
Twitter’s Problem Isn’t the Like Button - kaboro
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-10-30/twitter-s-problem-is-bigger-than-the-like-button
======
czardoz
Quite honestly, I feel like most of the media websites do the same thing.
Write negative articles for more clicks, virality, etc.

For example, this article could have been a piece on educating people on how
to use Twitter correctly (follow your interests, don't respond to trolls,
think critically), but instead focuses on how things are all dark and bad.

That being said, the solutions proposed here are actually sound IMO.

~~~
_trampeltier
Everyone want to make money. They sell ad space, not news.

~~~
User23
I also want to make money, because my landlord doesn't accept my being a
wonderful socially responsible person in lieu of rent.

------
metildaa
Twitter is dying, and upper management is creating the conditions for these
toxic twitter users to ruin the site. Twitter has royally wrecked the API and
done numerous other things that hurt the platform, but the content generated
by a subset of users is what has created this lethal situation for Twitter as
a platform.

~~~
mhuffman
Twitter was dying since it began ... remember it's very difficult growth after
inception ... and that it can't seem to make money no matter what it does?

I believe Twitter is a monument to the 2010's second dot com bubble, and in
the future, will be looked back on like pets.com is now.

~~~
mattbierner
Twitter is like 12 years old and has somewhere over 300 million users. It has
been public for five years.

Whatever it may be, it is not pets.com

~~~
lmm
> Twitter is like 12 years old and has somewhere over 300 million users. It
> has been public for five years.

And has never shown a profit.

> Whatever it may be, it is not pets.com

What if the runways are just longer this time around?

~~~
HappySweeney
> And has never shown a profit.

Twitter has had profitable quarters.

[https://www.recode.net/2018/2/8/16989834/twitter-q4-2018-ear...](https://www.recode.net/2018/2/8/16989834/twitter-q4-2018-earnings-
revenue-jack-dorsey)

[https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/27/twitter-posts-
record-100m-...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/27/twitter-posts-
record-100m-profit-but-loses-1m-users/)

------
eksemplar
Maybe they should disable the ability to comment instead? It seems to me that
comments are often a big problem on social media.

When comments stay relevant and informative, like they do here on HN, for the
most part anyway. They are an asset to the social media, but as soon as they
become something else they become a big problem.

Maybe they shouldn’t be disabled entirely, but instead you’d need to be
approved by the poster to comment? I could see a value in giving users the
control over you would allow to comment on your tweet.

~~~
Kaveren
That takes the social out of social media. Also gives way to a complete echo
chamber.

~~~
eksemplar
What’s social about a bunch of strangers screaming profanities at each other?

It should really be called angry mob media, if anything.

I see your point of course, but I’m not really worried about creating echo
chambers by giving users more ownership over their own conversations.

If you started screaming at me in the real world, I’d walk away and probably
never talk to you again. That’s an echo chamber, but it’s relatively harmless,
and I think the same thing would apply to almost all of social media.

I’m sure political tweeters would be terrible at it, but would it really
change anything? Right now thousands of people are trolling each other in
Donald Trumps twitter feed, but do you think they make a difference? I don’t,
in fact I don’t think anyone has ever really been pursauded of anything in a
political twitter comment section.

Mean while, the rest of us are taken hostage by the angry mob and a lack of
control of what ought to be our content.

------
raverbashing
Echo chambers are a problem, at the same time, communication across levels of
closeness are different.

This is what Twitter needs to get right.

A tweet from a friend is different from a tweet from a famous person.
Conversations happen differently. (And it seems they have some different
behaviours for these tweets)

Killing the like button won't help.

Taking abuse/harassement more seriously helps, especially things like the
obvious targeted DM harassement in the article.

------
DanielBMarkham
There's a knowledge transfer/attention span problem.

With the old 140 characters, or a picture meme, the best you can do is
communicate like Frankenstein in the old horror movies: "Fire BAD!" "Sun
good!"

Life isn't like that.

The is the same problem political ads face. If I've only got 10 seconds of
your time before you click on to something else, as a writer, I'm going to
have to punch you in nose. There's just no other way of using the medium. It's
built into the system.

But as others here have pointed out, it's not just Twitter, and it's not
related to likes by any means. (I have no idea what Twitter thinks they're
doing.)

I never participated in Quora because of this same thing, and it's much more
of a long-form site. For things worth knowing, things that will change your
life? You have to invest some time and effort. It's a conversation. It's back
and forth -- even when reading a novel. Drive-bys don't do that.

So let's look at tech overall.

