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Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer to Leave Company

nytimes.com

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Re: Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer to Leave Company

#261

Post by cpeterso »

md224 wrote: post #43
madeofpalk wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know I might sound like a vim user, but tweetstorms are honestly one of my favourite parts of twitter. Maybe there could be a better UI for authoring and displaying them, but there's something I really enjoy about reading a story 140 characters at a time.

I've been saying this for a little while now: Twitter should really try to capitalize on Tweetstorms. What they don't seem to realize is that Tweetstorms enable Twitter to be a kind of inverse annotation platform. Most annotation platforms enable large chunks of text to be dissected by readers, but a Tweetstorm is the opposite: the author specifies the exact segmentation of the text as they release it, and each segme…

Twitter users find new ways to use the service, such as tweet storms or customer support, but the company fails to recognize these opportunities to "pave the cow paths" and improve there usability of their service.

Re: Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer to Leave Company

#262

Post by inimino »

grzm wrote: post #248
inimino wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I don't. And I imagine that discussing the details in public would just create more work for the admins and limit their options for tweaking it; probably more trouble than it would be worth to make it transparent. Totally anecdotal, it's just my perception that a few downvotes are enough to grey something out, a few more and it gets killed and people stop seeing it. The first-order effect is that the worst con…

I agree that it would be more trouble than it's worth to make all of the algorithms open. It's minor, but I think the effect you're seeing can work just as well without differential weighting of up and down votes. The best thing about downvotes is they represent the community policing itself, so they don't generate the resentment that admin activity tends to. Agreed!

You're probably right about the weighting. Anecdotally, again, I think most posts here get either upvotes or downvotes but not many of both. If so, the weighting doesn't much matter. That's a sign that the community has a consistent idea of what it wants and doesn't want. The guidelines here support that. I suspect these numbers would be very different at Reddit. Where this doesn't hold, the handling of "controversial" posts becomes more important. If Reddit just killed controversial posts, how would Reddit change over time? I guess it would get a bit less noisy. (Disregarding the potential for abuse. Obviously Reddit cannot really disregard this problem given their user base, so I realize I'm oversimplifying.)

A post at (+1,-0) is a very different thing from a post at (+6,-5) and treating these equivalently will tend to favor heat over light.

Re: Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer to Leave Company

#263

Post by the8472 »

makomk wrote: post #96
chollida1 wrote: post #3

I think its valid to ask if Jack Dorsey is the next executive to leave. The moment Anthony Noto went to Twitter, all wall street could talk about was that he was brought in to sell the company. Who ever the next CTO is, they're going to have some tough decisions to make. Twitter already has to pay out an extreme amount of compensation in stock options just to get and retain talent. I don't want this to seem inflammat…

Twitter's problem isn't just that they have to fix harassment, it's that they have to do it without touching social justice activism that sure looks similar to it from the outside, right down to the doxing, threats, and smears. Oh, and they'll get no sympathy for getting this wrong as the difference is apparently obvious... except that everyone defines it differently (usually based on who their friends are) and simpl…

> harassment

I do wonder if this word is even appropriate to the situation. Using twitter seems akin to stepping on a soap box on the town square and shouting every single word you say.

Maybe nobody will pay attention to you. Or maybe you'll get a crowd of people who think favorably of you. Maybe someone else will step on his own box and have a conversation with you, but still there for everyone to hear.

And it goes even further, you even have an official scribe who records everything you say and then pins it to the great proclamation board of the city plaza so that everyone who was not there at the time can still follow what you're saying.

This is an incredibly public mode of conversation that people don't realize what they're doing.

And well, if you say something that people disagree with you will get booing, hissing, insults, threats from a whole mob... maybe just because you're too loud. This would be the risk if you stepped on a box of a real place.

You have to realize that the mob shouting you down probably doesn't really mean to attack a person. It is verbally attacking a public speaker on the city plaza. You get treated akin to an unpopular politician, not as regular citizen discussing things with friends.

Re: Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer to Leave Company

#264

Post by hnthroooow »

nyxtom wrote: post #241
firebones wrote: post #239

No one is asking my opinion, but here it is: Trifurcate Twitter into three distinct parts: * The social--what users actually use it for. * The ad platform. * The realtime gestalt/search platform. The latter is what is inadequately funded and considered. Twitter has a latency advantage on the pulse of thought across the user base. The user base is already high-value for this relative to the morass of Facebook users. T…

Didn't they buy out Gnip precisely for this reason?

I have no way to verify this is true, but I was told that they bought GNIP because (this sounds too ridiculous to type) they forgot to invoice them for two years for firehose access...when they remembered, GNIP couldn't afford the invoice, so buyout!

Like I say, it's a rumor that may have shades of truth, but that's what I heard.

Re: Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer to Leave Company

#265

Post by DanBC »

the8472 wrote: post #263
makomk wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter's problem isn't just that they have to fix harassment, it's that they have to do it without touching social justice activism that sure looks similar to it from the outside, right down to the doxing, threats, and smears. Oh, and they'll get no sympathy for getting this wrong as the difference is apparently obvious... except that everyone defines it differently (usually based on who their friends are) and simpl…

> harassment I do wonder if this word is even appropriate to the situation. Using twitter seems akin to stepping on a soap box on the town square and shouting every single word you say. Maybe nobody will pay attention to you. Or maybe you'll get a crowd of people who think favorably of you. Maybe someone else will step on his own box and have a conversation with you, but still there for everyone to hear. And it goes…

> maybe just because you're too loud. This would be the risk if you stepped on a box of a real place.

