Comment by bruce511 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bruce511 | Hacker News Reader

I get the sudden urge for Mastodon, and the anti-twitter sentiment at the moment, but IMO changing platform is irrelevant.

Firstly, let's assume that we are upset with twitter firings enough to quit twitter. Moderators, accessibility teams, etc - we consider them important enough that we leave when they go, and go to mastadon? Which has how many content moderators?

I'm no fan of elons style, but he's not wrong that a company losing 4m a day is sustainable. And saddled with 13b of new debt to pay off the old owners won't help.

Advertising won't save twitter. That's been tried and failed.

While there are edge cases where twitter is valuable, the vast majority is just noise, and not in a good way. The one-line sound bite has been co-opted by politicians and celebrities, to to little more than gain attention. It panders to the over-simplification, it eschews serious discussion of nuanced viewpoints. It is driven by those seeking attention, when absolutely any attention will do.

It is the bottom that internet communities raced to. Overall I think a world without twitter is better than a world with twitter, regardless of which platform it ends up on.

Big picture, Mastodon isn't just Twitter minus the moderation -- it's Twitter minus the algorithm for promoting the most "engaging" content. That's a big win, because it's the competition for the most engaging content that always ends up as a race to the bottom.

The dumbest, silliest, and rudest comments and commenters get promoted on Twitter (and Facebook etc), because that gets the most clicks. Get rid of all that manufactured promotion, and what's left is a quieter space where users can self-organize their own communities -- more like a chill party or friendly conference hallway than a staged political rally.

people retweet stuff in an equally dumb manner . thats how twitter started

That's why you unfollow such people.

Twitter started in 2006, they didn't add the retweet functionality until 2009.

Sure but folks quickly adopted "RT" as an informal means to re-tweet, then Twitter formalised the idea as a feature.

Which has how many content moderators?

None of them, but that's fine. People moving to Mastodon believe that communities can largely self-moderate, by aligning with the owners and kicking out people who don't play by their rules. Twitter is arguably the same, but it tries to be all things to all people and fails. Mastodon instance owners aren't trying to be that. They only want to keep a small number of people happy. That's a much easier job.

I think it works quite well. Mastodon instances aren't ever going to be a platform to broadcast a message to the public to like Twitter tries to be, but that's OK. There's a place in the world for lots of things that aren't Twitter.

It is the bottom that internet communities raced to.

People choosing to leave Twitter aren't convinced that's true. They believe it will get worse.

> None of them, but that's fine.

Not entirely true, my server has a content moderator - it's me, moderating my own content, which is the only content that can be posted on there.

> communities can largely self-moderate, by aligning with the owners and kicking out people who don't play by their rules

What is "kicking out people who don't play by their rules" if not "content moderation"??

The post I was responding to is talking about "people employed as content moderators." when the author wrote "Moderators, accessibility teams, etc - we consider them important enough that we leave when they go, and go to mastadon? Which has how many content moderators?". Mastondon has moderators, but not really in the same sense, because it doesn't need them. The people running instances do the job voluntarily, applying much simpler rules.

This applies if you're thinking of Twitter as a business or as a tool for mass-broadcast. If you think of something with a similar format but that fits a different space, that's the use for the Fediverse: it's more like USENET or BBSs or even 2008 Twitter than it is like 2022 Twitter.

Is Twitter losing $4m per day his fault? As in the acquisition was a LEVERAGED BUY-OUT and he scared off advertisers at a advertising summit that would have locked-in adrev for the year of 2023.

When you borrow money at an obscene interest rate during a leveraged-buyout, the fastest way to pay your creditors is to cut headcount if history serves correctly.

I have seen no numbers indicating they were losing anywhere near that per day looking at their published financials.

> I have seen no numbers indicating they were losing anywhere near that per day looking at their published financials.

They seem to have lost $221M in 2021[1] which would be ~600k/day but that seems to have been influenced by an $800M lawsuit loss - that would imply they had (theoretical) profits of ~$580M for 2021.

[1] https://news.yahoo.com/twitter-posts-loss-2021-stock-1301280...

Which implies that Twitter's profits were $1.5M/day rather than the $4M/day loss claimed by Musk. Something seems off there but I can't figure out which figure most accurately reflects reality. If in fact Twitter wasn't haemorrhaging money it casts a distinctly unpleasant pall on the reasons for the 50% cut to headcount.

> rather than the $4M/day loss claimed by Musk.

I suspect he might be shading things - AFAIK they have $4M/day loss now because of the $1bn debt obligation he loaded with the leveraged buyout.

Like saying you have to cut your workforce because 3 of your 4 factories burnt down when you set those fires yourself...

After months of trying to get out of the deal he took the equivalent of a pay-day loan, funded by multiple creditors, to complete the acquisition.

I am shocked there are as many people here not taking the time to look into the financials of that deal and are assuming Musk is some sort paragon of finance.

Re. moderation, I think you’re right to be skeptical of all-volunteer moderation, but I see it as a return to the phpBB days. My big worry is that once spammers/trolls start their own instances existing instances will have to lock down federation to other known instances, similar to what’s happened with email.

I’d argue that the things you don’t like about twitter have more to do with its business model than tweet-form content in general.

Interesting. Just to be on the same page, which social media you think needs to survive? Ig? Fb? TikTok? The reality is that social media is part of everyone's life wether we like it or not. Twitter may die but something else will take its place. Same goes for fb, ig, etc...

Regarding twitter itself, I also think twitter has an uphill battle (to say the least) to be profitable and maintain relevance in this climate. I think Elon will try different routes (some combination of twitch, YouTube for creators) just before call it quits but let's not forget that twitter is still the "Extra! Extra! Read all about it!" Platform. There's no other one to even come to mind when you want to know which news is happening atm.

Heck, he could enter in some sort of agreement with news outlets and add realtime video capabilities attached to trending tweets, etc...

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