
Twitter's Fucked - buffyoda
http://degoes.net/articles/fuck-twitter
======
ivraatiems
Yep. Yep, yep, yep. And Twitter's response is to ban some, but not all
harassers, using the algorithm of "whoever is high profile and we don't like
politically." That gives said harassers surprisingly legitimate reasons to
claim censorship by Twitter as a company, despite the fact that they were in
clear violation of Twitter's ToS and deserved to be banned.

I refer of course to the Milo Yiannopoulos situation (edit: I said the article
didn't mention. I missed the mention.). The man deserved what he got, but
there are dozens of accounts that were his "executors" \- doing the actual
harassment for him in many cases - who got off scot-free, while he remains
banned. There is no consistency.

I think there's a possibility that the arbitrary enforcement is partially
because Twitter knows that if it were consistent in enforcing its own rules,
so much of its population of users would disappear that it would be hobbling
itself.

The only "safe" way to use Twitter now is as an echo chamber - only follow
people you like, only talk to people who think the same way you do. That's a
waste.

~~~
Neetpeople
I have personally lost the belief that you can actually change someone's
opinion on almost anything. So an echo chamber doesn't have to be a bad thing.
I think people overestimate the value of having your beliefs challenged, does
it ever really change someone's mind? If that's the case, you might as well
view twitter as entertainment and to clue into the things you care about, in
which case it can be pretty useful.

~~~
ivraatiems
You _can_ change somebody's opinion, just not through one direct interaction.
An opinion change requires time, internal rationalization, and repeated
exposure.

An echo chamber is bad because it not only repeatedly re-broadcasts beliefs,
it also amplifies them. "The President is wrong and should be voted out of
office" can turn into "The President is wrong and ought to be shot" in an echo
chamber environment much faster if there's nobody around to say "wait, hold
up, maybe don't."

~~~
TheOneTrueKyle
Most likely at that point, they are making the opinion for themselves and you
probably have very little in the decision making

~~~
ivraatiems
Yes, that's exactly what is happening. You can't reach into somebody's brain
and make them change, but you can plant little idea-seeds that grow into
change.

~~~
asQuirreL
Recent studies [Nolan 2010] have shown this method to be tricky and dangerous,
but effective.

[Nolan 2010]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inception](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inception)

P.S. Sorry... couldn't resist ;)

------
jonstokes
True story: I was at a fundraiser in SF in about 2009, and over the course of
the evening I found myself chatting about Twitter on two different occasions:
once with Bill Maris of Google Ventures, and once with Joi Ito.

Bill and I were actually talking about what kind of investments GV was looking
to make. He stressed that GV was looking to invest in businesses that were
actually good businesses. As a counterexample, he brought up Twitter, which at
the time he considered to be a "good investment" (said with a grin and a wink)
but not a "good business". I had one of those feelings that you get when
somebody really smart just shared with you The Truth.

Later I found myself in a conversation with Joi, I think as part of a group
and not one-on-one, and Joi was talking about Twitter's lack of revenue. Joi
was an early stage investor in Twitter, and he was telling us something to the
effect of, "once we have all these users, we're going to bring everyone to the
table and figure out how to monetize and what we can charge for."

Over the years I've thought a lot about Bill's distinction between a "good
investment" and a "good business", and about Joi's "users first, money later"
optimism. I always felt like Bill would be proven right in the long-term, and
I think at this point he sorta has been.

Ultimately, though, either approach to investing can work -- but if you're
gonna do the Joi thing, you gotta know when to get out of the trade. (I have
no idea if/when Joi got out... just stating a general principle.)

~~~
econner
How is Twitter not a good business? It's still worth $11 billion.

~~~
majani
It's never made a profit.

~~~
econner
This is a good point. So I looked up some Twitter financials.

In 2015 they posted a Net Income of -$521.03M and EBITDA of -$137.21M.

I don't exactly understand how those two numbers can differ so much, but
either way they're pretttty bad.

~~~
tim333
I was curious as to why the two numbers differed so much. A lot of it seems to
be deprecation charges on servers and networking gear.

------
ryanmarsh
Does Twitter have to be Facebook to not be "fucked"?

I don't understand these statements that "Twitter is fucked". Twitter could
improve filtering and safety but if it never changed I'd probably still get my
news from it for the rest of my life. I just can't think of a better app for
my use cases. I often like Twitter Moments, like something funny or some pop
culture stuff I wouldn't have picked up on.

Every time there is breaking news Twitter carries it first.

I don't want longer tweets. That's what URL's are for. If you want to discuss
really distill your thoughts and thread them. I'm on here to scan for stuff
that lights up my brain not have an Op-Ed shoved in my face taking up the
whole screen.

I just don't understand. I love twitter.

~~~
hacker_9
People love to hate Facebook and Twitter, but they ain't going anywhere. The
service they provide is too useful, and after so many years they are ingrained
in people's social lives.

~~~
ryanmarsh
Exactly. They fill a need. These Monday morning quarterbacks should march up
to sand hill with a prototype and build their own. Leave my twitter alone.

~~~
cmurf
Well the actual quarterbacks, in the form of its owners, are selling. Today
it's down 14%. It's lost 1/2 its value in 12 months. It's not profitable.

Now maybe they just haven't discovered, or innovated, a business model that'll
at least stop them from taking on more water. Nevertheless, I'm curious how
much it's worth to you, in dollars, per day, per month or per year. Because $0
isn't working, clearly.

------
devishard
My rule is that if nobody would pay for your service, you probably don't have
a worthwhile business.

If Google instituted a $0.99 monthly fee to use Google search, people would
line up to pay it. They don't have to, because their business model works
differently, but they _could_ do that, and it would work. I'd probably pay for
an account.

If Facebook instituted a $0.99 monthly fee to use that, a lot of people would
do it just because it keeps them in the loop with their friends. And in fact,
many people would be willing to pay $2.99/mo for a business account which gets
to do more (like post more events or whatever). Again, this isn't their
business model, but this would totally work as a business model.

People would pay for Uber de-facto; they _do_ pay for Uber.

Likewise, half my coworkers have bought coin packs in Pokémon Go. In general,
lots of games do pay models.

If Twitter added a $0.99/year fee, there would be a clone written in a more
scalable architecture taking all their users within a week. Some businesses
would keep Twitter accounts, but that number would decrease as they lost
users. Remember that Twitter added some minor advertising and instantly
started losing users.

There are tons of other startups with this problem. The idea these days is,
get a bunch of users and introduce ads. The problem there is that when you add
ads, you're fundamentally changing your service. It's a bait-and-switch. And
once you do the switch, if people weren't willing to pay for your service
before, they're not going to want to start paying for it in the form of ads.

~~~
virtualwhys
> there would be a clone written in a more scalable architecture

Curious, what would be more scalable than Twitter's existing JVM based
architecture? 3 years ago[1] they were able to handle upwards of 140 (edit)
thousand tweets per second without any latency -- that's pretty ridiculous.

[1] [https://blog.twitter.com/2013/new-tweets-per-second-
record-a...](https://blog.twitter.com/2013/new-tweets-per-second-record-and-
how)

~~~
devishard
I didn't explain that well--initially Twitter was on RoR and sharded MySQL,
which wasn't scalable. Obviously they have done a lot of scaling work and can
handle their load now.

If I were implementing Twitter today, I'd probably do Elixir and Cassandra. I
don't generally leap to go NoSQL but Twitter's structure is particularly
suited to Cassandra. Elixir gives the ease of development I associate with
Ruby with the scalable, decentralizable BEAM. I'd also consider going with
Erlang straight up--it may not be as pretty as Elixir, but there's a lot to be
said for maturity in a language.

