Unlike everyone else here apparently, I find his attitude pretty positive. You all act as if you would have know what twitter would become from the beginning and you would have done better, I've been in infinitesimally smaller projects with pressures that have nothing to do with building Twitter and still I thought like I was losing control of the direction the product was going.
It’s pretty hard for even CEOs to control direction sometimes especially in big companies. A company is like a cthonic beast with many writhing tentacles that is in fact composed of thousands of cats. A black mass of cats, writhing, seeking, crawling toward anything that will increase its share price or get a cat promoted…
For those scared of all the links, here's a simple summary from someone who runs a server with an instance of one of these applications.
* ActivityPub is just an open, flexible protocol for sharing content
* The fediverse is a nice, human friendly way to describe all the various services using activitypub to talk back and forth to each other. The value in this is that these projects are diverse, it's not all twitter clones. You have video hosting services like peertube, the twitter-esque sites like mastodon and pleroma, open source managed file stores like nextcloud, and all of them can chat if they want to
* these services are hosted by whoever wants to host an instance, and they choose who they wish to federate with and who they don't, this optional interoperability is really the key feature for the entire network and protocol
Mastodon, as a twitter replacement is good from a user perspective (except in 300+ comment threads) , but I'd strongly recommend Pleroma at this point if you intend to run your own instance. The software of the two is similar, but Mastodon is in a constant state of chasing new, usually niche or controversial features which have led to a lot of bloat in terms of both management tooling, setup, and hardware required to run it.
It frustrates me that Jack seems to have genuine interest in this topic but seems to be totally averse to discussing Mastodon. It's hard to believe he's unaware of Mastodon, so we have to believe he thinks it's not the solution for some reason. But how could it not be? Why doesn't he just use his big name and significant influence to throw his weight behind Twitter's most successful open protocol competitor if he really wants this? None of it makes sense to me and I wish he would speak more plainly on the matter.
My main issue with Mastodon is that your identity is tied to whatever instance you signed up with. So if I sign up at example.social I will be [email protected]. If the moderators ban me or the instance stops working I am losing all my tweets and followers.
Ideally you would sign up with your own domain ([email protected]) and point some dns records to whichever instance you want, this way you stay flexible and you own your identity.
For someone invested in decentralized protocols, it just sounds like people trying to reinvent the wheel. "let’s make it decentralized" "wow, very cool idea".
Those guys are business guys but they have no idea what they are talking about. They don’t know the first bit about technical decentralization, about prior art, about the politics involved.
They are so close of realizing that their companies are Frankenstein monsters they don’t control anymore. They are so close of getting the whole idea that Stallman is trying to articulate for the late 40 years. But they are locked in their business/company/VC model and can’t get out of that.
God forbid someone learns business and has produced multiple successful businesses in some of the most forward looking, technical fields. That does not immediately disqualify their ability to know technical topics and if even may signal quite the opposite. This level of elitism often among the HN crowd creates an echo chamber that stifles innovation since it arbitrarily discriminates the dissemination & mixing of ideas that aren't fully "technical". These guys understand the concepts and can communicate with each other with that shared understanding and constructs. It's wild but that's how the top people within the field may chat, simply, efficient, and pointedly.
It's called the Media business model where we get the user to trade privacy for features and earn revenue on abusing privacy.
Given Apple's moves in the iOS app space and the way young people talk and behave; the next social media platform will be a low paid app that has full privacy and is non-ad revenue based and is centralized.
It will be some company that is super transparent but at the same time has figured out that one can provide paid services of value user of social media would pay for.
It might even be one of us that is reading this message that goes on to form such a social platform.
Crazy conspiracy theories, eh? People running those companies routinely talk to one another. When it seems they act together, it's often because they actually do act together.
I have to admit this is a bit surprising from Musk. I was pretty firmly of the theory that his real motive re Twitter was basically narcissism, and I'm still not sure that's wrong. I note he's not agreeing strongly with Dorsey, with the strongest phrase being "I'd like to help if I can".
And I still think he would be better off using any money he might have spent buying Twitter on funding a handful of open source competitors instead. The most charitable reason I can think of for trying to salvage Twitter for this grand goal of fixing web communication is to keep the network effect of having everyone be there. Would that even be meaningful in a real transition to something with a totally different architecture?
>I was pretty firmly of the theory that his real motive re Twitter was basically narcissism, and I'm still not sure that's wrong.
Why is it so hard to believe that Musk genuinely believes in exactly the version of "freedom of speech" that everyone in his generation grew up with, that served as the impetus for much of the internet's creation, etc.?
