4 ms·

It's a suspension, not a deletion, which implies it's possible to resume the account. It seems logical that the state of the account would be entirely preserved

It's a suspension, not a deletion, which implies it's possible to resume the account. It seems logical that the state of the account would be entirely preserved for later restoration.

logicallee 10y ago
so why does the article report that only 3.8 out of 3.9 million followers were restored? While overall I would say that is pretty much a rounding error, if we look at it very carefully you have to ask: did literally 100,000 people proactively choose to unsubscribe, from an account that obviously remains important, and moreover during a time when it was inactive? Would his tweet have been so 'spammy' that 1 out of 39 of his every follower decided on that basis alone to unsubscribe? If the full number of followers were not restored, it raises the question of why not? I don't know how to get historical "number of followers" information - as of this moment : https://twitter.com/jack https://twitter.com/jack the numbers I see are " 20.6K tweets, following: 2,2264, followers: 2.63M, likes: 15.1K, lists: 3" for good measure and lest someone try to rewrite history here's a screenshot I just took: http://i.imgur.com/JJQKPI9.png http://i.imgur.com/JJQKPI9.png The figure CNN quotes is: "Soon after Dorsey was reinstated, his number of followers was showing up as only about 145 -- a steep drop from the roughly 3.9 million he had previously. The figure later popped back up to around 3.8 million." So what exactly happened to cause 1.2M twitter followers to decide to unfollow him? Sure, he's a heavy tweeter - I wouldn't follow him due to the level of spam - I mean who send 20,000 tweets in 7 years - that's 7+ per day at least. but the people who did choose to follow him - if the CNN quote above is accurate - aren't people I would expect to unfollow him exactly around this time. So if CNN's figure is accurate -- what happened? And why the drop of 1 million subscribers, or in other words one in three subscribers that he had had?
- dustingetz 10y ago
  in distributed systems, counts are often incrementally maintained over time. There are many ways to trigger an unfollow (e.g. account deleted or country banned), and all the edge cases must be explicitly accounted for, or error creeps in, which is probably what happened. 3.8M is probably the more accurate count.
  - logicallee 10y ago
    I have no idea why anyone would downvote the current comment. I've edited to be clear I'm being totally open-ended. >3.8M is probably the more accurate count. You mean "than 3.9" right? So in an open-ended way, genuinely curious here, would you say the 2.63M he's at now (as I screenshotted for you) an "even more accurate" figure? just trying to understand the change in figures - I don't have a horse in this race and can certainly accept your reasoning. I don't know much about how these counts work.
    - freehunter 10y ago
      I don't know at all, but a number that high may be fuzzy like with reddit's voting system. At some point to save database queries, they may just approximate the number.
      - logicallee 10y ago
        that's an interesting perspective - though fuzzing by 46% seems more than I would expect (but may be possible.) I got 46% by doing 3.8/2.6 (you can check because 2.6 * 1.46 == 3.8). ----------------------------------- EDIT: I didn't change above the line with this edit but - why would anyone downvote this comment too? when all I say is it's an interesting perspective. (There are no comment replies at this time, just a downvote.) Also I reread my comment and I noticed that it was not actually listed as 2.6 - but 2.63 -- so two sig figs. I actually took screenshots (for myself) with my clock, this is an interesting change: http://imgur.com/a/CU7Qm http://imgur.com/a/CU7Qm it's -0.11m change over about 2 hours 21 min. (take 7 seconds). I don't know what part of that is "fuzzing" (like reddit does) what part of that is lack of coherence (from distributed DB), and what part of that is the actual change. I would think, if anything, it would move up during this time due to the extra attention - maybe HN, CNN and other readers would sub to him after reading this story. at any rate it's certainly a puzzle to me why anyone would downvote this comment. (I don't think it's malicious and there's just one downvote.)
        freehunter 10y ago
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- pjc50 10y ago
  Twitter has long had a number of "unfollow bugs", where users sometimes just find themselves no longer following people they definitely intended to follow. shrug.
- james_pm 10y ago
  Perhaps he was suspended as part of a bulk suspension and 1.2m of his followers were also suspended at the same time?
0xmohit 10y ago
> It's a suspension, not a deletion I'd doubt that the underlying data is deleted even if you choose to delete your account.

