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The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

• 9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y ago
  I really wonder whether any of the political establishment even has a clue as to the political makeup of the Independents. The two-party system keeps dominating all the news cycles, so it’s got to be pretty difficult for all of the marketing analytics companies to keep up with the noise.
  • dredmorbius 5y ago
    Seeing like a state ... turns out to be difficult. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State
    • 9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y ago
      If you’ve read the book, thoughts on this criticism of the book listed in the Wikipedia article? > Stanford University political scientist David D. Laitin described it as "a magisterial book." But he said there were flaws in the methodology of the book, saying the book "is a product of undisciplined history. For one, Scott’s evidence is selective and eclectic, with only minimal attempts to weigh disconfirming evidence... It is all too easy to select confirming evidence if the author can choose from the entire historical record and use material from all countries of the world."
      • dredmorbius 5y ago
        Any synoptic work can be criticised on the basis that its author strays from areas of specific expertise and selects from available evidence or narratives. That criticism is akin to critiquing water for being wet. The question is whether or not the book provides useful insights. And to that extent, I believe James C. Scott accomplishes his task. He needn't be correct in all his diagnoses or prescriptions for this to be true. Appropriate consideration of disconfirming evidence is a valid concern, though I'd have to see what Laitin is proposing in that regard to see if that critque has merits. What's all the more amusing is that the criticism is fundamentally grounded in the same fundamental paradox that states face, per Scott: that a complex domain cannot be accurately modeled or understood, that all attempts to do so are at best compromises and in error, and that any model will prove insufficient and unequal to the task.
        • 9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y ago
          > per Scott: that a complex domain cannot be accurately modeled or understood, that all attempts to do so are at best compromises and in error, and that any model will prove insufficient and unequal to the task. Ahh, interesting. I believe that most modern scientists would reject that proposition, a priori. Millennia of scientific advancements have shown that complex systems can indeed be modeled. Recent advancements in mathematics have shown that self-correcting simulations are certainly possible (deep learning, for example). Science itself could be simply described as a “self-correcting model with built-in error checking”.
          • dredmorbius 5y ago
            His argument is more nuanced, and ... includes examples. I've only managed about 3 chapters of the book so far. It has proved quite illuminating. There are examples of systems that do model well and those that don't. Depending on your physics, the 3, 2, 1, or null-body problems. The double pendulum. Etc. And those are only at the very simplest level. The fact that some systems can be effectively modelled doesn't mean that all can be. And in the case of complex systems (e.g., the German "rational forestry" method described early in Scott's book), initial success may preceed subsequent catastrophe.
            • 9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y ago
              > The fact that some systems can be effectively modelled doesn't mean that all can be. Based on my understanding, the leading-edge of scientific research shows that “if the human mind can comprehend it, then there is a mathematical function for it” Are you positing, then, that there simply are limits to what humans can understand? Or, rather, that some systems are just too complex to document properly?
              • dredmorbius 5y ago
                1. No. 2. Yes, yes.
  • tharne 5y ago
    > I really wonder whether any of the political establishment even has a clue as to the political makeup of the Independents. The do. The article is incredibly misleading. The drop in party affiliation does not mean that people are not partisan, are less partisan, or that someone who is not affiliated with party is open to voting for a candidate from either party. One of the major strategic breakthroughs of the Bush campaign on '04 and the Obama campaign in '08 was the ability to identity partisans who were not registered with one party or the other. Most people who are independents consistently will still vote for the same party regularly from one election to the next. Since at least 2000, most swings in voting patterns from one election to the next have more to do with turnout among various groups than with individuals voting differently than they had in the past. In 2010 for example, the Democrats suffered one of the worst midterm defeats in modern history. It was portrayed in the media as voters turning against Obama and the Democratic party. In fact, it was about turnout. Had turnout in 2010 looked like it had just two years earlier, the Democrats would not have suffered that kind of midterm "shellacking", as Obama called it. The real, and far less click-baity, story was that Obama was an incredibly charismatic and effective campaigner. When he wasn't on the ballet, a lot of democratic-leaning voters stayed home.
    • 9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y ago
      > The do. The article is incredibly misleading. I’m reading a lot of talk from you about the Democrats and Republicans, but what are the Independents thinking?
      • tharne 5y ago
        What I'm saying is that the parties understand the makeup of independents insofar as they know there are so few true independents, that it doesn't really matter what they think. In today's era, you get much more bang for your buck by convincing your own partisans to make it to the polls. My broader point is that contrary to what the article implies, "Unaffiliated Voter != A voter who is open to voting for either party"
        • 9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y ago
• throwaway5752 5y ago
  This isn't a new silent majority, is it? Has there ever been a majority of people who tweet? Twitter is a social media platform with it's own character and culture, and it is a tool for being informed on niche topics in realtime, similar to subreddits. It's not for everyone.
• egberts1 5y ago
  that would be me. I go elsewhere where the grass is greener.
• rambambram 5y ago
  I heard some nice tweets today. It was sunny, I was in the park, and the birds tweeted just beautiful!
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• hprotagonist 5y ago
  We perpetually rediscover this, and we're perpetually astonished.
• newsclues 5y ago
  Twitter is a cesspool and it seems like the people who are disproportionately influential are all on Twitter. I think it’s a bubble that should not have any political power, because it’s a cesspool!
  • sriram_sun 5y ago
    It can be a wellspring of knowledge too. It works for me. I follow knowledge generators in fields I'm interested in.
  • tenebrisalietum 5y ago
    American political discourse involving the uneducated is a cesspool. Social commentary often leads to political discourse which makes that type of speech sadly often one step away from a cesspool. Twitter is simply facilitating it. Stop following people who post political things or opinions about social issues and the toxicity is much, much less.
• typeofhuman 5y ago
  I don't engage on Twitter out of fear. I sometimes see posts that I like and want to retweet but I don't because it means I'm endorsing everything the author has ever said or ever will say. It's not worth the risk. People in my demographic face significant exposure to "cancelling" or ambushing for wrongthink. So it's best for me to avoid it entirely.
  • happytoexplain 5y ago
    >People in my demographic face significant exposure to "cancelling" or ambushing for wrongthink. I don't use Twitter or pretty much say anything publicly for the same reason, but note that this is definitely a risk for people of all demographics.
    • RobertRoberts 5y ago
      It is far more risk for some than others. If you have a minority viewpoint, you get attacked far more easily.
      • Ekaros 5y ago
        I would even say viewpoint of not the vocal minority. That is even near majority viewpoint, but if it is one not popular on twitter it is risky...
        • aksss 5y ago
          Isn't the whole dynamic of twitter that it can make a highly vocal minority viewpoint seem like an oppressive majority viewpoint, where reality is that it's like a heckler's veto on amphetamines with a megaphone?
        • Sebb767 5y ago
          > but if it is one not popular on twitter it is risky... Right now or at any point in the future. People have been canceled for things they said many years and opinion changes ago.
• arbol 5y ago
  25% of Americans sometimes tweet? That seems very high. I only know a couple of people who use Twitter...
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • Sir_Son_Son 5y ago
    The actual poll seems to ask "ever used". I believe that 25% of Americans have every used Twitter. I believe the number is probably much higher since "ever used" could mean anything from tweeted to seen a tweet.
  • moltke 5y ago
    I had one ten years ago when I was a teenager. I wonder if I'm part of that "sometimes tweets" category.
  • mftb 5y ago
    It is. The statistic the article is actually referencing is that ~25%, "use twitter"[0]. That most likely indicates they at least open Twitter. Another post from the same site, the article references, has the headline that about 10% of those create 80% of the content[1]. Bottom-line a fraction of 25% sometimes tweet. [0]https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/04/07/social-media-use-in-2021/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/04/07/social-media... [1]https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-twitter-users/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-tw...
    • kbelder 5y ago
      Yeah, I have to use twitter sometimes to check for immediate status bulletins from certain companies. I just hold my nose, check their stream, and immediately exit. And, of course, sometimes I accidently click on a link on HN that points to Twitter without realizing it, and I have to NOPE back out as fast as possible.
