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Comment by nostromo | Hacker News Reader

At some point people will realize that Twitter doesn't matter. The sooner that happens the better.

For whatever reason, our elites and media are convinced Twitter is very important. Nothing is worse than getting criticized by the peanut gallery. Twitter can end careers, cancel television shows, bring down elected officials.

That power quickly turned from, "complain about lost baggage on Twitter and get an airline ticket voucher for $50" to "I demand anyone I disagree with be exiled to Elba."

The truth is Twitter already doesn't matter, like, at all to almost everyone. Ask your aunt or brother-in-law about what's trending on Twitter and you'll get a blank stare. But journalists and elites continue to be terrified of, and enthralled by Twitter. They've collectively forgotten that "sticks and stones may break my bones..."

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Twitter is amazing. I didn't get into it until a couple years ago, I was missing so much. Many of the most influential, intelligent, thoughtful people post what they think or are interested in. In the past, unless they were a journalist, you'd have to wait for someone to write a book, and then buy it. Now you can pick and choose from the most amazing people of the world, and actually interact with them.

I kind of can't get over that this is free and such a high percentage of the people I want to know about are on it, and I worry that it is a temporary situation before everyone gets so afraid of possible negative consequences that they stop sharing. I think it is an added bonus that important people get used to dealing with criticism, as that leads to freer society.

It's up to you to pick the right people to listen to and not get engaged in foolish flame wars. The information I've gleaned from the conversations I've seen and participated in on Twitter over the last two years have saved me a decade or two of my own personal work.

I’m a long-time Twitter “not-getter” but this is well-articulated and has made me reconsider.

Can you recommend 10-20 people to follow?

You can look at the 138 people I follow: https://twitter.com/abdullahkhalids

I have a strict policy of only following people with a high signal to noise ratio (with a few exceptions). I follow only a few friends (and they don't tweet anyway). I unfollow anyone who tweets too much. I use the "don't show retweets" option for anyone who retweets random crap. I also use the "muted words" feature to get rid of political tweets. I myself only tweet things I would want to read 5 years from now.

If there was an easy way, I would write additional filters per person to mute their annoying pet peeves.

My nomination for highest signal to noise ratio is https://twitter.com/michael_nielsen

I can't, I'm in sort a niche area where there are people you've never heard of but are heroes in my field. I think this is the greatest strength of Twitter, it's not the same few celebrities. You find the people who are doing the things you want to know about. What do you do? What do you care about? Look for the leaders in those fields, and search for keywords to find conversations and you'll find other people who have a little community around it.

This 100%. Twitter is utterly irrelevant to 99% of people and organisations on the planet, and the opinions of people on it don't reflect the mainstream in any way whatsoever. It's especially noticeable in election cycles, where the 'extremes' seem to do really well on Twitter but get curbstomped in the actual polls.

But it's also noticeable in many so called examples of cancel culture too, since the whole result of your usual internet backdraft is... nothing much in particular. Everyone I've seen get hammered by negative reactions after saying something controversial online has seen the popularity not change one jot. Logan Paul? Still doing decently. The Nostalgia Critic? Still going strong. The people making these complaints have virtually zero pull as far as actual influence goes, and the angry gnashing of a few hundred/thousand Twitter users is vastly outweighed by a hundred times more people subscribing/following/supporting stars as normal.

For the most part, almost every business is in the same boat. The people on Twitter don't matter. They're not your customers. Most of your real customers don't give a toss what some angry internet 'influencer' thinks or their complaints about your 'offensive' remarks.

When people finally realise that, everything will quiet down and sanity will return.

Of course Twitter is irresistible to the media - they don't need to search lengthy interviews and other texts for quotes that sound bad when taken out of context anymore, now they get the quotes pre-sharpened to a dangerous point and delivered to their doorstep...

This hits the nail on the head. Language is very fuzzy: with a long-form article an idea can be refined to a point where an attentive reader will have no doubt about the author's take. With a >280 characters sound bite, the range of possible interpretations is exponentially greater, making uncharitable takeaways easy to come out with.

Twitter doesn't work in an adversarial context.

The truth is Twitter already doesn't matter, like, at all to almost everyone. Ask your aunt or brother-in-law about what's trending on Twitter and you'll get a blank stare.

Except they might have read an article on CNBC or Fox that was based on a twitter thread. That's where it actually makes a difference, when it spills over into other media and picks up steam. See: Twitter Revolutions [1]

A few years ago I got calls from a friends, who aren't Twitter users, that they saw me on E! and other news outlets because I was getting lit up on Twitter. The Guardian, CNET, DailyDot all picked up the story and ran with it.

So yes, you're right things on Twitter.com by themselves rarely matter. What matters is when they are picked up by other news outlets and gain mainstream momentum.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Revolution

> Except they might have read an article on CNBC or Fox that was based on a twitter thread. That's where it actually makes a difference, when it spills over into other media and picks up steam.

Exactly (and what I said in my comment). But it goes further. Take the NYT widely regarded as 'the Paper of Record'. What they say has a great amplifier impact. Ditto for shows like 60 Minutes or even the nightly news in some cases. Most people in media (say in small towns or in less than impressive in any way newspapers) very generally think that is what you aspire to to work for - a major media outlet (in other words some small station person in Idaho is envious of the people who work at the networks like some high school football coach is probably envious of NFL coaches, right?).

