Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#601

Post by lupire » Thu, May 12, 2022, 10:33 PM UTC

ipaddr wrote: post #541

SamBam wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still confuses me that being part-owner of an old dot-com payment company, part-owner of a mid-sized car company (by number of cars sold), and part-owner of a (very good) rocket company make a person richer than anyone has ever been in the history of the planet, but that's probably because I just haven't looked into it enough.

The most successful payment company, the top car company on terms of valuation and the top rocket company. We've never seen that profile. Usually it's someone who had monopolized an industry like Gates or Bozo doing under one company.

That's kind of arbitrary because Microsoft is an OS, apps, computer, and peripherals company; and Amazon is a retail, logistics, and cloud services company.

Tesla is a battery-based company, but could also have been a transportation company and included Boring and SpaceX.

And Mastercard and Vida are both bigger in payments than PayPal. And PayPal was mostly Thiel's Confinity, which merged with Musk's X.com bank.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#602

Post by the_doctah » Thu, May 12, 2022, 10:33 PM UTC

HelloMcFly wrote: post #562

the_doctah wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I use hate-speech as an example because the "groomer" as a slur issue is at a peak right now and is fresh in my head. Mm. I think the problem is that censorship advocates like you try to add words like this into the lexicon of "hate speech" and try to have it censored. It's not, and it shouldn't be, and you should be ashamed of even thinking it. It is not other people's responsibility to stay up to date on what may…

> It's not, and it shouldn't be, and you should be ashamed of even thinking it. I didn't see the OP advocating for censorship, but for the enablement of moderation for unacceptable content within a community. Do you think LGBTQ spaces on reddit - for instance - should be prevented from banning users that compare them all to child molesters? Is that "censorship" that the OP should be ashamed of? Must all spaces be ent…

Your argument for "spaces" and "communities" goes out the window when moderators of subreddits are forced to make sure their space adheres to what Reddit wants. That's not your space, it's Reddit's. No one is stopping subreddits from moderating how they want, the problem is when they are forced to moderate how Reddit wants. Furthermore, your "communities" and "spaces" are nothing more than an excuse to create echo chambers, which are not productive for free speech either, but that's just Reddit for you.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#603

Post by kranke155 » Thu, May 12, 2022, 10:34 PM UTC

pnathan wrote: post #556

fleddr wrote: post #480

Just a spring cleaning that is about a decade late. Twitter under-performs in every aspect imaginable: financially, product quality, product innovation. Nothing ever gets released and whilst this pace has improved in recent years, those "innovations" don't really deliver. They're barely used, copycats from other apps, and so on. Meanwhile, age-old problems are never addressed, like bots and the extremely hostile mob…

I do have to agree that Twitter is either (1) basically perfected or (2) coasting. I also might suggest that the buyout offer has prompted some very hard thinking internally and strategic changes.

I would say twitter threads need robust support and the edit button is sorely missed.

But yes in a way the paralysis that Twitter is in is interesting in a world where everything is being changed always all the time in agile cycles. Twitter feels like it just exists and this is the way it works.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#604

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 12, 2022, 10:34 PM UTC

turtledove wrote: post #503

vincvinc wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, are we on the same HN? I feel like I see a lot of topics debated I’d call political (“about how society ought to function”) on a daily basis.

I was going to say.... HN is full of politics. Not always the Red vs Blue kind, but there's political discussions constantly . At any given time several front page stories are explicitly political, and several more are implicitly political (e.g. cryptocurrency).

[deleted]

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#605

Post by saagarjha » Thu, May 12, 2022, 10:35 PM UTC

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #187

paxys wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is going to get a severance package larger that most of us will make in our lifetimes. There's no reason to weep for him.

What does a "head of consumer product" do? Has Twitter's platform/offering changed all that much in 7 years?

Spaces, Communities, Twitter Blue?

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#606

Post by 2bitencryption » Thu, May 12, 2022, 10:35 PM UTC

ilamont wrote: post #363

paganel wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only works because HN is, mostly, politics-free. I'm not a regular Twitter user but afaik that platform is pretty heavy on politics, more than that, it's pretty heavy when it comes to a certain political spectrum, the other side has been mostly de-platformed by now. I don't consider that as a healthy platform to comment on for the general public (even though, I agree, it might be ok for people who happen to shar…

> but afaik that platform is pretty heavy on politics Twitter is what you want it to be, topic-wise, based on who you follow and what they like to talk about. Further tuning is possible using blocks and muted keywords. However, there is bleed because people you follow and Twitter's recommendation features can't help themselves (and not just about politics; anything "newsy" pops up). What happens when Elon's "anything…

> it will drive millions of people away

I don't see this happening. I see the opposite. With free reign to post "anything under U.S. law", content on Twitter will become even further optimized to get the most eyeballs. You'll see things that make you so mad that you just HAVE to reply. And on and on it goes.

