So glad Twitter is finally owning up to their white privilege and doing something about wrongthink. Maybe in a few months I'll be able to scroll through my feed without having to retreat to my safe space and cry for an hour afterward.
Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter
271–280 of 369 posts
Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not what I said but it's fairly obvious that money is like steroids. You can't turn a donkey into a race horse but any semi-competent person can be successful with enough cash injection and network to get good advice.
Doesn't this run counter to even conventional wisdom about VC? 25-30% of all VC-backed startups liquidate all assets, and 75% return only the original investment. https://www.inc.com/john-mcdermott/report-3-out-of-4-venture...
That is a consequence of two things. 1) the all or nothing approach to business that VC backed startups take and 2) the lack of quality network for many founders. It's why I specifically mentioned network for good advice. If you look at the patterns emerging from silicon valley with the PayPal mafia and even YC itself there is a clear advantage to be had from A) access to immense amounts of cash coupled with B) a network of people who have been there and done that. I find it very hard to believe that white upper middle class males are remarkable for their genius intellect as successful founder profiles would have you believe if looked at in isolation. From a purely critical perspective there is a wide range of intellect levels on display amongst unicorn founders.
Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wikipedia's costs are extremely small relative the service usage. They don't have a lot of active development (relatively), and they don't need a ton of expensive infrastructure (relatively). Twitter's annual operating costs are in the $2+ billions. Wikipedia's are in the ~$60 millions. Not to say a non-profit twitter couldn't exist - this just feels like an unfair comparison. Just because two services are popular te…
We have an example of a service similar to twitter that's effectively free to run due to it's distributed nature in Mastodon/ActivityPub. Being financially sustainable without having to resort to dark patterns could just be an engineering question.
I've always asserted that Twitter should have been a protocol, not a startup.
Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter
#274Abuse and misinformation are certainly the big issues but even more bigger and rather meta-issue is the strong hub-and-spoke model that Twitter promotes. Here's an example: You could tweet some of the most informative and useful tweets relevant to, say, robotics enthusiasts for day after day and years after year, and you might still end up with absymal engagement in terms of likes, retweets and followers. Meanwhile,…
Wait... you're not paying for followers?
What kind of crazy are you?
That doesn't help our monthly active user stats!
Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter
#275> I don’t think I would create ‘likes’ in the first place. _You didn't_. It was called "Favorites", and you later renamed it to "likes". Jack can introspect as much as he wants, but it doesn't change the fact that they keep making the platform _worse_, not better. Another indication is that the official web/client is a cesspool of unrelated content I don't want to see, and somehow they now think they need to double d…
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Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter
#276Abuse and misinformation are certainly the big issues but even more bigger and rather meta-issue is the strong hub-and-spoke model that Twitter promotes. Here's an example: You could tweet some of the most informative and useful tweets relevant to, say, robotics enthusiasts for day after day and years after year, and you might still end up with absymal engagement in terms of likes, retweets and followers. Meanwhile,…
Wait... you're not paying for followers? What kind of crazy are you? That doesn't help our monthly active user stats!
Elaborate on a price, Merchant. How much? Where?
Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
I recently created a Twitter account, mostly as an experiment. I just followed some programmers, stuck to programming content. Immediately and every day after, I was constantly being displayed Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Justin Trudeau, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, etc. Not a single politician or voice not on the left. Considering how powerful Twitter has become, this is troubling. I know this is just one…
Programmers are usually very vocal leftists. I've always assumed that those who don't speak openly about politics don't care or are right wingers, but who knows.
> "I've always assumed that those who don't speak openly about politics don't care or are right wingers"
In my experience, people who assume that eventually progress to assuming that those are actually one and the same.
Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter
#278> He suggested that the service works best as an “interest-based network,” where you log in and see content relevant to your interests, no matter who posted it Yeah, no thanks. Has anybody ever been happy with Twitter's attempts to force content from non-followed users into the feed? A couple of times a year they'll opt everybody back into whatever crappy experiment they're running ("hey, we'll put some posts to your…
I think it's impossible to re-think Twitter and satisfy everyone. I completely switched who I follow (using Lists) twice already based on my interest changes in technology. First Rails, then iOS, now "crypto". I was early enough in the first two communities to know who the movers and shakers were. However it took me a while to find who is worth following in "Crypto Twitter". So I personally welcome any attempts to show me relevant content from folks I don't follow yet in the field.
Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
I follow a few hundred people with very varied interests, and I don't log in every few minutes. For non-addicted people, the algo is pretty nice. I want to see a sampling of interesting stuff I "missed" over the last day or two. If I want to go look at a particular person's chronological feed, I can do that. You can change it if you don't like it, click the sparkle button to do so, but don't think nobody likes it.
Try doing that, and find out how many times Twitter helpfully resets you to go back 'home' - a home which they feel they own and control. I press that button about once a week to go back to a chronological feed. I don't log in every few minutes - every few hours perhaps on a good day, but have no interest in an algorithmic feed - a scrolling chronological feed is just fine. There are very good reasons they forced us…
Aha! So I wasn't crazy that Twitter was changing back to their algorithmic feed every so often