Hi Tomas, great job as usual! However, aren't 4 pieces on Twitter a bit too much? There are many topics we voted. E.g. you promised one on real estate I am looking fwd to read. Thanks for the quality you deliver
An excellent piece. I learn something new each time I read a new article. A few observations:
The remarks about Twitter search and feed are absolutely spot-on and I'm not sure anyone has ever proposed or pursued something resembling the idea before. It makes one reconsider Elon's decision to fire over half his staff in a new light.
Ranking replies by time encourages the most active users to win Twitter: you have to essentially be there all the time. People who spend all day on Twitter don't generally tend to be wholesome users. But I don't see how ranking replies by quality really solves this problem: we are fundamentally lazy. People don't even click on the second page of Google search results. So, again, you are going to end up rewarding earlier users since people will stop reading down the replies after a certain point. However, it's still miles better than the current system.
I'm undecided over the merits of downvoting: YouTube famously discontinued it last year but limiting it to replies might suffice.
On downvoting: yes. Also, you might not want to show the downvotes, but still take them into consideration.
There were footnotes on the specifics of the ranking of replies. You can seed new ones to see if they're successful, and bury them otherwise. In fact, you can default to a reverse chronological order for the time component, so that every comment has a chance. But still prioritize quality.
You can also have a time decay function, where a like right now is more valuable than a like 2h ago.
In other words, this is a solvable pbm (that companies like FB have in fact worked on), so there's no reason why Twitter can't. And it would be by far the best action to turn Twitter into a conversation
I think the way this would promote diversity of opinion and thoughtful debate is because:
- You have an incentive to write thoughtful replies. Today, that incentive doesn't exist.
- If thoughtful replies are seen close to the original tweet, it's very easy to expose those saying stupid things, and they would be more cautious next time.
Great article, thanks Tomas. Thinking about how Twitter can do more to improve the polarization of Twitter. Do you think it’s possible for the algorithm to feed counterpoints, or include high quality, high ranked tweets that are more centrist?
On the feed itself it's hard, because the feeds reflect who we are. Ppl retweet the most incendiary parts, not Twitter. There could be a small penalty from sentiment analysis though, but that would go directly against engagement. I would consider it if I was the owner.
That said, I think we're vastly underestimating the power that a good debate could have. We're underestimating the power of replies to deliver that.
I understand that you want to discuss Twitter analytically - but that is somewhat akin to discussing a thermonuclear warhead analytically.
This has much more to do with morality. One cannot separate who Elon Musk is, what his world-view is, and what Twitter is rapidly becoming, from what can "work" to make Twitter better.
The man is demonstrably NOT a "normal" human being - and the past 3 weeks is highly illustrative in that regard.
Apart from the chaos he has created, his stated goal is to fashion the platform after his own belief system. A belief system completely untethered from reality. To that end, he has readmitted 45 and the hateful Tweets have already exploded as his entire "safety" staff has departed.
I have left Twitter permanently precisely because you cannot separate the platform from the man. That itself is a futile exercise.
I am no fan of Elon Musk - an intelligent but overhyped businessman with serious insecurity issues - but I don't think the rest of us have a moral pedestal from which to fling blame. I for one am certainly guilty of his many flaws: a tendency to overestimate one's contributions, severe hindsight bias, an inclination to treat a promise as a present convenience, vanity. I'll be hard pressed to find many people who can truly absolve themselves of similar charges.
Two, I'm not sure morality is the issue here. Morality is the excuse we resort to when we cannot have our way by sheer will. Twitter the business is a very different thing from Twitter the symbol. I do think it has spent too long being the latter.
Refined - I do hear and understand your message - and I respectfully disagree.
Milgram's studies (as flawed and questionable as his methodologies were) clearly showed that many if not most are capable of abhorrent action in certain contexts. All of us are capable of horrible deeds. This becomes more critical as one acquires more wealth and chooses (?) to become insulated from ethical feedback (for example, by firing anyone who disagrees).
I need not be perfect to render a reasonable and accurate judgement about Stalin and his purges, or the firebombing of Dresden. Indeed, my own brokenness may give me a lens through which to see more clearly.
