7 ms·

I'm very skeptical of the idea that Twitter can become a place where people discuss things with civility. It seems like the mechanics of the conversation encour

I'm very skeptical of the idea that Twitter can become a place where people discuss things with civility. It seems like the mechanics of the conversation encourage outrage.

kitsunesoba 4y ago
On top of that, historically internet forums have required fairly strict moderation to remain civil for any significant amount of time. Without that, one quickly ends up with an incredibly unpleasant space that repels more people than it attracts.
- davidw 4y ago
  Elon should make @dang CEO of twitter!
  - usefulcat 4y ago
    Please no, he'd be very missed here :)
  - biorach 4y ago
    dang has suffered enough
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - firloop 4y ago
    Hacker News is great precisely because it is very much _not_ a free speech paradise.
    - exodust 4y ago
      Maybe it would be even greater as a free speech paradise, where we could express opinions in the words and manner we choose. Perhaps some kind of "HN gloves off" mode might work. Or HN After Dark. Then the traditional civil mode could be retained, while allowing the more wild tangents to run their course in a separate but related area or mode. I think this is inevitable for online discussion. Politicians have their formal, respectful discourse zones, but gloves come off in certain places and contexts where heated exchange is not only acceptable, but expected. And these are the people running things. So to deny the same for the general population, will never sit well.
      - erk__ 4y ago
        Well you can just turn on showdead in the options, by far most of the dead comments are not really adding anything useful to conversations
        exodust 4y ago
        Dead comments can be useful, just like civil comments can be useless. Free speech doesn't make assumptions, it says "yes, the kitchen can get hot".
    - logicalmonster 4y ago
      For some people this is enough: but HackerNews is only great for discussion within the context of socially acceptable topics. Want to have some open and honest discussions about programming languages, databases, APIs, careers, or math? There are few places where you can read more interesting and intelligent discussions on things like this. Want to have some civil, but honest discussion about anything truly contentious: say race, religion, crime, homelessness, foreign affairs, IQ, sexuality, immigration, etc? Fully open and honest discussions on these sorts of topics are just not possible unless you have a very commonplace and milquetoast viewpoint.
- dhruval 4y ago
  Should be fairly straightforward to create some sort of subreddit type functionality and let each community set its own rules and self moderate.
  - personalidea 4y ago
    Yeah, we’ve seen on Reddit how well that goes.
skohan 4y ago
If that were really their goal, theoretically they could be. For instance, this forum has features, like invisible vote counts, and exponential cool-down periods which encourage healthy conversations. Whether that is compatible with their business goals is another question.
- jupp0r 4y ago
  This forum also has an educated crowd of nerds at the heart of its community. Twitter used to have that too and was a much more civil but also less interesting space when I joined in 2008.
  - davidw 4y ago
    HN is civil because of moderation, not because of the community.
    - gopher_space 4y ago
      The moderation on HN helps retain civil community members as well. I've been thinking about moderation as a chicken-or-egg situation but maybe it's more of an equilibrium issue. I should go over my old slashdot comments and see if I remember what pushed me out.
    - cmh89 4y ago
      Are you the davidw from reddit? Do you ever go on /r/portland? It's moderated to the max yet its still neither civil or engaging. Moderation matters but I think HN does a lot better due to the features that promote well thought out posts and don't really allow trolls to get much traction.
cauthon 4y ago
The mechanics of most social media platforms encourage outrage. 1. Most are optimizing to maximize user engagement, and it seems like most platforms have concluded that emotionally charged hot takes are the best way to keep the feed scrolling and the likes and shares flowing. 2. Most don't have the small communities or active moderation necessary to build a culture of civility. (HN is an outlier, though even here I think there are still some topics where the site becomes echo chamber-y.)
sakras 4y ago
I think the fundamental limitation is that a small character limit removes the opportunity for nuance. It is a trade off though - not many people will spend time reading nuanced essays. I’d say this is a big part of the polarization - there’s only enough room to basically say left or right and maybe indicate some magnitude to your belief, so you naturally end up with two parties.
concinds 4y ago
I'm stereotyping Musk here, but it wouldn't surprise me if he decided to solve it with AI (sentiment analysis specifically) so the algorithm promotes positive tweets and downranks negative ones. Might even work, since the field has made huge progress in recent years.
- giantrobot 4y ago
