40 ms·

>My most immediate takeaway from this novella of a thread is that Twitter is way overdue for long form tweets! (Musk's response) this may very well be the firs

>My most immediate takeaway from this novella of a thread is that Twitter is way overdue for long form tweets! (Musk's response) this may very well be the first thing in my life I've agreed with Musk on. By god scrolling through an entire essay chopped up with random replies and profile links thrown in because you have to click "show more replies" (which pops up twice?) over and over is awful. Just link to a Twitlonger. On yishan's actual points I agree though. Companies moderate haphazardly and improvise and they care about their bottom-line and to extinguish shitstorms. There's no coherent ideological bias on any sufficiently large social network, they just pivot to whatever is causing chaos on any given weekday. One important point stuck somewhere in the middle is his observation that in the physical world, no public square, or public debate looks like what's on display on internet social networks. All of them have rules, civility is a thing, if you're crazy someone's likely going to throw you out, there's identity instead of anonymity and so on. Maybe provocatively, "cancel culture" is simply culture. Culture is a bunch of rituals, rules, coercions, customs and traditions that predominantly tell us what not to so so we don't behave like a bunch of naked apes.

ec109685 5y ago
What Twitter client are you using? Mobile web at least threads it just fine. So much so I don’t understand why people use threadreader a given the junk that adds to a conversation as its being requested and replied to.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  >What Twitter client are you using? Mobile web at least threads it just fine. Chrome on the desktop right now. I agree that the mobile app is a better experience.
- hoherd 5y ago
  If you think mobile web threads fine, as in makes a good UX for reading written text, then that difference of opinion is the source of our and perhaps the parent of your post's disagreement. Mobile web looks just as awful as desktop web. I don't understand how people read on sites like this. I never read twitter threads unless I go through thread reader. It's intolerable otherwise. I am not affiliated with thread reader at all. EG for the OP link: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1514938507407421440.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1514938507407421440.html
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  For anyone who doesn't have a Twitter account, the experience is endless nags and blocks. I use Nitter for individual posts and searches, Threadreader to read threads. The stock website is intentionally horrible. Jules Dupuit explained why a over a century and a half ago. https://web.archive.org/web/20170511130317/https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/why-does-air-travel-suck-so-bad-this-19th-century-economist-explained-it-with-ju.html https://web.archive.org/web/20170511130317/https://www.inc.c...
ricardonunez 5y ago
Twitter threads are just blog posts cut and simplified to fit the platform’s limitation. People have learn to adapt and write more concise post. I hope that if Twitter adds long tweets, people still write in a similar way.
gpm 5y ago
> random replies and profile links thrown in because you have to click "show more replies" Huh, clicking show more replies only shows more of the original thread for me until I've reached the end of it. That does sound horrible, if that's the common experience then all the complaints about Twitter threads make a lot more sense to me.
computerdork 5y ago
Agree with both you and Yishan on how social networks are simply trying to extinguish shitstorms. Yeah, for my part, hope Elon can just focus on solving real problems instead dealing with the rolling disaster area that is a social network (seems like Yishan himself seems jaded and cynical about the experience). Just doesn't seem worth it!
- zozbot234 5y ago
  Social media sites encourage shitstorms because their algorithms are coded to boost whatever maximizes measures of "engagement".
  - astrange 5y ago
    Fairly sure there was a story recently where Facebook accidentally turned off "the algorithm" for some people for months and it made them miserable and angrier. I can't find it because Google thinks any related search is actually trying to look for "how to get unbanned from Facebook" though. One reason for this is algorithmic sorting is what gets rid of spam and hides annoying acquaintances you had to friend who never shut up. If you want engagement you don't actually want to show everyone endless political arguments; sex and animal pictures are what's really engaging.
  - slg 5y ago
    I do wonder if this was factored at all into the algorithms. Anger and rage inducing content is great for engagement but it adds a lot of overhead in increased moderation. Does that make it less profitable overall than an algorithm designed to elicit positive emotions? Engagement might be down, but happy users won't continually be at each other's throats leading to less required moderation and constant controversy.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- logicalmonster 5y ago
  > social networks are simply trying to extinguish shitstorms Just rambling out loud, but perhaps Elon's superpower as the owner of Twitter might be having the luxury to care a whole lot less about user shitstorms. Nobody has more Fuck-You money and ability to ignore a rabid mob than the richest guy on the planet. At the very least, it could be very entertaining.
m348e912 5y ago
I whole-heartedly agree, and it's why I use threadreader app to read multi-part tweets. Here is Yishan's thread. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1514938507407421440.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1514938507407421440.html Twitter could build their own multi-part reader functionality, but I'm content with using this tool.
- riffic 5y ago
  this should have been a blog post. I absolutely can not stand threadreader because there's something about how people use it that rubs me the wrong way. It does not help solve the fundamental problem (this should be a blog post not a series of Tweets).
- slg 5y ago
  Strangely enough I originally posted this to HN as a threadreader link, but it looks like the mods switched it to the original thread on Twitter. I can't remember ever seeing that before. Is this a new stance that HN now frowns upon threading apps?
  - Macha 5y ago
    It's not a new stance, HN has always pushed for linking the original source unless the referring source adds something meaningful. I'd personally feel thread unrolling is a meaningful addition, but I don't think that's ever been the mod's POV
