How web bloat impacts users with slow devices

2024-03-16 08:00:00

In 2017, we looked at how web bloat affects users with slow connections. Even in the U.S., many users didn't have broadband speeds, making much of the web difficult to use. It's still the case that many users don't have broadband speeds, both inside and outside of the U.S. and that much of the modern web isn't usable for people with slow internet, but the exponential increase in bandwidth (Nielsen suggests this is 50% per year for high-end connections) has outpaced web bloat for typical sites, making this less of a problem than it was in 2017, although it's still a serious problem for people with poor connections.

CPU performance for web apps hasn't scaled nearly as quickly as bandwidth so, while more of the web is becoming accessible to people with low-end connections, more of the web is becoming inaccessible to people with low-end devices even if they have high-end connections. For example, if I try browsing a "modern" Discourse-powered forum on a Tecno Spark 8C, it sometimes crashes the browser. Between crashes, on measuring the performance, the responsiveness is significantly worse than browsing a BBS with an 8 MHz 286 and a 1200 baud modem. On my 1Gbps home internet connection, the 2.6 MB compressed payload size "necessary" to load message titles is relatively light. The over-the-wire payload size has "only" increased by 1000x, which is dwarfed by the increase in internet speeds. But the opposite is true when it comes to CPU speeds — for web browsing and forum loading performance, the 8-core (2 1.6 GHz Cortex-A75 / 6 1.6 GHz Cortex-A55) CPU can't handle Discourse. The CPU is something like 100000x faster than our 286. Perhaps a 1000000x faster device would be sufficient.

For anyone not familiar with the Tecno Spark 8C, today, a new Tecno Spark 8C, a quick search indicates that one can be hand for USD 50-60 in Nigeria and perhaps USD 100-110 in India. As a fraction of median household income, that's substantially more than a current generation iPhone in the U.S. today.

By worldwide standards, the Tecno Spark 8C isn't even close to being a low-end device, so we'll also look at performance on an Itel P32, which is a lower end device (though still far from the lowest-end device people are using today). Additionally, we'll look at performance with an M3 Max Macbook (14-core), an M1 Pro Macbook (8-core), and the M3 Max set to 10x throttling in Chrome dev tools. In order to give these devices every advantage, we'll be on fairly high-speed internet (1Gbps, with a WiFi router that's benchmarked as having lower latency under load than most of its peers). We'll look at some blogging platforms and micro-blogging platforms (this blog, Substack, Medium, Ghost, Hugo, Tumblr, Mastodon, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky, Patreon), forum platforms (Discourse, Reddit, Quora, vBulletin, XenForo, phpBB, and myBB), and platforms commonly used by small businesses (Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, and WordPress again).

In the table below, every row represents a website and every non-label column is a metric. After the website name column, we have the compressed size transferred over the wire (wire) and the raw, uncompressed, size (raw). Then we have, for each device, Largest Contentful Paint* (LCP*) and CPU usage on the main thread (CPU). Google's docs explain LCP as

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures when a user perceives that the largest content of a page is visible. The metric value for LCP represents the time duration between the user initiating the page load and the page rendering its primary content

LCP is a common optimization target because it's presented as one of the primary metrics in Google PageSpeed Insights, a "Core Web Vital" metric. There's an asterisk next to LCP as used in this document because, LCP as measured by Chrome is about painting a large fraction of the screen, as opposed to the definition above, which is about content. As sites have optimized for LCP, it's not uncommon to have a large paint (update) that's completely useless to the user, with the actual content of the page appearing well after the LCP. In cases where that happens, I've used the timestamp when useful content appears, not the LCP as defined by when a large but useless update occurs. The full details of the tests and why these metrics were chosen are discussed in an appendix.

Although CPU time isn't a "Core Web Vital", it's presented here because it's a simple metric that's highly correlated with my and other users' perception of usability on slow devices. See appendix for more detailed discussion on this. One reason CPU time works as a metric is that, if a page has great numbers for all other metrics but uses a ton of CPU time, the page is not going to be usable on a slow device. If it takes 100% CPU for 30 seconds, the page will be completely unusable for 30 seconds, and if it takes 50% CPU for 60 seconds, the page will be barely usable for 60 seconds, etc. Another reason it works is that, relative to commonly used metrics, it's hard to cheat on CPU time and make optimizations that significantly move the number without impacting user experience.

The color scheme in the table below is that, for sizes, more green = smaller / fast and more red = larger / slower. Extreme values are in black.

Site	Size		M3 Max		M1 Pro		M3/10		Tecno S8C		Itel P32
	wire	raw	LCP*	CPU	LCP*	CPU	LCP*	CPU	LCP*	CPU	LCP*	CPU
danluu.com	6kB	18kB	50ms	20ms	50ms	30ms	0.2s	0.3s	0.4s	0.3s	0.5s	0.5s
HN	11kB	50kB	0.1s	30ms	0.1s	30ms	0.3s	0.3s	0.5s	0.5s	0.7s	0.6s
MyBB	0.1MB	0.3MB	0.3s	0.1s	0.3s	0.1s	0.6s	0.6s	0.8s	0.8s	2.1s	1.9s
phpBB	0.4MB	0.9MB	0.3s	0.1s	0.4s	0.1s	0.7s	1.1s	1.7s	1.5s	4.1s	3.9s
WordPress	1.4MB	1.7MB	0.2s	60ms	0.2s	80ms	0.7s	0.7s	1s	1.5s	1.2s	2.5s
WordPress (old)	0.3MB	1.0MB	80ms	70ms	90ms	90ms	0.4s	0.9s	0.7s	1.7s	1.1s	1.9s
XenForo	0.3MB	1.0MB	0.4s	0.1s	0.6s	0.2s	1.4s	1.5s	1.5s	1.8s	FAIL	FAIL
Ghost	0.7MB	2.4MB	0.1s	0.2s	0.2s	0.2s	1.1s	2.2s	1s	2.4s	1.1s	3.5s
vBulletin	1.2MB	3.4MB	0.5s	0.2s	0.6s	0.3s	1.1s	2.9s	4.4s	4.8s	13s	16s
Squarespace	1.9MB	7.1MB	0.1s	0.4s	0.2s	0.4s	0.7s	3.6s	14s	5.1s	16s	19s
Mastodon	3.8MB	5.3MB	0.2s	0.3s	0.2s	0.4s	1.8s	4.7s	2.0s	7.6s	FAIL	FAIL
Tumblr	3.5MB	7.1MB	0.7s	0.6s	1.1s	0.7s	1.0s	7.0s	14s	7.9s	8.7s	8.7s
Quora	0.6MB	4.9MB	0.7s	1.2s	0.8s	1.3s	2.6s	8.7s	FAIL	FAIL	19s	29s
Bluesky	4.8MB	10MB	1.0s	0.4s	1.0s	0.5s	5.1s	6.0s	8.1s	8.3s	FAIL	FAIL
Wix	7.0MB	21MB	2.4s	1.1s	2.5s	1.2s	18s	11s	5.6s	10s	FAIL	FAIL
Substack	1.3MB	4.3MB	0.4s	0.5s	0.4s	0.5s	1.5s	4.9s	14s	14s	FAIL	FAIL
Threads	9.3MB	13MB	1.5s	0.5s	1.6s	0.7s	5.1s	6.1s	6.4s	16s	28s	66s
Twitter	4.7MB	11MB	2.6s	0.9s	2.7s	1.1s	5.6s	6.6s	12s	19s	24s	43s
Shopify	3.0MB	5.5MB	0.4s	0.2s	0.4s	0.3s	0.7s	2.3s	10s	26s	FAIL	FAIL
Discourse	2.6MB	10MB	1.1s	0.5s	1.5s	0.6s	6.5s	5.9s	15s	26s	FAIL	FAIL
Patreon	4.0MB	13MB	0.6s	1.0s	1.2s	1.2s	1.2s	14s	1.7s	31s	9.1s	45s
Medium	1.2MB	3.3MB	1.4s	0.7s	1.4s	1s	2s	11s	2.8s	33s	3.2s	63s
Reddit	1.7MB	5.4MB	0.9s	0.7s	0.9s	0.9s	6.2s	12s	1.2s	∞	FAIL	FAIL

At a first glance, the table seems about right, in that the sites that feel slow unless you have a super fast device show up as slow in the table (as in, max(LCP*,CPU)) is high on lower-end devices). When I polled folks about what platforms they thought would be fastest and slowest on our slow devices (Mastodon, Twitter, Threads), they generally correctly predicted that Wordpress and Ghost would be faster than Substack and Medium, and that Discourse would be much slower than old PHP forums like phpBB, XenForo, and vBulletin. I also pulled Google PageSpeed Insights (PSI) scores for pages (not shown) and the correlation isn't as strong with those numbers because a handful of sites have managed to optimize their PSI scores without actually speeding up their pages for users.

If you've never used a low-end device like this, the general experience is that many sites are unusable on the device and loading anything resource intensive (an app or a huge website) can cause crashes. Doing something too intense in a resource intensive app can also cause crashes. While reviews note that you can run PUBG and other 3D games with decent performance on a Tecno Spark 8C, this doesn't mean that the device is fast enough to read posts on modern text-centric social media platforms or modern text-centric web forums. While 40fps is achievable in PUBG, we can easily see less than 0.4fps when scrolling on these sites.

We can see from the table how many of the sites are unusable if you have a slow device. All of the pages with 10s+ CPU are a fairly bad experience even after the page loads. Scrolling is very jerky, frequently dropping to a few frames per second and sometimes well below. When we tap on any link, the delay is so long that we can't be sure if our tap actually worked. If we tap again, we can get the dreaded situation where the first tap registers, which then causes the second tap to do the wrong thing, but if we wait, we often end up waiting too long because the original tap didn't actually register (or it registered, but not where we thought it did). Although MyBB doesn't serve up a mobile site and is penalized by Google for not having a mobile friendly page, it's actually much more usable on these slow mobiles than all but the fastest sites because scrolling and tapping actually work.

Another thing we can see is how much variance there is in the relative performance on different devices. For example, comparing an M3/10 and a Tecno Spark 8C, for danluu.com and Ghost, an M3/10 gives a halfway decent approximation of the Tecno Spark 8C (although danluu.com loads much too quickly), but the Tecno Spark 8C is about three times slower (CPU) for Medium, Substack, and Twitter, roughly four times slower for Reddit and Discourse, and over an order of magnitude faster for Shopify. For Wix, the CPU approximation is about accurate, but our `Tecno Spark 8C is more than 3 times slower on LCP*. It's great that Chrome lets you conveniently simulate a slower device from the convenience of your computer, but just enabling Chrome's CPU throttling (or using any combination of out-of-the-box options that are available) gives fairly different results than we get on many real devices. The full reasons for this are beyond the scope of the post; for the purposes of this post, it's sufficient to note that slow pages are often super-linearly slow as devices get slower and that slowness on one page doesn't strongly predict slowness on another page.

If take a site-centric view instead of a device-centric view, another way to look at it is that sites like Discourse, Medium, and Reddit, don't use all that much CPU on our fast M3 and M1 computers, but they're among the slowest on our Tecno Spark 8C (Reddit's CPU is shown as ∞ because, no matter how long we wait with no interaction, Reddit uses ~90% CPU). Discourse also sometimes crashed the browser after interacting a bit or just waiting a while. For example, one time, the browser crashed after loading Discourse, scrolling twice, and then leaving the device still for a minute or two. For consistency's sake, this wasn't marked as FAIL in the table since the page did load but, realistically, having a page so resource intensive that the browser crashes is a significantly worse user experience than any of the FAIL cases in the table. When we looked at how web bloat impacts users with slow connections, we found that much of the web was unusable for people with slow connections and slow devices are no different.

Another pattern we can see is how the older sites are, in general, faster than the newer ones, with sites that (visually) look like they haven't been updated in a decade or two tending to be among the fastest. For example, MyBB, the least modernized and oldest looking forum is 3.6x / 5x faster (LCP* / CPU) than Discourse on the M3, but on the Tecno Spark 8C, the difference is 19x / 33x and, given the overall scaling, it seems safe to guess that the difference would be even larger on the Itel P32 if Discourse worked on such a cheap device.

Another example is Wordpress (old) vs. newer, trendier, blogging platforms like Medium and Substack. Wordpress (old) is is 17.5x / 10x faster (LCP* / CPU) than Medium and 5x / 7x faster (LCP* / CPU) faster than Substack on our M3 Max, and 4x / 19x and 20x / 8x faster, respectively, on our Tecno Spark 8C. Ghost is a notable exception to this, being a modern platform (launched a year after Medium) that's competitive with older platforms (modern Wordpress is also arguably an exception, but many folks would probably still consider that to be an old platform). Among forums, NodeBB also seems to be a bit of an exception (see appendix for details).

Sites that use modern techniques like partially loading the page and then dynamically loading the rest of it, such as Discourse, Reddit, and Substack, tend to be less usable than the scores in the table indicate. Although, in principle, you could build such a site in a simple way that works well with cheap devices but, in practice sites that use dynamic loading tend to be complex enough that the sites are extremely janky on low-end devices. It's generally difficult or impossible to scroll a predictable distance, which means that users will sometimes accidentally trigger more loading by scrolling too far, causing the page to lock up. Many pages actually remove the parts of the page you scrolled past as you scroll; all such pages are essentially unusable. Other basic web features, like page search, also generally stop working. Pages with this kind of dynamic loading can't rely on the simple and fast ctrl/command+F search and have to build their own search. How well this works varies (this used to work quite well in Google docs, but for the past few months or maybe a year, it takes so long to load that I have to deliberately wait after opening a doc to avoid triggering the browser's useless built in search; Discourse search has never really worked on slow devices or even not very fast but not particular slow devices).

In principle, these modern pages that burn a ton of CPU when loading could be doing pre-work that means that later interactions on the page are faster and cheaper than on the pages that do less up-front work (this is a common argument in favor of these kinds of pages), but that's not the case for pages tested, which are slower to load initially, slower on subsequent loads, and slower after they've loaded.

To understand why the theoretical idea that doing all this work up-front doesn't generally result in a faster experience later, this exchange between a distinguished engineer at Google and one of the founders of Discourse (and CEO at the time) is illustrative, in a discussion where the founder of Discourse says that you should test mobile sites on laptops with throttled bandwidth but not throttled CPU:

• Google: *you* also don't have slow 3G. These two settings go together. Empathy needs to extend beyond iPhone XS users in a tunnel.
• Discourse: Literally any phone of vintage iPhone 6 or greater is basically as fast as the "average" laptop. You have to understand how brutally bad Qualcomm is at their job. Look it up if you don't believe me.
• Google: I don't need to believe you. I know. This is well known by people who care. My point was that just like not everyone has a fast connection not everyone has a fast phone. Certainly the iPhone 6 is frequently very CPU bound on real world websites. But that isn't the point.
• Discourse: we've been trending towards infinite CPU speed for decades now (and we've been asymptotically there for ~5 years on desktop), what we are not and will never trend towards is infinite bandwidth. Optimize for the things that matter. and I have zero empathy for @qualcomm. Fuck Qualcomm, they're terrible at their jobs. I hope they go out of business and the ground their company existed on is plowed with salt so nothing can ever grow there again.
• Google: Mobile devices are not at all bandwidth constraint in most circumstances. They are latency constraint. Even the latest iPhone is CPU constraint before it is bandwidth constraint. If you do well on 4x slow down on a MBP things are pretty alright
• ...
• Google: Are 100% of users on iOS?
• Discourse: The influential users who spend money tend to be, I’ll tell you that ... Pointless to worry about cpu, it is effectively infinite already on iOS, and even with Qualcomm’s incompetence, will be within 4 more years on their embarrassing SoCs as well

When someone asks the founder of Discourse, "just wondering why you hate them", he responds with a link that cites the Kraken and Octane benchmarks from this Anandtech review, which have the Qualcomm chip at 74% and 85% of the performance of the then-current Apple chip, respectively.

The founder and then-CEO of Discourse considers Qualcomm's mobile performance embarrassing and finds this so offensive that he thinks Qualcomm engineers should all lose their jobs for delivering 74% to 85% of the performance of Apple. Apple has what I consider to be an all-time great performance team. Reasonable people could disagree on that, but one has to at least think of them as a world-class team. So, producing a product with 74% to 85% of an all-time-great team is considered an embarrassment worthy of losing your job.

There are two attitudes on display here which I see in a lot of software folks. First, that CPU speed is infinite and one shouldn't worry about CPU optimization. And second, that gigantic speedups from hardware should be expected and the only reason hardware engineers wouldn't achieve them is due to spectacular incompetence, so the slow software should be blamed on hardware engineers, not software engineers. Donald Knuth expressed a similar sentiment in

I might as well flame a bit about my personal unhappiness with the current trend toward multicore architecture. To me, it looks more or less like the hardware designers have run out of ideas, and that they’re trying to pass the blame for the future demise of Moore’s Law to the software writers by giving us machines that work faster only on a few key benchmarks! I won’t be surprised at all if the whole multiithreading idea turns out to be a flop, worse than the "Itanium" approach that was supposed to be so terrific—until it turned out that the wished-for compilers were basically impossible to write. Let me put it this way: During the past 50 years, I’ve written well over a thousand programs, many of which have substantial size. I can’t think of even five of those programs that would have been enhanced noticeably by parallelism or multithreading. Surely, for example, multiple processors are no help to TeX ... I know that important applications for parallelism exist—rendering graphics, breaking codes, scanning images, simulating physical and biological processes, etc. But all these applications require dedicated code and special-purpose techniques, which will need to be changed substantially every few years. Even if I knew enough about such methods to write about them in TAOCP, my time would be largely wasted, because soon there would be little reason for anybody to read those parts ... The machine I use today has dual processors. I get to use them both only when I’m running two independent jobs at the same time; that’s nice, but it happens only a few minutes every week.

In the case of Discourse, a hardware engineer is an embarrassment not deserving of a job if they can't hit 90% of the performance of an all-time-great performance team but, as a software engineer, delivering 3% the performance of a non-highly-optimized application like MyBB is no problem. In Knuth's case, hardware engineers gave programmers a 100x performance increase every decade for decades with little to no work on the part of programmers. The moment this slowed down and programmers had to adapt to take advantage of new hardware, hardware engineers were "all out of ideas", but learning a few "new" (1970s and 1980s era) ideas to take advantage of current hardware would be a waste of time. And we've previously discussed Alan Kay's claim that hardware engineers are "unsophisticated" and "uneducated" and aren't doing "real engineering" and how we'd get a 1000x speedup if we listened to Alan Kay's "sophisticated" ideas.

It's fairly common for programmers to expect that hardware will solve all their problems, and then, when that doesn't happen, pass the issue onto the user, explaining why the programmer needn't do anything to help the user. A question one might ask is how much performance improvement programmers have given us. There are cases of algorithmic improvements that result in massive speedups but, as we noted above, Discourse, the fastest growing forum software today, seems to have given us an approximately 1000000x slowdown in performance.

Another common attitude on display above is the idea that users who aren't wealthy don't matter. When asked if 100% of users are on iOS, the founder of Discourse says "The influential users who spend money tend to be, I’ll tell you that". We see the same attitude all over comments on Tonsky's JavaScript Bloat post, with people expressing cocktail-party sentiments like "Phone apps are hundreds of megs, why are we obsessing over web apps that are a few megs? Starving children in Africa can download Android apps but not web apps? Come on" and "surely no user of gitlab would be poor enough to have a slow device, let's be serious" (paraphrased for length).

But when we look at the size of apps that are downloaded in Africa, we see that people who aren't on high-end devices use apps like Facebook Lite (a couple megs) and commonly use apps that are a single digit to low double digit number of megabytes. There are multiple reasons app makers care about their app size. One is just the total storage available on the phone; if you watch real users install apps, they often have to delete and uninstall things to put a new app on, so the smaller size is both easier to to install and has a lower chance of being uninstalled when the user is looking for more space. Another is that, if you look at data on app size and usage (I don't know of any public data on this; please pass it along if you have something public I can reference), when large apps increase the size and memory usage, they get more crashes, which drives down user retention, growth, and engagement and, conversely, when they optimize their size and memory usage, they get fewer crashes and better user retention, growth, and engagement.

Alex Russell points out that iOS has 7% market share in India (a 1.4B person market) and 6% market share in Latin America (a 600M person market). Although the founder of Discourse says that these aren't "influential users" who matter, these are still real human beings. Alex further points out that, according to Windows telemetry, which covers the vast majority of desktop users, most laptop/desktop users are on low-end machines which are likely slower than a modern iPhone.

On the bit about no programmers having slow devices, I know plenty of people who are using hand-me-down devices that are old and slow. Many of them aren't even really poor; they just don't see why (for example) their kid needs a super fast device, and they don't understand how much of the modern web works poorly on slow devices. After all, the "slow" device can play 3d games and (with the right OS) compile codebases like Linux or Chromium, so why shouldn't the device be able to interact with a site like gitlab?

Contrary to the claim from the founder of Discourse that, within years, every Android user will be on some kind of super fast Android device, it's been six years since his comment and it's going to be at least a decade before almost everyone in the world who's using a phone has a high-speed device and this could easily take two decades or more. If you look up marketshare stats for Discourse, it's extremely successful; it appears to be the fastest growing forum software in the world by a large margin. The impact of having the fastest growing forum software in the world created by an organization whose then-leader was willing to state that he doesn't really care about users who aren't "influential users who spend money", who don't have access to "infinite CPU speed", is that a lot of forums are now inaccessible to people who don't have enough wealth to buy a device with effectively infinite CPU.

If the founder of Discourse were an anomaly, this wouldn't be too much of a problem, but he's just verbalizing the implicit assumptions a lot of programmers have, which is why we see that so many modern websites are unusable if you buy the income-adjusted equivalent of a new, current generation, iPhone in a low-income country.

Thanks to Yossi Kreinen, Fabian Giesen, John O'Nolan, Joseph Scott, Loren McIntyre, Daniel Filan, @acidshill, Alex Russell, Chris Adams, Tobias Marschner, Matt Stuchlik, @[email protected], Justin Blank, Andy Kelley, Julian Lam, Matthew Thomas, avarcat, @[email protected], William Ehlhardt, Philip R. Boulain, and David Turner for comments/corrections/discussion.

Appendix: gaming LCP

We noted above that we used LCP* and not LCP. This is because LCP basically measures when the largest change happens. When this metric was not deliberately gamed in ways that don't benefit the user, this was a great metric, but this metric has become less representative of the actual user experience as more people have gamed it. In the less blatant cases, people do small optimizations that improve LCP but barely improve or don't improve the actual user experience.

In the more blatant cases, developers will deliberately flash a very large change on the page as soon as possible, generally a loading screen that has no value to the user (actually negative value because doing this increases the total amount of work done and the total time it takes to load the page) and then they carefully avoid making any change large enough that any later change would get marked as the LCP.

For the same reason that VW didn't publicly discuss how it was gaming its emissions numbers, developers tend to shy away from discussing this kind of LCP optimization in public. An exception to this is Discourse, where they publicly announced this kind of LCP optimization, with comments from their devs and the then-CTO (now CEO), noting that their new "Discourse Splash" feature hugely reduced LCP for sites after they deployed it. And then developers ask why their LCP is high, the standard advice from Discourse developers is to keep elements smaller than the "Discourse Splash", so that the LCP timestamp is computed from this useless element that's thrown up to optimize LCP, as opposed to having the timestamp be computed from any actual element that's relevant to the user. Here's a typical, official, comment from Discourse

If your banner is larger than the element we use for the "Introducing Discourse Splash - A visual preloader displayed while site assets load" you gonna have a bad time for LCP.

The official response from Discourse is that you should make sure that your content doesn't trigger the LCP measurement and that, instead, our loading animation timestamp is what's used to compute LCP.

The sites with the most extreme ratio of LCP of useful content vs. Chrome's measured LCP were:

• Wix
  • M3: 6
  • M1: 12
  • Tecno Spark 8C: 3
  • Itel P32: N/A (FAIL)
• Discourse:
  • M3: 10
  • M1: 12
  • Tecno Spark 8C: 4
  • Itel P32: N/A (FAIL)

Although we haven't discussed the gaming of other metrics, it appears that some websites also game other metrics and "optimize" them even when this has no benefit to users.

Appendix: the selfish argument for optimizing sites

This will depend on the scale of the site as well as its performance, but when I've looked at this data for large companies I've worked for, improving site and app performance is worth a mind boggling amount of money. It's measurable in A/B tests and it's also among the interventions that has, in long-term holdbacks, a relatively large impact on growth and retention (many interventions test well but don't look as good long term, whereas performance improvements tend to look better long term).

Of course you can see this from the direct numbers, but you can also implicitly see this in a lot of ways when looking at the data. One angle is that (just for example), at Twitter, user-observed p99 latency was about 60s in India as well as a number of African countries (even excluding relatively wealthy ones like Egypt and South Africa) and also about 60s in the United States. Of course, across the entire population, people have faster devices and connections in the United States, but in every country, there are enough users that have slow devices or connections that the limiting factor is really user patience and not the underlying population-level distribution of devices and connections. Even if you don't care about users in Nigeria or India and only care about U.S. ad revenue, improving performance for low-end devices and connections has enough of impact that we could easily see the impact in global as well as U.S. revenue in A/B tests, especially in long-term holdbacks. And you also see the impact among users who have fast devices since a change that improves the latency for a user with a "low-end" device from 60s to 50s might improve the latency for a user with a high-end device from 5s to 4.5s, which has an impact on revenue, growth, and retention numbers as well.

For a variety of reasons that are beyond the scope of this doc, this kind of boring, quantifiable, growth and revenue driving work has been difficult to get funded at most large companies I've worked for relative to flash product work that ends up showing little to no impact in long-term holdbacks.

Appendix: designing for low performance devices

When using slow devices or any device with low bandwidth and/or poor connectivity, the best experiences, by far, are generally the ones that load a lot of content at once into a static page. If the images have proper width and height attributes and alt text, that's very helpful. Progressive images (as in progressive jpeg) isn't particularly helpful.

On a slow device with high bandwidth, any lightweight, static, page works well, and lightweight dynamic pages can work well if designed for performance. Heavy, dynamic, pages are doomed unless the page weight doesn't cause the page to be complex.

With low bandwidth and/or poor connectivity, lightweight pages are fine. With heavy pages, the best experience I've had is when I trigger a page load, go do something else, and then come back when it's done (or at least the HTML and CSS are done). I can then open each link I might want to read in a new tab, and then do something else while I wait for those to load.

A lot of the optimizations that modern websites do, such as partial loading that causes more loading when you scroll down the page, and the concomitant hijacking of search (because the browser's built in search is useless if the page isn't fully loaded) causes the interaction model that works to stop working and makes pages very painful to interact with.

Just for example, a number of people have noted that Substack performs poorly for them because it does partial page loads. Here's a video by @acidshill of what it looks like to load a Substack article and then scroll on an iPhone 8, where the post has a fairly fast LCP, but if you want to scroll past the header, you have to wait 6s for the next page to load, and then on scrolling again, you have to wait maybe another 1s to 2s:

As an example of the opposite approach, I tried loading some fairly large plain HTML pages, such as https://danluu.com/diseconomies-scale/ (0.1 MB wire / 0.4 MB raw) and https://danluu.com/threads-faq/ (0.4 MB wire / 1.1 MB raw) and these were still quite usable for me even on slow devices. 1.1 MB seems to be larger than optimal and breaking that into a few different pages would be better on a low-end devices, but a single page with 1.1 MB of text works much better than most modern sites on a slow device. While you can get into trouble with HTML pages that are so large that browsers can't really handle them, for pages with a normal amount of content, it generally isn't until you have complex CSS payloads or JS that the pages start causing problems for slow devices. Below, we test pages that are relatively simple, some of which have a fair amount of media (14 MB in one case) and find that these pages work ok, as long as they stay simple.

Chris Adams has also noted that blind users, using screen readers, often report that dynamic loading makes the experience much worse for them. Like dynamic loading to improve performance, while this can be done well, it's often either done badly or bundled with so much other complexity that the result is worse than a simple page.

@Qingcharles noted another accessibility issue — the (prison) parolees he works with are given "lifeline" phones, which are often very low end devices. From a quick search, in 2024, some people will get an iPhone 6 or an iPhone 8, but there are also plenty of devices that are lower end than an Itel P32, let alone a Tecno Spark 8C. They also get plans with highly limited data, and then when they run out, some people "can't fill out any forms for jobs, welfare, or navigate anywhere with Maps".

For sites that do up-front work and actually give you a decent experience on low end devices, Andy Kelley pointed out an example of a site that does up front work that seems to work ok on a slow device (although it would struggle on a very slow connection), the Zig standard library documentation:

I made the controversial decision to have it fetch all the source code up front and then do all the content rendering locally. In theory, this is CPU intensive but in practice... even those old phones have really fast CPUs!

On the Tecno Spark 8C, this uses 4.7s of CPU and, afterwards, is fairly responsive (relative to the device — of course an iPhone responds much more quickly. Taps cause links to load fairly quickly and scrolling also works fine (it's a little jerky, but almost nothing is really smooth on this device). This seems like the kind of thing people are referring to when they say that you can get better performance if you ship a heavy payload, but there aren't many examples of that which actually improve performance on low-end devices.

Appendix: articles on web performance issues

• 2015: Maciej Cegłowski: The Website Obesity Crisis
  • Size: 1.0 MB / 1.1 MB
  • Tecno Spark 8C: 0.9s / 1.4s
    • Scrolling a bit jerky, images take a little bit of time to appear if scrolling very quickly (jumping halfway down page from top), but delay is below what almost any user would perceive when scrolling a normal distance.
• 2015: Nate Berkopec: Page Weight Doesn't Matter
  • Size: 80 kB / 0.2 MB
  • Tecno Spark 8C: 0.8s / 0.7s
    • Does lazy loading, page downloads 650 kB / 1.8 MB if you scroll through the entire page, but scrolling is only a little jerky and the lazy loading doesn't cause delays. Probably the only page I've tried that does lazy loading in a way that makes the experience better and not worse on a slow device; I didn't test on a slow connection, where this would still make the experience worse.
  • Itel P32: 1.1s / 1s
    • Scrolling basically unusable; scroll extremely jerky and moves a random distance, often takes over 1s for text to render when scrolling to new text; can be much worse with images that are lazy loaded. Even though this is the best implementation of lazy loading I've seen in the wild, the Itel P32 still can't handle it.
• 2017: Dan Luu: How web bloat impacts users with slow connections
  • Size: 14 kB / 57 kB
  • Tecno Spark 8C: 0.5s / 0.3s
    • Scrolling and interaction work fine.
  • Itel P32:0.7s / 0.5 s
• 2017-2024+: Alex Russell: The Performance Inequality Gap (series)
  • Size: 82 kB / 0.1 MB
  • Tecno Spark 8C: 0.5s / 0.4s
    • Scrolling and interaction work fine.
  • Itel P32: 0.7s / 0.4s
    • Scrolling and interaction work fine.
• 2024: Nikita Prokopov (Tonsky): JavaScript Bloat in 2024
  • Size: 14 MB / 14 MB
  • Tecno Spark 8C: 0.8s / 1.9s
    • When scrolling, it takes a while for images to show up (500ms or so) and the scrolling isn't smooth, but it's not jerky enough that it's difficult to scroll to the right place.
  • Itel P32: 2.5s / 3s
    • Scrolling isn't smooth. Scrolling accurately is a bit difficult, but can generally scroll to where you want if very careful. Generally takes a bit more than 1s for new content to appear when you scroll a significant distance.
• 2024: Dan Luu: This post
  • Size: 25 kB / 74 kB
  • Tecno Spark 8C: 0.6s / 0.5s
    • Scrolling and interaction work fine.
  • Itel P32: 1.3s / 1.1s
    • Scrolling and interaction work fine, although I had to make a change for this to be the case — this doc originally had an embedded video, which the Itel P32 couldn't really handle.
      • Note that, while these numbers are worse than the numbers for "Page Weight Doesn't Matter", this page is usable after load, which that other page isn't beacuse it execute some kind of lazy loading that's too complex for this phone to handle in a reasonable timeframe.
        

Appendix: empathy for non-rich users

Something I've observed over time, as programming has become more prestigious and more lucrative, is that people have tended to come from wealthier backgrounds and have less exposure to people with different income levels. An example we've discussed before, is at a well-known, prestigious, startup that has a very left-leaning employee base, where everyone got rich, on a discussion about the covid stimulus checks, in a slack discussion, a well meaning progressive employee said that it was pointless because people would just use their stimulus checks to buy stock. This person had, apparently, never talked to any middle-class (let alone poor) person about where their money goes or looked at the data on who owns equity. And that's just looking at American wealth. When we look at world-wide wealth, the general level of understanding is much lower. People seem to really underestimate the dynamic range in wealth and income across the world. From having talked to quite a few people about this, a lot of people seem to have mental buckets for "poor by American standards" (buys stock with stimulus checks) and "poor by worldwide standards" (maybe doesn't even buy stock), but the range of poverty in the world dwarfs the range of poverty in America to an extent that not many wealthy programmers seem to realize.

Just for example, in this discussion how lucky I was (in terms of financial opportunities) that my parents made it to America, someone mentioned that it's not that big a deal because they had great financial opportunities in Poland. For one thing, with respect to the topic of the discussion, the probability that someone will end up with a high-paying programming job (senior staff eng at a high-paying tech company) or equivalent, I suspect that, when I was born, being born poor in the U.S. gives you better odds than being fairly well off in Poland, but I could believe the other case as well if presented with data. But if we're comparing Poland v. U.S. to Vietnam v. U.S., if I spend 15 seconds looking up rough wealth numbers for these countries in the year I was born, the GDP/capita ratio of U.S. : Poland was ~8:1, whereas it was ~50 : 1 for Poland : Vietnam. The difference in wealth between Poland and Vietnam was roughly the square of the difference between the U.S. and Poland, so Poland to Vietnam is roughly equivalent to Poland vs. some hypothetical country that's richer than the U.S. by the amount that the U.S. is richer than Poland. These aren't even remotely comparable, but a lot of people seem to have this mental model that there's "rich countries" and "not rich countries" and "not rich countries" are all roughly in the same bucket. GDP/capita isn't ideal, but it's easier to find than percentile income statistics; the quick search I did also turned up that annual income in Vietnam then was something like $200-$300 a year. Vietnam was also going through the tail end of a famine whose impacts are a bit difficult to determine because statistics here seem to be gamed, but if you believe the mortality rate statistics, the famine caused total overall mortality rate to jump to double the normal baseline¹.

Of course, at the time, the median person in a low-income country wouldn't have had a computer, let alone internet access. But, today it's fairly common for people in low-income countries to have devices. Many people either don't seem to realize this or don't understand what sorts of devices a lot of these folks use.

Appendix: comments from Fabian Giesen

On the Discourse founder's comments on iOS vs. Android marketshare, Fabian notes

In the US, according to the most recent data I could find (for 2023), iPhones have around 60% marketshare. In the EU, it's around 33%. This has knock-on effects. Not only do iOS users skew towards the wealthier end, they also skew towards the US.

There's some secondary effects from this too. For example, in the US, iMessage is very popular for group chats etc. and infamous for interoperating very poorly with Android devices in a way that makes the experience for Android users very annoying (almost certainly intentionally so).

In the EU, not least because Android is so much more prominent, iMessage is way less popular and anecdotally, even iPhone users among my acquaintances who would probably use iMessage in the US tend to use WhatsApp instead.

Point being, globally speaking, recent iOS + fast Internet is even more skewed towards a particular demographic than many app devs in the US seem to be aware.

And on the comment about mobile app vs. web app sizes, Fabian said:

One more note from experience: apps you install when you install them, and generally have some opportunity to hold off on updates while you're on a slow or metered connection (or just don't have data at all).

Back when I originally got my US phone, I had no US credit history and thus had to use prepaid plans. I still do because it's fine for what I actually use my phone for most of the time, but it does mean that when I travel to Germany once a year, I don't get data roaming at all. (Also, phone calls in Germany cost me $1.50 apiece, even though T-Mobile is the biggest mobile provider in Germany - though, of course, not T-Mobile US.)

Point being, I do get access to free and fast Wi-Fi at T-Mobile hotspots (e.g. major train stations, airports etc.) and on inter-city trains that have them, but I effectively don't have any data plan when in Germany at all.

This is completely fine with mobile phone apps that work offline and sync their data when they have a connection. But web apps are unusable while I'm not near a public Wi-Fi.

Likewise I'm fine sending an email over a slow metered connection via the Gmail app, but I for sure wouldn't use any web-mail client that needs to download a few MBs worth of zipped JS to do anything on a metered connection.

At least with native app downloads, I can prepare in advance and download them while I'm somewhere with good internet!

Another comment from Fabian (this time paraphrased since this was from a conversation), is that people will often justify being quantitatively hugely slower because there's a qualitative reason something should be slow. One example he gave was that screens often take a long time to sync their connection and this is justified because there are operations that have to be done that take time. For a long time, these operations would often take seconds. Recently, a lot of displays sync much more quickly because Nvidia specifies how long this can take for something to be "G-Sync" certified, so display makers actually do this in a reasonable amount of time now. While it's true that there are operations that have to be done that take time, there's no fundamental reason they should take as much time as they often used to. Another example he gave was on how someone was justifying how long it took to read thousands of files because the operation required a lot of syscalls and "syscalls are slow", which is a qualitatively true statement, but if you look at the actual cost of a syscall, in the case under discussion, the cost of a syscall was many orders of magnitude from being costly enough to be a reasonable explanation for why it took so long to read thousands of files.

On this topic, when people point out that a modern website is slow, someone will generally respond with the qualitative defense that the modern website has these great features, which the older website is lacking. And while it's true that (for example) Discourse has features that MyBB doesn't, it's hard to argue that its feature set justifies being 33x slower.

Appendix: experimental details

With the exception of danluu.com and, arguably, HN, for each site, I tried to find the "most default" experience. For example, for WordPress, this meant a demo blog with the current default theme, twentytwentyfour. In some cases, this may not be the most likely thing someone uses today, e.g., for Shopify, I looked at the first thing that theme they give you when you browse their themes, but I didn't attempt to find theme data to see what the most commonly used theme is. For this post, I wanted to do all of the data collection and analysis as a short project, something that takes less than a day, so there were a number of shortcuts like this, which will be described below. I don't think it's wrong to use the first-presented Shopify theme in a decent fraction of users will probably use the first-presente theme, but that is, of course, less representative than grabbing whatever the most common theme is and then also testing many different sites that use that theme to see how real-world performance varies when people modify the theme for their own use. If I worked for Shopify or wanted to do competitive analysis on behalf of a competitor, I would do that, but for a one-day project on how large websites impact users on low-end devices, the performance of Shopify demonstrated here seems ok. I actually did the initial work for this around when I ran these polls, back in February; I just didn't have time to really write this stuff up for a month.

For the tests on laptops, I tried to have the laptop at ~60% battery, not plugged in, and the laptop was idle for enough time to return to thermal equilibrium in a room at 20°C, so pages shouldn't be impacted by prior page loads or other prior work that was happening on the machine.

For the mobile tests, the phones were at ~100% charge and plugged in, and also previously at 100% charge so the phones didn't have any heating effect you can get from rapidly charging. As noted above, these tests were formed with 1Gbps WiFi. No other apps were running, the browser had no other tabs open, and the only apps that were installed on the device, so no additional background tasks should've been running other than whatever users are normally subject to by the device by default. A real user with the same device is going to see worse performance than we measured here in almost every circumstance except if running Chrome Dev Tools on a phone significantly degrades performance. I noticed that, on the Itel P32, scrolling was somewhat jerkier with Dev Tools running than when running normally but, since this was a one-day project, I didn't attempt to quantify this and if it impacts some sites much more than others. In absolute terms, the overhead can't be all that large because the fastest sites are still fairly fast with Dev Tools running, but if there's some kind of overhead that's super-linear in the amount of work the site does (possibly indirectly, if it causes some kind of resource exhaustion), then that could be a problem in measurements of some sites.

Sizes were all measured on mobile, so in cases where different assets are loaded on mobile vs. desktop, the we measured the mobile asset sizes. CPU was measured as CPU time on the main thread (I did also record time on other threads for sites that used other threads, but didn't use this number; if CPU were a metric people wanted to game, time on other threads would have to be accounted for to prevent sites from trying to offload as much work as possible to other threads, but this isn't currently an issue and time on main thread is more directly correlated to usability than sum of time across all threads, and the metric that would work for gaming is less legible with no upside for now).

For WiFi speeds, speed tests had the following numbers:

• M3 Max
  • Netflix (fast.com)
    • Download: 850 Mbps
    • Upload: 840 Mbps
    • Latency (unloaded / loaded): 3ms / 8ms
  • Ookla
    • Download: 900 Mbps
    • Upload: 840 Mbps
    • Latency (unloaded / download / upload): 3ms / 8ms / 13ms
• Tecno Spark 8C
  • Netflix (fast.com)
    • Download: 390 Mbps
    • Upload: 210 Mbps
    • Latency (unloaded / loaded): 2ms / 30ms
  • Oookla
    • Ookla web app fails, can't see results
• Itel P32
  • Netflix
    • Download: 44 Mbps
    • Upload: test fails to work (sends one chunk of data and then hangs, sending no more data)
    • Latency (unloaded / loaded): 4ms / 400ms
  • Okta
    • Download: 45 Mbps
    • Upload: test fails to work
    • Latency: test fails to display latency

One thing to note is that the Itel P32 doesn't really have the ability to use the bandwidth that it nominally has. Looking at the top Google reviews, none of them mention this. The first review reads

Performance-wise, the phone doesn’t lag. It is powered by the latest Android 8.1 (GO Edition) ... we have 8GB+1GB ROM and RAM, to run on a power horse of 1.3GHz quad-core processor for easy multi-tasking ... I’m impressed with the features on the P32, especially because of the price. I would recommend it for those who are always on the move. And for those who take battery life in smartphones has their number one priority, then P32 is your best bet.

The second review reads

Itel mobile is one of the leading Africa distributors ranking 3rd on a continental scale ... the light operating system acted up to our expectations with no sluggish performance on a 1GB RAM device ... fairly fast processing speeds ... the Itel P32 smartphone delivers the best performance beyond its capabilities ... at a whooping UGX 330,000 price tag, the Itel P32 is one of those amazing low-range like smartphones that deserve a mid-range flag for amazing features embedded in a single package.

The third review reads

"Much More Than Just a Budget Entry-Level Smartphone ... Our full review after 2 weeks of usage ... While switching between apps, and browsing through heavy web pages, the performance was optimal. There were few lags when multiple apps were running in the background, while playing games. However, the overall performance is average for maximum phone users, and is best for average users [screenshot of game] Even though the game was skipping some frames, and automatically dropped graphical details it was much faster if no other app was running on the phone.

Notes on sites:

• Wix
  • www.wix.com/website-template/view/html/3173?originUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wix.com%2Fwebsite%2Ftemplates%2Fhtml%2Fmost-popular&tpClick=view_button&esi=a30e7086-28db-4e2e-ba22-9d1ecfbb1250: this was the first entry when I clicked to get a theme
  • LCP was misleading on every device
  • On the Tecno Spark 8C, scrolling never really works. It's very jerky and this never settles down
  • On the Itel P32, the page fails non-deterministically (different errors on different loads); it can take quite a while to error out; it was 23s on the first run, with the CPU pegged for 28s
• Patreon
  • www.patreon.com/danluu: used my profile where possible
  • Scrolling on Patreon and finding old posts is so painful that I maintain my own index of my Patreon posts so that I can find my old posts without having to use Patreon. Although Patreon's numbers in the table don't look that bad in the table when you're on a fast laptop, that's just for the initial load. The performance as you scroll is bad enough that I don't think that, today, there exists a computer and internet connection that browse Patreon with decent performance.
• Threads
  • threads.net/danluu.danluu: used my profile where possible
  • On the Itel P32, this technically doesn't load correctly and could be marked as FAIL, but it's close enough that I counted it. The thing that's incorrect is that profile photos have a square box around then
    • However, as with the other heavy pages, interacting with the page doesn't really work and the page is unusable, but this appears to be for the standard performance reasons and not because the page failed to render
• Twitter
  • twitter.com/danluu: used my profile where possible
• Discourse
  • meta.discourse.org: this is what turned up when I searched for an official forum.
  • As discussed above, the LCP is highly gamed and basically meaningless. We linked to a post where the Discourse folks note that, on slow loads, they put a giant splash screen up at 2s to cap the LCP at 2s. Also notable is that, on loads that are faster than the 2s, the LCP is also highly gamed. For example, on the M3 Max with low-latency 1Gbps internet, the LCP was reported as 115ms, but the page loads actual content at 1.1s. This appears to use the same fundamental trick as "Discourse Splash", in that it paints a huge change onto the screen and then carefully loads smaller elements to avoid having the actual page content detected as the LCP.
  • On the Tecno Spark 8C, scrolling is unpredictable and can jump too far, triggering loading from infinite scroll, which hangs the page for 3s-10s. Also, the entire browser sometimes crashes if you just let the browser sit on this page for a while.
  • On the Itel P32, an error message is displayed after 7.5s
• Bluesky
  • bsky.app/profile/danluu.com
  • Displays a blank screen on the Itel P32
• Squarespace
  • cedar-fluid-demo.squarespace.com: this was the second theme that showed up when I clicked themes to get a theme; the first was one called "Bogart", but that was basically a "coming soon" single page screen with no content, so I used the second theme instead of the first one.
  • A lot of errors and warnings in the console with the Itel P32, but the page appears to load and work, although interacting with it is fairly slow and painful
  • LCP on the Tecno Spark 8C was significantly before the page content actually loaded
• Tumblr
  • www.tumblr.com/slatestarscratchpad: used this because I know this tumblr exists. I don't read a lot of tumblers (maybe three or four), and this one seemed like the closest thing to my blog that I know of on tumblr.
  • This page fails on the Itel P32, but doesn't FAIL. The console shows that the JavaScript errors out, but the page still works fine (I tried scrolling, clicking links, etc., and these all worked), so you can actually go to the post you want and read it. The JS error appears to have made this page load much more quickly than it other would have and also made interacting with the page after it loaded fairly zippy.
• Shopify
  • themes.shopify.com/themes/motion/styles/classic/preview?surface_detail=listing&surface_inter_position=1&surface_intra_position=1&surface_type=all: this was the first theme that showed up when I looked for themes
  • On the first M3/10 run, Chrome dev tools reported a nonsensical 697s of CPU time (the run completed in a normal amount of time, well under 697s or even 697/10s. This run was ignored when computing results.
  • On the Itel P32, the page load never completes and it just shows a flashing cursor-like image, which is deliberately loaded by the theme. On devices that load properly, the flashing cursor image is immediately covered up by another image, but that never happens here.
  • I wondered if it wasn't fair to use this example theme because there's some stuff on the page that lets you switch theme styles, so I checked out actual uses of the theme (the page that advertises the theme lists users of the theme). I tried the first two listed real examples and they were both much slower than this demo page.
• Reddit
  • reddit.com
  • Has an unusually low LCP* compared to how long it takes for the page to become usable. Although not measured in this test, I generally find the page slow and sort of unusable on Intel Macbooks which are, by historical standards, extremely fast computers (unless I use old.reddit.com)
• Mastodon
  • mastodon.social/@danluu: used my profile where possible
  • Fails to load on Itel P32, just gives you a blank screen. Due to how long things generally take on the Itel P32, it's not obvious for a while if the page is failing or if it's just slow
• Quora
  • www.quora.com/Ever-felt-like-giving-up-on-your-dreams-How-did-you-come-out-of-it: I tried googling for quora + the username of a metafilter user who I've heard is now prolific on Quora. Rather than giving their profile page, Google returned this page, which appears to have nothing to do with the user I searched for. So, this isn't comparable to the social media profiles, but getting a random irrelevant Quora result from Google is how I tend to interact with Quora, so I guess this is representative of my Quora usage.
  • On the Itel P32, the page stops executing scripts at some point and doesn't fully load. This causes it to fail to display properly. Interacting with the page doesn't really work either.
• Substack
  • Used thezvi.substack.com because I know Zvi has a substack and writes about similar topics.
• vBulletin:
  • forum.vbulletin.com: this is what turned up when I searched for an official forum.
• Medium
  • medium.com/swlh: I don't read anything on Medium, so I googled for programming blogs on Medium and this was the top hit. From looking at the theme, it doesn't appear to be unusually heavy or particularly customized for a Medium blog. Since it appears to be widely read and popular, it's more likely to be served from a CDN and than some of the other blogs here.
  • On a run that wasn't a benchmark reference run, on the Itel P32, I tried scrolling starting 35s after loading the page. The delay to scroll was 5s-8s and scrolling moved an unpredictable amount, making the page completely unusable. This wasn't marked as a FAIL in the table, but one could argue that this should be a FAIL since the page is unusable.
• Ghost
  • source.ghost.io because this is the current default Ghost theme and it was the first example I found
• Wordpress
  • 2024.wordpress.net because this is the current default wordpress theme and this was the first example of it I found
• XenForo
  • xenforo.com/community/: this is what turned up when I searched for an official forum
  • On the Itel P32, the layout is badly wrong and page content overlaps itself. There's no reasonable way to interact with the element you want because of this, and reading the text requires reading text that's been overprinted multiple times.
• Wordpress (old)
  • Used thezvi.wordpress.com because it has the same content as Zvi's substack, and happens to be on some old wordpress theme that used to be a very common choice
• phpBB
  • www.phpbb.com/community/index.php: this is what turned up when I searched for an official forum.
• MyBB
  • community.mybb.com: this is what turned up when I searched for an official forum.
  • Site doesn't serve up a mobile version. In general, I find the desktop version of sites to be significantly better than the mobile version when on a slow device, so this works quite well, although they're likely penalized by Google for this.
• HN
  • news.ycombinator.com
  • In principle, HN should be the slowest social media site or link aggregator because it's written in a custom Lisp that isn't highly optimized and the code was originally written with brevity and cleverness in mind, which generally gives you fairly poor performance. However, that's only poor relative to what you'd get if you were writing high-performance code, which is not a relevant point of comparison here.
• danluu.com
  • Self explanatory
  • This currently uses a bit less CPU than HN, but I expect this to eventually use more CPU as the main page keeps growing. At the moment, this page has 176 links to 168 articles vs. HN's 199 links to 30 articles but, barring an untimely demise, this page should eventually have more links than HN.
    • As noted above, I find that pagination for such small pages makes the browsing experience much worse on slow devices or with bad connections, so I don't want to "optimize" this by paginating it or, even worse, doing some kind of dynamic content loading on scroll.
• Woo Commerce
  • I originally measured Woo Commerce as well but, unlike the pages and platforms tested above, I didn't find that being fast or slow on the initial load was necessarily representative of subsequent performance of other action, so this wasn't included in the table because having this in the table is sort of asking for a comparison against Shopify. In particular, while the "most default" Woo theme I could find was significantly faster than the "most default" Shopify theme on initial load on a slow device, performance was multidimensional enough that it was easy to find realistic scenarios where Shopify was faster than Woo and vice versa on a slow device, which is quite different from what I saw with newer blogging platforms like Substack and Medium compared to older platforms like Wordpress, or a modern forum like Discourse versus the older PHP-based forums. A real comparison of shopping sites that have carts, checkout flows, etc., would require a better understanding of real-world usage of these sites than I was going to get in a single day.
• NodeBB
  • community.nodebb.org
  • This wasn't in my original tests and I only tried this out because one of the founders of NodeBB suggested it, saying "I am interested in seeing whether @[email protected] would fare better in your testing. We spent quite a bit of time over the years on making it wicked fast, and I personally feel it is a better representation of modern forum software than Discourse, at least on speed and initial payload."
  • I didn't do the full set of tests because I don't keep the Itel P32 charged (the battery is in rough shape and discharges quite quickly once unplugged, so I'd have to wait quite a while to get it into a charged state)
  • On the tests I did, it got 0.3s/0.4s on the M1 and 3.4s/7.2s on the Tecno Spark 8C. This is moderately slower than vBulletin and significantly slower than the faster php forums, but much faster than Discourse. If you need a "modern" forum for some reason and want to have your forum be usable by people who aren't, by global standards, rich, this seems like it could work.
  • Another notable thing, given that it's a "modern" site, is that interaction works fine after initial load; you can scroll and tap on things and this all basically works, nothing crashed, etc.
  • Sizes were 0.9 MB / 2.2 MB, so also fairly light for a "modern" site and possibly usable on a slow connection, although slow connections weren't tested here.

Another kind of testing would be to try to configure pages to look as similar as possible. I'd be interested in seeing that results for that if anyone does it, but that test would be much more time consuming. For one thing, it requires customizing each site. And for another, it requires deciding what sites should look like. If you test something danluu.com-like, every platform that lets you serve up something light straight out of a CDN, like Wordpress and Ghost, should score similarly, with the score being dependent on the CDN and the CDN cache hit rate. Sites like Medium and Substack, which have relatively little customizability would score pretty much as they do here. Realistically, from looking at what sites exist, most users will create sites that are slower than the "most default" themes for Wordpress and Ghost, although it's plausible that readers of this blog would, on average, do the opposite, so you'd probably want to test a variety of different site styles.

Appendix: this site vs. sites that don't work on slow devices or slow connections

Just as an aside, something I've found funny for a long time is that I get quite a bit of hate mail about the styling on this page (and a similar volume of appreciation mail). By hate mail, I don't mean polite suggestions to change things, I mean the equivalent of road rage, but for web browsing; web rage. I know people who run sites that are complex enough that they're unusable by a significant fraction of people in the world. How come people are so incensed about the styling of this site and, proportionally, basically don't care at all that the web is unusable for so many people?

Another funny thing here is that the people who appreciate the styling generally appreciate that the site doesn't override any kind of default styling, letting you make the width exactly what you want (by setting your window size how you want it) and it also doesn't override any kind of default styling you apply to sites. The people who are really insistent about this want everyone to have some width limit they prefer, some font they prefer, etc., but it's always framed in a way as if they don't want it, it's really for the benefit of people at large even though accommodating the preferences of the web ragers would directly oppose the preferences of people who prefer (just for example) to be able to adjust the text width by adjusting their window width.

Until I pointed this out tens of times, this iteration would usually start with web ragers telling me that "studies show" that narrower text width is objectively better, but on reading every study that exists on the topic that I could find, I didn't find this to be the case. Moreover, on asking for citations, it's clear that people saying this generally hadn't read any studies on this at all and would sometimes hastily send me a study that they did not seem to have read. When I'd point this out, people would then change their argument to how studies can't really describe the issue (odd that they'd cite studies in the first place), although one person cited a book to me (which I read and they, apparently, had not since it also didn't support their argument) and then move to how this is what everyone wants, even though that's clearly not the case, both from the comments I've gotten as well as the data I have from when I made the change.

Web ragers who have this line of reasoning generally can't seem to absorb the information that their preferences are not universal and will insist that they regardless of what people say they like, which I find fairly interesting. On the data, when I switched from Octopress styling (at the time, the most popular styling for programming bloggers) to the current styling, I got what appeared to be a causal increase in traffic and engagement, so it appears that not only do people who write me appreciation mail about the styling like the styling, the overall feeling of people who don't write to me appears to be that the site is fine and apparently more appealing than standard programmer blog styling. When I've noted this, people tend to become become further invested in the idea that their preferences are universal and that people who think they have other preferences are wrong and reply with total nonsense.

For me, two questions I'm curious about are why do people feel the need to fabricate evidence on this topic (referring to studies when they haven't read any, googling for studies and then linking to one that says the opposite of what they claim it says, presumably because they didn't really read it, etc.) in order to claim that there are "objective" reasons their preferences are universal or correct, and why are people so much more incensed by this than by the global accessibility problems caused by typical web design? On the latter, I suspect if you polled people with an abstract survey, they would rate global accessibility to be a larger problem, but by revealed preference both in terms of what people create as well as what irritates them enough to send hate mail, we can see that having fully-adjustable line width and not capping line width at their preferred length is important to do something about whereas global accessibility is not. As noted above, people who run sites that aren't accessible due to performance problems generally get little to no hate mail about this. And when I use a default Octopress install, I got zero hate mail about this. Fewer people read my site at the time, but my traffic volume hasn't increased by a huge amount since then and the amount of hate mail I get about my site design has gone from zero to a fair amount, an infinitely higher ratio than the increase in traffic.

To be clear, I certainly wouldn't claim that the design on this site is optimal. I just removed the CSS from the most popular blogging platform for programmers at the time because that CSS seemed objectively bad for people with low-end connections and, as a side effect, got more traffic and engagement overall, not just from locations where people tend to have lower end connections and devices. No doubt a designer who cares about users on low-end connections and devices could do better, but there's something quite odd about both the untruthfulness and the vitriol of comments on this.

Retrospective Thoughts on BitC

2024-02-24 08:00:00

This is an archive of the BitC retrospective by Jonathan Shapiro that seems to have disappeared from the internet

Jonathan S. Shapiro shap at eros-os.org
Fri Mar 23 15:06:41 PDT 2012

By now it will be obvious to everyone that I have stopped work on BitC. An explanation of why seems long overdue.

One answer is that work on Coyotos stopped when I joined Microsoft, and the work that I am focused on now doesn't really require (or seem to benefit from) BitC. As we all know, there is only so much time to go around in our lives. But that alone wouldn't have stopped me entirely.

A second answer is that BitC isn't going to work in its current form. I had hit a short list of issues that required a complete re-design of the language and type system followed by a ground-up new implementation. Experience with the first implementation suggested that this would take quite a while, and it was simply more than I could afford to take on without external support and funding. Programming language work is not easy to fund.

But the third answer may of greatest interest, which is that I no longer believe that type classes "work" in their current form from the standpoint of language design. That's the only important science lesson here.

In the large, there were four sticking points for the current design:

1. The compilation model.
2. The insufficiency of the current type system w.r.t. by-reference and reference types.
3. The absence of some form of inheritance.
4. The instance coherence problem.

The first two issues are in my opinion solvable, thought the second requires a nearly complete re-implementation of the compiler. The last (instance coherence) does not appear to admit any general solution, and it raises conceptual concerns about the use of type classes for method overload in my mind. It's sufficiently important that I'm going to deal with the first three topics here and take up the last as a separate note.

Inheritance is something that people on the BitC list might (and sometimes have) argue about strongly. So a few brief words on the subject may be relevant.

Prefacing Comments on Objects, Inheritance, and Purity

BitC was initially designed as an [imperative] functional language because of our focus on software verification. Specification of the typing and semantics of functional languages is an area that has a lot of people working on it. We (as a field) kind of know how to do it, and it was an area where our group at Hopkins didn't know very much when we started. Software verification is a known-hard problem, doing it over an imperative language was already a challenge, and this didn't seem like a good place for a group of novice language researchers to buck the current trends in the field. Better, it seemed, to choose our battles. We knew that there were interactions between inheritance and inference, and it appeared that type classes with clever compilation could achieve much of the same operational results. I therefore decided early not to include inheritance in the language.

To me, as a programmer, the removal of inheritance and objects was a very reluctant decision, because it sacrificed any possibility of transcoding the large body of existing C++ code into a safer language. And as it turns out, you can't really remove the underlying semantic challenges from a successful systems language. A systems language requires some mechanism for existential encapsulation. The mechanism which embodies that encapsulation isn't really the issue; once you introduce that sort of encapsulation, you bring into play most of the verification issues that objects with subtyping bring into play, and once you do that, you might as well gain the benefit of objects. The remaining issue, in essence, is the modeling of the Self type, and for a range of reasons it's fairly essential to have a Self type in a systems language once you introduce encapsulation. So you end up pushed in to an object type system at some point in any case. With the benefit of eight years of hindsight, I can now say that this is perfectly obvious!

I'm strongly of the opinion that multiple inheritance is a mess. The argument pro or con about single inheritance still seems to me to be largely a matter of religion. Inheritance and virtual methods certainly aren't the only way to do encapsulation, and they may or may not be the best primitive mechanism. I have always been more interested in getting a large body of software into a safe, high-performance language than I am in innovating in this area of language design. If transcoding current code is any sort of goal, we need something very similar to inheritance.

The last reason we left objects out of BitC initially was purity. I wanted to preserve a powerful, pure subset language - again to ease verification. The object languages that I knew about at the time were heavily stateful, and I couldn't envision how to do a non-imperative object-oriented language. Actually, I'm still not sure I can see how to do that practically for the kinds of applications that are of interest for BitC. But as our faith in the value of verification declined, my personal willingness to remain restricted by purity for the sake of verification decayed quickly.

The other argument for a pure subset language has to do with advancing concurrency, but as I really started to dig in to concurrency support in BitC, I came increasingly to the view that this approach to concurrency isn't a good match for the type of concurrent problems that people are actually trying to solve, and that the needs and uses for non-mutable state in practice are a lot more nuanced than the pure programming approach can address. Pure subprograms clearly play an important role, but they aren't enough.

And I still don't believe in monads. :-)

Compilation Model

One of the objectives for BitC was to obtain acceptable performance under a conventional, static separate compilation scheme. It may be short-sighted on my part, but complex optimizations at run-time make me very nervous from the standpoint of robustness and assurance. I understand that bytecode virtual machines today do very aggressive optimizations with considerable success, but there are a number of concerns with this:

• For a robust language, we want to minimize the size and complexity of the code that is exempted from type checking and [eventual] verification. Run-time code is excepted in this fashion. The garbage collector taken alone is already large enough to justify assurance concerns. Adding a large and complex optimizer to the pile drags the credibility of the assurance story down immeasurably.
• Run-time optimization has very negative consequences for startup times
• especially in the context of transaction processing. Lots of hard data on this from IBM (in DB/2) and others. It is one of the reasons that "Java in the database" never took hold. As the frequency of process and component instantiation in a system rises, startup delays become more and more of a concern. Robust systems don't recycle subsystems.
• Run-time optimization adds a huge amount of space overhead to the run-time environment of the application. While the code of the run-time compiler can be shared, the state of the run-time compiler cannot, and there is quite a lot of that state.
• Run-time optimization - especially when it is done "on demand" - introduces both variance and unpredictability into performance numbers. For some of the applications that are of interest to me, I need "steady state" performance. If the code is getting optimized on the fly such that it improves by even a modest constant factor, real-time scheduling starts to be a very puzzling challenge.
• Code that is produced by a run-time optimizer is difficult to share across address spaces, though this probably isn't solved very well by * other* compilation approaches models either.
• If run-time optimization is present, applications will come to rely on it for performance. That is: for social reasons, "optional" run-time optimization tends to quickly become required.

To be clear, I'm not opposed to continuous compilation. I actually think it's a good idea, and I think that there are some fairly compelling use-cases. I do think that the run-time optimizer should be implemented in a strongly typed, safe language. I also think that it took an awfully long time for the hotspot technology to stabilize, and that needs to be taken as a cautionary tale. It's also likely that many of the problems/concerns that I have enumerated can be solved - but probably not * soon*. For the applications that are most important to me, the concerns about assurance are primary. So from a language design standpoint, I'm delighted to exploit continuous compilation, but I don't want to design a language that requires continuous compilation in order to achieve reasonable baseline performance.

The optimizer complexity issue, of course, can be raised just as seriously for conventional compilers. You are going to optimize somewhere. But my experience with dynamic translation tells me that it's a lot easier to do (and to reason about) one thing at a time. Once we have a high-confidence optimizer in a safe language, then it may make sense to talk about integrating it into the run-time in a high-confidence system. Until then, separation of concerns should be the watch-word of the day.

Now strictly speaking, it should be said that run-time compilation actually isn't necessary for BitC, or for any other bytecode language. Run-time compilation doesn't become necessary until you combine run-time loading with compiler-abstracted representations (see below) and allow types having abstracted representation to appear in the signatures of run-time loaded libraries. Until then it is possible to maintain a proper phase separation between code generation and execution. Read on - I'll explain some of that below.

In any case, I knew going in that strongly abstracted types would raise concerns on this issue, and I initially adopted the following view:

• Things like kernels can be whole-program compiled. This effectively eliminates the run-time optimizer requirement.
• Things like critical system components want to be statically linked anyway, so they can also be dealt with as whole-program compilation problems.
• For everything else, I hoped to adopt a kind of "template expansion" approach to run-time compilation. This wouldn't undertake the full complexity of an optimizer; it would merely extend run-time linking and loading to incorporate span and offset resolution. It's still a lot of code, but it's not horribly complex code, and it's the kind of thing that lends itself to rigorous - or even formal - specification.

It took several years for me to realize that the template expansion idea wasn't going to produce acceptable baseline performance. The problem lies in the interaction between abstract types, operator overloading, and inlining.

Compiler-Abstracted Representations vs. Optimization

Types have representations. This sometimes seems to make certain members of the PL community a bit uncomfortable. A thing to be held at arms length. Very much like a zip-lock bag full of dog poo (insert cartoon here). From the perspective of a systems person, I regret to report that where the bits are placed, how big they are, and their assemblage actually does matter. If you happen to be a dog owner, you'll note that the "bits as dog poo" analogy is holding up well here. It seems to be the lot of us systems people to wade daily through the plumbing of computational systems, so perhaps that shouldn't be a surprise. Ahem.

In any case, the PL community set representation issues aside in order to study type issues first. I don't think that pragmatics was forgotten, but I think it's fair to say that representation issues are not a focus in current, mainstream PL research. There is even a school of thought that views representation as a fairly yucky matter that should be handled in the compiler "by magic", and that imperative operations should be handled that way too. For systems code that approach doesn't work, because a lot of the representations and layouts we need to deal with are dictated to us by the hardware.

In any case, types do have representations, and knowledge of those representations is utterly essential for even the simplest compiler optimizations. So we need to be a bit careful not to abstract types* too * successfully, lest we manage to break the compilation model.

In C, the "+" operator is primitive, and the compiler can always select the appropriate opcode directly. Similarly for other "core" arithmetic operations. Now try a thought experiment: suppose we take every use of such core operations in a program and replace each one with a functionally equivalent procedure call to a runtime-implemented intrinsic. You only have to do this for user operations - addition introduced by the compiler to perform things like address arithmetic is always done on concrete types, so those can still be generated efficiently. But even though it is only done for user operations, this would clearly harm the performance of the program quite a lot. You can recover that performance with a run-time optimizer, but it's complicated.

In C++, the "+" operator can be overloaded. But (1) the bindings for primitive types cannot be replaced, (2) we know, statically, what the bindings and representations are for the other types, and (3) we can control, by means of inlining, which of those operations entail a procedure call at run time. I'm not trying to suggest that we want to be forced to control that manually. The key point is that the compiler has enough visibility into the implementation of the operation that it is possible to inline the primitive operators (and many others) at static compile time.

Why is this possible in C++, but not in BitC?

In C++, the instantiation of an abstract type (a template) occurs in an environment where complete knowledge of the representations involved is visible to the compiler. That information may not all be in scope to the programmer, but the compiler can chase across the scopes, find all of the pieces, assemble them together, and understand their shapes. This is what induces the "explicit instantiation" model of C++. It also causes a lot of "internal" type declarations and implementation code to migrate into header files, which tends to constrain the use of templates and increase the number of header file lines processed for each compilation unit - we measured this at one point on a very early (pre templates) C++ product and found that we processed more than 150 header lines for each "source" line. The ratio has grown since then by at least a factor of ten, and (because of templates) quite likely 20.

It's all rather a pain in the ass, but it's what makes static-compile-time template expansion possible. From the compiler perspective, the types involved (and more importantly, the representations) aren't abstracted at all. In BitC, both of these things are abstracted at static compile time. It isn't until link time that all of the representations are in hand.

Now as I said above, we can imagine extending the linkage model to deal with this. All of that header file information is supplied to deal with * representation* issues, not type checking. Representation, in the end, comes down to sizes, alignments, and offsets. Even if we don't know the concrete values, we do know that all of those are compile-time constants, and that the results we need to compute at compile time are entirely formed by sums and multiples of these constants. We could imagine dealing with these as opaque constants at static compile time, and filling in the blanks at link time. Which is more or less what I had in mind by link-time template expansion. Conceptually: leave all the offsets and sizes "blank", and rely on the linker to fill them in, much in the way that it handles relocation.

The problem with this approach is that it removes key information that is needed for optimization and registerization, and it doesn't support inlining. In BitC, we can and do extend this kind of instantiation all the way down to the primitive operators! And perhaps more importantly, to primitive accessors and mutators. The reason is that we want to be able to write expressions like "a + b" and say "that expression is well-typed provided there is an appropriate resolution for +:('a,'a)->'a". Which is a fine way to type the operation, but it leaves the representation of 'a fully abstracted. Which means that we cannot see when they are primitive types. Which means that we are exactly (or all too often, in any case) left in the position of generating all user-originated "+" operations as procedure calls. Now surprisingly, that's actually not the end of the world. We can imagine inventing some form of "high-level assembler" that our static code generator knows how to translate into machine code. If the static code generator does this, the run-time loader can be handed responsibility for emitting procedure calls, and can substitute intrinsic calls at appropriate points. Which would cause us to lose code sharing, but that might be tolerable on non-embedded targets.

Unfortunately, this kind of high-level assembler has some fairly nasty implications for optimization: First, we no longer have any idea what the * cost* of the "+" operator is for optimization purposes. We don't know how many cycles that particular use of + will take, but more importantly, we don't know how many bytes of code it will emit. And without that information there is a very long list of optimization decisions that we can no longer make at static compile time. Second, we no longer have enough information at static code generation time to perform a long list of basic register and storage optimizations, because we don't know which procedure calls are actually going to use registers.

That creaking and groaning noise that you are hearing is the run-time code generator gaining weight and losing reliability as it grows. While the impact of this mechanism actually wouldn't be as bad as I am sketching - because a lot of user types aren't abstract - the complexity of the mechanism really is as bad as I am proposing. In effect we end up deferring code generation and optimization to link time. That's an idea that goes back (at least) to David Wall's work on link time register optimization in the mid-1980s. It's been explored in many variants since then. It's a compelling idea, but it has pros and cons.

What is going on here is that types in BitC are too successfully abstracted for static compilation. The result is a rather large bag of poo, so perhaps the PL people are on to something.:-)

Two Solutions

• The most obvious solution - adopted by C++ - is to redesign the language so that representation issues are not hidden from the compiler. That's actually a solution that is worth considering. The problem in C++ isn't so much the number of header file lines per source line as it is the fact that the C preprocessor requires us to process those lines de novo for each compilation unit. BitC lacks (intentionally) anything comparable to the C preprocessor.
• The other possibility is to shift to what might be labeled "install time compilation". Ship some form of byte code, and do a static compilation at install time. This gets you back all of the code sharing and optimization that you might reasonably have expected from the classical compilation approach, it opens up some interesting design point options from a systems perspective, and (with care) it can be retrofitted to existing systems. There are platforms today (notably cell phones) where we basically do this already.

The design point that you don't want to cross here is dynamic loading where the loaded interface carries a type with an abstracted representation. At that point you are effectively committing yourself to run-time code generation, though I do have some ideas on how to mitigate that.

Conclusion Concerning Compilation Model

If static, separate compilation is a requirement, it becomes necessary for the compiler to see into the source code across module boundaries whenever an abstract type is used. That is: any procedure having abstract type must have an exposed source-level implementation.

The practical alternative is a high-level intermediate form coupled with install-time or run-time code generation. That is certainly feasible, but it's more that I felt I could undertake.

