Twitter is the world's news paper now. I think, as world newspaper, it is worth it's value.
Yes, if you mean to wrap world potatoes peelings.
Twitter Soars After Surprise Sales Gain, First Real Profit
71–80 of 218 posts
Re: Twitter Soars After Surprise Sales Gain, First Real Profit
#72Twitter loves Trump. It's not just twitter... the whole profit center around online communities is based on active communities. Most topics are cyclical - once the Superbowl is over, it's hard to keep a football community active. Only so many people are interested in the draft, in coaching changes, etc. But throw in some controversy and all of a sudden everything lights up again. The problem, or _a_ problem, is that…
I've pretty much dumped Twitter for Mastodon. My mental health couldn't keep up with the air of constant outrage on Twitter.
Re: Twitter Soars After Surprise Sales Gain, First Real Profit
#73I've been very active on Twitter in the past 2 years and not due to Trump or other controversies. A lot of developers I want to follow are active on Twitter. So it might be due to Trump, don't know, but I'm glad it's going well for them.
Twitter has become so bloated with advertisements and "artificial" trending topics that its nearly useless.
The "Today's Moments" section is... let's just say it's far from universal in its appeal and curation.
Re: Twitter Soars After Surprise Sales Gain, First Real Profit
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems like a lot of out of context clips to push a narrative, standard project veritas stuff. Like the clip about banning certain groups of people: the engineer says "it's going to ban a certain way of talking". You might take from this based on the video that he's talking about inadvertently banning right-leaning users. Well, what if he's talking about banning racism or messages that use ((subtle dog-whistles)) inst…
If you watched the whole thing you'd see the context of each interview.
I did, and it's just longer out of context videos that cut off at convenient points:
> Journalist: "Would you say the algorithms block liberal or conservative users?"
> Engineer: "I would say the majority of it are for Republicans, because they are all from Russia and wanted Trump to win"
> Journalist: "So you would mostly just get rid of Conservatives?"
> Engineer: "Yes"
> Immediate cut.
Woah, what a compelling argument. The guy is saying they are using machine learning to block Russian bots masquerading as American conservatives that are influencing the narrative in favor of Trump (that totally don't exist btw because we love Russia now and they would never attempt to meddle in any other countries elections). The video attempts to twist that into him saying they block conservatives.
This study is an interesting read: http://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/polarization-partisansh...
And an associated news article: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/018/feb/06/sharing-fa...
Re: Twitter Soars After Surprise Sales Gain, First Real Profit
#75Twitter loves Trump. It's not just twitter... the whole profit center around online communities is based on active communities. Most topics are cyclical - once the Superbowl is over, it's hard to keep a football community active. Only so many people are interested in the draft, in coaching changes, etc. But throw in some controversy and all of a sudden everything lights up again. The problem, or _a_ problem, is that…
Reminds me of local news. "Could this drink be killing you? Watch at 10!"
After a while it seems people have ditched local news save for weather.
Now it's mostly "Will tomorrow polar vortex freeze your testicles? Watch tonight at 10"
Re: Twitter Soars After Surprise Sales Gain, First Real Profit
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
It'll be interesting to see what that does to their hiring and retention, though. They are competing for people with Facebook, Google, etc. They weren't previously giving out those options to be nice.
And instead of paper options they will have to increase real $ - part of the problem for them is the way options are treated from an accounting perspective when in fact not all options get exercised.
So why not hand out RSUs instead?
Re: Twitter Soars After Surprise Sales Gain, First Real Profit
#77Twitter loves Trump. It's not just twitter... the whole profit center around online communities is based on active communities. Most topics are cyclical - once the Superbowl is over, it's hard to keep a football community active. Only so many people are interested in the draft, in coaching changes, etc. But throw in some controversy and all of a sudden everything lights up again. The problem, or _a_ problem, is that…
I don't think this is an explanation for the current status and gains of Twitter. Trump has been president for over a year, and has been a prolific tweeter for far longer. If anything, Trump tweets are less novel and more common place then they've been to date.
I think the activity on twitter being referred to is about Trump's presidency, not (mainly) about Trump's tweets. Same reason why cable news is raking it in.
Re: Twitter Soars After Surprise Sales Gain, First Real Profit
#78Twitter loves Trump. It's not just twitter... the whole profit center around online communities is based on active communities. Most topics are cyclical - once the Superbowl is over, it's hard to keep a football community active. Only so many people are interested in the draft, in coaching changes, etc. But throw in some controversy and all of a sudden everything lights up again. The problem, or _a_ problem, is that…
> The problem, or _a_ problem, is that people can only handle so much controversy. They have lives to lead.
You're so spot on. You know how everyone says, "Seinfeld is a show about nothing!" It wasn't about nothing, but what did make it different is that the characters never changed. They didn't have these huge arcs and defining life moments. They just went about their lives and we watched.
People say "it was about nothing!" in shock, as if its incredulous that a show without drama in the characters lives could be so popular.
But that was why it was popular -- because most people's lives, most of the times, are not filled with drama. They just go about their day.
And most people like it that way.
Re: Twitter Soars After Surprise Sales Gain, First Real Profit
#79Systematic outrage and Trump can be successfully monetized. Damn, I always had the silent hope that Twitter wouldn't not reach this point.
Re: Twitter Soars After Surprise Sales Gain, First Real Profit
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I expect a lot of people to not agree with what I am going to say, I believe this is much more linked to the political moment than to Twitter having a problem with "handling controversy". This just feels like an excuse to find a way to filter human communication, at this point. Don't get me wrong, I'm a Brazilian and the latest years' politics headlines have been flooding Twitter around here too, but spurious p…
> This just feels like an excuse to find a way to filter human communication Interesting. I've modded a fair amount of communities and the censorship argument to moderated discussion comes up frequently as new rules are implemented. From an online discussion point of view I don't think it holds merit at all. If I run a football board and have a rule that says "no basketball talk" that's my prerogative. As long as it'…
> From an online discussion point of view I don't think it holds merit at all. If I run a football board and have a rule that says "no basketball talk" that's my prerogative.
I think this is absolutely true. But things get murky when you're talking about sites like Facebook that are a primary means of communication for a significant part of the world's population. Because there's no "public space" online, large social networks become the de facto public space. But because they're not truly public they can do things like censor speech that would normally be allowed in the town square.