Super Follows | Hacker News Reader

Super Follows

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70 pointsmkeeter81 comments

The FAQ sounds reasonable, but there's a lot of shady-looking stuff in the actual terms. For instance:

> We may share revenue generated from the sale of Subscriptions to your Super Follows account with you at a rate which will depend, in Twitter’s discretion, on several factors, including the total number and price of Subscriptions purchased for your Super Follows account and the fees and taxes [...] that Apple, Google, Payment Processor, banks and/or credit card companies may assess in the purchase of Subscriptions and in processing payments to you. You understand this and should have no expectation that any particular revenue percentage will apply, or continue to apply, over time.

> We do not promise that the purchase of Subscriptions can be used to redeem any guaranteed sum of money, or any money at all. [...] You agree that we will not be liable to you, and you will not assert that we are liable to you, based on the sale of Subscriptions to your Super Follows account, including for any share of revenue generated from the sale of Subscriptions.

> We also do not guarantee that everyone with access to your Super Follows account will have purchased a Subscription.

> In addition, we reserve the rights, in our sole discretion, to [...] withhold, suspend, recoup or set-off Subscriptions revenue (including any earned balance that may have been generated from past or future Subscription sales to a Creator’s Super Follows account)

Also, this is pretty minor in the grand scheme of things, but I find it hilariously petty that legal notices to Twitter must be sent by both regular email and postal mail, and are only valid on receipt... but notices from Twitter only have to be emailed, and are presumed valid when sent. Just a straight-up "I'm big, you're little, and there's nothing you can do about it."

Compare to Patreon's TOS (https://www.patreon.com/policy/legal) which explicitly lays out the fees they charge. Twitter's version is more like "fuck you, we'll pay you if we feel like it."

Stuff like this is why most people don’t want to pay and the whole thing will be labeled as "meh people vote with their wallets and they prefer ads over payments".

In reality, it’s not in the company’s DNA and slapping payments with those ridiculous terms on a free product is simply not trustworthy.

Patreon is the opposite: clear terms, payments is their DNA, hence people are willing to pay and support creators.

I don't understand why they can't have reasonable terms from the get go. sketchy stuff you quoted.

Much as I dislike Twitter as a concept and a company, I think this is a good idea. It's high time the tech majors started to move towards alternative revenue streams from advertisement, and encouraging users to pay producers directly for content with the platform taking a cut seems like a good way to do that.

I don't know offhand who will charge for their tweets or what kind of content they'll be charging for, but I'm confident that the market is far more creative than any of us are at finding ways to use features like this.

Feels like the end state in less competitive markets is that the customer pays AND they get ads. Very hard not to do ads at media companies. At the very least, content manipulation via "promotion".

The problem is that paying customers are the _best_ segment! They're like a delicious cookie of revenue just sitting there. Uneaten. At some point natural growth slows. The forces of capitalism demand at least revenue growth. Where to squeeze it from? The cookie is right there. Paying customers get ads, surveillance and manipulated feeds.

The problem is not ads but the amount, quality and how they are shown.

Lex Fridman gives us the links and the timeline so that we can just skip it, but still see them if we want, and gives hours of content in return.

The problem is absolutely the ads. I subscribe to people on Twitch. Twitch is getting money from me. I'm also a Twitch Prime member and Amazon makes a lot of money off of me generally. They can do without sticking ads in my face.

I'll put up with ads when I'm not paying for things (and Twitch takes a very large cut!). If I am, get out. This is why I pay for YouTube Premium, because then I don't get ads.

And ads are literary paid by "you" (or investors hoping to eventually create a growing positive feedback loop) to to manipulate you and everyone else with cheap-shallow attempt to get you to buy a product or service and use up two of your most valuable assets - your time and your attention; you/society currently have the accepted culture to fund to using up your time and being manipulated and without accounting for the externalized cost and harm of such. Until society is educated on this harm and elects politicians who will create policy for healthy/healthier system then we'll be stuck in this state - and of course ads work, create profits, and industries with most profits have more profits to spend on advertising and on lobbying politicians of their choice to help bolster them into elected positions or to attempt to defame or suppress them directly or indirectly via funding their opposition who may engage in public or private/incognito smear campaigns - the subtly violent method compared to the method cartels use of assassinating any new political campaigners who don't fall in line with what they want. Good luck with the "no ads" effort to all though as you have the whole advertising industrial complex now disliking you or worse, you're now up against all their employees, owners, and investors of whatever part of the ecosystem they're part of - including the companies who depend on using ads for and to maintain inflated-artificial market share.

