News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Why Twitter Must Be Saved by guelo on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @06:02PM (#12904731)
Twitter is absolutely essential if you prefer to get your information unfiltered from the source. Yes, that means that there's much more noise and you have to work hard to keep your stream info-dense and free from your own biases. But any other source will have someone else's biases and spin, an extra layer of fog that you have to work through.
Re:Why Twitter Must Be Saved by naaaaak on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @08:03PM (#12905333)
Nothing about Twitter is essential and Twitter is highly filtered. Twitter actively censors opinions and trends it doesn't like. Over the summer, #DNCLeaks trended hard, only to get removed and replaced by a typoed tag that killed its discussion and momentum. The same thing happens, or trending tags get outright removed, time and again with topics related to recent Wikileaks. This censorship happens far too frequently to certain topics to be "glitches" and it always "coincidentally" favors Twitter's political worldview.

Twitter also very selectively enforces rules about what it judges as hate speech and abuse. Certain people can repeatedly tweet "kill all police", or advocate jihad, or advocate violence towards those who support a particular political candidate, but the moment anyone does even a fraction of the same towards any group that Twitter is in bed with, that person gets shadow banned or permabanned. Note: I'm not advocating hate speech, merely pointing out that Twitter allows it more often than not when it aligns with their politics.

Twitter had a chance to be a platform for open discussion, but its brownshirt employees chose to make it a censorship shithole. Never-turned-a-profit Twitter can go fuck itself – it's not essential and highly filtered.

Re:Why Twitter Must Be Saved by duaneb on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @08:54PM (#12905520)
Where do you get your news?
Re:Why Twitter Must Be Saved by emp_zealoth on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @09:26PM (#12905644)
Have you seen who is on Twitters "Trust and Safety Council?"

Last time it was only left wing extremists...

Disclaimer: I'm in the worst spot, since I'm right in the centre, so both leftists and rightists can hate on me all day

Re:Why Twitter Must Be Saved by duaneb on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @10:29PM (#12905860)
That's not an answer. Do you prefer to avoid news, or do you go through some other filter? Or do you just pace the world watching the news in realtime?
Re:Why Twitter Must Be Saved by Sacho on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @01:17AM (#12906651)
I thought about your comment, and I can tentatively agree with your premise. Twitter is certainly the most used way to disseminate information straight from the source.

The problem is, that is not Twitter(the company)'s goal. For the last several years, their main focus, through user complaints, has been to limit the unfettered flow of information, to produce curated feeds, etc. This is quickly converging with Facebook functionality. A recent major development (from outside Twitter itself) has been the introduction of blocklists, directly contradicting the author's utopia of "incorrect tweet followed by a correction". Meanwhile, Twitter has been introducing similar features for "celebrity" accounts.

Given that the article's stated reason for saving Twitter does not align with the company's goals, the only way to save it would be to get rid of the company currently managing it. However, I don't see any other company actually looking to maintain the model described in the article. News sites are shutting down comments sections, removing the possibility of corrections. College campuses, normally a bastion of open debate and conversation, are looking more and more into punishing "hateful" speech and creating "safe spaces". Social media is heavily invested into curation.

The article states "Twitter must be saved". By who? Even Twitter itself does not want Twitter to remain the way the article writer envisions it, and the other major actors are tripping over themselves to go faster than in the opposite direction.

There are in fact places dedicated to disseminating information with as little filter as possible, unlike Twitter. Off the top of my head, I can think of liveleak and 4chan. Neither of them is extremely popular, and 4chan has an awful reputation. I'm surprised that the author is not extending their support to them, instead of trying to support a company that is actively trying to run away from his vision.

Re:Why Twitter Must Be Saved by morsch on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @06:57AM (#12909508)
The ADL is on that list, as are the Samaritans. Not the kind of people typically running around with Che t-shirts.

https://about.twitter.com/safety/council

After a cursory glance (it's a long list) I don't think any of the organisations strike me as particularly left wing, certainly not in the traditional economic sense.

Re:Why Twitter Must Be Saved by hnal943 on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @01:59PM (#12913422)
FEMINIST FREQUENCY @femfreq
Re:Why Twitter Must Be Saved by e40 on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @09:52AM (#12910654)
I go here: http://www.memeorandum.com/ I filter out the extreme views and pick and chose the sources that I trust, but take a hefty dose of skepticsm with me when I visit any of the articles.
Re:Why Twitter Must Be Saved by tedunangst on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @06:46PM (#12905023)
If you prefer information from the source, wouldn't you prefer to actually get it direct from the source and not via twitter?
Re:Why Twitter Must Be Saved by hk__2 on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @06:52PM (#12905061)
> wouldn't you prefer to actually get it direct from the source and not via twitter?

