Twitter for Dummies (i.e. me)

Tony_Tarantula on 13/9/2015 at 01:22

Quote Posted by faetal

Pretty much the entire Arab spring unfolded on and was partly mediated by Twitter, since it is impossible for a government to enforce any kind of information control when people are hearing about it all first hand. If you honestly prefer a media which by its definition exists to a) sell copy and b) not upset advertisers to being able to (selectively, via clicking a hashtag) take a broader sample and then see what consensus, then that's your issue, not Twitter's. If you expect others to do the legwork for you, then you are going to get the level and quality of information commensurate with your time investment.

Another great example is how vastly different the situation in Palestine looks from the ground without the media polish on it - from both sides of the fence.

Yeah....the "social media represents an unfiltered, unbiased view" argument is one that has been discredited in it's absolute form. Slight tweaks to search algorithms, auto-censorship, metadata analysis, and a host of other tools allow a sufficiently sophisticated government to effectively control media outlets and identify subversive elements.

Wired did a pretty good write up of one part your assertion here, titled "Google's search algorithm could steal the presidency".

(http://www.wired.com/2015/08/googles-search-algorithm-steal-presidency/)

Also this is going to be fun almost every time you post from now on:

Quote:

It's a very intellectually feeble method to basically demand that everyone go out and independently do their own research off the back of YOUR claims

Vs.

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If you expect others to do the legwork for you, then you are going to get the level and quality of information commensurate with your time investment.

Not the best quote admittedly, just the most convenient. There's literally a dozen more examples of you refusing to look up even the most basic facts about issues so you can know what you're talking about....followed by many more where you say it's important to go look up your own information.

I think that would explain why you make insane statements like...ahem....

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we have "one government official claims" and "Guardian journalists claim".

When...if you'd done even the most basic research or even read any of the links I'd provided you would know is an insane statement to make because it equates dozens of leaked, official documents with vague, unsubstantiated "nothing to see here" claims from government officials. One is an empty claim and the other is backed by massive amounts of hard evidence which you can easily find on either the open internet or by getting on Wikileaks.

And as much as it may feel that way I'm really not attempting to be personal other than the coincedence that your own posting history is a prime example of the mistake you cited in this thread.

Tony_Tarantula on 13/9/2015 at 01:24

Quote Posted by Yakoob

So in light of that, how do you guys feel about media manipulation of Twitter and "manufactured" viral events? I don't think it's really happened for anything world/politically significant (as far as we know), but I've heard a few (arguably anecdotal) accounts of from marketing. Hundreds/thousands of procedurally generated bots strategically tweeting certain topic or hashtags until they take off and can maintain organic popularity.
.

Not the best source, but that's already the case for politics.

(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3038621/More-2-MILLION-Hillary-Clinton-s-Twitter-followers-fake-never-tweet.html)

When it comes to marketing....you've got no idea. It so happens that I'm currently at one of the top MBA programs in the world for marketing and some of the CMO's we've had visit have been remarkably forthcoming. I'd heard the statement that "Twitter is mostly marketers talking to marketers about marketing before" but I was pretty clueless as to how true that is until I heard it from the horse's mouth.

Yakoob on 13/9/2015 at 03:25

Quote Posted by Tony_Tarantula

It's a very intellectually feeble method to basically demand that everyone go out and independently do their own research off the back of YOUR claims

Vs.

If you expect others to do the legwork for you, then you are going to get the level and quality of information commensurate with your time investment.

Not the best quote admittedly, just the most convenient. There's literally a dozen more examples of you refusing to look up even the most basic facts about issues so you can know what you're talking about....followed by many more where you say it's important to go look up your own information.

Nice try but if you actually followed the train of thought you'd realize the two quotes refer to different contexts. The first is about you making claims and demanding people believe in them without proof, the second about acquiring knowledge in general. The second actually requires the first - part of doing your own research is removing claims that are not backed up by evidence.

