The previous thread on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22451302
Twitter, Elliott Strike Truce That Leaves CEO Dorsey in Place
71–80 of 107 posts
Re: Twitter, Elliott Strike Truce That Leaves CEO Dorsey in Place
#72Twitter is awesome because it doesn't operate under the growth for growths sake mentality plaguing many other companies. It really is an incredible public utility provided you liberally mute/block/unfollow all the petty fighting and find good people. Jack seems to understand that. I hope it doesn't devolve into a narrow reveneue maximizing ad-filled trashfire, but thats probably what the hedge fund will push for. I t…
That's my biggest concern with Twitters future right now. It already does what it does best, why should new and unnecessary features be added, and like you said Jack seems to understand that. The Investors however think otherwise, since unfortunately the tech industry has adopted the unnecessary change for changes sake for the last decade.
I can already see what such a mentality has done to many other sites, and In the end it drives away the core users of the platform. I can already see this in progress with Reddit for example.
Re: Twitter, Elliott Strike Truce That Leaves CEO Dorsey in Place
#73Paul Singer, the CEO of Elliot, is extremely partisan and is a top donor to the Republican Party. Seen in this light these moves have caused fear that they are an attack on Twitter to turn it into a right-wing propaganda channel. For example: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/29/paul-sing...
Twitter is already a leftist propaganda channel actively engaged in crushing dissent. Perhaps it’s time to balance the scales.
Thats weird because because both Twitter and Facebook were the things that got Trump elected in the first place...
Re: Twitter, Elliott Strike Truce That Leaves CEO Dorsey in Place
#74Hah! This is funny in all sorts of ways. Supposed "activist" investors settling for a quick ransom. Twitter paying the ransom by taking money from possibly worse people. Twitter paying $2 bn in ransom for Jack , the guy who is at best a half-time CEO, and who has presided over a mix of stagnation and deck-chair rearrangement. And of course the online panic that this was going to be a Trump-allied guy's way of dominat…
Is Jack too woke for you or not woke enough? Hard to make sense of your criticisms...what do you envision twitter should be?
That's not a dimension I care much about. As a product, it's stagnant. I think it could be a much better product. Better meaning serving a wider audience and serving different people in different ways.
Re: Twitter, Elliott Strike Truce That Leaves CEO Dorsey in Place
#75Hah! This is funny in all sorts of ways. Supposed "activist" investors settling for a quick ransom. Twitter paying the ransom by taking money from possibly worse people. Twitter paying $2 bn in ransom for Jack , the guy who is at best a half-time CEO, and who has presided over a mix of stagnation and deck-chair rearrangement. And of course the online panic that this was going to be a Trump-allied guy's way of dominat…
So, is your contention that Twitter would be better if it changed faster, or worse?
I don't think change for the sake of change is valuable. But I think it can't get better faster until it is better at changing.
Re: Twitter, Elliott Strike Truce That Leaves CEO Dorsey in Place
#76Paul Singer, the CEO of Elliot, is extremely partisan and is a top donor to the Republican Party. Seen in this light these moves have caused fear that they are an attack on Twitter to turn it into a right-wing propaganda channel. For example: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/29/paul-sing...
Twitter is already a leftist propaganda channel actively engaged in crushing dissent. Perhaps it’s time to balance the scales.
Any "Twitter is a _ propaganda channel" seems a bit odd when you consider that users choose who to follow, who to block, what topics to follow, what keywords to mute, whether or not to see targeted ads, etc. Twitter might be able to do a better job of tackling outright misinformation that spreads on the platform and they aren't always perfect when it comes to banning or suspending accounts (or failing to do so), but in general it's hard to say that a platform is just a propaganda channel for a specific ideology when it is inhabited by a diverse range of incompatible ideologies. Users tend to sort themselves into bubbles of like-minded accounts, but that is on users rather than Twitter.
