If you want to talk about respect, let’s talk about Elon’s disrespect to everyone who used Twitter or talks about it now. I noted elsewhere in the discussion that the convention for websites is “name” .com or .org
Google (.com)
Twitter (.com)
Wikipedia (.org)
etc.
Breaking that mold to be “edgy” doesn’t make one clever, it just causes confusion and wastes people’s time.
In this case, it’s wasted a lot of time because of how high-profile it is.
Side note - I’m also in MN. WDYT about the lake in Minneapolis that they renamed a few years back? It seems like there might be some parallels, but I don’t think it’s a good example for a worldwide audience. I only bring it up because of your username.
To the first part of your reply. I understand that Elon changed the name of both the company and the website, with a redirect of the former website. Is that not the case?
I am surprised how much time I am spending on the twitter/X thing.
As for the lake, I didn’t have an issue with it. The local community, that has naming rights, decided to change the name to better reflect their community and values. The new name is not mean or disrespectful. Maps will take a bit to update, but the lake name won’t be the only thing to change.
If you respond, what do you think of the flag?
Edit: I tested and X.com redirects to Twitter.com. So that is stupid.
Personally, I struggled with the new name for the lake. I couldn’t figure out how to pronounce it at first. Nothing in school prepared me for how to read “Bde”, and I definitely wouldn’t have expected it to rhyme with “g’day”.
I don’t particularly care for the new flag design, but I suspect I’ll get used to it. I’m not entirely clear on the motivation behind redesigning the flag in the first place, tbh.
Good points. I heard it on the radio a bunch, which makes it easier. Maybe radio versus print impacts acceptance?
I think several of the finalists were better than the final, but all are better than the current. I will also get used to it. (Anyone reading this, look under “History” section on Wikipedia for the finalists.)
Ownership doesn’t give you some moral right to rename something. Especially ownership of a public platform
It probably gives you the legal right… That’s it.
Maybe it’s disrespectful, but I’d strongly argue the opposite - it might be a husk of its former self, but Twitter is an impressive technical feat. They did a lot of good in pushing the limits of technology, and modern programmers stand on their shoulders.
A drunk man-child changed its name late one night, with no respect for what he’s destroying or even the slightest consideration of how to actually do it
I’ve never liked Twitter itself, but I think the creators deserve respect for advancing computer science
Thank you for your perspective. I had not considered that some would think of Twitter as something special and valuable. While Twitter has created some neat ideas, I see them as the “also ran that win due to huge amounts of cash”. No morals involved.
The community that grew around Twitter was special, but temporary. Just like to communities before and after it.
I appreciate that, but I don’t even mean the community or the platform (I’m not sure that form of social media is a good thing for humanity, at least I don’t think Twitter was) I mean the technologies developed (and shared widely) by Twitter
A big one is sharding. They needed to spread horizontally - no matter how powerful, a single database is a bottleneck at that scale. They needed to put databases in many datacenters too to serve a worldwide user base
But, since Twitter wanted to have one unified platform for everyone (as opposed to several country
, and required (near) real time communication. But most of all, it had to be fast
So they invented (or maybe advanced, it’s been a while since I read the write up) sharding. It’s a way to keep multiple databases in sync. If someone in the UK responds to a tweet in the US, a user in the UK is going to update the UK/EU database. But now you have to sync them - and someone else in the US might’ve commented in the meantime.
You can sync it through code design, like activity-pub does for the fediverse - you could make each tweet or action a separate record, and push updates to every server. But then you’re constrained in your design - everything must be built in a compatible way, and more complex records would take more custom code.
It could probably work for something like Twitter, but they made something more general. They came up with a way to do it at the database level - through some clever designs, they make it so multiple out of sync databases can be treated as a single database.
Now, you can just set up sharding, and don’t need to worry about it anymore - now if you build a site and need to scale up quickly, it’s basically a drop in solution. You barely have to change your code, if at all… The databases handle everything behind the scenes
They also made bootstrap, the first (or first widely used) style framework. You didn’t have to style every button or block of text manually anymore, plus it came with some widely used components (like modals that pop up and gray out the screen, or those drop downs that let you pick a date). It made building modern websites so much easier, especially for people like me that had to be taught color theory to understand how to match my clothes.
Unfortunately, it seems like it was killed thanks to an elongated muskrat or something. But it led to many such frameworks and improved the web as a whole greatly
They did a bunch of public good work like that, kind of like Facebook their core business might be harmful, but they did a lot to advance software engineering as a whole
The owner wants it to be called “X”, it is disrespectful to call it anything else. It is a happy coincidence that all name recognition is gone.
Edit: What is so hard to understand.
Calling it X reduces the value of Twitter. Calling it “X, formerly Twitter” tires the two together. I want people to pass on joining X.
