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The character limit is the last of Twitters issue, in my opinion. I think the #1 issue is the retweet model, it leads to people just brainlessly sharing low effort content with a single click. It's similar to how fake news and misleading content thrive on Facebook. But notice how Instagram where it's impossible to easily re-share content (well, you can now in stories) is far less toxic.

An honest UI might use the word “echo” rather than “retweet”.

Retweet used to actually retweet things (i.e. pretend "RT" and the OP's handle), so it's like the floppy disk icon. Parler uses a megaphone.

It's amusing to me the retweets (and hashtags) were emergent behaviour of early Twitter users, not any sort of well thought out plan for how the platform was intended to work.

And then the platform owners mostly misunderstood the problem and emergent solution, and natively implemented something similar but optimised for advertising sales metrics ("engagement!") instead of what the users were actually doing.

And then as the user base changed from it's early-userbase to being heavily biased to marketers (sorry, "influencers" and/or advertisers), and social media expert gurus started talking about "message amplification" - and so we end up with new contenders in the field thinking that the lack of ability to shout "brand messages" through a megaphone was the problem those early users "invented" retweeting to solve... <sigh>

(And now I'm imagining a world where a St*rbucks-like cafe chain hands megaphones to everybody as they enter the store, with the implicit understanding that you shout out every interesting bit of conversation you overhear, which inevitably quickly develops into people only shouting out other people's megaphone shouts because that's all you can hear, until eventually if crescendos into a Hendrix-esque never ending earsplitting feedback wail - probably Star Spangled Banner for maximum crudeness... Has Black Mirror done this yet?)

God so much this. Manual retweets didn't really work like the feature Twitter implemented do and they had drastically different effects on content spread. Quote tweets (which were also emergent before rts even became a feature) are actually closer in those terms.

But because the button is right there the more useful emergent version died completely off.

Perhaps "parrot", given the parent platform's choice of terminology?

"I totally made the world a better place today! I , ummm, yeah. So. I just parroted an actual activist's well thought out and carefully composed tweet, instead of doing anything of substance at all myself... What am I doing with my life? <sobs>"

> instead of doing anything of substance at all myself

Does amplification of messages count as "nothing of substance"? "Getting the message out" is a crucial part of activism, is it not?

Retweet is more on brand.

And then it would be filed under a "chamber" category on your profile. Just as a friendly reminder of where you were heading...

The retweet is my favourite part of twitter! It means a relatively unknown artist or developer can have their work massively amplified and shared around despite having only a small number of followers. I don't know of any other service that offers that sort of benefit.

"The retweet is my favourite part of twitter! It means a relatively unwanted company or brand can have their work massively amplified and shared around despite having only a small number of followers. I don't know of any other service that offers that sort of benefit."

Said nobody ever.

(I also somewhat agree with you, I have a bunch of real world friends now, who I first came to know via Twitter retweets - back in Twitter circa 2011 before the "brands" arrived. I'd totally given up by about 2018 and deleted my account.)

Did you just say "said nobody ever" to someone who literally just said that? There is clearly at least one person who feels that way.

It felt tongue in cheek to me since they went on to somewhat agree that signal boosting via retweets at least used to be nice. But I agree, it was a bit weird of a response.

I made a minor but critical small edit to what the person just said. I switched "unknown artist or developer" to "unwanted company or brand" - which to me at least, is a super accurate change in majority user base between Twitter 2010 and Twitter 2020.

Now ask yourself if anybody ever said what you're responding to?

You could’ve put the changed parts in italics (you’re still in the edit window and can do it). Most people wouldn’t realize this while they scan through replies, especially when you appear to be quoting verbatim.

Man, I did not see that change... I read it a couple of times, too, to make sure it was the same.

> Did you just say "said nobody ever" to someone who literally just said that?

No they did not. If you read it carefully you'll note there's a slight change. I missed it too on first read.

I'm surprised that up until now I've never seen someone on HN comment about following artists on Twitter. This is all I ever use Twitter for, never tweet myself, and unfollow people who only make passing statements that can be made up in a few seconds. My feed is almost entirely filled with people who use Twitter as something like Deviantart or Pixiv to upload original artwork and only use the character count for writing a description or title, or sometimes nothing at all and only posting artwork to speak for itself. This is entirely separate from some people's impression of Twitter as a breeding ground for arguments. People don't really argue as much in this specific subset of Twitter for some reason.

