Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll
twitter.com
twitter.com
- Jeff Bezos personally bought Washington Post but he left it alone and let the editors run it. What Jeff did do was invest some money into the IT department to modernize the workflow tools (metrics dashboards, etc) for journalists. He stayed out of the decisions of what stories get run on the front page.
- Rupert Murdoch owns Wall Street Journal but when Elizabeth Holmes asked him to squash negative stories about Theranos, he refused and stayed out of it. He let his editors run the stories even though it embarrassed him because he was a big investor.
Both those guys are more detached from those media outlets and don't meddle in it day to day.
What tech people like Paul Graham and others were hoping was for Elon to apply his scientific first principles type of thinking that he demonstrated previously at SpaceX+Tesla to Twitter. E.g. Tesla A.I. competency to clean up the bots and make the platform better.
Instead, Elon let the Twitter monster abuse his ego and his reputation as a savior is ruined.
Best thing Elon should have done was to focus only on the technical aspects of Twitter and let some more level-headed less-emotional people manage the editorial aspects.
Hopefully, Elon notices that we don't have endless HN and reddit front page articles about Rupert Murdoch's jet.
Besides, I don't think Twitter is what did Elon's reputation as a "savior" in. The current affair is more reaffirming than opinion shifting, for everyone I've talked to.
I wish one could take a step back and just see how ridiculous of a statement this is. There is nothing about Musk’s history and management style that is even remotely close to what could be called “scientific first principles type of thinking”. Musk’s management style is a bull in a china closet, he manages via personal vendettas, and he follows the marketing and hype first, delivery second product development cycle. See full self-driving, Cybertruck, Tesla robot, Tesla tunnel, and whatever else he’s promised over the years but never delivered on.
Edit: striking out comment about the Cybertruck’s airflow until I can find the article I read to back it up.
The problem with this is that Twitter didn't have any technical problems that it needed Musk to solve. "Bots" were not a major problem for day-to-day usage. What it needed was a product vision to reach sustainable profitability. Not a huge amount of additional debt, massive internal disruption, and a catastrophic reputational collapse.
Are you kidding? He loves the attention, and we are only talking about Twitter because Elon bought it rather than some boring guy.
I still don't see the impending death of Twitter. Where is the evidence that it is going down the tubes? PG will be back, because everything bad about Twitter is even worse on Mastodon -- instead of one narcissistic Napoleon running things like Twitter, Mastodon has hundreds of them, and they are even less accountable than Elon.
If you want to kill Twitter, stopping giving it free publicity would be a good start. But you can't help yourselves, so it survives and thrives on your outrage.
Many would happily dance on his grave, and raise a toast to his departure from this realm.
To say that he has a hands off approach to his editorial board, because of his handling of Theranos, is an unkindness to the harm he has caused to the fabric of decent society.
If any lesson is to be learned from Murdoch’s, it would be on silencing detractors, and holding the levers of political power.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk blasts Rep. Adam Schiff in deleted tweet: 'Your brain is too small'[1]
1. https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/twitter-ceo-elon-musk-b...
EDIT: Another example of scientific first principles
https://twitter.com/badlin/status/1604689299701911552/photo/...
That's even the actual title ("Kingmaker, The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty") of a BBC documentary about him: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000kxvz
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/13/reddit-ce...
At the time, yishan drew a ton of criticism, but now what has happened at Twitter dwarfs that story.
Recall that yishan was also from the Paypal mafia and had early experience at facebook. Yet was unable to make things work. Important for any of the current would-be Twitter investors to ponder.
Musk knows in his heart of hearts that he is the most interesting and newsworthy person on the planet, so it makes sense the front page articles are about him.
That didn't pan out too well either.
https://i.redd.it/manager-does-a-little-code-cleanup-v0-5cxg...
Frankly, at least this crazy guy running Twitter is openly doing it
Stating unilaterally that Bezos & Murdoch exert no influence over the content of their publications can't be grounded in any fact because any potential influence they might exert would never be public knowledge. It's falsifiable (as many commenters have done with Murdoch) but it's not provable. There's a lot of circumstantial evidence Bezos does too: it will probably remain circumstantial since he is in a position to keep it that way.
