71–80 of 100 posts
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Serious question: what is the benefit of Twitter? I never understood it. Since you’ve found a utility niche, would you expand on the statement?
Marketing, It's great for brands or anybody that has something to sell (a book, a product, an idea,...). It kind of replaced RSS for many people, expect it's a centralised tool. Unfortunately "journalists" use it way too often to make up news out of nothing, gather random photos/videos without fact checking and spread rumors and falsehoods as truth. Something like the Covington Catholic school fiasco heavily relayed…
That doesn't make it sound very enticing for the average user.
If you, like me, find the non-political part of Twitter valuable, I have discovered that Twitter has built in filtering tools. It's pretty simple. Each time I see a tweet I dislike, I pick one word from it and add it to my "mute word" list. It's now filled with words like "trump", "liberal", "minister", etc, and now I see interesting technical discussions instead of political trash.
I've done this by following a small amount of people and being extremely judicious in adding new ones (and quick to remove them: there are a couple writers I enjoy that do nothing but shitpost about politics on Twitter). I will say that my approach has the downside of being very low-volume though
Journalism would only be improved if every journalist got off of Twitter tomorrow. It's not representative of mainstream opinion. And the artificially created and cultivated Twitter echo chamber couldn't help but warp anybody's neutrality. Unfortunately, it's still seen as the best way to drive clicks.
Journalism is over. It doesn't matter what journalists do now. It was a by-product of mass media massive ad business which is being quickly taken over by tech companies.
Not really a surprise - is it? I bet [small-percentage]% of Americans produce [very-large-percentage]% of tech tweets too. Same with sewing tweets. Same with porn tweets. Being very active in politics is either a career choice or a hobby. And very active in this case means talking about it. It's like knowing about celebrity gossip at this point because that's practically what it is for a lot of this stuff.
The most surprising thing to me is the split in age distribution among user base vs. overall tweeting vs. political tweeting. Users 18-49 were 73% of the user base and produced 72% of tweets, but only 27% of political tweets. Users 50+ were only 26% of the user base and produced only 28% of tweets, but 73% of political tweets.
> Users 50+ were only 26% of the user base and produced only 28% of tweets, but 73% of political tweets.
By these numbers, users 15-17 are <1% of the user base and produce 0% of political tweets. (And even more dramatically, despite being more than 0% of users, they also produce 0% of tweets.) Even after allowing for rounding, this can't possibly be correct.
Wonder what percentage of Americans produce 97% of main stream media news and commentary? Would it be over 0.2%?
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/media-and-communication/home.htm
Also, they don’t get paid all that well.
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Journalism is over. It doesn't matter what journalists do now. It was a by-product of mass media massive ad business which is being quickly taken over by tech companies.
Isn't journalism a pillar of democracy? The well educated professionals who deep, lengthy dives into corruption, raw data, etc. How will democracy survive if no is being paid to spends weeks, years, to go deep on a subject and citizens can't be fully informed?
No. Journalism isn't a pillar of democracy. The ancient greeks who invented democracy didn't have journalism. When the US was founded, we didn't have journalism. Also, dictatorships have journalism. Nazi Germany, Soviet Union, Communist China all had journalism.
> The well educated professionals who deep, lengthy dives into corruption, raw data, etc.
Do you think really think this is what journalists do? The older I get and the more I learn about the history of journalism, the more skeptical I get about this claim.
> How will democracy survive if no is being paid to spends weeks, years, to go deep on a subject and citizens can't be fully informed?
How did democracy come into existence without journalism?
You could argue free speech/free press are one of the pillars of modern democracy. If you look at who is attacking free speech/free press, you'll notice it is idealogically driven corporate journalists.
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I've done this by following a small amount of people and being extremely judicious in adding new ones (and quick to remove them: there are a couple writers I enjoy that do nothing but shitpost about politics on Twitter). I will say that my approach has the downside of being very low-volume though
Up until 2015 I had a wonderfully curated comedy Twitter created in this manner. It was selected from the set of my favorite comedians, actors, writers, and internet people with particular focus towards those who posted humorous or insightful things on a regular basis. Then 2016 happened and the greater half decided they were really closet political pundits all along. Now I don't read Twitter at all.
Journalism would only be improved if every journalist got off of Twitter tomorrow. It's not representative of mainstream opinion. And the artificially created and cultivated Twitter echo chamber couldn't help but warp anybody's neutrality. Unfortunately, it's still seen as the best way to drive clicks.