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I'm optimistic from a nihilistic point of view: for Twitter the only way is up, and yet even a complete failure would be a net improvement to the world. There'
by fleddr 5y ago
I'm optimistic from a nihilistic point of view: for Twitter the only way is up, and yet even a complete failure would be a net improvement to the world.
There's a laundry list of uncontroversial improvements he can make to the product itself. Twitter as a product is broken in so many ways. Musk is the kind of outcome-driven character to get things done. And it will be done in a way that does not directly conflict with existing pressures, like ads.
He claims to commit to get an understanding of the algorithms for both censorship and promotions/verifications, and make them more transparent. As to what this will reveal, or how this will be changed, we don't know, except for a general direction of less censorship. So far he mentioned to want to strike a balance where both extremes (left, right) are equally unhappy.
My hope, but I expect to be disappointed, is that the influence that both extremes have on Twitter is nuked. A reversal of roles, where sane and reasonable voices capture the majority of attention, instead of rage-addicted mobs.
The truly tricky thing though is that if you dis-empower these extremists, you'll find that there's not much else. Twitter is basically those people and the rest retweeting it. What remains when you take away this outrage snowball activity...not very much. Twitter isn't at all a mainstream platform.
- op00to 5y agoI am looking forward to stop using Twitter myself, but there are so many communities not related to politics and social division on there. Amateur Radio is a big one that I’ll miss.
- wrycoder 5y agoWhy not just stick to that part, then?
- brewdad 5y agoBecause, at least in its current form, it becomes inevitable that the ugly stuff leaks in.
- wrycoder 5y agoWell, please stick around - we hams don't have that many quality forums. I suspect that some of the issues causing the ugly stuff will get corrected.
- op00to 5y agoThat's what I try to do now, but the bullshit always seems to seep in somehow.
- type0 5y agoSomeone tell me if it's true but it seems Twitter is becoming more and more like Google+ in certain areas?! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%2B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%2B
- MetaWhirledPeas 5y ago> Twitter as a product is broken in so many ways. I'm genuinely curious: how so? I'm all for the idea of aligning moderation with the law of the land, but to be honest I'm not in-the-loop enough to know what people are upset about in the first place, except banning Trump I guess? I can see how the Twitter UI kinda sucks in some ways, but it gets the job done. I'm fairly new to Twitter, and I'm pretty impressed at the level of participation from well-known individuals, and I'm also impressed with the ability to sniff out breaking news. If the "broken" part of Twitter is people arguing all the time, how is that different from other corners of the internet?
- fleddr 5y agoTwitter being toxic is one flaw that would be very complicated to address, but I'm talking about flaws at the feature level. The character limit in combination with a completely unusable threading system basically makes any non-trivial discussion impossible. Reply counts are buggy, and make no sense. Notification counters are broken. There's obvious bot armies. Reporting doesn't really work. Verification is broken. Discoverability for "common" users, the non-influencers, is a major problem. They're all basically tweeting to a wall. I could go on, but can sum it up as Twitter being far less usable and robust than it can be.
- MetaWhirledPeas 5y agoThanks for answering directly. I agree that Twitter's UI is not great for contextual reading (and therefore discussion), but I wonder if it might result in a greater diversity of content when browsing? A "better" UI might lead people down more rabbit holes and echo chambers. I'm really just playing devil's advocate of course, but I do have a comparison to draw: Reddit and Slashdot. Reddit, which is heavily popularity-based, arguably has a friendlier UI, but Slashdot's, once you come to understand it, seems much better at avoiding landslides of groupthink.
- mikeryan 5y agoMy take on all these “fixes” for a “broken” Twitter is that pretty much everyone has a point of view of what is broken to them and frequently the fixes for solving them are contradictory. A lot of Twitter’s bugs for some set people are features for another. Twitter will always have “problems” and most of them are impossible to solve in a global way that won’t leave a significant portion of their user base upset. I’m intrigued in what changes Musk drives and their eventual effects but really don’t think he (or anyone) will have the ability to significantly move the needle in increasing Twitter’s perceived value.
