Tim Berners-Lee: Stop Foaming At the Mouth, Twitter

nk497 writes "Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the web, has challenged users to improve social networks. He describes Twitter users as 'foaming at the mouth' and unwilling to retweet any update that wasn't offering an extreme opinion. 'How do you design a form of Twitter, how do you change the retweet system, so that Twitter will end up gathering a body of reasoned debate?' he asked. He noted that Facebook-style networks kept users within their existing friend groups, and didn't 'stretch' them to meet new people. Berners-Lee asked how can we 'make use of the web so it connects people together and breaks down barriers more than it builds them up.' Any ideas?"

Comments

Re:Reasoned Debate?

[spun]

In the US, at least, we as a society have become much more divisive, and no amount of technology is going to reflect differently.

Fuck you, asshole, who the fuck are you to call us divisive?

Re:Reasoned Debate?

[JoeMerchant]

People don't want to be improved. Twitter embraces that. Facebook too.

Re:Reasoned Debate?

[ElectricTurtle]

The character limit has quite a bit to do with it. Twitter by design can never be anything more than a bumper sticker fight. If you want a respectful and thoughtful debate, well, honestly one of the few I can even think of is that between Robert Nozick and John Rawls, and that was conducted with entire books.

As for group think, I can only offer the old platitude: be the change you want to see in the world. I won't positively mod stupidity even if its intent would be sympathetic to a position I hold. In fact, I get as much or more bothered by stupidity from "within" than "without" because I don't want some douche representing a good idea badly such that it turns people away.