You can pay for twitch turbo and not get ads.

Twitch Turbo doesn't show you video ads, but still shows you ads on the site. They just call them "promotions" instead.

For $9/month, I expect peace and quiet, you know?

I wish their press release wasn't advocating for a Tarot account that claims to give people psychic healing, though. This sort of thing really undermines their legitimacy in the fight against Covid misinformation.

> I don't know offhand who will charge for their tweets or what kind of content they'll be charging for, but I'm confident that the market is far more creative than any of us are at finding ways to use features like this.

Apparently tarot-card readers

Apparently Twitter will experiment with any revenue model except 1) actually just letting people pay to get rid of ads + see content in chronological order without other bullshit, or 2) allowing users to edit tweets which people have been begging for for years.

>1) actually just letting people pay to get rid of ads + see content in chronological order without other bullshit

It can't because the people most likely to pay are also the ones worth the most to advertisers. Thus you need to charge more to make up for it, thus selecting for even more valuable people, etc, etc.

>2) allowing users to edit tweets which people have been begging for for years.

Due to the high possibility for abuse either by users or people taking over their accounts this is unlikely unless it resets all metrics on the tweet. At which point you may as well make a new tweet. Same reason you can't edit the title of a reddit post.

Oh, come on, there are plenty of reasonable solutions to both of those, such as:

1) If you need to set the price high to avoid that effect, just set it high.

2) Add an “edited” tag (just like HN does). For replies that and retweets that came in before the edit, maybe have an easy way to show the original version.

Or, 2b) Show the edited version literally as an edit, with the typos crossed out.

>1) If you need to set the price high to avoid that effect, just set it high.

You missed my point, there is possibly no price high enough. The higher the price the more valuable the users who pay it are to advertisers. Thus the price needs to be even higher and endlessly up it goes.

>2) Add an “edited” tag (just like HN does)

HN does not allow the changing of headlines either except by admins. Arguably headlines are closer to tweets than comments.

The higher the price the more valuable the users who pay it are to advertisers. Thus the price needs to be even higher and endlessly up it goes.

Well, the price is higher for an ever-smaller set of users! It’s a demand curve - in principle you can pick a point where cost $C x N users is worth more than the loss of advertising revenue from those users.

Arguably headlines are closer to tweets than comments.

I’d argue the opposite!

As a compromise -- how about links on Twitter are similar to HN headlines?

HN does not have an edited tag and doesn't allow editing past a brief window (for both headlines and comments). Ones that are edited are invisibly edited: there's no notification that they have been, unless someone points it out. You are wrong and your idea is so awful that I struggle to think of an idea that could be more destructive to discussion quality, especially on a site that already has a low standard of discussion like twitter.

I edited this comment multiple times. No edit tag.

HN does not have an edited tag

Huh, wow! Somehow I had the idea that it did. I might be mixing it up with some other forum, or the edit to add: tag that many people here add manually.

and doesn't allow editing past a brief window

Right, that’s precisely the kind of obvious balancing restriction I was alluding to, by mentioning HN at all.

your idea is so awful that I struggle to think of an idea that could be more destructive to discussion quality

I’m going to need a bit more justification for that one than “your example of existing usage was incorrect”. Care to expand?

Why does HN allow edits at all?

Edit to add(!): I’m glad I was able to fix an unbalanced *

You're thinking of Facebook, which has an "edited" tag on comments on posts as well as a full edit history if you click on it.

I think Twitter could allow a 60-120 second edit window without being ripe for abuse that an indefinite edit window would allow.

Slack does too, if that matters

I don't see why you couldn't keep all versions of a tweet to browse (and allow direct linking to) but just display the most recent with a "This tweet has been modified link" that displays the revisions.

They’ve degraded the core experience so much that at this point they could charge users for the ability to stop their likes, follows or comments being randomly pushed to other people’s TL.

That’s not the worst part. I actually get value out of that.

The most outrageous thing is that it sends me non-disablable notifications for tweets people have posted. Sometimes tend over the course of a few days. Like there’s no other, UX-wise correct way for that. Holy fuck, how stupid. Makes me dread opening Twitter at all.

Edit: Just opened the app. One smartphone page of only spam.

