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Most Twitter users, as best I can tell, aren't actually complaining about what they see. They are complaining about what others see. In their view, they have

Most Twitter users, as best I can tell, aren't actually complaining about what they see. They are complaining about what others see. In their view, they have the "correct opinions" and have not been biased by any algorithms or moderation. Meanwhile, the people that disagree with them are the ones being duped by algorithms, bad moderation, and bad actors. That's why there's a huge censorship movement right now in the US. People aren't saying, "protect me from what I want" -- they are saying, "protect others from what they want, but leave me alone." Which is, of course, entirely hypocritical.

P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
^ and this sentiment is repeated by everyone who thinks they're smarter than everyone else. So now where are we?
bitwize 4y ago
Read Marcuse's "Repressive Tolerance" to see why this is the case: https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/publications/1960s/1965-repressive-tolerance-fulltext.html https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/publications/1960s/1965-repr... The tl;dr is that if you actually want to move toward a society of free and equal human beings and eliminate oppression, "free speech for all" is not how you go about it. One side of the political spectrum supports equality and emancipation, the other is opposed to it. Therefore the speech of one side must be tolerated and supported; the speech of the other must be squelched and restricted. The internet has had its time to experiment with free speech for all, and now we have Nazis. Social media companies saw greater value in muzzling the Nazis than they did in hewing to outdated libertarian internet values.
- nostromo 4y ago
  This is the exact logic used by Joseph McCarthy, and I think it's safe to say that was a failed experiment. > Therefore the speech of one side must be tolerated and supported; the speech of the other must be squelched and restricted. This is actually how you get Nazis. You know, the real ones that existed before the internet. Not 4chan weebs trolling boomers online, but the ones that would jail or kill you for having the wrong opinion or wrong affiliation.
  - ska 4y ago
    That seems a-historical. The way you get the real nazis is by not acting soon enough when they target/vilify/'other' marginalized groups, or attempting to get a foothold in political institutions.
    - bitwize 4y ago
      It is ahistorical. Germany outlawed Nazi ideology and went 80 years without renazifying; the danger of such was very real after WWII. Marcuse, a German Jew, was considering the real, immediate, terrifying problem of how to prevent another Holocaust.
      - nostromo 4y ago
        You're cherry picking. Look at Joseph McCarthy and see a counter-example. He used the exact same logic: to prevent a Soviet-style totalitarian government in the US, we had to be intolerant of everyone left of mainstream Democrats. It destroyed many peoples' lives, most of who were not at all sympathetic to Soviet-style communism. Similar to your example, we could also argue that McCarthy was indeed effective at preventing Soviet-style communism in America (since the US still has free speech and there has not been another holocaust). But in both cases we don't have convincing evidence that suppressing speech was actually helpful.
        woooooo 4y ago
        Worth adding on that McCarthy knew exactly what he was doing and didn't care. It raised his profile. (Source: master of the senate, caro) Those who validate dirty pool in pursuit of the greater good will always be enabling people like that.
        pixl97 4y ago
        Being moderate is a delicate balance where foes seek power in whatever way possible. With this said I get quite concerned when someone says it's their freedom to plot the end of my existence.
      - 4y ago
- trillic 4y ago
  A bit of a paradox, but a tolerant society does not tolerate intolerance.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - HPsquared 4y ago
    It's a logical contradiction. There seems to be some overloading of the word "tolerance".
    - petermcneeley 4y ago
      Yes such overloading leads to paradoxes. My favorite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unexpected_hanging_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unexpected_hanging_paradox
      - drdeca 4y ago
        Huh, does the unexpected hanging paradox come from such an overloading? It isn't obvious to me how it is. I don't mean that in a way to suggest that it seems unlikely to me. It seems quite plausible to me that it is. I just don't see in what way. Could you elaborate on how it comes from an overloading?
    - googlryas 4y ago
      It's not, it is just a term in common usage taken to the extreme in an attempt to be clever, in contravention of all conversational norms. I don't think there is any definition of tolerance that is mathematically sound and absolute. It would be like saying "a peaceful person would never punch someone in the nose". But what if you needed to punch someone in the nose because they were trying to kill you for no reason? That doesn't mean peaceful people don't exist, or that peaceful people need to let random people murder them. It just means that the determination of peacefulness is contextual.
    - SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
      FYI, I think that you missed that this idea that "a tolerant society does not tolerate intolerance" is better known as "Karl Popper's paradox of tolerance" You can find it under that name, numerous articles, from Wikipedia on down (1). Since 1945. it's widely known and accepted. It's not an actual contradiction, most "paradoxes" only appear that way on a superficial inspection. it would be like saying, as the sibling comment did "a peaceful person would never punch someone in the nose" ... except that a society that aims for peace, and is beset with violent people, is going to have to quell that violence. This might involve reserving the right to punch the punchers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
- petermcneeley 4y ago
  > Therefore the speech of one side must be tolerated and supported; the speech of the other must be squelched and restricted. This sounds like a distinction between say a friend and an enemy. Sounds like a political concept I have heard before.
  - cfraenkel 4y ago
    Too true. "Do as I say, not as I do." also comes to mind.
- wallfacer120 4y ago
- dpdpdp 4y ago
- hutzlibu 4y ago
