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No One Wants To Buy Twitter (theverge.com)
At one point, it seemed that many were interested in purchasing the micro-blogging social platform (which now calls itself a news service) Twitter, but its fate is quickly drying up. Salesforce (which couldn't buy LinkedIn) showed the most interest in Twitter, but this week its CEO Marc Benioff said his company has "walked away" from making a bid to buy it. The Verge sums up the situation: If you're keeping track, that's now... pretty much everyone who's said they're not interested in buying Twitter. Neither Google nor Disney plan to bid on Twitter, despite reports saying both were interested. Recode says that Apple is likely also out of the picture. And Verizon immediately dismissed speculation that it was considering a bid. Facebook is also said to be uninterested, according to CNBC. And while Microsoft's name has been tossed around, no one seems to think the acquisition would make any sense for an increasingly enterprise-focused company.The situation is so bad that as soon as the news of Salesforce withdrawing its name from the bidding race broke, its stock quickly went up by 6 percent, while Twitter's stock registered a 6 percent drop.
Why not?!
I have a nice crisp clean $5 bill here I'll be happy to pay for them. I'll even throw in a bag of doughnuts.
Anyone want to outbid me? Anyone?
Yaz
HA HA.
Goin' to the shitter!
Twitter needs to show how to make profits before expecting valuation they want. But they are reluctant to do that because it can drive users away from the platform. What kind of moron will pay a premium for future imaginary profits.
Who'da thought turning into a 24/7 SJW promotional/hit site wouldn't work?
It seems that Twitter's stock price has nosedived precipitously since appointing radical Social Justice Warrior Anita Sarkeesian to their newly formed “Trust and Safety Council.” Since then, Twitter has:
* Banned Robert Stacey McCain
* Banned Milo Yiannopoulos, AKA @Nero, permanently
* Suspended Instapundit
* Shadowbanned Anna Maria Perez
* Forced James O'Keefe to renove a Tweet and perform a spite reset
And after having damaged their brand and destroyed billions worth of shareholder value, lo and behold, no one wants to buy them! Gee, turns out that alienating half your user base at the behest of a tiny cadre of radical feminists is a lousy business strategy...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Why do they need to be bought out? The company is profitable and providing the service it was designed for. A buyout could only make it worse.
Oh, right, "investors" don't care about investment anymore, they just care about taking another entity's money in exchange for the stock they have been holding patiently for 8 seconds and why isn't someone buying it what is taking so long why is the price not going up oh there it goes ok sell sell SELLSELLANDBUYTHISOTHERTHINGNOWNOWNOW!
What about it being bought by a news service agencies like Reuters, AP or some advertising company like deceux I think those people who advertise on public transport?
Oh no they walked away because they banned a very few clickbait SQWs!
celebrate!
next? buy faceb00k & do the same!
just watch out for the MiB
late 90's and where media companies were buying each other out and then dropping as things didn't work out. It think Go network use to gobble up lots of sites.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I don't use facefuck, it's blocked from my network. Twitter is my main source of news.
Do you really think stoggy companies like MS want to buy into what has become a "social justice" (ie. "white guy this..., why guy that...") platform?
Maybe a university would be more interested. Twitter seems more aligned with their frame of thought.
I'll guess I'll keep $5 on hand and pick it up in a few years.
It's going to be fun watching that ridiculous app go the way of MySpace and Twatter.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
So, the venture capitalists (and CEO) should've cashed-out before Twitter became a racist/feminazi echo chamber. No, pretending to be a news service won't work because: 1) Facebook and friends have mind share in the blogging and news service; 2) People want more than 25 words of story.
Normally purchases go (1) express interest, (2) sign non-disclosure, (3) review confidential statements and documents, (4) decide whether to buy or not. With so many companies backing out it sounds like step #3 has been a bit of a problem. Poor financial outlook? Debt? I don't think Twitter will fail soon but I wouldn't buy stock in it...
Somehow I don't think blocking a few rightwing nutjobs caused Twitter to lose value. Maybe it's that the big boom of "hey we've got lots of users we must be worth a lot of money" is over, and potential buyers now want to see evidence that such companies actually make sense as a business.
It would be funny if Russians would buy it. Taking into account the role of Twitter in all the "colored" revolutions and how Russia and her allies are annoyed with it, they could buy it to turn the weapon in the opposite direction.
Frankly, I think that even the role of Twitter in revolts is exaggerated and it's not a valuable asset even for that. Do Chinese think the same?
Why does Twitter need to be bought by anyone? What's with this endless obsession about mergers and acquisitions and consolidation and stock market riches the west has?
Let Twitter do Twitter.
Err, what? Is this a mixed metaphor or did a cat walk across the keyboard?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
When thousands start to suspect something is up and stop trusting the platform, you do lose a significant number, but indeed its not nearly enough to actually destroy twitter, although may be a good sign that the people in charge of the platform don't actually know what is wrong with it or how to fix it because they're enclosed into this small bubble.
While distributed social media (like Diaspora) has been an idea floating around for a while, something like the 'twittersphere' is where it could be most useful, having multiple interlinked 'twitterverses' where different rules on acceptability apply. The SJW's can have some, and the anti-politically-correct can run their own free-for-all zones, and so on. What is then needed is the distributed indexing and so on. But for a technology which is basically a glorified indexed array of char[140]'s, it has little that isn't easily copied in terms of functionality. Given that most users' number of followers is in the 100s, a simple PHP script spewing out RSS feeds is almost good enough for that task (and already way more complex than it needs to be). An aggregator simply needs to get a few KB of text from a few hundred URIs every few minutes, and then compose it into an aggregated feed. The trouble with modern social media is that they need to overcomplicate it in order to turn it into something they control. Then they need to give it away free, figure out how to make money from it, and so on. We really need an 'opentwitter' system. Twitter has demonstrated the need and power of this sort of communication, but cannot make a profitable business out of it. Just like email isn't owned, we need a twitter that isn't owned. And preferably before Twitter as a company tanks.
More generally, a rethink about internet communications would be welcome: having more fine grained control about who can send what to whom would make a lot of sense (and can essentially be done via things like cryptographic keys) -- then basic data and document types. (For example, a tweet is basically a char[140], most small things could be considered a json object fitting some schema, and for many web documents, the content part least, could make do with a far lighter weight document type than modern HTML: something where a high quality light-weight renderer wouldn't need something as complex as an operating system, as modern web browsers are.)
John_Chalisque
Twitter touted itself as the "free speech wing of the free speech party" and is now banning people for having opinions that the San Francisco loons disagree with.
However, you're right.
Banning a few people doesn't affect the stock price. But when you ban hundreds of thousands? Then the message gets around that your hard work building an audience can be pissed away by the decision of a blue-haired loon in San Francisco who thinks you used the wrong pronoun.
That's when your audience drops off and no-one wants to us it any more... and that does affect your stock price.
Welcome to the wonder world of Twitter. They committed suicide so that the world could see what pandering to social justice loons means for companies.
I love it how three of your links were to some crank blog/news roll, the same one no less...and one of them was to Twitter.