But I'm saying this because I have the benefit of newer technologies and
having seen Twitter's mistakes. From a technical perspective, I think Twitter
is pretty well done.

------
raiyu
Every platform that is public and anonmyous runs afoul of this, this isn't
just twitter. You can look at Youtube comments, reddit, pretty much any forum.

What's missing is that other platforms, like Facebook, took a very hard stance
on this and forced people to signup as their real identities.

Twitter, can easily follow suit. That won't fix all of the problems, but it
will go towards improving things and it won't require massive product updates
and changes to the UX.

Given that their MAU growth numbers are low, and no longer the number that
they want the public market to focus on, actually instating this now wouldn't
even be that damaging from a reporting perspective, and if they bled out a few
users that weren't really contributing it could go a long way to improving
things.

Technically there is a privacy setting that twitter doesn't play up that can
be used for people that want to use twitter as a consumption platform and
limit the interactivity from other people.

Twitter is still fundamentally different and more open than facebook and with
requesting non-anonymous users they can still keep that open platform and
potentially clean up some of the outlier conversations that seem to be a focus
for so many people of what's wrong with twitter.

~~~
sievebrain
HN is public and anonymous and mostly manages to not suffer this problem, due
to the heavy manual labour of the moderators and a whole lot of selection bias
in its userbase.

To a slightly lesser extent, Slashdot has also licked that problem: for any
story that attracts enough comments (more than 300) the top rated ones are
often pretty good and the worthless ones start auto-collapsed. Even though
Slashdot gets a lot of jip these days, some of it deserved, I've still spent
many enjoyable hours reading some of the top rated comments there. Especially
nice is the fact that upvotes must have an adjective attached, which gently
nudges users into certain kinds of behaviour. For instance it's the only site
I've encountered where people often post extremely funny comments despite the
serious topics. The moderation system there encourages that sort of behaviour.

~~~
xseven
HN is not as mainstream as Twitter or Reddit, so I don't think we can really
compare it that way

~~~
dabockster
I wouldn't necessarily consider Reddit mainstream either. Sure, it has a lot
of users. But I don't hear people on the streets telling each other to look at
their subreddits.

~~~
gedrap
If we can trust in Alexa, reddit is #26 globally and #9 in the US. Even with
some error margin, that's damn mainstream.

------
epberry
I actually think none of these things are Twitter's biggest problems and that
while they are big issues Twitter could gradually, painstakingly fix them
through thoughtful policies coupled with careful engineering. Their biggest
problem is Facebook rapidly building Twitter's future inside Facebook.

What I mean is this: I agree with Jack's vision of Twitter being a "window to
the world", a place where you can instantly get a sense of what your
compatriots are thinking and how they are reacting to news. They have two
features which accomplish this pretty well: hashtags and live video. When
crazy things are happening Twitter is one of the best ways to "live" the event
through those two features. Jack appears to have taken this to heart and
recently said that Twitter's future will heavily involve breaking news. This
also addresses one of the big complaints in this post - you can't have a
thoughtful debate in 140 characters. But you can react! And you can absorb
little pieces of information and media.

Unfortunately for Twitter, Facebook has also seen the writing and the wall and
has built superior versions of hashtags and live video directly into their
experience. I have seen a noticeable improvement in the specificity and
granularity of their trending topics lately and we've all seen over the past
couple weeks how effective and raw (maybe too raw) their live video is.

So I don't think Twitter is fucked - I think their future still, after all
these laggard years, has a lot of potential. The problem is they have to stare
down an 800,000 pound blue and white gorilla to win.

------
patrickmay
Speech is not violence. The author's conflation of the two trivializes actual
physical violence.

~~~
peterwwillis
[http://www.nonviolentcommunication.com/aboutnvc/nonviolent_c...](http://www.nonviolentcommunication.com/aboutnvc/nonviolent_communication.htm)

[https://www.heartland.edu/documents/idc/What%20is%20violent%...](https://www.heartland.edu/documents/idc/What%20is%20violent%20comm%20and%20nvc%20\(Winters\).pdf)

~~~
nostrebored
Again, in both cases it's using violence as a rhetorical trick.

Verbal and emotional abuse of children are serious issues, but they do NOT
have to be violent for them to be horrible. The conflation of the two muddies
the language that we have to describe the events that happen to us.

If someone says, my parents were very violent to me, what would you assume
happened? Doesn't knowing that there was physical abuse help give context that
helps you respond to the situation?

~~~
peterwwillis
Did you even read the links?

'Violent speech' and 'violent communication' are a form of violence. They have
a nuanced definition. They can be used in multiple ways. Language is not
strict. It is fluid, it changes over time, and in this case, totally applies
to the subject. You are arguing for an unrealistic, unenforceable, overly-
literal use of language.

~~~
nostrebored
We have word-phrases for what you're talking about. More nuanced than your
proposed catch-all of 'violent communication.'

As someone who's been on the receiving end of a large portion of 'violent
communication', it's much easier, and significantly more validating to say
'emotional abuse' or 'hate speech'.

I don't understand what about asking violence to retain its definition is
unrealistic. It's an important word with important implications.

(I did read the links -- that's how I pulled an example out of them. You
really are a fan of rhetorical pot shots!)

~~~
peterwwillis
Violent communication is an umbrella term for a variety of causes and effects.
It may not be hateful. It may not be abusive. But it has the quality and
characteristics of the intent to cause harm, which is what violence is.

But going back to your main assertion here, you say that the word 'violence'
has a particular definition, and the use of this phrase does not retain it,
and that it thus harms people's interpretation of the word and its meaning.
Let's see if that's true.

The American Psychological Association defines it as this:

 _" Violence is an extreme form of aggression, such as assault, rape or
murder. Violence has many causes, including frustration, exposure to 𝘃𝗶𝗼𝗹𝗲𝗻𝘁
𝗺𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮, violence in the home or neighborhood and a tendency to 𝘀𝗲𝗲 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿
𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲'𝘀 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗮𝘀 𝗵𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗹𝗲 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆'𝗿𝗲 𝗻𝗼𝘁. Certain situations also
increase the risk of aggression, such as drinking, insults and other
provocations and environmental factors like heat and overcrowding."_

The Oxford dictionary has this definition:

 _" violence. Pronunciation: /ˈvī(ə)ləns/. noun. 1) Behavior involving
physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something. 1.1)
𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗴𝘁𝗵 𝗼𝗳 𝗲𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗿 𝗮𝗻 𝘂𝗻𝗽𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗿 𝗱𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗻𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗰𝗲: 𝘁𝗵𝗲
𝘃𝗶𝗼𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀. 1.2) Law The unlawful exercise of physical force
or intimidation by the exhibition of such force. To do violence to. Damage or
adversely affect. Origin: Middle English: via Old French from Latin violentia,
from violent- 'vehement, violent' (see violent)."_

Wikipedia has this to say:

 _" Violence is defined by the World Health Organization as "the intentional
use of physical force 𝗼𝗿 𝗽𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿, 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗱 or actual, against oneself, another
person, or against a group or community, which either results in or has a high
likelihood of resulting in injury, death, 𝗽𝘀𝘆𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗺, maldevelopment,
or deprivation", although the group acknowledges that the inclusion of "the
use of power" in its definition expands on the conventional meaning of the
word.[2] This definition involves intentionality with the committing of the
act itself, 𝗶𝗿𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗶𝘁 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝗲𝘀. However, generally,
𝗮𝗻𝘆𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗲𝘅𝗰𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝗻 𝗶𝗻𝗷𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗼𝗿 𝗱𝗮𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗮𝘆 𝗺𝗮𝘆 𝗯𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗯𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝘀
𝘃𝗶𝗼𝗹𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗶𝗳 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲 𝘃𝗶𝗼𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 (by a person and against a person)."_

Also note that Wikipedia (and many other sources) define the _types_ of
violence as self-directed, interpersonal, and collective, spanning acts such
as physical, sexual, _verbal, psychological, and emotional_. (Other sources
include expanded or additional categories)

\--

You'll note that in many definitions, the term encompasses several iterations
on the theme, such as assault and non-physical harm. (As a fellow linguist,
i'm sure you're aware that the definitions of the word "assault" in both a
legal and non-legal context includes non-physical harm) According to multiple
sources, the definition of the word flies in the face of your more strict
interpretation.

But you also mention catch-all word-phrases for things like this - like
'violent communication'! You can also notice that since the word 'violent' is
in the phrase - and since it is the root word of 'violence' \- and since their
mutual definitions span the same subjects and imply the same cause and effect
- that it isn't a perversion of the original word's meaning at all, but merely
elucidates a particular category of thing the root word wouldn't have directly
described as well.

Now, let's finally address your love of the word 'rhetorical'. The word
'rhetorical', in a general definition, is to form a question in order to make
a point rather than elicit an answer.

Taking into account the rest of my argument & evidence on the original
subject, don't you think it might be more useful to use language to point out
a flaw in logic, rather than trying to break down someone's argument with ad-
hominem attacks?

