Here is a guideline for a good Twitter experience:
1. Everyone who is negative, irrational, too political and so on gets unfollowed.
2. Everyone who is interesting gets followed.
3. Unfollow is more important than follow, because negative Tweets are more attention grapping.
The most difficult part about Twitter is to start out and curate your feed from nothing. But once you have that, it's one of the best social media tools out there.
At the same time, doing that feed management feels increasingly like swimming upstream against Twitter's desires. First, they started showing tweets that people I follow simply liked. Now they suggest "topics" all the time.
I have to spend more and more time reminding Twitter not to do that garbage. But, overall, I still find the time spent is worth it in return for the quality of conversation and education I get in return.
Reddit is like this for me 10x, with very little effort required to maintain my feed. Spend a few minutes picking a handful of healthy subreddits and unsubscribing from the giant ones and Reddit easily becomes one of the best sites out there.
While in principle, you might assume certain topics should have a community of a certain size and caliber, there's no guarantee that such a community exists if the right set of humans haven't happened to coalesce around it.
That's just the nature of human group behavior. You might live in a city that has enough disco fans to support a thriving disco night every Saturday, but there's no guarantee that the right DJs and nightclub will get together to make it happen.
Subs like /r/sysadmin ban this sort of question and tend to be mostly populated by working professionals.
Communities where all the top 10 hottest posts are made by newbies generally never grow into great subs. That sort of thing should be prob reserved to /r/askfoo or something.
What do you do when someone somewhat important in your industry puts out 20% abusive/toxic content (and that 20% is probably 90% of their engagement)? If you ban them you create drama, if you mute them you're still cutting yourself out of potentially important non-toxic conversations.
But when you don't ban/mute them twitter seems to want to constantly show you their hottest hottakes-- the very reason that you're not following them. (I'm not even sure if muting is enough to prevent the recommendations).
These features aren't available on any third-party clients. You should give a third-party client a try, because you'll just get the straight timeline.
This makes sense. These platforms are in the "engagement" business. They're trying to have you spend more time by suggesting content you will watch, not turn you off and have you close the tab.
During the pandemic, my family settled into a routine of watching some YouTube every evening before we get the kids in bed. The recommendation system has dialed in our tastes very well and basically get an enriching, relaxing, enjoyable ~30 minutes or so of shared experiences every night specific to our hobbies and interests.
When we pick up a new interest, it's quick to notice and start recommending related stuff. When we move on, it doesn't tend to take long to get it to stop recommending stuff in that category.
It definitely tends to overfit, but it's so much better than most other systems and I will absolutely take that over it recommending garbage-but-popular content.
Also, most of my music listening these days is DJ mixes on YouTube.
But a major source of toxic tweets is buying up all of Twitter.
$420 funding secured, "Thailand guy is a Pedo", constant attention-seeking, COVID19-conspiracy theories, etc. etc. Elon Musk's Twitter Account is one of the worst.
To see that this man is about to become the owner of Twitter really doesn't strike much confidence in me.
Lab leak was a conspiracy _theory_ a year ago. Today it's _very_ much a serious contender for the source.
If people are _crazy_ and blocked or censored for theorizing about conspiracy, then conspiracies will happen.
The best solution to bad speech is more good speech.
> Based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases in US too by end of April
>> 5:38 PM · Mar 19, 2020·Twitter for iPhone
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Musk was constantly marginalizing COVID19 statistics and downplaying the effects. There's more than one COVID19 conspiracy.
Musk was part of the "not that bad", COVID19 is like the flu, etc. etc. conspiracy theorists.
How is that a conspiracy theory? That's an opinion. Everyone has them. Why would you label him a conspiracy theorist for having an opinion you disagree with?
edit: why also is conspiracy theorist considered a pejorative? Conspiracy turns out to be the stuff of history.
At this point, we can say that "COVID19 will be done by April 2020" is a laughably incorrect response to the COVID19 issue entirely. Elon Musk was 100% the "like the flu", "Gone by April", "Lockdowns are stupid", "masking doesn't work" (etc. etc. etc.) bullshit train.
Everybody has their bad takes on various subjects. Elon Musk's COVID19 hot takes are among the worst I've seen. Others include some rather shitty behavior, like calling the Thailand guy a pedo for instance.
All-in-all, Elon Musk is NOT a good poster on Twitter, and if he takes over Twitter, I don't think I have much confidence in the long-term benefits of the platform. Its as if other online-trolls decided to take over various media outlets.
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Do you remember the 2020 election with any decent amount of memory? "COVID19 will go away as soon as the election is over", etc. etc. Tons of terrible takes on the subject. Musk was just part of that, and I daresay that falls into fall on conspiracy nut now that we can look back upon the pandemic with 2+ years of hindsight.
But if the COVID19 issue is a bad example / too political for your tastes, then I pivot to the Thailand Pedo guy tweets instead, which hopefully you can agree with me are uncalled for?
> ..."COVID19 will go away as soon as the election is over", etc. etc. Tons of terrible takes on the subject...
are not terribly likely to sway me. In the same nature as you thinking people like that are crazy, I personally find your views to be wild. But it's nice we can both voice them and remain civil.
> Musk was just part of that, and I daresay that falls into fall on conspiracy nut now that we can look back upon the pandemic with 2+ years of hindsight.