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    A number of URL remappings occur automatically, and Threadreader conversions may be amongst these. OTOH, Reddit links seem to be automatically rewritten to old.reddit.com. I've suggested YC consider running its own Nitter node for that system's UI/UX advantages.
memish 5y ago
You even disagree with him on physics, math, engineering and manufacturing?
- Aeolun 5y ago
  Disagree on everything it’s possible to have an opinion about. Speed of light or length of a second are not going to change just because I want it to.
pessimizer 5y ago
> There's no coherent ideological bias on any sufficiently large social network, they just pivot to whatever is causing chaos on any given weekday. This is both true in a trivial sense and bullshit in an important sense. Governments and companies work every day, and employ armies of people full time to create the "shitstorms" that social media companies react to. Even the news cycle is motivated by billionaire owned news outlets, and a brush fire on twitter becomes a wildfire because those outlets magnify it, often prompted by press releases from PR companies, lobbyists, NGOs, and administration officials. This is only improvisation for the first five minutes you become important. Once the relevant institutions have employed people full time to focus on the manipulation of your platform, it's systematic and routine. In the current climate, resistance will mean you're called to Congress and yelled at, and every other journalist will be screaming for your investigation and destruction. Instead, what happens is that you end up knowing all of the manipulators of your platform by their first names, you go golfing with them, and your kids date each other.
kaptain 5y ago
Underneath all our clothes, we’re all naked apes.
armchairhacker 5y ago
I agree with this except that > "cancel culture" is simply culture There are 2 types of cancel culture: society "cancelling" people when we discover they are extremely toxic and/or sexual predators, and private citizens getting doxxed, slandered, and sometimes fired from their jobs because of a racist tweet or off-putting remark. The latter is a by-product of social networks, especially Twitter, and it's a real problem with real consequences. Saying or doing something racist or rude is bad, it should and would probably get you kicked out of a bar or event. But prior to social media, it would not get your entire reputation ruined, and you wouldn't get 50,000 random people to start harassing you. I hope most would agree that this is a disproportionate punishment. But IMO the larger issue of cancel culture, is it makes people less likely to say edgy jokes or borderline politically-incorrect statements for fear they will also get "cancelled". Then the definition of "borderline" politically-incorrect shifts further left, more and more becomes taboo, and people start to deny facts because they don't agree to societal norms. When reality is taboo, you get real consequences. We need a grey area, where you can say something which isn't "accepted by society", but it doesn't get you effectively blacklisted everywhere, and it doesn't affect things like job offers. I'm too young to confirm but I assume we had something like this before social media took off. But with everyone connected and very scrutinizing/critical it's starting to go away.
- Retric 5y ago
  Saying the wrong thing in a private setting and getting fired has been a thing before computers existed. Cancel culture is just a new name for an ancient practice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunning
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Brown_(loyalist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Brown_(loyalist) > Brown soon found himself embroiled in the coming revolution. On 2 August 1775 a crowd of 130 Sons of Liberty confronted him at his house and demanded he pledge himself to the Patriot cause. Brown requested the liberty to hold his own opinions, saying that he could "never enter into an Engagement to take up arms against the Country which gave him being", and finally met their demands with pistol and sword. The crowd seized him and struck him with the butt of a musket, fracturing his skull. Taken prisoner, he was tied to a tree where he was roasted by fire and scalped before being tarred and feathered. Brown was then carted through a number of nearby settlements and forced to verbally pledge himself to the Patriot cause before being released. This mistreatment resulted in the loss of two toes and lifelong headaches. Cancel culture has been with us since the beginning. Hell, other primates kick bad actors out of the social group; it's been a thing before language existed.
fakethenews2022 5y ago
There is obvious ideological/institutional bias. Look at who Facebook offloads censorship to and who finances them. There is obvious censorship not due to shitstorms. dang censored plain links to scientific studies highlighting myocarditis side effects to covid-19 vaccines. Now those effects are accepted fact.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  > Look at who Facebook offloads censorship to and who finances them. The usual accusation is they pick left-wing fact checkers, but this falls apart on even casual examination. https://www.thedailybeast.com/facebook-brings-in-rightwing-news-site-the-daily-caller-to-factcheck-articles https://www.thedailybeast.com/facebook-brings-in-rightwing-n... "Facebook has brought in the right-wing news site The Daily Caller, which was co-founded by Fox News host Tucker Carlson and is known for pushing misinformation, to help fact-check articles, according to The Guardian."
  - rayiner 5y ago
    Would you say the median fact checker has the ideological inclinations of the median American?
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      I would say that's a somewhat bizarre question.
      - rayiner 5y ago
        Why? How else would you measure bias?
        camgunz 5y ago
        The way to evaluate a fact checker isn't via an ideology measurement, it's via an examination of their work. This bias thing feels like a dangerous precedent. I get not wanting kooks to exert strong cultural pressure, but if we start locking people out of various parts of society because of their beliefs, that sounds like the definition of illiberalism to me.
sjg007 5y ago
You can't yell Fire in a movie theatre if there's no fire. Your speech can't disturb the peace, your protest can be assigned to a specific location. Perhaps we need online equivalents. Online on one hand you have 4chan and the other Hacker News. It's a race to the bottom in some sense if all bets are off.
