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The tyranny of the supertweeter

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Re: The tyranny of the supertweeter

#41

Post by j-bos »

polytely wrote: post #19
Bakary wrote: post #7

The part about journalism is particularly troubling because Twitter is like crack for journalists and has thus played a big part in decreasing the credibility of the profession. The platform is a journalist's fantasy brought to life. The ability to exist as an individual and have an audience independently of their publication. Blue check-marks. As the article mentions, the capacity to find stories with little effort.…

It is very convenient if you want to run influence operations, to change the perception of reality for news consumers you only have to influence a handful of journalists by planting some tweets on their timeline.

And in theory, praising them with a disproportionate (compared to their own average's) number of likes and retweets when they tweet something to you(r organization's) advantage.

Re: The tyranny of the supertweeter

#42

Post by guerrilla »

ceejayoz wrote: post #32
petesergeant wrote: post #15

As someone from one of the many countries with a right/left/liberal split, I really don’t like that American politics conflates left and liberal together.

Quoted post unavailable.

I don't think this is why. Look at the number of Bernie supporters. I think what's really going on is that the right-wing media has a strategy of shifting the Overton window by calling liberals "left" and those same liberals have little problem with that because they consider themselves left, not knowing any better.

Re: The tyranny of the supertweeter

#43

Post by guerrilla »

enviclash wrote: post #35

Is it only me perceiving that people is growing aware of the disadvantages of twitter, or at least its frequent use?

Most people on Twitter have referred to Twitter as "this hellsite" enough times that I can't say that I think this is anything new. Knowing Twitter is terrible and terrible for you is a prominent part of Twitter culture. There are many memes around the subject.

Re: The tyranny of the supertweeter

#44

Post by colpabar »

fortran77 wrote: post #23

I keep my twitter politics-free. And I follow tech/hacker people and routinely mute/block those who think I want to hear their inane/naïve political opinions. And you know what? Twitter is pretty nice! It keeps me in a nice tech filter bubble where the biggest argument is 8080 vs 6502.

What do you do about the recommendations? I am constantly bombarded with suggestions for topics that I have 0 interest in. I click not interested, I update my settings, I create custom ublock rules, and yet they always come back eventually.

Re: The tyranny of the supertweeter

#45

Post by [deleted] »

fortran77 wrote: post #23

I keep my twitter politics-free. And I follow tech/hacker people and routinely mute/block those who think I want to hear their inane/naïve political opinions. And you know what? Twitter is pretty nice! It keeps me in a nice tech filter bubble where the biggest argument is 8080 vs 6502.

[deleted]

Re: The tyranny of the supertweeter

#46

Post by yew »

jbuhbjlnjbn wrote: post #24
amadeuspagel wrote: post #2

A classic on this topic, more general: Most of Most of What You Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People [1]. [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...

There is a different explanation about the 'power posters' - not that they are "insane", but that it's their job. They get good amounts of money for doing what they do. As an addition, for the extreme cases it's most likely not a single person, but multiple people, posting under the same name.

Some of them probably are effectively paid advertising teams. That doesn't really explain some of the people you used to get on forums though. Why pay someone to write 24/7 micro-serial "Transformers" fan-fiction?

Re: The tyranny of the supertweeter

#47

Post by jccalhoun »

tlholaday wrote: post #20

Is this tool feasible? Block user @A, and also block any user who has chosen to `follow` user @A. Ideally: > twitprune --block --recursive --depth 2 @A Edit: API Review Time!

I would like something a bit more fine grained. Have you retweeted positive things about x, y, or z or negative things about a, b, or c? Then I want your tweet marked with "do not engage" because there will be no point in trying to engage with them

Re: The tyranny of the supertweeter

#48

Post by bombcar »

crmd wrote: post #14
Bakary wrote: post #7

The part about journalism is particularly troubling because Twitter is like crack for journalists and has thus played a big part in decreasing the credibility of the profession. The platform is a journalist's fantasy brought to life. The ability to exist as an individual and have an audience independently of their publication. Blue check-marks. As the article mentions, the capacity to find stories with little effort.…

>finding a great source for a story is as easy as finding the right combination of search terms. This is the true poison in my opinion. Journalists can in seconds find random tweets stating any conceivable narrative they want to create, and then launder their personal opinions by pretending to "report" on "what sources are saying".

It’s really obvious when you follow through some of the “people are saying” links - it’s one thing to report on what Musk said, with fifty billion likes and replies already, and another to back up a statement with a link to a tweet with four likes.

Some are obviously “go out and find what you want someone to be saying”.

Re: The tyranny of the supertweeter

#49

Post by tom_ »

colpabar wrote: post #44
fortran77 wrote: post #23

I keep my twitter politics-free. And I follow tech/hacker people and routinely mute/block those who think I want to hear their inane/naïve political opinions. And you know what? Twitter is pretty nice! It keeps me in a nice tech filter bubble where the biggest argument is 8080 vs 6502.

What do you do about the recommendations? I am constantly bombarded with suggestions for topics that I have 0 interest in. I click not interested, I update my settings, I create custom ublock rules, and yet they always come back eventually.

I ignore them.

Re: The tyranny of the supertweeter

#50

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

petesergeant wrote: post #15

As someone from one of the many countries with a right/left/liberal split, I really don’t like that American politics conflates left and liberal together.

I'm not convinced these kind of semantic disputes matter. Non-Americans don't typically identify as "libertarian", but that doesn't make it hard to express or describe the idea of being pro-business and anti-regulation.
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