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Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

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Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#101

Post by stale2002 »

eropple wrote: post #16
seany wrote: post #5

It would only be better if they unbanned everyone and stopped trying to bend the messages sent over the platform. At the moment it seems like it might be better for it to just burn down, so something more open can replace it.

Do you think they should unban people who threaten to rape and kill people because they disagree about video games? If so, why?

Private decentralized ban lists would be a good solution to this. If you don't like people who say things that you believe are terrible, you can subscribe to a ban list.

If you don't care about people saying offensive things, you just don't subscribe to any ban lists. Or maybe only subscribe to spam ban lists.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#102

Post by mattmanser »

chatterbeak wrote: post #67
laurencei wrote: post #46

I'm not going to pretend you can run Twitter on an DigitalOcean box for $40pm with one guy. But when I see things like $100m in losses - I can't help but feel there is a real opportunity for Twitter to streamline its engineering and operational costs? Is there a breakdown available of where/how they spend their money?

We routinely run 5MM simultaneous TCP/IP connections on a single 12-core box (with Erlang!). There's no reason for Twitter to need all those employees and all that hardware. If someone can get it at a fire sale price, and reduce it to 100 employees, they can have a nice business.

Twitter's needs are several orders of magnitude greater than that, and those kind of problems have a habit of being exponential.

It's not even the same kind of problem, they've got to tailor their response to every user.

Finally, their investors simply cannot accept 'a nice little business'. They need Twitter to deliver serious ROI.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#103

Post by stale2002 »

eropple wrote: post #43
CoryG89 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't necessarily hold this view, but I can see the merit in it. I tend to lean toward purist as far as free speech goes. Slippery slope arguments and what not. Personally, I like the concept of outsourcing the policing/moderation of a community to the community itself. I think what online forums do by promoting moderators from the long time, trusted user base is a step in the right direction. The upvote/downvote s…

Great freedoms come with great responsibilities. I tend to think that free speech works only when the consequences of using that free speech...y'know...exist. In a universe of pseudonymity and anonymity, those consequences don't exist. Even when you are literally committing the crime of assault (friendly reminder: assault is the threat of violence, battery is the violence) against somebody because they have the temer…

But there WOULD be consequences. The consequences is that you would end up on a lot of people's ban lists.

That way you don't have to interact with people you don't want to.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#104

Post by logicallee »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #83
laurencei wrote: post #46

I'm not going to pretend you can run Twitter on an DigitalOcean box for $40pm with one guy. But when I see things like $100m in losses - I can't help but feel there is a real opportunity for Twitter to streamline its engineering and operational costs? Is there a breakdown available of where/how they spend their money?

> when I see things like $100m in losses Twitter lost $521MM in 2015, $578MM in 2014 and $645MM in 2013. Hundred million dollar losses would be a step forward at this point.

the problem is that by other metrics twitter is doing pretty well. There are very important people who will engage you in conversation (such as here) and ask you to DM them on twitter. That's insane.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#105

Post by ghaff »

_nedR wrote: post #87
rublev wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing what ? Holy shit.

Fwiw, this article was posted was just the other day on hn : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12626314

Yep. And, frankly, even within large or large-ish profitable companies, it's not uncommon to hear people making complaints along the lines of "What on earth do all the people in $XYZ_GROUP even do?" Now, I have no doubt that there are indeed inefficiencies within many companies and those inefficiencies tend to increase with scale. But there probably aren't 4x the number of people in finance, for example, that there need to be.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#107

Post by product50 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #83
laurencei wrote: post #46

I'm not going to pretend you can run Twitter on an DigitalOcean box for $40pm with one guy. But when I see things like $100m in losses - I can't help but feel there is a real opportunity for Twitter to streamline its engineering and operational costs? Is there a breakdown available of where/how they spend their money?

> when I see things like $100m in losses Twitter lost $521MM in 2015, $578MM in 2014 and $645MM in 2013. Hundred million dollar losses would be a step forward at this point.

Majority of those losses is because Twitter pays its employees large amounts of stock to retain them. Check out this analysis on how exorbitant Twitter's stock based compensation is vs. Facebook: https://medium.com/@fwiwm2c/stock-based-compensation-faceboo...

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#108

Post by komali2 »

logicallee wrote: post #104
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when I see things like $100m in losses Twitter lost $521MM in 2015, $578MM in 2014 and $645MM in 2013. Hundred million dollar losses would be a step forward at this point.

the problem is that by other metrics twitter is doing pretty well. There are very important people who will engage you in conversation (such as here) and ask you to DM them on twitter. That's insane.

What do you think would happen if Twitter didn't exist? You'd probably just email them or something.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#109

Post by ethbro »

riprowan wrote: post #65
laurencei wrote: post #46

I'm not going to pretend you can run Twitter on an DigitalOcean box for $40pm with one guy. But when I see things like $100m in losses - I can't help but feel there is a real opportunity for Twitter to streamline its engineering and operational costs? Is there a breakdown available of where/how they spend their money?

I have the same belief. The business could easily be run with a fraction of its current overhead -- IF it was willing to accept a "small is beautiful" existence. The problem is, "small is beautiful" doesn't get you multibillion-dollar IPOs....

If a company morphs into a non-profit, I can't imagine that would be good for existing holders of options (pointedly including upper management who would make the decision in the first place).

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#110

Post by jessaustin »

pessimizer wrote: post #72
chimeracoder wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they've changed it, or maybe it's for certain accounts, but I've definitely seen "Log in to view more" when scrolling down.

I've never had a Twitter account, and I've never seen that.

Maybe scroll down a bit further?
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