- Maursault 5y ago
  > You can't yell Fire in a movie theatre if there's no fire. Actually Schenck v. United States was partially overturned and severely limited 53 years ago, so that hasn't been correct, technically, for some time. iow, you probably can shout fire in a crowded theater, but it depends on the circumstances whether you'll be arrested, whether you've presented a clear and present danger, whether you caused a stampede, whether anyone was injured or killed. But if you are arrested, it won't be a free speech case. The charge will be disorderly conduct, or negligent homicide, or some other charge. Justice Holmes' quote has sort of taken on a life of its own as a determination of what speech is not protected, but really there's no law against it. FWIW, I'm not advocating for it, just being pedantic.
  - andrew_ 5y ago
    It's wild how the "fire" argument continues to be regurgitated as if from the mouth of a network talking head. Thanks for dousing that quickly.
    - sjg007 5y ago
      Maybe you should read Brandenburg v. Ohio first.
      - andrew_ 5y ago
        Good to have mentioned this. The interpretation of "immenent lawless behavior" varies greatly. My wife is an attorney and very recently was on a case where this particular case was cited. While I get your intent in mentioning it, the case is very specific and while Schenck is cited, it does not translate directly to "you can't say fire in a theater," but rather it's far more nuanced. It also doesn't change the fact that the "fire" argument is a lazy slinging of words lacking appropriate nuance.
rayiner 5y ago
“Ideological bias” doesn’t require some coherent master plan, just like minded people acting according to their incentives. Everyone really needs to read Manufacturing Consent: https://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Economy-Media/dp/0375714499 https://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Econo...
chanakya 5y ago
> Companies moderate haphazardly and improvise and they care about their bottom-line and to extinguish shitstorms. Yes, after they've helped create the shitstorms in the first place with their escalatory like and recommendation models.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  Maybe you've hit on what the real problem is - using algorithms to enhance the spread of things. Maybe have a damper algorithm to counter the escalatory ones that succeed too well.
StanislavPetrov 5y ago
>Social media companies are in the unenviable position of playing referee in the culture war They are self-appointed referees in a game where many of the participants never wanted or asked for a referee. These companies could simply limit themselves to removing spam and explicitly illegal content (which should be referred to authorities), but instead they choose to put their finger on the scale and wade into the fray.
jdrc 5y ago
> no public square, or public debate looks like what's on display on internet social networks. then there is the graffiti, the tags, the leaflets, the random crazy people shouting, singing, drug addicts, some people with guns etc etc. Some people spend too much time in academic institutions. they are not the public square
considerw 5y ago
I have a friend who writes long WhatsApp threads instead of one message. Usually I can see past the media and can read the message what she is saying. But on the other hand she is not saying inappropriate things about me. I think the real problem of the social media platforms is the users.
unityByFreedom 5y ago
No one's forcing you to write everything on Twitter in 40 tweets. He could have written a blog post and tweeted it.
- hwers 5y ago
  I agree. The limit encourages creativity and brevity
- ansible 5y ago
  It is not as if he Yishan was hitting the character limit on the individual tweets either, he was using the breaks for dramatic effect, like Shatner putting pauses in his speech.
lpa22 5y ago
I actually like the way it’s threaded - it allows you to discuss individual points in the essay instead of everyone talking about the entire contents at the same time. I do think they should have a collapse option to read it as one, but still allow you to reply to the individual thoughts
nathias 5y ago
Enforcing civility and 'culture' is not just censorship, it censorship + imperialism.
Joeri 5y ago
One important point stuck somewhere in the middle is his observation that in the physical world, no public square, or public debate looks like what's on display on internet social networks. All of them have rules, civility is a thing, if you're crazy someone's likely going to throw you out, there's identity instead of anonymity and so on. Most people that I see behaving horribly on social media platforms do so under their own name, or at least an identity easily matched up to a real person, probably because they don’t feel like the repercussions affect them. So I don’t think the anonymity is that much of a cause or enabler for misbehavior in practice. I think the idea of being thrown out of a bar for misbehaving is an interesting analogy. On twitter you can be thrown out of someone’s personal timeline, or you can be thrown out of all of twitter. In the real world that would be like either you are refused entry to someone’s home or you get thrown out of a country, with nothing in between. It seems like there is room there for more variations in between. Maybe hashtags could have moderators that forbid abusive individuals from using them, or maybe every tweet could form its micro-community, and individuals could be banned by the original tweeter from engaging with that tweet, but not from engaging with all of twitter. Twitter must have brainstormed a million variations on this concept of a moderated community, and I wonder why they have landed on the idea that you should only be allowed to curate your own timeline and not that of others who follow your tweets.
taneq 5y ago
> this may very well be the first thing in my life I've agreed with Musk on. You think electric cars and reusable rockets are bad?
wowokay 5y ago
I’m not sure about the comparison between a town square and the internet. BLM protests and Jan 6th, are great examples of town squares where civility and rule of law are thrown out the window like a free open platform on the internet would perform.
elvis10ten 5y ago
Cancel culture isn’t new, what is new is that the cancellers are now “decentralized”. In fact this is the first successful web3 product built on web2. Someone create CancelCoin. Just trying to be funny while still staying relevant to discuss. Please don’t downvote me to oblivion :)

