When thinking of the real value of Twitter, I end up thinking about how it seemed when it was first on the scene. For a short while, users as a group were using it "correctly" (or maybe "usefully," or "sanely"): reporters found it to be a great way to get breaking stories out in the public sphere. I remember what for me remains "peak" Twitter- following a favorite investigative journalist who happened to be near ground zero of a hunt for a dangerous criminal. He gave up-to-the-minute updates that read like the best crime fiction. When the guy was apprehended, the nation uttered a sigh of relief that one could feel, and Twitter made me feel like I was if not on the scene, at least had an incredibly candid perspective on it.
The worst I've ever seen from Twitter is our attempts to have a "global conversation" about nothing. It's like the erratic chatter at the end of a party when we all have to start contemplating our real lives, start begging people for rides or if we're needy, squeezing a little more ego stroking before the sun rises. It's depressing, moody and manipulative and feels dirty and gritty like tired smoke-irritated eyes. It and Threads can both go away and I'd be perfectly happy.
The problem is the East Coast media still spends way too much time on these things. The worst culture war takes end up getting articles written about them. It’s like our sociopolitical landscape is determined by the most insane 100 people in the country with access to the Internet.
Your post basically says "it's bizarre you're expressing your opinion, don't do that" - that is not healthy for productive conversation (ironically op's point about those products)
It's ok to express negative opinions about why one doesn't use something. Other people benefit from learning from a valid dissenting view
> Your post basically says "it's bizarre you're expressing your opinion, don't do that" - that is not healthy for productive conversation (ironically op's point about those products)
No it doesn't. They're just saying, millions are still using and enjoying Twitter / X and that is fine. If you don't like it, that is also fine and you can still be happy anyway. I don't see a problem with that.
The fact that Twitter and Facebook are driving divisiveness and misinformation definitely impacts my life, regardless of my lack of engagement with the platforms.
But you can (and you should want to) only control what you consume. You can't control what others decide to like and consume, even if, in your personal opinion, it drives misinformation.
>Your post basically says "it's bizarre you're expressing your opinion, don't do that" - that is not healthy for productive conversation (ironically op's point about those products)
Ironically, you just did the same thing to his post.
> reporters found it to be a great way to get breaking stories out in the public sphere.
Isn't that how it is still used? At least with a weather bent? That's about all I ever see in my Twitter feed is information about upcoming weather risks, with far more detail than you get from your usual weather forecasts.
It's great and I've been able to learn a lot more about the weather because of it.
That's likely because you engage with weather-related content.
For all its problems, Twitter does do a great job at tailoring the algorithmic feed to your (expressed) interests. I just follow/engage with artists, so I rarely see any English text on my feed. The people who see a constant feed of political hot takes have presumably engaged in political arguments on Twitter.
As an aside this was what pissed me off most about the change to require users to log in to see tweets; I'll always use incognito mode to view tweets with topics that I don't want polluting my timeline.
Twitter need distributed editorship. If a tweet is inflammatory, viral, or incorrect, a group of respected users can suppress it or edit them to remove bait headlines. This would be similar to the Wikipedia editor model. Editors can be elected and their actions would be a matter of public record. This would give us a democratic republic of tweets. Eventually users would learn to tweet quality items.
Wikipedia being a non-profit, and Jimmy Wales being a respected leader, is key to Wikipedia's success.
Why should I contribute to the curation of a for-profit company? Especially if Twitter will simply be sold off to the highest-bidder, such as a rich narcissist with a chip on his shoulder?
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This past year, we've seen the collapse of trust in three community driven websites:
1. Twitter
2. Reddit
3. StackOverflow
It turns out that for-profit companies seem to have good morals when there's plenty of money floating around. But the moment venture capitalism dries up, we get this year. All three making user-hostile and anti-moderator choices.
Curation of communities takes _work_. Work that people have been demotivated to do in various forms. Wikipedia has kept its moderators / editor base motivated... and I think the non-profit status is part of the key here.
Or at very least, the advertising approach that Twitter, Reddit, and kinda-sorta StackOverflow, has is probably unable to make a long-lasting trustful community.
Twitter and Reddit will continue existing of course. But I don't think we're going to have the communities of yesteryear anymore.
For better or for worse, Wikipedia is devoid of advertising revenue, and therefore seemingly immune to these ups and downs to the ad-tech market like Twitter/Reddit have been this past year.
Meaning that the marker of success is stable revenue? In other words, someone who keeps a minimum wage job their entire life could be the most successful person around?
If access to moderators is the metric of success, Wikipedia claims to have ~900 moderator accounts currently. Reddit, in 2017, claimed to have ~75,000 moderators. Unfortunately the later figure is severely dated, but has Reddit really lost over 74,000 moderator accounts since? That seems unlikely.
Perhaps Wikipedia has never been successful, just something that has managed to continue to exist?
> If Reddit says X but Wikipedia says Y, do you trust X to be true or do you trust Y to be true?
Neither. One – or both – of them might be true, but who cares? It is not advantageous to give it much concern. We have evolved to not rely on truths. "Is that a lion rustling those bushes or just the wind? Let me be absolutely certain it is a lion before I run." said no one who successfully passed on their genes ever. Truths don't matter much, and the reality is that we're not capable of processing full truths anyway, having to rely on simplifications that lose a lot of the important nuance.
> Wikipedia's editors are highly respected by everyone. Reddit... not so much.
That's like saying librarians garner more respect than comedians. That might be the case when observed through some particular lens, but they're really not comparable. What would that even mean? And if this is the measure of success we want to use, I am struggling to understand why Wikipedia and Reddit were brought together for comparison.
COVID19 literally killed people I knew because they were too stupid to mask up and/or vaccinate people.
Truths matter. And the others who survived it are physically weaker (worse breathing) and have seemingly permanently lost their smell.
So yes, truths matter. Those who follow falsehoods will lead themselves (and their kin) into the depths of despair. While cheering and falsely claiming victory because victory/feeling good about their decisions is more important to truths to them.
That's... fine. Darwin's law will deal with them over time. But I'll stay on the side of truth thanks very much.
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I'm also in the business of programming, which is largely in the business of truths. Is X easier than Y? Do people prefer X or Y? Is X a better design than Y? Etc. etc.
You can't fundamentally alter ground truths, no matter how much money you throw into reputation. Eventually, the truth wins out as the money runs out. Seeking truth first leads to being correct over the long term, as the untruthful die out and/or fail in their projects.
Don't lose sight of the truth. There's objective truths that people have been failing to accept very recently.
Editors who care about the objective truth and seek it (however flawed our seeking of the truth is), is going to over the long term, reach the truth faster. Of course, broken clocks are occasionally correct (possibly more correct) than the truthseekers. But I've got more confidence in some communities than others.
I also recognize that truthseekers are _NOT_ as popular as I once thought, and that we have a need to create curated communities where truth-seeking is favored over popularity-machines that Twitter and/or Reddit prefers to generate. (likely due to advertising revenue. Youtube and TikTok seem to be falling into the same trap).
> COVID19 literally killed people I knew because they were too stupid to mask up and/or vaccinate people.
A fantastic example of the truth not mattering. Is a lion or just the wind? What difference does it make? Run either way!
I put no effort into ensuring that it is true that masks are helpful, or if the vaccine would stave off the illness. Simply, the mental model of the world indicated that they posed no real harm in trying, so why not go for it? If it actually helped, great. If I wasted my time, also great! Who cares?
I'm sure all of us have flaws in our mental model of the world that will cause us to do something we shouldn't in some circumstance, but sharing of truths do nothing to correct those flaws. It is not like the truth about COIVD-19 isn't out there, but obviously it didn't help those who suffered.
> I'm also in the business of programming, which is largely in the business of truths.
Funny, I am too and it is exceedingly rare to find anyone who goes beyond gut feeling. Understandably so, as that's how our mind evolved to function. In fact, programmers love to argue about which gut feeling is right.