  • ApolloFortyNine 5y ago
    If that Pew Research survey is there only source (it's the one they link when they make the claim) it looks like 25% of Americans use twitter. But that doesn't mean that 25% actually makes tweets. It's probably possible to cross that with public twitter numbers on active tweeters, but I've heard 1% make 99% of the tweets before, and in my own experience that seems accurate. Most people I know who use twitter use it to stay up to date with creators they care about.
• alias_neo 5y ago
  I kept Twitter to "advertise" when I write technical blogs which I do very little of these days due to time. I follow a bunch of tech type stuff I'm interested in, but honestly, it's become more of a place to vent and whine about this or that. When I step back and look at it from afar, it's kinda what Facebook was when I left it a decade or so ago; people whining, and any subject worth commenting on is too controversial to do on the likes of Twitter where nuance is easily lost in so few characters. I see no real need for me to be on Twitter anymore. I'm not on any other social networks aside from linkedin, which also seems to have lost its professional focus.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • AitchEmArsey 5y ago
    It is a sign of the trying times we live in that I saw the extra "z"s in your post and instead of assuming a typo, I immediately think of Russian hackers infiltrating this platform.
    • alias_neo 5y ago
      Hehe the truth is much less nefarious; I was typing this on mobile, my 2 year old was climbing on me as I type and my wife was calling us both to hurry up and get to the dinner table, or else! Edit: and to explain why z's, it's exactly above the comma "," on my Android phone (Gboard), and it's easy to miss when you can't see!
      • adhesive_wombat 5y ago
        While we're on the subject of things with horrible UX (Twitter), why is there no forward slash on GBoard as a long-press alternative but there is a backslash?!
• mwt 5y ago
  Is there a link to a podcast or article that I'm missing? The authors throw out this big claim > It turns out, you're right. We dug into the data and found that, in fact, most Americans are friendly, donate time or money, and would help you shovel your snow. They are busy, normal and mostly silent. then follow it up with a couple disjointed statistics and then ends with > The bottom line: Every current trend suggests politics will get more toxic before it normalizes. But the silent majority gives us hope beyond the nuttiness. What? The entire premise around how often people _send_ tweets also doesn't seem like a good foundation. Misinformation (to pick only one relevant thing about social) comes from _consuming_ media. The median user story is probably people skimming endless content (memes, news, etc.) not tweeting everything out.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• Miner49er 5y ago
  > Independents — who are somewhere in the middle This seems factually wrong? Maybe most independents are in between the two parties, but not all. Look at Bernie Sanders for example, I would say he's to the left of the Democratic party. I thought maybe the Gallup poll they are referencing had a weird definition of an independent requiring it to be between the two parties, but I'm not seeing that either.
  • theandrewbailey 5y ago
    Aren't independents people who haven't declared any party affiliations? They are usually in the middle, but could have extreme Democrat or Republican views.
    • rootusrootus 5y ago
      Many of the people I know who are independent (like myself) have strong views, and largely lean one way or the other, but hate the party anyway. I feel this way about the party I most closely align with. We share a lot, but I really don't care at all for how they go about things, or what they consider is the highest priority. So I'm an independent, but I don't want to be associated with them.
    • pessimizer 5y ago
      > They are usually in the middle Is there any evidence for this, or even definition of this? I'd define it as swing voters who tend to mix up their ballot between the two parties, and I'd be surprised if the percentage of people who did that broke double digits.
    • Miner49er 5y ago
      That's my point, but the article says they are in the middle between Democrats and Republicans. They could be anywhere on the political spectrum, however.
  • _ttg 5y ago
    Your hunch is right. The "moderate middle" trope is a product of lazy pundits and independent voters are actually all over the ideological map - https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-moderate-middle-is-a-myth/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-moderate-middle-is-...
• jameskilton 5y ago
  "Never pass up a chance to keep your mouth shut" Words my Dad taught me as I was growing up, but only really sank in the last 5 or so years ago.
  • davio 5y ago
    "What I should have said was nothing"
  • tombert 5y ago
    Similar quote by Mark Twain > It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
    • daptaq 5y ago
      Takes one to know one.
      • SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
        It kind of seems like you are trying to pick a fight with Mark Twain.
        • chasd00 5y ago
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URWLnOJ25uA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URWLnOJ25uA
          • SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
            Swish! (That's amazing.)
    • anotherman554 5y ago
      I'm pretty sure that quote is an insult and not good faith advise.
• aarondf 5y ago
  [Deleted]
  • throwmeariver1 5y ago
    I don't want to take away from your post but you are copy and pasting it all over the place in every thread that mentions twitter or social media... That's against the rules of the site.
    • aarondf 5y ago
      Ah good call, I didn't know that.
      • andrewflnr 5y ago
        Did you really need someone to tell you it would be annoying? Now I know a twitter account I'm definitely going to look askance at.
• 999900000999 5y ago
  The most active social media users are usually people lacking in real life. Think about it, if you have a great job, a great partner and a great life, are you on Twitter arguing 20 to 30 hours a week. The type of person to argue with strangers all day has none of the above. It's also a matter of recognizing how insignificant we all are. No one cares what I think. Hopefully no one ever will. I do want to create games and music for people to enjoy, but if I then start mouthing off about how taxes are evil I hope I'm ignored.
  • paxys 5y ago
    There are two groups – people you describe (who have no life and spend 8 hours a day on Twitter) and people who have made a career out of being a social media personality. Most online spaces today are simply a series of weird interactions between these two groups with the "normal" user stuck in the middle.
  • bradenb 5y ago
    This feels oddly specific. I'm not sure why you can't engage on Twitter and still not be "lacking in real life." Who even gets to define "real life?" And while I'm sure some people spend 20-30 hours per week on Twitter I'm guessing it's such a small percentage of the world that it might as well be statistically insignificant.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • jazzyjackson 5y ago
      > I'm guessing it's such a small percentage of the world that it might as well be statistically insignificant. Exactly! The vast majority of content on social media is produced by a vanishingly small slice of the world's population. The views expressed should not be understood as representative.
    • filoleg 5y ago
      > This feels oddly specific. I'm not sure why you can't engage on Twitter and still not be "lacking in real life." It all depends on your definition of "engaging on Twitter". People reading their compiled follow lists and occasionally posting a thing or two are one thing, and that's definitely doable without "lacking in real life". But I struggle to imagine how one can spend 20-30 hours a week engaging in wild debates on twitter and not "lack in real life". I've noticed similar tendencies in myself recently, but with Discord instead of Twitter. After doing some prolonged soul-searching, I found that to be one of the main reasons.
• RobertRoberts 5y ago
  Can someone explain why they would ever put something on Twitter that is not marketing related? (I get it for business, but why for personal use?)
  • Miner49er 5y ago
    Probably for the same reasons you just posted this comment.
    • RobertRoberts 5y ago
      But I only post here because this community is worth interacting with. Twitter's community is the entire world. (as far as I know)
      • 9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y ago
        According to the article, Twitter only makes up 25% of America, let alone the world.
  • tenebrisalietum 5y ago
    Many artists use it as a platform to show their art. I'm betting it's more popular than DeviantArt for this purpose, for example.
    • Ekaros 5y ago
      Wouldn't that be marketing? Private, but marketing still. At least if those artist also provide commercial services.
      • tenebrisalietum 5y ago
        So a lot of artists post works they've done, and are open for commissions, and post the commissioned art or a retweet to the commissioner's account. This is marketing I guess but not what I typically think of as "fake PR" or "here's a notification of our service with a teaser of content" type of marketing
• subpixel 5y ago
  I don't Tweet. My mother, bless her, already comments on every one of my Instagram posts.
• omgmajk 5y ago
  Not that many people I know use Twitter at all, the place seems overly toxic and whenever I see a thread or tweet it's usually terrible stuff with terrible comments attached to it.
  • ghaff 5y ago
    Twitter is to a significant degree what you make of it and who you follow.
• RicoElectrico 5y ago
  Many people whose articles and projects get regularly posted here only have Twitter listed as the means of contact on their personal webpages. Wish they offered another contact as well.
