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I think this work is great and interesting, and I respect it. One of the things I feel like it lacks is a discussion of the broader context: we all sort of susp

I think this work is great and interesting, and I respect it. One of the things I feel like it lacks is a discussion of the broader context: we all sort of suspect that one of the reasons Twitter does not generally allow for de-escalation (like FB not censoring misleading news articles) is that such escalation is in fact part of their revenue stream (escalation=more engagement), so while I think ideas like this would be great if Twitter decided to incorporate it, the issue of course is that Twitter wouldn't want to as they actually love the cancel culture mill, it generates engagement. I genuinely however like the ability to admit guilt such that replies are disabled because as the author notes, it explicitly ends all engagement. Any following engagement would require more work (subtweeting, screenshotting) but actively put a damp on the first derivative. But that said, reducing engagement is in fact not in Twitter's interest, as I said, so I don't see them doing it without some outside pressure.

dgfitz 6y ago
The earth is still flat, the moon landing never happened, Darwin denied evolution. What I mean is, when a thing is said, a recant usually doesn’t matter. Even if the recant is from a subject matter expert. (Not debating truths of the above examples, they’re just examples)
secondcoming 6y ago
If there's anyone out there who wants to earn money from advertising there are two words you need to be aware of: "BRAND SAFETY" No well known advertiser wants their brand associated with something unpopular or toxic. This is why YouTube is demonetising any video that mentions Covid-19. YouTube themselves technically probably don't care, but brand safety conscious advertisers certainly do, and so YouTube must too. They've realised that Twitter and FB, and others, are currently toxic platforms. The discussion threads can be awful, driven by fascists on both the far-left and far-right of the political debate. They no longer want to buy this advertising space, it's too much of a reputational risk (I will say that advertisers outsource the buying of advertising space to Ad agencies who may not be as savvy since they're under pressure to spend allotted advertising budgets). Hence the news about big brands pulling budgets from social media. Another issue that I've never seen discussed is that if Twitter (and other social media platforms) relies completely on advertising revenue, it can be forced to only allow content that advertisers approve of. In other words, advertisers can in theory control political debate. Social media platforms then ban or remove content that's undesirable for advertisers because they can't monetise it.
- joshspankit 6y ago
  > if... it can be forced to allow only content that advertisers approve of. Your comment seems to state explicitly that not only can they be forced to, but they actively are, and already have been for a while. However, this fits with my intuition (especially in the now-advertiser-driven “news” space), so I may be jumping to conclusions.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- analyst74 6y ago
  > it can be forced to only allow content that advertisers approve of This was already the case before social media, mainstream media has always been controlled by the powerful. By "the powerful", I don't mean a secret cabal of white men deciding what happens, but that only people with enough resources, right connections can have an influence over what gets published. This is a pretty small group and not representative of the general public. Today's backlashes against social media platforms is just the existing elites trying to take back their control. I think they're going to succeed, and we'll go back to a higher barrier of entry in terms of influencing public opinions, which can be both a good and bad thing.
  - nl 6y ago
    > Today's backlashes against social media platforms is just the existing elites trying to take back their control. That's not really the case, as can been seen by the hate given to both FB and Twitter on HN.
    - austhrow743 6y ago
      HN is largely populated with the 1%.
      - nl 6y ago
        Perhaps, in the financial sense. But that's very different to the people who are typically refereed to as "the elites". That typically includes - for example - journalists - who aren't well paid at all.
ssalazar 6y ago
"Engagement" is the "paper clip maximizer"[1] of the modern software industry, or more generally an example of "instrumental convergence." Optimizing engagement without regard for negative externalities is a catastrophic ethical failure of the major players in the software industry, and we are finally seeing a backlash both from mainstream advertisers and widespread public outcry. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paperclip_maximizer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paper...
- andrepd 6y ago
  Why should a for-profit enterprise have any kind of ethical consideration at all? It seems that's your mistake.
  - tomrod 6y ago
    Inadvertently, this is a great argument for government as the public needs a coercive force able to require companies to internalize costs.
    - tenuousemphasis 6y ago
      Companies only exist as legal fictions granted privileges by governments.
      - tomrod 6y ago
        Patently untrue. The organization known as corporation, sort of. All of this is a red herring related to the point of cost internalization.
  - rmrfstar 6y ago
    Because we live in a society with social norms and a moral code. If anything, we should expect more morality from institutions that avail themselves of limited liability legal forms. This "corporations should be cynical sociopaths" idea is even newer than the limited liability corporate form, which is itself a modern invention. Before the current era of hyper-institutionalization and hyper-legalism there was a concept called "natural law". It basically meant morality, as understood at the time.
npunt 6y ago
I don't think twitter is not allowing de-escalation as much as they haven't figured out how to do it. The product itself hasn't changed much in a long time, and there are likely many internal reasons for that that have little to do with revenue. Meanwhile the FB misleading articles example is a much more nuanced problem that has less to do with engagement than simply being a political hot potato and a really challenging question of top-down authority (as well as a straight up massive cost center). While I agree that in the short run, drama = engagement = revenue, businesses have to consider both short and long term risk. One of the biggest long term brand risks to Twitter is how toxic discourse can be. Twitter's mission is to "give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly without barriers", in other words to be a kind of global commons where everyone may participate. To preserve that position means making sure discourse is constructive, because if it is not, that represents a "barrier" that will cause people to churn and revenue to fall. I'm glad you bring up the high friction paths of subtweeting & screenshotting. These things are still going to happen, but in design it's about how easy things are to do. We have to make the constructive things easy. Another way to put it is: if Twitter were a friendlier place, wouldn't that increase users and engagement? If you're not completely sure this would be false, then it's worth experimenting.
- acituan 6y ago
  > I don't think twitter is not allowing de-escalation as much as they haven't figured out how to do it. I think what they are doing is perfectly in line with their mission statement. "Give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly without barriers" lacks functional constraints such as "let the better ideas propagate more", "put some barriers around good judgement, rationality, relevance, factuality" etc. If a human mind operated through twitter algorithms, it would be equivalent to some sort of psychosis, every voice in one's head valued equally without due discrimination on reality checks, uncontrollable, irrational, amplifying irrelevant viewpoints, unable to conform to reality. Unsurprisingly at times our collective behavior fueled by twitter (and any other social media that operate through such filtering/amplification functions) resembles mass psychosis.
- noobermin 6y ago
  I should temper my above comment (my own sort of mea culpea :) ). You're right, given that I don't work for Twitter, I don't know whether there is an explicit desire not to reduce toxicity due to revenue concerns. I will say whether I am right or not, there at the very least does exist the incentive especially if they ignore the long term issues as you mention. Some evidence that at the very least they don't have an incentive to detoxify is that twitter has been toxic for years, almost a decade at this point. One of the most often cited essays on twitter toxicity from a leftist perspective was written in 2013[0] but the opening discussion sounds like it concern today. All in all, I think you're quite correct about how the toxicity is a long term risk, but perhaps people there need to realize how much of a threat it is for the platform. Finally, I think your article was really great, as I said before. I came with a negative perspective but you convinced me otherwise. I still believe that certain cultural and mindset issues need to be addressed that might be beyond design but I definitely feel you're right that the UX design could help reduce toxicity. [0] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/exiting-vampire-castle/ https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/exiting-vam...
randomsearch 6y ago
“Enragement is engagement”, in other words.
blablabla123 6y ago
Probably one should also see this less one-sided, de-escalation is not the answer to everything and escalation is not bad in every single case. Without ever escalating anything, everything that is hard to change is likely to stay the same. Too much escalation is of course a toxic thing but in moderation it's actually very useful and it wouldn't be so entangled in everyday lives if there was no use. That said, admitting guilt does not work when the other person is actually hostile since it can be used against oneself. (Just imagine what would happen if the current protest movement in the US would apologize to Donald Trump...) Apart from that, there are still online forums which work very well and don't turn toxic despite occasional rants. Twitter should take that as an example...

