It does have this gem in it:
"What has changed, however, is our approach to experimentation. As you’ve seen over the past several weeks, Twitter is embracing public testing. We believe that this open and transparent approach to innovation is healthy, as it enables us to move faster and gather user feedback in real-time. We believe that a service of this importance will benefit from feedback at scale, and that there is value in being open about our experiments and what we are learning. We do all of this work with one goal in mind: to improve Twitter for our customers, partners, and the people who use it across the world."
What a weird thing to say... A/B tests are a thing, does anyone buy that experimenting with new things by rolling out new features to all users at once is a good strategy?
"Network Experimentation at Scale" from Facebook describes how difficult this problem is. Most A/B test frameworks don't reach this level of sophistication. It does make some sense to just ship things if you don't have time to build out something like that. (disclosure: I worked at Twitter long ago)
Its just a diplomatic rephrasing of Elon’s “do lots of dumb things” tweet:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1590384919829962752?t=cc...
But advertisers who have pulled out because of distrust and lack of stability aren’t likely to be reassured by rationalizations for the policy instability, they’ll just be confirmed in their decisions to wait to see how things shake out.
And regulators concerned about noncompliance with binding rules aren't going to care about a PR rationalization at all, except insofar as it provides evidence that the failures were intentional rather than inadvertent.
It's just a CYA statement, basically saying "oops, I meant to do that...", and leaving the door open to make more oopsies as intentional "experiments".
> Unfortunately, the "move fast and break things" attitude doesn't work with rockets.
You will likely find this comment verbatim from the last 10 years. Given that is so, I can't see how someone could claim that Elon Musk is new to visible experimentation.
This "learn by doing" is going to end up well ... not. Especially when trying to learn by repeating mistakes with completely foreseable consequences, like that blue "verified" badge being available for anyone who pays without any verification.
Almost right.
Charging Tesla owners to beta test their autonomous driving software.
What it means: 'Elon looked bad when the blue checkmark fiasco happened. And more boo boos are on the way. Now Elon doesn't like to look bad. Solution? Everything we do is now covered by "it was just a test" disclaimer. Problem solved.'
Especially when you're trying to help someone and they are seeing something different from what you see.
Regulators, too [1].
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/a07ca1ae-9f9a-46ee-9457-27bb30e18...
To state the obvious, I don't think they are reading the room very well...
It's Latin so it must be smart.
Apparently Twitter had some huge problem with bots when Musk was trying to get out of the purchase. Thankfully he solved the bot problem after the purchase so he could run polls and really get the will of the people and not, you know, all those previously problematic bots.
They need to explain musks antics somehow. More polite wording than idve used.
This is some B-grade best-effort spin on what has been uncontrolled chaos with predictably awful effects.
The only thing keeping Twitter rolling is the majority percentage of the casual niche user in non-political and non-technical niches, who haven't been paying attention to the chaos; and who by virtue of being casual users are not notably surprised at everything that has broken both culturally, wrt safety and content, and technically.
Unfortunately for Leon the money comes from corners who HAVE been paying attention and not only see what's happened, and ongoing—they see through this kind of comedic college-try at handwaving around it.
I signed up for an account after years of refusing to do so after elon took over
I don't think that makes it a good idea though, seems like each failed "experiment" poisons the pool and certainly makes it possible to do experiments in isolation.
Elon's late night tweets always make me think of that scene in The Office where the new CEO (James Spader) decides to close one of the branches without telling anyone and when asked about it he goes "I got into a case of Australian Reds... and... How should I say this, Colombian whites"
This "going to do dumb things" is completely on brand for him with his 5 step manufacturing improvement process, step 1 of which is "make your requirements less dumb".
This is actually how Nike works, having worked there. They try all kinds of weird things aren't aren't afraid to, and then drop the ones that don't work with no regrets, keeping what works. Try new things, fail fast isn't a bad strategy for innovation.