That's all manageable and doable. Unfortunately, it isn't the path we had taken on, so it basically meant starting over.

Insufficiency of the Type System

At a certain point we had enough of BitC working to start building library code. It may not surprise you that the first thing we set out to do in the library was IO. We found that we couldn't handle typed input within the type system. Why not?

Even if you are prepared to do dynamic allocation within the IO library, there is a level of abstraction at which you need to implement an operation that amounts to "inputStream.read(someObject: ByRef mutable 'a)" There are a couple of variations on this, but the point is that you want the ability at some point to move the incoming bytes into previously allocated storage. So far so good.

Unfortunately, in an effort to limit creeping featurism in the type system, I had declared (unwisely, as it turned out) that the only place we needed to deal with ByRef types was at parameters. Swaroop took this statement a bit more literally than I intended. He noticed that if this is really the only place where ByRef needs to be handled, then you can internally treat "ByRef 'a" as 'a, merely keeping a marker on the parameter's identifier record to indicate that an extra dereference is required at code generation time. Which is actually quite clever, except that it doesn't extend well to signature matching between type classes and their instances. Since the argument type for read is ByRef 'a, InputStream is such a type class.

So now we were faced with a couple of issues. The first was that we needed to make ByRef 'a a first-class type within the compiler so that we could unify it, and the second was that we needed to deal with the implicit coercion issues that this would entail. That is: conversion back and forth between ByRef 'a and 'a at copy boundaries. The coercion part wasn't so bad; ByRef is never inferred, and the type coercions associated with ByRef happen in exactly the same places that const/mutable coercions happen. We already had a cleanly isolated place in the type checker to deal with that.

But even if ByRef isn't inferred, it can propagate through the code by unification. And that causes safety violations! The fact that ByRef was syntactically restricted to appear only at parameters had the (intentional) consequence of ensuring that safety restrictions associated with the lifespan of references into the stack were honored - that was why I had originally imposed the restriction that ByRef could appear only at parameters. Once the ByRef type can unify, the syntactic restriction no longer guarantees the enforcement of the lifespan restriction. To see why, consider what happens in:

  define byrefID(x:ByRef 'a) { return x; }

Something that is supposed to be a downward-only reference ends up getting returned up the stack. Swaroop's solution was clever, in part, because it silently prevented this propagation problem. In some sense, his implementation doesn't really treat ByRef as a type, so it can't propagate. But *because *he didn't treat it as a type, we also couldn't do the necessary matching check between instances and type classes.

It turns out that being able to do this is useful. The essential requirement of an abstract mutable "property" (in the C# sense) is that we have the ability within the language to construct a function that returns the location of the thing to be mutated. That location will often be on the stack, so returning the location is exactly like the example above. The "ByRef only at parameters" restriction is actually very conservative, and we knew that it was preventing certain kinds of things that we eventually wanted to do. We had a vague notion that we would come back and fix that at a later time by introducing region types.

As it turned out, "later" had to be "now", because region types are the right way to re-instate lifetime safety when ByRef types become first class. But adding region types presented two problems (which is why we had hoped to defer them):

• Adding region types meant rewriting the type checker and re-verifying the soundness and completeness of the inference algorithm, and
• It wasn't just a re-write. Regions introduce subtyping. Subtyping and polymorphism don't get along, so we would need to go back and do a lot of study.

Region polymorphism with region subtyping had certainly been done before, but we were looking at subtyping in another case too (below). That was pushing us toward a kinding system and a different type system.

So to fix the ByRef problem, we very nearly needed to re-design both the type system and the compiler from scratch. Given the accumulation of cruft in the compiler, that might have been a good thing in any case, but Swaroop was now full-time at Microsoft, and I didn't have the time or the resources to tackle this by myself.

Conclusion Concerning the Type System

In retrospect, it's hard to imagine a strongly typed imperative language that doesn't type locations in a first-class way. If the language simultaneously supports explicit unboxing, it is effectively forced to deal with location lifespan and escape issues, which makes memory region typing of some form almost unavoidable.

For this reason alone, even if for no other, the type system of an imperative language with unboxing must incorporate some form of subtyping. To ensure termination, this places some constraints on the use of type inference. On the bright side, once you introduce subtyping you are able to do quite a number of useful things in the language that are hard to do without it.

Inheritance and Encapsulation

Our first run-in with inheritance actually showed up in the compiler itself. In spite of our best efforts, the C++ implementation of the BitC compiler had not entirely avoided inheritance, so it didn't have a direct translation into BitC. And even if we changed the code of the compiler, there are a large number of third-party libraries that we would like to be able to transcode. A good many of those rely on [single] inheritance. Without having at least some form of interface (type) inheritance, We can't really even do a good job interfacing to those libraries as foreign objects.

The compiler aside, we also needed a mechanism for encapsulation. I had been playing with "capsules", but it soon became clear that capsules were really a degenerate form of subclassing, and that trying to duck that issue wasn't going to get me anywhere.

I could nearly imagine getting what I needed by adding "ThisType" and inherited interfaces. But the combination of those two features introduces subtyping. In fact, the combination is equivalent (from a type system perspective) to single-inheritance subclassing.

And the more I stared at interfaces, the more I started to ask myself why an interface wasn't just a type class. That brought me up against the instance coherence problem from a new direction, which was already making my head hurt. It also brought me to the realization that Interfaces work, in part, because they are always parameterized over a single type (the ThisType) - once you know that one, the bindings for all of the others are determined by type constructors or by explicit specification.

And introducing SelfType was an even bigger issue than introducing subtypes. It means moving out of System F<: entirely, and into the object type system of Cardelli et al. That wasn't just a matter of re-implementing the type checker to support a variant of the type system we already had. It meant re-formalizing the type system entirely, and learning how to think in a different model.

Doable, but time not within the framework or the compiler that we had built. At this point, I decided that I needed to start over. We had learned a lot from the various parts of the BitC effort, but sometimes you have to take a step back before you can take more steps forward.

Instance Coherence and Operator Overloading

BitC largely borrows its type classes from Haskell. Type classes aren't just a basis for type qualifiers; they provide the mechanism for *ad hoc*polymorphism. A feature which, language purists notwithstanding, real languages actually do need.

The problem is that there can be multiple type class instances for a given type class at a given type. So it is possible to end up with a function like:

define f(x : 'x) {
  ...
  a:int32 + b  // typing fully resolved at static compile time
  return x + x  // typing not resolvable until instantiation
}

Problem: we don't know which instance of "+" to use when 'x instantiates to int32. In order for "+" to be meaningful in a+b, we need a static-compile-time resolution for +:(int32, int32)->int32. And we get that from Arith(int32). So far so good. But if 'x is instantiated to int32, we will get a type class instance supplied by the caller. The problem is that there is no way to guarantee that this is the same instance of Arith(int32) that we saw before.

The solution in Haskell is to impose the ad hoc rule that you can only instantiate a type class once for each unique type tuple in a given application. This is similar to what is done in C++: you can only have one overload of a given global operator at a particular type. If there is more than one overload at that type, you get a link-time failure. This restriction is tolerable in C++ largely because operator overloading is so limited:

1. The set of overloadable operators is small and non-extensible.
2. Most of them can be handled satisfactorily as methods, which makes their resolution unambiguous.
3. Most of the ones that can't be handled as methods are arithmetic operations, and there are practical limits to how much people want to extend those.
4. The remaining highly overloaded global operators are associated with I/O. These could be methods in a suitably polymorphic language.

In languages (like BitC) that enable richer use of operator overloading, it seems unlikely that these properties would suffice.

But in Haskell and BitC, overloading is extended to type properties as well. For example, there is a type class "Ord 'a", which states whether a type 'a admits an ordering. Problem: most types that admit ordering admit more than one! The fact that we know an ordering exists really isn't enough to tell us which ordering to use. And we can't introduce two orderings for 'a in Haskell or BitC without creating an instance coherence problem. And in the end, the instance coherence problem exists because the language design performs method resolution in what amounts to a non-scoped way.

But if nothing else, you can hopefully see that the heavier use of overloading in BitC and Haskell places much higher pressure on the "single instance" rule. Enough so, in my opinion, to make that rule untenable. And coming from the capability world, I have a strong allergy to things that smell like ambient authority.

Now we can get past this issue, up to a point, by imposing an arbitrary restriction on where (which compilation unit) an instance can legally be defined. But as with the "excessively abstract types" issue, we seemed to keep tripping on type class issues. There are other problems as well when multi-variable type classes get into the picture.

At the end of the day, type classes just don't seem to work out very well as a mechanism for overload resolution without some other form of support.

A second problem with type classes is that you can't resolve operators at static compile time. And if instances are explicitly named, references to instances have a way of turning into first-class values. At that point the operator reference can no longer be statically resolved at all, and we have effectively re-invented operator methods!

Conclusion about Type Classes and Overloading:

The type class notion (more precisely: qualified types) is seductive, but absent a reasonable approach for instance coherence and lexical resolution it provides an unsatisfactory basis for operator overloading. There is a disturbingly close relationship between type class instances and object instances that needs further exploration by the PL community. The important distinction may be pragmatic rather than conceptual: type class instances are compile-time constants while object instances are run-time values. This has no major consequences for typing, but it leads to significant differences w.r.t. naming, binding, and [human] conceptualization.

There are unresolved formal issues that remain with multi-parameter type classes. Many of these appear to have natural practical solutions in a polymorphic object type system, but concerns of implementation motivate kinding distinctions between boxed and unboxed types that are fairly unsatisfactory.

Wrapping Up

The current outcome is extremely frustrating. While the blind spots here were real, we were driven by the requirements of the academic research community to spend nearly three years finding a way to do complete inference over mutability. That was an enormous effort, and it delayed our recognition that we were sitting on the wrong kind of underlying type system entirely. While I continue to think that there is some value in mutability inference, I think it's a shame that a fairly insignificant wart in the original inference mechanism managed to prevent larger-scale success in the overall project for what amount to political reasons. If not for that distraction, I think we would probably have learned enough about the I/O and the instance coherency issues to have moved to a different type system while we still had a group to do it with, and we would have a working and useful language today.

The distractions of academia aside, it is fair to ask why we weren't building small "concept test" programs as a sanity check of our design. There are a number answers, none very satisfactory:

• Research languages can adopt simplifications on primitive types (notably integers) that systems languages cannot. That's what pushed us into type classes in the first place, we new that polymorphism over unboxed types hadn't seen a lot of attention in the literature, and we knew that mutability inference had never been done. We had limited manpower, so we chose to focus on those issues first.
• We knew that parametric polymorphism and subtyping didn't get along, so we wanted to avoid that combination. Unfortunately, we avoided subtypes too well for too long, and they turned out to be something unavoidable.
• For the first several years, we were very concerned with software verification, which also drove us strongly away from object-based languages and subtyping. That blinded us.
• Coming to language design as "systems" people, working in a department that lacked deep expertise and interest in type systems, there was an enormous amount of subject matter that we needed to learn. Some of the reasons for our failure are "obvious" to people in the PL community, but others are not. Our desire for a "systems" language drove us to explore the space in a different way and with different priorities than are common in the PL community.

I think we did make some interesting contributions. We now know how to do (that is: to implement) polymorphism over unboxed types with significant code sharing, and we understand how to deal with inferred mutability. Both of those are going to be very useful down the road. We have also learned a great deal about advanced type systems.

In any case, BitC in its current form clearly needs to be set aside and re-worked. I have a fairly clear notion about how I would approach continuing this work, but that's going to have to wait until someone is willing to pay for all this.

Diseconomies of scale in fraud, spam, support, and moderation

2024-02-18 08:00:00

If I ask myself a question like "I'd like to buy an SD card; who do I trust to sell me a real SD card and not some fake, Amazon or my local Best Buy?", of course the answer is that I trust my local Best Buy¹ more than Amazon, which is notorious for selling counterfeit SD cards. And if I ask who do I trust more, my local reputable electronics shop (Memory Express, B&H Photo, etc.), I trust my local reputable electronics shop more. Not only are they less likely to sell me a counterfeit than Best Buy, in the event that they do sell me a counterfeit, the service is likely to be better.

Similarly, let's say I ask myself a question like, "on which platform do I get a higher rate of scams, spam, fraudulent content, etc., [smaller platform] or [larger platform]"? Generally the answer is [larger platform]. Of course, there are more total small platforms out there and they're higher variance, so I could deliberately use a smaller platform that's worse, but I'm choosing good options instead of bad options, in every size class, the smaller platform is generally better. For example, with Signal vs. WhatsApp, I've literally never received a spam Signal message, whereas I get spam WhatsApp messages somewhat regularly. Or if I compare places I might read tech content on, if I compare tiny forums no one's heard of to lobste.rs, lobste.rs has a very slightly higher rate (rate as in fraction of messages I see, not absolute message volume) of bad content because it's zero on the private forums and very low but non-zero on lobste.rs. And then if I compare lobste.rs to a somewhat larger platform, like Hacker News or mastodon.social, those have (again very slightly) higher rates of scam/spam/fraudulent content. And then if I compare that to mid-sized social media platforms, like reddit, reddit has a significantly higher and noticeable rate of bad content. And then if I can compare reddit to the huge platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Google search results, these larger platforms have an even higher rate of scams/spam/fraudulent content. And, as with the SD card example, the odds of getting decent support go down as the platform size goes up as well. In the event of an incorrect suspension or ban from the platform, the odds of an account getting reinstated get worse as the platform gets larger.

I don't think it's controversial to say that in general, a lot of things get worse as platforms get bigger. For example, when I ran a Twitter poll to see what people I'm loosely connected to think, only 2.6% thought that huge company platforms have the best moderation and spam/fraud filtering. For reference, in one poll, 9% of Americans said that vaccines implant a microchip and and 12% said the moon landing was fake. These are different populations but it seems random Americans are more likely to say that the moon landing was faked than tech people are likely to say that the largest companies have the best anti-fraud/anti-spam/moderation.

However, over the past five years, I've noticed an increasingly large number of people make the opposite claim, that only large companies can do decent moderation, spam filtering, fraud (and counterfeit) detection, etc. We looked at one example of this when we examined search results, where a Google engineer said

Somebody tried argue that if the search space were more competitive, with lots of little providers instead of like three big ones, then somehow it would be *more* resistant to ML-based SEO abuse.

And... look, if *google* can't currently keep up with it, how will Little Mr. 5% Market Share do it?

And a thought leader responded

like 95% of the time, when someone claims that some small, independent company can do something hard better than the market leader can, it’s just cope. economies of scale work pretty well!

But when we looked at the actual results, it turned out that, of the search engines we looked at, Mr 0.0001% Market Share was the most resistant to SEO abuse (and fairly good), Mr 0.001% was a bit resistant to SEO abuse, and Google and Bing were just flooded with SEO abuse, frequently funneling people directly to various kinds of scams. Something similar happens with email, where I commonly hear that it's impossible to manage your own email due to the spam burden, but people do it all the time and often have similar or better results than Gmail, with the main problem being interacting with big company mail servers which incorrectly ban their little email server.

I started seeing a lot of comments claiming that you need scale to do moderation, anti-spam, anti-fraud, etc., around the time Zuckerberg, in response to Elizabeth Warren calling for the breakup of big tech companies, claimed that breaking up tech companies would make content moderation issues substantially worse, saying:

It’s just that breaking up these companies, whether it’s Facebook or Google or Amazon, is not actually going to solve the issues,” Zuckerberg said “And, you know, it doesn’t make election interference less likely. It makes it more likely because now the companies can’t coordinate and work together. It doesn’t make any of the hate speech or issues like that less likely. It makes it more likely because now ... all the processes that we’re putting in place and investing in, now we’re more fragmented

It’s why Twitter can’t do as good of a job as we can. I mean, they face, qualitatively, the same types of issues. But they can’t put in the investment. Our investment on safety is bigger than the whole revenue of their company. [laughter] And yeah, we’re operating on a bigger scale, but it’s not like they face qualitatively different questions. They have all the same types of issues that we do."

The argument is that you need a lot of resources to do good moderation and smaller companies, Twitter sized companies (worth ~$30B at the time), can't marshal the necessary resources to do good moderation. I found this statement quite funny at the time because, pre-Twitter acquisition, I saw a much higher rate of obvious scam content on Facebook than on Twitter. For example, when I clicked through Facebook ads during holiday shopping season, most were scams and, while Twitter had its share of scam ads, it wasn't really in the same league as Facebook. And it's not just me — Arturo Bejar, who designed an early version of Facebook's reporting system and headed up some major trust and safety efforts noticed something similar (see footnote for details)².

Zuckerberg seems to like the line of reasoning mentioned above, though, as he's made similar arguments elsewhere, such as here, in a statement the same year that Meta's internal docs made the case that they were exposing 100k minors a day to sexual abuse imagery:

To some degree when I was getting started in my dorm room, we obviously couldn’t have had 10,000 people or 40,000 people doing content moderation then and the AI capacity at that point just didn’t exist to go proactively find a lot of harmful content. At some point along the way, it started to become possible to do more of that as we became a bigger business

The rhetorical sleight of hand here is the assumption that Facebook needed 10k or 40k people doing content moderation when Facebook was getting started in Zuckerberg's dorm room. Services that are larger than dorm-room-Facebook can and do have better moderation than Facebook today with a single moderator, often one who works part time. But as people talk more about pursuing real antitrust action against big tech companies, tech big tech founders and execs have ramped up the anti-antitrust rhetoric, making claims about all sorts of disasters that will befall humanity if the biggest companies are broken up into the size of the biggest tech companies of 2015 or 2010. This kind of reasoning seems to be catching on a bit, as I've seen more and more big company employees state very similar reasoning. We've come a long way since the 1979 IBM training manual which read

A COMPUTER CAN NEVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE

THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST NEVER MAKE A MANAGEMENT DECISION

The argument is now, for many critical decisions, it is only computers that can make most of the decisions and the lack of accountability seems to ultimately a feature, not a bug.

But unfortunately for Zuckerberg's argument³, there are at least three major issues in play here where diseconomies of scale dominate. One is that, given material that nearly everyone can agree is bad (such as bitcoin scams, spam for fake pharmaceutical products, fake weather forecasts, adults sending photos of their genitals to children), etc., large platforms do worse than small ones. The second is that, for the user, errors are much more costly and less fixable as companies get bigger because support generally becomes worse. The third is that, as platforms scale up, a larger fraction of users will strongly disagree about what should be allowed on the platform.

With respect to the first, while it's true that big companies have more resources, the cocktail party idea that they'll have the best moderation because they have the most resources is countered by the equally simplistic idea that they'll have the worst moderation because they're the juiciest targets or that they'll have the worst moderation because they'll have worst fragmentation due to the standard diseconomies of scale that occur when you scale up organizations and problem domains. Whether or not the company having more resources or these other factors dominate is too complex to resolve theoretically, but can observe the result empirically. At least at the level of resources that big companies choose to devote to moderation, spam, etc., having the larger target and other problems associated with scale dominate.

While it's true that these companies are wildly profitable and could devote enough resources to significantly reduce this problem, they have chosen not to do this. For example, in the last year before I wrote this sentence, Meta's last-year profit before tax (through December 2023) was $47B. If Meta had a version of the internal vision statement of a power company a friend mine worked for ("Reliable energy, at low cost, for generations.") and operated like that power company did, trying to create a good experience for the user instead of maximizing profit plus creating the metaverse, they could've spent the $50B they spent on the metaverse on moderation platforms and technology and then spent $30k/yr (which would result in a very good income in most countries where moderators are hired today, allowing them to have their pick of who to hire) on 1.6 million additional full-time staffers for things like escalations and support, on the order of one additional moderator or support staffer per few thousand users (and of course diseconomies of scale apply to managing this many people). I'm not saying that Meta or Google should do this, just that whenever someone at big tech company says something like "these systems have to be fully automated because no one could afford to operate manual systems at our scale", what's really being said is more along the lines of "we would not be able to generate as many billions a year in profit if we hired enough competent people to manually review cases our system should flag as ambiguous, so we settle for what we can get without compromising profits".⁴ One can defend that choice, but it is a choice.

And likewise for claims about advantages of economies of scale. There are areas where economies of scale legitimately make the experience better for users. For example, when we looked at why it's so hard to buy things that work well, we noted that Amazon's economies of scale have enabled them to build out their own package delivery service that is, while flawed, still more reliable than is otherwise available (and this has only improved since they added the ability for users to rate each delivery, which no other major package delivery service has). Similarly, Apple's scale and vertical integration has allowed them to build one of the all-time great performance teams (as measured by normalized performance relative to competitors of the same era), not only wiping the floor with the competition on benchmarks, but also providing a better experience in ways that no one really measured until recently, like device latency. For a more mundane example of economies of scale, crackers and other food that ships well are cheaper on Amazon than in my local grocery store. It's easy to name ways in which economies of scale benefit the user, but this doesn't mean that we should assume that economies of scale dominate diseconomies of scale in all areas. Although it's beyond the scope of this post, if we're going to talk about whether or not users are better off if companies are larger or smaller, we should look at what gets better when companies get bigger and what gets worse, not just assume that everything will get better just because some things get better (or vice versa).

Coming back to the argument that huge companies have the most resources to spend on moderation, spam, anti-fraud, etc., vs. the reality that they choose to spend those resources elsewhere, like dropping $50B on the Metaverse and not hiring 1.6 million moderators and support staff that they could afford to hire, it makes sense to look at how much effort is being expended. Meta's involvement in Myanmar makes for a nice case study because Erin Kissane wrote up a fairly detailed 40,000 word account of what happened. The entirety of what happened is a large and complicated issue (see appendix for more discussion) but, for the main topic of this post, the key components are that there was an issue that most people can generally agree should be among the highest priority moderation and support issues and that, despite repeated, extremely severe and urgent, warnings to Meta staff at various levels (engineers, directors, VPs, execs, etc.), almost no resources were dedicated to the issue while internal documents indicate that only a small fraction of agreed-upon bad content was caught by their systems (on the order of a few percent). I don't think this is unique to Meta and this matches my experience with other large tech companies, both as a user of their products and as an employee.

To pick a smaller scale example, an acquaintance of mine had their Facebook account compromised and it's now being used for bitcoin scams. The person's name is Samantha K. and some scammer is doing enough scamming that they didn't even bother reading her name properly and have been generating very obviously faked photos where someone holds up a sign and explains how "Kamantha" has helped them make tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is a fairly common move for "hackers" to make and someone else I'm connected to on FB reported that this happened to their account and they haven't been able to recover the old account or even get it banned despite the constant stream of obvious scams being posted by the account.

By comparison, on lobste.rs, I've never seen a scam like this and Peter Bhat Harkins, the head mod says that they've never had one that he knows of. On Mastodon, I think I might've seen one once in my feed, replies, or mentions. Of course, Mastodon is big enough that you can find some scams if you go looking for them, but the per-message and per-user rates are low enough that you shouldn't encounter them as a normal user. On Twitter (before the acquisition) or reddit, moderately frequently, perhaps an average of once every few weeks in my normal feed. On Facebook, I see things like this all the time; I get obvious scam consumer good sites every shopping season, and the bitcoin scams, both from ads as well as account takeovers, are year-round. Many people have noted that they don't bother reporting these kinds of scams anymore because they've observed that Facebook doesn't take action on their reports. Meanwhile, Reuven Lerner was banned from running Facebook ads on their courses about Python and Pandas, seemingly because Facebook systems "thought" that Reuven was advertising something to do with animal trading (as opposed to programming). This is the fidelity of moderation and spam control that Zuckerberg says cannot be matched by any smaller company. By the way, I don't mean to pick on Meta in particular; if you'd like examples with a slightly different flavor, you can see the appendix of Google examples for a hundred examples of automated systems going awry at Google.

A reason this comes back to being an empirical question is that all of this talk about how economies of scale allows huge companies to bring more resources to bear on the problem on matters if the company chooses to deploy those resources. There's no theoretical force that makes companies deploy resources in these areas, so we can't reason theoretically. But we can observe that the resources deployed aren't sufficient to match the problems, even in cases where people would generally agree that the problem should very obviously be high priority, such as with Meta in Myanmar. Of course, when it comes to issues where the priority is less obvious, resources are also not deployed there.

On the second issue, support, it's a meme among tech folks that the only way to get support as a user of one of the big platforms is to make a viral social media post or know someone on the inside. This compounds the issue of bad moderation, scam detection, anti-fraud, etc., since those issues could be mitigated if support was good.

Normal support channels are a joke, where you either get a generic form letter rejection, or a kafkaesque nightmare followed by a form letter rejection. For example, when Adrian Black was banned from YouTube for impersonating Adrian Black (to be clear, he was banned for impersonating himself, not someone else with the same name), after appealing, he got a response that read

unfortunately, there's not more we can do on our end. your account suspension & appeal were very carefully reviewed & the decision is final

In another Google support story, Simon Weber got the runaround from Google support when he was trying to get information he needed to pay his taxes

accounting data exports for extensions have been broken for me (and I think all extension merchants?) since April 2018 [this was written on Sept 2020]. I had to get the NY attorney general to write them a letter before they would actually respond to my support requests so that I could properly file my taxes

There was also the time YouTube kept demonetizing PointCrow's video of eating water with chopsticks (he repeatedly dips chopsticks into water and then drinks the water, very slowly eating a bowl of water).

Despite responding with things like

we're so sorry about that mistake & the back and fourth [sic], we've talked to the team to ensure it doesn't happen again

He would get demonetized again and appeals would start with the standard support response strategy of saying that they took great care in examining the violating under discussion but, unfortunately, the user clearly violated the policy and therefore nothing can be done:

We have reviewed your appeal ... We reviewed your content carefully, and have confirmed that it violates our violent or graphic content policy ... it's our job to make sure that YouTube is a safe place for all

These are high-profile examples, but of course having a low profile doesn't stop you from getting banned and getting the same basically canned response, like this HN user who was banned for selling a vacuum in FB marketplace. After a number of appeals, he was told

Unfortunately, your account cannot be reinstated due to violating community guidelines. The review is final

When paid support is optional, people often say you won't have these problems if you pay for support, but people who use Google One paid support or Facebook and Instagram's paid creator support generally report that the paid support is no better than the free support. Products that effectively have paid support built-in aren't necessarily better, either. I know people who've gotten the same kind of runaround you get from free Google support with Google Cloud, even when they're working for companies that have 8 or 9 figure a year Google Cloud spend. In one of many examples, the user was seeing that Google must've been dropping packets and Google support kept insisting that the drops were happening in the customer's datacenter despite packet traces showing that this could not possibly be the case. The last I heard, they gave up on that one, but sometimes when an issue is a total showstopper, someone will call up a buddy of theirs at Google to get support because the standard support is often completely ineffective. And this isn't unique to Google — at another cloud vendor, a former colleague of mine was in the room for a conversation where a very senior engineer was asked to look into an issue where a customer was complaining that they were seeing 100% of packets get dropped for a few seconds at a time, multiple times an hour. The engineer responded with something like "it's the cloud, they should deal with it", before being told they couldn't ignore the issue as usual because the issue was coming from [VIP customer] and it was interrupting [one of the world's largest televised sporting events]. That one got fixed, but, odds are, you aren't that important, even if you're paying hundreds of millions a year.

And of course this kind of support isn't unique to cloud vendors. For example, there was this time Stripe held $400k from a customer for over a month without explanation, and every request to support got a response that was as ridiculous as the ones we just looked at. The user availed themself of the only reliable Stripe support mechanism, posting to HN and hoping to hit #1 on the front page, which worked, although many commenters said made the usual comments like "Flagged because we are seeing a lot of these on HN, and they seem to be attempts to fraudulently manipulate customer support, rather than genuine stories", with multiple people suggesting or insinuating that the user is doing something illicit or fraudulent, but it turned out that it was an error on Stripe's end, compounded by Stripe's big company support. At one point, the user notes

While I was writing my HN post I was also on chat with Stripe for over an hour. No new information. They were basically trying to shut down the chat with me until I sent them the HN story and showed that it was getting some traction. Then they started working on my issue again and trying to communicate with more people

And then the issue was fixed the next day.

Although, in principle, as companies become larger, they could leverage their economies of scale to deliver more efficient support, instead, they tend to use their economies of scale to deliver worse, but cheaper and more profitable support. For example, on Google Play store approval support, a Google employee notes:

a lot of that was outsourced to overseas which resulted in much slower response time. Here stateside we had a lot of metrics in place to fast response. Typically your app would get reviewed the same day. Not sure what it's like now but the managers were incompetent back then even so

And a former FB support person notes:

The big problem here is the division of labor. Those who spend the most time in the queues have the least input as to policy. Analysts are able to raise issues to QAs who can then raise them to Facebook FTEs. It can take months for issues to be addressed, if they are addressed at all. The worst part is that doing the common sense thing and implementing the spirit of the policy, rather than the letter, can have a negative effect on your quality score. I often think about how there were several months during my tenure when most photographs of mutilated animals were allowed on a platform without a warning screen due to a carelessly worded policy "clarification" and there was nothing we could do about it.

If you've ever wondered why your support person is responding nonsensically, sometimes it's the obvious reason that support has been outsourced to someone making $1/hr (when I looked up the standard rates for one country that a lot of support is outsourced to, a fairly standard rate works out to about $1/hr) who doesn't really speak your language and is reading from a flowchart without understanding anything about the system they're giving support for, but another, less obvious, reason is that the support person may be penalized and eventually fired if they take actions that make sense instead of following the nonsensical flowchart that's in front of them.

Coming back to the "they seem to be attempts to fraudulently manipulate customer support, rather than genuine stories" comment, this is a sentiment I've commonly seen expressed by engineers at companies that mete out arbitrary and capricious bans. I'm sympathetic to how people get here. As I noted before I joined Twitter, commenting on public information

Turns out twitter is removing ~1M bots/day. Twitter only has ~300M MAU, making the error tolerance v. low. This seems like a really hard problem ... Gmail's spam filter gives me maybe 1 false positive per 1k correctly classified ham ... Regularly wiping the same fraction of real users in a service would be [bad].

It is actually true that, if you, an engineer, dig into the support queue at some giant company and look at people appealing bans, almost all of the appeals should be denied. But, my experience from having talked to engineers working on things like anti-fraud systems is that many, and perhaps most, round "almost all" to "all", which is both quantitatively and qualitatively different. Having engineers who work on these systems believe that "all" and not "almost all" of their decisions are correct results in bad experiences for users.

For example, there's a social media company that's famous for incorrectly banning users (at least 10% of people I know have lost an account due to incorrect bans and, if I search for a random person I don't know, there's a good chance I get multiple accounts for them, with some recent one that has a profile that reads "used to be @[some old account]", with no forward from the old account to the new one because they're now banned). When I ran into a senior engineer from the team that works on this stuff, I asked him why so many legitimate users get banned and he told me something like "that's not a problem, the real problem is that we don't ban enough accounts. Everyone who's banned deserves it, it's not worth listening to appeals or thinking about them". Of course it's true that most content on every public platform is bad content, spam, etc., so if you have any sort of signal at all on whether or not something is bad content, when you look at it, it's likely to be bad content. But this doesn't mean the converse, that almost no users are banned incorrectly, is true. And if senior people on the team that classifies which content is bad have the attitude that we shouldn't worry about false positives because almost all flagged content is bad, we'll end up with a system that has a large number of false positives. I later asked around to see what had ever been done to reduce false positives in the fraud detection systems and found out that there was no systematic attempt at tracking false positives at all, no way to count cases where employees filed internal tickets to override bad bans, etc.; At the meta level, there was some mechanism to decrease the false negative rate (e.g., someone sees bad content that isn't being caught then adds something to catch more bad content) but, without any sort of tracking of false positives, there was effectively no mechanism to decrease the false positive rate. It's no surprise that this meta system resulted in over 10% of people I know getting incorrect suspensions or bans. And, as Patrick McKenzie says, the optimal rate of false positives isn't zero. But when you have engineers who have the attitude that they've done enough legwork that false positives are impossible, it's basically guaranteed that the false positive rate is higher than optimal. When you combine this with normal big company levels of support, it's a recipe for kafkaesque user experiences.

Another time, I commented on how an announced change in Uber's moderation policy seemed likely to result in false positive bans. An Uber TL immediately took me to task, saying that I was making unwarranted assumptions on how banning works, that Uber engineers go to great lengths to make sure that there are no false positive bans, there's extensive to review to make sure that bans are valid and, in fact, the false positive banning I was concerned about could never happen. And then I got effectively banned due to a false positive in a fraud detection system. I was remind of that incident when Uber incorrectly banned a driver who had to take them to court to even get information on why he was banned, at which point Uber finally actually looked into it (instead of just responding to appeals with fake messages claiming they'd looked into it). Afterwards, Uber responded to a press inquiry with

We are disappointed that the court did not recognize the robust processes we have in place, including meaningful human review, when making a decision to deactivate a driver’s account due to suspected fraud

Of course, in that driver's case, there was no robust process for review, nor was there a robust appeals process for my case. When I contacted support, they didn't really read my message and made some change that broke my account even worse than before. Luckily, I have enough Twitter followers that some Uber engineers saw my tweet about the issue and got me unbanned, but that's not an option that's available to most people, leading to weird stuff like this Facebook ad targeted at Google employees, from someone desperately seeking help with their Google account.

And even when you know someone on the inside, it's not always easy to get the issue fixed because even if the company's effectiveness doesn't increase as the company gets bigger, the complexity of the systems does increase. A nice example of this is Gergely Orosz's story about when the manager of the payments team left Uber and then got banned from Uber due to some an inscrutable ML anti-fraud algorithm deciding that the former manager of the payments team was committing payments fraud. It took six months of trying to get the problem fixed to mitigate the issue. And, by the way, they never managed to understand what happened and fix the underlying issue; instead, they added the former manager of the payments team to a special whitelist, not fixing the issue for any other user and, presumably, severely reducing or perhaps even entirely removing payment fraud protections for the former manager's account.

No doubt they would've fixed the underlying issue if it were easy to, but as companies scale up, they produce both technical and non-technical bureaucracy that makes systems opaque even to employees.

Another example of that is, at a company that has a ranked social feed, the idea that you could eliminate stuff you didn't want in your ranked feed by adding filters for things like timeline_injection:false, interstitial_ad_op_out, etc., would go viral. The first time this happened, a number of engineers looked into it and thought that the viral tricks didn't work. They weren't 100% sure and were relying on ideas like "no one can recall a system that would do something like this ever being implemented" and "if you search the codebase for these strings, they don't appear", and "we looked at the systems we think might do this and they don't appear to do this". There was moderate confidence that this trick didn't work, but no one would state with certainty that the trick didn't work because, as at all large companies, the aggregate behavior of the system is beyond human understanding and even parts that could be understood often aren't because there are other priorities.

A few months later, the trick went viral again and people were generally referred to the last investigation when they asked if it was real, except that one person actually tried the trick and reported that it worked. They wrote a slack message about how the trick did work for them, but almost no one noticed that the one person who tried reproducing the trick found that it worked. Later, when the trick would go viral again, people would point to the discussions about how people thought the trick didn't work, with this message noting that it appears to work (almost certainly not by the mechanism that users think, and instead just because having a long list of filters causes something to time out, or something similar) basically got lost because there's too much information to read all of it.

In my social circles, many people have read James Scott's Seeing Like a State, which is subtitled How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human World Have Failed. A key concept from the book is "legibility", what a state can see, and how this distorts what states do. One could easily write a highly analogous book, Seeing like a Tech Company about what's illegible to companies that scale up, at least as companies are run today. A simple example of this is that, in many video games, including ones made by game studios that are part of a $3T company, it's easy to get someone suspended or banned by having a bunch of people report the account for bad behavior. What's legible to the game company is the rate of reports and what's not legible is the player's actual behavior (it could be legible, but the company chooses not to have enough people or skilled enough people examine actual behavior); and many people have reported similar bannings with social media companies. When it comes to things like anti-fraud systems, what's legible to the company tends to be fairly illegible to humans, even humans working on the anti-fraud systems themselves.

Although he wasn't specifically talking about an anti-fraud system, in a Special Master's System, Eugene Zarashaw, a director a Facebook made this comment which illustrates the illegibility of Facebook's own systems:

It would take multiple teams on the ad side to track down exactly the — where the data flows. I would be surprised if there’s even a single person that can answer that narrow question conclusively

Facebook was unfairly and mostly ignorantly raked over the coals for this statement (we'll discuss that in an appendix), but it is generally true that it's difficult to understand how a system the size of Facebook works.

In principle, companies could augment the legibility of their inscrutable systems by having decently paid support people look into things that might be edge-case issues with severe consequences, where the system is "misunderstanding" what's happening but, in practice, companies pay these support people extremely poorly and hire people who really don't understand what's going on, and then give them instructions which ensure that they generally do not succeed at resolving legibility issues.

One thing that helps the forces of illegibility win at scale is that, as a highly-paid employee of one of these huge companies, it's easy to look at the millions or billions of people (and bots) out there and think of them all as numbers. As the saying goes, "the death of one man is a tragedy. The death of a million is a statistic" and, as we noted, engineers often turn thoughts like "almost all X is fraud" to "all X is fraud, so we might as well just ban everyone who does X and not look at appeals". The culture that modern tech companies have, of looking for scalable solutions at all costs, makes this worse than in other industries even at the same scale, and tech companies also have unprecedented scale.

For example, in response to someone noting that FB Ad Manager claims you can run an ad with a potential reach of 101M people in the U.S. aged 18-34 when the U.S. census had the total population of people aged 18-34 as 76M, the former PM of the ads targeting team responded with

Think at FB scale

And explained that you can't expect slice & dice queries to work for something like the 18-34 demographic in the U.S. at "FB scale". There's a meme at Google that's used ironically in cases like this, where people will say "I can't count that low". Here's the former PM of FB ads saying, non-ironically, "FB can't count that low" for numbers like 100M. Not only does FB not care about any individual user (unless they're famous), this PM claims they can't be bothered to care that groups of 100M people are tracked accurately.

Coming back to the consequences of poor support, a common response to hearing about people getting incorrectly banned from one of these huge services is "Good! Why would you want to use Uber/Amazon/whatever anyway? They're terrible and no one should use them". I disagree with this line of reasoning. For one thing, why should you decide for that person whether or not they should use a service or what's good for them? For another (and this this is a large enough topic that it should be its own post, so I'll just mention it briefly and link to this lengthier comment from @whitequark) most services that people write off as unnecessary conveniences that you should just do without are actually serious accessibility issues for quite a few people (in absolute, not necessarily, percentage, terms). When we're talking about small businesses, those people can often switch to another business, but with things like Uber and Amazon, there are sometimes zero or one alternatives that offer similar convenience and when there's one, getting banned due to some random system misfiring can happen with the other service as well. For example, in response to many people commenting on how you should just issue a chargeback and get banned from DoorDash when they don't deliver, a disabled user responds:

I'm disabled. Don't have a driver's license or a car. There isn't a bus stop near my apartment, I actually take paratransit to get to work, but I have to plan that a day ahead. Uber pulls the same shit, so I have to cycle through Uber, Door dash, and GrubHub based on who has coupons and hasn't stolen my money lately. Not everyone can just go pick something up.

Also, when talking about this class of issue, involvement is often not voluntary, such as in the case of this Fujitsu bug that incorrectly put people in prison.

On the third issue, the impossibility of getting people to agree on what constitutes spam, fraud, and other disallowed content, we discussed that in detail here. We saw that, even in a trivial case with a single, uncontroversial, simple, rule, people can't agree on what's allowed. And, as you add more rules or add topics that are controversial or scale up the number of people, it becomes even harder to agree on what should be allowed.

To recap, we looked at three areas where diseconomies of scale make moderation, support, anti-fraud, and anti-spam worse as companies get bigger. The first was that, even in cases where there's broad agreement that something is bad, such as fraud/scam/phishing websites and search, the largest companies with the most sophisticated machine learning can't actually keep up with a single (albeit very skilled) person working on a small search engine. The returns to scammers are much higher if they take on the biggest platforms, resulting in the anti-spam/anti-fraud/etc. problem being extremely non-linearly hard.

To get an idea of the difference in scale, HN "hellbans" spammers and people who post some kinds of vitriolic comments. Most spammers don't seem to realize they're hellbanned and will keep posting for a while, so if you browse the "newest" (submissions) page while logged in, you'll see a steady stream of automatically killed stories from these hellbanned users. While there are quite a few of them, the percentage is generally well under half. When we looked at a "mid-sized" big tech company like Twitter circa 2017, based on the public numbers, if spam bots were hellbanned instead of removed, spam is so much more prevalent that all you'd see if you were able to see it. And, as big companies go, 2017-Twitter isn't that big. As we also noted, the former PM of FB ads targeting explained that numbers as low as 100M are in the "I can't count that low" range, too small to care about; to him, basically a rounding error. The non-linear difference in difficulty is much worse for a company like FB or Google. The non-linearity of the difficulty of this problems is, apparently, more than a match for whatever ML or AI techniques Zuckerberg and other tech execs want to brag about.

In testimony in front of Congress, you'll see execs defend the effectiveness of these systems at scale with comments like "we can identify X with 95% accuracy", a statement that may technically be correct, but seems designed to deliberately mislead an audience that's presumed to be innumerate. If you use, as a frame of reference, things at a personal scale, 95% might sound quite good. Even for something like HN's scale, 95% accurate spam detection that results in an immediate ban might be sort of alright. Anyway, even if it's not great, people who get incorrectly banned can just email Dan Gackle, who will unban them. As we noted when we looked at the numbers, 95% accurate detection at Twitter's scale would be horrible (and, indeed, the majority of DMs I get are obvious spam). Either you have to back off and only ban users in cases where you're extremely confident, or you ban all your users after not too long and, as companies like to handle support, appealing means that you'll get a response saying that "your case was carefully reviewed and we have determined that you've violated our policies. This is final", even for cases where any sort of cursory review would cause a reversal of the ban, like when you ban a user for impersonating themselves. And then at FB's scale, it's even worse and you'll ban all of your users even more quickly, so then you back off and we end up with things like 100k minors a day being exposed to "photos of adult genitalia or other sexually abusive content".

The second area we looked at was support, which tends to get worse as companies get larger. At a high level, it's fair to say that companies don't care to provide decent support (with Amazon being somewhat of an exception here, especially with AWS, but even on the consumer side). Inside the system, there are individuals who care, but if you look at the fraction of resources expended on support vs. growth or even fun/prestige projects, support is an afterthought. Back when deepmind was training a StarCraft AI, it's plausible that Alphabet was spending more money playing Starcraft than on support agents (and, if not, just throw in one or two more big AI training projects and you'll be there, especially if you include the amortized cost of developing custom hardware, etc.).

It's easy to see how little big companies care. All you have to do is contact support and get connected to someone who's paid $1/hr to respond to you in a language they barely know, attempting to help solve a problem they don't understand by walking through some flowchart, or appeal an issue and get told "after careful review, we have determined that you have [done the opposite of what you actually did]". In some cases, you don't even need to get that far, like when following Instagram's support instructions results in an infinite loop that takes you back where you started and the "click here if this wasn't you link returns a 404". I've run into an infinite loop like this once, with Verizon, and it persisted for at least six months. I didn't check after that, but I'd bet on it persisting for years. If you had an onboarding or sign-up page that had an issue like this, that would be considered a serious bug that people should prioritize because that impacts growth. But for something like account loss due to scammers taking over accounts, that might get fixed after months or years. Or maybe not.

If you ever talk to people who work in support at a company that really cares about support, it's immediately obvious that they operate completely different from typical big tech company support, in terms of process as well as culture. Another way you can tell that big companies don't care about support is how often big company employees and execs who've never looked into how support is done or could be done will tell you that it's impossible to do better.

When you talk to people who work on support at companies that do actually care about this, it's apparent that it can be done much better. While I was writing this post, I actually did support at a company that does support decently well (for a tech company, adjusted for size, I'd say they're well above 99%-ile), including going through the training and onboarding process for support folks. Executing anything well at scale is non-trivial, so I don't mean to downplay how good their support org is, but the most striking thing to me was how much of the effectiveness of the org naturally followed from caring about providing a good support experience for the user. A full discussion of what that means is too long to include here, so we'll look at this in more detail another time, but one example is that, when we look at how big company support responds, it's often designed to discourage the user from responding ("this review is final") or to justify, putatively to the user, that the company is doing an adequate job ("this was not a purely automated process and each appeal was reviewed by humans in a robust process that ... "). This company's training instructs you to do the opposite of the standard big company "please go away"-style and "we did a great job and have a robust process, therefore complaints are invalid"-style responses. For every anti-pattern you commonly see in support, the training tells you to do the opposite and discusses why the anti-pattern results in a bad user experience. Moreover, the culture has deeply absorbed these ideas (or rather, these ideas come out of the culture) and there are processes for ensuring that people really know what it means to provide good support and follow through on it, support folks have ways to directly talk to the developers who are implementing the product, etc.

If people cared about doing good support, they could talk to people who work in support orgs that are good at helping users or even try working in one before explaining how it's impossible to do better, but this generally isn't done. Their company's support org leadership could do this as well, or do what I did and actually directly work in a support role in an effective support org, but this doesn't happen. If you're a cynic, this all makes sense. In the same way that cynics advise junior employees "big company HR isn't there to help you; their job is to protect the company", a cynic can credibly argue "big company support isn't there to help the user; their job is to protect the company", so of course big companies don't try to understand how companies that are good at supporting users do support because that's not what big company support is for.

The third area we looked at was how it's impossible for people to agree on how a platform should operate and how people's biases mean that people don't understand how difficult a problem this is. For Americans, a prominent case of this are the left and right wing conspiracy theories that pop up every time some bug pseudo-randomly causes any kind of service disruption or banning.

In a tweet, Ryan Greeberg joked:

Come work at Twitter, where your bugs TODAY can become conspiracy theories of TOMORROW!

In my social circles, people like to make fun of all of the absurd right-wing conspiracy theories that get passed around after some bug causes people to incorrectly get banned, causes the site not to load, etc., or even when some new ML feature correctly takes down a huge network of scam/spam bots, which also happens to reduce the follower count of some users. But of course this isn't unique to the right, and left-wing thought leaders and politicians come up with their own conspiracy theories as well.

Putting all three of these together, worse detection of issues, worse support, and a harder time reaching agreement on policies, we end with the situation we noted at the start where, in a poll of my Twitter followers, people who mostly work in tech and are generally fairly technically savvy, only 2.6% of people thought that the biggest companies were the best at moderation and spam/fraud filtering, so it might seem a bit silly to spend so much time belaboring the point. When you sample the U.S population at large, a larger fraction of people say they believe in conspiracy theories like vaccines putting a microchip in you or that we never landed on the moon, and I don't spend my time explaining why vaccines do not actually put a microchip in you or why it's reasonable to think that we landed on the moon. One reason that would perhaps be reasonable is that I've been watching the "only big companies can handle these issues" rhetoric with concern as it catches on among non-technical people, like regulators, lawmakers, and high-ranking government advisors, who often listen to and then regurgitate nonsense. Maybe next time you run into a lay person who tells you that only the largest companies could possibly handle these issues, you can politely point out that there's very strong consensus the other way among tech folks⁵.

If you're a founder or early-stage startup looking for an auth solution, PropelAuth is targeting your use case. Although they can handle other use cases, they're currently specifically trying to make life easier for pre-launch startups that haven't invested in an auth solution yet. Disclaimer: I'm an investor

Thanks to Gary Bernhardt, Peter Bhat Harkins, Laurence Tratt, Dan Gackle, Sophia Wisdom, David Turner, Yossi Kreinin, Justin Blank, Ben Cox, Horace He, @borzhemsky, Kevin Burke, Bert Muthalaly, Sasuke, anonymous, Zach Manson, Joachim Schipper, Tony D'Souza, and @GL1zdA for comments/corrections/discussion.

Appendix: techniques that only work at small scale

This post has focused on the disadvantages of bigness, but we can also flip this around and look at the advantages of smallness.

As mentioned, the best experiences I've had on platforms are a side effect of doing things that don't scale. One thing that can work well is to have a single person, with a single vision, handling the entire site or, when that's too big, a key feature of the site.

I'm on a number of small discords that have good discussion and essentially zero scams, spam, etc. The strategy for this is simple; the owner of the channel reads every message and bans and scammers or spammers who show up. When you get to a bigger site, like lobste.rs, or even bigger like HN, that's too large for someone to read every message (well, this could be done for lobste.rs, but considering that it's a spare-time pursuit for the owner and the volume of messages, it's not reasonable to expect them to read every message in a short timeframe), but there's still a single person who provides the vision for what should happen, even if the sites are large enough that it's not reasonable to literally read every message. The "no vehicles in the park" problem doesn't apply here because a person decides what the policies should be. You might not like those policies, but you're welcome to find another small forum or start your own (and this is actually how lobste.rs got started — under HN's previous moderation regime, which was known for banning people who disagreed with them, Joshua Stein was banned for publicly disagreeing with an HN policy, so Joshua created lobsters (and then eventually handed it off to Peter Bhat Harkins).

There's also this story about craigslist in the early days, as it was just getting big enough to have a serious scam and spam problem

... we were stuck at SFO for something like four hours and getting to spend half a workday sitting next to Craig Newmark was pretty awesome.

I'd heard Craig say in interviews that he was basically just "head of customer service" for Craigslist but I always thought that was a throwaway self-deprecating joke. Like if you ran into Larry Page at Google and he claimed to just be the janitor or guy that picks out the free cereal at Google instead of the cofounder. But sitting next to him, I got a whole new appreciation for what he does. He was going through emails in his inbox, then responding to questions in the craigslist forums, and hopping onto his cellphone about once every ten minutes. Calls were quick and to the point "Hi, this is Craig Newmark from craigslist.org. We are having problems with a customer of your ISP and would like to discuss how we can remedy their bad behavior in our real estate forums". He was literally chasing down forum spammers one by one, sometimes taking five minutes per problem, sometimes it seemed to take half an hour to get spammers dealt with. He was totally engrossed in his work, looking up IP addresses, answering questions best he could, and doing the kind of thankless work I'd never seen anyone else do with so much enthusiasm. By the time we got on our flight he had to shut down and it felt like his giant pile of work got slightly smaller but he was looking forward to attacking it again when we landed.

At some point, if sites grow, they get big enough that a person can't really own every feature and every moderation action on the site, but sites can still get significant value out of having a single person own something that people would normally think is automated. A famous example of this is how the Digg "algorithm" was basically one person:

What made Digg work really was one guy who was a machine. He would vet all the stories, infiltrate all the SEO networks, and basically keep subverting them to keep the Digg front-page usable. Digg had an algorithm, but it was basically just a simple algorithm that helped this one dude 10x his productivity and keep the quality up.

Google came to buy Digg, but figured out that really it's just a dude who works 22 hours a day that keeps the quality up, and all that talk of an algorithm was smoke and mirrors to trick the SEO guys into thinking it was something they could game (they could not, which is why front page was so high quality for so many years). Google walked.

Then the founders realised if they ever wanted to get any serious money out of this thing, they had to fix that. So they developed "real algorithms" that independently attempted to do what this one dude was doing, to surface good/interesting content.

...

It was a total shit-show ... The algorithm to figure out what's cool and what isn't wasn't as good as the dude who worked 22 hours a day, and without his very heavy input, it just basically rehashed all the shit that was popular somewhere else a few days earlier ... Instead of taking this massive slap to the face constructively, the founders doubled-down. And now here we are.

...

Who I am referring to was named Amar (his name is common enough I don't think I'm outing him). He was the SEO whisperer and "algorithm." He was literally like a spy. He would infiltrate the awful groups trying to game the front page and trick them into giving him enough info that he could identify their campaigns early, and kill them. All the while pretending to be an SEO loser like them.

Etsy supposedly used the same strategy as well.

Another class of advantage that small sites have over large ones is that the small site usually doesn't care about being large and can do things that you wouldn't do if you wanted to grow. For example, consider these two comments made in the midst of a large flamewar on HN

My wife spent years on Twitter embroiled in a very long running and bitter political / rights issue. She was always thoughtful, insightful etc. She'd spend 10 minutes rewording a single tweet to make sure it got the real point across in a way that wasn't inflammatory, and that had a good chance of being persuasive. With 5k followers, I think her most popular tweets might get a few hundred likes. The one time she got drunk and angry, she got thousands of supportive reactions, and her followers increased by a large % overnight. And that scared her. She saw the way "the crowd" was pushing her. Rewarding her for the smell of blood in the water.

I've turned off both the flags and flamewar detector on this article now, in keeping with the first rule of HN moderation, which is (I'm repeating myself but it's probably worth repeating) that we moderate HN less, not more, when YC or a YC-funded startup is part of a story ... Normally we would never late a ragestorm like this stay on the front page—there's zero intellectual curiosity here, as the comments demonstrate. This kind of thing is obviously off topic for HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. If it weren't, the site would consist of little else. Equally obvious is that this is why HN users are flagging the story. They're not doing anything different than they normally would.

For a social media site, low-quality high-engagement flamebait is one of the main pillars that drive growth. HN, which cares more about discussion quality than growth, tries to detect and suppress these (with exceptions like criticism of HN itself, of YC companies like Stripe, etc., to ensure a lack of bias). Any social media site that aims to grow does the opposite; they implement a ranked feed that puts the content that is most enraging and most engaging in front of the people its algorithms predict will be the most enraged and engaged by it. For example, let's say you're in a country with very high racial/religious/factonal tensions, with regular calls for violence, etc. What's the most engaging content? Well, that would be content calling for the death of your enemies, so you get things a livestream of someone calling for the death of the other faction and then grabbing someone and beating them shown to a lot of people. After all, what's more engaging than a beatdown of your sworn enemy? A theme of Broken Code is that someone will find some harmful content they want to suppress, but then get overruled because that would reduce engagement and growth. HN has no such goal, so it has no problem suppressing or eliminating content that HN deems to be harmful.

Another thing you can do if growth isn't your primary goal is to deliberately make user-signups high friction. HN adds does a little bit of this by having a "login" link but not a "sign up" link, and sites like lobste.rs and metafilter do even more of this.

Appendix: Theory vs. practice

In the main doc, we noted that big company employees often say that it's impossible to provide better support for theoretical reason X, without ever actually looking into how one provides support or what companies that provide good support do. When the now-$1T were the size where many companies do provide good support, these companies also did not provide good support, so this doesn't seem to come from size since these huge companies didn't even attempt to provide good support, then or now. This theoretical, plausible sounding, reason doesn't really hold up in practice.

This is generally the case for theoretical discussions on disceconomies of scale of large tech companies. Another example is an idea mentioned at the start of this doc, that being a larger target has a larger impact than having more sophisticated ML. A standard extension of this idea that I frequently hear is that big companies actually do have the best anti-spam and anti-fraud, but they're also subject to the most sophisticated attacks. I've seen this used as a justification for why big companies seem to have worst anti-spam and anti-fraud than a forum like HN. While it's likely true that big companies are subject to the most sophisticated attacks, if this whole idea held and it were the case that their systems were really good, it would be harder, in absolute terms, to spam or scam people on reddit and Facebook than on HN, but that's not the case at all.

If you actually try to spam, it's extremely easy to do so on large platforms and the most obvious things you might try will often work. As an experiment, I made a new reddit account and tried to get nonsense onto the front page and found this completely trivial. Similarly it's completely trivial to take over someone's Facebook account and post obvious scams for months to years, with extremely markers that they're scams, many people replying in concern that the account has been taken over and is running scams (unlike working in support and spamming reddit, I didn't try taking over people's Facebook accounts, but given people's password practices, it's very easy to take over an account, and given how Facebook responds to these takeovers when a friend's account is taken over, we can see that attacks that do the most naive thing possible, with zero sophistication, are not defeated), etc. In absolute terms, it's actually more difficult to get spammy or scammy content in front of eyeballs on HN than it is on reddit or Facebook.

The theoretical reason here is one that would be significant if large companies were even remotely close to doing the kind of job they could do with the resources they have, but we're not even close to being there.

To avoid belaboring the point in this already very long document, I've only listed a couple of examples here, but I find this pattern to hold true of almost every counterargument I've heard on this topic. If you actually look into it a bit, these theoretical arguments are classic cocktail party ideas that have little to no connection to reality.

A meta point here is that you absolutely cannot trust vaguely plausible sounding arguments from people on this since they virtually all of them fall apart when examined in practice. It seems quite reasonable to think that a business the size of reddit would have more sophisticated anti-spam systems than HN, which has a single person who both writes the code for the anti-spam systems and does the moderation. But the most naive and simplistic tricks you might use to put content on the front page work on reddit and don't work on HN. I'm not saying you can't defeat HN's system, but doing so would take a little bit of thought, which is not the case for reddit and Facebook. And likewise for support, where once you start talking to people about how to run a support org that's good for users, you immediately see that the most obvious things have not been seriously tried by big tech companies.

Appendix: How much should we trust journalists' summaries of leaked documents?

Overall, very little. As we discussed when we looked at the Cruise pedestrian accident report, almost every time I read a journalist's take on something (with rare exceptions like Zeynep), the journalist has a spin they're trying to put on the story and the impression you get from reading the story is quite different from the impression you get if you look at the raw source; it's fairly common that there's so much spin that the story says the opposite of what the source docs say. That's one issue.

The full topic here is big enough that it deserves its own document, so we'll just look at two examples. The first is one we briefly looked at, when Eugene Zarashaw, a director at Facebook, testified in a Special Master’s Hearing. He said

It would take multiple teams on the ad side to track down exactly the — where the data flows. I would be surprised if there’s even a single person that can answer that narrow question conclusively

Eugene's testimony resulted in headlines like , "Facebook Has No Idea What Is Going on With Your Data", "Facebook engineers admit there’s no way to track all the data it collects on you" (with a stock photo of an overwhelmed person in a nest of cables, grabbing their head) and "Facebook Engineers: We Have No Idea Where We Keep All Your Personal Data", etc.

Even without any technical knowledge, any unbiased person can plainly see that these headlines are inaccurate. There's a big difference between it taking work to figure out exactly where all data, direct and derived, for each user exists, and having no idea where the data is. If I Google, logged out with no cookies, Eugene Zarashaw facebook testimony, every single above the fold result I get is misleading, false, clickbait, like the above.

For most people with relevant technical knowledge, who understand the kind of systems being discussed, Eugene Zarashaw's quote is not only not egregious, it's mundane, expected, and reasonable.

Despite this lengthy disclaimer, there are a few reasons that I feel comfortable citing Jeff Horwitz's Broken Code as well as a few stories that cover similar ground. The first is that, if you delete all of the references to these accounts, the points in this doc don't really change, just like they wouldn't change if you delete 50% of the user stories mentioned here. The second is that, at least for me, the most key part is the attitudes on display and not the specific numbers. I've seen similar attitudes in companies I've worked for and heard about them inside companies where I'm well connected via my friends and I could substitute similar stories from my friends, but it's nice to be able to use already-public sources instead of using anonymized stories from my friends, so the quotes about attitude are really just a stand-in for other stories which I can verify. The third reason is a bit too subtle to describe here, so we'll look at that when I expand this disclaimer into a standalone document.

If you're looking for work, Freshpaint is hiring (US remote) in engineering, sales, and recruiting. Disclaimer: I may be biased since I'm an investor, but they seem to have found product-market fit and are rapidly growing.

Appendix: Erin Kissane on Meta in Myanmar

Erin starts with

But once I started to really dig in, what I learned was so much gnarlier and grosser and more devastating than what I’d assumed. The harms Meta passively and actively fueled destroyed or ended hundreds of thousands of lives that might have been yours or mine, but for accidents of birth. I say “hundreds of thousands” because “millions” sounds unbelievable, but by the end of my research I came to believe that the actual number is very, very large.

To make sense of it, I had to try to go back, reset my assumptions, and try build up a detailed, factual understanding of what happened in this one tiny slice of the world’s experience with Meta. The risks and harms in Myanmar—and their connection to Meta’s platform—are meticulously documented. And if you’re willing to spend time in the documents, it’s not that hard to piece together what happened. Even if you never read any further, know this: Facebook played what the lead investigator on the UN Human Rights Council’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar (hereafter just “the UN Mission”) called a “determining role” in the bloody emergence of what would become the genocide of the Rohingya people in Myanmar.2

From far away, I think Meta’s role in the Rohingya crisis can feel blurry and debatable—it was content moderation fuckups, right? In a country they weren’t paying much attention to? Unethical and probably negligent, but come on, what tech company isn’t, at some point?

As discussed above, I have not looked into the details enough to determine if the claim that Facebook played a "determining role" in genocide are correct, but at a meta-level (no pun intended), it seems plausible. Every comment I've seen that aims to be a direction refutation of Erin's position is actually pre-refuted by Erin in Erin's text, so it appears that very few people who are publicly commenting who disagree with Erin read the articles before commenting (or they've read them and failed to understand what Erin is saying) and, instead, are disagreeing based on something other than the actual content. It reminds me a bit of the responses to David Jackson's proof of the four color theorem. Some people thought it was, finally, a proof, and others thought it wasn't.. Something I found interesting at the time was that the people who thought it wasn't a proof had read the paper and thought it seemed flawed, whereas the people who thought it was a proof were going off of signals like David's track record or the prestige of his institution. At the time, without having read the paper myself, I guessed (with low confidence) that the proof was incorrect based on the meta-heuristic that thoughts from people who read the paper were stronger evidence than things like prestige. Similarly, I would guess that Erin's summary is at least roughly accurate and that Erin's endorsement of the UN HRC fact-finding mission is correct, although I have lower confidence in this than in my guess about the proof because making a positive claim like this is harder than finding a flaw and the area is one where evaluating a claim is significantly trickier.

Unlike with Broken Code, the source documents are available here and it would be possible to retrace Erin's steps, but since there's quite a bit of source material and the claims that would need additional reading and analysis to really be convinced and those claims don't play a determining role in the correctness of this document, I'll leave that for somebody else.

On the topic itself, Erin noted that some people at Facebook, when presented with evidence that something bad was happening, laughed it off as they simply couldn't believe that Facebook could be instrumental in something that bad. Ironically, this is fairly similar in tone and content to a lot of the "refutations" of Erin's articles which appear to have not actually read the articles.

The most substantive objections I've seen are around the edges which, such as

The article claims that "Arturo Bejar" was "head of engineering at Facebook", which is simply false. He appears to have been a Director, which is a manager title overseeing (typically) less than 100 people. That isn't remotely close to "head of engineering".

What Erin actually said was

... Arturo Bejar, one of Facebook’s heads of engineering

So the objection is technically incorrect in that it was not said that Arturo Bejar was head of engineering. And, if you read the entire set of articles, you'll see references like "Susan Benesch, head of the Dangerous Speech Project" and "the head of Deloitte in Myanmar", so it appears that the reason that Erin said that "one of Facebook’s heads of engineering" is that Erin is using the term head colloquially here (and note that the it isn't capitalized, as a title might be), to mean that Arturo was in charge of something.

There is a form of the above objection that's technically correct — for an engineer at a big tech company, the term Head of Engineering will generally call to mind an executive who all engineers transitively report into (or, in cases where there are large pillars, perhaps one of a few such people). Someone who's fluent in internal tech company lingo would probably not use this phrasing, even when writing for lay people, but this isn't strong evidence of factual errors in the article even if, in an ideal world, journalists would be fluent in the domain-specific connotations of every phrase.

The person's objection continues with

I point this out because I think it calls into question some of the accuracy of how clearly the problem was communicated to relevant people at Facebook.

It isn't enough for someone to tell random engineers or Communications VPs about a complex social problem.

On the topic of this post, diseconomies of scale, this objection, if correct, actually supports the post. According to Arturo's LinkedIn, he was "the leader for Integrity and Care Facebook", and the book Broken Code discusses his role at length, which is very closely related to the topic of Meta in Myanmar. Arturo is not, in fact, a "random engineers or Communications VP".

Anway, Erin documents that Facebook was repeatedly warned about what was happening, for years. These warnings went well beyond the standard reporting of bad content and fake accounts (although those were also done), and included direct conversations with directors, VPs, and other leaders. These warnings were dismissed and it seems that people thought that their existing content moderation systems were good enough, even in the face of fairly strong evidence that this was not the case.

Reuters notes that one of the examples Schissler gives Meta was a Burmese Facebook Page called, “We will genocide all of the Muslims and feed them to the dogs.” 48

None of this seems to get through to the Meta employees on the line, who are interested in…cyberbullying. Frenkel and Kang write that the Meta employees on the call “believed that the same set of tools they used to stop a high school senior from intimidating an incoming freshman could be used to stop Buddhist monks in Myanmar.”49

Aela Callan later tells Wired that hate speech seemed to be a “low priority” for Facebook, and that the situation in Myanmar, “was seen as a connectivity opportunity rather than a big pressing problem.”50

The details make this sound worse than a small excerpt, so I recommend reading the entire thing, but with respect to the discussion about resources, a key issue is that even after Meta decided to take some kind of action, the result was:

As the Burmese civil society people in the private Facebook group finally learn, Facebook has a single Burmese-speaking moderator—a contractor based in Dublin—to review everything that comes in. The Burmese-language reporting tool is, as Htaike Htaike Aung and Victoire Rio put it in their timeline, “a road to nowhere."

Since this was 2014, it's not fair to say that Meta could've spent the $50B metaverse dollars and hired 1.6 million moderators, but in 2014, it was still the 4th largest tech company in the world, worth $217B, with a net profit of $3B/yr, Meta would've "only" been able to afford something like 100k moderators and support staff if paid at a globally very generous loaded cost of $30k/yr (e.g., Jacobin notes that Meta's Kenyan moderators are paid $2/hr and don't get benefits). Myanmar's share of the global population was 0.7% and, let's say that you consider a developing genocide to be low priority and don't think that additional resources should be deployed to prevent or stop it and want to allocate a standard moderation share, then we have "only" have capacity for 700 generously paid moderation and support staff for Myanmar.

On the other side of the fence, there actually were 700 people:

in the years before the coup, it already had an internal adversary in the military that ran a professionalized, Russia-trained online propaganda and deception operation that maxed out at about 700 people, working in shifts to manipulate the online landscape and shout down opposing points of view. It’s hard to imagine that this force has lessened now that the genocidaires are running the country.

These folks didn't have the vaunted technology that Zuckerberg says that smaller companies can't match, but it turns out you don't need billions of dollars of technology when it's 700 on 1 and the 1 is using tools that were developed for a different purpose.

As you'd expect if you've ever interacted with the reporting system for a huge tech company, from the outside, nothing people tried worked:

They report posts and never hear anything. They report posts that clearly call for violence and eventually hear back that they’re not against Facebook’s Community Standards. This is also true of the Rohingya refugees Amnesty International interviews in Bangladesh

In the 40,000 word summary, Erin also digs through whistleblower reports to find things like

…we’re deleting less than 5% of all of the hate speech posted to Facebook. This is actually an optimistic estimate—previous (and more rigorous) iterations of this estimation exercise have put it closer to 3%, and on V&I [violence and incitement] we’re deleting somewhere around 0.6%…we miss 95% of violating hate speech.

and

[W]e do not … have a model that captures even a majority of integrity harms, particularly in sensitive areas … We only take action against approximately 2% of the hate speech on the platform. Recent estimates suggest that unless there is a major change in strategy, it will be very difficult to improve this beyond 10-20% in the short-medium term

and

While Hate Speech is consistently ranked as one of the top abuse categories in the Afghanistan market, the action rate for Hate Speech is worryingly low at 0.23 per cent.

To be clear, I'm not saying that Facebook has a significantly worse rate of catching bad content than other platforms of similar or larger size. As we noted above, large tech companies often have fairly high false positive and false negative rates and have employees who dismiss concerns about this, saying that things are fine.

Appendix: elsewhere

• Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing's On Nonscalability: The Living World Is Not Amenable to Precision-Nested Scales
• Glen Weyl on radical solutions to the concentration of corporate power
• Zvi's collection of Quotes from Moral Mazes

Appendix: Moderation and filtering fails

Since I saw Zuck's statement about how only large companies (and the larger the better) can possibly do good moderation, anti-fraud, anti-spam, etc., I've been collecting links I run across when doing normal day-to-browsing of failures by large companies. If I deliberately looked for failures, I'd have a lot more. And, for some reason, some companies don't really trigger my radar for this so, for example, even though I see stories about AirBnB issues all the time, it didn't occur to me to collect them until I started writing this post, so there are only a few AirBnB fails here, even though they'd be up there with Uber in failure count if I actually recorded the links I saw.

These are so frequent that, out of eight draft readers, at least two draft readers ran into an issue while reading the draft of this doc. Peter Bhat Harkins reported:

Well, I received a keychron keyboard a few days ago. I ordered a used K1 v5 (Keychron does small, infrequent production runs so it was out of stock everywhere). I placed the order on KeyChron's official Amazon store, fulfilled by Amazon. After some examination, I've received a v4. It's the previous gen mechanical switch instead of the current optical switch. Someone apparently peeled off the sticker with the model and serial number and one key stabilizer is broken from wear, which strongly implies someone bought a v5 and returned a v4 they already owned. Apparently this is a common scam on Amazon now.

In the other case, an anonymous reader created a Gmail account to used as a shared account for them and their partner, so they could get shared emails from local services. I know a number of people who've done this and this usually works fine, but in their case, after they used this email to set up a few services, Google decided that their account was suspicious:

Verify your identity

We’ve detected unusual activity on the account you’re trying to access. To continue, please follow the instructions below.

Provide a phone number to continue. We’ll send a verification code you can use to sign in.

Providing the phone number they used to sign up for the account resulted in

This phone number has already been used too many times for verification.

For whatever reason, even though this number was provided at account creation, using this apparently illegal number didn't result in the account being banned until it had been used for a while and the email address had been used to sign up for some services. Luckily, these were local services by small companies, so this issue could be fixed by calling them up. I've seen something similar happen with services that don't require you to provide a phone number on sign-up, but then lock and effectively ban the account unless you provide a phone number later, but I've never seen a case where the provided phone number turned out to not work after a day or two. The message above can be read two ways, the other way being that the phone number was allowed but had just recently been used to receive too many verification codes but, in recent history, the phone number had only once been used to receive a code, and that was the verification code necessary to attach a (required) phone number to the account in the first place.

I also had a quality control failure from Amazon, when I ordered a 10 pack of Amazon Basics power strips and the first one I pulled out had its cable covered in solder. I wonder what sort of process could leave solder, likely lead-based solder (although I didn't test it) all over the outside of one of these and wonder if I need to wash every Amazon Basics electronics item I get if I don't want lead dust getting all over my apartment. And, of course, since this is constant, I had many spam emails get through Gmail's spam filter and hit my inbox, and multiple ham emails get filtered into spam, including the classic case where I emailed someone and their reply to me went to spam; from having talked to them about it previously, I have no doubt that most of my draft readers who use Gmail also had something similar happen to them and that this is so common they didn't even find it worth remarking on.

Anyway, below, in a few cases, I've mentioned when commenters blame the user even though the issue is clearly not the user's fault. I haven't done this even close to exhaustively, so the lack of such a comment from me shouldn't be read as the lack of the standard "the user must be at fault" response from people.

