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Comment by perihelions | Hacker News Reader

- "CEO of Twitter has posted an image of text (from the iOS Notes app?)"

At least he made the effort to include accessible alt-text. (Interestingly, the accessible text differs *slightly* from the picture-of-text version -- different draft revisions? Even social media CEO's don't seem comfortable with this workflow).

edit: here's a diff with highlighting: https://i.imgur.com/R9wf2H5.png

I'm relying on Verge's transcription of the screenshoted text,

https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/10/23019802/elon-musk-not-jo...

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That diff is a great lesson in Plain English. The version that looks ~50% longer provides no additional information.

True for every language

I think their point is that less is more.

It was meant as a supporting statement rather than a correction. I write copy in several languages, and trimming fat is key.

These are widely different tones and messages, if you have the other for context. Especially the bit about how “we’re still in control”. Seems obvious that a takeover is imminent.

Oh wow. I was honestly annoyed the conversation was a tangent about alt text. Then you all found evidence that he withdrew for takeover reasons. Time to eat some humble pie. (I also have blind friends, and suddenly feel terrible about diminishing the importance of alt text.)

What an interesting mistake. There must have been three or four messages. I wonder if the CEO acted alone or as a part of a team.

Talk about “no good deed goes unpunished.”

But the alleged "takeover reasons" bit is in the published text, not the alt text.

Haha.

Whoops. Time to bow out.

(Thank you for pointing out the mistake so gracefully. Have a good night.)

One problem with Twitter’s alt text is that it’s too short. I copy paste HN comments into alt text, but am almost always met with an error. In that situation I just link to the original comment, but the CEO couldn’t do that here.

Hahah it's not your day today or seems :P

Makes no difference, we now know he revised that portion of his message to emphasize autonomy and mulled over it. It’s a view into what he’s thinking.

Don’t think their current CEO ever came across as the “acts alone” sort to be honest.

Where's the "we're still in control" bit?

The final version's "the decisions we make and how we execute is in our hands, no-one else's".

Aha! I had interpreted it as a direct quote. That makes sense.

It's the "our decisions remain in our hands" thing, if I understand correctly.

Perhaps the alt text is condensed to comply with a limit? Looks like the same information for the most part.

Yes, that was my first thought too. Not everything is a conspiracy or a mistake.

It is all very odd: Why mention fiduciary responsibilities, background check, formal approval, we are in control unless all these things were in question?

It could be a legal CYA to explain why the board seat was tweeted about but didn't happen. It may be that list is standard boilerplate and needed to be referenced.

At least the alt-text makes sense. The image has so many mistakes in it. Words are missing, sentences left dangling. The alt-text was probably the template they gave him.

Thanks for the diff! But for the love of god would you please enable word-wrapping?

I'm so sorry to continue: please introduce some padding while you're at it; the text being so close to the window borders in stock emacs is so offputting. Signed with love, a recent emacs convert.

edit: I see word-wrapping now, thanks!

I've uploaded a new version with word-wrapping. Sorry for that!

Yeah, my emacs config is a work in progress.

> my emacs config is a work in progress

And so it shall remain

> Yeah, my emacs config is a work in progress

Hahaha Sisyphus had a similar problem

i wonder how the original text would have fared if it went through the grammarly filter instead.

It’s 1000 characters exactly.

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