Big Blue Huddle

With Musk screwing up Twitter left and right, I figured it was time for BBH to hedge its bet.  So you can now follow BBH on Mastodon (along with Facebook and Twitter)

https://mastodon.social/invite/o5g6Xwbq

I don't believe there is 100 percent agreement with the thought that Musk is "screwing up" Twitter.

As Tesla and SpaceX show, IMO, he is capable of accomplishing amazing things.

Cleaning up the supposed "mess" at Twitter is/was not easy, but he improved the bottom line (if nothing else).

Bob

PS. A few of us (including you) know how tough it is to decide how to run a site where freedom of expression is at a maximum while all the negative problems are minimized.  Now... multiply our experience by a billion !!!

Quote from: Bob In PA on July 04, 2023, 09:42:18 AMI don't believe there is 100 percent agreement with the thought that Musk is "screwing up" Twitter.

As Tesla and SpaceX show, IMO, he is capable of accomplishing amazing things.

Cleaning up the supposed "mess" at Twitter is/was not easy, but he improved the bottom line (if nothing else).

Bob

PS. A few of us (including you) know how tough it is to decide how to run a site where freedom of expression is at a maximum while all the negative problems are minimized.  Now... multiply our experience by a billion !!!

Sometimes I wonder how on earth people don't see what is really going on.  Here is an excerpt from Barron's (which is owned by the right-wing News Corp)

Twitter generated $5.08 billion in revenue in 2021 at its peak level as a listed company, before Musk's takeover. Musk said last year that Twitter was on track to generate around $3 billion in revenue for 2023.

https://www.barrons.com/articles/meta-threads-elon-musk-twitter-7c1f698a#:~:text=Twitter%20generated%20%245.08%20billion%20in,billion%20in%20revenue%20for%202023.

We live in an amazing world where taking revenues from $5 billion to $3 billion is considered genius. 

Bob,

I you are interested in what is actually happening, you might check out this (and there are plenty more) article

No One Believes Elon Musk's Explanation For Breaking Twitter

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/07/02/no-one-believes-elon-musks-explanation-for-breaking-twitter/?sh=2c3d97263bff

https://twitter.com/Patricia_Traina/status/1676227300730318848

Why isn't Twitter working? How Elon Musk finally broke his site – and why the internet might be about to get worse
Twitter's problems are a part of a broader problem on the web – or at least Elon Musk would like people to see them that way, writes Andrew Griffin

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/twitter-down-not-working-rate-limit-elon-musk-b2368617.html

Rich, just to be safe, shouldn't we also set up Rumble and Truth Social accounts? Asking for a friend.

Quote from: bighitterdalama on July 04, 2023, 11:26:54 AMRich, just to be safe, shouldn't we also set up Rumble and Truth Social accounts? Asking for a friend.

Brian: Wish I had thought of that... but you put it SO WELL!!!  Bob

Rich: Nice try with the stats, but revenue generated is not the bottom line, although it is a valid point.

The payroll (hence, the expenses subtracted from the diminished revenues) is the "true and correct" measure, IMO.

And, by the way, I really don't care if he makes or loses money, just so long as he tries as hard as we do to treat everyone fairly.

Bob

Quote from: Bob In PA on July 04, 2023, 04:24:35 PMRich: Nice try with the stats, but revenue generated is not the bottom line, although it is a valid point.

The payroll (hence, the expenses subtracted from the diminished revenues) is the "true and correct" measure, IMO.

And, by the way, I really don't care if he makes or loses money, just so long as he tries as hard as we do to treat everyone fairly.

Bob

I think it's pretty clear that he didn't buy Twitter to make money, or at least that making money is well down on his priority list.

I don't use Twitter (except to peep in on our site's account) but found this, and for what it's worth, here it is... it's from today, Wednesday, July 5....

Three days after Twitter owner Elon Musk told users it would temporarily limit how many tweets they can read to "address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation," the company is defending the move against criticism from users and advertisers.

CEO Linda Yaccarino pointed users Tuesday to an official corporate explanation as opposed to Musk's brief weekend tweet, which itself followed unexplained apparent outages reminiscent of Twitter's early days.

"To ensure the authenticity of our user base we must take extreme measures to remove spam and bots" as well as "other bad actors that are harming the platform," an unsigned statement on Twitter's business website says.

