Twitter Drama
So, Adam, are you still gonna be on Twitter?
Adam:Undecided.
Dax:What are you waiting for?
Adam:Wait. I don't know. I'm waiting for the the the buzz to die down. There's a lot of buzz, and it's unclear if everyone's going to Mastodon or if Twitter's gonna implode because all the SREs were laid off. Like, I I just don't know what to think.
Adam:Yeah. And I don't know if I'm upset about it, if it does die. I don't know.
Dax:So it sounds like we're both just gonna wait to see what everyone else does and and follow them there.
Adam:Yeah. I'm just gonna do whatever you do. Whatever you do, Zach. I'm following you.
Dax:And I'm following everyone else.
Adam:So Okay. In all seriousness, have you, like, looked at any of these alternatives? I mean, there's just so much talk now about, like, Twitter's dead. There's people that have said they've left. I don't know if they really left.
Adam:The it's the Canada thing. Like Yeah. People serious?
Dax:Yeah. I think I've been through this cycle before where I've looked at alternatives, not because I was trying to leave Twitter, but just out of curiosity with what what other models are there. I was pretty into federated stuff at one point.
Adam:Could you explain what that is to me? Or, I mean, for the listeners who don't know.
Dax:So I think the idea behind federated so I there's like a few different setups. Right? You can have a completely centralized setup like Twitter. Super easy to sign up. Everyone has one account except for the bots who have a 100 accounts apparently.
Dax:But theoretically, everyone has one account. Everything's in one place. One company, you know, serves everyone. Yep. Then there's a totally decentralized model where that's gonna get blockchain?
Adam:Is this gonna help you?
Dax:Okay. So that's like what with all, like, the crypto blockchain stuff, where people talk about putting the whole social network on the blockchain. In general, like, I don't think anyone who says that really knows what they're talking about. It just does not really make sense to go to go that far. It's not what blockchain systems can handle.
Dax:But federated stuff is a little bit more interesting where there is a single protocol, kinda like email. You know, email, there's a single protocol for receiving messages. But anyone can set up a server and join the protocol, and you compete based off of delivering good experiences. So you can think about Gmail as they're they're huge. Like, everyone uses Gmail, but they're technically on a federated protocol where you can message people that aren't on Gmail.
Dax:People that aren't on Gmail can message you. Anyone can come in and compete with Gmail. So that's kind of the appeal of federated systems where it's a protocol that is universal, but you're not trapped on one platform. If it starts to suck, you can move and you don't lose as much. It's not the case with, you know, fully centralized things.
Dax:So that's what Mastodon is, and that's why everyone's really excited about it. I checked out Mastodon a few years ago when it was, I guess, a little bit smaller. And I wasn't super excited by it. Like, I liked the concept. Like, I just love the idea of protocols and people building whatever they want.
Dax:But it's pretty rough.
Adam:Yeah. I've heard.
Dax:Some of the trade offs that you have to make. Yeah.
Adam:Yeah. And so I I have all kinds of questions. First of all, I guess the Gmail example is the protocol is just like email, just SMTP. That's just
Dax:Yeah. I don't know the details of email protocol. But yeah.
Adam:Yeah. Okay. And I guess with the Mastodon thing, I first of all, I didn't know it's been around for years. I thought it was just like some startup that launched because Twitter was under some duress. But it makes actually a ton of sense in my mind now that you said this.
Adam:If I take all of the, like, stuff I've seen about Mastodon on Twitter out of my mind, if I just ignore all of that because we'll talk about what we've what I've seen on Twitter, if I take all that out, the the idea makes a ton of sense that, like, Twitter should be this just general infrastructure that it it sucks for it to be a single company, now a private company, when it is so important in terms of messaging, public figures. You think of all the organizations that use Twitter to put out important messages. It's become this very vital infrastructure, I feel like, in society. And the idea that that could just be a protocol like email that could have multiple different versions of it, different clients.
Dax:Mhmm.
Adam:But, like, it's hard for that protocol to die or harder, I would think, than if it's a single company with a single person at the helm. Is that all check out?
