I really appreciate that there are still some people left who can think for themselves and don't view things solely in black and white (since they usually aren't). It's unfortunate that it's typically the other type who participate on Twitter. I believe this is due to the irreversible damage caused by character limit, which has been lifted, but the learned behavior changes slowly.
Discussion
Why do you think it was the char limit?
Quite often, the following scenario would occur (I know because I've been guilty of doing the same):
You start to write an eloquent response explaining why the tweet you're reacting to is wrong, but suddenly you hit the character limit. You spend a few minutes trying to rephrase your thoughts to fit within the limit, but now your message doesn't make any sense. Frustrated, you delete everything and just post "You are wrong" or "Screw you" instead.
Do you have any indication that factors other than the character limit might be responsible for the poor quality of discussions on Twitter?
I don't think using Twitter for deep discussions is a good idea. The platform is built for short messages only. Reddit (or whatever online forum) is better for this purpose.
True, but it that is the case, then what is it for? If people are meant to have fleeting ādiscussionsā, itās basically an hodgepodge of incoherent screaming matches with no real content.
Iāve had similar scenarios. Where the brevity required a more terse response than you intended. As you trimmed the fat out of your comment and the pleasantries fell into the internet void of unsent emails and lost innocence. Next to the place where your time goes watching the three dots move as someone types. Interesting theory.
After couple of āunlimitedā tweets from LukĆ”Å” Kovanda, i want limit back š¤£
It takes more time/energy to read or write a longer and more thoughful stuff.
TLDR. Limited attention span.
Also when you actually think long enough about a reply, you might realize it's all less clear than you innitially thought and the points you wanted to make suddenly don't seem as valid or that you don't really know much about some part of the argument and just cancel the reply.
When you hit the character limit, you can always use a thread.
Short posts catering to biases and emotions have so many engagement advantages and little energy cost for both sides. Even if you don't want to read it, you already had. Unlike with this long post, that very few will read.
I believe ālikesā and count were biggest culprits.
āScrew youā naturally gets more attention and engagement and eventually spread.
Nothing to do with limit. Limit inspired a lot of creativity. What was lacking was a way to expand on that.
Do you think quote replies enabled a āhey my loyal gang, letās dunk on thisā to the detriment of balanced discussion under original post?
šÆ
Guess I am in the minority but I liked the Twitter character limit. Brevity works for me.
I think the real decline was when Twitter went from 140 to 280 characters per tweet.
Nah. It was the right time. Did allow for more nuance ultimately.
I wish Twitter would have allowed users to categorize/label their tweets in custom feeds that each reader would have had the option to follow or not follow as opposed to follow the entire account. Twitter feeds were way to noisy especially when replies were mixed with tweets.
280 was still ok even though there was a lot of outrage.
10k now turns it into a different service.
The clarity and quickness to read is gone when you don't need to think anymore but use more word.
"We write frankly and fearlessly but then we āmodifyā before we print."
Clarity and quickness..
I like those attributes in social media.
So arenāt Nostr and Bluesky repeating the same mistake by including likes into the product?
You can use a Nostr client that hides reactions. For example, I have a PR open for Damus to add a setting to hide reactions. Only zaps.
Clients donāt have to implement in nostr. I hope some donāt.
To me the most important are note, re-note, reply, and zap.
I think the likes are emptyā¦but people are used to them I guess.
stop trying to make re-note a thing
never
How about denote?
ĀÆ\_(ć)_/ĀÆ
Official definition = https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/denote
āto make known : ANNOUNCEā
De is a play on words for de-centralized. The more people denote your note, the more decentralized it becomes.
Meant this as a name for quotes, since quotes have no ānoteā theme. Clearly naming things is not my speciality. š
agree that likes are no no. Zaps all the way
#ValueForBehavior
note1awz67r0ykw2yzm9j3eczwtgrfunvn8daypkhzv55h03u69tay0aq85h4u6
May I know why you dislike ālikesā ? It is because of it created a psychology of needing to be liked or that or it was used for algo purposes to increase visibility? Or that it reduces other interactive engagement such as comments and zaps? I may not want to opine on every note and zapping takes 3-4 steps, hence ālikesā seems like the easiest way to say I liked what the user posted and no other reasons to it (well sometimes to bookmark it too). I donāt have strong affinity towards ālikesā and neither do I hate it, but I am hoping to understand this better
What do you think about an implicit form of like, where clients report when youāve read a note rather than scrolled past?
Also: it used to be a star on Twitter originally, which I used to mark memorable tweets (I still use "Like" that way on Twitter today)
How much does algorithmic timeline/feed factor in with this? āScrew youā might get more attention briefly but that would be limited to whoever is online at the moment without an algorithm later showing it to more people.
This is actually sort of true. Why do we need likes and why do they need to be displayed?
Yeah hate gets more views. The character limit forced me to be more concise. Twitter probably made me a better writer overall
Likes were just created to give people "joy" feeling while they were voluntarily providing their datas...
Agree. The character limit was 100% a huge factor for the toxicity on Twitter.
I'm not a "screw you" kinda guy, so when I couldn't write short, I usually wrote nothing at all. Sometimes, in retrospect, that was a good call, but it other cases it just meant that misinformation stayed out there or it received a "screw you" or other unhelpful response from someone else.
I think brevity should be encouraged but not required.
It definitely stifled conversations with nuance. Twitter was worse for being a deep state apparatus and manipulating what you saw and who you reached and the timing of your notifications or likes or followers. How many āexā fbi employees worked there again? Thatās just the fbi! Twitter or the bad actors were partly responsible for the theft of an election and the cover up, pushing propaganda that led people to kill themselves with vaccines, you name it. Not different than the legacy MSM. I was banned for replying with the letters DNA to a abortion clip with no reason given. How much of history did you guys fuck up? Really sad.
I think it's just human behavior. It's human to simplify the world around us to make sense of it. We (humans) are lazy. It's easily to "moo" in crowd or post meme.
Faster and more "effective" communication amplifies this.
Not mentioning, how we (humans) love scapegoats. There has always been more people shanting "crucify", then intectuals seeking to find the truth through arguments.
Niceš
Mm, I respect it but I donāt share it. Twitter was born as a microblog network and had the idea of exchanging quick messages, not being a discussion forum. There are also threads if you want to express a longer idea or debate. Classifying people by a number of characters they write is not correct.
It's baffling that people still use Twitter even though it could not be more public how the algorithm works. It's as if people flocked to meaningless conflict by choice.
The character limit was Twitter's best feature.
There are so many things wrong with Twitter. That you cant just give one thing the fault.
I learned to formulate myself much more precisely because of the character limit.
- The censorship is clearly the worst, if I had to mention one thing.
- You get shadow-banned for writing the truth. There is nothing worse than suppressing the truth.
As Obi-Wan Kenobi once said, only a Sith deals in absolutes šāļø