[HN Gopher] Twitter 2.0: Our continued commitment to the public ...
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Twitter 2.0: Our continued commitment to the public conversation
Author : a9ex
Score : 173 points
Date : 2022-11-30 18:59 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.twitter.com)
| Apocryphon wrote:
| For some reason I think of this cheesy watered-down focus-group
| tested Pepsi portrayal of social consciousness when I see the
| word "conversation" in corporate PR.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9x15lR9VIg
| UweSchmidt wrote:
| I think he'll make it.
|
| Not only does it look like Twitter will survive (if the mass-
| migration to another platform hasn't happened yet, when will it?
| If the site runs stable after the initial shock, why would it run
| less stable later?), it just might make Musk more powerful than
| we could ever imagine. Contrasting with other social media
| founders/owners he isn't shy to use the platform as a very
| personal thing, to actively shape the discussion and to pick and
| fight fights. The potential power he could potentially wield
| makes the purchase, as well as possibly running Twitter as a
| loss, worth it.
| chronic94038 wrote:
| > I think he'll make it.
|
| On what basis?
|
| Elon needs cash flow to pay the loans he took to buy Twitter.
|
| Banks don't give a shit about politics, or mission, or
| popularity. Banks care about cash flow.
|
| Fact: advertisers (read: cash flow) are leaving Twitter. How
| will Elon pay off his loans?
| UweSchmidt wrote:
| It seems that he has about $200 Billion left, so I wouldn't
| worry too much about loans.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/?sh=1b1e26227999
| malshe wrote:
| Probably complete OT but is this correct grammatically?
|
| "First, none of our policies have changed."
|
| I think it should read "none of our policies has changed"
| instead. But I might be wrong as I get confused about this often.
| bombcar wrote:
| The policies? None have changed. There are zero changed
| policies. If there was one policy changed, that would be the
| one that has changed. But there are none that have changed. And
| of those that haven't changed, any two haven't changed.
|
| Those all sound correct to me. Zero is plural.
| [deleted]
| hn2017 wrote:
| Twitter 2.0 is not going well with advertisers and he knows it.
| This is a desperate plea. Will only get worse as more
| controversies arise
|
| https://theintercept.com/2022/11/29/elon-musk-twitter-andy-n...
| Imnimo wrote:
| >First, none of our policies have changed. Our approach to policy
| enforcement will rely more heavily on de-amplification of
| violative content: freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.
|
| Sounds like a change in policy to me.
| andreyk wrote:
| TLDR: this post is entirely to calm advertisers, it can be boiled
| down to "don't worry, we still prioritize brand safety like
| before".
|
| It does have this gem in it:
|
| "What has changed, however, is our approach to experimentation.
| As you've seen over the past several weeks, Twitter is embracing
| public testing. We believe that this open and transparent
| approach to innovation is healthy, as it enables us to move
| faster and gather user feedback in real-time. We believe that a
| service of this importance will benefit from feedback at scale,
| and that there is value in being open about our experiments and
| what we are learning. We do all of this work with one goal in
| mind: to improve Twitter for our customers, partners, and the
| people who use it across the world."
|
| What a weird thing to say... A/B tests are a thing, does anyone
| buy that experimenting with new things by rolling out new
| features to all users at once is a good strategy?
| s2radhak wrote:
| that blurb you quoted is just twitter rationalizing for Elon's
| red-bull fueled tweets to "improve twitter"
| superfrank wrote:
| Lol, red bull...
|
| Elon's late night tweets always make me think of that scene
| in The Office where the new CEO (James Spader) decides to
| close one of the branches without telling anyone and when
| asked about it he goes "I got into a case of Australian
| Reds... and... How should I say this, Colombian whites"
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > What a weird thing to say...
|
| They need to explain musks antics somehow. More polite wording
| than idve used.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| Musk literally said "we're going to dumb things" and keep the
| things that aren't dumb.
|
| This "going to do dumb things" is completely on brand for him
| with his 5 step manufacturing improvement process, step 1 of
| which is "make your requirements less dumb".
|
| This is actually how Nike works, having worked there. They try
| all kinds of weird things aren't aren't afraid to, and then
| drop the ones that don't work with no regrets, keeping what
| works. Try new things, fail fast isn't a bad strategy for
| innovation.
|
| Whether or not it'll work out for twitter remains to be seen.
| Especially with the rest of biased tech still upset that they
| lost their monopoly on the narrative arrayed against him.
| ilyt wrote:
| Right, but cost to that is your company losing some lunch
| money on prototypes.
|
| The costs to "fail fast" (if we're being generous) strategy
| Twitter employed so far far exceed that
| Toxide wrote:
| Hey remember all those terrible things we banned? Lets
| experiment by letting them free again! Weeeeeeeeeeee.
| s2radhak wrote:
| for our next experiment, we should re-introduce lead into
| paint
| fortuna86 wrote:
| looking into this
| ss108 wrote:
| The science on it is unsetttled and ideologically biased
| because I don't like the policies people justify on its
| basis.
| eternalban wrote:
| > What a weird thing to say... A/B tests are a thing, does
| anyone buy that experimenting with new things by rolling out
| new features to all users at once is a good strategy?
|
| What it means: _' Elon looked bad when the blue checkmark
| fiasco happened. And more boo boos are on the way. Now Elon
| doesn't like to look bad. Solution? Everything we do is now
| covered by "it was just a test" disclaimer. Problem solved.'_
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| It sort of makes sense if the experiment is about judging not
| just individual user reactions but the wider reaction of the
| media, advertisers, "the conversation" to a change.
|
| I don't think that makes it a good idea though, seems like each
| failed "experiment" poisons the pool and certainly makes it
| possible to do experiments in isolation.
| memish wrote:
| It's just referencing the fact that the new Twitter is more
| open and transparent. I can't believe how many people are
| spinning this as a bad thing.
|
| We heard almost nothing from Parag and little from Jack when he
| was running it and experiments were opaque from the outside.
|
| Now we're hearing from the CEO and employees like George Hotz
| about what they are doing and planning, and they're involving
| the community, asking for feedback directly.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _previous Twitter wasn 't as transparent as it is now_
|
| Reinstating accounts on the basis of a poll, on a platform
| you have spent months railing for having too many bots, is a
| good example of CYA transparency.
| h3rsko wrote:
| And are all the bots expected to vote one way?
| spamuel wrote:
| Elon specifically mentioned that his polls were actually a
| great way to obviate bots, as reflected by the bot activity
| seen on them. He was going to reinstate the accounts
| anyway.
| ilyt wrote:
| That sounds like excuse after the fact someone called him
| on his bullshit
| [deleted]
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| More like Twitter now lacks staffing of its ML and
| experimentation infra to actually do experiments carefully.
| jzelinskie wrote:
| Twitter was previously doing A/B tests. Spaces, communities,
| downvotes, circles, and even moderation were applied only to a
| subset of accounts while they actively experimented. The new
| policy is an objectively less scientific approach to testing
| functionality than what was occurring before.
| ilyt wrote:
| I feel that we can hardly call that random changes
| "policy"...
| generalizations wrote:
| It's not like A/B tests approach anything like the rigor that
| we expect from actual science, though.
| squaredot wrote:
| It's about marketing, the A/B testing they do, not science.
| sithlord wrote:
| what is not scientific about it? maybe its not good
| science, but it is science. really almost anything is
| science...
|
| Science is just observation and experimentation.
|
| Science doesn't dictate how you do the above. Now,
| someone would find it impossible to reproduce your
| findings, but - that would just suggest bad science
| ska wrote:
| > Science is just observation and experimentation.
|
| That's not enough. If you don't include some sense of
| both 'systematic' and 'rigorous' (and yes, these terms
| are slippery), you aren't doing science.
| nvrspyx wrote:
| But both of those qualifiers exist on continuums and
| where an experiment lies on them is subject to opinion,
| so there's no singular threshold. It means it would
| depend on the person reviewing the experiment whether
| it's "systematic" and "rigorous" enough to (personally)
| be considered science. What you're describing is the
| _quality_ of the science, not whether or not it _is_
| science.
|
| Until you can objectively measure how "systematic" and
| "rigorous" an experiment is, _your_ definition of science
| only applies to _you_.
| ska wrote:
| "Experiment and observation" is something we know humans
| have been doing for literally thousands of years (and
| without written evidence, probably 10s-100s). At least
| for loose versions of "experiment" which ties back to
| rigor.
|
| We haven't been doing science for very long. The primary
| difference is the desire and effort to add rigor and
| systematic thinking. The difference in efficacy is hard
| to understate.
| nvrspyx wrote:
| > We haven't been doing science for very long.
|
| Again, this comes back to _your_ definition. Many would
| disagree in that science has existed for, at least, as
| long as recorded human history because an actual tenable
| definition of science is something along the lines of
| "the endeavor to build knowledge by experimenting and
| observing the results". The _rigor_ of the experiment is
| part of the _quality_ of the science, not whether it 's
| science itself.
|
| No one is arguing that rigor isn't important to _good_
| science. It _is_ important because rigor lends to
| reliable and valid results. What we ultimately want is
| results that are _reproducible_ and can be used to
| _predict_. If you observe bad results, it 's because you
| did a bad experiment, thus bad science, not that you
| didn't do science at all.
|
| As an analogy: if I took notes during a meeting that no
| one can understand or use, that doesn't mean I didn't
| take notes. It just means that I took bad notes.
| ska wrote:
| > Many would disagree in that science has existed for, at
| least, as long as recorded human history
|
| Not sensibly. Or at least, whatever the semantics, we
| started doing something quantifiable different recently,
| which has had a massive impact on our world. It is quite
| sensible to ask "what changed?" and try to understand it.
| If you want to give it a different name from "science",
| ok, but that's mostly likely to confuse people. If you
| want to claim such a shift didn't happen, you've got a
| hard row to hoe.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Incorrect conclusions are frequently drawn from A/B
| tests. To some, this makes it unscientific, to others, it
| just means it's bad science. I think the argument is more
| semantic than objective.
|
| For example, if your metric is "time spent interacting on
| the platform", then a testing of a rollout of a feature
| ends up with longer page load times, so users spend more
| time there because they're waiting for pages to load
| would increase that metric, and management decides it's a
| good idea.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Most scientists likely wish they could get the rigor of a
| company like Twitter's a/b testing suite.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Why wouldn't Twitter (or similarly large companies) have
| open-sourced their a/b testing suite? It's not like the
| math there is proprietary.
|
| I mean, I'm sure the parameters to the math are
| proprietary. But the basic math seems simple enough.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| If you're not using an off the shelf one, chances are
| it's tightly integrated to your application framework.
|
| Trying to tease out the pieces that aren't coupled to
| Twitter's User class is probably more effort than it's
| worth
| cornel_io wrote:
| And this is sadly true about almost every good A/B
| testing system out there. They always involve tooling
| that has to exactly fit your stack, and it's really tough
| to make a general purpose product that would offer
| anywhere near the same value.
|
| To some extent, you grow your company and codebase around
| your A/B testing system, not the other way around,
| because it has to slot into so many places: deployment,
| testing, front-end, back-end, analytics, monitoring, etc.
| Almost no two companies share the same stacks across all
| of those dimensions, and an A/B testing system that
| _doesn 't_ hook in tightly to every one of those systems
| is not complete. This is why I always get a bit scared
| when people think they can just use one of those "drop-
| in" services and be done with it: yeah, great, you can
| now fiddle your JavaScript from some third-party website,
| but you're going to have a big project ahead of you
| passing group assignments out to all of the different
| systems that will need to know about them, and almost
| guaranteed some part of your stack will not have a
| library available from the service you picked so you're
| going to be writing your own REST wrapper, and dammit
| they don't document that API very well and it seems to be
| responding differently since the last update, and man
| it'd be a lot easier if I could just pipe results
| straight from my own service into Big query rather than
| running a daily user export, and damn, their dashboard
| doesn't let me set exclusion criteria on my own metrics,
| I have to send activation events now, and etc, etc. By
| the end you've basically built your own A/B test system
| from scratch, you've just paid someone else to do the
| "int myGroup = Random.next()" call, which is the easiest
| part to build.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| That makes sense. Thanks.
|
| I guess the comment I read implied Twitter had an amazing
| A/B test suite, as opposed to a tightly specialized A/B
| test suite.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| It wasn't "scientific" to begin with but what's happening
| right now is pretty clearly panicked throwing stuff at the
| wall based on Elon's intuition and day to day demands...