Hannah Arendt's work on Totalitarianism is quite relevant here, given that platforms like Twitter have become the true conveyors of dis- and accurate information in our world.
I stand by my statement: The values an organization embodies are important and flow from the top down; and the values it embodies will affect its impact on the world.
I suspect it is extremely rare to find an ethical organization with ethical leaders. (That would be an interesting hypothesis to investigate, no?)
I'm still working on the part of the series focused on Twitter the product. The last article in the series is about Twitter the company. I'll think about what you say for that piece.
I don't know why I am just seeing this. I appreciate the comment. You are quite right.
On the topic of ethical organizations with ethical leaders, it's frankly near to impossible. Maybe they existed before shareholder value maximization but they surely do not exist now.
The way I see capitalism is like a wrestling contest: there are less aggressive wrestlers like the great Muhammad Ali and more aggressive wrestlers like Mike Tyson. But at the end of the day, wrestling demands a certain amount of aggression. It's woven into the nature of game.
Capitalism works the same way. Capitalism is revenue - cost. That's its fundamental equation. Labour is a cost so you have to minimize that. Environmental protection is a cost so you have to minimize that. Legal liability is a cost so you have to minimize that. And everytime you mimimize costs, you transfer it onto the government or the society.
The reason it works is because we hope the value they generate exceed the costs they dump onto everyone else. For the last decade, that's not been true.
Twitter had the potential to be a useful communication platform but in the past few weeks has degenerated into chaos, with an explosion of hate, racism, and all the worst examples of humanity. The use of the N word for example...
Reinstating Trump under the guise of freedom of speech after the attack on the Capitol on January 6 is akin to releasing an arsonist and providing napalm for the next conflagration. Ok so maybe an exaggeration, more like lit matches tossed into a pile of tinder...
Anyway as far as this series of Twitter articles goes, I'm not interested in how Twitter could adapt or improve under its current ownership. I was an early admirer of Elon Musk until I learned more about his way of doing business. I'm glad he moved out of my area and into Texas, and because of how he treated his employees here, I was not surprised by what happened to the Twitter staff.
Fwiw I've only occasionally looked in on Twitter to follow a few specific people but they are also on Substack so I'll just stick with that and abandon Twitter.
I agree with Edward which is why I'm replying here rather than posting on my own. Leadership starts at the top. Companies like Patagonia and REI are inspiring because of their principles, because of their leaders.
Well, I don't know much about REI but there has been a lot of analysis done on Patagonia: it doesn't look good. The entire charity act seemed to be a way to transfer ownership to another entity in his full control and skirt tax payments. There are no 'good' billion dollar companies: that's not their job.
Trump won't return to Twitter. What Trump wanted was the constant adulation of his core support. He can get that on Truth Social. He wasn't using Twitter to canvass or run social experiments or get in touch with the ordinary American.
If he migrates to Twitter, Truth Social no longer has any reason to exist. The only thing he loses to a degree is the ability to shape the national conversation, and given how much attention the media continue to lavish on him and his antics, it's a marginal loss.
Everything Elon does comes from a deep longing to be the centre of attention. When he was the green genius, the left loved him and he was happy with the admiration. Then the cracks began to appear and the media turned against him. So Elon transformed himself into someone that could be beloved by the right. They don't care nearly as much about electric cars or solar panels of course. But they care a lot about free speech and sticking it to the libs. So Elon became the champion of that.
Left, Right, it doesn't really matter. It is who can feed the hunger for attention better.
About Patagonia, I'm not referring to the recent highly publicized "last official" act of the "former owner" in turning his company over to a board on which various family members sit (and thus still have some if not the same control over the company's direction). I did read that he still had to pay $17M in taxes but possibly that's a lot less than if he passed it off to his 2 children.
I meant the company's past and recent history, on environmental issues, working conditions, employee benefits, more sustainable manufacturing, packaging, and tagging of their products, including a program to repair or recycle used or worn or damaged products. I don't work for them but have heard a lot of positives about the company.
Well, I can counter with several objective pieces of evidence: their employment until recently of forced labour in Chinese labour camps, publicized donations that are not followed through, a history of sensational virtue signaling.
