[HN Gopher] Twitter acquires Revue
___________________________________________________________________
Twitter acquires Revue
Author : camillovisini
Score : 191 points
Date : 2021-01-26 12:07 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.twitter.com)
| the_drunkard wrote:
| Curious if Twitter will carry-over their draconian (and
| selectively enforced) censorship rules to Revue.
|
| I assume this was discussed as part of the acquisition? Will
| publishers have free reign to discuss topics that they want to
| publish on or do Twitter "rules" govern what's allowed to be
| discussed?
| lesstenseflow wrote:
| Why are comments about twitter's censorious nature being
| downvoted? The two main topics here (in my view) are 1. Twitter's
| response to Substack and how this move will impact the two
| companies and 2. the fact that some of Substack's most prominent
| users are writers who are refugees from other platforms (Andrew
| Sullivan from New York magazine, Bari Weiss from the New York
| Times etc.) who left because of the suppression-of-unpopular-
| speech trends that Twitter is now famous for.
|
| So Revue is what, Substack minus fees plus twitter viewpoint-
| enforcement? In any event I think this topic (censorship) at
| least bears discussion and I encourage users here not to downvote
| the discussion in the name of "suppressing right wingers" or
| similar. Twitter _does not just ban right wingers_. Take a look
| at the list of prominent people banned from twitter[0], it
| includes people such as Talib Kweli, Zuby (both rappers), "The
| IT Crowd" creator Graham Linehan, numerous political satire
| accounts, numerous feminists, and numerous artists and others for
| death threats towards such potential victims as "the Planters
| mascot Mr. Peanut," "a dead mosquito" and "the country Austria"
| (issued by an Austrian artist).
|
| If you have strong contrary views, you are probably in the danger
| zone for getting a twitter suspension or ban if someone wants to
| make a point of reporting you. Censorship should definitely be
| part of this discussion of Revue.
|
| 0:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_suspensions#List_of_no...
| kareemm wrote:
| Curious: was this an acqui-hire? Anybody have intel about deal
| terms?
| vincentmarle wrote:
| Cool, this is a Dutch company right? Congrats!
| geonnave wrote:
| Clearly and unsurprisingly this is to compete with Substack.
| Great move.
|
| Now, regarding character limits, beyond linking to a personal
| website or having a newsletter, I have seen avid content creators
| posting images containing small essays directly on Twitter to
| allow a deeper in-app reading experience.
|
| Maybe this should be a next, and less trivial, problem for
| Twitter to work on.
| d3sandoval wrote:
| I wholeheartedly agree. Making automatic alt-text available for
| those types of posts would go a long way in addressing the
| accessibility issues that plague image posts on Twitter. Their
| current UX for adding alt-text is painful and content authors
| are unlikely to use it... Seems like a great place for
| automation/OCR
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| If the OCR is good enough to deal with these text posts,
| isn't it already built into screen reading software that
| would make the alt-text duplication unnecessary?
| gnicholas wrote:
| Not if you're on a smartphone. This is one of the problems
| with mobile -- no way to have one app interact with
| another. Many people with disabilities rely on this sort of
| functionality on desktop and cannot use it on mobile. The
| only accessibility features that exist are the ones the OS
| implements.
| abinaya_rl wrote:
| This is really great acquisition. Maybe this is the path towards
| building the paid Twitter service?
| seneca wrote:
| Twitter is in an interesting position as a business. They can buy
| new platforms all they like but I, and many others, will never
| consider them because they have already poisoned the well when it
| comes to censorship. I would never consider them a useful
| platform for publishing, whether long-form or short. They're
| destined to be a home for partisans that agree with their
| orthodoxy and perhaps people with nothing vaguely controversial
| to say.
|
| I fear the internet will bifurcate due to problems like this.
| moksly wrote:
| The internet split long ago, and the vast majority of western
| consumers won't give two shits about non-progressive voices
| getting drowned.
|
| I'm not judging either way, and there is certainly something
| ironic about Apple using slave labour while taking the moral
| high ground against hateful assholes and their refusal to
| moderate.
|
| But it's the way the wind blows, and you're honestly not going
| to be able of resisting.
|
| In the EU we're certainly going to regulate big tech, but the
| result wouldn't lead to Trump not getting banned for inciting
| violence, if anything it would probably have happened sooner
| and with a public mandate.
|
| And good luck building a marketable platform out of the users
| who get kicked off the mainstream internet.
| jawns wrote:
| TWEET 1/7: It's ironic that the way Twitter proposes to improve
| its platform for writers is to move them off Twitter proper.
|
| TWEET 2/7: Writers use Twitter begrudgingly because that's where
| the eyeballs are, but it is a terrible communications platform
| for any writing longer than a single tweet.
|
| TWEET 3/7: Microblogging is core to its brand, but I shudder
| whenever I see a thread marked 1 of 22. Because of the character
| limitation, the writing on Twitter has a wooden cadence.
|
| TWEET 4/7: The best thing Twitter could do for writers is give
| them some way to go beyond the standard character limit within
| the core platform.
|
| TWEET 5/7: The limit doesn't need to be lifted entirely; maybe
| anything beyond the limit can be hidden by default, but with an
| option to reveal it.
|
| TWEET 6/7: Restricting how writers write can sometimes encourage
| better writing. But Twitter is one of the largest communications
| platforms in the world, and it's got to reckon with that.
|
| TWEET 7/7: Imagine if, instead of a char limit, you could only
| write rhyming couplets! It would be fun as a niche site, but not
| as a site used to communicate breaking news and longer, more
| thoughtful writing.
|
| COUPLET 1/1: Twitter's a major communications hub, like it or
| not. Its restrictions on writing are a big blind spot.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Hey you edited your tweets thats not allowed #followtherules
| herodoturtle wrote:
| Or alternatively (in my humble opinion), they should stop
| trying to be what they're not (a long form blogging platform)
| and instead stick to what they excel at (short broadcasts that
| are hashtag groupable and searchable).
| thesuitonym wrote:
| The problem isn't Twitter trying to be something it's not,
| it's that the short broadcasts that are hashtag groupable
| just is not a useful platform. People want long form writing
| platforms, but don't want to choose between Twitter, where
| people are, and blogging, where people aren't.
| herodoturtle wrote:
| I totally agree with this:
|
| > People want long form writing platforms, but don't want
| to choose between Twitter, where people are, and blogging,
| where people aren't.
|
| But this:
|
| > short broadcasts that are hashtag groupable just is not a
| useful platform
|
| I completely disagree with.
|
| It's been proven to be a very useful platform indeed.
| Again, not for long form blogging, but for short to-the-
| point announcements that can instantly reach a wide
| audience (and that can be grouped with related
| announcements and quickly searched for) - I think it's
| incredibly useful.
| cccc4all wrote:
| Will this be Twitter's Instagram?
|
| Or
|
| Will this be Twitter's Tumbler?
|
| My money is on the latter.
| coldtea wrote:
| While censorship people for their writings (based on whatever the
| US elites that happen to be mainstream in 2020 consider
| acceptable)?
|
| To the degree that even the sitting President, right or wrong,
| can be shut down?
|
| Yeah, pass...
| cercatrova wrote:
| Somewhat related, I use https://typefully.app to write tweet
| threads and schedule their posting. Why tweet threads instead of
| blogging, as many HN users ask? Tweets get traction and build an
| audience (yes, owning your platform is better than a corporation
| owning your platform, but you have to go where the eyeballs are)
| with which I can drive traffic, users and customers to other
| sites I want them to see.
|
| Twitter is also an amazing community, I've had many good
| interactions there that are simply not possible in other social
| media platforms. Where else can you get Paul Graham or Balaji
| Srinivasan to reply to you?
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| shout out to writefreely, https://github.com/writeas/writefreely
|
| this is Activitypub compatible self hosted writing tool.
| andrew_ wrote:
| Writefreely is awesome, and their devs were highly available in
| my experience with them. Discovered when Medium went the way of
| paywalls, I've donated several times to help keep the project
| alive.
| Tomte wrote:
| I take a look at write.as (the hosted version), and find one of
| the first posts in the community section:
| https://write.as/tmo/5-30-am-coffee-to-kick-things-off
|
| This post has just over 1800 characters (copy/pasted everything
| visible into Notepad++), no images whatsoever, and it takes
| 776ms to load and transfers 238 kilobytes.
|
| Why are minimalist seeming web sited often so obese
| (https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm)?
