12+ years in, and still not sure what to do with Twitter. Tech Lead @EsmeeFairbairn; Trustee @SchSocEnt; Freelance WebDev; Other hats with other opinions.
London, England
Joined December 2008
- Tweets5.1K
- Following844
- Followers740
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Long day at Twitter HQ with eng team
Two significant problems mostly addressed:
1. Fanout service for Following feed was getting overloaded when I tweeted, resulting in up to 95% of my tweets not getting delivered at all. Following is now pulling from search (aka Earlybird). When Fanout crashed, it would also destroy anyone else’s tweets in queue.
2. Recommendation algorithm was using absolute block count, rather than percentile block count, causing accounts with many followers to be dumped, even if blocks were only 0.1% of followers. Also, it’s trivial to bot spam accounts with blocks.
Question for #Chromebook users: is there a sensible way of pulling/pushing .md files from #GitHub and working on them locally/offline that doesn't involve the Linux environment on ChromeOS? (I'm working with a low-spec device that struggles)
Twitter often sets a standard, is my point. And if the new standard becomes verified individual accounts, there's going to be some collateral damage.
$8 for a blue tick might not seem like the worst idea in the world. But I'm concerned about what's next.
More than that, the way Twitter first handled things like blocking, muting, and other content moderation became something of a playbook for other platforms to follow.
Part of my concern is that Twitter has long been a vangaurd for what the rest of the internet looks like. Features like hyperlinked hashtags, short-form video content and ironically even verified accounts all became part of internet vernacular here.
Regardles, what you can't disagree with is that removing anonymity makes it harder for vulnerable people to maintain community and voice across the internet. A better explanation than I could give here: anonyome.com/2021/04/removin…
One could argue that less anonymity equals less harassment. It is worth bearing in mind though that 99% of the accounts banned from Twitter for abuse during Euro2020 were not anonymous. blog.twitter.com/en_gb/topic…
But back to my actual point - my biggest concern is that it's one more step along the road to removing anonymity online.
Ability to post longer tweets because you're a paying customer is one thing - tiered access in software is hardly new ground. But one of Twitter's greatest strengths has always been the lack of hierachy. The precedent this will set makes me nervous.
Slight sidebar to note that, of course you don't *need* to be verified to use Twitter. Yet. But what if that changes? Or, perhaps more likely, what if the fundemental experience you have access to as a result of being verified changes.
But if that is the goal, soon that won't be enough of a barrier, and the only logical step will be some other form of verification. Not just proof that you are a human, but proof of which human you are.
From what I can tell, one of the primary drivers for the verification charge is to provide a barrier to the mass creation of accounts. It helps prove that you are a real person. While I have issues with that, purely as a means to an end, it's certainly one option.
Throwing in my two cents on the 8 dollar thing. Cos I'm an idiot.
There's obviously the standard concerns associated with being able to buy your way into being "trusted", but I'm also worried about what happens further down the line...
Oh, except to say that it reminded me of this report from @doteveryone, and that I would love to see where that 50% number is at now
teapaw.org/willchurchill/status/1…
Very interesting report launched today from @doteveryone. Among the findings: "Half (50%) believe it’s ‘part and parcel’ of being online that people will try to cheat or harm them in some way."
But perhaps a greater understanding of power dynamics - and the power of both the individual and the collective - is leading to greater confidence in the average person that they don't have to put up with being a product.
I've often used Gmail as an example - free email service, for the price of your privacy. Most people don't think about it, or think about it just enough to decide it's not important enough to them.
What it seems to me (in what may be news only to me at this point) is that people are starting to realise that just because something is "free" (no money needs to change hands to use the service) that doesn't mean that you need to blindly accept whatever terms go along with it.
When someone so polarising and visible takes the helm, it's harder to ignore the values of the product. The move to the #fediverse - which is not only more transparent in its operation, but also offers much more individual choice of values - seems a more acceptable transaction.