"The problem of abuse is the greatest challenge the web faces today."
October 15, 2015 5:46 PM Subscribe
Umair Haque on Why Twitter’s Dying (And What You Can Learn From It):
Can we create a better web? Sure. But I think we have to start with humility, gratitude, reality — not arrogance, privilege, blindness. Abuse isn’t a nuisance, a triviality, a minor annoyance that “those people” have to put up with for the great privilege of having our world-changing stuff in their grubby hands. It will chill, stop, and kill networks from growing, communities from blossoming, and lives from flourishing.
"We once glorified Twitter as a great global town square, a shining agora where everyone could come together to converse. But I’ve never been to a town square where people can shove, push, taunt, bully, shout, harass, threaten, stalk, creep, and mob you…for eavesdropping on a conversation that they weren’t a part of…to alleviate their own existential rage…at their shattered dreams…and you can’t even call a cop."
A great read, and fitting because I finally threw some dirt on the grave that contains my Twitter account.
The signal to noise ratio is too low, and I decided just to make it a glorified feed for my website and Facebook page, and the clock is ticking on the latter.
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon at 5:54 PM on October 15, 2015 [2 favorites]
A great read, and fitting because I finally threw some dirt on the grave that contains my Twitter account.
The signal to noise ratio is too low, and I decided just to make it a glorified feed for my website and Facebook page, and the clock is ticking on the latter.
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon at 5:54 PM on October 15, 2015 [2 favorites]
Can you remember the last time you heard the CEO of a major tech company talking about…abuse…not ads?
Yes, during Gamergate, when the CEO admitted that Twitter had an abuse problem.
posted by Going To Maine at 5:55 PM on October 15, 2015 [23 favorites]
Yes, during Gamergate, when the CEO admitted that Twitter had an abuse problem.
posted by Going To Maine at 5:55 PM on October 15, 2015 [23 favorites]
But I’ve never been to a town square where people can shove, push, taunt, bully, shout, harass, threaten, stalk, creep, and mob you…for eavesdropping on a conversation that they weren’t a part of…to alleviate their own existential rage…at their shattered dreams…and you can’t even call a cop.
The author has obviously never lived as a woman.
That said, I agree that "We have normalized, regularized, and routinized abuse." And Twitter definitely needs to figure out how to deal with Twitter-based abuse if it wants to remain viable for the mainstream.
I hope they do, because I only recently got to the point where my Twitter feed is pretty awesome.
posted by melissasaurus at 6:06 PM on October 15, 2015 [18 favorites]
The author has obviously never lived as a woman.
That said, I agree that "We have normalized, regularized, and routinized abuse." And Twitter definitely needs to figure out how to deal with Twitter-based abuse if it wants to remain viable for the mainstream.
I hope they do, because I only recently got to the point where my Twitter feed is pretty awesome.
posted by melissasaurus at 6:06 PM on October 15, 2015 [18 favorites]
The topic interests me, but I'm honestly not sure I can make it through another Haque job.
posted by ominous_paws at 6:06 PM on October 15, 2015 [6 favorites]
posted by ominous_paws at 6:06 PM on October 15, 2015 [6 favorites]
Booooooooo.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:08 PM on October 15, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by Going To Maine at 6:08 PM on October 15, 2015 [4 favorites]
I don’t disagree with the idea that abuse is a problem, but the setup that “Twitter is a ghost town” seems at odds with the reality of increasing adoption.
Eh, Facebook has increasing adoption too, but the growth is primarily in other countries. Here in the US they've reached Peak Grandma. Facebook doesn't matter anymore (except if you're looking for photos of your high school classmates' kids whilst having your privacy sodomized). The same could increasingly be true for Twitter.
"Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."
posted by leotrotsky at 6:09 PM on October 15, 2015 [5 favorites]
Eh, Facebook has increasing adoption too, but the growth is primarily in other countries. Here in the US they've reached Peak Grandma. Facebook doesn't matter anymore (except if you're looking for photos of your high school classmates' kids whilst having your privacy sodomized). The same could increasingly be true for Twitter.
"Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."
posted by leotrotsky at 6:09 PM on October 15, 2015 [5 favorites]
From what I've seen over the last year, there seems to be less risk of Twitter losing all its members, and more risk of everyone worth following turning their accounts private, obviating the whole point of the service.
posted by selfnoise at 6:10 PM on October 15, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by selfnoise at 6:10 PM on October 15, 2015 [5 favorites]
Yeah, Twitter has an abuse problem, but it's hardly a ghost town. Now, it's also hardly a bastion of intelligent nuanced thought but that doesn't seem to stop people from using it. It still has this instant immediacy that no other platform I've ever seen can even come close to which is great, but at the same time it does feel impersonal. I think it'll always have a place in the social web but I doubt it will ever be as big as its investors want.
posted by GuyZero at 6:12 PM on October 15, 2015
posted by GuyZero at 6:12 PM on October 15, 2015
I'd say a bigger problem on twitter than abuse is narcissism. Are there any other networks where it's so common to buy an audience? Where the barrier to entry is 140 characters, and everyone's a comedian? But the only consistently funny account is Bakoon, God bless him.
posted by fleetmouse at 6:18 PM on October 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by fleetmouse at 6:18 PM on October 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
I think the real problem is all the hyperbole and drama on the 'net. It makes me want to literally set myself on fire and die.
posted by entropicamericana at 6:18 PM on October 15, 2015 [51 favorites]
posted by entropicamericana at 6:18 PM on October 15, 2015 [51 favorites]
"Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."
This is the difference between being popular and being cool, and neither has to do with failing to be successful. Digg didn't fall over because of abuse; it fell over because everyone left. Myspace didn’t go to pot because too many people were using it - it died because Facebook was, for most intents and purposes, better. Facebook will have a problem when nobody goes there anymore because nobody goes there anymore.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:18 PM on October 15, 2015 [4 favorites]
This is the difference between being popular and being cool, and neither has to do with failing to be successful. Digg didn't fall over because of abuse; it fell over because everyone left. Myspace didn’t go to pot because too many people were using it - it died because Facebook was, for most intents and purposes, better. Facebook will have a problem when nobody goes there anymore because nobody goes there anymore.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:18 PM on October 15, 2015 [4 favorites]
. . . here is my epitaph for Twitter. No, it isn’t really “dead”, yet. But I suppose in a way that a part of it is. Perhaps its promise. Let me put my story to you like this. We dreamed that we created a revolution. But we did not heed the great lesson of revolution. Today’s revolutionary is tomorrow’s little tyrant.
Perfect epitaph for the Web as a whole, then - at least to those of us old enough to remember, say, BBSs and Usenet. Its early, exhilarating promise wasn't scaleable or sustainable. That's a very different thing from being dead, though and - as Going to Maine points out - Twitter isn't dying. If anything, the appearance of the social Web represented the tipping point of the Web's transition from a tool of subcultures to a linchpin of mainstream cultures.
Haque is right that it's mainstream cultures themselves that are often morally broken (though this isn't novel, as he suggests), but neither they or a social Web mired in abuse are going anywhere anytime soon.
posted by ryanshepard at 6:20 PM on October 15, 2015 [9 favorites]
Perfect epitaph for the Web as a whole, then - at least to those of us old enough to remember, say, BBSs and Usenet. Its early, exhilarating promise wasn't scaleable or sustainable. That's a very different thing from being dead, though and - as Going to Maine points out - Twitter isn't dying. If anything, the appearance of the social Web represented the tipping point of the Web's transition from a tool of subcultures to a linchpin of mainstream cultures.
Haque is right that it's mainstream cultures themselves that are often morally broken (though this isn't novel, as he suggests), but neither they or a social Web mired in abuse are going anywhere anytime soon.
posted by ryanshepard at 6:20 PM on October 15, 2015 [9 favorites]
I don't know, I've used it largely as a replacement for RSS. Follow the right accounts and you've got a up to the minute account of every day's political goings on, business or privacy developments, behind the scenes during the Arab spring, etc. Dying seems like a pretty strong word for what's probably the best real time reporting method ever invented.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:24 PM on October 15, 2015 [35 favorites]
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:24 PM on October 15, 2015 [35 favorites]
I have a good, interesting Twitter timeline with a diverse (but could be more diverse) group of opinions, though it's tech-heavy.