ec109685 5y ago

What Twitter client are you using? Mobile web at least threads it just fine. So much so I don’t understand why people use threadreader a given the junk that adds to a conversation as its being requested and replied to.

Barrin92 5y ago
>What Twitter client are you using? Mobile web at least threads it just fine. Chrome on the desktop right now. I agree that the mobile app is a better experience.
hoherd 5y ago
If you think mobile web threads fine, as in makes a good UX for reading written text, then that difference of opinion is the source of our and perhaps the parent of your post's disagreement. Mobile web looks just as awful as desktop web. I don't understand how people read on sites like this. I never read twitter threads unless I go through thread reader. It's intolerable otherwise. I am not affiliated with thread reader at all. EG for the OP link: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1514938507407421440.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1514938507407421440.html
dredmorbius 5y ago
For anyone who doesn't have a Twitter account, the experience is endless nags and blocks. I use Nitter for individual posts and searches, Threadreader to read threads. The stock website is intentionally horrible. Jules Dupuit explained why a over a century and a half ago. https://web.archive.org/web/20170511130317/https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/why-does-air-travel-suck-so-bad-this-19th-century-economist-explained-it-with-ju.html https://web.archive.org/web/20170511130317/https://www.inc.c...

ricardonunez 5y ago

Twitter threads are just blog posts cut and simplified to fit the platform’s limitation. People have learn to adapt and write more concise post. I hope that if Twitter adds long tweets, people still write in a similar way.

gpm 5y ago

> random replies and profile links thrown in because you have to click "show more replies" Huh, clicking show more replies only shows more of the original thread for me until I've reached the end of it. That does sound horrible, if that's the common experience then all the complaints about Twitter threads make a lot more sense to me.