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| dunno. is it due to scripts on html page that does
| highlighting? or
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Thanks for the link! Starred / bookmarked, will look closer
| before jumping onto substack or revue (twitter's new thing).
| doublerabbit wrote:
| And so, we now enter the tumblr phase of Twitter.
| herodoturtle wrote:
| twittr
| dt3ft wrote:
| What is the product here?
| malwarebytess wrote:
| Interesting they're framing it as Revue joining twitter rather
| than Twitter acquiring Revue.
| mrweasel wrote:
| It's standard "we got bought up" jargon, but it is weird way of
| saying it.
|
| Joining indicates some come goal or success, but it has become
| Silicon Vally slang for: Our product is dead but at least we
| made some money.
| devdiary wrote:
| Revue looks amazing. But why so many twitter permissions required
| to login?
| sturza wrote:
| Seems like substack discovered a market and now they're competing
| julienreszka wrote:
| At what point are those kind of acquisitions anticompetitive?
| ghaff wrote:
| I used Revue for a while and basically decided I didn't want to
| do a regular newsletter. (Never had any interest in directly
| monetizing.)
|
| I do still have a blog but I mostly publish on various platforms
| that have fairly heavy-duty promotion machinery. But depending
| upon how Revue is integrated into Twitter, I'd take a look again.
| ryanwiggins wrote:
| The Creators arms race is in full swing, and the winner will be
| who can deliver the way to most monetize your existing audience
| AND expand your audience. Twitter already has a strong interest
| graph and is well positioned here
| another_sock wrote:
| This is a good idea with the caveat that twitter gets more sane
| banning/suspension policies. For any interesting or non-
| traditional writers/thinkers, the process of building up a
| platform and having it taken away from you by some tech overlord
| is a very common experience. Most people with any audience who
| say anything of value are very wary of anything associated with
| twitter, so there needs to be some administrative and policy
| changes before anybody of value uses this.
| thisistheend123 wrote:
| Will this be a competition for substack?
| cabalamat wrote:
| That's what i was thinking -- this is Twitter's version of
| substack.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Me too. I'm really not optimistic about the content that
| Twitter will curate here; I worry that they'll out-compete
| substack by peddling their usual outrage addiction, perhaps
| not right away but in time. The content that one might see on
| substack will be eventually buried on Twitter in exchange for
| the content that is most likely to make you click links.
| Here's to hoping I'm wrong.
| jhunter1016 wrote:
| This is a smart move by Twitter. Substack has taken off
| considerably. Rather than watch all their prized users go publish
| long form content on a platform outside their orbit, Twitter just
| pulled a platform into their orbit.
|
| The thing I'm curious about is how creative Twitter will get with
| integrating the platforms. There have been a lot of missed
| opportunities with previous Twitter acquisitions IMO.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| I don't thin substack crowd would trust Twitter with their
| content.
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| I think Twitter would be okay if the history professor with
| the $1m Substack comes over to them and people like Glenn
| Greenwald stay at Substack though.
| whiddershins wrote:
| History professor with 1m substack? Is this a specific
| reference?
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| Yep: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/27/business/media/he
| ather-co...
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| You are right. I am biased by my substack subscriptions
| list
| the_reformation wrote:
| The Substack crowd is already on Twitter, and is where they
| got their audience from.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| That is an overstatement. I might be a dinosaur, but in my
| case it is the other way around. I mostly follow people I
| have learned about elsewhere. Also, if Twitter decides to
| ban one of them, I will still have access to substack where
| the articles are.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Fascinating. I wonder what happened to Medium?
| kbelder wrote:
| They're blocked for me where ever I can block them, just
| because I got sick of innocently following a link and being
| ambushed by Medium and their hassle. Or 'friction', to
| euphemize.
| herodoturtle wrote:
| No idea what happened because I stopped using it after they
| started adding all the accessibility friction. The UI was
| decent, original. And giving the reader an idea of the "Reading
| time" of each article was a nice touch.
|
| But yeah, that friction got to be a little too much.
| AndrewLiptak wrote:
| It'll be interesting to see what Substack does in response to
| this. I can imagine that they'll lose some folks because
| Twitter's taking a lower rate.
| woodpanel wrote:
| Or they could win some folks because of ... Twitter.
| paulgb wrote:
| My prediction: bundling. Most of the good content (excluding
| self-hosted) is now arguably on Substack, but the subscription
| model is still one-to-one and doesn't allow them to take
| advantage of the network effects. There's a limited number of
| subscriptions I'm willing to pay for. Bundling economics, if
| done right, could extract a higher monthly fee from me into the
| platform. After all, the marginal cost of providing content to
| me is negligible, so anything I'd be willing to pay for but not
| enough for to justify another subscription is money left on the
| table.
| omarhaneef wrote:
| You know the joke that tech just rediscovers the pre-tech
| economy?
|
| Like a rideshare company will pick up groups of passengers
| from a location and drop them to the same location in the
| direction you're going - oh, you just discovered buses. That
| kind of thing?
|
| This is heading towards a you just discovered online
| magazines/newspapers jokes.
|
| Consider: - bundle the best writers together
|
| - pay them a salary so they feel some comfort
|
| - have an editor who decides
|
| - brand it so people trust the name
|
| etc
| paulgb wrote:
| Ha, that's fair, but a magazine-style model is only one way
| to go. Something like diminishing cost for adding
| additional subscriptions (with the discount split between
| the newsletters I subscribe to) would be effective in
| making me spend more there. (And probably abandon an off-
| substack paid subscription)
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| second mention of writefreely on HN today...
|
| writefreely, https://github.com/writeas/writefreely
|
| this is Activitypub compatible self hosted writing tool.
|
| AGPLv-3.0 goodness
| [deleted]
| pboutros wrote:
| This is a really smart acquisition for Twitter to make. I'm
| subscribed to a number of substacks (and Patreons) that I only
| discovered through creators on Twitter.
|
| Job #1 for twitter should be making it easy to subscribe to Revue
| newsletters from within Twitter. Please do not put the team that
| rolled out Fleets in charge of Job #1 ;)
| nikivi wrote:
| What did you dislike about Fleets rollout?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| They are incongruous with how I see most people using
| twitter. If I wanted the fleet, I would follow them on
| instagram.
| blakesterz wrote:
| I don't normally answer questions for others, but I feel
| uniquely qualified to chime in on this one!
|
| I am a pretty heavy Twitter user and have been for a long
| time. It's really the only "social" thing I use.
|
| I know Fleets is a Twitter thing... I remember seeing it
| someplace, maybe a story on Hacker News or something? Was it
| something like a replacement for Vine maybe? Or was it
| something with threaded conversations? Am I seeing Fleets in
| my feed? What do they look like? Are they being used at all?
|
| I really have no idea what Fleets is and I use Twitter all
| the time. Whatever Fleets is I agree with pboutros, don't put
| that same team in charge of anything else, this rollout
| didn't work.
|
| (I may be missing something totally obvious and awesome here!
| Maybe Fleets is the greatest thing since Google+ and I'm to
| set in my ways to notice or care? This could very well be
| another "It's not you, it's me" thing and I'm too dense to
| see it.)
| shp0ngle wrote:
| Fleets are Instagram Stories - Now On Twitter.
|
| I think they appear just in mobile app, but also not sure,
| I use the web Twitter on phone.
| kilbuz wrote:
| They do appear on the mobile app. One person out of the
| hundreds I follow uses them, so therefore I am reminded
| that they exist, even though I never watch them. If that
| person happened to stop creating them, I would not know
| what they are or that they exist.
| user-the-name wrote:
| You would, because the app will still waste the screen
| space for the fleets bar even if nobody is using it, just
| so it can push the button for creating a new one in front
| of you all the time.
| eimrine wrote:
| I tried to use Twitter for advertising my business. Reason why I
| have chosen Twitter is because somebody has told me that I can
| tweet via SMS, which fits perfect to my livestyle w/o smartphone.
| But after I have followed several dozens of similar businesses in
| short period of time (1 hour to find them all) my account was
| banned. Also I could not set up tweeting from SMS. That was my
| first and last experience with Twitter.
| [deleted]
| kodah wrote:
| I'm conflicted about this move. I was listening to Reply All the
| other day and they mentioned platform diversity and I've seen a
| number of discussions on here around platform diversity. Twitters
| ability to buy a feature like this makes it harder to compete
| with. It benefits writers in a way that it adds in-demand
| functionality to an existing popular platform but also harms
| writers and consumers because of the rising demand of platform
| diversity.
| mberning wrote:
| If you write anything important or at all at risk of becoming
| controversial twitter should be nothing more than a promotion
| engine.
| stakkur wrote:
| Oy. Another company wanting a piece of the 'newsletter' pie, and
| access to your mailing list.
| herodoturtle wrote:
| Yeah.
|
| But I'll still keep subscribing to the best mailing list, so...
| orliesaurus wrote:
| Will twitter penalize substack users like it had penalized
| sharing of instagram pictures by removing the preview embedded in
| tweets?
| throwawaysea wrote:
| If that is the case then I hope they are split up on antitrust
| grounds. But somehow I doubt the current administration will go
| after big tech.
