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2021 January - Birdwatch launched with first 1000 users

2022 October - Elon acquires Twitter

2022 November - Birdwatch renamed to Community Notes

2022 December - Community Notes feature made available to tweets around the world

Maybe Elon pushed the release schedule timeline up, but it would not be correct to state that pre-Elon Twitter didn't develop and launch the feature. It had been live for almost 2 years by the time Musk showed up.


You forgot

2022 October - birdwatch made available to everyone in the US as of November[1]

Just before Musk acquisition.

[1]https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/product/2022/helpful-b...


No way original twitter would have allowed community notes on ads or political posts


I was a fairly early Birdwatch tester; they definitely permitted political posts to be annotated. I can't recall either way on ads; given Musk never made a big "I'm enabling it on ads!" announcement I suspect it was always possible.

(Especially considering you can promote a post after the fact; it's not necessarily an ad to start with.)


When reddit first added fake/branded posts as ads for a short while it was possible for people to post on the branded posts. It was hilarious (vicious roasting of the products and brand) but of course that was quickly locked down.


Also last year there was a reform in the pension system. You can now choose to exit the pension system and have a large part of your fund liquidated.

Around 14% of the population decided to use this and cash out their future pensions in 2021.

Not sure how much of these funds got spent where but certainly it had some effect on the real-estate prices.


Why would they do that? Isn't that setting them up for a pension crisis in the future?


Because people are shortsighted and want a new TV/car/apartment RIGHT NOW.

Also, there's a certain mistrust of the pension scheme and people think that the money in their pension accounts will be gone anyway by the time they reach the pension age.


> Also, there's a certain mistrust of the pension scheme and people think that the money in their pension accounts will be gone anyway by the time they reach the pension age.

Perhaps because it's true. In my relatively short life, the retirement age went up by over 5 years, and by the time I reach it it's going to go up by at least another 5 years. And let me tell you, there's no chance in hell I'm retiring at 70. A conservative fund would 'outperform' any government pension system in the long term.

Remember, the pension system was devised in a time where a lot of people died before the pension age. It is impossible for the pensions to keep up without overtaxing the young or increasing the pension age.

On top of that, you may contribute north of 100k in your lifetime towards your pension 'fund' that you will never see if you die a day before retirement (as my father did).

Not to mention the fact that there's no actual pension 'fund', not up to the full amount at least (or anywhere near). Most of the funds I pay in today will be paid out to pensioneers tomorrow.


You will still get the state pension. The part you are able to cash out is managed by other funds(banks etc) and it would act as an extra to state offered pension.


> You will still get the state pension

What exactly would fund it then? Pensions system typically works by current generation providing for the previous. If we allow newer generations to "cash out", what would be the source of funding?


The pension system in Estonia consists of a shared fund "First Pillar" and an individual specific fund "Second Pillar". Part of your salary goes into the pension system and gets split between these two funds.

So the current workforce is helping to keep up the First pillar for the current pensioners. But at the same time the current workforce is making deposits into the Second Pillar which just invests their money into the markets.

So people can liquidate their Second Pillar without messing up the First Pillar for everyone else.


You fund a bit to the state pension and a bit to a private pension. Based on a previous comment Estonia allowed you to cash out the private pension. I assume. Romania has something similar where you pay for your state pension, mandatory level 1 private pension, and optionally a level 2/3 private pension. State + level 1 private pensions work as you'd expect, whereas level2/3 generally have cash-out terms. It's not either/or, if you want a level 3 private pension you need to contribute to both level 1&2.

edit: replace level with pillar, as I couldn't think of the word and saw it used by sibling comment after posting.


You can cash it out and manage your investment yourself. I interpret that small 14% as most of them doing so. Of course, I have no idea.


What happens if you essentially waste all the money? Will you be left totally without pension or will others foot the bill?


The pension system in Estonia has 3 tiers.

Everyone has the 1st, basic tier ("State pension"). Then there's the 2nd tier called the "Mandatory funded pension" which is the one that held the most savings and was "freed" now and then there's the 3rd one called "Supplementary funded pension" which has always been "free" as in you can stuff money in there and you can take it out as well.

People who blew their 2nd tier on a new car/TV/vacation/paying existing loans will still have the 1st tier but that will only guarantee a pension that's big enough that you won't directly starve but it's not big enough to actually let you live either.


Your pension would be substantially smaller.

Technically the pension fund consists of 3 parts:

1) Shared pool of funds. Current workforce pays into the pool and current pensioners get payouts from this pool. You can't liquidate this part of your fund as there is no part that is fully "yours"

2) Individual pool - part of your salary automatically gets put into this pool and invested into the pension fund of your choosing. THIS is the part that people can now liquidate before they reach the pension age

3) Individual pool of extra deposits - You can choose to add money into this pool and incest it in a pension fund. If you withdraw funds during your pension age then no gains tax is applied on the profits. But you can liquidate the fund at any point as long as you pay the gains tax.

So these citizens/residents will only be left with the first option as their pension payments.


Then you suffer the consequences of your own choices.


As opposed to paying into a ponzi?


What if stressful existance pushes for shorter lifespan with the effect of quickening the turnover of generations.

So stressful environment would speed up the evolutionary iteration of generations. While less stressful existance that has adopted to the environment would persist longer.


This analogy happens in some animals for sure. At the zoo they place the antelope near the cheetahs so that they breed more.


