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Marc Andreessen suddenly deletes all his tweets, goes on Twitter break
- smb06 10y agoTwitter is losing its most valuable assets - those that drove the most engagement.
- venomsnake 10y agoThe outrage engine is still up and running. Worry not.
- ams6110 10y agoIt was always just a fad.
- inopinatus 10y agoTwitter revealed an unmet need for global stream-of-consciousness and lowered the bar for online participation to the lowest currently known setting.
- rdtsc 10y agoI think it is a bit like that curse "May you get what you wish for". So now after people got the global stream-of-consciousness in tidbits of 140 character with lowest bar for online participation, they are thinking "This is a terrible. Who would want this..."
- aikah 10y ago> online participation More like a cheap way for journalists AKA "contributors" to source their articles AKA "blogposts".
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- chirau 10y agoMarc is probably the only guy on Twitter who could get away with typing up a whole story in parts on that site.
- guelo 10y agoI wonder if those bots that preserve pmarca's tweets run afoul of twitter policy. Twitter previously shutdown a service that preserved tweets that were deleted by politicians.
- thwarted 10y agoI think that if you have a verified account, you shouldn't be able to delete tweets. This would be a decent tradeoff for being recognized as a public figure, of which I think deletion of content runs afoul of.
- kkirsche 10y agoI'm sorry but I don't agree. In my opinion, everyone on a platform should have equal rights, within their user class (user, staff, admin, etc)
- angry-hacker 10y agoYour comment contradicts itself since mods themselves have more power than regular users. Life is never fair and people are never equal.
- pjc50 10y agoThat's a tremendously bad idea - what happens if you post something e.g. wrongly accusing someone less famous of something?
- thwarted 10y agoThen you eat crow and post a retraction, which also can't be deleted. The other alternative is to not have a verified account, then you can post whatever you want and then, ahem, delete it.
- snowwrestler 10y agoTwitter recently OK'd it again--Politwhoops. Unfortunately the group that runs it, the Sunlight Foundation, is itself in the process of shutting down.
- danso 10y agoThere's a bot that's captured the last 70,000 of Andreessen's tweets: https://twitter.com/pmarca_retweet https://twitter.com/pmarca_retweet What I find a little bizarre is that the @pmarca account is still listed as having 189 tweets, yet only the Pinned Tweet showed. Earlier last night, his account was listed as having 100K+ tweets and still only showed the Pinned tweet: https://twitter.com/2bluesc/status/779821454531497985 https://twitter.com/2bluesc/status/779821454531497985 Is this just a caching issue on Twitter's side? I was hoping it'd be a new level of profile privacy: hide all your tweets, but allow for the publishing of the pinned tweet.
- firasd 10y agoYeah it would be nice if social networks had a 'lockdown' button so all your public stuff can be hidden mid-controversy or if you were a target of harassment and/or otherwise inquisitive folks. The real question is, how did he do this without running into rate limits? What app did he use? Which portfolio company's elevated API access did he commandeer? #APIPrivilege
- icelancer 10y agoCan't you just make your account private as a "lockdown" feature?
- ttam 10y agoI believe that existing followers will still see be able to see the timeline
- Zelphyr 10y agoIf you're @pmarca I imagine you can get someone on the phone at Twitter pretty easily who will delete them for you.
- satyajeet23 10y agoHe used this (http://jmp.sh/ZYKGAMx http://jmp.sh/ZYKGAMx) to delete all tweets at once.
- kebback 10y agoBummer that guy had some notably annoying tweets
- hobo_mark 10y agoThis bot used to archive his "tweetstorms" (whose origin coincides with the invention of that word) https://mobile.twitter.com/pngmarca https://mobile.twitter.com/pngmarca but it looks like it stopped working some time ago.
- Tycho 10y agoreally? damn. one of the best. one time I replied to a tweet and he responded a few seconds later. it's like he was connected to the twittersphere 24/7
- tonetheman 10y agoEither that or he has something to do with the possible upcoming sale/buy of twitter?
- exstudent2 10y agoThis is my guess. He probably knows a sale is happening and doesn't want to provide value to the new owner. Probably because he has a competitive portfolio company or something.
- RickS 10y agoThat sounds petty and spiteful in a way I wouldn't expect from him, especially so publicly. Also, as valuable as his presence is, I can't imagine a buyer of the size needed to buy Twitter would be like "we'll give you n Billion, but only if pmarca stays on point"
- catherinelgrs 10y agoPerhaps Facebook is interested and Marc decided to stop tweeting to avoid conflicts? Not sure why he would delete the (public) history, though.
- exstudent2 10y ago> That sounds petty and spiteful in a way I wouldn't expect from him, especially so publicly. He was pretty notorious for blocking anyone with an opposing viewpoint on Twitter, so this seems in line with that.
- tamana 10y agoMore likely because he might be involved in a company that would have a quiet period related to a potential sale
- a_small_island 10y agoThis is nonsense.
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- bigtunacan 10y agoI've always liked the ability to "follow" anyone on Twitter. Unlike Facebook which I see as a way to communicate with friends and family, Twitter allows me to follow interesting people who might post interesting and insightful thoughts on topics I'm interested in. Then they limit it to the length of an SMS so I can get no more than a sound bite. I basically abandoned the platform as a waste of time.
- smb06 10y agoI have loved twitter for the same reason. It has allowed me to face conversations with and forge friendships with people that I otherwise would not have met in my daily life.
