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Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer to Leave Company

nytimes.com

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Re: Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer to Leave Company

#231

Post by cderwin »

maxerickson wrote: post #142
cderwin wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before someone comments noting that the 1st amendment only restricts government and is not binding on twitter: please note that free speech is a valuable community principle for the same reasons it is a valuable legal principle. The "marketplace of ideas" is very real and very valuable and ought not be censored. Moreover, it is very hard to consider social networks in this day and age to be acting as anything other t…

On the other hand, it's perfectly reasonable to remove some disruptive individual from a lecture (think someone repeatedly shouting the name of a soda in order to disrupt the lecture, not an invited speaker). This is the same sort of removal of ideas from the marketplace that you are talking about, it's just probably not one you want to use as a test for what you have articulated.

The two are fundamentally different platforms. Twitter is an open space provided as a free service to the public at large, while a lecture is a fundamentally closed platform (only the lecturer speaks) only open to those enrolled in a specific class.

That said, even in the example you give it is not always considered appropriate to remove people causing disruption. Consider, for example, a conservative speaker giving a guest lecture being protested against -- often loud enough the the lecturer needs to shout to be heard by his audience, even though protesters are outside.

Here is a relevant video of Ben Shapiro giving a lecture at Penn State: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLpa6fsTxCA

Re: Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer to Leave Company

#232

Post by roystonvassey »

inimino wrote: post #222
angry-hacker wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the platform just the best medium for harassing and trolling? What else can you do with 140 chars? Have you ever heard about good tweets? It's always negativity.

Since the election I've been spending time on HN and to a lesser extent Twitter. Every time I visit Twitter I find myself instinctively reaching for the downvote button, but there isn't one. About the only thing you can do when someone says (or retweets) something totally idiotic on Twitter is either unfollow, or, of course, reply. In other words, there is no way to register disapproval without simultaneously calling…

+1. I spent a considerable amount of time on Twitter between August and November of this year. I quit cold turkey primarily because of the widespread negativity. Plus, its endless stream of tweets had a certain cheap novelty factor that coaxes you to spend more time on it than is warranted or necessary. HN and Reddit, to some extent, mitigate this in just the way I want.

I'd be interested to hear about what are the reasons and ways people find Twitter useful/interesting.

Re: Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer to Leave Company

#233

Post by IgorPartola »

inimino wrote: post #222
angry-hacker wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the platform just the best medium for harassing and trolling? What else can you do with 140 chars? Have you ever heard about good tweets? It's always negativity.

Since the election I've been spending time on HN and to a lesser extent Twitter. Every time I visit Twitter I find myself instinctively reaching for the downvote button, but there isn't one. About the only thing you can do when someone says (or retweets) something totally idiotic on Twitter is either unfollow, or, of course, reply. In other words, there is no way to register disapproval without simultaneously calling…

As a counter argument I present Reddit, which as a downcote button but is even more notorious for its abusive communities. Is it possible that HN is just more heavily represented by mature people who tend to communicate better than average and the Magic isn't really in the downvote algorithm?

Re: Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer to Leave Company

#234

Post by firebones »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #150
flukus wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lay off approx 60-70% of the staff. How will that go down with investors expecting growth?

Considering layoffs typically increase stock prices in the short term, help increase profits in the short term, I would imagine short term investors would be happy. Long term investors it's hard to say because trimming the fat allows you to try much, much longer than you could have before. Overall I would imagine long term investors would have a positive feeling but only if a solid image is communicated to them regar…

Which 60-70%? It seems crazy to think it's that simple unless you can a) articulate which employees contribute to revenue, and b) take into account the compensation/option-based expense.

Make a mistake and you not only affect revenues (by cutting those contributing to revenue) but also cutting the ability to retain those remaining who actually do contribute to revenue.

No doubt there's room for cuts, but 60-70% seems way on the high side.

Re: Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer to Leave Company

#235

Post by grzm »

inimino wrote: post #222
angry-hacker wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the platform just the best medium for harassing and trolling? What else can you do with 140 chars? Have you ever heard about good tweets? It's always negativity.

Since the election I've been spending time on HN and to a lesser extent Twitter. Every time I visit Twitter I find myself instinctively reaching for the downvote button, but there isn't one. About the only thing you can do when someone says (or retweets) something totally idiotic on Twitter is either unfollow, or, of course, reply. In other words, there is no way to register disapproval without simultaneously calling…

Downvotes are stronger than upvotes, and the downvoted content gets buried.

I haven't seen this mentioned before, nor does it match with my observations of behavior on the site, though I admit the calculations of how down/up votes contribute to dimming is not transparent. Do you have a reference of where the relative weighting of up vs down votes is discussed?

