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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

“What is the point of fuck you money if you don’t get to say fuck you?” is the turn of phrase I believe. (Or in the case of Musk, meme lord when you’re not on the factory/star base floor)

Wealth has diminishing returns; he’s just trying to get more value for his exceptional personal wealth (and remember, he plans on dying on Mars, he’s playing a different game than typical billionaires). Status is his drug of choice, Twitter his platform. If you crave validation (Biden admin not mentioning him until recently, people buying ads in time square “say their [Tesla] name”), buy it if it isn’t given freely.

(observations as someone with years of therapy and a scholar of the human psyche)

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> Status is his drug of choice

Couldn't he have more noble causes in mind like trying to do the right thing for humanity (e.g. Tesla, SpaceX)? Social media is a cesspool right now, they seem to have a negative impact on democracy and humanity in general, and public social media companies have no incentive to clean themselves up because that will hurt shareholder value in the short term. Buying the company and taking it private will give him the ability to make those hard choices and try to make a social media company that is positive for humanity.

> Social media is a cesspool right now, they seem to have a negative impact on democracy and humanity in general, and public social media companies have no incentive to clean themselves up because that will hurt shareholder value in the short term. Buying the company and taking it private will give him the ability to make those hard choices and try to make a social media company that is positive for humanity.

AFAIK, his publicly-stated plan is to not "clean [Twitter] up," but rather turn it into more of an un-moderated cesspool.

Maybe he thinks an unmoderated cesspool is better than a moderated cesspool. Either way, you're swimming in shit. Twitter not being a cesspool is an appealing fantasy, but only that.

> Maybe he thinks an unmoderated cesspool is better than a moderated cesspool. Either way, you're swimming in shit.

I'm sure he thinks that. Apparently he's a "free speech absolutist."

> Twitter not being a cesspool is an appealing fantasy, but only that.

It's not a binary condition. Twitter can be a cesspool with relatively more or relatively less shit. I'm sure his preference will result in relatively more shit.

Personally, I've appreciated a having society that lacks the shit Donald Trump created on Twitter.

The perspective of "un-moderated" equaling "cesspool" is entirely based on whether or not you hold any opinions which are unpopular with the powerful.

I had an account I created in 2009. I had a modestly decent number of followers due to some past blogging on data science and DIY electronics. My account was suspended because I talked about the lab leak hypothesis before it was decided that it was ok to do so by The Good People™.

Maybe you hold some opinions that will also one day be unpopular with The Good People™. If you do, you'll soon find out that censorship is a very clumsy tool.

I'm with you, but should a person who holds no forbidden opinions today really feel worried that one of their opinions will be forbidden in the future?

You've got to think, if someone has the exact set of approved opinions today, that's almost certainly not a coincidence, but a sign that they form their opinions based on what is approved. And in that case they're at no risk of ever having a meaningfully unpopular opinion.

Unfortunately, you make an excellent point. And yes, I do think that the majority of people, when given the choice between what they know to be right and what they know to be popular, will choose the latter. Additionally, they will aggressively attack those who hold the unpopular opinion to buy themselves protection from the witch-hunters going after those with unpopular opinions.

> The perspective of "un-moderated" equaling "cesspool" is entirely based on whether or not you hold any opinions which are unpopular with the powerful.

Eh, no. It's more about signal to noise ratio. Because if recent history has taught us anything, it's that crowdsourced lies are often at least as compelling as the truth.

> My account was suspended because I talked about the lab leak hypothesis before it was decided that it was ok to do so by The Good People™.

Realistically, "un-moderated" will be 99% Qanon and Stop-the-Steal and 1% the kind of stuff you say you posted. The most obsessive have the loudest voices in those spaces, and people who believe wacky things seem to be more obsessive than those who don't.

The lab leak stuff gave me whiplash for sure. Early on, if you had the audacity to suggest that a coronavirus came out of a coronavirus lab, people would unironically call you a racist fascist right-wing lunatic.