~~~
nostrebored
You're willfully misinterpreting definitions here:

>>" Violence is an extreme form of aggression, such as assault, rape or
murder. Violence has many causes, including frustration, exposure to 𝘃𝗶𝗼𝗹𝗲𝗻𝘁
𝗺𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮, violence in the home or neighborhood and a tendency to 𝘀𝗲𝗲 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿
𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲'𝘀 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗮𝘀 𝗵𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗹𝗲 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆'𝗿𝗲 𝗻𝗼𝘁. Certain situations also
increase the risk of aggression, such as drinking, insults and other
provocations and environmental factors like heat and overcrowding."

Notice the APA's definitions includes assault, rape, and murder, and your
bolded text specifically refers to the root causes of violence. The exposure
to violent media predisposes people to violence, the perception of other
people's actions as hostile even when they're not causes a misunderstanding
that leads to violence.

1.1) from the Oxford definition is a testament to how strongly people react to
violence.

The Wikipedia article is a far more compelling argument for your case, but the
WHO has political interests that colors their definition of the word. Was the
FDA promoting trans fats violent? It certainly is an action that was taken
from a position of power which caused harm. The FDA actually might be one of
the more violent domestic US institutions under this definition. Are all
parents violent? Doing some harm to your child's mental health or well being
is going to happen in 18 years of making decisions.

Clearly there is a difference in significance between the 'violence' of a
parent who teases their child a few times and a parent who is beating their
child.

We have an obvious colloquial use of the word violence that supercedes using
violent as an adjective in this way. If we're going to talk about linguistic
drift, this is a very poor example. Rather, this appears to be a small number
of people who are attempting to expand the definition of violent. This
definition has only been adopted by a few special interests groups who have a
vested interest in changing how the larger population communicates. One method
that they are using to do this is using rhetorical[1] tricks, like labeling
everyone who does not agree with them as violent, by using overly loose
definitions like the WHO example above.

[1] When an argument is nearly entirely about the way that we use rhetoric,
I'll use the word rhetorical. That's the nice thing about words, when they
have strong definitions, they're highly applicable to situations. You can use
them and everyone will know what you're talking about!

------
tetrep
While I agree with most of the author's points, I'm not convinced at how
possible it would be to have a product that "adopts the market-orientation and
ad hoc network of Twitter" in such a way that "harassment would be
impossible." While deep learning and similar technologies can certainly make
it much more difficult to harass someone, you can't rely on the content of
someones message[0] nor can you rely on the network status of an individual,
as spam accounts won't be readily differentiable from new accounts, and
blocking new accounts from contacting people defeats the "ad hoc network"
requirement.

[0]: People are great at communicating meaning non-literally (see: definition
of literally) and one of the ways that manifests itself is through slang,
which is going to break anything but a so-close-it-might-as-well-be-AI system.
If you ban a word or phrase, it's meaning will be communicated through another
word or phrase. The insulting adversary has an advantage here, as they can use
other real words and phrases that would otherwise be innocuous to insult you,
it would be especially advantageous to use popular/common words/phrases as
replacements (see: euphemisms).

It's certainly possible to train a system in hindsight, but I highly doubt you
could do so in real-time and any delay in reacting to new slang means that's
when antagonists will strike. Hell, you could even do asynchronously defined
insults, send many messages containing various words phrases and then
announce, shortly after their delivery, what they mean (heh...).

~~~
ctvo
Why did you jump to ML as the solution to a vague product description (and
then proceed to outline how it'd be difficult to do with ML)?

Twitter 2.0 could do something as simple as forego the linear timeline (and
the restrictions that that imposes re: filtering) and still achieve all the
goals the author outlined.

------
bad_user
I disagree with the author because I've seen much more hostile content on
Facebook, which doesn't exhibit any of the author's identified causes.

I also think John De Goes doesn't mention the elephant in the room with which
he got burned, the last LandaConf along their policy and handling of the
created situation. And far from me to judge that situation in this comment,
but I find his judgment compromised, to say the least, if not disingenuous.

As for some of his claims, I'm actually glad that Twitter doesn't filter my
content. I DO NOT want any more filter bubbles. I actually want the people I
respect to show me their religion and political beliefs. In fact I want
disagreeing opinions, even if painful, because that's how I learn. I'm a
tolerant kind of guy and I want to see the world for what it is. And if I
can't tolerate somebody, then I'm not interested about his work or jokes
either.

------
im_down_w_otp
I'm sympathetic to the author's general ideas, but also find myself perturbed
by the myopic cheapening of the term "violence". (chars < 140)

~~~
thex10
I found the author's usage of the term eye-opening rather than myopic!

~~~
im_down_w_otp
Interesting. The way it was used seemed hyperbolic & better replaced w/
something like, "banal", "vapid", "uncivil" or "derogatory". (< 140)

------
atemerev
People are tired from crybullies. We need a place where freedom of speech
still matters.

Freedom of speech doesn't include invading someone's privacy (this is illegal;
doxxing, stalking etc. should be banned and actively fought against). But if
you can't handle insults, it is not anyone's job to prevent them. There's
always "Block" button, and then, there's always "delete account" button.

~~~
eropple
Explain to me how effective blocking individuals is when you're being spammed
by dozens and hundreds of people with so little to do that they will happily
go create egg accounts to continue harassing you. It's not practical or
feasible to block all of them. So people should delete their accounts because
they get brigaded? To _hell_ with that, and with the people who think that is
a social norm worth protecting.

"Crybullies." And I literally thought this could not get any sillier a thing.

~~~
throwanem
Without taking a stance on either side of this contentious issue, I would note
that it should be technically feasible to offer an option which would auto-
block any account that hasn't established a certain extent of "not a troll
sockpuppet" bona fides - for example, by being more than a few weeks old, and
having a certain degree of engagement with the community at large. Accounts
which fail to meet these criteria, and persist in attempts to abuse someone
already recognized as being targeted, might be automatically suspended or
banned.

I don't care for Twitter particularly, but it's a thing that exists, and it's
not likely to go away any time soon. And I don't care for shitposter brigades
_at all_. As the current brouhaha demonstrates, manual intervention in high-
profile cases is no solution at all. Twitter's engineering team is easily
capable of an automated solution; all they need is for their management to
turn them loose on the problem. I'm not sure why that hasn't yet happened. Of
course it's impossible for any automated solution to make everyone happy - but
what we're looking at right now is a response that has made everyone
_unhappy_. Twitter can do better. I hope they take this incident as sufficient
reason to do so.