I think you're taking for granted how twitter is used as a global cafe by communities that would otherwise be disjointed and isolated. For every controversial tweet or tweet of drama, theres thousands of enriching conversations happening that could otherwise not occur.

I think it's ironic that negative takes on the twitter model tend to be as shallow and polarizing as they claim the platform to be. As for me, I think there's some worth to it that could be taken even further if decentralized analogues become widely popular.

>>For every controversial tweet or tweet of drama, theres thousands of enriching conversations happening that could otherwise not occur.

I don't believe that this actually happens. Definitely not on twitter anyway.

It absolutely does; I've had civil conversations on Twitter many times, and I've been introduced to new information because of it. I've met people of similar beliefs, convictions and knowledge on Twitter. Ultimately, however, I left Twitter because of the problem pointed out by GP.

>>For every controversial tweet or tweet of drama, theres thousands of enriching conversations happening that could otherwise not occur.

> I don't believe that this actually happens. Definitely not on twitter anyway.

I believe that the GP has it reversed. I’d rephrase it in the other sense (what I see as reality) as:

“For every enriching conversation happening on Twitter, there are millions of controversial tweets or tweets of drama that occur and would anyway occur.”

You could say the same about IRC. GP's point is that not that many people are even on the platform. Twitter has less than 350 million monthly active users. It's about tied with Reddit. MSN had more unique monthly visitors than that in 2004.

Those numbers brought about something I'm surprised I haven't noticed before.

I don't know a single person who actually uses twitter regularly. Where as I know loads of people who use reddit/discord/facebook. And yet twitter is where all of the media attention goes.

Reddit: Lots of users. Mostly pictures of cats. Any insightful comments is... well, in the comments. Any particularly controversial comment is inherently buried by downvotes. Useful if you're combing through communities for information, less useful for grabbing the biggest bit of news.

Discord: You gotta be in the server in the first place. And it's real time. The discussion moves on. Even if anyone had anything interesting to say, it's already gone by the time the news wants to report on it. And they're not on the server anyway.

Facebook: Ugh, old people and essential oils peddlers. Nothing newsworthy happens on Facebook. Just Kevin being racist again.

and then there's twitter: Where most interesting tweets are public, and interacting with a tweet, either insightful or controversial, love it or hate it, just makes it bigger, and more discoverable, inviting more people to pile on or get the boot in, while the media watches on.

TBH, the 280-character limit (and of course, the attention economy) doesn't really encourage deep and balanced discourse...

Yep, which in turn contributes to this behavior unfortunately... The social media tools are setup perfectly for this - esp twitter.

Fast pace insult flinging matches between famous people has better engagement rates than slow, well thought out debate. People can consume insults faster and it brings about more emotion.

Exactly :)

"Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte."

> and media are convinced Twitter is very important

> Nothing is worse than getting criticized by the peanut gallery. Twitter can end careers, cancel television shows, bring down elected officials.

Twitter is in a way like a street protest that gets covered on the nightly news. As an example you can have 1000 people (or even less) protesting in NYC (a region with what 20 million people?) and the media will entirely blow the significance out of that protest proportion. Not that there are 19,999,000 people who aren't protesting but that there are 1000 that are.

> Ask your aunt or brother-in-law about what's trending on Twitter and you'll get a blank stare

Exactly true as a general rule.

But better ask anyone what they think is important (and this is the sad part) and they will probably mention something they received from a traditional media source who got what they did from twitter or social media (if not placed by a PR firm etc.)

Of course we all want this to be true, but the fact that individuals and companies are folding to twitter mobs mean there is real power; and why would people with power want to give it up

That goes for a lot of other media as well. Fox News has on average 2.5M viewers. In a country of 327 million (never mind the world), you can round that 0.7% viewership down and say that in practice nobody is watching Fox News. There are more daily viewers on Twitch than that, and far more viewers in total.

Twitter pretty ingeniously gave blue check marks to everyone in the media. It is a little private club where they can direct message most celebrities and politicians. Its media relevance isn’t going anywhere soon, it is like Bloomberg terminals at this point.

True. The media amplifies Twitter to the point of relevance. Its actually used by a very small percentage of the population - with any frequency. But every "news" outlet relies on it for "BREAKING NEWS". Taking what is nothing but a passing comment, and somehow turning it into "news". That is its power and its weakness.

Twitter is interesting because it can bring the unfiltered worst out of politicians and celebrities.

If you wouldn't say it to a bouquet of microphones, you shouldn't tweet it, either, but a lot of people don't seem to get that.

well, talking only of medias, they have reasons to give importance to social medias. if i were constantly reporting risings, protests, riots, movements, etc. that started online, i would give importance to social media too.

It's strange to see someone argue how "Twitter doesn't matter" when it's been a main platform for the world's most powerful man. I use Twitter but don't follow Pres. Trump or find it useful to engage with his tweets, but it's undeniable that he's used it to material effect. [0]

In any case, Twitter is also a very useful platform for the disenfranchised, including those who complain about corporate practices. You come up with a stilted example of "I demand anyone I disagree with be exiled to Elba" and declare that Twitter doesn't already matter, but you're ignoring the many daily situations when companies and organizations actually do respond to tweets, and make explanation or change behavior?

[0]http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/government_says_trump...

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