10 ms·

We Don’t Need a New Twitter

50 points by lucasv07 3y ago

damnesian 3y ago
When thinking of the real value of Twitter, I end up thinking about how it seemed when it was first on the scene. For a short while, users as a group were using it "correctly" (or maybe "usefully," or "sanely"): reporters found it to be a great way to get breaking stories out in the public sphere. I remember what for me remains "peak" Twitter- following a favorite investigative journalist who happened to be near ground zero of a hunt for a dangerous criminal. He gave up-to-the-minute updates that read like the best crime fiction. When the guy was apprehended, the nation uttered a sigh of relief that one could feel, and Twitter made me feel like I was if not on the scene, at least had an incredibly candid perspective on it. The worst I've ever seen from Twitter is our attempts to have a "global conversation" about nothing. It's like the erratic chatter at the end of a party when we all have to start contemplating our real lives, start begging people for rides or if we're needy, squeezing a little more ego stroking before the sun rises. It's depressing, moody and manipulative and feels dirty and gritty like tired smoke-irritated eyes. It and Threads can both go away and I'd be perfectly happy.
- leetharris 3y ago
  I find comments like that your last sentence so bizarre. Just don't use them and you can still be happy? Millions of people use and enjoy X, it's ok if you don't.
  - Robotbeat 3y ago
    The problem is the East Coast media still spends way too much time on these things. The worst culture war takes end up getting articles written about them. It’s like our sociopolitical landscape is determined by the most insane 100 people in the country with access to the Internet.
    - leetharris 3y ago
      Totally fair. The societal impact is hard to unpack, especially in context of many minor changes.
  - losteric 3y ago
    Your post basically says "it's bizarre you're expressing your opinion, don't do that" - that is not healthy for productive conversation (ironically op's point about those products) It's ok to express negative opinions about why one doesn't use something. Other people benefit from learning from a valid dissenting view
    - rvz 3y ago
      > Your post basically says "it's bizarre you're expressing your opinion, don't do that" - that is not healthy for productive conversation (ironically op's point about those products) No it doesn't. They're just saying, millions are still using and enjoying Twitter / X and that is fine. If you don't like it, that is also fine and you can still be happy anyway. I don't see a problem with that. There is no need to misinterpret the comment.
      - macintux 3y ago
        The fact that Twitter and Facebook are driving divisiveness and misinformation definitely impacts my life, regardless of my lack of engagement with the platforms.
        rvz 3y ago
        If you don't like those websites, you are free to block them for yourself if they are spreading 'misinformation'. You can still be happy with blocking them and that is also fine.
        curtisblaine 3y ago
        But you can (and you should want to) only control what you consume. You can't control what others decide to like and consume, even if, in your personal opinion, it drives misinformation.
    - Clubber 3y ago
      >Your post basically says "it's bizarre you're expressing your opinion, don't do that" - that is not healthy for productive conversation (ironically op's point about those products) Ironically, you just did the same thing to his post.
- randomdata 3y ago
  > reporters found it to be a great way to get breaking stories out in the public sphere. Isn't that how it is still used? At least with a weather bent? That's about all I ever see in my Twitter feed is information about upcoming weather risks, with far more detail than you get from your usual weather forecasts. It's great and I've been able to learn a lot more about the weather because of it.
  - mjr00 3y ago
    That's likely because you engage with weather-related content. For all its problems, Twitter does do a great job at tailoring the algorithmic feed to your (expressed) interests. I just follow/engage with artists, so I rarely see any English text on my feed. The people who see a constant feed of political hot takes have presumably engaged in political arguments on Twitter. As an aside this was what pissed me off most about the change to require users to log in to see tweets; I'll always use incognito mode to view tweets with topics that I don't want polluting my timeline.
    - randomdata 3y ago
      Being a farmer, that is likely. So wouldn't those who seek other types of up-to-minute news continue to see that for the same algorithmic reasons?
7e 3y ago
Twitter need distributed editorship. If a tweet is inflammatory, viral, or incorrect, a group of respected users can suppress it or edit them to remove bait headlines. This would be similar to the Wikipedia editor model. Editors can be elected and their actions would be a matter of public record. This would give us a democratic republic of tweets. Eventually users would learn to tweet quality items.
- ilikehurdles 3y ago
  It already has that in Community Notes.
- simonw 3y ago
