←back to thread

Brazil's X ban is sending lots of people to Bluesky

(www.theverge.com)
420 points rvz | 5 comments | 31 Aug 24 13:28 UTC | HN request time: 1.089s | source
Show context
pfraze ◴[31 Aug 24 23:15 UTC] No.41412758[source]▶
Copying over my latest backend status update; figure folks would find it interesting

Servers are holding up so far! Fortunately we were overprovisioned. If we hit 4mm new signups then things should get interesting. We did have some degradations (user handles entering an invalid state, event-stream crashed a couple times, algo crashed a couple times, image servers hit bad latencies) but we managed to avoid a full outage.

We use an event-sourcing model which is: K/V database for primary storage (actually sqlite), into a golang event stream, then into scylladb for computed views. Various separate services for search, algorithms, and images. Hybrid on-prem & cloud. There are ~20 of the k/v servers, 1 event-stream, 2 scylla clusters (I believe).

The event-stream crash would cause the application to stop making progress on ingesting events, but we still got the writes, so you'd see eg likes failing to increment the counter but then magically taking effect 60 seconds later. Since the scylla cluster and the KV stores stayed online, we avoided a full outage.

replies(9): >>41412984 #>>41413343 #>>41413506 #>>41413569 #>>41415242 #>>41415812 #>>41416225 #>>41417516 #>>41417547 #
pcwalton ◴[01 Sep 24 01:52 UTC] No.41413569[source]▶
It's frustrating that anything related to X/Twitter is such a predictably-partisan tinderbox because this is really interesting technical information. Thank you for sharing it!
replies(1): >>41414443 #
kstenerud ◴[01 Sep 24 05:04 UTC] No.41414443[source]▶
It's partisan/political because Musk is partisan/political. And it's not just Musk.

We've been living in a fantasy land of "no political affiliation" in the tech world for decades, and now that the age of the hyper-rich has come once again, they are realizing the benefits of using the power they wield to shape the worlds they live in.

So now in the early stages of this century's great fight, we'll see our beloved tech giants join the political fray in full force, dragging their follower armies along for the ride.

And it works, too. Just look at the comments here.

replies(9): >>41414549 #>>41414566 #>>41414571 #>>41414596 #>>41414987 #>>41415229 #>>41415701 #>>41416661 #>>41417566 #
kstenerud ◴[01 Sep 24 08:28 UTC] No.41415229[source]▶
Looking at the responses, I can see that people are still viewing this through the limited lens of left vs right.

This is of course a thing in that nobody can hide their colors anymore, but I'm specifically talking about the rich now feeling empowered enough that they even have the hubris to challenge governments of the world for their own benefit, and in some cases even build their own empires to escape the limitations of governments by forming their own rich-people-only worlds.

For example: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/28/magazine/prospera-hondura...

So long as you continue fighting left vs right, you're fighting the wrong enemy.

replies(5): >>41415279 #>>41415586 #>>41415752 #>>41415757 #>>41416519 #
mikrotikker ◴[01 Sep 24 08:40 UTC] No.41415279[source]▶
Free speech is all that matters. Musk is not perfect by any means here but he is better than the rest. He is exporting the 1st amendment to us nations who don't get to experience such freedoms. Which is what Twitter should have been doing, instead of kowtowing to the likes of the German and Saudi govts among others...
replies(6): >>41415431 #>>41415520 #>>41415528 #>>41415655 #>>41415806 #>>41415996 #
1. dspillett ◴[01 Sep 24 10:46 UTC] No.41415806[source]▶
> Musk is not perfect by any means

Musk is not perfect by any means wrt free speech.

His version of being a free speech absolutist is that people who agree with him should absolutely have the right to free speech.

replies(1): >>41416260 #
2. bluescrn ◴[01 Sep 24 12:06 UTC] No.41416260[source]▶
> His version of being a free speech absolutist is that people who agree with him should absolutely have the right to free speech.

So he's merely an equal and opposite reaction to what the other tribe have been doing for ages?

He didn't fundamentally change Twitter. He bought a powerful propaganda tool/weapon and aimed it in the opposite direction.

(I suppose he's also using it as his own personal megaphone, whereas the previous owners would merely ensure that chosen voices were amplified/suppressed rather than using their own voices directly)

Not sure how we start to approach some sort of disarmament process when it comes to these propaganda weapons, though.

replies(1): >>41417839 #
3. dspillett ◴[01 Sep 24 15:45 UTC] No.41417839[source]▶
> So he's merely an equal and opposite reaction

> He bought a powerful propaganda tool/weapon and aimed it in the opposite direction.

I'd say not. I don't think twitter itself wasn't aimed directly in any direction before Musk, other than “away from where firing may cause twitter problems”. They operated from a position of cowardice rather than political bias.

Sometimes this was towards the right because there was a fairly centrist or centre-left¹ bias online, but it often very much wasn't. For a clear case of them not aiming at the right, look at them leaving Trump and many like him alone at a time when they were flagrantly going against twitter policies, but slapping them for that would have caused too much grief back at them. It may be a complete coincidence², but Musk first started getting really serious about taking over around the time twitter started cracking down on that group (having joked about it prior to that IIRC, though it did take over a full year for his first actual takeover bid to happen).

----

[1] These definitions are difficult. Often what America seems to see as centre-left or even actually moderate left, is things that many over this side of the big pond would see as more centrist.

[2] Though I strongly suspect not.

replies(1): >>41419907 #
4. mikrotikker ◴[01 Sep 24 20:04 UTC] No.41419907{3}[source]▶
You must have been on the good, non political side of Twitter. Or maybe you don't realize because you're weren't the target of Twitters unfair tactics
replies(1): >>41435336 #
5. dspillett ◴[03 Sep 24 14:30 UTC] No.41435336{4}[source]▶
Those unfair tactics, assuming I accept they existed⁰, were not twitter's by my understanding, but reactions to the whims (or perceived possible whims) of advertisers, or the bulk of users that advertisers were there to claim the eyeballs of.

I'll caveat this by saying I've never had a twitter account or any desire for one¹ meaning my views are those of an outsider and occasionally a passive reader – but from what I can see twitter acted from a position of cowardice² rather than any political machinations.

----

[0] One man's fair slapping of an arsehole, is another man's unfair restriction of speech.

[1] At first it was a daft novelty, then a novelty that had perhaps outstayed its welcome, then just a place far too full of people who thought twitter was a good idea, then the famous got hold of it and it became a tribal shit-show & soon after a political shit-show – all before Musk jumped in with both feet and a lot of other people's money.

[2] Hence not kicking Trump (and a few others close to him or relevant rhetoric) despite flagrant breaches of their stated policies, until such time as he was a lesser threat due to not getting a second term, and before that kicking people not because of any internal moral code but because of what advertisers might think.