A Twitter addict realizes she needs rehab
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
It’s so sad because all JS related discourse moved to Twitter at some point so I keep trying to make it work, but have to keep quitting for my sanity’s sake.
Controversy with the angular team or high profile developers — why?
I’ve been off social media for years but I’d hear about it second hand from coworkers.
It does mean occasionally unfollowing someone who has otherwise great content, but often it’s retweeted by someone else I do follow, and anyway - it’s worth the cost.
The more accessible the language, the more politicised.
It would reach the point where not trying very hard to bypass the filters would make you liable somehow: "you, a JavaScript developer, should've tried harder to bypass the politics filters when you posted your pro LGBT tweet. What are you, an anti-Semite?"
Google Plus got this right in reverse, in that you could organize your people into circles based on your interests and then you could choose which circles to share any post with. If they had done it so that I could subscribe to you for either everything or just things about VueJS, than they would probably still be around.
In fact if somebody is trying to start a Twitter competitor, there is a space for a copy where you must select at least one tag for your posts and where I can then subscribe to intersections of tags and people.
It doesn't even have to be anything about politics, but Cpervia tweets about cryptography and FreeBSD. I have no interest in the latter, but I have to skip over the tweets that he makes because there is no good filter for them.
Now suppose It was somebody posting about compilers and upsetting pictures of aborted fetuses. In theory I could still skip those, but it would be far harder.
I notice it too on H.N.; it would not surprise me if 75% of votes on posts come from 25% of users, if not more extreme.
The people that vote on posts, not the people that comment, dictate what becomes visible, and it stands to reason that the former group is considerably less prudent and more prone to impulsive angry decisions than the latter.
I've certainly noticed quite a bit on H.N., and even more so on Reddit that upvoted threads with sensationalist headlines are more heavily scrutinized in the comments for being misleading.
Could we try "influence" boosting posts? Some kind of combination of "this person has X karma, commented on Y post, that yields the same result as upvoting in Z fashion" and normal upvotes?
I don't know that this would solve the above described problem (and it will likely introduce other issues in the social fabric of HN), but it might be interesting to see the outcome...
So say we have a these posts:
A
- B
- C
- - D
E
- F
- - G
- H
E
- H
- - I
- F
- - G
A
- B
- C
- - D
This results into posts whose children have the most activity statistically are more visible, but if an inactive post be replied to, it will briefly be at the top and more visible, and any new post will also start at the top.
Essentially, it is the treed evolution of the traditional linear thread system where threads are simply ranked based on most recent replied. DeviantArt uses this system and it's boards do not feel as though they be an echo-chamber and are full of people challenging each other's views and trees seem to be more balanced out rather than al replies being under the top post, which became the most visible due to upvotes such that others are ignored completely.
It indeed resulted in some threads being alive for months, but that was only because the discussion in it was healthy and interesting, and new input on the same subject continued to be had.
They typically also do not have an archival system and often præfer that one revive an old thread that was dead for years rather than make a new one on the same subject, as in doing so all the old content becomes visible again for a fresh perspective.
I agree that often it is quite interesting to receive new replies with new input to a thread that died off three years ago.
I am not seeing these fora being gamed at all: in order to game them, one must provide content interesting enough to draw replies. — Visibility is purely a function of the number of replies, not of agreement.
It's hard to convince world to move from this thing, but it promotes some kind of addiction, an ability to manipulate
web 2.0 is kinda mistake when it comes to news and stuff.
Virtually all websites that have them such as Reddit, Facebook, and Youtube are known to promote isolated echo chambers and extremist views, but that's what they attract so it's not going away or they would loose their userbase.
I do not believe that Reddit was started with this mentality, but at it's start wanted to promote decentralized leadership, but by now they must have realized this and their current policy seems to be to capitalize on their current userbase, which is known to favor and enjoy echo chambers. — H.N. is to a certain extent spared from this because it only has one page rather than attempting to divide itself into semi-isolated communities, but it's still quite obvious in distinct threads that one can be upvoted for saying the same thing one can be downvoted for in another thread, and that in general threads are filled with agreement.
