LoL... his tweet was too long so he used a screenshot of it?
I resigned from Twitter
801–810 of 1001 posts
Re: I resigned from Twitter
#802Earlier quoted context omitted.
>allow the platform to mature What does that mean? The medium is the message and Twitter is curt, prone to exaggeration / outrageous / mean spirited content.... and the people on there EAT IT UP. What is going to mature?
Censorship and more algo driven content discovery to push ads and approved narratives. Dorsey was probably the biggest advocate for free speech amongst the CEOs of any major company & Twitter is significantly less toxic than Facebook partly because of him. I fully expect his removal to lead the company in a more dystopian direction.
Advocates for free speech that support a "public square" model of free speech but who refuse to adapt that to the modern digital communication systems are doing more harm than good in my opinion.
A public square filled with nation state actors influencing the volume and contents of the subjects of discussion in the public square are doing more to inhibit free speech than any technological solution owned by a social media platform. Corporate censorship is a lot easier to fight, as users can walk or investors can react when things are not matching the desired effect. It's not perfect, but better than an open-ended "everything free" world where it can be manipulated by those with the right resources (in my opinion).
What we need is for people to get a lot more creative with how to create, support, and sustain free speech online without relying on millennia old concepts which do not map to our current problems quite well.
Re: I resigned from Twitter
#803I remember spending a summer on the Twitter campus and the whole time I was wondering - why the heck does Twitter need all these employees (5500 as of last count [0])? The functionality hasn't budged much in years. I get the need for IT ops to keep stuff running (especially since failwhale days). But honestly, I never got why Twitter couldn't do with 1/10 the staff they have / had. I hope this great resignation wave…
They need all those employees because apparently there is not really any algorithm at work... An insider leaked at some point on Reddit a while back that there are just a bunch of people applying back end controls on each user account to limit their posting activity in one of a few ways, and when I saw it it did a lot to ease my mind about how the erratic way Twitter works. I personally think that some accounts simpl…
This is the answer I was expecting. There's clearly a non-scaling factor at work here.
Re: I resigned from Twitter
#804Earlier quoted context omitted.
Has mediating access to information been the defining tool of control for civilizations? Maybe in tyrannical, despotic societies that is true, but those don't allow Twitter today via firewalls, so that's mostly a moot point in this thread. I'd say the sword and the coin have both been far more controlling than limited information spread. What of free society? Is the government of the USA, UK, or other "enlightened" s…
I disagree that "enlightened" societies don't rely on mediating access to information as the defining tool of control; our difference of opinion is perhaps that you think of this purely as limiting information spread, where I think of it also as shaping the information for their own ends. The governments of the UK and the USA, to state two examples you mentioned, have used these tools effectively as propaganda channe…
USA is literally founded on this principle:
Congress shall make no law /.../ abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press
And while it talks about the Congress, it is clear why the founders considered it to be necessary - the principal value of the free and unabridged speech to forming a free society is tremendous.
True, in an armed conflict, speech has been used as a weapon, and it is also true that the reality of US government has often fallen short of the noble ideals laying at its foundation. But until recently, it has been a widely recognized principle that unmediated and un-gated access to speech and expression - be it audio, printed, electronic or any other means of speech - is a vital cornerstone of a modern free society. Unfortunately, recently certain part of political and cultural establishment decided they want to "move past" these antiquated ideas of equality and appoint themselves as gatekeepers of speech - "for our common benefit and the benefit of the society", of which they are but selfless servants, to be sure.
The new Twitter CEO is, unfortunately, one of these people, and has unashamedly promoted this approach personally. Thus, we can expect only redoubling of effort from his side to suppress and remove speech that he considers "harmful" and discussion of topics he considers not up for discussion. Fortunately, there's an easy way to deal with it. As David Chappelle noted recently, "twitter is not a real place" - and doesn't need to be elevated to the position of society's gatekeeper, but rather demoted to society's cesspool. They proved themselves not up to the task to maintain robust free discourse platform - let them rot in their own bubble.