| while that may have worked for him in the past, I don't
| think it's going to work as well in this domain where
| you're working with a complex system dependent on millions
| of people's behaviors and incentives.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > while that may have worked for him in the past
|
| Did it? The nature of Tesla and his other current
| businesses buffer that a bit even if it has been his
| approach, and it seems to have gotten him thrown out as
| CEO at X.com _twice_ ; among the things going on Twitter
| seems to be Musk trying to relitigate his failure at
| X.com without other investors being in a position to kick
| him out, but he seems to be piling up existential threats
| without resolving them.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| It does kind of seem like he's addicted to dancing on the
| edge of cliffs
| thewataccount wrote:
| > actual science
|
| I'm not sure what you mean by this. Many quality studies
| are A/B tests. A/B just refers to the two IV states you're
| testing, which you're then observing a DV - sales,
| engagement, errors, etc.
|
| A/B tests can be double blinded (don't tell the error
| monitoring people which results are from a trial), and have
| high number of samples, far beyond even most pharmaceutical
| trials.
|
| They can also be really crappy, changing too many variables
| at once, etc. But they are certainly "real science".
|
| EDIT: an example, Drug vs placebo - is an A/B test.
| compiskey wrote:
| Advertisers and marketers use the equations but measure
| contemporary trends.
|
| Science is more "what's true if humans didn't exist."
|
| Marketing is more "what widget generates more revenue?"
| typest wrote:
| This isn't true. Science is ultimately the scientific
| method -- make a hypothesis, test a change, observe the
| results, repeat. It's an algorithm for learning and
| broadly gaining information about reality. It can equally
| be applied to things having to do with humans and things
| not having to do with humans.
| compiskey wrote:
| Agreed. My point is I am not going to see a marketer as
| aiming for the same goal "as an experimental physicist."
|
| To borrow the Lindy effect; whether someone likes the
| jacket in color A or B is of such short lived value it's
| a huge waste of the resources that went into the pipeline
| needed to come to the conclusion.
|
| Here's an A/B test; rethink logistics to increase
| customization of outputs or continue to create design
| jobs who define what's trendy and acceptable?
| thewataccount wrote:
| I think we're are getting caught up on what's being
| tested.
|
| In the context of what we're talking about, you can A/B
| test more than marketing, you're can test variables like
| UI/UX.
|
| Yes clothes fall in and out of fashion, but changing the
| placement, color, size of the "add to cart" button isn't
| something that's going to be changing frequently.
|
| Another example might be adding a "trending" tab the top
| navigation of a page or whether the "what's trending" vs
| "what you like" provide more engagement as the default
| page.
|
| Youtube recently tested randomly lowering people's video
| resolution to see who changed it back to gauge the
| importance of the resolution to their customers.
| compiskey wrote:
| I agree with your analysis of how I see things.
|
| I disagree that I am "caught up" on anything.
|
| I have a preference that's been refined over time. Not a
| psychological error in perception.
| sdrinf wrote:
| Not gp, but there's a significant kink when this applies
| to humans; namely, that humans have the ability to
| reflect on publicly known outcomes, and change their
| behavior en-masse in light of information so gained.
|
| I put this earler in the phrase "reflection
| completeness": https://sdrinf.com/reflection-completeness
| ie there are things which stops working when people know
| about it.
|
| In particular with A/B testing, this means that the
| initial A/B test is intermingled from at least 3 effects:
| specifically it measures how the naive population's
| behavior changes as a function of new functionality being
| made available. This is heavily, heavily time-dependent;
| specifically there's a "novelty effect" (early data
| collection will not be representative to long-term usage
| patterns); and there's "reflection effect" (once the
| outcome of the test is widely known, people can change
| their behavior based on that). Controlling for the first
| is difficult, but possible; controlling for the second,
| beyond just "keeping everything secret", is significantly
| more so, as the timelines for that might be years in
| length.
|
| I strongly suspect GP was pointing at this timeline
| factor, and specifically that market engineering, as
| currently, generally, widely practiced, is grounded on
| the immediately available signal of "does it increases
| sales in 2 weeks of A/B test running". Which, given
| novelty effects, is heavily biased towards "yes"; and
| these people aren't incentivized (nor have the
| time/energy) to measure _very_ long-term effects beyond
| novelty, and reflection period.
| eachro wrote:
| Most companies (or at least the ones doing things
| properly) will also have a long running retro test to see
| if impact persists (new test group = don't use the new
| changes).
| thewataccount wrote:
| I agree that it can be a difficult thing to analyze.
| There's also the Hawthorne Effect at play here too. But
| those are just confounding variables, they do not negate
| the fact that A/B tests are still "real science".
|
| An A/B test just refers to observing how a dependent
| variable changes when an independent variable is in two
| different states, State A and State B.
|
| Drug vs placebo - is an A/B test.
| ilyt wrote:
| I feel like it's especially bad for any UI changes that
| have relation to long-term productivity; measuring how
| given change affect existing users and whether the
| performance will go back to previous level or get below
| it after few weeks or month.
| zackees wrote:
| Technically it's not science because it doesn't follow
| the scientific method. Instead it's the close cousin,
| empiricism.
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empirical
| thewataccount wrote:
| A/B testing is literally just the scientific method, A/B
| are the two states of the IV. A drug vs placebo
| experiment, is an A/B test.
|
| For example with changing the font size of a button:
|
| Your null hypothesis is there is no difference in the
| number of clicks. Your alternative hypothesis is that
| there is an increase in number of clicks.
|
| Your IV is the button font size. Your DV is the number of
| button clicks over a set period of time.
|
| You randomly sample 50% of the population to State A
| (same button size) You put the other group into State B
| (increased button size)
|
| You observe the number of clicks of the button.
|
| You analyze this data, and can determine the statistical
| significance between your null and alternative
| hypothesis.
| fullshark wrote:
| You are likely putting "actual science" on a pedestal here
| Waterluvian wrote:
| If "actual science" is a real thing, then absolutely
| nothing humanity has ever done in the name of scientific
| endeavour is "actual science," given every experiment
| exists on a continuum of trade-offs.
|
| A case could be made that A/B testing is insufficiently
| rigorous given specific goals, resources, limitations,
| context, etc. But that case isn't being made here.
| williamstein wrote:
| Some pure mathematics is actually rigorous.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Hah! You're fast. I was about to comment on that: "actual
| math" probably exists. "actual science" probably doesn't.
| I'm not sure any experiment can ever be free from error,
| uncertainty, trade-offs. (And now I'm super curious about
| this...)
|
| Thanks though. I've narrowed my original comment to more
| accurately represent the scope I am referring to.
| philippejara wrote:
| to be fair whether mathematics is a science or not is
| debated[0], so your initial claim might very well stand
| true depending on which side one takes in the argument.
|
| [0]:https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/10178/
| is-math...
| Waterluvian wrote:
| That's fair. Though that gets into semantics which I
| don't find interesting or fun. In this context, I think
| it's fair to say we're talking about "things that can be
| experimented on to learn more things."
| cornel_io wrote:
| If they're done right, they are exactly as rigorous as we'd
| expect from science, since they are literally the same as
| randomized control trials. You can do even better with A/B
| testing because you have much tighter control over
| inclusion criteria, treatment compliance, and outcome
| analysis.
| arrrg wrote:
| That's not at all an argument for dropping AB testing, it's
| an argument for being more rigorous, especially since in
| principle the circumstances under which services with a
| large active user base can test are downright luxurious.
|
| Sociologists will frequently not have as good access to
| such a large participant pool under near ideal experimental
| conditions with such good ways to observe behavior. And the
| stuff you have to keep in mind when running experiments is
| not terribly complex. A bit of statistics, a few things you
| absolutely have to get right, that's it.
|
| Obviously there are reasons why AB tests are often not run
| rigorously (statistical illiteracy and pressure to get
| things done quick as well as to produce tangible results as
| often as possible - all three of which might lead you to
| run underpowered experiments with too few participants and
| to stop testing early which will lead to too many false
| positives). However, stopping to do experiments (and
| instead just releasing new stuff and observing the
| reaction) isn't really an improvement that leads to better
| outcomes compared to that.
| root_axis wrote:
| Based on what reasoning? Data quality with respect to
| computer systems approaches perfection, it is far more
| reliable than any data you can hope to approximate in the
| real world. There is also plenty of "actual science" with
| terrible data quality, hence the replication crises
| spanning large sections of the scientific landscape.
| sayrer wrote:
| A/B tests are pretty problematic for social networks, since
| anything effective can also influence the control group. They
| are excellent for single-player activities like shopping
| carts and signup flows.
|
| "Network Experimentation at Scale" from Facebook describes
| how difficult this problem is. Most A/B test frameworks don't
| reach this level of sophistication. It does make some sense
| to just ship things if you don't have time to build out
| something like that. (disclosure: I worked at Twitter long
| ago)
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| They're also problematic because you'll likely optimize for
| whatever metric you pick with no regard to the ethics of
| the optimization. Sometimes a double blind test is not the
| right thing to do.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _this post is entirely to calm advertisers_
|
| Regulators, too [1].
|
| [1]
| https://www.ft.com/content/a07ca1ae-9f9a-46ee-9457-27bb30e18...
| nicce wrote:
| It might be just an escape plan when Musk uses platform for his
| own needs. Banning users he does not like or allowing certain
| speech when filtering others and so on....
| cpr wrote:
| Where does it say or even imply "rolling out new features to
| all users at once"?
| tootie wrote:
| I'm guessing that some product people finally managed to
| explain what an AB test is to Elon and why they use them to
| validate product ideas before rushing implementations out the
| door based on gut instinct. Aside from trying to assuage
| advertisers about his capricious product decisions he's also
| trying to act like he is now an expert on digital product
| development.
| zzzeek wrote:
| the marketing team writes a Grown Up , Adult blog post to try
| to look normal, then commander Elon will come out tomorrow high
| fiving more nazis [1] and banning more non-nazi accounts for
| supposedly belonging to "antifa" and saying things he doesn't
| personally like [2].
|
| This is the same "trapped enabler" pattern we saw with Trump in
| the early days, with his staff constantly coming out to try to
| paper over whatever horrible thing he did. They had no shame,
| and neither does the Twitter staff that wrote this blog post.
|
| [1] https://archive.ph/xYeYY - TPM article without paywall
|
| [2] https://theintercept.com/2022/11/29/elon-musk-twitter-
| andy-n...
| everdrive wrote:
| I largely agree with your point, but I have to say as a user I
| generally don't enjoy A/B testing at all. It's invisible to me,
| and some part of the app or website I'm using is now either
| broken or annoying in some way, but still works normally for
| the people I mention it to, since they're not in my group.
| Additionally, the changes are sometimes totally transient, so
| things are disrupted for me briefly, only to be distrusted
| again.
| bombcar wrote:
| A/B testing when it's like the color of something (did you
| know you can change the hacker news banner color?) doesn't
| bother me much, but when it's more invasive and I can't turn
| it off or switch teams, it starts to get annoying.
|
| _Especially_ when you 're trying to help someone and they
| are seeing something different from what you see.
| davesque wrote:
| I think this new idea of "public testing" is really just a post
| hoc recasting of Elon's failed Twitter Blue rollout. Calling it
| by those words is...creative? But the failure was less an
| experiment as it was a lesson in humility.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I think this new idea of "public testing" is really just a
| post hoc recasting of Elon's failed Twitter Blue rollout.
| Calling it by those words is...creative?
|
| Its just a diplomatic rephrasing of Elon's "do lots of dumb
| things" tweet:
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1590384919829962752?t=cc.
| ..
|
| But advertisers who have pulled out because of distrust and
| lack of stability aren't likely to be reassured by
| rationalizations for the policy instability, they'll just be
| confirmed in their decisions to wait to see how things shake
| out.
|
| And regulators concerned about noncompliance with binding
| rules aren't going to care about a PR rationalization at all,
| except insofar as it provides evidence that the failures were
| intentional rather than inadvertent.
| unsui wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| It's just a CYA statement, basically saying "oops, I meant to
| do that...", and leaving the door open to make more oopsies
| as intentional "experiments".
| aaroninsf wrote:
| It's only weird, if you attempt to parse it with a straight
| face.
|
| This is some B-grade best-effort spin on what has been
| uncontrolled chaos with predictably awful effects.
|
| The only thing keeping Twitter rolling is the majority
| percentage of the casual niche user in non-political and non-
| technical niches, who haven't been paying attention to the
| chaos; and who by virtue of being casual users are not notably
| surprised at everything that has broken both culturally, wrt
| safety and content, and technically.
|
| Unfortunately for Leon the money comes from corners who HAVE
| been paying attention and not only see what's happened, and
| ongoing--they see through this kind of comedic college-try at
| handwaving around it.
| sf_rob wrote:
| unstaged rollouts of features the CEO thinks are cool public
| testing/experiments
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Twitter has never been more fun, useful, and engaging for me.
|
| I signed up for an account after years of refusing to do so
| after elon took over
| bvasilis wrote:
| Then, if I may ask, how do you have an idea of what it was
| before?
