On the Twitter Hack • Hacker News Board

Re: On the Twitter Hack

#21

Post by jermier » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 4:57 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #15

metalliqaz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very typical of the libertarian streak that underpins HN. I'm always a little turned off by this strange dominate-the-world culture out of SV. I come from a culture that valued open source and interoperable open standards. Where did my people go? Twitter is clearly and objectively a monopoly or in a duopoly with Facebook/Instagram. At my most charitable, I could include YouTube in the mix. But I'd still say m…

Nonsense. I'm as far from libertarian as you're going to get and I really don't see the case for breaking up Twitter. Breaking up Google I can understand, especially given their dominance in both search and advertising but Twitter is by comparison a bit player and all it really does is serve as a relay station. It's as close to a dumb pipe as you're going to get modulo a very small amount of content monitoring. And w…

> especially given their dominance in both search and advertising

Google's Search mechanism is merely a trojan horse where their real cash-cow is the advertising business. They use Search to assuage people into thinking they are an ethical company, when we all know by now, they rely on surveillance capitalism and creating large elaborate dossiers on the whole population.

Re: On the Twitter Hack

#22

Post by f38zf5vdt » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

Great to see Schneier with a totally level-headed response in comparison to Krebs, who wrote a 5 page apparent doxxing of someone he maybe suspected could potentially have been the hacker.

We have a standard (TLS) for general HTTP secure communications over the internet. We should also have standards for the transport and storage of user-to-user and user-to-public messages.

Re: On the Twitter Hack

#23

Post by Shivetya » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 5:18 PM UTC

metalliqaz wrote: post #10

jsnell wrote: post #6

> Companies like Facebook and Twitter have so much power because they are so large, and they face no real competition. I find it hard to take the rest of the article seriously when it's talking about Twitter as a giant monopoly that needs to be broken up... But also the argument seems fundamentally wrong. Account security is a prime example of a place where economies of scale bring a lot of benefit. I would absolutel…

This is very typical of the libertarian streak that underpins HN. I'm always a little turned off by this strange dominate-the-world culture out of SV. I come from a culture that valued open source and interoperable open standards. Where did my people go? Twitter is clearly and objectively a monopoly or in a duopoly with Facebook/Instagram. At my most charitable, I could include YouTube in the mix. But I'd still say m…

Twitter's power comes fro being nearly integrated into main stream news. the danger therein has been seen with the platform used to shame those who put forth the wrong opinion, spin a story in a manner not acceptable, or associate with someone who has done the same.

how this came about is hard to place but I would not doubt the executives at Twitter cultivated their position along with very adept targeting of celebrities.

How do you split up something which is embedded into the media, specifically the news?

Re: On the Twitter Hack

#24

Post by mc32 » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 5:32 PM UTC

jsnell wrote: post #6

> Companies like Facebook and Twitter have so much power because they are so large, and they face no real competition. I find it hard to take the rest of the article seriously when it's talking about Twitter as a giant monopoly that needs to be broken up... But also the argument seems fundamentally wrong. Account security is a prime example of a place where economies of scale bring a lot of benefit. I would absolutel…

The reason MSFT, GOOG, etc., have better security is because they have paying customers who have data to protect. So it behooves them to be proactive about security and to take it seriously.

Re: On the Twitter Hack

#25

Post by juliend2 » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 5:35 PM UTC

metalliqaz wrote: post #20

juliend2 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to talk about monopolies as if it was a bad thing. And I get it that you don't like Twitter being a closed platform. Me neither. It's not ideal, but it's still more user friendly than Mastodon (sadly). I wouldn't shed a tear if Twitter went bankrupt either, but I don't necessarily think it would lead to a better world (Facebook would be a stronger monopoly and that , I think, would make things worse).

> You seem to talk about monopolies as if it was a bad thing. guilty as charged

What's with this dogmatic rhetoric, lol? Monopolies are just companies that enjoy a significant edge over their competitors.

What makes monopolistic companies inherently always bad?

