It seems to me this piece makes lots of assumptions that do not really apply to social media, where I'll use Twitter as the example, just like the author did.
People don't really have "conversations" on social media. Most activity is posting updates about oneself, but the far bigger part is screaming at each other and playing engagement games.
The goal of all this activity is not to debate, converse or exchange information. The goal is to win by being maximally controversial, as that's the behavior that is rewarded.
As such, Twitter is opposite to real life. If you'd talk and behave as people do on Twitter in the real world, you'd be ousted in a day or may even wake up in the hospital.
In a dynamic where bad faith is the default, you can't apply good faith principles.
It's massively complex to address. On the one hand, you have almost no accountability regarding your speech on Twitter, yet incidentally too much: mob attacks / cancel culture. Too free and too restricted at once.
Personally, I think what you can and cannot say is a massive distraction from the real issue: what gets amplified. Reasonable conversation is pointless and hot takes win. It should be the opposite, just like in real life.
> The goal of all this activity is not to debate, converse or exchange information. The goal is to win by being maximally controversial, as that's the behavior that is rewarded.
> the real issue: what gets amplified
But it can be (at least partially) fixed if you change the optimization function.
And Twitter's Birdwatch (that Elon recently got all excited about when it fact checked the White House: https://twitter.com/metaviv/status/1587884806020415491) actually does this "bridging-based ranking" for adding context on tweets.
People don't really have "conversations" on social media. Most activity is posting updates about oneself, but the far bigger part is screaming at each other and playing engagement games.
The goal of all this activity is not to debate, converse or exchange information. The goal is to win by being maximally controversial, as that's the behavior that is rewarded.
As such, Twitter is opposite to real life. If you'd talk and behave as people do on Twitter in the real world, you'd be ousted in a day or may even wake up in the hospital.
In a dynamic where bad faith is the default, you can't apply good faith principles.
It's massively complex to address. On the one hand, you have almost no accountability regarding your speech on Twitter, yet incidentally too much: mob attacks / cancel culture. Too free and too restricted at once.
Personally, I think what you can and cannot say is a massive distraction from the real issue: what gets amplified. Reasonable conversation is pointless and hot takes win. It should be the opposite, just like in real life.