6 ms·

A lot to unpack recently with Twitter and Jack. A few thoughts. 1. Jack doesn’t seem passionate about product, especially Twitter. 2. Kara seems to lack the v

by theNJR 8y ago

A lot to unpack recently with Twitter and Jack. A few thoughts. 1. Jack doesn’t seem passionate about product, especially Twitter. 2. Kara seems to lack the vocabulary to talk about product which is both surprising and confusing, given her niche and time spent in it. She also doesn’t understand that Twitter has evolved way beyond Jack. “Why don’t you know, it’s your product!” she kept asking. The fact he doesn’t know says a lot. It’s out of any one persons control. Maybe the AI has already taken over ... 3. The most interesting thing Kara said was when she suggested Twitter be a public utility. More and more I think we need the National Public Internet. She almost asked a great question about needing fire, police and garbage. Then she mixed metaphors and started discussing those things literally, and Jack went off about doxing. 4. The most important take away for me was how unaligned Jack and Kara were. Never did they find common ground. Never were they speaking the same language. Twitter could not facilitate meaningful dialogue between two willing people motivated to be good actors. This isn’t about how bad threaded replies are. It’s about human connection and conversation in the medium of real time public text. It doesn’t work. Edit: I've tried to clean these thoughts up a bit if you care to read more: https://www.nicholasjrobinson.com/blog/quick-take/karajack-quick-take-4-takeaways-from-the-jack-dorsey-and-kara-swisher-twitter-interview https://www.nicholasjrobinson.com/blog/quick-take/karajack-q...

