Hacker News Reader

Comment by wch | Hacker News Reader

Now that the poll is leaning toward "yes", Elon is adding conditions, namely, you have to invest your life savings. Lex Fridman volunteered to do it for free, and Elon replied:

> One catch: you have to invest your life savings in Twitter and it has been in the fast lane to bankruptcy since May.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604626103326253056

View on HN

So, the guy who has blocked half of the Internet for having any kind of counter-argument whatsoever will become its new CEO?

Context:https://twitter.com/search?q=%22blocked%20by%20lex%22&src=ty...

Lex‘s subreddit (where he is a mod) is also famous for removing any posts that don’t enthusiastically agree with Lex. A lot of confused Lex fans are surprised to find themselves banned from his subreddit after making the mistake of questioning something he said.

Podcast skills aside, this is not a guy with a track record of healthy social media engagement or moderation.

He'll do just fine then. Compared to Musk, that is. In fact, I'd wager a crash test dummy would do fine, compared to Musk.

I have no doubt he’d end up as a puppet for Musk’s whims. Perhaps a great fall guy if Musk wants to blend into the background without actually ceding control.

That looks to be the plan. Whoever takes this job at this point is setting themselves up for failure. Anybody smart enough to run Twitter will pass and anybody stupid enough to try will end up being blamed even though there isn't a thing they could do about it at this point.

I'm open to being surprised.

Plan 'C':

Musk eats his loss, re-IPO's twitter at 10 cts on the dollar, prays the investors will cut him a deal and the new owners will do what they can to salvage the wreck. That would probably still be a dicey proposition. The cat is out of the bag now, Mastodon and a couple of others are now suffering growth pains for the first time in a long time and the most active users are all wondering if they should bail or have already done so.

It's the biggest self-own in the history of tech. But hopefully it will result in centralized social media becoming a thing of the past. That at least would be one positive thing to come out of this.

He hasn’t got podcast skills, just famous names. His questions are always extremely basic and naive

It's true. I'm a fan of his podcast and I can admit he's an awful interviewer. Fortunately he somehow gets interesting guests.

He wants to interview Putin to resolve the war by asking "hard" questions. He also wants to interview Trump for some reason. In over his head.

That's what he says but then in his interview he just praises the person and then plays softball of same old questions like meaning of life, is universe simulation, what will AGI do etc. Few minutes in his interview of Kanya West was the only moment I recall he tried to diverge from this modus operandy.

That guy hasn't asked a hard question in his life. He has guests spew obvious nonsense and then responds with IKR before lobbing his next softball. He would be a yes man to the people who report to him.

Lex is a kind hearted naive guy. Perfect target for manipulation.

In all fairness, that's the whole point of the block feature - to avoid interaction with people you don't want to interact.

I'm definitely off an opinion that people should block and mute as much as possible to sanitize their social media exchanges. After all, how often do people turn around on strangers that were worthy of a block?

People who wants to create their bubble chamber shouldn’t be in open social networks, IMO. Sure, you can say that it’s personal preference. Block feature is like a knife and should be used responsibly when someone has malintent and harassment. It should not be used to suppress opposing argument in respectful debates. To add insult to injury, Lex continues to deceive the public that he is all about loving everyone and respects all sides of arguments. At least, this behavior is damaging if a person is influencer and can impact public policies. It definitely isn’t acceptable behavior from future Twitter CEO.

I disagree, nobody is entitled to my time. I think exercising control over your social interaction is really the only way to stay healthy. If you plug into the matrix and just consume everything thrown at you, you'll surely be overwhelmed as attacks are ifninitely cheaper than rebutals.

I think CEO that understand the importance of social sanitization would be a good thing.

I think people have a right to do it sure but I think it very quickly leads to a total insulation from opposing viewpoints

One of the people complaining about being blocked mentions crypto or some other get rich quick scheme. I don't blame Lex for blocking annoying people.

Lex has had major crypto guests on his podcast and supports it

Who has he blocked? Context?

He has blocked almost everyone. He has blocked extremely well respected researchers and academics at top institutes who don't even follow him or even haven't tweeted at him just because he disagrees with his views. He once blocked someone for praising danish pastry.

https://mobile.twitter.com/search?f=top&q=lex%20fridman%20bl...

> just because he disagrees with his views

He even blocked himself? Wow. But points for consistency, at least.

My prediction is that once the poll finishes with Yes winning, he’ll say that he cannot find a replacement so the only option is for him to shut Twitter down, but of course, it must be polled, so he will do a poll asking if he should shut Twitter down and when No wins, he’ll say “guess I’ve got to stay!”.

If he did that, he would get absolutely grilled by people for not abiding to the poll result like he said.

I can't help but feel you might be right, though.

> No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604628761395138561?s=46...

He’s probably right, right? When was Twitter profitable, and was it profitable enough to pay for his leveraged buyout?

The thing is this didn't have to be his bomb to hold in the first place. He made what appeared to be an impulsive decision to offer an overpriced acquisition deal and waived due diligence leading him trapped in a position he couldn't back out of without consequences.

> When was Twitter profitable

Technically, 2021 - they made a loss of $220M but that was down to an $800M legal settlement which means they were -technically- at a profit of $580M.

> was it profitable enough to pay for his leveraged buyout?

Just over halfway to servicing the debt.

It seems like an awful idea to say it out loud though, right?

namely, you have to invest your life savings.

Sure. He can have my 38 bucks. I can't do any worse than he's doing.

And Lex is going to bite that bullet even.

No way Elon follows through, surely?

Not really a big catch for those without many savings.

[Edit]: Also, it's a bit of a stage rule as most of Musk's wealth is still in SpaceX and Tesla.

Or just do what he does: move your ‘life savings’ to ‘investments’ or whatever else that doesn’t fall under the savings umbrella.

Not that this game has any fixed rule or he’d keep his end of the deal.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com