Dax:Yeah. Yeah. It makes sense. And I think a lot of social networking, like peer to peer stuff when I say peer to peer, I mean, like, interacting with a bunch of people, they all could benefit from common protocol. Even payments.
Dax:Right? It kind of sucks that if you're on Venmo and I'm on Square Cash, those are, like, inoperable.
Adam:So but the actual experience of Mastodon, I've seen a lot of things on Twitter that it's bad. And that Yeah. So basically, have to run these independent like, if you want to run a server for Mastodon, you have to run your own infrastructure, you're paying the bill, that whole thing. But they're all are they all somehow connected? Like users across servers can interact or no?
Dax:Yeah. Exactly. So, it's on a protocol called ActivityPub, which is like a general social media publishing protocol.
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:And any server that's running ActivityPub or Mastodon can federate with other servers. The thing that I don't love about the Mastodon setup is that your identity is tied to one server. So I'm you know, if I set up my own server, I could be dax at my server, whatever. If I feel like I'm sick of her hosting my own server, like, my identity is just kind of tied to that. I have to host it forever to keep it up forever.
Dax:It doesn't travel with me if I decided to switch servers. So I still feel like you're a little bit locked in. And I think a lot of the UX issues come from that because, you know, you if you see people post their Mastodon handles, it's like their username at some random server they chose, which is pretty arbitrary at this point. Like, none of us know what we're doing. So that's, I think, some of the rough edges come from that.
Dax:And the reason I bring this up is because there's another project, which I haven't seen come up a lot. And I think it might be because it's like crypto related. So there's just automatic skepticism, which I'm all in for. Like, I don't generally like stuff in that space. But I don't know if you heard of a forecaster.
Dax:Heard want to
Adam:Well, I've heard you say that maybe on Discord about I don't know. Yeah. Continue.
Dax:I guess I'm the only one talking about it. Yeah. A couple years ago, the former CTO, I think, of Coinbase, he had this thought of this merriment of what is the minimum blockchain you need to do a decentralized or federated, Twitter replacement. Okay. And he spent, I think, a couple years I think it's been a couple years now with his his cofounder.
Dax:And they released something, and it's called Forecaster. And they have a great blog post about it. I'm not gonna try to explain it because I don't understand it well enough. But the idea there is they laid out what you need for a minimum social network. And they basically thought of it as the identity piece is the only piece that really needs to be, you know, on blockchain.
Dax:So that's where all the rough edges are. Like, creating an account, like, setting all that up is is a little bit trickier because crypto UX is just not great. And but once you do that, that's your identity. It's your identity forever. It doesn't matter what client using, like, how you're accessing the network.
Dax:That is just you. As long as you have control over that account, that is gonna be you forever, and no one can take that away from you. The rest of it does not operate on blockchain. It's kind of like Mastodon where it's, you know, it's federated. Okay.
Dax:People can build whatever experiences they want on it. And that model, I'm I'm really excited about. I feel like that's
Adam:Your identity sense. Like, your identity stays with you no matter which of the federated servers you join in that Farcaster example?
Dax:Yeah. Exactly. And people find you, like, mine would just be t h g x r. You're gonna find me no matter, you know, what what way you're entering the network.
Adam:Yeah. So that sounds attractive. I guess, I realized we've kinda, like, jumped into these Twitter alternatives. Maybe we should talk about, like, do we need a Twitter alternative? What what is the situation with Twitter?
Adam:What is the read on it? There's kinda like two angles, think, to talk about, and I'd like to dive into both. But, like, the technical side with the layoffs and all the people, like, pointing out bugs or pointing out things that are going wrong. And then there's sort of the just company and leadership, the Elon Musk side. Like Mhmm.
Adam:Is he capable of running a software company? I think there's a lot of people I'd just love to hear your opinions on all this. I I don't know where you wanna start.
Dax:Yeah. I guess let's start about whether we should be looking for a Twitter alternative. Yeah. I personally don't feel like that. I think I do kind of agree with you.
Dax:It's kind of the I'm gonna move to Canada if x person becomes president. We it's funny I say that because we actually know someone that literally did that. They moved to Panama. They were called out on their on their promise.
