Ask HN: How would you design an alternative Twitter • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How would you design an alternative Twitter

#161

Post by Tangurena2 » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 1:45 PM UTC

> would get automatically deleted after some years

Some people may not be allowed to delete (or to be deleted by someone else) their "tweets". US Presidents are one such category of people - all of their works while in office belong to the country.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Records_Act

In some lawsuits, records such as tweets need to be produced in what is called "discovery". It is possible to lose lawsuits - by default - for either destroying or refusing to turn over such records. A modern example of how expensive such behavior can be would be to look at how much Alex Jones is going to be paying out.

Re: Ask HN: How would you design an alternative Twitter

#162

Post by naravara » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 1:45 PM UTC

marcusverus wrote: post #114

ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we already have a "public town square": it's called DNS, Domain Name System, and it's great. With about $20/year you get "verified" and everyone knows you own "foo.com", or .whatever [1]. It's just that we, as in we the users, failed this great "public town square" because as soon as we get in the public we get scared and need to belong to a tribe: the Twitter tribe, the TikTok tribe, the Instagram tribe, and so…

> But we already have a "public town square": it's called DNS, Domain Name System, and it's great. With about $20/year you get "verified" and everyone knows you own "foo.com", or .whatever [1]. A public square is "an open public area in a city or town where people gather". DNS is far too abstract to even remotely resemble a public square--just like "capitalism" or "zoning laws" are too abstract to resemble a public s…

When people talk about the town square in this sense they're sort of groping at the concept of a "public sphere" that Habermas talked about.

Re: Ask HN: How would you design an alternative Twitter

#163

Post by rtpg » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 1:46 PM UTC

I feel like people are overstating the effects of mastodon fragmentation. Email "works" and is functionally extremely similar to what is going on with Mastodon and ActivityPub (the data stuff is not exactly equivalent, but...).

The beauty of a lot of it is how HTTP URLs to other domains just work. You see a thing, you click a link, you see their profile. Sure it's on another domain etc, but..

There's definitely a lot of busted data at the federated timeline level. But maybe that's actually fine. Gives the entire network a bit of an analog quality.

Re: Ask HN: How would you design an alternative Twitter

#164

Post by kjellsbells » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 1:46 PM UTC

bambax wrote: post #145

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You want to solve the problem of people saying racist things, so you decide to destroy the public square "Public Square" online is a fallacy. A public square is typically thought of where someone grabs the attention of all passerby and is voicing their thoughts. Those thoughts voiced are short lived and can only be broadcast as far as the sound wave will carry them. Social media like twitter allows millions of peop…

> "Public Square" online is a fallacy. A public square is typically thought of where someone grabs the attention of all passerby and is voicing their thoughts. Those thoughts voiced are short lived and can only be broadcast as far as the sound wave will carry them. That's very true. Maybe a better Twitter could incorporate actual geographical distance. You would have to choose where you are and could only see message…

Isnt your proposal basically Reddit? Subreddits are nodes that require you to be close to them to see whats going on (via joining the sub), with a public square, /r/popular, artificially built from the top posts on those nodes. For some definition of "top".

Re: Ask HN: How would you design an alternative Twitter

#165

Post by MonkeyMalarky » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 1:47 PM UTC

nebqr wrote: post #152

joshxyz wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Change someone else's avatar This is hilarious

That's the real money-maker. EDIT: The way it ends up working on the forums is that if you do something to annoy someone that isn't against the rules, they can spend 10 bux and change your avatar to a photo of something that you don't want showing up on every post you make (and likely giant red text that says something like "Ask me about [something offensive]), and then you have to spend 5 bux to undo it.

Yup. Profiting directly from the drama. More drama? More money! At least in the short term. In the long term it just became a weird cliquey mess. I think that hurt their growth prospects as it put off potential new users. But those users just went to reddit anyways.. reddit consumed their entire audience in the end.

