[HN Gopher] The world that Twitter never made
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The world that Twitter never made
Author : jseliger
Score : 42 points
Date : 2022-07-24 19:13 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (scholars-stage.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (scholars-stage.org)
| paganel wrote:
| A little meta, but I also heartily recommend the comments on that
| blog-post, reminded me of the golden days of the blogosphere.
| xbar wrote:
| "Of course millennials and zoomers are radicalized; the formative
| political events of their youth were a string of national
| disasters. "
|
| I do think the author was paying attention to the news in the
| 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s.
| karaterobot wrote:
| It's not necessary for everyone to use Twitter, or social media
| in general, for it to affect the culture. And if he can admit
| that, then most of his objections to Haidt's article sound more
| like misunderstandings of it.
| TimPC wrote:
| Hard disagree, the objections are still quite legitimate,
| especially the point about dodging accusations of racism and
| sexism. Haidt in particular seems to subscribe to the idea that
| if it was appropriate in 1950 it's appropriate now. Centrists
| won't win if they can't address 2022 values.
| ismaildonmez wrote:
| > Haidt in particular seems to subscribe to the idea that if
| it was appropriate in 1950 it's appropriate now.
|
| Can you please quote the relevant sections that made you
| reach this argument? I did read a lot of Haidt's work and I'd
| disagree on this conclusion.
| TimPC wrote:
| It's a general impression I got from his moral approach to
| centrism. He seems to think that there is equal blame to be
| apportioned in debates where one side is arguing for the
| fundamental rights of humans that are different from them
| and the other side is arguing for something resembling
| heteronormativity. It seems a strange take for someone who
| has studied moral philosophy. He continues to use language
| about common ground and compromise even as a sizeable
| contingent of republicans look to roll back gay marriage. I
| think it's fair to hold him to account for not taking
| unequivocal positions on basic human rights.
| nemothekid wrote:
| The original[1] article is also intriguing and not the analysis
| of someone I expect to see from someone who describes themselves
| as center-right. I think this line is a great allegory for my
| overall frustration with political discourse online:
|
| > _The story of baby boomer extremism could be told by analyzing
| networks of professors and students on elite campuses--but if
| that story did not also mention Vietnam, Watergate, the end of
| the civil rights movement, or the 1970s energy crisis, the
| average reader would conclude that the essayist had lost that
| decade's thread._
|
| My personal take has been that our problems have less to do "free
| speech" and "media decisiveness" and more to do with how
| America's economic system today has left most people on the edge
| of destitution and are left people too tired to engage
| meaningfully with politics. There is a huge chasm between the
| policies we actually need and what gets debated about daily. I
| would consider this a leftist position, so I'm excited to read
| what this author proposes.
|
| [1] https://www.city-journal.org/our-problems-arent-procedural
| [deleted]
| hgazx wrote:
| The other day I finished reading Amusing Ourselves to Death and I
| wondered what a similar book about the age of social media
| would've said.
| sigmoid10 wrote:
| I think the book's theme translates pretty well from TV to
| social media. It's just faster response times, more energetic,
| higher dopamine release etc. But all the core issues that were
| raised are more or less the same.
| jseliger wrote:
| Here you go: https://press.stripe.com/the-revolt-of-the-public
| owisd wrote:
| Twitter isn't some closed ecosystem comprising only its own users
| talking to each other. Journalists are all on it looking for
| 'public opinion' that then makes it into television and print,
| despite Twitter not being representative of public opinion at
| all.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| Journalists, being people, are lazy. And if they can get away
| with never leaving their couch and still do something that can
| be called "journalism," then they will do it.
|
| Every few months, some journalist will drive out into the
| hinterlands of America and discover that other 97% of America
| that isn't on Twitter 10 hours a day. They then write some
| chin-stroking piece about "bubbles," go to sleep, wake up, and
| then go back to the couch and the Twitter app, having learned
| nothing.
|
| I get it. Nobody wants to become a journalist and cover
| spaghetti suppers for the baseball team's Booster Club. But in
| reality, that's something like 90+% of ordinary people's lives.
| cbozeman wrote:
| Then they should all quit their jobs and learn to code.
|
| Being a journalist is _supposed_ to be a hard job with a
| strict code of ethics, and journalists are supposed to police
| their own, coming hard exceptionally hard on lazy
| journalists.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| They do a better job of policing their own than the
| software people, at least.
|
| It turns out biting the hand that feeds (or may feed in the
| future) is not easy.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| I once heard a journalist saying almost these exact words, on
| air, and still blaming Twitter for spreading inaccuracies and
| misinformation (edit: and most importantly "a inaccurate
| assessment of the general opinion"). I am still baffled (Lea
| Salame, for those who know).