~~~
eropple
I hear and respect what you're saying, but I don't think you can
technologically fix a social problem. Twitter needs _moderation_ , and I don't
think that's practically accomplished with a purely technological solution.
Assholes simply don't have a right to be there, and Twitter has a
responsibility to its userbase to not subject them to it at all, rather than
merely "well, machine learning" to a merely intermittently abusive, rather
than constantly abusive, state.

~~~
braythwayt
FWIW, even attempting technological solutions sends a signal of a sort. It's
probably a "Red Queen's Race" to stay ahead of determined abusers, just as
it's difficult to conquer spam, but one side-effect of making a concerted
effort to try is that Twitter would be sending an unambiguous message about
limits on behaviour.

~~~
eropple
This is a good point. That _some_ movement is happening is, unambiguously, a
good thing. It demonstrates at least some recognition of the situation.
Whether it's the right movement, or whether Twitter will consider it to be
"enough" and stop, is still an open question.

------
jklinger410
>The root problem with Twitter is that the product is carefully engineered to
cultivate maximum violence.

Hard to make it past this part. Not sure what definition of violence you're
using.

------
smacktoward
I made a version of this argument three years ago here:
[http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/02/i-kind-of-hate-
twitter/](http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/02/i-kind-of-hate-twitter/)

Twitter's core problem is that _its product 's design encourages users to
behave badly._ Mechanisms are baked deeply into it that make it very difficult
for its users to come across as anything other than jerks. Even those with the
best of intentions fall afoul of these mechanisms by accident periodically,
sometimes with serious real-world consequences like loss of a job or important
personal relationships. Users with _bad_ intentions, meanwhile, are enabled
and rewarded by other mechanisms.

Twitter is a Perfect Storm of bad discussion software design.

------
stcredzero
_The severe limitation on the size of tweets selects for puerile violence
rather than thoughtful, mutually satisfying interactions._

It's not just the size of tweets, though that does exacerbate things. The
entire attention economy of online social media rewards viral attention, and
therefore it rewards outrage politics. (Politics in the general sense of _Homo
sapiens_ following its social mammal instincts.)

~~~
ryanmarsh
Give them 500 characters. It doesn't matter it's the commons. You want people
to behave? Teach real civics in the schools.

~~~
stcredzero
_It doesn 't matter it's the commons._

Oh yes, it _does_! There's a ton of historical, economic, and game theoretic
work that indicates this matters. A lot!

 _You want people to behave? Teach real civics in the schools._

That only provides the information, not the incentive. If you want people to
behave, give them a stake in society.

~~~
ryanmarsh
All good points. Perhaps I was too flippant. To clarify, it does matter how
people behave. I just have little faith that the commons won't continue to
fall tragedy to itself without some sort of indoctrination (or incentive
system as you pointed out).

------
67726e
I don't think the author knows the definition of "violence"

~~~
dspillett
I think he has a fair idea:

[http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/violenc...](http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/violence)

2\. Strength of emotion or of a destructive natural force

~~~
michaelbuddy
You're broadening / redirecting that definition. One can have violent feelings
or reactions to something, such as someone suffering PTSD, mental breakdown,
emotional reaction to medicine. But one can't just claim that words that they
don't like spoken by someone are violence committed on them. At that point you
get into the "you're raping me with your thoughts" and that's just
irrationality. If one were irrational words will no longer retain meaning
anyway.

------
meerita
Trying to stop people trolling, insulting or having bad behavior is a waste of
time. Instead of that, make tools so people can filter the noise properly.

------
rufus_2
The banning of Milo is beyond hypocritical, the person he was "harassing" said
far worse things, yet she remains and keeps her little blue check. What a
joke.

~~~
intoverflow2
She also actively encouraged her followers to harass back to the people she
was harassed by. Which he was accused of inciting although he never actually
said it while she openly told they to do it and boasted about it.

But yeah one is a flavour of the month celeb and the other is a loudmouth who
doesn't meld well with Twitter employees political leanings. But both violated
TOS and both should have been banned.

------
glomek
> Free speech has a legal definition, and Twitter doesn’t qualify.

The legal definition of free speech is based on a moral principle, for which
Twitter _does_ qualify.

When a platform such as Twitter or Facebook becomes the de facto public
square, then a ban from Twitter or Facebook is a de facto ban from the public
square.

I don't care about Milo in particular, but I do care about the fact that
censorship by Twitter or Facebook _is_ real censorship.

------
6stringmerc
> _This means if you follow someone for what they have to say about
> professional improv comedy, you also get to hear them trash your religion,
> berate the intelligence of people who vote the way you do, and otherwise
> rant about and retweet topics you don’t want to hear about._

Wow, this is a really impressive observation that I think I, and maybe others,
have sensed but couldn't quite express. This is super relevant to me in the
music sphere, as I enjoy the art form but find numerous "Twitter Winners" like
Father John Misty toxic in the long term. Disclosure: I needled FJM on Twitter
following his immature diatribe that dropped 7 F-bombs on an un-expecting
family-oriented afternoon because its hurtful to fans and other artists.

------
squigs25
Another issue that contributes to anger on Twitter is that comments on tweets
are displayed based on the time which they appeared. So angry and unhelpful
comments often appear at the top, even if no one likes them, because they were
posted first.

------
d4rti
Jon Ronson's So You've Been Publicly Shamed ([https://www.amazon.co.uk/So-
Youve-Been-Publicly-Shamed/dp/03...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/So-Youve-Been-
Publicly-Shamed/dp/0330492284)) is an interesting book that goes into some
detail on the moral outrage and abuse side of social media.

------
Disruptive_Dave
Total side beef: can we all please stop comparing Pokemon Go DAUs with those
of massive social platforms that have been around for years and years? It's
just silly.

------
Sir_Cmpwn
I agree with a lot of this article, but want to call out this point for
discussion:

>This means if you follow someone for what they have to say about professional
improv comedy, you also get to hear them trash your religion, berate the
intelligence of people who vote the way you do, and otherwise rant about and
retweet topics you don’t want to hear about.

This sounds like the author is _asking_ for Twitter to build an echo chamber
for him? I would rather not have that for my account tbh and I would like to
discourage Twitter from heading in this direction (though it has already
started to do some of that).

~~~
sievebrain
Just tweet tagging would do the trick. Probably tweets are too short to auto-
tag, but medium manages to do it for longer form content.

------
CiPHPerCoder

      > There are four types of content that can earn you retweets:
      > 
      > 1. Indignant
      > 2. Insulting / Harassing
      > 3. Cute / Funny
      > 4. Insightful / Intelligent
    

...

    
    
      > Of these four kinds of content, two are inherently violent, 
      > and the other two have the potential for violence (mean jokes, condescension).
    

Today I learned that sharing an intelligent/insightful comment is potentially
violent enough to be worth commenting on.

I guess I'll just make dumb and obvious statements from now on, since I value
peace.

~~~
oldmanjay
This continued attempt to redefine violence to include words disturbs me in a
very fundamental way. It's a legitimate attempt to make thoughtcrime viable by
people who firmly believe all human ills can be solved if you just wag enough
fingers in faces.

------
ScaryRacoon
I like how everyone now wants an echo chamber of their own ideas and are so
uncomfortable with someone who challenges their opinions that they demand a
service change the way it operates. I'm not saying the bashing/harassment is
okay, it isn't.

------
jdp23
> I actually think that, for technology companies, more people will choose
> providers that are completely non-political.

