Is It Time To Rethink the Fundamental Dynamics of Twitter? (techcrunch.com) 143
At a TED conference, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said the social media company needs to rethink how they incentivize user behavior to combat abuse and misinformation. "He suggested that the service works best as an 'interest-based network,' where you log in and see content relevant to your interests, no matter who posted it -- rather than a network where everyone feels like they need to follow a bunch of other accounts, and then grow their follower numbers in turn," reports TechCrunch. From the report: Dorsey recalled that when the team was first building the service, it decided to make follower count "big and bold," which naturally made people focus on it. "Was that the right decision at the time? Probably not," he said. "If I had to start the service again, I would not emphasize the follower count as much ... I don't think I would create 'likes' in the first place." Since he isn't starting from scratch, Dorsey suggested that he's trying to find ways to redesign Twitter to shift the "bias" away from accounts and toward interests.
And while Dorsey said he's less interested in maximizing time spent on Twitter and more in maximizing "what people take away from it and what they want to learn from it," TED's Chris Anderson suggested that Twitter may struggle with that goal since it's a public company, with a business model based on advertising. Would Dorsey really be willing to see time spent on the service decrease, even if that means improving the conversation? "More relevance means less time on the service, and that's perfectly fine," Dorsey said, adding that Twitter can still serve ads against relevant content. In terms of how the company is currently measuring its success, Dorsey said it focuses primarily on daily active users, and secondly on "conversation chains -- we want to incentivize healthy contributions back to the network."
And while Dorsey said he's less interested in maximizing time spent on Twitter and more in maximizing "what people take away from it and what they want to learn from it," TED's Chris Anderson suggested that Twitter may struggle with that goal since it's a public company, with a business model based on advertising. Would Dorsey really be willing to see time spent on the service decrease, even if that means improving the conversation? "More relevance means less time on the service, and that's perfectly fine," Dorsey said, adding that Twitter can still serve ads against relevant content. In terms of how the company is currently measuring its success, Dorsey said it focuses primarily on daily active users, and secondly on "conversation chains -- we want to incentivize healthy contributions back to the network."
Away from accounts (Score:3)
He's come to the right place (Score:5, Insightful)
Asking a certified look-we-are-so-SMRT echochamber cult for advice on how to keep the goodthink in and evict the badthink out from your "social media platform"? Exactly the thing I would do!
Re:He's come to the right place (Score:4, Interesting)
But hey, maybe they could take in one point from this here, echochamber...
I have good karma on slashdot, and because of this, I have the choice to disable ads. Maybe twitter could employ some sort of "karma" like slashdot did, and use it to enable or disable certain aspects of twitter.
Re:He's come to the right place (Score:5, Insightful)
I have good karma on slashdot, and because of this, I have the choice to disable ads. Maybe twitter could employ some sort of "karma" like slashdot did, and use it to enable or disable certain aspects of twitter.
The problem is that Karma on Slashdot is generally capped, and the reach of Slashdot is relatively low. It's entirely possible for me to have a similar level of karma to Wil Wheaton on Slashdot (if he's still around). Both Wil and I have had comments modded +5, the highest available. On Twitter, it would require some bizarre viral share situation for a tweet of mine to have the same number of likes and retweets that Wil gets on a bad day. I will never have the same reach as Cardi B on Twitter, but if she were to join Slashdot, we would likely reach similar levels of karma.
Twitter would be betting the farm on the sort of shift that allows for the sort of egalitarianism which Slashdot's system is intended to provide. Moreover, there's no way Twitter is allowing anyone to disable ads, except maybe if they're some sort of influencer like Katy Perry or Ellen Degeneres...and by time you get to that level, ads aren't seen by the individual because those Twitter accounts are managed by social media teams. Also, if the threshold is set to even 500 followers, that would make that option unavailable for 96% of Twitter users.
Even if somehow that problem was solved, what would be able to be changed? Besides ad removal, the addition of extra filters? Accounts that can only be followed once you have a certain amount of reach? Even if they came up with a dozen different achievements that allowed customization of the experience, wouldn't that make the issue that much worse as people on the cusp of that sort of popularity would start begging for followers to reach it, making Twitter worse for lower level users?
