Comment by qubax | Hacker News Reader

Comment by qubax | Hacker News Reader

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Twitter has the same problem that reddit, facebook, youtube, etc does. Journalists and the media want to dominate it.

Why is twitter so terrible today? Because there are so many toxic journalists on it.

https://medium.com/@Haje/who-are-twitter-s-verified-users-af...

Same thing with reddit. What happened to reddit? A publication company bought it and journalists are desperately trying to turn it into their propaganda platform.

Who is leading the charge against facebook and google? Journalists and news companies. Why? Because they want preferential treatment on these platforms and want to turn them into their fiefdoms.

The real question isn't why twitter is bad. It's why journalists, news companies, etc are so toxic. Why is journalism today no different than political party evangelism? Every news organization and journalist sound like political advocates and the mouthpiece of a political party. Why are so many journalists and news organizations working so hard to help one party or the other? I thought journalism and news was supposed to be about facts, not political advocacy?

It's strange how these journalists loved social media when their political candidate of choice won. Now, they are whining endlessly about social media. They are as much, if not more, of a problem than twitter or any other social media platform.

Yeah outside of politics and journalism, Twitter is incredible. I think @jack focuses far too much on a crowd that will always be dramatic, negative, and and rife with trolls/attacks/disinformation/pandering, because its part of their job description to be so. This is further awkward because journalistic outfits see themselves as a shining beacon of everything good to a degree that is somewhat comical.

Economics twitter, finance twitter, bio twitter, art twitter, intellectual subgroup(s) and unaffiliated smartypants twitter are all amazing. I have met many people through twitter, been invited to private slacks, made real friends, and learned so much. I love the platform. Way more intellectual than any other social network.

I just 99% stay away from the political machine on there, and the "toxic rage" that everyone is clamouring about seems to pass me by.

I logged in just to reply to this because I was one who generally doesn't like social media and thought of Twitter as just a proprietary version of RSS.

But I had to do some promotion for work and created an account and got hooked in. There is no doubt a lot of junk and the trending stuff tends to be sports and politics, but just like Reddit there is a lot of cool stuff there if you wander off the beaten path.

Things like the #pico8 https://twitter.com/hashtag/pico8 where people are posting simple pico8 patterns or As the Film Ends https://twitter.com/endingsummary a bot which posts final sentences from Wikipedia film plot summaries, are just cool.

I hope the service can endure in some form so oddball stuff like this will remain.

>>Who is leading the charge against facebook and google? Journalists and news companies.

Also privacy advocates and engineers, but why let that get in the way of a good spin eh?

"Why is twitter terrible today?" is a question that can only be answered by individuals, not systemically and objectively. You hate it because journos are trying to push their political agenda. I hate it because I feel it brings out my worst behavior. A 15 year old hates it because there's not enough dank memes anymore.

Social media's problem is people socializing. I really think it's that simple.

I don't see that at all. The tone is similar on 4chan, Reddit, Facebook... even the Duolingo board has occassional shitposters. Usenet in the 90s also had trolls on it. It makes little sense to single out journalists, and blame them for Twitter's problems.

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