Twitter says it will restrict retweeting world leaders who break rules - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/15/twitter-world-leaders-break-rules/ <comment><USER2> At what point does Twitter restricting world leader tweets become election interference and foreign policy interference. Will Twitter have to register as a foreign agent in Europe?

<comment><USER3> I've had people telling me for the last 3 years that it's definitely election interference if a private Russian company pays some people to write tweets about US politicians. But now, apparently it's not election interference if Twitter itself applies special restrictions to the accounts of foreign politicians it doesn't like?

<comment><USER4> One is a private American company abiding the law and exercising it's legal right. The other is a rogue state sponsored disinformation/psyop campaign detrimental to our sovereignty. How is this that difficult?

<comment><USER5> Why does it matter that it's a state compromising our democracy vs a private company? Anyway, I maintain that Twitter and other major social networks represent such an overwhelming volume of our speech that they are not simply "private companies". To the OP's point, their sheer power over the political process is the entire alleged Russian attack vector.

<comment><USER6> Guns and wars that's why. Twitter doesn't have an army and can't dictate laws without getting its chain yanked.

Russia/China/USA etc is a whole different story.

<comment><USER5> Then you misunderstand the debate. Russia's attack model isn't guns and wars, it's subverting our democracy by influencing who sees what via Twitter et al. If the Russians can change our laws by using social media to covertly influence elections, then clearly Twitter can as well. And "Twitter getting its chain yanked" depends on our ability to audit Twitter's traffic shaping, which is nonexistent—there is no transparency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are several world leaders that I'd be happier with if they weren't leaders. (And some local leaders too! There are city councilmen I would send to Mars if I could.)

But I absolutely want and need to know what they're saying. A platform that provides a direct way for them to speak shouldn't be interfering with that.

<comment><USER8> That sounds awfully naive to me. World leaders have all kinds of options for communicating with the public. Official press releases, for example. Press releases are preferable because when they tell falsehoods, they can be fact checked in the press. We have no obligation to allow them to use social networks for propaganda purposes.

<comment><USER9> The fact checkers are too often biased/liars/propagandists. I want to hear what someone has to say. As an adult I don't need someone to translate a tweet for me, nor protect me from its contents. Most media is propaganda today; Twitter is the closest to live news we have, and @Jack is eager to end that too.

<comment><USER10> If you think Twitter is informative and actual news is all fake news I invite you to in depth fact check 10 pages of news stories and 10 pages of your favorite tweets and tell us how it goes. Blog about what you learn even.

<comment><USER11> _> If you think Twitter is informative and actual news is all fake news_

That's not what he said. He said he wants to see what people say directly, not filtered through anyone else. Then he can decide for himself what is informative and what is fake news. I feel the same way.

<comment><USER10> You are yourself a filter as is every useful aspect of human civilization. A tiny fraction of the sensory data around you becomes your perceptions a microscopic portion thereof is communicated to other people. We filter for quality and 90% of everything is crap or noise.

One wouldn't learn physics by seeing what the entire human race had to say on the subject because virtually the whole of humanity knows next to nothing on the topic. We instead filter it by people that are known to be knowledgeable on the topic. People that are paid to teach it, people that work in relevant fields, people that have published papers in journals that themselves act as filters.

When people say they prefer twitter it is because given the entire population of users its trivial for any person to find people who reinforce what they already think no matter how silly. If you believe the flat world was farted out by a goat there are fellow goat worshipers that will by happy to make you feel good by expounding on the topic.

<comment><USER11> _> You are yourself a filter_

Sure, that's the point. I want to do my own filtering, not depend on someone else's.

 _> One wouldn't learn physics by seeing what the entire human race had to say on the subject because virtually the whole of humanity knows next to nothing on the topic. We instead filter it by people that are known to be knowledgeable on the topic._

But how do we know who is knowledgeable? There are plenty of websites out there with crackpot content whose authors claim to be knowledgeable.

One common way is to accept some kind of credential that is supposed to correlate with being knowledgeable. For example, person A is a professor of physics, and person B is a random person on the Internet with no credentials, so person A is much more likely to be knowledgeable about physics.

However, that still doesn't mean you should believe everything person A says about physics, because, unfortunately, person A is probably not going to be as careful as they should be about distinguishing actual proven physics, physics that is confirmed by experiment, from their own opinions. Watch a Brian Greene or Michio Kaku special on quantum mechanics and, if you don't know much about physics beforehand, you will come away thinking that Star Trek style transporters are just around the corner. Read a pop science article by a string theorist as a lay person with no background knowledge and you will come away thinking that physicists have experimental proof that a multiverse of 10^500 universes exists.

And this is in physics, a hard science, where we can do experiments that confirm particular predictions of our best current theories, General Relativity and quantum field theory, to thirteen or fourteen decimal places. Imagine what it's like in softer disciplines. And the more important the consequences, the more likely it is that people who are thought to be knowledgeable will fail to distinguish between what's actually known and confirmed and their own opinions. Physicists misleading people about quantum mechanics or string theory is regrettable, but nobody is advocating huge public policy choices based on quantum mechanics or string theory. That's not true in other disciplines.

So the unpleasant fact is that I can't trust others, even experts in their fields, to filter for me. I have to do my filtering for myself. That's why I don't want people to give me their opinions and spin about things. I want to see the raw data so I can decide for myself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not sure who will end up being satisfied with this.

People who want the "world leaders" deplatformed will be mad they they're still online, and people who like said leaders will cry persecution every time this is invoked, whether it's intentional or some automated system being tripped.

A sizable chunk will not hear about any of this and will wonder why they can't like a tweet (unless this problem is solved with the right UX).

Does the Streisand Effect apply to this too? Does this end up with more quote tweeting?

<comment><USER13> The TC article linked to the blog post announcing this, but didn't link to the page describing how the public interest feature works: [https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/public- intere...](https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/public-interest)

In short, it's not just silently making the Tweet non-interactive (as the article implies). It's similar to the existing "sensitive content" UX.

<comment><USER14> Thank you for the link.

I understand the general rule against violence, but I feel like, when dealing with elected officials, you have to specify a difference between legitimate military action and calls to civilian violence. I don't think anyone would object that Twitter hosts an announcement from the Staatsminister of Netherlands that she has decided to join the coalition of the willing and to send troops to Afghanistan, but that's a clear call to violence and people will die because of that decision.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I honestly don't understand why "world leaders" aren't banned as soon as they break the rules, just like anyone else would be. If I said even a tiny fraction of the things "world leaders" have said, I'd be banned from Twitter in a second, and rightfully so.

<comment><USER16> Because nations and their leaders are different to people.

When Britain declared war on Germany in WW2 were they 'threatening violence' and would that get them banned from Twitter?

<comment><USER17> Instead of a hypothetical you can just use the example from the article:

> Twitter said it would not ban President Trump despite incendiary tweets, > including allegations that he threatened to declare war on North Korea.

<comment><USER16> Right, but using the example of Britain and Germany back in WW2 removes it from current politics and allows us to think of an example of a clear and direct incitation of violence that almost everyone thinks was legal and morally just and would have been appropriate to Tweet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What organization or individual ever in history could claim to have this kind of power over world affairs? There's never been anyone quite as potently leveraged as Jack Dorsey.

As much as I am in favor of the (superficial, at least) spirit of this decision, I'm torn about the huge corner we're turning as a civilization here.

edit: Downvoters, if you are interpreting this as a veiled swipe at Twitter or indirect support of Trump (& friends), that's neither the intent nor representative of my opinions about these actors in the least.

This may be a touchstone event that bottlenecks perception of the international system in a way that makes the particular provocateurs about as relevant to the long term outcome as Gavrilo Princip was to the formation of NATO or the UN.

<comment><USER19> > What organization or individual ever in history could claim to have this > kind of power over world affairs?

If I could find my copy of the book, "The Media Monopoly" I could give you numerous answers.

<comment><USER18> I understand that "the media" has held this kind of sway for a long time. But here we are with a single, publicly identifiable organization (and ultimately a private individual) casually invoking their power to mute every world leader at will, with the flip of a switch. This is a new normal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> All I read between the lines is "election season is coming up and this is the path of least resistance we came up with".

Twitter + Politics is probably a net negative on the world.

</comment><comment><USER21> Twitter can make it's own decisions, not my position to tell them what they can and can't do, but

>The company said the move will help its users stay informed about global affairs, but while balancing the need to keep the site's rules in check.

Is a baseless lie. And I can't believe they're brazen enough to propose limiting the outreach of world leaders on the site while saying

>help its users stay informed about global affairs

Twitter has been around for over a decade, yet only now are they deciding to take this approach, meaning, regardless of what triggered this new policy, is not rooted in any sort of desire to "keep the site's rules in check".

<comment><USER22> As soon as they delete and curate content they are also endorsing the content that stays online. If this endorsed content is slander they should be liable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm not sure that anyone concerned with Twitter's policies/content has focused on the retweet-ability of rule violating world leaders. This is a super shallow effort.

