
How hard is it to have a conversation on Twitter? So hard even the CEO can’t - longdefeat
https://www.recode.net/2019/2/12/18222558/kara-swisher-jack-dorsey-twitter-interview-conversation-karajack-livetweet
======
theNJR
A lot to unpack recently with Twitter and Jack. A few thoughts.

1\. Jack doesn’t seem passionate about product, especially Twitter.

2\. Kara seems to lack the vocabulary to talk about product which is both
surprising and confusing, given her niche and time spent in it. She also
doesn’t understand that Twitter has evolved way beyond Jack. “Why don’t you
know, it’s your product!” she kept asking. The fact he doesn’t know says a
lot. It’s out of any one persons control. Maybe the AI has already taken over
...

3\. The most interesting thing Kara said was when she suggested Twitter be a
public utility. More and more I think we need the National Public Internet.
She almost asked a great question about needing fire, police and garbage. Then
she mixed metaphors and started discussing those things literally, and Jack
went off about doxing.

4\. The most important take away for me was how unaligned Jack and Kara were.
Never did they find common ground. Never were they speaking the same language.
Twitter could not facilitate meaningful dialogue between two willing people
motivated to be good actors. This isn’t about how bad threaded replies are.
It’s about human connection and conversation in the medium of real time public
text. It doesn’t work.

Edit: I've tried to clean these thoughts up a bit if you care to read more:
[https://www.nicholasjrobinson.com/blog/quick-
take/karajack-q...](https://www.nicholasjrobinson.com/blog/quick-
take/karajack-quick-take-4-takeaways-from-the-jack-dorsey-and-kara-swisher-
twitter-interview)

~~~
dalbasal
I don't think Twitter _is_ a conversational medium, essentially. It certainly
isn't a good one, for complex conversations.

It's hard to find the horse-and-boogie analogy for something that's
essentially new, but bumper sticker, or billboard is more apt.

On the public utility front... email exists, RSS exists, the www exists... all
open platforms, public by some (the right) definitions.

The problem is that an open field (especially when there're multi-$bn
opportunities) is innovative, resourceful and will often outcompete the public
utility.

How are you going to stop the next twitter from winning the get users game,
ban texting apps?

~~~
theNJR
NPR and PBS didn't invent anything, they used an established technology to be
a not-for-profit public good. The National Public Internet wouldn't be
breaking ground, it would be using social media for the public good.

~~~
dalbasal
That is all fine. You could have public (state owned) websites, apps, social
networks and such.

I'd argue that wikipedia, lichess and such _are_ public services already. I
personally have more confidence in that sort of a model (os, community run,
etc) than a traditional public service model, but there's room in the bed for
three.

The problem is the same though. These services need to do more than just
exist. They need popularity.

It's very well to say "twitter should be a public service." I have no doubt
that it _could_ be. But, it'd still need to outcompete commercial competition.

~~~
Shivetya
Oh fuck no.

the last thing we want is state owned and operated social networks and apps.
whats next, swipe left to report hate speech? swipe right to report suspicious
activity. a site where every picture is subject to scrutiny by government
agencies because they were submitted to same?

the idea that twitter should be a public utility vastly over exaggerates its
impact in the life of the average person, American or not. If anything that
message is tailor made to boost the value of the company. there is nothing
twitter is doing that cannot be replicated, you just need time, good
marketing, and money. Three needs of every successful business.

------
BoiledCabbage
Regardless of what Twitter is or isn't, how in the world is the _CEO_
surprised by how his product works? And we're not talking some obscure corner
case, but basic use case?

Having a conversation was a learning experience for him and his team?

Such a basic level of unfamiliarity with their own product gives me a lot of
pause that he can do anything to guide the company on fixing rampant automated
accounts or making it less of a frequently hostile forum.

~~~
eeeeeeeeeeeee
The one use case I’ve seen of Twitter is rapid fire updates about some
developing situation, like an emergency. But it can’t be a back and forth
discussion. It can be one person or many people adding to a combined
discussion via that hashtag.

However, even when I see people do what is effectively a long form blog post
on Twitter, I often give up on it before the end because it’s too frustrating.

