Live data from Hacker News

Paul Graham on Twitter's anti-Substack measures: “It's a mistake.”

twitter.com

11–20 of 84 posts

Re: Paul Graham on Twitter's anti-Substack measures: “It's a mistake.”

#12
post #3

I've run out of the mental energy to give Musk the benefit of the doubt. His capricious and poor decision-making is ruining one of my favorite products day and day. It's so frustrating to watch, a complete train wreck in slow motion. I'm simultaneously beyond caring and unable to ignore it at this point.

I had a coworker who would have anger lines come out of his skull if you said Musk had anything to do with PayPal success. It was like Barney Stinson talking about Ralph Macchio.

Then Tesla and SpaceX happened and I was like, “hmm, maybe he was wrong” and then Twitter happened and I’m thinking, “no, I get it now”.

Re: Paul Graham on Twitter's anti-Substack measures: “It's a mistake.”

#13
Did the ADL push for this? Here's what they said 4 days ago:

Substack’s increasing popularity on Twitter

Measuring the prevalence of Substack links on Twitter provides an important metric to determine the platform’s popularity, as authors often use Twitter to promote their newsletters to potential subscribers. Over the past few years, tweets which include external links to Substack pages, also known as outlinks, have increased demonstrably.

In 2021, the volume of Twitter mentions (including retweets) which included outlinks to Substack exceeded 6.08 million. In 2022, those mentions doubled to more than 12.6 million. In the first two months of 2023, mentions are already over 4.3 million.

This increase begs the question of whether the wealth of misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories on Substack – much of which has drawn countless paid and unpaid subscribers to the platform – violates the platform’s existing content moderation policies.

https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/antisemitism-false-inform...

Re: Paul Graham on Twitter's anti-Substack measures: “It's a mistake.”

#16

Do organisations tend to regret bans, especially if they are willing to hold firm for a few days? As Reddit banned all its creepy communities, people had a fit for a few days and made similar proclamations about how Voat would beat them as a result, and then life went on. It didn't destroy Reddit at all. Same with the crackdown on the conspiracy subreddits. Off they went to Voat. But Voat is gone and Reddit remains.…

Is the Twitter example entirely true though? Arguably Twitters actions helped fuel its buyout from an activist billionaire. That's hardly non-consequence.

And that buyout netted far more money for shareholders than a fair price would have at the time of selling.

Re: Paul Graham on Twitter's anti-Substack measures: “It's a mistake.”

#19

What do you call it when someone has dug in their heels in contrast to what’s obvious to everyone else? Especially when their fear of being wrong just causes them to be more and more wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalation_of_commitment

Re: Paul Graham on Twitter's anti-Substack measures: “It's a mistake.”

#20

Do organisations tend to regret bans, especially if they are willing to hold firm for a few days? As Reddit banned all its creepy communities, people had a fit for a few days and made similar proclamations about how Voat would beat them as a result, and then life went on. It didn't destroy Reddit at all. Same with the crackdown on the conspiracy subreddits. Off they went to Voat. But Voat is gone and Reddit remains.…

Well...Parler did gain popularity very quickly...but AWS kicked them off the platform & they had to mothball their app until it was reprogrammed using the new hosting platform.

Twitter was also hemorrhaging money. The censorship had a chilling effect on the entire industry.

Post reply on HN