  "of free and equal human beings" The problem starts with how you define those two(or any political expression). Because by many definitions, they are contradictory. Equal chances? Money gives people advantages, so all should have the same money? Even if all would have the same money, some are born smart and some are born dumb. Genetic equalisation? Pretty much against the idea of "freedom" like I know it. When people are free, some will party all day, some will work like a dog. So some will get rich. Some will get by, some will starve. Unless you mean strictly "equal in front of the law", which we supposedly have, but we all know that the one with the more expensive lawer (or any lawer at all) has a big edge. So de facto we are not even equal in front of the law. The big question is, how and what would you change about it? I would actually start with free speech, because when people cannot speak freely, they will start speaking in code. And this will just make the whole political discussions even harder, as it will blur the definitions even more. I think this is mainly what we have on the internet. Lots of talk and lots of people thinking they are right, but only little actual communication and adressing the core problems because people are mostly talking about different things.
- sien 4y ago
  And read Marcuse for gems like this : "They would include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements that promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or that oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc." That is, if you oppose the expansion of government you should have your right to free speech removed. From : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse Which shows the problem with idea of 'we must remove free speech for hate speech' because one of the originators of the idea intended that free speech should be withdrawn from people he disagreed with in ways that many or even most people in most Democratic states would find abhorrent.
- kneebonian 4y ago
  > The internet has had its time to experiment with free speech for all, and now we have Nazis. Interestingly enough did you know that the original Nazis came about before the internet ever existed, way back in the 1930's, further did you know Nazis existed prior to the internet as well. It is true, in fact one may argue that there is no real correlation between the existence of Nazis and the internet, just their visibility. But in a less sarcastic vein, I can only speak from my personal experience, but from what I see the more we try and suppress speech that some do not like, whether labeling it as hate speech, misinformation, or whatever else has produced in fact the exact opposite of the intended result, where more people are willing to tolerate actual Nazi's, question official information more readily and tolerate real racism more because the label became so broadly applied that it lost any meaningful effect. Finally I also heard one interesting theory that part of the reason one side of the political spectrum is currently struggling so much is because the other side had even their moderate views censored from twitter, whereas another side was treated in a much more lenient fashion. The result was only the most reasonable and centerist voices of one side were shared, whereas the other side had many of their most radical and vocal members airing their views for all to see, which was a turn off to many, whereas the most extermist content on the other side was hidden and squelched.
ska 4y ago
> Most Twitter users, as best I can tell, aren't actually complaining about what they see. They are complaining about what others see. FWIW this doesn't match my experience at all, but I've hardly made a study of it. What I mean by that is that the limited complaints I have heard are mostly about a) bad quality advertisement targeting and b) political targeting, also mostly bad quality. "quality" here meaning accuracy of the targeting, not a comment on the content.
- wallfacer120 4y ago
  If you haven't noticed the chorus of coastal media types asking for people they disagree with to be prevented from speaking in any public forum, then you are truly oblivious.
  - jshen 4y ago
    Or maybe we’re all in filter bubbles, including you.
    - wallfacer120 4y ago
      - actually_a_dog 4y ago
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    I've seen them asking for private forums to stop giving such folk a platform, because an organization can choose to do what it will with its private property. But public forums? No, I can't say I have. In fact, I remember witnessing a President giving a large speech in a public forum that was followed by a riot at the Capitol (whether said speech was causal to the riot is still a matter for the courts). Nobody challenged his right to give the speech until the question of whether it was "incitement to riot" came up, and that challenge is unrelated.
justlikeplace 4y ago
Sounds just like Hacker News.
SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
> Most Twitter users, as best I can tell, aren't actually complaining about what they see. They are complaining about what others see. I don't see any evidence for that > In their view, they have the "correct opinions" ... the people that disagree with them are the ones being duped This is getting very straw-man > That's why there's a huge censorship movement right now in the US Oh really, is there?
Animats 4y ago
> I dunno. Mostly I don't want to see ads. I liked Facebook when it just told me what my friends were doing. I don't want a "news feed" from a social network. But the news media suffer from a huge punditry to hard facts ratio problem. Today's first-screen news stories on major outlets that didn't begin as a press release or punditry: * Fox: "Remains of missing toddler Quinton Simon found in landfill, mother charged" * Washington Post: "Covid deaths skew older, reviving questions about ‘acceptable loss’" * New York Times: "Antiwar Activists Who Flee Russia Find Detention, Not Freedom, in the U.S." "Exhumed Grave Near Kherson Shows Occupation’s Brutality" * New York Post: nothing. * Reuters: "Hawaii's Mauna Loa volcano erupts for first time in nearly 40 years". * The Times (of London): nothing, because they have such large ads and banners that the content is hidden. * South China Morning Post: nothing, again mostly because of oversized banners. * Le Monde: "The unflinching gaze of Ukrainian drones in Bakhmut" * CNN: multiple stories, because the first screen has many headline links and small banners. Some of this is optimizing the use of screen space for revenue, not information.
- jrmg 4y ago