Now it's officially a credible theory[1].

This is exactly why moderating "The Truth" is so dangerous. The people claiming to be the arbiter of the truth are politically motivated and self serving.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/16/politics/biden-intel-review-c...

Additionally, most of them were utterly innumerate. There's nothing more infuriating than the "I'm not a math person" folks sitting there gleefully pretending to understand data as they disseminate mass panic.

He could but he doesn't, because he is a narcissist

It's really none of your business what someone does with their own money.

He could also do much worse.

> It's really none of your business what someone does with their own money.

Then don't you think people shouldn't have so much money that they can literally control society? What a facile stance.

Musk doesn't have enough money to literally control the society.

If controlling twitter means literally controlling society, then I hope he crashes and burns that whole affair. That much power should never be concentrated into a single corporation.

I'm more talking about lobbying and the pernicious effects of a legal system modifiable by the elites. You can surely see that the rich and elite in society have written tax laws, property (IP, copyright) laws, employment laws, and complicated everything enough that the legal system is pretty directly pay to win.

I think the online giant platforms are another problematic avenue of control, I don't object to that characterization, but I'm really saying that saying "other's money is none of your business" can't be a good-faith statement in a world where money can control livelihoods and laws with such ease.

> but I'm really saying that saying "other's money is none of your business" can't be a good-faith statement in a world where money can control livelihoods and laws with such ease.

It absolutely can. I have no problem with the fact that money can buy politicians.

I have a problem with the fact that politicians can be bought in the first place.

Which are 2 completely different issues. If you had loads of money, you’d play the game too.

Then we’re “playing the game” by caring how he spends his money and trying to use social pressure to force changes in law. You can’t simultaneously say Musk should be able to do what he wants because he can, and then tell others that they need to behave differently.

Well, you can, but it’d be massively hypocritical and an opinion that’s easily dismissed

Musk doesn't control society, neither does twitter. If electrifying the cars of the western world affords someone the insane wealth required to... buy an internet forum... that seems like a fairly reasonable level of control over capital allocation to me.

I never stated anything about "complete control of society", I am merely making the point that money is essentially an abstraction of power and that modern society does nothing to prevent that, maybe it even is built to amplify that. Accordingly, to say "it's none of your business what others do with their money" is to say "it's none of your business how others use their power", and if you can't see how it's pretty directly everyone's business what everyone else does in our shared world, I think you and I understand ethics a little differently.

Edit: parent comment cleanly and completely changed due to my response, what a world. Cowards.

So what you're trying to say is that Trump Social should clone a load balancer or two and migrate to Postgres

Oh, come now. It’s not our business if he uses his money to outright purchase a politician? It’s not our business if he uses his money in pursuit of The Most Dangerous Game? It’s not our business if he uses his money to run disinformation campaigns via social media? Of course it is very clearly our business what he does with his money.

If anything, we should not only be scrutinizing the hell out of Musk’s stated intentions, but also scrutinizing those people in the Twitter organization who have the power to manipulate the public message, and ensuring that there are checks in place to keep falsehoods and anti-democracy messaging out of social media.

I mean, really, “mind your business!”? So let’s pretend it’s some other mega-billionaire, shall we? We sure has hell don’t want the likes of Putin purchasing twitter, do we? Give your head a shake.

Edit: ah, shit, I see later in the thread you double down. What a waste of my time. Don’t bother responding, IDGAF.

> Couldn't he have more noble causes in mind like trying to do the right thing for humanity (e.g. Tesla, SpaceX)?

Why should he?

Luckily this is also the right thing for humanity.

> Couldn't he have more noble causes in mind like trying to do the right thing for humanity (e.g. Tesla, SpaceX)? ...

> ...Social media is a cesspool right now,...

He would have greater impact if he used his account to not add to the cesspool, then. Much more than if he bought the company and kept tweeting like he does.