I guess it's a good thing Slashdot's new corporate masters are promoting the comments of crotchety old fucks like you to the top, we'd hardly want to miss out on this sort of wisdom. /yawn
Feel free to shadowban mods, I've got better things to do than wait for this site to stop sucking balls.
I hate to break it to you but your lot represent the status quo, not the alt right. It's not the alt eight or Gamergate that the media, politicians and corporations pander to.
XMPP, it even has publish/subscribe functionality.
You missed *demanded users phone numbers*
I haven't logged in for a couple of months since they insist I give them my tel. Not happening, not with every company under the sun getting data-breached at one time or another including yahoo and microsoft.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Somehow I don't think blocking a few rightwing nutjobs caused Twitter to lose value.
I agree insofar as I doubt that it's caused some kind of massive drop in traffic or ad revenue, but the existence of drama surrounding it might be the reason why some companies don't want to bother with the potential headaches.
For example, given the right crowd your little dismissive "a few right wing loons" is fuel enough for a rollicking debate. Twitter (and Youtube and others) only care about censoring the Christian and secular right wing. They do not censor Islamists, who are part of the extreme right by any reasonable measure. The left (and now more and more also the mainstream) defend them even as they try to silence the conventional secular/Christian right wing in America or western Europe, often silencing them precisely due to their criticism of the Islamic right wing.
Do you have any idea what the tweets look like on the Arab language version of Twitter? Go plug some into Google Translate and find out. While atheist bloggers were being hacked to death in Bangladesh, do you know what was trending on Arabic Twitter? #KillAllAtheists.
The new owners would have to decide whether or not they're going to do something about this stuff. The new owners would have to decide whether or not to re-ban Milo if he tried to create a new account. The new owners would have to decide whether or not to dissociate themselves from Anita Sarkeesian, an irrational, misandrist, anti-free speech lunatic whom Twitter should never have put in a position of power.
I don't think there's some sort of highly damaging boycotting of Twitter going on at this very moment, but that doesn't mean these things are entirely irrelevant.
Those people were banned specifically to improve their brand. Corporations don't want to be associated with shitty people.
.. and when you're selling now, buyers likewise would too.
Somehow I don't think blocking a few rightwing nutjobs caused Twitter to lose value
So which part makes them "nut jobs" the part where they post things offensive to regressive leftists, or the parts where they post politically compromising things that hurt their feelings and they should be silenced before you have too much to think for yourself?
FYI twitter has dug this hole on it's own. The second you start censoring content because it hurts feelings or it's politically inconvenient to a group of people, that's when investors start to flee. Their links are just scratching the surface, twitter ever since they put their 1984ish sounding "Trust and Safety council" has been suppressing trending hashtags and tweets if it shows leftists or democrats in a bad light. Blocking and censoring journalists from showing up in some countries, helping EU countries suppress citizens who are critical of the influx of illegals. And of course censoring content if it's "offensive."
Om, nomnomnom...
really it's just this:
# send
channel.insert(message)
# distribution
for channel in subscriptions:
message = channel.get_topn(100)
if the guys who have ran twitter up until now can't bring it to profitability it's highly unlikely anyone else could.
Awesome platform but doesn't make a dime of profit.
> extreme right by any reasonable measure
That's proof positive that your measure is not reasonable.
You cannot group together secular status quo authoritarians, theocractic revolutionaries, people with a strong preference for individual rights, and people who don't use "cis" in everyday language as if they are a homogenous group that you can hate because they don't eat at the same hipster burger shack you do.
Hopefully, some other companies will learn from this and avoid SJWs like the plague they are.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
After Twitter did that NFL deal it really became a point of no return. Sometimes in desperation these companies do the dumbest things.
#Doomed from the beginning, @Twitter was a #fad in search of a mission.
I think you misinterpreted the general thrust of my post there.
The one-dimensional political spectrum is very problematic, yes. One of those problems is the enemy-of-my-enemy problem that has led many progressives to defend Islamists to an extent that they would never dream of defending the Christian extreme right.
Nevertheless, there are many similarities between far right Christians, far right Muslims (i.e. Islamists), and secular fascists. It would be foolish not to comment on this similarity. In fact, it's one of the best tools we have in pushing back against the pro-censorship agendas of many so-called progressives.
Banning people like those in the list. Regardless of what you think about them, Nero was one of the most followed accounts on Twitter. Robert Stacey McCain and Instapundit are also huge names outside of Twitter with tons of followers both on Twitter and on their blogs. None of them, including Milo/Nero, were actually blocked for actions that most people doing a due diligence examination of the value of Twitter's user base would find acceptable.
Nero was blocked for "harassing" Leslie Jones. Actually, his followers were. Meanwhile if you're the right group you can also dox and call for the rape and murder of teenage girls who say the wrong thing to you on Twitter and get away with it if you're one of Twitter's favored groups.
You're so full of shit it's unreal. Literally the only people who pretend that Twitter hasn't turned into a SJW shithole that even attacks mainstream liberals are SJWs.
turns out that alienating half your user base at the behest of a tiny cadre of radical feminists is a lousy business strategy...
I'm pretty sure the 99% of Twitter users have no idea who these people are, nor care.
1. Remove "report post" function.
2. Limit follows to 2000, charge $4.95 for each additional 500 follows per year.
All done. Twitter saved.
So which part makes them "nut jobs" the part where they post things offensive to regressive leftists, or the parts where they post politically compromising things that hurt their feelings and they should be silenced before you have too much to think for yourself?
If you want to think for yourself, then I'd suggest try something other than social media to source your information.
If you want to think for yourself, then I'd suggest try something other than social media to source your information.
So which part of that disputes twitter censoring things that they disagree with? Oh right...
The point was about 3.2m above your head apparently.
Om, nomnomnom...
We really need an 'opentwitter' system. Twitter has demonstrated the need and power of this sort of communication,
No we don't. Twitter is a microcosm of stupid and if it went away overnight there would be zero impact to the lives of most normal people. Millions of idiots would have to find another way to see what the Kardashians are up to today, but regular life would function quite fine without it.
And after having damaged their brand and destroyed billions worth of shareholder value, lo and behold, no one wants to buy them! Gee, turns out that alienating half your user base at the behest of a tiny cadre of radical feminists is a lousy business strategy...
Yeah, except that's not the reality of the situation.
As of Twitter's latest earnings report, its user base grew more than expected, up to 313 million active monthly users. Their problem has been a softening of advertiser demand, which has reduced revenues below expectations.
Indeed, all of the companies interested in buying Twitter have only been interested because of the reduced shareholder value. Twitter isn't a good buy-out candidate when its stock value is worth more than the real value of its assets; it's only when its market value is at or below the value of its assets and expected revenues that it suddenly becomes something everyone could be interested in buying out. As such, the "destroyed billions worth of shareholder value" is actually a good thing for a company looking to buy them out -- you buy low, not high.
