Is It Time To Rethink the Fundamental Dynamics of Twitter? (techcrunch.com)

At a TED conference, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said the social media company needs to rethink how they incentivize user behavior to combat abuse and misinformation. "He suggested that the service works best as an 'interest-based network,' where you log in and see content relevant to your interests, no matter who posted it -- rather than a network where everyone feels like they need to follow a bunch of other accounts, and then grow their follower numbers in turn," reports TechCrunch. From the report: Dorsey recalled that when the team was first building the service, it decided to make follower count "big and bold," which naturally made people focus on it. "Was that the right decision at the time? Probably not," he said. "If I had to start the service again, I would not emphasize the follower count as much ... I don't think I would create 'likes' in the first place." Since he isn't starting from scratch, Dorsey suggested that he's trying to find ways to redesign Twitter to shift the "bias" away from accounts and toward interests.

And while Dorsey said he's less interested in maximizing time spent on Twitter and more in maximizing "what people take away from it and what they want to learn from it," TED's Chris Anderson suggested that Twitter may struggle with that goal since it's a public company, with a business model based on advertising. Would Dorsey really be willing to see time spent on the service decrease, even if that means improving the conversation? "More relevance means less time on the service, and that's perfectly fine," Dorsey said, adding that Twitter can still serve ads against relevant content. In terms of how the company is currently measuring its success, Dorsey said it focuses primarily on daily active users, and secondly on "conversation chains -- we want to incentivize healthy contributions back to the network."

Comments

Away from accounts

[mccalli]

Literally. Focus not on accounts? No reporting of inactive user count to your investors...

Re:Away from accounts

[Anonymous Coward]

It's antithesis of a public corporations though, as they seek to maximize profits (concentrating wealth), while externalizing costs and risks (damage and pain).
They are amoral by definition, without remorse, and resemble psychopathy and create psychopathic systems.
Not that governments are inherently better, which is why we need to focus on LIFE and sustainable environment instead, if our children and ourselves in next life are to survive.

Re: Away from accounts

[Anonymous Coward]

Twitter captures ideas but is a very unsuccessful replacement for human interaction. You never hear people saying "Hi honey, how was your day? You look a little sleepy. Do you need a back massage?".
It's all just "look at me and this stuff I'm near right now".

Re: Away from accounts

[Anonymous Coward]

Twitter is a perfect barometer to measure a population's existential isolation. Estimate the thousands of people at some event where the majority are merely holding up their phones to record it. Something perhaps genuinely spectacular is happening and they see it only via their 2x4 inch screen. Then they find out their "special" recording is everywhere, already posted by others who were there for the enjoyment of others who don't really care, they having moved on to something else.

"Look at me! I'm here! Listen to me! Please! Dear God, will someone please look at me!"
- the ur-tweet

He's come to the right place

[Anonymous Coward]

Asking a certified look-we-are-so-SMRT echochamber cult for advice on how to keep the goodthink in and evict the badthink out from your "social media platform"? Exactly the thing I would do!

Re:He's come to the right place

[BringsApples]

But hey, maybe they could take in one point from this here, echochamber...

I have good karma on slashdot, and because of this, I have the choice to disable ads. Maybe twitter could employ some sort of "karma" like slashdot did, and use it to enable or disable certain aspects of twitter.

Re:He's come to the right place

[Voyager529]

I have good karma on slashdot, and because of this, I have the choice to disable ads. Maybe twitter could employ some sort of "karma" like slashdot did, and use it to enable or disable certain aspects of twitter.

The problem is that Karma on Slashdot is generally capped, and the reach of Slashdot is relatively low. It's entirely possible for me to have a similar level of karma to Wil Wheaton on Slashdot (if he's still around). Both Wil and I have had comments modded +5, the highest available. On Twitter, it would require some bizarre viral share situation for a tweet of mine to have the same number of likes and retweets that Wil gets on a bad day. I will never have the same reach as Cardi B on Twitter, but if she were to join Slashdot, we would likely reach similar levels of karma.

Twitter would be betting the farm on the sort of shift that allows for the sort of egalitarianism which Slashdot's system is intended to provide. Moreover, there's no way Twitter is allowing anyone to disable ads, except maybe if they're some sort of influencer like Katy Perry or Ellen Degeneres...and by time you get to that level, ads aren't seen by the individual because those Twitter accounts are managed by social media teams. Also, if the threshold is set to even 500 followers, that would make that option unavailable for 96% of Twitter users.

Even if somehow that problem was solved, what would be able to be changed? Besides ad removal, the addition of extra filters? Accounts that can only be followed once you have a certain amount of reach? Even if they came up with a dozen different achievements that allowed customization of the experience, wouldn't that make the issue that much worse as people on the cusp of that sort of popularity would start begging for followers to reach it, making Twitter worse for lower level users?

Slashdot has its issues, but it's clear that preventing the existence of a 0.01% of accounts and limiting the reward of groupthink has been a fundamental component from the get-go, which has helped it avoid some of the pitfalls of Reddit and other straight upvote/like ranking systems. Such a system would alienate the Twitter audience, and Twitter knows it.

Re:He's come to the right place

[BringsApples]

Damn I wish I had posted that as AC, so I could now mod you up.

Re:He's come to the right place

[AmiMoJo]

Slashdot and Reddit could both be vastly improved by making 1 up-vote cancel out 5 down-votes.

You see a lot of comments both here and on Reddit with huge numbers of both up and down votes. Slashdot is particularly prone to the Insightful Troll mod.

Of course it will result in some actual troll posts being modded up by other trolls, but it's worth putting up with to give useful but somewhat unpopular posts a better chance.

Re:He's come to the right place

[MachineShedFred]

With the ultimate prize being the ability to disable Twitter completely?

Oh wait, I already have that option. By completely ignoring it, because it's a largely useless service.

Re:He's come to the right place

[BringsApples]

With the ultimate prize being the ability to disable Twitter completely?

You're good at reading between the lines. Thank you.

Re:He's come to the right place

[ISayWeOnlyToBePolite]

Slashdot has its issues, but it's clear that preventing the existence of a 0.01% of accounts and limiting the reward of groupthink has been a fundamental component from the get-go, which has helped it avoid some of the pitfalls of Reddit and other straight upvote/like ranking systems. Such a system would alienate the Twitter audience, and Twitter knows it.

One thing I like about slashdot is that anyone can post without registering but do so with a score of 0, registered accounts starts with +1 and if you're not totally incoherent you quite quickly start posting with a +2, so pretty much everyone worth reading do and I can adjust my preferences and see as much or little as I want to. If a twitter post gets 300 replies I know I probably won't enjoy browsing the discussion.

Re:He's come to the right place

[Can'tNot]

Slashdot and Reddit could both be vastly improved by making 1 up-vote cancel out 5 down-votes.

This would make moderation mostly useless for any controversial topic, every post would be at +5. Moderation only works when some posts are elevated above others.

That said, reddit's system is absolutely terrible. I can't understand why slashdot's system hasn't been copied more broadly, the mod system here has its flaws but it's the best I've seen anywhere and it's been around forever.

Re:He's come to the right place

[AmiMoJo]

The majority of Slashdot posts never get any moderation at all. They sit at their default score forever.

Those that get moderation are either pure crap like APK/GNAA spam, or they are worthy of consideration. Worthy even if only to note that someone with an agenda modded them up for some reason.

Re:He's come to the right place

[shanen]

I concur with the interesting mod, though I see insight underneath.