The issue with edits is the sort of situation where A tweets something B supports/likes so B retweets it, then A edits the tweet and puts something B would not want to boost in. What should happen to B's retweet?

The best option I can think of for edits is to have the edit just delete the original and give you an input field with the text, attachments, and replied-to fields filled in already. (Maybe do something fancy and skip reuploading large media that doesn't get changed.) As far as likes/links/retweets go it's an entirely separate tweet.

That or adding support for a reply to be flagged as having corrections and be promoted to the top of the reply list and somehow highlighted to bring attention to to.

Why not allow edits on tweets that haven't received any engagement (likes or replies) and have a low enough view count. Or even tweets that haven't been posted for very long. This would allow for edits to fix minor typos at the very least.

You can see your timeline chronologically: at the top right you have some weird icons that look like little stars, click on it and select a different sorting order.

It's not persistent and they also keep futzing with things like throwing "so-and-so liked this tweet" into the timeline. I just want to see what people I follow actually publish, not their likes or follows or whatever.

It won't stay like that though. It magically switches back to "we hate you" mode after a small amount of time.

Just proofread or follow-up; the amount of clutter and chaos that comes from edit functionality is not at all worth it.

You can already see content in chronological order without other bullshit, without paying: https://lee-phillips.org/howtotwitter/

> see content in chronological order without other bullshit

This is called "Lists" and has been a free feature of Twitter since 2009.

1) Lists are kludgy and 2) the UI for adding people to lists rather than just following them is more of a PITA.

As I said, though, literally any business model other than just letting people be paid users and see what they want to see without interference.

I just don't get who would pay for this. Maybe I'm getting old.

Also this is a good example of how Apple's fees are sneaking into creator content. Out of a $5/mo sub, Apple gets $1.50 as an Apple Tax, yet Twitter still charges money on top of that for processing. The Internet has taken a turn for the worse.

Right now, a lot of "creators" use Twitter to generate leads to sell premium content of various sorts (e.g. paid newsletters, ebooks, etc.). But the premium content has to live somewhere else, and there's a challenge getting people from Twitter to those other platforms.

I can see both the creators and consumers of content being happier if the lead gen and delivery of the premium content could happen in the same place. This especially makes sense if Twitter integrates this further with their Revue acquisition.

A few examples I could imagine: - This could be used as an alternative to Substack/paid newsletters. - I could see this being popular with people who share tips like crypto/stocks, etc. Get the basic tips for free, pay to get the good stuff (note: I don't endorse this, I'm just saying I bet it'll happen). - This is a bit different from everything else I'm mentioning, but I bet celebrities could get their hardcore fans to pay for inside access to various things (e.g. backstage videos).

It's basic patronage of the arts. It's a mechanism that long predates anything to do with the internet. Like a creator? Want them to keep creating? Give them money directly (well mostly directly).

But why so much to Apple?

No choice, got to render unto Caesar.

They are a wildly successful monopoly so until they're broken up that's how it be.

It works great on Twitch.

This is very intriguing. I'm most interested to see over time if super following is used mainly for:

1. Real-time financially valuable tweets from experts (market analysts, crypto experts, breaking news that can move stock markets, etc.), where the tweets are perceived as genuinely worth paying for

2. Supporting creative types -- musicians, comedians, etc. -- not necessarily for the tweets themselves, but just to support them because you like them, and maybe you'll get early access to show tickets too or something

3. Paying for content that's genuinely interesting in itself, e.g. short newsletters in tweet form.

I'm not sure the price is high enough for #1 to be a viable business model. I'm not sure enough people will voluntarily pay #2 to make a dent (or they already use Patreon instead). And #3 seems particularly ill-suited to Twitter's short-form.

But we'll see -- it would be nice if this did wind up supporting people financially.

Seems like they're trying to get back a piece of the Patreon pie, similar to Twitch with all its (now) built-in sponsorship options.

> the tweets are perceived as genuinely worth paying for

If the information is really so valuable, then either:

1) the expected value of paying for it is positive, the purveyor would be better playing the market themself (or working for a hedge fund...) than selling it

2) the expected value of paying for it is negative, the people buying for it are wasting their money

Not all market transactions are done to make money on the trade itself, many are done to protect a larger business interest. This is very uncommon on stock markets, but is very common on commodity markets. You don't generally hear much discussion of commodity markets because they are not the big way (at least not today) for people doing trading to make it rich quick.