So.. what, we just let the dumpster fire continue on unabated and do nothing? I would argue his tweets are a lot less harmful than those that push false news in an attempt to change the route that democracies are following.

> Buying the company and taking it private will give him the ability to make those hard choices and try to make a social media company that is positive for humanity.

If that's the goal, why not simply found another social media company built around those values?

Surely he has the means to attract tech talent to do it, the means/message to attract users to a new platform, and presumably if he knows what's bad about Twitter and how to subtract it and make it good, he could do this greenfield.

This would result in increased platform diversity, too. And I'll bet you it's cheaper.

Imagine if Musk had tried to buy a big three automaker in order to make electric cars happen.

> If that's the goal, why not simply found another social media company built around those values?

Twitter is one of the few social networks that actually has a network. A lot of social media failed because the cold start problem is a very hard problem to solve at this point in the game. Elon probably knows it and I would bet that this is why he is looking to buy an established social network rather than creating a new one.

It's a hard problem if you don't have the clout to get attention and/or if there's no particular demand for whatever distinction your platform offers.

Musk has market-moving clout and a cult of personality, so the remaining question would be if he has a compelling insight into distinguished features.

If he doesn't, he won't make Twitter better. If he does, he could make a greenfield platform a success.

Google failed at it multiple times. Trumps network seems to have failed

Because this isn't really about building a neat social network, it's about power.

People have tried to do what you said. Let's make a Twitter that's not controlled by the hard left! The result was Twitter's ideological allies at tech firms immediately banned them from every platform they controlled, and other allies ganged up to hack and destroy them.

You cannot start a Twitter competitor today, it's impossible, because:

1. The sort of people who found companies tend to be pro-free speech because their economic survival depends on having risky but correct ideas, and that naturally leads to a sympathy for free speech.

2. The sort of people who hate free speech are obsessed with Twitter/tweeting platforms specifically.

3. They are exceptionally aggressive. They will do anything, including damaging their own companies and even breaking the law in order to stop any other platform from becoming popular. They've managed to take over tech firms to a sufficient extent that they will destroy any attempts to replace Twitter, which they see as a key pivot point in their power over society.

The obvious solution: buy Twitter and fix it. It's too big to ban. This also has the major benefit of really, really upsetting Musk's ideological enemies. They'd hate him anyway and many are in powerful positions in politics and the media. Even the thought of losing Twitter to Musk has very conspicuously driven them into a frenzy in recent days, and such frenzies discredit them in the eyes of the general public, thus weakening their ability to move against Musk.

> Imagine if Musk had tried to buy a big three automaker in order to make electric cars happen.

Bad analogy. Social media platforms are natural monopolies. The utility of a car doesn't grow with how many other people own that model. By contrast, Twitter's utility is basically just a function of the fact that all the relevant players use it.

> Social media platforms are natural monopolies.

If this was the case, Facebook wouldn't have needed to buy Instagram and Whatsapp. Or hell, there wouldn't have been FB because MySpace would have been king forever.

Network effects are real and they can help sustain engagement and mindshare but given how easy it is to move fluidly between multiple forums (social or no), the next competing platform is one compelling reason for engagement away.

> Couldn't he have more noble causes in mind like trying to do the right thing for humanity (e.g. Tesla, SpaceX)?

Like what?

Plastics in the ocean, mass die offs, hunger around the world, health care around the world

Jeez, he's already launched Tesla and SpaceX, why's he gotta solve every problem under the sun before he does something not quite so clear cut.

And haven't we already established that no amount of money thrown around is going to actually fix "hunger around the world" or "health care around the world". How many billions have already been dumped down that hole to little effect?

He didn't launch tesla, he bought his title. Neither company is really making the world better.

And idk why your so cynical about results. Just one example is Bill gates helping with polio vaccines.

Anyway I thought you were asking for better ways to actually help the world then buying Twitter. Plenty of research needs funding.