Twitter content being crowdsourced means that Musk as owner has far less direct influence. All he can really do is censor, which is exactly what we've seen play out.
i mean, i guess, if you don't consider having a job- and or career-ending gun pointed at your head to be at all influential or coercive.
https://chomsky.info/consent01/#:~:text=SIZE%2C%20OWNERSHIP%...
Murdoch staying out of content would be like Musk staying out of tech.
I don't think what you describe is actually possible. Compare Glenn Greenwald's writing about his work at an organization funded by Pierre Omidyar ( https://greenwald.substack.com/p/pierre-omidyars-financing-o... ):
> Any time I speak or write about Omidyar, the proverbial elephant in the room is my own extensive involvement with him: specifically, the fact that the journalistic outlet I co-founded in 2013, and at which I worked for eight years, was funded almost entirely by him. For purposes of basic journalistic disclosure, but also to explain how my interaction with him informs my perspective on these issues, I will describe that experience and what I learned from it.
> When I left the Guardian in 2013 at the height of the Snowden/NSA reporting to co-found a new media outlet along with two other journalists, it was Omidyar who funded the project, which ultimately became The Intercept, along with its parent corporation, First Look Media. Our unconditional demand when deciding to accept funding from Omidyar was that he vow never to have any role whatsoever or attempt to interfere in any way in the editorial content of our reporting, no matter how much he disagreed with it or how distasteful he found it. He not only agreed to this condition but emphasized that he, too, believed the integrity of the new journalism project depended upon our enjoying full editorial freedom and independence from his influence.
> In the eight years I spent at The Intercept, Omidyar completely kept his word. There was never a single occasion, at least to my knowledge, when he attempted to interfere in or override our journalistic independence.
> For the first couple of years, adhering to that promise was easy: [...] our journalism and Omidyar's worldview were fully aligned
> The arrival of Donald Trump on the political scene in 2015 changed all of that, and did so quite dramatically.
> the Trump-centric worldview that I spent most of my time attacking and mocking on every platform I had — in speeches, interviews, podcasts, social media and in countless articles at The Intercept — was the exact political worldview to which Omidyar had completely devoted himself and was passionately and vocally advocating.
> The radical divergence between my worldview and Omidyar's did not end there.
> This extreme divergence between my public profile and Omidyar's core views expanded for years. Often Omidyar would promote and herald a view on Twitter in the morning, and I would then publish an article on The Intercept attacking that same view in the afternoon, and then go on television that night to attack it some more.
> It was an irresistible story to journalists: at the time, I was the most prominent and the highest-paid journalist associated with The Intercept, which relied almost entirely on Omidyar's annual multi-million dollar largesse, and yet my primary political and journalistic focus at The Intercept was tantamount to a war on Omidyar's most cherished political beliefs and core objectives.
> On at least two occasions, journalists with major outlets contacted each of us to let us know they wanted to write about this glaring split. Yet neither ended up doing so for a simple reason: Omidyar made it emphatically clear that I had the absolute right to express whatever views I wanted, and that my doing so would never create a problem with him, let alone cause him to rethink his funding of The Intercept.
> Omidyar told me privately on both occasions that he knew when he decided to fund The Intercept that the day would come, likely soon, when not just me but other journalists there would be publishing articles with which he vehemently disagreed or even undermined his other interests. When he decided to fund The Intercept, he told me, he was supporting independent journalism, not promoting a particular ideology or political agenda. And indeed, no matter how much my attacks escalated on his core beliefs and the other groups he was heavily funding — and escalate they did! — I never received any remote signal that my outspoken journalism and commentary were imperiling his ongoing funding of The Intercept.
> I recount all of that for two reasons. First, I want to make clear that my analysis of Omidyar's role in this scam Facebook "whistleblower” campaign and the dangers it presents is in no way motivated by personal animus toward him.
> But the second point is the more important one. When it comes to billionaire funders of political and journalistic projects, Omidyar — despite the long list of political views and activities of his that I regard as misguided or even toxic — is, for the reasons I just outlined, as good as it gets. And yet despite all that, it is simply unavoidable — inevitable — that the ideology, views and political agenda of a billionaire funder will end up contaminating and dominating any project for which they are the exclusive or primary funder. Omidyar is not some apolitical or neutral guardian of good internet governance; he is a highly politicized and ideological actor with very strong views on society's most debated questions.
