5 ms·

There are a lot of talks on HN about the toxicity of social media. And people are pretty angry against Google and Facebook. But to me the worse is by far Twitt

by polote 5y ago

There are a lot of talks on HN about the toxicity of social media. And people are pretty angry against Google and Facebook. But to me the worse is by far Twitter. There are plenty of random people who have a disproportionate number of followers compared to the quality of their posts. And as a result can do these kind of mods. Which are amplified by retweets, something that barely exists in other social media. Random people can have too much power. As a society we should really prevent anyone to have more than a certain reach, like for example 5k people viewing a post. If you want to have a bigger reach you should apply to get a professional account and be regulated.

throwkeep 5y ago
I agree, Twitter is the most destructive of the lot. It drives mob behavior and low quality interaction like nothing else. It doesn't get as much scrutiny in the press though, because it's the home of journalists.
- smlss_sftwr 5y ago
  This is just a conjecture, but I think the 280 character limit on Twitter (or whatever it is now) is one of the key culprits behind the trend of deteriorating discourse not just at the societal level but even at a personal level. It's simply impossible to express nuance in a 280-character span and if you can't win over an audience within that limit, they'll just scroll past whatever else you have to say. Even if you personally have a more intricate perspective on the matter, you're forced to play by majority rules if you want to reach an audience and that quickly becomes a race to the bottom in a system that rewards whoever can come up with the best one-line mic drop instead of the best formulated ideas. I've noticed in my very limited experience with Twitter that it seems to drive "engagement" from opposing sides more so than Facebook's echo chamber, which is a breeding ground for confrontation (whereas long-form Facebook rants seem more so geared towards getting people on "your side" to egg you on). In theory our society needs that sort of cross-aisle engagement to reverse the trend of political fragmentation, but if all you have is 280 characters to make your case that just simply doesn't work. I wonder if there is a solution that could make it work, but given the trend of social media culture being driven by the lowest common denominator I'm inclined to think you'd need some sort of centralized moderating authority and that just brings us back full circle to traditional media outlets
kokanator 5y ago
>Random people can have too much power. So the common persons voice should be rate limited? Only those 'qualified' should be able to have a larger impact? Who makes the rules in this situation?
- jaywalk 5y ago
  > So the common persons voice should be rate limited? Only those 'qualified' should be able to have a larger impact? Yes, to both. To go along with what the OP was saying, the common person should have to get the attention of someone with a "professional account" in order to get their voice amplified. Of course, that's assuming "professional accounts" actually mean something and aren't handed out like blue checkmarks on Twitter.
  - sethammons 5y ago
    starting to sound like a republic :)
- mordae 5y ago
  Mods. You say something nasty, you get banned. You make sense, you get slightly promoted.
- lkbm 5y ago
  "Random people" doesn't mean "common people". It means people with no connection to the situation, or to the people involved. On Faceobook, the only people who can flood my notifications are people have I as friends, or maybe friends of friends. On Twitter, it's everyone, including people who are just there to be abusive.
- koheripbal 5y ago
  The issue is that the people in society with the most free time seem to have the most influence on social media. Rate limiting people so that they could only post/vote/etc once per day, for example, or perhaps amplifying the vote by the account age might work to bring more attention to more mature voices.
- 5y ago
bostik 5y ago
Oh good, so now I can silence a critical voice by unleashing a horde of bots and I don't even need to drown their voice?
- fouric 5y ago
  AFAIK Twitter already considers bots impersonating people (if not just all bots) to be against their TOS and actively works to hunt them down or remove them. The fact that they're imperfect and so your strategy might work some of the time has nothing to do with the proposition that OP is making.
fouric 5y ago
> As a society we should really prevent anyone to have more than a certain reach, like for example 5k people viewing a post. Why? What benefit does this provide to everyone? How is this not just going to silence minority opinion?
- yonixw 5y ago
  Anti-Vax are also a minority, and we should block them. I guess his intentions are to make the spread slow enough so the target of harassment could respond before being piled on OR for doctors to respond to Anti-Vax claims fast enough. So maybe a reach of 1K/Day would be a better approach to slow down harassment while allowing minorities to speak up (and the compromise is that it will take more time for their voice to be heard). WhatsApp did something similar where you cannot share a popular message to more than one, since it was used to spread a call to violence in India. [1] [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/7/21211371/whatsapp-message-forwarding-limits-misinformation-coronavirus-india https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/7/21211371/whatsapp-message-...
throw_m239339 5y ago
Twitter is certainly the worst because of the format that drives "low quality" interaction between users. Everybody is yelling at each other, in the hope to garner a few new followers or likes. To me it's definitely the most toxic social network, far ahead of Facebook or even Reddit. Yet driving that outrage up is what gets Twitter eyeballs thus revenue, so there is an incentive for that platform to generate this sort of behaviour. Twitter absolutely loved Trump presence, they made good money out of him.
jazzyjackson 5y ago
Facebook does have a 5000 person limit on how many people can follow your personal account, after that you need to start a fan page.
throwitaway78 5y ago
Read this comment earlier and nodded in agreement. Somehow ended up on Twitter looking at the trending topic "people questioning need for more Ted Bundy content." Oh ha, I agree, I'm sick of serial killer true crime murder ugliness too. Click the link. Immediately see this: https://twitter.com/OhNoSheTwitnt/status/1397629835757883395 https://twitter.com/OhNoSheTwitnt/status/1397629835757883395 "No thanks, Ted Bundy movie. If I want a story about a white guy who murders women I’ll just watch the news." Right. White guys, they are the worst. Why is it that I can go on Twitter and within 2 minutes find hate speech attacking the group I've been assigned to? Btw, this is pretty tame. I could find worse with very little effort.
legitster 5y ago
Facebook obviously gets a lot of crap but they way they default your conversations to your localized pool of contacts certainly acts like "baffles" around an online persona. Twitter generally discourages anonymity but also has almost no protection against your content being instantly thrust into a national spotlight.

