[HN Gopher] A new era of transparency for Twitter
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A new era of transparency for Twitter
Author : summarity
Score : 82 points
Date : 2023-03-31 18:44 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.twitter.com)
| Reptur wrote:
| Transparency would be releasing the data that they check against
| for "abusive, toxicity, nsfw" content. I read the code, those are
| specific checks, but they're opaque on the data that it checks
| against. Without transparency on this data, they cannot prove to
| the public "twitter files" type censorship isn't still happening.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| + transparency would be realising the decisions behind the
| boosted accounts.
| srameshc wrote:
| Nothing twitter can do to restore the lost trust. Twitter has to
| die evenutally. I believe in federated microblogging future.
| sho_hn wrote:
| For me the best social media company is one I don't have to
| trust in because I can look, check and verify. Or at least that
| others can do this.
|
| In that sense, this does make a dent.
|
| Still, without config/model weights, etc. it's not worth that
| much.
| th18row wrote:
| Sorry but I have this strong feeling that the
| Fediverse/ActivityPub will be one of those ideas that will fail
| miserably or just become a niche for weirdos. My reasoning is:
| it's completely unnecessary. Just have different sites, like
| forums from the early 2000s. Much cleaner and simpler. I don't
| need a shared identity throughout these places. It's not what
| the web was meant to be, at all.
|
| On the other hand, I have no reason to assume Twitter will die.
| What trust are we talking about here? I have no idea. People
| will just continue using it. In fact, I vastly prefer what's
| happening now than what the last management was doing.
|
| Not trying to be confrontational here. I'm trusting my gut
| feeling more because I've seen through so many things that
| range from delusions to failed ideas in the last decade:
| Theranos, WeWork, Metaverse, Clubhouse, Crypto [other than
| Bitcoin], Social networks pretending to be the arbiters of
| truth, etc. I have a strong BS detector.
| arnorhs wrote:
| I think twitter can be replaced by another twitter. something
| that share some of the nice traits, but leaves out the others.
|
| Whatever it is it won't be federated though.. except maybe as a
| small side feature "normies" dont know about.
| simonw wrote:
| Launching a big brand Twitter alternative on top of the
| existing Fediverse feels to me like it could work incredibly
| well right now.
|
| The obsolute worst thing about the Fediverse (Mastodon et al)
| right now is the onboarding process. You have to "chose an
| instance" before you can even start understanding what that's
| about - and if you chose wrong you might find your instance
| gets switched off leaving you high and dry in the future.
|
| Now imagine Tumblr ships ActivityPub. Every Tumblr user can
| now follow any Mastodon user, and vice-versa. The Tumblr
| ecosystem gets a whole bunch of new high quality available
| content. Mastodon enthusiasts can tell their skeptical
| friends "go sign up for a Tumblr account and follow me from
| that".
|
| Or... if you're launching something new, why would you launch
| from a state of zero accounts when you could launch with
| Fediverse compatibility and have ~10m accounts that your
| first users can start following straight away?
| LegitShady wrote:
| I dont think the general public wants to do the work.
| centralized systems leverage that to win in the long run.
| szundi wrote:
| A closed secretive company must be better for sure.
| tfehring wrote:
| More popular related post:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35391433
| znpy wrote:
| > By Twitter
|
| so what is that, no one wants to put their name on this?
| JulianWasTaken wrote:
| Isn't it slightly ironic for a post on transparency to be signed
| "Twitter" as its author instead of some human? Who's speaking at
| this point?
|
| Of course in context of the rest of their missteps it's a tiny
| thing, but it stands out to me immediately when seeing the post
| at least.
| xena wrote:
| This is so hilarious that I'm having trouble laughing at it. I
| can't even describe how funny this is. I love 2023. It's giving
| science fiction authors a hard time trying to keep up with the
| absurdity.
| olalonde wrote:
| I genuinely can't tell if this comment is meant to be
| satirical, well done either way.
| sho_hn wrote:
| The organization is speaking, which is made up of many people.
| This is fine.
| thih9 wrote:
| Fine maybe, just not very transparent.
| jzb wrote:
| I have lots to gripe about with Twitter these days, but I
| don't see anything non-transparent about a corporate
| release not being signed by a specific person. It is most
| likely a product of a group, not a specific person.
| Attaching a name to it doesn't make it any more
| transparent. It just puts that person in the crosshairs
| given the current environment.
| [deleted]
| kylecazar wrote:
| Doesn't really bother me, not sure how useful it would be to
| include a name.
|
| I think it's safe to assume at the very least who approved it.
| wilg wrote:
| No?
| jader201 wrote:
| For me, at least, I don't even see it signed by "Twitter".
|
| I see a "By" under the headline, with an empty space where the
| author should be. (Maybe it's since been updated/removed?)
|
| Which is even more ironic/hilarious.
| tripdout wrote:
| Twitter shows up next to "By" for me, but it took a few
| seconds to load in after the page itself. Maybe it's being
| blocked by a script/ad blocker in your end?
| jader201 wrote:
| No, it actually has something to do with my Twitter
| account. If I log out (without changing any extensions), I
| see "Twitter" show up as the author.
| [deleted]
| bena wrote:
| I think it's fine. It represents the opinion of the corporation
| as a whole. The opposite of "the opinions here are my own and
| do not reflect blah blah blah".
|
| It has no singular author.
| ppetty wrote:
| This is the first step... any thoughts on step 2? How many steps
| until advance notice for API changes?
| rqtwteye wrote:
| Step 3 is profit.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35391433
| mephitix wrote:
| No it's not. Different articles.
| cramjabsyn wrote:
| Lol talk about tone deaf and rudderless. This is their era of
| impulsive decisions, cyber bullying and demise (I hope)
| [deleted]
| pessimizer wrote:
| Reading this thread, I thought this press release was going to be
| interesting. Instead it seems totally anodyne and reasonable.
| Imagine being so angry that twitter is going to put its
| recommendation code on github.
| grumple wrote:
| Was this written by an LLM? Kinda feels like it. But maybe that's
| just the nature of corporate copy...
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