Adam:Yeah. I'm sure it's happened in small numbers. Yeah. It's maybe not the number of people who said they would.
Dax:Yeah. So, yeah, it's obviously a really chaotic time. You know, the future of it is unknown. It's gonna be rough and bumpy, which is unfortunate, especially the people that work there for, you know, all of us using the using Twitter that love Twitter. But I don't I feel like it's a little bit of an overreaction.
Dax:I don't think there really has been anything crazy that's happened yet, at least. That thing I was telling you about the thread that I saw this morning, there were some new stories going around about how, like, hateful tweets have gone up, like, thousand x or something. But if you actually look at the numbers, there were, like, a thousand accounts that were created right after Twitter got acquired, and they were doing that. And then Twitter, like, clamped down on it. And ever since then, it's pretty much been the same old Twitter, except everyone's kinda having this meta meta conversation.
Adam:Yeah. No. Yeah. It it has dominated a lot of what I see on Twitter is just this talk of the situation at Twitter. I guess, like, the I I assumed all this the increased spam and increased hate speech stuff was overblown and that it wasn't necessarily like, people didn't do all the the real research to to back those claims.
Adam:But I guess there have been some notable things that have happened. Well, I don't know how notable, but there have been instances where with the new verification system, companies were impersonated and tweets were put out and stock prices dropped. I don't know. If you know anything about those stories or if there's real concern. I guess he ended up pulling the the feature shortly thereafter, so there had to be something to it.
Dax:Yeah. It's funny. Prior to that, I was talking to my friends, and I was we were talking about, okay. What's the most lucrative thing you could do to, like, fake and force in that company? And the thing we came up with is you impersonate Jerome Powell and say, hey, we're dropping rates again, and then the stock market goes crazy.
Adam:Oh, wow.
Dax:Yeah. But then the next day, someone actually did something like that with that pharma company. And, yeah, that that was interesting because I don't know how much money they made off of that. Maybe maybe it was clever. I don't know.
Dax:Yeah. But, yeah, that I guess the yes, I agree. The product development side has been really questionable. It feels like they're making unforced errors. I would love to have a Twitter where every human has one account, and I think that's what they should try to get to.
Dax:This first, like, incremental thing they did, I think it was kinda I think everyone kind of saw what was gonna happen, and then and then it did happen. I still wanna give them the benefit of the doubt because as obvious as it is to us, like, I'm sure it's just, like, completely chaotic. You'd expect the people in Twitter to to do better, Elon Musk concluded. But I'm kind of in a wait and see mode.
Adam:Yeah. Do you do you have any, like, thoughts on Elon Musk as, like, CEO of a software like, a tech company? Because I I I like, as I think about his successes, and I know that's all debated a lot, but SpaceX and Tesla are very different companies than Twitter. Do you think his style of coming in and trying to run a software company plays, or is there concern on that front?
Dax:Yeah. I think for myself, for a long time, even before Tesla and SpaceX were as big as they are, I've kind of, like, had I was kinda fifty fifty on Elon Musk. I one, in the past, I've kind of always been like, well, I like him because I like the way he spends his money, you know, kind of trying these really crazy things and putting it on the line. I imagine that if I had that much money, I would be brave enough to do that, which, you know, who knows if I would actually be. Sure.
Dax:The other side that always was a red flag, and I see this with Mark Zuckerberg also, is when they get this reputation of being an engineer. And I know that doesn't happen by accident. It has to be very intentionally cultivated where they're like, oh, look, he actually know x knows y z technical concept.
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:That to me is always a red flag because I feel like that has to be like very intentional PR, and that just makes me not trust it. Yeah. But that said, you know, these companies are big and successful. People I think that upsets a lot of people because they don't like the way he runs them or they don't like who he is or etcetera. But and there's always attempts at taking away the fact that they they are successful.
Dax:You know, people will try to say, oh, you know, he didn't do that. It was the engineers or, like, whatever the details are at the end of the day. At some point, he kinda had to put it on the line and take a lot of personal risks to try to make these companies successful. And these are, like, crazy moonshot companies. There's not been, like, a single profitable American car company in I don't know how long.