dgfitz 6y ago

The earth is still flat, the moon landing never happened, Darwin denied evolution. What I mean is, when a thing is said, a recant usually doesn’t matter. Even if the recant is from a subject matter expert. (Not debating truths of the above examples, they’re just examples)

secondcoming 6y ago

If there's anyone out there who wants to earn money from advertising there are two words you need to be aware of: "BRAND SAFETY" No well known advertiser wants their brand associated with something unpopular or toxic. This is why YouTube is demonetising any video that mentions Covid-19. YouTube themselves technically probably don't care, but brand safety conscious advertisers certainly do, and so YouTube must too. They've realised that Twitter and FB, and others, are currently toxic platforms. The discussion threads can be awful, driven by fascists on both the far-left and far-right of the political debate. They no longer want to buy this advertising space, it's too much of a reputational risk (I will say that advertisers outsource the buying of advertising space to Ad agencies who may not be as savvy since they're under pressure to spend allotted advertising budgets). Hence the news about big brands pulling budgets from social media. Another issue that I've never seen discussed is that if Twitter (and other social media platforms) relies completely on advertising revenue, it can be forced to only allow content that advertisers approve of. In other words, advertisers can in theory control political debate. Social media platforms then ban or remove content that's undesirable for advertisers because they can't monetise it.

joshspankit 6y ago
> if... it can be forced to allow only content that advertisers approve of. Your comment seems to state explicitly that not only can they be forced to, but they actively are, and already have been for a while. However, this fits with my intuition (especially in the now-advertiser-driven “news” space), so I may be jumping to conclusions.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
analyst74 6y ago
> it can be forced to only allow content that advertisers approve of This was already the case before social media, mainstream media has always been controlled by the powerful. By "the powerful", I don't mean a secret cabal of white men deciding what happens, but that only people with enough resources, right connections can have an influence over what gets published. This is a pretty small group and not representative of the general public. Today's backlashes against social media platforms is just the existing elites trying to take back their control. I think they're going to succeed, and we'll go back to a higher barrier of entry in terms of influencing public opinions, which can be both a good and bad thing.
- nl 6y ago
  > Today's backlashes against social media platforms is just the existing elites trying to take back their control. That's not really the case, as can been seen by the hate given to both FB and Twitter on HN.
  - austhrow743 6y ago
    HN is largely populated with the 1%.
    - nl 6y ago
      Perhaps, in the financial sense. But that's very different to the people who are typically refereed to as "the elites". That typically includes - for example - journalists - who aren't well paid at all.