Whether or not it'll work out for twitter remains to be seen. Especially with the rest of biased tech still upset that they lost their monopoly on the narrative arrayed against him.
The costs to "fail fast" (if we're being generous) strategy Twitter employed so far far exceed that
This is the same "trapped enabler" pattern we saw with Trump in the early days, with his staff constantly coming out to try to paper over whatever horrible thing he did. They had no shame, and neither does the Twitter staff that wrote this blog post.
[1] https://archive.ph/xYeYY - TPM article without paywall
[2] https://theintercept.com/2022/11/29/elon-musk-twitter-andy-n...
How though, Twitter has had week(s) to prepare this post and its so bare.
> First, none of our policies have changed. ... The team remains strong and well-resourced.
If you're Eli Lily, why would you re-advertise on twitter. Nothings changed from when you stopped!
Not only would I not buy ads, i'd rethinking even having a corporate presence considering the lack of protections against fraud.
I wonder why they don't have 7/12 polls in court, surely 9/12 is enough to decide a sentence already, and all americans think it's fair, why twitter doesn't freakin comply with 75% poll rule?
We heard almost nothing from Parag and little from Jack when he was running it and experiments were opaque from the outside.
Now we're hearing from the CEO and employees like George Hotz about what they are doing and planning, and they're involving the community, asking for feedback directly.
Reinstating accounts on the basis of a poll, on a platform you have spent months railing for having too many bots, is a good example of CYA transparency.
Our Trust & Safety team continues its diligent work to keep the platform safe from hateful conduct, abusive behavior, and any violation of Twitter's rules
including I suppose Elon's experimental approach to management.
I hope that in 10 years, we will look back at this twitter 2.0 (= musk's debacle) as the impetus that lead to more widespread adoption of social media 2.0 (= federation)
I already see the snowball effect getting momentum with all this coverage (NPR, NYT...) and big name exits (Apple...)
That instead of one poorly managed understaffed silo full of trolls and abusers you have 2000 poorly managed, even more understaffed systems with 2000 different approaches to moderation and content doesn't make anything easier or fixed for people who use Twitter today.
It is the same like we had federated chat with Jabber for 20 years now - and nobody uses it. The best implementations of it ended being the nonfederated ones - like Google Talk or I believe Whatsapp used that protocol. And apart from nerds and some engineers literally has no clue that something like XMPP even exists.
People don't care about the technology, they care where they want to communicate with their friends and network.
The Twitter issues are first and foremost human, business, management and social problems, not something you can throw some network protocols and technology at and declare it solved.
It is not about short-term problem solving. It is about long-term investment in more decentralized social networks. 2000 different approaches is exactly what is needed for "natural selection" to do it job.
> are first and foremost human, business, management and social problems, not something you can throw some network protocols and technology at and declare it solved.
Agreed. But the protocols should by designed to adress and resolve those problems the best they can. This will take a lot of iterations. The more (and sooner) people jump ship, the better chance we have to test and iterate.
Twitter's current issues by and large are a result of trusting corporate media silos with our precious time, data, and safety online. It's wildly unacceptable.
Smaller communities can be more focused and managed. Trying to get everyone in one place agreeing on one set of rules sounds impossible. At least federation has the potential to let groups exist differently as desired.
But it would effectively kill the various cat-and-mouse gaming of the entire system by spammers, scammers, and sub-nation-state adversaries.
I feel HN is not that moderated - bar - I don't feel like it happens that often that people's opinions get disappeared - Imo the main appeal of the site is that people of differing opinions are and worldviews are able to have informed debates about stuff here - even if limited to the world of technology.
You can be sure that if a flood of new users happens, the current system won't scale, and we'd see a diminishing quality of content and comments posted. Some old timers would probably say that has already happened, but it's still largely under control.
This site doesn't have the benefit of, say, Reddit, where niche communities can still exist in relative isolation and with their own moderation rules, even with the amount of users and low quality content on the rest of the site.