~~~
everdev
Twitter was billed as a microblogging platform. Blog posts are 1-way
communication.

Want a discussion? Allow comments and make them visually separate and less
prominent just like blogs do.

~~~
ConceptJunkie
Twitter is a million soap boxes in the town square.

Perhaps what we really need is a million meeting rooms that people can enter
or leave as they desire.

I don't use Twitter, but I do use Facebook to keep up with family and friends,
but the primary value I get out of it is from the groups I belong to, often
private, where people can have (moderated, if needed) discussions about topics
of common interest.

~~~
TremendousJudge
Or reddit. The experience of participating in small subreddits is vastly
different from frontpage lurking.

------
kanox
Twitter sucks as a discussion platform but it excels as an insult delivery
system.

~~~
dustingetz
Which is how it became a unicorn because it turns out that humans get addicted
to being angry

~~~
harryf
Especially when you can deliver insults without the threat of receiving a
smack in the face back

~~~
pbhjpbhj
In the UK you can get arrested for tweeting in opposition to the groupthink,
not a smack in the face as such, ...

~~~
Ntrails
Can you cite some examples of people being prosecuted for saying things on
twitter that aren't, you know, bomb threats or holocaust denial etc.

~~~
paganel
Here it goes, from a few days ago (I'm not the OP):
[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6687123/Mother-
arre...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6687123/Mother-arrested-
children-calling-transgender-woman-man.html)

Sorry for the Daily Mail link but it looks like the mainstream press hasn't
catch up on the subject. Afaik transphobia is not on the same level with "bomb
threats or holocaust denial" but apparently people get arrested for it.

~~~
pjc50
Daily Mail reporting will be grossly inaccurate on this subject. I suspect
this was not for a single incident but as part of a campaign of harrasment.
There's a lot of that going on against trans people at the moment, often
enabled by twitter and the gutter press.

~~~
paganel
Boris Johnson has practically said the same thing in his latest editorial in
The Telegraph [1], i.e. that that woman was transphobic and that the U.K.
police should focus on other more stringent tasks (like knife crime).
Transphobia is ugly but it’s not on the same level as Holocaust denial and
people shouldn’t get arrested for it.

[1] [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/02/10/police-
wasting-t...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/02/10/police-wasting-time-
arresting-twitter-transphobes-could-tackling/)

~~~
pjc50
Boris Johnson is one of the men who lied about Europe so often the EU made the
Euromyths page in an attempt to stem the tide. He's not a reliable source (in
any case that's an opinion piece), and nor is the Telegraph.

There's a culture war going on, trans people are the current wedge issue, and
people like Boris are absolutely part of it.

Again, we need the underlying facts, which I suspect include a longer history
of targeted harassment rather than a driveby twitter insult.

~~~
paganel
Johnson himself said the woman was a transphobic, him lying should mean that
the woman was in the right and not a transphobic at all. I know about his past
records, I only mentioned him to show that the story was real and mainstream,
not some journalistic hack (like some of the stuff published in the Daily
Mail).

------
cooperadymas
> Twitter’s 280 characters just don’t leave enough room for a nuanced
> conversation.

Well, yeah. And cars are a terrible way to travel across oceans. The world
discovered this ages ago. Kids, back in my day we only had 140 ch

------
paulgb
Twitter is like a town hall where everyone can heckle. Here’s a tree
visualization I made of a portion of the #KaraJack thread, which demonstrates
the problem (and only includes a fraction of the non-Jack/Kara tweets):
[https://treeverse.app/view/pX89745H](https://treeverse.app/view/pX89745H)

------
AndrewKemendo
Twitter was founded as a micro-blogging service, not a forum. It evolved into
the anonymous comment section for the entire internet somewhere along the way.

Seems like neither side were being self aware in this case.

I'm also not sure exactly what the product problem is with Twitter. The only
exposure I have to a group of people upset about Twitter are the folks that
Joe Rogan had on his podcast, and their complaints are just that it's toxic.

However Twitter unlike Google and Facebook is the least functional as a
utility, so refraining from using it if you don't like it seems like a no
brainer. You're not losing anything functional

