I just want to highlight something- the original iteration made some MASSIVE mistakes. In less than a few hours, Zvi somehow found out about the mistakes, and immediately took down the article and replaced it with a heavily repaired version. It still makes some big mistakes, most of which are basically impossible for a generalist blogger not to make. But this level of competence is still above and beyond the standards of open source intelligence. I’m very glad that this research was done.
If you often spend time on Twitter and sometimes produce content, and you don’t think Twitter is worth your $8, then what is the chance it is worth at least zero dollars? What is the chance it isn’t worth a lot less than negative $8?
Very low.
Um, false?
The risk of getting hooked on twitter’s news feed for more than >2 hours per day is much more net-negative than ±8 USD. In fact, sinking in $8 makes you feel invested, same as the $20/m GPT4 fee, and then the news feed throws you bones at the exact frequency that keeps you coming back (including making a strong first impression). It’s gacha-game-level social engineering. If you lose the loser, you lose 100% of what you could have done to them or gotten out of them, making user retention the top priority. This is the case, even if you ignore the fact that there are competing platforms, all racing to the bottom to strategically hook/harvest any users/market share that your system leaves vulnerable.
There is an easy fix. It is to make a google doc, with a list of links to the user page of all the facebook and twitter accounts that are worth looking at, and bookmark that google doc so you can check all of them once a day. No news feeds, and you’re missing nothing. You can also click the “replies” tab on the user page to see what they’re talking about. It’s such an easy and superior fix.
What’s the difference between the Google Doc and a Twitter List with those accounts on it?
I can see the weird border case where the $8 gets you invested in a bad way but $0 makes you consume in a good way, I guess, but it’s weird. Mostly sounds like you very much agree on the danger of much worse than -$8.
Also, you say there are still a bunch of mistakes. Even if it’s effectively too late to fix them for the post (almost all readers are within the first 48 hours) I’d like to at least fix my understanding, what else did I still get wrong, to extent you know?
I don’t know what a Twitter List is, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see it containing some kind of trap to steer the user into a news feed.
Social media/enforced addiction stuff is not only something that I avoid talking about publicly, but it’s also something that I personally must not change the probability of anyone blogging about it. I will get back to you on this once I’ve gone over more of your research, but what I was thinking of would have to be some kind of research contracting for Balsa, that comes with notoriously difficult-to-hash-out assurances of not going public about specific domains of information.
A twitter list is literally: You create it (or use someone else’s) and if you load it (e.g. https://twitter.com/i/lists/83102521) you get the people on the lists in reverse chronological order and nothing else (or you can use Tweetdeck). Doesn’t seem to have traps.
I just want to highlight something- the original iteration made some MASSIVE mistakes. In less than a few hours, Zvi somehow found out about the mistakes, and immediately took down the article and replaced it with a heavily repaired version. It still makes some big mistakes, most of which are basically impossible for a generalist blogger not to make. But this level of competence is still above and beyond the standards of open source intelligence. I’m very glad that this research was done.
Um, false?
The risk of getting hooked on twitter’s news feed for more than >2 hours per day is much more net-negative than ±8 USD. In fact, sinking in $8 makes you feel invested, same as the $20/m GPT4 fee, and then the news feed throws you bones at the exact frequency that keeps you coming back (including making a strong first impression). It’s gacha-game-level social engineering. If you lose the loser, you lose 100% of what you could have done to them or gotten out of them, making user retention the top priority. This is the case, even if you ignore the fact that there are competing platforms, all racing to the bottom to strategically hook/harvest any users/market share that your system leaves vulnerable.
There is an easy fix. It is to make a google doc, with a list of links to the user page of all the facebook and twitter accounts that are worth looking at, and bookmark that google doc so you can check all of them once a day. No news feeds, and you’re missing nothing. You can also click the “replies” tab on the user page to see what they’re talking about. It’s such an easy and superior fix.
What’s the difference between the Google Doc and a Twitter List with those accounts on it?
I can see the weird border case where the $8 gets you invested in a bad way but $0 makes you consume in a good way, I guess, but it’s weird. Mostly sounds like you very much agree on the danger of much worse than -$8.
Also, you say there are still a bunch of mistakes. Even if it’s effectively too late to fix them for the post (almost all readers are within the first 48 hours) I’d like to at least fix my understanding, what else did I still get wrong, to extent you know?
I don’t know what a Twitter List is, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see it containing some kind of trap to steer the user into a news feed.
Social media/enforced addiction stuff is not only something that I avoid talking about publicly, but it’s also something that I personally must not change the probability of anyone blogging about it. I will get back to you on this once I’ve gone over more of your research, but what I was thinking of would have to be some kind of research contracting for Balsa, that comes with notoriously difficult-to-hash-out assurances of not going public about specific domains of information.
Fair enough.
A twitter list is literally: You create it (or use someone else’s) and if you load it (e.g. https://twitter.com/i/lists/83102521) you get the people on the lists in reverse chronological order and nothing else (or you can use Tweetdeck). Doesn’t seem to have traps.