I also prune and curate that timeline intensely, use a third-party client with keyword and regex-based mute filters, and have a gigantic blacklist to keep, shall we say, certain hashtag trolling jerks out of my mentions.
This is the only way to make Twitter sane for me.
It is also way too much to ask of a normal person.
posted by SansPoint at 6:27 PM on October 15, 2015 [8 favorites]
I also prune and curate that timeline intensely, use a third-party client with keyword and regex-based mute filters, and have a gigantic blacklist to keep, shall we say, certain hashtag trolling jerks out of my mentions.
This is the only way to make Twitter sane for me.
It is also way too much to ask of a normal person.
posted by SansPoint at 6:27 PM on October 15, 2015 [8 favorites]
This guy writes like someone trying to get a gig as a T.E.D-talk guru.
posted by Diablevert at 6:34 PM on October 15, 2015 [18 favorites]
posted by Diablevert at 6:34 PM on October 15, 2015 [18 favorites]
I'm enjoying twitter more than I used because I stopped engaging with ding-dongs. Here's my last retweet:
Computer Science: Question to consider when choosing a programming language: Do I want to become like the people who use this language?
posted by boo_radley at 6:42 PM on October 15, 2015 [3 favorites]
Computer Science: Question to consider when choosing a programming language: Do I want to become like the people who use this language?
posted by boo_radley at 6:42 PM on October 15, 2015 [3 favorites]
I had to laugh at this article about Twitter dying because when I accidentally highlighted a word, a little popup offered to let me tweet it.
Also, no idea who this Bakoon is but s/he sure ain't no wint.
posted by Sternmeyer at 6:42 PM on October 15, 2015 [2 favorites]
Also, no idea who this Bakoon is but s/he sure ain't no wint.
posted by Sternmeyer at 6:42 PM on October 15, 2015 [2 favorites]
The entire social media model is utterly flawed. Social media companies are only giving lip service to abuse issues because the entire business model is to gain as many members accounts as possible so as to create an inflated company worth on the market.
The way to limit abuse is to limit accounts - completely contrary to the faux business model being employed. Require a a barrier to entry - a credit card for instance and charge a $2.00 fee. Violate common standards of civility and bam - your card, name and address are locked out of the system. Yes it's possible to get around but it cuts down immensely on the most common sorts of trolls, spams and scams.
There are many very good implementable solutions but all of them involve culling your user base and this is precisely what those companies do not want to do.
posted by AGameOfMoans at 6:42 PM on October 15, 2015 [25 favorites]
The way to limit abuse is to limit accounts - completely contrary to the faux business model being employed. Require a a barrier to entry - a credit card for instance and charge a $2.00 fee. Violate common standards of civility and bam - your card, name and address are locked out of the system. Yes it's possible to get around but it cuts down immensely on the most common sorts of trolls, spams and scams.
There are many very good implementable solutions but all of them involve culling your user base and this is precisely what those companies do not want to do.
posted by AGameOfMoans at 6:42 PM on October 15, 2015 [25 favorites]
wint is a tryhard
posted by fleetmouse at 6:47 PM on October 15, 2015
posted by fleetmouse at 6:47 PM on October 15, 2015
I don't know if Twitter is dying but they just laid off 8% of their workforce so they can't be all that flush.
Personally I'd use Twitter more if it had a more newsreader like interface where I could see all the new tweets since I last looked at it and then have it mark them as read as I browsed through them. As it is I see "View 345 new tweets" and just say fuck it and close the tab.
posted by octothorpe at 6:50 PM on October 15, 2015 [13 favorites]
Personally I'd use Twitter more if it had a more newsreader like interface where I could see all the new tweets since I last looked at it and then have it mark them as read as I browsed through them. As it is I see "View 345 new tweets" and just say fuck it and close the tab.
posted by octothorpe at 6:50 PM on October 15, 2015 [13 favorites]
What AGameOfMoans said - the first time someone ever mentioned MetaFilter to me, the first thing they said was "they charge $5 and it seems to really cut down on the trolling..."
So:
Metafilter: they charge $5 and it seems to really cut down on the trolling
posted by randomkeystrike at 6:51 PM on October 15, 2015 [13 favorites]
So:
Metafilter: they charge $5 and it seems to really cut down on the trolling
posted by randomkeystrike at 6:51 PM on October 15, 2015 [13 favorites]
Seconding AGameOfMoans: I don't think twitter is dying but it could be doing a lot better, and in no small part the problem is hammering away trying to make the wrong business model work.
They've been chasing advertising since the IPO, which gives a strong incentive to have as many users as possible even if half of them are sock puppets. Using a billing system to prevent abuse would fit well with switching to a model where they get revenue from users, changing the incentive to providing a good experience rather than selling your attention.
posted by adamsc at 6:51 PM on October 15, 2015
They've been chasing advertising since the IPO, which gives a strong incentive to have as many users as possible even if half of them are sock puppets. Using a billing system to prevent abuse would fit well with switching to a model where they get revenue from users, changing the incentive to providing a good experience rather than selling your attention.
posted by adamsc at 6:51 PM on October 15, 2015
The thing he expected Twitter to be isn't working out, therefore Twitter is dead and there's a big problem.
No.
Twitter is many things to many people. Lots of people still use it and enjoy it a lot. The company is still trying to figure out how to make a sustainable amount of money off it. They are still (IMHO) suffering from their ill-advised decision to shut down the third-party ecosystem and make Twitter just-what-the-company-says-it-is. But it's still managing to grow and evolve and reach people.
It's messy, but there's a lot of great stuff in there, and no, it's not dead.
posted by alms at 6:52 PM on October 15, 2015 [7 favorites]
No.
Twitter is many things to many people. Lots of people still use it and enjoy it a lot. The company is still trying to figure out how to make a sustainable amount of money off it. They are still (IMHO) suffering from their ill-advised decision to shut down the third-party ecosystem and make Twitter just-what-the-company-says-it-is. But it's still managing to grow and evolve and reach people.
It's messy, but there's a lot of great stuff in there, and no, it's not dead.
posted by alms at 6:52 PM on October 15, 2015 [7 favorites]
Require a barrier to entry - a credit card for instance and charge a $2.00 fee
Also useful for locking out all the black teens (well, black people of all ages I guess) that make up a huge part of Twitter's most active users.
I mean, you're right, but that one change would have a lot of other impacts to how people use twitter.
posted by GuyZero at 6:53 PM on October 15, 2015 [19 favorites]
Also useful for locking out all the black teens (well, black people of all ages I guess) that make up a huge part of Twitter's most active users.
I mean, you're right, but that one change would have a lot of other impacts to how people use twitter.
posted by GuyZero at 6:53 PM on October 15, 2015 [19 favorites]
wint
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 6:54 PM on October 15, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 6:54 PM on October 15, 2015 [2 favorites]
> I think the real problem is all the hyperbole and drama on the 'net. It makes me want to literally set myself on fire and die.
This was the main reason I left Twitter. Fights and/or abuse were not an issue for me, but because I was using it primarily as a newsfeed to follow local, provincial and federal politics every time something happened it was PEARL FUCKING HARBOUR*. It was exhausting and stressful and eventually I couldn't take it anymore. Now if I want to dip my toe into the stream I just google the hashtag I'm interested in.
* in fairness to Twitter, I live in Toronto and during the Rob Ford Era every day felt like the Pearl Harbour of municipal politics, even without Twitter
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:12 PM on October 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
This was the main reason I left Twitter. Fights and/or abuse were not an issue for me, but because I was using it primarily as a newsfeed to follow local, provincial and federal politics every time something happened it was PEARL FUCKING HARBOUR*. It was exhausting and stressful and eventually I couldn't take it anymore. Now if I want to dip my toe into the stream I just google the hashtag I'm interested in.
* in fairness to Twitter, I live in Toronto and during the Rob Ford Era every day felt like the Pearl Harbour of municipal politics, even without Twitter
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:12 PM on October 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
Twitter is still where My People are (queer and trans/genderweird women in tech, more or less), and is still way better than anything since circa-2004 Livejournal for actually introducing me to people who I'm interested in talking to.