Unless you can meet the source in person every time you need a medium to get information, and Twitter serves that purpose.

Re:Why Twitter Must Be Saved by tedunangst on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @07:46PM (#12905274)
Is it absolutely essential that the medium be twitter?
Re:Why Twitter Must Be Saved by leereeves on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @06:56AM (#12909501)
It's absolutely essential that the medium of public communication not be controlled by a small group of people.

Twitter doesn't meet that standard.

Re:Why Twitter Must Be Saved by Roarosaur on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @08:01PM (#12905325)
No, but we currently do not know of/have any other medium that serves that particular niche purpose.
Re:Why Twitter Must Be Saved by chris_wot on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @10:30PM (#12905863)
Goodness, what did we ever do before Twitter?
Re:Why Twitter Must Be Saved by roninb on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @12:50PM (#12912632)
I don't think anyone in this subthread is suggesting Twitter can't be replaced (some are actually just arguing that it's the only current way to get direct, first-hand information about current events). What are you adding to the conversation here?

What did we actually do before Twitter? There was a shooting at my university's library late at night a few years back and I only found out about it because of Twitter. I know about 50 people that were actually physically in the library at the time and a handful of them were live-tweeting. I not only knew what was going on, and that they were safe, I was warned not to go about 200m south at the moment (which happened to be the plan, the bar my SO and I were going to was on the opposite side of campus).

When I looked the next morning, there was one (1) article about it on a local website and nothing in national or regional media. Later that afternoon a ton of info came out and hit the media, but until then, there really wasn't anything. That showed me the power of Twitter (however stupid and cliche I sound saying that [look typing?]).

Just because something isn't necessary to survive as a human being, or to allow society to function properly, doesn't mean it shouldn't be fought for (again, not necessarily saying Twitter as a company, but the idea of a social network that allows for immediate sharing of ideas and news) or at the very least appreciated.

Do you not see the utility or are you just being a cynic?

Re:Why Twitter Must Be Saved by GrinningFool on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @01:20AM (#12906668)
We went whole hours without receiving our critical stream of data. Frankly I'm amazed that we survived those dark days as a species.
Re:Why Twitter Must Be Saved by yoz-y on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @06:13AM (#12909241)
No but Twitter is already there, is unprecedented and it works.
Re:Why Twitter Must Be Saved by rtpg on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @08:03PM (#12905332)
Twitter is a great medium for it, since it's public by default.

It's the easiest way for a random person to hold their own press conference. People can easily ask short questions, and get short answers. All from their phone

Re:Why Twitter Must Be Saved by mrweasel on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @07:28AM (#12909692)
>Twitter serves that purpose

The Internet serves that purpose. You don't need Twitter, there's a ton of other ways to get news directly from the source. If you're arguing that "Twitter makes it visible", then yes, if you follow the right people or other share you interests, but in that case even Facebook would work.

Re:Why Twitter Must Be Saved by duaneb on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @08:55PM (#12905528)
I can't walk across the world in the time it takes me to open twitter.
Re:Why Twitter Must Be Saved by subsection1h on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @08:49PM (#12905498)
Yes, Twitter is "absolutely essential" for getting information "from the source", and literally "any other source will have someone else's biases and spin". You've convinced me to stop reading research papers and complete my bioinfomatics education by reading Twitter. Thank you for opening my eyes!
Re:Why Twitter Must Be Saved by drdrey on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @06:22PM (#12904881)
By definition, isn't it impossible to be free from your own biases?
Re:Why Twitter Must Be Saved by tpeo on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @07:07PM (#12905122)
By the definition of what? "Bias", "own bias", or "human"?

I don't know about "human", but being "biased" is something like "consistently straying from the truth in spite of available information", but there's nothing right there that says that everyone must be biased. In so far as someone is biased, they cannot be free from their "own biases" only in the same sense that I cannot think anyone's thoughts but my own. Still, nothing stops them from trying to improve.

Now, if you mean that we cannot avoid living in some particular information bubble, that's not a bias (at least in the psychological sense). That's an issue of incomplete information.

Re:Why Twitter Must Be Saved by snewk on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @06:39PM (#12904982)
i always imagine'd you could get infinitely close to being free from your own biases, but never fully get there.

of course, thats my biased opinion.