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

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

#51

Post by onion2k »

HopenHeyHi wrote: post #28
extr wrote: 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.

This is the last straw. I give up. You can find a link to my new Mastodon profile on my site. https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1604556563338887168 Heh. Y'all are hilarious. 6 months in and countless predictions of imminent doom, site will collapse, everybody will leave for Mastodon, its all going to shit.. Meanwhile dude changes the logo to Doge and the building sign to Titter. I think you're taking a silly website w…

countless predictions of imminent doom

Web software that's built well is robust and survives even when things fail. Twitter's engineers clearly built a solid foundation, and we know this because it's still running without them. The only people who said Twitter would collapse were people who had no faith in Twitter's engineers. Musk himself must have believed it'd survive without them because he trusted the business wouldn't collapse when he fired 75% for the staff.

What people who understand tech said was that Twitter will find it hard to build new things with those people. Recent changes have been updating the logo and blocking retweets if the tweet has a specific domain in it. If you want evidence that Musk is crippling Twitter, it's right there. Twitter is not moving forwards.

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

#52

Post by Dalewyn »

khochesh_kushat wrote: post #47
lelanthran wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Still running" is a pretty low bar. Is that really how success should be measured? Yahoo! and AOL are also "still running". I'm no Musk fan, quite the opposite (check my old comment history), but "still running" is exactly the opposite of what I (and many other naysayers) thought would happen if a tech company laid off over 50% of their staff. Whether you like it or not, "still running" is the bar for success for…

If just still running was the goal, any company that raised money would just take it and keep a mailbox open in perpetuity, and do nothing else, thus achieving the bar for success. However, in reality, growth is the bar for success in nearly every business.

Don't move the goal posts.

The naysayers claimed everything from the site crashing due to lack of maintenance to the business going under due to fleeing advertisers.

As it turns out, and whether you like it or not, Twitter is still doing business ("still running") as usual.

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

#53

Post by somenameforme »

Freedom2 wrote: post #50
extr wrote: 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.

Controversial take: I believe that Twitter has significantly improved as a platform, with extended tweet lengths, enhanced media quality, a consistent reverse chronological timeline, reduced advertisements, broader access to verification, and initial steps towards algorithm transparency. The issue lies with the users, as the overwhelming criticism of Elon tends to eclipse any reasonable discourse about the platform.…

One recurring trend in Musk's successes has been mockery. When SpaceX was still a tiny upstart, their ideas of reusable rockets were actively mocked by "experts" in the industry, which proclaimed they'd already long since researched such ideas, and they simply weren't economically viable.

And similarly with Tesla. It's claimed he didn't start Tesla, which is technically true but misleading. He joined when it was 4 guys with some big ideas, but the "real" founders of the company would "leave" before Tesla's first product, The Roadster, hit production. Beyond that, electric cars were largely seen as a "radical" (as in dubious) idea at the time, with the status quo being hybrids which tended to look weird and be poor performing, more serving as a means of virtue signaling environmentalism than anything else.

Basically, it all gets back to Henry Ford. If you ask people what they want, they'd have said faster horses. When an innovator takes over a company, his ideas are going to look dumb to most people, which is why most people are not innovators.

All that said, censoring Substack looks dumb.

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

#54

Post by braza »

It’s a tricky place for both parties because Twitter has the distribution and the network effect; and writers have a premium (but gated) content.

And Substack is in a bad place to because does not have the social graph and platform power of the first and needs the pay the latter.

On top of that Twitter needs to generate some revenue in the worst moment of the company history that was the end of ZIRP.

Being purely speculative here, I think in Elon’s head Twitter would be the “public square for free speech” but in reality every writer is using the platform only to get the network effect and the vitality aspect to generate leads to their gated communities and/or brand awareness/social status.

One aspect that cannot be forgot is that Elon is the man with the bomb vest, because he’s willing to break the company and has so much less to lose than writers and Substack; and they know that they depends of Twitter.

I do not think that Matt Taibbi or Michael Shellenberg had other platform options to get millions of impressions [1][2]; or Substack can pay and play the game of “let’s build our own network via social graph” due to their financial situation [3].

[1] - https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1644428913651642387?s=46&...

[2] - https://twitter.com/shellenbergermd/status/16443801983124807...

[3] - https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/26/report-substack-the-highly...

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

#55

Post by somenameforme »

maxbond wrote: post #36
HopenHeyHi wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the last straw. I give up. You can find a link to my new Mastodon profile on my site. https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1604556563338887168 Heh. Y'all are hilarious. 6 months in and countless predictions of imminent doom, site will collapse, everybody will leave for Mastodon, its all going to shit.. Meanwhile dude changes the logo to Doge and the building sign to Titter. I think you're taking a silly website w…

This is the moral equivalent of telling people to stop hitting themselves. Musk starts damaging something people care for very much (people found friendship and community on Twitter and it became a big part of their lives), they get upset about it, and the fact that they are emotionally invested is presented as evidence they are unserious and their views can be dismissed. Even outright mocked. If they don't immediate…

It's the behavior and rationale of people opposing Musk that's being mocked. People are running around framing every single issue as if it's the end of the world for their experience, and downvoting any and everything they can, except comments which indulge similar histrionics.

