A proposal to improve Twitter and perhaps the world(theatlantic.com)
theatlantic.com
A proposal to improve Twitter and perhaps the world
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/04/the-case-against-retweets/554078/?single_page=true
118 comments
How bad of a job the UX people at Twitter are doing, that we have to come up with apps like this to read the feed!
This looks really cool. I wish they were flexible about organizing our feed.
This looks really cool. I wish they were flexible about organizing our feed.
Twitter's goal with their UX is probably to maximize "engagement" rather than "usefulness".
Twitter has probably too many users now to be able to create a single UI that would please everyone. It is sad that they have crippled the API for newcomers and forced the look and feel on the old indie clients.
I use twirssi with regex highlights and just read the highlights. All I ever read are posts caught by the regex.
I think adding links to user profiles might be a good addition if I wanted to see a all of a specific users tweets but I rarely do.
I think adding links to user profiles might be a good addition if I wanted to see a all of a specific users tweets but I rarely do.
This looks great. How does it work - are you scraping this data or using an API?
I use the official API to fetch the tweets every 15 minutes, then it filters and saves each tweet individually into a flat database table. This view gets the tweets via JSON using a simple SQL query that groups and sorts by user, filtering for the past x hours.
Is that a picture of the custom news reader itself, or is the custom part just producing the ATOM stream and you're using a standard news reader?
This is an image of my news reader's Twitter view, sorry if that wasn't clear. I use a separate table to store tweets so I can create a custom view just for them. I tried making them into more of 'feed' with specific time periods (aka tweets per calendar date) and thread them into my normal news feed, but I didn't like the results. Most people tweet in bursts, and I follow people all over the world, so I'd inevitably cut someone's thoughts in half. Also, tweets are generally links, so I treat their content more like I would when browsing Hacker News or Reddit (skimming), which is different from how I view my feeds (reading).
I would not be surprised if Twitter is one day regarded as a poster child for the dangers of blindly optimizing for engagement. I'm sure all their features do increase engagement, at least in the short term. They wouldn't release them otherwise. But it is a sort of engagement that burns out users and ultimately sends them away.
If you follow media criticism much, that's pretty much precisely (one of) the argument(s) being put against Twitter (and Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, and other forums) here and now.
Tim Wu, danah boyd, Clay Shirky, Robert McChesney, Jonathan Albright, Tristan Harris, and others are among those critics. Several have direct experience with TwitFaceGoogTube et al.
Tim Wu, danah boyd, Clay Shirky, Robert McChesney, Jonathan Albright, Tristan Harris, and others are among those critics. Several have direct experience with TwitFaceGoogTube et al.
Seems like most social media is going that way now. Facebook in particular. I thought Snapchat would be a break from this since the content is temporary, but I've read news articles from my home country about kids having to get "Snapchat-sitters" to maintain their streaks while they are offline for more than a day. So they post random images to each other to keep their streak number increasing, which is total nonsense with regards to both engagement and content.
Yes, I have seen this Snapchat streak phenomenon with my little brother and his friends. They constantly send completely random pictures to each other, i.e. they open the camera app, take a picture of the ground, of the seat in front of them in the car, etc. and then immediately send it to a number of their Snapchat friends. When I had Snapchat installed for a short while he started sending me those pictures too, which in the end led to me blocking him. From what my brother said there is a lot of competition around who can keep their numbers the highest. Quite a strange thing to watch as an outsider.
> Quite a strange thing to watch as an outsider.
And working just as the cognitive scientists designed.
And working just as the cognitive scientists designed.
Indeed. At times it is scary what level of trickery and manipulation is used to drive addiction (or engagement as some like to call it) in social media. Especially when you consider that these methods are also indiscriminately used on young kids, as soon as they get their first smartphone and start installing apps like Snapchat (which can be pretty early nowadays).
Retweets are essential for discovery of new people to follow. As such they are too valuable to dismiss, even with today's popularity of twitter.
The empty-state is a big problem for the onboarding of new users on social platforms, especially less personal ones.
The empty-state is a big problem for the onboarding of new users on social platforms, especially less personal ones.
Personally, I do not want to find new people to follow, because the majority of the time they will not follow me. This system leads to an awful feeling of asymmetry, where anything I post gets almost no interaction while I am constantly seeing a few hyper popular accounts. I think I just don't like the consumption model of social media, I want interaction with peers, not the latest hot take from a celebrity account.
I don't think my Twitter account will make it to the end of 2018.
I don't think my Twitter account will make it to the end of 2018.
I personally find the self determined curation the one good thing about twitter and don't write posts myself at all... (just replies every now and than)
For your purposes twitter might be truly unfit...
For your purposes twitter might be truly unfit...
> But social-media platforms don’t have to be organized around shareability. Instagram, for instance, doesn’t allow links, except a single one in each user’s profile. This dampens self-promotion and slows down the spread of information from the rest of the internet on the platform. It doesn’t have native reposting tools, either. And it is, by pretty much all accounts, a nicer place to spend time online.
While it may have that going for it, wasn't Instagram recently considered the worst social media app for mental health? https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/19/health/instagram-worst-social...
I'm not convinced that dampening self-promotion and discouraging reposting are sufficient conditions for considering one platform to be better than the other.
While it may have that going for it, wasn't Instagram recently considered the worst social media app for mental health? https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/19/health/instagram-worst-social...
I'm not convinced that dampening self-promotion and discouraging reposting are sufficient conditions for considering one platform to be better than the other.
