I resigned from Twitter • Hacker News Board

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#911

Post by PantaloonFlames » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 2:25 AM UTC

jordanpg wrote: post #893

potluckyears wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The US Supreme Court is within spitting distance of wading into these waters. See Justice Thomas' concurrence in the grant of cert for Biden v. Knight First Amendment Institute[1]. "The similarities between some digital platforms and common carriers or places of public accommodation may give legislators strong arguments for similarly regulating digital platforms." See also https://www.npr.org/2021/04/05/984440891/jus…

It sounds like Justice Thomas is suggesting that this might be a reasonable thing for legislators to write laws about. It is not Justice Thomas saying, the US Supreme Court is likely to issue opinions on Twitter as a common carrier.

Maybe that’s what you intended to suggest, by the phrase “wading in.”

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#912

Post by PantaloonFlames » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 2:27 AM UTC

potluckyears wrote: post #884

dawnim wrote: post #849

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be interesting to see something like this governed by a community. Interesting in the light of DAO ownership. Any notable projects like this?

Member-owned co-ops like credit unions and REI come to mind. They follow a "one member, one vote" rule. Credit unions are not-for-profit, while REI makes billions in revenue, and both provide great service. They're an existence proof that it's possible to still be a good business while governed democratically. In some countries like Finland, the democratic government holds some large non-majority stake in companies t…

> Credit unions are not-for-profit, while REI makes billions in revenue,

Periodic reminder: revenue is not profit. A not-for-profit can bring in billions in revenue. (I don’t know of any non-profit organizations that fit this description)

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#913

Post by steve76 » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 2:38 AM UTC

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Re: I resigned from Twitter

#914

Post by gonational » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 2:52 AM UTC

ciabattabread wrote: post #860

gonational wrote: post #692

Censoring speech is completely counter to everything this country was built on. Every corporation doing this, YC included, is plainly undermining our freedom of speech. Using the public square exception, while also censoring and editorializing, creates a moral hazard, wherein the offending corporations are are actually publishers that ate not responsible for the content they publish, yet they are benefitting from it.…

Twitter is a private platform that has a 1st amendment right to exercise editorial control about what happens to their own platform. Same for a blog with a comment section, a restaurant review service, a moderated forum about tech news, an image sharing service. It shouldn't matter how large a corporate entity is. Same for the cable news networks. Same for newspapers and magazines.

Correct. But then they cannot enjoy the protections that come with being a "Public Square". You don't get to choose "OK I'm going to be a publisher/editor of content, but I will enjoy the protections of being a Public Square". Currently all of these companies are breaking the law, it's a known thing, but nobody is doing anything about it, same for the Logan act and many other laws that we have that are broken all the time and nobody enforces them.

If you're a publisher the size of Twitter of contact, then it's much harder to create a monopoly, because you need to spend countless millions of hours per week editorial editing content to make sure that none of it is illegal/defamatory/etc. Having the protections of a public square well only pretending to actually be one is fraud.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#915

Post by rpmisms » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 2:54 AM UTC

MaximumYComb wrote: post #813

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #748

A few reflections on this announcement. 1) Remember that CEOs of public companies are essentially unable to say what they think or want. The cost of doing it is being sued for damages, having to spend countless hours with lawyers, etc. Jack might think X, but he's only allowed to say Y, and he doesn't want to go beyond that because he doesn't want to fight that fight. Only people in a close circle really know what's…

I lean moderately left and I really disagree with #3. The explosion of voices is only ones that are "allowed". Twitter is one of the biggest offenders of cancel culture (i.e. silencing people).

This is nonsense. I talk with my favorite furry purveyors of printable guns on twitter nearly daily. I have criticisms of how Twitter bends to the establishment left, but there's a lot of stuff on twitter that makes many blue people very angry.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#916

Post by bern4444 » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 2:54 AM UTC

freediver wrote: post #541

MisterPea wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but is Twitter really suffering with any engineering problems? I generally would like to see a CTO come in charge but here's a unique case where someone from product might be more suitable.

Using their API is still a nightmare.

Twitter recently rolled out full support for their v2 API along with improvements to the usage policy, and the ability to get started quickly with essential access. What issues do you have with the API?

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#917

Post by bern4444 » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 2:59 AM UTC

kevingadd wrote: post #302

nafizh wrote: post #97

People love to bash Dorsey but he had more of a backbone than Zuckerberg in every possible way. And while the game is always about money, Dorsey did try to improve the eco-system in a principled way even if arguably he failed in many ways - this courage was probably there because he was a founder of the company. The new CEO will be more like Pichai at Google or Cook at Apple - only there to make money.

I don't know how you could write this comment unless you've barely used Twitter in the last 5 years. Their API stewardship is a mess, their support for third-party clients is miserable, Tweetdeck is constantly neglected, Web Twitter is chaotic+slow, and they constantly cram awful/broken new stuff like fleets and spaces into the UI and saddle it with user-hostile stuff like broadcasting what you're doing to all your f…

> Their API stewardship is a mess

What issues have you had with Twitter's v2 apis[0].

[0]https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-api/getting-st...

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#918

Post by kamaal » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 3:04 AM UTC

oblio wrote: post #806

slowmovintarget wrote: post #765

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Use the pen to design a better sword(missiles, f-35s etc), that's the point, not writing novels and reddit threads with a pen.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#919

Post by nvr219 » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 3:05 AM UTC

mrpopo wrote: post #895

ksec wrote: post #796

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter, ~$35B Market Cap, no profits, operating expenses keeps growing with Gross Profits. Future projection of profitability is still slim. Along with trillions of social / political issues that you have to due with because you are running social media. Square, ~$100B Market Cap, profitable, still mainly US based and growing. Crypto and Payment. Lots of potentials. It is not too hard to pick which one to run.

If your goal is personal monetary profit, maybe. Is it the case of Jack? Why want more when you already have too much

Because at a certain point money becomes an addiction.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#920

Post by LordDragonfang » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 3:15 AM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #848

bakuninsbart wrote: post #824

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both you and the person two comments above have overtly rose-tinted glasses on the proclaimed ideas of the so-called "free societies".The founding fathers did not accidentally deny their slaves the right to free speech and a free life. It is no accident that no woman nor a man without property signed the constitution. Public discourse has been dominated by white, rich men since the inception of the US, and history is…

We don't have slaves anymore. At least not in Western societies. So I am not sure how it's relevant - sure, people in the past had got a lot of things wrong. They thought diseases come from bad smells, eating arsenic can cure you, and yes - some of them also thought owning slaves is ok. Now we know better about these things. We don't have slavery anymore - at least in the West (curiously, nobody seems to give a tweet…

>We don't have slaves anymore. At least not in Western societies.

The US still explicitly allows slavery in its constitution, actually, so that's incorrect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_Stat...

It is absolutely not a coincidence that immediately after the passage of the 13th amendment, the incarceration of people of color skyrocketed following the passage of numerous racially-targeted "black codes". It's also not a coincidence that the majority of the current incarcerated population are people of color, it's a direct legacy of that system. Sure, you can't explicitly write racially targeted laws anymore, but applying an ounce of critical theory shows how the laws can be enforced along racial lines.

>And to fix that, we need more active suppression of speech, surely?

Note that no one actually suggested this as the solution.

It's always very telling that when someone of privilege is told that society has not, actually, been equitable in its supposed ideals (in this case free speech) the first reaction is always, "So instead you want to oppress and censor me??" instead of attempting to engage with the idea that maybe we should be structuring things so they're not oppressing anyone.

The best explanation I've seen of this phenomenon is that when someone has lived in an privileged and elevated position for their whole life, any calls for equity seem like an attack on your position.