Particularly:
> falls into fall on conspiracy nut now
Conspiracy is when a group of people conspire. To have a bad opinion is not to be a conspiracy theorist. If you want to call him a nut for a bad opinion, fine, but I just don't think conspiracy theorist makes sense when it has nothing to do with groups of people conspiring.
> But if the COVID19 issue is a bad example / too political for your tastes, then I pivot to the Thailand Pedo guy tweets instead, which hopefully you can agree with me are uncalled for?
Maybe I'll check out the Pedo guy tweets. I'm not on twitter, and don't know to which you refer.
Frankly I couldn't care much less about Musk. I care a great deal about free speech and throwing conspiracy theorist around as a pejorative.
The use of conspiracy theorist as a pejorative is an echo chamber way of attacking the message deliverer and dismissing what they have to say out of hand without consideration of their message. We do that too much in today's society, and considering the corruption present, we really shouldn't.
> All-in-all, Elon Musk is NOT a good poster on Twitter, and if he takes over Twitter, I don't think I have much confidence in the long-term benefits of the platform. Its as if other online-trolls decided to take over various media outlets.
Sure, maybe fair. I don't know. I feel that if he removes moderation and adds free speech, then it will be a net positive.
If any billionaire puts their slant on content moderation, I think its a net negative whether I agree with them or not. So, if he somehow does _just_ bring free speech back, then good. If not, then twitter will just be another biased platform as it has been, but with a new bias.
Do you even Jan 6th insurrection?
Donald Trump was removed from the platform because he has, and continues, to be a Jan6th conspiracy theorist. Donald Trump still believes he won the 2020 election.
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There's also a severe amount of Russian propaganda going around the internet right now. Do you support letting the Russian bots reign free on Twitter?
Russia / Moscow are clearly trying to use the internet to spread false information on Ukraine.
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In any case, having a "jackass" as the leader of Twitter (Pedo Tweet, Elon Musk "funding secured $420", and other such lies) is definitely a reason to leave the platform IMO. Elon Musk will attract other high-profile jackasses at a minimum.
The dumbass celebrity shitposting is the worst part of Twitter. I like Twitter mostly as an RSS-like replacement (since RSS itself is not as popular these days), with well-intentioned bloggers sharing information on a "push to serve" basis.
But the long-back-and-forth of 2-sentence long debates is... not useful for any form of discussion. It generates traffic and ad-revenue for sure, but its not useful to me. Good debates need longer-form formats, blogposts with multiple paragraphs and data to discuss.
I think "thread-reader" and 1/x and 2/x style long-form posts help a lot, but Twitter really isn't designed for medium-form discussion.
This is gross language. I assume apparently implying something so obvious as to make my points absurd?
Regardless free speech should be welcomed in this case too. People can then just ridicule his opinions and tear them down directly. It's not like he can't reach his audience on Gab or some other network.
For background, I'm not pro-Trump. I'm libertarian and think both sides of the spectrum are just legs of the same body that stomps on our freedoms and makes us poor.
> Do you support letting the Russian bots reign free on Twitter?
With regards to propaganda I think I have an operating brain. As such, I can make up my own mind. As for bots, I do think it would be nice if we could come up with a technical solution guaranteeing a human is posting the tweet.
> In any case, having a "jackass" as the leader of Twitter (Pedo Tweet, Elon Musk "funding secured $420", and other such lies) is definitely a reason to leave the platform IMO. Elon Musk will attract other high-profile jackasses at a minimum.
Sure.
> since RSS itself is not as popular these days
Which is really too bad. I really love RSS based podcasting though!
> 2-sentence long debates is... not useful for any form of discussion
I completely agree.
Jan 6th insurrection is what started this "Twitter moderation debate" when Donald Trump was banned from the platform.
This is absolutely central to the entire discussion, and I'm trying to remind you of it. What should we, as an internet / online society do, to bad actors and/or trolls?
I think the solution chosen is obvious. We ban bad actors from online platforms of note. Russia (particularly Russian propaganda sources like RT) are another group, like Trump, who likely deserve the axe.
Once you and I agree that some actors deserve to be banned from online platforms, there's not much else to discuss. Its simply a matter of moderation, who truly deserves it or not. I think that moderation is a difficult and thankless job (I've done it myself on occasion).
But I absolutely see value in moderating forums / discussions. Twitter banning some bad actors is just a continuation of the online moderation model that we've used for so many years (since USENET at least).
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The #1 thing going all across conservative media right now, is how Elon Musk (might) bring Trump back to Twitter and reverse the Trump ban. Is this hypothetical something you'd support?
There's "free speech", and then there's "inciting rebellion against our entire system of government". And alas, I don't think that supporting the Jan 6th insurrection falls under the "free speech" camp, and that Donald Trump's ban should remain firm.
If a group of people want to spread conspiracy theories about the inadequacy of our election systems, then they no longer fall under "free speech" and are instead well within the category of "high treason" and/or "enemy of the state". That's the kind of talk that almost took down our entire country, and still threatens to do so in the next election cycle.
I don't think there's much to remind me of. I'm not on twitter and never really had the debate until now.
> What should we, as an internet / online society do, to bad actors and/or trolls?
Point out where they're factually incorrect. Ignore them. Ridicule them.