~~~
eeeeeeeeeeeee
Don’t you think the inherent design — “microblogging” — encourages a toxic
environment? Most people aren’t poets or great writers, so I just frequently
see people talking past each other or misreading what has been said because
there is zero nuance.

~~~
vonmoltke
I'm not sure the design is responsible for much of that. I see plenty of
people on Reddit and this very site who talk past each other and skip straight
over the nuance when it _is_ presented. I also see favoritism shown to the
"sound bite"-style comments over the thought out ones, particularly on
contentious issues.

~~~
eeeeeeeeeeeee
I agree it's present in any kind of dialogue where people assume the worst of
others, but Reddit at least allows unlimited text. Same with this site -- I've
seen many reactive comments, but then a thread resolves it and everyone
reaches a good place. I've seen similar on Reddit, although less so compared
to here.

I don't think I've ever seen the same on Twitter, ever. It usually devolves
into something worse.

I do think there are parallels between Reddit and Twitter that encourage a
level of snark that is just never appropriate when talking to a human in real
life, unless you know them well.

------
mosselman
This is like acting surprised that a skateboard is not a suitable vehicle for
going on a long vacation with.

~~~
skywhopper
The newsworthy bit is that Jack seemed tripped up by it, too. Why agree to an
interview in a format that will showcase the worst aspects of your product?

~~~
noobiemcfoob
My theory is that Jack is trying to expose the flaws of twitter to the rest of
the company. A way of bludgeoning the stubborn in the company by a blitz of
bad press

~~~
smt88
You seem to be giving him too much credit.

His recent interviews and (lack of) leadership have shown that he bludgeons no
one, and the stubborn person is him. He's just an unusual kind of stubborn:
unwilling to make any decision at all.

~~~
marssaxman
That, too, is a form of visionary leadership. He is protecting a bubble of
chaos in which creative ferment can occur, by refusing to let outside forces
impose too much order on it. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing
depends on whether the bubble of chaos in question is working for you or not.

~~~
smt88
> _by refusing to let outside forces impose too much order on it_

He also refuses to let _inside_ forces impose order on it. He doesn't do
anything at all. I would call Twitter a camel -- a horse designed by committee
-- but it seems it's not even that. He apparently just consults committees ad
infinitum and then does nothing.

------
Finnucane
Twitter is basically broadcasting. Why would expect bidirectional
communication?

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Works just fine for CB radio.

~~~
yetihehe
Depends on where, I don't have CB because in my country it's as effective at
delivering insults as twitter. I don't need insult radio when driving.

~~~
VectorLock
CB radio: for when you need to road rage to an audience.

------
fredsted
I feel like Kara Swisher just handled this in a bad way. You can easily have a
conversation on Twitter: you make a tweet, someone else answers it. Rinse-
repeat. Jack would've just needed to load Kara's twitter profile and reply to
new tweets. What am I missing?

~~~
darkerside
That wouldn't have made the news the way this did, now would it?

~~~
fredsted
Sure, but now non-Twitter users will just think of Twitter as being bad for 2
way conversation due to this event/stunt.

But I guess all publicity is good publicity.

~~~
darkerside
I assure you Kara Swisher cares not. Turning this into a shitfest is a big win
for her.