zanny 8y ago
We already have Twitter as a utility, its called ActivityPub and dozens of products and thousands of independent instances are now using it. If Twitters higher ups were serious about "being a utility' they would federate on what is on track to become the browser social protocol from the W3C.
- theNJR 8y ago
  It was interesting to see a small force of people pushing ActivityPub in the Twitter comments last night.
- gotocake 8y ago
  A public utility that very few people have even heard of outside of tech circles. I feel that more or less takes the “public” out of the “utility” and doesn’t give Twitter a pass.
  - Kye 8y ago
    This was true of every protocol. It's still true of every protocol. How many people use HTTP every day without ever hearing about it? Most people couldn't even tell you what a web browser is. They use it all the same. The ActivityPub standard is barely a year old.
    - gotocake 8y ago
      I didn’t say it’s doomed, or dead, I said that the reality of it being a little known and used protocol is at odds with the claim that it represents a public utility. I think that’s especially true when comparing it to a claim that Twitter, with many hundreds of millions active users, should be a public utility.
  - lokedhs 8y ago
    Few people compared to Twitter, sure, but not as much as you muggy think. When I ask around in my circles, which is a typical mic of tech and non-tech people, very few have ever used Twitter. The ones who did are all tech people. Sure, a lot of people have heard of it, but that seems to be mainly through reporting on other media. I believe that Twitter is mostly a way for media people to get word out. As for Mastodon, there is definitely a lot of tech people there, but there is a very large group of users who are not. A lot of them comes from other social media platforms to get away from the negative climate there.
- skybrian 8y ago
  ActivityPub seems like an interesting protocol waiting for a killer app. Mastodon is a reasonable start, but too much like Twitter.
  - cabalamat 8y ago
    > ActivityPub seems like an interesting protocol waiting for a killer app You may well be right. If someone builds a new and innovative social network, it will start with 0 users and probably won't be able to compete with existing networks, due to network effects. But if someone builds a new and innovative social network using ActivityPub, it can piggyback on all ActivityPub's existing users, so network effects help it (and help existing ActivityPub systems). ActivityPub means that innovation in the social networking space can now succeed, and is thus a game changer.
  - zanny 8y ago
    The ultimate secret sauce of ActivityPub is that its killer app is every app that uses it. Its about having the same fundamental building blocks - because really, youtube, instagram, snap, tiktok, facebook, twitter, etc are all doing the same thing, you post content, aggregate it, share it, and comment on it - and having those portable across all the implementers so you can subscribe to someone whos on peertube via Mastodon and get their uploaded videos there, in the UI you like the most.
skybrian 8y ago
"National Public Internet": of which nation? I don't think that works, but a nongovernmental entity devoted to public service might work.
saas_sam 8y ago
Do you think the rate of improvements that have happened to the internet would be sustained if it were run by the government? I sure don't. Moving decision-making capabilities away from the public and into the hands of bureaucrats sounds like a good way to increase surveillance, decrease innovation, and lord knows what else. I really hope that idea does not take off.
- hollerith 8y ago
  Funnily enough the internet was run by governments from when it started in 1969 through 1992 or 1993. Specifically, The US government paid for most of it with most of the rest being paid for Great Britain, the Scandinavian countries and maybe Finland. Unless they happened to be next door to an organization that already had a connection, US organizations had to lease a dedicated circuit from a phone company to connect to the internet, but generally did not have to compensate the US government or the organization owning the router they connected to. The US government tried to transfer ownership of the internet to AT&T in 1977 and again in 1987, at a token price, but AT&T didn't want it because they couldn't see how to make money from it and worried about the potential for disruption of their existing businesses. Those dedicated circuits I mentioned earlier were not a service that AT&T offered voluntarily: AT&T was required by the US Federal Court to sell one to anyone who wanted one as part of the outcome of an anti-trust case brought by the US government against AT&T. At the time that the requirement was first imposed, most wide-area computer networks in the US were "proprietary" rather than "public", meaning that the network was used to connect the offices of a single (large, wealthy) organization, mostly running protocols developed by IBM. Although the intent of the court ruling was to protect IBM's business in wide-area networks from AT&T's monopoly power, the young internet benefitted greatly from the ruling, too. Starting in the late 1980s most large US tech companies were connected to the internet, but management's intent in paying whatever costs were involved in getting connected to the internet were to make it easier for the company's scientists and engineers to communicate with their counterparts in other large tech companies or in university science and engineering departments or various research labs. No large tech company at that time saw the internet as a way to generate revenue or sell products or services. I do not advocate returning to a government-run public network, but I spent a lot of time on the internet in 1992 and I can tell you that there would be lots of intense conversation and lots of publishing on the internet even if we were to remove all the profit-motivated entities.
dalbasal 8y ago
I don't think Twitter is a conversational medium, essentially. It certainly isn't a good one, for complex conversations. It's hard to find the horse-and-boogie analogy for something that's essentially new, but bumper sticker, or billboard is more apt. On the public utility front... email exists, RSS exists, the www exists... all open platforms, public by some (the right) definitions. The problem is that an open field (especially when there're multi-$bn opportunities) is innovative, resourceful and will often outcompete the public utility. How are you going to stop the next twitter from winning the get users game, ban texting apps?
- theNJR 8y ago
  NPR and PBS didn't invent anything, they used an established technology to be a not-for-profit public good. The National Public Internet wouldn't be breaking ground, it would be using social media for the public good.
  - dalbasal 8y ago
    That is all fine. You could have public (state owned) websites, apps, social networks and such. I'd argue that wikipedia, lichess and such are public services already. I personally have more confidence in that sort of a model (os, community run, etc) than a traditional public service model, but there's room in the bed for three. The problem is the same though. These services need to do more than just exist. They need popularity. It's very well to say "twitter should be a public service." I have no doubt that it could be. But, it'd still need to outcompete commercial competition.
    - Shivetya 8y ago
      Oh fuck no. the last thing we want is state owned and operated social networks and apps. whats next, swipe left to report hate speech? swipe right to report suspicious activity. a site where every picture is subject to scrutiny by government agencies because they were submitted to same? the idea that twitter should be a public utility vastly over exaggerates its impact in the life of the average person, American or not. If anything that message is tailor made to boost the value of the company. there is nothing twitter is doing that cannot be replicated, you just need time, good marketing, and money. Three needs of every successful business.
hopler 8y ago
> She almost asked a great question about needing fire, police and garbage. Twitter already provides a garbage fire service, that's why users are begging for police.
cvwright 8y ago
> National Public Internet You want to put Ajit Pai (or someone like him) in charge of Twitter, Facebook, etc?
- chillacy 8y ago
  Being a utility hasn't stopped Comcast from being terrible either. In fact being considered a natural monopoly means I _have_ to use Comcast because they've entered a deal with the city to be the sole provider. I would hate to _have_ to use Twitter, Facebook, etc because the government only licenses them as social networks.
darkpuma 8y ago
>It’s about human connection and conversation in the medium of real time public text. It doesn’t work. Your conclusion is too broad. It doesn't work on twitter, but I've seen it work just fine on other mediums. In fact I've seen people reconcile and resolve their differences on IRC when they couldn't/wouldn't do it face to face.
- theNJR 8y ago
  Can you expand on that? I have a weird case of internet nostalgia where IRC, niche forums and a little Usenet were perfect. But I think they were perfect because they were small and most people had a common ground based in tech. Lots of diverse people together in the same space, I don’t think, has ever worked in the history of man.
jocoda 8y ago
maybe offtopic, apologies > she suggested Twitter be a public utility Always interested to know how that could possibly work. Not just for twitter but for any other dominant site. The internet now has more users outside of the US [0] so who is the public, and who manages things? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_Internet_users https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...
ghobs91 8y ago
The last damn thing we need is a government run social network. We saw a preview of how that would be run when the current administration decided to manipulate/fake comments on the FCC site during the net neutrality debate. The ideal balance for things like this is a properly regulated social network, where said regulation focuses on holding the social network responsible for spread of fake information and hate speech.
- sorenn111 8y ago
  The last damn thing we need is a government determining what is and is not hate speech.