> To understand the dangers of a small group of billionaires funding campaigns like this [...] put yourself in the place of senior editors of The Intercept. Despite Omidayr's genuine affirmation of editorial independence, they live in complete captivity to, and fear of, Omidyar's whims and preferences.
> As is true of so many billionaire-funded NGOs and “non-profits,” editors and senior writers at The Intercept receive gigantic, well-above-the-market salaries. Because the site depends almost entirely on Omidyar's infinite wealth, it does not sell any subscriptions or ads and it therefore does not have any pressure to produce at all in order to generate revenue. It is a dream job for most of them: enormous salaries, endless expense accounts, a complete lack of job requirements, and no need even to attract an audience. For years, outside of three or four journalists, articles published by The Intercept produce almost no traffic.
> It does not get better than that, and that is why almost nobody ever quits The Intercept. Why would they? They just stay for years and years, collecting a huge salary, with no need to do anything but avoid angering one man. They work in an industry where jobs disappear with astonishing frequency, where layoffs are the norm, where the very existence of most organizations is precarious, and where the slightest dissent from liberal orthodoxies can render someone permanently unemployable. Those who work in outlets funded by billionaires have essentially won a type of lottery, at least temporarily, and very few people are willing to risk losing a winning lottery ticket, especially if they know they have no alternatives
> That means that the entire news organization has a constituency of one: Pierre Omidyar. If you were an Intercept editor who knows you could never get anywhere near that high salary working anywhere else — and that is true for virtually the entire senior editorial staff at The Intercept other than its Washington Bureau Chief Ryan Grim — you will of course be desperate to keep the sinecure going. That is not really corrupt as much as it is just basic self-preservation. If remaining in Omidyar's good graces is the only way to pay your large mortgage and maintain your lifestyle — which is true for most of them — then that will be all you ever think or care about.
> Consider the power that bestows on Omidyar in the lives of those dependent on him.
> They wake up knowing every day that one man has the power, on a whim, to destroy their livelihood. That desperate dynamic produces a climate where catering one's worldview and work product to Omidyar's ideological preferences becomes the overarching imperative. The only thing that matters to them in their work is keeping their sole benefactor happy and avoiding his wrath.
> I want to avoid the caricature here. This need to please Omidyar is often more subliminal than conscious. There are numerous journalists who work at The Intercept who do great work and rarely think about Omidyar in any conscious or direct way.
> But the inescapable reality is that the senior editorial management absolutely knows that their only real job is to foster a climate that will keep Omidyar happy, which means only hiring or publishing voices that will not offend him, ensuring that The Intercept's political and journalistic posture is aligned with his ideological worldview and, most of all, prohibiting anyone or any journalism from remaining at The Intercept if it strays too far from Omidyar's political project.
-----
When the owner is ideologically committed above all else to not interfering with what his organization publishes, when he makes repeated public statements to that effect and demonstrates his sincerity over and over and over again, the result is that the organization adheres slavishly to every quirk of the owner's beliefs, and devotes all its effort to bringing itself into line and expelling anyone who might think differently.
Jeff Bezos is part of every decision about what gets run on the front page of the Washington Post, whether he'd like that to be true or not.
I'm speculating a bit, and I'm not supporting his actions, I'm trying to explain then. I think he already had disagreement with his son that came out as trans later, and I think the major reason he changed his political position is because of his child. The child also cut all ties with him.
He said "The woke mind virus must be destroyed, nothing else matters".
It's not Elon the entrepreneur, or Elon the management genius, or even Elon the troll on social media.
What's really driving him is Elon the father that views leftism and woke as a mind virus that had possessed his child.
When you reach that position as a father, there's no loyalty to old political parties, there's no choosing words carefully or looking at Twitter as a regular business.
This is a person who could not care much about ideology until ideology reached his house and destroyed it - and only at that point he actually started fighting the fight.
He treats Twitter and leftists as the enemies because in his mind they are enemies, enemies that managed to destroy his child. It might seem inconceivable that someone might change his position so radically, and surprise everyone, but that's because they don't understand the real motivation.
