I'm also really praying that some super cool platform emerges from this that's convenient and fun and also somehow resilient against the whims of whacky billionaires.
Probably people think him being back at Tesla more of the time is better for the company. I have my doubts about that. My big hope is he doesn’t screw up SpaceX close to Starship launching.
In the scheme of things that Twitter does, these polls aren't really too bad. As someone mentions, it's in the thousands per second, and I don't _think_ they show activity in real-time to anyone looking at them.
I hate to be the HN commenter that trivializes tech, but is that performance that impressive for a poll? Especially when there is no requirement for real time reads of the results.
Oh I know it's quite possible technically, I've just never had the privileged to work at Twitter scale. It's also the human side of that I find fascinating, that 250k people voted in under 2 min.
> I hate to be the HN commenter that trivializes tech, but is that performance that impressive for a poll? Especially when there is no requirement for real time reads of the results.
I think he only posts polls when he believes he knows the outcome already. Yesterday he posted a poll about unsuspending the journalist accounts and when the outcome wasn't what he wanted instead of following the majority vote he posted it again with different options (with the same result, which he did abide by the second time).
I think this indicates he's tired of Twitter already. But he still owns it, so who will he put in his place? Or maybe he is expecting a landslide "no" result?
Chamath has his SPACs and Calacanis has his syndicate. They know how to craft deals that benefit them over other investors. I assume Sacks does the same with his investments.
They know a bad deal because they are usually the ones crafting them.
It seems like it would be the smart move to hire someone with expertise in social media, give them his high-level vision, and let them implement the details. The last few weeks of Elon's micromanagement have been a complete shitshow.
It's fun to think about until you realize building the company/service portofolio that can support a mega-app would almost certainly attract ire from regulators even within the U.S., ignoring the amount of capital investment required to achieve it.
Plus, Uber/Spotify/Doordash/Yelp can barely turn a profit as-is. What incentives will the everything app offer to pull consumers away from these existing competitors other than subsidizing the services with VC money, which would only worsen profitability and sustainability?
Let's imagine Google Cloud, AWS, Azure are resp. Google's / Amazon's / Microsoft's everything apps. They are managing to handle the regulatory weight of supporting applications of all kinds of nature, and if you rethink Twitter as a platform you can do the same as well.
Many things are possible, and the Twitter app today may even continue to work as-is. But underneath it will be able to power more apps and more use cases, all tied under a common cohesive set of interactive primitives, much higher level than what cloud applications today support. This means less to reinvent, less to rediscover, and easier more natural integration between apps, services and components.
It'd be a lot of work, definitely not a 2-3 month project. So you'd need also a survival strategy that keeps Twitter 1.0 working and profitable.
Google, Amazon, and Microsoft absolutely do not have "everything" apps. Google Maps is the closest to a mega-app and it's still highly focused on things that are location-based.
These companies also don't favour their own services over others on their cloud platforms. That's why regulators aren't coming after them. Twitter is not a cloud service provider and it's not hard to see why the argument you presented does not hold up.
1. A general purpose computing platform is an everything app.
2. Cloud platforms and their APIs are a significant step towards moving higher-level in development platforms compared to, say, compiling a raw binary and running it on Linux.
3. Keep moving in that direction.
1. The "everything app" being talked about is essentially a Chinese tech giant mega-app, which are absolutely not general purpose computing platforms which are not "apps" themselves.
2. Agreed but this has nothing to do with Twitter or mega-apps whatsoever.
3. Transitioning to cloud service is not what Twitter needs to do right now even under the mega-app vision. And attempting so under their current situation is a sure fire way to actually go bankrupt.
His everything app idea is similar to WhatsApp yes, but he's had this idea from way back, when he got the X domain. The thing I'm describing is a long term vision, you need to first be profitable with the current platform before you start that.
Has he ever stated anywhere that his long term vision is a "general computing platform"? Because mega-apps are not that. There has been zero building happening or even hinted at towards his everything app vision while he is wrecking everything at Twitter.
He has compared Twitter to a neural network where we (and bots) are the nodes. I feel this was him mostly trying to sound fancy, but in my mind I'm absolutely gonna grab this and run with it.
Mega-app, the way I understand that term, is not what he's after. He's mentioned that he wants to allow HQ video and compete with YouTube and have a separate app which shows a YouTube-like view of only tweets with videos on them. Like a projection of that content, from the same platform.
Or alternatively you can see it as merely a "videos tab" in a single "mega-app", but this distinction is not quite substantial on a higher level, only about the logistics of marketing the app and maintaining it.
As for there being zero building happening... of course. He's trying to stop bleeding cash for now. I'm not suggesting he's working on this NOW.
Let's agree to disagree here because we are clearly not talking about the same things at all. I suggest reading up on what Chinese mega apps look like and Musk's personal comments that referred to WeChat. Adding longform video is exactly part of a conventional mega-app and it is absolutely not revolutionary whatsoever.
Haha, funny response, but I did say the details matter ;-)
I may be projecting my own ideas onto "everything". When Elon took over Twitter, I was inspired by his idea, and combined with concepts from some projects I'm working on, over two weeks or so, in my free time I wrote like 50+ pages of notes on what "Twitter 2.0" might be.
Is Elon's idea anything close to so comprehensive, I don't know. We only know he wanted payments in it, but this is barely scratching the surface of what Twitter could be.
Twitter's timeline of messages could be seen as a communication platform, computation platform, verified facts registry and so on. The rabbit hole is deep if you let your fantasy run wild.
And I hate just about anyone you probably consider an experts “vision” on social media, especially since what it ended up becoming was a “”private”” end run around the 1st and 4th amendments.
It really is perfect, a not-government entity making wink-wink decisions at the behest of unelected executive branch employees.
- Level the playing field between the "blue-checks" and everyone else. I think the intent of that is to encourage the 90% of people who passively consume content to engage more, and encourage lurkers without accounts to sign up.
- Reduce the dependency on advertisers by pivoting to a model that is partly user-funded. Reddit seems to have had some success with this, for example.
- Signal that Twitter is going to be less politically partisan going forward, probably in an attempt to rope back in users who moved to right-wing Twitter clones.
I don't think those are objectively terrible ideas, but the implementation so far has been remarkably bad.
> ... probably in an attempt to rope back in users who moved to right-wing Twitter clones.
The problem with Twitter isn't free speech, but objective reality. There's only room for one reality on Twitter -- not two, or three, or four.
Truth Social and the right wing platforms don't challenge people's view that the 2020 election was a fraud, that pizza gate really happened, so they will probably continue now as they are.
For a lot of right-wing people I have spoken to, the Hunter Biden story getting falsely removed for "Russian disinformation" was the last straw. Think of it as a dumb scandal if you want, but the issue was a legitimate news story published by high-profile mainstream news outlets getting removed using counter-disinformation tools. That really damaged Twitter's credibility.
Now they would rather hang out on a site where they don't have to worry about overbearing moderation, at the cost of a handful of nutters talking about Satanic rituals or whatever. I think Musk had a plausible route to getting those users back if he could promise slightly more limited and fair enforcement of the rules.
Is it the fact they don't want anyone to question their belief system? Because that's what I see.
When they are questioned, they martyrize themselves to spark more outrage. (I'm a victim of the woke left!) And then use that as a crutch to deflect further criticism or questions.
If it wasn't Hunter Biden's Laptop, it would be something else, e.g. Pizzagate, Voting Machines, Mail-in Balloting, Fake school shootings, etc.
You can't blame the mainstream media if you're the one that's calling "wolf" over and over without facts.
I don't really think that's the case. We can see the dynamic in action on the Fediverse, a space where anyone can make their own server and moderate it according to their wishes. There are right-wing servers that have created their own walled gardens (Gab, Truth Social), but at the same time the left-wing servers have created server blacklists that include most of the "free speech" servers. Given the option, a lot of people across the political spectrum apparently want hugboxes.
