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Fleets: A new way to join the conversation
- jypepin 6y ago> But some of you tell us that Tweeting is uncomfortable because it feels so public, so permanent, and like there's so much pressure to rack up Retweets and Likes. That’s why, unfortunately, there are so many Tweets left in drafts! really? I thought the whole point of tweeting was that it was easy and no pressure?
- notduncansmith 6y agoI think we lost that when public figures started having to answer for their old tweets. Interestingly, that only happened because enough people bought into the original idea for it to become a permanent thing.
- heydonovan 6y agoI actually don't use Twitter much because of this. I'll lurk for sure, but I'm more active on Snapchat where I know all my thoughts and photos will be gone. You ever see those folks get fired because of what they said years ago? Pass.
- crankyoldcrank 6y agoLol, I joined Twitter around 2013 because it seemed like everyone in tech was there and it'd be a good way to keep up. Then I saw cross talk between radical Left Twitter and people I followed in tech. Uh oh. I got into exactly one political argument and realised that with my ADHD impulse control, my career, and my belief that homo sapiens is sexually dimorphic, I should not be on that site of I valued eating. I deleted the account. Now I read Twitter, but I will not log in. Ever. I also deleted my Facebook account around that time. Nowadays, I only use my real identity with people I know in private groups on self hosted servers. Even commenting here with a pseudonym gives me pause; every opinionated post is a liability if you get doxxed.
- fxtentacle 6y agoI think you nailed the issue. Twitter lost its "easy, no pressure" vibe when people started losing their job over old social media posts.
- atomi 6y agoI have strong convictions and I cannot imagine being so concerned about my livelihood that I effectively self-censor. I guess that's why I've never used my real name. I do also remember when Twitter wasn't so political. But all that changed when more information became available and people started to realize how serious our issues are. If you have concerns you shouldn't be afraid to speak up because that's how a Democracy works.
- sellyme 6y ago> You ever see those folks get fired because of what they said years ago? Yep, and I'm totally fine with people being accountable for their own words and actions. If the concern is people being fired over something that's not actually that bad because of malicious actors making a mountain out of a molehill, then there's better ways to address that than making systematic changes to the way we communicate to allow people to suffer no consequences from proliferating hate speech.
- ultrafez 6y agoAnd now, we've reached equilibrium again: every major social network now has stories.
- rakoo 6y agoIt is time for us developers to accept the truth and implement stories wherever we can: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=bar9.stories https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=bar9.sto...
- ChrisArchitect 6y agodidnt' that stories plugin for VScode (maybe not that one?) get sold for a bunch of money recently?
- root_axis 6y ago9000 dollars according to the creator.
- rakoo 6y agoI am more baffled by the idea that someone would buy it
- mcintyre1994 6y agoI’m guessing the same reason as browser extensions get sold - remote code execution on a bunch of people’s computers for something they wouldn’t volunteer for. Displaying ads, exploiting data leaks to plugins that might exist in VSCode, waiting for a zero day in electron to drop without a patch, something miserable.
- radihuq 6y agoSource video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHO316LKnZw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHO316LKnZw
- shortstuffsushi 6y agoThis seems tone-deaf to me. While the world is screaming about either censorship or misinformation issues with Twitter, they're launching a service to make ephemeral tweets ala Snapchat or Instagram stories. I guess they've got to keep developing something, but it feels like a weird time to launch this.
- djsumdog 6y agoI agree. The memes with the Twitter fact checks are hilarious, but they're also tragic. I have no hope of any meaningful Section 230 reform anytime the way things are going and applauding big media companies for their censorship. I feel like all the big media platforms need to be required by law to not editorialize on anyone else's content: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/is-meaningful-section-230-reform-possible/#1-no-editorializing-on-other-peoples-content-no-fact-checking-no-disclaimers https://battlepenguin.com/politics/is-meaningful-section-230...