> A fantastic example of the truth not mattering. Is a lion or just the wind? What difference does it make? Run either way!
We literally just had anti-mask protesters and anti-vaccine protesters take over one of the major political parties with major sway over a huge number of people's behavior (local municipalities, as well as large-scale behaviors of our society).
At this point I think you're trolling me if you don't see why this is an important issue of our times.
Despite these idiots injecting themselves with useless ivermectin, catching COVID19 and literally dying, I do care about their lives. Not only because of personal relationships, but also as a society they still play a role in the workforce, as fathers or mothers, or other sociological bonuses to our overall life. It is still a tragedy that they've basically killed themselves due to misinformation.
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There are other political issues of the now, and of the future, where the truth will also matter.
> We literally just had anti-mask protesters and anti-vaccine protesters take over one of the major political parties.
We also, at one point, had top doctors letting it be known that cloth masks increase the chance of infection. Not an unreasonable thing to say as the 2015, if I recall correctly, study in hospitals shows that medical professionals wearing cloth masks were at greater risk of infection of disease over wearing no mask due to increased incidents of face touching.
Not unreasonable, but not true, was it? Followup studies around COVID-19 in the general population found very different results. Now imagine if we got wrapped up in being concerned about what is "true". We'd be left thinking cloth masks are detrimental. But as we weren't concerned about what is true, we were willing to keep evaluating the situation.
> if you don't see why this is an important issue of our times.
As opposed to all the other times the Anti-Mask League showed up?
I'm talking about the simple crap. Like, does Ivermectin work at stopping COVID19? Answer: no. It never did, it never had a chance. It was studied first by the RECOVERY Trials and Dexamethasone was the first cheap ($20ish) drug found to be useful.
All the bullshit with Ivermectin after RECOVERY trials was just that: bullshit and misinformation.
Come on dude, its not so hard to see the misinformation littering our discussion space. And your avoidance of the _OBVIOUS_ problems to seed your argument is proof that you're in this for internet points rather than truthful discussion.
There's obvious misinformation, and obvious untruths at play here. And people who want to pretend and muddy the waters. And I'm beginning to think you're one of those muddying the waters dishonest discussion people given how you're misleading this conversation.
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There's a set of honest discussion points that are in our culture.
There's a set of dishonest, misinformation, misleading trolls in our culture.
Are you honestly trying to deny this 2nd group of people's existence? That's all I'm trying to point out.
And what if you told me it did? What would change? The answer is nothing. Not getting wrapped up in what is true also means not getting wrapped up in what is false. It cuts both ways.
Honestly, I don't know what these non-sequiturs are trying to serve. They have nothing to do with the discussion taking place. It seems like you just want to go on some weird political rant or to express your emotions in some strange way. A discussion has no place for either of those things.
Trolls are creating misinformation and using it for political gain. That's my point.
Because these trolls see political benefits in misleading people, they'll continue to do so, and continue to grow in power as they mislead large segments of the population.
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Truthful discussion is the only thing that can combat it. And *simple truths exist*. Despite your attempts at proving otherwise.
This is important because when we talk about our online discussion spaces, like Reddit, Wikipedia, or Twitter, I'm evaluating them on how easy it is for the misinformation-trolls to win and bully themselves into an advantageous position, and how easy it is for the Truth to be gleaned (or at least, a community of truth-seekers to be developed).
> Trolls are creating misinformation and using it for political gain. That's my point.
Yes, I understand that is your point. Just as I could make it my point that the sky is blue. But why would we want to make these points? These non-sequiturs add nothing of value.
Because Reddit and Twitter are havens of misinformation (especially more recently as moderators are protesting / refusing to do as much of a job they did before). And other websites have higher levels of trust with me.
You know. The point of the discussion?
The entire crux of Twitter and Reddit is about discussions, and IMO, truth-seeking is one of the most important roles discussion plays. How well a webpage, or other system, functions in regards to truth-seeking is a high priority for me.
Well, yeah, Reddit is a comedy website. It's not supposed to be truthful in any meaningful sense. It's there for when you want a laugh. The CEO even admits to editing other people's comments when they are deemed not funny enough.
Like I stated in another post, I only really ever see weather forecasts on Twitter, from people who have allegedly dedicated their lives to meteorology and not just some "pretty weather girl" like you find in more common weather channels. I have found them to be as truthful as forecasting the weather can be, and are open about the limitations of their models. They don't always get it right, but that is entirely understandable. We don't understand the truths of weather. Nor do we need to because not worrying about the truth has allowed us to focus on what is actually important.
So, I don't know, Wikipedia's weather forecasts have been far less reliable in experience. That's not really its thing. I see no reason to trust either because it doesn't matter what the truth is – the weather will come the same either way – but if I had a gun to my back forcing me to choose, Twitter would win. But, realistically, they're not meaningfully compared. They offer a completely different service.
Twitter is for pumping illegitimate, unregulated securities like LunaCoin / Terra and other failed cryptocoins.
And this has seemingly gotten worse over the past year, at least in my eyes. Now to get boosted, you can just pay $7/month and force feed scamcoins to the masses.
> Twitter is for pumping illegitimate, unregulated securities like LunaCoin / Terra and other failed cryptocoins.
Okay, and if you don't get wrapped up in thinking the message is true, what difference does it make? You could get yourself in trouble if you are concerned about the truth, and then pick the 'wrong truth', indeed. But why would you do that?
> And this has seemingly gotten worse over the past year, at least in my eyes.
They say the Twitter algorithm feeds you what you want to see. This may be a "you" problem. I've never seen anything about crypto on Twitter. Mostly weather-related content and sometimes farmers posting pictures from the field. That's about it.
Are you really so young that you've never had to make a decision in your life? Like, what to do with your money? Which goods to purchase? Whether or not Car X or Car Y is good / bad / shilled / whatever? Is school district X better or school district Y better, or is it just local FUD / fake crap? Investments is yet another decision for anyone who is trying to provide for themselves and/or their families, so the truth in stuff to invest into (or not invest into) is of high importance.
Do you not make decisions that affect you... or people you care about? I'm struggling to figure out how naive you are and what your background is.
If truth doesn't matter to you, so be it. I'm not here to convince you. But I'm still curious who you are and how you can get through life with this attitude.
There's a myriad of such choices I encounter on a daily basis, be it at work, at home, in my family, in the families of my friends and so forth. To see someone so disinterested in such details (and apparently ignorant of the importance of truth in these situations) is... intriguing to me.
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I decided that Lunacoin was a scam, as are many other cryptocoins. So I am safe.
My coworker, a close friend of mine, also agreed it was a scam. However, he didn't realize that Celsius was wrapped up in it. And therefore, lost $X0,000 to the situation. That's $X0,000 that his children will not be able to use through schooling, or for his next car or retirement.
He placed his trust in Celsisus and got overrun by the Terra/Lunacoin disaster, despite paying attention to it he was unable to predict the trajectory of that situation in time to save his money.
Those who found out the truth faster got their money out in time, before everything collapsed.
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I mean, I guess it hasn't really affected his life or my life. We all can afford a $X0,000 mistake here and there and not really sweat it. But it does change our purchase habits over the next few years to save back up and put our financial house back in order when these kinds of things happen.
Old enough that I'm past the "I must know the truth!" phase of my life. Don't get me wrong, I was there once upon a time. I came to see it as a fool's errand.
> Like, what to do with your money?
Outside of basic things like food? Save it, mostly.
> Whether or not Car X or Car Y is good / bad / shilled / whatever?
I don't buy many things, but I have most certainly tried the whole agonizing over what is good, bad, shilled, whatever – studying a product in intimate detail in the past. I knew what was true, but when I got it home I was still disappointed in my purchase as what I thought was important turned out to not be.
Is it really worth worrying about? If you feel there is value in owning something, you kind of just have to try it and see what happens. Hopefully you made a good choice. If not, hopefully you have a chance to try again.