I'm not saying it doesn't happen on the left as well. I'm just saying it's easier to recognize when it does happen on the right. The Dominion v. Fox News lawsuits come to mind here. Parents of Sandy Hook v. Alex Jones, too.
Back around 1991/1992 the Democrats in congress were so convinced there was an October Surprise in the 1980 election. There just wasn't anything there.
Hugboxes don't force you to question your belief system, right? You can go on living in whatever world you want to. But anything coming out of those hugboxes, no one should take seriously, right?
Before social media we would have called much of this stuff "conspiracy theories".
The hard right, and their conspiracy theories about Pizzagate, Voting Machines, Mail-in Balloting and Fake school shootings are crazy and disgraceful, in my opinion. And I lost any respect I might have had for Trump after the aftermath of the 2020 election.
But I'm equally disapproving of the left in their handling of the 2016 election and its aftermath, and the way they represented it as "stolen", as well as their narratives during the BLM "protests" and January 6 "insurrection". Imo, if Trump had really wanted a coup, he would have placed his people in top positions of the armed forces, and used actual armed soldiers. Q-anon and others involved on January 6 did not seem to have anywhere near the kind of organization to carry out an actual coup.
Also, Twitter and outher outlets suppressing (then and even now) the Hunter laptop (not the porn, but the actual evidence of corruption that looked like it involved Joe) made it look super-partisan.
Later on, the partisan divide arround covid, with crazy anti-vaxxers on one side, and similarly irrational support for excessive lockdowns and suppression of the WIV story on the other, it seemed like Twitter was contributing to the excesses of both sides.
The world (and perhaps especially the US) needs a platform where moderates of both sides can meet to discuss their differences, and where moderation is (to the extent it is carried out) applied to the crazy people of BOTH sides when it becomes excessive.
That way, one can hope, it may be possible to separate facts from matters of opinion from outrights falsehoods.
If too many people consistently tow the party line (which many be the case for anyone consistently agreeing with their own side on all issues above), I think a breakup of the USA is inevitable. The result will be one Woke-merica and one Maga-merica, and quite possibly civil war.
When Musk took over, I was hoping he would take the platform in a direction where it would support a moderate centre.
> That way, one can hope, it may be possible to separate facts from matters of opinion from outrights falsehoods.
Jan. 6th was a based on a series of falsehoods. Fox News and several Republican politicians claimed it was a antifa "False Flag" operation the night after it happened.
Fox News downplayed much of the Trump scandals in his presidency. So now turnabout is fair play I guess with the coverage of whatever's on Hunter Biden's laptop? The entire narrative is clouded by Giuliani and company apparently tampering with the data that made it to the NY Post.
> .. and quite possibly civil war.
So we need to restore Trump to the presidency, suspend the constitution, or whatever the right wing demands or there will be violence? Why can't it be just as simple Fox News, Alex Jones, OANN, and Newsmax agreeing to no longer manufacture outrage for ratings?
> So we need to restore Trump to the presidency, suspend the constitution, or whatever the right wing demands or there will be violence?
Not what I'm saying at all, rather the opposite. But if both sides stop interpreting everything coming frome moderates on the other side in the worst possible light, that's a start in mitigating polarization.
> I think the issue is that social media is the most amazing tool for propaganda ever invented.
The Russians realized it in 2016, and the data I've seen indicates that they promoted both Trump and Sanders at the time.
> One of the two political parties learned from that experience rather than wanted to fix it.
Both sides spread a lot of lies and even more half truths both in social media and more traditional media. The loyalists on both sides also both seem unable to spot where their own side is spreading disinformation and propaganda.
Most self-proclaimed "experts in social media" seem to be responsible for making it the disaster that it is for our societies.
The one thing that has definitely been refreshing about new Twitter is that the leader isn't yet another "social media expert" and just another social media user with similar complaints as millions of other users.
Personally I really hope they also get rid of the "UX experts" next, given how shit Twitter's UX is, especially on anything that isn't a phone.
The problem is that people who want to do social media will become what they hate, because of the very real constraints which people learn about quickly once they're actually steering the ship. Very few social media places don't suck, and it takes a pretty heavy hand to keep things from going completely to hell. The two places I know which aren't hives of scum and villainy are HN and Metafilter; both are heavily moderated, text only, and basically ad free.
I feel like to an extent that is the usual response to any sort of attempt at disruption.
For example, prior to Falcon 9 the argument used to be that SpaceX too would have to either succumb to relying on expensive cost-plus contracts or go bust like all other space companies before them. Yet, as they pushed up against that attitude and tried their own approach, they became successful and set the model that has now led to hundreds of new private space companies. Similarly, the argument against reusing F9 was that it wouldn't fly often enough to pay for reuse.
Thus I think that it isn't too crazy to consider that maybe with all this fiddling around they might stumble upon a more healthy model for social media for their scale. Especially considering that this environment of a large platform with an existing userbase undergoing said change is very unique (in that most other attempts at healthier social media have failed in part due to not being able to rely on pre-existing network effects).
Maybe they'll still fail, but I think it's still worth trying (even if it kills Twitter) rather than just appointing another 'expert' to continue to make things worse. Especially because it isn't my own money on the line :)
It certainly would be a fun experiment. But the dynamics are so quite different from what he usually deals with.
Lets start with employees... both Tesla and especially SpaceX had hordes of people wanting to work there. I don't currently see the same for Twitter, and Elon just removed a bunch of talent.
Customers are also widely different. Tesla were enthusiasts willing to overlook drawbacks and oopsies. SpaceX was few high value ones like NASA, and by now have a great track record, not to mention the price. Instead of believers in the company mission, many twitter users are just average people. They will complain. They might leave due to drastic changes. Sure, there is a strong network effect. But Musk payed a lot of money for that, should he really risk it all?
>Lets start with employees... both Tesla and especially SpaceX had hordes of people wanting to work there. I don't currently see the same for Twitter, and Elon just removed a bunch of talent.
I don't know of anyone who is clamoring to work for Twitter now but the people he fired definitely don't seem like the type you're describing either. I think he views the majority of Twitter to be inmates running the asylum.
The real question is will he be able to find replacements that share his vision/passion for Twitter like he did with those companies. Twitter seems a lot less prestigious than SpaceX or Tesla.
Does he even have a high level vision beyond generating a reaction?
(The "free speech platform" sounded like a vision, but we wouldn't have new banning offences every five minutes if that had been a serious consideration rather than something he said for the likes)
His high level vision was to create "X the everything app" in the style of mega-apps offered by Chinese tech giants. Not only does this vision require clearing massive regulatory hurdles, secure immense amount of capital funding, and acquire/build a highly diversified portofolio of companies covering multiple unrelated consumer sectors, there's probably nobody willing or capable to take that job.
I'm not sure it's meant to make him look good or bad as much as just say "What person who Elon would agree with, who also has an idea of how to run a social media/moderation business, would agree to work for him and implement his vision."
The problem with being someone with ideas outside of the rest of your community is that you generally can't find other people with complimentary skills who agree with you.
Whatever you think about removing Elon as head of Twitter, whether you believe that to be smart or not, this is just not how you go about making decisions as a leader.
Think of it this way, will Elon be conducting a new poll on whether or not to fire his replacement in a year's time? (Because that's what this type of decision making process leads to.)
This is not sustainable because it does not bring any sort of stability.
Maybe, or maybe not, but the fact of the matter is that a poll in a private platform does not a vote make, and using it as such for varying degrees of impactful events is either irresponsible or willfully deceptive.
Interesting. Maybe he found the CEO he wants earlier than expected. That would make sense. If the poll says so he can step down immediately, and if not then he can still step down later whenever he feels like. Of course he still maintains ultimate control either way but he can go back to focusing on SpaceX and Tesla more, either immediately or maybe in a few months.
So in this case he may not believe he knows the outcome ahead of time, but it doesn't matter because the outcome is the same either way. Only the timing is different.
