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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 hea

by 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.
- flerchin 3y ago
  What did StackOverflow do?
  - agubelu 3y ago
    Lately it's been overran with ChatGPT-generated answers.
- randomdata 3y ago
  What says that Wikipedia is successful and not just existing like Twitter and Reddit are likely to continue to?
  - dragontamer 3y ago
    For better or for worse, Wikipedia is devoid of advertising revenue, and therefore seemingly immune to these ups and downs to the ad-tech market like Twitter/Reddit have been this past year.
    - randomdata 3y ago
      Meaning that the marker of success is stable revenue? In other words, someone who keeps a minimum wage job their entire life could be the most successful person around?
      - dragontamer 3y ago
        I'd say being in a position where you aren't forced to piss off the moderators to make more advertisement revenue is a major advantage this year. It's not about revenue. I'm talking about trust, so that the crowd is willing to curate data for you.
        randomdata 3y ago
        If access to moderators is the metric of success, Wikipedia claims to have ~900 moderator accounts currently. Reddit, in 2017, claimed to have ~75,000 moderators. Unfortunately the later figure is severely dated, but has Reddit really lost over 74,000 moderator accounts since? That seems unlikely. Perhaps Wikipedia has never been successful, just something that has managed to continue to exist?
Dig1t 3y ago
Twitter has "community notes" now, which is something similar to what you describe. If something contains wrong or is misleading information the community can vote to add extra context to the bottom of the tweet that the author did not write. The note only shows up if people with a diverse set of backgrounds all vote that it is useful/correct. It's a feature that was introduced after the Twitter -> X conversion and it's a pretty good feature in my opinion. I have seen many instances of misinformation on the right being "community noted" where extra context is appended to the bottom of something inflammatory.
pessimizer 3y ago
We need to develop tools and theory to facilitate that. Wikipedia's online governance model is completely vulnerable to attack to the point that it's almost shaped by attackers. Not a lot of good online models of governance even exist outside of Debian. It's a hard problem, which is why real-life protocols like Robert's Rules of Order are so large and complicated when their aims seem very simple: to allow a group of people to agree on a course of action. edit: Community Notes and other (open) algorithmic governance that is designed to withstand certain classes of attack are clearly an advance over simple voting systems. Robert's Rules use overlapping votes within votes within debates of motions, repeals, and amendments. The structure of every RR vote is determined by a mechanical classification of the thing being voted on, including the amount and type of notice that has to be given before the vote, and whether representatives of general membership get to vote, majority or 2/3rds vote/majority-of-membership, etc. I think we should start from there, and take advantage of the fact that meetings can be distributed, continuous, and concurrent online to simplify them. RR is the way it is because they all met in one place to talk about the same thing at the same time, and didn't have the internet or any of our cool devices.
tempodox 3y ago
Twitter probably has to implement campaigns from DoJ, DoD, NSA, or whoever else is owed “special favors”. Distributed editorship would only mess with that.
godshatter 3y ago
Praise the hive mind or be silenced. No thanks. Maybe we could all work on the "I see a tweet I disagree with and I'm not reflexively responding with a knee-jerk overly emotional response" thing instead.
brandonagr2 3y ago
Have you not heard of Community Notes? https://communitynotes.twitter.com/guide/en/about/introduction https://communitynotes.twitter.com/guide/en/about/introducti...

by 7e 3y ago

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.

flerchin 3y ago
What did StackOverflow do?
- agubelu 3y ago
  Lately it's been overran with ChatGPT-generated answers.
randomdata 3y ago
What says that Wikipedia is successful and not just existing like Twitter and Reddit are likely to continue to?
- dragontamer 3y ago
  For better or for worse, Wikipedia is devoid of advertising revenue, and therefore seemingly immune to these ups and downs to the ad-tech market like Twitter/Reddit have been this past year.
  - randomdata 3y ago
    Meaning that the marker of success is stable revenue? In other words, someone who keeps a minimum wage job their entire life could be the most successful person around?
    - dragontamer 3y ago
      I'd say being in a position where you aren't forced to piss off the moderators to make more advertisement revenue is a major advantage this year. It's not about revenue. I'm talking about trust, so that the crowd is willing to curate data for you.
      - randomdata 3y ago
        If access to moderators is the metric of success, Wikipedia claims to have ~900 moderator accounts currently. Reddit, in 2017, claimed to have ~75,000 moderators. Unfortunately the later figure is severely dated, but has Reddit really lost over 74,000 moderator accounts since? That seems unlikely. Perhaps Wikipedia has never been successful, just something that has managed to continue to exist?

Dig1t 3y ago

Twitter has "community notes" now, which is something similar to what you describe. If something contains wrong or is misleading information the community can vote to add extra context to the bottom of the tweet that the author did not write. The note only shows up if people with a diverse set of backgrounds all vote that it is useful/correct. It's a feature that was introduced after the Twitter -> X conversion and it's a pretty good feature in my opinion. I have seen many instances of misinformation on the right being "community noted" where extra context is appended to the bottom of something inflammatory.

pessimizer 3y ago

We need to develop tools and theory to facilitate that. Wikipedia's online governance model is completely vulnerable to attack to the point that it's almost shaped by attackers. Not a lot of good online models of governance even exist outside of Debian. It's a hard problem, which is why real-life protocols like Robert's Rules of Order are so large and complicated when their aims seem very simple: to allow a group of people to agree on a course of action. edit: Community Notes and other (open) algorithmic governance that is designed to withstand certain classes of attack are clearly an advance over simple voting systems. Robert's Rules use overlapping votes within votes within debates of motions, repeals, and amendments. The structure of every RR vote is determined by a mechanical classification of the thing being voted on, including the amount and type of notice that has to be given before the vote, and whether representatives of general membership get to vote, majority or 2/3rds vote/majority-of-membership, etc. I think we should start from there, and take advantage of the fact that meetings can be distributed, continuous, and concurrent online to simplify them. RR is the way it is because they all met in one place to talk about the same thing at the same time, and didn't have the internet or any of our cool devices.

tempodox 3y ago

Twitter probably has to implement campaigns from DoJ, DoD, NSA, or whoever else is owed “special favors”. Distributed editorship would only mess with that.

godshatter 3y ago

Praise the hive mind or be silenced. No thanks. Maybe we could all work on the "I see a tweet I disagree with and I'm not reflexively responding with a knee-jerk overly emotional response" thing instead.

brandonagr2 3y ago

Have you not heard of Community Notes? https://communitynotes.twitter.com/guide/en/about/introduction https://communitynotes.twitter.com/guide/en/about/introducti...