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>like Musk and SBF I‘m sorry, but what? Just to give some perspective that I don’t think HN really gets: most of my friends have increased their twitter usage

>like Musk and SBF I‘m sorry, but what? Just to give some perspective that I don’t think HN really gets: most of my friends have increased their twitter usage. If you aren’t aware, whatever the team did there a few days ago really has appeared to cut bots down to almost 0. SBF is an [alleged] criminal who has [allegedly] defrauded people of billions of dollars, and will likely be spending a substantial amount of time in prison for it. These things aren’t the same. A restaurant changing their menu to suit a larger audience is not “hubris” simply because it no longer caters to you.

SilverBirch 4y ago
Just for reference what Musk did is just blocked half the mobile carriers in emerging markets, kneecapping their ability to grow Twitter in those countries whilst only temporarily tamping down on bots. The bots will be back, the users won't.
- blululu 4y ago
  Honest question: are low income users viable for an ad supported platform? As it is I think only North American online ads actually make decent money, though perhaps European and Asian ad markets also deliver value close to break even. It is all an investment in the future. The last 15 years have had a belief that more users means more money but this might be thinking that all users are the same when some are much more valuable than others.
  - SilverBirch 4y ago
    Meta makes revenues of about $15Bn in US & Canada, $8Bn in the EU and $10Boutside of EU & US/Canada each year. So it's clearly not nothing, and it's not like Twitter can afford to be picky about where it makes money.
    - CamelCaseName 4y ago
      Meta is insanely deep in those countries outside the EU/US/CA though. As in, they are "the" internet for users who get it for free on their mobile plans and everything else costs exorbitant amounts of money. I don't quite think Elon could do that, unless Starlink really takes off I suppose.
    - AmericanChopper 4y ago
      > it's not like Twitter can afford to be picky about where it makes money. Being picky about where you make your money is absolutely essential for most businesses. Every dollar in revenue costs some amount of money to generate, and choosing the right market segments to invest that money in is a foundational part of a business plan.
    - blululu 4y ago
      Revenue is not profit. It costs money to serve content. The EU has a 1.5x population of NA so that means it is only a third the revenue per user. The third segment has 6x population of NA so the revenue per user is only ~8% of a NA user and that population’s revenue stream is probably dominated by Japan, Korea, Australia and wealthy countries. At a certain point it costs more to serve content than ads will pay. Twitter doesn’t have the pockets to run a loss as an investment indefinitely so it needs to be picky about where it spends money.
  - blamazon 4y ago
    "Mitchell and Webb - Kill The Poor": https://youtu.be/owI7DOeO_yg https://youtu.be/owI7DOeO_yg
  - blitzar 4y ago
    I thought it was a town square for the world? The most important town square for the world.
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  If the plan was to do something short term while a better, longer term fix, is put into place, that sounds reasonable.
- ollien 4y ago
  Do you have a source on this?
  - matwood 4y ago
    https://www.platformer.news/p/how-elon-botched-his-war-on-bots https://www.platformer.news/p/how-elon-botched-his-war-on-bo... > The project was part of Elon Musk’s attempt to rid Twitter of spam. But rather than work to remove individual offenders, the company identified mobile networks associated with large spam networks in specific countries, and blocked users who relied on those networks from receiving SMS messages from Twitter, impacting people with two-factor authentication. Then it blocked traffic from those carriers completely. > From 5:35 AM to 6:45 AM PT on Sunday, Twitter shut down access to the primary telecom providers in India and Russia, as well as the second biggest telecom company in Indonesia, Platformer has learned.
katbyte 4y ago
> most of my friends have increased their twitter usage. it doesn't matter if people use the platform more if they don't pay for the blue check or if advertisers are not interested in paying for ads.
- HN_is_for_gemes 4y ago
  Yes, because marketers don't care about audience size and they have a long history of being strictly moral people.
  - linuxftw 4y ago
    I qualify as a marketer. I don't want my ads seen by people not local to my market. Audience size alone isn't useful, it's about target audience, of which, almost none of that would have been blocked recently. (I don't use or market on twitter).
  - PhasmaFelis 4y ago
    Marketers care very much about the context their ads appear in, which is why they're leaving Twitter in droves. https://www.npr.org/2022/11/25/1139180002/twitter-loses-50-top-advertisers-elon-musk https://www.npr.org/2022/11/25/1139180002/twitter-loses-50-t... Musk has already had one public tantrum about it. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1597285572699074560 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1597285572699074560
  - uoaei 4y ago
    It's almost like they don't have infinite money and need to decide where to allocate their resources.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
misiti3780 4y ago
actualwitch 4y ago
> Just to give some perspective that I don’t think HN really gets: most of my friends have increased their twitter usage. So your friends are using twitter more and you just assume everyone else does too? Have you considered that people who have other opinions exist and theirs is as valid as yours?
- zeven7 4y ago
  > Have you considered that people who have other opinions exist and theirs is as valid as yours? I think parent is saying the opposite. "Just to give some perspective that I don’t think HN really gets" Parent has seen several comments assuming everyone's leaving Twitter and Musk is destroying the platform and himself and will never recover. I, likewise, reading Reddit get the same feeling that some pockets think everybody is leaving Twitter and going to Mastadon or something like this is a big cultural revolution. I think that is true in some pockets, but like parent I don't think anyone except Musk really knows what the actual engagement numbers look like, and even he doesn't know what they'll look like long term. But he is clearly making a bet, and it's silly for a biased hivemind to already assume his downfall when it actually hasn't happened yet. Just like there was a broad assumption that Twitter would have all kinds of technical issues after most of the staff was fired. Maybe that's still to come, but it hasn't really happened yet, and it can't be assumed. Twitter isn't necessarily going to be an epic failure, and it's strange how some pockets of the internet feel they should make that assertion, whether you agree with Musk's politics or not. And politics is what it really comes down to. Politics is what drives the desire for these communities to see Musk fail, nothing else. And at any rate it is very strange to compare Musk to SBF in any way.
  - matwood 4y ago
    Everyone assumed my comment about hubris referred to how he's running Twitter now. I think what he's doing is dumb, but that's not my point. His biggest problem is he way overpaid, and saddled the company with a ton of debt. My hubris comment was referring to him talking big and signing a deal he never intended to follow through on. He could run Twitter perfectly and still be forced into bankruptcy by the end of '23. IMO, that's a very likely scenario.
mradek 4y ago
Twitter use is up because everyone wants to see the sometimes insane tweets put their by their top leadership. I had never used twitter prior to Elon taking over, and I made an account to check it out for a week or two. Ultimately stopped using it because it isn’t really for me. I also don’t care enough for anyone’s opinion that much that I’m willing to scroll through insanity, bots, and a holes to find a nugget. But I’m sure millions of others do enjoy that. HN is my fav social media lol.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
kibwen 4y ago
> most of my friends have increased their twitter usage Meanwhile, all of my friends have erased their Twitter accounts (some migrating to Mastodon, others to other social media sites, others happily forgoing social media at all), all of the organizations I'm a part of have stopped using Twitter for official communication, the subreddits I follow have banned Twitter links, and my product has removed its Twitter integration. Large swathes of the internet are defederating from Twitter.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
matwood 4y ago
If we assume (big assumption) Musk has done everything right since the closing, he may still just be rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic. His hubris got him stuck in a deal way over paying for Twitter. I think he thought he could run his mouth and get out of any real consequence like he's done every other time. Except this time he found out.
astrange 4y ago
I've gotten more bots, all three of crypto pump replies, sexy women accounts following me, and group DMs about job offers in Japanese.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Aaronstotle 4y ago
Everyday I am tagged in a crypto bot spam comment and get invited to a spam group DM. Twitter still has issues
_hcuq 4y ago
Are your friends buying advertising on Twitter?