- chasd00 5y agohopefully not being beholden to wallst as a public company opens up options that may be good for the twitter community but would not be so great for the stock price. Instead of an increasing stock price driving every LOC written maybe making twitter a better place will drive where effort is spent. / lots of "hopefully" and "maybe" in the above
- notabee 5y agoIt might empty out if that happens and be the end of it, but I know that the prospect of a forum for discussion that isn't constantly trying to poke the outrage center of my brain sounds very appealing and I think that would be the case for many people. What would be even more magical would be a complete outing of all the dark PR that's going on. Flip over and show the filthy astroturfing underbelly of so much of the internet these days. That's probably not going to happen in the way that I wish but I'll still hope for it.
- cwkoss 5y agoWould be cool to do a deep analysis of all of the dark PR and astroturfing, then once they have solid data, make all the data about it public. Expose who is paying for shills and what the shills are saying. Could be a wikileaks-level society shaking revelation.
- fleddr 5y agoSame. The dynamic that not everybody understands is that harm in social media is not about people saying toxic or extreme things. They'll continue to do so. The issue is the speed and spread of those messages. Right now they are amplified like a snowball and end up dominating the tone and culture of the entire platform. Influencers are richly rewarded for it, whilst sane and reasonable people get crickets. That's the part that should be reversed, which is of course easier said then done, as it's the DNA of current Twitter. The thing that ordinary people like us should consider is political tolerance. Most people in this world are reasonable and are in the bandwidth center-left / center / center-right. That's the room for sane conversation. With this I mean to say that you should not double-down on "your side". When you're moderately progressive, you should equally reject far-left and far-right extremism. Whilst opening up to the reasonable people on the opposite side. Reject all crazy people.
- therouwboat 5y agoHow do you reject crazy people without them thinking they are being censored? If their bot followers are removed and nobody sees their posts, isnt it just the same as if they were banned?
- water-your-self 5y agoThis just looks like a bezos acquisition of Washington Post but more modern if you ask me. Given sentiment from subordinates and Elon's affinity for doing drugs with pop stars i don't expect his ownership of twitter to be anything other than abusive at best.
- monkeywork 5y agoHonestly what diff if he does drugs with pop stars, How does that neg impact his contribution over someone else?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- fleddr 5y agoI'm thinking Twitter is in dire need for a little of his "abuse". It's a dysfunctional company, product and community. I think Musk's abuse should be seen in a larger context. Not as an excuse, rather as an explanation. He takes on seeming impossible missions and is then ruthless in achieving them. Anything that gets in the way has to go, from employees to institutions. You can debate whether these methods are required to achieve the results or not, I wouldn't know the answer to that. But I do believe he's not intentionally abusive like some evil villain. He's autistic. His mind doesn't work like the mind of most of us. He cuts straight through politics and social rituals and doesn't read them or comply with them like the rest of us. You could say he's not good at people things, and perhaps that's why he overachieves.
- Consultant32452 5y agoIt's really hard explaining to people how the brain of an autistic person works. Most people are quite happy to accommodate the special needs of a person with one leg. But you show them a person whose disability means they don't comply with your social rituals and have an abrasive personality and suddenly it's time to moralize.
- tmp_anon_22 5y agoElon Musk is a personality that gets full credit for all successes he participates in and receives little criticism for the things he fails at. Like the time he pledged $6B to the EU to solve world hunger but then fell off the face of the Earth when it came time to collect. Please look into the history of his companies, Musk is first and foremost a financier who among other things purchases the "Founder" title when buying companies.
- tayo42 5y ago> As to what this will reveal, or how this will be changed, we don't know, except for a general direction of less censorship. So far he mentioned to want to strike a balance where both extremes (left, right) are equally unhappy. This is how uninformed internet people think things work. I think you'll all be disappointed
- andrepd 5y agoReally, what planet do these people live in? Musk has sued people he disagrees with, has sued whistleblowers, has sued a kid for making a twitter bot. They expect him to be some kind of free speech paragon? Fuck me...
- belter 5y agoHe is going to allow back the rule on calling pedo guy to divers saving kids...
- aserdf 5y ago> has sued a kid for making a twitter bot the @elonjet account?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- emteycz 5y ago> has sued a kid for making a twitter bot Kid or not, it's doxxing. Musk could have sued him outright but instead he asked him nicely to take it down and offered a good amount of money too. Kid's own fault he didn't take it.