If Twitter went away then that specific platform would also go away. True, it's sad that said platform is also a hub of tribes and divisive arguments and design patterns that support mindless retweeting, but that's just how social media that needs to keep expanding its audience is designed. If an audience wanting to be a part of that culture by giving in to those patterns without slowing down to analyze the ulterior motives of social media companies like HN commenters often do motivates artists and creators to bring their work there, as they now have a sizeable audience, then I can't really complain or force them to move elsewhere. That would just be exacerbating the same issue of being divisive. I can't force these people off Twitter just because most of Twitter personally bothers me.

Yet, that still isn't enough to prevent the occasional content creator from retweeting something from a different handle that shows up on your timeline, and that specific retweet has nothing to do with the content you want to see and delves into divisive or political territory. But you also receive value from the person who retweeted it through their art. It just goes to show that separating these things is a human issue with no easy solution, and it's tempting to get frustrated at the status quo.

> My feed is almost entirely filled with people who use Twitter as something like Deviantart or Pixiv to upload original artwork and only use the character count for writing a description or title

Me too! If I discover an artist I like, I'll scroll through their feed quickly before I decide to follow. If they tweet mostly one liners or politics with only the occasional artwork, then it's a pass from me.

One other thing I'd suggest is muting certain keywords. Adding political terms to your mute list can clean things up significantly.

Why would you follow people that retweet brands? Retweets work just fine as a discovery mechanism for me still. (EDIT: not to forget, you can disable retweets for people you want to otherwise follow nowadays)

> But notice how Instagram where it's impossible to easily re-share content (well, you can now in stories) is far less toxic.

People still re-share it, Instagram just encourages and rewards you to just steal the content and pretend it's your own and because the system doesn't support hyperlinking it's very difficult to call people out on it.

It's a huge issue for any artists on the platform.

I've never really thought of twitter as a social network more of a collection of grandstands or soapboxes or something all with people holding megaphones with a 10 second limit all yelling at the same time and sometimes the people around your megaphone will yell your message out to the people near their soap boxes. The more important you are, the taller your soapbox and and the farther the sound goes, but your megaphone still only works for 10 seconds at a time.

I very much want a Facebook for coding friends clone.

Lots of solutions out there but I for whatever reason I don't like any of them

Slack/Discord and similar interfaces are effectively chat. I want topics and replies. I know you can start a topic on both of those but it just feels less conducive to friends talking to me than talking on Facebook.

I could make groups on facebook. I can't put my finger on why this doesn't work. Maybe because it requires diligence. I have to remember to select the group of "programmer friends" that I want to topic to go to. Forget and my either my programmer friends get family posts or my family gets programmer posts. Also FB will spam non-programmer friends with "g posted about x over here".

A forum like discourse or phpbb doesn't have to social graph. Anyone that joins can participate in all discussion. I want to talk to friends only

Google+ and some features that seemed to kind of go in this directly but I feel like most people used it to spread news instead of discuss what they're working on or thoughts they are having. I don't need tech news. I can get that here.

I'm not even saying Facebook is the best UX for what I want. I used to enjoy a smf forum that was mostly friends and I liked that I could see the list of topics. But, I also just like glancing at my Facebook feed once a day or so and see what my friends are up to. I'd like a similar experience except for programming / tech only topics with tech only friends.

And of course it goes without saying that a coding FB should format code well and some how allow embedding live snippets in iframes

Note: I know lots of people say their FB news feed is a dumpster fire. For whatever reason I've unfollowed enough people or something that mine is fine. Unfollowed every political friend for example. Just don't want that on my newsfeed. Can get it elsewhere

If all you want on top of Discord/Slack is proper topics, https://zulipchat.com/ is worth a try.

See, for instance:

https://rust-lang.github.io/compiler-team/about/chat-platfor... https://www.ponylang.io/community/

(both use zulip for their main chat platform, AFAIK)

I want the social graph. I post, only the people I added as "friends" get to see my post, not everyone who signed up for the discord/slack. I also only want to see posts from my friends. But of course, we all have different lists of friends. Discord/Slack don't seem to be about that. But thank you for the recommendation. I'll still take a look

Sounds a bit like a description of Google+

Dischord/Slack allows me to set up chat servers for any specific circle I share a common project with.

If anything it provides a more specialized, focused, social graph. That's not saying it's better or worse than Facebook's approach. I generally expect someone to answer a post I put on discord "in real time", to accomplish something.

What's good (and bad) about a Facebook post is that it allows me to just throw out an idea and any one of my many friends, from many circles, can respond.

I wonder if a discord that allowed general broad also would be interesting.

