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Man Who Built the Retweet: “We Handed a Loaded Weapon to 4-Year-Olds”

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Re: Man Who Built the Retweet: “We Handed a Loaded Weapon to 4-Year-Olds”

#41

Post by diminoten »

malvosenior wrote: post #14

It's so annoying when platforms and product managers think they know better than their users. People want to retweet and they will even if you remove this feature (as they were before it existed). It basically comes off as Twitter doesn't like the users they have or the behavior they want. It's really hilarious that they use Gamergate as an example of why retweets are bad. That was a massive manifestation of the abov…

People suck, and when you let the suckiest people have the same level of audience as less sucky people, you've got a problem.

Re: Man Who Built the Retweet: “We Handed a Loaded Weapon to 4-Year-Olds”

#42

Post by concert-gilled »

smacktoward wrote: post #28
malvosenior wrote: post #14

It's so annoying when platforms and product managers think they know better than their users. People want to retweet and they will even if you remove this feature (as they were before it existed). It basically comes off as Twitter doesn't like the users they have or the behavior they want. It's really hilarious that they use Gamergate as an example of why retweets are bad. That was a massive manifestation of the abov…

> People want to retweet People want to gamble, too, and to drink alcohol, and to shoot heroin. That doesn't mean those things are good for them, or that it's axiomatically ideal either for them individually or for society at large to not have any restrictions on their ability to satisfy those desires.

Are you equating retweets to using heroin?

Re: Man Who Built the Retweet: “We Handed a Loaded Weapon to 4-Year-Olds”

#43

Post by smacktoward »

briandear wrote: post #27
malvosenior wrote: post #14

It's so annoying when platforms and product managers think they know better than their users. People want to retweet and they will even if you remove this feature (as they were before it existed). It basically comes off as Twitter doesn't like the users they have or the behavior they want. It's really hilarious that they use Gamergate as an example of why retweets are bad. That was a massive manifestation of the abov…

Buzzfeed’s entire business was built on clickbait.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

> Tu quoque (Latin for "you also"), or the appeal to hypocrisy, is a fallacy that intends to discredit the opponent's argument by asserting the opponent's failure to act consistently in accordance with its conclusion(s).

Re: Man Who Built the Retweet: “We Handed a Loaded Weapon to 4-Year-Olds”

#44

Post by jschwartzi »

derekdahmer wrote: post #40
plorkyeran wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article specifically argues that the retweet button causes problems that manual retweeting didn't, and so he did invent the thing that's actually a problem.

Yea the act of copying and pasting to do a retweet required just enough extra work that people had to think about what they were typing, and so users used it in a less reactionary way. It's kind of incredible that a tweak to one small feature could have such a large behavioral impact.

In the context of "reducing friction" to improve conversion from click-through advertising it's not unexpected that making it easier to retweet results in more people retweeting stuff without thinking it through.

Re: Man Who Built the Retweet: “We Handed a Loaded Weapon to 4-Year-Olds”

#45

Post by phkahler »

Been saying for years that the Share button is what ruined Facebook. I went there to see what was up with people I know, not to get news or Memes.

The problem now is that FB makes a lot of money via sharing paid content so they won't get rid of it.

Re: Man Who Built the Retweet: “We Handed a Loaded Weapon to 4-Year-Olds”

#46

Post by dmix »

azinman2 wrote: post #26
malvosenior wrote: post #14

It's so annoying when platforms and product managers think they know better than their users. People want to retweet and they will even if you remove this feature (as they were before it existed). It basically comes off as Twitter doesn't like the users they have or the behavior they want. It's really hilarious that they use Gamergate as an example of why retweets are bad. That was a massive manifestation of the abov…

The difference is that lowering friction to perform an action has caused an exponential increase in its usage... and it’s so associated with cognitive bias and impulsive thinking that it’s allowed a lot of false information to spread quickly. I say let people go back to the manual RT

Was there really that big of a different between “via @user” and “RT” and the retweet button?

Re: Man Who Built the Retweet: “We Handed a Loaded Weapon to 4-Year-Olds”

#47

Post by _vertigo »

dccoolgai wrote: post #30

So tired of these "OMG What Did I Create?" stories from social media devs. How about you grow a conscience _before_ you build these things? I have told managers to go f themselves for: Content that would demean people Lying to or misleading customers *Hosing over my fellow engineers ... among other things I don't think it's that special of a thing to do but reading these things makes it seem like it is.

So, had you been in his position about to join Twitter or working for Twitter and about to build the RT button, you believe you would have foreseen its effects and refused to participate on it based on your conscience?

Did anyone actually predict in Twitter’s early days that adding an RT button would lead to it being an “anger-based platform”? What makes you think you would have?

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