- theon144 6y agoI would agree, but the feature itself does seem interesting, I am actually looking forward to trying it - to be honest I do feel kind of a weird social pressure on Twitter given that the tweets are somewhat of a public record; it's why I still prefer IRC for instance. I wouldn't have made the connection between misinformation problems and ephemeral tweets were it not for your comment.
- black_puppydog 6y agoJust remember that for all intents and purposes, fleets will be just as public. I.e. I predict politicians, activists, celebrities will stumble over them just the same. As a thought experiment: do you think if Corbyn had fleeted his comment about that graffito, would it have really protected him? I find that unlikely. Edit: and after typing this out, I'm pretty sure I actually think that last bit is a good thing, independent of my stance on the substance of the matter. But don't mistake "I can't see it anymore" for "nobody else will remember."
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- slg 6y agoThere is a real cognitive disconnect in our legal system with how businesses can go after something like youtube-dl for for potentially facilitating infringement while companies just straight copy features from their competitors. Why should Disney have this protection of their IP innovation but Snap doesn’t?
- nradov 6y agoPatents still exist. If Twitter has violated any Snap patents then they are free to sue.
- slg 6y agoA copyright happens automatically and is a much more powerful tool to stop infringement while a patent is a pain to acquire, involves public disclosure of a process you often want to keep secret, and is often defined very narrowly. The two aren't really comparable in the level of protection that they provide for your IP. I would generally be on the side of weakening copyright over strengthen patents, but the disconnect between the two just seems strange when they theoretically are supposed to serve the exact same purpose.
- toast0 6y agoCopyright protects the expression of an idea in a tangible medium. All of these story features are arguably expressions of the same idea, but they're not the same expression, so it's not a copyright issue. There's an amazing variety of creative products that are based on the same idea; often the better ones aren't the first ones.
- slg 6y agoCopyright protects more than just the specific expression, they also protect collections of ideas. If I publish a novel about a magical wizard who can control things with his mind, flies around the galaxy in a spaceship shaped like an X, carries a laser sword, and battles his cyborg father who wears all black, I bet I would get a call from Disney's lawyers. That is because my work could be deemed substantially similar to Disney's IP even if it is a different expression.
- Jasper_ 6y agoAs far as I can tell, this is a new tab, that only works on the app, not on the website or on third-party clients. So now my followers can only see see my Fleets if they're using the official app? The idea is not a terrible one, but the execution just seems to be incredibly confusing and poor. It seems like this is a a completely separate product that doesn't integrate well into the main app.
- ouchjars 6y agoThey copied other social networks' stories feature so accurately, they even included the bit where it's only available on mobile apps first.
- simlevesque 6y agoFacebook on the browser shows stories.
- tidepod12 6y agoI think it almost has to be that way, no? If it was available on the website or third party clients, it would be trivially easy for someone to write an app that archives everyone's "ephemeral" tweets and stores them permanently, defeating the entire purpose. I mean, I foresee that happening anyway, but my guess is that this is an attempt to make it more difficult/less widespread.
- rakoo 6y agoFacebook and Instagram have stories on the web app, so it is possible to do
- Kaibeezy 6y ago“so permanent” unlike, say, the screenshot someone takes of it?
- bovermyer 6y agoYeah, this. Once something is publicly shared, it is permanently public, no matter what the platform tells you.
- Asraelite 6y agoI imagine it won't be long until some archiving service comes along for it, similar to Pushshift for Reddit. It'll be interesting to see how much effort Twitter puts into preventing scraping.
- ponker 6y agoA screenshot is not verifiable. You can take a screenshot of my Tweet but that is not proof that I tweeted it, unless it's captured and verified by a screenshotting service that has a solid reputation for integrity.
- mcintyre1994 6y agoI completely agree, but screenshots of Tweets are always floating around places like Reddit and even Twitter itself. Not enough people have been knowingly caught out for them to be immediately considered potentially fake yet I guess.
- onecommentman 6y agoIn an important sense, a screenshot is not deniable either. Nor a digital camera photo, or a Polaroid, or a photocopy... You could just make a phone call...
