4 ms·

> No product improvements, but worse reliability, more spam, and a weird desperate-looking rebrand. What are you talking about? There has been more change at T

by bko 3y ago

> No product improvements, but worse reliability, more spam, and a weird desperate-looking rebrand. What are you talking about? There has been more change at Twitter in the last year than in the last ten. From editable comments, subscriptions, revenue sharing, blue checkmark for sale, alternative check marks for govts and org, culling of old accounts, API restrictions, forcing people to put parody in acct. I noticed a lot less spam as well. A year and a half ago I remember every top reply being crypto scams from fake vitalik accounts I get you prob don't like the guy but saying the product is unchanged is just delusional. Maybe some of the changes are worse but there have been a lot of changes

rsynnott 3y ago
No-one's claiming it's _unchanged_. The word they used was 'improvements'.
- bko 3y ago
  The only change I would say is not an improvement is the api restrictions. Which ones don't you like?
  - bluefishinit 3y ago
    Rate limits, even more censorship, more blue checkmarks, blue checkmarks sorted to the top of threads, can't see accounts if not logged in, growth in scam ads, musk's tweets promoted to everyone's feeds... I'm sure there's more. I stopped using the service because it was never great but now it's one of the worst properties on the internet.
    - rsynnott 3y ago
      > musk's tweets promoted to everyone's feeds... Almost surprisingly, blocking him does still appear to work. Though it will sometimes have him in the list of suggestions to follow, even if you've blocked him...
    - ajmurmann 3y ago
      To add some recent gems: * everyone's DM settings got changed to only allow DMs from blue checkmarks/Musk sycophants * There are now rate limits on DMs unless you pay for the checkmark These changes of course are justified with spam reduction. IMO the best spam reduction would be to allow me to hide all tweets from people who pay for a checkmark and didn't have one pre-Musk
kaba0 3y ago
Changes for the worse. Also, you might want to check out that crypto scam timeline.
delecti 3y ago
Editable comments and subscriptions predate Musk. Alternative check marks and forcing people to put parody in the account were both caused by the idiotic decision to put blue checkmarks for sale. There's no need to conspicuously identify government/business accounts as "no really, this is for real" if you haven't completely devalued the "no really, this is for real" symbol of your platform. And there's no need to put "parody" on an Elon parody account if you can clearly see that it's not verified. Are you saying that API restrictions is a good thing? You seem to be suggesting that, but I don't know why you'd feel that way. Revenue sharing just incentivizes inflammatory behavior, which is an obvious net-negative for the platform as a whole. Culling of old accounts is neutral at best. And the DM spam problems were basically unchanged until just the past week when he forced everyone's DMs closed. He did manage to introduce new spam problems though, because now every large account's replies is full of the most braindead nonsense, just because the user paid $8. I'll gladly take crypto spam instead this. Also, the text you quoted said "no product improvements", but you're saying that the product is not "unchanged". I agree the product has been changed, but I would agree with the GP's statement that there haven't been improvements.
- bko 3y ago
  Blue checkmarks should be available to all or should have objective rules for qualification. It was used as a carrot and a stick. The opaque process refused people with millions of followers and gave it to others with a few k followers and no notoriety. It was extremely political. It should be available to all and not just the annoited class. More explicit tags like govt or corp are a no brainier.i shouldn't have to guess if this is a personal account, corp or govt As for revenue sharing, take musk out of the picture and if I were to ask about a social platform that is primarily supported by subscriptions and content generators get paid, you would be all for it. Do you apply the same criticism with YouTube sharing revenue? Come on, I can't take you seriously for criticizing a social network for sharing revenue with creators. We're just so far apart on basic values nothing I can say could change your mind
  - delecti 3y ago
    I agree the verification process was flawed. It was supposed to be "this person is who they seem to be", and it became also a symbol of prestige. That needed to be addressed, likely by being a bit more available (though I don't think available to all is the right move), and also by just suspending/banning anyone who broke rules badly enough to get their badge taken away. But blasting the doors open and removing a symbol of trust is a pretty clear example of throwing out the baby with the bath water. And I agree more explicit tags are also good, but they became necessary because Elon nuked the previous system. A few gentle changes could have addressed all the problems. The kind of toxicity and algorithmic pushing of content on Twitter isn't quite like other platforms. Users are regularly exposed to content from deliberately inflammatory users. Your timeline can be filled with retweets, suggested content, or replies to accounts you don't follow by accounts you do. Adding a monetary reward for being inflammatory before addressing the toxicity is the problem. Adding revenue share to Twitter is like throwing money into a mosh pit; it wasn't done thoughtfully enough to not make things worse. If Musk wanted to expand revenue share, he could have done it in thoughtful ways. Expanding the subscriptions feature would have been a good start.