Most consumer level goods have become insulated from price fluctuations in commodity markets, but there is still some variation at the consumer level in the price of fresh fish and meats, and sometimes fresh fruits and vegetables.

At the scale restaurants buy, and especially large chains or higher scale restaurants, price fluctuations can make a big impact on profitability. Getting tipped off early to a situation that might impact prices can allow a company to lock in a futures contract at the current prices for delivery later on when prices have risen before the people selling know that prices are about to go up.

The result is that the people gathering the data and producing information may not be in a position to get value directly, they are not already trading in those commodity, but people already doing that trading may get value from better or faster information on the market.

Great, now the timeline is going to be full of "just tweeted X to my super follows, super follow me here: ...". Sounds like more ads.

I guess in fairness you probably don't want to follow people who tweet like this but these kinds of tweets will still be hard to avoid. I'd rather just pay twitter $x/yr for no ads.

Yeah, a few artists I follow were in the first batch and I'm already getting tired of them shilling for Patreon, Twitch subs, Ko-Fi and now Twitter subscriptions, all at once, all over my timeline.

I realize these people need an income but I can't be the only one that feels a bit put off.

It's a tough balance, as you said, artists and creators should have a way to monetize. But they're hardly the only ones doing it, so depending on who you follow, Twitter can end up feeling like a subway station with buskers as far as the eye can see.

You don’t even have to do all that. Twitter has a mute words feature that allows you to target key words so that you’ll never see tweets that have them.

It amazes me how much HN complains about Twitter without understanding the tools Twitter provides. It’s similar in essence to uniformed Anti Vaxxers who’s only contempt with Vaccines are based on lack of understanding.

It does not always work. Early this year I added "NFT" to my list, tons of posts got through.

So it's basically Patreon/OnlyFans but for Twitter. I can't imagine anyone will want this for non-porn purposes, but I guess maybe they're hoping they can scrape off a bit of OnlyFans' market share.

There's also a really active community of really smart people posting takes and interesting viewpoints on Twitter. Most of them seem to have Substacks these days, so this makes sense from my perspective. If Substack is monetized long-form think pieces, then "super follows" could be monetized "smart people thoughts."

I'm not sure I want to pay $3 a month, per person, just for some extra tweets. I don't think the value of a tweet is nearly as great as the value of a Substack post. Super follows seem wildly expensive to me. Seems more like a $0.99/month subscription (or lower).

Depends on what the tweets are. For a photographer, the tweets could be your entire work. For some scientists, their tweets are some of the most influential things that they write. And for an indie game developer, the tweets might be the medium for links to exclusive add-ons, etc.

I was genuinely surprised your comment doesn't end with an "/s", but anyway, I'd be interested to hear the rationale of users who pay for "smart people thoughts".

Your comment implies that paying money to hear the thoughts & opinions of smart people is some sort of new concept that should be considered with skepticism. And yes, Twitter does contain more than just political shouting matches by random people.

Here's a few examples:

1. I follow a few photographers that I greatly admire. Some of their best work is on Twitter. With super-follows, I can support these artists and get exclusive posts for things like gear reviews, etc.

2. I follow a lot of economists/scientists that often have really interesting insights. Noah Smith, Tyler Cowen, Ezra Klein, Scott Manley, to name a few. I'd happily pay a couple dollars a month for more in-depth content by them on Twitter.

3. I also follow some interesting writers and creators, like Craig Mod, Hundred Rabbits, and Kyle Chakya. I could see myself paying them a couple bucks a month if enough of their content was offered that way. They are also people I really respect, so I'd be happy to support them.

> the rationale of users who pay for "smart people thoughts"

I pay for the Economist all the time. So far it's been great. The news is completely useless on a personal value basis, but reading the insightful calm reporting without drama has been fantastic. Especially during the US election when it felt like the whole world was screaming at me 24/7.

I'm also a big buyer of audiobooks from experts so that I can get their "smart people thoughts" on $topic.

1. Buy subscription to several 'smart people thought' accounts

2. Copy/paste the content on to your own premium Twitter account and re-sell them as a "smart people thoughts bundle" subscription

> ... I'd be interested to hear the rationale ...

Is your interest enough for you to pay to hear it? If so you answered your own question.

Otherwise just know some people would be willing to pay for it.

