Twitter Will Turn Off Some Features To Fight Election Misinformation (nytimes.com) 97
Twitter, risking the ire of its best-known user, President Trump, said on Friday that it would turn off several of its routine features in an attempt to control the spread of misinformation in the final weeks before the presidential election. From a report: The first notable change, Twitter said, will essentially give users a timeout before they can hit the button to retweet a post from another account. A prompt will nudge them to add their own comment or context before sharing the original post. Twitter will also disable the system that suggests posts on the basis of someone's interests and the activity of accounts they follow. In their timelines, users will see only content from accounts they follow and ads. And if users try to share content that Twitter has flagged as false, a notice will warn them that they are about to share inaccurate information.
Doesn't matter (Score:1)
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Lol. Clueless. People who say X wonâ(TM)t vote for trump
Who are you talking to? I didn't say that.
Re:Doesn't matter (Score:4, Insightful)
That's all assuming the election is legitimate. We've all seen signs that Trump and his sycophants are trying to cheat the process and steal the election through various voter suppression tactics. Sadly, I have to admit that it's possible his machinations could be successful, resulting in a totally fraudulent election. In which case we might just end up with a civil war. I'm just hoping there are still enough people in positions of responsibility, who have the integrity to uphold the Constitution, to prevent those efforts from succeeding. We can't allow someone like Donald Trump to continue taking a steaming dump on the Constitution.
As a sidebar to this, Congress needs to NOT confirm that crazy-eyed religious nutjob to the Supreme Court. That, in and of itself, is a politicization of our judicial system, and that should not be allowed. You want to talk about Trump not getting the womens' vote? That creature he nominated is like some Bizzarro Earth parody of RBG, diametrically opposed to everything RBG stood for.
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So the only way Trump wins, acording to you, is if the election is "illegitimate". Any election Trump wins is illegitimate, and any election he loses is legitimate. Got it.
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Look in the mirror, man, you're the one saying "Assuming the election is legitimate: Trump will lose"
You've already precomitted to declaring that there's only one valid outcome of this election, so how can you even call anyone else out?
Enjoy 4 more (Score:2)
Thanks for clarifying that your rules only apply to other people.
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> *I* want a SANE country to live in, not the Hell Dimension that has been 4 years of Trump.
You're free to leave, you know.
Well, assuming any of the other countries are willing to let you in.
Think the Canadian immigration site will crash again?
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Republicans will bide their time until 2024 and try to get a real GOP candidate back into the Whitehouse
It will be Ivanka Trump.
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I'm not in the US, but honestly: Is the choice in 2020 any better than it was in 2016?
In 2016: Trump was...Trump. Hillary was a slimey crook, and had obvious health problems.
In 2020: Trump is...Trump. Biden gropes young girls in public, and has obvious signs of senility.
Y'all could pick random names out of a phone book, and get better candidates. I'm honestly not sure who's going to win in 2020 - I expect a lot of people to change their minds at the last minute, in both directions. It's a coin toss, who's g
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Thank for demonstrating the very misinformation Twitter is talking about.
Funny how you never mentioned the con artist being both a slimy crook and having obvious health problems, nor that fact the con artist has both assaulted and raped women and has clear signs of early onset dementia.
Funny how that works.
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Right, Trump's the one cheating, and not the Democrats including Obama who was briefed by Brennan himself about intelligence at the highest levels that Hillary was creating the false Russian narrative.
Re:Doesn't matter (Score:4, Interesting)
The Republican primaries had a lot of people who were better. Maybe all the always-trumpers label them RINOs, but they were indeed true blue Republicans in name and deed. Sheesh, even people I really dislike would have been so much better, like Ted Cruz. Trump even insulted Ted's wife but when Trump won the primary Ted turned around and kissed Trump's ass. Every one of those so-called RINOs would have appointed conservative judges just like Trump did, but they would have done that without being a joke that causes us to be laughed at by the rest of the world. They would have done that without whistfully praising Putin and Kim and Duterte for being strong leaders.
Trump won essentially due to a revolt from a core set of conservative voters against the Republican party. And this is sort of a remnant of the Reform Party in a lot of ways if you follow the spiralling history there. And we're stuck in that because of our winner-takes-all elections which essentially forces us to have only two viable parties, which means that each party has a diverse set of wings all upset at the fact that they have to get along with each other.
Re: Doesn't matter (Score:1)
Which party was pushing for mass mail voting while also pressing for the removal of voter ID laws? What party in Pennsylvania removes the signature match requirement? Which party said mail in voting was fine, only to be proven wrong now with multiple stories of ballots being thrown out, ballots being stolen, ballots being harvested, and general mishaps causing ballots to either be faulty or not arrive at all?