Re: Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer to Leave Company

#236

Post by cderwin »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #139
cderwin wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before someone comments noting that the 1st amendment only restricts government and is not binding on twitter: please note that free speech is a valuable community principle for the same reasons it is a valuable legal principle. The "marketplace of ideas" is very real and very valuable and ought not be censored. Moreover, it is very hard to consider social networks in this day and age to be acting as anything other t…

Should there be an absolute right to speech, however, especially when it can be used to, for example, silence other people? This is something that countries differ on. The US's notion of near-absolute free speech is rather unusual.

First off, it's not practical to ban all speech supporting censorship, because then all speech supporting that specific policy (including your own comment) would also have to be banned.

I'm not aware of other countries suppressing speech that is intended to censor others, though I am aware that countries like France criminally censor anti-semitic remarks such as holocaust denial. Is this what you mean? I've never heard of the rationale behind that censorship being that that speech is intended to silence others.

In any case, I do think there should be a near-absolute right to speech for three reasons. The first is a slippery slope argument -- any time you criminalize behavior that is open to human interpretation, the power of that interpretation can and will be abused. The risk of censorship is too great to put in the hands of regulators or politicians, even with n degrees of "oversight".

Speech also cannot cause direct harm, and censoring does cause harm in that it takes away someone's right. For that reason, it seems reasonable to censor speech that actually cause harm to happen, though idle threats or general instructions do not qualify.

Lastly, banning speech does not allow the ideas it represents to be addressed in a serious manner, meaning that proponents of that speech will always (likely somewhat correctly) be able to claim said speech was banned in order to enable attacks son that sort of speech. This goes hand-in-hand with the idea that eventually whatever speech that would be banned would just be defeated in the marketplace of ideas, and banning speech just prevents it from being struck down as irresponsible on even ground. I think this can be evidenced by their being no more serious a problem with holocaust denial in the United States than elsewhere in the west where it is banned.

As you can probably tell, my opinions fall very close to the Supreme Court's interpretatin of the first amendment, so I guess I am a bit biased in my opinion.

Re: Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer to Leave Company

#238

Post by cderwin »

fullshark wrote: post #154
cderwin wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before someone comments noting that the 1st amendment only restricts government and is not binding on twitter: please note that free speech is a valuable community principle for the same reasons it is a valuable legal principle. The "marketplace of ideas" is very real and very valuable and ought not be censored. Moreover, it is very hard to consider social networks in this day and age to be acting as anything other t…

Yeah this is pretty much my take (even though I was that person you mentioned)

Sorry about that! I didn't mean to single you out, I've just seen people substitute "but [blank] isn't the gov't" for an actual justifiable reason to ban speech that I wanted to say something.

Re: Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer to Leave Company

#239

Post by firebones »

No one is asking my opinion, but here it is:

Trifurcate Twitter into three distinct parts:

* The social--what users actually use it for. * The ad platform. * The realtime gestalt/search platform.

The latter is what is inadequately funded and considered.

Twitter has a latency advantage on the pulse of thought across the user base. The user base is already high-value for this relative to the morass of Facebook users. This is the key differentiator. This is what you base the platform and the value of search upon. You don't bury it by restricting the API, or trying to shift it into the realm of the social platform with "Moments"--you build dependency upon it, and monetize that unique value by those who need to keep the pulse. This creates value for the other two parts. It is also woefully underfunded.

Someone mentioned an AWS-like model. That is thinking along the right track. Make the gestalt a utility that people will pay for.

Yes, you still have all the spam/hate issues on the social platform, and those need to be solved. But those only become a corporate imperative if Twitter is resigned to merely being a social network rather than a platform.

Maybe it's actually 4 parts--I forgot about the live event deals (e.g., NFL games). There's a raw, traditional media part, but I'd align that with the advertising part.

Re: Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer to Leave Company

#240

Post by cderwin »

cderwin wrote: post #121
wyck wrote: post #102

There is this thing called the foundation of America and it centres on what's called the 1st amendment. If you think twitter or any social platform should interfere with that and somehow grants him a platform to destroy the world then I suggest you re-evaluate your stance, stop over reacting like a 15 year old, and pick up a copy of 1984.

Before someone comments noting that the 1st amendment only restricts government and is not binding on twitter: please note that free speech is a valuable community principle for the same reasons it is a valuable legal principle. The "marketplace of ideas" is very real and very valuable and ought not be censored. Moreover, it is very hard to consider social networks in this day and age to be acting as anything other t…

Replying to myself because parent was flagged: why was it flagged? It didn't say anything outright offensive or disturbing, and even though its tone was bordering on rude, it certainly raised a valid point (just look at the civil discussion below it). It is particularly troubling that a comment against suppressing speech on forums like this would be censored. I understand that HN is not Times Square but it is a public forum, and I do think a reasonable assumption of freedom of expression is warranted.
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