| phpisthebest wrote:
| I was a lurker before, I read twitter all the time with
| out an account. It as a pain because they kept trying to
| force you to create an account so I kept having to find
| ways around their account signup walls which was fun...
| escaper wrote:
| What specific communities have gotten more fun for you
| since Elon took over and what is making them more fun?
| Genuinely curious.
| janoc wrote:
| How is that different from Tesla essentially using Tesla car
| owners as unpaid betatesters for their autonomous driving (and
| other) software while disclaiming all responsibility when
| anything happens?
|
| This "learn by doing" is going to end up well ... not.
| Especially when trying to learn by repeating mistakes with
| completely foreseable consequences, like that blue "verified"
| badge being available for anyone who pays without any
| verification.
| w0m wrote:
| > using Tesla car owners as unpaid betatesters
|
| Almost right.
|
| Charging Tesla owners to beta test their autonomous driving
| software.
| dexterdog wrote:
| Almost fully right. Charging and risking Tesla subscribers
| to beta test their autonomous driving software.
| lancesells wrote:
| So close. Charging and risking Tesla subscribers along
| with everyone else on the road to beta test their
| autonomous driving software.
| LanceJones wrote:
| I'm one of those people. Running FSD Beta in my Model S
| Plaid in BC. And your negative connotation doesn't apply
| to me or many/most of the other beta testers with whom
| I'm regularly communicating.
| yreg wrote:
| It's curious how many people are unhappy that someone
| choses to pay for an early-access product that's in beta.
| choppaface wrote:
| The thing is Twitter already A/B tested a LOT and Twitter's new
| owner is naive to those prior findings as well as the long-term
| effects of them. Any advertiser is going to want to know about
| attrition rates, and those were previously best reported
| through now-fired employees as well as earnings releases. This
| is Twitter's new owner learning the hard way that there are
| dumb advertisers out there who do want quick lift but longer
| term he'll retain only spam. No way Twitter ever gets better
| than Doubleclick now.
| 14u2c wrote:
| Maybe they are referring to Elon's recent unhinged polls as
| testing.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Hey: vox populi, vox dei!
|
| It's Latin so it must be smart.
|
| Apparently Twitter had some huge problem with bots when Musk
| was trying to get out of the purchase. Thankfully he solved
| the bot problem after the purchase so he could run polls and
| really get the will of the people and not, you know, all
| those previously problematic bots.
| bryananderson wrote:
| Except when a poll gets a lot of votes that he doesn't
| like, in which case he says "looks like the bots are out in
| force today!"
| edavis wrote:
| > It's Latin so it must be smart.
|
| It's perfect, in a way, that the full quote is "Nec
| audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum
| tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit." which
| translates to "And those people should not be listened to
| who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of
| God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very
| close to madness."
|
| Refs:
| https://twitter.com/cagrimmett/status/1595967787339743232
| lesuorac wrote:
| > TLDR: this post is entirely to calm advertisers,
|
| How though, Twitter has had week(s) to prepare this post and
| its so bare.
|
| > First, none of our policies have changed. ... The team
| remains strong and well-resourced.
|
| If you're Eli Lily, why would you re-advertise on twitter.
| Nothings changed from when you stopped!
| fortuna86 wrote:
| > If you're Eli Lily, why would you re-advertise on twitter.
| Nothings changed from when you stopped!
|
| Not only would I not buy ads, i'd rethinking even having a
| corporate presence considering the lack of protections
| against fraud.
| insin wrote:
| Looking forward to a verified @RealEliLilleyCEO account
| appearing 5 minutes after Twitter Blue 2.0 3.0 comes out,
| which only allows you to trivially impersonate people,
| after which Musk will completely independently invent
| Verification 2.0 3.0 which will either just be the old
| system again or a separate Twitter Blue badge. Visionary
| genius at work.
| andreyk wrote:
| Oh I agree, this post won't change anything at this point.
| But I guess that's why it was released (and as others noted,
| also for regulators / to save face after weeks of chaos).
| [deleted]
| awestley wrote:
| I read the experimentation bit as Twitter (Elon) trying to push
| the boundaries of what Twitter can get away with from a PR
| perspective.
| Aaronstotle wrote:
| Hard to take this seriously when the CEO keeps peddling right-
| wing conspiracy theories and calling out advertisers who have
| reduced their spend due to concerns about the platform.
| serverholic wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what conspiracies is he peddling?
| nickthegreek wrote:
| that paul pelosi is a gay man who got beat up by a prostitute
| he picked up while drinking.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/30/business/musk-tweet-pelosi-
| co...
| rnk wrote:
| Who is musk hanging out with or reading that encourages his
| crazy views; he didn't use to be that way, I almost feel
| sorry that one of the world's riches people is so full of
| self-justifying bs. For most humans, the idea that you'd
| laugh at an attack on an 80 year person with a hammer in
| their home is horrible, out of bounds. There's no reason to
| believe this story is true of course, but on top of not
| laughing at horrible attacks, who cares if some older
| person is having sex with a younger person.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Nearly all of his public replies are to some of the worst
| right-wing grifters on Twitter, so ironically maybe he
| spent too much time on the platform he just bought.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| The issue might be he isn't hanging out with enough real
| people and instead just drinking the koolaid of those
| @'ing him. Lil bit of the ol' chronically online
| sickness.
| danans wrote:
| > Who is musk hanging out with or reading that encourages
| his crazy views
|
| I don't get where this line of thought comes from. Why
| must it be someone else who is encouraging him? He's a
| middle aged man who is the wealthiest person in the world
| by some metrics. He should own his words and actions and
| can't blame others.
|
| When people show you who they are, believe them. Which
| means he probably is the kind of person who would, as you
| say: "laugh at an attack on an 80 year person with a
| hammer in their home."
|
| Making electric cars and space rockets doesn't make him
| any less likely to be exactly that kind of person.
| [deleted]
| BoxFour wrote:
| Off the top of my head: He was peddling the conspiracy that
| Paul Pelosi was attacked by a spurned lover.
|
| He had to quickly walk that one back by deleting the reply
| and pretending it never happened.
| alexandre_m wrote:
| No, he said "more than meets the eye" because of
| contradicting news reports in the medias early on when the
| story broke, with many unknowns and incoherencies remaining
| today.
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/miguel-almaguer-
| remains...
| AustinDev wrote:
| Body cam footage even censored would do a lot to sort out
| the unknowns and incoherencies. Sadly, we'll never see
| that out of SFPD
| p0pcult wrote:
| As would not taking cues from right wing fever dream
| peddlers.
| AustinDev wrote:
| Of course, but the whole situation is implausible on its
| face. It doesn't have to be a right-wing conspiracy.
| BoxFour wrote:
| Lol no, the "news report" Musk linked explicitly accused
| Paul Pelosi's attacker of being a spurned lover. Even the
| report you linked was apparently retracted because of
| some weird minor details about how the encounter with
| police went down, not the overall premise which is that
| the Pelosi house was broken into by a stranger looking
| for Nancy.
|
| Attempts to paint it otherwise are either just covering
| for Musk for some reason (which I don't know why you
| would feel the need to do that) or trying to rewrite the
| narrative on what the right-wing conspiracy theory here
| is that Musk peddled in the first place.
| felipesoc wrote:
| > First, none of our policies have changed. Our approach to
| policy enforcement will rely more heavily on de-amplification of
| violative content: freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.
|
| They recently unbanned many controversial accounts based solely
| on Twitter polls. Who do they expect will believe these
| statements?
| threeseed wrote:
| Musk also asked people to report suspected Antifa accounts to
| Andy Ngo a right-wing conservative journalist.
|
| All of whom have now been suspended despite there being no
| infringement on terms of service.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > Musk also asked people to report suspected Antifa accounts
| to Andy Ngo a right-wing conservative journalist.
|
| Is there a source on that? Because if so, holy crap... but
| I'd like to see some evidence.
| threeseed wrote:
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1596071799410003969
|
| And note how Musk through simply engaging with these people
| gives endorsement to this ridiculous and baseless link
| between pedophiles and left-wing accounts.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| Looks to be the same source as was used in a sibling
| comment further up
| https://theintercept.com/2022/11/29/elon-musk-twitter-
| andy-n...
| josteink wrote:
| > Antifa accounts. ... All of whom have now been suspended
| despite there being no infringement on terms of service.
|
| Are we talking about the same Antifa? Political terrorists,
| violently attacking civilians for having opposing beliefs?
|
| If inciting real-world political violence and terror is not
| against the TOS, why were supposedly all those right wingers
| banned?
| KerrAvon wrote:
| citation needed, buddy. if you can get it from somewhere
| outside your made up right wing filter bubble.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| He can't provide it. He's failing in all regards with
| this "argument" and he knows it doesn't hold water.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| And banned accounts when fringe far right "journalists"
| complained about them.
|
| https://theintercept.com/2022/11/29/elon-musk-twitter-andy-n...
| josteink wrote:
| So banning right wing users for having right wing opinions
| are OK...
|
| But banning antifa-accounts, that is accounts held by people
| taking part in month long riots and looting and political
| real-world violence... that is bad?
|
| Is this satire? Is this an honestly held opinion? Or am I
| missing something?
| jasonlotito wrote:
| > So banning right wing users for having right wing
| opinions are OK...
|
| What views?
|
| I saw some of the tweets people got banned for. Are you
| okay with me associating those views with right wing views?
|
| > that is accounts held by people taking part in month long
| riots and looting and political real-world violence
|
| So, you are saying that your alleged criminal activities
| off Twitter should feature into whether you are banned?
| (Note, you never claimed they violated ANY of Twitters
| rules in your comment)
|
| Is this satire? Is this an honestly held opinion? Or am I
| missing something?
| [deleted]
| kmeisthax wrote:
| You're missing a lot of things.
|
| The right-wingers that got banned presumably broke one of
| Twitter's rules - maybe they said "I wish someone would
| shoot (insert politician they don't like here)". Even if
| you take "pre-Musk Twitter had a left wing bias" as
| granted, that doesn't mean the right-wingers were
| wrongfully banned.
|
| >But banning antifa-accounts, that is accounts held by
| people taking part in month long riots and looting and
| political real-world violence... that is bad?
|
| The only way to boil this down to a politically neutral
| rule is if we banned every right-winger who was at the
| Capitol on January 6, 2021 alongside everyone who went to a
| BLM rally that turned violent in 2020. And as far as I can
| tell neither behavior alone was a violation of Twitter
| rules as they stood at the time. The rule was no inciting
| violence on-platform, not no being involved in violence
| whatsoever.
|
| As far as I can tell, pre-Musk Twitter had two biases:
|
| - Their moderation team was understaffed and overworked
| because Twitter was too big of a target to effectively
| moderate. Twitter moderation would overprosecute easy-to-
| detect cases (i.e. LMG staff getting banned for months
| because of them sarcastically saying "I'll kill you") and
| underprosecute difficult ones (i.e. everyone harassing
| Twitter's villain-of-the-day).
|
| - As a direct consequence of this, right-wingers were more
| likely to be banned. This is because their rhetoric is
| inherently more violent[0] in ways that were easier to
| detect.
|
| Musk has basically decided to cut the moderation team in
| half and unban all the right-wingers in the name of
| "balance". All this does is say "we are now letting right-
| wingers break all the rules, but left-wingers must be on
| their best behavior, if we let them stay on the platform at
| all".
|
| [0] Specifically, left-wingers were saying to smash
| windows, right-wingers were saying to smash people.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| > Sp banning right wing users for having right wing
| opinions are OK...
|
| Maybe! Being part of a group that also holds certain
| opinions isn't really relevant to whether expressing those
| opinions violates a policy. But which opinions did you have
| in mind?
|
| Here have an extremely relevant tweet.
|
| https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/10503916635526717
| 4...
| fundad wrote:
| "LOL no...no not those views"
|
| pure gold
| shakezula wrote:
| This is a false premise. Without understanding why each
| account was banned and what infraction was cited we can't
| make a clear comparison or judgment about either case.
| Otherwise it's just more outrage-porn.
| threeseed wrote:
| You are missing the fact that no-one was getting banned
| merely for having an option or for their actions outside of
| the Twitter platform. They were banned for continuously
| violating the terms of service e.g. inciting violence,
| racist or xenophobic content, doxxing etc.
|
| And what happened here is that those left-wing accounts
| were banned without any such violation i.e. it was purely
| arbitrary and the very thing you claim you don't want.
| willcipriano wrote:
| What's odd to me is if this question came up a few months
| ago we would see lots of "it's a private platform" and
| "freedom of association" comments that aren't as
| prevalent all the sudden.
|
| Those left wing people that were banned, very likey
| supported the system that just got them banned.
| esotericimpl wrote:
| I don't think people care if left wing or right wing
| people are banned. People want consistency, safety and
| the rules applied equally.
|
| Right wing people seemed to act like shitheads more often
| so they are banned more often.
|
| I'd continue arguing however, conservative law,
| jurisprudence and overall culture seems to always boil
| down to that there are in groups who the law protects BUT
| does not bind, and out groups who the law binds but does
| not protect.
|
| You can pretty much view all of twitter's new moderation
| capability through that lens and then it starts to make
| perfect sense.
| [deleted]
| jasonlotito wrote:
| No one in this thread is arguing that people who violate
| the rules shouldn't be banned. We are discussing the
| hypocrisy of what Elon is saying vs what he is clearly
| doing.
|
| He is free to do this all he wants. We are free to laugh
| and mock as he flails around, lying and making stuff up.
|
| You just wanted to quickly jump in and make this comment
| because you "got 'em" but really you just missed the
| mark.
| stonogo wrote:
| Where are the month-long antifa riots?
| QuantumGood wrote:
| On November 23, Twitter stopped enforcing its "COVID-19
| misleading information" policy.
|
| The previous policy received acclaim from medical
| professionals: In an advisory to technology platforms, US
| Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy cited Twitter's rules as an
| example of what companies should do to combat misinformation.
| When journalist Kara Swisher in September 2020 confronted Musk
| with the possibility that many people could die if they didn't
| follow public health recommendations, the man who believes he
| is making cars safer and saving mankind by going to Mars
| replied bluntly: "Everybody dies."
|
| The argument could be made that Elon cares more about virtual,
| future people than actual people living today.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Well know we know why they kept the covid policy and just
| aren't enforcing it [1]. They knew they were writing this
| blog post!