> I think the solution chosen is obvious.
This doesn't make it right.
> Once you and I agree that some actors deserve to be banned from online platforms, there's not much else to discuss.
I don't agree. And frankly, you just pointed out a a slippery slope that is exactly why I think you shouldn't ban anyone.
> But I absolutely see value in moderating forums / discussions.
I'm on the fence. Moderation is probably fine, but I don't like when megacorps do it. Centralization of power is my biggest concern.
> The #1 thing going all across conservative media right now, is...
I don't care. In my mind conservative and liberal media, cable news networks, and NPR, Etc... are just mouthpeices for the government and or corporatocracy. So long as the funding comes from a government or advertising, it's junk media in my mind.
> There's "free speech", and then there's "inciting rebellion against our entire system of government".
I would like you and me to peacefully rebel against our current system of government. Stop voting and stop paying taxes. Stop registering your vehicle, and stop getting government involved in marriage licensing. Let the whole dirtly system dissolve so we can be free individuals.
There, I openly incited rebellion. I'm sure you disagree, but that's not the point.
> I don't think that supporting the Jan 6th insurrection falls under the "free speech" camp
I disagree. But I think we're running in circles now.
> If a group of people want to spread conspiracy theories about the inadequacy of our election systems, then they no longer fall under "free speech" and are instead well within the category of "high treason" and/or "enemy of the state".
Wow, that's pretty dogmatic. Who watches the watchers? At some point a hammer like that will be used against perfectly peaceful people. Your statement sounds like it belongs in 1984 bequeathed by the Ministry of Truth. What if there at some point is an issue with the voting systems?
> particularly Russian propaganda sources like RT
One man's propaganda is another's BBC. BBC and NPR are both sponsored by governments that have bad track records of abuse of human rights. Why is Voice of America still allowed to operate on Twitter?
Good luck with that.
Trump, and his followers, today still believe the election was stolen. I don't believe there's any way to convince them otherwise. The only thing that can happen is to mitigate the damage.
You're welcome to try to convince them. I've done what I can from my side.
> Ridicule them.
That doesn't work for state-sponsored propaganda sites like RT. These groups have access to huge amounts of state-sponsored money and hire troll-farms from 3rd world countries to gaslight the discussion.
The opposite occurs, I'm ridiculed more often than not with these ridiculous discussion points. Its a losing battle because I fight fair, while they fight by buying up troll farms.
Unless I myself use a ton of fake accounts to build up a fake-following and build up a fake discussion, there's pretty much no hope at actually reaching critical mass and making discussion points move.
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The same occurs with billionare-level supporters like Elon Musk and/or Trump. They have the money to buy up false support and astroturf their supporters. You're up against literal professionals, who are paid per tweet to make the discussion look like their sponsored billionare is winning the discussions.
Its not quite as bad as state-sponsored propaganda like RT, but still bad.
You are naive. You aren't aware of the tactics being used in the modern social networks or how poisoned the discussion has become.
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> Why is Voice of America still allowed to operate on Twitter?
Are you seriously comparing BBC and Voice of America to RT? What side of the Ukrainian war are you on?
> I disagree. But I think we're running in circles now.
You're free to disagree, and I'm free to think of you as naive fool for doing so. At best, you're unaware of the tactics. At worst, you're in tacit support of them and are trying to convince me that the pro-Trump Jan6th insurrection crowd is a reasonable group that can hold a discussion with.
Alas, my experience says otherwise, and there's nothing you can say to convince me otherwise. Because I have actually talked to many Jan6th truthers and alt-right people on my own time. I've also discussed the Russian/Ukraine issue with pro-Russian / RT-supporters.
Its not like their "free speech" has disappeared off the face of the internet. I still seek them out for debate and they're readily available to discuss the issues with me.
Bit defeatist, but fair enough.
> Its a losing battle because I fight fair, while they fight by buying up troll farms.
Now who's the conspiracy theorist? Who's they!?
Just ribbin' you. : )
> You are naive. You aren't aware of the tactics being used in the modern social networks or how poisoned the discussion has become.
I've read some articles and have found most of this to be unconvincing. I think you're probably right that Twitter lends itself to bad conversation. But, just because a bunch of bots show up with false information or call me a dork, doesn't mean I have to believe them. I can verify sources, and quantity != quality when it comes to shitposts.
> Are you seriously comparing BBC and Voice of America to RT? What side of the Ukrainian war are you on
I'm on the side that understands without governments there aren't wars.
> You're free to disagree, and I'm free to think of you as naive fool for doing so.
Yup.
> Because I have actually talked to many Jan6th truthers and alt-right people on my own time.
Not unique to your experience. Many of that view run in my circles.
> Alas, my experience says otherwise, and there's nothing you can say to convince me otherwise.
Okay. Well talking to an immovable wall isn't a good look, so I'll drop it.
> Its not like their "free speech" has disappeared off the face of the internet.
Yup, which is why I don't care too much about Twitter either way. I'm just an advocate for free speech.
@dragontamer,
Thank you for the extended discussion. I'm going to try to get some work done.
Hope you have a great evening (assuming it's near night wherever you are)
Cheers,
- reedjosh
I feel I have the ability to figure this stuff out too.