> Investments is yet another decision for anyone who is trying to provide for themselves and/or their families, so the truth in stuff to invest into (or not invest into) is of high importance.
I invest in things I like doing. I like farming, so that is where a large part of my portfolio is found. And, as it happens, I don't think I could have done better anywhere else – but, really, that was just a lot of luck. I won't likely remain a good investment forever, but at least I'll still have the fun. Where is the fun in crypto?
Its not about "I must know the truth!" as much as its about making important decisions for myself and others in my social circle.
But as I said before, I'm not interested in convincing you. I'm just curious what your background is. Whether you're young and naive or old and jaded doesn't matter too much aside from my curiosity.
This discussion only convinces me of the further need to build communities where truth is important, as I'm sure there's plenty of people like you who I'll need to watch out for.
Some of us have important decisions to be made where the truth matters. If you're not part of it, that's fine. But don't muck up what we're trying to do or our seeking of truth to improve our lives, or the lives of people who are close to us.
> Its not about "I must know the truth!" as much as its about making important decisions for myself and others in my social circle.
It can only about "I must know the truth!".
Important decisions take in all information and use it with the worldview model to determine the best course of action. What is actually true or false doesn't matter to that model. It's able to tease out what is important, usually...
Yes, sometimes the model fails, but that happens even with truthful information fed into it. As was pointed out earlier, the truth about COVID-19 was relayed through every channel imaginable, but was still no match for an erroneous model. Such is life.
In fact, it may even be an evolutionary adaptation for some models to become erroneous. Consider the local maxima problem in machine learning. One way to break out of that is to try something different and see if you can find a new maxima. We may have gotten here as a species because some mutation causing 'random defects' in the mind occurred, and some of those 'defects' proved to be better.
> This discussion only convinces me of the further need to build communities where truth is important
Is a community of one really a community? If you can establish truth, there is no more value in community. That's why we don't sit around talking about 1+1=2 all day long. We could, but why would we? It would be pointless. People only talk about things they are unsure of in an effort to expand that model. People will share what they think they know, but as the mind cannot handle full truths, you are only ever going to hear a simplification that misses important nuance even in the best case. The model has to account for that. As such, it is optimized to function without requiring truths.
It's not a measure of _their_ success we're concerned with. It's a measure of _our_ success if we trust them.
Nobody is perfectly reliable. But some people and orgs are more reliable than others. How you choose to navigate this spectrum affects your life. I think that's all dragontamer is saying. And it seems reasonable.
I'll leave you to apply sophistry to your heart's content, and your evolution will be some impossible-to-anticipate effect of your decisions regarding things you consider to be true or don't care about the truth of.
Twitter has "community notes" now, which is something similar to what you describe. If something contains wrong or is misleading information the community can vote to add extra context to the bottom of the tweet that the author did not write. The note only shows up if people with a diverse set of backgrounds all vote that it is useful/correct. It's a feature that was introduced after the Twitter -> X conversion and it's a pretty good feature in my opinion. I have seen many instances of misinformation on the right being "community noted" where extra context is appended to the bottom of something inflammatory.
We need to develop tools and theory to facilitate that. Wikipedia's online governance model is completely vulnerable to attack to the point that it's almost shaped by attackers. Not a lot of good online models of governance even exist outside of Debian.
It's a hard problem, which is why real-life protocols like Robert's Rules of Order are so large and complicated when their aims seem very simple: to allow a group of people to agree on a course of action.
edit: Community Notes and other (open) algorithmic governance that is designed to withstand certain classes of attack are clearly an advance over simple voting systems. Robert's Rules use overlapping votes within votes within debates of motions, repeals, and amendments. The structure of every RR vote is determined by a mechanical classification of the thing being voted on, including the amount and type of notice that has to be given before the vote, and whether representatives of general membership get to vote, majority or 2/3rds vote/majority-of-membership, etc.
I think we should start from there, and take advantage of the fact that meetings can be distributed, continuous, and concurrent online to simplify them. RR is the way it is because they all met in one place to talk about the same thing at the same time, and didn't have the internet or any of our cool devices.
Twitter probably has to implement campaigns from DoJ, DoD, NSA, or whoever else is owed “special favors”. Distributed editorship would only mess with that.
Maybe we could all work on the "I see a tweet I disagree with and I'm not reflexively responding with a knee-jerk overly emotional response" thing instead.
Mastodon/AP should be the place most state agencies turn to. It's ridiculous they don't "own the pipe" and continue relying on other platforms as a primary method. It gives them everything they need OOB.
Canadian agencies getting shut out by Facebook is the shining proof of this. There should be no reason someone has to make an account with a foreign company just to get fast updates on what is happening locally, that's absurd.
Sadly, many town agencies (my town included) are pretty bad with technology. For example, my town has official website with "calendar" and "news" sections, but it has much less info than Twitter feeds, especially for urgent events like "unexpected street closure". And police department almost never uses that website.
I have no definite knowledge, but I suspect that city hall wants to control what appears in resources they own.. and as a result, other agencies found it easier to make an account on Twitter rather than deal with town's commnication manager.
>> The biggest thing Twitter did that nothing else could match was getting extremely specific or local news quickly.
I think this is under-selling the different items of value Twitter brings. For example, another thing that Twitter did was giving disenfranchised people a voice. Question for the group -- would the BLM movement have gained national following. Would George Floyd, or Central Park Karen ever have been heard of without Twitter?
Growing up, I remember only 2 or 3 incidents that took the national scene. Yet these things happened hundreds of times and were almost wholly ignored until Twitter came along.
I'd conclude it would not -- decades of Mainstream Media, both left and right -- gave only passing coverage to the issue. Growing up in Brooklyn I remember many events like this that would have been huge national conversations to never even get covered by the media of record.
When I first started using Mastodon I felt a bit overwhelmed by angry toots from certain communities. One of my pet peeves is leftists who, just as the John Birch Society saw "communists" everywhere, now see "fascists" everywhere. (For the record I am a leftist, a friend and I were the first people to put Chomsky audio lectures on the web, I've been to Howie Hawkins' house, etc.) It was clear to me that the "explore" tab was toxic because it listed things that got the most boosts and angry content spread like a virus.
At that time I was looking for an open source sentiment analysis model for social media (as opposed to product reviews) and couldn't find one. From a machine learning standpoint it didn't seem difficult to me but I thought I'd be destroyed by the process of collecting 5000 angry toots to train it.
With such a model one could: (1) filter incoming toots so you don't see them, (2) filter outgoing toots so my own anger doesn't escape (I even thought of making one that enforced
but then realized instead of saying "Kier Starmer is a (borderline) fascist" (according to sci fi writer Charlie Stross) you can just load adjectives: "Fascist Kier Starmer promotes fascist policies that his fascist supporters applaud") or (3) put filtering in the network itself to bring down
which would be the most effective. Now (1) and (2) have the advantage of being less political, that is, people are very unlikely to find out you are blocking there but angry people will become aware of (3) and have something new to be angry about.
Over that time though I: (a) discovered that I get really good engagement sharing photos I take, particularly that are tagged #bloomscrolling, (b) I've added a lot of really great people, (c) got very quick to block "anti-fascists" and people who proclaim they are uncomfortable in their own skin or that I should be uncomfortable in mine, and (d) blocked a few keywords and I am enjoying my Mastodon experience a lot more.
If Threads or somebody else wants to make a serious attempt at (3) however, I am all for it.
Another great tool on Mastodon is the "block all from instane" button. Birds of a feather flock together, so blocking the most egregious offenders is a fast-track to keeping your TL clean (in my experience).
That button may as well be called the echo chamber construction button since that is what it will eventually achieve. An open mind for a different view is a good thing, it does not mean you need to make that view your own but it does mean you should be open to the fact that others think and act in different ways from your own.
I doubt it. My feed is still open; new and unknown content will inevitably make it's way into my feed. It's mostly just nice to have the nuclear option for dedicated troll instances or known hate groups. You don't have to block those people if you don't want to, but my feed is much better off without them.
