Twitter engineering boss Foad Dabiri quits day after DeSantis launch glitches
bbc.com
bbc.com
1. Dabiri mentioned in a tweet (left out of the BBC article ofc) that his departure didn’t have to do with recent events. That might be face-saving on his part but it is clickbaiting on the BBC’s part. Source: https://twitter.com/foaddabiri/status/1662110369140310023?s=...
2. Second point is that evidently twitter didn’t pay its bills (hosting maybe?) for Spaces. Source: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/twitter-cut-key-soft...
Both are obviously RUMINT but, there ya go…
Sometimes people just want to change up their career. It happens. There’s no particular reason.
And yeah, sure, he could’ve been let go for the technical glitches. But it’s hardly his fault if his heart isn’t in it anymore. People change. The trick is to depart before it becomes a problem, which (as I’ve discovered) is indeed tricky. Your instinct is to stay simply because it’s the default, it’s good money, and it’s no effort to change the status quo. Plus you worked hard to get there. All of those are difficult forces to overcome when you just want to do something, anything, else.
I think in the absence of evidence we just take the man at his word.
The more alarming aspect was the shrillness of replies, which seem to generally go unchallenged. I don’t like the idea that people think HN is for loudness. But thankfully that seems to be a minor fluctuation.
The sibling reply from Freedom2 is right too — your comment (other than the downvote complaints, which I know is hard to resist) generated some good discussion.
I hope it’s a measurement error, because the spike is literally a J.
It's still somewhat nascent, but with more high profile articles posted, you'll see more people coming over.
Fortunately, the UI here is not good enough to probably hold redditor interest in the long term.
you could have some fun here if you were a creditor who Musk was refusing to pay
leave the service running, and cut it off at the point it does as much political damage as possible to Musk
This is Musk’s #1 play in his playbook. Stop paying people and see who is willing to fight for it legally. Then negotiate down.
He did the same thing with Solar Roof customers when he doubled their price and asked them to sign a new contract even if they had a signed contract. My friend was one of those and he simply refused to sign anything because he knew better but I wonder how many signed the new contract. Eventually they relented and honored the original price but it was disgusting to even have to deal with that.
We admire them for their successes, which they use to camouflage their misdeeds. Worth studying but never becoming.
Remember Musk clawed-back severance and bonuses on many people who already left.
Would you put someone on a two-week notice in charge of a nationwide critical launch?
In any case, hard to care no matter what the truth is, one more stupid twitter thing where it's a death by 1000 self-inflicted cuts.
I still don't get why there isn't an alternative, it's just a brand name, the service could have be replicated.
How does that work?
Perhaps, but the reasoning seems to basically boil down to "Journalists should take everything as gospel unless explicitly proven otherwise"
Enlightening and educational indeed, I suppose.
Were these people forced to accept money over their legitimately held shares? If not, is it now illegal for them to sell their shares?
In other words: I can see that it is no longer traded at the stock exchange, but I don't know enough about stock to understand how the genie is forced back into the bottle.
Their RSUs/equity would have either been deleted, converted to private equity that you can maybe sell on the secondary markets at best, or converted to cash bonuses.
I think 1/3 are pretty unlikely and 2 would have those RSUs in the gutter as well.
Maybe a disgruntled Twitter employee could comment.
“I must admit, I have rarely come across someone with a more unique perspective on things. It’s truly intriguing to witness such different ways of thinking.”
I think Musk’s product vision is noble and clear: to make Twitter as neutral and transparent a speech platform as possible. No soft censoring, algorithmic manipulation, etc. You can imagine why certain groups would be against that. And rooting out “extremism” is not it, despite what they say.
Of course. Only the hardcore and literal censoring from Turkey.
My understanding is that Erdojan threatened to throttle the site for the entire country - a cost that maybe you or I may not have incurred if we were in that position.
At the very least, Twitter was transparent about the content restriction, which is certainly better than how the previous team operated.
Twitter used to reject more censorship requests. Now they're accepting more of them after Mr. Musk has become the owner.
I'm comparing Twitter pre-Musk vs Twitter post-Musk.
> Most alarmingly, Twitter's self-reports do not show a single request in which the company refused to comply, as it had done several times before the Musk takeover.
now we know what it takes to shut up a free speech absolutist
You should look up (or speak to ex twitter employees) about how pro censorship and pro-algorithmic manipulation he has been. The difference is when the topic is related to him or his companies.
Maybe I'm alone in not wanting to see (real example off the top of my head) apologia for a mass shooter's neo-nazi tattoos pushed to the top of my feed in the interest of "neutral and transparent free speech". But I don't think so.
> The social media giant fully or partially complied with 98.8 percent of takedown requests it received from October 27, the date of Musk’s takeover, to April 13, including hundreds of requests from Turkey and India, which have faced criticism for silencing critics.