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| I listened to a podcast that included this story, it was a
| Facebook decision. Mark phoned and gave them a few hours heads
| up that 'Instagram' had decided not to allow the embeds any
| more. They actually got it delayed 24 hours or something like
| that to avoid breaking Twitter.
| pr0zac wrote:
| Instagram pictures don't show up on Twitter because Facebook
| blocked it. They did that in response to Twitter blocking
| Instagram from finding contacts via Twitter. Its FAANG in-
| fighting from like 8 years ago that I'm still kind of surprised
| hasn't been sorted out by now.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| More like NATFAG in-fighting in this case
| jsjsbdkj wrote:
| wow that's a terrible acronym.
| CivBase wrote:
| "Revue by Twitter"
|
| It's interesting that the tech giants keep tagging their names
| onto the brands they acquire. Does that really help?
|
| I know that the tech crowd exists in a bubble and that the hatred
| for the tech giants on HN doesn't really reflect the feelings of
| the general public... but even outside the tech sphere, are there
| really many people who _like_ Twitter as a company? Most people
| just seem to tolerate the companies behind their preferred
| platform. It doesn 't seem to me like there would be many who
| would be more likely to engage with a new brand as a result of
| its association with Twitter. If anything, I'd expect the
| opposite effect.
| cocktailpeanuts wrote:
| Interesting that they don't do "GitHub by Microsoft", or "NPM
| by Microsoft". Maybe there's some insight in there somewhere...
| sneak wrote:
| Microsoft wants to keep their corporate stink off of those
| brands as to not taint their market dominance and continued
| growth. It appears to be working.
|
| They're slowly working other, less-Microsoft-branded
| proprietary stuff into them, like Azure and VSCode.
|
| GitHub and NPM however remain without even a mention of their
| ownership and decisionmaking entity.
|
| Some of the marketing for these things they've even taken to
| posting on unaffiliated domains, like we saw on HN yesterday:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25903358
|
| They're trying really hard to not remind people that the same
| people who put ads in your start menu also own and control
| your favorite free code host, too.
|
| Call it Microsoft GitHub whenever you can.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| Everyone knows github. Adding microsoft to the name doesnt
| get more sign ups. Npm doesnt even get sign ups this way. I
| have no idea what Revue is. Adding Twitter to the name gives
| it instant credibility.
| walterbell wrote:
| We are "Reviewed by Twitter" and we are here to help.
| whomst wrote:
| I've heard that it might be for anti trust reasons (but with
| putting Facebook on all of its properties). Properly
| establishing who owns what up front makes the average user more
| aware of the consolidation of platforms
| enos_feedler wrote:
| If Revue were a big company perhaps. In this case I think its
| just to give Revue more value through the brand association.
| elliekelly wrote:
| I've seen that argument a few times recently as well but I
| don't find it at all persuasive. Public perception of market
| competition isn't relevant to antitrust law. That the public
| is more aware of a company's anti-competitive behavior
| doesn't somehow absolve or even lessen the potential
| liability for the anti-competitive behavior.
|
| Or perhaps I just don't understand the point they're trying
| to make? I've yet to come across this antitrust/branding
| argument where the rationale has been explained but I'd
| definitely be curious to hear the legal theory.
| TimPC wrote:
| The only thing I can come up with is that being aware of
| the damages in advance of a purchasing decision might in
| some cases serve to limit said damages relative to being
| unaware of them. Not sure it applies in a monopoly setting
| where awareness of damages doesn't give you an alternative
| though. It gets more complicated when damage is speech
| instead of a financial exploit on a product.
| rriepe wrote:
| Are you allowed to disagree?
| jp1016 wrote:
| I was making a tool to bookmark tweets and convert threads into
| articles , https://twimark.io , this acquisition could move some
| users who write long threads to revue. I wonder what the effects
| will be
| prestigious wrote:
| You would have to be a complete idiot to try and build your
| revenue on something owned by Twitter. They will shut you down at
| any time, for any reason, with no recourse.
| gnicholas wrote:
| With Revue and Substack, do the authors have access to
| subscriber email addresses? If so, that would somewhat blunt
| concerns like this, both directly (if you are booted off the
| platform) and indirectly (presumably the platforms would be
| less aggressive in their rules/enforcement if it is easy for
| authors to leave).
| mshroyer wrote:
| https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/logistics
|
| > I'm saving the Substack mailing list regularly to my hard
| drive, and if I go somewhere else I'll let you all know.
|
| So this is possible on Substack at least.
|
| Some Substacks also use a custom domain name, which would
| make migration off the platform even easier.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| In the new era of monopolistic common carrier platforms, you
| have to BUILD INTO YOUR BUSINESS PLAN what happens when you get
| screwed by, say, the Apple App Store, YouTube, or Twitter, et.
| al. It's a business risk, just like fire or flood. You have to
| have a contingency ready to go at a moment's notice. By
| example, Parler didn't.
| rwcarlsen wrote:
| I read somewhere that parler actually did have a contingency
| plan, but their backup host pulled out on them too.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| just build your own internet
| cjlm wrote:
| This space is quite interesting. You have the gorilla at the
| picnic (Substack), the stagnating old timers (TinyLetter), the
| member management platforms (Memberful, probably Mailchimp), the
| link dump creators (curated.co) and the spunky indie upstarts
| (Buttondown).
| asicsp wrote:
| There's membership feature on gumroad as well:
| https://gumroad.com/gumroad/p/introducing-gumroad-membership...
| FalconSensei wrote:
| Yeah, but I guess by going free, Revue is going to grab a good
| chunk of the space.
|
| For example, curated.co seems nice, but $25 bucks a month for
| sending a newsletter that doesn't even have a single
| subscriber?
| [deleted]
| siruva07 wrote:
| Excellent acquisition. Twitter will definitely compete and take
| marketshare from Substack with lower fees from 20% to 5%. I hope
| this acquisition is actually a stepping stone for Twitter to
| become a much better service.
|
| Twitter could absolutely become a paid service and move away from
| ads as its business model. No political ads to worry about. No
| interference with the product experience. And believe it or not,
| if I understand correctly these services (FB, Twitter) have an
| ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) of just $5-8 per year.
|
| Imagine paying $1-3 per month for FB or Twitter. We'd no longer
| be the product -- our data not for sale -- and the companies
| would make more money! Knowing that my message would get
| received, I'd happily pay to slide into the DMs like people do to
| me on LinkedIn (mostly service providers, but I've gotten some
| great biz dev connections from InMail).
|
| It's almost a running joke, up there with Daft Punk playing at
| the trash fence, that Twitter just won't release an edit button.
| With a move towards paying subscribers, maybe Twitter will listen
| to its _real_ customers -- content writers -- rather than
| advertisers.
| motoboi wrote:
| If they charge 5 to 15 reais per month 80% of Brazil's users
| will exit Twitter and Facebook for the free competitor the same
| day. I suppose the same would happen anywhere the exchange rate
| is unfavorable.
|
| A price for FB in Brazil? R$ 1 ($0,2). And the free option
| would still get a huge market share.
| Tenoke wrote:
| For what is worth, those users also earn them much lees
| revenue, so the cost can be lower, too.
| mrisoli wrote:
| It's a matter of perception, especially in poorer countries
| like Brazil, why would anyone pay money for something that
| was previously free?
|
| Good example of this is WhatsApp, IIRC it was free for a
| year then charged $1 for lifetime access, people still
| scrambled to get around the app(download illegal APKs, or
| recreate accounts).
