1/ Bots, trolls, and shit human are pervasive on twitter. Consequently, Twitter exists in a state of continual septicemia that infects us all. Why can't they fix it?pic.twitter.com/0EPstFEAxS
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2/ In information retrieval terms, it's easy to achieve a high recall in identifying bots and trolls. They exhibit interaction patterns that don't match healthy ones. But...
3/ In terms of precision, there'd be false positives. Banning people who are not bots or intentional provocateurs is bad PR. "Free speech!" "Corporate censorship!" Parasites depend on the outrage of the sincere (deplorable) people. It's how they evade the social immune system.
4/ But, ignoring the price of Twitter's stock, banning deplorable people isn't tyranny -- it's how you foster a community. Twitter (and Facebook) want to create (and the capture) a single global community. That won't work. It can't.
5/ Look at the interaction patterns for people who follow professional trolls like @infowars or @PrisonPlanet. They aren't there for the inane "analysis".
They're there to do combat.
They want to know who to attack, because it makes them feel good.
6/ That's why those accounts are so successful. It's not about ideological isolation and filter bubbles. It's about the opposite. They exist as battlefront locators. And, when there isn't one, they synthesize one.
7/ That's also why the @getongab dumpster fire won't work. It's no fun if you can't call someone left of nazi a "libtard". It can't sustain the same level of engagement as twitter, because it doesn't have the people they want to fuck with on it.
All they can do is raid twitter.
8/ Social networks need communities that enforce community standards. "Admit anyone" barring outright calls to violence isn't viable. We need something like virtual demes -- even algorithmic ones -- that draw boundaries and isolate the infections.
9/ I don't think twitter will do that. Again, they are beholden to share price, first. But, with each day, I'm more and more convinced that @MastodonProject is a solution to the problem of Twitter. (Albeit a hard one to bootstrap.)
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