Twitter Beta-Tests a Spine | Hacker News Reader

Twitter Beta-Tests a Spine

theatlantic.com

63 pointsshawndumas16 comments

Original article: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/01/twitter/

Call me an idealist, but I'd like to believe they did it out of principle.

For me it's fine to think they did it out of pure greed (i.e. they realize they are direct competitors to news companies so if they show themselves to bow to this pressure no one will use them for anything controversial again). That way they're more likely to keep doing it in the future, even under new management.

Twitter's still small enough that they can make decisions out of principle, without them being diluted by a corporate structure. This strikes me as something Google might have done a few years ago.

Challenging the gag order was a win-win for them. Were they to lose, they'd have to comply with the gag order, but they could at least benefit from having put up a fight. Because they won, they get to be the champion of the people.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad they did, and I'm extremely proud of them on principle, but it was the logical way to respond.

Any guesses as to why they did this? I don't believe the "they're principled" tripe for one second. They must've had something to gain.

Edit: for those saying "good PR", why doesn't that apply to Amazon, Paypal, or any of the other companies that refused to work with Wikileaks? Is Twitter in a more precarious position in its market than they are in theirs? I don't think so, because even if you can replicate Twitter's software, you can't clone their community.

How about making their users like them more? Positive press? Good karma?

If not for principles, then perhaps for their public image?

That would be my guess. Whatever the reason, I do hope that more companies consider following Twitter and defending their users in the future.

In the current weirdly democratic online business environment -- where, theoretically, anyone with enough money could clone your app -- engendering positive reactions from your userbase seems like a remarkably valid approach to long-term retention.

You're wrong in many ways.

1) They have principles. I know the GC personally and he is a very principled guy. So are ev and biz.

2) Having principles isn't counter to the ability to recognize gains. In fact, the idealist in me hopes and has seen how they are intimately connected.

Also, remember that if you start giving into every request like this without a fight, they'll end up looking like a patsy. They fight and they know that they'll be taken seriously by law enforcement and by their users. I'm glad twitter did this.

Unlike Visa or Mastercard, the government does not lobby for Twitter. They do not have much to gain by folding easily.

I mentioned this above, but I'll expand on it here:

What does Twitter have to offer, really? Do we really care about Paris offering links to her friend's vagina? I mean, that, "Shit my dad says" and so on are entertaining and maybe worth a little bit but Twitter's real value is as a news service. If you're following the right place you can get instant news in a way not possible almost anywhere else. Would we have even heard about the Iran riots without Twitter? If they're going to be the place for scoops for the world they can't show themselves as someone who will give you up the first time the US asks.

From the Wired article:

Much of it is likely attributable to Twitter’s general counsel Alexander Macgillivray. As security and privacy blogger Christopher Soghoian notes, Macgillivray was one of the first law students at Harvards’ Berkman internet law center and at in his previous job at Google “played a major role in getting the company to contribute takedown requests to chillingeffects.org.”

so you don't believe people are ever principled, or are very rarely pricipled? Or do you believe that the people at twitter specifically aren't principled; and if so why?

I have nothing against the Twitter folks. I don't know anything about them, and have no opinion of them either way. I'm just saying that going from how other companies have responded to the American government's attempt to bully Wikileaks (by giving in to their demands), Twitter appears to be an anomaly. I'd like to know why.

>Any guesses as to why they did this?

I know we're talking about totally different scales here, but web users are able to be very, very fickle. Look at something like digg. In what seemed like a few days, the site all but completely lost all relevancy because the users' perception of "management" was that they were catering to advertisers.

Twitter could fall just as quickly (and so could facebook, despite what seems to be popular opinion) if the users start feeling like they have to be cautious about what they're tweeting (or who they're following, in this case).

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