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Twitter 2.0: Our continued commitment to the public conversation

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Re: Twitter 2.0: Our continued commitment to the public conversation

#71

Post by Arubis »

As a reminder to developers and tech workers that are accustomed to the benefits of working in one of the more flexible and well-compensated fields for traditional employment, if Elon succeeds with his management style at Twitter—nay, even if he doesn't terribly and visibly fail—many folks managing large tech organizations and corporations in general will conclude that that management style is acceptable and sufficiently effective.

tl;dr: if Twitter doesn't get seriously hurt over the medium and long term, this entire industry is going to be a lot less fun to work in as management concludes they can put the squeeze on.

Re: Twitter 2.0: Our continued commitment to the public conversation

#72

Post by davesque »

andreyk wrote: post #12

TLDR: this post is entirely to calm advertisers, it can be boiled down to "don't worry, we still prioritize brand safety like before". It does have this gem in it: "What has changed, however, is our approach to experimentation. As you’ve seen over the past several weeks, Twitter is embracing public testing. We believe that this open and transparent approach to innovation is healthy, as it enables us to move faster an…

I think this new idea of "public testing" is really just a post hoc recasting of Elon's failed Twitter Blue rollout. Calling it by those words is...creative? But the failure was less an experiment as it was a lesson in humility.

Re: Twitter 2.0: Our continued commitment to the public conversation

#73

Post by yellow_lead »

Macha wrote: post #8

> First, none of our policies have changed. Our approach to policy enforcement will rely more heavily on de-amplification of violative content: freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach. "Nothing has changed, except..." > Our Trust & Safety team continues its diligent work to keep the platform safe from hateful conduct, abusive behavior, and any violation of Twitter's rules. The team remains strong and well-resourc…

From the same first quote - none of our policies have changed, just policy enforcement has changed.

Isn't policy enforcement a part of a separate policy? The policy for policy enforcement? They really wanted to be able to say "the policy hasn't changed." This is a bigger stretch than a taffy pull.

Re: Twitter 2.0: Our continued commitment to the public conversation

#74

Post by arrrg »

generalizations wrote: post #35
jzelinskie wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter was previously doing A/B tests. Spaces, communities, downvotes, circles, and even moderation were applied only to a subset of accounts while they actively experimented. The new policy is an objectively less scientific approach to testing functionality than what was occurring before.

It's not like A/B tests approach anything like the rigor that we expect from actual science, though.

That’s not at all an argument for dropping AB testing, it’s an argument for being more rigorous, especially since in principle the circumstances under which services with a large active user base can test are downright luxurious.

Sociologists will frequently not have as good access to such a large participant pool under near ideal experimental conditions with such good ways to observe behavior. And the stuff you have to keep in mind when running experiments is not terribly complex. A bit of statistics, a few things you absolutely have to get right, that’s it.

Obviously there are reasons why AB tests are often not run rigorously (statistical illiteracy and pressure to get things done quick as well as to produce tangible results as often as possible – all three of which might lead you to run underpowered experiments with too few participants and to stop testing early which will lead to too many false positives). However, stopping to do experiments (and instead just releasing new stuff and observing the reaction) isn’t really an improvement that leads to better outcomes compared to that.

Re: Twitter 2.0: Our continued commitment to the public conversation

#75

Post by compiskey »

thewataccount wrote: post #55
generalizations wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like A/B tests approach anything like the rigor that we expect from actual science, though.

> actual science I'm not sure what you mean by this. Many quality studies are A/B tests. A/B just refers to the two IV states you're testing, which you're then observing a DV - sales, engagement, errors, etc. A/B tests can be double blinded (don't tell the error monitoring people which results are from a trial), and have high number of samples, far beyond even most pharmaceutical trials. They can also be really crapp…

Advertisers and marketers use the equations but measure contemporary trends.

Science is more “what’s true if humans didn’t exist.”

Marketing is more “what widget generates more revenue?”

Re: Twitter 2.0: Our continued commitment to the public conversation

#76

Post by staunch »

There's no way to run a platform supported by ads that upholds anything resembling free speech.

The advertising model is Twitter's fatal flaw. It puts the fate of the platform in the hands of a tiny corporate mob that are themselves subject to larger mobs.

If "the mission" was truly driving Twitter, they'd drop all advertising and build enough value that some decent percentage of users would pay for it. In a few years, with a lot of work, I believe they could build a $10+ billion/yr business using paid accounts and features. With zero advertising. Twitter is an incredible "channel" for information, marketing, customer support, etc.

But unless they kick their addiction to ads, it doesn't matter if they do or don't believe in free speech, because their advertisers (customers) most definitely don't and they're in ultimate control.

Re: Twitter 2.0: Our continued commitment to the public conversation

#77

Post by lijogdfljk »

kilroy123 wrote: post #28

Let's be honest – Musk doesn't know what the hell he is doing here.

I'm starting to question how much he has ever. Has something changed with him? Or has he always been like this? If it's always been this rash, hasty and questionable then i can only imagine the real heroes are the people around him who managed to refine what he says and wants into tangible, achievable and coherent goals.

Regardless of whether or not you agree with his actions these days, it does at least seem a significant departure from how the public perceived his actions in the past. Over the past few years his actions have steadily grown more.. loud, at the very least.

.. It's.. interesting.

Re: Twitter 2.0: Our continued commitment to the public conversation

#78

Post by O__________O »

Twitter ban me few years ago for not providing a phone number for SMS verification and that account is still ban. Literally only used that account to access another website, which I was not ban from and still use via direct login. Later, Twitter was discovered to be illegally using SMS numbers to profile users even though they explicitly stated they were not; they were fined for it. — Yet they have unban accounts for users that literally broke rules and were actual threats to safety of others.

This linked blog post is full of half-truths, if not out right lies — and company is literally run by Elon, who has lied so many times about his plans for Twitter than it’s beyond me why anyone is still using it.

Re: Twitter 2.0: Our continued commitment to the public conversation

#80

Post by smcl »

fishcrackers wrote: post #64
smcl wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First Twitter was going to crash in a week Was it? I read a lot of comments saying that mass-firing people is going to cause immediate degradation in some areas like content moderation (which we have seen) and eventual unpredictable failures in others. If you saw people predicting a sudden crash I'd take their opinion with a pinch of salt in the future, sounds like quite a reactionary take. > then it was everyone w…

things this big rarely fail instantly, it's usually a long slow decline either way none of what's being done or talked about recently makes me want to start using twitter, maybe they will figure something out i guess

Yeah I've no idea how Twitter works or what kind of fires they have to put out on a day-to-day basis, or what other things grow - so I wouldn't dare to make any rash predictions like that. My thinking is that even if Twitter had double the headcount they needed, it'd be really tough to axe that many people without firing or turn away the people needed to put out those fires.

And yeah if you weren't a Twitter user before, you're probably not signing up at this moment in time :)

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