Twitter should start placing a visual marker on Tweets that have been posted via their API. Maybe a yellow exclamation mark around the same location as the blue check mark (which is for verified accounts).
How Twitter poisoned politics
31–40 of 174 posts
Re: How Twitter poisoned politics
#32How people poisoned politics.
Re: How Twitter poisoned politics
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd just call it "road rage." There's some research into this and my high-level understanding is that when people feel "safe inside their armor" - whether that's the metal of the car or the semi-anonymity of the internet, their animal instincts come out. It's fueled from both directions. In a tweet you don't really have context or body language or any of the other signals to tell you how someone means their message t…
Huh, that's interesting because introspection tells me it's the opposite for me. When I'm in my safe zone is when I can comfortably be rational and calm almost all the time. If I ever said something rash or that I didn't mean it would probably be when someone engages me and makes me feel uncomfortable in real life, never over the internet.
Yeah I mean people are all different. I know what you mean about feeling calmer behind the keyboard, something about seeing what I'm about to say often makes me tone it down or rephrase it.
Not everyone goes nuts behind the wheel of a car either. But the thing is when the potential mob is the entire national or world population it doesn't take a very large percentage of the mob going "road rage" to turn the thing violent, you know what I mean?
It's like the whole "yelling fire in a crowded theater" problem.
Re: How Twitter poisoned politics
#34Was there a time when politics wasn't full of poison? By the end Thomas Jefferson hated George Washington so much he refused to attend his funeral.
And that's just 242-year history of America, you can go back to Rome, Greece or Ancient Egypt and see thousands of years of vitriol inside any large human collective.
Modern tools could do a better job, sure. Twitter, FB, YouTube and the rest could use some kind of reputation systems, which at least provide a gradient of user interaction instead of just blacklisting.
But politics have never been pure, it's a myth. Don't blame communication platforms (although again, they can do better), blame the humans that use them.
Re: How Twitter poisoned politics
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd just call it "road rage." There's some research into this and my high-level understanding is that when people feel "safe inside their armor" - whether that's the metal of the car or the semi-anonymity of the internet, their animal instincts come out. It's fueled from both directions. In a tweet you don't really have context or body language or any of the other signals to tell you how someone means their message t…
It is what you are saying, and exacerbated by the huge gap in power and control between elites/politicians and the average person. You have CEOs and politicians making decisions that ruin people's lives. With Twitter, people are suddenly put at the same level where they can speak back to power, directly and angrily.
Yes, angrily. It's a channel that somewhat rewards anger, too, since the nasty tweet probably has a whole bunch of other people who "kind of wanted to say that" who will retweet and like, since it lets them get in on the screed without feeling fully guilty of saying it themselves.
And you know how it is with these things, when you see anything you wrote get retweeted a ton or liked a ton, it gives you that kind of thrill. So the angry voice gets a bunch of positive reinforcement.
Re: How Twitter poisoned politics
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd just call it "road rage." There's some research into this and my high-level understanding is that when people feel "safe inside their armor" - whether that's the metal of the car or the semi-anonymity of the internet, their animal instincts come out. It's fueled from both directions. In a tweet you don't really have context or body language or any of the other signals to tell you how someone means their message t…
It is what you are saying, and exacerbated by the huge gap in power and control between elites/politicians and the average person. You have CEOs and politicians making decisions that ruin people's lives. With Twitter, people are suddenly put at the same level where they can speak back to power, directly and angrily.
Another equally valid frame is that you have a system designed by those same CEO's that explicitly encourages people to be as pissed off as possible, all the time, so their rage can be cynically farmed for clicks and ads.
Re: How Twitter poisoned politics
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is what you are saying, and exacerbated by the huge gap in power and control between elites/politicians and the average person. You have CEOs and politicians making decisions that ruin people's lives. With Twitter, people are suddenly put at the same level where they can speak back to power, directly and angrily.
Another equally valid frame is that you have a system designed by those same CEO's that explicitly encourages people to be as pissed off as possible, all the time, so their rage can be cynically farmed for clicks and ads.
Absolutely this too. There's a lot of money to be made from making people angry (see cable news). I don't know anyone who makes money calming the crowd down. Is there such thing as a social media mob therapist? :)
Re: How Twitter poisoned politics
#38From the moment that news outlets started reporting on things said on Twitter years ago, I assumed this would happen. With enough bots, you gain the ability to create any narrative you want. Create story, then create the image that you want the supporters of one side to have, followed by the image for the other side. Use bots and retweets to amplify. You gain the power to define what's happening culturally if the new…
Hell I spin and create narratives on Reddit all the time. Sometimes for fun, sometimes for intrigue to see how far I can get pushing some ironical bigoted thing to real people. However, with Poe's Law, I can never know if they are just playing along with me, or sincerely believe the bullshit I'm typing.
Re: How Twitter poisoned politics
#39I can’t remember who originally said this, but the problem with Twitter is that you think you’re engaging in jokey banter with your mates but random strangers are reading each tweet without context in absolute seriousness and judging you
Re: How Twitter poisoned politics
#40From the moment that news outlets started reporting on things said on Twitter years ago, I assumed this would happen. With enough bots, you gain the ability to create any narrative you want. Create story, then create the image that you want the supporters of one side to have, followed by the image for the other side. Use bots and retweets to amplify. You gain the power to define what's happening culturally if the new…
The only recourse is to treat Twitter just like any other message board...and ignore it. The cynic in me says this will never happen for the same reason Twitter even made it into the mainstream in the first place: star power. As long as celebs roost on twitter, the press not be will be right behind to gather the fallen feathers.
This almost makes me wonder if "Verified" accounts is a step in the wrong direction.
Imagine a twitter where you actually have no way of knowing whether an account is "real" or not. Perhaps people then would take it far less seriously, and the only safe approach for a celebrity to take would be to say "we don't use Twitter" via other channels.
Well, then again, that would be Twitter shooting itself in the foot.