It could not tell good-faith users without first giving an opportunity to "bad actors to alter their behavior to evade detection," the statement says. It's working to keep the latter from "scraping people's public Twitter data to build AI models" and "manipulating people and conversation on the platform in various ways."

The change affects "a small percentage" of users and the effects on advertising have been "minimal," the company says. "At times, even for a brief moment, you must slow down to speed up." Yaccarino defended the measure as "big moves to keep strengthening the platform."

Quote from: Bob In PA on July 05, 2023, 07:20:14 AMI don't use Twitter (except to peep in on our site's account) but found this, and for what it's worth, here it is... it's from today, Wednesday, July 5....

Three days after Twitter owner Elon Musk told users it would temporarily limit how many tweets they can read to "address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation," the company is defending the move against criticism from users and advertisers.

CEO Linda Yaccarino pointed users Tuesday to an official corporate explanation as opposed to Musk's brief weekend tweet, which itself followed unexplained apparent outages reminiscent of Twitter's early days.

"To ensure the authenticity of our user base we must take extreme measures to remove spam and bots" as well as "other bad actors that are harming the platform," an unsigned statement on Twitter's business website says.

It could not tell good-faith users without first giving an opportunity to "bad actors to alter their behavior to evade detection," the statement says. It's working to keep the latter from "scraping people's public Twitter data to build AI models" and "manipulating people and conversation on the platform in various ways."

The change affects "a small percentage" of users and the effects on advertising have been "minimal," the company says. "At times, even for a brief moment, you must slow down to speed up." Yaccarino defended the measure as "big moves to keep strengthening the platform."

Quote"We've been hearing from creators and public figures who are interested in having a platform that is sanely run, that they believe that they can trust and rely upon for distribution," said Meta's chief product officer Chris Cox at an internal meeting in early June, reported The Verge at the time.

https://fortune.com/2023/07/04/meta-threads-instagram-app-thursday-mark-zuckerberg-twitter-elon-musk-rate-limits/

Rest assured BBH will have a Threads account as soon as possible.

Quote from: Bob In PA on July 05, 2023, 07:20:14 AMI don't use Twitter (except to peep in on our site's account) but found this, and for what it's worth, here it is... it's from today, Wednesday, July 5....

Three days after Twitter owner Elon Musk told users it would temporarily limit how many tweets they can read to "address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation," the company is defending the move against criticism from users and advertisers.

CEO Linda Yaccarino pointed users Tuesday to an official corporate explanation as opposed to Musk's brief weekend tweet, which itself followed unexplained apparent outages reminiscent of Twitter's early days.

"To ensure the authenticity of our user base we must take extreme measures to remove spam and bots" as well as "other bad actors that are harming the platform," an unsigned statement on Twitter's business website says.

It could not tell good-faith users without first giving an opportunity to "bad actors to alter their behavior to evade detection," the statement says. It's working to keep the latter from "scraping people's public Twitter data to build AI models" and "manipulating people and conversation on the platform in various ways."

The change affects "a small percentage" of users and the effects on advertising have been "minimal," the company says. "At times, even for a brief moment, you must slow down to speed up." Yaccarino defended the measure as "big moves to keep strengthening the platform."

I don't have a Twitter account, so when Elon put these new temporary rules in place I could no longer view a tweet by clicking on it when it was embedded on another site, like BBH.  Non- Twitter members could not read tweets at their origin. I'm happy to report that this limitation has been lifted.  For example, in the thread on gambling suspensions Rich posted some tweets, and if I clicked on one a few days ago all I got was a Twitter sign-up page.  Now I get the actual tweet, and responses, on Twitter.  So at least this restriction was pretty temporary - just a matter of a few days.  I don't know if the limits on the number of tweets members and verified members can read have also been lifted, though I'd guess they have been.