  That breaks down with coded language. If groups use code words or emojis they can change their coding faster than sentiment analysis models can be updated. Even if those models can be updated quickly the coding by users can be changed arbitrarily. They can also trivially add trivial positive text alongside the codes to get amplified. Just as an example take the insipid "let's go Brandon" slogan. Sentiment analysis would rate that as a positive statement unless it was specifically flagged. That's a trivial example. There's untold numbers of covert meanings for emojis, even for banal things.
- moonchrome 4y ago
  > promotes positive tweets and downranks negative ones. Isn't this Instagram thing - my impression at least - have not used longer than a day or two because it's basically fluff only. Cutting out negative sentiment - whatever the definition - would make it boring IMO
- merely-unlikely 4y ago
  There doesn't need to be one algorithm. Bring your own algorithm would be pretty cool.
- jcadam 4y ago
  > so the algorithm promotes positive tweets and downranks negative ones Will have to prefix tweets with I positively hate...
- sangnoir 4y ago
  AI moderation has spectacular faulure modes (as banned Twitter users know). Imagine a tweet like "The thought of $NAME being unalived brings a smile to my face" would be enough to get through the positivity filter[1]. The word "unalive" itself was coined and became popular to escape such basic filters that have no sense of meaning. 1. I just tried the following on the first online sentiment analysis tool I found, and scored 85% positive: You sound very 'smart'. I have warm and fuzzy feelings at the thought of you being unalived, with your genius
naasking 4y ago
It depends on incentives. Right now histrionics and outrage get boosted and sober, nuanced analysis goes nowhere. Invert that boosting algorithm and maybe Twitter can become useful. I'm not sure what would mean for revenue though.
- mooreds 4y ago
  > I'm not sure what would mean for revenue though. I think if you have a place with useful conversation and also the attention of people, you can make money.
Beltalowda 4y ago
I agree, but these mechanics are not a law of nature, and can be changed. Whether Musk will actually do that: dunno. But I don't think it's inconceivable that Twitter could become something much better than it is today.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  I think the tweet format is directly opposed to having thoughtful, or even civil, discourse. It's hard to express anything complicated in 280 character, and if you want to have a discussion you need that time to express yourself. Without the short tweet format, what is twitter?
  - oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
    Did you write your comment in less than 280 (278) characters on purpose?
    - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
      Absolutely.
cmh89 4y ago
Civil discussion requires decorum and rules, and Musk and other conservatives view those as "censorship". It's the same reason none of the reddit clones have ever taken off, turns out most people don't want to participate in a virtual space free of censorship because it just turns into a cesspool
- soderfoo 4y ago
  Respectfully, I have not found that to be true. No one side has a monopoly on the lunatics or the level headed. It's unfortunate ad hominems, logical fallacies, and the "mic drop one liner" get so much traction and amplification. When I find myself making snap judgments about an issue, I dive in to the opposition, doggedly seek out the underpinning ideas, from academic or level headed folks. It's helped strengthen my personal convictions on some matters and moderated my pre held notions.
  - cmh89 4y ago
    >Respectfully, I have not found that to be true. No one side has a monopoly on the lunatics or the level headed. I really disagree. I think you have fringe folks on the left but outlandish ideas are mainstream amongst conservatives. For example, 70% of republicans believe Joe Biden did not legitimately win the 2020 election. https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2022/70-percent-republicans-falsely-believe-stolen-election-trump/ https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2022/70-percent-republ... You just aren't going to find such strong belief in anything that absurd on the left. >When I find myself making snap judgments about an issue, I dive in to the opposition, doggedly seek out the underpinning ideas, from academic or level headed folks. I agree! Obviously some subjects like anti-vaxxers or election deniers don't have level-headed or academic folks who can support them. That's really why you need intense moderation because quality content doesn't rise to the top. An 'anything goes' environment tends to promote the absolute worst ideas, as people like Gwyneth Paltrow and Joe Rogan have a far wider audience that actual scientists. If you allow them to lie about important issues, the lie is going to suffocate any academic or level-headed person who has something to say.
    - 4y ago
rajin444 4y ago
Civil discussion requires high trust societies. Our elites have been doing everything possible to destroy that recently.
- freejazz 4y ago
  Amusing that you don't see this as tautological
hackernewds 4y ago
The main issue with human conversation is the humans