• hexo 5y ago
  Yea, I don't tweet. I have a twitter but don't see any point to tweet anything. That also means I have 0 followers. Made like 3 comments max. I don't really think about twitter as a social network. For me it's more like complete shitfest which is sometimes informative and/or funny.
  • ASalazarMX 5y ago
    I've tried to curate my activity, followings and topics to have a nicer experience. Like Google News, the curation works well, but slowly degrades in a few weeks until I'm seeing thing I'm not interested in, but their algorithms say people tend to engage with (mostly sports, celebrities, politics). Twitter is specially annoying because it constantly probes you, be it with irrelevant posts to see if you like them, and asking you to confirm what topics you like or dislike. At least it includes a disclaimer when it's doing that.
• Finnucane 5y ago
  twtter has about 70 million US users, out of a population of 330 million (does twitter have an age cutoff for users?). One would presume that twitter is like other services, where a small percentage of the user base is producing a larger percentage of the content. So 'most people don't tweet' isn't really that much of a stretch.
  • pessimizer 5y ago
    The shocking story is that 25% of Americans tweet. As a non-tweeter, I would have assumed that number was more like 1-5%. 25% sounds pretty representative to me. I'm annoyed by how this story seems to be jamming together unrelated things to paint a picture. Are people under the impression that twitter users are big political donors, or that twitter users don't mostly self-identify as independents? Are [capital-I]ndependents "somewhere in the middle," or is that just editorial trying to turn 42% of people into centrist charity-givers?
    • Finnucane 5y ago
      Most independents are not really 'in the middle', however much they may be disillusioned with existing party structures. They tend to lean one way or the other. I'm fairly liberal, but strongly anti-partisan (I've never belonged to a party). I think shrinking party affiliation is a good thing.
      • pessimizer 5y ago
        I agree. I also think that twitter reflects that. The vast majority of political twitter claims to be independent. Axios is doing a thing that centrists do often, which is to equivocate between independents, "swing voters" and centrists in order to make themselves a silent plurality.
• erehweb 5y ago
  • johnNumen 5y ago
    • distrill 5y ago
  • StevePerkins 5y ago
    While I did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016 or 2020, I AM a political independent who doesn't always vote for the Democratic candidate, either. And this notion that roughly 50% of voters are quasi hate criminals is abhorrent. It's always, "Oh, I suppose it's okay if you vote for the wrong party, as long as your candidate is no actual threat to my own ideology. But <most recent Presidential nominee> is just going too far." Except that partisans have been saying this same thing about "<latest Presidential nominee>" for at least 50 years now. This mindset is absurd, and only proves the author's premise about suggesting an isolated bubble.
    • moltke 5y ago
      Comments like this remind me of the political speech scene in "Around the World in 80 Days." America has been extremely partisan pretty much forever.
  • coolso 5y ago
    > But a lot of them voted for a really terrible President In fairness, the media did a really good job making the low gas prices, low inflation, low taxes, record low illegal border crossings, well-handled foreign policy, and record breaking speedy vaccine development of the last administration somehow seem like the most evil thing ever, so a misled public can’t really be blamed too much for who they voted into office now. I think more than anything they were just tired of hearing about it so they voted for the current guy for a little media break.
• izzygonzalez 5y ago
  In analyzing my personal motivations and looking at "common sense" knowledge and psych research on the topic, I've come to the conclusion that we gain a lot of motivational energy from others. We live in worlds of stories and narratives, and those narratives are strengthened when mirrored and shared by others. If someone notices or sees my work or praises me for my work, it is a strong signal to my brain that it's on the right track. It was embarrassing for me to admit this, but I've found it to be a running thread throughout my educational and work career. I suspect it dominates my brain more because of early childhood experiences more, but I'm unsure because it seems taboo to admit to craving acceptance or acknowledgement. Once I began admitting it to myself, it became a big part of what drives my growth. I now know the impact that accountability has on my success. I'd rather feel slightly embarrassed for wanting people to see my toy projects than limit my personal trajectory out of fear. I am mindful of depending on others for validation, and I try to strike a healthy balance between wanting to impress others and wanting to impress myself. Apropos to the topic at hand, I'm using Twitter and Observable to "learn in public". I don't expect or intend to become an influencer. I just know that I can leverage the dopamine hits of upvotes and likes and retweets for my personal growth. I'm a social animal that needs to have his efforts directed through shared structures of meaning. So far, I've leveraged that in multiple areas to great effect.
  • karaterobot 5y ago
    I'm kind of the same way, but I don't have a Twitter account, and haven't really ever had one. I have a private chat server with other people who make things and share them with each other. It's tacitly understood that we support each other's work and provide constructive feedback. Not to mention emojis. It's nice, gives me the brain chemicals I need, and I don't need to get exposed to Twitter. So, if you are hesitant about Twitter for any other reason, I'm here to say that you can learn in public without it.
    • izzygonzalez 5y ago
      That's a great lower-stakes way to approach it. I turned to Twitter because of the threading and big computer science community. I think the vital part is the aspect of accountability. Even just committing to updating a friend on progress and asking them to keep you to your word helps. I've found it hard to get people to do that work because it sometimes requires shifting from "friend" to "boss" mode. I don't really think it's fair to put my loved ones in that position lol
• dogleash 5y ago
  I wish someone would go around interviewing reporters like this writer and ask "How long did it take for you to realize that Twitter is not real life? Why do you think you were mislead for so long? How do you plan to avoid similar errors in judgement in the future?" Except the social status journos have make this like of inquiry uncouth. It is someone both one of the most pressing issues of our media landscape, yet seen as a simple-minded and undignified perspective that sophisticated media won't touch.
• RobRivera 5y ago
  whats twitter?
• annoyingnoob 5y ago
  People that regularly use social media seem to think they know everything or can know everything. Seems myopic from an outside perspective.
• ayngg 5y ago
  I thought this was fairly well understood that these communities follow some sort of Pareto ratio where a minority of people churn out most of the content, or are responsible for sending content to the top of feeds. I recall reading about it with regards to Twitter and Reddit, and it probably applies in some form or another with every social network that allows for passive participants.
  • nomdep 5y ago
    And yet, companies and conference organizers seem to think the Twitter mob represents everyone
• zelphirkalt 5y ago
  I disagree with the wording of the article or its title's wording. Not being on Twitter is being called "silent"? Is that the yardstick for not being silent? I'd rather communicate outside of giant echo chambers and text length limitations and engagement optimized (a)social spying media, with real people and speak out there. With family, friends, the neighbors or the neighborhood, for example. Outrage about whatever on Twitter will not help anyone much, except Twitter. I would also guess, that more than 25% of people in the US vote in elections. Surely that is not "being silent".
  • cgrealy 5y ago
    The "silent majority" is a specific reference. It was popularised by Nixon during the Vietnam war. It doesn't literally mean they are silent, just that they are not the focus of the media.
• Pooge 5y ago
  The 1% rule[1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule
• omoikane 5y ago
  Can we also get some stats on number of users/lurkers who don't comment on Hacker News?
• toastercat 5y ago
  I tried being a Twitter user for a bit last year, mostly because a lot of engineers I admire use it to communicate about interesting topics and also their work. But after a while, I realized even they will pollute my feed with politically divisive topics, whether it be from them retweeting something, or liking a tweet, or even entering into the fray themselves -- Twitter will find a way to get me to see it. For a while, I resolved "OK, if anyone retweets this stuff, I will simply unfollow them" but eventually this felt self-defeating. I know a lot of folks in my field side by the stance that everything is political, even code. Call me irresponsible, but I've honestly led a much happier and stress-free life living in the fantasy world where that is not the case, and I can enjoy my hobby in open-source without Github issues becoming a shouting match that spans 200 comments from people who aren't even invested in the codebase. EDIT: typos
  • dheera 5y ago
    I don't Tweet because Twitter never promotes my post to hashtags and people who might be interested in my content. People I respond to with questions never reply. Basically, nobody reads my stuff. It's a waste of time if you're not already famous.
