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Comment by Bye_Felicia | Hacker News Reader

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That is a wildly lazy "translation" of the subtitle of an article you clearly didn't actually read or engage with. His argument boils down to none of the above, and your final point is such an incredibly ironic statement, that it's hard to believe it wasn't intentional.

Twitter is, to his point, largely a worthless platform for discussion if you don't heavily curate your experience, because it does, by design (unintentionally, possibly), massively elevate bad takes, noise, and quick, pithy attacks, because they're easy to propagate, and it very clearly downgrades any argument that requires more than a few hundred characters to present (especially now, with the changes to how threaded conversations can be linked). Threads idea of moderating that changes the dynamic and value. Neither is actually good, and neither is particularly beneficial compared to other models.

But sure, "governments" and "media companies" and rabble rabble rabble. Next time, RTFA.

If you use a misleading headline, then that is not my problem. I skimmed the article as the New Yorker is an overly verbose rag read by sesquipedalian obsessed pseudo-intellectuals.

Actually, YOU have just made an excellent point unintentionally, not everyone has the time or desire to read a long article. IF you prefer more longform content, then you can go to any number of platforms which specialize in that.

Twitter is what it always was, a quick take or bite-size morsel of information.

It is stupid easy for governments to control centralized private platforms. Just pass a law. The problem is that Twitter has trouble adhering to the most basic requirements while also running cheap, e.g., preventing CSAM content.

>> A global platform is too difficult for governments to control

How is that? I claim the opposite. It's far easier to control onr entity instead of multiple separated ones.

How is Cal Newport fascist? I have always known him as the "deep work"/how to focus guy.

As a long-time enjoyer and early promoter of social media, I disagree with your translation.

The real problem is that either due to algorithms or some inherent quirk of human nature, global public social media has become awful. Let me characterize the awfulness with a joke that showcases the vibe shift.

You tweet/post: “I love sandwiches”

2009 twitter: “Omg I too love sandwiches! Let’s be friends, follow me back”

2023 twitter: “How dare you speak against my brethren who cannot eat gluten!?!? You are an awful human being and I hope you rot in hell.”

This is a natural consequence of Twitter's design, which rewards attention and users with high follower counts. "Omg I too love sandwiches" is not going to get a lot of likes, whereas outrage sells. There's no way to punish toxic behavior, so the only direction is up.

> which rewards attention

Hence my thought that this is a quirk of human nature. We give attention to the wrong things.

All ad-based media suffers from this problem. Twitter’s algorithm is but a reflection of our revealed preferences. It doesn’t care what we say we want, only what we show we want with our actions.

You don't even need ads for it to happen. Take the ads out of Twitter. Drive the algorithm entirely off of what has the most likes and retweets. You're still going to get incredibly toxic behavior, because that's what people are more likely to react to and retweet.

The problem is that with Twitter, everything lives in one huge pool. You can't make a "nice Twitter" section cordoned off from everything else.

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