I'm sure any of the goons who helped plan this debacle after he was forced to buy^H^H^H make good on his agreement to buy it would be delighted to run it.
I can guarantee you there are plenty of people who do, you really don't need an ex-social media CEO or whatever to do it. Would be absolutely hilarious if he somehow managed to get moot to be the CEO.
Ask any head coach of the Dallas Cowboys working under Jerry Jones how this kind of relationship works out for those involved. I get the sense that it would be very similar.
I'm sure plenty of people would love that job on their CV or filling their bank account but of the actually qualified people, who would want to be micromanaged by Elon Musk? There's better options out there
> Although I'm not sure who would want to run Twitter now.
If it pays well enough that I could retire afterward then I'd give it a shot. I somehow doubt it's physically possible to fuck things up anywhere near as badly as what's already happened.
I muted his account months ago, but still got the retweets. I voted yes, which seems to be getting momentum and is now leading by a very comfortable margin.
If you mute, the rewtweets will be masked unless you reveal them. I saw this one because it was on HN before it closed. I never saw the previous polls until they were closed.
I have him blocked. Surprisingly, I can still click through and it looks like I could vote if I wanted to (which feels like a bug, but, eh, probably not Twitter's biggest issue right now).
not too long ago he claimed that spam and bot accounts make up an estimated 11% of Twitter’s total user base, I don't think that has changed much so I agree these polls are simply a farce.
He doesn't want to lead Twitter... social media is a junk hole mostly filled with lowest common denominator users. He's definitely tired of the stupid issues on both sides that are filled with entitled users and whiners. It's a lose lose, let someone else fill their day with that.
He bought Twitter. From day one he didn’t need to be CEO. But he chose to immediately show up and make big changes, both in personnel and in the platform itself. He doesn’t need a poll to hire somebody else to run the company.
Some people have different modes of making decisions and framing the results, like all good outcomes being on them and all bad outcomes being due to external circumstances and “wasn’t me”. You think that’s cowardice (and assume morals), for other people it could be just convenience
Clearly, the vote count is full of fraud because all of the users are bots anyways, yeah? In the pools of thought that Elon floats in, it would only be more fraudulent if Dominion was conducting the poll.
> Amazing this guy was ready to get on his knees for Putin up until January.
What do you mean exactly?
> For sure he has a soft spot for Autocrats both in Moscow and in San Francisco
The West establishment has a soft spot for autocrats: whitewashing the wealth of oligarchs, buying cheap oil stolen from common people, selling anti-protest crowd control gear and tear gas, etc, etc; even though "lots of stuff are known about Putin since 2000 till January 2022, some perhaps even worse than Ukraine invasion". I don't think Lex has done or has expressed a wish to do anything comparable to that.
> Every video of his that YT pushes in my feed I see Putin in the thumbnail with sunglasses and behind a huge explosion
I just scrolled through the past 8 years of thumbnails on his main channel and the past year of thumbnails on his clips channel. The thumbnail you describe doesn't exist.
What I found is that he has several thumbnails of Putin looking stern, but without any sunglasses or nuclear blasts. (He also has thumbnails of Hitler and Stalin looking stern, but I don't take that to suggest he's simultaneously a communist and a nazi.) Additionally he has several videos with nuclear blast thumbnails, but none of them have anybody superimposed on front of the explosion. And he doesn't have any meme-like photoshopped sunglasses thumbnails. That sort of meme thumbnail doesn't seem to be his style.
(I didn't watch any of these videos because I can't stand Lex, so I can't comment on what he actually says. But the sort of thumbnail you're describing just isn't his style.)
Having watched a lot of Lex, I know that his family is Ukrainian and he recently visited Ukraine. It's very clear that he is by no means in support of Putin. However, he is clearly interested in Putin and other dictators as a historical and psychological phenomenon and seems fascinated by the idea of interviewing someone like that and the ethical aspects of it.
He does seem like a sycophant to me, his interviewing personality grates on my nerves for several reasons and this is one of them. But I'm about 90% sure he's not been trying to make Putin look cool. At least, not in the thumbnails.
Lex Fridman’s subreddit is notoriously trigger-happy with bans and post removals. Lex is a mod, but it’s not clear who is doing the heavy-handed moderation. It’s well-known on Reddit that you don’t post anything less than glowing agreement with Lex on his subreddit, unless you want your post removed and to risk getting banned. I know his podcast personality is popular, but this is not the guy you want calling the shots on social media governance.
OTOH, Elon picking Lex as the fall guy to take the blame wouldn’t entirely surprise me.
Heh, I was permanently banned from /r/lexfridman in a thread about his Duncan Trussell interview. My comment was basically:
"Oh, great, another 'podcaster interviews another podcaster for reciprocal exposure' episode?"
Snarky, sure, but still unfortunate he can't handle some rib jabbing about interviewing a clown like Trussell compared to the more intellectual guests he (used to) interview. :)
Changing the prior poll made sense. The options were “unban immediately”, “unban in a day”, “unban in a week”, “unban in some longer a lot of time”.
The issue with this is obvious: there’s only one “you fucked up” option and the “I agree but let’s talk specifics” group is divided into three. So even though the majority of people said “I agree”, the “you fucked up” got the most votes. Classic first-past-the-post failure mode.
That said, the later poll didn’t reflect this dynamic. My suspicion is that early on in polls the answers are likely to lean pro-Elon, as the votes are more likely to to be Twitter stan’s. As time goes by word of mouth spreads news of the poll to people who aren’t as active on twitter and accordingly are less likely to be pro-elon.
It was the same with the “should I step down” poll, started out pro-Elon, flipped as popularity increased.
He's stuck with Twitter now, at an overinflated price. He'll never be able to make enough money from it to justify the valuation. Will he leave, no he wont, he'll still pull the strings from behind the scences. He just wont be doing it so publically anymore, he'll get a front to do it for him.
He’s just going to put someone like Blake Masters or David Sacks in charge. Which, honestly, would be worse than old Twitter but better than erratic Elon Twitter.
Rules dropping out of the blue around flight tracking, not being able to link to other social media sites, the confusing verification issue with all the fake/parody accounts, mass banning of journalists for linking to reporting he didn’t like etc. Old Twitter had none of this.
The second poll about unbanning the journalists went for 24 hours (the first was only an hour or so), so even though "now" was the winning option, he still got the outcome he was looking for by giving them a 24+ hour suspension.
what was that outcome? fewer people knowing about his childish behavior? no, that wasn't it. fewer people knowing about his private jet and the mechanisms of being able to track it. nope, didn't work that way either. showing the world he's a petulant little child that throws a hissy fit when he doesn't get his way. now we're getting somewhere.
I thought Jason Calacanis was going to run it. He'd be much better.... also the type to not put up with crap - and not the type either to "run by committee".
Of course he knows what the results will be. He owns twitter. He has all the admin passwords to the server that runs the poll. The admins that run the server answer to him. The result of this poll will be whatever Elon Musk wants it to be.
Email to the admins: "Hey guys I'd like the results of the poll to be the following..."
No chance.
Interesting side note: Here in Australia this morning on the ABC public broadcaster's national News channel, one of the presenters said "if you hate Elon Musk, vote yes"... encouraging the mostly left-leaning ABC viewers to log on and vote Musk out. The poll will get swamped by this politically divisive Musk-hating recruitment drive, which is why the results stand as they are.
That is not what happened at all. In the first poll, he asked when the journalists should be unsuspended and the options were (a) now, (b) tomorrow, (c) in 7 days, and (d) longer. Choice (a) got 43%, not the majority. Choices (c) and (d) totaled 52.5%, which means the 𝗺𝗮𝗷𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘆 voted for a minimum suspension of 7 days. Elon then essentially invoked "rank choice" voting and ran a new poll with only the top two choices (a) now, and (b) 7 days. "Now" won, and he made good on it.
