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Substack Notes Launched

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Re: Substack Notes Launched

#661

Post by mlindner »

Omatic810 wrote: post #660
mlindner wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the details of that report. They're measuring by _number_ of tweets rather than impressions. Hate speech impressions are down. i.e. if you want hate speech you have to go out of your way to find it using bots. Normal users are seeing them less after the purchase. It's really tiring to counter so much misinformation about this that flies about. It's not just a one-time drop either, the impressions continues to…

Here's the report, the claim had no misinformation. https://beamdisinfo.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Antisemit... Hate speech IS up. The claim was "hate speech is up". Impressions being down matters to the impact of the speech, but the claim stands - hate speech is up. You can claim it doesn't matter (and I might agree with you, since impressions are down, people know what to expect now, and the increase is signifi…

I'll retract my opinion that "hate speech is down" as it's apparently difficult to measure but I am going to continue to say that "hate speech is up" is at the very least "highly misleading" as it gives the impression that the platform is worse for minorities than it was pre-acquisition. The reverse is the truth, given the lower impressions of hate speech, it effectively means that those that would verbally attack minorities are being highly squelched versus the situation before the acquisition. That's all around a good thing.

The visibility of hate speech on twitter is down.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#663

Post by Dalewyn »

rvz wrote: post #585
nemo44x wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter had de facto commissars in every region that coordinated with their contacts at various activist networks to ensure everyone was coordinated. Musk broke that wheel. Twitter in the USA is noticeably better too. A few people left but no one cares. So many more interesting voices have been raised.

I deleted my Twitter account long before Musk took over it because Twitter has always been a outrage capital. I’m not sure why it is now fashionable to see many techies here scream about it now after tolerating the years of garbage that has proliferated on the site. It is likely has something to do with the layoffs which can cause many to become highly emotional of all their reasoning. The network effect of 220M+ use…

>It is likely has something to do with the layoffs which can cause many to become highly emotional of all their reasoning.

It's just the pendulum finally swinging the other way (as was foretold) and the people concerned becoming appalled with the realization they now have to drink their own kool-aid.

It's not unlike what happened when journalists, who told people who lost their jobs to go and "learn to code", were told to go and "learn to code" when they in turn lost their jobs.

Basically, these people can dish out but can't take.

Any smart bystander who witnesses these things would do well to take away the need for prudence in one's statements and desires. The pendulum swings with absolute apathy.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#664

Post by Gareth321 »

chrisbolt wrote: post #648
neural_thing wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their 2021 revenue is $12M. We don't know their 2022 revenue. Your numbers are just wrong. Source: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1783191/000167025423...

From your source, their 2021 net profit was -$6.5M and their 2020 net profit was $1M. They seem to be mixing the $24.6M in negative cash flow for 2021 with the $1M in net profit in 2020? Doesn’t make any sense.

Valuations in tech haven't been based on profit for 25 years now. It's all revenue and user growth.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#665

Post by danjac »

emptysongglass wrote: post #182
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I follow mostly techies, very few went to mastodon, and among them were none of the ones I cared about. Seems like the people doing the most things in my field have no time for drama and are busy doing stuff, while the ones that actually accomplish little have the time and energy for this.

Counterpoint: most of the Cloud Native crowd I follow moved to Hachyderm. > Seems like the people doing the most things in my field have no time for drama and are busy doing stuff, Standing up for ethics isn't performative drama. I made my exit very quietly because I didn't have time for the drama of a petulant tyrant. I care that the tech I consume is open source or at the very least is guided by some principal of a…

Most of the Python developers I followed are on Mastodon. "Techies" has lots of sub-cultures, so it could be C# or React developers are stuck on Twitter, for example, so if you are in those groups it might seem nobody has left.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#666

Post by Gareth321 »

jeroenhd wrote: post #621
sanderjd wrote: post #553

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 disagree. Federation is a feature people want, but they don't know about the concept.

I think they want it, but by an order of magnitude more, they want simple UX. Everything else is a distant second. UX is the foundation upon which everything else is built. Without an excellent UX, the audience will forever remain niche. I tried to just sign up to Mastodon, and it was a clusterfuck of proportions so unbelievable that I can't believe it has as many users as it does - and it only has a couple million users.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#667

Post by quaintdev »

m_ke wrote: post #58
ghiculescu wrote: post #48

I love Substack. But apart from to mess with Twitter I really don’t understand the point of this. https://substack.com/profile/241262-casey-newton/note/c-1446... I’d a good summary. I don’t want to subscribe to hundreds of newsletters to see tweet (sorry, notes). But if you change that setup, it really is a Twitter clone with no upside to writers.

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.

I remember there was a time when people were excited about medium. Then medium needed some money so they started blocking readers behind login dialog boxes. Then come substack and everyone got excited about it. Sooner or later it will be on same path that medium took.

When will we realise that blogging websites (not personal blogs) are not sustainable in long run.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#668

Post by Gareth321 »

jeroenhd wrote: post #622
davidw wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Better to fix Mastodon Is that possible? Seems kind of difficult due to its nature, but I admit I'm just a very casual user of it and don't know much. Signed up for the Substack thing. Seems worth a look - it's very similar to Twitter.

What do you consider difficult about it?

Mastodon is never going to take off. I’ve been building SaaS applications for 15 years. I don’t think you understand the very low level of complexity required for mass adoption. Let’s just look at the signup process for a few minutes, using the UX convention of actions.

Twitter:

1. Search for Twitter.

2. Click on the first link.

3. Click sign up.

Mastodon:

1. Search for Mastodon.

2. Click the first link: mastodon.social.

3. Click create account.

4. Message modal pops up alerting the user that it is currently impossible to sign up to mastodon.social. But don’t worry, you can sign up on another server by clicking “Find another server.” At this point I’m confused. Why are there different servers? Will my friends be on the other server? Do we need to sign up on the same server? No explanation. I click the link.

5. Long page of options. No indication of quality or why I should choose one server over another. Now I am in choice paralysis. I click the first option (which has an anime figure on it). Surely - surely - the first option is the best option. The suggested option by whoever is running this application.

6. I land on a Korean language portal and I am done. I’m never coming back. Mastodon is dead to me. Forever.

You might think this is hyperbole, but I promise you it is not. I’ve been in charge of A/B testing and UX centric development for web applications just like this for a very long time. Mastodon’s sign up process is easily one of the worst I have ever seen. Not a single UX person has been involved in the creation of this protocol.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#669

Post by mlindner »

cactusplant7374 wrote: post #659
mlindner wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

He found out Twitter would need to pay him 100M. That is a big incentive to backpedal.

There's no evidence to support that statement.

Given he continues to talk with the man at times (he replied to one of his tweets the a few days ago) and there's no evidence to support the idea that he did it for monetary reasons, other explanations are much more reasonable. Namely that it was a simple mistake.

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