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Source article thesis that this article is a response to (the
| Atlantic piece):
|
| > "Social scientists have identified at least three major forces
| that collectively bind together successful democracies: social
| capital (extensive social networks with high levels of trust),
| strong institutions, and shared stories. Social media has
| weakened all three. To see how, we must understand how social
| media changed over time--and especially in the several years
| following 2009."
|
| Social scientists have reproducibility problems in their work, so
| that's more like an ideological opinion than anything else, but
| if we take it as given, here's the gist of the response:
|
| > "First, social media (and Twitter in particular) cannot account
| for a societal wide decline in trust or a societal wide rise in
| radicalism and partisanship. The number of active twitter users
| is just too small... Second: the better explanation for declining
| institutional trust is declining institutional performance...
| Third, what we call "cancel culture" is not a new feature of
| American life. It has always been with us."
|
| Another possibility is that the chattering classes believe
| they're more important than they are, and more fundamental
| economic and ecological factors are behind the deepening cracks
| in the facade of social stability. A society divided into wealthy
| pockets and impoverished wastelands is simply not a stable
| society, and the ecological impacts of resource exhaustion and
| climate extremes certainly aren't helping with the resilience
| factor.
|
| The combination of economic and climatic stress has destroyed
| entire civilizations in the past. Modern technology (for example,
| the ability to dig deep wells for water, the ability to generate
| power via different means if one source is exhausted, etc.) can
| buffer this to some extent, if there's enough social cohesion to
| ensure that technological benefits are available to all.
| Otherwise, the historical record points to civil war being the
| most likely outcome.
| emptyfile wrote:
| I'm always amused by how Americans view Twitter.
|
| In my part of Europe, if journalists and politicians didn't use
| it like their English speaking counterparts do, it would be as
| relevant as Google+.
| cbozeman wrote:
| Yeah, I don't understand why Twitter didn't take off around the
| world.
|
| It's excellent for what it _designed_ to be: a "quick take"
| sharing site / link sharing site.
|
| It's awful (like most social media) for in-depth thoughtful
| discussion, because the platform is, by design, geared towards
| the above-mentioned use cases.
| kosasbest wrote:
| Twitter was instrumental in the Arab Spring[0]. Many organize and
| plan protests on there, trying to recreate that initial success.
| Twitter is a mirror of the real world, albeit a very bad one.
| People who say 'Twitter is just text' have obviously never
| watched whole 30-minutes news article videos on Twitter, so it's
| not 'just text', it's full of rich media.
|
| The Russia-Ukraine war is all over the platform, for better or
| worse. It annoys me that people are resorting to disaster
| tourism, popcorn in their hands, whilst watching the world burn.
| Stop being an armchair activist, and get out there and make a
| dent whilst you still can. A small retweet of something you think
| is important _means nothing_ in the grand scheme of things.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_and_the_Arab_Spri...
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| > The Russia-Ukraine war is all over the platform,
|
| Original content is mostly on Telegram.
| saurik wrote:
| Your reference does not agree with your assertion ;P.
| imbnwa wrote:
| "Is debated" is good enough if people take the existence of
| the link as evidence enough
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| Is Twitter today the same Twitter than enabled the Arab Spring
| though?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Arguably yes. Twitter was one of the main tools used by the
| organizers of the BLM Summer of Love in 2020, and the MAGA
| coup on Jan 6.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| _BLM Summer of Love in 2020_
|
| _MAGA coup on Jan 6_
|
| Do you really need to use such insanely partisan
| terminology? It's so blatant I can't tell if it was made
| tongue-in-cheek or not.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| It strikes me more as cynical than partisan, FWIW.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Yes. Both groups deserve mockery for their insane
| behavior. If you didn't know, the "Summer of Love" is a
| mocking name for the BLM riots because of the incredible
| amount of violence at those protests. The MAGA coup is a
| tongue-in-cheek way to refer to the idiots running
| through the capital thinking they could stop an election.
| cantSpellSober wrote:
| Correct, a violent uprising against the government is an
| "insurrection."
|
| It's not a "coup" if it fails.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| They had no organisation, clear goal, or strategy. Real
| attempted coups - or "uprisings" if you're sympathetic -
| are much different.
