[mindcrime]

Just to play Devil's advocate:

One that wants to manipulate your mind

Like your post here? Or my present reply to it? And so on...

one that echochambers your discovery

Which is good, because nobody has enough time in the day to process every conceivable byte of information they might stumble across...

one that censors arbitrarily

OK, because while everyone may have the right to speak freely, not all speech needs to be heard by everyone...

[pteredactyl]

The idea is I have a timeline and am able to choose what's on it. Good, bad, ugly. It's up to me. If I don't like what someone's saying I unfollow, mute or block. Easy.

With Twitter, FB, and modern social media, they let their algorithm decide what I should see. They think they know what people want and ultimately what's best for me. I disagree with this so I opt-out of their services. Sadly. Because there are ( or were ) a lot of interesting and novel voices on there.

Also, I suppose at a certain point those 3XXX employees need to justify their existence.

And yes it's their prerogative to do whatever they want with their product. And yes I know private companies are not bound by the 1st Amendment.

[xnxn]

> Easy.

If you're spectating, maybe. Completely falls apart when you try to engage in dialogue on Twitter, which is what both Twitter, Inc. and I want.

Say I follow someone because I like what they say. And I want to discuss what they're saying, or to explore existing discussions. I'm going into this ready to have a thoughtful debate or two.

So I open the replies, and they're what I consider to be garbage: flamewars, reaction GIFs, propaganda, straight-up bad-faith trolling, and worse. But maybe there's some good in here somewhere?

Assume I'm a typical human with emotions and stuff. Do I:

A) Immediately close the thread! It's not worth it, and I have the ability and willpower to bow out.

B) Scroll through the replies, muting and blocking people. Maybe if I do this enough I'll have a nicer experience on the next thread I open. Wow there sure are a lot of these folks!

C) Take the bait. Someone is wrong on the internet.

You know already, but I'll tell you anyway. I, typical human, tend to rush headlong into option C), which wastes my time, makes me unhappy, and gives me a negative perception of the quality of discussions on Twitter. Twitter, Inc. doesn't want that either, but they've picked these replies to show me. Clearly they don't know what kind of thing I think is garbage. So what can they do?

It's not easy.

[pteredactyl]

Replies with the most upvotes are at the top. That generally filters out the BS. There is a date posted versus upvote count balance that needs to be reached, but ML is not required.

And this all assumes you're trying to have conversation around someone with many many followers. If you're in a small circle, none of your argument applies.

Further posts by the original poster are at the top too.

Yes, you may have to filter through some posts on your own. If you plan on having a conversation with Obama, good luck. And for good reason.

But I don't want Twitter Inc filtering for me. Essentially upvoting and downvoting comments based on their algorithm. Sorry.

At least give users the choice to use their ML algorithm or not. I'd even pay to have it turned off or to tweak how I see my timeline.

So I don't follow.

[nl]

If you're in a small circle, none of your argument applies.

Try being a woman or Jewish and have a conversation on Twitter about - say - gaming.

[zaarn]

Not enabling echochambering doesn't mean you get overwhelmed.

If the algorithms only ever selects things you already like, how would you discover things you might not know you like? Or change your mind about a subject because you only ever see tweets that agree with your worldview?

A good timeline would not only show you speech, ideas or content you agree to or like but also stuff you don't like and don't agree with.

[ckastner]

>> One that wants to manipulate your mind

> Like your post here? Or my present reply to it? And so on...

Except that Twitter thrives on controversy. There's controversy on HN as well, but escalations lead to flagging of content, not promotion of it.

>> one that echochambers your discovery

> Which is good, because nobody has enough time in the day to process every conceivable byte of information they might stumble across...

Strawman. This statement isn't about quantity, it's about content. Focusing on information that reinforces one's one view, instead of engaging in critical thought, is a dumbing-down.

>> one that censors arbitrarily

> OK, because while everyone may have the right to speak freely, not all speech needs to be heard by everyone...

Strawman. This isn't about what gets filtered, but who filters and how this information gets filtered.