| FalconSensei wrote:
| Exactly. There are 2 problems with requiring payments in
| Brazil:
|
| 1 - Most people will not want to pay. They will spend a
| whole day/weekend trying to find a free alternative, even
| if it costs just a couple bucks.
|
| 2 - Many, many people don't have credit cards. You would
| need to support boleto or debit. Generating and managing
| boletos adds cost, so you would need to increase your
| fees not to lose money
| strogonoff wrote:
| I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that there's a
| slight problem with saying "social networks shouldn't
| become paid because some users will leave".
|
| This line of reasoning implicitly treats those products
| as some sort of public good. I imagine it's beneficial to
| their owners--but is it to the users?
|
| There's a conflict of interest here. Networks _want_ to
| be free. Huge account numbers and de-facto public good
| status positively influence network valuations and allow
| them to charge more for ads; armies of troll and no-value
| accounts greatly inflate the numbers; the loser turns out
| to be legitimate users. If we are sure they remain afloat
| if we pay them, why should we worry about product's
| popularity more than our own treatment?
|
| They are not central parks or public squares. They don't
| have the obligation of being free. They are free to
| discriminate subscription prices between countries, which
| many companies do today (Apple Music is 5 times cheaper
| in India than in the US[0]).
|
| And if geographical price discrimination is not enough,
| if I'm poor I have the freedom to use another social
| network that charges less or nothing; when I (hopefully)
| grow my income and get fed up with myself being a product
| of X I can choose to invest into a more expensive tier of
| social networking and move my social presence[1] to Y--
| what's wrong with that?
|
| I suspect that normalizing paid options could make social
| networking more heterogenous, encourage competition, and
| likely benefit the society in the long run.
|
| [0] https://www.cashnetusa.com/blog/which-countries-pay-
| most-and...
|
| [1] If https://datatransferproject.dev pans out, I could
| perhaps even take my posts with me.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| > I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that there's
| a slight problem with saying "social networks shouldn't
| become paid because some users will leave".
|
| Facebook was successful because 'everyone' was on
| Facebook. It was the one place that I would go and find
| almost everyone I knew, and if I posted something there,
| all of them would have access to it.
|
| Similarly, I've tried migrating from Twitter to Mastodon.
| But no one I know uses it, so why bother?
|
| I would pay for Facebook/Twitter, but on the condition
| that other people are also paying. As soon as people
| start leaving, there's no much point.
| patrickaljord wrote:
| There is no way in hell Twitter is going to give up on ads any
| time soon. Maintaining a service like Twitter costs hundreds of
| millions of dollars in infra and workers and it's highly
| unlikely that Revue could cover those costs. Even if by some
| miracle, Revue manages to pays the bill, it would be impossible
| to justify to shareholders giving up on such a huge source of
| revenue that is ads.
|
| tl;dr twitter giving up on ads ain't happening
| rightbyte wrote:
| I am a bit cynical about that Spyware-aaS companies like FB
| would stop spying just becouse you paid them. I mean I bought a
| Samsung TV for 1000USD and still it tries to show adds and spy.
| The temptation to increase margins is high no matter what.
|
| I am not that up to date with Twitter. Are they in the same
| class as FB and Google?
| boogies wrote:
| > companies [don't] stop spying just becouse you paid them
|
| I think Windows (10 especially) is Exhibit A here (its
| "users" are definitely the product, but MS is happy to take
| their free money -- or not, you can download it for $0 from
| their site, and cheap activation keys are easy to find), and
| the world's first trillion dollar company is Exhibit B -- its
| end-users are customers in many senses of the word, and
| they're not _the_ product, but _a_ product that they offer to
| their walled garden's developers with strings attached.
| rozab wrote:
| Correct. I don't understand why people suggest direct revenue
| streams would help in this regard. Have you seen Facebook's
| profit margins? They don't _need_ to spy on people.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >I am a bit cynical about that Spyware-aaS companies like FB
| would stop spying just becouse you paid them.
|
| So am I. The problem is that the paying members are also the
| same members that are most valuable to advertisers (because
| they have disposable cash and are probably 'power users' of
| the platform), so there is an incentive to 'sell them' to
| advertisers as well.
| TimPC wrote:
| If we get enough global privacy laws with sufficient teeth,
| it may be possible for paid models to offer a low risk
| alternative to spying where you would be constantly at risk
| of fines for poor decisions on how you implement your data
| collection. It would be quite a change in the way the
| internet works financially, but it seems like companies
| would be likely to adapt to it were it to happen.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| The trouble with paid social media is that the value is
| in the network, and becomes much less attractive if lots
| (maybe 90% of users) don't pay, and hence are removed
| from the service.
|
| You could do freemium, but you'd make a lot less money
| (FB would anyway, maybe this would work for Twitter)
| without reducing your support costs.
|
| So yeah, I'm not sure this would work in the current
| setup (even global privacy laws with teeth will move from
| individual level ads to cohort level ads). The trouble is
| not that subscription services are worse, it's that ads
| are super profitable if you're a really big service.
| leppr wrote:
| A derivative take on this is that getting people used to
| paying for internet services, would enable more respectful
| platforms that _need_ the subscription revenue, to exist.
|
| I also would never pay for participation in a monolithic
| user-generated content platform with questionable "curation"
| (e.g. Youtube Premium), but directly paying for
| hosting/moderation/admin work is still the way forward IMO.
| simias wrote:
| Indeed, and especially if they already have the tracking tech
| anyway. Why bother turning it off?
|
| I wish that paying for Spotify meant that my privacy would be
| respected, but I have zero illusions that they basically
| gather at least as much data as free customers.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I think you're right, but if people had to pay even a few
| dollars a month for Facebook and Twitter I think it would
| make a big dent in amount of nonstop drivel and shitposting
| that goes on. And that's another reason it won't happen, it
| would reduce eyeballs for the ads.
| RankingMember wrote:
| > The temptation to increase margins is high no matter what.
|
| yep, I remember when cable tv was ad-free (because who
| would've dreamt people would be ok with paying a subscription
| fee while still getting ads shoved down their throat?)
| TimPC wrote:
| cable tv always had ads because the cable subscription goes
| to an infrastructure provider not the content provider. If
| the infrastructure provider was the content provider there
| is a substantial incentive to reduce or eliminate ads a la
| Netflix and Amazon Prime which largely restrict ads to
| brief promotions of other content on the network.
| organsnyder wrote:
| Those infrastructure providers pay a ton of money to the
| content providers. I've heard that ESPN is the single
| largest cost of most cable plans.
| julianlam wrote:
| I don't believe this is correct. Certain cable television
| channels were originally ad free (e.g. USA, Nickelodeon)
| because they competed against free OTA broadcasts which
| were ad supported.
|
| Similarly to pay per view.
|
| That those channels now show commercials (and has for a
| long enough time that people think "it was always like
| this") just cements our expectations that commercials are
| a fact of life.
| deckard1 wrote:
| In addition to cable going to ads, it deserves mention that
| many shows today feature brand advertising right in the
| program.
|
| I pay for Netflix, but go watch a Korean drama and they are
| clearly advertising Subway, KFC, Samsung, etc. right there
| in the show through the show itself.
|
| Movies do this too, and you paid for that expensive ticket.
| Wayne's World even did a parody of this in 1992:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjB6r-HDDI0
|
| Advertising is incredibly pervasive in our modern society
| and only going to increase.
| DavidPeiffer wrote:
| I knew someone who was an early adopter of satellite TV.
| She said during the news, rather than ads, you saw the
| hosts smoking and chatting.
|
| That sounds so much more pleasant than what we have today.
|
| When cable had no ads, did all programs just run
| continously? If a channel did a special where they played
| standard TV programs designed for over the air broadcast
| (18-23 minutes/episode), did they just play them
| consecutively or have some other filler to keep on a 30 or
| 60 minute schedule?
| ISL wrote:
| With satellite TV in the 90s, some channels simply
| blacked out or showed a placeholder in the ad slots --
| sometimes the satellite channels were the very feeds that
| the TV stations were using.
|
| Premium channels would fill the gaps between shows with
| advertisements for upcoming shows on the same channel or
| affiliated channels. Coming from broadcast TV, networks
| like HBO were kind of incredible; no ads, just the thing
| you went there to watch.
|
| By then, however, the non-premium channels definitely
| carried ads.
| deckard1 wrote:
| > She said during the news, rather than ads, you saw the
| hosts smoking and chatting.
|
| Sounds like she was viewing the direct feed or something.
