
Why I can’t have conversations using Twitter (2014) - bjerun
http://antirez.com/news/82
======
feral
Tech design choices can have profound social impact.

This is just a personal theory, but I suspect Twitter's choices have done huge
damage to Western Civilization, by forcing, as a medium, a very short
'soundbite' structure onto debate. (Even more so than the media which gave us
the term 'soundbite' ever did!)

So that sounds like a very overblown assertion, right?

But think about Trump. Twitter is his platform, and arguably he is the sort of
President a platform like Twitter most directly enables. He gets direct
unchallenged access to a mass medium, a mass medium which makes it
particularly hard to counteract false claims or have reasoned debate. For
exactly the issues Antirez is raising.

I don't have evidence to support my theory, all I can say is I don't think I
want Twitter to succeed.

~~~
supremesaboteur
> But think about Trump. Twitter is his platform, and arguably he is the sort
> of President a platform like Twitter most directly enables. He gets direct
> unchallenged access to a mass medium

This is actually not true. Many of Trump's claims are challenged on Twitter
and outside of Twitter. Maybe you don't like that he can directly talk to the
people rather than twist his words to suit your narrative before heading it
over to the masses

~~~
subpixel
Just yesterday I looked at Twitter to read up about a back and forth between
two developers I respect. I was reminded that Twitter makes it well-nigh
impossible to follow multiple sides of a conversation. (Of course, calling
what happens on Twitter a conversation is a stretch to begin with.)

Much of the time, when a tweet says that it's 'in reply to' someone else, the
specific tweet it was meant as a reply to is not displayed to third parties.

If you extend this experience to the Trump scenario, it's a total fantasy to
think his followers on Twitter are being exposed to rebuttals of his
statements.

You see counter-opinions if you follow the person who expresses them. It's the
inverse of discourse, and I agree it's cancerous to civil society.

~~~
ygaf
I never got started with twitter, because it just didn't make sense, without a
bit of practice using it at least. Thanks for confirming it is a general mess.

------
gkya
Twitter is annoying. I signed up a couple years ago to follow some local
stuff's news, mostly events. Thus I followed 8-9 accounts that initially were
of my interest, and started refreshing and reading my feed. All I got was the
same 3-4 posts repeated annoyingly often, so that I had to fish for new things
that sink below stuff reposted almost hourly since months. I though, well,
maybe it's these accounts that I follow that don't know what to do, and
started looking around. What I found is that there are 3 prominent Twitter
stereotypes: (i) the reposter, which repeatedly posts the same thing and
retweets anybody who mention them, (ii) the dumper, like news sites etc.,
which just vomit tweets at you one every other minute, and (iii) the spartan
which speaks in semi-cryptic punchlines. Given the platform has no spam
filtering or any way to indicate whether a post is seen or not, it's byzantine
task to extract information from what you get served in your feed.

~~~
orbitur
Maybe I've spent too much time on Twitter, but once you find a decent small
group of people/comedians to follow, it becomes easier to find others like
them since they tend to all follow each other.

I now follow over 900 people, and my Twitter feed is news I care about,
opinions I care about, and great "cryptic punchlines" as you call them.

------
moxious
Well the fundamental chosen limitations of the service seem to make it a bad
choice for detailed technical arguments. But ultimately social networks are
just about who is there. We talk about technical topics on twitter not because
it's the right forum, but because the people we want to talk to are there.

~~~
Radim
I think you hit the nail on the head there.

This is also what makes "social networks" so frustrating to technical people:
it's not about your idea or even its execution. Rather, it's about how many
other apes you've groomed in the past, to the point they'll back you up
("retweet") no matter how stupid your argument or insipid your tweet. The
politics of it, tribalism.

A 140 character limit doesn't help of course :-) but the need for soundbites,
a shared communication channel for quickly correcting/reinforcing our
perception of reality, goes much deeper than that. Twitter is just a medium.

Where it gets interesting is when you consider _why_ human group-think and
"shared" perception of reality has been so successful, in evolutionary terms.
Why are apes not simply rational animals, instead of spending so much energy
forever climbing social ladders and adoring celebrities? Why these complex
super-human social hierarchies (religions included), what makes them so
efficient?

~~~
moxious
Well...yes to what you're saying. But there aren't neat lines between our
professional technical lives and our personal ones, in particular because we
spend a lot of time hanging out with people who share our interests.

