371–380 of 398 posts
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How is Twitter not a good business? It's still worth $11 billion.
It's never made a profit.
In 2015 they posted a Net Income of -$521.03M and EBITDA of -$137.21M.
I don't exactly understand how those two numbers can differ so much, but either way they're pretttty bad.
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Explain to me how effective blocking individuals is when you're being spammed by dozens and hundreds of people with so little to do that they will happily go create egg accounts to continue harassing you. It's not practical or feasible to block all of them. So people should delete their accounts because they get brigaded? To hell with that, and with the people who think that is a social norm worth protecting. "Crybul…
For that, there is another button: "stop receiving notifications". And another one: "don't allow anybody but the people I follow to spam me with shit". Both are easily activated on Twitter. What other button we need to invent? "Activate our hordes of ML algorithms to make sure that all replies you receive are about kittens or pink ponies"? Can be done, but we already have Facebook for that. For me, all this drama loo…
But, then. "Crybullies." Res ipsa loquitur.
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Explain to me how effective blocking individuals is when you're being spammed by dozens and hundreds of people with so little to do that they will happily go create egg accounts to continue harassing you. It's not practical or feasible to block all of them. So people should delete their accounts because they get brigaded? To hell with that, and with the people who think that is a social norm worth protecting. "Crybul…
There are social networks (Facebook, Tumblr) where you can turn off the ability to be messaged by people you don't friend/mutually follow. Getting attacked by trolls? Shut it down, and enjoy the silence.
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I hear and respect what you're saying, but I don't think you can technologically fix a social problem. Twitter needs moderation , and I don't think that's practically accomplished with a purely technological solution. Assholes simply don't have a right to be there, and Twitter has a responsibility to its userbase to not subject them to it at all, rather than merely "well, machine learning" to a merely intermittently…
FWIW, even attempting technological solutions sends a signal of a sort. It's probably a "Red Queen's Race" to stay ahead of determined abusers, just as it's difficult to conquer spam, but one side-effect of making a concerted effort to try is that Twitter would be sending an unambiguous message about limits on behaviour.
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Instagram, WhatsApp, WeChat, Line?
Up until earlier this year, WhatsApp actually had a for-pay business model: it cost $1 per year. They stopped charging in January, evidently, in theory to remove a barrier to entry. (Being owned by Facebook now probably helps them make that move, though.) I've wondered how Twitter would have been different if they'd taken a similar approach: $1 per account per year. They'd certainly be smaller than they are now, but…
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If your beliefs change all the time, they can't have been held very strongly or justifiably in the first place. Maybe you should stop having beliefs like that. That's direct evidence that you shouldn't be confident in many of your beliefs, given they change so often. A person with stable beliefs, even if they aren't ever challenged, has no such direct evidence to suggest they should be less confident, they can only h…
> A person with stable beliefs, even if they aren't ever challenged, has no such direct evidence to suggest they should be less confident That's like saying someone who comes up with a bunch of scientific hypotheses and never tests them should have more confidence in them than someone who does. Holding on to your beliefs even in the face of evidence/arguments to the contrary is not a sign of having better or more con…
The author is right that the product has some major flaws, especially around harassment, but no one else seems to want to take over the space. And Facebook, Tumblr, G+, etc. are all much worse platforms for the kind of discussion that happens on Twitter.
So I think the toxic environment can definitely put a ceiling on the number of new users, so does the timeline issues, but it could probably just keep plodding along for another 5+ years as-is until these issues are worked out or something much better is put in place (not likely, but possible, IMO).
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> Nothing in my comment as it stands now is false. Nothing in my responses to you are false. When I noticed something incorrect, I modified it, noted it, and accepted responsibility. But you didn't go back in time and read the article before your comment. That's the point. > The fact that my comment is similar to the article doesn't make it false. The fact that I didn't notice the similarity immediately doesn't make…
Please stop. Personal attacks are not OK on Hacker News, and we ban accounts that do so repeatedly.
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Please stop. Personal attacks are not OK on Hacker News, and we ban accounts that do so repeatedly.
Are you a bot?