Anyway, I'm not supporting his actions, this is meant to empathize with him so I'll understand what's going on and where all this is coming from, and therefore, where is it going.
The Atlantic is now visibly more biased towards the "left."
The original Atlantic was pretty much neutral.
These are outdated legacy systems that don't have the impact they once did. So there is not much point to comparing how they operate with Twitter.
One thing interesting that's happening with Elon's polls is ppl will notice who runs polls about their own decisions. And that's a good thing.
So he can accomplish his mission of destroying Twitter for good, take down BlueSky and all the associated crypto crapware with it, and take down his own other businesses in the process.
Two birds with one stone:
1. The whole idea of social media owned by large private companies that make money out of ads and surveillance will get a big hit, and open ActivityPub-based social media can fill the void left by Twitter (like it should have happened already a decade ago). If only Zuckerberg could also make the same embarrassing mistakes that Musk is making...
2. This arrogant buffoon whose only talent is to exploit people will get out of the way for a while.
So go Elon. Hold on and stay on the sinking ship like a good captain. I'm enjoying both the show and the popcorn.
https://cdn.masto.host/bitcoinhackers/media_attachments/file...
Every time he suspends a high profile Twitter account for posting Mastodon links (or, as he did recently, changes the T&Cs to explicitly "prohibit sharing Mastodon links"), we get a new spike of users and content on the Fediverse.
He's doing more to bring people to the Fediverse than years of enthusiasts trying to explain normal folks what an instance and an ActivityPub inbox are.
There are significant technical, scalability and user experience challenges with ActivityPub-based systems that people refuse to acknowledge and address. Some of those challenges may not even have a good solution - turns out there are also advantages to centralisation, and fixing social media toxicity doesn't necessarily require throwing the baby out with the bathwater and going all-in on a decentralised solution.
On the technical and scalability side, what challenges do you see? I personally see a distributed system of instances as something much more scalable than a centralized platform.
The EU's DMA is forcing giants to open up their platforms and APIs, which means opening up the walled gardens, which means that Twitter and Meta will no longer hold a monopoly on how their information is presented (i.e. there will be a blossoming of apps that deliver the content without all the spyware, which kicks surveillance capitalism directly in its bollocks).
Users are also becoming more sensitive about who stores their data and how it's used. As platforms become more aggressive about defending their profit margins, and start shovelling more ads down people's throats, more sponsored results and deploy more trackers, people are actually starting to quit those platforms and move somewhere else - a reversal of the network effects that made these platforms' popularity about 10-15 years ago.
I really believe that within 5-10 years the idea of using a closed, proprietary and surveillance-based piece of software to stay in contact with your friends will sound as dumb as using proprietary and paid protocols for computer networking instead of TCP/IP, or some proprietary implementation of messaging instead of emails.
I think this indicates he's tired of Twitter already. But he still owns it, so who will he put in his place? Or maybe he is expecting a landslide "no" result?
The issue with this is obvious: there’s only one “you fucked up” option and the “I agree but let’s talk specifics” group is divided into three. So even though the majority of people said “I agree”, the “you fucked up” got the most votes. Classic first-past-the-post failure mode.
That said, the later poll didn’t reflect this dynamic. My suspicion is that early on in polls the answers are likely to lean pro-Elon, as the votes are more likely to to be Twitter stan’s. As time goes by word of mouth spreads news of the poll to people who aren’t as active on twitter and accordingly are less likely to be pro-elon.
It was the same with the “should I step down” poll, started out pro-Elon, flipped as popularity increased.
https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/16036000010571857...
Lex Fridman just volunteered
Although I'm not sure who would want to run Twitter now.
Agreed, and this move would almost certainly be more of a distraction than an actual stepping down. Whoever is put in charge will still be under Elon’s thumb, but with a different person in the CEO seat, Elon can pass blame for the bad decisions and ride in like a white knight to reverse any unpopular actions.
He’s also facing a huge amount of backlash, pent-up backlash, that he hasn’t experienced before or more successfully insulated himself from before. For example, when he was recently booed off stage.
