Can't lie I love Twitter, the only social media platform I regularly use, I have an Insta but that's primarily for perving. Twitter is essentially the unofficial 18+ social media platform though and realistically that should probably be official, there should be a way where minors can't access it whilst I think warnings of some sort to those who are struggling with mental health issues/ low self esteem/ are easily offended are advised to try and stay away or restrict the way they use it. There actually is an option to restrict who can respond to your tweets whilst you can also set your profile to private, things like this probably need to be highlighted more.
Twitter is a ****ing dumpster fire in general, let alone when it comes to football. Barely anyone I know uses it for anything other than professional stuff now (a couple of people I know are journalists) and I avoid football Twitter like the plague beyond following the Spurs account and one or two others who are good for transfer rumours and such. Never delve into the responses in tweets though because there’s only so many times I can read the bantz on there before I want to depart Earth entirely. You do occasionally get some interesting threads from reputable people on more general interest topics but those are far outnumbered by the noise on Twitter. Honestly the only reason I can see to use Twitter is to troll people, and that’s whether it comes to discussing football or anything else on there. 90% of tweets just seem to be **** banter or incredibly heated, polarising opinions. The only social media I use regularly is Instagram (for similar reasons to DH, lol) and the only place I will discuss football online is here, made that decision long ago. As someone under 30 who has grown up with social media a big part of my life from even before I was a teenager, I genuinely think that 99% of the internet is just an awful place to be if you have any mental health issues whatsoever, no matter how slight. Of course it’s natural that people are on there more now given what’s happened in the last year and people haven’t been able to see their friends or support groups in person or whatever, and you do sometimes see people find online spaces that help them mentally - here can sometimes be one of them. But Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, have a lot to do in order to better protect people with mental health issues. Not to mention that the moderation on all 3 mainstream sites is trash.
Yeah @C. Kane twitter is for the mentally twisted ... see above. Good on you for getting off it. Use a bit of instagram as per for my stalking but primarily i use it to upload my top 10 fave pics (only lets you do 10) when i go on a trip. Quite nice as a little memory bank for me else i mainly use FB to catch up on some of the local hong kong politics being spoken about or from my local community. Don't really use social media for actually communicating with people though. I can imagine twitter is about as toxic as it comes, there really is too much crap on there and you could fall into a deep time wasting hole reading all of that stuff so i don't really use twitter at all. This i guess is my primary social media site but it's usually when i'm meant to be working
I don't really see how they can moderate any of the websites properly. firstly, they have a vested interest in getting as many views as possible, so toxicity helps that in some ways. secondly, the automatic bots, if they go to extreme people complain normal things are deleted and there is no way in hell they can moderate everything by hand. If i ever have offspring, i will just have to educate them not to take social media that seriously, as you say it's an absolute cesspit and will allow people to get away with what they want. Preferably, they can stay off it but hopefully they have the mental fortitude to cope. The internet is great for some things, but has also allowed for all the weirdos to bandy together to reinforce each others views. Not sure if we would be better off with or without it. I guess if nothing bad happens to you because of it, it's great.
Insta would be my favourite app but I just enjoy the dark and ****ty humour of Twitter too much. Some of the women on that platform are just different level though. I'd honestly shake their parent's hands and say job well done if I could. Hard to say how they can be moderated to be honest. Some people have tried pushing for photo ID/ registered address per account but I don't necessarily agree with that. Personally I have a photo of myself on Twitter anyway but I just wouldn't be comfortable uploading that sort of documentation to something like that. I think advising/ warning people more vigorously could be a start though. All social media platforms generally advertise the wonders of it and to an extent I understand that, you want as many people using your platform as possible as that brings in the money but with the followings that Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc all have, they're easily in a position to now say "Look, we want you here but there's some things you need to be aware of etc".
Yup, it's why it's my favourite. Yeah I post holiday snaps as well on Insta, standard that, gotta make your mates jealous whilst their slaving away in England. But it's primarily used for perving from my side... Got sick of Facebook years back, too many pics of newborns all the way up to their first day of school clogging my time line, or the spackers who'd write indirects at people "you crossed me once but never again, watch out in the future!" - lol shut up you ****ing weapon. Twitter is basically a mix of the Prem board and GC. And so when you think of this forum, most are somewhat advised not to go GC under any circumstance unless you wanna be mentally scarred whereas it's also unwritten but known that you should only really go on the Prem board if you're a bit of a cu... You know.
I think the moderation is a massive issue, both because of the scale of the platforms and what they’ve become, which is essentially the ‘public square’ of today, especially Twitter. Not to mention the perception and reality of bias when it comes to moderating political discussion or culture war topics. It’s also tied up into how they generate revenue as well, as you rightly say traffic is more driven by anger and provocation so they have no incentive to quash people who use the platforms in such a way, even if they could. The same is true of the vast majority of media outlets now, they make money from online traffic so the incentives are there to provoke and tell ‘bad news’. It’s a huge issue. I agree that if I ever have kids I’d want to be very careful with them about how they use social media. Obviously kids will inevitably get up to all kinds of **** on the internet anyway but specifically with social I think there’s a whole load of education needed around it. One of the only places I’ve ever been on the internet where actual rational discussion about general topics (politics, life, economics, rather than just football) takes place is a strictly moderated subreddit that ‘optimises for light over heat’. It sounds like a bit of a ****y phrase (and it is) but it completely eliminates any posting that isn’t thought out and has had effort put into it. I only occasionally lurk there because I don’t have the time or inclination to put the effort in to post, but it’s an interesting place on a meta level as well as hosting interesting discussions. Even that place though is likely to be purged by Reddit admins before too long I reckon because they fly pretty close to the sun when it comes to some culture war topics. FWIW I think our mods do a great job on this board and I wouldn’t want the moderation here to go in that direction because it doesn’t suit football as a topic or the dynamics of this board.
