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I had to make a comment because I disagree so strongly with this sentiment. I am biased of course because I do not like Twitter in the first place, but I genuin

by fruffy 7y ago

I had to make a comment because I disagree so strongly with this sentiment. I am biased of course because I do not like Twitter in the first place, but I genuinely believe Twitter has made this crisis worse than it is. Twitter naturally "outperforms" all other agencies because it thrives on disaster and outrage porn. Of course you will encounter all kind of alarm bells because that is what gets retweeted. Constantly and year-round. A broken clock may be right twice a day. >It continues to be a much better source of information than the vast majority of traditional media (and quite a bit better than WashPo IMO, lost a bit of respect for Cal on that one, still respect him a lot though) I passionately disagree, Twitter is not a better source information. It is merely a firehose of information, which is largely low-grade, easily digestible news that is often incorrect or misrepresented. None of it is vital nor useful. This has nothing to do with following smartly it is about how the website is built. Even if you follow smartly, at best you get an unbiased news aggregator where you might as well go straight to the source. Twitter is instant gratification for news addicts. Everyone wants to be the town herald that gets there first. Sources on Twitter are also biased, even more so. I rather trust processed and digested news than person X that said Y and shows some shaky video of Z. Best recent example of the disastrous consequences are the comments made by a German official in the Berlin senate (hardly an important position) who went on Twitter to complain about the US holding back masks. That turned out to be incorrect but spread like wildfire and caused an international incident. The "slow" news actually investigated and called him out on it but by then the damage had been done.

randomsearch 7y ago
Absolutely correct, thank you. The only people on twitter who know what they’re talking about are the subset of scientific experts who happen to have a twitter account. But their papers and public press conferences are more informative than tweeting over the noise of twitter. A really great example is the current hysteria over the “mask conspiracy theory”. A few minutes reading the WHO’s advice months ago told me more than everything people have posted since. Still, people post accusations at the WHO, apparently not even bothering to read their position. People don’t seem to like experts, and twitter is an exaggeration of all that is irrational amongst people.
pm90 7y ago
> This has nothing to do with following smartly it is about how the website is built. Even if you follow smartly, at best you get an unbiased news aggregator where you might as well go straight to the source. Strongly disagree. From the consumer side, most non-technical people don't know how to set up "feeds" or subscribe to the topics they are interested in. Twitter allows you to do so, to pick the people that you're interested in following, and see what their thoughts are and what they want to share. And from the publisher side, twitter has allowed various Health Care Workers to quickly get online and share what is really going on in various hospitals throughout the US. This would not have been possible with a platform that was harder to use.

by fruffy 7y ago

randomsearch 7y ago

Absolutely correct, thank you. The only people on twitter who know what they’re talking about are the subset of scientific experts who happen to have a twitter account. But their papers and public press conferences are more informative than tweeting over the noise of twitter. A really great example is the current hysteria over the “mask conspiracy theory”. A few minutes reading the WHO’s advice months ago told me more than everything people have posted since. Still, people post accusations at the WHO, apparently not even bothering to read their position. People don’t seem to like experts, and twitter is an exaggeration of all that is irrational amongst people.

pm90 7y ago

> This has nothing to do with following smartly it is about how the website is built. Even if you follow smartly, at best you get an unbiased news aggregator where you might as well go straight to the source. Strongly disagree. From the consumer side, most non-technical people don't know how to set up "feeds" or subscribe to the topics they are interested in. Twitter allows you to do so, to pick the people that you're interested in following, and see what their thoughts are and what they want to share. And from the publisher side, twitter has allowed various Health Care Workers to quickly get online and share what is really going on in various hospitals throughout the US. This would not have been possible with a platform that was harder to use.