------
b1llyhoyle
Getting lost in all this noise is Jack's willingness to have a conversation
and also admit his product's shortcomings. How many other CEOs subject
themselves to a similar, unscripted experiment? Kudos to Jack for being
transparent and accessible.

~~~
rchaud
His responses sounded pretty scripted. To a question on what Twitter has
specifically done to combat abuse on the platform (a question that's been
asked over and over for years now):

1\. We have evolved our polices.

2\. We have prioritized proactive enforcement to remove burden from victims

3\. We have given more control in product (like mute of accounts without
profile pics or associated phone/emails)

4\. Much more aggressive on coordinated behavior/gamingAlso this wasn't a
real-time face to face conversation, so you can be sure

Aside from #3, all of these sounded like CEO-speak to me. No specifics, so
nothing to attach personal responsibility to.

------
elcapitan
In this case, it's probably not twitter's fault that the conversation fails,
but Jack's. I saw him on Joe Rogans Podcast, who tried to get some concrete
answers out of him, and he was probably the most evasive guest I've ever seen
there.

~~~
5trokerac3
The way he evasively responds to these important questions (not just with
Rogan, but Sam Harris too) makes a lot more sense paired with the supposition
that Twitter is not "failing" as Jack says here, but _executing according to
plan_.

Look at recent bans, across the technology sphere (and more recently the
financial sphere with Chase), and a clear pattern emerges. Nobody denies what
the pattern is. The only argument is _whether or not you support banning
certain ideas_.

From where I'm sitting we're seeing the formation of a new form of exile (I
write that without hyperbole). Why bother setting up prison camps or penal
colonies when you can completely remove someone's ability to publicly
communicate, find gainful employment, or even open a bank account? We are
inching closer to a world where, if someone engages in public wrongthink, they
can immediately be _shamed into poverty and banned from the public square_.

~~~
crazypyro
>We are inching closer to a world where, if someone engages in public
wrongthink, they can immediately be shamed into poverty and banned from the
public square.

And this is so different from the entirety of human history how...?

Tribalism and social ostracization of "deviants" is nothing new.

~~~
5trokerac3
The difference being that the Overton window of “acceptable” opinion is
rapidly shrinking.

------
easshvsh
Twitter was not made to have conversations. It is not a forum system. And that
is not a bad thing. If you want to use a forum, why don't you sign up for one?

~~~
perfmode
Are you saying jack should hav signed up for a forum?

------
baud147258
Danluu has made a transcipt of the discussion:

[https://danluu.com/karajack/](https://danluu.com/karajack/)

[https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1095569349249851393](https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1095569349249851393)

------
no_gravity
The main problem I have with Twitter is that when you reply to your own
tweets, the reply will appear as a new tweet on your timeline.

This way your timeline becomes total chaos. Unless you only tweet a single 280
chars text and never add anything to it.

Otherwise, I would use it to post topics I am interested in. Reply to those
topics to add more text or when new information becomes available. And have a
discussion with people interested in those topics. I wish there was such a
platform. It would be like everybody can run their own mini HN.

~~~
aethertron
How about Wordpress? What you're describing sounds to me like the standard
structure of a blog with comments.

Twitter is a weird sort of blog platform.

It is chaotic by design: the chaos is consequence of its distinguishing
features. Everyone does get their own 'mini HN', i.e. a _forum_. But they lack
the tools to rule over that forum. It's idealistically anarchic. Everyone's
expected to get along peacefully, totally in public. There's no ownership over
threads.

~~~
no_gravity
Wordpress is a tool to make websites. Yes, you can put your content on a
website and then link to that from Twitter.

But that puts a big barrier in front of your content and the Twitter users.
Visiting a website is usually a horrible experience. So people are very
hesitant to do so. Click through rates from social media to websites are
abysmal.

~~~
aethertron
Good point. Users are willing to browse around Twitter (and Facebook) where
the experience is consistent, tolerable. And functional enough for many kinds
of content creators. They've achieved a sort of balance.

User hesitation to follow links out to the open web is lamentable, but wholly
understandable.

Perhaps some 3rd party service with a recognisable URL could establish itself
as a non-horrible, useful supplement to add extra structure to one's posts.

