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Comment by Andrew_nenakhov | Hacker News Reader

I find this hilarious. We all understand that the core reason some people might want to hurt twitter is because it is no longer going to follow the moderation policy that they liked (namely, silencing people with different political opinions). Yet, people can't name this reason honestly, and invent some other thin weiled excuses like 'layoffs are baaaad and unethical'.

Bold prediction: this influencer with 40k followers will find that ~40 of his followers have followed him to mastodon, and will be back quietly in a few months. Likely, after finding some reconciling excuse about Musk doing something good so he can be forgiven.

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Or the simpler answer that doesn't fit your narrative is that lots of folks don't like Musk and his actions and his approach to running businesses. Lots of people find Musk repulsive. It shouldn't be a surprise that those people want to leave.

That’s why I deleted my account. Musk and the rest of the PayPal mafia are hardcore neofeudalist libertarians, a movement that has gradually infected more and more of the tech world.

If Twitter becomes interoperable with other services, this is literally the opposite of tech neofeudalism.

Tech neofeudalism manifests itself as walled gardens where the cost of leaving is very high for the serfs.

> If Twitter becomes interoperable with other services, this is literally the opposite of tech neofeudalism.

It's not interoperable. It's controlled by one person. Like Facebook. When that changes we can discuss it. But until then, it's just an empty promise.

It is a promise. Its value will be established sooner or later. It is too early to call any Twitter-related promise "empty". Even new governments traditionally have 100 days before it is considered fair to rip into them.

> Even new governments traditionally have 100 days

But companies do not. Buy a company and start making big mistakes and there will be consequences. The competition for users is fierce. If you want 100 days, get elected instead of being forced into buying a company you didn't really want in the first place.

There will be consequences both ways. It is well possible that new Twitter will attract other people if its politics changes.

Not everyone in America, much less outside it, wants to pretend that they share the values of Californian Democrats from the progressive tribe, which according to this study [0] makes up whopping 8 per cent of the American population.

[0] https://hiddentribes.us/#america-s-hidden-tribes

Lots of things are possible. But what we are discussing is why GP deleted his account: Musk and the rest of the PayPal mafia are hardcore neofeudalist libertarians.

You can make all the promises and guesses about the future that you want, but until those guesses materialize, they are vaporware. People can rightly continue to leave a platform they have no interest or faith in.

If any of your guesses do materialize people can presumably change their mind and come back to Twitter.

> Not everyone in America, much less outside it, wants to pretend that they share the values of Californian Democrats from the progressive tribe

That's not very relevant to an advertising platform. TV and radio stations rarely appeal to more than one or two tribes and both platforms are highly moderated to the point where the public has almost zero voice. Musk's dream of forcing people to tolerate free speech is rather idealistic. According to your source, if Musk wants to attract the biggest audience, he should ban politics from the platform.

> Its value will be established sooner or later. It is too early to call any Twitter-related promise "empty".

By default I can't take any promise from Elon seriously, nor do I understand how anyone believes anything he says. He underestimates every problem and never has any plans until after he makes announcements. I can't believe how many "eventually" promises people will still believe from one guy who obviously makes them off the cuff with no thought whatsoever for what is involved. Half of HN seems to give way too much credit to hot air from this guy, he's announced (and taken money for!) many many things coming imminently years ago.

Self driving cars any day now.

https://electrek.co/2022/09/15/tesla-facing-class-action-law...

I don’t mean he’s a tech neofeudalist, I mean he is an ancap small government libertarian. Like he wants to do away with government (except for enforcing property rights) and have crypto currency instead of a real currency with no taxation and everything privatised/user pays.

This simpler answer never seems to be the correct one, every[0] single[1] time[2]. It's much easier to say you're going to move than move.

[0]: https://www.mattmaldre.com/2017/08/02/people-leave-reddit/

[1]: https://nypost.com/2021/01/09/trump-fans-leave-twitter-after...

[2]: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/technology/facebook-ou...

That doesn't tell the real story though. Actual alternatives to these services do exist now and have some popularity. So some people do actually move. MySpace is an example of an eventual mass exodus.

Anecdotal, but I personally know a handful of people who deleted their Facebook account and use other platforms instead. So it does happen. The question is whether or not it affects their advertising revenue in the long run. Zucks's solution so far seems to have been buying up the competition.

It's not out of the question that one of these massively popular social networks will collapse in the next decade.

Wanting to leave on principle, but unable to leave because of your own impulses and needs are two different things. Personally I bet most folks come back after the dust settles, and I bet Musk is banking on that.

