Tag: twitter

The Buzz Around Zomato

My congratulations to you if you are unaware of what I’m going to talk about in this blogpost. And not just my congratulations, I will be envious of you as well. I aspire to reach your level of moksha one of these days, and please, tell me how you did it.

But here’s the background:

The pure veg fleet not only delivers only pure vegetarian food from pure vegetarian restaurants, but was also going to get different uniforms, as you can see in the tweet above.

Which, of course, means we have to talk about Google Buzz.

When Google introduced Buzz, its answer to Facebook and Twitter, it hoped to get the service off to a fast start. New users of Buzz, which was added to Gmail on Tuesday, found themselves with a ready-made network of friends automatically selected by the company based on the people that each user communicated with most frequently through Google’s e-mail and chat services.

But what Google viewed as an obvious shortcut stirred up a beehive of angry critics. Many users bristled at what they considered an invasion of privacy, and they faulted the company for failing to ask permission before sharing a person’s Buzz contacts with a broad audience. For the last three days, Google has faced a firestorm of criticism on blogs and Web sites, and it has already been forced to alter some features of the service.

E-mail, it turns out, can hold many secrets, from the names of personal physicians and illicit lovers to the identities of whistle-blowers and antigovernment activists. And Google, so recently a hero to many people for threatening to leave China after hacking attempts against the Gmail accounts of human rights activists, now finds itself being pilloried as a clumsy violator of privacy.

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/technology/internet/13google.html

Did Google mean to violate the privacy of its users by launching Buzz? Of course not. Did it end up violating the privacy of its users? Of course it did.

Should a business aim to optimize for the privacy of its customers? Each one of us is entitled to our opinion in this case, but I have a very clear answer, personally, for this question. Yes, a business should optimize for the privacy of its customers

What if a tenant has told his or her landlord that they are vegetarian, when in fact they are non-vegetarian?

What if someone’s son or daughter has taken to eating non-veg, but hasn’t told their parents yet?

What if a housing society decides to ban entry of non-vegetarian food into the society?

You may have ethical, cultural, religious or political views about each of these scenarios. And because I’m writing this for an online audience, I’m sure you do have some or all of these views. I do too, of course.

But those views have nothing to do with the fact that people are free to have their preferences when it comes to dietary habits, and keep them private from whomsoever they like. You and I may disapprove or regret this state of affairs, but we do not get to unilaterally change said status. That’s my personal take, at any rate, and if you happen to disagree, I would love to know why.

What Zomato, or indeed any other business, does is its own business. I and everybody else in this country, we are all free to increase our patronage of Zomato for having started its pure veg fleet, or boycott them altogether for it. That is each individual customer’s own business.

But each person in this country ought to have the right to keep their dietary preferences private to themselves, or share it only with folks of their choosing.

The truth always lies somewhere in the middle. Maybe you’ve heard me say this before, but here’s where Zomato has ended up re: this situation

So the pure veg fleet will continue to exist, but will be indistinguishable from the rest of Zomato’s fleet in terms of appearances. This will be counted as a victory and as a defeat by different representatives on both “sides”, and much outrage will manifest itself, to everybody’s all round satisfaction.

Speaking of which…

It is our fate to live in the age of social media, so you will see a million takes about religious intolerance from both “sides” of this “debate”. Ditto for caste related aspects. And a million other things besides, I am sure. Here’s a useful tip:

Seven days is overkill, if you ask me. Twitter will find something else to lose its excreta over by tomorrow, don’t you worry.

Give Back My Reader To Me

I’ve been off Twitter for a while now, and I cannot begin to tell you how good I feel about it. As with all addictions, so also with this one – friends still send me links to tweets, and folks will occasionally tell me that I’ve been tagged in this, that or the other. But I don’t have a Twitter app on my phone, I don’t log in to Twitter as much as possible, and life is very, very good.

I’ve been off Facebook for even longer, and I happily confess to the fact that Instagram is a complete mystery to me. I don’t have strong feelings for or against Instagram, save for a sense of utter befuddlement.

