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Epilogue of my time working at Twitter

esthercrawford.medium.com

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Re: Epilogue of my time working at Twitter

#81

Post by renewiltord »

pessimizer wrote: post #68
bhauer wrote: post #21

I appreciate this considerably more nuanced and thoughtful view of the modern history of Twitter. So much coverage of Twitter since the Musk acquisition is entangled with partisan politics, ultimately in part thanks to Musk provoking such a reaction. That makes this post feel ever more illuminating and thoughtful—it avoids the partisan pitfalls and irrational extremism seen in virtually every other article on the top…

> The incessant lazy about how Twitter is dying, for either technical or other reasons. I'm absolutely shocked by the appetite people have for weekly stories proclaiming that their enemy is on the verge of being vanquished. So angry, and so incoherent and belligerent when confronted or even ignored. This is a person, not a demon. Also, a person with fairly median-of-the-road politics. He's gross because he's rich and…

Have to agree with this part

> I'm absolutely shocked by the appetite people have for weekly stories proclaiming that their enemy is on the verge of being vanquished.

Probably the worst outcome of Musk acquisition of Twitter is the weekly stories of how Twitter is Dying; Netcraft Confirms. Reminiscent of Reddit's Bernie is Winning, Ron Paul is Winning, Trump is Losing, etc. etc. More Wunscherfüllung than reality.

Many statements also far divorced from truth. Don't understand purpose. Reality is Twitter did not immediately collapse after senior engineers fired. Did not collapse after advertisers withdrew. Did not collapse after Threads launched. Did not collapse after nth prediction of collapse.

Surely posteriors must be different from priors given evidence, but Twitter is always D+14 from collapse due to various reasons. Clearly incorrect and low quality prediction.

Anyway, Esther Crawford tweet was good. People jumping on her were always wrong. She gave it a solid shot, good for her. No shame in trying.

Re: Epilogue of my time working at Twitter

#82

Post by nancyhn »

bentlegen wrote: post #73
nancyhn wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally who has improved humanity more this century? I ask with all seriousness. Electric cars and rockets would not be where they are if he had chosen a different and much less difficult path.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page: Google (made near-infinite knowledge reachable), Chrome/Chromium, GMail, YouTube, Android (powers billions of handsets), Google Maps … If you credit Musk directly for all the aforementioned things, why not them? And yes, Google bought some of those properties, but so did Musk. What’s the difference? Marketing? (I don’t actually think Larry and Sergey “most benefitted humanity” or deserve a…

That's a good answer, although it's arguable their best contribution was in the prior century with search and page rank, whereas this century has been dominated with contributions to the ad space.

Re: Epilogue of my time working at Twitter

#83

Post by bryansum »

Having also been part of an acquisition in 2020, I found her assessment of Twitter internally was spot on, and was something that I believe isn’t discussed enough in the context of the Elon acquisition.

There was a great sense of shared vision and purpose internally, but this also masked a fair amount of cynicism / political machinations (launch a feature we don’t actually believe to prove it won’t work — Fleets), engineering tech debt (I worked on the iOS client) leading to extremely long product / dev cycles, and ultimately the most destructive, a sense of complacency about it all. It was ultimately why I left, even before the Elon drama.

Re: Epilogue of my time working at Twitter

#84

Post by bentlegen »

nancyhn wrote: post #82
bentlegen wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page: Google (made near-infinite knowledge reachable), Chrome/Chromium, GMail, YouTube, Android (powers billions of handsets), Google Maps … If you credit Musk directly for all the aforementioned things, why not them? And yes, Google bought some of those properties, but so did Musk. What’s the difference? Marketing? (I don’t actually think Larry and Sergey “most benefitted humanity” or deserve a…

That's a good answer, although it's arguable their best contribution was in the prior century with search and page rank, whereas this century has been dominated with contributions to the ad space.

PageRank was developed in 1998. I assure you Google did not immediately come out and crush search. Altavista, Yahoo, and Lycos might have all been bigger properties during 1999.