There's no way in hell I would ever consider using it as a capital-P Platform for expressing important opinions, because, yeah, attracting the attention of strangers on there is a recipe for abuse and awfulness and certain doom. But for socializing — even with unlocked accounts, even as members of a marginalized group with a lot of infighting and a lot of vulnerability to outsiders being shitty — it actually still seems to work fine for those of us who just want to keep a low profile and kibbitz about our lives.
But probably that sort of use doesn't monetize well?
posted by nebulawindphone at 7:20 PM on October 15, 2015 [4 favorites]
There's no way in hell I would ever consider using it as a capital-P Platform for expressing important opinions, because, yeah, attracting the attention of strangers on there is a recipe for abuse and awfulness and certain doom. But for socializing — even with unlocked accounts, even as members of a marginalized group with a lot of infighting and a lot of vulnerability to outsiders being shitty — it actually still seems to work fine for those of us who just want to keep a low profile and kibbitz about our lives.
But probably that sort of use doesn't monetize well?
posted by nebulawindphone at 7:20 PM on October 15, 2015 [4 favorites]
I found his wikipedia page; am I alone in getting a "wrote this page myself" vibe from it?
Flagged for deletion, notability.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:21 PM on October 15, 2015 [2 favorites]
Flagged for deletion, notability.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:21 PM on October 15, 2015 [2 favorites]
My experience of Twitter is that it's like shouting into a void. I haven't really had a problem with abuse (although I acknowledge that's definitely a problem for some) -- the real problem is that nobody in my social circle tweets.
Twitter's userbase just isn't that big, especially considering the cultural cachet that the network has...
posted by schmod at 7:35 PM on October 15, 2015 [2 favorites]
Twitter's userbase just isn't that big, especially considering the cultural cachet that the network has...
posted by schmod at 7:35 PM on October 15, 2015 [2 favorites]
But probably that sort of use doesn't monetize well?
Can it show ads for laundry detergent? Then it can monetize just fine.
posted by GuyZero at 7:36 PM on October 15, 2015
Can it show ads for laundry detergent? Then it can monetize just fine.
posted by GuyZero at 7:36 PM on October 15, 2015
Why Twitter's Dying, by a man who posts like this.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 7:36 PM on October 15, 2015 [19 favorites]
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 7:36 PM on October 15, 2015 [19 favorites]
I liked this tweet:
umair @umairh 15h15 hours ago
Hey, it's perfectly ok to disagree with my lil essay (or in general) without becoming mortal enemies. That's part of its point 😎👍
posted by Drinky Die at 7:42 PM on October 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
umair @umairh 15h15 hours ago
Hey, it's perfectly ok to disagree with my lil essay (or in general) without becoming mortal enemies. That's part of its point 😎👍
posted by Drinky Die at 7:42 PM on October 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
Follow the right accounts and you've got a up to the minute account of every day's political goings on, business or privacy developments, behind the scenes during the Arab spring, etc.
I got tired just reading this.
posted by echocollate at 7:44 PM on October 15, 2015 [5 favorites]
I got tired just reading this.
posted by echocollate at 7:44 PM on October 15, 2015 [5 favorites]
>Also useful for locking out all the black teens
I can find no substantial instance of what you claim in the link that you provided.
I think that if someone can afford a phone and monthly data plan to tweet from they can likely also afford five bucks for a walmart money card.
posted by AGameOfMoans at 7:54 PM on October 15, 2015 [3 favorites]
I can find no substantial instance of what you claim in the link that you provided.
I think that if someone can afford a phone and monthly data plan to tweet from they can likely also afford five bucks for a walmart money card.
posted by AGameOfMoans at 7:54 PM on October 15, 2015 [3 favorites]
I think you just don't care. And it's fine to not care about other peoples' problems.
But not everyone tweets from a phone.
And if it's so trivial to bypass having a credit card, how is it going to stop abuse?
At any rate, I'll concede that if there was an easy way to solve Twitter's abuse problem then someone would have done it by now, so it's probably a pretty hard problem to solve.
posted by GuyZero at 7:57 PM on October 15, 2015 [7 favorites]
But not everyone tweets from a phone.
And if it's so trivial to bypass having a credit card, how is it going to stop abuse?
At any rate, I'll concede that if there was an easy way to solve Twitter's abuse problem then someone would have done it by now, so it's probably a pretty hard problem to solve.
posted by GuyZero at 7:57 PM on October 15, 2015 [7 favorites]
>I think you just don't care
That is extremely rude, pretentious and I take quite a bit of offense to that remark.
Phone, computer ... it doesn't matter. One can get debit cards at a trivial cost so I believe that your argument of locking people out is invalid.
The cost of repeated offenses is not trivial however, it takes time, money and effort - things which low-effort trolling - the bulk of uncivil behavior - is not known for.
Your argument that states "if it could be done it would have already been done" is simply specious and not worth addressing.
posted by AGameOfMoans at 8:06 PM on October 15, 2015 [5 favorites]
That is extremely rude, pretentious and I take quite a bit of offense to that remark.
Phone, computer ... it doesn't matter. One can get debit cards at a trivial cost so I believe that your argument of locking people out is invalid.
The cost of repeated offenses is not trivial however, it takes time, money and effort - things which low-effort trolling - the bulk of uncivil behavior - is not known for.
Your argument that states "if it could be done it would have already been done" is simply specious and not worth addressing.
posted by AGameOfMoans at 8:06 PM on October 15, 2015 [5 favorites]
There are solutions that people have suggested to curb Twitter's abuse problem, and they've made some progress. But the amount of sheer crap you have to go through to file one report, combined with the daily shit tons of abuse that people like Anita Sarkeesian have to put up with, you can see why people might throw their hands up and say, "why bother?"
Twitter is the collective unconscious. It's how I've found out about several major events within minutes, long before anything hit the news. But it is also full of monsters from the id. They've always been there, but it's now so much easier for them to reach out and annoy the world, not just the people down the street.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 8:26 PM on October 15, 2015 [3 favorites]
Twitter is the collective unconscious. It's how I've found out about several major events within minutes, long before anything hit the news. But it is also full of monsters from the id. They've always been there, but it's now so much easier for them to reach out and annoy the world, not just the people down the street.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 8:26 PM on October 15, 2015 [3 favorites]
Well I'm glad you care.
Mechanisms for locking out users from signing up either keep people out or they don't.
If they keep people out, they will keep people out regardless of whether their intentions are good or bad.
if they don't keep people out then they're ineffective.
It can't both be trivial to bypass a barrier and simultaneously have it work to keep people out.
Users like low income South Africans are unlikely to ever have any access to even a disposable credit card. Significant numbers of high-income European users don't have credit cards even though they could get them. All you're doing is make credit card issuers the new proxies for entry into Twitter which is just passing the problem to someone else and not fundamentally solving anything.
In general rate-limiting is a reasonable way to reduce service abuse but it's not clear to me what you would tie twitter accounts to that wouldn't change the service pretty drastically. Government-issued id? Lots of problems there. Financial credentials? Same as credit cards. I'm not sure what other widely third party identity verification services exist. Rate limit account creation by IP address? Good for stopping people bulk creating accounts, but pretty easy for trolls to deal with who only need an account or two.
And I'm not sure why you're so sure that trolls are easily dissuaded by doing a little work. This is the same group of people that like to dox people which always struck me as a lot of work.
posted by GuyZero at 8:27 PM on October 15, 2015 [5 favorites]
Mechanisms for locking out users from signing up either keep people out or they don't.
If they keep people out, they will keep people out regardless of whether their intentions are good or bad.
if they don't keep people out then they're ineffective.
It can't both be trivial to bypass a barrier and simultaneously have it work to keep people out.
Users like low income South Africans are unlikely to ever have any access to even a disposable credit card. Significant numbers of high-income European users don't have credit cards even though they could get them. All you're doing is make credit card issuers the new proxies for entry into Twitter which is just passing the problem to someone else and not fundamentally solving anything.