> This article appears in the April 2018 print edition with the headline “The Case Against Retweets.”
So the title was changed from "The Case Against Retweets" to "Retweets are Trash". Seems that the editor took the author's advice on creating sharable content - this is a pretty clear-cut appeal to emotion.
So the title was changed from "The Case Against Retweets" to "Retweets are Trash". Seems that the editor took the author's advice on creating sharable content - this is a pretty clear-cut appeal to emotion.
I fully expected that this title was a reference to the more-famed A Modest Proposal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal
Rather surprised that The Atlantic wouldn't have been self-aware re: the title.
Rather surprised that The Atlantic wouldn't have been self-aware re: the title.
Here's my modest proposal to improve Twitter and perhaps the world. Don't use Twitter.
Dumb HN-tier nitpick, but when people use the words "modest proposal" do they know where it comes from? The original modest proposal was satire and it's a little bit of cognitive dissonance for me to see it used seriously in a title.
Regardless, I find the amplification part of twitter to be the best part, although I don't really feel like I see more outrage than joy or just humor. I think it has a lot to do with who you choose to follow.
Regardless, I find the amplification part of twitter to be the best part, although I don't really feel like I see more outrage than joy or just humor. I think it has a lot to do with who you choose to follow.
Agree. Before I read the article I assumed that this would be a tongue-in-cheek series of suggestions that would destroy twitter.
I could make the argument that the article uses it well, whether or not that was the authors intention. It is a fitting allegory if you stretch it.
Swift's proposal is satire in order to capture the attention of readers and point it to abuses of power. One could make an allusion to poor children serving the public good and how that relates to morals and values with the spread of (negative) viral content and how tweet-babies could be better served better for consumption by the public.
I haven't thought it through much more than that, but I could see it.
Swift's proposal is satire in order to capture the attention of readers and point it to abuses of power. One could make an allusion to poor children serving the public good and how that relates to morals and values with the spread of (negative) viral content and how tweet-babies could be better served better for consumption by the public.
I haven't thought it through much more than that, but I could see it.
Of course they know. But to punish them for annoying you we have deprived them of their modesty above.
This article irritatingly mixes up the ß (eszett, or ss ligature), the italic version of the same ligature and the greek letter beta (or it's math-unicode alternative).
[edit: Originally I falsely accused the author of doing this, but the equation was actually originally written in terms of eszett. This is silly.]
Also I imagine if everyone started blocking real retweets like this people would just go back to the oldskool copy-paste method.
[edit: Originally I falsely accused the author of doing this, but the equation was actually originally written in terms of eszett. This is silly.]
Also I imagine if everyone started blocking real retweets like this people would just go back to the oldskool copy-paste method.
> Also I imagine if everyone started blocking real retweets like this people would just go back to the oldskool copy-paste method.
Yet, other networks where retweeting (reposting) requires copy-paste has a much lower percentage of this. Anecdotally, almost nobody in my instagram feed are reposting other people's photos or text. There are applications to do so, or one could just copy-paste a screenshot. Yet, most people post only their own photos. On twitter, almost half of the posts I see on the first page are reposted retweets. How does it look for you?
Also, Raising the bar very little would make a huge impact due to the amplification of the network effect.
Yet, other networks where retweeting (reposting) requires copy-paste has a much lower percentage of this. Anecdotally, almost nobody in my instagram feed are reposting other people's photos or text. There are applications to do so, or one could just copy-paste a screenshot. Yet, most people post only their own photos. On twitter, almost half of the posts I see on the first page are reposted retweets. How does it look for you?
Also, Raising the bar very little would make a huge impact due to the amplification of the network effect.
I agree with this, on Twitter and Facebook I will very often repost stuff, but on Instagram I never do. However, I do think it's hard to get noticed on Instagram (if that's what you want), due to the lack of native sharing, likes are on someone else's feed and often don't even get a follow from a popular share.
It may be related to the target platform for Instagram and Snapchat being mobile devices. Copy-pasting on mobile tends to be more cumbersome, and the slightest impediment to the UX can have a significant effect on how many times it occurs.
Even some networks with retweeting don't suffer this as much.
Most of my mastodon feed is posts, a retweet(boost) is probably one in 50 on a normal day, spiking to maybe one in 10.
It might be a cultural problem on twitter (maybe some mastodon communities have similar problems...)
Most of my mastodon feed is posts, a retweet(boost) is probably one in 50 on a normal day, spiking to maybe one in 10.
It might be a cultural problem on twitter (maybe some mastodon communities have similar problems...)
No, the are no Greek letters in this article. There's only ß (U+00DF LATIN SMALL LETTER SHARP S).
I think what the grandparent wanted to say is that every sharp S (ß) in the article should actually be Beta (β). The article probably refers to a certain slide[0] Jonah Peretti's presentation[1] "Mormons, Mullets and Maniacs" which actually uses a sharp S in italics. Seems to me like it should be a Beta indeed, especially since using a sharp S in this context would be rather unusual as far as I can tell.
[0]https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/4c655d457f8b9a711c7d0...
[1]http://www.businessinsider.com/jonah-perettis-awesome-viral-...
[0]https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/4c655d457f8b9a711c7d0...
[1]http://www.businessinsider.com/jonah-perettis-awesome-viral-...