by polote 5y ago

throwkeep 5y ago

I agree, Twitter is the most destructive of the lot. It drives mob behavior and low quality interaction like nothing else. It doesn't get as much scrutiny in the press though, because it's the home of journalists.

smlss_sftwr 5y ago
This is just a conjecture, but I think the 280 character limit on Twitter (or whatever it is now) is one of the key culprits behind the trend of deteriorating discourse not just at the societal level but even at a personal level. It's simply impossible to express nuance in a 280-character span and if you can't win over an audience within that limit, they'll just scroll past whatever else you have to say. Even if you personally have a more intricate perspective on the matter, you're forced to play by majority rules if you want to reach an audience and that quickly becomes a race to the bottom in a system that rewards whoever can come up with the best one-line mic drop instead of the best formulated ideas. I've noticed in my very limited experience with Twitter that it seems to drive "engagement" from opposing sides more so than Facebook's echo chamber, which is a breeding ground for confrontation (whereas long-form Facebook rants seem more so geared towards getting people on "your side" to egg you on). In theory our society needs that sort of cross-aisle engagement to reverse the trend of political fragmentation, but if all you have is 280 characters to make your case that just simply doesn't work. I wonder if there is a solution that could make it work, but given the trend of social media culture being driven by the lowest common denominator I'm inclined to think you'd need some sort of centralized moderating authority and that just brings us back full circle to traditional media outlets

kokanator 5y ago

>Random people can have too much power. So the common persons voice should be rate limited? Only those 'qualified' should be able to have a larger impact? Who makes the rules in this situation?

jaywalk 5y ago
> So the common persons voice should be rate limited? Only those 'qualified' should be able to have a larger impact? Yes, to both. To go along with what the OP was saying, the common person should have to get the attention of someone with a "professional account" in order to get their voice amplified. Of course, that's assuming "professional accounts" actually mean something and aren't handed out like blue checkmarks on Twitter.
- sethammons 5y ago
  starting to sound like a republic :)
mordae 5y ago
Mods. You say something nasty, you get banned. You make sense, you get slightly promoted.
lkbm 5y ago
"Random people" doesn't mean "common people". It means people with no connection to the situation, or to the people involved. On Faceobook, the only people who can flood my notifications are people have I as friends, or maybe friends of friends. On Twitter, it's everyone, including people who are just there to be abusive.
koheripbal 5y ago
The issue is that the people in society with the most free time seem to have the most influence on social media. Rate limiting people so that they could only post/vote/etc once per day, for example, or perhaps amplifying the vote by the account age might work to bring more attention to more mature voices.
5y ago

bostik 5y ago

Oh good, so now I can silence a critical voice by unleashing a horde of bots and I don't even need to drown their voice?

fouric 5y ago
AFAIK Twitter already considers bots impersonating people (if not just all bots) to be against their TOS and actively works to hunt them down or remove them. The fact that they're imperfect and so your strategy might work some of the time has nothing to do with the proposition that OP is making.

fouric 5y ago

> As a society we should really prevent anyone to have more than a certain reach, like for example 5k people viewing a post. Why? What benefit does this provide to everyone? How is this not just going to silence minority opinion?

yonixw 5y ago
Anti-Vax are also a minority, and we should block them. I guess his intentions are to make the spread slow enough so the target of harassment could respond before being piled on OR for doctors to respond to Anti-Vax claims fast enough. So maybe a reach of 1K/Day would be a better approach to slow down harassment while allowing minorities to speak up (and the compromise is that it will take more time for their voice to be heard). WhatsApp did something similar where you cannot share a popular message to more than one, since it was used to spread a call to violence in India. [1] [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/7/21211371/whatsapp-message-forwarding-limits-misinformation-coronavirus-india https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/7/21211371/whatsapp-message-...

throw_m239339 5y ago

Twitter is certainly the worst because of the format that drives "low quality" interaction between users. Everybody is yelling at each other, in the hope to garner a few new followers or likes. To me it's definitely the most toxic social network, far ahead of Facebook or even Reddit. Yet driving that outrage up is what gets Twitter eyeballs thus revenue, so there is an incentive for that platform to generate this sort of behaviour. Twitter absolutely loved Trump presence, they made good money out of him.

jazzyjackson 5y ago

Facebook does have a 5000 person limit on how many people can follow your personal account, after that you need to start a fan page.

throwitaway78 5y ago

Read this comment earlier and nodded in agreement. Somehow ended up on Twitter looking at the trending topic "people questioning need for more Ted Bundy content." Oh ha, I agree, I'm sick of serial killer true crime murder ugliness too. Click the link. Immediately see this: https://twitter.com/OhNoSheTwitnt/status/1397629835757883395 https://twitter.com/OhNoSheTwitnt/status/1397629835757883395 "No thanks, Ted Bundy movie. If I want a story about a white guy who murders women I’ll just watch the news." Right. White guys, they are the worst. Why is it that I can go on Twitter and within 2 minutes find hate speech attacking the group I've been assigned to? Btw, this is pretty tame. I could find worse with very little effort.

legitster 5y ago

Facebook obviously gets a lot of crap but they way they default your conversations to your localized pool of contacts certainly acts like "baffles" around an online persona. Twitter generally discourages anonymity but also has almost no protection against your content being instantly thrust into a national spotlight.