Sounds like a change in policy to me.
uh
Corporate doublespeak at its finest.
It'd count as a policy change and "we accept your resignation" would count as a firing.
This is more like a big private club.
They recently unbanned many controversial accounts based solely on Twitter polls. Who do they expect will believe these statements?
https://theintercept.com/2022/11/29/elon-musk-twitter-andy-n...
I'm having a hard time thinking that anyone should be called a journalist -- without mocking quotes -- at this point. After the past couple of years of "reporting" about COVID, vaccines, protests, Ukraine, China, Twitter, etc., et. al., EVERYONE has taken positions at the "fringe."
For 20 years, I've made sense of the news by looking for the pieces of the puzzle where people agree. That is now literally impossible. There is ZERO overlap on ANY issue between the two sides now.
The few actual journalists remaining are known by name, and moving from newspapers to Substack.
Even when Loder is quoted he openly speculated about what happened and says he doesn’t know. The piece is just a tissue of insinuations.
I also wouldn't call Andy Ngo, a gay asian journalist who's spoken in front of congress, far right. He basically records riots in Portland and uploads them to twitter, and he's only right wing in the sense that more republicans watch his videos than democrats
But banning antifa-accounts, that is accounts held by people taking part in month long riots and looting and political real-world violence… that is bad?
Is this satire? Is this an honestly held opinion? Or am I missing something?
This is bullshit on its face. The first sentence and the second sentence directly contradict each other.
The previous policy received acclaim from medical professionals: In an advisory to technology platforms, US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy cited Twitter’s rules as an example of what companies should do to combat misinformation. When journalist Kara Swisher in September 2020 confronted Musk with the possibility that many people could die if they didn’t follow public health recommendations, the man who believes he is making cars safer and saving mankind by going to Mars replied bluntly: “Everybody dies.”
The argument could be made that Elon cares more about virtual, future people than actual people living today.
This is what Longtermists actually believe.
All of whom have now been suspended despite there being no infringement on terms of service.
[CITATION NEEDED]
Musk said they were in "clear violation of ToS." I want to see both the pro- and the anti- on that before passing judgement on the move.
Is there a source on that? Because if so, holy crap... but I'd like to see some evidence.
Are we talking about the same Antifa? Political terrorists, violently attacking civilians for having opposing beliefs?
If inciting real-world political violence and terror is not against the TOS, why were supposedly all those right wingers banned?
Maybe Twitter really didn’t need 7500 people, and maybe having more voices speak is a good thing (there is always block button), and maybe advertisers won’t flee forever. That seems more likely to me than Twitter imploding.
Was it? I read a lot of comments saying that mass-firing people is going to cause immediate degradation in some areas like content moderation (which we have seen) and eventual unpredictable failures in others. If you saw people predicting a sudden crash I'd take their opinion with a pinch of salt in the future, sounds like quite a reactionary take.
> then it was everyone would flee to Mastodon
Well some people have been trying out Mastodon, some have been tinkering with Tumblr or Instagram, and some communities have started to solidify around discord servers and other places. One near-universal thing I've seen is more popular accounts being very vocal about sharing their links to other services with the aim of making Twitter non-essential - so if it goes down, or they'd rather leave then they could do so without starting completely from scratch.
> now it’s that all the advertisers would leave.
To be fair it sounds like a lot of them have, prompting this very letter ...
> Maybe Twitter really didn’t need 7500 people
Maybe. It remains to be seen whether axing so many so suddenly was survivable in the long-term financially or operationally, though.
either way none of what's being done or talked about recently makes me want to start using twitter, maybe they will figure something out i guess
Maybe people just don't need another "online community"
a lot of tech companies is laying off people. Amazon, Facebook...etc.
DoorDash is laying off 1,250 corporate workers. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/30/doordash-lays-off-1250-emplo...
i believe the winter (recession) is coming if not then something is going on that most if not all tech companies is doing layoff or freeze hiring.