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33789456
| kmeisthax wrote:
| >The argument could be made that Elon cares more about
| virtual, future people than actual people living today.
|
| This is what Longtermists actually believe.
| haliskerbas wrote:
| Elon cares more about money than actual people living today
| [deleted]
| williamsmj wrote:
| > First, none of our policies have changed. Our approach to
| policy enforcement will rely more heavily on de-amplification
| of violative content: freedom of speech, but not freedom of
| reach.
|
| This is bullshit on its face. The first sentence and the second
| sentence directly contradict each other.
| [deleted]
| VikingCoder wrote:
| > Our Trust & Safety team... remains strong and well-resourced...
|
| > ...impressions on violative content are down over the past
| month...
|
| I think both of those claims are demonstrably false.
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| Can you demonstrate them as such? And can you validate your
| demonstration by eliminating the content produced by bots and
| sock puppets?
| snapcaster wrote:
| I see comments like this frequently on hackernews and i'm
| curious on your motivation. Do you actually use twitter so
| this comment isn't lining up with your expectations? Do you
| not use twitter and expect this person to justify their
| experience by doing further research? What is _actually_
| motivating you to comment like this?
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| In order presented: Yes. No. You mean, it is not obvious? I
| am motivated by curiosity.
|
| A claim was made that is not supported. It isn't
| unreasonable to request such a claim to be validated by
| demonstration.
|
| Personally, I have not seen an increase in "hate" or
| violence or bigotry or any other -ism or -ist. I've seen
| people disagree in a much more whole-hearted way, while at
| the same time, seeing prompts for reducing the strength of
| language. For example, you get a pop up if you write "I
| think you are stupid" but not "I think you are silly."
|
| Quid pro quo: what is _actually_ motivating _you_ to
| comment like this?
| [deleted]
| snapcaster wrote:
| I guess it feels like this is just banter amongst bored
| people at work and demand for works cited comes off as
| sealioning or just maybe misreading the room
| luckylion wrote:
| I find that anything related to Twitter/Musk produces
| some of the lowest quality comments on HN, and the top
| comment in this thread is one of them. It's a reddit
| style "amirite?" comment that does not engage with the
| topic (Twitter says they've limited reach for "hateful"
| content, so "impressions" could be down, even if the
| total number of hateful tweets sent might be up, so it's
| absolutely not obvious, and it's very questionable how
| some random person would know which tweets had what
| amount of impressions), doesn't care to present any
| reasoning or data, and the user vanishes when asked to
| substantiate.
|
| Musk brings out the worst in some people. Hearing about
| him shuts down their brains and they "return to monkey",
| just throwing feces. And they're certainly not dumb, it
| just looks like those old spy movies with sleeper agents.
| One minute your friendly neighbor jokes and smiles and
| the next he hears some specific sentence on the radio and
| his programming takes over, his face freezes and he gets
| his gun and marches towards city hall. That's what I see
| happening to some people here when Musk gets mentioned.
| erulabs wrote:
| > Sealioning refers to the disingenuous action by a
| commenter of making an ostensible effort to engage in
| sincere and serious civil debate, usually by asking
| persistent questions of the other commenter.
|
| Never heard sealioning before, "thanks, I hate it" I
| guess. Reminds me of "dog-whistling", and in a way is an
| exact example of what PM_me_your_math is getting at.
|
| You can decide someone is being disingenuous, but if you
| can't demonstrate that somehow, I'm inclined to
| disbelieve you. The GP said "those claims are
| demonstrably false", and then a follow up comment said
| "okay, please demonstrate", and you can claim that's
| being disingenuous? Don't you see how that creates an
| iron-clad thought bubble?
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>Do you actually use twitter so this comment isn't lining
| up with your expectations?
|
| yes, and I see zero hate or other issues with content on my
| feed
|
| > What is _actually_ motivating you to comment like this?
|
| I hate when people attribute opening the Overton window to
| more than just Extreme left authoritarian political
| opinions, which is what Political Twitter was isolated to
| before elon, is some how a bad thing
| trs8080 wrote:
| > I hate when people attribute opening the Overton window
| to more than just Extreme left authoritarian political
| opinions, which is what Political Twitter was isolated to
| before elon
|
| This is incorrect.
|
| "Based on a massive-scale experiment involving millions
| of Twitter users, a fine-grained analysis of political
| parties in seven countries, and 6.2 million news articles
| shared in the United States, this study carries out the
| most comprehensive audit of an algorithmic recommender
| system and its effects on political content. Results
| unveil that the political right enjoys higher
| amplification compared to the political left."
|
| - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8740571/
|
| "Twitter reportedly won't use an algorithm to crack down
| on white supremacists because some GOP politicians could
| end up getting barred too"
|
| - https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-algorithm-
| crackdown-...
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Nothing in your comment refutes my position. The very
| rules and actions of "Trust and safety" are what I am
| talking about, not what links users of the platform
| share.
|
| Try to actually talk about what I am complaining about
| trs8080 wrote:
| > Try to actually talk about what I am complaining about
|
| > > I hate when people attribute opening the Overton
| window to more than just Extreme left authoritarian
| political opinions, which is what Political Twitter was
| isolated to before elon
|
| I literally quoted what you talked about and responded to
| your claim - please try to improve your reading
| comprehension skills.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >and responded to your claim
|
| No you did not, you responded with an unrelated fact that
| "right news" (which is widely over categorized in these
| research papers BTW) is the most shared link
|
| This does not refute the position that twitter employee
| based censorship was largely in one direction, this does
| not refute the fact that twitter policies were written
| and enforced in one ideological direction, this does not
| even really indicate why those links where shared or the
| reaction to the link, where they shared for outrage or
| criticism, for support or derision?
|
| No your link proves and supports nothing
| craftsman wrote:
| You: "...Extreme left authoritarian political opinions,
| which is what Political Twitter was isolated to before
| elon"
|
| If true, then we would not find much, if anything, that
| was not "extreme left authoritarian political opinions"
| amongst the detritus of "political twitter", right?
|
| And yet, when shown that not only did there exist content
| from the political right, it was amplified more than
| content from the political left, you reply:
|
| "you responded with an unrelated fact"
|
| Let's try it this way. Let's say I make a statement that
| the birds at my feeder are isolated to crows. If you then
| point to my own videos which show not only that there are
| many other kinds of birds, but these other kinds of birds
| eat the most seed from it, what should I reply? "Oh, I'm
| sorry but that is an unrelated fact"? Or perhaps, "That
| proves nothing, how do we know the other birds were not
| brought there by the crows?" Or how about, "The fact that
| there were other kinds of birds at your feeder does not
| refute the fact that you prevent non-crows from coming to
| your feeder." Etc.
| [deleted]
| trs8080 wrote:
| > No you did not, you responded with an unrelated fact
| that "right news" (which is widely over categorized in
| these research papers BTW) is the most shared link
|
| Yes, on Twitter, which according to you was "Extreme left
| authoritarian" until recently. Odd that leftist
| authoritarians allow right wing content to dominate their
| platform.
|
| > twitter employee based censorship was largely in one
| direction
|
| Any evidence for this claim?
|
| > the fact that twitter policies were written and
| enforced in one ideological direction
|
| Evidence? Twitter's own data says that this is not the
| case in the links I provided.
|
| > No your link proves and supports nothing
|
| My links (there were two) prove and support my point -
| you haven't read them though.
| RonaldRaygun wrote:
| This is an utterly bizarre chain of comments.
|
| You quite literally stated that Political Twitter was
| isolated to "Extreme left authoritarian political
| opinions" prior to Musk's takeover. Which is of course
| both demonstratively false and a ridiculous claim on its
| face.
|
| If anything, the person responding to you gave you the
| benefit of the doubt, presuming you may have meant that
| views outside the "extreme authoritarian left" were
| systematically de-emphasized by the recommendation
| algorithm. Which is also false but at least not a
| mindbogglingly stupid thing to actually believe.
|
| Someone interested in an actual discussion might have
| taken the opportunity to clarify their initial statement.
| But abrasiveness and the "read what I meant, not what I
| wrote" approach also works I guess.
| fernandotakai wrote:
| i use twitter and have been using twitter for the past...
| fifteen years (my profile say "Joined October 2007").
|
| my own twitter experience has not changed at all -- i'm
| seeing the same tweets i was seeing before and seeing none
| of the hate people are seeing. but, ofc, the plural of
| anecdote is not data.
| philippejara wrote:
| I personally do, and nothing has changed for me since he
| took over. I would like to see some semblance of a proof
| when someone tries to be as bold as to claim something is
| demonstrably false, he's not talking about having a
| different experience he is saying as a matter of fact that
| it is a false statement.
|
| For all the jokes about excessive sourcing that hacker news
| gets it's probably one of the things that keeps it from
| turning into yet another hearsay platform.
|
| This is genuinely the only place in the internet right now
| I can actually read and have a decent discussion about musk
| without it either turning into a hate circlejerk or a
| flamewar, would be nice to keep it that way.
| VikingCoder wrote:
| > he is saying as a matter of fact that it is a false
| statement
|
| Actually, I said "I think."
|
| If I had left off the "I think," then you would be
| correct about what I said.
| etchalon wrote:
| I think the last one might be "true-able" if they changed the
| internal classification for certain types of content.
|
| Third-parties haven't confirmed this, and their data shows the
| opposite, so I'd wager either it's an outright lie or a
| function of classification.
| fundad wrote:
| no law against lying to your investors and regulators right?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| When Twitter determines what violates the policy, the numbers
| can be whatever Twitter needs them to be.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > Our approach to policy enforcement will rely more heavily on
| de-amplification of violative content: freedom of speech, but not
| freedom of reach.
|
| This is the only part of the statement that might possibly be
| referring to the algorithms. I think the worst thing twitter (and
| FB as well) has done in the past was to use algorithms to boost
| outrage and thus boost engagement. Are they saying they're going
| to change how this works? I'm skeptical.
| frob wrote:
| The biggest problem Twitter now has is that I'm not fully
| convinced someone didn't just pay $8 to publish this as Twitter.
| _hypocrites_ wrote:
| A lot of the dogpiling here is sensationalism fueled by the
| media. People have a very short fuse to comment and won't bother
| doing research, or consider alternative viewpoints. It's either
| left or right wing - and that sort of thing is blatant
| indoctrination into an incredibly narrow Overton window that did
| not come from within someone's mind. It was put there, through
| constant reinforcement and propaganda.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Twitter is totalled. There is no recovery or any amount of repair
| that will convince anyone that the platform is worth consuming or
| saving.
| Terretta wrote:
| Granted there's all sorts of pearl clutching, but odds are
| Twitter is probably just fine for now as there's no actual
| alternative.*
|
| Majority of users have no awareness of any of this angst,
| they're just using it for its niche.
|
| It's popcorn-worthy drama because of the headcount carnage and
| the culture clash with increasingly vapid corporate ESG posing,
| while in reality both headcount bloat (particularly non-maker
| roles) and corporate virtue signaling need a check.