Some real-time payment infrastructures to compare to:

UK - Faster Payments Service (2008) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payments_Service

EU - SEPA Instant Credit (2017) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area#SEPA...

Australia - New Payments Platform (2018) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Payments_Platform




Also, despite not technically being a governmental operation, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Interface, from India.


Came here to say this.

UPI is quite revolutionary. Launched in 2016 [0], UPI handles 882.3 million transactions with ~USD 21 billion in transaction value [1], as of July, 2019.

UPI is designed to be a payment utility by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). NPCI is not a governmental organisation but is formed by a collective of 56 Indian Banks including 10 core banks [2].

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Interface [1] - https://www.medianama.com/2019/08/223-upi-transactions-grew-... [2] - https://www.npci.org.in/about-us-background


NPP has been hugely beneficial for p2p. I've used it and now trust it implicitly, as a mechanism.

Being stuck in cheque clearing bank settlement delay is a royal pain.

International funds clearance and KYC remain problems.


NPP is on it's way to being really handy, but it still sucks that I have to hack things to force NPP for some payments

(ie. CommBank will only use NPP for PayID payments, but banks like Up will use NPP for transfers for a BSB/Account number if the receiving banks supports it, not all banks are fully on the platform yet)

The downside is my teenagers can now shake me down for cash remotely


NPP is a joke. There's a limit of $1,000 for transfers. It doesn't always work if you don't use a PayID.

Compare that to Faster Payments which easily works with 250k with or without a PayID


That transaction limit is only a bank imposed limitation - while out of the ones I checked, Commonwealth (and I assume some other) does have a $1K daily limit for personal accounts, various other banks appear to have higher limits or just use the regular transaction limit (which you can usually choose yourself).


If you regularly need to move 250k sums electronically inside the Australian economy, using this kind of mechanism, I'd love to know what you're doing. Only because I am nosy: I cannot conceive of transactions on this level which demand NPP class behaviour.


> If you regularly need to move 250k sums electronically inside the Australian economy.

Paying sub-contractors, settling property transactions, the list goes on.

When buying a house, I remember having to withdraw $60k in cash from my savings bank account and walking over and depositing it in another because it would take the other bank 3 working days to clear a bank-cheque. Some banks do offer an over-night inter-bank mechanism, but surprisingly CommBank does not.


I don't think it was designed for what you want to do. Interesting problem: fast efficient payment of GST-incurring and other taxable money in a low doc manner.


I think the idea is that it is very common to transact in amounts >$1000. Rent, car payment, direct deposit, etc.


> NPP is a joke. There's a limit of $1,000 for transfers. It doesn't always work if you don't use a PayID.

ANZ have a $5000 limit. It's down to the bank to enforce this.


I'm fairly sure this is to ease it into use. I would assume that as it becomes more ubiquitous (many banks don't even have it yet) the limit will increase.


Brazil - Sistema de Pagamentos Brasileiro (Brazilian Payment System) 2002

https://www.bcb.gov.br/en/financialstability/paymentsystem

> Guidelines for the Brazilian Instant Payments Ecosystem: The Brazilian instant payments ecosystem will have a flexible and open participation structure and will be similar to the existing interbank electronic funds transfer (TED)—with greater availability, speed, and simpler addressing of payments. The transactions will be performed in a simple and fast way to different beneficiaries. Moreover, the BCB (Brazilian Central Bank) will develop a single settlement infrastructure.


While BACS' 24h clearing of interbank transfers was normally ok, FasterPayments really makes having multiple accounts split across bank's super convenient.

My wife and I both have our own accounts with Barclays and joint accounts (and mortgage) with Nationwide, and I have a Monzo account for small day to day expenses. It takes me less than a minute to open the Barclays app, transfer some money to the joint account, and then open the Nationwide app to confirm the balance and do whatever I needed to do from there. Total money management game changer. I've done a four hop transfer from my savings to overpay the mortgage, in about three minutes.


Don't forget the best of them all India - UPI (2016) https://www.npci.org.in/product-overview/upi-product-overvie...


Hopefully Canada next and no, Interac isn't an equivalent service.


Why isn't interac equivalent?


Interac is designed for consumer-to-consumer transactions and isn't automated like these systems.


They released software that allowed you to update the certificates on your card.

They then gave a limited time frame for every one to migrate their cards over. Either with the software update or going to the police department and having them do it for you.

After the deadline they declared all older cards digitally invalid. Meaning that you can still use it as a physical ID but not for online auth or signing processes.


You can request your service to be whitelisted: https://www.sk.ee/en/services/validity-confirmation-services...

Pricing is here: https://www.sk.ee/en/services/pricelist/certificate-validati...

So it's not quite as simple as Google or Facebook oAuth. But the government does support the idea that if you want then add this as a login option to your forum for dogs or an e-store for sweaters.

The main value is still in the fact that the authentication gives you the ability to create legally binding contracts that get signed online.


To be precise: the system offers both identification and authentication (by using two different certificates, with two different pin codes.)

Even if you don't sign-up and whitelist your service you can sign documents or verify other people documents signatures (both online or with a desktop client). There are usage quotas, though.


This is paying for revoke checking, right?

Validating the certificate the same way servers validate client certificates should be enough to verify it as a date/time-valid Estonian ID.


Yes, this is to use OCSP. You do not have to pay if you download revocation lists manually. Ofcourse lists become stale rather quickly.

Very basic - hello world level - implementation is as simple as enabling client certificate authentication in Apache config.


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