The new Twitter is becoming a cesspit of disinformation — study it now
www.nature.com
Social-media researchers overemphasized the platform now called X for years. But now, as it rapidly changes into something new and frightening, we risk paying too little attention.
    • Pxtl@lemmy.caEnglish
      9·
      8 months ago

      This is overstated.

      In the old days, there was a hierarchy of reputability. At the top you had the bluechecks that generally represented reputable sources of information, who had premium billing in the platform. Then you had the normies. Then you had the slush-pit of soft-blocked people that were shoved into the “other replies” box because everybody hated them and they only followed their network of bots.

      Now, the hierarchy is reversed. The slush-pit people are now have blue-checks, the algorithmic boost on blue-checks is even stronger, and half of the old reputable blue-checks have left.

      This is like saying “Reddit/Lemmy has always been awful” if we made the upvotes/downvotes of all the worst people on the site worth 100X what a normal person’s upvote/downvote was worth. Yes, there have always been problems, but they can get worse.

      • FontMasterFlex@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        8 months ago

        You must not pay attention, I’m new to Lemmy, but Reddit’s been garbage for years. Seems like a lot of that garbage made it’s way to Lemmy too. Face it anything that you can hide behind a screen and a keyboard with relative anonymity is fucking shit. It outs people for the kind of person they REALLY are when they don’t have to face the repercussions of saying shit to someones face.

        • Pxtl@lemmy.caEnglish
          1·
          8 months ago

          Yes.

          But here’s the thing:

          Reddit/Lemmy: those people have equal voice to you or me. Of course they can amplify that voice with sockpuppets, but still - one account one vote.

          Old Twitter: those people have downmodded influence. Twitter knew everybody hates them and treated them like the garbage they are.

          New Twitter: those people rule the roost, because they’re willing to pay Elon $8/mo for a megaphone for their jackassery.

    • Corgana@startrek.websiteEnglish
      41·
      8 months ago

      This isn’t pointed out enough, IMO. People act like it went sharply downhill under Musk but this is the platform that enabled extremists for years and only even banned Trump when he literally tried to overthrow democracy. Maybe Twitter was good in like 2010 but I really don’t think Musk changed THAT much about it.

    • ribboo@lemm.eeEnglish
      11·
      8 months ago

      Not nearly this bad. Go read the article. It’s much easier to spread crap nowadays, even though you could before.

  • Railcar8095@lemm.eeEnglish
    91·
    8 months ago

    I once read a quote that roughly translates as “Even the greatest wizard of all time can’t transform bread into bread”.

    I always thought it was stupid, but makes more sense now.

  • masquenox@lemmy.worldEnglish
    71·
    8 months ago

    It’s always been a cesspit of misinformation… Phony Stark is now merely advertising it as a feature.

  • StraightArrow@feddit.deEnglish
    4·
    8 months ago

    I’ve never used Twitter, nor liked it, but in 2010 I had to observe that it was indeed useful when it became one of the primary ways for people to communicate during the Arab Spring.

    Since then I kept not being into it, but at least I thought it had some important value I had not seen.

    Now it’s all locked up, so it really has become useless (and I haven’t even talked about the rampant disinformation)

    RIP Twitter

    Edit: fixed grammar