I mean this change is something I personally oppose, but the people whinging about it would generally be cheering it on rapturously had it been done under 'Old Twitter' leadership. In other words, the criticisms are not being made in good faith.

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

#56

Post by lelanthran »

khochesh_kushat wrote: post #47
lelanthran wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Still running" is a pretty low bar. Is that really how success should be measured? Yahoo! and AOL are also "still running". I'm no Musk fan, quite the opposite (check my old comment history), but "still running" is exactly the opposite of what I (and many other naysayers) thought would happen if a tech company laid off over 50% of their staff. Whether you like it or not, "still running" is the bar for success for…

If just still running was the goal, any company that raised money would just take it and keep a mailbox open in perpetuity, and do nothing else, thus achieving the bar for success. However, in reality, growth is the bar for success in nearly every business.

> If just still running was the goal, any company that raised money would just take it and keep a mailbox open in perpetuity, and do nothing else, thus achieving the bar for success.

Firstly, that's not what "a running business" is generally understood to mean. I apologise if english is not your first language and the phrase was misunderstood by yourself.

Secondly, twitter is operating, they are not simply keeping the address alive. They have far surpassed that "bar" of merely keeping an address alive.

Thirdly, growth is not the bar for success in any business, nevermind "nearly every business". For shareholders, sure, they'd love to see growth (which you have left undefined), but any business that can meet it's monthly expenses is considered a successful business.

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

#57

Post by [deleted] »

somenameforme wrote: post #55
maxbond wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the moral equivalent of telling people to stop hitting themselves. Musk starts damaging something people care for very much (people found friendship and community on Twitter and it became a big part of their lives), they get upset about it, and the fact that they are emotionally invested is presented as evidence they are unserious and their views can be dismissed. Even outright mocked. If they don't immediate…

It's the behavior and rationale of people opposing Musk that's being mocked. People are running around framing every single issue as if it's the end of the world for their experience, and downvoting any and everything they can, except comments which indulge similar histrionics. I mean this change is something I personally oppose, but the people whinging about it would generally be cheering it on rapturously had it be…

[deleted]

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

#58

Post by clouddrover »

It isn't a mistake. It is simply Musk's nature.

Paul Graham gave up on Twitter when Mastodon got the same treatment (https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1604556563338887168), only to later go back to tweeting again.

Maybe it's time for Paul Graham to see Musk for what he is and leave Twitter for good.

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

#59

Post by Dalewyn »

somenameforme wrote: post #55
maxbond wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the moral equivalent of telling people to stop hitting themselves. Musk starts damaging something people care for very much (people found friendship and community on Twitter and it became a big part of their lives), they get upset about it, and the fact that they are emotionally invested is presented as evidence they are unserious and their views can be dismissed. Even outright mocked. If they don't immediate…

It's the behavior and rationale of people opposing Musk that's being mocked. People are running around framing every single issue as if it's the end of the world for their experience, and downvoting any and everything they can, except comments which indulge similar histrionics. I mean this change is something I personally oppose, but the people whinging about it would generally be cheering it on rapturously had it be…

[flagged]

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

#60

Post by maxbond »

somenameforme wrote: post #55
maxbond wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the moral equivalent of telling people to stop hitting themselves. Musk starts damaging something people care for very much (people found friendship and community on Twitter and it became a big part of their lives), they get upset about it, and the fact that they are emotionally invested is presented as evidence they are unserious and their views can be dismissed. Even outright mocked. If they don't immediate…

It's the behavior and rationale of people opposing Musk that's being mocked. People are running around framing every single issue as if it's the end of the world for their experience, and downvoting any and everything they can, except comments which indulge similar histrionics. I mean this change is something I personally oppose, but the people whinging about it would generally be cheering it on rapturously had it be…

Why do you think everyone who criticizes Musk falls into a single bucket? What makes you think you are able to know how they would behave in an alternative history? If all his critics are shrill and hysterical as you say, but you actually share this criticism, why is it you are uniquely exempt from being shrill and hysterical?

From where I'm standing, this seems like just another empty rhetorical device to dismiss people you'd rather not engage with, to paint them with a broad brush and then hold them accountable for hypothetical scenarios you invented. (Not wanting to engage with people is fine, framing that as being about their being hysterical rather than you being disinterested isn't.)

If the previous post was the moral equivalent of telling someone to stop hitting themselves, claiming they'd have supported this policy without Musk without any evidence (which I find extremely hard to believe, people get very upset when platforms do anything like this) is the equivalent of getting upset with your spouse because you had a dream they were unfaithful.

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