I would suggest that positive moderation should be made easy to encourage positive behavior, and though negative moderation should be more difficult (to offset the higher motivation of angry people), there should also be real penalties (in terms of reduced visibility) associated with earning negative feedback.

In the larger context of my theoretical solution of MEPR, the voting should also be symmetric. Positive (or negative) evaluations should affect both the comment and the person who made the comment, and the other ratings should even affect the reputation of each rater.

Sometimes it bothers me that Slashdot discussions are so transient. In contrast to the dynamics of Twitter, where transience may be the only approach to a virtue.

Re:He's come to the right place

[shanen]

Interesting and insightful comment.

Just addressing a partial solution approach to one part of it: What if karma and moderation were both reported on a logarithmic (and symmetric) basis? In the case of your comment, Insightful level 3 would represent more than e^3 (= ~20) and less than e^4 (= ~54) favorable moderations.

(Also presumes mod points would be much more plentiful and without the cancellation for participating in the discussion. I think that possibility of impartiality should be handled differently, or rather to say that the premise of impartiality is misleading.)

Nothing has changed

[e0b521bb9d0246d0b619]

> "log in and see content relevant to your interest"

That sure as hell sounds like creating echo chambers to me - which is exactly the opposite of what is needed for meaningful discourse. The latter is what Twitter *should* be promoting if it actually cares one iota about abuse and misinformation, but of course it doesn't; it just cares about talking the talk so it can continue raking in ad money.

Re:Nothing has changed

[e**(i pi)-1]

exactly. One should not have to log in to read the content. Already now, when getting promotional emails from twitter about new tweets, the email refers to twitter links which require login even so the tweets are public.

Re: Nothing has changed

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are an active user and you follow accounts you are interested in then you have value to advertisers. Fake accounts, creeps, and idiots literally destroy value just by merely existing. Idiots don't have to be active to hurt the platform irreparably.

Re: Nothing has changed

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh?

Re:Nothing has changed

[AmiMoJo]

It depends how you define "relevant". If it's "relevant to Metro City politics" and includes a variety of interesting conversations and views from those involved it could be good.

One of the best uses of Twitter is to get comments directly from those involved, particularly politicians, and see how others respond to them. If they can build on that and make tools that make participating in the conversation easier (which often means just liking something someone else said, because 10,000 people all saying the same thing is harder to present than one comment with 10,000 likes).

Re:Nothing has changed

[AmiMoJo]

Something is wrong then, because you can read public tweets without being logged in, along with all the public replies. They work fine with things like archival services too, which are also not logged in.

Re:Nothing has changed

[Dunbal]

Yep, they want to invent the Facebook/Youtube feed. So the makers of Twitter actually have no idea how people use their service at all. Well I wish them luck in destroying it. When it's gone the collective IQ of the planet may actually increase slightly.

Re: Nothing has changed

[Dunbal]

literally destroy value just by merely existing.

So value = advertisers. Or value to advertisers is the important thing. Good to know which side of the fence you're on. A great many people (including some in the advertising industry) believe that advertisers actually destroy value but hey, it's a good paying job so go with it. Value is when a good product is cheap. Then you have great value. Advertising costs money, the cost is passed on to the consumer. So while advertising may increase sales, you get the same product more expensive. Value decreases. But the company doesn't give a shit because their bottom line increases. Net result is the company makes more money at the expense of value to the consumer. Better yet is the case where advertising is used to sell a shit product very expensive. That's really bad value. Get the correlation between advertising and value here? There is no case in which advertising ADDS value to anything on this planet.

Re:Nothing has changed

[sinij]

I imagine Twitter as two infinite and hostile mobs facing each other and user stepping into the middle to shout something and occasionally get viciously attacked by the mob in response.

How can you have anything relevant when it is impossible to have a conversation? It follows that "relevant" in context of Twitter approximately means "Will elicit emotional response".

Re:Nothing has changed

[Dunbal]

You'd think so but the algorithms aren't that smart.

Re:Nothing has changed

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably because you're an idiot. It's meant for celebrity gossip and product announcements, not morons arguing on the internet.

Re: Nothing has changed

[pnutjam]

Advertising is like paying people to tell you your clothes look funny and your too ugly. I get that at home, thanks.

Re: Nothing has changed

[tsqr]

There is no case in which advertising ADDS value to anything on this planet.

Duh. Of course advertising cannot add value to anything, but it can induce the consumer to perceive increased value by making a product appear more desirable, thus increasing demand. That's only a bad thing when the product is truly of little worth; case in point: television ads for the latest reality show.

Let's take a hypothetical situation where you have developed a product or service that would be of substantial value to society. You believe that there is no case in which advertising ADDS value to anything on this planet, so you don't do anything to promote public awareness of your fantastic product or service. As a result, no one knows about it, no one uses it, and its potential value is never realized.

Re:Nothing has changed

[MachineShedFred]

I read it more like "I wish we were Reddit" than what you got out of it.

Sure, there can be some echo chamber creation on Reddit, but most subs are topic based and have posts and content linked that are both positive, and critical.

Re:Nothing has changed

[MachineShedFred]

Yes, you can; but the links are built to get you to log in, so that they (twitter) can then bleat on about active user accounts disguising the fact that they aren't active at all.

If you can't win at the metrics, then game the numbers. Make "active" mean "accounts that people have logged into in X days", instead of "accounts where people have actually posted content to the service" and look at the numbers go up when you scheme people into logging in out of sheer link-click-lazy!

Re: Nothing has changed

[MachineShedFred]

If inactive accounts merely existing "hurts the platform irreparably" then I would say the "platform" isn't built very solid, and is doomed to failure.

Inactive accounts are an inevitability in any computer service. People get bored, move on to other services, die. You cannot avoid inactive accounts.

Re:Nothing has changed

[Anonymous Coward]

Twitter is one thing, but here are some actually important changes people are now making all over the world...

Twitter is a censors playground. Twitter censors free speech. That sucks balls.

Why THE FUCK do you think the State wants to balkanize control censor surveillance spy datamine sell you and turn the internet into a police nanny state...

It's because the STATE and all its rich cronies, both of which do NOTHING but TAX (taxation *is* theft) and FINANCE you to death, oh and LITERALLY MURDER INNOCENT PEOPLE, are scared shitless that one of the revolutions in the list of recent social technology political revolutions.... will be the PEOPLE WAKING THE FUCK UP and realizing that the DO NOT NEED GOVERNMENT, that it's a USELESS INEFFICIENCY that 100% DOES NOT give ONE SINGLE FUCK about them.

That's why the Internet is DANGEROUS... because Humanity are all WAKING UP together on it.

Youtube Search: Larken Rose, Keith Knight, Mark Passio

Another thing that's driving the Great Awakening is cryptocurrency, specifically strongly PRIVATE transaction mineable privacy coins... simply put, People KNOW that just like Metals when their Money is THEIRS, in their pocket on their phone stored sharded among friends that IT'S THEIRS, growing day by day, little personal transactions among people, bit by bit, growing into business transactions, retail, etc. Humans want that, just like in their DNA from thousands of years ago, NO ONE IN THE MIDDLE, permissionless, they NO LONGER want the UTTER SHITCOIN that is FIAT, no inflation, no Civil Forfeiture, no lockouts, etc.

https://z.cash/
https://getmonero.org/
https://bitcoin.com/ BCH https://bitcoincash.org/

So yeah, the State's and their CRONY BANKSTERS all around the world are FREAKING THE FUCK OUT over BOTH the Internet and Cryptocurrency.
Best part is that at last there is NOTHING they can do about it, you've got encrypted packets on the series of tubes, Cryptographic Overlay Networks filled with the Freedom of Speech... so it's either shut off the Internet or the Electricity, and they don't have the BALLS to do that because Humanity will rise up and crush them.
They know that, so like any COWARDS, after a little bluster that shows their TRUE COLORS AGAINST YOU, they will tuck tail and run and YOU WIN :)

This is a ONCE IN A LIFETIME chance at a world of true Freedom, no more of their Slavery, War, Theft, Murder.
It's there for you if you want it.
Please learn about these things.