So congrats -- you've invented an argument by working backward form a premise, while ignoring basic math and economics. Because if your argument had any real merit, any big company could buy Twitter, fire Ms. Sarkeesian, re-instate five accounts, and suddenly they'd be able to increase the value of the company by billions. But here's a hint -- the advertisers don't care who is visiting Twitter, or what their politics are. The fact that they gained over 3 million monthly visitors in the last reported quarter (to 313 million) is all they are going to care about -- and advertising is virtually all of Twitter's revenue. But advertisers are going elsewhere -- and its certainly not because there are some butt-hurt Conservative Justice Warriors who can't handle people calling them out for being complete douchbags. These companies have looked at Twitter's fundamentals, and it appears they come up wanting. Perhaps after they lose a few hundred million more in value someone will snap them up.
Yaz
Those people were banned specifically to improve their brand. Corporations don't want to be associated with shitty people.
I think you mean "they were banned" because twitter thought it would improve their brand among the wider audience, it turns out that their audience that they appealed to is actually an extremely small and vocal minority that the majority of people would label "batshit insane" and "incredibly politically correct."
Twitter seems to believe that brand that's really the huge thing and has wide support is the same stuff that people like Anitia Sarkeesian, Jessica Valenti, Paul Feig, etc believe in. Identity politics, doxing, harassment, factually insubstantial posturing(all men are rapists, sexism is why xyz thing failed, if you don't believe what we're telling you--you're a sexist/misogynist/etc, everything is the fault of them white men, video games make people especially men into mass-murders, rapists, etc), if you don't support xyz women, you're a sexist/misogynist, stating failures are the cause of the audience, attacking the audience, sex-negative stances, meritocracy is a MRA construct, free speech needs to be limited/revoked, no-platforming is good, no-platforming of people who have contrary opinions is good. Men can't talk about xyz thing because they're men, safe-spaces, trigger warnings over absolute inane bullshit, and the list goes on.
Om, nomnomnom...
Yes and there's a very simple model to make it clearer: pre-modern, modern, and post-modern.
Modern is the start of humanistic values. Pre-modern is old empires enforced with mythic and religious identity and so on. Post-modern is currently half baked, a step towards global but still in its early phase, and hasn't worked out yet.
So for example, post-modern often champions the rights of islamists to not be offended because it wants to avoid western cultural imperialism, even though the islamists are trying to return us to the pre-modern Middle Ages. And of course there was no post-modernity back in the Middle Ages, so post-modernity ends up trying to destroy itself. And taking us all down with it.
Personally I think we all just need to re-study modernity and understand what its core value for is for the world, the stuff it advanced and got right, such as the individual and humanistic values and education and so on. And figure out how the world as a whole can configure to develop towards modernity.
Once most of the world is practicing and working at a modern humanistic level, then a real post-modernity can emerge. The current version of post-modernity is a fuckup.
But it doesn't have to be depressing. Many recoil against modernity because it is godless or lacks rules for living. But Buddha already 2500 years ago said you have to cast off the old myths and figure out for yourself, as an individual, what works, including, what's the answer to happiness and compassion. Depending on how you read it, Buddha was teaching humanistic values thousands of years ago.
Pre modern empire structures, basically weaponise religion to control followers and gain power. But if people just put on humanistic glasses, many of these weird cross cultural issues become very clear.
If your 'value' is based on the ability to communicate.
And you have shown that you only allow communication you approve of.
You have no value.
Then why did they hire shitty people to run the place?
It will take awhile for them to wise up. virtue signaling is big right now.
But these companys never stop to consider that those they are trying to pander to. Will never buy the books, see the movies, or buy the other items being pushed.
Because consuming is not their hobby.
Complaining and being outraged is their hobby. And any product that bows down to them is ignored. Because the job is done there.
There's a new injustice to fight. A new product to crap on until they bow down.
But they will never be customers...
The actual customers are being driven away by the changes instead.
"Mario being male instead of female isn't proof of the video game industry supporting misogyny" is now a rightwing nutjob view.
Congrats.
This is part of the reason why people don't respect Twitter and other SJW propaganda platforms.
More and more unfeatures, but not listening to its users anymore.
The app has way too much ads (open a tweet and you see always a big ad below the replies), the web interface is slow inefficient and buggy.
Users demand since years an "edit last tweet" function, but they always get something else they did not ask for and do not want
- Videos have now autoplay!
- You can retweet yourself!
- We change the length of tweets, fuck you users of the old app
- Moments
Further they have strange ideas about blocking. Following is asymmetric. Cool. I do not need to read you, but you can still read me. Thats better for a site like Twitter than mutal friendships. But blocking is symmetric? I block you (my good right), but suddenly you cannot read me either? That's strange.
I would like them to remove all shit and let the users pay 2 eur per month. That's fair. But then remove all ads and move the t.co tracking links back to nontracking ones.
it's only when its market value is at or below the value of its assets and expected revenues that it suddenly becomes something everyone could be interested in buying out
That is only true if you buy the company as a simple monetary investment: buy, break it up, draw divident, or sell it when you find someone willing to pay its actual value. But if you are buying because the company fits well with whatever your own business is, then its value may be a lot more than the value of its assets on the open market. For instance, the company's patent on rounded corners may be worth squat to anyone... except to the company who can use it to lock out a competitor (or prevent from being locked out themselves). And that's actually where the GPs argument falls flat: buyers who are not interested in Twitter's ability to sell ads but in other things (patents, talent, research, user data, or the users themselves) are not likely to care overly much about reduced ad revenue or a damaged brand name, and will be happy to see the share price plummet.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
But for a technology which is basically a glorified indexed array of char[140]'s, it has little that isn't easily copied in terms of functionality. Given that most users' number of followers is in the 100s, a simple PHP script spewing out RSS feeds is almost good enough for that task (and already way more complex than it needs to be).
The problem is if you want replies to tweets, you'll run into the same uncontrolled spam / troll / junk / harassment / propaganda problem that has driven users from distributed systems towards centralized sites and why so many blogs and other sites disable comments. You need some kind of CAPTCHA for rate control and it needs to be replaced/updated as it is broken. And ideally you'd have some third party moderators following guidelines, because no moderation is troll heaven and owner moderation lets you silence all opposing views and criticism. That's the hard part, not making a char[140] aggregator.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
How are tweets "news"?
If tweets are news, then every public toiletwall is a news service.
No one wants to buy a large open festering cesspool either.
Twitter has turned into a place of seething hatred and all that is wrong with humanity. Almost all the big guys have stopped interacting with it and now use it as a write only medium due ot the sheer numbers of shitmouths that are there that make slashdot trolls look civilized.
Their own fault for not delivering tools that allow the control of the mess early on. now it's too late.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Will someone with a decade's worth of mod-points please mod the parent up to one trillion?
I'd offer to simplify it even further: the problem is that many progressives haven't made the jump from "oh wow, western civilization has done a bunch of crappy things" to "oh wow, everybody has done a bunch of crappy things."
The ignorance of, denial of and/or rigid prioritization of grievances is the overriding problem among most post-modernist / progressive / SJW crowds. From it flows all of the cancerous bullshit that has caused so many former self-described leftists to distance themselves.
