I'm reminded of the phrase 天下为公, which is hard to translate exactly because 公 is doing some linguistical juggling that English has a hard time matching.
I don't think twitter in its current capacity should exist, the storage should be decoupled from the filters and the filters that everyone uses should be a free market with traditional competition dynamics. It may end up looking something like twitter, but without editorializing algorithms and a single walled entry. We can quibble who owns the database I suppose.
It seems like a reasonable question to ask and I'm surprised to see you, in particular, take this point of view.
I could argue that due to the New York Times being the "newspaper of record" they should post my manifesto because, after all, it's very important. The obvious objection to this is that the NYT is privately owned, and despite having made itself very important, I don't have the right to tell them what to do.
This is the obvious objection to "Twitter is important, we should get to tell it what to do" as well, and you're old enough to know that Twitter kneecapping third-party apps is not at all new to the Musk chapter of the company, either.
Is it different, though? If so, how? Granted the jibe about the UN was sarcastic, but it's the same question, and, you know it.
Your NYT analogy seems to be specific to posting things, not reading them.
When it comes to reading, I think you could indeed make a reasonably compelling argument that the NYT must not refuse to provide a subscription to anyone who asks. That would be similar (but obviously not exactly the same) to the way common carriers are treated.
As to publishing, even then your analogy doesn't really fit because NYT has always been extremely selective about what they publish (ie they are curators) whereas twitter was fundamentally based on the polar opposite.
It was only a “town square” in the minds of Twitter users, no one else thinks that about a news media propped-up social network. If anything it was a comment section attached to nothing. And comment sections all get bad after a while.
I'm reminded of the phrase 天下为公, which is hard to translate exactly because 公 is doing some linguistical juggling that English has a hard time matching.
I don't think twitter in its current capacity should exist, the storage should be decoupled from the filters and the filters that everyone uses should be a free market with traditional competition dynamics. It may end up looking something like twitter, but without editorializing algorithms and a single walled entry. We can quibble who owns the database I suppose.
Would 'regulated utility' be a good fit for what you are describing?
[dead]
the EU of course, the actually functioning UN
Can you stop with the 'just asking questions' routine?
> Can you stop with the 'just asking questions' routine?
This combative response caught me by surprise.
I have nominal awareness of what Nitter stood for in the past.
Asking people for money given the legal precariousness AND not having a more strategic business model seems sketchy to me. Even bordering on scam.
Hence my genuine curiosity about whether there's something more substantial in the works.
It seems like a reasonable question to ask and I'm surprised to see you, in particular, take this point of view.
I could argue that due to the New York Times being the "newspaper of record" they should post my manifesto because, after all, it's very important. The obvious objection to this is that the NYT is privately owned, and despite having made itself very important, I don't have the right to tell them what to do.
This is the obvious objection to "Twitter is important, we should get to tell it what to do" as well, and you're old enough to know that Twitter kneecapping third-party apps is not at all new to the Musk chapter of the company, either.
Is it different, though? If so, how? Granted the jibe about the UN was sarcastic, but it's the same question, and, you know it.
Your NYT analogy seems to be specific to posting things, not reading them.
When it comes to reading, I think you could indeed make a reasonably compelling argument that the NYT must not refuse to provide a subscription to anyone who asks. That would be similar (but obviously not exactly the same) to the way common carriers are treated.
As to publishing, even then your analogy doesn't really fit because NYT has always been extremely selective about what they publish (ie they are curators) whereas twitter was fundamentally based on the polar opposite.
There is no way someone who is on HN for any amount of time is not aware of what Nitter is.
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It was only a “town square” in the minds of Twitter users, no one else thinks that about a news media propped-up social network. If anything it was a comment section attached to nothing. And comment sections all get bad after a while.
There are a lot of public institutions using twitter for their communications.
There are a lot of public institutions not using Twitter for their communications too. Are those institutions not in the “town square”?
And they should be utterly ashamed of it. They give it a legitimacy that it has not deserved for years now.
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