by theNJR 8y ago

zanny 8y ago

We already have Twitter as a utility, its called ActivityPub and dozens of products and thousands of independent instances are now using it. If Twitters higher ups were serious about "being a utility' they would federate on what is on track to become the browser social protocol from the W3C.

theNJR 8y ago
It was interesting to see a small force of people pushing ActivityPub in the Twitter comments last night.
gotocake 8y ago
A public utility that very few people have even heard of outside of tech circles. I feel that more or less takes the “public” out of the “utility” and doesn’t give Twitter a pass.
- Kye 8y ago
  This was true of every protocol. It's still true of every protocol. How many people use HTTP every day without ever hearing about it? Most people couldn't even tell you what a web browser is. They use it all the same. The ActivityPub standard is barely a year old.
  - gotocake 8y ago
    I didn’t say it’s doomed, or dead, I said that the reality of it being a little known and used protocol is at odds with the claim that it represents a public utility. I think that’s especially true when comparing it to a claim that Twitter, with many hundreds of millions active users, should be a public utility.
- lokedhs 8y ago
  Few people compared to Twitter, sure, but not as much as you muggy think. When I ask around in my circles, which is a typical mic of tech and non-tech people, very few have ever used Twitter. The ones who did are all tech people. Sure, a lot of people have heard of it, but that seems to be mainly through reporting on other media. I believe that Twitter is mostly a way for media people to get word out. As for Mastodon, there is definitely a lot of tech people there, but there is a very large group of users who are not. A lot of them comes from other social media platforms to get away from the negative climate there.
skybrian 8y ago
ActivityPub seems like an interesting protocol waiting for a killer app. Mastodon is a reasonable start, but too much like Twitter.
- cabalamat 8y ago
  > ActivityPub seems like an interesting protocol waiting for a killer app You may well be right. If someone builds a new and innovative social network, it will start with 0 users and probably won't be able to compete with existing networks, due to network effects. But if someone builds a new and innovative social network using ActivityPub, it can piggyback on all ActivityPub's existing users, so network effects help it (and help existing ActivityPub systems). ActivityPub means that innovation in the social networking space can now succeed, and is thus a game changer.
- zanny 8y ago
  The ultimate secret sauce of ActivityPub is that its killer app is every app that uses it. Its about having the same fundamental building blocks - because really, youtube, instagram, snap, tiktok, facebook, twitter, etc are all doing the same thing, you post content, aggregate it, share it, and comment on it - and having those portable across all the implementers so you can subscribe to someone whos on peertube via Mastodon and get their uploaded videos there, in the UI you like the most.

skybrian 8y ago

"National Public Internet": of which nation? I don't think that works, but a nongovernmental entity devoted to public service might work.

saas_sam 8y ago

Do you think the rate of improvements that have happened to the internet would be sustained if it were run by the government? I sure don't. Moving decision-making capabilities away from the public and into the hands of bureaucrats sounds like a good way to increase surveillance, decrease innovation, and lord knows what else. I really hope that idea does not take off.

