Comment by luckylion | Hacker News Reader

Comment by luckylion | Hacker News Reader

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> In many ways it's more important to society than FB & G (picking them as the 2 of the big 5 that are pure information plays), in that it hosts semi-public conversations and helps experts stay informed.

Out of all interactions on Twitter I've witnessed, conversations comes to mind the least to describe them. It's either people screaming at each other which barely makes it past a scripted dialogue of replies, or it's somebody saying ABC and all their fans saying "wow, so smart/brave/true". I don't see any value in those, and they make up the super majority on twitter.

The "helping experts stay informed" part is true though, there are some small communities where it's used to provide easy methods to contact others. That's a small benefit compared to the giant damage it does to actual dialogue.

Twitter's default mode is a school yard brawl where you have plenty of "followers" egging the fighters on. That's a utility if you want to destroy a society, but important to society?

I don't use Twitter, but I've talked about this with friends that do, about why they used Twitter. Their feedback was that they've had good conversations with people through there, and have followers who are clearly getting benefit from their messages.

Unfortunately, this positive side of Twitter is not the one we all hear about all the time. We hear about the noisy, angry, spiteful side.

It would be nice if we could have one without the other, but these problems are common to most of human history, not just digital forums.

Great article on this topic: The Internet of Beefs https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2020/01/16/the-internet-of-beefs/

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22101244

The length limitation makes proper discussions hard. I can't even discuss the Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz a German law on labeling meat, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rinderkennzeichnungs-_und_Ri...) in a tweet. Little space for more than a troll bit or a link.

The problem seems to be more how crazy long some word in German are ;)

> Rinderkennzeichnungs- und Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz About this soundlisten (help·info) (RkReÜAÜG)

So you can.

Of course and I could say "that labeling law" or something. Point is: The short length is nice for consuming tweets, but you can't use it for discussion. Quoting that term was ment for emphasizing.

> The length limitation makes proper discussions hard.

Twitter has the exact same problem, if not worse, than TV had since ever: In order to be heard, your statement must fit in a soundbite, but nothing except very simple statements can fit. This is why everything is either reinforcing the status quo or rejecting something outright without qualification, leading to apparent polarization and radicalization: The medium itself enforces it.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concision_(media_studies)

You guys know about threading, right? In fact, the fastest-growing type of tweet in terms of popularity is the 100-tweet extended thread.

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