- LeifCarrotson 10y agoIs 140 characters enough to call them conversations? I would expound on the virtues of precise arguments and establishing context, but im@140
- smb06 10y agoYou are not limited to one single tweet only. I've had multiple, meaningful conversations that span across multiple tweets. As many as needed to convey the message - not limited to just 140.
- talmand 10y agoThe fact one has to convey a thought over multiple tweets shows the stupidity of the limit.
- bigtunacan 10y agoMy thoughts exactly
- smb06 10y agoHow is it different from having to convey a thought over multiple sentences?
- mikeknoop 10y agoIn case you're curious what tool he used to delete them: deletealltweets.com The only reason I know is because that software auto-tweeted "I am deleting all my tweets using ..." and then got deleted a few seconds later.
- ttam 10y agointeresting, apparently the software doesn't unlike "the likes", so we can still see all 267k likes https://twitter.com/pmarca/likes https://twitter.com/pmarca/likes
- yitchelle 10y agoIs deleting account the only option here?
- teaneedz 10y agoDoes this service handle more than 3,200 tweets or are all such apps limited to this number by Twitter? I've been looking for a safe and reliable service - depending on who buys Twitter.
- cyberferret 10y agoI liked that pmarca always retweeted @pmarca tweets that were positive and negative towards him. Basically unfiltered viewpoints from opposite angles. I've heard that he has a large ego, but behaviour like that, plus the fact that he routinely 'likes' and retweets messages from people outside the tech elite circle (myself included) seems to disprove that... or is that just MY ego now kicking into conformance rationalisation mode?!?!? ;-)
- idlewords 10y agoHe also blocked pretty much anyone who got under his skin. Those he blocked were no longer able to see the stupid shit he said without special effort. In that way, it was an effective way of silencing critics.
- ketralnis 10y agoIs that so bad? If he's on twitter to follow news or to have conversations that he enjoys or to promote himself, why allow that platform to be a way to criticise you? I certainly don't want a section of my phone or desktop to be devoted to all of the mean things said about me. I certainly wouldn't want such a thing hooked up to push notifications
- tedunangst 10y agoBecause it's not "turn off notifications from this person". It's "hide my tweets from this person, but only when they're logged in" which is a particularly useless (not to mention misleading) form of "security".
- nostrademons 10y agoThe point isn't security, though, it's happiness. It's basically "These person's tweets make me upset, and so I'm going to not interact with them", which is a very basic form of boundary-setting which is thankfully supported by Twitter.
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- ikeboy 10y agoRight after last week's South park made quitting Twitter a plot point. Interesting.
- notgood 10y agoAnd if I member correctly his profile pic its a South Park style drawing of himself[0]. [0] https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/529529964178075648/7rgC9uv__400x400.png https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/529529964178075648/7rgC...
- draw_down 10y agoNot a bad idea if you ask me.
- boona 10y agoI wonder if it's due to their censorship policy lately. Facebook seems to have been doing the same to a lesser degree, but not so openly.
- bilbobeer 10y agoLast fall ( october 2015 ) twitter started mandating your real mobile number (sms confirmation) to logon, so I deleted my account. I think I had over a 1,000 followers, so what. The case of anonymity was taken away last year. I suspect with Twitter being for sale, that the sale of 'confirmed live humans' to target for their interest and profile is more valuable then millions of anonymous. I deleted all of my facebook accounts more than 5+ years ago. About the same time they went to 'real id'. These days you can't even open an account on google without your mobile phone. I was amazed running youtube on my samsung that it let me create a google account, which is mandatory to run youtube, without a mobile, then the next night I ran the youtube again and it asked for my phone number, so I deleted the android youtube, Much of the developer tools now require your credit-card just to download, ... funny that they're going way beyond 'real id' to 'Real Orwell'. With the credit card, they can link your FICO, and that is worth some real money, to know a person interest, and net worth. I suspect in time that people who refuse to give out their mobile numbers and credit cards will be denied developer privileges. I think the line of reasoning goes that 'code' is too valuable to give to the anonymous people. Long ago Zuckerberg said "Only an idiot would use Facebook", I concur, using computer since 1960's, I started with punch card on OS/360 IBM, most mostly machine language, then jumped to APL in 1970, then Unix mid 70's. Since day one, I never used my real-name for anything online (tcp-ip), to this day I find it a privilege to google my own name and find nothing. I think that Marc has just joined this club, the club of freedom knowing that they know nothing. Don't give them anything, not your real name, not your phone ( tracking device ), not your credit-card ( scores,IRS ). Now in China they give a number to every citizen indicating his worthiness, the FICO or credit score in USA is much the same, its always been an indication of a well behaved citizen, a lemming. Let's hope now with all his money that Marc finds a life, maybe he can go live on some mountain and become spiritual and disconnect from all electronic device for a time, and learn the real meaning of being human.
- snowwrestler 10y ago> Last fall ( october 2015 ) twitter started mandating your real mobile number (sms confirmation) to logon Can you provide more info on what you mean? I use Twitter every day and I've never given them my phone number.
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- WheelsAtLarge 10y agoI suspect he feels there's a conflict of interest with his business and twitter. I bet he's somehow involved in twitter's buyout/takeover. Twitter is going private or someone is buying it and Andreessen is somehow involved. My guess. Twitter is here to stay they just have to figure out how to make it work better and make it pay. I think going private is the best way to innovate without having to look over your shoulder for unhappy investors. Just look at WeChat for ideas.
- gjolund 10y ago"Twitter is here to stay" Want to take bets on that?
- allenleein 10y agoI def won't bet on "stay".