- JohnTHaller 5y agoTweeting about aircraft N628TS's publicly available ADS-B information isn't doxxing.
- emteycz 5y ago
- stjohnswarts 5y agoI predict Elon changes nothing but letting people like Trump and Thomas back on there, otherwise he won't interfere much. He might step in occassionally but he'll mostly be a silent partner. He just didn't want his tweets blocked because that is rough on his ego.
- SamReidHughes 5y agoHe would be throwing free money down the drain if he doesn't change its management.
- jorblumesea 5y agoDo you know Elon Musk? I feel like this is the opposite take I would expect.
- fleddr 5y agoI don't. I think this interview gives away a lot about his plans, as well as his character: https://www.ted.com/talks/elon_musk_elon_musk_talks_twitter_tesla_and_how_his_brain_works_live_at_ted2022 https://www.ted.com/talks/elon_musk_elon_musk_talks_twitter_...
- talideon 5y agoIt's _really_ easy to disempower extremists. (a) Linear timeline. (b) Stop injecting stuff into people's timelines. (c) Hide like and retweet counts from anyone but the person who made the tweet. (d) Add a cooldown period on tweets: they're not visible for this period, and they can still be edited during it. Editing a tweet resets the cooldown period. The problem with all this is that it drives down "engagement". Addendum: (e) Make it possible to prevent retweets (including quote retweets) from certain accounts you follow from showing up on your timeline. There are certain people you might like who retweet effluent, and you don't want that effluent going straight into your eyeballs.
- madeofpalk 5y ago> (c) Hide like and retweet counts from anyone but the person who made the tweet Honestly - hide them full stop. From everyone. I enjoy using Twitter, but I dislike how my small brain can be very unhealthily obsessed with those numbers.
- chasd00 5y agoI feel the same way about the little score thing here on HN. I give that number way too much attention.
- tyingq 5y ago(a) Require login (b) Present each person with the fake reality that is least likely to offend them
- narrator 5y agoWhat's funny is that the people who are threatening to leave for other platforms don't understand what an enormous amount of engineering effort it is to build AI at scale to control wrongthink. They think it's something that the platform owner turns up and down like a thermostat.
- ouid 5y agoI don't think people threatening to leave are doing so out of a desire to exist in a more censored world, just one in which the censorship isn't controlled by Elon.
- fleddr 5y agoFurther, they have no other platform to go to. If we're talking about the same people here, their position of "power" is uniquely granted at Twitter. For better or worse, Twitter is dominant in setting the cultural and political tone. There's no other platform that offers this.
- drnonsense42 5y agoThis, in a nutshell, is the ivory tower conversation silicon valley liberals have been having with themselves for the past few years to justify their ever-creeping censorship. 90% of the people on the site should not have been banned in the first place. Obviously the overwhelming majority of people having this conversation at these companies are liberal and it just happens to turn out that everyone who needs to be banned is a conservative, and we’ll throw in a few people like Farrakhan who give the democrats bad optics.
- rnk 5y agoI disagree with your idea, that basically conservatives think only they get banned from twitter. I'd describe it as people making repeated hate speech, threatening, and/or misleading information that leads to death. A liberal example of a banned twitter person is Naomi Wolfe, writer of the "Beauty Myth". The problem for facebook and twitter and similar things is that accelerating inflammatory speech that outrages increases people's use of the system. It's really hard for them to get a lot of use without just resending the outrage of the day.
- fleddr 5y agoThe problem with this binary thinking is that centrists as well as moderate progressives and moderate conservatives play no role in any of this. I'd say quite a few, if not most, moderate progressives are not at all on board with extreme wokism. Similarly, moderate conservatives may not be too crazy about Trump or "alternate realities". This massive group, which is most people, and pretty much all sane and reasonable people, have no place in social media like Twitter. The silent majority. They can't even express a single critical thought about their own "side" nor engage with political opponents. They're scared. Rather than doubling down on this battle of which side should be censored, the very point should be to reduce extremism and its reach on both sides. Not just "your" side. Sane people should dominate conversation.