Insane noise and screaming is NOT a dynamic

[shanen]

I'm going to watch this discussion to see if anyone can provide a sane definition of what the "dynamics of Twitter" are supposed to be. Near as I can tell, it is a peculiar form of insanity driven by some sort of theory that if you can get enough eyeballs looking in the same direction, you must have created some value there. I'm not seeing the value.

Part and parcel of the insane worship of corporate cancers? Of course if stock prices become completely detached from reality, then the only question is which company can do the best "job" of creating an illusion of shareholder value, eh? I'd still bet on the Chinese, whose stock market has risen 30% recently for no reasons I can detect.

By the way, the original idea of extremely short messages was really dumb. Twice times dumb is still dumb. I used to believe the expression that "Brevity is the soul of wit" until I saw Twitter in action.

Re:Insane noise and screaming is NOT a dynamic

[Anonymous Coward]

The "dynamics of twitter" is that Jack has created a giant pub, people hang about with their mates talking about stuff, they talk to the people next to them, who the generally know by sight at least, and are perfectly capable of shouting across the bar is someone says something particularly stupid. If someone tells a particularly good joke then it does the rounds and everybody laughs, and if someone drops their pint everybody stops what they are doing to take the piss.

What Jack has thus far neglected to do is find a way to sell these people drinks, and thus make any money from these people who turn up in his establishment every day for a chat, or a rant, or a fight.

Re: Insane noise and screaming is NOT a dynamic

[Anonymous Coward]

Short messages was never an idea it was a technical constraint that was spun as a âoefeatureâ. The idea was a platform that was going to deliver messages across a number of other platforms, one of which being SMS. So the messages needed to fit into the size of an sms message, which was also sized specifically to fit into an existing signaling mechanism.

It turned out sms never ended up mattering to twitter because everyone who cared about it got a smart phone anyway and therefore only the web and apps ever mattered; which obviously havenâ(TM)t got those technical limitations. Basically the entire short message thing was just poor judgment about where media was going.

Re: Insane noise and screaming is NOT a dynamic

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm gonna start a new service called blather. You know how they say make something you want for yourself? Well, I am gonna sit in front of my blather web page all the live long day. No character limit on blather.

Re:Insane noise and screaming is NOT a dynamic

[ISayWeOnlyToBePolite]

I'm going to watch this discussion to see if anyone can provide a sane definition of what the "dynamics of Twitter" are supposed to be. Near as I can tell, it is a peculiar form of insanity driven by some sort of theory that if you can get enough eyeballs looking in the same direction, you must have created some value there. I'm not seeing the value.

Part and parcel of the insane worship of corporate cancers? Of course if stock prices become completely detached from reality, then the only question is which company can do the best "job" of creating an illusion of shareholder value, eh? I'd still bet on the Chinese, whose stock market has risen 30% recently for no reasons I can detect.

By the way, the original idea of extremely short messages was really dumb. Twice times dumb is still dumb. I used to believe the expression that "Brevity is the soul of wit" until I saw Twitter in action.

Twitter stock currently trades at a price to earnings ratio of 22.09: https://www.marketwatch.com/in...
You can see a summary of their financials for the last 5 years: https://www.marketwatch.com/in...
(I only invest in broad cheap index funds so I'm not interested in arguing share value. I only intended to show that they do make money and the valuation is possibly high but not crazy).

Re:Insane noise and screaming is NOT a dynamic

[Anonymous Coward]

Twitter doubles down on its dumb mistakes, that's why Jack is still there, still pretending to ever have had some relevance at Twitter.

Re: Insane noise and screaming is NOT a dynamic

[Anonymous Coward]

When exactly did they expect the service to diverge from SMS and what was the user base going to be? Was it only after people started posting pics of their food and exotic locations? How did investors feel about the switch? Was it famaly friendly service instead of a casual thing? An ever growing headache... Pass the tequila

Re:Insane noise and screaming is NOT a dynamic

[bradley13]

Your "pub" analogy is absolutely right. And this is what people - especially those calling for censorship - need to think about. No one is hovering around the tables at your local pub, telling people what they're allowed to say, and what they cannot say. If they did, they'd likely wind up in the hospital. If the people hovering bring the power of the government to bear (a cop at every table), all that will happen is people will take their conversations elsewhere.

Freedom of speech should be a near to an absolute right as we can make it. Anything else means that someone, somewhere is deciding what thoughts can be expressed - and that is a tremendous power to give to any human being, or any organization composed of human beings. It is a power that will be abused.

No matter what you do: someone, somewhere will believe something stupid. Sometimes people in echo chambers will talk themselves into something stupid - this is nothing new - think of the Salem Witch Trials. People are like that, life is like that, and the fact remains: censorship is far too high a price to pay, and won't solve the problem anyway.

Re:Insane noise and screaming is NOT a dynamic

[Dunbal]

The people buy him drinks, because he sells their info to advertisers.

Re:Insane noise and screaming is NOT a dynamic

[Dunbal]

$700 million/year in "R&D" lol

Re:Insane noise and screaming is NOT a dynamic

[serviscope_minor]

Your "pub" analogy is absolutely right. And this is what people - especially those calling for censorship - need to think about. No one is hovering around the tables at your local pub, telling people what they're allowed to say, and what they cannot say.

So close yet so far. Pubs can and do bar people for shitty behavior all the time. If you started spouting off about raping another patron, you'd find yourself out not just from the pub, but probably most of the pubs in the town center (they share information on problem customers).

Freedom of speech does not and had never meant that someone is obliged to hand you a megaphone.

Re:Insane noise and screaming is NOT a dynamic

[alvinrod]

The issue is that Twitter is trying to exist in the space somewhere between private publication and public forum, mainly for their own convenience. If you're a public space instead of a pub, you still don't owe anyone a megaphone or soapbox, but you can't throw them out if they've brought there own just because you don't like the message. A pub might remove people for any reason it cares to or establish some kind of dress code if it likes. However, it's going to draw scrutiny if only black people were being tossed out for dress code violations while whites, Asians, Latinos, etc. weren't being similarly kicked out for inappropriate attire.

Twitter could just stop trying to police their content all together and leave that up to the actual police and court system. Even if you're in a public place like a park, you can still be arrested for inappropriate conduct. Similarly, civil courts won't cease dealing with defamation or libel cases just because someone posted their statements on Twitter as opposed to in a newspaper. People tend to think that letting everyone have a voice is going to result in the spread of dangerous ideas or some such nonsense. How much attention do you give to the crazy person in the park spouting off lunacy about UFOs?

Re:Insane noise and screaming is NOT a dynamic

[ISayWeOnlyToBePolite]

$700 million/year in "R&D" lol

I don't know where you've got that figure from, last year it was $555m although in -15 it was $800+m but yes, that is an insane amount of money imnho spent on research on how to trigger people while showing them ads.

Re:Insane noise and screaming is NOT a dynamic

[Anonymous Coward]

No one is hovering around the tables at your local pub, telling people what they're allowed to say, and what they cannot say.

You're joking right? You start harassing patrons or causing significant discomfort to them in almost any pub I've ever been to and you're likely to get kicked out.