But to be honest, I always try to operate on the principle that a world with a little more good in it is a superior to a world without. So on that score, Patagonia gets a pass.
Really great Article! I started to love Twitter over the last year. The big downside, IMHO, of Twitter is the polarization of discussions and the constant work of keeping my feed clean of ugly discussions. For example, I really avoid all discussions on COVID even from experts or political leaders, because almost all the replies are hateful and disrespectful. Will you also discuss or address these matters?
I've always been puzzled by Twitter, and not in a good way. Twitter seems the platform least suitable for in depth intelligent discussion, and yet that's where all the elites congregate. Makes no sense to me. At least for intelligent discussion, I think we made a mistake when we abandoned forums for social media. Blog comments are an acceptable compromise, but forums are still the best platform, imho. I might be the last person on the net who thinks that though. :-)
I am currently on Twitter, but only because Substack allows me to list my new articles there with exactly no effort on my part. I don't expect that to accomplish much, but it's pain free, so why not?
“In some future time there will be a continent called America …
The human race in that era will get into troubles all over its head and practically wreck everything in spite of its intelligent Budda nature …..
In that future American era…..
…enter the world in a new form to cure the world of loveless knowledge that seeks with blind hunger and mindless rage eating food that will not fill it “
Is a new twitter or google etc possible ?
Can we proselytize and indoctrinate and propagandize and advertise and monetize and rank for interest simultaneously while pursuing solutions or truth
Perhaps when using the site you must chose what you are there to do so if you decline a category you can be spared from enduring it
I also might suggest a rant category where there is no ranking and likes are not counted and a psycho bot replies with de escalation program
Hi Tomas, great job as usual! However, aren't 4 pieces on Twitter a bit too much? There are many topics we voted. E.g. you promised one on real estate I am looking fwd to read. Thanks for the quality you deliver
Thanks Marco. I don't intend to take 3 weeks to publish them.
Thx for manifesting your interest on the real estate piece.
I have a series coming on cities, which will touch on that. I don't have a prioritized project after that, so I might pick that one up!
An excellent piece. I learn something new each time I read a new article. A few observations:
The remarks about Twitter search and feed are absolutely spot-on and I'm not sure anyone has ever proposed or pursued something resembling the idea before. It makes one reconsider Elon's decision to fire over half his staff in a new light.
Ranking replies by time encourages the most active users to win Twitter: you have to essentially be there all the time. People who spend all day on Twitter don't generally tend to be wholesome users. But I don't see how ranking replies by quality really solves this problem: we are fundamentally lazy. People don't even click on the second page of Google search results. So, again, you are going to end up rewarding earlier users since people will stop reading down the replies after a certain point. However, it's still miles better than the current system.
I'm undecided over the merits of downvoting: YouTube famously discontinued it last year but limiting it to replies might suffice.
On downvoting: yes. Also, you might not want to show the downvotes, but still take them into consideration.
There were footnotes on the specifics of the ranking of replies. You can seed new ones to see if they're successful, and bury them otherwise. In fact, you can default to a reverse chronological order for the time component, so that every comment has a chance. But still prioritize quality.
You can also have a time decay function, where a like right now is more valuable than a like 2h ago.
In other words, this is a solvable pbm (that companies like FB have in fact worked on), so there's no reason why Twitter can't. And it would be by far the best action to turn Twitter into a conversation
Those are some pretty interesting ideas
Still don’t see how this avoids silo effect
How does this avoid the rage tweets
How does this promote diversity of opinion
Sometimes one is not aware of an interest outside one current path how is this open to new paths
So far I generally regard twitter and face book as giant time sinks
I find your blog useful when it draws on the twitter information to illustrate your ideas
Perhaps a twitter search like google search would be more useful and up to date
The search would definitely be useful.
I think the way this would promote diversity of opinion and thoughtful debate is because:
- You have an incentive to write thoughtful replies. Today, that incentive doesn't exist.
- If thoughtful replies are seen close to the original tweet, it's very easy to expose those saying stupid things, and they would be more cautious next time.
Great article, thanks Tomas. Thinking about how Twitter can do more to improve the polarization of Twitter. Do you think it’s possible for the algorithm to feed counterpoints, or include high quality, high ranked tweets that are more centrist?