My social media is now, in effect, Whatsapp, and even on that service I have lost count of how many messages I have not responded to. The Whatsapp application on my computer tells me that I have sixty-three unread messages, while the one on my phone tells me it is a hundred and two.

Ah well, we’ll get to it one day.

But long story short, I currently find social media and social networks overrated. With the exception of chai, of course. That I’m always up for.

But there was a social network, back in the day, that I was hopelessly in love with. Gather round, young folks, and let me tell you about a time when social networks were used to share stuff that people had enjoyed reading.

Yes, really.

One feature took off immediately, for power users and casual readers alike: a simple sharing system that let users subscribe to see someone else’s starred items or share their collection of subscriptions with other people. The Reader team eventually built comments, a Share With Note feature, and more. All this now seems trite and obvious, of course, but at the time, a built-in way to see what your friends liked was novel and powerful. Reader was prescient.

https://www.theverge.com/23778253/google-reader-death-2013-rss-social

Google Reader was heaven for infovores. It was a website that used this thing called Atom, which itself was based off this thing called RSS. And what it did was that it went and checked all the blogs that you liked reading. If that blog had been updated – if the author of that blog had written a new post – Google Reader would fetch a simplified version of that update for you.

So you only needed to visit Google Reader, because Google Reader would visit all the blogs for you. And once you visited Google Reader, Google Reader would give you a nice simple list of all the new things for you to read. And you would read it, ruminate on it, and move on.

Maybe you’d star the occasional post, because you liked reading it that much. Maybe you’d comment on a particular post, because it resonated that much. Comment not on the original blog post, you understand, but on Google Reader. And maybe, just maybe, you liked a post enough to want to share it with other users of Google Reader.

Who were these other users? Well, people who liked reading blogposts as much as you! So maybe you would wind up talking about economics with a person who would go on to become a professor at Columbia University. Or maybe you would end up arguing about drip marketing with a student of computer science. Or maybe you would learn about the intricacies of indoor gardening.

Well, that last one not so much in my case, but you see my point.

There are many things to dislike about social media today, and Twitter in particular. I’m sure you have your list, and I assure you I have mine. But whatever your reasons and whatever be mine, it is this particular reason that comes at the very top for me. Reader did it the other way round, you see, compared to everybody else.

Twitter is a place you go to share, and occasionally read. Google Reader was a place where you went to read, and occasionally share.

“What are you optimizing for?” is one of my favorite questions to ask on this blog, and Reader’s answer was clear. It was optimizing for the consumption of content, not for lighting bonfires. That’s great, from my perspective. But there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch, y’see:

At its peak, Reader had just north of 30 million users, many of them using it every day. That’s a big number — by almost any scale other than Google’s. Google scale projects are about hundreds of millions and billions of users, and executives always seemed to regard Reader as a rounding error. Internally, lots of workers used and loved it, but the company’s leadership began to wonder whether Reader was ever going to hit Google scale. Almost nothing ever hits Google scale, which is why Google kills almost everything.

https://www.theverge.com/23778253/google-reader-death-2013-rss-social

It’s been more than ten years since Google Reader was killed, and while Feedly has been a very good substitute, it doesn’t have the same social features built in that Reader did. And as I said earlier, each of us has our list of gripes with Twitter, but top of the list to me is the fact that Twitter had to occasionally ask if you’d like to, y’know, at least read the damn link first before outraging about it.

So Reader’s long gone, and Facebook, Twitter and Instagram don’t cut it for me. What comes next when connecting with people I want to connect with?

I don’t know about you, but Whatsapp communities are promising in my case. I’ve joined one about music, one about sports, and one about crosswords (of all things), and it’s been uniformly great. Plus, there’s Artifact, which I’m kinda-sorta hopeful about. And Threads, of course. We’ll see how these pan out.

