This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Is another Twitter post okay? People are panicking about Twitter and Elon Musk's actions so far.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/10/elon-musk-twitter-disastrous-weekend/671942/
I'm someone who has never loved Twitter and I am dismayed at how it influences media and national discourse. It seems to foster a special brand of toxicity and bring out the worst impulses and tendencies of online interaction. My question is, what if the best case scenario happens and it totally implodes? Imagine - advertisers leave, users sunset their accounts, the thing just turns into a ghost town. Do you think national discourse changes for the better? What platform do all those frustrated users move to and will that platform just turn into another Twitter? Is there an equivalent platform at all? Will media outlets actually have to start reporting on meaningful content rather than the latest Twitter dust-up? Those high-profile personalities who suck all the oxygen out of the room, will people simply stop paying attention to them without a platform?
yawwn..just more outrage and hype by the media
Twitter was already a shit show before Musk bought it. Obviously , there is going to be some turbulence given that the company is undergoing major restructuring under new management. Musk is being blamed for all the problems that existed before he bought it.
More options
Context Copy link
Twitter got big in 2012-2015 when violent revolutions were being organized, literal beheading videos were bieng shared, and ISIS recruitment was the norm on the platform.
People want unmoderated content. They want to see how fucked-up other people are, they want to point a gawk.
4chan is somehow still one of the more relevant online spaces depite having and awful interface that has barely improved since 2005, and now requires nigh unusable captchas to post anything at all (since they're always under bot attack)
Any its still used by 100s of thousands of daily users.
.
Twitter has consistently destroyed its own market power the past few years in the name of appeasing the US security state. They restricted COVID misinfo right when something like twitter might have caused an armed anti-lockdown insurrection in the US (Twitter mobs have destroyed nations over vastly less), and they booted trump at the exact moment he could have issued a tweet that would have brought down the republic.
Imagine if Jan 6th he had tweeted support for the stormers and told his 60 million supporters to start a revolution?
.
Twitter's power is its a place where unapproved ideas, extremism, and yes, even lies, can move fast enough that history itself is torn assunder. Its a place you have to be if you want to follow the news or accumulate power... because it is the modern battlefield. And that's worth vastly more than 45billion to own.
And they were willing to give that up and be just a second teir social networking platform... when the FBI and DHS hasn't even taken them to court?
Jack Dorsey's old line that he wanted twitter to be "The free-speech wing of the free-speech party" wasn't just an aspiration... its what's gave twitter its importance and success.
Twitter is the only social media platform that can measure its impact both in users, and in nations destroyed.
That's power! That's impact! That's growth industry! That's the future! (if indeed we are ever to enter the future instead of decay into a parody of the 20th century)
By buying twitter and taking it private where equity firms can't force it to follow ESG or bend over to "anti-extremism" pressure Musk has gotten closer to actually being one of the Cyberpunk CEO-Warlords like Weyland, Tyrell, or Arasaka.
In 2024 he'll be in position to decide what Arab Spring style story he wants to rock the American empire.
.
How sad. A battlefield with no glory. If this is true then we have removed the last bastion of masculine excellence. sexless hydrogen from now to forever.
Eh, you could always move to Ukraine.
Not my people, not my glory.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Would have been a very bad week for a lot of coastal elite Twitter shareholders I imagine.
More options
Context Copy link
Twitter sucks, but these alt platforms are just as bad, either with unusable interfaces, captchas, requiring a phone, arbitrary rules/censorship etc. 4chan has so much censorship in other ways besides speech. /biz and /pol block all VPNs, public proxies, Tor, and some ISPs from posting (i have not tried it on EC2 addresses but I am sure those do not work either). And also full of feds there too. Twitter its credit does not do this.
As it they have a worse bot problem than other sites which do not require a near-unsolvable captcha to use? Lame excuse on 4chan's part.
Twitter allows you to use Tor... As long as you give them your phone number lol. At least 4chan and the other alt platforms don't do that yet.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
What problem do you have with 4chan's interface? I vastly prefer it to Reddit's, since it allows a comment to have multiple parents. Maybe you forgot to enable the "Inline quote links" option in the settings.
Or you can just pay $20 per year for a 4chan Pass.
TBH I would rather give Agrawal $20 than 4chan, imho. The IRS/DHS/FBI or whoever are probably watching that $20 very closely. They can just not req. the captcha, like any other website, instead of asking for money and making up lame excuses.
