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Twitter’s Plan to Get People to Stop Yelling at Each Other

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Re: Twitter’s Plan to Get People to Stop Yelling at Each Other

#161

Post by onion2k »

kprjo wrote: post #158
astrange wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN has a pretty cynical viewpoint on everything. A comment doesn't really feel like a contribution when you're writing it unless you disagree with the parent (like so). People will find all sorts of reasons to think the article is wrong based on "mid-brow dismissal" or will say any public figure or company is lying about any statement they make. Plus there's no emojis.

Yeah, on the other hand Twitter is all roses, and those people always side with public figures and companies, lol. Maybe those guys would like HN better if they could use avatars so they could show off their black lipstick and half-shaved heads.

This is exactly the sort of unreasonable and irrational angry generalization that makes people call HN "the angry orange website".

Re: Twitter’s Plan to Get People to Stop Yelling at Each Other

#162

Post by test1235 »

onion2k wrote: post #128
aloisdg wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN, Reddit and most newsgroups are not so bad.

HN has an appalling reputation outside of HN. People refer to it as "the evil orange website". EDIT: It's "angry orange website", not "evil orange website". Not so bad after all.

Outside where? I don't think I've ever seen HN mentioned anywhere except maybe Reddit, when people are asking for recommendations.

Re: Twitter’s Plan to Get People to Stop Yelling at Each Other

#163

Post by newen »

carriers wrote: post #59
skymt wrote: post #33

> Over several days this spring, BuzzFeed News met with Twitter’s leadership and watched as twttr’s team worked on its first big push: helping people better understand what’s being said in often chaotic conversations. The team thinks that if people took more time to read entire conversations, that would help improve their comprehension of them. I had assumed that Twitter was aware of the implications of its design fo…

Yeah, I don't get this at all. I think it's even deeper than designing for controversy. I'm "older" (40s), though I work on products used by younger people, so I don't think this is just me being old, but I can't follow a conversation on twitter at all. When there's a link from HackerNews to Twitter, I click on it and sometimes see the thing mentioned in the HN title, and sometimes don't. Then there's a bunch of stuf…

I had the same problem with Twitter too. The posts and replies seemed random and without any structure and I didn't really get it. But after I spent a few weeks using it, it started making sense and I would browse posts and replies without too much effort.

I think it just takes a while for new people to get Twitter. Probably most people don't even know why Twitter is confusing initially because they are so used to it.

Re: Twitter’s Plan to Get People to Stop Yelling at Each Other

#164

Post by theoh »

rjf72 wrote: post #127
theoh wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people used to feel this way about IRC. I'm afraid the reality is probably that you just don't have the motivation to figure it out, for whatever reason. No mass-market product like Twitter could succeed if it was as confusing as you say it is. There's also the fact that a subset of computer programmer types have low tolerance for all sorts of "noisy" things that the average person doesn't have a problem with.

I'd separate use cases. If you want to talk to/about yourself or if you just want to rant at somebody, post memes, etc then Twitter is easy and natural to use. If you want to have meaningful nuanced conversation, Twitter is useless. So you end up with a dichotomy where for some people Twitter is a fine fit and for others it's completely unusable. Both are correct.

I'm actually a Twitter user, and I think this is a very jaundiced opinion. I have a lot of different interests and following people on Twitter is a very good grapevine system. Math twitter is a good place, for example. A lot of people are very enthusiastic about how it has enriched their mathematical diet. There are many good people on Twitter who use it for serious sharing of ideas in other fields as well.

In general, it's a good way for people to share thoughts and links to a diverse audience. Liking Twitter isn't a sign of foolishness. Among the social networks, it's not as gross and corporate as FB, or as superficial as Instagram.

Your dismissal of the reasons why people might like Twitter, the implicit claim that it's useless for sophisticated people like yourself, and the apparent desire to impose black and white dichotomies on the world risks making you into a candidate for the category of "just wanting to rant at somebody".

We know that HN has its own serious cultural problems, after all.