SilverBirch 4y ago

Just for reference what Musk did is just blocked half the mobile carriers in emerging markets, kneecapping their ability to grow Twitter in those countries whilst only temporarily tamping down on bots. The bots will be back, the users won't.

blululu 4y ago
Honest question: are low income users viable for an ad supported platform? As it is I think only North American online ads actually make decent money, though perhaps European and Asian ad markets also deliver value close to break even. It is all an investment in the future. The last 15 years have had a belief that more users means more money but this might be thinking that all users are the same when some are much more valuable than others.
- SilverBirch 4y ago
  Meta makes revenues of about $15Bn in US & Canada, $8Bn in the EU and $10Boutside of EU & US/Canada each year. So it's clearly not nothing, and it's not like Twitter can afford to be picky about where it makes money.
  - CamelCaseName 4y ago
    Meta is insanely deep in those countries outside the EU/US/CA though. As in, they are "the" internet for users who get it for free on their mobile plans and everything else costs exorbitant amounts of money. I don't quite think Elon could do that, unless Starlink really takes off I suppose.
  - AmericanChopper 4y ago
    > it's not like Twitter can afford to be picky about where it makes money. Being picky about where you make your money is absolutely essential for most businesses. Every dollar in revenue costs some amount of money to generate, and choosing the right market segments to invest that money in is a foundational part of a business plan.
  - blululu 4y ago
    Revenue is not profit. It costs money to serve content. The EU has a 1.5x population of NA so that means it is only a third the revenue per user. The third segment has 6x population of NA so the revenue per user is only ~8% of a NA user and that population’s revenue stream is probably dominated by Japan, Korea, Australia and wealthy countries. At a certain point it costs more to serve content than ads will pay. Twitter doesn’t have the pockets to run a loss as an investment indefinitely so it needs to be picky about where it spends money.
- blamazon 4y ago
  "Mitchell and Webb - Kill The Poor": https://youtu.be/owI7DOeO_yg https://youtu.be/owI7DOeO_yg
- blitzar 4y ago
  I thought it was a town square for the world? The most important town square for the world.
P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
If the plan was to do something short term while a better, longer term fix, is put into place, that sounds reasonable.
ollien 4y ago
Do you have a source on this?
- matwood 4y ago
  https://www.platformer.news/p/how-elon-botched-his-war-on-bots https://www.platformer.news/p/how-elon-botched-his-war-on-bo... > The project was part of Elon Musk’s attempt to rid Twitter of spam. But rather than work to remove individual offenders, the company identified mobile networks associated with large spam networks in specific countries, and blocked users who relied on those networks from receiving SMS messages from Twitter, impacting people with two-factor authentication. Then it blocked traffic from those carriers completely. > From 5:35 AM to 6:45 AM PT on Sunday, Twitter shut down access to the primary telecom providers in India and Russia, as well as the second biggest telecom company in Indonesia, Platformer has learned.