They really really can not. Accelspammer was just one person.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Son, 4chan gold accounts were a joke and I refuse to admit otherwise.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The "Math twitter" people I follow are either cloning their tweets to a Mastodon account or moving to Mastodon entirely. I don't think it'll supplant Twitter, but it might.
The free-speech-fan in me loves the idea of this genre of network application becoming mostly decentralized/federated. The schadenfreude-fan in me can't wait to see the cognitive dissonance when the "I can't use a system that won't censor other people enough" crowd realize how badly they have failed to solve that problem. The SpaceX fan in me is worried over how far Twitter's value might crash and how badly Musk might have trashed his future ability to raise investment for more important causes.
It's common for people and companies to make a big announcements out of protest, such as moving to another platform or suspending advertising, and then quietly returning when it's no longer politically expedient or because the new platform is inferior. It's so shallow and transparent.
More options
Context Copy link
Math...Twitter?
Agreed on all points, though. Especially regarding Musk, who doesn’t seem to be in a good position right now. Anything he does to Twitter will either damage his net worth or disappoint his more rabid fans. Or both. @greyenlightenment really wants to believe that reinstating Trump will recoup his investment; I don’t think it actually matters. Those who care about being on Twitter, by and large, already are, and yet it sucks.
The technologist in me also fears that adopting another tech specifically designed to allow filter bubbles might have some deleterious effects. Twitter is already full of islands; separating them further doesn’t seem beneficial for polarization.
Beats the hell out of normie Twitter! Posting on Twitter seems to make everybody lose 30 IQ points, so I think the tricks to making it useful are "follow people with 30 points to spare" and "never ever post yourself". That latter one doesn't really generalize, I know.
I only follow one edge of math twitter (though it blurs a bit into CS/AI/science/engineering clusters). I also get a lot of good stuff from their retweets and a little from "the algorithm", but I try not to add a new follow unless there's little to no chaff mixed in with the grain. If I have time to blow on filtering through a lot of dubious material myself to seek quality, well, that's what this place is for...
https://twitter.com/JohnDCook has a bunch of side accounts devoted to various subfields; I'm pretty sure he's tweeting at the same relative level about each, but I'm not at the same level in each so sometimes I get a reassuring "yes I understand obvious theorem is obvious", sometimes it's "wow that's so much clearer now" and sometimes "wait, really?"
https://twitter.com/CihanPostsThms is very eclectic but often very interesting and generally well-cited.
https://twitter.com/johncarlosbaez is one of the folks (I bet the others I'm thinking of were his correspondents) moving to Mastodon. It's a real shame; category theory is fascinating but triggers "isn't this too abstract to be useful" fears in me, so seeing the perspective of a master of the subject who's also a physicist was great.
Yeah, this is a bit of a disaster. But it's a disaster that's been with us all through human history (how much of a boost have religions gotten from the fact that historically >90% of people shared yours in your family and community even when only <10% of people shared it worldwide?) and I'd like to hope that the fact it's getting worse again is a bit of a blip. People can still easily seek out other perspectives now if they want to. I just wish I understood why more people don't want to, or why they don't at least feel a bit ashamed about that. I guess with normies I could imagine someone trying to be wise by worrying about whether mere exposure to evil use of skilled rhetoric could trick them, but you'd think PhD ideologues would be more confident in their ideological stability.
We could probably have a Math Motte thread, where the cream of Math Twitter gets reposted. Unless you think that would introduce an Eternal September.
I'd worry about lack of interest, but I might toss something in the Friday Fun thread and see.
In which direction? I would be surprised if there was enough cross-community interest for either community to swamp the other.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
TWTR peaked at $80, shorty after Trump was banned. Twitter stock went up 300%, from $20 when Trump was inaugurated, to $80 when he was finally suspended. Coincidence? Maybe but more engagement does not hurt. Sure, everyone already has a Twitter account, but having Trump active will mean more activity, more clicks, more ad views, etc.
Twitter went public in 2013. The presidency also saw countless corporate restructurings, acquisitions, and site redesigns. Shockingly, they even added features such as 280-character limits. These are confounding factors with no effect from Trump.
He probably boosted engagement relative to a Hillary or Jeb! candidacy. I don’t think that would replicate. The shock value has worn off, in part thanks to relentless media coverage of every POTUS tweet. The biggest legacy of his time on Twitter is that more people are jaded and think it’s a cesspit full of witches.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Because network effects are so strong in the social media space, I'd imagine FB/Instagram/TikTok or some other big platform will create a 'tweet corner' or something that basically clones Twitter (like FB did with reels) to try and capture folks. I think that's much more realistic than some random scrappy social media company coming in the space is already incredibly fragmented.