Slashdot has its issues, but it's clear that preventing the existence of a 0.01% of accounts and limiting the reward of groupthink has been a fundamental component from the get-go, which has helped it avoid some of the pitfalls of Reddit and other straight upvote/like ranking systems. Such a system would alienate the Twitter audience, and Twitter knows it.
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Damn I wish I had posted that as AC, so I could now mod you up.
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Slashdot and Reddit could both be vastly improved by making 1 up-vote cancel out 5 down-votes.
You see a lot of comments both here and on Reddit with huge numbers of both up and down votes. Slashdot is particularly prone to the Insightful Troll mod.
Of course it will result in some actual troll posts being modded up by other trolls, but it's worth putting up with to give useful but somewhat unpopular posts a better chance.
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Slashdot and Reddit could both be vastly improved by making 1 up-vote cancel out 5 down-votes.
This would make moderation mostly useless for any controversial topic, every post would be at +5. Moderation only works when some posts are elevated above others.
That said, reddit's system is absolutely terrible. I can't understand why slashdot's system hasn't been copied more broadly, the mod system here has its flaws but it's the best I've seen anywhere and it's been around forever.
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The majority of Slashdot posts never get any moderation at all. They sit at their default score forever.
Those that get moderation are either pure crap like APK/GNAA spam, or they are worthy of consideration. Worthy even if only to note that someone with an agenda modded them up for some reason.
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I concur with the interesting mod, though I see insight underneath.
I would suggest that positive moderation should be made easy to encourage positive behavior, and though negative moderation should be more difficult (to offset the higher motivation of angry people), there should also be real penalties (in terms of reduced visibility) associated with earning negative feedback.
In the larger context of my theoretical solution of MEPR, the voting should also be symmetric. Positive (or negative) evaluations shou
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Slashdot has its issues, but it's clear that preventing the existence of a 0.01% of accounts and limiting the reward of groupthink has been a fundamental component from the get-go, which has helped it avoid some of the pitfalls of Reddit and other straight upvote/like ranking systems. Such a system would alienate the Twitter audience, and Twitter knows it.
One thing I like about slashdot is that anyone can post without registering but do so with a score of 0, registered accounts starts with +1 and if you're not totally incoherent you quite quickly start posting with a +2, so pretty much everyone worth reading do and I can adjust my preferences and see as much or little as I want to. If a twitter post gets 300 replies I know I probably won't enjoy browsing the discussion.
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Interesting and insightful comment.
Just addressing a partial solution approach to one part of it: What if karma and moderation were both reported on a logarithmic (and symmetric) basis? In the case of your comment, Insightful level 3 would represent more than e^3 (= ~20) and less than e^4 (= ~54) favorable moderations.
(Also presumes mod points would be much more plentiful and without the cancellation for participating in the discussion. I think that possibility of impartiality should be handled differently,
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With the ultimate prize being the ability to disable Twitter completely?
Oh wait, I already have that option. By completely ignoring it, because it's a largely useless service.
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With the ultimate prize being the ability to disable Twitter completely?
You're good at reading between the lines. Thank you.
Nothing has changed (Score:5, Interesting)
> "log in and see content relevant to your interest"
That sure as hell sounds like creating echo chambers to me - which is exactly the opposite of what is needed for meaningful discourse. The latter is what Twitter *should* be promoting if it actually cares one iota about abuse and misinformation, but of course it doesn't; it just cares about talking the talk so it can continue raking in ad money.
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Something is wrong then, because you can read public tweets without being logged in, along with all the public replies. They work fine with things like archival services too, which are also not logged in.
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Yes, you can; but the links are built to get you to log in, so that they (twitter) can then bleat on about active user accounts disguising the fact that they aren't active at all.
If you can't win at the metrics, then game the numbers. Make "active" mean "accounts that people have logged into in X days", instead of "accounts where people have actually posted content to the service" and look at the numbers go up when you scheme people into logging in out of sheer link-click-lazy!
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literally destroy value just by merely existing.
So value = advertisers. Or value to advertisers is the important thing. Good to know which side of the fence you're on. A great many people (including some in the advertising industry) believe that advertisers actually destroy value but hey, it's a good paying job so go with it. Value is when a good product is cheap. Then you have great value. Advertising costs money, the cost is passed on to the consumer. So while advertising may increase sales, you get the same product more expensive. Value decreases. But
Re: Nothing has changed (Score:4, Funny)
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There is no case in which advertising ADDS value to anything on this planet.
