281–290 of 504 posts
TLDR: this post is entirely to calm advertisers, it can be boiled down to "don't worry, we still prioritize brand safety like before". It does have this gem in it: "What has changed, however, is our approach to experimentation. As you’ve seen over the past several weeks, Twitter is embracing public testing. We believe that this open and transparent approach to innovation is healthy, as it enables us to move faster an…
As a reminder to developers and tech workers that are accustomed to the benefits of working in one of the more flexible and well-compensated fields for traditional employment, if Elon succeeds with his management style at Twitter—nay, even if he doesn't terribly and visibly fail—many folks managing large tech organizations and corporations in general will conclude that that management style is acceptable and sufficie…
There's no way to run a platform supported by ads that upholds anything resembling free speech. The advertising model is Twitter's fatal flaw. It puts the fate of the platform in the hands of a tiny corporate mob that are themselves subject to larger mobs. If "the mission" was truly driving Twitter, they'd drop all advertising and build enough value that some decent percentage of users would pay for it. In a few year…
Are there any social networks, in existence, at scale, which do not rely on advertising as their primary revenue source?
Other than this I don't know - the problem with social media is that you need network effects to make the platform valuable - nobody is going to pay for an empty place, and similarly nobody will join because they'd have to pay (so the platform would need to provide value from day 1).
Twitter is in a unique position when it comes to this - it already has the network effects and a significant userbase including influential people. This is why I'm also very excited about Musk's takeover of it. Do I agree with him about everything? Absolutely not - I think the man is unhinged. Yet, a stupid, ego-driven decision is our only escape from the cancer that is advertising.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not like A/B tests approach anything like the rigor that we expect from actual science, though.
> actual science I'm not sure what you mean by this. Many quality studies are A/B tests. A/B just refers to the two IV states you're testing, which you're then observing a DV - sales, engagement, errors, etc. A/B tests can be double blinded (don't tell the error monitoring people which results are from a trial), and have high number of samples, far beyond even most pharmaceutical trials. They can also be really crapp…
"First, none of our policies have changed."
I think it should read "none of our policies has changed" instead. But I might be wrong as I get confused about this often.
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> Try to actually talk about what I am complaining about > > I hate when people attribute opening the Overton window to more than just Extreme left authoritarian political opinions, which is what Political Twitter was isolated to before elon I literally quoted what you talked about and responded to your claim - please try to improve your reading comprehension skills.
>and responded to your claim No you did not, you responded with an unrelated fact that "right news" (which is widely over categorized in these research papers BTW) is the most shared link This does not refute the position that twitter employee based censorship was largely in one direction, this does not refute the fact that twitter policies were written and enforced in one ideological direction, this does not even re…
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This isn’t true. Science is ultimately the scientific method — make a hypothesis, test a change, observe the results, repeat. It’s an algorithm for learning and broadly gaining information about reality. It can equally be applied to things having to do with humans and things not having to do with humans.
Agreed. My point is I am not going to see a marketer as aiming for the same goal “as an experimental physicist.” To borrow the Lindy effect; whether someone likes the jacket in color A or B is of such short lived value it’s a huge waste of the resources that went into the pipeline needed to come to the conclusion. Here’s an A/B test; rethink logistics to increase customization of outputs or continue to create design…
In the context of what we're talking about, you can A/B test more than marketing, you're can test variables like UI/UX.
Yes clothes fall in and out of fashion, but changing the placement, color, size of the "add to cart" button isn't something that's going to be changing frequently.
Another example might be adding a "trending" tab the top navigation of a page or whether the "what's trending" vs "what you like" provide more engagement as the default page.
Youtube recently tested randomly lowering people's video resolution to see who changed it back to gauge the importance of the resolution to their customers.
I do not see how they can say they still prioritize broad safety when there is reportedly only one person left on the child safety team.
In the past, exploitation victims had to literally sue Twitter to take down explicit material, because a "review" could not "find a violation of [their] policies" [1].
Now "the three biggest hashtags used by child abusers selling child sexual abuse material on Twitter have virtually been eliminated" according to a human trafficking survivor advocate [2]. They have also made it easier for users to flag such content.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/minor-lawsuit-twitter-explic...
[2] https://twitter.com/elizableu/status/1594139581045428224
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Twitter 2.0 is banning accounts as soon as Andy Ngo, the galaxy's biggest liar, demands they be banned. https://theintercept.com/2022/11/29/elon-musk-twitter-andy-n...
I don't see how you reached that conclusion. If you look at the referenced thread, he was reporting accounts that were inciting violence.
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"Experiment and observation" is something we know humans have been doing for literally thousands of years (and without written evidence, probably 10s-100s). At least for loose versions of "experiment" which ties back to rigor. We haven't been doing science for very long. The primary difference is the desire and effort to add rigor and systematic thinking. The difference in efficacy is hard to understate.
> We haven't been doing science for very long. Again, this comes back to your definition. Many would disagree in that science has existed for, at least, as long as recorded human history because an actual tenable definition of science is something along the lines of "the endeavor to build knowledge by experimenting and observing the results". The rigor of the experiment is part of the quality of the science, not whet…
Not sensibly. Or at least; let's avoid bogging down on the semantics. We started doing something quantifiable different recently, which has had a massive impact on our world. It is quite sensible to ask "what changed?" and try to understand it. If you want to give it a different name from "science", ok, but that's mostly likely to confuse people. If you want to claim such a shift didn't happen, you've got a hard row to hoe.