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Twitter's Fucked

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Re: Twitter's Fucked

#81

Post by cookiecaper »

jnevill wrote: post #24
SeanDav wrote: post #12

I am probably in a very small minority, but I have never seen the point of Twitter. It has almost limitless potential to destroy your life by taking something out of context and copying it to millions. I shudder to think of the number of times I have made a tasteless throwaway comment or colourful joke that, if taken out of context, would have had dire consequences. It has almost limitless potential to take up all yo…

Same here. I have an account, but I've never found any use for it. I've tried a few times, but it offers nothing that I want. I tend to be more "Social" on sites that focus on a specific topic like StackOverflow, Blogs that I follow, Facebook for friends and family, so Twitter offers nothing there. Others seem to use twitter as a new aggregator where stories they care about get bubbled up by their followers. I use fe…

I think the real promise of Twitter is that it offers a platform to engage directly with movers and shakers. The short form makes it possible to exchange ideas with high-profile people that otherwise would never be able or willing to read all the long-form mail they get. @pmarca has addressed a tweet I made before, totally unsolicited. That's the only element that I feel it really brings to the table; it's digestable for busy people, and busy people actually sometimes engage on it (though often to their detriment).

Re: Twitter's Fucked

#82

Post by criddell »

mrweasel wrote: post #57
ryanmarsh wrote: post #14

Does Twitter have to be Facebook to not be "fucked"? I don't understand these statements that "Twitter is fucked". Twitter could improve filtering and safety but if it never changed I'd probably still get my news from it for the rest of my life. I just can't think of a better app for my use cases. I often like Twitter Moments, like something funny or some pop culture stuff I wouldn't have picked up on. Every time the…

The main reason Twitter is screwed, isn't that they don't have a product people like. So what if Pokemon Go has more daily users? It's not really the same type of product. Twitter can be successful, at the same type that Pokemon, Facebook and other are successful. These companies aren't mutually exclusive. The reason Twitter is screwed is because they created a popular product and absolutely no idea on to make money…

While I would have no problem paying $10 for a year of Twitter, I think it would kill it.

For a brief moment, I thought Google had a chance with Google+. The discussion model is better, the moderation tools are better, but it just doesn't have the users. I wonder if they had launched with a read/write API and good developer libraries, would Google+ have achieved critical mass? I'd still love to see Google try this since they really have nothing to lose at this point.

Re: Twitter's Fucked

#83

Post by JustSomeNobody »

You put that much thought into the analysis but couldn't do the same for the headline?

"Fked" is a cop out word used when you don't have enough mental juices left to actually describe what you want to describe.

Re: Twitter's Fucked

#85

Post by eropple »

atemerev wrote: post #33

People are tired from crybullies. We need a place where freedom of speech still matters. Freedom of speech doesn't include invading someone's privacy (this is illegal; doxxing, stalking etc. should be banned and actively fought against). But if you can't handle insults, it is not anyone's job to prevent them. There's always "Block" button, and then, there's always "delete account" button.

Explain to me how effective blocking individuals is when you're being spammed by dozens and hundreds of people with so little to do that they will happily go create egg accounts to continue harassing you. It's not practical or feasible to block all of them. So people should delete their accounts because they get brigaded? To hell with that, and with the people who think that is a social norm worth protecting.

"Crybullies." And I literally thought this could not get any sillier a thing.

Re: Twitter's Fucked

#86

Post by ryanmarsh »

stcredzero wrote: post #66

The severe limitation on the size of tweets selects for puerile violence rather than thoughtful, mutually satisfying interactions. It's not just the size of tweets, though that does exacerbate things. The entire attention economy of online social media rewards viral attention, and therefore it rewards outrage politics. (Politics in the general sense of Homo sapiens following its social mammal instincts.)

Give them 500 characters. It doesn't matter it's the commons. You want people to behave? Teach real civics in the schools.

Re: Twitter's Fucked

#87

Post by jonstokes »

True story: I was at a fundraiser in SF in about 2009, and over the course of the evening I found myself chatting about Twitter on two different occasions: once with Bill Maris of Google Ventures, and once with Joi Ito.

