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So many unnecessarily cynical takes here. Let's say you were in charge of a large legacy system that some segment of customers complain about it not working for

So many unnecessarily cynical takes here. Let's say you were in charge of a large legacy system that some segment of customers complain about it not working for them as well as other segments. How would you know whether their complaints are valid unless you measured it? You have to know first. So measure it.

xmprt 4y ago
I understand the value of measurements but how does measuring tweets from an individual user help?
- dorkwood 4y ago
  If engagement on the tweets of that user goes down after a change has been implemented, you can roll back the change to prevent that user from being negatively impacted.
  - nrb 4y ago
    What if engagements around that user naturally declined, perhaps due to that user going off the deep end. Wouldn’t this just serve to bias the algorithm toward propping up the exposure of that user? Do they even care about the control so long as that user’s engagement is up and to the right?
    - TigeriusKirk 4y ago
      He's very likely the user on the platform with the most engagement, and probably by a long distance. From that viewpoint, it does make some sense to use his account as measurement point.
    - v0idzer0 4y ago
      Come on think this through. It’s trivial to tell the difference between a gradual and natural decline and a drastic decline immediately after rolling out a change. Especially when the change is rolled out region by region and only exists in regions running the update. You have to be able to measure the effect of changes and the most popular accounts are the obvious low hanging fruit for doing that.
    - Jorge1o1 4y ago
      You do an A/B test so even for the same tweet or same time period, you’re just comparing the new, “treatment” group against the old “control group.”
davesque 4y ago
Yeah, but then what do you do after you measure it? Nothing? No, you make decisions differently so as not to offend whoever is part of the criteria. For example, can we agree that we don't want an "author_is_flat_earther" flag? Because who gives a shit if Twitter makes a change to their recommendation engine that negatively affects flag earthers? Just because something is only used for A/B testing doesn't make it completely inert.
- blackoil 4y ago
  flat_earther can be a a proxy for conspiracy theories. They may want to know if there is a swing.
- gpm 4y ago
  There could be an argument for an "author is a flat earther" flag with the intention of those tweets being repeated by twitter less.
  - scott_w 4y ago
    Do you think Elon bought Twitter so he can bury his own tweets?
    - just-tom 4y ago
      Actually, that's a refreshing take. (No).
slg 4y ago
You can dismiss the complaint without measurement if you are confident in two things: 1. Your system does nothing to actually segment this specific group by their identity. 2. You are confident that the systems you have set up to reward good behavior and punish bad behavior are accurate. If both of those are true, you know that even if the group is being disproportionately negatively impacted by some form of recommendation/moderation, that it is only because that group disproportionately participates in behavior that is bad for the platform. That isn't a problem. It would actually be worse for the platform overall if you did anything to appease that group.
- jurassic 4y ago
  > ...it is only because that group disproportionately participates in behavior that is bad for the platform. That isn't a problem. That is exactly what Twitter's stance has been all along (in the pre-Elon era) and it IS a problem for the product because people being silenced due to their own bad behavior (example: misgendering transgender people) feel an injustice is being done. The rule-makers get to set the range of acceptable discourse on Twitter and those to the right of center have felt unfairly disadvantaged by the way it was done in the past. Over time this has eroded trust in the product. Just because people aren't being labeled and ranked based on whether they are red team or blue team, the people deciding what "good" and "bad" behavior looks like on the platform have the power to disproportionately impact these groups.
  - slg 4y ago
    Data isn't going to tell Twitter whether to allow or disallow misgendering people. You either think that is bad behavior that shouldn't be allowed or you don't. Disallowing it is not disadvantaging Republicans. It is stopping behavior Twitter has deemed is bad for the platform. As I said in point 2 above, either Twitter is confident in those decisions or not. Data is worthless when it comes to a moral decision like that. And if we accept hat Twitter believes (or more accurately did believe) that misgendering people is wrong, who cares whether people who want to do it feel an injustice is being done? Would anyone say that deleting spam is an injustice to spammers? You break the rules and you get punished.
marricks 4y ago
Elon has said he wanted more reach and experimented with getting it. He also loves attention and tweets a ton. There’s benefit of the doubt then there’s just… whatever the polar opposite of that is.
- nwiswell 4y ago
  The penalty of the certain
- ModernMech 4y ago
  Presumption of guilt.
lazyeye 4y ago
I've never seen so many "experts" speaking from a position of complete ignorance than I do on Hacker News.