Edit: Though the article mentions that violating tweets are totally un- interactive, except that they can be quote retweeted. Still pretty shallow but slightly less than my original comment.

With that said - it's un clear to me what constitutes a rule violating tweet for a world leader. They should come out with some examples of what is and is not a violation, they should also better specify what a world leader is.

<comment><USER24> Regardless of the conversation about this being insufficient, I think it will still have a significant impact if actually employed.

Not only does it actually reduce the proliferation of these tweets, it signals that a line was crossed by a particular tweet.

<comment><USER23> The big problem I see, is this still does nothing to inhibit distribution to followers. In an echo chamber, everyone still sees it. It just protects people who already were going out of their way to not interact with it.

<comment><USER25> Twitter is not an "echo chamber." A site that big simply has way too many conflicting opinions for that to be true.

<comment><USER26> It's not one echo chamber, but depending on who you follow, you could find yourself in one

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The US govt. shouldn't be using some third party tool to communicate with its citizens. Post a blog on usa.gov and say whatever you want, problem solved.

<comment><USER28> The White House [1], and just about every US government department and agency (e.g. [2], [3], [4]) already has a blog. The fact that most people are unaware they exist is precisely why they also post to third-party platforms.

[1] [https://www.whitehouse.gov/news/](https://www.whitehouse.gov/news/)

[2] [https://www.energy.gov/news-blog](https://www.energy.gov/news-blog)

[3] [https://www.usda.gov/media/blog](https://www.usda.gov/media/blog)

[4] [https://blogs.nasa.gov/](https://blogs.nasa.gov/)

<comment><USER29> Perhaps if they didn't post to third party platforms, we would be more likely to know the blogs exist?

<comment><USER30> More likely blog excerpts would just be reposted on Twitter

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > We decide whether a Tweet that would otherwise violate the Twitter Rules is > in the public interest using the following criteria and process:

Feeling blessed knowing that Twitter Safety is deciding what information is best for the American public.

<comment><USER14> If you think someone else should, I'm sure that Twitter would be happy to delegate that role to anyone more legitimate… Anyone, really. They probably would also love to pay that person. Facebook is trying to set that up, for instance — with very generous conditions: dotation covering a full-time staff, etc.

Dealing with that is a nightmare for specialists and no software developer would want to be embroiled in that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> How much "harm" would be done to society at large if twitter didn't exist?

How much "harm" would be done to society at large if all social media didn't exist? (including things like USENET)

How much "harm" would be done to society if the Internet didn't exist? (excluding things like email)

How much "harm" would be done to society if email didn't exist?

I never lived in a time without a telephone, but I did span the "international calls have to be pre-booked" time, and some of the 'no international subscriber trunk dialling' time.

I remember a time before all this stuff, distinctly/discretely. They don't get identical answers.

</comment><comment><USER33> > "We want to make it clear today that the accounts of world leaders are not > above our policies entirely..."

Thakn you, Twitter. Your bold stance will make it clear where you draw the line, and also where you draw the new line after the President tramples over your line.

</comment><comment><USER34> >Any user who tweets content promoting terrorism, making "clear and direct" threats of violence, and posting private information are all subject to ban.

I wonder whether threats of military intervention (technically) counts. Interesting food for thought.

</comment><comment><USER35> The only thing worse than vague rules is their inevitable selective application.

</comment><comment><USER36> So much for the free speech wing of the free speech party. :(

<comment><USER8> Daily reminder that free speech entitles you to protection from the government. It doesn't grant you rights to verbally puke all over any social network you please.

<comment><USER37> Daily rejoinder that this argument is getting really old when most political speech has moved to online fora controlled by a small number of corporate players which have more power than any traditional publisher ever did due to network effects.

<comment><USER38> It's amazing to me how many people on Hacker News, a technical forum full of the most technically capable people in the world, seem to forget that the Internet is still a thing, domain name registrars (and failing that, IP addresses) still exist, and anyone can put almost anything they want on the Internet regardless of their political views.

So many people here seem resigned to this idea that Twitter and Facebook are the _only_ ways to communicate online. I would have thought the most technically capable people in the world would remember that HTML can be served from basically any Internet-accessible computer in the world.

<comment><USER39> What about the Network Effect?

What does it matter if anyone can have a say if they don't get heard?

<comment><USER40> What do you mean? The freedom to communicate your ideas is not the same thing as a guarantee to an audience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Restrict retweeting? Ban the damn account instead.

Normal users gets banned, and one would expect world leaders to usually behave better than the average user and actually read the terms of service.

If Twitters simple terms of service is to complicated for world leaders then they should probably stay away...

</comment><comment><USER42> Interesting side effect:

> _We haven't used this notice yet, but when we do, you will not be able to > like, reply, share, or Retweet the Tweet in question. You will still be able > to express your opinion with Retweet with Comment._

I think, not able to like/retweet is less of a big deal than unable to _reply_ \- not the only way to comment on the tweet is using a quote-tweet, which can only be seen by your own followers. This seems to make it impossible to get a full overviews about the replies to a tweet unless you already know the people that you expect to reply.

I may be wrong, but this seems like a step to _increase_ the filter-bubble effect and potentially strengthen the effect of such tweets instead of restricting them.

<comment><USER43> Exactly. Modern social media platofrms derive their power from their ability to control preception.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> "The social media giant said it will not allow users to like, reply, share or retweet the offending tweets, but instead will let users quote-tweet to allow ordinary users to express their _opinions_." (Emphasis mine)

And that, my friends, is exactly the problem with Twitter.

The format of the platform encourages opinions, not substantiated arguments. I'm not saying you _can't_ have substantiated arguments, I'm saying the format doesn't _encourage_ them. The whole point of Twitter is for influencers to post short quips to evoke emotion and get followers. As McLuhan said, "The medium is the message". It's a losing battle.

<comment><USER43> They cant afford to let users gauge opinion. That's _their_ job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Twitter leadership has shown they are not a good arbiter of truth. This is a sticky problem. While deplatforming does work for obvious instances of hate&exclusion, I'm not sure handing authoritarians the weapon of "they are silencing me" will help the situation.

</comment><comment><USER46> I think Twitter should add a "save" feature so that those who want to actually save a reference to a tweet don't actually have to "like" it. I wonder how much this would change the "heart" counts for world leaders...

<comment><USER25> They've had this for months; it's called "Add to Bookmarks" in the popup options on a given Tweet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Possibly the worst platform to ever grace the internet, and that takes some doing when you have Facebook as your competition.

The sooner it kills itself from within the better

</comment><comment><USER48> The US company that is broadcasting Chinese propaganda about Hong Kong [1] is going to start suppressing what the US President has to say. Despicable.

[1] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/08/19/twitter-u...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/08/19/twitter- under-fire-for-running-chinese-ads-attacking-hong-kong-protesters/)

</comment><comment><USER49> We'll just take screenshots and post those.

People have already been doing this for quite some time, since the media has been rather brazen about "disappearing" articles that expose either their own corruption or the foibles of their paymasters.

</comment><comment><USER50> Would be fun if affected world leaders backslash by restricting Twitter in their country.

</comment><comment><USER51> Well you can serialize tweets into text and then tweet that:

      Leader tweeted:...

</comment><comment><USER52> Have there been any studies on how many people actually see those tweets, and of those, how many remember the content and then agree/disagree? I'm a bit unsure how data based any of these actions are.

<comment><USER53> What? Who uses twitter anymore? I mean, besides politicians and celebrities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> How about hide the tweet if the tweet breaks the rules. Like a reverse mute.

<comment><USER35> ...like shadow banning?

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Users will retweet and like screen-grabs instead. I don't think it will solve the issue. It's a step in the right direction though.

</comment><comment><USER56> Sure would be great if certain world leaders felt bound by the Rule of Law.

But in the meantime maybe we can at least get them to follow Twitters TOS...

</comment><comment><USER57> And since we all know who is the world leader this is aimed at - seems like Twitter is begging for regulation as retaliation strike.

<comment><USER58> Maybe they want regulation. Currently they get attacked no matter what they do. Regulation allows them to wash their hands of their messiest issue and when anyone gets angry, they can point to the regulations and blame the government.

<comment><USER57> Honestly the best solution is social networks to be declared as public fora or something definition based on common carrier - they are forced to not discriminate about speech, but they are immune. California has a something about the fora in the state constitution that was relevant about right to protest in malls.

<comment><USER59> So if I run a forum for discussion of chess, and someone keeps posting long rants about how all the <vulgar word for black people> are low IQ thieves who should be deported to Africa, Jews are keeping white people down and its too bad Hitler was stopped before he finished what he started with them, and also posts his Death Eaters gang rape Hermione fanfiction, and none of this has the slightest thing to do with chess...I should have to leave these posts up and not ban that account, unless I want to take responsibility for everything anyone says on my forum?

<comment><USER57> Make a chess forum with couple of billion users that use it as main form of communication and then lets sweat after that question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Can't people just retweet with comment? Not very familiar with Twitter, so genuine question.