by bko 3y ago

rsynnott 3y ago

No-one's claiming it's _unchanged_. The word they used was 'improvements'.

bko 3y ago
The only change I would say is not an improvement is the api restrictions. Which ones don't you like?
- bluefishinit 3y ago
  Rate limits, even more censorship, more blue checkmarks, blue checkmarks sorted to the top of threads, can't see accounts if not logged in, growth in scam ads, musk's tweets promoted to everyone's feeds... I'm sure there's more. I stopped using the service because it was never great but now it's one of the worst properties on the internet.
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    > musk's tweets promoted to everyone's feeds... Almost surprisingly, blocking him does still appear to work. Though it will sometimes have him in the list of suggestions to follow, even if you've blocked him...
  - ajmurmann 3y ago
    To add some recent gems: * everyone's DM settings got changed to only allow DMs from blue checkmarks/Musk sycophants * There are now rate limits on DMs unless you pay for the checkmark These changes of course are justified with spam reduction. IMO the best spam reduction would be to allow me to hide all tweets from people who pay for a checkmark and didn't have one pre-Musk

kaba0 3y ago

Changes for the worse. Also, you might want to check out that crypto scam timeline.

delecti 3y ago

Editable comments and subscriptions predate Musk. Alternative check marks and forcing people to put parody in the account were both caused by the idiotic decision to put blue checkmarks for sale. There's no need to conspicuously identify government/business accounts as "no really, this is for real" if you haven't completely devalued the "no really, this is for real" symbol of your platform. And there's no need to put "parody" on an Elon parody account if you can clearly see that it's not verified. Are you saying that API restrictions is a good thing? You seem to be suggesting that, but I don't know why you'd feel that way. Revenue sharing just incentivizes inflammatory behavior, which is an obvious net-negative for the platform as a whole. Culling of old accounts is neutral at best. And the DM spam problems were basically unchanged until just the past week when he forced everyone's DMs closed. He did manage to introduce new spam problems though, because now every large account's replies is full of the most braindead nonsense, just because the user paid $8. I'll gladly take crypto spam instead this. Also, the text you quoted said "no product improvements", but you're saying that the product is not "unchanged". I agree the product has been changed, but I would agree with the GP's statement that there haven't been improvements.

bko 3y ago
Blue checkmarks should be available to all or should have objective rules for qualification. It was used as a carrot and a stick. The opaque process refused people with millions of followers and gave it to others with a few k followers and no notoriety. It was extremely political. It should be available to all and not just the annoited class. More explicit tags like govt or corp are a no brainier.i shouldn't have to guess if this is a personal account, corp or govt As for revenue sharing, take musk out of the picture and if I were to ask about a social platform that is primarily supported by subscriptions and content generators get paid, you would be all for it. Do you apply the same criticism with YouTube sharing revenue? Come on, I can't take you seriously for criticizing a social network for sharing revenue with creators. We're just so far apart on basic values nothing I can say could change your mind
- delecti 3y ago
  I agree the verification process was flawed. It was supposed to be "this person is who they seem to be", and it became also a symbol of prestige. That needed to be addressed, likely by being a bit more available (though I don't think available to all is the right move), and also by just suspending/banning anyone who broke rules badly enough to get their badge taken away. But blasting the doors open and removing a symbol of trust is a pretty clear example of throwing out the baby with the bath water. And I agree more explicit tags are also good, but they became necessary because Elon nuked the previous system. A few gentle changes could have addressed all the problems. The kind of toxicity and algorithmic pushing of content on Twitter isn't quite like other platforms. Users are regularly exposed to content from deliberately inflammatory users. Your timeline can be filled with retweets, suggested content, or replies to accounts you don't follow by accounts you do. Adding a monetary reward for being inflammatory before addressing the toxicity is the problem. Adding revenue share to Twitter is like throwing money into a mosh pit; it wasn't done thoughtfully enough to not make things worse. If Musk wanted to expand revenue share, he could have done it in thoughtful ways. Expanding the subscriptions feature would have been a good start.