Duh. Of course advertising cannot add value to anything, but it can induce the consumer to perceive increased value by making a product appear more desirable, thus increasing demand. That's only a bad thing when the product is truly of little worth; case in point: television ads for the latest reality show.
Let's take a hypothetical situation where you have developed a product or service that would be of substantial value to society. You believe that there is no case in which advertising ADDS value to anythi
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If inactive accounts merely existing "hurts the platform irreparably" then I would say the "platform" isn't built very solid, and is doomed to failure.
Inactive accounts are an inevitability in any computer service. People get bored, move on to other services, die. You cannot avoid inactive accounts.
This is not an echo chamber (Score:5, Interesting)
You are mistakenly reading "content relevant to yourself" with "content you agree with". A common error but a fatal one in such type of discourse.
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"Content relevant to your interrest" normally include stuff you agree or disagree with, but on a particular subject.
You'd think that, but that's not how people are. "Their interest" extends beyond the theme, into the narrative. A flat earther wouldn't find stuff on Globular Earth within their interest (nor vice versa). Once a person has decided on how things are, they actively, even on a subconscious level, seek out confirmation of said belief.
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I dunno, I get the impression that most flat earthers just enjoy arguing and being contrarian. If everyone agrees with them it's no fun any more, so relevant for them is someone they can have a discussion with.
Yes they would (Score:3)
["Content relevant to your interrest" normally include stuff you agree or disagree with, but on a particular subject.] - You'd think that, but that's not how people are.
But Twitter shows that is EXACTLY how people are.
Because so much of twitter is filled with people in a bubble, bringing in contrary stories from outside that bubble to complain about, and to have others complain about as well.
A flat earther wouldn't find stuff on Globular Earth within their interest
Yes they absolutely would because they woul
Where the consensus is (Score:1)
It's definitely flat. I mean, just look at it (but not from too high up; that's a conspiracy. and not with measuring instruments; I don't understand those. and certainly not with math. God, I hate math.).
Re:This is not an echo chamber (Score:4, Insightful)
Presenting a reasonable overview of views and conversations is a very difficult nut to crack. How do you select posts that are representative, in a way that can't be gamed?
If you do somehow manage to do it you will be accused of bias anyway, because people think that their fringe view is actually way more popular than it is.
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I do think you could tackle your question by associating the tweet with the tweeter, and making the relationship reflexive. Easiest to illustrate with an example of network analysis? It could obviously be applied to that most prominent tweeter-in-chief, ol' #PresidentTweety hisself (though I don't need to go there for the example).
I'm going to assume symmetric MEPR is being used, with MEPR-C for the Comments and MEPR-I for the Identities. If someone tweets a lie with bad grammar and spelling, then that twee
Re: This is not an echo chamber (Score:1)
"Content relevant to your interest" normally include stuff you agree or disagree with, but on a particular subject.
By "normally", I think you mean " theoretically". The fact of the matter is that topic classification is a pretty hard problem. In a *practical* algorithm to match you with your topics of interest, the concepts of "topic" and "viewpoint" are likely to be conflated to a large degree.
Re:This is not an echo chamber (Score:4, Insightful)
You all know the flat earthers are making fun of YOU right. The joke is to troll people who think they are informed and an educated. I won't pretend there might not be some crank out there that still actually thinks the earth is flat but the flat earthers certainly don't think so. Most of them are really really smart guys and gals who are amused by coming up with the math porn to explain all the observed evidence and still conclude a flat earth.
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I've always figured that to be the case, because the trolling is just too good. But I really wish we could claim the same about anti-vaxxers.
Some are troll (Score:2)
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"Content relevant to your interrest" normally include stuff you agree or disagree with, but on a particular subject.
I'm not sure how well this would actually work in practice. I may complain that some Trump supporters only view media which confirms their beliefs, but I don't want to see a bunch of Infowars articles / tweets either. I do like to read articles with well reasoned arguments I may disagree with, but that is drowned out by misinformation. I assume many/most people on the other side of the political spectrum think research coming out of universities and the "educated elite" is also misinformation.
