Why I've Quit Twitter (random article)
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I have no idea who is the person who wrote this article (random click from HN).
But his or hers rant has a lot of truth in it.
Even if I feel its's a bit overblown.
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@cartman82 said in Why I've Quit Twitter (random article):
Even if I feel its's a bit overblown.
It's definitely overblown, and could have done with being a bit more structured. On the other hand, I concur with some of the substantive thrust of the article; cults of personality would love to have the true power of censorship (though not necessarily by destroying the state; subordinating it to the goals of the cult would work at least as well, and that has a terrible history of ill-use).
To be fair, I mostly ignore Twitter and completely ignore Facebook; they just don't attract me at all. As such, I also mostly ignore the shit maelstroms that evolve there. All that foolishness passes me by. This makes me happy.
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@dkf Yep, for twitter.
I use facebook for middle-aged peer meetups. To be more exact, my wife ensures that I know which middle-aged peer meetup I should be attending, via facebook.Twitter; never seen the appeal. I don't think that I'm a luddite (I'm on tdwtf, for goodness sake) but I've never seen the point; 140 (best guess) characters is one part, but it's mostly the seeming randomness - how do you keep up with whatever is trending? And keep off my godamn lawn!
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They happily mix "refugee", "immigrant", "terrorist", and "Muslim" as if these mean the same thing.
Well, currently in Europe, three of these are indeed interchangable... And depending on how you do statistics, you might argue that "terrorists" works too...
The guy who wrote that article seems to have committed the fallacy fallacy - since those people are crazy, they cannot be right about anything.
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Did anyone think Twitter was a good idea in 2006? Hindsight makes all the problems with a platform obvious, but even then, I seem to remember people making fun of it (e.g. "It's like a blog, but shorter." "GENIUS!").
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@Gąska said in Why I've Quit Twitter (random article):
And depending on how you do statistics, you might argue that "terrorists" works too...
You mean, if you do the statistics… dishonestly?
The proportion of terrorists is really very small indeed, sufficiently small that statistical analysis starts to run into problems with errors introduced by the fundamental quantisation of the problem domain. There are non-muslim terrorists too, though they are mostly a little less organised. They're also mostly not operating in Poland, a country which currently has things mostly fairly easy in national security terms.
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I kinda knew what this was about before even reading the article. There are a lot of authoritarian types on there who want to censor what is deemed to be offensive etc.etc.
There are people complaining about it, but most of the complainants make the mistake of thinking that for some reason that twitter has to be some sort of bastion of free speech which they have no obligation to be IMO.
Twitter has some pretty legit uses. For example, election results as they are coming in or short updates on a particular situation, with quick updates from people in or around the situation. As a form of conversation it is pretty terrible.
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Oh this is about the m*ldbug thing? To be fair to lambdaconf, if you barred everyone who was clearly deranged from speaking, you wouldn't have much of a functional programming conference.
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@Buddy said in Why I've Quit Twitter (random article):
functional
I was going to ask which sense of the word you were using, but both work equally well. :)
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@cartman82 the top HALF of his article is GamerGate bullshit. Oh noes! The neo-super-double-feminists are going to kill us all!
I'd say "saved you a click" but sadly I didn't see this thread soon enough.
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@skotl said in Why I've Quit Twitter (random article):
how do you keep up with whatever is trending?
I think only little kids even attempt to do that. I never look at that dumb left column.
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@Groaner The IDEA is pretty genius in any era. A Tumblr-like blog engine where every blog post is small enough to fit in a text message.
The "problem" is text messages got longer, then got totally irrelevant since mobile internet is everywhere, and the initial genius is gone and Twitter has no clue where to go from here.
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@blakeyrat said in Why I've Quit Twitter (random article):
@cartman82 the top HALF of his article is GamerGate bullshit. Oh noes! The neo-super-double-feminists are going to kill us all!
The second half is "oh noes President Trump will destroy the world", but I guess you liked that part.
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@cartman82 I didn't read it. I don't need more GamerGate in my life.
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GamerGate was the lolz.
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@dkf said in Why I've Quit Twitter (random article):
The proportion of terrorists is really very small indeed, sufficiently small that statistical analysis starts to run into problems with errors introduced by the fundamental quantisation of the problem domain.
@dkf said in Why I've Quit Twitter (random article):
There are non-muslim terrorists too, though they are mostly a little less organised.