Dax:You know, getting rockets a 100 x cheaper, also, like, insane just to do as a person with no background in that space. So it's undeniable that he's entered spaces where he's had very little reason to be an expert and delivered. So I generally would not bet against him. It is hard now him entering a space that I think I understand a little bit because, you know, I work on software. And it seems like he's doing all the wrong things, but you kind of have a history that you I feel like I would still give him the benefit of the doubt.
Adam:Yeah. It's all very entertaining at the very least.
Dax:I don't know.
Adam:And then I've seen people tweet that that there's more traffic hitting Twitter now than ever because all this craziness.
Dax:Yeah. And that's been the case with all his companies, like or at least with Tesla. It's been a lot about this controversial marketing angle, which I do not understand at all.
Adam:I guess I
Dax:can't even understand it, but it seems horrible.
Adam:Really love to hate him, it seems. Like, there's a lot of and I'm not, like, an Elon Musk fan. I just I think I'm, like, you know, I'm sort of indifferent. I think he's done interesting things. And, yeah, to your point, like, you can't deny the success that they've had at those companies, whoever wasn't responsible for that.
Adam:But people, like, people have really come out with this Twitter thing, and and that's been a lot of the discourse on Twitter is just this sort of, like, either very strongly for or very strongly against Elon Musk, and the sky is falling. I'm not getting numbers on my tweet notifications now. Clearly, he doesn't know what he's doing. Like, have you seen any of the technical, like, actual decay that people sort of there's been a lot of murmurs that now, like, things are degrading. It's just happening slowly, but but just watch.
Adam:Six months from now, Twitter won't exist. Do you believe any of
Dax:Yeah. So I have not faced I haven't hit any of that myself. I haven't noticed anything, but other people have posted. And I'll take, you know, I'll take their word for it that there is stuff that's degrading. And, of course, there's some articles from ex employees saying, you know, this company will blow up in six months.
Dax:I've left companies where I've thought that about myself, Oh, there's all these little things that I'm doing. And there's no way someone's gonna know how to do that. Yeah, just times where I left and it wasn't like a like a friendly, friendly parting. And it was really chaotic, and it was a complete mess. But it survived.
Dax:And it always does, like people always figure it out. And it's that there's gonna be some short term pain and pressure. But I generally believe that people will eventually figure it out. It's not like no one can resuscitate it. You know, no one on the planet is capable of resuscitating it.
Dax:So I I believe it'll degrade and things will will break. Like, there's always some random servers that need to be rebooted every two weeks Right. No matter how, like, good of an engineering company you are. And if someone's not there to do it, maybe it kind of creeps up.
Adam:And I guess when that stuff happens, will anyone really leave over that? I guess what would it take for you to leave twitter.com?
Dax:I'm just here because everyone I like is here. And as long as that continues to be the case, I'm gonna continue to be here even if the experience is not great. I would argue that the Twitter experience has not been that great in terms of a product for a while. It's kind of stagnated. It's gotten bloated in some ways.
Dax:The ads are really, really bad. They are. But I'm still here because everyone I care about is here.
Adam:Yeah. So Yeah. It's been the only Yeah. It's really been the only place I hang out on the Internet for a long time. But to your point, yeah, it hasn't really changed much.
Adam:I think that is exciting to me, whoever's in charge. Like, the idea that they're coming in and and making a lot of changes, it seems, really fast. It makes me think, like, they'll figure something out that's interesting, and and we won't just have the same Twitter we've had for a decade or whatever.
Dax:Yeah. Exactly. I mean, it's it's like my favorite platform, but it's not good. So just the chance of it becoming better is is exciting.
Adam:Yeah. Like the I think of the whole hour the things I really don't like about Twitter, like just the the the ways that things get in front of you, and I know there's ways to, like, you can change your feed to be chronological and all that, but the algorithm, in quotes, generally feels pretty bad. The things that are and maybe that's just the way our brains work, but the things that are sort of amplified on the platform seem backwards from what I really care about. And I would think that he's he's aware of that. Like, he's talked about the algorithm a lot and fairness and all this stuff.
