Blue subscribers should be the only ones that can vote in policy related polls | Hacker News Reader

Blue subscribers should be the only ones that can vote in policy related polls

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31 pointscroes53 comments

On the one hand, it's dumb to let bots vote in your policy polls, so trying to filter them out makes perfect sense. On the other hand, it also seems dumb to not let potential customers vote - these are the people you're trying to get $8 from, shouldn't you want to know what they want? On the third hand, making policy decisions based on Twitter polls is dumb from the get-go.

Running a business is not a democracy - dumbest idea ever.

He'll ignore decisions he doesn't agree with, so it's only a pretend democracy.

Agreed, Elon should never have posted that poll.

This seems a bit contradictory to his “vox populi” mantra. On the other hand, it does align with his conservative political ideology of changing election rules when they don’t go your way.

He may also just be trolling with this post.

Musk could've easily accomplished all of his goals if he could just be more selective about what he says. Should've never mentioned anything about "absolutist" or "wokeism." Could've made all the same decisions (like trimming half the company, introducing "Blue", polling about re-admitting ex-presidents) and would now be in a totally different, much better position.

When he speaks, he closes doors and creates surface area for his critics to latch onto. They can rightly call him a hypocrite because he so often publishes things that he really should probably let stew for a while in his head first, whether or not he actually acts on it.

I'm always fascinated by these kinds of mistakes and was pleased to learn the term "unforced error" to describe them.

All he had to do was nothing.

Hell, he could probably chat about it w/ chatGPT before making a decision and make the better call just for having played the idea off an 'equal' (last part tongue in cheek).

"Smile more, talk less"? :)

Peter Cook has raised a glass.

> Rimmer then gains ultimate control by requiring the populace to engage in endless postal voting and televoting on trivial or complex matters.

> At last, exhausted, they acquiesce in one final vote which passes dictatorial power to him.

The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Rise_of_Michael_R...

Perhaps the result wasn't the one he hoped for?

I'm not sure about that. He also had the "be careful what you wish for" tweet, which indicates he had something in mind if the vote was to step down. Also, I can't imagine he planned to put so much energy into this one part of his empire forever.

It could also mean to expect more radical changes if the vote goes in favor of him staying.

It's a common political tactic to make statements that can be interpreted one way or another. On average, people will read it the way they want to, and yet the statement will never be wrong.

He is a/b testing ways to make money and to induce people to pay for blue checks or other IAPs. So he thinks if a poll that will get multiple millions of votes and tries to see how high a conversion rate is likely with a highly engaging topic like “how much do you hate me”.

I think he is just trying to find ways to drive people to make these purchases.

Not sure the best idea, but it's the same in the stock market - only shareholders can vote.

the stock market has never made any anti-consumer choices using this system

And those that made bad choices that the market doesn’t agree with are punished accordingly, by losing their money and thus influence in future decisions

What about the Twitter shareholders?

Wasn't there a book exactly like this? A guy took over some business and made all these perplexing business decisions.

Some of the decisions were designed to simply draw attention to the company, others were actual changes to improve the company.

This Twitter drama reminds me of some work of fiction, I just can't remember which.

Only people who buy a blue tick will believe the polls actually drive the strategy anyway.

Tasteless tacky & dull. More flood the zone with shit antics. How low.

Grabbing some more popcorn - Elon is not some savant it seems - he seems rather terrible at this social media CEO gig.

So, at first, Elon Musk declared that the "current lords & peasants system" is bad.

Now, he's implementing a system where it's Lord Elon, his $8 Vassals, and the rest of the unwashed Peasants cannot speak.

He seems rather unclear on concepts of equality and free speech . . .

He had a good idea before the acquisition which was “authenticate all real humans”. Seems like that’d solve many issues on the platform, but imagine it’d be expensive to implement.

One automated human verification process that I've seen in the wild:

The Bumble dating app has you verify accounts by taking a photo of yourself making a pose.

Your account gets verified almost instantly. I'm not sure how it works, presumably some algorithm compares the verification photo to your profile photos. Plus there are probably other data that go into verification beyond the photo.

I'm curious how well it would stand up to AI generated profile pictures and a deepfaked verification photo.

Another verification process I've seen:

When you apply for a loan online, you are challenged to answer questions such as: select from this list of addresses the ones that you lived at, and select from this list of cars that you once used as collateral for a loan.

