HN Explorer

Is Elon Musk's Takeover of Twitter the News Event of the Year?

3 points by Normille ↗ HN
As someone who had a Twitter account several years ago but lost interest in it and haven't posted in about 2 or 3 years, I was under the impression it was just YASMS [Yet Another Social Media Site]. And that Elon Musk's takeover was just another case of "One rich turd buying another rich turd's company".

But judging by the amount of coverage it's been getting in the press --and not just the tech press. I'm talking all the main news channels too-- I'm beginning to feel like everyone else but me seems to consider this the most newsworthy event of the year. Right up there with the Russian ivasion of Ukraine.

Only a couple of days ago, I heard an interview on a national UK radio news station with a soon-to-be-ex Twitter employee which seriously ran for about 20 or 30 minutes. And this was just some guy who worked there, speculating about the company's future. Not a top executive or anyone with any real info.

And, as for the tech press. Well, it's almost becoming a challenge to find a story which isn't about Elon-bloody-Musk and Twitter!

Search on HN for "musk twitter"[0] and I counted 15 pages of submissions to go back 10 days to when the takeover was confirmed. At 20 results per page, that's 300 submissions to HN alone, just in the 10 days since Musk took over.

In a similar period, the BBC has had 18 news stories on the subject [1]

And I counted no less than 60 stories on the subject in the Guardian, during the same time frame [2]

I'm assuming the story is pretty much the same in other parts of the world too.

Am I missing something here? I don't see the fascination with social media myself. But I know a lot of people use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or whatever and get enjoyment from them.

But are these vacuuous time-sinks so newsworthy that the change of ownership at one of them is attracting this kind of blanket news coverage. Can the press really find nothing more important happening in the world?

[0] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=musk%20twitter&sort=byDate&type=story

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cmj34zmwx51t/twitter

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/twitter

11 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 37.9 ms ] thread
xqcgrek2
He's the new punching bag, and guaranteed vehicle for clicks. Something or someone had to replace Trump.
rvz
Yes. They found a new villain of the month to get their hungry clicks around. The one before was Putin. Before him, it was Trump. Now it is Elon Musk.
dave4420
People love watching car crashes. The Truss car crash is over, we needed a new one to rubberneck at.

And it distracts from depressing news like inflation / Russia-Ukraine / Covid / Brexit / climate fail / strikes.

Normille
You could have a point there.

I think Musk is a bit of a dickwad. But a part of me has a grudging admiration for him. I think he epitomises the 'bit of a dickwad' inside all of us that [probably fortunately] most of us never get to indulge.

Who wouldn't want to have the wealth to fire cars into space, dig huge underground tunnels under cities and wreak our revenge on massive faceless companies that piss us off, by buying them and then sacking everyone?

I've got a nasty feeling I might engage in similar dickwaddery, if I had that kind of money.

pestatije
Now imagine he goes visit Putin and manages to convince him not to send Snowden to the front...That would be news of the decade!...worthy of a tweet.
adyashakti
Only for people clueless enough to think that actual news can fit in a tweet.
jleyank
No, I think things like the UK PM merry-go-round or the Ukraine situation is a bit more significant that EM's follies. The US election might/will be pretty important. Canada's doing its bit by having provincial governments suppressing citizen rights whenever it passes laws. Tensions over Taiwan or N. Korea, hopefully, won't force their way into this discussion.

And, if EM's Twitter adventure is the dominant story, it should be made larger - the amount of money being lost by Meta and at risk from other social media companies bears watching.

WallyFunk
> I'm beginning to feel like everyone else but me seems to consider this the most newsworthy event of the year

Probably just your filter bubble. Things like the Pakistan Floods[0] were truly horrific and barely graced the front pages. Like, really horrible, devastating things happen[1] in the world and because it's not tech-news, us geeks don't notice. By all means, continue to read Slashdot, Hackernews, but pay attention to world news. My personal go-tos are Associated Press, Reuters, BBC World News, and a local news site for my area.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Pakistan_floods

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

Normille 

  >By all means, continue to read Slashdot, Hackernews, but pay attention to world news...
I guess you missed the bit where I counted how many times the Musk/Twitter story had featured on BBC News and The Guardian?
WheelsAtLarge
No, but the attention it's getting speak to why Musk bought it. Just about every media member has a Twitter account and uses it. They are affected and therefore report on it. This is worldwide news because of the reach Twitter has and it seems world changing.