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I resigned from Twitter

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Re: I resigned from Twitter

#861

Post by slowmovintarget »

oblio wrote: post #806
slowmovintarget wrote: post #765

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Beneath the rule of men entirely great > The pen is mightier than the sword.

That's easy to write when you're not on the wrong end of a Mongolian bow or a T-34 gun barrel.

The point of the original quote was about people with too much control over others already. In which case, a few strokes of a pen could condemn thousands to misery or death. In that sense, there was no need to be aiming a bow at a single individual.

The original quote wasn't about speech, it was about excessive control.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#862

Post by CryptoPunk »

potluckyears wrote: post #769
mjamil wrote: post #608

I'm in a post-Thanksgiving charitable mood, so thank you, Jack. The execution hasn't been perfect (as has been commented on ad nauseam), but Twitter is the closest to a worldwide-accessible [1] Speaker's Corner [2] I know of, and that - despite all the completely valid criticism - is a valuable public service: mediating access to information has been the defining tool of control for those in power pretty much since c…

Perhaps a valuable public service should be owned and governed by...the public? In a corporation like Twitter, only people who can afford a financial stake have a say, and having more financial stake means having more say. Not a great structure if your concern is power. Perhaps everyone in the public (with a social rather than financial stake in a platform like Twitter) should have a voice in its governance.

The government mismanages almost everything it takes over. If it owned Twitter, the employees would take over, unionize, and demand and get a collective bargaining agreement that guarantees annual pay raises while making them almost totally immune to dismissal.

There's a reason why the government was not able to effectively execute on developing a cost-effective space launch system, while SpaceX was. The efficacy of using the profit motive and competition to engender innovation and efficiency is not corporate propaganda. It's the lesson of the last 400 years.

The sanctification of the government, as some kind of healthy antidote to corporate greed, and representative of the collective will, is a deeply misguided and extraordinarily dangerous notion. Thomas Sowell's account of his experience at the Department of Labor in 1960 is a poignant example of how untrue it is: https://youtu.be/v6PDpCnMvvw?t=38

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#864

Post by jimmySixDOF »

tw04 wrote: post #850
mjamil wrote: post #608

I'm in a post-Thanksgiving charitable mood, so thank you, Jack. The execution hasn't been perfect (as has been commented on ad nauseam), but Twitter is the closest to a worldwide-accessible [1] Speaker's Corner [2] I know of, and that - despite all the completely valid criticism - is a valuable public service: mediating access to information has been the defining tool of control for those in power pretty much since c…

> FWIW, you've also championed transparency and decentralization for your platform more than any other SV social media titan You’re taking the same company that repeatedly used their api to kill all the third party competitors to their horrible client(s)? I avoid Twitter like the plague And even I followed them enough to know they are anything but open.

And yet, just lately, they have been trying to win back and refresh the third party dev ecosystem by introducing a new API 2.0 and even newer relaxed terms for it's use. These provoked a debate two weeks ago on HN between those who watched the rug getting pulled out from under them when Twitter locked the old API, and those who just wanted to make something [1].

I wonder where Jack was behind this re-evaluation and if it might not get re-re-evaluated in his wake.

API 2.0 just got even riskier for developers !

[1] Updates to the Twitter developer platform https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29231262

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#865

Post by Talanes »

63 wrote: post #620
ChuckMcM wrote: post #259

It will be interesting to see how Twitter changes as a result. Twitter with selective following and setting your timeline to 'time order' creates a pretty good environment for me. It feels like the equivalent of living in only a few chosen 'subreddits' rather than getting the full frontal reddit experience.

The difference for me has always beem that Twitter is organized by person rather than by topic. In some ways that's good if I'm following someone because I care about them personally, but usually I follow people because I'm interested in a particular aspect of their work like art or announcements. In those cases, I don't want to hear about their political opinions or what their child did that week. I know you can fol…

Likes and Retweets are the big annoyances, IMO. If I'm following someone, it's because I want to see the content that they are consciously putting out, not just whatever they impulsively click a heart on. And unless you're a personal friend or a particularly interesting content aggregator, I probably don't care about your RTs either.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#866

Post by kwertyoowiyop »

ralfd wrote: post #831
hartator wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Remember that CEOs of public companies are essentially unable to say what they think or want. Elon Musk seems pretty free. He just pays the fines time to time.

Yes. I guess Musk is the exception proving the rule.

Of course, exceptions don’t prove rules, they disprove them. Maybe Musk is showing that CEOs could say a lot more than they choose to, at least if they have charisma. And run certain kinds of businesses, appealing to a certain kind of investors and customers.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#867

Post by madeofpalk »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #853
madeofpalk wrote: post #838

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compare to before, where the only voices you heard where ones that were allowed by a hand full of media execs.

I don't see Twitter as an improvement over what we had before. The same people controlling the media once, are on the boards of the companies that allegedly made the change possible. On the other hand, their faces are hidden now, so we can't really say if a certain topic is legitimately important for the general public or the consensus has been fabricated or, even worse, their platform has been abused and we won't kn…

Before Twitter you didn’t have a voice you were afraid to lose.

Edit: re-reading this, I’m giving Twitter too much credit, but I hope the point I’m trying to make is still visible.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#868

Post by Talanes »

ctdonath wrote: post #857
Talanes wrote: post #846

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Great Bluecheck Purge Why is this something that adults invest their energy into? It feels very much like being back in grade school and getting upset over who got a sticker. Shouldn't both sides of that conflict have better things to be pissed over?

Because it was the moment Twitter decisively shifted from an open fair neutral public forum, where contributor accounts could be neutrally & objectively confirmed to be who they claimed to be, to a biased forum which refused legitimate identification of anyone not in line with certain sociopolitical views. Anonymity is important, and Twitter gave that to anyone who wanted it. Identification is important too, and Twit…

I guess it's hard to care because @Talanaes has been denied a Blue Check since they were introduced.

It was never a real or fair identification system, it was a promo tool for early Twitter to boost celebrity engagement that they should have revamped or retired six or seven years ago.

Edit: What a wonderful time to realize my HN handle is mistyped, lol.

Re: I resigned from Twitter

#870

Post by peoplefromibiza »

madeofpalk wrote: post #867
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #853

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see Twitter as an improvement over what we had before. The same people controlling the media once, are on the boards of the companies that allegedly made the change possible. On the other hand, their faces are hidden now, so we can't really say if a certain topic is legitimately important for the general public or the consensus has been fabricated or, even worse, their platform has been abused and we won't kn…

Before Twitter you didn’t have a voice you were afraid to lose. Edit: re-reading this, I’m giving Twitter too much credit, but I hope the point I’m trying to make is still visible.

> Before Twitter you didn’t have a voice you were afraid to lose.

it depends on where and when

people with no voice are still with no voice, even with Twitter

people that had some kind of voice, still have a voice, probably more.

people with lots of voice power, still have a lot of power

except now people that have gained popularity don't want to lose it to silence potentially dangerous actors, because they are on the same boat, and entities with a lot of resources can have a voice (sometimes very convincing) where they wouldn't have before.

Think about the staggering amount of visibility the Talibans have on platforms like IG, they are influencers now!

Not entirely Twitter's fault, but the Jack Dorseys didn't think about the consequences and here we are.

They did what they are good at: built a platform, made it grow exponentially, lost control of it, but profited.

Not judging the intentions, they could have been the best ever, but the result is that they built something that we have to deal with, whether we like it or not.

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