I also note that Musk said he put these temporary limits in to stop having data scraped from tweets to fuel AI, while Zuckerburg just announced that every bit of data would scraped from posts on Thread to fuel AI.  This is spelled out on the Threads app page of the apple app store which lists all of the different data they can collect and link to the users identity. So, very different visions for the 2 products.  This is the real cage match.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/threads-an-instagram-app/id6446901002

https://gizmodo.com/google-says-itll-scrape-everything-you-post-online-for-1850601486

Quote from: AZGiantFan on July 05, 2023, 09:53:09 PMI don't have a Twitter account, so when Elon put these new temporary rules in place I could no longer view a tweet by clicking on it when it was embedded on another site, like BBH.  Non- Twitter members could not read tweets at their origin. I'm happy to report that this limitation has been lifted.  For example, in the thread on gambling suspensions Rich posted some tweets, and if I clicked on one a few days ago all I got was a Twitter sign-up page.  Now I get the actual tweet, and responses, on Twitter.  So at least this restriction was pretty temporary - just a matter of a few days.  I don't know if the limits on the number of tweets members and verified members can read have also been lifted, though I'd guess they have been.

I also note that Musk said he put these temporary limits in to stop having data scraped from tweets to fuel AI, while Zuckerburg just announced that every bit of data would scraped from posts on Thread to fuel AI.  This is spelled out on the Threads app page of the apple app store which lists all of the different data they can collect and link to the users identity. So, very different visions for the 2 products.  This is the real cage match.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/threads-an-instagram-app/id6446901002

https://gizmodo.com/google-says-itll-scrape-everything-you-post-online-for-1850601486

Rich,


Thing to remember is that Al scraping data doesn't harm the users and has negligible impact on the platform.   The reason Musk didn't like the scraping is that he feels that data has value and he should be paid for it.   The odd part is that Musk isn't creating his content.  So it's not like he really owns the data.

I think Musk backed off on the need to be logged in to view Twitter is because of Google.  Google delisted Twitter since it's bots could no longer crawl Twitter.

Bob, previously claimed incorrectly that Twitter was a mess.   The reality was it was well run and well moderated prior to Musk.   Advertisers and celebratities, and people of note want a stable responsibly run platform.  That is the opposite of what Musk has provided.   He has counted on the effective monopoly that Twitter is in terms of text based rather than picture /video based social media.    Facebook's Threads if a solid offering could overtake Twitter in time.   

Here is an article talking about the Threads experience.


https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/06/we-tried-threads-metas-new-twitter-rival-heres-what-happened

EDIT TO ADD-  for some reason, Threads doesn't have a desktop/web browser version.  That will limit my adoption of the technology.  While I certainly use phone-based apps, I don't like being forced to use them exclusively.

EDIT TO ADD-  I am seeing quite a few NYG content creators getting their Threads account

This was just posted, it looks like Threads is going to have legs

Not an admirable person, IMO.

Still not sure he was blameless in alleged "theft" of the Facebook idea from the twins (Harvard classmates).

Just IMO, but he comes off as someone whom I don't mind NOT knowing personally (and I get a "sneak" vibe too).

Bob

Quote from: Bob In PA on July 06, 2023, 12:54:03 PMNot an admirable person, IMO.

Still not sure he was blameless in alleged "theft" of the Facebook idea from the twins (Harvard classmates).

Just IMO, but he comes off as someone whom I don't mind NOT knowing personally (and I get a "sneak" vibe too).

Bob

Bob,

Zuckerberg is hardly a saint, but he begins to look like one when you compare him to Musk. 

Quote from: MightyGiants on July 06, 2023, 08:16:49 AMRich,


Thing to remember is that Al scraping data doesn't harm the users and has negligible impact on the platform.  The reason Musk didn't like the scraping is that he feels that data has value and he should be paid for it.  The odd part is that Musk isn't creating his content.  So it's not like he really owns the data.

Bob, previously claimed incorrectly that Twitter was a mess.  The reality was it was well run and well moderated prior to Musk.  Advertisers and celebratities, and people of note want a stable responsibly run platform.  That is the opposite of what Musk has provided.  He has counted on the effective monopoly that Twitter is in terms of text based rather than picture /video based social media.    Facebook's Threads if a solid offering could overtake Twitter in time. 

To your first point this is right out of the description of the Threads app on Apples app store:

QuoteThe following data may be collected and linked to your identity:

Health & Fitness
Purchases
Financial Info
Location
Contact Info
Contacts
User Content
Search History
Browsing History
Identifiers
Usage Data
Sensitive Info
Diagnostics
Other Data

I don't want Zuckerburg & Co. to have all this data about me.

And to your second point, I've read the Twitter files so I cannot agree with your contention that it was well moderated, and I'll just leave that there, because going further gets dangerously close to political.