Hint: It wasnâ(TM)t the Republicans.
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Nope.
Harris is normal politician level repugnant. Hillary Clinton was cesspool slime-mold level repugnant.
Biden was literally the worst choice the Democratic party could have made from the picks they had. Which seems to be a running theme for both parties over the past couple decades.
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Biden was literally the worst choice the Democratic party could have made from the picks they had.
Apparently not, he's winning.
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Biden was literally the worst choice the Democratic party could have made from the picks they had.
Apparently not, he's winning.
That doesn't necessarily mean he was the right choice. It just means the other side has an even worse candidate in the race.
Which makes me wonder just how terrible of a candidate could be in Biden's position and still be winning. That's one to run through the political simulation a few times.
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Given that the opposition is so hated I would have expected more of a 80% to 10% results, that fact that it is more of a 50% to 40% scares me.
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Given that the opposition is so hated I would have expected more of a 80% to 10% results,
That's your cognitive bias right there.
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Biden was literally the worst choice the Democratic party could have made from the picks they had.
Apparently not, he's winning.
He's leading because he's not Trump, not because he's Biden.
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Re: Doesn't matter (Score:2)
Clinton won because he was not Bush, then Bush won because he was not Clinton (Gore,Clinton... at the time could anyone really tell the difference?) Then Obama won because he was not Bush, won again because McCain was still too close to being Bush and then finally Trump won because he was not Hillary.
So if Biden only wins because he is not Trump then it would seem he is merely honoring a now long-held tradition in American Politics.
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
And if users try to share content that Twitter has flagged as false, a notice will warn them that they are about to share inaccurate information.
Why would you ever allow someone to share something that's been flagged as false? I mean, shouldn't the behavior be that you get an error message saying sorry this is false and you're not allowed to spread falsehoods? And shouldn't that be the behavior all the time not just right around the election?
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Actually I've seen more false information in the form of misleading fact checking lately. The fact checks beat down some similar sounding strawman. Half the time they contain blatant biased opinion that has no business on a fact check things like 'technically this bit is true but this guy is a hypocrite because.." or "he is unlikely to mean it because of this or that [supposedly contradictory thing he said or did another time]." With a false conclusion. That isn't fact checking, that is opinion.
Did you know
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Yes, I've shown examples of bias. You've simply stated some exist without supporting your statement whatsoever, proving nothing. Truth is found indepedent of bias through a combination of logical support, facts, and evidenciary support. You've presented none of that and have failed to undermine any of the support I provided.
My comment just presents a string of known falsehoods spreading on the internet and generic examples of faulty logic I've been finding in fact checks, intentionally abstracted from any s
Re: Why? (Score:1)
What infuriates me the most is that the mainstream national media was exposed under Bush Jr. for what it was...a propaganda machine willing to spread lies for those it aligned with politically...and people have forgotten that, now believing everything they see about Trump from CNN and the like.
I can remember how the media helped sell the pointless war in Iraq, how they continued to lie during it, and then eventually getting caught in their lies and being exposed...I donâ(TM)t understand how people can
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I've too have been disappointed and saddened by the supposed independent media and fact based fact checkers.
Even previously reputable sources like NPR and APNews are letting bias and slanted reporting and unnecessary colorful/biased adjectives and interpretation destroy the trust in free press.
If you cannot report the news without obvious prejudice, then I'm not sure you deserve free press protection or access.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
And if users try to share content that Twitter has flagged as false, a notice will warn them that they are about to share inaccurate information.
Why would you ever allow someone to share something that's been flagged as false?
I mean, shouldn't the behavior be that you get an error message saying sorry this is false and you're not allowed to spread falsehoods? And shouldn't that be the behavior all the time not just right around the election?
Who decided it was false? Usually some hired "fact-checker" with their own bias and agenda.
Here's an account of a recent incident involving John Stossel
https://www.dailynews.com/2020... [dailynews.com]
Re: Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Usually" and yet you give one example. That's not usual, that is unusual.
This is how peer-review works in science, essentially (although the reviewers ideally have no conflicts of interest). It's not fool-proof, nothing involving human review ever is.
Ideally, fact-checking would be done by an independent body, but who appoints them, and are they compensated for it? Regardless if those issues, it's patently better to have some kind of checking, rather than none at all.
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"Usually" and yet you give one example. That's not usual, that is unusual.