Ironically, in this very comment train, people are mostly agreeing with each other that the voting system creates too much of an echo-chamber.
There are a lot of small Reddits that are off the beaten path. It's a diverse ecosystem and you aren't required to participate in the larger subs which may well be "an echo chamber" because they were started for a specific interest and you either are into that or not and if not, it's not really the place for you.
I don't think you need to be fighty and actively oppose every single "popular" opinion to provide a different take. I say a lot of unpopular things on HN and, so far, they haven't banned me.
I'm older than I used to be. I'm more inclined to pick my battles and I have a different understanding of how to introduce other ideas. If you do it right, you can get taken seriously sometimes though it's a slow process and not for the innately impatient or the folks looking to grab karma or the folks wanting to make a splash.
They certainly don't ban for opinions that would be upvoted in another thread, but one will be downvoted, and H.N. seems to limit posts to five per day to any user with any recent downvoted comment.
Just yet I was limited because a single one of my comments received a downvote, but that comment has now been upvoted again, so I am no longer limited. — This does not seem like a particularly good system to me and scares people from saying anything that goes against the mentality in any particular thread.
> I'm older than I used to be. I'm more inclined to pick my battles and I have a different understanding of how to introduce other ideas. If you do it right, you can get taken seriously sometimes though it's a slow process and not for the innately impatient or the folks looking to grab karma or the folks wanting to make a splash.
There are certainly strategies and diplomatic tactics that can aid one, but I do not feel one should need to do so if absence of such would leave one upvoted in another thread depending on what way they mentality of the thread swings, which is of course vicious, since this system further diminishes dissent.
I seriously doubt this is true.
I generally stand by my right to my opinion. I have worked at figuring out how to do that without making every single comment a hill to die on. It's taken time and effort. I used to be a walking, talking train wreck waiting to happen and I still have personal challenges to being me and not being overwhelming amounts of drama for existing.
I don't like drama. Accusations that I say and do things for dramatic effect or similar are inaccurate understandings of who I am and what motivates me.
I view HN as an opportunity for growth. I have had the experience of feeling like "a big fish in a little pond" and I generally gate it.
I enjoyed being here at first because I was a little fish in a big pond and was free to just enjoy the opportunity to engage in meaty discussion. And then that turned into drama and I began trying to figure out why and yadda.
These days, it's less drama than it used to be. I'm still trying to find my sea legs here with no effective role models, but I still prefer to see it first and foremost as an opportunity to engage in meaty discussion and to whatever degree it still serves that function, it's life enhancing.
Upvotes, downvotes, etc are all niggling details. The opportunity to enrichment my mind without paying tuition or leaving home etc is extremely valuable to me and has caused me to be thick skinned about a great many things for nearly twelve years now.
Why do you think this is not true? This is something that is quite often discussed and just happened to me.
One comment I made today had one downvote, and I was met with the dreaded “You're positing too much” message, but shortly thereafter someone else upvoted it again to bring it to 1 again, and I could post freely again.
Your opinion seems to be conditioned upon that this is false, but even if it were false, votes simply have a habit of scaring people into saying something others might disagree with. And even Reddit in a less extreme fashion limits one to 1 post per hour on any subreddit where one has negative total karma, which is certainly less extreme, but one can very easily receive negative karma for simply disagreeing and being well within Reddit's rules in how one phrases such disagreement. Simply going to say, r/movies and saying “I disagree, I personally did not like this film at all and thought it was overrated.” too much is all it takes to be limited to one post per hour on r/movies.
> Upvotes, downvotes, etc are all niggling details. The opportunity to enrichment my mind without paying tuition or leaving home etc is extremely valuable to me and has caused me to be thick skinned about a great many things for nearly twelve years now.
Even if these websites did not limit one in any way for being downvoted, they still give visibility based on upvotes, and the psychological effect on others is real, which leads to such places slowly but surely becoming a monoculture which attract more and more users that simply desire an echo-chamber which will lead to more and more users that do not like it, or simply desire a different ech-chamber, to leave.
