Will Ranjan-Churchill

12+ years in, and still not sure what to do with Twitter. Tech Lead @EsmeeFairbairn; Trustee @SchSocEnt; Freelance WebDev; Other hats with other opinions.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Long day at Twitter HQ with eng team

Two significant problems mostly addressed:

1. Fanout service for Following feed was getting overloaded when I tweeted, resulting in up to 95% of my tweets not getting delivered at all. Following is now pulling from search (aka Earlybird). When Fanout crashed, it would also destroy anyone else’s tweets in queue.

2. Recommendation algorithm was using absolute block count, rather than percentile block count, causing accounts with many followers to be dumped, even if blocks were only 0.1% of followers. Also, it’s trivial to bot spam accounts with blocks.

[Will Ranjan-Churchill @willranjhill]

#Tech / #IT people, when was the last time you went to a conference (virtual or in person) that wasn't purely a series of sales talks?

[Will Ranjan-Churchill @willranjhill]

Question for #Chromebook users: is there a sensible way of pulling/pushing .md files from #GitHub and working on them locally/offline that doesn't involve the Linux environment on ChromeOS? (I'm working with a low-spec device that struggles)

[Will Ranjan-Churchill @willranjhill]

Twitter often sets a standard, is my point. And if the new standard becomes verified individual accounts, there's going to be some collateral damage.

$8 for a blue tick might not seem like the worst idea in the world. But I'm concerned about what's next.

[Will Ranjan-Churchill @willranjhill]

Throwing in my two cents on the 8 dollar thing. Cos I'm an idiot.

There's obviously the standard concerns associated with being able to buy your way into being "trusted", but I'm also worried about what happens further down the line...

[Will Ranjan-Churchill @willranjhill]

More than that, the way Twitter first handled things like blocking, muting, and other content moderation became something of a playbook for other platforms to follow.

[Will Ranjan-Churchill @willranjhill]

Oh, except to say that it reminded me of this report from @doteveryone, and that I would love to see where that 50% number is at now

https://t.co/rfVOuF2Spd

[Will Ranjan-Churchill @willranjhill]

Very interesting report launched today from @doteveryone. Among the findings: "Half (50%) believe it’s ‘part and parcel’ of being online that people will try to cheat or harm them in some way."

[Will Ranjan-Churchill @willranjhill]

A random thought dump on my commute home:

I've been thinking a lot recently about power dynamics. I work for a grant funder, so maybe that's natural, and maybe I'll talk about that at some point. But I've also been thinking more widely with my "#tech hat" on.

[Will Ranjan-Churchill @willranjhill]

Anyway, it's my stop, so I'll end the thought dump there.