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Comment by ejb999 | Hacker News Reader

>>Let us see how Elon turn Twitter into a good or bad product

He doesn't need to do anything to turn it into a bad product - its already cesspool.

Real question is will he be able to make it better?

Based on the conversations between him and Dorsey, how fucked Twitter is which gives him little to build on, and how distracted Elon is by various other things I doubt it very much.

This is a very expensive hobby project for a billionaire that’s going to fail.

Just my view and I would love to be proven wrong

I think Twitter has the most unrealized potential of any of the big tech companies. The present team was completely unable to get there, and seemingly unable to even see there was wasted potential.

Musk does at least see it could be better. I'm not convinced he can get it right, but it's better than the stagnant place the company has been in for years.

Honest question: what are some ways Twitter could be better?

I am having a hard time imagining a clear direction.

"Better" for who?

I can't see almost anything Twitter has done in the last decade as being "better". Off the top of my head:

* Killing off tons of client by their changes to the API

* Switching to algorithmic timeline instead of chronological

* Infesting my timeline with "X like this post", "You might also like", and a ton of ads

* Horrible UI for viewing threads even though it's now better supported (ability to tweet a whole thread from the official UI)

* Podcasts‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽

* Twitter Blue, I still have no clue who uses this or why

* Moments or Topics (or whatever that one tab in the official app is)

* Their clone of that "podcasts but worse" service that I've already forgotten about. (Spaces! I had to go look it up)

Other than increasing the character limit (ok, there was 1 thing) there isn't a single thing they've done recently (or over the last decade) that I can point to and say "That made Twitter better!". It to the point that you have to be sadist to use their official clients, every time I open the website or the official client I get frustrated.

Now if you just care about stockholders then sure, shoving a ton of ads in your feed and filling your feed with people you don't follow or care about probably makes sense, in the short term, because that's all stockholders care about.

I pay for twitter blue just to get rid of the spaces icon in the nav bar. I don’t want to listen to what people have to say and it doesn’t need to constantly be in my face.

I too think these changes weren’t better. Wouldn’t going back on most of these constitute a “better” twitter?

Only mentioned can reply was a good feature add

It could be better in some of the ways HN is better. By encouraging intellectual curiosity, discouraging low effort put-downs that call everybody Hitler, etc.

And by hiring @Dang or a clone of him to make the most visible judgement calls, like what to do in the Hunter Biden scenario or whether to ban a sitting president for lying, for instance.

> like what to do in the Hunter Biden scenario or whether to ban a sitting president for lying, for instance.

Why go back so far? As of four days ago all you need to get ban hammered on Twitter is win an election: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33038614

Twitter will be better minus the special operation bots a technically sophisticated person like Elon Musk won't let Wallstreet wolf reporting pull the wool over peoples's eyes. Elon Musk speaks of the economy in the limit, is that a clear enough direction?

What does better mean?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com