I want to smack each and every one of them upside the head with pool noodle and explain that everyone everywhere has done a mountain of shitty things. Yes, people as a whole suck... but there are specific bits and pieces worth saving and these value need to be recognized and saved and promoted without regard to the owner of the brain or mouth from which they come tumbling out. Simply badmouthing America or the West or imperialism or neo-imperialism solves nothing, nothing at all, and their bleating often betrays a profound ignorance of the past and current crimes of China, Russia, Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, Iran or whomever else they deem exempt from criticism due to the fact that a few of our past politicians made a dick move or three.
I have three Twitter accounts (personal, business, product related) and I've never been forced to enter a telephone number.
I do know that accounts tempbanned or accounts showing some likelihood of being linked to someone sanctioned have been required to pony up a phone number. Was your account banned, or did something else happen?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Banned/suspended, a couple of posts from some steam group promoting games and they suspended the account for spamming!!
I'm simply not interested enough in twitter to jump through stupid hoops to get the account back or open another account (new gmail -> gmail tel -> new twitter account afaik).
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
99% of Twitter users have never heard of these people, and if they had they'd probably sympathize with a company enforcing its ToS against users who, for example, are posting screenshots of forged tweets in an attempt to increase harassment of perceived "enemies".
Twitter growth has slowed (and on occasion gone into reverse) lately. The real reason it probably that the platform has changed fairly radically in the last 3-4 years, with changes that completely undermine the "read lots of quick, short, messages" selling point.
Some of the changes that have broken Twitter include:
1. Making messages take up about 1/5 of the screen, because of attached images, movies (WTF?), link summaries, etc.
2. Adding ads in a way that means the user has already read them by the time they realize they're in an ad, making them 10x as obnoxious (and, funnily enough, actually creating negative value for advertisers. Nobody trusts a Twitter advertiser, because you feel tricked when you've read their ad.)
3. Messing with the timelines. Even with their "optimized" version turned off, they frequently make the third "tweet" a pages long summary of tweets you've already read, entitled "In case you missed it", and there's no way to turn this off.
These have made Twitter change from being a nice way to keep up with your friends and the news to being an absolute chore to read.
The idea that these have had no effect on subscribers, while the banning of a self-admitted Troll and some others who have no self control, somehow has is ridiculous. Sure, a handful of people who wanted a network that made it easier to send a rape threat to a black actress or female CEO might feel that a crackdown on harassment or the banning of people who forge Tweets would turn them off, but they're not really the kinds of people who a social network wants, and they are the kinds of people who drive away more people than they attract.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Ps
Massive irony: I got the twitter account because they never verified email addresses used to open accounts. I got a password reset and took the account that some annoying oik used my email address to open.
So basically they don't care about security, they just want peoples phone numbers because advertising revenue.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
All the talk about censorship of certain users misses the point. TWITTER IS NOT PROFITABLE. Twitter has been around for, what, 10 years, and it still cannot make a profit. It has a stupid business model because TWITTER DOES NOT MAKE A PROFIT. If someone had a decent idea how to monetize the service to turn a profit it would have done so. Dorsey took charge, again, and still no profit. The headline could read "No One Buys Money Losing Tech Company."
Make love, not reality television.
It is because their patents are worthless. The functionality was already in another product in 1999 but it went under in the .com crash.
Sorry, but I never heard of any of those guys before, and I'm pretty sure that, outside of the US, the whole SJW ordeal is either completely unknown or considered at most a source of laughs.
On the other hand, everybody in my circles seems to be aware of the writing on the wall:
- the UI has been getting worse and worse, as Twitter scrambles to find ways to cram in ad revenue. They can not charge users lest immediate death, but everything related to ads and push-unsolicited-news does anger users anyway
- other channels of communication sprang up, and took away the 'hip' crowd and influencers. Maybe they got bored, or they just realized 140 chars is not enough for meaningful communication. Or they are just still there, but got diluted by the number of useless tweets raining in from all PR departments. In short: quality of tweets is in decline
- guys working in the advertising/news space also were super angry at twitter removing features that made it appealing to have the number of likes and retweets for your content display on your site
The balancing between being a service useful for its users and a service which rakes in money as an advertising/content platform is a very fine act, and I think that it is too late for Twitter to pull it off now.
Seems like that would just create echo chambers. The more open mixing of ideas on Twitter is better. The only people who have a problem with it are the ones who can't express their views without harassing those who disagree with them.
Even Slashdot has a quality filter. It's not anti-free speech, it's the bare minimum necessary for free speech and debate to be viable.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
To the world. Other nations just have to learn to enjoy the fun of freedom.
Add languages and support tools to get access. Don't ask any gov for access. Draw the best users to the brand and never seek the approval of bureaucrats.
Fun and freedom will always attract the best new users. Been banned or reported is just like gov sanctioned web 2.0 in most repressive regimes. Not the best policy to grow any brand.
Swapping out US protection before, during and after free speech for "international" acceptance just removes all the real people who don't want to be corrected or banned.
People can move to other new free platforms and have fun. Any brand once tainted by bureaucrats is a joke.
Stay with freedom as a core value or state for all to see that the directions of theocracies and absolute monarchies are now more valued than freedom.
The US has one great selling point no other nation can ever have. Freedom. Sell it to the world. Bureaucrats and policy banning comments is rather common globally and offers no growth.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I use Twitter regularly and it doesn't require a phone number. They don't have mine.
It's a shame they don't support any method other than text message for 2 factor authentication. Because of that I don't use it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Increasing the text limit, adding videos and images, they've strayed from the original vision of mandatory quick updates and have introduced more time consuming/bandwidth-heavy elements that make it more like a traditional blog than just a series of status updates that can be rapidly consumed. Also adding verified accounts has created a disparity in the feature set that has created a different tier of users, perhaps adding an illusion of a schism in communication.
Twinstiq, game news
His post and any crying teen about the same.
Twitter's business model has been non profitable pretty much since its inception. They were aiming for a LinkedIn and no one is taking the bait.
Wonder if we're reaching the end of the second dotcom bubble...
Yes, said 'champions' treat islamists like little feral pets who they hope to tame, given enough time. And that itself is cultural imperialism.
The whole notion is that 'History has ended' and all we need to do now is sort out the pieces and get everything pointed in the right direction. Utter bullshit, but it's the main thrust of present-day triumphalist liberal Western ideology. Fuck that. Everybody has figured out your gig. Your Final Fix bullshit was attempted by Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, FDR, and Mao (Enver Hoxa, Kim Il Sung, Pol Pot, etc. ) in the last century. We know. You're kinder, you're gentler, and you will get it right this time.
The problem is if you want replies to tweets, you'll run into the same uncontrolled spam / troll / junk / harassment / propaganda problem that has driven users from distributed systems towards centralized sites and why so many blogs and other sites disable comments.
No. What you do is let people host their own replies to tweets by assigning them UUIDs. The only centralization you need is to make sure you don't have UUID collisions.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"Somehow I don't think blocking a few rightwing nutjobs caused Twitter to lose value."
"I don't think."
FTFY.
From what I understand many of Trump's posts are shadow-hidden; Completely or in regard to geographic areas. Like for example, last I heard if you sign in from Florida Trump had not posted anything in months, as per a week ago, or something like that.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I just want to say, that I really can't understand
why no company wants to buy #twitter. It's the per
fect platform for truly social people to
[reply] [retweet] [heart] [...]
