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If enough people feel that it has a bias, and are discontent with it, they are free to start their own platform. They are also free to not moderate their platfo

If enough people feel that it has a bias, and are discontent with it, they are free to start their own platform. They are also free to not moderate their platform, or even moderate it with whatever bias they so choose. This has happened a few times (Voat, Gab) and the utopia of a hands-off content platform has never played out to anything other than a cesspool. Popular platforms remain popular and useful because they have the power to make editorial decisions. I also assert that the world is not locked in to Twitter today, just like we were not locked in to Digg a decade ago. Users will flock elsewhere if they sense a need.

partyboat1586 6y ago
Great and then we will see even more echo chambers. What people need is not another right wing echo chamber and not another left wing one either. Twitter was that neural platform for a while where ideas clashed but now they risk the right splintering off and that is not a good thing for anyone.
- epistasis 6y ago
  Letting false election interference stay up, with a link to facts about actual elections, is pretty much the exact opposite of an "echo chamber." It's easy to parrot oft-repeated slipper slopes arguments, but doing that is actually the echo chamber. Especially when now even bothering to check to see if it applies in certain situations.
  - partyboat1586 6y ago
    People are free to reply to Tweets with sources and facts if they want to. I just don't think that should be Twitter's job. This case is fair enough but I really do believe in the slippery slope argument. It's also clearly not an echo chamber to talk about it here considering the number of downvotes I'm sustaining. I'm also seeing posts get upvoted before they get downvoted so it's controversial... Which is a good thing for discourse!
dvt 6y ago
> If enough people feel that it has a bias, and are discontent with it, they are free to start their own platform. This is, of course, disingenuous. It's like saying, just a monolithic railroad company was about to bulldoze your house in the mid 1800s, "If you're discontent, you can always start your own railroad company." We're dealing with a complex system of interconnected motivations. "Start your own Twitter" is an anti-solution.
- akersten 6y ago
  Unless I'm mistaken, Twitter isn't really in the business of bulldozing houses or otherwise introducing themselves into your daily life without consent - the simile feels forced.
- javagram 6y ago
  Wrong, because no one is bulldozing your house. You’re on a street with a 100 houses and one of them is having a cool party. But the cool kids don’t like you and don’t want you in their house. The other 99 houses (Gab, Mastodon, theDonald.win , bulletin boards, etc.) welcome you in, but you don’t think their owners are cool and don’t want to hang with them. Should the government force the owner of the cool party house to let you hang with the cool kids? Many would say that violates freedom of association.
paulgb 6y ago
> Popular platforms remain popular and useful because they have the power to make editorial decisions. Bingo. I think this is a point that isn't made enough: to the extent platforms like Twitter can continue to exist, it depends on their ability to remove spammers, harassers, and other unwanted participants. Imagine using email in 2020 without a spam filter. Because Twitter isn't an open protocol, they provide both the protocol and the spam filter. To ask them to stop removing any content would be as disruptive to their business as asking GMail to let all emails through.

partyboat1586 6y ago

Great and then we will see even more echo chambers. What people need is not another right wing echo chamber and not another left wing one either. Twitter was that neural platform for a while where ideas clashed but now they risk the right splintering off and that is not a good thing for anyone.

epistasis 6y ago
Letting false election interference stay up, with a link to facts about actual elections, is pretty much the exact opposite of an "echo chamber." It's easy to parrot oft-repeated slipper slopes arguments, but doing that is actually the echo chamber. Especially when now even bothering to check to see if it applies in certain situations.
- partyboat1586 6y ago
  People are free to reply to Tweets with sources and facts if they want to. I just don't think that should be Twitter's job. This case is fair enough but I really do believe in the slippery slope argument. It's also clearly not an echo chamber to talk about it here considering the number of downvotes I'm sustaining. I'm also seeing posts get upvoted before they get downvoted so it's controversial... Which is a good thing for discourse!

dvt 6y ago

> If enough people feel that it has a bias, and are discontent with it, they are free to start their own platform. This is, of course, disingenuous. It's like saying, just a monolithic railroad company was about to bulldoze your house in the mid 1800s, "If you're discontent, you can always start your own railroad company." We're dealing with a complex system of interconnected motivations. "Start your own Twitter" is an anti-solution.

akersten 6y ago
Unless I'm mistaken, Twitter isn't really in the business of bulldozing houses or otherwise introducing themselves into your daily life without consent - the simile feels forced.
javagram 6y ago
Wrong, because no one is bulldozing your house. You’re on a street with a 100 houses and one of them is having a cool party. But the cool kids don’t like you and don’t want you in their house. The other 99 houses (Gab, Mastodon, theDonald.win , bulletin boards, etc.) welcome you in, but you don’t think their owners are cool and don’t want to hang with them. Should the government force the owner of the cool party house to let you hang with the cool kids? Many would say that violates freedom of association.

paulgb 6y ago

> Popular platforms remain popular and useful because they have the power to make editorial decisions. Bingo. I think this is a point that isn't made enough: to the extent platforms like Twitter can continue to exist, it depends on their ability to remove spammers, harassers, and other unwanted participants. Imagine using email in 2020 without a spam filter. Because Twitter isn't an open protocol, they provide both the protocol and the spam filter. To ask them to stop removing any content would be as disruptive to their business as asking GMail to let all emails through.