In general rate-limiting is a reasonable way to reduce service abuse but it's not clear to me what you would tie twitter accounts to that wouldn't change the service pretty drastically. Government-issued id? Lots of problems there. Financial credentials? Same as credit cards. I'm not sure what other widely third party identity verification services exist. Rate limit account creation by IP address? Good for stopping people bulk creating accounts, but pretty easy for trolls to deal with who only need an account or two.
And I'm not sure why you're so sure that trolls are easily dissuaded by doing a little work. This is the same group of people that like to dox people which always struck me as a lot of work.
posted by GuyZero at 8:27 PM on October 15, 2015 [5 favorites]
Guy Zero - you can have zero barriers to entry and hence complete chaos as twitter, Reddit, Gamergate abusers and others has shown are unworkable or you can create some sort of barrier that makes it somewhat more difficult to gain entry and hence somewhat more valuable to maintain your account by not acting uncivilly but you can not have both - this is a given that everyone already knows. Whether that barrier be a minor monetary one or something else entirely it does not matter - what matters is that it be not trivial to create multiple harassing accounts.
>And I'm not sure why you're so sure that trolls are easily dissuaded by doing a little work
Because Metafilter.
posted by AGameOfMoans at 8:41 PM on October 15, 2015 [4 favorites]
>And I'm not sure why you're so sure that trolls are easily dissuaded by doing a little work
Because Metafilter.
posted by AGameOfMoans at 8:41 PM on October 15, 2015 [4 favorites]
Abuse? For me it's more like shouting into a void. I have 500 followers (mostly real-looking) and get basically zero interest in anything I post.
posted by miyabo at 8:41 PM on October 15, 2015 [7 favorites]
posted by miyabo at 8:41 PM on October 15, 2015 [7 favorites]
With respect, the moderators seem to put in a considerable amount of work, which I suspect has more to do with Metafilter's unique environment than the entry fee does.
posted by AdamCSnider at 8:43 PM on October 15, 2015 [16 favorites]
posted by AdamCSnider at 8:43 PM on October 15, 2015 [16 favorites]
>And I'm not sure why you're so sure that trolls are easily dissuaded by doing a little work
Because Metafilter.
But Metafilter is also extremely less diverse and more US centric than Twitter which is good evidence of the downsides to barriers being talked about.
posted by Drinky Die at 8:45 PM on October 15, 2015 [7 favorites]
Because Metafilter.
But Metafilter is also extremely less diverse and more US centric than Twitter which is good evidence of the downsides to barriers being talked about.
posted by Drinky Die at 8:45 PM on October 15, 2015 [7 favorites]
There are between 2000 and 6000 comments on Metafilter per day.
There are 500 million tweets per day.
Twitter is a hundred thousand times more popular than Metafilter.
Metafilter is manually moderated where nearly every comment is read by one mod from a staff of five.
So Twitter would probably only need 500,000 moderators to achieve the same level of moderation.
posted by GuyZero at 8:49 PM on October 15, 2015 [10 favorites]
There are 500 million tweets per day.
Twitter is a hundred thousand times more popular than Metafilter.
Metafilter is manually moderated where nearly every comment is read by one mod from a staff of five.
So Twitter would probably only need 500,000 moderators to achieve the same level of moderation.
posted by GuyZero at 8:49 PM on October 15, 2015 [10 favorites]
Whether that barrier be a minor monetary one or something else entirely it does not matter - what matters is that it be not trivial to create multiple harassing accounts.
So what thing can be used to uniquely identify any human being from anywhere on the planet that is also free but that each person only has one of?
I can't think of anything.
posted by GuyZero at 8:51 PM on October 15, 2015
So what thing can be used to uniquely identify any human being from anywhere on the planet that is also free but that each person only has one of?
I can't think of anything.
posted by GuyZero at 8:51 PM on October 15, 2015
And hey, AGameOfMoans, sorry for saying you don't care. Not sure why I'm so fighty about this. I shouldn't make it personal. So my apologies for saying that.
posted by GuyZero at 8:59 PM on October 15, 2015 [12 favorites]
posted by GuyZero at 8:59 PM on October 15, 2015 [12 favorites]
Twitter is basically a hate amplification machine. Which makes it dead to me.
posted by clvrmnky at 9:14 PM on October 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by clvrmnky at 9:14 PM on October 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
I can't think of anything.
butts lol
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:25 PM on October 15, 2015 [3 favorites]
butts lol
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:25 PM on October 15, 2015 [3 favorites]
the new moments things is cool
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 9:51 PM on October 15, 2015
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 9:51 PM on October 15, 2015
at what point does it become necessary to not sign up for the latest hottest thingy? we are all hipsters now.
posted by valkane at 9:57 PM on October 15, 2015
posted by valkane at 9:57 PM on October 15, 2015
Octothorpe: Personally I'd use Twitter more if it had a more newsreader like interface where I could see all the new tweets since I last looked at it and then have it mark them as read as I browsed through them. As it is I see "View 345 new tweets" and just say fuck it and close the tab.
The free Android app Twicca does this. You can set it to load any number of tweets (up to 200) at a time, and they stay static on your viewer until you reload again, even days or weeks after. Once you reload, previously loaded tweets turn gray so you know you've read them. I'm a completist on twitter and try to read everything posted by the accounts I follow, and I hated the official twitter app for constantly reloading to the top of my feed when I just want to pick up where I left off yesterday and read tweets in order.
posted by smokysunday at 10:03 PM on October 15, 2015 [4 favorites]
The free Android app Twicca does this. You can set it to load any number of tweets (up to 200) at a time, and they stay static on your viewer until you reload again, even days or weeks after. Once you reload, previously loaded tweets turn gray so you know you've read them. I'm a completist on twitter and try to read everything posted by the accounts I follow, and I hated the official twitter app for constantly reloading to the top of my feed when I just want to pick up where I left off yesterday and read tweets in order.
posted by smokysunday at 10:03 PM on October 15, 2015 [4 favorites]
at what point does it become necessary to not sign up for the latest hottest thingy?
those of us who still get heartbreakingly optimistic email updates from Ello are pretty well inoculated from early adoption fever
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:14 PM on October 15, 2015 [13 favorites]
those of us who still get heartbreakingly optimistic email updates from Ello are pretty well inoculated from early adoption fever
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:14 PM on October 15, 2015 [13 favorites]
I think we have to start with humility, gratitude, reality
I haven't been entirely able to put together why it should be so, but there's something close to an ironclad rule here: the greater the number of banal virtues a dull-witted pontificator strings together in a sentence, the closer the sentence itself becomes to a performative demonstration that the writer lacks those virtues.
posted by RogerB at 10:18 PM on October 15, 2015 [2 favorites]
I haven't been entirely able to put together why it should be so, but there's something close to an ironclad rule here: the greater the number of banal virtues a dull-witted pontificator strings together in a sentence, the closer the sentence itself becomes to a performative demonstration that the writer lacks those virtues.
posted by RogerB at 10:18 PM on October 15, 2015 [2 favorites]
so I found his wikipedia page; am I alone in getting a "wrote this page myself" vibe from it?
Plausible...but there just...aren't enough unnecessary...ellipses in it...to read as...authentic Haque.
posted by strangely stunted trees at 10:49 PM on October 15, 2015
Plausible...but there just...aren't enough unnecessary...ellipses in it...to read as...authentic Haque.
posted by strangely stunted trees at 10:49 PM on October 15, 2015
alms: "Twitter is many things to many people."
Because I am Internet Old (which means over 40), Twitter means the same thing it meant to me when it first arose: a place where you can announce to everyone what you had for lunch.
I understand that it has evolved beyond that, where people cut large doctoral theses into tiny chunks and post them online in reverse order, making them impossible to read, interspersed with comments from themselves, or maybe other people, it's hard to tell, and where people write "@" and "RT" and "#" a whole lot, like "@jacobfuzz RT: @twog That's #awesomeplops @#RT", making it impossible to read, and where people post misogynist crud, often in a way that's impossible to read (thank goodness for little favors), but unfortunately generally in a way that it's possible to get the gist.