Where we seem to have landed is this weird landscape where everything is
either 10 seconds or 100 hours. Yes, there is some nice medium-scale content
available, but even then, the creators will tell you that for the most part,
people either consume in one of those two fashions. There are a lot of people
purchasing long-form content that never use it. It just makes them feel
better. We know this now -- and we didn't in the past -- because we instrument
the hell out of everything users do.

Looking at the stats across multiple sites, I think if you really want to make
people's lives better -- and not just sell stuff -- you have to acknowledge
human nature and take a stand: are you going to be the 10 second guys or the
100-hour guys? I'd love to see somebody create something that somehow manages
both well, with "progressive elaboration" of deep topics and avoidance of
anything created that's low effort.

------
GnarfGnarf
The problem with Twitter is that there is not enough "bang for the buck". The
meager rewards do not compensate for the time and mind-share that have to be
invested in plodding through reams of Twitter dross.

There are so many more important and interesting things to do than read banal
and insipid posts.

I'm happy to have the day's best Tweets sifted by news channels and Jimmy
Fallon.

------
Kaveren
> "The notion that harassment and negativity are important for countering echo
> chambers should be the first to go."

> "First, tweets from blocked users should no longer appear in the replies to
> a tweet."

Being able to respond with an alternative viewpoint without having your reply
made invisible is not necessary for countering echo chambers?

Even on HN and Reddit, many people use the downvote button improperly. It
_should_ be a button to downvote content that doesn't contribute to the
discussion, or is spam, or morally bankrupt. It's not anything closed to this
in practice. I think this is how the block feature will be used if you can
just block someone to delete their replies.

I'm not a fan of removing likes from Twitter.

~~~
weregiraffe
>It should be a button to downvote content that doesn't contribute to the
discussion, or is spam, or morally bankrupt

Yeah, this is never going to work, because it is all subjective.

~~~
Udik
The temptation to use it to punish for opinions we don't like is just too
strong. And as soon as somebody start using it that way, everybody else
follows.

~~~
wetpaws
I like how person mentioning a practice of downvoting for unpopular opinions
got downvoted for unpopular opinion

------
shiburizu
An aside: Why is twitter's website so awful? Every time I might bother to
click on the site to see someone's post it's "join twitter now" every 5
seconds with unresponsive touch design that jumps everywhere.

------
Bantros
Twitter's problem, like any other social media, is people

------
mythrowmyway
Twitter is especially toxic for minorities. I am a Sikh and as Indian
elections approach, toxicity and fake news of Indian blue ticks have increased
substantially. I want to counter it, but my account is just one off and it has
also gotten disabled too now.

On top, they censored a website that was raising awareness among elected
representatives about politically motivated large scale massacres of Sikhs,
1984SikhGenocide.org Tweets go straight to draft if you plug this URL in. How
can Twitter ban this on a global scale at behest of Indian government? Then
they act chummy about being receptive of both sides views. How can a minority
user counter all this negativity because you get flooded nearly instantly.
Also, I had to provide my phone number for enabling my account, and
considering that my account details can be asked by Indian government
effectively means there is a chilling effect on me. Twitter needs to take into
account its minoroty users too, because there aren’t many accounts that can
counter the propaganda. And the flood of tweets is just immense which then
gets spread through WhatsApp. A spin agency sends message on Whatsapp, blue
ticks posts on Twitter, screenshotted and posted back on Whatsapp giving it an
air of authenticity.

~~~
User23
Hey I want to send you some love from the States. I've never met a Sikh who
wasn't an absolutely wonderful person. I have to admit I'm shocked that the
Indian government is discriminating against you, given how much your people
have contributed to the subcontinent over the centuries.

------
throwawaynpc123
negative comments aren't always "harassment"

------
qubax
Twitter has the same problem that reddit, facebook, youtube, etc does.
Journalists and the media want to dominate it.

Why is twitter so terrible today? Because there are so many toxic journalists
on it.

[https://medium.com/@Haje/who-are-twitter-s-verified-users-
af...](https://medium.com/@Haje/who-are-twitter-s-verified-users-af976fc1b032)

Same thing with reddit. What happened to reddit? A publication company bought
it and journalists are desperately trying to turn it into their propaganda
platform.

Who is leading the charge against facebook and google? Journalists and news
companies. Why? Because they want preferential treatment on these platforms
and want to turn them into their fiefdoms.

The real question isn't why twitter is bad. It's why journalists, news
companies, etc are so toxic. Why is journalism today no different than
political party evangelism? Every news organization and journalist sound like
political advocates and the mouthpiece of a political party. Why are so many
journalists and news organizations working so hard to help one party or the
other? I thought journalism and news was supposed to be about facts, not
political advocacy?