Pubs are far, far, less supportive of frozen peaches than Twitter.

Re:Insane noise and screaming is NOT a dynamic

[shanen]

Confused me for a minute there, but thank you [bradley13] for calling that (moderated) interesting comment to my attention, even if an AC wrote it. At first I thought you were talking to me, but I couldn't remember anything about a pub.

Mostly I agree with you (and even with the AC), but I definitely think the dynamics of Twitter do not mesh well with how a pub works. If you say something stupid or crazy in a pub, a couple of people, probably drunk people, hear it and then it goes away. Worst case is someone might get punched in the mouth.

Twitter can be more like the town drunk chiseling his idiocy in stone and sending copies to every corner of the world. There is only a tiny bit of overlap in certain cases, as when a unscripted video from a pub goes viral. People have lost their careers or been elected to high offices based on Twitter idiocy. (Twidiocy?)

Let me be clear that I'm not advocating censorship, except perhaps for a form of self-censorship. I'd prefer to describe it as accountability. If you repeatedly say stupid or false things, especially in public, it should become part of your reputation that you say those things, and your visibility should go down. I'd even argue it should be your default visibility, but I'd still gladly accept an opt-in approach to get the fools and trolls out of my sight and keep them from wasting my time.

Re:Insane noise and screaming is NOT a dynamic

[iampiti]

Forcing messages to be short can have advantadges too. For one it forces people to be succint and get to the point. OTOH it also encourages short and controversial statements, memes, etc.
Anyway if you follow the correct people Twitter can be pretty interesting.

Re:Insane noise and screaming is NOT a dynamic

[shanen]

On those terms, I would reword or refocus my criticism towards Twitter's failure to help you tell who are the people worth following. I think there are two aspects: (1) Twitter doesn't care about wasting out time, and (2) The reduction to single-dimensional metrics, while convenient for lazy programmers, makes it difficult to assess "correct" in any meaningful sense.

Twitter builds social bubbles and echo chambers

[Just A Gigolo]

Insanity just intensifies when you are inhaling your own farts

Re: Twitter builds social bubbles and echo chamber

[astrofurter]

My farts smell like roses, with just a hint of lavender.

So... Youtube?

[thegarbz]

Content relevant to interests based on profiling the user? Sounds like the Youtube way. And we all know Youtube only contains level headed discussions and isn't a cesspool of hate and conspiracy theories /s.

Re: So... Youtube?

[Anonymous Coward]

YouBoob was popping up Al-Qaeda conspiracy theories from Encylopedia Britannica over top of Notre Dame videos. It ws so funny to see their truth suppression algorithm fail so miserably. LOL

They should be popping up scientific facts from AE911Truth Org

hebis trying to control the flow of information.

[Anonymous Coward]

Currently followers can opt to follow all posts.
For examole, as a Leftish he is trying to have political control of information from the Right and transform twitter in a facebook where all flow of information is under Zuckerberg control.

Re: Twitter builds social bubbles and echo chambe

[Anonymous Coward]

I figured as much

nothing really new in centuries?

[Anonymous Coward]

we've been here before? deja you 2; https://archive.org/details/Hemp_for_victory_1942

Lipstick on a pig.

[geekmux]

Twitter is basically pointless and rather worthless in the big picture.

Yes, it really is. Don't give me that freedom/privacy/have-to-fight-tyranny bullshit. Wars were never won with Tweets, and the last humans attempting to convey meaningful messages in 140 characters or less were cavemen smearing pictures on rock walls. The early days of Twitter were essentially learning just how often humans was bored enough on a toilet to tell other humans about it, and assume they gave a shit.

And no, you're not going to convince greedy shareholders demanding infinite growth these days that less eyeballs and less time in front of your ad-driven revenue model is somehow a good thing. You would need to fix the greed problem first.

Re:Lipstick on a pig.

[religionofpeas]

I like twitter for following certain people that post interesting stuff to new developments or research papers. It works fairly well for that.

The thread and response mechanism is totally useless, just like the hashtags.

Re:Lipstick on a pig.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no fixing greed... unless you force everyone to socialism. Then you only have greed at the top.

Nathan

Re:Lipstick on a pig.

[AmiMoJo]

It's hard to gauge exactly how influential Trump's tweets are, but given the number of followers he has and the fact that his tweets are often cited by news orgs and other leaders, I'd say they are not insignificant.

The fact that many other politicians have adopted Twitter as a way to speak directly to the electorate, bypassing the media and press conferences, giving immediate and direct reactions to events and things other people say, suggests that many of them think Twitter is not insignificant too.

Re:Lipstick on a pig.

[geekmux]

It's hard to gauge exactly how influential Trump's tweets are, but given the number of followers he has and the fact that his tweets are often cited by news orgs and other leaders, I'd say they are not insignificant.

The fact that many other politicians have adopted Twitter as a way to speak directly to the electorate, bypassing the media and press conferences, giving immediate and direct reactions to events and things other people say, suggests that many of them think Twitter is not insignificant too.

The fact that Twitter could very likely start a war between two countries, should scare the shit out of people.

Sometimes bypassing those checks and balances, isn't a good thing.

Re: Lipstick on a pig.

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump's tweets are influential because he's the President, not because they are tweets. 99.999% of Twitter is just noise.

Twitter didn't get popular for any of the reasons these morons claim. It got popular because of narcissism and celebrity worship.

Re:Lipstick on a pig.

[Dunbal]

The fact that Twitter could very likely start a war between two countries

Wtf? Back into your safe space. No war is going to start over tweets. You seem to be suffering from TDS/Orangemanbad. No one would dare attack the US no matter how outrageous one of President Trump's tweets. And the US won't attack any country over a tweet that they weren't going to attack anyway.

Re:Lipstick on a pig.

[AHuxley]

A utility. Where the user can publish and talk to the world.
No extra censorship needed.

Re:Lipstick on a pig.

[AmiMoJo]

It would be blocked immediately due to the high level of child porn, terrorist murder videos and magnet links.

Re:Lipstick on a pig.

[GrumpySteen]

Your life is basically pointless and rather worthless in the big picture. The universe existed before you were born and will continue after you cease to exist. Nothing you do will change the universe.

The problem with "in the big picture" arguments is that you can always expand out to a point where the whatever you're talking about is meaningless. Dismissing something because you can find a scale where it has no impact is a failure in your own logic.

You being hacked to death by an axe wielding maniac has no impact in "the big picture", but I'm willing to bet that you wouldn't dismiss some Jason Vorehees wannabe chasing you down the street with an axe just because your life doesn't make a difference "in the big picture."

Then why no capability to follow a hashtag?

[michaelmalak]

Why is there no capability to follow a hashtag? It it too complex to develop? (Not to mention the hashtag trending manipulation that forces users to intentionally misspell hashtags. And given other his other censorship efforts, it would seem Jack Dorsey wants users to follow his interests, not theirs.)

Re:Then why no capability to follow a hashtag?

[pauljlucas]

You can, if fact, save a search (where your search can be a hashtag). I don't use the default Twitter client, but Twitterrific gives the appearance of "following" a saved search.

This is not an echo chamber

[aepervius]

"Content relevant to your interrest" normally include stuff you agree or disagree with, but on a particular subject. I don't care about twitter but when I want stuff about a certain theme, I want the stuff for the stuff against, and a way to weight where the consensus is (e.g. flat earth, globular earth, and where the consensus is). On the other hand if I want a flateartH/globular earth discussion and i get served content on java programming I am getting pissed off.

