7 ms·

This is to me seems like a very counterintuitive “feature” — at least on paper. Hiding tweets seems akin to telling the whole world, “here are tweets from my cr

by danso 7y ago

This is to me seems like a very counterintuitive “feature” — at least on paper. Hiding tweets seems akin to telling the whole world, “here are tweets from my critics I dislike so much I’m going out of my way to suppress them”. At least when you report, block, or mute someone, no one else knows that you were bothered (or, as trolls like to say, “triggered”). It’s not the same like being downvoted on HN or reddit, where the vote to suppress is a community/crowd decision. If Taylor Swift hides a tweet, you are inherently curious to know what rando’s tweet managed to hurt or anger Swift (or her social media minder). That said, while Twitter seems to be incredibly slow at introducing new features, the trade off is that what they do push out often ends up being a good thing. The survey evidence cited in the article seems flimsy, but I give Twitter some benefit of the doubt that they wouldn’t push an obviously destructive feature.

hndamien 7y ago
People will use it differently. If you use it to tune out noise, nobody will bother to check in yours. If you use it to quell rational dissent, then it will be the go to place for the juice.
tbabb 7y ago
I bet it'll work. First, I think most of the time the hidden content is going to be very low-quality (and thus not gratifying to explore), rather than "juicy", and users will quickly learn that. Second, it puts a huge damper on the gratification of stirring sh#t and getting a bunch of activity, notifications, and subs as a reward. Instead, when you stir the pot, you find yourself ushered to a closet by yourself. It's not locked, but you're definitely not the life of the party anymore. The result is a social force– an adjustment to incentives— that keeps conversations on-topic and civil. Really, I think it's missing the point to frame it as a tool for silencing critics with dissenting opinions, instead of a tool for silencing people who want to call you an ${inflammatory_statement} in your thread about a cake you baked today. As I understand it, as your follower count goes up on Twitter, the latter problem gets almost untenable to handle because the strategy of coat-tailing high visibility accounts by sh#t-stirring in their threads is currently so unambiguously effective. Time will tell what effect this has, but I am hopeful that it will have a large positive impact. (I think the problem demands action no less decisive and significant than this).
- akersten 7y ago
  > The result is a social force– an adjustment to incentives— that keeps conversations on-topic and civil. Really, I think it's missing the point to frame it as a tool for silencing critics with dissenting opinions, instead of a tool for silencing people who want to call you an ${inflammatory_statement} in your thread about a cake you baked today. If that's really what it is, let's disable it for accounts representing government entities and elected officials. Seem like a good compromise?
  - tbabb 7y ago
    There's legal precedent that public figures blocking constituents on social media amounts to a first amendment violation, so that idea may actually hold water. Naturally that only applies for government officials; the first amendment doesn't (and shouldn't) prohibit private entities from curating content. Although bad-faith dialogue disruption does happen with political and government officials too, and can be a problem (including potentially a free-speech problem, for those who are drowned out) for different reasons.
    - markdown 7y ago
      > There's legal precedent that public figures blocking constituents on social media amounts to a first amendment violation That's US-only.
    - crankylinuxuser 7y ago
      There's also the 'Snowden Problem' which is contractors that act on behalf of the feds don't have the same requirements and protections as the feds. And around 95% (my assessment) of 'federal employees' are contractors.
- joncrane 7y ago
  Do you think it can be used as some sort of metric? Like ratio of followers:blocked replies? Or the number of accounts which block a person's replies?
oxguy3 7y ago
I think that this is kind of a good thing. If you abuse the "hide tweets" feature to block people giving fair criticism, you'll probably get called out on it. But if you use it only to hide true garbage replies, then no one will care. The fact that other people can see what you've hidden adds a sort of accountability to the system, which to me seems like potentially a good thing. It seems like a good compromise between entirely open discussion (where people can troll without consequence) and a Facebook-like system (where people can silence all dissent on their page). But who knows -- we'll have to see how it actually works in practice.