I'm very skeptical of the idea that Twitter can become a place where people discuss things with civility. It seems like the mechanics of the conversation encourage outrage.

kitsunesoba 4y ago

On top of that, historically internet forums have required fairly strict moderation to remain civil for any significant amount of time. Without that, one quickly ends up with an incredibly unpleasant space that repels more people than it attracts.

davidw 4y ago
Elon should make @dang CEO of twitter!
- usefulcat 4y ago
  Please no, he'd be very missed here :)
- biorach 4y ago
  dang has suffered enough
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- firloop 4y ago
  Hacker News is great precisely because it is very much _not_ a free speech paradise.
  - exodust 4y ago
    Maybe it would be even greater as a free speech paradise, where we could express opinions in the words and manner we choose. Perhaps some kind of "HN gloves off" mode might work. Or HN After Dark. Then the traditional civil mode could be retained, while allowing the more wild tangents to run their course in a separate but related area or mode. I think this is inevitable for online discussion. Politicians have their formal, respectful discourse zones, but gloves come off in certain places and contexts where heated exchange is not only acceptable, but expected. And these are the people running things. So to deny the same for the general population, will never sit well.
    - erk__ 4y ago
      Well you can just turn on showdead in the options, by far most of the dead comments are not really adding anything useful to conversations
      - exodust 4y ago
        Dead comments can be useful, just like civil comments can be useless. Free speech doesn't make assumptions, it says "yes, the kitchen can get hot".
  - logicalmonster 4y ago
    For some people this is enough: but HackerNews is only great for discussion within the context of socially acceptable topics. Want to have some open and honest discussions about programming languages, databases, APIs, careers, or math? There are few places where you can read more interesting and intelligent discussions on things like this. Want to have some civil, but honest discussion about anything truly contentious: say race, religion, crime, homelessness, foreign affairs, IQ, sexuality, immigration, etc? Fully open and honest discussions on these sorts of topics are just not possible unless you have a very commonplace and milquetoast viewpoint.
dhruval 4y ago
Should be fairly straightforward to create some sort of subreddit type functionality and let each community set its own rules and self moderate.
- personalidea 4y ago
  Yeah, we’ve seen on Reddit how well that goes.

skohan 4y ago

If that were really their goal, theoretically they could be. For instance, this forum has features, like invisible vote counts, and exponential cool-down periods which encourage healthy conversations. Whether that is compatible with their business goals is another question.

jupp0r 4y ago
This forum also has an educated crowd of nerds at the heart of its community. Twitter used to have that too and was a much more civil but also less interesting space when I joined in 2008.
- davidw 4y ago
  HN is civil because of moderation, not because of the community.
  - gopher_space 4y ago
    The moderation on HN helps retain civil community members as well. I've been thinking about moderation as a chicken-or-egg situation but maybe it's more of an equilibrium issue. I should go over my old slashdot comments and see if I remember what pushed me out.
  - cmh89 4y ago
    Are you the davidw from reddit? Do you ever go on /r/portland? It's moderated to the max yet its still neither civil or engaging. Moderation matters but I think HN does a lot better due to the features that promote well thought out posts and don't really allow trolls to get much traction.

cauthon 4y ago

The mechanics of most social media platforms encourage outrage. 1. Most are optimizing to maximize user engagement, and it seems like most platforms have concluded that emotionally charged hot takes are the best way to keep the feed scrolling and the likes and shares flowing. 2. Most don't have the small communities or active moderation necessary to build a culture of civility. (HN is an outlier, though even here I think there are still some topics where the site becomes echo chamber-y.)

sakras 4y ago

I think the fundamental limitation is that a small character limit removes the opportunity for nuance. It is a trade off though - not many people will spend time reading nuanced essays. I’d say this is a big part of the polarization - there’s only enough room to basically say left or right and maybe indicate some magnitude to your belief, so you naturally end up with two parties.

concinds 4y ago

I'm stereotyping Musk here, but it wouldn't surprise me if he decided to solve it with AI (sentiment analysis specifically) so the algorithm promotes positive tweets and downranks negative ones. Might even work, since the field has made huge progress in recent years.