It's a suspension, not a deletion, which implies it's possible to resume the account. It seems logical that the state of the account would be entirely preserved for later restoration.

logicallee 10y ago

so why does the article report that only 3.8 out of 3.9 million followers were restored? While overall I would say that is pretty much a rounding error, if we look at it very carefully you have to ask: did literally 100,000 people proactively choose to unsubscribe, from an account that obviously remains important, and moreover during a time when it was inactive? Would his tweet have been so 'spammy' that 1 out of 39 of his every follower decided on that basis alone to unsubscribe? If the full number of followers were not restored, it raises the question of why not? I don't know how to get historical "number of followers" information - as of this moment : https://twitter.com/jack https://twitter.com/jack the numbers I see are " 20.6K tweets, following: 2,2264, followers: 2.63M, likes: 15.1K, lists: 3" for good measure and lest someone try to rewrite history here's a screenshot I just took: http://i.imgur.com/JJQKPI9.png http://i.imgur.com/JJQKPI9.png The figure CNN quotes is: "Soon after Dorsey was reinstated, his number of followers was showing up as only about 145 -- a steep drop from the roughly 3.9 million he had previously. The figure later popped back up to around 3.8 million." So what exactly happened to cause 1.2M twitter followers to decide to unfollow him? Sure, he's a heavy tweeter - I wouldn't follow him due to the level of spam - I mean who send 20,000 tweets in 7 years - that's 7+ per day at least. but the people who did choose to follow him - if the CNN quote above is accurate - aren't people I would expect to unfollow him exactly around this time. So if CNN's figure is accurate -- what happened? And why the drop of 1 million subscribers, or in other words one in three subscribers that he had had?

dustingetz 10y ago
in distributed systems, counts are often incrementally maintained over time. There are many ways to trigger an unfollow (e.g. account deleted or country banned), and all the edge cases must be explicitly accounted for, or error creeps in, which is probably what happened. 3.8M is probably the more accurate count.
- logicallee 10y ago
  I have no idea why anyone would downvote the current comment. I've edited to be clear I'm being totally open-ended. >3.8M is probably the more accurate count. You mean "than 3.9" right? So in an open-ended way, genuinely curious here, would you say the 2.63M he's at now (as I screenshotted for you) an "even more accurate" figure? just trying to understand the change in figures - I don't have a horse in this race and can certainly accept your reasoning. I don't know much about how these counts work.
  - freehunter 10y ago
    I don't know at all, but a number that high may be fuzzy like with reddit's voting system. At some point to save database queries, they may just approximate the number.
    - logicallee 10y ago
      that's an interesting perspective - though fuzzing by 46% seems more than I would expect (but may be possible.) I got 46% by doing 3.8/2.6 (you can check because 2.6 * 1.46 == 3.8). ----------------------------------- EDIT: I didn't change above the line with this edit but - why would anyone downvote this comment too? when all I say is it's an interesting perspective. (There are no comment replies at this time, just a downvote.) Also I reread my comment and I noticed that it was not actually listed as 2.6 - but 2.63 -- so two sig figs. I actually took screenshots (for myself) with my clock, this is an interesting change: http://imgur.com/a/CU7Qm http://imgur.com/a/CU7Qm it's -0.11m change over about 2 hours 21 min. (take 7 seconds). I don't know what part of that is "fuzzing" (like reddit does) what part of that is lack of coherence (from distributed DB), and what part of that is the actual change. I would think, if anything, it would move up during this time due to the extra attention - maybe HN, CNN and other readers would sub to him after reading this story. at any rate it's certainly a puzzle to me why anyone would downvote this comment. (I don't think it's malicious and there's just one downvote.)
      - freehunter 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
pjc50 10y ago
Twitter has long had a number of "unfollow bugs", where users sometimes just find themselves no longer following people they definitely intended to follow. shrug.
james_pm 10y ago
Perhaps he was suspended as part of a bulk suspension and 1.2m of his followers were also suspended at the same time?

0xmohit 10y ago

> It's a suspension, not a deletion I'd doubt that the underlying data is deleted even if you choose to delete your account.