This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Thanks for sharing your experience. I myself have noticed different problems on different accounts. On my main, where I spend 99% of my time on Twitter (and where I post), I do experience BOT interactions (follows, likes, DMs, but not replies), but the difference between how it is now versus how it was in this regard is a difference in degree, not kind. It is definitely worse than it was, but it's not insanely worse. The ads are different, and I noticed that some ads are even unlabeled, that is, they don't tell you that they're ads. Another thing with ads is that some of them don't handle UI interactions in kind with other tweets. For example, some ads instantly open the in-app browser whereas on a normal tweet the same interaction would be interpreted as part of a scroll action. I have never experienced the foreign language thing, that's truly odd.
On my private account that I created after Elon took over, on which I don't post and only follow a few accounts, I get 2-3 BOT follow requests per day. It's weird. Also, I had to solve like 12 captchas just to sign up; I thought that was funny.
I guess it comes down to what you attribute to the mass layoffs vs. what you attribute to Elon's sense of product and product management. I think a lot of the bad things we're seeing are due to the latter, not the former.
More options
Context Copy link