Live data from Hacker News

Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

techcrunch.com

361–369 of 369 posts

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#361
post #2

> He suggested that the service works best as an “interest-based network,” where you log in and see content relevant to your interests, no matter who posted it Yeah, no thanks. Has anybody ever been happy with Twitter's attempts to force content from non-followed users into the feed? A couple of times a year they'll opt everybody back into whatever crappy experiment they're running ("hey, we'll put some posts to your…

I recently created a Twitter account, mostly as an experiment. I just followed some programmers, stuck to programming content. Immediately and every day after, I was constantly being displayed Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Justin Trudeau, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, etc. Not a single politician or voice not on the left. Considering how powerful Twitter has become, this is troubling. I know this is just one…

This is what you see even if you follow nothing or if you only follow stuff clearly associated with the right.

When you follow stuff associated with the right, it often gets unfollowed. This was very noticeable with the movie Unplanned. Basically you couldn't follow it.

If you start off a new account by following only politicians on the right, you are highly likely to get your account banned.

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's exactly reddit. That's ridiculous. Is topic vs author the only metric we use to categorize social media? What about thread flatness, delegation of curation/censorship and styling, quantitative and qualitative distinctions about how feeds are tailored to users, etc.? I can think of many distinctions between the two despite rarely using either.

Sure, but that will no longer be twitter, it'll be a reddit competitor. He should then also state what will make it better than reddit, from what he's public ally saying so far it just sounds like he's never heard of reddit and is going to invent it.

It's already a reddit competitor to some extent. I agree that it will be more of a reddit competitor, but it's already on the continuum. These things are mushy.

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah like Farage monopolising BBCQT - no thank you.

I think Farage is a moron and I couldn't disagree with him more, but what a disappointingly closed-minded view you have. That view is one of the worst problems of Twitter, in my opinion. I think Dorsey is trying to blow smoke up our ass on the other issues, because their core business is advertising no matter what he says, but I actually believe him on this and think it's one of the few really good things he's sincer…

Knowing what "Farage" is does not mean I wont debate properly with other political views.

Farage is not a moron he is dangerous nationalist stirring up violence for personal gain. Just as the "crank" end of the labour party has its own dangerous individuals.

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Here we have a climatologist, and for balance, someone who believes the Earth is a computer simulation, and another who is certain it's flat and was created by the Illuminati who are alien lizards."

Elon Musk seems to fall into both of the first groups.

The third, too, when he's smoking up.

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#365

Removing counts is the only viable cure for social media that’s left. Not removing the problems, but removing the addictiveness. Once we reduce the problem space of inputs to people who aren’t addicted, the results should be a lot less difficult to parse. Visibility into why a post is top of page should not be granted through an integer mapped on a scale of 0 to infinity at any level of precision. Not for upvotes, do…

Instagram is: https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/18/instagram-no-like-counter/

But the screenshots indicate that they’re still showing the count to the user who posted, which is the only user that must not see them. Nice try, but it won’t be sufficient.

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make the posters pay and you'll lose your content. I think that's only true if you try to charge all posters. Advertising is actively damaging our social networks, as it did newspapers before them.

If the service is built to maximize the benefit to users (instead of to maximize benefit to advertisers, or to maximize a corporation's profits), then I'd argue that you cannot charge even some posters. Maximizing the benefit to readers means getting the most and best content. Charging posters will eliminate some posts which is bad for readers. And when a poster is willing to pay, that means the poster is profiting f…

An unfunded service has zero benefit as it doesn't exist.

So propose a non-commercial model which would work and cover all costs (including hosting).

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make the readers pay and you'll lose your audience. Make the posters pay and you'll lose your content. Without advertising, that means the service cannot make a profit. Maybe that's the solution to the puzzle.

Seems like posters with many thousands of followers have different needs than the typical one; sell premium tools to handle their use case

Yes thanks, that's what I was trying to say, but this says it more succinctly.

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#368
post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what I'm talking about, but judging from the fact that Ev Williams founded or co-founded Blogger, Twitter, and Medium, perhaps he was the real visionary behind the idea. That's three different "write stuff online and share it" startups. He clearly understands social media and blogging and micro-blogging. Maybe Jack is more of the 'biz guy'?

From what I’ve read, Ev deserves more credit. My take on the founding of twitter is that you had a bunch of people and no clear leadership, and that different people had different opinions of what twitter should be. That ambiguity has undermined the platform from day one, no focus, no clear mission, no clear plan on how to spend their money.

Right, considering that Twitter in the early days was considered to be some sort of free SMS replacement that happened to show some messages publicly.

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#369
post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you so down on real life - expecting every one to display laser focused concentration on one topic is just not realistic or actually healthy.

> Why are you so down on real life Bizarre interpretation.

Why?
Post reply on HN