Adam:I'm sure they're gonna make changes. I don't know. That seems like the kind of thing that could go really badly or it could it could be awesome. I don't know. It's I'm excited to watch it all play out.
Dax:Yeah. And that that's kind of one of the reasons I've liked Twitter is because it does take work. You have to follow the right people and you have to, like, set your feed in a certain way. But you can get to a place where it doesn't feel like this thing is just hijacking things you can't control. When I see other platforms like Instagram, every single thing put in front of me is, like, creating an involuntary reaction for me that I just cannot, like, control.
Dax:Yeah. And I hate that feeling. I I I just don't like that. And with Twitter, I feel like, okay. I'm in control.
Dax:I'm, like, using it because I like it. But, know, that's not the default Twitter experience. The default Twitter experience is you follow a bunch of people, and someone that thinks like you quote tweet someone that doesn't think like you, and they're like, look at this idiot, and then you can't help but read all, like, hate read all replies. And that's like just hijacking your time. Yeah.
Dax:So I'd love to see that not be the default experience. And a lot of people hate Twitter because of that. I think it's a terrible place because of that.
Adam:Yeah. I don't know that I've gotten out of that. I don't know that I've gotten out of the default experience. I don't know if I've put enough work into my there are a lot of times I feel like I spent time on Twitter and I wasn't, like, pleased at the end that I didn't spend the time wisely or something.
Dax:Yeah. It still happens. It's just to what degree. To me, it's, you know, it's it's not a 100% off my feed, but it's, like, mostly off my feed.
Adam:But I've never thought about that as Twitter's, like, differentiator. Is it it's, like, almost the worst of the big social media platforms at being a good social media platform in terms of, like, what they want to do, which is hijack your attention. Like, Twitter's the worst at it, and maybe that's why we like it the most. That's interesting.
Dax:Yeah. I guess it's just hard to do when it's text only. I mean, these other platforms I mean, there's videos and whatever on Twitter, but yeah. The ad side is also something I don't know. What kind of ads do you get on Twitter?
Adam:I used to get a lot of, like it was, like, Lamego and, like, serverless stuff. I mean, just I don't know if they somehow knew I was AWS. These days, I don't really notice the ads. I think I just skip right past them. I don't I don't know if I just don't even register in my brain.
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:Yeah. I yeah. So I did I do get some of that, like, the technology focused ones, but it's I always found it annoying because it feels like they don't have enough ads to fulfill that category. You just do the same thing over
Adam:and over for a month. I do see I see the same, like, promoted tweet. It's the guy that's like, you don't one does not simply deploy Kubernetes.
Dax:Kubernetes. You see that one all
Adam:the time. Oh, that's funny. Yeah. Is that an ad? I mean, it's a promoted tweet, I guess.
Adam:It's an ad in a sense, but it's the same that we're talking about here, the slots that big companies put in, or is that somebody that just paid to have that tweet? I
Dax:don't know. I think it's I'm I'm too afraid to click on it.
Adam:Yeah. No. Same. So
Dax:I get that, that and just hammers you over the head with that. Then I get this other category of things for those fake mobile games. Have you seen those?
Adam:Oh, I think I have. Yeah.
Dax:Where it'll be like this weird three d rendering of a game that's not it's it's not the actual game, but it's, like, really goofy and funny. It's always, some mafia boss. It's, like, beating up some guy. It's yeah. I actually found it entertaining because they feel like little soap operas to me where I just cannot predict where where it's gonna go.
Dax:But, you know, also a really terrible ad. I don't use Instagram much, but when I do, every single ad I get, I'm literally happy to get the ads. I'm like, wow, I like needed that. Like, I just got a dog. I'm getting all this really cool dog stuff.
Dax:So Yeah.
Adam:Yeah. My wife said, like, they're so good on Instagram about feeding her stuff that she's looking for. She'll just, like, search something so that she knows she'll get more ads about that thing. Like, she uses Instagram for that. And it's interesting, like, it's working out well for them and their advertisers, I guess, that Instagram.
