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I’m no Yann LeCun, but I’ve been wondering whether I should do the same. Twitter seems hyperoptimized for smug, self righteous character assassinations and gro

I’m no Yann LeCun, but I’ve been wondering whether I should do the same. Twitter seems hyperoptimized for smug, self righteous character assassinations and group pile-ons. It’s not a place for nuanced discussion (bizarrely, I actually find Reddit far better for that, though it’s not without its own problems too). Opening the app feels like unleashing thousands of shrieking voices telling you why you’re horrible person. I’m not sure the benefits outweigh the emotional drain.

duxup 6y ago
The medium is the message, and the medium of Twitter is curt and obnoxious. I've tried for a long time to curate some twitter feeds with various types of content but the negative and fingers in ears yelling (even when being 'positive') is endless / unavoidable. I'll follow some folks I really respect and like and then they get in a nasty spat and it is like being at a dinner party where a couple has a fight in front of everyone. Even folks who say stuff that generally I would 'agree' with post it in such a trite and bizarre way that I don't want anything to do with it.
- nilkn 6y ago
  I was told that the trick to making Twitter tolerable is to only follow interesting people in specific fields of interest. I tried that and was immediately disappointed. It makes it obvious that someone who is an expert in one topic can be extremely naive about everything else. This isn’t really a surprise, but I’d rather not have a feed that seems to specialize in showing me all the emotional and largely political rants of people I respected. Twitter feels like one huge, awkward Thanksgiving dinner where everybody is looking to pick a political fight with everybody else over anything at all.
0xy 6y ago
Reddit has huge moderation and organized shill issues. It's not uncommon to open up a contentious thread and see an ocean of [deleted] posts that were heavily upvoted. Some of the power mods are, in my opinion, working for or are owned by advertising/PR/political agencies. Some power mods regularly violate their own subreddit rules to post hyper-partisan news (/r/worldnews for example explicitly forbids internal US news and politics but its mods regularly post such material).
ChrisRR 6y ago
That's completely why I've never used twitter in the first place. It's just a place for people to loudly shout their opinion into the void, no matter how incorrect or misinformed it is. Then no-one can really argue against you because there's no real conversation threads in the UI, and the character limit isn't long enough to post a well thought out response.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

duxup 6y ago

The medium is the message, and the medium of Twitter is curt and obnoxious. I've tried for a long time to curate some twitter feeds with various types of content but the negative and fingers in ears yelling (even when being 'positive') is endless / unavoidable. I'll follow some folks I really respect and like and then they get in a nasty spat and it is like being at a dinner party where a couple has a fight in front of everyone. Even folks who say stuff that generally I would 'agree' with post it in such a trite and bizarre way that I don't want anything to do with it.

nilkn 6y ago
I was told that the trick to making Twitter tolerable is to only follow interesting people in specific fields of interest. I tried that and was immediately disappointed. It makes it obvious that someone who is an expert in one topic can be extremely naive about everything else. This isn’t really a surprise, but I’d rather not have a feed that seems to specialize in showing me all the emotional and largely political rants of people I respected. Twitter feels like one huge, awkward Thanksgiving dinner where everybody is looking to pick a political fight with everybody else over anything at all.

0xy 6y ago

Reddit has huge moderation and organized shill issues. It's not uncommon to open up a contentious thread and see an ocean of [deleted] posts that were heavily upvoted. Some of the power mods are, in my opinion, working for or are owned by advertising/PR/political agencies. Some power mods regularly violate their own subreddit rules to post hyper-partisan news (/r/worldnews for example explicitly forbids internal US news and politics but its mods regularly post such material).

ChrisRR 6y ago

That's completely why I've never used twitter in the first place. It's just a place for people to loudly shout their opinion into the void, no matter how incorrect or misinformed it is. Then no-one can really argue against you because there's no real conversation threads in the UI, and the character limit isn't long enough to post a well thought out response.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]