Google

• "I had to get the NY attorney general to write them a letter before they would actually respond to my support requests so that I could properly file my taxes"
• Google photo search for gorilla returns photos of black people, fixed after Twitter thread about this goes viral; 3 years later, there are stories in the press about how Google fixed this by blocking search results for the terms "gorilla", "chimp", "chimpanzee", and "monkey" and has not unblocked the terms
  • On 2024-01-06, I tried uploading a photo of a gorilla and searching for gorilla, which returned no results both immediately after the upload as well as a few weeks later, so this still appears to be blocked?
• Google suspends a YouTuber for impersonating themselves; on appeal YouTube says "unfortunate, there's not more we can do on our end. your account suspension & appeal were very carefully reviewed & the decision is final ... we really appreciate your understanding".
  • Channel restored after viral Twitter thread makes it to the front page of HN.
• Two different users report having their account locked out after moving; no recovery of account
• Google closed the accounts of everyone who bought a phone and then sold it to a particular person who was buying phones, resulting in emails to their email address getting bounced, inability to auth to anything using Google sign-in, etc.; at least one user whose account was a recovery account for someone who bought and sold a phone also had their accounted closed; Dans Deals wrote this up and people's accounts were reinstated after the story went viral
• Google Cloud reduces quota for user, causing an incident, and then won't increase it again
  • User tries to find out what's going on and has this discussion:
    • GCP support: You exceeded the rate limit
    • User: We did 5000/10min. The quota was approved at 18k/min
    • GCP support: That's not the rate limit
    • User: What's the rate limit
    • GCP support: Not sure have to check with that team
  • So it seems like GCP added some kind of internal rate limiting that's stricter than the user's approved quota?
  • A commenter responds with "if you don’t buy support from GCP you have no support." and other users note that paying for support can also give you no support
• Google accepts fake DMCA takedown requests even in cases that are very obviously fake
  • An official Google comment on this is the standard response that there are robust processes for this "We have robust tools and processes in place to fight fraudulent takedown attempts, and we use a combination of automated and human review to detect signals of abuse – including tactics that are well-known to us like backdating. We provide extensive transparency and submit notices to Lumen about removal requests to hold requesters accountable. Sites can file counter notifications for us to re-review if they believe content has been removed from our results in error. We track networks of abuse and apply extra scrutiny to removal requests where appropriate, and we’ve taken legal action to fight bad actors abusing the DMCA"
• Small business app creator has everything shut down pending "verification" of Google Pay
  • Support did nothing and GCP refused to look into it until this story hit #1 on HN, at which point someone looked into it and fixed it
• Lobbying group representing Google, Apple, etc., is able to insert the language they want directly into a right to repair bill, excluding many devices from the actual right to repair.
  • "“We had every environmental group walking supporting this bill,” Fahy told Grist. “What hurt this bill is Big Tech was opposed to it.”"
• File containing a single line with "1" in it restricted on Google Drive due to copyright infringement; appeal denied
  • HN readers play around and find that files containing just "0" also get flagged for copyright violation
  • issue fixed after viral Twitter thread
• In 2016, Fark has ads disabled when a photograph of a clothed adult posted in 2010 is incorrectly flagged as child porn; appeals process takes 5 weeks
  • Fark notes that they had similar problems in 2013 because an image was flagged as showing too much skin
• Pixel 6 freezes when calling emergency services
  • a user notes that they reported the issue almost 4 years before this complaint on an earlier Pixel and the issue was "escalated" but was still an issue ~8 months before the previous complaint
  • A Google official account responded that the freeze was due to Microsoft Teams, but the user notes they've never used or even installed Microsoft Teams (there was an actual issue where Teams would block emergency calls, but that was not this user's issue)
• Account locked and information sent to SFPD after father takes images of son's groin to send to doctor, causing an SFPD investigation; SFPD cleared the father of any wrongdoing, but Google "stands by its decision", doesn't unlock the account
  • Google spokesperson says "We follow US law in defining what constitutes CSAM and use a combination of hash matching technology and artificial intelligence to identify it and remove it from our platforms,"
    
• Google cloud suspends corporate account, causing outage; there was a billing bug and the owner of the account paid and was assured that their account wouldn't be suspended due to the bug, but that was false and the account got suspended anyway
  • HN commenter suggests that "engineers that lack business experience" reach out to their account managers once they have significant spend; multiple people respond and say that they've done this and it didn't help at all
• Company locked out of their own domain on Google Workspaces; support refused to fix this
• Google cloud account suspended because someone stole the CC numbers for the corporate card and made a fraudulent adwords charge
• Journalist's YouTube account incorrectly demonetized
  • fixed after 7 months of appealing and a viral Twitter thread
• Ads account suspended; an educated guess is that some ML fraud signals plus using a Brex card led to the suspension
  • card works when paying for many other Google services
• Person's credit card stops working with Google accounts after using it to pay on multiple accounts
  • guessed to be due to an incorrect anti-fraud check
• Ads account suspended for "suspicious payments" even though the same card is used for many other Google payments, which are not suspended
  • after multiple appeals that fail, the former Google employee talks to internal contacts to get escalations, which also fail and the ads account stays suspended
• Google Play account banned for no known reason
  • the link Google provides to file the appeal can't be access with a banned account
  • the user had two apps using one API, so it counted as two separate violations at once, so the account was banned for "multiple violations"
• Google ads account for a small non-profit banned due to "unpaid balance"
  • Balance reads $0.00 but appealing ban fails
• Google ads account banned after account automatically switched to Japanese and then payment is made with an American card
• Google sheet with public election information incorrectly removed for "phishing"
  • restored after viral HN thread
• User account disabled and photos, etc., lost with no information on why and no information for why the appeal was rejected
  • ex-Google engineer unable to escalate to anyone who can restore account
    
• 10-year old YouTube channel with 120M views scheduled for deletion due copyright claims (no information provided to channel creator about what the copyright infringement was)
  • channel eventually saved after Twitter thread went viral
• FairEmail and Netguard app developer removes apps after giving up on fight with Google over whether or not FairEmail is Spyware
  • app later restored sometime after viral HN thread
• App banned from Play store because a button says "Report User" and not "Report"
• User gets banned from GCP for running the code on Google's own GCP tutorials
• Youtube comment anti-spam considered insufficient, so a user creates their own YT anti spam
• Search for product reviews generally returns SEO linkfarm spam and not useful results
  • See also, my post on the same topic
• Google account with thousands of dollars of apps banned from Google with no information on what happened and appeals rejected
  • account eventually restored after viral Twitter thread
• Linux Experiments Youtube Channel deleted with no reason given
  • channel restored shortly after viral Twitter and HN threads
• Warranty replacement Google Pixel 7 Pro is carrier locked to the wrong carrier and, even though user is in Australia, the phone is locked to a U.S. carrier
  • User has gone to Google support 8 times over 1 month and Google support has incorrectly told user 8 times that the phone is unlocked, so user has had no usable phone for 1 month; the carrier the phone is locked to agrees that the phone is incorrectly carrier locked, but they can't do anything about it since the original purchaser of the phone would have to call the carrier, but apparently the warranty replacement is a locked, used, phone
  • Possibly due to the reddit thread, Google support agrees to swap user's phone, but support continues to insist that the phone is not carrier locked
• Malware uses Google OAuth to hijack accounts
  • Google claims they've mitigated this for all accounts that were compromised, which could be true
• GCP account suspended for no discernable reason after years of use
  • Support was useless, but since the user used to work at Google, they emailed a former co-worker who sent an internal email, which caused the issue to get fixed immediately
• Obviously fake Google reviews for movie not removed for quite some time (obviously fake because many reviews copy+paste the exact same text)
• Google doesn't detect obviously fake restaurant reviews
  • I've noticed this as well locally — a new restaurant will have 100+ 5 star reviews, almost all of which look extremely fake; these reviews generally don't get removed, even years later
• Owner and developer at SaaS app studio 7 out of 100 apps (that use the same code) start getting rejected from app store
  • The claimed reason is that the apps allow user generated content (UGC) and therefore need a way to block and report the content, but the apps already have this
  • The developer keeps emailing support, explaining that they already have this and support keeps responding with nonsense like "We confirm that your app ... does not contain functionality to report objectionable content ... For more information or a refresher, we strongly recommend that you review our e-learning course on UGC before resubmission."
  • All attempts to escalate were also rejected, e.g., "Can you escalate this?" was responded to with "Unfortunately, we do not handle this kind of concern. You may continue to communicate with the appropriate team for further assistance in resolving your issue. Please understand that I am not part of the review team so I'm not able to give further information about your concern. I again apologize for the inconvenience." and then "As much as I'd like to help, I'm not able to assist you further. If you don't have any other concerns, I will now have to end our chat to assist other developers. I apologize and thank you for understanding. Have a great day. Bye!"
  • Multiple developers suggest that instead of interacting with Google support as if anyone actually pays attention or cares, you should re-submit your app with some token change, such as incrementing an internal build number; because Google's review process is nonsense, even serious concerns can be bypassed this way. The idea is that it's a mistake to think that the content of their messages makes any sense at all and that you're dealing with anything resembling a rational entity (see also.
• Google groups is a massive source of USENET spam
• Google groups is a massive source of USENET spam
• Google groups is a massive source of USENET spam
• Google groups is a massive source of email spam; a Google employee put information about this into a ticket, which did not fix the issue, nor does setting "can't add me to groups"
• Google locks user out by ignoring authenticated phone number change and only sending auth text to old number
• I had an issue related to the above, where I was once locked out of Google accounts while traveling because I only took my code generator and left my 2FA tokens at home; this was in the relatively early days of 2FA tokens and I added the tokens to reduce the odds that I would be locked out, because the documentation indicated that I would need any of my 2FA methods to be available to not get locked out; in fact, this is false, and Google will sometimes only let you authenticate with specific methods, so adding more methods actually increases the chances you'll get locked out if your concern is that you may lose a method and then lose access to your account
• Google allows user to pay for plan with unlimited storage, cancels unlimited storage plan, and then deletes user's data
  • Many HN commenters on the story tell the user they should've had other backups, apparently not reading the story, which notes that the user concurrently had a government agency take all of their hard drives
• Google closes company's Google Cloud account over 3 cent billing error, plus some other stories
• YouTube doesn't take down obvious scam ads when reported, responding with "We decided not to take this ad down. We found that the ad doesn’t go against Google’s policies"
• YouTube doesn't take down obvious scam ads
• Incorrect YouTube copyright takedown
• YouTube copyright claim for sound of typing on keyboard; fixed after Twitter thread goes viral
• Another YouTube copyright claim for sound of typing on keyboard; again fixed after Twitter thread goes viral
• User puts free music they made on YouTube, allowing other people to remix it; someone takes YouTube ownership of the music, fixed after user, one of the biggest YouTubers of all time, creates a video complaining about this
• Developer's app removed from app store for no discernible reason (allegedly for "user privacy") and then restored for no discernable reason
• YouTube copyright claim for white noise
• YouTube refuses to take down obvious scam ad
• YouTube refuses to take down scam ads for fake medical treatments
• YouTube refuses to take down scam ads
• Google doesn't take down obvious scam ads with fake download buttons
  • Mitigated on user's site by hiring a firm to block these ads post-auction?
• YouTube refuses to take down fraudulent ad after reporting
• Personally reporting scam ads to an employee at Google who works in the area causes ads to get taken down for a day or two, but they return shortly afterwards
• Google refuses to take down obvious scam ads after reporting
• Google refuses to take down obvious scam ad, responding with "We decided not to take this ad down. We found that the ad doesn’t go against Google’s policies, which prohibit certain content and practices that we believe to be harmful to users and the overall online ecosystem."
• YouTube refuses to take down obvious real estate scam ad using Wayne Gretzky, saying the ad doesn't violate any policy
• Straighforward SEO spam clone of competitor's website takes their traffic away
• User had negotiated limit of 300 concurrently BigQuery queries and then Google decided to reduce this to 100 because Google rolled out a feature that Google PMs and/or engineers believed was worth 3x in concurrent queries; user notes that this feature doesn't help them and that their query limit is now too low; talking to support apparently didn't work
• User keeps having their tiny GCP instance shut down because Google incorrectly and nonsensically detects crypto mining on their tiny instance
• User has limit on IPs imposed on them and the standard process for requesting IPs returned "Based on your service usage history you are not eligible for quota increase at this time"; all attempts to fix this via support failed
• Google Maps gives bad directions to hikers who get lost
• Search and rescue teams warn people against use of Google Maps
• Google's suggested American and British pronunciations of numpy
• CEO of Google personally makes sure that a recruiter who accidentally violated Google's wage fixing agreement with Apple is fired and the apologies to CEO of Apple for the error
• Developer's app rejected from app store and developer given the runaround for months
  • They keep getting support people telling them that their app doesn't do X, so they send instructions on how to see that the app does do X; their analytics show that support never even attempted to run the instructions and just kept telling them that their app didn't do X
• One of many examples of Google not fixing Maps errors when reported, resulting in people putting up a sign telling users to ignore Google Maps directions
  • Some more examples here
• SEO spam of obituaries creates cottage industry of obituary pirates
• Malware app stays up in app store for months after app is reported to be malware
  • The app now seems to be gone, but archive.org indicates that the app was up for at least six months after this person noted that they reported this malware which owned their parents
• User reports Google's accessible audio captchas only let you do 2-3 before banning you and making you do image-based captchas, making Google sites and services inaccessible to some blind people
• User gets impossible versions of Google's ReCaptcha, making all sites that use ReCaptcha inaccessible; user is unable to cancel paid services that are behind ReCaptcha and is forced to issue chargebacks to stop payment to now-impossible to access services
• User can't download India-specific apps while in India because Google only lets you change region once a year
• 3 year old YouTube channel with 24k subs, 100 videos, and 400 streams deleted, allegedly for saying "Don't hold your own [bitcoin] keys", which was apparently flagged as promoting illegal activity
  • YouTube responds with "we've forwarded this info to the relevant team and confirmed that the channel will remain suspended for Harmful or dangerous content policies" and links to a document; the user asks what content of theirs violates the policies and why, if the document says that you get 3 strikes your channel is terminated, the account was banned without getting 3 strikes; this question gets no response
• Snow closure of highway causes Google Maps to route people to unplowed forest service road with 10 feet of snow
• Google play rejects developer's app for nonsense reasons, so they keep resubmitting it until the app doesn't get rejected
• Washed out highways due to flooding causes Google Maps to route people through forest service roads that are in even worse condition
• Google routes people onto forest service roads that need an offroad vehicle to drive; users note that they've reported this, which does nothing
• Google captchas assume you know what various American things are regardless of where you are in the world
• Google AMP allows phishing campaigns to show up with trusted URLs
  • People warned Google engineers that this would happen and that there were other issues with AMP, but the response from Google was that if you think that AMP is causing you problems, you're wrong and the benefit you've received from AMP is larger than the problems it's causing you
• User reports that chrome extension, after getting acquired, appears to steal credit card numbers and reviews indicate that it now injects ads and sometimes (often?) doesn't work
  • 6 months ago, user tried to get the extension taken down, but this seems to have failed (the Firefox extension is also still available)
• User has their Google account banned after updating their credit card to replace expiring credit card with new credit card (both credit cards were from the same issuer, had the same billing address, etc.)
• Reporting a spam youtube comment does nothing
• BBC reports bad ads to Google and Google claims to have fixed the issue with an ML system, but follow-up searches from the BBC indicate that the issue isn't fixed at all
• User signs up for AdSense and sells thousands of dollars of ads that Google then doesn't allow the user to cash out
  • This is a common story that I've seen hundreds of times. Unsurprisingly, multiple people respond and say the same thing happened to them and that there's no recourse when this happens.
• User has their Google account (Gmail) account locked for no discernable reason; account recovery process and all appeals do nothing
  • For unknown reasons, after two years, the account recovery process works and the account is recovered
• User has their Google Pay account locked for "fraud"; there's a form you're supposed to fill out to get them to investigate, which did nothing three times
  • User had their phone through googlefi, email through Gmail, DNS via Google, etc., all of which stopped working
  • A couple years later, their accounts started working again for no discernable reason
• User gets locked out of Gmail despite having correct password and access to the recovery email (Gmail tells user their login was suspicious and refuses to let them log in)
  • I've had this happen to me as well when I had my correct password as well as a 2fa device; luckily, things started working again later
• User can't get data out of Google after Google adds limit on how much data account can have
• User notes that they're only able to get support from Google because they used to work there and know people who can bypass the normal support process
• Google takes down developer's Android app, saying that it's a clone of an iOS app; app was making $10k/mo
  • Developer finds out that the app Google thinks they're cloning is their own iOS app
  • Developer is able to get unbanned, but revenue never recovers an settles down to $1k/mo. Developer stops developing Android apps
• User finds that if they use "site:" "wrong", Google puts them into CAPTCHA hell
  • Another user notes that this happens to them with other query query modifiers
• Reporting malware Chrome extensions doesn't get them taken down, although some do end up getting taken down after a blog post on this goes viral
• User accidentally gains admin privileges to many different companies Google Cloud account and can't raise any kind of support ticket to get anyone to look at the problem
  • Multiple people respond and tell stories about how bad Google's paid support is compared to AWS support
• 15 year ol Gmail account lost with no recovery possible
  • Someone who helps many people with recovery says "they've all basically hit the brick wall of Google suggesting that at their scale, nothing can be done about such 'edge' cases"
• Google account lost despite having proper auth because Google deems login attempts too suspicious
• Google account lost despite having proper auth and access to backup account because Google deems login attempts too suspicious
• Google account lost despite having proper auth because Google deems login to be too suspicious
• Google account lost despite having proper auth and TOTP because Google deems login to be too suspicious
• Google account lost despite proper auth because Google deems login to be too suspicious
  • Person notes that they can log in when they travel back to the city they used to live in, but they can't log in where they moved to
• Google account lost despite proper auth for no known reason
  • Account login restored for no known reason a few months later
• User tries to log into Gmail account and gets ~20 consecutive security challenges, after which Gmail returns "You cannot log in at this time", so their account appears to be lost
• Google changes terms of service and reduces user's quota from 2TB to 15GB, user is unable to find any way to talk to a human about this and is forced to pay for a more expensive plan to not lose their data
  • YouTube account with single video and no comments banned for seemingly no reason, support requests do nothing
• Huge YouTube channel shut down
  • Someone defends this as the correct action because "Their account got session jacked and taken over by a crypto scamming farm. Google was in the right to shut down the account until it could get resolved."
    • Someone who is actually familiar with what's going on notes that this is nonsense, "Their account was shut down days after the crypto scam issue was resolved. They discussed it on the WAN show from the week before last."
• Many users run into serious problems after Google decides to impose 5M file limit on Google Drive without warning
  • Google support replies with "I reviewed your case here on our end including the interactions with the previous representatives. This case has already been endorsed to one of our account specialists. What they found out is that the error is working as intended"
  • On HN, the top comment is a Google engineer responding to say "I don't personally think that there are reasonable use-cases for human users with 5 million files. There may be some specialist software that produces data sets that a human might want to back up to Google Drive, but that software is unlikely to run happily on drive streamed files so even those would be unlikely to be stored directly on Drive." and a multiple people agree, despite the issue itself being full of people describing how they're running into issues
    • Someone notes that Google Drive advertises storage tiers up to 30TB, so 5M files would be 6MB at 30TB, not really a weird edge case of someone generating a bunch of tiny files or anything like that
    • Another user responds their home directory contains almost 5M files
  • The top HN reply to the #2 comment is a second Google engineer saying that Google Drive isn't for files (and that it's for things like Google Docs) and that people shouldn't be using it to store files
    • Someone notes that Google's own page for drive advertises it as a "File Sharing Platform"; this doesn't appear to have changed since, as of this writing, the big above-the-fold blurb on Google's own page about drive is that you can "Store, share, and collaborate on files and folders from your mobile device, tablet, or computer". Unsurprisingly, users indicate that they think Google Drive is for files
  • In low ranked HN comments, multiple people express surprise that Google didn't bother to contact the users who would be impacted by this change before making it
  • This Google engineering attitude of "this is how we imagine users use our product, and if you're using it differently, even if that's how the product is marketing, you're using it wrong" was a very common attitude when I worked at Google and I see that it hasn't changed.
• Chrome on Android puts tabloid stories and other spam next to frequently used domains/links
• Google pays Apple to not compete on search
• Google search has been full of scam ads for years
• r/blender repeatedly warns people over many months to not trust results for blender since top hit is malware.
• Rampant nutritional supplement scam advertising on Google
• Top search result for local restaurant is a scam restaurant
• User reports massive about obvious phishing and spam content makes it through Gmail's spamfilter, such as an ad that either steals your payment info or gets you to buy super overpriced gold
• High-ranking / top Google results for many pieces of software is malware that pays for a high ranking ad slot
  • Reporting this malware doesn't seem effective and the same malware ads can persist for very long periods of time unless someone contacts a Google engineer or makes a viral thread about the ad
• Top result for zoom installer is an ad that tries to get you to install badware
• User sees a huge number of scam ads on YouTube
• User sees a huge number of scam ads on YouTube
• User's list of wedding vendors they're using to organize a wedding tagged as phishing and user is warned for violating Google Drive's phishing policy
  • User tried to get more information but found no way to do so
• Corp security notes that it's very easy to send phishing emails to employees of corporation by passing it through Google Groups
• Google account lost because 2FA recovery process doesn't work
  • User lost their Google Authenticator 2FA when their phone broke. They have their backup recovery codes, but this only lets them log into their account (and uses up a code forever when logging in); after logging in, this does not enable them to change their 2FA, so each login is a countdown to losing their account
  • In the HN comments, some people walk them through the steps to change their 2FA when using backup codes, which works for other users but not this user — user believes that some kind of anti-fraud system is suspicious the user is fraudulent, which limits what kind of 2FA enables changing 2FA, requiring the original and now lost 2FA to change 2FA, making the recovery codes useless; in standard internet comment style, some people keep telling the user that this works and the user should simply do the steps that work, even though the user has explained multiple times that this does not work for them
  • Someone suggests buying Google One support, but someone else notes that Google One support appears to be very poor even though it's paid support, and people have noted on many other threads that even cloud support can be useless when spending millions, tens of millions, or hundreds of millions a year, so the idea that you'll get support from Google because you pay for is isn't always correct
  • Multiple people have reported the exact same issue and many people report that their mitigation to this is to score the 2FA secrets in their password manager; they know that this means that a computer and/or password manager compromise defeats their 2FA, but they feel that's better than randomly losing their account because the 2FA backup codes can simply not work if Google decides that they're too suspicious
    • Someone suggests setting multiple Yubikeys to prevent this issue. That sounds logical, but I've done this and I can report that it does not prevent this issue — I added multiple 2FA tokens in order to reduce the chance that losing 2FA tokens would cause me to get locked out; at one point, Google became suspicious of one of the 2FA I used to log in almost every time and required me to present another 2FA token, making my idea of having multiple 2FA tokens reduce the risk of a lockout actually backfire since, if Google becomes suspicious of the wrong 2FA tokens, losing any one out of N 2FA tokens could cause my account to become lost
• User loses Gmail account after Google system decides the phone numbers they've been using for verification "cannot be used for verification"
  • Another user looks into it and finds that Google's official support suggestion is to create another account, so the anti-fraud false positive means that this person lost their Gmail account
• User locked out of account after password change; user is sure they're using the correct password because they're using a password manager
  • As with the above cases, the password reset flow doesn't work; after five weeks of trying daily, doing the exact same steps as each other time worked, so the account was only lost for five weeks and not forever
• User complaints that their Google accounts have been moderately broken for 10 years due to forced Google+ migration in 2013 that left their account in a bad state
• User locked out of Google after changing password
  • Google asks the user to enter the new and old password, which the user does, but this doesn't enable logging in
  • Google sometimes asks the user to scan a QR code from a logged in account, but the user can't do this because they can't log in
  • User changed password to main and recovery accounts at the same time, so they're locked out of both accounts
  • For no discernable reason, repeatedly trying to get into the recovery account eventually worked, which allowed them to eventually get back into their main account
• User gets locked out of Gmail account when Gmail starts asking for 10+ year old password as well as current password to log in
  • User finds a suggestion on an old support forum to not try to log in for 40+ days and then try, at which point the user is only asked for their current password and can log in
    • This is clearly not a universal solution as there are examples of people who try re-logging in every year to lost accounts, which usually doesn't work, but this apparently sometimes works?
  • Someone posts the standard reply about how you shouldn't expect to get support unless you pay for Google One, apparently ignoring how every time someone posts this, people respond to note that Google One support rarely fixes problems like these
• User loses Gmail account because Gmail suddenly refuses to allow access with only the correct password and requires access to recovery email address, which has lapsed
  • A comment blaming the user from someone who apparently didn't read the post
• User loses Gmail account because Gmail suddenly refuses to allow access with only the correct password and requires an old phone number which is no longer active
  • This turned out to be another case where waiting a long time and then trying to log in worked
• User loses Gmail account because Gmail suddenly refuses to allow access with only the correct password and requires an old phone number which is no longer active
  • In this case, waiting a long time and then trying to log in didn't work and the account seems permanently lost
• User loses Gmail account because Gmail suddenly refuses to allow access the correct password; user has the recovery email as well, but that doesn't help
  • After three years of trying to log in every few months, logging in worked for no discernable reason, so the account was only lost for three years
• Google gives away user's Google Voice number, which they were using daily and had purchased credits on that were also lost
  • Someone who apparently didn't read the post suggests to the user they shouldn't have let the number be inactive for 6 months or they should've "made the number permanent'
  • Support refuses to refund user for credits and user can't get a new Google Voice number because the old one is still somehow linked to them and is considered a source of spam
• User loses Gmail account when recovery account token doesn't work
• User loses Gmail account when credentials stop working for no discernible reason
• User has an issue with Google and talks to support; support tells user to issue a chargeback, which results in user's account getting banned and user losing 15 years of account history
• User is in the middle of getting locked out of Google accounts and makes a viral post to try to get a human at Google to look at the issue
• John Carmack complains about having "a ridiculous time" with Google Cloud, only getting his issue resolved because he complained on Twitter an is one of the most famous programmers on the planet, decided to move to another provider after the second time this happened
• Developer documents years of incorrect Google Play Store policy violations and how to work around them
  • Someone claiming to have worked on the Google Play Store team says: "a lot of that was outsourced to overseas which resulted in much slower response time. Here stateside we had a lot of metrics in place to fast response. Typically your app would get reviewed the same day. Not sure what it's like now but the managers were incompetent back then even so."
• Developer notes that they sometimes get updates rejected from Google Play store and have even had their existing app get delisted, but that the algorithm for this is so poor that you can make meaningless changes, which has worked for getting them relisted every time so far
• Developer banned from Google Play, but they win the appeal
  • However, the Name / Namespace (com.company.project) continues to be blocked, so they'd have to refactor the app and change the product and company name to continue using Google Play
• Developer describes their process of interacting with the Google Chrome Webstore, which involves so much kafkaesque nonsense that they have semi-automated handling of the nonsense they know they'll encounter
• Developer has comical, sub-ChatGPT level interactions with "Chrome Web Store Developer Support" (see link for multiple examples)
• User complains about repeated nonsense video demonetization and age limiting , such as this I ate water with chopsticks getting a strike against it for "We reviewed your content carefully, and have confirmed that it violates our violent or graphic content policy", with a follow-up of "your video was rated [sic] limited by ML then mistakenly confirmed by a manual reviewer as limited .... we've talked to the team to ensure it doesn't happen again", but of course this keeps happening, which is why the user is complaining (the complaint comes after the video was restricted again and the appeal was denied twice, despite the previous comment about how YouTube would ensure this doesn't happen again).
• User has YouTube video incorrectly taken down for violating community guidelines, but it gets restored after they and another big YouTuber both write viral Twitter threads about the incorrect takedown
• User notes that Gmail's spam filtering appears to be getting worse
  • I remember this one because, when this user complained about it, I noticed that I was getting multiple spam emails per day (with plenty of false positives when I checked my spam folder as well)
  • This complaint from a user was also memorable to me since I was getting the exact same spam as this user
• User notes that Google (?) consistently sends you the wrong way into a highway offramp
• User's video on the history of megaman speedruns becomes age restricted, which also mostly demonetizes it?
  • User appeals, and 45 minutes later, they get a response saying "after careful review, we've confirmed that the age restriction on your video won't be lifted" (video is 78 minutes long)
    • User then quotes YouTube's own guidelines to show that their video doesn't appear to violate the guidelines
  • User tweets about this, and then YouTube replies saying they lifted the age restriction, but the video stopped getting recommended, so the video was still not making money (this user makes a living off YouTube videos)
  • 8 days later, the video is officially age restricted again, and they say that the previous reversal was an error
  • User then makes a video about this and tweets about the video, which then goes viral.
  • YouTube then responds after the tweet about getting the runraround goes viral, with "really sorry again that this was such a confusing / back and forth experience 😞. we’ve shared your video with the right people & if helpful, keep sharing more w/ our community outreach team on that same email too!!"
• When Jamie Brandon was organizing a database conference, Gmail spamfiltered the majority of emails he sent out about it
  • ~700 people signed up to be notified when tickets were available, but even though they explicitly signed up to get notified, Gmail still spamfiltered Jamie's email
• Author publishes a book about their victimization and sex crimes; Google then puts a photo of someone else in an automatically generated profile for the author
  • "After spending weeks sending feedback and trying to get help from Google support, they finally deleted the woman’s photo, but then promptly replaced it with another Andrea Vassell who is a pastor in New York. She, the pastor in New York, wrote to me that she has been 'attacked' because people believe she is me."
  • That the person was a pastor of a church also caused problems for some people mentioned in the book; author again tries to get the photo removed, which eventually works, but is then replaced by the photo of a man who'd been fired for threatening the author, and then months later, the pastor's photo showed up again as the author
  • Author appears to be non-technical and found HN and is writing a desperate plea for someone to do something about it
  • A Google employee whose profile reads "Google's public liaison of Search, helping people better understand search & Google better hear public feedback", responds with "I'll share more about how you can better get this feedback to us ... [explanation of knowledge panels] ... Normally people just don't like the image we show, so we have a mechanism for them to upload a preferred image. That's very easy to use. But in your case, I understand your reasons for not wanting to have an image used at all. I believe if you had filed feedback explaining that, the image would have been removed."
  • Author is dumbfounded given her lengthy explanation of how much feedback she has already provided and responds with "Are you suggesting that I did not send feedback through the appropriate channels? I have dozens of email exchanges with Google, some of which have multiple people copied on them, and I have screenshots of me sending feedback through your feedback link located within the knowledge panel. (And I explained my situation to them with more detail than I have explained here.). In April and May, I received email responses from Google employees who work for the knowledge panel support team. After they changed the photo twice to images of the wrong women instead of deleting them, I continued complaining and they suggested I contact legal removals. When I contacted legal, I received automated responses to contact the knowledge support team. So I was bounced around. They then began ignoring me and I started receiving automated responses from everyone. Even though I was being ignored, on any given day, I would wake up and find a different photo presented alongside my book. I also reached out to you, Danny Sullivan, directly"
• Famous sci-fi author spends years trying to get Google to stop putting photos of other people in their "knowledge panel"
  • This seems to currently be fixed, and it only took between five years and a decade to fix it.
• User notes that knowledge panel for them is misleading or wrong, and that attempts to claim the knowledge panel to fix this have failed
• Google knowledge panel for person incorrectly states that they are "also known as The Sadist ... a Bulgarian rapist and serial killer who murdered five people... "
  • Fixed after a story about this makes it to #1 on HN
• User notes that Google's knowledge panels about business often contain incorrect information even when the website for the business has correct information
• Company reaches out to candidate about a job, eventually giving them an offer. The offer acceptance reply in email is marked as spam by everyone at the company
  • On looking in the spam folder, one user at the company (me) finds that 19 out of 20 "spam" emails are actually not spam. Other users check and find a huge amount of important email is being classified as spam.
  • Google support responds with what appears to be an automated message which reads "Hi Dan. Our team is working on this issue. Meanwhile, we suggest creating a filter by selecting 'Never send it to spam' to stop mail from being marked as spam", apparently suggesting that everyone with a corp gmail account disable spam filtering entirely by creating a filter that disables the spam filter
    • One person responds and says they actually did this because they were getting so much important email classified as spam
• "Obvious to humans" spam gets through Gmail's spam filter all the time while also classifying "ham" as "spam"
• I emailed a local window film installer and their response to me, which quotes my entire email, went straight to spam
  

Facebook (Meta)

• Journalist's account deleted and only restored after Twitter thread on deletion goes viral
• Facebook moderator notes there's no real feedback or escalation path between what moderators see and the people who set FB moderation policy
• User banned from WhatsApp with no reason given
  • appeal resulted in a generic template response
• Instagram user can no longer interact with account
  • would like to remove account, but can't because login fails
• Multiple users report they created a FB account so they can see and manage FB ads; accounts banned and can no longer manage ads
• User banned after FB account hacked
  • account restored after viral HN story
• On a local FB group, user posts "Looking for some tech advice (admins delete if not allowed)... my Instagram account was hacked and I have lost all access to that account. The guy is still posting as me daily and communicating to others as me in messages (its a bitcoin scam). Does anyone know how I can communicate with Instagram directly? There does not appear to be any way to contact them and all the instructions I've followed lead me nowhere bc I have completely lost access to that account! 😫 Thank you!"
  • Someone suggests Instagram's instructions for this, https://help.instagram.com/368191326593075, but user replies and says that these didn't work because "I did all that but unfortunately the hacker was in my email and and verified all the changes before I noticed"
  • I replied and suggested searching linkedin for a connection to an employee, since the only things that work are internal escalation or going viral
• Facebook incorrectly reports a user to DigitalOcean for phishing for a blog post they wrote
  • DigitalOcean sends them an automated message saying that their droplet (machine/VM) will be suspending if they don't delete the offending post within 24 hours
  • user appeals and appeal goes through; unclear if it would've gone through without the viral HN thread about this
• User banned from FB marketplace for "violating community guidelines" after posting an ad for a vacuum
  • user appeals multiple times and each appeal is denied, ending with "Unfortunately, your account cannot be reinstated due to violating community guidelines. The review is final"
• Reporting post advocating for violence against a person does nothing
• Reporting post where one user tells another user to kill themselves does nothing
• Murdered person is flooded with racist comments; friends report these, which does nothing
• 40000 word series of articles by Erin Kissane that I'm not going to attempt to summarize
• Facebook doesn't take down obvious scam ads after reporting them
• User stops reporting obvious scam ads to Facebook because they never remove them, always saying that the ad didn't breach any standards
• Takeover of dead person's Facebook account to run scams
• See "Kamantha" story in body of post
• Facebook refuses to do anything about account that was taken over and constantly posts scams
• Facebook refuses to do anything about fake page for business
• Reporting scammer on facebook does nothing
• Paying for "creator" level of support on Facebook / insta appears to be worthless
  • Reviews is that support is sort of nice, in that you get connected to a human being who isn't reading off a script, but also useless. At one point Jonny Keeley had a video didn't upload and support's recommendation was to try editing the video again and uploading it again. Keeley asked support why that would fix it and the answer was basically, there's no particular reason to think that it might fix it, but it might also just work to re-upload the video. Another time, Keeley got "hacked" and went to support. Support once again responded quickly, but all they did was send him a bunch of links that he thinks are publicly available. Keeley was hoping that support would fix the issue, but instead they appear to have given him information he could've googled.
• Zuckerberg rejected proposals to improve teen mental health from other FB execs
  • article notes that "that a lack of investment in well-being initiatives meant Meta lacked 'a roadmap of work that demonstrates we care about well-being.'"
• Malicious Google ad from Google-verified advertiser; ad only removed after major publication writes a story about it
  • A user notes that something that amplifies the effectiveness of this attack is that Google allows advertisers to show fake domains, which is necessary for them to do tracking as they currently do it and not show some weird tracking domain
• User gets lifetime ban from running ads because they ran ads for courses teaching people to use pandas (the python library)
  • User hits appeal button on form and is immediately banned for life. Someone notes that the appeal button is a trap and you should never hit the appeal button???. Apparently you should fill out some kind of form that you won't be able to fill out if you hit the appeal button and are immediately banned?
• User notes pervasive scam ads
• You can deactivate anyone's WhatsApp account by sending an email asking for it to be deactivated
  • This is sort of the opposite of all those scam FB accounts where reporting that the account is scamming does nothing
• User has innocuous Threads message removed for "violating Community guidelines", and then asks why there's so much spam that doesn't get removed but their message gets remove
• User has Threads message removed with message saying that it violates community guidelines; message is a reply to themselves that reads "(Also, please don't respond to this with some 'well, on the taxpayer funding front, I think they have a point...' stuff. If you can read an article that highlights efforts to push people like me out of society and your takeaway is 'Huh, I think those people have a point!' then I'd much rather you not comment at all. I "
  • Like many others, user notes that they've repeatedly reported messages that do actually violate community guidelines and these messages don't get removed
• Rampant fraud on Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp
• Meta moderation in Kenya
• Facebook removes post showing art, electronics, and wheelchair mods is "hate speech"
  • No support action does anything, but the post is restored after the story about this goes viral
• User notes that stories that vaguely resemble holding a gun to one's head, such as holding a hair dryer to one's head, get flagged
• User reports threads desktop isn't usable for them for 6 weeks and then suddenly starts working again; logging in on most browsers give them an infinite loop
• Dead link due to Mastodon migration, but comment about FB spam which used to be accessible in https://mastodon.social/@[email protected]/109826480309020697
• User banned from Facebook's 2FA system (including WhatsApp, Insta, etc., causing business Insta page to get deleted) due to flaw in password recovery system
  • Despite having 2FA enabled, someone was able to take over this person's FB account. On appealing this, user is told "We've determined that you are ineligible to use Facebook"
  • User also used FB login for DMV and is no longer able to log into DMV
  • New accounts the user creates are linked to the old account and banned. Someone comments, "lol so they can identify/verify that but somehow fail to fingerprint login from Vietnam and account hijacking."
  • As usual, multiple people have the standard response that it's the user's fault for using a big platform and that no one should use these platforms, with comments like "It's common sense and obvious, yet whenever it gets mentioned, the messenger gets dunked on for victim blaming or whatever ... Somehow, this is a controversial opinion on HN" (there are many more such comments; I just linked a couple)
    • The author, who already noted in the post that his industry is dependent on Instagram asks "Please educate me on how to get the potential clients to switch platforms that they use to view pictures?" and didn't get a response; presumably, as is standard, none of these commenters read the post, although perhaps some of them just think that no one should work in these industries and anyone who does so should go flip burgers or something
• User's account banned after it was somehow compromised from a foreign IP
  • User gets the standard comment about how FB couldn't possibly review cases like this due to its scale
• User effectively banned from Facebook due to broken password recovery process, which requires getting total strangers to vouch that you're a real person, presumably due to some bad ML.
  • Afterwards, some scammer created a fake profile of the person, so there's now a fake version of the person around on FB and not a real one
• User effectively banned from FB due to bad "suspicious activity" detection despite having 2FA on and having access to their password and 2FA
• User repeatedly has account suspended for no discernable reason
• User effectively banned from FB until a friend of theirs starts a jos a job there, at which point their friend opens an internal ticket to get them unbanned
• User banned from FB after account hacked
• User banned from FB after account hacked
  • See comments for many other examples
• User banned from facebook after account hacked
  • Luckily for the user, this made the front page of HN and was highly ranked, causing some FB engineers to reach out and then fix the issue
  • Of course the HN post has the standard comments; one commenter suggests that people with the standard comments actually read the article before commenting, for once: "Anyone saying 'Good riddance! Go enjoy your life without Facebook!' is missing the point. Please read this bit from the article:"Thing is I’m a Mum of two who has just moved to a new area. Facebook groups have offered me support and community, and Mums I’ve met in local playgrounds have added me as a friend so we can use messenger to plan playdates. Without these apps sadly my little social life becomes a lot lonelier, and harder."
    • Undeterred, commenters respond to this comment with things like "this might actually have been a blessing in disguise--just the encouragement she needed to let go and move on from this harmful platform."
• People who don't know employees at FB who can help them complain on Google Maps about their Facebook's anti-fraud systems
• User banned from Facebook after posting about 12V system on Nissan Leaf in Nissan Leaf FB group
  • The post was (presumably automatically) determined to have violated "community standards", requiring identify verification to not be banned
  • "OK, I upload my driving licence. And it won't accept the upload. I try JPEG, PNG, different sizes, different browsers, different computers. Nothing seems to stick and after a certain number of attempts it says I have to wait a week to try again. After as couple of rounds of this the expiry deadline passes and my account is gone."
• Person notes that their wife and most of their wife's friends have lost their FB accounts at least once
• Person notes that girlfriend's mother's account was taken over and reporting the account as being taken over does nothing
  • The person, a programmer, finds it odd that taking over an account and changing the password, email, profile photo, full name, etc., all in quick succession doesn't trigger any kind of anti-fraud check
• User reports that you can get FB accounts banned by getting people in groups dedicated to mass reporting accounts to all report an account you want to get banned
• Someone wrote a spammy reply to a "tweet" of mine on Threads that was trending (they replied with a link to their substack and nothing else). I reported it and, of course, nothing happened. I guess I neeed to join one of the mass reporting groups to ask a bunch of people to report the spam.
• User is locked out of account and told they need to upload photo ID, which does nothing
  • Six months later, user gets to know a Facebook employee, who gets them unbanned
• User has Facebook account banned and can't get it unbanned
  • User tried to contact FB employees on linkedin, which failed
  • User then used instagram to meet FB employees and sleep with them, resulting in the account getting unbanned
• User is effectively banned from instagram because they logged in from a new device and can't confirm a no-longer active email
• User gets FB account stolen, apparently bypassing 2FA check the user thought would protect them
  • White male, father of 3 FB account replace by young Asian female account, apparently not at all suspicious to FB anti-fraud systems
• User finds that someone is impersonating them on Instagram; reporting this does nothing
• User has ad account hacked; all attempts to contact support get no response or a useless auto-response or a useless webpage
• User reports that there are multiple fake accounts impersonating them and family members and that reporting these accounts does nothing
• Relatively early post-IPO Facebook engineer has account banned from Facebook and of course no standard appeal process works
  • User reports that their engineering friends inside the company are also unable to escalate the issue, so their account as well as ads money and Oculus games are lost
• Sophisticated/technical user gets Instagram account stolen despite using strong random password, password manager, and 2FA
  • Crypto people had been trying to buy the account for 6 months and then the account was compromised
  • Following Instagram's official instructions for what to do literally results in an infinite loop of instructions
  • Instagram claims that they'll send you an email from [email protected] if you change the email on your account, but this didn't happen; user looked at their Fastmail logs and believes that their email was not compromised
  • User was able to regain their Insta account after the story hit the front page of HN
  • Multiple people note that there are services that claim to be able to get you a desired Insta handle for $10k to $50k; it's commonly believed that this is done via compromised Facebook employees. Since there is (in general) no way to appeal or report these things, whatever it is that these services do is generally final unless you're famous, well connected in tech, or can make a story go viral about you
• Desirable Instagram handle is stolen
  • The first two times this happened, user was able to talk to a contact inside Facebook to fix it, but they lost their contact to Facebook so the handle was eventually stolen and appears to be gone forever
• User tries to recover their mother's hacked Instagram account and finds that the recovery process docs are an infinite loop
  • They also find that the "click here if this login wasn't you" e-mail anti-fraud link when someone tries to log in as you is a 404
  • They also find that if an account without 2FA on gets compromised and the attacker turns on 2FA, this disables all old recovery mechanisms.
• User logs in and is asked for email 2FA
  • Email never arrives, isn't in spam folder, etc.
  • User asks for another code, which returns the error "Select a valid choice. 0 is not one of the available choices."
  • Subsequent requests for codes fail. User tries to contact support and gets a pop-up which says "If you’re unable to get the security code, you need to use the Instagram app to secure your account", but the user doesn't have the Instagram app installed, so their account is lost forever
• Instagram takes username from user to give it to a more famous user, a common story
• User with password, 2FA, registered pgp key (!?) gets locked of account due to some kind of anti-fraud system triggering; FB claims that only a passport scan will unlock the account, which the user apparently hasn't tried
• User finds that it's not possible to move Duo 2FA and loses account forever
  • According to the user, FB has auth steps to handle this case, which involves sending in ID docs, which the user tries annually. These steps do nothing
• User with Pixel phone can't use bluetooth for months because Google releases an update that breaks bluetooth (presumably only for some and not all devices) and doesn't bother to fix it for months
• I tried clicking on some Facebook ads (I normally don't look at or click on them) leading up to Black Friday and most ads were actually scams
• User reports fake FB profile (profile uses images from a famous dead person) and gets banned after reporting the profile a lot; user believes they were banned for reporting this profile too many times
• User makes FB post about a deepfake phishing attack, which then attracts about 1 spam comment per minute that they have to manually delete because FB's systems don't handle this correctly
• FB Ad Manager product claims reach of 101M people in the U.S. aged 18-34, but U.S. census has the total population being 76M, a difference of 25M assuming all people in the U.S. in that age group can be reached via FB ads
  • Former PM of the ads targeting team says that this is expected and totally fine because FB can't be expected to slice and dice numbers as small as tens or hundreds of millions accurately. "Think at FB scale".
• User gets banned from FB for a week for posting sexual content when they posted an image of a pokemon
• For maybe five years or so, I would regularly get spam in my feed where a scammer would sell fake sneakers and then tag a bunch of people, tagging someone I'm FB friends with, causing me to get this spam into my feed
  • This exact scam doesn't show up in my feed all the time anymore, but tag spam like this still sometimes shows up
• Instagram takes down account posting public jet flight information when billionaire asks the to

Amazon

• Author notes that 100% of the copies of their book sold on Amazon are counterfeits (100% because Amazon never buys real books because counterfeiters always have inventory)
  • Author spent months trying to get Amazon to take action on this; no effect
  • Author believes that most high-sale volume technical books on Amazon are impacted and says that other authors have noticed the same thing
• Top USB drive listings on Amazon are scams
• Amazon retail website asks user to change password; Amazon retail account and AWS stop working
  • never restored
• Magic card scam on Amazon
  • many customers report that "rare" cards were removed from packs bought from Amazon
• Counterfeit books sold on Amazon
  • seller of non-counterfeit books reported to Amazon various times over the years without effect
• User notes that Amazon is more careful about counterfeits in Australia than in the U.S. due to regulatory action, and that Valve only issued refunds in some cases due to Australian regulatory action
• User notes that Amazon sells counterfeit Kindle books
• Author notes that Amazon sells counterfeit copies of their book
• Boardgame publisher reports counterfeit copies of their game on Amazon, which they have not been able to get Amazon to remove
  • I saw this on a FB group I'm on since the publisher is running a PR blitz to get people to report the fake copies on Amazon in order to get Amazon to stop selling counterfeits
• Amazon resells returned, damaged, merchandise
  • This is so common that authors warn each other that this happens and so that other authors know that to leave a note in the book telling the user what happened when authors return damaged author's copies of books
• Amazon ships "new" book with notes scribbled on pages and exercises done; on asking for replacement, user gets a 2nd book "new" in similar condition
• Top-selling Amazon fuses dangerously doesn't blow at well above rated current
• Amazon sells used items as new
• Amazon sells used items as new
• Amazon sells used items as new
• Amazon sells used items as new
• Amazon sells used item as new; book has toilet paper inside
• Amazon sells used item as new; book has toilet paper inside
• Amazon ships HDDs in oversized box with no padding
• Amazon sells used or damaged items as new
• Amazon sells used microwave full of food detritus as new
• Amazon sells used pressure cooker with shopping bag and food smell as new
• Amazon sells used vacuum cleaner as new, complete with home address and telephone number of the person who returned the vacuum
• Amazon ships incorrect product to user buying a new item, apparently due to someone returned in different item
• Amazon sells incomplete used item as new
• Amazon sells used items as new
• Amazon sells used item as new, complete with invoice for sale 13 years ago, with name and address of previous owner
• Amazon selling low quality, counterfeit, engine oil filters
• Amazon sells supplements with unlabeled or mislabeled ingredients
  • Someone notes that Amazon used to require certification for supplements, but the person who was driving this left Amazon and it appears that no one has picked it up
• Amazon sells counterfeit shampoo that burns user's scalp
  • User wrote a review, which was deleted by Amazon
• Amazon sells damaged, used, items as new
• Amazon sells counterfeit supplement
  • User wrote a review noting this, which Amazon deleted
• Amazon sells box full of trash as new lego set
• Amazon sells used item with a refurbished sticker on it as new
• User has National Geographic subscription that can't be cancelled through the web interface, so they talk to Amazon support to cancel it; Amazon support cancels their Amazon Prime subscription instead
• Amazon sells used, damaged, item as new
• Amazon sells used item with Kohl's sticker on it as new
• Amazon sells nearly empty boardgame box as new, presumed to be returned item with game removed
• Amazon sells counterfeit board game
• User writes review noting that product tries to buy fake reviews; Amazon deletes their review as being bought because it mentioned this practice
• User writes review noting that product tries to buy fake reviews; Amazon deletes their review as being bought because it mentioned this practice
• User writes review noting that product tries to buy fake reviews; Amazon deletes their review as being bought because it mentioned this practice
• User writes review noting that product tries to buy fake reviews; Amazon deletes their review as being bought because it mentioned this practice
• Amazon sells counterfeit SD cards; user compares to reference SD card bought at brick and mortar store
  • A commenter notes that counterfeit SD cards are so common on Amazon that r/photography has a blanket recommendation against buying SD cards on Amazon
• User leave a review noting that product is a scam/fake an review is rejected
• Counterfeit lens filter on Amazon; multiple users note that they never buy camera gear (which includes things like SD cards) from Amazon because they've received too many counterfeits
• Amazon sells used, dirty, CPU as new CPU; CPU is marked "NOT FOR RESALE" (NFR)
  • it's not known why this CPU is marked NFR; a commenter speculates that it was a review copy of a CPU, in which case it would be relatively likely to be a highly-binned copy that's better than what you'd normally get. On the other hand, it could also be an early engineering sample with all sorts of bugs or other issues; when I worked for a CPU company, we would buy Intel CPUs to test them and engineering samples would not only have a variety of bugs that only manifested in certain circumstances, they would sometimes have instructions that did completely different things that could be reasonable behavior, except that Intel had changed the specified behavior before release, so the CPU would just do the wrong thing, resulting in crashes on real software (this happened with the first CPU we were able to get that had the MWAIT instruction, an engineering sample that was apparently from before Intel had finalized the current behavior of MWAIT).
• Amazon doesn't refund user after they receive empty box instead of $2100 item, but there's a viral story about this, so maybe Amazon will fix this
• Amazon refuses to refund user after sending them an old, used, camera lens instead of high-end new lens
  • On the photography forum where this is posted, users note that you should never by camera lenses or other high-end gear from Amazon if you don't want to risk being scammed
• Amazon doesn't refund user after sending them a low-end used camera lends instead of the ordered high-end lens
  • Users on this photography forum (a different one than the above) note that this happens frequently enough that you should never order camera lenses from Amazon
• Amazon refuses to refund user who got an empty box instead of a $7000 camera until story goes viral and Amazon gets a lot of bad press
  • Based on the shipping weight, Amazon clearly shipped something light or an empty box and not a camera

• User gets constant stream of unwanted Amazon packages

  • In response to a news story, Amazon says "The case in question has been addressed, and corrective action is being taken to stop the packages", but the user reports that nothing has changed

• Amazon sells user used AirPods, which later causes a problem when they want to use the 1-year warranty because Apple shows an in-service date 2 months before the user bought the item

  • To fix this, Apple requests that the user get some evidence from Amazon that the particular serial number was associated with their purchase and Amazon refuses to do this; people recommend that, to fix this, the user do the "standard" Amazon scam of buying a new item and returning a used item to swap a broken used item for a new item

• User receives old, used, HD from Amazon instead of new HD

• Mechanic warns people not to buy car parts on Amazon because counterfeits are so frequent

  • They note that you can get counterfeits in various places, but the rate is highest from Amazon and it's often a safety issue; they're current dealing with a customer who had counterfeit brake pads
  • Many other mechanics reply and report similar issues, e.g., someone bought a water pump from Amazon that exploded after 5 months that they believe is fake

• User stops buying household products from Amazon because counterfeit rate is too high

• User gets counterfeit card game from Amazon

• User gets counterfeit board game from Amazon

• Amazon sells counterfeit gun parts and accessories

• Amazon sells so many counterfeits that board game maker runs a marketing campaign to ask people to stop buying their game on Amazon

  • They spent months trying to get Amazon to go after counterfeits without making progress until the marketing campaign; two days after they started it, Amazon contacted them to try to deal with the issue

• Searching for items in many categories trivially finds huge number of fraudulent or counterfeit items

• User gets counterfeit hair product that burns scalp

• User receives used book from Amazon and their friend tells them that it's normal to buy books and return them in the return window, which their friend does all the time

• Amazon driver mishears automated response from Eufy doorbell, causing Amazon to shut down user's smarthome (user was able to get smarthome and account back after one week)

  • Video footage allegedly shows that the doorbell said "excuse me, can I help you", which lead to an Amazon executive personally accusing this user of racism; when account was unlocked, the user wasn't informed (except that things started working again)
  • In the comments to the article, someone says that it's impossible that Amazon would do this, with comments like "None of this makes any sense and is probably 100% false.", as if huge companies can't do things that don't make any sense, but Amazon's official response to a journalist reaching our for comment confirms that the something like the events happened; if it was 100% false, it would be very strange for Amazon to respond thusly instead of responding with a denial or not responding

• Youtuber who made a video about the above has their Amazon Associates account deleted after video goes viral

• Amazon account gets locked out; support refuses to acknowledge there's an issue until user calls back many times and then tells user to abandon the account and make another one

• User has Amazon account closed because they sometimes send gifts to friends back home in Belarus

• User gets counterfeit item from Amazon; they contact support with detailed photos showing that the item is counterfeit and support replies with "the information we have indicates that the product you received was authentic"

• User gets the wrong GPU from Amazon, twice; luckily for them, the second time, Amazon sent a higher end GPU than was purchased, so the user is getting a free upgrade

• Technical book publisher fails to get counterfeits removed from Amazon

  • Amazon announced a new system designed to deal with this, but people continue to report rampant technical book counterfeiting on Amazon, so the system does not appear to have worked

• ChatGPT clone of author's book only removed after Washington Post story on problem

• Searching for children's books on Amazon returns AI generated nonsense

• Amazon takes down legitimate cookbook; author notes "They won't tell us why. They won't tell us how to fix whatever tripped the algorithm. They won't seem to let us appeal. Reaching a human at Amazon is a Kafkaesque experience that we haven't yet managed to do."

  • When I checked later, not restored despite viral Mastodon thread and highly upvoted/ranked front-page HN article
  • Multiple people give the standard response of asking why booksellers bother to use Amazon, seemingly unaware (???) that Amazon has a lot of marketshare and authors can get a lot more reach and revenue on Amazon than on other platforms (when they're not arbitrarily banned) (the author of the book replies and says this as well, but one doesn't need to be an author to know this)

• Amazon basically steals $250 from customer, appeal does nothing, as usual

• Amazon delivers package directly to food waste / compost bin and declines to provide any compensation

  • User notes that they had a nice call with Amazon support and that they hope this doesn't happen again. From my experience with trying to get Amazon to stop shipping packages via Intelcom and Purolator, I suspect this user will have this problem happen again — I've heard that you can get them to not deliver using certain mechanisms, but you have to repeatedly contact support until someone actually puts this onto your file, as opposed to just saying that they'll do it and then not doing it, which is what's happened the two times I've contacted support about this

• User receives fake GPU from Amazon, after an attempt to buy from the official Amazon.com msi store

• Amazon Fresh order comes with bottle of urine

• Amazon sells many obviously fake 16 TB physically tiny SSD drives for $100

  • The author sent a list of fakes to Amazon and a few disappeared. The author isn't sure if the listings that disappeared were actually removed by Amazon or if it's just churn in the listings
  • An HN commenter searches and also finds many fakes, which have good reviews that are obviously for a different product; someone notes that they've tried reporting these kinds of obvious fakes where someone takes a legitimate product with good reviews and then swaps in a scam product but that this does nothing
  • Multiple people note that they've tried leaving 1* reviews for fake products and had these reviews rejected by Amazon for not meeting the review policy guidelines
  • Some time after this story made the front page of HN, this class of fakes got cleaned up. However, other fakes that are mentioned in the HN comments (see item directly below this) did not get cleaned up; maybe someone can write an article about how these other items are fake to get these other things cleaned up as well

• User notes that bestselling item on Amazon is a fake item and that they tried to leave a review to this effect, but the review was rejected

  • I looked up the item and it's still a bestselling item. There are some reviews which indicate that it's a fake item, but this fake item seems to have been on sale for years

• Amazon sells Android TV boxes that are actually malware

  • It appears that these devices have been on sale on Amazon at least since 2017; I clicked the search query in the link of the above post and it still returns many matching devices in 2014

• Amazon scammer causes user to get arrested and charged for fraud, which causes user to lose their job

  • The user also notes "In Canada, a criminal record is not a record of conviction, it’s a record of charges and that’s why I can’t work now. Potential employers never find out what the nature of it is, they just find out that I have a criminal arrest record."
  • For more information on how the scam works, see this talk by Nina Kollars

• An Amazon seller story

  • It's unclear exactly what's going on here since some parts of the seller's story appear to be false? Some parts are quite plausible and really terrible if true

• Illegal weapon a bestselling item on Amazon, although this does get removed after it's reported

• Fake Amazon listings with titles and descriptions like "I'm sorry but I cannot fulfill this request it goes against OpenAI use policy. My purpose is to provide helpful and respectful information to users"

  • The most obvious cases seem to have been cleaned up after a story about this hit #1 on HN
  • Someone noted that the seller's page is still up (which is still true today) and if you scroll around for listings, other ones with slightly different text, like "I'm sorry I cannot complete this task there isn't enough information provided. Please provide more context or information so I can assist you better " are still up
    • These listings are total nonsense, such as the above, which has a photo of a cat and also says "Exceptional Read/Write Speeds: With exceptional read/write speeds of up to 560MB and 530MB "
  • I checked out other items from this seller, and they have a silicone neck support "bowl" that also says "Note: Products with electrical plugs are designed for use in the US. Outlets and voltage differ internationally and this product may require an adapter or converter for use in your destination. Please check compatibility before purchasing.", so it seems that someone at Amazon took down the listings that HN commenters called out (the HN thread on this is full of HN commenters pointing out ridiculous listing and those individual listings being taken down), but there's no systematic removal of nonsense listings, of which there are many

• I tried to buy 3M 616 litho tape from Amazon (in Canada) and every listing had a knock-off product that copy+pasted the description of 3M 616 into the description

  • It's possible the knock-off stuff is as good, but it seems sketchy (and an illegal trademark violation) to use 3M's product description for your own knock-off product; at least some reviews indicate that expected to get 3M 616 and got a knock-off instead

• When searching for replacement Kidde smoke detectors on amazon.ca, all of the one I found are not Canadian versions, meaning they're not approved by SA, cUL, ULC or cETL. It's possible this doesn't matter, but in the event of a fire and an insurance claim, I wouldn't want to have a non-approved smoke detector

• Amazon store selling 5 year old tires as new (tires age over time and 5 year old tires should not be sold as new)

Microsoft

This includes GitHub, LinkedIn, Activision, etc.

• Microsoft AI generated news articles put person's photo into a story about a different person's sexual misconduct trial
  • Other incorrect AI generated stories include Joe Biden falling asleep during a moment of silence for Maui wildfire victims, a conspiracy theory about Democrats being behind the recent covid surge, and a story about San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston resigning after criticism by Elon Musk; these seem to be a side effect of laying off human editors and replacing them with AI
  • Other results include an obituary for a former NBA player who died at age 42, titled "Brandon Hunter useless at 42" and AI generated poll attached to a Guardian article on a deceased 21-year old woman, "What do you think is the reason behind the woman’s death" with the options "murder, accident, or suicide"
• User banned from GitHub for no discernable reason
  • User happens to be co-founder of GitHub, so this goes viral when they tweet about it, causing them to get unbanned; GitHub's COO responds with "You're 100% unsuspended now. I'm working with our Trust & Safety team to understand what went wrong with our automations and I'm incredibly sorry for the trouble."
• Gary Bernhardt, a paying user of GitHub files a Privacy / PII Github support request
  • ignored for 51 days, until Gary creates a viral Twitter thread
• LinkedIn user banned after finding illegal business on LinkedIn and reporting it
  • seems like the illegal business used their accounts to mass report the user
• LinkedIn user banned for looking at too many profiles
  • appeal rejected by customer service
  • this also happened to me when I was recruiting and looking at profiles and I also got nonsens responses from customer service, although my account wasn't permanently banned
• Azure kills entire company's prod subscription because Azure assigned them a shared IP that another customer used in an attack
• GitHub spam is out of control
• Outlook / Hotmail repeatedly incorrectly blocks the same mail servers; this can apparently be fixed by:
  • Visit https://olcsupport.office.com/ and submitting the complaint; Wait for the auto-reply, followed by the "Nothing was detected" email; replying with "Escalate" in the body, which then causes the server to get unblocked again in a day
• User reports that, every December, users on the service get email rejected by Microsoft, which needs to be manually escalated every year
• User running mail server on same IP for 10+ years, with no one else using IP, repeatedly has Microsoft block mail from the IP address, requiring manual escalation to fix each time
• Whitelisting a server doesn't necessary allow it to receive email if Microsoft decides to block it; a Microsoft employee thinks this should work, but it apparently doesn't work
• Microsoft arbitrarily blocks email from user's server; after escalation, they fix it, but only for hotmail and live.com, not Office 365
• OpenAI decides user needs to do 80 CAPTCHAs in a row to log in
  • In response to this, someone sent me: "Another friend of mine also had terrible issues even signing up for openai -- they told him he could only use his phone number to sign up for a maximum of 3 accounts, and he tried telling them that in fact he had only ever used it to sign up for 1 account and got back the same answer again and again (as if they use their own stuff for support) ... he said he kept trying to emphasize the word THREE with caps for the bot/human on the other end" [but this didn't work]
• User reports software on GitHub that has malware installer three times and GitHub does nothing
• I used linkedin for recruiting, which involved (manually) looking at people's profiles and was threatened with a ban for looking at too many profiles
  • The message says you should contact support "if you think this was in error", but this returns a response that's either fully automated or might as well be and appears to do nothing
• Gary Bernhardt spends 5 days trying to get Azure to take down phishing sites, which did nothing
  • Gary has 40k Twitter followers, so he tweeted about it, which got the issue fixed after a couple of days. Gary says "No wonder the world is so full of scams if this is the level of effort it takes to get Microsoft to take down a single phishing site hosted on their infrastructure".
• Spammer spams GitHub repos with garbage issues and PRs for months
  • After I made this viral Mastodon thread about this which also made it to the front page of HN, one of the two accounts was suspended, but when I checked significantly later, the other was still around and spamming
    • I did not report this account because I reported a blatant troll account (which I know was banned from Twitter and lobsters for trolling) and got no action, and I've seen many other people indicate that they find GitHub reporting to be useless, which seems to have been the case here; one person noted that, before my viral thread, they had already blocked the account from a repo they're a maintainer and didn't bother to report because of GitHub's bad reporting flow
• Microsoft incorrectly marks many blogs as spam, banning them from Bing as well as DuckDuckGo
  • Fixed sometime after a post about this went viral
• GitHub Copilot emits GPL code
• Windows puts conspiracy theory articles and other SEO spam into search menu
• Microsoft bans people using prompt injections on BingGPT
• User finds way to impersonate signed commits from any user because GitHub uses regexes instead of a real parser and has a bug in their regex
  • Bug report is initially closed as "being able to impersonate your own account is not an issue", by someone who apparently didn't understand the issue
  • After the user pings the issue a couple more times, the issue is eventually re-opened and fixed after a couple months, so this is at least better than the other GitHub cases we've seen, where someone has to make a viral Twitter thread to get the issue fixed
  • In the HN comments for the story, someone notes that GitHub is quick to close security issues that they don't seem to have looked closely at
• User is banned from GitHub after authorizing a shady provider with a login
  • Of course this has the standard comments blaming the user, but people note that the "log in with GitHub" prompt and the "grant this service to act on your behalf" prompt look almost identical; even so, people keep responding with comments like "dont bother wasting anymore resources to protect the stupids"
• Activision's RICOCHET anti-cheat software is famous for having a high false positive rate, banning people from games they paid for (this also bans people from playing "offline" in single-player mode)
  • User had their game crash 8 times in a row due to common problems (many people reported crashes with the version that crashed for this user), which apparently triggered some kind of false positive in anti-cheat software
  • Support goes well beyond what most companies respond with, and responds with "Any specifics regarding the ban will not be released in order to help maintain the integrity and security of the game, this is company policy that will not be changing."
  • Since this software is famous for being inaccurate and having a high false positive rate, there are a huge number of accounts of false bans, such as this one. In order to avoid doubling the length of this post, I won't list these
• Relatively rare case of user figuring out why they were incorrectly banned by Activision and getting their account restored
  • Of course support was useless as always and trying to get help online just resulted in getting a lot of comments blaming the user for cheating
  • User was banned because, after Activision and Blizzard were merged, their Blizzard username (which contains the substring "erotica") became illegal, causing them to be banned by Activision's systems. But, unlike a suspension for an illegal username in Blizzard's system, Activition's system doesn't tell you that have an illegal username and just bans you
  • Luckily, the user was able to find a single reddit post by someone who had a similar issue and that post had a link that lets you log into the account system even if you're banned, which then lets you change your username
  • Three days after making that change, the user was unbanned
• User who bought Activision game to play in single-player campaign mode only banned for cheating after trying to launch/play game on Linux through Wine/Proton
  • Support gave user the runaround and eventually stopped responding, so user appears to be permanently banned
• Anti-"cheat" software bans users before they can even try playing the game
  • Someone speculates that it could be due to buying refurbished hardware, since Activision bans based on hardware serial numbers and some people were banned because they bought SSDs from banned machines
• Anti-"cheat" software bans user from Bungie (Activision) game for no discernable reason; user speculates it might be because AutoHotkey to script Windows (for out of game activities)
• Minecraft user banned for 7 days for making sign that says Nigel on their mom's realm (server, basically?); other users report that creating or typing something with the substring "nig" is dangerous
  
  • See also, offensive words in Minecraft
• Microsoft Edge incorrectly blocks a page as being suspicious
  • Developer tries to appeal, but is told that they need to send a link to a URL for the support person to look at, which is impossible because it's an API server that has no pages. Support does not reply to this.
• User banned from WoW for beating someone playing with 60 accounts, who submits 60 false reports against user; people report this kind of issue in Overwatch as well, where mass reporting someone is an easy way to get Blizzard to suspend or ban their account
• User suspends user from WoW for not renaming their pet from its default name of "Gorilla", which was deemed to be offensive

Stripe

• Turns off account for a business that's been running since 2016 with basically the same customers. After a week of talking to tech support, the account is reactivated and then, shortly afterwards, 35% of client accounts get turned off. Account reactivated after story got 1k points on HN
• Stripe holds $400k from account and support just gives developer the runaround for a month
  • Support asks for 2 receipts and then, after they're sent, asks for the same two receipts again, etc.
  • As usual, HN commenters blame the developer and make up reasons that the developer might be bad, e.g., people say that the developer might be committing fraud. From a quick skim, at least five people called the developer's story fake or said or implied that the developer was involved in some kind of shady activity
  • Shortly after the original story made HN, Stripe resolved the issues and unlocked the accounts, so the standard responses that the developer must be doing something fraudulent were wrong again; a detailed accounting of what happens makes it clear that nothing about Stripe's response, other than the initial locking for potential fraud, was remotely reasonable
    • The developer notes that Stripe support was trying to stonewall them until they pointed out that there was a high-ranking HN post about the issue: "Dec 30 [over one month from the initial freezing of funds]: While I was writing my HN post I was also on chat with Stripe for over an hour. No new information. They were basically trying to shut down the chat with me until I sent them the HN story and showed that it was getting some traction. Then they started working on my issue again and trying to communicate with more people. No resolution."
  • After the issue was resolved, the developer was able to get information from Stripe about why the account was locked; the reason was that the company had a spike in sales due to Black Friday. Until the issue hit the top of HN, the developer was not able to talk to any person at Stripe who was useful in any way
• Developer at SaaS for martial arts academies in Europe notes that some new anti-fraud detection seems to be incorrectly suspending accounts; their academies have their own accounts and multiple got suspended
  • These stories are frequent enough that someone responds "Monthly HN Stripe customer support thread", to which the moderator of HN responds that it's more than monthly and HN will probably have to do something about this at some point, since having the HN front page be Stripe support on a regular basis is a bit much
    • Doing a search now, there are still plenty of support horror stories, but they typically don't get many votes and don't have Stripe staff drop in to fix the issue, so it seems that this support channel no longer works as well as it used to.
  • Multiple people point out issues in how Stripe handles SEPA DD and other users of Stripe note that they're impacted by this as well
  • Of course, this gets the usual responses that we need to see both sides of the story, maybe you're wrong and Stripe is right, etc.; the developer responds to one of these with an apology for their error
• After account was approved and despite many tests using the Stripe test environment, on launch, it turns out that the account wasn't approved after all and payments couldn't go through. Some people say that you should send real test payments before launch, but someone notes that using real CC info for tests and not the Stripe test stuff is a violation of Stripe's terms
• Stripe user notes that Stripe fraud detection completely fails on some trivial attacks, writes about it after seeing it hit them as well as many other Stripe users
  • Developer describes the support they received as "a joke" since they had to manually implement rules to block the clearly fraudulent charges
  • A stripe developer replies and says they'll look into it after two threads on this go viral
• Shut down payments for job board; seems to have been re-activated after Twitter thread
• Turned off company without warning; company moved to Parallel Economy
• Wording of Stripe's renewal email causes users of service to think that you have to email the service to cancel; issue gets no action for a year, until Gary Bernhardt publicly tweets about it
• User has Stripe account closed for no discernable reason
• Stripe user has money taken out of their account
  • A Stripe employee responds with "we wouldn't do so without cause", implying that Stripe's error rate is 0%
• Stripe arbitrarily shuts down user's business
  • Payments restored after story goes viral on HN
    • This happens so frequently that multiple people comment on how often this happens and how this seems to be the only way to get support from Stripe for some business-killing issues
• Developer notes that Stripe fraud detection totally failed when people do scams via CashApp
  • Another developer replies and notes that it's weird that you can block prepaid cards but not CashApp when CashApp is used for so much scamming
• Developer has payments frozen, initially because account was misclassified and put into the wrong risk category
  • Developer notes that suspension is particularly problematic because a "minimum fee commitment" with Stripe where they get a discount but also have a fee floor regardless of transaction volume; having payments suspending effectively increases their rate
  • After one week, their account was unfrozen, but then another department froze their account, " this time by a different Stripe risk team with even weirder demands: among other things, they wanted a 'working website' (our website works?) and 'contact information to appear on the website' (it's on every page?) It was as if Stripe had never heard of or talked to us before, and just like the other risk team, they asked questions but didn't respond to our emails."
  • This also got resolved, but new teams keep freezing their account, causing the developer to go through a similar process again each time
  • Fed up with this, the developer made an HN post which got enough upvotes that the Stripe employee who handles HN escalations saw the post
  • Of course, someone has the standard response that this must be be the user/developer's fault, it must be because the business is shady or high risk, one that typically gets banned from payment processors, but if that's the case, that makes this example even worse — why would Stripe negotiate a minimum fee agreement with a business they expect to ban and how come the business keeps getting unbanned each time after someone bans them
    • Also, multiple people report having or seeing similar experiences, "I find it totally believable after having to work through multiple internal risk teams to get my test accounts past automated flaggers", etc
• Stripe suspends account and support doesn't respond when suer wants to know why
  • User notes that they can't even refund their users: "when I attempted to process a refund for a customer who had been injured & was unable to continue training, I get an error message stating I am unable to process refunds! Am I supposed to tell my customer that my payment process won't refund his money? FYI - The payment I am attempting to refund HAS NOT been paid out yet - the money is sitting in my stripe account - but they refuse to refund it or even dignify me with a response."
  • Many people comment on bad Stripe support has been for them, even this happy customer: "We’re using stripe and are overall happy. But their customer support is pretty bad. Lots of canned replies and ping-pong back and forth until you get someone to actually read your question"
• Stripe account suspended due to a lien; after the lien is removed, Stripe doesn't unsuspend the account and the account is still frozen
  • Luckily, the son of the user is a programmer who knows someone at Stripe, so the issue gets fixed
• Developer's Stripe account is suspended with a standard message seen in other Stripe issues, "Our systems recently identified charges that appear to be unauthorized by the customer, meaning that the owner of the card or bank account did not consent to these payments. This unfortunately means that we will no longer be able to accept payments ... "
  • Developer pressed some button to verify their identity, which resulted in "Thank you for completing our verification process. Unfortunately, after conducting a further review of your account, we’ve determined that we still won't be able to accept payments for xx moving forward". They then tried to contact support, which did nothing
  • After their HN post hits the front page, someone looks into it and it appears that the issue is fixed and the developer gets an email which reads "It looks like some activity on your account was misidentified as unauthorized, causing potential charge declines and the cancellation of your account. This was a mistake on our end, so we've gone ahead and re-enabled your account." The developer notes that having support not respond until you can get a front-page HN post is a poor support strategy for users and that they lost credit card renewals during the time the account was suspended
• Developer has product launch derailed when Stripe suspends their account for no discernable reason; they try talking to support which doesn't work
  • What does work is posting a comment on a front-page HN thread about someone else's Stripe horror story, which becomes the top comment, which causes a Stripe employee to look at the issue and unsuspend the account
• Stripe bans developer for having too many disputes when they've had one dispute, which was a $10 charge where they won on submitting evidence about the dispute to J.P. Morgan, the user's bank
  • The developer appeals and receives a message saying that they're "after further conducting a review of your account, we've determined that we still won't be able to accept payments ... going forward. Stripe can only support users with a low risk of customer disputes. After reviewing your submitted information and website, it does seem like your business presents a higher level of risk than we can currently support"
  • After the story hits #1 on HN, their account is unbanned, but then a day later, it's rebanned for a completely different reason!
• Developer banned from Stripe; they aren't sure why, but wonder if it's because they're a Muslim charity
• User, who appears to be a non-technical small business owner has their Stripe account suspended, which also disabled the "call for help" button or any other method of contacting support
  • After six weeks, they find HN and make a post on HN, which gets the attention of someone at Stripe, and they're able to get their information out of Stripe and move to another payment processor, though they mention that they lose 6 weeks of revenue and close with "please..do better. You're messing with people's livelihoods"
• Developer notes that the only way they've been able to get Stripe issues resolved is by searching LinkedIn for connections at Stripe, because support just gives you the runaround
• User (not using Stripe as a service, someone being charged by Stripe) gets fraudulently charged every month and issues a chargeback every month
  • To stop having to issue a chargeback each month, user is stuck in a support loop where Stripe tells them to contact the credit card company and the credit card company tells them to contact Stripe t
    • Stripe support also responds nonsensically sometimes, e.g., responding and asking if they need help resetting their password
• Developer notes that Stripe's "radar" fraud detection product misses extremely simple fraudulent cases​​, such as "Is it a 100th charge coming from the same IP in Ukraine with a Canadian VISA", or "Same fake TLD for the email address, for a customer number 2235", so they use broad rules to reject fraudulent charges, but this also rejects many good charges and causes a loss of revenue