<comment><USER14> Yes:

> let users quote-tweet to allow ordinary users to express their opinions.

<comment><USER60> So this changes absolutely nothing?

<comment><USER14> The tweet appears hidden, replaced by a text explaining that it's unacceptable and a link to reveal the original message.

It seems little but it does send the message that the content is not welcome. I don't know of any large scale attempt at using that approach to reduce unwanted content. Other approaches, for instance, flagging links as proven false by fact-checkers, has significantly back-fired so I'm curious.

<comment><USER60> Okay, good to know. It wasn't clear to me what the actual consequence was of forcing a, "retweet with comment" would be, if the comment could just be "." or something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Power of a corporation over the government: The world of Cyberpunk is closer and closer.

</comment><comment><USER62> How about restricting world leaders who break the rule instead?

</comment><comment><USER63> Don't say what you want, slave! Or, Uhm World Leader...

</comment><comment><USER64> Aaaaaand que Joe Rogan Experience: Jack Dorsey vol. III

</comment><comment><USER65> Where has social media been a good thing for society?

<comment><USER66> We'll look back on Twitter in years to come as one of the worst things to happen to public discourse since the Internet came to exist.

I just wish it would go away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> just what we need... more censure in the US... /s

Now if they fail to block something illegal or something else of that nature, can they be held liable?

</comment><comment><USER68> Tech companies are getting into politics too much

</comment><comment><USER69> I think it's excellent that they're restricting the Iranian leader's tweet where he says that Rushdie's death sentence still stands. I think it is equally wrong not to restrict Trump's tweets where he threatens to destroy countries like Iran or North Korea, which is obviously the threat of a terrorist act, involving the murder of millions of innocent civilians. That being the case, it seems clear to me that Twitter is not impartial.

</comment><comment><USER70> Luckily, there will still be [http://TrumpTweets.io](http://TrumpTweets.io) to fill that gaping void.

</comment><comment><USER71> How will they remove bias, as already mentioned in the article:

"Last year, Twitter said it would not ban President Trump despite incendiary tweets, including allegations that he threatened to declare war on North Korea. However, in the case of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, he had one of his tweets deleted from the site."

</comment><comment><USER72> Right. We're all equal but some people are more equal than others. So it's OK they're above the rules for commoners.

Twitter is rationalizing their unequal treatment of people for the sake of their network traffic and $$$, but what's amazing is people are actually buying this.

I wonder how those same people would rationalize their opposition to other outrageous situations like universities saying "professors can say racist things in the university press and classroom because there is public interest in their words", "CEOs of big international corporations can do hate speech because there is world wide public interest", "it's OK for evil governments to stream threats and false narratives because there is public interest" etc.

<comment><USER73> Anyone with a verified account gets away with incitement and harassment on a scale that lesser accounts would be sanctioned for. In the one case I saw where a verified account was sanctioned, their friends (actually I suspect its a paid Tweet ring) rallied their hundreds of thousands of supporters. Given that journalists rely heavily on Twitter (its true source of power), they can amplify this outrage.

Twitter is held hostage by its power users.

<comment><USER74> I got mobbed and threatened with violence from none other than the leaders of the Bay Area Clojure meetup, published author(s), and found my Twitter account instantly suspended on Muni home—guessing somebody in the group knew somebody inside the big T to make the suspension happen, or they just got a big mass of reports in. I was physically at the Meetup when these calls for violence were happening, unbeknownst to me since I don't use my mobile while at meetups, but it explains some if the eratic behavior. I don't know where to begin seeking recourse, this was earlier this year. It's terrifying, indeed.

<comment><USER75> Wow, this sounds insane. Do you mind sharing the backstory?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> I don't believe them.

</comment><comment><USER77> A lot of people are making claims about a "loss" of free speech due to this change. I don't see how this is an issue.

Twitter's rules are impartial. I don't see how impartial rules can be exclusionary. Well I can to some degree, in the sense that impartial rules such as "no politics in esports" prevents people from protesting injustices, such as Hong Kong, but Twitter's rules are more about not actively promoting violence.

It is entirely possible that these impartial rules may disproportionately affect certain groups/political parties (white nationalists, Trump, etc.) -- this just means those parties need to get in step with baseline moral standards that simply claim actively promoting violence and exclusion is bad.

Also Twitter is a private company. They can choose who is able to use their platform or not. (At least I think that's how it works, maybe not).

<comment><USER78> The problem is bias. Just like how making hiring based on race illegal people still do it. So if the admins are biased in favor of one party then they will be very lenient against it and very strict against the other. They might have reasons for every ban "You can't incite hatred" while also have reasons for not banning your own "The hatred is justified in this case as the other side is worse", but the end result still becomes very biased.

So in essence the more liberties you give your admins to ban or silence people the more biased your platform becomes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Who decides whether the leaders break rules or not?

</comment><comment><USER42> OT, but Verizon's GDPR prompt/privacy policy is exceptionally scary and even more infuriating than the usual policies. Could we maybe post a link from another source?

</comment><comment><USER80> Would be good if all retweets needed a comment.

</comment><comment><USER81> And who will guard against them breaking their own rules? Who will watch the watchmen?

</comment><comment><USER82> What's a "world leader"? That sounds like something you might claim to be but that should under no circumstances be allowed.

<comment><USER83> > _What 's a "world leader"?_

A head of state of a country, especially but not exclusively of an influential nation.

<comment><USER82> I'm pointing out that the term implies more than the truth, and that it's good there aren't real world leaders. Apparently people don't appreciate my approach to communicating that.

<comment><USER84> "World leader" is an extremely common term for a leader of a country. They are called "world leader" because they are involved in world affairs.

You seem to believe it means a leader of some kind of whole earth government. That isn't implied at all.

<comment><USER82> I know how people use it. I think it's an idiotic term.

<comment><USER84> So your question was rehtorical and all your protests about how it was "chilling" were just to create drama or something?

Great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> The whole thing looks like a clever PR move pursuing several goals: a) advertise to leaders who hasn't joined jet; b) appeal to authoritarian leaders who like to ban/firewall platforms in their countries, and thus gain competitive advantage; c) please Trump.

And the whole thing feels disgusting.

<comment><USER60> How is this going to please Trump?

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> Yawn. They've said this how many times over the last couple years?

<comment><USER83> As far as I remember, never?

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> Retweeting is not free speech. The original tweet is free. Everything after that is leveraged speech. Leveraged by the platform. And the platform is co- responsible for leveraging speech. If Trump's (or whoever's) followers want to subscribe to what he has to say, awesome. But if Twitter (or whatever platform) functions as a megaphone for hate speech, or incitement to violence speech, or dangerous and obvious misinformation speech, it should be held accountable. And if it is being held accountable it should have discretion such that they can behave as a responsible megaphone. I'm all about free speech. But building multi billion dollar echo chambers that can be co-opted with impunity in the name of free speech makes zero legal sense and zero common sense.

<comment><USER88> What about my individual freedom of expression to repeat what someone else said?

If someone else says something first, am I not allowed to repeat it?

Like, let's say I heard something in the park. It would be ridiculous for someone to try and stop me from physically saying the same thing that someone else said.

<comment><USER89> To be fair, Jack Dorsey doesn't own your park.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> Good. "World leaders" should be subject to some facsimile of the rules that apply to regular people. This strikes a good balance of neutral reporting and responsible platform stewardship, in my opinion. Note that the media has always exercised this type of judgment, and as imperfect as that judgment is, I think it's better than neutrally amplifying whatever people tell them.</comment>


Silicon Valley Tries to Alter the Perception of Cannabis - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/technology/marijuana-start-ups-see-an-industry-on-the-cusp-of-a-breakthrough.html?ref=technology <comment><USER2> Very few people are going to get rich off of cannabis. There's really nothing novel about any part of the industry except that it's now legal. Indoor growing / hydroponics are used for a wide variety of plants, so the tech on the production front is already mature (if not commoditized). Because it's pretty cheap to produce and doesn't take a ton of special knowledge, wide legalization will see a race to the bottom on price (along with razor-thin margins for growers). Prices are still very high right now because nobody can achieve sufficient scale (again, thanks to the weird legal environment) but once they do, prices and margins will fall and a lot of growers will get bought out or go out of business. It doesn't really cost much to grow super- high quality marijuana on an industrial scale.

The rest of the value chain is really nothing novel either if you ignore the weird regulatory environment that currently exists. A retail store selling weed is not much different from any other retail store. A delivery service is still subject to the same fundamental issues as any other delivery service -- and when weed becomes really cheap, a $10 delivery fee may not make sense when you're buying $20 worth of weed. There's room in the market for differing tastes and consumption methods, but those too are more or less commoditized and can use general-purpose industrial processing equipment.

There's a boom right now because the market is growing quickly, but there will be a corresponding crash once the consumer market starts to hit the point where scale matters.

<comment><USER3> I personally feel you underestimate how much money there is to be made DURING the race to the bottom. Sure 5 years from now you may not be able to charge a $10 delivery fee. But that's 5 years where you can, grow a company, pivot when the time is right and new market trends emerge.

