8 ms·

Twitter Exodus Hits Teams Tasked with Regulatory, Content Issues Globally

55 points by erehweb 4y ago

grugagag 4y ago
Discussion on this other thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33730985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33730985
Quequau 4y ago
It doesn't seem to me that jettisoning the employees responsible for regulatory compliance is a sound management strategy.
- autotune 4y ago
  It's only not sound if you want to grow and sustain the business rather than turn it into your own personal $44 billion rage room for pointless glass smashing.
  - nxm 4y ago
    Yet it still running, and cutting costs is a necessity for profitability when costs exceed revenue. Incredible how bloated that company was before Elon took over.
    - autotune 4y ago
      Complaining about Twitter still running for their public presence is a testament to how much solid automation and infrastructure the previous SREs put in place than anything. If you look you can find comments about how it is already deteriorating in their ad portal. Complaining about a website being up is like asking what the IT person at your org does all day, and then getting angry when they get fired and things start going down a month later.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - yakak 4y ago
      It wasn't really that bloated, it is just a stupid business to run because it requires a massive investment and delivers only twits. I'm a bit shocked that no-one "acquihired" twitter to make another real tech company without hitting all the barriers and filtering even an infinite blood-money funded startup will hit. They threw out the baby, but the bath water is still there, and cloudy and a bit cold.
    - random314 4y ago
      After 15 years of existence Twitter was 2B dollars in the black. That's more than 100M$ for every year that Twitter has existed. The business is now in the red in the excess of 10B dollars because Elon put a 13B dollar loan on the company's books. The company was running fine even after the market crash until Elon took over. It's in the red now, not because of bloated employees- but because of Elon Musk.
- hatenberg 4y ago
  It is if you are only pursuing an. US election influence opportunity. He laid off 90% of Asia and much of EU, betraying his bullshit about mission and vision. This is just him spending money for a seat at the table with a specific party
  - ncr100 4y ago
    Another win for Putin through another Putin influenced US-based unstable personality.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    He tried to lay off EU employees, his US actions are void as per employment law in most European countries, and several countries are looking into it.
  - ralph84 4y ago
    It's more than just that. You can buy a seat at the table for a lot less than $44 billion. SBF got a seat for $40 million.
guywithahat 4y ago
https://archive.ph/FCoa0 https://archive.ph/FCoa0 I wonder how much of this is actually due to employees leaving/being fired and how much is just due to increased regulatory interest due to Twitter having new owners? As we've seen a lot of the content issues are due to organizations attempting to get twitter in trouble since Elon is perceived to be "anti-establishment" by many https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1595630109116989440 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1595630109116989440, and GDPR has a reputation for not being enforced equally. One has to wonder whether things have actually changed or if they're just getting regulated differently now
- isthisthingon99 4y ago
  Anti establishment would be celebrated in the west for example when we celebrate women being anti establishment in Iran.
  - PeterStuer 4y ago
    Because that is not anti-western establishment.
    - isthisthingon99 4y ago
      I'm confused why I got down voted
- zimpenfish 4y ago
  > how much of this is actually due to employees leaving/being fired Pretty much every position named in the FTC consent decree appears to have left which means they have no-one to handle that and, apparently, there's an audit due in January. This is not "just due to increased regulatory interest due to Twitter having new owners" - it's the existing consent decree they have to work under.
- anticristi 4y ago
  The EU recently passed the Digital Service Act which expecting regulates very large platforms, like Twitter. Curious to see when Twitter gets the first "dark pattern" fine.
Ambolia 4y ago
Last week Twitter was supposed to break in a couple of days. Now it will have regulatory problems any time soon. I'll be interested when Twitter has actual issues instead of crazy conspiracy theory of the day about the future problems that are sure to come, never to be spoken about again if the prediction doesn't turn out to be true.
- medler 4y ago
  Twitter has been having actual issues. I have routinely been seeing “this tweet is unavailable,” and have to refresh once or twice to get the tweet to load. The old Twitter kept on top of those kinds of issues because having a reliable app is key to keeping ad money rolling in. New Twitter hasn’t had a major outage yet, but the degradation in various services kind of suggests that the remaining SREs/ops people are overwhelmed, since they can’t even keep up the full functionality of the site.
- senttoschool 4y ago
  I've been seeing way more spam posts.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- BulgarianIdiot 4y ago
  > Last week Twitter was supposed to break in a couple of days. The "it was supposed to break in a couple of days" meme is an often repeated strawman by Elon's defenders. Can you point to any ex-Twitter employee claiming Twitter is supposed to break in a couple of days? Most said the system is built to be resilient, as long as THERE ARE NO CHANGES MADE TO IT. And no significant outages, hacker attacks, and so on challenges. You tell me, can Twitter coast indefinitely without changes? How do they plan to monetize it without changes? And without advertisers? The problem is Elon and his goons are randomly shutting down things in attempt to "remove the bloat" and then they don't know how to turn them on. So things have been breaking in the last few weeks. Any way you look at it, Twitter is on a course to disaster. But like the Titanic, it takes a bit to get there.
- croes 4y ago
PM_me_your_math 4y ago
The way twitter was run, the job was probably being done by 5 workers and 16 managers who mostly played corn-hole and 'relaxed' during much of the day. A team that met only for 2 hours after lunch everyday to "knock out some projects" and then wind-down in the smoothie room. I don't know why everyone thinks they can run a large organization better than a man like Elon Musk.
- bastawhiz 4y ago
  Do you have any evidence at all for that? Any whatsoever?
  - infamouscow 4y ago
    The absence of any new features, for years.
    - skinnymuch 4y ago
      I don’t follow Twitter much. Twitter Spaces is newer than years.
    - bastawhiz 4y ago
      Twitter blue, spaces, fleets, double tweet length, alt tags, new web UI. All without material downtime.