katbyte 4y ago

> most of my friends have increased their twitter usage. it doesn't matter if people use the platform more if they don't pay for the blue check or if advertisers are not interested in paying for ads.

HN_is_for_gemes 4y ago
Yes, because marketers don't care about audience size and they have a long history of being strictly moral people.
- linuxftw 4y ago
  I qualify as a marketer. I don't want my ads seen by people not local to my market. Audience size alone isn't useful, it's about target audience, of which, almost none of that would have been blocked recently. (I don't use or market on twitter).
- PhasmaFelis 4y ago
  Marketers care very much about the context their ads appear in, which is why they're leaving Twitter in droves. https://www.npr.org/2022/11/25/1139180002/twitter-loses-50-top-advertisers-elon-musk https://www.npr.org/2022/11/25/1139180002/twitter-loses-50-t... Musk has already had one public tantrum about it. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1597285572699074560 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1597285572699074560
- uoaei 4y ago
  It's almost like they don't have infinite money and need to decide where to allocate their resources.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

misiti3780 4y ago

actualwitch 4y ago

> Just to give some perspective that I don’t think HN really gets: most of my friends have increased their twitter usage. So your friends are using twitter more and you just assume everyone else does too? Have you considered that people who have other opinions exist and theirs is as valid as yours?

zeven7 4y ago
> Have you considered that people who have other opinions exist and theirs is as valid as yours? I think parent is saying the opposite. "Just to give some perspective that I don’t think HN really gets" Parent has seen several comments assuming everyone's leaving Twitter and Musk is destroying the platform and himself and will never recover. I, likewise, reading Reddit get the same feeling that some pockets think everybody is leaving Twitter and going to Mastadon or something like this is a big cultural revolution. I think that is true in some pockets, but like parent I don't think anyone except Musk really knows what the actual engagement numbers look like, and even he doesn't know what they'll look like long term. But he is clearly making a bet, and it's silly for a biased hivemind to already assume his downfall when it actually hasn't happened yet. Just like there was a broad assumption that Twitter would have all kinds of technical issues after most of the staff was fired. Maybe that's still to come, but it hasn't really happened yet, and it can't be assumed. Twitter isn't necessarily going to be an epic failure, and it's strange how some pockets of the internet feel they should make that assertion, whether you agree with Musk's politics or not. And politics is what it really comes down to. Politics is what drives the desire for these communities to see Musk fail, nothing else. And at any rate it is very strange to compare Musk to SBF in any way.
- matwood 4y ago
  Everyone assumed my comment about hubris referred to how he's running Twitter now. I think what he's doing is dumb, but that's not my point. His biggest problem is he way overpaid, and saddled the company with a ton of debt. My hubris comment was referring to him talking big and signing a deal he never intended to follow through on. He could run Twitter perfectly and still be forced into bankruptcy by the end of '23. IMO, that's a very likely scenario.

mradek 4y ago

Twitter use is up because everyone wants to see the sometimes insane tweets put their by their top leadership. I had never used twitter prior to Elon taking over, and I made an account to check it out for a week or two. Ultimately stopped using it because it isn’t really for me. I also don’t care enough for anyone’s opinion that much that I’m willing to scroll through insanity, bots, and a holes to find a nugget. But I’m sure millions of others do enjoy that. HN is my fav social media lol.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

kibwen 4y ago

> most of my friends have increased their twitter usage Meanwhile, all of my friends have erased their Twitter accounts (some migrating to Mastodon, others to other social media sites, others happily forgoing social media at all), all of the organizations I'm a part of have stopped using Twitter for official communication, the subreddits I follow have banned Twitter links, and my product has removed its Twitter integration. Large swathes of the internet are defederating from Twitter.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

matwood 4y ago

If we assume (big assumption) Musk has done everything right since the closing, he may still just be rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic. His hubris got him stuck in a deal way over paying for Twitter. I think he thought he could run his mouth and get out of any real consequence like he's done every other time. Except this time he found out.

astrange 4y ago

I've gotten more bots, all three of crypto pump replies, sexy women accounts following me, and group DMs about job offers in Japanese.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Aaronstotle 4y ago

Everyday I am tagged in a crypto bot spam comment and get invited to a spam group DM. Twitter still has issues

_hcuq 4y ago

Are your friends buying advertising on Twitter?