Taking flight - Twitter CTO Parag Agrawal will replace Jack Dorsey as CEO

[williamcll]

After a year of trying to oust the CEO, Jack Dorsey is finally stepping down from twitter and the CTO will take his place. This has caused waves on the stock market and NASDAQ has stopped trading with twitter as of the time of this writing.

Quotes

Quote

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 29, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Twitter, Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) today announced that Jack Dorsey has decided to step down as Chief Executive Officer and that the Board of Directors has unanimously appointed Parag Agrawal as CEO and a member of the Board, effective immediately. Dorsey will remain a member of the Board until his term expires at the 2022 meeting of stockholders. Bret Taylor was named the new Chairman of the Board, succeeding Patrick Pichette who will remain on the Board and continue to serve as chair of the Audit Committee.

 

Agrawal has been with Twitter for more than a decade and has served as Chief Technology Officer since 2017. "I've decided to leave Twitter because I believe the company is ready to move on from its founders. My trust in Parag as Twitter's CEO is deep. His work over the past 10 years has been transformational. I'm deeply grateful for his skill, heart, and soul. It's his time to lead," said Dorsey. Bret Taylor, Twitter's incoming Independent Board Chair said, "On behalf of the Board, I want to thank Jack for his visionary leadership and unrelenting dedication to Twitter since its founding. Jack returned to Twitter and turned the Company around at the most critical time. The progress since then has been nothing short of incredible. Jack has given the world something invaluable and we will continue to carry it forward."

Quote

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is expected to step down from his executive role, sources tell CNBC’s David Faber. Twitter stock was up more than 5% on the news. Dorsey currently serves as both the CEO of Twitter and Square, his digital payments company. It’s unclear who’s set to succeed Dorsey or the timing of a potential announcement. It’s also unknown why Dorsey would take a step back. But if he steps down, the next CEO will have to meet Twitter’s aggressive internal goals. The company said earlier this year it aims to have 315 million monetizable daily active users by the end of 2023 and to at least double its annual revenue in that year.

 

My thoughts

I doubt a change in leadership would change how twitter functions, or if they did, only more questionably poor decisions. Gonna be interesting for stockholder though.

 

Sources

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/jack-dorsey-steps-down-as-twitter-ceo-board-unanimously-appoints-cto-parag-agrawal-as-successor-301432989.html

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/29/twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey-is-expected-to-step-down-sources-say.html

[poochyena]

This really worries me because he was a really good CEO. He managed twitter much better than other CEOs manage their social media platforms in my opinion. I honestly can't think of any negative changes that Twitter has made in the past decade besides removing the egg default avatar, but thats incredibly minor.

[StDragon]

3 minutes ago, poochyena said:

This really worries me because he was a really good CEO.

Jack Dorsey is the "Rat King" of the sewer known as Twitter. So for a Rat King, yeah, he's good at the job.

[poochyena]

3 minutes ago, StDragon said:

Jack Dorsey is the "Rat King" of the sewer known as Twitter. So for a Rat King, yeah, he's good at the job.

what does that even mean

[RejZoR]

44 minutes ago, poochyena said:

This really worries me because he was a really good CEO. He managed twitter much better than other CEOs manage their social media platforms in my opinion. I honestly can't think of any negative changes that Twitter has made in the past decade besides removing the egg default avatar, but thats incredibly minor.

Twitter is pure distilled cancer. Firstly because of perpetually offended culture on it and all the shadowbanning and censoring. What made me scrub this sack of crap was their constant pathetic attempts to get my phone number. They would just randomly lock your account on basis of being offended over some random shit and offer you "verification" through phone number only even though there was clearly also option for e-mail verification, but they purposely made it look like phone is only option. After dealing with "suspension" and "verification" for the 3rd time I just deleted that pile of shit. Guess what, nothing changed. Just like nothing changed after I made Fecesbook disappear.