But nothing will make me happier than the return of the king. For Reader was my kind of nerdery, with the best Easter Egg ever. It allowed me to discover fellow nerds.

And that, if you ask me, is what a social network ought to be.

JASP as a Way to Teach Statistics

I’ve long been in search of a statistical tool that, well, does statistical analysis, but does so in a way that doesn’t require much by way of coding and whose output is intuitive. Above all, the idea behind distributions, and the ability to play around with distributions should become clearer for having used the software, and not the other way around.

If, as a bonus, it could give a visual representation of the solutions to your typical ‘normal distribution’ type problems from undergrad level textbooks – well, that would be awesome.

And it is early days yet, but JASP seems to be just that software. I learnt about it because of the magic of Twitter:

And much as I dislike the circus around the social media company these days, I still remain hopelessly addicted to the app. The benefits that I get by being a part of it still make it entirely worthwhile.

And well, I downloaded it (it’s free, do go ahead and give it a try), kicked the wheels for a bit, and it seems to be very good as a teaching tool for undergrad students. Not just undergrad students, I suppose – anybody who is relatively new to statistics will enjoy this software more than the alternatives when it comes to developing an intuitive feel for the subject.

This was one of the first videos that I saw, and it is reassuring to note that the learning curve is not steep.

I will be trying more things on this in the days to come, but in the meantime, if any of you have tried JASP in the past, and have resources to share, please do send them my way – I’ll update this blogpost.

Thank you!

How To Fall In Love With Twitter

There’s a very small list of people I know of who use Twitter well.

There are probably millions of people who use Twitter well, of course. It is just that I haven’t found them yet.

But when you do use Twitter well, it is a magical thing. It entertains you, educates you and on rare but delightful occasions, even enlightens you.

Learning how to use Twitter well is a skill. I am still learning it, but I get a little better everyday. And isn’t that the point?

And if you’re looking for advice on how to use Twitter well, follow Navin Kabra on Twitter. Learn from what he says, but much more importantly, learn from what he does on Twitter.

For example, consider his pinned tweet:

Navin, thank you for being awesome at Twitter!

What Should One Be Paying Attention To?

Television, he writes, “serves us most ill when it co-opts serious modes of discourse — news, politics, science, education, commerce, religion — and turns them into entertainment packages. We would all be better off if television got worse, not better. ‘The A-Team’ and ‘Cheers’ are no threat to our public health. ‘60 Minutes,’ ‘Eyewitness News’ and ‘Sesame Street’ are.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/07/opinion/media-message-twitter-instagram.html

Do read the entire column, and I hope it is not behind a paywall for you, for it deserves to be widely read. But I’ve found myself thinking about that line: “We would all be better off if television got worse, not better”, and thinking about its broader applications and implications.

  1. How should I be thinking of Twitter and how much time I spend on it? (A lot, by the way, far too much. The only good thing, if at all, is that I spend almost all of this time reading what others have to say rather than saying anything myself. But – and this is a pertinent question, especially right now – would I be better off if Twitter got “worse”, or is it the other way around?)
  2. How should I be thinking of the amount of time I spend reading blogs? Books? Fiction books vs non-fiction books? Do books serve me most ill when they co-opt non-serious modes of discourse?
  3. Should I be watching the Rene Girard series on YouTube, or does that make my experience of both learning more about Girard and time spent on YouTube worse?
  4. “What am I optimizing for?” is a great question, and a very powerful one for analysis. When it comes to learning, is “What am I optimizing for when I consume content in different ways?” an even better question, or simply a subset of the first one?
  5. I’ve given up on watching news on television entirely, and have been patting myself on the back ever since. That, to me, is the only silver lining after having read this column.

CinemaRare on Hidden Gems on Zee5

I plan to spend part of this summer watching movies, and this list seems to be a good way to get started with movies from India:

Cory Doctrow on Byju’s

This Twitter thread, and its implications deserve deep reflection about Twitter, Cory Doctrow, India, and education in India. And not in that order.

Should social media ban political parties?

