Twitter Runs on Hate – But Its Users Don't Reflect Real Life | Hacker News Reader

Twitter Runs on Hate – But Its Users Don't Reflect Real Life

theamericansaga.com

9 pointsca98am7910 comments

All social media runs on cheap dopamine hits. Hate is one way to get those. Twitter has always been the Monty Python "I want an argument" skit, but it's worse post-Musk.

Algorithmic social media works like this. Two people walk past you. One says "hi." The other smears themselves with peanut butter and feathers and starts clucking like a chicken and saluting Hitler. Which one maximizes engagement? Social media is a space where interactions are prioritized by an algorithm that will only show you that and will source a steady stream of chicken clucking Nazis from the entire world to make sure your feed is full of it.

The very earliest social media showed you chronological feeds of your friends. That was actual social media. It all went to hell when algorithmically sorted timelines were introduced and it's been downhill since.

On the other hand Musks Twitter is demonstrating that there are limits to "any engagement is good engagement", with their advertising business in shambles since the big agencies have deemed them a brand risk. Engagement isn't worth much if only the absolute dregs of advertisers want to appear on your site.

Thats really more of a sign of oligopoly limiting competition among brands and/or collusion among oligopolists. If the market for the goods and services being advertised was actually competitive nobody would risk that for more than a very short time, as the first company to ignore it would have an advantage. They may create a new brand selling essentially the same product and advertise that on edgier engagemwnt sites but they wouldnt do what they have done if the market was actually competitive.

there is certainly no oligopoly over ALL products and services that can be advertised for. that's just nonsense talking points from musk, who is trying to excuse the toxic mess he has made of Twitter.

There certainly is a large market concentration in advertising and it is naive to claim otherwise. All is irrelevant. What matters for oligopoly is enough to exercise market power, which is pretty clearly what is happening here because the competitive incentive is to find a way to advertise on x because its a huge market that is underserved right now.

So you're saying what's "pretty clearly happening" is there's no way the "competitive incentive" is ignored in this "large under-served market" for any other reason than the specific "market power" interference caused by an advertising oligopoly? Do you then also think Musk purchased one of the largest advertising driven platforms on the planet without understanding this "pretty clear" outcome could happen from any controversial action? :)

It is irrelevant what musk thought it is only relevant what is happening. What is happening is large companies can afford to ignore a market because a group of them have colluded and know the others wont break the agreement to boycott and the produxt options are so heavily weighted to their group that the consumers will be consuming their produxt anyway.

Twitter at least still provides the “Following” feed which is still just that chronological feed from people you follow.

But contamination leaks in via diffusion from the “For you” feed via retweets and reactions from the people you follow. Still with judicious curation it’s still possible (for me, mostly a lurker) to have a mostly-positive and non-toxic experience on the site by unfollowing accounts that begin to orbit too close to the culture war battlegrounds, and by blocking any commenters trying to inject toxicity into the threads I read. It’s certainly getting worse as we head into USA election season and overall moderation and anti-botting deteriorates though.

Very much agreed on the For You feed - it seemed to show me things I wouldn't like, presumably to get rage-gagement. I do follow a few political types, but the majority are science, Japanese game devs, or language humor, which rarely lap up against politics.

I find myself going there less and less as the Israel-Gaza war has been seeping into everything, and of course our own election just getting hotter.

the whining about twitter is an endless fountain of tiresome. everyone should know by now they can join mastodon if twitter is too strong for their tummies. I get it, people miss old twitter. I miss Toys R Us. Live with it and move on.

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