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

You can pick on the devs for choosing to work at Twitter or other social media companies, but let's be clear: the developers aren't the ones calling the shots.

1. Lower the temperature of the discussion: simple, published rules like “you can use more than X(low number) expletives per Y(high number) words of text” and “you can not have ANY calls for violence” and

2. No censorship of the topics.

I think, this would restore public trust in the platform (but I am sure there are other, possibly equally good solutions that Twitter can come up with).

Yup.

In the 1930s movie "Meet John Doe", see how a newspaper can try to increase circulation by (a) publishing something, a continuing narrative, emotional (in the movie, a poor person frustrated with the economy and politics and writing a FAKE letter to the newspaper on their decision to commit suicide), (b) creating controversy, (c) encouraging arguments to start, should he or should he not, etc.

The continuing narrative idea was to encourage the controversy to run for some months. The idea of such a narrative was formulated by E. Bernays, as I recall, also in the 1930s. Later Bernays was an ad executive in the US.

Sooo, an old, 1930s or before, idea to create strong emotions, headaches, stomach aches, upchucks, anger, frustration, stress, depression, various individual psychological problems, various political and societal problems, was for the media to create long running, continuing controversy.

Net, whenever start to feel emotions from what see in the media, guess that 90+% of the time you have just been fooled, manipulated, exploited, jerked around by the media looking for eyeballs for ad revenue.

Recall the old characterization of media values, "If it bleeds, it leads."

My old description has been the media just wants to grab you, by the heart, the gut, below the belt, always below the shoulders, never between the ears.

Objective, credible, important information? Nearly never. Brainless, groundless, manipulative emotionalism? Nearly always.

Sooo, I deeply, profoundly, bitterly hate and despise the MSM (mainstream media) -- they want to deceive me, steal my time and energy. So, for some years, I've flatly refused to pay any attention to the MSM.

Solution for the MSM and the old techniques of journalism? Easy. People just ignore the MSM. That will cut off their supply of eyeballs and ad revenue and they will go out of business.

I posted more at

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33417798

“Agreement” is a voluntary act. If people don’t agree on fundamental facts, we need more dialog to reach agreement if possible, and mutual tolerance if not.

“Agreement” cannot be an involuntarily enforced mandate.

If people don’t agree, we cannot force them to agree by silencing dissenting voices. Even if such silencing worked in the short-term, it’s corrosive to society’s ability to discern truth.