Trying to understand digital spaces through analog metaphors can be a great intuition pump but it's important not to take it too far. We can take a simple model of persuasion — @jerusalem.bsky.social's only point — as forming with some probability upon exposure, in a network of interacting people.
In a public square, there is no hierarchy. Everyone can talk to everyone else at about the same rate and so all beliefs in the group get a comparable chance to spread, based on frequency in the population and and probability to convince. That's nice! Low epistemic Gini, lovely model.
(Yes I know, culture, pre-existing norms, tyranny of structurelessness, etc. none of that matters here.) But if that's your mental model for how Twitter works, you're just going to be flat out wrong. Twitter has a strong hierarchy and it's entirely driven by what the platform *makes* relevant.
Ironically, the pundits who love echoing one another's belief that Bluesky is an echo chamber are the very same who fail to understand that Twitter is specifically designed to echo certain views strongly and completely dampen others. It ultimately has an epistemic Gini of 1.
Whether you choose to take seriously political commentary from people who don't understand power in the 21st century is entirely up to you of course. But I wouldn't recommend it.
Incidentally, I think Ted might have a point here. (Stubborn prickly diva? Me?) bsky.app/profile/tedu...
Analogies for computer things are necessary when people are so stupid they don’t understand the computer thing. But we should be past that now. How many people still need to think of a car as a mechanised horse? Ffs. People are stupid.
I disagree, a good intuition pump is a good intuition pump. People often have no other way to approach invisible components of computer architectures.
Yes. But that’s my point. Did people still need to think of cars as horses in 1940? 50 years after the invention of the car? Why don’t people understand computers yet. We have entire generations who don’t know the before times and they still don’t understand them.
But we’ve also done a terrible job of making tech accessible. Too hard too fast.