Comment by slownews45 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by slownews45 | Hacker News Reader

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Interesting - this came just after I'd read through the HN piece on life after an internet mob attack.

https://twitter.com/pasql/status/1366795510355537924

https://pasquale.cool/internet-mob

I'm not on twitter, and poking my head into at least this corner seems pretty damn unhealthy.

In sequence a women accused this guy (falsely) of harassing her from some other random account (it's not clear why). Then another person said they overheard a conversation ages ago and stopped being friends with the guy - which turned out to not be true either. And it continued from there. Is there no consequence on twitter for this type of stuff?

Wonder if there is space for a twitter clone. Basically interesting ideas, sharing information. You'd be stuck with bad information, the response (instead of calling someone an idiot) would be to describe a different theory. No personal attacks of any kind.

HN seems to avoid a lot of this type of mob behavior around personal stuff and it's easier for non-involved people to engage then.

I think most people underestimate how vulnerable Twitter is to competition.

They have no technical moat, and their business decisions may have been a net negative to users. 95% of their value lies in network effects, and people are fickle. I expect twitter will go the way of Yahoo over the next decade.

Twitter’s moat is speed of new information. It is the fastest way to find out what is going on. That is delivered by a combination of technology, experience design, and network effect.

And basically every major competitor has ceded that ground to them. Google had a whole pilot project around real-time search. It only worked because they ingested the Twitter firehose, and when that deal ended, so did Google Real-time Search. Facebook tried to take this on with “going live” video; where is that now? Most platforms like Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, etc. did not even try.

>Is there no consequence on twitter for this type of stuff?

Ideally there would be social consequences for stuff like this, but there's absolutely no risk in trying to drum up lynch mobs against people online, but there is potential career benefit to be gained.

> wonder if there is space for a twitter clone

Mastodon have been a pleasant alternative to Twitter for me, but the experience is highly dependent on the instance (server) you choose to join. But the fact that virtually every server is community owned, contains no ads or algorithmic feed is making a huge difference.

It's impossible to have HN-like discussions if platform targets general population

But what about just dialing down the personal attacks? I mean, it's hard to engage with twitter as part of general population when folks are immediately in destroyer mode.

Couldn't twitter just have a flag for personnel attacks. Or is it considered good that these attacks happen there - plenty I'm sure are potentially supported by a bit more than the one linked from HN. But either way hard to engage with from the outside.

Twitter's business model relies on it being toxic. Controversy and drama generate "engagement", so they have no reason to change. This isn't specific to Twitter even, any ad-supported social platform has this problem and which is why advertising should be considered a cancer.

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