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Comment by braingenious | Hacker News Reader

Serious question: Who cares?

I am not trying to make a joke or seem edgy. Literally, what group of people is actually impacted by this by first or second order effects of…whatever the hell this story entails?

In other words, this is on the front page of hacker news. Why?!

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I’m sure a decent fraction of the hundreds of millions of people who use Twitter would care if it changed drastically.

Twitter users.

Twitter employees.

Twitter investors.

Twitter board members.

Elon fans.

Lots of people. Weird question. If you don't care, move on.

1. Twitter is the de facto “public square”.

2. Musk being on the board or not, and his actions re. Twitter in general, will have consequences, especially given that he has unlimited money.

3. Up until recently, the liberal-left was cheering for tech platforms exercising their sovereignty and censoring power: “if you don’t like it, build your own Twitter”. They’re having to eat crow. This has major implications for the future of the political debate on regulations/anti-trust etc.

> Twitter is the de facto “public square”

In the way the village cock fight was. Twitter is a convenient source of quotes for journalists. Beyond that it’s totally opt in.

> 1. Twitter is the de facto “public square”.

Can you clarify why you think so? I think even of the small fraction of Americans that use it, most have no reach.

Maybe few average people use it but Twitter is very popular among politicians in many countries. So people interested in politics use Twitter a lot. If Twitter changes dramatically it will most likely affect the political discourse in many countries.

It’s tech news. Naturally, tech people are interested.

If you look at it in the context of Musk 2024 you should probably care about it, given what trump did with twitter.

Would he be allowed? Is he a "natural born citizen"?

Bloody hell. It's the first time I'm hearing about this, but that prospect is terrifying. Unhinged workaholic thinking he knows best about everything and refusing to listen to reason ruling by tweets. I can see him insulting other heads of state because they disagreed with him, starting wars on a whim ( yeah i know he can't technically declare a war, but he can launch a missile strike or "special military operation"). I can also see him going the Nicholas II route, micromanaging the hell out of everything while being too unknowledgeable about the vast majority of it. Let's hope it doesn't come to it.

Edit: disregard all of that. He's South African, he couldn't run. Whew!

For what it's worth, I agree. The amount of full-throated fanboying for him is borderline sick. More than anything else, the current Elon -- note, this wasn't always the case, hence the qualifier -- is really just a childish troll with nobody around to tell him no.

He’s always been like that. It was just less visible because he used to have some contact with reality.

Only Elon. For everyone else it's a distraction.

Me.

I hate narcissists grabbing established tech for their own gain.

I find it hard to believe you're not trying to seem edgy. Is it difficult to imagine that many Twitter user's experiences will be affected by Elon Musk's involvement with the company?

This big is news in big tech?

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