A real problem I have with r/manga on Reddit is that really only one specific genre is read and discussed there, because all threads about anything else obtain no visibility due to the voting system, the genre is controversial in most other paces, but anyone who criticizes it there is downvoted.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26622148
I've been here a lot of years. I was rate limited at one time. I'm not currently.
I framed that very carefully as my opinion and not an assertion of fact.
It's possible to be Dutch and strongly opinionated on HN and in good standing (not rate limited).
Maybe you are right and I'm wrong. It ain't no big thing. I'm not trying to win an argument here. I'm just making conversation and trying to be helpful, which is something of a bad habit of mine and habits die hard.
(Shrug)
You have a good day.
Exactly why I read the comments before I click the link to the article, and why I'll read the article (assuming the comments give me a valid reason to) before commenting about it. ;)
Imo there haven't been any competing attempts. There's been nothing remotely as interesting or viable as a system for many broad discussions about JS to happen. The ability for someone to take an old post, staple a new opinion on top, & retweet it, and for anyone to engage with it as they like is pretty unsurpassed. Nothing remotely comes close. Everywhere else on the planet, once a thread is 2 months old it's dead, never to be seen again. Relying on individual people to be the relays, the beacons in the conversation was a huge plus, something exceedingly unique & powerful & special about Twitter that nothing else comes close to capturing.
I've been off twitter semi-involuntarily for a year now. I still think the network of people model is incredible. But also, JS Twitter had been in bad decay for a number of years. There's problems & problematic issues, but to me, the defining problem was that there was much less interesting stuff to talk about. We are way latter in the game, everyone seemingly works for gigantic humungo corporations closed-source systems. There's way way more stuff that just works, way more really good libraries. And there's way way less inter-action among the different tech-stacks. Where-as before JS Twitter made sense, now the massive audience is pretty heavily divided into various stack pieces. There are some general-JS tweetings that happen but the common thread is the slowest, least interesting part of JS & JS Twitter & what it was, which was more cross-ranging & examining of new ideas.
JS left college, got a job, got boring.
> all JS related discourse moved to Twitter
The jokes write themselves at this point :v
I've done the same exact thing.
I find very little usefulness in the national and international posturing, blaming, and virtue signaling that makes up most broadcast, cable, and print news.
An older example: if you didn't pay attention to the news on 9/11 you risked being stuck in the airport for a very long time.
So yeah, there are situations where you do need to follow the news. Not often, but two global events have happened in my lifetime (3 if you count the fall of the Berlin wall) where you really did need to pay attention to the news.
Maybe some sort of exponential back-of is warrented? Say you check the news and if nothing relevant happend you check in again the next day, then you skip a day, then two, etc. When an event happens where you need to follow the news (say a local flood), you go back to an hourly checkup.
The final thing I have noticed is that the news you need to follow are mostly very local. What happens in other countries is, relatively speaking, of no importance to you.
Check your government website if you want to know what the regulations are today, or check your airport and airline sites before you leave for the airport if you're worried about delays. You don't need "news" for this.
I don't think you need to over complicate it. There's nothing wrong with checking the news daily if that's what you like, or following some particular stories or events important to you even more regularly. A compulsion to keep checking, spending hours a day on it, or some fear that you need to check or you'll miss out is where it could negatively affect your life.
I needed them to keep taps on the government and explain the ever changing rules in a better, more clear way. It is not important for the government to make the rules simple, understandable or appreciable so they didn't.
That is not overclomplicating it, btw. That is responding to reality.
And by over complicating it, I'm talking about this exponential backoff algorithm. You can read the news if you want, don't feel bad about it. Nothing bad is going to happen and you won't miss out on much if you don't though. And I promise you you would spend more time scouring the news for 9/11 type events than you would spend stuck in airports due to said events because you didn't read the news.