> Twitter fully complied with 440, or 50 percent, of requests and partially complied with 377, or 42 percent, during the 12-month period before Musk’s takeover.
Those come from the Pentagon's budget, not Elon Musk.
2. Musk turned off Starlink in Crimea.
3. Musk believes Crimea belongs to Russia. Following, and loudly proclaiming, Russian propaganda.
----------
Given all the issues Starlink has been having, all it has proven is that SpaceX is an unreliable partner. In the future, its clear that unless your politics line up with Musk, you shouldn't trust that internet service.
A Ukrainian official said:
"Musk assured us he will continue to support Ukraine. When we had a powerful blackout, I messaged him on that day and he momentarily reacted and has already delivered some steps. He understands the situation."
Boy, that doesn’t sound very anti-Ukrainian to me.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/12/starlink-will-se...
Crimea belongs to Russia. Russia invaded in 2014 and no one, including Obama, did anything about it. The entire world stepped back and let it happen. No one lifted a finger. You can’t go back and retroactively show your disapproval over something almost 10 years later and say “hey that shouldn’t have happened!”. The outcome of war determines who owns land, regardless of what people may want to see. People may say what they want about Israel’s right to occupy the Holy Land but I dare them to try to take it away through war. Israel owns the land that it occupies.
Why don't you apply the same logic to the opposite side?
> You can’t go back and retroactively show your disapproval
"Might is right" is extremely bad principle for doing politics. It is actually an absence of principles at all.
I mean, it's sort of true, but it's very weird to (as GP did) espouse might-makes-right as a determinant of moral ownership and then turn around and say "Russia owns Crimea" when there is literally a war happening in Ukraine right now and the Western war machine is straining at its leash to utterly annihilate the Russian presence in what it considers Ukrainian territory, held back only by Russia's semi-credible threat of nuclear escalation.
What the hell?
I'm saying that Ukraine deserves Starlink access in Crimea. And you go off on tangents about irrelevant details. The only person who matters in this discussion is Elon Musk, who is refusing to enable Starlink access in Crimea.
But as I said in other posts: even if Mr. Musk enabled Starlink in Crimea, I don't know if the Ukrainian Commandos could trust it. We need to simply choose an entirely different satellite system to provide them... because Mr. Musk is seemingly compromised here. (And if Mr. Musk turns it off at a bad time, it could be even worse than his current inaction)
If you would like to clarify your position, feel free to do so. But I'm afraid doing so may undermine the point you were trying to make.
Of course you can; it happens all the time. See the GOP's recent dismantling of Roe v. Wade as an unfortunate recent example.
Crimea's ownership is disputed within the international community and its ultimate disposition is far from settled.
Actually you can and it happens all the time.
Crimea belongs to Russia.
Just as your car now belongs to me, every since I saw you left the keys in it and decided to take it out for a joy ride.
I hate purity tests, but when it comes to censorship you can’t flip-flop on it.
Not to mention, step outside the two party lens for a second. If he does this for democrats and republicans then surely he needs to do it for absolutely anyone that declares a presidential candidacy? To do otherwise would be to endorse the two party political establishment, also not a neutral statement.
A truly neutral Twitter would have no problem hosting a Space where a person announces their candidacy. But it would have no further involvement.
I wonder how you feel about media then?
The criticisms I’m laying out here (including the fact that, yes, interviewers have bias) are exactly the criticisms I and many others would level at corporate media. Despite his claims Musk is emulating them, not proving some radical alternative.
This then manifests in charging Post-Elon twitter with Right wing Bias because if Pre-Elon Twitter was "neutral" (it was not), Elon moving twitter slightly to the right means it now Right wing ...
Personally I think Elon is centrist, agreeing with some Right wing policies, and some left wing policies, but clearly has a personal bias which is reflected in the policy choices of twitter, too much so IMO.
That said most often when I engage on this subject I am faced with people that have the position that CNN, MSNBC, and NY Times, Washington Post, and other corp media are not organizationally biased, and that Pre-Elon Twitter was a neutral platform, so the hypocrisy of that position is what I challenge.
He spends his entire day reply-guying to right-wing loons on everything from COVID crankery to RaHoWa wannabes and throws around canned-ass Germany-in-the-thirties anti-Jewish bullshit because a guy sold some stock. Where his bread is buttered is simply not difficult to suss out.
Now go on and tell me that anti-Semitism (no, not anti-Zionism, do not give me that dodge) is "centrist".
Have you ever watched "60 Minutes" interview a candidate?
I recently watched Leslie Stahl interview MTG. I didn't know anything about MTG, and still don't, as all Stahl did was try to embarrass her with various rhetorical traps.
> In addition to the points made by sibling replies I’ll also point out that the crashed Twitter Space was one where Musk helped a Republican presidential candidate launch his campaign. No matter which party is involved, that’s not something a neutral speech platform would ever involve itself in.