| There is a documentary called "Spin" which was recorded
| footage of the downtime between ads. You can see, for
| example, George H.W. Bush chatting up Larry King. There
| is footage of Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and others. The
| people being recorded don't seem to realize that the
| satellite feed continues during a break or downtime.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_(1995_film)
| sharperguy wrote:
| In the UK, the BBC channels are still ad-free. Shows like
| The IT Crowd or Star Trek just play through continuously
| without ads.
|
| Between shows, they have a short ad break advertising
| other BBC shows and live broadcasts that will be playing
| at a later time, but nothing paid.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I wouldn't really call the intermission an ad break as
| they're not really trying to sell you something. The main
| purpose is as a buffer between shows with slightly
| different timings or with live shows that won't finish at
| an exact time (or may overrun like sports matches). You
| get the same on the radio too though they often have a
| short news briefing in the gap as well. Very occasionally
| they will have too large a gap to fill and read a poem.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| Premium linear channels in the US (think HBO) do this as
| well. It's an artifact of programming blocks -- you want
| your movie/show/sport/etc. to start on the hour or half-
| hour, but the thing before it rarely will end when you
| want it to (a few seconds of slack time to switch to the
| next item). If you have some small-enough unit of time
| left between the end of the movie and the start of the
| next slot, you either commission a bunch of micro-length
| shorts or you run internal promos to fill the gap.
| jlelse wrote:
| Same in Germany with the public TV channels like ARD,
| ZDF, etc.
| larrik wrote:
| IT Crowd isn't BBC, though...
| organsnyder wrote:
| I think their point is that shows that were produced with
| ads in mind simply play through with no gaps (similar to
| how ad-free streaming services play them).
|
| How do they schedule the shows to account for the odd
| lengths?
| dingaling wrote:
| > How do they schedule the shows to account for the odd
| lengths?
|
| Certainly up through the 90s the 'big ticket' and
| imported shows started on the hour or :30 and everything
| else slotted around that. Secondary programmes often
| started at :50 or :15 as a result.
|
| https://www.transdiffusion.org/content/uploads/2016/10/19
| 991...
|
| If timings were really awkward they would pad five or ten
| minutes with a short filler about hot air ballooning or
| pottery making or somesuch
| nomdep wrote:
| At least in my country, in the week just after christmas,
| in several children cable channels, the ads dissapear.
| Instead the run "ads" for other shows in the channel.
|
| I guess that how TV without ads would look like.
| larrik wrote:
| In the USA, the Disney Channel is mostly like this year
| round.
| devlopr wrote:
| tcm is like this.
| smileybarry wrote:
| In Israel, cable/satellite company-owned channels only
| ads shown for other shows or channels. That's not because
| they're nice, but because they're legally barred from
| showing "real" ads (only commercial, free OTA channels
| can do that; gov-owned public access only shows ads for
| their own shows, same reason). Plus those ads are just
| between programs and never in the middle of one. They
| still get very repetitive, though.
| Applejinx wrote:
| Funnily enough, just last week I deleted both Facebook and
| Twitter, even though they 'cost me nothing'.
| jtsiskin wrote:
| Facebook makes $30-40 ARPU in the US+Canada.
|
| https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2020/q3...
| krrrh wrote:
| It's important to factor in how much cost savings Facebook
| could realize by eliminating most of its advertising
| department and associated engineering when looking at how
| moving off an advertising model might affect profitability. I
| have no idea what the magnitude of this is, but a good
| portion of that $30-40 has to get chewed up by spending on
| stuff that makes the platform less useful to the end users.
| hderms wrote:
| Presumably none of these big players want to charge money for a
| pro service because it would be difficult to walk back on w.r.t
| ad revenue. The ad purchasers would probably take issue with
| it, especially given that they're explicitly valuing their user
| base at presumably less than they're charging for advertising
| access to them.
|
| Not to say it couldn't work, but I'm guessing the reason it
| hasn't been tried is at least partially do to there being no
| going back
| throwawaysea wrote:
| I am very fearful of where that goes. Twitter and Facebook
| delete lots of conversations that offend their progressive
| political sensibilities. Even if people paid for these
| services, they would still be operating within those biased
| chambers as a result. I would rather have someone independent
| like Substack win this space instead of seeing these companies
| take it all just because of their financial warchests and the
| power of network effects making them immune to competition.
| dumbfounder wrote:
| The second you charge you cut out a large chunk of your
| audience. The second you cut out a large chunk of your audience
| you give up what makes Twitter useful. Facebook has the same
| issue, if only 10% of your friends are on there, why would you
| want to be there?
| sneak wrote:
| > _I hope this acquisition is actually a stepping stone for
| Twitter to become a much better service._
|
| I don't. Centralization of censorship ability in a small number
| of platforms is a bad thing for everyone. Twitter and Instagram
| or any other centralized censor becoming a "better service"
| makes our whole society worse.
|
| It's time to leave Twitter and never look back. Only assholes
| tell other adults what they're allowed to see or read.
|
| I tolerated Twitter deciding what I was allowed to write for a
| dozen years. When they started censoring search and dictating
| what I was allowed to read, I deleted my account.
|
| Sharecropping on someone else's platform is a dead end.
| nathias wrote:
| I won't believe that until I see it, you can most definitely
| both pay and be the product.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| 100% agree with the business model switch. I think products
| have a natural business model and for Twitter it's not
| advertising. I think it took time for the market to have
| appetite to pay for more subs, but it's here now. I really
| think this takes Twitter to the next level.
| notahacker wrote:
| > Imagine paying $1-3 per month for FB or Twitter. We'd no
| longer be the product -- our data not for sale -- and the
| companies would make more money! Knowing that my message would
| get received, I'd happily pay to slide into the DMs like people
| do to me on LinkedIn (mostly service providers, but I've gotten
| some great biz dev connections from InMail).
|
| So my inbox is the product? I think the number of people
| willing to pay $36 per annum to not see sponsored content in
| amongst all the organic marketing spam in newsfeeds is a
| negligible proportion of the user base, especially since ad
| blockers can be configured to hide it anyway.
| 0x1F8B wrote:
| > Imagine paying $1-3 per month for FB or Twitter.
|
| Imagine paying $1-3 per month for FB or Twitter.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| I'm sure they would figure out a way to roll it into your
| phone bill.
|
| I think it would be a good thing. This sounds harsh but
| honestly most of the the types of people that are unwilling
| to pay $1-3 per month for the service are probably the types
| that don't make the service a better social network.
|
| It would also hopefully disincentivize government agencies
| and maybe even politicians from using it as a channel of
| communications since it's more along the lines of a
| traditional business arrangement and not a "free, TV-like"
| service.
| boogies wrote:
| > Imagine paying $1-3 per month for FB or Twitter. We'd no
| longer be the product
|
| You're not the product in the Fediverse, where Pleroma says you
| can run a small server for ~$4/month
| (https://pleroma.social/blog/2021/01/13/the-big-pleroma-
| and-f...). Or you can join someone else's instance and donate
| eg. to GNU Social's lead developer on Liberapay
| (https://liberapay.com/diogo/donate) or Mastodon on Patreon
| (https://www.patreon.com/mastodon, $1/month gives you access
| ironically to a Discord channel).
| user-the-name wrote:
| An edit button does not make sense for a service like Twitter.
| There are way to many ways to abuse it, and any solution that
| tries to deal with those just ends up being equivalent to what
| already exists: Delete and repost.
| corobo wrote:
| > and any solution that tries to deal with those just ends up
| being equivalent to what already exists: Delete and repost.
|
| I'd love this honestly. Even if it was just a delete and
| repost under the hood, generally I find I want an edit button
| just after posting and noticing all the typos.
|
| As long as the interface interacted like an edit form rather
| than have me copy and then rebuild the tweet I'd be good to
| go.
| thebean11 wrote:
| It would be bad UX. Users would expect it to edit (keeping
| likes, retweets, replies, timestamp etc) but it would
| actually delete and repost which is a very different thing
| on Twitter.
| skinkestek wrote:
| Mastodon has this :-)
| siruva07 wrote:
| Why does an edit button not make sense for a service like
| Twitter? How would it be abused?
|
| Deleting and reposting hurts and would eliminate engagement
| statistics.
|
| From a product experience, edited tweets, similar to Slack,
| could show an "(edited)" that when clicked on let's a user
| see the version history. That way, it can't be abused, but
| does allow for minor typos (e.g.
