zlacker

>>GavCo+(OP)
This is actually an argument for why Twitter shouldn't exist.

Twitter makes it super easy to do mass warrantless surveillance, because Twitter gathers millions of people together in the same searchable public space. It's a honeypot.

What's dangerous about the "public square" concept is that Musk doesn't just want a public square — one public space among many, one among equals — he wants the public square, a monopoly on online conversation. "I think I see a path to Twitter exceeding a billion monthly users in 12 to 18 months" https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1596751751532937217

We shouldn't have all of our conversations, political or otherwise, in one place. That's a giant mistake. We need decentralization for our own safety and freedom.

>>lapcat+mM
This goes for any large web property where people congregate to communicate. HN is no different in that respect.

>>jacque+wO
> This goes for any large web property where people congregate to communicate.

Yes, for example Facebook and TikTok.

> HN is no different in that respect.

Well, Twitter has over 200 million users. I believe that HN is much much smaller. HN also tends to be more anonymous.

>>lapcat+NP
HN is a lot larger than you probably think and YC has an excellent legal department and even if I do not know for sure that there has been contact between LE and HN/YC about this forum given the fact that we are looking at a decade+ of operation and many millions of interactions, including threats of bodily harm and other nonsense I would expect the chances of there having been such interaction to be better than even.

>>jacque+gR
> HN is a lot larger than you probably think

I'd be interested to know the user number.

>>lapcat+3Y
A typical homepage link can cause between 40 and 50K visitors to your website. And that's a small fraction of the total number of users. Millions of pageviews per day, 250K+ registered users and a multiple of that in lurkers.

Does that help?

>>jacque+CZ
> 250K+ registered users

That's the relevant number. So Twitter is about 1000x larger than HN.

From a surveillance standpoint, we're really only talking about commenters, on both sites.