Polio vaccines? Bad example. Whatever good they did in the past, most outbreaks of polio in the world today are triggered by oral vaccine rollouts.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7049a1.htm

https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/polio-outbreak-s...

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/polio-cases-now-caus...

>status vs noble cause

Why not both?

> and remember, he plans on dying on Mars, he’s playing a different game than typical billionaires

I think you’re giving him too much credit here. It’s male appendage measuring at this point, like with most three comma club members.

> three comma club members

So you're gonna bundle people with $999B and $1B together, just like that?

joe rogan said that i believe

It's not really about that alone.

Musk have a case against him by the SEC (tweeting about taking tesla private), it seems like they can win it, and he might be forced to stop using twitter.

Now I can imagine it hard for the SEC to enforce such a role if it's his private company.

So in a sense he's using that money to secure his best tool to marketing / growth which is definitely worth 50Bn$ for tesla alone (then add all his other ventures now and in the future)

Is the SEC upset about Elon’s tweeting or making public statements that happen to occur on Twitter?

It was definitely his false and misleading statements that were the problem.

>he might be forced to stop using twitter

Just like last time.

He addresses the SEC thing here: https://youtu.be/cdZZpaB2kDM?t=1635

SEC already punished him by making him step down as chair of Tesla for 3 years, plus a fine. And I doubt that curtailing anyone’s first amendment rights is a punishment the SEC is legally allowed to enact.

[1]:https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-226

The SEC “curtails first amendment rights” all the time. It’s arguably one of their most effective means of enforcement: an order or agreement to stop lying.

I am not a lawyer, but restricting Musk from being able to speak publicly seems an overly-broad way of restricting him from lying about market-related things, given that the latter is a small subset of his overall speech.

I don’t think it’s likely the SEC would prohibit him from using twitter altogether but I don’t think it’s entirely beyond their ability, either. Especially in the context of a settlement agreement.

The SEC doesn't need to persuade Twitter to enforce anything and it would make a difference if Twitter is public or private. The SEC can sanction Musk as an individual and officer of Tesla. As such insider trading rules (and whatever?) apply to him, no matter what medium he uses to break them.

(And please explain how publishing stoner and dogecoin memes is worth $50billion to Tesla... ;)

Because it's not his 'fuck you' money but the supposed hopes and dreams of all those who believe he is some wonderful 'capital allocator'.

Bullshi!t proven.

Is buying twitter an example of that? He may make a buck but I'll 100% disagree.

And what? You think he earned 260 squillian dollars?

No, his shares were brought to that level through the demand of those who purchased shares in companies he owns.

It's not 'his' 'fuck you' money at all.

At this stage, he's using societies capital for entertainment value ... the support for him is cult like.

The whole spectacle is obscene and pathetic.

> the support for him is cult like

Don’t think for a moment that he does not pay a team of promotionists. Every public forum is monitored and “influenced.” He is not a completely stupid person and he obviously understands social media. Of course many of those in this very thread that argue against those who say “bad things” about Musk are being engaged by his paid mouthpieces. It is very much in his best interests to spend pocket change amounts to counter all criticism. It is absurd to think otherwise.

moistly, I think you are in an epistemic pit because you think misleading others is smart. Notice that you don't present evidence that everything is monitored and influenced, because it isn't an evidence rooted belief. Notice that you think that influence on social media is intelligent, that misinformation is clever, and that countering criticism rather than entertaining it is wisdom - you call it absurd to not counter criticism at the end of your post. On the basis of these things you think that smart people must be doing it and since you consider Elon smart you think he is doing it.

The problem is, being smart and thinking misleading people via online influence is smart aren't the same thing. moistly, in mistaking intelligence for oppression, I think you are dooming yourself into accepting a potentially false belief. Many very intelligent people value integrity.

You asks us not to think for even a moment. Fuck that. What happens when we do? The finances at Tesla are public knowledge because it a public company. They don't have an advertising department. It seems reasonable that Elon might not believe in paid promotions as much as some people. So a reasonable person might entertain the thought that -- and now we've transgressed your command to not think for even a moment.