Unfortunately, the people I care about do not have such ability. And they trust these online personalities (who are largely supported by bots) more than my discussion points or arguments.
Yes, I'm defeatist, but there's a reason for that. I don't think my friends being dumbasses / unable to handle propaganda is a reason to cut them out of my lives, but it is very disconcerting to me how terrible at logos they've become, and how much ethos/pathos sways them these days.
These are people close to me: my mother, coworkers, my sister, etc. etc. I enjoy a spirited debate with them now and then still but its not to actually convince them of any facts, but only for me to check up on how far the propaganda train they've gone. Actually trying to convince them of anything doesn't work, and is not the point of discussions in my experience.
The fact remains: online personalities (be they Ben Shapiro, Joe Rogan, Trump, etc. etc.) hold more sway to these people than my own words. I cannot win the ethos or pathos battle, only the logos battle (but that's only one peg of the rhetorical triangle). Without any support of ethos or pathos, its all for naught.
That's why rhetoric is ethos + pathos + logos. We can't just focus on the logos leg. Figuring out ways to punish the ethos (ex: banning Trump from Twitter, to diminish his reputation) seems like the only answer.
Any attempts for me to diminish ethos on my own only leads to an ad hominem attack which is easily deflected and diminishes my own logos.
> Hope you have a great evening (assuming it's near night wherever you are)
You as well.
Both of which I enjoy, but that's hardly cause for lavish praise.
Definitely not my experience, or that of anybody I know who curates their feed carefully. It certainly promotes shallower conversation, and forces irritating kludges like threads. But it's simply not true that it categorically precludes complexity or depth.
Or you follow people who post (relatively innocuous) things that enrage the sorts of people who post angry comments in response to opinion points.
Now if Twitter removes 3rd party client access, well, yeah, I guess I'll see where my followees go. Or find another source of entertainment/news.
You need to be really brutal with muting anyone who creeps into your timeline and posts something you dislike, and turning off the retweets or just unfollowing people who bring the people you find yourself muting into your timeline.
Like straight away see something you don't like then hit mute.
False; Twitter’s algorithm pushes lots of stuff you don't directly follow and is very clearly heavily driven by subject categorization (which is often also hilariously bad), as well as stylistic categorization (or maybe instead of it, as I see very little indication that the latter plays a role.) So, if you see toxic posts, it probably means you engage with tweets ON SUBJECTS on which some people post toxic takes, or follow people who post tweets on such topics.
It doesn't require any direct interaction with toxic tweets or individuals.
I don't see any of that, on the official mobile app with timeline set to "latest Tweets". The only stuff from non-followed accounts I see are ads, and those aren't even terrible.
I do use the killfile zealously though.
I like Twitter precisely because it puts me in control over which accounts I get to see. It's the only social network that I still enjoy using.
Yes, if you use a non-default setting carefully isolated from the Settings menu on its own menu with a non-intuitive icon, it behaves differently.
I had no doubt that somebody who hates Twitter could find a facile excuse for that hate. I didn't need the demonstration.
I don't even use twitter but I've lost friends because they became intolerable after being radicalized by the twitter hot-take feed. It sucks. Also ignoring it or even avoiding the platform completely doesn't solve the problem when toxic twitter traffic has made you a target.
If you recognize the need to immediately unsubscribe from lists and have a practice of doing it, you can keep your inbox functional and sane.
If you don’t, the thing gets hard to use or downright unpleasant to work with.
2. the toxicity is primarily in replies and interactions not always in posts. the posts which are toxic can still appear in your feed via RTs and simply looking at trending topics.
I agree you can do a lot to control your experience on twitter, but it simply isn't that simple unless you have a small <500 follower account.
What's too political for you? Taken too far, this can be putting your head in the sand.
As someone who deleted Facebook after maybe two years on the platform and never took up anything else, I find Twitter to be slightly useful. I get insight from a handful of people for whom Twitter is their best outlet. I use it very much as source of information. It sucks as much as anything else when it comes to discourse. For my usage, I would see Twitter moderate content much, much more strictly than they do now. The most valuable creators don't come within 100 miles of violating any ethical boundaries and I'd reckon the vast majority of readers (and ad clickers) don't post much at all and will be completely unaffected by any moderation rules.
- check their liked items. Is this something I agree with or want on my timeline? Are they being consistent with their online persona? (Is a Christian account going out and liking pics of scantily clad people?)
- check their replies for how they talk to others. Ctrl+f for words or topics I just don’t want to see (and already have muted).
- check their following list. Who are the following? Do I want to see their 3p retweets in my feed?
Regarding the “topics” feature, I almost always click “I don’t want to see this” and I’m at the point where I never see that feature. It’s related to what you “like” so ymmv on how accurate it is for you. Additionally, I never follow tags or trends. That’s just asking for noise.
I’ve effectively created a twitter account that is isolated to “homesteading/gardening/farm twitter” and I’m pretty pleased with the experience. It’s everything I want and nothing I don’t.
It didn’t come without some online weed pulling though ;)
This only works if you treat Twitter as read only. Any Tweet that reaches a sizable enough audience will have people interact with it and its author in a toxic way. The level of the toxicity will often depend on the specific author and certain types of people definitely receive more toxicity than others.
Or try element picker from ublock origin.
