Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

741–750 of 1001 posts

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#741

Post by anonymousab »

_fat_santa wrote: post #312
cutenewt wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's going to be more in the other direction. He really hates the bots, so he'll probably close up the API. Until bots gets solved, no developer should expect the API to open up.

The problem isn't the bots, the problem is the lack of differentiation between bots and real accounts. I say open up the API and let people make whatever bots they wish, but if you tweet through the API then you get a big "BOT" tag next to your username on the feed.

> the problem is the lack of differentiation between bots and real accounts

Nah, I'd bet that it really is as simple as the fact that the first thing Elon sees under any and everything he tweets is a flood of cryptobot fake posts and scams. That he and we identify them quite easily, and he's just flat-out tired of it.

If clamping down on API access also curtails a significant proportion of those posts, then he'll do it, even if it's just a temporary relief.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#742

Post by comboy »

colinsane wrote: post #593
thinkingemote wrote: post #248

They need to re-free up the API. Early adopters and hackers really did some great work using the API until they walled-gardened it and rate limited it to make it unusable. They need to do this for goodwill at the very least, but I think it will spark the fire to make it popular with techies again. Based on the recently published discovery chats we will probably see: * High def video * Focus on music publication * The…

> They need to re-free up the API. it's not easy to regain that trust once you lose it. how long would Twitter's API need to remain open until you decide they're not going to reverse course and that it's worth building on? 2 years, minimum? and even then there'd be a bitter taste when i do: it would always be in the back of my mind that "what i'm building is only temporary, they're going to take this away again at _s…

I get the point, but don't you have it in the back of your mind when using any 3rd party service? I do.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#743

Post by pfisherman »

chamakits wrote: post #161

I understand that he has been publicly combative with all the executives; but is it a practical to fire all those key executives right away? Specially, do they not contain any specifically useful knowledge or experience that you should make an attempt at creating a collaborative transition? Is this how these kinds of acquisitions of public companies happen? Isn’t this effectively freezing all significant activities f…

They outmaneuvered him and picked his pocket to the tune of $44 billion, so I suspect that he is not very fond of them.

I honestly wonder if Jack Dorsey did not just con his “buddy” out of a boatload of cash.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#745

Post by anonymousab »

jmyeet wrote: post #629
thinkingemote wrote: post #248

They need to re-free up the API. Early adopters and hackers really did some great work using the API until they walled-gardened it and rate limited it to make it unusable. They need to do this for goodwill at the very least, but I think it will spark the fire to make it popular with techies again. Based on the recently published discovery chats we will probably see: * High def video * Focus on music publication * The…

> High def video Twitter's video serving is embarrassingly woefully bad. Like really, really bad. So much so that Twitter videos buffering is a meme. This should be a core focus. > They need to re-free up the API Nobody cares about that. I mean a few developers do but 99.9% of users don't. Nor do they care about the consequences. Time and time again we've seen a growing platform embrace developers until they're large…

> Twitter's video serving is embarrassingly woefully bad

I've never understood why they just refuse to let you click a button to view the higher res version of a video. Instead, it's a game of refreshing and clicking play several times until whatever automation they have realizes that you do, in fact, have enough bandwidth and decoding power to handle a 640p video.

At least youtube-dl bypasses Twitter's shenanigans, but it just seems like such a hostile feature to begin with.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#746

Post by thenewthotness »

colinsane wrote: post #593
thinkingemote wrote: post #248

They need to re-free up the API. Early adopters and hackers really did some great work using the API until they walled-gardened it and rate limited it to make it unusable. They need to do this for goodwill at the very least, but I think it will spark the fire to make it popular with techies again. Based on the recently published discovery chats we will probably see: * High def video * Focus on music publication * The…

> They need to re-free up the API. it's not easy to regain that trust once you lose it. how long would Twitter's API need to remain open until you decide they're not going to reverse course and that it's worth building on? 2 years, minimum? and even then there'd be a bitter taste when i do: it would always be in the back of my mind that "what i'm building is only temporary, they're going to take this away again at _s…

Don’t worry, there’s an unlimited supply of younger, less jaded devs willing to do the work.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#747

Post by anonymousab »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #663

They need to stop ruining the experience for those of us without an account. Everyone was using Twitter as basically an open bulletin board and then they go and make it visitor-hostile. I look at ads either way.

There are a few ublock filters that solve those issues. Alternatively, disabling cookies for twitter used to get rid of a lot of the nagware features since they would only pop up on the 'second' interaction that would cause a page load.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#748

Post by eatsyourtacos »

rafaelturk wrote: post #484
causality0 wrote: post #471

It's very strange to me he intends to un-ban Trump when he gave up trying to work with him on that advisory council thing early in Trump's presidency.

Freedom of speech, even Trump deserves it

What does freedom of speech have to do with posting on twitter?

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#749

Post by augustuspolius »

GMoromisato wrote: post #582

My predictions: 1. Musk is going to discover (and maybe admit?) that fixing Twitter is harder than he thought. It will be just like self-driving, which seems straightforward, but which actually has thousands of edge cases which are hard to solve with a single general system. Nevertheless, he will persist, because that's what he does. 2. Current Twitter makes a profit on advertising, which means Twitter needs to encou…

Seriously considering #3 a solid idea to even discuss is a delusion. Twitter already has videos (YouTube, Twitch), a feed (Facebook, Google News), images (IG), etc. did it replace any of the above mentioned services or do you think the only missing element in this massive intercontinental cross-technological enterprise is Elon Musk?

They just need his guidance and leads, PMs, design, engineers, … and, most importantly, users of these existing platforms will all align and populate this brave new super app.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#750

Post by d23 »

kjksf wrote: post #684
JasserInicide wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk is going to discover (and maybe admit?) that fixing Twitter is harder than he thought. Yeah I think he's going to intensely focus on Twitter for ~6 months, not change much, get bored, and then move onto something else.

The way he got bored running Tesla and SpaceX for ~20 years? I really don't get where this meme of "impulsive, erratic, hotheaded Musk" comes from given he demonstrated ability to stick with a business in the toughest of times. Tesla was literally days away from bankruptcy at one time and Musk made it work. After first 3 failed launches he was about to run out of money and yet he financed another launch, which worked…

> I really don't get where this meme of "impulsive, erratic, hotheaded Musk" comes from

His behavior like… every day and the fact that he apparently accidentally just bought a $44B company doesn’t at least let you see where people are coming from?

Post reply on HN