Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just to play Devil's advocate: One that wants to manipulate your mind Like your post here? Or my present reply to it? And so on... one that echochambers your discovery Which is good, because nobody has enough time in the day to process every conceivable byte of information they might stumble across... one that censors arbitrarily OK, because while everyone may have the right to speak freely, not all speech needs to b…
The idea is I have a timeline and am able to choose what's on it. Good, bad, ugly. It's up to me. If I don't like what someone's saying I unfollow, mute or block. Easy. With Twitter, FB, and modern social media, they let their algorithm decide what I should see. They think they know what people want and ultimately what's best for me. I disagree with this so I opt-out of their services. Sadly. Because there are ( or w…
If you're spectating, maybe. Completely falls apart when you try to engage in dialogue on Twitter, which is what both Twitter, Inc. and I want.
Say I follow someone because I like what they say. And I want to discuss what they're saying, or to explore existing discussions. I'm going into this ready to have a thoughtful debate or two.
So I open the replies, and they're what I consider to be garbage: flamewars, reaction GIFs, propaganda, straight-up bad-faith trolling, and worse. But maybe there's some good in here somewhere?
Assume I'm a typical human with emotions and stuff. Do I:
A) Immediately close the thread! It's not worth it, and I have the ability and willpower to bow out.
B) Scroll through the replies, muting and blocking people. Maybe if I do this enough I'll have a nicer experience on the next thread I open. Wow there sure are a lot of these folks!
C) Take the bait. Someone is wrong on the internet.
You know already, but I'll tell you anyway. I, typical human, tend to rush headlong into option C), which wastes my time, makes me unhappy, and gives me a negative perception of the quality of discussions on Twitter. Twitter, Inc. doesn't want that either, but they've picked these replies to show me. Clearly they don't know what kind of thing I think is garbage. So what can they do?
It's not easy.