ssalazar 6y ago

"Engagement" is the "paper clip maximizer"[1] of the modern software industry, or more generally an example of "instrumental convergence." Optimizing engagement without regard for negative externalities is a catastrophic ethical failure of the major players in the software industry, and we are finally seeing a backlash both from mainstream advertisers and widespread public outcry. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paperclip_maximizer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paper...

andrepd 6y ago
Why should a for-profit enterprise have any kind of ethical consideration at all? It seems that's your mistake.
- tomrod 6y ago
  Inadvertently, this is a great argument for government as the public needs a coercive force able to require companies to internalize costs.
  - tenuousemphasis 6y ago
    Companies only exist as legal fictions granted privileges by governments.
    - tomrod 6y ago
      Patently untrue. The organization known as corporation, sort of. All of this is a red herring related to the point of cost internalization.
- rmrfstar 6y ago
  Because we live in a society with social norms and a moral code. If anything, we should expect more morality from institutions that avail themselves of limited liability legal forms. This "corporations should be cynical sociopaths" idea is even newer than the limited liability corporate form, which is itself a modern invention. Before the current era of hyper-institutionalization and hyper-legalism there was a concept called "natural law". It basically meant morality, as understood at the time.

npunt 6y ago

I don't think twitter is not allowing de-escalation as much as they haven't figured out how to do it. The product itself hasn't changed much in a long time, and there are likely many internal reasons for that that have little to do with revenue. Meanwhile the FB misleading articles example is a much more nuanced problem that has less to do with engagement than simply being a political hot potato and a really challenging question of top-down authority (as well as a straight up massive cost center). While I agree that in the short run, drama = engagement = revenue, businesses have to consider both short and long term risk. One of the biggest long term brand risks to Twitter is how toxic discourse can be. Twitter's mission is to "give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly without barriers", in other words to be a kind of global commons where everyone may participate. To preserve that position means making sure discourse is constructive, because if it is not, that represents a "barrier" that will cause people to churn and revenue to fall. I'm glad you bring up the high friction paths of subtweeting & screenshotting. These things are still going to happen, but in design it's about how easy things are to do. We have to make the constructive things easy. Another way to put it is: if Twitter were a friendlier place, wouldn't that increase users and engagement? If you're not completely sure this would be false, then it's worth experimenting.

acituan 6y ago
> I don't think twitter is not allowing de-escalation as much as they haven't figured out how to do it. I think what they are doing is perfectly in line with their mission statement. "Give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly without barriers" lacks functional constraints such as "let the better ideas propagate more", "put some barriers around good judgement, rationality, relevance, factuality" etc. If a human mind operated through twitter algorithms, it would be equivalent to some sort of psychosis, every voice in one's head valued equally without due discrimination on reality checks, uncontrollable, irrational, amplifying irrelevant viewpoints, unable to conform to reality. Unsurprisingly at times our collective behavior fueled by twitter (and any other social media that operate through such filtering/amplification functions) resembles mass psychosis.
noobermin 6y ago
I should temper my above comment (my own sort of mea culpea :) ). You're right, given that I don't work for Twitter, I don't know whether there is an explicit desire not to reduce toxicity due to revenue concerns. I will say whether I am right or not, there at the very least does exist the incentive especially if they ignore the long term issues as you mention. Some evidence that at the very least they don't have an incentive to detoxify is that twitter has been toxic for years, almost a decade at this point. One of the most often cited essays on twitter toxicity from a leftist perspective was written in 2013[0] but the opening discussion sounds like it concern today. All in all, I think you're quite correct about how the toxicity is a long term risk, but perhaps people there need to realize how much of a threat it is for the platform. Finally, I think your article was really great, as I said before. I came with a negative perspective but you convinced me otherwise. I still believe that certain cultural and mindset issues need to be addressed that might be beyond design but I definitely feel you're right that the UX design could help reduce toxicity. [0] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/exiting-vampire-castle/ https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/exiting-vam...

randomsearch 6y ago

“Enragement is engagement”, in other words.

blablabla123 6y ago

Probably one should also see this less one-sided, de-escalation is not the answer to everything and escalation is not bad in every single case. Without ever escalating anything, everything that is hard to change is likely to stay the same. Too much escalation is of course a toxic thing but in moderation it's actually very useful and it wouldn't be so entangled in everyday lives if there was no use. That said, admitting guilt does not work when the other person is actually hostile since it can be used against oneself. (Just imagine what would happen if the current protest movement in the US would apologize to Donald Trump...) Apart from that, there are still online forums which work very well and don't turn toxic despite occasional rants. Twitter should take that as an example...