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This is such a disingenuous take. Twitter isn’t just a web page that displays the last thing saved to a database. It curates a different version of that for the

This is such a disingenuous take. Twitter isn’t just a web page that displays the last thing saved to a database. It curates a different version of that for the millions of users reading it. That’s before you think about Spaces, the whole advertising platform that supports it, the abuse systems, and the infrastructure required to do all of that at a scale far beyond some bootcamp clone. HN discourse should be above this.

TillE 3y ago
Just to give one example, I (and many others) have tens of thousands of blocked accounts. How do you implement that efficiently, at scale? Are you gonna do an extra database check for every single tweet that comes my way? Hopefully not. And if you think about how Twitter works for five seconds, just consider everything that has to happen when an account with 100M followers posts a tweet. It's an absolute nightmare.
- chirau 3y ago
  Out of curiosity, what do you mean by tens of thousands of blocked accounts? Are those your bot accounts that get blocked or it is you blocking people from your feed?
  - hapidjus 3y ago
    I think they’re referring to accounts that they blocked, so that content from those accounts wont show up in the feed.
- sprite 3y ago
  A bit off topic, but any book/article recommendations for building things at Twitter/IG scale? I know for example IG switched to a "fan-out" approach early on to handle accounts with a lot of users. Would love to learn more about this.
  - CapricornNoble 3y ago
    In some previous HN thread, I dialed in on a recommendation for "Designing Data-Intensive Applications" by Martin Kleppmann, which I honestly still haven't gotten around to reading so....YMMV. Maybe if you search HN for that book title, it might lead you to other useful discussions?
poisonarena 3y ago
> HN discourse should be above this. vomit inducing "Be better" post.. "I disagree with you so your comment shouldn't be allowed here"

TillE 3y ago

Just to give one example, I (and many others) have tens of thousands of blocked accounts. How do you implement that efficiently, at scale? Are you gonna do an extra database check for every single tweet that comes my way? Hopefully not. And if you think about how Twitter works for five seconds, just consider everything that has to happen when an account with 100M followers posts a tweet. It's an absolute nightmare.

chirau 3y ago
Out of curiosity, what do you mean by tens of thousands of blocked accounts? Are those your bot accounts that get blocked or it is you blocking people from your feed?
- hapidjus 3y ago
  I think they’re referring to accounts that they blocked, so that content from those accounts wont show up in the feed.
sprite 3y ago
A bit off topic, but any book/article recommendations for building things at Twitter/IG scale? I know for example IG switched to a "fan-out" approach early on to handle accounts with a lot of users. Would love to learn more about this.
- CapricornNoble 3y ago
  In some previous HN thread, I dialed in on a recommendation for "Designing Data-Intensive Applications" by Martin Kleppmann, which I honestly still haven't gotten around to reading so....YMMV. Maybe if you search HN for that book title, it might lead you to other useful discussions?

poisonarena 3y ago

> HN discourse should be above this. vomit inducing "Be better" post.. "I disagree with you so your comment shouldn't be allowed here"