Or maybe just because you're Jewish.

https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/judgments/sentencing-remarks-of...

> You have to realize that the mob shouting you down probably doesn't really mean to attack a person. It is verbally attacking a public speaker on the city plaza. You get treated akin to an unpopular politician, not as regular citizen discussing things with friends.

The case I linked above put someone in fear of their life.

It's disappointing to see people claim this is not really an attack.

Re: Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer to Leave Company

#266

Post by BinaryIdiot »

firebones wrote: post #234
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering layoffs typically increase stock prices in the short term, help increase profits in the short term, I would imagine short term investors would be happy. Long term investors it's hard to say because trimming the fat allows you to try much, much longer than you could have before. Overall I would imagine long term investors would have a positive feeling but only if a solid image is communicated to them regar…

Which 60-70%? It seems crazy to think it's that simple unless you can a) articulate which employees contribute to revenue, and b) take into account the compensation/option-based expense. Make a mistake and you not only affect revenues (by cutting those contributing to revenue) but also cutting the ability to retain those remaining who actually do contribute to revenue. No doubt there's room for cuts, but 60-70% seems…

> Which 60-70%? It seems crazy to think it's that simple

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply it would be simple at all. Unfortunately I have no way to give you a good answer here. They have a disproportionately large amount of engineers and other staff compared to the product(s) they offer but without internal information regarding groups, compensations, etc there is no way I could ever begin to answer this as an outside.

> No doubt there's room for cuts, but 60-70% seems way on the high side.

I disagree. The best I can find Twitter currently has 2,900 - 3,000 employees (they had a high of 3,900 the best I can tell). What products and solutions do they have? Almost none with almost no evolution to show for the past 5+ years.

They are extremely employee heavy. Granted I can't know for sure how their internals work but 900 employees should be able to not only run but to evolve the platform without issue, even including sales and marketing.

Far more company have done much more with much less than that.

Re: Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer to Leave Company

#267

Post by the8472 »

inimino wrote: post #222
angry-hacker wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the platform just the best medium for harassing and trolling? What else can you do with 140 chars? Have you ever heard about good tweets? It's always negativity.

Since the election I've been spending time on HN and to a lesser extent Twitter. Every time I visit Twitter I find myself instinctively reaching for the downvote button, but there isn't one. About the only thing you can do when someone says (or retweets) something totally idiotic on Twitter is either unfollow, or, of course, reply. In other words, there is no way to register disapproval without simultaneously calling…

The problem with that is that twitter is a single platform with different communities. Implementing downvotes would mean that group A could just downvote posts of group B and vice versa. If downvotes weigh heavier than upvotes then even small groups could bury larger groups into oblivion. Add in sockpuppets and it gets worse.

I don't think users attempting to moderate others is a solution. It would reduce the diversity of opinions. The largest group would just push out unpopular opinions.

Instead you need tools that allows users to give themselves peace without punishing others. Maybe with the help of the followed/followers, i.e. some assistance from the social graph.

Re: Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer to Leave Company

#268

Post by jalada »

md224 wrote: post #43
madeofpalk wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know I might sound like a vim user, but tweetstorms are honestly one of my favourite parts of twitter. Maybe there could be a better UI for authoring and displaying them, but there's something I really enjoy about reading a story 140 characters at a time.

I've been saying this for a little while now: Twitter should really try to capitalize on Tweetstorms. What they don't seem to realize is that Tweetstorms enable Twitter to be a kind of inverse annotation platform. Most annotation platforms enable large chunks of text to be dissected by readers, but a Tweetstorm is the opposite: the author specifies the exact segmentation of the text as they release it, and each segme…

Whilst everyone is plugging their own stuff, we’ve been working on a little thing called Stormchaser for aggregating Tweetstorms in your timeline and lists: https://www.stormchaser.io

Re: Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer to Leave Company

#269

Post by dang »

wyck wrote: post #102

There is this thing called the foundation of America and it centres on what's called the 1st amendment. If you think twitter or any social platform should interfere with that and somehow grants him a platform to destroy the world then I suggest you re-evaluate your stance, stop over reacting like a 15 year old, and pick up a copy of 1984.

Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. They don't add anything new and typically lead to flamewars.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13225228 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer to Leave Company

#270

Post by rtpg »

hyperdunc wrote: post #256
rtpg wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter could simply "choose sides". Yes, they could have the courage to not allow neo-Nazis to use their site as a platform.

They might have the courage, but do they have the judgement to decide who's an actual neo-nazi? Twitter has a history of political partisanship. They'll ban "racist" conservatives but allow minority "terrorist" organizations.

There's a Pacific Ocean-sized gulf between the current policy and your nightmare scenario.

Slippery slope and all that, but they un-suspended Richard Spencer for "reasons".

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