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Ask HN: How would you design an alternative Twitter
201–210 of 351 posts
Re: Ask HN: How would you design an alternative Twitter
#202No one here is answering your question so I will :) Database: I’d use whatever you know and helps you get to market, but abstract it away from the rest of your app so you can swap out later. Lots of good choices here; I’d pick mysql or postgres running on rds. I would also design for sharding by user on day 1 because that can be extremely painful to add later, however, care would have to be taken to ensure it doesn’t…
I've never actually seen anyone in 40 years actually swap out that database.
I've been on a team that ported a production system from MySQL to PostgreSQL, because we wanted the ability to add columns without downtime (this was a few years ago before MySQL gained the ability) and we wanted to build features using trigram indexes.
Re: Ask HN: How would you design an alternative Twitter
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
We gotta build things for the humans we have, not the humans we wish to have. Maybe global public squares don't work for the humans we have. That's ok.
Maybe the internet isn’t a good analog of the square. I’m sure there are taverns near any reader here where one could “say the wrong things” and be asked to leave or maybe roughed up or even worse. Those consequences might be an important part of this not-really-discourse-or-free-speech-but-we-want-to-treat-it-like-free-speech. Hard to say what the best thing is. Huge parts of our society don’t like consequences for…
For one, a real public square isn't anonymous. To add to your example, get thrown out the tavern too many times and they will eventually not let the person come back. This person can't simply create a new account and sneak back in.
Re: Ask HN: How would you design an alternative Twitter
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately the period from about 2015 to early 2021 made it very clear that even while direct participation is avoidable, the implications of the platform and it's users aren't. Then again, the solution to the hooligan yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre isn't to close the theatre...
We do enforce fire codes though, including things like occupancy limits.
I would love to hear what you think fire codes and occupancy limits have to do with Twitter and social media.
Re: Ask HN: How would you design an alternative Twitter
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Public Square" online is a fallacy. A public square is typically thought of where someone grabs the attention of all passerby and is voicing their thoughts. Those thoughts voiced are short lived and can only be broadcast as far as the sound wave will carry them. That's very true. Maybe a better Twitter could incorporate actual geographical distance. You would have to choose where you are and could only see message…
Isnt your proposal basically Reddit? Subreddits are nodes that require you to be close to them to see whats going on (via joining the sub), with a public square, /r/popular, artificially built from the top posts on those nodes. For some definition of "top".
I would say it’s also a mix of nextdoor - both of which are still just as toxic.
Tempted to say the problem is just the internet breeding toxicity in general. Maybe we could all do better with less internet and more nature time
Re: Ask HN: How would you design an alternative Twitter
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lots of devices attached to ongoing services today are sold for a one-time fee. For most of their existence, Microsoft and Adobe had very sustainable businesses based on one-time fees. It is a fine model. Software companies today are addicted to "recurring revenue" (thinking that is the only way to get sustainable cash flow), but a lot of people will pay you $20 once who would never pay you $1/month, and there will a…
That was for desktop software. The era of buy it, download it and it's yours forever. Not an ongoing service.
Yeah, you would have to raise the one-time payment constantly in order to keep up with your own recurring costs, the more users you have the greater your costs will be.
Re: Ask HN: How would you design an alternative Twitter
#207Freedom of association is more fundamental than freedom of speech. If you can't stop the mob from shouting you down, your voice won't be heard.
The foundational act of a Twitter alternative is to create silos where communities are allowed to exclude other users. The platform is not a public "town square" — it never was — it's a private forum, where users may choose who they associate with.
Re: Ask HN: How would you design an alternative Twitter
#208I think you're jumping into the technical bits right away without thinking through requirements/features. Maybe we (the royal 'we' as in all of humanity) shouldn't have a public town square? When you build something to have marginalized voices be heard you are also including all marginalized voices. The MarginalizedVoice super object has EqualRightsForSquirrels as well as HatefulRacistUncle child objects. There are v…
> When you build something to have marginalized voices be heard Why do we have to do that? Isn't the idea of having easy access for all enough? What people are so marginalized that they can't mute hateful speech and get on with their day?
One of the big problems with harassment on a platform like Twitter, and this seems to be pretty hard to get across to people who haven't been subject to it -- or don't know someone who's been subject to it, at least -- is the speed and intensity of what's coming at you if a true pile-on happens, or if a particular group decides you are The Enemy. You can mute and block a handful of jerks and get on with your day, perhaps, but if everything you post is greeted with hundreds (or even thousands!) of responses along the lines of "we're going to dox you and I hope someone rapes you to death," we're talking about something very different than "people are being mean to me on the internet."
I'm not sure if all of Twitter's problems come from mere scale; it suffers from what analyst Ben Thompson has called the Pollyannaish Assumption: we focus on the upsides of the "global public square" without accurately evaluating the downsides, and bluntly, I see this a lot in discussions on HN. It's the subtext of "why can't people just block and move on." Arguably, focusing on the downsides without accurately evaluating the upsides, which I also increasingly see a lot on HN, isn't really an improvement -- but if we're going to have platforms like Twitter and Facebook, the question of "what do you do about harassment, hate speech, and stochastic terrorism on those platforms" needs a better answer than "suck it up, buttercup."
Re: Ask HN: How would you design an alternative Twitter
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not if your proclaimed goal is to create a Twitter alternative.
It is probably not for you to decide if how someone spends their time is a waste. That is something only the person can decide.
Absolutely. I think it’s still ok and enriching to put energy into debating priorities.
Re: Ask HN: How would you design an alternative Twitter
#210Elon, is that you?