  • spion 5y ago
    I actually wonder if getting more people involved in politics (well, political activism, which is somewhat distinct from political action) is doing any good. It only works if you involve more people on your side, but it seems like this tends to result with more people getting involved on the other side as well.
  • madeofpalk 5y ago
    For what it's worth, you can disable retweets for people (and I think your entire feed).
    • themanmaran 5y ago
      Not for everyone unfortunately. But there is a ruby script that does it for you. https://gist.github.com/robinsloan/a045d26c513681f13680f319fbfc84d2 https://gist.github.com/robinsloan/a045d26c513681f13680f319f...
• thenerdhead 5y ago
  I always think of the ratio of 90% consume, 9% contribute, and 1% create. This is a phenomenon on wikipedia, GitHub, twitter, and other places. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule The big question is...what side do you want to be on?
  • datavirtue 5y ago
    Nothing gets you high like creating.
  • dredmorbius 5y ago
    On larger platforms, the ratio is probably far closer to 90%, 9.85%, 0.15%. I've seen this ratio at Google+[1] and again on a recently-shuttered Diaspora instance (520 MUAs of 350k total profiles). There's a very strong power law between the number of presentations of content and the number of accounts reaching that level. Facebook sees ~5 billion-with-a-b "pieces" of content (I'm presuming these are posts, comments, images, or videos, though given other engagement-inflation, might and quite possibly do also include likes or reshares), per day. The top daily shares ... are typically in the millions-to-tens-of-millions range.[2] This is also typical of any winner-takes-all metric and follows from the inherent limits of population attention and time. Social media seems to occupy ~45 minutes/day for many people, and if you start dividing out 2,700 seconds among messages, there are only so many messages a typical person can read or view in a day: 10 is 270s (4.5 minutes) each, 100 is 27 seconds, 1,000 is 2.7 seconds. I suspect for most people, the number is in the 10--50 range. It's not so much whether or not you want to be a producer or consumer. It's whether or not the channel is providing relevant, useful, accurate, and actionable information. For the most part, social media probably doesn't. ________________________________ Notes: 1. See: https://blogs.perficient.com/2015/04/14/real-numbers-for-the-activity-on-google-plus/ https://blogs.perficient.com/2015/04/14/real-numbers-for-the... That's based on a 500k+ true random sample of profiles, and is based on my own earlier work based on 50k+ randomly-sampled profiles. 2. There are a few "most popular on Facebook" sites which track the top shares for a given day. I'm not aware of specific systematic tracking over time, though that of course all but certainly exists.
• Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  Doesn't seem it would be an issue worth discussing except in the marketing department of twitter if the media would get over their addiction to sitting at their computers and interpreting the world through tweets they see posted. There's no good reason why Twitter should be considered the default human communication medium but this "silent majority" is only seen as an aberration because of this assumption that Twitter is where one should go when seeking a representative sample of society. There's also a silent majority of people who don't use tiktok but no one outside of tiktok thinks that's a problem.
• vmception 5y ago
  > As polarized as America seems, Independents — who are somewhere in the middle — would be the biggest party. Yes! I love this stat, I hope it holds in other polling. All your friends (that you haven't blocked) are lying to you!
• StopDarkPattern 5y ago
  Its almost like there is a disinformation campaign from a Russian play book. Its almost like there is a corporation that gets paid for user counts and bot clicks. Its almost like the sovereign discourse of our nation is under assault. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
• andrewclunn 5y ago
  "and they don't try to pick fights at school board meetings." And that's where I stopped reading. Because, you know, voicing disagreement at a public forum with people tasked with educating your kids is the same as going on a Twitter rant.
  • SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
    Is it not? Someone going on a "Twitter rant" is voicing disagreement in a public forum about important issues of the day, sometimes even including the topic of educating your kids. I don't think either activity is bad or wrong, but they seem substantially equivalent to me.
• ineptech 5y ago
  Twitter looks like a sunk-cost fallacy run amok. The pitch was that it would become ubiquitous, and it clearly isn't and doesn't seem like it ever will be, but the people who are most heavily invested in it act as if it was, presumably out of self-interest.
  • Ekaros 5y ago
    Now that I think about it. I wonder if those heavily invested think it as part of their job while it generates them hits of dopamine like drugs... So they can easily justify their addiction...
• RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
  I think Twitter has disproportionate influence because all the journalists are on Twitter, and end up amplifying it. How many times have a seen TV hosts just basically read Twitter. Twitter is an easy way for journalists/TV personalities to generate stories.
• hirundo 5y ago
  Editor: "Erica, Mike, I need that story right now." Erica&Mike: "Sorry boss, it isn't written yet, all we have are notes with topics, bullet points and numbered lists." Editor: "Time's up. Publish the notes."
• shireboy 5y ago
  I'm in that group. I've consciously cut out Facebook and Twitter in part because of the toxic echo chambers they've become. HN is about the only place I'll wade in sometimes because the level of discourse seems higher. A little rabbit trail though: Looking at the graph in the article, I'm wondering if US isn't ripe for a party system change. It's not _always_ been Republican vs Democrat in our history. Both sides are incentivized away from supporting a 3rd party out of fear it will help the "other side" and primary systems etc. have entrenched the current 2 party system. But with such great and growing discontent, I wonder if a switch like from Whigs or the handful of other parties won't eventually happen.
  • javajosh 5y ago
    I suspect that there are a LOT of disaffected Republicans who are conservative but not Trumpian authoritarians. In the same way, there are a LOT of disaffected Democrats who are liberals but not woke/cancel culture social justice warriors. So, yeah, I agree - there's room for a new party.
    • jahnu 5y ago
      As a European, comments of this nature confuse me a little. This comments suggests an equivalency. But from this side of the pond I haven't seen the Democrats you describe actually in power and implementing policy. Can't say that about the other side. So why would any Democrats who are liberal but not "woke" be frustrated since those elements of their party wield little if any influence.
      • erichocean 5y ago
        As an American, I'll try to explain how our two parties (and their voters) work in practice. The Left (voters) have two main platforms: economic and cultural. The Right (voters) have two main platforms: economic and cultural. The Left votes for the Democratic Party. The Right votes for the Republican Party. Independents mostly vote one way or another, and a small percentage vote for whoever seems most moderate that particular election. When governing, the Democratic Party works with the Republican Party to implement: 1. The cultural platform of the Left. 2. The economic platform of the Right. The cultural platform of the Right and the economic platform of the Left are not implemented. The Left calls the Democratic-Republican Establishment the "corporate" party and believes the country has moved strongly to the Right over the last 40 years. (They are focusing on the fact that the economic platform of the Right is being implemented.) The Right calls the Democratic-Republican Establishment the "uniparty" and believes the country has moved strongly to the Left over the last 40 years. (They are focusing on the fact that the cultural platform of the Left is being implemented.) This is a stable political system because neither a Left voter nor a Right voter wants to vote for the other party, because then they wouldn't even be getting half of what they want! The Democratic-Republican Establishment doesn't care who people vote for, because it wins either way. The important thing is for voters to believe their vote matters—even though it actually doesn't. The key result is that neither the Left's economic platform nor the Right's cultural platform are ever implemented. (A few legacy cultural issues on the Right, e.g. 2nd Amendment gun rights, still exist. Same with pre-WW2 economic issues on the Left.) Hope this helps!
• nluken 5y ago
  It's frustrating how tough it is to stick to topics you're interested in seeing on Twitter. Even after trying to actively disengage with a lot of the news-based stuff on the site to stop myself from doomscrolling, I still get shown a ton of news and politics on my feed because some of my friends on Twitter like and retweet that kind of stuff. I think it's also kind of strange how much variance there is in the content on the site. Something about the fact that stupid jokes take up the same space and appear in the same way as very serious news feels harmful to me.
• MiddleEndian 5y ago
  I got my twitter account MyfirstnameMylastname somewhere early in the site's existence, probably around 2009. But never really got the appeal of Twitter so I never used it for anything, I'd check it once every six months or so. I eventually learned I share a name with a tech journalist who is very active on Twitter, and occasionally I would get tagged instead instead of him. Every time, I would respond with the Navy Seal Copypasta, broken into eight twitter sized parts. Eventually they banned me for this. And thus ended my Twitter adventure for good.