Yep. Exactly why I rarely - if ever - venture on the PL or GC boards. I sometimes browse to watch @Spurlock winding people up, which to be fair has reached an art form over the years. But honestly...far too much inane drivel to make me want to post anything on there. There is without question a critical mass after which pretty much any social endeavour starts to disintegrate. I read a book a while ago called the Tipping Point which places that number at an absolute maximum of 150 people, which tbh when transplanted to an online setting should if anything decrease significantly due to ease and immediacy of acces as well as (more importantly) the fact that everyone turns into Billy Big Bollocks the instant they're safely entrenched behind a screen and keyboard. It's the reason the original 606 went down the pan. The mods (who let's be honest weren't very good but had a hapless task) just couldn't keep up with the waves of abusive and inane crap being posted every second. In the end it all just collapsed under its own weight. I've oftentimes heard the argument that Twitter and the like enable and enhance freedom of speech. Bollocks to that. I'm just about old enough to remember the world before Twitter and at no stage did I feel that my freedom of speech was curtailed in any way shape or form before Jack Dorsey rode in on his stallion and saved the day. If anything, the mob rule and cancel culture that prevails on these platforms is actually eroding freedom of speech at an alarming pace, to the point where all that's left is freedom to abuse - relentlessly, mercilessly and without consequence. As you've said, they are nearly impossible to police (you'd need tens of millions of moderators with an impossibly complex hierarchy of adjudication) and are run by companies based in an ultra-privileged corner of the liberal west whose grasp of the realities for users such as Claude is almost certainly both non-existent and obscured by dollar signs.
Someone should have pulled Claude aside and hooked him up with some proper social media management. Monetise his various trademark phrases and fights with Ty by turning them into merchandise and a sensible online presence. Then manage his profiles themselves, for the most part, leaving him to get on with things on AFTV and attend the matches.
I read a few years ago that Bully (he of "Who's name is Harry Kane?" infamy) made the decision to step back from AFTV and social media in general once he clocked what it was doing to him. A very wise and prescient decision for someone whose assessment of Kane left me thinking he totally lacked wisdom or prescience. I think Lee 'Voldermort' Judges is a great example of how to do it properly. Not sure if he has help with his Insta and Twitter accounts but he uses them really well to put across the 'real him' who isn't the living meme Robbie obviously wants to turn him into. He also uses his profile to do a lot of good work in the community which is a sure-fire way to protect yourself from the baying mob. The other example of how to do it properly is Ty, who is so far gone that literally nothing anyone could say about him could affect him. Give him headphones, a water bottle and a picture of Wenger and the man is pleased as punch.
He does have the thinnest skin in history and a complete absence of a sense of humour, though. The mildest digs send him over the edge, which I'm sure Robbie is very happy about. Probably doesn't take it out on the missus like DT, though. Allegedly...
I use Instagram to post my photos. I take loads on my walks. I have two...a general one and a spurs one. I started 5 years ago so my girls could see my photos and some how I have about 250-300 followers on each. But both are not in my name so no one other than my girls and a couple of mates know it's me. I don't go near anything else. Wouldn't touch Facebook or twitter cos it is a cesspit and tbh wouldn't trust the kids I work with or their families to try and track me down...I know some have in the past. Always amazes me how naive some teachers are...they post **** that could cause them real grief.
My girls weren't allowed any until they were old enough to understand that being an anonymous trolling ****wit is cruel and unkind...amazes me how so few adults grasp this simple but obvious fact. As for monitoring it...I posted a clip I recorded off my TV of carragher groaning in pain during the Liverpool v City match and posted it on my spurs account...250 followers...it was found by sky TV, removed and the account blocked for a week within an hour ... sad twats If they can do that they can find abusive ****wits and ban them imho
I like Twitter, but I primarily follow musicians a few football 'journalists' and people that I know. I don't delve very deep into other peoples comments and if I find that people start to get on my nerves I stop following them.. I am quite old and still generally follow my mothers advice that if you can't say something nice don't say anything, I hope that I am much the same here!!
Yeah I’ve been done for copyright infringement though not banned, when Kane scored the winner against Tunisia at the World Cup I took a boomerang picture of Kane at the final whistle with a caption of something like “****ing love you, Harry!”. Got notified within minutes the post got taken down due to BBC/ ITV copyright (can’t remember which channel it was on)... So I instantly put it in my Insta story and have kept it in the archive til this day. Suck my nuts, copyrighters!
There is some surprisingly good stuff on Twitter amongst the dross. A lot of excellent lawyers have interesting accounts. There is also quite a lot of good science and music.
To be honest I've never had issues on Twitter, barring one or two members of the Lunatic Fringe who have real difficulty not sounding like clueless derplords when challenged, while on the other hand Facebook is regularly an open sewer on a hot July day in Mumbai - and FB never does a damn thing to fix it, as I've seen death threats, doxxing, harassment, obvious bots, Covid truther claptrap and blatant racism, all of which violated FB's ToS, yet when it's reported they say it's fine
It's not correct that Facebook have done nothing...Why, in the last week alone, they have banned the use of the word 'damned', which has made running fan sites for these guys a whole lot more difficult...as they have been told to change their names or be closed down. please log in to view this image A site for the band 'Anal ****' has not been advised to change their name...No, I'm not joking.
Given Anal ****'s entire schtick, I'm sure they'd have loved it if they did. Anything for publicity, despite the band being dead for a decade.
