News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Threads, an Instagram App by rsynnott on Tuesday July 04, 2023 @08:04AM (#36585556)
> Twitter is monetized outrage.

I wonder, do you actually use it, or more to the point, did you pre-Musk? That's certainly a belief people have about the site, and it is certainly a facet of Twitter, but Twitter is (or was) only monetized outrage in the same way that Twitter is cat pictures or Twitter is porn or Twitter is celebrities. It was there, but unless you chose to engage with it you likely wouldn't see much of it (as the recommendation stuff started to break down under Musk, many people were surprised to see porn in the algorithmic feed; despite porn on Twitter being a huge deal, many users were surprised it was allowed because The Algorithm(TM) used to be good at hiding it from those who didn't engage with it).

I do think post-Musk that this effective auto-segmentation has become less of a thing, particularly for outrage/political stuff; the algorithmic stuff seems increasingly broken, and the auto-promotion of blueticks shoves all sorts of nonsense in your face. But for most of Twitter's lifespan, unless you were in that world, you didn't really see much of it.

Re:Threads, an Instagram App by brokenkebaby on Tuesday July 04, 2023 @08:33AM (#36585814)
It's not a feature exclusive for Twitter to be sure but the fact that herd behavior on background of social animosity is much more important driver than cat pictures is pretty much established. There are number of studies on this account
Re:Threads, an Instagram App by lnxg33k1 on Tuesday July 04, 2023 @08:16AM (#36585653)
I wonder if you used it, in order to think that it was not monetized outrage, Twitter for me was like the french revolution, one guillotine a day, without trial, where the population was judge jury and executor
Re:Threads, an Instagram App by soneca on Tuesday July 04, 2023 @08:25AM (#36585736)
I still use and barely see any outrage on it. I am just selective with who I follow and stay in the feed where I mostly see tweets of who I follow.

I agree with GP, it’s very easy to stay out of outrage sight.

Re:Threads, an Instagram App by blitzar on Tuesday July 04, 2023 @09:18AM (#36586258)
Its even easier when you only get to see a few tweets a day.
Re:Threads, an Instagram App by isykt on Tuesday July 04, 2023 @09:18AM (#36586259)
In order to do this, you must assiduously avoid mainstream news as well. I think that’s the point where the two sides of this debate are talking past each other. There is the Twitter you see on Twitter (your customized feed) but there’s also the That that is reported on in the news, screencapped on Reddit, shared on WhatsApp and iMessage, etc. If the sense memory of those non-platform Twitter interactions is stronger than the on-platform ones, especially when it comes to negative senses like hate, it tarnishes the users’ experience with it.
Re:Threads, an Instagram App by soneca on Tuesday July 04, 2023 @09:37AM (#36586462)
That’s right. I avoid mainstream news completely (everywhere, not just on Twitter) for several years now
Re:Threads, an Instagram App by lnxg33k1 on Tuesday July 04, 2023 @10:07AM (#36586884)
So you’re not having the twitter experience, you’re living in a twitter ghetto away from the public?
Re:Threads, an Instagram App by soneca on Tuesday July 04, 2023 @10:22AM (#36587104)
What? No, I follow people tweeting in public. I almost never tweet, but when I do it’s public as well.

To be honest I don’t know what you meant on your comment. Was it a mix of tautology with true Scotsman? You have to follow outraged people to say you are properly on Twitter thus if you are properly on Twitter the outrage is unavoidable?

Re:Threads, an Instagram App by oblio on Tuesday July 04, 2023 @10:49AM (#36587489)
His point is that you are not the average Twitter user.

You're an ivory tower inhabitant of Twitter :-)

Re:Threads, an Instagram App by soneca on Tuesday July 04, 2023 @11:47AM (#36588244)
A village is an analogy that I like more. And there are a lot of those villages around Twitter
Re:Threads, an Instagram App by oblio on Tuesday July 04, 2023 @03:06PM (#36591236)
True, but at least the public perception is that the carefully curated non hate, non garbage consuming Twitter user is a person living comparatively in a very small village.

Most people live in a huge metropolis of suffering.

BTW, there are many UX studies showing people don't change defaults. What Twitter recommends to them is what they read.

Re:Threads, an Instagram App by throwaway894345 on Tuesday July 04, 2023 @09:15AM (#36586231)
I’ve used it before and during Musk. Twitter has always been outrage by default (at least since ~2014 or so) with some crude controls that allow you to opt out (like blocking/muting people, using curated lists instead of the main feed, and for the love of all that is holy never ever visiting the “for you” or “trending” links). Most of the people I’ve heard claim (as you are) that you have to opt-in to outrage on Twitter are using third party apps that don’t show the same timeline or recommendations as the official app/site (or they otherwise don’t steer users toward the outrage content the same way as the official UIs did).

Agreed that Twitter has improved a bit post-Musk, but it has a decade of ossified outrage culture baked in and that doesn’t change easily. Some notable improvements though include: “for you” and “trending” pages are no longer exclusively showing the worst representations of viewpoints I disagree with (still plenty of disagreement and idiocy, but no longer exclusively the most idiotic representations of the views I disagree with), Community Notes seems genuinely helpful at identifying mis/disinformation that pre-Musk Twitter would have happily boosted (even endorsed via Blue Check), and honestly even the “Blue Check no longer means endorsement but rather access to paid features” seems like a marked improvement. Twitter seems quite a lot more content-neutral without going full anarchy.