  • buryat 5y ago
    > Every time, I would respond with the Navy Seal Copypasta, broken into eight twitter sized parts. Eventually they banned me for this. yeah, people like you should be banned
    • gameman144 5y ago
      Is this sarcasm? If not, I'd love to hear the rationale behind this, as to me this seems far less objectionable than lots of things which happen on mainstream Twitter.
      • newsbinator 5y ago
        I suppose the charitable argument for banning would be: it pollutes Twitter without extending any conversations or bringing anybody joy per se. Basically it's spam. Certainly on HN that person would/should be banned right away (which is part of the reason HN is the best place on the internet). But Twitter is a different animal. So are Reddit and 4Chan. Sarcastic copypasta is par for the course.
        • f1refly 5y ago
          > it pollutes Twitter without extending any conversations or bringing anybody joy per se. Basically it's spam. Looking from the outside, this is an accurate description of 99,99% of all messages ever written on twitter. Arguably, the copy pasted text can at least bring a bit of joy which other tweets also fail at.
• Manuel_D 5y ago
  This was never new. Only about 1 in 5 Americans even use Twitter [1]. 1. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/02/10-facts-about-americans-and-twitter/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/02/10-facts-ab...
• rektide 5y ago
  so much salt in the comments. why risk putting yourself in the world? why risk opening your mouth? i dunno, why do you leave your house? a lot of you probably dont really have to. do you not want to engage in the world? are you not curious about other people, interested in heearing them think? does having direct access to incredibly high grade people not excite you for some reason? do you not want to grow and get better, do you value being safe & secure so much as to pass up exchanging & interacting with so many? where else do you go to engage in cereberal, vast conversations? do you have world class thinkers, developers, journalists & researchers that you pow-wow with regularly? are you entirely uninterested in seeing some of their lives, participating together with them? getting to join the global consciousness has been an incredible privilege. having a place for my thoughts in public, being open to reflection, getting to share & hear others open streams of communication, getting to engage in all manners of debate & discovery... this is 100% the cyberspace i signed up for. when twitter comes up as a topic tbis grousing & moaning about it, how everything that happens there is all shit &, from only bad edgy people... do you not look in the mirror when you cast such bitter hateful negative accusations at all? do you not see yourself enacting the bad acts you decry? this is such enormous slanted bias, rules out, out of hand, the possibility of positive use & engagement. is anyone at all interested in the absurdly high value, in the incredible all connectedness, in the ability to throw wide your doors of perception here? this moaning & whining about this incredible global public shared hypermedium, this Fear Uncertainty & Doubt about putting yourself into the world, none of it makes sense to me. opt in, go online, share, grow! as for thr topic at hand, well. i do think a lot of people, frankly, dont have much to contribute. honing a sense of insight & perspective & exploration, or engaging deeply in some worldly endeavor; these are not totally common attributes, and you need something to bother to be tweeting about, something that has value. im not surprised so many opt for quiet. i want to think of how to make valuable so many's participation, how to refine & grow intellects in this online social program, but i havent come.up with a lot of strong ideas for it. and sure here's definitely plenty of pointless blathering about, from people who would do better to go offline & become someone first, absolutely. personally i stayed in generally smaller circles where i was not as subject to the endless peanut gallery, and was able to use the tool effectively to understand who was adjacent to my circles & interesting & who was wasting everyonecs time. part of the whole experience of twitter is establishing better internal filters, getting quick & fast at finding value, honing in on the interesting, the gems, the things with hooks or shininess, amid a lot of kind of ambient/experiential bits of background information about your contaxts, a connectivity maybe not valuable very often but which does kind of stitch us a bit closer to those we come to regard as in our circles.
• nikolay 5y ago
  2022 feels like the pre-1989 era in Communist Bulgaria - people only shared what they think in their closest circles.
• calumetregion 5y ago
  Highly online life leads to instability. It's like living your life in a packed subway car. Stress response. This is why cities are less healthy for you as well.
  • dlp211 5y ago
    > This is why cities are less healthy for you as well. This is news to me.
    • calumetregion 5y ago
      http://schizophrenia.com/prevention/country.html http://schizophrenia.com/prevention/country.html
      • dlp211 5y ago
        So this is interesting, but I think the claim is overstated, or at least, this doesn't satisfy the claim that cities are less healthy. This show a positive correlation of an increase in specific mental health cases, but that is looking at health only along a single axis. I'm not saying your claim is wrong, just that this isn't sufficient. There is other evidence that shows that city living is healthier with longer lifespans and reduced obesity.
        • calumetregion 5y ago
          It's a fascinating subject and one I love to "argue" about when I'm traveling for work and at a bar in the city, people get really fired up! We all dig in to support our life choices. People in the city tend to be younger and higher income - both skew the numbers. Access to health services - advantage city vs rural. But the stress level is off the charts higher in a city. This is terrible for you. There is some evidence that suburban or exurban might be the sweet spot, where you get the benefit of access to care and less daily stress. Walking and movement is important too, so if you can combine income with small town living (community) in an active way you may be way ahead of the game.
        • 5y ago
• jhoechtl 5y ago
  I am one of those. For a simple reason: It had no effect. As a sidenote back in the days I worked for a university and we did research in public policy making. How social media would make a difference as it empowers the underprivileged. In my opinion almost none of that came true. Those which make an effect are the ones in power. The rest is cats video and advertisement disguised as influencers.
• Atlas667 5y ago
  This is almost exclusively the fault of media trying to engage viewers through culture war. These people [one random, average person passionate about something they know little about] are saying these things[taken out of context by reporter or site] about you[random attribute you will identify with]. Media demographics are killing harmony. These people feed our brains. They are our eyes beyond what our real eyes can see. Which is not very far. That's how people come to hate people they've never met. Or how wars are started.
• bena 5y ago
  I'm in mostly read-only mode on most social media. I only post in response to people I personally know for the most part and occasionally a few small-ish, independent creators whose work I support. I sincerely believe we, humans as a species, do not handle scale well at all. There's just a limit to what we can fathom or process. And social media has scaled beyond our ability to comprehend how to socially interact with it.
• hereforphone 5y ago
  There is another silent majority: those who have their opinions cancelled by social media outlets. This includes Twitter.
• UnpossibleJim 5y ago
  So, this article states that 42% of Americans identify as politically independent. This beats the next largest political identity (Democrats, 29%) by 13%. Yet, the political system has been rigged - obviously so, for anyone who cares to look - so that an independent party fails to get the 5% necessary to get onto the ballot and future funding for the next election cycle for presidential running. How is it that there is nothing that can be done to alleviate this type of obvious voter suppression and electoral corruption on a national scale? I understand this is tertiary to the title, but makes up a large part of the article, so I thought I'd bring it up.
  • MrYellowP 5y ago
    Nothing can be done, because the system is owned by the corrupt, which means that the system is corrupt. The only solution against this problem is violence. Despite what a lot of completely delusional and clueless morons believe, voting solves nothing as long as all parties are basically run by rich people and or paid career politicians. And I'm not even going to dive into the details. They're not necessary. You have not just the politicians against you, you also have the media against you, which means that you have most people against you. Unless you manage to get people to realize what's going on, things will only change when those in charge want things to change. Then it'll happen on their terms, they will provide solutions to problems they created and we all are going to pay for it.
    • vlunkr 5y ago
      I don't know what your political leanings are, but do you realize this is the position of the people who stormed the capitol building?
      • Ekaros 5y ago
        Ever wondered how that was even possible? Like how bad must the security be for bunch of unarmed random civilians to enter and have access to rather important location? Almost seems like manufactured. Or lot of people should be fired for incompetence...