But, to me, Twitter is "Hi I'm having a pastrami sandwhich lol", and "Hi I hate women", so I can't feel too sad about its apparent demise.
posted by Bugbread at 12:05 AM on October 16, 2015 [10 favorites]
Because I am Internet Old (which means over 40), Twitter means the same thing it meant to me when it first arose: a place where you can announce to everyone what you had for lunch.
I understand that it has evolved beyond that, where people cut large doctoral theses into tiny chunks and post them online in reverse order, making them impossible to read, interspersed with comments from themselves, or maybe other people, it's hard to tell, and where people write "@" and "RT" and "#" a whole lot, like "@jacobfuzz RT: @twog That's #awesomeplops @#RT", making it impossible to read, and where people post misogynist crud, often in a way that's impossible to read (thank goodness for little favors), but unfortunately generally in a way that it's possible to get the gist.
But, to me, Twitter is "Hi I'm having a pastrami sandwhich lol", and "Hi I hate women", so I can't feel too sad about its apparent demise.
posted by Bugbread at 12:05 AM on October 16, 2015 [10 favorites]
Well, if the $5 sign up fee is too much of a barrier, there's always the send-a-postcard-to-jessamyn option...
Not actually sure if that's still an option, but I am genuinely curious what it would look like at Twitter scale, with hundreds of postcards streaming in daily from oppressed youth in repressive countries who really just want to know where the next protest is happening. (mixed in amongst the many-thousands of automatically-star-stickered postcards from spammers.)
posted by kaibutsu at 12:31 AM on October 16, 2015 [3 favorites]
Not actually sure if that's still an option, but I am genuinely curious what it would look like at Twitter scale, with hundreds of postcards streaming in daily from oppressed youth in repressive countries who really just want to know where the next protest is happening. (mixed in amongst the many-thousands of automatically-star-stickered postcards from spammers.)
posted by kaibutsu at 12:31 AM on October 16, 2015 [3 favorites]
Everyone here seems to have such a different twitter experience than I have.
My twitter stream is a few bands I like that I want to know what is going on with, a couple of high powered creatives types that I like that I want to know what is going on with, and other than that is mostly either furries or humans that I know IRL or know via online and will meet someday.
It's a fun place, full of interesting little tidbits and factoids and a lot of general insights and mayhem. It's NOT full of politics or hate or topics that are attracting trolls. Zero abuse, lots of caring and sharing, and, like, I got to basically follow Duran Duran record their brand new album over the past couple of years because they kept tweeting about it.
I mean... I guess... I don't search for hashtags... I changed my trending topics sidebar to "worldwide" to get away from having hateful things appear randomly before my eyes... Nearly all my interaction with twitter is via a desktop web browser, with some time spent on the official Twitter app for my iPad...
I guess, I dunno. I read declarations in this thread (and elsewhere) about how horrible twitter is, and all I can think is, Are we even using the same service? Because that's not my experience at ALL!
I'd be sad if twitter disappeared. It's been great fun for me, and has built relationships between me and others and helped me feel informed about certain bands and people I want to know about.
posted by hippybear at 12:49 AM on October 16, 2015 [10 favorites]
My twitter stream is a few bands I like that I want to know what is going on with, a couple of high powered creatives types that I like that I want to know what is going on with, and other than that is mostly either furries or humans that I know IRL or know via online and will meet someday.
It's a fun place, full of interesting little tidbits and factoids and a lot of general insights and mayhem. It's NOT full of politics or hate or topics that are attracting trolls. Zero abuse, lots of caring and sharing, and, like, I got to basically follow Duran Duran record their brand new album over the past couple of years because they kept tweeting about it.
I mean... I guess... I don't search for hashtags... I changed my trending topics sidebar to "worldwide" to get away from having hateful things appear randomly before my eyes... Nearly all my interaction with twitter is via a desktop web browser, with some time spent on the official Twitter app for my iPad...
I guess, I dunno. I read declarations in this thread (and elsewhere) about how horrible twitter is, and all I can think is, Are we even using the same service? Because that's not my experience at ALL!
I'd be sad if twitter disappeared. It's been great fun for me, and has built relationships between me and others and helped me feel informed about certain bands and people I want to know about.
posted by hippybear at 12:49 AM on October 16, 2015 [10 favorites]
This is really bad news for a certain unemployed conservative that I know. He gave up blogging over a year ago in order to become a Twitter power house because Twitter was the hip new way to fame and fortune. Needless to say, it has not worked out well for him. When I look at his Twitter feed, all I see are endless arguments about who called who what word, and what that word means exactly.
posted by ELF Radio at 12:56 AM on October 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by ELF Radio at 12:56 AM on October 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
More humans use Facebook than practice the Catholic faith. Each person on the planet averages over 2 tweets per month.
If y'all are going to throw around phrases like "Twitter/FB are dying", it'd be a good idea to look into the scale on how these things are used. Because if you can describe a platform's userbase in "multiples of the population of the US" (FB is coming up on 4, Twitter is about 1) then they have a while to go before they are truly dead.
posted by sideshow at 12:58 AM on October 16, 2015 [5 favorites]
If y'all are going to throw around phrases like "Twitter/FB are dying", it'd be a good idea to look into the scale on how these things are used. Because if you can describe a platform's userbase in "multiples of the population of the US" (FB is coming up on 4, Twitter is about 1) then they have a while to go before they are truly dead.
posted by sideshow at 12:58 AM on October 16, 2015 [5 favorites]
GuyZero: "Significant numbers of high-income European users don't have credit cards even though they could get them."Wut? Well, I guess you're right that many people don't have credit cards, but practically everybody has a bank card and the means to do an online transfer of 2$.
You Americans are the ones still using cheques, fer chrissakes.
posted by brokkr at 1:00 AM on October 16, 2015 [2 favorites]
I'm an American, and I'm pretty sure that what we use are checks.
posted by hippybear at 1:10 AM on October 16, 2015 [10 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 1:10 AM on October 16, 2015 [10 favorites]
And most of us only write a few checks a year.
posted by octothorpe at 4:42 AM on October 16, 2015
posted by octothorpe at 4:42 AM on October 16, 2015
Because I am Internet Old (which means over 40), Twitter means the same thing it meant to me when it first arose: a place where you can announce to everyone what you had for lunch.
I am also Internet Old, also over 40, and I have a completely different experience.
I've found Twitter to be an excellent resource for instant, direct, on-the-ground updates from places and events where I would normally have to wait for some wire service or major network to filter through the information for me, if it even bothered to report on it at all. It also has a dead simple mechanism for finding accounts that are reporting from said places and events. It's a fast and widespread network for reporting.
At the same time, it's also a great way for cranks, hatemongers and assorted nutjobs to be able to reach me directly when they dislike my reporting, or when they dislike the nature of the story and want to yell at someone about it and therefore choose me because I'm reporting on it. This is especially the case if I write any story about Israel - even though I am not, at all, involved with any politician in this country making any foreign policy decisions about Israel, just reporting on it is enough to spark a deluge of bile and vitriol from some pretty horrifyingly mean-spirited Israeli right-wingers and associates. If I write a story about Israel, I keep my Twitter feed open in the next tab, ready to Block with impunity.
I cannot imagine what it would be like to be a visible minority, in any sense of the word, and have opinions that you express on Twitter. But I bet it would be pretty fucking exhausting.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 5:04 AM on October 16, 2015 [6 favorites]
I am also Internet Old, also over 40, and I have a completely different experience.
I've found Twitter to be an excellent resource for instant, direct, on-the-ground updates from places and events where I would normally have to wait for some wire service or major network to filter through the information for me, if it even bothered to report on it at all. It also has a dead simple mechanism for finding accounts that are reporting from said places and events. It's a fast and widespread network for reporting.
At the same time, it's also a great way for cranks, hatemongers and assorted nutjobs to be able to reach me directly when they dislike my reporting, or when they dislike the nature of the story and want to yell at someone about it and therefore choose me because I'm reporting on it. This is especially the case if I write any story about Israel - even though I am not, at all, involved with any politician in this country making any foreign policy decisions about Israel, just reporting on it is enough to spark a deluge of bile and vitriol from some pretty horrifyingly mean-spirited Israeli right-wingers and associates. If I write a story about Israel, I keep my Twitter feed open in the next tab, ready to Block with impunity.
