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Comment by TicklishTiger | Hacker News Reader

I am a fan of Twitter. It is a much better social network then Facebook and Instagram. But when it comes to development quality, Twitter reminds me of Ebay. The technology just does not seem solid. Every other month, something goes wrong.

I wonder if there is a systematic difference between companies with solid development and companies with wonky development. Is there a different hiring philosophy in place? A different type of tech stack? A different management structure?

Just a week ago, Twitter lost over 20% market cap because they noticed that they were showing people device-personalized ads even though they were opted out of that. After they fixed it, revenues went down.

In other words, a stunning 10 billion dollar of Twitters market cap was based on the illusion that the tech was working as expected. While in reality it was wrecking havoc.

Is it really possible that a feature that makes up a quarter of the companies value is not being tested?

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I've thought a lot about this, having worked at some of these companies with both good and bad quality. The best conclusion I can come to is whether or not the executives use the technology on a regular basis.

At eBay, the execs didn't use the platform much. In fact, when I worked there, they had to give us a $10 credit just to get us to use it (and then stopped when the users said it wasn't fair that employees were bidding with someone else's money).

At Facebook/IG, the execs use the platform often. At Netflix the execs use it pretty much every day. At Twitter, you don't see a lot of executive use.

You can even see it at Apple. The quality on MacOs has been falling, quite possibly because all the execs are using iPads and iPhones as their daily drivers, and rarely using laptops.

I think in the end it boils down to visibility to people who can affect change. Either your execs need to use the product often, or the engineers need to be empowered to make changes without exec approval (or both, like at Netflix or Facebook/IG).

Are you implying that Netflix software quality is good? As someone who uses the web interface in a variety of browsers, I disagree in the strongest terms possible.

The technical quality of it is good, its just that they make shitty UX decisions like autoplaying stuff when you just want to browse their catalog.

I haven’t used the Netflix web app in years. I can’t think of the last time I’ve seen others use it. Perhaps the execs don’t use the web app? The iOS apps work great for me. Especially the offline download feature- great for planes.

I think you may have inadvertently proved my point. The web interface is one of the least used interfaces. It probably doesn’t get used by many execs or engineers in the company.

I’m taken aback by all the people saying they never use the web interface - what in the world do people use, then? Is it really true that people overwhelmingly use Netflix on tiny phone screens?

Edit: I am stupid and forgot that smart TVs exist (despite owning one)

The TV mostly. Many TVs have built in Netflix apps, and also lots of thinks that you connect to a TV like AppleTV, Roku, Firestick, Blu-Ray players, etc.

Also iPads and other tablets.

Ah, right. Obviously. Not sure how TVs slipped my mind :)

I can get it to play video on Firefox in Linux. It seems ok to me.

The bar for Linux is “does it work at all?” If it’s not completely broken, then everything else matters little, because it could just as easily be broken. (Source: daily Linux user for... like ten years now?)

Anecdotally, I’ve only seen or heard of one or two people in recent years use Netflix on a web browser and it being a regular thing for them. I’d expect the vast majority to be via TV or mobile devices.

When I was in college, it was common for people to have a computer but not a TV.

(Of course, Netflix didn't offer streaming at the time - while piracy offered films quickly and for free, but only if you watched on computer)

In my experience, web interface is much more usable and pleasant than Apple TV app, which is just plain hostile.

> At Netflix the execs use it pretty much every day.

If true, they need to be fired. If they experience how terrible the Netflix UI is and refuse to fix it, they're guilty of either gross neglect or sabotage.

> If they experience how terrible the Netflix UI is and refuse to fix it, they're guilty of either gross neglect or sabotage.

Would ignorance of the quality of their product be any better?

Although I find the web ui works pretty well for me

> Would ignorance of the quality of their product be any better?

I suppose it would, since they can't remain ignorant forever.

> At Twitter, you don't see a lot of executive use.

Umm? I worked at Twitter for 4.5 years and execs used it a lot. The _board_ largely didn't use it, but everyone else did, to sometimes amusing results.

https://adage.com/article/digital/twitter-cfo-mistakenly-twe...

> The quality on MacOs has been falling, quite possibly because all the execs are using iPads and iPhones as their daily drivers, and rarely using laptops.

iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS were pretty awful as well, and presumably every executive is using those. And I can think of at least a handful of senior executives who probably use Macs daily–they're also probably the ones with the most direct control over the people who can fix issues in the software they're using.