I saw someone comment elsewhere that he is also highly leveraged, and that if Twitter tanks and Tesla’s stock keeps falling, he stands to lose a lot of money and even potentially control of Tesla. I haven’t looked into the veracity of the argument, but it seems plausible that he’s in over his head in more ways than one.
"As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it"
Not true, he changed the poll well before its conclusion. Then he abided by the majority vote and unbanned those users. But you're not happy, and need to make stuff up about what he did or didn't do.
His latest poll deciding his own fate reveals the bold transparency approach. People can't handle transparency it seems. Almost like they want things decided behind closed doors that decide the terms they agree to. The world needs more transparency not less.
It will be sad to see him step down, if the poll decides that. It's been highly entertaining. The outrage and temper tantrums sparked in entitled over-sensitive Twitter users and commentators, is quality popcorn material. Must the curtain close?
Today is 19 Dec, and in 12 hours he'll post again that the people have spoken. He's playing some sort of game.
I suspect his personality means that he gets a lot of satisfaction from fawning fans, but at some point the reality hits of the Twitter saga's impact on Tesla and more. Like he's trying to kick some sort of addiction.
He wanted something to anger people right before the poll so it’s guaranteed he gets voted out.
The whole point of being an exec is that you make the big difficult decisions, not defer them to a mass of people who couldn’t possibly understand the nuance of any one decision.
Delegation is part of the job but you don't get to delegate consequential executive decisicions to something as capricious as an internet poll...
It was burning money before Elon, after buyout it is technically in even bigger loss. Advertisers and many influencers have basically fled from it. Politicians are also looking into regulating or outright ban it due to recent headlines of suspending journalists and more.
I still can't help but think that 40+ billion dollars probably could of built a twitter competitor with cleaner sheets and hopefully with better quality from lessons learned of previous social networks.
All of those obvious moves were possible straight after the acquisition though. Now your final sentence is far more realistic.
Scrap all the moderation changes musk has made, apologise to all the advertisers, keep headcount at a sustainable level (more than they have now but less than they had when musk bought it), and look to launch some new products (reviving Vine is the obvious one).
One person suggested Matt Mullenweg which is about the best answer any of us could think of.
> One catch: you have to invest your life savings in Twitter and it has been in the fast lane to bankruptcy since May.
Context:https://twitter.com/search?q=%22blocked%20by%20lex%22&src=ty...
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604628761395138561?s=46...
Sure. He can have my 38 bucks. I can't do any worse than he's doing.
No way Elon follows through, surely?
[Edit]: Also, it's a bit of a stage rule as most of Musk's wealth is still in SpaceX and Tesla.
I mean, it’s not like he’s used the platform to do punish anyone who opposes him or his views before.
Maybe I’m reading by too much into it.
I don't really see a problem here that was not already a problem before.
I am also not going to lie, I think social media as a whole is really not that big of a deal. I know many people have built businesses through social media and benefit from it, but businesses live and die naturally everyday, don't put your eggs into one basket. I know some people that had some level of popularity on LiveJournal, they all survived it's death. You will too.
Entirely speculative, but in terms of what could make this poll a rational choice right now, that's the only rational one I could think up in the moment. Maybe I'm absurdly wrong, but it's more interesting to treat people as rational and intelligent than as cartoon villans.
Not everything is 4-D chess. Sometimes unforced errors are just that.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=last24h&page=0&prefix=fals...
To see how far he has fallen, watch this emotion-filled video [1] as a reminder of what a nice guy he used to be. After he became the richest man in the world it is as if he flipped the "evil bit" of his personality. Time to flip that bit again.
Definitely adds some flavor to this!
It sucks to see people with near-limitless resources just sit and wallow in (self-inflicted) misery when they could probably do something about it.
It would've been fine if he published planned policy changes and asked the community for feedback before putting it in place. But actually making random policy changes and then rolling it back hours later is such bad form. The latest policy changes were so half-assed and dumb that it makes me wonder what's going through his head. Doesn't he have anyone helping to bounce ideas around?
If he steps down, who do you think he'll chose as his successor?
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604628761395138561?s=46...
Still playing games.
Twitter has been a pit of outrage, fuelling mobs to attack people for so long — will this new version of it be any worse? I’m curious to find out (from the sidelines)
And how long before he has another poll on whether or not to fire them?