I think your sentiment towards the growing side is spot on though. Large players with experience growing produce and other plants will swoop in and dominate.

<comment><USER2> Delivery businesses in general are hard to make a buck in. Most of the ones currently operating are only successful because they either charge sky-high delivery fees or they're operating at a loss to gain market share. It's not like hiring people to deliver things is a new concept.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >People in the marijuana industry have lately taken to saying that legal marijuana is the next Internet, an untrammeled new market opportunity that is just waiting for its own big brands, the Google and Facebook of pot.

This feels like a very poor analogy. Legal marijuana is perhaps "an untrammeled new market opportunity," but I sincerely doubt it will completely revolutionize the majority of human business and recreational activity within a few decades as the internet has.

<comment><USER5> Too bad there isn't an existing industry based on smoking dried, rolled up plant leaves that they could compare themselves to. Heck, if they realized such an industry existed, they could disrupt it.

<comment><USER6> Back in the 1970s somebody wrote a novel, _Acapulco Gold_ , about roughly this situation. I suppose that it is long out of print, but it shouldn't be hard to find on Amazon.

Edit: Actually, I think it was about Big Tobacco disrupting the cannabis business, not vice-versa.

<comment><USER7> It seems incredibly likely that Big Tobacco will eventually dominate the cannabis business. The current protection is that the legal environment is still to fraught for corporations of that stature to take the risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What may derail this is the proposal to move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule II.[1] That makes marijuana a prescribable drug. This makes it insurance-reimbursable, but distribution is through the usual chain for addictive prescription drugs, with non-renewable prescriptions for specific quantities and reporting to the DEA. This would make it more available for medical purposes, but less available for recreational purposes.

[1] [http://www.thedailychronic.net/2015/49457/hillary-clinton- en...](http://www.thedailychronic.net/2015/49457/hillary-clinton-endorses- marijuanas-reclassification-to-schedule-ii/)

<comment><USER9> Moving to Schedule 2 is a policy that may have made sense twenty years ago. We're well past that at this point - MJ is legal in several states and the sky isn't falling.

<comment><USER10> Right, quite the opposite. In those states, drug arrests are down, prison population is dropping, tax dollars are being collected. It's looking like the right kind of policy from just about every perspective.

<comment><USER11> >drug arrests are down

Serious question, because this point gets brought up often in this discussion: Did people expect drug arrests to go _up_ or even stay the same? If you remove the ability of police to arrest someone for something, don't arrests then naturally go down?

<comment><USER12> One of the main recurring arguments against legalizing marijuana is that it is a "gateway drug": people who try it are more likely to go on to harder drugs like opium or cocaine. This means that some people legitimately believe that legalizing it would get more people into these other drugs and increase the overall number of drug crimes.

It doesn't really make sense to me, but it seems to be one of the most common rationalizations for being against legalization.

<comment><USER11> >This means that some people legitimately believe that legalizing it would get more people into these other drugs and increase the overall number of drug crimes.

Okay, but according to the ACLU 52% of drug arrests are for marijuana. I know we've already exited the realm of logic with the gateway drug theory but to believe that legalizing marijuana would result in an _instant_ increase in drug arrests -- that is, enough to overtake the _majority of drug arrests in a single category_ , seems patently absurd.

[0][https://www.aclu.org/gallery/marijuana-arrests- numbers](https://www.aclu.org/gallery/marijuana-arrests-numbers)

<comment><USER13> Yes, that idea is silly and that's why none of us have seen anyone making such a polemic argument. I think you know the answer, people vote with emotion, not with facts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I know that HN often doesn't care for wordplay, but the inverse of this headline is both funny and true - "Cannabis tries to Alter the Perception of Silicon Valley".

<comment><USER15> Anyone who thinks a plant has agency, and can "try" anything, has been smoking something.

<comment><USER14> Oh come on, it's used to indicate intention of non-sentient objects all the time. "The electron tries to fall into the lowest energy state."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is getting medical marijuana really as easy as a quick video chat with symptoms of frequent heartburn? Prohibiting it seems especially ridiculous if that is the case.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Dude, not even. When I worked in the Valley I went to the THC doctor's office with a whole backstory about how I work for a big tech company and I drank to handle the stress etc.

When I got there I was given a medical form to fill out. The third page actually asked why I wanted medical marijuana. I simply wrote "anxiety" and figured I'd explain it later. Then I got the call that the doctor was ready to see me. I gave him the form, he flipped straight to the third page, then said:

"Hmm...anxiety...when you go to the dispensary, you're going to want to ask for Indica."

<comment><USER17> Well? Did it help? :)

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Marijuana is an interesting drug. On one hand, it is like a stress reset button (along with a good night's sleep), but on the other, it's impossible to OD or feel sick on it, so, unlike alcohol, you can binge or have it all the time and feel few adverse side effects.

Thing is, studies have shown that too much use can dampen the brain's ability to absorb (not produce!) dopamine, making everyday successes feel less significant.

So yes, it did help, but it comes with caveats. Just because you can blaze all day erryday doesn't mean you should.

<comment><USER18> > _it 's impossible to (..) feel sick on it_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitey_%28drugs%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitey_%28drugs%29)

How much it too much would depend on your body and tolerance, but I've seen plenty of people feel sick from smoking too much.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Can't say I've ever felt sick from smoking too much, except for a time when the munchies took over and I ended up ordering delivery from two restaurants in one night.

<comment><USER18> Could be that you've never smoked enough to get there, could be you're just lucky. Certainly it's a lot harder to feel shit after smoking than drinking.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash >Could be that you've never smoked enough to get there

Believe me, I've tried.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Something to consider is the effect growing will have on the power grid. In Portland there have been some blackouts caused by grow houses:

[http://www.oregonlive.com/marijuana/index.ssf/2015/11/mariju...](http://www.oregonlive.com/marijuana/index.ssf/2015/11/marijuana_grows_cause_power_bl.html)

<comment><USER20> Our power grid is rickety and flakey, it needs some serious upgrades. 20,000W of grow lights is what, 40 modern desktops with 500W power supplies? The problem you're mentioning is more about fault tolerance and missing fail-over modes.

<comment><USER21> And growing in residential spaces that were never wired for that much power draw, instead of commercial/industrial areas.

<comment><USER22> I'd be surprised. Just because it's legal doesn't make it exempt from zoning laws, and surely if you're moving into it because of legalization you'd want to stay legal with the rest of your business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Prohibition will slowly ebb until it reaches a tipping point, just like it did with alcohol. We've already seen that the deleterious effects of cannabis are minimal. Heck, if I weren't one of the unlucky few on whom it has no effect, I'd probably use it too.

<comment><USER24> Can you expand on why it doesn't have effect on you?

<comment><USER25> it's bullshit. if you gave him an edible he'd be higher than a kite, just like every other person on earth.

<comment><USER26> A lot of people with no smoking experience don't get enough in the lungs the first few times. Actual unresponsiveness to THC is very rare if it exists at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Cannabis should be treated the same as tobacco.

</comment><comment><USER28> The funny thing about stoner stereotypes is how much lazy thinking is involved. And so people who like cannabis but don't fit the stereotype just shut up about it. I guess it's time to do away with the stereotypes, now that there is money to be made! Funny how that works too.

</comment><comment><USER29> There are over 400,000 emergency room visits per year from marijuana. THC has biphasic activity. At low doses it can create the desired effects but at higher doses it has the opposite effects. These effects include irritability and even psychosis.

[1]New England Journal of Medicine (2014): Adverse Health Effects of Marijuana Use: [http://dfaf.org/assets/docs/Adverse%20health%20effects.pdf](http://dfaf.org/assets/docs/Adverse%20health%20effects.pdf)

[2] [http://www.menshealth.com/medical- marijuana/](http://www.menshealth.com/medical-marijuana/)

<comment><USER30> >There are over 400,000 emergency room visits per year from marijuana.

"In 2010, there were approximately 12.1 million diabetes-related ED visits for adults aged 18 years or older"

[https://www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/reports/statbriefs/sb167.jsp](https://www.hcup- us.ahrq.gov/reports/statbriefs/sb167.jsp)

Should we outlaws sugar and high fructose corn syrup ?

Anyway, looking at the full statistics on drug abuse emergency rooms visits it doesn't look like total [hypothetically successful] prohibition of marijuana would have any effect as OTC, other drugs and alcohol would obviously fill the void:

[http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/drug- related...](http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/drug-related- hospital-emergency-room-visits)

"Highlights from the 2009 Drug Abuse Warning Network

In 2009, there were nearly 4.6 million drug-related ED visits nationwide. These visits included reports of drug abuse, adverse reactions to drugs, or other drug-related consequences. Almost 50 percent were attributed to adverse reactions to pharmaceuticals taken as prescribed, and 45 percent involved drug abuse. DAWN estimates that of the 2.1 million drug abuse visits—

        27.1 percent involved nonmedical use of pharmaceuticals (i.e., prescription or OTC medications, dietary supplements)

       21.2 percent involved illicit drugs

        14.3 percent involved alcohol, in combination with other drugs

"

<comment><USER29> If you take the time to read the articles from NEJM, PNAS, and so on that have been cited, then you'll see the dangers of marijuana use. Please don't be critical until you've read the medical studies.