@dkf said in Why I've Quit Twitter (random article):
You mean, if you do the statistics… dishonestly?
Unless you want to claim the two statistics above are blatant lies, you don't have to interpret the data too much to come to extremist conclusions. Honestly, it's much easier to statistically "prove" that significant part of Muslims are terrorists than to statistically "prove" the gender pay gap.
Disclaimer: I don't share those views. I am strongly against uncontrolled mass immigration, but not because of potential terrorism threat.
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@Groaner said in Why I've Quit Twitter (random article):
Did anyone think Twitter was a good idea in 2006? Hindsight makes all the problems with a platform obvious, but even then, I seem to remember people making fun of it (e.g. "It's like a blog, but shorter." "GENIUS!").
My Twitter account dates from that era. My entire Twitter history is hearing about it, making an account, tweeting via SMS a few times, and declaring it dumb as hell.
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Slightly aside:
I remember the whole IRA feeling a lot more dangerous than 8 attacks, but there was a media blackout ordered by Thatcher. I was quite young at the time.
I supposed it doesn't include failed ones because there was at least 1 attempt in the town up the road (Bournemouth) in the early 90s, but they discovered the bomb(s) before anything happened. I think this was a couple of years before the peace process started.
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@lucas1 said in Why I've Quit Twitter (random article):
I remember the whole IRA feeling a lot more dangerous than 8 attacks
It most certainly was more than 8 attacks. But most of the time, the general bombings had warnings phoned in first. Not always though, and I think there was at least one case where an inaccurate warning was used to herd people towards where the main bomb was. Some of those bombs were much larger than anything used in the Brussels attacks.
If the UK doesn't seem to be panicking over the current set of bombings, it's because we remember the what the IRA were doing.
I remember the bombing in Manchester in 1996. I still think it did more for the city than two generations of previous civic leadership did by forcing the demolition of some truly ugly buildings…
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@dkf According to statistics I saw earlier this week, you are 100 times more likely to die and 3500 times more likely to get injured in a car crash than in a terrorist attack. Though I'm not sure whether they used Belgian or (West-)European numbers for that.
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I heard on the radio last week (BBC Radio 4, not TLCZ Bumfuck) that there were more terrorist attacks in the UK and Europe in the 70s than we are experiencing now.
The whole suicide thang, though, is new...
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@dkf said in Why I've Quit Twitter (random article):
I remember the bombing in Manchester in 1996. I still think it did more for the city than two generations of previous civic leadership did by forcing the demolition of some truly ugly buildings…
The thing I find most fascinating about that event was the postbox that was just yards from the bomb, yet escaped intact; I believe it's still there too, even after all the redevelopment (it may have been moved a few yards)
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@skotl Do they count hijackings as "terror attacks"? Statistics are hard.
I miss the days when terror attacks were anarchists and had no religious component: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_bombing
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@blakeyrat I think so - I certainly remember there seeming to be a spate of hijackings in the 70s.
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@blakeyrat Twitter was talking about increasing the length of tweets to 1000 characters not that long ago. I wouldn't be surprised to see them do it just because of what you said.
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@blakeyrat said in Why I've Quit Twitter (random article):
The neo-super-double-feminists are going to kill us all!
I'd say "saved you a click" but sadly I didn't see this thread soon enough.That could be said about any hate group.
"The Black Panthers aren't that dangerous. A few people with bats at the polls won't tear down democracy."
"The neo-nazis aren't dangerous. A few demonstrations and let them vent, won't tear down civility."
Sorry, but you must have missed some of the comments from extreme feminists out there. The entire point of the article is that social media is taking the extreme from every side, and forcing people to align with the extremes, and I absolutely agree with this. It's sad that you picked out the one group that you'd defend, and failed to see that this concept applies equally to all sides.
Your quick dismissal is part of the reason that this trend is occurring. Someone is waving a red-flag, and you say it's not a problem because you don't care about what extreme feminists say, because confirmation bias has you thinking that it's insignificant what the extremists say in light of the validity of feminism as a whole.
No, it's always important to condemn extremism, within any group. It's never justified to say, "Don't worry about that, this group has valid arguments", because it gives a platform for idiots to keep shouting nonsense, waters down your message, and invokes a negative reaction from outsiders.
You always need to clarify who doesn't speak for you. You can't shove it on everyone else to filter out nonsense, and then use their frustration-induced apathy as an excuse to attack your audience further. That's bullshit.
