'Brittle' Twitter suffers bad case of the Mondays: Links, pics, vids fail Elon Musk's Twitter got off to a bad start on Monday when it introduced further unexpected changes in the form of broken links and images. Starting around 0830 Pacific Time, according to DownDetector, clicking on links in Twitter posts resulted in an error message: {"errors":[{"message":"Your current API plan does not include …
I wouldn't know, because I changed my password to something I would forget a few weeks ago, as was just fed up with the service.
However, it seems that El Reg and the BBC really don't get the irony of this statement..
"PS: Twitter insiders claim the biz is no longer able to effectively tackle trolling, state-backed disinformation..."
Unless by tackle they mean "engage with" and "state-backed disinformation" they mean the US Government?
I guess you have not actually read The Twitter Files?
The single best explanation I have ever heard, was actually from a botanist in the TV show "The Expanse".
I can't remember the exact quote, but essentially what he said was that complex systems don't fail outright. They deteriorate over time, small things breaking here and there because they cannot be maintained. Eventually those small issues start adding up, and eventually they will cascade, causing other parts to fail, which cascade further, until finally the whole thing crashes and burns.
I couldn't find the exact clip I was looking for but it's Season 2 Episode 10 "Cascade".
And that's exactly what we're seeing now with Twitter. Twitter is already dead. They just don't know it yet.
Empty promises from a post dot-bomb company that tweets will provide a resilient and lasting platform of record. A "digital commons" or "town square". Instead it is just another headless statue lost in the blowing sands of the wasteland that is Silicon Valley in hindsight.
In reality, they wanted us to rely on it to make it harder to abandon, like all the similar platforms before it. In reality it was no different, other than leaving a scum ring a little higher up in the bathtub.
Government agencies in particular should take this lesson to heart and stop pandering to platforms like Metaface, Googlebet, and MuskTwit. They should really own their own platforms and communications, and leverage tools that one person can't shutdown, take away from them or erase. The news media also bought into that Faustian pact, with decades of content reliant on Twitter shortened URLs and embedded references to tweets instead of direct quotes and screen shots. That journalistic record is now in danger of being erased at any moment. All so Twitter could drive uptake and "engagement" and steal eyes and advertising money from the publications that pandered to it for likes and follows.
/s Anybody from the Reg can feel free to chime in if the are feeling particularly hollow or bitter in hindsight, or if their longstanding deal with the old man at the crossroads kept them out of, well that PARTICULAR kind of trouble. :) s/
In the 1980's, when we were working on data networking at a significant player, a brilliant guy, the leader of a group of very smart people indeed, circulated "The Machine Stops" and told everyone working on this to read it.
I've never forgotten it. It is a shame it isn't mandatory reading for this generation of networking engineers.
For those, like me who are yet to read the story, link is here: http://www.visbox.com/prajlich/forster.html
I hadn't read it... until a few minutes ago. Thanks! It remembered me about "Ravage" (""Ashes, Ashes" in the english edition) by René Barjavel (1943), in the sense of a "lost" humanity that forgets about humanity and leans almost religiously toward "the machine"... until it fails.
Didn't like the ending, but no spoilers from me.
Obligatory wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashes,_Ashes
"We made an internal change that had some unintended consequences."
Aka "We've fired all the guys who knew how it worked, and are now learning as we go. If we ever get close to figuring it all out, performance reviews will ensure we fire the guys who have just about finished mastering it and replace them with new guys who have to start from scratch. Thank you for your patience."
"We made an internal change* that had some unintended consequences. We’re working on this now** and will share an update when it’s fixed."
*Getting rid of everyone who knew how it all worked.
**Trying to rehire those that knew how it all worked, who are extremely pissed & now want more $$$$$.
This looks very much like Musk's crackdown on external services using the Twitter API has also cracked down on Twitter's own services using the API. Perhaps they solved the issue by buying access to their own API for themselves.
EM figured out the road to profitability! Every homepage render by Twitter is 1000 API calls to Twitter (as established by prior work by EM). Start charging for every API call, take say 2x as much as each call costs.