I cannot imagine what it would be like to be a visible minority, in any sense of the word, and have opinions that you express on Twitter. But I bet it would be pretty fucking exhausting.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 5:04 AM on October 16, 2015 [6 favorites]
but practically everybody has a bank card and the means to do an online transfer of 2$.
In the US 7.7% of the population were unbanked in 2013.
A 2013 report says 93 million Europeans are unbanked or underbanked.
I agree that's it's not really that hard to get some sort of money transfer facility but for whatever reason there are a lot of people in the richest countries in the world who are still unable to do so. Using this as a user verification mechanism is de facto locking out poor people and people from less developed nations.
Maybe locking out poor people isn't that huge a deal to twitter's business, but locking out users from less developed nations (for whom $2 might be a lot of money and banking is not a common thing) is a pretty big deal to twitter I think.
But I could be wrong. Maybe it is an effective mechanism for keeping out repeat abusers and maybe keeping out users from developing nations doesn't matter. But users from the developing world have been a big part of twitter so far and I hope that doesn't change.
posted by GuyZero at 5:20 AM on October 16, 2015 [4 favorites]
In the US 7.7% of the population were unbanked in 2013.
A 2013 report says 93 million Europeans are unbanked or underbanked.
I agree that's it's not really that hard to get some sort of money transfer facility but for whatever reason there are a lot of people in the richest countries in the world who are still unable to do so. Using this as a user verification mechanism is de facto locking out poor people and people from less developed nations.
Maybe locking out poor people isn't that huge a deal to twitter's business, but locking out users from less developed nations (for whom $2 might be a lot of money and banking is not a common thing) is a pretty big deal to twitter I think.
But I could be wrong. Maybe it is an effective mechanism for keeping out repeat abusers and maybe keeping out users from developing nations doesn't matter. But users from the developing world have been a big part of twitter so far and I hope that doesn't change.
posted by GuyZero at 5:20 AM on October 16, 2015 [4 favorites]
Yeah I can't see the YPG fighters in Rojava scraping together a debit card so they can tweet from the front lines and keep the world updated on what's happening. I think the payment model for Twitter would throw out a lot of baby for a little bathwater.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 5:23 AM on October 16, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 5:23 AM on October 16, 2015 [2 favorites]
Twitter is awesome and if you don't like it you're probably not using it right. That's Twitter's fault, though. They don't do anything to encourage people to use Twitter efficiently, so people sign up and use it for a few days and go, "this is dumb I don't get it." I think the sweet spot is following 200-400 people, and they should be either funny, interesting, newsworthy, or otherwise impactful. Twitter isn't a great social network, but it's an awesome newsfeed.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 5:40 AM on October 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 5:40 AM on October 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
Speaking of poor people being treated differently, in a recent thread RedOrGreen pointed to an article saying that Millions of Facebook users have no idea they’re using the internet.
posted by XMLicious at 5:41 AM on October 16, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by XMLicious at 5:41 AM on October 16, 2015 [2 favorites]
It's really hard to find any point the writer makes that doesn't also apply to Facebook... if anything, that's an even sadder comment on humanity, because with Facebook, you can't blame the masses of awful, awful strangers: these are people you're supposed to have pre-screened as worthy.
posted by rokusan at 5:41 AM on October 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by rokusan at 5:41 AM on October 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
This guy sure did spend Tuesday livetweeting a debate into a ghost town full of ghosts and not people.
posted by griphus at 5:43 AM on October 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by griphus at 5:43 AM on October 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
GuyZero: "But users from the developing world have been a big part of twitter so far and I hope that doesn't change."That's a fair point, it just seems a bit like moving the goal posts. First 2$ was a problem for Black Americans, then for rich Europeans and now for people in the developing world. It's clear that manual automation isn't going to work and a financial barrier of entry is problematic viz. various marginalized groups, so then how to solve the problem? It seems like the only way is for Twitter to invent robotic moderation (because public moderation is just going to be abused) but as also discussed above, they themselves have very little interest in culling the user numbers.
(I tried using Twitter for a while (like, a year) and gave up. There was some slightly interesting stuff being posted by various people, but I found the interface utterly confounding. From where I'm sitting it seems to be used primarily by journalists, celebrities and sports people.)
posted by brokkr at 5:55 AM on October 16, 2015
> I think the sweet spot is following 200-400 people, and they should be either funny, interesting, newsworthy, or otherwise impactful.
I follow about 150 people and it's pretty much a 40/60 split between people I know in some way, some artists/musicians that I really like, and maybe a few outlying "newsfeed" accounts.
I never expected Twitter to be anything more than an amusing diversion and it's never disappointed me in that regard.
posted by Gev at 5:56 AM on October 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
I follow about 150 people and it's pretty much a 40/60 split between people I know in some way, some artists/musicians that I really like, and maybe a few outlying "newsfeed" accounts.
I never expected Twitter to be anything more than an amusing diversion and it's never disappointed me in that regard.
posted by Gev at 5:56 AM on October 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
I think the big difference between Facebook and Twitter for me is that almost zero real life friends ever post on Twitter whereas FB is entirely IRL friends. I just don't seem to be in the demographic for Twitter.
posted by octothorpe at 6:05 AM on October 16, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by octothorpe at 6:05 AM on October 16, 2015 [2 favorites]
I just don't seem to be in the demographic for Twitter. -- octothorpe
Eponysterical.
posted by rokusan at 6:48 AM on October 16, 2015 [6 favorites]
Eponysterical.
posted by rokusan at 6:48 AM on October 16, 2015 [6 favorites]
Twitter is basically a hate amplification machine.
Aren't all technologies basically amplifiers? Can't walk to the next town - drive instead. Can't visit ask your clients - phone them instead. Can't afford to send out 100,000 brochures - email them instead.
You amplify a bunch of monkeys, they're going to fling a lot more poo a lot farther.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 6:51 AM on October 16, 2015
Aren't all technologies basically amplifiers? Can't walk to the next town - drive instead. Can't visit ask your clients - phone them instead. Can't afford to send out 100,000 brochures - email them instead.
You amplify a bunch of monkeys, they're going to fling a lot more poo a lot farther.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 6:51 AM on October 16, 2015
My twitter stream is a few bands I like that I want to know what is going on with, a couple of high powered creatives types that I like that I want to know what is going on with, and other than that is mostly either furries or humans that I know IRL or know via online and will meet someday.
It's a fun place, full of interesting little tidbits and factoids and a lot of general insights and mayhem. It's NOT full of politics or hate or topics that are attracting trolls. Zero abuse, lots of caring and sharing, and, like, I got to basically follow Duran Duran record their brand new album over the past couple of years because they kept tweeting about it.
Yeah, this is pretty much what trans twitter is like too. I mean, politics happens, and I guess there are plenty of minor public figures in the trans world who spend a lot of their time on twitter shouting about it, but it seems easy enough to just be like, "Okay, have fun with that, but it makes me sad and stressed to listen so I guess I'll stop following you."
posted by nebulawindphone at 7:14 AM on October 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
It's a fun place, full of interesting little tidbits and factoids and a lot of general insights and mayhem. It's NOT full of politics or hate or topics that are attracting trolls. Zero abuse, lots of caring and sharing, and, like, I got to basically follow Duran Duran record their brand new album over the past couple of years because they kept tweeting about it.
Yeah, this is pretty much what trans twitter is like too. I mean, politics happens, and I guess there are plenty of minor public figures in the trans world who spend a lot of their time on twitter shouting about it, but it seems easy enough to just be like, "Okay, have fun with that, but it makes me sad and stressed to listen so I guess I'll stop following you."
posted by nebulawindphone at 7:14 AM on October 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
Some things I use Twitter for -
- knowing what's on the minds of people in the publishing industry. Editors, writers, agents are all pretty wound up together in a Twitter klatch. You can even watch people pitch their novels there, and watch lit agents carp about horrible queries and update their wish lists.
Get lots of good laughs for free. Lots of comedy people (and wannabes) are allatime putting new stuff up there.