  I liked Facebook when it just told me what my friends were doing. I don't want a "news feed" from a social network. I have the completely un-researched and un-backed opinion that Twitter changing its prompt from "What are you doing?" to "What's happening?" in 2009 has had an unappreciated, oversized negative affect on the world.
  - cxr 4y ago
    I hold an opinion that can be considered somewhat opposite[1]. Similarly, a commenter from Reddit[2] writes: > I haven’t personally met anyone active on Twitter for years. There are very specific types of people that want to be sharing things in that way and from my experience they are very narcissistic. > Not that Reddit doesn’t have their share of asssholes, but I find that because it is anonymous it is also more tolerable. At least it was the case until a few years ago, now Reddit became very popular and the quality of the posts has declined immensely in almost all subs. > Twitter is just a bunch of people self promoting themselves as more intelligent, more informed, more socially and environmentally conscious, etc. Basically IG for unattractive people. Already implicit in the "What are you doing?" prompt is the hallmark of modern social media that focuses on positioning individual personality and punditry over common, for-the-greater-good, "kitchen table" discussion in service to a given topic—the focus is on you, the contributor, rather that taking backseat to whatever it is that you're supposed to be contributing to. I'm not sure that this can be rolled back at this point, though. 1. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31180315 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31180315> 2. <https://old.reddit.com/r/samharris/comments/z59ccj/annaka_on_twitter_addiction/ixv06wu/ https://old.reddit.com/r/samharris/comments/z59ccj/annaka_on...>
k__ 4y ago
That's true. My timeline is pretty chill. But when I look what's trending in my country, Twitter is a garbage fire.
jrmg 4y ago
I don't think that's correct. I think most people are complaining about what they see, and how they feel when using Twitter. I'm basing my opinion on: - The experience of seeing people move to Mastodon and comment on how much more pleasant they find it (I do think this might be fleeting - more because they're seeing only early adopters than because there's intrinsic 'bitterness' missing on Mastodon, at least compared to 'old Twitter'). - My own experience of Twitter. It just makes me anxious and angry now. Every time. Yet I keep going back! It's transformed from a pleasant place to converse and browse to somewhere where everyone is angry at everyone else all the time. I'm fairly liberal in my opinions, so usually people I see are angry at either right wing folks or other left wing folks being liberal in slightly different ways - but I do also see the retweets of angry right wing tweets with the "hey, isn't this opinion SO WRONG" opinion. This is with the 'chronological' feed. With the 'algorithmic' feed, it's _even worse_: I now get more angry people I don't know on both sides of the spectrum, and I don't see the non-angry normal conversations or life updates from people I do follow (presumably because they're low-engagement). - I _do_ think about how this affects others, you're right - and I imagine that those with more right wing opinions are in much the same state as me, but more 'opposite', and _even more angry_ because right wing accounts seem to be more likely to be aggressive than left wing ones. So, yes, I am concerned about what others see - but only in as much as I'm concerned about what everyone sees and how the current political climate is descending into an angry selfish madness where no-one is prepared to actually listen to anyone else. I do think this angry selfish madness is more prevalent on the right, especially in mainstream politics. Maybe my experience is not the majority one, but I think you should take it into account.
- toofy 4y ago
  > My own experience of Twitter... it’s transformed from a pleasant place… yep. this is what many of these people just continually fail to understand. it’s just not fun being around abusive, abrasive, anti-social people constantly. its not complicated. it’s not scandalous. it’s not shocking. people don’t enjoy being around anti-social rude people. when they’re given an alternative where the promise is less shitty behaviors (the current iteration seems to be mastodon) then people go there, and this drives a certain group of people crazy. what we should be asking is why it bothers them so strongly when some people say “i’m personally going to move away from that rude abrasive person over there.” why are they so insistent that we spend our free time around abrasive assholes? they’re adamant about this. why?
0x457 4y ago
Hmm, I see a lot of trash that I don't want to see "suggested" by twitter in my feed on the time. The thing is...I don't care that others see it, like it, retweet it. It just, personally, I don't want to see content from accounts I'm not subscribed - I don't care how many of my accounts, that I follow, follow those accounts. Like, 2/3 of my feed is not from accounts I follow: promoted tweets and suggestions. That's why I quit. I still log in from time to time to keep my handle alive and check out some crazies...
98codes 4y ago
For me, it was never about what I did see, it was always about what I didn't see. Want to show me extra stuff that you think matches? OK, but FFS let me see the stuff that I have purposefully, manually subscribed to/followed.
ilyt 4y ago
Eh, I think many of them are fully aware that it is the platform that pushes views that agree with them, hence any notion of removing "moderation" seems like helping "the enemy" get a hold.
BizarroLand 4y ago
Isn't it odd that we are both always perfect and always getting better with time? I don't know anyone who consistently looks at their own thoughts and opinions from a self-critical eye with the goal of probing their mental models for flaws in the structure for the express purpose of fixing their logical or factual errors, but surely we do gradually over time. That is probably a very difficult thing to do all at once, although I suppose it does happen little by little. Surely, no matter how rarely or in what brilliant glimpses we get time chisels away our ignorance so long as our ignorance is more pliable than the steel of the chisel of our self-education. I doubt many adults feel as though they have suddenly sprung fully formed from the womb of childhood, fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of perfection, and yet most of us feel that as of right now, our small flaws aside, we are as close to perfection as we have ever been or possibly ever will be.

