Comments on: Twitter still in trouble http://www.kalyr.co.uk/weblog/computing/social-media/twitter-still-in-trouble/ The blogs of Tim Hall Fri, 14 Apr 2017 23:35:42 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=3.7.41 By: Tim Hall http://www.kalyr.co.uk/weblog/computing/social-media/twitter-still-in-trouble/comment-page-1/#comment-80883 Mon, 31 Oct 2016 10:36:28 +0000 http://www.kalyr.co.uk/weblog/?p=17035#comment-80883 Important to remember that political ideologues (of any stripe) are the minority, but they’re the ones who make all the noise, and as the old saying goes, it’s the squeaky wheel that gets the oil. Some communities have a “Leave your politics at the door” rule for a good reason.

Twitter’s problem is there are many, many overlapping communities sharing the same space, and some of them aren’t willing to co-exist with others. So it needs a means of keeping them apart.

Twitter’s other problem, of course, is they’ve built something that’s hard to monetise without alienating their users. And that’s a whole ‘nother issue…

]]> By: Colum Paget http://www.kalyr.co.uk/weblog/computing/social-media/twitter-still-in-trouble/comment-page-1/#comment-80878 Mon, 31 Oct 2016 01:11:37 +0000 http://www.kalyr.co.uk/weblog/?p=17035#comment-80878 Twitters mistakes have been so numerous that it’s tough to point to any one problem, for instance their decision to discourage third party clients and apps led to the platform being increasingly left behind in the age of open-source and cloud. But I totally agree with the points you make here. One of twitter’s biggest problems is that it allows ideological harrassment to pass provided that it’s coming from the ‘right side’. This is true of a lot of online spaces. Few of these spaces will survive the next five years in any significant form.

In attempting to allow open season on white men, SJW ideology declares open season on everyone. SJW outrage is a form of performance art, and requires a target. Once all the cishet white men have blocked/muted you, or are otherwise no longer providing you good targets, you have to find other victims. Thus we eventually see gay men becoming a target and Steven Fry getting chased off, or Peter Thiel declared to ‘not be gay’.

Ultimately then spaces that try to cleave to an ideological line will always become troll infested and all the normal people will be targeted in turn and most will be driven away. They will hit some upper limit and not be able to grow beyond that. I predict the same will happen to gab.ai.

The future is probably many walled gardens each catering to a different audience. These will likely be created within something like facebook by giving people the tools to create their own closed subgroups. This isn’t going to happen with twitter though, twitter has had its day.

Colum

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