> "I love Twitter. Twitter is the closest thing we have to a global consciousness." -- Jack Dorsey, Apr 25, 2022
Twitter is more like hooking electrodes to a the brains of a frog and watching parts of it jump when you apply current.
The people worrying about Musk: (a) believe that twitter offers such zombie like control over "global consciousness", (b) that such controls are a good thing, and (c) that Musk is the Wrong Person to wield them, which means there must be Right People somewhere.
The global consciousness thing stems from the neural-net like search features of Twitter. You find unexpected and real-time updates on any subject imaginable. Often a Google or DuckDuckGo search query is no match for Twitter's search feature.
It's the closest thing to hacking the world's hive-mind, however cobbled together it is. IMHO the more people that use it the better. We can create a sort of better noosphere[0] than the current one.
"neural-net like search features of Twitter"?? "It's the closest thing to hacking the world's hive-mind"??? Puh-leese. While I personally don't find much use for Twitter, I don't hate it, but this "global consciousness" nonsense is just marketing babble.
It's really a reflection of what Twitter is actually great at: surfacing things that you're already interested in. If you're the type of person who interacts with a lot of political things on Twitter, it's going to surface things that will make you engage, which is hot political takes. So it makes you believe that you are part of this global consciousness, despite it really being just tens of thousands of people engaging with each other circularly.
Personally I have locked down my Twitter to only be about music and anime and it's really, really good at surfacing new art and new music that I enjoy. I have never seen a political take on my personal Twitter feed.
I continue to hope that Twitter, the One True Ring and Arbiter of All That Is Culturally Relevant, is metaphorically thrown into the lava. No one entity should have this level of power.
Whatever takes its place will likely be a shadow of Twitter’s size, and risks being confined to smaller demographics. These are all features, not bugs.
We will one day look back at this time and see how insane it is to take a website with a freeform, limited size text input field so seriously.
> Who’s agreeing that it has such power in the first place?
In support of this, Twitter has a metric "monetizable daily active users". So while, in the United States, they have 68 million monthly active users, the amount of mDAUs is 38 million. While 1/10th of the United States is certainly no small feat, Facebook is probably the real issue with >250 million monthly active users in the United States[1] (I couldn't find a similar daily metric).
Yes but sometimes things like the holocaust (Hitlers big lie) & the Khmer Rouge (kill all smart people & literally anybody who might even look “smart”) happen before that.
Do we want such things happening again? There’s currently a large amount of a political party that wants to straight up murder the other in open season. The other wants like… healthcare, & equal rights (in actual practice, not just written) for minorities.
> Okay, we'll censor the #KillAllMen hashtag and the like since imminent threats are not covered under "free speech".
Actually, under the Brandenburg v Ohio standard... they're constitutionally-protected free speech. To be illegal, you have to pretty much be speaking to a mob, pointing to someone, and saying "kill that person."
Pretty sure those atrocities happened because of regimes that CENSORED the truth... Not because the Nazis and Khmer Rouge were free-speech advocates SMH.
Edit - also the Khmer Rouge started off as guerilla fighters supported by foreign powers (China, Vietnam) who won a civil war then purged their enemies/smart people. They didn't come to power because of 'free speech' or whatever point you think you're making. As for the Nazis, they literally outlawed free speech after consolidating their power SMH.
HN has very light moderation versus Reddit which has pretty heavy-handed moderation and Subreddits quickly turn into echo chambers. And even there the best Subreddits are those that are least-moderated.
Edit - Twitter is also currently a cesspool of fake outrage and Islamic extremism somehow. Myself and almost everyone I know doesn't use it for that reason. Instagram and even TikTok are better platforms because of the lack of political censorship.
This sounds like a "I didn't say it, I declared it" situation. It means absolutely nothing without specifics, of which few have been offered.
What exactly is "enabling free speech" on a globally used platform? Is Musk going to disable Twitter in countries that criminalize Holocaust denial? It's not illegal in the US after all. How about criticism of China's treatment of Uighurs? Will that left untouched considering Musk's numerous business interests that require bending the knee to the CCP?