It’s likely 99.9% of Twitter’s user base does not care about this issue. Would be hard to build a product that is compelling enough to overcome the extreme network effect of something that is arguably a utility.
Musk and his team put together a fundraising deck and were actively looking for investors. It was never vanity for Musk. The deck was pretty clear about what Musk thought Twitter could become.
It's so obvious that Musk was not really interested. The social balance was totally non-existent in this conversation. Musk's one line replies sound so generic. Seems like he wanted to keep the door open but Dorsey hadn't convinced him really yet. "I'd like to help if I can" is such a without obligation sentence. Then Jack replies with another well-designed text.
What/who is Dorsey referring to when he says "Back when we had the activist come in" ? It's cute Musk thinks decentralised Twitter is a 'Super interesting idea' - come on, really? It's like two people discussing Blockchain when it first entered into the Zeitgeist a decade ago.
There's an axiom in discussions here where Twitter needs saving.
Why?
In what way is it non successful?
In what way is it broken?
I mean most Twitter discussions I ever saw are disgusting or plain dumb mascarading as profound.
I don't think the medium of a public square like that is a good thing, and I would be happy to see its demise.
But it seems successful in the way it usually lead the public discourse similarly to how newspapers did. So what's exactly wrong with Twitter from that perspective? It seems very successful.
This seems like double-talk to me. The talk is about decentralization, but also bakes in the idea it will be done exactly to their specification. Nonsense, of course.
The chat thread looked so farcical that I had to double check it wasn't a parody account. Is it possible the text has been edited? It just looks too scripted, especially since Jack Dorsey had shared his thoughts regarding Twitter being intended as a protocol publicly.
You can see in the other Tweets posted by that account that he acknowledges that he knows Twitter has fake users prior to making a private offer. Although the fake users thing was never and is not a valid legal reason to void the contract. However, it's incredible to see that he didn't have the foresight not text about the fact that he knew this ahead of time.
This is pretty cool; the internal messaging of big tech heads. Really interesting to see the way these bigshots converse; terse, to the point, no-nonsense.
This is quite interesting to see because Jack has plenty of stock in twitter obviously? So it kind of shows that he doesn’t really care about profits, instead he wants to do more interesting thing, what a geek, just like all of us lol. Or the other way to see it is that he felt that twitter can’t be saved and he wants to create a new profitable thing.. who knows about how billionaires think
In the US, part of litigation is something called discovery. This is when involved parties ask for and provide documents to establish facts of the case (requests can also be disputed, and deleting documents is a Problem). The communication of executives with Musk would be relevant to a civil case between Musk and a company.
Litigation isn’t something that should generally be taken lightly because things like discovery will tend to bring dirty laundry into public record unless documents are given additional requests to seal them. And even these seals can be litigated for certain interested parties to access them.
Dorsey has said in the past (tweeted even) that he wanted to turn Twitter into a federated protocol. It was 1 random message, and then never brought up again. Interesting that he's still thinking about that.
I know they are talking about new sexy distributed / federated stuff, but we actually had what they were talking about a long long time ago, and it was distributed in a very similar way - orgs, corps and just plain people used to run NNTP and IRC servers as they pleased, and cooperated with each other as they wanted.
Glad to see good ideas don't die, they just get reinvented.
Reading this conversation reminded me of something Steve Jobs once said:
"Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.
Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again"
[+] [-] Trufa|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] api|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] j0hnyl|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unity1001|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] senectus1|3 years ago|reply
That batch of messages in isolation are really promising.
[+] [-] brethil|3 years ago|reply
Just look at Mastodon[4, 5] if you're looking for something like twitter without the centralization and the corporate greed.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub [2] https://activitypub.rocks [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software) [5] https://joinmastodon.org/servers
[+] [-] viridian|3 years ago|reply
* ActivityPub is just an open, flexible protocol for sharing content
* The fediverse is a nice, human friendly way to describe all the various services using activitypub to talk back and forth to each other. The value in this is that these projects are diverse, it's not all twitter clones. You have video hosting services like peertube, the twitter-esque sites like mastodon and pleroma, open source managed file stores like nextcloud, and all of them can chat if they want to
* these services are hosted by whoever wants to host an instance, and they choose who they wish to federate with and who they don't, this optional interoperability is really the key feature for the entire network and protocol
Mastodon, as a twitter replacement is good from a user perspective (except in 300+ comment threads) , but I'd strongly recommend Pleroma at this point if you intend to run your own instance. The software of the two is similar, but Mastodon is in a constant state of chasing new, usually niche or controversial features which have led to a lot of bloat in terms of both management tooling, setup, and hardware required to run it.