<comment><USER31> ER doc here.

I have seen people in the ED with marijuana-related complaints. I can count the total number on my hands. Every single one of those patients has been absolutely fine. Am I aware of patients with marijuana-related complaints who weren't fine? Sure, a few case reports. But overall, the "dangers" of marijuana do not exist in a real sense, compared to the dangers of every other recreationally-used/abused substance out there, or compared to prescription medications, both psychotropic and not. Not even close.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lessons from Nokia: The idea of users as designers is a catastrophe - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/22/nokia_manifesto_risku/print.html

<comment><USER2> It depends which users you're talking about. I'd guess (based on the lead-user theories of Yochai Benkler) that a ridiculous of amount of innovation is going to come out of Android, because of it's toolkit nature combined with the type of people who would buy a phone just to make it do something that currently can't be done, who have no other suitable platform.

We've already seen a wave of innovation from "users" building apps for iPhone, Android just continues and expands this into the next level down.</comment>


Let Your Workers Rebel - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/cover-story/2016/10/let-your-workers-rebel <comment><USER2> Sure. Until they say something politically incorrect. Then you fire them.</comment>


Review my startup... - <AUTHOR> http://jeremy.tregunna.ca/articles/2011-03-28/review_my_startup

<comment><USER2> True. as someone who's been working on something for 6 months, and who finally feels almost ready to post something here, I'd say: take the startups which were obviously thrown up in the last few weeks with a grain of salt.. but don't lump the ones which have clearly had some thought (and serious manhours) put into them into the same bundle.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, it's just very hard to see quality in some of the items that get posted. That's not to take away from the effort gone into building and marketing them, I know it's hard work. I've failed in the startup world before myself. Just one of those thoughts that runs through your mind sometimes.

<comment><USER2> Yup, it might be helpful to see metrics along with every "review my startup" post. not # customers/users, since obviously the startups that post will have low numbers; but maybe things like manhours spent coding, number of people involved, time since ideation, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure how useful those metrics would be at any point, since some ideas are simple, and others complex. Plus how do you quantify time since you got the idea? Just for example.

<comment><USER2> they wouldn't be good metrics for comparing apples and oranges. you're right. what other proxies are there for how serious/committed the founders are and/or how well thought out the business plan? or do you just take all 'review my startup' links with a grain of salt?

<comment><AUTHOR> Due to lack of any good metrics, I always take all "Review my startup" links with a grain of salt. I try and keep note of the ones that look interesting, but generally after perusing the site, I forget about it. Some are downright ridiculous, others look interesting. There's an opportunity here somewhere, I just don't see it. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Startup Economics 101, or, How Long Until We're Dead? - <AUTHOR> http://adgrok.com/startup-economics-101/ <comment><USER2> Be cautious about deferred fees in dealing with lawyers. These have their legitimate role in the world of startups but, as with any other form of "easy credit," they can wind up costing you far more in the long run than if you simply negotiate good rates or fixed fee amounts for work you have at hand.

For example, this piece discusses fee deferrals up to $30K. How would this work?

A typical deferred-fee deal provides that a startup will get corporate legal services of up to x amount that are deferred for some fixed time (say, 6 months) or until the company does its first funding at some minimum amount (say, $1 million), whichever comes first. In exchange, the startup gives the law firm a small piece of equity for the credit extension. If the startup fails in its business, the founders are not personally liable for the cost of the legal services and the law firm eats the loss (this is the credit risk it takes for which it gets equity in exchange). If the startup does not fail, the bill comes due in time and must be paid.

Now, a few observations from one who has done such deals many times over from a lawyer perspective:

1\. The deferred-fee deal is a beautiful fit for the type of go-for-broke, hope-to-massively-scale company that will depend heavily on VC funding. You team up with a few co-founders, set your company in motion, and let it fly. You get heavily diluted up front when the VC funding comes in at $5 million and up, the burn rate for the company is high, and you go all out with a prestige team to build that billion dollar company (or at least hundreds of millions). You hire a law firm that bills $500/hr and up even for green attorneys and that works in teams. A simple company formation is $5K and up; your convertible note round is $5K to $10K and up; your Series A round is $50K to $60K and up. And, if it all works, all this gets paid from VC money. If it flops, you owe nothing. In a way, then, this is a risk-free way as a founder to go for broke in launching an ambitious venture.

2\. Now consider a bootstrap venture or an angel-funded venture where the founders delay outside funding until they can build a credible pre-money valuation in hopes of minimizing dilution. Unlike the VC-funded case, you will here want to be much more cautious about what the legal services will cost. In most such companies, it is easy to get through the first 6 months of the company's history (a typical deferral period) without coming anywhere close to spending $30K on a legal budget. Company formation can easily be done in the $2K-$3K range for the vast majority of such companies; bridge notes for $3K or so; Series A often for $5K to $10K. Maybe you also need Terms of Service and other miscellaneous items (e.g., trademark applications). Thus, if you add up all the typical legal needs of such a venture, you _might_ get up to the $10K range in the normal case if you spend your money wisely.

3\. The temptation, then, with a deferred-fee deal is to spend on legal matters with greater abandon given that you are using "easy credit." This made sense historically under the VC model. It makes less sense under the modern angel model and even less sense for a company that is going the purely bootstrap route.

4\. When it comes to deferred-fee deals, then, it is important to count the real cost. It _may_ be a good step for your company but make sure the fit is right for your venture. A decade ago, this was a near-ideal arrangement for most startups with quality founding teams. Today, it makes sense for some but probably not for most quality startups.

5\. Bottom line: if a deferred-fee deal looks attractive, then, by all means do it. Just don't treat it as an axiomatic good. Like most easy-credit arrangements, the ultimate cost to your company (even if not to you personally) may be quite a bit higher than what it might otherwise be if you focus purely on the market cost of the services.

I do find it ironic that this item is emphasized in a (nice) piece on watching your spending and that is what prompted me to comment. Do watch your dollars and especially when someone offers you something that seems to be all upside (when it is not).

<comment><AUTHOR> You are absolutely right, and frankly we're wondering if we should do such a deal right now. I absolutely believe your point that such 'easy credit' will spur companies to spend more on lawyers than they should. We'd like to avoid that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Salaries are hard. We are in a somewhat identical situation, seed funded 6 month old, and were grappling with salaries after we closed our seed round.

We went with something slightly different but probably more appropriate for a Scandinavian or European country. Basically each founder has a fixed sum that they can cost the company each month. It's up to each founder to decide how they split that sum between salary, benefits and mandatory retirement schemes. The salary itself can vary by as much as 30-40% depending on how you compose your package.

From my point of view, as the keeper of the cash, this makes burn rate planning manageable. All of us feel that the system is fair and we also feel we can optimize it for our own particular lifestyle. As for the actual sums we agreed on an equal split, with a slightly higher amount for the founder who had kids (that would be me).

<comment><USER4> you guys must be Swedes :)

(it sounds smart and well thought out)

<comment><USER3> Very close, the company is Finnish. That said I'm a Swedish-Finn. :)

<comment><USER4> I remember reading a long article it seems I never bookmarked, unfortunately, on how less likely it would have been for Linux to start and get traction in any other place, because of the ethos of community and cooperation which apparently is very strong in Finland (and Scandinavia - never been to Finland, Italian here :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is my first post on Hacker News. Glad to join you guys and see that you're talking about finances. I'm an accountant who is also a tax and business lawyer, specializing in micro businesses and creative projects. Hopefully I can contribute to the discussion.

This community is full of people who know how to hack code. I'd like to introduce the idea that it's possible to be equally creative with business entity design. Business laws and tax codes are just other types of codes, waiting to be hacked.

Corporations are one way to organize and that structure is well-suited to mature businesses. But it's far from the best format for beginning creative enterprises. It seems to be widely accepted that start-ups need to be corporations to make the transitions smoother as more investors are added down the line. It's time to reconsider that.

Start-ups have completely different needs than mature businesses and should not be strangled by all the baggage that comes with a corporation, in the name of 'making a smoother transition.'

It is fairly simple to start with an organization that is NOT a corporation and, thereby, avoid payroll taxes. Possibly ALL taxes, depending on the structure and the source of cash. This is particularly true if you are going to give equity anyway.

Do some research on entity choice. Examples might be a Limited Liability Company, Limited Liability Partnership (in some jurisdictions), Limited Partnership, Limited Liability Limited Partnership (also only in some jurisdictions), even go naked as as simple Partnership or Joint Venture.

By the time you're big enough to go public, you'll be able to afford the lawyers you need to reorganize. And that will be the least of your concerns. In the meantime, pick a business structure that is well-suited to your current needs, and can even help with some of your current headaches, like salaries, taxes, and cash flow.