This part anyway is not really hypothetical.
https://www.npr.org/2022/11/25/1139180002/twitter-loses-50-t...
If Twitter was a new app just launched, I would think it was a seriously sketchy back alley and not a town square.
Why would they come back? Musk is the Donald Trump of tech - plenty of devoted fans, but not someone brands want to associate themselves with. Even if he wanted to, it doesn't seem that Musk can stop impulsively tweeting controversial things.
Post Musk, Twitter's debt was already going for 70 cents on the dollar, and that's before the news of this week
AFAIK, most of the people I follow are still tweeting; I just don't see as many now.
Pre-2015 Twitter wasn't the apocalypse before all the content moderation policies were rushed in as a response to widespread narrative that a bunch of people in swing states changed their votes because of Russian accounts.
It's not the apocalypse now. You can block hateful trolls anytime you want.
At the end of the day, there's a chunk of the US population who believes that they are much, much smarter than most of their countrymen, and that their unique ability to identify misinformation isn't shared by these buffoons in swing states who don't vote the way they want them to. There's a huge swathe of people like that in the software industry.
Exactly. 7,500 is far too much to run a site like Twitter which at the time, it was already running itself to the ground. But it seems just like the so-called mass advertiser migration from Facebook, that never happened will be no different with Twitter despite the unusual levels of vacuous claims of Twitter's immediate 'imploding', which that has been greatly exaggerated by very emotionally charged people.
Twitter was already dead. Twitter 2.0 on the other hand seems more alive than ever, and I'm laughing at both the Twitter chaos and those pretending to leave Twitter whilst keeping their accounts.
> ...impressions on violative content are down over the past month...
I think both of those claims are demonstrably false.
Third-parties haven't confirmed this, and their data shows the opposite, so I'd wager either it's an outright lie or a function of classification.
The second claim is absolutely more nuanced, and I admit, will be much harder to falsify.
"Nothing has changed, except..."
> Our Trust & Safety team continues its diligent work to keep the platform safe from hateful conduct, abusive behavior, and any violation of Twitter's rules. The team remains strong and well-resourced, and automated detection plays an increasingly important role in eliminating abuse.
It's undeniably less well-resourced than it was a few weeks ago, and people's experience indicate it's clearly less effective as a result.
What a non-statement. I doubt advertisers will react the way Elon hopes they will.
Does twitter agree that the comments were hateful, did that not change? If didn't change, then twitter agrees they were hateful comments and twitter is now happy to have them on the platform.
Musk can't keep his foot out of his mouth here it seems.. it's very confusing.
That these previously banned users were banned for conduct that they would consider hateful
That banning users is the only way to keep the platform safe from hateful conduct
If twitter disagrees with either of these statements, you can see why they would disagree with your point
At least some of the banned deserve a second chance. Those who were total monsters will probably be quickly re-banned. Others have found their own echo chambers elsewhere and won't even bother coming back.
Isn't policy enforcement a part of a separate policy? The policy for policy enforcement? They really wanted to be able to say "the policy hasn't changed." This is a bigger stretch than a taffy pull.
you have a procedure for the policy, thus procedures can change but the policy is the same.
policy's are goals, procedures are how those goals are met, and given the wide and subjective nature of all Big Tech policies, changing in procedures are more import and impactful than changes in policy, and the procedures are never open to public review
If I were an advertiser Twitter would be on my "never advertise here again" list, and I might re-evaluate in a decade or so. Besides look at the slimy ads have been common on twitter in the last 2 weeks. I would not want my ads showing up alongside those.
IIRC, between direct firings and resignations they got rid of the entire team shortly after the takeover, including at least the first head installed after the takeover and firing of the former head, so the impression of continuity this seeks to invoke is at best misleading.
In the past, exploitation victims had to literally sue Twitter to take down explicit material, because a "review" could not "find a violation of [their] policies" [1].