  That doesn't sound a huge distance away from how Community Notes works.
- jader201 3y ago
  Unlike Wikipedia, Twitter, in its current usage, is not a list of author-less posts. They are attributed directly to the author. Having someone else make edits in their behalf seems to only make the experience worse, not better.
- dragontamer 3y ago
  Wikipedia being a non-profit, and Jimmy Wales being a respected leader, is key to Wikipedia's success. Why should I contribute to the curation of a for-profit company? Especially if Twitter will simply be sold off to the highest-bidder, such as a rich narcissist with a chip on his shoulder? ----------- This past year, we've seen the collapse of trust in three community driven websites: 1. Twitter 2. Reddit 3. StackOverflow It turns out that for-profit companies seem to have good morals when there's plenty of money floating around. But the moment venture capitalism dries up, we get this year. All three making user-hostile and anti-moderator choices. Curation of communities takes _work_. Work that people have been demotivated to do in various forms. Wikipedia has kept its moderators / editor base motivated... and I think the non-profit status is part of the key here. Or at very least, the advertising approach that Twitter, Reddit, and kinda-sorta StackOverflow, has is probably unable to make a long-lasting trustful community. Twitter and Reddit will continue existing of course. But I don't think we're going to have the communities of yesteryear anymore.
Apreche 3y ago
We don’t need all of what Twitter did, but we need some of it. The biggest thing Twitter did that nothing else could match was getting extremely specific or local news quickly. Is some web service down? Twitter is faster for info than both isup.me and the official status page. See smoke in the distance? Twitter can tell you all about the fire way before the local news.
- deleted 3y ago
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- data-ottawa 3y ago
  All I want is somewhere the local fire station, mayor, power company, and transit companies, etc. ca share their updates in an easy to find place. Twitter solves real problems for them, but with the last year of changes clearly doesn’t value the requirements that use case needs.
  - gochi 3y ago
    Mastodon/AP should be the place most state agencies turn to. It's ridiculous they don't "own the pipe" and continue relying on other platforms as a primary method. It gives them everything they need OOB. Canadian agencies getting shut out by Facebook is the shining proof of this. There should be no reason someone has to make an account with a foreign company just to get fast updates on what is happening locally, that's absurd.
    - theamk 3y ago
      Sadly, many town agencies (my town included) are pretty bad with technology. For example, my town has official website with "calendar" and "news" sections, but it has much less info than Twitter feeds, especially for urgent events like "unexpected street closure". And police department almost never uses that website. I have no definite knowledge, but I suspect that city hall wants to control what appears in resources they own.. and as a result, other agencies found it easier to make an account on Twitter rather than deal with town's commnication manager.
- 3y ago
joseph_grobbles 3y ago
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PaulHoule 3y ago
When I first started using Mastodon I felt a bit overwhelmed by angry toots from certain communities. One of my pet peeves is leftists who, just as the John Birch Society saw "communists" everywhere, now see "fascists" everywhere. (For the record I am a leftist, a friend and I were the first people to put Chomsky audio lectures on the web, I've been to Howie Hawkins' house, etc.) It was clear to me that the "explore" tab was toxic because it listed things that got the most boosts and angry content spread like a virus. At that time I was looking for an open source sentiment analysis model for social media (as opposed to product reviews) and couldn't find one. From a machine learning standpoint it didn't seem difficult to me but I thought I'd be destroyed by the process of collecting 5000 angry toots to train it. With such a model one could: (1) filter incoming toots so you don't see them, (2) filter outgoing toots so my own anger doesn't escape (I even thought of making one that enforced https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime but then realized instead of saying "Kier Starmer is a (borderline) fascist" (according to sci fi writer Charlie Stross) you can just load adjectives: "Fascist Kier Starmer promotes fascist policies that his fascist supporters applaud") or (3) put filtering in the network itself to bring down https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_coefficient_(epidemiology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_coefficient_(epid... which would be the most effective. Now (1) and (2) have the advantage of being less political, that is, people are very unlikely to find out you are blocking there but angry people will become aware of (3) and have something new to be angry about. Over that time though I: (a) discovered that I get really good engagement sharing photos I take, particularly that are tagged #bloomscrolling, (b) I've added a lot of really great people, (c) got very quick to block "anti-fascists" and people who proclaim they are uncomfortable in their own skin or that I should be uncomfortable in mine, and (d) blocked a few keywords and I am enjoying my Mastodon experience a lot more. If Threads or somebody else wants to make a serious attempt at (3) however, I am all for it.