1. you only see direct tweets and commented retweets from people you follow 2. no trending 3. no suggested
I've started using twitter heavily over the past year, and honestly as long as you keep it focused and immediately unfollow anyone who starts tweeting unrelated things it's a pretty decent experience.
Just pick a theme, and follow people who tweet about that theme. If they go off track, just unfollow them.
(Of course you'll be able to find a bunch of death threats from random accounts all over, I could find a handful in a few minutes, but that's largely outside of anyone's control.)
The only recent example I can think of is the Babylon Bee and, yeah, this was 100% warranted https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2022/03/21/the-babyl...
I think this is what I don’t understand about the general sentiment that Twitter is some kind of uber-censored platform. Sure, high profile accounts and tweets can sometimes be removed, but have you ever tried reporting tweets?
9 out of 10 times that I report tweets threatening violence or harm against someone, I get a notification a few hours later that the “moderation team” has reviewed that tweet and found it not to be in breach of any policies. Twitter’s reporting system is ineffective at best, and I almost wish I had seen the kind of heavy handed moderation that people prescribe to Twitter here.
The fact that moderation tools exist does not imply that they are being used for political censorship. None of the screenshots of "search blacklisted" accounts from the leak showed any evidence of it being used on actual people, they are all random alphanumeric usernames with more reports than tweets.
In fact, the opposite is true. In 2018, when the feature was first rolled out, it was found to be catching several notable conservative commentators because their tweeting behavior is hard to distinguish from trolls and spambots (wonder why...), so those people were explicitly whitelisted so that they would appear in searches and trends despite their bad behavior.
There’s no goalpost moving here - a social media site having the ability to prevent large volumes of spam making its way to the trending page in front of thousands of eyeballs shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. The number of crypto scams in replies to tweets by Elon himself suggests that this tooling is definitely not as draconian in ability as you seem to believe.
Your email provider also has “secret” blacklists, and if incoming email originates from a sender on those lists then it gets put in your junk (or even bounced). Does that concern you?
The tweet is still up, even. Babylon Bee are being asked to delete it as a form of bending the knee to an opposing ideology. It's wrongthink, not hate speech or incitement, that you and Twitter are concerned with.
I don't have a horse in the trans debate, but I have my fair share of opinions that are verboten in progressive circles. It would be stupid of me to deny what is happening there.
Especially in this case where it was targeted at an individual, and not just a conservative blog post on transgenderism being linked to etc. Notice that Ben Shapiro et al have not been banned.
I'm not trying to define hate speech, I'm saying that there's no hate there to begin with and so all we're left with is an argument over reality (or the terms we use to describe it): is a woman an adult human female, or is there something else we have to consider?
In your counterexamples, black people/women are being declared strictly inferior. That's not the case here - Levine isn't lessened by being an adult human male.
If you want something censored, the onus should be on you to prove that it is hateful, not on someone else to prove that it is not. For that, you need to define hate speech and explain how the Babylon Bee's post fits that definition alongside the examples you just gave.
It still is, if we're talking about averages. Extremely well studied too.
Maybe you're brainwashed to the point where everything Twitter bans falls into categories of "hate speech" or "extreme disinformation". That doesn't mean the majority of people out there share your views. Of course, you don't have to deal with those people, because you probably hang out only on websites that reinforce your biases via censorship.
>I'd love an example of how yourself or other you follow are censored.
Unity 2020 campaign account got permanently banned and links to its website were restricted even in private messages. They broke no rules, posted nothing edgy and no one ever coherently explained why this happened.
New York Post got suspended after Tweeting Hunter Biden laptop article link. The suspension was based on clearly fabricated rationale.
These are just two egregious cases that I'm well familiar with. I can post about a dozen more. There are thousands less notable, but no less clear-cut examples out there. There are even more examples that are debatable, but which in totality indicate a pattern or political manipulation.
Funny thing is, I don't even use Twitter. The question is, why does a person like me is more aware of its censorship that someone who claims to be well familiar with the platform?
Maybe you're brainwashed to the point where everything Twitter bans falls into categories of "hate speech" or "extreme disinformation". That doesn't mean the majority of people out there share your views. Of course, you don't have to deal with those people, because you probably hang out only on websites that reinforce your biases via censorship.
The only thing Libs of TikTok posts is videos made by liberals on TikTok. Yet it was deemed hateful? Reposting liberal content is hateful now.
What? How do you know how long they are watched? How do you how long it's watched on Twitter?
> Then labels the videos as evidence of pedophelia/child grooming
Strange way to summarize the captions, the annotations and summaries I've seen were pretty accurate and more specific than your hyperbole.
How many posts have there been on Twitter calling republicans Nazis? Or claiming the 2016 election was stolen? Or calling Clarence Thomas a house —-r or an Uncle Tom.
Libs of Tik Tok is tame by comparison.
"This is a mental illness"
"This teacher has been identified and is employed by @FergFlorSchools"
"3rd grade teacher at @GracemorNKC teaches 8 year olds about gender identity and then “wonders if anyone [students] will change their minds” presumably about their gender. These groomer teachers need to be fired. "
You say "just annotating videos", those political blinders you're wearing must be pretty strong...