|
| There's a reasonable chance the image hit among various
| political and tech influencers is soon (months to years) offset
| by performance and utility gains from getting the other two
| under control.
|
| All this is off the table if something with _less friction_
| gains network effects within the niche.
|
| In that sense I'd agree with you: now's certainly a (rare) time
| to try to convince folks to change a habit many literally grew
| up with.
|
| * _Mastodon user since spring 2018._
| ARandumGuy wrote:
| > odds are Twitter is probably just fine for now as there's
| no actual alternative.
|
| Just because there isn't a direct alternative doesn't mean
| Twitter's future is bright. Twitter users can just quit
| Twitter without signing up for a new social media site. They
| can use other social media more, or find something else to do
| with their time.
|
| Keep in mind, a vast majority of Twitter users don't actually
| post. To these users, Twitter is just a source of
| entertainment. And if these users aren't getting enough
| entertainment, they'll just stop using the site. Maybe not
| immediately, and maybe not in an organized fashion. But
| people can and do change their social media habits, and
| there's nothing forcing people to stick with Twitter.
| jjfoooo5 wrote:
| The advertiser exodus (already well underway) is a far bigger
| threat to Twitter than a user exodus. The subscription model
| is dead on arrival.
|
| There's plenty of options if you want a forum without
| "corporate ESG posing" - 4chan et al. They just don't make
| money, or interest the majority of people.
| seydor wrote:
| Don't you think the news of its death are greatly exaggerated?
| HappySweeney wrote:
| [deleted]
| squaredot wrote:
| Looking at the speed with which this post goes up the HN page,
| I would say that Twitter is still very relevant.
| sosodev wrote:
| Some people enjoy observing dumpster fires
| smcl wrote:
| This is assuming the old "no such thing as bad publicity!"
| adage is correct and can only mean good things for whoever
| the subject is. However recall that any new revelations
| around Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX similarly shoot up the front
| page and get a load of clicks, eyeballs and comments ... so
| clearly there's a limit to where this applies.
|
| Twitter isn't in the position FTX is in, but I personally
| believe that the publicity that Musk and Twitter have been
| getting over the last month has been nearly universally bad.
| There is little value in increased user engagement if so much
| of it is centered around the catastrophic Twitter management
| and Elon Musk or Tesla parody accounts, particularly if there
| fewer companies interested in advertising to those users.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| All the arrogant and uncited claims in posts like this... I would
| for once like to see some honesty.
|
| How many of you were saying "It's a private company, it can do
| what it wants!!" when it was a public company, and now it does
| what it wants... "It must be destroyed!!".
|
| Some of you have decent points... Others are insufferable
| arrogant assholes who know everything about everything. I would
| like someone to just please admit "I'm mad that Musk isn't using
| Twitter to suppress the people I don't like".
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| This is one of the most refreshing comments on Musk since he
| suggested buying twitter, so of course it's about to fade out
| of existence.
| _hypocrites_ wrote:
| Oh, you see that on HN every day through the downvoting system
| (and people checking your posting history). You don't need
| Twitter for that vitriol.
| Zigurd wrote:
| This is Eon's previous claim that "nothing has changed" rehashed.
| It is an attempt to gaslight advertisers; "Do you believe all the
| people complaining about Nazis, racists and misogynists that you
| see with your lying eyes, or do you believe our policy
| statement?"
| arnvald wrote:
| Musk's actions since joining Twitter board have been so erratic
| it's hard to believe a single word in this announcement:
|
| * first joined the board then quit immediately
|
| * made a purchase offer then almost immediately tried to withdraw
| it
|
| * fired people then tried to rehire some of them
|
| * claimed 20% of Twitter users are bots then let users decide to
| unban Trump
|
| * announced absolute free speech then got angry when advertisers
| used their free speech to tell him they don't like how he runs
| the company
|
| * allowed everyone to get verified checkmark then pulled it
|
| * supported unlimited free speech then started banning people
| saying parody needs to be marked explicitly, then banned parody
| accounts anyway
|
| And now they claim the moderation teams are well resourced and
| able to do their job just as before. How can anyone believe it?
| yalogin wrote:
| Nothing new here except that it's not signed Elon, which is a
| surprise to me. Looks like someone convinced him to put out a
| sane message out there placating advertisers.
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| Concerning to say the least: https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-
| child-sexual-abuse-mater...
| minimaxir wrote:
| This post reads as an attempt to appease Twitter advertisers
| similar to Elon Musk's letter about abuse on Twitter before he
| officially took over, except it comes after Elon publically
| threatened advertisers and disparaged their largest one (Apple).
| fullshark wrote:
| Agreed, nothing of substance here, appears to be damage control
| for the paid verification rollout.
| Covzire wrote:
| MentallyRetired wrote:
| Sorry, but no. I'm currently disgusted with Twitter's new
| management and their treatment of developers. It's the fediverse
| for me, thanks.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| First Twitter was going to crash in a week, then it was everyone
| would flee to Mastodon, now it's that all the advertisers would
| leave.
|
| Maybe Twitter really didn't need 7500 people, and maybe having
| more voices speak is a good thing (there is always block button),
| and maybe advertisers won't flee forever. That seems more likely
| to me than Twitter imploding.
| bottlepalm wrote:
| That was the talking point last week and the week before. You
| need to get up to speed with the latest outrage narrative.
| Don't worry about following up on any of it. There will always
| be a new one ready to go. Writing Elon articles is like the
| 'easy button' of mainstream media. It will always generate
| clicks which is a great way to advance your career as a
| professional 'content creator'. Just focus on this while the
| rest of the uninteresting world goes under reported.
| camdenlock wrote:
| The character of this hysteria reminds me a lot of how the
| mainstream media obsessed over Trump in the 2015-2020 era.
| [deleted]
| rvz wrote:
| > Maybe Twitter really didn't need 7500 people, and maybe
| having more voices speak is a good thing (there is always block
| button), and maybe advertisers won't flee forever. That seems
| more likely to me than Twitter imploding.
|
| Exactly. 7,500 is far too much to run a site like Twitter which
| at the time, it was already running itself to the ground. But
| it seems just like the so-called mass advertiser migration from
| Facebook, that never happened will be no different with Twitter
| despite the unusual levels of vacuous claims of Twitter's
| immediate 'imploding', which that has been greatly exaggerated
| by very emotionally charged people.
|
| Twitter was already dead. Twitter 2.0 on the other hand seems
| more alive than ever, and I'm laughing at both the Twitter
| chaos and those pretending to leave Twitter whilst keeping
| their accounts.
| therouwboat wrote:
| Why are remaining workers asked to be hardcore and do long
| days if there is nothing to do? These are the best of the
| best, so they should probably get their work done really fast
| and leave early.
| jjfoooo5 wrote:
| Twitter was a second tier advertising destination before there
| was any inkling of a Musk deal, and advertisers started leaving
| before the deal closed when he was trying to get out of it. The
| biggest advertising firms in the world are advising their
| clients to leave.
|
| Why would they come back? Musk is the Donald Trump of tech -
| plenty of devoted fans, but not someone brands want to
| associate themselves with. Even if he wanted to, it doesn't
| seem that Musk can stop impulsively tweeting controversial
| things.
| eatonphil wrote:
| > now it's that all the advertisers would leave.
|
| This part anyway is not really hypothetical.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2022/11/25/1139180002/twitter-loses-50-t...
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| Twitter cutting down the bloat and going start up mode is
| probably the best thing. Twitter before Musk isn't any better
| than after Musk.
| YokoZar wrote:
| Twitter had been posting profits since 2018, with the
| exception of last quarter (billion dollar lawsuit payout) and
| Q2 2020 (pandemic start)
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/299119/twitter-net-
| incom...
|
| Post Musk, Twitter's debt was already going for 70 cents on
| the dollar, and that's before the news of this week
| linasj wrote:
| Twitter after musk is welcoming misinformation
| https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-63796832 - this means
| worse.
| smcl wrote:
| > First Twitter was going to crash in a week
|
| Was it? I read a lot of comments saying that mass-firing people
| is going to cause immediate degradation in some areas like
| content moderation (which we have seen) and _eventual_
| unpredictable failures in others. If you saw people predicting
| a sudden crash I 'd take their opinion with a pinch of salt in
| the future, sounds like quite a reactionary take.
|
| > then it was everyone would flee to Mastodon
|
| Well some people have been trying out Mastodon, some have been
| tinkering with Tumblr or Instagram, and some communities have
| started to solidify around discord servers and other places.
| One near-universal thing I've seen is more popular accounts
| being very vocal about sharing their links to other services
| with the aim of making Twitter non-essential - so if it goes
| down, or they'd rather leave then they could do so without
| starting _completely_ from scratch.
|
| > now it's that all the advertisers would leave.
|
| To be fair it sounds like a lot of them have, prompting this
| very letter ...
|
| > Maybe Twitter really didn't need 7500 people
|
| Maybe. It remains to be seen whether axing so many so suddenly
| was survivable in the long-term financially or operationally,
| though.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Also I've heard stories by some pretty prominent Twitter
| users who just left the platform and feel like their time on
| there has mostly been a waste of their live and won't be
| going back.
|
| Maybe people just don't need another "online community"
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| >Maybe. It remains to be seen whether axing so many so
| suddenly was survivable in the long-term financially or
| operationally, though.
|
| a lot of tech companies is laying off people. Amazon,
| Facebook...etc.
|
| DoorDash is laying off 1,250 corporate workers.
| https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/30/doordash-lays-
| off-1250-emplo...
|
| i believe the winter (recession) is coming if not then
| something is going on that most if not all tech companies is
| doing layoff or freeze hiring.
| bri3d wrote:
| According to 10-K filings, Doordash went from 3,886 to over
| 8,600 employees in calendar year 2021 (!!!). While the
| global macroeconomic situation is certainly fragile right
| now, the current trend towards corporate-tech layoffs needs
| to be viewed through this lens. Most public tech companies
| hired a truly ludicrous number of people in 2021, and the
| 2022 layoff season is more of a market rebalancing than an
| overall market shrinkage.
| rnk wrote:
| Obviously something is going on, but there's not a secret
| info line that big companies are into. Interest rates are
| up, it's harder to get easy money to expand. Some companies
| are going to spend less money on new software, and lots of
| companies are trying to reduce costs because it feels like
| we will have a recession. At the same time, there are lots
| of jobs, and out of the tech world people are getting
| raises for hourly work, and they still can't hire enough
| people. $20/hour at my local mcdonalds. I am still get
| random job and interview requests on linked in. If you are
| an experienced engineer there are plenty of jobs. Google,
| Amazon etc has done some layoffs but they grew a lot the
| last 2 years. Seems like plenty of smaller companies are
| hiring.
| fishcrackers wrote:
| things this big rarely fail instantly, it's usually a long
| slow decline
|
| either way none of what's being done or talked about recently
| makes me want to start using twitter, maybe they will figure
| something out i guess
| smcl wrote:
| Yeah I've no idea how Twitter works or what kind of fires
| they have to put out on a day-to-day basis, or what other
| things grow - so I wouldn't dare to make any rash
| predictions like that. My thinking is that even if Twitter
| had double the headcount they needed, it'd be really
| _tough_ to axe _that_ many people without firing or turn
| away the people needed to put out those fires.
|
| And yeah if you weren't a Twitter user before, you're
| probably not signing up at this moment in time :)
| tshaddox wrote:
| Stuff also actually did break.
| smcl wrote:
| Yeah probably - I just wasn't aware of anything too high-
| profile or calamitous
| HappySweeney wrote:
| DCMA requests went unanswered for several days, leading
| many to post full movies in 2-minute sections.
| smcl wrote:
| Yeah I mentioned content moderation
| querulous wrote:
| their entire ad platform is basically unuseable at
| present
| JPKab wrote:
| The ideologically driven hyperventilating over Twitter is so
| ridiculous.
|
| Pre-2015 Twitter wasn't the apocalypse before all the content
| moderation policies were rushed in as a response to widespread
| narrative that a bunch of people in swing states changed their
| votes because of Russian accounts.
|
| It's not the apocalypse now. You can block hateful trolls
| anytime you want.
|
| At the end of the day, there's a chunk of the US population who
| believes that they are much, much smarter than most of their
| countrymen, and that their unique ability to identify
| misinformation isn't shared by these buffoons in swing states
| who don't vote the way they want them to. There's a huge swathe
| of people like that in the software industry.
| qwertox wrote:
| I would really like to see a transparent result of the re-allow-
| Trump-poll. It might as well have been a bunch of bots.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _Our approach to policy enforcement will rely more heavily on
| de-amplification of violative content: freedom of speech, but not
| freedom of reach._
|
| Switching from normal bans to something even shadowier than
| ordinary shadowbans?
