The whole blue check Stanford Prison Experiment of giving verified people/accounts additional privileges and boosted rankings also doesn’t help matters. What was supposed to be a security feature became a status symbol.
I used to have the same opinion as the parent poster. I'd tell people that Twitter is actually really great if you curate your feed. Unfortunately, I can't tell people that anymore, because it's not possible to do.
For some background, I've only become a real user of Twitter this year (I've had an account for ages, but never used it much). Currently there is one topic of interest to me I'd like to follow the community closely. Independently (before reading this article), I've also found the timeline useless as well. Instead I follow a handful to a dozen of people by turning on notification for them in addition to follow. Every day I go to notification tab in my Twitter app, tap on the one for tweets from people I enabled notification for. This is a chronologically sorted list of tweets by these people. This has been the only way Twitter has been useful to me.
It sounds like Lists is basically like that but allows me to follow multiple topics like that. It does however seem to require a different app than the official Twitter app, so I'll have to play around with it some more if there is another topic I care to follow on Twitter about.
I also don’t seem to get weird tweets anymore and I just remembered that I added some weird strings to my mute list at the suggestion of someone else on Twitter. I Googled a few and apparently this is a thing? There’s an article in Vice about it, for what that is worth:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kz9ez/go-into-2020-by-takin...
On mobile, I think it stopped reverting to non-chronological for me many months ago. My suggested follows are typically friends/kids of friends. Like GP of this thread, my experience with Twitter is positive but I only follow about 100 people. Main criticism is that with a curated list, it can be a bit of a wasteland sometimes - either rarely new tweets to see, or you post something to generate discussion and get nothing.
I see people complain about this a lot, but I've not experienced this. Is it a mobile thing? On my computer I got put into the algorithmic feed once, when they launched it I guess, then I changed it to "latest" and it's still like that today.
Straight out of FB's playbook, I see.
On the other hand, there are topic centric social networks like Reddit where it's a lot easier to find and follow just the news about a specific niche (like finance).
I'm not totally against the people centric model. I think it can work well in social networks like Facebook and Instagram that are more friends and family focused, but I don't really get that vibe from Twitter.
That's solved by being stingy with your follows and not being afraid to unfollow people. From my experience I have zero issues keeping my stream focused on finance (though i do follow one or two comedy accounts that post every once in a while)
I feel Instagram is 100% influencer focused -- i.e. sponsorship focused -- with just enough "friends and family" to not make it feel like an advertisement show.
You know how music on a commercial radio station is there to fill gaps between ads? That is Instagram and Facebook! Same concept but "done with computers". :)
Not judging, just expressing my disappointment about the lack of honest separation between ads and private life.
Isn't RSS more suitable for this? Subscribing to feeds from finance news sites?
Youtube is far easier to make intellectual, there are tons of great educational channels & podcasts to watch and listen to.
However, I do not want to just tell them what I like and let them indulge my addictions forever and put me into some sort of echo chamber.
Recommendation is hard.
This is a feature - the point is that if you were able to fully customize the recommendation algorithm you'll end up opting out of all the bullshit the platform wants you to "engage" with.
My hobby channels have completely dominated every other form of content in my life at this point.
1. Few people outside the politics sphere use Twitter in Australia. It's all politicians, public relations specialists, and journos. I could create an account and try and interact, but I'm unlikely be interacting with people who have any influence in my hemisphere of the world.
2. I once made an account anyway, out of curiosity, and was immediately defamed by someone I hadn't even met. To the point of having to delete the service, scorched earth.
3. Eventually I had to create an account to use the Twitter API as part of a big data assignment. However, every time I tried to verify my account, no email or text message would make its way to me. I contacted support for months, with no replies. Ended up having to use the tutor's Twitter account (which I'm sure would have breached ToS).
It's been over a year, and I still haven't received a reply from Twitter. Maybe they just don't want me to have an account?
Why would I get involved after all this? Seems like more trouble than its worth, to be honest.
Follow positive, talented and creative folk, they will provide value back.
Then again i keep a very tight leash on who i follow, and keep the number of follows very low, so i know exactly what sort of content will show up. Is that not how most people use twitter?
There are two main twitter feeds:
- Home: the algo one that twitter wants you to use. Mostly those you follow but not 100%; this will sometimes show very popular tweets or maybe something your followees liked (but didn't RT).
- Latest: which is just the (imo, good) original "everything from those you follow, reverse chronologically".
Twitter has always had a List function that makes it a lot easier to only follow tweets from a set list (or many lists) of people. Yeah, you'll still see retweets if they do happen to retweet something you're not in the mood to see. But you're more likely to be able to pick and choose people who won't do that. By self-curating, I rarely see toxic tweets unless I start drilling down into very political threads.