Look, if you want to claim you are governing by poll and have people believe it then you can't change the rules after you start no matter how bad they are. It's far too easy to manipulate the result by adding or removing options after you know the voting trends. It's not as if this was that important of a decision anyway. There was no downside to simply respecting the first poll result and counting it as a lesson to think about the options a little harder next time.
> I think this indicates he's tired of Twitter already.
He’s also facing a huge amount of backlash, pent-up backlash, that he hasn’t experienced before or more successfully insulated himself from before. For example, when he was recently booed off stage.
I saw someone comment elsewhere that he is also highly leveraged, and that if Twitter tanks and Tesla’s stock keeps falling, he stands to lose a lot of money and even potentially control of Tesla. I haven’t looked into the veracity of the argument, but it seems plausible that he’s in over his head in more ways than one.
Eh, for whatever reason I don’t think he’d do that. He’s in it for the chaos, and what says chaos more than letting a Twitter mob decide who should be ceo?
Whether you think he would or not he’s not given me any reason to trust him about anything ever again. As a bonus he did get me to quit my Twitter habit after over a decade. Now that I’ve built up a good size list of people to follow on mastodon I actually like it more.
I understand the point is he’s hoping people will log back in to engage. But I’m just done. Even if he steps down his actions have shown what a massive single point of failure the whole thing is.
So I guess what I’m saying is: the fact that he controls everything is more the problem than whether he will exercise this one specific control.
> I think he only posts polls when he believes he knows the outcome already.
Agreed, and this move would almost certainly be more of a distraction than an actual stepping down. Whoever is put in charge will still be under Elon’s thumb, but with a different person in the CEO seat, Elon can pass blame for the bad decisions and ride in like a white knight to reverse any unpopular actions.
> "and when the outcome wasn't what he wanted instead of following the majority vote"
Not true, he changed the poll well before its conclusion. Then he abided by the majority vote and unbanned those users. But you're not happy, and need to make stuff up about what he did or didn't do.
His latest poll deciding his own fate reveals the bold transparency approach. People can't handle transparency it seems. Almost like they want things decided behind closed doors that decide the terms they agree to. The world needs more transparency not less.
It will be sad to see him step down, if the poll decides that. It's been highly entertaining. The outrage and temper tantrums sparked in entitled over-sensitive Twitter users and commentators, is quality popcorn material. Must the curtain close?
> The outrage and temper tantrums sparked in entitled over-sensitive Twitter users and commentators, is quality popcorn material. Must the curtain close?
I do mostly agree with you—Musk's outrage and temper tantrums have been pretty funny. This is probably been the funniest time Twitter has, just weeks of everyone dunking on him and watching him flail in rage. But honestly, it's getting kind of tiresome. Every time the conversation moves on to something else, he bans someone or adds some new rules or gets mad about something, to keep himself in the center of attention. I think it's probably time to close the curtains.
Actual outrage from users, including celebrity meltdowns and viral whinging. The amount of users threatening to leave, linking to their tumble-weed infested Mastodons is hilarious.
All Musk did was rattle cages with a few truth bombs and mild trolling. Entertaining stuff. Anyone voting "yes" takes life way too seriously.
Not to mention devaluing the insights of Twitter Files and FBI-tweaked moderation processes and staffer ideology influence. It's good to see all that exposed in the light. Musk did the dirty work that was needed.
> It's good to see all that exposed in the light. Musk did the dirty work that was needed.
The twitter files did reveal the kind of insider access that powerful people get to journalists in order to push a narrative, but I do wish he had accomplished that without doing the exact same thing he was complaining about—giving journalists insider access to power in order to push a narrative.
It made sense to remove the first poll. It wasn’t constructed in the best way. The revision was warranted in my opinion, and doesn’t necessarily show that he was being tricksy.
In one hand, he is horrible at it. On the same hand, he should pay more attention to SpaceX and rest.
On the other hand, a world with Musk is better than one without.
I think if the poll says 'yes' and he does truly abide by it, I think it will show some honesty around the whole 'public town square' and 'for the people' rhetoric he has espoused. I'd be quite impressed.
However, he has a history of noble intents on Twitter (eg the 'end world hunger' thing) followed by lack of follow-through, so I can imagine a scenario where the poll comes out 'yes' and he doesn't abide by the results by calling foul play somewhere (bot accounts, multiple user accounts etc.)
It's much more likely he wants out of the hot seat and is using the poll, which has an obvious outcome, as an excuse to step down as head while keeping his pride intact.
Damn, I just tried to create a twitter account just to say 'no' so I can settle down with some popcorn and watch the world burn. My signup failed with an error, I guess they must have sacked the poor admins responsible for signups :(
Elon owning Twitter is the most public accountability Twitter has ever had. Him owning Twitter, the way he's currently operating, will force a critical eye toward a lot of bad behaviors that we all experience but nobody really talks about on every network.
I think he could’ve done that. I would’ve welcomed that. But his revelations mixed with his red pilling colors it badly. I voted yes and I’m a Tesla owner. He can’t run twitter because he’s too susceptible to the ego trip involved. He’s making rules from his personal POV, not from the perspective of the health of the platform or an actual fairness doctrine.
He also has no plan… his successor needs a holistic strategic mindset and a business development methodology. Perhaps he had support from leadership lieutenants at Tesla and Space X and is trying to solo this one. Something’s different enough with his floundering at Twitter.
As someone who already despised Twitter there is only good outcomes for me if it either declines into oblivion or they somehow rescue it from this pit into something more like ~2010-2012 Twitter moderation wise.
Best case we get a more decentralized option or a centralized option that isn’t so politicized by the owners… or at least an owner who isn’t a contentious celebrity that is a black/white villain/hero to a big portion of the population.
Unfortunately all of my experiences with Mastadon have been negative (particularly the UI and how it encourages bubbles harder than Reddit hypermodding), but Mastadon seems to be all people talk about.
That's a salient point. Biased, uneven, nontransparent moderation was always happening with weak justification, it was just done by unaccountable people and propagandized as righteous.
Remember people getting banned for saying "learn to code", disallowing certain news links even in DMs, shadowbanning undesirables with no transparency.
"unbiased moderation" is fundamentally impossible for an international service like Twitter with millions of users. Each country has its own rules about which content you are allowed to post and it has its own regulatory agencies that may demand you behave in a certain way. Your moderators will all apply their own cultural norms to their own behavior as well.
I agree that it's not "righteous" somehow but the idea that Twitter could be moderated evenly in an "unbiased" way is incredibly naive and it seems to be one of the illusions Elon was under before he took over.
> unbiased moderation" is fundamentally impossible for an international service like Twitter with millions of users.
Especially given that the pool of California tech people from which Twitter might draw moderators are to the left of 99% of that international community of users.
We’re not talking about “democrats.” We are talking about college educated California democrats. On cultural issues—which dominate when it comes to moderation decisions—the Overton window of a typical Twitter employee is well to the left of people in most European countries, and far to the left of those in Asia or Africa or the Middle East. For example, center left Emmanuel Macron or solidly left Mette Frederiksen wouldn’t be able to express their views on immigration at a Twitter staff meeting: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20221102-mette-frederi...
> Him owning Twitter, the way he's currently operating, will force a critical eye toward a lot of bad behaviors that we all experience but nobody really talks about on every network.
Are you talking as a communist meaning "The society has been too lenient on the class of billionaires, but now that one of them is exposed as a destructive idiot, people will be forced to ask whether the rest of them deserve their power over us"?
Because that's the only logically consistent interpretation of your statement I can find.
How did you jump from that to Communism? I though the meaning was pretty clear: People will be more critical regarding social networks. Meaning they will more carefully assess the merits and flaws of Social Networks, instead of just assuming they're good and fun with no real drawbacks.
But the thing is, all these things are happening not because Twitter is social media; they're happening because Twitter is led by Elon Musk. I'm not saying everything is fine under Zuckerberg or Pichai, but whatever their flaws are, organizations led by other billionaires don't suffer the same kind of pathology as Musk's Twitter. They operate very differently.