Re: Twitter, Elliott Strike Truce That Leaves CEO Dorsey in Place
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Twitter is awesome because it doesn't operate under the growth for growths sake mentality plaguing many other companies. Is that really true though? They've been a huge beneficiary of fake news, astroturfing and bots. They've only relatively recently started to do something resembling policing of these things.
On Facebook you're bound to your friends/family/co-workers/etc, on Reddit you're bound to the shallowest lowest common denominator content (front page) or else endless spam and self-promotion (sort by new.) Twitter is where you're meaningfully in control of who you follow and what you see. That means it's on you to curate that, and many won't want to do that. I was on Twitter for a while before I found the real niche…
Counterpoint: My friends/family/co-workers are not trolls.
Twitter is optimized for fake identities, and for virally spreading the most sensationalistic content.
Re: Twitter, Elliott Strike Truce That Leaves CEO Dorsey in Place
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's incredibly amazing people think Twitter's problem is dumb partisan bullshit related to the United States. Industrial-strength bikeshedding.
What would you say is a significant problem with Twitter? I'm interested in what you think would make Twitter a better service for its users.
I think one of Twitter's big mistakes is to go for a one-size-fits-all product. For example, in shifting away from a time-based timeline to the algorithmic timeline they've made it worse for advanced users in an effort to juice user activity metrics among less engaged users. That could be fine if they let other people build successful Twitter clients, but the put the kibosh on that long ago. This makes them more ad dollars, but at the cost of treating users like foie gras geese.
Another is the single model of discussion: tweets and replies in a single global space. There's no way for individuals or groups to create other contexts, so anybody attempting to have a sophisticated discussion needs to be prepared for 101-level people blundering in, reading a single tweet, and reacting ignorantly to it.
A third is its inability to handle longer blocks of text. The tweetstorm is as close as they come. It's a medium I enjoy, but it's not good for everything. In the same way one attaches images, one should be able to attach longer blocks of text, and perhaps richer things, like HTML. That would take it from being a micropublishing platform to an actual publishing platform.
They could also do massively better in terms of abuse prevention and conversation quality. I'd love to be able to pay for verification, so that they'd check my claimed identity and mark me as me. For anonymous accounts, I'd like ways for serious organizations to vouch for them. E.g., a human rights org should be able to say, "Yes, this is actually a person on the ground in Country X," so we can start telling real people from propaganda sock puppets.
Re: Twitter, Elliott Strike Truce That Leaves CEO Dorsey in Place
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
On Facebook you're bound to your friends/family/co-workers/etc, on Reddit you're bound to the shallowest lowest common denominator content (front page) or else endless spam and self-promotion (sort by new.) Twitter is where you're meaningfully in control of who you follow and what you see. That means it's on you to curate that, and many won't want to do that. I was on Twitter for a while before I found the real niche…
Counterpoint: My friends/family/co-workers are not trolls. Twitter is optimized for fake identities, and for virally spreading the most sensationalistic content.
yes, this if why you can choose who to follow...
Re: Twitter, Elliott Strike Truce That Leaves CEO Dorsey in Place
#80It's always been confusing to me what twitter is as a company -- it feels more like a utility, or like the public service part of 20th century journalism without the profit model In many ways it's more important to society than FB & G (picking them as the 2 of the big 5 that are pure information plays), in that it hosts semi-public conversations and helps experts stay informed Would be interesting for some small coun…
It is genuinely frightening to me that influential people apparently believe this. Twitter is terrible. Even smart people sound like idiots on Twitter. The format deliberately rewards controversial hot takes and inaccurate garbage "breaking news". I can't think of another major internet property that's less in the public interest. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/04/twitt...
I've seen good ideas bubble up from the population, through the blue checks, and to the right people in places of power multiple times. One recent example is to temporarily allow doctors to practice medicine across state lines using tele-medicine in order to help combat covid19. Another idea bubbling up is giving people a "right to try" experimental medications, again regarding covid19.
The regular populace has never had this kind of access to political leadership in the history of the planet. Not participating on Twitter is like not voting on the referendums section of your ballot.