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spectramax | 4 years ago

I’d say Twitter has done more damage to the society than FB. Twitter is a pure outrage machine.

I might be in the minority but Instagram is still awesome. It’s gotten more ads but most of them are quite interesting.

I’ve found made in USA goods from IG ads like this: https://psudo.com/

discuss

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pfisherman|4 years ago

My understanding is that the scope of Facebook ads and surveillance is not limited to Facebook properties. The Facebook pixel and SDK are pretty ubiquitous.

Twitter is actually useful if you limit who you follow to the right people. My experience of Twitter is a bunch of academics promoting their articles. Lior Pachter trashing tSNE and UMAP is about the spiciest it gets.

rendall|4 years ago

I know very few people on Twitter. Facebook, on the other hand, is nearly a requirement even to have a social life. I don't use FB, but I definitely miss out on general invitations.

It is strictly not possible to participate in local Burning Man events here in Finland without a Facebook account, for instance. They flat out refuse to promote through any other platform or channel.

spectramax|4 years ago

I fundamentally disagree with Twitter's ideological position. Banning the president, allowing Taliban leaders, it is a censorship extravaganza and the selling point is ecochambered short blips of outrage. What you're pointing out is also true - there is some good stuff on Twitter just like any platform. Most political content on Twitter is horrible, left / right - both.

FB goes against silicon valley's zeitgeist and it gets disproportional hate. IMO, all social media is toxic and it has done more damage to the society than benefited ... but the biases are very much evident in how each service is perceived by the larger tech community. FB also did many eggregious things, no doubt. Election interference, etc.

Meanwhile, Tiktok is HN's darling.

Another thing is Twitter has become de facto channels for official communications of government bodies. How do you access these official channels? With a phone number of course when you try to register an account - which is required. Twitter has destroyed the world by coaslescing social media, outrage tactics, government bodies into one hot boiling soup of toxins.

wpietri|4 years ago

You may be using Twitter wrong. Switch it from "top tweets" to "latest tweets" mode, and then follow people who tweet and retweet things that are not outrage-driven. I follow a lot of interesting people and I learn a ton.

But even if Twitter were pure outrage, that is far from the most serious social media damage to society. Twitter, for all its faults, is relatively low on mis- and dis-information because people call it out. It's all one conversational space. Facebook, which is much more fragmented, enables flourishing niches of bonkers thought. Some of those niches are just wild-type insanity, but many more are gardens of crazy cultivated by people with a financial or political need for that.

I firmly believe that without Facebook, we wouldn't have a situation where thousands of people are dying per day of a preventable disease, with 95+% of those because of mis- and dis-information about the disease and the necessary countermeasures.

fouc|4 years ago

I suspect that Facebook has more users than Twitter, and heavier engagement. Facebook has multiple aspects that people heavily use, things like photo albums, marketplace, messenger, birthdays, etc. In comparison Twitter seems more limited.