• 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
  This article or ones like it are, IMHO, long overdue. There is a bias online for people who are always online. It sounds obvious but "tech" companies and people online ignore or have a blind spot for people who remain offline. "Tech" companies and avid internet users generally see the world through their computers. If something is not represented online, then it is unlikely to register with them as being relevant. For example, as alluded to this by this Axios article, the opinions of people who do not express their opinions online. It is rare to find someone online advising readers to ditch their pocket computers and disconnect their laptops. It would be like a newspaper pre-internet advising readers to stop buying newspapers. Therefore, everything read online must be weighed against this self-serving bias. Web traffic is the lifeblood of Google, Facebook and their ilk. If people go offline, the losses would be substantial. The civilised world can survive offline, as it did when many of us were born, and for centuries before, but Big Tech and their wannabes cannot. This is because, generally, they are only internediaries (middlemen). They sit on a computer network, observe and manipulate traffic of the people who use it. These companies want people online 24/7. As the article states only a minority of people have complied. Contrary to the title, this offline majority is neither new nor silent.
  • mabub24 5y ago
    It's an evolution on the Chattering Classes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chattering_classes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chattering_classes
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• irrational 5y ago
  What about people who don't use Twitter, at all? Or does "tweet" encompass both viewing Twitter and posting on Twitter? Anyway, so the bottom line, is the squeaky wheel gets the grease?
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• ar_lan 5y ago
  Twitter is the fastest way for me to feel like I'm a completely worthless human being, especially in the tech sector. It overwhelmingly emphasizes the following, from my experience: 1. If you are not famous, you don't matter. 2. Front-end engineers are invariably the most important and skillful, and backend engineers really aren't valuable. 3. If you hold any position that's even accidentally politically incorrect, you will be publicly shamed for it, and some people are quite relentless at bringing up tiny past mistakes. Overall, it seems like a fairly useless space unless you can take advantage of the above 3, or if you want to have the lowest self-esteem possible as rapidly as possible.
  • jelling 5y ago
    > 3. If you hold any position that's even accidentally politically incorrect, you will be publicly shamed for it, and some people are quite relentless at bringing up tiny past mistakes. A friend got disinvited from speaking at an NLP convention, not because of something he said or did, but because his employer was tangentially related to national security contracts. Of course, the person that organized the dis-invite also used it as an opportunity to get themselves ahead.
    • rubatuga 5y ago
      Wait a minute what kind of NLP you talking about here?
  • Clubber 5y ago
    >2. Front-end engineers are invariably the most important and skillful, and backend engineers really aren't valuable. As mainly a back end developer, I find this statement the opposite of reality. :) Good thing I don't post on Twitter.
  • kzrdude 5y ago
    I'm not a fan of twitter either, mainly for reason (3). It is a platform where it's very easy to be publically shamed in an unproportional manner. In comparison, forums like hacker news and reddit don't focus on the person writing, but focuses on the conversation. People can respond in a mean way (unfortunately) to a comment, but not "to the person", it doesn't have the same dynamic. The potential for huge reach of any single tweet is a big factor in giving twitter this bad dynamic. That we feel relatively safe to have conversations, to try arguments and to sometimes be wrong about stuff is healthy. Maybe I'm confused and wrong about what I'm writing in this comment. Someone will tell me, but I'll live. :)
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• iambateman 5y ago
  The problem with Twitter is simple. If someone agrees with a post, they “like” it. If someone disagrees, they tweet in response. This was the ONLY option until a few weeks ago with the rollout of the downvote button, so we will see if downvoting changes this dynamic. Suppose a tweet gets 90 likes, and 10 negative responses. That’s 90% positive response. But if someone clicks on the tweet, they’ll see the one original tweet followed by 10 disagreeable posts, which can make it seem like fringe ideas are actually much more mainstream.
  • alexmingoia 5y ago
    I agree. This is an astute observation, and I think it applies to any online discussion system.
• amluto 5y ago
  I have a different problem with Twitter: the mechanics of using it keep getting worse. Once upon a time you could read Twitter without logging in. This meant that one could communicate via Twitter to anyone without much friction. Now Twitter is barely functional logged out, and even making an account just to read Twitter is a hassle: you need to give an email address and then get persistent nagged. Twitter wants verification and phone number, it sends spam (I mean helpful links to content), and it generally tries to drive engagement in a way that drives away users. In short, people who want to have readers want a platform that makes reading easy. Twitter is no longer that platform.
  • ceilingcorner 5y ago
    Nitter.net is a life saver for this.
• ceilingcorner 5y ago
  I have lost a lot of respect for certain very accomplished people because they tweet their hot takes on current issues constantly. I follow you because you’re an awesome musician/writer/entrepreneur/whatever, not because I need your extremely uninformed opinion on geopolitics or social issues.
• riffic 5y ago
  Twitter, as a service, is incredibly user-hostile[0]. It's not all that surprising to see a quote like this: > 75% of people in the U.S. never tweet. [0] Check it: https://www.google.com/search?q=user+hostile+twitter+site:news.ycombinator.com https://www.google.com/search?q=user+hostile+twitter+site:ne...
• joe_the_user 5y ago
  Choosing Twitter in particular as vehicle to say "most people aren't public online" has an odd logic to it. Twitter has a reputation as one of the most toxic of social networks. Stories of Tweets that exposed someone to tremendous harassment or embarrassment are rife. I make quite a variety of posts and comments online, occassionally publishing article in blog and so-forth. But I avoid Twitter in particular "like the plague", which it seems resemble. Yet it also seems to be true that Twitter is taken as the standard of "being public" by much of the press. And it seems like this standard comes from both journalists operating by the instant-answer, instant-gratification standard of Twitter and an overall, "you have to be willing to take the heat to be credible" attitude of those in high government, private industry, bureaucracies and so-forth. And this expresses a toxicity to not just Twitter but our entire society.
  • civilized 5y ago
    I would guess that the representation of public figures on Twitter is pretty high, maybe 70% or more (absolutely no data behind this, just my guess based on personal experience and a subjective definition of "public figure"). That said, the vast majority of those people just use Twitter to announce their various public events, professional accomplishments, media releases, etc. IMO this is the way to go, unless you enjoy and get something out of the rough-and-tumble of direct Twitter engagement. I used to for a little while, but got over it. It definitely made me a more contentious person, for better and worse.
• upofadown 5y ago
  It would be good if mainstream media outlets would read this article and understand the points made in it. All to often news ends up being something that someone said on Twitter. It's like going down to the local pub to troll for quotes...
• FailMore 5y ago
  So lovely to read a short article that's straight to the point
• kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  "and they don't try to pick fights at school board meetings." wtf - way to pick a political side in an article. So "normal, nice" people are people who never question the government, especially not if Democrats are in power? These people were picking fights about the government transitioning their kids. Or rather, I guess from their perspective, the government picked the fight.
• jscheel 5y ago
  I know this isn't the main takeaway from the article, but I'm highly suspect of the "independence" of voters claiming to be independent. This is merely anecdote, but many people I know who claim to be independent are really just "aspirationally-independent". The like to think of themselves as open-minded and independent, but when they vote, they vote one way, and one way only. Looking into it a bit, this is not uncommon: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/few-americans-who-identify-as-independent-are-actually-independent-thats-really-bad-for-politics/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/few-americans-who-ident... and https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/01/08/most-political-independents-actually-arent/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/01/0....
• znpy 5y ago
  Hello, i'm part of the twitter majority that doesn't tweet, despite being on the platform since ~2008. Before anybody asks: - twitter is trash - you just can't have proper conversations (let alone, discussion) with such limits (140 and now 280 characters) - there are basically two types of people on twitter - one is: people doing self-promotion / self-marketing (this includes engineers tweeting about tech stuff and journalists forced to entertain readers) - the other is: toxic people that have an empty life and need to fill it by having arguments with other people and are going to attack anyone on anything (and make no mistake: these people can be anywhere from the far right to the far left). - most people's opinion don't matter anyway - I realized years ago that my life just isn't enriched by social media
• gm 5y ago
  Among the best mental health decisions of my life is to get rid of Twitter from my everyday life. I still have an account (the only reason to delete it would be as a sign of protect, but I don't care, and Twitter doesn't care that I don't care). I do not visit the site on my own. There's just so much negativity, cruelty, and stupid thoughts. How can anyone post anything insightful, nuanced, and worth reading with such a character limit? I realized that interesting tweets (or rather, Twitter threads) have a way of finding me through other means. That's the only time I visit Twitter. I'm ok on missing out on ideas that do not find me through other means. The vomit to caviar ratio on Twitter is way too high.