I highly doubt this will happen. Media by and large has gotten shittier because of the advertising/freemium model. People want content and information for free, real solid journalism cannot happen with shoestring budgets and agencies having to suck the advertisers' dick. Not to mention the ideological capture, which I strongly believe was also driven by advertising. More outrage/political polarization = more clicks = more ad money.
If we want good media, or at least the possibility of good media, we've got to get rid of or severely restrict online ads.
Depends on which people. The substack/rationalist crowd will continue to pay attention, but the public may pay less attention to them. I'd imagine their attention will just be captured by the latest TikTok personality though, I doubt people will all the sudden stop craving bite size content that makes them feel smart.
lol this is youtube's business model but more like 8 minutes, the minimum length for video monetization.
More options
Context Copy link
FB/Instagram/TikTok content isn't visible to people without accounts, making them mostly useless for the main function of twitter: public relations.
What if they create a section where you don't need an account? Not sure if they would but don't see why they couldn't.
More options
Context Copy link
Facebook pages are visible without an account, same for TikTok and Instagram but more limited visibility. Instagram requires an account to view content which is below the fold.
More options
Context Copy link
Twitter is nearly impossible to read without an account. You can read a deep linked tweet, but not even all the replies.
More options
Context Copy link
When was the last time you tried to access twitter dot com without an account or while logged out? More than three tweets on screen from a feed results in the interaction blocking log-in nag that cannot be dismissed. Single tweets that you are linked to are not as locked down but the same applies to a directly linked TikTok video.
Just went to nitter. net to avoid Twitter's horrible nagscreen, and of course it's unavailable for most people. Browsers telling you "you may not visit this site as its ssl cert expired 5 minutes ago" is a depressing look at the future of the internet.
Edit what the fuck, the motte automatically turns the Nitter url into Twitter? What absolute bullshit is this?
It automatically converts nitter and twitter links into each other. You can change which one it is in your user preferences.
More options
Context Copy link
You must be on a weird section of the internet or have some interesting configuration. From what I'm seeing they have a DigiCert one good until December 12th, 2022, that is not OCSP stapled so there shouldn't be any cache issues and it's not on any public CRLs. This is for the 104.244.41.0/24 subnet that I'm resolving to at least. Offsite validation via DigiCert says the same.
edit: This was replying to the comment mentioning twitter dot com, not nitter dot net but it seems something autocorrected the latter to the former.
It's actually just a cert date error, so someone's system clock is fucked and I'm pretty sure it's not mine.
FYI the comment still links to twitter dot com rather than nitter dot net. I've been using the nitter.poast.org instance rather than .net since .net has been consistently unstable for me. Other instances list available here.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
FB is trying to pivot away from news/politics and TikTok never got into the game to begin with. Sure, there's a few dumb teachers tiktoking their groomer fantasies, but libsoftiktok has to put in work to find them. If you're a casual user of tiktok you see attractive ladies doing stuff while being attractive and cute pets doing stuff while being cute. Maybe once in a while a bit of novelty like a fat person with a nice face who is really good at dancing or a really ugly dog whose owner loves them anyway :heartwarming music:.
The business case for big platforms getting into political ads is actually quite bad. A quick google search suggests that all political ads in the US, across all platforms, is $13B. That's less than half of Amazon's ad revenue and a single digit portion of Google's. The downside is a massive amount of political risk. Why take that risk for a few percentage points more revenue? Zuck certainly doesn't want to.
https://www.statista.com/topics/4942/political-advertising-in-the-us/#dossierKeyfigures https://www.statista.com/statistics/271258/facebooks-advertising-revenue-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266249/advertising-revenue-of-google/ https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/03/amazon-has-a-31-billion-a-year-advertising-business.html
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Twitter's "misinformation" flags and related policies were only implemented after COVID. The censorship Elon-supporters complain about is all very new. Elon has already said he does not want Twitter to be unmoderated, so my best guess is he wants something like 2017 Twitter? 2015 maybe? Lots of stuff changed after Trump as well.
Both 2015 and 2017 Twitter ended up growing into 2022 Twitter, so I don't see how this could hurt the platform. Leftists aren't going to build their own network - they operate by taking over existing ones. Media and government is just butthurt that their victories are being rolled back somewhat.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link