[poochyena]

5 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Twitter is pure distilled cancer. Firstly because of perpetually offended culture on it and all the shadowbanning and censoring. What made me scrub this sack of crap was their constant pathetic attempts to get my phone number. They would just randomly lock your account on basis of being offended over some random shit and offer you "verification" through phone number only even though there was clearly also option for e-mail verification, but they purposely made it look like phone is only option. After dealing with "suspension" and "verification" for the 3rd time I just deleted that pile of shit. Guess what, nothing changed. Just like nothing changed after I made Fecesbook disappear.

I don't understand how requiring a phone number for extra security and to reduce spam makes twitter cancer. Thats actually common among nearly every social media platform. I'm not sure what you mean by "perpetually offended culture" or  "all the shadowbanning and censoring". I've actually never heard of anyone banned on twitter or posts removed for no good reason. Do you have any examples of that? I think I remember one account I followed got banned for a few days, but I think it was either due to copyright reasons or report trolling, but his account was brought back a few days later.

[RejZoR]

3 minutes ago, poochyena said:

I don't understand how requiring a phone number for extra security and to reduce spam makes twitter cancer. Thats actually common among nearly every social media platform. I'm not sure what you mean by "perpetually offended culture" or  "all the shadowbanning and censoring". I've actually never heard of anyone banned on twitter or posts removed for no good reason. Do you have any examples of that? I think I remember one account I followed got banned for a few days, but I think it was either due to copyright reasons or report trolling, but his account was brought back a few days later.

What extra security? They were literally thirsting for phone number even though i had 2 factor using e-mail. If you don't know what perpetually offended culture means, then you basically don't know ANYTHING about Twitter. It's pointless to discuss further really if you're that disconnected from what Twitter is. It's an outrage social platform where every fart with 2 seconds is always offended over something and rallies a horde of perpetually offended zombies behind it. It's why it's cancer. In the end I only used it as notification service for companies to be on top of updates and announcements. Only thing Twatter is good for really.

[poochyena]

2 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

What extra security? They were literally thirsting for phone number even though i had 2 factor using e-mail.

2 factor gives extra security, phone number 2 factor specifically also reduces spam as creating alt accounts with multiple phone numbers is much more difficult than with multiple emails.

3 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

If you don't know what perpetually offended culture means, then you basically don't know ANYTHING about Twitter.

I've been active on twitter every day since 2018 and have had an account since 2009. I genuinely don't know what you mean by "perpetually offended culture". Considering your unwillingness to explain it, i'm guessing you don't actually know what it means either.

[porina]

I don't know the outgoing person or the new one taking up lead, so as a user I'll judge their success on how the platform moves forwards. If it gets killed (e.g. Tumblr) then people will move on. Then again, I don't know of anything else in its space. That is, primarily short form text based.

 

Different platforms have different problems. Twitter is no exception, but I don't think its negatives are as bad as others (to me, that's anything Facebook, Reddit, Tiktok). It is not perfect. There are people I don't agree with on it, but that applies EVERYWHERE.

[TheEggComputer]

On 11/29/2021 at 11:56 AM, williamcll said:

After a year of trying to oust the CEO, Jack Dorsey is finally stepping down from twitter and the CTO will take his place. This has caused waves on the stock market and NASDAQ has stopped trading with twitter as of the time of this writing.

Quotes

 

My thoughts

I doubt a change in leadership would change how twitter functions, or if they did, only more questionably poor decisions. Gonna be interesting for stockholder though.

 

Sources

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/jack-dorsey-steps-down-as-twitter-ceo-board-unanimously-appoints-cto-parag-agrawal-as-successor-301432989.html

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/29/twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey-is-expected-to-step-down-sources-say.html

huh. Although nothing will change as they will probably never give an edit button.

[igormp]

45 minutes ago, poochyena said:

I've been active on twitter every day since 2018 and have had an account since 2009. I genuinely don't know what you mean by "perpetually offended culture". Considering your unwillingness to explain it, i'm guessing you don't actually know what it means either.