That's your view, which you're entitled to, and you don't have to use the nasty mean button. However, personally, I can live without Nazis and crypto-spam, and will quite happily use the button when the moderators of my instance aren't sufficiently on the ball.
> For the record I am a leftist, a friend and I were the first people to put Chomsky audio lectures on the web, I've been to Howie Hawkins' house, etc.
Sad to see you feel the need to include this disclaimer to be able to voice your opinion without being labelled by those same "leftists" here on HN. Yes, there are plenty of people here who are quick to downvote and throw accusations of -ism/-ist/-phobia your way when you venture outside of their "safe spaces" but... who cares?. This labelling says far more about the people attaching labels to anything which goes against their world view than it does about the persons being labelled. Just let them put their silly stickers and click that downvote button, with your ~50K karma you can spare a few for the good cause of freedom of expression without fear of retaliation.
One thing I like about Hacker News is that there is very little of that BS.
Mastodon loses the right wing trolls (although I hear there are a handful of widely blocked servers) but has the minus that it does have a subculture of people who normalize othering and dehumanizing behavior in each other.
It also has a large "silent majority" of nice folks but the effects of chronological feed + boosting amplifies a loud minority beyond their actual numbers.
Mastodon does not so much "lose the right wing trolls", it is just that some of the biggest instances are run by "left wing authoritarians" who simply do not allow views outside of their own comfort zone [1]. There are likely to be some right wing instances as well but those are shunned by those bigger instances, some of which even block other Mastodon instances which are deemed unclean since they do not have a strict enough blocking policy. Gab and Truth Social are based on Mastodon but they do not federate and searching for "conservative fediverse sites" does not produce anything other than criticism of conservativism on the fediverse [2] so it is unclear whether there is such a thing as a 'conservative fediverse'. What is clear is that if there is something like that around the main Mastodon instances refuse to federate with it and with that they make themselves far less interesting for those who prefer diversity of thought than they could otherwise be.
[1] Diversity of thought is the one diversity which really counts but also the one shunned by those who profess to strive for diversity.
[2] There is a clear need for a politically neutral - not "left" or "centre" or "right" but "unbiased" - search infrastructure
And since the service is going to be run by a rich jerk with his or her own opinions that they think are facts, it's refreshing that the rich jerk in question is extremely transparent about what those opinions are now.
Twitter’s real value was its “global RSS” nature. You could get short, quick updates about local news, published papers, sports events, political happenings, and more.
It made it easy to source info from your followers (or their followers) quickly. Think Ask HN but broader.
Activity on Twitter is down now, mastodon and threads aren’t cutting it. There’s more activity on LinkedIn but it’s quite phoney.
I genuinely feel that Twitter provided me with useful information from people of interest.
Why aren't mastodon and threads cutting it? They provide exactly what you claim you want.
Leads me to believe for a lot of people, the allure of Twitter isn't actually anything intentional, but just the combination of being at the right place at the right time - that feeling you got, the relationships you fostered. Just like if you were on Tumblr during its independent peak.
Lots of people I know have half-migrated to Bluesky or totally moved to Mastodon, so my feed is much emptier than it used to be.
I'm pretty optimistic about the fediverse in the medium term, certainly for many communities. But right now twitter.com is still the default for organizations large and small, and I'm not sure that changes. It's gonna be a mess.
Twitter was doing just fine when it banned nazis and covid disinformation. to call this "a more sanitized and boring experience" is textbook black and white reasoning. moderation is hard, but twitter's new "moderation is the CEO personally bans the accounts he's personally offended by, while people who share child exploitation videos are celebrated and paid cash" [1] is not the way to do it.
go read about the conspiracy theories on that link I sent, I know it's uncomfortable to have to draw a line between "things that were uncertain at one point, people misspoke, the wrong message went out for a period of time" and "completely fabricated conspiracy theories that are wildly made up by malignant actors intended to harm the most people possible", but unfortunately these things have to be done.
Headlines like this make me not read the article, because anyone who actually writes this headline seems to lack the unawareness that his opinion is literally 1 insignificant stupid opinion floating in a sea of 10 billion shitty opinions.
Headlines like this are an immediate benefit to me because it allows authors to filter themselves out.
There are so many better ways to offer takes on things that don't depend on the stupidest worded headlines like "We dont ____", as if my use case is the same as yours.
It's actually mindblowingly painful to me when people would even consider that, I mean it's physically painful to think that someone thinks that. And, obviously it half the time might not mean to be taken literally, and in this case the author lacks insight as to how many people are disgusted by stupid headlines that have this "I decide what's best for you" energy. Yes Cal Newport, certainly you know what is best for the entire world.
Social proof is probably one of the strongest cohesive bonds of civilization. Cal Newport is a fairly well known person in tech. You might not respect him, but there are probably hundreds of people who's opinions you will take as gospel.
I can't think of a single person who's opinion I would take as "gospel." Just sort of vague outlines that 99% doesnt actually apply to the way I think about it. If there are any opinions that hold weight, it would be down to the creative technical aspects about technique of things I haven't 100% mastered yet in all areas (artists better than me explaining tonal value principals, programmers better than me explaining design patterns, etc). Either way, this isn't even the point of what I wrote. I have no problems with opinions.
My point is that headlines written like "We dont need _______" is idiotic, because it's an opinion stating what is best for others while excluding/ignoring all variables which would change that outcome the opinion is based on. How about just writing what it's about? I explain more what I meant in my other comment.
"An Essay In Which I Present Points About The Social Media Service Formerly Known As Twitter, Arguing That Newer Systems Should Not Attempt To Duplicate It Because That Would Reduce Their Value To Society."
So ... someone or some entity should not attempt to start a new Twitter-style because Cal Newport says it will emphasize negativity?
Surely the vast amount of brainpower could go into perhaps modifying the style or the algorithm, or tweet length, or some variable to help? Surely there is an embedded solution, somewhere in there.
That's why I'm saying headlines like this are stupid, there are literally near infinite variables that affect outcomes. This opinion as a statement of "what is best" is literally useless, like what true value does it offer? Do you think companies read Cal Newports blog and are like "gee I guess building a new twitter clone exactly like it is could lead to increased world negativity... better not do it"
I would read this article if it were like "Ways to Reduce Negativity in Twitter-Like Algorithms." Now THAT would be useful, and interesting.
Or even, if he doesn't want to think about solving it, then "Twitter-like platforms lead to increased negativity". Now it's a statement of fact and its up to the reader to use the information usefully, ("Hmm.. maybe I shouldnt build this new platform, or I should change how I look at it") rather than treating the user like a bumbling child.
>Do you think companies read Cal Newports blog and are like "gee I guess building a new twitter clone exactly like it is could lead to increased world negativity... better not do it"
Well, yes, that's his intent: to influence people by presenting his opinion.
Interesting... so given that is true, do you think Cal Newport believes:
1) Twitter-clone emphasizing negativity not solvable in any possible way
2) He has considered every single solution that exists in the entire problem space, even those which might take teams of minds to come up with answers to
> So ... someone or some entity should not attempt to start a new Twitter-style because Cal Newport says it will emphasize negativity?
Yeah, sure, he's all alone in saying that.
> Surely the vast amount of brainpower could go into perhaps modifying the style or the algorithm, or tweet length, or some variable to help? Surely there is an embedded solution, somewhere in there.
"Surely"?!? There is no more reason to be sure of that than of the opposite. On the contrary, all the evidence so far rather strongly supports the opposite. So... "Surely"? Muahahahaa.
> That's why I'm saying headlines like this are stupid, there are literally near infinite variables that affect outcomes.
That's a bit like saying "That's why I'm saying headlines like 'We don't need a new bubonic plague' are stupid, there are literally near infinite variables that affect outcomes". What, you're saying Twitter isn't like the bubonic plague? Like I said, all evidence so far points toward it being so, so why don't you prove that it isn't. That's the only way to prove your claim that the headline is stupid.