When the probl
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"Content relevant to your interrest" normally include stuff you agree or disagree with, but on a particular subject. I don't care about twitter but when I want stuff about a certain theme, I want the stuff for the stuff against, and a way to weight where the consensus is (e.g. flat earth, globular earth, and where the consensus is).
You and all of the rest of us reading Slashdot are very much in the minority on this point, as demonstrated by Slashdot's own metrics. Most people don't want that, or Slashdot would be far more popular than it is. It's rather blindingly obvious from which platforms are popular that people want bubbles. Bubbles sell. Bubbles sell really really well.
Shit, we have people here who don't want that. AmiMoJo is complaining further up about Slashdot's moderation because AmiMoJo doesn't like how the Slashdot co
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It depends how you define "relevant". If it's "relevant to Metro City politics" and includes a variety of interesting conversations and views from those involved it could be good.
One of the best uses of Twitter is to get comments directly from those involved, particularly politicians, and see how others respond to them. If they can build on that and make tools that make participating in the conversation easier (which often means just liking something someone else said, because 10,000 people all saying the s
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How can you have anything relevant when it is impossible to have a conversation? It follows that "relevant" in context of Twitter approximately means "Will elicit emotional response".
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I read it more like "I wish we were Reddit" than what you got out of it.
Sure, there can be some echo chamber creation on Reddit, but most subs are topic based and have posts and content linked that are both positive, and critical.
beyond the bones (Score:3)
It's hard to jump in with an insightful comment if your moral compass has forgotten what the words originally meant; in that condition, at best you're chasing your own tail.
Interest:
1) something that arouses attention
2) advantage, benefit
3) business, company
Behind door nu
Insane noise and screaming is NOT a dynamic (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm going to watch this discussion to see if anyone can provide a sane definition of what the "dynamics of Twitter" are supposed to be. Near as I can tell, it is a peculiar form of insanity driven by some sort of theory that if you can get enough eyeballs looking in the same direction, you must have created some value there. I'm not seeing the value.
Part and parcel of the insane worship of corporate cancers? Of course if stock prices become completely detached from reality, then the only question is which company can do the best "job" of creating an illusion of shareholder value, eh? I'd still bet on the Chinese, whose stock market has risen 30% recently for no reasons I can detect.
By the way, the original idea of extremely short messages was really dumb. Twice times dumb is still dumb. I used to believe the expression that "Brevity is the soul of wit" until I saw Twitter in action.
Re:Insane noise and screaming is NOT a dynamic (Score:5, Insightful)
The "dynamics of twitter" is that Jack has created a giant pub, people hang about with their mates talking about stuff, they talk to the people next to them, who the generally know by sight at least, and are perfectly capable of shouting across the bar is someone says something particularly stupid. If someone tells a particularly good joke then it does the rounds and everybody laughs, and if someone drops their pint everybody stops what they are doing to take the piss.
What Jack has thus far neglected to do is find a way to sell these people drinks, and thus make any money from these people who turn up in his establishment every day for a chat, or a rant, or a fight.
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Your "pub" analogy is absolutely right. And this is what people - especially those calling for censorship - need to think about. No one is hovering around the tables at your local pub, telling people what they're allowed to say, and what they cannot say. If they did, they'd likely wind up in the hospital. If the people hovering bring the power of the government to bear (a cop at every table), all that will happen is people will take their conversations elsewhere.
Freedom of speech should be a near to an abso
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Your "pub" analogy is absolutely right. And this is what people - especially those calling for censorship - need to think about. No one is hovering around the tables at your local pub, telling people what they're allowed to say, and what they cannot say.
So close yet so far. Pubs can and do bar people for shitty behavior all the time. If you started spouting off about raping another patron, you'd find yourself out not just from the pub, but probably most of the pubs in the town center (they share informati
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Confused me for a minute there, but thank you [bradley13] for calling that (moderated) interesting comment to my attention, even if an AC wrote it. At first I thought you were talking to me, but I couldn't remember anything about a pub.