What do you mean "nο"? The mix up here is that the equation given uses a symbol which is visually similar to a different symbol, in a confusing manner. In all my experience I don't think I've ever seen someone use ß (not beta) as a variable name, whereas it would be totally idiomatic to use beta there. There's no rule against it, but it looks like a mistake, or deliberate confusion. Did you notice that the word "no" in the first line used a lowercase omicron?
I checked the source [0] and that does indeed use ß, so I was wrong to blame the author of the piece. I now blame Jonah Peretti.
[0] https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/1158576/pages/uf-...
I checked the source [0] and that does indeed use ß, so I was wrong to blame the author of the piece. I now blame Jonah Peretti.
[0] https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/1158576/pages/uf-...
As tome says, no the article isn't mixing anything up. So why are you insisting that it is?
You seem annoyed that the original creator of the formula used a symbol that you wouldn't have expected. So that's your beef. Not with this article, or any assumptions of "mixing up."
As for why the original creator used "ß", I don't know, but perhaps it related to the "S" in sharability. Or he's not a mathematician and he liked the look.
You seem annoyed that the original creator of the formula used a symbol that you wouldn't have expected. So that's your beef. Not with this article, or any assumptions of "mixing up."
As for why the original creator used "ß", I don't know, but perhaps it related to the "S" in sharability. Or he's not a mathematician and he liked the look.
> What do you mean "nο"?
"No, the article doesn't mix up anything", perhaps?
"No, the article doesn't mix up anything", perhaps?
I don't have a Twitter account but occasionally arrive on that site through a link.
I concur with the author that retweets are lazy noise. And quite often they reveal aspects of a person's character that I'd rather not know.
Maybe Twitter would be better if it had a technical means of enforcing only original thought. Perhaps some day in the AI future...
I concur with the author that retweets are lazy noise. And quite often they reveal aspects of a person's character that I'd rather not know.
Maybe Twitter would be better if it had a technical means of enforcing only original thought. Perhaps some day in the AI future...
What is HN if not a stream of "retweeted" links. The author of the article seems to think the act of Retweeting is bad, yet xir touches on the real problem - the one of amplifying simple emotions rather than promoting thoughtful content. On HN, most links, like the one in this post, are intended to amplify our thinking . However on Twitter, Instagram and many other social media, almost every post is intended to evoke an emotional response.
Not all emotional responses are necessarily bad. The problem I have with most forms of social media is most encourage short posts, which almost always is devoid of thoughtfulness, which then begets responses of similar kind. This is why I personally think Twitter is such a terrible platform.
>What is HN if not a stream of "retweeted" links
A stream of links upvoted by many people. No retweeting happens, which is why you don't see the same link every time someone votes it, only when someone resubmits it (after months or years usually).
A stream of links upvoted by many people. No retweeting happens, which is why you don't see the same link every time someone votes it, only when someone resubmits it (after months or years usually).
There is nothing wrong with emotional response targeting. Rather, as the author pointed out, targeting anger or outrage. He might have missed that other platforms, even Instagram, have outrage responses (atleast this is what the text seems to imply) but as he rightfully points out, they are significantly muted compared to Twitter.
Hackernews too has a culture of outrage, at times. Some articles stay on the frontpage for an entire day with very active comment sections. Most of the time outrage (though sometime the joy of a productive discussion).
Mastodon also seems to have less of a problem with retweeting (called boosting in masto), users seem to prefer their own content and boost only a few toots (though also from experience, less active users tend to boost more, me included a few times a week).
Hackernews too has a culture of outrage, at times. Some articles stay on the frontpage for an entire day with very active comment sections. Most of the time outrage (though sometime the joy of a productive discussion).
Mastodon also seems to have less of a problem with retweeting (called boosting in masto), users seem to prefer their own content and boost only a few toots (though also from experience, less active users tend to boost more, me included a few times a week).
1/ Author's a dude.
2/ The singular (gender-neutral) they has existed since the 13th century in informal contexts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they). Just use that.
What is the intent of using "xir" against the author's wishes if not to provoke an emotional response, then? The author is very clearly identified as "he". I can only conclude that you are trying to start a flame war.
I'd report your comment to the moderators but I don't know how.
I'd report your comment to the moderators but I don't know how.
Read the guidelines! they explain how: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Let's not have a pronoun flamewar please. Everyone just resist.
The guidelines that say "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says" and "Don't feed egregious comments by replying" combine to give good guidance here.
Let's not have a pronoun flamewar please. Everyone just resist.
The guidelines that say "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says" and "Don't feed egregious comments by replying" combine to give good guidance here.
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pjc50(1)
>What is the intent of using "xir" against the author's wishes if not to provoke an emotional response, then? The author is very clearly identified as "he".
While it could be that (I give it a chance of 10%), there's a more likely explanation: the parent just didn't read the post or skimmed through it, so they don't know whether the author "clearly identifies as "he".
They just respond to the headline "retweets are trash" with their opinions on retweets, and used "xir" to play it safe regarding whoever the author might be.
Many people (many have said so in HN discussions) don't read TFA, or don't read the whole FA, and hardly care enough to read bylines and who the author is, etc. They just come straight to the comments, and discuss the topic as a subject they have an opinion about, not based on what TFA says.
While it could be that (I give it a chance of 10%), there's a more likely explanation: the parent just didn't read the post or skimmed through it, so they don't know whether the author "clearly identifies as "he".
They just respond to the headline "retweets are trash" with their opinions on retweets, and used "xir" to play it safe regarding whoever the author might be.