There's no way for a tech company to be "completely non-political." So I
actually think that people will continue to prefer providers whose politics
they see as compatible with theirs. And it seems to me that tech companies
like Google and Microsoft and Apple (in their public pushback against
government surveillance) and AirBnB (bringing in Eric Holder to do a non-
discrimination policy) see things similarly.

Specifically when it comes to harassment and hate speech, while I certainly
agree with his points of making it easier for people to protect themselves, in
the end there's no way to avoid taking a political stance. Twitter (like
Facebook and most other large social networks) has a policy that "you may not
promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the
basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender
identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease". Obviously
that's an inherently political position. But conversely, _not_ having a policy
like that -- saying that attacking, threatening, and promoting violence
against people based on these characteristics is okay and it's up to them to
use the tools to insulate themselves from it -- is just as political. There
really isn't a neutral position.

[Of course this is the same guy who doesn't see that a decision to let Curtis
Yarvin speak at his conference is just as political as a decision not to. To
be clear, I'm not saying it was a right or wrong decision; I'm just saying it
was political either way.]

------
smt88
This is an excellent assessment with more depth and nuance than its title
suggests. It also isn't the same old Twitter-bashing.

I hate Twitter, but I don't necessarily agree that it's too broken to fix.
There's a place for a Twitter-like product in the world, and Twitter is
already entrenched.

The question of a Twitter revamp is this: will it alienate existing heavy
users? Will that effect be counterbalanced by new users?

------
jomamaxx
It's an interesting treatise, but I suggest the author is describing media in
general. Tech has only amplified the faults of media: emotionally visceral and
passionate (i.e. as opposed to dispassionate or objective) news gets the
clicks.

Very proud and 'credible' news outlets face this problem and it's real. Either
get the clicks or go out of business.

------
TimJRobinson
How about a rating system for people? And each rating could also be biased by
the rating of the person giving the rating. Kind of like pagerank for people.
Then the posts of those who have the most positive ratings float to the top of
the stream.

Sure trolls will support other trolls but I'm pretty convinced most people are
good people and should easily outnumber and be able to take down gangs of
trolls online.

This way the community self moderates and is able to weed out the undesirables
and assholes on the platform all by themself, no intervention required.

The people you rated highly could also float to the top of your stream so if
you enjoy the trash talking of milo or similar characters you can still see
them without them poisoning the well for everyone else.

~~~
scholia
There is a sort of rating system, in the follower ratio. Each follower
represents a "vote" for the value of that person's Twitter stream.

It's not only the number but also the ratio. There are people who have 200,000
followers because they are following 200,000 people. This tells you their
tweets are worthless. (And if you're following 200,000 people, you're not
reading their tweets.)

------
Disruptive_Dave
Has anyone ever had substantial conversations about the idea that maybe, just
maybe, this is a human beings problem? As in we're not conditioned nor
designed to communicate in such an environment? And that this type of access
to the public and each other is so new (in the greater scheme of the world)
that we have no damn clue what we're doing? Or is everyone going to continue
to make arguments that are heavily based on the presumption that we're all
good little boys and girls who only desire / are capable of having "meaningful
interactions" online and that's the natural state of things by which
everything should be analyzed?

~~~
visakanv
Those are two extreme positions, most of the substantial conversations I have
lie in the middle. We typically assume that humans are not well-adapted (yet)
to communicating in a digital format, and so we're still developing norms and
ways of communicating tone and so on.

We're not all good little boys and girls, but we do want to have good
conversations with one another, and so we try and do what we can to make
things better as we go.

------
dddrh
I'll bite on the Twitter 2.0 comment.

In some sense, I see the descriptions he made in Snapchat. The ability to
consume content from where ever I choose, but my ability to reach out and
converse with people who create content is limited by their desire to create a
1:1 connection with me. I wasn't a big fan of Snapchat when it first came out,
but over time it has interested me with some of the decisions that they have
made to really make the product about consuming moments that are personal to
me, as well as interesting to me.

------
gkya
Twitter is best for announcing things: events, blog posts, updates, software
version and the like, plus maybe a link. Anything else is unfit for the
platform. The strings are too short.

~~~
rocky1138
Actually, what I find Twitter best for is directly talking to CEOs, lead
developers, lead marketers, or other people in high positions. They usually
reply.

For instance, I asked John Carmack if he'd ever consider doing anything on the
Atari Jaguar again (he ported Wolf3d and Doom to that platform back in 1993)
and he replied saying that he'd more likely do Apple ][ stuff if he went
retro.

How many times in a person's life do they directly talk to John Carmack? It's
amazing that you can just type a few things in and someone that powerful
replies to a relative nobody.

------
codingdave
The problem is deeper than these details -- Twitter's product doesn't solve a
problem.

It adds communication to the world, with certain unique flavors... and some
people have found ways to use it to improve reporting on news, events, or
marketing. Some people have found ways to solve minor problems for themselves,
specifically. And because of those things, it has found its traction.

But there is no major underlying problem shared by millions that Twitter
solves. Which is why it also struggles to maintain a userbase.

------
pkamb
If you post a well-shot picture on Instagram you'll immediately get a bunch of
random (but not spam) Likes and maybe a comment or two (I assume people search
their interests via hashtag: "#architecture" or "#cars" or etc.). Same with
Reddit or Hacker News; post a comment and you'll _often_ get an
upvote/reply/comment/banter in return. On Facebook your IRL friends will Like
your stuff.

Without a meaningful number of followers, on Twitter you get _nothing_.

Hashtags eat into your 140 characters, and are mostly used ironically or for
singular events/causes, which aren't really appropriate for the majority of
tweets. So no one's going to find it via search or hashtag.

There are no communities/topics/forums/subreddits to join. No way to tweet at
all the other people who like this one thing.

So to get any kind of notice/interaction with a Tweet of your own you're left
to tweeting at someone else, which feels wrong/argumentative/pushy for all the
reasons this article laid out. Infinitely more intrusive than a comment reply.
Hoping that they either retweet you or reply to you, which gets your tweet
those precious views, favorites, and replies enjoyed (and dreaded) by the most
average tweet of a well-followed account.

Those metrics (and lack there-of) either lead you to _not_ tweet yourself and
only follow [celebrities / internet-celebrities / news] or constantly [reply-
to / tweet-at / annoy / troll] those same high-profile accounts. Which is
better for Twitter?

~~~
visakanv
My tactic is this, and I've used this in several different circles – look for
people who are moderately influential in a field, but not super famous (say
less than 2k followers). Then follow them, and tweet positive things at them,
or ask genuine questions, and contribute. There's usually a group of people
who all talk to each other, and you can gently get into the conversations if
you're careful. Once you do that, and you've made decent contributions a
couple of times, they'll typically follow you.

Now I can "ask Twitter" a question and get interesting responses from dozens
of people. But it takes time and effort, which I suppose most people aren't
willing to spend.

------
nhangen
I've been using Twitter since 2006-2007, and for a long period of time I
absolutely loved, ranted, and raved about it. The problem is that now, I'm not
sure what I'm supposed to do on Twitter to offer or receive value.

Last night I was blocked by someone I followed for simply offering a tame
retort to a comment they made whilst blocking someone else.

When I tweet, nothing happens. Granted, I'm not the most interested Twitter
user in the world, but I'd like to think I have the occasional insight that
might be worth reading, favoriting, or sharing.

The only time I actually see engagement is when I'm using it for current
events, and respond to strangers. One would think that when this happens, you
might be able to cultivate those engagements into future correspondence, but
nope...it's all event based, and I have no time for that.