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"Twitter is mostly marketers talking to marketers about marketing before"

I notice that too in marketing my game. Every time I use #indiegame or #gamedev hashtags I get a bunch of bots re-tweeting it, which sometimes gets picked up by other bots. I don't think any human actually follows these bots. At least, I wouldn't - you can already search by hashtag, I dont need a bot spamming my feed for that.

faetal on 13/9/2015 at 14:19

Quote Posted by Tony_Tarantula

Except I haven't said it is unbiased and unfiltered, I said it didn't have a unified media filter. I get that nuance isn't your strong point, but really? I even countered with an example of how relying on social media can introduce other filters and how you have to be careful of this. Arguing back and forth with someone is only fun if the other person is able to engage with your actual points rather than just build straw man after straw man. You, Tony, are a terrible bore. Sorry if that seems personal, but it's true. When the thin end of your argument wedge is something I haven't even said, don't imagine I'm going to expend any time in discovering what the thick end is up to.

heywood on 15/9/2015 at 20:34

For significant events, trending tags are kind of shit, because as soon as a tag like #ferguson trends, it quickly becomes monopolized by the media, political action groups, activists and the like, and a smattering of regular people commenting from afar. Finding sources with first hand knowledge tweeting on a popular topic or hashtag is like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. And the trends themselves are already filtered and manipulated by various mechanisms ranging from media spotlight, "campaigns", the weird sociology of social media trends, simple randomness, and timing. So if you go on Twitter right now to see what's happening at the border between Hungary and Serbia, your view is already media filtered.

Another problem is the language barrier. I can read English, and a fair bit of German if I struggle at it, and a wee bit of French. So for the really contentious media-filtered events like the Arab Spring, the Israel-Hamas war, the Syrian civil war, or the invasion of Crimea, I wouldn't even be able to read the tweets of the regular people on the ground where the story is happening. The vast majority of English language tweets about these events come from the media itself and various advocacy groups. Relatively few come from individuals in the epicenter of the events, and those that are tweeting in English are targeting the Western audience and therefore probably astroturf.

Realistically, I think the only way to get a well rounded view of events is to follow the reporting of multiple news organizations coming at it from different sides and different national or regional perspectives (where possible notwithstanding the language barrier).

faetal on 16/9/2015 at 09:54

Really depends though. Even getting multiple sources of news within the US for the occupation of Palestine shows various shades of "Palestinians are evil terrorists, Israel is the most moral nation is the whole god-damned world and if you don't agree you're an anti-Semite". Similarly, looking at the news from a variety of sources within a number of Arab states will show you essentially the inverse. You'd have to engage in a pretty exhaustive and nationally / culturally weighted media aggregation mission to get even close to something like objectivity.

I'd go as far as to say that objectivity is impossible to achieve, but that being able to mix raw eye-witness accounts in with the media stuff can throw obvious slants into harsher relief than just looking at one or the other. Another thing which can occur (and which needs to be treated with care since it can come with its own bias) is the crowd-sourcing of fact-checking wrt media versus on the ground representation of things. This debate will never be served by arguing for or against any kind of all or nothing scenario or "which is best?" conclusions. What I've seen in a positive light from Twitter is in some scenarios, journalistic honesty has been quietly lifted up due to the ever-present threat of Twitter shit storms rejecting a media version of things. Sure this can occasionally be too shrill or or pointless storm in a teacup outrage, but as with the Arab spring and increasingly with the Israeli occupation of Palestine - the approved media channels can't just claim the definitive version of things as theirs any more. Whether this is on balance a good or a bad thing is a better focus for debate IMO.

PigLick on 16/9/2015 at 13:31

at least we know that with twitter we can change the world eh

Yakoob on 17/9/2015 at 23:33

Quote Posted by faetal

I'd go as far as to say that objectivity is impossible to achieve

I agree, but because I think objectivity is simply inapplicable to anything above raw facts or physical laws. Even if we had the raw power to analyze every last data point, we would need some criteria to judge it by, and that right there is subjective. Like Israel vs. Palestine, how do you objectively judge that? By amount of people killed? Killed normalized over time? How do you factor in injuries, cultural destruction, destroyed individual childhoods and dreams?

You can't take an inherently humanitarian concern and strap all the humanity from it. Unless you approach it all from purely biological and evolutionary perspective, in which case it no longer matters.

faetal on 18/9/2015 at 00:20

Well quite, but there is such a thing as skewing fact and outright making shit up.