A neutral platform is _the best_ choice for all candidates to present their platform on. Its a common discussion space where both sides have an un-censored dialogue.
When candidates can tweet to one another, and community notes fact checks in real time, that will be great. One reason I think trump is hesitant to come back on.
And, of course, this article was boosted from The Atlantic's Verified Organization Twitter account[2].
Seems like they see the value in paying $1000/mo for the gold check on Twitter, even though it's now a "far right social network". I'd like to believe that they just want to make sure they have a presence on every social network to spread awareness and diversity of opinion, but I can't seem to find them on Truth Social[3].
So, has Twitter truly "evolved into a platform that is indistinguishable from the wastelands of alternative social-media sites such as Truth Social" if The Atlantic still finds it valuable to have a presence on Twitter?
It's beyond transparent what legacy media is doing here, and it's quite sad to see.
[1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/elon-...
[2]: https://twitter.com/theatlantic/status/1661113356277653507?s...
[3]: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Atruthsocial.com+%22Th...
1. Authors of articles do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the owners of a publication, except for articles clearly listed as editorial and representing the authors.
2. It is possible to believe that Twitter had become a racist alt-right hellsite (hint, it has) and yet want to connect with readers or potential readers. This is a commercial decision.
3. I’m curious what you think legacy media is doing since you provide no details and the rest of your post suggests you share some disturbing opinions on “MSM.”
> the rest of your post suggests you share some disturbing opinions on “MSM.”
Is this ad hominem? If not, why?
> It is possible to believe that Twitter had become a racist alt-right hellsite (hint, it has)
Is this speculation? If not, why?
> he dressed down why your post is dishonest
Where? Is it this part ("Your argument is manipulative and fallacious"), where a conclusion is drawn without evidence? If so, why? And if not, where?
As an aside I'm not a big fan of the lack of diligence in verifying orgs for the gold check, it's enabling a lot of bad actors who are willing to pay the thousand dollars for a quick crypto scam.
Try reading one of the CCP's mouthpieces for a week and it will be such a revelation of how bad US news is that you are more informed about the world by a CCP mouthpiece than the US trash news.
In the US, we basically have competing factions of the National Enquirer vs Weekly World News reporting on a constant food fight for clicks. A person is not more informed by reading what side threw a sandwich across the table first.
They are all such complete and utter shit.
My account was deleted around the same time many reporters who reported on elonjet in the past had. Maybe because I had retweeted elonjet in the past and posted. I do not know-I was never notified in email about it.
Claiming he wants to create a "neutral and transparent a speech platform as possible" when Elon Musk does things like this after taking over Twitter is ridiculous!
https://people.com/human-interest/twitter-accounts-belonging...
Certain groups include everybody that would like some relief from slander, yellow journalism and plain wholesale fabrication. Especially when the slant benefits Himself.
Hard censoring I guess; crushing his opponents any anybody who dares speak against him.
I don't think you have any idea what you're talking about. One of the most obvious changes is sorting the responses of people who pay for Twitter to the top of every reply thread.
And he's turned up all the algorithms 4x as hard, it defaults to a "for you" page that's full of viral accounts posting fight videos.
I mean, it's probably just a bug and they'll fix it on appeal but you never know…
I've done the same thing myself on forums, but I didn't have a budget for my spam filter team.
The blue tick vitriol at the top of any thread has really turned me off reading any comments at all.
A prominent media outlet is running what amounts to nothing more than a smear article against Musk/Twitter. Why? If this were an isolated occurrence, I’d write it off as strange and move on, but it isn’t. Dozens of media outlets are pushing similar content. And every time the subject comes up, the replies are filled with terse and snarky comments along the lines of “Musk bad because <reason I gleaned from smear campaign against Musk>”.
I haven’t used Twitter in years, so I can’t comment on the UX. I haven’t stayed incredibly up-to-date on all the goings-on, so I can’t provide citations or rebuttals. Maybe the site is truly that bad, that it is worth the entire Internet hammering home every single day now. It seems more likely to me that it is the other way around and the Internet decided Twitter was going to be bad once Musk purchased it.
I say the above because, how many outsiders would have noticed any changes based on their usage of Twitter? Would users have known about the mass layoffs? Has the site experience degraded as a result of that, or was Musk right that most people were doing nothing? Would users have known about changes in the content recommendation algorithm, or were they hyper-alert to changes on their feed because it was widely reported? These are half-honest questions because I really don’t know as a non-user, but also somewhat rhetorical because I suspect the answer is no.
> And since some have asked, my decision and the timing of it are independent of any recent events.
Recently I teased PR for how their announcements never sound human. But this is what you get when people without PR experience give announcements. It’s always the same format and usually includes a weird idiom.
It’s Saturday evening and I want to be pedantic, dammit!
This works?
I guess maybe I’m just not attached to jobs the way some are so it comes off as phoney to me. The kind of thing you say when hiring managers are watching.