In what way was this "100% warranted"? You mean it's "100% warranted" to ban accounts which make fun of people and things you don't like? What about making fun of Trump? Is that fine? Seems to be, and seems to be based entirely on the mod's political persuasions.
Let's talk about Hunter Biden's laptop. This was banned almost immediately under the premise of "hacked material." Okay, seems fair. Except they allowed (and continue to allow) hacked material to circulate about the Canadian Freedom Convoy donors.
Let's talk about covid. Twitter banned any and all mentions (and accounts) which discussed the possibility that covid came from a lab in Wuhan. This is now a leading theory of its origin. Project Veritas, whether you like them or not, have been instrumental in exposing the relationship between Fauci and EcoHealth Alliance. The fact that Fauci oversaw re-defining the term "gain of function research," that he explicitly gave funding to EcoHealth Alliance, knowing they would be funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology to conduct gain of function research, and uncovered incorrectly redacted emails between Fauci and EcoHealth Alliance.
Twitter even suspended Chinese virologist Li-Meng Yan who fled the country to talk about the high likelihood of a lab leak.
I feel quite certain you're busy telling yourself "but these are all totally justified!" This means your views align really well with the moderation on Twitter. Where it's fine to ban things like this, but not the hacked private information about Canadian Freedom Convoy donors, or Trump and family hacks, or the doxing of Libs of Ticktok founder Chaya Raichik.
Twitter's moderation is fairly transparent, and mostly consistentish (as it can be, moderating on the scale that twitter does, which i guess is not very consistent at all...). Just because you don't agree with their moderation doesn't make it untransparent, or inconsistent.
This is the one example everyone who is getting their knickers in a twist about Twitter censorship loves to bring up, but it doesn't seem to be a great example. There's only weak circumstantial evidence in favour of the theory and banning discussion of it was something Twitter realised was a mistake and rolled back on.
I don't think it's unreasonable for mistakes to happen as long as they're corrected. I think there are plenty of things you can criticise Twitter for, but this seems like an odd one to highlight.
> Twitter even suspended Chinese virologist Li-Meng Yan who fled the country to talk about the high likelihood of a lab leak.
"Even"? This is a misrepresentation. Yan is a political hack. She refuses to have her work peer-reviewed. See e.g. [0]. She's a useful pawn for Steve Bannon.
[0] https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/pubs_archiv...
The whole point of free speech is that no faction should be allowed to suppress the speech of others, lest such factions prevent consideration of ideas that might eventually prove convincing and true.
Where it starts to look biased is that they've drawn two lines in the sand in recent years: 1. No disinformation about a global pandemic, and 2. No using lies about an election to justify violence against the government. And they banned a bunch of people that did that. And yes: it was one side that made those issues "partisan".
I really don't know what you want Twitter to do here. In any other society, those would seem like reasonable rules.
Why was Robert Malone kicked off? Isn’t his opinion more valuable than some random news personality when it comes to Covid? Literally banning a scientist who helped invent the very tech he is discussing. If he’s wrong, that’s fine, but it isn’t about facts — even the debate is banned.
And what exactly constitutes misinformation? I think this is the problem.
I'm noticing
A) twitter users that interest me and don't discuss politics are usually pretty great
B) I generally don't want to read anybody's political opinions on Twitter or most places... people who want to talk about politics mostly seem to be in to fighting a culture war, there might be people who aren't but I don't see them and it isn't the platform's fault or a moderation issue
It seems to be falling out of fashion, but a few years ago a lot of prominent Silicon Valley technologists started intermingling overtly racist and otherwise hateful political Tweets among their otherwise interesting and insightful tech Tweets. I think Twitter and other ideologically-aligned media radicalized them, which is to say that avoiding political accounts is a fine thing except (1) sometimes Twitter turns accounts political and (2) avoiding accounts that Tweet about politics at all is swimming against the current and (3) it sucks to have the all-or-nothing choice between following/not-following an account (rather than being able to follow interesting tech Tweets but uninteresting political Tweets, for example).
Example?
"I don't think California should repeal civil rights legislation in order to allow overt hiring on the basis of race and gender."
"I think we should perhaps reconsider our non-enforcement of property crimes due to the fact that nobody can park on the street, the stores across from me are boarded up, and two pharmacies in my relatively affluent neighborhood just closed due to theft."
"I didn't find it appropriate for the protestors to tear down a statue of Ulysses S. Grant or rename a school from Abraham Lincoln."
"I don't think it should be part of the school curriculum to be talking to preschoolers about gender and sexuality."
"Asians are disproportionally denied access to schools and employment due to arbitrary ethic and racial targets."
Other such hateful things.
To be clear: there is often a lot of gray area and some middle ground to be taken in complex debates. When one side (eg: far-right American trollish behaviour) goes too hard in to the paint, the (over?) reaction by the opposing side(s) often loses perspective and it's the more reasonable opinions in the middle that get squashed in the well meaning attempts to supress troll like extremist influence. I think the above post highlights exactly these kind of opinions that get steamrolled away, even though many of them are within the realm of sensible debate.
All the sarcasm accomplished was an indirect criticism of the prior poster who asserted without evidence tech figureheads were tweeting "overtly racist and otherwise hateful political Tweets". It's pretty uncharitable to assume they were referring to stuff on that list (many of which aren't just in the realm of sensible debate, but are actually majority views-- e.g. #1 we can look to the results of the ballot measure).