You can go even further in your curation through the use of lists.
I feel like the people who complain about how awful Twitter is are telling me about the company they choose to keep. I know that's not the reality of the situation, but Twitter really can be what you make of it. Just because you're friends with someone doesn't mean you have to follow them on Twitter.
It would be one thing if the negative stuff from Twitter was just internet drama and stayed on Twitter. Then anyone could "opt out". But it doesn't stay there. You can't opt out of things that spill into your life, your downtown, your company, your country.
This is at least the argument that you will hear. On the one hand completely shutting out political content does seem like a let them eat cake attitude. But of course it isn’t binary. The problem is that the political content is everywhere now and it’s toxic. I don’t want to ignore the problems of the world and I also cannot allow the endless yelling to drag me into depression.
I'd wager to say anyone that's active in local politics is doing more good than 90% of politics-tweeters.
You cannot use this customized experience as the sole argument to imply that experiences of other people on that website are somehow abnormal. When customized feeds and algorithms are in play, there is no such thing as "normal" experience to begin with.
Another layer to this issue is the fact that Twitter (unlike some message board from early 00s) is big enough to influence society at large, so while you might decide to ignore a particular drama, the drama might not ignore you. Because of that a lot of conventional wisdom about "The Internet" doesn't really apply.
Twitter is not real life. It's a deranged, toxic simulacrum of an alternative universe built by a god who hates us.
I’ve also had really negative experiences with Twitter.
My conclusion is that Twitter is frequently derided but really it does nothing more than act as a megaphone for human nature. If you don’t like Twitter, you’re probably just following the wrong humans.
This matches my experience too. I’ve connected with a lot of interesting people in a reasonably niche field (audio software dev) who I would otherwise never have had the opportunity to. I’ve subsequently had the pleasure of meeting a few of these people in real life at conferences etc.
However anything political quickly turns into a dumpster fire. I can kind of see why people get sucked in to arguing on there, but it’s better to just ignore that side of Twitter IMO. I’ve definitely unfollowed people who have too high a ratio of political type content vs. what I’m actually following them for!
twitter is also a cesspool that is destroying the world.
both can be true
I deleted FB 3 years ago and miss nothing about it
Twitter on the other hand, when used properly is indispensable
Politics is a proven source of infinite "engagement" which is how this disgusting company (and similar competitors) make their money on, which is why it's so hard to "opt out" of it - opting out of politics (and other potentially inflammatory topics) would decrease your "engagement" which while good for your time and sanity is absolutely against the company's business model.
https://twitter.com/settings/your_twitter_data/twitter_inter...
That worked better for me. Got more time to spend on HN and personal projects.
My best experience was using RSS to follow specific profiles. Still not worth it.
I think this would be considered extremely out of the norm. Your experiences with Twitter are definitely not typical.
Things are very different now that it’s so dominated by politically-charged rhetoric and piling on, and I can understand that new social connections would more likely get drowned out these days.
But whether it’s IRC, NNTP, Yahoo Chat, LiveJournal, Twitter, LinkedIn or any other online social platform, the practice of finding new acquaintances on the platform then parlaying them into offline professional or personal relationships is not at all unusual.
But to your point, early-days Twitter included most people who were into startups, many who were into programming, design, media, even music. Maybe small in number (say, only a few million people) but still significant and influential.
I’m conscious that this discussion is essentially becoming a debate over the definition of “typical”, which is rather pointless.
The point is that whatever your definition of “typical”, the number of people making offline friends and business connections via Twitter and other online platforms has always been significant.
We can call it luck, fate, law of attraction or whatever. But these things do happen. Maybe not that common.
HN is social media too! I've heard the arguments why it's not but they aren't compelling to me; it is one. The main difference between here and twitter is the tone.
On here there is a cultural expectation that you will perform dispassionate erudition but if you read beyond that at all very few comments are any more intellectually stimulating than an average tweet. Less, honestly, at least people on twitter still seem to value joy and humor and whimsy.
Furthermore the "algorithm" is well-understood and is driven by users as opposed to a black-box algorithm designed to optimize "engagement".
Finally human moderation here is competent and keeps things in check, as opposed to treating it like a cost center and outsourcing it to underpaid people working in terrible conditions who most likely don't speak our language natively and might misunderstand the context or meaning of things (which becomes a problem when you're supposed to draw the line between what's offensive/snarky and not).
You can pretty much be as cruel as you want on HN as long as you don't swear or call people names too much.
You can find joy on here sure but it's despite the culture here not because of it.