(Although I was suggesting something to use instead of Twitter, not something
to use with it.)

------
ksec
I assume people finally realise Jack isn't the next Steve Jobs as the media
and supporters ( I now assume they are fake supporters?) likes to paint it.

And Travis Kalanick isn't either, I assume most have figure out by now.

And Evan Spiegel.

If you are a Product CEO, or Founder, which tends to be even more Product
focus than any succession CEO, and you don't know the basics of your product,
then the company has a problem. Even more so when these "products" are
gazillion times simpler than everything Apple were doing.

------
rgoulter
> It’s almost impossible to have a smart, healthy argument on Twitter because
> no one has the space needed to share their thoughts.

The article gives an example of each user trying to discuss and reply 4x
branches of a conversation in 280 characters. At best, this can be mitigated
on Twitter by "one person replies with a sequence of tweets", and the other
then replies to that sequence.

I don't think brevity is the main reason for a lack of healthy arguments,
though. "smart, healthy arguing" is a hard game for people to play, so it's
"almost impossible" to have anywhere. (Let alone on a site where replies are
open to anyone who might have had a bad day and wants to vent, or whatever).

:-) Twitter's user-experience can also be quite different for users with
different following / follower counts.

------
cabalamat
One of my motives for building meowcat2[1] is that Twitter doesn't do
threading very well[2]. (Another motive is I don't want the web to be
controlled by a few big corporations).

[1]:
[https://github.com/cabalamat/meowcat2](https://github.com/cabalamat/meowcat2)

[2]: [https://cabalamat.wordpress.com/2018/03/04/twitter-gets-
mess...](https://cabalamat.wordpress.com/2018/03/04/twitter-gets-message-
order-wrong/)

------
crsmithdev
Has it ever been the place to have an interview or 1:1 conversation? That it
didn't work well seems like something that would be known in advance, and so
the choice of doing it this way feels more like grandstanding on the part of
KS.

Not saying Twitter doesn't have problems, just that this seems to be an
interview constructed to support a narrative right from the start.

------
rdtsc
> I am going to start a NEW thread to make it easy for people to follow
> (@waltmossberg just texted me that it is a “chaotic hellpit”)

It is interesting that this discussion on Twitter about discussions on Twitter
ended up being a disorganized mess. It illustrates the problem with Twitter so
well.

I consider Twitter a major step back in online discussion and sharing of
ideas. It not just made that worse but it changed it in a qualitative way and
it infected how people interact in other online communities and maybe in real
life as well.

I call this process "twitterification of discourse". Short phrases, sarcastic
quips, thrown back and forth are terrible way to build consensus, digest
information and participate in meaningful discussions. It can be entertaining
and give the poster a false sense of "victory" in "beating" an opponent but
mostly just leads to sowing resentment and dividing people rather than
bringing them together. "Oh I am a stupid idiot, for thinking this way. Well
thank you, I appreciate your thoughtful comment and I'll reconsider my
position" said nobody ever. Heck people might be well meaning in posting their
short retort but the medium itself brings a coldness and negativity to it by
its very nature.

Before this process was mostly happening in the media with talking heads
spewing their positions quickly between commercial breaks. But now that has
spread and everyone can talk and interact that way. Isn't it great!