Despite my conservative nature and Jack's recent behavior/antics, I do like
Twitter and want it to succeed, but it's not going to be long before I stop
using it and eventually stop registering accounts for new businesses. We have
more fun with Snapchat.

------
Yabood
I think killing the 140 character limit will severely damage Twitter and turn
into a tumblr-like website. I do agree with the author on some of the
technical aspects he mentioned like filtering. I'd add to that list how
conversations are structured, they are a complete mess. It gets worse too if
you're building a product that leverages their API.

------
jcbeard
Umm, so twitter is a private company. Yeah, they can censor whoever they like.
Can the NYT censor if they want? YES! Should they, likely not b/c of backlash
from people like us. What we have to realize, is that unless there is a non-
profit totally open "commons" then there is really no recourse for us. Did
Twitter damage us monetarily? Are they even responsible outside of their terms
of service? Suspect even that has language that subjects it to change at any
time. In short, the idea that "twitter's fucked" is well...stupid. You can say
what you want, but you know what...twitter can kick you off at any time.
That's just the way it works. Has been that way since the days of BBS and
later AOL/Compuserve (and yes, I was kicked out of many of those rooms too).

------
nikdaheratik
I wonder how much of root of this can be reduced to election year political
nonsense. A year from now, it's going to be much less annoying to be on the
Internet.

The author is right that the product has some major flaws, especially around
harassment, but no one else seems to want to take over the space. And
Facebook, Tumblr, G+, etc. are all much worse platforms for the kind of
discussion that happens on Twitter.

So I think the toxic environment can definitely put a ceiling on the number of
new users, so does the timeline issues, but it could probably just keep
plodding along for another 5+ years as-is until these issues are worked out or
something much better is put in place (not likely, but possible, IMO).

------
ppod
If you use twitter as described in this article, then that's the kind of
experience you will have. It's kind of like being in a large crowded public
space. If you are loud and assertive and determined to stand up for everything
you believe in, even with strangers, then you will run into trouble no matter
how good your opinions or how polite you are.

"everyone can send anything to everyone" is twitter's USP. I can't think of
another many-to-many broadcast (publish-subscribe) platform. That is what
makes it successful, and it is vulnerable to competitors who use that model,
but I can't think of many. Snapchat kind of works like that, right?

------
kefka_p
I, for one, do want technology companies making ethically informed decisions.
It doesn't mean they will always make the right ethical decisions, but it has
a far higher chance of positive outcome than simply avoiding the matter
altogether.

I can understand why the author is somewhat frightened by the prospect, but
fear doesn't justify inaction.

To say Twitter isn't free speech because it has limitations seems dubious. The
U.S. is fairly well-regarded on the rights of speech, but even here there are
limits. That doesn't mean free speech doesn't exist, it means it is paired
with responsibility with penalties for failure to abide by those
responsibilities.

------
lossolo
I wonder why twitter will not use Machine Learning to remove terrorism
propaganda from their social network? I mean you can train neural networks to
recognize terrorism spreading accounts and tweets. It's not black magic, NLP
to get intent + classification of known/blocked terrorist accounts and just
train. Then show message "Sorry but this tweet looks like abusing our rules,
please wait until our staff will check it" or something like that. If you do
nothing where you can then you are just accomplice to spreading terrorism.

~~~
ceejayoz
The likely end result of that is just coded communication.

As a similar example, Facebook's "no gun sales" policy now has people selling
a pair of socks for $650 using a picture that just happens to have a gun in
the background. (Examples:
[https://twitter.com/ecined/status/756940120826097664](https://twitter.com/ecined/status/756940120826097664)
[https://twitter.com/monteiro/status/756639900796088320](https://twitter.com/monteiro/status/756639900796088320))

~~~
hiou
And you honestly don't think machine learning will be able to detect that as a
gun sale?

~~~
ceejayoz
The more it does, the more coded it gets.

I still have to dig into my spam folder's contents periodically to rescue
important emails for the same reasons.

------
0xmohit
I recall somebody describing retweets in a sentence:

A dog barks. Several other dogs bark.

------
harryh
It's worth nothing that John's thoughts here are no doubt heavily influenced
by his experiences on twitter during the LamdaConf/Moldbug incident.

------
EGreg
_In addition, Twitter lets anyone contact anyone with any kind of content, and
will send a notification to the recipient. As a result, any person or bot with
a Twitter account has the ability to interrupt your life with an invasive,
hateful message at any time._

What? I thought they had to follow you for your Direct Message to reach them.
So I can contact potential advisors through twitter if I can't figure out
their email address?

~~~
csixty4
You can open up your DMs so anybody can message you now.

~~~
EGreg
I believe you are wrong:

[https://cl.ly/0a2C3d432i1W](https://cl.ly/0a2C3d432i1W)

[https://support.twitter.com/articles/14606](https://support.twitter.com/articles/14606)

It does say _If you are sending Direct Messages to accounts that do not follow
you, you may need to verify your phone number._ and I did verify my phone
number - still nothing.

~~~
csixty4
It's not on by default. TBL probably doesn't have it enabled. It's on the
Security settings page[1]

[1]
[https://twitter.com/settings/security](https://twitter.com/settings/security)

------
moron4hire
Y'all must be using a different Twitter than the one I'm using. Violence[0]? I
mean, I hear tale of it. But I don't have any examples that come to mind [1].

Maybe it's because I'm not a celebrity of any kind, but it really seems like
you get out of Twitter that which you put in.

[0] disregarding the misapplication of the word here, for a minute.

[1] Unless we count that time Zed Shaw called me an evil capitalist war monger
or something like that.

------
dabockster
>This means if you follow someone for what they have to say about professional
improv comedy, you also get to hear them trash your religion, berate the
intelligence of people who vote the way you do, and otherwise rant about and
retweet topics you don’t want to hear about.

I actually like this aspect of non-filtering. It forces exposure to differing
opinions and makes people think.

------
niftich
Yesterday, I saw this chart [1] from Twitter's Q2 2016 earnings report, and
noticed that US users are only 21% of Twitter's 313 million monthly active
users. Presumably, other anglocentric (ie. posting in English about topics
relevant to English speakers) users push this figure much higher than 21%,
but:

Does the kind of posting culture the author writes extend to the
international, non-anglocentric portion of the audience? I'm not entirely
convinced it does.

For example Twitter is very popular in Turkey, where it's part of social
culture [2][3], and while a great deal of 'western' content is consumed, most
of the user-generated discourse is either casual or latently political. Trying
to find English-speaking media covering abuse on Turkish Twitter only lead me
to this article [4] about a political clique harassing users about political
stances, and that was a sponsored effort, not 'organic' acts by self-
organizing users.

Twitter is also fairly popular in Japan [5], where pop culture phenomena drive
much of the engagement.

While I agree with nearly all of the points presented in this analysis, I'm
just not sure it represents most of Twitter's non-US userbase, which is
significantly larger in aggregate than its US users.

[1]
[http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/5797c8ca88e4a71b008...](http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/5797c8ca88e4a71b008badb3-960/twitter.png)

[2] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomwatson/2014/03/25/turkeys-
twi...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomwatson/2014/03/25/turkeys-twitter-ban-
shutting-down-technology-or-social-culture/)

[3]
[https://www.socialbakers.com/statistics/twitter/profiles/tur...](https://www.socialbakers.com/statistics/twitter/profiles/turkey/)

[4] [http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/turkey-twitter-
trolls/](http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/turkey-twitter-trolls/)

[5] [http://mashable.com/2013/10/22/japan-loves-
twitter/](http://mashable.com/2013/10/22/japan-loves-twitter/)

------
guelo
This makes no sense. Several of the issues he identifies are also problems on
Facebook but they haven't hurt that network:

140 Characters: I rarely see "thoughtful exchange of complex ideas" on
Facebook which allows as much text as you can type.