Now "the three biggest hashtags used by child abusers selling child sexual abuse material on Twitter have virtually been eliminated" according to a human trafficking survivor advocate [2]. They have also made it easier for users to flag such content.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/minor-lawsuit-twitter-explic...
[2] https://twitter.com/elizableu/status/1594139581045428224
[1]: https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-child-sexual-abuse-mater...
Switching from normal bans to something even shadowier than ordinary shadowbans?
"Everybody calm down, the building is not on fire, this is just a test of our fire suppresion system. After we fired staff handling it. Also due to miscommunication someone filled it with diesel.
* first joined the board then quit immediately
* made a purchase offer then almost immediately tried to withdraw it
* fired people then tried to rehire some of them
* claimed 20% of Twitter users are bots then let users decide to unban Trump
* announced absolute free speech then got angry when advertisers used their free speech to tell him they don't like how he runs the company
* allowed everyone to get verified checkmark then pulled it
* supported unlimited free speech then started banning people saying parody needs to be marked explicitly, then banned parody accounts anyway
And now they claim the moderation teams are well resourced and able to do their job just as before. How can anyone believe it?
This is the only part of the statement that might possibly be referring to the algorithms. I think the worst thing twitter (and FB as well) has done in the past was to use algorithms to boost outrage and thus boost engagement. Are they saying they're going to change how this works? I'm skeptical.
tl;dr: if Twitter doesn't get seriously hurt over the medium and long term, this entire industry is going to be a lot less fun to work in as management concludes they can put the squeeze on.
Specifically, their policy around Covid misinformation changed November 23. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/29/twitter-stops-policing-covid...
The advertising model is Twitter's fatal flaw. It puts the fate of the platform in the hands of a tiny corporate mob that are themselves subject to larger mobs.
If "the mission" was truly driving Twitter, they'd drop all advertising and build enough value that some decent percentage of users would pay for it. In a few years, with a lot of work, I believe they could build a $10+ billion/yr business using paid accounts and features. With zero advertising. Twitter is an incredible "channel" for information, marketing, customer support, etc.
But unless they kick their addiction to ads, it doesn't matter if they do or don't believe in free speech, because their advertisers (customers) most definitely don't and they're in ultimate control.
I think that's what we have been conditioned into believing, but I see no reason that the a sponsored post about Tide Pods has to have anything but platform coincidence to someone using the same tool to troll about how "the jews" bla bla bla.
Our selective outrage is insane. This is all political. I'm tired of it.
This linked blog post is full of half-truths, if not out right lies — and company is literally run by Elon, who has lied so many times about his plans for Twitter than it’s beyond me why anyone is still using it.
Majority of users have no awareness of any of this angst, they're just using it for its niche.
It's popcorn-worthy drama because of the headcount carnage and the culture clash with increasingly vapid corporate ESG posing, while in reality both headcount bloat (particularly non-maker roles) and corporate virtue signaling need a check.
There's a reasonable chance the image hit among various political and tech influencers is soon (months to years) offset by performance and utility gains from getting the other two under control.
All this is off the table if something with less friction gains network effects within the niche.
In that sense I'd agree with you: now's certainly a (rare) time to try to convince folks to change a habit many literally grew up with.
* Mastodon user since spring 2018.
Why would someone choose you over Musk?
How would you ensure that in 5 years you will not sell out for big $$$
Not trying to be a troll, just genuinely asking as the answers may help someone who actually has the resources/time
So many people do only editorialism but call themselves journalists. Journalists who do great investigatory pieces are often independent or bounce between publications frequently. Lots of influencers posing at journalists to obtain a veneer of legitimacy. More money than ever influencing the content of what is being written about. Lots of uncredentialed civilians tweeting newsworthy things. Lots of 'news' services writing articles entirely sourced via tweet.
I think the journalism industry is so blurry and chaotic right now, it's hard to know who is worthy of platforming.
https://theintercept.com/2022/11/29/elon-musk-twitter-andy-n...
https://twitter.com/ThierryBreton/status/1598015892457426944
You choose where and with whom you want to converse.