On the feed itself it's hard, because the feeds reflect who we are. Ppl retweet the most incendiary parts, not Twitter. There could be a small penalty from sentiment analysis though, but that would go directly against engagement. I would consider it if I was the owner.
That said, I think we're vastly underestimating the power that a good debate could have. We're underestimating the power of replies to deliver that.
Tomas -
I'm sorry.
I understand that you want to discuss Twitter analytically - but that is somewhat akin to discussing a thermonuclear warhead analytically.
This has much more to do with morality. One cannot separate who Elon Musk is, what his world-view is, and what Twitter is rapidly becoming, from what can "work" to make Twitter better.
The man is demonstrably NOT a "normal" human being - and the past 3 weeks is highly illustrative in that regard.
Apart from the chaos he has created, his stated goal is to fashion the platform after his own belief system. A belief system completely untethered from reality. To that end, he has readmitted 45 and the hateful Tweets have already exploded as his entire "safety" staff has departed.
I have left Twitter permanently precisely because you cannot separate the platform from the man. That itself is a futile exercise.
I am no fan of Elon Musk - an intelligent but overhyped businessman with serious insecurity issues - but I don't think the rest of us have a moral pedestal from which to fling blame. I for one am certainly guilty of his many flaws: a tendency to overestimate one's contributions, severe hindsight bias, an inclination to treat a promise as a present convenience, vanity. I'll be hard pressed to find many people who can truly absolve themselves of similar charges.
Two, I'm not sure morality is the issue here. Morality is the excuse we resort to when we cannot have our way by sheer will. Twitter the business is a very different thing from Twitter the symbol. I do think it has spent too long being the latter.
Refined - I do hear and understand your message - and I respectfully disagree.
Milgram's studies (as flawed and questionable as his methodologies were) clearly showed that many if not most are capable of abhorrent action in certain contexts. All of us are capable of horrible deeds. This becomes more critical as one acquires more wealth and chooses (?) to become insulated from ethical feedback (for example, by firing anyone who disagrees).
I need not be perfect to render a reasonable and accurate judgement about Stalin and his purges, or the firebombing of Dresden. Indeed, my own brokenness may give me a lens through which to see more clearly.
Hannah Arendt's work on Totalitarianism is quite relevant here, given that platforms like Twitter have become the true conveyors of dis- and accurate information in our world.
I stand by my statement: The values an organization embodies are important and flow from the top down; and the values it embodies will affect its impact on the world.
I suspect it is extremely rare to find an ethical organization with ethical leaders. (That would be an interesting hypothesis to investigate, no?)
Blessings.
T
Thank you. I can see that perspective.
I'm still working on the part of the series focused on Twitter the product. The last article in the series is about Twitter the company. I'll think about what you say for that piece.
I don't know why I am just seeing this. I appreciate the comment. You are quite right.
On the topic of ethical organizations with ethical leaders, it's frankly near to impossible. Maybe they existed before shareholder value maximization but they surely do not exist now.
The way I see capitalism is like a wrestling contest: there are less aggressive wrestlers like the great Muhammad Ali and more aggressive wrestlers like Mike Tyson. But at the end of the day, wrestling demands a certain amount of aggression. It's woven into the nature of game.
Capitalism works the same way. Capitalism is revenue - cost. That's its fundamental equation. Labour is a cost so you have to minimize that. Environmental protection is a cost so you have to minimize that. Legal liability is a cost so you have to minimize that. And everytime you mimimize costs, you transfer it onto the government or the society.
The reason it works is because we hope the value they generate exceed the costs they dump onto everyone else. For the last decade, that's not been true.
Twitter had the potential to be a useful communication platform but in the past few weeks has degenerated into chaos, with an explosion of hate, racism, and all the worst examples of humanity. The use of the N word for example...
Reinstating Trump under the guise of freedom of speech after the attack on the Capitol on January 6 is akin to releasing an arsonist and providing napalm for the next conflagration. Ok so maybe an exaggeration, more like lit matches tossed into a pile of tinder...