- esyir 7y ago
  Wouldn't you just hide the criticism too though. Considering the worry around filter bubbles, elitism this be one of the strongest ones of all?
- danso 7y ago
  That's a good point. I'm only thinking in terms of Twitter celebrities (both the real-life and only-on-Twitter variety). But for more average users who regularly tweet and discuss controversial (or otherwise troll-attracting) topics, and get a moderate number of good and trash replies, this feature would likely be a good quality-of-life improvement for their followers.
- wruza 7y ago
  Hide truly garbage replies first and no one will scroll past them. SMM will generate lots of garbage to themselves to bury real damage under kilometers of junk. “Sorry for that, we recently managed an attack by unfair competitors.”
  - ozzmotik 7y ago
    well that's interesting, I haven't ever really seen SWIM used in a context outside of generally drug related forums and discussion
ggreer 7y ago
> That said, while Twitter seems to be incredibly slow at introducing new features, the trade off is that what they do push out often ends up being a good thing. I find most new Twitter features to be worse than useless: • "Like" was turned into "algorithmic retweet". Now I can't like a tweet without some percentage of my followers seeing it. This is also a problem when I follow others. I can disable seeing their retweets but I can't disable seeing their likes. I've had several people tell me that they unfollowed me because of tweets I liked. I've done the same to others. • My timeline now shows tweets from people I don't follow. Above the tweet is something like, "Tim Urban and 8 others follow...", and then there will be a tweet by someone who I really don't want to follow (such as Ben Shapiro). There seems to be no way to disable this feature. • Quote retweet is a great way to encourage flamewars. Long ago, people could not retweet with a message. That meant that people were less likely to retweet something they found inflammatory because their followers might think they agreed with it. Quote retweet means they can preface it with, "Look at what this terrible person said." That's a great way to encourage the Toxoplasma of Rage[1]. Overall, the effect of these features has been to reduce my Twitter usage. Now I mostly go there for a couple of group DMs. 1. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage...
- joegahona 7y ago
  I hate those first two a lot. It has definitely caused my Twitter usage to decrease. What metric could Twitter possibly be optimizing for, and why not at least give people the opportunity to disable them?
- jrockway 7y ago
  > "Like" was turned into "algorithmic retweet". Now I can't like a tweet without some percentage of my followers seeing it. This is also a problem when I follow others. I can disable seeing their retweets but I can't disable seeing their likes. I've had several people tell me that they unfollowed me because of tweets I liked. I've done the same to others. G+ had this too, and I also got threats of being unfollowed if I didn't stop liking things. (I could turn it off in my settings, though, but I liked to use reshares to add comments and +1 to reshare without comment.) Ultimately what the social networks never delivered on were the true concept of areas of interest. You should be able to follow someone's interest in a certain subject, and then like things in that context. That way if someone is following you for your programming content, they don't have to read the anime reviews that you like, or whatever. It never happened. I think social media is a dead thing now. You can use it to snipe at political figures and promote products for money. That's about it.
donohoe 7y ago
Yes, I say that happen. An account reposted a tweet as their own and then hid all the Replies flagging it as stolen content.
seapunk 7y ago
> At least when you report, block, or mute someone, no one else knows that you were bothered (or, as trolls like to say, “triggered”). That’s not really anonymous. For example when someone reports a tweet, Twitter also sends a message to the concerned person to let them know someone reported them, even if they didn’t take any action. In case of cyberbullying, the abusers can use the Twitter report as a tool to add more drama and pour oil onto the fire.