Many people (many have said so in HN discussions) don't read TFA, or don't read the whole FA, and hardly care enough to read bylines and who the author is, etc. They just come straight to the comments, and discuss the topic as a subject they have an opinion about, not based on what TFA says.
Thoughtful content is good when I want something to mull over in a car ride or when I'm actually feeling curious. When I'm worn out and just want brain candy thoughtful content is effectively trash. It's not as simple as thoughtful content good and emotional content bad. Feel good memes are a perfect example of this.
As a Twitter reader, you need to (given the very limited tools) control what comes into your feed. Yes, there's a lot of retweet-based outrage, but a bit of selective removal of people or their retweet ability helps with that. Or muting certain outrage keywords.
Whereas on the other end, the various sorts of Funny Twitter and Weird Twitter and Artist Twitter live off retweets, they're an essential and beneficial part of the experience.
What Twitter have done badly though is collapsed the disctinction between "like" and "retweet" by causing things that you like to appear in the timelines of others. Where they can then also like and retweet it, keeping it alive.
It's often amazing how bad twitter understand how their site is used by its communities. I suppose they focus on the paid "brand engagement" area, which is a social desert.
Whereas on the other end, the various sorts of Funny Twitter and Weird Twitter and Artist Twitter live off retweets, they're an essential and beneficial part of the experience.
What Twitter have done badly though is collapsed the disctinction between "like" and "retweet" by causing things that you like to appear in the timelines of others. Where they can then also like and retweet it, keeping it alive.
It's often amazing how bad twitter understand how their site is used by its communities. I suppose they focus on the paid "brand engagement" area, which is a social desert.
"But I follow thousands of people"
I was wondering why someone would feel this way until I got to that line! Why would you follow thousands of people if "noise" bothers you? I think most people like their social media a bit more curated than that to start with, could be wrong though.
I was wondering why someone would feel this way until I got to that line! Why would you follow thousands of people if "noise" bothers you? I think most people like their social media a bit more curated than that to start with, could be wrong though.
I follow a couple thousand people on Twitter. It's a mix of infosec folks, developers, startup friends, comic book artists, news people, comedians, a variety.
It's less I'm trying to follow individual people and more that I'm trying to find interesting thoughts or articles or art that they're creating or sharing.
Even so, there is still "noise" in that you'll see the same article surface multiple times or the same news story be bandied about (for the last 24 hours it's been pretty Sam Nunberg).
It's less I'm trying to follow individual people and more that I'm trying to find interesting thoughts or articles or art that they're creating or sharing.
Even so, there is still "noise" in that you'll see the same article surface multiple times or the same news story be bandied about (for the last 24 hours it's been pretty Sam Nunberg).
How is it humanly possible to ingest the daily feeds from a couple of thousand of people?
I follow about a hundred or so and I get 300-400 items per day. I use lists for different topics but following one of the lists takes too much time.
In addition to this, nobody stays on topic. The political climate is so intense that the reactions to it permeate everything.
The signal to noise ratio is becoming unacceptable and I’m not aware of any tools to improve it.
I follow about a hundred or so and I get 300-400 items per day. I use lists for different topics but following one of the lists takes too much time.
In addition to this, nobody stays on topic. The political climate is so intense that the reactions to it permeate everything.
The signal to noise ratio is becoming unacceptable and I’m not aware of any tools to improve it.
How is it humanly possible to ingest the daily feeds from a couple of thousand of people?
I know a few hundred people in real life but I don't feel a need to call them all up every single day. Ditto for Twitter. I can follow a wide range of people and dip in and out of it, enjoy the variety, and move on. I'd want to read everyone's every tweet as little as I'd want to know every one of my acquaintance's thoughts every day..
I know a few hundred people in real life but I don't feel a need to call them all up every single day. Ditto for Twitter. I can follow a wide range of people and dip in and out of it, enjoy the variety, and move on. I'd want to read everyone's every tweet as little as I'd want to know every one of my acquaintance's thoughts every day..
but... but you get choose who you call, so you only make one call. But you can't unread tweets to find the one you want to read. So are these just snapshots of a moment in time you look at? Which is nothing like calling someone on the phone.
I follow about 8,000+ people, because I follow just about anyone who has a relatively active account and who may be affiliated in my professional and academic networks. Partly I do this as passive networking, much easier to reach out to people on a cold call when we follow each other. And partly because I like reading tweets from people who I've never met or really known.
The trick is that I don't treat Twitter as a newscast but as a stream of interesting thoughts to sample from when I have free time. I do keep a secret list of people who use Twitter to put out original work that I'll check from time to time but mostly I find that my general timeline has most of the interesting tweets in it anyway, because of how Twitter curates the top of it -- with the What-You-Might-Have-Missed, even if you have your timeline in chrono order.
The trick is that I don't treat Twitter as a newscast but as a stream of interesting thoughts to sample from when I have free time. I do keep a secret list of people who use Twitter to put out original work that I'll check from time to time but mostly I find that my general timeline has most of the interesting tweets in it anyway, because of how Twitter curates the top of it -- with the What-You-Might-Have-Missed, even if you have your timeline in chrono order.
You don't have to look at every post. Muting words also helps if there's something you don't want to see, "nunberg" for instance.
I've personally never felt the need to mute words or people on Twitter or any other social network. I follow 540 accounts on Twitter right now and disagree with most of the political perspectives espoused therein. Yet I don't mind seeing any of this sort of thing on my social media timelines for a couple reasons.
