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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?

#231

Post by lvs »

ghaff wrote: post #147
lvs wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter is a cheap way to get response quotes for an article without asking anyone any questions. It's gotten so ridiculous that some news "content" is just a series of embedded Tweets. Serious news organizations should band together and restrain themselves from this silly practice. It violates one of the most important rules of interviewing, which is to know who the source is and what her biases might be so that the…

There's a lot of lazy journalism looking for a quote, any quote, because they're required to have one in a story they're writing. This isn't new. When I was an analyst, some reporters would call me for a quote about something. There were times when I didn't have anything to say because I didn't know anything about said thing. But some would pester me for a quote anyway so they didn't have to give someone else a call.…

The BBC was one of the most egregious pioneers in soliciting meaningless viewer responses in the pre-social media era. They would go so far as to kill 30+ seconds of airtime to soliciting/demanding "participatory" viewer responses that were invariably inane. On the plus side, at least it led to some good satire [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQnd5ilKx2Y

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#232

Post by nothrabannosir »

funkyy wrote: post #224
sambobeckingham wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50 people to maintain a site the size of Twitter?

Look at WhatsApp.

And see what? Mostly 1-to-1 events, no search, no broadcast, no history, not badgered with legal matters on any comparable scale, ...

I don't think it's comparable.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#233

Post by vkou »

pessimizer wrote: post #77
imh wrote: post #53

It seems weird to say that twitter discussion was so significant in furthering different causes. From the outside (I don't use it), I've still heard plenty about those events. From the inside, I'd bet it seems like they were the original source for the events, or at least the cause of it getting so big. On reddit/imgur/9gag/4chan/etc, there seems to be an idea that whichever one you are on is the source of whichever…

4chan and reddit have undoubtedly been the source of an enormous number of ideas and trends, though.

Which are largely storms in a teapot, with little effect on the world. They are, at their best, slacktivism.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#234

Post by vkou »

CoryG89 wrote: post #175
eropple wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The consequence for these crimes when they do not occur on the Internet is jail time. What, exactly, does a ban list mean by comparison?

Not true. I can mail anyone a letter, anonymously to their house. I can even drop it in a public mailbox w/ no return address and it will be delivered to you. Unless I mess this up some how there will be no jail time. This doesn't mean everyone wants the government to go through all of the letters and filter out the bad ones. Same goes on the internet.

Except Twitter is not mailing a letter - it's like renting up a billboard in front of Christie's house, that says that you're going to kill her and rape her.

Doing that will absolutely land you in a criminal court. 'She doesn't have to look at it' won't be a great defense, either.

Words have consequences, and centuries of precedent and legislature have established them.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#235

Post by blakeyrat »

collyw wrote: post #91
eropple wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

While I agree that its not good to make these threats, does anyone take a bunch or gamers sitting in their mothers basements seriously when they make these threats?

Even if you don't take them seriously, they can still do a lot of damage. Even ignoring the psychological elements of being constantly denigrated, these groups can usually drive people off of Twitter by sheer mass of tweets.

"Just block them", it's easy when there's one or two accounts being dicks. It's much more difficult when 4chan's recruited 50,000 accounts to be dicks.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#236

Post by blakeyrat »

RileyKyeden wrote: post #49
Rustydave wrote: post #12

How about charging users?. Like monthly plans etc.

Most of the people I talk to on Twitter don't have money to spare. They're the kind of people who have to toss up a fundraiser to make rent because they had a surprise medical bill or car repair.

They could offer "premium" accounts, the way Amazon does or Hulu used to, where there are no ads and some add-in services are discounted or free.

Or they could offer little widgets you can buy and post on your profile page, like LiveJournal does (assuming it still does; it's been ages.)

Or a combination of the two, like DeviantArt.

There's plenty of options. Hell, sell Twitter plushies. That failwhale image was pretty cute.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#237

Post by eveningcoffee »

dapz wrote: post #198
eveningcoffee wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard one of the "big data social scientists" to claim that they can now replace the population with the sample (as this is what the Twitter really is) because of, you know, big data.

If you have a demographic model of twitter users and appropriately re-weight, why is this a bad approach to take?

If I understood correctly then this was considered as a not necessary step.

Now given the Twitters nature then is there such a model that is even approximately accurate?

Or in other words, what relevant data Twitters collects and how accurate it is?

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#238

Post by pfarnsworth »

product50 wrote: post #107
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.

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...

That's probably the only good thing about Twitter then. The people making the site should be better rewarded than those at the top, that have less to do with it.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#239

Post by eropple »

h4nkoslo wrote: post #230
eropple wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I asked seany if they should unban people who make death and rape threats. I didn't assert that Twitter bans only people who make death and rape threats. So, no, I'm not "going" anywhere. Now, as to your eliding of actual malicious intent: pointing the Eye of Sauron at people, when you know-and-can't-not-know that your followers will deluge whoever you point at with death and rape threats, is not, in my book, merely…

I'm impressed by your ability to ignore the banning of people like RSM for apparently no reason other than having wrote wrongthink in another forum. I suppose that was "harmful" too? Given the left's continuing efforts to restrict freedom of association, I don't find myself under any obligation to respect their desire to exclude people of my ideological persuasion from any given platform. Ironically Twitter's censors…

I cannot find any information regarding McCain from any source that I find credible. The sites that are covering this are ones like Breitbart and Infowars, which are so incredible that, yes, I assume they're reporting from an alternate dimension until something is corroborated by somebody. And I certainly suspect that he probably did something nasty, because--and I know this will shock you deeply--that's what neo-Confederate white-supremacist gay-haters do. And since my experience with Twitter is that I have never seen somebody banned whose banning did not make the service a better place to be, and the names you drop that I do know are abject cancerous people who get off on harming other people, yeah, I will certainly give Twitter the benefit of the doubt.

If they overstep those lines, yes, I'll certainly reevaluate. And given actual proof, I'd be willing to revise my weakly-held stance even on a neo-Confederate, white-supremacist gay-hater like McCain. There's a reason that elsewhere in this thread I've made a point of saying that people who, say, threaten Donald Trump should be treated the exact same way because I don't believe that that kind of abuse is acceptable from any quarter.

But that proof will never, ever be forthcoming.

.

I'm getting kind of tired of this dance, though, so let's be really real here for a second. 'Cause I have this sneaking suspicion that this is about a very Southern flavor of "freedom", the freedom to do unto others. 'Cause I remember the hair-shirt conservative screams about BlockTogether when that rolled out, the idea that block lists were an attack on the right.

You won't go make Your Own Twitter not because you feel contrary, it's not because you're going to be a gadfly just because you Don't Respect The Left. It's because you will have nobody there who you can scream at. That's really the genesis of this complaint. It's the perceived right that other people have to listen to you.

And they don't. And that's why I'm done with you here. HAND.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#240

Post by eropple »

blakeyrat wrote: post #235
collyw wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree that its not good to make these threats, does anyone take a bunch or gamers sitting in their mothers basements seriously when they make these threats?

Even if you don't take them seriously, they can still do a lot of damage. Even ignoring the psychological elements of being constantly denigrated, these groups can usually drive people off of Twitter by sheer mass of tweets. "Just block them", it's easy when there's one or two accounts being dicks. It's much more difficult when 4chan's recruited 50,000 accounts to be dicks.

For sure. This is also why "block lists" don't actually, y'know--work. Oh, distributed block lists! Which require somebody to be abused by the new randos before they work!

At some point, and I'd personally argue that that point was a few years ago now, you take the gloves off and start eighty-sixing the bad actors.

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