Dax:Yeah. I would use an ad only version of Instagram where I'm just, like, show me all the stuff you think I want because it's usually right.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. That's the funny part about, like, the privacy angle. Everybody wants, like, no tracking and all that, but it makes for a better like, ads don't have to be bad. Yeah.
Adam:I generally think what do you think about the whole on Twitter, the the move to subscriptions? Maybe I don't see as many ads because I am Twitter blue. I'm subscribed.
Dax:Well, speaking of Twitter being a product that's bad, I've been subscribed to Twitter Blue for since it came out, and I've had every single feature turned off because I think every feature makes it worse. Like,
Adam:No. I agree. I've I've had the two ninety nine forever too, and I turned off the undo thing. Like, so many of those features just annoyed me. I like that you can upload longer videos, so I did some longer videos on Twitter, which is dumb because nobody wants to watch video on Twitter, but I did it.
Adam:I'm trying to think if there's other features. I guess I changed the icon.
Dax:Wait. Wait.
Adam:On my screen. Icon? Yeah. You can use, like, a different they have, like, holiday themed ones, like, the icon on your phone. I've done that.
Dax:I mean, I'm into finding ways that people like, I'll I'll I subscribe to them because, I said, I Twitter is a big part of my life and
Adam:Same. Make a
Dax:lot of value from it. So I'm like, I'll pay. I don't care about the features, but, you know Yeah.
Adam:Honestly, it's not. It's like, if it makes it easier for them to not do as many ads or something, like, that to me is a reason to pay for it. It's a thing I use a lot, and I'm okay paying for things I use a lot and hoping it'll make it better. I don't know if that's the general if that's the broad consensus. I don't feel like that's been the reaction I've seen on Twitter.
Adam:People seem pretty upset about the whole thing.
Dax:But I think people are still as far as we've come, people are still not used to paying for software in general. Like, $8 a month is, like, two random things you would grab, like, while you're checking out at a grocery store without thinking about So, yeah, it's think people aren't used to used to paying for it. And I think one of those tied to the verification stuff that just really muddied up the conversation.
Adam:Yeah. So we think Twitter's sticking around. We don't think it's it's gone in six months?
Dax:Yeah. I think it I think it took around. Like I said, there's a few things. I've just seen this before, like, m and a type of thing happens. Things change hands.
Dax:Always really chaotic. It's never gonna be smooth. It's never gonna be elegant. Really can't expect that from even, like, an expert operator. And two, I you know, say whatever you want about Elon Musk, but he generally hasn't had huge failures.
Dax:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think the other thing we didn't talk about is all the layoffs. And I think that one I mean, I think if I if you look into it, it's it's like a suspension, I think.
Adam:Oh, really?
Dax:From what I understand. It's like you're suspended for three months, you'll still get paid.
Adam:Like a furlough?
Dax:Yeah, exactly. You might get, you know, unsuspended or or whatever it is. So yeah. So we'll see we'll see what where they end up.
Adam:It's interesting that Twitter made these big layoffs, took a lot of heat. But, like, all the tech companies
Dax:Every single
Adam:big ones are are doing these huge layoffs. It kinda timed poorly for if you're looking at it from Elon Musk's standpoint, like, he bought Twitter, he did all these layoffs, but, like, how much of that's just the global macroeconomic situation?
Dax:Yeah. I mean, they were headed that way either way. These companies that are much more profitable than them had to do layoffs, you know, 10%. So Twitter was at least seeing that much, if not more.
Adam:Interesting. Well, I guess I'll reserve I'll I'll not go out and get a Mastodon handle or whatever you have to do. I don't even know what server I would use.
Dax:That's the other problem. Like, you first have to pick your username, which I guess is yours would be adam dot dev. Mhmm. But then, you know, you have to pick from all the servers and there's like no yeah. It's federated stuff can be very cool, but it needs to kinda be a Gmail situation where there's one really excellent provider
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:And then, you know, like niche providers for people that are more advanced.
Adam:Cool. Well, think you've said it all, Dax. I don't know that I have any other questions about Twitter.
Dax:Yeah. Alright. Well, I guess I'll see you on Twitter then.
Adam:Yeah. I'll see you on Twitter. See you, Dax.
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