Author Topic: Twitter  (Read 1889 times)

Twitter
« on: 07 January, 2021, 08:27:57 pm »
In short I'm thinking of signing up as regularly things I'm interested in say contact us via twitter. They often have an email address but often takes some finding

Some people I'm interested in also use it rather then Facebook

Is twitter any less evil at creaming your profile and selling your soul and any less advert heavy then Facebook which seems now to fit in stuff about my friends between adverts

Re: Twitter
« Reply #1 on: 07 January, 2021, 08:44:28 pm »
I don't use twitter, so I have no direct experience, but twitter makes 90% of it's revenue by selling advertising (about $800 million a quarter), and the reason advertisers buy the ads is because twitter collects user data.

Ruthie

  • Her Majester
Re: Twitter
« Reply #2 on: 07 January, 2021, 08:51:36 pm »
I like Twitter. There are some interesting accounts, and it’s easy to find people who share my profession and my hobbies, and follow them. Also that Crinklylion introduced me to some hilarious accounts.

And Rev Richard Coles who is an utter darling and a sweetheart.
Milk please, no sugar.

Re: Twitter
« Reply #3 on: 07 January, 2021, 08:56:10 pm »
I am on Twitter. however I would really really advise against making any personal information available on your profile.
The act of 'doxxing' is sadly common. A scientist working at a pharma company criticised a Telegraph columnist this week
She threatened to 'finish him' and due to information on his profile someone worked out hsi place of employment.

Sorry to make that sound a bit scary, I am sure you know to use common sense.

Re: Twitter
« Reply #4 on: 07 January, 2021, 09:00:44 pm »
Yeah I will be using a pseudonym and maybe some spurious details as sensible debate seems dead in this day and rage (sic) .

rogerzilla

  • When n+1 gets out of hand
Re: Twitter
« Reply #5 on: 07 January, 2021, 09:04:19 pm »
Twitter is often horrible but can also be incredibly witty.
Hard work sometimes pays off in the end, but laziness ALWAYS pays off NOW.

hellymedic

  • Just do it!
Re: Twitter
« Reply #6 on: 07 January, 2021, 09:10:30 pm »
I've been happy with my Twitter experience so far.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Twitter
« Reply #7 on: 07 January, 2021, 09:11:26 pm »
Is twitter any less evil at creaming your profile and selling your soul and any less advert heavy then Facebook which seems now to fit in stuff about my friends between adverts

Yes, because twitter has an API that can be accessed without adverts by third-party applications (I mostly read twitter in a text-only client, which greatly cuts down the dross).  Every now and then they make unnecessary annoying changes, because they want to drive you to access it via the website or their own app so they can serve you adverts.  But equally Twitter has a long history of being easy to create useful/entertaining bots for, so they're unlikely to break third-party access entirely.

It's slightly less evil than Facebook, in as much that it's a social media hellsite that's evolved out of a broadcast-sms-alike tool, rather than a social media hellsite that's evolved out of a rating-and-stalking-the-women-in-Mark-Zuckerberg's-college-classes tool.  In practice, Twitter seems more inclined towards spontaneous interactions with interesting people and less about stoking 'engagement' within your own social bubble.

It's also much less of a walled-garden; reading a public twitter feed without a twitter account is practical.  This is presumably because Facebook's business model of borging every useful tool on the internet until they control substantial amounts of everyone's online life has been eminently successful, while Twitter's seems to be based on repeated failure to understand what people actually use twitter for.

They're both pretty horrid for dredging up historical content.  Again, this is less of a problem on Twitter, where the nature of the tool lends itself to more transient content.

The endgame, of course, is Facebook buying twitter.

ian

Re: Twitter
« Reply #8 on: 07 January, 2021, 09:44:55 pm »
Like all these businesses, your personal data is their product. That's the deal. They can cut through pseudonyms like butter.

I mostly don't get Twitter, it's a high signal-to-noise ratio, often filled with opposing groups of people yelling 'me too' to no obvious relevance. It's a lot of effort for the occasional worthwhile comment and you really have to chose who to follow carefully. Let's face it, there are not many people who can deliver the sort of bon mot that the format demands. And, of course, a lot of people mistake it for real life.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Twitter
« Reply #9 on: 07 January, 2021, 09:52:31 pm »
Like all these businesses, your personal data is their product. That's the deal.

That's the mature state.  There's a larval state where the product is venture capital, which they attract via their user count.  The transition between the two is where the advertising, algorithmic timelines, API changes, and similar dross is carefully titrated to the point where it almost but not quite pisses off the users enough that they stop using it.

