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 -
I am bullish on Threads.
Some platform transfers are like a Siphon. The hard part is getting the first leak to start. After that, it sustains itself. A good siphon needs 2 things : the destination should be at a low-enough potential and the fence should be short enough. Twitter made the fence shorter by causing all their problems and creating a will for users to leave. Every other destination platform so far has itself being high friction : Mastadon, Blue sky, etc. Threads is so low effort to start it is not even funny.
Digg to Reddit was like this. Twitter will keep bleeding users now that the Siphon has begun. Twitter might still hold onto some communities, but it will be a shell of itself without the core 'normie audience', and as threads becomes feature complete. the quirky people will transition as well. Adding new features to threads is going to be a breeze for Facebook. A new platform is infinitely easier to build on without tech debt.
emphasis on trying. Facebook has shown itself to be sufficiently mobile given enough user demand. As of now, it appears as if it is a twitter-peer, not competitor. But, if more ex-twitter users start demanding twitter like features, I can see Threads morphing into a non-anonymous-twitter because that's what users want. The product follows the money.
My predictions:
95% - Threads will never be bigger than Twitter at its peak
90% - Threads will have a positive stock impact on Meta's future
80% - Threads is permanent and here to stay. A ~20% of twitter's US base will have moved permanently in before Oct 2023
70% - Threads will increasingly look more and more like twitter. It will not differentiate itself. It will compete on a 1:1 feature basis.
60% - Threads will have full feature parity with twitter in 1 year
50% - Snapchat has 30% of instagram's users. Threads will have more than 30% of Twitter's active users in 2 years.
20% - Threads will have more active users than twitter in 2 years
Upvote because while I disagree with the predictions myself, it's good epistemics to register them for falsification.
Someone asked Zorba to make a prediction market here, and while that's probably more effort than it's worth, it's still worth something!
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link