You live your values. You should skip your values because someone else is a shit.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/elon-musks-new-twitter-pronoun-rule-invites-bullying-lgbtq-groups-say-rcna87336
Musk believes people are free to ignore what people want to be called. So I think that we are free to ignore what he wants Twitter to be called.
Great, I want to be disrespectful to msuk the twitter destroyer.
He can spend all his money on ads for rebranding it to xshitter.
If you want to talk about respect, let’s talk about Elon’s disrespect to everyone who used Twitter or talks about it now. I noted elsewhere in the discussion that the convention for websites is “name” .com or .org
Google (.com) Twitter (.com) Wikipedia (.org)
etc.
Breaking that mold to be “edgy” doesn’t make one clever, it just causes confusion and wastes people’s time.
In this case, it’s wasted a lot of time because of how high-profile it is.
Side note - I’m also in MN. WDYT about the lake in Minneapolis that they renamed a few years back? It seems like there might be some parallels, but I don’t think it’s a good example for a worldwide audience. I only bring it up because of your username.
To the first part of your reply. I understand that Elon changed the name of both the company and the website, with a redirect of the former website. Is that not the case?
I am surprised how much time I am spending on the twitter/X thing.
As for the lake, I didn’t have an issue with it. The local community, that has naming rights, decided to change the name to better reflect their community and values. The new name is not mean or disrespectful. Maps will take a bit to update, but the lake name won’t be the only thing to change.
If you respond, what do you think of the flag?
Edit: I tested and X.com redirects to Twitter.com. So that is stupid.
Personally, I struggled with the new name for the lake. I couldn’t figure out how to pronounce it at first. Nothing in school prepared me for how to read “Bde”, and I definitely wouldn’t have expected it to rhyme with “g’day”.
I don’t particularly care for the new flag design, but I suspect I’ll get used to it. I’m not entirely clear on the motivation behind redesigning the flag in the first place, tbh.
Good points. I heard it on the radio a bunch, which makes it easier. Maybe radio versus print impacts acceptance?
I think several of the finalists were better than the final, but all are better than the current. I will also get used to it. (Anyone reading this, look under “History” section on Wikipedia for the finalists.)
Ownership doesn’t give you some moral right to rename something. Especially ownership of a public platform
It probably gives you the legal right… That’s it.
Maybe it’s disrespectful, but I’d strongly argue the opposite - it might be a husk of its former self, but Twitter is an impressive technical feat. They did a lot of good in pushing the limits of technology, and modern programmers stand on their shoulders.
A drunk man-child changed its name late one night, with no respect for what he’s destroying or even the slightest consideration of how to actually do it
I’ve never liked Twitter itself, but I think the creators deserve respect for advancing computer science
Thank you for your perspective. I had not considered that some would think of Twitter as something special and valuable. While Twitter has created some neat ideas, I see them as the “also ran that win due to huge amounts of cash”. No morals involved.
The community that grew around Twitter was special, but temporary. Just like to communities before and after it.
Cheers
I appreciate that, but I don’t even mean the community or the platform (I’m not sure that form of social media is a good thing for humanity, at least I don’t think Twitter was) I mean the technologies developed (and shared widely) by Twitter
A big one is sharding. They needed to spread horizontally - no matter how powerful, a single database is a bottleneck at that scale. They needed to put databases in many datacenters too to serve a worldwide user base
But, since Twitter wanted to have one unified platform for everyone (as opposed to several country , and required (near) real time communication. But most of all, it had to be fast
So they invented (or maybe advanced, it’s been a while since I read the write up) sharding. It’s a way to keep multiple databases in sync. If someone in the UK responds to a tweet in the US, a user in the UK is going to update the UK/EU database. But now you have to sync them - and someone else in the US might’ve commented in the meantime.
You can sync it through code design, like activity-pub does for the fediverse - you could make each tweet or action a separate record, and push updates to every server. But then you’re constrained in your design - everything must be built in a compatible way, and more complex records would take more custom code.
It could probably work for something like Twitter, but they made something more general. They came up with a way to do it at the database level - through some clever designs, they make it so multiple out of sync databases can be treated as a single database.
Now, you can just set up sharding, and don’t need to worry about it anymore - now if you build a site and need to scale up quickly, it’s basically a drop in solution. You barely have to change your code, if at all… The databases handle everything behind the scenes
They also made bootstrap, the first (or first widely used) style framework. You didn’t have to style every button or block of text manually anymore, plus it came with some widely used components (like modals that pop up and gray out the screen, or those drop downs that let you pick a date). It made building modern websites so much easier, especially for people like me that had to be taught color theory to understand how to match my clothes.
Unfortunately, it seems like it was killed thanks to an elongated muskrat or something. But it led to many such frameworks and improved the web as a whole greatly
They did a bunch of public good work like that, kind of like Facebook their core business might be harmful, but they did a lot to advance software engineering as a whole
Thank you. I learned a lot from your post.
I am hopeful that the churning created by the upheaval will result in a number of new, innovative companies.