I don't think anyone seriously doubts that with enough searching we could find a couple examples that would make their claim technically true, at the very least... without delving into comments within the realm of sensible debate.
We shouldn't need to be so cynical, but if we must we don't need to do it at the expense of other participants here!
Twitter encourages hot-takes. Because of that all sorts of ill considered crap shows up there-- and that includes both inappropriately tarring views as racist as well as racist views that most people would agree are racist.
Would you identify which of your examples is speech that you find objectionable? The last statement about discrimination against Asians seems particularly well-supported by evidence, so it's not clear to me and perhaps others which statement(s) you intend to highlight as the example of "hateful things".
These things need to be discussed, but it’s best left for the people with their skin in it to discuss.
I'll go even farther and say it's nice if you fully share politics with the moderation team and you are too insecure about those politics to entertain other viewpoints. The sort of people about whom John Stewart Mill wrote:
> He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion... Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them...he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.
You are always going to fail at moderating millions of users. It just depends how bad you fail.
"I hate Muslim men" = banned (Muslim and man are inherent traits)
"I hate Muslim cab drivers" = OK (cab driver is a chosen profession)
I have a friend who was banned for saying something to the effect of "I hope white men have trouble sleeping tonight"
They have specific rules and they apply them. No one is going through millions of tweets every day and seeing if they match an ideology.
https://twitter.com/ButNotTheCity/status/1518051399631785986
Content moderation can be a challenging problem, but this is a clear failure of both algorithmic and human moderation processes, and there are an enormous number of these failures that lead to real harm in the form of radicalization and targeting of individuals and groups online and the real world.
But come on, the account name is, literally on it's own, a violation of the first rule of the Twitter Safety rules.
Also, Muslim isn't an inherent trait. It's a religion that is taught. Even your examples are faulty.
That looks like an utopia to me
Its like white people telling brown people that airport security isnt a toxic place and its all in their mind. Things are toxic...just not for everyone. Try being colored or not part of the in-crowd on Twitter and you get to see how toxic it is.
The point of twitter isnt just to read, but also to engage. But engagement is hard when tiki-toting nationalists are sending death threads to anyone that doesnt want to turn the world into prison.
Even technical (non political) conversations get all sorts of hate flung at PoC accounts.
Try being a white right-of-center man and see how toxic it is. Try being a Christian and see how how toxic it is. Try being a gender-critical feminist and see how toxic it is. Etc.
If you got hate for having Christian imagery or references in your profile, that would be awful. But if "being a Christian" means quoting Leviticus 18:22 at homosexuals then that is an action you're taking and getting pushback for.
I find people like yourself in traditional power structures genuinely believe the enforcement of the existing structure is a "neutral" act or position to hold. I think this delusion is how you come to think of politics you actively engage is as merely "being". It's not, and no on else is obligated to pretend it is.
- have been purveyors, not victims, of discrimination within USA
- introduced extreme polarization to mass media & political discourse
- controlled enough political power to push their beliefs on the majority through law since the inception of this country
I wonder if “center of X” voices have ever wondered _why_ their opinions aren’t well received outside of their bubbles.
Possibly but Twitter’s ownership won’t help with any of that.
Social media is designed in such a way that most engagement is somewhat mindless, so most people like and follow stuff they enjoy on a whim and then can’t easily connect the dots to how toxic stuff ended up in their feed. But beside that, even if you can understand exactly how to curate Twitter into something nice… why bother? There’s zero cost to just hang out in nicer parts of the internet, or, even better, talk to people IRL.
I think this is the kind of fundamental disagreement that comes up; what is known and familiar is "normal" even if you admit it's "not great" but what is not great about things that are not known and familiar is "insanely bad how could anyone even think about living that way".
Oh, so you've visited the Bay Area?
I doubt changes in Twitter leadership will change much for people who use Twitter this way. It's unlikely it would be in Twitter's interests or even widely popular but I do hope for better tools for configuring your feed, especially options to filter out politics and current events if that's not what you're on Twitter to read about.
My experience with twitter is great. Things happen and the people that I follow react to them. I see news, machine learning papers and one liner jokes / pithy observations. I've no problems with freedom of speech or any other aspect of it.
>> I'm seeing loads of comments about how toxic Twitter is, but isn't that on you?
That is what I too think every time some says that.
If someone trolls me in a reply, I ignore them and move on. Having the last word means nothing on the internet.
Though to be fair, I do have to avoid reading the replies in every post. This feels like an actual loss, since they often contain thorough, intelligent rebuttals or supplements. It's just not worth wading through all the insane people.
[1] I say this with empathy. I think outrage addiction is real.
[2] eg Nate Silver and Matt Yglesias both turned into trolls at one point, though silver has since improved
I tried to do this for years but I’ve been unable to do this because everyone just tweets about politics (or Twitter finds a way to inject their recommendations into my feed). So I gave up and stopped trying to control that.
Even when Twitter finally made the option to use ‘latest tweets’ instead of their feed, after a decade of making that difficult, it still seemed to be too far gone.
Now I only use Twitter when I get linked to it from other sources.
Once you've done all that it's much better. Of course you can't think of everything so some stuff slips through but that's a given for anything.
