Related: yes, I do support interoperability requirements between platforms. No, that still doesn't mean you get to blast your opinion all over the internet without hitting a roadbump every now and then.
It will be so satisfying for Musk to buy Twitter, open it up completely, and then be able to use this argument in reverse.
Where did this sentiment originate from? I never heard of it before and all of a sudden in the last few years I hear so many people parroting it. Why is it that all these people were silent for so long and now they're yelling in unison about how bad Twitter as a megaphone is?
I don’t want them arbitrarily hidden from my timeline by an algorithm. Twitter offers a chronological timeline but has repeatedly reset my user preference for it. If there weren’t third party applications that respected my preference I definitely would not be using it anymore.
Before for that, other “movements” that had bridged the gap between real and online worlds were celebrated.
Arab Spring circa 2012, is a particular good example.
Now, many people want them to stop doing that. Which they decline, since they KNOW what will be happening in that case.
So, if you think you can do a better platform, while disregarding the (minimal) lessons learned from Twitter (or Reddit, or...), go ahead! You will fail, not because "criticism of the original platform is off-limits", but because it's a well-known anti-pattern.
You’re right about human judgement but that’s not the topic. The central point, I repeat emphatically, is about transparency, not governance.
Twitter can continue exactly the same way but just be transparent. The intense pushback is because they’ve holed themselves into an untenable position? Not sure why people are so against transparency. Maybe they lied in congressional testimonies?
Public knowledge of what "X" is doesn't really help, I think, other than to aid spammers? And a requirement to "talk to a human" upon hitting X would surely immediately degrade into "Google has reviewed your appeal and has determined that the infinite block of your account remains in effect. There is no further appeal"?
That secret sauce is ripe for manipulation and extremely powerful.
Against combating spam - I mean, isn't this how something gets stronger? HN has a strong view that open source software is more secure because it gets hardened through exposure, not through obfuscation.
No it can't. If the algorithm was transparent the only thing you'd see is spammers who have put tons of resources into figuring out the exactly optimal way to maximize engagement. Grassroots engagement would be impossible.
Also, Twitter's spam control has been objectively bad.
https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1487022342630957062?lang=en
People think that the entire platform has been hijacked by left-wing / progressives and the reason for lack of transparency is more insiduos than "spam". For example, being liable for what they told Congress.