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Comment by davedx | Hacker News Reader

Good summary of the current political climate around the tech sector. To be honest, this has been a long time coming -- I've been reading pieces with disdain for "Silicon Valley technocrats" for a while now. It is picking up pace now, though... and the EU has already fired quite a few shots.

"I left out Twitter because it’s not actually a company, it’s a dysfunctional non-profit that accidentally provides a valuable service." Ouch.

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If a company is not making money but there are lots of people trying to keep it around it probably means that the company is making money for these people but it's not reflected to the books directly or the payment is due for later time.

It's bit of like building roads that on the books may look like unprofitable venture but the utility they provide makes possible for other businesses to flourish so the roads are kept build and maintained.

Do we really want to see Twitter gone? It's service is invaluable but it feels like they should be state-run or non-profit run or run by a company like Apple that makes it's money from directly selling something to it's users. Not only because Twitter fails to directly make money but also because it harness immense power to shape the human population(but they are not as good as Facebook in this).

I’ve seen quite a lot of suggestions on here that X shouldn’t be allowed to fail by the state, but I don’t really get it. Taking Twitter, it’s not like they are a railway or fuel company that if it shut down would cause massive disruption for many people and industries. And let’s not even begin to get into complications about the state (US government) owning them. How would that affect the privacy of users in other countries?

Twitter is the medium about what's happening RIGHT NOW. In before you would open the TV or the radio to get information about what's happening right now but these days many people would look at Titter to get information about "RIGHT NOW". It could be mundane things about the lives of other people or it could be an event that's affecting large number of people. If something is happening, there would be reports of observations and there would be statements from people in position of making statements.

I don't really think that a state should run a service about what's happening right now but I think that Twitter is invaluable service to the public that needs to be dealt with carefully.

Twitter's power is well beyond the power of displaying ads to users and the only failing thing is the business of displaying ads to users in exchange for money. Twitter's core function is strong, it's not a failing product.

Arguably it's a medium for unimportant things happening right now. anecdotal but I see maybe 1% useful tweets and 99% garbage.

The TV is also criticised for low quality content but still it is a fundamental medium and the way it is managed is regarded as a basic benchmark for democracies.

So of it isnt twitter. We can agree that we as a society need a social sounding board.

I would second this argument. I quit Twitter about two years ago after realizing that I mostly don't care about the things that are "happening right now" according to Twitter.

This is like saying "the library sucks, most of their books are totally irrelevant to me"-- on Twitter, you curate your own feed.

You've never used it in a crisis situation then. I've used it to be better informed about several hurricanes near me, political developments, a possible nuclear facility problem affecting family, the Tohuku earthquake, the Macondo well blowout, and numerous other things.

Twitter has been a prime source of first-hand real-time information in many many crises. Just because you haven't used it that way doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Perhaps you should curate your feeds a bit better.

Before tv or radio, there were telegraphs, and before that, there were newspapers. News traveled at the speed of horses and the stamina of riders.

I would argue that the immediacy of information comes at the cost of deliberation and the moderation that encourages. I'm not sure the result is a net gain.

Twitter is useless. Nothing would occur to the US or world if Twitter would shut-down today.

I'll say this is the only reason I've really stayed with Twitter. And it's not about the "right now" everywhere else but in my own neighborhood. If I hear a bunch of fire engines or helicopters lingering around, it's usually faster to go to Twitter and search my neighborhood to see what's going on than wait for it to be picked up by local news, if it is at all. You still have to use your brain to try and sort the signal from the noise.

If it is not profitable and runs on loss, then it is making profitable businesses in the same market impossible. We dont want it gone, but we are completely ok with it being gone due to bad business.

I am also ok with some help towards suddenly unemployed employees, owners who lost everything etc. However, business itself existing prevents a company with actual business model to appear.

I dont thing twitter is the kind of service that government should keep alive. It is not like roads.

> Do we really want to see Twitter gone?

Yes. As soon as possible, please.

why?

What positive value does it provide in your opinion?

It's the only generic, centralized, realtime source of news. The key is that the definition of "news" is quite broad.

Instant reports of witnesses about ongoing events and instant statements from those who are supposed to be in control of the ongoing events.

It's invaluable.

It exemplifies and exacerbates all the worst aspects of the internet: clickbaiting, irrelevant oversharing, uninformed commentary, reactionary groupthink, mob harassment, inaccurate and deliberately misleading news, etc.

Do I really want to see Twitter gone? Yes. I despise the trend of writing news articles where tweets are treated as sources, and most of the article is a series of tweets. One of the headlines I avoid ends with the phrase "and the Internet/Twitter goes <strong emotion>".

Twitter has only one logical paying customer that I can see: the media. The media immediately grabbed on to Twitter, pushing their handles on broadcasts. Back in 2007 I remember saying that CNN should have a rack with their name on it at Twitter's data center. Twitter has been trying to find a way to make advertising work, but if anyone wants to save Twitter (if it actually needs saving), it would be the media, maybe in the form of something like the AP, a service that everyone uses and pays into.

Why do you blame Twitter for the low quality articles that are about Twitter? Maybe you should direct your anger to those who write the news, not Twitter itself.

>Do we really want to see Twitter gone?

Can we have RSS back? I mainly use Twitter as an ersatz RSS substitute, because most publishers killed off RSS in favour of social media.

I just use Twitrss for those.

The other angle which I haven't seen much written about yet (hint hint aspiring journalists) is I personally know a good number of the mid and high level employees at these companies, and they are becoming increasingly disillusioned by the day. They just don't want to be a part of this bullshit system anymore. Especially at Google and Facebook, they seem to be more authoritarian than some toppled dictatorships of the past century.

Fortunately it's a great time for radical career shifts, especially if you always wanted to be an artist.

> Fortunately it's a great time for radical career shifts, especially if you always wanted to be an artist.

Can you elaborate? Genuinely curious.

Maybe they meant those mid/high-level employees have enough cash/stock that they can peace out of the work force or work less and pursue something artistic.

As far as that Twitter comment goes: I've always found Bray to be a bit too pleased with himself and not as clever as he would like to think he is. In that context, it's not a humorous bit of side eye but a tedious manifestation of his superiority complex.

He's also 100% correct, Twitter should be de-listed and treated as a utility. It's too much of a public good to get gobbled up by Google or whoever.

What makes Twitter "too much of a public good" in your opinion?

It's very handy as a short message system for public announcements/information.

trying to turn it into anything else has kinda failed

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