zlacker

Stop treating Twitter as news. It's trash, bots, and trashy bots all the way down.

>>racnid+(OP)
I live in Minneapolis, and I'm not a Twitter user, but I've found that following news reporters on Twitter that are on-site has been the best way to get reliable information quickly during the protests. (I use nitter.net to follow them.) I don't even like Twitter, but I can say unequivocally that it's not "trash, bots, and trashy bots all the way down". It's been extremely valuable to me this week.

>>racnid+(OP)
Twitter is trash even without the bots (which can easily be distinguished).

>>racnid+(OP)
With the recent protests it's been difficult to find local news coverage. But I found tweets, I found livestreams, but I couldn't find any reporters covering some of the most impactful demonstrations in my city in decades. In that moment, Twitter was critical.

There is a lot of bots and trash, but it has it moments where it is a wonderful tool. This is one of them.

Show me a believable bot that's going to fake a livestream of what's actually happening at the scene. There's far too much contextual information to fake it. I could identify the streets protestors walked down, the landmarks, the actions taken, the way the phone was temporarily thrown on the ground after a confrontation. Far too much nuance to fake all of that.

Faking a <500px low quality everything-is-burning but it's actually street lights picture isn't particularly groundbreaking when it comes to doctored images.

>>JMTQp8+x3
They don’t have to fake it, they can just film (or filter through) 500 scenes and only retweet the ones that fit their narrative while discarding the rest.

>>aianus+n4
I feel like the irony of your comment might be lost on you