Mostly I agree with you (and even with the AC), but I definitely think the dynamics of Twitter do not mesh well with how a pub works. If you say something stupid or crazy in a pub, a couple of people, probably drunk people, hear it and then it goes away. Worst case is someone
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Re: Insane noise and screaming is NOT a dynamic (Score:1)
Short messages was never an idea it was a technical constraint that was spun as a âoefeatureâ. The idea was a platform that was going to deliver messages across a number of other platforms, one of which being SMS. So the messages needed to fit into the size of an sms message, which was also sized specifically to fit into an existing signaling mechanism.
It turned out sms never ended up mattering to twitter because everyone who cared about it got a smart phone anyway and therefore only the web and
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I'm going to watch this discussion to see if anyone can provide a sane definition of what the "dynamics of Twitter" are supposed to be. Near as I can tell, it is a peculiar form of insanity driven by some sort of theory that if you can get enough eyeballs looking in the same direction, you must have created some value there. I'm not seeing the value.
Part and parcel of the insane worship of corporate cancers? Of course if stock prices become completely detached from reality, then the only question is which company can do the best "job" of creating an illusion of shareholder value, eh? I'd still bet on the Chinese, whose stock market has risen 30% recently for no reasons I can detect.
By the way, the original idea of extremely short messages was really dumb. Twice times dumb is still dumb. I used to believe the expression that "Brevity is the soul of wit" until I saw Twitter in action.
Twitter stock currently trades at a price to earnings ratio of 22.09: https://www.marketwatch.com/in... [marketwatch.com]
You can see a summary of their financials for the last 5 years: https://www.marketwatch.com/in... [marketwatch.com]
(I only invest in broad cheap index funds so I'm not interested in arguing share value. I only intended to show that they do make money and the valuation is possibly high but not crazy).
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$700 million/year in "R&D" lol
I don't know where you've got that figure from, last year it was $555m although in -15 it was $800+m but yes, that is an insane amount of money imnho spent on research on how to trigger people while showing them ads.
What are the externalities of Twitter's dynamics? (Score:2)
I really can't decide if your reply merits any response, though I do see several analytic approaches. Is it possible we could have an interesting discussion? Seems so unlikely in these trollish times...
My new subject is based on the more conventional economic approach. If you can answer that question in a meaningful way, then we can look at the larger context of those alleged earnings.
However, I would favor an ekronomic approach considering the value of time. From that perspective you would be hard-pressed
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Anyway if you follow the correct people Twitter can be pretty interesting.
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On those terms, I would reword or refocus my criticism towards Twitter's failure to help you tell who are the people worth following. I think there are two aspects: (1) Twitter doesn't care about wasting out time, and (2) The reduction to single-dimensional metrics, while convenient for lazy programmers, makes it difficult to assess "correct" in any meaningful sense.
Twitter builds social bubbles and echo chambers (Score:1)
Re: Twitter builds social bubbles and echo chamber (Score:2)
My farts smell like roses, with just a hint of lavender.
So... Youtube? (Score:2)
Content relevant to interests based on profiling the user? Sounds like the Youtube way. And we all know Youtube only contains level headed discussions and isn't a cesspool of hate and conspiracy theories /s.
Lipstick on a pig. (Score:4, Insightful)
Twitter is basically pointless and rather worthless in the big picture.
Yes, it really is. Don't give me that freedom/privacy/have-to-fight-tyranny bullshit. Wars were never won with Tweets, and the last humans attempting to convey meaningful messages in 140 characters or less were cavemen smearing pictures on rock walls. The early days of Twitter were essentially learning just how often humans was bored enough on a toilet to tell other humans about it, and assume they gave a shit.
And no, you're not going to convince greedy shareholders demanding infinite growth these days that less eyeballs and less time in front of your ad-driven revenue model is somehow a good thing. You would need to fix the greed problem first.
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I like twitter for following certain people that post interesting stuff to new developments or research papers. It works fairly well for that.
The thread and response mechanism is totally useless, just like the hashtags.
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It's hard to gauge exactly how influential Trump's tweets are, but given the number of followers he has and the fact that his tweets are often cited by news orgs and other leaders, I'd say they are not insignificant.
The fact that many other politicians have adopted Twitter as a way to speak directly to the electorate, bypassing the media and press conferences, giving immediate and direct reactions to events and things other people say, suggests that many of them think Twitter is not insignificant too.