I assure you, you still hear about the big events without issue. Just your usual day-to-day is more than enough to hear about the important news very quickly. There's no way you could have missed 9/11 or the Covid lockdowns. I mean, I don't care a bit about soccer and I still heard within hours when my country was eliminated from the Euro.
And whenever something particular sounds like it deserves your attention you can go read about it on whatever news website. But that's fairly rare.
Reflecting for myself, I used to feel the same way, but quit news about 6 months ago and have never felt happier. No longer am I sinking valuable hours into something that didn't bring me happiness or help me better myself.
That's even more true when the news takes the form of something like Twitter.
If you enjoy it, keep it up, but don't think it somehow capital-M Matters.
One of the nice things about Biden's presidency is how much less attention the news seems to merit, these days.
Meanwhile, did you find any of the Trump-related news for those four years (hell, over five, really, counting the election) particularly actionable, in an "I really needed to know that right this minute" sort of way? I kept up with all of it (it was entertaining, for sure) but never did, personally. Even CDC guidance and such during the pandemic filtered down to state and local ordinances by the time they mattered much. Mask mandates quickly resulted in posters at store entrances, and most provided free or cheap masks, especially at first, so there was little likelihood of being caught out there. I anticipated panic-shortages before the news caught on when I saw a way-above-normal number of household paper products in shopping carts at the local bulk store-by the time it was in the news or became a meme a few days later, the shortages were already a problem. Some help that would have been—and realistically, we'd have probably been OK if we'd been affected by them, we'd have figured something out with only very little inconvenience. Regardless, even a news-avoider would have realized that they should maybe pop in slightly more often than usual to see what's up, specifically, with the whole pandemic thing, well before it had much effect in the US.
Most big stories still don't actually matter. Pulse nightclub shooting, or the one in Vegas, or the Boston Marathon bombers? Quick news mattered—locally. Living several states away, I could have found out a month later and it'd have made no difference. Assange extradited, US pulling out of Afghanistan—US invading Afghanistan, for that matter? Russia invades Ukraine? Brexit? Libyan revolution? "Immigrant caravans"? I care because I'm a bit of a politics and news junkie, but if I'd ignored those the harm to my life would have been zero. They're not local events, for me, and they're just not that important to my day-to-day life. I could have found out about Brexit a year after the vote, would have made no difference (there's a joke in there about how long that process has taken).
9/11 disrupted air travel and phone service nationwide, but was of the rare "you could hardly miss it" variety so one was unlikely to encounter those problems before becoming aware of it.
I'm actually having trouble thinking of another event in the last 30+ years, in the US, that wasn't local and that had a "light cone", if you will, of actual effects on my life that hit in less than a week, and for which foreknowledge was in any way actionable. Typically, they never "hit". If they do, then finding out when that happens is just as good.
4chan, for instance, also comes with rather niche views, but does not attempt to convince one that it's views are anything but niche.
Being immersed in Twitter, and many other websites known to create “filter bubbles”, eventually might make one believe it is the mainstream.
In fact, it is not so dissimilar from how I think U.S.A. culture works; it is often noted how often inhabitants inside of it loose perspective of how idiosyncratic U.S.A. cultural memes are nothing more than that, as the people there often phrase them as though they be of a more global, even timeless nature.
Well, how wrong was I. I’d love to go back to that time.
I guess she just has a need and strong desire to share thoughts and write them down. Considering she seems to be enough of an author to be published writing is something she likes to do. Twitter would be another outlet for that. Is that so bad, as long as its not interfering with the rest of her life. Seems like she still is writing long articles regularly.
I feel like i got wrapped up in the need to comment too. I did do some similar experiments on my self. The trigger for this was political stuff. A little more drastically i went and deleted my twitter account, to my surprise the account is actually fully gone after 30 days. I never felt like putting the effort to get an account back so that habit is pretty much gone. Facebook doesn't have much of a network for me anymore, feels like its dying so it doesn't get much use from me except for linking with instagram. Instagram i only use as a photo sharing place and to see artwork, not really a commenter there. Disconnecting from reddit was interesting, i found my self still wanting to comment, and make throwaway jokes. Nothing thoughtful, dumb shit i thought would be funny. Sometimes I would see a small comment suggesting something wrong and wanted to them know. It feels like weird behavior.
