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How hard is it to have a conversation on Twitter? So hard even the CEO can’t

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Re: How hard is it to have a conversation on Twitter? So hard even the CEO can’t

#141

Post by theNJR »

zanny wrote: post #138
theNJR wrote: post #132

A lot to unpack recently with Twitter and Jack. A few thoughts. 1. Jack doesn’t seem passionate about product, especially Twitter. 2. Kara seems to lack the vocabulary to talk about product which is both surprising and confusing, given her niche and time spent in it. She also doesn’t understand that Twitter has evolved way beyond Jack. “Why don’t you know, it’s your product!” she kept asking. The fact he doesn’t know…

We already have Twitter as a utility, its called ActivityPub and dozens of products and thousands of independent instances are now using it. If Twitters higher ups were serious about "being a utility' they would federate on what is on track to become the browser social protocol from the W3C.

It was interesting to see a small force of people pushing ActivityPub in the Twitter comments last night.

Re: How hard is it to have a conversation on Twitter? So hard even the CEO can’t

#143

Post by pjc50 »

paganel wrote: post #134
pjc50 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Daily Mail reporting will be grossly inaccurate on this subject. I suspect this was not for a single incident but as part of a campaign of harrasment. There's a lot of that going on against trans people at the moment, often enabled by twitter and the gutter press.

Boris Johnson has practically said the same thing in his latest editorial in The Telegraph [1], i.e. that that woman was transphobic and that the U.K. police should focus on other more stringent tasks (like knife crime). Transphobia is ugly but it’s not on the same level as Holocaust denial and people shouldn’t get arrested for it. [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/02/10/police-wasting-t...

Boris Johnson is one of the men who lied about Europe so often the EU made the Euromyths page in an attempt to stem the tide. He's not a reliable source (in any case that's an opinion piece), and nor is the Telegraph.

There's a culture war going on, trans people are the current wedge issue, and people like Boris are absolutely part of it.

Again, we need the underlying facts, which I suspect include a longer history of targeted harassment rather than a driveby twitter insult.

Re: How hard is it to have a conversation on Twitter? So hard even the CEO can’t

#144

Post by eeeeeeeeeeeee »

grawprog wrote: post #75
eeeeeeeeeeeee wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one use case I’ve seen of Twitter is rapid fire updates about some developing situation, like an emergency. But it can’t be a back and forth discussion. It can be one person or many people adding to a combined discussion via that hashtag. However, even when I see people do what is effectively a long form blog post on Twitter, I often give up on it before the end because it’s too frustrating.

>Twitter is rapid fire updates about some developing situation. This is the only thing i've ever used Twitter for. It's the best place to find out about problems on my local transit system. Long before the company ever gives an alert, there'll dozens of people tweeting angrily about the problems.

Yep, anytime I see some larger than normal police/fire presence in my city, or a large cloud of smoke, I go on Twitter. It works great for breaking events and is usually always way ahead of any news organizations (which are usually just pulling things from Twitter, too).

Re: How hard is it to have a conversation on Twitter? So hard even the CEO can’t

#145

Post by gotocake »

zanny wrote: post #138
theNJR wrote: post #132

A lot to unpack recently with Twitter and Jack. A few thoughts. 1. Jack doesn’t seem passionate about product, especially Twitter. 2. Kara seems to lack the vocabulary to talk about product which is both surprising and confusing, given her niche and time spent in it. She also doesn’t understand that Twitter has evolved way beyond Jack. “Why don’t you know, it’s your product!” she kept asking. The fact he doesn’t know…

We already have Twitter as a utility, its called ActivityPub and dozens of products and thousands of independent instances are now using it. If Twitters higher ups were serious about "being a utility' they would federate on what is on track to become the browser social protocol from the W3C.

A public utility that very few people have even heard of outside of tech circles. I feel that more or less takes the “public” out of the “utility” and doesn’t give Twitter a pass.

