The New New Reading Environment

https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-45/the-intellectual-situation/the-new-new-reading-environment/

by apollinaire • 3 years ago

32 5 3 years ago

prohobo• 3 years ago

I don't deny people the right to hate Musk, but just speaking about Twitter specifically:

1) He is turning Twitter into exactly the kind of service that social media and privacy reformists have been asking for. Flipping the economic model from "user as product" back to "platform as product" is capitalism at its healthiest. The subscription model is the best way to monetize the platform without selling user data. You hate this? You prefer the model that drives the engagement economy that emotionally abuses and manipulates people, while selling them out?

2) His takeover turned over some rocks and rooted out a lot of bots and political manipulation/censorship. Yes, Twitter was more stable before, but it was also a walled garden controlled by mainstream media and government officials in an unethical manner.

3) Twitter is now a more ethically managed shithole that doesn't manipulate audiences for narrative alignment.

That means a lot of people who liked Twitter before, because it was censored and narrative-driven in their interests, now have to contend with the reality that not everyone agrees with them or likes them. That also means they are exposed to more of the toxicity that was always there.

4) They're open-sourcing the algorithm, which is absolutely what should have been done years ago for a communication tool that's so ingrained in political discussion in the West. It will get better at rooting out spam and garbage content with the help of community contributers, it just takes some time.

In my opinion, the author is essentially complaining about the growing pains of what real reform looks like. They don't want reform; they want censorship, manipulation, and privacy abuses.

I don't know if Twitter will survive this, but anyone serious about living in a healthy society should be rooting for their current management to succeed, or to at least inspire a better successor.

azangru• 3 years ago

Twitter was ... a walled garden controlled by mainstream media and government officials in an unethical manner.
Twitter is now a more ethically managed shithole that doesn't manipulate audiences for narrative alignment.
That means a lot of people who liked Twitter before ... now have to contend with the reality that not everyone agrees with them or likes them. That also means they are exposed to more of the toxicity that was always there.

There are several case studies that make me doubt whether one can make any conclusions about the trajectory of Twitter and the walls of its garden.

Exhibit one: preventing publication of tweets or updates to one's profile that contained links to Mastodon. Rolled back, as far as I understand; but wtf?

Exhibit two: blocking publication of tweets containing links to Substack. Also rolled back apparently (Matt Taibbi is still on Twitter despite his threats to move to Substack notes); but wtf??!!

Exhibit three: Elon suggesting that they can reassign NPR account to another person or company if NPR doesn't tweet. WTF??!!!

Exhibit four. There's an online personality called Scott Ritter. He has strongly — perhaps obnoxiously so — pro-Russian opinions about the ongoing conflict. His account got suspended. I understand that he pisses lots of people off; that he may be an idiot, a tool, and a horrible human being; whatever. But, suspending his account does not fit the narrative of a new Twitter that defends freedom of speech and does not care about toxicity, or about who agrees with whom.

alxlaz• 3 years ago

Also, "the kind of service that social media and privacy reformists have been asking for" is very much a stretch.

There's been no substantial change to the Twitter policy, and the whole thing is still centered on an algorithm-driven timeline. It's exactly the same Twitter as before, except it's got a paid subscription. There's no "flipping" in the economy -- automatically driving the right story to the right users is still the main proposition and user attention is still the main product, except some of them are also paying for it now, for some reason.

Edit: also, remember that time when Twitter banned the ElonJet dude (okay, doxxing, makes total sense), then a bunch of journalists who covered the ElonJet story, then journalists who covered Twitter banning a bunch of journalists who covered the ElonJet story?

amadeuspagel• 3 years ago

Funny to read that only "hucksters and marks, the passive and the desperate" are still using twitter, only to be begged to tweet a quote from it in the middle. Who is the huckster and who is the mark here?

oofnik• 3 years ago

I think the world is fundamentally divided between people who want to be heard, and people who want to be right.

With all due respect to the editors of n+1, people who do well in media are almost always, with very few exceptions, of the former category.

The New New Reading Environment

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