For one, if I were to mute opinions that I disagreed with, I feel like I would be in effect turning a blind eye to the fact that people have these opinions. I don't see any value in this; people all over the world have all sorts of different opinions, and deluding myself into believing that people who disagree with me effectively don't exist seems... wrong, morally, at least to me. I specifically follow individuals (both public figures and not) whose opinions (political and otherwise) don't align with my own. I _want_ to see thoughts that aren't just identical to the ones already floating around in my head!
Also, I personally believe that associating emotions with words and phrases in the minds of the populace so strongly as to cause one to either react with outrage or reach for a digital mute/hide button, is one of the strongest weapons of social destruction today. This is a means of socially engineering people's reactions to specific ideas, conditioning them on a mass scale to be unable to use logic and reason as their emotions short-circuit any such thinking. Since mid-2016 I have gone to great lengths to refrain from becoming "outraged" by outrage-bait news and social media posts, and I've found that it's increased my personal happiness and outlook on life considerably, especially as the mass and social media ramp up their production of nigh-constant outrage fuel, and everyone seems to want to make _everything_ political.
For one, if I were to mute opinions that I disagreed with, I feel like I would be in effect turning a blind eye to the fact that people have these opinions. I don't see any value in this; people all over the world have all sorts of different opinions, and deluding myself into believing that people who disagree with me effectively don't exist seems... wrong, morally, at least to me. I specifically follow individuals (both public figures and not) whose opinions (political and otherwise) don't align with my own. I _want_ to see thoughts that aren't just identical to the ones already floating around in my head!
Also, I personally believe that associating emotions with words and phrases in the minds of the populace so strongly as to cause one to either react with outrage or reach for a digital mute/hide button, is one of the strongest weapons of social destruction today. This is a means of socially engineering people's reactions to specific ideas, conditioning them on a mass scale to be unable to use logic and reason as their emotions short-circuit any such thinking. Since mid-2016 I have gone to great lengths to refrain from becoming "outraged" by outrage-bait news and social media posts, and I've found that it's increased my personal happiness and outlook on life considerably, especially as the mass and social media ramp up their production of nigh-constant outrage fuel, and everyone seems to want to make _everything_ political.
Who said anything about disagreements, much less outrage, though? The context was cutting out noise, and muting is a more effective version of skipping your eyes past it. Some topics just get spent and become boring.
The article was basically about this ("So I began to take note each time I experienced a little hit of outrage or condescension or envy during a Twitter session. What I found was that nearly every time I felt one of these negative emotions, it was triggered by a retweet."), and in my experience this is largely how the "mute" functionality is used: literally to protect yourself from experiencing the learned emotional trigger associated with seeing specific keywords or phrases.
Fair enough, but this subthread had diverged to a discussion of the logistics of reading a large number of feeds, and the mute functionality was suggested in that context.
I mean, you get 300-400 items a day? Do you read it all? I think the best method is just to not read it all. Just scan for a few minutes until you're bored then stop.
Do you read every HN post? Much less should you feel the need to read every tweet.
Do you read every HN post? Much less should you feel the need to read every tweet.
I’m able to scan the titles of every HN post and see what interests me.
> Even so, there is still "noise" in that you'll see the same article surface multiple times
For a while that was my benchmark for what was worth reading if I saw an article surface more than once it was possible of interest to multiple circles of interests rather than one, and likely worth the time to read. Of course, that was the time before sites like Buzzfeed/Upworthy and the general expansion of a culture of writing articles specifically for reshare virality.
For a while that was my benchmark for what was worth reading if I saw an article surface more than once it was possible of interest to multiple circles of interests rather than one, and likely worth the time to read. Of course, that was the time before sites like Buzzfeed/Upworthy and the general expansion of a culture of writing articles specifically for reshare virality.
> For a while that was my benchmark for what was worth reading if I saw an article surface more than once it was possible of interest to multiple circles of interests rather than one, and likely worth the time to read.
There was a clever RSS reader that worked on this principle. Sadly, it is no longer being developed.
https://feedafever.com
There was a clever RSS reader that worked on this principle. Sadly, it is no longer being developed.
https://feedafever.com
> Nunberg
and now even HN is :p
and now even HN is :p
> When they disappeared, my feed had less punch-the-button outrage. Fewer mean screenshots of somebody saying precisely the wrong thing. Less repetition of big, big news. Fewer memes I’d already seen a hundred times.
I follow ~500 people, but I'm very selective by only following people who know better than to re/tweet wrong, irrelevant, or obvious stuff. This way, Twitter works great for me as first-hand news, rather than the usual spin cyclone.
(I also use Twitter for Mac, so no promoted tweets, random order, etc).
I follow ~500 people, but I'm very selective by only following people who know better than to re/tweet wrong, irrelevant, or obvious stuff. This way, Twitter works great for me as first-hand news, rather than the usual spin cyclone.
(I also use Twitter for Mac, so no promoted tweets, random order, etc).
I follow ~30 people, but have still turned off showing retweets for some. Some people just seem to treat it as a bigger like button.
> Some people just seem to treat it as a bigger like button.
But isn't that exactly what it is? The line between retweet and like is pretty blurry with the algorithmic timeline. I often see tweets that were merely liked by someone I follow.
But isn't that exactly what it is? The line between retweet and like is pretty blurry with the algorithmic timeline. I often see tweets that were merely liked by someone I follow.
I wonder if this is a key part of the problem, or whether it's a separate problem of its own making. I know sometimes I struggle with the decision of whether to 'like' or 'retweet'. I wonder what it would be like if there was only a 'like' button, but individuals can choose to broadcast their likes or not, and followers can choose whether to display (notifications of) likes or not.