Nobody I follow ever bothers me and I certainly don't post much, but it's the internet flame factory in terms of how much other nonsense gets posted because the content is public by default. That's almost the point.
News stories like, "One user on Twitter thinks..." that shows a tweet showing the inflammatory thing they want to pretend is a trend, even though the tweet itself has virtually no likes were the beginning of a trend that got us to the news cycle we are today.
IMO it's the root cause of the "everybody is terrible" news cycle that people have been trying to live in for the past 10 years. IMO it's all been a media driven attempt to polarize people and it's self reinforcing because Twitter becomes the reference point to determine if people are polarized.
As long as I focus on getting information and ignore those who consistently gave doctored information, Twitter is awesome.
People are starting to organize hangouts/parties with people in "this corner of twitter." I even met up with dudes from twitter last weekend and had a great time!
@visakanv and @eigenrobot (among many others) seem to be some of the biggest community members. Even though it's probably more lib-right than I am there's a wide range of fascinating people who I pretty much consider internet friends.
I can’t remember blocking anyone in recent memory and follow ~350 people. I’ve also had some of my best customer service experiences there, typically from places that, without twitter, I’d have to phone and spend hours on hold.
My simple rule for anything on my phone is that I’m extremely tight on what app I give notification rights to. I can count on one hand how many apps have that ability and twitter most definitely isn’t one of them.
IMO, as long as you stay away from politics, Twitter is great; you can probably say the same for Reddit and other socials too.
One thing that I do hate though, is the bizarre message threading model - it's just so confusing! All I want is messages in chronological order!
I would place an exception on Facebook, or Facebook-like networks because you follow actual people, not public persona and ideas. For example I have some good friends that have some debatable political ideas, that's fine, we may have small and respectful arguments, but most of the times, we just avoid the subject and do things we both enjoy. But add them to Facebook and you get all the vomit, no only their posts, but others too, because Facebook thinks that if you like a person, you must share the same ideas. It makes my Facebook feed essentially worthless, as if being littered with ads wasn't enough.
Maybe I have a different experience than most. I just wanted an anon account for specific times and organic content. Guess if you do that you are evil and shouldn't have that right.
There’s a very very vocal minority of accounts that spam up every trending topic to make it as politically divisive as they can.
Not sure why my experience was different but I was trying to make the site work in good faith and didn't feel politically targeted. I just was unable to keep anger and reactivity off my feed from accounts I didn't even follow.
With the flexible content controls that Twitter already has in place, you can make Twitter to be just about as nice as you want it to be. If you mark your profile private, selectively follow, and either mute or block things / accounts that interfere with your worldview, it can be quite pleasant.
The problem is that you have to be public to get virality, and that virality opens you up to people who disagree. Locking your account and developing your own content haven is an easy tradeoff for those people sane enough to not need internet likes from random people.
I sure read a lot more junk here on HN than I do on my twitter feed, mostly because I have a lot more control on what comes my way there. However, keep in mind that by having such control, one is very prone to ending up in an echo chamber whereas on HN, I learn to think differently once in a while because of someone who disagrees with me and puts up a civilized response.
I'd like to have both environments. Each have their pros and cons.
Most complains about twitter aren't really about it's "toxicity", which is about how the user who browses twitter perceives the content, like you said. The main issue with Twitter is differential treatment and straight out censorship in some cases. This is not something the "user can fix" by changing his perception or views.
[1] I may follow someone for their tech content, that person may also be a big American football fan a sport I have no interest in.
[2] hashtags are not the same and people don’t use them consistently
you sound completely braindead
“I'm seeing loads of comments about how toxic Twitter is, but isn't that on you?”
no, it isn’t
“Don't follow or engage and the algorithm will skip you over.”
no, it won’t
I'm following exactly one person (a mathematician). A significant number of the tweets I get to read are still political. I also get some stupid recommendation (tabloid type of content).
It's entertaining, probably not toxic, but addictive, noisy and overall not a very productive activity. I get much more from HN.
I do occasionally get the random suggestion that is irrelevant, but that's a quick fix.
Facebook however. I don't think there is any help for my feed. I've abandoned trying.
[1]: mute the following forever, all without quotes: "RT @", "suggest_activity_tweet", "suggest_recycled_tweet_inline"
e.g. I just saw a tweet from someone I don't follow in my feed -- let's say, Lisa. Above it, it said "You are seeing this because Bob liked it". But I don't follow Lisa, nor Bob! Why am I seeing this??? I swear this has just happened, and it happens all the time.
One exception is wesbos of course, maybe I just like the guy since he not always tweets about programming and I still enjoy his content.
To feign ignorance on the subject is silly and side steps the main criticisms.
No one is talking about your personal twitter feed here. They are referencing Twitter as a whole and its culture.
Censorship doesnt seem like a big deal if you agree with the side that is censoring.
For this reason, I don't use Twitter at all. I prefer to stay on sites like HN or even Reddit. All of them have their issues and rage bait, but at least those two in particular generally have more long-form content. Reddit, when used for hobby-related content, is actually pretty great, even though it gets a lot of crap (granted, the crap is kinda deserved). Just don't use it for political stuff and you're fine.
I don’t know why there aren’t better features to curate/ filter feeds.
But what if I want to follow more than 100 people?
twitter should be for top-most posts only.