So, whatever Musk does, it will not lead to people critically looking at Facebook and Reddit. It will more likely lead to people critically looking at Tesla and SpaceX.
It's the same thing as trump in the presidency - many things were uncovered to be norms that people follow, rather than strict law
When run well, social media stays out of the spotlight, with it's issues swept under the rug enough for regulators to not notice. With musk loudly showing those issues, regulatory interest is drawn, and new rules for social media will be crafted for everyone's benefit across all social media
Am I cynical in thinking that if you vote yes, it’s a permanent record on your Twitter account, which he can then use later to mete out anti-musk retaliation punishments?
I mean, it’s not like he’s used the platform to do punish anyone who opposes him or his views before.
I think he very much expects people to vote yes.
He clearly has no idea how to run Twitter and this gives him a way to get out of this disaster while still somewhat saving face.
Now that you mention it, Twitter is suspiciously effective at torturing Elon and his clone army, and it keeps him too busy to save the world from unfriendly AI. Maybe it is the Basilisk...
The thought experiment resurfaced in 2015, when Canadian singer Grimes referenced the theory in her music video for the song "Flesh Without Blood", which featured a character known as "Rococo Basilisk". She said, "She's doomed to be eternally tortured by an artificial intelligence, but she's also kind of like Marie Antoinette."[6][20] In 2018 Elon Musk referenced this in a verbatim tweet, reaching out to her. Grimes later said that Musk was the first person in three years to understand the joke. This caused them to start a romance.[6][28] Grimes later released another song titled "We Appreciate Power" which came with a press release stating, "Simply by listening to this song, the future General AI overlords will see that you’ve supported their message and be less likely to delete your offspring", which is said to be a reference to the basilisk.[29]
I am even more cynical and I think he wants an out without loosing (more) face. He hopes he will get a vote telling him to leave and then he can say people have spoken.
Sure it's associated to you, and yes it's permanent in the lifetime that this particular record is remembered and/or useful. It is also not farfetched for Twitter or really any website similar to it like FB, Reddit, etc. to punish people who only upvote or like comments/posts, no other engagement otherwise.
I don't really see a problem here that was not already a problem before.
I am also not going to lie, I think social media as a whole is really not that big of a deal. I know many people have built businesses through social media and benefit from it, but businesses live and die naturally everyday, don't put your eggs into one basket. I know some people that had some level of popularity on LiveJournal, they all survived it's death. You will too.
In the six weeks he's been CEO, he totally gutted Twitter, and chased away who knows how many advertisers.
There's no reasonable way to right that ship.
I think he knows he's on the Titanic. I think he's looking for a pretense to get out, to stop this from taking TSLA down with it even further. TSLA is down -50% in three months, whereas the S&P500 is flat.
What's interesting though is that it's now his private play-toy. If you want to buy a $1,000,000 Ferrari and thrash it into oblivion in 1 week that is totally your choice, have fun with that. It wouldn't be a free country if people could stop you doing so.
He's doing the same thing here, he just has more money to play with, which I think it what people are ultimately annoyed about.
Also worth pointing out that for years and years everyone said the way he was going about aerospace was impossible and stupid and was never going to work. They said the same thing about his approach to automobiles.
By very definition to shake up an industry you need to go against the status quo. You need to do something others have not, and you need to take risks. Otherwise you're just going to get a 1 or 2% improvement. So actually I see him messing with Twitter so fundamentally as a good thing, because there's a chance it will result in something great. It might burn to the ground too, but that's the risk you take when you actually do something.
I mean, the worst thing about Facebook/YouTube is the relentless advertising, so maybe there's a chance that Elon chasing away advertisers is actually a good thing for Twitter users? He owns the thing, what do you care if it makes very little money?
I guarantee YouTube and Facebook would be more enjoyable to use with 1/10th the number of ads (and as a result, 1/10th the profit, which means nothing to me)
It is not really his private play-toy. There was a bunch of other investors that joined him and I bet they're giving him heat about the results already.
> If you want to buy a $1,000,000 Ferrari and thrash it into oblivion in 1 week that is totally your choice, have fun with that. It wouldn't be a free country if people could stop you doing so.
OK, but if you do that, people will consider you reckless, and people will question whether they can trust you with other endeavors.
Sure, but that's completely irrelevant. Are we talking about the TSLA stock price, or are we talking about Elon destroying Twitter.
People are very confused about what to be outraged about. They feel as if they should be outraged at a Billionaire, they just can't quite decide what angle to take, and will jump around wildly from one thing to the next.
Also worth nothing TSLA has tracked AMZN almost identically for many months now.
> Sure, but that's completely irrelevant. Are we talking about the TSLA stock price, or are we talking about Elon destroying Twitter.
It's obviously relevant, as destroying Twitter has reduced the value of Musk's TSLA stake by tens of billions.
> People are very confused about [...]
What's that got to do with the hypothesis (Musk's own motivation to stop this) above?
> Also worth nothing TSLA has tracked AMZN almost identically for many months nowAlso worth nothing TSLA has tracked AMZN almost identically for many months now.*
TSLA is far worse off than AMZN, which has little relevance as a basis for comparison, and even more so than all the other major car manufacturers.
If he steps down now his sycophants will just be able to claim that as the cause for the company further collapsing after he leaves, and not the braindead management decisions he's been making up to this point.
Maybe he's got a stimulant (or other psychoactive) prescription that renews around this time of the month and we're witnessing a periodic, chemically induced mania?
And that's a bad thing now that Elon is doing it, whereas previously on Hackernews nootropics together with fasting and gut bacteria husbandry were the key to a long fulfilling life.
Drinking moderate amounts of alcohol can be a great way to relax and socialize. Drinking all the time to get through the day can cause serious harm. There's no conflict between these positions.
I know several people that use Modafanil thanks to a friendly doctor, not due to medical need. I get the impression this is pretty common with a particular swath of tech and finance workers.
Don't forget blood transfusions from 18 year olds, if you really want to go torture yourself with thoughts of "is this a conspiracy theory or just really fucked up reality"
Yeah. I had an awful time with it. I can’t describe my dream because it doesn’t belong here at all, and while it wasn’t a nightmare so to speak, it was extremely unsettling.
It has a sort of vividness and trueness to real life that, given the subject of the dream, was totally unwelcome in my mind and eerily blended the dream world and real life. I’d never experienced anything like it.
Somehow the dream also felt long. Not long for a dream, but like an actual day passed. It was a seriously unsettling experience.
One of the reasons that might have happened is that a lot of OTC melatonin is actually way too high of a dose. You need like a .5mg dose, but most of it that I have seen in stores is in the 3-5mg range, which is quite a bit more than what you need.
The only time I took Ambien, I discovered the next morning that I had apparently awakened at some point and attempted to eat a tea bag. Yeah, no thanks.
First I heard of it, my friend’s mother got a prescription and found herself waking up with bags of flour and empty jars of mayonnaise in bed with her. More recently I had a colleague who grew extremely habituated/addicted to it, which did not end well.
"Ambien Walrus: come with me on an adventure you'll never remember"
I think you're on to something! All that jetsetting around and working in multiple timezones is going to be harsh. Can't fall asleep on the flight to Qatar and gotta be up in 6 hours to make a public appearance and watch the game? Why not take a little Ambien, what's the worst that could happen?
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[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 504 ms ] threadImpossible in its current state with its current leadership? All signs point to yes.
Going to be interesting to see what this does to the price of TSLA stock when the market opens on Monday
Probably people think him being back at Tesla more of the time is better for the company. I have my doubts about that. My big hope is he doesn’t screw up SpaceX close to Starship launching.
I can only imagine the infrastructure for this...
https://mastodon.weinzierlweb.com/@ludwig/109537268355917100
It's still cool, even if it's not the _coolest_.
https://twitter.com/lexfridman/status/1604624131626090497
I think this indicates he's tired of Twitter already. But he still owns it, so who will he put in his place? Or maybe he is expecting a landslide "no" result?