- smoldesu 3y ago
  Another great tool on Mastodon is the "block all from instane" button. Birds of a feather flock together, so blocking the most egregious offenders is a fast-track to keeping your TL clean (in my experience).
deleted 3y ago
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frithsun 3y ago
Twitter is working just fine. And since the service is going to be run by a rich jerk with his or her own opinions that they think are facts, it's refreshing that the rich jerk in question is extremely transparent about what those opinions are now.
sbszllr 3y ago
Twitter’s real value was its “global RSS” nature. You could get short, quick updates about local news, published papers, sports events, political happenings, and more. It made it easy to source info from your followers (or their followers) quickly. Think Ask HN but broader. Activity on Twitter is down now, mastodon and threads aren’t cutting it. There’s more activity on LinkedIn but it’s quite phoney. I genuinely feel that Twitter provided me with useful information from people of interest.
- gochi 3y ago
  Why aren't mastodon and threads cutting it? They provide exactly what you claim you want. Leads me to believe for a lot of people, the allure of Twitter isn't actually anything intentional, but just the combination of being at the right place at the right time - that feeling you got, the relationships you fostered. Just like if you were on Tumblr during its independent peak.
  - deleted 3y ago
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- TillE 3y ago
  Lots of people I know have half-migrated to Bluesky or totally moved to Mastodon, so my feed is much emptier than it used to be. I'm pretty optimistic about the fediverse in the medium term, certainly for many communities. But right now twitter.com is still the default for organizations large and small, and I'm not sure that changes. It's gonna be a mess.
ae_throw 3y ago
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zzzeek 3y ago
Twitter was doing just fine when it banned nazis and covid disinformation. to call this "a more sanitized and boring experience" is textbook black and white reasoning. moderation is hard, but twitter's new "moderation is the CEO personally bans the accounts he's personally offended by, while people who share child exploitation videos are celebrated and paid cash" [1] is not the way to do it. [1] https://www.mediamatters.org/twitter/elon-musks-twitter-rewards-far-right-conspiracy-theorist-ad-revenue-even-after-posting https://www.mediamatters.org/twitter/elon-musks-twitter-rewa...
- stronglikedan 3y ago
  But it still bans nazis, and it only ever promoted covid disinformation at the behest of the US gov (and there are receipts to prove it).
  - zzzeek 3y ago
    OK tell me about the US government connections for the people in this article (Based on a study from a group that Elon Musk is now suing): https://www.npr.org/2021/05/13/996570855/disinformation-dozen-test-facebooks-twitters-ability-to-curb-vaccine-hoaxes https://www.npr.org/2021/05/13/996570855/disinformation-doze...
- Pannoniae 3y ago
  Disinformation is whatever powers decide it is. I remember when saying "wearing masks helps" was considered misinformation for a short time... Censoring "misinformation" is just a thinly veiled justification to censor anything which is uncomfortable for whoever has power.
  - zzzeek 3y ago
    go read about the conspiracy theories on that link I sent, I know it's uncomfortable to have to draw a line between "things that were uncertain at one point, people misspoke, the wrong message went out for a period of time" and "completely fabricated conspiracy theories that are wildly made up by malignant actors intended to harm the most people possible", but unfortunately these things have to be done.
NotGMan 3y ago
Twitter/X is a goldmine due to the "Lists" feature. You can subscribe to the people that talk about the topics that interest you eg nutrition, marketing etc... And then through those people you learn about other people and website/resources.
Exuma 3y ago
Headlines like this make me not read the article, because anyone who actually writes this headline seems to lack the unawareness that his opinion is literally 1 insignificant stupid opinion floating in a sea of 10 billion shitty opinions. Headlines like this are an immediate benefit to me because it allows authors to filter themselves out. There are so many better ways to offer takes on things that don't depend on the stupidest worded headlines like "We dont ____", as if my use case is the same as yours. It's actually mindblowingly painful to me when people would even consider that, I mean it's physically painful to think that someone thinks that. And, obviously it half the time might not mean to be taken literally, and in this case the author lacks insight as to how many people are disgusted by stupid headlines that have this "I decide what's best for you" energy. Yes Cal Newport, certainly you know what is best for the entire world.
