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They are irrelevant when they are cited as in any way representative. "People are clamouring for more of X in Y" and then they show three tweets. When really

They are irrelevant when they are cited as in any way representative. "People are clamouring for more of X in Y" and then they show three tweets. When really maybe nobody cares. Or maybe they care in the other direction entirely.

watwut 8y ago
How you know they are not representative? If that tweet has considerable response, then those who liked it are represented by it. Most of those who retweeted it are too.
- oblio 8y ago
  Representative of what? First of all, there's many, many bots on Twitter. So the replies or the likes can be fake. Secondly, even if they're real, how do you know that they're representative of anything? Twitter is global. US politics, for example, could be followed by Afghan kids. Why would US news care about likes from people half a world away? Thirdly, there's a lot of dumb people around. There's several reasons old media is tightly curated, and not all of them are related to making money or to censorship. A good chunk of it is to not show (just) garbage.
  - watwut 8y ago
    Is your idea is that only polls should be published or what exactly? They are as representative of their own opinions as any other person or activist or whoever quoted. Whether they are dumb is irrelevant. Plenty of senators are dumb too. Just because you don't like somebody does not mean he or she does not exist and that his or her opinions don't influence their votes, buying habits or otherwise have impact on world around them. Huge chunk of "old media" is garbage too, just with little bit better grammar. One thing that curation of old media was bubble too. It made people convinced that "nobody think that" while quite a lot of people actually think that. I don't mean outright censorship here, but the range of arguments and opinions being expressed was much smaller. To some extend, I understand how ideologies can be dangerous and how their promotion in media threatens us. But you don't seem to object on the "this person is promoting ideology that leads to less freedom" grounds. You seem to object on the "these people should not matter" grounds. Lastly, it US cared more about what Afghan kids like, US would be less cool about killing them and about destabilizing whole regions of world.
    - Dylan16807 8y ago
      > One thing that curation of old media was bubble too. It made people convinced that "nobody think that" while quite a lot of people actually think that. I don't mean outright censorship here, but the range of arguments and opinions being expressed was much smaller. You can still get that while citing twitter, but you can also get those 1:1000 opinions that were impossible to find before, and make them look unreasonably common.

watwut 8y ago

How you know they are not representative? If that tweet has considerable response, then those who liked it are represented by it. Most of those who retweeted it are too.

oblio 8y ago
Representative of what? First of all, there's many, many bots on Twitter. So the replies or the likes can be fake. Secondly, even if they're real, how do you know that they're representative of anything? Twitter is global. US politics, for example, could be followed by Afghan kids. Why would US news care about likes from people half a world away? Thirdly, there's a lot of dumb people around. There's several reasons old media is tightly curated, and not all of them are related to making money or to censorship. A good chunk of it is to not show (just) garbage.
- watwut 8y ago
  Is your idea is that only polls should be published or what exactly? They are as representative of their own opinions as any other person or activist or whoever quoted. Whether they are dumb is irrelevant. Plenty of senators are dumb too. Just because you don't like somebody does not mean he or she does not exist and that his or her opinions don't influence their votes, buying habits or otherwise have impact on world around them. Huge chunk of "old media" is garbage too, just with little bit better grammar. One thing that curation of old media was bubble too. It made people convinced that "nobody think that" while quite a lot of people actually think that. I don't mean outright censorship here, but the range of arguments and opinions being expressed was much smaller. To some extend, I understand how ideologies can be dangerous and how their promotion in media threatens us. But you don't seem to object on the "this person is promoting ideology that leads to less freedom" grounds. You seem to object on the "these people should not matter" grounds. Lastly, it US cared more about what Afghan kids like, US would be less cool about killing them and about destabilizing whole regions of world.
  - Dylan16807 8y ago
    > One thing that curation of old media was bubble too. It made people convinced that "nobody think that" while quite a lot of people actually think that. I don't mean outright censorship here, but the range of arguments and opinions being expressed was much smaller. You can still get that while citing twitter, but you can also get those 1:1000 opinions that were impossible to find before, and make them look unreasonably common.