Re: Ask HN: How would you design an alternative Twitter

#166

Post by tough » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 1:48 PM UTC

cnity wrote: post #129

azangru wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the royal 'we' as in all of humanity Sorry for being a prick; but the royal 'we' is the exact opposite of the 'we' in all of humanity. Royal 'we' is when the speaker refers to him-or-herself with the first-person plural pronoun, as was common among sovereigns ("we the Emperor of the French"). These days most commonly seen in academic articles, where single authors refer to themselves as "we" for some reason.

> single authors refer to themselves as "we" for some reason They mean "we" as in "you (the reader) and I (the author)". "We can see that", etc. It's as if the author is a guide on a journey.

Oh, nice, would have never guessed

Re: Ask HN: How would you design an alternative Twitter

#167

Post by naravara » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 1:48 PM UTC

ctvo wrote: post #121

The technical challenges are solved. It's not an interesting discussion to cheer for your favorite tech stack. What's interesting is what value Twitter gives and what could a new platform target? For me, there's a slice of Twitter users that provide information, entertainment, and context that I can't get elsewhere. This could be something from a mid-level analyst re: market volatility or a college professor at a sma…

> If I could get rid of the celebrities, the thought leaders, the self marketers, the low content hate, and the bots, and only be left with the above in a moderated environment I'd welcome this global town square.

Sadly many of those people come for the self-marketers and thought leaders though.

I've noticed this in Reddit too. A lot of posters in places like AskHistorians and AskScience have left, questions just don't get answered as much anymore and the quality of responses has gone way down. I expect those people came for the memes and interesting articles (and maybe /r/GoneWild) and participated in this value additive stuff while they happened to be around. But as Reddit got less interesting, more focused on memes and political fighting, and generally became less of a fun place to hang out they seem to spend less time on it and post less.

Re: Ask HN: How would you design an alternative Twitter

#168

Post by GrinningFool » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 1:48 PM UTC

ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #128

marcusverus wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But we already have a "public town square": it's called DNS, Domain Name System, and it's great. With about $20/year you get "verified" and everyone knows you own "foo.com", or .whatever [1]. A public square is "an open public area in a city or town where people gather". DNS is far too abstract to even remotely resemble a public square--just like "capitalism" or "zoning laws" are too abstract to resemble a public s…

DNS is the public town square: when using browsers, navigating across domains, we are all fundamentally gathered in the DNS space. Me having "foo.com" is akin to setting up a stall in this public town square and selling my vegetables, and you are free to visit "foo.com" and buy into my ideology, or simply never visit it. And yes, precisely, "foo.com", or "twitter.com", or "tiktok.com", cannot, by definition, be digit…

That seems like saying your town is a public town square because everyone has an address that can be reached by post.

Re: Ask HN: How would you design an alternative Twitter

#169

Post by baxtr » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 1:49 PM UTC

Shadowed_ wrote: post #137

baxtr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting yes. But mainly a waste of time.

If you waste time on something that's interestning to you, time is not being wasted.

Not if your proclaimed goal is to create a Twitter alternative.

Re: Ask HN: How would you design an alternative Twitter

#170

Post by thinkingemote » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 1:49 PM UTC

wahnfrieden wrote: post #158

balaji1 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inventing some protocol around the Dunbar number is interesting. There was something similar in the Weatherford's book on Genghis Khan [1][2]. This system was described to be very effective for communicating and coordinating the huge military. > In Genghis Khan's military system, a tumen was recursively built from units of 10 (aravt), 100 (zuut) and 1,000 (mingghan), each with a leader reporting to the next higher le…

Dunbar’s number is discredited reactionary nonsense, see wengrow/graeber research

Is there some research on a law of 5? As in 5 is the max amount of connections and permutations in a group of people which it's possible for a member to work out the permutations?

For example in a group of 3 me bill and Alice I can model bills view of me and Alice alone, me and Alice together, me Alice and bill together, etc etc

Beyond a certain number it's not really possible.