Bill and I were actually talking about what kind of investments GV was looking to make. He stressed that GV was looking to invest in businesses that were actually good businesses. As a counterexample, he brought up Twitter, which at the time he considered to be a "good investment" (said with a grin and a wink) but not a "good business". I had one of those feelings that you get when somebody really smart just shared with you The Truth.

Later I found myself in a conversation with Joi, I think as part of a group and not one-on-one, and Joi was talking about Twitter's lack of revenue. Joi was an early stage investor in Twitter, and he was telling us something to the effect of, "once we have all these users, we're going to bring everyone to the table and figure out how to monetize and what we can charge for."

Over the years I've thought a lot about Bill's distinction between a "good investment" and a "good business", and about Joi's "users first, money later" optimism. I always felt like Bill would be proven right in the long-term, and I think at this point he sorta has been.

Ultimately, though, either approach to investing can work -- but if you're gonna do the Joi thing, you gotta know when to get out of the trade. (I have no idea if/when Joi got out... just stating a general principle.)

Re: Twitter's Fucked

#88

Post by sievebrain »

sksixk wrote: post #70
ryanmarsh wrote: post #14

Does Twitter have to be Facebook to not be "fucked"? I don't understand these statements that "Twitter is fucked". Twitter could improve filtering and safety but if it never changed I'd probably still get my news from it for the rest of my life. I just can't think of a better app for my use cases. I often like Twitter Moments, like something funny or some pop culture stuff I wouldn't have picked up on. Every time the…

agree. all these "fixes" are to change what twitter is. twitter is a short-form, _immediate_ publishing platform. it's great for what's happening _now_. i don't want to read long-form pieces that took 2 days of editing. i think moments and periscope are good steps. not perfect, but they emphasize _now_.

There's a big spectrum in-between an essay that took two days to write and a tweet. Hacker News is a good example of messages that are long enough to say something useful and short enough to not require any commitment by the reader.

I dislike the way the article uses the word "violence". Nothing that happens on Twitter is violent. The definition of violence right from a Google search for "define:violence" is

behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something

Nonetheless, the author articulates the reasons I do not use Twitter myself. The amount of drama that site creates seems, to a non-user, to be far in excess of the amount of insight it generates. I have never heard of a really great conversation or unique, insightful idea emerging on Twitter. I have heard, a lot, about idiotic fights that escalate into real world problems. I agree that the 140 character limit is the cause of such problems.

Re: Twitter's Fucked

#89

Post by snaky »

gadders wrote: post #73
ivraatiems wrote: post #3

Yep. Yep, yep, yep. And Twitter's response is to ban some, but not all harassers, using the algorithm of "whoever is high profile and we don't like politically." That gives said harassers surprisingly legitimate reasons to claim censorship by Twitter as a company, despite the fact that they were in clear violation of Twitter's ToS and deserved to be banned. I refer of course to the Milo Yiannopoulos situation (edit:…

The article says that Milo didn't deserve what he got, and I agree. You may not agree with his politics but people of all stripes have done worse. I guess we'll end up with a conservative twitter clone, and a liberal twitter, and no-one will ever face the "danger" of seeing viewpoints they disagree with.

Conservatives are ok with freedom of speech, 'safe zones' are invented by progressives.

Re: Twitter's Fucked

#90

Post by pron »

atemerev wrote: post #33

People are tired from crybullies. We need a place where freedom of speech still matters. Freedom of speech doesn't include invading someone's privacy (this is illegal; doxxing, stalking etc. should be banned and actively fought against). But if you can't handle insults, it is not anyone's job to prevent them. There's always "Block" button, and then, there's always "delete account" button.

> But if you can't handle insults, it is not anyone's job to prevent them.

Care to explain the ethical viewpoint that's led you to this conclusion?

The problem isn't "insults" and the solution isn't "handling them". The problem is social dynamics that create disrespect and dehumanization towards certain people. The dynamics and their consequences are real regardless of how the victims "handle" them.

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