xmprt 4y ago

I understand the value of measurements but how does measuring tweets from an individual user help?

dorkwood 4y ago
If engagement on the tweets of that user goes down after a change has been implemented, you can roll back the change to prevent that user from being negatively impacted.
- nrb 4y ago
  What if engagements around that user naturally declined, perhaps due to that user going off the deep end. Wouldn’t this just serve to bias the algorithm toward propping up the exposure of that user? Do they even care about the control so long as that user’s engagement is up and to the right?
  - TigeriusKirk 4y ago
    He's very likely the user on the platform with the most engagement, and probably by a long distance. From that viewpoint, it does make some sense to use his account as measurement point.
  - v0idzer0 4y ago
    Come on think this through. It’s trivial to tell the difference between a gradual and natural decline and a drastic decline immediately after rolling out a change. Especially when the change is rolled out region by region and only exists in regions running the update. You have to be able to measure the effect of changes and the most popular accounts are the obvious low hanging fruit for doing that.
  - Jorge1o1 4y ago
    You do an A/B test so even for the same tweet or same time period, you’re just comparing the new, “treatment” group against the old “control group.”

davesque 4y ago

Yeah, but then what do you do after you measure it? Nothing? No, you make decisions differently so as not to offend whoever is part of the criteria. For example, can we agree that we don't want an "author_is_flat_earther" flag? Because who gives a shit if Twitter makes a change to their recommendation engine that negatively affects flag earthers? Just because something is only used for A/B testing doesn't make it completely inert.

blackoil 4y ago
flat_earther can be a a proxy for conspiracy theories. They may want to know if there is a swing.
gpm 4y ago
There could be an argument for an "author is a flat earther" flag with the intention of those tweets being repeated by twitter less.
- scott_w 4y ago
  Do you think Elon bought Twitter so he can bury his own tweets?
  - just-tom 4y ago
    Actually, that's a refreshing take. (No).

slg 4y ago

You can dismiss the complaint without measurement if you are confident in two things: 1. Your system does nothing to actually segment this specific group by their identity. 2. You are confident that the systems you have set up to reward good behavior and punish bad behavior are accurate. If both of those are true, you know that even if the group is being disproportionately negatively impacted by some form of recommendation/moderation, that it is only because that group disproportionately participates in behavior that is bad for the platform. That isn't a problem. It would actually be worse for the platform overall if you did anything to appease that group.

jurassic 4y ago
> ...it is only because that group disproportionately participates in behavior that is bad for the platform. That isn't a problem. That is exactly what Twitter's stance has been all along (in the pre-Elon era) and it IS a problem for the product because people being silenced due to their own bad behavior (example: misgendering transgender people) feel an injustice is being done. The rule-makers get to set the range of acceptable discourse on Twitter and those to the right of center have felt unfairly disadvantaged by the way it was done in the past. Over time this has eroded trust in the product. Just because people aren't being labeled and ranked based on whether they are red team or blue team, the people deciding what "good" and "bad" behavior looks like on the platform have the power to disproportionately impact these groups.
- slg 4y ago
  Data isn't going to tell Twitter whether to allow or disallow misgendering people. You either think that is bad behavior that shouldn't be allowed or you don't. Disallowing it is not disadvantaging Republicans. It is stopping behavior Twitter has deemed is bad for the platform. As I said in point 2 above, either Twitter is confident in those decisions or not. Data is worthless when it comes to a moral decision like that. And if we accept hat Twitter believes (or more accurately did believe) that misgendering people is wrong, who cares whether people who want to do it feel an injustice is being done? Would anyone say that deleting spam is an injustice to spammers? You break the rules and you get punished.

marricks 4y ago

Elon has said he wanted more reach and experimented with getting it. He also loves attention and tweets a ton. There’s benefit of the doubt then there’s just… whatever the polar opposite of that is.

nwiswell 4y ago
The penalty of the certain
ModernMech 4y ago
Presumption of guilt.

lazyeye 4y ago

I've never seen so many "experts" speaking from a position of complete ignorance than I do on Hacker News.