Uber

• Former manager of payments team banned from Uber due to incorrect fraud detection
  • engineer spends six months trying to get it fixed and it's eventually fixed via adding a whitelist that manually unbans the former manager of the payments team, but the underlying issue isn't fixed
• UberEats driver has accounted deactivated for not delivering drugs
  • Driver originally contacted Uber support, who told them to contact the police. The police confirmed that the package contained crack cocaine
  • The next day, Uber support called the driver and asked what happened. After the driver explained, support told them they would report the package as having being delivered to the police
  • Shortly afterwards, driver's account was deactivated for not delivering the drugs
• Despite very clear documentation that UberEats delivered the wrong order, Uber refuses to refund user
• User has account put into a degraded state because user asked for too many refunds on bad or missing items
• User has account put into a degraded state because user asked for refund on missing item
• I often wonder if the above will happen to me. My local grocery store delivers using DoorDash and, most of the time, at least one item is missing (I also often get items I didn't order that I don't want); either the grocery store or the driver (or both) seem to frequently accidentally co-mingle items for different customers, resulting in a very high rate of errors
• Asking for refund on order with error puts account into degraded state
• Uber refuses to refund item that didn't arrive on UberEats, until user threatens to send evidence of non-refund to UK regulatory agency, at which point Uber issues the refund
• Uber refuses to refund user when Uber Eats driver clearly delivered the wrong item; item isn't even an Uber delivery (it's a DoorDash delivery)
• A friend of mine had an Uber stop in the wrong place (it was multiple blocks away and this person ordered an Uber to pick them up from a medical appointment because they're severely concussed, so much so that walking is extremely taxing for them); the driver refused to come to them, so they agreed to go to the driver. When they were halfway there, the driver canceled the order in a way that caused my friend to pay a cancellation fee
• User receives a 6 pack instead of 12 pack from Uber Eats and customer service declines to refund the difference
  • In the comments, other people report having the same issue
• Uber refuses to issue refund when stolen phone (?) $2000 in charges; user only gets money back via chargeback and presumably gets banned for life, as is standard when issuing chargebacks to big tech companies
• UberEats refuses to issue refund when order is clearly delivered to wrong location (half a mile away)
• Early in the pandemic, Uber said they would compensate drivers if they got covid, but they refuse to do this
  • After 6 months of having support deny their request, Uber gives them half of the compensation that was promised
• UberEats punishes driver for "shop and pay" order when item is out of stock and cannot be purchased
• Disabled user orders groceries from UberEats; when order is delivered to the wrong building, support won't have item actually delivered
• User can't cancel UberEats order when restaurant doesn't make order, leaving order in limbo
  • The restaurant is closed and support responds saying that they can't do anything about it and the user needs to go to cancel in their app, but going to cancel in their app forwards them to chat with the support person who says that they need to go cancel in their app; after more discussion, support tells them that their order, which they know was never delivered, is not eligible for a refund
• Uber maps routes driver down impossible route and a user indicates that reporting this issue does nothing
• UberEats driver notes that reporting that someone stole an order from the restaurant is pointless because the order just gets sent back out to another driver anyway; contacting support is useless and costs you valuable time that you could be using to earn money
  • Another driver reports the same thing
• Two people scammed Uber Eats out of $1M
• Uber drivers at a local airport cancel ride if fare is under $100
• Uber driver suddenly has account blocked
  • They find out that it's because a passenger reported an item lost; passenger later realizes they had the item all along and driver is unblocked, but driver was 2 hours from home and had to do the 2 hour drive home without being able to pick up fares
• User reports that UberEats delivery had slugs in it and Uber does their now-standard move of not issuing a refund; they issue a refund after the post about this goes viral
• User reports that UberEats driver spilled drink, with clear evidence of this and Uber refuses to refund until after a thread about it goes viral and the user complains on Twitter
• Uber refuses to refund UberEats pizza delivery that never showed up; user indicates that they'd never contacted support before and had never asked for a refund before
• Driver threatened with ban from Uber and is unable to get any kind of remotely reasonable response until his union, the App Drivers and Couriers Union worked with the Worker Info Exchange to go after Uber in court; "Just before the case came to court, Uber apologised and acknowledged it had made a mistake"
  • Uber's issues an official response of "We are disappointed that the court did not recognise the robust processes we have in place, including meaningful human review, when making a decision to deactivate a driver’s account due to suspected fraud."
• User notes that Uber drivers often do scams and that Uber doesn't seem to prevent this
• User notes that they frequently get scammed by Uber drivers, but Uber usually refunds them when they report the scam to Uber
• User notes that Uber drivers try to scam the ~1/20 times
• User blocked from UberEats refunds after too many orders got screwed up and the user got too many refunds; user sent photos of the messed up orders, but Uber support doesn't care about what happened, just the size of and number of refunds
• User's uber account blocked for no discernable reason
  • At the time, there was no way to contact support, but the user tries again after a few years, at which point there is a support form, but that still doesn't work User's wife is incorrectly banned from user. User worked at Uber for four years and knows that the only way to get this fixed is to escalate to employees they know because, as a former employee, they know how useless support is
• User tries to get support for UberEATS not honoring a buy 1 get 1 free deal; support didn't help
• Former Uber engineer notes that people randomly get banned for false positives
• User had some Uber driver create an account with their email despite them never verifying the email with this new account; user tried to have their email removed, but support says they can't discuss anything about the account since they're not the account owner
• User's wife banned from Uber for no discernible reason
• User's Uber account gets into apparently unfixable unexpected state

Cloudflare

• Blind user reports that Cloudflare doesn't have audio captchas, making much of the web unusable
  • Person that handles Cloudflare captchas invites the user to solve an open research problem so that they're able to browse websites hosted on Cloudflare
• Cloudflare suspends user's account with no warning or information
  • contacting CloudFlare results in the a response of "Your account violated our terms of service specifically fraud. The suspension is permanent and we will not be making changes on our end."
  • account restored after viral HN thread
• User finds much of the internet unusable with Firefox due to Cloudflare CAPTCHA infinite loop (switching to Chrome allows them to browse the internet); user writes up a detailed account of the issue and their issue is auto-closed (and other people report the exact same experience)
  • Same issue, different user
  • Same issue, different user
    • Same issue, different user
  • Same issue, different user
  • Same issue, different user
  • Same issue, different user
  • Same issue, different user
  • Same issue, different user
  • Same issue, different user
  • Same issue, different user
  • Same issue, different user
  • Same issue, different user
  • Same issue, different user
  • Similar issue, but with Brave instead of Firefox
  • Standard response of "why use the product if it does this bad thing?"
    • People point out that, as usual, this standard response is nonsense because, just for example, government websites that some people need to interact with sometimes use Cloudflare
  • After the story hits the front page of HN, a cloudflare exec replies and says people will look into it and then one person reports that the issue is fixed for them; I found tens of people who said that they reported the issue to Cloudflare, so I would guess that, overall, thousands of people reported the issue to cloudflare, which did nothing until someone wrote a post that hit the HN front page.
• Cloudflare takes site down due to what appears to be incorrect malware detection
• Cloudflare blocks transfer of domains in cases of incorrect fraud detection
• Incorrect phishing detection results in huge phishing warning on website
• Incorrect phishing detection results in URL being blocked
  • This was apparently triggered by a URL that hadn't existed for 10 years?
• User can't access any site on cloudflare because cloudflare decided they're malicious
• User can't access any site on cloudflare and some other hosts, they believe because another user on their ISP had malware on their computer
• Cloudflare blocks some HN comments
  • Users do a bit of testing and find that the blocking is fairly arbitrary
• User is blocked by Cloudflare and can no longer visit many (all?) sites that are behind Cloudflare when using Firefox
  • In the comments, on the order of 10 users note they've run into the same problem. The article is highly upvoted and a Cloudflare PM looks into it (resolution unknown)
• RSS feeds blocked because Cloudflare detects RSS client isn't a browser with a real human directly operating it
• User from Hong Kong finds that they often have to use a VPN to access sites on Cloudflare because Cloudflare thinks their IP is bad
• User finds a large fraction of the internet unusable due to Cloudflare infinite browser check loop
• User finds a large fraction of the internet unusable because Cloudflare has decided their IP is suspicious
  • User changes ISPs in order to be able to use the internet again ### TODO example in main body
• Security researcher finds security flaw in Cloudflare
  • Researcher claims that afterwards, "Cloudflare literally lobbied the FTC to investigate me and question the legality of openly discussing security research"
• Cloudflare ia haven for scammers and copyright thieves

Shopify

• Having a store located in Puerto Rico causes payouts to be suspended every 3-4 months to verify address
• Kafkaesque support nightmare after payouts suspended
  • bizarre requirements, such as proving the bookstore has a license to sell the books they're selling

Twitter (X)

I dropped most of the Twitter stories since there are so many after the acquisition that it seems silly to list them, but I've kept a few random ones.

• Users report NSFW, pornographic, ads
• Users report seeing bestiality, CP, gore, etc., when they don't want to see it
• Scammers posting as customer service agents on Twitter/X

Apple

• Apple ML identifies user as three different people, depending on hairstyle
• Long story about Apple removing an app from the app store
• Rampant, easy to find, scam/spam apps on app store
  • A developer asks, how is it that so many legitimate apps get banned taken down from the app store for bad reasons when so much blatant spam gets through?
    • Lots of stories of legitimate apps getting autorejected immediately on submission, often requiring jumping through nonsensical hoops to get the app reinstated
• Apple forces developer to remove app for being too similar to another one of their apps because they have localized versions of their apps for different geos; developer asks how come people with essentially identical apps can keep 400 basically identical apps up?
• Searches for apps in various basic categories return scams and random puzzle games (in non-game categories)
• User makes an app that lets you read HN; Apple store repeatedly rejects app for reasons that don't make sense given what the app does, but support fails to understand the explanation
  • Luckily, it's Apple and not Google and they eventually manage to get a human on the phone, who understands the verbal explanation

DoorDash

• Driver can't contact customer, so DoorDash support tells driver to dump food in parking lot
• DoorDash driver says they'll only actually deliver the item if the user pays them $15 extra
• The above is apparently not that uncommon scam as a friend of mine had this happen to them as well
• DoorDash refuses refund for item that didn't arrive
  • Of course, people have the standard response of "why don't you stop using these crappy services?" (the link above this one is also full of these) and some responds, "Because I'm disabled. Don't have a driver's license or a car. There isn't a bus stop near my apartment, I actually take paratransit to get to work, but I have to plan that a day ahead. Uber pulls the same shit, so I have to cycle through Uber, Door dash, and GrubHub based on who has coupons and hasn't stolen my money lately. Not everyone can just go pick something up."
• At one point, after I had a few bad deliveries in a row and gave a few drivers low ratings (I normally give people a high rating unless they don't even attempt to deliver to my door), I had a driver who took a really long time to deliver who, from watching the map, was just driving around. With my rating, I wrote a note that said that it appeared that, from the route, the driver was multi-apping, at which point DoorDash removed my ability to rate drivers, so I switched to Uber

Walmart

• Driver steals delivery order; Walmart support does nothing and user has to drive to Walmart store to get issue fixed, but this is actually possible, unlike with most tech companies
  • Walmart employee notes that delivery is subcontracted out, with no real feedback mechanism
• Delivery doesn't arrive and user is unable to get refund
• Walmart refuses to refund user when they're charged the wrong price

Airbnb

I've seen a ton of these but, for some reason, it didn't occur to me to add them to my list, so I don't have a lot of examples even though I've probably seen three times as many of these as I've seen Uber horror stories.

• AirBnB had cameras in the bathroom and bedroom and support refused to refund user
• AirBnB refuses to issue refund of scam booking to stolen credit card; user has to issue chargeback and (as is standard) presumably gets their account banned for life
• User finds cameras in AirBnB that cover sleeping areas and other private areas and AirBnB says they'll refund user as user books a hotel and then refuses to refund user
  • User is a tenacious lawyer and goes through arbitration to get a refund, which takes a large amount of effort and almost an entire year (dates in 1st level reddit link from above appear to be wrong if dates are correct in subsequent links)

Appendix: Jeff Horwitz's Broken Code

Below are a few relevant excerpts. This is intended to be analogous to Zvi Mowshowitz's Quotes from Moral Mazes, which gives you an idea of what's in the book but is definitely not a replacement for reading the book. If these quotes are interesting, I recommend reading the book!

The former employees who agreed to speak to me said troubling things from the get-go. Facebook’s automated enforcement systems were flatly incapable of performing as billed. Efforts to engineer growth had inadvertently rewarded political zealotry. And the company knew far more about the negative effects of social media usage than it let on.

---

as the election progressed, the company started receiving reports of mass fake accounts, bald-faced lies on campaign-controlled pages, and coordinated threats of violence against Duterte critics. After years in politics, Harbath wasn’t naive about dirty tricks. But when Duterte won, it was impossible to deny that Facebook’s platform had rewarded his combative and sometimes underhanded brand of politics. The president-elect banned independent media from his inauguration—but livestreamed the event on Facebook. His promised extrajudicial killings began soon after.

A month after Duterte’s May 2016 victory came the United Kingdom’s referendum to leave the European Union. The Brexit campaign had been heavy on anti-immigrant sentiment and outright lies. As in the Philippines, the insurgent tactics seemed to thrive on Facebook—supporters of the “Leave” camp had obliterated “Remain” supporters on the platform. ... Harbath found all that to be gross, but there was no denying that Trump was successfully using Facebook and Twitter to short-circuit traditional campaign coverage, garnering attention in ways no campaign ever had. “I mean, he just has to go and do a short video on Facebook or Instagram and then the media covers it,” Harbath had marveled during a talk in Europe that spring. She wasn’t wrong: political reporters reported not just the content of Trump’s posts but their like counts.

Did Facebook need to consider making some effort to fact-check lies spread on its platform? Harbath broached the subject with Adam Mosseri, then Facebook’s head of News Feed.

“How on earth would we determine what’s true?” Mosseri responded. Depending on how you looked at it, it was an epistemic or a technological conundrum. Either way, the company chose to punt when it came to lies on its platform.

---

Zuckerberg believed math was on Facebook’s side. Yes, there had been misinformation on the platform—but it certainly wasn’t the majority of content. Numerically, falsehoods accounted for just a fraction of all news viewed on Facebook, and news itself was just a fraction of the platform’s overall content. That such a fraction of a fraction could have thrown the election was downright illogical, Zuckerberg insisted.. ... But Zuckerberg was the boss. Ignoring Kornblut’s advice, he made his case the following day during a live interview at Techonomy, a conference held at the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay. Calling fake news a “very small” component of the platform, he declared the possibility that it had swung the election “a crazy idea.” ... A favorite saying at Facebook is that “Data Wins Arguments.” But when it came to Zuckerberg’s argument that fake news wasn’t a major problem on Facebook, the company didn’t have any data. As convinced as the CEO was that Facebook was blameless, he had no evidence of how “fake news” came to be, how it spread across the platform, and whether the Trump campaign had made use of it in their Facebook ad campaigns. ... One week after the election, BuzzFeed News reporter Craig Silverman published an analysis showing that, in the final months of the election, fake news had been the most viral election-related content on Facebook. A story falsely claiming that the pope had endorsed Trump had gotten more than 900,000 likes, reshares, and comments—more engagement than even the most widely shared stories from CNN, the New York Times, or the Washington Post. The most popular falsehoods, the story showed, had been in support of Trump.

It was a bombshell. Interest in the term “fake news” spiked on Google the day the story was published—and it stayed high for years, first as Trump’s critics cited it as an explanation for the president-elect’s victory, and then as Trump co-opted the term to denigrate the media at large. ... even as the company’s Communications staff had quibbled with Silverman’s methodology, executives had demanded that News Feed’s data scientists replicate it. Was it really true that lies were the platform’s top election-related content?

A day later, the staffers came back with an answer: almost.

A quick and dirty review suggested that the data BuzzFeed was using had been slightly off, but the claim that partisan hoaxes were trouncing real news in Facebook’s News Feed was unquestionably correct. Bullshit peddlers had a big advantage over legitimate publications—their material was invariably compelling and exclusive. While scores of mainstream news outlets had written rival stories about Clinton’s leaked emails, for instance, none of them could compete with the headline “WikiLeaks CONFIRMS Hillary Sold Weapons to ISIS.”

---

The engineers weren’t incompetent—just applying often-cited company wisdom that “Done Is Better Than Perfect.” Rather than slowing down, Maurer said, Facebook preferred to build new systems capable of minimizing the damage of sloppy work, creating firewalls to prevent failures from cascading, discarding neglected data before it piled up in server-crashing queues, and redesigning infrastructure so that it could be readily restored after inevitable blowups.

The same culture applied to product design, where bonuses and promotions were doled out to employees based on how many features they “shipped”—programming jargon for incorporating new code into an app. Conducted semiannually, these “Performance Summary Cycle” reviews incented employees to complete products within six months, even if it meant the finished product was only minimally viable and poorly documented. Engineers and data scientists described living with perpetual uncertainty about where user data was being collected and stored—a poorly labeled data table could be a redundant file or a critical component of an important product. Brian Boland, a longtime vice president in Facebook’s Advertising and Partnerships divisions, recalled that a major data-sharing deal with Amazon once collapsed because Facebook couldn’t meet the retailing giant’s demand that it not mix Amazon’s data with its own.

“Building things is way more fun than making things secure and safe,” he said of the company’s attitude. “Until there’s a regulatory or press fire, you don’t deal with it.”

---

Nowhere in the system was there much place for quality control. Instead of trying to restrict problem content, Facebook generally preferred to personalize users’ feeds with whatever it thought they would want to see. Though taking a light touch on moderation had practical advantages—selling ads against content you don’t review is a great business—Facebook came to treat it as a moral virtue, too. The company wasn’t failing to supervise what users did—it was neutral.

Though the company had come to accept that it would need to do some policing, executives continued to suggest that the platform would largely regulate itself. In 2016, with the company facing pressure to moderate terrorism recruitment more aggressively, Sheryl Sandberg had told the World Economic Forum that the platform did what it could, but that the lasting solution to hate on Facebook was to drown it in positive messages.

“The best antidote to bad speech is good speech,” she declared, telling the audience how German activists had rebuked a Neo-Nazi political party’s Facebook page with “like attacks,” swarming it with messages of tolerance.

Definitionally, the “counterspeech” Sandberg was describing didn’t work on Facebook. However inspiring the concept, interacting with vile content would have triggered the platform to distribute the objectionable material to a wider audience.

---

​​... in an internal memo by Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, who had gone from being one of Mark Zuckerberg’s TAs at Harvard to one of his most trusted deputies and confidants at Facebook. Titled “The Ugly,” Bosworth wrote the memo in June 2016, two days after the murder of a Chicago man was inadvertently livestreamed on Facebook. Facing calls for the company to rethink its products, Bosworth was rallying the troops.

“We talk about the good and the bad of our work often. I want to talk about the ugly,” the memo began. Connecting people created obvious good, he said—but doing so at Facebook’s scale would produce harm, whether it was users bullying a peer to the point of suicide or using the platform to organize a terror attack.

That Facebook would inevitably lead to such tragedies was unfortunate, but it wasn’t the Ugly. The Ugly, Boz wrote, was that the company believed in its mission of connecting people so deeply that it would sacrifice anything to carry it out.

“That’s why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it,” Bosworth wrote.

---

Every team responsible for ranking or recommending content rushed to overhaul their systems as fast as they could, setting off an explosion in the complexity of Facebook’s product. Employees found that the biggest gains often came not from deliberate initiatives but from simple futzing around. Rather than redesigning algorithms, which was slow, engineers were scoring big with quick and dirty machine learning experiments that amounted to throwing hundreds of variants of existing algorithms at the wall and seeing which versions stuck—which performed best with users. They wouldn’t necessarily know why a variable mattered or how one algorithm outperformed another at, say, predicting the likelihood of commenting. But they could keep fiddling until the machine learning model produced an algorithm that statistically outperformed the existing one, and that was good enough.

---

... in Facebook’s efforts to deploy a classifier to detect pornography, Arturo Bejar recalled, the system routinely tried to cull images of beds. Rather than learning to identify people screwing, the model had instead taught itself to recognize the furniture on which they most often did ... Similarly fundamental errors kept occurring, even as the company came to rely on far more advanced AI techniques to make far weightier and complex decisions than “porn/not porn.” The company was going all in on AI, both to determine what people should see, and also to solve any problems that might arise.

---

Willner happened to read an NGO report documenting the use of Facebook to groom and arrange meetings with dozens of young girls who were then kidnapped and sold into sex slavery in Indonesia. Zuckerberg was working on his public speaking skills at the time and had asked employees to give him tough questions. So, at an all-hands meeting, Willner asked him why the company had allocated money for its first-ever TV commercial—a recently released ninety-second spot likening Facebook to chairs and other helpful structures—but no budget for a staffer to address its platform’s known role in the abduction, rape, and occasional murder of Indonesian children.

Zuckerberg looked physically ill. He told Willner that he would need to look into the matter ... Willner said, the company was hopelessly behind in the markets where she believed Facebook had the highest likelihood of being misused. When she left Facebook in 2013, she had concluded that the company would never catch up.

---

Within a few months, Facebook laid off the entire Trending Topics team, sending a security guard to escort them out of the building. A newsroom announcement said that the company had always hoped to make Trending Topics fully automated, and henceforth it would be. If a story topped Facebook’s metrics for viral news, it would top Trending Topics.

The effects of the switch were not subtle. Freed from the shackles of human judgment, Facebook’s code began recommending users check out the commemoration of “National Go Topless Day,” a false story alleging that Megyn Kelly had been sacked by Fox News, and an only-too-accurate story titled “Man Films Himself Having Sex with a McChicken Sandwich.”

Setting aside the feelings of McDonald’s social media team, there were reasons to doubt that the engagement on that final story reflected the public’s genuine interest in sandwich-screwing: much of the engagement was apparently coming from people wishing they’d never seen such accursed content. Still, Zuckerberg preferred it this way. Perceptions of Facebook’s neutrality were paramount; dubious and distasteful was better than biased.

“Zuckerberg said anything that had a human in the loop we had to get rid of as much as possible,” the member of the early polarization team recalled.

Among the early victims of this approach was the company’s only tool to combat hoaxes. For more than a decade, Facebook had avoided removing even the most obvious bullshit, which was less a principled stance and more the only possible option for the startup. “We were a bunch of college students in a room,” said Dave Willner, Charlotte Willner’s husband and the guy who wrote Facebook’s first content standards. “We were radically unequipped and unqualified to decide the correct history of the world.”

But as the company started churning out billions of dollars in annual profit, there were, at least, resources to consider the problem of fake information. In early 2015, the company had announced that it had found a way to combat hoaxes without doing fact-checking—that is, without judging truthfulness itself. It would simply suppress content that users disproportionately reported as false.

Nobody was so naive as to think that this couldn’t get contentious, or that the feature wouldn’t be abused. In a conversation with Adam Mosseri, one engineer asked how the company would deal, for example, with hoax “debunkings” of manmade global warming, which were popular on the American right. Mosseri acknowledged that climate change would be tricky but said that was not cause to stop: “You’re choosing the hardest case—most of them won’t be that hard.”

Facebook publicly revealed its anti-hoax work to little fanfare in an announcement that accurately noted that users reliably reported false news. What it omitted was that users also reported as false any news story they didn’t like, regardless of its accuracy.

To stem a flood of false positives, Facebook engineers devised a workaround: a “whitelist” of trusted publishers. Such safe lists are common in digital advertising, allowing jewelers to buy preauthorized ads on a host of reputable bridal websites, for example, while excluding domains like www.wedddings.com. Facebook’s whitelisting was pretty much the same: they compiled a generously large list of recognized news sites whose stories would be treated as above reproach.

The solution was inelegant, and it could disadvantage obscure publishers specializing in factual but controversial reporting. Nonetheless, it effectively diminished the success of false viral news on Facebook. That is, until the company faced accusations of bias surrounding Trending Topics. Then Facebook preemptively turned it off.

The disabling of Facebook’s defense against hoaxes was part of the reason fake news surged in the fall of 2016.

---

Gomez-Uribe’s team hadn’t been tasked with working on Russian interference, but one of his subordinates noted something unusual: some of the most hyperactive accounts seemed to go entirely dark on certain days of the year. Their downtime, it turned out, corresponded with a list of public holidays in the Russian Federation.

“They respect holidays in Russia?” he recalled thinking. “Are we all this fucking stupid?”

But users didn’t have to be foreign trolls to promote problem posts. An analysis by Gomez-Uribe’s team showed that a class of Facebook power users tended to favor edgier content, and they were more prone to extreme partisanship. They were also, hour to hour, more prolific—they liked, commented, and reshared vastly more content than the average user. These accounts were outliers, but because Facebook recommended content based on aggregate engagement signals, they had an outsized effect on recommendations. If Facebook was a democracy, it was one in which everyone could vote whenever they liked and as frequently as they wished. ... hyperactive users tended to be more partisan and more inclined to share misinformation, hate speech, and clickbait,

---

At Facebook, he realized, nobody was responsible for looking under the hood. “They’d trust the metrics without diving into the individual cases,” McNally said. “It was part of the ‘Move Fast’ thing. You’d have hundreds of launches every year that were only driven by bottom-line metrics.”

Something else worried McNally. Facebook’s goal metrics tended to be calculated in averages.

“It is a common phenomenon in statistics that the average is volatile, so certain pathologies could fall straight out of the geometry of the goal metrics,” McNally said. In his own reserved, mathematically minded way, he was calling Facebook’s most hallowed metrics crap. Making decisions based on metrics alone, without carefully studying the effects on actual humans, was reckless. But doing it based on average metrics was flat-out stupid. An average could rise because you did something that was broadly good for users, or it could go up because normal people were using the platform a tiny bit less and a small number of trolls were using Facebook way more.

Everyone at Facebook understood this concept—it’s the difference between median and mean, a topic that is generally taught in middle school. But, in the interest of expediency, Facebook’s core metrics were all based on aggregate usage. It was as if a biologist was measuring the strength of an ecosystem based on raw biomass, failing to distinguish between healthy growth and a toxic algae bloom.

---

One distinguishing feature was the shamelessness of fake news publishers’ efforts to draw attention. Along with bad information, their pages invariably featured clickbait (sensationalist headlines) and engagement bait (direct appeals for users to interact with content, thereby spreading it further).

Facebook already frowned on those hype techniques as a little spammy, but truth be told it didn’t really do much about them. How much damage could a viral “Share this if you support the troops” post cause?

---

Facebook’s mandate to respect users’ preferences posed another challenge. According to the metrics the platform used, misinformation was what people wanted. Every metric that Facebook used showed that people liked and shared stories with sensationalistic and misleading headlines.

McNally suspected the metrics were obscuring the reality of the situation. His team set out to demonstrate that this wasn’t actually true. What they found was that, even though users routinely engaged with bait content, they agreed in surveys that such material was of low value to them. When informed that they had shared false content, they experienced regret. And they generally considered fact-checks to contain useful information.

---

every time a well-intentioned proposal of that sort blew up in the company’s face, the people working on misinformation lost a bit of ground. In the absence of a coherent, consistent set of demands from the outside world, Facebook would always fall back on the logic of maximizing its own usage metrics.

“If something is not going to play well when it hits mainstream media, they might hesitate when doing it,” McNally said. “Other times we were told to take smaller steps and see if anybody notices. The errors were always on the side of doing less.” ... “For people who wanted to fix Facebook, polarization was the poster child of ‘Let’s do some good in the world,’ ” McNally said. “The verdict came back that Facebook’s goal was not to do that work.”

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When the ranking team had begun its work, there had been no question that Facebook was feeding its users overtly false information at a rate that vastly outstripped any other form of media. This was no longer the case (even though the company would be raked over the coals for spreading “fake news” for years to come).

Ironically, Facebook was in a poor position to boast about that success. With Zuckerberg having insisted throughout that fake news accounted for only a trivial portion of content, Facebook couldn’t celebrate that it might be on the path of making the claim true.

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multiple members of both teams recalled having had the same response when they first learned of MSI’s new engagement weightings: it was going to make people fight. Facebook’s good intent may have been genuine, but the idea that turbocharging comments, reshares, and emojis would have unpleasant effects was pretty obvious to people who had, for instance, worked on Macedonian troll farms, sensationalism, and hateful content.

Hyperbolic headlines and outrage bait were already well-recognized digital publishing tactics, on and off Facebook. They traveled well, getting reshared in long chains. Giving a boost to content that galvanized reshares was going to add an exponential component to the already-healthy rate at which such problem content spread. At a time when the company was trying to address purveyors of misinformation, hyperpartisanship, and hate speech, it had just made their tactics more effective.

Multiple leaders inside Facebook’s Integrity team raised concerns about MSI with Hegeman, who acknowledged the problem and committed to trying to fine-tune MSI later. But adopting MSI was a done deal, he said—Zuckerberg’s orders.

Even non-Integrity staffers recognized the risk. When a Growth team product manager asked if the change meant News Feed would favor more controversial content, the manager of the team responsible for the work acknowledged it very well could.

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The effect was more than simply provoking arguments among friends and relatives. As a Civic Integrity researcher would later report back to colleagues, Facebook’s adoption of MSI appeared to have gone so far as to alter European politics. “Engagement on positive and policy posts has been severely reduced, leaving parties increasingly reliant on inflammatory posts and direct attacks on their competitors,” a Facebook social scientist wrote after interviewing political strategists about how they used the platform. In Poland, the parties described online political discourse as “a social-civil war.” One party’s social media management team estimated that they had shifted the proportion of their posts from 50/50 positive/negative to 80 percent negative and 20 percent positive, explicitly as a function of the change to the algorithm. Major parties blamed social media for deepening political polarization, describing the situation as “unsustainable.”

The same was true of parties in Spain. “They have learnt that harsh attacks on their opponents net the highest engagement,” the researcher wrote. “From their perspective, they are trapped in an inescapable cycle of negative campaigning by the incentive structures of the platform.”

If Facebook was making politics more combative, not everyone was upset about it. Extremist parties proudly told the researcher that they were running “provocation strategies” in which they would “create conflictual engagement on divisive issues, such as immigration and nationalism.”

To compete, moderate parties weren’t just talking more confrontationally. They were adopting more extreme policy positions, too. It was a matter of survival. “While they acknowledge they are contributing to polarization, they feel like they have little choice and are asking for help,” the researcher wrote.

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Facebook’s most successful publishers of political content were foreign content farms posting absolute trash, stuff that made About.com’s old SEO chum look like it belonged in the New Yorker.

Allen wasn’t the first staffer to notice the quality problem. The pages were an outgrowth of the fake news publishers that Facebook had battled in the wake of the 2016 election. While fact-checks and other crackdown efforts had made it far harder for outright hoaxes to go viral, the publishers had regrouped. Some of the same entities that BuzzFeed had written about in 2016—teenagers from a small Macedonian mountain town called Veles—were back in the game. How had Facebook’s news distribution system been manipulated by kids in a country with a per capita GDP of $5,800?

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When reviewing troll farm pages, he noticed something—their posts usually went viral. This was odd. Competition for space in users’ News Feeds meant that most pages couldn’t reliably get their posts in front of even those people who deliberately chose to follow them. But with the help of reshares and the News Feed algorithms, the Macedonian troll farms were routinely reaching huge audiences. If having a post go viral was hitting the attention jackpot, then the Macedonians were winning every time they put a buck into Facebook’s slot machine.

The reason the Macedonians’ content was so good was that it wasn’t theirs. Virtually every post was either aggregated or stolen from somewhere else on the internet. Usually such material came from Reddit or Twitter, but the Macedonians were just ripping off content from other Facebook pages, too, and reposting it to their far larger audiences. This worked because, on Facebook, originality wasn’t an asset; it was a liability. Even for talented content creators, most posts turned out to be duds. But things that had already gone viral nearly always would do so again.

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Allen began a note about the problem from the summer of 2018 with a reminder. “The mission of Facebook is to empower people to build community. This is a good mission,” he wrote, before arguing that the behavior he was describing exploited attempts to do that. As an example, Allen compared a real community—a group known as the National Congress of American Indians. The group had clear leaders, produced original programming, and held offline events for Native Americans. But, despite NCAI’s earnest efforts, it had far fewer fans than a page titled “Native American Proub” [sic] that was run out of Vietnam. The page’s unknown administrators were using recycled content to promote a website that sold T-shirts.

“They are exploiting the Native American Community,” Allen wrote, arguing that, even if users liked the content, they would never choose to follow a Native American pride page that was secretly run out of Vietnam. As proof, he included an appendix of reactions from users who had wised up. “If you’d like to read 300 reviews from real users who are very upset about pages that exploit the Native American community, here is a collection of 1 star reviews on Native American ‘Community’ and ‘Media’ pages,” he concluded.

This wasn’t a niche problem. It was increasingly the default state of pages in every community. Six of the top ten Black-themed pages—including the number one page, “My Baby Daddy Ain’t Shit”—were troll farms. The top fourteen English-language Christian- and Muslim-themed pages were illegitimate. A cluster of troll farms peddling evangelical content had a combined audience twenty times larger than the biggest authentic page.

“This is not normal. This is not healthy. We have empowered inauthentic actors to accumulate huge followings for largely unknown purposes,” Allen wrote in a later note. “Mostly, they seem to want to skim a quick buck off of their audience. But there are signs they have been in contact with the IRA.”

So how bad was the problem? A sampling of Facebook publishers with significant audiences found that a full 40 percent relied on content that was either stolen, aggregated, or “spun”—meaning altered in a trivial fashion. The same thing was true of Facebook video content. One of Allen’s colleagues found that 60 percent of video views went to aggregators.

The tactics were so well-known that, on YouTube, people were putting together instructional how-to videos explaining how to become a top Facebook publisher in a matter of weeks. “This is where I’m snagging videos from YouTube and I’ll re-upload them to Facebook,” said one guy in a video Allen documented, noting that it wasn’t strictly necessary to do the work yourself. “You can pay 20 dollars on Fiverr for a compilation—‘Hey, just find me funny videos on dogs, and chain them together into a compilation video.’ ”

Holy shit, Allen thought. Facebook was losing in the later innings of a game it didn’t even understand it was playing. He branded the set of winning tactics “manufactured virality.”

“What’s the easiest (lowest effort) way to make a big Facebook Page?” Allen wrote in an internal slide presentation. “Step 1: Find an existing, engaged community on [Facebook]. Step 2: Scrape/Aggregate content popular in that community. Step 3: Repost the most popular content on your Page.”

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Allen’s research kicked off a discussion. That a top page for American Vietnam veterans was being run from overseas—from Vietnam, no less—was just flat-out embarrassing. And unlike killing off Page Like ads, which had been a nonstarter for the way it alienated certain internal constituencies, if Allen and his colleagues could work up ways to systematically suppress trash content farms—material that was hardly exalted by any Facebook team—getting leadership to approve them might be a real possibility.

This was where Allen ran up against that key Facebook tenet, “Assume Good Intent.” The principle had been applied to colleagues, but it was meant to be just as applicable to Facebook’s billions of users. In addition to being a nice thought, it was generally correct. The overwhelming majority of people who use Facebook do so in the name of connection, entertainment, and distraction, and not to deceive or defraud. But, as Allen knew from experience, the motto was hardly a comprehensive guide to living, especially when money was involved.

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With the help of another data scientist, Allen documented the inherent traits of crap publishers. They aggregated content. They went viral too consistently. They frequently posted engagement bait. And they relied on reshares from random users, rather than cultivating a dedicated long-term audience.

None of these traits warranted severe punishment by itself. But together they added up to something damning. A 2019 screening for these features found 33,000 entities—a scant 0.175 percent of all pages—that were receiving a full 25 percent of all Facebook page views. Virtually none of them were “managed,” meaning controlled by entities that Facebook’s Partnerships team considered credible media professionals, and they accounted for just 0.14 percent of Facebook revenue.

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After it was bought, CrowdTangle was no longer a company but a product, available to media companies at no cost. However much publishers were angry with Facebook, they loved Silverman’s product. The only mandate Facebook gave him was for his team to keep building things that made publishers happy. Savvy reporters looking for viral story fodder loved it, too. CrowdTangle could surface, for instance, an up-and-coming post about a dog that saved its owner’s life, material that was guaranteed to do huge numbers on social media because it was already heading in that direction.

CrowdTangle invited its formerly paying media customers to a party in New York to celebrate the deal. One of the media executives there asked Silverman whether Facebook would be using CrowdTangle internally as an investigative tool, a question that struck Silverman as absurd. Yes, it had offered social media platforms an early window into their own usage. But Facebook’s staff now outnumbered his own by several thousand to one. “I was like, ‘That’s ridiculous—I’m sure whatever they have is infinitely more powerful than what we have!’ ”

It took Silverman more than a year to reconsider that answer.

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It was only as CrowdTangle started building tools to do this that the team realized just how little Facebook knew about its own platform. When Media Matters, a liberal media watchdog, published a report showing that MSI had been a boon for Breitbart, Facebook executives were genuinely surprised, sending around the article asking if it was true. As any CrowdTangle user would have known, it was.

Silverman thought the blindness unfortunate, because it prevented the company from recognizing the extent of its quality problem. It was the same point that Jeff Allen and a number of other Facebook employees had been hammering on. As it turned out, the person to drive it home wouldn’t come from inside the company. It would be Jonah Peretti, the CEO of BuzzFeed.

BuzzFeed had pioneered the viral publishing model. While “listicles” earned the publication a reputation for silly fluff in its early days, Peretti’s staff operated at a level of social media sophistication far above most media outlets, stockpiling content ahead of snowstorms and using CrowdTangle to find quick-hit stories that drew giant audiences.

In the fall of 2018, Peretti emailed Cox with a grievance: Facebook’s Meaningful Social Interactions ranking change was pressuring his staff to produce scuzzier content. BuzzFeed could roll with the punches, Peretti wrote, but nobody on his staff would be happy about it. Distinguishing himself from publishers who just whined about lost traffic, Peretti cited one of his platform’s recent successes: a compilation of tweets titled “21 Things That Almost All White People Are Guilty of Saying.” The list—which included “whoopsie daisy,” “get these chips away from me,” and “guilty as charged”—had performed fantastically on Facebook. What bothered Peretti was the apparent reason why. Thousands of users were brawling in the comments section over whether the item itself was racist.

“When we create meaningful content, it doesn’t get rewarded,” Peretti told Cox. Instead, Facebook was promoting “fad/junky science,” “extremely disturbing news,” “gross images,” and content that exploited racial divisions, according to a summary of Peretti’s email that circulated among Integrity staffers. Nobody at BuzzFeed liked producing that junk, Peretti wrote, but that was what Facebook was demanding. (In an illustration of BuzzFeed’s willingness to play the game, a few months later it ran another compilation titled “33 Things That Almost All White People Are Guilty of Doing.”)

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As users’ News Feeds became dominated by reshares, group posts, and videos, the “organic reach” of celebrity pages began tanking. “My artists built up a fan base and now they can’t reach them unless they buy ads,” groused Travis Laurendine, a New Orleans–based music promoter and technologist, in a 2019 interview. A page with 10,000 followers would be lucky to reach more than a tiny percent of them.

Explaining why a celebrity’s Facebook reach was dropping even as they gained followers was hell for Partnerships, the team tasked with providing VIP service to notable users and selling them on the value of maintaining an active presence on Facebook. The job boiled down to convincing famous people, or their social media handlers, that if they followed a set of company-approved best practices, they would reach their audience. The problem was that those practices, such as regularly posting original content and avoiding engagement bait, didn’t actually work. Actresses who were the center of attention on the Oscars’ red carpet would have their posts beaten out by a compilation video of dirt bike crashes stolen from YouTube. ... Over time, celebrities and influencers began drifting off the platform, generally to sister company Instagram. “I don’t think people ever connected the dots,” Boland said.

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“Sixty-four percent of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools,” the researcher wrote in a note summarizing her findings. “Our recommendation systems grow the problem.”

This sort of thing was decidedly not supposed to be Civic’s concern. The team existed to promote civic participation, not police it. Still, a longstanding company motto was that “Nothing Is Someone Else’s Problem.” Chakrabarti and the researcher team took the findings to the company’s Protect and Care team, which worked on things like suicide prevention and bullying and was, at that point, the closest thing Facebook had to a team focused on societal problems.

Protect and Care told Civic there was nothing it could do. The accounts creating the content were real people, and Facebook intentionally had no rules mandating truth, balance, or good faith. This wasn’t someone else’s problem—it was nobody’s problem.

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Even if the problem seemed large and urgent, exploring possible defenses against bad-faith viral discourse was going to be new territory for Civic, and the team wanted to start off slow. Cox clearly supported the team’s involvement, but studying the platform’s defenses against manipulation would still represent moonlighting from Civic’s main job, which was building useful features for public discussion online.

A few months after the 2016 election, Chakrabarti made a request of Zuckerberg. To build tools to study political misinformation on Facebook, he wanted two additional engineers on top of the eight he already had working on boosting political participation.

“How many engineers do you have on your team right now?” Zuckerberg asked. Chakrabarti told him. “If you want to do it, you’re going to have to come up with the resources yourself,” the CEO said, according to members of Civic. Facebook had more than 20,000 engineers—and Zuckerberg wasn’t willing to give the Civic team two of them to study what had happened during the election.

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While acknowledging the possibility that social media might not be a force for universal good was a step forward for Facebook, discussing the flaws of the existing platform remained difficult even internally, recalled product manager Elise Liu.

“People don’t like being told they’re wrong, and they especially don’t like being told that they’re morally wrong,” she said. “Every meeting I went to, the most important thing to get in was ‘It’s not your fault. It happened. How can you be part of the solution? Because you’re amazing.’ 

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“We do not and possibly never will have a model that captures even a majority of integrity harms, particularly in sensitive areas,” one engineer would write, noting that the company’s classifiers could identify only 2 percent of prohibited hate speech with enough precision to remove it.

Inaction on the overwhelming majority of content violations was unfortunate, Rosen said, but not a reason to change course. Facebook’s bar for removing content was akin to the standard of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt applied in criminal cases. Even limiting a post’s distribution should require a preponderance of evidence. The combination of inaccurate systems and a high burden of proof would inherently mean that Facebook generally didn’t enforce its own rules against hate, Rosen acknowledged, but that was by design.

“Mark personally values free expression first and foremost and would say this is a feature, not a bug,” he wrote.

Publicly, the company declared that it had zero tolerance for hate speech. In practice, however, the company’s failure to meaningfully combat it was viewed as unfortunate—but highly tolerable.

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Myanmar, ruled by a military junta that exercised near-complete control until 2011, was the sort of place where Facebook was rapidly filling in for the civil society that the government had never allowed to develop. The app offered telecommunications services, real-time news, and opportunities for activism to a society unaccustomed to them.

In 2012, ethnic violence between the country’s dominant Buddhist majority and its Rohingya Muslim minority left around two hundred people dead and prompted tens of thousands of people to flee their homes. To many, the dangers posed by Facebook in the situation seemed obvious, including to Aela Callan, a journalist and documentary filmmaker who brought them to the attention of Elliot Schrage in Facebook’s Public Policy division in 2013. All the like-minded Myanmar Cassandras received a polite audience in Menlo Park, and little more. Their argument that Myanmar was a tinderbox was validated in 2014, when a hardline Buddhist monk posted a false claim on Facebook that a Rohingya man had raped a Buddhist woman, a provocation that produced clashes, killing two people. But with the exception of Bejar’s Compassion Research team and Cox—who was personally interested in Myanmar, privately funding independent news media there as a philanthropic endeavor—nobody at Facebook paid a great deal of attention.

Later accounts of the ignored warnings led many of the company’s critics to attribute Facebook’s inaction to pure callousness, though interviews with those involved in the cleanup suggest that the root problem was incomprehension. Human rights advocates were telling Facebook not just that its platform would be used to kill people but that it already had. At a time when the company assumed that users would suss out and shut down misinformation without help, however, the information proved difficult to absorb. The version of Facebook that the company’s upper ranks knew—a patchwork of their friends, coworkers, family, and interests—couldn’t possibly be used as a tool of genocide.

Facebook eventually hired its first Burmese-language content reviewer to cover whatever issues arose in the country of more than 50 million in 2015, and released a packet of flower-themed, peace-promoting digital stickers for Burmese users to slap on hateful posts. (The company would later note that the stickers had emerged from discussions with nonprofits and were “widely celebrated by civil society groups at the time.”) At the same time, it cut deals with telecommunications providers to provide Burmese users with Facebook access free of charge.

The first wave of ethnic cleansing began later that same year, with leaders of the country’s military announcing on Facebook that they would be “solving the problem” of the country’s Muslim minority. A second wave of violence followed and, in the end, 25,000 people were killed by the military and Buddhist vigilante groups, 700,000 were forced to flee their homes, and thousands more were raped and injured. The UN branded the violence a genocide.

Facebook still wasn’t responding. On its own authority, Gomez-Uribe’s News Feed Integrity team began collecting examples of the platform giving massive distribution to statements inciting violence. Even without Burmese-language skills, it wasn’t difficult. The torrent of anti-Rohingya hate and falsehoods from the Burmese military, government shills, and firebrand monks was not just overwhelming but overwhelmingly successful.

This was exploratory work, not on the Integrity Ranking team’s half-year roadmap. When Gomez-Uribe, along with McNally and others, pushed to reassign staff to better grasp the scope of Facebook’s problem in Myanmar, they were shot down.

“We were told no,” Gomez-Uribe recalled. “It was clear that leadership didn’t want to understand it more deeply.”

That changed, as it so often did, when Facebook’s role in the problem became public. A couple of weeks after the worst violence broke out, an international human rights organization condemned Facebook for inaction. Within seventy-two hours, Gomez-Uribe’s team was urgently asked to figure out what was going on.

When it was all over, Facebook’s negligence was clear. A UN report declared that “the response of Facebook has been slow and ineffective,” and an external human rights consultant that Facebook hired eventually concluded that the platform “has become a means for those seeking to spread hate and cause harm.”

In a series of apologies, the company acknowledged that it had been asleep at the wheel and pledged to hire more staffers capable of speaking Burmese. Left unsaid was why the company screwed up. The truth was that it had no idea what was happening on its platform in most countries.

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Barnes was put in charge of “meme busting”—that is, combating the spread of viral hoaxes about Facebook, on Facebook. No, the company was not going to claim permanent rights to all your photos unless you reshared a post warning of the threat. And no, Zuckerberg was not giving away money to the people who reshared a post saying so. Suppressing these digital chain letters had an obvious payoff; they tarred Facebook’s reputation and served no purpose.

Unfortunately, restricting the distribution of this junk via News Feed wasn’t enough to sink it. The posts also spread via Messenger, in large part because the messaging platform was prodding recipients of the messages to forward them on to a list of their friends.

The Advocacy team that Barnes had worked on sat within Facebook’s Growth division, and Barnes knew the guy who oversaw Messenger forwarding. Armed with data showing that the current forwarding feature was flooding the platform with anti-Facebook crap, he arranged a meeting.

Barnes’s colleague heard him out, then raised an objection.

“It’s really helping us with our goals,” the man said of the forwarding feature, which allowed users to reshare a message to a list of their friends with just a single tap. Messenger’s Growth staff had been tasked with boosting the number of “sends” that occurred each day. They had designed the forwarding feature to encourage precisely the impulsive sharing that Barnes’s team was trying to stop.

Barnes hadn’t so much lost a fight over Messenger forwarding as failed to even start one. At a time when the company was trying to control damage to its reputation, it was also being intentionally agnostic about whether its own users were slandering it. What was important was that they shared their slander via a Facebook product.

“The goal was in itself a sacred thing that couldn’t be questioned,” Barnes said. “They’d specifically created this flow to maximize the number of times that people would send messages. It was a Ferrari, a machine designed for one thing: infinite scroll.”

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Entities like Liftable Media, a digital media company run by longtime Republican operative Floyd Brown, had built an empire on pages that began by spewing upbeat clickbait, then pivoted to supporting Trump ahead of the 2016 election. To compound its growth, Liftable began buying up other spammy political Facebook pages with names like “Trump Truck,” “Patriot Update,” and “Conservative Byte,” running its content through them.

In the old world of media, the strategy of managing loads of interchangeable websites and Facebook pages wouldn’t make sense. For both economies of scale and to build a brand, print and video publishers targeted each audience through a single channel. (The publisher of Cat Fancy might expand into Bird Fancy, but was unlikely to cannibalize its audience by creating a near-duplicate magazine called Cat Enthusiast.)

That was old media, though. On Facebook, flooding the zone with competing pages made sense because of some algorithmic quirks. First, the algorithm favored variety. To prevent a single popular and prolific content producer from dominating users’ feeds, Facebook blocked any publisher from appearing too frequently. Running dozens of near-duplicate pages sidestepped that, giving the same content more bites at the apple.

Coordinating a network of pages provided a second, greater benefit. It fooled a News Feed feature that promoted virality. News Feed had been designed to favor content that appeared to be emerging organically in many places. If multiple entities you followed were all talking about something, the odds were that you would be interested so Facebook would give that content a big boost.

The feature played right into the hands of motivated publishers. By recommending that users who followed one page like its near doppelgängers, a publisher could create overlapping audiences, using a dozen or more pages to synthetically mimic a hot story popping up everywhere at once. ... Zhang, working on the issue in 2020, found that the tactic was being used to benefit publishers (Business Insider, Daily Wire, a site named iHeartDogs), as well as political figures and just about anyone interested in gaming Facebook content distribution (Dairy Queen franchises in Thailand). Outsmarting Facebook didn’t require subterfuge. You could win a boost for your content by running it on ten different pages that were all administered by the same account.

It would be difficult to overstate the size of the blind spot that Zhang exposed when she found it ... ... Liftable was an archetype of that malleability. The company had begun as a vaguely Christian publisher of the low-calorie inspirational content that once thrived on Facebook. But News Feed was a fickle master, and by 2015 Facebook had changed its recommendations in ways that stopped rewarding things like “You Won’t Believe Your Eyes When You See This Phenomenally Festive Christmas Light Show.”

The algorithm changes sent an entire class of rival publishers like Upworthy and ViralNova into a terminal tailspin, but Liftable was a survivor. In addition to shifting toward stories with headlines like “Parents Furious: WATCH What Teacher Did to Autistic Son on Stage in Front of EVERYONE,” Liftable acquired WesternJournal.com and every large political Facebook page it could get its hands on.

This approach was hardly a secret. Despite Facebook rules prohibiting the sale of pages, Liftable issued press releases about its acquisition of “new assets”—Facebook pages with millions of followers. Once brought into the fold, the network of pages would blast out the same content.

Nobody inside or outside Facebook paid much attention to the craven amplification tactics and dubious content that publishers such as Liftable were adopting. Headlines like “The Sodomites Are Aiming for Your Kids” seemed more ridiculous than problematic. But Floyd and the publishers of such content knew what they were doing, and they capitalized on Facebook’s inattention and indifference.

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The early work trying to figure out how to police publishers’ tactics had come from staffers attached to News Feed, but that team was broken up during the consolidation of integrity work under Guy Rosen ... “The News Feed integrity staffers were told not to work on this, that it wasn’t worth their time,” recalled product manager Elise Liu ... Facebook’s policies certainly made it seem like removing networks of fake accounts shouldn’t have been a big deal: the platform required users to go by their real names in the interests of accountability and safety. In practice, however, the rule that users were allowed a single account bearing their legal name generally went unenforced.

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In the spring of 2018, the Civic team began agitating to address dozens of other networks of recalcitrant pages, including one tied to a site called “Right Wing News.” The network was run by Brian Kolfage, a U.S. veteran who had lost both legs and a hand to a missile in Iraq.

Harbath’s first reaction to Civic’s efforts to take down a prominent disabled veteran’s political media business was a flat no. She couldn’t dispute the details of his misbehavior—Kolfage was using fake or borrowed accounts to spam Facebook with links to vitriolic, sometimes false content. But she also wasn’t ready to shut him down for doing things that the platform had tacitly allowed.

“Facebook had let this guy build up a business using shady-ass tactics and scammy behavior, so there was some reluctance to basically say, like, ‘Sorry, the things that you’ve done every day for the last several years are no longer acceptable,’ ” she said. ... Other than simply giving up on enforcing Facebook’s rules, there wasn’t much left to try. Facebook’s Public Policy team remained uncomfortable with taking down a major domestic publisher for inauthentic amplification, and it made the Civic team prove that Kolfage’s content, in addition to his tactics, was objectionable. This hurdle became a permanent but undisclosed change in policy: cheating to manipulate Facebook’s algorithm wasn’t enough to get you kicked off the platform—you had to be promoting something bad, too.

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Tests showed that the takedowns cut the amount of American political spam content by 20 percent overnight. Chakrabarti later admitted to his subordinates that he had been surprised that they had succeeded in taking a major action on domestic attempts to manipulate the platform. He had privately been expecting Facebook’s leadership to shut the effort down.

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A staffer had shown Cox that a Brazilian legislator who supported the populist Jair Bolsonaro had posted a fabricated video of a voting machine that had supposedly been rigged in favor of his opponent. The doctored footage had already been debunked by fact-checkers, which normally would have provided grounds to bring the distribution of the post to an abrupt halt. But Facebook’s Public Policy team had long ago determined, after a healthy amount of discussion regarding the rule’s application to President Donald Trump, that government officials’ posts were immune from fact-checks. Facebook was therefore allowing false material that undermined Brazilians’ trust in democracy to spread unimpeded.

... Despite Civic’s concerns, voting in Brazil went smoothly. The same couldn’t be said for Civic’s colleagues over at WhatsApp. In the final days of the Brazilian election, viral misinformation transmitted by unfettered forwarding had blown up.

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Supporters of the victorious Bolsonaro, who shared their candidate’s hostility toward homosexuality, were celebrating on Facebook by posting memes of masked men holding guns and bats. The accompanying Portuguese text combined the phrase “We’re going hunting” with a gay slur, and some of the posts encouraged users to join WhatsApp groups supposedly for that violent purpose. Engagement was through the roof, prompting Facebook’s systems to spread them even further.

While the company’s hate classifiers had been good enough to detect the problem, they weren’t reliable enough to automatically remove the torrent of hate. Rather than celebrating the race’s conclusion, Civic War Room staff put out an after-hours call for help from Portuguese-speaking colleagues. One polymath data scientist, a non-Brazilian who spoke great Portuguese and happened to be gay, answered the call.

For Civic staffers, an incident like this wasn’t a good time, but it wasn’t extraordinary, either. They had come to accept that unfortunate things like this popped up on the platform sometimes, especially around election time.

It took a glance at the Portuguese-speaking data scientist to remind Barnes how strange it was that viral horrors had become so routine on Facebook. The volunteer was hard at work just like everyone else, but he was quietly sobbing as he worked. “That moment is embedded in my mind,” Barnes said. “He’s crying, and it’s going to take the Operations team ten hours to clear this.”

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India was a huge target for Facebook, which had already been locked out of China, despite much effort by Zuckerberg. The CEO had jogged unmasked through Tiananmen Square as a sign that he wasn’t bothered by Beijing’s notorious air pollution. He had asked President Xi Jinping, unsuccessfully, to choose a Chinese name for his first child. The company had even worked on a secret tool that would have allowed Beijing to directly censor the posts of Chinese users. All of it was to little avail: Facebook wasn’t getting into China. By 2019, Zuckerberg had changed his tune, saying that the company didn’t want to be there—Facebook’s commitment to free expression was incompatible with state repression and censorship. Whatever solace Facebook derived from adopting this moral stance, succeeding in India became all the more vital: If Facebook wasn’t the dominant platform in either of the world’s two most populous countries, how could it be the world’s most important social network?

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Civic’s work got off to an easy start because the misbehavior was obvious. Taking only perfunctory measures to cover their tracks, all major parties were running networks of inauthentic pages, a clear violation of Facebook rules.

The BJP’s IT cell seemed the most successful. The bulk of the coordinated posting could be traced to websites and pages created by Silver Touch, the company that had built Modi’s reelection campaign app. With cumulative follower accounts in excess of 10 million, the network hit both of Facebook’s agreed-upon standards for removal: they were using banned tricks to boost engagement and violating Facebook content policies by running fabricated, inflammatory quotes that allegedly exposed Modi opponents’ affection for rapists and that denigrated Muslims.

With documentation of all parties’ bad behavior in hand by early spring, the Civic staffers overseeing the project arranged an hour-long meeting in Menlo Park with Das and Harbath to make the case for a mass takedown. Das showed up forty minutes late and pointedly let the team know that, despite the ample cafés, cafeterias, and snack rooms at the office, she had just gone out for coffee. As the Civic Team’s Liu and Ghosh tried to rush through several months of research showing how the major parties were relying on banned tactics, Das listened impassively, then told them she’d have to approve any action they wanted to take.

The team pushed ahead with preparing to remove the offending pages. Mindful as ever of optics, the team was careful to package a large group of abusive pages together, some from the BJP’s network and others from the INC’s far less successful effort. With the help of Nathaniel Gleicher’s security team, a modest collection of Facebook pages traced to the Pakistani military was thrown in for good measure

Even with the attempt at balance, the effort soon got bogged down. Higher-ups’ enthusiasm for the takedowns was so lacking that Chakrabarti and Harbath had to lobby Kaplan directly before they got approval to move forward.

“I think they thought it was going to be simpler,” Harbath said of the Civic team’s efforts.

Still, Civic kept pushing. On April 1, less than two weeks before voting was set to begin, Facebook announced that it had taken down more than one thousand pages and groups in separate actions against inauthentic behavior. In a statement, the company named the guilty parties: the Pakistani military, the IT cell of the Indian National Congress, and “individuals associated with an Indian IT firm, Silver Touch.”

For anyone who knew what was truly going on, the announcement was suspicious. Of the three parties cited, the pro-BJP propaganda network was by far the largest—and yet the party wasn’t being called out like the others.

Harbath and another person familiar with the mass takedown insisted this had nothing to do with favoritism. It was, they said, simply a mess. Where the INC had abysmally failed at subterfuge, making the attribution unavoidable under Facebook’s rules, the pro-BJP effort had been run through a contractor. That fig leaf gave the party some measure of deniability, even if it might fall short of plausible.

If the announcement’s omission of the BJP wasn’t a sop to India’s ruling party, what Facebook did next certainly seemed to be. Even as it was publicly mocking the INC for getting caught, the BJP was privately demanding that Facebook reinstate the pages the party claimed it had no connection to. Within days of the takedown, Das and Kaplan’s team in Washington were lobbying hard to reinstate several BJP-connected entities that Civic had fought so hard to take down. They won, and some of the BJP pages got restored.

With Civic and Public Policy at odds, the whole messy incident got kicked up to Zuckerberg to hash out. Kaplan argued that applying American campaign standards to India and many other international markets was unwarranted. Besides, no matter what Facebook did, the BJP was overwhelmingly favored to return to power when the election ended in May, and Facebook was seriously pissing it off.

Zuckerberg concurred with Kaplan’s qualms. The company should absolutely continue to crack down hard on covert foreign efforts to influence politics, he said, but in domestic politics the line between persuasion and manipulation was far less clear. Perhaps Facebook needed to develop new rules—ones with Public Policy’s approval.

The result was a near moratorium on attacking domestically organized inauthentic behavior and political spam. Imminent plans to remove illicitly coordinated Indonesian networks of pages, groups, and accounts ahead of upcoming elections were shut down. Civic’s wings were getting clipped.

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By 2019, Jin’s standing inside the company was slipping. He had made a conscious decision to stop working so much, offloading parts of his job onto others, something that did not conform to Facebook’s culture. More than that, Jin had a habit of framing what the company did in moral terms. Was this good for users? Was Facebook truly making its products better?

Other executives were careful when bringing decisions to Zuckerberg to not frame decisions in terms of right or wrong. Everyone was trying to work collaboratively, to make a better product, and whatever Zuckerberg decided was good. Jin’s proposals didn’t carry that tone. He was unfailingly respectful, but he was also clear on what he considered the range of acceptable positions. Alex Schultz, the company’s chief marketing officer, once remarked to a colleague that the problem with Jin was that he made Zuckerberg feel like shit.

In July 2019, Jin wrote a memo titled “Virality Reduction as an Integrity Strategy” and posted it in a 4,200-person Workplace group for employees working on integrity problems. “There’s a growing set of research showing that some viral channels are used for bad more than they are used for good,” the memo began. “What should our principles be around how we approach this?” Jin went on to list, with voluminous links to internal research, how Facebook’s products routinely garnered higher growth rates at the expense of content quality and user safety. Features that produced marginal usage increases were disproportionately responsible for spam on WhatsApp, the explosive growth of hate groups, and the spread of false news stories via reshares, he wrote.

None of the examples were new. Each of them had been previously cited by Product and Research teams as discrete problems that would require either a design fix or extra enforcement. But Jin was framing them differently. In his telling, they were the inexorable result of Facebook’s efforts to speed up and grow the platform.

The response from colleagues was enthusiastic. “Virality is the goal of tenacious bad actors distributing malicious content,” wrote one researcher. “Totally on board for this,” wrote another, who noted that virality helped inflame anti-Muslim sentiment in Sri Lanka after a terrorist attack. “This is 100% direction to go,” Brandon Silverman of CrowdTangle wrote.

After more than fifty overwhelmingly positive comments, Jin ran into an objection from Jon Hegeman, the executive at News Feed who by then had been promoted to head of the team. Yes, Jin was probably right that viral content was disproportionately worse than nonviral content, Hegeman wrote, but that didn’t mean that the stuff was bad on average. ... Hegeman was skeptical. If Jin was right, he responded, Facebook should probably be taking drastic steps like shutting down all reshares, and the company wasn’t in much of a mood to try. “If we remove a small percentage of reshares from people’s inventory,” Hegeman wrote, “they decide to come back to Facebook less.”

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If Civic had thought Facebook’s leadership would be rattled by the discovery that the company’s growth efforts had been making Facebook’s integrity problems worse, they were wrong. Not only was Zuckerberg hostile to future anti-growth work; he was beginning to wonder whether some of the company’s past integrity efforts were misguided.

Empowered to veto not just new integrity proposals but work that had long ago been approved, the Public Policy team began declaring that some failed to meet the company’s standards for “legitimacy.” Sparing Sharing, the demotion of content pushed by hyperactive users—already dialed down by 80 percent at its adoption—was set to be dialed back completely. (It was ultimately spared but further watered down.)

“We cannot assume links shared by people who shared a lot are bad,” a writeup of plans to undo the change said. (In practice, the effect of rolling back Sparing Sharing, even in its weakened form, was unambiguous. Views of “ideologically extreme content for users of all ideologies” would immediately rise by a double-digit percentage, with the bulk of the gains going to the far right.)

“Informed Sharing”—an initiative that had demoted content shared by people who hadn’t clicked on the posts in question, and which had proved successful in diminishing the spread of fake news—was also slated for decommissioning.

“Being less likely to share content after reading it is not a good indicator of integrity,” stated a document justifying the planned discontinuation.

A company spokeswoman denied numerous Integrity staffers’ contention that the Public Policy team had the ability to veto or roll back integrity changes, saying that Kaplan’s team was just one voice among many internally. But, regardless of who was calling the shots, the company’s trajectory was clear. Facebook wasn’t just slow-walking integrity work anymore. It was actively planning to undo large chunks of it.

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Facebook could be certain of meeting its goals for the 2020 election if it was willing to slow down viral features. This could include imposing limits on reshares, message forwarding, and aggressive algorithmic amplification—the kind of steps that the Integrity teams throughout Facebook had been pushing to adopt for more than a year. The moves would be simple and cheap. Best of all, the methods had been tested and guaranteed success in combating longstanding problems.

The correct choice was obvious, Jin suggested, but Facebook seemed strangely unwilling to take it. It would mean slowing down the platform’s growth, the one tenet that was inviolable.

“Today the bar to ship a pro-Integrity win (that may be negative to engagement) often is higher than the bar to ship pro-engagement win (that may be negative to Integrity),” Jin lamented. If the situation didn’t change, he warned, it risked a 2020 election disaster from “rampant harmful virality.”

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Even including downranking, “we estimate that we may action as little as 3–5% of hate and 0.6% of [violence and incitement] on Facebook, despite being the best in the world at it,” one presentation noted. Jin knew these stats, according to people who worked with him, but was too polite to emphasize them.

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Company researchers used multiple methods to demonstrate QAnon’s gravitational pull, but the simplest and most visceral proof came from setting up a test account and seeing where Facebook’s algorithms took it.

After setting up a dummy account for “Carol”—a hypothetical forty-one-year-old conservative woman in Wilmington, North Carolina, whose interests included the Trump family, Fox News, Christianity, and parenting—the researcher watched as Facebook guided Carol from those mainstream interests toward darker places.

Within a day, Facebook’s recommendations had “devolved toward polarizing content.” Within a week, Facebook was pushing a “barrage of extreme, conspiratorial, and graphic content.” ... The researcher’s write-up included a plea for action: if Facebook was going to push content this hard, the company needed to get a lot more discriminating about what it pushed.

Later write-ups would acknowledge that such warnings went unheeded.

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As executives filed out, Zuckerberg pulled Integrity’s Guy Rosen aside. “Why did you show me this in front of so many people?” Zuckerberg asked Rosen, who as Chakrabarti’s boss bore responsibility for his subordinate’s presentation landing on that day’s agenda.

Zuckerberg had good reason to be unhappy that so many executives had watched him being told in plain terms that the forthcoming election was shaping up to be a disaster. In the course of investigating Cambridge Analytica, regulators around the world had already subpoenaed thousands of pages of documents from the company and had pushed for Zuckerberg’s personal communications going back for the better part of the decade. Facebook had paid $5 billion to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to settle one of the most prominent inquiries, but the threat of subpoenas and depositions wasn’t going away. ... If there had been any doubt that Civic was the Integrity division’s problem child, lobbing such a damning document straight onto Zuckerberg’s desk settled it. As Chakrabarti later informed his deputies, Rosen told him that Civic would henceforth be required to run such material through other executives first—strictly for organizational reasons, of course.

​​Chakrabarti didn’t take the reining in well. A few months later, he wrote a scathing appraisal of Rosen’s leadership as part of the company’s semiannual performance review. Facebook’s top integrity official was, he wrote, “prioritizing PR risk over social harm.”

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Facebook still hadn’t given Civic the green light to resume the fight against domestically coordinated political manipulation efforts. Its fact-checking program was too slow to effectively shut down the spread of misinformation during a crisis. And the company still hadn’t addressed the “perverse incentives” resulting from News Feed’s tendency to favor divisive posts. “Remains unclear if we have a societal responsibility to reduce exposure to this type of content,” an updated presentation from Civic tartly stated.

“Samidh was trying to push Mark into making those decisions, but he didn’t take the bait,” Harbath recalled.

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Cutler remarked that she would have pushed for Chakrabarti’s ouster if she didn’t expect a substantial portion of his team would mutiny. (The company denies Cutler said this.)

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a British study had found that Instagram had the worst effect of any social media app on the health and well-being of teens and young adults.

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The second was the death of Molly Russell, a fourteen-year-old from North London. Though “apparently flourishing,” as a later coroner’s inquest found, Russell had died by suicide in late 2017. Her death was treated as an inexplicable local tragedy until the BBC ran a report on social media activity in 2019. Russell had followed a large group of accounts that romanticized depression, self-harm, and suicide, and she had engaged with more than 2,100 macabre posts, mostly on Instagram. Her final login had come at 12:45 the morning she died.

“I have no doubt that Instagram helped kill my daughter,” her father told the BBC.