It's his thought process that is the problem. I feel Twitter would have died Elon, or no Elon. But this sort of spectacular flameout ending is really what Elon brings to the table because his leadership style does not lend itself to stability.
It will probably be another poll. With one option, him.
the federated social web will outlive this.
Someone referred to Elon as "speedrunning being a forum moderator", or "running a Lowtax" and yeah, so far.
However, he has a history of noble intents on Twitter (eg the 'end world hunger' thing) followed by lack of follow-through, so I can imagine a scenario where the poll comes out 'yes' and he doesn't abide by the results by calling foul play somewhere (bot accounts, multiple user accounts etc.)
And I bet Elon Musk is praying people vote for him to step down. So if you can, vote for him to stay as head. It’s not everyday you see 40-odd billion dollars as well as Tesla stocks plumetting - it’s quite fascinating so little it seems to bother him.
But in all fairness, I think it would be better for his mental health if he gave social media a break for a while!
Among other things, he is one of the founders of Ycombinator. He is quite known in the tech world. You've might stumbled across one of his essays which are frequently linked here.
Going to be interesting to see what this does to the price of TSLA stock when the market opens on Monday
Probably people think him being back at Tesla more of the time is better for the company. I have my doubts about that. My big hope is he doesn’t screw up SpaceX close to Starship launching.
Does he mean a twitter poll?
Usually, CEO contracts have a clause that the person will devote substantially all of their work time to the business. Not spending time on side projects.
https://openargs.com/oa663-elon-dumps-42-million-more-shares...
The plan is damage control to save Tesla’s spiral. Investors are clamoring the board to do something.
I can only imagine the infrastructure for this...
https://mastodon.weinzierlweb.com/@ludwig/109537268355917100
Does Elon Musk always do such stuff without consulting with anyone who can tell him it's a legal disaster?
"Hey, everyone sign up on Twitter right now! Elon is having a poll to decide if he should resign from head of Twitter!"
He should never have spent so much time on Twitter, the interactions with his fans and his haters are not good for his mental health.
I say bravo. Twitter is dead. Long live Twitter.
Best case we get a more decentralized option or a centralized option that isn’t so politicized by the owners… or at least an owner who isn’t a contentious celebrity that is a black/white villain/hero to a big portion of the population.
Unfortunately all of my experiences with Mastadon have been negative (particularly the UI and how it encourages bubbles harder than Reddit hypermodding), but Mastadon seems to be all people talk about.
Yes, running an engine at eleven will show you where it creaks. But it may also fling shrapnel through itself and everyone nearby.
He also has no plan… his successor needs a holistic strategic mindset and a business development methodology. Perhaps he had support from leadership lieutenants at Tesla and Space X and is trying to solo this one. Something’s different enough with his floundering at Twitter.
Are you talking as a communist meaning "The society has been too lenient on the class of billionaires, but now that one of them is exposed as a destructive idiot, people will be forced to ask whether the rest of them deserve their power over us"?
Because that's the only logically consistent interpretation of your statement I can find.
Remember people getting banned for saying "learn to code", disallowing certain news links even in DMs, shadowbanning undesirables with no transparency.
What are people actually voting on here... it feels simultaneously obvious, and completely unclear to me.
We just had a quarter of a trillion dollars of federal spending earmarked for the EV supply chain; why are you calling retiring politicians’ spouses pedos and giving Kanye West life advice when you could be corralling all of that.
Elon, please come home.
If I vote yes, do I get banned later? Is he going to leave and then blame/rewrite history to make it looks like the new leader is at fault? I'm afraid to post anything to the platform for fear of losing my account and premium handle to a ban from an insane leader.
The last few months _have_ to pop the bubble that Elon is a master of anything other that self-promotion.
However, I voted yes because I want to see if he’ll honour his word, it’s more that yes is the active choice rather than any comment on his leadership.
Maybe he's even sicced his bots to vote yes.
If the poll result says he should step down, he'll say "I'll be stepping down once I've found a suitable replacement" - which is exactly the same sort of thing he's been saying since the acquisition [0]
It sure generates massive amounts of publicity for Twitter and Musk though.