Is Musk going to relocate the company to Mars so they can allow white nationalist groups and ISIS offshoots
It is not just journalists, it is most of the people who shape culture including politicians and entertainers. That is why Twitter has a bigger multiplier effect than other social media platforms compared to their number of users. You may not consume Twitter directly, but odds are you still consume it filtered through the minds of the most powerful people in our culture.
a) Twitter, like other mediums, offers incredible influence.
b) I don't think the powers that be really believe this is such a good thing.
c) Musk is bad for Twitter, almost assuredly. He could feasibly bring some operational rigour, 'more and better ads' meaning more profit - but I'm extremely doubtful that he will make Twitter better in the civic sense.
The best answer to Twitter is mostly just 'less Twitter'.
I've had Twitter account for more than 10 years and hardly ever used it. The war in Ukraine however, has instantly addicted me to it, what with news coming 'straight from the front lines'.
I have found this to be immensely valuable - though a bit too much to handle.
That said, stepping back, even the 'thoughtful comment's are 95% fleeting and rubbish.
Finally - only a small % of people use Twitter. Most people could give a shit. I think that distinction is important.
Imagine if you have all the journalists, NGOs, academics - people who are addicted to talking, ideas, their own voices, to 'making a name' - and now send them to one giant conference where they can yell at each other. Most people could care less and wouldn't ever want to participate.
In the end, if something on Twitter is important enough - it will make the news and you'll hear about it.
Yes, especially everyone in politics, journalism, and other culturally important institutions where it seems to have become a professional requirement.
If anyone out there is on the fence, please try it. Quit for 60 days—long enough to break the addiction—and see how you feel and whether you actually miss it.
I have always in my life attempted to look up to people only for the admirable parts of their existence. It's ok to think Tiger Woods is a golf god and terrible husband.
Similarly I cannot count how many 'public figures' I've learned are deranged or critically incapable of thinking from their posting on twitter. I'd much rather those people volunteer to identify themselves two me through twitter or whatever platform, so that I can know what's going on with the whole of their thinking.
Twitter almost invariably unmasks idiots more than it makes heroes.
Tragically - I have seen many people I admire look like fools.
In particular, a lot of users will 'let loose' their beef, their cynical grind on Twitter, the thing that upsets them. Consistently.
It's one thing to be 'angry' in person, with people you know - that can work - but when you do it in public, without the humane context, it just feels really unsympathetic and people look bad.
I think this is what happens when you give a man a smartphone, and have them start to just 'say stuff' 20 times a day. We don't have that much insight. We just get ornery, like a smoker needing their next cigarette.
I think this applies to everyone.
One minute I really respect a person for their moderation, conscientiousness - the next moment they're jumping on a stupid meme, over reacting to something etc..
Well, it's not too difficult to ignore 'a vast amount of media' -- in fact, given there are only 86,400 seconds in a day, and for 28,880 of them you're sleeping, I'd say you have to ignore a vast amount of media. I wouldn't say that qualifies someone as a social outcast.
Anonymous/pseudonymous messageboarsd still exist, particularly if they're for things that preceded social media and are still popular, like a sports team.
The lack of gamification (upvote buttons and the like) is probably one of the reason many moved from forums to Facebook groups and Twitter.
I gotta keep asking the obvious question: Why won't someone else build a Twitter?
Not a "free speech" Twitter, not a "better" Twitter, just... figuratively rebranded Twitter. Same concept, maybe different implementation details, some modest innovations, but give the people who want to leave a place to go.
The only answer I've ever gotten (that isn't solvable by being good at software engineering) is, "network effects!" but... now is the moment, if ever there was a moment, where the network is most fragile on Twitter.
Give people a place to go for a "Twitter Classic" experience, before the rudeness and hate get re-platformed!
Whoever does this, I feel confident in saying, will be a millionaire. I dunno if there are any more "Social Media" billionaires left, but millionaire? That feels very achievable!
If it's such a sure investment, why not do it yourself?
You can fork Mastadon[1] and get the thing deployed this afternoon!
The "network effect" isn't some little thing you can easily solve. Like saying "building rockets is easy, the designs are all there, just solve the gravity problem".
