<story><title>The tyranny of the supertweeter</title><url>https://omnibudsman.substack.com/p/the-tyranny-of-the-supertweeter</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Bakary</author><text>The part about journalism is particularly troubling because Twitter is like crack for journalists and has thus played a big part in decreasing the credibility of the profession.&lt;p&gt;The platform is a journalist&amp;#x27;s fantasy brought to life. The ability to exist as an individual and have an audience independently of their publication. Blue check-marks. As the article mentions, the capacity to find stories with little effort.&lt;p&gt;Of course, this is fairly illusory and the resulting quality of stories is poorer each year to the point where Twitter threads repackaged as articles are a significant portion of most outlets.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s the Mercator projection but for the opinions of people who don&amp;#x27;t touch grass. The significance of Twitter users&amp;#x27; opinions is blown way out of proportion because the medium itself is easily accessible and attractive to journalists.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>SamBam</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s also an excellent Exra Klein podcast where he talks to game-philospher C. Thi Nguyen about Twitter&amp;#x27;s Like button&amp;#x27;s effect on journalists. [1]&lt;p&gt;He says that as a journalist on twitter (which almost every journalist is) it&amp;#x27;s nearly impossible to get away from measuring your worth&amp;#x2F;impact by the number of likes you get. It&amp;#x27;s so buit into our minds, we can&amp;#x27;t &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; use Likes as a proxy for how engaging our story is.&lt;p&gt;The issue is that it subtly, though completely, changes how you write a story. For example (taking as a premise that even plain factual reporting is essentially political at this point) if you are a New York Times journalist and you write an environmental story that appeals to the emotions of the people who &lt;i&gt;already&lt;/i&gt; understand the dangers of climate change, you&amp;#x27;ll get thousands of likes. But the story won&amp;#x27;t be impactful because you&amp;#x27;re preaching to the choir. If, instead, you wrote a story framed in a way that might change a few people&amp;#x27;s minds, you won&amp;#x27;t get nearly the number of likes, because the very angles you&amp;#x27;d approach the story at would be ones that would be less comfortable to your core audience, your choir.&lt;p&gt;Preaching to the choir is one of the biggest causes of our echo chambers and widening divides, and it&amp;#x27;s directly caused by counting likes.&lt;p&gt;1. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;podcasts.apple.com&amp;#x2F;us&amp;#x2F;podcast&amp;#x2F;a-philosophy-of-games-that-is-really-a-philosophy-of-life&amp;#x2F;id1548604447?i=1000552204773&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;podcasts.apple.com&amp;#x2F;us&amp;#x2F;podcast&amp;#x2F;a-philosophy-of-games-...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>The tyranny of the supertweeter</title><url>https://omnibudsman.substack.com/p/the-tyranny-of-the-supertweeter</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Bakary</author><text>The part about journalism is particularly troubling because Twitter is like crack for journalists and has thus played a big part in decreasing the credibility of the profession.&lt;p&gt;The platform is a journalist&amp;#x27;s fantasy brought to life. The ability to exist as an individual and have an audience independently of their publication. Blue check-marks. As the article mentions, the capacity to find stories with little effort.&lt;p&gt;Of course, this is fairly illusory and the resulting quality of stories is poorer each year to the point where Twitter threads repackaged as articles are a significant portion of most outlets.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s the Mercator projection but for the opinions of people who don&amp;#x27;t touch grass. The significance of Twitter users&amp;#x27; opinions is blown way out of proportion because the medium itself is easily accessible and attractive to journalists.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jqgatsby</author><text>&amp;quot;It&amp;#x27;s the Mercator projection but for the opinions of people who don&amp;#x27;t touch grass.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Well said!&lt;p&gt;Also, the sample bias phenomenon being raised in the article comes up so often, and is so easy to be deeply fooled by. It&amp;#x27;s the same type of issue that makes people think that recidivism rates are much higher than they are:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;slate.com&amp;#x2F;news-and-politics&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;why-do-so-many-prisoners-end-up-back-in-prison-a-new-study-says-maybe-they-dont.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;slate.com&amp;#x2F;news-and-politics&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;why-do-so-many-p...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>