You are mistakenly reading "content relevant to yourself" with "content you agree with". A common error but a fatal one in such type of discourse.

Re:This is not an echo chamber

[Merk42]

"Content relevant to your interrest" normally include stuff you agree or disagree with, but on a particular subject.

You'd think that, but that's not how people are. "Their interest" extends beyond the theme, into the narrative. A flat earther wouldn't find stuff on Globular Earth within their interest (nor vice versa). Once a person has decided on how things are, they actively, even on a subconscious level, seek out confirmation of said belief.

Re:This is not an echo chamber

[AmiMoJo]

Presenting a reasonable overview of views and conversations is a very difficult nut to crack. How do you select posts that are representative, in a way that can't be gamed?

If you do somehow manage to do it you will be accused of bias anyway, because people think that their fringe view is actually way more popular than it is.

Re: This is not an echo chamber

[Anonymous Coward]

"Content relevant to your interest" normally include stuff you agree or disagree with, but on a particular subject.

By "normally", I think you mean " theoretically". The fact of the matter is that topic classification is a pretty hard problem. In a *practical* algorithm to match you with your topics of interest, the concepts of "topic" and "viewpoint" are likely to be conflated to a large degree.

Re:This is not an echo chamber

[DarkOx]

You all know the flat earthers are making fun of YOU right. The joke is to troll people who think they are informed and an educated. I won't pretend there might not be some crank out there that still actually thinks the earth is flat but the flat earthers certainly don't think so. Most of them are really really smart guys and gals who are amused by coming up with the math porn to explain all the observed evidence and still conclude a flat earth.

Re:This is not an echo chamber

[Dutch Gun]

I've always figured that to be the case, because the trolling is just too good. But I really wish we could claim the same about anti-vaxxers.

Re:This is not an echo chamber

[ranton]

"Content relevant to your interrest" normally include stuff you agree or disagree with, but on a particular subject.

I'm not sure how well this would actually work in practice. I may complain that some Trump supporters only view media which confirms their beliefs, but I don't want to see a bunch of Infowars articles / tweets either. I do like to read articles with well reasoned arguments I may disagree with, but that is drowned out by misinformation. I assume many/most people on the other side of the political spectrum think research coming out of universities and the "educated elite" is also misinformation.

When the problem is that different sides disagree about the foundational facts in a debate, having meaningful discussion and debate is quite difficult. Most people, myself included, don't want to be bothered by media which uses "alternative facts". And either side will generally disagree about which facts are the alternative ones.

Re:This is not an echo chamber

[AmiMoJo]

I dunno, I get the impression that most flat earthers just enjoy arguing and being contrarian. If everyone agrees with them it's no fun any more, so relevant for them is someone they can have a discussion with.

Re:This is not an echo chamber

[Anonymous Coward]

But in other topics it doesn't apply. Think about adorable kitty photos, science news, fashion, gardening, etc. There are plenty of topics that interest people where someone might have personal preferences but still wants to see everything posted that is relevant, and there's no right or wrong, no moral of political position on it.

Re:This is not an echo chamber

[Areyoukiddingme]

"Content relevant to your interrest" normally include stuff you agree or disagree with, but on a particular subject. I don't care about twitter but when I want stuff about a certain theme, I want the stuff for the stuff against, and a way to weight where the consensus is (e.g. flat earth, globular earth, and where the consensus is).

You and all of the rest of us reading Slashdot are very much in the minority on this point, as demonstrated by Slashdot's own metrics. Most people don't want that, or Slashdot would be far more popular than it is. It's rather blindingly obvious from which platforms are popular that people want bubbles. Bubbles sell. Bubbles sell really really well.

Shit, we have people here who don't want that. AmiMoJo is complaining further up about Slashdot's moderation because AmiMoJo doesn't like how the Slashdot consensus has diverged from his particular weird little worldview. He wants to "fix" Slashdot moderation, pretty much for the sole purpose of making his own posts more visible. And nearly everybody everywhere has exactly the same idea.

The fact that Slashdot moderation eventually converges on a consensus (at least in the aggregate) is a problem for the vast majority, who want the thing they think should be popular to be unassailably popular. They want the thing they think should be unpopular to be utterly buried. (Except for the Participation Trophy generation who think down-mods are evil and shouldn't exist.) Both infinite upmods and infinite downmods appeal to people's basest instincts. They want their team to "win", and that fact it only takes 4 votes to suddenly pop a Slashdot -1 post into +3 visibility upsets people. The fact it only takes 1 vote to drop a +3 post down into the sea of +2 also upsets people. (Substitute your own numbers for your personal visibility settings. (And the fact that you can have your own personal preference for which posts are visible are anathema to Twitter too.))

In short, nobody likes the Slashdot system because almost nobody likes being intellectually engaged, let alone intellectually challenged.

Re:This is not an echo chamber

[shanen]

I do think you could tackle your question by associating the tweet with the tweeter, and making the relationship reflexive. Easiest to illustrate with an example of network analysis? It could obviously be applied to that most prominent tweeter-in-chief, ol' #PresidentTweety hisself (though I don't need to go there for the example).

I'm going to assume symmetric MEPR is being used, with MEPR-C for the Comments and MEPR-I for the Identities. If someone tweets a lie with bad grammar and spelling, then that tweet should earn negative reputation on the dimensions of true and clear (among others), and some of that negative MEPR-C would reflect back on the MEPR-A of the author, reducing the visibility of future tweets from that source.

The balance point would be in the time, which means the reason the solution fails within the dynamics of Twitter is because wasting your time is just as valuable from Twitter's perspective as not wasting it. Rather like Facebook, eh?

Echo chambers

[onyxruby]

Echo chambers in fair part were created by trying to increase user engagement. The thought being that by providing more of what the user liked, they could in turn provide more and more meaningful ads.

The problem is that as people engaged more with certain things they started seeing less of other things. In other words they stopped getting exposed to competing and conflicting ideas. Over a period of time it can readily get to the point where users only hear things that agree with them. Good intentions can readily inadvertently create echo chambers.

The problem is that the user can readily come under the impression that their algorithmically defined world view is normal. Because this same process occurs concurrently across any platform of note (ad dollars) the echo chamber effect is comprehensive. Everywhere a user turns idea X is good and idea Y is bad! The result of this is increased hostility and society becoming increasingly polarized. Sooner or later this will inflame tensions to the point where civil wars start to break out.

Save the Internet. Kill the echo chamber.

Re:Echo chambers

[ISayWeOnlyToBePolite]

I'd be curious to know how you experienced life before social media?
As I remember purveyors of fringe beliefs could sometimes be seen on street corners and town squares handing out stenciled leaflets and shouting, but if their views where too extreme, they'd be driven away by an angry mob (and they where quite a rare occurrence). Today any crackpot can an will, butt into your online conversation. The diversity of opinions among my friends, at school or at work was very small compared to for example this site (and I'd say twitter has an even greater diversity given that it's target group is larger and the lack of moderation which gives anyone the opportunity to butt in on equal footing unless you specifically block them).

I never could get into Twitter.

[pecosdave]

I like writing small books when I post and reply. I just never could see how so many embraced such a limiting format.

I know it originally caught on because the news media gave it such a big push but it doesn't explain the staying power to me. I would be happy if Twitter just went away all together. I tire of hearing about it constantly. One take away it note - based on the constant Twitter backlash in the news, from public shaming to outright executions in some countries I can't see why anyone would post an opinion there.

Re:I never could get into Twitter.

