Read on Twitter
Across all political & ideological commitments, there's a movement today away from civil discourse & towards signalling, dunking, & mindless pile-ons. It's aided (or caused) by the amplification dynamics encoded in our platforms, and it's ruining us all. We can & must do better.
There's so much clever, informative, & funny content on here. And sometimes it's a joy to be connected to everyone. But there's also a filtering mechanism & social dynamic that drowns it out in favor of swarming & bickering, that promotes our worst moments & won't let them go.
Clearly part of the problem is the platforms themselves. That doesn't abdicate its users of responsibility. But the primitives influence the fitness function.
Say in reality the most attention-grabbing conversations are feuds but they number 1 in 1000. We all see a few per year but don't seek them—they won't dominate your social experience. But after filtering everyone's content for max attention-grabbiness, suddenly it's everything.
We begin to think that feuds are all that exists, that being mentioned in a feud is all that matters. We begin to see all of life as a long progression from feud to feud. Because nothing besides feuds can compete for attention & we're so connected that there's always one handy.
I don't know where we go from here. But we must find a medium (or a fix to this one) so that talking past each other and waging petty skirmishes via fake (or burner) account armies, personal insults, bad-faith dunks, & other pathological BS are not the primary form of engagement
Importantly, @twitter needs to disempower burner accounts. While they're powerless if ignored, they have limitless power to blow up notifications tabs and DMs. For prominent ppl w/in stone's throw of a controversy it makes Twitter look like a war zone.
It takes supreme self control to remain cool and not get pulled into the vortex, & having seen just enough of this, I understand why people get dragged into the mud so easily. This can't be the recipe: give people megaphones, then shower them with bile until chaos ensues.