P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago

^ and this sentiment is repeated by everyone who thinks they're smarter than everyone else. So now where are we?

bitwize 4y ago

Read Marcuse's "Repressive Tolerance" to see why this is the case: https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/publications/1960s/1965-repressive-tolerance-fulltext.html https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/publications/1960s/1965-repr... The tl;dr is that if you actually want to move toward a society of free and equal human beings and eliminate oppression, "free speech for all" is not how you go about it. One side of the political spectrum supports equality and emancipation, the other is opposed to it. Therefore the speech of one side must be tolerated and supported; the speech of the other must be squelched and restricted. The internet has had its time to experiment with free speech for all, and now we have Nazis. Social media companies saw greater value in muzzling the Nazis than they did in hewing to outdated libertarian internet values.

nostromo 4y ago
This is the exact logic used by Joseph McCarthy, and I think it's safe to say that was a failed experiment. > Therefore the speech of one side must be tolerated and supported; the speech of the other must be squelched and restricted. This is actually how you get Nazis. You know, the real ones that existed before the internet. Not 4chan weebs trolling boomers online, but the ones that would jail or kill you for having the wrong opinion or wrong affiliation.
- ska 4y ago
  That seems a-historical. The way you get the real nazis is by not acting soon enough when they target/vilify/'other' marginalized groups, or attempting to get a foothold in political institutions.
  - bitwize 4y ago
    It is ahistorical. Germany outlawed Nazi ideology and went 80 years without renazifying; the danger of such was very real after WWII. Marcuse, a German Jew, was considering the real, immediate, terrifying problem of how to prevent another Holocaust.
    - nostromo 4y ago
      You're cherry picking. Look at Joseph McCarthy and see a counter-example. He used the exact same logic: to prevent a Soviet-style totalitarian government in the US, we had to be intolerant of everyone left of mainstream Democrats. It destroyed many peoples' lives, most of who were not at all sympathetic to Soviet-style communism. Similar to your example, we could also argue that McCarthy was indeed effective at preventing Soviet-style communism in America (since the US still has free speech and there has not been another holocaust). But in both cases we don't have convincing evidence that suppressing speech was actually helpful.
      - woooooo 4y ago
        Worth adding on that McCarthy knew exactly what he was doing and didn't care. It raised his profile. (Source: master of the senate, caro) Those who validate dirty pool in pursuit of the greater good will always be enabling people like that.
      - pixl97 4y ago
        Being moderate is a delicate balance where foes seek power in whatever way possible. With this said I get quite concerned when someone says it's their freedom to plot the end of my existence.
    - 4y ago
trillic 4y ago
A bit of a paradox, but a tolerant society does not tolerate intolerance.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- HPsquared 4y ago
  It's a logical contradiction. There seems to be some overloading of the word "tolerance".
  - petermcneeley 4y ago
    Yes such overloading leads to paradoxes. My favorite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unexpected_hanging_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unexpected_hanging_paradox
    - drdeca 4y ago
      Huh, does the unexpected hanging paradox come from such an overloading? It isn't obvious to me how it is. I don't mean that in a way to suggest that it seems unlikely to me. It seems quite plausible to me that it is. I just don't see in what way. Could you elaborate on how it comes from an overloading?
  - googlryas 4y ago
    It's not, it is just a term in common usage taken to the extreme in an attempt to be clever, in contravention of all conversational norms. I don't think there is any definition of tolerance that is mathematically sound and absolute. It would be like saying "a peaceful person would never punch someone in the nose". But what if you needed to punch someone in the nose because they were trying to kill you for no reason? That doesn't mean peaceful people don't exist, or that peaceful people need to let random people murder them. It just means that the determination of peacefulness is contextual.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