Surely you've seen those Twitter/Youtube/Insta ads that would show a trivially easy puzzle (like, toddler-level easy), and show a person somehow failing it. "Can YOU solve it"? the add entices. Obviously. Of course you can solve it. It's designed to be brain-dead easy to cast the widest net, and to give you just that brief moment of discomfort while you watch someone ELSE fail (as scripted). And you want to dispel this discomfort, so you click on it (or, more likely, you scroll on, but you better believe that other people click on it).

It's like cigarettes. Everyone knows they kill you in the long run. But boy do they tickle those neurons that make you want just one more.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#607

Post by kranke155 » Thu, May 12, 2022, 10:35 PM UTC

paganel wrote: post #316

ilamont wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also think the proposal to have Twitter allow all content that is "legal under US law" is a dangerous idea for the platform being a healthy community that most people actually want to participate in. This is key. If @dang suddenly threw up his hands and said "anything goes on HN within U.S. law" this wonderful virtual discussion forum would die and most of us would sign off forever. I say that as someone whose be…

That only works because HN is, mostly, politics-free. I'm not a regular Twitter user but afaik that platform is pretty heavy on politics, more than that, it's pretty heavy when it comes to a certain political spectrum, the other side has been mostly de-platformed by now. I don't consider that as a healthy platform to comment on for the general public (even though, I agree, it might be ok for people who happen to shar…

There are pro-Russian accounts on Twitter. I don’t know about right wing US but I follow Marco Rubio. I don’t know how you’d get removed just for being right wing.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#608

Post by JPKab » Thu, May 12, 2022, 10:36 PM UTC

DantesKite wrote: post #501

fleddr wrote: post #480

Just a spring cleaning that is about a decade late. Twitter under-performs in every aspect imaginable: financially, product quality, product innovation. Nothing ever gets released and whilst this pace has improved in recent years, those "innovations" don't really deliver. They're barely used, copycats from other apps, and so on. Meanwhile, age-old problems are never addressed, like bots and the extremely hostile mob…

You're 100% correct. They shut down Vine. TikTok is now a billion dollar industry. As far as I'm concerned, every product manager involved in that decision shouldn't be involved with Twitter anymore, because they display an astonishingly level of incompetence.

No shit.

Twitter is filled with extravagantly paid Product Managers with thoroughly mediocre (at best) results. Vine is a great example, but think about the complete lack of imagination when it comes to Musk's idea of charging users $3/month. I would absolutely pay that to be on a Twitter free of bots. And wow, how bad is the data science team at Twitter that they can't spot the OBVIOUS bots all over the site? When you see what they get paid, that's what makes it pathetic.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#609

Post by lupire » Thu, May 12, 2022, 10:36 PM UTC

Turing_Machine wrote: post #600

sudosysgen wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no revolution to speak of. Tesla is an evolution in the high-end EV market. In the mid-range market Tesla was late to the punch and faces stiff competition, and in the low-end market they aren't an entity to speak of.

> in the low-end market they aren't an entity to speak of. So... like Apple?

Far more people can afford iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air than can afford any Tesla car.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#610

Post by kranke155 » Thu, May 12, 2022, 10:37 PM UTC

kyledrake wrote: post #189

I've been using Twitter since it's main novelty was that it was a successful Ruby on Rails app, and honestly I've been trying to figure out where the exit is for my personal use of Twitter lately. If the acquisition goes through, Twitter won't make enough money to service it's debt, and the things they will do to fix that are pretty much guaranteed to lower the quality of the platform, which frankly has never worked…

Musk’s idea of “anything that is legal” is a terrible idea, it comes from someone who’s clearly never moderated a community.

Generally any unpleasantness and lack of civility needs to be moderated out in some extent, or the platform gets completely taken over by trolls and normal people leave. That’s just the end result. Anyone who’s been involved in online communities know this.

I see this in subreddits. The subreddit of my own country is poorly moderated and virulent in trolling and insults. But you look at something like AskHistorians and you see academic level content. NeutralPolitics is the only politics subreddit that isnt instantly toxic. Why? Moderation and rules.

It’s astonishing how far you can move the content with moderation.

A rule I’ve learnt recently and really loved is - every community can be judged quickly by how comfortable women are in it. The first sign of lack of moderation is male sexual harassment - because that’s the first thing male assholes do. You have to deal with the assholes. Assholes exist and are relatively common. If you allow assholes, women leave, and when women leave, you can tell something went wrong.