by danso 7y ago

hndamien 7y ago

People will use it differently. If you use it to tune out noise, nobody will bother to check in yours. If you use it to quell rational dissent, then it will be the go to place for the juice.

tbabb 7y ago

I bet it'll work. First, I think most of the time the hidden content is going to be very low-quality (and thus not gratifying to explore), rather than "juicy", and users will quickly learn that. Second, it puts a huge damper on the gratification of stirring sh#t and getting a bunch of activity, notifications, and subs as a reward. Instead, when you stir the pot, you find yourself ushered to a closet by yourself. It's not locked, but you're definitely not the life of the party anymore. The result is a social force– an adjustment to incentives— that keeps conversations on-topic and civil. Really, I think it's missing the point to frame it as a tool for silencing critics with dissenting opinions, instead of a tool for silencing people who want to call you an ${inflammatory_statement} in your thread about a cake you baked today. As I understand it, as your follower count goes up on Twitter, the latter problem gets almost untenable to handle because the strategy of coat-tailing high visibility accounts by sh#t-stirring in their threads is currently so unambiguously effective. Time will tell what effect this has, but I am hopeful that it will have a large positive impact. (I think the problem demands action no less decisive and significant than this).

akersten 7y ago
> The result is a social force– an adjustment to incentives— that keeps conversations on-topic and civil. Really, I think it's missing the point to frame it as a tool for silencing critics with dissenting opinions, instead of a tool for silencing people who want to call you an ${inflammatory_statement} in your thread about a cake you baked today. If that's really what it is, let's disable it for accounts representing government entities and elected officials. Seem like a good compromise?
- tbabb 7y ago
  There's legal precedent that public figures blocking constituents on social media amounts to a first amendment violation, so that idea may actually hold water. Naturally that only applies for government officials; the first amendment doesn't (and shouldn't) prohibit private entities from curating content. Although bad-faith dialogue disruption does happen with political and government officials too, and can be a problem (including potentially a free-speech problem, for those who are drowned out) for different reasons.
  - markdown 7y ago
    > There's legal precedent that public figures blocking constituents on social media amounts to a first amendment violation That's US-only.
  - crankylinuxuser 7y ago
    There's also the 'Snowden Problem' which is contractors that act on behalf of the feds don't have the same requirements and protections as the feds. And around 95% (my assessment) of 'federal employees' are contractors.
joncrane 7y ago
Do you think it can be used as some sort of metric? Like ratio of followers:blocked replies? Or the number of accounts which block a person's replies?

oxguy3 7y ago

I think that this is kind of a good thing. If you abuse the "hide tweets" feature to block people giving fair criticism, you'll probably get called out on it. But if you use it only to hide true garbage replies, then no one will care. The fact that other people can see what you've hidden adds a sort of accountability to the system, which to me seems like potentially a good thing. It seems like a good compromise between entirely open discussion (where people can troll without consequence) and a Facebook-like system (where people can silence all dissent on their page). But who knows -- we'll have to see how it actually works in practice.

esyir 7y ago
Wouldn't you just hide the criticism too though. Considering the worry around filter bubbles, elitism this be one of the strongest ones of all?
danso 7y ago
That's a good point. I'm only thinking in terms of Twitter celebrities (both the real-life and only-on-Twitter variety). But for more average users who regularly tweet and discuss controversial (or otherwise troll-attracting) topics, and get a moderate number of good and trash replies, this feature would likely be a good quality-of-life improvement for their followers.
wruza 7y ago
Hide truly garbage replies first and no one will scroll past them. SMM will generate lots of garbage to themselves to bury real damage under kilometers of junk. “Sorry for that, we recently managed an attack by unfair competitors.”
- ozzmotik 7y ago
  well that's interesting, I haven't ever really seen SWIM used in a context outside of generally drug related forums and discussion

ggreer 7y ago

> That said, while Twitter seems to be incredibly slow at introducing new features, the trade off is that what they do push out often ends up being a good thing. I find most new Twitter features to be worse than useless: • "Like" was turned into "algorithmic retweet". Now I can't like a tweet without some percentage of my followers seeing it. This is also a problem when I follow others. I can disable seeing their retweets but I can't disable seeing their likes. I've had several people tell me that they unfollowed me because of tweets I liked. I've done the same to others. • My timeline now shows tweets from people I don't follow. Above the tweet is something like, "Tim Urban and 8 others follow...", and then there will be a tweet by someone who I really don't want to follow (such as Ben Shapiro). There seems to be no way to disable this feature. • Quote retweet is a great way to encourage flamewars. Long ago, people could not retweet with a message. That meant that people were less likely to retweet something they found inflammatory because their followers might think they agreed with it. Quote retweet means they can preface it with, "Look at what this terrible person said." That's a great way to encourage the Toxoplasma of Rage[1]. Overall, the effect of these features has been to reduce my Twitter usage. Now I mostly go there for a couple of group DMs. 1. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage...

joegahona 7y ago
I hate those first two a lot. It has definitely caused my Twitter usage to decrease. What metric could Twitter possibly be optimizing for, and why not at least give people the opportunity to disable them?
jrockway 7y ago
> "Like" was turned into "algorithmic retweet". Now I can't like a tweet without some percentage of my followers seeing it. This is also a problem when I follow others. I can disable seeing their retweets but I can't disable seeing their likes. I've had several people tell me that they unfollowed me because of tweets I liked. I've done the same to others. G+ had this too, and I also got threats of being unfollowed if I didn't stop liking things. (I could turn it off in my settings, though, but I liked to use reshares to add comments and +1 to reshare without comment.) Ultimately what the social networks never delivered on were the true concept of areas of interest. You should be able to follow someone's interest in a certain subject, and then like things in that context. That way if someone is following you for your programming content, they don't have to read the anime reviews that you like, or whatever. It never happened. I think social media is a dead thing now. You can use it to snipe at political figures and promote products for money. That's about it.

donohoe 7y ago

Yes, I say that happen. An account reposted a tweet as their own and then hid all the Replies flagging it as stolen content.

seapunk 7y ago

> At least when you report, block, or mute someone, no one else knows that you were bothered (or, as trolls like to say, “triggered”). That’s not really anonymous. For example when someone reports a tweet, Twitter also sends a message to the concerned person to let them know someone reported them, even if they didn’t take any action. In case of cyberbullying, the abusers can use the Twitter report as a tool to add more drama and pour oil onto the fire.