[HN Gopher] A decent team could reverse engineer [Twitter] versi...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       A decent team could reverse engineer [Twitter] version 1 in a month
        
       Author : aresant
       Score  : 8 points
       Date   : 2022-03-26 18:48 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (twitter.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
        
       | trasz wrote:
       | Twitter's core functionality is trivial. What's not trivial is
       | the business side.
        
       | ohgodplsno wrote:
       | PG with the useless takes again, and Elon complaining that you
       | can't put out shit takes on Twitter. Yep, seems par for the
       | course for these two.
        
       | nurettin wrote:
       | You can build something like Twitter in a month, but you cannot
       | build the nightmare that is the Twitter API. You will be billed
       | like the AWS, perhaps a bit richer. You will be suspended from
       | regular use within limits, you will be given a very short backlog
       | and Twitter will gatekeep any and all remotely useful
       | information.
        
       | draw_down wrote:
        
       | aresant wrote:
       | I initially thought this was PG larping the HN trolling position
       | of "this tech could be easily replicated" (1) but reading the
       | entire thread I'm not sure sure!
       | 
       | (1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
        
         | Dylan16807 wrote:
         | Trolling?? Also why do people keep ignoring the "For a linux
         | user" part?
         | 
         | But to the topic, why would it be non-serious? If you can't
         | make a _basic_ clone of most websites in a month, you 're not a
         | very good web dev team.
        
           | cinntaile wrote:
           | Making a basic clone is not what makes Twitter Twitter.
        
           | saurik wrote:
           | > Also why do people keep ignoring the "For a linux user"
           | part?
           | 
           | Because people like to feel superior and it is more fun for
           | them to be trite while doing it; it is the same reason why
           | people keep referencing the early reviews of the iPod,
           | ignoring that that device _did_ suck and only became popular
           | years later when they made both product improvements and
           | introduced iTunes.
           | 
           | > If you can't make a basic clone of most websites in a
           | month, you're not a very good web dev team.
           | 
           | Also: 100% this. People then like to whine about "but the
           | scale is impossible to pull off" and frankly that isn't even
           | true either (though to do it _cost effectively_ I agree would
           | be difficult, but if you don 't know how to throw together
           | something very similar to Twitter that could even handle
           | billions of users with just a few engineers in a month _in
           | 2022_ using all of the tooling we now have at our disposal
           | then you are clearly an amateur)... the hard part isn 't
           | building the tech now, it is bootstrapping an actual
           | community, which maybe Elon could do? or maybe he couldn't.
           | I'm pessimistic, but I also wouldn't be shocked if he pulled
           | it off.
        
       | agilob wrote:
       | Elon complains on Twitter for not accepting freedom of speech? He
       | fired an employee for posting a video on youtube
       | https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/tesla-empl...
        
         | metadat wrote:
         | It's less about freedom of speech and more that the individual
         | violated their NDA.
        
         | bko wrote:
         | Tesla is not a public forum. I don't know what you expect the
         | response to be for an employee that violates terms of service
         | of their employer and posts public criticism about the company
         | and product. Whats the appropriate response? If you got a job
         | at a bank and posted on social media about how the bank is
         | evil, do you think you'd keep your job? Have some common sense.
         | 
         | I think that's different than complaining about censorship
         | (often at the behest of politicians) on ubiquitous public
         | forums. And the rules are not clear and you may not even get an
         | explanation. And all major platforms and even infrastructure
         | providers like AWS more or less act in unison. I think it's a
         | valid complaint.
        
       | bko wrote:
       | I think the problem with twitter clones is that they're free
       | speech absolutist, which in principal is good, but it obviously
       | attracts the worst and others get turned off. I checked out
       | alternatives and regularly within the first page you can see
       | truly cringy stuff (name your -ism). How about an alternative
       | that just has a sensible policy about what can and can't be
       | posted? Or a "bring your own filter" feature where you can pick
       | your filter and discover algo, and people can create open-source
       | or private versions you can pick from. Want the wild west?
       | There's a filter for that. Want something like twitter but
       | without inflammatory politics? How about twitter with slightly
       | looser censorship? All could be crowdsourced filters
       | 
       | But it has to be easy. No separate domains or configurations. One
       | shared global state but you can swap out rules.
        
       | conradludgate wrote:
       | (in response to the original tweet) People are governed by social
       | rules in the "Town Square". If you say something people don't
       | like, you will face consequences (whether that be legal, social
       | or physical).
       | 
       | The same is always true on twitter. It's just that you can reach
       | millions of people rather than hundreds. I don't know if our
       | social or legal systems have caught up with this international
       | instant explosion yet.
       | 
       | Until that happens, I'm all for moderation (even if it can ban
       | the wrong parties sometimes). I see it as an overall net
       | positive.
        
         | conradludgate wrote:
         | People joke about 'safe spaces', but it's necessary. People
         | live their lives online now. And we increasingly don't have
         | control over what we see and read. The spaces absolutely need
         | to be accommodating to the most people as a consequence of that
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2022-03-26 23:01 UTC)