Overall i guess i wonder why we make comments, like what drives this behavior. Then why most other people don't participate. I think only 1% or something of an online community actually contribute. These comments seem to be somewhere between actually sharing thoughts and socializing but not quite either.
In real life, you have to bring up a topic and provide some context surrounding it before you can even share your opinion on it. Even then, your conversation partner may not even be interested in what you have to say. But on social media, someone out there must be interested in your thoughts, and is likely well-versed in it (they're also tweeting actively), so you post it. You get a 'like' or a response for your thought or opinion. You feel good.
The thing is, opinions require zero energy or effort. You just have them. I think that's part of what makes it addictive. You don't have to do any work, just share your thoughts, and you'll get feedback from the system. That feedback feels good. With enough feedback, you're soon sharing the most pithy thoughts, or most banal facts just to get another hit.
It's also bizarre that people need to share every private thought and action with the world. An author died and she re-read their book. How much of that impulse stemmed from a inform the public about it?
It's hard to respect the "Verified" users if you knew they all have tweet counts that when divided by hours since they joined the platform it comes out at over 1 tweet an hour every hour for 9+ years.
You can check this yourself using the wayback machine to see all their counts from before it was hidden. Pretty much every popular personality on Twitter is hopelessly addicted to it and you realize how little value their views have when they must be staring at it for hours and hours a day.
The only major difference I can see between the two are the political and ideological opposites. On the chans it's A-OK to post about wiping out some "inferior race", while on Twitter wiping out or mistreating men is accepted. All kinds of kink porn is easily found on Twitter (which was a big surprise), people confess to crimes, harass each other, dox and send death threats to "the other side", spread fake news, falsely accuse each other with real world consequences, and so much more. Yet somehow, Twitter is a standard app on devices, newspapers, governments, underage kids and grandpas use it.
Is it just money?
Your argument is not unlike "why is the government supporting the printing of books when some books contain inflammatory speech and bomb building manuals" (though obviously not a 1:1 equivalence because books don't have algorithmic recommendations by themselves).
It is now that life imitates art.
To live for onself onto one self is hard. Much easier to share your life and convince yourself it has meaning through external validation.
There’s rarely peace in one owns head. The hollow solace lies outside of us, with true peace hard to achieve, if achievable at all.
They're exactly the publication I'd expect to publish something that breaks with the groupthink infecting the rest of the industry.
Twitter just seems like narcissistic self important people yelling over each other. Guess I never figured that one out.
One thing is I always delete my account after 3-6 months and create a new one, following different people/groups etc.
A gun is dangerous. Twitter is dangerous.
Both are useful if used appropriately with the right training and safeguards.
Want to follow someone who posts a lot of interesting things about JS? Be prepared to see posts they like about curry poodles. Oh here’s some worst-in-class topic recommendations barfed out by depressed ML, and you can’t turn them off. What do you mean you don’t like Roseanne Nostalgia? Here are some Binky The Clown Stock Tips.
You can just use any of the numerous third party clients that have a sorted timeline and don't inject random posts in your timeline.
I follow a bunch of sports writers on Twitter to keep up on my favorite teams and fantasy stuff. Invariably, on slow news days, they will post about their kids, cats, the weather, anything other than the teams they cover. I generally don't mind but will unfollow if the balance gets too far out of whack or if they get political in an untenable way.
YMMV as far as where to draw the line between content and fluff.
All social media should be topic, not user based IMO. This is the way the internet was originally, it was not really personality, or people based. you joined a forum about fishing, woodworking, programming, or politics to engage with other people on those topics. Off Topic things where either isolated to a specific area of the community or banned completely.
Today however we do not see to have topics on social media is it just a stream of everything about a person...
I was there in the Usenet days, and it was beautiful. I was there when Compuserve and Prodigy and Mozilla burst forth.