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@blakeyrat said in Why I've Quit Twitter (random article):
The IDEA is pretty genius in any era. A Tumblr-like blog engine where every blog post is small enough to fit in a text message.
No, it's dumb, always will be dumb, and will, by far, appeal to the worst of humanity.
Take any quote that will fit into a tweet, and I'll twist it into something terrible.
I just taught a class about this. Little phrases without context are terrible because they can be interpreted whichever way you want.
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@blakeyrat said in Why I've Quit Twitter (random article):
The "problem" is text messages got longer, then got totally irrelevant since mobile internet is everywhere, and the initial genius is gone and Twitter has no clue where to go from here.
That would make sense. At the same time, technological progress has cast sites like YTMND and Xanga into irrelevance, so why and how has Twitter survived? Network effects?
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@Groaner said in Why I've Quit Twitter (random article):
That would make sense.
Yeah, let's take this limitation that phones have, and enforce it on online communication.
And we wonder why people are terrible at communicating...
@Groaner said in Why I've Quit Twitter (random article):
how has Twitter survived
Because people are addicted to information.
Even if it's shitty information.
We want faster ways to absorb information. And so we prioritize speed over quality.
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Ace's easy embargo of twitter.
So I will promote my site on Twitter. I will use it, but I won't let it use me. I will use it as a soulless corporate branding device and promotional platform. If I write something I like, or if i wish to use my decent reach to promote, I'll do so.
What I won't do is provide them free content. Any platform requires content, after all. This site would be a much poorer experience were it not for the thousands of people commenting here, adding their own takes and opinions and diversions and links to stories.
That article was too long.
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@Weng said in Why I've Quit Twitter (random article):
My entire Twitter history is hearing about it, making an account, tweeting via SMS a few times, and declaring it dumb as hell.
I have mostly followed people, and my biggest use of twitter these days is reading the "Popular in your network" emails that often contain links to interesting things.
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@blakeyrat said in Why I've Quit Twitter (random article):
Oh noes! The neo-super-double-feminists are going to kill us all!
TFA:
3WF collects women looking for a cause, often highly educated, under-challenged, and lonely. This is a generation who have learned that doing female things, and following the female biological imperatives, is "bad." And yes, these are real things. If you hear a voice shouting "social construct!" in your mind, you are already under a form of mind control.
Or at least on double secret probation.
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@RaceProUK said in Why I've Quit Twitter (random article):
the postbox that was just yards from the bomb, yet escaped intact
Was that one of the old round red pillars? Those things are made of cast iron. You'd need a nuke just to rustle their jimmies.
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@boomzilla I use it to follow upcoming events from people I like. Usually something like "hey here are the venues for our latest tour / events". If it is used as an advanced form of RSS feed, it is pretty useful, people who have conversations on there are morons.
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@flabdablet said in Why I've Quit Twitter (random article):
Was that one of the old round red pillars?
Yep :)
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The main reason Twitter is still relevant seems to be that journalists love it, so it's always in the tech news
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@flabdablet said in Why I've Quit Twitter (random article):
Was that one of the old round red pillars? Those things are made of cast iron. You'd need a nuke just to rustle their jimmies.
Well, I expect a normal bomb would do the job if it was exploded inside the post box.
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@boomzilla said in Why I've Quit Twitter (random article):
I have mostly followed people, and my biggest use of twitter these days is reading the "Popular in your network" emails that often contain links to interesting things.
I'm using twitter as my read later list. And increasingly as a replacement for RSS.
I find that ordinary bookmarks / RSS feeds are too permanent. They just keep piling more and more unread stuff, that never ever disappears without pruning or action on my part. With twitter, stuff just sort of naturally scrolls out of view. While I can go through my history and find that article I wanted to read a month ago, I don't have to. There isn't a persistent number hanging there to weight on my mind until the end of time.
I find that liberating. And judging by the number of people who are ditching RSS for twitter, I'm not alone.
Which is a shame. There isn't a technical reason why you couldn't have an open equivalent of twitter. I guess no one has gotten the user experience quite right yet.
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@cartman82 said in Why I've Quit Twitter (random article):
There isn't a technical reason why you couldn't have an open equivalent of twitter. I guess no one has gotten the user experience quite right yet.
To be fair, neither has Twitter.
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@flabdablet said in Why I've Quit Twitter (random article):
Was that one of the old round red pillars?
Monty Python Postbox Sketch – 02:40
— Jacques Clouseau