They know a bad deal because they are usually the ones crafting them.
He can't control the narrative anymore.
But if his high-level vision is described by his actions so far... oh my God, yeah, no one would wanna touch that with a thousand mile pole.
Plus, Uber/Spotify/Doordash/Yelp can barely turn a profit as-is. What incentives will the everything app offer to pull consumers away from these existing competitors other than subsidizing the services with VC money, which would only worsen profitability and sustainability?
Many things are possible, and the Twitter app today may even continue to work as-is. But underneath it will be able to power more apps and more use cases, all tied under a common cohesive set of interactive primitives, much higher level than what cloud applications today support. This means less to reinvent, less to rediscover, and easier more natural integration between apps, services and components.
It'd be a lot of work, definitely not a 2-3 month project. So you'd need also a survival strategy that keeps Twitter 1.0 working and profitable.
These companies also don't favour their own services over others on their cloud platforms. That's why regulators aren't coming after them. Twitter is not a cloud service provider and it's not hard to see why the argument you presented does not hold up.
1. A general purpose computing platform is an everything app. 2. Cloud platforms and their APIs are a significant step towards moving higher-level in development platforms compared to, say, compiling a raw binary and running it on Linux. 3. Keep moving in that direction.
2. Agreed but this has nothing to do with Twitter or mega-apps whatsoever.
3. Transitioning to cloud service is not what Twitter needs to do right now even under the mega-app vision. And attempting so under their current situation is a sure fire way to actually go bankrupt.
Mega-app, the way I understand that term, is not what he's after. He's mentioned that he wants to allow HQ video and compete with YouTube and have a separate app which shows a YouTube-like view of only tweets with videos on them. Like a projection of that content, from the same platform.
Or alternatively you can see it as merely a "videos tab" in a single "mega-app", but this distinction is not quite substantial on a higher level, only about the logistics of marketing the app and maintaining it.
As for there being zero building happening... of course. He's trying to stop bleeding cash for now. I'm not suggesting he's working on this NOW.
I may be projecting my own ideas onto "everything". When Elon took over Twitter, I was inspired by his idea, and combined with concepts from some projects I'm working on, over two weeks or so, in my free time I wrote like 50+ pages of notes on what "Twitter 2.0" might be.
Is Elon's idea anything close to so comprehensive, I don't know. We only know he wanted payments in it, but this is barely scratching the surface of what Twitter could be.
Twitter's timeline of messages could be seen as a communication platform, computation platform, verified facts registry and so on. The rabbit hole is deep if you let your fantasy run wild.
Alas... instead we have this today.
It really is perfect, a not-government entity making wink-wink decisions at the behest of unelected executive branch employees.
- Level the playing field between the "blue-checks" and everyone else. I think the intent of that is to encourage the 90% of people who passively consume content to engage more, and encourage lurkers without accounts to sign up.
- Reduce the dependency on advertisers by pivoting to a model that is partly user-funded. Reddit seems to have had some success with this, for example.
- Signal that Twitter is going to be less politically partisan going forward, probably in an attempt to rope back in users who moved to right-wing Twitter clones.
I don't think those are objectively terrible ideas, but the implementation so far has been remarkably bad.
The problem with Twitter isn't free speech, but objective reality. There's only room for one reality on Twitter -- not two, or three, or four.
Truth Social and the right wing platforms don't challenge people's view that the 2020 election was a fraud, that pizza gate really happened, so they will probably continue now as they are.
Now they would rather hang out on a site where they don't have to worry about overbearing moderation, at the cost of a handful of nutters talking about Satanic rituals or whatever. I think Musk had a plausible route to getting those users back if he could promise slightly more limited and fair enforcement of the rules.
When they are questioned, they martyrize themselves to spark more outrage. (I'm a victim of the woke left!) And then use that as a crutch to deflect further criticism or questions.
If it wasn't Hunter Biden's Laptop, it would be something else, e.g. Pizzagate, Voting Machines, Mail-in Balloting, Fake school shootings, etc.
You can't blame the mainstream media if you're the one that's calling "wolf" over and over without facts.
Back around 1991/1992 the Democrats in congress were so convinced there was an October Surprise in the 1980 election. There just wasn't anything there.
Hugboxes don't force you to question your belief system, right? You can go on living in whatever world you want to. But anything coming out of those hugboxes, no one should take seriously, right?
Before social media we would have called much of this stuff "conspiracy theories".
https://theintercept.com/2021/10/11/bani-sadr-reagan-iran-ho...
But I'm equally disapproving of the left in their handling of the 2016 election and its aftermath, and the way they represented it as "stolen", as well as their narratives during the BLM "protests" and January 6 "insurrection". Imo, if Trump had really wanted a coup, he would have placed his people in top positions of the armed forces, and used actual armed soldiers. Q-anon and others involved on January 6 did not seem to have anywhere near the kind of organization to carry out an actual coup.
Also, Twitter and outher outlets suppressing (then and even now) the Hunter laptop (not the porn, but the actual evidence of corruption that looked like it involved Joe) made it look super-partisan.
Later on, the partisan divide arround covid, with crazy anti-vaxxers on one side, and similarly irrational support for excessive lockdowns and suppression of the WIV story on the other, it seemed like Twitter was contributing to the excesses of both sides.
The world (and perhaps especially the US) needs a platform where moderates of both sides can meet to discuss their differences, and where moderation is (to the extent it is carried out) applied to the crazy people of BOTH sides when it becomes excessive.
That way, one can hope, it may be possible to separate facts from matters of opinion from outrights falsehoods.
If too many people consistently tow the party line (which many be the case for anyone consistently agreeing with their own side on all issues above), I think a breakup of the USA is inevitable. The result will be one Woke-merica and one Maga-merica, and quite possibly civil war.
When Musk took over, I was hoping he would take the platform in a direction where it would support a moderate centre.
So far, he has not made much progress.
Jan. 6th was a based on a series of falsehoods. Fox News and several Republican politicians claimed it was a antifa "False Flag" operation the night after it happened.
Fox News downplayed much of the Trump scandals in his presidency. So now turnabout is fair play I guess with the coverage of whatever's on Hunter Biden's laptop? The entire narrative is clouded by Giuliani and company apparently tampering with the data that made it to the NY Post.
> .. and quite possibly civil war.
So we need to restore Trump to the presidency, suspend the constitution, or whatever the right wing demands or there will be violence? Why can't it be just as simple Fox News, Alex Jones, OANN, and Newsmax agreeing to no longer manufacture outrage for ratings?
Not what I'm saying at all, rather the opposite. But if both sides stop interpreting everything coming frome moderates on the other side in the worst possible light, that's a start in mitigating polarization.
I think the issue is that social media is the most amazing tool for propaganda ever invented.
The Russians realized it in 2016. One of the two political parties learned from that experience rather than wanted to fix it.
The Russians realized it in 2016, and the data I've seen indicates that they promoted both Trump and Sanders at the time.
> One of the two political parties learned from that experience rather than wanted to fix it.
Both sides spread a lot of lies and even more half truths both in social media and more traditional media. The loyalists on both sides also both seem unable to spot where their own side is spreading disinformation and propaganda.
The one thing that has definitely been refreshing about new Twitter is that the leader isn't yet another "social media expert" and just another social media user with similar complaints as millions of other users.
Personally I really hope they also get rid of the "UX experts" next, given how shit Twitter's UX is, especially on anything that isn't a phone.
For example, prior to Falcon 9 the argument used to be that SpaceX too would have to either succumb to relying on expensive cost-plus contracts or go bust like all other space companies before them. Yet, as they pushed up against that attitude and tried their own approach, they became successful and set the model that has now led to hundreds of new private space companies. Similarly, the argument against reusing F9 was that it wouldn't fly often enough to pay for reuse.