Seems like they got suspended for being cancerous and got salty for that. I may be wrong tho, but as a user since 2011, and active daily since 2016 or so, I only saw that "perpetually offended culture" talk coming from people that rightfully deserve to be banned 

[Sandro Linux]

Not sure whether this is a good thing or not but I did like how Jack Dorsey wanted to integrate crypto more into Twitter and I am not sure the new CEO will go ahead with that 

[RejZoR]

11 hours ago, poochyena said:

2 factor gives extra security, phone number 2 factor specifically also reduces spam as creating alt accounts with multiple phone numbers is much more difficult than with multiple emails.

I've been active on twitter every day since 2018 and have had an account since 2009. I genuinely don't know what you mean by "perpetually offended culture". Considering your unwillingness to explain it, i'm guessing you don't actually know what it means either.

It's literally self explanatory. People raging over shit they find offensive. And they find everything offensive. All the time.

[Brooksie359]

10 hours ago, igormp said:

Seems like they got suspended for being cancerous and got salty for that. I may be wrong tho, but as a user since 2011, and active daily since 2016 or so, I only saw that "perpetually offended culture" talk coming from people that rightfully deserve to be banned 

Honestly I think for the most part censorship is needed to some extent on any platform like Twitter but the problem becomes its virtually impossible to get it right every time so people will still get outraged at the few times they get it wrong or the times where its a Grey area. 

[poochyena]

12 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

It's literally self explanatory. People raging over shit they find offensive. And they find everything offensive. All the time.

so.. like how you are right now about twitter, for example? Guess I should quit ltt forums, too much of this perpetually offended culture.

[RejZoR]

1 hour ago, poochyena said:

so.. like how you are right now about twitter, for example? Guess I should quit ltt forums, too much of this perpetually offended culture.

Am I rallying bunches of idiots to go on some dumb crusade where they are offended on behalf of someone else on dumb shit? No. So no, I'm not the same.

 

Also yes, there is a lot of perpetually offended people here on LTT too. Wasn't few years ago when I joined. The cancel culture with these offended idiots is like cancer. Spreading everywhere slowly and steadily.

[wanderingfool2]

13 hours ago, poochyena said:

I don't understand how requiring a phone number for extra security and to reduce spam makes twitter cancer. Thats actually common among nearly every social media platform. I'm not sure what you mean by "perpetually offended culture" or  "all the shadowbanning and censoring". I've actually never heard of anyone banned on twitter or posts removed for no good reason. Do you have any examples of that? I think I remember one account I followed got banned for a few days, but I think it was either due to copyright reasons or report trolling, but his account was brought back a few days later.

An issue is that the "phone number" verification happens when they "detect" issues with your account...and not everyone wants to provide their phone number to a company (especially if using an alt account that you do not wish to be associated with yourself in real life).  I've come across this issue myself, where I've abandoned my alt account because it required a phone number.  This was an account that I had for like 5 years, and didn't do anything spammy with [didn't really tweet] used to communicate between my friends who were on the platform.  In general something that in no way shape or form was used anything like a bot would.

 

Other examples of issues was that they now pretty much nag you to join just to see tweets or replies, along with the long issue where if you scroll down, then switch tabs and sometime later go back to the tab the entire thing reloads...so you lose your spot.

 

For shadowbanning, I think mostly it's for accounts that are harassing, but I know earlier days it use to be for people who shared "inappropriate" images on twitter...which is ironic because I'm constantly fed promoted ad tweets that are NSFW [and I constantly report those ads].