    FYI, I think that you missed that this idea that "a tolerant society does not tolerate intolerance" is better known as "Karl Popper's paradox of tolerance" You can find it under that name, numerous articles, from Wikipedia on down (1). Since 1945. it's widely known and accepted. It's not an actual contradiction, most "paradoxes" only appear that way on a superficial inspection. it would be like saying, as the sibling comment did "a peaceful person would never punch someone in the nose" ... except that a society that aims for peace, and is beset with violent people, is going to have to quell that violence. This might involve reserving the right to punch the punchers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
petermcneeley 4y ago
> Therefore the speech of one side must be tolerated and supported; the speech of the other must be squelched and restricted. This sounds like a distinction between say a friend and an enemy. Sounds like a political concept I have heard before.
- cfraenkel 4y ago
  Too true. "Do as I say, not as I do." also comes to mind.
wallfacer120 4y ago
dpdpdp 4y ago
hutzlibu 4y ago
"of free and equal human beings" The problem starts with how you define those two(or any political expression). Because by many definitions, they are contradictory. Equal chances? Money gives people advantages, so all should have the same money? Even if all would have the same money, some are born smart and some are born dumb. Genetic equalisation? Pretty much against the idea of "freedom" like I know it. When people are free, some will party all day, some will work like a dog. So some will get rich. Some will get by, some will starve. Unless you mean strictly "equal in front of the law", which we supposedly have, but we all know that the one with the more expensive lawer (or any lawer at all) has a big edge. So de facto we are not even equal in front of the law. The big question is, how and what would you change about it? I would actually start with free speech, because when people cannot speak freely, they will start speaking in code. And this will just make the whole political discussions even harder, as it will blur the definitions even more. I think this is mainly what we have on the internet. Lots of talk and lots of people thinking they are right, but only little actual communication and adressing the core problems because people are mostly talking about different things.
sien 4y ago
And read Marcuse for gems like this : "They would include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements that promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or that oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc." That is, if you oppose the expansion of government you should have your right to free speech removed. From : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse Which shows the problem with idea of 'we must remove free speech for hate speech' because one of the originators of the idea intended that free speech should be withdrawn from people he disagreed with in ways that many or even most people in most Democratic states would find abhorrent.
kneebonian 4y ago
> The internet has had its time to experiment with free speech for all, and now we have Nazis. Interestingly enough did you know that the original Nazis came about before the internet ever existed, way back in the 1930's, further did you know Nazis existed prior to the internet as well. It is true, in fact one may argue that there is no real correlation between the existence of Nazis and the internet, just their visibility. But in a less sarcastic vein, I can only speak from my personal experience, but from what I see the more we try and suppress speech that some do not like, whether labeling it as hate speech, misinformation, or whatever else has produced in fact the exact opposite of the intended result, where more people are willing to tolerate actual Nazi's, question official information more readily and tolerate real racism more because the label became so broadly applied that it lost any meaningful effect. Finally I also heard one interesting theory that part of the reason one side of the political spectrum is currently struggling so much is because the other side had even their moderate views censored from twitter, whereas another side was treated in a much more lenient fashion. The result was only the most reasonable and centerist voices of one side were shared, whereas the other side had many of their most radical and vocal members airing their views for all to see, which was a turn off to many, whereas the most extermist content on the other side was hidden and squelched.