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It's not that right-wing nutjobs were blocked, but that the left-wing nutjobs have been given control over the site, which is likely to lead to ever-increasing extremism (see e.g. #killallmen), and thus to a diminishing userbase.
I still can't fathom why people would want to use twitter. I thought I was going insane when companies were talking about buying it.
Cut out the middleman! Have all tweets sent straight to the central scrutinizers
So posting a video of a NY government official saying voter fraud is widespread and describing how it is done is a "nut job".
I think we just found the real nut job, the person who believe voter fraud is ok and pointing it out is evil.
As a platform, the main distinguishing feature of Twitter compared to other platforms is that its 140 character limit makes any kind of discussion impossible, and that it strongly favors social signaling and self-righteous indignation as the primary modes of communication.
I doubt advertisers want to see their products seen in such a divisive, biased, and angry environment as Twitter, and it isn't even useful for market research because its user population is so unrepresentative.
I honestly don't care if I'm modded down, but @jack has turned twitter political with his editing and banning conservatives while promoting his own political views.
@jack is an asshole and I hope karma catches up with him one day.
The world will be the better for it.
And on the Eighth Day, Man created God.
I'd offer to simplify it even further: the problem is that many progressives haven't made the jump from "oh wow, western civilization has done a bunch of crappy things" to "oh wow, everybody has done a bunch of crappy things."
You may want to rethink that. I believe your problem is that you haven't had the realization that every political ideology has their failings. Because I see no evidence of you pointing out the crappy things on all sides.
Try this:
The ignorance of, denial of and/or rigid prioritization of grievances is the overriding problem among most regressive / conservative/ RW crowds. From it flows all of the cancerous bullshit that has caused so much of a desire for oppression and vengeance against the perceived threat of the left.
Would you be able to say that or not? If you could say it, why not?
I want to smack each and every one of them upside the head with pool noodle and explain that everyone everywhere has done a mountain of shitty things.
Yes, yes, you feel frustrated and just want to enlighten others. That does not speak as well for you as you may think. Perhaps you could examine that for insight into your flaws.
Yes, people as a whole suck... but there are specific bits and pieces worth saving and these value need to be recognized and saved and promoted without regard to the owner of the brain or mouth from which they come tumbling out.
That's a position of the left, the right is quite happy to make the association that being black/brown/yellow/homosexual is badwrong and must be purged.
Simply badmouthing America or the West or imperialism or neo-imperialism solves nothing, nothing at all, and their bleating often betrays a profound ignorance of the past and current crimes of China, Russia, Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, Iran or whomever else they deem exempt from criticism due to the fact that a few of our past politicians made a dick move or three.
Yeah, but pointing out the maledictions of say, Russia, is actually a distraction from the right's revelations of the 'crimes' of the Hillary. And it's always the left that wants to put American lives at risk with their peacekeeping over people who should handle their own problems. And the left wants America to spend even more trillions on foreign aid, and even take from the workers here to feed the 'starving' refugees who are really just terrorist in disguise.
I know, I know, you resent being told that your approach is flawed, that you yourself are guilty of a failing you can see in the left, but not in yourself. Oh you may make the occasional nod to it, but do you not realize that you would be better off taking on the problem more robustly? That would demonstrate by positive example your own evenhandedness.
99% of Twitter users have never heard of these people
The big "scandal" was with Leslie Jones and mainstream media talked about it. So even people who don't use Twitter (like myself) at least partially heard about it. I agree that sadly the majority of the population would sympathize with the censorship and the "progressive" attitude of Twitter, but there is still an important minority of pro free speech people who are hurting badly the image of Twitter.
E.g. people using the client having to pay a monthly fee?
If you see a way of this happening, then there's a future for Twitter. Else, there isn't.
But hey, I can subscribe to newsletters and receive updates there, too. I don't have any kinds of instant notifications set for my Twitter-App, so any updates I only see when I actually open the client.
Which incidentally is the same as with my mail client.
Twitter is great way for companies to communicate with users (especially those that don't want to sign up to Facebook) to escalate stuff around useless L1-support or in case of a total service-breakdown (DDoS or whatever).
I have trouble, though, imagining just how much (or how little) I would actually gladly pay for such a thing - and I can't believe I'm the only one.
Hopefully, Facebook is next.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
The one-dimensional political spectrum is very problematic, yes.
Then stop using it. At least look at some of the others.
One of those problems is the enemy-of-my-enemy problem that has led many progressives to defend Islamists to an extent that they would never dream of defending the Christian extreme right.
The problem is that you think that's what they are doing due to your own desire to conceptualize the actions of 'progressives' in a way that fits your paradigm of criticism. What if 'progressives' are acting the way they are because they find the 'conservative' reaction to be counter-productive, and instead increasing the problem?
Nevertheless, there are many similarities between far right Christians, far right Muslims (i.e. Islamists), and secular fascists.
Exactly. They're especially stimulated by feelings of persecution and abuse, to the point where they craft that narrative. They are also highly convinced of their own superiority.
It would be foolish not to comment on this similarity. In fact, it's one of the best tools we have in pushing back against the pro-censorship agendas of many so-called progressives.
It's actually one of your worst tools, and has consistently failed to have any kind of positive impact. I suggest that the only result you're getting is the feedback of self-satisfaction, which may be your desired result, but it is not a productive one.
Have you seen the kinds of stuff Trump tweets out? Blocking his tweets in a region would actually benefit his campaign there.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
You already have this: its called IRC.
Its just not Web1337.0 for the facebook generation, which is fine too, as you dont get much idiots nowadays.
I can spot the patterns in your writing style a mile away. I'm not wasting my time again. You're an intellectually bankrupt person who falls back on trolling techniques after you've lost an argument. And you can't even be bothered to register for an account, FFS.
Facebook makes about ONE BILLION dollars in profit every quarter. They have virtually no debt. You may not like social media but it's a profitable business for Facebook.
Twitter is something else.
lucm, indeed.
I'd like to buy Twitter. They have a solid product and a huge customer base.
The only reason their npv is negative is because they're spending as if they were growing. Start spending proportional to actual cash flows (like non bubble businesses do), and you have positive cash flows again.
Might need to have some existing shareholders take a cut though.
Do you have any idea what the tweets look like on the Arab language version of Twitter? Go plug some into Google Translate and find out. While atheist bloggers were being hacked to death in Bangladesh, do you know what was trending on Arabic Twitter? #KillAllAtheists.
The official language of Bangladesh is Bengali, so exactly what connection are you alleging? I'd worry more about the politics of Bangladesh, it is not a country where it is safe to complain about the leadership regardless of your religion. Not that your account can be verified, I looked, and could not find real examination, it may be it was all the actions of a few trolls.
Of course, if you were worried about the Bangladeshi, you'd show some concern about the tragedies in textile factories.
The official language of Bangladesh is Bengali, so exactly what connection are you alleging?
