Earlier quoted context omitted.
They push for censorship of pornographic material, which is less dangerous than misinformation about vaccines.
What's the problem with making public pages SFW?
It's censorship
Ex-Twitter exec blows the whistle, alleging reckless cybersecurity policies
581–590 of 645 posts
Re: Ex-Twitter exec blows the whistle, alleging reckless cybersecurity policies
#582Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's not a monopoly because there are alternatives, and it only has a 10% market share in the US ( https://gs.statcounter.com/social-media-stats/all/united-sta... ). The bakery also sets precedent as it did go to the supreme court, and it was used as a rallying cry by politicians on the right.
So, in simpler words, they are indeed a pseudo-monopolistic (pseudo means apparent, something very close to but not quite there) social media giant that can indeed censor millions (10% of USA's population is 30 millions) arbitarily and at will ? Ok :) And whether a bakery serves your gay wedding or not is perhaps the most petty and inconsequential thing to be upset about. There are thousands upon thousands of bakerie…
Again, it set a legal precedent and it's a restriction on freedom there shouldn't be a threshold to care
Re: Ex-Twitter exec blows the whistle, alleging reckless cybersecurity policies
#583Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I read the full whistle-blower complaint The content of the complaint is all that matters, and it should be judged on its own merits. It never matters who said what, and attempting to make it matter is ad hominem fallacy; it is what is said that matters. That said, I can't quite fathom why Twitter's cybersecurity matters any more than the cybersecurity of any of the myriad of online forums, HN included: the "data"…
> Say Twitter is completely overrun by foreign state actors who delete everything. That's not what's dangerous. Instead, dangerous things include manipulating the algorithms so that "news" of ones choice get lots of visibility. Then a foreign state can influence the elections
> Then a foreign state can influence the elections
I think this is bollocks. 23% of Americans say they use Twitter. 61% of Americans voted in the last Presidential election. So with my bad math, say a foreign state somehow gets every possible Twitter users vote going their way, at best it's going bamboozle 14% of weak-minded Americans. That's at best, the perfect and unbeatable score. The reality is that most Twitter users are not obsessed with the platform, and most Americans are not on the fence with their votes. This concern is not really supportable.
Re: Ex-Twitter exec blows the whistle, alleging reckless cybersecurity policies
#584Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They have pipelines of exploitation for everyone that gets "discovered" into contractual nightmare deals, they require tons of free labor and costly hurdles just to become notable and visible on the platform For what it's worth, as someone running a high-five-digits account, it is possible to get notable on Twitter - you just have to put in a ton of work to make quality content people are actually interested in.
Sure... In order to build a house, you just need to bring your motivation... And lots of time... And money... to hire an architect and an entire home building company... Without having any income the whole time... Hard work for free does not make sense in this type of post-pandemic world we live in... It's too "Marie Antoinette-esque" of people to say it's anywhere near reasonable.
My point is, a lot of those wannabe "influencers" who complain the most about "boo hoo, Twitter/Instagram are so unfair" are simply putting out mediocre content.
Re: Ex-Twitter exec blows the whistle, alleging reckless cybersecurity policies
#585Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I read the full whistle-blower complaint The content of the complaint is all that matters, and it should be judged on its own merits. It never matters who said what, and attempting to make it matter is ad hominem fallacy; it is what is said that matters. That said, I can't quite fathom why Twitter's cybersecurity matters any more than the cybersecurity of any of the myriad of online forums, HN included: the "data"…
The algorythms are not public, and as the public square of present, Twitter essentially drives public discourse... especially when a large portion of the legacy media has been reduced to sourcing their stories and directly quoting from Twitter. Secondly, private messages between people are not public either. Opening that data up or allowing it to be read or manipulated by other entities will drive a lot of outrage an…
>The algorythms are not public,
Seriously, so what? Twitter's IP does not affect national security.
>and as the public square of present, Twitter essentially drives public discourse...
This is being awfully kind to a platform that 77% of Americans have absolutely nothing to do with.
>especially when a large portion of the legacy media has been reduced to sourcing their stories and directly quoting from Twitter.
Ah, legacy media, conservative politispeak for CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, etc. Can't get away from Twitter on the major networks anymore, it's Twitter all the time? Just what in the heck are you talking about? Turn the news on sometime. The only reason for Twitter to be in the news is Elon Musk (previously, Trump). Or, you know, give one example of a major news outlet using Twitter as source for a story. Real journalists do not do that. They use legitimate sources.