Really? How did you arrive at this "fact-check" conclusion?
An objective opinion would be "Based on this example we know it occurs, we don't know to what extent".
I think you just demonstrated the problem with fact-checking.
You can't really peer review on Twitter (Score:2)
So it's like buying crap. Don't trust the reviews, look for sources of information you can trust that have commented on it. And if you get burnt remember and adjust accordingly.
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Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Translation: Who decided it was false? Usually some hired fact checker who actually fact checks and won't let nutjobs spread lies and propaganda. That sucks. Nutjobs should be allowed to spread lies and propaganda!"
The simple fact is this: He spread a video containing misleading information. He even admits he spread a video containing misinformation. Fact checking worked completely as designed - by catching a nutjob knowingly spreading misinformation and flagging it.
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Translation: Who decided it was false? Usually some hired fact checker who actually fact checks and won't let nutjobs spread lies and propaganda. That sucks. Nutjobs should be allowed to spread lies and propaganda!"
The simple fact is this: He spread a video containing misleading information. He even admits he spread a video containing misinformation. Fact checking worked completely as designed - by catching a nutjob knowingly spreading misinformation and flagging it.
You are focusing on "he" and "a video". This is about a policy that applies across the board.
It is naïve to believe that hired special interest group fact-checkers are unbiased.
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You are under the mistaken impression that users are paying twitter to deliver messages to other people. They aren't. Users are posting things on twitter and twitter is promoting that content to other users to make money. If that content turns out to be false, Twitter is committing fraud. (Whether they are legally prosecuted for it or not.) The fact-checkers are there to protect twitter. That is their bias. If that bias is not what people want in a service, the "free market" will create another servic
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I'm focusing on the example you presented - which is an example of the system working exactly as designed. It stopped misleading material from being spread.
You didn't present an example of bias. You presented an example of misleading material being flagged.
That's what you're having a hard time grasping, it's not bias t
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I'm focusing on the example you presented - which is an example of the system working exactly as designed. It stopped misleading material from being spread.
You didn't present an example of bias. You presented an example of misleading material being flagged.
That's what you're having a hard time grasping, it's not bias to mark misleading material as being misleading. That's what fact checkers are supposed to do.
You didn't read the article then. He spoke to two of the three "fact checkers" and they both said they hadn't seen the video.
When he showed it to them they said it was fine.
Then subsequently, perhaps after having a group meeting at the office, they changed their minds.
This isn't right.
Hubris (Score:2)
A social media platform should not be in the business of vetting "truth". Too many issues are too complex. Even if the "fact checkers" were actually neutral and conscientious, they cannot possibly do the job they are assigned. Either they they have to check a zillion tweets/posts/videos to earn their salary, meaning checks are so superficial as to be meaningless. Or they are part of some group that doesn't care so muc
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Why would you ever presume to prevent someone from sharing something? Also, truth is relative and twitter is not arbiter of what is and is not truth. Since that is exactly the kind of gatekeeper role they are attempting to play in order to manipulate elections alongside the other major tech companies they want to create the appearance of taking actions consistent with that role.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Categorically false. What you believe might be relative, but truth is whatever reality that actually exists independent of what people believe about it.
It may very well be the case that nobody knows or even necessarily believes what might actually be true about a given situation, but that does not remotely change the veracity of it, and the truth may yet eventually still be discovered later.
Objective truth absolutely exists.
Disagreement about truth is actually just a disagreement about belief, and does not ever change what actually happened.
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Categorically false. What you believe might be relative, but truth is whatever reality that actually exists independent of what people believe about it.
Person A says " It is 70 degrees F outside."
Person B says "It is warm outside"
Person C says "It is chilly outside"
All of these statements are true, even if person B says person C's statement is false.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Only A's statement could be objectively true, as the notions of "warm" and "chilly" are themselves a subjective assessment lacking any objective qualification.
It is meaningless to assert that a statement made that is using subjective terminology is true or false.
This does not mean that truth is relative.
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Truth is even more relative than that. Instrument A says it is 70 F outside. Instrument B says it is 72 F outside, Instrument C says it is 71 F outside. There is relative truth even in objective external measurement. They could even be the same instrument! We have protocols that all amount to arriving at consensus for precisely this reason, even then consensus smooths out variation and increases reliability more so than make a result more or less true. You should look at how references for time and NTP work
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
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I have a high quality, guaranteed accurate thermometer with me. Right here in my back pocket.
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OMG you should sell it! NIST will be so happy to have a reference that they can use to calibrate THEIR reference and the EU will be absolutely thrilled when they can then use that to fix any discrepancy with their own reference.
