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Ask HN: How would you design an alternative Twitter

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

#171

Post by ianai »

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #24

I think you're jumping into the technical bits right away without thinking through requirements/features. Maybe we (the royal 'we' as in all of humanity) shouldn't have a public town square? When you build something to have marginalized voices be heard you are also including all marginalized voices. The MarginalizedVoice super object has EqualRightsForSquirrels as well as HatefulRacistUncle child objects. There are v…

Agree. If anything I'd make it like a cross between FB-early days and twitter. i.e. whatever a post is only immediately view-able by direct contacts. Maybe even top off how many direct contacts an account can have and require payment (monthly/yearly, tiered) above that threshold. Also give users the ability to mute/delete posts unilaterally - from their view but also possibly from the site entirely. Maybe have an "auto-disconnect" available above a threshold. Trying to think of ways around the mob mentality stuff.

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

#172

Post by tough »

Tangurena2 wrote: post #161

> 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 l…

It was also pretty funny to read Elon's DM's with his billionaire friends and aids about the twitter takeover due to this when he wanted out.

Kudos to -discovery-

If you don't want something read on the future, don't write it. Its that simple

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

#174

Post by cphoover »

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…

Seems like you are looking for an intelligent filtering tool-set.

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

#175

Post by wahnfrieden »

thinkingemote wrote: post #170
wahnfrieden wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

no

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

#178

Post by nebqr »

MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #165
nebqr wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's one way of looking at it. For someone who still loves that SA forums, reddit taking all of the low effort posters and 4chan taking all the racists/incels has been a real boon to the forums.

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

#179

Post by brandall10 »

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…

I don't know if the limit needs to be geographical. I'd think it could be segmented by interest, ala discussion forums for particular hobbies. Those are private and heavily moderated, there are 'village elders' (mods/heavily active users), people are on good behavior because of this, they always seem to have a section for more controversial/political discussions for those who want it - and they tend to be civil, surprisingly enough, because users have a rep to protect in the more generalized sections and don't want to be a bad citizen. And nothing is indexed by search engines, you have to go to the site and search.

Reddit has this a bit with subreddits but it's far more loose and indexed by search engines, which I think is why it is problematic in certain ways.

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

#180

Post by bambax »

kjellsbells wrote: post #164
bambax wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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".

True, but the significant difference is that you can belong to any number of subreddits at the same time, and they're organized by topic.

In my idea the place itself would be neutral/non-significant, and you could only be in one place at a time, like IRL.

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