Now do the math: every time Twitter renders its homepage for a user, it performs 1000 API calls. It pays for each of these. So for every cent Twitter receives from itself for API calls, it pockets a half a cent profit. Now sure, Twitter has to pay that cent, but since it paid itself it certainly lost no money.
> Twitter has to pay that cent
But, as it is a Major Client of Twitter, Twitter has very favourable terms, 60 days to pay the invoice, so for two months it can borrow against its invoiced income before it has to worry about being required to pay itself. That takes care of running costs for April and May.
In 45 days time, Twitter will raise the cost of using the API and invoice Twitter for the larger sum to cover June and July, thus giving an increase in invoiced value, extrapolated out to show an above predictions annual growth. Such growth, in the current global climate, makes Twitter a Good Bet for investors and the creditors take over the June invoices to clear the borrowings from March, with interest (surprising how high API prices can jump). Repeat with the July invoices, and separate lenders, to take care of June and July.
It's August! Silly Season in the media, ignore anything you hear on the news! Summer Holidays are here, we're all on a cruise to the Cayman Islands.
Imagine that it would be illegal to have more than £100m - anything over that would have to be taxed at 110%.
Musk would have to work together with hundreds of people to buy Tw@ter.
This means there is lesser likelihood that those hundreds of people would exhibit the same personality disorders and would probably lead to better outcome for humanity.
Yes Elon, the platform is brittle. Much more brittle than it was a few months ago. And seemingly getting more brittle as time goes on.
Do you suppose this might be in some way connected to two facts? First that you have slashed staffing and second that you have increased the rate that changes are made to the platform.
Well if your system is so BRITTLE
Perhaps you need to take it a little slower and fix the foundations.
To all the engineers who built this brittle structure, you should perhaps be a little embarrassed ?
It is not really the new guys fault, he bought a lame duck.
Should have left Twitter alone.
Well he's a fucking idiot then. One is a social media platform, one is a space rocket. They are not similar engineering challenges.
What is it with these fucking white knights leaping to the defence of Space Karen? What do they get out of it? The possibility of a retweet from their beloved leader?
Space X have an entire layer of management dedicated to managing Musk and keeping him feeling important but preventing him from actually doing anything that might harm the company. Elon is treating Twitter like he would treat Space X if they weren't very careful about not letting him touch anything and making sure he just stomps about feeling important.
Seems that old Elon is treating Twitter like space X, test until failure then fix what needs to be fixed.
There's a bit of a difference between what Elon did at SpaceX and Twitter:
1. At SpaceX, Elon hired skilled engineers to build rockets. Then he got lots of DARPA, NASA, and investor money to design and test rockets. Then, yes, they tested rockets that exploded and learned from the test failures.
2. At Twitter, Elon is firing every engineer and manager who knows how the system runs while cutting expenditures that might be used for system improvements. The resulting failures aren't from deliberate testing but rather lack of maintenance and dwindling system knowledge. Even if the failures were from deliberate tests then Elon has laid off the skilled personnel who know how to use the resulting test data.
Remove all public relations, remove any way for a customer\client to contact the company. Perhaps an AI chatbot would be helpful for Twitter, it seems all other places I call or visit their website have some sort of interactive assistant that shits the bed quickly... I'm sorry(Dave) I'll have to disconnect you, I don't understand your question.
It’s a good job that, other than claiming credit for it, he has little to do with SpaceX. They’d just be a firework factory if he did.
Boring Company? New Twitter? Whoopie Cushions in your Tesla (actually, all the shit bits in a Tesla) - that’s all Musk. I wouldn’t trust him with a Lego set. He’d probably push the pieces up his nose.
I wouldn’t trust him with a Lego set. He’d probably push the pieces up his nose.
OK Homer, don't give him any crayons!
Homer discovers the root cause of his subnormal intelligence: a crayon that was lodged in his brain ever since he was six years old. He decides to have it removed to increase his IQ, but soon learns that being intelligent is not always the same as being happy.
Sounds like they enabled the paid API feature so all Elon needs to do is whip out that credit card and add it to Twitters developer account on Twitter's developer portal and then all their apps will work again. A bonus feature is Twitter gets some more income.
Maybe if they make it pay-per-call it might even balance the books.
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