> Or even, if he doesn't want to think about solving it, then "Twitter-like platforms lead to increased negativity". Now it's a statement of fact and its up to the reader to use the information usefully
1) Twitter is the quintessential Twitter-like platform.
2) WTF would "a new Twitter" even mean, if not precisely any new "Twitter-like platform"?!?
3) The headline has always been a statement of fact.
Your analogy just escapes all reason. Twitter is an entertainment platform that obviously millions of people find enjoyable, and certainly astronomical amounts of good come out of it to certain individuals. I bet there are many experiences of people getting their name out there, or some insignificant thing no one would notice. You want to tell me someone who's life changed for the better is going to agree with that headline? Not only "that person" but EVERY PERSON on twitter who likes it? Get the fuck out of here.
The bubonic plague killed millions of people.
"We dont need __some tech thing__" is definitely not a statement of fact. There's literally no universe where this is true.
"Twitter when analyzed in X way, appears sentiment trends towards the negative" is much more a statement of fact, but won't be preferred because its not clickbait paternalistic garbage
"Here's why we need to stop making headlines like this"
I said a statement of fact (to my own mind) which may be a fact or an opinion to someone else.
Regardless, never once in my opinion did I say "Heres whats best for you." I simply stated a fact about what I believe to be true, and what looks stupid to me.
I can't decide what is best for everyone else. Perhaps someone likes being spoon fed their decisions, and in this case the headline would be great for them, however that doesn't change my statement.
Also, my statements of facts/opinions could be wrong, and that is still further beside the point. Being wrong about something has nothing to do with me asserting that YOU would benefit from my opinion by adhering to it.
Twitter went downhill as soon as it became socially acceptable to have conversations on it. When it was pure status updates and quick information bursts, it was fine. Basically, bring back the 140 character limit.
EDIT: got a bad source on the old character limit which claimed it was 120
140.. I think 280 struck a good balance between letting you fit a reasonable amount of information in a tweet, and not letting you write so much that the UI needs to hide most of it.
The people demanding a "new twitter" are those who set up weird hierarchies and benefitted from the obscure, hidden "blue checkmark" game - more often than not, their only tweets were lukewarm pro-current thing babble. I don't miss old twitter a bit.
Obvious? Maybe ICE driver guilt, but I have never heard a reason that made sense except for some vague accusations that too much fun is being had and that is somehow offensive.
And yeah he’s made some mistakes which I guess is unforgivable because, well, it goes back to fun being offensive.
Thanks for clarifying. To me it's just never obvious what their real issue is. I suspect someone who succeeds at stuff while daring to question everything and have fun at it is just triggering for a lot of folks.
Exactly. Whilst many here are still screaming about Twitter / X collapsing with yet 220M+ daily active users. Their predictions were quite deranged:
Prediction 1:
November 2022 was meant to be the time when Twitter / X the social network and service was 'predicted' to implode in the coming weeks after the layoffs [0][1] and not be up and running globally.
Reality: In reality, it is still up and running and working today with hundreds of millions of users using it right now.
Prediction 2:
Threads was supposed to "hollow out Twitter in extremely rapid fashion" [2] and one predicted to give it a couple of months for Threads to do just that.
Reality: Well, we have given it two months and Threads is the one that is hollowing itself out in "extremely rapid fashion" and lost 80% of its users after signing up to the service. [3]
Prediction 3:
The outages Twitter / X had would make the majority of users migrating elsewhere and they will stick around on the new service.
Reality:
Anyone who knows about network effects knows that obviously didn't happen and was less effective since even when Twitter / X went down the users would rather wait for it to get back up than to fully migrate off the network.
Conclusion:
So you see at this point we gave it enough time for the Twitter / X predictions by the doomsday folks and and it seems that all of those predictions were alarmist false prophesies by a few extremely angry techies who won't admit they were incorrect.
I think a month and a half is way too early to tell how this plays out. Elon keeps mismanaging Twitter, and threads is missing a lot of features to make it even able to compete with Twitter. It's still early days, it really just depends where the most celebrities go. People want to feel like they have the chance of being seen or heard by someone important.
> Threads was supposed to "hollow out Twitter in extremely rapid fashion"
To be fair, in the hands of someone else, it could well have - they shot themselves in the feet with several easy-to-avoid mistakes (no web version, forcing people you don't follow into your feed, etc.)
(My Threads experience was "ok, nice presentation, who is that? block. block. block. wtf. block. block. block. block.block.blockblockblock. I give up." and I haven't been back since the day I signed up.)
I think it could've had it been just a new feature of Instagram so it would already have DMs, comments, and most importantly hashtags and better discovery plus as easy as onboarding is, not needing onboarding at all would be easier.
I am a fan for Cal Newport's books and podcast. In general I think that the more consumer choices, the better. I agree however that Threads doesn't serve any of my purposes. I tried it for a few days.
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[ 0.16 ms ] story [ 209 ms ] threadThe worst I've ever seen from Twitter is our attempts to have a "global conversation" about nothing. It's like the erratic chatter at the end of a party when we all have to start contemplating our real lives, start begging people for rides or if we're needy, squeezing a little more ego stroking before the sun rises. It's depressing, moody and manipulative and feels dirty and gritty like tired smoke-irritated eyes. It and Threads can both go away and I'd be perfectly happy.
Millions of people use and enjoy X, it's ok if you don't.
It's ok to express negative opinions about why one doesn't use something. Other people benefit from learning from a valid dissenting view
No it doesn't. They're just saying, millions are still using and enjoying Twitter / X and that is fine. If you don't like it, that is also fine and you can still be happy anyway. I don't see a problem with that.
There is no need to misinterpret the comment.
You can still be happy with blocking them and that is also fine.
Ironically, you just did the same thing to his post.
Isn't that how it is still used? At least with a weather bent? That's about all I ever see in my Twitter feed is information about upcoming weather risks, with far more detail than you get from your usual weather forecasts.
It's great and I've been able to learn a lot more about the weather because of it.
For all its problems, Twitter does do a great job at tailoring the algorithmic feed to your (expressed) interests. I just follow/engage with artists, so I rarely see any English text on my feed. The people who see a constant feed of political hot takes have presumably engaged in political arguments on Twitter.
As an aside this was what pissed me off most about the change to require users to log in to see tweets; I'll always use incognito mode to view tweets with topics that I don't want polluting my timeline.
Having someone else make edits in their behalf seems to only make the experience worse, not better.
Why should I contribute to the curation of a for-profit company? Especially if Twitter will simply be sold off to the highest-bidder, such as a rich narcissist with a chip on his shoulder?
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This past year, we've seen the collapse of trust in three community driven websites:
1. Twitter
2. Reddit
3. StackOverflow
It turns out that for-profit companies seem to have good morals when there's plenty of money floating around. But the moment venture capitalism dries up, we get this year. All three making user-hostile and anti-moderator choices.
Curation of communities takes _work_. Work that people have been demotivated to do in various forms. Wikipedia has kept its moderators / editor base motivated... and I think the non-profit status is part of the key here.
Or at very least, the advertising approach that Twitter, Reddit, and kinda-sorta StackOverflow, has is probably unable to make a long-lasting trustful community.
Twitter and Reddit will continue existing of course. But I don't think we're going to have the communities of yesteryear anymore.
It's not about revenue. I'm talking about trust, so that the crowd is willing to curate data for you.
Perhaps Wikipedia has never been successful, just something that has managed to continue to exist?
I'm talking about curation and quality of the editor force. Wikipedia's editors are highly respected by everyone. Reddit... not so much.
Neither. One – or both – of them might be true, but who cares? It is not advantageous to give it much concern. We have evolved to not rely on truths. "Is that a lion rustling those bushes or just the wind? Let me be absolutely certain it is a lion before I run." said no one who successfully passed on their genes ever. Truths don't matter much, and the reality is that we're not capable of processing full truths anyway, having to rely on simplifications that lose a lot of the important nuance.