I think some people might use super follows to increase the quality of the conversation in their comments (no more bots/trolls), similar to what Vitalik did today [1] but for a wider audience. I liked that thread so much that I think there is something here. Looking forward to it. With obvious caveat it might keep some folks without the means out of the conversation ...

[1] https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/143319573790756454...

I wonder if this will allow explicit content and try to come for OnlyFans. Seems unlikely, but that's the first analogue I thought of.

IIRC Twitter currently allows explicit content, so my guess is this is exactly Twitter's plan for this service.

Didn't Twitter started experimenting with forcing login to see some Twitter accounts? Combined with this, it now makes more sense.

I feel like this will be very popular in the politics/cult-following circles for raising money and pushing agendas...

But I do hope it stays pure and becomes a way to genuinely support a creator who provides valuable opinions or views.

Perhaps a scenario like being able to super-follow the person behind a Wall Street Journal article, instead of the journal fees instead.

I wonder if people like Malang Khostay will be eligible for this, given that it's a direct line to funding terrorism.

Which subcultures of Twitter would want to pay IRL money for tweets? I'm seriously out of the loop here.

Anyone using patreon.

Unless you’re one of the few creators that have set up a DRM scheme using Patreon’s API, Patreon is functionally just a pay-to-view newsletter operating on the honor system and the idea that you’re paying as a show of support, not for a specific product/item.

Creators share text updates, images, video, download links, etc based on paying tiers. A Twitter feed works just as well for that.

Many (most?) artists use Twitter as a sharing/visibility platform already, equivalent to a “free tier” on Patreon but with much better visibility thanks to retweet-sharing and Twitter’s size. Having a smooth on-ramp for casual viewers to transition to patreon-style support could be quite useful.

The only immediate use case that comes to mind is as a competitor to OnlyFans. Sex workers by and large are already all over Twitter.

People who would subscribe to OnlyFans creators. Yeah it's a small set of people but those people are willing to throw down _massive_ amounts of money for that kind of stuff.

I know of plenty of writers/podcasters/video creators that make a steady income via substack/patreon, but that's all long form content that can't be hosted on twitter. I can't imagine there are many people with twitter feeds valuable enough to pay for.

i wouldn't pay for tweets, but i might be happy to support people whose regular tweets entertain or inform me (right now i do it via patreon for a couple of them)

> $1.50 - Apple’s in-app purchase fee (currently, 30% of subscription cost under Apple’s terms, subject to change by Apple)

Their revenue breakdown wording is interesting. It implies Apple could change their 30% cut, which is always possible, but doesn't seem likely?

I think that's there to insinuate that this dividend is not under their control. If Apple were to introduce an overhaul to their finance structure as was anticipated last week, they'd likely adjust the margins to suit.

> Super Follows is a way for people’s most engaged followers to help them earn money for their contributions on Twitter. When someone offers a Super Follows subscription, their Super Followers can see bonus Tweets created especially for them. Super Followers receive badges on all their replies to the person they’ve Super Followed, letting them stand out in the conversation.

I could hardly follow that paragraph.

I feel like this would have been a good idea 5 years ago, but Twitter has become increasingly irrelevant in the interim. Using it now, it feels like Twitter is largely another soapbox for journalists and politicians, while most normal users have gradually peeled away. I take no pleasure in saying this - I have had an active Twitter account for 12 years, although I rarely tweet nowadays.

OnlyFans is a UK-based company and Twitter is US-based. I sometimes wonder how much of stuff like this is just governments trying to capture value with their own companies rather than letting it go to foreign companies. I know we saw virtually this same thing with TikTok/Instagram Reels.

Seems a bit conspiratorial but I don't otherwise know why Twitter would implement this.

I feel weird saying this, but probably they do this in response to common market forces and trends

It appears that, given the 0 refund policy, blocking super followers will cost the followers money. Oddly, this feels good for folks who would otherwise be harassed by such an amplification mechanism.

> Note: We’re still in the early stages of Super Follows,and right now only people in our initial test group can offer Super Follows subscrpitions.

I wonder if the note was added last minute :)

Codenamed: "Oh Shit, I Forgot This Was A Business, Quick, Somebody Think Of A Way To Monetize!"

Twitter is having an identity crisis, sad.

This is born dead, very few people (even at the scale of twitter) pay for stuff which is already free.

Not true. You don't need a Twitch subscription to watch a streamer but hundreds of thousands of people still subscribe for $5 a month.

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