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It's hard to gauge exactly how influential Trump's tweets are, but given the number of followers he has and the fact that his tweets are often cited by news orgs and other leaders, I'd say they are not insignificant.
The fact that many other politicians have adopted Twitter as a way to speak directly to the electorate, bypassing the media and press conferences, giving immediate and direct reactions to events and things other people say, suggests that many of them think Twitter is not insignificant too.
The fact that Twitter could very likely start a war between two countries, should scare the shit out of people.
Sometimes bypassing those checks and balances, isn't a good thing.
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The fact that Twitter could very likely start a war between two countries
Wtf? Back into your safe space. No war is going to start over tweets. You seem to be suffering from TDS/Orangemanbad. No one would dare attack the US no matter how outrageous one of President Trump's tweets. And the US won't attack any country over a tweet that they weren't going to attack anyway.
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No extra censorship needed.
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It would be blocked immediately due to the high level of child porn, terrorist murder videos and magnet links.
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Your life is basically pointless and rather worthless in the big picture. The universe existed before you were born and will continue after you cease to exist. Nothing you do will change the universe.
The problem with "in the big picture" arguments is that you can always expand out to a point where the whatever you're talking about is meaningless. Dismissing something because you can find a scale where it has no impact is a failure in your own logic.
You being hacked to death by an axe wielding maniac has n
Then why no capability to follow a hashtag? (Score:2)
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Echo chambers (Score:3)
Echo chambers in fair part were created by trying to increase user engagement. The thought being that by providing more of what the user liked, they could in turn provide more and more meaningful ads.
The problem is that as people engaged more with certain things they started seeing less of other things. In other words they stopped getting exposed to competing and conflicting ideas. Over a period of time it can readily get to the point where users only hear things that agree with them. Good intentions can readily inadvertently create echo chambers.
The problem is that the user can readily come under the impression that their algorithmically defined world view is normal. Because this same process occurs concurrently across any platform of note (ad dollars) the echo chamber effect is comprehensive. Everywhere a user turns idea X is good and idea Y is bad! The result of this is increased hostility and society becoming increasingly polarized. Sooner or later this will inflame tensions to the point where civil wars start to break out.
Save the Internet. Kill the echo chamber.
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I'd be curious to know how you experienced life before social media?
As I remember purveyors of fringe beliefs could sometimes be seen on street corners and town squares handing out stenciled leaflets and shouting, but if their views where too extreme, they'd be driven away by an angry mob (and they where quite a rare occurrence). Today any crackpot can an will, butt into your online conversation. The diversity of opinions among my friends, at school or at work was very small compared to for example this sit
I never could get into Twitter. (Score:2)
I like writing small books when I post and reply. I just never could see how so many embraced such a limiting format.
I know it originally caught on because the news media gave it such a big push but it doesn't explain the staying power to me. I would be happy if Twitter just went away all together. I tire of hearing about it constantly. One take away it note - based on the constant Twitter backlash in the news, from public shaming to outright executions in some countries I can't see why anyone would post an
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I don't understand how people deal with the low signal to noise ratio and the deluge of messages; it's like drinking from a fire hydrant.
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I can't help but think of the classics sometimes. [imgur.com]
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I rarely click on the tweets embedded in news stories.
Twitter is mostly a bunch of noise to me. I have an account, and I have a couple of things auto-posting in case someone wants to see the YouTube video I liked. I don't spend much time on YouTube either.
It's basically a neglected account, though I've had a couple of verified celebrities follow me unprovoked - that blew my mind. Edward James Olmos and Nolan K Bushnell. Sorry to bore them so much. Bushnell followed me after I made some Tweets from the
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Based on what I gather from the news - yeah.
Stop saying echo chamber... (Score:2)
Twitter is tribalism, bear-baiting, witch hunts, everything that humans have done for hundreds if not thousands of years only in an electronic format.
Now Dorsey wants to change that? He wants to change the nature of humanity? Ya, good luck.
Well I never liked Twitter anyways, I'll be glad to see it go, and replaced with a Pinterest clone.
The problem is HUMANS (Score:2)
Mob psychology and all the flaws of humans in numbers... it was amplified by the internet already but now with walled garden monopolies centralizing the internet it's turbocharged to nearly as far as is humanly possible.