Lots of solutions out there but I for whatever reason I don't like any of them

This is one of the reasons why I think Facebook is virtually impossible to topple as the dominant social network. Facebook came along when social networks were new and unusual, and people didn't really have ideas about what they could be. Everyone accepted Facebook's UI and feature set, even if they didn't really like it, and signed up anyway. Now people expect to see set of features they want from a social network on Day One, and won't compromise by signing up if those things aren't there. Consequently if you want to build a new social network app you have a massive undertaking from the outset. Without doing that no social network can gain enough traction to grow enough to compete with Facebook.

Unless users are willing to accept a less than perfect solution they're going to be stuck with Facebook as the only real option.

warez, cp, and spam brought down Usenet. There may be a lesson there.

I'm working on peapods.com ( stream.mikestaub.dev ) and would love your feedback.

> N-character limit is still a determiner of Twitter (poisonous) discourse quality

Is this an assumption or is there evidence?

I can see why at first glance that would seem true, but I also see conspiracy theories spread with or without character limits. What seems to do better for discourse is not char limits, but rather enforcing limits on misinformation and hate speech.

In my mind, it is only a social network if I know whom I am networking with and they know who I am in real life. Reddit isn’t a social network since no one on there knows who I am and to the best of my knowledge I’ve never interacted with the same person on there twice. Anonymous is not social.

This site is a bit of an in between. There are definitely recognizable names here like JacquesM, DoreenMichelle, etc. that I don’t know IRL but recognize here. Then there are the users like WalterBright where I can correlate to an IRL identity, without knowing him personally.

I had to look up all the people you named and am still not clear who they are or why you know them exactly.

I don’t, I just recognize them as commenters and can tie their comments into their previous comments.

That might be one difference. I read comments, but not who wrote them. I don't even know who I am replying to right now ;-) It is like shouting into the dark.

HN de-emphasises the handle of the commenter (smaller font, lighter text). No doubt that was an intentional decision, but I wonder just to what extent the original designer (pg?) expected it would influence the discussions.

Reddit emphasises them a bit more than HN, but still the natural reading flow is such that you miss the username. It's common for someone to comment, a second poster to reply asking a question, and a third poster to reply without people noticing he's different from the first poster.

Facebook emphasises the commenter more, showing their name in bolder text and a profile picture.

Some older forums (on phpBB, vBulletin, etc) emphasised it even more, devoting a large section to the left of each post to the commenter's name, statistics and often an avatar. These forums were much more prone to cults of personality than the likes of Reddit.

On the other end of the spectrum is 4chan, where posts are anonymous and content, or at least memes, is king. It doesn't seem like that necessarily leads to more nuanced discussion.

That's really interesting to me. I grew up with MySpace. Facebook wasn't a thing until high school. I used them similarly, but for different reasons: I spoke to new people on MySpace and people that I already knew on Facebook. I made many dear friends on MySpace and still talk to many of them frequently.

I think that more traditional "profile-based" social media is well-suited to meeting new people. I have no interest in reading another person's "feed" of shared content and ramblings, but I am more inclined to perhaps read a short "About Me" if that makes sense.

> and Twitter isn't something most people enjoy being on but I think it's what people get on to seem/feel important

This feels like a "everyone is mostly like me" fallacy. A whole ton of people use Twitter because they actually enjoy it.

Maybe they're mostly enjoying the fact that everyone else is already there.

> the user doesn't really much ability to define their own social graph

Far as I'm concerned, this is the main feature of Twitter. The only thing that really sets it apart is that every exchange is a public exchange.

This also (until recently) set a standard for statements, where if there are enough replies, and even the critical ones don't cast doubt on the statement, you could have more trust in it. Now of course it's uncertain, since Twitter automatically censors and pseudo-censors replies, including quality ones. Sometimes Twitter does this thing where it won't even show you a reply that you sent unless you have a direct link.

I've been working on Taaalk (https://taaalk.co), a social network for conversations.

> I don't think ways of defining one's own social network have been exhausted by all the networks out there

Yeah, it’s fun to build a clone, but what we really need is something innovative.

I touched upon this in another comment, but I miss "profile-based" social media sites. No feed.

Ex. I have a profile that I can update with photos, etc. If you want to see those things, add me as a friend and navigate to my profile. If I want to share something with my friends, I can use a feature similar to MySpace's bulletin board, a space to share text-only updates about my life. The actual content of the update is hidden behind a link (the title of the update) so I can decide if I am interested in it or not.

I think centralized feeds have destroyed social media. This is especially true of feeds optimized to show "relevant" content.