Perverse Mechanics: it's the same metrics used on Facebook and every other
social network out there.

Terrible Filtering: Same filtering as Facebook.

~~~
niftich
Facebook requires a real name and most people provide it, because they also
use it as a Friends & Family social network. We've also drilled into an entire
generation's heads that employers will check Facebook, so realistically most
of the conversation on Facebook these days is either carefully groomed, or
Tumblr-style Buzzfeed reposts, or personal updates scoped to friends & family.

Twitter is intended to be public -- as private accounts vastly limit your
audience, and at that point, you have much better alternatives to share
content within your circle like Tumblr or Facebook or Instagram. You can adopt
a pseudonymous identity, and most importantly, you can tag (ie. 'reply to')
other public accounts, essentially arbitrary people.

------
Xyik
It's easy to complain and identify problems, I don't really understand why
these posts are so popular, but one seems to crop up on HN every month or so.
It's kind of tiring to see all this negativity towards something that's done a
bunch of good for the world and is fading away. Not everything lasts and
that's okay.

------
jackmott
I left recently specifically because of Twitters failure to promptly remove
obvious bots and users partaking in harassment.

------
j2kun
> In fact, it’s hard or even impossible to fit a single intelligent thought
> into 140 characters.

He said, in fewer than 140 characters...

------
bitL
Twitter's role is in providing a nice mirror to narcissists. There is a huge
population segment with these characteristics and Twitter's existence is
guaranteed unless somebody comes with even more beautiful mirror. That's how
they get their numbers; anything beyond that is just piggybacked on top of
this.

------
joshstrange
The part about different kinds of content that get shared reminds me of this
CGP Grey video that talks about what causes us to share things:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc)

~~~
flush
Yeah, this is exactly what I thought of too. Searched for "CGP" and there your
comment is! :)

------
hsod
I don't get why everyone wants Twitter to be not-Twitter.

The fact that anyone in the world can read and reply to your tweets (and vice
versa) is fundamental to Twitter.

It seems like what people want is an entirely different service, something
like Slack or group chat with invite-only groups.

------
stevebmark
This is from the same guy who thinks "diversity" in tech means capitalists and
libertarians in the same room. His opinions are not worth reading. Twitter
does have major problems but this is not an insightful, original nor helpful
piece on them.

------
ChrisArchitect
What's Happening. [https://blog.twitter.com/2016/see-whats-
happening](https://blog.twitter.com/2016/see-whats-happening) Twitter's best
promotional explanation ever I'd say.

------
shklnrj
I really think milo is correct when he says that Twitter would support anyone
who is higher in the position of claiming to be victim. Whether that person is
victim or not does not matter. Twitter does not stand for free speech for sure
in my opinion.

------
cptskippy
Is "Twitter's" a valid contraction? My understanding of contractions was that
they were only used with pronouns and helping verbs but I can't find where
this is stated in online definitions.

It makes me very uncomfortable.

------
SeanDav
I am probably in a very small minority, but I have never seen the point of
Twitter. It has almost limitless potential to destroy your life by taking
something out of context and copying it to millions. I shudder to think of the
number of times I have made a tasteless throwaway comment or colourful joke
that, if taken out of context, would have had dire consequences.

It has almost limitless potential to take up all your attention, trying to
stay up to date with what everyone is saying.

I can't think of a single thing I am missing out on, by not having an active
Twitter account, but can think of many reasons to not have one.

~~~
jomamaxx
You're not in the minority, you're in the majority.

Not that many people actually use Twitter.

That you think you are in the minority is a weird cultural phenom - people
with the loud voices behaviours signal to us what is 'normative' even if it is
not!

Because you see a lot of people using Twitter, you think 'everyone's doing
it'. In reality - most people are far more neutral/central than the voices in
the web. And most people just don't care about such things.

Try ignoring Twitter for a few months. You won't feel left out, trust me. It's
mostly noise.

~~~
hacker_9
Twitter had 350 million active users in Q1 of 2016, this is quite a lot
actually.

~~~
VLM
The majority might be bots. Surely for financial reasons the most tenuous
definition of "active" will be applied.

Still, its like the old saying about email, I don't care if 99% of email is
spam, as long as I get my electric bill email on time, I'm all good.

Twitter might become like TV, where everyone knows everyone watches, but it
turns out statistics prove almost no one actually watches.

Its like the endless debates about religion where its a ritual to say X where
X is "I believe in Y" and people endlessly argue about the difference between
doing something and being something, as if they have to be linked.

~~~
jomamaxx
" but it turns out statistics prove almost no one actually watches"

... ha ha .. ha ...

People still watch a lot of regular TV and will continue to do so for quite a
long time.

------
TheAceOfHearts
WRT the "Harasser’s Paradise" section: a few months back I uninstalled the
Twitter app from my phone and I started using the mobile site. It works great
and it kills bullshit notifications.

------
trestles
a bit of a strange argument. Twitter's salty environment is the nature of the
beast in many ways. He seems to have some idealized nature of "how it should
be" vs "how it is". Also, make clear distinctions about where you feel Twitter
went wrong as a business and where you just don't like it ( <\- this is by far
my biggest pet peeve of engineers talking about other products). Pretty
pointless article.

------
johnwheeler
I haven't experienced harassment (only have 100 followers), but here's what I
don't like.

Can't edit tweets

People follow you and unfollow you if you don't follow them back in a day or
two.

Webcam porn stars like your tweets to draw attention to themselves.

Inconsistent user experience. Do I click the profile picture to edit my
settings or edit my settings to change my profile picture? I always forget.

[http://twitter.com/johnwheeler_](http://twitter.com/johnwheeler_)

------
equivocates
Yeah, why didn't they make twitter more like Blogger, Wordpress, Tumblr,
LiveJournal, Medium, MySpace, or Facebook?

------
ISL
It's certainly possible to insult someone in 140 characters, but it's equally
possible to complement them.

(This post: 136 characters)

------
gavanwoolery
I agree and disagree (in a friendly manner!). Yes, Twitter can be (and often
is) a violent battleground. IMHO, this is not the reason it is failing (in
fact, these battles drive high engagement).

Politics get violent, no matter where you express them, no matter the
character limit. That's just the nature of the beast - half the people in the
world disagree with the other half. Censorship is too difficult to execute at
high level, because as it has been shown in the past, the people controlling
the censorship are often biased.

The way I have found Twitter to be enjoyable is to not get involved in
political threads (and yes, I have made the mistake of doing so, several
times). I do not share the same political ideology as many of the people I
interact with on Twitter, but I nonetheless respect their right to have an
opinion. So long as I do not turn Twitter into my soapbox, I enjoy it (same
thing applies to Facebook for me). If you completely block out people you
disagree with (as many tweeters do), you will have a very narrow view of the
world.

I think there is value in Twitter, and it could easily repair itself if it
cared enough (unfortunately, it seems to care very little about improving
itself at the moment).

One thing Twitter has done right: I have made more real-world friends (as in,
people I have met in person) via Twitter than I have Facebook. Twitter
encourages befriending people you do not know, Facebook still carries the
privacy stigma.

Here are things that Twitter _should_ do if it wants to improve:

\- Fix the blue sticker. Stop handing it out to arbitrary people, and ignoring
real influencers (example: thousands of video game streamers have the sticker,
but Richard Garriott, one of the most influential game creators, does not).
Allow people to apply for the sticker with a nonrefundable paid application
(just enough money to pay the staff to evaluate whether or not they warrant
the sticker).

