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For a post called "Quitting Twitter", I think this piece actually does a great job summarizing the really cool things about Twitter. I think there's something a

by ketzo 6y ago

For a post called "Quitting Twitter", I think this piece actually does a great job summarizing the really cool things about Twitter. I think there's something a little magical about finding someone you really respect in your field, responding to one of their tweets, and getting a thoughtful response six minutes later! The toxicity is rough, though. It exhausts me on big subreddits, too -- it's impossible to have conversations with anyone because the focus is on "dunking" people for the benefit of other readers. Like anything else reddit, it gets better the smaller you go. I find this is actually true on Twitter, too. I've had some positive interactions in the replies under a @patio11 tweet with 120 likes. But any moderately popular tweet is just a shitshow. Twitter (and Reddit, and HN, etc.) are sort of pretending to be conversation-software, when really, they're tiny blogs; by and large, you don't write replies for the benefit of the person to whom you're responding, you write them for all the people who you know are going to see your reply. That's the source of so much of the toxic feeling, IMO, but it's also the entire value propositon: come see the interesting (or funny, or infuriating, or horrifying) back-and-forth of internet strangers! Maybe the toxicity can be eliminated or mitigated somehow, but I really think it's part-and-parcel with the format of "public conversation." God knows I'm part of the problem; I write between 1 and 10 HN/reddit comments every day. It's an addiction! External validation feels very, very good. I try not to "dunk" people, but if there's one thing the internet has, it's no shortage of idiotic comments, and it's hard for me not to take a condescending tone when someone's talking about how women don't deserve to play videogames or how Joe Biden wants to eat babies or whatever. I guess the best you can hope for is a community spirit that encourages thoughtful conversation and discourages shit-talking. And I think that's where Twitter, by and large, really fails. Twitter culture at large is so, so based around "look at this dumb shit this idiot said! aren't they stupid?" It sucks, and it absolutely warps people like the author says.