[+] [-] kethinov|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drexlspivey|3 years ago|reply
Ideally you would sign up with your own domain ([email protected]) and point some dns records to whichever instance you want, this way you stay flexible and you own your identity.
There is a github issue for this that is open for 5 years but not much has been done https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/2668
[+] [-] niutech|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] faller_slive|3 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluesky_(protocol)
[+] [-] throoo0ooowaway|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] www_harka_com|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _-david-_|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] memish|3 years ago|reply
Obviously a different approach is needed to replace Twitter. Mastodon is a dead end.
[+] [-] ploum|3 years ago|reply
Those guys are business guys but they have no idea what they are talking about. They don’t know the first bit about technical decentralization, about prior art, about the politics involved.
They are so close of realizing that their companies are Frankenstein monsters they don’t control anymore. They are so close of getting the whole idea that Stallman is trying to articulate for the late 40 years. But they are locked in their business/company/VC model and can’t get out of that.
[+] [-] orky56|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewflnr|3 years ago|reply
Dorsey seems to have figured it out.
[+] [-] fredgrott|3 years ago|reply
Given Apple's moves in the iOS app space and the way young people talk and behave; the next social media platform will be a low paid app that has full privacy and is non-ad revenue based and is centralized.
It will be some company that is super transparent but at the same time has figured out that one can provide paid services of value user of social media would pay for.
It might even be one of us that is reading this message that goes on to form such a social platform.
[+] [-] dmw_ng|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simantel|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bamboozled|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] memish|3 years ago|reply
Musk: I interface way better with engineers who are able to do hardcore programming than with program manager / MBA types of people
Agrawal: In our next convo- treat me like an engineer instead of CEO and lets see where we get to.
-
Musk: I basically following your advice!
Dorsey: I know and I appreciate you. This is the right and only path. I’ll continue to do whatever it takes to make it work.
-
Marc Benioff: Happy to talk about it if this is interesting: Twitter conversational OS- the townsquare for your digital life
Musk: Well I down own it yet
-
Satya Nadella: Thx for the chat. Will stay in touch. And will for sure follow-up on Teams feedback!
-
Musk: Please send me anyone who actually writes good software
Steve Jurvetson: Ok, no management good coders, got it.
[+] [-] gambler|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewflnr|3 years ago|reply
And I still think he would be better off using any money he might have spent buying Twitter on funding a handful of open source competitors instead. The most charitable reason I can think of for trying to salvage Twitter for this grand goal of fixing web communication is to keep the network effect of having everyone be there. Would that even be meaningful in a real transition to something with a totally different architecture?
[+] [-] hardnose|3 years ago|reply
Why is it so hard to believe that Musk genuinely believes in exactly the version of "freedom of speech" that everyone in his generation grew up with, that served as the impetus for much of the internet's creation, etc.?
[+] [-] brandall10|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bmitc|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vernon99|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MomoXenosaga|3 years ago|reply
The internet was, is and always will be a cesspool. It comes with anonimity and plausible deniability.
[+] [-] parkingrift|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qprofyeh|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] medion|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lm28469|3 years ago|reply
Sounds like every other billionaire who once they have one foot in the grave rediscover themselves as philanthropists...
You can't fix it Jack, you fucked it up big time and shitting out yet another platform won't ever make it better
[+] [-] mola|3 years ago|reply
I mean most Twitter discussions I ever saw are disgusting or plain dumb mascarading as profound.
I don't think the medium of a public square like that is a good thing, and I would be happy to see its demise. But it seems successful in the way it usually lead the public discourse similarly to how newspapers did. So what's exactly wrong with Twitter from that perspective? It seems very successful.
[+] [-] jmull|3 years ago|reply
Not to mention mastodon already exists.
[+] [-] dreamer7|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elil17|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] once_inc|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pgt|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robertwt7|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mFixman|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SamoyedFurFluff|3 years ago|reply
Litigation isn’t something that should generally be taken lightly because things like discovery will tend to bring dirty laundry into public record unless documents are given additional requests to seal them. And even these seals can be litigated for certain interested parties to access them.
[+] [-] ashayh|3 years ago|reply
What a joke.
[+] [-] skerit|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ivoras|3 years ago|reply
Glad to see good ideas don't die, they just get reinvented.
[+] [-] kidsil|3 years ago|reply
"Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again"