Another insidious aspect of "twitterification of discourse" is that it cements
people's positions. Once they promote some cause or state some opinions for
everyone to see, but then later find out they have been wrong or misled, it
becomes much harder to change their position because well their posts were
there for everyone to see and now they are judged as hypocrites for example.

~~~
lostconfused
Just look at bash.org

Short, terse comments are not new. The systemic factors that cause it are
somewhat different for twitter. But it's not a new occurrence.

------
malloreon
Every interview I've seen with jack lately (BS podcast, a couple written
profiles + snippets of this conversation) mention a whole ton of changes and
fixes and improvements, but twitter remains the cesspool it's been for years.

It would be nice if he gave a publicly accountable timeline with actual
consequences for failure.

------
towelr34dy
Am I the only one deeply surprised by how badly executed this thing was?

I mean, what was it?

Was it a test?

Then why make it so public and high profile?

I mean; what the heck was Jack thinking? The whole thing was a confusing mess
that at best will be forgotten.

It's very strange to see a CEO of a 11 digit public company put something out
there like that.

------
40acres
This whole conversation was the result of a cop out by Jack to avoid being
interviewed by Kara on air. I'm a bit surprised because he's gone on her show
/ platforms before and even Zuckerberg interviewed with her after the 2016 and
Cambridge scandals.

------
gdubs
Twitter has this public utility value: a place where you can get updates on
air quality during a wildfire, when the official agency websites are buckling
under the traffic.

Some report having good experiences by following a very selective group of
people with shared interests.

But it’s interesting that both Facebook and Twitter evolved into these
negative, emotional, politically charged, environments when they moved from a
chronological list of updates from your curated set of friends and followers,
to an algorithmic one that shuffles in “popular” content.

It’s hard to have a nuanced conversation in a noisy stadium. Much easier to
chant along with the crowd.

~~~
aikah
> But it’s interesting that both Facebook and Twitter evolved into these
> negative, emotional, politically charged, environments when they moved from
> a chronological list of updates from your curated set of friends and
> followers, to an algorithmic one that shuffles in “popular” content.

Because that's where the money is? fake outrage, drama, division and
negativity. Reddit is no different. People love dirty laundry and scandals.
These social media are the new tabloids, you know, the magazines nobody buys
but everybody reads...

------
awkward
> Despite the public interview, and a dedicated hashtag (#karajack) for the
> event, it didn’t take long before the dozens of tweets between the two
> started to get confusing. They were listed out of order,

I would have liked to make a higher effort post about twitter's UX, but if you
want a platform that lets conversations happen, is there anything more
important than this? They've done work to privilege the OP's responses, but
giving one party that ability would seem even worse for conversation.

------
CyberShadow
Is there a Twitter client / UI that presents threads (with all their replies)
on one page with indentation / nesting, i.e. like HN / Reddit?

~~~
ratsmack
I think this is what you are talking about:

[https://threadreaderapp.com](https://threadreaderapp.com)

~~~
CyberShadow
I don't see any nesting or indentation there; or, for that matter, even
replies from other people. It seems to convert ... something ... into a wall
of text.

------
osrec
I've always found Twitter to be a bit of a mess. Spam bots everywhere, and not
a single cohesive line of thought that I can tune into. It feels unstructured
and utterly disjointed, and whenever I'm forced to go on there, I can't wait
to leave.

I wonder if they just pay famous people to use it and others follow?!

------
m3kw9
Is analogous to trying to start conversations on YouTube using video. Twitter
wasn’t meant for that, yet. Is more of a post-commenting system, with
potential for response, see Elon Musks tweets. No way can have a conversation
longer than 2-3 responses before people fall off

------
ekianjo
Twitter was never designed to be a conversation platform. It's like trying to
make a boat fly.

------
Kiro
I use Twitter a lot and I still don't understand how to view the damn comments
to a tweet. The obvious button just prompts me with a form. I need to click on
the date or something to see the thread. It's so obscure I don't even
remember.

------
izzydata
I was never under the impression that conversation was a thing Twitter was
supposed to do. It is more like a blog than a chat client.

I don't think anyone would complain that making blog updates in Slack via
pinned messages is difficult.

------
cptskippy
Twitter's whole experience is convoluted and it feels like either the
developers didn't want to update the UI or were unable to, so features like
DMs are handled through highly context sensitive means.

------
xorand
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19150914](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19150914)

------
mcv
I've always considered Twitter an excellent platform for shouting into the
void, but I can't imagine anyone would even consider having a conversation
there.