So, yes, a good accountant will pay for themselves many times over. So will a good lawyer. Finding a good one is the real challenge.

<comment><USER6> With advice like that, I hope this isn't your last post here too. Welcome to HN! :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> nice post, unfortunately SF payroll tax is 1.5% over $150,000 in payroll, not $250k in payroll as mentioned in your article :( It's a racket and is one of the reasons Twitter and Zynga are threatening to leave SF if the city doesn't give them a break on the tax. But it hurts the little guys more. If you have 4 employees making $40k each you have to pay 1.5% of 160k, which is $2400 (that amounts to almost 2 months of office rent or 75% of one employees monthly salary).

<comment><USER8> Personally, I'd be willing to take a 1.5% paycut to work in SF instead of the Valley, because I can't stand suburban commutes. But that kind of reasoning is probably why I'm in NYC instead of out west to begin with.

EDIT: Also, I'd suspect that the "1.5% on payrolls over 150k" only applies to the amount in overage, because that's the way most graduated taxes work. So it'd be 150 bucks on the 10k of overage in your 160k example.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, in NYC you have a 1.5% income tax, rather than corporate tax, which is almost worse in a way.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, and that doesn't even bother me, because I love living here and wouldn't trade that 1.5% for a suburban commute. To start with, I don't have to own a car, so that alone probably puts me ahead on income (the cost of rent puts me right back behind again, though).

I am still upset as a Red Sox fan that a bunch of that money went to subsidizing the new Yankee Stadium, though.

<comment><USER7> but you could move to south san francisco, and have an easy bart commute and the company wouldn't have to pay any payroll tax.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Every dollar you bring in has a significant effect on your runway. While making a few K a month and making it early may be far from profit, it can change your runway from 12 months to 18 months and beyond. It can also determine if you get to call it "my" business or "the" business.

<comment><USER10> It is a tremendous feeling to get to the break-even point and with it the realization that you can now work on your startup full-time for as long as you want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A very good post by @asmartbear on the same subject : <http://blog.asmartbear.com/death-clock.html>

<comment><USER12> I think that the Death Clock article is complementary, rather than an alternative.

The OP post is essentially a laundry list of expenses that startups can expect to face. This is useful because it is easy to overlook something that will blow a hole in your cash.

The Smart Bear post is a higher level look at tools for managing cashflow. Instead of checking the cashflow balance once per month, you can see almost immediately what's going on. Short feeback loops are the core of agility.

The only danger I can see with the SB approach is a risk of overcorrecting to noise. The use of least-squares fitting helps, but mindfulness pays.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Two blog posts early on (one on NY vs. SF, and another about my time at > Goldman Sachs) went viral and were what first put us on the map. To this > day, people stop me when I'm wearing an AdGrok shirt and ask if I'm the guy > from the blog. We've gotten meetings with major companies who might > otherwise not return emails because of those posts. Pick a fight. Pinch a > nerve.

It was interesting to know that these blog posts had such a positive effect just by unearthing a controversy, something out of the 37Signals playbook. Hard to argue against free marketing despite potentially stepping on a few toes.

</comment><comment><USER14> You would think, with the big deal Obama is making about how we need to do everything we can to encourage more start ups, he would offer some kind of 2 year tax free grace period. I understand that we need to tax to some extant, but how much more likely do you think start ups would be to succeed if we didn't have to worry about taxes eating away our already limited money during the first most crucial steps?

<comment><USER15> Personally, I think that when you are small and not very profitable, lowering the complexity of taxes would help you more than lowering the tax rate. Most taxes are on profit (or on income) and nearly all of them are graduated. Before you are making much money, you don't have to pay out much in taxes.

However, tax complexity makes planning much more difficult. I've gotta include a tax person in my decision making process. Now, once you are big, this is no big deal, but as a smaller entity? this is kindof a big deal. And it's another huge risk factor. If I screw up and end up in massive debit to one of my vendors or a bank or something, worst case I can declare bankruptcy. If I screw up my taxes? There is no such escape route available. I know more than one person who will spend most of their career in debit to the IRS because they thought they could do their own small business taxes, and screwed it up.

So yeah. for startups? I think complexity of taxes, ultimately, is a bigger deal than the tax rate. This reverses, I think, as the company becomes more profitable. Lower tax rates are going to make profitable businesses more profitable, so lower tax rates would increase the upside for any startup. But I think that reducing the complexity of the tax code would help those who are still teetering on the edge of profitability more than reducing the tax rate.

<comment><USER8> This. The US has one of the highest on-paper corporate tax rates while having one of the lowest effective corporate tax rates that most companies actually pay.

This is basically a regressive taxation system for business since small businesses don't do things like offshore accounts and tax havens, so they get stuck with the bill. Meanwhile we're incenting big business to spend more time on that BS than on producing good product. Unfortunately, nobody will be able to reform this because any amount of moving things around between line items will be branded as RAISING TAXES!!1one2, even if it's revenue neutral (just omit the balancing cuts and it's still OBAMA RAISING TAXES).

<comment><USER16> It is hard to get around the 35% US corporate tax rate. In my time as an investment banker, the only way I saw that companies could easily lower their taxes is by losing money (losing money one year gives you a carry-forward loss that you can use to get out of taxes the next, hardly free money). As far as I am aware, this kind of tax credit is common in the developed world and the US corporate taxes remain the highest. The impression that you get at reddit/ The Huffington Post/ Hollywood that you can open up a foreign bank account and _bam_ no taxes is largely false. All the companies that I sold, capitalized, or researched paid taxes at close to the nominal rate of 35% (my specialty was firms $100 million to $1 billion in market cap).

What are your credentials? Perhaps you are a corporate tax accountant and you know better than I do.

<comment><USER8> I almost certainly know less about corporate taxes than you do.

But how do you explain the gap between stated and effective tax rate? Maybe I'm oversimplifying by blaming the Cayman Islands but obviously big corporations are doing _something_ to pay significantly lower taxes than the advertised rate.

<comment><USER16> Usually companies with a low effective tax rate have lost money in recent years. This is especially true over the last 3 years (I believe 3 years is the limit on a carry-forward loss credit, and 2008-2011 has been bad for business). The net effect is that US companies pay 35% taxes on their 3-year trailing average income rather than income in a given year.

Occasionally you will hear another breathless claim on places like reddit/The Huffington Post/The Daily Kos that some large percent of corporations pay no corporate taxes at all. They are usually counting the large number of small businesses organized as S-corps and LLCs which pay pass-through personal income taxes rather than corporate taxes, and counting all the C-corps that lost money and therefore paid no corporate taxes for the year. On its face it is a true statement that most corporations pay no taxes, but it is a very misleading statement.

In my experience, it is very difficult for the shareholders of a C-corp in the United States to derive benefit from the entity's business activities without the benefits being taxed at the corporate level.

<comment><USER8> Well, so here's a study by the congressional budget office:

<http://cbo.gov/ftpdocs/69xx/doc6902/11-28-CorporateTax.pdf>

Puts the effective corporate tax rate a cool 10-15 points under the statutory one, depending on sector, and has some graphs illustrating that our statutory rate is one of the highest while our effective rate is one of the lowest.

So it's not just the dirty hippies saying this.

The dirty hippies tend to get angry about stuff like the fact that Exxon apparently pays little to no corporate taxes (citation needed), and whatever else they have going on they certainly haven't posted a loss recently.

<comment><USER16> "The dirty hippies tend to get angry about stuff like the fact that Exxon apparently pays little to no corporate taxes (citation needed), and whatever else they have going on they certainly haven't posted a loss recently."

Exxon Mobile paid $21 billion in corporate taxes on operating income of $53 billion in the fiscal year ended December 31, 2010 for an effective corporate tax rate of 40%. Do leftists not know where to look this stuff up? They are allowed to take finance and accounting classes, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Great writeup! As I read it, it also reminded me of this poem "Dulce Et Decorum Est" - <http://www.english.emory.edu/LostPoets/Dulce.html>

<comment><USER18> Yes, it's quite refreshing to see great literature quotes in a "technical" or "business" kind of blog post. His reference to Owen's poem is incorrect though: the phrase originates from one of Horace's Odes, which Owen is quoting from. In Owen's poem, the phrase was used ironically: it's about as sweet and proper to die for one's country (or startup) as mustard gas and dead horses stuck in the mud. Perhaps the irony is intended....?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> What ranges of equity/salary compensation are offered these days? If one should be skeptical about an employee who wants mostly cash, how should founders react to someone preferring all equity?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd be fine with it. I think later on when you've got dozens (or hundreds) of employees and a limited options pool, it might become unfeasible. But right now, I'd have no problem with paying an employee only equity. Even tiny companies like us have valuations that are, well, non-zero, so it's not like some employee can conspire to get founder equity status by simply not taking cash.

