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I resigned from Twitter

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Re: I resigned from Twitter

#621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YES! You don't leak it to a reporter like it's the latest variant of the iPhone. There should have an announcement from the board, a LONG time before markets were to start (ideally end of markets on friday) clearly explaining WHAT is happening and WHY (even if it's a bullshit reason, there should be a reason). It would have allowed markets to absorb the news instead of the NYSE having to halt trading amid the uncerta…

I don't get it. Who cares? You sound like you just want the status quo. Sending a tweet works just as well to get the message out.

the tweet came a few hours after CNBC leaked it, what I had posted on HN was the original article, it was changed with the tweet after the fact by some mod here.

My comment dates from when we didn't have a tweet or any info, no one knew who the next ceo of twitter was, simply the rumour (not even confirmed news) that jack had left. no one knew, Twitter PR was refusing reporter questions and NYSE had to stop trading until the situation settled

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is heavily moderated, which is interesting given how often it is used as a platform to decry censorship.

Can you provide specific examples please? It would seem that it moderates trolling content, self promotional or bot level garbage.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

You can also try searching for "please by:dang"

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#623
post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here is that "toxic" is subjective, what I find toxic and disagreeable may not be the same thing you find toxic and disagreeable. Take for example hot button issue of Gun ownership, I believe it an essential right and extension of self defense, others view any talk about guns as toxic that should be banned. Who's worldview should win? Mine, your's, Twitters? IMO platforms like twitter should not be making…

It's their tool, so they get to build it to their liking, until law is created requiring them to do otherwise. The question in the meantime is, "what is moral?" and "do we as an entity (twitter) enforce our morality at all, and to what extent?" For example, millions of people believe the lie , the fabrication that the 2020 presidential election result was fraudulent. If there are organizations on your platform amplif…

The problem is of course, he won't ever do that consistently. Instead he will simply decide that people he doesn't personally like a "lying" and "spreading misinformation", whilst people who are powerful or who he does like, never do.

Consider that if Twitter censored everyone who believed a lie or fabrication, every public health person who claimed masks didn't work and then that they did, would all lose their Twitter accounts or be hidden. Guess what, they will never do that.

Thus it is reasonable to interpret their use of the word "healthy" to be "heavily left wing biased".

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#624
post #444
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to sound like a Boomer, but I still genuinely don't get what Twitter is for. I actually finally created an account a year ago and most of my follows are pretty high-brow (journalists, various industry experts, some big shots in my outer circle) and I still get almost no value from it. They use twitter to post inside jokes or promos to web content that I didn't have trouble finding without twitter. Maybe 1 out of…

> most of my follows are pretty high-brow (…) and I still get almost no value from it. They use twitter to post (…) promos to web content that I didn't have trouble finding without twitter. Have you considered you’re not getting value from it because your follows are high-brow? Instead of following big shots with their own marketing teams, follow small creators in areas that interest you (e.g. indie game developers).

If the platform made it easier to discover these kind of niches, that would be some real value.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#625
post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here is that "toxic" is subjective, what I find toxic and disagreeable may not be the same thing you find toxic and disagreeable. Take for example hot button issue of Gun ownership, I believe it an essential right and extension of self defense, others view any talk about guns as toxic that should be banned. Who's worldview should win? Mine, your's, Twitters? IMO platforms like twitter should not be making…

It's their tool, so they get to build it to their liking, until law is created requiring them to do otherwise. The question in the meantime is, "what is moral?" and "do we as an entity (twitter) enforce our morality at all, and to what extent?" For example, millions of people believe the lie , the fabrication that the 2020 presidential election result was fraudulent. If there are organizations on your platform amplif…

There are better ways to win the hearts and minds of the population than authoritarian control of what people see, hear and say. No one likes to be controlled by someone else. Censoring discussion of the issue is only going to make more people assume the election was in fact "fraudulent". Similarly Sam Harris has said in a podcast how laws against Holocaust denial do more to create more Holocaust deniers than they help because they automatically make people assume you have something to hide, even if you don't.

In general, intelligent people feel an intellectual responsibility to question what they are told.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The average person doesn't like to inhabit the Hobbesian reality that CEOs do, where they're accountable for results and any bad things happening are automatically their fault Does this actually happen though? I'm not sure I've ever seen a President or CEO of a company be held accountable for bad behavior or bad decisions in any meaningful way. Best case scenario, you mess up and get "fired" (with a million-dollar-…

This is similar to why the argument that capitalists are due returns because they take on risk doesn't move me. Please, give me the "risk" of having somewhat-fewer millions in the bank. I'll take on all that risk. For free! Meanwhile workers will be in deep shit if their company goes under and they don't find something else ASAP. Risk, indeed. The absolute worst-case scenario is that they might have to work for a liv…

> Please, give me the "risk" of having somewhat-fewer millions in the bank. I'll take on all that risk. For free!

