

Amazon Apologizes For 'Embarrassing And Ham-Fisted' Gay Book Blacklist - ciscoriordan
http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-reverses-course-apologizes-for-embarrassing-and-ham-fisted-gay-book-blacklist-2009-4

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apu
So then is the supposed hack by 'weev' false?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=560075>

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ciscoriordan
I think the more interesting story might be the role Twitter played in all of
this.

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cookiecaper
What impact did Twitter really have? I'm annoyed with all of the constant
Twitter hype -- I think it's overblown and that there's not much behind the
fad. It seems like a case of everyone jumping on the bandwagon to me,
especially in the cases of MSM; they're just desperate to be on the brink of
the next big thing, and so everyone jumps all over Twitter not because they
appreciate Twitter but because they're all trying to be cooler than each
other. Twitter is pretty lame, and it's pretentious, and I don't like it, and
I don't think that many other people do either. So, is Twitter really
significant here or is this just another case of wannabe hipsters attempting
to appear clairvoyant so that everyone will complement their impeccable
fashion sense?

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cstejerean
I keep hearing Twitter bashing on this site and it's starting to bother me.
Twitter is what you make it. It all depends on who you choose to follow. It's
perfectly fine if you haven't found a way to make use of Twitter, but for an
increasing number of people, Twitter is starting to play a pretty important
role.

I dropped my cable subscription when I moved to my new apartment last August
and outside of HN I've been relying mainly on Twitter to hear about what's
happening in the world at large. I've used it to communicate with friends and
coworkers, to see what interesting people in the open source community are
doing, to communicate with people during conferences such as at PyCon, to ask
for help and to help others, and for entertainment.

Yes, there's plenty of hipsters and social media experts that do nothing more
than add noise, but the asymmetrical follow model and the ease to start and
stop following people means that you shouldn't care. Choose the people you
find interesting and it will make all the difference.

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moe
_I dropped my cable subscription when I moved to my new apartment last August
and outside of HN I've been relying mainly on Twitter to hear about what's
happening in the world at large._

That's just a stupid thing to say and exactly the kind of hype that's getting
on our nerves (speaking for us, the twitter immune here).

My opinion towards twitter as a technology is fairly ambivalent - It's a
horrible implementation but as long as I'm not forced to use it I couldn't
care less.

What's annoying is all those people who feel a need to cite the medium as if
it added any kind of value to a message.

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cstejerean
"That's just a stupid thing to say and exactly the kind of hype that's getting
on our nerves"

When making statements of that nature you should rely try to elaborate more.
What exactly is a stupid thing to say? Claiming that I rely on Twitter as a
source of news? Why is that stupid? I've been doing this since August and it's
worked out really well so far. I'm not trying to convince anyone else to do
the same, I was just responding to a question of whether or not Twitter
provides actual value. To me it does.

The medium does not provide value to the message, but it does provide a very
powerful way to spread messages and to organize people. What alternative
communication medium would you recommend for organizing a protest? (Like the
one that happened in Moldova
[http://neteffect.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/04/07/moldovas...](http://neteffect.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/04/07/moldovas_twitter_revolution))

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tom_rath
You're not "relying on Twitter" for a source of news, you're relying on
unattributed hearsay which just happens to be transmitted through Twitter.

That's not smart.

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yef
How do you know who he follows?

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lehmannro
Half a dozen clicks from his HN profile and you're there:
<http://twitter.com/offbytwo/friends>

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cstejerean
Impressive, I updated my profile so it should be easier to find now.