I'm guilty of 90% retweets or so, but have a general low output rate including them. So I made a policy of retweet only things, that people who follow me wouldn't see anyway. Like 10+ people overlap. For me it's distinctively different from a like button. The most annoying thing is having other peoples liked pushed into the timeline and the same 3 ads all over again.
I think they're just trying to apply the wrong tool for the job.
What they're probably interested in is getting news/thoughts about a handful of topics, which would be akin to following a few subreddits or forums.
But the way Twitter and Facebook are set-up is that you follow people, not topics. And people tend to talk about all sorts of topics on a given day, thus the "noise."
What they're probably interested in is getting news/thoughts about a handful of topics, which would be akin to following a few subreddits or forums.
But the way Twitter and Facebook are set-up is that you follow people, not topics. And people tend to talk about all sorts of topics on a given day, thus the "noise."
Technorati and Twingly used to provide such services but Technorati seems to have been bought and decommissioned and Twingly has pivoted into something else.
I wrote a script to split up the people I follow into lists according to a few different categories (based on keywords in their names/handles/bios sprinkled with a touch of manual massaging). It really helps to sort through the noise.
I ended up with the following lists that I can now browse separately for several disparate interests of mine:
I ended up with the following lists that I can now browse separately for several disparate interests of mine:
Founders / CEOs
Game Dev
Apple
AR / VR
Iowa (local people I follow from where I'm from)This is one functionality I wish Twitter included! I’d love for it to use some machine learning or whatnot to naturally group all the people I follow into several distinct lists.
This is the main thing I love(d) in Google+ (yeah, yeah...)
Whenever I'd add someone, I picked which group or groups they fell into. I could create as many or as few groups as I wanted and then I could view posts and threads based on which "circle" they were in.
I'd be more inclined to use Twitter or any service that made this kind of sorting this flexible and useful.
Whenever I'd add someone, I picked which group or groups they fell into. I could create as many or as few groups as I wanted and then I could view posts and threads based on which "circle" they were in.
I'd be more inclined to use Twitter or any service that made this kind of sorting this flexible and useful.
I could not imagine following that many people.
I follow my local (city) government, the NWS for weather, and Raymond Hettinger.
I follow my local (city) government, the NWS for weather, and Raymond Hettinger.
I follow only couple hundred accounts and the same problem exists for me with retweets.
I use a userscript [1] to toggle display of retweets and likes which Twitter's algorithm decides should act like retweets, to make their extra "engagement" opt-in.
It also highlights these tweets when displayed, so it's a bit more obvious when your timeline consists of someone else's retweet spree or Twitter's algorithm.
[1] https://github.com/insin/greasemonkey#twitter-engagement-min...
It also highlights these tweets when displayed, so it's a bit more obvious when your timeline consists of someone else's retweet spree or Twitter's algorithm.
[1] https://github.com/insin/greasemonkey#twitter-engagement-min...
Wouldn't an easy solution be to allow making "retweets off" as default for following other users? I do that manually for many accounts that I follow.
I don't know if the author uses Twitter as much as I do, but I love RTs and Quotes, and serve a central point on what Twitter is, a sharing network of short messages.
Making people copy & paste is an 90's mindset. If you think too much noise is being published, ask the author or stop following him. Or make add him/her to a list so you can watch his/she's messages without RTs.
I want to know news, and I want them FAST. Twitter does an amazing job on this field, because when something is really important a lot of people are gonna share it. RTs are also is very important for Trending Topics!
imho not wanting RTs on Twitter is not fully understanding Twitter.
Making people copy & paste is an 90's mindset. If you think too much noise is being published, ask the author or stop following him. Or make add him/her to a list so you can watch his/she's messages without RTs.
I want to know news, and I want them FAST. Twitter does an amazing job on this field, because when something is really important a lot of people are gonna share it. RTs are also is very important for Trending Topics!
imho not wanting RTs on Twitter is not fully understanding Twitter.
I'd really like to see his proposal as something you can toggle when you navigate to someone's twitter profile, since when I do that I'm usually only interested in things they wrote themselves, not things they retweeted.
I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting copy+pasting as an alternative to retweeting.
Funny enough, the word "retweet" used to refer doing exactly that. Twitter only added retweet functionality in 2009, before then the convention was to write "RT" followed by the handle and then paste the tweet.
As a trivia point, one of the tweets that got Quinn Norton fired from her NYT editorial gig was a manual retweet she did of a John Perry Barlow tweet that contained the n-word:
Her explanation: https://twitter.com/quinnnorton/status/963594118747361281
The original tweet: https://twitter.com/JPBarlow/status/3760544030
There was plenty else that Norton tweeted that was problematic (including another time that she used the n-word in a debate to rhetorically quip that "terrorist" was an equally stupid word), but I was struck at how easy it was to misread those pre-official-RT tweets as actual original tweets from the retweeter. And many of the people dragging Norton over that tweet may not have been around back in 2009.
Her explanation: https://twitter.com/quinnnorton/status/963594118747361281
The original tweet: https://twitter.com/JPBarlow/status/3760544030
There was plenty else that Norton tweeted that was problematic (including another time that she used the n-word in a debate to rhetorically quip that "terrorist" was an equally stupid word), but I was struck at how easy it was to misread those pre-official-RT tweets as actual original tweets from the retweeter. And many of the people dragging Norton over that tweet may not have been around back in 2009.