That is deeply not the case, and if you or anyone finds examples of it, you should let us know at [email protected]. If people are being cruel and not getting moderated, the likeliest explanation is that we haven't seen it, because we don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here. Oh and we don't give a fuck about swearing.
The generalization you're making is so false and so mean that I would call it a slur, both of this community and of the people who work on it.
I've just deleted the longer part of this comment because we've had this discussion in private mail several times, but for the record: I think you're focussing too much on naked words, and ignore evil behaviour (like intentional misrepresentations of the other one's position) too much.
I'll concede that your job is hard and you're doing a mostly good job. I just think it could be better.
Can you honestly go look through the comments of any post touching any of those issues and call them kind? It's one thing to say it's out of scope for moderation because they keep it civil and calm. But to say the cruelty isn't there is to choose not to see it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27320284
It is wildly not the case that the median HN commenter who writes on stories related to economic inequality is biased against marginalized people.
This is a pretty clear instance of what Dan refers to as the "notice-dislike fallacy"; you've noticed people writing callous comments, because they rub you the wrong way (as they do me), but haven't noticed the countervailing comments, because they're boring (to you).
Philosophically, I would say HM is like a wealthy suburb. You don't see trash in the street. People mostly follow the law and are good neighbors. Everyone wants their neighborhood to be okay and are okay sharing/learning about gardening and home improvement from each other. Now: are some people disconnected from the what other people experience as the harsh reality somewhere else? Absolutely. This is the case everywhere. What you do when you see or hear someone with a completely different perspective is listen and try to understand what they are talking about. We all need to get better at this no matter where we are (work, store, hn, twitter, etc)
But all you can do is push the nastiness below a certain threshold of passive aggression. It's literally impossible to do more than that.
I've found it just a bit more unpleasant to post here with every few months which pass. Insults still get moderated and downvoted, sure, but bad-faith dismissals and pugnacious pedantry become incrementally more common, not to mention drive-by downvotes on neutral and factual posts which maybe signal some kind of tribal affiliation, no matter how weakly.
I don't think this can be solved, but it's real.
Of course it can be solved, just not on a public pseudonymous forum. As long as people exist that are entertained by trolling, derailing or just in general making the internet a little worse every day you cannot win. Filtering content or accounts is a fools errand, filtering people allowed to comment and post on the other hand would trivially solve this, especially when their real reputation is on the line with every comment but then you don´t get the network effects that low effort account creation and pseudonymity give you.
Here is an important observation I think I've made over the years:
All else being equal, the HN model (full names voluntary, IRL connection voluntary i.e only username and password, long lived profiles encouraged) has been better for interesting civil discussions.
Why?
Full name policies only encourage this explosive mix:
- People who don't realize the foolishness of commenting publicly using their full name on a controversial case.
- People with fake but real-looking accounts.
- People who realize it is stupid but does it anyway sometimes because even newspaper comments sections deserve some adult voices.
Very many of the people you'd want to hear from are silent because they don't want your name mixed in with the regulars in the comments there.
I also really disagree that tone is a minor and unimportant factor, keeping the discussion civil manages to open up the door to a lot more discussion between people who disagree strongly. One of the users I recognize on here I recognize not because we agree - but because usually when we're talking in a thread it's an interesting conversation despite a really deep philosophical disagreement.
The problem is not politeness vs. impoliteness, but rather acting in good faith vs. pretending to do so. As readers, it's our responsibility (now more than ever) to tell good faith from trollish decorum.
Oh and forcing them to marry a guy they had sex with, regardless of whether it was rape or not. As social engineering to force good behavior on others.
He was all polite and serious. And I still perceive him as the biggest threat to my safety and well being. And the most uncomfortable thing that was tolerated here.
No, being polite is not better and does not make it better. If I am expected to be perfectly nice to him in response, well this place sux sometimes.
HN does have an assumption built into the guidelines that we should assume all arguments are being made in good faith - I don't actually have an issue with reading arguments made in bad faith in good faith myself - if someone makes a baseless claim that is refuted soundly and sanely in a comment then readers will be able to parse the two comments and will generally favor the one more clearly made in good faith. Ad hominem attacks actually hurt your argument here while on twitter they can bolster it - most of hackernews has no respect for "sick burns".
it literally is not. The idea that all topics have equal both sides is not founded in any actual reality, it is a device used by those who would push falsehoods to demand an audience. Falsehoods do not deserve equal footing to truth.
