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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”

#81

Post by homonculus1 »

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.

Historically, though, the restrictions placed in pursuit of your proposed ideal have caused enormous suffering and destroyed entire communities through mass incarceration, corruption, and gang/cartel violence fueled by black market money. Attempting to stamp out negative desires by decree through large-scale force has plausibly caused far more damage to society than simply accepting that a small fraction of people will burn up their lives, smash in some car windows, and eventually kill themselves in pursuit of their vice. And the former problem hasn't even replaced the latter, now we just have both.

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

#82

Post by allemagne »

plorkyeran wrote: post #24
ShakataGaNai wrote: post #8

One major problem with this: It's not like he "invented" the retweet. The userbase invented the "RT" prefixed message. Twitter the company simply took what the user base had done and weaponized it and empowered it. But at the same time they made it easier to track a single specific message being RT'd. So blessing and a curse.

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.

I think I understand that argument, but I'm not convinced that it's really all that true or that the actual button being added to Twitter was all that consequential.

Is a manual task like copy/paste and writing quotemarks really enough "friction" to reduce what seems like a pretty natural human drive on social media? Would doing it over and over again not make it just as "automatic" as a single button push for power users, even if it's not as convenient?

We also don't have the benefit of looking at the counterfactual situation where the retweet button wasn't implemented.

Maybe keeping manual retweeting would just result in a worse kind of "dunking" that had the extra dynamic of the retweeters subtly tweaking the wording of the quoted tweet.

Besides, if Twitter didn't implement the retweet button then the hoards of 3rd-party apps or some Twitter alternative probably would anyway.

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

#83

Post by livueta »

jackfoxy wrote: post #6

I think the real problem is Twitter refuses to make sophisticated filtering available to users. Simple mute, block, and keyword filtering are inadequate.

Good filtering has traditionally been one of the killer features of userscripts for enhancing imageboard experiences. Things like filtering by image hash, regular expressions and recursive filtering (also filter content that engages with filtered content; repeat) are pretty powerful tools for fighting abuse or, at minimum, making the daily grind not quite so terrible. Stuff like that is generally accomplishable client-side, so as a non-Twitter user I'm a bit curious why this isn't already a widely used thing.

Makes me want to mess around with a browser extension that uses perceptual hashing to filter smug frog images or whatever.

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

#84

Post by cgag »

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…

i find it hard to believe that people think it's as simple as gamers just plain hating women for no reason, but it seems to be repeated all the time

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

#85

Post by ancorevard »

ShakataGaNai wrote: post #8

One major problem with this: It's not like he "invented" the retweet. The userbase invented the "RT" prefixed message. Twitter the company simply took what the user base had done and weaponized it and empowered it. But at the same time they made it easier to track a single specific message being RT'd. So blessing and a curse.

"weaponized it" This is foolish language to use. A retweets is actually super helpful and provides value. However, like with all tools, it matters what you use it for.

These days it seems like most people forget that there is a Twitter that exist outside politics. There are lots of communities on Twitter that provides tremendous value to those who are part of them.

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

#86

Post by cpeterso »

jackfoxy wrote: post #6

I think the real problem is Twitter refuses to make sophisticated filtering available to users. Simple mute, block, and keyword filtering are inadequate.

I've found keyword filtering to be very effective, but they limit your filter list to 200 keywords and they don't apply to ads (so I can't block ads about blockchain stuff).

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

#87

Post by svachalek »

amiantos wrote: post #67
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.

The problem is idealism. > “I was very excited about the opportunity that Twitter represented,” Wetherell said, noting that he initially felt the retweet button would elevate voices from underrepresented communities. The problem is that it didn't register to him, or anyone, that "racists" were an "underrepresented community", as were sexists, misogynists, homophobes, anti-intellectuals, quacks, and so on. When attemp…

I would go less with blaming optimism and more the mirrored bubble of the internet itself. Everyone out there is just like me, right?

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

#88

Post by cpeterso »

livueta wrote: post #83
jackfoxy wrote: post #6

I think the real problem is Twitter refuses to make sophisticated filtering available to users. Simple mute, block, and keyword filtering are inadequate.

Good filtering has traditionally been one of the killer features of userscripts for enhancing imageboard experiences. Things like filtering by image hash, regular expressions and recursive filtering (also filter content that engages with filtered content; repeat) are pretty powerful tools for fighting abuse or, at minimum, making the daily grind not quite so terrible. Stuff like that is generally accomplishable clien…

> Makes me want to mess around with a browser extension that uses perceptual hashing to filter smug frog images or whatever.

I'd like to be able to filter tweets from users that have keywords in their user bio (e.g. frog emojis or #QAnon).

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

#89

Post by UnFleshedOne »

ascagnel_ wrote: post #56
dmix wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

User interaction drops dramatically with each extra click required -- I don't think it's hard to extrapolate that an action that involves at least two additional clicks (select text than focus the input), plus keying in text, pasting text, and reformatting pasted text to fit fewer available characters would greatly drop the rate of retweets.

I think similar mechanism explains why some diseases blow up into epidemic and some fizzle out. Epidemiologists have all the hard math on just how much friction is needed.

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

#90

Post by smt88 »

ancorevard wrote: post #85
ShakataGaNai wrote: post #8

One major problem with this: It's not like he "invented" the retweet. The userbase invented the "RT" prefixed message. Twitter the company simply took what the user base had done and weaponized it and empowered it. But at the same time they made it easier to track a single specific message being RT'd. So blessing and a curse.

"weaponized it" This is foolish language to use. A retweets is actually super helpful and provides value. However, like with all tools, it matters what you use it for. These days it seems like most people forget that there is a Twitter that exist outside politics. There are lots of communities on Twitter that provides tremendous value to those who are part of them.

> what you use it for

In some cases it makes it easier to cause harm, so weaponize seems appropriate (turning a non-weapon into a weapon)...

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