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Substack Notes Launched

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Re: Substack Notes Launched

#631
post #207
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said it well. I actually suspect that many people hate him not in spite of what he has done, but because of it: They think if they acknowledge what people like Elon Musk have done in their lives, they'd have to loathe themselves, their own choices, values and weaknesses. Which is, of course, quite silly. Each human being has their own path in life. Comparing yourself to anyone, no matter who, is going to cause mi…

Precisely put. I wouldn't attempt to ignore his work on SpaceX, Tesla, etc since those companies have kickstarted their own revolution(s); electric vehicles and Starlink, even though I think Tesla FSD is a dangerous scam. Without it, the cars are fine. Before, almost all the techies here were dreaming and begging to work for Elon Musk. Then the blue bird happened, got bought out and gave them 'emotional distress' and…

Curious question I have. What makes you think FSD is a “dangerous scam”? It’s quite functional even if it doesn’t quite meet the advertising yet. Maybe slightly dangerous for now yes, but hardly a scam.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was always riddled with bugs, I'm not sure why people are blaming that on Musk as that is surely the least applicable of any of the criticisms that get thrown his way. Are people's memories that short that they thought it was a bug free experience up till a few months ago?

It had a lot of performance and loading bugs, but it never showed me private tweets.

Is your contention that now you've been shown a more serious bug than you'd experienced previously that it's an indication that there were not similar or worse bugs in existence before the takeover?

Even if I myself hadn't experienced more serious bugs than those prior to the takeover, it'd still seem a stretch.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, this perspective seems very head-in-a-bubble to me. It's a tiny tiny number of people who think the problem with Twitter and Substack is that they aren't federated. Federation isn't a feature people broadly care about. If it makes the platform work better, great! But I don't think that's the case for Mastodon or any other federated platform I've come across. It's the opposite, they make concessions on…

I disagree. Federation is a feature people want, but they don't know about the concept. When I show people that I can talk to Signal, WhatsApp, and Signal through a single app, they're pretty impressed. I wouldn't expect most people to set up a Matrix bridging system like I did, same with most Mastodon servers, but it's a feature people do generally want. With Mastodon, most people first ask "but how do I follow peop…

Federation is someone doing a cool card trick at a cocktail party. Does it look cool? Yes. Is anyone going to go out and buy a deck of cards the next morning and learn how to do it? No.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not a kid using his parents money. He's using his own and his personal name/reputation to secure money. He's not hurting an ant. He fired people and let them go find other jobs which seems pretty fair instead of for example reducing their pay drastically and forcing them to quit, or paying them minimum wage and profit sharing. Which still would have been pretty fair IMO. Not every ceo or company owners needs to…

It can be done without being an asshole (for example without insulting a handicapped person) https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/elon-musk-gets-involved-...

Note: he did not insult a handicapped person. At no point did he attack his disability. That was a cruel twisting of facts by the media.

Further he was misled by someone feeding him incorrect information and promptly apologized for the confusion. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1633253950198624257

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, this perspective seems very head-in-a-bubble to me. It's a tiny tiny number of people who think the problem with Twitter and Substack is that they aren't federated. Federation isn't a feature people broadly care about. If it makes the platform work better, great! But I don't think that's the case for Mastodon or any other federated platform I've come across. It's the opposite, they make concessions on…

I disagree. Federation is a feature people want, but they don't know about the concept. When I show people that I can talk to Signal, WhatsApp, and Signal through a single app, they're pretty impressed. I wouldn't expect most people to set up a Matrix bridging system like I did, same with most Mastodon servers, but it's a feature people do generally want. With Mastodon, most people first ask "but how do I follow peop…

I mean texts.com does what matrix does without the overhead

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#636
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is twitter ruined? My personal experience on the site has not changed much.

