Hacker News Reader

Comment by loceng | Hacker News Reader

I'd be curious to know Scott Galloway's response to this.

Is this action that of a mainstream media channel being bought and control shifted way from Jack and current board's leadership, where they seem to be trying to at least do good - even if they are faltering some?

I'd speculate that they will push for political ads to be allowed, and false information to be perpetuated. To me this situation is highlighting that we can't depend on platforms that depend on advertising revenue as its operations budget.

View on HN

Galloway bought $10 mil worth of Twitter shares with the goal of doing the same thing Elliot is doing.

Don’t let the political clickbait headline fool you, this is all about profiting off twitter by removing Dorsey and bringing in a CEO who actually works full time at the company he runs.

This has absolutely nothing to do with politics.

Activists get a bad rap but they make our economy more efficient. The reason we’re having so many governance problems with big companies like Uber, WeWork, etc is because they stayed private for so long with zero accountability. If they went public earlier, activists could have made them a target much sooner.

*edit: I see mods changed the headline to something more accurate

Those big public companies are really being reined in by their shareholders: Comcast, Verizon, Exxon Mobil, Valeant, Equifax, Wells Fargo. Oh wait...

The public equities market has failed and will continue to fail to punish unethical behavior. Elliot, Scott Galloway, all the biggest equity funds all only care about returns. Scandals and misbehavior can affect returns but it’s often more efficient to cover them up or lobby to make them legal than actually fix the issue.

I almost feel like CEO owners have more of an incentive to prohibit bad behavior to protect their individual legacy. Adam Neumann made out great from WeWork but it’s rumored he left America and I don’t blame him. Jack probably doesn’t want to be the guy who led to the downfall of the American democracy, and I’d trust him to do more about it than any combination of nameless funds.

Do you understand the economy being more efficient isn't equal to making society via the health of society including societal systems like democracy more efficient?

Regardless of the headline, the article states that Elliot was anti-Trump and then became pro-Trump:t that is why there is more concern, above and beyond the problems of non-human-centred capitalism of only caring about a "strong economy" excluding the health of society.

You're making a lot of assumptions otherwise - which of there is only uncertainty and speculation at the moment.

Also, economic drivers are inherently tied to politics.

Ya I'm worried that the only reason to oust Dorsey is to try and allow political ads again

Out right rejecting a huge profit stream like that is reason enough to drop Dorsey. What a terrible business decision to leave that sort of money on the table over a relatively small cohort of their users who complain.

> over a relatively small cohort of their users who complain.

I can’t wait until vocal minority has been seen for what it is and now cow toed to. The best art and comedy and film of the past wouldn’t exist if created today because surely it would offend someone and “need” to be canceled.

Yes I agree about it being a terrible business decision. But not everything should be about money. Micro-targeting political ads is terrible for democracy

I think Twitter and other social networks should be neutral. I don't see why they should make decisions that benefit democracy or any other political system.

> Micro-targeting political ads is terrible for democracy

Is it? This was done to a much greater extent than Twitter is capable of with direct mail even in the 1990’s.

That's itself a very political view. I think political ads are good for democracy.

If looking long-term and outside of short-term profits it may not be a terrible business decision, how people govern their company, their platform,

What's happening with Twitter now is simply capitalistic regulatory capture, falling in line with Mark Zuckerberg's lack of ethics all in the name of revenues - which fits Mark's character since the "founding" - fucking over of the twins who hired him to start ConnectU, who he lead on to believe he was working on their platform, when in fact he was working on TheFacebook - knowing and saying there wasn't a need or room for two such platforms; the key to Facebook's initial success was ConnectU twins' idea of limiting people signing up to requiring a university email, so automatically you can connect those people easily and make it like having more or less exclusive clubs.

All of this happening is just war evolved, and honestly the decentralized bad actors are winning at the moment - and why true decentralization (not Bitcoin driven) systems need to coming together faster in case bad actors continue to capture government agencies and systems - and at some point start trying for full control over media like China and Russia have.

Do you understand the implications of manipulative ads, including those that lie about others, perpetuating hate and distrust of others?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com