| https://twitter.com/sir/status/1353737949729468416)
| thomasahle wrote:
| > Deleting and reposting hurts and would eliminate
| engagement statistics.
|
| Maybe there should be a maximum number of characters
| edited. If I have liked/retweeted a tweet, and its author
| then completely rewrites it,I would want my "engagement"
| eliminated.
| RL_Quine wrote:
| Am considering taking Tesla private at $9420. Funding
| secured.
|
| Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding
| secured.
|
| Am considering taking Tesla private at $42. Funding
| secured.
| [deleted]
| conradfr wrote:
| Also why not make editing available for n minutes?
| Perfect for typos.
| thomasahle wrote:
| That's probably an even better approach, though famous
| people may have a lot of engagements during that time.
|
| Maybe just make editing work like deletion/repost: Remove
| all likes a retweets. Then after n minutes it becomes an
| unattractive thing to do.
| mnx wrote:
| no way to prevent just adding a 'not' while still
| allowing sensible editing.
| ballenf wrote:
| Editing tweets to me is not just a feature, it's a
| fundamental shift to the nature of the platform. Even
| bigger than doubling tweet size did.
|
| Twitter is defined by tweets not being polished Facebook or
| LinkedIn posts. Except for people who don't use it that
| way, but they feel artificial to me. I'd rather all of
| Twitter not drift that direction.
|
| And personally, I love that I _can 't_ worry about fixing
| typos. If they're bad enough I delete. If not, move on,
| stay humble and pay more attention next time.
| user-the-name wrote:
| Because you can completely change the content of a post
| after it gets traction.
| notafraudster wrote:
| While I agree with the general replies to the parent
| comment, it seems like the magnitude of this problem is
| relatively small given the staffing Twitter has who could
| solve it. Even the general problem of "Can we tell if an
| edit changes the connotation of a sentence?" seems like
| it is solveable at Twitter's scale.
| siruva07 wrote:
| A time or engagement based restriction would prevent
| this, i.e. having 3-5 minutes to edit the tweet, at which
| point the edit button is locked. Revision history would
| still show. "Undo Send" a la Gmail, but for tweets.
| ajanuary wrote:
| "Revision history would still show"
|
| Except in a distributed system like Twitter (including
| client and server) there is no single timeline, and
| amateur digital forensics will erroneously say "aha, but
| you retweeted it before it was edited"
| Spivak wrote:
| As long as RTs and likes are tied to a specific version
| of the Tweet then it's no real problem.
| kristiandupont wrote:
| Perhaps, but you are talking about creating rather
| complex machinery in order to support a tiny feature. If
| the only argument in favor is engagement statistics
| (would those take edits into consideration as well?), I
| certainly see why Twitter doesn't care too much.
| user-the-name wrote:
| But if the tweet has only been live for a few minutes,
| you might as well delete and repost.
| willj wrote:
| I think the lack of an edit button is helpful on a couple
| fronts:
|
| - it makes authors think more before posting; if there are
| typos, or it isn't exactly what they want to say, and it
| gains traction, they can't fix it, so they work to make it
| right the first time
|
| - Most people ignore edit histories [citation needed; based
| on my own experience and knowledge of others']. As a
| result, if the post is edited, the conversation can get
| fragmented and confusing for later readers
|
| That said, I'd love it if there were a way to see deleted
| tweets, at least of politicians
| nefitty wrote:
| The deleted tweet view is obviously not a part of Twitter
| yet, but here's a service from ProPublica for this
| specific use case: https://www.politwoops.com/countries
| bachmeier wrote:
| Because rather than retweeting "I hate the KKK" you just
| retweeted "I support the KKK".
| Spivak wrote:
| I mean it's not an insurmountable problem though. As long
| as likes and RTs are tied to a specific version of a
| Tweet and you can see the edits and associated likes it's
| fine.
| kristiandupont wrote:
| Even setting aside the UX issues in this, I think this is
| underestimating the complexity. I don't know anything
| about Twitters infrastructure but obviously we are not
| talking about a single postgres instance here.
| Effectively turning every tweet into a linked list with
| connected retweets, likes etc. is a _significant_ data
| model change for a system of this scale.
| reidjs wrote:
| For now let's just add a "*" to the original post to give
| all the retweeters deniability. I'd bet 99% of edits are
| for grammar/spelling/readability.
| [deleted]
| davidivadavid wrote:
| So keep the original message when you retweet. That
| doesn't seem like an insurmountable amount of conceptual
| complexity.
| nefitty wrote:
| This is a particularly low-tier way to troll on Reddit.
| It doesn't seem like the problem is drastic there, or
| even here on HN. I think the problem does stem from a
| retweet having a vibe of "I endorse this message.",
| regardless of what the retweeter has written in their
| bio.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > I think the problem does stem from a retweet having a
| vibe of "I endorse this message.", regardless of what the
| retweeter has written in their bio.
|
| At the very least, a retweet _always_ means "I want more
| people to see this message".
| csomar wrote:
| > And believe it or not, if I understand correctly these
| services (FB, Twitter) have an ARPU (Average Revenue Per User)
| of just $5-8 per year.
|
| The problem is that they are making the bulk of their money
| from the top tier of their users (which is a really tiny
| percentage); and the rest is not monetize-able. If your are
| making $80-100 from your top guys (who will probably, gladly,
| pay $5/month subscription), you still come short. And the mass
| that makes you $0/year is not going to pay at any price,
| anyway. They are just there to keep the higher value audience.
| stonecraftwolf wrote:
| Obligatory, but this really seems to confuse the point: their
| revenue doesn't come from their users at all. It comes from
| selling their users to advertisers.
| Nacdor wrote:
| > Twitter will definitely compete and take marketshare from
| Substack with lower fees from 20% to 5%.
|
| Twitter's willingness to silence users for political reasons
| will ensure this service never competes with Substack in any
| meaningful way.
|
| I don't doubt that it will be popular, but you won't see top-
| tier independent journalists building their houses on a
| Twitter's land after what we learned in the past year.
| reidjs wrote:
| I assume you're mainly referring to Trump.
|
| Inciting a coup is technically a political reason, but I
| think most people agree that's a valid reason to silence
| someone.
| Nacdor wrote:
| No, I'm mainly referring to the NY Post which was pre-
| emptively banned before Twitter had fact-checked their
| story. Even after it was proven that the story was true,
| Twitter refused to unlock their account. It took weeks of
| immense public pressure and even then the NY Post might've
| still been forced to delete the "offending" tweets just to
| satisfy Twitter and get their account back.
|
| https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1354077568555692034
|
| No sane journalist would rely on Twitter for income after
| that.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| > Even after it was proven that the story was true
|
| Where did you get that that story was true? It was mostly
| fake but with some elements of truth in it. The story
| itselve didn't even seem credible was my POV.
|
| Source?
| Nacdor wrote:
| The email authenticity was verified via DKIM signature.
|
| I'm not going to break it down point-by-point because
| you're just shifting the goalposts now. Twitter and FB
| let plenty of fake and exaggerated stories run wild when
| they say something negative about Trump. For example, the
| fake stories about Trump telling people to "Drink/inject
| bleach", the fake stories about him calling COVID a
| "hoax", and the fake stories about him calling Nazis
| "very fine people".
|
| All of those were debunked -- even by left-leaning fact-
| checkers -- yet none of them were removed or penalized on
| the social media platforms.
| TimPC wrote:
| Twitter has done far more than silence Trump. The NY Post
| article they shut down before the election turned out to be
| more true than false. It wasn't an attempt to incite a
| coup, it was an attempt to report some inconvenient facts
| about the son of a man who is now president and corruption.
| I'm glad Biden is president as I think it was a needed
| change that will be good for the US and the world but I
| still found this shut down of information deeply troubling.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| It's been established that Twitter will ban people because
| of their views. Now we're just debating where their lines
| are.
| coreyrab wrote:
| It will be interesting to see what the terms of the deal are.
| I've used Revue to publish a paid newsletter and it works great.
| Not quite as polished as Substack, but the lower take rate will
| certainly be enough for some customers to switch imo.
| figgyc wrote:
| Am I the only one who sees Revue, Substack etc. as a niche
| market? I can see why it appeals to Silicon Valley types/HN
| readers; after all this website is a content aggregator so it
| makes sense we all have a shared interest in written work. That
| said I think that the blog "industry" is dying more than it is
| growing.
