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Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

reuters.com

761–770 of 1001 posts

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#761
post #708

I'm optimistic from a nihilistic point of view: for Twitter the only way is up, and yet even a complete failure would be a net improvement to the world. There's a laundry list of uncontroversial improvements he can make to the product itself. Twitter as a product is broken in so many ways. Musk is the kind of outcome-driven character to get things done. And it will be done in a way that does not directly conflict wit…

hopefully not being beholden to wallst as a public company opens up options that may be good for the twitter community but would not be so great for the stock price. Instead of an increasing stock price driving every LOC written maybe making twitter a better place will drive where effort is spent.

/ lots of "hopefully" and "maybe" in the above

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#762

I don't really love the notion of billionaires buying up media; but given how incredibly important twitter has become to media and its influence on democracy and politics, I think it's a huge improvement that a free speech advocate will be in charge at least. I don't buy that content "moderation" (ahem, or as it should be called, censorship) is desirable when a tech company can silence people that have legit-if-undes…

His words might suggest free speech advocate but his actions do not

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#763
post #708

I'm optimistic from a nihilistic point of view: for Twitter the only way is up, and yet even a complete failure would be a net improvement to the world. There's a laundry list of uncontroversial improvements he can make to the product itself. Twitter as a product is broken in so many ways. Musk is the kind of outcome-driven character to get things done. And it will be done in a way that does not directly conflict wit…

It might empty out if that happens and be the end of it, but I know that the prospect of a forum for discussion that isn't constantly trying to poke the outrage center of my brain sounds very appealing and I think that would be the case for many people. What would be even more magical would be a complete outing of all the dark PR that's going on. Flip over and show the filthy astroturfing underbelly of so much of the internet these days. That's probably not going to happen in the way that I wish but I'll still hope for it.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#765
You can check if twitter is silently oppressing your account here: https://taishin-miyamoto.com/ShadowBan/

Mine currently has "reply deboosting" applied. Twitter didn't notify me of this either. I had to actively hunt it down. And there's nothing I can do to change it.

Such a shady company so far.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#766

Quoted post unavailable.

We are in uncharted waters. Never in history the barrier of entry and the cost to spread an idea has been so low.

I can start a campaign reaching hundreds of millions of people claiming insane things like that the earth is flat and dominate the mindshare because nobody on the opposite side has the time or will to counter me.

Then I can have groups of followers propagating my nonsense and keep expanding the insanity bubble. Eventually the average Joe will observe the size of the bubble and conclude "hey everyone believes that the earth is flat, so it must be true"

The closest to that was the TV but TV does not have that interactivity multiplier that the internet has.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#768
post #758
post #631

Ways I think Twitter could immediately improve, from the perspective of users: - Optional verification check marks for anyone who wants them. Throw out the Blue Check status symbol. Offer "real person" twitter filter. - Transparent and consistent moderation policies. Bans are inconsistently applied for reasons that are often hard to figure out. - Return to a reverse chronological time and/or down selection of rage-ba…

I've tried Twitter recently for the first time to get more recent information about the Ukraine war. Maybe long-term twitter users see it differently because they've fine-tuned it and got used to it, but to me Twitter looks like a horrible and awful medium. I just can't see any purpose for it. People on Twitter post opinions and are subsequently mocked and insulted by other people who also value their opinions above…

It's the de facto only place you can get lots of useful information in tech twitter. The overwhelming majority of good posts I find about interesting snippets, articles about anything from css to typescript and haskell I find them in tweets.

Signal to noise ratio is indeed very high, and sadly I see too much content I don't care about, which makes me abandon Twitter for weeks, but I think that it could be fixed.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#769
post #631

Ways I think Twitter could immediately improve, from the perspective of users: - Optional verification check marks for anyone who wants them. Throw out the Blue Check status symbol. Offer "real person" twitter filter. - Transparent and consistent moderation policies. Bans are inconsistently applied for reasons that are often hard to figure out. - Return to a reverse chronological time and/or down selection of rage-ba…

- Better search. Not necessarily in all of Twitter, but better search in a user's own tweet history.

I don't have many complaints with this currently. Appreciate the more power-user type syntax they have in the interface.

Also searching users with curl and the api works great too.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#770

I've always wanted a feature that just bins similar reactions together, so I don't have to read them. For example, I'd love replies to be binned into categories like "cruel disparagement", "wilful misunderstanding", "mindless agreement", "fallacious", "opinion as fact", and "threats and doxing". Ideally the last category would be taken seriously by law enforcement. People who write things who get binned into these ca…

>I've always wanted a feature that just bins similar reactions together, so I don't have to read them. For example, I'd love replies to be binned into categories like "cruel disparagement", "wilful misunderstanding", "mindless agreement", "fallacious", "opinion as fact", and "threats and doxing".

The problem has always been who gets to decide those things, not that it would be nice to have. And since no one can be trusted to do that, we don't get to have it.

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