Users: hey can you get rid of the Nazis please Twitter: ok…

We’ve recently seen research about so-called “bots” and misinformation on Twitter and wanted to share our perspective on why findings that might seem remarkable at first are likely inaccurate. We’re working on a more detailed explanation, but some comments for now.

We continue to be excited by the research opportunities that Twitter data provides. Our service is the largest source of real-time social media data, and we make this data available to the public for free through our public API. No other major service does this.

Many researchers, academics, and journalists use our public API — a set of tools for programmatically accessing information on Twitter. We make all public Twitter content available via our APIs. You can learn more about them here:

The basic issue with much of the research based on our public APIs is simple: The APIs don't provide insight into our defensive actions to protect Twitter from manipulation, including bots.

Because of this, API-based research can't distinguish between accounts we've already identified as bad (and hidden or removed) and real, authentic ones.

$Wilbert Liu \U0001f468\U0001f3fb\u200d\U0001f3a8$

Wilbert Liu 👨🏻‍🎨...
@wilbertliu

These past few days I've been experimenting with something new that I want to use by myself.

Interestingly, this thread below has been written by that.

Let me show you how it looks like. 👇🏻

Recently I just refunded all Poster's sales from Gumroad. Being that said, I decided to not using that service anymore.

Here's a little story \U0001f447\U0001f3fb
— Wilbert Liu \U0001f468\U0001f3fb\u200d\U0001f3a8 (@wilbertliu) November 19, 2018

When you see localhost up there, you should know that it's truly an experiment! 😀

It's a dead-simple thread writer that will post a series of tweets a.k.a tweetstorm. ⚡️

I've been personally wanting it myself since few months ago, but neglected it intentionally to make sure it's something that I genuinely need.

So why is that important for me? 🙂

I've been a believer of a story. I tell stories all the time, whether it's in the real world or online like this. Our society has moved by that.

If you're interested by stories that move us, read Sapiens!

One of the stories that I've told was from the launch of Poster.

It's been launched multiple times this year, and Twitter has been my go-to place to tell the world about that.

Here comes my frustration.. 😤

Robin Berjon
@robinberjon

Recently, the @CNIL issued a decision regarding the GDPR compliance of an unknown French adtech company named "Vectaury". It may seem like small fry, but the decision has potential wide-ranging impacts for Google, the IAB framework, and today's adtech. It's thread time! 👇

It's all in French, but if you're up for it you can read:
• Their blog post (lacks the most interesting details): https://t.co/PHkDcOT1hy
• Their high-level legal decision: https://t.co/hwpiEvjodt
• The full notification: https://t.co/QQB7rfynha

I've read it so you needn't!

Vectaury was collecting geolocation data in order to create profiles (eg. people who often go to this or that type of shop) so as to power ad targeting. They operate through embedded SDKs and ad bidding, making them invisible to users.

The @CNIL notes that profiling based off of geolocation presents particular risks since it reveals people's movements and habits. As risky, the processing requires consent — this will be the heart of their assessment.

Interesting point: they justify the decision in part because of how many people COULD be targeted in this way (rather than how many have — though they note that too). Because it's on a phone, and many have phones, it is considered large-scale processing no matter what.

Tobie Langel
@tobie

Elastic didn't really relicense ElasticSearch. It forked it.

🧵 A thread.

1/18

There's a lot of talk in the open source community about the cost of forking.

2/18

- "Forking is best avoided."

- "Forking is a last resort option."

- "Forking is like a nuclear weapons. It's a defensive threat."

3/18

Forking is seen as impractical and extremely expensive.

And that's a Really Good Thing(tm).

It's a forcing function for figuring out solutions that are broadly acceptable across the community.

4/18

The thing is, the cost of forking is mostly a function of three things:

1⃣ the size of the community that you can bring along with you,
2⃣ whether you need to rename your fork (who owns the trademark), and
3⃣ how much infrastructure you need to rebuild.

5/18

Joe Natoli
@joenatoli

#UX and #design friends, we need to talk about estimating. I'd like to share some advice that's come up 3 times this week, in hopes it's useful. And it's echoed, by the way, in the BUSINESS OF UX course @EliNatoli and I are teaching at my UX 365 Academy (link at the end).

(1/12)

Avoiding wars with clients is a matter of how you structure your engagements, along with how you spell out what you're doing in your proposals/contracts. That starts with estimating.

The biggest 2 rules I follow are these:

(2/12)

1. I do not EVER estimate a project in full from start-to-finish.

2. Once we're past initial Discovery (see below), I estimate in small chunks, e.g. "here's what will take us to the next iteration/review."

(3/12)

NEVER estimate past the point where you may get new information based on a build/test cycle.

Believe me when I say that you'll be wrong every time. Ask me how I know ;-)

(4/12)

So instead, first, I estimate a Consult/Discovery part that details what I think we need to do to get a handle on what's actually wrong here, and how long that will take.

For example...

(5/12)

Users: hey can you get rid of the Nazis please

Twitter: ok sure, we've changed the stars to hearts for likes

Users: no no, zero Nazis please

Twitter: yep we're getting rid of Vine

Users: nah hey, what about the Nazis

Twitter: ok ok fine, no more likes

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Users: hey can you get rid of the Nazis pleaseTwitter: ok sure, we've changed the stars to hearts for likesUsers: no no, zero Nazis pleaseTwitter: yep we're getting rid of VineUsers: nah hey, what about the NazisTwitter: ok ok fine, no more likes

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Users: hey can you get rid of the Nazis please

Twitter: ok sure, we've changed the stars to hearts for likes

Users: no no, zero Nazis please

Twitter: yep we're getting rid of Vine

Users: nah hey, what about the Nazis

Twitter: ok ok fine, no more likes