| kgarten wrote:
| Giving Elon's recent tweets about engagement and other metrics
| ... Sounds more like Twitter 3.0 to me ... Web 3.0 style.
|
| "the line goes up"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g
|
| Last time I logged in on Twitter, I got right extremists in my
| suggestions to follow. There are tons of right wing trolls on the
| platform (check #thenoticing hashtag), one cannot follow the
| protests in China due to pr0n spam. Yet, everything is FINE. We
| are just experimenting.
| summerlight wrote:
| Meanwhile it's reviving tens of thousands of accounts previously
| banned for harassment based on a single poll from Elon's fanboy
| as well as ending covid 19 misinformation policy. Pathetic
| attempts to appease advertisers, but it's just stacking another
| layer of distrust.
| josteink wrote:
| Correction: It's unbanning accounts which should never have
| been banned in the first place, for simply having legal to hold
| opinions.
|
| He's banning child porn and bots though. Because that seemingly
| wasn't banned before.
|
| He's clearly a nazi, eh?
| alkonaut wrote:
| We can only speculate what Twitter 2.0 will be but I suspect
| Twitter 3.0 will be a very small company trying to emulate
| Twitter 1.0.
| theCrowing wrote:
| I don't get it why lie in a PR fluff piece when everyone can see
| what's going on. Vox ......
| lcnmrn wrote:
| I recently introduced Subreply 9.0 with super fast, sub 100ms
| response times. Beat that, Elon!
| kilroy123 wrote:
| Let's be honest - Musk doesn't know what the hell he is doing
| here.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| Let's be honest - baseless speculation because HN clearly
| shares all the same biases of the rest of big tech:
| https://i.imgur.com/Si183zE.jpg
| imperialdrive wrote:
| Honest question - Maybe he will very quickly? I have no skin in
| the game, but the occasional Twitter links sent my way in group
| chats still load just fine, pretty fast actually, and the
| related page content appears to be less 'spammy'. Seems like a
| little progress if anything.
| runevault wrote:
| I can say that, at least for me, the timeline and lists load
| far slower than they used to, to the point I see spinners for
| each individual item in the trending topics list for a second
| or more before they finally load in. I don't remember the
| last time that happened to me pre-buyout.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| There have never been more spam bots in the replies and the
| site and apps are getting stuck in weird cache loops for the
| first time that I can remember. It's obviously a very
| robustly built platform but to me, it seems like it's
| coasting and hoping that nothing too big breaks.
| qwertox wrote:
| The worst thing is that he's getting angry over it and walking
| into the open arms of the Republicans instead of staying
| neutral.
| memish wrote:
| Just because you don't know what he's doing doesn't mean he
| doesn't know what he's doing. That's a common error in logic.
|
| You'll also have to ignore that he's built companies that land
| rockets back on Earth and produce millions of EVs. He's
| objectively demonstrated ability.
| pschuegr wrote:
| Another common error in logic is assuming that building
| rockets and building communities require the same kinds of
| skills.
| crftr wrote:
| It's a reminder that even some of our brightest minds are
| susceptible to the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
|
| It continues to look as if Musk believes a Twitter turn-around
| is largely a technical project--rather than tending to a
| community of users.
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| I'm starting to question how much he has ever. Has something
| changed with him? Or has he always been like this? If it's
| always been this rash, hasty and questionable then i can only
| imagine the real heroes are the people around him who managed
| to refine what he says and wants into tangible, achievable and
| coherent goals.
|
| Regardless of whether or not you agree with his actions these
| days, it does at least seem a significant departure from how
| the public perceived his actions in the past. Over the past few
| years his actions have steadily grown more.. loud, at the very
| least.
|
| .. It's.. interesting.
| [deleted]
| aorloff wrote:
| He completely underestimated the difference between a
| corporate takeover of an established company and growing a
| startup. In addition, he appears to be getting terrible
| advice, which is not uncommon for powerful people who attract
| sycophants.
| danans wrote:
| > I'm starting to question how much he has ever. Has
| something changed with him? Or has he always been like this?
|
| His growing group of admirers started treating his like a
| messiah, and he fully embraced that role, along with the
| behaviors that it engenders upon someone. He's not special in
| that way. It's a position a lot of ambitious people would
| like to be in.
| querulous wrote:
| he had very capable partners/lieutenants at spacex and tesla
| (shotwell and straubel, respectively). elon's undeniably
| great at cheerleading and fundraising but it's unclear how
| much credit he deserves for the technical accomplishments of
| spacex and tesla. at paypal he was run out almost immediately
| upon becoming ceo and at twitter he's surrounded himself with
| non entities like jason calcanis and alex spiro
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > at paypal he was run out almost immediately upon becoming
| ceo
|
| Technically, he was never CEO "at Paypal". He was forced
| out as CEO of X.com the second time just before it took the
| name of the main product (which it had acquired with the
| company that developed it, with Elon returning as CEO with
| the acquisition) and became PayPal.
| martythemaniak wrote:
| I think what's changed is that Twitter is 1) an established
| thing, rather than something Musk built up and 2) not really
| tech.
|
| Tesla, SpaceX, Boring Co have ambitious objectives with clear
| right/wrong answers. You put something in orbit or don't.
| Your car goes 500km with 70kWh of energy or it doesn't etc.
| You can inspire smart engineers to work hard to meet
| ambitious goals that require creative thinking.
|
| Twitter has none of that, it is more like a club. Having the
| loudest speakers or brightest lights isn't going to make your
| club the best club. There is a certain baseline of technical
| competence required, yes, but mostly its about attracting the
| right crowd (being extra nice to some people, kicking others
| out) and making sure everybody has a good time. Musk might
| have actually succeeded with this using his previous person,
| but his new culture warrior schtick isn't gonna work.
| etchalon wrote:
| I don't know why anyone would take seriously anything Twitter
| says, beyond acknowledging they said it.
|
| Everything is currently a moving target, and subject to their
| owner's whims.
| liquidify wrote:
| "Freedom of speech but not freedom of reach". Sounds like tyranny
| of a different form. I believe that any platform that enjoys
| protections of the federal government should be required by law
| to have 100% open moderation policies, regardless of whether it
| is reach or speech. Those policies should be required to be
| "legally" oriented and not based on platform preferences. Let the
| actual police handle policing.
| borbulon wrote:
| > First, none of our policies have changed
|
| uh
|
| https://transparency.twitter.com/en/reports/covid19.html
| schemescape wrote:
| The policy is still there---they just aren't enforcing it.
|
| Corporate doublespeak at its finest.
| fortuna86 wrote:
| Is a policy or a law that is not enforced even a law or
| policy? They are just words on paper then.
| lesuorac wrote:
| I feel like in any sort of legal setting this would go the
| same way as those "do X or resign" statements.
|
| It'd count as a policy change and "we accept your
| resignation" would count as a firing.
| ilkkal wrote:
| At this point, why care about Twitter?
| MKais wrote:
| Musk might be feeling the heat, among other things, from the EU's
| commissioner for internal market.
|
| https://twitter.com/ThierryBreton/status/1598015892457426944
| Deukhoofd wrote:
| I'm heavily amused by the "More details on #Mastodon" reply
| directly below it.
| MKais wrote:
| Me too.
| ilyt wrote:
| > What has changed, however, is our approach to experimentation.
| As you've seen over the past several weeks, Twitter is embracing
| public testing.
|
| "Everybody calm down, the building is not on fire, this is just a
| test of our fire suppresion system. After we fired staff handling
| it. Also due to miscommunication someone filled it with diesel.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Isn't this an outright lie? "First, none of our policies have
| changed." I don't mean just generally.
|
| Specifically, their policy around Covid misinformation changed
| November 23. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/29/twitter-stops-
| policing-covid...
| b0sk wrote:
| This is to appease Tim Cook. He just tweeted a video of him in
| Apple Campus
| mrkramer wrote:
| Mastodon FTW
| boplicity wrote:
| If I had the time and resources, I would build a Twitter clone
| and focus on just getting journalists, editors, reporters, etc on
| the platform. This is a powerful community that is quite
| established on Twitter, but I suspect they would be willing to
| migrate. Maybe something like, Manuscript Wishlist or
| QueryTracker, but specifically with a Twitter vibe.
| noncoml wrote:
| Sounds noble, but how would you earn their trust?
|
| Why would someone choose you over Musk?
|
| How would you ensure that in 5 years you will not sell out for
| big $$$
|
| Not trying to be a troll, just genuinely asking as the answers
| may help someone who actually has the resources/time
| unsui wrote:
| I think it's fair that it's not a difficult question:
|
| Why choose X over musk?
|
| - X isn't erratic and unpredictable/capricious
|
| - X has a solid track record of working with stakeholders and
| partners for win-win relationships
|
| - X doesn't lead one to discuss enforcment of morality
| clauses in contracts
|
| - X cares about best-practices for all stakeholders,
| including employees
|
| I could go on.
|
| At this point, almost _ANYONE_ with a decent resume could be
| considered a better steward than musk
| cwkoss wrote:
| If you had your own twitter clone, what rule/process would you
| use for determining whether someone is a
| journalist/editor/reporter? Who should get the 'press'
| credential?
|
| So many people do only editorialism but call themselves
| journalists. Journalists who do great investigatory pieces are
| often independent or bounce between publications frequently.
| Lots of influencers posing at journalists to obtain a veneer of
| legitimacy. More money than ever influencing the content of
| what is being written about. Lots of uncredentialed civilians
| tweeting newsworthy things. Lots of 'news' services writing
| articles entirely sourced via tweet.
|
| I think the journalism industry is so blurry and chaotic right
| now, it's hard to know who is worth listening to (or courting
| to be-listened-to on your hypothetical platform).
| joegahona wrote:
| Someone is trying this now: https://post.news/
| Communitivity wrote:
| I do not see how they can say they still prioritize broad safety
| when there is reportedly only _one_ person left on the child
| safety team.
| _0ffh wrote:
| Well, whatever the team was doing before, it seems like their
| effectiveness has increased quite a bit without the missing
| team members.
|
| In the past, exploitation victims had to literally sue Twitter
| to take down explicit material, because a "review" could not
| "find a violation of [their] policies" [1].
|
| Now "the three biggest hashtags used by child abusers selling
| child sexual abuse material on Twitter have virtually been
| eliminated" according to a human trafficking survivor advocate
| [2]. They have also made it easier for users to flag such
| content.
|
| [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/minor-lawsuit-twitter-
| explic...
|
| [2] https://twitter.com/elizableu/status/1594139581045428224
| dorkwood wrote:
| One person for the Asia-Pacific region[1], not one person in
| total.
|
| [1]: https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-child-sexual-abuse-
| mater...
| Arubis wrote:
| As a reminder to developers and tech workers that are accustomed
| to the benefits of working in one of the more flexible and well-
| compensated fields for traditional employment, if Elon succeeds
| with his management style at Twitter--nay, even if he doesn't
| terribly and visibly fail--many folks managing large tech
| organizations and corporations in general will conclude that that
| management style is acceptable and sufficiently effective.
|
| tl;dr: if Twitter doesn't get seriously hurt over the medium and
| long term, this entire industry is going to be a lot less fun to
| work in as management concludes they can put the squeeze on.
| mhoad wrote:
| Probably a good time to think about unionising then.
| https://techworkerscoalition.org/
| rcarmo wrote:
| I thought they had sacked the entirety of the Trust & Safety
| team. Especially considered I got added to something like 30 spam
| DM threads over the last week, and that reporting them did
| exactly nothing.
| fortuna86 wrote:
| Crypto bots are also out of control.
| jacooper wrote:
| These official statements are worthless when Elon decides
| everything based on a poll on his private account and by his
| circle of yes-men.
| seydor wrote:
| Doesnt really say much. I will wait for Twitter 2.1
| kesri wrote:
| the way things are going this might end up being the last
| release
| mosdl wrote:
| Twitter 3.0, now with blockchain and rug pulls!
| bombcar wrote:
| Twitter 3.11 for Workgroups is where it's at.
| lmedinas wrote:
| By then only Tesla/Elon fanboys and Crypto people will be
| using Twitter. Tech guys moved to Mastodon and Celebrities to
| Instagram and Tiktok.
|
| :(
| mosdl wrote:
| Probably a very high overlap between those two audiences.
| WallyFunk wrote:
| 'Town Square' is a misnomer on their part. The town square is the
| Internet at large and not some single silo'd gatekeepery app.
| nmz wrote:
| Its certainly a town square, just because you have your own
| little tavern/forum doesn't mean the town square isn't the town
| square.
| chomp wrote:
| It isn't a town square - a town square is public. Twitter is
| a private organization. In this case, Twitter is the tavern.
| The Internet is the town square.
| pram wrote:
| Is Facebook the town dilapidated mall full of geezers
| getting their daily walks?
