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Comment by iammjm | Hacker News Reader

I used to be a big Musk fan. But the longer it gets, the more i start to dislike him. He starts turning into a Mad King

I’m the opposite. Never was a Musk fan but now that I see him trying to reform twitter I’m very impressed he’s willing to take so much flak for such a direly needed goal.

He doesn’t seem to be “reforming” Twitter, he seems to be trying desperately to recoup his lost investment.

This wasn’t needed and will be looked upon with embarrassment by him and all of tech in a decade.

He literally just bought it. Give the man a chance before writing him off.

No, that's not how this works. Elon Musk existed before his Twitter purchase, he doesn't get a pass on literally everything he's done up until now.

You're moving the goalposts from the context of the thread.

There are no "goalposts" to move. Elon Musk has a well earned reputation, and it's impacting how I and others judge his actions related to Twitter.

This makes absolutely zero sense

...it makes no sense to consider someone's history when predicting their future performance?

If that doesn't make sense to you, not much will.

> After engineers, some of Twitter’s highest-paid employees work in sales, where several earn more than $300,000, according to documents viewed by The Post.

That seems normal for an organization of Twitter’s size, doesn’t it? They’ve got to sell ads.

That seems incredibly normal for any tech company. Gotta pay commissions to get the best sales folks.

Sales people usually get commission right? So those sales people on $300k+ are probably earning Twitter way way more than that with big corporate sales

This is normal and desirable.

Anything having to do with twitter is not “direly needed”

Agreed. I'm excited to see what the Twitter "business" becomes under Musk's leadership. For too long Twitter has flirted with being a public utility and not a company.

For sure it will be a hard time for the current team - both those that stay and those that go as it is with any significant change.

Now I agree twitter is deeply flawed but there is no guarantee that a changed twitter will be better twitter. Especially I would say when it’s directed by someone who shows such little regard for law and responsibilities.

Sign me up for 10x that "flak" if I had his money. Please.

To be charitable to Elon Musk:

Solving the problem of fossil fuel for private transport? Meh.

Massive cost reductions in space exploration and development of reusable rocket boosters and technology to get us back to the moon? Pushover.

Ensure more people can drop the n-word and spread disinformation and hatred of democracy for free? This is important.

Just gonna end up censoring what he doesn't like

He didn't lose you at PayPal?

At X.com

I still have a lot of respect for Musk as bold business exec. But my respect for him as a person dropped to near-zero when he promoted the baseless conspiracy theory about Paul Pelosi.

His libelous pedo accusations should have sealed the deal years ago.

He didn’t. Look at context.

How vague. What is the context that makes that post ok?

The context seems to be he replied to Hillary with a conspiracy theory source that previously claimed she was replaced by a body double after 9/11 and other crazy stuff. Not sure where that is making things better.

Context is important. He was responding to a dubious claim with a dubious claim.

Is there context beyond the "There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye" tweet he posted? I think if that's the only context reasonably you can interpret that a number of ways: it responding to a dubious claim with a dubious claim is not the only way.

That's exactly what I think: there's too much uncertainty around what he meant by that. So I refer to the principle of charitable interpretation.

At the level of Elon Musk's influence, if something you can say is so uncertain that there is an uncharitable interpretation you can drive a truck through, I think that arguing that he meant it the charitable way is kind of meaningless when it's just as easy for people to interpret it as his support for the conspiracy theory.

We don't live in Elon Musk's head and someone, at a personal level, can choose to take it as the GP's interpretation, but I think "Context is important" doesn't make sense at all when we all have the same context with different possible interpretations.

You're preaching to the choir. I wish he'd think a bit more before tweeting, because I know what he says can have consequences.

However, that doesn't mean I have to interpret his tweets in the worst possible way, or that I can't remind other people of basic principles of civility.

No. He responded to a reasonable opinion with an assertion of lies from a well known propagandist.

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