> Wikipedia's editors are highly respected by everyone. Reddit... not so much.
That's like saying librarians garner more respect than comedians. That might be the case when observed through some particular lens, but they're really not comparable. What would that even mean? And if this is the measure of success we want to use, I am struggling to understand why Wikipedia and Reddit were brought together for comparison.
Truths matter. And the others who survived it are physically weaker (worse breathing) and have seemingly permanently lost their smell.
So yes, truths matter. Those who follow falsehoods will lead themselves (and their kin) into the depths of despair. While cheering and falsely claiming victory because victory/feeling good about their decisions is more important to truths to them.
That's... fine. Darwin's law will deal with them over time. But I'll stay on the side of truth thanks very much.
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I'm also in the business of programming, which is largely in the business of truths. Is X easier than Y? Do people prefer X or Y? Is X a better design than Y? Etc. etc.
You can't fundamentally alter ground truths, no matter how much money you throw into reputation. Eventually, the truth wins out as the money runs out. Seeking truth first leads to being correct over the long term, as the untruthful die out and/or fail in their projects.
Don't lose sight of the truth. There's objective truths that people have been failing to accept very recently.
Editors who care about the objective truth and seek it (however flawed our seeking of the truth is), is going to over the long term, reach the truth faster. Of course, broken clocks are occasionally correct (possibly more correct) than the truthseekers. But I've got more confidence in some communities than others.
I also recognize that truthseekers are _NOT_ as popular as I once thought, and that we have a need to create curated communities where truth-seeking is favored over popularity-machines that Twitter and/or Reddit prefers to generate. (likely due to advertising revenue. Youtube and TikTok seem to be falling into the same trap).
A fantastic example of the truth not mattering. Is a lion or just the wind? What difference does it make? Run either way!
I put no effort into ensuring that it is true that masks are helpful, or if the vaccine would stave off the illness. Simply, the mental model of the world indicated that they posed no real harm in trying, so why not go for it? If it actually helped, great. If I wasted my time, also great! Who cares?
I'm sure all of us have flaws in our mental model of the world that will cause us to do something we shouldn't in some circumstance, but sharing of truths do nothing to correct those flaws. It is not like the truth about COIVD-19 isn't out there, but obviously it didn't help those who suffered.
> I'm also in the business of programming, which is largely in the business of truths.
Funny, I am too and it is exceedingly rare to find anyone who goes beyond gut feeling. Understandably so, as that's how our mind evolved to function. In fact, programmers love to argue about which gut feeling is right.
We literally just had anti-mask protesters and anti-vaccine protesters take over one of the major political parties with major sway over a huge number of people's behavior (local municipalities, as well as large-scale behaviors of our society).
At this point I think you're trolling me if you don't see why this is an important issue of our times.
Despite these idiots injecting themselves with useless ivermectin, catching COVID19 and literally dying, I do care about their lives. Not only because of personal relationships, but also as a society they still play a role in the workforce, as fathers or mothers, or other sociological bonuses to our overall life. It is still a tragedy that they've basically killed themselves due to misinformation.
----------
There are other political issues of the now, and of the future, where the truth will also matter.
We also, at one point, had top doctors letting it be known that cloth masks increase the chance of infection. Not an unreasonable thing to say as the 2015, if I recall correctly, study in hospitals shows that medical professionals wearing cloth masks were at greater risk of infection of disease over wearing no mask due to increased incidents of face touching.
Not unreasonable, but not true, was it? Followup studies around COVID-19 in the general population found very different results. Now imagine if we got wrapped up in being concerned about what is "true". We'd be left thinking cloth masks are detrimental. But as we weren't concerned about what is true, we were willing to keep evaluating the situation.
> if you don't see why this is an important issue of our times.
As opposed to all the other times the Anti-Mask League showed up?
All the bullshit with Ivermectin after RECOVERY trials was just that: bullshit and misinformation.
Come on dude, its not so hard to see the misinformation littering our discussion space. And your avoidance of the _OBVIOUS_ problems to seed your argument is proof that you're in this for internet points rather than truthful discussion.
There's obvious misinformation, and obvious untruths at play here. And people who want to pretend and muddy the waters. And I'm beginning to think you're one of those muddying the waters dishonest discussion people given how you're misleading this conversation.
--------------
There's a set of honest discussion points that are in our culture.
There's a set of dishonest, misinformation, misleading trolls in our culture.
Are you honestly trying to deny this 2nd group of people's existence? That's all I'm trying to point out.
And what if you told me it did? What would change? The answer is nothing. Not getting wrapped up in what is true also means not getting wrapped up in what is false. It cuts both ways.
Honestly, I don't know what these non-sequiturs are trying to serve. They have nothing to do with the discussion taking place. It seems like you just want to go on some weird political rant or to express your emotions in some strange way. A discussion has no place for either of those things.
Trolls are creating misinformation and using it for political gain. That's my point.
Because these trolls see political benefits in misleading people, they'll continue to do so, and continue to grow in power as they mislead large segments of the population.
------------
Truthful discussion is the only thing that can combat it. And *simple truths exist*. Despite your attempts at proving otherwise.
This is important because when we talk about our online discussion spaces, like Reddit, Wikipedia, or Twitter, I'm evaluating them on how easy it is for the misinformation-trolls to win and bully themselves into an advantageous position, and how easy it is for the Truth to be gleaned (or at least, a community of truth-seekers to be developed).
Yes, I understand that is your point. Just as I could make it my point that the sky is blue. But why would we want to make these points? These non-sequiturs add nothing of value.
You know. The point of the discussion?
The entire crux of Twitter and Reddit is about discussions, and IMO, truth-seeking is one of the most important roles discussion plays. How well a webpage, or other system, functions in regards to truth-seeking is a high priority for me.
Like I stated in another post, I only really ever see weather forecasts on Twitter, from people who have allegedly dedicated their lives to meteorology and not just some "pretty weather girl" like you find in more common weather channels. I have found them to be as truthful as forecasting the weather can be, and are open about the limitations of their models. They don't always get it right, but that is entirely understandable. We don't understand the truths of weather. Nor do we need to because not worrying about the truth has allowed us to focus on what is actually important.
So, I don't know, Wikipedia's weather forecasts have been far less reliable in experience. That's not really its thing. I see no reason to trust either because it doesn't matter what the truth is – the weather will come the same either way – but if I had a gun to my back forcing me to choose, Twitter would win. But, realistically, they're not meaningfully compared. They offer a completely different service.
And this has seemingly gotten worse over the past year, at least in my eyes. Now to get boosted, you can just pay $7/month and force feed scamcoins to the masses.
Okay, and if you don't get wrapped up in thinking the message is true, what difference does it make? You could get yourself in trouble if you are concerned about the truth, and then pick the 'wrong truth', indeed. But why would you do that?
> And this has seemingly gotten worse over the past year, at least in my eyes.
They say the Twitter algorithm feeds you what you want to see. This may be a "you" problem. I've never seen anything about crypto on Twitter. Mostly weather-related content and sometimes farmers posting pictures from the field. That's about it.
Are you really so young that you've never had to make a decision in your life? Like, what to do with your money? Which goods to purchase? Whether or not Car X or Car Y is good / bad / shilled / whatever? Is school district X better or school district Y better, or is it just local FUD / fake crap? Investments is yet another decision for anyone who is trying to provide for themselves and/or their families, so the truth in stuff to invest into (or not invest into) is of high importance.
Do you not make decisions that affect you... or people you care about? I'm struggling to figure out how naive you are and what your background is.
If truth doesn't matter to you, so be it. I'm not here to convince you. But I'm still curious who you are and how you can get through life with this attitude.
There's a myriad of such choices I encounter on a daily basis, be it at work, at home, in my family, in the families of my friends and so forth. To see someone so disinterested in such details (and apparently ignorant of the importance of truth in these situations) is... intriguing to me.
