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Ask HN: Can we stop talking about Elon Musk for a while please?

16 points by sifar ↗ HN
[0]

It is turning HN into another social media circus - sucking all energy, joy, mental bandwidth from other things here.

All I am asking for is to let it go and not pay much attention to EM related stories for some time. They are precisely to elucidate a dopamine reaction and are no longer constructive.

[0] I understand the irony about talking about not asking to talk about it. One way to go about is to not comment to this thread.

24 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 62.1 ms ] thread
nickthegreek
You are free to let it go and not engage with any story that you would like. Spend some time and develop an browser extension to block if you wish and post a Show HN. Your time is yours. And I implore you to use it how you see fit. However, some people might want to discuss when a huge social media company starts banning journalists and then runs polls it.
hker999
You are leaving an important part out. They were sharing private information regarding his private jet location. He was also stalked a few days ago based on this leaked information.

Non-left leaning journalists and politicians have been permabanned for much less and many, for no reason at all (as per the leaks).

It's disingenuous to suddenly care about 'free speech' from the same group that has been colluding with the government for the past 5+ years to silence all political opposition and anyone they didn't like.

dpkirchner
This is the first I've heard about leaks of private information. Do you mean something like it's interior configuration or what food is onboard?
nickthegreek
I didn’t leave out a lie?

There was no private information. There was no collusion.

The only person who’s definition of free speech that keeps changing is Elon Musk.

avgDev
What private information has been shared by those journalists?

Edit: Never mind, I read your posts again: They were sharing private information regarding his private jet location

This information IS NOT PRIVATE. I literally just looked up and Musk even has private pilots license. You can find who owns what planes and get their numbers.

Zigurd
You can't cover up a tail number, for good reasons. Crowdsourced information about plane locations is important OSINT for some investors. This is information collected out in public.

It also looks like nobody was willing to sign their name to a police report regarding the supposed stalking incident. And then in a snit he blocks numerous real journalists reporting on when and whether such an incident occurred.

"Thin skinned narcissist buys criticism factory" is proving to be the most elegant and predictive summation of what's happening.

cc101
It's what he is doing that is important. Reading about the man himself is nauseating. Again, what he is doing is very important, and it needs to be discussed.
avgDev
No.

These are major events and I might want to discuss with the HN crowd. I want to see how this unfolds good or bad and there are lessons to be learned. If you are bothered by it you can just scroll past anything about Tesla/Twitter/SpaceX/Musk?

I get 0 dopamine from learning that Twitter is banning journalists.

gregjor
I want to learn more about elucidating a dopamine reaction.
sifar
Yeah my bad. Seems I wasn't thinking when I was writing this - that word just popped up.
gregjor
I think you wanted "eliciting."
sys42590
From the last 90 submissions there seem to be >5% about Elon / Twitter. Why is everybody submissing stuff about that? Why the huge media coverage overall?

Twitter was atrocious to use even before it was bought by Elon Musk. Without e.g. Nitter it was (and still is) even unusable to anybody not signed up and signed in.

avgDev
I listened to news in the morning, so was expecting to see a discussion on HN but could not find anything on first 3 pages.

"From the last 90 submissions there seem to be >5% about Elon / Twitter. Why is everybody submissing stuff about that?" this has to be a joke. A major tech company is taking some insane actions, laying off employees, saying Twitter now allows free speech then banning journalists......ITS A POPULAR TOPIC, hence, the submissions.

the_only_law
There were a number of threads popping up last night, but they were quickly getting downranked for obvious reasons.
sys42590
My theory is that the average Joe on either side of the political spectrum is NOT on Twitter nor actively uses Twitter. So if Twitter pulls the plug, what are the consequences for the general public?

IMO if Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, Uber, Tesla, SpaceX, Microsoft, Apple, Netflix, Intel, or any other big company pulls the plug it would affect the general public more than Twitter going offline.

Of couse it would be very bad for the employees and their families, but most consumers of the service would just move on.

dekhn
I think Hacker News as a site has some glaring deficiencies. One of them is that it doesn't have the ability to group a bunch of posts into a topic that doesn't pollute the main page with more than one small link.
hindsightbias
The previous POTUS was able to leverage Twitter to win the office. While imo, the left and media played a critical role in that by amplifying his messages and starving his primary opponents of any way to compete.

While I think all this attention is exactly what EM wants and would play into his hands if he was a true 4D genius, I don’t think he is. But this is an ideological crusade with big outcomes so it’s hard to figure out what the right path is.

gardenhedge
This is the first thing I've seen about Musk all day. Thanks OP..
MrWiffles
The first rule of Elon club is: YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT ELON CLUB!

;-)

jacquesm
It is being discussed because a billionaire using their wealth to buy up a medium and then stomping all over it while trying to present themselves as a hero is something that bothers a lot of people, especially if those people spent a decade+ curating and posting on said platform. If it does not bother you then simply ignore the links and don't add to them.

This whole saga lays bare one of the big issues with big centralized tech that probably very few people saw coming prior to this acquisition, it is the largest such disaster since the collapse of Digg and MySpace, it is happening at breakneck speed and has the potential to do serious real world harm.

For a tech story on HN it is as relevant as can be.

sifar
Imagine an empty space with nothing, now by merely drawing a line you have divided it into two sides.

>> If it does not bother you then simply ignore the links and don't add to them.

It is not so much as doesn't bother me as it is blindingly obvious and we are playing the game he wants to play by responding. Something something wrestling in the mud with something .... We have been here before.

He is in a very tight spot - over leveraged, lawsuits, losing billions, might lose control of Tesla, it's losing valuation and customers as others catch up and the shine wears off. Spacex is still sane and valuable - hence the talk of IPO. The only way out for him is to manufacture outrage. He tried to do it with Apple and that is why Tim Cook did not engage with him.

Why people don't realize that you cannot discuss these issues without separating it from the cult of his personality. There won't be any coherent discussion when that is involved - just mud wrestling. And he knows that.

>> This whole saga lays bare one of the big issues with big centralized tech that probably very few people saw coming prior to this acquisition.

Forgive me but that is very incorrect. People in tech have been talking,worried, disappointed about it. That ship has sailed a long time ago.

Anyways, I appreciate those who understood and did not comment.

Zigurd
The former richest man on the planet who now owns a significant social media site is unraveling. Imagine if Howard Hughes live tweeted his descent into madness. Aviation geeks of that time would have been riveted.

Good discussions happen here because people here understand things like Elon's unusually large percentage of tesla shares pledged against loans. This is where people have informed opinions about his other big bets, like Starship and Full Self Driving. This is where you will find the best predictions regarding when his Twitter adventure becomes unsustainable.