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Twitter 2.0: Our continued commitment to the public conversation

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291–300 of 504 posts

Re: Twitter 2.0: Our continued commitment to the public conversation

#291

First Twitter was going to crash in a week, then it was everyone would flee to Mastodon, now it’s that all the advertisers would leave. Maybe Twitter really didn’t need 7500 people, and maybe having more voices speak is a good thing (there is always block button), and maybe advertisers won’t flee forever. That seems more likely to me than Twitter imploding.

Twitter was a second tier advertising destination before there was any inkling of a Musk deal, and advertisers started leaving before the deal closed when he was trying to get out of it. The biggest advertising firms in the world are advising their clients to leave.

Why would they come back? Musk is the Donald Trump of tech - plenty of devoted fans, but not someone brands want to associate themselves with. Even if he wanted to, it doesn't seem that Musk can stop impulsively tweeting controversial things.

Re: Twitter 2.0: Our continued commitment to the public conversation

#292
post #12

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…

I largely agree with your point, but I have to say as a user I generally don’t enjoy A/B testing at all. It’s invisible to me, and some part of the app or website I’m using is now either broken or annoying in some way, but still works normally for the people I mention it to, since they’re not in my group. Additionally, the changes are sometimes totally transient, so things are disrupted for me briefly, only to be dis…

A/B testing when it's like the color of something (did you know you can change the hacker news banner color?) doesn't bother me much, but when it's more invasive and I can't turn it off or switch teams, it starts to get annoying.

Especially when you're trying to help someone and they are seeing something different from what you see.

Re: Twitter 2.0: Our continued commitment to the public conversation

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think people need thicker skin What a ridiculous thing to say. Actually plenty of us (and I've also been on the internet for many decades now) would like to hop online to engage with some cool folks about [insert interesting topic here] without having utter garbage and dreck thrown up in our faces like racism, transphobia, misogyny, bigotry, etc., etc.

Well it is good thing for you all major platforms have the ablity to block, mute, or otherwise curate your experience, including sharing "block lists" and other innovations so your personal experience is what you make it to be I support giving people the power to create their own echo chambers and safe spaces, feel free to do so.. No one should be forced to communicate with anyone they do not want to, however you als…

> Well it is good thing for you all major platforms have the ablity to block, mute, or otherwise curate your experience, including sharing "block lists" and other innovations so your personal experience is what you make it to be

Why would i choose a platform where i have to moderate thousands of individuals? Ie what's the purpose in that lol?

Where is this world where we went from having Forums of communities to global cesspools where we want to manage what sort of nonsense shows up on the feed?

> We really have lost the cultural axiom "I may hate what you say, but I will defend your right to say it" haven't we.

I didn't say this, so your two replies in one feels odd. However, no one is stopping you from saying it. Say it all you want. I'm advocating a smaller forum where i don't have to listen to you say things to me that i'm uninterested in.

I'm not stopping you from being on the internet. From having electricity. Just like i'm fine with you yelling on the street corner.

I'm moving to the other side of the street. And you object to that, for some odd reason. Because by me moving, it doesn't give you a voice?

Edit: To sum it up, this isn't about safe spaces. This is about spam. There's only so much "Vaccines give you 5G!!!" i can put up with lol. Just like the guy on the street corner. Hard to have a conversation around that annoying screaming.

Re: Twitter 2.0: Our continued commitment to the public conversation

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think we're are getting caught up on what's being tested. 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 pag…

I agree with your analysis of how I see things.

I disagree that I am “caught up” on anything.

I have a preference that’s been refined over time. Not a psychological error in perception.

Re: Twitter 2.0: Our continued commitment to the public conversation

#295
post #285

Probably complete OT but is this correct grammatically? "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.

The policies? None have changed. There are zero changed policies. If there was one policy changed, that would be the one that has changed. But there are none that have changed. And of those that haven't changed, any two haven't changed.

Those all sound correct to me. Zero is plural.

Re: Twitter 2.0: Our continued commitment to the public conversation

#296
post #12

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…

I'm guessing that some product people finally managed to explain what an AB test is to Elon and why they use them to validate product ideas before rushing implementations out the door based on gut instinct. Aside from trying to assuage advertisers about his capricious product decisions he's also trying to act like he is now an expert on digital product development.

Re: Twitter 2.0: Our continued commitment to the public conversation

#297
post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter was previously doing A/B tests. Spaces, communities, downvotes, circles, and even moderation were applied only to a subset of accounts while they actively experimented. The new policy is an objectively less scientific approach to testing functionality than what was occurring before.

A/B tests are pretty problematic for social networks, since anything effective can also influence the control group. They are excellent for single-player activities like shopping carts and signup flows. "Network Experimentation at Scale" from Facebook describes how difficult this problem is. Most A/B test frameworks don't reach this level of sophistication. It does make some sense to just ship things if you don't hav…

They're also problematic because you'll likely optimize for whatever metric you pick with no regard to the ethics of the optimization. Sometimes a double blind test is not the right thing to do.

Re: Twitter 2.0: Our continued commitment to the public conversation

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.newsweek.com/activists-accuse-elon-musk-banning-... mentions a few, although there are far more.

You need to be more specific - he wasn't banning George Takei or Occupy Democrats. He banned ANTIFA accounts that were being used to plan "direct action", ie: riots. Something that was previously against Twitter's TOS, but it wasn't being enforced specifically against ANTIFA accounts because Twitter employees were sympathetic to the cause.

Whatever you need to tell yourself to make your little delusion work. Obviously the banned accounts were not calling for any form of violence, otherwise the bans wouldn't have been news

Re: Twitter 2.0: Our continued commitment to the public conversation

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Technically it's not science because it doesn't follow the scientific method. Instead it's the close cousin, empiricism. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empirical

A/B testing is literally just the scientific method, A/B are the two states of the IV. A drug vs placebo experiment, is an A/B test.

For example with changing the font size of a button:

Your null hypothesis is there is no difference in the number of clicks. Your alternative hypothesis is that there is an increase in number of clicks.

Your IV is the button font size. Your DV is the number of button clicks over a set period of time.

You randomly sample 50% of the population to State A (same button size) You put the other group into State B (increased button size)

You observe the number of clicks of the button.

You analyze this data, and can determine the statistical significance between your null and alternative hypothesis.

Re: Twitter 2.0: Our continued commitment to the public conversation

#300
"Freedom of speech but not freedom of reach". Sounds like tyranny of a different form. I believe that any platform that enjoys protections of the federal government should be required by law to have 100% open moderation policies, regardless of whether it is reach or speech. Those policies should be required to be "legally" oriented and not based on platform preferences. Let the actual police handle policing.
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