What an extraordinary question. Christians care about what other Christians are doing and pan-Muslim identity is, if anything, much stronger at this moment in time. This is somewhat strengthened by the fact that Arab is a second language for many educated Muslims, sense the Qu'ran is only considered truly authentic in its original language. It may shock you to find out that the Muslims of the UK (mostly of South Asian ethnicity) also a deep interest in the goings-on of the Middle East, despite Arabic not been a native language of any region in Southern Asia.
the actions of a few trolls.
The point was Twitter's reaction, not existence of the trolls themselves. They did not remove the tweets. Go check out the Arabic post-Pulse nightclub tweets. I'll bet you anything they're still up.
Of course, if you were worried about the Bangladeshi, you'd show some concern about the tragedies in textile factories.
Go gratuitously change the topic somewhere else. These things have to be analyzed as they arrive in the inbox. If you spend all your time debating what should be debated, nothing gets done. The topic here, on this particular page, is clearly defined and it has very little to do with that tiny little list marked "tricky problems arising from globalization."
sense the Qu'ran
since* ! Fuck me, been hanging too long around the semi-literate. Also, *Arabic.
and about ten other typos. Say something smarter next time and maybe I'll take the time to proofread my reply.
The Verge - for people who find Wired too difficult.
At the bottom of the
In any case, it is multiaxial.
Which is why you are seeing what you are interpreting as a circle. Or what others see as a horseshoe.
It's actually people's methodologies overlapping and blending into each other (what/how they do) instead of their ideologies (that which they believe/know to be true).
Thus "Different yap patterns, but always willing to dictate how others must act in minute detail." looks like a circle - cause it is a view along a single axis.
The "willing to dictate how others must act" axis of authority, while ignoring all others.
Cause both peaks and valleys come off as circles on a map.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
*eyeroll*
You have no idea how this site works, do you?
When you think about it, what makes "butt-hurt Conservative Justice Warriors" douchebags? They must be trying to accomplish something.
Ah, instead of actually addressing my words on substance, you attack with scurrilous aspersions of character. The thing is, accusing somebody of trolling is often more a statement about yourself than it is a valid criticism. It means little on its own to make that denunciation, and my choice in not presenting an account to you, has minimal value in itself.
Really, that is something I have noticed about you, when confronted with the flaws in your thinking, you retreat to what is a rather vapid defensiveness against a person, preferring to denounce others rather than meaningfully considering the possibility of your own errors and reflecting on the actual mistakes in your communications.
Be honest, what image do you think you are presenting of yourself? Or to ask it in a way that may put you in the position where you do consider it, how do you think you are really seen?
The real question, I suppose, is whether you are fooling yourself, or just trying to fool others.
I'll debate anyone on anything for hours, but I've no interest in pandering to a coward who likes to play psychologist. Do you actually encounter any/many people who are eager to sit here and argue about your half-baked psychological analyses instead of debating the subject at hand? It's off-topic and boring and you aren't very good at it.
Twitter (and Youtube and others) only care about censoring the Christian and secular right wing. They do not censor Islamists, who are part of the extreme right by any reasonable measure. The left (and now more and more also the mainstream) defend them even as they try to silence the conventional secular/Christian right wing in America or western Europe, often silencing them precisely due to their criticism of the Islamic right wing.
What in the world are you talking about? Which Christians or right wingers are being censored on Twitter? And before you trot out Milo, who was banned for posting racist garbage to a black woman's Twitter feed, keep in mind he wasn't censored for being a Christian or a right winger, he was banned for being an asshole.
They do not censor Islamists, who are part of the extreme right by any reasonable measure.
I see, so your position is that all Muslims are extremists. I don't have to live in San Francisco to call that for what it is, bigotry. As for the ones who are extremists - and Christianity has them too, as we just saw once again in Kansas - there can be enormous intelligence value in keeping their Twitter accounts active. Twitter occasionally purges of thousands of extremist accounts at a time, but I strongly suspect that's only after they've been told by NSA/CIA/etc that those accounts are no longer worth monitoring.
The new owners would have to decide whether or not to dissociate themselves from Anita Sarkeesian, an irrational, misandrist, anti-free speech lunatic whom Twitter should never have put in a position of power.
On this, we agree. She shouldn't be in charge of anything more influential than her own breakfast.
"If there was a gay Afro-Puertorican Linux distribution, I'd give it a try" ~lucm
I still see a niche value for twitter in mobile industry and such. It is a perfect platform for say mobile food trucks, and the ice cream man. If they would open source the client and ease up on the censoring it could become a successful messaging client. There is some small value to be had for the platform but nothing like the brazillions people keep expecting.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
What an extraordinary question. Christians care about what other Christians are doing and pan-Muslim identity is, if anything, much stronger at this moment in time. This is somewhat strengthened by the fact that Arab is a second language for many educated Muslims, sense the Qu'ran is only considered truly authentic in its original language.
So you have no demonstration of a real connection, let alone any kind of popular movement to it?
In that case, I'm more inclined to believe it was a political elimination that trolls decided to appropriate, with the slight possibility of the atheism issue being a deliberate distraction.
It may shock you to find out that the Muslims of the UK (mostly of South Asian ethnicity) also a deep interest in the goings-on of the Middle East, despite Arabic not been a native language of any region in Southern Asia.
I would hope it would not shock you to consider that the world has an interest in the going-ons of the Middle East due to a geographical happenstance of unfortunate importance. Well, an interest that boils down to keeping the spice flowing, not actual concern over what happens on Arrakis.
The point was Twitter's reaction, not existence of the trolls themselves. They did not remove the tweets.
Given that all I can find in the way of comments of it seems to be self-aggrandizement from atheists wishing to present themselves as the victims, I'll need more authentication. Can you find a response from Twitter itself?
Go check out the Arabic post-Pulse nightclub tweets. I'll bet you anything they're still up.
You neglected to specificy which tweets. Merely being in Arabic is not an offense. So that would make a bad bet on my part. Given that I don't speak Arabic, I'll refrain from using any automatic translation tools. However while I see that some individuals deleted their offensive tweets after the Pulse shooting, I do not know that Twitter itself did.
Go gratuitously change the topic somewhere else. These things have to be analyzed as they arrive in the inbox. If you spend all your time debating what should be debated, nothing gets done. The topic here, on this particular page, is clearly defined and it has very little to do with that tiny little list marked "tricky problems arising from globalization."
You're the one screaming to the hills about the left ignoring malignant conduct, while turning a blind eye yourself to such problems as tragic deaths in factories in Bangladesh, which you callously dismiss as problems arising from globalisation. My point was to show your lack of concern, and you pretty effectively demonstrated it with your reaction. Sad that you don't realize it. Your reaction was quite revealing to your true character.
I suppose it is some comfort that you aren't suave enough to pivot and attack on it. Better for the world that you not be entirely adept and competent.
No. What you do is let people host their own replies to tweets by assigning them UUIDs. The only centralization you need is to make sure you don't have UUID collisions.