giantrobot 4y ago
That breaks down with coded language. If groups use code words or emojis they can change their coding faster than sentiment analysis models can be updated. Even if those models can be updated quickly the coding by users can be changed arbitrarily. They can also trivially add trivial positive text alongside the codes to get amplified. Just as an example take the insipid "let's go Brandon" slogan. Sentiment analysis would rate that as a positive statement unless it was specifically flagged. That's a trivial example. There's untold numbers of covert meanings for emojis, even for banal things.
moonchrome 4y ago
> promotes positive tweets and downranks negative ones. Isn't this Instagram thing - my impression at least - have not used longer than a day or two because it's basically fluff only. Cutting out negative sentiment - whatever the definition - would make it boring IMO
merely-unlikely 4y ago
There doesn't need to be one algorithm. Bring your own algorithm would be pretty cool.
jcadam 4y ago
> so the algorithm promotes positive tweets and downranks negative ones Will have to prefix tweets with I positively hate...
sangnoir 4y ago
AI moderation has spectacular faulure modes (as banned Twitter users know). Imagine a tweet like "The thought of $NAME being unalived brings a smile to my face" would be enough to get through the positivity filter[1]. The word "unalive" itself was coined and became popular to escape such basic filters that have no sense of meaning. 1. I just tried the following on the first online sentiment analysis tool I found, and scored 85% positive: You sound very 'smart'. I have warm and fuzzy feelings at the thought of you being unalived, with your genius

naasking 4y ago

It depends on incentives. Right now histrionics and outrage get boosted and sober, nuanced analysis goes nowhere. Invert that boosting algorithm and maybe Twitter can become useful. I'm not sure what would mean for revenue though.

mooreds 4y ago
> I'm not sure what would mean for revenue though. I think if you have a place with useful conversation and also the attention of people, you can make money.

Beltalowda 4y ago

I agree, but these mechanics are not a law of nature, and can be changed. Whether Musk will actually do that: dunno. But I don't think it's inconceivable that Twitter could become something much better than it is today.

SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
I think the tweet format is directly opposed to having thoughtful, or even civil, discourse. It's hard to express anything complicated in 280 character, and if you want to have a discussion you need that time to express yourself. Without the short tweet format, what is twitter?
- oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
  Did you write your comment in less than 280 (278) characters on purpose?
  - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    Absolutely.

cmh89 4y ago

Civil discussion requires decorum and rules, and Musk and other conservatives view those as "censorship". It's the same reason none of the reddit clones have ever taken off, turns out most people don't want to participate in a virtual space free of censorship because it just turns into a cesspool

soderfoo 4y ago
Respectfully, I have not found that to be true. No one side has a monopoly on the lunatics or the level headed. It's unfortunate ad hominems, logical fallacies, and the "mic drop one liner" get so much traction and amplification. When I find myself making snap judgments about an issue, I dive in to the opposition, doggedly seek out the underpinning ideas, from academic or level headed folks. It's helped strengthen my personal convictions on some matters and moderated my pre held notions.
- cmh89 4y ago
  >Respectfully, I have not found that to be true. No one side has a monopoly on the lunatics or the level headed. I really disagree. I think you have fringe folks on the left but outlandish ideas are mainstream amongst conservatives. For example, 70% of republicans believe Joe Biden did not legitimately win the 2020 election. https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2022/70-percent-republicans-falsely-believe-stolen-election-trump/ https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2022/70-percent-republ... You just aren't going to find such strong belief in anything that absurd on the left. >When I find myself making snap judgments about an issue, I dive in to the opposition, doggedly seek out the underpinning ideas, from academic or level headed folks. I agree! Obviously some subjects like anti-vaxxers or election deniers don't have level-headed or academic folks who can support them. That's really why you need intense moderation because quality content doesn't rise to the top. An 'anything goes' environment tends to promote the absolute worst ideas, as people like Gwyneth Paltrow and Joe Rogan have a far wider audience that actual scientists. If you allow them to lie about important issues, the lie is going to suffocate any academic or level-headed person who has something to say.
  - 4y ago

rajin444 4y ago

Civil discussion requires high trust societies. Our elites have been doing everything possible to destroy that recently.

freejazz 4y ago
Amusing that you don't see this as tautological

hackernewds 4y ago

The main issue with human conversation is the humans