Re: I resigned from Twitter
#805I'm in a post-Thanksgiving charitable mood, so thank you, Jack. The execution hasn't been perfect (as has been commented on ad nauseam), but Twitter is the closest to a worldwide-accessible [1] Speaker's Corner [2] I know of, and that - despite all the completely valid criticism - is a valuable public service: mediating access to information has been the defining tool of control for those in power pretty much since c…
Twitter Blue apparently was another not so great idea I guess... Look folks, Twitter was never really profitable and it showed. Innovation has been lagging for years, and they had to rely on sensationalism from Trump that simply can't be allowed to persist any more. The profit model has changed, and therefore the CEO music change. The big question is where it all will go next. I can think of several ideas that will i…
I have never liked Twitter. I just never got it. Talk about yourself?
That said, I would like to find other sites. It seemes like the monopolies are so strong--there's just not much hope.
I would like to find sites other than
Hackernew reddit facebook--excuse me Meta.
I thought by now there would be so many options, but I couldn't imagine trying to compete with a handful of huge sites.
I'm too old for Ticktok.
Re: I resigned from Twitter
#806Earlier quoted context omitted.
Has mediating access to information been the defining tool of control for civilizations? Maybe in tyrannical, despotic societies that is true, but those don't allow Twitter today via firewalls, so that's mostly a moot point in this thread. I'd say the sword and the coin have both been far more controlling than limited information spread. What of free society? Is the government of the USA, UK, or other "enlightened" s…
> Beneath the rule of men entirely great > The pen is mightier than the sword.
That's easy to write when you're not on the wrong end of a Mongolian bow or a T-34 gun barrel.
Re: I resigned from Twitter
#807It 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.
Society is going through a learning process in understanding the value of scope in our social environments. If you simply connect all the nodes into a gigantic hyper graph you get a constantly evolving shithole. It’s like programming using only global variables.
There is both value and risk in highly personalized social scoping. The largest risk IMO is epistemic closure, which at large scale is corrosive to society. A platform which has the effect of enabling frictionless epistemic bubbles for everyone is harmful, not beneficial.
This is a systemic risk of decentralization in all of its forms, too, really. At its most extreme, a world comprised of arbitrarily many self-governed communities is a dystopia.
Re: I resigned from Twitter
#808I'm in a post-Thanksgiving charitable mood, so thank you, Jack. The execution hasn't been perfect (as has been commented on ad nauseam), but Twitter is the closest to a worldwide-accessible [1] Speaker's Corner [2] I know of, and that - despite all the completely valid criticism - is a valuable public service: mediating access to information has been the defining tool of control for those in power pretty much since c…
Perhaps a valuable public service should be owned and governed by...the public? In a corporation like Twitter, only people who can afford a financial stake have a say, and having more financial stake means having more say. Not a great structure if your concern is power. Perhaps everyone in the public (with a social rather than financial stake in a platform like Twitter) should have a voice in its governance.
We should definitely have public owned non profits, maybe even government sponsored ones.
They're utilities and should be treated as such.
I don't expect this to happen in the US unless there's a a Great Digital Depression.
Re: I resigned from Twitter
#809Doubling down on bitcoin/financial payment/payment gateway.
Smart.
Re: I resigned from Twitter
#810Earlier quoted context omitted.
Share your insight.
Twitter was never meant to be a platform that all information can be shared their 280 characters. It was always meant to be abbreviated and force short handed information. OP comment that Jack had to post an image to pass on the information completely misunderstands what/how and why twitter was built. OP comment was a throwaway comment trying to say that long form text based comments should be allowed on twitter? Thi…
Twitter started out as a way to organize protests via cellphone, TXT2MOB. Jack just used it to post a manifesto as an image of text because the platform cannot support long-form communication. It is not a medium for subtlety, complexity, or depth. Both statements are true. Your complaint has nothing to do with Twitter's failure as a substantial communication mechanism, and my point simply illustrates that failure. We're both right.