3 ms·

An honest UI might use the word “echo” rather than “retweet”.

microcolonel 6y ago
Retweet used to actually retweet things (i.e. pretend "RT" and the OP's handle), so it's like the floppy disk icon. Parler uses a megaphone.
- bigiain 6y ago
  It's amusing to me the retweets (and hashtags) were emergent behaviour of early Twitter users, not any sort of well thought out plan for how the platform was intended to work. And then the platform owners mostly misunderstood the problem and emergent solution, and natively implemented something similar but optimised for advertising sales metrics ("engagement!") instead of what the users were actually doing. And then as the user base changed from it's early-userbase to being heavily biased to marketers (sorry, "influencers" and/or advertisers), and social media expert gurus started talking about "message amplification" - and so we end up with new contenders in the field thinking that the lack of ability to shout "brand messages" through a megaphone was the problem those early users "invented" retweeting to solve... <sigh> (And now I'm imagining a world where a St*rbucks-like cafe chain hands megaphones to everybody as they enter the store, with the implicit understanding that you shout out every interesting bit of conversation you overhear, which inevitably quickly develops into people only shouting out other people's megaphone shouts because that's all you can hear, until eventually if crescendos into a Hendrix-esque never ending earsplitting feedback wail - probably Star Spangled Banner for maximum crudeness... Has Black Mirror done this yet?)
  - stormbrew 6y ago
    God so much this. Manual retweets didn't really work like the feature Twitter implemented do and they had drastically different effects on content spread. Quote tweets (which were also emergent before rts even became a feature) are actually closer in those terms. But because the button is right there the more useful emergent version died completely off.
bigiain 6y ago
Perhaps "parrot", given the parent platform's choice of terminology? "I totally made the world a better place today! I , ummm, yeah. So. I just parroted an actual activist's well thought out and carefully composed tweet, instead of doing anything of substance at all myself... What am I doing with my life? <sobs>"
- zimpenfish 6y ago
  > instead of doing anything of substance at all myself Does amplification of messages count as "nothing of substance"? "Getting the message out" is a crucial part of activism, is it not?
deevolution 6y ago
Retweet is more on brand.
henriquemaia 6y ago
And then it would be filed under a "chamber" category on your profile. Just as a friendly reminder of where you were heading...

Retweet used to actually retweet things (i.e. pretend "RT" and the OP's handle), so it's like the floppy disk icon. Parler uses a megaphone.

bigiain 6y ago
It's amusing to me the retweets (and hashtags) were emergent behaviour of early Twitter users, not any sort of well thought out plan for how the platform was intended to work. And then the platform owners mostly misunderstood the problem and emergent solution, and natively implemented something similar but optimised for advertising sales metrics ("engagement!") instead of what the users were actually doing. And then as the user base changed from it's early-userbase to being heavily biased to marketers (sorry, "influencers" and/or advertisers), and social media expert gurus started talking about "message amplification" - and so we end up with new contenders in the field thinking that the lack of ability to shout "brand messages" through a megaphone was the problem those early users "invented" retweeting to solve... <sigh> (And now I'm imagining a world where a St*rbucks-like cafe chain hands megaphones to everybody as they enter the store, with the implicit understanding that you shout out every interesting bit of conversation you overhear, which inevitably quickly develops into people only shouting out other people's megaphone shouts because that's all you can hear, until eventually if crescendos into a Hendrix-esque never ending earsplitting feedback wail - probably Star Spangled Banner for maximum crudeness... Has Black Mirror done this yet?)
- stormbrew 6y ago
  God so much this. Manual retweets didn't really work like the feature Twitter implemented do and they had drastically different effects on content spread. Quote tweets (which were also emergent before rts even became a feature) are actually closer in those terms. But because the button is right there the more useful emergent version died completely off.

bigiain 6y ago

Perhaps "parrot", given the parent platform's choice of terminology? "I totally made the world a better place today! I , ummm, yeah. So. I just parroted an actual activist's well thought out and carefully composed tweet, instead of doing anything of substance at all myself... What am I doing with my life? <sobs>"

zimpenfish 6y ago
> instead of doing anything of substance at all myself Does amplification of messages count as "nothing of substance"? "Getting the message out" is a crucial part of activism, is it not?

deevolution 6y ago

Retweet is more on brand.

henriquemaia 6y ago

And then it would be filed under a "chamber" category on your profile. Just as a friendly reminder of where you were heading...