Later research—both inside and outside Instagram—would demonstrate that a class of commercially motivated accounts had seized on depression-related content for the same reason that others focused on car crashes or fighting: the stuff pulled high engagement. But serving pro-suicide content to a vulnerable kid was clearly indefensible, and the platform pledged to remove and restrict the recommendation of such material, along with hiding hashtags like #Selfharm. Beyond exposing an operational failure, the extensive coverage of Russell’s death associated Instagram with rising concerns about teen mental health.

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Though much attention, both inside and outside the company, had been paid to bullying, the most serious risks weren’t the result of people mistreating each other. Instead, the researchers wrote, harm arose when a user’s existing insecurities combined with Instagram’s mechanics. “Those who are dissatisfied with their lives are more negatively affected by the app,” one presentation noted, with the effects most pronounced among girls unhappy with their bodies and social standing.

There was a logic here, one that teens themselves described to researchers. Instagram’s stream of content was a “highlight reel,” at once real life and unachievable. This was manageable for users who arrived in a good frame of mind, but it could be poisonous for those who showed up vulnerable. Seeing comments about how great an acquaintance looked in a photo would make a user who was unhappy about her weight feel bad—but it didn’t make her stop scrolling.

“They often feel ‘addicted’ and know that what they’re seeing is bad for their mental health but feel unable to stop themselves,” the “Teen Mental Health Deep Dive” presentation noted. Field research in the U.S. and U.K. found that more than 40 percent of Instagram users who felt “unattractive” traced that feeling to Instagram. Among American teens who said they had thought about dying by suicide in the past month, 6 percent said the feeling originated on the platform. In the U.K., the number was double that.

“Teens who struggle with mental health say Instagram makes it worse,” the presentation stated. “Young people know this, but they don’t adopt different patterns.”

These findings weren’t dispositive, but they were unpleasant, in no small part because they made sense. Teens said—and researchers appeared to accept—that certain features of Instagram could aggravate mental health issues in ways beyond its social media peers. Snapchat had a focus on silly filters and communication with friends, while TikTok was devoted to performance. Instagram, though? It revolved around bodies and lifestyle. The company disowned these findings after they were made public, calling the researchers’ apparent conclusion that Instagram could harm users with preexisting insecurities unreliable. The company would dispute allegations that it had buried negative research findings as “plain false.”

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Facebook had deployed a comment-filtering system to prevent the heckling of public figures such as Zuckerberg during livestreams, burying not just curse words and complaints but also substantive discussion of any kind. The system had been tuned for sycophancy, and poorly at that. The irony of heavily censoring comments on a speech about free speech wasn’t hard to miss.

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CrowdTangle’s rundown of that Tuesday’s top content had, it turned out, included a butthole. This wasn’t a borderline picture of someone’s ass. It was an unmistakable, up-close image of an anus. It hadn’t just gone big on Facebook—it had gone biggest. Holding the number one slot, it was the lead item that executives had seen when they opened Silverman’s email. “I hadn’t put Mark or Sheryl on it, but I basically put everyone else on there,” Silverman said.

The picture was a thumbnail outtake from a porn video that had escaped Facebook’s automated filters. Such errors were to be expected, but was Facebook’s familiarity with its platform so poor that it wouldn’t notice when its systems started spreading that content to millions of people?

Yes, it unquestionably was.

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In May, a data scientist working on integrity posted a Workplace note titled “Facebook Creating a Big Echo Chamber for ‘the Government and Public Health Officials Are Lying to Us’ Narrative—Do We Care?”

Just a few months into the pandemic, groups devoted to opposing COVID lockdown measures had become some of the most widely viewed on the platform, pushing false claims about the pandemic under the guise of political activism. Beyond serving as an echo chamber for alternating claims that the virus was a Chinese plot and that the virus wasn’t real, the groups served as a staging area for platform-wide assaults on mainstream medical information. ... An analysis showed these groups had appeared abruptly, and while they had ties to well-established anti-vaccination communities, they weren’t arising organically. Many shared near-identical names and descriptions, and an analysis of their growth showed that “a relatively small number of people” were sending automated invitations to “hundreds or thousands of users per day.”

Most of this didn’t violate Facebook’s rules, the data scientist noted in his post. Claiming that COVID was a plot by Bill Gates to enrich himself from vaccines didn’t meet Facebook’s definition of “imminent harm.” But, he said, the company should think about whether it was merely reflecting a widespread skepticism of COVID or creating one.

“This is severely impacting public health attitudes,” a senior data scientist responded. “I have some upcoming survey data that suggests some baaaad results.”

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President Trump was gearing up for reelection and he took to his platform of choice, Twitter, to launch what would become a monthslong attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the November 2020 election. “There is no way (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent,” Trump wrote. As was standard for Trump’s tweets, the message was cross-posted on Facebook.

Under the tweet, Twitter included a small alert that encouraged users to “Get the facts about mail-in ballots.” Anyone clicking on it was informed that Trump’s allegations of a “rigged” election were false and there was no evidence that mail-in ballots posed a risk of fraud.

Twitter had drawn its line. Facebook now had to choose where it stood. Monika Bickert, Facebook’s head of Content Policy, declared that Trump’s post was right on the edge of the sort of misinformation about “methods for voting” that the company had already pledged to take down.

Zuckerberg didn’t have a strong position, so he went with his gut and left it up. But then he went on Fox News to attack Twitter for doing the opposite. “I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online,” he told host Dana Perino. “Private companies probably shouldn’t be, especially these platform companies, shouldn’t be in the position of doing that.”

The interview caused some tumult inside Facebook. Why would Zuckerberg encourage Trump’s testing of the platform’s boundaries by declaring its tolerance of the post a matter of principle? The perception that Zuckerberg was kowtowing to Trump was about to get a lot worse. On the day of his Fox News interview, protests over the recent killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers had gone national, and the following day the president tweeted that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”—a notoriously menacing phrase used by a white Miami police chief during the civil rights era.

Declaring that Trump had violated its rules against glorifying violence, Twitter took the rare step of limiting the public’s ability to see the tweet—users had to click through a warning to view it, and they were prevented from liking or retweeting it.

Over on Facebook, where the message had been cross-posted as usual, the company’s classifier for violence and incitement estimated it had just under a 90 percent probability of breaking the platform’s rules—just shy of the threshold that would get a regular user’s post automatically deleted.

Trump wasn’t a regular user, of course. As a public figure, arguably the world’s most public figure, his account and posts were protected by dozens of different layers of safeguards.

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Facebook drew up a list of accounts that were immune to some or all immediate enforcement actions. If those accounts appeared to break Facebook’s rules, the issue would go up the chain of Facebook’s hierarchy and a decision would be made on whether to take action against the account or not. Every social media platform ended up creating similar lists—it didn’t make sense to adjudicate complaints about heads of state, famous athletes, or persecuted human rights advocates in the same way the companies did with run-of-the-mill users. The problem was that, like a lot of things at Facebook, the company’s process got particularly messy.

For Facebook, the risks that arose from shielding too few users were seen as far greater than the risks of shielding too many. Erroneously removing a bigshot’s content could unleash public hell—in Facebook parlance, a “media escalation” or, that most dreaded of events, a “PR fire.” Hours or days of coverage would follow when Facebook erroneously removed posts from breast cancer victims or activists of all stripes. When it took down a photo of a risqué French magazine cover posted to Instagram by the American singer Rihanna in 2014, it nearly caused an international incident. As internal reviews of the system later noted, the incentive was to shield as heavily as possible any account with enough clout to cause undue attention.

No one team oversaw XCheck, and the term didn’t even have a specific definition. There were endless varieties and gradations applied to advertisers, posts, pages, and politicians, with hundreds of engineers around the company coding different flavors of protections and tagging accounts as needed. Eventually, at least 6 million accounts and pages were enrolled into XCheck, with an internal guide stating that an entity should be “newsworthy,” “influential or popular,” or “PR risky” to qualify. On Instagram, XCheck even covered popular animal influencers, including Doug the Pug.

Any Facebook employee who knew the ropes could go into the system and flag accounts for special handling. XCheck was used by more than forty teams inside the company. Sometimes there were records of how they had deployed it and sometimes there were not. Later reviews would find that XCheck’s protections had been granted to “abusive accounts” and “persistent violators” of Facebook’s rules.

The job of giving a second review to violating content from high-profile users would require a sizable team of full-time employees. Facebook simply never staffed one. Flagged posts were put into a queue that no one ever considered, sweeping already once-validated complaints under the digital rug. “Because there was no governance or rigor, those queues might as well not have existed,” recalled someone who worked with the system. “The interest was in protecting the business, and that meant making sure we don’t take down a whale’s post.”

The stakes could be high. XCheck protected high-profile accounts, including in Myanmar, where public figures were using Facebook to incite genocide. It shielded the account of British far-right figure Tommy Robinson, an investigation by Britain’s Channel Four revealed in 2018.

One of the most explosive cases was that of Brazilian soccer star Neymar, whose 150 million Instagram followers placed him among the platform’s top twenty influencers. After a woman accused Neymar of rape in 2019, he accused the woman of extorting him and posted Facebook and Instagram videos defending himself—and showing viewers his WhatsApp correspondence with his accuser, which included her name and nude photos of her. Facebook’s procedure for handling the posting of “non-consensual intimate imagery” was simple: delete it. But Neymar was protected by XCheck. For more than a day, the system blocked Facebook’s moderators from removing the video. An internal review of the incident found that 56 million Facebook and Instagram users saw what Facebook described in a separate document as “revenge porn,” exposing the woman to what an employee referred to in the review as “ongoing abuse” from other users.

Facebook’s operational guidelines stipulate that not only should unauthorized nude photos be deleted, but people who post them should have their accounts deleted. Faced with the prospect of scrubbing one of the world’s most famous athletes from its platform, Facebook blinked.

“After escalating the case to leadership,” the review said, “we decided to leave Neymar’s accounts active, a departure from our usual ‘one strike’ profile disable policy.”

Facebook knew that providing preferential treatment to famous and powerful users was problematic at best and unacceptable at worst. “Unlike the rest of our community, these people can violate our standards without any consequences,” a 2019 review noted, calling the system “not publicly defensible.”

Nowhere did XCheck interventions occur more than in American politics, especially on the right.

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When a high-enough-profile account was conclusively found to have broken Facebook’s rules, the company would delay taking action for twenty-four hours, during which it tried to convince the offending party to remove the offending post voluntarily. The program served as an invitation for privileged accounts to play at the edge of Facebook’s tolerance. If they crossed the line, they could simply take it back, having already gotten most of the traffic they would receive anyway. (Along with Diamond and Silk, every member of Congress ended up being granted the self-remediation window.)

Sometimes Kaplan himself got directly involved. According to documents first obtained by BuzzFeed, the global head of Public Policy was not above either pushing employees to lift penalties against high-profile conservatives for spreading false information or leaning on Facebook’s fact-checkers to alter their verdicts.

An understanding began to dawn among the politically powerful: if you mattered enough, Facebook would often cut you slack. Prominent entities rightly treated any significant punishment as a sign that Facebook didn’t consider them worthy of white-glove treatment. To prove the company wrong, they would scream as loudly as they could in response.

“Some of these people were real gems,” recalled Harbath. In Facebook’s Washington, DC, office, staffers would explicitly justify blocking penalties against “Activist Mommy,” a Midwestern Christian account with a penchant for anti-gay rhetoric, because she would immediately go to the conservative press.

Facebook’s fear of messing up with a major public figure was so great that some achieved a status beyond XCheck and were whitelisted altogether, rendering even their most vile content immune from penalties, downranking, and, in some cases, even internal review.

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Other Civic colleagues and Integrity staffers piled into the comments section to concur. “If our goal, was say something like: have less hate, violence etc. on our platform to begin with instead of remove more hate, violence etc. our solutions and investments would probably look quite different,” one wrote.

Rosen was getting tired of dealing with Civic. Zuckerberg, who famously did not like to revisit decisions once they were made, had already dictated his preferred approach: automatically remove content if Facebook’s classifiers were highly confident that it broke the platform’s rules and take “soft” actions such as demotions when the systems predicted a violation was more likely than not. These were the marching orders and the only productive path forward was to diligently execute them.

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The week before, the Wall Street Journal had published a story my colleague Newley Purnell and I cowrote about how Facebook had exempted a firebrand Hindu politician from its hate speech enforcement. There had been no question that Raja Singh, a member of the Telangana state parliament, was inciting violence. He gave speeches calling for Rohingya immigrants who fled genocide in Myanmar to be shot, branded all Indian Muslims traitors, and threatened to raze mosques. He did these things while building an audience of more than 400,000 followers on Facebook. Earlier that year, police in Hyderabad had placed him under house arrest to prevent him from leading supporters to the scene of recent religious violence.

That Facebook did nothing in the face of such rhetoric could have been due to negligence—there were a lot of firebrand politicians offering a lot of incitement in a lot of different languages around the world. But in this case, Facebook was well aware of Singh’s behavior. Indian civil rights groups had brought him to the attention of staff in both Delhi and Menlo Park as part of their efforts to pressure the company to act against hate speech in the country.

There was no question whether Singh qualified as a “dangerous individual,” someone who would normally be barred from having a presence on Facebook’s platforms. Despite the internal conclusion that Singh and several other Hindu nationalist figures were creating a risk of actual bloodshed, their designation as hate figures had been blocked by Ankhi Das, Facebook’s head of Indian Public Policy—the same executive who had lobbied years earlier to reinstate BJP-associated pages after Civic had fought to take them down.

Das, whose job included lobbying India’s government on Facebook’s behalf, didn’t bother trying to justify protecting Singh and other Hindu nationalists on technical or procedural grounds. She flatly said that designating them as hate figures would anger the government, and the ruling BJP, so the company would not be doing it. ... Following our story, Facebook India’s then–managing director Ajit Mohan assured the company’s Muslim employees that we had gotten it wrong. Facebook removed hate speech “as soon as it became aware of it” and would never compromise its community standards for political purposes. “While we know there is more to do, we are making progress every day,” he wrote.

It was after we published the story that Kiran (a pseudonym) reached out to me. They wanted to make clear that our story in the Journal had just scratched the surface. Das’s ties with the government were far tighter than we understood, they said, and Facebook India was protecting entities much more dangerous than Singh.

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“Hindus, come out. Die or kill,” one prominent activist had declared during a Facebook livestream, according to a later report by retired Indian civil servants. The ensuing violence left fifty-three people dead and swaths of northeastern Delhi burned.

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The researcher set up a dummy account while traveling. Because the platform factored a user’s geography into content recommendations, she and a colleague noted in a writeup of her findings, it was the only way to get a true read on what the platform was serving up to a new Indian user.

Ominously, her summary of what Facebook had recommended to their notional twenty-one-year-old Indian woman began with a trigger warning for graphic violence. While Facebook’s push of American test users toward conspiracy theories had been concerning, the Indian version was dystopian.

“In the 3 weeks since the account has been opened, by following just this recommended content, the test user’s News Feed has become a near constant barrage of polarizing nationalist content, misinformation, and violence and gore,” the note stated. The dummy account’s feed had turned especially dark after border skirmishes between Pakistan and India in early 2019. Amid a period of extreme military tensions, Facebook funneled the user toward groups filled with content promoting full-scale war and mocking images of corpses with laughing emojis.

This wasn’t a case of bad posts slipping past Facebook’s defenses, or one Indian user going down a nationalistic rabbit hole. What Facebook was recommending to the young woman had been bad from the start. The platform had pushed her to join groups clogged with images of corpses, watch purported footage of fictional air strikes, and congratulate nonexistent fighter pilots on their bravery.

“I’ve seen more images of dead people in the past three weeks than I’ve seen in my entire life, total,” the researcher wrote, noting that the platform had allowed falsehoods, dehumanizing rhetoric, and violence to “totally take over during a major crisis event.” Facebook needed to consider not only how its recommendation systems were affecting “users who are different from us,” she concluded, but rethink how it built its products for “non-US contexts.”

India was not an outlier. Outside of English-speaking countries and Western Europe, users routinely saw more cruelty, engagement bait, and falsehoods. Perhaps differing cultural senses of propriety explained some of the gap, but a lot clearly stemmed from differences in investment and concern.

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This wasn’t supposed to be legal in the Gulf under the gray-market labor sponsorship system known as kafala, but the internet had removed the friction from buying people. Undercover reporters from BBC Arabic posed as a Kuwaiti couple and negotiated to buy a sixteen-year-old girl whose seller boasted about never allowing her to leave the house.

Everyone told the BBC they were horrified. Kuwaiti police rescued the girl and sent her home. Apple and Google pledged to root out the abuse, and the bartering apps cited in the story deleted their “domestic help” sections. Facebook pledged to take action and deleted a popular hashtag used to advertise maids for sale.

After that, the company largely dropped the matter. But Apple turned out to have a longer attention span. In October, after sending Facebook numerous examples of ongoing maid sales via Instagram, it threatened to remove Facebook’s products from its App Store.

Unlike human trafficking, this, to Facebook, was a real crisis.

“Removing our applications from Apple’s platforms would have had potentially severe consequences to the business, including depriving millions of users of access to IG & FB,” an internal report on the incident stated.

With alarm bells ringing at the highest levels, the company found and deleted an astonishing 133,000 posts, groups, and accounts related to the practice within days. It also performed a quick revamp of its policies, reversing a previous rule allowing the sale of maids through “brick and mortar” businesses. (To avoid upsetting the sensibilities of Gulf State “partners,” the company had previously permitted the advertising and sale of servants by businesses with a physical address.) Facebook also committed to “holistic enforcement against any and all content promoting domestic servitude,” according to the memo.

Apple lifted its threat, but again Facebook wouldn’t live up to its pledges. Two years later, in late 2021, an Integrity staffer would write up an investigation titled “Domestic Servitude: This Shouldn’t Happen on FB and How We Can Fix It.” Focused on the Philippines, the memo described how fly-by-night employment agencies were recruiting women with “unrealistic promises” and then selling them into debt bondage overseas. If Instagram was where domestic servants were sold, Facebook was where they were recruited.

Accessing the direct-messaging inboxes of the placing agencies, the staffer found Filipina domestic servants pleading for help. Some reported rape or sent pictures of bruises from being hit. Others hadn’t been paid in months. Still others reported being locked up and starved. The labor agencies didn’t help.

The passionately worded memo, and others like it, listed numerous things the company could do to prevent the abuse. There were improvements to classifiers, policy changes, and public service announcements to run. Using machine learning, Facebook could identify Filipinas who were looking for overseas work and then inform them of how to spot red flags in job postings. In Persian Gulf countries, Instagram could run PSAs about workers’ rights.

These things largely didn’t happen for a host of reasons. One memo noted a concern that, if worded too strongly, Arabic-language PSAs admonishing against the abuse of domestic servants might “alienate buyers” of them. But the main obstacle, according to people familiar with the team, was simply resources. The team devoted full-time to human trafficking—which included not just the smuggling of people for labor and sex but also the sale of human organs—amounted to a half-dozen people worldwide. The team simply wasn’t large enough to knock this stuff out.

---

“We’re largely blind to problems on our site,” Leach’s presentation wrote of Ethiopia.

Facebook employees produced a lot of internal work like this: declarations that the company had gotten in over its head, unable to provide even basic remediation to potentially horrific problems. Events on the platform could foreseeably lead to loss of life and almost certainly did, according to human rights groups monitoring Ethiopia. Meareg Amare, a university lecturer in Addis Ababa, was murdered outside his home one month after a post went viral, receiving 35,000 likes, listing his home address and calling for him to be attacked. Facebook failed to remove it. His family is now suing the company.

As it so often did, the company was choosing growth over quality. Efforts to expand service to poorer and more isolated places would not wait for user protections to catch up, and, even in countries at “dire” risk of mass atrocities, the At Risk Countries team needed approval to do things that harmed engagement.

---

Documents and transcripts of internal meetings among the company’s American staff show employees struggling to explain why Facebook wasn’t following its normal playbook when dealing with hate speech, the coordination of violence, and government manipulation in India. Employees in Menlo Park discussed the BJP’s promotion of the “Love Jihad” lie. They met with human rights organizations that documented the violence committed by the platform’s cow-protection vigilantes. And they tracked efforts by the Indian government and its allies to manipulate the platform via networks of accounts. Yet nothing changed.

“We have a lot of business in India, yeah. And we have connections with the government, I guess, so there are some sensitivities around doing a mitigation in India,” one employee told another about the company’s protracted failure to address abusive behavior by an Indian intelligence service.

During another meeting, a team working on what it called the problem of “politicized hate” informed colleagues that the BJP and its allies were coordinating both the “Love Jihad” slander and another hashtag, #CoronaJihad, premised on the idea that Muslims were infecting Hindus with COVID via halal food.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS—the umbrella Hindu nationalist movement of which the BJP is the political arm—was promoting these slanders through 6,000 or 7,000 different entities on the platform, with the goal of portraying Indian Muslims as subhuman, the presenter explained. Some of the posts said that the Quran encouraged Muslim men to rape their female family members.

“What they’re doing really permeates Indian society,” the presenter noted, calling it part of a “larger war.”

A colleague at the meeting asked the obvious question. Given the company’s conclusive knowledge of the coordinated hate campaign, why hadn’t the posts or accounts been taken down?

“Ummm, the answer that I’ve received for the past year and a half is that it’s too politically sensitive to take down RSS content as hate,” the presenter said.

Nothing needed to be said in response.

“I see your face,” the presenter said. “And I totally agree.”

---

One incident in particular, involving a local political candidate, stuck out. As Kiran recalled it, the guy was a little fish, a Hindu nationalist activist who hadn’t achieved Raja Singh’s six-digit follower count but was still a provocateur. The man’s truly abhorrent behavior had been repeatedly flagged by lower-level moderators, but somehow the company always seemed to give it a pass.

This time was different. The activist had streamed a video in which he and some accomplices kidnapped a man who, they informed the camera, had killed a cow. They took their captive to a construction site and assaulted him while Facebook users heartily cheered in the comments section.

---

Zuckerberg launched an internal campaign against social media overenforcement. Ordering the creation of a team dedicated to preventing wrongful content takedowns, Zuckerberg demanded regular briefings on its progress from senior employees. He also suggested that, instead of rigidly enforcing platform rules on content in Groups, Facebook should defer more to the sensibilities of the users in them. In response, a staffer proposed entirely exempting private groups from enforcement for “low-tier hate speech.”

---

The stuff was viscerally terrible—people clamoring for lynchings and civil war. One group was filled with “enthusiastic calls for violence every day.” Another top group claimed it was set up by Trump-supporting patriots but was actually run by “financially motivated Albanians” directing a million views daily to fake news stories and other provocative content.

The comments were often worse than the posts themselves, and even this was by design. The content of the posts would be incendiary but fall just shy of Facebook’s boundaries for removal—it would be bad enough, however, to harvest user anger, classic “hate bait.” The administrators were professionals, and they understood the platform’s weaknesses every bit as well as Civic did. In News Feed, anger would rise like a hot-air balloon, and such comments could take a group to the top.

Public Policy had previously refused to act on hate bait

---

We have heavily overpromised regarding our ability to moderate content on the platform,” one data scientist wrote to Rosen in September. “We are breaking and will continue to break our recent promises.”

---

The longstanding conflicts between Civic and Facebook’s Product, Policy, and leadership teams had boiled over in the wake of the “looting/shooting” furor, and executives—minus Chakrabarti—had privately begun discussing how to address what was now unquestionably viewed as a rogue Integrity operation. Civic, with its dedicated engineering staff, hefty research operation, and self-chosen mission statement, was on the chopping block.

---

The group had grown to more than 360,000 members less than twenty-four hours later when Facebook took it down, citing “extraordinary measures.” Pushing false claims of election fraud to a mass audience at a time when armed men were calling for a halt to vote counting outside tabulation centers was an obvious problem, and one that the company knew was only going to get bigger. Stop the Steal had an additional 2.1 million users pending admission to the group when Facebook pulled the plug.

Facebook’s leadership would describe Stop the Steal’s growth as unprecedented, though Civic staffers could be forgiven for not sharing their sense of surprise.

---

Zuckerberg had accepted the deletion under emergency circumstances, but he didn’t want the Stop the Steal group’s removal to become a precedent for a backdoor ban on false election claims. During the run-up to Election Day, Facebook had removed only lies about the actual voting process—stuff like “Democrats vote on Wednesday” and “People with outstanding parking tickets can’t go to the polls.” Noting the thin distinction between the claim that votes wouldn’t be counted and that they wouldn’t be counted accurately, Chakrabarti had pushed to take at least some action against baseless election fraud claims.

Civic hadn’t won that fight, but with the Stop the Steal group spawning dozens of similarly named copycats—some of which also accrued six-figure memberships—the threat of further organized election delegitimization efforts was obvious.

Barred from shutting down the new entities, Civic assigned staff to at least study them. Staff also began tracking top delegitimization posts, which were earning tens of millions of views, for what one document described as “situational awareness.” A later analysis found that as much as 70 percent of Stop the Steal content was coming from known “low news ecosystem quality” pages, the commercially driven publishers that Facebook’s News Feed integrity staffers had been trying to fight for years.

---

Zuckerberg overruled both Facebook’s Civic team and its head of counterterrorism. Shortly after the Associated Press called the presidential election for Joe Biden on November 7—the traditional marker for the race being definitively over—Molly Cutler assembled roughly fifteen executives that had been responsible for the company’s election preparation. Citing orders from Zuckerberg, she said the election delegitimization monitoring was to immediately stop.

---

On December 17, a data scientist flagged that a system responsible for either deleting or restricting high-profile posts that violated Facebook’s rules had stopped doing so. Colleagues ignored it, assuming that the problem was just a “logging issue”—meaning the system still worked, it just wasn’t recording its actions. On the list of Facebook’s engineering priorities, fixing that didn’t rate.

In fact, the system truly had failed, in early November. Between then and when engineers realized their error in mid-January, the system had given a pass to 3,100 highly viral posts that should have been deleted or labeled “disturbing.”

Glitches like that happened all the time at Facebook. Unfortunately, this one produced an additional 8 billion “regrettable” views globally, instances in which Facebook had shown users content that it knew was trouble. The company would later say that only a small minority of the 8 billion “regrettable” content views touched on American politics, and that the mistake was immaterial to subsequent events. A later review of Facebook’s post-election work tartly described the flub as a “lowlight” of the platform’s 2020 election performance, though the company disputes that it had a meaningful impact. At least 7 billion of the bad content views were international, the company says, and of the American material only a portion dealt with politics. Overall, a spokeswoman said, the company remains proud of its pre- and post-election safety work.

---

Zuckerberg vehemently disagreed with people who said that the COVID vaccine was unsafe, but he supported their right to say it, including on Facebook. ... Under Facebook’s policy, health misinformation about COVID was to be removed only if it posed an imminent risk of harm, such as a post telling infected people to drink bleach ... A researcher randomly sampled English-language comments containing phrases related to COVID and vaccines. A full two-thirds were anti-vax. The researcher’s memo compared that figure to public polling showing the prevalence of anti-vaccine sentiment in the U.S.—it was a full 40 points lower.

Additional research found that a small number of “big whales” was behind a large portion of all anti-vaccine content on the platform. Of 150,000 posters in Facebook groups that were eventually disabled for COVID misinformation, just 5 percent were producing half of all posts. And just 1,400 users were responsible for inviting half of all members. “We found, like many problems at FB, this is a head-heavy problem with a relatively few number of actors creating a large percentage of the content and growth,” Facebook researchers would later note.

One of the anti-vax brigade’s favored tactics was to piggyback on posts from entities like UNICEF and the World Health Organization encouraging vaccination, which Facebook was promoting free of charge. Anti-vax activists would respond with misinformation or derision in the comments section of these posts, then boost one another’s hostile comments toward the top slot

---

Even as Facebook prepared for virally driven crises to become routine, the company’s leadership was becoming increasingly comfortable absolving its products of responsibility for feeding them. By the spring of 2021, it wasn’t just Boz arguing that January 6 was someone else’s problem. Sandberg suggested that January 6 was “largely organized on platforms that don’t have our abilities to stop hate.” Zuckerberg told Congress that they need not cast blame beyond Trump and the rioters themselves. “The country is deeply divided right now and that is not something that tech alone can fix,” he said.

In some instances, the company appears to have publicly cited research in what its own staff had warned were inappropriate ways. A June 2020 review of both internal and external research had warned that the company should avoid arguing that higher rates of polarization among the elderly—the demographic that used social media least—was proof that Facebook wasn’t causing polarization.

Though the argument was favorable to Facebook, researchers wrote, Nick Clegg should avoid citing it in an upcoming opinion piece because “internal research points to an opposite conclusion.” Facebook, it turned out, fed false information to senior citizens at such a massive rate that they consumed far more of it despite spending less time on the platform. Rather than vindicating Facebook, the researchers wrote, “the stronger growth of polarization for older users may be driven in part by Facebook use.”

All the researchers wanted was for executives to avoid parroting a claim that Facebook knew to be wrong, but they didn’t get their wish. The company says the argument never reached Clegg. When he published a March 31, 2021, Medium essay titled “You and the Algorithm: It Takes Two to Tango,” he cited the internally debunked claim among the “credible recent studies” disproving that “we have simply been manipulated by machines all along.” (The company would later say that the appropriate takeaway from Clegg’s essay on polarization was that “research on the topic is mixed.”)

Such bad-faith arguments sat poorly with researchers who had worked on polarization and analyses of Stop the Steal, but Clegg was a former politician hired to defend Facebook, after all. The real shock came from an internally published research review written by Chris Cox.

Titled “What We Know About Polarization,” the April 2021 Workplace memo noted that the subject remained “an albatross public narrative,” with Facebook accused of “driving societies into contexts where they can’t trust each other, can’t share common ground, can’t have conversations about issues, and can’t share a common view on reality.”

But Cox and his coauthor, Facebook Research head Pratiti Raychoudhury, were happy to report that a thorough review of the available evidence showed that this “media narrative” was unfounded. The evidence that social media played a contributing role in polarization, they wrote, was “mixed at best.” Though Facebook likely wasn’t at fault, Cox and Raychoudhury wrote, the company was still trying to help, in part by encouraging people to join Facebook groups. “We believe that groups are on balance a positive, depolarizing force,” the review stated.

The writeup was remarkable for its choice of sources. Cox’s note cited stories by New York Times columnists David Brooks and Ezra Klein alongside early publicly released Facebook research that the company’s own staff had concluded was no longer accurate. At the same time, it omitted the company’s past conclusions, affirmed in another literature review just ten months before, that Facebook’s recommendation systems encouraged bombastic rhetoric from publishers and politicians, as well as previous work finding that seeing vicious posts made users report “more anger towards people with different social, political, or cultural beliefs.” While nobody could reliably say how Facebook altered users’ off-platform behavior, how the company shaped their social media activity was accepted fact. “The more misinformation a person is exposed to on Instagram the more trust they have in the information they see on Instagram,” company researchers had concluded in late 2020.

In a statement, the company called the presentation “comprehensive” and noted that partisan divisions in society arose “long before platforms like Facebook even existed.” For staffers that Cox had once assigned to work on addressing known problems of polarization, his note was a punch to the gut.

---

In 2016, the New York Times had reported that Facebook was quietly working on a censorship tool in an effort to gain entry to the Chinese market. While the story was a monster, it didn’t come as a surprise to many people inside the company. Four months earlier, an engineer had discovered that another team had modified a spam-fighting tool in a way that would allow an outside party control over content moderation in specific geographic regions. In response, he had resigned, leaving behind a badge post correctly surmising that the code was meant to loop in Chinese censors.

With a literary mic drop, the post closed out with a quote on ethics from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre: “Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?”

Garnering 1,100 reactions, 132 comments, and 57 shares, the post took the program from top secret to open secret. Its author had just pioneered a new template: the hard-hitting Facebook farewell.

That particular farewell came during a time when Facebook’s employee satisfaction surveys were generally positive, before the time of endless crisis, when societal concerns became top of mind. In the intervening years, Facebook had hired a massive base of Integrity employees to work on those issues, and seriously pissed off a nontrivial portion of them.

Consequently, some badge posts began to take on a more mutinous tone. Staffers who had done groundbreaking work on radicalization, human trafficking, and misinformation would summarize both their accomplishments and where they believed the company had come up short on technical and moral grounds. Some broadsides against the company ended on a hopeful note, including detailed, jargon-light instructions for how, in the future, their successors could resurrect the work.

These posts were gold mines for Haugen, connecting product proposals, experimental results, and ideas in ways that would have been impossible for an outsider to re-create. She photographed not just the posts themselves but the material they linked to, following the threads to other topics and documents. A half dozen were truly incredible, unauthorized chronicles of Facebook’s dawning understanding of the way its design determined what its users consumed and shared. The authors of these documents hadn’t been trying to push Facebook toward social engineering—they had been warning that the company had already wandered into doing so and was now neck deep.

---

The researchers’ best understanding was summarized this way: “We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls.”

---

In 2020, Instagram’s Well-Being team had run a study of massive scope, surveying 100,000 users in nine countries about negative social comparison on Instagram. The researchers then paired the answers with individualized data on how each user who took the survey had behaved on Instagram, including how and what they posted. They found that, for a sizable minority of users, especially those in Western countries, Instagram was a rough place. Ten percent reported that they “often or always” felt worse about themselves after using the platform, and a quarter believed Instagram made negative comparison worse.

Their findings were incredibly granular. They found that fashion and beauty content produced negative feelings in ways that adjacent content like fitness did not. They found that “people feel worse when they see more celebrities in feed,” and that Kylie Jenner seemed to be unusually triggering, while Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was no trouble at all. They found that people judged themselves far more harshly against friends than celebrities. A movie star’s post needed 10,000 likes before it caused social comparison, whereas, for a peer, the number was ten.

In order to confront these findings, the Well-Being team suggested that the company cut back on recommending celebrities for people to follow, or reweight Instagram’s feed to include less celebrity and fashion content, or de-emphasize comments about people’s appearance. As a fellow employee noted in response to summaries of these proposals on Workplace, the Well-Being team was suggesting that Instagram become less like Instagram.

“Isn’t that what IG is mostly about?” the man wrote. “Getting a peek at the (very photogenic) life of the top 0.1%? Isn’t that the reason why teens are on the platform?”

---

“We are practically not doing anything,” the researchers had written, noting that Instagram wasn’t currently able to stop itself from promoting underweight influencers and aggressive dieting. A test account that signaled an interest in eating disorder content filled up with pictures of thigh gaps and emaciated limbs.

The problem would be relatively easy for outsiders to document. Instagram was, the research warned, “getting away with it because no one has decided to dial into it.”

---

He began the presentation by noting that 51 percent of Instagram users reported having a “bad or harmful” experience on the platform in the previous seven days. But only 1 percent of those users reported the objectionable content to the company, and Instagram took action in 2 percent of those cases. The math meant that the platform remediated only 0.02 percent of what upset users—just one bad experience out of every 5,000.

“The numbers are probably similar on Facebook,” he noted, calling the statistics evidence of the company’s failure to understand the experiences of users such as his own daughter. Now sixteen, she had recently been told to “get back to the kitchen” after she posted about cars, Bejar said, and she continued receiving the unsolicited dick pics she had been getting since the age of fourteen. “I asked her why boys keep doing that? She said if the only thing that happens is they get blocked, why wouldn’t they?”

Two years of research had confirmed that Joanna Bejar’s logic was sound. On a weekly basis, 24 percent of all Instagram users between the ages of thirteen and fifteen received unsolicited advances, Bejar informed the executives. Most of that abuse didn’t violate the company’s policies, and Instagram rarely caught the portion that did.

---

nothing highlighted the costs better than a Twitter bot set up by New York Times reporter Kevin Roose. Using methodology created with the help of a CrowdTangle staffer, Roose found a clever way to put together a daily top ten of the platform’s highest-engagement content in the United States, producing a leaderboard that demonstrated how thoroughly partisan publishers and viral content aggregators dominated the engagement signals that Facebook valued most.

The degree to which that single automated Twitter account got under the skin of Facebook’s leadership would be difficult to overstate. Alex Schultz, the VP who oversaw Facebook’s Growth team, was especially incensed—partly because he considered raw engagement counts to be misleading, but more because it was Facebook’s own tool reminding the world every morning at 9:00 a.m. Pacific that the platform’s content was trash.

“The reaction was to prove the data wrong,” recalled Brian Boland. But efforts to employ other methodologies only produced top ten lists that were nearly as unflattering. Schultz began lobbying to kill off CrowdTangle altogether, replacing it with periodic top content reports of its own design. That would still be more transparency than any of Facebook’s rivals offered, Schultz noted

...

Schultz handily won the fight. In April 2021, Silverman convened his staff on a conference call and told them that CrowdTangle’s team was being disbanded. ... “Boz would just say, ‘You’re completely off base,’ ” Boland said. “Data wins arguments at Facebook, except for this one.”

---

When the company issued its response later in May, I read the document with a clenched jaw. Facebook had agreed to grant the board’s request for information about XCheck and “any exceptional processes that apply to influential users.”

...

“We want to make clear that we remove content from Facebook, no matter who posts it,” Facebook’s response to the Oversight Board read. “Cross check simply means that we give some content from certain Pages or Profiles additional review.”

There was no mention of whitelisting, of C-suite interventions to protect famous athletes, of queues of likely violating posts from VIPs that never got reviewed. Although our documents showed that at least 7 million of the platform’s most prominent users were shielded

by some form of XCheck, Facebook assured the board that it applied to only “a small number of decisions.” The only XCheck-related request that Facebook didn’t address was for data that might show whether XChecked users had received preferential treatment.

“It is not feasible to track this information,” Facebook responded, neglecting to mention that it was exempting some users from enforcement entirely.

---

“I’m sure many of you have found the recent coverage hard to read because it just doesn’t reflect the company we know,” he wrote in a note to employees that was also shared on Facebook. The allegations didn’t even make sense, he wrote: “I don’t know any tech company that sets out to build products that make people angry or depressed.”

Zuckerberg said he worried the leaks would discourage the tech industry at large from honestly assessing their products’ impact on the world, in order to avoid the risk that internal research might be used against them. But he assured his employees that their company’s internal research efforts would stand strong. “Even though it might be easier for us to follow that path, we’re going to keep doing research because it’s the right thing to do,” he wrote.

By the time Zuckerberg made that pledge, research documents were already disappearing from the company’s internal systems. Had a curious employee wanted to double-check Zuckerberg’s claims about the company’s polarization work, for example, they would have found that key research and experimentation data had become inaccessible.

The crackdown had begun.

---

One memo required researchers to seek special approval before delving into anything on a list of topics requiring “mandatory oversight”—even as a manager acknowledged that the company did not maintain such a list.

---

The “Narrative Excellence” memo and its accompanying notes and charts were a guide to producing documents that reporters like me wouldn’t be excited to see. Unfortunately, as a few bold user experience researchers noted in the replies, achieving Narrative Excellence was all but incompatible with succeeding at their jobs. Writing things that were “safer to be leaked” meant writing things that would have less impact.

Appendix: non-statements

I really like the "non-goals" section of design docs. I think the analogous non-statements section of a doc like this is much less valuable because the top-level non-statements can generally be inferred by reading this doc, whereas top-level non-goals often add information, but I figured I'd try this out anyway.

• Facebook (or any other company named here, like Uber) is uniquely bad
  • As discussed, on the contrary, I think Facebook isn't very atypical, which is why
• Zuckerberg (or any other person named) is uniquely bad
• Big tech employees are bad people
• No big tech company employees are working hard or trying hard
  • For some reason, a common response to any criticism of a tech company foible or failure is "people are working hard". This is almost never a response to a critique that nobody is working hard, and that is once again not the critique here
• Big tech companies should be broken up or otherwise have antitrust action taken against them
  • Maybe so, but this document doesn't make that case
• Bigger companies in the same industry are strictly worse than smaller companies
  • Discussed above, but I'll mention it again here
• The general bigness vs. smallness tradeoff as discussed here applies strictly across all areas all industries
  • Also mentioned above, but mentioned again here. For example, the percentage of rides in which a taxi drier tries to scam the user seems much higher with traditional taxis than with Uber
• It's easy to do moderation and support at scale
• On average, large companies provide a worse experience for users
  • For example, I still use Amazon because it gives me the best overall experience. As noted above, cost and shipping are better with Amazon than with any other alternative. There are entire classes of items where most things I've bought are counterfeit, such as masks and respirators. When I bought these in January 2020, before these were something many people would buy, I got genuine 3M masks. Masks and filters were then hard to get for a while, and then when they became available again, the majority of 3M masks and filters I got were counterfeit (out of curiosity, I tried more than a few independent orders over the next few years). I try to avoid classes of items that have a high counterfeit rate (but a naive user who doesn't know to do this will buy a lot of low-quality counterfeits), and I know I'm rolling the dice every time I buy any expensive item (if I get a counterfeit or an empty box, Amazon might not accept the return or refund me unless I can make a viral post about the issue), and sometimes a class of item goes from being one where you can usually get good items to one where most items are counterfeit.
  • Many objections are, implicitly or explicitly, are about the average experience, but this is nonsensical when the discussion is about the experience in the tail; this is like the standard response you see when someone notes that a concurrency bug is a problem and someone else say it's fine because "it works for me", which doesn't make sense for bugs that occur in the tail.

Why it's impossible to agree on what's allowed

2024-02-07 08:00:00

On large platforms, it's impossible to have policies on things like moderation, spam, fraud, and sexual content that people agree on. David Turner made a simple game to illustrate how difficult this is even in a trivial case, No Vehicles in the Park. If you haven't played it yet, I recommend playing it now before continuing to read this document.

The idea behind the site is that it's very difficult to get people to agree on what moderation rules should apply to a platform. Even if you take a much simpler example, what vehicles should be allowed in a park given a rule and some instructions for how to interpret the rule, and then ask a small set of questions, people won't be able to agree. On doing the survey myself, one of the first reactions I had was that the questions aren't chosen to be particularly nettlesome and there are many edge cases Dave could've asked about if he wanted to make it a challenge. And yet, despite not making the survey particularly challenging, there isn't broad agreement on the questions. Comments on the survey also indicate another problem with rules, which is that it's much harder to get agreement than people think it will be. If you read comments on rule interpretation or moderation on lobsters, HN, reddit, etc., when people suggest a solution, the vast majority of people will suggest something that anyone who's done moderation or paid attention to how moderation works knows cannot work, the moderation equivalent of "I could build that in a weekend"¹. Of course we see this on Dave's game as well. The top HN comment, the most agree-upon comment, and a very common sentiment elsewhere is²:

I'm fascinated by the fact that my takeaway is the precise opposite of what the author intended.

To me, the answer to all of the questions was crystal-clear. Yes, you can academically wonder whether an orbiting space station is a vehicle and whether it's in the park, but the obvious intent of the sign couldn't be clearer. Cars/trucks/motorcycles aren't allowed, and obviously police and ambulances (and fire trucks) doing their jobs don't have to follow the sign.

So if this is supposed to be an example of how content moderation rules are unclear to follow, it's achieving precisely the opposite.

And someone agreeingly replies with:

Exactly. There is a clear majority in the answers.

After going through the survey, you get a graph showing how many people answered yes and no to each question, which is where the "clear majority" comes from. First of all, I think it's not correct to say that there is a clear majority. But even supposing that there were, there's no reason to think that there being a majority means that most people agree with you even if you take the majority position in each vote. In fact, given how "wiggly" the per-question majority graph looks, it would be extraordinary if it were the case that being in the majority for each question meant that most people agreed with you or that there's any set of positions that the majority of people agree on. Although you could construct a contrived dataset where this is true, it would be very surprising if this were true in a natural dataset.

If you look at the data (which isn't available on the site, but Dave was happy to pass it along when I asked), as of when I pulled the data, there was no set of answers which the majority of users agreed on and it was not even close. I pulled this data shortly after I posted on the link to HN, when the vast majority of responses were HN readers, who are more homogeneous than the population at large. Despite these factors making it easier to find agreement, the most popular set of answers was only selected by 11.7% of people. This is the position the top commenter says is "obvious", but it's a minority position not only in the sense that only 11.7% of people agree and 88.3% of people disagree, almost no one holds a position with only a small amount of disagreement from this allegedly obvious position. The 2nd and 3rd most common positions, representing 8.5% and 6.5% of the vote, respectively, are similar and only disagree on whether or not a non-functioning WW-II era tank that's part of a memorial violates the rule. Beyond that, approximately 1% of people hold the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th most popular positions, with every less popular position having less than 1% agreement, with a fairly rapid drop from there as well. So, 27% of people find themselves in agreement with significantly more than 1% of other users (the median user agrees with 0.16% of other users). See below for a plot of what this looks like. The opinions are sorted from most popular to least popular, with the most popular on the left. A log scale is used because there's so little agreement on opinions that a linear scale plot looks like a few points above zero followed by a bunch of zeros.

Another way to look at this data is that 36902 people expressed an opinion on what constitutes a vehicle in the park and they came up with 9432 distinct opinions, for an average of ~3.9 people, per distinct expressed opinion. i.e., the average user agreement is ~0.01%. Although averages are, on average, overused, an average works as a summary for expressing the level of agreement because while we do have a small handful of opinions with much higher than the average 0.01% agreement, to "maintain" the average, this must be balanced out by a ginormous number of people who have even less agreement with other users. There's no way to have a low average agreement with high actual agreement unless that's balanced out by even higher disagreement, and vice versa.

On HN, in response to the same comment, Michael Chermside had the reasonable but not highly upvoted comment,

> To me, the answer to all of the questions was crystal-clear.

That's not particularly surprising. But you may be asking the wrong question.

If you want to know whether the rules are clear then I think that the right question to ask is not "Are the answers crystal-clear to you?" but "Will different people produce the same answers?".

If we had a sharp drop in the graph at one point then it would suggest that most everyone has the same cutoff; instead we see a very smooth curve as if different people read this VERY SIMPLE AND CLEAR rule and still didn't agree on when it applied.

Many (and probably actually most) people are overconfident when predicting what other people think is obvious and often incorrectly assume that other people will think the same thoughts and find the same things obvious. This is more true of the highly-charged issues that result in bitter fights about moderation than the simple "no vehicles in the park" example, but even this simple example demonstrates not only the difficulty in reaching agreement, but the difficulty in understanding how difficult it is to reach agreement.

To use an example from another context that's more charged, consider in any sport and whether or not a player is considered to be playing fair or is making dirty plays and should be censured. We could look at many different players from many different sports, so let's arbitrarily pick Draymond Green. If you ask any serious basketball fan who's not a Warriors fan, who's the dirtiest player in the NBA today, you'll find general agreement that it's Draymond Green (although some people will argue for Dillon Brooks, so if you want near uniform agreement, you'll have to ask for the top two dirtiest players). And yet, if you ask a Warriors fan about Draymond, most have no problem explaining away every dirty play of his. So if you want to get uniform agreement to a question that's much more straightforward than the "no vehicles in the park" question, such as, "is it ok to stomp on another player's chest and then use them as a springboard to leap into the air? on top of a hundred other dirty plays", you'll find that for many such seemingly obvious questions, a sizable group of people will have extremely strong disagreements with the "obvious" answer. When you move away from a contrived, abstract, example like "no vehicles in the park" to a real-world issue that people have emotional attachments to, it generally becomes impossible to get agreement even in cases where disinterested third parties would all agree, which we observed is already impossible even without emotional attachment. And when you move away from sports into issues people care even more strongly about, like politics, the disagreements get stronger.

While people might be able to "agree to disagree" on whether or not a a non-functioning WW-II era tank that's part of a memorial violates the "no vehicles in the park" rule (resulting in a pair of positions that accounts for 15% of the vote), in reality, people often have a hard time agreeing to disagree over what outsiders would consider very small differences of opinion. Charged issues are often fractally contentious, causing disagreement among people who hold all but identical opinions, making them significantly more difficult to agree on than our "no vehicles in the park" example.

To pick a real-world example, consider Jo Freeman, a feminist who, in 1976, wrote about her experienced being canceled for minute differences in opinion and how this was unfortunately common in the Movement (using the term "trashed" and not "canceled" because cancellation hadn't come into common usage yet and, in my opinion, "trashed" is the better term anyway). In the nearly fifty years since Jo Freeman wrote "Trashing", the propensity of humans to pick on minute differences and attempt to destroy anyone who doesn't completely agree with them hasn't changed; for a recent, parallel, example, Natalie Wynn's similar experience.

For people with opinions far away in the space of commonly held opinions, the differences in opinion between Natalie and the people calling for her to be deplatformed are fairly small. But, not only did these "small" differences in opinion result in people calling for Natalie to be deplatformed, they called for her to be physically assaulted, doxed, etc., and they suggested the same treatment suggested for her friends and associates as well as people who didn't really associate with her, but publicly talked about similar topics and didn't cancel her. Even now, years later, she still gets calls to be deplatformed and I expect this will continue past the end of my life (when I wrote this, years after the event Natalie discussed, I did a Twitter search and found a long thread from someone ranting about what a horrible human being Natalie is for the alleged transgression discussed in the video, dated 10 days ago, and it's easy to find more of these rants). I'm not going to attempt to describe the difference in positions because the positions are close enough that, to describe them would take something like 5k to 10k words (as opposed to, say, a left-wing vs. a right-wing politician, where the difference is blatant enough that you can describe in a sentence or two); you can watch the hour in the 1h40m video that's dedicated to the topic if you want to know the full details.

The point here is just that, if you look at almost any person who has public opinions on charged issues, the opinion space is fractally contentious. No large platform can satisfy user preferences because users will disagree over what content should be moderated off the platform and what content should be allowed. And, of course, this problem scales up as the platform gets larger³.

If you're looking for work, Freshpaint is hiring (US remote) in engineering, sales, and recruiting. Disclaimer: I may be biased since I'm an investor, but they seem to have found product-market fit and are rapidly growing.

Thanks to Peter Bhat Harkins, Dan Gackle, Laurence Tratt, Gary Bernhardt, David Turner, Kevin Burke, Sophia Wisdom, Justin Blank, and Bert Muthalaly for comments/corrections/discussion.

Notes on Cruise's pedestrian accident

2024-01-29 08:00:00

This is a set of notes on the Quinn Emanuel report on Cruise's handling of the 2023-10-02 accident where a Cruise autonomous vehicle (AV) hit a pedestrian, stopped, and then started moving again with the pedestrian stuck under the bottom of the AV, dragging the pedestrian 20 feet. After seeing some comments about this report, I read five stories on this report and then skimmed the report and my feeling is that the authors of four of the stories probably didn't read the report, and that people who were commenting had generally read stories by journalists who did not appear to read the source material, so the comments were generally way off base. As we previously discussed, it's common for summaries to be wildly wrong, even when they're summarizing a short paper that's easily read by laypeople, so of course summaries of a 200-page report are likely to be misleading at best.

On reading the entire report, I'd say that Cruise both looks better and worse than in the articles I saw, which is the same pattern we saw when we looked at the actual source for Exhibits H and J from Twitter v. Musk, the United States v. Microsoft Corp. docs, etc.; just as some journalists seem to be pro/anti-Elon Musk and pro/anti-Microsoft, willing to push an inaccurate narrative to dunk on them to the maximum extent possible or exonerate them to the maximum extent possible, we see the same thing here with Cruise. And as we saw in those cases, despite some articles seemingly trying to paint Cruise in the best or worst light possible, the report itself has material that is more positive and more negative than we see in the most positive or negative stories.

Aside from correcting misleading opinions on the report, I find the report interesting because it's rare to see any kind of investigation over what went wrong in tech in this level of detail, let alone a public one. We often see this kind of investigation in safety critical systems and sometimes see in sports as well as for historical events, but tech events are usually not covered like this. Of course companies do post-mortems of incidents, but you generally won't see a 200-page report on a single incident, nor will the focus of post-mortems be what the focus was here. In the past, we've noted that a lot can be learned by looking at the literature and incident reports on safety-critical systems, so of course this is true here as well, where we see a safety-critical system that's more tech adjacent than the ones we've looked at previously.

The length and depth of the report here reflects a difference in culture between safety-critical systems and "tech". The behavior that's described as unconscionable in the report is not only normal in tech, but probably more transparent and above board than you'd see at most major tech companies; I find the culture clash between tech and safety-critical systems interesting as well. I attempted to inject as little of my opinion as possible into the report as possible, even in cases where knowledge of tech companies or engineering meant that I would've personally written something different. For more opinions, see the section at the end.

REPORT TO THE BOARDS OF DIRECTORS OF CRUISE LLC, GM CRUISE HOLDINGS LLC, AND GENERAL MOTORS HOLDINGS LLC REGARDING THE OCTOBER 2, 2023 ACCIDENT IN SAN FRANCISCO

I. Introduction

A. Overview

• 2023-10-24: California DMV suspended Cruise's driverless license
• 2023-10-02: human-drive Nissan hit a pedestrian, putting the pedestrian in the path of a Cruise autonomous vehicle (AV), which then dragged the pedestrian 20 feet before stopping
• DMV claims
  • Cruise failed to disclose that the AV moved forward after its initial impact
  • video Cruise played only shows a part of the accident and not the pedestrian dragging
  • DMV only learned about dragging from another government agency, "impeding its oversight"
• NHTSA and CPUC also took action against Cruise and made similar claims
• Media outlets also complained they were misled by Cruise
• Cruise leadership and Cruise employees who talked with regulators admit they didn't explain the dragging, but they said they played the full video clip but, in all but one of the meetings, internet issues may have prevented regulators from seeing the entire accident
• Cruise employees claim the NHTSA received the full video immediately after the 10-03 meeting and the CPUC declined the offer for the full video
• Cruise employees note they played the full video, with no internet issues, to the SF MTA, SFPD, and SFFD on 10-03 and had a full discussion with those agencies
• Cruise leadership concedes they never informed the media, but leadership believed that Cruise's obligations to the media are different than their obligations to regulators

B. Scope of Review

• [no notes]

C. Review Plan Methodology and Limitations

• 205k "documents", including " including e-mails, texts, Slack communications, and internal Cruise documents"
• Interviewed 88 current and former employees and contractors
• Reviewed a report by Exponent Inc., 3rd party firm
• Internal review only; did not interview regulators and public officials
• A number of employees and contractors were not available "due to personal circumstances and/or the wide-scale Reduction in Force", but these interviews were not deemed to be important
• Report doesn't address broader issues outside of mandate, "such as the safety or safety processes of Cruise AVs or its operations, which are more appropriately evaluated by those with engineering and technical safety expertise"

D. Summary of Principal Findings and Conclusions

• By morning of 10-03, leadership and 100+ employees knew the pedestrian had been dragged ~20ft. by the Cruise AV during the secondary movement after the AV came to a stop.
• Plan was to disclose this happened by playing the full video, "letting the 'video speak for itself.'"
  • Cruise assumed that regulators and government officials would ask questions and Cruise would provide further info
• "Weight of the evidence" is that Cruise attempted to play the full video, but in 3 meetings, internet issues prevented this from happening and Cruise didn't point out that the pedestrian dragging happened
• On 10-02 and 10-03, "Cruise leadership was fixated on correcting the inaccurate media narrative" that Cruise's AV had caused the accident
  • This led Cruise to convey information about the Nissan and omit "other important information" about the accident to "the media, regulators, and other government officials"
• "The reasons for Cruise’s failings in this instance are numerous: poor leadership, mistakes in judgment, lack of coordination, an 'us versus them' mentality with regulators, and a fundamental misapprehension of Cruise’s obligations of accountability and transparency to the government and the public. Cruise must take decisive steps to address these issues in order to restore trust and credibility."
• "the DMV Suspension Order is a direct result of a proverbial self-inflicted wound by certain senior Cruise leadership and employees who appear not to have fully appreciated how a regulated business should interact with its regulators ... it was a fundamentally flawed approach for Cruise or any other business to take the position that a video of an accident causing serious injury provides all necessary information to regulators and otherwise relieves them of the need to affirmatively and fully inform these regulators of all relevant facts. As one Cruise employee stated in a text message to another employee about this matter, our 'leaders have failed us.'"

II. THE FACTS REGARDING THE OCTOBER 2 ACCIDENT

A. Background Regarding Cruise’s Business Operations

• Cruise founded in 2013, acquired by GM in 2016 (GM owns 79%)
• Cruise's stated goal: "responsibly deploy the world’s most advanced driverless vehicle service"
• "Cruise’s stated mission is to make transportation cleaner, safer and more accessible"
• Driverless ride-hail operation started 2021-09 in SF
• Started charging in 2022-06
• Has expanded to other areas, including overseas
• 10-02 accident was first pedestrian injury in > 5M mi of driving

B. Key Facts Regarding the Accident

• 10-02, 9:29pm: human-driven Nissan Sentra strikes pedestrian in crosswalk of 4-way intersection at 5th & Market in SF
• Pedestrian entered crosswalk against a red light and "Do Not Walk" signal and then paused in Nissan's lane. Police report cited both driver and pedestrian for code violations and concluded that the driver was "most at fault"
• The impact launched the pedestrian into the path of the Crusie AV
• Cruise AV braked but still hit pedestrian
• After coming to a complete stop, the AV moved to find a safe place to stop, known as a "'minimal risk condition' pullover maneuver (pullover maneuver) or 'secondary movement.'"
• AV drove up to 7.7mph for 20 feet, dragging pedestrian with it
• Nissan driver fled the scene (hit and run)

C. Timeline of Key Events

• 10-02, 9:29pm: accident occurs and Nissan driver flees; AV transits low-res 3-second video (Offload 1) confirming collison to Cruise Remote Assistance Center
• 9:32pm: AV transmits medium-res 14-second video (Offload 2) of collision, but not pullover maneuver and pedestrian dragging
• 9:33pm: emergency responders arrive between 9:33pm and 9:38pm
• 9:40pm: SFFD uses heavy rescue tools to remove pedestrian from under AV
• 9:49pm: Cruise Incident Response team labels accident a "Sev-1", which is for minor collisions. Team created a virtual "war room" on Google Meet and a dedicated slack channel (war room slack channel) with ~20 employees
• 10:17pm: Cruise contractors arrive at accident scene. One contractor takes > 100 photos and videos and notes blood and skin patches on the ground, showing the AV moved from point-of-impact to final stopping place
  • Another contractor, with Cruise's authorization, gives SFPD 14-second video showing Nissan
• 11:31pm: Cruise raises incident to "Sev-0", for "major vehicle incident with moderate to major injury or fatality to any party". Maybe 200 additional employees are paged to the war room
• 10-03, 12:15am: incident management convenes virtual meeting to share updates about accident and discuss media strategy to rebut articles that AV caused the accident
• 12:45am: Cruise govt affairs team reaches out to govt officials
• 12:53am: Cruise issues a press release noting the Nissan caused the accident. CEO Kyle Vogt and Communications VP Aaron McLear heavily edit the press statement. No mention of pullover maneuver or dragging; Cruise employees claim they were not aware of those facts at the time
• 1:30am: AV back at Cruise facility, start the process of downloading collision report data from AV, including full video
• 2:14am: 45-second video of accident which depicts pullover maneuver and dragging available, but no Cruise employee receives a notification that it's ready until > 4 hours later, when all data from AV is processed
• 3:21am: At the request of Cruise govt. Affairs, Director of Systems Integrity Matt Wood creates 12s video of accident showing Nissan hitting pedestrian and pedestrian landing in front of Cruise AV. Video stops before AV hits pedestrian
• 3:45am: Wood posts first known communication within Cruise of pullover maneuver and pedestrian dragging to war room slack channel with 77 employees in the channel at the time. Wood says the AV moved 1-2 car lengths after initial collision
• 6:00am: Cruise holds virtual Crisis Management Team (CMT) meeting; pedestrian dragging is discussed. Subsequent slack messages (6:17am, 6:25am, 6:56am) confirm discussion on pullover maneuver and dragging
• 6:28am: Cruise posts 45s 9-pane video of pullover and dragging, the full video (offload 3) to war room slack channel
• 6:45am: Virtual Senior Leadership Team (SLT) meeting; Vogt and McLear discuss whether or not to share full video with media or alter Cruise press statement and decide to do neither
• 7:25am: Cruise govt. affairs employee emails NHTSA and offers to meet
• 7:45am: Cruise eng and safety teams hold preliminary meetings to discuss collision and pullover maneuver
• 9:05am: Cruise regulator, legal, and systems integrity employees have pre-meeting to prepare for NHTSA briefing; they discuss pullover and dragging
• 10:05am: Wood and VP of Global Government Affairs Prashanthi Raman have virtual meeting with Mayor of SF's transpo advisor. Wood shows full video, "reportedly with internet connectivity issues from his home computer"; neither Wood nor Raman brings up or discusses pullover or dragging
• 10:30am: Virtual meeting with NHTSA. Wood shows full video, "again having internet connectivity issues causing video to freeze and/or black-out in key places including after initial impact" and again not bringing up or discussing pullover or dragging
• 10:35am: Cruise eng and safety teams have 2nd meeting to discuss collision
• 11:05am: Cruise regulatory, legal, and systems integrity employees have pre-meeting for DMV and California Highway Patrol (CHP) briefing; Cruise team doesn't discuss pullover and dragging
• 11:30am: hybrid in-person and virtual meeting with DMV and CHP. Wood shows full video, again with internet connectivity issues and again not bringing up or discussing pullover or dragging
• 12:00pm: virtual Cruise CMT meeting; engineers present findings, including chart detailing movement of AV during accident. Shows how AV collided with pedestrian and then moved forward again, dragging pedestrian ~20 ft. AV programmed to move as much as 100 ft, but internal AV systems flagged a failed wheel speed sensor because wheels were moving at different speeds (because one wheel was spinning on pedestrian's leg), stopping the car early
• 12:30pm: Cruise govt affairs employee calls CPUC to discuss 10-02 accident and video
• 12:40pm: Cruise virtual SLT meeting. Chart from CMT meeting presented. Vogt, COO Gil West, Chief Legal Officer Jeff Bleich, and others present. Safety and eng teams raise question of grounding fleet; Vogt and West say no
• 1:40pm: full video uploaded to NHTSA
• 2:37pm: Cruise submits 1-day report to NHTSA; no mention of pullover or dragging
• 3:30pm: Cruise virtual meeting with SF MTA, SFPD, and SFFD. Wood "shows full video several times" without technical difficulties. Cruise doesn't bring up pullover maneuver or dragging, but officials see it and ask Cruise questions about it
• 6:05pm: Cruise CMT meeting. Vogt and West end Sev-0 war room. Some cruise employees later express concerns about this
• 10-05, 10:46am: Forbes asks Cruise for comment on AV dragging. Cruise declines to comment and stands by 10-03 press release
• 1:07pm: CPUC sends request for information with 10-19 response deadline
• 10-06, 10:31am: Forbes publishes "Cruise Robotaxi Dragged Woman 20 Feet in Recent Accident, Local Politician Says"
• 10-10, 4:00pm: DMV requests more complete video from Cruise. Cruise responds same day, offering to screenshare video
• 10-11, 11am: Cruise meeting with DMV on operational issues unrelated to accident. DMV's video request "briefly discussed"
• 12:48pm: Cruise paralegal submits 10-day report to NHTSA after checking for updates. Report doesn't mention pullover or dragging "as no one told the paralegal these facts needed to be added"
• 10-12, 3pm: NHTSA notifies Cruise that it intends to open Preliminary Evaluation (PE) for 10-02 accident and 3 other pedestrian-related events
• 10-13, 10am: Cruise meets with DMV and CHP to share 9m 6-pane video and DMV clarifies that it wants the 45s 9-pane video ("full video")
• 12:19pm: Cruise uploads full video
• 1:30pm: Cruise meets with NHTSA and argues that PE is unwarranted
• 10-16, 11:30am: Cruise meets with DMV and CHP, who state they don't believe they were shown full video during 10-03 meeting
• 10-16: NHTSA officially opens PE
• 10-18, 3:00pm: Cruise holds standing monthly meeting with CPUC. Cruise says they'll meet CPUC's 10-19 deadline
• 10-19, 1:40pm: Cruise provides information and full video in response to 10-05 request
• 10-23, 2:35pm: Cruise learns of possible DMV suspension of driverless permit
• 10-24, 10:28am: DMV issues suspension of Cruise's driverless permit. Except for the few employees who heard on 10-23, Cruise employees are surprised
• 10:49am: Cruise publishes blog post which states: "Shortly after the incident, our team proactively shared information with the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), California Public Utilities Commision [sic] (CPUC), and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), including the full video, and have stayed in close contact with regulators to answer their questions"
• 11-02, 12:03pm: Cruise submits 30-day NHTSA report, which includes discussion of pullover and dragging
• 11-02: Cruise recalls 950 systems as a result of 10-02 accident
• 12-01: CPUC issues Order to Show Cause "for failing to provide complete information and for making misleading public comments regarding the October 2, 2023 Cruise related incident and its subsequent interactions with the commission"

D. Video Footage of the Accident

• 6 videos
  • Offload 1; 9:29pm: low res, 3s, 4-pane. Captures 3s immediately after collision, including audio
  • Offload 2; 9:32pm*: 14s, 9-pane. No audio. Shows Nissan pedestrian collision and pedestrian being thrown into path of Cruise AV
  • Media Video; 10:04pm: 21s, 4-pane. Derived from offload 2, but slowed down
  • 1:06am: 4s clip of offload 2, cut by Vogt and sent to SVP of Government Affairs David Estrada and Chief Legal Officer Jeff Bleich with "this is the cut I was thinking of". Estrada responds with "yes, agree that should be the primary video that gets released if one is released". Video is a single pane from left-front of AV and only shows Nissan hitting pedestrian. Estrada says this should be shown in meetings with regulators first to show "what happened in clarity so you can see how the event happened (establish clear fault of human driver)", but "no evidence this shorter 4-second video was shown at any of the regulatory meetings."
  • 3:21am: 12s 9-pane video derived from offload 2. Cruise VP of Global Government Affairs Prashanthi Raman and Estrada asked Wood for shorter version of 14s video, "given last night’s Sev 0 and our need to discuss with policymakers, can you please make us a usable video of this angle [link to Webviz]. We only need to show the impact and the person landing in front of us and then cut it there". Wood created the video. Cruise’s Senior Director of Federal Affairs Eric Danko tells Wood, "believe NHTSA will want video footage that captures moment of our impact as well" and Wood replies, " can create a NHTSA version video once the logs have been offloaded"
  • "full video"; 6:28am: 45s, 9-pane, shows pullover and dragging. No audio. Link to full video posted to war room slack at

E. The Facts Regarding What Cruise Knew and When About the October 2 Accident

1. Facts Cruise Learned the Evening of October 2

a. Accident Scene

• Driverless Support Specialists (DSS) arrive at scene, 9:39pm to 9:44pm
• Another 2-person DSS team arrives with member of operations team and member of Safety Escalation team (SET), 10:00-10:30pm
• At least one contractor takes > 100 photos and video and indicated an understanding of pedestrian dragging
  • Contractor noted blood and skin pieces, took long shots of trail of blood that indicated traveled after impact; contractor was instructed to bring phone to Cruise instead of uploading video onto customary Slack channel; contractor believes this was to protect injured pedestrian's privacy
  • Photos and video uploaded into "RINO" database at 2:23am, accessed by > 100 employees starting at 10-03, 5:11am; DB doesn't show which specific employees reviewed specific photos and videos
• Another person at the scene denied knowing about dragging
• In Cruise's internal review, prior to Quinn Emanuel, One Remote Assistance operator (RA) said they saw "ped flung onto hood of AV. You could see and hear the bump" and another saw AV "was already pulling over to the side". Quinn Emanuel didn't find out about these until after the RIF on 12-14. On reaching out, one declined the interview and the other didn't respond
  • Two other interviewees reported discussion of secondary movement of AV on evening of 10-02 or early morning of 10-03 but "this information has not been verified and appears contrary to the weight of the evidence"
• No employees interviewed by Quinn Emanuel indicated they knew about dragging on 10-02

b. Virtual "Sev-0 War Room"

• 20 people initially in war room
• 200+ joined and left war room on 10-02 and 10-03
• 2 interviewees recalled discussion of pedestrian dragging in Sev-0 war room on Meet. Neither could identify who was involved in the discussion or the timing of the discussion. One said it was after 4:00am
• Cruise incident response playbook outlines roles of Incident Commander, SLT, CMT as well as how to respond in the weeks after incident. Playbook was not followed, said to be "aborted" because "too manually intensive"

c. Initial Media Narrative About the October 2 Accident

• "Although the War Room was supposed to address a variety of issues such as understanding how the accident happened and next steps, the focus quickly centered almost exclusively on correcting a false media narrative that the Cruise AV had caused the Accident"

2. Facts Cruise Learned on October 3

a. The 12:15 a.m. "Sev-0 Collision SFO" Meeting

• CMT Incident Manager convened meeting with 140 invites
• Focus on sharing updates and media narrative strategy
• Slack communications show Cruise employees viewed risk that public could think that Cruise AV injured pedestrian as a crisis
• Estrada says to Raman, "feels like we are fighting with both arms tied behind our back if we are so afraid of releasing an exonerating video, very naïve if we think we won’t get walloped by media and enemies"
  • Raman responds, "we are under siege is my opinion, we have no fighting chance with these headlines/media stories…we are drowning — and we will lose every time"
  • above statement is said to have "captured well the feeling within Cruise’s senior leadership"
• Vogt attended meeting and wanted to reveal only 4s part of clip showing the Nissan hitting the pedestrian
  • Vogt insisted he wanted to authorize any video or media statement before release, "nothing would be shared or done" without his approval
• In parallel, comms team drafted bullet points to share with media, including "AV came to a complete stop immediately after impacting the struck pedestrian", which comms team did not know was inaccurate

b. Engineer’s 3:45 a.m. Slack Message

• Slack communication
  • Wood: I have not seen this mentioned yet, but in the 1st RA Session the AV is stopped nearly right next to the adjacent vehicle but drives forward another 1-2 car lengths before coming to it's [sic] final position.
  • Unnamed employee: ACP, I can’t access the link but is the PED under the vehicle while it continues to move? Am I understanding that correctly
  • Wood: I believe so and the AV video can be seen moving vertically
• Wood determined this by looking at data from RA center, which implied AV movement of 1-2 car lengths with dragged pedestrian

c. The 6:00 a.m. Crisis Management Team (CMT) Meeting

• CMT discussed pullover and dragging
• 100+ in meeting, including "COO Gil West, co-founder and Chief Product Officer Dan Kan, VP of Communications, Senior Director of Federal Affairs, and members of the communications, legal, engineering, safety, regulatory, and government affairs teams"
• 6:17am, engineer slacks Wood, "have they raised the issue that the AV moved post-event? On this call. I joined late" and Wood responds "Not yet. I will raise"
• Slack conversation during meet, from West to 6 other senior leaders:
  • West: ACP- For awareness it was reported at the CMT meeting that the AV moved 1-2 vehicle lengths before RA connection (low collision and looking for pull over before e-stop hit)
  • Vogt: Should we run road to sim and see what the AV would have done if it was in the other vehicles position? I think that might be quite powerful
  • West: Good idea- I suspect the AV would have stopped and never hit the Ped in the first place
• engineer summarized CMT meeting in war room slack, "in the CMT meeting this morning, there was discussion of releasing/sharing video at some point. Matt Wood also noted that the AV travels at a slow speed after the collision, with the pedestrian underneath the car (it's about 7 meters). It wasn't discussed, but i wanted to point out that someone who has access to our AV video above up until the point of the collision could see later that the AV traveled about this distance post-collision, because there is a video on social media which shows the AV stopped with the pedestrian underneath, and there are some markers in the scene."
  • engineer also pointed out that non-engineers should be able to deduce pedestrian dragging from before before AV impact plus social media video showing AV's final position. After the DMV suspension order, also said "I pointed out in the channel that it was not hard to conclude there was movement after the initial stop…it seems the DMV fully understanding the entire details was predictable"

d. The 6:45 a.m. Senior Leadership Team (SLT) Meeting

• Dragging discussed in SLT meeting
• SLT discussed amending media statement, "the outcome [of these discussions] was whatever statement was published on social we would stick with because the decision was we would lose credibility by editing a previously agreed upon statement"
• At this point, senior members of comms team knew that "AV came to a complete stop immediately after impacting the struck pedestrian" statement was inaccurate, but comms team continued giving inaccurate statement to press after SLT meeting, resulting in publications with incorrect statements in Forbes, CNBC, ABC News Digital, Engadget, Jalopnik, and The Register
  • "complete stop" removed on 10-13 after comms employee flagged statement to legal, which said "I don’t think we can say this"

e. The 7:45 a.m. and 10:35 a.m. Engineering and Safety Team

Meetings

• [no notes]

f. The 12:05 p.m. CMT Meeting

• [no notes]

g. The 12:40 p.m. SLT Meeting

• "Vogt is said to have stated that it was good the AV stopped after 20 feet when it detected interference with its tire rather than continuing, as AVs are programmed to do, to look for a safe place to pull over for up to 100 feet or one full block"
• Safety and eng teams raised question of grounding fleet until fix deployed
  • Vogt and West rejected idea

h. The 6:05 p.m. CMT Meeting

• CMT leaders learn SLT is disbanding Sev-0 war room
• Some interviewees expressed concern that no future CMT meetings scheduled for biggest incident in Cruise history
  • Some suggested to Chief Legal Officer Jeff Bleich that "miniature CMT" should continue to meet; Bleich and others supportive, but this wasn't done

