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Twitter’s Plan to Get People to Stop Yelling at Each Other

buzzfeednews.com

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Re: Twitter’s Plan to Get People to Stop Yelling at Each Other

#51

Post by erikpukinskis »

Itaxpica wrote: post #32

Unfortunately, I don’t think this is really an issue that can be fixed technically. People go to Twitter to yell at each other; that’s basically the point of the platform. A Twitter where people don’t yell at each other is basically Mastodon, which is a lovely network that basically nobody uses.

> I don’t think this is really an issue that can be fixed technically.

It’s really easy to bet that something is impossible. It sounds smart, because all of history confirms your theory.

But history is also chock full of people doing things that didn’t seem possible, so personally I think you’re making a very bad bet.

And I wonder why you are even doing it? What’s gained by trying to convince people that there are zero viable interventions in a specific corner of the solution space? Especially such a big corner as “all technical interventions”?

Re: Twitter’s Plan to Get People to Stop Yelling at Each Other

#52

Post by gipp »

rchaud wrote: post #8

> "....learn about how not having [likes and retweets] could potentially change how people read things,” How does that change the way you interact in a conversation? That’s super interesting.” So basically, a bunch of tiny iterative UX changes that won't move the needle one bit. This is the company where moving from from 140 to 280 chars happened over the course of a decade. I feel for the product people, they are wo…

I'm not super optimistic about the changes, but getting rid of like/rt counts is not even close to a "tiny iterative ux change". Those counts are absolutely central to the way users interact with and understand conversation on the site. Getting rid of them completely is a massive sea change in the conversational dynamics.

Re: Twitter’s Plan to Get People to Stop Yelling at Each Other

#53

Post by z3t4 »

save_ferris wrote: post #11
ve55 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It lets them constantly drag anything out of proportion. Very often articles are written titled "Xs are Ying", where less than 1% of Xs are even considered to begin with. This is BuzzFeed (not that they're even a worse offender than most others at this point), what does one expect?

It frustrates me how often arguments like these are made without considering the economic conditions which led to publishers adopting this clickbait behavior. When the internet came in and destroyed print subscriptions and tech giants like FB/Google started controlling online advertising, getting clicks became the way to make money. We really only have ourselves to blame for choosing ad-driven media content at the ex…

Ads and "click" bait predates the Internet. Topics have yet to reach the "quality" of front page headlines.

Re: Twitter’s Plan to Get People to Stop Yelling at Each Other

#54

Post by egypturnash »

Itaxpica wrote: post #32

Unfortunately, I don’t think this is really an issue that can be fixed technically. People go to Twitter to yell at each other; that’s basically the point of the platform. A Twitter where people don’t yell at each other is basically Mastodon, which is a lovely network that basically nobody uses.

A few years ago I went to Twitter to see what my friends were doing, and to talk to them. There wasn’t much yelling.

Then Gamergate happened and people started yelling about it, and then that grew into the alt-right and that got more yelling, and then Trump got elected and it’s just been so much yelling.

And now here I am mostly on Mastodon, where there’s next to no celebrities, brands, or other things to yell at, and it’s pretty nice.

Re: Twitter’s Plan to Get People to Stop Yelling at Each Other

#55

Post by la_barba »

josefresco wrote: post #2

> Twitter, predictably, immediately dysregulated in response. This a rant, but I hate this trend of taking what a couple/few people say and calling it "Twitter" or "everyone is saying" or "people are calling for" or "the Internet hates". Reference the actual person who said the comment and don't lump millions of users in with the comments of a few. Whenever I dig into an issue like this, I find maybe a handful of com…

Its a natural consequence of wanting to inflate your position when you have little to no personal authority on the matter, and essentially stealing 'authority' by supporting what amounts to an angry mob on the internet. "One person thinks this" has never really been a valuable commodity, unless that one person has some kind of name recognition.

Re: Twitter’s Plan to Get People to Stop Yelling at Each Other

#56

Post by la_barba »

435rafwweeww wrote: post #29

Dorsey (from the article) : “I also don’t feel good about how Twitter tends to incentivize outrage, fast takes, short term thinking, echo chambers, and fragmented conversation and consideration.” But what has he done to fix the problem, besides tiny UX tweaks that go nowhere, and the occasional ban of a highly visible jerk? Twitter is on fire, and he just plods along. Dorsey, in this article, is about as believable a…

All companies become 'slow and lumbering' once they pass a certain size. I cant think of any exception off the top of my head. Once you have the welfare of thousands of people in your hand, you tend to not take any risks. Seems like a normal human response to me...

Re: Twitter’s Plan to Get People to Stop Yelling at Each Other

#58

Post by skybrian »

ihuman wrote: post #18
skybrian wrote: post #15

Simpler: stop showing tweets just because other people liked them. That's not a reshare, so it shouldn't be treated that way. More generally, discourage large conversations and encourage fragmentation.

> stop showing tweets just because other people liked them There's already a way to do this: use any third-party client. You even get the added bonus of a reverse-chronological timeline!

That works for individuals, but the social interactions won't change unless a lot of people do it.

Re: Twitter’s Plan to Get People to Stop Yelling at Each Other

#59

Post by carriers »

skymt wrote: post #33

> Over several days this spring, BuzzFeed News met with Twitter’s leadership and watched as twttr’s team worked on its first big push: helping people better understand what’s being said in often chaotic conversations. The team thinks that if people took more time to read entire conversations, that would help improve their comprehension of them. I had assumed that Twitter was aware of the implications of its design fo…

Yeah, I don't get this at all. I think it's even deeper than designing for controversy. I'm "older" (40s), though I work on products used by younger people, so I don't think this is just me being old, but I can't follow a conversation on twitter at all. When there's a link from HackerNews to Twitter, I click on it and sometimes see the thing mentioned in the HN title, and sometimes don't. Then there's a bunch of stuff below it, some of which is definitely replies to the original post, and some of which appears to be part of a completely different conversation. Some threads of conversations get cut off for no apparent reason and you have to click something to see more of them. Nothing is indented, so it's really hard to tell who's replying to whom.

I basically can't understand a thread on Twitter, so I've never signed up because who the hell wants to be part of that? I usually also don't go to Twitter to read stuff other people link to because I'm not going to be able to follow it. Forget boosting controversial stuff, I bet a lot of users post the way they do because they also don't understand what they're looking at.

Re: Twitter’s Plan to Get People to Stop Yelling at Each Other

#60

Post by scott_s »

gipp wrote: post #52
rchaud wrote: post #8

> "....learn about how not having [likes and retweets] could potentially change how people read things,” How does that change the way you interact in a conversation? That’s super interesting.” So basically, a bunch of tiny iterative UX changes that won't move the needle one bit. This is the company where moving from from 140 to 280 chars happened over the course of a decade. I feel for the product people, they are wo…

I'm not super optimistic about the changes, but getting rid of like/rt counts is not even close to a "tiny iterative ux change". Those counts are absolutely central to the way users interact with and understand conversation on the site. Getting rid of them completely is a massive sea change in the conversational dynamics.

It was a big change for HN.
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