- samatman 6y agoRunning Inspect Element on a tweet to edit it into something funny, then taking a screenshot of the result, is a popular trope for humor on Twitter. There's some plausible deniability, in other words. That's enough for some cases, and not enough for others.
- angst_ridden 6y agoHaving friends who have suffered pile-ons and targeted harassment on Twitter, this seems specially crafted to enable that kind of bad behavior. Even if you flag a "fleet" for violating the rules, it will have vanished by the time it gets reviewed. "Oh, it's gone, so it's OK."
- Fernicia 6y agoPresumably Twitter staff can still access expired Fleets. It's not an issue with Instagram stories.
- chimeracoder 6y ago> Presumably Twitter staff can still access expired Fleets. It's not an issue with Instagram stories. Twitter already has problems with harassment and tweets that are deleted before the report is reviewed. I would bet that harassment will be a problem for Fleets as well.
- twic 6y agoFleets will be useful for brigading. Combined operations!
- xiaolingxiao 6y agoTwitter is testing audio rooms a-la Clubhouse as well, they're scouting for beta testers right now.
- throwaway-sf 6y agoHave a feeling Twitter stories are going to be used almost exclusively by adult film stars promoting their onlyfans.
- zero_deg_kevin 6y agoThis is how Twitter Tumblr’s itself out of the app stores.
- grishka 6y agoStories. These are called stories. And they aren't something Twitter ever needed.
- weego 6y agoEverything twitter bought in it killed off and everything its tried to do since the first offering has failed, they even managed to make a poor job of rolling out their new Web client. I admire twitters engineering, they provided lots of excellent open source in Scala, but their product teams... Eesh
- grishka 6y agoIt just feels like each rewrite of their web UI is a downgrade, both in terms of UX design and in terms of overall engineering quality. I recently broke the new web app doing nothing but a sequence of actions they clearly didn't anticipate. I mainly use Tweetdeck on desktop because at least it doesn't suck.
- computerphage 6y agoImagine trying to hold people accountable for disinformation when they just start spreading everything with fleets.
- hammock 6y agoFleets actually make it easier for Twitter to censor more content without being detected. By the time you realize your Fleet was shadowbanned, it would have been gone anyway.
- fudged71 6y ago“Every program attempts to expand until it includes disappearing daily stories" - zawinski's lesser-known eponymous law
- jrochkind1 6y ago> This format may sound familiar to you! I don't understand what they mean by that. Just that it's similar to other platforms with temporary-disappearing messages?
- storkhill 6y agoYes. It's familiar to the majority because Twitter copied every other platform out there. It's like how every white girl loves Starbucks and Instagram selfies.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- vsareto 6y agoLots of folks about to find out that #TweetFleet has a lot of EVE online content
- zelly 6y agoThe apes have run out of shapes.
- papito 6y agoOh yeah, I check out Instagram stories! Once a year. When I tap by mistake.
- thehappypm 6y agoOk boomer
- papito 6y agoTHIS f--ing guy!
- xwdv 6y agoThis feature should be implemented into hackernews. When users really disagree with someone, they tend to pull up their post history and downvote them on multiple comments to multiply the damage. I would like to have no visible history.
- kps 6y agoThe problem is downvoting, not history. Web forums without voting are much more pleasant than reddit and its clones.
- vosper 6y agoIt'll be interesting to see whether they make this stuff available to paying customers via the API. Currently they say they have no plans to do so [0], but what if it takes off? When you are an API customer you are supposed to honor all the actions that a user takes on their tweets (delete them from your in-house datastore if it's deleted from Twitter, for instance) but it's weakly/not enforced by Twitter. If they start putting stuff that's inherently ephemeral into the API feed then how will they deal with making customers not just persist it anyway? Or maybe analytics for Fleets will only be provided by Twitter, which would be a bit of a slap to their API customers but at least Twitter can enforce the rules around the content. [0] https://twittercommunity.com/t/will-twitter-api-support-fleets/145710/2 https://twittercommunity.com/t/will-twitter-api-support-flee...
- aero142 6y ago> we saw people with Fleets talk more on Twitter. Those new to Twitter found Fleets to be an easier way to share what's on their mind. Because they disappear from view after a day, Fleets helped people feel more comfortable sharing personal and casual thoughts, opinions, and feelings. It is clear that new user engagement metrics are still the only thing that really matters at a social media company. I recently deleted my Twitter account because it is a completely toxic place now. Until there is a clear metric for that, it will always be terrible.
- ianmobbs 6y agoYou get the experience you curate for self. If the people you followed were toxic, it’s not Twitter’s fault you didn’t unfollow them!
- Splendor 6y agoSorry if this question is off base (I haven't been on Twitter in a couple of years now), but I thought Twitter had gotten rid of the reverse chronological timeline and instead were surfacing tweets their algorithm thought you'd like. Is that not the case?
- rattt 6y agoYou can still choose to go back to reverse chronological. They also sometimes randomly revert you to the new one and make you manually switch back again ...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- WorldMaker 6y agoAnecdotes of course, but the last I pulled up my personal Twitter feed 1 in every 5 tweets was Promoted (and 2 of three of those were toxic engagement bait). 2 in every 5 comments were "so-and-so liked this engagement bait" from an algorithm somewhere, leaving just 6 in 15, before I got angry and bailed, "curate-able" tweets from actual people I followed. Admittedly I switched to Mastodon months back and some weeds are to be expected as I have intentionally avoided Twitter, but it was pretty well curated when I was a heavy Twitter user, and I absolutely can blame Twitter directly for the low value of Promoted content and algorithm generated content I never directly followed and cannot directly curate.
- alblue 6y agoWhat users want: an edit button for Tweets and the ability to block Nazis. What Twitter gives: self destructing tweets.
- alblue 6y agoThe major downside of these “fleets” is that they will be able to be used to harass others but subsequently hide the evidence of that automatically after 24h.
- rictic 6y agoIt's common practice to screenshot controversial tweets because they can be deleted.
- mikewarot 6y agoIn the old days, we wrote blogs, and got replies days, weeks, months, even years later. The feedback cycle consisted of your readers, who you also read, writing replies... a modern version of letter writing, but in public. It worked well, in fact it still works well, but it's not twitchy enough for modern tastes. The downside of the modern system is that the attention economics encourage hot takes, and the advertising economics encourage pushing only content likely to promote engagement, at the cost of reverse chronological order, and a full feed of everything you thought you signed up to read. Because people are encouraged to act rashly, history in those types of environment is a mine for seeking out poorly thought out statements. It's built into the system. The technical fix offered here is to erase history, which makes everyone effectively anonymous, as they can say what the want, causing real world effects, and the evidence disappears after X amount of time. Do we really want to make twitter and facebook even more like Lord of the Flies? There are other ways to deal with this... limiting the audience of one's words to only the friends you have at the current time, and making that stick for all time, is the way to go, in my opinion. If someone isn't in your audience at the time you express a thought, they never will be. It's fairly easy to implement this with the addition of starting and ending times for access.... if I add Bob on November 17, 2020... the default might be to give access starting a Month earlier... and never ending... until it is revoked. Here at HN, wiser people than me set up a system that seems remarkable resistant to "first post" pressure, and more rewarding of reflective contemplation that will stand the test of time. Twitter is going to see this new "feature" heavily used to game a lot of things, once people catch on.
- simonebrunozzi 6y agoWhat a terrible name: fleets. To me, it means multiple sets of several ships. I can't fathom how this would relate to what the product/functionality actually is. Edit: I guess you can argue that "fleeting" is similar to "evanescent", but... No, I still think about the ships.
- dbbk 6y agoIt quite clearly means a fleeting tweet.
- jijji 6y agoAt least with this feature, when your tweet is ghosted, you agreed to it
- LordAtlas 6y agoAnecdotal evidence only: it's been in testing here in India for a while, and 90% of the "fleets" I see are from media accounts. Hardly any of the people I follow post fleets.