And if the person you tweet a reply to doesn't follow you he'll never see it nor will the 90%+ of his followers that aren't your followers. How is that anything like Twitter? The only way that works in a remotely sane fashion is if everybody is already following each other, it's like reinventing a Facebook group only poorly and you can't limit it to just one topic because you're either following or not. For example say person X makes a tweet. A, B and C are work buddies, 1, 2, 3 are part of his sports team and I, II and III are personal friends. We all reply, but ABC doesn't see 1-3 or I-III's posts because we're not followers of each other. And then X makes a reply to A's reply, does it hang in thin air for 1-3 and I-III? Or does now A's reply get "backdated" into the conversation? Is X aware that all these different groups have only see a fraction of what he sees?
If you think that was the solution, you haven't understood the problem. At all.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
And if the person you tweet a reply to doesn't follow you he'll never see it nor will the 90%+ of his followers that aren't your followers. How is that anything like Twitter?
You send a pingback to the site to which you're replying, of course. Fuck, do I have to spell out every trivial detail for you? Is this Slashdot or not?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The problem is if you want replies to tweets, you'll run into the same uncontrolled spam / troll / junk / harassment / propaganda problem that has driven users from distributed systems towards centralized sites and why so many blogs and other sites disable comments. You need some kind of CAPTCHA for rate control and it needs to be replaced/updated as it is broken.
Require proof-of-work to reply. In other words, deploy a blockchain-driven comment reply system.
I initially wrote that sarcastically, since blockchain is the new nonsense buzzword, but it just might work. Dunno, since I've never participated in that type of social media and don't understand the mindset, so I don't know if that sort of restriction would be acceptable. The only social media site I use is Slashdot, and it seems to be qualitatively different from all the others. Still, proof-of-work can not be gamed, no matter what you do. That eliminates spam, 99% of trolls, 98% of junk, 99% of harassment, and some large percentage of propaganda. The only surviving propaganda would be paid propaganda. There aren't many assholes dedicated enough to trolling to run a mining rig just to shitpost.
Since so many users of such sites insist on using their phones, you'd have to link installations via accounts. The phone app would not mine and would not serve data to the distributed system. You'd have to run a PC for both of those functions. The PC would mine and be a server node in the distributed system. The phone app would tap into the credits generated by the PC to be able to post. PC installation and app to PC linking would have to be drop dead simple while still being exceedingly secure, or credit piracy would be a thing, and the shitposting would continue. That's probably enough to torpedo the idea, right there. Key exchange isn't easy enough. Even easier key exchange, like "use the app to take a photo of a QR code" is still not easy enough.
Never mind. Solving the problem requires implementing security. Users hate security.
There aren't many assholes dedicated enough to trolling to run a mining rig just to shitpost.
Interesting. That sentence was supposed to be:
There aren't many trolls dedicated enough to trolling to run a mining rig just to shitpost.
But Slashdot's lameness filter wouldn't allow it in combination with the rest of the text. Yet I can post it standalone. Odd. I haven't run into the lameness filter for anything other than all caps in years...
and you can include "progressives" and "socialists" in that basket of deplorables as well.
Haven't made the jump? US progressivism since the 1950's has increasingly incorporated elements of Frankfurt school ideology; rejecting Western civilization is part and parcel of that ideology.
I think Twitter is a honeypot of stupid, which makes it useful in my book.
If Twitter went away overnight a few hundred thousand rabid and confused people would be let loose to wreak havoc on other sites.
I see, so your position is that all Muslims are extremists.
Islamist is not a synonym for Muslim, nor is "jihadi" an acceptable synonym for Islamist (as some people try to claim) because most Islamists are able to operate in the open by simply prefacing their comments with a nominal rejection of violence (often espousing terribly bad justifications for doing so.)
I do sometimes use the word "Islamist" a bit too loosely insofar as I often am actually referring to "Islamists and conservative Muslims", but the line between those two groups is quite fluid and this has nothing to do with your complaint, which is based entirely on ignorance.
This is the second time this week someone has misundestood this term. I want to think that it's not a common enough word, but I suspect it's more likely that there are tons of people out there who have no idea that the Muslim world isn't divided between jihadists and moderates. Hundreds of millions of Muslims (but not all Muslims, of course) are fighting for the right to create theocratic hellholes...hellholes that go far beyond what the vast majority of Evangelical Christians are advocating; it's just that they have enough sense to occasionally preface their rhetoric with a few words of condemnation for ISIS or whatever.
If you are in fact ignorant of the Islamist movement that has tendrils around the globe, you may want to refrain on commenting on anything pertaining to controversies surrounding Islam until you've had time to read up on it. I mean to say that in the friendliest possible tone of voice.
Which Christians or right wingers are being censored on Twitter? And before you trot out Milo, who was banned for posting racist garbage to a black woman's Twitter feed, keep in mind he wasn't censored for being a Christian or a right winger, he was banned for being an asshole.
I don't really buy that was their only reason; it might not have even been their primary reason. He was de-verified by Twitter prior to this. He was also temp-banned by Twitter immediately after the Pulse shooting due to a result of a sustained flagging campaign by Muslims. (This isn't some conspiracy theory; they were open about trying to get him taken off of Twitter.)
I don't have another good Twitter example offhand, since I have mostly avoided Twitter like the plague. (Although I have in the past translated some of the comments on Arabic Twitter and they definitely seemed like the sort of thing that would be deleted if said by a Christian on English Twitter.)
Youtube's censorship is what's most troubling me at the moment, particularly of Atheism-is-Unstoppable's video a few months back. (Disclaimer: I'm not a huge fan of either him or Milo, but both men are correct and even compelling on certain specific issues.) They are apparently not allowing anyone to say that they "hate" Muslims, even if they candy coat the shit out of it with " no, not all Muslims are terrorists, I don't hate Muslims on the street to anywhere near the same extent I hate ISIS, I just hate that people are spreading vile nonsense." This, in combination with their almost sickening official video response to the Pulse nightclub, has me very pessimistic the direction they are headed in.
The tiny bit of optimist in me says that maybe if it keeps getting worse, we'll finally see a good pro-free speech platform arise that Joe Sixpack would be willing to use.
Given that all I can find in the way of comments of it seems to be self-aggrandizement from atheists wishing to present themselves as the victims
We were the victims. The men I claim as my brothers were killed in Bangladesh.
while turning a blind eye yourself to such problems as tragic deaths in factories in Bangladesh
Are you the same AC? Or are all ACs like this? I'm beginning to see why most people just ignore you people.
Strawman, liar, hijacking without apology, expecting me to provide citations for some lazy asshole who won't even bother making a slashdot account... yeah, I think I'm done with this.
Lol. Assuming the stupidest possible implementation of ideas you dislike practically defines slashdot. Its like an inverse of the principle of charity.
So which part of that disputes twitter censoring things that they disagree with? Oh right...
You know not every discussion involves a dispute?
The point was about 3.2m above your head apparently.
Things are not always as they seem...
I know I've said this before: "Twitter should have been an RFC, not a company".