|
| To me, media seems to be trending towards quick, consumable,
| visually stimulating content, ie YouTube, TikTok and the like.
| The reason such content is more engaging and profitable is
| because it's a lot easier to turn it into a feed: one does not
| scroll through a newsletter for hours on end, and long form
| content tends to be the type that you put more thought into
| reading instead of simply moving on to the next piece.
|
| Advertising runs on eyeballs but subscriptions do not, and it
| feels to me like Twitter seem to think that creating a well
| integrated platform to drive more Twitter discussion is a good
| idea, but really to me it feels like blogs and Tweets run
| perpendicular to each other: anyone who's read a decent amount of
| Twitter conversation knows that deeply thought out and sensible
| it is not.
|
| Maybe they see being able to be "in" conversations about
| paywalled content will incentivize people to pay up, and will
| subsequently start pushing Revue content on people's feeds to try
| and create such a mentality? Or maybe Twitter don't care about
| making Revue "part of" Twitter and just think it's a growing
| market worth capitalising on. Only time will tell.
|
| In a way it sort of reminds me of podcasts. They work well only
| for a group of people who have the time to consume long content,
| and while it works as a large niche, I can't see it growing into
| a Twitter-scale mass market, so I wouldn't trust it to be around
| for a particularly long time.
| nojs wrote:
| I'm curious as to why Twitter chose to do this as an acquisition
| rather than build their own. It doesn't seem particularly hard to
| build from an engineering perspective, and I doubt Twitter needs
| to acquire the Revue user base given their existing profile and
| reach.
| [deleted]
| bachmeier wrote:
| As a user of Twitter who mainly reads tweets rather than writing
| them, I hope this isn't just a way to make larger volumes of
| misinformation go viral. Obviously, that's not Twitter's
| intention, but they want to make money, and viral misinformation
| seems to be an effective strategy for making money.
|
| The reason I raise this issue is because the important
| characteristic of Twitter is that others can call out the
| misinformation quickly. It's not perfect, of course, but it's
| better than a newsletter, where it's just a blob of
| misinformation with nobody able to call out the BS.
| Bakary wrote:
| That's the first time I hear of Twitter as a platform
| inherently efficient against misinformation. If anything, it
| seems uniquely primed to spread it and reward users for doing
| so.
| bachmeier wrote:
| Oh, Twitter's definitely not a tool "against misinformation".
| My concern is actually that it's so efficient at spreading
| misinformation _and now they want to take away the ability to
| call out the misinformation_.
| andrew_ wrote:
| As someone who moved away from Twitter, the last thing I need in
| my life is another Twitter-owned property. The politics of the
| last month aside, Twitter is a foul, trite, snide place where the
| worst of us are trumpeted to the loudest voice and widest
| audience. The negativity and incentive to waste hours and focus
| are pervasive in every community I've participated in. Of course,
| YMMV. Despite my best efforts, I was unable to curate and filter
| away those things that I abhor about Twitter. A few weeks removed
| and my mental state feels all the better for it. Color me
| cynical, but I'll pass on another attempt for Twitter to monetize
| my attention.
| tentacleuno wrote:
| I find it somewhat ironic that Twitter has only now banned
| Trump. They allowed him to stay on his platform so more people
| would sign-up, follow him and get radicalised. Now he's no
| longer the President, they've suddenly acquired morality. Fool
| me once, eh.
| herodoturtle wrote:
| Didn't they ban him as a protective measure to curb
| additional violence after he incited the storming of the
| capitol?
|
| I don't think twitter's tactics are as nefarious as you make
| them out to be.
| tentacleuno wrote:
| They banned him after his Presidency. He did greivous harm
| and acts of hate before that, but only now are Twitter
| giving it the attention it deserves. Anyone else would have
| been banned long before now. He has incited a great deal of
| violence with racist dogwhistles, and only now he's facing
| any sort of punishment. The argument of 'free speech' falls
| apart when you factor this in.
| siruva07 wrote:
| <sigh> I hear you. But Twitter is an incredible service. From
| the Arab spring to people like @balajis who broke COVID (for me
| at least) before major news networks.
|
| The only interactive we have as users is positive (a heart or
| retweet) vs negative (thumbs down on Youtube, downvote on
| reddit).
|
| I think a broken heart, </3, essentially as a downvote, could
| do a lot to make Twitter more of a community that rewards and
| punishes, rather than just allows people to exist in their own
| eco-chamber. The politicians of the last month would have
| likely seen way more downvotes / broken hearts than favs and
| retweets, and that might have done something for them
| personally...it's at least worth a test if anyone at Twitter
| reads this :).
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| > YMMV
|
| It does, enormously. I've reached out to people via Twitter and
| had nothing but great experiences. I've had dialogue with
| people I would never have had access to before. IME, so long as
| you stick away from politics, Twitter is fine but, of course,
| this depends on who you follow and interact with.
| danielscrubs wrote:
| I like it but I have a policy to unfollow if they start to
| tweet about anything they don't work in. So a programmer that
| talks about politics is going to be unfollowed. Also they have
| to consistently be able to educate me and not just say things I
| agree with.
|
| Works pretty well. Main drawback is that it's just singular
| focus nerds.
|
| A drawback is that people don't always seem charitable in their
| thoughts of why I choose to unfollow.
|
| I guess I could just as easily follow their blogs instead of
| Twitter though.
| cpeterso wrote:
| Muting words related to political topics or the meme of the
| week can make a huge improvement in your Twitter timeline.
|
| I'm bummed that Twitter limits the mute list to only 200
| words. I'm maxed out and have to remove a word when I want to
| mute a new one.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I suspect that one problem on Twitter is how wide you "open the
| door". If you crack it open just a little (i.e. limited
| follows), you can have a nice, useful, informative stream
| there, without all the negativity. But if you insist on opening
| the door fairly wide (i.e. lots more follows), you're
| effectively inviting the whole world in.
|
| And guess what? "the whole world", taken as a whole, isn't so
| great.
| complianceowl wrote:
| Use Revue, build a sizeable distribution list, so I can get
| banned for expressing my thoughts? So I can be treated like a
| pedophile for saying something unpopular that doesn't align with
| their radical leftist ideology? No thank you. There's a lot of
| other subscription services for me to take a risk that big with
| anyone associated with Twitter.
| spacesword wrote:
| Good point, bad analogy. Twitter treats pedophiles really well.
| complianceowl wrote:
| Lol, you make a good point.
| woodpanel wrote:
| Probably a win for Substack, as a take-over by less-diverse-on-
| purpose Twitter will drive away those who seek diversity of
| opinions.
|
| Although, I can already feel the cancel-pressure building up in
| and around Substack, just by writing this.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| I dont think this is a win for substack. Before this
| acquisition Substack was probably the leading product in this
| category. Im sure if Substack polled it's publishers on what
| they want most, people would say "more paid subscribers".
| Twitter is a platform that can offer this from day 1. A
| chance to have your newsletter promoted to new eyeballs with
| a strong interest in what you write about. Substack needs to
| grow the reader side organically and so the race is on.
| Substack needs to turn into twitter faster than twitter can
| build substacks tools. Twitter just acquired a company to
| accelerate this process. How can substack accelerate?
| rchaud wrote:
| You seem to be more concerned with 'cancel culture' than the
| actual viability of your hypothetical 'unpopular opinion'
| newsletter.
| complianceowl wrote:
| The "viability of your hypothetical 'unpopular opinion'"??
| Are you serious? You're already taking shots and focusing on
| my beliefs without first addressing the risk that Big Tech
| and its affiliates pose to merely not being censored or
| banned? You're the kind of person that should work at
| Twitter. You'll fit right in, bud.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| I ve seen people talking about owning their twitter audience but
| the suggestion was to move away from twitter and towards self-
| hosting. Substack is promoted as a temporary in-between.
| Interesting that twitter thinks authors want to lock long-form
| content in there. What happens after the inevitable next Purge?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > What happens after the inevitable next Purge?
|
| Most authors are not going to be "purged" full stop.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| The good ones won't go to a platform that purges speech. It
| may be OK for content marketers, but i don't see journalists
| that don't like to mince their words (e.g. greenwald)
| choosing to host their content on twitter.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| Greenwald is an avid Twitter user, and is hardly in any
| danger of being de platformed for any of his views.
