Promotion of alternative social platforms policy • Hacker News Board

Re: Promotion of alternative social platforms policy

#181

Post by troydavis » Sun, Dec 18, 2022, 6:22 PM UTC

KarlKemp wrote: post #111

troydavis wrote: post #49

(from another thread) Any attorneys want to weigh in on whether - or when - this becomes an anti-competitive/anti-trust concern, either in the US (FTC) or the EU? Related reading: * Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) Article 102, on abusive conduct by companies that have a dominant position in a market: https://competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/antitrust/procedures... . Any EU resident can file a co…

I believe it doesn’t fit the generic laws against anticompetitive practices, mostly because they don’t have dominance in any market. Compare Apple’s iOS stores. There may be something in newer legislation which has made data portability a priority. And Apple has just changed its practice, but due only to very specific pressure. So I’d say this is rather pathetic, but not illegal.

> mostly because they don’t have dominance in any market.

Keep in mind that at least the FTC generally considers a market to be, roughly, goods and services that are close substitutes for one another[1]. That is, if one good or service can be substituted for another, those may be in the same market. However, as the FTC's summary says, "evidence that customers highly value certain product attributes may limit their willingness to substitute other products." The size and breadth of a network is a product attribute that affects a customer's willingness and ability to substitute any other product.

For anyone else into this topic, "Antitrust and Social Networking" (2012) is a good place to start: https://lawecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1188... (PDF).

[1]: https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...

Re: Promotion of alternative social platforms policy

#182

Post by Alpi » Sun, Dec 18, 2022, 6:23 PM UTC

Why? Is he trying to make the company profitable by keeping the traffic within it? But how many people will be freaked out instead?

Re: Promotion of alternative social platforms policy

#183

Post by jacquesm » Sun, Dec 18, 2022, 6:23 PM UTC

legutierr wrote: post #131

afandian wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, what a great way to find out about alternatives. I'd never heard of "Post" and "Nostr".

Nostr is perhaps the most interesting of the list. Fully decentralized; messages are cryptographically signed; users are identified by their private keys; following is done on the client side, with no stateful server-side component; messages broadcast via stateless relays. https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr https://github.com/aljazceru/awesome-nostr Overall design seems very simple. It feels a bit like email, in…

Very interesting, thank you.

To what degree is it decentralized?

Re: Promotion of alternative social platforms policy

#184

Post by tompagenet2 » Sun, Dec 18, 2022, 6:23 PM UTC

tlogan wrote: post #117

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #36

Ah damn, I hoped for a fair experiment to demonstrate absordity of total free speech, but istead we got bog standard hypocracy! Boo! If you are caught wondering why some people still support Elon - in 'true conservative' society, like Russia or Saudi states, hypocracy is means of demonstrating hierarchy. So as a leader, you show that you are dominant by demonstrating that rules don't apply to you. That makes you even…

I genuinely believed that he would try to allow more free speech on Twitter. There was a small chance that the experiment will succeed. I guess he never wanted that: he just lied. But why?

Because he's always been an insecure child, who says what he thinks will make him popular or stand out to a group of acolytes. Sometimes that'll work for a while, sometimes it'll really help, but over time you get more cocksure, more convinced of your own greatness and more foolish.

Re: Promotion of alternative social platforms policy

#185

Post by amrocha » Sun, Dec 18, 2022, 6:23 PM UTC

Also of note is how this policy change was announced during the final match of the world cup.

That's the ultimate version of putting out a press release on Friday.

Re: Promotion of alternative social platforms policy

#186

Post by cddotdotslash » Sun, Dec 18, 2022, 6:23 PM UTC

hobbitstan wrote: post #74

Interesting that Gettr, Parler and Gab aren't included in the ban list. The linktr.ee ban isn't a great idea, many artists use it to promote themselves on various non-SM platforms.

TikTok is also suspiciously missing.

Re: Promotion of alternative social platforms policy

#187

Post by belltaco » Sun, Dec 18, 2022, 6:23 PM UTC

nailer wrote: post #180

synu wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve definitely linked to my profiles on other sites before and never been banned or even warned.