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Defining a tolerance is (to quote me in the post you replied to) an example of "protocols that all amount to arriving at consensus." How do you set the tolerance on your reference? You figure out within what margin you get a consistent result (consensus) and agreement with other trusted sources (consensus).
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Truth is even more relative than that. Instrument A says it is 70 F outside. Instrument B says it is 72 F outside, Instrument C says it is 71 F outside. There is relative truth even in objective external measurement. They could even be the same instrument! We have protocols that all amount to arriving at consensus for precisely this reason, even then consensus smooths out variation and increases reliability more so than make a result more or less true and the consensus achieved is rarely absolute. History i
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Person A is stating a truth.
Persons B and C are stating opinions.
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Your pedantry over the reality of physical events isn't wrong, just irrelevant to the masses who discuss subjectives, interpretations, speculatives, opinions, etc
eg "X was responsible for Y", "A was B"s fault", "C sucks", "D isn't doing enough about E", "F is planning to G"
Yes, ten people died in an industrial accident. No one's discussing the objective reality of that number being eleven. They'll be eager to discuss the corporation's statement saying "Those workers didn't do enough safety checks". Not beca
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Your pedantry over the reality of physical events isn't wrong, just irrelevant to the masses who discuss subjectives, interpretations, speculatives, opinions, etc
eg "X was responsible for Y", "A was B"s fault", "C sucks", "D isn't doing enough about E", "F is planning to G"
Yes, ten people died in an industrial accident. No one's discussing the objective reality of that number being eleven. They'll be eager to discuss the corporation's statement saying "Those workers didn't do enough safety checks". Not because they're discussing the objective reality of what the statement's words were, that's an objective record, they're discussing what it *means*. Human meaning is less black and white, our concerns are primarily a world of ascribing.
"Ten/eleven people died" is not relative. It can have a veracity measurement.
"Ten people died because of X" is relative. Even people who WERE there (and we sure as fuck weren't, nor the talking heads) will need to hesitate before spouting about veracity.
Your example is good, because fact-checkers will subjectively decide that attributing the deaths to a cause they agree with is the truth, and anything else is misinformation.
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Agreed.
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Yes yes yes, we get it - objective facts don't matter because feelings are more important. Except, you're not allowed to even have your own feelings because Twitter will deny you that right.
Which is why we're in this stupid situation we're in today.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
One can examine the chain of causality to determine whether this is the case or not.
If X did not happen in the first place, then clearly the statement is false.
So you first need to determine if X ever happened in the first place.
If X did happen, then you can examine the chain of causation in the events that led to their death to determine if X somehow indirectly caused those people to die where, and especially to determine that if X had not occurred, then the people would not have died if all other things which were not caused by X had been equal. After the analysis, if you find that they would have died independently of X, then it is objectively incorrect to say that X caused their death, even if X happened and they died.
Objective reality even on matters of assigning blame exists. At most the case might be that we don't know what the truth is, but that doesn't mean that it isn't there.
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It may very well be the case that nobody knows or even necessarily believes what might actually be true about a given situation,
And therein lies the rub. Flagging true/false involves the personal beliefs and perceptions of the people doing the flagging. If we want to descent into philosophical pedantry, how do we know that anything is true [youtube.com]?
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There are some things that we can irrefutably say are true....Descartes infamous "I think, therefore I am" comes to mind as what in my own view might be the pinnacle of such.
Also, we can (usually) reasonably accept the reality around us as provided by our senses. While obviously, senses can still be deceived, I am referring to the general case here. Barring relatively rare mental disorders, the information relayed to our conscious minds generally reflects a sufficient approximation of reality that it c
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Well there's the relativity of truth, and its opposite the relativity of wrong. Asimov wrote a good little essay on it, https://chem.tufts.edu/Answers... [tufts.edu] Am I telling the truth if I say the world is round?
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Found the Philosophy Major!
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Just joking with you... My son has a MA in Philosophy and that comment sounded a lot like something he would say.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not sure about Twitter, but Facebook does warn you if a post is going to be flagged. The reason you’d still want to allow the user the ultimate choice of still continuing to post is because the flagging algorithms quite frankly, suck.
The other day I wanted to share that thing about whitehousegiftshop selling a “Trump Beat Covid-19” coin. Facebook flagged it because they considered it to be “potentially misleading”, because people might assume it was an officially government authorized minted coin and not just a kitschy collectible created in incredibly poor taste (regardless of who thought it was a good idea to sell).
