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Comment by bruceb | Hacker News Reader

Twitter works for them as they can shape the narrative to their own preconceived notions. Just write "twitter users blast X" which in reality is like 5 people. Its a fig leaf for whatever they want to write.

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Oh man that has to be one of the most frustrating things whenever I go somewhere that has the news on...Hell, I saw someone use a twitter thread as a "source" as support for an argument on facebook.

Twitter can be such a cesspool...I'm just always surprised at how people can't stop looking at it despite it making them miserable.

Can you expand on what you mean here? For the extent of the claim, it seems quite unsubstantiated.

Below are examples of recent news stories that amount to nothing more than “someone on twitter said:”

https://www.businessinsider.com/people-outraged-elon-musk-ca...

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/chance-the-rap...?

https://www.centralmaine.com/2020/07/10/maines-twitter-users...

https://news.yahoo.com/us-chinese-ambassadors-spar-twitter-1...

I have no opinion about any of them, but they’re honestly not that hard to find.

Keep in mind that in your examples, those 'someones' are Musk, Chance, and the US/China ambassadors. Not exactly no bodies. For better or worse, Twitter has become an official communication channel for many, and is news.

To make a statement like that 'quite unsubstantianted' on the one of the most common things is very strange.

I feel like something was missed or lost along the way. The parent said articles are quoting tweets more often embedding opinion that match the story they want to tell.

This morning I saw a sports story from two different papers both with the embedded tweets both with different replies that were opposite and both presented as majority opinion.

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