After trying out all of the alternative Twitters for conservatives, my assumption is that it must take a lot more work than most of us think it will to build a polished experience that someone wants to use. Every alternative I've used has sucked in comparison.
To think of it as 'tech' and not the set of relations between the people is to misunderstand it.
Making that community again would be really hard.
There would have to be a 'very strong impetus' for it.
Trump is a very popular figure, and it's feasible he could be the basis for a new kind of social network, but as we saw with Parler and 'Truth Social' - he'll likely fail for obvious reasons. (And thankfully so).
And FYI - it's not at all obvious what would make a 'better Twitter'. Just adjusting the alg a bit, allowing 'more' expression, being better at spam - none of that would be enough for a 'new entrant' to make any progress.
Some days, you have to wonder where we’d be if Pownce actually won out against Twitter back in the day. That Twitter won out ended up being more consequential than anyone could have expected.
I wouldn’t really build one because I’m not sure how Twitter makes money. Ads? Selling data access (firehouse)? Are any of those things actually sustainable?
Twitter feels less like a social network and more like just a tool.
A social network, like most websites, is just a tool.
Setting aside all the spicy hot takes about "discourse", politics, free speech, censorship, addiction mind control, etc, most of which is overblown, A social network is just a tool to allow people to form persistent connections with each other and communicate, or consume curated content.
Give people a place to go for a "Twitter Classic" experience, before the rudeness and hate get re-platformed!
...and before the copious amounts of illegal content. One other aspect that is briefly touched on in the article and other related writings (of which I cannot recall any specifically, unfortunately) is the virtue that is required of a Twitter user on the platform.
Twitter has a difficult time dealing with the sheer volume of illegal content popping up on the site (and I mean illegal, very immoral, not just something that can be handwaved as opinion - I mean things like e.g. straight up CSAM [0]) and I suspect that even if you solve the social network problems (and you have to solve that and try and get everyone over onto the platform together as whole social units, otherwise you have nothing but a void that people shout into), any competitor will eventually bleed itself dry with its "free" model due to the amount of money being thrown towards trying to close the floodgates, or at least stymying the tide of, incoming illegal content.
(Interestingly, I suspect this is true of any other social media platform as well, and I think once you try and factor in the costs and technological innovations needed to try and stop the problem, it becomes a truly impossible task to try and displace any existing giant at their current financial states.)
I do disagree on the millionaire bit, though - perhaps billionaire would be more apt for one to solve all the issues that social media can encounter given the kinds of valuations these platforms pull.
There have already been a lot of alternate Twitters built, including the federated Mastodon network. If you haven't heard of them, why not? That answers the question.
For any Twitter competitor to work, they need a hook to get people to actually use it instead of Twitter. It's hard to think of a really good one. People who feel they have been too censored on Twitter are a possible source, but then the people who were enthusiastic about censoring them go on the attack at any new site, making them have to address a lot of hard problems earlier than otherwise.
Not to mention being able to get top-tier software engineers to work there instead of Twitter or any other company.
A couple people have replied with the generic, "Network Effects are hard!" reply, but y'all seem to have ignored my whole point; Twitter's "Network Effect" is vulnerable right now. They could be a Digg looking for a Reddit, but nobody's trying to build a Reddit for some reason.
Also, you definitely don't need "top-tier" engineers to build a Twitter clone. There are hard problems involved in running a site at Twitter scale, and Twitter definitely needs and (currently, anyway) has top-tier engineers, but even 1/100th of Twitter scale would make you a millionaire.
Alternatively, you could just hire all of the engineers who want to leave Twitter because Elon runs it now.
Just take the parts of Twitter that don't fit with Elon's vision (but might be the parts that make Twitter valuable), build a new company out of them, and make a bunch of money. I just see an opportunity here, is what I'm trying to say.
I'm not sure if "Not owned by Elon Musk" is a sufficient hook to get people to sign up. I mean that literally - it might be, or it might not be. But seeing as how technically Elon Musk doesn't actually own Twitter yet and this whole brouhaha only seems to have gotten serious a week or so ago, I'd say give it some time. Surely, no matter how good or bad Musk's ownership of Twitter turns out to go, somebody will start yet another alternate Twitter with that hook, and we'll all get to see if it works or not.