Re: Epilogue of my time working at Twitter

#85

Post by cjbgkagh »

bentlegen wrote: post #73
nancyhn wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally who has improved humanity more this century? I ask with all seriousness. Electric cars and rockets would not be where they are if he had chosen a different and much less difficult path.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page: Google (made near-infinite knowledge reachable), Chrome/Chromium, GMail, YouTube, Android (powers billions of handsets), Google Maps … If you credit Musk directly for all the aforementioned things, why not them? And yes, Google bought some of those properties, but so did Musk. What’s the difference? Marketing? (I don’t actually think Larry and Sergey “most benefitted humanity” or deserve a…

I think there is a ‘but for’ aspect, without google it’s reasonable to expect the some other search engine could have evolved into the same thing. Given the scope and scale of the investment required to get Tesla and SpaceX to a viable state it seem that only a somewhat crazy person could would even attempt that. It’s difficult to find an optimum level of crazy, and is often difficult to distinguish between crazy and stupid. That said, I do think Elon would be even more successful if he was a bit less crazy and a bit less stupid.

Re: Epilogue of my time working at Twitter

#86

Post by downWidOutaFite »

bhauer wrote: post #21

I appreciate this considerably more nuanced and thoughtful view of the modern history of Twitter. So much coverage of Twitter since the Musk acquisition is entangled with partisan politics, ultimately in part thanks to Musk provoking such a reaction. That makes this post feel ever more illuminating and thoughtful—it avoids the partisan pitfalls and irrational extremism seen in virtually every other article on the top…

As if Musk doesn't encourage the vitriol. He's banned antifascists and unbanned right wing trolls, and he's a right wing troll himself. This is what he created, and maybe it makes business sense, polarization and anger generates engagement. But it doesn't make sense to blame the users, thats just what the platform is now.

Re: Epilogue of my time working at Twitter

#87

Post by bentlegen »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #85
bentlegen wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page: Google (made near-infinite knowledge reachable), Chrome/Chromium, GMail, YouTube, Android (powers billions of handsets), Google Maps … If you credit Musk directly for all the aforementioned things, why not them? And yes, Google bought some of those properties, but so did Musk. What’s the difference? Marketing? (I don’t actually think Larry and Sergey “most benefitted humanity” or deserve a…

I think there is a ‘but for’ aspect, without google it’s reasonable to expect the some other search engine could have evolved into the same thing. Given the scope and scale of the investment required to get Tesla and SpaceX to a viable state it seem that only a somewhat crazy person could would even attempt that. It’s difficult to find an optimum level of crazy, and is often difficult to distinguish between crazy and…

By that logic, why couldn’t someone have done the same with electric cars and rockets? Were we never going to go into space again? Did the Nissan Leaf not already exist?

Re: Epilogue of my time working at Twitter

#89

Post by cjbgkagh »

bentlegen wrote: post #87
cjbgkagh wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a ‘but for’ aspect, without google it’s reasonable to expect the some other search engine could have evolved into the same thing. Given the scope and scale of the investment required to get Tesla and SpaceX to a viable state it seem that only a somewhat crazy person could would even attempt that. It’s difficult to find an optimum level of crazy, and is often difficult to distinguish between crazy and…

By that logic, why couldn’t someone have done the same with electric cars and rockets? Were we never going to go into space again? Did the Nissan Leaf not already exist?

As I mentioned; they lacked the scale and scope required to be successful.

Re: Epilogue of my time working at Twitter

#90

Post by tomatotomato37 »

bloopernova wrote: post #42
bhauer wrote: post #21

I appreciate this considerably more nuanced and thoughtful view of the modern history of Twitter. So much coverage of Twitter since the Musk acquisition is entangled with partisan politics, ultimately in part thanks to Musk provoking such a reaction. That makes this post feel ever more illuminating and thoughtful—it avoids the partisan pitfalls and irrational extremism seen in virtually every other article on the top…

musk has a vast amount of power and influence due to his wealth, links to several corporations, links to other rich people, and his control of a social media site. I believe that someone with that much power has an obligation, a responsibility to improve the world for humanity. Whether elected or not. he instead chooses to do what he does. That is why I dislike him. he could offer so much more but messes around "trol…

Compared to average finance billionaire #293 bragging to their golf buddies how they got the Toys-R-Us bankruptcy to pay for their third private yacht he has definitely done his duty for improving the world, even if he's lately been acting like a major idiot while doing it. Yes I know there are other tech billionaires who do better, but for every one of them there's a mile of those who instead actively work to make the world worse for their own self interest
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