• JSavageOne 5y ago
  I never understood why Twitter has a character limit. It reduces discussion to tiny empty soundbites. People get around it via "Twitter threads", which are a giant pain in the ass to create (vs. writing a simple post) and navigate through. Does Twitter just hold on to the character limit for nostalgia purposes? I mean if they really wanted to keep that limit, at the least why not create a separate Twitter without a character limit as an experiment, and see what the demand is?
• emerged 5y ago
  So glad my toxic/addictive social network experiences were years ago on old style forums. It’s been wild watching the rest of the world go through the same thing but completely public not on some niche forum nobody reads. If these networks are here to stay we very clearly need to at least train people from a young age how to mentally handle social networks.
• HNHatesUsers 5y ago
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• 0xedd 5y ago
  Don't use Twitter. It's rigged to piss you off. Use federated microblogging and join a like minded instance. I don't know about web 3.0 but the former is very appealing and works ok.
  • pxtail 5y ago
    How to discover these instances? I would imagine that downside of this approach would be the danger of existing only within certain bubbles and never being exposed to different point of view.
    • Barrin92 5y ago
      if you're interested in checking out mastodon, here's a recommender system https://instances.social/ https://instances.social/
• dqpb 5y ago
  I assumed most tweets aren’t by real people anymore.
• donatj 5y ago
  I've been using Twitter for something like 12 years now. I can count on one hand the number of actual positive interactions I've had in the last couple years. I'm my experience you can't even ask people mildly pointed questions anymore without getting blocked. You can't even try to start a conversation anymore. It's just person makes grand sweeping statment. You cheer them on, ignore them, or get blocked. It's not a healthy environment. It's just grandstanding. It used to feel really democratizing, anyone could comment on anything. Now between people only allowing people they follow to reply and the percentage of harmless to innate comments that get hidden behind "Show additional replies, including those that may contain offensive content" it really doesn't feel like it once was. In their attempts to make it more "friendly", they both made it less friendly and killed the value proposition. It's just a place to build a cult of personality these days.
  • EastSmith 5y ago
    I don't think twitter was made for interactions, but interactions drive engagement metrics, so twitter optimizes for interaction. I am using twitter since 2008, and I have like 5 interactions per year. I unfollow noisy people. 3 tweets a day? You are too noisy. I also do not hit the like or retweet buttons a lot. Around events I follow some extra accounts (Ukraine) that are noisy. Then unfollow at some point.
• cabaalis 5y ago
  This just means there is a stabilizing force trying to maintain peace and status quo while figures on either sides of issues sway the long game.
• brailsafe 5y ago
  Like others have mentioned, even if you just want to use twitter to follow other engineers or designers etc.. Twitter will invariably find a way to show you their annoying political takes, and other from people they liked or are even vaguely connected. I was on Twitter for a little while about 10 years ago now for the same reason, but then ditched it in 2015/16 when I started seeing this happen more. Everyone wanted social points for shitting on whoever was deemed to be on the wrong side of history or whatever it was then. I used the t ruby cli for twitter and backed up my lists of follows and followers, then unfollowed everyone without deactivating my account. Interestingly, even while following nobody, I still got the same shit in my feed. I eventually did an official twitter backup (which is admittedly quite a good offline webapp), and deleted the account, because fuck that place. My approach was the digital version of tossing all your potentially useful possessions in a bag and putting it in a storage locker; if you don't think to go and get it for a year, toss it in the garbage.
• FpUser 5y ago
  I do not tweet. Neither do my friends and few programmers I know.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• TZubiri 5y ago
  Haha, that's me
• ryder9 5y ago
  [dead]
• xhevahir 5y ago
  This is more of a general comment on the subject, but I don't agree with the emphasis on the Internet's role in American political polarization. The Internet definitely has exacerbated the problem, but I think the writing was on the wall in the mid-nineties (i.e., before most Americans had access), when Newt Gingrich got to practice this style of politics as Speaker of the House.
• fleddr 5y ago
  Outrage always wins when it comes to attention. The traditional news will never report on things that are going fine, they hyper focus on the (usually) bad exception. This incentive is to strong and perverse that they gladly misrepresent facts, dramatize them or even just make up stories. When I discuss the day with my girlfriend, she won't tell me how the day largely went fine, the conversation is about that one colleague doing something wrong. It's in all of us, we direct attention to deviations. Twitter exploits this to the very maximum on a scale not possible in the physical world. The issue is not that people say outrageous things, they'll always do that. The real issue is that those views spread far and wide at breakneck speed, and thereby become popular or even culturally dominant. Which is made possible by simple things like a retweet button and inflated follower counts. When you see somebody having 100K followers, you may think this is due to 100K people somehow searching for a person, browsing through lists of experts or having a connection with them in real life. Something you might call organic followers. That's not how it works at all. Based on engagement, after a particular threshold, it's a recommended account shown in front of many people, after that it snowballs and escalates. And this is how you can have somebody "verified" and with 200K followers, that in real life is unemployed, has no particular useful expertise or insight, zero accomplishments, and absolutely thrive on the platform. And it gets worse. These mid-tier influencers find each other. And if they align politically, they become an unstoppable force able to plaster the entire network with the dumbest of takes. As this works so well, they become addicted to it. There can't be a quiet day, fresh outrage has to be constantly invented.
• rubyist5eva 5y ago
  I've been on twitter for only a few weeks since there is an election coming up in my country and the parties have a rather big presence there and I have no other social media, and I like that I can remain pseudonymous (as opposed to Facebook which has a real name policy). I've also been following the Ukraine invasion on there as well...I don't know if it's just the content I'm following but boy, it's tiring.
• cronix 5y ago
  Silent majority....of what, Axios? Twitter users? Article never says. > 75% of people in the U.S. never tweet. The above is also a link in the article, which if you follow it, it states > roughly seven-in-ten Americans say they ever use any kind of social media site How many people over 12 in the US actually even have a Twitter account? I doubt it's even 15%. According to the source the article linked to, about 70% use NO social media. I know twitter is popular with the HN crowd, but only 2 people I know actually use it and they only use it for business accounts. In my family, there are 7 younger people between 15-30. 0 use Twitter. They use instagram and snapchat mostly.
  • jdminhbg 5y ago
    > > roughly seven-in-ten Americans say they ever use any kind of social media site ... > According to the source the article linked to, about 70% use NO social media. I think you misread. It says "ever use," not "never use." So 70% do use social media.
• aiyen 5y ago
  The need for this article shows the macro herd mentality of Twitter in general. My knee jerk reaction was that obviously, a lot of people don’t tweet. But I think when you’re part of a group, whether virtual or physical, you may start to think that the majority of people think like you, hangs around the same space as you, and has the same life experiences as you.
• tharne 5y ago
  As Dave Chappelle says, "Twitter isn't a real place".
• qiskit 5y ago
  New? Most people in the US and the world haven't tweeted. I haven't and nobody I know has. Most people don't even have a twitter account.
• Arrivest 5y ago
  This post has 500 comments, but 5k people have actually read it. That's the real silent majority, whose opinions you'll never know. All social medias are like this, but people always forget about this fact, because it's the 500 comments that draw your attention.
• rubatuga 5y ago
  If there aren't many people who are interested in voting for either candidate, the easiest way to win is not to convince the other side, but to push people who weren't interested in voting, to vote. This is usually done through outrage tactics. As we see both republican and democrat go down in popularity overall, we can see that these tactics are being used more and more.
• lifeplusplus 5y ago
  I tried using Twitter but it's kinda disorienting... Reddit is easier to follow. And doesn't have character limit so you can actually respond properly than just saying one liners. If talk is just a screaming match I'd rather just play apex legends, much more enjoyable... Also if there are 5673 people with same low effort flawed logic then kind of pointless to reply to one person.. it's better to do public announcement. Make a YouTube video, write a blog post, or maybe even rant on Reddit ...