He keeps pushing the ‘for you’ page over the regular following tab that just shows tweets of people you follow The content moderation is basically nil now so tons of racist content is propagated throughout the network. Various technical bugs plaguing things - videos not playing, images not appearing, etc The verification system has been destroyed which has allowed fake accounts to run rampant The API has been wrecked…

All the data shows that racist content is down significantly following the purchase.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#637
post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was always riddled with bugs, I'm not sure why people are blaming that on Musk as that is surely the least applicable of any of the criticisms that get thrown his way. Are people's memories that short that they thought it was a bug free experience up till a few months ago?

> Are people's memories that short that they thought it was a bug free experience up till a few months ago? Hilarious how people here have tolerated all garbage and bugs from pre-Musk Twitter takeover for years and now they all complain about them now. It is selective memory based on the current villain of the year to hate. Twitter has always been an outrage capital with a strong network effect. It is just that for t…

I honestly think people were resigned to the previous poor level of the app/website, and of course you are right, they now can use it and any regressions that have been actually introduced as a stick to beat an ideological opponent with.

Even a cursory search of HN brings up absurd bugs[1]:

> Slightly related but very interesting: the 2010 Twitter bug where simply tweeting "Accept [username]" would automatically force them to follow you.

From what Musk has told us since he took over, and others it sounds like an unholy mess behind the scenes. From [2]:

> In Tuesday's hearing, which ran for more than two hours, Zatko painted a portrait of a company plagued by widespread security issues and unable to control the data it collects. Calm and measured, he stuck closely to his expertise, unpacking technical details of Twitter's systems with real-world examples of how information held by the company could be misused.

> "It's not far-fetched to say that an employee inside the company could take over the accounts of all of the senators in this room," he warned.

From [3], a Twitter engineer on the work ethic:

> “If you’re not feeling it, you can take a few days off,” he was recorded saying. “People have taken months off.”

> “I basically went to work like four hours a week last quarter,” he added. “And it’s just how it works in our company.”

Which tells me a lot. And should we forget about this doozy from Dorsey's days in charge?[4]

> Oh, and while he was in charge, there was no backup of Twitter’s database.

I could go on for a long time but it's clear that people are being selective with their memories.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16942844

[2] https://www.npr.org/2022/09/13/1122671582/twitter-whistleblo...

[3] https://nypost.com/2022/05/17/twitter-engineer-says-commie-s...

[4] https://fortune.com/2015/09/30/jack-dorsey-twitter-ceo-fired...

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which noted liberal Ron DeSantis defines as "the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them." That's not a quote from Ron DeSantis. From [0]: > Ryan Newman, DeSantis’s general counsel, said the term referred to “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.” [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/05/desantis-...

Technically true. But Newman said it on the stand, under oath, an a case where DeSantis was being sued for firing a "woke" prosecutor. So I think that's as close to an official answer as we're going to get from DeSantis.

> Technically true.

There's no technically true - there's what you wrote, which was untrue, and what I wrote, which was true. Technically is entirely unnecessary in that assessment, especially when you go on to admit that DeSantis hasn't actually given an answer.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#639
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They raised a ton of money on a high valuation, spent 25mil to make 1 mil last year and are now scrambling to raise a new crowd sourced round because they don't want to get wiped out in a down round. This notes thing looks like an attempt to pivot to an advertising based business model and I'm guessing they think they have "influencers" on their platform to bring in a decent audience.

What did they spend their $25 million on? What's the tech they have that costs this much to build? Their hard problems are a building a CMS or are otherwise solved by using fastly and sendgrid?

They threw money at some big name early adopters.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#640
post #34

I've just checked it out and it's much closer to a Twitter clone than I anticipated. Now it's clear why Elon made the drastic decision to mess with substack links on Twitter. The site is clean and simple. I'm very disappointed in Musk for essentially ruining one of the world's great information platforms. Mastodon was just not the thing people were looking for. I hope this takes off.

How is twitter ruined? My personal experience on the site has not changed much.

It's gutted several communities I'm a part of.
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