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I'm sure there's plenty of demand for non-rage-based engagement, and in fact there are a lot of platforms that offer that (HN being one of them). I just don't t

I'm sure there's plenty of demand for non-rage-based engagement, and in fact there are a lot of platforms that offer that (HN being one of them). I just don't think there's a demand for that on the scale that Twitter wants and needs to operate. In my opinion, there's two reasons for this; first, Twitter has largely moved mainstream discourse to a superficial conflict-based format, even among those who might previously have enjoyed quiet reasonable discussion; a lot of these people are no longer going to get what they need, emotionally speaking, from a less confrontational platform. Second, the nature of Twitter has brought a lot of people into the mix who were not interested in participating in online discussion at all, but have been energized by the presence of a platform that provides an opportunity to dunk on jerks all day. These people, likewise, are not going to be served by a less-confrontational platform, and are going to move to the next thing or just disperse if no suitable platform is offered. Twitter is huge; it's scaled for the kind of vast crowds that are attracted by the particular flavor of discourse it offers; if any significant portion of those vast crowds go away because it starts offering a different kind of discourse, then it will collapse under the cost and complexity of running a platform of that size.

LordDragonfang 4y ago
>I'm sure there's plenty of demand for non-rage-based engagement, and in fact there are a lot of platforms that offer that (HN being one of them). I mean, the three threads with the most comments in the past week (by a significant margin) have all fallen under "rage-based engagement" (two threads on Elon-Twitter and the thread on Google Docs' new inclusivity checker). So while HN may be better in that regard, it is by no means exempt from that same influence. People are inclined to argue in comment sections, and Twitter is one big comment section. (It's also worth noting that HN enjoys its comparatively high signal-to-noise engagement because of its fairly heavy moderation; it seems self-evident what more "free speech" would do to that)

LordDragonfang 4y ago

>I'm sure there's plenty of demand for non-rage-based engagement, and in fact there are a lot of platforms that offer that (HN being one of them). I mean, the three threads with the most comments in the past week (by a significant margin) have all fallen under "rage-based engagement" (two threads on Elon-Twitter and the thread on Google Docs' new inclusivity checker). So while HN may be better in that regard, it is by no means exempt from that same influence. People are inclined to argue in comment sections, and Twitter is one big comment section. (It's also worth noting that HN enjoys its comparatively high signal-to-noise engagement because of its fairly heavy moderation; it seems self-evident what more "free speech" would do to that)