| adolph wrote:
| "Most" definitely messes with the business model. The
| requirement is for only enough to get everyone else to fall
| in line. It also helps to make selections idiosyncraticly
| arbitrary to maintain strategic ambiguity instead of drawing
| a clear line.
| pembrook wrote:
| > _Starting today, we're making Revue's Pro features free for all
| accounts and lowering the paid newsletter fee to 5%_
|
| ...and there goes Substack 's entire business.
|
| Overall, this is great for writers however. The missing component
| to Substack was the discovery/social mechanism. From a strategic
| perspective, it's easier to bolt on newsletter sending than it is
| to build a new social network.
|
| So this was always a huge risk for Substack as a platform. But
| hey, there's also an alternate universe where Twitter stays dumb
| and lazy and never crushes Substack. So I see why investors took
| the risk.
|
| But I see no path forward for Substack if Twitter manages to not
| completely botch this.
| [deleted]
| crocodiletears wrote:
| A few of Substack's writers wouldn't be allowed for long on a
| Twitter-owned platforms, and they know it. Writers like
| Greenwald, Yarvin, and Taibbi are all to varying degrees,
| transgressive enough and critical enough of social media to
| perceive the extra cut Substack takes as a reasonable ask in
| exchange for a greater level of platform security.
|
| Substack will certainly lose a lot of writers, but I think
| it'll be safe as a profitable niche alternative.
| kixiQu wrote:
| Aren't they all active on Twitter? Greenwald certainly is.
| It's a major part of their brand-building effort already at
| the very least
| crocodiletears wrote:
| Yarvin isn't, to my knowledge. It's a matter of how they
| communicate on the platform, vs off. It's entirely feasible
| for them to present their more anodyne content on the
| platform, while still expressing a wider range of ideas and
| opinions off of it. This has been the smartest strategy for
| a while. Twitter doesn't usually care what you do outside
| their platform.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It's a matter of how they communicate on the platform,
| vs off. It's entirely feasible for them to present their
| more anodyne content on the platform, while still
| expressing a wider range of ideas and opinions off of it.
|
| Greenwald's Twitter is no more anodyne than his substack;
| the only real difference seems to be the usual kinds of
| adaptation to microblogging vs. long-form.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > A few of Substack's writers wouldn't be allowed for long on
| a Twitter-owned platforms, and they know it.
|
| Maybe, but two of your three examples clearly would be
| allowed, and quite active, for quite a while "on a Twitter-
| owned platform":
|
| > Writers like Greenwald,
|
| https://twitter.com/ggreenwald (1.5M followers, since Aug
| 2008)
|
| > Yarvin,
|
| The only one without an obvious verified account on Twitter.
| There's a no-activity @CurtisYarvin regular account, though.
|
| > and Taibbi
|
| https://twitter.com/mtaibbi (0.5M followers, since May 2009)
| offtop5 wrote:
| Not exactly. The Twitter brand isn't looking so hot right now.
|
| I think it's the same thing with Slack, Slack only exists
| because Microsoft teams is made by Microsoft.
|
| I swear to God it's mostly a placebo effect, but you're like oh
| yeah we're using slack we're the cool kids now. Many companies
| will have a single breakaway team that uses slack just to feel
| cool.
|
| But if $10 a month makes a developer happier she might produce
| another $500 in value.
| ajford wrote:
| We use both Slack and Teams. I strongly disagree that it's
| the 'cool factor' making Slack better. Teams is just a pain
| to use for 70% of my day-to-day messaging needs. Teams works
| well for meetings and large presentations. For intra-team
| communication and bot integration, Slack wins hands down for
| my team.
| offtop5 wrote:
| Teams works.
|
| Your team is just used to Slack.
|
| At the same time , if it costs 2k in lost productivity to
| switch, it's easier to keep using Slack.
|
| I agree Slack is better though. I can't imagine if I
| started a new team I'd fight for slack over teams though
| pembrook wrote:
| > The Twitter brand isn't looking so hot right now.
|
| I see "current press sentiment" as an irrelevant factor. Just
| wait until some prominent right winger heads to Substack and
| the journalists start aiming their sights.
|
| The point is, if I'm going to start a paid newsletter, am I
| willing to give up an extra 5% of my income for the same
| feature set?
|
| The answer is hell no. Substack will have to lower their
| prices, and then the feature war will begin. Twitter will
| always have the upper hand given they can directly integrate
| newsletter sign up forms into twitter.
|
| But hey, bureaucratic incompetence is endemic at Twitter, so
| they might screw up this obvious path to victory they have in
| front of them.
| offtop5 wrote:
| To each their own, but given the major questions around how
| much power Twitter has, I don't see a lot of free and open
| journalism happening there.
|
| Ideally the entire reason you pay for this type of content
| is because you don't want to just read CNN. If Twitter is
| perceived as controlling your content anyway, why pay for
| it
| heimatau wrote:
| IMHO, the only solution is a fairly complicated
| decentralized structure with economic incentives for all.
| offtop5 wrote:
| Even then you have gatekeepers for hosting and payment
| processing.
| ajvs wrote:
| Exactly the problem cryptocurrency was created to
| address.
| nwsm wrote:
| > The Twitter brand isn't looking so hot right now.
|
| Can you explain? I use Twitter daily (hourly) and haven't
| read anything that lessened my opinion of them. Are you
| talking about censorship / Trump stuff? Personally they have
| not gotten on my bad side with any of that.
|
| > Slack only exists because Microsoft teams is made by
| Microsoft
|
| I'm also not sure what you mean by this. Microsoft Teams
| exists because of Slack.
| splaytreemap wrote:
| Let's see if the DOJ goes after them for predatory pricing
| first. Twitter may have bought themselves enough favor with the
| Biden administration that he'll let it slide.
| walleeee wrote:
| Why is the Revue model preferable to a blog with a tip jar and
| RSS?
|
| I understand why Twitter wants in on a lucrative game, but I
| don't understand the value proposition for writers or readers. I
| struggle to see how, as a regular person on the internet, I
| benefit from a "public square" that will hijack my brainstem to
| maximize engagement, sell my attention and browsing habits to 3rd
| parties, and suspend my account with no warning if I run afoul of
| a black-box censor.
| input_sh wrote:
| Well, for one, it's not a tip jar, but more of a blog +
| exclusive content.
|
| Other than that, not much but an easy setup... if you're from a
| country that supports receiving money from Stripe. If not,
| sucks to be you!
| apozem wrote:
| Tips/micropayments are bad customer experiences. From
| Stratechery (multi-line quote):
|
| -----------
|
| I am instinctually skeptical of micropayments for a whole host
| of reasons:
|
| - First, you have to have attach a payment method; it is hard
| to overcome that level of friction for just a few cents
|
| - Secondly, if said payment method is a credit card, you need
| to deal with the fact the fees on a credit card transaction
| start around $0.29
|
| - Third, there is the psychological burden imposed on customers
| who need to continually choose whether or not to make a
| purchase
|
| To date the only sort of business that has succeeded with
| micropayments are free-to-play games: the App Store supplies
| the payment method (and eats the credit card fees), most games
| obfuscate the money spent (by selling in-game currency), and
| even then the strategy succeeds by hooking a small number of
| "whales" who play the game compulsively; most never pay.
|
| This, in my estimation, would never work for a newspaper or
| magazine: there is too much competition when it comes to
| content, the price of any one piece couldn't be priced high
| enough to overcome fees, and getting people to pay is hard.
| Moreover, while a subscription model caps the amount of revenue
| you earn per customer, it also reduces the likelihood said
| customer will explore alternatives: it is set and forget, while
| a micropayment asks for consideration every single time.
|
| -----------
|
| https://stratechery.com/2016/blendle-launches-in-the-u-s-an-...
| (paywalled)
| rchaud wrote:
| It's preferable because people don't want to have to click
| through multiple screens to do PayPal/Visa Checkout
| authentication to give somebody $3.
|
| Nobody knows what RSS is either. Even back in mid-00s, I would
| sometimes struggle to add a blog to my Firefox feed (this was
| pre-Chrome). On some sites you'd click the RSS button and it
| would work. On other sites clicking it would display
| incomprehensible XML markup, causing me to abandon the site.
| walleeee wrote:
| That's fair, although to me that suggests we need to create
| easier self-hostable blog/newsletter tools, not all migrate
| to Twitter's next big fishtank
| nerfhammer wrote:
| also some would only put a snippet in their RSS feed rather
| than the whole article
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