- rnk 5y agoWoke is an undefined term, it's just the latest way to identify someone or some idea you don't agree with without really saying what it means. It's a strategy to avoid having to wrestle with complicated and difficult problems in society. I agree with you that reducing extremism and encouraging communication is really important, something we should all strive for.
- TrispusAttucks 5y agoI am also optimistic because of these 3 D's. 1. de-censoring 2. de-radicalize 3. de-politicize The twitter addicts aren't going anywhere. The de-censoring will allow left and right to meet on a level playing field. This should help de-radicalize the fringe extremes and allow for discourse without discussion or users being banned. With more room for nuance the center of the road folks will feel better about discussing their views. Also this should ultimately de-politicize platform and be a win for, at least, America. -- PS. I would like to see censoring of violent terrorist groups increase. That would also be a win. Also new features!
- tablespoon 5y ago> The twitter addicts aren't going anywhere. The de-censoring will allow left and right to meet on a level playing field. This should help de-radicalize the fringe extremes and allow for discourse without discussion or users being banned. I'm highly skeptical that putting the extremes in greater contact would cause de-radicalization. I think it's more likely that would cause the extremes to further polarize and dig in for apocalyptic battle for the fate of the world. I think a more-likely "de-radicalization" path is to hyper-amplify the center while suppressing the extremes. Specifically exposing users to a lot of content one "notch" toward the center and some content two "notches" in that direction (e.g. extreme right user gets a lot of moderate right and some centrist; a moderate left user gets a lot of centrist and some moderate right).
- MathCodeLove 5y agoI think allowing both extremes makes it clearer where precisely the center is located. Look at it this way - In a balanced system you can see how far each side stretches. You're better able to understand what truly is the "extreme" and what isn't: LLLLLLLLLL <you> RRRRRRRRRR In a system where one side is censored, what you see doesn't change, but your perception of what you see is warped. The extreme L may not seem so extreme given how much closer you are to it. And even the mild R can begin to look more extreme compared to everything else you see. LLLLLLL <you> LLLRRRR Allowing both sides to speak without censorship may not have any impact on the actual L and R extremist, but it will hopefully have an impact on "normal" people and stop warping their perceptions.
- ROARosen 5y agoI think Musk might just make it public again, or turn it into a nonprofit. True, I'm going a little out on a limb here but IMHO makes total sense. Since Twitter is - in Musk's words - the “de facto public town square” - it doesn't make sense for it to be a private company at all (which is much less open to outside scrutiny and/or criticisms). Which is kind of an oxymoron given the fact that the changes he supposedly wants to implement will only be possible if he takes it private. All of this leads me to believe he might just implement the changes he wants and promptly go public again, keeping control of the board or as CEO (prob also at a much higher eval). This, or maybe he'll turn it into a nonprofit.
- simondotau 5y agoI honestly don't see how being publicly owned—i.e. beholden to the profit motive—is anything other than objectively worse for a "de facto public town square". Twitter is addicted to engagement. Solving for this in the long term cannot be squared with modern capitalism.
- version_five 5y agoI don't see how Twitter can be changed away from what it is and still be a place people are interested in going to. I think the best reasonable outcome will be for it to be destroyed by this, and set the cause of elite outrage back a few years until something else evolves. I assume this is the master plan. Otherwise, what is the real pathway to a single site where opinions coexist, free speech is allowed, and people participate in good faith. It's a bit like democracy, it only really works if the overwhelming majority have the same goals, otherwise it sucks for everyone. I see the potential here for a tower of Babel type destruction where all the silly tribes fighting each other just get scattered and take some time to regroup, and hopefully give society a chance to thrive for a bit. Let's see.
- itronitron 5y agoTwitter should charge every account a monthly fee based on the number of followers they have, unless they have fewer than 100 (or some other n) followers.
- fleddr 5y agoSo buying influence, not sold on this idea.
- itronitron 5y agoIt is not buying influence as each account still needs to attract its own followers. It simply places the cost of influence/reach on the size of the account instead of on individual users who are the ones being influenced.
- prawn 5y agoAnd when griefers band together to follow people en masse to drive up their costs? They would not want to discourage heavy users (who bring the crowds) from using their platform.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]