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It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

simonwillison.net

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Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#411

Post by slaw »

gonehome wrote: post #397
slaw wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a proof that there is no backdoor in WhatsApp? Client code is not released. By default it does unencrypted backup to cloud. You don't know if encryption keys are leaving device.

I think you’re thinking of iMessage. WhatsApp backups are encrypted: https://faq.whatsapp.com/1192377921246090/?locale=en_US&refs... I don’t know if there’s proof, but I have a friend that works on the team that I trust. I’ve also seen the tools for analyzing the metadata for police warrants and they only deal with metadata (because content is encrypted).

You are right. Year ago was release with WhatsApp backup encrypted.

https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/end-to-end-encrypt-whatsapp...

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#412

Post by tchaffee »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #408
tchaffee wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you seriously claiming that a person with 90 million followers with hundreds of thousands of retweets and countless replies didn't produce a lot of advertising revenue for Twitter? I didn't claim anything. I asked for your sources. You are the one who made a claim. And now you're acting astounded that someone would dare question your claim. Truth Social can't seem to become profitable [1]. So Trump's ability to…

I resign from communicating with you because you are not arguing in good faith. Demanding to provide data that is clearly not publicly available is pure demagoguery, as this figure is irrelevant for our discussion: it does not matter if ad revenue from user engagement created by Trump was XXXXX USD or YYYYYY USD, as it is beyond clear that this figure was above zero. So blocking him was against the commercial interes…

> Demanding to provide data that is clearly not publicly available

You claimed to know such data. It's clear you haven't been debating in good faith from the point you made that claim.

> as it is beyond clear that this figure was above zero.

No it's not. I provided evidence that he may in fact drive away advertisers.

> So blocking him was against the commercial interests of the platform.

That's not how it works. Blocking someone who provides a small amount of advertising revenue but who drives away other users would be in the best interest of the platform. Blocking someone who the moderators believe will incite violence is in the best commercial interests of the platform.

> the success (or lack of it) of other platforms, like Truth social, is hardly relevant here

It's entirely relevant because Trump invested in that platform and spends most of his time there. If they can't make a profit it puts your claim about his ability to attract advertisers in doubt.

> Now, you may claim victory in this internet discussion, and celebrate it like your other imaginary victories.

I never claimed victory. I simply asked you to back up your claims and you got yourself into a panic over that and threatened to quit. Ok. Bye.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#413

Post by tchaffee »

dmix wrote: post #410
tchaffee wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And no I don't think I need to support such a statement with a source. I'm sure you can find one. What I've found is Facebook is not popular with young people: the audience many advertisers are the most interested in. The stock market is certainly not happy with their latest results. So sure, I can easily find a source that says Facebook is still the most popular platform. The details matter. Is it growth in Asia t…

User-wise Facebook seems to be doing fine: > One area where Meta showed promise was in adding to Facebook’s massive user base > Facebook has 2.93 billion monthly active users. 1.98 billion daily active users. That was up from 1.97 billion three months ago. > Facebook has 264 million monthly active users in the United States and Canada alone. The majority of Facebook’s users belong to the 25 to 34 age group. > Twitter…

Good to see you finally backing up your claims with sources. The first source is paywalled though.

Yes user-wise they do seem to be doing fine, but I'd like to know where the growth is happening. That's important.

The 2nd source has some interesting demographics, but unfortunately doesn't include growth which would be the most interesting to me.

Very interesting that their largest user base by far is now in India, which I hinted at before. I suspect much of their growth from their latest earnings report is from that region of the world. Which also helps explain why ad revenue is down. Note also that ad reach in India is a very low 30% compared to the UK at 60% or Mexico over 80%. They didn't give numbers for the US. But if a lot of the growth is in India with such a low ad reach, that doesn't bode well for ad revenue.

Facebook also seems to be failing at attracting the young demographic from the west that advertisers love. As their core user base ages it will be interesting to see if they can maintain the interest of advertisers. I think Instagram is going to prop them up for a while. But it wouldn't surprise me at all if Facebook starts to become less important to advertisers, who will quickly move to wherever their target audience spends the most time.

Either way, just because FB is doing fine user wise doesn't mean that folks on HN who threatened to quit FB didn't actually go ahead and do that. If every HN user quit FB in one day, I don't think it would even show up on any chart.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#414

Post by origin_path »

tchaffee wrote: post #351
dezeiner wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a tired and often parroted talking point used to dismiss literal hours of continuous footage of execs rambling on and on about enacting their political agendas in the workplace.

> literal hours of continuous footage Where? Can you provide a source?

The source is Project Veritas. Why not go to their website and take a look? There have been a whole bunch of cases where they got Twitter staff on record to say damning things. And no, it's not out of context. The statements are in context and speak for themselves. You can watch the videos or listen to the recordings to hear it for yourself. If you want to argue this source isn't valid, you need to prove it, because the evidence is there.

https://www.projectveritas.com/news/twitter-senior-engineer-...

Twitter engineer: “Our jobs are at stake, he's a capitalist and we weren't really operating as capitalists, more like very socialist. Like we're all like commie as f*k.” ... “Twitter does not believe in free speech… Elon believes in free speech.”

https://www.projectveritas.com/news/twitter-executive-mocks-...