hollerith 8y ago
Funnily enough the internet was run by governments from when it started in 1969 through 1992 or 1993. Specifically, The US government paid for most of it with most of the rest being paid for Great Britain, the Scandinavian countries and maybe Finland. Unless they happened to be next door to an organization that already had a connection, US organizations had to lease a dedicated circuit from a phone company to connect to the internet, but generally did not have to compensate the US government or the organization owning the router they connected to. The US government tried to transfer ownership of the internet to AT&T in 1977 and again in 1987, at a token price, but AT&T didn't want it because they couldn't see how to make money from it and worried about the potential for disruption of their existing businesses. Those dedicated circuits I mentioned earlier were not a service that AT&T offered voluntarily: AT&T was required by the US Federal Court to sell one to anyone who wanted one as part of the outcome of an anti-trust case brought by the US government against AT&T. At the time that the requirement was first imposed, most wide-area computer networks in the US were "proprietary" rather than "public", meaning that the network was used to connect the offices of a single (large, wealthy) organization, mostly running protocols developed by IBM. Although the intent of the court ruling was to protect IBM's business in wide-area networks from AT&T's monopoly power, the young internet benefitted greatly from the ruling, too. Starting in the late 1980s most large US tech companies were connected to the internet, but management's intent in paying whatever costs were involved in getting connected to the internet were to make it easier for the company's scientists and engineers to communicate with their counterparts in other large tech companies or in university science and engineering departments or various research labs. No large tech company at that time saw the internet as a way to generate revenue or sell products or services. I do not advocate returning to a government-run public network, but I spent a lot of time on the internet in 1992 and I can tell you that there would be lots of intense conversation and lots of publishing on the internet even if we were to remove all the profit-motivated entities.

dalbasal 8y ago

I don't think Twitter is a conversational medium, essentially. It certainly isn't a good one, for complex conversations. It's hard to find the horse-and-boogie analogy for something that's essentially new, but bumper sticker, or billboard is more apt. On the public utility front... email exists, RSS exists, the www exists... all open platforms, public by some (the right) definitions. The problem is that an open field (especially when there're multi-$bn opportunities) is innovative, resourceful and will often outcompete the public utility. How are you going to stop the next twitter from winning the get users game, ban texting apps?

theNJR 8y ago
NPR and PBS didn't invent anything, they used an established technology to be a not-for-profit public good. The National Public Internet wouldn't be breaking ground, it would be using social media for the public good.
- dalbasal 8y ago
  That is all fine. You could have public (state owned) websites, apps, social networks and such. I'd argue that wikipedia, lichess and such are public services already. I personally have more confidence in that sort of a model (os, community run, etc) than a traditional public service model, but there's room in the bed for three. The problem is the same though. These services need to do more than just exist. They need popularity. It's very well to say "twitter should be a public service." I have no doubt that it could be. But, it'd still need to outcompete commercial competition.
  - Shivetya 8y ago
    Oh fuck no. the last thing we want is state owned and operated social networks and apps. whats next, swipe left to report hate speech? swipe right to report suspicious activity. a site where every picture is subject to scrutiny by government agencies because they were submitted to same? the idea that twitter should be a public utility vastly over exaggerates its impact in the life of the average person, American or not. If anything that message is tailor made to boost the value of the company. there is nothing twitter is doing that cannot be replicated, you just need time, good marketing, and money. Three needs of every successful business.

hopler 8y ago

> She almost asked a great question about needing fire, police and garbage. Twitter already provides a garbage fire service, that's why users are begging for police.

cvwright 8y ago

> National Public Internet You want to put Ajit Pai (or someone like him) in charge of Twitter, Facebook, etc?

chillacy 8y ago
Being a utility hasn't stopped Comcast from being terrible either. In fact being considered a natural monopoly means I _have_ to use Comcast because they've entered a deal with the city to be the sole provider. I would hate to _have_ to use Twitter, Facebook, etc because the government only licenses them as social networks.

darkpuma 8y ago

>It’s about human connection and conversation in the medium of real time public text. It doesn’t work. Your conclusion is too broad. It doesn't work on twitter, but I've seen it work just fine on other mediums. In fact I've seen people reconcile and resolve their differences on IRC when they couldn't/wouldn't do it face to face.

theNJR 8y ago
Can you expand on that? I have a weird case of internet nostalgia where IRC, niche forums and a little Usenet were perfect. But I think they were perfect because they were small and most people had a common ground based in tech. Lots of diverse people together in the same space, I don’t think, has ever worked in the history of man.

jocoda 8y ago

maybe offtopic, apologies > she suggested Twitter be a public utility Always interested to know how that could possibly work. Not just for twitter but for any other dominant site. The internet now has more users outside of the US [0] so who is the public, and who manages things? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_Internet_users https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...

ghobs91 8y ago

The last damn thing we need is a government run social network. We saw a preview of how that would be run when the current administration decided to manipulate/fake comments on the FCC site during the net neutrality debate. The ideal balance for things like this is a properly regulated social network, where said regulation focuses on holding the social network responsible for spread of fake information and hate speech.

sorenn111 8y ago
The last damn thing we need is a government determining what is and is not hate speech.