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Tell HN: Twitter switched temporarily to rate limited mode

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Re: Tell HN: Twitter switched temporarily to rate limited mode

#731

Post by Majromax »

basisword wrote: post #645
Majromax wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Blue sales ultimately can't hope to come close to what big brand ads used to give. I don't know, I think the hope is there. With these rate limits and some Fermi estimates, we can guess what Twitter's hoped-for revenue per user might be. Suppose that this move is designed to move regular users over to Twitter Blue, and a regular user might ordinarily see 2000 tweets per day. Suppose further that Twitter would show…

>> Suppose that this move is designed to move regular users over to Twitter Blue I hope you don't work in marketing. Why would a non-paying user watch Twitter arbitrarily limit the number of Tweets a _paying user_ can view per day, and think "yeah, I'll pay for that".

> I hope you don't work in marketing.

Hell no, but also don't mistake me for thinking that this was a good idea.

However, particularly when I don't understand a subject well, I try to take all reasonable-sounding claims seriously at first and give them some back-of-the-envelope analysis. It seemed to me that the original claim was that Blue sales couldn't replace ads, but it seems like the numbers are close under some reasonable approximation.

I do agree that this move is likely to drive many users away from Twitter entirely, but a short-sighted company could still think that an acceptable tradeoff if they're having trouble selling all available advertising space.

Re: Tell HN: Twitter switched temporarily to rate limited mode

#732

Post by berkes »

GuB-42 wrote: post #652
moose_man wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean to tell me that you can't actually run a tech company with three engineers and a Mac Mini?

I think Twitter was definitely overstaffed. You don't need that much manpower to run a tech company, at least on the technical side. The problem is that Twitter organized itself as an overstaffed company, with complex structures, complex code, lots of R&D, etc... Than Elon Musk came in and did a Thanos snap and immediately fired half of the workforce, and I guess quite a few others left, especially among the best who…

Only Twitter was an advertising company. And for that to run smooth, you apparently need a lot of staff.

From people that ensure your Kelloggs ads don't appear below literal neonazi movies, to people that close deals on large advertising campaigns, to people that ensure the place where those ads appear (Twitter, the product) actually keeps running.

Re: Tell HN: Twitter switched temporarily to rate limited mode

#733

Post by berkes »

phpisthebest wrote: post #547
partiallypro wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is because of the "end of cheap money" (I don't think this high interest rate environment will last that long) but just sheer incompetence by Musk and his staff. Elon has become increasingly erratic on the platform, he just tweeted recently a reply to a Tweet saying Islam would take over France. I don't know if he's always been like this or if the stories of his heavy ketamine usage are true and ta…

>>I don't think this is because of the "end of cheap money" Explain just about all platforms doing revenue adjusting user hostile actions then? Examples include Reddit with the API fees, YT with the Ad Blocking blocking. etc This is all a reaction to the end of cheap money, aka the cost of capital is going up, so companies need to actually make revenue instead of chasing free capital >>I don't think this high interes…

If it truly is "the end of cheap money" (which I believe is the root cause) we can clearly see which management is competent, and which just flailing aimlessly.

"When the tide goes out, you see who's been swimming naked."

Re: Tell HN: Twitter switched temporarily to rate limited mode

#734

Post by rafark »

cubefox wrote: post #618
moose_man wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean to tell me that you can't actually run a tech company with three engineers and a Mac Mini?

Have you checked how many engineers Mastodon has? https://joinmastodon.org/de/about Four.

Doesn’t take too many people to build a website like twitter. It’s not really hard and there are tons of mvc frameworks in pretty much any major language.

Only one good programmer could probably create a clone.

Of course the scale matters, but it’s not like you’d be writing an OS.

Re: Tell HN: Twitter switched temporarily to rate limited mode

#735

Post by toyg »

stubybubs wrote: post #695
plorkyeran wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is presumably a reference to Musk offering to buy a SpaceX employee a horse in exchange for sexual favors.

This is libel, a vile calumny, and I won't hear it! How dare you! It was a flight attendant he offered a horse to.

A flight attendant who was supposed to give him a massage as part of her duties. Because who doesn't expect their flight crew to be masseuses?

You must be crazy to work for Musk.

Re: Tell HN: Twitter switched temporarily to rate limited mode

#737

Post by imartin2k »

TigeriusKirk wrote: post #237
faefox wrote: post #85

It really feels like we're witnessing the end of an era. Elon is doggedly piloting Twitter into the ground and Reddit seems strangely compelled to follow his lead. Reddit may recover - I'm not so sure about Twitter. What technologies will take their place? In a time where it's never been easier to stand up your own website/forum/what have you, could we possibly see a gradual return to a pre-corporate Internet?

The shift is that the content itself now has tangible value. So far it's been the attention of the users that has been monetized, primarily via advertising. But now the content generated by the users has value as input into AI training sets. And AI companies are scrambling to gather as much as they can as rapidly as they can. The data itself, not the attention of the users, is what is now being harvested. The compani…

This seems to become this year’s biggest unanticipated second order effect of LLMs: UGC and organic human-generated content in general is suddenly valuable in a different way than before. This should totally accelerate the move of “quality content” behind paywalls or signup walls. Only commodity content, low quality content, and AI-generated content will remain on the open web.

Re: Tell HN: Twitter switched temporarily to rate limited mode

#738

Post by whoevencares »

Waterluvian wrote: post #569
pydry wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you asked me a year ago I wouldnt have guessed that raising interest rates would be the cure to doomscrolling. But here we are.

What’s next? A war in Ukraine that solves the fossil fuel crisis?

[flagged]

Re: Tell HN: Twitter switched temporarily to rate limited mode

#739

Post by fundad »

minimaxir wrote: post #342
kuchenbecker wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the money was loaned, and the debt is now Twitters and not his.

Elon rolled Twitter into X Corp, which would mean the debt is entangled with his other assets and may make things messy in the inevitable lender lawsuits.

That means he can spin off all of X’s debt together with Twitter whenever he wants.

Re: Tell HN: Twitter switched temporarily to rate limited mode

#740

Post by fundad »

rsynnott wrote: post #152
ceejayoz wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the move that elevates “the Saudis funded this to kill Twitter” from silly conspiracy theory to maybe plausible.

Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by Elon’s incompetence.

Malice? He thinks he’s liberating us from the woke mind virus and defending poor oppressed Republican activists.
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