It's not the platform though.
We're seeing a retelling of the Eternal September story, and it's sad. Yeah, some historical context will be passed on, reframed for the new century. But there's a core philosophy that will never be "recovered." Because it didn't truly arise from sharing.
It's right there in the name.
Beware the tempers wasn't part of the original dream.
There's practically nothing to see here. If a bunch of chimpanzees join a club, it's not that interesting to note that there's suddenly shit being flung everywhere.
EDIT: just to be 3000% clear, given the current obsession with the topic, my comment and use of "chimps" has less than nothing to do with race. It's a reference to our entire species' primate past and the tendency to underestimate our similarity to those ancestors.
[1] Limit this to the developed world if you'd like. Countries that came online much more rapidly and recently, and continue to have large portions of the population come online every day, are dealing with a different but related set of problems.
It'll still seep through the cracks because that's what Twitter wants.
I got to the point of 1000+ accounts and 1000+ words muted and it's still a bad place. To Twitter it is more valuable to them that I have to hear about the issues Twitter considers important than for me to have a healthy Twitter feed.
A global "Politics on/off" switch is 100% possible and they choose not to do it because they consider it more important for the world that I hear the correct politics than be able to just hear none.
I agree that stuff gets in. It is a trade off.
maybe i should try third party apps vs fighting twitters algos.
Or general learning about a given topic. Tons of writers and journalists use Twitter, so if you're interested in higher-quality takes on a given topic, or just updates on e.g. author interviews and upcoming events, it can be a really good resource.
I tested Twitter while doing some research on astrology and found that some of the most on-target astrology advice I could find was found in the Twitter Topic for my ascendant sign (different from the typical sun sign used in astrology). It was far better than some of the paid services I tested. Very subjective-anecdotal (I ended up making my own lists based on what was interesting/useful to me) but I think it shows that it helps to consciously examine what Twitter is good at.
Lists can be really good too. Like this one for Open Source CAD: https://twitter.com/i/lists/963793700190146560
It was to be a battle of wills between one aging, chemo-addled brain and
So the real story is she had chemo therapy at some point, presumably for cancer, and was still impaired and during presumably her recovery, Twitter became too big a thing in her life. Either out of prosaic misattribution or intentionally creating drama for the sake of writing a story, she frames it as an addiction she needed to beat.
This really had nothing to do with Twitter. If Twitter hadn't existed, there would be some other thing she got stuck on during recovery.
Twitter was the right amount of mental engagement for her during recovery when harder things were beyond her reach. When she was more recovered, she recognized it was time to move on and do other things. And she did so.
The end.
Anyway, what do you think she'd be addicted to if not Twitter? Crack cocaine?
Maybe crossword puzzles, which were the go to back in the day for people who liked words.
The funny thing was that it starts sending you random notifications from people you don’t even follow or have the bell on for as a dark pattern to get you to come back.
What I realized is — like how I quit reading the news many years ago — everything on Twitter is pointless and ephemeral.
From one outrage cycle to the next, never relenting. Everyone always mad about some meaningless minutiae. If it was actually important it would surface by some other means so I never missed anything.
Then I’d go outside and everyone’s living their lives like Twitter doesn’t exist.
It’s easier to do than you think. Lock your account, turn off notifications for the whole app, and do literally anything else.
The best strategy is to block keywords to avoid all the social justice and politics. I just wished they allowed blocking more than 200 words.
After all, a large part of "withdrawal" seems to be FOMO, i.e. the feeling that everyone else is having the time of their life while you are missing out. However, if you can be sure nothing is happening because the network is shut down, FOMO might be greatly reduced.
Social media is good if you want to spread a message and reach other interested people. It is also good to find interesting stuff as a distraction.
Social networks used to be good to represent yourself, to keep contact with friends, and to meet new real people around you. It's really sad nothing like that exists anymore.
The reason I'm on it is because a lot of the best info on Covid this year breaks on Twitter weeks or even months before it's common knowledge.
Not that I disagree, but it is a rule