Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Man Who Built the Retweet: “We Handed a Loaded Weapon to 4-Year-Olds”

buzzfeednews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 148 posts

Re: Man Who Built the Retweet: “We Handed a Loaded Weapon to 4-Year-Olds”

#11

Post by black_puppydog »

ethbro wrote: post #9
jackfoxy wrote: post #6

I think the real problem is Twitter refuses to make sophisticated filtering available to users. Simple mute, block, and keyword filtering are inadequate.

I was wondering today why Facebook et al. don't break their share functions into emotionally binned categories. "Share because it makes me angry" etc Seems like they'd get amazing whole text training sets, as well as a signal to better guide their platforms (e.g. under-weighting negative emotions in share velocity).

that's cute that you're assuming they would want to do that.

Re: Man Who Built the Retweet: “We Handed a Loaded Weapon to 4-Year-Olds”

#12

Post by slig »

jackfoxy wrote: post #6

I think the real problem is Twitter refuses to make sophisticated filtering available to users. Simple mute, block, and keyword filtering are inadequate.

They don't even have to be that sophisticated: just me automatically block accounts with no phone number and/or were created recently.

Re: Man Who Built the Retweet: “We Handed a Loaded Weapon to 4-Year-Olds”

#14

Post by malvosenior »

It's so annoying when platforms and product managers think they know better than their users. People want to retweet and they will even if you remove this feature (as they were before it existed). It basically comes off as Twitter doesn't like the users they have or the behavior they want.

It's really hilarious that they use Gamergate as an example of why retweets are bad. That was a massive manifestation of the above concept. Journalists and platforms thought they knew better than gamers and users and they went to war with each other. Gamergate as a grassroots, distributed movement was very interesting and it's sadly not surprising that "the powers that be" want to reign back in control of the narrative.

It's also ironic that there's a gigantic "Share" and "Tweet" button at the top of this article. As if Buzzfeed isn't entirely guilty of creating clickbait and pumping it into social media to inflame and degrade conversation. The title of this post is literally: “We Handed a Loaded Weapon to 4-Year-Olds”. That is not elevated conversation.

Re: Man Who Built the Retweet: “We Handed a Loaded Weapon to 4-Year-Olds”

#15

Post by splendidHaiku »

daveFNbuck wrote: post #7
btbuildem wrote: post #4

So -- remove the button. No? Why not?

The guy in the article doesn't even work at Twitter. He's not in a position to remove it.

Maybe other people work at twitter who could remove it? Questions was why not just remove it.

Re: Man Who Built the Retweet: “We Handed a Loaded Weapon to 4-Year-Olds”

#17

Post by raverbashing »

slig wrote: post #12
jackfoxy wrote: post #6

I think the real problem is Twitter refuses to make sophisticated filtering available to users. Simple mute, block, and keyword filtering are inadequate.

They don't even have to be that sophisticated: just me automatically block accounts with no phone number and/or were created recently.

You can do that for 'no phone no.' accounts, people can still reply to you but you'll see no notification

Re: Man Who Built the Retweet: “We Handed a Loaded Weapon to 4-Year-Olds”

#18

Post by protomyth »

btbuildem wrote: post #4

So -- remove the button. No? Why not?

Because people will go back to the RT: convention and Twitter won't be able to sell the analytics as easily.

Maybe they will finally get rid of the like acting like a retweet, ah the good ole' days.

Re: Man Who Built the Retweet: “We Handed a Loaded Weapon to 4-Year-Olds”

#19

Post by seisvelas »

ethbro wrote: post #9
jackfoxy wrote: post #6

I think the real problem is Twitter refuses to make sophisticated filtering available to users. Simple mute, block, and keyword filtering are inadequate.

I was wondering today why Facebook et al. don't break their share functions into emotionally binned categories. "Share because it makes me angry" etc Seems like they'd get amazing whole text training sets, as well as a signal to better guide their platforms (e.g. under-weighting negative emotions in share velocity).

People would quickly realize that if they share it under a negative category their share velocity would be hit. A better approach might just be to sentiment-detect negative emotion in Tweets and adjust share velocity accordingly.
Post reply on HN