Re: How hard is it to have a conversation on Twitter? So hard even the CEO can’t

#146

Post by towelr34dy »

Am I the only one deeply surprised by how badly executed this thing was?

I mean, what was it?

Was it a test?

Then why make it so public and high profile?

I mean; what the heck was Jack thinking? The whole thing was a confusing mess that at best will be forgotten.

It's very strange to see a CEO of a 11 digit public company put something out there like that.

Re: How hard is it to have a conversation on Twitter? So hard even the CEO can’t

#147

Post by eeeeeeeeeeeee »

kennydude wrote: post #117
eeeeeeeeeeeee wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? Then why does Twitter allow you to @reply someone? It is a feature. I mean, Jack Dorsey even doing this interview shows it's a feature, otherwise he should have said "Twitter was not made for this." And not all blog posts are one-way communication, just like you said, that is why we have comment systems attached to blog posts.

afaik originally this was just a convention that people started using until it became a feature

Right, I think it was, but if they let users just do it on their own Twitter could wipe their hands of it (e.g. "you're not using it correctly.") But because they made it an official feature, they have embraced that functionality. So it's a moot point now.

I understand why they did it. They let the site kind of grow organically to see what it could become and embraced how people were using it. And I think they are likely super nervous from a financial perspective about any user loss if they start pulling features.

But I think Twitter has a similar problem as Facebook -- it connects a lot of random people into a conversation system that should likely not be connected. On HN, I'm connecting with people that care about the tech community. On a Reddit sub-reddit, it's specific to some topic. Twitter just seems to encourage too many outliers to get involved in conversations they should probably sit back and simply listen on.

Re: How hard is it to have a conversation on Twitter? So hard even the CEO can’t

#148

Post by rchaud »

b1llyhoyle wrote: post #53

Getting lost in all this noise is Jack's willingness to have a conversation and also admit his product's shortcomings. How many other CEOs subject themselves to a similar, unscripted experiment? Kudos to Jack for being transparent and accessible.

His responses sounded pretty scripted. To a question on what Twitter has specifically done to combat abuse on the platform (a question that's been asked over and over for years now):

1. We have evolved our polices.

2. We have prioritized proactive enforcement to remove burden from victims

3. We have given more control in product (like mute of accounts without profile pics or associated phone/emails)

4. Much more aggressive on coordinated behavior/gamingAlso this wasn't a real-time face to face conversation, so you can be sure

Aside from #3, all of these sounded like CEO-speak to me. No specifics, so nothing to attach personal responsibility to.

Re: How hard is it to have a conversation on Twitter? So hard even the CEO can’t

#149

Post by skybrian »

theNJR wrote: post #132

A lot to unpack recently with Twitter and Jack. A few thoughts. 1. Jack doesn’t seem passionate about product, especially Twitter. 2. Kara seems to lack the vocabulary to talk about product which is both surprising and confusing, given her niche and time spent in it. She also doesn’t understand that Twitter has evolved way beyond Jack. “Why don’t you know, it’s your product!” she kept asking. The fact he doesn’t know…

"National Public Internet": of which nation?

I don't think that works, but a nongovernmental entity devoted to public service might work.

Re: How hard is it to have a conversation on Twitter? So hard even the CEO can’t

#150

Post by skybrian »

zanny wrote: post #138
theNJR wrote: post #132

A lot to unpack recently with Twitter and Jack. A few thoughts. 1. Jack doesn’t seem passionate about product, especially Twitter. 2. Kara seems to lack the vocabulary to talk about product which is both surprising and confusing, given her niche and time spent in it. She also doesn’t understand that Twitter has evolved way beyond Jack. “Why don’t you know, it’s your product!” she kept asking. The fact he doesn’t know…

We already have Twitter as a utility, its called ActivityPub and dozens of products and thousands of independent instances are now using it. If Twitters higher ups were serious about "being a utility' they would federate on what is on track to become the browser social protocol from the W3C.

ActivityPub seems like an interesting protocol waiting for a killer app. Mastodon is a reasonable start, but too much like Twitter.
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