- following accounts that share interesting things
- refusing to engage in arguments
- choosing "Not interested in this ad" for every ad
- avoiding "doom-scrolling"
I'd be sad to lose my account, given I don't have a way to recreate the "feed" of my curated following list, let alone easily interact w/ those people.
> The only way this makes sense is if you sell it to someone with the taste, restraint and democratic values you've proven yourself to lack by your recent policy changes. As long as you own it, twitter is untrustworthy as a platform for public discourse.
Does this action cause outrage? Shock? Yes? Send it.
Is it a coincidence that this is an avenue for revenue for Twitter? Maybe.
At this point, twitter's goal (whether headed by Elon or someone else) should be to join the fediverse, and be accepted by other large instances for federation with them.
I don’t think this is the way to gauge public opinion.
For those tempted to vote 'yes': Elon can see your votes.
I have never seen such a spectacular use of a footgun.
There's no reasonable way to right that ship.
I think he knows he's on the Titanic. I think he's looking for a pretense to get out, to stop this from taking TSLA down with it even further. TSLA is down -50% in three months, whereas the S&P500 is flat.
He's doing the same thing here, he just has more money to play with, which I think it what people are ultimately annoyed about.
Also worth pointing out that for years and years everyone said the way he was going about aerospace was impossible and stupid and was never going to work. They said the same thing about his approach to automobiles.
By very definition to shake up an industry you need to go against the status quo. You need to do something others have not, and you need to take risks. Otherwise you're just going to get a 1 or 2% improvement. So actually I see him messing with Twitter so fundamentally as a good thing, because there's a chance it will result in something great. It might burn to the ground too, but that's the risk you take when you actually do something.
I mean, the worst thing about Facebook/YouTube is the relentless advertising, so maybe there's a chance that Elon chasing away advertisers is actually a good thing for Twitter users? He owns the thing, what do you care if it makes very little money?
I guarantee YouTube and Facebook would be more enjoyable to use with 1/10th the number of ads (and as a result, 1/10th the profit, which means nothing to me)
Corollary: from the beginning, popularity is driving the Twitter venture rather than anything else.
What is it again CEOs do? Because I thought they got paid the big bucks to make decisions.
/s
To be fair to the lunatic currently in charge of Twitter, I don't think he's actually getting big bucks to be CEO, is he?
I've been discussing Twitter for a very long time at newslettr.com . If you want to go down that rabbit hole, beware.
You made your own bed, now tweet in it.
You moved fast and broke it, now shut up and fix it.
As well as a good news-month on HN in general, imo.
Anyway here it is: https://notabird.site/elonmusk/status/1604617643973124097
https://mobile.twitter.com/lexfridman/status/160462708738566...
Fun times!
Obviously that’s untrue but it’s a form of thumb sucking.
(A) A sudden last minute huge influx of "No" votes. Either caused by bots or by Musk putting his finger on the scale. (Yes, I think this voting will be rigged.)
(B) He already has someone in mind for running Twitter. That person will be as bad or worse than he is. (What's DJTJ doing these days?)
(C) He will claim that 'liberals' and 'bots' forced a "Yes", so he'll remove those votes.
all the crying about big bad elon is a joke
Elon could have done it. It would have been stupid and glorious.
People keep on clutching pearls, saying you need moderation. You don't need more than what's legal, many websites are doing fine being wild jungles. Arguably, more than fine if you count creativity.
Really the only downside is that the advertisers and uninteresting people would fuck off. Neither would have mattered if instead of this pay for blue system they started charging accounts depending on how many followers they have.
Like for instance, convincing people to move to Mastodon (a decentralized service) so that it becomes mainstream and censorship becomes harder.
Also that, words are cheap, so what Elon is doing isn't catapulting his net worth and reputation that much. The concrete actions he took (50% layoffs, Twitter Blue, suspending journalists but then unsuspending them) aren't too unhinged.
That being said, it's common to form long-winded conspiracies around the obvious truth. Extreme wealth, extreme recognition, and an army of yes-men have a really strong influence, maybe Elon is becoming insane.
He's losing the poll, and I don't actually think he'll abide by the results. But then he seems kind of unhinged lately, so what do I know.