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The tyranny of the supertweeter

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Re: The tyranny of the supertweeter

#111

Post by ajross »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #73
ajross wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the true poison in my opinion. Journalists can in seconds find random tweets stating any conceivable narrative they want to create, and then launder their personal opinions by pretending to "report" on "what sources are saying". That... not remotely true. No one writes stories for major organizations based only on tweets[1]. Go pick up (figuratively) a newspaper and read the front page stories carefully, an…

What would you consider a major organization? I'll happily grant that the New York Times won't let you do that, but it's common for your Voxes ( https://www.vox.com/culture/23357114/the-little-mermaid-raci... ) or Rolling Stones ( https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/black-litt... ) to write articles on the topic of "I found some people saying mean things on social media".

So frustrating. I talked about news and reporters, and you try to counter with links to two opinion pieces from their journal's respective "culture" sections.

Your point seems to be, what, that people who disagree with you are posting on the internet? Should we make the same criticism of Substack too?

Re: The tyranny of the supertweeter

#112

Post by tablespoon »

actionablefiber wrote: post #90
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced these kind of semantic disputes matter. Non-Americans don't typically identify as "libertarian", but that doesn't make it hard to express or describe the idea of being pro-business and anti-regulation.

> being pro-business and anti-regulation The word "liberal" means exactly that - showing preference and deference to private enterprise - in the overwhelming majority of the world, as it refers to economic liberalism.

>> I'm not convinced these kind of semantic disputes matter. Non-Americans don't typically identify as "libertarian", but that doesn't make it hard to express or describe the idea of being pro-business and anti-regulation.

> The word "liberal" means exactly that - showing preference and deference to private enterprise - in the overwhelming majority of the world, as it refers to economic liberalism.

Except in America, where it took on a somewhat narrower, variant meaning that focuses on "social liberalism."

Re: The tyranny of the supertweeter

#113

Post by bnralt »

I think this overlooks the biggest issue. It's not just that Twitter (and most online forums) aren't representative of the public at large. It's that these sites are driven by a tiny number of hyper-online turbo posters, many of whom are likely mentally unwell. It's worth reading this post: "Most of What You Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People"[1].

Even that, I believe, understates the problem, because I think these hyper-online folk are more likely than the average person to be active in multiple internet communities. I've been surprised to find a personality on small niche game forums pop up as well known Twitter political commentator, or read a comment on Hacker News, switch over to a niche Reddit sub about an unrelated topic, and see comments by the exact same user (same screen name and beliefs).

The other day I passed a crazy person on the street who had mountains of handwritten cardboard signs plastered all over a park. We can easily tell someone like that is crazy. But if they plaster their screed all over the internet in bit sized posts and Tweets, and none of them are _too_ obviously insane, it's easy to think this is just a normal person. And since almost no online site has posting limits, crazy people that spam messages online all day are simply going to drown out any normal people on the platform (with the upvoting systems only exacerbating these problems).

https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...

Re: The tyranny of the supertweeter

#114

Post by rr888 »

thrown_22 wrote: post #78
mhneu wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the word liberal, which means something different for most Americans than its meaning in other countries. In Australia, the Liberal party is the conservatives who are allied with Murdoch. The word "neoliberal" is also a problem. It is used negatively and aimed at a broad swath of center-left to center-right. But in other countries, the people called "neoliberals" would be understood to be conservatives.…

[flagged]

I'm really not sure who you're talking about now. Sounds like Russian BS. Do you have a source for any of these three things?

> were pushing for the OK sign to be classified as a hate symbol used by secret Nazis

> Ukraine having 20% of it's army wear literal swastikas

> Today they argue that [Ukraine swastikas] isn't that bad.