There’s been reports of mastodon links being handled oddly for a while prior to this announcement. Not insta though. Odd Twitter considers them a competitor though Insta did get big through twitter originally.

For a while? I've only heard of that in the past few days.

Re: Promotion of alternative social platforms policy

#188

Post by neilv » Sun, Dec 18, 2022, 6:24 PM UTC

> Prohibited platforms:

> Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Post and Nostr

> 3rd-party social media link aggregators such as linktr.ee, lnk.bio

Missing from this list are things that are not direct competitors, but where creators have monetized brands that they're motivated to promote on Twitter, including: YouTube, OnlyFans.

I suspect that promoting blog articles on Medium and Substack is still OK.

I also see TikTok getting incidentally promoted on other sites (even if it's by stealing content originally from TikTok, or referring to TikTok fads).

No mention of Reddit, which could be very similar to Twitter (but better), but historically has de-emphasized user profiles/identities.

Is Twitter focusing on competitors that permit user-profile-centric sharing sites?

(BTW, nice of them to give everyone a list of competitors they feel threatened by.)

Re: Promotion of alternative social platforms policy

#189

Post by maxbond » Sun, Dec 18, 2022, 6:24 PM UTC

tlogan wrote: post #117

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #36

Ah damn, I hoped for a fair experiment to demonstrate absordity of total free speech, but istead we got bog standard hypocracy! Boo! If you are caught wondering why some people still support Elon - in 'true conservative' society, like Russia or Saudi states, hypocracy is means of demonstrating hierarchy. So as a leader, you show that you are dominant by demonstrating that rules don't apply to you. That makes you even…

I genuinely believed that he would try to allow more free speech on Twitter. There was a small chance that the experiment will succeed. I guess he never wanted that: he just lied. But why?

I'm not being hyperbolic when I say I believe the explanation is that Musk is a fascist. Fascism is notoriously difficult to define, but what I mean here is that Musk ultimately believes only in the will to power; all stated principles will ultimately be abandoned at the time when they conflict with his will to gain & maintain power. You can compare this to Trump; Trump excoriated Clinton over her handling of classified information wrt her email server, but not only did many Trump administration officials (including his children) make similar mistakes, but we've seen with the document scandal that he had no regard for classified information when it suited him to keep them in an unlocked closet space. (This is not to defend Clinton; I have no interest in doing so.)

So Musk talked about being a free speech absolutist, until such a time as he felt threatened by it. The only thing Musk actually believes is that he is the most deserving person to wield power, and because he the most deserving, anything he does in support of that is justified. He can justify it by saying, I'm making humanity an interplanetary species, and in doing so I will save billions of lives.

(He won't make us an interplanetary species, his plans for colonizing Mars are gibberish, nothing he does is truly justified.)

Re: Promotion of alternative social platforms policy

#190

Post by lukevp » Sun, Dec 18, 2022, 6:24 PM UTC

bko wrote: post #136

choult wrote: post #19

"Thin-skinned narcissist buys criticism machine." This is not "free speech absolutism" in the slightest. It's not even business-savvy. Elon's mask has truly cracked, and he proves he is nothing but a febrile mind who has bought into his own hype.

Quoted post unavailable.

Musk is being revealed as an emperor with no clothes. He was originally lauded because he had great ideas, put his money where his mouth was, and delivered some great products. And yeah, his companies needed to be a grind to succeed where so many have failed (Tesla being the only American car startup to succeed in something like 100 years). But going into a respected tech company like Twitter and gutting 80% of the workforce, acting like you know better than the engineers who built the thing, and rolling out and back policies and features without any real plan or thought, is showing that Elon believes he can just rinse and repeat his grindcore/dictatorial culture on any company and it will be successful. Something like Twitter with hundreds of millions of users and most of them non-paying, with governments and big brands depending on it, that runs a lot of the public discourse, can’t withstand this bull in a china shop management mentality. We all are seeing this unfold and these posts are shorthand ways of calling this out. It doesn’t need to be said in such great detail. The upvotes are an acknowledgement from the rest of us that we see it too.