Why Twitter will always be broken & mislead millions:
1. People prefer the joy of going viral or having their political biases confirmed to being truthful
2. There are no formal or informal consequences for sharing comforting lies
3. So incentives all run in the worst direction
1. People prefer the joy of going viral or having their political biases confirmed to being truthful
2. There are no formal or informal consequences for sharing comforting lies
3. So incentives all run in the worst direction
I appreciate @ddale8 fighting the good fight here, but trying to market facts to Twitter is like trying to sell Yankees tickets at a Red Sox game
https://twitter.com/Yair_Rosenberg/status/1348774724067856387
We could change this. If we collectively created informal social media norms that stigmatized users who share viral falsehoods and refuse to correct them, people would stop doing it. When you mock, sanction, and block people who do something, you disincentivize people to do it.
https://twitter.com/Yair_Rosenberg/status/1348774724067856387
People treat the problem of viral misinformation as a top-down issue to be solved by corporations. But we could fix a lot of it from the bottom-up simply by establishing basic internet etiquette and treating the sharing of unverified info like the online equivalent of bad breath.
https://twitter.com/Yair_Rosenberg/status/1348779506102906882
Much of this tweet, including its bottom line, is not true, but because it makes people feel good to share it and not check it, it will continue to go viral. Whatever our politics, until we stop retweeting comforting lies, we will continue to be fed them.
https://twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1348897957819666432
Short version: Twitter is broken because people are broken, and until we teach ourselves to use social media technology much more responsibly, it'll continue to spread viral falsehoods.
https://twitter.com/Yair_Rosenberg/status/1348774724067856387
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