Re: On the Twitter Hack

#26

Post by jacquesm » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

incanus77 wrote: post #17

jacquesm wrote: post #2

I would be highly surprised if world leaders communicated anything sensitive via DM on Twitter.

> Just before the stroke of midnight on September 20, 2016, at the height of last year’s presidential election, the WikiLeaks Twitter account sent a private direct message to Donald Trump Jr., the Republican nominee’s oldest son and campaign surrogate. From https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/the-sec... Not directly a world leader, and even Trump Sr. was still the nominee, but not far removed from th…

And that warrants breaking up or nationalizing Twitter how?

Re: On the Twitter Hack

#27

Post by basch » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 5:46 PM UTC

Shivetya wrote: post #23

metalliqaz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very typical of the libertarian streak that underpins HN. I'm always a little turned off by this strange dominate-the-world culture out of SV. I come from a culture that valued open source and interoperable open standards. Where did my people go? Twitter is clearly and objectively a monopoly or in a duopoly with Facebook/Instagram. At my most charitable, I could include YouTube in the mix. But I'd still say m…

Twitter's power comes fro being nearly integrated into main stream news. the danger therein has been seen with the platform used to shame those who put forth the wrong opinion, spin a story in a manner not acceptable, or associate with someone who has done the same. how this came about is hard to place but I would not doubt the executives at Twitter cultivated their position along with very adept targeting of celebri…

Correct, it is more a thought monopoly than one of numbers. Its a lifeline between everyone who has a megaphone. I'm not sure one platform that all journalists choose to prioritize falls under traditional antitrust concerns, based only on that fact, nor does that fact alone really strengthen other antitrust concerns.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/06/twitters-influence-beyond-us...

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/journalists-on-twitter-s...

Re: On the Twitter Hack

#28

Post by stickfigure » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 6:04 PM UTC

basch wrote: post #16

stickfigure wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly do you propose to split up Twitter? Split the userbase into 100 groups? Who goes in which group? And what happens when people want to switch groups... ultimately coalescing in a single node? Because, you know, network effects. I don't like Twitter either, so I don't use it. It's a really effective solution!

There's other ways to deal with anti-trust besides breaking the companies apart. Data portability, interoperability, ownership of your own social graph. If these platforms were forced to act more like email, where leaving google for microsoft doesnt mean i can no longer contact my friends, the network effects that give them monopoly-like power diminish. Imagine how ridiculous email would feel if you need a gmail acco…

So let's imagine Facebook/Twitter/etc was based on open protocols like SMTP...

* You'd have the same spam and abuse problem that email has.

* You'd have zero control over the information you post to it, just like email. There would be absolutely no way of stopping or even slowing down the Cambridge Analyticas of the world.

"Ownership of your own social graph" is complete and utter nonsense. As soon as you share data with other people through open protocols, they own it. Just like email.

Even email is tending towards centralization, with a few big players that can manage the spam and abuse and still get their messages delivered.

Re: On the Twitter Hack

#29

Post by jacquesm » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 6:07 PM UTC

juliend2 wrote: post #25

metalliqaz wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You seem to talk about monopolies as if it was a bad thing. guilty as charged

What's with this dogmatic rhetoric, lol? Monopolies are just companies that enjoy a significant edge over their competitors. What makes monopolistic companies inherently always bad?

No, that is not the definition of a monopoly.

A monopoly is a entity that holds exclusivity to a good or a service.

Re: On the Twitter Hack

#30

Post by jacquesm » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 6:09 PM UTC

f38zf5vdt wrote: post #22

Great to see Schneier with a totally level-headed response in comparison to Krebs, who wrote a 5 page apparent doxxing of someone he maybe suspected could potentially have been the hacker. We have a standard (TLS) for general HTTP secure communications over the internet. We should also have standards for the transport and storage of user-to-user and user-to-public messages.

Yes, the level of class difference is substantial. Doesn't make this particular argument much stronger though. It also shows Schneier put in some actual thought before firing this off.