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I decided that Lunacoin was a scam, as are many other cryptocoins. So I am safe.
My coworker, a close friend of mine, also agreed it was a scam. However, he didn't realize that Celsius was wrapped up in it. And therefore, lost $X0,000 to the situation. That's $X0,000 that his children will not be able to use through schooling, or for his next car or retirement.
He placed his trust in Celsisus and got overrun by the Terra/Lunacoin disaster, despite paying attention to it he was unable to predict the trajectory of that situation in time to save his money.
Those who found out the truth faster got their money out in time, before everything collapsed.
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I mean, I guess it hasn't really affected his life or my life. We all can afford a $X0,000 mistake here and there and not really sweat it. But it does change our purchase habits over the next few years to save back up and put our financial house back in order when these kinds of things happen.
Old enough that I'm past the "I must know the truth!" phase of my life. Don't get me wrong, I was there once upon a time. I came to see it as a fool's errand.
> Like, what to do with your money?
Outside of basic things like food? Save it, mostly.
> Whether or not Car X or Car Y is good / bad / shilled / whatever?
I don't buy many things, but I have most certainly tried the whole agonizing over what is good, bad, shilled, whatever – studying a product in intimate detail in the past. I knew what was true, but when I got it home I was still disappointed in my purchase as what I thought was important turned out to not be.
Is it really worth worrying about? If you feel there is value in owning something, you kind of just have to try it and see what happens. Hopefully you made a good choice. If not, hopefully you have a chance to try again.
> Investments is yet another decision for anyone who is trying to provide for themselves and/or their families, so the truth in stuff to invest into (or not invest into) is of high importance.
I invest in things I like doing. I like farming, so that is where a large part of my portfolio is found. And, as it happens, I don't think I could have done better anywhere else – but, really, that was just a lot of luck. I won't likely remain a good investment forever, but at least I'll still have the fun. Where is the fun in crypto?
But as I said before, I'm not interested in convincing you. I'm just curious what your background is. Whether you're young and naive or old and jaded doesn't matter too much aside from my curiosity.
This discussion only convinces me of the further need to build communities where truth is important, as I'm sure there's plenty of people like you who I'll need to watch out for.
Some of us have important decisions to be made where the truth matters. If you're not part of it, that's fine. But don't muck up what we're trying to do or our seeking of truth to improve our lives, or the lives of people who are close to us.
It can only about "I must know the truth!".
Important decisions take in all information and use it with the worldview model to determine the best course of action. What is actually true or false doesn't matter to that model. It's able to tease out what is important, usually...
Yes, sometimes the model fails, but that happens even with truthful information fed into it. As was pointed out earlier, the truth about COVID-19 was relayed through every channel imaginable, but was still no match for an erroneous model. Such is life.
In fact, it may even be an evolutionary adaptation for some models to become erroneous. Consider the local maxima problem in machine learning. One way to break out of that is to try something different and see if you can find a new maxima. We may have gotten here as a species because some mutation causing 'random defects' in the mind occurred, and some of those 'defects' proved to be better.
> This discussion only convinces me of the further need to build communities where truth is important
Is a community of one really a community? If you can establish truth, there is no more value in community. That's why we don't sit around talking about 1+1=2 all day long. We could, but why would we? It would be pointless. People only talk about things they are unsure of in an effort to expand that model. People will share what they think they know, but as the mind cannot handle full truths, you are only ever going to hear a simplification that misses important nuance even in the best case. The model has to account for that. As such, it is optimized to function without requiring truths.
All information is useful.
Nobody is perfectly reliable. But some people and orgs are more reliable than others. How you choose to navigate this spectrum affects your life. I think that's all dragontamer is saying. And it seems reasonable.
It does seem reasonable. But is it true? We must ensure it is true before we do anything else!
Just kidding. Whether or not it is true makes no difference.
It's a hard problem, which is why real-life protocols like Robert's Rules of Order are so large and complicated when their aims seem very simple: to allow a group of people to agree on a course of action.
edit: Community Notes and other (open) algorithmic governance that is designed to withstand certain classes of attack are clearly an advance over simple voting systems. Robert's Rules use overlapping votes within votes within debates of motions, repeals, and amendments. The structure of every RR vote is determined by a mechanical classification of the thing being voted on, including the amount and type of notice that has to be given before the vote, and whether representatives of general membership get to vote, majority or 2/3rds vote/majority-of-membership, etc.
I think we should start from there, and take advantage of the fact that meetings can be distributed, continuous, and concurrent online to simplify them. RR is the way it is because they all met in one place to talk about the same thing at the same time, and didn't have the internet or any of our cool devices.
Maybe we could all work on the "I see a tweet I disagree with and I'm not reflexively responding with a knee-jerk overly emotional response" thing instead.
The biggest thing Twitter did that nothing else could match was getting extremely specific or local news quickly.
Is some web service down? Twitter is faster for info than both isup.me and the official status page.
See smoke in the distance? Twitter can tell you all about the fire way before the local news.
Twitter solves real problems for them, but with the last year of changes clearly doesn’t value the requirements that use case needs.
Canadian agencies getting shut out by Facebook is the shining proof of this. There should be no reason someone has to make an account with a foreign company just to get fast updates on what is happening locally, that's absurd.
I have no definite knowledge, but I suspect that city hall wants to control what appears in resources they own.. and as a result, other agencies found it easier to make an account on Twitter rather than deal with town's commnication manager.
At some point in the past, IRC was the place to find this.
I think this is under-selling the different items of value Twitter brings. For example, another thing that Twitter did was giving disenfranchised people a voice. Question for the group -- would the BLM movement have gained national following. Would George Floyd, or Central Park Karen ever have been heard of without Twitter?
Growing up, I remember only 2 or 3 incidents that took the national scene. Yet these things happened hundreds of times and were almost wholly ignored until Twitter came along.
I'd conclude it would not -- decades of Mainstream Media, both left and right -- gave only passing coverage to the issue. Growing up in Brooklyn I remember many events like this that would have been huge national conversations to never even get covered by the media of record.
At that time I was looking for an open source sentiment analysis model for social media (as opposed to product reviews) and couldn't find one. From a machine learning standpoint it didn't seem difficult to me but I thought I'd be destroyed by the process of collecting 5000 angry toots to train it.
With such a model one could: (1) filter incoming toots so you don't see them, (2) filter outgoing toots so my own anger doesn't escape (I even thought of making one that enforced
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime
but then realized instead of saying "Kier Starmer is a (borderline) fascist" (according to sci fi writer Charlie Stross) you can just load adjectives: "Fascist Kier Starmer promotes fascist policies that his fascist supporters applaud") or (3) put filtering in the network itself to bring down
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_coefficient_(epid...
which would be the most effective. Now (1) and (2) have the advantage of being less political, that is, people are very unlikely to find out you are blocking there but angry people will become aware of (3) and have something new to be angry about.
Over that time though I: (a) discovered that I get really good engagement sharing photos I take, particularly that are tagged #bloomscrolling, (b) I've added a lot of really great people, (c) got very quick to block "anti-fascists" and people who proclaim they are uncomfortable in their own skin or that I should be uncomfortable in mine, and (d) blocked a few keywords and I am enjoying my Mastodon experience a lot more.
If Threads or somebody else wants to make a serious attempt at (3) however, I am all for it.
Sad to see you feel the need to include this disclaimer to be able to voice your opinion without being labelled by those same "leftists" here on HN. Yes, there are plenty of people here who are quick to downvote and throw accusations of -ism/-ist/-phobia your way when you venture outside of their "safe spaces" but... who cares?. This labelling says far more about the people attaching labels to anything which goes against their world view than it does about the persons being labelled. Just let them put their silly stickers and click that downvote button, with your ~50K karma you can spare a few for the good cause of freedom of expression without fear of retaliation.
Mastodon loses the right wing trolls (although I hear there are a handful of widely blocked servers) but has the minus that it does have a subculture of people who normalize othering and dehumanizing behavior in each other.
