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The End of Big Twitter

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Re: The End of Big Twitter

#81

Post by chatmasta »

roc wrote: post #77
blackaspen wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Twitter encourages and amplifies bad behavior while inhibiting intelligent and thoughtful conversation." Ok. So, how is Twitter unique here? How often do you read an intelligent and thoughtful article in your local newspaper? Doesn't your local cable news channel choose to focus on the 'bad' instead of the 'good'? Or are you living in some alternate universe?

The 140 character limit and general focus on brevity encourages people to drop specificity and shift to bold proclamations and absolutes.[1] This is guaranteed to cause miscommunication and hurt feelings. The resulting arguments are impossible to effectively reason out at 140 characters. And even if you do work it out in another medium (email, phone call, etc) - the re-tweeting spreads the old arguments like wildfire…

This is a really good point. An interesting psychology experiment could measure the susceptibility of subjects to stereotype threat after they read a given newsfeed. I hypothesize that because of the "priming" effects of each newsfeed, subjects who read the same set of tweets would score similarly on the stereotype test. This would be in like with the results of the famous John Bargh study where subjects subconsciously decreased their walking speed, for instance, after reading words related to the elderly.

It's a scary thought that the opinions of society can be clustered by similarity of Twitter newsfeeds. That sounds ripe for manipulation and propaganda dissemination.

Re: The End of Big Twitter

#82

Post by jarek »

XorNot wrote: post #80
jarek wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then someone registers @XNot with name XorNot and you're no better off.

Having name providence provides some amount of deniability though. If there's multiple accounts with the same or similar then it takes deliberate effort to create mistaken identity.

Not to mention a sufficiently motivated deliberate actor could get Twitter to hand over your account - particularly easy if it's completely unused...

Re: The End of Big Twitter

#83

Post by 01101010 »

roc wrote: post #77
blackaspen wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Twitter encourages and amplifies bad behavior while inhibiting intelligent and thoughtful conversation." Ok. So, how is Twitter unique here? How often do you read an intelligent and thoughtful article in your local newspaper? Doesn't your local cable news channel choose to focus on the 'bad' instead of the 'good'? Or are you living in some alternate universe?

The 140 character limit and general focus on brevity encourages people to drop specificity and shift to bold proclamations and absolutes.[1] This is guaranteed to cause miscommunication and hurt feelings. The resulting arguments are impossible to effectively reason out at 140 characters. And even if you do work it out in another medium (email, phone call, etc) - the re-tweeting spreads the old arguments like wildfire…

Except that "people in Philadelphia suck" isn't a shorter way of saying "some people in Philadelphia suck". It's an entirely different statement.

Why not shorten it to "some Philadelphians suck"? It's shorter and, arguably, more accurate.

>The 140 character limit and general focus on brevity encourages people to drop specificity and shift to bold proclamations and absolutes.

I disagree that the limit encourages vagueness, bold proclamations, and absolutes. Those are side effects of not stopping to think about how to effectively convey a greater-than-140-characters thought in less than 140 characters (without changing its meaning.)

Re: The End of Big Twitter

#84

Post by roc »

01101010 wrote: post #83
roc wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 140 character limit and general focus on brevity encourages people to drop specificity and shift to bold proclamations and absolutes.[1] This is guaranteed to cause miscommunication and hurt feelings. The resulting arguments are impossible to effectively reason out at 140 characters. And even if you do work it out in another medium (email, phone call, etc) - the re-tweeting spreads the old arguments like wildfire…

Except that "people in Philadelphia suck" isn't a shorter way of saying "some people in Philadelphia suck". It's an entirely different statement. Why not shorten it to "some Philadelphians suck"? It's shorter and, arguably, more accurate. >The 140 character limit and general focus on brevity encourages people to drop specificity and shift to bold proclamations and absolutes. I disagree that the limit encourages vague…

> "It's an entirely different statement."

Which is the point. The character limit creates miscommunication because people wind up submitting something other than what they set out to communicate.

> "Those are side effects of not stopping to think about how to effectively convey a greater-than-140-characters thought in less than 140 characters (without changing its meaning.)"

So you're agreeing that Twitter, as a medium, presents a unique challenge to how most humans communicate in most other media and requires special consideration and effort?

That doesn't actually sound like a disagreement.

