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Twitter is poison. It amplifies meaningless shit into the stratosphere with its trending algorithms, aided by the fact that the largest userbase on twitter see

Twitter is poison. It amplifies meaningless shit into the stratosphere with its trending algorithms, aided by the fact that the largest userbase on twitter seems to be political extremists of both left & right. It's created an environment where making a comment like "mathematics is merely a white supremacist social construct" is now somehow acceptable to the left. The platform literally exists to make things look like they're a bigger deal worldwide than they really are. It's dangerous. I quit twitter a while back - when I was on the platform, all my news consumption revolved around it. I was deeply concerned about the state of the UK and the US because of the constant stream of political propaganda from both sides. Since I quit my brain feels like it's been completely freed of political dogma and I'm in a significantly better mood generally. I've not missed the trending page, that's for certain. The biggest issue is the loss of academic freedom you alluded too, mainly & ironically being pushed heavily by the 'Twitter Left'. Twitter is like a heavily left leaning version of /pol/ these days. I'd like to be clear that I would consider myself on 'the left', to be a progressive person & I am absolutely aware that the extremist cesspit that is twitter does not represent the genuine left, much as it doesn't represent genuine moderates or genuine conservatives. It's the most extreme weaponized propaganda & rent-a-mob tool thats ever existed in human history.

Akronymus 6y ago
> It amplifies meaningless shit into the stratosphere with its trending algorithms, aided by the fact that the largest userbase on twitter seems to be political extremists of both left & right. It's created an environment where making a comment like "mathematics is merely a white supremacist social construct" is now somehow acceptable to the left. It is like unleashing a neural net that amplifies whatever it sees in a image but fed with white noise IMO. And then it just keeps on spiraling in on itself.
- breakfastduck 6y ago
  It scares me how much people on twitter believe that what they see trending on there from the news and other sources is being seen and blown up worldwide when it's not. It's being blown up worldwide ON TWITTER. The vast majority of the world never sees or hears any of it. It causes delusions of grandeur across the userbase.
  - krapp 6y ago
    People believe that off Twitter as well. I've seen commenters here claim that the majority of all human communication and interaction takes place on and is controlled by a few social media silos.
    - breakfastduck 6y ago
      Yes, it's a difficult problem to solve. The fact twitter has so much political sway in the real world is appalling considering how small the user-bases are relative to populations. We find ourselves in a position where the media can use twitter to amplify opinion and provide a false sense of majority to implement political pressure.(See cancel culture)
      - Akronymus 6y ago
        Along with that, the beltway bubble, where "reporters" mostly follow each other leads to, quite frankly, bizarre stories along with a unhealthy dose of outright wrong reporting.
  - lewiscollard 6y ago
    > It scares me how much people on twitter believe that what they see trending on there from the news and other sources is being seen and blown up worldwide when it's not. It's being blown up worldwide ON TWITTER. Unfortunately, "Twitter users react to..." is an entire genre of news article these days, even on otherwise-reasonable sources like the BBC.
    - jeegsy 6y ago
      "....caused an internet BACKLASH!"
dexen 6y ago
>[Twitter] amplifies meaningless shit into the stratosphere with its trending algorithms Doubtful, given how popular it is among people and ogranisations that carefully measure the RoI of their marketing & outreach operations, and constantly adjust balance of their efforts among 2, 3, 4 different communication channels (YT, Insta, mail, in-person events, topical forums, old style media, etc.). A more fitting hypothesis would be, "Twitter opened up a couple new paradigms of influencing people". The paradigms are complex, opaque, and subtly inter-related; quite hard to grasp for people that aren't fully "in the loop". That's why there appearance of chaos and, at the same time, we see highly organized action emerges from this chaos.
- breakfastduck 6y ago
  That's fair - I wasn't trying to make the point that it can't be weaponized. In fact it's quite the opposite. I guess my main point with that quote is that it amplifies things (sometimes organically viral, sometimes engineered) and then places them all on the same level. So the userbase starts to believe that something that trended on twitter is just as globally important/well known as the genuine world news story that trended beside it, because it's all in one pot. That's dangerous.
- webmaven 6y ago
  > >[Twitter] amplifies meaningless shit into the stratosphere with its trending algorithms > Doubtful, given how popular it is among people and ogranisations that carefully measure the RoI of their marketing & outreach operations, and constantly adjust balance of their efforts among 2, 3, 4 different communication channels (YT, Insta, mail, in-person events, topical forums, old style media, etc.). I'm not sure why you think that the two are incompatible, or opposed. I don't mean to suggest that marketing is entirely meaningless, but surely the ROI of any particular marketing effort is largely independent of its meaningfulness?