- bowsamic 3y ago
  It's physically painful to you when people have opinions about what is not useful for other people? If that is so, you really need to see a doctor
  - brandonagr2 3y ago
    It is painful when the link is a clickbait blog intro linking to actual article that is paywalled
    - deleted 3y ago
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- waihtis 3y ago
  Social proof is probably one of the strongest cohesive bonds of civilization. Cal Newport is a fairly well known person in tech. You might not respect him, but there are probably hundreds of people who's opinions you will take as gospel.
  - Exuma 3y ago
    I can't think of a single person who's opinion I would take as "gospel." Just sort of vague outlines that 99% doesnt actually apply to the way I think about it. If there are any opinions that hold weight, it would be down to the creative technical aspects about technique of things I haven't 100% mastered yet in all areas (artists better than me explaining tonal value principals, programmers better than me explaining design patterns, etc). Either way, this isn't even the point of what I wrote. I have no problems with opinions. My point is that headlines written like "We dont need _______" is idiotic, because it's an opinion stating what is best for others while excluding/ignoring all variables which would change that outcome the opinion is based on. How about just writing what it's about? I explain more what I meant in my other comment.
waihtis 3y ago
The people demanding a "new twitter" are those who set up weird hierarchies and benefitted from the obscure, hidden "blue checkmark" game - more often than not, their only tweets were lukewarm pro-current thing babble. I don't miss old twitter a bit.
- waihtis 3y ago
  .. and of course, the "rocket man bad" crowd are very anti X for obvious reasons.
  - pavlov 3y ago
    > "the "rocket man bad" crowd are very anti X for obvious reasons" Who's "rocket man"? Isn't that what Trump called Kim Jong-un? I guess you're right and there's probably a substantial overlap between those who don't like North Korea and those who don't like Musk's Twitter.
    - waihtis 3y ago
      Trump? Do you mean "orange man"?
  - natch 3y ago
    Obvious? Maybe ICE driver guilt, but I have never heard a reason that made sense except for some vague accusations that too much fun is being had and that is somehow offensive. And yeah he’s made some mistakes which I guess is unforgivable because, well, it goes back to fun being offensive.
    - waihtis 3y ago
      For the record we're on the same side here.
      - natch 3y ago
        Thanks for clarifying. To me it's just never obvious what their real issue is. I suspect someone who succeeds at stuff while daring to question everything and have fun at it is just triggering for a lot of folks.
michaelhoffman 3y ago
Of course, we don't NEED a new Twitter, but many folks WANT a new Twitter.
lapcat 3y ago
This is just a blurb linking to the full article at https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/we-dont-need-a-new-twitter https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/we-dont-n... which was discussed 11 days ago at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37161347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37161347 (96 comments)
bowsamic 3y ago
Twitter went downhill as soon as it became socially acceptable to have conversations on it. When it was pure status updates and quick information bursts, it was fine. Basically, bring back the 140 character limit. EDIT: got a bad source on the old character limit which claimed it was 120
- rowanseymour 3y ago
  140.. I think 280 struck a good balance between letting you fit a reasonable amount of information in a tweet, and not letting you write so much that the UI needs to hide most of it.
- jabroni_salad 3y ago
  It was 140! and the interface used to be SMS. It basically was for multicast text messaging and I really liked that.
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soperj 3y ago
It wasn't that long ago when people on here thought that Twitter was about to be replaced by Threads.
- gremlinsinc 3y ago
  I think it could've had it been just a new feature of Instagram so it would already have DMs, comments, and most importantly hashtags and better discovery plus as easy as onboarding is, not needing onboarding at all would be easier.
merricksb 3y ago
Original article in The New Yorker discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37161347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37161347
mark_l_watson 3y ago
I am a fan for Cal Newport's books and podcast. In general I think that the more consumer choices, the better. I agree however that Threads doesn't serve any of my purposes. I tried it for a few days. I get a lot of value from Mastodon (https://mastodon.social/@mark_watson https://mastodon.social/@mark_watson) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/mark_l_watson https://twitter.com/mark_l_watson) for very different purposes: Mastodon is where I post personal and some tech stuff and read a lot of fairly random stuff. I follow specific tech people on Twitter/X and that is my "morning tech news."
johnea 3y ago
We never needed the old one either...