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing I find most annoying about twitter is that news organizations depend on it to write their stories.
You will be reading a story and then just when you get to the part you wanted to know about there is a link
to somebody effing tweet, and when you click on it you are sucked into their twitter account to try to figure
out where the pertinent information is. Its the same way with local television news relying on youtube for many
of their stories.

Re: I never could get into Twitter.

[Anonymous Coward]

All tweets are just nonsense floating around making everyone else miserable

Re:I never could get into Twitter.

[pecosdave]

I rarely click on the tweets embedded in news stories.

Twitter is mostly a bunch of noise to me. I have an account, and I have a couple of things auto-posting in case someone wants to see the YouTube video I liked. I don't spend much time on YouTube either.

It's basically a neglected account, though I've had a couple of verified celebrities follow me unprovoked - that blew my mind. Edward James Olmos and Nolan K Bushnell. Sorry to bore them so much. Bushnell followed me after I made some Tweets from the Texas State Libertarian Convention - that's an explanation. I dusted off the account to participate in what was going on real-time. Olmos just popped up out of the woodwork, I don't know what, I didn't follow him or anything, but I'm a fan of his acting, so cool.

Re: I never could get into Twitter.

[pecosdave]

Based on what I gather from the news - yeah.

Re:I never could get into Twitter.

[h4ck7h3p14n37]

I don't understand how people deal with the low signal to noise ratio and the deluge of messages; it's like drinking from a fire hydrant.

Re:I never could get into Twitter.

[pecosdave]

I can't help but think of the classics sometimes.

Stop saying echo chamber...

[FilmedInNoir]

makes it sound like an echo chamber in here.
Twitter is tribalism, bear-baiting, witch hunts, everything that humans have done for hundreds if not thousands of years only in an electronic format.
Now Dorsey wants to change that? He wants to change the nature of humanity? Ya, good luck.
Well I never liked Twitter anyways, I'll be glad to see it go, and replaced with a Pinterest clone.

Or just delete it.

[Anonymous Coward]

No one of importance would notice.

Is it our call?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is an odd place to pose that question. Rethinking fundamental dynamics of something is up to the creator based on their intentions and goals for it. Sounds like Dorsey is doing that. Goofy headline.

Stop Censoring Conservatives + Facebook

[Hillie]

Very simple.

Though what I think is interesting is that we see this and not something about how Facebook can improve, because Facebook sucks.

Seriously. There have been some times that I post posts where I clearly am pouring out my heart and absolutely no one responds. I would think that some family would respond.. and I also see cousins who posts lots of posts, and they are pretty popular and have lots of likes on Instagram and absolutely no engagement.

On the other side of that, I notice that I NEVER see posts from friends I ACTUALLY want to see posts from, even when they are set to "See First" and instead I see posts that are absolute garbage, and just.. The whole thing is awful. I won't even talk about the awful bugs and such.

It's the algorithms. They have made things worse, not better. It has gotten worse over time in the past eleven years. *sigh*

It's like if I went here to Slashdot, and instead of showing me EVERY article.. I see only the ones that "Slashdot thinks I'll be interested in" and it shows be a bunch of ones about cats and knitting pillows..

No

[Anonymous Coward]

That would have been ten years or so ago, and it applies to ALL web 2.0 companies. Alas, our last administration thought it was a better idea for these folks to actually set up shop in the White House. Until our regulators have the balls to dish out some real consequences - here we are.

Re: No

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny. If in hindsight you told people here's how you ought to use Twitter: not too often, not in a rude way, don't drink and tweet, etc., and everything will be just fine, we would likely have a very different world. (Un)fortunately, some people just can't be satisfied no matter how good life is or could be and guess what? Here we are. And I'll be laughing my ass off about it from here to eternity.

It's time to start thinking...

[Anonymous Coward]

...that Twitter should DIE......biggest wart on the ass of humanity..

Where the consensus is

[Anonymous Coward]

It's definitely flat. I mean, just look at it (but not from too high up; that's a conspiracy. and not with measuring instruments; I don't understand those. and certainly not with math. God, I hate math.).

Why not just charge people to tweet?

[oneiros27]

Their economics were basically other people get engagement by posting stuff, and they ride the coattails to make money off of it.

Years ago, when the service was moderately popular, they could've just implemented a system by which people who have a *lot* of followers have to pay money to tweet to them.

Set up something like people get 100k points a day, and you can store up to 1M points. If you have 10k followers, you can send 10 tweets a day for free ... anything over that, you pay for. And you can tweet for free to 1 million followers if you're only tweeting every 10 days.

But those people paying for bots to follow them *also* have to pay twitter for the right to send messages to those bots. Corporations and people getting paid as 'influencers' have to give some money back to twitter for using their network to send messages to their followers.

I'm just throwing out some numbers here ... maybe you don't have a hard cap, but you have it so you can carry over a percentage from day to day. The basic idea is that those people who profit from your service have to pay in ... and those people still trying to build a following get to participate free 'til they hit some threshold

The dynamic of existence?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. It shouldn't.

I think it's clear what twitter is

[mark_reh]

and who and what it's for. It's obviously for criminals, cheats, liars, and thieves.
Why is anyone else using it?

Re:I think it's clear what twitter is

[pauljlucas]

Why is anyone else using [Twitter]?

I use Twitter to follow my local transit agencies that tweet system status updates so I can be aware of them and take steps to mitigate transit issues. I can also ask questions or complain at them --- and actually get responses within minutes. I also use it to get in touch with companies' customer service --- and also actually get responses within minutes. And I can do all of this without having to call some number, navigate a phone-tree, and remain on hold for 20 minutes --OR-- send e-mail and likely have to wait "one business day" for a response.

If they feel like it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Twitter is in its death throes. They're a business, if they want to stay in the scene they'll evolve, or they'll die.

Seeing as they're massively bias, I see no way they can recover. They killed themselves with their weird morality play, in which they get to be judge judy and executioner

Re:If they feel like it?

[bev_tech_rob]

Twitter is in its death throes. They're a business, if they want to stay in the scene they'll evolve, or they'll die.

Seeing as they're massively bias, I see no way they can recover. They killed themselves with their weird morality play, in which they get to be judge judy and executioner

Lord I hope so!

But this isn't how Twitter (and people) work

[Opportunist]

What people, at least those using Twitter to broadcast, want is publicity. They want to be heard. They want followers who read their stuff, retweet it and make them feel important. What people want is that their opinion matters. If you have a million followers, everything you say will be taken in by a million brains and they will probably believe it. If, and only if, it supports their already pre-formed notion of what is "true".

Because that's how people work.

Now, of course you could achieve this also by providing insightful information. You could inform the world about flaws in software you discover, you could have the (actual) news before the local outlet brings them. But this is hard. What's way easier is is to provide some conspiracy-laced fringe theories that find some fertile grounds with those that feel slighted by "the system" or somehow disadvantaged, which is a pretty big hunting ground in the western world today.

Advertisers need this too

[evanh]

The industry premise is busted at the moment. The idea of tracking people is insane. They need to reorient to topics of article/discussion/selection/search ... and for just that session only.

Sounds like Twitter wants to be Reddit

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this sort of how Reddit already works?

Gamification of Social Media

[Anonymous Coward]

Simply means when debating on social media, you are driven to win.

What starts out as a debate quickly devolves into an argument, which quickly devolves further into an effort to win by any means necessary - even by lying or posting misinformation.

It is virtually impossible to convince someone to change their stance (even if doing so would be correct) because doing so is losing.

This is how social media is designed.

They only way to win is not to play.

Re: Gamification of Social Media

[Anonymous Coward]

By all means play, just don't gamble. Let the idiots gamble away their lives playing the social media game.

