21–30 of 49 posts
>"Twitter is a hive of trolling and abuse that it seems unable to stop."
>"Then came Twitter, which wasn’t his idea but was his company. He remains the largest individual shareholder and a board member."
Why is it - "it seems unable to stop" and not "we seem unable to stop"? Does he really have no influence or power as an outsized share holder, board member and founder of Twitter? He can't help fix that "broken" bit?
Uh, hmm, no. That's a bit too much of a stretch.
It's hard to take an article seriously after a claim like that.
More like society is broken.
> Mr. Williams — a Twitter founder, a co-creator of Blogger — set everyone free, providing tools to address the world. In the history of communications technology, it was a development with echoes of Gutenberg. Uh, hmm, no. That's a bit too much of a stretch. It's hard to take an article seriously after a claim like that.
> Mr. Williams — a Twitter founder, a co-creator of Blogger — set everyone free, providing tools to address the world. In the history of communications technology, it was a development with echoes of Gutenberg. Uh, hmm, no. That's a bit too much of a stretch. It's hard to take an article seriously after a claim like that.
Quotes (and subsequent commentary) on HN comments are a great way for me to decide what to read or not. Yours is a great example of that, thanks for that. I wont read it.
Medium feels like it's ubiquitous and mildly despised at the same time.
At the scale of Comcast or Facebook that might be a sign of success. But I suspect it's a pretty bad sign for a company in Medium's position, given what they're trying to be.
I'm sick of people deciding that the problem with the internet is other people. The internet isn't "broken." The internet is the only mass communication and media paradigm which doesn't have to present a facade for the sake of commercial interests, but an honest, unfiltered glimpse at the zeitgeist. It's a mirror, an honest mirror. If we don't like what we see, it's because we had a naive understanding of what we are…
While I partially agree with you, I think there's a tendency of those (us) who work in a deterministic universe to under-attribute technology's ability to shade or shift pre-existing things. In the same way that propagation models matter in neural networks, the nuances of how the internet is consumed, shared, cross-linked, and presented all influence the zeitgeist that it creates.
If HN had no moderation or anti-spamming code, our comment threads would look very different. Would that be a reflection of our truer selves? I say yes and no: it would reflect our opinions of the moment more accurately, but by virtue of altering the comment content on the site we would then make different comments to those comments.
So an algorithm shifts our HN world, despite the fact that we remain the same people. (At least over the short term)
And when it boils down to it, I refuse to live in a world where technology is impotent in reminding us of and appealing to our kinder, aspirational, better natures.
I'm sick of people deciding that the problem with the internet is other people. The internet isn't "broken." The internet is the only mass communication and media paradigm which doesn't have to present a facade for the sake of commercial interests, but an honest, unfiltered glimpse at the zeitgeist. It's a mirror, an honest mirror. If we don't like what we see, it's because we had a naive understanding of what we are…
I agree. In particular, the NYT and other large media organizations seem to talk as though the internet became abruptly disharmonious during the election. It wouldn't be an NYT article of it didn't have "Trump supporters are evil" undertones. Our country isn't going to get better if we are constantly demonizing those with whom we disagree.