computerdork 5y ago

Agree with both you and Yishan on how social networks are simply trying to extinguish shitstorms. Yeah, for my part, hope Elon can just focus on solving real problems instead dealing with the rolling disaster area that is a social network (seems like Yishan himself seems jaded and cynical about the experience). Just doesn't seem worth it!

zozbot234 5y ago
Social media sites encourage shitstorms because their algorithms are coded to boost whatever maximizes measures of "engagement".
- astrange 5y ago
  Fairly sure there was a story recently where Facebook accidentally turned off "the algorithm" for some people for months and it made them miserable and angrier. I can't find it because Google thinks any related search is actually trying to look for "how to get unbanned from Facebook" though. One reason for this is algorithmic sorting is what gets rid of spam and hides annoying acquaintances you had to friend who never shut up. If you want engagement you don't actually want to show everyone endless political arguments; sex and animal pictures are what's really engaging.
- slg 5y ago
  I do wonder if this was factored at all into the algorithms. Anger and rage inducing content is great for engagement but it adds a lot of overhead in increased moderation. Does that make it less profitable overall than an algorithm designed to elicit positive emotions? Engagement might be down, but happy users won't continually be at each other's throats leading to less required moderation and constant controversy.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
logicalmonster 5y ago
> social networks are simply trying to extinguish shitstorms Just rambling out loud, but perhaps Elon's superpower as the owner of Twitter might be having the luxury to care a whole lot less about user shitstorms. Nobody has more Fuck-You money and ability to ignore a rabid mob than the richest guy on the planet. At the very least, it could be very entertaining.

m348e912 5y ago

I whole-heartedly agree, and it's why I use threadreader app to read multi-part tweets. Here is Yishan's thread. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1514938507407421440.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1514938507407421440.html Twitter could build their own multi-part reader functionality, but I'm content with using this tool.

riffic 5y ago
this should have been a blog post. I absolutely can not stand threadreader because there's something about how people use it that rubs me the wrong way. It does not help solve the fundamental problem (this should be a blog post not a series of Tweets).
slg 5y ago
Strangely enough I originally posted this to HN as a threadreader link, but it looks like the mods switched it to the original thread on Twitter. I can't remember ever seeing that before. Is this a new stance that HN now frowns upon threading apps?
- Macha 5y ago
  It's not a new stance, HN has always pushed for linking the original source unless the referring source adds something meaningful. I'd personally feel thread unrolling is a meaningful addition, but I don't think that's ever been the mod's POV
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  A number of URL remappings occur automatically, and Threadreader conversions may be amongst these. OTOH, Reddit links seem to be automatically rewritten to old.reddit.com. I've suggested YC consider running its own Nitter node for that system's UI/UX advantages.

memish 5y ago

You even disagree with him on physics, math, engineering and manufacturing?

Aeolun 5y ago
Disagree on everything it’s possible to have an opinion about. Speed of light or length of a second are not going to change just because I want it to.

pessimizer 5y ago

> There's no coherent ideological bias on any sufficiently large social network, they just pivot to whatever is causing chaos on any given weekday. This is both true in a trivial sense and bullshit in an important sense. Governments and companies work every day, and employ armies of people full time to create the "shitstorms" that social media companies react to. Even the news cycle is motivated by billionaire owned news outlets, and a brush fire on twitter becomes a wildfire because those outlets magnify it, often prompted by press releases from PR companies, lobbyists, NGOs, and administration officials. This is only improvisation for the first five minutes you become important. Once the relevant institutions have employed people full time to focus on the manipulation of your platform, it's systematic and routine. In the current climate, resistance will mean you're called to Congress and yelled at, and every other journalist will be screaming for your investigation and destruction. Instead, what happens is that you end up knowing all of the manipulators of your platform by their first names, you go golfing with them, and your kids date each other.

kaptain 5y ago

Underneath all our clothes, we’re all naked apes.