> Secondly, private messages between people are not public either. Opening that data up or allowing it to be read or manipulated by other entities will drive a lot of outrage and the data contained within is important!
Absurd. No one cares what you say in private to a complete stranger you'll never meet.
Re: Ex-Twitter exec blows the whistle, alleging reckless cybersecurity policies
#586Earlier quoted context omitted.
The algorythms are not public, and as the public square of present, Twitter essentially drives public discourse... especially when a large portion of the legacy media has been reduced to sourcing their stories and directly quoting from Twitter. Secondly, private messages between people are not public either. Opening that data up or allowing it to be read or manipulated by other entities will drive a lot of outrage an…
+1. Additionally IP addresses, email and phone numbers can be extremely sensitive if leaked, so security is absolutely paramount. Case in point: imagine the risk to activists or journalists in heavily censored countries.
Please name one time in the history of TCP/IP that leaked IP addresses led to anything at all.
Re: Ex-Twitter exec blows the whistle, alleging reckless cybersecurity policies
#587Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I read the full whistle-blower complaint The content of the complaint is all that matters, and it should be judged on its own merits. It never matters who said what, and attempting to make it matter is ad hominem fallacy; it is what is said that matters. That said, I can't quite fathom why Twitter's cybersecurity matters any more than the cybersecurity of any of the myriad of online forums, HN included: the "data"…
I was kind of curious about this as well, though I suppose if a politician’s account was compromised it could cause some pretty major embarrassment or maybe even conflict. Are DMs a thing on Twitter? Having those compromised might be pretty serious too.
Actually, this already happened,[1] and we were doomed because of it. Fetishes are fine, but those people need to look away from Twitter sometimes and get a grip.
Re: Ex-Twitter exec blows the whistle, alleging reckless cybersecurity policies
#588Re: Ex-Twitter exec blows the whistle, alleging reckless cybersecurity policies
#589Earlier quoted context omitted.
If Musk actually believes this represents anything it puts his IQ in the single digit - low double digits range.
So what you're saying is that an idiot can become the richest man in the world without being born into it? How often has that happened in the entire history?
If 5 billion people flip coins all day long one of them will eventually flip only heads all day.
Profoundly dumb people have been heads of state, CEOs etc. So why not the richest person in the world?
Alternative suggestion would be that he doesnt actually believe that the reason he is trying not to buy twitter is the reason he was buying twitter.
Re: Ex-Twitter exec blows the whistle, alleging reckless cybersecurity policies
#590Is it just me, or does some of this feel less whistleblower-y and more petty? For example: > The company also lacks sufficient redundancies and procedures to restart or recover from data center crashes, Zatko's disclosure says, meaning that even minor outages of several data centers at the same time could knock the entire Twitter service offline, perhaps for good. That said, this is Mudge. I have a lot of respect for…
Quite a few parts of it are petty, and honestly feel like he was at war with most of the leaders.
He wasn't responsible for disaster recovery, or reliability, yet he was reporting to the board (going above his reporting chain), telling them that the company wasn't doing enough because it can't handle _multiple_ data center outages at once? Very, very few companies could handle that. If twitter can handle their primary datacenter failing, then they do have a working DR plan. They aren't lying. Is the DR plan to Mudge's liking? Obviously not, but his idea of a DR plan is out of line with what the vast majority of the industry considers a reasonable DR plan.
Similarly, mDAU vs user/bot numbers aren't lies. The company switched their reporting metric. They're accurately reporting their growth metric to the board, and to the shareholders. The raw user numbers could actually matter to the board/shareholders, but the board could have required them to report them and didn't. Just because they aren't reporting the metric you'd prefer them to report doesn't mean they're lying to anyone.
There are a number of legitimate complaints in the disclosure related to poor security practices, but many of them feel like internal problems that don't rise to the level of crimes. Sadly, he may have had a hard time moving the needle on those issues because he was spending his time fighting everyone.
He's a gifted engineer, and may even be a gifted leader, but that doesn't mean he was doing a good job in the culture he was working in. I read the whole document, and the majority feels like someone running headfirst into bad cultural issues and burning out while making enemies.