Dan GillmorSep 20, 2023

New Yorker review of Musk hagiography says Twitter "has American journalism in a choke hold."

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/09/18/elon-musk-walter-isaacson-book-review

Journalists are choking themselves. It is their decision. Musk must chortle every day as he watches journalists bend over to support his business.

They could leave, and take their audiences with them, if they wanted to. They don't.

They're doing this to themselves. Inertia, amoral calculation, and timidity are weapons of self-destruction.

How Elon Musk Went from Superhero to Supervillain

Jill Lepore reviews Walter Isaacson’s new book, about a founder of Tesla and SpaceX and the owner of the social-media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

The New Yorker
Show threadMastodon MigrationSep 20, 2023

@dangillmor

Everyday they suffer some new abuse or deprivation, their lives become more and more misersble, and they just keep tweeting. It's a syndrome very familiar to hard core drug users and alcoholics.

#TwitterAddiction

Show threadhaleySep 20, 2023
@mastodonmigration @dangillmor I've appreciated your posts in the past but that's a pretty shitty, insensitive comparison. Twitter/X/Musk etc. suck but a) no, not comparable to addiction, which is a serious health concern and b) while there are probably journalists who don't care about Musk being a horrible human being, many are simply doing what they feel they have to to survive in an increasingly difficult media landscape.
Show threadSiderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis

@mastodonmigration

In addition to @haley_exe 's extremely correct comment about how inappropriate it is to compare people using Twitter to drug addicts, do you imagine that if someone using Twitter were checking out Mastodon and saw your comment, they would conclude that they would be welcome here? Your whole rhetorical point in invoking drug addiction was to use it as a pejorative, to denigrate people who are still using Twitter at this point. You may want to think again about whether that's an effective rhetorical approach to take to bring about the results you seem to want.

@dangillmor

Sep 21, 2023 at 1:50amWeb
Show threadMastodon MigrationSep 21, 2023

@siderea @haley_exe @dangillmor

Thank you for these comments. Agree that the brief post can be interpreted as denigrating people addicted to Twitter, but the intention here is to call attention to the similarities between the dopamine craving and release that a popular poster on Twitter experiences to the similar neurochemistry of other types of addicts. Here is a good reference:

https://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2021/10/29/addictive-potential-of-social-media-explained/

As with other types of addition the first step is to acknowledge the mechanisms at work.

Addictive potential of social media, explained

Stanford psychiatrist Anna Lembke’s book, Dopamine Nation, explains our brain chemistry's role in modern society's addiction to social media.

Scope
Show threadhaleySep 21, 2023
@mastodonmigration @siderea @dangillmor Dopamine hits occur with all social media use, including here on Mastodon, even if the mechanisms are less carefully engineered here. Your comparison was still insensitive and inhospitable to new users.
Show threadMastodon MigrationSep 21, 2023

@haley_exe @siderea @dangillmor

Accept your criticism. Something like addictive behavior should be addressed with a more careful in depth discussion.

Agree that dopamine hits are a function of all social media, even here. Recognizing these powerful forces is key to making informed decisions about social media use.

Thank you for your comment. Will try to be more sensitive to this issue in the future.

Show threadSiderea, Sibylla BostoniensisSep 21, 2023

@mastodonmigration

Keep digging. Maybe you will find gold that way.

@haley_exe @dangillmor

Show threadMastodon MigrationSep 21, 2023

@siderea @haley_exe @dangillmor

As said in the post above, your criticism of the top post is accepted. The subject of addiction to social media and Twitter in particular is not something to toss out without a great deal more context. Will try to do better in the future.