> not a "better" Twitter, just... figuratively rebranded Twitter. Same concept, maybe different implementation details,
Isn't that what Yo, Secret, and all those other long-dead flashes in the pan were? 2014 VC decks were probably full of pitches for the next big thing in social media.
Twitter is a small aquarium for very colorful goldfish. The aquarium protects goldfish from the reality, and gives them an illusion that they are (1) much bigger than they really are and that they are (2) clearly superior to other fish, such as tuna and sardine. The new owner wants to introduce some diversity and add tuna to the aquarium. I suggest he should add some crabs too.
I thought this was a mostly well structured article. Several of the paragraphs were prompts from quoting others, which gave me a chance to check out the other's he'd linked to.
Now, reading an article about stoicism from the perspective of a Silicon Valley techbro or VC? That's real pain.
Anything I've heard or read Musk say about Twitter longer than a tweet seems to be positive from my perspective. The two themes I hear are the idea that it's a "town square" and that this form of communication is crucial for society. To me this seems like trying to go against the belief/conversation bubbles present by default on other social platforms. There are other aspects that will have to be dealt with such as how to monetize it to satisfy the private investors, or how it might be misused for other purposes. These other aspects don't have to negate the first primary goals but rather find a way to co-exist. I can't tell if the detractors (a) don't believe the stated motivations, (b) don't trust it will be done well, (c) have various other complaints/beefs that outweigh the positives. I find it hard to argue that Musk won't execute well given Tesla and SpaceX as priors.
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 103 ms ] thread> "I love Twitter. Twitter is the closest thing we have to a global consciousness." -- Jack Dorsey, Apr 25, 2022
Twitter is more like hooking electrodes to a the brains of a frog and watching parts of it jump when you apply current.
The people worrying about Musk: (a) believe that twitter offers such zombie like control over "global consciousness", (b) that such controls are a good thing, and (c) that Musk is the Wrong Person to wield them, which means there must be Right People somewhere.
I think they're wrong on all counts.
It's the closest thing to hacking the world's hive-mind, however cobbled together it is. IMHO the more people that use it the better. We can create a sort of better noosphere[0] than the current one.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noosphere
Personally I have locked down my Twitter to only be about music and anime and it's really, really good at surfacing new art and new music that I enjoy. I have never seen a political take on my personal Twitter feed.
Whatever takes its place will likely be a shadow of Twitter’s size, and risks being confined to smaller demographics. These are all features, not bugs.
We will one day look back at this time and see how insane it is to take a website with a freeform, limited size text input field so seriously.
Who’s agreeing that it has such power in the first place?
> take a website with a freeform, limited size text input field so seriously.
Who takes Twitter so seriously?
Does it really need 4chan level of disclaimer saying “don’t take this so seriously” ?
In support of this, Twitter has a metric "monetizable daily active users". So while, in the United States, they have 68 million monthly active users, the amount of mDAUs is 38 million. While 1/10th of the United States is certainly no small feat, Facebook is probably the real issue with >250 million monthly active users in the United States[1] (I couldn't find a similar daily metric).
0: https://www.statista.com/statistics/970911/monetizable-daily...
1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/247614/number-of-monthly...
> Who takes Twitter so seriously?
All of the people flipping their lid about it being bought out. If it truly has no power, why would anybody care who owned it?
"And now, we have a question from Twitter, which is apparently something that happens now".
They had no idea.
Yes but sometimes things like the holocaust (Hitlers big lie) & the Khmer Rouge (kill all smart people & literally anybody who might even look “smart”) happen before that.
Do we want such things happening again? There’s currently a large amount of a political party that wants to straight up murder the other in open season. The other wants like… healthcare, & equal rights (in actual practice, not just written) for minorities.
Actually, under the Brandenburg v Ohio standard... they're constitutionally-protected free speech. To be illegal, you have to pretty much be speaking to a mob, pointing to someone, and saying "kill that person."
