alt Hacker NewsYou are wrong about AI "being a breath of fresh air" in comparison. For one, AI isn't something you use instead of a microblogging platform. LLMs push all sorts of utter trash in the guise of "information" for much the same reasons.
But I wanted to go out of my way to comment to agree with you wholeheartedly about your claims about the irredeemability of the "microblogging" format.
It is systemically structured to eschew nuance and encourage stupid hot takes that have no context or supporting documents.
Microblogging is such a terrible format in it's own right that it's inherent stupidity and consistent ability to viralize the stupidest takes that will nevertheless be consumed whole by the entire self-selecting group that thinks 140 characters is a good idea is essential to the Russian disinfo strategy. They rely on it as a breeding ground for stupid takes that are still believable. Thousands of rank morons puke up the worst possible narratives that can be constructed, but inevitably, in the chaos of human interaction, one will somehow be sticky and get some traction, so then they use specific booster accounts to get that narrative trending, and like clockwork all the people who believe there is value to arguing things out of context 140 characters at a time eat it up.
Even people who make great, nuanced and persuasive content on other platforms struggle to do anything but regress to the local customs on Twitter and BS.
The only exception to this has been Jon Bois, who is vocally progressive and pro labor and welfare policy and often this opinion is made part of his wonderful pieces on sports history and journalism and statistics, but his Twitter and Bluesky posts are low context irreverent comedy and facetious sports comments.
The people who insisted Twitter was "good" or is now "good" have always just been overly online people, with poor media literacy and a stark lack of judgement or recognition of tradeoffs.
That dumbass russian person who insisted they had replicated the LK-99 "superconductor" and all the western labs failed because the soviets were best or whatever was constantly brought up here as how Twitter was so great at getting people information faster, when it actually was direct evidence of the gullibility of Twitter users who think microblogging is anything other than signal-free noise.
Here's a thing to think about: Which platform in your job gets you info that is more useful and accurate for long term thinking? Teams chats, emails, or the wiki page someone went out of their way to make?
AI has been a breath of fresh air to me, but I understand some of the problems with it.
Chatting with a bot and using it as a brainstorming or research assistant is the first time I’ve felt a since of wonder since Web 1.0. It offers a way to search and interact with knowledge that is both more efficient and different from anything else.
One of the most mind blowing to me is reverse idea search. “I heard the following idea once. Please tell me who may have said this.” Before LLMs this was utterly impossible.
But I also understand how these things work and that any fact or work that the LLM does must be checked. You can’t just mindlessly believe a chat bot. I can see how people who don’t keep that in mind could be led way out into lala land by these things.
I also see their potential for abuse, but that’s true of all tech. In prehistoric times I’m sure there were some guys sitting around a fire lamenting “maybe we should not have sharpened stick. Maybe we should not play god. Let stick be dull as god intended.”