The only solution is to go back to decentralized smaller more chaotic market of smaller mobs concentrating human flaws. Yes that means that the useful benefits will be weaker as well so the few useful movements will have to settle on a few services.
Stop Censoring Conservatives + Facebook (Score:1)
Very simple.
Though what I think is interesting is that we see this and not something about how Facebook can improve, because Facebook sucks.
Seriously. There have been some times that I post posts where I clearly am pouring out my heart and absolutely no one responds. I would think that some family would respond.. and I also see cousins who posts lots of posts, and they are pretty popular and have lots of likes on Instagram and absolutely no engagement.
On the other side of that, I notice that I NEVER see pos
Why not just charge people to tweet? (Score:3)
Their economics were basically other people get engagement by posting stuff, and they ride the coattails to make money off of it.
Years ago, when the service was moderately popular, they could've just implemented a system by which people who have a *lot* of followers have to pay money to tweet to them.
Set up something like people get 100k points a day, and you can store up to 1M points. If you have 10k followers, you can send 10 tweets a day for free ... anything over that, you pay for. And you can tweet for free to 1 million followers if you're only tweeting every 10 days.
But those people paying for bots to follow them *also* have to pay twitter for the right to send messages to those bots. Corporations and people getting paid as 'influencers' have to give some money back to twitter for using their network to send messages to their followers.
I'm just throwing out some numbers here ... maybe you don't have a hard cap, but you have it so you can carry over a percentage from day to day. The basic idea is that those people who profit from your service have to pay in ... and those people still trying to build a following get to participate free 'til they hit some threshold
I think it's clear what twitter is (Score:2)
and who and what it's for. It's obviously for criminals, cheats, liars, and thieves.
Why is anyone else using it?
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I use Twitter to follow my local transit agencies that tweet system status updates so I can be aware of them and take steps to mitigate transit issues. I can also ask questions or complain at them --- and actually get responses within minutes. I also use it to get in touch with companies' customer service --- and also actually get responses within minutes. And I can do all of this without having to call some number, navigate a phone-tree, and remain on hold for 20 minute
But this isn't how Twitter (and people) work (Score:4, Insightful)
What people, at least those using Twitter to broadcast, want is publicity. They want to be heard. They want followers who read their stuff, retweet it and make them feel important. What people want is that their opinion matters. If you have a million followers, everything you say will be taken in by a million brains and they will probably believe it. If, and only if, it supports their already pre-formed notion of what is "true".
Because that's how people work.
Now, of course you could achieve this also by providing insightful information. You could inform the world about flaws in software you discover, you could have the (actual) news before the local outlet brings them. But this is hard. What's way easier is is to provide some conspiracy-laced fringe theories that find some fertile grounds with those that feel slighted by "the system" or somehow disadvantaged, which is a pretty big hunting ground in the western world today.
Advertisers need this too (Score:2)
The industry premise is busted at the moment. The idea of tracking people is insane. They need to reorient to topics of article/discussion/selection/search ... and for just that session only.
Gamification of Social Media (Score:1)
Simply means when debating on social media, you are driven to win.
What starts out as a debate quickly devolves into an argument, which quickly devolves further into an effort to win by any means necessary - even by lying or posting misinformation.
It is virtually impossible to convince someone to change their stance (even if doing so would be correct) because doing so is losing.
This is how social media is designed.
They only way to win is not to play.
Does @Jack even use Twitter? (Score:1)
No seriously. Does Jack really USE twitter? I don't think so. I've been on twitter a long time and this drivel looks like he misses the entire point of what makes twitter useful and why numerous people are more than a little annoyed that obvious improvements aren't being done.
1) Generally nothing has been about harassment. Those that report and include everything from death threats to flat our racist remarks get told "nothing can be done."
2) Steering the platform towards seeing "content' that interests you
Return the internet (Score:1)
Everyone is then happy with their own ideas, politics, art, culture, faith as the type of "site" will fit in well with their interests.
Don't try and sell one huge site to the world.
Sell 100000's of small sites to the world.
Happy people on their own sites are people who will enjoy ads and create content for decades.
Never to read, interact with, see, find a person they have nothing in common with.
People who will consume.