Edit - also the Khmer Rouge started off as guerilla fighters supported by foreign powers (China, Vietnam) who won a civil war then purged their enemies/smart people. They didn't come to power because of 'free speech' or whatever point you think you're making. As for the Nazis, they literally outlawed free speech after consolidating their power SMH.
Note the "eventually" here can be 10-50 years. Which leaves a lot of room for short term damage.
Reminds me a bit of Keynes's "In the long run we are all dead".
Lol eventually in today's world is like a week... 50 years ago there was no internet at all.
Do you believe that websites with no moderation tend to have the best truth/lie ratio?
HN has very light moderation versus Reddit which has pretty heavy-handed moderation and Subreddits quickly turn into echo chambers. And even there the best Subreddits are those that are least-moderated.
Edit - Twitter is also currently a cesspool of fake outrage and Islamic extremism somehow. Myself and almost everyone I know doesn't use it for that reason. Instagram and even TikTok are better platforms because of the lack of political censorship.
What exactly is "enabling free speech" on a globally used platform? Is Musk going to disable Twitter in countries that criminalize Holocaust denial? It's not illegal in the US after all. How about criticism of China's treatment of Uighurs? Will that left untouched considering Musk's numerous business interests that require bending the knee to the CCP?
Is Musk going to relocate the company to Mars so they can allow white nationalist groups and ISIS offshoots
I am not on twitter.
Neither are billions of global human beings.
I know it's a big site, but the "global consciousness" or "world's town square" are just Twitter user's stroking their ego.
Journalists are all on it. That's all.
b) I don't think the powers that be really believe this is such a good thing.
c) Musk is bad for Twitter, almost assuredly. He could feasibly bring some operational rigour, 'more and better ads' meaning more profit - but I'm extremely doubtful that he will make Twitter better in the civic sense.
The best answer to Twitter is mostly just 'less Twitter'.
I've had Twitter account for more than 10 years and hardly ever used it. The war in Ukraine however, has instantly addicted me to it, what with news coming 'straight from the front lines'.
I have found this to be immensely valuable - though a bit too much to handle.
That said, stepping back, even the 'thoughtful comment's are 95% fleeting and rubbish.
Finally - only a small % of people use Twitter. Most people could give a shit. I think that distinction is important.
Imagine if you have all the journalists, NGOs, academics - people who are addicted to talking, ideas, their own voices, to 'making a name' - and now send them to one giant conference where they can yell at each other. Most people could care less and wouldn't ever want to participate.
In the end, if something on Twitter is important enough - it will make the news and you'll hear about it.
To people whose brokerage accounts have 8-digit balances, that is probably not too far away from what they meant.
If anyone out there is on the fence, please try it. Quit for 60 days—long enough to break the addiction—and see how you feel and whether you actually miss it.
I have always in my life attempted to look up to people only for the admirable parts of their existence. It's ok to think Tiger Woods is a golf god and terrible husband.
Similarly I cannot count how many 'public figures' I've learned are deranged or critically incapable of thinking from their posting on twitter. I'd much rather those people volunteer to identify themselves two me through twitter or whatever platform, so that I can know what's going on with the whole of their thinking.
Twitter almost invariably unmasks idiots more than it makes heroes.
Tragically - I have seen many people I admire look like fools.
In particular, a lot of users will 'let loose' their beef, their cynical grind on Twitter, the thing that upsets them. Consistently.
It's one thing to be 'angry' in person, with people you know - that can work - but when you do it in public, without the humane context, it just feels really unsympathetic and people look bad.
I think this is what happens when you give a man a smartphone, and have them start to just 'say stuff' 20 times a day. We don't have that much insight. We just get ornery, like a smoker needing their next cigarette.
I think this applies to everyone.
One minute I really respect a person for their moderation, conscientiousness - the next moment they're jumping on a stupid meme, over reacting to something etc..
The lack of gamification (upvote buttons and the like) is probably one of the reason many moved from forums to Facebook groups and Twitter.
Not a "free speech" Twitter, not a "better" Twitter, just... figuratively rebranded Twitter. Same concept, maybe different implementation details, some modest innovations, but give the people who want to leave a place to go.
