Twitter - How many fishes use it?

[Seanm]

In my experience you have to treat twitter with a large pinch of salt, even respected journalists/commentators can be guilty of retweeting utter bull shit or out of date stories that fit a current narrative. I don't follow any news or political stuff, it just finds its way into my feed anyway.

Yes, that’s why it’s been so revealing! If a respected journalist breathlessly Tweets out the latest easily disprovable garbage from an anonymous Downing Street source that tells you exactly how seriously you should take their paid work.

 

[Hook]

Posted for business purposes before retirement, but just an occasional reader these days. Hesitant to use Twitter more until the ownership situation becomes clearer.

 

[Brian]

Interesting vote results so far. The names in each group is interesting too. I hadn't realised so many members didn't use it given the number of posts containing tw*tter links to the pov of other people.

 

[Tony L]

However, curating links to a limited number of twitterers sound dangerously close to curating an echo chamber.

And as with all social media, you are reading heavily filtered content, with no fact checking for veracity.

It also defines populism. Writing what you feel your audience want to hear rather than what they should hear, in order to get retweets, likes, etc.

Like all social media, I'm convinced it can be benign/positive/helpful, but that comes with the price of all the manipulative shit.

I’d argue all those points apply to all media all the time. Internet media as a whole allows for far more source-diversity and ability to cross-reference than ever was the case in the past when the overwhelming majority were fed their news a day or two later once it had been editorialised, filtered and politically aligned by newspapers with clear partisan agendas etc.

Modern media such as Twitter is far faster, exponentially more diverse, and far more wide-reaching. It obviously depends hugely on the intellect of the end user, but it always has, e.g. there have always been dickheads who actually believe what they read in the Daily Express etc when in most cases it is little more than partisan propaganda spin. I find Twitter hugely useful as a cross-referencing tool as well as an instant and direct connection with the areas that interest me.

I look at a lot of stuff I really do not agree with. That is how to learn, how to obtain a balanced picture, and to better understand what is coming down the shitpipe etc. I’d never dream of buying a shitrag like the Sun or Mail in real life, yet Twitter keeps me easily informed as to what hate-filled crap they are publishing. It is only an echo chamber if you very deliberately make it one, but so is everything else in life, e.g. social groups, newspapers, TV & radio, pubs etc. There is never any substitute for independent research and every side of every debate is almost always well articulated on Twitter by the people at the very epicentre.

 

[Big Tabs]

poll votes on the ‘tweet or not’ are closer than I thought.

I didn’t know where the swing would be, but I did expect one > Sort of 66.6% either way.

 

[notaclue]

It's a re-run of Brexit in the results at the moment. 48% to 52%. With the 48% being right.

Twitter is very good for keeping very up to date. The format is nice and concise. You can digest a lot of (hopefully useful) information very quickly on Twitter.

 

[paulfromcamden]

TBH my biggest problem with Twitter is that it can be such a time hole. He says posting on a hi-fi forum for the nth time that day...

 

[bigjonny]

The official Kentucky Fried Chicken account follows 11 people, 6 men called Herb and the 5 Spice Girls.

 

[SteveS1]

Don’t use it at all, can’t be bothered and other media seem to use it to provide most of their content, so the chance of missing anything that would be interesting to me is low.

 

[Caliente]

Haven't read all the replies, and this may have been stated already, but I have found Twitter to be particularly it useful in contacting my bank, utility company and so on to resolve issues.

 

[kasperhauser]

Twitter, like anything else, is exactly what you make it. For some, it’s a great way to keep up on current events. For others, great for connecting to the writing (/tech/crypto/music/whatever you’re interested in) community. For many, it simply serves as the most efficient outrage engine ever devised.

I’ve been on there for years, and was recently followed by Nancy Sinatra, so obviously my life’s work is complete.

Edit: pretty much what TonyL said a few posts before this one.

 

[Funk]

Twitter is a cesspool. I have an account from years ago but never post, don't follow anyone and only ever go there because sadly it's the quickest way to get an issue with a company resolved rather than going through a support number etc.

I really think that 'social media' such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and what not is awful and detrimental to humanity rather than positive.

 

[Bjork67]

Bus drivers are for it ¡¡

 

[TheDecameron]

Twitter, like anything else, is exactly what you make it.

Twitter is a cesspool. I have an account from years ago but never post

How does one reconcile these views? There used to be a chap on here who asserted Class D amplification was the work of the devil and fond of saying “good Queen Bess would say ‘off with their heads!’.

 

[Tony L]

Twitter is a cesspool. I have an account from years ago but never post, don't follow anyone and only ever go there because sadly it's the quickest way to get an issue with a company resolved rather than going through a support number etc.

Twitter is absolutely useless unless you follow things that interest you. Like everything in life it can be an absolute cesspool, or the most intelligent and supportive place imaginable, or everything in between. Like pretty much any tool what it does depends entirely where you point it. It is a communications tool that spans and democratises the world like no tool before it. It is just millions of individual people. Some are geniuses, some are utter shitheads. Some of the geniuses are shitheads. Some are household names, others are not, some are even bots (and some of those are cool too!). No one has power. It is a democracy. As ever, choose wisely.

 

[Marchbanks]

As ever, choose wisely.

What happens if you are not wise and choose unwisely? And pass links to the unwise material unto equally unwise friends who do the same? Rhetorical questions, we’ve all seen the answers in the last six or seven years.

 

[Seanm]

What happens if you are not wise and choose unwisely? And pass links to the unwise material unto equally unwise friends who do the same? Rhetorical questions, we’ve all seen the answers in the last six or seven years.

Well, that tends to be the view of our professional media-political class, and it’s a response to the process I pointed to earlier: Twitter forced them into close contact with ordinary people, who made fun of them mercilessly, leading them to conclude that Twitter (along with Putin) was to blame for All the Problems.

 

[Marchbanks]

Well, that tends to be the view of our professional media-political class, and it’s a response to the process I pointed to earlier: Twitter forced them into close contact with ordinary people, who made fun of them mercilessly, leading them to conclude that Twitter (along with Putin) was to blame for All the Problems.

Well, I’m most definitely not part of the professional media-political class, and (as far as I know) I’ve never been made fun of mercilessly on Twitter. Therefore I can only think I’ve reached that conclusion via an entirely different path.

 

[suzywong]

I have a twitter account - the only time I've used it in the last two years is when I was chasing down a Playstation 5 (with the help of my son-in-law!).

Apparently, my wife used it to check on the traffic situation on the M27, before setting off for work.

 

[TheDecameron]

Twitter is absolutely useless unless you follow things that interest you. Like everything in life it can be an absolute cesspool, or the most intelligent and supportive place imaginable, or everything in between. Like pretty much any tool what it does depends entirely where you point it. It is a communications tool that spans and democratises the world like no tool before it. It is just millions of individual people. Some are geniuses, some are utter shitheads. Some of the geniuses are shitheads. Some are household names, others are not, some are even bots (and some of those are cool too!). No one has power. It is a democracy. As ever, choose wisely.

It’s a hoot when a sock puppet outs them self by replying from their own account inadvertently to someone criticising their sock puppet. There’s a heavy infestation of far right racist trolls all over Twitter and they ooze malignancy. Partly a function of allowable anonymity but with some of them, their unbuttoned junk gets hung out right in the open, name , mug shot the lot.