No, it isn't (Score:2)
Betteridge says No (Score:2)
Top Tweets vs. Latest Tweets (Score:3)
The first time I tried Twitter, I couldn't make any sense out of it, and I gave up after a few days.
The second time, I added ~50 people to my feed and started following them. After some months, I realized that it was making me jittery, and I stopped.
The third time, I cut my feed down to ~5 people (only 3 of whom post regularly). Now I check it once or twice a day (more if I'm bored). I read back until I get to tweets that I've seen before, and then I'm caught up.
Maybe a year ago, I'm reading my feed, and after a while I realize that I'm...lost...disoriented...out of context. I'm seeing tweets from people that I don't follow. I'm seeing tweets from long ago. I'm finding myself dropped into the middle of threads I that never saw the start of. I have a nagging feeling that I'm missing things, so I keep reading. And it just keeps going: I never get caught up.
Eventually, I start looking around, and I find that Twitter has switched me to "Top Tweets" (also called "Home"), which is some kind of algorithmic mash-up of my feed, and things linked to my feed, and things maybe sort-of like my feed, all presented in a pseudo-non-chronological order.
Twitter tries to gloss this as tweets relevant to my interests, but its primary effect it to annoy me, and disorient me, and--crucially--to prevent me from engaging with Twitter in a directed and goal-oriented fashion. I can't just read what's new and get on with the day. Instead, I'm stuck in this endless scrolling morass of...twitter stuff...
I crawl around in Twitter's configuration screens and eventually find where they've hidden the Top/Latest setting. I switch it back to Latest Tweets (my feed only, strict chronological order). I catch up on my feed and then I'm done.
But the next time I look at Twitter, they've switched my feed back to Top Tweets, and I'm lost, and they also moved the setting somewhere new and I have to go hunt it down and switch it back again.
Eventually, the setting migrates to the little star icon at the top right of the front page and stays there, but to this day Twitter periodically switch my feed to Top tweets and I have to switch it back.
It seems obvious to me that this is all about increasing user time on the platform. Twitter really, really, really does not want me to just read what's new in a directed way and then get on with my day. They want to create a morass--a tarpit--that can put me into a fugue state and keep me forever scrolling down to read just one more tweet.
Re: (Score:2)
Why rethink Twitter, just don't think about it (Score:2)
Easy solution: Just turn it OFF! /s (Score:2)
Because turning it off will "stop" all "verbal abuse", right! /s
Maybe the platform, in this case Twitter, is IRRELEVANT because people will complain *regardless* of the medium. That's what people do: Communicate. Popular and Unpopular ideas.
Trying to crack down on bullshit "hate speech" is not the solution either -- a) that will just drive it underground, and b) it also becomes a slippery slope. What is fine today to express may not be tomorrow. Either you allow people to express their opinions or you do
Trash it (Score:1)
Economics (Score:2)
No, users who keep patronizing this pointless talking-shop need to re evaluate why the fuck they keep handing their eyeballs to Jack Dorsey to sell.
I admit, I am an Old (tm) who doesn't in the least understand why people are interested in everyone else's passing thoughts or the announcement they are standing in line for a latte.
censorship (Score:1)
Yeah, re-think that stuff. Just because someone is a millennial doesn't mean they have to be a snowflake.
If you can't find any buyers for your low ball offer and then the one turkey who is interested changes their mind it's time to go back to the drawing board.
He just wants to monetize interests (Score:2)
He doesn't care about you.
Twitter is a monopoly (Score:2)
Yes, the fundamental dynamics of Twitter should be rethought: It should be broken up into a dozen Mastodon instances.
Easy solution (Score:2)
"If I had to start the service again, I would not emphasize the follower count as much ... I don't think I would create 'likes' in the first place."
Then demote the "follower count" to a less prominent position, and take the fucking "Likes" button out. Problem solved.
Don't act like this is a brain transplant, it's just HTML. Turn those features off, hide them, or bury them in some stats page.
HAHAHAHA (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Twitter is in its death throes. They're a business, if they want to stay in the scene they'll evolve, or they'll die.
Seeing as they're massively bias, I see no way they can recover. They killed themselves with their weird morality play, in which they get to be judge judy and executioner
Lord I hope so!