In recent years, the objective seems to frequently be to make enough impact that your company gets bought by Facebook.

Twitter, for some reason, appears to be stuck in a perpetual adolescence.

Mrs Pingu

  • Who ate all the pies? Me
    • Twitter
Re: Twitter
« Reply #10 on: 07 January, 2021, 10:09:11 pm »
Can recommend following Giant Military Cats @giantcat9 :D
Do not clench. It only makes it worse.

Re: Twitter
« Reply #11 on: 07 January, 2021, 10:17:35 pm »
If you never venture into Twitter, none of the following will make any sense:

https://twitter.com/TheIDSmiths/status/1346832559582404608?s=20

 

But if you do, its fucking genius

ian

Re: Twitter
« Reply #12 on: 08 January, 2021, 09:47:44 am »
Like all these businesses, your personal data is their product. That's the deal.

That's the mature state.  There's a larval state where the product is venture capital, which they attract via their user count.  The transition between the two is where the advertising, algorithmic timelines, API changes, and similar dross is carefully titrated to the point where it almost but not quite pisses off the users enough that they stop using it.

In recent years, the objective seems to frequently be to make enough impact that your company gets bought by Facebook.

Twitter, for some reason, appears to be stuck in a perpetual adolescence.

I think that's true of any tech business these days (I'm sitting here in my remote command centre for the mothership for that very reason, and I'm not complaining, the process paid my first house deposit).

Twitter does seem stuck, I'm not sure anyone ultimately knows what to do with it.

I skim through it every now and again, there's some interest, but a lot of dross and no quality control which sort of reminds you that real life needs an editor. And the retweeting phenomenon is effectively an amplifier for all kinds of noise.

Some people are obsessive about it, and you get an entire media stories that basically consist of stuff people are saying about something on Twitter, which is the condensed voxpop that ought to be punished by death.

Re: Twitter
« Reply #13 on: 08 January, 2021, 10:18:26 am »
Whether twitter is useful depends on what you want it for. You can find the best and the worst. It is 99% shite, but 1% gold. You have to be scrupulous in who you follow and be completely disinterested in having followers lest you be drawn into the game of attention-seeking  (I have 0   :P ). If you want unabridged, unreconstituted information straight from the 'experts' then you can find it. You just have to be aware that they are posting for a reason, and consider what reason that might be (as with all intelligent consumption of media)

quixoticgeek

  • Mostly Harmless
Re: Twitter
« Reply #14 on: 08 January, 2021, 01:37:11 pm »
Like all these businesses, your personal data is their product. That's the deal. They can cut through pseudonyms like butter.

I mostly don't get Twitter, it's a high signal-to-noise ratio, often filled with opposing groups of people yelling 'me too' to no obvious relevance. It's a lot of effort for the occasional worthwhile comment and you really have to chose who to follow carefully. Let's face it, there are not many people who can deliver the sort of bon mot that the format demands. And, of course, a lot of people mistake it for real life.

Twitter is only as good as the people you follow.

I recommend:

https://twitter.com/HourlyCats
https://twitter.com/Otter_Emergency
https://twitter.com/EmergencyKitten
https://twitter.com/CapybaraCountry
https://twitter.com/quokkaeveryhour
https://twitter.com/hourlywolvesbot
https://twitter.com/uksnowmap

I would also recommend that you find the setting to disable the algorithm, so you get tweets as based on the time they were posted, not as some algorithm thinks you want to see them. I also recommend not using the website to access. If you use tweetdeck, you get the non algorithmic feed by default. My android app (plume), is the same.

I've been on twitter since 2008. I've posted over 220k posts. I've made some great friends via twitter, and it's even got me a ride in the Soyuz simulator.

Oh, I'm on twitter with the same username as here.

J
--
Beer, bikes, and backpacking
http://b.42q.eu/

Re: Twitter
« Reply #15 on: 08 January, 2021, 07:01:55 pm »


And Rev Richard Coles who is an utter darling and a sweetheart.

He's on Winter walks on BBC Four tonight :thumbsup:

Ruthie

  • Her Majester
Re: Twitter
« Reply #16 on: 09 January, 2021, 11:47:00 am »
Michael Rosen is on very good form at the moment. Which is nice.

@MichaelRosenYes
Milk please, no sugar.

Re: Twitter
« Reply #17 on: 12 January, 2021, 04:32:04 am »


And Rev Richard Coles who is an utter darling and a sweetheart.

He's on Winter walks on BBC Four tonight :thumbsup:

And if you liked that walk you can cycle a very similar route from the Sutton Bank car park to Rievaulx Abbey along the old drovers road and round in a loop back to the car park.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.