Let’s talk about the real elephant in the room when it comes to misinformation: shitty public education. If more people grasped the concept of critical thinking skills, we wouldn’t need social media networks playing nanny over what information we can and cannot share.
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Another reason you would want to allow sharing of fake information is to criticise or correct it.
Anyway you can't really stop it. Often people just screenshot the post anyway so that people can see stuff in closed groups or from accounts they are blocked from following.
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Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally, I think the "soft" way to handle these situations that Twitter had to develop to deal with the sensitive situation of the POTUS spreading misinformation on Twitter is a great improvement over the "hard" way of straight up censorship.
Think about it, by suppressing dissenting views entirely (even if most of these ideas are terrible or stupid), you drive them underground. Thanks to the scarcity heuristic, rare views seem more valuable to our brains, even when they're not. I mean, why do "they" not want you to know about this stuff? Additionally, if you're getting this information from an underground channel, you aren't going to be getting any counter-viewpoints like you would in an open forum. Once you're hooked by a piece of "secret" special information, then an ideological group can easily pull you in further and work on indoctrinating you further.
While presenting the counter-viewpoint along with the misinformation does allow the misinformation to spread through normal channels, it shuts down the scarcity heuristic. It's just more information on the giant pile of information. While this could trigger one's availability bias, the availability of the counter-viewpoint will trigger the same bias, preventing one from overcoming the other on bias ground alone.
Also, as some other people have pointed out, sometimes people arguing against the misinformation get flagged too. Having their same viewpoint repeated by the system is harmless, while having it censored could cause harm.
Lastly, if a reasonable minority viewpoint is being suppressed, this system allows it to exist and possibly gain traction, even if it is going to meet resistance from this system. Just because the "party line" is being pushed in your face doesn't mean you'll believe it if the mainstream view is the anti-reality viewpoint. The point shouldn't be to shut down opposing views but rather to make them have to compete on a more rational basis.
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Oh yes, of course, because this approach was totally taken in those historical cases, and not totally different things that happened.
Oh wait, that isn't what happened because this approach is relatively new.
For evolution/intelligent design/young-Earth creationism, you had religious people pushing for "equal time" in school. This didn't privilege the fact-checked answer of evolution and enshrined creationism in the institution of learning, rather than having it just be something someone said on the Internet.
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More to the point -- if twitter knows something is false they either stop distributing it or they are just as guilty of fraud. It's so nice to hear that twitter will temporarily stop using fraudulent content to promote use of their service. Why was that legal in the first place? These services have used the false impression that they are content agnostic to claim legal protections that they never should have had in the first place. If Twitter "promotes" something into people's timelines, and it turns ou
Crony capitalism (Score:4, Interesting)
risking the ire of its best-known user, President...
Here’s a crazy idea: Maybe the president* shouldn’t be on Twitter. Would it really be so difficult for whitehouse.gov to add their own microblogging service for the POTUS?
For all this talk about Facebook having a monopoly, that’s nothing compared to the millions of captive audience members Twitter has, because they’re the official platform of the president.
* and before someone says it, no, I didn’t think Obama should’ve been using Twitter in an official capacity either.
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Yeah, we'd all download and install the official Trump app so we can listen to him, right?
Re:Crony capitalism (Score:4, Insightful)
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Also remember that every word written down over uttered where someone can hear it becomes a part of the record. That's what shows up in a later presidential library, future academics will scour all that social media for hidden meanings and use it for future biographies and history books.
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Remember when Obama came to office and he was a bit dismayed that they wouldn't let him keep his Blackberry device, as it was deemed not secure enough. He relented and life went on. Trump however never relented over Twitter, he let everyone know that this was not a team effort and that he was the boss and everyone else could be fired at a moment's notice. Norms were discarded.
Remember how everyone booed and hissed when Bill Clinton asked his wife to help out with the health care plan? Well fast forward
Like disabling Trump's account on the night of? (Score:2)
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Bubble, Amplification, and Impulsivity (Score:5, Interesting)
So, disabling these features tone down the worst 'features' of social media:
- Impulsive Retweeting, the user has no time to think over or verify what they are retweeting ...etc)
- Amplification Effect that is not present in other modes of communication (letter to the editor, soap box,
- Information Bubble, the echo chamber, with no exposure to alternate view points
Without those, social media is far less addictive, and therefore less lucrative for the companies who run it ...
Can we just turn Twitter itself 'Off', for good? (Score:2)
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Twitter's Main Feature IS Misinformation (Score:2)