This is the same guy who made the dumb article, "destroy all ifs". He probably just wrote this article to troll hackernews
Twitter's Fucked
111–120 of 398 posts
Re: Twitter's Fucked
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article says that Milo didn't deserve what he got, and I agree. You may not agree with his politics but people of all stripes have done worse. I guess we'll end up with a conservative twitter clone, and a liberal twitter, and no-one will ever face the "danger" of seeing viewpoints they disagree with.
Conservatives are ok with freedom of speech, 'safe zones' are invented by progressives.
There's nothing inherently conservative or liberal about being offended and wanting an echochamber at times.
Both want freedom of speech sometimes and both want to be able to block out dissenting voices at others.
The trick is finding a balance. Too big of an echochamber can be unhealthy, too small of one and little discussion about core beliefs gets discussed (everything gets sidetracked by the dissenters).
Young conservatives definitely seem to be outnumbered online, and I've seen them put up walls so they can discuss their beliefs without being constantly picked apart by people with alternative beliefs.
So I think the divide on ideological lines is unrealistic. Just human nature (good and bad).
Re: Twitter's Fucked
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
http://www.nonviolentcommunication.com/aboutnvc/nonviolent_c... https://www.heartland.edu/documents/idc/What%20is%20violent%...
Again, in both cases it's using violence as a rhetorical trick. Verbal and emotional abuse of children are serious issues, but they do NOT have to be violent for them to be horrible. The conflation of the two muddies the language that we have to describe the events that happen to us. If someone says, my parents were very violent to me, what would you assume happened? Doesn't knowing that there was physical abuse help…
Did you even read the links?
'Violent speech' and 'violent communication' are a form of violence. They have a nuanced definition. They can be used in multiple ways. Language is not strict. It is fluid, it changes over time, and in this case, totally applies to the subject. You are arguing for an unrealistic, unenforceable, overly-literal use of language.
Re: Twitter's Fucked
#114Yep. Yep, yep, yep. And Twitter's response is to ban some, but not all harassers, using the algorithm of "whoever is high profile and we don't like politically." That gives said harassers surprisingly legitimate reasons to claim censorship by Twitter as a company, despite the fact that they were in clear violation of Twitter's ToS and deserved to be banned. I refer of course to the Milo Yiannopoulos situation (edit:…
I have personally lost the belief that you can actually change someone's opinion on almost anything. So an echo chamber doesn't have to be a bad thing. I think people overestimate the value of having your beliefs challenged, does it ever really change someone's mind? If that's the case, you might as well view twitter as entertainment and to clue into the things you care about, in which case it can be pretty useful.
You can change somebody's opinion, just not through one direct interaction. An opinion change requires time, internal rationalization, and repeated exposure.
An echo chamber is bad because it not only repeatedly re-broadcasts beliefs, it also amplifies them. "The President is wrong and should be voted out of office" can turn into "The President is wrong and ought to be shot" in an echo chamber environment much faster if there's nobody around to say "wait, hold up, maybe don't."
Re: Twitter's Fucked
#115Yep. Yep, yep, yep. And Twitter's response is to ban some, but not all harassers, using the algorithm of "whoever is high profile and we don't like politically." That gives said harassers surprisingly legitimate reasons to claim censorship by Twitter as a company, despite the fact that they were in clear violation of Twitter's ToS and deserved to be banned. I refer of course to the Milo Yiannopoulos situation (edit:…
I have personally lost the belief that you can actually change someone's opinion on almost anything. So an echo chamber doesn't have to be a bad thing. I think people overestimate the value of having your beliefs challenged, does it ever really change someone's mind? If that's the case, you might as well view twitter as entertainment and to clue into the things you care about, in which case it can be pretty useful.
Don't look at the trees for the forest. Challenging the status quo solved the aphartaid, freed nations, emancipated women and much more.
Sure those changes are generational as people don't get their opinion changed easily.
But allowing these discussion to take place freely especially amongst the youth is essential to let them shape their world.
Re: Twitter's Fucked
#116My rule is that if nobody would pay for your service, you probably don't have a worthwhile business.
If Google instituted a $0.99 monthly fee to use Google search, people would line up to pay it. They don't have to, because their business model works differently, but they could do that, and it would work. I'd probably pay for an account.
If Facebook instituted a $0.99 monthly fee to use that, a lot of people would do it just because it keeps them in the loop with their friends. And in fact, many people would be willing to pay $2.99/mo for a business account which gets to do more (like post more events or whatever). Again, this isn't their business model, but this would totally work as a business model.
People would pay for Uber de-facto; they do pay for Uber.
Likewise, half my coworkers have bought coin packs in Pokémon Go. In general, lots of games do pay models.
If Twitter added a $0.99/year fee, there would be a clone written in a more scalable architecture taking all their users within a week. Some businesses would keep Twitter accounts, but that number would decrease as they lost users. Remember that Twitter added some minor advertising and instantly started losing users.
There are tons of other startups with this problem. The idea these days is, get a bunch of users and introduce ads. The problem there is that when you add ads, you're fundamentally changing your service. It's a bait-and-switch. And once you do the switch, if people weren't willing to pay for your service before, they're not going to want to start paying for it in the form of ads.
Re: Twitter's Fucked
#117Every platform that is public and anonmyous runs afoul of this, this isn't just twitter. You can look at Youtube comments, reddit, pretty much any forum. What's missing is that other platforms, like Facebook, took a very hard stance on this and forced people to signup as their real identities. Twitter, can easily follow suit. That won't fix all of the problems, but it will go towards improving things and it won't req…
If you think that enforcing real names induces civility and you use Facebook as an example, your argument is wrong and self-contradictory.
Facebook is /proof/ that the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory doesn't need anonymity. What the Internet proves about communication is that fuckwaddery (yes, this is a word, my word) is inversely proportional to interface friction. The quicker it is to spill the contents of your mind without the filtration enabled by interface difficulty, the more crap you can put out. Since 90 percent of everything is crap, [Sturgeon] even what you are thinking 90 percent of the time is crap and you're lucky if you manage to only commit the remaining 10 percent without contaminating it with the rest. Interface difficulty enforces thinking about what you commit to discussion. Which is why pen-and-ink letter writing "is an art" and the twitterverse is a cesspool - real names or not.
This is not to say that if everything went back to pen-and-paper that there would be no fuckwads. There would simply be fewer of them.
Lastly, I never used my real name on Facebook or other social media. Why should I give up what I have every right to do in real life just because it's electronic? People don't care whether I'm using my real name or alias as long as they know who they're talking to.
BMO's Revised Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory
(Normal person + communication medium) / interface friction = fuckwad
And when friction=0, you have a black hole of fuckwaddery. You usually get this when you use alcohol as a lubricant.
Re: Twitter's Fucked
#118In addition, Twitter lets anyone contact anyone with any kind of content, and will send a notification to the recipient. As a result, any person or bot with a Twitter account has the ability to interrupt your life with an invasive, hateful message at any time. What? I thought they had to follow you for your Direct Message to reach them. So I can contact potential advisors through twitter if I can't figure out their e…
You can open up your DMs so anybody can message you now.
Re: Twitter's Fucked
#119[deleted]
Re: Twitter's Fucked
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article says that Milo didn't deserve what he got, and I agree. You may not agree with his politics but people of all stripes have done worse. I guess we'll end up with a conservative twitter clone, and a liberal twitter, and no-one will ever face the "danger" of seeing viewpoints they disagree with.
Conservatives are ok with freedom of speech, 'safe zones' are invented by progressives.
What other people choose do with their privately-owned platforms does not limit anyone's freedom of speech, as the law currently stands.