Curated Content Drives Connection

TL;DR — The most valuable thing we can gain by using social media is meaningful connections on a human level. The most meaningful connections allow us to have a positive impact on the well-being of others. For social media to generate these types of connections it needs to be curated.

• Without curation we have a deluge of information. We can’t process every tweet, message, post, or comment. The voices that could have offered the greatest opportunity for connection are drowned out.
• With curation we can distinguish the signal from the noise. The tweets, messages, posts, and comments that can drive connection can be found. We can see how others are doing, be impacted by them and provide feedback.

Curation of content allows communities to form meaningful relationships with one another.

The good part about being banned from Twitter

I’ve already written two posts about Twitter’s automated system banning me, here and here. My first post to my new account was this:

Thanks to Dr Mehmet Yildiz I was able to connect to a bunch of #illumination writers on twitter. They followed me and I’m glad I did the right thing to follow them back.

One of them was Fiona Sommer. I had not added any news media into my feed yet so I saw her tweet this:

I figured I could try to provide some encouragement

This resulted in her writing this post, where I was mentioned:

Joshua Davis

Twitter response:

“This may not be that encouraging but I always tell myself and other people that I only write for “my audience,” and if your not “my audience” then you can’t appreciate what I write. When people ask, “who’s your audience?” The answer is pretty much “just me, I write for myself.”

Well…he’s not wrong, and it’s naturally encouraging! My partner is always harping on this one, but taking it a little further.

He reminds me that my writing is a form of therapy and that it doesn’t matter if others agree with me getting those negative emotions out of myself, and potentially helping another soul that’s in a similar place.

It felt like this was the most meaningful connection I could make with a stranger now that the entire country is under quarantine.

What more do we really want from our time spent on social media other than to have a positive impact online? This was a real connection with another person.

UPDATE: I didn’t post this initially but after I read Fiona Sommer’s post here I unfollowed her on Twitter:

I thought that the type of perspective she had and her worldview was just too different than mine so I decided I didn’t want to see her in my Twitter feed and I didn’t follow her on Medium. Twitter was just an information feed to me so that I could understand the world as seen by people with “my perspective” who speak “my language.”

After I read her article where she mentioned the value of my feedback, I realized that human connection is much more valuable than having a bunch of sources in my Twitter feed who all think like I do.

I added her back because we connected.

I may not be the type of person who appreciates her type of writing but who cares, I’d much rather connect with someone than just read people who think like me.

The ability for connection drowned out

After a few days I started to add back in the news media, organizations, and YouTube channels which had previously been in my feed:

The voices that had the greatest potential of offering a connection on a human level were being quickly drowned out. I was adding information to my feed that would never result in the ability to form a meaningful human connection.

I realized that I needed two different versions of twitter:

• A feed for news and information
• A feed for human connection

I decided that if I can use Twitter to focus on real people who want to connect with me about our writing then it has more value. I want to be part of a community where people are supporting each other to become better writers. I’ve started to remove accounts where a human connection is impossible or unrealistic. I have other places I can go to obtain news and information.

Soon my feed will have less than 40 tweets per day in it. I will be able to read all the tweets by everyone I follow on Twitter. If their are opportunities to connect on a human level I will be less likely to miss them. This means more ways to have a positive impact + hopefully my writing will get better.

Social media can help us connect to others in a meaningful way but only if the content is curated.

ILLUMINATION disbanded due to use of @mentions

This is the most important point in this post.

Please consider the following. The central point of dispute which triggered Medium’s ban was centered around how Dr Mehmet Yildiz was using @mentions. Can anyone provide some insight as to this matter? Which option best categorizes Dr. Mehmet Yildiz’s actions:

• Providing Valuable Curation
• Indiscriminate Promotional Spam

Especially given these testimonials:

I Give My Opinion

My opinion may not be worth much but Dr Mehmet Yildiz was shinjuku station for our medium community.

Serving as the main connecting hub for rail traffic between Tokyo’s special wards and Western Tokyo on inter-city rail, commuter rail, and subway lines, the station was used by an average of 3.64 million people per day in 2007, making it, by far, the world’s busiest transport hub (and registered as such with Guinness World Records). The main JR station and the directly adjacent private railways have a total of 35 platforms, including an underground arcade, above ground arcade and numerous hallways with another 17 platforms (53 total) can be accessed through hallways to 5 directly connected stations without surfacing outside.

Shinjuku station is right in the middle of Tokyo. If the government were to forbid foot traffic through the station from riders of the Toei Subway who want to catch a train heading North on JR East then it would be a disaster. It’s just confusing. Its like saying, use @mentions but don’t USE MENTIONS, what? This is the best analogy I can think of if our ability to use @mentions is removed.

Medium won’t let me add @mentions the bottom of my post now. So they are going to use technology to frustrate @mentions. This disappears after I publish: