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> If the idea of federated Twitter was so good and so important why did everyone seemingly only get interested in it right now? It involves work. Before Musk's

> If the idea of federated Twitter was so good and so important why did everyone seemingly only get interested in it right now? It involves work. Before Musk's takeover Twitter was reliable, predictable and somewhat boring. Now it is none of those things, for better or worse. I think people see federation as a means to avoid a similar outcome in the future. > Now that Elon owns it, well, now it sucks and is bad. I mean... yes? No need to examine this through an ideological lens: the simple fact is that the future of Twitter is now very uncertain. Ad revenue is tanking, half the staff has been laid off, features are being modified on the fly. It simply isn't a service you can rely on right now.

illuminati1911 4y ago
Laying off staff of a company that has barely added any new features during the last 10 years and has always been operating at a loss is not necessarily a bad thing for the future of the platform. You are right about the chaotic way things are added/removed right now, but I personally prefer it to what Twitter was before Musk: Force login on the main page and unfair ideological censorship. We'll see what happens in the long run.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
googlryas 4y ago
Let's assume that Elon decides to burn 44 billion instead of running a mostly successful business like he's generally done in the past with his other businesses. What exactly are the dangers of using Twitter if it might stop existing say 3 years from now?
- jimcsharp 4y ago
  Your brand will have lost 3 years of opportunity to build up its footprint on an alternative - for whatever that's worth.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- slg 4y ago
  >Let's assume that Elon decides to burn 44 billion instead of running a mostly successful business like he's generally done in the past with his other businesses. Why set up this false dichotomy? Elon might burn down his $44b investment in an attempt to run Twitter as a mostly successful business. Running a car company and running a social media company are not the same skill set. It is entirely possible, and seems more likely than it did a week ago, that he has no idea how to actually turn Twitter into a success. >What exactly are the dangers of using Twitter if it might stop existing say 3 years from now? Content and followers on Twitter cannot easily and directly be transferred somewhere else. Any personal investment a user makes into Twitter today is at risk of being worthless if Twitter disappears. Whether that matters you or not depends on why you use Twitter. If it is for fun, that isn't a real risk. But plenty of people use Twitter as part of their job and these people really need to start considering if investing in their Twitter account is worth it compared to moving that effort somewhere else.
  - googlryas 4y ago
    I don't think it's a false dichotomy because based on the statements of 85% of the people on hacker news, you would think that they have all the right answers for running twitter, and Elon is simply not following their advice. So if he fails, even if it is well intentioned, it is only because he is boneheaded enough to not listen to the geniuses on hacker news and reddit. Elon has successfully run more than just a car business in a wide variety of fields. There are free apps that let you archive your Twitter feed, and there are free apps that let you find messed it on users from their Twitter account. I'm sure those tools would get even better and easier to use if the writing was on the wall that Twitter is going down. What you say about personal investment is true, but it is true about literally everything. If you personally invest in Macedon, I messed it on fails, then you have wasted your time and all of your work is worthless.
    - slg 4y ago
      >I guess I set up the false dichotomy because based on the statements of 85% of the people on hacker news, you would think that they have all the right answers for running twitter, and Elon is simply not following their advice. So if he fails, even if it is well intentioned, it is only because he is boneheaded enough to not listen to the geniuses on hacker news and reddit. But that is still a false dichotomy because I don't need to know the right answer to recognize boneheaded management. Any independent observer can see that Musk is going back and forth on certain decisions: saying "comedy is now legal on Twitter" then banning parody accounts for mocking him or laying people off then immediately asking them to come back. These are self inflected mistakes that I recognize as objectively bad management without knowing the specifics of how to properly manage Twitter. >Elon has successfully run more than just a car business in a wide variety of fields. And none have been a media company let alone a social media company. Building cars, rocket ships, and tunnels are all relatively similar from a management perspective and are very different from running a social media company. Running a social media company requires a much more complex understanding of people and social systems. It isn't as simple as just building a good product. Twitter's technical product was never the primary issue with the company. The problems Twitter faces are all human problems. Musk hasn't shown an ability to fix those type of issues. >There are free apps that let you archive your Twitter feed, and there are free apps that let you find messed it on users from their Twitter account. I'm sure those tools would get even better and easier to use if the writing was on the wall that Twitter is going down. Those apps are generally worthless at the scale we are talking about. Twitter has 450m monthly users. Mastodon has 1m. Retaining 0.2% of your audience when transferring platforms doesn't provide much value. >What you say about personal investment is true, but it is true about literally everything. If you personally invest in Macedon, I messed it on fails, then you have wasted your time and all of your work is worthless. Yes, the point it that it didn't seem like Twitter failing was a likely situation a year ago. Today it seems like a realistic possibility.
TigeriusKirk 4y ago
To date there has been no change in my Twitter experience.
- afavour 4y ago
  No but changes have been announced. Fundamentally altering what the "blue tick" means alone will give e.g. major brands pause. As of Tuesday (or whenever they actually launch it) someone will be able to register the Twitter account @C0ca_cola and pay $8 to give it a verified checkmark. If I were Coca-Cola I'd be quite concerned about that.
  - Yoofie 4y ago
    If they were genuinely concerned about name sniping like that, they could of did the same.
  - EricE 4y ago
    >As of Tuesday (or whenever they actually launch it) someone will be able to register the Twitter account @C0ca_cola and pay $8 to give it a verified checkmark. And what are you basing that assumption on? Where did he say that for $8 anything goes? If anything he's been very plain that was NOT going to happen, yet people like you still are willing to assume the worse? Again, based on what specifically?
    - afavour 4y ago
      Two days later this hasn’t aged very well, has it?
- r00fus 4y ago
  As of this week, Twitter will release the new verified/blue where "verified" means "payment for $8/mo authorized". No actual verification of identity [0]. If this wasn't enough, Musk has confirmed the timeline will essentially shadowban non-verified accounts [1]. So anyone can take anyone's else's name as "verified" and the non-verified will not be seen. Essentially this means if you have the money you can run dozens or thousands of verified accounts that claim to be anyone. [0] https://twitter.com/RMac18/status/1588304086792667136 https://twitter.com/RMac18/status/1588304086792667136 [1] https://twitter.com/somebadideas/status/1588876465915166721?s=20&t=9txff4_sxo-9Ln3ySfWRHQ https://twitter.com/somebadideas/status/1588876465915166721?...
EricE 4y ago
>Before Musk's takeover Twitter was reliable, predictable and somewhat boring. In what ways? And in what ways do you think federated servers that don't agree on what rules to apply and lack any sort of mechanism for global, centralized control will make Mastodon reliable, predictable or even somewhat boring?!?
- afavour 4y ago
  > In what ways? Twitter's product has been static for years, barring perhaps the introduction of Twitter Spaces, which has barely made a dent in usage (as far as I can see, anyway). I personally regard this as a negative: I think that they should have been innovating more. But if I were a major brand looking at my advertising commitments I'd probably be fine with it. > And in what ways do you think federated servers that don't agree on what rules to apply and lack any sort of mechanism for global, centralized control will make Mastodon reliable, predictable or even somewhat boring?!? I don't personally think Mastodon is the answer so I'm probably not well positioned to answer this. But if my organization sets up its own Mastodon instance I'm free to ignore what the larger Mastodon ecosystem is doing, if I want to. It is under my control and can't be bought out by a memelord playing a prank gone wrong.
  - EricE 4y ago
    >But if my organization sets up its own Mastodon instance I'm free to ignore what the larger Mastodon ecosystem is doing, if I want to. You have the same tools to block on Twitter. There is literally no difference.
    - afavour 4y ago
      Of course there is. On Twitter someone could sign up, pretend to be a member of my organization, pay $8 to get a verified checkmark and there's very little I can do about it. If I own my own Mastodon instance I can kick them off (or stop them from signing up in the first place)
      - TeMPOraL 4y ago
jimbob45 4y ago
Before Musk's takeover Twitter was reliable, predictable and somewhat boring It was none of those things and was widely regarded to be the worst-run company in tech not named Theranos or WeWork, including on this very website. It's fine to dislike Musk and it's fine to dislike the moves he's made but this revisionist history has to stop.
- afavour 4y ago
  Maybe you can explain to me the way in which Twitter was deeply unpredictable before Musk took over because I don't really see it. I agree that it was a badly run company but in a way that meant it didn't really change very much about its product in the last few years. That's what I mean about predictable and boring. If you looked at Twitter as product in 2017 and looked at it in 2022 you wouldn't see a whole lot of difference.
  - jimbob45 4y ago
    Take your pick between employees acting as agents on behalf of foreign governments[0], suspending POTUS for rules not uniformly applied to other users[1], introducing a fact-checking system with poor community reception[2], changing the core feature of the product (post length)[3], or improperly collecting data and accruing fines such that the US FTC now has the company under tight investigation. All done before Musk ever owned the company. [0]https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-twitter-employee-found-guilty-acting-agent-foreign-government-and-unlawfully https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-twitter-employee... [1]https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio... [2]https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/25/22248903/twitter-birdwatch-fact-checking-misinformation https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/25/22248903/twitter-birdwatc... [3]https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/21/twitter-to-expand-into-long-form-content-with-upcoming-twitter-notes-feature/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/21/twitter-to-expand-into-lon... [4]https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/twitter-pre-musk-data-mismanagement-could-inhibit-company-decades https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/twitter-pre-musk-data...
    - EricE 4y ago
BlueTemplar 4y ago
Not to forget the TwitterAPIpocalypse of 2012 (?), when Twitter heavily restricted its programming interfaces, which decimated the ecology of companies that were built around it, like Flattr (1.0). I surmise that's not unrelated to Mastodon's release in 2016 ? For instance : IFTTT forced to remove Twitter triggers to comply with new API policies : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4550625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4550625
- veqq 4y ago
  April 2013

illuminati1911 4y ago

Laying off staff of a company that has barely added any new features during the last 10 years and has always been operating at a loss is not necessarily a bad thing for the future of the platform. You are right about the chaotic way things are added/removed right now, but I personally prefer it to what Twitter was before Musk: Force login on the main page and unfair ideological censorship. We'll see what happens in the long run.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

googlryas 4y ago

Let's assume that Elon decides to burn 44 billion instead of running a mostly successful business like he's generally done in the past with his other businesses. What exactly are the dangers of using Twitter if it might stop existing say 3 years from now?

jimcsharp 4y ago
Your brand will have lost 3 years of opportunity to build up its footprint on an alternative - for whatever that's worth.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
slg 4y ago
>Let's assume that Elon decides to burn 44 billion instead of running a mostly successful business like he's generally done in the past with his other businesses. Why set up this false dichotomy? Elon might burn down his $44b investment in an attempt to run Twitter as a mostly successful business. Running a car company and running a social media company are not the same skill set. It is entirely possible, and seems more likely than it did a week ago, that he has no idea how to actually turn Twitter into a success. >What exactly are the dangers of using Twitter if it might stop existing say 3 years from now? Content and followers on Twitter cannot easily and directly be transferred somewhere else. Any personal investment a user makes into Twitter today is at risk of being worthless if Twitter disappears. Whether that matters you or not depends on why you use Twitter. If it is for fun, that isn't a real risk. But plenty of people use Twitter as part of their job and these people really need to start considering if investing in their Twitter account is worth it compared to moving that effort somewhere else.
- googlryas 4y ago
  I don't think it's a false dichotomy because based on the statements of 85% of the people on hacker news, you would think that they have all the right answers for running twitter, and Elon is simply not following their advice. So if he fails, even if it is well intentioned, it is only because he is boneheaded enough to not listen to the geniuses on hacker news and reddit. Elon has successfully run more than just a car business in a wide variety of fields. There are free apps that let you archive your Twitter feed, and there are free apps that let you find messed it on users from their Twitter account. I'm sure those tools would get even better and easier to use if the writing was on the wall that Twitter is going down. What you say about personal investment is true, but it is true about literally everything. If you personally invest in Macedon, I messed it on fails, then you have wasted your time and all of your work is worthless.
  - slg 4y ago
    >I guess I set up the false dichotomy because based on the statements of 85% of the people on hacker news, you would think that they have all the right answers for running twitter, and Elon is simply not following their advice. So if he fails, even if it is well intentioned, it is only because he is boneheaded enough to not listen to the geniuses on hacker news and reddit. But that is still a false dichotomy because I don't need to know the right answer to recognize boneheaded management. Any independent observer can see that Musk is going back and forth on certain decisions: saying "comedy is now legal on Twitter" then banning parody accounts for mocking him or laying people off then immediately asking them to come back. These are self inflected mistakes that I recognize as objectively bad management without knowing the specifics of how to properly manage Twitter. >Elon has successfully run more than just a car business in a wide variety of fields. And none have been a media company let alone a social media company. Building cars, rocket ships, and tunnels are all relatively similar from a management perspective and are very different from running a social media company. Running a social media company requires a much more complex understanding of people and social systems. It isn't as simple as just building a good product. Twitter's technical product was never the primary issue with the company. The problems Twitter faces are all human problems. Musk hasn't shown an ability to fix those type of issues. >There are free apps that let you archive your Twitter feed, and there are free apps that let you find messed it on users from their Twitter account. I'm sure those tools would get even better and easier to use if the writing was on the wall that Twitter is going down. Those apps are generally worthless at the scale we are talking about. Twitter has 450m monthly users. Mastodon has 1m. Retaining 0.2% of your audience when transferring platforms doesn't provide much value. >What you say about personal investment is true, but it is true about literally everything. If you personally invest in Macedon, I messed it on fails, then you have wasted your time and all of your work is worthless. Yes, the point it that it didn't seem like Twitter failing was a likely situation a year ago. Today it seems like a realistic possibility.