> Of course many of those in this very thread that argue against those who say “bad things” about Musk are being engaged by his paid mouthpieces.

I'm not being paid by Elon Musk to post this. I publicly declare right now that I will retract my assertion that you are trapped in an epistemic pit and give you one hundred dollars if you can prove that at least four people in this thread are being paid by Elon Musk to counteract criticism. I will welcome this public disgrace if you teach me better, because I strongly believe that accepting criticism from you so that my beliefs are more accurate is not absurd, but of great benefit to me.

LOL, go ahead and believe what you wish. More the fool you, though, if you naïvely believe that the ultra-wealthy don’t manage their public image!

You're retreating from your original claim that Musk specifically pays people to "monitor and influence public forums" and in particular this forum. Now someone else pointed out that this is nonsense, you're retreating to the bailey of "wealth people manage their public image" which is a much weaker claim.

It’s the same claim! Since the time of pharaohs those with power and money have paid informers and influencers to keep their ear to the ground and to promote their benefactor. It’s a well-established industry. Hollywood makes extensive use of it, Scientology infamously so, politicians the same, and sure as god made little green apples, Musk’s cult-like evangelists are helped along their path by the ministrations of professional influencers. You can’t say Musk farted without some toady sycophant popping up to say that it smells like roses. It’s bizarre and unnatural, and Occam’s razor says that it’s hired help.

Claim 1:

> Of course many of those in this very thread that argue against those who say “bad things” about Musk are being engaged by his paid mouthpieces.

Claim 2

> More the fool you, though, if you naïvely believe that the ultra-wealthy don’t manage their public image!

In one you claim that people in this thread are doing it. In the other you claim that it is a thing which is done. These are two different claims.

You think people who disagree with you are fools, because you think misleading others is wisdom. I think you can escape, because I think you know that Putin is a moron. Do you agree that it was stupid of him to spread misinformation, ultimately resulting in deception prospering so much so that he lost sight of the truth, leading to ruin? If it was stupid for Putin, then why can't it be stupid for others? Look, you point to Pharaoh. He is dead, his empire is dead, and his fancy pyramid didn't help him. You point to politicians - Hitler killed himself. You point to Scientology - do you think them clever and wise, that they have the truth; I don't. Why are you pointing at idiots? Why are you pointing at dead men? Why do you think they are so clever?

If you had evidence that people were being paid, you wouldn't need to point to unwise dead men! Get out of the pit. Where is the oppression you claim? Where are the people being paid? Where is your evidence? Show me a check. Show me a paystub! Show me an account name which can be hired through an online service. Show me that I'm wrong that your beliefs are not rooted in your preconception that it is wise to mislead. I confess that I believe that it isn't absurd to be corrected. Criticize me! Point out my flaws! I will be better for it.

I am not talking about claim 2. I am talking about claim 1.

Also, from the Hacker News site guidelines:

> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.

> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

Good god what tiresome and unnecessary drivel.

You mock attempts to share critical feedback with you. It is clear you don't value criticism. It is plain to see why someone who doesn't value criticism wouldn't understand why someone else would value it. Nevertheless, plenty of intelligent people consider soliciting critical feedback of their ideas to be among the most important things they can do.

I eagerly await the day you present concrete evidence of your claims that many here are being paid by Elon Musk to promote him, but I grow more and more certain with your every reply that you have no such evidence. If you did have the evidence, you would collect a hundred dollars quickly. Since you don't, you call me a fool and pretend I speak drivel. I could call you a liar for that, but I won't. I think you are confused enough that you believe your own false claims. I completely forgive your insults.

However, I must insist you not see yourself as wise in your own eyes. You who proclaim that others should not "think for even a moment" have no place whatsoever mocking at cultists.

Bless your heart for caring so much. I do not.

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