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Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

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Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#481

Post by JarlUlvi »

andrepd wrote: post #144
mindcrash wrote: post #24

* Remove Jack from CEO position * Let Evan return as CEO (merge with Medium) ... this will restore Twitter management to the situation around 2010, then ... * Reform or cancel the Trust & Safety council * Restore open API access and app ecosystem * Remove side wide censorship tools, add self censorship tools (a la Gab) * Reverse the timeline changes * Stop pandering to far left ideologues Something like that?

* Reform or cancel the Trust & Safety council Why. * Remove side wide censorship tools, add self censorship tools (a la Gab) Whose tools are that? * Stop pandering to far left ideologues I'm not aware of any such pandering. Care to give some examples?

Most of my friends left Twitter once they started censoring libertarians (which I am) and conservatives.

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#482

Post by JarlUlvi »

patmcguire wrote: post #329
mindcrash wrote: post #24

* Remove Jack from CEO position * Let Evan return as CEO (merge with Medium) ... this will restore Twitter management to the situation around 2010, then ... * Reform or cancel the Trust & Safety council * Restore open API access and app ecosystem * Remove side wide censorship tools, add self censorship tools (a la Gab) * Reverse the timeline changes * Stop pandering to far left ideologues Something like that?

Trust & Safety council is in their business interests. Harassment is an existential threat if it chases the big names off their platform.

Harassment is not an opposing opinion on the political spectrum.

But to Twitter, it is.

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#484

Post by JarlUlvi »

eropple wrote: post #442
grandalf wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Twitter need not be an accessory to that. There is no great loss, either moral or financial, to the slow leakage of anime avatars and Twitter eggs. Many people would say that exact thing if Twitter decided to censor content that was about gay marriage, etc. You are giving Twitter an easy out. Just censor everything that doesn't go over well in the suburban zipcode that best mirrors the target audience of Coca Cola.

If that would make them more money, I expect they would do that. It's obvious from even a cursory look at Twitter's demographics that it wouldn't make them more money and would make them look bad and hurt their bottom line. Much like the alt-right racist contingent makes them look bad and hurts their bottom line. That would be why I am making a clear distinction between "moral" and "financial". The alt-right is immor…

You are conflating speech from libertarians (me), and conservatives with some nazis or whatever.

Racists don't get a pass on Twitter, unless they are part of BLACK LIVES MATTER.

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#485

Post by AnimalMuppet »

eropple wrote: post #449
grandalf wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> does not happen to straight white men There are many aspects of how society treats men and women differently that are abhorrent to me. One of the most abhorrent is how a girl who struggles in math is more likely to be encouraged to focus on other subjects, while a boy in the same situation is more likely to be encouraged to achieve mastery. We (as a society) can do so much better... but censoring ideas is not he so…

Refusing to associate with people is not "censorship" of ideas or anything else. Damaging, abusive people can be kicked out of one's place of business and it ain't a problem . I will not cede the ground of basic language to protofascists and you shouldn't either.

So you see it as protofascism to allow such speech (presuming I understood your last paragraph). grandalf sees blocking that speech as protofascism (more or less - he doesn't use that word).

I agree with you that the speech in question is horrific - something any civilized person should be ashamed of having thought, let alone said. But I still side with grandalf on this. Prohibiting speech as if it were violence - no matter how threatening the content of the speech - opens another door to the fascists. You want it as a weapon to use against vile speech. But the problem is, that weapon will be turned against your speech soon enough. Your speech will be classified as "vile", "hateful", "violent", and banned. Rationally, based on content? No, but as a means of control by whoever's in power at the time.

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#486

Post by JarlUlvi »

genericpseudo wrote: post #251
grandalf wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> threatens violence or is intended to foment violence against a person or people I see no reason why having a clear, public record of such communications is worse than forcing those involved to use a different messaging system. It's just words. The simple answer is press the "unfollow" button, or follow it, read it, and act in your best interests based on it.

There is no such thing as "just words". That's a position only sustainable from privilege.

I hate senseless privilege arguments which is really masquerading anti-white sexism & racism.

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#487

Post by aanm1988 »

epoch1970 wrote: post #478
nikcub wrote: post #128

1. cut costs by a lot. they shouldn't be spending $2B per year 2. allow the apps to be used without a login - with the default view showing 'what is on now'. almost every member of my family has attempted to use twitter at some point and just been confused. 3. reformat all the explore pages into ordinary twitter streams 4. acquire nuzzel. their view of 'whats on now' is better than twitter's view 5. drop the video pa…

I don't know if it's still like this, but when I last tried to create a Twitter account it required a phone number and some kind of verification by phone. That's something I refuse to do. I can sort of understand requiring that to try to combat the creation of spam accounts, for instance. But it made the service pretty much unusable for me. Unless it's as easy to create an account there as it is to create one here or…

You don't have to give them a phone number. They will let you sign up without it.

Then flag immediately as a bot and refuse to let you do anything without a phone number.

Lame Twitter. Lame.

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#488

Post by wapz »

aanm1988 wrote: post #487
epoch1970 wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if it's still like this, but when I last tried to create a Twitter account it required a phone number and some kind of verification by phone. That's something I refuse to do. I can sort of understand requiring that to try to combat the creation of spam accounts, for instance. But it made the service pretty much unusable for me. Unless it's as easy to create an account there as it is to create one here or…

You don't have to give them a phone number. They will let you sign up without it. Then flag immediately as a bot and refuse to let you do anything without a phone number. Lame Twitter. Lame.

Yup I made an account several years ago to tweet to a support staff because I couldn't login. The next day my account was "suspended" or banned for something like "being a bot." Never looked back.

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#489

Post by thisnotmyacc »

Set a goal of $1 billion yearly profit by 2020. That places the value at PE of 20 PE (2/3rds of Alphabets 29.9) at ~$20 billion, which is ~2 times their current valuation.

Assuming 5% YoY growth in revenue, which is about 2% growth in users combined with a 2% better yield, both of which are imminently doable, the current $2.5B revenue grows to about $3B.

According to their 2016 financial statement, http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AMDA-2F526X/398748660..., Twitter spent 2.668B in 2016. So that means Twitter needs to cut costs by 20% by 2020 to hit my goal of $1bn profit.

Twitter spent $800 million on each of their three big areas, which they list as "Cost of revenue", "Research and development" and "Sales and marketing". If you can shave off 40% from each of "Research and development" and "Sales and marketing", costs hit $2Billion give or take, and goal achieved.

None of that is silicon valley swing for the moon sexy, and it seems pretty unremarkable in a world of hype and excess. But $3B in revenue and $2bn in costs seems achievable by 2020.

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#490

Post by wapz »

silvestrov wrote: post #372
danielhooper wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how many would pay $1/month to be able to communicate their points more clearly? My guess is less than 10,000.

50 countries with 200 persons each? I'd say more than 10.000 in just USA alone. Even if you up it to $5 a month. Twitter is used a lot by those who use twitter.

I'd say 10,000 from businesses in the USA alone. A lot of companies use twitter as their makeshift tech support and public image. $1/month for a company is completely irrelevant to their spending.
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