Case in point: I still see the “coexist” and lefty bumper stickers in the cars ahead of me at chick-fil-a drive through line pretty regularly. Everybody wants to protest and boycott products until you have that itch that only a spicy chicken biscuit can scratch.

For me it is much, much simpler. I invest a lot of my time in putting content and thoughts onto a platform.

If I doubt the future of a platform and already find the status quo questionable, I am just not as motivated to put in the time to do something on there.

I guess for many people twitter was a platform they wanted to get rid of for a while, this is just a trigger to convince the others as well.

> For me it is much, much simpler. I invest a lot of my time in putting content and thoughts onto a platform.

Maybe you should invest your time productively instead

Maybe I phrased that wrong: I don't use "a lot" of my time in absolute terms on social media (an hour a week maybe), but I value my time so if I spend it somewhere I want it to count.

And no worries, I am more productive than most people would find normal, but thanks for your "productive" comment.

This is how I feel as well: I’ve been pretty ambivalent about twitter for a while (seems like a good machine for getting into arguments online), but network effects have kept me on it. That network effect might be now be breaking.

It's the Trust Thermocline: https://mastodon.social/@garius/109279394369832433

I should have linked to that in my post, because it was very influential on my thinking. It helped me realize that my trust in Twitter had just been completely decimated.

Over the last week I've favourited every single person claiming to leave Twitter. In a few weeks I intend to do some analysis and see how many stop posting. So far the answer is none out of 200, but it's early days.

You're not even approaching what would be considered a scientific and somewhat useful study.

You can move away from a platform without a complete stop. I've seen people who used to post on Facebook on a daily basis claim to leave, and then they use the platform less and less until you rarely see them. What also matters is the nature of their posts. If people who used to put effort into thoughtful engaging posts start to post trivial and unengaging content, that has a similar effect to no longer using the platform.

If this happens in large numbers, it would of course impact your advertising revenue.

You could be right, assuming he manages to indeed keep the platform running smoothly. I think that will be the most important factor. And while I honestly can’t be bothered to care whether people are banned or not from Twitter, it just sounds to me like the idea that less moderation is always good could be an oversimplification of the problem. If I am not mistaken there were attempts to create “free speech” platforms that never went anywhere. Also, from the point of view of the survival of the platform itself, banning a few people to please many more others seems to be more reasonable than taking some kind of ideological stand (in one way or another). So, the question is, can the platform survive (smoothly) supported mainly by the happy attitude of so-called freedom fighters?

Neil young is back on Spotify. Nuff said.

Not in my country, except for songs that appear on albums that are outside of his control. I do expect him to eventually return, though.

> this influencer with 40k followers will find that ~40 of his followers

Mastodon is way more active than what you pretend, at least in France. Some 40k influencers already have thousands of followers on mastodon.

As someone who has maintained a personal mastodon instance since ~2017, I'm quite sceptical of your hopes that this sudden influx of users will remain active.

It seems that your prediction was too bold: he has accumulated ~1100 followers so far

Yeah, I like living in a democracy, so I appreciated when twitter silenced certain people that tried to use it to violently overthrow my democratically elected government. Donald Trump tweeted all the time, many of his tweets were of a very different political opinion than mine (when they were coherent), yet he was not silenced. Not until he tried to violently overthrow the US government.

This is a brilliant example of a selective memory. What you have forgotten is that long before Jan6, Twitter blocked retweets of Trump's tweets, attached various warnings to his tweets, was selectively 'fact-checking' him, how that notebook story was banned on Twitter right before the elections. If that is not silencing, then what is? Can you name some other person on Twitter that had undergone a similar treatment?

The real question is, would they have done better by not acting on his antics? I think every moderation decision is a trade-off, and the final goal is always the health of the platform itself, not “society” or whatever. Yeah, some people will be hurt, but not acting would hurt too. So… I don’t know. It seems too “romantic” to me to believe that there is a handful of left-wing bigots in the company and all you need to do is get rid of them. I have a hunch the problem is more complex (and that Twitter cannot solve it, only try to survive).

> The real question is, would they have done better by not acting on his antics?

Yes, they would have done better. Their business should be providing the platform, not telling the users that is 'true' and what is not. That everyone should decide for themselves.

One thing is fighting spam, but what they were doing was Ministry of Truth stuff. And harm from that might be thousandfold greater than whatever Trump could ever do.

> Their business should be providing the platform

That's not how capitalism works. Their business should be doing whatever they think will generate the most long term profit for the owners. It's an advertising platform. Advertisers don't want a platform where users get to decide what the truth is. Advertisers don't want their advertisement next to some anti-vaxxer nutjob or a vocal racist. This is common sense.