Re: The tyranny of the supertweeter

#115

Post by xhevahir »

SamBam wrote: post #79
Bakary wrote: post #7

The part about journalism is particularly troubling because Twitter is like crack for journalists and has thus played a big part in decreasing the credibility of the profession. The platform is a journalist's fantasy brought to life. The ability to exist as an individual and have an audience independently of their publication. Blue check-marks. As the article mentions, the capacity to find stories with little effort.…

There's also an excellent Exra Klein podcast where he talks to game-philospher C. Thi Nguyen about Twitter's Like button's effect on journalists. [1] He says that as a journalist on twitter (which almost every journalist is) it's nearly impossible to get away from measuring your worth/impact by the number of likes you get. It's so buit into our minds, we can't not use Likes as a proxy for how engaging our story is. T…

> If, instead, you wrote a story framed in a way that might change a few people's minds, you won't get nearly the number of likes...

Or, more painfully, you'll see a lot of derisive quote-tweets, subtweets, hostile screencaps, the dreaded "ratio"... Twitter users are a catty bunch.

Re: The tyranny of the supertweeter

#116

Post by tux1968 »

samatman wrote: post #100
tux1968 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mercator projection, which exists to provide an objective map of longitude to up and down. While true, it also distorts reality and leads to mistaken ideas about the world: https://wonderfulengineering.com/the-authagraph-world-map-is...

If you cut meat with an ax, this is a mistake, but it isn't the ax which is mistaken.

If everyone in society is still cutting meat with an axe, it's a mistake to not mention better alternatives ;-)

Re: The tyranny of the supertweeter

#117

Post by Bakary »

samatman wrote: post #82
Bakary wrote: post #7

The part about journalism is particularly troubling because Twitter is like crack for journalists and has thus played a big part in decreasing the credibility of the profession. The platform is a journalist's fantasy brought to life. The ability to exist as an individual and have an audience independently of their publication. Blue check-marks. As the article mentions, the capacity to find stories with little effort.…

This is an insult to the Mercator projection, which exists to provide an objective map of longitude to up and down. The social graph of Twitter journalism is an ephemeron, it means only itself and maps to no other part of reality. This distorts in every direction it can, while giving no useful reference frame in return.

On the contrary, it is a reverent homage. What other map is so significant in modern-day culture that it has gained any reputation at all, let alone a cadre of haters? Thanks to it, discussing map projections will never not be funny.

Re: The tyranny of the supertweeter

#118

Post by Tycho »

I remember @pmarca kept a Twitter list of journalist accounts. It was a pretty good thing to browse, full of stories that journalists were trying to bring to light. Then in 2016 it became unreadable, just a 24/7 TDS group therapy forum.

Re: The tyranny of the supertweeter

#119

Post by h2odragon »

PaulHoule wrote: post #94

My first take was that a "supertweeter" is the opposite of a "subwoofer".

I bet we could sell ultrasonic transducers to audiophiles at a fat profit.

"Restoring the all important 48Khz to 500Khz band to your audio improves the listening experience, repels bats and mosquitoes, drives dogs mad, and will lengthen your lifespan by 100 years. Only $495"

Re: The tyranny of the supertweeter

#120

Post by kixiQu »

bachmeier wrote: post #92
SamBam wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also an excellent Exra Klein podcast where he talks to game-philospher C. Thi Nguyen about Twitter's Like button's effect on journalists. [1] He says that as a journalist on twitter (which almost every journalist is) it's nearly impossible to get away from measuring your worth/impact by the number of likes you get. It's so buit into our minds, we can't not use Likes as a proxy for how engaging our story is. T…

This is less of a problem to me than the other side effect of like-driven journalism. If you only preach to the choir, you can get away with misleading or inaccurate claims. Like-driven journalism encourages a style where you present only some of the facts or even just make stuff up. Folks like stuff because of what it says. They don't care if it's partial truths or lies. Like-driven journalism quite literally punish…

This is also talked about in Nguyen's work, as the difference between "epistemic bubble" and "echo chamber". It's worth checking out

https://academic.oup.com/book/39388/chapter/339074130

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