Thus I think that it isn't too crazy to consider that maybe with all this fiddling around they might stumble upon a more healthy model for social media for their scale. Especially considering that this environment of a large platform with an existing userbase undergoing said change is very unique (in that most other attempts at healthier social media have failed in part due to not being able to rely on pre-existing network effects).
Maybe they'll still fail, but I think it's still worth trying (even if it kills Twitter) rather than just appointing another 'expert' to continue to make things worse. Especially because it isn't my own money on the line :)
Lets start with employees... both Tesla and especially SpaceX had hordes of people wanting to work there. I don't currently see the same for Twitter, and Elon just removed a bunch of talent.
Customers are also widely different. Tesla were enthusiasts willing to overlook drawbacks and oopsies. SpaceX was few high value ones like NASA, and by now have a great track record, not to mention the price. Instead of believers in the company mission, many twitter users are just average people. They will complain. They might leave due to drastic changes. Sure, there is a strong network effect. But Musk payed a lot of money for that, should he really risk it all?
I don't know of anyone who is clamoring to work for Twitter now but the people he fired definitely don't seem like the type you're describing either. I think he views the majority of Twitter to be inmates running the asylum.
The real question is will he be able to find replacements that share his vision/passion for Twitter like he did with those companies. Twitter seems a lot less prestigious than SpaceX or Tesla.
(The "free speech platform" sounded like a vision, but we wouldn't have new banning offences every five minutes if that had been a serious consideration rather than something he said for the likes)
The problem with being someone with ideas outside of the rest of your community is that you generally can't find other people with complimentary skills who agree with you.
- allow all legal speech; or
- ban doxxing, publicly available location info, bots, spam, info critical of Musk/Twitter, parody, links to other social media, and Kanye West
Think of it this way, will Elon be conducting a new poll on whether or not to fire his replacement in a year's time? (Because that's what this type of decision making process leads to.)
This is not sustainable because it does not bring any sort of stability.
Imagine if Tom ran twitter. We’d truly be in the best timeline.
Specifically how he treats his underlings.
I can't help but think he's in quite an unhealthy mental state at the moment.
Although I'm not sure who would want to run Twitter now.
So in this case he may not believe he knows the outcome ahead of time, but it doesn't matter because the outcome is the same either way. Only the timing is different.
Especially while continually being at Elon’s mercy.
If it pays well enough that I could retire afterward then I'd give it a shot. I somehow doubt it's physically possible to fuck things up anywhere near as badly as what's already happened.
And I'm sure some Musk critics decided not to mute him anyway. Hell, I only finally got annoyed enough to do it about a week ago.
"As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it"
https://notabird.site/elonmusk/status/1604623424164282368
Lex Fridman just volunteered
https://twitter.com/lexfridman/status/1604627087385661440
Lots of stuff are known about Putin since 2000 till January 2022, some perhaps even worse than Ukraine invasion
For sure he has a soft spot for Autocrats both in Moscow and in San Francisco
What do you mean exactly?
> For sure he has a soft spot for Autocrats both in Moscow and in San Francisco
The West establishment has a soft spot for autocrats: whitewashing the wealth of oligarchs, buying cheap oil stolen from common people, selling anti-protest crowd control gear and tear gas, etc, etc; even though "lots of stuff are known about Putin since 2000 till January 2022, some perhaps even worse than Ukraine invasion". I don't think Lex has done or has expressed a wish to do anything comparable to that.
Every video of his that YT pushes in my feed I see Putin in the thumbnail with sunglasses and behind a huge explosion
Like it’s cool or something that an autocrat with a cult of personality controls 5000 nukes
I just scrolled through the past 8 years of thumbnails on his main channel and the past year of thumbnails on his clips channel. The thumbnail you describe doesn't exist.
What I found is that he has several thumbnails of Putin looking stern, but without any sunglasses or nuclear blasts. (He also has thumbnails of Hitler and Stalin looking stern, but I don't take that to suggest he's simultaneously a communist and a nazi.) Additionally he has several videos with nuclear blast thumbnails, but none of them have anybody superimposed on front of the explosion. And he doesn't have any meme-like photoshopped sunglasses thumbnails. That sort of meme thumbnail doesn't seem to be his style.
(I didn't watch any of these videos because I can't stand Lex, so I can't comment on what he actually says. But the sort of thumbnail you're describing just isn't his style.)
OTOH, Elon picking Lex as the fall guy to take the blame wouldn’t entirely surprise me.
"Oh, great, another 'podcaster interviews another podcaster for reciprocal exposure' episode?"
Snarky, sure, but still unfortunate he can't handle some rib jabbing about interviewing a clown like Trussell compared to the more intellectual guests he (used to) interview. :)
The issue with this is obvious: there’s only one “you fucked up” option and the “I agree but let’s talk specifics” group is divided into three. So even though the majority of people said “I agree”, the “you fucked up” got the most votes. Classic first-past-the-post failure mode.
That said, the later poll didn’t reflect this dynamic. My suspicion is that early on in polls the answers are likely to lean pro-Elon, as the votes are more likely to to be Twitter stan’s. As time goes by word of mouth spreads news of the poll to people who aren’t as active on twitter and accordingly are less likely to be pro-elon.
It was the same with the “should I step down” poll, started out pro-Elon, flipped as popularity increased.
https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/16036000010571857...
what was that outcome? fewer people knowing about his childish behavior? no, that wasn't it. fewer people knowing about his private jet and the mechanisms of being able to track it. nope, didn't work that way either. showing the world he's a petulant little child that throws a hissy fit when he doesn't get his way. now we're getting somewhere.
Email to the admins: "Hey guys I'd like the results of the poll to be the following..."
No chance.
Interesting side note: Here in Australia this morning on the ABC public broadcaster's national News channel, one of the presenters said "if you hate Elon Musk, vote yes"... encouraging the mostly left-leaning ABC viewers to log on and vote Musk out. The poll will get swamped by this politically divisive Musk-hating recruitment drive, which is why the results stand as they are.
----
Yes = he gets to step away from the dumpster fire without it looking like it was his decision
No = all of his previous decisions are justified
Plurality is not necessarily majority
I bet he expected to get clear majority for 7 days.
He’s also facing a huge amount of backlash, pent-up backlash, that he hasn’t experienced before or more successfully insulated himself from before. For example, when he was recently booed off stage.
I saw someone comment elsewhere that he is also highly leveraged, and that if Twitter tanks and Tesla’s stock keeps falling, he stands to lose a lot of money and even potentially control of Tesla. I haven’t looked into the veracity of the argument, but it seems plausible that he’s in over his head in more ways than one.
I understand the point is he’s hoping people will log back in to engage. But I’m just done. Even if he steps down his actions have shown what a massive single point of failure the whole thing is.
So I guess what I’m saying is: the fact that he controls everything is more the problem than whether he will exercise this one specific control.
Agreed, and this move would almost certainly be more of a distraction than an actual stepping down. Whoever is put in charge will still be under Elon’s thumb, but with a different person in the CEO seat, Elon can pass blame for the bad decisions and ride in like a white knight to reverse any unpopular actions.
Not true, he changed the poll well before its conclusion. Then he abided by the majority vote and unbanned those users. But you're not happy, and need to make stuff up about what he did or didn't do.
His latest poll deciding his own fate reveals the bold transparency approach. People can't handle transparency it seems. Almost like they want things decided behind closed doors that decide the terms they agree to. The world needs more transparency not less.
It will be sad to see him step down, if the poll decides that. It's been highly entertaining. The outrage and temper tantrums sparked in entitled over-sensitive Twitter users and commentators, is quality popcorn material. Must the curtain close?
I do mostly agree with you—Musk's outrage and temper tantrums have been pretty funny. This is probably been the funniest time Twitter has, just weeks of everyone dunking on him and watching him flail in rage. But honestly, it's getting kind of tiresome. Every time the conversation moves on to something else, he bans someone or adds some new rules or gets mad about something, to keep himself in the center of attention. I think it's probably time to close the curtains.