50 points by lucasv07 3y ago

When thinking of the real value of Twitter, I end up thinking about how it seemed when it was first on the scene. For a short while, users as a group were using it "correctly" (or maybe "usefully," or "sanely"): reporters found it to be a great way to get breaking stories out in the public sphere. I remember what for me remains "peak" Twitter- following a favorite investigative journalist who happened to be near ground zero of a hunt for a dangerous criminal. He gave up-to-the-minute updates that read like the best crime fiction. When the guy was apprehended, the nation uttered a sigh of relief that one could feel, and Twitter made me feel like I was if not on the scene, at least had an incredibly candid perspective on it. The worst I've ever seen from Twitter is our attempts to have a "global conversation" about nothing. It's like the erratic chatter at the end of a party when we all have to start contemplating our real lives, start begging people for rides or if we're needy, squeezing a little more ego stroking before the sun rises. It's depressing, moody and manipulative and feels dirty and gritty like tired smoke-irritated eyes. It and Threads can both go away and I'd be perfectly happy.

leetharris 3y ago
I find comments like that your last sentence so bizarre. Just don't use them and you can still be happy? Millions of people use and enjoy X, it's ok if you don't.
- Robotbeat 3y ago
  The problem is the East Coast media still spends way too much time on these things. The worst culture war takes end up getting articles written about them. It’s like our sociopolitical landscape is determined by the most insane 100 people in the country with access to the Internet.
  - leetharris 3y ago
    Totally fair. The societal impact is hard to unpack, especially in context of many minor changes.
- losteric 3y ago
  Your post basically says "it's bizarre you're expressing your opinion, don't do that" - that is not healthy for productive conversation (ironically op's point about those products) It's ok to express negative opinions about why one doesn't use something. Other people benefit from learning from a valid dissenting view
  - rvz 3y ago
    > Your post basically says "it's bizarre you're expressing your opinion, don't do that" - that is not healthy for productive conversation (ironically op's point about those products) No it doesn't. They're just saying, millions are still using and enjoying Twitter / X and that is fine. If you don't like it, that is also fine and you can still be happy anyway. I don't see a problem with that. There is no need to misinterpret the comment.
    - macintux 3y ago
      The fact that Twitter and Facebook are driving divisiveness and misinformation definitely impacts my life, regardless of my lack of engagement with the platforms.
      - rvz 3y ago
        If you don't like those websites, you are free to block them for yourself if they are spreading 'misinformation'. You can still be happy with blocking them and that is also fine.
      - curtisblaine 3y ago
        But you can (and you should want to) only control what you consume. You can't control what others decide to like and consume, even if, in your personal opinion, it drives misinformation.
  - Clubber 3y ago
    >Your post basically says "it's bizarre you're expressing your opinion, don't do that" - that is not healthy for productive conversation (ironically op's point about those products) Ironically, you just did the same thing to his post.
randomdata 3y ago
> reporters found it to be a great way to get breaking stories out in the public sphere. Isn't that how it is still used? At least with a weather bent? That's about all I ever see in my Twitter feed is information about upcoming weather risks, with far more detail than you get from your usual weather forecasts. It's great and I've been able to learn a lot more about the weather because of it.
- mjr00 3y ago
  That's likely because you engage with weather-related content. For all its problems, Twitter does do a great job at tailoring the algorithmic feed to your (expressed) interests. I just follow/engage with artists, so I rarely see any English text on my feed. The people who see a constant feed of political hot takes have presumably engaged in political arguments on Twitter. As an aside this was what pissed me off most about the change to require users to log in to see tweets; I'll always use incognito mode to view tweets with topics that I don't want polluting my timeline.
  - randomdata 3y ago
    Being a farmer, that is likely. So wouldn't those who seek other types of up-to-minute news continue to see that for the same algorithmic reasons?