Reading big news faster than actual news outlets are going to report it. (Some of it may turn out to be counterfactual later, so caveat emptor, etc.)
Communicate with some small circle of my cooler friends, without having every bit of my discourse scanned by aging family members, grossly right-wing-thinking neighbors, rando high-school aquaintances (a.k.a. Facebook.)
posted by newdaddy at 9:07 AM on October 16, 2015
- knowing what's on the minds of people in the publishing industry. Editors, writers, agents are all pretty wound up together in a Twitter klatch. You can even watch people pitch their novels there, and watch lit agents carp about horrible queries and update their wish lists.
Get lots of good laughs for free. Lots of comedy people (and wannabes) are allatime putting new stuff up there.
Reading big news faster than actual news outlets are going to report it. (Some of it may turn out to be counterfactual later, so caveat emptor, etc.)
Communicate with some small circle of my cooler friends, without having every bit of my discourse scanned by aging family members, grossly right-wing-thinking neighbors, rando high-school aquaintances (a.k.a. Facebook.)
posted by newdaddy at 9:07 AM on October 16, 2015
Facebook will have a problem when nobody goes there anymore because nobody goes there anymore.
I think Facebook saw its death coming, at least the death of its own usefulness as a destination or first-source of info a couple of years ago, and has planned for it very well.
Even if nobody 'uses' Facebook itself, they'll continue to survive and thrive as that thing people use to log into other websites, whether it's to create an account on Shopify or to buy something at Uniqlo or to make a comment at CNN or the Washington Post. There are literally millions of websites and shops at which you can use your Facebook login instead of creating a new user/password/profile for that site or shop itself.
And of course you using that login gives Facebook all the delicious lucrative tracking info they're after, anyway, even if you never ever visit facebook.com.
Heck, Facebook doesn't even need to be its own website anymore. The money's now in tracking you elsewhere, anyway.
posted by rokusan at 9:54 AM on October 16, 2015 [2 favorites]
I think Facebook saw its death coming, at least the death of its own usefulness as a destination or first-source of info a couple of years ago, and has planned for it very well.
Even if nobody 'uses' Facebook itself, they'll continue to survive and thrive as that thing people use to log into other websites, whether it's to create an account on Shopify or to buy something at Uniqlo or to make a comment at CNN or the Washington Post. There are literally millions of websites and shops at which you can use your Facebook login instead of creating a new user/password/profile for that site or shop itself.
And of course you using that login gives Facebook all the delicious lucrative tracking info they're after, anyway, even if you never ever visit facebook.com.
Heck, Facebook doesn't even need to be its own website anymore. The money's now in tracking you elsewhere, anyway.
posted by rokusan at 9:54 AM on October 16, 2015 [2 favorites]
I think the big difference between Facebook and Twitter for me is that almost zero real life friends ever post on Twitter
For some of us, this is a feature and not a bug!
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 10:01 AM on October 16, 2015 [5 favorites]
For some of us, this is a feature and not a bug!
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 10:01 AM on October 16, 2015 [5 favorites]
I really really dislike the presumptuous, royal 'we' of the article: 'we used to think, but now we realize that we...' and its implicit in-crowd.
Bleah, speak for yourself. Twitter has more than 300 million active users, and lots of us have different experiences / expectations than you and your clique.
posted by signal at 1:22 PM on October 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
Bleah, speak for yourself. Twitter has more than 300 million active users, and lots of us have different experiences / expectations than you and your clique.
posted by signal at 1:22 PM on October 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
Twitter is basically a hate amplification machine. Which makes it dead to me.
You should probably stay out of 4chan, then. Because if Twitter is a hate machine then I can’t even the whole site.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:27 PM on October 16, 2015
You should probably stay out of 4chan, then. Because if Twitter is a hate machine then I can’t even the whole site.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:27 PM on October 16, 2015
"ugh this bar sucks"
"then you definitely don't want to hang out in the sewer under it"
posted by griphus at 1:36 PM on October 16, 2015 [5 favorites]
"then you definitely don't want to hang out in the sewer under it"
posted by griphus at 1:36 PM on October 16, 2015 [5 favorites]
"ugh this bar sucks"
"then you definitely don't want to hang out in thesewer under it" dive bar down the street"
4chan and Twitter are (regrettably) the same class of thing.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:46 PM on October 16, 2015
"then you definitely don't want to hang out in the
4chan and Twitter are (regrettably) the same class of thing.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:46 PM on October 16, 2015
4chan and Twitter are (regrettably) the same class of thing.
something something form vs function
posted by GuyZero at 1:59 PM on October 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
something something form vs function
posted by GuyZero at 1:59 PM on October 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
newdaddy: "Communicate with some small circle of my cooler friends, without having every bit of my discourse scanned by aging family members, grossly right-wing-thinking neighbors, rando high-school aquaintances (a.k.a. Facebook.)"
I can understand a myriad of reasons for not wanting to use Facebook, but this one makes no sense. You can specify on an incredibly granular level who can and cannot see any given post, comment, etc. You can go name by name, or create groups, and use them both to specify disclosure and hiding ("Show this post to: people in High School Friends group and people in Lightning Rangers group but not people in Crazy Family Members group"). And yet instead you're picking Twitter, which, as far as I understand (and please do correct me if I'm wrong), has only three settings: 1) "Absolutely everyone in the world can read my tweets", 2) "Every single one of my followers can read my tweets" and 3) "Only one single person can read my PM"
posted by Bugbread at 4:23 PM on October 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
I can understand a myriad of reasons for not wanting to use Facebook, but this one makes no sense. You can specify on an incredibly granular level who can and cannot see any given post, comment, etc. You can go name by name, or create groups, and use them both to specify disclosure and hiding ("Show this post to: people in High School Friends group and people in Lightning Rangers group but not people in Crazy Family Members group"). And yet instead you're picking Twitter, which, as far as I understand (and please do correct me if I'm wrong), has only three settings: 1) "Absolutely everyone in the world can read my tweets", 2) "Every single one of my followers can read my tweets" and 3) "Only one single person can read my PM"
posted by Bugbread at 4:23 PM on October 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
Yeah but on Twitter nobody knows you're a dog.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 5:01 PM on October 16, 2015
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 5:01 PM on October 16, 2015
From the OP: It’s early fall, and I’m at my favorite cafe in London. What the? Twitter’s a cemetery. Populated by ghosts. I call them the “ists”. Journalists retweeting journalists…activists retweeting activists…economists retweeting economists…once in a while a great war breaks out between this group of “ists” and that…but the thing is: no one’s listening…because everyone else seems to have left in a hurry.
About ten years ago I got very frustrated with peoples' responses to a study of maker / consumer numbers on the web. The claim was that it was a 1:9 ratio - for every one person making something (a post, a comment, a piece of art) there were nine "passively" consuming it. "Why won't more people be producers instead of consumers?" the lamentations rang. At the time I was troubled by the dismissal of the 9 consumers as not contributing themselves - the audience is important and it contributes (and also, I believe the audience eventually becomes contributors, if not at one place than at another, because to read the words of others with interest is to become changed).
I'm sorry his dream of a utopia was killed by Twitter. I'm distressed his way of coping with it is to blame people for feeling strongly about things and organizing around them. I am happier in a world where #weneeddiversegames and #blacklivesmatter are things and I happen to think both of those movements ARE about something and DO add meaning to the world even if they were created by -ists who talk on twitter.
Abuse does not arise in a vacuum. A healthy mind does not (need to) abuse. Abuse is created of trauma, and it is the traumatized mind which abuses.
This is actually untrue. They studied bullies, and bullies who are not themselves bullied are among the mentally healthiest in terms of anxiety and depression. The ones in the worst shape are the bullied who became bullies. It's a good narrative - good people don't just abuse others! - but abuse on twitter has become a hobby for a distressingly high number of people, one of whom was recently arrested for inciting terrorism, and it is not really a sign of mental illness. People are often cruel to others because they find it fun.
