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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?

#291

Post by nixos »

cyphar wrote: post #286
crazy1van wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

America's electoral college voting system is a joke though. Not to mention that voting isn't mandatory. Australia solved both of those problems with a preferential, mandatory voting system.

> Not to mention that voting isn't mandatory. Australia solved both of those problems with a preferential, mandatory voting system

How will that stop corruption? Presumably, when someone is being dragged to vote, he'll vote for "the more familiar name", in other words, the name most repeated on TV, in other words, the one who raised the most funds.

If anything, voting should be hard (but fair) so that only people that actually know something about the candidates (and political system) should be able to decided which one is better.

How to do that? No idea.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#292

Post by andy_ppp »

No. Twitter would be better off using machine learning to segment their users (the way Hello is trying to do manually). For example they should know I love Nike trainers, Arsenal football club, I'm a developer, I'm thinking about buying a house etc. and surface this information when I'm writing a tweet such that it knows if I'm talking about Arsenal or my trip around Japan and gives a richer UI based on this. Making my stream more interesting i.e. when a game is on and I'm writing about it there should be way to message only Arsenal people...

All of this should be automatically added/tagged up and while you can remove the metadata it'll be right most of the time. The advertising potential is incredible.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#293

Post by egypturnash »

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?

You're missing friends on Twitter. I use it a lot because a lot of my friends are there; it's sort of like an asynchronous semi-public IRC channel where I decide who's in it. They, and whatever random thoughts they happen to feel like broadcasting on Twitter, are the "content".

It's a social network. If you're not being social it's pretty goddamn boring.

It's not without its flaws - nuanced, lengthy discourse is pretty much impossible thanks to that 140-character limit - but it's been a great way to keep up with my friends on an informal basis.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#294

Post by egypturnash »

andy_ppp wrote: post #292

No. Twitter would be better off using machine learning to segment their users (the way Hello is trying to do manually). For example they should know I love Nike trainers, Arsenal football club, I'm a developer, I'm thinking about buying a house etc. and surface this information when I'm writing a tweet such that it knows if I'm talking about Arsenal or my trip around Japan and gives a richer UI based on this. Making…

"The advertising potential is incredible."

Maybe some things don't need to have advertising crammed into every possible corner. Maybe some things don't need to be monetized to the maximum extent possible.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#295

Post by kalleboo »

Merad wrote: post #242
SolaceQuantum wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Meanwhile Facebook does filter out things it thinks you're not interested in, and it outrages people that they're missing out on something.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#296

Post by cyphar »

hodgesrm wrote: post #290
cyphar wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America's electoral college voting system is a joke though. Not to mention that voting isn't mandatory. Australia solved both of those problems with a preferential, mandatory voting system.

Why is it a joke? It's been around for a couple of hundred years so it can't be that terrible. Also, it helps avoid the problem of settling close elections--we saw that in Florida in 2000. Without the electoral college the Florida mess would conceivably extend over all 50 states any time there is a close contest.

> It's been around for a couple of hundred years so it can't be that terrible.

Heh. If only everything that is old was good. The all-or-nothing electoral college system:

1. Removes power from all people, because they vote for electors not for the actual candidates.

2. Removes representation of people in both swing and predetermined states, because they don't get represented by their elector (all electors have to vote for the same party, not according to the fraction of their state that voted for party X). However, in a weird twist, not all states require that electors vote for the candidate the state told them to vote for -- meaning that they have insane amounts of power.

3. The way electors are assigned actually means that small states have more voting power than large states -- meaning that you can effectively become president if you can get the right 22% of the USA to vote for you.

Oh, and please note that the electoral college system came about because the founding fathers thought you (the commonman) was too dumb to understand how voting should work. So they gave the power of voting to electors.

Here's some videos on the topic:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90RajY2nrgk

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUS9mM8Xbbw

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wC42HgLA4k

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#297

Post by cyphar »

nixos wrote: post #291
cyphar wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America's electoral college voting system is a joke though. Not to mention that voting isn't mandatory. Australia solved both of those problems with a preferential, mandatory voting system.

> Not to mention that voting isn't mandatory. Australia solved both of those problems with a preferential, mandatory voting system How will that stop corruption? Presumably, when someone is being dragged to vote, he'll vote for "the more familiar name", in other words, the name most repeated on TV, in other words, the one who raised the most funds. If anything, voting should be hard (but fair) so that only people tha…

> How will that stop corruption? Presumably, when someone is being dragged to vote, he'll vote for "the more familiar name", in other words, the name most repeated on TV, in other words, the one who raised the most funds. If anything, voting should be hard (but fair) so that only people that actually know something about the candidates (and political system) should be able to decided which one is better.

You could also (rather than viewing it as an education issue, that "dumb people shouldn't be allowed to vote" [not a quote]) see it as a representation issue. If only the "people who know something" can vote, now you've over-represented a sample of your population.

The only way to be sure that elections have the maximum benefit for everyone is to ensure everyone votes. Allowing people to not vote is not a benefit -- even if you argue that they're votes are not helpful.

And ultimately, in Australia you are allowed (through a legal loophole) to submit invalid votes -- a vote that doesn't count toward any party. The only thing that is mandatory is that you show up. Everyone knows about invalid (donkey) votes, so if someone really wanted to abstain they have an avenue for it.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#298

Post by rchowe »

notyourwork wrote: post #280
XorNot wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My understanding is Netflix uses AWS for their infrastructure. Are they not on a similar scale as twitter with similar needs? Or is there a difference I am not seeing, perhaps a different use case. (This is a serious question, I am not doubting you.)

I believe that Netflix mainly uses AWS because their needs tend to surge dramatically at certain times, so that if they built their own worldwide server network, it would have to be vastly over-provisioned for when people get home at 7 PM and start streaming.

Plus they were a pretty early-adopter of AWS, and they have a ton of infrastructure running on it already.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#299

Post by logicallee »

sanderjd wrote: post #285
logicallee wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

huh? If cell phones didn't exist, you would make an arrangement to go meet someone at a certain time and place, and if you both didn't show up, OH WELL. "stood up". That doesn't diminish from the value and buy-in of cell phones and is a bizarre argument to make regarding the value, if any, of twitter.

I don't really get this analogy. Cell phones are a qualitative improvement in that situation. How is sending a DM an improvement over sending an email?

I guarantee you that every single person sending and receiving DM's has an email address, so you'll have to ask them.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#300

Post by matt4077 »

misnamed wrote: post #275
kharms wrote: post #2

This would be fantastic. Twitter's utility is in its open (inherently less profitable) nature. As a data source for academic study it's unparalleled.

Bonus: non-profits can still make tons of money for their founders and operators. People think it means 'no profit' but that is totally off base.

Operators, yes – they can get typical compensation. But a non-profit founder doesn't get anything.
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