I am totally fine with bad faith actors making ad hominem attacks since it weakens their argument, but responses made in good faith should keep it civil to not erode their own argument. By the way, I can sympathize with you somewhat as this can essentially lead to sealioning[1] and that is extremely common elsewhere on the internet. But with strong moderation and flagging mechanics that actually work quickly on HN obvious sealioning can be quickly called out and quashed. I understand that some folks get their jollies by making low effort arguments and forcing others to put thought and time into crafting a well formulated counter argument - this will happen on the internet and it can be depressing to realize it after the fact but I think it's still worth it to try and craft well structured[2] responses when you can.
I don't actually disagree with this statement:
> Falsehoods do not deserve equal footing to truth.
and if I were running a talk-show called Hacker News then I wouldn't invite on folks with obviously racist viewpoints, but this is an internet forum where we can't pre-emptively screen participants. So I'd argue it's less about putting falsehoods on equal footing to the truth and more about making sure the truth of the truth isn't eroded by it coming out of a poor mouthpiece that biases opinions against it.
If someone wrote a comment that's obviously in error to you please do write a response highlighting what you think the problem was in a calm voice so that other people who might not notice the error can see it clearly spelled out. And do that because you're options are:
1. Respond in a sane tone
2. Respond with personal attacks or a poorly formed argument
3. Decline to respond
On that list is not the option to delete the comment you think it incorrect so, of the choices, I think #1 is by far the best option.
1. http://wondermark.com/1k62/ if you're unfamiliar with the term.
2. Well, except grammatically, I make no claims that my grammar is in any way well structured - sorry if it makes it hard to read!
The second major way in which this concept collapses is that HN has a dangerous addiction to labeling things ad-hominem attacks. If someone makes a horrific argument, and you say "that argument is horrific and leads to harm being done to others", you are in every case met with responses along the lines of "that's an ad-hominem attack" or "that's politics this space isn't about politics". HN posters time and time again fail to separate the argument being made from the person making them.
> this is a space where beginners do not belong
Not true at all. There's a lot of introductory material hitting the front page every single day here. If you ask a technical question there's usually someone VERY knowledgeable who will be more than happy to teach you some things and point you to further guidance. I often see two people disagreeing about a topic they both know WAY more about the topic than me. What am I supposed to do? Tell them their knowledge is unwelcoming to me? No way! A level-headed dialogue between them is about the most productive form of teaching I could hope for.
You don't just talk over people who know their shit as if you knew more about it. You present your knowledge (and lack thereof) and ask questions, maybe build an argument. If they're interested in continuing, they will engage in a similar way. I don't see what's so "hostile" about that.
> "that argument is horrific and leads to harm being done to others"
If you just say that and leave it at that, that doesn't mean anything. It's not an ad hominem, but it's not an argument either. If you provide an argument and evidence, you should be taken more seriously. I can tell you I've seen A LOT more ad hominem attacks being labeled as such than actual arguments. What commonly happens, though, is a commenter mixes both a good argument with an ad hominem (or some other fallacy), and then others focus on the fallacy and not the argument. Of course that's bad, but it's all the more reason to not be fallacious.
And if it is those aforementioned bad actors who get to define and gatekeep what it means to be "polite"?
I agree that on Twitter this is a much more complicated matter.
You shouldn’t assume that every argument made against a particular solution to social injustice is an argument advocating for social injustice.
While there are some people who are just plain racist or bigoted or have certain religious views; and therefore believe that racial/gender/etc injustice is inevitable, many others are just arguing against a particular solution.
For example, not everyone agues against dialectical materialism because they want people to be poor. They just don’t think communism can work.
It certainly has its share of silliness, especially around the subjects of VC and Silicon Valley culture generally. And economics...
It's no surprise within the echo chamber things seem harmonious, but there's something really funny about seeing people from here thumb their noses down at Twitter.
If you follow the right people in tech on Twitter, their replies are pretty similar to HN, and it's a lot of the same people.
Crapping on Twitter while acting like HN is above it all is kind of like saying your favorite coffee shop is so much better than the entire City of New York.
you can be deeply offensive on hn if who you are offending is people outside of what hn considers to be its own audience. hn posters will defend the harm their software does to society all over town. people on this site care only about decorum; the syntax of kindness without the semantics.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I'm biased of course, but I also see more of this place than anyone else does (at least I hope I am, since I get paid for it), and comments like yours do not reflect the community at all accurately. "People on this site care only about decorum" is a cheap shot, and—speaking of syntax without semantics—is a cliché at this point too. People in this community care about considerably more than that. ("Syntax without semantics" is a great phrase, though. Did you come up with that? I like it.)
The denunciatory generalization you're making seems to me an example of unkindness, and so a little ironic whilst denouncing others for unkindness. I don't like seeing anyone unjustly accused.
