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Twitter suspended our Open Data project's account and wiped all our followers

openbenches.org

41–50 of 154 posts

Re: Twitter suspended our Open Data project's account and wiped all our followers

#41

An "open data project" that stores all of its data on Twitter? Not that Twitter's in the right here, but this seems like a bad move...

I don't think they store all their data on twitter. If they did, they probably wouldn't have this file in their repo: https://github.com/edent/openbenches/blob/master/database/da...

Re: Twitter suspended our Open Data project's account and wiped all our followers

#42
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a good alternative you would suggest? I often have a similar problem and the fact is that most users hang out on platforms that suck like Twitter, Facebook, etc. If I build my business on a decentralized platform like blockchain etc. I immediately lose 90% or even more of my target audience. If I build my business on my own datacenter the cost and maintenance involved is staggeringly high. Do you have a reason…

Use cloud providers like AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure. Or pay to be colocated in a datacenter -- you don't need to build one. Back up your databases somewhere that only you control. You'll have to hire some engineers to maintain this, but it won't be as bad as building a datacenter. And it's what you'll need to do to avoid being a sharecropper on someone else's platform.

> You'll have to hire some engineers to maintain this

That rules out small projects and requires monetization.

Re: Twitter suspended our Open Data project's account and wiped all our followers

#43
post #23
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume this is sarcasm, so I’d like to point out that I don’t consider myself smarter than anyone else or anything - I say idiots simply because there’s no excuse where blatantly obvious spam (for example the crypto currency scam replies in response to famous accounts like Elon Musk) isn’t deleted automatically.

If you know how to reliably solve that easy problem I'm pretty sure they're hiring

Solving that particular problem is not hard: trash any reply to a celebrity or viral tweet that includes a link and gets reported x times. There was a good Twitter thread on this recently, pointing out that we look for complicated solutions when simple ones would do. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/987602838594445312.html

Re: Twitter suspended our Open Data project's account and wiped all our followers

#45
I run a bot swarm that tweets transit delays in Boston and this has been affecting some of the most prolific accounts (i.e. the one that tweets bus delays), that being said, it's been super easy to get them reactivated and I havn't lost any followers.

Re: Twitter suspended our Open Data project's account and wiped all our followers

#46
post #23
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume this is sarcasm, so I’d like to point out that I don’t consider myself smarter than anyone else or anything - I say idiots simply because there’s no excuse where blatantly obvious spam (for example the crypto currency scam replies in response to famous accounts like Elon Musk) isn’t deleted automatically.

If you know how to reliably solve that easy problem I'm pretty sure they're hiring

I’m sure their engineers (if they still have any - I haven’t seen any innovation from Twitter in a long time) are more than capable of fixing this if management lets them.

Hiring more engineers isn’t going to solve it. Management and product is where the real problem is IMO.

Re: Twitter suspended our Open Data project's account and wiped all our followers

#47

So what's the current feeling on HN towards stories like this one? They seem fairly repetitive and uninteresting: users use something with no customer service, automated system goes haywire and bans/blocks/disables/inconveniences their account, the only way they have to get it resolved is to make some noise about it, they then return to using the service, nothing changes. At this point I'm tempted to flag stories lik…

While repetitive, these stories serve as a useful reminder that Twitter management is still just as incompetent as ever, and no one should rely on their service for anything important.

Re: Twitter suspended our Open Data project's account and wiped all our followers

#48
post #23
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume this is sarcasm, so I’d like to point out that I don’t consider myself smarter than anyone else or anything - I say idiots simply because there’s no excuse where blatantly obvious spam (for example the crypto currency scam replies in response to famous accounts like Elon Musk) isn’t deleted automatically.

If you know how to reliably solve that easy problem I'm pretty sure they're hiring

Automatically flag any account making a reply with the same name or same picture. It's incredibly simple yet they don't do it.

Re: Twitter suspended our Open Data project's account and wiped all our followers

#49

Unrelated: Openbenches, you don't have a single picture of the greatest benches in America? http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/...

I think you are confusing it with this bench https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/jamacia-pond-bench

Re: Twitter suspended our Open Data project's account and wiped all our followers

#50
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m wondering what the idiots at Twitter are really doing. What if they're not idiots? What if that system is working exactly as intended?

Whoever designed how this system is supposed to work (as in, allow the spam to remain) is still an idiot in my view. Granted, I’m sure they have an agenda to justify this (aka boost user numbers as much as possible, even if all of them are bots) but as a user I don’t care - I see spam on the platform and I call them out for it.

> Whoever designed how this system is supposed to work (as in, allow the spam to remain) is still an idiot in my view

Why? If you don't know what the goal is, how can you judge the results? Just because you don't care for the result doesn't make the person who designed the system an idiot. It makes you an idiot for continuing to use a system you hate.

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