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Tell HN: The issues of Twitter are not a technical problem to solve

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Re: Tell HN: The issues of Twitter are not a technical problem to solve

#121

Post by Herbstluft »

asicsp wrote: post #95
Herbstluft wrote: post #41

Until not that long ago I was a pretty happy Twitter user. I curated my follows (keeping them between 150 and 200), only followed people posting interesting , creative , or scientific things. When anyone started tweeting or retweeting low quality material, I simply unfollowed. Unfortunately, the devs at Twitter hate the way I use it. Nowadays ever 5th post or so on my timeline is from someone I do not follow, either…

You can use lists to avoid all of these. You'll see tweets only from those you add to the list. No promotional tweets, etc. So, instead of (or, in addition to) follow/unfollow, you'll have to add/remove from lists.

Thanks for the tip. I'll give it a try.

Re: Tell HN: The issues of Twitter are not a technical problem to solve

#122

Post by pj_mukh »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #45
pj_mukh wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the uncomfortable question though, can a social media platform achieve sufficient scale, so its more useful for discoverability than your group chats, without optimizing for engagement? Discord is a happy medium (just, really large group chats).

TikTok, for all its woes, seems to somehow do this significantly better than Twitter and Facebook? Or is that just my filter bubble?

Is there a conversation to be had? I guess stitched videos?

Re: Tell HN: The issues of Twitter are not a technical problem to solve

#123

Post by thereddaikon »

mox1 wrote: post #66
mFixman wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord is actually a good example: I think I got 0 notifications about groups I don't follow, so isn't as big of an incentive to aggressively smugpost as in Twitter.

Join any server remotely related to crypto or finance, the spam messages will start rolling in. I get on average about 1 a day, something about "pumps" (whatever that is)

Why would join a discord dedicated to either? That seems like a own goal to me. If you dont want to get sketchy messages, then dont go to sketchy places.

Re: Tell HN: The issues of Twitter are not a technical problem to solve

#124

Post by kyleyeats »

mFixman wrote: post #36
kyleyeats wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a pretty good cross-section of the discourse the week before election day. Not sure if it's worth extrapolating.

This happened in May. It's probably even worse now.

Oh, then yeah that's just annoying. I was annoyed off of it not too long ago as a long-time user, and it was for political stuff for me as well. We won't have a good picture of post-Elon Twitter until the 9th, but I'm cautiously optimistic.

Re: Tell HN: The issues of Twitter are not a technical problem to solve

#125

Post by protomyth »

I just want to see the tweets of people I follow and stuff they retweet. I like the ability to turn off retweets from people I follow. I can even live with ads.

I absolutely do not want to see what people like, trends, or tweets from randos that I don't follow. If I haven't indicated I feel it warrants my attention then leave me alone. My idea of celebrities is different than Twitters.

Discovery is for search.

I am less engaged with all the engagement added.

Re: Tell HN: The issues of Twitter are not a technical problem to solve

#126

Post by phailhaus »

dqpb wrote: post #109
phailhaus wrote: post #57

Agreed. The problem with Twitter is in its design . It's in what it allows you to do, and what it doesn't. I'll repeat what I raised in the other post: 1. People are high-variance, and yet we're only allowed to follow individual accounts. That's a problem, especially because network effects mean that one person's voice gets amplified exponentially with the number of followers they have. Consider the six degrees of se…

You agree and then list a bunch of technical problems.

Those aren't technical problems. They have nothing to do with the tech stack of Twitter, how it scales, whether it's centralized or decentralized, etc. It's entirely how the experience is structured and what users are allowed to do, how site is designed independent of implementation details.

Re: Tell HN: The issues of Twitter are not a technical problem to solve

#127

Post by pjc50 »

noxer wrote: post #116
mFixman wrote: post #14

I used to agree with you until I created a new Twitter account from scratch. I'm not American and I specifically put non-political things in my interests. Yet, the second I signed up I got the following: 1. A notification about a smug reply a rando made to a Republican Congressman. 2. Posts from a meme page with a Pepe the frog avatar showing homeless people fighting in San Francisco. 3. Somebody I don't follow accus…

Everyone takes shortcuts these days so by Godwin's law directly calling the other person on the internet with which you disagree a nazi is peak optimization /s On a serious note I think the problem is actually the heavy moderation and algorithmic bubble creation. Then you had certain famous and controversial people who operated above all bubbles and the different bubble started clashing. The only way I see to fix thi…

> disagreeing but supporting that someone should be able voice their opinion anyway

It's not just "disagreement" but the death threats, slurs, allegations of "grooming", racism, libel, and simple fraud (especially involving cryptocurrency).

Heck, Musk himself posted (and deleted shortly afterwards) libel about Pete Pelosi.

Re: Tell HN: The issues of Twitter are not a technical problem to solve

#128

Post by enos_feedler »

mFixman wrote: post #14

I used to agree with you until I created a new Twitter account from scratch. I'm not American and I specifically put non-political things in my interests. Yet, the second I signed up I got the following: 1. A notification about a smug reply a rando made to a Republican Congressman. 2. Posts from a meme page with a Pepe the frog avatar showing homeless people fighting in San Francisco. 3. Somebody I don't follow accus…

Agreed everyone should do this. I created a burner facebook account just so I could sell things on Marketplace and the feed of clickbait I see is pretty awful. Its eye opening to see what kind of shit the platform shoves on you when they have no data to go. However I bet even small bits of info would be enough to strongly change things for the first few bits. Haven’t tried though! Giving em nothing

Re: Tell HN: The issues of Twitter are not a technical problem to solve

#129

Post by amatecha »

mFixman wrote: post #14

I used to agree with you until I created a new Twitter account from scratch. I'm not American and I specifically put non-political things in my interests. Yet, the second I signed up I got the following: 1. A notification about a smug reply a rando made to a Republican Congressman. 2. Posts from a meme page with a Pepe the frog avatar showing homeless people fighting in San Francisco. 3. Somebody I don't follow accus…

Conversely I signed up for Mastodon and saw a ton of awesome technical content, geeky chatter and exactly zero hostility or toxicity. Has been that way for the past few years. (Though, a smaller instance, not mastodon.social)

Re: Tell HN: The issues of Twitter are not a technical problem to solve

#130

Post by pjc50 »

pessimizer wrote: post #86
edent wrote: post #13

I disagree. Your points aren't necessarily wrong, but they ignore one big factor. Twitter chooses what content to promote to people. I could use Twitter quite happily not knowing about the latest "scandal" in, say, the knitting world. But Twitter actively promotes that content to me - either with the "trending" sidebar or by showing me content that it thinks will increase my engagement. That is a technical problem. H…

> How do you surface engaging content without also surfacing harmful / polarising / abusive content? People's objections to twitter are rarely if ever that they have objectionable material forced upon them. The objections are that objectionable material is "surfaced" to anyone, especially the people who desire that material the most. And the definition of that objectionable material tends to correspond to the beliefs…

> especially the people who desire that material the most.

Just because people want to hear the blood libel about Jews doesn't mean it has to be allowed.

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