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If the original content is solely on Twitter, I question its value on the large scale. Most of the ones I see that I would personally consider valuable are actu

If the original content is solely on Twitter, I question its value on the large scale. Most of the ones I see that I would personally consider valuable are actually Twitter links to other sites. Genuinely important stuff doesn't fit in 230 characters, as a rule. You don't see stuff like Newton's Principia, Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, Shakespeare's Macbeth, the Mahabharata, or Confucius's Analects on Twitter. Conversely, the platform is heavily optimized for rage-bait of the "Burn the witch!" "Lynch the black!, or "Throw the Jew down the well!" school. And of course the overwhelming bulk of Twitter consists of junk like which vapid "celebrity" is currently having sex with which other vapid "celebrity". It's the supermarket tabloid of online discourse.

jacquesm 5y ago
Just a couple of examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30370551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30370551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30318634 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30318634 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30266226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30266226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30231611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30231611 > If the original content is solely on Twitter, I question its value on the large scale. This goes for the web in general I guess, but Twitter, like any source needs some filtering and HN filters just fine. If it makes the homepage with more than 100 upvotes I'll have a look. > You don't see stuff like Newton's Principia, Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, Shakespeare's Macbeth, the Mahabharata, or Confucius's Analects on Twitter. You don't see them on Medium, Facebook. Wordpress or any one of a 100 other outlets either. The classics are the classics because they went through 100's of years of filtering and in the most literal sense they stood the test of time. > Conversely, the platform is heavily optimized for rage-bait of the "Burn the witch!" "Lynch the black!, or "Throw the Jew down the well!" school. There's that. But there is also some pretty good content, you just need to be very selective. > And of course the overwhelming bulk of Twitter consists of junk like which vapid "celebrity" is currently having sex with which other vapid "celebrity". As opposed to Google News and millions of other news outlets? You seem to be angry with media in general rather than with Twitter per-se, which I can totally sympathize with but let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater, it is not all bad and that is what this blanket ban is all about. > It's the supermarket tabloid of online discourse. No, it also has the supermarket tabloid of online discourse. But it also has fascinating exchanges between scientists and other people with interesting jobs, as well as a huge network of other professionals. Like everything else online: Twitter is what you make it. I get more - and better - feedback on my projects on Twitter than on HN, and the relationships tend to last longer than just an article and the immediate response on that. I still write to my blog and post the links on Twitter because I want to control where my content ends up, so you won't see me write 'articles' for twitter, though I've done the occasional thread when it was inconvenient to write a blog post, which typically is a very large amount of work. Anyway, this is all moot: nobody forces you to visit Twitter, you can filter out the links if you don't want to see them, that's pretty easy.
- Turing_Machine 5y ago
  > You don't see them on Medium, Facebook. Wordpress or any one of a 100 other outlets either. You'd be far more likely to see them on Medium or Wordpress, if only because those platforms let you write something more than 230 characters long without resorting to some sort of ugly hack. > You seem to be angry with media in general rather than with Twitter per-se Ah, yes. "You seem angry". Note that I specifically provided the Washington Post as a counter-example of content that appears to be of higher quality.

jacquesm 5y ago

Just a couple of examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30370551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30370551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30318634 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30318634 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30266226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30266226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30231611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30231611 > If the original content is solely on Twitter, I question its value on the large scale. This goes for the web in general I guess, but Twitter, like any source needs some filtering and HN filters just fine. If it makes the homepage with more than 100 upvotes I'll have a look. > You don't see stuff like Newton's Principia, Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, Shakespeare's Macbeth, the Mahabharata, or Confucius's Analects on Twitter. You don't see them on Medium, Facebook. Wordpress or any one of a 100 other outlets either. The classics are the classics because they went through 100's of years of filtering and in the most literal sense they stood the test of time. > Conversely, the platform is heavily optimized for rage-bait of the "Burn the witch!" "Lynch the black!, or "Throw the Jew down the well!" school. There's that. But there is also some pretty good content, you just need to be very selective. > And of course the overwhelming bulk of Twitter consists of junk like which vapid "celebrity" is currently having sex with which other vapid "celebrity". As opposed to Google News and millions of other news outlets? You seem to be angry with media in general rather than with Twitter per-se, which I can totally sympathize with but let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater, it is not all bad and that is what this blanket ban is all about. > It's the supermarket tabloid of online discourse. No, it also has the supermarket tabloid of online discourse. But it also has fascinating exchanges between scientists and other people with interesting jobs, as well as a huge network of other professionals. Like everything else online: Twitter is what you make it. I get more - and better - feedback on my projects on Twitter than on HN, and the relationships tend to last longer than just an article and the immediate response on that. I still write to my blog and post the links on Twitter because I want to control where my content ends up, so you won't see me write 'articles' for twitter, though I've done the occasional thread when it was inconvenient to write a blog post, which typically is a very large amount of work. Anyway, this is all moot: nobody forces you to visit Twitter, you can filter out the links if you don't want to see them, that's pretty easy.

Turing_Machine 5y ago
> You don't see them on Medium, Facebook. Wordpress or any one of a 100 other outlets either. You'd be far more likely to see them on Medium or Wordpress, if only because those platforms let you write something more than 230 characters long without resorting to some sort of ugly hack. > You seem to be angry with media in general rather than with Twitter per-se Ah, yes. "You seem angry". Note that I specifically provided the Washington Post as a counter-example of content that appears to be of higher quality.