It also has a large "silent majority" of nice folks but the effects of chronological feed + boosting amplifies a loud minority beyond their actual numbers.
[1] Diversity of thought is the one diversity which really counts but also the one shunned by those who profess to strive for diversity.
[2] There is a clear need for a politically neutral - not "left" or "centre" or "right" but "unbiased" - search infrastructure
Keir
And since the service is going to be run by a rich jerk with his or her own opinions that they think are facts, it's refreshing that the rich jerk in question is extremely transparent about what those opinions are now.
It made it easy to source info from your followers (or their followers) quickly. Think Ask HN but broader.
Activity on Twitter is down now, mastodon and threads aren’t cutting it. There’s more activity on LinkedIn but it’s quite phoney.
I genuinely feel that Twitter provided me with useful information from people of interest.
Leads me to believe for a lot of people, the allure of Twitter isn't actually anything intentional, but just the combination of being at the right place at the right time - that feeling you got, the relationships you fostered. Just like if you were on Tumblr during its independent peak.
I'm pretty optimistic about the fediverse in the medium term, certainly for many communities. But right now twitter.com is still the default for organizations large and small, and I'm not sure that changes. It's gonna be a mess.
[1] https://www.mediamatters.org/twitter/elon-musks-twitter-rewa...
https://www.npr.org/2021/05/13/996570855/disinformation-doze...
Censoring "misinformation" is just a thinly veiled justification to censor anything which is uncomfortable for whoever has power.
You can subscribe to the people that talk about the topics that interest you eg nutrition, marketing etc...
And then through those people you learn about other people and website/resources.
Headlines like this are an immediate benefit to me because it allows authors to filter themselves out.
There are so many better ways to offer takes on things that don't depend on the stupidest worded headlines like "We dont ____", as if my use case is the same as yours.
It's actually mindblowingly painful to me when people would even consider that, I mean it's physically painful to think that someone thinks that. And, obviously it half the time might not mean to be taken literally, and in this case the author lacks insight as to how many people are disgusted by stupid headlines that have this "I decide what's best for you" energy. Yes Cal Newport, certainly you know what is best for the entire world.
My point is that headlines written like "We dont need _______" is idiotic, because it's an opinion stating what is best for others while excluding/ignoring all variables which would change that outcome the opinion is based on. How about just writing what it's about? I explain more what I meant in my other comment.
or
"We Don't Need A New Twitter"
and trust that people will supply context.
Surely the vast amount of brainpower could go into perhaps modifying the style or the algorithm, or tweet length, or some variable to help? Surely there is an embedded solution, somewhere in there.
That's why I'm saying headlines like this are stupid, there are literally near infinite variables that affect outcomes. This opinion as a statement of "what is best" is literally useless, like what true value does it offer? Do you think companies read Cal Newports blog and are like "gee I guess building a new twitter clone exactly like it is could lead to increased world negativity... better not do it"
I would read this article if it were like "Ways to Reduce Negativity in Twitter-Like Algorithms." Now THAT would be useful, and interesting.
Or even, if he doesn't want to think about solving it, then "Twitter-like platforms lead to increased negativity". Now it's a statement of fact and its up to the reader to use the information usefully, ("Hmm.. maybe I shouldnt build this new platform, or I should change how I look at it") rather than treating the user like a bumbling child.
Well, yes, that's his intent: to influence people by presenting his opinion.
1) Twitter-clone emphasizing negativity not solvable in any possible way
2) He has considered every single solution that exists in the entire problem space, even those which might take teams of minds to come up with answers to
Yeah, sure, he's all alone in saying that.
> Surely the vast amount of brainpower could go into perhaps modifying the style or the algorithm, or tweet length, or some variable to help? Surely there is an embedded solution, somewhere in there.
"Surely"?!? There is no more reason to be sure of that than of the opposite. On the contrary, all the evidence so far rather strongly supports the opposite. So... "Surely"? Muahahahaa.
> That's why I'm saying headlines like this are stupid, there are literally near infinite variables that affect outcomes.
That's a bit like saying "That's why I'm saying headlines like 'We don't need a new bubonic plague' are stupid, there are literally near infinite variables that affect outcomes". What, you're saying Twitter isn't like the bubonic plague? Like I said, all evidence so far points toward it being so, so why don't you prove that it isn't. That's the only way to prove your claim that the headline is stupid.
> Or even, if he doesn't want to think about solving it, then "Twitter-like platforms lead to increased negativity". Now it's a statement of fact and its up to the reader to use the information usefully
1) Twitter is the quintessential Twitter-like platform.
2) WTF would "a new Twitter" even mean, if not precisely any new "Twitter-like platform"?!?
3) The headline has always been a statement of fact.
The bubonic plague killed millions of people.
"We dont need __some tech thing__" is definitely not a statement of fact. There's literally no universe where this is true.
"Twitter when analyzed in X way, appears sentiment trends towards the negative" is much more a statement of fact, but won't be preferred because its not clickbait paternalistic garbage
It's precisely as much a statement of fact as your proposed "Twitter-like platforms lead to increased negativity", just not quite as mealy-mouthed.
> There's literally no universe where this is true.
Besides this one.
"Here's why we need to stop making headlines like this"
I said a statement of fact (to my own mind) which may be a fact or an opinion to someone else.
Regardless, never once in my opinion did I say "Heres whats best for you." I simply stated a fact about what I believe to be true, and what looks stupid to me.
I can't decide what is best for everyone else. Perhaps someone likes being spoon fed their decisions, and in this case the headline would be great for them, however that doesn't change my statement.
Also, my statements of facts/opinions could be wrong, and that is still further beside the point. Being wrong about something has nothing to do with me asserting that YOU would benefit from my opinion by adhering to it.
EDIT: got a bad source on the old character limit which claimed it was 120
Who's "rocket man"? Isn't that what Trump called Kim Jong-un?
I guess you're right and there's probably a substantial overlap between those who don't like North Korea and those who don't like Musk's Twitter.
And yeah he’s made some mistakes which I guess is unforgivable because, well, it goes back to fun being offensive.
Prediction 1:
November 2022 was meant to be the time when Twitter / X the social network and service was 'predicted' to implode in the coming weeks after the layoffs [0][1] and not be up and running globally.
Reality: In reality, it is still up and running and working today with hundreds of millions of users using it right now.
Prediction 2:
Threads was supposed to "hollow out Twitter in extremely rapid fashion" [2] and one predicted to give it a couple of months for Threads to do just that.
Reality: Well, we have given it two months and Threads is the one that is hollowing itself out in "extremely rapid fashion" and lost 80% of its users after signing up to the service. [3]
Prediction 3:
The outages Twitter / X had would make the majority of users migrating elsewhere and they will stick around on the new service.
Reality:
Anyone who knows about network effects knows that obviously didn't happen and was less effective since even when Twitter / X went down the users would rather wait for it to get back up than to fully migrate off the network.
Conclusion:
So you see at this point we gave it enough time for the Twitter / X predictions by the doomsday folks and and it seems that all of those predictions were alarmist false prophesies by a few extremely angry techies who won't admit they were incorrect.
[0] https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/11/08/1062886/heres-ho...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34617964
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36580669
[3] https://gizmodo.com/threads-has-lost-more-than-80-of-daily-a...
To be fair, in the hands of someone else, it could well have - they shot themselves in the feet with several easy-to-avoid mistakes (no web version, forcing people you don't follow into your feed, etc.)
(My Threads experience was "ok, nice presentation, who is that? block. block. block. wtf. block. block. block. block.block.blockblockblock. I give up." and I haven't been back since the day I signed up.)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37161347
I get a lot of value from Mastodon (https://mastodon.social/@mark_watson) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/mark_l_watson) for very different purposes:
Mastodon is where I post personal and some tech stuff and read a lot of fairly random stuff.
I follow specific tech people on Twitter/X and that is my "morning tech news."