3. Cruise’s Response to the Forbes Article

• Forbes reached out about pedestrian dragging
  • Cruise decides not to respond to avoid triggering a new media cycle
    • Cruise stops sharing video with media

III. CRUISE’S COMMUNICATIONS WITH REGULATORS, CITY OFFICIALS, AND OTHER STAKEHOLDERS

A. Overview of Cruise’s Initial Outreach and Meetings with Regulators

• "initial blurb" drafted by 12:24am; Cruise not aware of dragging at the time

B. The Mayor’s Office Meeting on October 3

• Meeting with Mayor’s Transportation Advisor Alexandra Sweet
• Cruise employee gave overview, then Wood played full video
  • This approach became the standard presentation from Cruise
• Full video was played twice by Wood, but there were connectivity issues
• Sweet apparently noticed that the vehicle moved again, but didn't ask about dragging or why vehicle moved again

C. Cruise’s Disclosures to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)

1. Cruise’s Initial Outreach on October 3

• **10-03, 7:25am **: Cruise’s Head of Regulatory Engagement emailed NHTSA
  • NHTSA issues they wanted addressed included "Whether the Cruise ADS or remote assistant could ascertain that the pedestrian was trapped under the vehicle or the location of a pedestrian on the ground" and "vehicle control dynamics (lateral and longitudinal) leading to the incident and following impact including ADS predicted path of the pedestrian and whether any crash avoidance or mitigation took place" and video of accident

2. Cruise’s NHTSA Pre-Meeting

• Talking points for anticipated questions
  • Did you stop the fleet?
    • Alicia Fenrick: We have not changed the posture of the fleet.
    • We have not identified a fault in AV response
  • Why did the vehicle move after it had initially stopped?
    • [Not discussed] Matthew Wood: The impact triggered a collision detection and the vehicle is designed to pull over out of lane in
  • Why didn't the vehicle brake in anticipation of the pedestrian in the road?
    • Matthew Wood: I think the video speaks for itself, the pedestrian is well past our lane of travel into the other lane
    • Alicia Fenrick: The pedestrian was clearly well past lane of travel of the AV. It would not be reasonable to expect that the other vehicle would speed up and proceed to hit the pedestrian, and then for the pedestrian to flip over the adjacent car and wind up in our lane.
• Excerpt of notes from an employee:
  • They requested a video-wait until the meeting at least. Then another question-where we end the video.
  • Alicia: Biggest issue candidly. That we moved, and why, is something we are going to need to explain. The facts are what they are.
  • Matt: why we moved, it is a collision response. Detected as a minor collision, so design response is a permissible lane pullover.
  • How to reference this: triggered a collision detection and was designed to pull over out of lane. Do not qualify as minor collision, rather as a collision detection.
  • Questions will be: it stopped and then proceeded forward.
  • General premise: we are looking into this, we are doing a deep dive, we have done some preliminary analysis and this is what we have but it is only preliminary.
  • Buckets: before impact, impact, after impact.
• Slack messages show discussion of when video should be sent and which video should be sent; decided to play full video due to to avoid being "accused of hiding the ball"

3. Cruise’s Meeting with NHTSA on October 3

• Wood played the full video 2 or 3 times, "but it kept stopping or blacking- or whiting out because his home computer was having connectivity issues"
• "NHTSA did not see the Full Video clearly or in its entirety"
• No discussion of pullover or dragging
  • Pre-meeting notes edited after meeting, adding "[Not discussed]" to this item
• Meeting notes of some questions asked by NHTSA
  • Could RA detect that pedestrian trapped?
    • Wood: Yes
  • Sensors too?
    • Wood: Yes
  • The statement "the last thing you would want to do is move when a pedestrian is underneath" appears to have been said, but recollections disagree on who said it. Some believe Wood said this and NHTSA concurred, some believe Wood said this an NHTSA repeated the statement, and some believe that NHTSA said this and Wood concurred
• Post-meeting slack discussion
  • Employee: "I think we might need to mention the comment Matt made during the NHTSA call that the last thing you would want to do is move with a pedestrian under the car. From my notes and recollection Matt said 'As pedestrian is under vehicle last thing want to do is maneuver' and [the NHTSA regulator] agreed"
  • Another employee: "lets see where the conversation goes. if it’s relevant, we should share it. That’s not the main point here though"
  • In other discussions, other employees and execs express varying levels of concern on the non-disclosure of pullover and dragging, from moderate to none (e.g., Senior Director of Federal Affair says he "stands by it ... [Cruise's employees] have gone beyond their regulatory requirements")

4. Cruise’s NHTSA Post-Meeting on October 3

• NHTSA sent a request for video and Cruise uploaded full video

5. Cruise’s Interactions with NHTSA on October 12, 13, and 16

a. October 12 Call

• NHTSA regulator called Cruise employee and informed them that NHTSA was planning Preliminary Evaluation; employee sent the following to Cruise NHTSA team:
  • "She shared that there was a lot of consternation in the front office about last week's incident. It is going to be a pretty broad investigation into how vehicles react to pedestrians out in the street and people in the roadway. But questions about last week's incident will be included in the IR questions and analysis. I offered an additional briefing about last week's incident, but she said that we were quite upfront and shared the video and told them everything they need to know."
  • "it [is] difficult to believe that they could find fault with our reaction to the pedestrian in Panini [Panini is the name of the specific AV] that would extend beyond asking us additional questions in a follow-up…"

b. October 13 Meeting

• "Despite the severe consequences that could result from a PE, including a recall, Cruise’s Chief Legal Officer and Senior Vice President of Government Affairs did not attend"
• From meeting agenda: "We’re just a little confused by this. We met with you about the Panini incident last week, and the team didn’t express any remaining concerns about it, even when asked if you had any additional concerns. Was there really remaining concern about AV behavior regarding Panini? If yes, why did they not request another briefing? We’ve been extremely cooperative with the Agency and have always provided information that the agency requested. What will be gained by this escalation that we are not already providing? Offer briefing on any of these topics in lieu of PE."
• Also planned to state: "Regarding last week’s incident we briefed the agency within hours of the event, provided video, and offered repeatedly to share additional information, including around the topic of pedestrian safety broadly. None was requested, which makes us question the motivations behind opening a PE. PEs are punitive means to gather information, and are reputationally harmful, particularly in a nascent industry."

c. October 16 PE

• [no notes]

6. Cruise’s NHTSA Reports Regarding the October 2 Accident

• NHTSA's SGO requires three written reports, including "a written description of the pre-crash, crash, and post-crash details"
• Cruise's first two reports did not mention pullover and dragging; after consultation with GM, third report did mention pullover and dragging

a. NHTSA 1-Day Report

• Original draft forwarded from paralegal to Deputy General Counsel Alicia Fenrick, Director of Communications Erik Moser, and Managing Legal Counsel Andrew Rubenstein: "A Cruise autonomous vehicle ("AV"), operating in driverless autonomous mode, was at a complete stop in response to a red light on southbound Cyril Magnin Street at the intersection with Market Street. A dark colored Nissan Sentra was also stopped in the adjacent lane to the left of the AV. As the Nissan Sentra and the AV proceeded through the intersection after the light turned green, a pedestrian entered the crosswalk on the opposite side of Market Street across from the vehicles and proceeded through the intersection against a red light. The pedestrian passed through the AV's lane of travel but stopped mid-crosswalk in the adjacent lane. Shortly thereafter, the Nissan Sentra made contact with the pedestrian, launching the pedestrian in front of the AV. The AV braked aggressively but, shortly thereafter, made contact with the pedestrian. This caused no damage to the AV. The driver of the Nissan Sentra left the scene shortly after the collision. Police and Emergency Medical Services (EMS) were called to the scene. The pedestrian was transported by EMS."
  • LGTM'd [approved] by Fenrick and Moser; Rubenstein said "the GA folks have suggested some additional edits", which included adding that the "completely" pass through AV's lane of travel, changing "launching" to "deflecting", and removing "this caused no damage to the AV"; no discussion of possible inclusion of pullover and dragging
• Cruise employee who established NHTSA reporting system believed that full details, including pullover and dragging, should've been included, but they were on vacation at the time
• In later, 10-24, employee Q&A on DMV suspension order, an employee asked "Why was the decision made not to include the post-collision pull-over in the written report to the NHTSA? At least, this seems like it must have been an intentional decision, not an accidental oversight."
  • Rubenstein drafted this prepared response for Fenrick: "The purpose of the NHTSA reporting requirement is to notify the agency of the occurrence of crashes. Consistent with that objective and our usual practice, our report notified NHTSA that the crash had occurred. Additionally, we had already met with NHTSA, including showing the full video to them, prior to submission of the report. That meeting was the result of our proactive outreach: we immediately reached out to NHTSA after the incident to set up a meeting to discuss with them. Our team met with NHTSA in the morning following the incident, including showing the full video to NHTSA. We then submitted the report and sent a copy of the full video later that afternoon."
  • Fenrick LGTM'd the above, but the response ended up not being given
• Quinn Emanuel notes, "It is difficult to square this rationale with the plain language of the NHTSA regulation itself, which requires “a written description of the pre-crash, crash, *and post-crash details….*” (emphasis added)"

b. NHTSA 10-Day Report

• Paralegal had full authority to determine if any new info or updates were necessary
• Paralegal asked three employees on slack, "hi, checking in to see if there have been any updates to this incident? In particular, any status on the ped"
  • An employee who interacts with law enforcement responded "Unfortunately no. I’ve reached out to the investigating sergeant but have not received a response. This is probably due to other investigations he may be involved in"
  • This employee said that they were referring only to the pedestrian's medical condition, but the paralegal took the response more broadly
• The paralegal also checked the RINO database for updates and saw none, then filed the 10-day report, which states "There are no updates related to this incident since the original submission on October 3, 2023" and then repeats the narrative in the 1-day report, omitting discussion of pullover and dragging

c. NHTSA 30-Day Report

• GM urged Cruise to be more comprehensive with 30-day report, so CLO Bleich got involved.
  • Bleich reviewed the 1-day and 10-day reports, and then followed up with "[t]he most important thing now is simply to be complete and accurate in our reporting of this event to our regulators", says to include the pullover and dragging
  • Rubenstein objected to including dragging in 30-day report

7. Conclusions Regarding Cruise’s Interactions with NHTSA

• [no notes]

D. Cruise’s Disclosures to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV)

1. Cruise’s Initial Outreach to the DMV and Internal Discussion of Which Video to Show

• "Vogt wanted to focus solely on the Nissan’s role in causing the Accident and avoid showing the pedestrian’s injuries"
• Estrada to Raman, apparently concurring: "Think we should get the clip of the video as Kyle described to prepare to show it to policymakers ... show the impact and the person landing in front of us. Cut it there. That's all that is needed."
• Raman and Danko disagreed and pushed for showing most complete video available

2. DMV’s Response to Cruise’s Outreach

• [no notes]

3. Cruise’s DMV Pre-Meeting

• "While Deputy General Counsel Fenrick said she did not typically attend DMV meetings, she opted to attend this meeting in order to have some overlapping attendees between the NHTSA and DMV meetings. Notably, neither Bleich nor Estrada attended the pre-meeting despite planning to meet in-person with the DMV Director to discuss the Accident."

4. Cruise’s October 3 Meeting with the DMV

a. DMV Meeting Discussions

• DMV regulators do not believe full video was played
• Cruise employees have different recollections, but many believe full video was played, likely with bad connectivity problems
• No discussion of pullover or dragging

b. Cruise’s Post-DMV Meeting Reflections

• Slack discussion
  • Raman: thoughts?
  • Fenrick: You mean DMV call? More aggressive than NHTSA . . .
  • ACP - Not overly so but seemed a bit more critical and a little unrealistic. Like really we should predict another vehicle will hit and run and brake accordingly. I think they think they're expectations of anticipatory response is to other road users collisions was a bit off.
  • Raman: They tend to ask insane hypotheticals. I was about to interrupt and say we can go through any number of hypos.. this is what happened but I was waiting for them to ask a followup question before I did it.
  • Fenrick: insane hypothetical is absolutely right
  • ACP - Bigger concern is that no regulator has really clued in that we moved after rolling over the pedestrian
• In another slack discussion, an employee stated "the car moved and they didn’t ask and we’re kind of lucky they didn’t ask"
  • Some employees indicate that this was the general consensus about the meeting

5. Cruise’s October 10 Communications with DMV

• DMV asked for video by 10-11. Cruise did not do this, but showed a video in a meeting on 10-13

6. Cruise’s October 11 Meeting with the DMV

• [no notes]

7. Cruise’s October 13 Meeting with the DMV

• Cruise shared 9-minute 6-pane video created by Wood
  • "Notably, the camera angles did not include the lower frontal camera angles that most clearly showed the AV’s impact with the pedestrian and pullover maneuver"
• "Interviewees said that the DMV’s tone in the meeting 'felt very mistrustful' and that it 'felt like something was not right here.'"
  • DMV had questions about what appeared to be missing or misleading video
  • In response to DMV's concerns and request, Cruise uploaded full video to DMV online portal

8. Cruise’s October 16 Meeting with the DMV

• Meeting was scheduled for a different topic, but meeting moved to topic of DMV being misled about the accident; "Cruise interviewees recalled that the DMV and CHP attendees were angry about the October 3 presentation, saying their collective memory was that they were not shown the Full Video"

9. Cruise’s October 23 Communications with the DMV

• Cruise calls political consultant to have them find out why DMV has been silent on expansion of SF autonomous fleet
  • Consultant says DMV is "pissed" and considering revocation of Cruise's license to operate
• Internal disagreement on whether this could happen. "Estrada then sent CLO Bleich a Slack message indicating that he had talked to the DMV Director and there was '[n]o indication whatsoever that they are considering revoking.'"
  • Raman checks with political consultant again, who repeats that DMV is very angry and may revoke

10. DMV’s October 24 Suspension Order

• Estrada calls DMV director Gordon to ask about suspension and is stonewalled
• Vogt joins the call and makes personal appeal, saying he's "been committed to this since he was 13 to try and improve driver safety"
• Appeal fails and suspension order is issued shortly afterwards
• Slack conversation
  • Estrada: Kyle leading our response that we provided "full" video and we will stand by that if it's a fight.
  • Bleich: ACP- This will be a difficult fight to win. DMV and CHP have credibility and Steve Gordon seems to swear that he did not see the end of the video. The word of Cruise employees won't be trusted. I think we should bring in an outside firm to review the sequence of events and do an internal report since otherwise there is no basis for people to believe us. We should consider doing this and how to message it.
  • Estrada: Yes agree difficult and that we need to do it because we have facts, we can have sworn statements and data analytics on our side. Not a he said she said. We have proof. If we prove with facts a false statement that is important reputation saving.
  • Steve stopped even trying to make this claim. He resorted to arguing we should have highlighted the pullover attempt. This is a big overreach by them to make a claim like this we have the ability to prove false.

11. Post-October 24 DMV Communications

• Vogt posted this blog post, titled "A detailed review of the recent SF hit-and-run incident"
  • [The report only has an excerpt from the blog post, but for the same reason I think it's worth looking at the report in detail, I think it's worth looking at the blog post linked above; my read of the now-deleted blog post is that it attempts to place the blame on the "hit and run" driver, which is repeatedly emphasized; the blog post also appears to include a video of the simulation discussed above, where Vogt says "Should we run road to sim and see what the AV would have done if it was in the other vehicles position? I think that might be quite powerful"]
  • [The blog post does discuss the pullover and dragging, saying "The AV detected a collision, bringing the vehicle to a stop; then attempted to pull over to avoid causing further road safety issues, pulling the individual forward approximately 20 feet"]

12. Conclusions Regarding Cruise’s Communications with the DMV

• Bleich: "[T]he main concern from DMV was that our vehicle did not distinguish between a person and another object under its carriage originally, and so went into an MRC. Second, they felt that we should have emphasized the AV’s second movement right away in our first meeting. In fact, in the first meeting -- although we showed them the full video -- they (and we) were focused on confirming that we were not operating unsafely before the collision and we did not cause the initial contact with the pedestrian. They did not focus on the end of the video and -- because they did not raise it -- our team did not actively address it"
• Vogt: "I am very much struggling with the fact that our GA team did not volunteer the info about the secondary movement with the DMV, and that during the handling of the event I remember getting inconsistent reports as to what was shared. At some point bad judgment call must have been made, and I want to know how that happened."
• Bleich: "ACP -- I share your concern that the second movement wasn’t part of the discussion. I don’t know that there was a deliberate decision by the team that was doing the briefings. I believe they were still in the mode from the previous evening where they were pushing back against an assumption that we either were responsible for hitting the pedestrian or that we did not react fast enough when the pedestrian fell into our path. But as I’ve probed for basic information about what we shared and when I’ve had the same frustration that dates get pushed together or details are left out. I don’t know if this is deliberate, or people are simply having difficulty recalling exactly what they did or said during the immediate aftermath of that event."
• "these Slacks convey that the three senior leaders of the company – the CEO, CLO, and COO – were not actively engaged in the regulatory response for the worst accident in Cruise’s history. Instead, they were trying to piece together what happened after the fact."

E. Cruise’s Disclosures to the SF MTA, SF Fire Department, and SF Police

Department

• After playing video, a government official asks "this car moves with the woman underneath it, is that what we are seeing?", which results in a series of discussions about this topic
• Two of the four Cruise employees in the meeting report being shocked to see the pullover and dragging, apparently not realizing that this had happened

F. Cruise’s Disclosures to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC)

1. Cruise’s October 3 Communications with the CPUC

• CPUC and Cruise disagree on whether or not there was an offer to play the full video

2. CPUC’s October 5 Data Request

• CPUC requests video by 10-19; Cruise's standard policy was to respond on the last day, so video was sent on 10-19

3. Cruise’s October 19 Response to CPUC’s Data Request

• Video, along with the following summary: "[T]he Nissan Sentra made contact with the pedestrian, deflecting the pedestrian in front of the AV. The AV biased rightward before braking aggressively but, shortly thereafter, made contact with the pedestrian. The AV then attempted to achieve a minimal risk condition (MRC) by pulling out of the lane before coming to its final stop position. The driver of the Nissan Sentra left the scene shortly after the collision."

4. Conclusions Regarding Cruise’s Disclosures to the CPUC

• [no notes]

G. Cruise’s Disclosures to Other Federal Officials

• Cruise's initial outreach focused on conveying the accident had been caused by the hit-and-run Nissan driver
• After the DMV suspension on 10-24, "outreach focused on conveying the message that it believed it had worked closely with regulatory agencies such as the California DMV, CPUC, and NHTSA following the October 2 Accident"

IV. THE AFTERMATH OF THE OCTOBER 2 ACCIDENT

A. The Cruise License Suspension by the DMV in California

• Operating with human driver behind the wheel still allowed

B. The NHTSA PE Investigation and Safety Recall

• [no notes]

C. The CPUC’s “Show Cause Ruling”

• [no notes]

D. New Senior Management of Cruise and the Downsizing of Cruise

• [no notes]

V. SUMMARY OF FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS

• "By the time Cruise employees from legal, government affairs, operations, and systems integrity met with regulators and other government officials on October 3, they knew or should have known that the Cruise AV had engaged in a pullover maneuver and dragged the pedestrian underneath the vehicle for approximately 20 feet"
  • "Cruise’s passive, non-transparent approach to its disclosure obligations to its regulators reflects a basic misunderstanding of what regulatory authorities need to know and when they need to know it"
• "Although neither Cruise nor Quinn Emanuel can definitively establish that NHTSA or DMV were shown the entirety of the Full Video, including the pullover maneuver and dragging, the weight of the evidence indicates that Cruise attempted to play the Full Video in these meetings; however, internet connectivity issues impeded or prevented these regulators from seeing the video clearly or fully."
  • "in the face of these internet connectivity issues that caused the video to freeze or black- or white-out, Cruise employees remained silent, failing to ensure that the regulators understood what they likely could not see – that the Cruise AV had moved forward again after the initial impact, dragging the pedestrian underneath the vehicle"
• "Even if, as some Cruise employees stated, they were unaware of the pullover maneuver and pedestrian dragging at the time of certain regulatory briefings (which itself raises other concerns), Cruise leadership and other personnel were informed about the full details of the October 2 Accident during the day on October 3 and should have taken corrective action."
• "While Cruise employees clearly demonstrated mistakes of judgment and failure to appreciate the importance of transparency and accountability, based on Quinn Emanuel’s review to date, the evidence does not establish that Cruise employees sought to intentionally mislead government regulators about the October 2 Accident, including the pullover maneuver and pedestrian dragging"
• "Cruise’s senior leadership repeatedly failed to understand the importance of public trust and accountability"
• "Cruise’s response to the October 2 Accident reflects deficient leadership at the highest levels of the Company—including among some members of the C-Suite, legal, governmental affairs, systems integrity, and communications teams—that led to a lack of coordination, mistakes of judgment, misapprehension of regulatory requirements and expectations, and inconsistent disclosures and discussions of material facts at critical meetings with regulators and other government officials. The end result has been a profound loss of public and governmental trust and a suspension of Cruise’s business in California"
  • "There was no captain of the ship. No single person or team within Cruise appears to have taken responsibility to ensure a coordinated and fully transparent disclosure of all material facts regarding the October 2 Accident to the DMV, NHTSA, and other governmental officials. Various members of the SLT who had the responsibility for managing the response to this Accident were missing-in-action for key meetings, both preparatory and/or with the regulators. This left each Cruise team to prepare for the meetings independently, with different employees attending different regulatory meetings, and with no senior Cruise official providing overall direction to ensure consistency in approach and disclosure of all material facts."
  • "There was no demonstrated understanding of regulatory expectations by certain senior Cruise management or line employees"
  • "Cruise’s deficient regulatory response to the October 2 Accident reflects preexisting weaknesses in the Company, including ineffectual Cruise leadership with respect to certain senior leaders. Two out of many examples illustrate these weaknesses."
    • No coordinated or rigorous process for what needed to be discussed with DMV, NHTSA, etc., nor did leadership or employees in meetings take steps to ensure they were informed of what had happened before the meetings (such as asking their direct reports for updates); "To underscore Cruise’s lack of coordination in its briefings to regulators and other government officials on October 3, senior leadership never convened a meeting of the various teams to discuss and learn how these meetings went, what questions were asked, and what discussions took place. Had they done so, they should have realized that in only one of the four meetings did government officials ask questions about the pullover maneuver and pedestrian dragging, requiring corrective action"
    • "Cruise lawyers displayed a lack of understanding of what information must be communicated to NHTSA in these reports, and misapprehended the NHTSA requirement ... Cruise leadership gave a paralegal the primary responsibility for preparing and filing such reports with the Cruise legal department exercising little oversight"

VI. RECOMMENDATIONS

• New senior leadership
• Consider creating a dedicated, cross-disciplinary Regulatory Team which understands regulations, has experience dealing with regulators, and proactively improves Cruise's regulatory reporting processes and systems, reporting directly to CEO with board oversight
• Training for remaining senior leadership
• Create a streamlined Crisis Management Team
  • 200 people in a war room can't manage a crisis; also need to have a "captain" or someone in charge
• Review incident response protocol and ensure that it is followed
• "There is a need to reform the governmental affairs, legal, and public communications functions within Cruise"
• "Cruise should file its reports about any accident involving a Cruise vehicle with regulators by having a designated Chief Safety Officer or senior engineer, as well as a regulatory lawyer, within Cruise review and approve the filing of each report"

Appendix

• The report by Exponent, mentioned above, is included in the Appendix. It is mostly redacted, although there is a lot of interesting non-redacted content, such as "the collision detection system incorrectly identified the pedestrian as being located on the side of the AV at the time of impact instead of in front of the AV and thus determined the collision to be a side impact ... The determination by the ADS that a side collision occurred, and not a frontal collision, led to a less severe collision response being executed and resulted in the AV performing the subsequent outermost lane stop maneuver instead of an emergency stop ... The root cause of the AV’s post-collision movement, after the initial brief stop, was the inaccurate determination by the ADS that a side collision had occurred ... the inaccuracy of the object track considered by the collision detection system and the resulting disparity between this track and the pedestrian’s actual position, the ADS failed to accurately determine the location of the pedestrian at the time of impact and while the pedestrian was underneath the vehicle"

back to danluu.com

I don't have much to add to this. I certainly have opinions, but I don't work in automotive and haven't dug into it enough to feel informed enough to add my own thoughts. In one discussion I had with a retired exec who used to work on autonomous vehicles, on incident management at Cruise vs. tech companies Twitter or Slack, the former exec said:

You get good at incidents given a steady stream of incidents of varying severity if you have to handle the many small ones. You get terrible at incidents if you can cover up the small ones until a big one happens. So it's not only funny but natural for internet companies to do it better than AV companies I think

On the "minimal risk condition" pullover maneuver, this exec said:

These pullover maneuvers are magic pixie dust making AVs safe: if something happens, we'll do a safety pullover maneuver

And on the now-deleted blog post, "A detailed review of the recent SF hit-and-run incident", the exec said:

Their mentioning of regulatory ADAS test cases does not inspire confidence; these tests are shit. But it's a bit unfair on my part since of course they would mention these tests, it doesn't mean they don't have better ones

On how regulations and processes making safety-critical industries safer and what you'd do if you cared about safety vs. the recommendations in the report, this exec said

[Dan,] you care about things being done right. People in these industries care about compliance. Anything "above the state of the art" buys you zero brownie points. eg for [X], any [Y] ATM are not required at all. [We] are better at [X] than most and it does nothing for compliance ... OTOH if a terrible tool or process exists that does nothing good but is considered "the state of the art" / is mandated by a standard, you sure as hell are going to use it

If you're looking for work, Freshpaint is hiring a recruiter, Software Engineers, and a Support Engineer. I'm in an investor, so you should consider my potential bias, but they seem to have found product-market fit and are growing extremely quickly (revenue-wise)

Thanks to an anonymous former AV exec, Justin Blank, and 5d22b for comments/corrections/discussion.

Appendix: a physical hardware curiosity

One question I had for the exec mentioned above, which wasn't relevant to this case, but is something I've wondered about for a while, is why the AVs that I see driving don't have upgraded tires and brakes. You can get much shorter stopping distances from cars that aren't super heavy by upgrading their tires and brakes, but the AVs I've seen have not had this done.

In this case, we can't do the exact comparison from an upgraded vehicle to the base vehicle because the vehicle dynamics data was redacted from section 3.3.3, table 9, and figure 40 of the appendix, but it's common knowledge that the simplest safety upgrade you can make on a car is upgrading the tires (and, if relevant, the brakes). One could argue that this isn't worth the extra running cost, or the effort (for the low-performance cars that I tend to see converted into AVs, getting stopping distances equivalent to a sporty vehicle would generally require modifying the wheel well so that wider tires don't rub) but, as an outsider, I'd be curious to know what the cost benefit trade-off on shorter stopping distances is.

They hadn't considered it before, but thought that better tires and brake would make a difference in a lot of other cases and prevent accients and explained the lack of this upgrade by:

I think if you have a combination of "we want to base AV on commodity cars" and "I am an algorithms guy" mindset you will not go look at what the car should be.

And, to be clear, upgraded tires and brakes would not have changed the outcome in this case. The timeline from the Exponent report has

• -2.9s: contact between Nissan and Pedestrian
• -2s: Pedestrian track dropped
• -1.17s: Pedestrian beings separating from Nissan
• -0.81s: [redacted]
• -0.78s: Pedestrian lands in AV's travel lane
• -0.41s: Collision checker predicts collision
• -0.25s: AV starts sending braking and steering commands (19.1 mph)
• 0s: collision (18.6 mph)

Looking at actual accelerometer data from a car with upgraded tires and brakes, stopping time from 19.1mph for that car was around 0.8s, so this wouldn't have made much difference in this case. If brakes aren't pre-charged before attempting to brake, there's significant latency when initially braking, such that 0.25s isn't enough for almost any braking to have occurred, which we can see from the speed only being 0.5mph slower in this case.

Another comment from the exec is that, while a human might react to the collision at -2.9s and slow down or stop, "scene understanding" as a human might do it is non-existent in most or perhaps all AVs, so it's unsurprising that the AV doesn't react until the pedestrian is in the AV's path, whereas a human, if they noticed the accident in the adjacent lane, would likely drastically slow down or stop (the exec guessed that most humans would come to a complete stop, whereas I guessed that most humans would slow down). The exec was also not surprised by the 530ms latency between the pedestrian landing in the AV's path and the AV starting to attempt to apply the brakes although, as a lay person, I found 530ms surprising.

On the advantage of AVs and ADAS, as implemented today, compared to a human who's looking in the right place, paying attention, etc., the exec said

They mainly never get tired or drink and hopefully also run in that terrible driver's car in the next lane. For [current systems], it's reliability and not peak performance that makes it useful. Peak performance is definitely not superhuman but subhuman

Why do people post on [bad platform] instead of [good platform]?

2024-01-25 08:00:00

There's a class of comment you often see when someone makes a popular thread on Mastodon/Twitter/Threads/etc., that you also see on videos that's basically "Why make a Twitter thread? This would be better as a blog post" or "Why make a video? This would be better as a blog post". But, these comments are often stronger in form, such as:

I can't read those tweets that span pages because the users puts 5 words in each reply. I find common internet completely stupid: Twitter, tiktok, Instagram, etc. What a huge waste of energy.

or

When someone chooses to blog on twitter you know it's facile at best, and more likely simply stupid (as in this case)

These kinds of comments are fairly common, e.g., I pulled up Foone's last 10 Twitter threads that scored 200 points or more on HN and 9 out of 10 had comments like this, complaining about the use of Twitter.

People often express bafflement that anyone could have a reason for using [bad platform], such as in "how many tweets are there just to make his point? 200? nobody thinks 'maybe this will be more coherent on a single page'? I don't get social media" or "Come on, typing a short description and uploading a picture 100 times is easier than typing everything in one block and adding a few connectors here and there? ... objectively speaking it is more work".

Personally, I don't really like video as a format and, for 95% of youtube videos that I see, I'd rather get the information as a blog post than a video (and this will be even more true if Google really cracks down on ad blocking) and I think that, for a reader who's interested in the information, long-form blog posts are basically strictly better than long threads on [bad platform]. But I also recognize that much of the content that I want to read wouldn't exist at all if it wasn't for things like [bad platform].

Stepping back and looking at the big picture, there are four main reasons I've seen that people use [bad platform], which are that it gets more engagement, it's where their friends are, it's lower friction, and it monetizes better.

Engagement

The engagement reason is the simplest, so let's look at that first. Just looking at where people spend their time, short-form platforms like Twitter, Instagram, etc., completely dominate longer form platforms like Medium, Blogspot, etc.; you can see this in the valuations of these companies, in survey data, etc. Substack is the hottest platform for long-form content and its last valuation was ~$600M, basically a rounding error compared to the value of short-form platforms (I'm not including things like Wordpress and or Squarespace, which derive a lot of their valuation from things other than articles and posts). The money is following the people and people have mostly moved on from long-form content. And if you talk to folks using substack about where their readers and growth comes from, that comes from platforms like Twitter, so people doing long-form content who optimize for engagement or revenue will still produce a lot of short-form content¹.

Friends

The friends reason is probably the next simplest. A lot of people are going to use whatever people around them are using. Realistically, if I were ten years younger and started doing something online in 2023 instead of 2013, more likely than not, I would've tried streaming before I tried blogging. But, as an old, out of touch, person, I tried starting a blog in 2013 even knowing that blogging was a dying medium relative to video. It seems to have worked well enough for me, so I've stuck with it, but this seems generational. While there are people older than me who do video and people younger than me who write blogs, looking at the distribution of ages, I'm not all that far from the age where people overwhelmingly moved to video and if I were really planning to do something long-term instead of just doing the lowest friction thing when I started, I would've started with video. Today, doing video is natural for folks who are starting to put their thoughts online.

Friction

When [bad platform] is a microblogging platform like Twitter, Mastodon, Threads, etc., the friends reason still often applies — people on these platforms are frequently part of a community they interact with, and it makes more sense for them to keep their content on the platform full of community members than to put content elsewhere. But the bigger reason for people whose content is widely read is that a lot of people find these platforms are much lower friction than writing blog posts. When people point this out, [bad platform] haters are often baffled, responding with things like

Come on, typing a short description and uploading a picture 100 times is easier than typing everything in one block and adding a few connectors here and there? ... objectively speaking it is more work

For one thing, most widely read programmer/tech bloggers that I'm in touch with use platforms that are actually higher friction (e.g., Jekyll friction and Hugo friction). But, in principle, they could use substack, hosted wordpress, or another platform that this commenter considers "objectively" lower friction, but this fundamentally misunderstands where the friction comes from. When people talk about [bad platform] being lower friction, it's usually about the emotional barriers to writing and publishing something, not the literal number of clicks it takes to publish something. We can argue about whether or not this is rational, whether this "objectively" makes sense, etc., but at the end of the day, it is simply true that many people find it mentally easier to write on a platform where you write short chunks of text instead of a single large chunk of text.

I sometimes write things on Mastodon because it feels like the right platform for some kinds of content for me. Of course, since the issue is not the number of clicks it takes and there's some underlying emotional motivation, other people have different reasons. For example, Foone says:

Not to humblebrag or anything, but my favorite part of getting posted on hackernews or reddit is that EVERY SINGLE TIME there's one highly-ranked reply that's "jesus man, this could have been a blog post! why make 20 tweets when you can make one blog post?"

CAUSE I CAN'T MAKE A BLOG POST, GOD DAMN IT. I have ADHD. I have bad ADHD that is being treated, and the treatment is NOT WORKING TERRIBLY WELL. I cannot focus on writing blog posts. it will not happen

if I try to make a blog post, it'll end up being abandoned and unfinished, as I am unable to edit it into something readable and postable. so if I went 100% to blogs: You would get: no content I would get: lots of unfinished drafts and a feeling of being a useless waste

but I can do rambly tweet threads. they don't require a lot of attention for a long time, they don't have the endless editing I get into with blog posts, I can do them. I do them a bunch! They're just rambly and twitter, which some people don't like

The issue Foone is referring to isn't even uncommon — three of my favorite bloggers have mentioned that they can really only write things in one sitting, so either they have enough momentum to write an entire blog post or they don't. There's a difference in scale between only being able to get yourself to write a tweet at a time and only being able to write what you can fit into a single writing session, but these are differences in degree, not differences in kind.

Revenue

And whatever the reason someone has for finding [bad platform] lower friction than [good platform], allowing people to use a platform that works for them means we get more content. When it comes to video, the same thing also applies because video monetizes so much better than text and there's a lot of content that monetizes well on video that probably wouldn't monetize well in text.

To pick an arbitrary example, automotive content is one of these areas. For example, if you're buying a car and you want detailed, practical, reviews about a car as well as comparisons to other cars one might consider if they're looking at a particular car, before YouTube, AFAIK, no one was doing anything close to the depth of what Alex Dykes does on Alex on Autos. If you open up a car magazine from the heyday of car magazines, something like Car and Driver or Road and Track from 1997, there's nothing that goes into even 1/10th of the depth that Alex does and this is still true today of modern car magazines. The same goes for quite a few sub-categories of automotive content as well, such as Jonathan Benson's on Tyre Reviews. Before Jonathan, no one was testing tires with the same breadth and depth and writing it up (engineers at tire companies did this kind of testing and much more, but you had to talk to them directly to get the info)² . You can find similar patterns in a lot of areas outside of automotive content as well. While this depends on the area, in many cases, the content wouldn't exist if it weren't for video. Not only do people, in general, have more willingness to watch videos than to read text, video monetizes much better than text does, which allows people to make providing in depth information their job in a way that wouldn't be possible in text. In some areas, you can make good money with a paywalled newsletter, but this is essentially what car magazines are and they were never able to support anything resembling what Alex Dykes does, nor does it seem plausible that you could support something like what Jonathan Benson does on YouTube.

Or, to pick an example from the tech world, shortly after Lucy Wang created her YouTube channel, Tech With Lucy, when she had 50k subscribers and her typical videos had thousands to tens of thousands views with the occasional video with a hundred thousand views, she noted that she was making more than she did working for AWS (with most of the money presumably coming in from sponsorships). By comparison, my blog posts all get well over a million hits and I definitely don't make anywhere near what Lucy made at AWS; instead, my blog barely covers my rent. It's possible to monetize some text decently well if you put most of it behind a paywall, e.g., Gergely Orosz does this with his newsletter, but if you want to have mostly or exclusively have freely available content, video generally dominates text.

Non-conclusion

While I would prefer that most content that I see on YouTube/Twitter/Threads/Mastodon/etc. were hosted on a text blog, the reality is that most of that content wouldn't exist at all if it had to be written up as long-form text instead of as chunked up short-form text or video. Maybe in a few years, summary tools will get good enough that I can consume the translations but, today, all the tools I've tried often get key details badly wrong, so we just have to live with the content in the form it's created in.

If you're looking for work, Freshpaint is hiring a recruiter, Software Engineers, and a Support Engineer. I'm in an investor in the company, so you should take this with the usual grain of salt, but if you're looking to join a fast growing early-stage startup, they seem to have found product-market fit and have been growing extremely quickly (revenue-wise).

Thanks to Heath Borders, Peter Bhat Harkins, James Young, Sophia Wisdom, and David Kok for comments/corrections/discussion.

Appendix: Elsewhere

• Paul Ford's WWIC (Why Wasn't I Consulted) is a more general version of this post

Here's a comment from David Kok, from a discussion about a rant by an 80-year old bridge player about why bridge is declining, where the 80-year old claimed that the main reason is that IQ has declined and young people (as in, people who are 60 and below) are too stupid to play intellectual games like bridge; many other bridge players concurred:

Rather than some wrong but meaningful statement about age groups I always just interpret statements like "IQ has gone down" as "I am unhappy and have difficulty expressing that" and everybody else going "Yes so am I" when they concur.

If you adapt David Kok's comment to complaints about why something isn't a blog post, that's a meta reason that the reasons I gave in this post are irrelevant (to some people) — these reasons only matter to people who care about the reasons; if someone is just venting their feelings an the reasons they're giving are an expression of their feelings and not meant to be legitimate reasons, the reasons someone might not write a blog post are irrelevant.

Anyway, the topic of why post there instead of here is a common enough topic that I'm sure other people have written things about it that I'd be interested in reading. Please feel free to forward other articles you see on the topic to me

Appendix: HN comments on Foone's last 10 Twitter threads.

I looked up Foone's last N Twitter threads that made to HN with 200+ points, and 9 out of 10 have complaints about why Foone used Twitter and how it would be better as a blog post. [This is not including comments of the form "For those who hate Twitter threads as much as I do: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1014267515696922624.html", of which there are more than comments like the ones below, which have a complaint but also have some potentially useful content, like a link to another version of the thread.

Never trust a system that seems to be working

One of the first comments was a complaint that it was on Twitter, which was followed not too long after by

how many tweets are there just to make his point? 200? nobody thinks "maybe this will be more coherent on a single page"? I don't get social media

Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

This would be better written in a short story format but I digress.

shit like this is too good and entertaining to be on twitter [one of the few positive comments complaining about this]

This person hates it so much whenever there is a link to their content on this site, they go on huge massive rants about it with threads spamming as much as the OP, it's hilarious.

You want to know something about how bullshit insane our brains are?

They'll tolerate reading it on twitter?

Serious question : why do publishers break down their blog posts into umpteen tweeted microblogs? Do the engagement web algorithms give preference to the number of tweets in a thread? I see this is becoming more of a trend

This is a very interesting submission. But, boy, is Twitter's character limit poisonous.

IMO Foone's web presence is toxic. Rather than write a cogent article posted on their blog and then summarize a pointer to that post in a single tweet, they did the opposite writing dozens of tweets as a thread and then summarizing those tweets in a blog post. This is not a web trend I would like to encourage but alas it is catching on.

Oh, I don't care how the author writes it, or whether there's a graph relationship below (or anything else). It's just that Twitter makes the experience of reading content like that a real chore.

Reverse engineering Skifree

This should have been a blog or a livestream.

Even in this format?

I genuinely don't get it. It's a pain in the ass for them to publish it like that and it's a pain in the ass for us to read it like that. I hope Musk takes over Twitter and runs it the ground so we can get actual blog posts back.

Someone points out that Foone has noted that they find writing long-form stuff impossible and can write in short-form media, to which the response is the following:

Come on, typing a short description and uploading a picture 100 times is easier than typing everything in one block and adding a few connectors here and there?

Obviously that's their prerogative and they can do whatever they want but objectively speaking it is more work and I sincerely hope the trend will die.

Everything with a battery should have an off switch

You forgot, foone isn't going to change from streams of Twitter posts to long form blogging. [actually a meta comment on how people always complain about this and not a complaint, I think]

I can't read those tweets that span pages because the users puts 5 words in each reply. I find common internet completely stupid: Twitter, tiktok, Instagram, etc. What a huge waste of energy.

He clearly knows [posting long threads on Twitter] is a problem, he should fix it.

Someone points out that Foone has said that they're unable to write long-form blog posts, to which the person replies:

You can append to a blog post as you go the same way you can append to a Twitter feed. It's functionally the same, the medium just isn't a threaded hierarchy. There's no reason it has to be posted fully formed as he declares.

My own blog posts often have 10+ revisions after I've posted them.

It doesn't work well for thousands of people, which is why there are always complaints ... When something is suboptimal, you're well within your rights to complain about it. Posting long rants as Twitter threads is suboptimal for the consumers of said threads

I kind of appreciate the signal: When someone chooses to blog on twitter you know it's facile at best, and more likely simply stupid (as in this case)

There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit

Amazingly, no complaint that I could see, although one comment was edited to be "."

Taking apart the 2010 Fisher Price re-released Music Box Record Player

why is this a twitter thread? why not a blog?

Followed by

I love that absolutely no one got the joke ... Foone is a sociopath who doesn't feel certain words should be used to refer to Foone because they don't like them. In fact no one should talk about Foone ever.

While posting to Tumblr, E and W keys just stopped working

Just hotkey detection gone wrong. Not that big of a surprise because implementing hotkeys on a website is a complete minefield. I don't think you can conclude that Tumblr is badly written from this. Badly tested maybe.

Because that comment reads like nonsense to anyone who read the link, someone asks "did you read the whole thread?", to which the commenter responds:

No because Twitter makes it completely unreadable.

My mouse driver is asking for a firewall exemption

Can we have twitter banned from being posted here? On all UI clicks, a nagging window comes up. You can click it away, but it reverts your click, so any kind of navigation becomes really cumbersome.

or twitter urls being replaced with some twitter2readable converter

Duke Nukem 3D Mirror Universe

This is remarkable, but Twitter is such an awful medium for this kind of text. I wish this was posted on a normal platform so I could easily share it.

If this were a blog post instead of a pile of tweets, we wouldn't have to expand multiple replies to see all of the content

Uh why isn't this a blog, or a youtube video? specifically to annoy foone

Yes, long form Twitter is THE WORST. However foone is awesome, so maybe they cancel each other out?

I hate twitter. It's slowly ruining the internet.

Non-foone posts

Of course this kind of thing isn't unique to Foone. For example, on the last Twitter thread I saw on HN, 2 of the first five comments were:

Has this guy got a blog?

and

That's kind of why the answer to "posting something to X" should be "just say no". It's impossible to say anything there that is subtle in the slightest or that requires background to understand but unfortunately people who are under the spell of X just can't begin to see something they do the way somebody else might see it.

I just pulled up Foone's threads because I know that they tend to post to short-form platforms and looking at 10 Foone threads is more interesting than looking at 10 random threads.

How bad are search results? Let's compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

2023-12-30 08:00:00

In The birth & death of search engine optimization, Xe suggests

Here's a fun experiment to try. Take an open source project such as yt-dlp and try to find it from a very generic term like "youtube downloader". You won't be able to find it because of all of the content farms that try to rank at the top for that term. Even though yt-dlp is probably actually what you want for a tool to download video from YouTube.

More generally, most tech folks I'm connected to seem to think that Google search results are significantly worse than they were ten years ago (Mastodon poll, Twitter poll, Threads poll). However, there's a sizable group of vocal folks who claim that search results are still great. E.g., a bluesky thought leader who gets high engagement says:

i think the rending of garments about how even google search is terrible now is pretty overblown¹

I suspect what's going on here is that some people have gotten so used working around bad software that they don't even know they're doing it, reflexively doing the modern equivalent of hitting ctrl+s all the time in editors, or ctrl+a; ctrl+c when composing anything in a text box. Every adept user of the modern web has a bag of tricks they use to get decent results from queries. From having watched quite a few users interact with computers, that doesn't appear to be normal, even among people who are quite competent in various technical fields, e.g., mechanical engineering². However, it could be that people who are complaining about bad search result quality are just hopping on the "everything sucks" bandwagon and making totally unsubstantiated comments about search quality.

Since it's fairly easy to try out straightforward, naive, queries, let's try some queries. We'll look at three kinds of queries with five search engines plus ChatGPT and we'll turn off our ad blocker to get the non-expert browsing experience. I once had a computer get owned from browsing to a website with a shady ad, so I hope that doesn't happen here (in that case, I was lucky that I could tell that it happened because the malware was doing so much stuff to my computer that it was impossible to not notice).

One kind of query is a selected set of representative queries a friend of mine used to set up her new computer. My friend is a highly competent engineer outside of tech and wanted help learning "how to use computers", so I watched her try to set up a computer and pointed out holes in her mental model of how to interact with websites and software³.

The second kind of query is queries for the kinds of things I wanted to know in high school where I couldn't find the answer because everyone I asked (teachers, etc.) gave me obviously incorrect answers and I didn't know how to find the right answer. I was able to get the right answer from various textbooks once I got to college and had access to university libraries, but the questions are simple enough that there's no particular reason a high school student shouldn't be able to understand the answers; it's just an issue of finding the answer, so we'll take a look at how easy these answers are to find. The third kind of query is a local query for information I happened to want to get as I was writing this post.

In grading the queries, there's going to be some subjectivity here because, for example, it's not objectively clear if it's better to have moderately relevant results with no scams or very relevant results mixed interspersed with scams that try to install badware or trick you into giving up your credit card info to pay for something you shouldn't pay for. For the purposes of this post, I'm considering scams to be fairly bad, so in that specific example, I'd rate the moderately relevant results above the very relevant results that have scams mixed in. As with my other posts that have some kind of subjective ranking, there's both a short summary as well as a detailed description of results, so you can rank services yourself, if you like.

In the table below, each column is a query and each row is a search engine or ChatGPT. Results are rated (from worst to best) Terrible, Very Bad, Bad, Ok, Good, and Great, with worse results being more red and better results being more blue.

The queries are:

• download youtube videos
• ad blocker
• download firefox
• Why do wider tires have better grip?
• Why do they keep making cpu transistors smaller?
• vancouver snow forecast winter 2023

	YouTube	Adblock	Firefox	Tire	CPU	Snow
Marginalia	Ok	Good	Ok	Bad	Bad	Bad
ChatGPT	V. Bad	Great	Good	V. Bad	V. Bad	Bad
Mwmbl	Bad	Bad	Bad	Bad	Bad	Bad
Kagi	Bad	V. Bad	Great	Terrible	Bad	Terrible
Google	Terrible	V. Bad	Bad	Bad	Bad	Terrible
Bing	Terrible	Terrible	Great	Terrible	Ok	Terrible

Marginalia does relatively well by sometimes providing decent but not great answers and then providing no answers or very obviously irrelevant answers to the questions it can't answer, with a relatively low rate of scams, lower than any other search engine (although, for these queries, ChatGPT returns zero scams and Marginalia returns some).

Interestingly, Mwmbl lets users directly edit search result rankings. I did this for one query, which would score "Great" if it was scored after my edit, but it's easy to do well on a benchmark when you optimize specifically for the benchmark, so Mwmbl's scores are without my edits to the ranking criteria.

One thing I found interesting about the Google results was that, in addition to Google's noted propensity to return recent results, there was a strong propensity to return recent youtube videos. This caused us to get videos that seem quite useless for anybody, except perhaps the maker of the video, who appears to be attempting to get ad revenue from the video. For example, when searching for "ad blocker", one of the youtube results was a video where the person rambles for 93 seconds about how you should use an ad blocker and then googles "ad blocker extension". They then click on the first result and incorrectly say that "it's officially from Google", i.e., the ad blocker is either made by Google or has some kind of official Google seal of approval, because it's the first result. They then ramble for another 40 seconds as they install the ad blocker. After it's installed, they incorrectly state "this is basically one of the most effective ad blocker [sic] on Google Chrome". The video has 14k views. For reference, Steve Yegge spent a year making high-effort videos and his most viewed video has 8k views, with a typical view count below 2k. This person who's gaming the algorithm by making low quality videos on topics they know nothing about, who's part of the cottage industry of people making videos taking advantage of Google's algorithm prioritizing recent content regardless of quality, is dominating Steve Yegge's videos because they've found search terms that you can rank for if you put anything up. We'll discuss other Google quirks in more detail below.

ChatGPT does its usual thing and impressively outperforms its more traditional competitors in one case, does an ok job in another case, refuses to really answer the question in another case, and "hallucinates" nonsense for a number of queries (as usual for ChatGPT, random perturbations can significantly change the results⁴). It's common to criticize ChatGPT for its hallucinations and, while I don't think that's unfair, as we noted in this 2015, pre-LLM post on AI, I find this general class of criticism to be overrated in that humans and traditional computer systems make the exact same mistakes.

In this case, search engines return various kinds of hallucinated results. In the snow forecast example, we got deliberately fabricated results, one intended to drive ad revenue through shady ads on a fake forecast site, and another intended to trick the user into thinking that the forecast indicates a cold, snowy, winter (the opposite of the actual forecast), seemingly in order to get the user to sign up for unnecessary snow removal services. Other deliberately fabricated results include a site that's intended to look like an objective review site that's actually a fake site designed to funnel you into installing a specific ad blocker, where the ad blocker they funnel you to appears to be a scammy one that tries to get you to pay for ad blocking and doesn't let you unsubscribe, a fake "organic" blog post trying to get you to install a chrome extension that exposes all of your shopping to some service (in many cases, it's not possible to tell if a blog post is a fake or shill post, but in this case, they hosted the fake blog post on the domain for the product and, although it's designed to look like there's an entire blog on the topic, there isn't — it's just this one fake blog post), etc.

There were also many results which don't appear to be deliberately fraudulent and are just run-of-the-mill SEO garbage designed to farm ad clicks. These seem to mostly be pre-LLM sites, so they don't read quite like ChatGPT hallucinations, but they're not fundamentally different. Sometimes the goal of these sites is to get users to click on ads that actually scam the user, and sometimes the goal appears to be to generate clicks to non-scam ads. Search engines also returned many seemingly non-deliberate human hallucinations, where people confidently stated incorrect answers in places where user content is highlighted, like quora, reddit, and stack exchange.

On these queries, even ignoring anything that looks like LLM-generated text, I'd rate the major search engines (Google and Bing) as somewhat worse than ChatGPT in terms of returning various kinds of hallucinated or hallucination-adjacent results. While I don't think concerns about LLM hallucinations are illegitimate, the traditional ecosystem has the problem that the system highly incentivizes putting whatever is most profitable for the software supply chain in front of the user which is, in general, quite different from the best result.

For example, if your app store allows "you might also like" recommendations, the most valuable ad slot for apps about gambling addiction management will be gambling apps. Allowing gambling ads on an addiction management app is too blatantly user-hostile for any company deliberately allow today, but of course companies that make gambling apps will try to game the system to break through the filtering and they sometimes succeed. And for web search, I just tried this again on the web and one of the two major search engines returned, as a top result, ad-laden SEO blogspam for addiction management. At the top of the page is a multi-part ad, with the top two links being "GAMES THAT PAY REAL MONEY" and "GAMES THAT PAY REAL CASH". In general, I was getting localized results (lots of .ca domains since I'm in Canada), so you may get somewhat different results if you try this yourself.

Similarly, if the best result is a good, free, ad blocker like ublock origin, the top ad slot is worth a lot more to a company that makes an ad blocker designed to trick you into paying for a lower quality ad blocker with a nearly-uncancellable subscription, so the scam ad blocker is going to outbid the free ad blocker for the top ad slots. These kinds of companies also have a lot more resources to spend on direct SEO, as well as indirect SEO activities like marketing so, unless search engines mount a more effective effort to combat the profit motive, the top results will go to paid ad blockers even though the paid ad blockers are generally significantly worse for users than free ad blockers. If you talk to people who work on ranking, a lot of the biggest ranking signals are derived from clicks and engagement, but this will only drive users to the best results when users are sophisticated enough to know what the best results are, which they generally aren't. Human raters also rate page quality, but this has the exact same problem.

Many Google employees have told me that ads are actually good because they inform the user about options the user wouldn't have otherwise known about, but anyone who tries browsing without an ad blocker will see ads that are various kinds of misleading, ads that try to trick or entrap the user in various ways, by pretending to be a window, or advertising "GAMES THAT PAY REAL CASH" at the top of a page on battling gambling addiction, which has managed to SEO itself to a high ranking on gambling addiction searches. In principle, these problems could be mitigated with enough resources, but we can observe that trillion dollar companies have chosen not to invest enough resources combating SEO, spam, etc., that these kinds of scam ads are rarely seen. Instead, a number of top results are actually ads that direct you to scams.

In their original Page Rank paper, Sergei Brin and Larry Page noted that ad-based search is inherently not incentive aligned with providing good results:

Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. For example, in our prototype search engine one of the top results for cellular phone is "The Effect of Cellular Phone Use Upon Driver Attention", a study which explains in great detail the distractions and risk associated with conversing on a cell phone while driving. This search result came up first because of its high importance as judged by the PageRank algorithm, an approximation of citation importance on the web [Page, 98]. It is clear that a search engine which was taking money for showing cellular phone ads would have difficulty justifying the page that our system returned to its paying advertisers. For this type of reason and historical experience with other media [Bagdikian 83], we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the Consumers.

Since it is very difficult even for experts to evaluate search engines, search engine bias is particularly insidious. A good example was OpenText, which was reported to be selling companies the right to be listed at the top of the search results for particular queries [Marchiori 97]. This type of bias is much more insidious than advertising, because it is not clear who "deserves" to be there, and who is willing to pay money to be listed. This business model resulted in an uproar, and OpenText has ceased to be a viable search engine. But less blatant bias are likely to be tolerated by the market. ... This type of bias is very difficult to detect but could still have a significant effect on the market. Furthermore, advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results. For example, we noticed a major search engine would not return a large airline’s homepage when the airline’s name was given as a query. It so happened that the airline had placed an expensive ad, linked to the query that was its name. A better search engine would not have required this ad, and possibly resulted in the loss of the revenue from the airline to the search engine. In general, it could be argued from the consumer point of view that the better the search engine is, the fewer advertisements will be needed for the consumer to find what they want. This of course erodes the advertising supported business model of the existing search engines ... we believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm.

Of course, Google is now dominated by ads and, despite specifically calling out the insidiousness of user conflating real results with paid results, both Google and Bing have made ads look more and more like real search results, to the point that most users usually won't know that they're clicking on ads and not real search results. By the way, this propensity for users to think that everything is an "organic" search result is the reason that, in this post, results are ordered by the order the appear on the page, so if four ads appear above the first organic result, the four ads will be rank 1-4 and the organic result will be ranked 5. I've heard Google employees say that AMP didn't impact search ranking because it "only" controlled what results went into the "carousel" that appeared above search results, as if inserting a carousel and then a bunch of ads above results, pushing results down below the fold, has no impact on how the user interacts with results. It's also common to see search engines ransoming the top slot for companies, so that companies that don't buy the ad for their own name end up with searches for that company putting their competitors at the top, which is also said to not impact search result ranking, a technically correct claim that's basically meaningless to the median user.

When I tried running the query from the paper, "cellular phone" (no quotes) and, the top result was a Google Store link to buy Google's own Pixel 7, with the rest of the top results being various Android phones sold on Amazon. That's followed by the Wikipedia page for Mobile Phone, and then a series of commercial results all trying to sell you phones or SEO-spam trying to get you to click on ads or buy phones via their links (the next 7 results were commercial, with the next result after that being an ad-laden SEO blogspam page for the definition of a cell phone with ads of cell phones on it, followed by 3 more commercial results, followed by another ad-laden definition of a phone). The commercial links seem very low quality, e.g., the top link below the carousel after wikipedia is Best Buy's Canadian mobile phone page. The first two products there are an ad slots for eufy's version of the AirTag. The next result is for a monthly financed iPhone that's tied to Rogers, the next for a monthly financed Samsung phone that's tied to TELUS, then we have Samsung's AirTag, an monthly financed iPhone tied to Freedom Mobile, a monthly financed iPhone tied to Freedom mobile in a different color, a monthly financed iPhone tied to Rogers, a screen protector for the iPhone 13, another Samsung AirTag product, an unlocked iPhone 12, a Samsung wall charger, etc.; it's an extremely low quality result with products that people shouldn't be buying (and, based on the number of reviews, aren't buying — the modal number of reviews of the top products is 0 and the median is 1 or 2 even though there are plenty of things people do actually buy from Best Buy Canada and plenty of products that have lots of reviews). The other commercial results that show up are also generally extremely low quality results. The result that Sergei and Larry suggested was a great top result, "The Effect of Cellular Phone Use Upon Driver Attention", is nowhere to be seen, buried beneath an avalanche of commercial results. On the other side of things, Google has also gotten into the action by buying ads that trick users, such as paying for an installer to try to trick users into installing Chrome over Firefox.

Anyway, after looking at the results of our test queries, some questions that come to mind are:

• How is Marginalia, a search engine built by a single person, so good?
• Can Marginalia or another small search engine displace Google for mainstream users?
• Can a collection of small search engines provide better results than Google?
• Will Mwmbl's user-curation approach work?
• Would a search engine like 1996-Metacrawler, which aggregates results from multiple search engines, ChatGPT, Bard, etc., significantly outperform Google?

The first question could easily be its own post and this post is already 17000 words, so maybe we'll examine it another time. We've previously noted that some individuals can be very productive, but of course the details vary in each case.

On the second question, we looked at a similar question in 2016, both the general version, "I could reproduce this billion dollar company in a weekend", as well as specific comments about how open source software would make it trivial to surpass Google any day now, such as

Nowadays, most any technology you need is indeed available in OSS and in state of the art. Allow me to plug meta64.com (my own company) as an example. I am using Lucene to index large numbers of news articles, and provide search into them, by searching a Lucene index generated by simple scraping of RSS-crawled content. I would claim that the Lucene technology is near optimal, and this search approach I'm using is nearly identical to what a Google would need to employ. The only true technology advantage Google has is in the sheer number of servers they can put online, which is prohibitively expensive for us small guys. But from a software standpoint, Google will be overtaken by technologies like mine over the next 10 years I predict.

and

Scaling things is always a challenge but as long as Lucene keeps getting better and better there is going to be a point where Google's advantage becomes irrelevant and we can cluster Lucene nodes and distribute search related computations on top and then use something like Hadoop to implement our own open source ranking algorithms. We're not there yet but technology only gets better over time and the choices we as developers make also matter. Even though Amazon and Google look like unbeatable giants now don't discount what incremental improvements can accomplish over a long stretch of time and in technology it's not even that long a stretch. It wasn't very long ago when Windows was the reigning champion. Where is Windows now?

In that 2016 post, we saw that people who thought that open source solutions were set to surpass Google any day now appeared to have no idea how many hard problems must be solved to make a mainstream competitor to Google, including real-time indexing of rapidly-updated sites, like Twitter, newspapers, etc., as well as table-stakes level NLP, which is extremely non-trivial. Since 2016, these problems have gotten significantly harder as there's more real-time content to index and users expect much better NLP. The number of things people expect out of their search engine has increased as well, making the problem harder still, so it still appears to be quite difficult to displace Google as a mainstream search engine for, say, a billion users.

On the other hand, if you want to make a useful search engine for a small number of users, that seems easier than ever because Google returns worse results than it used to for many queries. In our test queries, we saw a number of queries where many or most top results were filled with SEO garbage, a problem that was significantly worse than it was a decade ago, even before the rise of LLMs and that continues to get worse. I typically use search engines in a way that doesn't run into this, but when I look at what "normal" users query or if I try naive queries myself, as I did in this post, most results are quite poor, which didn't used to be true.

Another place Google now falls over for me is when finding non-popular pages. I often find that, when I want to find a web page and I correctly remember the contents of the page, even if I do an exact string search, Google won't return the page. Either the page isn't indexed, or the page is effectively not indexed because it lives in some slow corner of the index that doesn't return in time. In order to find the page, I have to remember some text in a page that links to the page (often many clicks removed from the actual page, not just one, so I'm really remembering a page that links to a page that links to a page that links to a page that links to a page and then using archive.org to traverse the links that are now dead), search for that, and then manually navigate the link graph to get to the page. This basically never happened when I searched for something in 2005 and rarely happened in 2015, but this now happens a large fraction of the time I'm looking for something. Even in 2015, Google wasn't actually comprehensive. Just for example, Google search didn't index every tweet. But, at the time, I found Google search better at searching for tweets than Twitter search and I basically never ran across a tweet I wanted to find that wasn't indexed by Google. But now, most of the tweets I want to find aren't returned by Google search⁵, even when I search for "[exact string from tweet] site:twitter.com". In the original Page Rank paper, Sergei and Larry said "Because humans can only type or speak a finite amount, and as computers continue improving, text indexing will scale even better than it does now." (and that, while machines can generate an effectively infinite amount of content, just indexing human-generated content seems very useful). Pre-LLM, Google certainly had the resources to index every tweet as well as every human generated utterance on every public website, but they seem to have chosen to devote their resources elsewhere and, relative to its size, the public web appears less indexed than ever, or at least less indexed than it's been since the very early days of web search.

Back when Google returned decent results for simple queries and indexed almost any public page I'd want to find, it would've been very difficult for an independent search engine to return results that I find better than Google's. Marginalia in 2016 would've been nothing more than a curiosity for me since Google would give good-enough results for basically anything where Marginalia returns decent results, and Google would give me the correct result in queries for every obscure page I searched for, something that would be extremely difficult for a small engine. But now that Google effectively doesn't index many pages I want to search for, the relatively small indices that independent search engines have doesn't make them non-starters for me and some of them return less SEO garbage than Google, making them better for my use since I generally don't care about real-time results, don't need fancy NLP (and find that much of it actually makes search results worse for me), don't need shopping integrated into my search results, rarely need image search with understanding of images, etc.

On the question of whether or not a collection of small search engines can provide better results than Google for a lot of users, I don't think this is much of a question because the answer has been a resounding "yes" for years. However, many people don't believe this is so. For example, a Google TLM replied to the bluesky thought leader at the top of this post with

Somebody tried argue that if the search space were more competitive, with lots of little providers instead of like three big ones, then somehow it would be *more* resistant to ML-based SEO abuse.

And... look, if *google* can't currently keep up with it, how will Little Mr. 5% Market Share do it?

presumably referring to arguments like Hillel Wayne's "Algorithm Monocultures", to which our bluesky thought leader replied

like 95% of the time, when someone claims that some small, independent company can do something hard better than the market leader can, it’s just cope. economies of scale work pretty well!

In the past, we looked at some examples where the market leader provides a poor product and various other players, often tiny, provide better products and in a future post, we'll look at how economies of scale and diseconomies of scale interact in various areas for tech but, for this post, suffice it to say that it's clear that despite the common "econ 101" cocktail party idea that economies of scale should be the dominant factor for search quality, that doesn't appear to be the case when we look at actual results.

On the question of whether or not Mwmbl's user-curated results can work, I would guess no, or at least not without a lot more moderation. Just browsing to Mwmbl shows the last edit to ranking was by user "betest", who added some kind of blogspam as the top entry for "RSS". It appears to be possible to revert the change, but there's no easily findable way to report the change or the user as spammy.

On the question of whether or not something like Metacrawler, which aggregated results from multiple search engines, would produce superior results today, that's arguably irrelevant since it would either be impossible to legally run as a commercial service or require prohibitive licensing fees, but it seems plausible that, from a technical standpoint, a modern metacrawler would be fairly good today. Metacrawler quickly became irrelevant because Google returned significantly better results than you would get by aggregating results from other search engines, but it doesn't seem like that's the case today.

Going back to the debate between folks like Xe, who believe that straightforward search queries are inundated with crap, and our thought leader, who believes that "the rending of garments about how even google search is terrible now is pretty overblown", it appears that Xe is correct. Although Google doesn't publicly provide the ability to see what was historically returned for queries, many people remember when straightforward queries generally returned good results. One of the reasons Google took off so quickly in the 90s, even among expert users of AltaVista, who'd become very adept at adding all sorts of qualifiers to queries to get good results, was that you didn't have to do that with Google. But we've now come full circle and we need to add qualifiers, restrict our search to specific sites, etc., to get good results from Google on what used to be simple queries. If anything, we've gone well past full circle since the contortions we need to get good results are a lot more involved than they were in the AltaVista days.

If you're looking for work, Freshpaint is hiring a recruiter, Software Engineers, and a Support Engineer. I'm in an investor in the company, so you should take this with the usual grain of salt, but if you're looking to join a fast growing early-stage startup, they seem to have found product-market fit and have been growing extremely quickly (revenue-wise).

Thanks to Laurence Tratt, Heath Borders, Justin Blank, Brian Swetland, Viktor Lofgren (who, BTW, I didn't know before writing this post — I only reached out to him to discuss the Marginalia search results after running the queries), Misha Yagudin, @[email protected], Jeremey Kun, and Yossi Kreinin for comments/corrections/discussion

Appendix: Other search engines

• DuckDuckGo: in the past, when I've compared DDG to Bing while using an ad blocker, the results have been very similar. I also tried DDG here and, removing the Bing ads, the results aren't as similar as they used to be, but they were still similar enough that it didn't seem worth listing DDG results. I use DDG as my default search engine and I think, like Google, it works fine if you know how to query but, for the kinds of naive queries in this post, it doesn't fare particularly well.
• wiby.me: Like Marginalia, this is another search engine made for finding relatively obscure results. I tried four of the above queries on wiby and the results were interesting, in that they were really different than what I got from any other search engine, but wiby didn't return relevant results for the queries I tried.
• searchmysite.net: Somewhat relevant results for some queries, but not as relevant as Marginalia. Many fewer scams and ad-laden pages than Google, Bing, and Kagi.
• indieweb-search.jamesg.blog: seemed to be having an outage. "Your request could not be processed due to a server error." for every query.
• Teclis: The search box is still there, but any query results in "Teclis.com is closed due to bot abuse. Teclis results are still available through Kagi's search results, explicitly through the 'Non-commercial Web' lens and also as an API.". A note on the front page reads "Teclis results are disabled on the site due to insane amount of bot traffic (99.9% traffic were bots)."

Appendix: queries that return good results

I think that most programmers are likely to be able to get good results to every query, except perhaps the tire width vs. grip query, so here's how I found an ok answer to the tire query:

I tried a youtube search, since a lot of the best car-related content is now youtube. A youtube video whose title claims to answer the question (the video doesn't actually answer the question) has a comment recommending Carroll Smith's book "Tune To Win". The comment claims that chapter 1 explains why wider tires have more grip, but I couldn't find an explanation anywhere in the book. Chapter 1 does note that race cars typically run wider tires than passenger cars and that passenger cars are moving towards having wider tires and it make some comments about slip angle that give a sketch of an intuitive reason for why you'd end up with better cornering with a wider contact patch, but I couldn't find a comment that explains differences in braking. Also, the book notes that the primary reason for the wider contact patch is that it (indirectly) allows for more less heat buildup, which then lets you design tires that operate over a narrower temperature range, which allows for softer rubber. That may be true, but it doesn't explain much of the observed behavior one might wonder about.

Tune to Win recommends Kummer's The Unified Theory of Tire and Rubber Friction and Hays and Brooke's (actually Browne, but Smith incorrectly says Brooke) The Physics of Tire Traction. Neither of these really explained what's happening either, but looking for similar books turned up Milliken and Millken's Race Car Vehicle Dynamics, which also didn't really explain why but seemed closer to having an explanation. Looking for books similar to Race Car Vehicle Dynamics turned up Guiggiani's The Science of Vehicle Dynamics, which did get at how to think about and model a number of related factors. The last chapter of Guiggiani's book refers to something called the "brush model" (of tires) and searching for "brush model tire width" turned up a reference to Pacejka's Tire and Vehicle Dynamics, which does start to explain why wider tires have better grip and what kind of modeling of tire and vehicle dynamics you need to do to explain easily observed tire behavior.

As we've noted, people have different tricks for getting good results so, if you have a better way of getting a good result here, I'd be interested in hearing about it. But note that, basically every time I have a post that notes that something doesn't work, the most common suggestion will be to do something that's commonly suggested that doesn't work, even though the post explicitly notes that the commonly suggested thing doesn't work. For example, the most common comment I receive about this post on filesystem correctness is that you can get around all of this stuff by doing the rename trick, even though the post explicitly notes that this doesn't work, explains why it doesn't work, and references a paper which discusses why it doesn't work. A few years later, I gave an expanded talk on the subject, where I noted that people kept suggesting this thing that doesn't work and the most common comment I get on the talk is that you don't need to bother with all of this stuff because you can just do the rename trick (and no, ext4 having auto_da_alloc doesn't mean that this works since you can only do it if you check that you're on a compatible filesystem which automatically replaces the incorrect code with correct code, at which point it's simpler to just write the correct code). If you have a suggestion for the reason wider tires have better grip or for a search which turns up an explanation, please consider making sure that the explanation is not one of the standard incorrect explanations noted in this post and that the explanation can account for all of the behavior that one must be able to account for if one is explaining this phenomenon.