Remember RFCs and when there were clients other than HTTP that people cared about? This. Twitter's 140 character messages could be just UDP if you don't care about them making it, or a really quick TCP connection to some server that then redistributes the messages. Heck, it could even be blockchain based and distributed with no central server; but it never should have been a company. The only reason it's a company is because of the way VC money sloshes around in the Valley, and it's a casino where retail investors play against the house and always lose.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Hmm, willingness to debate? I would say you tend to stubbornly refuse to reconsider your thinking, for days, if not weeks, rather than mere hours. Perhaps even a lifetime.
Debate though, no, you really don't do that, you're way too prone to claimed offense and standoffishness for that, let alone able to adjust your own position as you communicate with others.
You should analyze yourself though, you can't listen to others until you know yourself better.
That said, no, I can't say you are especially novel. There are several of your nature in this thread.
fuck you salesforce for not buying linkedin. I had to delete my account because m$ bought it...
We were the victims. The men I claim as my brothers were killed in Bangladesh.
Only if you can use their deaths to assail Twitter apparently. Confronting the government of Bangladesh that most likely ordered their deaths is too much to ask.
And the deaths of people exploited by outside influences preying upon them is dismissed by you as a triviality, unworthy of your attention. Ithink I would disown you if you claimed to be related to me.
Are you the same AC? Or are all ACs like this? I'm beginning to see why most people just ignore you people.
Seems to me you ignore everyone, except maybe those whose message you want to hear. Anything that disturbs your worldview is rendered into unthinkable badthought.
Strawman, liar, hijacking without apology, expecting me to provide citations for some lazy asshole who won't even bother making a slashdot account... yeah, I think I'm done with this.
Feigned outrage over being questioned, unwillingness to have a discussion, is there any reason for anyone to worry about you pretending to storm off in a huff? Even if you closed your account, you'd likely just start a new one.
What would be interesting to hear from you would be some acknowledgment of the criticism of others, that doesn't sound like it had to be dragged out of you. That would be quite a surprise.
That's an interesting way of looking at it... But keep in mind that GP's argument about destroying shareholder value isn't just about a lower stock price due to a damaged brand, the actual value (assets) of the company may have decreased by a similar amount at the same time. Instead of paying $100 for an $80 item, you're now paying $50 for a $40 item. The price may be lower but it's still a crap buy.
But the numbers don't bear this out. These things are reported publicly, and can be easily looked up.
Like a lot of virtual services, Twitter doesn't have a ton of real value to start with. They don't have significant real estate holdings -- their latest earnings report lists $758 837 of "Property and Equipment, net", which is up from $699 502 YoY, and at an all-time high. So the hypothesis doesn't stand in light of the facts.
Twitter's whole value is in their Monthly Active Users (MAU), and that was up 1% during the last reported quarter. Twitters problem is that they don't have much of any real value (as mentioned above, they only have about 3/4 of a million in property and equipment), there isn't much growth potential, and advertising revenue is stagnant.
Making up stuff about SJWs being the reason why Twitter's valuation is down is just mental masturbation, and an attempt to paint "SJW's" as a societal ill. But Twitter's problems have nothing to do with Anita Sarkeesian, or five Conservative (in)Justice Warriors who have had their accounts banned for being abusing dicks. Hell, advertisers generally don't want to be associated with such people anyway -- it devalues their brand. The numbers -- which are publicly available -- bear this out.
The GP was being disingenuous, plain and simple.
Yaz
I'm of the opinion that Twitter should be turned to a public service and stay alive even with public funding/support.
It's a way for schizos and retards to steam off instead of running around killing people. If you shut it the stupidity and hatered in there will explode and contaminate the rest of the Internet. Keep them in there to interact with bots all day.
You know not every discussion involves a dispute?
Right, would you rather try debate? Want to try again and explain how censoring things is a good idea that will draw people in?
Things are not always as they seem...
Yes, sometimes they're near and sometimes far. And sometimes they're out in left field.
Om, nomnomnom...
Right, would you rather try debate? Want to try again and explain how censoring things is a good idea that will draw people in?
Because a lot of people only like to hear what they want to hear. Twitter is a private company not a public service, there is no obligation to offer everyone a voice. Just like sports, religion, music, fashion or any other private venture, you create an ecosystem that you think customers want. You and I might think it's shit, but millions of others out there might think this sanitised version of Internet communication is great.
Obvious off-topic troll is obvious. Your writing patterns give you away. You're no desire to engage in real debate and I've no more desire to respond to you except to warn others to not bother responding. Go register for an account if you want to have a real debate with accountability.
Just how far in debt is Twitter to make major companies walk away so abruptly? Usually for a corporate entity it takes a substantial amount of concern, and cons out weighing the pros to walk away from the consideration of a bid on a major internet company.
I bet The Donald is interested.
It's basically the mold for how not to design a social network.
Because a lot of people only like to hear what they want to hear. Twitter is a private company not a public service, there is no obligation to offer everyone a voice. Just like sports, religion, music, fashion or any other private venture, you create an ecosystem that you think customers want. You and I might think it's shit, but millions of others out there might think this sanitised version of Internet communication is great.
Correct partially. People enjoy listening to what they like to hear, however Twitter is a publicly traded company not private and is responsible to it's shareholders. Go listen to their last investors meeting, investors in general are livid with what the CEO has done to the company and brand.
Investors already know that the current CEO has significantly damaged the brand, possibly beyond repair. Some people though are in so deep that the only way to recover their buy in is for Twitter to sell to another company, but the CEO keeps fucking it up and the board doesn't seem to care. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if in 6mo that there's a shareholder revolt. So that goes all back to the original point, when you ban people because "reasons" it doesn't draw people in. Their number of active users continues to fluctuate between 288-315m but the number of new subscribers continues to fall through the floor. Which also reminds me of the shareholder lawsuit against them for purposefully misleading investors on future growth of users.
Om, nomnomnom...
however Twitter is a publicly traded company not private and is responsible to it's shareholders.
This maybe a cultural terminology thing. Where I live 'public' means government, ie owned by the people, 'private' means owned by individuals.
Publicly listed companies are also public but we differentiate by calling them 'listed'. The big difference is that the rules for things like free speech etc only apply to the public sector because it has to try and be fair to every single person in the country. Private can be as biased as they like, since in a free market if you disagree you always have the choice not to use their services. (It's not quite that simple but that's the general gist of it)
So that goes all back to the original point, when you ban people because "reasons" it doesn't draw people in.
I think it depends. Donald Trump drew in about 35 million supporters with similar rhetoric, and most sports clubs work specifically on the tribal us vs them exclusion mentality that makes no sense. Apple is also the most profitable company in the world specifically because of the highly controlled ecosystem they provide their customers.
Twitter is merely trying to create a controlled environment that benefits more users. They may have executed it poorly, I wouldn't know because I find the whole Twitter concept stupid to start with so don't get involved, but the idea can work if done properly.
To fix Twitter, just remove all direct messaging. All the harassment would stop. Sure, people could still tweet all manner of vile things, but only people who have opted in to follow them would see it.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
My primary use-case is getting real-time status updates from my local public transit agency (that I commute on daily). I wouldn't like to see that go away.
Where I live we have an app for that. Real-time timetable and routing information using vehicle tracking on all public trains/buses/ferries etc, with built-in notifications.
So your comment has absolutely nothing to do with what I said.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.