This is in the third paragraph of the article.
I would like the opposite - hide all uninformative and boring nonsense some people tweet (but not often enough to unfollow), and just get the retweets. These usually have high information and are of relevance (i'm only using twitter for itsec news).
Readme App has made a huge difference the quality of stuff I see on twitter. No retweets, no random reply chains, literally just the tweets from the people you follow. It doesn't even allow you to tweet or reply. -
https://readmeapp.stream/
I use Nuzzel so I can see what's being shared by the people I follow without having to deal with all the other nonsense on Twitter.
[deleted]
I experienced the same. Not showing retweets in my Twitter app of choice made Twitter enjoyable again. I can highly recommend it.
I don't have problems with retweets, I usually just stop following people who retweet non-interesting noise.
Twitter however now also displays tweets people I follow have liked and that has been the worst change for me. People seem to use retweets more sparingly (and may even think if followers are interested before retweeting) than likes. So now my feed is full of cat pictures and memes users have liked instead of just the content I really subscribed for.
Twitter however now also displays tweets people I follow have liked and that has been the worst change for me. People seem to use retweets more sparingly (and may even think if followers are interested before retweeting) than likes. So now my feed is full of cat pictures and memes users have liked instead of just the content I really subscribed for.
That noise is missing in clients like Tweetbot, but to use the website these days I have a bunch of ublock rules:
https://gist.github.com/bazzargh/7fced928736890eef1f4bd302c7...
... including those annoying favourites-as-retweets (.tweet-has-context:not([data-retweeter])). It really grates that they introduced that without allowing you to mute that like RT's, or a way to stop your own tweets showing up like that; and surprising that the feature survived after Ted Cruz's nsfw 'like' showed up that way last year.
... including those annoying favourites-as-retweets (.tweet-has-context:not([data-retweeter])). It really grates that they introduced that without allowing you to mute that like RT's, or a way to stop your own tweets showing up like that; and surprising that the feature survived after Ted Cruz's nsfw 'like' showed up that way last year.
> Twitter however now also displays tweets people I follow have liked and that has been the worst change for me.
I rarely go on Twitter but I've noticed that the "X liked this" are usually the worst of all on my newsfeed.
But there's a fix for this: click on the "..." menu -> "I don't like this tweet" on a few of them, and then you shouldn't see any more of the "X liked this tweet"
The only one I see now are "X and Y liked this tweet from Z" but in that case I follow both X, Y, and Z.
This has improved the quality of the feed dramatically.
I rarely go on Twitter but I've noticed that the "X liked this" are usually the worst of all on my newsfeed.
But there's a fix for this: click on the "..." menu -> "I don't like this tweet" on a few of them, and then you shouldn't see any more of the "X liked this tweet"
The only one I see now are "X and Y liked this tweet from Z" but in that case I follow both X, Y, and Z.
This has improved the quality of the feed dramatically.
Agreed. You can configure twitter to not add retweets from particular accounts you follow, and that's great, but unfortunately, you cannot prevent it from adding tweets that have been liked.
At this point what is the difference between "like" and "retweet"?
At this point what is the difference between "like" and "retweet"?
likes don't always show. re-tweets do.
Haven't seen any of this in Tweetbot. Twitter's own clients kinda blow.
The author praises Snapchat and Instagram and makes a compelling point for their anti-shareable features.
I myself have begun to think that a higher standard of friendship is needed in social media. Something like Twitter, where you can follow anyone unless they actively block you, makes more sense where engagement is limited, like how selecting a TV channel to watch is largely a one-way experience.
I would love to see a social network demand a higher standard of friendship from a user before other users are allowed in their network - based on something more than reciprocal button pushing, so kind folks don't feel compelled to accept a friend request out of politeness. Snapchat may be on to something here, as you actually have to know the person exists before you can add them.
I don't know exactly what the answer is - ask compatibility questions, quiz the user about their history, analyze their current social networks for positive engagement - but I'm extremely curious about the possibility of a social network that purposely limits its own network effects.
I myself have begun to think that a higher standard of friendship is needed in social media. Something like Twitter, where you can follow anyone unless they actively block you, makes more sense where engagement is limited, like how selecting a TV channel to watch is largely a one-way experience.
I would love to see a social network demand a higher standard of friendship from a user before other users are allowed in their network - based on something more than reciprocal button pushing, so kind folks don't feel compelled to accept a friend request out of politeness. Snapchat may be on to something here, as you actually have to know the person exists before you can add them.
I don't know exactly what the answer is - ask compatibility questions, quiz the user about their history, analyze their current social networks for positive engagement - but I'm extremely curious about the possibility of a social network that purposely limits its own network effects.
>I would love to see a social network demand a higher standard of friendship from a user before other users are allowed in their network - based on something more than reciprocal button pushing, so kind folks don't feel compelled to accept a friend request out of politeness.
Like Facebook?
There is no one type of "social network" out there.
The solution is for people to learn how to use various social networks effectively. Facebook is for keeping some sort of connection with people you know or once knew. Twitter is for content, be it about activism or entertainment. Instagram is for people to boost each other's self esteem so they collectively feel better, at least for some time.
For personal connections, what we really need are small, immutable communities like a small town or a school class. People who talk to each other on a daily basis. This is the only way humans are accustomed to live and judge their own worth and the progress they make.
