It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon • Hacker News Board

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#111

Post by watwut » Sat, Nov 05, 2022, 8:56 AM UTC

Doddler wrote: post #68

buf wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep talking about laying off half the company like it's a bad thing. Don't get me wrong, there are lots of negative factors to laying off staff and I'm not denying those. But anyone who has worked in a large org, especially a public one, knows that there is excessive bloat. Many people at large orgs do nothing. They go to great lengths to ensure it looks like they're doing something, which I guess is somethin…

I think even if he was correct that Twitter has a lot bloat that needs to be cut, I really struggle to believe you could accurately judge who or what needs to be cut when slashing your 7000 employee business in half within 5-6 days of walking in the door. The chance of making big mistakes and cutting critical staff and teams is very high.

I think that even worst is that it does not look fair or transparent at all. Which means, remaining employees are going to be demotivated and resentful. It is going to be chaos organizational, competences will be unclear etc. Which will make organization as a whole more dysfunctional then it needs to be.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#112

Post by swyx » Sat, Nov 05, 2022, 8:56 AM UTC

schipplock wrote: post #87

I expect that the feature I’ll miss most from Twitter will be the algorithmic timeline! I must be old. I remember a time when people wanted a chronological timeline (on by default). Twitter still offers a chronological timeline, but now that people are migrating to Mastodon, I've come across the wish to have an algorithmic timeline again quite often :). I just find this interesting (I can relate, I find the algorithm…

stated vs revealed preference. many people say they want chron, but actually end up using algo a lot more (figures)

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#113

Post by Tepix » Sat, Nov 05, 2022, 8:56 AM UTC

GrumpyNl wrote: post #35

I think, they are happy will all the attention https://www.mastodon.com/

:-)

For those who are wondering, the page you are looking for is at https://joinmastodon.org/

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#114

Post by jdub » Sat, Nov 05, 2022, 8:56 AM UTC

tga wrote: post #49

> I can’t see myself putting the same work in to help the world’s richest man pay the loans he took out So Twitter was “really good” (while it was helping the many rich shareholders of a random public company) but it’s suddenly “work” a couple of days after the owner changed? Nothing wrong for not using it because of ideological reasons, but the product’s accessibility (or anything else really) hasn’t changed yet.

Twitter was already under a cloud while Musk was grandstanding his acquisition stunt. Once he was forced to go through with it, his immediate actions and communication confirmed how much chaos we (users, staff, customers) were in for. Then after one week, awfully mishandled mass layoffs, demands to massively reduce infrastructure costs, etc.

Nothing's changed? Sure it has. Trust and confidence are hard to build, easy to torch.

One week.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#115

Post by fazfq » Sat, Nov 05, 2022, 8:56 AM UTC

Twitter has always been a cesspool of hate but it may be worth signing up if people who bitch about Musk owning it keep leaving.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#116

Post by tylersmith » Sat, Nov 05, 2022, 8:57 AM UTC

joeevans1000 wrote: post #69

As someone who cares for a blind father, I can't stomach the decision to eliminate the accessibility team. I am myself moving to Mastodon. I was amazed in doing this that the UI/UX of Mastodon is much better than Twitter. I feel better.

How big is the Mastodon accessibility team? I'm having a hard time finding any information about it.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#117

Post by bitwize » Sat, Nov 05, 2022, 8:57 AM UTC

tga wrote: post #49

> I can’t see myself putting the same work in to help the world’s richest man pay the loans he took out So Twitter was “really good” (while it was helping the many rich shareholders of a random public company) but it’s suddenly “work” a couple of days after the owner changed? Nothing wrong for not using it because of ideological reasons, but the product’s accessibility (or anything else really) hasn’t changed yet.

Twitter used to be run by progressives, so there was a modicum of "we are, or should be, doing good things here".

Elon Musk bought Twitter specifically to hollow out its progressive cultural core.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#118

Post by thinkingemote » Sat, Nov 05, 2022, 8:57 AM UTC

matusp wrote: post #91

joeevans1000 wrote: post #69

As someone who cares for a blind father, I can't stomach the decision to eliminate the accessibility team. I am myself moving to Mastodon. I was amazed in doing this that the UI/UX of Mastodon is much better than Twitter. I feel better.

Did eliminating the accessibility team made the twitter worse for blind people somehow? Was twitter getting better for blind people over the years?

In terms of web accessibility, it had improved the alt text / meta descriptions, etc of external websites through the "cards" when you share a page on twitter, over the years, encouraging web developers to put them in their own websites. (same with faceboook etc)

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#119

Post by recuter » Sat, Nov 05, 2022, 8:58 AM UTC

joeevans1000 wrote: post #69

As someone who cares for a blind father, I can't stomach the decision to eliminate the accessibility team. I am myself moving to Mastodon. I was amazed in doing this that the UI/UX of Mastodon is much better than Twitter. I feel better.

The purge is of the specific individuals of that team not the concept of accessibility itself. Same goes with all these changes, it is a reboot.

If anything, you may end up with a higher quality of accessibility (and moderation, spam filtering, whatever) down the line. Or not. Who knows. The current iteration of the company has ossified - not making changes is arguably against the long term interests of your blind father.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#120

Post by causi » Sat, Nov 05, 2022, 8:59 AM UTC

szundi wrote: post #84

NZ_Matt wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could argue the accessibility team wasn't doing a very good job if Mastodon have done it better without a dedicated team. An application can and should have good accessibility by default without a dedicated team

This. Even before Musk arrived there was a lot of debate about Twitter being overstaffed and departments are not producing any value at all. I don't know more or the details, but this is what sometimes I was reading years back.

That's the baffling thing to me. For the better part of a decade people have talked about Twitter being an overstaffed pack of idiots whose day to day largely consists of presiding over the fall of Western civilization. Now that they've been purchased by a jackass, however, they're suddenly a bunch of saints who've only been doing their best to hold back the tides of barbarism. I get the feeling that someone less of an asshole and more ideologically-aligned to the commentators could do the exact same housecleaning Musk is doing and they'd be cheering him on.