tinyhouse 6y ago
Toxicity on twitter is huge but once you unfollow toxic users (or any user who tweets nonsense too often) things look much better. Tbh I don't use twitter to engage in conversations. I use it mostly to consume interesting content.
- firebaze 6y ago
  You're still supporting a platform where avoiding toxic content is active mental work.
  - kevinherron 6y ago
    Life is a platform that requires active work to avoid toxic content.
    - Nextgrid 6y ago
      Life happens to be so because of external factors nobody is benefiting from, and you can't avoid it. Twitter is so because it is designed to encourage arguments (to generate "engagement") and you can avoid it.
    - minikites 6y ago
      Twitter could be doing so much more to fix this problem. It's abundantly clear that "hands off" moderation doesn't work. It doesn't work for Twitter, it doesn't work for Facebook, it doesn't work for any shared social space online or offline.
      - Groxx 6y ago
        While I absolutely agree with this, and think Twitter does things that make it worse: no automated (or human-driven in bulk) abuse-detector will ever work perfectly. People are creative. Some amount of manual blocking is a reasonable expectation... just not as much as is necessary now :)
        minikites 6y ago
        I'm not asking for perfect, I'm asking for anything more than the literally zero effort they're putting forth now.
      - hombre_fatal 6y ago
        Twitter actively encourages the outrage machine. They aren't an organization that just needs to work a bit harder. They tell you when your tweets are reported even if no action is taken, just to make you mad that people are reporting you. They tell you when someone blocks you and you can't visit their twitter anymore even though you can if you log out. Who would build a system like this unless they wanted to fuel drama?
agumonkey 6y ago
Somehow I managed to swim only good parts of twitter. It was full of smart creative people doing only peaceful things. A few thin feud here and there but nothing crazy. Not to pick on it but compared to curated reddit / twitter, I found it very hard to find anything interesting on discord I kept jumping from server to server.
Baeocystin 6y ago
This SMBC was written in 2013, and I still think it's the most accurate simplified explanation of how social media on the internet tends to work I've come across: https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2939 https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2939 I don't have a solution. But it's a real problem.
- ketzo 6y ago
  Yep. Related is what SlateStarCodex called the "weak man" argument. Basically, you make a strawman argument: rather than arguing whatever point your opponent was claiming, you make something up and argue against that instead. But since you're arguing on the internet, you can always find some dipshit somewhere who actually supports the insane thing you made up. So you turn to your opponent and say "look at what your side believes!" https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweapons/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweap...
- bhaak 6y ago
  Aren't we now seeing a reaction to this with the cancel culture? Getting rid of the assholes as vehemently as possible? Even though cancel culture is probably overreacting, I'm not sure if there is another way than to get rid of the toxic loud minority. I'm a mod in a subreddit that has a very toxic circle jerk sister subreddit. Like "jokes about the recently died father of one of the persons the main subreddit is about" bad. Some people frequent both subreddits and while they are just behaved enough to not be straight banned in the main subreddit, their behavior in the circle jerk would well justify a perma bann. In my experience there is no reasoning with certain persons. Even if they seem reasonable 80% of the time, the 20% completely destroy any basis for normal discussions. There's a latent sentiment that creeps into every discussion if you don't remove these persons. Even if they haven't shown their bad side in the main subreddit.
  - Baeocystin 6y ago
    The problem with mass banning on a large scale driven by whoever is loudest is that it very, very quickly devolves into witch hunts. Nobody wins. I used to run my own BBS back in the dialup days. Even then, the problems would be recognisable to a modern forum mod. The only workable solutions I've found are that the more focused a board on a select number of topics, the easier it is to effectively moderate in a humane manner, and that it is impossible to rules-lawyer your way to success. In the end, you have to spend significant brain-time evaluating behavior on a case-by-base basis, and be willing to ban, listen, and revise in equal measures. It's hard work, and generally unappreciated.
dumb_troll 6y ago
One of the cooler exp in my career was Theodore Ts'o responding to a (in retrospect dumb) query about some latency issues we were witnessing with fsync. I feel like twitter enables more of those interactions
nonameiguess 6y ago
This was possible before Twitter. I remember back in the phpBB days, I was in a group where people were discussing the work of the philosopher Daniel Dennett and I had just read his book and didn't think people were reading him correctly. Instead of immediately taking to the "submit" button to tell them what I thought, I just emailed Daniel Dennett and asked him. He was head of the Tufts University Cognitive Science center and his email was publicly listed. He answered pretty quickly. I wonder if he still would or if the amount of spam hitting public figures from every direction is so overwhelming that they can't possibly respond to it all. And I wonder how much of the "responses" you get from blue checks on Twitter is really them and how much is a hired social media manager running their account.
rconti 6y ago
I pretty much entirely agree with the author. I've never derived value from Twitter, try as I might. I think some personalities are better suited to the decentralized, broadcast-and-hope, follow-the-experts, ratings-driven content. I get a lot more value out of forums about a topic, or HN, or groups of friends I already know. Facebook groups on my hobbies, etc. Joining/participating in "private" (but open to anyone) groups rather than broadcasting outwards to all and getting engagement through shock/clickbait type content. That doesn't mean what works for me has to work for you, though, and of course it's without getting into how problematic one platform's LEADERSHIP might be versus another.
justhw 6y ago
Thanks for that. Awareness and introspection as you just demonstrated are key for a toxic free life.

by ketzo 6y ago

tinyhouse 6y ago

Toxicity on twitter is huge but once you unfollow toxic users (or any user who tweets nonsense too often) things look much better. Tbh I don't use twitter to engage in conversations. I use it mostly to consume interesting content.

firebaze 6y ago
You're still supporting a platform where avoiding toxic content is active mental work.
- kevinherron 6y ago
  Life is a platform that requires active work to avoid toxic content.
  - Nextgrid 6y ago
    Life happens to be so because of external factors nobody is benefiting from, and you can't avoid it. Twitter is so because it is designed to encourage arguments (to generate "engagement") and you can avoid it.
  - minikites 6y ago
    Twitter could be doing so much more to fix this problem. It's abundantly clear that "hands off" moderation doesn't work. It doesn't work for Twitter, it doesn't work for Facebook, it doesn't work for any shared social space online or offline.
    - Groxx 6y ago
      While I absolutely agree with this, and think Twitter does things that make it worse: no automated (or human-driven in bulk) abuse-detector will ever work perfectly. People are creative. Some amount of manual blocking is a reasonable expectation... just not as much as is necessary now :)
      - minikites 6y ago
        I'm not asking for perfect, I'm asking for anything more than the literally zero effort they're putting forth now.
    - hombre_fatal 6y ago
      Twitter actively encourages the outrage machine. They aren't an organization that just needs to work a bit harder. They tell you when your tweets are reported even if no action is taken, just to make you mad that people are reporting you. They tell you when someone blocks you and you can't visit their twitter anymore even though you can if you log out. Who would build a system like this unless they wanted to fuel drama?

