3 ms·
Stop treating Twitter as news. It's trash, bots, and trashy bots all the way down.
by racnid 6y ago
Stop treating Twitter as news. It's trash, bots, and trashy bots all the way down.
- nathcd 6y agoI live in Minneapolis, and I'm not a Twitter user, but I've found that following news reporters on Twitter that are on-site has been the best way to get reliable information quickly during the protests. (I use nitter.net to follow them.) I don't even like Twitter, but I can say unequivocally that it's not "trash, bots, and trashy bots all the way down". It's been extremely valuable to me this week.
- dependenttypes 6y agoTwitter is trash even without the bots (which can easily be distinguished).
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y agoWith the recent protests it's been difficult to find local news coverage. But I found tweets, I found livestreams, but I couldn't find any reporters covering some of the most impactful demonstrations in my city in decades. In that moment, Twitter was critical. There is a lot of bots and trash, but it has it moments where it is a wonderful tool. This is one of them. Show me a believable bot that's going to fake a livestream of what's actually happening at the scene. There's far too much contextual information to fake it. I could identify the streets protestors walked down, the landmarks, the actions taken, the way the phone was temporarily thrown on the ground after a confrontation. Far too much nuance to fake all of that. Faking a <500px low quality everything-is-burning but it's actually street lights picture isn't particularly groundbreaking when it comes to doctored images.
- aianus 6y agoThey don’t have to fake it, they can just film (or filter through) 500 scenes and only retweet the ones that fit their narrative while discarding the rest.
- batty_alex 6y agoI feel like the irony of your comment might be lost on you