armchairhacker 5y ago

I agree with this except that > "cancel culture" is simply culture There are 2 types of cancel culture: society "cancelling" people when we discover they are extremely toxic and/or sexual predators, and private citizens getting doxxed, slandered, and sometimes fired from their jobs because of a racist tweet or off-putting remark. The latter is a by-product of social networks, especially Twitter, and it's a real problem with real consequences. Saying or doing something racist or rude is bad, it should and would probably get you kicked out of a bar or event. But prior to social media, it would not get your entire reputation ruined, and you wouldn't get 50,000 random people to start harassing you. I hope most would agree that this is a disproportionate punishment. But IMO the larger issue of cancel culture, is it makes people less likely to say edgy jokes or borderline politically-incorrect statements for fear they will also get "cancelled". Then the definition of "borderline" politically-incorrect shifts further left, more and more becomes taboo, and people start to deny facts because they don't agree to societal norms. When reality is taboo, you get real consequences. We need a grey area, where you can say something which isn't "accepted by society", but it doesn't get you effectively blacklisted everywhere, and it doesn't affect things like job offers. I'm too young to confirm but I assume we had something like this before social media took off. But with everyone connected and very scrutinizing/critical it's starting to go away.

Retric 5y ago
Saying the wrong thing in a private setting and getting fired has been a thing before computers existed. Cancel culture is just a new name for an ancient practice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunning
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Brown_(loyalist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Brown_(loyalist) > Brown soon found himself embroiled in the coming revolution. On 2 August 1775 a crowd of 130 Sons of Liberty confronted him at his house and demanded he pledge himself to the Patriot cause. Brown requested the liberty to hold his own opinions, saying that he could "never enter into an Engagement to take up arms against the Country which gave him being", and finally met their demands with pistol and sword. The crowd seized him and struck him with the butt of a musket, fracturing his skull. Taken prisoner, he was tied to a tree where he was roasted by fire and scalped before being tarred and feathered. Brown was then carted through a number of nearby settlements and forced to verbally pledge himself to the Patriot cause before being released. This mistreatment resulted in the loss of two toes and lifelong headaches. Cancel culture has been with us since the beginning. Hell, other primates kick bad actors out of the social group; it's been a thing before language existed.

fakethenews2022 5y ago

There is obvious ideological/institutional bias. Look at who Facebook offloads censorship to and who finances them. There is obvious censorship not due to shitstorms. dang censored plain links to scientific studies highlighting myocarditis side effects to covid-19 vaccines. Now those effects are accepted fact.

ceejayoz 5y ago
> Look at who Facebook offloads censorship to and who finances them. The usual accusation is they pick left-wing fact checkers, but this falls apart on even casual examination. https://www.thedailybeast.com/facebook-brings-in-rightwing-news-site-the-daily-caller-to-factcheck-articles https://www.thedailybeast.com/facebook-brings-in-rightwing-n... "Facebook has brought in the right-wing news site The Daily Caller, which was co-founded by Fox News host Tucker Carlson and is known for pushing misinformation, to help fact-check articles, according to The Guardian."
- rayiner 5y ago
  Would you say the median fact checker has the ideological inclinations of the median American?
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    I would say that's a somewhat bizarre question.
    - rayiner 5y ago
      Why? How else would you measure bias?
      - camgunz 5y ago
        The way to evaluate a fact checker isn't via an ideology measurement, it's via an examination of their work. This bias thing feels like a dangerous precedent. I get not wanting kooks to exert strong cultural pressure, but if we start locking people out of various parts of society because of their beliefs, that sounds like the definition of illiberalism to me.

sjg007 5y ago

You can't yell Fire in a movie theatre if there's no fire. Your speech can't disturb the peace, your protest can be assigned to a specific location. Perhaps we need online equivalents. Online on one hand you have 4chan and the other Hacker News. It's a race to the bottom in some sense if all bets are off.

Maursault 5y ago
> You can't yell Fire in a movie theatre if there's no fire. Actually Schenck v. United States was partially overturned and severely limited 53 years ago, so that hasn't been correct, technically, for some time. iow, you probably can shout fire in a crowded theater, but it depends on the circumstances whether you'll be arrested, whether you've presented a clear and present danger, whether you caused a stampede, whether anyone was injured or killed. But if you are arrested, it won't be a free speech case. The charge will be disorderly conduct, or negligent homicide, or some other charge. Justice Holmes' quote has sort of taken on a life of its own as a determination of what speech is not protected, but really there's no law against it. FWIW, I'm not advocating for it, just being pedantic.
- andrew_ 5y ago
  It's wild how the "fire" argument continues to be regurgitated as if from the mouth of a network talking head. Thanks for dousing that quickly.
  - sjg007 5y ago
    Maybe you should read Brandenburg v. Ohio first.
    - andrew_ 5y ago
      Good to have mentioned this. The interpretation of "immenent lawless behavior" varies greatly. My wife is an attorney and very recently was on a case where this particular case was cited. While I get your intent in mentioning it, the case is very specific and while Schenck is cited, it does not translate directly to "you can't say fire in a theater," but rather it's far more nuanced. It also doesn't change the fact that the "fire" argument is a lazy slinging of words lacking appropriate nuance.

