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If you think it's the Twitter's moderation team who's responsible for "to control and influence the conversation itself" on Twitter, I got bad news for you. Po

If you think it's the Twitter's moderation team who's responsible for "to control and influence the conversation itself" on Twitter, I got bad news for you. Political conversation on twitter is driven by: 1) loud extremists on all sides of the political spectrum 2) domestic and foreign agents working to destabilize society for their gain 3) bots amplifying all of the above Regular people, the majority of them with bland moderate opinions, are largely absent from all of that, yet somehow we all pretend that Twitter and other such platforms are representative of the population. I mean, if we weren't pretending, there would be very little reason to pay attention to it, yet here we are. There are two types of platforms that (somewhat!) managed to escape the trap of extremism: 1) Those owned and controlled by billionaires for their own gain (state funded channels, major private news channels, local news stations, etc.) 2) Platforms that are too small / too niche / not used by people for sharing political opinions (niche forums, most people's email, etc.) I am yet to see any solutions for this. Everyone's pumping Mastodon as if it can solve extremism / spam / bots. It can't, the extremists, special interests, and their bots will just follow you there... if Mastodon ever becomes big enough to drive political discourse that is. And if it won't, then it's no different from the myriad of niche forums we already have – those are great, but utterly irrelevant to the problems we face with platforms like Twitter. Neither will government-enforced censorship improve the situation. If you disagree, let's wait until <party-you-hate> is in power, then implement this change. <excuses follow>. Yeah, that's what I thought.

jacooper 4y ago
> 1) loud extremists on all sides of the political spectrum One side controls and puts rules for the entire conversation, that's the issue. > Regular people, the majority of them with bland moderate opinions, are largely absent from all of that Yet they consume that content, that's why it shouldn't be controlled by a biased party.
- nikitaga 4y ago
  > One side controls and puts rules for the entire conversation, that's the issue. Moderation bias is only a minor issue in practice, compared to the real issues that I mentioned. Twitter is still a cesspool of both left wing and right wing propaganda despite your claim that one side "controls the entire conversation". > why it shouldn't be controlled by a biased party So... 1) You have an unbiased party in mind, and this party is unbiased because it's magically incorruptible in principle, not because it currently holds no power worth corrupting. or 2) You claim that no party should control twitter at all (aka free speech absolutism), and have a magical solution to ward off extremism and deliberate attacks and bots. Either way, it's irresponsible to keep such groundbreaking discoveries from the world, please do share.
  - jacooper 4y ago
    > Moderation bias is only a minor issue in practice Maybe, maybe not, but my comment solely focuses on that, and nothing else. > Either way, it's irresponsible to keep such groundbreaking discoveries from the world, please do share. > > Its a problem and I don’t know the solution either,

jacooper 4y ago

> 1) loud extremists on all sides of the political spectrum One side controls and puts rules for the entire conversation, that's the issue. > Regular people, the majority of them with bland moderate opinions, are largely absent from all of that Yet they consume that content, that's why it shouldn't be controlled by a biased party.

nikitaga 4y ago
> One side controls and puts rules for the entire conversation, that's the issue. Moderation bias is only a minor issue in practice, compared to the real issues that I mentioned. Twitter is still a cesspool of both left wing and right wing propaganda despite your claim that one side "controls the entire conversation". > why it shouldn't be controlled by a biased party So... 1) You have an unbiased party in mind, and this party is unbiased because it's magically incorruptible in principle, not because it currently holds no power worth corrupting. or 2) You claim that no party should control twitter at all (aka free speech absolutism), and have a magical solution to ward off extremism and deliberate attacks and bots. Either way, it's irresponsible to keep such groundbreaking discoveries from the world, please do share.
- jacooper 4y ago
  > Moderation bias is only a minor issue in practice Maybe, maybe not, but my comment solely focuses on that, and nothing else. > Either way, it's irresponsible to keep such groundbreaking discoveries from the world, please do share. > > Its a problem and I don’t know the solution either,