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Agreed. Twitter is the Facebook for the chattering classes. The reasons it escapes the kind of pitched battles waged by the media against Facebook is beyond me.

Agreed. Twitter is the Facebook for the chattering classes. The reasons it escapes the kind of pitched battles waged by the media against Facebook is beyond me. Maybe it's because the toxicity bred by Twitter is organically driven by user activity (aside from trending topics) whereas with Facebook it's the opaque "algorithm". Or maybe it's because it's a convenient platform for logrolling hot takes. In the end it seems like distinction not worth making.

dnissley 5y ago
> The reasons [Twitter] escapes the kind of pitched battles waged by the media against Facebook is beyond me. The answer is right here: > Twitter is the Facebook for the chattering classes [a group which includes those working in media].
wutbrodo 5y ago
> The reasons it escapes the kind of pitched battles waged by the media against Facebook is beyond me. Because thinking of Facebook as a boogeymen that turns people into monsters requires thinking of their users not only as monstrous, but as helpless dupes, unable to resist being influenced by the medium they're using. The media's overrepresentation on Twitter means that applying the same logic would require a level of introspection and self-awareness that would be difficult for most people, let alone journalists. It's the same reason everyone overestimated early-2010s Twitter's userbase, when for a long period it had less active users than the Google+ stream alone (ie, not the auto-posting from Google products).
- aaroninsf 5y ago
  Possible. Or perhaps it's that the company has engaged in systematic malfeasance, unethical business practices, and has profoundly amoral leadership, resulting in profoundly amoral behavior, culminating in knee jerk dishonesty, denial, and misdirection, and the systematic betrayal abuse and injury of their users, host societies, and culture at large.
  - wutbrodo 5y ago
    What? This thread is about why Twitter has escaped (much) media criticism, not why Facebook has received it.
BeFlatXIII 5y ago
The toxicity I see complained about most when FB is discussed is that users the complainer dislikes are shepherded into algorithmically-generated safe spaces where they lose all connection to reality. The toxicity of Twitter is 100% organic petty conflicts.

dnissley 5y ago

> The reasons [Twitter] escapes the kind of pitched battles waged by the media against Facebook is beyond me. The answer is right here: > Twitter is the Facebook for the chattering classes [a group which includes those working in media].

wutbrodo 5y ago

> The reasons it escapes the kind of pitched battles waged by the media against Facebook is beyond me. Because thinking of Facebook as a boogeymen that turns people into monsters requires thinking of their users not only as monstrous, but as helpless dupes, unable to resist being influenced by the medium they're using. The media's overrepresentation on Twitter means that applying the same logic would require a level of introspection and self-awareness that would be difficult for most people, let alone journalists. It's the same reason everyone overestimated early-2010s Twitter's userbase, when for a long period it had less active users than the Google+ stream alone (ie, not the auto-posting from Google products).

aaroninsf 5y ago
Possible. Or perhaps it's that the company has engaged in systematic malfeasance, unethical business practices, and has profoundly amoral leadership, resulting in profoundly amoral behavior, culminating in knee jerk dishonesty, denial, and misdirection, and the systematic betrayal abuse and injury of their users, host societies, and culture at large.
- wutbrodo 5y ago
  What? This thread is about why Twitter has escaped (much) media criticism, not why Facebook has received it.

BeFlatXIII 5y ago

The toxicity I see complained about most when FB is discussed is that users the complainer dislikes are shepherded into algorithmically-generated safe spaces where they lose all connection to reality. The toxicity of Twitter is 100% organic petty conflicts.