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?
But if his high-level vision is described by his actions so far... oh my God, yeah, no one would wanna touch that with a thousand mile pole.
Plus, Uber/Spotify/Doordash/Yelp can barely turn a profit as-is. What incentives will the everything app offer to pull consumers away from these existing competitors other than subsidizing the services with VC money, which would only worsen profitability and sustainability?
Many things are possible, and the Twitter app today may even continue to work as-is. But underneath it will be able to power more apps and more use cases, all tied under a common cohesive set of interactive primitives, much higher level than what cloud applications today support. This means less to reinvent, less to rediscover, and easier more natural integration between apps, services and components.
It'd be a lot of work, definitely not a 2-3 month project. So you'd need also a survival strategy that keeps Twitter 1.0 working and profitable.
These companies also don't favour their own services over others on their cloud platforms. That's why regulators aren't coming after them. Twitter is not a cloud service provider and it's not hard to see why the argument you presented does not hold up.
1. A general purpose computing platform is an everything app. 2. Cloud platforms and their APIs are a significant step towards moving higher-level in development platforms compared to, say, compiling a raw binary and running it on Linux. 3. Keep moving in that direction.
2. Agreed but this has nothing to do with Twitter or mega-apps whatsoever.
3. Transitioning to cloud service is not what Twitter needs to do right now even under the mega-app vision. And attempting so under their current situation is a sure fire way to actually go bankrupt.
Mega-app, the way I understand that term, is not what he's after. He's mentioned that he wants to allow HQ video and compete with YouTube and have a separate app which shows a YouTube-like view of only tweets with videos on them. Like a projection of that content, from the same platform.
Or alternatively you can see it as merely a "videos tab" in a single "mega-app", but this distinction is not quite substantial on a higher level, only about the logistics of marketing the app and maintaining it.
As for there being zero building happening... of course. He's trying to stop bleeding cash for now. I'm not suggesting he's working on this NOW.
I may be projecting my own ideas onto "everything". When Elon took over Twitter, I was inspired by his idea, and combined with concepts from some projects I'm working on, over two weeks or so, in my free time I wrote like 50+ pages of notes on what "Twitter 2.0" might be.
Is Elon's idea anything close to so comprehensive, I don't know. We only know he wanted payments in it, but this is barely scratching the surface of what Twitter could be.
Twitter's timeline of messages could be seen as a communication platform, computation platform, verified facts registry and so on. The rabbit hole is deep if you let your fantasy run wild.
Alas... instead we have this today.
It really is perfect, a not-government entity making wink-wink decisions at the behest of unelected executive branch employees.
- Level the playing field between the "blue-checks" and everyone else. I think the intent of that is to encourage the 90% of people who passively consume content to engage more, and encourage lurkers without accounts to sign up.
- Reduce the dependency on advertisers by pivoting to a model that is partly user-funded. Reddit seems to have had some success with this, for example.
- Signal that Twitter is going to be less politically partisan going forward, probably in an attempt to rope back in users who moved to right-wing Twitter clones.
I don't think those are objectively terrible ideas, but the implementation so far has been remarkably bad.
The problem with Twitter isn't free speech, but objective reality. There's only room for one reality on Twitter -- not two, or three, or four.
Truth Social and the right wing platforms don't challenge people's view that the 2020 election was a fraud, that pizza gate really happened, so they will probably continue now as they are.
Now they would rather hang out on a site where they don't have to worry about overbearing moderation, at the cost of a handful of nutters talking about Satanic rituals or whatever. I think Musk had a plausible route to getting those users back if he could promise slightly more limited and fair enforcement of the rules.
When they are questioned, they martyrize themselves to spark more outrage. (I'm a victim of the woke left!) And then use that as a crutch to deflect further criticism or questions.
If it wasn't Hunter Biden's Laptop, it would be something else, e.g. Pizzagate, Voting Machines, Mail-in Balloting, Fake school shootings, etc.
You can't blame the mainstream media if you're the one that's calling "wolf" over and over without facts.
Back around 1991/1992 the Democrats in congress were so convinced there was an October Surprise in the 1980 election. There just wasn't anything there.
Hugboxes don't force you to question your belief system, right? You can go on living in whatever world you want to. But anything coming out of those hugboxes, no one should take seriously, right?
Before social media we would have called much of this stuff "conspiracy theories".
https://theintercept.com/2021/10/11/bani-sadr-reagan-iran-ho...
But I'm equally disapproving of the left in their handling of the 2016 election and its aftermath, and the way they represented it as "stolen", as well as their narratives during the BLM "protests" and January 6 "insurrection". Imo, if Trump had really wanted a coup, he would have placed his people in top positions of the armed forces, and used actual armed soldiers. Q-anon and others involved on January 6 did not seem to have anywhere near the kind of organization to carry out an actual coup.