Social media is designed for friends, not technical discussion, it's just that
human relationships of all kinds are messy and there are no clear lines. So
one bleeds over into the other, this can be expected. I don't think that's
social media's fault or the people, just a predictable consequence of "how the
people be"

------
sitkack
What Antirez describes is magnified on Twitter but no means isolated to it.
Cherry-picking and un-charitably attacking someones statements is a human flaw
that everyone should seek to suppress. And it happens for a couple reasons

* Weak egos on part of the listener. They want to _take down_ or show their superiority by besting a famous or popular person.

* Over Criticality. Instead of waiting for the entire argument to jell, and trying to charitably [1] understand the persons argument, you find the first perceived hole and attack. Often arguing about things that aren't germane to the discussion.

* False Drama / Celebrity Association. This is the bullshitter who wants to be "involved in the argument" but doesn't really care about the argument or the outcome.

People forget that debate, as practiced in meat space is about winning, not
using logic to present cogent arguments. So when Antriez gets beaten on
Twitter, he losing the debate due other's rhetorical skill. Your mom.

[1]
[http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html](http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html)

~~~
the_af
> _Cherry-picking and un-charitably attacking someones statements is a human
> flaw_

I don't think that's _exactly_ the situation Antirez describes. The way I see
it, he's saying that Twitter makes it too easy for people to _inadvertently_
pick isolated tweets out of context, _mistakenly_ thinking they are seeing the
whole context (because tracking down the full discussion on Twitter is very
cumbersome and time-consuming), and then reply to something different than
what was actually argued in the broader context.

That's different than cherry-picking on purpose in order to "win" an argument,
which is indeed a human flaw and not a technological one.

~~~
lj3
> That's different than cherry-picking on purpose in order to "win" an
> argument, which is indeed a human flaw and not a technological one.

As much as I want to believe that, it has not been my experience. I've found
that if there's a possible way to misinterpret a statement, somebody on the
internet will misinterpret it. They don't do it on purpose to win an argument
most of the time, either. It happens everywhere on the internet (HN, Reddit,
twitter, even blog comment sections) because communication is difficult and
internet increases the exposed surface area of a statement. The more people to
read a thing, the more likely it is somebody will interpret something that
wasn't intended.

~~~
the_af
Maybe. But wouldn't you say this flaw is more likely with a tech platform that
breaks down a debate into 140 character long pieces and makes it difficult to
see the whole context?

Look at the three tweets Antirez mentions. The second one starts

"the 99% percentile is bad [...]"

Antirez mentions someone took this to literally mean that percentiles are a
bad metric. To me, this doesn't particularly require bad faith or malicious
cherry-picking; it just requires a bit of carelessness, enabled by the lack of
context and no indication this was part #2 of a 3-long series of tweets. And
apparently, once the "rebuttals" start piling up, they generate a snowball
effect. Not _entirely_ Twitter's fault, but definitely made worse by it, which
is what (I think) Antirez is arguing:

> _" Once upon a time, people used to argue for days on usenet, but at least
> there was, most of the times, an argument against a new argument and so
> forth, with enough text and context to have a normal condition. This instead
> is just amplification of hate and engineering rules 101 together."_

------
hota_mazi
If you're the kind of person who's comfortable writing texts of two paragraphs
or more, you should completely avoid writing on Twitter, period. This will
only lead to frustration and interaction with people who don't value the same
level of quality writing as you do.

~~~
pdimitar
Absolutely. I've drawn my conclusions several years ago and stopped being
active on Twitter, and stopped trying to look for meaningful material on it.

The painful truth is that many people realize this but they agonize over the
fact that the people they want to talk with can only be found on Twitter.
Network effect + tribalism = today's sad reality.

------
austenallred
I like how Benedict Evans describes the 140 char limit: lossy compression.

It's hilarious to me that a rule enforced by external technical reasons
(length of SMS) has become so important to the product that it's non
negotiable.

Why can't I even, for example, add a text "attachment" the same way I attach
photo, video, links, etc.? There's something hilarious about the CEO of
Twitter screenshotting the "notes" app on his iPhone in order to send a
message.

~~~
eknight15
I like the idea of a text "attachment" but I could also see it being used
negatively.

e.g. I tweet something positive in the 140 characters, and in the attachment I
have something offensive. It's similar to the editing tweet problem.

There was some press about expanding the limit
[https://www.recode.net/2016/1/5/11588480/twitter-
considering...](https://www.recode.net/2016/1/5/11588480/twitter-
considering-10000-character-limit-for-tweets)

------
kelukelugames
My biggest regret is arguing with people on Twitter. It is not productive.
Even less so than arguing on any other forum.