rayiner 5y ago

“Ideological bias” doesn’t require some coherent master plan, just like minded people acting according to their incentives. Everyone really needs to read Manufacturing Consent: https://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Economy-Media/dp/0375714499 https://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Econo...

chanakya 5y ago

> Companies moderate haphazardly and improvise and they care about their bottom-line and to extinguish shitstorms. Yes, after they've helped create the shitstorms in the first place with their escalatory like and recommendation models.

WalterBright 5y ago
Maybe you've hit on what the real problem is - using algorithms to enhance the spread of things. Maybe have a damper algorithm to counter the escalatory ones that succeed too well.

StanislavPetrov 5y ago

>Social media companies are in the unenviable position of playing referee in the culture war They are self-appointed referees in a game where many of the participants never wanted or asked for a referee. These companies could simply limit themselves to removing spam and explicitly illegal content (which should be referred to authorities), but instead they choose to put their finger on the scale and wade into the fray.

jdrc 5y ago

> no public square, or public debate looks like what's on display on internet social networks. then there is the graffiti, the tags, the leaflets, the random crazy people shouting, singing, drug addicts, some people with guns etc etc. Some people spend too much time in academic institutions. they are not the public square

considerw 5y ago

I have a friend who writes long WhatsApp threads instead of one message. Usually I can see past the media and can read the message what she is saying. But on the other hand she is not saying inappropriate things about me. I think the real problem of the social media platforms is the users.

unityByFreedom 5y ago

No one's forcing you to write everything on Twitter in 40 tweets. He could have written a blog post and tweeted it.

hwers 5y ago
I agree. The limit encourages creativity and brevity
ansible 5y ago
It is not as if he Yishan was hitting the character limit on the individual tweets either, he was using the breaks for dramatic effect, like Shatner putting pauses in his speech.

lpa22 5y ago

I actually like the way it’s threaded - it allows you to discuss individual points in the essay instead of everyone talking about the entire contents at the same time. I do think they should have a collapse option to read it as one, but still allow you to reply to the individual thoughts

nathias 5y ago

Enforcing civility and 'culture' is not just censorship, it censorship + imperialism.

Joeri 5y ago

One important point stuck somewhere in the middle is his observation that in the physical world, no public square, or public debate looks like what's on display on internet social networks. All of them have rules, civility is a thing, if you're crazy someone's likely going to throw you out, there's identity instead of anonymity and so on. Most people that I see behaving horribly on social media platforms do so under their own name, or at least an identity easily matched up to a real person, probably because they don’t feel like the repercussions affect them. So I don’t think the anonymity is that much of a cause or enabler for misbehavior in practice. I think the idea of being thrown out of a bar for misbehaving is an interesting analogy. On twitter you can be thrown out of someone’s personal timeline, or you can be thrown out of all of twitter. In the real world that would be like either you are refused entry to someone’s home or you get thrown out of a country, with nothing in between. It seems like there is room there for more variations in between. Maybe hashtags could have moderators that forbid abusive individuals from using them, or maybe every tweet could form its micro-community, and individuals could be banned by the original tweeter from engaging with that tweet, but not from engaging with all of twitter. Twitter must have brainstormed a million variations on this concept of a moderated community, and I wonder why they have landed on the idea that you should only be allowed to curate your own timeline and not that of others who follow your tweets.

taneq 5y ago

> this may very well be the first thing in my life I've agreed with Musk on. You think electric cars and reusable rockets are bad?

wowokay 5y ago

I’m not sure about the comparison between a town square and the internet. BLM protests and Jan 6th, are great examples of town squares where civility and rule of law are thrown out the window like a free open platform on the internet would perform.

elvis10ten 5y ago

Cancel culture isn’t new, what is new is that the cancellers are now “decentralized”. In fact this is the first successful web3 product built on web2. Someone create CancelCoin. Just trying to be funny while still staying relevant to discuss. Please don’t downvote me to oblivion :)