Re: The End of Big Twitter

#85

Post by Istof »

mjn wrote: post #7
austenallred wrote: post #2

The same frustrations (and more) are constantly levied against Facebook (as well as nearly every other platform). The reality is, however, that people are joining much, much faster than they're leaving. So even if 1 in 10 hates a platform and refuses to use it, that is negated by the 5 that are joining.

In my own limited experience, Facebook has changed less than Twitter from the perspective of conversation dynamics, to the extent that I now prefer FB, while I used to prefer Twitter. For one thing, FB is less "flat". On FB, my updates only go to my FB friends, or optionally to "friends of friends". They are the only people who can either see or comment on them. So the size of my friend list has a large effect on dis…

Do you use email when you want to be even more private? Sure if you don't want a stranger to reply to your message, don't send it to everybody.

Re: The End of Big Twitter

#86

Post by mtalantikite »

dang wrote: post #33
mtalantikite wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, HN used to be much more technical early on, so I'm sure some would argue it's already happened. Long gone are the days of waking up to a front page full of Erlang posts in an attempt to scare off the general public whenever there was press about HN. I think it's been accepted that HN is more just general interest about startups these days.

I don't think that HN is less technical than it used to be. It has always had mixed content. Perceptions of it are perennially mixed as well—someone was just asking me why there hasn't been much startup news on HN lately.

I don't know, as I'm writing this there are about 7-10 posts that are actually technical on the front page. The rest are product announcements or fluff tech articles from Wired. Actually, some of these technical posts (like GHC passes in Coq) are feature announcements as well.

That's not to say I don't enjoy HN, it's great, but I certainly could use less of the "Show HN" startup announcements on the front page or techcrunch articles that are about nothing.

Re: The End of Big Twitter

#87

Post by dang »

mtalantikite wrote: post #86
dang wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that HN is less technical than it used to be. It has always had mixed content. Perceptions of it are perennially mixed as well—someone was just asking me why there hasn't been much startup news on HN lately.

I don't know, as I'm writing this there are about 7-10 posts that are actually technical on the front page. The rest are product announcements or fluff tech articles from Wired. Actually, some of these technical posts (like GHC passes in Coq) are feature announcements as well. That's not to say I don't enjoy HN, it's great, but I certainly could use less of the "Show HN" startup announcements on the front page or tec…

I really think this is whatever that bias is where we rewrite our memories to match how we feel about the past.

As long as we're taking random samples, let's see what, say, November 2010 looked like:

https://web.archive.org/web/20101119073443/http://news.ycomb...

How about March 2008? (I'm picking these arbitrarily...)

https://web.archive.org/web/20080327223917/http://news.ycomb...

If either of those front pages showed up today, people would be complaining very loudly about HN's steep decline.

Re: The End of Big Twitter

#88

Post by mtalantikite »

dang wrote: post #87
mtalantikite wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, as I'm writing this there are about 7-10 posts that are actually technical on the front page. The rest are product announcements or fluff tech articles from Wired. Actually, some of these technical posts (like GHC passes in Coq) are feature announcements as well. That's not to say I don't enjoy HN, it's great, but I certainly could use less of the "Show HN" startup announcements on the front page or tec…

I really think this is whatever that bias is where we rewrite our memories to match how we feel about the past. As long as we're taking random samples, let's see what, say, November 2010 looked like: https://web.archive.org/web/20101119073443/http://news.ycomb... How about March 2008? (I'm picking these arbitrarily...) https://web.archive.org/web/20080327223917/http://news.ycomb... If either of those front pages show…

Yeah, I guess the takeaway is that Wired and Techcrunch have been terrible for a long time ;)

I still find both of those archive grabs more interesting. They're certainly not all posts just for the neckbeards, that's not what ever drew me to HN, but they don't lean so heavy towards "Show HN: Please look at my startup".

Re: The End of Big Twitter

#89

Post by [deleted] »

Istof wrote: post #85
mjn wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my own limited experience, Facebook has changed less than Twitter from the perspective of conversation dynamics, to the extent that I now prefer FB, while I used to prefer Twitter. For one thing, FB is less "flat". On FB, my updates only go to my FB friends, or optionally to "friends of friends". They are the only people who can either see or comment on them. So the size of my friend list has a large effect on dis…

Do you use email when you want to be even more private? Sure if you don't want a stranger to reply to your message, don't send it to everybody.

[deleted]
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