Why, know someone who will take only equity? Send him/her our way if so..;)

<comment><USER15> Are there legal problems with this? Don't you need to pay at least minimum wage? Or is that implied?</comment></comment></comment>


Lemonade Startup – A satire simulator game - <AUTHOR> http://lemonstartup.com <comment><AUTHOR> OP here, we developed this game over the weekend for Toronto Game Jam and I thought the Hacker News community would appreciate the subject matter. There's a total of 7 endings and one involves getting acquired by Juicebook. See if you can figure it out :D

<comment><USER3> A couple nitpicks. It's stressful to land on a page with a countdown to start and no idea how it works or what I need to do. I couldn't scroll down to the instructions or forecast. Other than that the interface is pretty slick. Good luck!

<comment><USER4> It's using Agile methodology. The problem is likely with you ;).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> After about 10-15 plays, my last 3 games were:

Valuation: 312,057,919 Cash: 1,228,670 Ending: Still in Business

Valuation: 168,777,006 Cash: 949,141 Ending: Bootstrapped (was trying for this one)

Valuation: 788,748,152 Cash: 1,257,966 Ending: Still In Business ([http://i.imgur.com/Js2ZOYx.png](http://i.imgur.com/Js2ZOYx.png))

What I did was (roughly): Left the price at $1.5 nearly the whole time. I dropped it down to .50 in the last sprint.

First 5 days researching to get PMF.

Next 15 day designing to get Award

11 days on sales, accepting everything (all 3 carts, salmon, rappers, etc.) but not the investors. I wanted the extra marketing/sales from the other things, not the money. Equity be damned! (Damn that "second life" cart, it steals m'equity! As does the salmon one too. You need all the equities for the Fruitbook ending.)

Next 8 days on development to get the drops

Then the last 17 day on marketing, always accepting the PR/video/etc throughout the whole time.

It will largely depend on the weather that last day, but this routine should give you a good deal of valuation each time. On my $788M run, the last day was 29c "sunny with clouds"

</comment><comment><USER6> Selling $0 lemonade at the end brings your final valuation up to crazy values. 200 million range.

</comment><comment><USER7> That was too much fun for such a simple game! I just finished with 50k in the bank and a $15million valuation. If only life were so easy to game.

</comment><comment> mauricio-OH The secret to success and not bleed cash is business 101:

\- Sales and Marketing all the way. Nothing else.

\- Go to $10 from the beginning (you are starbucks of lemonade)

\- Accept: free cash, PR, licenses, new locations

\- Reject: Anything that gives away equity or royalties

260k in cash 15.9M valuation

[http://cl.ly/image/2m1F161B1w2B](http://cl.ly/image/2m1F161B1w2B)

<comment><USER8> more business 101 - after showing initially good results and establishing confidence, drop your prices to unsustainable levels (i.e. $0) to drive growth and inflate your valuation, then make a swift exit. This strategy netted me ~$200k + $90m+ valuation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have been acquired by JuiceBook after finishing with $116k in cash and a valuation of $8.6m.

It seems that the secret is to increase price throughout the game - <USER2> $10/cup by the 2nd half of Sprint 4. Also accept any and all popups.

</comment><comment><USER10> The name reminds me of an old apple 2 game called lemonade stand which was a simulation of an, wait for it, lemonade stand. It had random weather...I remember hoping for a heat wave in Lemonsville California.

<comment><AUTHOR> While not played on the apple 2. A form of that simulator on the web from younger years was an inspiration for this game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I noticed that on one day my valuation can go from negative thousands to positive thousands and vice versa. So, what is better? Final cash or final valuation?

</comment><comment><USER12> Start off designing furiously, get that Super Slick Packaging, and then switch to Sales/Marketing until the end.

Final Cash: $1,633,350.26

Final Valuation: $147,397,541.20

</comment><comment><USER13> $190M in valuation after the second try. Trick is to focus on product dev and then once you reach PMF, just spend on S&M.

</comment><comment><USER14> There's going to be a blog post about a blood orange lemonade stand selling for $10/glass on Monday.

<comment><USER15> Followed by a $2048 Flappy Bird stand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Guess I ran it too lean. $30K cash left in the bank, $10MM valuation.... no acquisition :'-(

</comment><comment><USER17> Finished with 19k in cash an 977k in valuation Fun game stressful when you first land though.

</comment><comment><USER18> The day before the end I had a $19m valuation, then it dropped to $10m on the last day :(

<comment><USER18> Looking at the other comments on here.. maybe I should go into the lemonade business :P</comment></comment>


Good Riddance to Social Search - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/28/good-riddance-to-social-search/ <comment><USER2> I think the results from "social search" are in there, they're just incorporated at a deeper level.

I wish people who (tried to) write about search engines had a better understanding of modern information retrieval techniques (document similarity, use of metadata, bag of words, etc) and that results are no longer just keyword matching, but try to infer the users intent from context and past interactions.

Search engines could probably due a better job conveying this in the presentation of results.</comment>


How To Prep for the App Store Freeze this Holiday Season - <AUTHOR> http://blog.apptopia.com/how-to-prep-for-apples-app-store-freeze-this-holiday-season/

<comment><USER2> Really emphasizes the need to prepare NOW for these types of opportunities. Especially now that we are talking about $100's of millions (if not Billions of dollars).

Sounds a little bit like the wild wild west / gold rush to me. I like it.

</comment><comment><USER3> EA has really come out quietly as a really serious competitor in the app market. Doesn't surprise me they are on top of the holiday hustle.</comment>


How JavaScript closures are garbage collected - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19798803/how-javascript-closures-are-garbage-collected?newsletter=1&nlcode=91287%7caea8

<comment><USER2> I'm fairly sure the issue being illustrated here is due to an optimization in how closure scopes are created, which I don't think any of the answers mention (yet). Can't remember where I saw this, but there's a blog-post somewhere in the wild that explains. Slap me if I'm wrong.

      // scope 1
      var someClass = function() {};

      function f() {
        // scope 1, 2
        var some = new someClass();
        function unreachable() { some; /* scope 1, 2, 3 */ }
        return function() { /* scope 1, 2, 4 */ };
      }

      window.f_ = f();

Basically, any closures created within scope 2 will share the same parent scope in its scope chain rather than each closure having its own parent. That means any variable in scope 2 that's captured by a child closure (3 or 4) will be included in the other child scopes.

In this case, `some` is captured in `unreachable()`, thus it's going to be included in the returned function as well. The returned function is then retained with `window.f_`, and that's the leak.

EDIT: for clarity. EDIT2: not the original article I read, but this does cover it: [http://www.meteor.com/blog/2013/08/13/an-interesting-kind- of...](http://www.meteor.com/blog/2013/08/13/an-interesting-kind-of- javascript-memory-leak)

<comment><USER3> The bit that helped most from the meteor post was this:

 _Well, the typical way that closures are implemented is that every function object has a link to a dictionary-style object representing its lexical scope. If both functions defined inside replaceThing actually used originalThing, it would be important that they both get the same object, even if originalThing gets assigned to over and over, so both functions share the same lexical environment._

<comment><USER4> Good quote. That is certainly a simple way to manage things. It isn't the only way (nor the best IMHO), but it is the simplest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The author wrote a really short code snippet that demonstrates the problem:

      function f() {
        var some = [];
        while(some.length < 1e6) {
          some.push(some.length);
        }
        function g() { some; } //removing this fixes a massive memory leak
        return function() {};    //or removing this
      }

If you keep a reference to the results of calling this function, it will keep a reference to the "some" variable, even though it is not needed.

He created a page that demonstrates the problem here:

[https://s3.amazonaws.com/chromebugs/memory.html](https://s3.amazonaws.com/chromebugs/memory.html)

<comment><USER6> So well that it crashed/froze icweasel...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Unfortunately, this behavior is common across all major browsers. There is a Chromium bug for it ([http://crbug.com/315190](http://crbug.com/315190)), but no responses as of yet.

<comment><USER3> This isn't going to be trivial to fix, it would require the vm to provide a different taylored scope to each function.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, you are right. I am optimistic, however.

IE used to not GC cyclical JS/DOM references. Google Chrome is doing a massive rework of DOM garbage collection with Oilpan.

You are right that it is not a trivial change, but there is nothing technically infeasible about GC'ing per closure. I think it is worth it, just as it was worth it for IE to have smarter GC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> martin-adams Maybe it's being kept in case the returned function executes an eval statement which needs the closure ;)

</comment><comment><USER7> Ah gc... always behaving as something alive

good question by the way</comment>


Adobe Creative Suite now in subscription form - <AUTHOR> http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/cssubscription.html <comment><USER2> Just some quick math about this...

Adobe has released a Creative Suite package every ~20 months (Wikipedia).

CS1 - 09/2003

CS2 - 04/2005 - 19 Months

CS3 - 03/2007 - 23 Months

CS4 - 10/2008 - 19 Months

CS5 - 04/2010 - 18 Months

\----

If we bought the first premium suite (based off current prices in the Adobe Store) it would have cost us around $1900. Add in upgrades at $400 each, and we get a total lifetime cost of $3500.