If you're indoors, you converse with your family/coworkers. If you're outdoors, you converse with friends or service providers + some public noise.
Privately, people can talk about whatever they want. If someone starts bothering someone, the "host" of the place can ask them to leave, kick them out, or call the police.
IRC almost figured it out like 900 years ago, but no then the centralized Hutts decided they want to control everything and "mOnEtIzE" all our interactions so now we have proprietary BS each trying to reinvent the damn wheel in its own broken half-baked way.
Surprisingly enough there's almost as many Japanese users as Americans on Twitter, not to mention everyone else, do they also get an input on the style of the public conversation?
Apparently he's having trouble with the EU now as well because he's shuttered the office in Brussels. Is this a global public conversation, a local one, is everyone going to live by one standard, pretty hard to figure that all out if you've reduced the workforce to keeping the servers running.
The order of the list says everything you need to know.
"First, none of our policies have changed."
I think it should read "none of our policies has changed" instead. But I might be wrong as I get confused about this often.
Those all sound correct to me. Zero is plural.
And yet they lock accounts for tweets like "Elon Musk should pay taxes"
Everything is currently a moving target, and subject to their owner's whims.
Not only does it look like Twitter will survive (if the mass-migration to another platform hasn't happened yet, when will it? If the site runs stable after the initial shock, why would it run less stable later?), it just might make Musk more powerful than we could ever imagine. Contrasting with other social media founders/owners he isn't shy to use the platform as a very personal thing, to actively shape the discussion and to pick and fight fights. The potential power he could potentially wield makes the purchase, as well as possibly running Twitter as a loss, worth it.
On what basis?
Elon needs cash flow to pay the loans he took to buy Twitter.
Banks don’t give a shit about politics, or mission, or popularity. Banks care about cash flow.
Fact: advertisers (read: cash flow) are leaving Twitter. How will Elon pay off his loans?
"the line goes up"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g
Last time I logged in on Twitter, I got right extremists in my suggestions to follow. There are tons of right wing trolls on the platform (check #thenoticing hashtag), one cannot follow the protests in China due to pr0n spam. Yet, everything is FINE. We are just experimenting.
I am m the opposite of a liberal, call it whatever you want. The Internet, media and corporate world is mostly always against my views. Guess what: I am still fine and believe it or not, despite two decades of massive liberal propaganda, my anti-liberal feelings are stronger than ever.
So if you are liberal you probably believe your side is the good one and can hold against facts, contradictions and fights. You should not be afraid of loosing some ground. If you are right, the stupid, opposite and wrong ideas of anti-liberals can't win. You are safe.
You seem to be afraid that allowing a bit of opposite speech will hurt your political stands. I would say: trust yourself, trust your beliefs and spread them intelligibly, and mostly, live by them.
Concrete goals are apparently to stick it to the woke, or something.
He’s banning child porn and bots though. Because that seemingly wasn’t banned before.
He’s clearly a nazi, eh?
I can’t wait to see the evidence of corruption of Twitter, but it was already visible to all conservatives.
I think that in a few months it will be already a great success.
Regardless of whether or not you agree with his actions these days, it does at least seem a significant departure from how the public perceived his actions in the past. Over the past few years his actions have steadily grown more.. loud, at the very least.
.. It's.. interesting.
You'll also have to ignore that he's built companies that land rockets back on Earth and produce millions of EVs. He's objectively demonstrated ability.
It continues to look as if Musk believes a Twitter turn-around is largely a technical project--rather than tending to a community of users.
How many of you were saying "It's a private company, it can do what it wants!!" when it was a public company, and now it does what it wants... "It must be destroyed!!".
Some of you have decent points... Others are insufferable arrogant assholes who know everything about everything. I would like someone to just please admit "I'm mad that Musk isn't using Twitter to suppress the people I don't like".