55 points by erehweb 4y ago

Discussion on this other thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33730985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33730985

Quequau 4y ago

It doesn't seem to me that jettisoning the employees responsible for regulatory compliance is a sound management strategy.

autotune 4y ago
It's only not sound if you want to grow and sustain the business rather than turn it into your own personal $44 billion rage room for pointless glass smashing.
- nxm 4y ago
  Yet it still running, and cutting costs is a necessity for profitability when costs exceed revenue. Incredible how bloated that company was before Elon took over.
  - autotune 4y ago
    Complaining about Twitter still running for their public presence is a testament to how much solid automation and infrastructure the previous SREs put in place than anything. If you look you can find comments about how it is already deteriorating in their ad portal. Complaining about a website being up is like asking what the IT person at your org does all day, and then getting angry when they get fired and things start going down a month later.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - yakak 4y ago
    It wasn't really that bloated, it is just a stupid business to run because it requires a massive investment and delivers only twits. I'm a bit shocked that no-one "acquihired" twitter to make another real tech company without hitting all the barriers and filtering even an infinite blood-money funded startup will hit. They threw out the baby, but the bath water is still there, and cloudy and a bit cold.
  - random314 4y ago
    After 15 years of existence Twitter was 2B dollars in the black. That's more than 100M$ for every year that Twitter has existed. The business is now in the red in the excess of 10B dollars because Elon put a 13B dollar loan on the company's books. The company was running fine even after the market crash until Elon took over. It's in the red now, not because of bloated employees- but because of Elon Musk.
hatenberg 4y ago
It is if you are only pursuing an. US election influence opportunity. He laid off 90% of Asia and much of EU, betraying his bullshit about mission and vision. This is just him spending money for a seat at the table with a specific party
- ncr100 4y ago
  Another win for Putin through another Putin influenced US-based unstable personality.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  He tried to lay off EU employees, his US actions are void as per employment law in most European countries, and several countries are looking into it.
- ralph84 4y ago
  It's more than just that. You can buy a seat at the table for a lot less than $44 billion. SBF got a seat for $40 million.

guywithahat 4y ago

https://archive.ph/FCoa0 https://archive.ph/FCoa0 I wonder how much of this is actually due to employees leaving/being fired and how much is just due to increased regulatory interest due to Twitter having new owners? As we've seen a lot of the content issues are due to organizations attempting to get twitter in trouble since Elon is perceived to be "anti-establishment" by many https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1595630109116989440 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1595630109116989440, and GDPR has a reputation for not being enforced equally. One has to wonder whether things have actually changed or if they're just getting regulated differently now

isthisthingon99 4y ago
Anti establishment would be celebrated in the west for example when we celebrate women being anti establishment in Iran.
- PeterStuer 4y ago
  Because that is not anti-western establishment.
  - isthisthingon99 4y ago
    I'm confused why I got down voted
zimpenfish 4y ago
> how much of this is actually due to employees leaving/being fired Pretty much every position named in the FTC consent decree appears to have left which means they have no-one to handle that and, apparently, there's an audit due in January. This is not "just due to increased regulatory interest due to Twitter having new owners" - it's the existing consent decree they have to work under.
anticristi 4y ago
The EU recently passed the Digital Service Act which expecting regulates very large platforms, like Twitter. Curious to see when Twitter gets the first "dark pattern" fine.

Ambolia 4y ago

Last week Twitter was supposed to break in a couple of days. Now it will have regulatory problems any time soon. I'll be interested when Twitter has actual issues instead of crazy conspiracy theory of the day about the future problems that are sure to come, never to be spoken about again if the prediction doesn't turn out to be true.

medler 4y ago
Twitter has been having actual issues. I have routinely been seeing “this tweet is unavailable,” and have to refresh once or twice to get the tweet to load. The old Twitter kept on top of those kinds of issues because having a reliable app is key to keeping ad money rolling in. New Twitter hasn’t had a major outage yet, but the degradation in various services kind of suggests that the remaining SREs/ops people are overwhelmed, since they can’t even keep up the full functionality of the site.
senttoschool 4y ago
I've been seeing way more spam posts.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
BulgarianIdiot 4y ago
> Last week Twitter was supposed to break in a couple of days. The "it was supposed to break in a couple of days" meme is an often repeated strawman by Elon's defenders. Can you point to any ex-Twitter employee claiming Twitter is supposed to break in a couple of days? Most said the system is built to be resilient, as long as THERE ARE NO CHANGES MADE TO IT. And no significant outages, hacker attacks, and so on challenges. You tell me, can Twitter coast indefinitely without changes? How do they plan to monetize it without changes? And without advertisers? The problem is Elon and his goons are randomly shutting down things in attempt to "remove the bloat" and then they don't know how to turn them on. So things have been breaking in the last few weeks. Any way you look at it, Twitter is on a course to disaster. But like the Titanic, it takes a bit to get there.
croes 4y ago

PM_me_your_math 4y ago

The way twitter was run, the job was probably being done by 5 workers and 16 managers who mostly played corn-hole and 'relaxed' during much of the day. A team that met only for 2 hours after lunch everyday to "knock out some projects" and then wind-down in the smoothie room. I don't know why everyone thinks they can run a large organization better than a man like Elon Musk.

bastawhiz 4y ago
Do you have any evidence at all for that? Any whatsoever?
- infamouscow 4y ago
  The absence of any new features, for years.
  - skinnymuch 4y ago
    I don’t follow Twitter much. Twitter Spaces is newer than years.
  - bastawhiz 4y ago
    Twitter blue, spaces, fleets, double tweet length, alt tags, new web UI. All without material downtime.