TigeriusKirk 4y ago

To date there has been no change in my Twitter experience.

afavour 4y ago
No but changes have been announced. Fundamentally altering what the "blue tick" means alone will give e.g. major brands pause. As of Tuesday (or whenever they actually launch it) someone will be able to register the Twitter account @C0ca_cola and pay $8 to give it a verified checkmark. If I were Coca-Cola I'd be quite concerned about that.
- Yoofie 4y ago
  If they were genuinely concerned about name sniping like that, they could of did the same.
- EricE 4y ago
  >As of Tuesday (or whenever they actually launch it) someone will be able to register the Twitter account @C0ca_cola and pay $8 to give it a verified checkmark. And what are you basing that assumption on? Where did he say that for $8 anything goes? If anything he's been very plain that was NOT going to happen, yet people like you still are willing to assume the worse? Again, based on what specifically?
  - afavour 4y ago
    Two days later this hasn’t aged very well, has it?
r00fus 4y ago
As of this week, Twitter will release the new verified/blue where "verified" means "payment for $8/mo authorized". No actual verification of identity [0]. If this wasn't enough, Musk has confirmed the timeline will essentially shadowban non-verified accounts [1]. So anyone can take anyone's else's name as "verified" and the non-verified will not be seen. Essentially this means if you have the money you can run dozens or thousands of verified accounts that claim to be anyone. [0] https://twitter.com/RMac18/status/1588304086792667136 https://twitter.com/RMac18/status/1588304086792667136 [1] https://twitter.com/somebadideas/status/1588876465915166721?s=20&t=9txff4_sxo-9Ln3ySfWRHQ https://twitter.com/somebadideas/status/1588876465915166721?...

EricE 4y ago

>Before Musk's takeover Twitter was reliable, predictable and somewhat boring. In what ways? And in what ways do you think federated servers that don't agree on what rules to apply and lack any sort of mechanism for global, centralized control will make Mastodon reliable, predictable or even somewhat boring?!?

afavour 4y ago
> In what ways? Twitter's product has been static for years, barring perhaps the introduction of Twitter Spaces, which has barely made a dent in usage (as far as I can see, anyway). I personally regard this as a negative: I think that they should have been innovating more. But if I were a major brand looking at my advertising commitments I'd probably be fine with it. > And in what ways do you think federated servers that don't agree on what rules to apply and lack any sort of mechanism for global, centralized control will make Mastodon reliable, predictable or even somewhat boring?!? I don't personally think Mastodon is the answer so I'm probably not well positioned to answer this. But if my organization sets up its own Mastodon instance I'm free to ignore what the larger Mastodon ecosystem is doing, if I want to. It is under my control and can't be bought out by a memelord playing a prank gone wrong.
- EricE 4y ago
  >But if my organization sets up its own Mastodon instance I'm free to ignore what the larger Mastodon ecosystem is doing, if I want to. You have the same tools to block on Twitter. There is literally no difference.
  - afavour 4y ago
    Of course there is. On Twitter someone could sign up, pretend to be a member of my organization, pay $8 to get a verified checkmark and there's very little I can do about it. If I own my own Mastodon instance I can kick them off (or stop them from signing up in the first place)
    - TeMPOraL 4y ago

jimbob45 4y ago

Before Musk's takeover Twitter was reliable, predictable and somewhat boring It was none of those things and was widely regarded to be the worst-run company in tech not named Theranos or WeWork, including on this very website. It's fine to dislike Musk and it's fine to dislike the moves he's made but this revisionist history has to stop.

afavour 4y ago
Maybe you can explain to me the way in which Twitter was deeply unpredictable before Musk took over because I don't really see it. I agree that it was a badly run company but in a way that meant it didn't really change very much about its product in the last few years. That's what I mean about predictable and boring. If you looked at Twitter as product in 2017 and looked at it in 2022 you wouldn't see a whole lot of difference.
- jimbob45 4y ago
  Take your pick between employees acting as agents on behalf of foreign governments[0], suspending POTUS for rules not uniformly applied to other users[1], introducing a fact-checking system with poor community reception[2], changing the core feature of the product (post length)[3], or improperly collecting data and accruing fines such that the US FTC now has the company under tight investigation. All done before Musk ever owned the company. [0]https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-twitter-employee-found-guilty-acting-agent-foreign-government-and-unlawfully https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-twitter-employee... [1]https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio... [2]https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/25/22248903/twitter-birdwatch-fact-checking-misinformation https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/25/22248903/twitter-birdwatc... [3]https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/21/twitter-to-expand-into-long-form-content-with-upcoming-twitter-notes-feature/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/21/twitter-to-expand-into-lon... [4]https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/twitter-pre-musk-data-mismanagement-could-inhibit-company-decades https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/twitter-pre-musk-data...
  - EricE 4y ago

BlueTemplar 4y ago

Not to forget the TwitterAPIpocalypse of 2012 (?), when Twitter heavily restricted its programming interfaces, which decimated the ecology of companies that were built around it, like Flattr (1.0). I surmise that's not unrelated to Mastodon's release in 2016 ? For instance : IFTTT forced to remove Twitter triggers to comply with new API policies : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4550625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4550625

veqq 4y ago
April 2013