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From my perspective, you'd be exactly wrong. I've never had an account on any FB property - avoid it like the Spyware plague that it is. Yet others find FB, I

by toss1 6y ago

From my perspective, you'd be exactly wrong. I've never had an account on any FB property - avoid it like the Spyware plague that it is. Yet others find FB, Instagram, etc. very useful, even tho if I had to remove one thing to improve the internet, FB would be at the top of my list. OTOH, Twitter, which I used to formally deride like you, I've found to be immensely useful, as I can directly link to & occasionally converse with top leaders and experts in many fields, and get direct links to the source papers/articles, without filtering, delays, & distortions of the regular media (but ya, one needs to heavily use the Block function in political discussions to maintain civility/sanity). It's also clear that Twitter is used a lot by all news orgs, it's often the 1st place news breaks, and every journo is active on it. So, seems that it really is about each individual users' needs. If these were removed from the internet, replacements would be active almost immediately. Would they be better/worse? Who knows?

Spooky23 6y ago
Twitter can be useful and I use it in a manner that benefits me. But it's impact on society is so awful it defeats the utility. Their chronic corporate irresponsibility and disregard of abuse is unconscionable. Entities controlling fake or bot accounts, combined the amplification effect on the platform basically have turned it into disinformation as a service. It so trivial to manipulate institutions and tastemakers that Twitter can be used to undermine them. Check out local public officials or B-list corporate types and what they follow. At that scale, you as a guy with a credit card can trivially insert a narrative into that persons feed to manipulate their perspectives or actions. There are entities doing this at scale to influence policy. Facebook is pretty malevolent as well. But I don't think that it undermines institutions like Twitter. It targets the broader public. They are more like TV brand marketing without editorial standards and with more focused targeting. Nazis couldn't get ads on your local TV station in 1990, but they can on Facebook.
- toss1 6y ago
  Ah, from that perspective - vulnerability to exploitation on societal scale by bad actors - both are a severe problem. Part of the problem is the technical/feature sets of each platform, and a lot of it is the corp management or failure of management. While the bot/troll hordes on Twitter are a serious problem disrupting many conversations, I'm almost thinking FB is more of a problem because the desinformatsiya can be more specifically targeted, and spread with less visibility outside the particular set of connections. So, I fully agree, from the POV of preserving democracy, I'd have zero hesitation in fully & finally terminating either/both today, if there were remotely more responsible replacements.

by toss1 6y ago

Spooky23 6y ago

Twitter can be useful and I use it in a manner that benefits me. But it's impact on society is so awful it defeats the utility. Their chronic corporate irresponsibility and disregard of abuse is unconscionable. Entities controlling fake or bot accounts, combined the amplification effect on the platform basically have turned it into disinformation as a service. It so trivial to manipulate institutions and tastemakers that Twitter can be used to undermine them. Check out local public officials or B-list corporate types and what they follow. At that scale, you as a guy with a credit card can trivially insert a narrative into that persons feed to manipulate their perspectives or actions. There are entities doing this at scale to influence policy. Facebook is pretty malevolent as well. But I don't think that it undermines institutions like Twitter. It targets the broader public. They are more like TV brand marketing without editorial standards and with more focused targeting. Nazis couldn't get ads on your local TV station in 1990, but they can on Facebook.

toss1 6y ago
Ah, from that perspective - vulnerability to exploitation on societal scale by bad actors - both are a severe problem. Part of the problem is the technical/feature sets of each platform, and a lot of it is the corp management or failure of management. While the bot/troll hordes on Twitter are a serious problem disrupting many conversations, I'm almost thinking FB is more of a problem because the desinformatsiya can be more specifically targeted, and spread with less visibility outside the particular set of connections. So, I fully agree, from the POV of preserving democracy, I'd have zero hesitation in fully & finally terminating either/both today, if there were remotely more responsible replacements.