| s2radhak wrote:
| No, it's the dilapidated mall full of geezers getting
| their daily walks that the Zuck creepily stares at for ad
| revenue
| streb-lo wrote:
| A town square is usually a public project, maintained by the
| city on behalf of taxpayers.
|
| This is more like a big private club.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Twitter is those public-use bulletin boards at the
| entrances of grocery stores.
|
| (are those still a thing? Practically every store of any
| size had one in the 90s, at least, but I haven't paid
| attention and can't for-sure recall seeing one in years)
| cyberphobe wrote:
| This is like a big private club that allows anyone to enter
| and has effectively taken the place of a town square, due
| to (among other things) lack of such a public project. It
| _ought_ to be owned by the government, but we 've
| privatized it.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I think the idea is more about Twitter _functioning as_ a
| public square. The claim is usually that if Twitter functions
| sufficiently similar to a public square, then the public should
| reasonably concerned about how /if Twitter amplifies or
| restricts certain people.
| daveidol wrote:
| Sure, but for a lot of people sites like Twitter are their way
| of spreading information and having discussions online. Sadly
| the days of everyone hosting their own personal site or blog
| are gone for most of the less technically savvy.
| [deleted]
| Barrin92 wrote:
| One thing that I don't see talked about a lot is that this
| approach of experimentation which is effectively Musk conducting
| twitter polls, de-facto excludes the majority of users on the
| site.
|
| Surprisingly enough there's almost as many Japanese users as
| Americans on Twitter, not to mention everyone else, do they also
| get an input on the style of the public conversation?
|
| Apparently he's having trouble with the EU now as well because
| he's shuttered the office in Brussels. Is this a global public
| conversation, a local one, is everyone going to live by one
| standard, pretty hard to figure that all out if you've reduced
| the workforce to keeping the servers running.
| staunch wrote:
| There's no way to run a platform supported by ads that upholds
| anything resembling free speech.
|
| The advertising model is Twitter's fatal flaw. It puts the fate
| of the platform in the hands of a tiny corporate mob that are
| themselves subject to larger mobs.
|
| If "the mission" was truly driving Twitter, they'd drop all
| advertising and build enough value that some decent percentage of
| users would pay for it. In a few years, with a lot of work, I
| believe they could build a $10+ billion/yr business using paid
| accounts and features. With zero advertising. Twitter is an
| incredible "channel" for information, marketing, customer
| support, etc.
|
| But unless they kick their addiction to ads, it doesn't matter if
| they do or don't believe in free speech, because their
| advertisers (customers) most definitely don't and they're in
| ultimate control.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > There's no way to run a platform supported by ads that
| upholds anything resembling free speech.
|
| I think that's what we have been conditioned into believing,
| but I see no reason that the a sponsored post about Tide Pods
| has to have anything but platform coincidence to someone using
| the same tool to troll about how "the jews" bla bla bla.
|
| Our selective outrage is insane. This is all political. I'm
| tired of it.
| etchalon wrote:
| Are there any social networks, in existence, at scale, which do
| not rely on advertising as their primary revenue source?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Closest thing to it would be WhatsApp, which during its early
| days charged a token sum to access and still managed to gain
| significant marketshare.
|
| Other than this I don't know - the problem with social media
| is that you need network effects to make the platform
| valuable - nobody is going to pay for an empty place, and
| similarly nobody will join because they'd have to pay (so the
| platform would need to provide value from day 1).
|
| Twitter is in a unique position when it comes to this - it
| already has the network effects and a significant userbase
| including influential people. This is why I'm also very
| excited about Musk's takeover of it. Do I agree with him
| about everything? Absolutely not - I think the man is
| unhinged. Yet, a stupid, ego-driven decision is our only
| escape from the cancer that is advertising.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| People can read and parse this but face facts: This statement is
| worthless unless it's personally, and credibly, signed by Elon
| Musk.
| O__________O wrote:
| Twitter ban me few years ago for not providing a phone number for
| SMS verification and that account is still ban. Literally only
| used that account to access another website, which I was not ban
| from and still use via direct login. Later, Twitter was
| discovered to be illegally using SMS numbers to profile users
| even though they explicitly stated they were not; they were fined
| for it. -- Yet they have unban accounts for users that literally
| broke rules and were actual threats to safety of others.
|
| This linked blog post is full of half-truths, if not out right
| lies -- and company is literally run by Elon, who has lied so
| many times about his plans for Twitter than it's beyond me why
| anyone is still using it.
| memish wrote:
| Jack endorsed the post
|
| https://twitter.com/jack/status/1598072898614628352
| latchkey wrote:
| Our Trust & Safety team continues its diligent work to keep the
| platform safe from hateful conduct, abusive behavior, and any
| violation of Twitter's rules
|
| Should have prefixed that with "What is left of our trust &
| safety team..."
| jacobgorm wrote:
| This podcast episode by Sam Harris finally convinced me to close
| my Twitter account. Worth a listen
| https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/304...
| Macha wrote:
| > First, none of our policies have changed. Our approach to
| policy enforcement will rely more heavily on de-amplification of
| violative content: freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.
|
| "Nothing has changed, except..."
|
| > Our Trust & Safety team continues its diligent work to keep the
| platform safe from hateful conduct, abusive behavior, and any
| violation of Twitter's rules. The team remains strong and well-
| resourced, and automated detection plays an increasingly
| important role in eliminating abuse.
|
| It's undeniably less well-resourced than it was a few weeks ago,
| and people's experience indicate it's clearly less effective as a
| result.
|
| What a non-statement. I doubt advertisers will react the way Elon
| hopes they will.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Our Trust & Safety team continues its diligent work
|
| IIRC, between direct firings and resignations they got rid of
| the entire team shortly after the takeover, including at least
| the first head installed after the takeover and firing of the
| former head, so the impression of continuity this seeks to
| invoke is at best misleading.
| sosodev wrote:
| Yeah... Also, the unbanning of users previously considered
| hateful also directly conflicts with "to keep the platform safe
| from hateful conduct"
| bluescrn wrote:
| Remember way back before the era of social media mob justice,
| when there was this concept of 'forgiveness'?
|
| At least some of the banned deserve a second chance. Those
| who were total monsters will probably be quickly re-banned.
| Others have found their own echo chambers elsewhere and won't
| even bother coming back.
| dagmx wrote:
| Banning is usually only for repeat offenders. Usually you
| get multiple suspensions before the ban.
|
| Which is basically what you described and therefore is
| already how it works.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| Forgiveness usually requires some level of admitting fault
| and contrition. I have not seen that from the hateful
| accounts Elon unbanned.
| cyberphobe wrote:
| Elon is pretty clearly unbanning violent right-wing
| extremists while banning rule-following accounts on the
| left, sometimes transparently at the direction of the right
| wingers. Why do you insist on pretending anything else?
| toolz wrote:
| Which rule following accounts on the left have been
| banned since musk bought the company? I only know of a
| couple accounts that were banned for very clearly
| violating terms of service, i.e. impersonating other
| people. I personally don't agree with even those bans,
| but I am curious to know which rule followers were
| banned.
| cyberphobe wrote:
| https://www.newsweek.com/activists-accuse-elon-musk-
| banning-... mentions a few, although there are far more.
| spamuel wrote:
| You need to be more specific - he wasn't banning George
| Takei or Occupy Democrats. He banned ANTIFA accounts that
| were being used to plan "direct action", ie: riots.
| Something that was previously against Twitter's TOS, but
| it wasn't being enforced specifically against ANTIFA
| accounts because Twitter employees were sympathetic to
| the cause.
| threeseed wrote:
| > He banned ANTIFA accounts that were being used to plan
| "direct action", ie: riots
|
| Please provide evidence that accounts like Chad Loder
| were posting about imminent, direct actions to riot. I
| followed that account pretty closely for the last month
| and saw none of that.
|
| I would think about your comment because this is pretty
| defamatory.
| cyberphobe wrote:
| Whatever you need to tell yourself to make your little
| delusion work. Obviously the banned accounts were not
| calling for any form of violence, otherwise the bans
| wouldn't have been news
| trs8080 wrote:
| Answered above, reproducing for you here:
|
| "As the Los Angeles City Councilmember Mike Bonin noted
| on Twitter, the suspended users include Chad Loder, an
| antifascist researcher whose open-source investigation of
| the U.S. Capitol riot led to the identification and
| arrest of a masked Proud Boy who attacked police
| officers. The account of video journalist Vishal Pratap
| Singh, who reports on far-right protests in Southern
| California, has also been suspended."
|
| "All four accounts had been singled out for criticism by
| Andy Ngo, a far-right writer whose conspiratorial, error-
| riddled reporting on left-wing protests and social
| movements fuels the mass delusion that a handful of small
| antifascist groups are part of an imaginary shadow army
| called "antifa." In a public exchange on Twitter on
| Friday, Musk invited Ngo to report "Antifa accounts" that
| should be suspended directly to him."
|
| https://theintercept.com/2022/11/29/elon-musk-twitter-
| andy-n...
| trs8080 wrote:
| "As the Los Angeles City Councilmember Mike Bonin noted
| on Twitter, the suspended users include Chad Loder, an
| antifascist researcher whose open-source investigation of
| the U.S. Capitol riot led to the identification and
| arrest of a masked Proud Boy who attacked police
| officers. The account of video journalist Vishal Pratap
| Singh, who reports on far-right protests in Southern
| California, has also been suspended."
|
| "All four accounts had been singled out for criticism by
| Andy Ngo, a far-right writer whose conspiratorial, error-
| riddled reporting on left-wing protests and social
| movements fuels the mass delusion that a handful of small
| antifascist groups are part of an imaginary shadow army
| called "antifa." In a public exchange on Twitter on
| Friday, Musk invited Ngo to report "Antifa accounts" that
| should be suspended directly to him."
|
| https://theintercept.com/2022/11/29/elon-musk-twitter-
| andy-n...
| MarcoZavala wrote:
| chasd00 wrote:
| > antifascist researcher
|
| doesn't that just mean someone who doxes people they
| don't agree with? Great, i'm glad he helped arrest a
| criminal but the ends don't always justify the means.
| trs8080 wrote:
| > doesn't that just mean someone who doxes people they
| don't agree with
|
| ... no?
| bluescrn wrote:
| Same game as always, but now the other team now has the
| ball.
|
| With a propaganda weapon as powerful as Twitter, it's
| probably better for everybody if it's destroyed, rather
| than continues to be used/abused to escalate political
| divisions by either side of the great divide. And that
| seems to be the way things are going.
|
| It should never have been taken so seriously to begin
| with.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > it's probably better for everybody if it's destroyed
|
| At first I hoped Musk would see the nightmare, give up,
| just pull the plug, and go home. I think that's out
| though, now I hope it collapses under its own weight.
| Hope dies last.
| cyberphobe wrote:
| By what metric was Twitter previously controlled by the
| "other team", by which you presumably the far left?
| Before Elon owned them, they were bending over backwards
| to allow right wing accounts ([0] for example), and they
| frequently banned left wing accounts that at all went
| afoul of the rules
|
| [0]: https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-algorithm-
| crackdown-...
| memish wrote:
| Speaking of "pretending", that is false on both counts.
| d23 wrote:
| He unbanned a right wing extremist who attempted to use
| Twitter to overthrow the government.
| cyberphobe wrote:
| excellent argument, you sure changed my mind
| hatefulmoron wrote:
| Can't you see the irony in this when you didn't offer any
| evidence?
| [deleted]
| jeffbee wrote:
| Twitter 2.0 is banning accounts as soon as Andy Ngo, the
| galaxy's biggest liar, demands they be banned.
|
| https://theintercept.com/2022/11/29/elon-musk-twitter-
| andy-n...
| memish wrote:
| I don't see how you reached that conclusion. If you look
| at the referenced thread, he was reporting accounts that
| were inciting violence.
| jeffbee wrote:
| The article describes Ngo's claims as "misleading,
| factually incorrect". Which would be in keeping with
| literally everything Ngo has ever written.
| memish wrote:
| The article is misleading. You can go look at the thread
| to see for yourself.
| jonfw wrote:
| Anybody would agree with you given the following two
| assumptions-
|
| That these previously banned users were banned for conduct
| that they would consider hateful
|
| That banning users is the only way to keep the platform safe
| from hateful conduct
|
| If twitter disagrees with either of these statements, you can
| see why they would disagree with your point
| bilbo0s wrote:
| Problem in the long run is that it doesn't matter whether
| or not Twitter believes they are hateful. Heck, it doesn't
| even matter if the person you're responding to thinks they
| are hateful.
|
| For Musk to not lose gobs and gobs of money, it only
| matters whether advertisers, in their sole estimation,
| consider those people hateful. The guys with the nine
| figure ad budgets will almost certainly fall on the
| "cautious" side of that line.
|
| The only thing that will help here is finding small, less
| PR minded brands or businesses to replace the players in
| the nine figure club. This won't be easy, but I think it is
| the only reasonable way forward to create the kind of
| Twitter that Musk seems to want to create. Having worked at
| "DDB Need'em" long ago, I'd set his chances of pulling that
| off relatively low, but I don't think it's impossible.
| threeseed wrote:
| > The only thing that will help here is finding small,
| less PR minded brands or businesses to replace the
| players in the nine figure club.
|
| My partner runs a small business that spends a few
| million on ads each year.
|
| Why would she take the risk (and it is a huge risk) of
| advertising on Twitter when Facebook, Google etc. give
| her the confidence and results her business depends on.
| Smaller businesses are far less likely to take risks.
| valarauko wrote:
| > My partner runs a small business that spends a few
| million on ads each year.
|
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think a company with
| an ad budget of a few million is a "small business"
| anymore.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > For Musk to not lose gobs and gobs of money, it only
| matters whether advertisers, in their sole estimation,
| consider those people hateful.
|
| Or, more accurately, "content they don't want their
| advertising seen near".