Akronymus 6y ago

> It amplifies meaningless shit into the stratosphere with its trending algorithms, aided by the fact that the largest userbase on twitter seems to be political extremists of both left & right. It's created an environment where making a comment like "mathematics is merely a white supremacist social construct" is now somehow acceptable to the left. It is like unleashing a neural net that amplifies whatever it sees in a image but fed with white noise IMO. And then it just keeps on spiraling in on itself.

breakfastduck 6y ago
It scares me how much people on twitter believe that what they see trending on there from the news and other sources is being seen and blown up worldwide when it's not. It's being blown up worldwide ON TWITTER. The vast majority of the world never sees or hears any of it. It causes delusions of grandeur across the userbase.
- krapp 6y ago
  People believe that off Twitter as well. I've seen commenters here claim that the majority of all human communication and interaction takes place on and is controlled by a few social media silos.
  - breakfastduck 6y ago
    Yes, it's a difficult problem to solve. The fact twitter has so much political sway in the real world is appalling considering how small the user-bases are relative to populations. We find ourselves in a position where the media can use twitter to amplify opinion and provide a false sense of majority to implement political pressure.(See cancel culture)
    - Akronymus 6y ago
      Along with that, the beltway bubble, where "reporters" mostly follow each other leads to, quite frankly, bizarre stories along with a unhealthy dose of outright wrong reporting.
- lewiscollard 6y ago
  > It scares me how much people on twitter believe that what they see trending on there from the news and other sources is being seen and blown up worldwide when it's not. It's being blown up worldwide ON TWITTER. Unfortunately, "Twitter users react to..." is an entire genre of news article these days, even on otherwise-reasonable sources like the BBC.
  - jeegsy 6y ago
    "....caused an internet BACKLASH!"

dexen 6y ago

>[Twitter] amplifies meaningless shit into the stratosphere with its trending algorithms Doubtful, given how popular it is among people and ogranisations that carefully measure the RoI of their marketing & outreach operations, and constantly adjust balance of their efforts among 2, 3, 4 different communication channels (YT, Insta, mail, in-person events, topical forums, old style media, etc.). A more fitting hypothesis would be, "Twitter opened up a couple new paradigms of influencing people". The paradigms are complex, opaque, and subtly inter-related; quite hard to grasp for people that aren't fully "in the loop". That's why there appearance of chaos and, at the same time, we see highly organized action emerges from this chaos.

breakfastduck 6y ago
That's fair - I wasn't trying to make the point that it can't be weaponized. In fact it's quite the opposite. I guess my main point with that quote is that it amplifies things (sometimes organically viral, sometimes engineered) and then places them all on the same level. So the userbase starts to believe that something that trended on twitter is just as globally important/well known as the genuine world news story that trended beside it, because it's all in one pot. That's dangerous.
webmaven 6y ago
> >[Twitter] amplifies meaningless shit into the stratosphere with its trending algorithms > Doubtful, given how popular it is among people and ogranisations that carefully measure the RoI of their marketing & outreach operations, and constantly adjust balance of their efforts among 2, 3, 4 different communication channels (YT, Insta, mail, in-person events, topical forums, old style media, etc.). I'm not sure why you think that the two are incompatible, or opposed. I don't mean to suggest that marketing is entirely meaningless, but surely the ROI of any particular marketing effort is largely independent of its meaningfulness?