291–300 of 403 posts
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> turning the "conservative search results" lever It may not have been algorithmic, but it definitely happened.
You know this how? Because you were that guy?
Musk has repeatedly talked about "open sourcing" twitter's algorithm. Given Musk is (understandably) super impatient, this repo may be his first move. I expect this to start with bunch of readme and other high level docs and evolve into details and eventually code.
This seems to be a practical joke by a Twitter engineer as opposed to an actual release.
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It's so difficult as someone who works in technology to tolerate this idea that there is "an algorithm". Maybe this will get flagged on HN but the overwhelming feeling is to just scream "don't be such a fucking idiot, this is a $43Bn company it doesn't boil down to 50 lines of code" and hell, there are plenty of examples of 50 lines of code at my company I could spend a month really understanding and even then not un…
I don't think that most people actually believe "the algorithm" is like a Python script or something.
This idea that "the algorithm" is something you can just "publish" is a pernicious lie told by people like Musk - who knows it isn't true - to the general public who don't know better. The "algorithm" in reality is probably farcical calls to cusotm APIs that no current employees understand well enough to modify which is why Twitter hasn't changed anything in coming up to a decade - which is when all the engineering talent left.
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Well, that's an algorithm. If you have to draw a diagram showing how edge cache nodes affect a user's results based on whether or not they signed in from New York or Phoenix, or if the downtime of a cluster affects the relevance rankings of tweets for a photography enthusiast, then guess what... That's an algorithm.
Yes it's an algorithm, but as software engineers we shouldn't pander to people who actually think there is a small flow chart dictating what happens in your search results. It's idiotic or dishonest.
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Twitter is transparent in how they do shadow bans? They still deny they are a thing but it's clear to see the network effects of them. Twitter is transparent - that's the most hilarious thing I have read today!
Has there ever been any actual indication of twitter shadow bans being a real thing, or are we putting it in the same "weird conspiracy theory" category as "facebook listens using microphone to target ads"? I follow a few people in "gamer/twitch twitter" and every now and then this meme pops up of twitter secretly deranking "go live" twitch.tv tweets, which is much more palatable to these people than the reality of j…
Please stop living in this bubble. There have been plenty of reports of Twitter shadow banning speech it doesn't like. It has even suspended accounts multiple times only to reinstate them by saying it was an "algorithm error" or it being "wrongly flagged". In India we regularly see Twitter suspending accounts that have not violated any Indian law.
All because it doesn't align with the left-leaning ideology of Twitter. Even trends are boosted to favor left-leaning news portals over right-leaning news portals (which is visible in the trends section).
An example: https://www.freepressjournal.in/viral/bringbacktrueindology-...
^ This account specifically was suspended a total of 3 times. Ultimately the anonymous account owner decided to come out in the open and open a Twitter account in his real name. He got banned again very recently. In all those instances, there was not even one tweet of his that "crossed the line" when it came to anything illegal. Be it speech, instigation of violence or even a curse word. Nothing at all. The suspension was purely ideological.
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Wonder if their RSU grants have a clause that converts them to cash in the event of a takeover. And having been in a company that was taken over, it's a mixture of emotions - is my job safe, will this be the same culture I joined for etc. etc.
>"Wonder if their RSU grants have a clause that converts them to cash in the event of a takeover" This is interesting question since RSUs are a big part of total comp but how are unvested RSUs dealt with when the stock is retired? Are those put on a future cash comp schedule? And if so at what conversion rate?
I know the algorithm i use, it ends with ORDER BY date DESC.
Is that actually possible on Twitter? (I have an account but don't use it.) I do believe them that when a user follows several 100+ other users, it would probably be impossible to read every tweet chronologically.
I then use tweet deck which shows a column of tweets per list.
As these are separated by subject and are chronological, it makes it far easier to follow.
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"Among the elite, and within Twitter specifically, there is much more inclination to ban the right. I say this as someone whose political views, if you force them onto the left-right spectrum, probably end up about 80% toward the left. E.g. I've spent millions over the past several elections supporting the Democrats. It used to be that censorship was something the right did, and free speech was something the left wer…
I’m pro censorship. We have and need speech norms. The left and right are not equal. The left does not rely as much on lies to advocate its positions, and the left is not as oriented around destruction and regression as the right. We need a more robust understanding of speech than “allowed or not”. Emphasis & volume matters.
Imagine having something like this for Google's and YouTube's algorithms; $100bn+ SEO industry would go bankrupt or at least they would pivot to some sort of advising but there wouldn't be the mayhem that we have today.