~~~
SwellJoe
My biggest twitter-related regret is that my most liked tweet (by thousands)
is a terrible joke about Trump. The reason I regret it so much is that within
an hour or two, I realized that people weren't liking it because it was funny
in an absurd "nothing matters" sort of way...they were liking it because they
thought it was funny in a "yeah, that'd show'em" sort of way. I realized that
people who took it as an opportunity to argue with me were really stupid...but
the people who were agreeing with me and liking it were _also_ really stupid
(so what does that make me?). There should be a German word for that feeling.

But, also arguing with people on twitter. That's bad, too. Let's just go with
that.

~~~
jcbrand
> There should be a German word for that feeling.

Best I can think of right now is "fremdschämen", which literally translates
into "foreign shame".

It means to be ashamed or embarrassed for other people's behaviour (as opposed
to your own).

------
mintplant
This is why I hate that there was such an uproar around raising the tweet
length limit. Mastodon's 500 character limit works so much better, especially
when paired with the ability to collapse the bulk of a longer post's content
under a short summary line.

------
epoch1970
The big problem I have with having conversations on Twitter is that I wasn't
even able to sign up for a Twitter account the last time I tried. It wanted me
to provide a phone number. I refuse to do this, as they have no legitimate
need for that information, even if it is just a lousy technique to try to
avoid spammers from using their service. I think the account was automatically
canceled or locked or something like that, just a few minutes after opting not
to give my phone number. I don't know if this is still the case, but it turned
me off of Twitter.

------
jpalomaki
From the comments in the article: " It certainly works much better as a
broadcast medium and for giving occasional shout-outs, high fives, and
anything you know isn't going to go beyond a short, positive interaction "

Looking at the Twitter design, this seems to be the intended use. At least in
my stream almost all tweets are accompanied by a large picture. Quite often
something that is not even very relevant, since they are auto picking the
pictures for linked web sites. This makes very poor use of screen real estate.
If conversations were a thing for them, I would expect a different design.

------
mst
The newer tendency to mark threads with numbers so that people at least know
there _is_ context to a particular mid-thread tweet seems to help somewhat,
but the general problem remains.

It also fascinates me how badly editors' choice of headlines to make people
more likely to click can screw up the debate because many people respond to
the clickbait headline without clicking, and end up drawing conclusions that
aren't at all supported by the article. Presumably this is also a problem on
facebook, but I deleted my account there some time ago.

------
jancsika
So far I'm only convinced the author would have gotten longer, more verbose
flow on Usenet or Mailman. I am not convinced the ideas contained in that flow
would have been any more valuable.

To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what insight I would gain in this specific
case from reading anything _other_ that a) your post on diskless replication,
b) the Stripe engineers' report, and maybe c) a few of the paragraphs of your
response in this post.

------
lyra_comms
Twitter wasn't designed to enable good conversations - it was designed for
rapid, viral growth thanks to a gimmick which limits message length and
sensible, nuanced interaction.

Have a look at Lyra - it's a nonprofit conversation service designed with
respect for language and attention.

www.hellolyra.com

------
kleiba
Potentially relevant, since the article draws a comparison between twitter
discussions and (what used to be) usenet discussions:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September)

Twitter seems to support less of a netiquette, it's more point-and-shoot.
Besides that, it seems intuitive that the 140 chars restriction lends itself
less to discussions than proper forums.

------
DrNuke
I find Twitter the only bearable bulletin these days, just following my
industry influencers without participating actively.

------
k__
Why care about some ppl in twitter?

I met a bunch of people hating on React and a bunch of people loving it.

No value in these tweets.

------
agentgt
For service consistency we have been experimenting with the CV which is the
standard deviation over the mean (with of course 99% as well being looked at).

I told someone we were looking at it and I too got a similar response.

------
ealexhudson
(This is a few years old at this point..)

------
wfunction
Seems like part of this could've been prevented by just tweeting with (1/) or
(2/) in the beginning of multi-tweet posts.