------
oneepic
I dislike Twitter but this article is pretty sensationalist. Too much emphasis
on the petty complaints. The actual "conversation" was fine.

------
JustSomeNobody
Why would you try to have a conversation on Twitter? Twitter is about
commenting on someone else's stream of consciousness. That's it.

------
kgthegreat
This seems like an A/B test to find out if there is enough demand to open up
twitter or improve twitter for some specific purposes.

------
rozim
I had thought threaded discussions were solved, pre modern internet era, pre-
slashdot even, by Usenet clients like rn...

------
znpy
I always found "wanting to have a conversation via twitter" a laughable
concept, to be honest.

------
hopler
It's hard to watch videos over email, too...

------
NelsonMinar
Twitter needs a full time CEO.

------
forkandwait
The real question is why would anyone even _try_ to have a conversation on
twitter?

------
endlessvoid94
Journalism is broken.

~~~
aikah
Only because it largely sourced its news based on Tweets and Twitter trends.
They went for cheap then they are surprised people don't want to pay for
glorified tabloids?

~~~
porpoisely
Journalism is broken because journalism is overrun by highly biased and agenda
driven ideologues like kara swisher.

[https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1086735766997344261](https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1086735766997344261)

She epitomizes everything wrong with journalism today. It's not about truth,
facts or news. It's about ideology.

Hopefully it's a temporary phase and things will get better.

------
trumped
are they talking about private conversations in public?

------
FrankDixon
funny, in the recent sam harris interview, jack just couldn‘t get enough of
highlighting how twitter enables „conversations“.

------
gammateam
> Swisher’s questions about Twitter’s complex abuse policies, and Dorsey’s
> subsequent responses, were floating around my timeline along with the
> regular tech news and opinions I always look at.

Ha! I need to see this episode of Silicon Valley

------
NoblePublius
(Checks Twitter) (Finds bots arguing “a man is a man and a woman is a woman”)
(Deletes Twitter)

------
entity345
Twitter is no more suitable to having conversations than SMS are.

This is a case of trying to force a use case on a platform that isn't designed
for it.

Edit: It's getting very tiring to receive downvotes at every comment.

~~~
benj111
Agreed, but showing messages in order? That's doable isn't it?

I'd be annoyed if my text messages started displaying out of order.

~~~
smrtinsert
This still happens today - actually I get a lot of dropped and reordered
messages in a very well covered area. People don't realize it because a lot of
the time we unconsciously design our text messages to be disposable.

The only reason I know is because I'm going through a big project and the big
stakeholders are frequently communicating via text messages as well as phone
and email. I've considered moving us to WhatsApp but we're nearing the end so
its not that annoying, we just know to use it less.

------
aboutruby
I think only Reddit has mastered the large-scale discussion involving
thousands or ten of thousands of people at the same time.

~~~
fredsted
Eh, maybe for people who've been using it for years. When celebrities do AMAs
without guidance by experienced users, they constantly reply to the wrong
threads or even the thread itself. Formatting being hard (e.g. you have to
press enter two times to do a single line break) also doesn't help.

~~~
lmm
Markdown is the worst kind of formatting except for all the others.

I literally don't know how to write a sentence with more than one asterisk in
on HN, and I've been here several years. Formatting is hard but Reddit at
least follows a known standard and has a "formatting help" link right under
the comment box if you need it.

~~~
DCoder
And yet something as basic as a _preview_ is missing. Reddit's community-
driven browser plugin ([0]) at least adds that, HN's counterpart [1] sorely
needs it.

\---

Come to think of it, is there a definitive guide to HN comment formatting?
Implementing a preview feature in [1] would be doable if the markup is
documented.

[0]:
[https://redditenhancementsuite.com/](https://redditenhancementsuite.com/)

[1]: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-
enhanc...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-
enhancement-s/bappiabcodbpphnojdiaddhnilfnjmpm?hl=en)

~~~
Sean1708
[https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc](https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc)

It's hidden behind the FAQ.

