Twitter's decline

[ylevental]

Let's talk about their decline. Twitter lost all value a long time ago.

[SkepticalHistorian]

If Musk really believes in free speech, Twitter won’t decline. People were being blocked for thoughtcrime saying men can never become women, or women don’t have penises, for telling the truth.

[ericbarbour]

once again, this 2016 article explains it best

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/06 ... ack-dorsey

Twitter, which was founded in mid-2006, has always been engulfed in madness. Its first (and mostly forgotten) leader, Noah Glass, was fired a few months into the company’s life as he sat on a green bench in the South Park area of San Francisco. When Dorsey took over as C.E.O., he lasted for a year and a half before he was fired while sitting in front of an uneaten bowl of yogurt and granola at the Clift hotel, on Geary Street. Evan Williams lasted 23 months before he was pushed out in a vicious boardroom coup as he sat, helpless, at a mahogany table at the company’s law offices.

If these expulsions sound like murders, that’s likely because many of them were committed with the same behind-the-scenes planning and mastery. In every instance, the man who was knocked off had no idea who was behind the coup that led to his demise. In 2013, after the publication of my book Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal, I was greeted with effusive (or enraged) phone calls, text messages, and e-mails from co-founders, board members, and senior employees who were excited to finally learn the true identities of their tormentors. I still occasionally receive calls from people inside the company asking me for information about a recent firing.

[zeroslot30]

I think the whole checkmark/verify system is fucked. It always kinda was, but now that anyone (even me!) can snag one for $8, it becomes pointless. So pointless and troll-easy that Twitter now has to add an "Official" tag to accounts for companies and celebrities. I don't get the point of having both when either can suffice.

[suckadmin]

He has deep pockets so it may take awhile before it officially goes bankrupt. It seems like he bought it not realizing that it's business model relies on ad dollars and that letting the site become unhinged for whatever reason is not good for business.

I also don't believe for a second that he actually believes in or understands free speech. For example the site still has word filters that produce a warning saying people don't like it when you say bla bla bla.. it'd be trivial to remove such guardrails .. meanwhile he's fired employees critical of his boneheaded antics

[ericbarbour]

posted today:

https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/29/if- ... of-tweets/

There is no ongoing independent backup of Twitter. There was to begin with: the US Library of Congress (LoC) signed an agreement allowing it to create a complete Twitter Archive for a while. That ran for 12 years, during which time billions of tweets were collected. As an update on the Twitter Archive explained in 2017, the decision not to collect everything thereafter was taken because of the dramatic increase in the number of tweets; the fact that the Library of Congress only received text, but many tweets were more visual than textual; and the increase in potential tweet length from 140 to 280 characters.

I'm amazed they took that much for archiving. And that Twitter agreed to it. Would never happen today--people post shitty things, and the company wants it all covered up. I don't buy this "excessive volume of data" business. If Twitter's vast server farm system can handle the original data, an outside agency can take a copy.

[ericbarbour]

and oh just BTW.....

https://arstechnica.com/information-tec ... -the-ways/

Mastodon—or at least instances hosting widely known or influential users—is also likely to be much more susceptible to distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDos), which knock sites offline by bombing servers with more traffic or commands than they can handle. Centralized platforms with deep pockets consider DDoS mitigation servers as a basic cost. Volunteer-run instances aren’t likely to have the same resources. If Mastodon’s user base continues its current growth spurt, this susceptibility will likely be used to silence critics of all stripes.

Which is exactly what keeps happening to "controversial" websites. Including Twitter. And even Wikipedia is occasionally targeted by DDOS cowboys, and we don't know how often, and no one's talking.

[ericbarbour]

jknbdsfjkgsd.jpg (409.55 KiB) Viewed 5292 times

[Ognistysztorm]

once again, this 2016 article explains it best

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/06 ... ack-dorsey

Twitter, which was founded in mid-2006, has always been engulfed in madness. Its first (and mostly forgotten) leader, Noah Glass, was fired a few months into the company’s life as he sat on a green bench in the South Park area of San Francisco. When Dorsey took over as C.E.O., he lasted for a year and a half before he was fired while sitting in front of an uneaten bowl of yogurt and granola at the Clift hotel, on Geary Street. Evan Williams lasted 23 months before he was pushed out in a vicious boardroom coup as he sat, helpless, at a mahogany table at the company’s law offices.

If these expulsions sound like murders, that’s likely because many of them were committed with the same behind-the-scenes planning and mastery. In every instance, the man who was knocked off had no idea who was behind the coup that led to his demise. In 2013, after the publication of my book Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal, I was greeted with effusive (or enraged) phone calls, text messages, and e-mails from co-founders, board members, and senior employees who were excited to finally learn the true identities of their tormentors. I still occasionally receive calls from people inside the company asking me for information about a recent firing.

This is big. Elon Musk didn't just bought a company, but also a crime scene. He made good of his promise to reveal what really happened during the coverup of Hunter Biden story.

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598822959866683394

Politics aside, this is really the Hollywood moment for Big Tech. I heard somewhere that you have a book in the works that pulls a similar fashion against Wikipedia; maybe it's time to resuscitate and publish it now that public opinion will turn against Big Tech?

[badmachine]

once again, this 2016 article explains it best

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/06 ... ack-dorsey

Twitter, which was founded in mid-2006, has always been engulfed in madness. Its first (and mostly forgotten) leader, Noah Glass, was fired a few months into the company’s life as he sat on a green bench in the South Park area of San Francisco. When Dorsey took over as C.E.O., he lasted for a year and a half before he was fired while sitting in front of an uneaten bowl of yogurt and granola at the Clift hotel, on Geary Street. Evan Williams lasted 23 months before he was pushed out in a vicious boardroom coup as he sat, helpless, at a mahogany table at the company’s law offices.

If these expulsions sound like murders, that’s likely because many of them were committed with the same behind-the-scenes planning and mastery. In every instance, the man who was knocked off had no idea who was behind the coup that led to his demise. In 2013, after the publication of my book Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal, I was greeted with effusive (or enraged) phone calls, text messages, and e-mails from co-founders, board members, and senior employees who were excited to finally learn the true identities of their tormentors. I still occasionally receive calls from people inside the company asking me for information about a recent firing.

This is big. Elon Musk didn't just bought a company, but also a crime scene. He made good of his promise to reveal what really happened during the coverup of Hunter Biden story.

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598822959866683394

Politics aside, this is really the Hollywood moment for Big Tech. I heard somewhere that you have a book in the works that pulls a similar fashion against Wikipedia; maybe it's time to resuscitate and publish it now that public opinion will turn against Big Tech?

prediction: nothing will come of it, sadly