Twitter Lead Client Partner: “The rest of us who have been here believe in something that's good for the planet and not to give people free speech.” ... “People don’t know how to make a rational decision if you don’t put out -- correct things that are supposed to be out in the public, right?” ... “If we’re implementing all these rules…and Elon wants to dismantle them, then technically our ideology has led us to not making money because we’re not making money, and Elon wants to turn it the other way so that we can make money,”

https://www.projectveritas.com/news/undercover-video-twitter...

“if it was a pro-Trump thing and I’m anti-Trump… I banned his whole account… it’s at your discretion” ... Olinda Hassan, Policy Manager for Twitter Trust and Safety explains, “we’re trying to ‘down rank’… shitty people to not show up,” “we’re working [that] on right now”

Parnay Singh, Twitter Direct Messaging Engineer: “Yeah you look for Trump, or America, and you have like five thousand keywords to describe a redneck. Then you look and parse all the messages, all the pictures, and then you look for stuff that matches that stuff.” ... “the majority of it are for Republicans”

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#415

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

tchaffee wrote: post #412
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I resign from communicating with you because you are not arguing in good faith. Demanding to provide data that is clearly not publicly available is pure demagoguery, as this figure is irrelevant for our discussion: it does not matter if ad revenue from user engagement created by Trump was XXXXX USD or YYYYYY USD, as it is beyond clear that this figure was above zero. So blocking him was against the commercial interes…

> Demanding to provide data that is clearly not publicly available You claimed to know such data. It's clear you haven't been debating in good faith from the point you made that claim. > as it is beyond clear that this figure was above zero. No it's not. I provided evidence that he may in fact drive away advertisers. > So blocking him was against the commercial interests of the platform. That's not how it works. Bloc…

> You claimed to know such data.

Can you please give a link to the message where I claimed to know such data?

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#416

Post by extra88 »

NZ_Matt wrote: post #79
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.

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

No one is moving from Twitter to Mastodon because the latter is more accessible to people with disabilities. It's not, definitely not the main Mastodon UI (vs. 3rd party UIs).

I think the article mentioned the dismissal of Twitter's whole accessibility team as a sign that Musk has no respect or understanding of what the fired people did or why it was important. Ditto for other dismissed teams, like those researching machine learning ethics.

> An application can and should have good accessibility by default without a dedicated team

I used to think that, I used to think that understanding accessibility was a part of doing a good job on front-end so people who care about doing a good job will address it. Now I think formal and informal education about is so bad about not including accessibility concerns as a part of creating interfaces that there's too much for people to unlearn. Everyone has some responsibility for the accessibility of the final product but few will give it enough time or consideration.

Additionally, if an application is big enough to have a team working on it, that means there are some specialists in a variety of areas. With sufficient team size, that should include accessibility specialists who know what the right thing to do is or conduct research to make a decision about what the right thing to do is.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#417

Post by extra88 »

LEDThereBeLight wrote: post #169
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

The UX can be better and the accessibility worse.

That's better UX for some people, or "SUX."

https://twitter.com/thebillygregory/status/55246601271378329...

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#418

Post by jdub »

kcplate wrote: post #392
jdub wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But even they didn't view it as a status symbol. A bunch of weird, ignorant, mostly right-leaning jerks did.

I disagree. It was a wide gamut, not just one political ideology. Just the commentary in the last week shows it was across the board. Fox News personalities to AOC to Steven King to a few other Hollywood celebs bitching about it. Wide range of political leaning, common thread…all celebrities.

They're not "bitching about" more people being verified, they're "bitching about" the wanton, clueless vandalism of the verification system.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#419

Post by extra88 »

luckylion wrote: post #144
ealexhudson wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Musk wants twitter to be the town square for the world, that town square needs to be accessible for all. Even though this might not directly affect Simon, hats off to him for making that decision. If twitter starts becoming as inaccessible as most other systems it will lock out people and remove their voices from twitter. That feels like an incredibly valid reason, and isn't the point of free markets to vote with…

Have you ever actually looked at their website? You need to use a 3rd-party service like nitter to make twitter accessible. It really feels like people have never used twitter and are reading the news and go "aha! they've canned the accessibility team! they're trying to exclude the blind!"

Maybe that was once true but it hasn't been. Here's a deafblind user of Twitter (the iPhone app) who had immediate trouble using the main Mastodon app [0].

Twitter only formed an accessibility team in 2020. Accessibility improvements had been made over the years before then but since the team was formed, improvements have been arriving much more steadily. Since Musk didn't only fire this team but half the staff overall, Twitter has not only lost expertise but people with the time to devote to these areas.

[0] https://twitter.com/HabenGirma/status/1586829640827404288

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#420

Post by extra88 »

awestroke wrote: post #140
mongol wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone needs to do that though. With the foremost experts sacked, and staff down with a half, who will bother?

Maybe the employees on the accessibility team were all useless and hated by the whole org? Maybe starting fresh with real accessibility experts is a better way forward?

There was no accessibility team before 2020, Twitter hired real accessibility experts to be on the team, and they have been responsible for a number of accessibility improvements.
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