7e 3y ago

Twitter need distributed editorship. If a tweet is inflammatory, viral, or incorrect, a group of respected users can suppress it or edit them to remove bait headlines. This would be similar to the Wikipedia editor model. Editors can be elected and their actions would be a matter of public record. This would give us a democratic republic of tweets. Eventually users would learn to tweet quality items.

ilikehurdles 3y ago
It already has that in Community Notes.
simonw 3y ago
That doesn't sound a huge distance away from how Community Notes works.
jader201 3y ago
Unlike Wikipedia, Twitter, in its current usage, is not a list of author-less posts. They are attributed directly to the author. Having someone else make edits in their behalf seems to only make the experience worse, not better.
dragontamer 3y ago
Wikipedia being a non-profit, and Jimmy Wales being a respected leader, is key to Wikipedia's success. Why should I contribute to the curation of a for-profit company? Especially if Twitter will simply be sold off to the highest-bidder, such as a rich narcissist with a chip on his shoulder? ----------- This past year, we've seen the collapse of trust in three community driven websites: 1. Twitter 2. Reddit 3. StackOverflow It turns out that for-profit companies seem to have good morals when there's plenty of money floating around. But the moment venture capitalism dries up, we get this year. All three making user-hostile and anti-moderator choices. Curation of communities takes _work_. Work that people have been demotivated to do in various forms. Wikipedia has kept its moderators / editor base motivated... and I think the non-profit status is part of the key here. Or at very least, the advertising approach that Twitter, Reddit, and kinda-sorta StackOverflow, has is probably unable to make a long-lasting trustful community. Twitter and Reddit will continue existing of course. But I don't think we're going to have the communities of yesteryear anymore.

Apreche 3y ago

We don’t need all of what Twitter did, but we need some of it. The biggest thing Twitter did that nothing else could match was getting extremely specific or local news quickly. Is some web service down? Twitter is faster for info than both isup.me and the official status page. See smoke in the distance? Twitter can tell you all about the fire way before the local news.

deleted 3y ago
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data-ottawa 3y ago
All I want is somewhere the local fire station, mayor, power company, and transit companies, etc. ca share their updates in an easy to find place. Twitter solves real problems for them, but with the last year of changes clearly doesn’t value the requirements that use case needs.
- gochi 3y ago
  Mastodon/AP should be the place most state agencies turn to. It's ridiculous they don't "own the pipe" and continue relying on other platforms as a primary method. It gives them everything they need OOB. Canadian agencies getting shut out by Facebook is the shining proof of this. There should be no reason someone has to make an account with a foreign company just to get fast updates on what is happening locally, that's absurd.
  - theamk 3y ago
    Sadly, many town agencies (my town included) are pretty bad with technology. For example, my town has official website with "calendar" and "news" sections, but it has much less info than Twitter feeds, especially for urgent events like "unexpected street closure". And police department almost never uses that website. I have no definite knowledge, but I suspect that city hall wants to control what appears in resources they own.. and as a result, other agencies found it easier to make an account on Twitter rather than deal with town's commnication manager.
3y ago

joseph_grobbles 3y ago

[dead]

PaulHoule 3y ago

When I first started using Mastodon I felt a bit overwhelmed by angry toots from certain communities. One of my pet peeves is leftists who, just as the John Birch Society saw "communists" everywhere, now see "fascists" everywhere. (For the record I am a leftist, a friend and I were the first people to put Chomsky audio lectures on the web, I've been to Howie Hawkins' house, etc.) It was clear to me that the "explore" tab was toxic because it listed things that got the most boosts and angry content spread like a virus. At that time I was looking for an open source sentiment analysis model for social media (as opposed to product reviews) and couldn't find one. From a machine learning standpoint it didn't seem difficult to me but I thought I'd be destroyed by the process of collecting 5000 angry toots to train it. With such a model one could: (1) filter incoming toots so you don't see them, (2) filter outgoing toots so my own anger doesn't escape (I even thought of making one that enforced https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime but then realized instead of saying "Kier Starmer is a (borderline) fascist" (according to sci fi writer Charlie Stross) you can just load adjectives: "Fascist Kier Starmer promotes fascist policies that his fascist supporters applaud") or (3) put filtering in the network itself to bring down https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_coefficient_(epidemiology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_coefficient_(epid... which would be the most effective. Now (1) and (2) have the advantage of being less political, that is, people are very unlikely to find out you are blocking there but angry people will become aware of (3) and have something new to be angry about. Over that time though I: (a) discovered that I get really good engagement sharing photos I take, particularly that are tagged #bloomscrolling, (b) I've added a lot of really great people, (c) got very quick to block "anti-fascists" and people who proclaim they are uncomfortable in their own skin or that I should be uncomfortable in mine, and (d) blocked a few keywords and I am enjoying my Mastodon experience a lot more. If Threads or somebody else wants to make a serious attempt at (3) however, I am all for it.

smoldesu 3y ago
Another great tool on Mastodon is the "block all from instane" button. Birds of a feather flock together, so blocking the most egregious offenders is a fast-track to keeping your TL clean (in my experience).