I'm honestly shocked around how bad the experience is on the site. Mobile video especially. 30% of the time the video says "my account may not be allowed to see this video", even while logged out. Refreshing the page fixes it. But even when the video is loaded, it takes 2-3 taps on the play button to actually play.

It's not even the edge cases that they have issues with, it's the basics on the site. There are some serious quality control issues happening at Twitter.

Twitter... is a much better social network then Facebook and Instagram.

Off on a tangent: Are to elaborate? I've found Twitter extremely hard to use - people tweet and retweet so frequently, it always looks like a deluge of short, mostly meaningless, fluff. At least with Facebook, the longer bits of fluff are in a single post instead of spread aross and intermingled with other fluff.

But, maybe I'm doing it wrong? I really don't know. These days, I mostly stick to Instagram - it doesn't seem to have the negative impact on my psyche as either FB or Twitter.

The way Twitter works for me is to select very carefully whom to follow. And to turn off retweets from everybody. If somebody tweets fluff, I immediately unfollow them.

It completely escapes me, what you can do with Instagram. You cannot do text posts. You cannot put links in your posts. I have never seen a single intelligent discussion taking place on Instagram. What do you use it for?

> What do you use it for?

Sharing pictures, which is what it was built for.

It's not a platform for long form discussions or sharing links (That's why you can't even use links except one in your bio and everyone saying "link in bio" if they want to share something. There's even dedicated companies working around these restrictions and providing redirection services etc.

Photos. Which is probably why I like it - no fake news, no political shouting matches, no other stuff that makes me unhappy. Just photos.

I think the knee jerk joke would be Twitter rarely has intelligent discussion too. Obviously that’s not true and I’m sure you follow people who discuss worthy things. But the toxic parts of Twitter are so bad, which is what most of it is, is so bad, unless you’re keeping on top as much as you are, it seems like you get exposed to some of it...that’s not an issue most of the time on IG. It’s there for a chill experience.

I also only follow people with very high signal to noise ratio, and it works for me. I will use the option to "Turn off retweets" from people who retweet useless fluff but tweet good stuff.

What I would love is a button that temporarily removes the the retweets and/or tweets of a person from my timeline. Some people will on certain days get really passionate about an issue I don't care about and don't want to see 20 tweets from them, when their daily average is 1.

The big difference between Twitter and FB/IG is that it's explicitly oriented towards following people you don't know, not your friends. There's great, meaningful stuff on there (amongst all the meaningless fluff, but that's just Sturgeon's Law). The political stuff is toxic but if you dodge that and follow interesting people it gets a lot better.

The 280-char limit is IMO a bug these days, not a feature, and people route around it somewhat awkwardly with threads.

(Some random examples of good stuff: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1189378755313242112 https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1189249817492557826 https://twitter.com/isislovecruft/status/1189604908074332160 )

> I am a fan of Twitter. It is a much better social network then Facebook and Instagram.

I mean. You have the right to your opinion. But... really?

I understand that the sentiment is “Twitter is mostly what you make it“, but it was so incredibly toxic that I was stunned to the point where I almost became radicalised against the ideology that was pervasive at the time.

Even now I am sensitive to it.

Facebook in comparison never had strangers piling on me telling me I am worthless and invalid based on my race and gender.

Not that any of them are fantastical beacons of acerbic communication which puts such a high emphasis on civility as hacker news does. But to call twitter the best of this breed is, I feel, speaking from a far different experience than my own.

That sounds awful.

Do you have a sense of how much of this was due to how Twitter is designed as a medium vs due to the culture formed by the people who tend to use it?

I know both of these factors feed each other, but I ask because I’ve noticed several Twitter design decisions that seem to lead to angry mobs. Short tweets mean low-context, sorting feeds by engagement encourages piling on, and the rapid feedback loop is perfect for amplifying righteous anger.

It's probably both, but for me, I follow a pretty non-political group of people, but Twitter will absolutely insist on presenting me inflammatory and polarizing tweets just because someone I follow or someone popular engaged with that tweet. Facebook does not do this, at least for me it doesn't.

Obviously this is all opinionated and YMMV etc.

> Facebook in comparison never had strangers piling on me telling me I am worthless and invalid based on my race and gender.