Does @Jack even use Twitter?

[turb]

No seriously. Does Jack really USE twitter? I don't think so. I've been on twitter a long time and this drivel looks like he misses the entire point of what makes twitter useful and why numerous people are more than a little annoyed that obvious improvements aren't being done.

1) Generally nothing has been about harassment. Those that report and include everything from death threats to flat our racist remarks get told "nothing can be done."
2) Steering the platform towards seeing "content' that interests you is rather crazy when much of the appeal is not only connecting with those you know but being able to 'hang out' and in some cases actually interact with various authors, stars, scientists is what makes it cool. Take a look at what NaNoWriMo does. Take look at the spread of news, or more out of the way things like archeology, the scientific community.

If you look at one of the major ills of Facebook, it's the content. The propaganda that gets circulated around that then incites flame wars doesn't in any way help humanity and frankly has done much to break up friendships and worse. How is this in any way good?

3) 3rd party clients have been treated horribly on twitter yet these are the clients that have made for the best experience and typically been the source for innovation on the platform. Sure says a lot when the best things about the platform came from elsewhere, including Ollie.

I could go on.

Abuse and misinformation

[Anonymous Coward]

Abuse and misinformation - aka, facts and opinions we dislike and wish to censor and punish.

Captcha: tantrum

Return the internet

[AHuxley]

To forums, IRC, usenet , web site.
Everyone is then happy with their own ideas, politics, art, culture, faith as the type of "site" will fit in well with their interests.
Don't try and sell one huge site to the world.
Sell 100000's of small sites to the world.
Happy people on their own sites are people who will enjoy ads and create content for decades.
Never to read, interact with, see, find a person they have nothing in common with.
People who will consume.

No, it isn't

[pak9rabid]

Unless we're talking about dismantling Twitter altogether, it's not time to talk about shit.

Betteridge says No

[luis_a_espinal]

Do better when creating headlines. This is as close at it gets to being a lazy click-bait without becoming one.

Top Tweets vs. Latest Tweets

[swm]

The first time I tried Twitter, I couldn't make any sense out of it, and I gave up after a few days.
The second time, I added ~50 people to my feed and started following them. After some months, I realized that it was making me jittery, and I stopped.
The third time, I cut my feed down to ~5 people (only 3 of whom post regularly). Now I check it once or twice a day (more if I'm bored). I read back until I get to tweets that I've seen before, and then I'm caught up.
Maybe a year ago, I'm reading my feed, and after a while I realize that I'm...lost...disoriented...out of context. I'm seeing tweets from people that I don't follow. I'm seeing tweets from long ago. I'm finding myself dropped into the middle of threads I that never saw the start of. I have a nagging feeling that I'm missing things, so I keep reading. And it just keeps going: I never get caught up.
Eventually, I start looking around, and I find that Twitter has switched me to "Top Tweets" (also called "Home"), which is some kind of algorithmic mash-up of my feed, and things linked to my feed, and things maybe sort-of like my feed, all presented in a pseudo-non-chronological order.
Twitter tries to gloss this as tweets relevant to my interests, but its primary effect it to annoy me, and disorient me, and--crucially--to prevent me from engaging with Twitter in a directed and goal-oriented fashion. I can't just read what's new and get on with the day. Instead, I'm stuck in this endless scrolling morass of...twitter stuff...
I crawl around in Twitter's configuration screens and eventually find where they've hidden the Top/Latest setting. I switch it back to Latest Tweets (my feed only, strict chronological order). I catch up on my feed and then I'm done.
But the next time I look at Twitter, they've switched my feed back to Top Tweets, and I'm lost, and they also moved the setting somewhere new and I have to go hunt it down and switch it back again.
Eventually, the setting migrates to the little star icon at the top right of the front page and stays there, but to this day Twitter periodically switch my feed to Top tweets and I have to switch it back.
It seems obvious to me that this is all about increasing user time on the platform. Twitter really, really, really does not want me to just read what's new in a directed way and then get on with my day. They want to create a morass--a tarpit--that can put me into a fugue state and keep me forever scrolling down to read just one more tweet.

Re:Top Tweets vs. Latest Tweets

[Oligonicella]

You have a far greater tolerance than I. I drop any platform that subverts my choices on the second time. (The first time I assume is my screw up.)

Why rethink Twitter, just don't think about it

[pgmrdlm]

Don't read it, don't post to it. Just don't use it. Like any product that isn't used, it will go away.

Easy solution: Just turn it OFF! /s

[UnknownSoldier]

Because turning it off will "stop" all "verbal abuse", right! /s

Maybe the platform, in this case Twitter, is IRRELEVANT because people will complain *regardless* of the medium. That's what people do: Communicate. Popular and Unpopular ideas.

Trying to crack down on bullshit "hate speech" is not the solution either -- a) that will just drive it underground, and b) it also becomes a slippery slope. What is fine today to express may not be tomorrow. Either you allow people to express their opinions or you don't.

The Signal:Noise ratio, and misinformation will ALWAYS exist on any medium. The best way to handle is to provide a place so people can discuss their idiosyncrasies without fear of retaliation. You can't overcome ignorance by avoiding the topic.

But apparently its too fucking hard to just ignore those you disagree with on Twitter.

Disingenuous

[Anonymous Coward]

"Dorsey said it focuses primarily on daily active users, and secondly on "conversation chains -- we want to incentivize healthy contributions back to the network."

Horsecrap.

He and his flunky were on Rogan...they want to CONTROL the conversation, not "incentivize" it.

Tell Jack to go fly a kite. He's not the arbiter or conversation OR morality.

Twitter should be deleted

[Anonymous Coward]

A society getting it's morals from morally bankrupt san francisco nutters.
Soulless corporate SJW nonsense. Don't use twitter. Don't use facebook.

Trash it

[Ryanrule]

End it. Nothing good on there.

Just rewrite humanity

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a pretty good tweet saying, and I paraphrase "Twitter is just 4chan for normies with groups for interest/niche interest, and the persons with checkmark are basically tripcode users." something like that.
Couple that with the Pompei graffiti, and you just understand that's how humanity has always been. No need to get upset over this and just have fun about it.

beyond the bones

[epine]

> "log in and see content relevant to your interest"

That sure as hell sounds like creating echo chambers to me — which is exactly the opposite of what is needed for meaningful discourse.

It's hard to jump in with an insightful comment if your moral compass has forgotten what the words originally meant; in that condition, at best you're chasing your own tail.

Interest:
1) something that arouses attention
2) advantage, benefit
3) business, company

Behind door number two, our "interests" are succeeding in life: becoming competent in our professions and avocations; achieving financial security; having family you enjoy spending time with—who all enjoy the best possible health.

The shell game performed by the advertising industry is to substitute "interests" with "irritations".

* You're irritated when your dish soap fails to cut through grease.
* You're irritated when you laundry soap leaves ring around the collar.
* You're irritated when your TV has 500 channels, and the only channel with something good on is the premium channel for which you have yet to subscribe.

———

What the mindfulness literature teaches is that our emotions are structured so that petty irritations flare up. Ideally, you stop and shake the tiny pebble out of your running shoe. Problem solved. However, if you sit for five minutes and actively stare at the cigarette, your desire to smoke the cigarette will actually subside, because this entire class of impulse is transient.

The purpose of advertising is to belay the transience. But the effect of each individual advertisement is also transient, and so the battering "belay" baton can only work if the advertising is unbelievably persistent, to the point of ubiquity in the human physical environment. This project is now complete to such an extent, that many people no longer even track the different between their irritations (and the surrounding micro-decisions) and their long-term interests (larger goals in life).

