Twitter is an incredible medium for citizen journalism and news broadcasting in general. There is no doubt about that. It does have issues with tackling bots and fake profiles - something that it finds harder than other social networks like Facebook which have a better system in place for authenticating accounts. By subscribing to the right people on Twitter, my feed is highly curated to suit my interests. Their machine learning would only get better and I only wish they use the AI it to classify bots and other fake accounts to enhance user experience.
I Hope Twitter Goes Away
181–190 of 251 posts
Re: I Hope Twitter Goes Away
#182Thanks for posting this, I have had the same unpopular opinion since Twitter first appeared. While I don't necessarily think that Twitter should go away, I do think it should get out of the way of other methods for communication. There are much better forms of communication for many circumstances where communication is needed. Which is damn near everything aside from communicating with marketers and expressing witty one-liners to the world.
EDIT: I forgot about one great thing about twitter that I normally don't think about (since all the other uses cloud this function for me): real-time news. There's not many tools out there that can handle this type of functionality better. Reddit serves the same purpose for many people and does so in an even better way in my opinion (no character limit, communities focused on a topic, etc.).
Re: I Hope Twitter Goes Away
#183Twitter won't go away for say 50-100 years. Why? There is value in the name/idea in the public consciousness. Let's not forget that myspace, friendster, and livejournal still exist. There are a lot of pre 2000 sites and brands that are still sort of a live in some kind of zombie state or another. It's weird.
Myspace has no impact on my life... Thats "close enough" to gone for my purposes, and I assume the author's as well.
I don't mine if there are people going around using tools that I don't care for, it's only when they're insanely popular beyond all cause do they exert social pressure on people who would prefer to not use them.
Re: I Hope Twitter Goes Away
#184Twitter is the best real time news source I've ever seen. Any discussion of it's utility that ignores that is missing how a huge percentage of its users actually interact with it. Yes its bad for conversations. Yes it is poor at building communities. But if you want to know whats happening in Twitter can be a fantastic resource. Especially (but not exclusively) if your area of interest involves sports, tech, or polit…
Ahh, real time news! Yes I think that is the one biggest positive feature of twitter. When I was trying to remember some positive things about Twitter to respond to this with, I failed to remember this one due to all the other not-as-positive things Twitter is used for.
Re: I Hope Twitter Goes Away
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a bit like saying "I wish cell phone B would go away, because I prefer cell phone A, and if cell phone A was the only one people could buy, it would be cheaper for me to buy because of economies of scale."
No, it's like "I wish cell phone B would go away" because I prefer cell phone A, and I think cell phone B is POISONOUS to community and discussion, and leads to a worse society.
The trouble is that "worse society" is defined by the preferences of the speaker, not the aggregate preferences of everyone in society including the thousands (millions?) of users contently using Twitter in ways the speaker dislikes.
Re: I Hope Twitter Goes Away
#186Says the guy with nearly 38k tweets.
Re: I Hope Twitter Goes Away
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it's like "I wish cell phone B would go away" because I prefer cell phone A, and I think cell phone B is POISONOUS to community and discussion, and leads to a worse society.
The trouble is that "worse society" is defined by the preferences of the speaker, not the aggregate preferences of everyone in society including the thousands (millions?) of users contently using Twitter in ways the speaker dislikes.
I don't see how that's problematic at all. If my ideal society is different from that of most other people, it still doesn't mean I'm not entitled to my own opinion.
Re: I Hope Twitter Goes Away
#188I hate Twitter as well. It is occupying a place that could very easily be occupied by much better products. It's primary purpose is to hold back innovation.
I'm sure some people prefer Twitter as it is and it is valid for them to do so. However, the existence of Twitter is still massively harmful in terms of opportunity cost.
Re: I Hope Twitter Goes Away
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People who think twitter is a conversation platform are #doingitwrong. Period. If millions of people insist on using your product as a conversation platform, it is a conversation platform, no matter what you intended it to be. A thing is what it is.
People use twitter for announcements and then for comments on those announcements. Very few people have actual conversations. When a conversation does happen, it's usually the root poster agreeing (or disagreeing) with the person that tweeted at them. I don't see anyone going to twitter with the initial intent of conversing with someone. Nobody goes onto their computer and says "Hey I'm gonna go message this person o…
> I don't see anyone going to twitter with the initial intent of conversing with someone.
They're you're either blind or not looking very hard.
Twitter is a conversation platform. A shitty one perhaps, but one nontheless.
Re: I Hope Twitter Goes Away
#190Twitter still rules the real-time news/information area. Communities like facebook/irc/forums are too closed for broadcasts like that. It has its purpose and it does it well. But you can also not use products you don't like.
I suspect some Twitter hate as he spent time very close to it in working there. This is expected, you work on a product you might see more of the bad than the good. Game developers don't always enjoy the game because they see what they had to cut, directors can't watch a movie without pointing out flaws, security forces can't walk into a building without checking for safety, or you worked at Olive Garden and might never want that ever, ever again.
When you work in it, you really get to know something, for better or worse.