Uhm.. That seems to be just as prevalent on FB (or anywhere online) as far as I can tell.

As for Twitter vs. Facebook: I feel that Twitter is far less cluttered for me and "follow" (and unfollow) is a much better way to select my content then be"friend" (and then unfriend). On Twitter I just pick interesting accounts to read and now my feed is full of stuff that is largely interesting. On Facebook it's .. complicated (and I reduced my friend list to 2, because it wasn't worth the effort).

Instagram? That's just shallow/vain in every way and doesn't even compete IMHO - it's an entirely different beast (that I don't understand).

I'm more stunned at Twitter's UX. For example if a tweet of mine has x likes, I click on the link to see who liked it, and am often just greeted with a blank modal. I believe it has something to do with the likes being private, or likes from people who don't follow me? I actually don't know, and feel they could use this blank modal as a chance to tell me.

Their icon buttons on desktop have no tooltip. For some of them you can get a sense of what they do by hovering over them and looking at the url in the corner of the browser. But others that just have click handlers on them give you no clue at all. I could go on and on about how perplexing I find Twitter's UX to be, these are just two examples.

> I am a fan of Twitter. It is a much better social network then Facebook and Instagram

I used to follow a lot of blogs of people on Google Reader, when it was shut down everyone just chanted "What's the big deal? Just use Twitter it does the same thing".

Now to follow the same creators I did before I have to experience everything with a side order of hot takes about American politics (I'm not American).

Twitter is one of the worst things to happen to the internet, I can't have any sort of healthy interaction with the internet and actually keep up with what I'm interested in anymore. It sickens me that every time a platform or service shuts down the answer from Twitter addicts is always "just use Twitter".

> Just a week ago, Twitter lost over 20% market cap because they noticed that they were showing people device-personalized ads even though they were opted out of that. After they fixed it, revenues went down.

I'd like to clarify what actually happened here (throwaway for paranoia).

The actual bug was that the account signups flow was accidentally modified to automatically opt out new signups[1]. When Legal reviewed the ads targeting and discovered the opt out setting wasn't being respected, they made ads start doing so. Two this later they discovered the sign-ups bug.

[1] I know, a bunch of people would rather it was always like that.

I honestly wouldn't read anything in this bug in terms of development quality. Catalyst is buggy and poorly supported. Developing for Apple products is often-time an exercise in workarounds, hacks, and undefined behavior fun. These issues only get worse when you get to be the size of Twitter and the app architectures starts to get more complicated to support a large team. The iOS application patterns are not super evolved or friendly to scale.

Given Twitter’s size, you’d think they would be able to create good apps.

Instead, they killed off or bought and killed most of the alternative apps which provided significantly better experience with a fraction of resources.

I think you're being too generous to Twitter's competitors. For example, Facebook was incorrectly computing their video metrics for years, resulting in inflated watch times https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-overestimated-key-vide... .

"Look advertisers, this is how many views a video on Facebook gets. Would you like to know our rates for video ads?"

"Incorrectly computing". God damn everything is spin nowadays.

I think it all depends on their mindset on developing the platform and the mindset of new hires - are they being incentivized to "shake X industry" or brainstorm features every other day, or do they look at what they have and figure out how to make it even better. Is Twitter made to make it easy for users to do some thing, or is it being made to do what some other company did, but "for X"

I find most SV companies, like game design, falls apart when it is used as a vehicle to test out a philosophy instead of implementing an idea users actually want.

Funny that you mention eBay. There's currently widespread issues with Item Specifics https://community.ebay.com/t5/Announcements/FRIDAY-OCT-18-UP...

As I said, there are technical issues every other month with Ebay. While Amazon does not even have technical issues every other year.

That is what my question is about.

What is the root cause, that one team is creating 10x more solid technology then the other?

> As I said, there are technical issues every other month with Ebay. While Amazon does not even have technical issues every other year.

Apart from Amazon's search interface mostly generating garbage results, rendering the experience unusable?

That's not a bug. It's supposed to feel like a treasure hunt.

My guess is that they probably have a hard time recruiting sr engineers from FAANG. I don't think they can really compete, can they?

According to levels.fyi, the highest paying job at eBay is about the same as a slightly-above-mid-level engineer at FAANG, so yeah, you're probably right.

Are FAANG considered good quality here? Certainly some of the fault here lies with Catalina.

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