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frithsun 3y ago

Twitter is working just fine. And since the service is going to be run by a rich jerk with his or her own opinions that they think are facts, it's refreshing that the rich jerk in question is extremely transparent about what those opinions are now.

sbszllr 3y ago

Twitter’s real value was its “global RSS” nature. You could get short, quick updates about local news, published papers, sports events, political happenings, and more. It made it easy to source info from your followers (or their followers) quickly. Think Ask HN but broader. Activity on Twitter is down now, mastodon and threads aren’t cutting it. There’s more activity on LinkedIn but it’s quite phoney. I genuinely feel that Twitter provided me with useful information from people of interest.

gochi 3y ago
Why aren't mastodon and threads cutting it? They provide exactly what you claim you want. Leads me to believe for a lot of people, the allure of Twitter isn't actually anything intentional, but just the combination of being at the right place at the right time - that feeling you got, the relationships you fostered. Just like if you were on Tumblr during its independent peak.
- deleted 3y ago
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TillE 3y ago
Lots of people I know have half-migrated to Bluesky or totally moved to Mastodon, so my feed is much emptier than it used to be. I'm pretty optimistic about the fediverse in the medium term, certainly for many communities. But right now twitter.com is still the default for organizations large and small, and I'm not sure that changes. It's gonna be a mess.

ae_throw 3y ago

[flagged]

zzzeek 3y ago

Twitter was doing just fine when it banned nazis and covid disinformation. to call this "a more sanitized and boring experience" is textbook black and white reasoning. moderation is hard, but twitter's new "moderation is the CEO personally bans the accounts he's personally offended by, while people who share child exploitation videos are celebrated and paid cash" [1] is not the way to do it. [1] https://www.mediamatters.org/twitter/elon-musks-twitter-rewards-far-right-conspiracy-theorist-ad-revenue-even-after-posting https://www.mediamatters.org/twitter/elon-musks-twitter-rewa...

stronglikedan 3y ago
But it still bans nazis, and it only ever promoted covid disinformation at the behest of the US gov (and there are receipts to prove it).
- zzzeek 3y ago
  OK tell me about the US government connections for the people in this article (Based on a study from a group that Elon Musk is now suing): https://www.npr.org/2021/05/13/996570855/disinformation-dozen-test-facebooks-twitters-ability-to-curb-vaccine-hoaxes https://www.npr.org/2021/05/13/996570855/disinformation-doze...
Pannoniae 3y ago
Disinformation is whatever powers decide it is. I remember when saying "wearing masks helps" was considered misinformation for a short time... Censoring "misinformation" is just a thinly veiled justification to censor anything which is uncomfortable for whoever has power.
- zzzeek 3y ago
  go read about the conspiracy theories on that link I sent, I know it's uncomfortable to have to draw a line between "things that were uncertain at one point, people misspoke, the wrong message went out for a period of time" and "completely fabricated conspiracy theories that are wildly made up by malignant actors intended to harm the most people possible", but unfortunately these things have to be done.

NotGMan 3y ago

Twitter/X is a goldmine due to the "Lists" feature. You can subscribe to the people that talk about the topics that interest you eg nutrition, marketing etc... And then through those people you learn about other people and website/resources.

Exuma 3y ago

Headlines like this make me not read the article, because anyone who actually writes this headline seems to lack the unawareness that his opinion is literally 1 insignificant stupid opinion floating in a sea of 10 billion shitty opinions. Headlines like this are an immediate benefit to me because it allows authors to filter themselves out. There are so many better ways to offer takes on things that don't depend on the stupidest worded headlines like "We dont ____", as if my use case is the same as yours. It's actually mindblowingly painful to me when people would even consider that, I mean it's physically painful to think that someone thinks that. And, obviously it half the time might not mean to be taken literally, and in this case the author lacks insight as to how many people are disgusted by stupid headlines that have this "I decide what's best for you" energy. Yes Cal Newport, certainly you know what is best for the entire world.

