
Ask HN: Am I the only one outraged by Twitter shutting down share counts? - tkfx
Even Mashable is broken: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;utjkzuh.png
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chippy
Ask yourself what emotions you are feeling when you think about Twitter
shutting down share counts.

Really feel these feelings, don't let them go away, don't try to hide the
outrage.

Now clear your mind of the negative feeling. Take several deep breaths and
clear your mind.

Now think of something important in your life.

Now think of something important in the lives of another person.

Mediate on what a sense of perspective means.

~~~
AznHisoka
I think you're being insincere here. OP obviously (I assume) is not that
devastated by this change like a death in the family. But he's unhappy about
it, similar to as if your client changed their spec overnight, or if their
database got wiped out of data, and they had no backups. He's trying to start
a conversation about this.

Your comment doesn't add anything to this because HN revolves around
developer/tech issues. By nature, almost ALL conversations/complaints here are
1st world problems

~~~
brianwawok
Many HN posts are about sharing cool things. Expressing outrage a commercial
product changed a feature? Seems a waste of hot air and lowers the quality of
this site.

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dkopi
Disappointed? Sure. Annoyed? Perhaps. Outraged? Over twitter canceling a free
feature I never paid them to provide? Meh.

~~~
tkfx
It just came in as a total surprise for me (and I guess for Mashable too,
although they did write something about it:
[http://mashable.com/2015/09/23/twitter-share-
counts/](http://mashable.com/2015/09/23/twitter-share-counts/))

------
steverayson
Twitter announced it about 7 weeks ago, here is my post on background and
links to their announcements [http://buzzsumo.com/blog/twitter-share-counts-
in-your-browse...](http://buzzsumo.com/blog/twitter-share-counts-in-your-
browser-new-buzzsumo-chrome-extension/)

------
calind
It finally went away. I'm hoping the same for all counters because from a
reader's perspective they are pointless. so I have only positive feelings
about this :).

~~~
loceng
People don't trust themselves as much as we should, which is why people are
more likely to share something if it looks like it is "safe" to do - if others
are doing it. I agree though that it would be better that if people shared
something because they were compelled enough to do it on their own.

~~~
rustynails
I find value in the popularity of a comment because it gives me some insight
to how a community thinks, collectively.

I've observed a number of times that the most popular web sites and the most
popular news sites (as ranked by web traffic) are the most controversial (eg.
sexist) and least informative. Hence, trusting the average person is like
trusting populist politics.. The Kardadhians rule. Aka race to the bottom, aka
McDonalds journalism.

~~~
loceng
That type of thinking may not be able to pool together as easily then, and
therefore that thinking may not be reenforced as much.

And I agree, it is interesting to see it - and obviously Twitter would have
that data, so they could make it available to researchers as well. On a daily
basis I wonder how it impacts everything.

------
alexc05
Someone outraged by something on twitter? Better call CNN, MSNBC, Buzzfeed,
Salon...

Honestly, no. I'm actually really frustrated by the impact twitter has had on
news.

How hard is it to find five stupid people on twitter? It isn't. Yet somehow we
have to read articles about "people are outraged by Starbucks' red coffee cup"
and "Trump weighs in on the coffee cup issue"

No. I'm not outraged that twitter is changing their layout.

I'm frustrated that twitter is somehow the LOIC of stupid outrage that seems
entirely out of control.

------
charlesism
What are "share counts"? I guess that's my short answer.

The only feeling I have about Twitter is mild irritation at the amount of
attention it gets. It's not very useful to the vast majority of its users.

Twitter is extremely useful if you have some measure of celebrity, of course,
which is why well-known journalists prattle on and on about it.

I don't have unbridled hatred toward Twitter. It just gets tired constantly
hearing the MSM blabbing hashtags, and wading through a bunch of "share"
buttons (that nobody uses anyway) whenever I want to read an article.

If these "share counts" are some means of letting users see how many people
(didn't) retweet them, it's probably a healthy thing for Twitter. Since the
average count for the average user will be either zero, or near zero, most of
the time, it doesn't seem like it's good for customer retention.

~~~
rustynails
I do not use social networking like Twitter, Facebook, linked in, etc.
however, of all of these systems, I prefer Twitter because it's the least
invasive. If I want to hear what a particular person has to say, I opt in. I
find that an appealing concept. It's almost the antithesis of Facebook.

------
joelrunyon
I'm mostly confused why they said "this isn't working" and decided to just
shut it down rather than fix it. Seems a little bizarre for a company that
would presumably benefit from having accurate counts.

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MicroBerto
I'm annoyed because now I have an ugly looking button on my site and need to
replace it. I liked those vertical count boxes.

Twitter is going to suffer death by paper cut.

[https://twittercommunity.com/t/clarification-about-share-
cou...](https://twittercommunity.com/t/clarification-about-share-counts-for-
the-new-tweet-button/52868)

------
mahouse
The only reason for them to remove this is that the tweet counts were always
embarrassingly lower than the fb share counts.

------
LukeB_UK
Why are you outraged?

In their blog post announcing it, they state that one of the main reasons is
because it's meaningless and doesn't reflect the actual engagement around that
link. I'm inclined to agree, I don't care about how many people clicked a
button to share it, I care more about a discussion around something.

------
idlewords
Yes.

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taytus
Outraged? You are outraged for something that was announced almost 2 months
ago? Really? Outraged?

~~~
macu
I hadn't heard about it till now. I'm not affected because I didn't invest in
the feature in any way, or know anyone who did. Yet I can appreciate the
"outrage" from the perspective of people who invest in features that are later
taken away, with apparently no regard or care for the impact to users who put
their time and loyalty into the service because of what it offered. It's just
a fact in user land, we accept the TOS and throw our time into the furnace.

------
brador
One more step towards Twitters untimely irrelevancy.

Shame, if they implemented features instead of removing them they could be
huge. Still can in my opinion.

------
mahouse
Documented anywhere?

~~~
tkfx
Announced on: [https://blog.twitter.com/2015/hard-decisions-for-a-
sustainab...](https://blog.twitter.com/2015/hard-decisions-for-a-sustainable-
platform)

And went live this weekend. Surprised it didn't make any headlines.

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anon6_
It was always a metric easy to inflate.

Just like Ashley Madison's male to female and bot to human ratio, we'll never
get honest stats on this - but it's really easy to bot twitter. There is no
mobile phone verification. The amount of computerized accounts on twitter is
huge.

From Twitter's SEC filing [1]:

In a new filing, the company said that “up to approximately 8.5%” of the
accounts it considers active are automatically updated “without any
discernible additional user-initiated action.”

Even that is quite a qualifier. You could have a discernible user-initiated
action, _then_ leave it to a bot.

I won't deny that twitter is a great way to get inbound traffic, and lots of
it. But your followers, shares, etc. are still hugely inflated. It's really
easy to game Twitter. The signal:noise ratio on there is critical.

[1]:
[https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000156459014...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000156459014003474/twtr-10q_20140630.htm)