All Musk did was rattle cages with a few truth bombs and mild trolling. Entertaining stuff. Anyone voting "yes" takes life way too seriously.
Not to mention devaluing the insights of Twitter Files and FBI-tweaked moderation processes and staffer ideology influence. It's good to see all that exposed in the light. Musk did the dirty work that was needed.
The twitter files did reveal the kind of insider access that powerful people get to journalists in order to push a narrative, but I do wish he had accomplished that without doing the exact same thing he was complaining about—giving journalists insider access to power in order to push a narrative.
Does he mean a twitter poll?
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604616863673208832
However, he has a history of noble intents on Twitter (eg the 'end world hunger' thing) followed by lack of follow-through, so I can imagine a scenario where the poll comes out 'yes' and he doesn't abide by the results by calling foul play somewhere (bot accounts, multiple user accounts etc.)
Does Elon Musk always do such stuff without consulting with anyone who can tell him it's a legal disaster?
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=last24h&page=0&prefix=fals...
I say bravo. Twitter is dead. Long live Twitter.
He also has no plan… his successor needs a holistic strategic mindset and a business development methodology. Perhaps he had support from leadership lieutenants at Tesla and Space X and is trying to solo this one. Something’s different enough with his floundering at Twitter.
Best case we get a more decentralized option or a centralized option that isn’t so politicized by the owners… or at least an owner who isn’t a contentious celebrity that is a black/white villain/hero to a big portion of the population.
Unfortunately all of my experiences with Mastadon have been negative (particularly the UI and how it encourages bubbles harder than Reddit hypermodding), but Mastadon seems to be all people talk about.
The days when Twitter was cool is when you could get your toaster to tweet when your toast is up.
Removing dedicated bots just made for bots that are trying to hide their bot-ness
Remember people getting banned for saying "learn to code", disallowing certain news links even in DMs, shadowbanning undesirables with no transparency.
I agree that it's not "righteous" somehow but the idea that Twitter could be moderated evenly in an "unbiased" way is incredibly naive and it seems to be one of the illusions Elon was under before he took over.
Especially given that the pool of California tech people from which Twitter might draw moderators are to the left of 99% of that international community of users.
Inter-cultural policy differences aren't new and being able to moderate on an international online forum like Twitter is pretty challenging.
Contrast the recent post about Stanford’s language policing guide, with Macron calling such guidance “woke nonsense.” https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/emmanuel-mac...
Yes, running an engine at eleven will show you where it creaks. But it may also fling shrapnel through itself and everyone nearby.
Are you talking as a communist meaning "The society has been too lenient on the class of billionaires, but now that one of them is exposed as a destructive idiot, people will be forced to ask whether the rest of them deserve their power over us"?
Because that's the only logically consistent interpretation of your statement I can find.
So, whatever Musk does, it will not lead to people critically looking at Facebook and Reddit. It will more likely lead to people critically looking at Tesla and SpaceX.
When run well, social media stays out of the spotlight, with it's issues swept under the rug enough for regulators to not notice. With musk loudly showing those issues, regulatory interest is drawn, and new rules for social media will be crafted for everyone's benefit across all social media
I mean, it’s not like he’s used the platform to do punish anyone who opposes him or his views before.
Maybe I’m reading by too much into it.
He can "Twitter punish" his detractors all he wants, but that won't help him keep Twitter alive financially.
(I'm unsure of the fine detail of the cosmology of the weirder long-termists, but surely there is some sort of counter-basilisk)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk#Legacy
The thought experiment resurfaced in 2015, when Canadian singer Grimes referenced the theory in her music video for the song "Flesh Without Blood", which featured a character known as "Rococo Basilisk". She said, "She's doomed to be eternally tortured by an artificial intelligence, but she's also kind of like Marie Antoinette."[6][20] In 2018 Elon Musk referenced this in a verbatim tweet, reaching out to her. Grimes later said that Musk was the first person in three years to understand the joke. This caused them to start a romance.[6][28] Grimes later released another song titled "We Appreciate Power" which came with a press release stating, "Simply by listening to this song, the future General AI overlords will see that you’ve supported their message and be less likely to delete your offspring", which is said to be a reference to the basilisk.[29]
I don't really see a problem here that was not already a problem before.
I am also not going to lie, I think social media as a whole is really not that big of a deal. I know many people have built businesses through social media and benefit from it, but businesses live and die naturally everyday, don't put your eggs into one basket. I know some people that had some level of popularity on LiveJournal, they all survived it's death. You will too.
Corollary: from the beginning, popularity is driving the Twitter venture rather than anything else.
There's no reasonable way to right that ship.
I think he knows he's on the Titanic. I think he's looking for a pretense to get out, to stop this from taking TSLA down with it even further. TSLA is down -50% in three months, whereas the S&P500 is flat.
He's doing the same thing here, he just has more money to play with, which I think it what people are ultimately annoyed about.
Also worth pointing out that for years and years everyone said the way he was going about aerospace was impossible and stupid and was never going to work. They said the same thing about his approach to automobiles.
By very definition to shake up an industry you need to go against the status quo. You need to do something others have not, and you need to take risks. Otherwise you're just going to get a 1 or 2% improvement. So actually I see him messing with Twitter so fundamentally as a good thing, because there's a chance it will result in something great. It might burn to the ground too, but that's the risk you take when you actually do something.
I mean, the worst thing about Facebook/YouTube is the relentless advertising, so maybe there's a chance that Elon chasing away advertisers is actually a good thing for Twitter users? He owns the thing, what do you care if it makes very little money?
I guarantee YouTube and Facebook would be more enjoyable to use with 1/10th the number of ads (and as a result, 1/10th the profit, which means nothing to me)
OK, but if you do that, people will consider you reckless, and people will question whether they can trust you with other endeavors.
Hence TSLA sinking like lead.
People are very confused about what to be outraged about. They feel as if they should be outraged at a Billionaire, they just can't quite decide what angle to take, and will jump around wildly from one thing to the next.
Also worth nothing TSLA has tracked AMZN almost identically for many months now.
It's obviously relevant, as destroying Twitter has reduced the value of Musk's TSLA stake by tens of billions.
> People are very confused about [...]
What's that got to do with the hypothesis (Musk's own motivation to stop this) above?
> Also worth nothing TSLA has tracked AMZN almost identically for many months nowAlso worth nothing TSLA has tracked AMZN almost identically for many months now.*
TSLA is far worse off than AMZN, which has little relevance as a basis for comparison, and even more so than all the other major car manufacturers.
Musk basically did just that with a Mclaren F1.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/32191/did-you-know-elon-musk-w...
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604626103326253056
Any jackass can formulate an argument against someone by misquoting, the real skill is in doing it while being accurate.
What is it again CEOs do? Because I thought they got paid the big bucks to make decisions.
/s
To be fair to the lunatic currently in charge of Twitter, I don't think he's actually getting big bucks to be CEO, is he?
Today is 19 Dec, and in 12 hours he'll post again that the people have spoken. He's playing some sort of game.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1582778449583693836
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1593769469741932544
Or are you suggesting he gets an injection or so once a month?
https://www.science.org/content/article/young-blood-antiagin...
I would just think he's maybe tired and burnt out. This is classic burn-out syndrome here.
Not everybody reacts the same way to different chemicals, even the ones our bodies produce naturally.
It has a sort of vividness and trueness to real life that, given the subject of the dream, was totally unwelcome in my mind and eerily blended the dream world and real life. I’d never experienced anything like it.
Somehow the dream also felt long. Not long for a dream, but like an actual day passed. It was a seriously unsettling experience.
I'll still never touch ambien again, but there are many reasons that melatonin may not be enough.
The walrus has branched out.
I think you're on to something! All that jetsetting around and working in multiple timezones is going to be harsh. Can't fall asleep on the flight to Qatar and gotta be up in 6 hours to make a public appearance and watch the game? Why not take a little Ambien, what's the worst that could happen?