Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Twitter's Fucked

degoes.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 398 posts

Re: Twitter's Fucked

#241

Post by harryh »

majani wrote: post #237
harryh wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill is wrong. Twitter's revenue per user is quite good. Their problem is that user growth is poor. They can't get enough users to meet their goals. Joi was correct that focusing on users first was the correct decision. They just haven't been able to execute on that goal as well as they hoped for.

There is evidence from past social networks that if you don't hit critical mass of mainstream user adoption, and you've got these lofty valuations, the company is in for a really bad time

Yes, exactly. Hence the maniacal focus on "users first" to reach critical mass because if you don't do that you are dead.

Then "money later."

Re: Twitter's Fucked

#242

Post by jcbeard »

Umm, so twitter is a private company. Yeah, they can censor whoever they like. Can the NYT censor if they want? YES! Should they, likely not b/c of backlash from people like us. What we have to realize, is that unless there is a non-profit totally open "commons" then there is really no recourse for us. Did Twitter damage us monetarily? Are they even responsible outside of their terms of service? Suspect even that has language that subjects it to change at any time. In short, the idea that "twitter's fucked" is well...stupid. You can say what you want, but you know what...twitter can kick you off at any time. That's just the way it works. Has been that way since the days of BBS and later AOL/Compuserve (and yes, I was kicked out of many of those rooms too).

Re: Twitter's Fucked

#243

Post by dragonwriter »

snaky wrote: post #233
specialist wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Notorious progressives Bush and Cheney gave us "free speech zones": http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/free-speech-...

Bush and Cheney were much more progressives than conservatives.

> Bush and Cheney were much more progressives than conservatives.

No, they weren't. They were authoritarian conservatives. (In the US, there's often a confusion between "conservative" and "libertarian", and if you confuse those and assume anything that isn't libertarian must be progressive, I can see how you'd make that mistake, but Bush/Cheney is about as far from progressive as you can get.)

Re: Twitter's Fucked

#244

Post by scholia »

TimJRobinson wrote: post #53

How about a rating system for people? And each rating could also be biased by the rating of the person giving the rating. Kind of like pagerank for people. Then the posts of those who have the most positive ratings float to the top of the stream. Sure trolls will support other trolls but I'm pretty convinced most people are good people and should easily outnumber and be able to take down gangs of trolls online. This…

There is a sort of rating system, in the follower ratio. Each follower represents a "vote" for the value of that person's Twitter stream.

It's not only the number but also the ratio. There are people who have 200,000 followers because they are following 200,000 people. This tells you their tweets are worthless. (And if you're following 200,000 people, you're not reading their tweets.)

Re: Twitter's Fucked

#245

Post by dabockster »

ivraatiems wrote: post #114
Neetpeople wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have personally lost the belief that you can actually change someone's opinion on almost anything. So an echo chamber doesn't have to be a bad thing. I think people overestimate the value of having your beliefs challenged, does it ever really change someone's mind? If that's the case, you might as well view twitter as entertainment and to clue into the things you care about, in which case it can be pretty useful.

You can change somebody's opinion, just not through one direct interaction. An opinion change requires time, internal rationalization, and repeated exposure. An echo chamber is bad because it not only repeatedly re-broadcasts beliefs, it also amplifies them. "The President is wrong and should be voted out of office" can turn into "The President is wrong and ought to be shot" in an echo chamber environment much faster…

>"The President is wrong and should be voted out of office" can turn into "The President is wrong and ought to be shot" in an echo chamber environment much faster if there's nobody around to say "wait, hold up, maybe don't."

Are you implying that social media created Donald Trump?

Re: Twitter's Fucked

#246

Post by Disruptive_Dave »

Has anyone ever had substantial conversations about the idea that maybe, just maybe, this is a human beings problem? As in we're not conditioned nor designed to communicate in such an environment? And that this type of access to the public and each other is so new (in the greater scheme of the world) that we have no damn clue what we're doing? Or is everyone going to continue to make arguments that are heavily based on the presumption that we're all good little boys and girls who only desire / are capable of having "meaningful interactions" online and that's the natural state of things by which everything should be analyzed?

Re: Twitter's Fucked

#247

Post by majani »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #14

Does Twitter have to be Facebook to not be "fucked"? I don't understand these statements that "Twitter is fucked". Twitter could improve filtering and safety but if it never changed I'd probably still get my news from it for the rest of my life. I just can't think of a better app for my use cases. I often like Twitter Moments, like something funny or some pop culture stuff I wouldn't have picked up on. Every time the…

I feel a more accurate way to put it would be that Twitter the $11b, 4,000 employee juggernaut is fucked, but Twitter the niche, 100 employee, 100 million dollar site for news junkies still has a chance

Re: Twitter's Fucked

#248

Post by snaky »

dragonwriter wrote: post #243
snaky wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bush and Cheney were much more progressives than conservatives.

> Bush and Cheney were much more progressives than conservatives. No, they weren't. They were authoritarian conservatives. (In the US, there's often a confusion between "conservative" and "libertarian", and if you confuse those and assume anything that isn't libertarian must be progressive, I can see how you'd make that mistake, but Bush/Cheney is about as far from progressive as you can get.)

> Conservatives were dismayed as he proposed a traditional Keynesian stimulus which Democrats lauded. Above all, he made one of the most dramatic federal interventions in American history by his aid to the financial system

> Conservatives and libertarians have criticized Bush for greatly increased domestic spending, creating a new entitlement program for prescription drugs, failing to veto a single bill, and expanding both the size and scope of government

http://www.conservapedia.com/George_W._Bush

Re: Twitter's Fucked

#249

Post by scholia »

Karunamon wrote: post #219
scholia wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Milo's tweets weren't anywhere NEAR harassment level. Trolling a famous person on twitter is not harassment and brigading. Milo had tens of thousands of flying monkeys to troll and harass people on his behalf. He knew this perfectly well, and used it all the time. His tweets didn't need to be particularly harassing: all he had to do was point the finger. Which he did.

So what, when you gain over some arbitrary amount of followers, you're not allowed to ever tweet about another person? What's the magic number at which you're not allowed to speak about anything but generalities? That's an plainly insane rule. How about Twitter actually ban people who actually break the site rules, act with some small measure of maturity, and stop moderating with a political bias that a child could s…

You're ignoring the context. Milo knew what he was doing. It was deliberate harassment.

And thanks to his thuggish role in gamergate, he had plenty of "previous".

Re: Twitter's Fucked

#250

Post by scholia »

michaelbuddy wrote: post #224
scholia wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Milo's tweets weren't anywhere NEAR harassment level. Trolling a famous person on twitter is not harassment and brigading. Milo had tens of thousands of flying monkeys to troll and harass people on his behalf. He knew this perfectly well, and used it all the time. His tweets didn't need to be particularly harassing: all he had to do was point the finger. Which he did.

>Milo had tens of thousands of flying monkeys to troll and harass people your claim. I was reading his tweets and you're wrong. It's simple. you don't have a leg to stand on. And thanks to twitter, we don't have the records to look at either. But since I was reading them I know, so I don't have to take your claim into consideration.

Your problem, I think.
Post reply on HN