
Rules Won’t Save Twitter. Values Will - aaronbrethorst
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/08/opinion/twitter-alex-jones-jack-dorsey.html
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malvosenior
If the New York Times wants to clean up Twitter they can start with their own
staff. They just hired one of the more toxic Twitter personalities to their
editorial board:

[https://twitter.com/nickmon1112/status/1025437806775226368](https://twitter.com/nickmon1112/status/1025437806775226368)

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chirau
Rules are set after consideration of values.

I am with Jack on this one. You don't just change rules because everyone else
is doing it. What Kara and a lot of other groupthinkers don't realize is how
prejudgemental they actually are.

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creaghpatr
>His intent was to tamp down widespread rumors that Twitter was “shadow
banning” — who comes up with these creepy terms? — some conservative users.

Slurring her political opponents as 'creepy'...does she think people are
buying that dirty rhetorical trick in 2018?

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happytoexplain
It's possible I'm being pessimistic, but it seems to me that readers/listeners
are more willing to rally around dirty rhetorical tricks in the past few years
than any other time I can remember.

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TremendousJudge
you're just paying more attention

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Spivak
I feel like Kara could have made a relatively persuasive argument about
different moderation styles and whether it makes sense for us to care more
about adherence to a system than making a positive change but I feel like this
one kind of missed the mark. It's essentially just a rant about how Twitter
won't ban someone she, and a lot of other people, don't like.

I completely agree with her that Twitter, or really any online community,
would be better with subjective human driven moderation guided by values but I
see two main issues: moderators have to be angels with nigh perfect knowledge
and human moderation doesn't scale.

Communities above a certain size are going to struggle with this until the end
of time. The only change Twitter can reasonably make isn't to their moderation
strategy but platform changes to make Twitter feel smaller. Some examples:

\- Only allowing people who you follow to reply to your Tweets and giving
posters the ability to disable replies for individual messages or account-wide
to stop worldwide dogpiling.

\- Changing the default tweet to be protected and having more fine grained
controls to limit their audience.

\- Making popularity metrics on tweets visible only to the author.

\- Hiding retweets be default.

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jeffreyrogers
The best description I've heard of twitter is that it's a mirror disguised as
a window. Twitter can be great for getting a diverse perspective that most
people wouldn't otherwise have access to. It can also turn into an echo
chamber that only reinforces and amplifies your existing biases. If what you
see on twitter is hate, vitriol, and groupthink then maybe what's ugly is you,
not the world you think you're observing.

I am not sure what good banning people from the service does. I don't think it
stops people from thinking outrageous and hurtful things. It just moves them
elsewhere and makes them less likely to encounter people who could help them
be more civil and less sensational.

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digi_owl
Social media in general can turn into an echo chamber quite quickly.

But so can traditional media, as there used to be a newspaper for every
opinion out there...

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dmritard96
unfortunately, I'm not sure I really buy this.

Twitter was basically about to allow Nuclear war to start on its platform.
Alex Jones is kinda a foot note comparatively.

Anyways, unfortunately I think a president that gas lights everyone via
twitter is what has saved twitter...