 

The biggest issue that is a major problem is how they handle "takedown" requests.  I've reported something that was clearly illegal [like, the kind of thing that needs to be removed ASAP], and not only was there not a category for "illegal", but it took a few days before it was removed [and the account still wasn't banned].  This is to me speaks volumes on how terrible Twitter is as a company, caring more about registered users and eyes on the twitter feed.  If you don't believe me, here is a quote from John Doe vs Twitter...with a line of defense that Twitter didn't violate the laws [case 3:21-cv-00485 March 10 motion to dismiss]

Quote

Plaintiff and his mother Jane Doe reported the Videos to Twitter using
Twitter’s reporting process three times beginning on January 21, 2020.  (¶¶ 83–95.)  Plaintiff and
Jane Doe also sent emails about the Videos to Twitter.  (Id.)  On January 28, 2020, Twitter emailed
Plaintiff and informed him that it had reviewed the Videos, and did not find a violation.  (¶ 91.)  
Sometime  after,  Jane  Doe  allegedly  contacted  an  agent  of  the  United  States  Department  of  
Homeland Security (“DHS”), who sent Twitter a takedown request.  (¶¶ 97-98.)  Immediately after
Twitter received the request, on or about January 30, 2020—i.e., nine days after receiving the first
report  from  Plaintiff—Twitter  removed  the  Videos  and  suspended  the  Twitter  accounts  that  had  
posted them.6  (Id.)

It literally took a request from DHS, to remove child pornography from the site [9 days]...and their legal response was that they shouldn't be held liable because they tried their best and they didn't do it in a way that safe harbour was broken.

 

Towards this topic, I hope that things change, but I really don't have any hope that it will actually change.  I think we will be in the same situation as above, as a company that is built like the above is nearly impossible to change.

[WolframaticAlpha]

17 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Twitter is pure distilled cancer. Firstly because of perpetually offended culture on it and all the shadowbanning and censoring. What made me scrub this sack of crap was their constant pathetic attempts to get my phone number. They would just randomly lock your account on basis of being offended over some random shit and offer you "verification" through phone number only even though there was clearly also option for e-mail verification, but they purposely made it look like phone is only option. After dealing with "suspension" and "verification" for the 3rd time I just deleted that pile of shit. Guess what, nothing changed. Just like nothing changed after I made Fecesbook disappear.

That is because you are not using twitter in the correct manner. Since you are a member of the >10 iq gang, you don't get involved in twitter bullshit. You look at it from afar and get an ego boost whenever you see a dumb tweet.

 

Seriously though, twitter is one of the places on the internet where the worst of humanity collects. Twitter is a place where morons find other like minded idiots, form a commune, and then 'cancel' you if you have a different opinion.

 

My theory for all this is that twitter's heart only system is deeply broken. Unlike reddit or youtube, which promote the content which has a large number of likes/upvotes, twitter promotes a topic, with a large number of tweets. So instead of getting quality content, you get the things which make the most noise. And that is largely incoherent. It is like getting Among Us videos all the time, because of the sheer volume of them, instead of quality commentary on some matter, if that makes sense.

2 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

as a company that is built like the above is nearly impossible to change.

Well, we used to think like that about MS in the ballmer days. Maybe we see it again?

[Mark Kaine]

16 hours ago, danthe_only_man said:

huh. Although nothing will change as they will probably never give us an edit button.

They should do it, and when you're done editing theres only one option: "cancel" : D

 

 

[Doobeedoo]

It's a cesspool platform.

[igormp]

7 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

Honestly I think for the most part censorship is needed to some extent on any platform like Twitter but the problem becomes its virtually impossible to get it right every time so people will still get outraged at the few times they get it wrong or the times where its a Grey area. 

Yeah, but in the end it's a private company and they're free to censor whatever they want, however they want, so it doesn't matter much as long as they can profit out of it.

[poochyena]

8 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Am I rallying bunches of idiots to go on some dumb crusade where they are offended on behalf of someone else on dumb shit? No. So no, I'm not the same.

well... yes. You seem to be encouraging others not to use twitter because of things you got offended by on the site.

 

8 hours ago, comander said:

They probably went a bit too heavy on the algorithmic targeting. 