Also, Twitter and outher outlets suppressing (then and even now) the Hunter laptop (not the porn, but the actual evidence of corruption that looked like it involved Joe) made it look super-partisan.
Later on, the partisan divide arround covid, with crazy anti-vaxxers on one side, and similarly irrational support for excessive lockdowns and suppression of the WIV story on the other, it seemed like Twitter was contributing to the excesses of both sides.
The world (and perhaps especially the US) needs a platform where moderates of both sides can meet to discuss their differences, and where moderation is (to the extent it is carried out) applied to the crazy people of BOTH sides when it becomes excessive.
That way, one can hope, it may be possible to separate facts from matters of opinion from outrights falsehoods.
If too many people consistently tow the party line (which many be the case for anyone consistently agreeing with their own side on all issues above), I think a breakup of the USA is inevitable. The result will be one Woke-merica and one Maga-merica, and quite possibly civil war.
When Musk took over, I was hoping he would take the platform in a direction where it would support a moderate centre.
So far, he has not made much progress.
Jan. 6th was a based on a series of falsehoods. Fox News and several Republican politicians claimed it was a antifa "False Flag" operation the night after it happened.
Fox News downplayed much of the Trump scandals in his presidency. So now turnabout is fair play I guess with the coverage of whatever's on Hunter Biden's laptop? The entire narrative is clouded by Giuliani and company apparently tampering with the data that made it to the NY Post.
> .. and quite possibly civil war.
So we need to restore Trump to the presidency, suspend the constitution, or whatever the right wing demands or there will be violence? Why can't it be just as simple Fox News, Alex Jones, OANN, and Newsmax agreeing to no longer manufacture outrage for ratings?
Not what I'm saying at all, rather the opposite. But if both sides stop interpreting everything coming frome moderates on the other side in the worst possible light, that's a start in mitigating polarization.
I think the issue is that social media is the most amazing tool for propaganda ever invented.
The Russians realized it in 2016. One of the two political parties learned from that experience rather than wanted to fix it.
The Russians realized it in 2016, and the data I've seen indicates that they promoted both Trump and Sanders at the time.
> One of the two political parties learned from that experience rather than wanted to fix it.
Both sides spread a lot of lies and even more half truths both in social media and more traditional media. The loyalists on both sides also both seem unable to spot where their own side is spreading disinformation and propaganda.
The one thing that has definitely been refreshing about new Twitter is that the leader isn't yet another "social media expert" and just another social media user with similar complaints as millions of other users.
Personally I really hope they also get rid of the "UX experts" next, given how shit Twitter's UX is, especially on anything that isn't a phone.
For example, prior to Falcon 9 the argument used to be that SpaceX too would have to either succumb to relying on expensive cost-plus contracts or go bust like all other space companies before them. Yet, as they pushed up against that attitude and tried their own approach, they became successful and set the model that has now led to hundreds of new private space companies. Similarly, the argument against reusing F9 was that it wouldn't fly often enough to pay for reuse.
Thus I think that it isn't too crazy to consider that maybe with all this fiddling around they might stumble upon a more healthy model for social media for their scale. Especially considering that this environment of a large platform with an existing userbase undergoing said change is very unique (in that most other attempts at healthier social media have failed in part due to not being able to rely on pre-existing network effects).
Maybe they'll still fail, but I think it's still worth trying (even if it kills Twitter) rather than just appointing another 'expert' to continue to make things worse. Especially because it isn't my own money on the line :)
Lets start with employees... both Tesla and especially SpaceX had hordes of people wanting to work there. I don't currently see the same for Twitter, and Elon just removed a bunch of talent.
Customers are also widely different. Tesla were enthusiasts willing to overlook drawbacks and oopsies. SpaceX was few high value ones like NASA, and by now have a great track record, not to mention the price. Instead of believers in the company mission, many twitter users are just average people. They will complain. They might leave due to drastic changes. Sure, there is a strong network effect. But Musk payed a lot of money for that, should he really risk it all?
I don't know of anyone who is clamoring to work for Twitter now but the people he fired definitely don't seem like the type you're describing either. I think he views the majority of Twitter to be inmates running the asylum.
The real question is will he be able to find replacements that share his vision/passion for Twitter like he did with those companies. Twitter seems a lot less prestigious than SpaceX or Tesla.
(The "free speech platform" sounded like a vision, but we wouldn't have new banning offences every five minutes if that had been a serious consideration rather than something he said for the likes)
The problem with being someone with ideas outside of the rest of your community is that you generally can't find other people with complimentary skills who agree with you.
- allow all legal speech; or
- ban doxxing, publicly available location info, bots, spam, info critical of Musk/Twitter, parody, links to other social media, and Kanye West
Think of it this way, will Elon be conducting a new poll on whether or not to fire his replacement in a year's time? (Because that's what this type of decision making process leads to.)