I came to this interesting article via Mostly Economics:

In many countries, Facebook is one of the few alternatives to the government-aligned outlets that dominate national media ecosystems. That is why authorities have devoted so many resources to manipulating it, and why the company must take responsibility for stopping them.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/facebook-ban-trump-world-leaders-by-courtney-c-radsch-2021-07

Which led me to ask myself this question: what are the long term costs and benefits of having political parties on social media, and whether it makes sense to ban them from being on it?

  1. In these politically charged times, disclaimers might be a good way to start. This is not about Trump and Facebook, which is what the article I excerpted from is about. Nor is it about Twitter and the Indian government. It is about, more broadly speaking, the separation of societal discourse from discourse led by, shaped by and manipulated by, political parties. All political parties from all nations across all social media platforms.
  2. What is the aim of political parties on social media? Are they playing the non-zero game of asking what is best for their country (and preferably the world)? Or are they playing the zero-sum game of showing how the other side is wrong?
  3. Do they lead by example in terms of what societal discourse ought to be like? I know what my answer is to this question. If yours is yes, and you are willing to engage in a conversation, I would love to learn why my answer is wrong.
  4. My utopian societal discourse is one in which I take the help of others to learn what is best. And I hope to do this by improving my own knowledge and thinking, by conversing with others.
  5. Perhaps I’m too cynical when I say this, but this is not the aim of any political party on any social media platform. The aim of any political party on any social media platform is to prove “The Other” wrong. More, to insist that glory for your tribe/state/nation is all that matters. Still more, to insist that this glorious destination can only be reached via supporting “Us”, not “The Other”.
  6. Political parties play the zero sum game on social media. And we get sucked into playing that game ourselves.
  7. They’re not the root cause of the state of societal discourse, to be clear. But have they made the problem worse? Maybe I’m blinkered in my view, but I fail to see how this is not the case.
  8. The devil, as always, lies in the details. Are representatives of political parties to be allowed? If yes, are they free to make political statements? Who decides? This is not, I’m very aware, a very practical solution to the problem I’m highlighting. But I’ll make two final points.
  9. I’d much rather have this conversation than a debate on whether America should rein in Facebook, and whether India should ban Twitter, or any other match the following of your choice.
  10. If the two alternatives given to me are a country without social media of my choice, OR social media of my choice without political parties’ handles on it, I’m going with the latter.
  11. The truth lies somewhere in the middle. But maybe there’s merit in approaching the middle from this side of the spectrum rather than that one? (Yes, I know, third point. But this is my platform, and therefore my choice.)

Ways to Learn Outside of College

Outside of college doesn’t necessarily mean not enrolling in college. It means complementing whatever it is that you’re learning in college.