That's not how capitalism works. Their business should be providing value to their users, which, in turn, would make their platform attractive for advertisers. Trump provided a lot of engagement and popularity to the platform, so banning him was igealogy-driven and was very much against their business interests.

Now, advertisers come from different parts of the political spectrum, and if some advertiser would decide to vacate their spot on the platform, some other business would fill the spot.

You know, earlier this year a lot of western companies have quit the russian market, like Macdonalds. Do you think there are no burgers in Russia now?

> Their business should be providing value to their users

Yes, their paid users being the advertisers. The end "users" are the product.

> Trump provided a lot of engagement and popularity to the platform

Can you please give a source for your engagement figures?

> banning him was igealogy-driven and was very much against their business interests.

Again, please provide a source for this. Evidence of this could be grounds for a class action suit on the part of share holders.

Are you seriously claiming that a person with 90 million followers with hundreds of thousands of retweets and countless replies didn't produce a lot of advertising revenue for Twitter? If so, I resign from arguing with you.

For exact figures you might ask Elon himself.

> Are you seriously claiming that a person with 90 million followers with hundreds of thousands of retweets and countless replies didn't produce a lot of advertising revenue for Twitter?

I didn't claim anything. I asked for your sources. You are the one who made a claim. And now you're acting astounded that someone would dare question your claim.

Truth Social can't seem to become profitable [1]. So Trump's ability to produce (or drive away) advertising revenue is certainly open to being questioned.

> For exact figures you might ask Elon himself.

Elon didn't make the claim. You did.

> If so, I resign

If you can't back up your claims with a source, then yes, it's right of you to resign.

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/DWAC?p=DWAC&.tsrc=fin-srch

I resign from communicating with you because you are not arguing in good faith.

Demanding to provide data that is clearly not publicly available is pure demagoguery, as this figure is irrelevant for our discussion: it does not matter if ad revenue from user engagement created by Trump was XXXXX USD or YYYYYY USD, as it is beyond clear that this figure was above zero. So blocking him was against the commercial interests of the platform.

Likewise, the success (or lack of it) of other platforms, like Truth social, is hardly relevant here. It is another demagogue technique called 'straw man', as you try to bait your opponent into arguing about a completely different social platform.

Now, you may claim victory in this internet discussion, and celebrate it like your other imaginary victories.

> Demanding to provide data that is clearly not publicly available

You claimed to know such data. It's clear you haven't been debating in good faith from the point you made that claim.

> as it is beyond clear that this figure was above zero.

No it's not. I provided evidence that he may in fact drive away advertisers.

> So blocking him was against the commercial interests of the platform.

That's not how it works. Blocking someone who provides a small amount of advertising revenue but who drives away other users would be in the best interest of the platform. Blocking someone who the moderators believe will incite violence is in the best commercial interests of the platform.

> the success (or lack of it) of other platforms, like Truth social, is hardly relevant here

It's entirely relevant because Trump invested in that platform and spends most of his time there. If they can't make a profit it puts your claim about his ability to attract advertisers in doubt.

> Now, you may claim victory in this internet discussion, and celebrate it like your other imaginary victories.

I never claimed victory. I simply asked you to back up your claims and you got yourself into a panic over that and threatened to quit. Ok. Bye.

> You claimed to know such data.

Can you please give a link to the message where I claimed to know such data?

Sure:

> Trump provided a lot of engagement and popularity to the platform, so banning him was igealogy-driven and was very much against their business interests.

You either have those engagement numbers or you don't. Which is it?

You either know how much advertising revenue he generated -or- how much he drove away. Or you don't.

You either have evidence that banning him was against their business interests or you are just guessing. I don't think you have those numbers. You suggested Elon Musk might have those numbers. So it's pretty clear you yourself don't have the internal business numbers that would be used to make those decisions.

Lacking sources to back up your claims, then you were arguing in bad faith. But I'm open minded. Feel free to back up that claim with actual evidence.

So can't provide a link, and with your lie exposed, went into to panic mode, trying to pass your (false) assumptions as a claim I never made, ok.

I provided a quote of the claim you made up based on guesses you made and that you have no evidence for. There is nothing wrong with guessing, just admit it next time when someone asks for your source of data.

Cute copying me with "panic mode". I appreciate the imitation.

Didn't you resign a few comments ago? Or was that another false claim?

> long before Jan6

So Twitter moderators accurately predicted Trump's words could eventually end in violence long before it happened?

> Not until he tried to violently overthrow the US government.

Try rereading twitters ban post: https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...

He got banned for tweets that require reading with an extra crinkly tin foil hat on to get "tried to overthrow the government".

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