It finally went away. I'm hoping the same for all counters because from a reader's perspective they are pointless. so I have only positive feelings about this :).
Ask HN: Am I the only one outraged by Twitter shutting down share counts?
11–20 of 32 posts
Re: Ask HN: Am I the only one outraged by Twitter shutting down share counts?
#12Ask yourself what emotions you are feeling when you think about Twitter shutting down share counts.
Really feel these feelings, don't let them go away, don't try to hide the outrage.
Now clear your mind of the negative feeling. Take several deep breaths and clear your mind.
Now think of something important in your life.
Now think of something important in the lives of another person.
Mediate on what a sense of perspective means.
Re: Ask HN: Am I the only one outraged by Twitter shutting down share counts?
#13Someone outraged by something on twitter? Better call CNN, MSNBC, Buzzfeed, Salon...
Honestly, no. I'm actually really frustrated by the impact twitter has had on news.
How hard is it to find five stupid people on twitter? It isn't. Yet somehow we have to read articles about "people are outraged by Starbucks' red coffee cup" and "Trump weighs in on the coffee cup issue"
No. I'm not outraged that twitter is changing their layout.
I'm frustrated that twitter is somehow the LOIC of stupid outrage that seems entirely out of control.
Re: Ask HN: Am I the only one outraged by Twitter shutting down share counts?
#14Outraged? You are outraged for something that was announced almost 2 months ago? Really? Outraged?
I hadn't heard about it till now. I'm not affected because I didn't invest in the feature in any way, or know anyone who did. Yet I can appreciate the "outrage" from the perspective of people who invest in features that are later taken away, with apparently no regard or care for the impact to users who put their time and loyalty into the service because of what it offered. It's just a fact in user land, we accept the TOS and throw our time into the furnace.
Re: Ask HN: Am I the only one outraged by Twitter shutting down share counts?
#15Why are you outraged?
In their blog post announcing it, they state that one of the main reasons is because it's meaningless and doesn't reflect the actual engagement around that link. I'm inclined to agree, I don't care about how many people clicked a button to share it, I care more about a discussion around something.
Re: Ask HN: Am I the only one outraged by Twitter shutting down share counts?
#16It finally went away. I'm hoping the same for all counters because from a reader's perspective they are pointless. so I have only positive feelings about this :).
Yeah, I am torn about caring or not caring.
On the one hand, it is a decent way to show readers how popular a post is and maybe feel more encouraged to share. On the other, now that I don't receive that count portion of the service, keeping the button installed means Twitter gets to still track my users.
People do use the buttons though to share. Before I added a LinkedIn button I received a number of emails from people asking for one so they could more easily share links.
I may just remove it though because when Facebook and LinkedIn have a good amount of shares or likes, it looks strange to have a button with no shares.
Re: Ask HN: Am I the only one outraged by Twitter shutting down share counts?
#17What are "share counts"? I guess that's my short answer.
The only feeling I have about Twitter is mild irritation at the amount of attention it gets. It's not very useful to the vast majority of its users.
Twitter is extremely useful if you have some measure of celebrity, of course, which is why well-known journalists prattle on and on about it.
I don't have unbridled hatred toward Twitter. It just gets tired constantly hearing the MSM blabbing hashtags, and wading through a bunch of "share" buttons (that nobody uses anyway) whenever I want to read an article.
If these "share counts" are some means of letting users see how many people (didn't) retweet them, it's probably a healthy thing for Twitter. Since the average count for the average user will be either zero, or near zero, most of the time, it doesn't seem like it's good for customer retention.
Re: Ask HN: Am I the only one outraged by Twitter shutting down share counts?
#18The only reason for them to remove this is that the tweet counts were always embarrassingly lower than the fb share counts.
Re: Ask HN: Am I the only one outraged by Twitter shutting down share counts?
#19Ask yourself what emotions you are feeling when you think about Twitter shutting down share counts. Really feel these feelings, don't let them go away, don't try to hide the outrage. Now clear your mind of the negative feeling. Take several deep breaths and clear your mind. Now think of something important in your life. Now think of something important in the lives of another person. Mediate on what a sense of perspe…
I think you're being insincere here. OP obviously (I assume) is not that devastated by this change like a death in the family. But he's unhappy about it, similar to as if your client changed their spec overnight, or if their database got wiped out of data, and they had no backups. He's trying to start a conversation about this.
Your comment doesn't add anything to this because HN revolves around developer/tech issues. By nature, almost ALL conversations/complaints here are 1st world problems
Re: Ask HN: Am I the only one outraged by Twitter shutting down share counts?
#20It finally went away. I'm hoping the same for all counters because from a reader's perspective they are pointless. so I have only positive feelings about this :).
People don't trust themselves as much as we should, which is why people are more likely to share something if it looks like it is "safe" to do - if others are doing it. I agree though that it would be better that if people shared something because they were compelled enough to do it on their own.