ska 4y ago

> Most Twitter users, as best I can tell, aren't actually complaining about what they see. They are complaining about what others see. FWIW this doesn't match my experience at all, but I've hardly made a study of it. What I mean by that is that the limited complaints I have heard are mostly about a) bad quality advertisement targeting and b) political targeting, also mostly bad quality. "quality" here meaning accuracy of the targeting, not a comment on the content.

wallfacer120 4y ago
If you haven't noticed the chorus of coastal media types asking for people they disagree with to be prevented from speaking in any public forum, then you are truly oblivious.
- jshen 4y ago
  Or maybe we’re all in filter bubbles, including you.
  - wallfacer120 4y ago
    - actually_a_dog 4y ago
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  I've seen them asking for private forums to stop giving such folk a platform, because an organization can choose to do what it will with its private property. But public forums? No, I can't say I have. In fact, I remember witnessing a President giving a large speech in a public forum that was followed by a riot at the Capitol (whether said speech was causal to the riot is still a matter for the courts). Nobody challenged his right to give the speech until the question of whether it was "incitement to riot" came up, and that challenge is unrelated.

justlikeplace 4y ago

Sounds just like Hacker News.

SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago

> Most Twitter users, as best I can tell, aren't actually complaining about what they see. They are complaining about what others see. I don't see any evidence for that > In their view, they have the "correct opinions" ... the people that disagree with them are the ones being duped This is getting very straw-man > That's why there's a huge censorship movement right now in the US Oh really, is there?

Animats 4y ago

> I dunno. Mostly I don't want to see ads. I liked Facebook when it just told me what my friends were doing. I don't want a "news feed" from a social network. But the news media suffer from a huge punditry to hard facts ratio problem. Today's first-screen news stories on major outlets that didn't begin as a press release or punditry: * Fox: "Remains of missing toddler Quinton Simon found in landfill, mother charged" * Washington Post: "Covid deaths skew older, reviving questions about ‘acceptable loss’" * New York Times: "Antiwar Activists Who Flee Russia Find Detention, Not Freedom, in the U.S." "Exhumed Grave Near Kherson Shows Occupation’s Brutality" * New York Post: nothing. * Reuters: "Hawaii's Mauna Loa volcano erupts for first time in nearly 40 years". * The Times (of London): nothing, because they have such large ads and banners that the content is hidden. * South China Morning Post: nothing, again mostly because of oversized banners. * Le Monde: "The unflinching gaze of Ukrainian drones in Bakhmut" * CNN: multiple stories, because the first screen has many headline links and small banners. Some of this is optimizing the use of screen space for revenue, not information.

jrmg 4y ago
I liked Facebook when it just told me what my friends were doing. I don't want a "news feed" from a social network. I have the completely un-researched and un-backed opinion that Twitter changing its prompt from "What are you doing?" to "What's happening?" in 2009 has had an unappreciated, oversized negative affect on the world.
- cxr 4y ago
  I hold an opinion that can be considered somewhat opposite[1]. Similarly, a commenter from Reddit[2] writes: > I haven’t personally met anyone active on Twitter for years. There are very specific types of people that want to be sharing things in that way and from my experience they are very narcissistic. > Not that Reddit doesn’t have their share of asssholes, but I find that because it is anonymous it is also more tolerable. At least it was the case until a few years ago, now Reddit became very popular and the quality of the posts has declined immensely in almost all subs. > Twitter is just a bunch of people self promoting themselves as more intelligent, more informed, more socially and environmentally conscious, etc. Basically IG for unattractive people. Already implicit in the "What are you doing?" prompt is the hallmark of modern social media that focuses on positioning individual personality and punditry over common, for-the-greater-good, "kitchen table" discussion in service to a given topic—the focus is on you, the contributor, rather that taking backseat to whatever it is that you're supposed to be contributing to. I'm not sure that this can be rolled back at this point, though. 1. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31180315 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31180315> 2. <https://old.reddit.com/r/samharris/comments/z59ccj/annaka_on_twitter_addiction/ixv06wu/ https://old.reddit.com/r/samharris/comments/z59ccj/annaka_on...>

k__ 4y ago

That's true. My timeline is pretty chill. But when I look what's trending in my country, Twitter is a garbage fire.