If subscription pricing was around since day one and we went with the new subscription pricing monthly rate of $95 (with one year contract) we would end up paying ~ $8650 to date or about 2.5x of buying it over that period (91 Months).

I don't find it surprising that they're going down this route. It surely is an interesting way to charge for downloaded software as we've really only seen this on the web front thus far.

I'm a bit interested to see how many total subscriptions we'll sign up for in a couple years. Reoccurring billing is certainly a nice stream of cash - and a bit of a trojan horse for additional revenue ;)

<comment><USER3> Right, but this is perfect for those of us who only need Adobe CS 1 or 2 months of the year--pay the monthly fee, add a little to our hourly rate to cover it, and voila!

Instead of ~$3500, you're looking at < $400 / year, which sounds just about right for me and the web dev / basic design work I'm doing.

I can use Gimp or Inkscape or Scribus for basic mockups, and than for the final client prints/work, I switch to the Adobe CS suite for standards compatibility, etc...

<comment><USER2> Ha! That's a great idea - add it in as a billable item on client invoices.

<comment><USER4> Unless _you_ are that customer. Imagine going to a carpenter and then receiving an invoice for him renting a hammer. Wouldn't that look a bit odd?

In other words it is commonly expected that professionals come equipped with the tools of trade. Not that this is set in stone, but that's the state of affairs and trying to do it differently is an uphill battle.

<comment><USER5> _> In other words it is commonly expected that professionals come equipped with the tools of trade_

Not always. Construction firms hire a lot of what they need for each job, because it is not economical for them to store and maintain the enormous variety of tools/machines that they need over the course of a year. They'd need a huge warehouse and a whole team of people to manage and maintain all the equipment, and at that point you may as well start running a hire company.

They don't invoice you for each rental fee in an itemised fashion, for the same reason they dont invoice you for each screw, each nail, the fuel for their vehicles etc: you don't give a shit.

<comment><USER6> The same model applies in film production, where (literally) tons of very expensive equipment get used for brief amounts of time by people who are hired based on long-standing personal relationships, then equipped by rental shops that can afford to maintain the massive inventories of often peculiar parts that are needed on any given show.

Actually, it's not the parts that are peculiar, it's the amounts and configurations that tend to vary. In any case, it makes good economic sense for everyone involved to handle labor and kit separately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Software suites like this cost huge amounts of money for bundles of tools that generally follow the 80/20 rule for any given user.

The problem is, any given user might need a different 20% than the next person. It makes it difficult for lighter versions of the software to compete, because there's always _that one thing_ that they need, and is only in the high-cost package.

This is a prime example of why a model like the Canon Cat or Apple's abandoned OpenDoc approach should be reconsidered, in my opinion.

In those models (I think it's called a component model?), users buy interoperable tools instead of complete applications. Rather than opening a program, you open a document, and select which tools you want to use on it.

The operating system contains the ability to open file formats, rather than individual programs. Programs are replaced by tools which can manipulate data once the file format has been read by the OS.

For example, you might open a photo, and decide to use a magic wand selector by Adobe, but apply a filter from SumoPaint, a resize tool from Panic Software, and manipulate the text with a Microsoft tool.

All of your tools would be in a "toolbox" that you could customize on the fly, much like you'd deal with a toolbox on a workbench.

You don't go into your kitchen and turn on every appliance in the room when you just want a piece of toast - why should your computer act that way?

Of course, the operating system itself would have to be built with that in mind in the first place - but is that such a crazy idea?

<comment><USER8> We've got a great interoperable format already, that's being used by billions of people throughout the world, it's called HTML. The future of creative tools will be those that can both read and write HTML + whatever additional standards work with it.

<comment><USER7> It's an intriguing idea, but it's hard to see HTML as a real competitor to C++ anytime soon.

I'm not a programmer, I'm a UX guy, so please tell me if I'm missing something here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am continuely surprised that someone hasn't come to undercut this market (besides pirating which might be a huge factor here). But can Adobe's offerings be so far and above others that people think $95 a month is a great deal?

Note: I obviously don't use this suite so I don't know the true benefits of the software.

<comment><USER10> As far as undercutting them, there is

GIMP: <http://gimp.org> \- Gimp is for doing photo editing work. People hate on the gimp for not have 16 bit color support, but this point should be moot for the overwhelming majority of users. I've used GIMP to edit photos, then sold them on iStockphoto where they have been used in advertising.

I've been using gimp for ~10 years and I've never come across something that I can't do with it. (Including the "content aware fill" thing from about a year ago: <http://newslily.com/blogs/96>). I'm a pretty big GIMP fan.

People also hate on it's interface. If you've grown up on photoshop, sure, but I can work faster in GIMP than I can in anything (including photoshop).

Inkscape: <http://inkscape.org/> \- I use inkscape every single day for doing advertising materials at my job. I've done ads that have been published in nationally-syndicated magazines with this, and have done work for enormous, internationally-recognized brands with this. Inkscape is a fantastic piece of software.

Scribus: <http://scribus.org> \- Scribus is for doing page layouts. While I don't use it extensively _anymore_ , I have used it for publishing work in the past. It is a fantastic, very complete piece of software that will do everything that you want to do with it.

This stuff is all free, and is all fully capable of allowing you to do work. The only things you're going to get with Adobe's products is support for their proprietary formats.

<comment><USER11> > This stuff is all free, and is all fully capable of allowing you to do work.

That depends on the work you need to do. I don't pirate software on principle, so I used to use exactly those three applications, along with OpenOffice, for my everyday needs. However, when I started needing tools to do real work for real money, my perspective changed: the glaring weaknesses in the OSS software compared to the serious professional tools made it easily worth dropping £1,000+ on things like CS5.

In the interests of fairness, since "glaring weaknesses" is a somewhat strong term, I will list a few of the more obvious ones:

\- No serious typography support (e.g., using OpenType features; flexible antialiasing for screen graphics; flexible H&J settings).

\- No serious colour support (e.g., integrating Pantone spot colours).

\- No layer styles.

The Adobe apps have their problems, to be sure, but on even these basic points the "competition" is lagging many years behind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is great for someone like me. It's silly to spend the full amount for a programmer like me who wants to use Photoshop for touching up images and website graphics, but I'd gladly pay on a month to month basis.

<comment><USER8> More likely you will soon be able to get a subscription web app that just does what you need for web layout and image touchups - you can already almost do all of it now, and don't have to fork over any $$ to Adobe.

<comment><USER13> I've noticed that Aviary has recently started offering an embeddable editor which could be useful for having customers upload/do small edits.

Other than that, webapps make zero sense in this space. I don't see why I would upload my images to a server and edit them in a browser with major overhead, when I can edit them locally in a 10x more powerful application.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm interested to see how the international pricing will look for this. Here in Australia the CS5 Master Collection costs $4,344.00 compared to $2,599.00 in the US. Given that the AUD is now worth more than the USD it's rather a slap in the face.

<comment><USER15> Surprise, the international pricing's a total rip-off.

Illustrator, month-to-month: $45. UK: $65 pre-tax, $77 after tax.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> After comparing the subscription price to the full price for Photoshop (~$200 discount off full price), it seems like the service may be viable for one-off users. The occasional photographer, designer, etc. should jump on this. Of course, there's no replacement for a one-time purchase if these tools are for daily/frequent use. In response to the price, though, for a subscription service, it does seem a bit high. Sure the suite packs in a lot of features, but I'm not sure if $35/month is justifiable (let alone $49); especially for one-off users. It really depends on how much value the software contributes to your business.

</comment><comment><USER17> A bit high but the future, I really hope Autodesk will do this as I need 3dsmax and maya about 3 months out of the year. Pricing is too high but this is a good direction to fight piracy.

</comment><comment><USER18> If this was their main business model, maybe Adobe would focus on quality vs quantity? this urgency to add new features and force users to purchase more sluggish versions after each OS upgrade is not doing it for me. Fireworks used to be an amazing piece of software. Now it's ridiculously sluggish, with no visible benefits. I would gladly pay adobe to own a fast version of Fireworks on my current OS, I don't care if the feature set is from 2005.

</comment><comment><USER19> Several years ago, I bought the cut-down version of Sony Vegasfor about £50, having briefly considered buying the £300 version instead.

A few years later, I buy a new video camera that saves files in H264 and my older version of Vegas won't load the files. I had to upgrade it.

I'm glad I didn't spend £300 getting the more expensive version, but if there was a reasonable subscription plan, I could have just switched to the new version that supported H264 without a new big payment.

</comment><comment><USER20> A big factor is expense vs. purchase for companies. Purchase requires a timely permission process that can takes weeks. With subscriptions, they can now get the software quickly and move on, expensing when it's convenient.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is great. Some people may only need to use the products every now and then, so they cant justify the high price tag. This opens up the market to folks who may be casual users. Kudos Adobe...

</comment><comment><USER22> It looks like a strategy against low-end disruption that companies like sumopaint are causing.

<comment><USER23> Is Sumo Paint really disrupting anything?</comment></comment>