Re: Twitter’s Plan to Get People to Stop Yelling at Each Other

#165

Post by bluetidepro »

baroffoos wrote: post #131
bluetidepro wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

THIS. This is "Twitter Moments" in a nutshell, and it drives me absolutely crazy. It may be the most toxic "news-source", in my opinion, because of this. It takes a handful of tweets (usually not even verified accounts), and tries to make mountains out of molehills. It tries to drive narratives based on trends of a few "loud" users, and it's so deceiving. It rarely paints a full picture, and it tries so hard to manip…

I once did the research on an article with a title in the format "X group is outraged over Y's comment on twitter" and when I found the original post I found no outrage and at most just a mild dissatisfaction.

Exactly. Haha They blow everything WAY out of proportion. It's so silly. Drives me mad. ha

Re: Twitter’s Plan to Get People to Stop Yelling at Each Other

#166

Post by cjslep »

Veen wrote: post #147
cjslep wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The low quality of Reddit-think slips into the workplace all the time. If it isn't a debate about semantics (the lowest form of argument, "well this word also means..." Etc) it's a debate about the second lowest form (the form/framing of an argument, "that's a reductionist argument..." Etc), and when I challenge said co-workers on this ("what kind of reductionism? So what if it's reductionist? Don't assume I believe…

> Don't assume I believe in Kant's first formulation of the categorical imperative which you use Your co-workers must be very different to the people I come across in my work.

It's actually quite simple: do you take something I said and try to extend it to an absurd use case, to show how such a viewpoint cannot be true? This is that universality formulation in action.

Quick example: I said not vaccinating is risking death, and someone else said I shouldn't drive because that risk of death is higher. That's all it takes!

Re: Twitter’s Plan to Get People to Stop Yelling at Each Other

#167

Post by thinkingemote »

vokep wrote: post #74
LargeWu wrote: post #23

Twitter mostly proves that a lot of people are not happy unless they're outraged.

Or rather a lot of people are unhappy and express this through constant outrage masked by a facade of happiness and "good vibes"

I think the reality on Twitter is that only a very few people are unhappy and outraged and a very many people without the strong emotions empathise and amplify it.

This is actively encouraged and labeled in some groups by "being a good ally" for example.

Re: Twitter’s Plan to Get People to Stop Yelling at Each Other

#168

Post by repolfx »

kprjo wrote: post #151
onion2k wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wrong about the name. It's "the angry orange website". https://twitter.com/search?q="angry%20orange%20website" - that's just a sample of HN's 'haters'. HN has its share of people who are awful and post horrible opinions (see the discussion about any article on JavaScript, health care, wealth, etc). I believe HN has some value left which is why I still post here, but I can absolutely see why people have abandone…

I wonder why they call it that. After all you get banned here if you post right-wing opinions. It's practically a safe space for them.

HN moderators discourage humour. Contrast with Slashdot that encouraged it via the moderation system. If everyone has to sound serious all the time, you get a lot of angry sounding posts.

Re: Twitter’s Plan to Get People to Stop Yelling at Each Other

#169

Post by thinkingemote »

enraged_camel wrote: post #132
toephu2 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you have nazis in your timeline in the first place? I never understood the people that always complain about nazis on twitter. Like seriously what are you clicking 'Like' on that your twitter is fully of nazis?

It’s not my Twitter that is full of Nazis. It’s Twitter in general. And their tweets make it into my life because non-Nazis respond to them, and those responses then become popular and are shared.

It's more accurate to say that Twitter is full of responses to Nazis than Twitter is full of nazis. People on Twitter amplifies responses

Re: Twitter’s Plan to Get People to Stop Yelling at Each Other

#170

Post by astrange »

kprjo wrote: post #158
astrange wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN has a pretty cynical viewpoint on everything. A comment doesn't really feel like a contribution when you're writing it unless you disagree with the parent (like so). People will find all sorts of reasons to think the article is wrong based on "mid-brow dismissal" or will say any public figure or company is lying about any statement they make. Plus there's no emojis.

Yeah, on the other hand Twitter is all roses, and those people always side with public figures and companies, lol. Maybe those guys would like HN better if they could use avatars so they could show off their black lipstick and half-shaved heads.

This is not a mid-brow dismissal for once. Instead it's "boomer mindset", which you usually only see in newspaper comment sections. A rarity!
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