Anyway as far as this series of Twitter articles goes, I'm not interested in how Twitter could adapt or improve under its current ownership. I was an early admirer of Elon Musk until I learned more about his way of doing business. I'm glad he moved out of my area and into Texas, and because of how he treated his employees here, I was not surprised by what happened to the Twitter staff.
Fwiw I've only occasionally looked in on Twitter to follow a few specific people but they are also on Substack so I'll just stick with that and abandon Twitter.
I agree with Edward which is why I'm replying here rather than posting on my own. Leadership starts at the top. Companies like Patagonia and REI are inspiring because of their principles, because of their leaders.
Well, I don't know much about REI but there has been a lot of analysis done on Patagonia: it doesn't look good. The entire charity act seemed to be a way to transfer ownership to another entity in his full control and skirt tax payments. There are no 'good' billion dollar companies: that's not their job.
Trump won't return to Twitter. What Trump wanted was the constant adulation of his core support. He can get that on Truth Social. He wasn't using Twitter to canvass or run social experiments or get in touch with the ordinary American.
If he migrates to Twitter, Truth Social no longer has any reason to exist. The only thing he loses to a degree is the ability to shape the national conversation, and given how much attention the media continue to lavish on him and his antics, it's a marginal loss.
Everything Elon does comes from a deep longing to be the centre of attention. When he was the green genius, the left loved him and he was happy with the admiration. Then the cracks began to appear and the media turned against him. So Elon transformed himself into someone that could be beloved by the right. They don't care nearly as much about electric cars or solar panels of course. But they care a lot about free speech and sticking it to the libs. So Elon became the champion of that.
Left, Right, it doesn't really matter. It is who can feed the hunger for attention better.
About Patagonia, I'm not referring to the recent highly publicized "last official" act of the "former owner" in turning his company over to a board on which various family members sit (and thus still have some if not the same control over the company's direction). I did read that he still had to pay $17M in taxes but possibly that's a lot less than if he passed it off to his 2 children.
I meant the company's past and recent history, on environmental issues, working conditions, employee benefits, more sustainable manufacturing, packaging, and tagging of their products, including a program to repair or recycle used or worn or damaged products. I don't work for them but have heard a lot of positives about the company.
Well, I can counter with several objective pieces of evidence: their employment until recently of forced labour in Chinese labour camps, publicized donations that are not followed through, a history of sensational virtue signaling.
But to be honest, I always try to operate on the principle that a world with a little more good in it is a superior to a world without. So on that score, Patagonia gets a pass.
Really great Article! I started to love Twitter over the last year. The big downside, IMHO, of Twitter is the polarization of discussions and the constant work of keeping my feed clean of ugly discussions. For example, I really avoid all discussions on COVID even from experts or political leaders, because almost all the replies are hateful and disrespectful. Will you also discuss or address these matters?
I've always been puzzled by Twitter, and not in a good way. Twitter seems the platform least suitable for in depth intelligent discussion, and yet that's where all the elites congregate. Makes no sense to me. At least for intelligent discussion, I think we made a mistake when we abandoned forums for social media. Blog comments are an acceptable compromise, but forums are still the best platform, imho. I might be the last person on the net who thinks that though. :-)
I am currently on Twitter, but only because Substack allows me to list my new articles there with exactly no effort on my part. I don't expect that to accomplish much, but it's pain free, so why not?
Twitter is not useful as a debate tool. It’s useful as a news gathering tool
Massive sturm and drang about Musk's announcement about restoring banned accounts. Interested to see how you would handle.
A quote from Gary Snyder. 1969
“In some future time there will be a continent called America …
The human race in that era will get into troubles all over its head and practically wreck everything in spite of its intelligent Budda nature …..
In that future American era…..
…enter the world in a new form to cure the world of loveless knowledge that seeks with blind hunger and mindless rage eating food that will not fill it “
Is a new twitter or google etc possible ?
Can we proselytize and indoctrinate and propagandize and advertise and monetize and rank for interest simultaneously while pursuing solutions or truth
Perhaps when using the site you must chose what you are there to do so if you decline a category you can be spared from enduring it
I also might suggest a rant category where there is no ranking and likes are not counted and a psycho bot replies with de escalation program