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| Yea.. how does he expect this to be interpreted? Their stance
| hasn't changed.. cool, except before Twitter said some people
| posted hateful content, and banned them. Now they unbanned
| them, so what is the non-change?
|
| Does twitter agree that the comments _were_ hateful, did that
| not change? If didn 't change, then twitter agrees they were
| hateful comments and twitter is now happy to have them on the
| platform.
|
| Musk can't keep his foot out of his mouth here it seems..
| it's very confusing.
| dismantlethesun wrote:
| Maybe their stance is that people shouldn't be banned
| forever?
|
| I personally, don't believe in eternal bans. I always hate
| the horror stories where someone has made a mistake and
| thus Google bans them from all non-related activities for
| life, then bans the account of anyone who gave that person
| privileges too.
|
| With respect to Twitter, I'd say sure Trump is an
| insurrectionist and a shameful individual, but it's been 2
| years... while we can't all rightly forgive him, we can at
| least him speak his thoughts in 280 characters or less.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Maybe their stance is that people shouldn't be banned
| forever?
|
| They are entitled to that stance, and advertisers
| uncomfortable with either the actual or anticipated
| results of that stance are entitled to not advertise on
| Twitter.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| Simple, just define their beliefs as hateful/hate speech,
| then you can ban them for hate. reddit is also _great_ at
| this.
| [deleted]
| gfodor wrote:
| No, because the thing that has changed explicitly is Twitter
| is no longer going to ban users based on hateful conduct, but
| deboost their tweets.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Except they actually keep suspending accounts for
| violations of the hateful content policy, specifically for
| Tweets with fairly mild criticism of Musk and nothing that
| even superficially relates to what is prohibited by the
| hateful content policy.
| jsmith45 wrote:
| Yeah, I'm betting that a lot of advertisers will have concerns
| being on a platform that does not try to delete things like
| hate speech, but merely "demonetize it, and negatively boost
| it.
|
| If I were an advertiser Twitter would be on my "never advertise
| here again" list, and I might re-evaluate in a decade or so.
| Besides look at the slimy ads have been common on twitter in
| the last 2 weeks. I would not want my ads showing up alongside
| those.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| From the same first quote - none of our policies have changed,
| just policy enforcement has changed.
|
| Isn't policy enforcement a part of a separate policy? The
| policy for policy enforcement? They really wanted to be able to
| say "the policy hasn't changed." This is a bigger stretch than
| a taffy pull.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| policy vs Procedure.
|
| you have a procedure for the policy, thus procedures can
| change but the policy is the same.
|
| policy's are goals, procedures are how those goals are met,
| and given the wide and subjective nature of all Big Tech
| policies, changing in procedures are more import and
| impactful than changes in policy, and the procedures are
| never open to public review
| [deleted]
| alfor wrote:
| So much hate here about Musk. I am very hopeful about the future
| of Twitter since Musk bought it.
|
| I can't wait to see the evidence of corruption of Twitter, but it
| was already visible to all conservatives.
|
| I think that in a few months it will be already a great success.
| listless wrote:
| It reads like a hostage letter - "Everything is fine, please
| don't remove our app from your store".
| whateveracct wrote:
| So what is different? Are there concrete goals?
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Well, now instead of censoring people who spout right-wing hate
| speech and falsehoods on the regular, Elon is censoring people
| who say mean things about him or are known left-wing pundits
| while re-instating the right-wing hate mongers.
|
| Concrete goals are apparently to stick it to the woke, or
| something.
| CrypticShift wrote:
| > What has changed, however, is our approach to experimentation
|
| including I suppose Elon's experimental approach to management.
|
| I hope that in 10 years, we will look back at this twitter 2.0 (=
| musk's debacle) as the impetus that lead to more widespread
| adoption of social media 2.0 (= federation)
|
| I already see the snowball effect getting momentum with all this
| coverage (NPR, NYT...) and big name exits (Apple...)
| janoc wrote:
| It won't. Federation doesn't solve any of the problems Twitter
| now has.
|
| That instead of one poorly managed understaffed silo full of
| trolls and abusers you have 2000 poorly managed, even more
| understaffed systems with 2000 different approaches to
| moderation and content doesn't make anything easier or fixed
| for people who use Twitter today.
|
| It is the same like we had federated chat with Jabber for 20
| years now - and nobody uses it. The best implementations of it
| ended being the nonfederated ones - like Google Talk or I
| believe Whatsapp used that protocol. And apart from nerds and
| some engineers literally has no clue that something like XMPP
| even exists.
|
| People don't care about the technology, they care where they
| want to communicate with their friends and network.
|
| The Twitter issues are first and foremost human, business,
| management and social problems, not something you can throw
| some network protocols and technology at and declare it solved.
| CrypticShift wrote:
| > doesn't solve any of the problems Twitter now has > you
| have 2000 poorly managed, even more understaffed systems with
| 2000 different approaches
|
| It is not about short-term problem solving. It is about long-
| term investment in more decentralized social networks. 2000
| different approaches is exactly what is needed for "natural
| selection" to do it job.
|
| > are first and foremost human, business, management and
| social problems, not something you can throw some network
| protocols and technology at and declare it solved.
|
| Agreed. But the protocols should by designed to adress and
| resolve those problems the best they can. This will take a
| lot of iterations. The more (and sooner) people jump ship,
| the better chance we have to test and iterate.
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| /shrug, depends on how people view the problem.
|
| Smaller communities can be more focused and managed. Trying
| to get everyone in one place agreeing on one set of rules
| sounds impossible. At least federation has the potential to
| let groups exist differently as desired.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| That is the thing, people do not go to twitter to be in
| "Small Focused Community"
|
| They do it to interact with the globe, and the more people
| on that network the better it is.
|
| There are a million ways to create a niche site (like
| hacker news) that allows a Small Focused Community to
| interact, that is not a replacement for Twitter
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| Agreed, but that's kinda the point in my eyes. Maybe a
| global forum with no moderation everyone can agree with
| is a bad thing? Ie maybe it makes everyone unhappy?
|
| Everyone was on Facebook too. We're not all looking for
| Facebook 2.0 currently, are we? Yea, we have different
| form factors of social networks, definitely. But some
| _(not all!)_ of the core features of Facebook were
| misguided or mismanaged. Some features of Facebook aren
| 't looking to be replaced.
|
| I'm not saying Mastodon is a replacement for Twitter. I'm
| simply saying _maybe_ some features of Twitter aren 't
| worth being replaced for many people.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>Maybe a global forum with no moderation everyone can
| agree with is a bad thing? Ie maybe it makes everyone
| unhappy?
|
| I do not agree, and it does not make me unhappy at all. I
| am late 70's child, I experienced the Wild West of the
| internet, nothing posted to twitter (or the chan's for
| that matter) shock me, or makes me unhappy
|
| I think people need thicker skin, and maybe more
| anonymity not less...
|
| Censorship is not the solution, never has been in history
| and never will be in the future.
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| > I do not agree, and it does not make me unhappy at all.
| I am late 70's child, I experienced the Wild West of the
| internet, nothing posted to twitter (or the chan's for
| that matter) shock me, or makes me unhappy
|
| Yea, i did say "everyone" but i didn't actually mean
| everyone. Lots of people enjoy Facebook in all it's
| glory, too.
|
| > Censorship is not the solution, never has been in
| history and never will be in the future.
|
| My comment wasn't about Censorship, though. It was about
| people and a possibility that they may prefer categorized
| focused communities like many of us grew up with. Which
| may or may not include moderation (aka "censorship")
|
| I certainly enjoyed the forums of old more than the
| modern day global scroll feed. But i prefer
| focused/categorized content, clearly.
|
| My point wasn't that you do or don't. Merely to pose a
| question. A question (among many) that could dictate
| whether or not the Forums of old have a place in the
| modern day. Whether or not the global attention draw that
| is Twitter is actually desired. _edit_ : Desired enough
| to keep it alive and "successful", at least.
| jaredcwhite wrote:
| > I think people need thicker skin
|
| What a ridiculous thing to say. Actually plenty of us
| (and I've also been on the internet for many decades now)
| would like to hop online to engage with some cool folks
| about [insert interesting topic here] without having
| utter garbage and dreck thrown up in our faces like
| racism, transphobia, misogyny, bigotry, etc., etc.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Well it is good thing for you all major platforms have
| the ablity to block, mute, or otherwise curate your
| experience, including sharing "block lists" and other
| innovations so your personal experience is what you make
| it to be
|
| I support giving people the power to create their own
| echo chambers and safe spaces, feel free to do so..
|
| No one should be forced to communicate with anyone they
| do not want to, however you also should not be able to
| prevent me from communicating with others that I desire
| to
|
| >>What a ridiculous thing to say
|
| Not really, it is sad parents have stopped teaching
| "Sticks and Stones my break my bones but words will never
| harm me"
|
| We really have lost the cultural axiom "I may hate what
| you say, but I will defend your right to say it" haven't
| we.
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| > Well it is good thing for you all major platforms have
| the ablity to block, mute, or otherwise curate your
| experience, including sharing "block lists" and other
| innovations so your personal experience is what you make
| it to be
|
| Why would i choose a platform where i have to moderate
| thousands of individuals? Ie what's the purpose in that
| lol?
|
| Where is this world where we went from having Forums of
| communities to global cesspools where we want to manage
| what sort of nonsense shows up on the feed?
|
| > We really have lost the cultural axiom "I may hate what
| you say, but I will defend your right to say it" haven't
| we.
|
| I didn't say this, so your two replies in one feels odd.
| However, no one is stopping you from saying it. Say it
| all you want. I'm advocating a smaller forum where i
| don't have to listen to you say things to me that i'm
| uninterested in.
|
| I'm not stopping you from being on the internet. From
| having electricity. Just like i'm fine with you yelling
| on the street corner.
|
| I'm moving to the other side of the street. And you
| object to that, for some odd reason. Because by me
| moving, it doesn't give you a voice?
|
| _Edit_ : To sum it up, this isn't about safe spaces.
| This is about spam. There's only so much "Vaccines give
| you 5G!!!" i can put up with lol. Just like the guy on
| the street corner. Hard to have a conversation around
| that annoying screaming.
| jaredcwhite wrote:
| Utterly disagree. I trust the people running a small/medium-
| sized instance I've personally vetted to host my account
| infinitely more than I trust some anonymous group of
| contractors in a content moderation farm somewhere...or Elon,
| lol.
|
| Twitter's current issues by and large _are_ a result of
| trusting corporate media silos with our precious time, data,
| and safety online. It 's wildly unacceptable.
| ilyt wrote:
| I think calling Mastodon and friends "federation" is too
| generous, "fiefdoms" fits much better, each with king/admin
| (not actual users) deciding what's allowed and what is banned.
| mlindner wrote:
| Mastodon doesn't do any of the things I want out of social
| media, and has the most backwards thinking to moderation. The
| moderation system is based on witch hunting. Federation can't
| work when there are discrete sets of people that absolutely
| hate each other. Right now Mastodon is full of the most far-
| left people.
| knolax wrote:
| First it's "The government can't stop me from saying anything
| I want", then it's "Corporations can't stop me from saying
| anything I want on their platform", and now you've progressed
| to "Private individuals running their own instances have to
| federate with me and listen to what I say or else they're
| witch hunting leftists". It's my own instance, I will
| federate with who I want. You have the right to run your
| instance, I have the right to tell you to fuck off.
| fundad wrote:
| How much did any of us think about or notice social network ads
| for Apple products? I remember the #AppleEvent hashtag emoji
| campaigns that cost a pretty penny but that's not what's going
| on now.
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