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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?

#241

Post by beemanners »

dpark wrote: post #209
beemanners wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally, at any scale over ~500 computers that run continuously, investing in private infrastructure is going to be 1/2 to 1/5 the cost of public cloud, including people costs. The real levers for improving engineering spend are around complexity of your actual serving software, which doesn't depend on / isn't really influenced by who you buy your computers from.

I don't buy that claim at all. No way you're building private infrastructure for 1/5 the cost of Azure or AWS. Or even 1/2. If you're comparing some servers in a 4th tier colo with a poor SLA to AWS and pretending that devops time is free, then sure. But if you're actually building something with comparable reliability and availability, then no way. You're going to spend a lot more than you'd expect on extra capacity…

You're severely discounting the very large margin those companies take. It is not hard to build a medium sized infrastructure, with quality, cheaply - if you have access to expertise. This usually means hiring a few infrastructure jockeys from the larger companies.

Your SLA will likely be better than with public cloud.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#242

Post by Merad »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #135
sverige wrote: post #126

I've never been able to understand Twitter's popularity. To me, it's like a website's comment section without the attached content. And most of the stuff I've seen on Twitter is only slightly better than YouTube comments, and often worse. I know there are lots of Twitter users here -- seriously, I'm not trying to be funny or sarcastic, I just don't get the appeal. What am I missing?

Twitter gives you the ability to curate yourself a feed from comments of people you deem interesting enough to follow and keep up-to-date with, as far as I know. I mostly use it for my literary pursuits, and being able to follow editors, agents, and authors at the same time with minimal hassle has made twitter very useful to the fiction scene. Alternatively, in the tech world, it gives you live updates on various dev…

The problem with Twitter, IMO, is that it's a fire hose. Let's say that I decide to follow John Carmack. I'm interested in his thoughts on technical topics and especially articles or posts that he may have written. Instead, I get all of that plus* the inspirational quotes he posts every morning, his political opinions, his thoughts on current events, etc. None of which I care about, and none of which (AFAIK) Twitter gives me the ability to filter.

*I don't know if John Carmack actually posts anything of the sort, just a hypothetical.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#243

Post by zhemao »

tibiapejagala wrote: post #228
zhemao wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL, most openly corrupt president. Somebody clearly hasn't read much US history. Andrew Jackson literally handed out political appointments to his supporters and relatives. Hilary Clinton isn't even close to being the most corrupt. She probably wouldn't even be in the top ten.

>Hilary Clinton isn't even close to being the most corrupt. She probably wouldn't even be in the top ten. Technically you are right, but this sounds pretty depressing. At least she didn't make it to the top 10!

Well, there's only been 44 presidents. So top ten is the top 23%. I'd wager she's barely even in the top 50%. There was a shocking amount of corruption during the gilded age.

Also, she's really not that corrupt. So she takes campaign contributions from wall street financiers. So does every other political candidate. She's released all of her tax returns, so we knew what all her financial connections were, even before the emails were leaked.

Don't get me wrong. I don't like her, I don't like her Wall Street connections, and I don't like most of her politics. But I'm still going to vote for her. I at least recognize that she can be a competent president, which is more than I can say about any of the other candidates (and yes, that includes Gary Johnson and Jill Stein).

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#244

Post by [deleted] »

vkou wrote: post #234
CoryG89 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#245

Post by funkyy »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #232
funkyy wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Legal would be outsourced, marketing same, spam control - yup, the same. That leaves developers and critical function staff. Twitter could easily work with 200 staff from 2 locations.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#246

Post by mullen »

seizethecheese wrote: post #222
dagamer34 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WhatsApp isn't real-time, and there's no reason for traffic 2 weeks ago to be any bigger than tomorrow. However, there's a Presidential Debate tonight so you know Twitter's traffic is going to be off the charts.

WhatsApp isn't real time?

Twitter and WhatsApp are both Real Time. However, if they could save a lot money going from Real Time to Near Real Time, they should do it.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#247

Post by mullen »

XorNot wrote: post #196
sdenton4 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH, continuing to develop that infrastructure may be continuing to place money on a losing bet... If they're actually running their own infra cheaper than cloud would allow, they should absolutely keep going with their own. But it's foolish to keep doing something simply because it's what you're already doing.

There's a fairly highly probability this is true? AWS/GCE are not cheap. They're cost-effective for certain classes of use-case, but beyond a given scale, or with certain base-level requirements, you're way better off colocating a bunch of a machines.

AWS can be cheap if you architect right. However, bandwidth costs are going to kill you at AWS.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#248

Post by h4nkoslo »

eropple wrote: post #239
h4nkoslo wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-Con…

It's a shame that we had to get this deep into the thread to get you to admit your preferred policy (and Twitter's, apparently) is that straightforward ideological purges by default make the platform better (unless you can prove a negative and establish that no one ever had a sad as a result of their writing).

Instead of leading with spurious claims of abuse, next time you should go with that on top.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#249

Post by crazy1van »

treehau5_ wrote: post #90
enraged_camel wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>and a lot were genuinely surprised that Twitter does not in fact represent the will of the Democratic Primary. Yep, we found out that a small group of DNC insiders do, by controlling the media narrative and conspiring with party insiders to sabotage the campaign of the non-favored candidate. I mean, let's get real: there is a reason the DNC chairwoman Debbie Schultz resigned. re: downvotes... everything I've said i…

The silicon valley bleeding hearts don't like to hear the truth when it doesn't fit their narrative or look good through their valley, rose colored, horn rimmed glasses. Even Mountain View coordinated with her campaign. As much as a self serving narcissist Trump is, I find it equally appalling that she gets so much support. The entire Wallstreet transcript scandal once again got buried by Trump-mania. This will be th…

> Democracy is a farce in this country.

Where did this claim come from? None of the (many) scandals in the election so far have involved fraudulent voting. Democracy in America is very far from a farce. Instead it's more that you don't like the choices the voters have made.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#250

Post by Avshalom »

Karunamon wrote: post #210
JonnieCache wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>general catalog of human discourse I would contest this. Twitter represents a very narrow sector of society.

What sector would that be? 313M active users per month does not seem very "narrow". That's more than half the population of North America!

on the other hand it's ~5 of the global population and significant number of those 313m are corporate accounts and automated broadcasters.
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