|
| They involve much larger and more organised masses of
| people, police being neutralised (either they support the
| coup, or asked to stand down, or pro-coup paramilitaries
| have rendered them a non-issue) and close coordination
| with the leader they are attempting to install. Aid by a
| more powerful outside force is also very, very common.
|
| So I think attempted coup is a very grandiose term for a
| bunch of amateurs who were allowed to wander in, posed
| for photos, stole a podium, and put their feet on a desk.
| They didn't have the support of police, military, civil
| service, media, the government, or any foreign
| government.
| cantSpellSober wrote:
| I didn't call it an attempted coup.
|
| I agree, once they beat enough law enforcement officers
| with their weapons and smashed their way into the
| rotunda, there's even a video where one of them says
| "what now?" and they start smoking weed. Planning wasn't
| their strong point.
|
| But none of the things you listed are required to be a
| coup. I don't think you understand:
|
| > coups - or "uprisings" if you're sympathetic
|
| These are not synonymous. Jan 6 was a violent "uprising"
| whether you're sympathetic or not. The simple fact that
| they _accomplished nothing_ means it wasn 't a coup.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| I'm just pointing out differing terms for the same thing.
|
| If a media outlet supports a coup or an attempted coup,
| they will tend to call it an "uprising", "revolution" or
| similar. "Coups" are used when the coverage is negative.
|
| Likewise, uprisings and revolutions get rid of "regimes",
| while coups overthrow "democratically elected
| governments". Exactly how democratic either the
| aforementioned "regime" or "elected government" actually
| is doesn't seem to factor into things.
| cantSpellSober wrote:
| > I'm just pointing out differing terms for the same
| thing
|
| You don't understand that they _aren 't_ the same thing.
| Jan 6 was a violent uprising, an insurrection, no matter
| who you support.
|
| It was _not_ a coup (mostly because it achieved nothing).
| cbozeman wrote:
| Which BLM protest did you attend? This one?
| https://www.nationalreview.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/08/CN...
| cantSpellSober wrote:
| How often do you copy and paste that URL from the
| conservative editorial magazine _National Review_?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I experienced the NYC BLM protests and riots from a bit
| of a distance. Bricks were thrown through windows, and
| several stores were looted. It wasn't a violent riot
| every day, often just an orderly protest march, but there
| were riots.
| jmyeet wrote:
| > ... never watched whole 30-minutes news article videos on
| Twitter,
|
| I don't think anyone has watched any 30 minute video on Twitter
| because I've yet to see a Twitter video go more than about 10
| seconds without buffering.
|
| I'm honestly shocked at just how bad Twitter is at serving
| video. For a company that size and for as important as video
| is, it's absolutely inexcusable.
| fferen wrote:
| +1, Full screen video works about 10% of the time on my
| phone.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| The article you quote says 61,000 people died in the Arab
| Spring. Libyas second civil war just recently concluded and the
| Syrian civil war is ongoing.
|
| I'm having a lot of difficulty regarding this as a positive.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| > Twitter was instrumental in the Arab Spring
|
| It absolutely was not, and only twitter-humping westerners
| would have you thinking that it was. No, a wikipedia article is
| not evidence.
|
| https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/1/27/the-social-medi...
|
| https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428596-400-was-the-...
|
| https://phys.org/news/2013-01-social-media-aided-didnt-arab....
| frankosaurus wrote:
| Zeynep Tufekci's book Twitter and Tear Gas talks about this.
|
| In Tunisia circa 2010, Twitter was part of the new tactics used
| by social movements and enabled their early success.
| Establishment groups weren't ready for it and in some ways
| ignorant of the new technology.
|
| She argues that those in power have since evolved their tactics
| to counteract these innovations so they're no longer as
| effective.
|
| For example, in countries where mass censorship is not
| possible, establishments have adopted techniques of information
| overload and discrediting/questioning everything to reduce the
| effectiveness of social movements.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > She argues that those in power have since evolved their
| tactics to counteract these innovations so they're no longer
| as effective.
|
| Not only governments have caught up but they successfully
| cracked down on these protesters using their Twitter user
| history against them, especially in Turkey during the great
| political purge after the failed (fake) coup attempt.
| skybrian wrote:
| It's true that most of us are just watching the war in Ukraine,
| and I think it's important to keep that in perspective; our
| role is that of the audience. Talking among ourselves doesn't
| do much but it's not harmful either.
|
| But it seems like the geolocation folks are actually
| participating in the war? Not to mention the donations and
| helping the refugees. (More of that in Europe.)
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| Russisn Ukraine war online propaganda front is on Telegram. On
| Twitter you have westerners charging their flags and what not.
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