It's strange how these journalists loved social media when their political
candidate of choice won. Now, they are whining endlessly about social media.
They are as much, if not more, of a problem than twitter or any other social
media platform.

~~~
simonsarris
Yeah outside of politics and journalism, Twitter is incredible. I think @jack
focuses far too much on a crowd that will _always_ be dramatic, negative, and
and rife with trolls/attacks/disinformation/pandering, because its part of
their job description to be so. This is further awkward because journalistic
outfits see themselves as a shining beacon of everything good to a degree that
is somewhat comical.

Economics twitter, finance twitter, bio twitter, art twitter, intellectual
subgroup(s) and unaffiliated smartypants twitter are all amazing. I have met
many people through twitter, been invited to private slacks, made real
friends, and learned so much. I love the platform. Way more intellectual than
any other social network.

I just 99% stay away from the political machine on there, and the "toxic rage"
that everyone is clamouring about seems to pass me by.

~~~
zantana
I logged in just to reply to this because I was one who generally doesn't like
social media and thought of Twitter as just a proprietary version of RSS.

But I had to do some promotion for work and created an account and got hooked
in. There is no doubt a lot of junk and the trending stuff tends to be sports
and politics, but just like Reddit there is a lot of cool stuff there if you
wander off the beaten path.

Things like the #pico8
[https://twitter.com/hashtag/pico8](https://twitter.com/hashtag/pico8) where
people are posting simple pico8 patterns or As the Film Ends
[https://twitter.com/endingsummary](https://twitter.com/endingsummary) a bot
which posts final sentences from Wikipedia film plot summaries, are just cool.

I hope the service can endure in some form so oddball stuff like this will
remain.

------
mrweasel
I don't think it's fair to blame Twitter. When I first started using the
internet (forums, usenet, mailinglists and so on) there where hateful speech,
angry mobs, and just plain idiots.

The problem is that some people have come to expect that everywhere they go is
a safe-spaces, where ass holes don't exists or can be swiftly dealt with.

Sure, Twitter needs to have a way to deal with things that are just plain
illegal, and for the health of the platform they may need to add some
additional policing. But let's face it, it's not the average internet user who
are using Twitter.

The issues facing Twitter isn't that people are leaving because it's a hostile
place. People leaving are either bots or realising that Twitter isn't good
place it interact with friends and family. Honestly, most people don't need
Twitter, but the media, which is full of Twitter power users, seem to think
that it's THE platform. We need to look at Twitter more as a supplement to
LinkedIn and not as a Facebook competitor.

~~~
izacus
> The problem is that some people have come to expect that everywhere they go
> is a safe-spaces, where ass holes don't exists or can be swiftly dealt with.

That's such a strange thing to say - isn't that a very reasonable expectation?
Even in the outside world, the expectation is that you won't be dealing with
assholes every minute of your life when you participate somewhere.

And the thing about modern internet is that it's really really hard to find
ANY place where you don't have to deal with them. Even HN isn't immune to
deliberate trolling and personal attacks.

~~~
mrweasel
> That's such a strange thing to say - isn't that a very reasonable
> expectation? Even in the outside world, the expectation is that you won't be
> dealing with assholes every minute of your life when you participate
> somewhere.

That depends, I can't go into a ghetto area or a bar and say what ever I want
and not expect people to react, regardless of how right I may be. I'm sure
that this is an unpopular opinion but posting on Twitter is actively seeking
out the ass holes and loud idiots.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
So you're saying Twitter is a ghetto? I can't say I'd disagree with that. But
how do we start a social media site that isn't?

~~~
moate
By your very nature, you can't.

As you reach a certain size, it becomes nearly impossible to moderate due to
the volume of material. Also, _what_ to moderate will always be a fight. If
you have a 10 million users, and 3,000,000 of them say that something is
offensive, and 3,000,000 of them say that it is not and _needs_ to be left,
you're in a real pickle. If you listen to either side, you're possible siding
with a minority opinion. Even if you're siding with a minority, you're going
to upset millions of people. And no matter what your stance, you're taking a
stance (with either action or inaction).

What is the morally correct choice? It's the trolley problem every time a
group gets offended (or counter-offended, or counter-counter-offended or...)
Is it supposed to be a truly democratic state of majority, or a civil
environment? What is the goal? None of these questions have "right" answers,
just opinions. So what if you feel that your opinion is opposed by most of
your users, who do you listen to?