• SLWW 5y ago
  Something I've been learning is what i have come to think of as an antidote to narcissism (and the effects of narcissists); I'm in a much better place in my life then ever before, I'm happy, i view people closer to who they are then ever before... and I enjoy the journey. Simply, to achieve this; I've stopped looking for "friends" who reflect me, as they are useless and a waste of time and resource. I already have me, I am myself, I don't need others to validate those things as they do it worse or for the wrong reasons, except for fundamental beliefs, an example of this is comparing fundamentals with music, because if we believe that "murder is wrong", and "don't steal" we can get along much better, avoid serious violations... with music on the flip side i don't care if you like something different, or play something different. If you are creating it I will listen, if you are listening to it on the radio I will plug my ears and we with both be happy. These are two good examples as they demonstrate something I believe is the answer for a much happier way of life. Simply being, I am willing to hear something i don't like, because I choose how valuable it is. If you are an idiot I may tell you, if I think it will help you; if i don't think it will help, I won't say anything, and i will try my best to forget the conversation. Your words only matter because I allow it to matter to me; regardless of the actual implications of your words on reality. If you say something like; "the sky is red and you are a retard for disagreeing with me, I will hear no argument" (this is exaggerated for the point), how would I respond? I used to get offended, because "I'm not retarded, ur the idiot"; now I try to respond (and i'm far from perfect, getting better) with something along the lines of, "good conversation, I disagree, lol bye" and laugh about it later. It's not valuable to continue, and the worst thing that happened is I no longer respect them, if I ever did before. One less loser in my life, overall better outlook, less stress, nice. Nothing you say or do will matter to anyone else but by those who respect you. Another thing, I don't respect you, you don't respect me. In the online world you have formed an opinion on me based on only my presence, if this is the first time you have read anything I have written, your whole view of me is being built only from the few paragraphs here. You don't respect me, you insult me when you do that; making me not who i am, but a simplified cartoon which is only my shadow. Of course I'm speaking generally, i have met a few exceptions and I know there are more out there who just don't assume who i am by a few hundred words, but it's gonna take a long time to find you. I've went on too long about this, so I'll wrap it up. The only concession I make to actually caring is with people i have known for a long time, who have proven they really care, and those that really want to grow as people. I choose, at a detriment to myself usually, to value their words, no matter how hard it is to understand, or how much it hurts. Simply speaking, only give people the power they deserve, and some random on twitter doesn't matter (to you). :)
• bobobob420 5y ago
  nice to see twitter is the new facebook. This is what happens when your platform is geared towards lowest hanging fruit of content
• oregano 5y ago
  Ive tried using twitter at least four times and found it exhausting. Never kept it up longer than a week. I also don’t have fb so maybe that’s common for my target demographic.
• pengaru 5y ago
  As far as I can tell all "social media" is a raging dumpster fire, which self-selects for most engagement with people who actually enjoy spending their time in a dumpster fire. But this all seems like a fantastic feature, just ignore it all! There are so many better things to do with your time. The people you most want nothing to do with are being most consumed by it, leaving the beaches, parks, campgrounds, trails, etc. more available for your enjoyment. Let the twits have at it, good riddance.
• spyder 5y ago
  Huh, new? The majority of people were always just content consumers not producers. The short form content platforms are probably reducing this gap but producing even just low quality content takes more effort than consuming.
• B1FF_PSUVM 5y ago
  One day we'll come to accept that media are toxic in the doses we're consuming.
• b3nji 5y ago
  “New”? Aren't these the people who have always been, and the “new”, is the small majority on Twitter thinking they represent the vast majority of society? Thinking about it further, my government appears to listen to a lot of what Twitter has to say. I wonder if it's easy to control a country using a high number of well-placed Twitter commentators designed to usher in whatever those in power actually wanted.
• habosa 5y ago
  Yes! I am so sick of seeing people draw conclusions from Twitter. Twitter is an incredible real-time data source for factual information (ex: is something literally on fire?) but not a good source for real-time opinion polls. It only gives you the opinion of people who feel the need to share with the entire world, which is a certain personality type. There are two groups who I think need to learn this lesson: 1. Jouralists. I constantly see statements like "People are <X emotion> about <Y>" based on a handful of sassy tweets. That's not journalism. 2. Product Managers. If you get 10 tweets asking for a feature you'll hear the PM say "our users really want <X>" which is not true. 10 extremely online users want <X>. I am convinced that this is how so many apps get dark mode but don't get actual new features. Note: yes I realize I am posting on HN about how nobody should listen to people online. The hypocrisy is real.
• amai 5y ago
  Twitter should ask users to solve a captcha before each tweet. Not only would that solve the problem of bots, but it would give everyone a chance to think longer before tweeting.
• graphenus 5y ago
  The biggest takeout for me is that most people so not support any of the two parties in the country. A clear sign that more parties and a more diverse spectrum of opinions are needed!
• Mentlo 5y ago
  I was talking about this to friends the other day. I hypothesised this might happen in a paper (apologies, not in English, and not hosted online, I think, anymore) 15 years ago - with the basis of hypothesis being that algorithms that are optimised towards the wrong objective can easily form echo chambers that amplify a certain attitude - but to a dip in/dip out user it looks like a consensus forming - because humans are not good at perceiving difference in problems past a certain scale. What I couldn't imagine back then is that Twitter is going to be the main platform (I was using a nascent FB and early 00's bulletin boards as the examples of the system). And Twitter is absolutely bonkers in terms of how it polarizes opinion. If I didn't know any better, I would think that it was specifically designed to achieve this purpose. If I needed to design a system that polarizes opinion more than Twitter, I would be hard pressed to do it better. 1. The 160/240 character limit forces you to reduce topics to their most impactful tenets - which strips out all of the nuance and grounds you into an extreme position. For the one expressing the opinion - it will always look more benign than for the one reading it, because the writer can't fully strip it's perception through bias of known context. 2. The users have "gotten around that" by starting threads - and Twitter has started optimising the feed to show threaded views - but threads are not generated "at once" (there are tools for that, but most users don't use them). They are generated post by post - and in a fairly complex topic (such as, oh I don't know, the war in Ukraine) - this will mean >10 tweets as part of the thread. Each of those tweets is replyable and because you can like parts rather than the whole thread - it will show in people's feeds piecewise -> which will create discussions on parts of the point, not the full context. 3. In turn - these piecewise reactions are forming a base for someone else's reaction, where you've gone even further into the rabbit hole. By this point - an argument has already started - and because the 240 char limit doesn't allow for nuance - the argument looks like a black and white argument - as there are no points that are in the "grey zone" that a reader from the side could connect between the opposing sides and perceive any hope of consensus. 4. Users from the outside see it as B&W - so they enter with B&W assumptions in - and assume an aggressive tone - completely derailing any hope to avoid creation of opposing echo chambers. I can see how they got there - and I can see the choices they made - 160 characters was a good choice for user engagement and revenue - as the flywheel will allow for more ad insertions - and if you optimise for quick reactions - your algorithm is going to take you into a zone where people don't read entire threads - because the algo isn't rewarded for people idling about and not reacting/answering. In terms of what it's doing to public opinion - it should be a textbook example of how growth-oriented product design - when not evaluated hollistically, can create unwanted social effects. EDIT: Forgot to link to original point of the article /facepalm. The reason why it's never going to achieve higher penetration - in my view - is that a lot of people get adverse emotional reactions from how the algorithm works - so you end up having people who have to be there (media) - and people who are quite comfortable with emotionally loaded engagement on social networks - which amplifies all of the functions stated above. And those people are, fortunately, in a minority. However, the fact that people don't tweet, doesn't mean that people don't read the tweets - as twitter is public without an account and major news outlets usually link to twitter threads. This drastically amplifies the reach of the distorted echo-chamber battles - which makes the overall effect on public opinion even worse. I mean it's perfect in how horrible it is.
• z3ncyberpunk 5y ago