This effect can best be observed on Instagram. By wiring very carefully curated moments of a top percentage of millions of people to our brains, we're only making ourselves feel worthless and put ourselves under enormous mental stress.
Like Facebook?
There is no one type of "social network" out there.
The solution is for people to learn how to use various social networks effectively. Facebook is for keeping some sort of connection with people you know or once knew. Twitter is for content, be it about activism or entertainment. Instagram is for people to boost each other's self esteem so they collectively feel better, at least for some time.
For personal connections, what we really need are small, immutable communities like a small town or a school class. People who talk to each other on a daily basis. This is the only way humans are accustomed to live and judge their own worth and the progress they make.
This effect can best be observed on Instagram. By wiring very carefully curated moments of a top percentage of millions of people to our brains, we're only making ourselves feel worthless and put ourselves under enormous mental stress.
Allow me to broaden the topic.
A lot of this era speaks about equality. As if everything should be flat and free to go in and out. But I very often feels that only "hills" matters. People overcome them when they do want to perceive what's at the top, and often make something of it. Instead of just wandering around without efforts or care.
I wonder if other people feel like this about this flat vs hills thing (sorry for that very badly name analogy)
A lot of this era speaks about equality. As if everything should be flat and free to go in and out. But I very often feels that only "hills" matters. People overcome them when they do want to perceive what's at the top, and often make something of it. Instead of just wandering around without efforts or care.
I wonder if other people feel like this about this flat vs hills thing (sorry for that very badly name analogy)
Nextdoor sends you a postcard in the mail to the physical address you register with. You validate your account with the PIN on the post card.
This way you're fairly certain that you're only interacting with your close neighbors.
This way you're fairly certain that you're only interacting with your close neighbors.
Twitch provides a good solution to this in someways.
It's highly interactive, especially with IRL channels, and the options for interaction are following, subscribing (which is following but with a $$ donation per month + perks), and chat.
Many streamers have links in their chats automatically blocked, and there's a good variety between small streamers with sane chats and streamers with hundreds of thousands of viewers who's chat is much more similar to Twitter's reactionary dynamic.
It's highly interactive, especially with IRL channels, and the options for interaction are following, subscribing (which is following but with a $$ donation per month + perks), and chat.
Many streamers have links in their chats automatically blocked, and there's a good variety between small streamers with sane chats and streamers with hundreds of thousands of viewers who's chat is much more similar to Twitter's reactionary dynamic.
I definitely think something like that would have potential for virality; something where maybe in order to add someone, you have to be in physical proximity with them when adding.
I could totally see that becoming kinda gamified, the objective being to collect as many of your friends' on it (by actually physically meeting them) as possible (like Pokemon Go, lol)
I could totally see that becoming kinda gamified, the objective being to collect as many of your friends' on it (by actually physically meeting them) as possible (like Pokemon Go, lol)
Maybe something like "meet in person, exchange contact information, communicate via phone, text, email?"
> my office mate, who happens to be a skilled programmer, wrote a script for me that turned off retweets from everybody
if you also want to do this, here's a small hacky tool I made that uses the Twitter API to turn of retweets for people you follow. http://turn-off-retweets.glitch.me
if you also want to do this, here's a small hacky tool I made that uses the Twitter API to turn of retweets for people you follow. http://turn-off-retweets.glitch.me
I don't think retweets are trash in general. They are one of the main ways for me to find new, interesting accounts on Twitter. I follow people because I like the things they tweet, i.e. find them interesting. Chances are they are going to retweet content that I appreciate too. If someone starts retweeting random, uninteresting content I just unfollow (or disable retweets for them, like the author mentioned). Problem solved. Maybe I don't have the same problems with noise because I follow fewer than a hundred accounts, since I treat Twitter as a source of information first, and a social network second.
I wrote a little web app a while back to do this if anyone is interested:
http://www.nathanbeach.com/deretweetme/
The article didn't even touch the phenomenon of robots.
Take Trump's Twitter account for example. A second after he tweets, there are other of retweets. How come? it's robot that do it automatically.
Now, if I (for some obscure reason) follow that robot, I'd see all of Trump's tweets. But hang on, if that's what I want to do, I'd just follow @realDonaldTrump, right? why should I get all his tweets from a robot?
Another option is that the goal of these robots is to create artificial virality to Trump's tweets: "Oh, there are 5,023,482 retweets - this tweet (or this person) must be clever!" - which is the premise of this article. Retweets are trash.
Take Trump's Twitter account for example. A second after he tweets, there are other of retweets. How come? it's robot that do it automatically.
Now, if I (for some obscure reason) follow that robot, I'd see all of Trump's tweets. But hang on, if that's what I want to do, I'd just follow @realDonaldTrump, right? why should I get all his tweets from a robot?
Another option is that the goal of these robots is to create artificial virality to Trump's tweets: "Oh, there are 5,023,482 retweets - this tweet (or this person) must be clever!" - which is the premise of this article. Retweets are trash.
What I like about retweets is that they simulate the behavior of neurons to some extent. Neurons trigger each other to fire and transmit information from one node to another. The closer we can get to a giant hive-mind with millions of linked up human brains working together, the sooner we can solve the problems that plague society.
Then recently, I excluded all retweets. It's quite amazing how little actual new thoughts and opinions are shared on Twitter - getting rid of retweets cut out easily 80% of the tweets I'd see. And I'm OK with that - I think too many people retweet reflexively, without real thought and it ends up being a waste of time.
1. https://photos.app.goo.gl/kdQyqzWXDIvV0VfR2