On how to get good results for other queries, since this post is already 17000 words, I'll leave that for a future post on how expert vs. non-expert computer users interact with computers.

Appendix: summary of query results

For each question, answers are ordered from best to worst, with the metric being my subjective impression of how good the result is. These queries were mostly run in November 2023, although a couple were run in mid-December. When I'm running queries, I very rarely write natural language queries myself. However, normal users often write natural language queries, so I arbitrarily did the "Tire" and "Snow" queries as natural queries. Continuing with the theme of running simple, naive, queries, we used the free version of ChatGPT for this post, which means the queries were run through ChatGPT 3.5. Ideally, we'd run the full matrix of queries using keyword and natural language queries for each query, run a lot more queries, etc., but this post is already 17000 words (converting to pages of a standard length book, that would be something like 70 pages), so running the full matrix of queries with a few more queries would pretty quickly turn this into a book-length post. For work and for certain kinds of data analysis, I'll sometimes do projects that are that comprehensive or more comprehensive, but here, we can't cover anything resembling a comprehensive set of queries and the best we can do is to just try a handful of queries that seem representative and use our judgment to decide if this matches the kind of behavior we and other people generally see, so I don't think it's worth doing something like 4x the work to cover marginally more ground.

For the search engines, all queries were run in a fresh incognito window with cleared cookies, with the exception of Kagi, which doesn't allow logged-out searches. For Kagi, the queries were done with a fresh account with no custom personalization or filters, although they were done in sequence with the same account, so it's possible some kind of personalized ranking was applied to the later queries based on the clicks in the earlier queries. These queries were done in Vancouver, BC, which seems to have applied some kind of localized ranking on some search engines.

• download youtube videos
  • Ideally, the top hit would be yt-dlp or a thin, graphical, wrapper around yt-dlp. Links to youtube-dl or other less frequently updated projects would also be ok.
  • Great results (yt-dlp as a top hit, maybe with youtube-dl in there somewhere, and no scams): none
  • Good results (youtube-dl as a top hit, maybe with yt-dlp in there somewhere, and no scams): none
  • Ok results (youtube-dl as a top hit, maybe with yt-dlp in there somewhere, and fewer scams than other search engines):
    • Marginalia: Top link is for youtube-dl. Most links aren't relevant. Many fewer scams than the big search engines
  • Bad results (has some useful links, but also links to a lot of scams)
    • Mwmbl: Some links to bad sites and scams, but fewer than the big search engines. Also has one indirect link to youtube-dl in the top 10 and one for a GUI for youtube-dl
    • Kagi: Mostly links to scammy sites but does have, a couple pages down, a web.archive.org link to the 2010 version of youtube-dl
  • Very bad results (fails to return any kind of useful result)
    • ChatGPT: basically refuses to answer the question, although you can probably prompt engineer your way to an answer if you don't just naively ask the question you want answered
  • Terrible results (fails to return any kind of useful result and is full of scams:
    • Google: Mostly links to sites that try to scam you or charge you for a worse version of free software. Some links to ad-laden listicles which don't have good suggestions. Zero links to good results. Also links to various youtube videos that are the youtube equivalent of blogspam.
    • Bing: Mostly links to sites that try to scam you or charge you for a worse version of free software. Some links to ad-laden listicles which don't have good suggestions. Arguably zero links to good results (although one could make a case that result #10 is an ok result despite seeming to be malware).
• ad blocker
  • Ideally, the top link would be to ublock origin. Failing that, having any link to ublock origin would be good
  • Great results (ublock origin is top result, no scams):
    • ChatGPT: First suggestion is ublock origin
  • Good results (ublock origin is high up, but not the top result; results above ublock origin are either obviously not ad blockers or basically work without payment even if they're not as good as ublock origin; no links that directly try to scam you): none
  • Ok results (ublock origin is in there somewhere, fewer scams than other search engines with not many scams)
    • Marginalia: 3rd and 4th results gets you to ublock origin and 8th result is ublock origin. Nothing that appears to try to scam you directly and "only" one link to some kind of SEO ad farm scam (which is much better than the major search engines)
  • Bad results (no links to ublock origin and mostly links to things that paywall good features or ad blockers that deliberately let ads through by default):
    • Mwmbl: Lots of irrelevant links and some links to ghostery. One scam link, so fewer scams than commercial search engines
  • Very bad results (exclusively or almost exclusively link to ad blockers that paywall good features or, by default, deliberately let through ads)
    • Google: lots of links to ad blockers that "participate in the Acceptable Ads program, where publishers agree to ensure their ads meet certain criteria" (not mentioned in the text, but explained elsewhere if you look into it, so that the main revenue source for companies that do this is advertisers paying the "ad blocker" company to not block their ads, making the "ad blocker" not only not an ad blocker, but very much not incentive aligned with users. Some links to things that appear to be scams. Zero links to ublock origin. Also links to various youtube videos that are the youtube equivalent of blogspam.
    • Kagi: similar to Google, but with more scams, though fewer than Bing
  • Terrible results (exclusively or almost exclusively link to ad blockers that paywall good features or, by default, deliberately let through ads and has a significant number of scams):
    • Bing: similar to Google, but with more scams and without youtube videospam
• download Firefox
  • Ideally, we'd get links to download firefox with no fake or scam links
  • Great results (links to download firefox; no scams):
    • Bing: links to download Firefox
    • Mwmbl: links to download firefox
    • Kagi: links to download firefox
  • Good:
    • ChatGPT: this is a bit funny to categorize, since these are technically incorrect instructions, but a human should easily be able to decode the instructions and download firefox
  • Ok results (some kind of indirect links to download firefox; no scams):
    • Marginalia: indirect links to download Firefox instructions to get to a firefox download
  • Bad results (links to download firefox, with scams):
    • Google: top links are all legitimate, but the #7 result is a scam that tries to get you to install badware and the #10 result is an ad that appears to be some kind of scam that wants your credit card info.
• Why do wider tires have better grip?
  • Ideally, would link to an explanation that clearly explains why and doesn't have an incomplete explanation that can't explain a lot of commonly observed behavior
  • Great / Good / Ok results: none
  • Bad results (no results or a very small number of obviously incorrect results):
    • Mwmbl: one obviously incorrect result and no other results
    • Marginalia: two obviously incorrect results and no other results
  • Very bad results: (a very small number of semi-plausible incorrect results)
    • ChatGPT: standard ChatGPT "hallucination" that's probably plausible to a lot of people (it sounds like a lot of incorrect internet comments on the topic, but better written)
  • Terrible results (lots of semi-plausible incorrect results, often on ad farms):
    • Google / Bing / Kagi: incorrect ad-laden results with the usual rate of scammy ads
• Why do they keep making cpu transistors smaller?
  • Ideally, would link to an explanation that clearly explains why. The best explanations I've seen are in VLSI textbooks, but I've also seen very good explanations in lecture notes and slides
  • Great results (links to a very good explanation, no scams): none
  • Good results (links to an ok explanation, no scams): none
  • Ok results (links to something you can then search on further and get a good explanation if you're good at searching and doesn't rank bad or misleading explanations above the ok explanation):
    • Bing: top set of links had a partial answer that could easily be turned into links to correct answers via more searching. Also had a lot of irrelevant answers and ad-laden SEO'd garbage
  • Bad results (no results or a small number of obviously irrelevant results or lots of semi-plausible wrong results with an ok result somewhere):
    • Marginalia: no answers
    • Mwmbl: one obviously irrelevant answer
    • Google: 5th link has the right keywords to maybe find the right answer with further searches. Most links have misleading or incorrect partial answers. Lots of links to Quora, which don't answer the question. Also lots of links to other bad SEO'd answers
    • Kagi: 10th link has a fairly direct path to getting the correct answer, if you scroll down far enough on the 10th link. Other links aren't good.
  • Very bad results:
    • ChatGPT: doesn't really answer the question. Asking ChatGPT to explain its answers further causes it "hallucinate" incorrect reasons.
• vancouver snow forecast winter 2023
  • I'm not sure what the ideal answer is, but a pretty good one would be to Environment Canada's snow forecast, predicting significantly below normal snow (and above normal temperatures)
  • Great results (links to Environment Canada winter 2023 multi-month snow forecast as top result or something equivalently good): none
  • Good results: none
  • Ok results (links to some kind of semi-plausible winter snow forecast that isn't just made-up garbage to drive ad clicks): none
  • Bad results (no results or obviously irrelevant results):
    • Marginalia: no results
    • ChatGPT: incorrect results, but when I accidentally prepended my question with "User\n", then it returned a link to the right website (but in a way that would make it quite difficult to navigate to a decent result), so perhaps a slightly different prompt would pseudo-randomly cause a ok result here?
    • Mwmbl: a bunch of obviously irrelevant results
  • Very bad results: none
  • Terrible results (links to deliberately faked forecast results):
    • Bing: mostly irrelevant results. The top seemingly-relevant result is the 5th link, but it appears to be some kind of scam site that fabricates fake weather forecasts and makes money by serving ads on the heavily SEO'd site
    • Kagi: top 4 results are from the scam forecast site that's Bing's 5th link
    • Google: mostly irrelevant results and the #1 result is a fake answer from a local snow removal company that projects significant snow and cold weather in an attempt to get you to unnecessarily buy snow removal service for the year. Other results are SEO'd garbage that's full of ads
      

Appendix: detailed query results

Download youtube videos

For our first query, we'll search "download youtube videos" (Xe's suggested search term, "youtube downloader" returns very similar results). The ideal result is yt-dlp or a thin, free, wrapper around yt-dlp. yt-dlp is a fork of youtube-dlc, which is a now defunct fork of youtube-dl, which seems to have very few updates nowadays.. A link to one of these older downloaders also seems ok if they still work.

Google

1. Some youtube downloader site. Has lots of assurances that the website and the tool are safe because they've been checked by "Norton SafeWeb". Interacting with the site at all prompts you to install a browser extension and enable notifications. Trying to download any video gives you a full page pop-over for extension installation for something called CyberShield. There appears to be no way to dismiss the popover without clicking on something to try to install it. After going through the links but then choosing not to install CyberShield, no video downloads. Googling "cybershield chrome extension" returns a knowledge card with "Cyber Shield is a browser extension that claims to be a popup blocker but instead displays advertisements in the browser. When installed, this extension will open new tabs in the browser that display advertisements trying to sell software, push fake software updates, and tech support scams.", so CyberShield appears to be badware.
2. Some youtube downloader site. Interacting with the site causes a pop-up prompting you to download their browser extension. Putting a video URL in causes a pop-up to some scam site but does also cause the video to download, so it seems to be possible to download youtube videos here if you're careful not to engage with the scams the site tries to trick you into interacting with
3. PC Magazine listicle on ways to download videos from youtube. Top recommendations are paying for youtube downloads, VLC (which they note didn't work when they tried it), some $15/yr software, some $26/yr software, "FlixGrab", then a warning about how the downloader websites are often scammy and they don't recommend any downloader website. The article has more than one ad per suggestion.
4. Some youtube downloader site with shady pop-overs that try to trick you into clicking on ads before you even interact with the page
5. Some youtube downloader site with pop-ups that try to trick you into clicking on scam ads
6. Some youtube downloader site with pop-ups that try to trick you into clicking on scam ads, e.g., "Samantha 24, vancouver | I want sex, write to WhatsApp | Close / Continue". Clicking anything (any button, or anywhere else on the site tries to get you to install something called "Adblock Ultimate"
7. ZDNet ZDnet listicle. First suggestion is clipware, which apparently bundles a bunch of malware/adware/junkware with the installer: https://www.reddit.com/r/software/comments/w9o1by/warning_about_clipgrab/. The listicle is full of ads and has an autoplay video
8. [YouTube video] Over 2 minutes of ads followed by a video on how to buy youtube premium (2M views on video)
9. [YouTube video] Video that starts off by asking users to watch the whole video (some monetization thing?). The video tries to funnel you to some kind of software to download videos that costs money
10. [YouTube video] PC Magazine video saying that you probably don't "have to" download videos since you can use the share button, and then suggests reading their story (the one in result #3) on how to download videos
11. Some youtube downloader site with scam ads. Interacting with the site at all tries to get you to install "Adblock Ultimate"
12. Some youtube downloader site with pop-ups that try to trick you into clicking on scam ads
13. Some youtube downloader site with scam ads

Out of 10 "normal" results, we have 9 that, in one way or another, try to get you to install badware or are linked to some other kind of ad scam. One page doesn't do this, but it also doesn't suggest the good, free, option for downloading youtube videos and instead suggests a number of paid solutions. We also had three youtube videos, all of which seem to be the video equivalent of SEO blogspam. Interestingly, we didn't get a lot of ads from Google itself despite that happening the last time I tried turning off my ad blocker to do some Google test queries.

Bing

1. Some youtube downloader site. This is google (2), which has ads for scam sites
2. [EXPLORE FURTHER ... "Recommended to you based on what's popular"] Some youtube download site, not one we saw from google. Site has multiple pulsing ads and bills itself as "50% off" for Christmas (this search was done in mid-November). Trying to download any video pulls up a fake progress bar with a "too slow? Try [our program] link". After a while, a link to download the video appears, but it's a trick, and when you click it, it tries to install "oWebster Search extension". Googling "oWebster Search extension" indicates that it's badware that hijacks your browser to show ads. Two of the top three hits are how to install the extension and the rest of the top hits are how to remove this badware. Many of the removal links are themselves scams that install other badware. After not installing this badware, clicking the download link again results in a pop-over that tries to get you to install the site's software. If you dismiss the pop-over and click the download link again, you just get the pop-over link again, so this site appears to be a pure scam that doesn't let you download videos
3. [EXPLORE FURTHER]. Interacting with the site pops up fake ads with photos of attractive women who allegedly want to chat with you. Clicking the video download button tries to get you to install a copycat ad blocker that displays extra pop-over ads. The site does seem to actually give you a video download, though
4. [EXPLORE FURTHER] Same as (3)
5. [EXPLORE FURTHER] Same as Google (1) (that NortonSafeWeb youtube downloader site that tries to scam you)
6. [EXPLORE FURTHER] A site that converts videos to MP4. I didn't check to see if the site works or is just a scam as the site doesn't even claim to let you download youtube videos
7. Google (1), again. That NortonSafeWeb youtube downloader site that tries to scam you.
8. [EXPLORE FURTHER] A link to youtube.com (the main page)
9. [EXPLORE FURTHER] Some youtube downloader site with a popover that tries to trick you into clicking on an ad. Closing that reveals 12 more ads. There's a scam ad that's made to look like a youtube downloader button. If you scroll past that, there's a text box and a button for trying to download a youtube video. Entering a valid URL results in an error saying there's no video that URL.
10. Gigantic card that actually has a download button. The download button is fake and just takes you to the site. The site loudly proclaims that the software is not adware, spyware, etc.. Quite a few internet commenters note that their antivirus software tags this software as malware. A lot of comments also indicate that the software doesn't work very well but sometimes works. The site for the software has a an embedded youtube video, which displays "This video has been removed for violating YouTube's Terms of Service". Oddly, the download links for mac and Linux are not for this software and in fact don't download anything at all and are installation instructions for youtube-dl; perhaps this makes sense if the windows version is actually malware. The windows download button takes you to a page that lets you download a windows executable. There's also a link to some kind of ad-laden page that tries to trick you into clicking on ads that look like normal buttons
11. PC magazine listicle
12. An ad for some youtube downloader program that claims "345,764,132 downloads today"; searching the name of this product on reddit seems to indicate that it's malware
13. Ad for some kind of paid downloader software

That's the end of the first page.

Like Google, no good results and a lot of scams and software that may not be a scam but is some kind of lightweight skin around an open source project that charges you instead of letting you use the software for free.

Marginalia

1. 12-year old answer suggesting youtube-dl, which links to a URL which has been taken down and replaced with "Due to a ruling of the Hamburg Regional Court, access to this website is blocked."
2. Some SEO'd article, like you see on normal search engines
3. Leawo YouTube Downloader (I don't know what this is, but a quick search at least doesn't make it immediately obvious that this is some kind of badware, unlike the Google and Bing results)
4. Some SEO'd listicle, like you see on normal search engines
5. Bug report for some random software
6. Some random blogger's recommendation for "4K Video Downloader". A quick search seems to indicate that this isn't a scam or badware, but it does lock some features behind a paywall, and is therefore worse than yt-dlp or some free wrapper around yt-dlp
7. A blog post on how to install and use yt-dlp. The blogpost notes that it used to be about youtube-dl, but has been updated to yt-dlp.
8. More software that charges you for something you can get for free, although searching for this software on reddit turns up cracks for it
9. A listicle with bizarrely outdated recommendations, like RealPlayer. The entire blog seems to be full of garbage-quality listicles.
10. A script to download youtube videos for something called "keyboard maestro", which seems useful if you already use that software, but seems like a poor solution to this problem if you don't already use this software.

The best results by a large margin. The first link doesn't work, but you can easily get to youtube-dl from the first link. I certainly wouldn't try Leawo YouTube Downloader, but at least it's not so scammy that searching for the name of the project mostly returns results about how the project is some kind of badware or a scam, which is better than we got from Google or Bing. And we do get a recommendation with yt-dlp, with instructions in the results that's just a blog post from someone who wants to help people who are trying to download youtube videos.

Kagi

• 1. That NortonSafeWeb youtube downloader site. Interacting with the site at all prompts you to install a browser extension and enable notifications. Trying to download any video gives you a full page pop-over for extension installation for something called CyberShield. There appears to be no way to dismiss the popover without clicking on something to try to install it
• 2. Another link to that NortonSafeWeb youtube downloader site. For some reason, this one is tagged with "Dec 20, 2003", apparently indicating that the site is from Dec 20th 2003, although that's quite wrong.
• 3. Some youtube downloader site. Selecting any video to download pushes you to a site with scam ads.
• 4. Some youtube downloader site. Interacting with the site at all pops up multiple ads that link to scams and the page wants to enable notifications. A pop-up then appears on top of the ads that says "Ad removed" with a link for details. This is a scam link to another ad.
• 5. Another link to the above site
• 6-7. Under a subsection titled "Interesting Finds", there are links to two github repos. One is for transcribing youtube videos to text and the other is for using Google Takeout to backup photos from google photos or your own youtube channel
• 8. Some youtube downloader site.
• 9-13. Under a subsection titled "Blast from the Past", 4 irrelevant links and a link to youtube-dl's github page, but the 2010 version at archive.org
• 14. SEO blogspam for youtube help. Has a link that's allegedly for a "Greasemonkey script for downloading YouTube videos", but the link just goes to a page with scammy ads
• 15. Some software that charges you $5/mo to download videos from youtube

Mwmbl

1. Some youtube video downloader site, but one that no other search engine returned. There's a huge ad panel that displays "503 NA - Service Deprecating". The download link does nothing except for pop up some other ad panes that then disappear, leaving just the 503 "ad".
2. $20 software for downloading youtube videos
3. 2016 blog post on how to install and use youtube-dl. Sidebar has two low quality ads which don't appear to be scams and the main body has two ads interspersed, making this extremely low on ads compared to analogous results we've seen from large search engines
4. Some youtube video download site. Has a giant banner claiming that it's "the only YouTube Downloader that is 100% ad-free and contains no popups.", which is probably not true, but the site does seem to be ad free and not have pop-ups. Download link seems to actually work.
5. Youtube video on how to install and use youtube-dlg (a GUI wrapper for youtube-dl) on Linux (this query was run from a Mac).
6. Link to what was a 2007 blogpost on how to download youtube videos, which automatically forwards to a 2020 ad-laden SEO blogspam listicle with bad suggestions. Article has two autoplay videos. Archive.org shows that the 2007 blog post had some reasonable options in it for the time, so this wasn't always a bad result.
7. A blog post on a major site that's actually a sponsored post trying to get you to a particular video downloader. Searching for comments on this on reddit indicate that users view the app as a waste of money that doesn't work. The site is also full of scammy and misleading ads for other products. E.g., I tried clicking on an ad that purports to save you money on "products". It loaded a fake "checking your computer" animation that supposedly checked my computer for compatibility with the extension and then another fake checking animation, after which I got a message saying that my computer is compatible and I'm eligible to save money. All I have to do is install this extension. Closing that window opens a new tab that reads "Hold up! Do you actually not want automated savings at checkout" with the options "Yes, Get Coupons" and "No, Don't Save". Clicking "No, Don't Save" is actually an ad that takes you back to a link that tries to get you to install a chrome extension.
8. That "Norton Safe Web" youtube downloader site, except that the link is wrong and is to the version of the site that purports to download instagram videos instead of the one that purports to download youtube videos.
9. Link to Google help explaining how you can download youtube videos that you personally uploaded
10. SEO blogspam. It immediately has a pop-over to get you to subscribe to their newsletter. Closing that gives you another pop-over with the options "Subscribe" and "later". Clicking "later" does actually dismiss the 2nd pop-over. After closing the pop-overs, the article has instructions on how to install some software for windows. Searching for reviews of the software returns comments like "This is a PUP/PUA that can download unwanted applications to your pc or even malicious applications."

Basically the same as Google or Bing.

ChatGPT

Since ChatGPT expects more conversational queries, we'll use the prompt "How can I download youtube videos?"

The first attempt, on a Monday at 10:38am PT returned "Our systems are a bit busy at the moment, please take a break and try again soon.". The second attempt returned an answer saying that one should not download videos without paying for YouTube Premium, but if you want to, you can use third-party apps and websites. Following up with the question "What are the best third-party apps and websites?" returned another warning that you shouldn't use third-party apps and websites, followed by the ironic-for-GPT warning,

I don't endorse or provide information on specific third-party apps or websites for downloading YouTube videos. It's essential to use caution and adhere to legal and ethical guidelines when it comes to online content.

ad blocker

For our next query, we'll try "ad blocker". We'd like to get ublock origin. Failing that, an ad blocker that, by default, blocks ads. Failing that, something that isn't a scam and also doesn't inject extra ads or its own ads. Although what's best may change at any given moment, comparisons I've seen that don't stack the deck have often seemed to show that ublock origin has the best or among the best performance, and ublock origin is free and blocks ads.

Google

1. "AdBlock — best ad blocker". Below the fold, notes "AdBlock participates in the Acceptable Ads program, so unobtrusive ads are not blocked", so this doesn't block all ads.
2. Adblock Plus | The world's #1 free ad blocker. Pages notes "Acceptable Ads are allowed by default to support websites", so this also does not block all ads by default
3. AdBlock. Page notes that " Since 2015, we have participated in the Acceptable Ads program, where publishers agree to ensure their ads meet certain criteria. Ads that are deemed non-intrusive are shown by default to AdBlock users", so this doesn't block all ads
4. "Adblock Plus - free ad blocker", same as (2), doesn't block all ads
5. "AdGuard — World's most advanced adblocker!" Page tries to sell you on some kind of paid software, "AdGuard for Mac". Searching for AdGuard turns up a post from this person looking for an ad blocker that blocks ads injected by AdGuard. It seems that you can download it for free, but then, if you don't subscribe, they give you more ads?
6. "AdBlock Pro" on safari store; has in-app purchases. It looks like you have to pay to unlock features like blocking videos
7. [YouTube] "How youtube is handling the adblock backlash". 30 second video with 15 second ad before the video. Video has no actual content
8. [YoutTube] "My thoughts on the youtube adblocker drama"
9. [YouTube] "How to Block Ads online in Google Chrome for FREE [2023]"; first comment on video is "your video doesnt [sic] tell how to stop Youtube adds [sic]". In the video, a person rambles for a bit and then googles ad blocker extension and then clicks the first link (same as our first link), saying, "If I can go ahead and go to my first website right here, so it's basically officially from Google .... [after installing, as a payment screen pops up asking you to pay $30 or a monthly or annual fee]"
10. "AdBlock for Mobile" on the App Store. It's rated 3.2* on the iOS store. Lots of reviews indicate that it doesn't really work
11. MalwareBytes ad blocker. A quick search indicates that it doesn't block all ads (unclear if that's deliberate or due to bugs)
12. "Block ads in Chrome | AdGuard ad blocker", same as (5)
13. [ad] NordVPN
14. [ad] "#1 Best Free Ad Blocker (2024) - 100% Free Ad Blocker." Immediately seems scammy in that it has a fake year (this query was run in mid-November 2023). This is for something called TOTAL Ad Block. Searching for TOTAL Ad Block turns up results indicating that it's a scammy app that doesn't let you unsubscribe and basically tries to steal your money 15 [ad] 100% Free & Easy Download - Automatic Ad Blocker. Actually for Avast browser and not an ad blocker. A quick search show that this browser has a history of being less secure than just running chromium and that it collects an unusually large amount of information from users.

No links to ublock origin. Some links to scams, though not nearly as many as when trying to get a youtube downloader. Lots of links to ad blockers that deliberately only block some ads by default.

Bing

• 1. [ad] "Automatic Ad Blocker | 100% Free & Easy Download". [link is actually to avast secure browser, so an entire browser and not an ad blocker; from a quick search, this appears to be a wrapper around chromium that [has a history of being less secure than just running chromium](https://palant.info/2020/01/13/pwning-avast-secure-browser-for-fun-and-profit/) [which collects an unusually large amount of information from users](https://palant.info/2019/10/28/avast-online-security-and-avast-secure-browser-are-spying-on-you/)].
• 2. [ad] "#1 Best Free Ad Blocker (2023) | 100% Free Ad Blocker". Has a pop-over nag window when you mouse over to the URL bar asking you to install it instead of navigating away. Something called TOTAL ad block. Apparently tries to get to sign up for a subscription [and then makes it very difficult to unsubscribe](https://www.reddit.com/r/Adblock/comments/1412m7l/total_adblock_peoples_experiencesopinions/) (apparently, you can't cancel without a phone call, and when you call and tell them to cancel, they still won't do it unless you threaten to issue a chargeback or block the payment from the bank)
• 3. [ad] "Best Ad Blocker (2023) | 100% Free Ad Blocker". Seems to be a fake review site that reviews various ad blockers; ublock origin is listed as #5 with 3.5 stars. TOTAL ad block is listed as #1 with 5 stars, is the only 5 stars ad blocker, has a banner that shows that it's the "#1 Free Ad Blocker", is award winning, etc.
  If you then click the link to ublock origin, it takes you to a page that "shows" that ublock origin has 0 stars on trustpilot. There are multiple big buttons that say "click to start blocking ads" that try to get you to install TOTAL ad block. In the bottom right, in what looks like an ad slot, there's an image that says "visit site" for ublock origin. The link doesn't take you to ublock origin and instead takes you a site for [the fake ublock origin](https://www.reddit.com/r/ublock/comments/32mos6/ublock_vs_ublock_origin/).
• 4. [ad] "AVG Free Antivirus 2023 | 100% Free, Secure Download". This at least doesn't pretend to be an ad blocker of any kind.
• 5. [Explore content from adblockplus.org] A link to the adblock plus blog.
• 6. [Explore content from adblockplus.org] A link to a list of adblock plus features.
• 7. "Adblock Plus | The world's #1 free ad blocker".
• 8-13. Sublinks to various pages on the Adblock Plus site.

We're now three screens down from the result, so the equivalent of the above google results is just a bunch of ads and then links to one website. The note that something is an ad is much more subtle than I've seen on any other site. Given what we know about when users confuse ads with organic search results, it's likely that most users don't realize that the top results are ads and think that the links to scam ad blockers or the fake review site that tries to funnel you into installing a scam ad blocker are organic search results.

Marginalia

1. "Is ad-blocker software permissible?" from judaism.stackexchange.com
2. Blogspam for Ghosterty. Ghostery's pricing page notes that you have to pay for "No Private Sponsored Links", so it seems like some features are behind a pay wall. Wikipedia says "Since July 2018, with version 8.2, Ghostery shows advertisements of its own to users", but it seems like this might be opt-in?
3. https://shouldiblockads.com/. Explains why you might want to block ads. First recommendation is ublock origin
4. "What’s the best ad blocker for you? - Firefox Add-ons Blog". First recommendation is ublock origin. Also provides what appears to be accurate information about other ad blockers.
5. Blog post that's a personal account of why someone installed an ad blocker.
6. Opera (browser).
7. Blog post, anti-anti-adblocker polemic.
8. ublock origin.
9. Fairphone forum discussion on whether or not one should install an ad blocker.
10. SEO site blogspam (as in, the site is an SEO optimization site and this is blogspam designed to generate backlinks and funnel traffic to the site).

Probably the best result we've seen so far, in that the third and fourth results suggest ublock origin and the first result is very clearly not an ad blocker. It's unfortunate that the second result is blogspam for Ghostery, but this is still better than we see from Google and Bing.

Mwmbl

1. A bitly link to a "thinkpiece" on ad blocking from a VC thought leader.
2. A link to cryptojackingtest, which forwards to Opera (the browser).
3. A link to ghostery.
4. Another link to ghostery.
5. A link to something called 1blocker, which appears to be a paid ad blocker. Searching for reviews turns up comments like "I did 1blocker free trial and forgot to cancel so it signed me up for annual for $20 [sic]" (but comments indicate that the ad blocker does work).
6. Blogspam for Ad Guard. There's a banner ad offering 40% off this ad blocker.
7. An extremely ad-laden site that appears to be in the search results because it contains the text "ad blocker detected" if you use an ad blocker (I don't see this text on loading the page, but it's in the page preview on Mwmbl). The first page is literally just ads with a "read more" button. Clicking "read more" takes you to a different page that's full of ads that also has the cartoon, which is the "content".
8. Another site that appears to be in the search results because it contains the text "ad blocker detected".
9. Malwarebytes ad blocker, which doesn't appear to work.
10. HN comments for article on youtube ad blocker crackdown. Scrolling to the 41st comment returns a recommendation for ublock origin.

Mwmbl lets users suggest results, so I tried signing up to add ublock origin. Gmail put the sign-up email into my spam folder. After adding ublock origin to the search results, it's now the #1 result for "ad blocker" when I search logged out, from an incognito window and all other results are pushed down by one. As mentioned above, the score for Mwmbl is from before I edited the search results and not after.

Kagi

• 1. "Adblock Plus | The world's #1 free ad blocker".
• 2-11. Sublinks to other pages on the Adblock Plus website.
• 12. "AdBlock — best ad blocker".
• 13. "Adblock Plus - free ad blocker".
• 14. "YouTube’s Ad Blocker Crackdown", a blog post that quotes and links to discussions of people talking about the titular topic.
• 15-18. Under a section titled "Interesting Finds", three articles about youtube's crackdown on ad blockers. One has a full page pop-over trying to get you to install TOTAL Adblock with "Close" and "Open" buttons. The "Close" button does nothing and clicking any link or the open button takes to a page advertising TOTAL adblock. There appears to be no way to dismiss the ad and read the actual article without doing something like going to developer tools and deleting the ad elements. The fourth article is titled "The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web" and 100% of the above the fold content is the header plus a giant ad. Scrolling down, there are a lot more ads.
• 19. "AdBlock".
• 20. Another link from the Adblock site, "Ad Blocker for Chrome - Download and Install AdBlock for Chrome Now!".
• 21-25. Under a section titled "Blast from the Past", optimal.com ad blocker, a medium article on how to subvert adblock, a blog post from a Mozillan titled "Why Ad Blockers Work" that's a response to Ars Technica's "Why Ad Blocking is devastating to the sites you love", "Why You Need a Network-Wide Ad-Blocker (Part 1)", and "A Popular Ad Blocker Also Helps the Ad Industry", subtitled "Millions of people use the tool Ghostery to block online tracking technology—some may not realize that it feeds data to the ad industry."

Similar quality to Google and Bing. Maybe halfway in between in terms of the number of links to scams.

ChatGPT

Here, we tried the prompt. How do I install the best ad blocker?

First suggestion is ublock origin. Second suggestion is adblock plus. This seems like the best result by a significant margin.

download firefox

Google

• 1-6. Links to download firefox.
• 7. Blogspam for firefox download with ads trying to trick you into installing badware.
• 8-9. Links to download firefox.
• 10 [ad] Some kind of shady site that claims to have firefox downloads, but where the downloads take you to other sites that try to get you to sign up for an account where they ask for personal information and your credit card number. Also pops up pop-over with window that does the above if you try to actually download firefox. At least one of the sites is some kind of gambling site, so this site might make money off of referring people to gambling sites?

Mostly good links, but 2 out of the top 10 links are scams. And we didn't have a repeat of this situation I saw in 2017, where Google paid to get ranked above Firefox in a search for Firefox. For search queries where almost every search engine returns a lot of scams, I might rate having 2 out of the top 10 links be scams as "Ok" or perhaps even better but, here, where most search engines return no fake or scam links, I'm rating this as "Bad". You could make a case for "Ok" or "Good" here by saying that the vast majority of users will click one of the top links and never get as far as the 7th link, but I think that if Google is confident enough that's the case that they view it as unproblematic that the 7th and 10th links are scams, they should just only serve up the top links.

Bing

• 1-12. Links to download firefox or closely related links.
• 13. [ad] Avast browser.

That's the entire first page. Seems pretty good. Nothing that looks like a scam.

Marginalia

• 1. "Is it better to download Firefox from the website or use the package manager?" on the UNIX stackexchange
• 2-9. Various links related to firefox, but not firefox downloads
• 10. "Internet Download Accelerator online help"

Definitely worse than Bing, since none of the links are to download Firefox. Depending on how highly you rate users not getting scammed vs. having the exact right link, this might be better or worse than Google. In this post, this scams are relatively highly weighted, so Marginalia ranks above Google here.

Mwmbl

• 1-7. Links to download firefox.
• 8. A link to a tumblr that has nothing to do with firefox. The title of the tumblr is "Love yourself, download firefox" (that's the title of the entire blog, not a particular blog post).
• 9. Link to download firefox nightly.
• 10. Extremely shady link that allegedly downloads firefox. Attempting to download the shady firefox pops up an ad that tries to trick you downloading Opera. I did not run either the Opera or Firefox binaries to see if they're legitimate.

kagi.com

• 1-3. Links to download firefox.
• 4-5. Under a heading titled "Interesting finds", a 404'd link to a tweet titled "What happens if you try to download and install Firefox on Windows" [which used to note that downloading Firefox on windows results in an OS-level pop-up that recommends Edge instead "to protect your pc"](https://web.archive.org/web/20220403104257/https://twitter.com/plexus/status/1510568329303445507) and some extremely ad-laden article (though, to its credit, the ads don't seem to be scam ads).
• 6. Link to download firefox.
• 7-10. 3 links to download very old versions of firefox, and a blog post about some kind of collaboration between firefox and ebay.
• 11. Mozilla homepage.
• 12. Link to download firefox.

Maybe halfway in between Bing and Marginalia. No scams, but a lot of irrelevant links. Unlike some of the larger search engines, these links are almost all to download the wrong version of firefox, e.g., I'm on a Mac and almost all of the links are for windows downloads.

ChatGPT

The prompt "How do I download firefox?" returned technically incorrect instructions on how to download firefox. The instructions did start with going to the correct site, at which point I think users are likely to be able to download firefox by looking at the site and ignoring the instructions. Seems vaguely similar to marginalia, in that you can get to a download by clicking some links, but it's not exactly the right result. However, I think users are almost certain to find the correct steps and only likely with Marginalia, so ChatGPT is rated more highly than Marginalia for this query.

Why do wider tires have better grip?

Any explanation that's correct must, a minimum, be consistent with the following:

• Assuming a baseline of a moderately wide tire for the wheel size.
  • Scaling both of these to make both wider than the OEM tire (but still running a setup that fits in the car without serious modifications) generally gives better dry braking and better lap times.
  • In wet conditions, wider setups often have better braking distances (though this depends a lot on the specific setup) and better lap times, but also aquaplane at lower speeds.
  • Just increasing the wheel width and using the same tire generally gives you better lap times, within reason.
  • Just increasing the tire width and leaving wheel width fixed generally results in worse lap times.
• Why tire pressure changes have the impact that they do (I'm not going to define terms in these bullets; if this text doesn't make sense to you, that's ok).
  • At small slip angles, increasing tire pressure results in increased lateral force.
  • In general, lowering tire pressure increases effective friction coefficient (within reason a semi-reasonable range).

This is one that has a lot of standard incorrect or incomplete answers, including:

• Wider tires give you more grip because you get more surface area.
  • Wider tires don't, at reasonable tire pressure, give you significantly more surface area.
• Wider tires actually don't give you more grip because friction is surface area times a constant and surface area is mediated by air pressure.
  • It's easily empirically observed that wider tires do, in fact, give you better handling and braking.
• Wider tires let you use a softer compound, so the real reason wider tires give you more grip is via the softer compound.
  • This could be part of an explanation, but I've generally seen this cited as the only explanation. However, wider tires give you more grip independent of having a softer compound. You can even observe this with the same tire by mounting the exact same tire on a wider wheel (within reason).
• The shape of the contact patch when the tire is wider gives you better lateral grip due to [some mumbo jumbo], e.g., "tire load sensitivity" or "dynamic load".
  • Ok, perhaps, but what's the mechanism that gives wider tires more grip when braking? And also, please explain the mumbo jumbo. For my goal of understanding why this happens, if you just use some word but don't explain the mechanism, this isn't fundamentally different than saying that wider tires have better grip due to magic.
    • When there's some kind of explanation of the mumbo jumbo, there will often be an explanation that only applies to aspect of increased grip, e.g., the explanation will really only apply to lateral grip and not explain why braking distances are decreased.

Google

• 1. A "knowledge card" that says "Bigger tires provide a wider contact area that optimizes their performance and traction.", which explains nothing. On clicking the link, it's SEO blogspam with many [incorrect statements, such as "Are wider tires better for snow traction? Or are narrow tires more reliable in the winter months? The simple answer is narrow tires!](https://mastodon.social/@danluu/111441790762754806) Tires with a smaller section width provide more grip in winter conditions. They place higher surface pressure against the road they are being driven on, enabling its snow and ice traction"
• 2. [Question dropdown] "do wider tires give you more grip?", which correctly says "On a dry road, wider tires will offer more grip than narrow ones, but the risk of aquaplaning will be higher with wide tires.". On clicking the link, there's no explanation of why, let alone an answer to the question we're asking
• 3. [Question dropdown] "Do bigger tires give you better traction?", which says "What Difference Does The Wheel Size Make? Larger wheels offer better traction, and because they have more rubber on the tire, this also means a better grip on the road", which has a nonsensical explanation of why. On clicking the link, the link appears to be talking about wheel diameter and is not only wrong, but actually answering the wrong question.
• 4. [Question dropdown] "Why do wider tires have more grip physics?", which then has some of the standard incorrect explanations.
• 5. "Do wider wheels improve handling?", which says "Wider wheels and wider tires will also lower your steering friction coefficient". On clicking the link, there's no explanation of why nor is there an answer to the question we're asking.
• 6. "What are the disadvantages of wider tires?", which says "Harder Handling & Steering". On clicking the link, there are multiple incorrect statements and no explanation of why.
• 7. "Would wider tires increase friction?", which says "Force can be stated as Pressure X Area. For a wide tire, the area is large but the force per unit area is small and vice versa. The force of friction is therefore the same whether the tire is wide or not.". Can't load the page due to a 502 error and the page isn't in archive.org, but this seems fine since the page appears to be wrong
• 8. "What is the advantage of 20 inch wheels over 18 inch wheels?" Answers a different question. On clicking the link, it's low quality SEO blogspam.
• 9. "Why do race cars have wide tires?", which says "Wider tires provide more resistance to slippery spots or grit on the road. Race tracks have gravel, dust, rubber beads and oil on them in spots that limit traction. By covering a larger width, the tires can handle small problems like that better. Wider tires have improved wear characteristics.". Perhaps technically correct, but fundamentally not the answer and highly misleading at best.
• 10-49. Other question dropdowns that are wrong. Usually both wrong and answering the wrong question, but sometimes giving a wrong answer to the right question and sometimes giving the right answer to the wrong question. I am just now realizing that clicking question dropdowns give you more question dropdowns.
• 50. "Why do wider tires get more grip? : r/cars". The person asks the question I'm asking, concluding with "This feels like a really dumb question because wider tires=more grip just seems intuitive, but I don't know the answer.". The top answer is total nonsense "The smaller surface area has more pressure but the same normal force as a larger surface area. If you distribute the same load across more area, each square inch of tire will have less force it's responsible for holding, and thus is less likely to be overcome by the force from the engine". The #2 answer is a classic reddit answer, "Yeah, take your science bs and throw it out the window.". The #3 answer has a vaguely plausible sounding answer to why wider tires have better lateral grip, but it's still misleading. Like many of the answers, the answer emphasizes how wider tires give you better lateral grip and has a lengthy explanation for why this should be the case, but wider tires also give you shorter braking distances and the provided explanation cannot explain why wider tires have shorter braking distances so must be missing a significant part of the puzzle. Anyway, none of the rest of the answers really even attempt to explain why
• 51-54. Other reddit answers bunched with this one, which also don't answer the question, although one of them links to https://www.brachengineering.com/content/publications/Wheel-Slip-Model-2006-Brach-Engineering.pdf, which has some good content, though it doesn't answer the question.
• 55. SEO blogspam for someone's youtube video; video doesn't answer the question.
• 56. Extremely ad-laden site with popovers that try to trick you into clicking on ads, etc.; has text I've seen on other pages that's been copied over to make an SEO ad farm (and the text has answers that are incorrect)

Bing

• 1. Knowledge card which incorrectly states "Larger contact patch with the ground."
• 2-4. Carousel where none of the links answer the question correctly. (3) from bing is (50) from google search results. (2) isn't wrong, but also doesn't answer the question. (3) is SEO blogspam for someone else's youtube video (same link as google.com 55). The video does not answer the question. (3) and (4) are literally the same link and also don't answer the question
• 5. "This is why wider tires equals more grip". SEO blogspam for someone else's youtube video. The youtube video does not answer the question.
• 6-10. [EXPLORE FURTHER] results. (6) is blatantly wrong, (7) is the same link as (3) and (4), (8) is (2), SEO blogspam for someone else's youtube video and the video doesn't answer the question, (9) is s SEO blogspam for someone else's youtube video and the video doesn't answer the question, (10) is generic SEO blogspam with lots of incorrect information
• 11. Same link as (2) and (8), still SEO blogspam for someone else's youtube video and the video doesn't answer the question
• 12-13 [EXPLORE FURTHER] results. (12) is some kind of SEO ad farm that tries to get you to make "fake" ad clicks (there are full screen popovers that, if you click them, cause you to click through some kind of ad to some normal site, giving revenue to whoever set up the ad farm). (13) is the website of the person who made one of the two videos that's a common target for SEO blogspam on this topic. It doesn't answer the question, but at least we have the actual source here.

From skimming further, many of the other links are the same links as above. No link appears to answer the question.

Marginalia

Original query returns zero results. Removing the question mark returns one single result, which is the same as (3) and (4) from bing.

Mwmbl

1. NYT article titled "Why Women Pay Higher Interest". This is the only returned result.

Removing the question mark returns an article about bike tires titled "Fat Tires During the Winter: What You Need to Know"

Kagi

1. A knowledge card that incorrectly reads "wider tire has a greater contact patch with the ground, so can provide traction."
2. (50) from google
3. Reddit question with many incorrect answers
4. Reddit question with many incorrect answers. Top answer is "The same reason that pressing your hand on the desk and sliding it takes more effort than doing the same with a finger. More rubber on the road = more friction".
5. (3) and (4) from bing
6. Youtube video titled "Do wider tyres give you more grip?". Clicking the video gives you 1:30 in ads before the video plays. The video is good, but it answers the question in the title of the video and not the question being asked of why this is the case. The first ad appears to be an ad revenue scam. The first link actually takes you to a second link, where any click takes you through some ad's referral link to a product.
7. "This is why wider tires equals more grip". SEO blogspam for (6)
8. SEO blogspam for another youtube video
9. SEO blogspam for (6)
10. Quora answer where top answer doesn't answer the question and I can't read all of the answers because I'm not logged in or aren't a premium member or something.
11. Google (56), stolen text from other sites and a site that has popovers that try to trick you into clicking ads
12. Pre-chat GPT nonsense text and a page that's full of ads. Unusually, the few ads that I clicked on seemed to be normal ads and not scams.
13. Blogspam for ad farm that has pop-overs that try to get you to install badware.
14. Page with ChatGPT-sounding nonsense. Has a "Last updated" timestamp that's sever-side generated to match the exact moment you navigated to the page. Page tries to trick you into clicking on ads with full-page popover. Ads don't seem to be scams, as far as I can tell.
15. Page which incorrectly states "In summary, a wider tire does not give better traction, it is the same traction similar to a more narrow tire.". Has some ads that get you to try to install badware.

ChatGPT

Provides a list of "hallucinated" reasons. The list of reasons has better grammar than most web search results, but still incorrect. It's not surprising that ChatGPT can't answer this question, since it often falls over on questions that are both easier to reason about and where the training data will contain many copies of the correct answer, e.g., Joss Fong noted that, when her niece asked ChatGPT about gravity, the response was nonsense: "... That's why a feather floats down slowly but a rock drops quickly — the Earth is pulling them both, but the rock gets pulled harder because it's heavier."

Overall, no search engine gives correct answers. Marginalia seems to be the best here in that it gives only a couple of links to wrong answers and no links to scams.

Why do they keep making cpu transistors smaller?

I had this question when I was in high school and my AP physics teacher explained to me that it was because making the transistors smaller allowed the CPU to be smaller, which let you make the whole computer smaller. Even at age 14, I could see that this was an absurd answer, not really different than today's ChatGPT hallucinations — at the time, computers tended to be much larger than they are now, and full of huge amounts of empty space, with the CPU taking up basically no space relative to the amount of space in the box and, on top of that, CPUs were actually getting bigger and not smaller as computers were getting smaller. I asked some other people and didn't really get an answer. This was also relatively early on the life of the public web and I wasn't able to find an answer other than something like "smaller transistors are faster" or "smaller = less capacitance". But why are they faster? And what makes them have less capacitance? Specifically, what about the geometry causes that to scale so that transistors get faster? It's not, in general, obvious that things should get faster if you shrink them, e.g., if you naively linearly shrink a wire, it doesn't appear that it should get faster at all because the cross sectional area is reduced quadratically, increasing resistance per distance quadratically. But length is also reduced linearly, so total resistance is increased linearly. And then capacitance also decreases linearly, so it all cancels out. Anyway, for transistors, it turns out the same kind of straightforward scaling logic shows that they speed up (at back then, transistors were large enough and wire delay was relatively small enough that you got extremely large increases in performance for shrinking transistor). You could explain this to a high school student who's taken physics in a few minutes if you had the right explanation, but I couldn't find an answer to this question until I read a VLSI textbook.

There's now enough content on the web that there must be multiple good explanations out there. Just to check, I used non-naive search terms to find some good results. Let's look at what happens when you use the naive search from above, though.

Google

• 1. A knowledge card that reads "Smaller transistors can do more calculations without overheating, which makes them more power efficient.", which isn't exactly wrong but also isn't what I'd consider an answer of why. The article is interesting, but is about another topic and doesn't explain why.
• 2. [Question dropdown], "Why are transistors getting smaller?". Site has an immediate ad pop-over on opening. Site doesn't really answer the question, saying "Since the first integrated circuit was built in the 1950s, silicon transistors have shrunk following Moore’s law, helping pack more of these devices onto microchips to boost their computing power."
• 3. [Question dropdown] "Why do transistors need to be small?". Answer is "The capacitance between two conductors is a function of their physical size: smaller dimensions mean smaller capacitances. And because smaller capacitances mean higher speed as well as lower power, smaller transistors can be run at higher clock frequencies and dissipate less heat while doing so", which isn't wrong, but the site doesn't explain the scaling that made things faster as transistors got smaller. The page mostly seems concerned about discrete components and note that "In general, passive components like resistors, capacitors and inductors don’t become much better when you make them smaller: in many ways, they become worse. Miniaturizing these components is therefore done mainly just to be able to squeeze them into a smaller volume, and thereby saving PCB space.", so it's really answering a different question
• 4. [Question dropdown], "Why microchips are getting smaller?". SEO blogspam that doesn't answer the question other than saying stuff like "smaller is faster"
• 5. [Question dropdown], "Why are microprocessors getting smaller?". Link is to stackexchange. The top answer is that yield is better and cost goes down when chips are smaller, which I consider a non-answer, in that it's also extremely expensive to make things smaller, so what explains why the cost reduction is there? And, also, even if the cost didn't go down, companies would still want smaller transistors for performance reasons, so this misses a major reason and arguably the main reason.
#2 answer actually sort of explains it, "The reason for this is that as the transistor gate gets smaller, threshold voltage and gate capacitance (required drive current) gets lower.", but is both missing parts of the explanation and doesn't provide the nice, intuitive, physical explanation for why this is the case. Other answers are non-answers like "The CORE reason why CPUs keep getting smaller is simply that, in computing, smaller is more powerful:". It's possible to get to a real explanation by searching for these terms
• 6. "Why are CPU and GPU manufacturers trying to make ...". Top answer is the non-answer of "Smaller transistors are faster and use less power. Small is good." and since it's quora and I'm not a subscriber, the other answers are obscured by a screen that suggests I start a free trial to "access this answer and support the author as a Quora+ subscriber".
• 7-10. sub-links to other quora answers. Since I'm not a subscriber, by screen real estate, most of the content is ads. None of the content I could read answered the question.

Bing

• 1. Knowledge card with multiple parts. First parts have some mumbo jumbo, but the last part contains a partial answer. If you click on the last part of the answer, it takes you to a stack exchange question that has more detail on the partial answer. There's enough information in the partial answer to do a search and then find a more complete explanation.
• 2-4. [people also ask] some answers that are sort of related, but don't directly answer the question
• 5. Stack exchange answer for a different question.
• 7-10 [explore further] answers to totally unrelated questions, except for 10, which is extremely ad-laden blogspam to a related question that has a bunch of semi-related text with many ads interspersed between the text.

Kagi

• 1. "Why does it take multiple years to develop smaller transistors for CPUs and GPUs?", on r/askscience. Some ok comments, but they answer a different question.
• 2-5. Other reddit links that don't answer the question. Some of them are people asking this question, but the answers are wrong. Some of the links answer different questions and have quite good answers to those questions.
• 6. Stackexchange question that has incorrect and misleading answers.
• 7. Stackexchange question, but a different question.
• 8. Quora question. The answers I can read without being a member don't really answer the question.
• 9. Quora question. The answers I can read without being a member don't really answer the question.
• 10. Metafilter question from 2006. The first answers are fundamentally wrong, but one of the later answers links to the wikipedia page on MOSFET. Unfortunately, the link is to the now-removed anchor #MOSFET_scaling. There's still a scaling section which has a poor explanation. There's also a link to the page on Dennard Scaling, which is technically correct but has a very poor explanation. However, someone could search for more information using these terms and get correct information.

Marginalia

No results

Mwmbl

1. A link to a Vox article titled "Why do artists keep making holiday albums?". This is the only result.

ChatGPT

Has non-answers like "increase performance". Asking ChatGPT to expand on this, with "Please explain the increased performance." results in more non-answers as well as fairly misleading answers, such as

Shorter Interconnects: Smaller transistors result in shorter distances between them. Shorter interconnects lead to lower resistance and capacitance, reducing the time it takes for signals to travel between transistors. Faster signal propagation enhances the overall speed and efficiency of the integrated circuit ... The reduced time it takes for signals to travel between transistors, combined with lower power consumption, allows for higher clock frequencies

I could see this seeming plausible to someone with no knowledge of electrical engineering, but this isn't too different from ChatGPT's explanation of gravity, "... That's why a feather floats down slowly but a rock drops quickly — the Earth is pulling them both, but the rock gets pulled harder because it's heavier."

vancouver snow forecast winter 2023

Good result: Environment Canada's snow forecast, predicting significantly below normal snow (and above normal temperatures)

Google

1. Knowledge card from a local snow removal company, incorrectly stating "The forecast for the 2023/2024 season suggests that we can expect another winter marked by ample snowfall and temperatures hovering both slightly above and below the freezing mark. Be prepared ahead of time.". On opening the page, we see that the next sentence is "Have Alblaster [the name of the company] ready to handle your snow removal and salting. We have a proactive approach to winter weather so that you, your staff and your customers need not concern yourself with the approaching storms." and the goal of the link is to get you to buy snow removal services regardless of their necessity by writing a fake forecast.
2. [question dropdown] "What is the winter prediction for Vancouver 2023?", incorrectly saying that it will be "quite snowy".
3. [question dropdown] "What kind of winter is predicted for 2023 Canada?" Links to a forecast of Ontario's winter, so not only wrong province, but the wrong coast, and also not actually an answer to the question in the dropdown.
4. [question dropdown] "What is the winter prediction for B.C. in 2023 2024?" Predicts that B.C. will have a wet and mild winter, which isn't wrong, but doesn't really answer the question.
5. [question dropdown] "What is the prediction for 2023 2024 winter?" Has a prediction for U.S. weather
6. Blogspam article that has a lot of pointless text with ads all over. Text is contradictory in various ways and doesn't answer the question. Has huge pop-over ad that covers top half the page
7. Another blogspam article from the same source. Lots of ads; doesn't answer the question
8. Ad-laden article that answers some related questions, but not this question
9. Extremely ad-laden article that's almost unreadable due to the number of ads. Talks a lot about El Nino. Eventually notes that we should see below-normal snow in B.C. due to El Nino, but B.C. is almost 100M km² and the forecast is not the same for all of B.C., so you could maybe hope that the comment about B.C. here applies to Vancouver, but this link only lets you guess at the answer
10. Very ad-laden article, but does have a map which has map that's labeled "winter precipitation" which appears to be about snow and not rain. Map seems quite different from Environment Canada's map, but it does show reduced "winter precipitation" over Vancouver, so you might conclude the right thing from this map.

Bing

• 1-4. [news carousel] Extremely ad laden articles that don't answer the question. Multiple articles are well over half ads by page area.
• 5. Some kind of page that appears to have the answer, expect that the data seems to be totally fabricated? There's a graph with day-by-day probability of "winter storm". From when I did the search, there's about an average of about a 50% daily chance of a "snow storm" going forward for the next 2 weeks. Forecasts that don't seem fake have it at 1% or less daily. Page appears to be some kind of SEO'd fake forecast that makes money on ads?
• 6-8. [more links from same site] Various ad laden pages. One is a "contact us" page where the main "contact us" pane is actually a trick to get you to click on an ad for some kind of monthly payment service that looks like a scam
• 9-14 [Explore 6 related pages ... recommended to you based on what's popular] Only one link is relevant. That link has a "farmer's almanac" forecast that's fairly different from Environment Canada's forecast. The farmer's almanaic page mainly seems to be an ad to get you to buy farmer's almanic stuff, although it also has conventional ads

Kagi

• 1. Same SEO'd fake forecast as Bing (5)
• 2-4. More results from scam weather site
• 5-7. [News] Irrelevant results
• 8. Spam article from same site as Google (6)
• 9-13. More SEO spam from the same site
• 14. Same fake forecast as Google (1)
• 15. Page is incorrectly tagged is being from "Dec 25, 2009" (it's a recent page) and doesn't contain relevant results

Marginalia

No results.

Mwmbl

• 1. Ad-laden news article from 2022 about a power outage. Has an autoplay video ad and many other ads as well.
• 2. 2021 article about how the snow forecast for Philadelphia was incorrect. Article has a slow-loading full-page pop-over that shows up after a few seconds and is full of ads.
• 3. 2016 article on when the Ohio river last froze over.
• 4. Some local news site from Oregon with a Feb 2023 article on the snow forecast at the time. Site has an autoplay video ad and is full of other ads. Clicking one of the random ads ("Amazon Hates When You Do Ths, But They Can't Stop You (It's Genius)" results in the ad trying to get you to install a chrome extension. The ad attempts to resemble an organic blog post on a site that's just trying to get you to save money, but if you try to navigate away from the "blog post", you get a full page popover that tries to trick you into installing the chrome extension. Going to the base URL reveals that the entire site is actually a site that's trying to trick users into installing this chrome extension. This is the last result.

ChatGPT

"What is the snow forecast for Vancouver in winter of 2023?"

Doesn't answer questions, recommends using a website, app, or weather service.

Asking "Could you please direct me to a weather website, app, or weather service that has the forecast?" causes ChatGPT to return random weather websites that don't have a seasonal snow forecast.

I retried a few times. One time, I accidentally pasted in the entire ChatGPT question, which meant that my question was prepened with "User\n". That time, ChatGPT suggested "the Canadian Meteorological Centre, Environment Canada, or other reputable weather websites". The top response when asking for the correct website was "Environment Canada Weather", which at least has a reasonable seeming seasonal snow forecast somewhere on the website. The other links were still to sites that aren't relevant.

Appendix: Google "knowledge card" results

In general, I've found Google knowledge card results to be quite poor, both for specific questions with easily findable answers as well as for silly questions like "when was running invented" which, for years, infamously returned "1748. Running was invented by Thomas Running when he tried to walk twice at the same time" (which was pulled from a Quora answer).

I had a doc where I was collecting every single knowledge card I saw to tabulate the fraction that were correct. I don't know that I'll ever turn that into a post, so here are some "random" queries with their knowledge card result (and, if anyone is curious, most knowledge card results I saw when I was tracking this were incorrect).

• "oc2 gemini length" (looking for the length of a kind of canoe, an oc2, called a gemini)
  • 20″ (this was the length of a baby mentioned in an article that also mentioned the length of the boat, which is 24'7"
• "busy beaver number"
  • (604) 375-2754
• "Feedly revenue"
  • "$5.2M/yr", via a link to a site which appears to just completely fabricate revenue and profit estimates for private companies
• "What airlines fly direct from JFK airport to BLI airport?"
  • "Alaska Airlines - (AS) with 30 direct flights between New York and Bellingham monthly; Delta Air Lines - (DL) with 30 direct flights between JFK and BLI monthly". This sounded plausible, but when I looked this up, this was incorrect. The page it links to has a bunch of text that like "How many morning flights are there from JFK to BLI? Alaska Airlines - (AS) lists, on average, 1 flights departing before 12:00pm, where the first departure from JFK is at 09:30AM and the last departure before noon is at 09:30AM", seemingly with the goal of generating a knowledge card for questions like this. It doesn't really matter that the answers are fabricated since the goal of the site seems to be to get traffic or visibility via knowledge cards
• "Air Canada Vancouver Newark"
  • At the time I did this search, this showed a knowledge card indicating that AC 7082 was going to depart the next day at 11:50am, but no such flight had existed for months and there was certainly not an AC 7082 flight about to depart the next day
• "TYR Hurricane Category 5 neoprene thickness"
  • 1.5mm (this is incorrect)
• "Intel number of engineers"
  • (604) 742-3501 (I was looking for the number of engineers that Intel employed, not a phone number, and even if I was looking for a phone number for Intel engineers, I don't think this is it).
• "boston up118s dimensions"
  • "5826298 x 5826899 x 582697 in" (this is a piano and, no, it is not 92 miles long)
• "number of competitive checkers players"
  • 2
• "fraser river current speed"
  • "97 to 129 kilometers per hour (60 to 80 mph)" (this is incorrect)
• "futura c-4 surfski weight"
  • "39 pounds" (this is actually the weight of a different surfski; the article this comes from just happens to also mention the futura c-4)

Appendix: FAQ

As already noted, the most common responses I get are generally things that are explicitly covered in the post, so I won't recover those here. However, any time I write a post that looks at anything, I also get a slew of comments like and, indeed, that was one of the first comments I got on this post.

This isn't a peer-reviewed study, it's crap

As I noted in this other post,

There's nothing magic about academic papers. I have my name on a few publications, including one that won best paper award at the top conference in its field. My median blog post is more rigorous than my median paper or, for that matter, the median paper that I read.

When I write a paper, I have to deal with co-authors who push for putting in false or misleading material that makes the paper look good and my ability to push back against this has been fairly limited. On my blog, I don't have to deal with that and I can write up results that are accurate (to the best of my ability) even if it makes the result look less interesting or less likely to win an award.

The same thing applies here and, in fact, I have a best paper award in this field (information retrieval, or IR, colloquially called search). I don't find IR papers particularly rigorous. I did push very hard to make my top-conference best-paper-award-wining paper more rigorous and, while I won some of those fights, I lost others, and that paper has a number of issues that I wouldn't let pass in a blog post. I suspect that people who make comments like this mostly don't read papers and, to the extent they do, don't understand them.

Another common response is

Your table is wrong. I tried these queries on Kagi and got Good results for the queries [but phrase much more strongly]

I'm not sure why people feel so strongly about Kagi but, all of these kinds of responses so far have come from Kagi users. No one has gotten good results for the tire, transistor, or snow queries (note, again, that this is not a query looking for a daily forecast, as clearly implied by the "winter 2023" in the query), nor are the results for the other queries very good if you don't have an ad blocker. I suppose it's possible that the next person who tells me this actually has good results, but that seems fairly unlikely given the zero percent correctness rate so far.

For example, one user claimed that the results were all good, but they pinned GitHub results and only ran the queries for which you'd get a good result on GitHub. This is actually worse than you get if you use Google or Bing and write good queries since you'll get noise in your results when GitHub is the wrong place to search. Of course you make a similar claim that Bing is amazing is you write non-naive queries, so it's curious that so many Kagi users are angrily writing me about this and no Google or Bing users. Kagi appears to have tapped into the same vein that Tesla and Apple have managed to tap into, where users become incensed that someone is criticizing something they love and then write nonsensical defenses of their favorite product, which bodes well for Kagi. I've gotten comments like this from not just one Kagi user, but many.

Transcript of Elon Musk on stage with Dave Chapelle

2022-12-11 08:00:00

This is a transcription of videos Elon Musk's appearance on stage with Dave Chapelle using OpenAI's Whisper model with some manual error corrections and annotations for crowd noise.

As with the Exhibit H Twitter text message release, there are a lot of articles that quote bits of this, but the articles generally missing a lot of what happened and often paint a misleading picture of happened and the entire thing is short enough that you might as well watch or read it instead of reading someone's misleading summary. In general, the media seems to want to paint a highly unflattering picture of Elon, resulting in articles and virtual tweets that are factually incorrect. For example, it's been widely incorrectly reported that, during the "I'm rich, bitch" part, horns were played to drown out the crowd's booing of Elon, but the horn sounds were played when the previous person said the same thing, which was the most cheered statement that was recorded. The sounds are much weaker when Elon says "I'm rich, bitch" and can't be heard clearly, but it sounds like a mix of booing and cheering. It was probably the most positive crowd response that Elon got from anything and it seems inaccurate in at least two ways to say that horns were played to drown out the booing Elon was receiving. On the other hand, even though the media has tried to paint as negative a picture of Elon as possible, it's done quite a poor job and a boring, accurate, accounting of what happened in many of other sections are much less flattering than the misleading summaries that are being passed around.

• Video 1
  • Dave: Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise for the richest man in the world.
  • Crowd: [mixed cheering, clapping, and boos; boos drown out cheering and clapping after a couple of seconds and continue into next statements]
  • Dave: Cheers and boos, I say
  • Crowd: [brief laugh, boos continue to drown out other crowd noise]
  • Dave: Elon
  • Crowd: [booing continues]
  • Elon: Hey Dave
  • Crowd: [booing intensifies]
  • Elon: [unintelligible over booing]
  • Dave: Controversy, buddy.
  • Crowd: [booing continues; some cheering can be heard]
  • Elon: Weren't expecting this, were ya?
  • Dave: It sounds like some of them people you fired are in the audience.
  • Crowd: [laughs, some clapping can be heard]
  • Elon: [laughs]
  • Crowd: [booing resumes]
  • Dave: Hey, wait a minute. Those of you booing
  • Crowd: [booing intensifies]
  • Dave: Tough [unintelligible due to booing] sounds like
  • Elon: [unintelligible due to being immediately cut off by Dave]
  • Dave: You know there's one thing. All those people are booing. I'm just. I'm just pointing out the obvious. They have terrible seats. [unintelligible due to crowd noise]
  • Crowd: [weak laughter]
  • Dave: All coming from wayyy up there [unintelligible] last minute non-[unintelligible] n*****. Booo. Booooooo.
  • Crowd: [quiets down]
  • Dave: Listen.
  • Crowd: [booing resumes]
  • Dave: Whatever. Look motherfuckas. This n**** is not even trying to die on earth
  • Crowd: [laughter mixed with booing, laughter louder than boos]
• Video 2
  • Dave: His whole business model is fuck earth I'm leaving anyway
  • Crowd: [weak laughter, weak mixed sounds]
  • Dave: Do all you want. Take me with you n**** I'm going to Mars
  • Crowd: [laughter]
  • Dave: Whatever kind of pussy they got up there, that's what we'll be doin
  • Crowd: [weak laughter]
  • Dave: [laughs] Anti-gravity titty bars. Follow your dreams bitch and the money just flow all over the room
  • Crowd: [weak laughter]
  • Elon: [laughs]
  • Crowd: [continued laughter drowned out by resumed booing; some cheering can be heard]
  • Elon: Thanks for, uhh, thanks for having me on stage.
  • Dave: Are you kidding. I wouldn't miss this opportunity.
  • Elon: [unintelligible, cut off by crowd laughter]
  • Crowd: [laughter]
  • Elon: [unintelligible, cut off by crowd laughter]
  • Dave: The first comedy club on Mars that should be my [pause for crowd laughter] a deal's a deal, Musk.
  • Crowd: [weak laughter and cheering]
  • Elon: [unintelligible], yeah
  • Dave: You n***** can boo all you want. This n**** gave me a jet pack last Christmas
  • Crowd: [laughter]
  • Dave: Fly right past your house. They can boo these nuts [unintelligible due to laughter at this line]
  • Dave: That's how we like to chill, we do all the shit
  • Crowd: [weak laughter, shifting to crowd talking]
  • Elon: [Elon shifts, as if to address crowd]
  • Crowd: [booing resumes]
  • Elon: Dave, what should I say?
  • Crowd: [booing intensifies]
  • Dave: Don't say nothin. It'll only spoil the moment. Do you hear that sound Elon? That's the sound of pending civil unrest.
  • Crowd: [weak laughter, some booing can initially be heard; booing intensifies until Dave cuts it off with his next line]
  • Dave: I can't wait to see which story you decimate next motherfucka [unintelligible] you shut the fuck up with your boos. There's something better that you can do. Booing is not the best thing that you can do. Try it n****. Make it what you want it to be. I am your ally. I wish everybody in this auditorium peace and the joy of feeling free and your pursuit of happiness make you happy. Amen. Thank you very much San Francisco. No city on earth has ever been kind to me. Thank you. Good night.
• Video 3 [lots of empty seats in the crowd at this point]
  • Dave: [unintelligible] as you can. It's funnier when you say it. Are you ready? Say this [unintelligible] you say. Go ahead.
  • Crowd: [weak laugther]
  • Maybe Chris Rock?: I'm rich bitch
  • Crowd: [loud cheers, loud horn from stage can be heard as well]
  • Unknown: Wait wait wait wait [hands mic to Elon]
  • Crowd: [laughter]
  • Elon: [poses]
  • Crowd: [laughter, booing starts to be heard over laughter]
  • Elon: I'm rich bitch
  • Crowd: [some sound, hard to hear over horns from stage followed by music from the DJ drowning out the crowd; sounds like some booing and some cheering]
• Video 4
  • Dave: Talib Kweli my good friend [crowd cheers] is currently banned from Twitter.
  • Crowd: [laughter]
  • Dave: He goes home to [unintelligible], Kweli. [hands mic to Elon]
  • Elon: Ahh waa. Twitter cu-customer service right here.
  • Crowd: [weak laughter]
  • Elon: We'll get right on that.
  • Crowd: [weak booing, gets stronger over time through next statement, until cut off by Dave]
  • Elon: Dave, you should be on Twitter.
  • Dave: If you. Let me tell you something. Wait. Radio, where's your phone?
  • Dave: Listen. Years ago, this is true, I'll tell you two quick Twitter stories then we'll go home.
  • Crowd: [weak laughter]
  • Dave: Years ago, I went to love on the Twitter. I put my name in, and it said that you can't use famous people's names.
  • Crowd: [weak laughter]
  • Dave: And that my name was already in use, it's true.
  • Dave: So I look online to see who's using my name and it turns out it was a fake Dave Chappelle. And I was like, what the fuck? And I started to shut him down, but I read the n***** tweets. And this is shocking. This motherfucker, Elon, was hilarious.
  • Crowd: [weak laughter, someone yells out "damn right"]
  • Dave: So I figured, you know what, I'm gonna let him drop. And everybody will think I'm saying all this funny shit, and I don't even have to say this stuff. And it was great. Every morning I wake up and get some coffee and laugh at fake Dave Chappelle's tweets.
  • Dave: But then
  • Crowd: [loud sounds, can hear someone say "whoa"]
  • Dave: [blocks stage light with hand so he can see into the crowd, looks into crowd] Fight. Will you cut that shit out, you anti-[unintelligible; lots of people are reporting this as facist, which is plausible, making the statement about "anti-facists"] n*****?
  • Crowd: [loud sounds, can hear some jeers and boos]

Chat log exhibits from Twitter v. Musk case

2022-10-01 08:00:00

This is a scan/OCR of Exhibits H and J from the Twitter v. Musk case, with some of the conversations de-interleaved and of course converted from a fuzzy scan to text to make for easier reading.

I did this so that I could easily read this and, after reading it, I've found that most accountings of what was said are, in one way or another, fairly misleading. Since the texts aren't all that long, if you're interested in what they said, I would recommended that you just read the texts in their entirety (to the extent they're available — the texts make it clear that some parts of conversations are simply not included) instead of reading what various journalists excerpted, which seems to sometimes be deliberately misleading because selectively quoting allows them to write a story that matches their agenda and sometimes accidentally misleading because they don't know what's interesting about the texts.

If you want to compare these conversations to other executive / leadership conversations, you can compare them to Microsoft emails and memos that came out of the DoJ case against Microsoft and the Enron email dataset.

Since this was done using OCR, it's likely there are OCR errors. Please feel free to contact me if you see an error.