There is a subset of traumatized people who might then redirect aggression outwards, either as a defense or because they've learned it feels good to them too, but a lot of traumatized people don't and blaming them for this behavior just adds another undue burden to their load.
posted by Deoridhe at 6:08 PM on October 16, 2015 [6 favorites]
About ten years ago I got very frustrated with peoples' responses to a study of maker / consumer numbers on the web. The claim was that it was a 1:9 ratio - for every one person making something (a post, a comment, a piece of art) there were nine "passively" consuming it. "Why won't more people be producers instead of consumers?" the lamentations rang. At the time I was troubled by the dismissal of the 9 consumers as not contributing themselves - the audience is important and it contributes (and also, I believe the audience eventually becomes contributors, if not at one place than at another, because to read the words of others with interest is to become changed).
I'm sorry his dream of a utopia was killed by Twitter. I'm distressed his way of coping with it is to blame people for feeling strongly about things and organizing around them. I am happier in a world where #weneeddiversegames and #blacklivesmatter are things and I happen to think both of those movements ARE about something and DO add meaning to the world even if they were created by -ists who talk on twitter.
Abuse does not arise in a vacuum. A healthy mind does not (need to) abuse. Abuse is created of trauma, and it is the traumatized mind which abuses.
This is actually untrue. They studied bullies, and bullies who are not themselves bullied are among the mentally healthiest in terms of anxiety and depression. The ones in the worst shape are the bullied who became bullies. It's a good narrative - good people don't just abuse others! - but abuse on twitter has become a hobby for a distressingly high number of people, one of whom was recently arrested for inciting terrorism, and it is not really a sign of mental illness. People are often cruel to others because they find it fun.
There is a subset of traumatized people who might then redirect aggression outwards, either as a defense or because they've learned it feels good to them too, but a lot of traumatized people don't and blaming them for this behavior just adds another undue burden to their load.
posted by Deoridhe at 6:08 PM on October 16, 2015 [6 favorites]
I'm sorry his dream of a utopia was killed by Twitter. I'm distressed his way of coping with it is to blame people for feeling strongly about things and organizing around them. I am happier in a world where #weneeddiversegames and #blacklivesmatter are things and I happen to think both of those movements ARE about something and DO add meaning to the world even if they were created by -ists who talk on twitter.
Yeah - Twitter is a really great place for diverse audiences to speak to each other, and for that speaking to be visible. On the other hand, it's also a place where it's easy for harassers to use those conversations for target acquisition, and to bring in reinforcements, try to split people from the pack and so on.
It feels like access control isn't the ideal way to prevent that - having better ways of dealing with abuse within the system is. It's interesting that Twitter is one of relatively few social networks where the CEO explicitly identified harassment as a potentially product-killing issue, even if that CEO then rotated out. Steps taken so far have mainly been about removing abusive users from your feed, which is the least controversial option, but also the least effective.
(And of course has already got people who primarily want Twitter to be a way for them to insult and abuse women, transpeople, PoCs etc, and to form groups around doing so, up in arms.)
posted by running order squabble fest at 5:18 AM on October 18, 2015
Yeah - Twitter is a really great place for diverse audiences to speak to each other, and for that speaking to be visible. On the other hand, it's also a place where it's easy for harassers to use those conversations for target acquisition, and to bring in reinforcements, try to split people from the pack and so on.
It feels like access control isn't the ideal way to prevent that - having better ways of dealing with abuse within the system is. It's interesting that Twitter is one of relatively few social networks where the CEO explicitly identified harassment as a potentially product-killing issue, even if that CEO then rotated out. Steps taken so far have mainly been about removing abusive users from your feed, which is the least controversial option, but also the least effective.
(And of course has already got people who primarily want Twitter to be a way for them to insult and abuse women, transpeople, PoCs etc, and to form groups around doing so, up in arms.)
posted by running order squabble fest at 5:18 AM on October 18, 2015
Metafilter: You amplify a bunch of monkeys, they're going to fling a lot more poo a lot farther.
posted by klausness at 1:33 PM on October 19, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by klausness at 1:33 PM on October 19, 2015 [1 favorite]
Is Twitter Censoring a Blockbuster Report on US Drone Assassinations?
posted by homunculus at 5:14 PM on October 19, 2015
posted by homunculus at 5:14 PM on October 19, 2015
How the Military Uses Twitter Sock Puppets to Control Debate and Suppress Dissent
Why is Twitter Censoring Our Timelines Without Consent?
Appears zooko is quitting twitter due to the censorship, probably more to follow.
posted by jeffburdges at 1:29 PM on October 21, 2015
Why is Twitter Censoring Our Timelines Without Consent?
Appears zooko is quitting twitter due to the censorship, probably more to follow.
posted by jeffburdges at 1:29 PM on October 21, 2015
I suppose twitter's success comes from providing a relatively casual and unfiltered way to listen to interesting people, thereby increasing those people's influence.
I'd expect that twitter's efforts to reduces that casual and unfiltered feeling will themselves be abused by more sophisticated adversaries like the FBI to obstruct phenomena like "black twitter".
We need both truly private platforms so that groups can organize without outside monitoring and harassment, and public platforms like twitter but where the users have complete control over their filtering.
posted by jeffburdges at 1:44 PM on October 21, 2015
I'd expect that twitter's efforts to reduces that casual and unfiltered feeling will themselves be abused by more sophisticated adversaries like the FBI to obstruct phenomena like "black twitter".
We need both truly private platforms so that groups can organize without outside monitoring and harassment, and public platforms like twitter but where the users have complete control over their filtering.
posted by jeffburdges at 1:44 PM on October 21, 2015
There are really useful comments by Nadia Kayyali of the EFF in this discussion of online harassment :
wired: Most of our conversations about online harassment tend to focus on people in the United States. What are we missing in terms of a broader global perspective on online harassment?
Kayyali: At Facebook, they have the platform in regional languages, but they have very limited regional language support—people who speak it—to deal with complaints.
wired: This allows authoritarian governments to hire troll armies to trick Facebook’s algorithms into taking down the accounts of political dissidents by making it seem like the dissidents are violating Facebook policies.
Kayyali: Harassment at a global level is often political. It’s the Free Syrian Army versus Bashar al-Assad’s paid Internet commenters. It’s attack squads in Vietnam that are supposed to get people kicked off Facebook for supposed violations to the real-name policy, because they’re writing unpopular things. It’s incredibly important to expand who we’re thinking of when we think about the unintended consequences of our policies.
Harvey: Yes. Twitter recently introduced a couple of different identification paths for accounts. We wanted to make sure that we weren’t unduly putting people at risk. For example, we made sure that if you couldn’t provide a phone number, there were other options. Because outside the US, if the telecom is directly connected with the government, a phone number can lead the authorities to someone who’s an activist or a dissident or a whistle-blower.
posted by jeffburdges at 5:12 PM on October 24, 2015 [1 favorite]
wired: Most of our conversations about online harassment tend to focus on people in the United States. What are we missing in terms of a broader global perspective on online harassment?
Kayyali: At Facebook, they have the platform in regional languages, but they have very limited regional language support—people who speak it—to deal with complaints.
wired: This allows authoritarian governments to hire troll armies to trick Facebook’s algorithms into taking down the accounts of political dissidents by making it seem like the dissidents are violating Facebook policies.
Kayyali: Harassment at a global level is often political. It’s the Free Syrian Army versus Bashar al-Assad’s paid Internet commenters. It’s attack squads in Vietnam that are supposed to get people kicked off Facebook for supposed violations to the real-name policy, because they’re writing unpopular things. It’s incredibly important to expand who we’re thinking of when we think about the unintended consequences of our policies.
Harvey: Yes. Twitter recently introduced a couple of different identification paths for accounts. We wanted to make sure that we weren’t unduly putting people at risk. For example, we made sure that if you couldn’t provide a phone number, there were other options. Because outside the US, if the telecom is directly connected with the government, a phone number can lead the authorities to someone who’s an activist or a dissident or a whistle-blower.
posted by jeffburdges at 5:12 PM on October 24, 2015 [1 favorite]
« Older Mans' best friend. | How Doctors Take Women's Pain Less Seriously Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by Going To Maine at 5:53 PM on October 15, 2015 [36 favorites]