bowsamic 3y ago
It's physically painful to you when people have opinions about what is not useful for other people? If that is so, you really need to see a doctor
- brandonagr2 3y ago
  It is painful when the link is a clickbait blog intro linking to actual article that is paywalled
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
waihtis 3y ago
Social proof is probably one of the strongest cohesive bonds of civilization. Cal Newport is a fairly well known person in tech. You might not respect him, but there are probably hundreds of people who's opinions you will take as gospel.
- Exuma 3y ago
  I can't think of a single person who's opinion I would take as "gospel." Just sort of vague outlines that 99% doesnt actually apply to the way I think about it. If there are any opinions that hold weight, it would be down to the creative technical aspects about technique of things I haven't 100% mastered yet in all areas (artists better than me explaining tonal value principals, programmers better than me explaining design patterns, etc). Either way, this isn't even the point of what I wrote. I have no problems with opinions. My point is that headlines written like "We dont need _______" is idiotic, because it's an opinion stating what is best for others while excluding/ignoring all variables which would change that outcome the opinion is based on. How about just writing what it's about? I explain more what I meant in my other comment.

waihtis 3y ago

The people demanding a "new twitter" are those who set up weird hierarchies and benefitted from the obscure, hidden "blue checkmark" game - more often than not, their only tweets were lukewarm pro-current thing babble. I don't miss old twitter a bit.

waihtis 3y ago
.. and of course, the "rocket man bad" crowd are very anti X for obvious reasons.
- pavlov 3y ago
  > "the "rocket man bad" crowd are very anti X for obvious reasons" Who's "rocket man"? Isn't that what Trump called Kim Jong-un? I guess you're right and there's probably a substantial overlap between those who don't like North Korea and those who don't like Musk's Twitter.
  - waihtis 3y ago
    Trump? Do you mean "orange man"?
- natch 3y ago
  Obvious? Maybe ICE driver guilt, but I have never heard a reason that made sense except for some vague accusations that too much fun is being had and that is somehow offensive. And yeah he’s made some mistakes which I guess is unforgivable because, well, it goes back to fun being offensive.
  - waihtis 3y ago
    For the record we're on the same side here.
    - natch 3y ago
      Thanks for clarifying. To me it's just never obvious what their real issue is. I suspect someone who succeeds at stuff while daring to question everything and have fun at it is just triggering for a lot of folks.

michaelhoffman 3y ago

Of course, we don't NEED a new Twitter, but many folks WANT a new Twitter.

lapcat 3y ago

This is just a blurb linking to the full article at https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/we-dont-need-a-new-twitter https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/we-dont-n... which was discussed 11 days ago at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37161347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37161347 (96 comments)

bowsamic 3y ago

Twitter went downhill as soon as it became socially acceptable to have conversations on it. When it was pure status updates and quick information bursts, it was fine. Basically, bring back the 140 character limit. EDIT: got a bad source on the old character limit which claimed it was 120

rowanseymour 3y ago
140.. I think 280 struck a good balance between letting you fit a reasonable amount of information in a tweet, and not letting you write so much that the UI needs to hide most of it.
jabroni_salad 3y ago
It was 140! and the interface used to be SMS. It basically was for multicast text messaging and I really liked that.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

soperj 3y ago

It wasn't that long ago when people on here thought that Twitter was about to be replaced by Threads.

gremlinsinc 3y ago
I think it could've had it been just a new feature of Instagram so it would already have DMs, comments, and most importantly hashtags and better discovery plus as easy as onboarding is, not needing onboarding at all would be easier.

merricksb 3y ago

Original article in The New Yorker discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37161347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37161347

mark_l_watson 3y ago

I am a fan for Cal Newport's books and podcast. In general I think that the more consumer choices, the better. I agree however that Threads doesn't serve any of my purposes. I tried it for a few days. I get a lot of value from Mastodon (https://mastodon.social/@mark_watson https://mastodon.social/@mark_watson) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/mark_l_watson https://twitter.com/mark_l_watson) for very different purposes: Mastodon is where I post personal and some tech stuff and read a lot of fairly random stuff. I follow specific tech people on Twitter/X and that is my "morning tech news."

johnea 3y ago

We never needed the old one either...