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Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

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Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#851

Post by [deleted] »

bink wrote: post #700
nostromo wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "freedom of speech" (I know that the first amendment only applies to government censorship, but Musk likes to pretend not to) Freedom of speech is not the first amendment and vice versa. Freedom of speech is an ideal that applies to all people and all spaces, public and private, while the First Amendment only applies in America and to the government. People think they sound smart when they say freedom of speech onl…

And freedom of speech also includes to the rights of private individuals and companies to determine what they share on their own platforms, and what they can or cannot be compelled to host or say.

[deleted]

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#852

Post by alex_sf »

FortiDude wrote: post #433

hot take: big tech layoffs are actually very good because they release into the wild a slew of competent workers with great credentials who will hopefully get hired by a company which does something useful for humanity instead of selling ads

It's Twitter, though, so the 'competent workers' piece is questionable.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#853

Post by fredgrott »

Some context, these are the platforms that are at 1 billion or getting close to 1 billion users:

FB Instagram Youtube Linkedin

Notice that twitter, despite it's age is nowhere close to closing on LinkedIN's current 700 million users.

Those worried about Journalists have not followed the upswing in Instagram users by journalists...some well known Liberal leaning journalist networks are now current Instagram users and creators.

The Twitter employees let go, got a gift of being freed from working for someone that factually is perceived as white superior race advocate including racism.

Advertisers, current Twitter employees and users all have the most important vote and objection to this...our feet and attention.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#854

Post by Wowfunhappy »

yummies wrote: post #639
john-radio wrote: post #402

A lot of the tweets that are quoted in the article have been removed. For example, Twitter employee Cristina Angeli is mentioned in the story for having tweeted an image of "staff members... flooding an internal Slack channel with blue heart emojis as they wait to learn their fate tomorrow", but that tweet is deleted on twitter itself because "This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules." This is ironic if you consider all…

I think there's a much simpler and less juicy angle here: someone posted a screenshot of an internal communication , and it got removed. It's not surprising or controversial that Twitter would try to contain a leak of its own internal comms (a screenshot of their slack). This isn't "Twitter took down a disparaging post about Twitter", it's that they tried to stop the sharing of internal data. That being said, I don't…

I can't remember the details now, but I remember a couple years back the New York Times published a big exposé on a screwup in the Middle East perpetuated by... The New York Times. My understanding is that this type of thing isn't even so uncommon.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#855

Post by xyzzyz »

pdpi wrote: post #714
nostromo wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "freedom of speech" (I know that the first amendment only applies to government censorship, but Musk likes to pretend not to) Freedom of speech is not the first amendment and vice versa. Freedom of speech is an ideal that applies to all people and all spaces, public and private, while the First Amendment only applies in America and to the government. People think they sound smart when they say freedom of speech onl…

The first amendment isn't even particularly strong protection - it only forbids Congress from restricting freedom of speech, but doesn't set out any specific rights, or preclude states from setting their own laws restricting rights. E.g. the Portuguese constitution has much stronger guarantees. It explicitly recognises freedom of exprssion as a right, but it also explicitly recognises freedom of access to information…

> The first amendment isn't even particularly strong protection - it only forbids Congress from restricting freedom of speech, but doesn't set out any specific rights, or preclude states from setting their own laws restricting rights.

This has been true when 1st Amendment has been passed, but has not been true since SCOTUS ruled that 14th Amendment incorporates 1st Amendment for states. Today, states are just as bound by 1st Amendments as the federal government is.

> but it also explicitly recognises freedom of access to information as a right: you have a right to inform yourself, and the exercise of that right cannot be limited by any form of censorship.

That’s interesting, but what does it mean in practice? Can you give me an example of a situation where this right applied in Portugal? I want to know if this would actually protect us Americans from something that the government is currently not prohibited from doing.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#856

Post by ethbr0 »

danans wrote: post #820
mikkergp wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be interesting to see how Elon defines success. Twitter in it's current form is a dead end, and there's no way "more free speech" is going increase either revenue or users. So if you think Elon is going to succeed at making Twitter a better Twitter as we know it, then I'm confident this take is wrong. Which is why he's focused on the everything X app or whatever. Now, I wouldn't want to underestimate Elon, he…

> Twitter in it's current form is a dead end, and there's no way "more free speech" is going increase either revenue or users. I think this is failing to imagine how bad things could get societally. Imagine if more consumers and advertisers start enjoying consuming and being associated with malevolent, hateful, and violence-inducing speech. Many in the 1930s-40s enjoyed the hateful caricatures of Jews that the Nazis…

My read on the libertarian, free-speech Twitter pitch was that the mainstream media typically uses a straw man to dismiss it.

If you start with the proposition "Anyone should be able to post anything on Twitter"...

... and want to get to "Everyone enjoys reading Twitter," then there's a lot of black box space in the middle.

You can have the most vile things on your platform, but your userbase self-censors. E.g. crowdsourced shadow-banning / down-voting. Or reputation with verified identities underneath.

Or just... more transparency.

Empowering the public to data-mine Twitter opens some interesting windows to a platform that has terrible things, but empowers interested parties to fruitfully research who they're coming from.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#858

Post by [deleted] »

Bhilai wrote: post #541

Sorry to say this but comments on this thread are very disappointing and show a basic lack of empathy in HN crowd. I am obviously generalizing and I know most of you are not heartless souls. FFS people, a huge number of people have lost their livelihoods, sense of belonging and might fall into financial hardships in current market conditions. Whatever you think of Elon or Twitter employees, its good to be grounded in…

[deleted]

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#859

Post by swalsh »

MangoCoffee wrote: post #29
aliljet wrote: post #8

I'm pretty curious about how and where Twitter employees were distributed. For a company ostensibly worth $44 billion, having 7,500 staff feels pretty damn lean. It feels like Musk isn't just purging people, he's purging the Twitter culture...

we'll find out soon if Twitter really need 7500 employees. (IMO, i just don't see how and why you needs that many people to run Twitter)

I have no doubt Elon expects to hire a bunch of people to replace those hire laid off.... but I suspect he wants different people.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#860

Post by pojzon »

watwut wrote: post #833
john-radio wrote: post #402

A lot of the tweets that are quoted in the article have been removed. For example, Twitter employee Cristina Angeli is mentioned in the story for having tweeted an image of "staff members... flooding an internal Slack channel with blue heart emojis as they wait to learn their fate tomorrow", but that tweet is deleted on twitter itself because "This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules." This is ironic if you consider all…

Musk is pro free speech, when it is speech he likes and finds funny. Not at all with speech he dislikes. It is stupid, but free speech became codeword for "my opponents should shut up while my friends can arbitrary harrass them". And that is me being euphemistic about it.

Didnt you just explain how current social media work ?

Who decides what is „news” and what is „fake-news” ? (Few PC ppl in big corpos?).

Why sayin that „sure you can say what you want, but you have to defend your words” is so controversial ?

Are ppl afraid of being proven wrong or look stupid ?

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