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Goodbye, Fleets

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Re: Goodbye, Fleets

#281

Post by mypalmike »

gumby wrote: post #74
pjc50 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> anxieties that hold people back from Tweeting Have they, like, asked people? Also, do they need more people to tweet? It's not like the platform is short of content. Isn't there a role for the comfortable lurker?

They have to change; their market cap is much lower than the other "majors" and actually the usage level (and subscriber base) is lower too. It's like the inverse of reddit: reddit has a very high Alexa score yet is invisible in the public media; Twitter is discussed endlessly by the nattering nabobs, called before congress etc, yet has trouble monetizing their infamy.

Most companies would envy this amount of "trouble monetizing": https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TWTR/twitter/gross...

Re: Goodbye, Fleets

#283

Post by conradfr »

leviathant wrote: post #146
markdown wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can turn off their retweets. How does one do this?

Navigate to the profile of the account you'd like to stop seeing retweets from. Click the circular icon with three horizontal dots to the right of their profile picture. Select the first option in this menu labeled "Turn off Retweets."

I've been waiting for that to be a global option since forever.

Re: Goodbye, Fleets

#284

Post by conradfr »

Tycho wrote: post #45

It was incredibly annoying how it took up significant real estate at the top of the screen and there was no way to disable the feature. Good riddance.

Exactly, I hope it will not be occupied by Spaces instead (which I also do not care for).

Re: Goodbye, Fleets

#285

Post by rhizome »

jjj123 wrote: post #59
tills13 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you but don't all the actions you mention turn Twitter into an even larger, more strict echo chamber?

I’m not sure you can make that assumption. Part of what makes these social networks echo chambers are the unconscious ways we navigate them: how long we linger on a post, stay in the site, etc. I’m not sure whether conscious decisions like being judicious with the follow and block buttons would pull you into more of an echo chamber than the algorithm does, especially if you’re selecting for things other than “this ca…

I think that's a cop-out. There are no objective measures of these things, the meaning of "how long you linger" or where you move your mouse are completely made-up by the coders who wrote the algorithm. They don't have to be a signal of anything, but the companies just go ahead and decide it means something. Then Goodhart's Law finishes the job.

Re: Goodbye, Fleets

#286

Post by whywhywhywhy »

colinmhayes wrote: post #207
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #31

The lack of innovation at Twitter, Instagram and Facebook is utterly baffling and points to a serious culture problem. Feels there are rooms of people now just being paid to clone successful features from other apps and only after those apps have carved their place in the market, literally become followers rather than trailblazers. In just a few years Instagram is going to seem completely old hat to anyone who didn't…

Established social media companies innovating is how you get new reddit. I think the facebook strategy of not changing successful platforms and continually building/buying new ones makes the most sense.

>Established social media companies innovating is how you get new reddit

I'd argue new reddit isn't innovating, there is no vision or passion behind that product. The team is clearly being given metrics they need to move and all the work is focused around moving those metrics.

Re: Goodbye, Fleets

#287

Post by skinnymuch »

telotortium wrote: post #202
px43 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please point to one person whose life was ruined from a single tweet, and who didn't deserve it. Yes, it exposes unapologetic racists and misogynists. That's a good thing. People who genuinely learn from their fuckups are generally called out, but their lives are hardly "ruined".

David Shor - he was impulsively fired by his firm last June for just a tweet linking to academic research (I think by a black academic) that argued that violent protests following the MLK assassination reduced the share of Democratic support in the following presidential election, while non-violent protests increase Democratic support: https://www.vox.com/2020/7/29/21340308/david-shor-omar-wasow... . David Shor is a…

I do agree your example appears wild. Any sort of repercussions no less losing your job is crazy for that. However, that isn’t life ruining if he’s fine after the firing. The OP and others before were talking about life ruining.

I’d consider something like this life ruining:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/03/29/adam-smith-c...

A mean spirited yet relatively insignificant video berating a low level employee for the company/owners bigoted views. The guy ends up losing his job and allegedly can’t get another job for years.

Re: Goodbye, Fleets

#288

Post by skinnymuch »

dheera wrote: post #107
thallavajhula wrote: post #5

Twitter is great when it comes to transparency. I love how they included this >Although we built Fleets to address some of the anxieties that hold people back from Tweeting, Fleets are mostly used by people who are already Tweeting to amplify their own Tweets and talk directly with others. We’ll explore more ways to address what holds people back from participating on Twitter. And for the people who already are Tweet…

I didn't even know about "Fleets", maybe that was part of the problem.

Yeah. I’ve heard the same from a few friends/acquaintances who aren’t into tech too much but use Twitter.

Re: Goodbye, Fleets

#289

Post by skinnymuch »

btown wrote: post #168
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #21

Kudos to Twitter for pulling the plug on a high profile feature that wasn't working out. I saw some reasonably interesting Fleets at first, but it quickly devolved into a low-effort self promotion feature as they noted: > Although we built Fleets to address some of the anxieties that hold people back from Tweeting, Fleets are mostly used by people who are already Tweeting to amplify their own Tweets Eventually I stop…

The one thing that Fleets had going for them, that I think Twitter needs more than anything, is the fact that they are fleeting . Many people, myself included, are afraid to tweet something inane on main, lest we forget to delete it (or lest it be archived by a crawler), and have it taken out of context years later in a way that might damage our careers. But it doesn't follow that "something is fleeting, therefore it…

Fleets can be screenshotted, no? You said tweeting something inane. Others on here have said they’re afraid to tweet at all. If the worry is that high, then the worry of a Fleet screenshot being taken out of context should probably be enough to not allow you to do that either.

Re: Goodbye, Fleets

#290

Post by skinnymuch »

netcraft wrote: post #232
btown wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one thing that Fleets had going for them, that I think Twitter needs more than anything, is the fact that they are fleeting . Many people, myself included, are afraid to tweet something inane on main, lest we forget to delete it (or lest it be archived by a crawler), and have it taken out of context years later in a way that might damage our careers. But it doesn't follow that "something is fleeting, therefore it…

Ive always wished to be able to put an expiration on tweets. There are a lot of things that dont need to live forever. Here in the south if I go a couple hours without looking at twitter sometimes ill have to scroll through lots of weather related tweets for a current storm system that I would have loved if I was watching twitter at the time, but are useless to me now. And maybe they dont get deleted, but just dont s…

Yes. Not just for your example, but sometimes it’s obvious a tweet only matters in the moment or doesn’t matter. All of these cases would be great if the tweets were somehow archived or put away (like skipping your email inbox)
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