  1. Listen in on Twitter. I’ll use economics as an example, but I’m sure this applies to practically any subject. Listening in means quite literally listening in to people in the field having a debate about, well practically anything. #EconTwitter is a useful way to get started. This tweet, for example, was fourth or fifth in the “Top” section at the time of writing this blogpost.
  2. Learn what lists on Twitter are, and either follow lists made by others, or start creating your own. This list, for example, is of folks on Twitter who have been guests on The Seen And The Unseen (TSATU).
  3. We’ll resume our regular programming from the next point onwards, but just in case you’ve been living under a rock, listen to The Seen And The Unseen. Multi-hour episodes, well over two hundred of them. Each of them with guests who are experts in the real, meaningful sense of the term. Each backed with impeccable research by Amit Varma. All for free. What a time to be alive.
  4. Following topics on Twitter is often more useful than following people on Twitter, although as always, TALISMAN.
  5. Why not read about each Nobel Prize in economics, say at the rate of one a week? Here’s the complete list of Nobel Prize winners. Here’s the 2020 prize winners page. If you are an undergraduate student, focus on the popular science version. If you are a Master’s student, read the more arcane version. Of course, nothing prevents you from reading both, no matter what level of economics you are comfortable with. 🙂 An idea that I have been toying with for a year: a podcast about the winners, created in the style of this podcast. This also ought to be done for all of India’s Prime Ministers, but that is a whole separate story.
  6. Blogs! There are far too many blogs on economics out there, all of them unbelievably excellent. Some are directly about economics, some are tangentially about economics, some aren’t about economics at all, and those are the very best kind. Read more blogs! Here’s how I read blogs, if that helps.
  7. YouTube. 3Blue1Brown, Veritasium, Kurzgesagt, Sky Sports Masterclasses on Cricket (yes, seriously), and so, so, so many more! One of my targets for the coming months is to curate my YouTube feed the way I have curated my Twitter feed. Suggestions are always welcome!
  8. Podcasts.
    Amit Varma responded on Twitter recently to a question put up by Peter Griffin. The question was this. Amit’s reply was this.
    Alas, this applies to me. My podcast listening has gone down due to the pandemic. One, because I have not been in a frame of mind to listen for extended periods of these past eighteen months. Two, because my listening was usually while driving. But still, podcasts. My top three are (or used to be): Conversations With Tyler, EconTalk and TSATU.
    (And one day, so help me god, I will write a blog post about WordPress’ new editor. Why can one not embed a tweet in a numbered list in the 21st year of the 21st century?! And they call this a modern editor! Bah.)

Questions about Veritasium (as just one example), and how that might possibly relate to economics might arise in some reader’s minds. Two responses: don’t compartmentalize learning. Ask, for example, about the economics of producing videos such as these. Second, learning about other subjects (interdisciplinary learning in fancypants English) is helpful in many, many different ways. Ditto with Sky Sports Cricket Masterclasses. Learn about training like an athlete, and then watch Adam Gilchrist talk about training with his dad. (The first couple of minutes, that’s all).

The larger point about the list is this: there really is no excuse left to not learn a little bit more about any subject. Learning can (and should) be a lifelong affair. And the role of college, especially in the humanities, is to help foster that environment of learning, and to act as guides for young folks just about to embark on their (lifelong) journey of learning.

Or, to put it even more succinctly, we need to have classrooms act as complements to online learning, not as a substitute for it. And that needs to happen today, not some vague day in the future.

Twitter Stories

Back in the day, when I had structure, regularity and a schedule here on EFE, Saturday used to be about five tweets that I enjoyed reading that week.

Which, on reflection (and some gentle prodding from Navin Kabra) wasn’t the brightest idea, because that’s what likes and RT’s are for on Twitter. So how about maybe a brief write-up based on a tweet that I read recently?

This week’s tweet that turns into a post is based on a variety of things. First, Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

The Black Swan is kind of like Thinking Fast and Slow, in the sense that everybody claims to have read it, and very few people actually have. If you haven’t read all of his books, please get started. The order doesn’t really matter, but if you’re asking, my favorite is Anti-Fragile.

There’s a lot to like about his books, his tweets and his outlook towards life, and this tweet is one example (note that I am talking about the pics in the reply, not the original tweet):

https://twitter.com/filipkob/status/1352028989381095424

Now, the original tweet, reposted as a stand-alone:

So what is the company about?

Nasser Jaber is cofounder of the Migrant Kitchen, a catering company and social impact organization that hires immigrants, migrants, and undocumented workers to both train them in commercial cooking as well as help gain their cuisines more exposure in the marketplace.

https://stories.zagat.com/posts/nasser-jaber-on-creating-jobs-through-immigrant-cuisine

Read the whole article! I got to learn about quipe (kibbeh, apparently), and esfiha (the spelling differs based on context, so my apologies if I got it “wrong”), among other things.

Twitter is a wonderful, wonderful way to learn more about the world, but it is like a garden, in the sense that constant weeding is required. But when you tend to it just so, it is completely worth the effort!

If you have had moments of serendipity on Twitter that you’d like to share, please, send them along. @ashish2727 on Twitter.

Thanks, and enjoy the weekend 🙂