This is not sustainable because it does not bring any sort of stability.
Imagine if Tom ran twitter. We’d truly be in the best timeline.
Specifically how he treats his underlings.
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
Lots of stuff are known about Putin since 2000 till January 2022, some perhaps even worse than Ukraine invasion
For sure he has a soft spot for Autocrats both in Moscow and in San Francisco
What do you mean exactly?
> For sure he has a soft spot for Autocrats both in Moscow and in San Francisco
The West establishment has a soft spot for autocrats: whitewashing the wealth of oligarchs, buying cheap oil stolen from common people, selling anti-protest crowd control gear and tear gas, etc, etc; even though "lots of stuff are known about Putin since 2000 till January 2022, some perhaps even worse than Ukraine invasion". I don't think Lex has done or has expressed a wish to do anything comparable to that.
Every video of his that YT pushes in my feed I see Putin in the thumbnail with sunglasses and behind a huge explosion
Like it’s cool or something that an autocrat with a cult of personality controls 5000 nukes
I just scrolled through the past 8 years of thumbnails on his main channel and the past year of thumbnails on his clips channel. The thumbnail you describe doesn't exist.
What I found is that he has several thumbnails of Putin looking stern, but without any sunglasses or nuclear blasts. (He also has thumbnails of Hitler and Stalin looking stern, but I don't take that to suggest he's simultaneously a communist and a nazi.) Additionally he has several videos with nuclear blast thumbnails, but none of them have anybody superimposed on front of the explosion. And he doesn't have any meme-like photoshopped sunglasses thumbnails. That sort of meme thumbnail doesn't seem to be his style.
(I didn't watch any of these videos because I can't stand Lex, so I can't comment on what he actually says. But the sort of thumbnail you're describing just isn't his style.)
OTOH, Elon picking Lex as the fall guy to take the blame wouldn’t entirely surprise me.
"Oh, great, another 'podcaster interviews another podcaster for reciprocal exposure' episode?"
Snarky, sure, but still unfortunate he can't handle some rib jabbing about interviewing a clown like Trussell compared to the more intellectual guests he (used to) interview. :)
Although I'm not sure who would want to run Twitter now.
So in this case he may not believe he knows the outcome ahead of time, but it doesn't matter because the outcome is the same either way. Only the timing is different.
Especially while continually being at Elon’s mercy.
If it pays well enough that I could retire afterward then I'd give it a shot. I somehow doubt it's physically possible to fuck things up anywhere near as badly as what's already happened.
Email to the admins: "Hey guys I'd like the results of the poll to be the following..."
No chance.
Interesting side note: Here in Australia this morning on the ABC public broadcaster's national News channel, one of the presenters said "if you hate Elon Musk, vote yes"... encouraging the mostly left-leaning ABC viewers to log on and vote Musk out. The poll will get swamped by this politically divisive Musk-hating recruitment drive, which is why the results stand as they are.
----
Yes = he gets to step away from the dumpster fire without it looking like it was his decision
No = all of his previous decisions are justified
what was that outcome? fewer people knowing about his childish behavior? no, that wasn't it. fewer people knowing about his private jet and the mechanisms of being able to track it. nope, didn't work that way either. showing the world he's a petulant little child that throws a hissy fit when he doesn't get his way. now we're getting somewhere.
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.
He can't control the narrative anymore.
"As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it"
I can't help but think he's in quite an unhealthy mental state at the moment.
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?
I do mostly agree with you—Musk's outrage and temper tantrums have been pretty funny. This is probably been the funniest time Twitter has, just weeks of everyone dunking on him and watching him flail in rage. But honestly, it's getting kind of tiresome. Every time the conversation moves on to something else, he bans someone or adds some new rules or gets mad about something, to keep himself in the center of attention. I think it's probably time to close the curtains.
All Musk did was rattle cages with a few truth bombs and mild trolling. Entertaining stuff. Anyone voting "yes" takes life way too seriously.
Not to mention devaluing the insights of Twitter Files and FBI-tweaked moderation processes and staffer ideology influence. It's good to see all that exposed in the light. Musk did the dirty work that was needed.
The twitter files did reveal the kind of insider access that powerful people get to journalists in order to push a narrative, but I do wish he had accomplished that without doing the exact same thing he was complaining about—giving journalists insider access to power in order to push a narrative.
And I'm sure some Musk critics decided not to mute him anyway. Hell, I only finally got annoyed enough to do it about a week ago.
They know a bad deal because they are usually the ones crafting them.
Plurality is not necessarily majority
I bet he expected to get clear majority for 7 days.
I understand the point is he’s hoping people will log back in to engage. But I’m just done. Even if he steps down his actions have shown what a massive single point of failure the whole thing is.
So I guess what I’m saying is: the fact that he controls everything is more the problem than whether he will exercise this one specific control.