jrmg 4y ago

I don't think that's correct. I think most people are complaining about what they see, and how they feel when using Twitter. I'm basing my opinion on: - The experience of seeing people move to Mastodon and comment on how much more pleasant they find it (I do think this might be fleeting - more because they're seeing only early adopters than because there's intrinsic 'bitterness' missing on Mastodon, at least compared to 'old Twitter'). - My own experience of Twitter. It just makes me anxious and angry now. Every time. Yet I keep going back! It's transformed from a pleasant place to converse and browse to somewhere where everyone is angry at everyone else all the time. I'm fairly liberal in my opinions, so usually people I see are angry at either right wing folks or other left wing folks being liberal in slightly different ways - but I do also see the retweets of angry right wing tweets with the "hey, isn't this opinion SO WRONG" opinion. This is with the 'chronological' feed. With the 'algorithmic' feed, it's _even worse_: I now get more angry people I don't know on both sides of the spectrum, and I don't see the non-angry normal conversations or life updates from people I do follow (presumably because they're low-engagement). - I _do_ think about how this affects others, you're right - and I imagine that those with more right wing opinions are in much the same state as me, but more 'opposite', and _even more angry_ because right wing accounts seem to be more likely to be aggressive than left wing ones. So, yes, I am concerned about what others see - but only in as much as I'm concerned about what everyone sees and how the current political climate is descending into an angry selfish madness where no-one is prepared to actually listen to anyone else. I do think this angry selfish madness is more prevalent on the right, especially in mainstream politics. Maybe my experience is not the majority one, but I think you should take it into account.

toofy 4y ago
> My own experience of Twitter... it’s transformed from a pleasant place… yep. this is what many of these people just continually fail to understand. it’s just not fun being around abusive, abrasive, anti-social people constantly. its not complicated. it’s not scandalous. it’s not shocking. people don’t enjoy being around anti-social rude people. when they’re given an alternative where the promise is less shitty behaviors (the current iteration seems to be mastodon) then people go there, and this drives a certain group of people crazy. what we should be asking is why it bothers them so strongly when some people say “i’m personally going to move away from that rude abrasive person over there.” why are they so insistent that we spend our free time around abrasive assholes? they’re adamant about this. why?

0x457 4y ago

Hmm, I see a lot of trash that I don't want to see "suggested" by twitter in my feed on the time. The thing is...I don't care that others see it, like it, retweet it. It just, personally, I don't want to see content from accounts I'm not subscribed - I don't care how many of my accounts, that I follow, follow those accounts. Like, 2/3 of my feed is not from accounts I follow: promoted tweets and suggestions. That's why I quit. I still log in from time to time to keep my handle alive and check out some crazies...

98codes 4y ago

For me, it was never about what I did see, it was always about what I didn't see. Want to show me extra stuff that you think matches? OK, but FFS let me see the stuff that I have purposefully, manually subscribed to/followed.

ilyt 4y ago

Eh, I think many of them are fully aware that it is the platform that pushes views that agree with them, hence any notion of removing "moderation" seems like helping "the enemy" get a hold.

BizarroLand 4y ago

Isn't it odd that we are both always perfect and always getting better with time? I don't know anyone who consistently looks at their own thoughts and opinions from a self-critical eye with the goal of probing their mental models for flaws in the structure for the express purpose of fixing their logical or factual errors, but surely we do gradually over time. That is probably a very difficult thing to do all at once, although I suppose it does happen little by little. Surely, no matter how rarely or in what brilliant glimpses we get time chisels away our ignorance so long as our ignorance is more pliable than the steel of the chisel of our self-education. I doubt many adults feel as though they have suddenly sprung fully formed from the womb of childhood, fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of perfection, and yet most of us feel that as of right now, our small flaws aside, we are as close to perfection as we have ever been or possibly ever will be.