If you, or anyone, has a good idea about what we can do to make this place more kind, I'd love to hear it (as long as it doesn't reduce to "ban my ideological enemies", which turns out to be what a lot of people would prefer, but is not viable given the mandate of this site).
That's what the HN organizers think it is and want it to be, but I don't think it's an accurate reflection of how HN users actually behave. It's prescriptive, not descriptive.
> People in this community care about considerably more than that.
I've been here many years and that has not been my experience. I come here to look for updates on libraries and tools I use and to hear about new libraries and tools. In the years I have been here, I have found this to be the most nihilistic, false-equivocating social media site I have ever encountered. What I have witnessed all too often is that admissible HN opinion talk stops at "what makes a computer program well-constructed", and very rarely considers "how might computer programs cause harm to their users and to society". Often times when people say "hey maybe that use of technology is harmful to [group of people not well-repesented on HN]", that discussion is immediately downvoted into oblivion. When it comes to software criticism, that is, the well-reasoned consideration of how software affects society, HN gets an F. HN doesn't care. HN would look at a Java program for a police torture system and would say "it should be written in Haskell" instead of "maybe we shouldn't be building instruments of torture". Maybe a given individual user wouldn't, but that's how the votes would land.
> If you, or anyone, has a good idea about what we can do to make this place more kind, I'd love to hear it
Sure. Here's a few.
Remove all visible scores from the site entirely. The idea that a person is aware of points given to them for saying the correct thing incentivizes saying things that get points, not saying things that improve the discussion. I'm not saying that no system of tracking the success of comments should exist. I'm saying that currently, the mechanics of HN allow people to see their own karma and are rewarded for saying things within the HN zeitgeist with more karma. The karma system precludes the Overton window from shifting.
It's a discussion board. There should be no point reward for comments posted. The reward is the replies you get from others.
Experts and beginners are given an entirely equal footing, but beginners outnumber experts in every topic; that's what makes them experts. If all of the experts in a topic think one thing, and all the beginners think another thing, should the beginners always win because they are more numerous? Hmm.
One solution might be to implement something akin to pagerank, but on a topic level. E.g., if a thread is posted about Ants, a user that had participated in a lot of past discussions about Ants should have their upvotes/downvotes weighed more heavily. There are doubtless other solutions, and since I'm not in your codebase I'm not sure what solution is actually reasonable.
Separately, make posts a limited resource. The mechanics of this are, I imagine, proper difficult to get right. Very very difficult. Some ideas that would have to be tested: You can only post if you have a post token. You're awarded a post token every six hours, even when you're gone. You can hold a maximum of four post tokens. Add in some mechanic where users can cause other users to gain post tokens. Some concepts along that line: When you reply to someone, they are awarded a post token (or a portion of a post token). Upvotes grant either post tokens or portions of post tokens. If a user really loves a comment, they can give one of their own post tokens to the person that made that comment. Users in their first week are given only 1 post token a day.
Could you cite some specific HN submissions where you've observed this behavior? I honestly cannot recall a single one.
I accept there are people who feel that an argument in defence of certain types of software is in bad faith, and an argument made deliberately to hurt and exclude others.
It’s not much of a leap, given that harm obviously exists to many in society, and software isn’t helping, or at least that some people get much more benefit from it than others.
However, not everyone believes that software harms people. Not everyone believes that that harm is deliberate. Not everyone believes that anything can be done, and even if they do it’s probable that they have differing ideas on what is to be done.
I get that when people see problems, and they see others ignoring those problems, or arguing with them, that they feel that those other are being callous, cruel and disrespectful. As the saying goes, if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.
I sympathise, but I can’t agree. There are so many solutions to the world’s problems and so few who agree on any of them. I can’t just assume that everyone who adopts a contrary position is deliberately being cruel, deliberately acting out of selfishness or deliberately acting to exclude and suppress other views.
when you see a strawman point it out. people may not like it, you may get downvoted but... something about being the change you want to see.
for example: I routinely get down-voted every time I say something positive about cryptocurrencies. Should I stop telling people my opinion when the overall sentiment on HN is pretty negative when it comes to the likes of bitcoin and ETH?
people on this site care more than just decorum. sweeping generalizations like this rarely hold water.
The problems you're describing are endemic to social spaces and won't be resolved by removing _one_ social space.
If you care deeply about something, you will find other people on Twitter. If you work in public, people will find you. Someone right now I met from Maine is currently drawing up the plans to teach me to timber frame a structure I just got approved. About 20 people I met from twitter have been over my house (for dinner, etc) at different times. Far more people read my work because of Twitter.
If you don't use it as a political mouthpiece it's incredible and there's nothing like it. And that's really up to the user.