3 days ago, I decided to end my World Cup boycott & I joined in the convo, as 4 yrs ago. "You won't believe what happened next," as they say
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World Cup tweeting understandably turns people off & the new mute function was rolled out just in time to help cope with the deluge, right?
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Unsurprisingly, mute wasn't well thought out & designed, becoming another "shadow" functionality like lists. Only, this one kills convos.
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2 days ago, after the games, I noticed that a twin tornado tearing down
#Pilger was going completely unnoticed, despite repeated tweets. -
It happened again, yday, on a larger scale, when the IDF mounted the largest op in the West Bank after the 2nd Intifada and *noone noticed*.
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I'm being dramatic, but Palestine is fairly visible on Twitter, ppl interested in it can easily follow it, would see RTs. If not for mute.
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My hypothesis: In addition to numbness due to oversharing, muting is eroding Twitter's function as a substrate of the 'global conscience'.
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By which I mean that Twitter seems to be devolving into islands of news monologues, interspersed by -directional- pleasantries & chatter.
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I'd need data to back up my hypothesis, ofc, but Twitter is notoriously stingy, and no new media think tank is researching these trends.
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First tornados, next Palestine, then it'll likely be Iraq. And don't blame football, all the ace curators I know are watching it & news both
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I see the counter-arguments, about enhancing consent, but mute was never really needed on Twitter. Or it should've been better implemented.
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Asymmetric follow is Twitter. Unfollow is a social game. Blocking is needed, and we fought to keep it. It carries finality & thus gravitas.
End of conversation
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@asteris Do you get the sense that a lot of people are muting many others? I've only used it a handful of times for trolls. -
@astroehlein yes, I do, and I'll explain in a bit. For a spoiler of the convo, jump back to my closing rant on Palestine last night. -
@asteris And there are issues that have broken through the barrier since mute was introduced, like#BringBackOurGirls...
End of conversation
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@asteris I want to hear this...I use mute as a sort of blocking-lite for people who aren't abusive but spamming. Am obv missing somethingThanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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