agumonkey 6y ago

Somehow I managed to swim only good parts of twitter. It was full of smart creative people doing only peaceful things. A few thin feud here and there but nothing crazy. Not to pick on it but compared to curated reddit / twitter, I found it very hard to find anything interesting on discord I kept jumping from server to server.

Baeocystin 6y ago

This SMBC was written in 2013, and I still think it's the most accurate simplified explanation of how social media on the internet tends to work I've come across: https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2939 https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2939 I don't have a solution. But it's a real problem.

ketzo 6y ago
Yep. Related is what SlateStarCodex called the "weak man" argument. Basically, you make a strawman argument: rather than arguing whatever point your opponent was claiming, you make something up and argue against that instead. But since you're arguing on the internet, you can always find some dipshit somewhere who actually supports the insane thing you made up. So you turn to your opponent and say "look at what your side believes!" https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweapons/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweap...
bhaak 6y ago
Aren't we now seeing a reaction to this with the cancel culture? Getting rid of the assholes as vehemently as possible? Even though cancel culture is probably overreacting, I'm not sure if there is another way than to get rid of the toxic loud minority. I'm a mod in a subreddit that has a very toxic circle jerk sister subreddit. Like "jokes about the recently died father of one of the persons the main subreddit is about" bad. Some people frequent both subreddits and while they are just behaved enough to not be straight banned in the main subreddit, their behavior in the circle jerk would well justify a perma bann. In my experience there is no reasoning with certain persons. Even if they seem reasonable 80% of the time, the 20% completely destroy any basis for normal discussions. There's a latent sentiment that creeps into every discussion if you don't remove these persons. Even if they haven't shown their bad side in the main subreddit.
- Baeocystin 6y ago
  The problem with mass banning on a large scale driven by whoever is loudest is that it very, very quickly devolves into witch hunts. Nobody wins. I used to run my own BBS back in the dialup days. Even then, the problems would be recognisable to a modern forum mod. The only workable solutions I've found are that the more focused a board on a select number of topics, the easier it is to effectively moderate in a humane manner, and that it is impossible to rules-lawyer your way to success. In the end, you have to spend significant brain-time evaluating behavior on a case-by-base basis, and be willing to ban, listen, and revise in equal measures. It's hard work, and generally unappreciated.

dumb_troll 6y ago

One of the cooler exp in my career was Theodore Ts'o responding to a (in retrospect dumb) query about some latency issues we were witnessing with fsync. I feel like twitter enables more of those interactions

nonameiguess 6y ago

This was possible before Twitter. I remember back in the phpBB days, I was in a group where people were discussing the work of the philosopher Daniel Dennett and I had just read his book and didn't think people were reading him correctly. Instead of immediately taking to the "submit" button to tell them what I thought, I just emailed Daniel Dennett and asked him. He was head of the Tufts University Cognitive Science center and his email was publicly listed. He answered pretty quickly. I wonder if he still would or if the amount of spam hitting public figures from every direction is so overwhelming that they can't possibly respond to it all. And I wonder how much of the "responses" you get from blue checks on Twitter is really them and how much is a hired social media manager running their account.

rconti 6y ago

I pretty much entirely agree with the author. I've never derived value from Twitter, try as I might. I think some personalities are better suited to the decentralized, broadcast-and-hope, follow-the-experts, ratings-driven content. I get a lot more value out of forums about a topic, or HN, or groups of friends I already know. Facebook groups on my hobbies, etc. Joining/participating in "private" (but open to anyone) groups rather than broadcasting outwards to all and getting engagement through shock/clickbait type content. That doesn't mean what works for me has to work for you, though, and of course it's without getting into how problematic one platform's LEADERSHIP might be versus another.

justhw 6y ago

Thanks for that. Awareness and introspection as you just demonstrated are key for a toxic free life.