Then just turn the algorithm off. My feed only shows content from people I follow unless i'm bored and hit the "explore" button in which is mostly political news and bunnies.

 

8 hours ago, comander said:

Twitter can devolve into "YOU SHOULD DIE AND LOSE YOUR JOB AND I HATE YOUR CAT."

You think lttforums is immune to that? Or literally any other community, online or irl? Why? What makes you think twitter has some sort of exclusivity of people exchanging insults?

7 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

An issue is that the "phone number" verification happens when they "detect" issues with your account...and not everyone wants to provide their phone number to a company (especially if using an alt account that you do not wish to be associated with yourself in real life).

but why? Phone numbers are already public record. Whats the worst that would happen? Twitter leaks or sells your phone number and you start getting a bunch of spam phone calls? Oh wait, thats already a thing.

 

5 hours ago, WolframaticAlpha said:

Seriously though, twitter is one of the places on the internet where the worst of humanity collects. Twitter is a place where morons find other like minded idiots, form a commune, and then 'cancel' you if you have a different opinion.

I don't understand how you are blaming twitter for this and why you choose to let how other people use twitter affect your life.

 

5 hours ago, WolframaticAlpha said:

Unlike reddit or youtube, which promote the content which has a large number of likes/upvotes, twitter promotes a topic, with a large number of tweets. So instead of getting quality content

Yes, just look at this terrible low quality content from the twitter algorithm. How could anyone ever use the site.

Spoiler

The only reason you'd see content you don't like on twitter is because you specifically go out looking for it. It would be like me going to lttforums and complaining there is too much tech discussion

[wanderingfool2]

37 minutes ago, poochyena said:

but why? Phone numbers are already public record. Whats the worst that would happen? Twitter leaks or sells your phone number and you start getting a bunch of spam phone calls? Oh wait, thats already a thing.

Giving a company like twitter allows them to use it associate your accounts.  From there you essentially lose you anonymity, when they start tuning searches towards you.  A perfect example of this, instagram.  They associated my -hidden- instagram account, which the only overlapping information was my phone used to activate IG and phone was used for facebook.  Started getting "suggestions" for the people who were my facebook friends.  In my case it doesn't matter as much, but in a case where it's say a teen who gets outted to his parents or similar stories can have huge consequences

 

Twitter, I suspect, makes more money per promoted tweet on "verified" identifiable users.

[Brooksie359]

3 hours ago, igormp said:

Yeah, but in the end it's a private company and they're free to censor whatever they want, however they want, so it doesn't matter much as long as they can profit out of it.

No twitter can't censor whatever they want because that would make them a publisher and not a platform which would be a huge problem for twitter. That being said twitter obviously knows that which is why they have guidelines and ban or suspend people based on them. 

[RejZoR]

4 hours ago, poochyena said:

well... yes. You seem to be encouraging others not to use twitter because of things you got offended by on the site.

 

Then just turn the algorithm off. My feed only shows content from people I follow unless i'm bored and hit the "explore" button in which is mostly political news and bunnies.

 

You think lttforums is immune to that? Or literally any other community, online or irl? Why? What makes you think twitter has some sort of exclusivity of people exchanging insults?

but why? Phone numbers are already public record. Whats the worst that would happen? Twitter leaks or sells your phone number and you start getting a bunch of spam phone calls? Oh wait, thats already a thing.

 

I don't understand how you are blaming twitter for this and why you choose to let how other people use twitter affect your life.

 

Yes, just look at this terrible low quality content from the twitter algorithm. How could anyone ever use the site.

  Reveal hidden contents

The only reason you'd see content you don't like on twitter is because you specifically go out looking for it. It would be like me going to lttforums and complaining there is too much tech discussion

Shit, I can't say anything because I'm apparently rallying lynch mobs that way. You don't have the slightest clue about the thing and when i explain it to you I'm urging people against it. Which is it dude? Wtf?