Exhibit H

• 2022-01-21 to 2022-01-24
  • Alex Shillings [IT specialist for SpaceX / Elon]: Elon- are you able to access your Twitter account ok? I saw a number of emails held in spam. Including some password resets attempts
  • Elon: I haven't tried recently
  • Elon: Am staying off twitter
  • Elon: Is my twitter account posting anything?
  • Alex: Not posting but I see one deactivation email and a dozen password reset emails. Assuming this is a scammer attempt but wanted to check to ensure you still had access to your Twitter
  • Elon: It Is someone trying to hack my twitter
  • Elon: But I have two-factor enabled with the confirmation app
  • Alex: OK, great to hear.
  • Alex: Yes -FaceTimed with them to confirm my identity(hah) and they are hopefully gonna reset your 2FA to SMS soon. Asking for an update now
  • Elon: Sounds good
  • Elon: I can also FaceTime with them if still a problem
  • Alex: Tldr; your account is considered high profile internally over there. So they've made it very hard to make changes like this by their teams. They are working through it...
  • Elon: Happy to FaceTime directly
  • Elon: Not sure how I was able to make Twitter work on this new phone, as I didn't use the backup code.
  • Alex: Connecting with their head of Trust & Safety now
  • Alex: I assume we used your old phone to verify the new, once upon a time
  • Elon: Oh yeah
  • Alex: They can fix it by disabling all 2FA for your account which will let you in and then you can re-enable it. Are you available in 90 mins to have them coordinate it?
  • Elon: ["liked" above]
  • Alex: I know things are in flux right now, but is EMDesk SpaceX still your primary calendar? I realize there a meeting on there in 1 hour. In case I should move this twitter fix out a bit.
  • Elon: Yeah
  • Elon: But I can step off the call briefly ta Face Time them if need be
  • Alex: Sounds good. And ideally I'm just texting you ta sign in once they disable 2FA and then you can immediately sign in and re-enable. No FaceTime needed.
  • Elon: ["liked" above]
  • Alex: Elon-we are ready to make the change if you are
  • Elon: ["liked" above]
  • Alex: 2FA disabled. Please try to log in now
  • Alex: Able to get back in ok?
  • Elon: ["liked" above]
  • Alex: And once in you can enable 2FA Settings> Security and account access> Security> 2FA Alex Stillings
  • Alex: App only is suggested
  • Elon: Thanks!
  • Alex: And reminder to save that backup code 👍
  • Elon: ["liked" above]


• 2022-03-05
  • Antonio Gracias [VC]: Wow...I saw your tweet re free speech. Wtf is going on Elon...
  • Elon: EU passed a law banning Russia Today and several other Russian news sources. We have been told to block their IP address.
  • Elon: Actually, I find their news quite entertaining
  • Elon: Lot of bullshit, but some good points too
  • Antonio: This is fucking nuts...you are totally right. I 100% agree with you.
  • Elon: We should allow it precisely bc we hate it...that is the ping of the American constitution.
  • Antonio: Exactly
  • Elon: Free speech matters mast when it's someone you hate spouting what you think is bullshit.
  • Antonio: I am 100% with you Elon. To the fucking mattresses no matter what .....this is a principle we need to fucking defend with our lives or we are lost to the darkness.
  • Antonio: Sorry for the swearing. I am getting excited.
  • Elon: ["loved" "I am 100%..."]
  • Elon: [2022-04-26] On a call. Free in 3O mins.
  • Antonio: Ok. I'll call you in 30


• 2022-03-24
  • TJ: can you buy Twitter and then delete it, please!? xx
  • TJ: America is going INSANE.
  • TJ: The Babylon Bee got suspension is crazy. Raiyah and I were talking about it today. It was a fucking joke. Why has everyone become so puritanical?
  • TJ: Or can you buy Twitter and make it radically free-speech?
  • TJ: So much stupidity comes from Twitter xx
  • Elon: Maybe buy it and change it to properly support free speech xx
  • Elon: ["liked" "Or can you buy Twitter..."]
  • TJ: I honestly think social media is the scourge of modern life, and the worst of all is Twitter, because it's also a news stream as well as a social platform, and so has more real-world standing than Tik Tok etc. But it's very easy to exploit and is being used by radicals for social engineering on a massive scale. And this shit is infecting the world. Please do do something to fight woke-ism. I will do anything to help! xx


• 2022-03-24 to 2022-04-06 [interleaved with above convo]
  • Joe Lonsdale [VC]: I love your "Twitter algorithm should be open source" tweet -I'm actually speaking to over 100 members of congress tomorrow at the GOP policy retreat and this is one of the ideas I'm pushing for reigning in crazy big tech. Now I can cite you so I'll sound less crazy myself :). Our public squares need to not have arbitrary sketchy censorship.
  • Elon: ["liked" above]
  • Elon: Absolutely
  • Elon: What we have right now is hidden corruption!
  • Joe: ["loved" above]
  • [2022-04-04]: Joe: Excited to see the stake in Twitter -awesome. "Back door man" they are saying haha. Hope you're able to influence it. I bet you the board doesn't even get full reporting or see any report of the censorship decisions and little cabals going on there but they should -the lefties on the board likely want plausible deniability !
  • Elon: ["liked" above]
  • [2022-04-16] Joe: Haha even Governor DeSantis just called me just now with ideas how to help you and outraged at that board and saying the public is rooting for you. Let me know if you or somebody on your side wants to chat w him. Would be fun to see you if you guys are around this weekend or the next few days.
  • Elon: Haha cool


• 2022-03-26
  • "jack jack" [presumably Jack Dorsey, former CEO of Twitter and CEO of Square]: Yes, a new platform is needed. It can't be a company. This is why I left.
  • jack: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1507777913042571267?s,=20&t=8z3h0h0JGSnt86Zuxd61Wg
  • Elon: Ok
  • Elon: What should it look like?
  • jack: I believe it must be an open source protocol, funded by a foundation of sorts that doesn't own the protocol, only advances it. A bit like what Signal has done. It can't have an advertising model. Otherwise you have surface area that governments and advertisers will try to influence and control. If it has a centralized entity behind it, it will be attacked. This isn't complicated work, it just has to be done right so it's resilient to what has happened to twitter.
  • Elon: Super interesting idea
  • jack: I'm off the twitter board mid May and then completely out of company. I intend to do this work and fix our mistakes. Twitter started as a protocol. It should have never been a company. That was the original sin.
  • Elon: I'd like to help if I am able to
  • jack: I wanted to talk with you about it after I was all clear, because you care so much, get it's importance, and could def help in immeasurable ways. Back when we had the activist come in, I tried my hardest to get you on our board, and our board said no. That's about the time I decided I needed to work to leave, as hard as it was for me.
  • Elon: ["loved" above]
  • jack: Do you have a moment to talk?
  • Elon: Bout to head out to dinner but can for a minute
  • jack: I think the main reason is the board is just super risk averse and saw adding you as more risk, which I thought was completely stupid and backwards, but I only had one vote, and 3% of company, and no dual class shares. Hard set up. We can discuss more.
  • Elon: Let's definitely discuss more
  • Elon: I think it's worth both trying to move Twitter in a better direction and doing something new that's decentralized
  • jack: It's likely the best option. I just have doubts. But open
  • Elon: ["liked above]


• 2022-03-26 to 2022-03-27
  • Elon to Egon Durban [private equity; Twitter board member]: This is Elon. Please call when you have a moment.
  • Elon: It is regarding the Twitter board.
  • Egon: Have follow-up. Let's chat today whenever convenient for you.


• 2022-03-27 to 2022-04-26 [interleaved with above]
  • Larry Ellison [Oracle founder and exec] Elon, I'd like to chat with you in the next day or so ... I do think we need another Twitter 👍
  • Elon: Want to talk now?
  • Larry: Sure.
  • [2022-04-17] Elon: Any interest in participating in the Twitter deal?
  • Larry: Yes ... of course 👍
  • Elon: Cool
  • Elon: Roughly what dollar size? Not holding you to anything, but the deal is oversubscribed, so I have to reduce or kick out some participants.
  • Larry: A billion ... or whatever you recommend
  • Elon: Whatever works for you. I'd recommend maybe $2B or more. This has very high potential and I'd rather have you than anyone else.
  • Larry: I agree that it has huge potential... and it would be lots of fun
  • Elon: Absolutely:)
  • [2022-04-26] Larry: Since you think I should come in for at least $2B... I'm in for $2B 👍
  • Elon: Haha thankss:)


• 2022-03-27 to 2022-03-31 [group chat with Egon Durban, "Martha Twitter NomGov", Brett Taylor [CEO of Salesforce and Chairman of Twitter board], "Parag" [presumably Parag Agrawal, CEO of Twitter, and Elon Musk]
  • Egon: Hi everyone Parag (Ceo), Bret (Chairman) and Martha (head of gov) -You are connected w Elon. He is briefed on my conversations w you. Elon -everyone excited about prospect of you being involved and on board. Next step is for you to chat w three of them so we can move this forward quickly. Maybe we can get this done next few days🤞
  • Elon: Thanks Egon
  • Parag: Hey Elon - great to be connected directly. Would love to chat! Parag
  • Martha: Hey Elon, I'm Martha chair of Twitter nomgov- know you've talked to Bret and parag - keen to have a chat when you have time - im in Europe (also hope covid not too horrible as I hear you have it)
  • Parag: Look forward to meeting soon! Can you let us know when you are able to meet in the Bay Area in the next couple of days?
  • Martha: Hey Elon, I'm Martha chair of Twitter nomgov - know you've talked to Bret and parag -I'm v keen to have a chat when you have time - im in Europe but will make anything work
  • Elon: Sounds good. Perhaps a call late tonight central time works? I'm usually up until ~3am.
  • Martha: If ok with you I'll try you 10am CET (lam PST) looking forward to meeting you
  • Elon: Sure
  • Martha: Thanks v much for the time Elon -pis let us know who in your office our GC can talk to -sleep well!
  • Elon: You're most welcome. Great to talk!


• 2022-03-27 [interleaved with above]
  • Brett Taylor: This is Bret Taylor. Let me know when you have a minute to speak today.Just got off with Parag and I know he is eager to speak with you today as well. Flexible all day
  • Elon: Later tonight would work - maybe 7pm? I have a minor case of Covid, so am a little under the weather.
  • Brett: Sorry to hear -it can knock you out. 7pm sounds great
  • Elon: ["liked above]


• 2022-03-27
  • Parag: Would love to talk. Please let me know what time works - I'm super flexible. -Parag
  • Elon: Perhaps tonight around 8?
  • Parag: That works! Look forward to talking.
  • Elon: ["liked" above]
  • Elon: Just finishing a Tesla Autopilot engineering call
  • Parag: ["liked" above]


• 2022-03-27 to 2022-04-24 [interleaved with above]
  • "Dr Jabour": Hi E,Pain settling down? Time for a latter-day Guttenburg to bring back free speech ..... and buy Twitter.
  • [2022-04-04] Elon: ["liked" above]
  • [2022-04-24] Jabour: Hi E,looks like a TWITTER board member scurrying around unbalanced trying to deal with your offer.... Am loving your tactics, ( vid taken fro my house on Monica beach)-Brad
  • Elon: ["loved" above]


• 2022-03-29 to 2022-04-01 [interleaved with above]
  • Will MacAskill [co-creator of effective altruism movement, Oxford professor, Chair of board for Global Priorities Institute at Oxford]: Hey - I saw your poll on twitter about Twitter and free speech. I'm not sure if this is what's on your mind, but my collaborator Sam Bankman-Fried (https://www.forbes.com/profile/sam-bankman-fried/?sh=4de9866a4449) has for a while been potentially interested in purchasing it and then making it better for the world. If you want to talk with him about a possible joint effort in that direction, his number is [redacted] and he's on Signal.
  • Elon: Does he have huge amounts of money?
  • Will: Depends on how you define "huge"! He's worth $24B, and his early employees (with shared values) bump that to $30B. I asked about how much he could in principle contribute and he said: "~$1-3b would be easy-$3-8b I could do ~$8-15b is maybe possible but would require financing"
  • Will: If you were interested to discuss the idea I asked and he said he'd be down to meet you in Austin
  • Will: He's based in the Bahamas normally. And I might visit Austin next week, if you'd be around?
  • Will: That's a start
  • Will: Would you like me to intro you two via text?
  • Elon: You vouch for him?
  • Will: Very much so! Very dedicated to making the long-term future of humanity go well
  • Elon: Ok then sure
  • Will: Great! Will use Signal
  • Will: (Signal doesn't work; used imessage instead)
  • Elon: Ok
  • Will: And in case you want to get a feel for Sam, here's the Apr 1st tweet from his foundation, the Future Fund, which I'm advising on -I thought you might like it:
  • Will: https://twitter.com/ftxfuturefund/status/1509924452422717440?s=20&t=0qjM58KUj49xSGa0qae97Q
  • Will: And here's the actual (more informative) launch tweet· moving $100M-$1B this year to improve the future of humanity:
  • Will: https://twitter.com/ftxfuturefund/status/1498350483206860801


• 2022-03-29 to 2022-04-14
  • Mathias Döpfner [CEO and 22% owner of Axel Springer, president of Federal Association of Digital Publishers and Newspaper Publishers]: Why don't you buy Twitter? We run it for you. And establish a true platform of free speech. Would be a real contribution to democracy.
  • Elon: Interesting idea
  • Mathias: I'm serious. It's doable. Will be fun.
  • [2022-04-04] Mathias: Congrats to the Twitter invest! Fast execution 🤩 Shall we discuss wether we should join that project? I was serious with my suggestion.
  • Elon: Sure, happy to talk
  • Mathias: I am going to miami tomorrow for a week. Shall we speak then or Wednesday and take it from there?
  • Elon: Sure
  • [2022-04-06] Mathias: A short call about Twitter?
  • Mathias: # Status Quo: It is the de facto public town square, but it is a problem that it does not adhere to free speech principles. => so the core product is pretty good, but (i) it does not serve democracy, and (ii) the current business model is a dead end as reflected by flat share price. # Goal: Make Twitter the global backbone of free speech, an open market place of ideas that truly complies with the spirit of the first amendment and shift the business model to a combination of ad-supported and paid to support quality # Game Plan: 1.),,Solve Free Speech" 1a) Step 1: Make it censorship-FREE by radically reducing Terms of Services (now hundreds of pages) to the following: Twitter users agree to: (1) Use our service to send spam or scam users, (2) Promote violence, (3) Post illegal pornography. 🙃 1b) Step 2: Make Twitter censorship-RESISTANT • Ensure censorship resistance by implementing measures that warrant that Twitter can't be censored long term, regardless of which government and management • How? Keep pushing projects at Twitter that have been working on developing a decentralized social network protocol (e.g., BlueSky). It's not easy, but the backend must run on decentralized infrastructure, APls should become open (back to the roots! Twitter started and became big with open APIs). • Twitter would be one of many clients to post and consume content. • Then create a marketplace for algorithms, e.g., if you're a snowflake and don't want content that offends you pick another algorithm. 2.) ,,Solve Share Price" Current state of the business: • Twitters ad revenues grow steadily and for the time being, are sufficient to fund operations. • MAUs are flat, no structural growth • Share price is flat, no confidence in the existing business model and/or
  • [2022-04-14] Mathias: Our editor of Die Welt just gave an interview why he left Twitter. What he is criticising is exactly what you most likely want to change. I am thrilled to discuss twitters future when you are ready. So exciting.
  • Elon: Interesting!


• 2022-03-31 to 2022-04-01 [group chat with Bret Taylor, Parag, and Elon Musk, interleaved with some of the above]
  • Elon: I land in San Jose tomorrow around 2pm and depart around midnight. My Tesla meetings are flexible, so I can meet anytime in those 10 hours.
  • Bret: By "tomorrow" do you mean Thursday or Friday?
  • Elon: Today
  • Parag: I can make any time in those 10 hours work.
  • Bret: I land in Oakland at 8:30pm. Perhaps we can meet at 9:30pm somewhere? I am working to see if I can move up my flight from NYC to land earlier in the meantime
  • Bret: Working on landing earlier and landing in San Jose so we can have dinner near you. Will keep you both posted in real time
  • Bret: Ok, successfully moved my flight to land at 6:30pm in San Jose. Working on a place we can meet privately
  • Elon: Sounds good
  • Elon: Crypto spam on Twitter really needs to get crushed. It's a major blight on the user experience and they scam so many innocent people.
  • Bret: It sounds like we are confirming 7pm at a private residence near San Jose. Our assistants reached out to Jehn on logistics. Let me know if either of you have any concerns or want to move things around. Looking forward to our conversation.
  • Parag: Works for me. Excited to see you both in person!
  • Elon: Jehn had a baby and I decided to try having no assistant for a few months
  • Elon: Likewise
  • Bret: The address is [redacted]
  • Bret: Does 7pm work for you Elon?
  • Elon: Probably close to that time. Might only be able to get there by 7:30, but will try for earlier.
  • Bret: Sounds good. I am going to be a bit early because my plane is landing earlier but free all evening so we can start whenever you get there and Parag and I can catch up in the meantime
  • Bret: This wins for the weirdest place I've had a meeting recently. I think they were looking for an airbnb near the airport and there are tractors and donkeys 🤷
  • Elon: Haha awesome
  • Elon: Maybe Airbnb's algorithm thinks you love tractors and donkeys (who doesn't!)
  • Elon: On my way. There in about 15 mins.
  • Bret: And abandoned trucks in case we want to start a catering business after we meet
  • Elon: Sounds like a post-apocalyptic movie set
  • Bret: Basically yes
  • Elon: Great dinner:)
  • Bret: Really great. The donkeys and dystopian surveillance helicopters added to the ambiance
  • Elon: Definitely one for the memory books haha
  • Parag: Memorable for multiple reasons. Really enjoyed it


• 2022-03-31 to 2022-04-02 [group message with Will MacAskill, "Sam BF", and Elon Musk, interleaved with above]
  • Will: Hey, here's introducing you both, Sam and Elon. You both have interests in games, making the very long-run future go well, and buying Twitter. So I think you'd have a good conversation!
  • Sam: Great to meet you Elon-happy to chat about Twitter (or other things) whenever!
  • Elon: Hi!
  • Elon: Maybe we can talk later today? I'm in Germany.
  • Sam: I'm on EST-could talk sometime between 7pm and 10pm Germany time today?


• 2022-04-03 to 2022-04-04 [group chat with Jared Birchall, "Martha Twitter NomGov", and Elon Musk]
  • Elon: Connecting Martha (Twitter Norn/Gov) with Jared (runs my family office).
  • Elon: Jared, there is important paperwork to be done to allow for me to hopefully join the Twitter board.
  • Martha: Thanks Elon - appreciate this - hi Jared - I'm going to put Sean Edgett in touch with you who is GC at Twitter
  • Jared: Sounds good. Please have him call anytime or send the docs to my email: [...]
  • Martha: 👍
  • Martha: Elon - are you available to chat for 5 mins?
  • Martha: I'd like to relay the board we just finished
  • Elon: Sure
  • [2022-04-04] Martha: Morning elon -you woke up to quite a storm.... Great to hear from Bret that you agree we can move this along v quickly today -Jared, I'm assuming it's you I should send the standstill they discussed to you? It will be the same as egon and silverlake undertook. Let me know if should go to someone else - we're really keen to get this done in next couple of hours. Thank you
  • Elon: You can send to both of us
  • Elon: Sorry, I just woke up when Bret called! I arrived from Berlin around 4am.
  • Martha: No apologies necessary. Let's How would you like it sent? If by email, pis let me know where
  • Elon: Text or email
  • Elon: My email is [redacted]
  • Martha: 👍
  • Martha: <Attachment-application/vnd.openxmlformatsofficedocument.wordprocessingml.document-Twitter Cooperation Agreement-Draft April 4 2022.docx>
  • Martha: Here it is -also gone by email Same as Egon's but even more pared back
  • Martha: Just copying you both to confirm sent agreement-v keen to get this done quickly as per your conversation


• 2022-04-03
  • Bret: Just spoke to Martha. Let me know when you have time to talk today or tomorrow. Sounds like you are about to get on a flight — flexible
  • Elon: Sounds good. I'm just about to take off from Berlin to Austin, but free to talk anytime tomorrow.
  • Bret: I am free all day. Text when you are available. Planning to take a hike with my wife and that is the only part where my reception may be spotty. Looking forward to speaking. And looking forward to working with you!
  • Elon: ["liked" above]


• 2022-04-03 [interleaved with above]
  • Parag: I expect you heard from Martha and Bret already. I'm super excited about the opportunity and look forward to working closely and finding ways to use your time as effectively as possible to improve Twitter and the public conversation.
  • Elon: Sounds great!


• 2022-04-03
  • jack: I heard good things are happening
  • Elon: ["liked" above]


• 2022-04-04
  • Ken Griffin [CEO of Citadel]: Love it !!
  • Elon: ["liked" above]


• 2022-04-04
  • Bret Taylor: Hey are you available?
  • Bret Taylor: Given the SEC filing, would like to speak asap to coordinate on communications. Call asap when you are back


• 2022-04-04 [interleaved with above]
  • [redacted]: Congratulations!! The above article ☝️ [seemingly referring to https://www.revolver.news/2022/04/elon-musk-buy-twitter-free-speech-tech-censorship-american-regime-war/] was laying out some of the things that might happen: Step 1: Blame the platform for its users Step 2. Coordinated pressure campaign Step 3: Exodus of the Bluechecks Step 4: Deplatforming "But it will not be easy. It will be a war. Let the battle begin."
  • [redacted]: It will be a delicate game of letting right wingers back on Twitter and how to navigate that (especially the boss himself, if you're up for that) I would also lay out the standards early but have someone who has a savvy cultural/political view to be the VP of actual enforcement
  • [redacted]: A Blake Masters type


• 2022-04-04 to 2022-04-17 [interleaved with above]
  • Egon Durban: Hi -if you have a few moments call anytime? Flying to UK
  • Elon: Just spoke to Bret. His call woke me up haha. Got it from Berlin at 4am.
  • Egon: 🙏
  • [2022-04-17] Elon: You're calling Morgan Stanley to speak poorly of me ...


• 2022-04-04
  • Elon to Jared Birchall: Please talk to Martha about the filing
  • Jared: ok


• 2022-04-04
  • Bret Taylor: Do you have five minutes?
  • Elon: Sure


• 2022-04-04
  • Elon to Parag: Happy to talk if you'd like
  • Parag: That will be very helpful. Please call me when you have a moment
  • Elon: Just on the phone with Jared. Will call as soon as that's done.
  • Parag: ["liked" above]


• 2022-04-04
  • "Kyle": So can you bust us out of Twitter Jail now lol
  • Elon: I do not have that ability
  • Kyle: Lol I know I know. Big move though, love to see it


• 2022-04-04 [group chat with Egon Durban, "Martha Twitter NomGov", Brett Taylor, Parag Agrawal, and Elon Musk, interleaved with above]
  • Elon: Thank you for considering me for the Twitter board, but, after thinking it over, my current time commitments would prevent me from being an effective board member. This may change in the future. Elon


• 2022-04-04 [interleaved with some of above]:
  • Joe Rogan: Are you going to liberate Twitter from the censorship happy mob?
  • Elon: I will provide advice, which they may or may not choose to follow


• 2022-04-04
  • Bret Taylor: https://twitter.com/trungtohan/status/1510994320471429131?s=10&t=qrv_fOhTfUzRVDe_IbJKlQ
  • Elon: ["laughed at" above]


• 2022-04-04 to 2022-04-05 [interleaved with above]
  • Parag: You should have an updated agreement in your email. I'm available to chat.
  • Elon: Approved
  • Parag: ["loved" above]
  • Parag: Have a few mins to chat? I'm eager to move fast
  • Elon: Sure, I'm just on a SpaceX engine review call.
  • Parag: Please call me after
  • Parag: I'm excited to share that we're appointing @elonmusk to our board! Through conversations with Elon in recent weeks, it became clear to me that he would bring great value to our Board. Why? Above all else, he's both a passionate believer and intense critic of the service which is exactly what we need on Twitter, and in the Boardroom, to make us stronger in the long-term. Welcome Elon!
  • Elon: Sounds good
  • Elon: Sending out shortly?
  • Parag: https://twitter.com/paraga/status/1511320953598357505?s=21&t=g9oXkMyPGFahuVNDKcoBa5A
  • Elon: Cool
  • Parag: Super excited!
  • Elon: Likewise!
  • Elon: Just had a great conversation with Jack! Are you free to talk later tonight?
  • Parag: Yeah, what time?
  • Elon: Would be great to unwind permanent bans, except for spam accounts and those that explicitly advocate violence.
  • Elon: 7pm CA time? Or anytime after that.
  • Parag: 7p works! Talk soon
  • Elon: Calling back in a few mins
  • Parag: ["liked" above]
  • Elon: Pretty good summary
  • Elon: https://twitter.com/stevenmarkryan/status/1511489781104275456?s=1O&t=LprG6-7KefKLzNX133IpjQ


• 2022-04-05 [group chat with Jared Birchall, "Martha Twitter NomGov", and Elon Musk]
  • Martha: I'm so thrilled you're joining the board. I apologise about the bump of the first agreement-I'm not a good manager of lawyers. I really look forward to meeting you.
  • Elon: Thanks Martha, same here.


• 2022-04-05 [interleaved with above]
  • Bret: I am excited to work with you and grateful this worked out
  • Elon: Likewise


• 2022-04-05 [interleaved with above]
  • jack: Thank you for joining!
  • jack: https://twitter.com/jack/status/1511329369473564677?s=21&t=DdrUUFvJPD7Kf-jXjBogIg
  • Elon: Absolutely. Hope I can be helpfull
  • jack: Immensely. Parag is an incredible engineer. The board is terrible. Always here to talk through anything you want.
  • Elon: When is a good time to talk confidentially?
  • jack: anytime
  • Elon: Thanks, great conversation!
  • jack: Always! I couldn't be happier you're doing this. I've wanted it for a long time. Got very emotional when I learned it was finally possible.
  • Elon: ["loved" above]
  • Elon: Please be super vocal if there is something dumb I'm doing or not doing. That would be greatly appreciated.
  • jack: I trust you but def will do
  • Elon: ["liked" above]
  • jack: https://twitter.com/MattNavarra/status/1511773605239078914
  • jack: Looks like there's a "verified" account in the swamp of despair over there. https://m.facebook.com/Elonmuskoffifref=nf&pn_ref=story&rc=p (promoting crypto too!)
  • Elon: Haha
  • [2022-04-26] jack: I want to make sure Parag is doing everything possible to build towards your goals until close. He is really great at getting things done when tasked with specific direction. Would it make sense for me you and him to get on a call to discuss next steps and get really clear on what's needed? He'd be able to move fast and clear then. Everyone is aligned and this will help even
  • Elon: Sure
  • jack: great when is best for you? And please let me know where/ifyou want my help. I just want to make this amazing and feel bound to it
  • Elon: How about 7pm Central?
  • Elon: Your help would be much appreciated
  • Elon: I agreed with everything you said to me
  • jack: Great! Will set up. I won't let this fail and will do whatever it takes. It's too critical to humanity.
  • Elon: Absolutely
  • jack: <Attachment-image/jpeg-Screen Shot 2022-04-26 at 15.05.00.jpeg>
  • jack: I put together a draft list to make the discussion efficient. Goal is to align around 1) problems we're trying to solve, 2) longterm priorities, 3) short-tenn actions, all using a higher level guide you spoke about. Think about what you'd add/remove. Getting this nailed will increase velocity.
  • jack: Here's meeting link for 7pm your time
  • jack: [meeting URL]
  • Elon: Great list of actions
  • jack: We're on hangout whenever you're ready. No rush. Just working on refining doc.
  • Elon: ["liked" above]
  • Elon: It's asking me for a Google account login
  • Elon: You and I are in complete agreement. Parag is just moving far too slowly and trying to please people who will not be happy no matter what he does.
  • jack: At least it became clear that you can't work together. That was clarifying.
  • Elon: Yeah


• 2022-04-06
  • Ira Ehrenpreis [VC]: If you plan on joining the Nom/Gov or Comp Committees, lmk and I can give you some tips! Haha! 🤪
  • Elon: Haha, I didn't even want to join the Twitter board! They pushed really hard to have me join.
  • Ira: You're a pushover! 😂
  • Ira: And you already got them to try the edit! Oh yeah... it had already been in the works. Sure.
  • Elon: It was actually in the works, but I didn't know.


• 2022-04-06 to 2022-04-08
  • Justin Roiland [co-creator of Rick and Morty]: I fucking love that you are majority owner of Twitter. My friends David and Daniel have a program that verifies identity that would be nice to connect to Twitter. As in, if people chose to use it, it could verify that they are a real person and not a troll farm. I should introduce you to them.
  • Elon: I just own 9% of Twitter, so don't control the company.
  • Elon: Will raise the identity issue with Parag (CEO).


• 2022-04-06 to 2022-04-14
  • Gayle King [co-host for CBS Mornings and editor for The Oprah Magazine]: Gayle here! Have you missed me (smile) Are you ready for to do a proper sit down with me so much to discuss! especially with your twitter play ... what do I need to do ???? Ps I like a twitter edit feature with a24 hour time limit ... we all say shit we regret want to take back in the heat of the moment ...
  • Elon: Twitter edit button is coming
  • Gayle: The whole Twitter thing getting blown out of proportion
  • Elon: Owning ~9% is not quite control
  • Gayle: I never thought that it did ... and I'm not good in math
  • Elon: Twitter should move more to the center, but Parag already thought that should be the case before I came along.
  • Elon: ["laughed at" "I never thought..."]
  • [2022-04-14] Gayle: ELON! You buying twitter or offering to buy twitter Wow! Now Don't you think we should sit down together face to face this is as the kids of today say a "gangsta move" I don't know know how shareholders turn this down .. like I said you are not like the other kids in the class ....
  • Elon: ["loved above]
  • [2022-04-18] Elon: Maybe Oprah would be interested in joining the Twitter board if my bid succeeds. Wisdom about humanity and knowing what is right are more important than so-called "board governance" skills, which mean pretty much nothing in my experience.


• 2022-04-07 to 2022-04-08 [interleaved with above]
  • Parag: A host of ideas around this merit exploration - even lower friction ones than this.
  • Elon: I have a thought about this that could take out two birds with one stone
  • Elon: Btw, what's your email?
  • Parag: [...]
  • Parag: Would you be able to do a q&a for employees next week virtually? My travel is causing too long of a delay and only about 10-15% of audience will be in person so we will be optimizing for virtual anyways. Would any of Wed/Thu 11a pacific next week work for you for a 45 min video q&a?- else I can suggest other times. Trying to maximize attendance across global timezones.
  • Parag: Would love to hear more when we speak nexts-do you have any availability tomorrow?
  • Elon: Sure
  • Elon: It would be great to get an update from the Twitter engineering team so that my suggestions are less dumb.
  • Parag: Yep-will set up a product+ eng conversation ahead of q&a -they said, I expect most questions to not get into specific ideas / depth - but more around what you believe about the future of Twitter and why it matters, why you can personally, how to want to engage with us, what you hope to see change... -but also some from people who are upset that you are involved and generally don't like you for some reason. As you said yesterday, goal is for people to just hear you speak directly instead of make assumptions about you from media stories. Would Thursday 11a pacific work next week for the q&a?
  • Elon: 11am PT on Wed works great
  • Elon: Exactly. Thurs 11 PT works.
  • Parag: Ok cool. So will confirm a convo Wed 11a PT with small eng and product leads. And the AMA on Thu 11a PT.
  • Parag: Also: my email to company about AMA leaked already+ lots of leaks from internal slack messages: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/04/07/musk-twitter-employee-outcry/ -I think there is a large silent majority that is excited about you bring on the board, so this isn't representative. Happy to talk about it-none of this is a surprise.
  • Elon: Seedy
  • Elon: *awesome (damn autocorrect!)
  • Elon: As expected. Yeah, would be good to sync up. I can talk tomorrow night or anytime this weekend. I love our conversations!
  • Parag: I'm totally flexible after 530p pacific tomorrow -let me know what works. And yes this is expected -and I think a good thing to move us in a positive direction. Despite the turmoil internally-I think this is very helpful in moving the company forward.
  • Elon: Awesome!
  • Elon: I have a ton of ideas, but lmk if I'm pushing too hard. I just want Twitter to be maximum amazing.
  • Parag: I want to hear all the ideas -and I'll tell you which ones I'll make progress on vs. not. And why.
  • Parag: And in this phase -just good to spend as much time with you. + have my Product and Eng team talk to you to ingest information on both sides.
  • Elon: I would like to understand the technical details of the Twitter codebase. This will help me calibrate the dumbness of my suggestions.
  • Elon: I wrote heavy duty software for 20 years
  • Parag: I used to be CTO and have been in our codebase for a long time.
  • Parag: So I can answer many many of your questions.
  • Elon: I interface way better with engineers who are able to do hardcore programming than with program managero/ MBA types of people.
  • Elon: ["liked" "I used to be CTO..."]
  • Elon: 🔥🔥
  • Parag: in our next convo-treat me like an engineer instead of CEO and lets see where we get to. I'll know after that convo who might be the best engineer to connect you to.
  • Elon: Frankly, I hate doing mgmt stuff. I kinda don't think anyone should be the boss of anyone. But I love helping solve technical/product design problems.
  • Elon: You got it!
  • Parag: Look forward to speaking tomorrow. Do you like calendar invites sent to your email address?
  • Elon: ["liked" above]
  • Elon: I already put the two dates on my calendar, but no problem to send me supplementary stuff.
    
  • Parag: I'm available starting now if you want to have a chat about engineering at Twitter. Let me know!
  • Elon: Call in about 45 mins?
  • Parag ["liked" above]
  • Elon: Will call back shortly
  • Elon: <Attachment• image/pngs-Screenshot 2022-04-08 at 10.10.09 PM.png>
  • Elon: I am so sick of stuff like this
  • Parag: We should be catching this
  • Elon: Yeah


• 2022-04-09 to 2022-04-24
  • Kimbal Musk [Elon's brother and owner of The Kitchen Restaurant Group]: I have an idea for a blockchain social media system that does both payments and short text messages/links like twitter. You have to pay a tiny amount to register your message on the chain, which will cut out the vast majority of spam and bots. There is no throat to choke, so free speech is guaranteed.
  • Kimbal: The second piece of the puzzle is a massive real-time database that keeps a copy of all blockchain messages in memory, as well as all message sent to or received by you, your followers and those you follow.
  • Kimbal: Third piece is a twitter-like app on your phone that accessed the database in the cloud.
  • Kimbal: This could be massive
  • Kimbal: I'd love to learn more. I've dug deep on Web3 (not crytpo as much} and the voting powers are amazing and verified. Lots you could do here for this as well
  • Elon: I think a new social media company is needed that is based on a blockchain and includes payments
  • Kimbal: Would have them pay w a token associated w the service? You'd have to hold the token in your wallet to post. Doesn't have to expensive it will grow over time in value
  • Kimbal: Blockchain prevents people from deleting tweets. Pros and cons, but let the games begin!
  • Kimbal: If you did use your own token, you would not needs advertising it's a pay for use service but at a very low price
  • Kimbal: With scale it will be a huge business purely for the benefit of the users. I hate advertisements
  • Elon: ["liked" above]
  • Kimbal: There are some good ads out there. The voting component of interested users (only vote if you want to) could vote on ads that add value. The advertisers would have to stake a much larger amount of tokens, but other than there is no charge for the ads. It will bring out the creatives and the ads can politically incorrect/art/activision/philanthropy
  • Kimbal: Voting rights could also crowdsource kicking scammers out. It drives me crazy when I see people promoting the scam that you're giving away Bitcoin. Lots of bad people out there
  • [2022-04-24] Elon: Do you want to participate in the twitter transaction?
  • Kimbal: Let's discuss tomorrow
  • Elon: Ok
  • Kimbal: I can break away from my group a lot of the time. Will text tomorrow afternoon and if you're free we can meet up
  • Elon: Ok


• 2022-04-09 [interleaved with above]
  • Parag: You are free to tweet "is Twitter dying?" or anything else about Twitter -but it's my responsibility to tell you that it's not helping me make Twitter better in the current context. Next time we speak, I'd like to you provide you perspective on the level of internal distraction right now and how it hurting our ability to do work. I hope the AMA will help people get to know you, to understand why you believe in Twitter, and to trust you -and I'd like the company to get to a place where we are more resilient and don't get distracted, but we aren't there right now.
  • Elon: What did you get done this week?
  • Elon: I'm not joining the board. This is a waste of time.
  • Elon: Will make an offer to take Twitter private.
  • Parag: Can we talk?


• 2022-04-09 to 2022-04-10 [interleaved with above]
  • Bret: Parag just called me and mentioned your text conversation. Can you talk?
  • Elon: Please expect a take private offer
  • Bret: I saw the text thread. Do you have five minutes so I can understand the context? I don't currently
  • Elon: Fixing twitter by chatting with Parag won't work
  • Elon: Drastic action is needed
  • Elon: This is hard to do as a public company, as purging fake users will make the numbers look terrible, so restructuring should be done as a private company.
  • Elon: This is Jack's opinion too.
  • Bret: Can you take 10 minutes to talk this through with me? It has been about 24 hours since you joined the board. I get your point, but just want to understand about the sudden pivot and make sure I deeply understand your point of view and the path forward
  • Elon: I'm about to take off, but can talk tomorrow
  • Bret: Thank you
  • Bret: Heyo-can you speak this evening? I have seen your tweets and feel more urgency about understanding your path forward
  • [next day] Bret: Acknowledging your text with Parag yesterday that you are declining to join the board. This will be reflected in our 8-K tomorrow. I've asked our team to share a draft with your family office today. I'm looking forward to speaking today.
  • Elon: Sounds good
  • Elon: It is better, in my opinion, to take Twitter private, restructure and return to the public markets once that is done. That was also Jack's view when I talked to him.


• 2022-04-12
  • Michael Kives [Hollywood talent agent]: Have any time to see Philippe Laffont in Vancouver tomorrow?
  • Elon: Maybe
  • Michael: Any particular time of best?
  • Michael: any time best?
  • Elon: What exactly does he want?
  • Michael: Has some ideas on Twitter Owns a billion of Tesla Did last 2 or 3 SpaceX rounds And-wants to get into Boring in the future (I told him to help with recruiting) You could honestly do like 20 mins in your hotel He's super smart, good guy
  • Elon: Ok, he can come by tonight. Room 1001 at Shangri-La.
  • Michael: Need to find you a great assistant! I'm headed to bed I'll tell Philippe to email you when he lands tonight in case you're still up and want to meet
  • Michael: https://twitter.com/sbf_ftx/status/1514588820641128452?s=21&tZ4pA_Ct35ud6M60g3ng
  • Michael: Could be cool to do this with Sam Bankman-Fried
  • [2022-04-28] Elon: Twitter is obviously not going to be turned into some right wing nuthouse. Aiming to be as broadly inclusive as possible. Do the right thing for vast majority of Americans.
  • Michael: ["liked" above]


• 2022-04-13 to 2022-04-15
  • Elon to Bret: After several days of deliberation -this is obviously a matter of serious gravity-I have decided to move forward with taking Twitter private. I will send you an offer letter tonight, which will be public in the morning. Happy to connect you with my team if you have any questions. Thanks, Elon
  • Bret: Acknowledged
  • Bret: Confirming I received your email. Also, please use [...] going forward, my personal email.
  • Elon: Will do
  • [2022-04-14] Bret: Elon, as you saw from our press release, the board is in receipt of your letter and is evaluating your proposal to determine the course of action that it believes is in the best interest of Twitter and all of its stockholders. We will be back in touch with you when we have completed that work. Bret
  • Elon: Sounds good
  • [2022-04-17] Bret: Elon, I am just checking in to reiterate that the board Is seriously reviewing the proposal in your letter. We are working on a formal response as quickly as we can consistent with our fiduciary duties. Feel free to reach out anytime.
  • Elon: ["liked" above]


• 2022-04-14
  • Elon to Steve Davis [President of Boring Company]: My Plan B is a blockchain-based version of twitter, where the "tweets" are embedded in the transaction as comments. So you'd have to pay maybe 0.1 Doge per comment or repost of that comment.
  • Elon: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1514564966564651008?s=1O&t=OfO6fmJ_4DuQrOrdkKIT0gQ Self
  • Steve: Amazing! Not sure which plan to root for. If Plan B wins, let me know if blockchain engineers would be helpful.


• 2022-04-14 [group chat with Will MacAskill, Sam BF, and Elon Musk, interleaved with above]
  • Sam BF: Btw Elon-would love to talk about Twitter Also a post on how blockchain+Twitter could work:
  • Sam BF:https://twitter.com/sbf_ftx/status/1514588820641128452?s=21&t=n10hLHFilyMognjOucltw


• 2022-04-14 to 2022-04-16
  • Marc Merrill [co-founder and President of Riot Games]: https://ground.news/article/elon-musk-offers-to-buy-twitter-for-4139-billion_20a2b3
  • Marc: you are the hero Gotham needs - hell F'ing yes!


• 2022-04-14 to 2022-04-15
  • Jason Calacanis [VC]: You should raise your offer
  • Jason: $54.21
  • Jason: The perfect counter
  • Jason: You could easily clean up bots and spam and make the service viable for many more users —Removing bots and spam is a lot less complicated than what the Tesla self driving team is doing (based on hearing the last edge case meeting)
  • Jason: And why should blue check marks be limited to the elite, press and celebrities? How is that democratic?
  • Jason: The Kingdom would like a word.. https://twitter.com/Alwaleed_TalaI/status/1514615956986757127?s=20&t=2q4VfMBXrldYGj3vFN_r0w 😂😂😂
  • Jason: Back of the envelope... Twitter revenue per employee: $5B rev / 8k employees = $625K rev per employee in 2021 Google revenue per employee: $257B rev2/ 135K employee2= $1.9M per employee in 2021 Apple revenue per employee: $365B rev / 154k employees= $2.37M per employee in fiscal 2021
  • Jason: Twitter revenue per employee if 3k instead of 8k: $5B rev/ 3k employees= $1.66m rev per employee in 2021 (more industry standard)
  • Elon: ["emphasized" above]
  • Elon: Insane potential for improvement
  • Jason: <Attachment-image/gif-lMG_2241.GIF>
  • Jason: Day zero
  • Jason: Sharpen your blades boys 🗡️
  • Jason: 2 day a week Office requirement= 20% voluntary departures
  • Jason: https://twitter.com/jason/status/1515094823337832448?s=1O&t=CWr2U7sH4wVOsohPgjKRg
  • Jason: I mean, the product road map is beyond obviously
  • Jason: Premium feature abound ... and twitter blue has exactly zero [unknown emoji]
  • Jason: What committee came up with the list of dog shit features in Blue?!? It's worth paying to turn it off
  • Elon: Yeah, what an insane piece of shit!
  • Jason: Maybe we don't talk twitter on twitter OM @
  • Elon: Was just thinking that haha
  • Elon: Nothing said there so far is anything different from what I said publicly.
  • Elon: Btw, Parag is still on a ten day vacation in Hawaii
  • Jason: No reason to cut it short... in your first tour as ceo
  • Jason: (!!!)
  • Jason: Shouldn't he be in a war room right now?!?
  • Elon: Does doing occasional zoom calls while drinking fruity cocktails at the Four Seasons count?
  • Jason: 🤔
  • Jason: https://twitter.com/jason/status/1515427935263490053?s=10&t=4rQ_JIDXCDtHhOaXdGHJ5g
  • Jason: I'm starting a DAO
  • Jason: 😂😂😂
  • Jason: Money goes to buy twitter shares, if you don't wine money goes to open source twitter competitor 😂😂😂
  • Elon: ["liked" above]
  • [2022-04-23] Elon: I will be Universally beloved, since it is so easy to please everyone on twitter
  • Jason: It feels like everyone wants the same exact thing, and they will be patient and understanding of any changes ... Twitter Stans are a reasonable, good faith bunch
  • Jason: These dipshits spent a years on twitter blue to give people exactly..... Nothing they want! * Jason: Splitting revenue with video creators like YouTube could be huge unlock
  • Jason: We could literally give video creators 100% of their ad revenue up to $1m then do split
  • Elon: Absolutely
  • Jason: 5 Teams: 5 Northstar metrics 1. Legacy Opps: uptime, speed 2. Membership team: remove bots while getting users to pay far "Real Name Memberships" $5 a month $SO a year. Includes 24 hours response to customer service 3. Payments: % of users that have connected a bank account/made a deposit 4. Creator Team: get creators to publish to twitter first (musicians, You Tubers, tiktokers, etc) by giving them the best % split in the industry (and promotion) 5. Transparency Team: make the Algorithm & Moderation understandable and fair
  • Jason: I think those are the 5 critical pieces ... everyone agrees to "year one" sprint, including coming back to offices within the first 60 days (unless given special dispensation for extraordinary contribution)
  • Jason: Hard Reboot the organization
  • Jason: Feels like no one is setting priorities ruthlessly .. 12,000 working on whatever they want?!? No projects being cancelled?!
  • Jason: Move HQ to Austin, rent gigafactory excess space
  • Elon: Want to be a strategic advisor if this works out?
  • Elon: Want to be a strategic advisor to Twitter if this works out?
  • Jason: Board member, advisor, whatever ... you have my sword
  • Elon: ["loved" above]
  • Jason: If 2, 3 or 4 unlock they are each 250b+ markets
  • Jason: Payments is $250-500b, YouTube/creators is $250b+
  • Jason: Membership no one has tried really .... So hard to estimate. 1-5m paid members maybe @ Jason $50-100 a year? 250k corporate memberships @ 10k a year?
  • Elon: You are a mind reader
  • Jason: Put me in the game coach!
  • Jason: [unclear emoji]
  • Jason: Twitter CEO is my dream job
  • Jason: https://apple.news/AIDqUaC24Sguyc9S9krWlig
  • Jason: we should get Mr Beast to create for twitter ... we need to win the next two generations (millennials and Z are "meh" on twitter)
  • Elon: For sure
  • Jason: Just had the best idea eve.for monetization ... if you pay .01 per follower per year, you can DM all your followers upto 1x a day.
  • Jason: 500,000 follows = $5,000 and 1 DM them when 1 have new podcast episode, or I'm doing an event... or my new book comes out
  • Jason: And let folks slice and dice... so, you could DM all your twitter followers in Ber1in and invite them to the GigaRave
  • Jason: Oh my lord this would unlock the power of Twitter and goose revenue massively .... Who wouldn't pay for this!?!?
  • Jason: and if you over use the tool and are annoying folks would unfollow you ... so it's got a built in Jason safe guard {unlike email spam)
  • Jason: Imagine we ask Justin Beaver to come back and let him DM his fans ... he could sell $10m in merchandise or tickets instantly. Would be INSANE for power users and companies
  • Elon: Hell yeahl!
  • Elon: It will take a few months for the deal to complete before I'm actually in control
    


• 2022-04-14
  • [redacted]: Hey Elon -my name is Jake Sherman. I'm a reporter with Punchbowl News in Washington I cover Congress. Wonder if you're game to talk about how Twitter would change for politics if you were at the helm?


• 2022-04-14
  • Adeo Ressi [VC]: Would love you to buy Twitter and fix it 🙏
  • Elon: ["loved" above]


• 2022-04-14
  • Omead Afshar [Project Director for Office of CEO at Tesla]: Thank you for what you're doing. We all love you and are always behind you! Not having a global platform that is truly free speech is dangerous for all. Companies are all adopting some form of content moderation and it's all dependent on ownership on how it shifts and advertisers paying them, as you've said.
  • Omead: Who knew a Saudi Arabian prince had so much leverage and so much to say about twitter.


• 2022-04-20
  • Elon to Brian Kingston [investment management, real estate]: Not at all


• 2022-04-20 to 2022-04-22
  • Elon: Larry Ellison is interested in being part of the Twitter take-private
  • Jared: ["liked above]
  • Jared: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-19/ftx-ceo-bankman-fried-wants-to-fix-social-media-with-blockchain
  • Jared: <Attachmento-text/vcard - Sam Bankman-Fried.vcf>
  • Jared: He seems to point to a similar blockchain based idea Also, we now have the right software engineer for you to speak with about the blockchain idea. Do you want an intro? Or just contact info?
  • Elon: Who is this person and who recommended them?
  • Elon: The engineer
  • Elon: I mean
    
  • Elon: The idea of blockchain free speech has been around for a long time. The questions are really about how to implement it.
  • Jared: former spacex'r, current CTO at Matter Labs, a blockchain company. TBC is on the verge of hiring him.
  • Jared: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonykrose/
  • Elon: Ok
  • Jared: best to intro you via email?
  • Elon: Yeah
  • Jared: Investor calls are currently scheduled from 1pm to 3pm. They'd like to do a brief check in beforehand.
  • Elon: Ok
  • Elon: Whatever time works
  • Jared: ["liked" above]
  • Jared: I'll be dialing in to the calls as well. Let me know if you prefer that I'm there in person at the house or if remote is better.
  • Elon: Remote is fine


• 2022-04-22
  • "BL Lee": i have a twitter ceo candidate for you -bill gurley/benchmark. they were early investors as well so know all the drama. want to meet him?


• 2022-04-23
  • Elon to James Gorman [CEO, Morgan Stanley]: Thanks James, your unwavering support is deeply appreciated. Elon
  • Elon: I think the tender has a real chance


• 2022-04-23
  • Elon to Bret: Would it be possible for you and me to talk this weekend?
  • Elon: Or any group of people from the Twitter and my side
  • Bret: Yes, that would be great. I would suggest me and Sam Britton from Goldman on our side. Do you have time this afternoon / evening?
  • Elon: Sounds good
  • Elon: Whatever time works for you and Sam is good for me
  • Bret: Can we call you in 15 mins? 4:30pm PT (not sure what time zone you are in)
  • Bret: I can just call your mobile. Let me know if you prefer Zoom, conference call code, or something different
  • Elon: Sure
  • Elon: Mobile is fine
  • Bret: ["liked" above]
    
  • Bret: Just tried callings-please call whenever you are available
  • Elon: Calling shortly
  • Bret: Great thanks
  • Elon: Morgan Stanley needs to talk to me. I will call as soon as that's done.
  • Bret: No problem -here when you are ready
  • Elon: ["liked" above]
  • Bret: I understand our advisors just had a productive call. I am available to speak after you've debriefed with them.
  • Elon: Sounds good


• 2022-04-23 [interleaved with above]
  • Joe Rogan: I REALLY hope you get Twitter. If you do, we should throw a hell of a party.
  • Elon: 💯


• 2022-04-23 to 2022-04-26
  • "Mike Pop": For sure
  • Mike: defiantly things can be better and more culturally engaged
  • Mike: I think you're in a unique position to broker better AI to detect bots the second they pop up
  • Elon: ["liked" above]
  • [2022-04-026] Mike: When do I start boss
  • Elon: It will take at least a few months to dose the deal
  • Mike: ["loved" above]


• 2022-04-25
  • Bret: Time for a quick check in?
  • Bret: Will call you back
  • Bret: In a bit
  • Elon: Ok
  • Bret: https://twitter.com/btaylor/status/1518664708177362944?s=lO&t=9WqlCSZVMQdycPc314T
  • Elon: ["loved" above]
  • Elon: Thank you
  • Bret: Here to make this successful in any way I can
  • Elon: ["liked" above]
    


• 2022-04-25 to 2022-04-26 [interleaved with some above]
  • Elon to Parag: Can I call you later? I have the SpaceX exec staff meeting right now. Will be done in half an hour. Do you need to talk before then?
  • Parag: No -can talk in 30!
  • Elon: ["liked above]
  • [2022-04-26] Elon: Good question ...
  • Elon: https://twitter.com/norsemen62/status/1519005154204336128?s=1O&t=MKtYF6Wu2sSTdoWWqThEDg


• 2022-04-25 [interleaved wth some above]
  • jack: Thank you ❤️
  • Elon: ["loved" above]
  • Elon: I basically following your advice!
  • jack: I know and I appreciate you. This is the right and only path. I'll continue to do whatever it takes to make it work.
  • Elon: ["liked" above]


• 2022-04-25
  • Elon to Tim Urban [creator of What But Why]: Absolutely
  • Tim: i haven't officially started my podcast yet but if you think it would be helpful, i'd be happy to record a conversation with you about twitter to ask some of the most common questions and let you expand upon your thoughts Tim Urban
  • Tim: but only if it would be helpful to you
  • Elon: Suee
  • Tim: Any day or time that's best for you? And best location? I'm in LA but can zip over to Austin if you're there.
  • Elon: Probably in a few weeks
  • Tim: ["liked" above]
    


• 2022-04-25
  • Michael Grimes [IBanker at Morgan Stanley]: Do you have 5 minutes to connect on possible meeting tomorrow I believe you will want to take?
  • Elon: Will call in about half an hour
  • Michael: Sam Bankman Fried is why I'm calling https://twitter.com/sbf_ftx/status/1514588820641128452 https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/recode/2021/3/20/22335209/sam-bank.man-fried-joe-biden-ftx-cryptocurrency-effective-altruism https://ftx.us
  • Elon: ??
  • Elon: I'm backlogged with a mountain of critical work matters. ls this urgent?
  • Michael: Wants 1-Sb. Serious about partner w/you. Same security you own
  • Michael: Not urgent unless you want him to fly tomorrow. He has a window tomorrow then he's wed-Friday booked
  • Michael: Could do $5bn if everything vision lock. Would do the engineering for social media blockchain integration. Founded FTX crypto exchange. Believes in your mission. Major Democratic donor. So thought it was potentially worth an hour tomorrow a la the Orlando meeting and he said he could shake hands on 5 if you like him and I think you will. Can talk when you have more time not urgent but if tomorrow works it could get us $5bn equity in an hour
  • Elon: Blockchain twitter isn't possible, as the bandwidth and latency requirements cannot be supported by a peer to peer network, unless those "peers" are absolutely gigantic, thus defeating the purpose of a decentralized network.
  • Elon: ["disliked" "Could do $5bn ..."]
  • Elon: So long as I don't have to have a laborious blockchain debate
  • Elon: Strange that Orlando declined
  • Elon: Please let him know that I would like to talk and understand why he declined
  • Elon: Does Sam actually have $3B liquid?
  • Michael: I think Sam has it yes. He actually said up to 10 at one point but in writing he said up to 5. He's into you. And he specifically said the blockchain piece is only if you liked it and not gonna push it. Orlando referred Sams interest to us and will be texting you to speak to say why he (Orlando) declined. We agree orlando needs to call you and explain given everything he said to us and you. Will make that happen We can push Sam to next week but I do believe you will like him. Ultra Genius and doer builder like your formula. Built FTX from scratch after MIT physics. Second to Bloomberg in donations to Biden campaign.


• 2022-04-25 to 2022-04-28
  • Elon to David Sacks [VC]: https://twitter.com/dineshdsouza/status/1518744328205647872?s=10&t=vkagBUrJJexF_SJDOC_LUw
  • David Sacks: RT'd
  • David: Justin Amash (former congressman who's liberterian and good on free speech) asked far an intro to you: "I believe I can be helpful to Twitter's team going forward-thinking about how to handle speech and moderation, how that intersects with ideas about governance, how to navigate actual government (including future threats to Section 230), etc.-and I'd love to connect with Elon if he's interested in connecting (I don't have a direct way to contact him). I believe my experience and expertise can be useful, and my genera! outlook aligns with his stated goals. Thanks. All the best." Please LMK if you want to connect with him.
  • David: https://twitter.com/justinamash?s=21&t=_Owbgwdot71pUtC4rJUXYg
  • Elon: I don't own twitter yet
  • David: Understood.
  • [2022-04-28] Elon: Do you and/or find want to invest in the take private?
  • Elon: *fund
  • David: Yes but I don't have a vehicle for it (Craft is venture} so either I need to set up an SPV or just do it personally. If the latter, my amount would be mice-nuts in relative terms but I would be happy to participate to support the cause.
  • Elon: Up to you
  • David: Ok cool, let me know.
  • David: I'm in personally and will raise an SPV too if that works for you.
  • Elon: Sure


• 2022-04-26
  • James Murdoch [Rupert Murdoch's son]: Thank you. I will link you up. Also will call when same of the dust settles. Hope all's ok..
  • Elon: ["liked" above]


• 2022-04-26 [group chat with Kathryn Murdoch, James Murdoch, and Elon Musk]
  • Kathryn Murdoch [James Murdoch's wife]: Will you bring back Jack?
  • Elon: Jack doesn't want to come back. He is focused on Bitcoin.


• 2022-04-27
  • [redacted]: Hi Elon, This is Maddie, Larry Ellison's assistant. Larry asked that I connect the head of his family office, Paul Marinelli, with the head of yours. Would you please share their contact details? Alternatively, please provide them with Paul's: Cell: [...] Email: [...]
  • Elon: [Jared's email]
  • [redacted]: Thank you.


• 2022-04-27
  • Marc Benoiff [co-founder, chair, co-CEO of Salesforce, along with Bret Taylor]: Happy to talk about it if this is interesting: Twitter conversational OS-the townsquare for your digital life.
  • Elon: Well I don't own it yet


• 2022-04-27
  • Reid Hoffman [VC] Great. I will put you in touch with Satya.
  • Elon: Sounds good
  • Elon: Do you want to invest in Twitter take private?
  • Reid: It's way beyond my resources. I presume you are not interested in ventures$.
  • Elon: There is plenty of financial support, but you're a friend, so just letting you know you'd get priority. VC money is fine if you want.
  • Reid: Very cool! OK -if I were to put together$, what size could you make available? [unclear emoji, some kind of smiling face]
  • Elon: Whatever you'd like. I will just cut back others.
  • Elon: I would need to know the approximate by next week
  • Reid: What would be the largest $ that would be ok? I consulted with our LPs, and I have strong demand. Would be fun!
  • Elon: $2B?
  • Reid: Great. Probably doable -let me see.
  • Elon: Can be less if easier. The round is oversubscribed, so I just have to tell other investors what their allocation is ideally bv early next week.
  • Elon: Should I connect you with the Morgan Stanley team?
  • Reid: Yes please. Especially with the terms, etc. I know Michael Grimes, btw.
  • Elon: Please feel free to call him directly
  • [group chat message connecting Reid to Jared Birchall]
  • Reid: OK-I'll do that. (Trying to simplify your massively busy life.) The Morgan Stanley deal team is truly excellent and I don't say such things lightly.
  • [group chat messages between Reid and Jared to exchange emails]
  • Reid: Indeed! I took U public and the MSFT-U deal with them!


• 2022-04-27 [interleaved with above]
  • Viv Huantusch: From a social perspectives-Twitter allowing for high quality video uploads (1080p at a minimum) & adding a basic in-app video editor would have quite a big impact I think. Especially useful for citizen journalism & fun educational content. Might even help Twitter regain market share lost to TikTok
  • Elon: Agreed
  • Elon: Twrtter can't monetize video yet, so video is a loss for Twitter and for the those who post
  • Elon: Twitter needs better guidance
  • Viv: Yeah, 100%
  • Viv: They should have a subscription that's actually useful (unlike Twitter Blue haha)
  • Elon: Totally


• 2022-04-27 [group chat with "Satya" [presumed to be Satya Nadella CEO of Microsoft], Reid Hoffman, and Elon Musk, interleaved with above]
  • Elon, Satya: as indicated, this connects the two of you by text and phone.
  • Satya: Thx Reid. Efon -will text and coordinate a time to chat. Thx


• 2022-04-27 [interleaved with above]
  • Satya: Hi Elon .. Let me know when you have time to chat. can do tomorrow evening or weekend. Look forward to it. ThxSatya
  • Elon: I can talk now if you want
  • Satya: Calling
  • Satya: Thx for the chat. Will stay in touch. And will for sure follow-up on Teams feedback!
  • Elon: sounds good :)


• 2022-04-27 [interleaved with above]
  • Elon to Brian Acton [interim CEO of Signal]: Trying to figure out what to do with Twitter DMs. They should be end to end encrypted (obv). Dunno if better to have redundancy with Signal or integrate it.


• 2022-04-27 [interleaved with above]
  • Elon to Bret Taylor: I'd like to convey some critical elements of the transition plan. Is there a good time for us to talk tonight? Happy to have anyone from Twitter on the call.
  • Elon: My biggest concern is headcount and expense growth. Twitter has ~3X the head count per unit of revenue of other social media companies, which is very unhealthy in my view.


• 2022-04-28 [group chat with Jared Birchall, Sam BF, and Elon Musk]
  • Jared Birchall: Elon -connecting you with SBF.
  • Sam BF: Hey!


• 2022-04-29
  • Steve Jurvetson [VC]: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilmichael/
  • Steve: If you are looking for someone to run the Twitter revamping .... perhaps as some kind of CXO under you ... Emil Michael is a friend that just offered that idea. Genevieve loved working for him at Klout. He went on to become Chief Business Officer of Uber for 2013-17.
  • Elon: I don't have a Unkedln account
  • Elon: I don't think we will have any CXO titles
  • Steve: OK. Are you looking to hire anyone, or do you plan to run it?
  • Steve: <Attachmente-image/jpeg-Screen Shot 2022-04-29 at5.49.53 PM.jpeg>
  • steve: This is his experience prior to Uber:
  • Elon: Please send me anyone who actually writes good software
  • Steve: Ok, no management; good coders, got it.
  • Elon: Yes
  • Elon: Twitter is a software company (or should be)
  • Steve: Yes. My son at Reddit and some other young people come to mind. I was thinking about who is going to manage the software people (to prioritize and hit deadlines), and I guess that's you.
  • Elon: I will oversee software development

Exihibit J

• 2022-04-04 to 2022-04-14
  • Mathias Döpfner: 👍
  • [2022-04-14] Mathias: <Attachment - application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document-Twitter_lnterview.doc>


• 2022-04-11
  • Kimbal Musk: Great to hang yesterday. I'd love to help think through the structure for the Doge social media idea Let me know how I can help
  • Elon: Ok


• 2022-04-14
  • Elon to Marc Merill: ["loved" "you are the hero Gotham needs -hell F'ing yes!"]


• 2022-04-14
  • Elon to Steve Davis: ["liked" "Amazing! Not sure which plan to root for. If Plan B wins, let me know if blockchain engineers would be helpful."]


• 2022-04-15
  • Elon to Omead Afshar: ["laughed at" "Who knew a Saudi Arabian prince had so much leverage and so much to say about twitter."]


• 2022-04-20
  • Brian Kingston: Hi Elon-it's Brian Kingston at Brookfield. There was an artide today in the FT that said we (Brookfield) have "decided against providing an equity cheque• for a Twitter buyout. I Just wanted to let you know that didn't came from us-we would never comment (on or off the record) about something like that, particularly when it relates to one of our partners. We appreciate all that we are doing on solar together and you allowing us to participate in the Boring Co raise this week. While I'm sure you don't believe anything you read in the FT anyway, I'm sorry if the article caused any aggravation. If there is anything we can do to be helpful, please do let me know.


• 2022-04-23 to 2022-05-09
  • Micahel Grimes: Michael Grimes here so you have my number and know who is calling. Dialing you now
  • Elon: ["liked" above]
  • Micahel: https://youtu.be/DOW1V0kOELA
  • Elon: ["laughed at" above]
  • Micahel: If you have a second to chat
  • Michael: Perfect.
  • Michael: got it. Will forward the equity Interest email to Jared and Alex that he sent in and have It in the queue in the event his interest is needed overall. Absent the blockchain piece he's focused on investing if you want his interest in Twitter and your mission but we can park him for now.
  • Michael: Agree. Was one piece of equation and I do think he would be at least3bn if you like him and want him, maybe more. Will work with Jared and Alex to be sure it makes sense to meet -my instinct is it does because Orlando Brace also declined today in the end (not sure if political fears or what but he fiaked today}.
  • [2022-05-04] Elon: No response from Bret, not even an interest in talking. I think it's probably best to release the debt tomorrow. This might take a while.
  • Micahel Grimes: Nikesh came to see me this afternoon. Just to talk Twitter and you. If you had the time he would cancel his plans tomorrow night to meet with you and come to where you are in SF or mid peninsula Or he could fly to Austin another time of course. If you want me to send him to you let me know and he will break his lans to do
  • Elon: It's fine, no need to break his plans.
  • Michael: Got it.
  • Michael: I asked Pat and Kristina to each spend the weekend writing up their transition and diligence plan and how to approach debt rating agencies on may 16. We need one of them signed up (employment contract for 3 months) as Transition CFO of X Holdings and owning the model and diligence from financial point of view on the follow up meetings with Twitter on costs and users and engineers etc. We believe two will not work at the agencies or in front of debt investors as you have to have one CFO. If you were willing to have SVP Ops of X Holdings (Pat would be more qualified for that than Kristina I then it's possible to retain them both for the transition. The way to stay on ludicrous speed Is to pick one of them tomorrow as transition CFO and then we run with it full metal jacket. I believe each can do the job and deliver the ratings and debt and transition plan for day one. Then you dismiss him/her as job well done or offer permanent CFO if you choose.
  • Elon: Neither were great.
  • Elon: They asked no good questions and had no good comments.
  • Elon: Let's slow down just a few days
  • Elon: Putin's speech tomorrow is extremely important
  • Elon: It won't make sense to buy Twitter if we're headed into WW3
  • Elon: Just sayin
  • Michael: Understood. If the pace stays rapid each are good enough to get job done for the debt Then you hire great for go forward. But will pause for May 9 Vladimir and hope for the best there. We can take stock of where things look after that.
  • Elon: ["liked" above]
  • Elon: An extremely fundamental due diligence item is understanding exactly how Twitter confims that 95% of their daily active users are both real people and not double-counted.
  • Elon: They couldn't answer that on Friday, which is insane.
  • Elon: If that number is more like 50% or lower, which is what I would guess based on my feed, then they have been fundamentally misrepresenting the value of Twitter to advertisers and investors.
  • Elon: To be super clear, this deal moves forward if it passes due diligence, but obviously not if there are massive gaping issues.
  • Elon: True user account is a showstopper if actually much lower than the 95% claimed
  • Elon: Parag said thatTwitter has 2500 coders doing at least 100 lines per month. Maybe they could fit this feature in ... https://twitter.com/skylerrainnj/status/1523616659365277698?s=1O&t=1qmVNhjQPeHafBPEHiFrRQ


• 2022-04-25
  • Adeo Ressi: <Attachment-image/jpego-Elon Musk and Twitter Reach Deal on Sale Live Up....jpeg>
  • Adeo: Congrats? This will be a good thing.
  • Elon: I hope so :)
  • Adeo: You've had ideas on how to fix that companyfor A LONG TIME. The time is now.
  • Adeo: I think it's exciting.


• 2022-04-25
  • James Musk: Congrats! Super important to solve the bot problem.
  • Elon: Thanks
  • Elon: The bot problem is severe


• 2022-04-27
  • Elon to Reid Hoffman: This is Elon


• 2022-05-01
  • Elon to Sean Parker [VC and founder of Napster]: Am at my Mom's a apartment, doing Twitter dilligence calls


• 2022-05-02
  • Jason Calacanis: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1521158715193315328?s=1O&t=htc_On6KY9B9C4VtllFIO
  • Jason: one thing you can do in this regard is an SPV of 250 folks capped at $10m .. pain on the next for a large company but one item on cap table
  • Jason: You do have to have someone lead/man a e the SPV
  • Elon: Go ahead
  • Jason: ["liked" above]
  • Jason: When you're private its fairly easy to do, but I think current shareholders have to re-up
  • Elon: Are you sure?
  • Jason: I am not
  • Jason: Have never done a take private
  • Jason: Large shareholders (QPs) are likely different than non-accredited investors
  • [2022-05-12] Elon: What's going on with ou marketing an SPV to randos? This is not ok.
  • Jason: Not randos, I have the largest angel syndicate and that's how I invest. We've done 25D+ deals like this and we know all the folks. I though that was how folks were doin it.
  • Jason: $100m+ on commitments, but if that not ok it's fine. Just wanted to support the effort.
  • Jason: ~300 QPs and 200 accredited investors said they would do it. It's not an open process obviously, only folks alread in our syndicate.
  • Jason: There is massive demand to support uyour effort btw...people really want to see you win.
  • Elon: Morgan Stanley and Jared thing you are using our friendship not in a good way
  • Elon: This makes it seem like I'm desperate
  • Elon: Please sto
  • Jason: Only ever want to support you.
  • Jason: Clearly you're not desperate -you have the worlds greatest investors voting in support of a deal you already have covered. you're overfunded. will quietly cancel it... And to be clear, I'm not out actively soliciting folks.These are our exiting LPs not rondos. Sorry forany trouble
  • Elon: Morgan Stanley and Jared are very upset
  • Jason: Ugh
  • Jason: SPVs are how everyone is doing there deals now... Like loved to SPVs etc
  • Jason: Just trying to support you... obviously, I reached out to Jared and sort it out.
  • Jason: * moved
  • Elon: Yes, I had to ask him to stop.
  • Elon: ["liked" "Just trying to support..."]
  • Jason: Cleaned it up with Jared
  • Elon: ["liked" above]
  • Jason: I get where he is coming from.... Candidly, This deal has just captures the worlds imagination In an unimaginable way. It's bonkers...
  • Jason: And you know I'm ride or die brother - I'd jump on a grande for you
  • Elon: ["loved" above]


• 2022-05-05
  • Elon to Sam BF: Sorry, who is sending this message?


• 2022-05-05
  • Elon to James Murdoch: In LA right now. SF tomorrow to due dilligence on Twitter.


• 2022-05-05
  • Elon to John Elkann [heir of Gianni Agnelli]: Sorry, I have to be at Twitter HQ tomorrow afternoon for due dilligence.


• 2022-05-05
  • David Sacks: ["liked" "Best to be low-key during transaction "]


• 2022-05-10 [unclear what's happening due to redactions; may be more than one convo here]
  • Antonio Gracias: Connecting you.
  • [redacted]: Hi Elon This is Peter and my numbers. Look forward to being helpful Bob
  • Elon: Got it
  • Elon: Should we use the above two numbers for the conf call?
  • [redacted]: Sure


• 2022-06-16 to 2022-06-17
  • [redacted]: If I understood them correctly, Ned [presumebly Ned Segal, CFO of Twitter] and Parag said that cash expenditures over the next 12 months will be $78 and that cash receipts will also be $78. However, the cash receipts number doesn't seem realistic, given that they expect only $1.2B in CU, which is just $4.8B annualized.
  • [redacted]: In europe so just getting your msg. i do not have proxy w me but my guess is they are using their proxy numbers vs current reality. we are developing proformas that have lower revenue/receipts and lower disbursements.
  • Elon: Ok. Given that Q2 is almost over, itobviousl doesn't make sense for them to use proxy numbers vs [looks like something is cut off here — seems like text is in a spreadsheet and word wrap wasn't used on this row, which was then printed and scanned in]
  • Elon: I'm traveling in Europe right now, but back next week
  • [redacted]: i spokewned on the 7b receipts/expenses. he said he was trying to be more illustrative on '23 expense base, pre any actions we would take and provide a simplified strawman of possible savings. he said they are not planning on doing an updated fcst for 22/23. i think this Is ok re process since i think their fcst would not likely be very good and we wouldn't likely use It anyways. They fly at way too high a level to have a fcst of much value. We are in process of developing revenue fcst and a range of sensitivities and will then walk thru w them to get their input.
  • Elon: Their revenue projections seem disconnected from reality
  • [redacted]: completely.
  • Elon: Phew, it's not just me

Equity / financing commitments from 2022-05-05 SEC filing

If you're curious about the outcomes of the funding discussions above, the winners are listed in the Schedule 13D

• HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud (Kingdom): ~$1.9B
• Lawrence J. Ellison Revocable Trust: $1B
• Sequoia Capital Fund, L.P.: $0.8B
• VyCapital: $0.7B
• Binance:$0.5B
• AH Capital Management, L.L.C. (a16z): $0.4B
• Qatar Holding LLC: $0.375B
• Aliya Capital Partners LLC: $0.36B
• Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC: ~$0.316B
• Brookfield: $0.25B
• Strauss Capital LLC: $0.15B
• BAMCO, Inc. (Baron): $0.1B
• DFJ Growth IV Partners, LLC: $0.1B
• Witkoff Capital: $0.1B
• Key Wealth Advisors LLC: $0.03B
• A.M. Management & Consulting: $0.025B
• Litani Ventures: $0.025B
• Tresser Blvd 402 LLC (Cartenna): $0.0085B
• Honeycomb Asset Management LP: $0.005B

Thanks to @tech31842, @agentwaj, and mr. zip for OCR corrections