Why aren't you founding a company, then? Or a cryptocurrency token, or selling NFTs? Or leveraging up to become a landlord on borrowed money? Or hobnobbing with executive recruiters and VCs while setting yourself up as a thought leader? Or raising capital for a hedge fund? These are all things you can do right now, with potentially (but risky) multi-million-$ payoffs. For many of them you don't even need to quit your day job - your employment contract might say otherwise, but the actual work involved can be done on your downtime without them knowing.

For most people, the real reason they don't do this is because they're uncomfortable with it. They don't want to inhabit a world of secrets, lies, non-aligned interests, and risk, so they take a job that lets them ignore all that and get paid for doing a specific task according to the specifications of their boss.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#627
post #563

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Some the problems are old... and some are new. The old press was broadcast-only and had to catter to the lowest common denominator. As a result, at least some people were immune. The new "press" is crowdsourced and tailored just for you. Social media doesn't even have to do research on what works or what doesn't on who. Natural selection by means of retweeting does all the work. You can find misinformation of all lev…

> You can find misinformation of all levels of sophistication, all the way to incorrect scientific papers if thats your shtick. This isn't new at all. "More doctors smoke Camel Cigarettes". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCMzjJjuxQI And the Tobacco industry funded all types of scientific papers, that were published all over the place to demonstrate Tobacco's "health benefits". ------- The only reason we can't find e…

Right, except now its not just pathological aspects of capitalism causing the problem - its democratized. Now everyone can misinterpret papers in novel an exciting ways that are likely to spread far and wide.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How the fuck does Elon do it then? The mf has like four concurrent organizations under his helm. Tesla = primary concern | SpaceX = Gwynne Shotwell (Prez & COO) | Boring Company/Neuralink ["Labs" projects] = funsies

Every company he starts/runs is to enable viable Mars civilization. SpaceX = get us there. Tesla = cash cow for SpaceX + Mars ground transportation. SolarCity = energy infra for a Mars colony. Boring = radiation protection for Mars habitats. Neuralink = moonshot cash cow, advancement of neural medicine for Mars colony. Trying to advance/safeguard humanity is the most funsies thing one can do.

If you definition of "X is for Mars" is so broad as to include "brain-computer interfaces just like on Earth, but done on Mars" then yeah I suppose pretty much everything is done in the service of Mars. For example, Google is working on having the best search engine available to use for search on Mars. Facebook wants to build the best social network, for Mars. Etc.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#629
post #385

It will be interesting to see how Twitter changes as a result. Twitter with selective following and setting your timeline to 'time order' creates a pretty good environment for me. It feels like the equivalent of living in only a few chosen 'subreddits' rather than getting the full frontal reddit experience.

This seems to hold true for many social media sites: facebook, reddit, twitter. It takes effort on behalf of the user to make their experience on the site "better". And by better I mean, less divisive, and less mindless scrolling of memes/low effort content. Thinking about it from the business's perspective, it probably ultimately also lowers their user engagement metrics. Users get a higher quality experience using…

I don't think this is solvable, or indeed even a problem to be solved. Our definition of "better" probably overlaps quite a bit, but it decidedly does not with many, many people. There are a lot of people who really enjoy "memes and low-effort content".

The reason it takes effort on behalf of the user is because there's no such thing as a perfect read-your-mind content recommendation system that doesn't require any inputs from you, as much as people like to pretend machine learning is magic. Twitter/Reddit et al are a tool for building a content stream that fits you perfectly: their recommendations aren't intended to be blindly and indiscriminately consumed, but to narrow your search space to make the construction of this stream possible in the first place.

This is a simple extension of the trend of broadening distribution we've seen, from having three broadcast channels (all reporting the same news with the same slant and the same blind spots), through cable television, all the way up to today's wide-open, bottom-up distribution system. The root of this type of complaint about social media is that they treat their users with too much respect, trusting them to have the emotional continence and intellectual maturity to build a custom content stream that fits them instead of being told precisely what to believe and what to care about by Walter Cronkite.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Visually impaired people using a screenreader won't be able to read it.

Can screen readers still not read text in images? Years ago I could understand that being a problem, but now? If that's still true then it seems to me those screen readers could really use an upgrade. My phone has been able to copy text out of screenshots flawlessly for years . I do agree with the overall point though that images are a suboptimal way of conveying text.

Does your phone perform the OCR locally or does it farm it out to a service? There's privacy implications for the latter.
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