\- Monetize popularity the right way, and get rid of all the fake followers.
Get rid of people who follow then unfollow just to get a high
follower/following ratio. This makes people who build their follower base the
honest way seem underrated/undervalued. Come up with a better ranking system
than number of followers (i.e. how influential are your top 20 followers?).

\- Emphasize and reward the flagging of fake accounts. Put the twitter
population to work at eliminating spam and fake followers.

\- Sometimes I want to express things that are not exactly advertisements, but
if I want to promote them (using money) they will get marked as an ad
("promoted"). This just cheapens the value of whatever I want to promote. Its
really not necessary; let users figure out what is an ad and what is not - it
is pretty easy. Think of all the people willing to pay to get real exposure
for their tweets (not spammy tweets, but just people that want to broadcast
their ideas or content). This could be a business model on its own.

\- Fix your software. I've noticed it makes my browser grind to a halt on some
machines. Others have issued complaints across various platforms.

\- There is much more, but I have probably already gotten too deep.

------
KirinDave
I know this sentiment will be unpopular here. But so am I (to the point where
moderators have "rate limited" me until such time as I stop speaking on SJ
issues) so... I think it's no surprise that suddenly the previously pro-
twitter and "pro freedom of speech and welcoming spaces for all even if
they're unpopular" folks are mad at twitter.

This article is hot on the heels of twitter banning Milo Y for cheerfully
orchestrating yet another race baiting campaign against a black woman in
cinema, and just a few months after Degoes himself got a lot of heat on
Twitter and lost nearly all corporate sponsorship, having to rely on the
businesses of friends for reduced funding for LambdaConf. This is a "hot take"
in the Twitter parlance. And of course, banning Milo and shunning LambdaConf
didn't fix the root causes or stem the tide of harassment of other behaviors
that make the twitterLeft continue to be mad.

To directly address TFA's content, it's not possible in the modern era to be
"non-political" because the definition of "non-political" varies so radically.
More on this in a moment, but being "non-political" is neocon code for, "not
offending me" (in the same way that "safe space" is actually code for
"inoffensive space") and that's a rather complex and customized product to
deliver.

It's very interesting though. We've all ended up in a place where the platform
sort of holds us hostage. We feel compelled to share our bite-sized rhetoric
chunks and then castigate people for being "unfair" and banning "rational
argument" without considering that (and I stress, _all sides_ of every issue
has these people) a nearly unending torrent of ill-considered hate vomits at
everyone involved in even the minutest controversy. _It's totally irrational
to demand people remain rational under these circumstances._ The neurotypical
human simply cannot be expected to handle the way Twitter amplifies negative
data.

And yet, we cannot possibly deny the pivotal importance Twitter (and in
abstract, media like it) has had on rapidly disseminating information that I
think most people here would absolutely agree should get out. For example,
Twitter rapidly spreads media and information about social unrest worldwide,
has laid bare many abuses of official power in the West, and has been
incredibly important for disseminating viewpoints during the current American
election.

This conversation _is_ valuable even though it is "political." It has value in
every case where it brings raised awareness about the human experiences that
define political conflict, social unrest, and violence worldwide.

The key difference is that in every case where twitter is used for news
reporting and rapidly sharing personal perspectives, it trumps every other
media. Twitter simply outshines every other media sharing design we've ever
seen for news. Degoes is dead and demonstrably wrong that it's only cute and
tidy tweets that get huge sums of retweets.

Many of the most successful tweets in the sphere of "politics" are just raw
information. "Donald Trump said this." "Egypt's government is doing this."
"This is happening in Libya." The same 140 character limit that quashes all
but the most clipped conversations and promotes media actually severely limits
the spin one can actually craft around any given fact and strongly favors
media delivered so fast that any substantial working or processing has to be
automated. That's probably to the platform's overall credit.

If Twitter has a future, it's as a news platform that makes everyone into a
journalist. If Twitter is doomed, it's because it forces everyone into a
common scrum of a debate where even if we could type more to more eloquently
debate, it wouldn't matter because the overwhelming pressure of people tossing
out quit hate fastballs would erode the conversation.

Those of us who are opponents of Degoes worldview overall are still in violent
and absolute agreement that the platform needs more tools to curb
'harassment'. While we may differ on the subject of what harassment is in this
case, we agree that ultimately Twitter needs to develop sophisticated tools
for managing incoming content and filtering it.

They've refuse to do so. Maybe 2-3 years ago, we could argue it wasn't
feasible at scale, but I think the industry has progressed to the point where
we don't believe that anymore. It's entirely feasible to do even basic
bayesian classifiers at "twitter scale". It could be done client side, even!

Ultimately, there have to be trapdoors in this for news and shocking
information. A social conservative may not like it if we bring up some of
Donald Trump's more outrageous turns of phrase, but if it's timely and
corroborated data then it probably has value, and I suspect most people would
appreciate receiving it even if it's only from one wing of their social graph.

Twitter's successful future isn't in some clever blocklist as Degoes suggests.
I don't think it's about longer formats or an emphasis on rich media, either.
It's in deeply understanding the content of tweets and finding a way to push
timely, critical information to you via an amenable arm of your social graph.
If you need to hear about the Muslim Spring through Pat Robertson to digest
that information, so be it. That is you. If you need to hear about it through
your favorite liberal pundit Colbert, that too is you. This is semantic
analysis and machine learning in an unprecedented level of ambition, but I
don't think anyone doubts it can technically be done.

------
forloop
> (edit: I said the article didn't mention. I missed the mention.)

Amazing your comment is top—given you didn't read the article.

> The man deserved what he got

From what I've seen (I'm no expert on the subject), that's debatable.

~~~
jjnoakes
Wait, missing one mention equates to not reading the entire article? Amazing
indeed.

~~~
nardi
"Milo" appears nine times in the article. The discussion about him is a large
part of the content.

~~~
jsmthrowaway
To be fair, the points about that person were almost near the end after heavy
points about the product, it "felt" like conclusion territory which I often
skip if I've gotten the point already, and to be honest, I about ran out of
steam by that point too. Is it so crazy to imagine that someone reads an
article that makes its point quite clearly even before the conclusion, and
comments upon it after reading solely its meat? Hell, I almost closed the
article _once I saw that person 's name,_ even.

A lot of people here just are snapping to criticize over this, which is oddly
reminiscent of a subtext of the article, not doing this comment section any
favors, and specifically discussed in the HN guidelines.

Now that I've made a substantive comment: who cares, seriously?

------
bechampion
twitter 2.0 is 141 chars

------
benten10
Finally! In HN I have finally truly found the loving, caring crowd that really
cares about ethics in game journalism above everything else! Keep up the good
work folks!

------
iRobbery
140 Characters; 100% agree, it should have been a minimum requirement of the
message length instead maximum.

~~~
rch
Effective comment, and you still have 32 characters to spare.

~~~
iRobbery
:) Nah, (confirmed by downvotes hehe) it is not really that effective comment
imho either. It is a common (quick) thought i think many will have that read
paragraph about the 140 char limit. And my statement is not very specific, nor
a 'fix' for the problem and could be argued to be untrue for.. other reasons
(e.g. the more you write the more chance a certain point will not be agreed
upon by reader and discards the whole message because of that, and sorts)

And I could have dedicated pages on how much you write isn't that important,
often it is the reader, that can't be arsed to read it anyway.

If twitter would do a bit more on rewarding 'good' (and yes.. who am i to say
what is good) behaviour; though some might describe that again as censorship.
Creating another discussion.

------
JustSomeNobody
You put that much thought into the analysis but couldn't do the same for the
headline?

"F __ked " is a cop out word used when you don't have enough mental juices
left to actually describe what you want to describe.