There's this meme that the Internet knows everything about you. And this is true, if you define your self as your exposed bundle of irritants, through which you can best be manipulated during micro-decisions. (Purchasing a $50,000 pick-up truck qualifies as a large micro-decision; whereas purchasing further education from the most appropriate graduate school would be a small macro-decision.)

———

I have my personal computer rigged so that I receive almost no advertisement. (Low financial profile, obscure software environment, combined with many plug-ins, and hundreds upon hundreds of ad hoc User CSS fragments.)

YouTube this morning tried to force me to watch a Grammarly ad. (I turned down the physical volume control and attended another screen for 60 seconds; if the ad blinks too much, I attend to another screen moved to a different desktop.)

The Grammarly ad featured an example of how the program can assist the writer in turning large woolly sentences into short, punchier sentences. Problem: I don't write large woolly sentences in the first place. I write large sophisticated sentences, because large sophisticated sentences are better at conveying attitude to readers who put in the mental effort to read between the lines.

———

I would have more readers (I'm pretty sure), if my writing was less cognitively demanding. But I'd communicate less over all.

Laszlo Bock's book Work Rules: Insights from Inside Google (2015) says that productivity is governed by a Pareto distribution: the amount you communicate goes up exponentially with the intelligence and sophistication of the readers you reach. Nothing communicates more effectively that feeding a smart reader a smart idea. Here's the problem (part II): smart readers have already read all the short, pu

Economics

[argStyopa]

No, users who keep patronizing this pointless talking-shop need to re evaluate why the fuck they keep handing their eyeballs to Jack Dorsey to sell.

I admit, I am an Old (tm) who doesn't in the least understand why people are interested in everyone else's passing thoughts or the announcement they are standing in line for a latte.

Yes they would

[SuperKendall]

["Content relevant to your interrest" normally include stuff you agree or disagree with, but on a particular subject.] - You'd think that, but that's not how people are.

But Twitter shows that is EXACTLY how people are.

Because so much of twitter is filled with people in a bubble, bringing in contrary stories from outside that bubble to complain about, and to have others complain about as well.

A flat earther wouldn't find stuff on Globular Earth within their interest

Yes they absolutely would because they would want to bitch about that on Twitter, and call the group to flood the comments on any globular Earth story. That is exactly what happens today, everyday, all the time.

censorship

[Micah NC]

You mean like how telling people to code is rejected as "hate speech"?

Yeah, re-think that stuff. Just because someone is a millennial doesn't mean they have to be a snowflake.

If you can't find any buyers for your low ball offer and then the one turkey who is interested changes their mind it's time to go back to the drawing board.

He just wants to monetize interests

[WillAffleckUW]

He doesn't care about you.

Sounds like Google + 2.0/ Reddit/Discourse/ Slack

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand what he wants because it has existed before. I'm not certain how well it scales. What group would one be a part of for "Election 2016"? How would that have prevented the spread of fake news? Maybe if you had hard barriers between the categories? I'm in my cars from 1984 group, and some dude tries sharing the latest Infowars bullplop, it should be blocked before its shared. Unless I'm part of a politically oriented group, I should be protected from that content? And I guess if some dude in the "General election 2016" group tired sharing infowars in there, it should be blocked as well. Basically the solution is to ban fake news automagically. Which since its automatic, can be done right now too with the current twitter.

Rethink, haven't got past part one

[Anonymous Coward]

why would anyone actually use twitter in the first place?

Cut the cord one app at a time and those content producers will leave twitter when there's no follower base to self-promote to.

Twitter is a monopoly

[Kethinov]

Yes, the fundamental dynamics of Twitter should be rethought: It should be broken up into a dozen Mastodon instances.

Maybe...just maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

...Jack should consider working on the ACTUAL troll problem. Like when they get reported, not taking a year and a half to act on it. OR leaving people making bomb threats or posting their gun plots to kill people online for months on end until the press discovers it and makes a PR thing of it. But they seem quick to ban anyone who says the F word when not directed at anyone in particular.

they're not serious

[Anonymous Coward]

if they were serious, they'd hide follower lists and counts, retweets and reply counts, and actively block any attempt at counting even the total number of replies within a given twitter account. which would completely wreck it of course, because such a block would require heavy-handed frontend delays and censoring of information vital to the core of how the system works.

What are the externalities of Twitter's dynamics?

[shanen]

I really can't decide if your reply merits any response, though I do see several analytic approaches. Is it possible we could have an interesting discussion? Seems so unlikely in these trollish times...

My new subject is based on the more conventional economic approach. If you can answer that question in a meaningful way, then we can look at the larger context of those alleged earnings.

However, I would favor an ekronomic approach considering the value of time. From that perspective you would be hard-pressed to convince me that Twitter fits into essential or investment categories and I would classify it as recreation of the most harmful sort. Perhaps even rising tot he level of anti-investment (if we bring the externalities back into the discussion).

On its surface, your comment is simply defending the insanity of the modern stock market. To make an appeal to the historical value of shares, I think you'd have to argue that Twitter is like a new kind of railroad or telegraph, but rather that requiring massive resources and investments, it "wins" its game based on some sort of first-mover monopolistic advantage.

P.S. The other comment about R&D expense is interesting, however. It would only make sense as part of a desperate search for a cure for the harms of Twitter.

P.P.S. Next I'll scan the entire discussion in search of answers to my original question about the dynamics of Twitter. I'm not optimistic about finding many enlightening ideas. I think your [iSayWeOnlyToBePolite's] response is basically at the level of a computer program "deciding" that the Twitter shares can be sold to a bigger sucker quickly enough to generate a "profit".

The problem is HUMANS

[bussdriver]

Mob psychology and all the flaws of humans in numbers... it was amplified by the internet already but now with walled garden monopolies centralizing the internet it's turbocharged to nearly as far as is humanly possible.

The only solution is to go back to decentralized smaller more chaotic market of smaller mobs concentrating human flaws. Yes that means that the useful benefits will be weaker as well so the few useful movements will have to settle on a few services.

Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

Following topics rather than people won't work. They already have hashtags which only kind of sort of work for non-mainstream topics. Who the info comes from is just as important as what the info is. I only follow people who are experts in their field & people who I know are good, evidence-informed communicators. Anyone else represents too much work for too little valuable info.

Easy solution

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

"If I had to start the service again, I would not emphasize the follower count as much ... I don't think I would create 'likes' in the first place."

Then demote the "follower count" to a less prominent position, and take the fucking "Likes" button out. Problem solved.

Don't act like this is a brain transplant, it's just HTML. Turn those features off, hide them, or bury them in some stats page.

I think it is time to rethnk

[Anonymous Coward]

Why Jack dorsey wants to lap my cum and rim my asshole?

HAHAHAHA

[Drunkulus]

"healthy contributions" HAHAHAHA

Jews use it. (JIDF) You have to.

[Anonymous Coward]

Twitter is lame as it is basically just truncated tidbits and URL sharing. IRC is more useful for discussion honestly.

But if it keeps Jews in Israel use it.
https://twitter.com/superzar2000/with_replies

Some are troll

[aepervius]

There are trolls everywhere , but unfortunately there is quite a few which are earnest. Like the few which think 9/11 was thermite demolition/US government false flag, like the one which think we never landed on the moon, or the one which pretend gas chamber never existed : some are troll and do for the kicker, some are unfortunately earnest in their belief. I note belief, because for all those there are far too many independent verification possible so anybody refusing facts in the face of reality is having a religious belief rather than an opinion...