The only answer I've ever gotten (that isn't solvable by being good at software engineering) is, "network effects!" but... now is the moment, if ever there was a moment, where the network is most fragile on Twitter.
Give people a place to go for a "Twitter Classic" experience, before the rudeness and hate get re-platformed!
Whoever does this, I feel confident in saying, will be a millionaire. I dunno if there are any more "Social Media" billionaires left, but millionaire? That feels very achievable!
The "network effect" isn't some little thing you can easily solve. Like saying "building rockets is easy, the designs are all there, just solve the gravity problem".
[1] https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon
Also, I don't think you quite get what I mean if you think Mastadon is what I'm talking about.
For example, can I run ads across all of Mastadon?
To think of it as 'tech' and not the set of relations between the people is to misunderstand it.
Making that community again would be really hard.
There would have to be a 'very strong impetus' for it.
Trump is a very popular figure, and it's feasible he could be the basis for a new kind of social network, but as we saw with Parler and 'Truth Social' - he'll likely fail for obvious reasons. (And thankfully so).
And FYI - it's not at all obvious what would make a 'better Twitter'. Just adjusting the alg a bit, allowing 'more' expression, being better at spam - none of that would be enough for a 'new entrant' to make any progress.
Twitter feels less like a social network and more like just a tool.
Setting aside all the spicy hot takes about "discourse", politics, free speech, censorship, addiction mind control, etc, most of which is overblown, A social network is just a tool to allow people to form persistent connections with each other and communicate, or consume curated content.
...and before the copious amounts of illegal content. One other aspect that is briefly touched on in the article and other related writings (of which I cannot recall any specifically, unfortunately) is the virtue that is required of a Twitter user on the platform.
Twitter has a difficult time dealing with the sheer volume of illegal content popping up on the site (and I mean illegal, very immoral, not just something that can be handwaved as opinion - I mean things like e.g. straight up CSAM [0]) and I suspect that even if you solve the social network problems (and you have to solve that and try and get everyone over onto the platform together as whole social units, otherwise you have nothing but a void that people shout into), any competitor will eventually bleed itself dry with its "free" model due to the amount of money being thrown towards trying to close the floodgates, or at least stymying the tide of, incoming illegal content.
(Interestingly, I suspect this is true of any other social media platform as well, and I think once you try and factor in the costs and technological innovations needed to try and stop the problem, it becomes a truly impossible task to try and displace any existing giant at their current financial states.)
I do disagree on the millionaire bit, though - perhaps billionaire would be more apt for one to solve all the issues that social media can encounter given the kinds of valuations these platforms pull.
[0] https://endsexualexploitation.org/twitter/
For any Twitter competitor to work, they need a hook to get people to actually use it instead of Twitter. It's hard to think of a really good one. People who feel they have been too censored on Twitter are a possible source, but then the people who were enthusiastic about censoring them go on the attack at any new site, making them have to address a lot of hard problems earlier than otherwise.
Not to mention being able to get top-tier software engineers to work there instead of Twitter or any other company.
A couple people have replied with the generic, "Network Effects are hard!" reply, but y'all seem to have ignored my whole point; Twitter's "Network Effect" is vulnerable right now. They could be a Digg looking for a Reddit, but nobody's trying to build a Reddit for some reason.
Also, you definitely don't need "top-tier" engineers to build a Twitter clone. There are hard problems involved in running a site at Twitter scale, and Twitter definitely needs and (currently, anyway) has top-tier engineers, but even 1/100th of Twitter scale would make you a millionaire.
Alternatively, you could just hire all of the engineers who want to leave Twitter because Elon runs it now.
Just take the parts of Twitter that don't fit with Elon's vision (but might be the parts that make Twitter valuable), build a new company out of them, and make a bunch of money. I just see an opportunity here, is what I'm trying to say.
Isn't that what Yo, Secret, and all those other long-dead flashes in the pan were? 2014 VC decks were probably full of pitches for the next big thing in social media.
Substack is quickly becoming Writing 101 for tech bros.
Now, reading an article about stoicism from the perspective of a Silicon Valley techbro or VC? That's real pain.