My point being, it's not impossible, but you're right that it won't be cheap. And not everyone on Twitter will be able to take part in automated verification for one reason or another.

Plus Twitter depends on free accounts to have enough people at the party. Or at least in the growth days that was important. Maybe it's not a priority anymore.

the biggest issue with this plan (and one he certainly realized by now which is why he hasn't solved this problem) is that the majority of users and followers are simply bots or inactive users. as soon as he purges those and everyone's follower count (most notably his) drops by 50-70% everyone will see the platform as dying.

Seeing that 50-70% drop in accounts up front would have been a better way of introducing the 70% staffing cuts.

Yes, he is replacing the nobility with a theocracy.

This is the way it should be. People need to have skin in the game and this is in line with my suggestion on how Twitter can solve both its revenue problem and its content moderation problem all at once.

The idea is to auction off the rights to ban/allow controversial users. Twitter collects money for selling this right and the people that feel the strongest about whether or not someone’s speech should be allow on the platform can have a direct say in that decision—all they have to do is put their money where their mouth is. If they don’t, then it’s obviously not worth it to them to have someone be banned or allowed on Twitter.

Let the free market sort out what speech is acceptable. It’s dynamic and is a better representation of what society actually wants at any given time compared to any other system.

Elon should embrace this especially as he just found out that the government was doing exactly this by paying Twitter to censor people. Why not just open it up to everyone?

In theory, (most) botnet operators can’t afford $8/month/bot; so this seems like a reasonable strategy from that point of view

The last vote had 17 mil votes. If I were Russia or China, I would gladly pay 150 mil if I could steer Twitter into a direction I want.

if all results are within say 10% of each other, your botnet just needs to make up the dif. So it would really just cost a fraction of that.

Would be even cheaper because there’d be so few Twitter blue users, so you’d only need to account for the delta amongst that small subset of the current user base

In theory, yes, but it's known that these gangs who do platform manipulation somehow acquire SIM cards in bulk to register accounts en masse. And that costs money.

> platform manipulation somehow acquire SIM cards in bulk to register accounts en masse

You think teleoperators would deny such a request from the sitting government in their country?

not 8 dollars, SIM cards are basically for free in countries with botnets, heck even in relatively developed Czechia I can get sim card for free

“botnets” are boogeymen, it’s a story that doesn’t stand up to any meaningful interrogation.

Elon Musk has simultaneously argued that Twitter is the most popular it has ever been, that there are hundreds of millions of real people using each day… while also supposing that 17 million votes in 12 hours couldn’t possibly come from real people and there must be “botnets” responsible.

Why couldn’t 10% of the people using a platform want to vote in a poll about the future of the platform?

This is perfectly legal, and OK with me, but many will perceive it as "democracy for those who can pay."

Why would an 8 dollar fee discourage nation states with massive bot army budgets? He owns the site and can do whatever he wants, but why is there all of this performative behaviour.

They'll perceive it that way because that's how it is.

There's no need to muddy the waters with "many will perceive it[...]" when the reality is that in order to participate in the vote you have to pay money.

But is that actually bad? Don’t we want the people making decisions to have skin in the game? People use money everyday to express their preferences, why shouldn’t we use it here?

"Is it bad to force people to pay for a service the owner calls a 'public square' in order to be allowed to have one's voice heard about how the public square is run?"

That's your question, correct? We're still talking about Elon's Public Square Bastion of Free Speech Twitter, correct? Would you like to rephrase your question, or will, "Yes, that's actually bad" suffice?

No need to rephrase. That was indeed my question. Fact of the matter is, you need money to participate in society at large. I don’t see why it’s bad that Twitter’s not any different. I’m not here to defend Elon’s principles, but if charging people money for a service is bad, then that’s quite the indictment on society.

So should we bring back a poll tax then?

I think a case could be made for it. Or something like only taxpayers get to vote since they are effectively deciding how to spend their collective dollars. This is how companies operate with shareholders and that seems to work and people don’t bat an eye at it.

In other words, a poll tax.

> but many will perceive it as "democracy for those who can pay."

I don't know if I'd call it that, but it's certainly not "the world's town square".

Many will perceive having to pay $8 to vote as "democracy for those who can pay"? You don't say.

Not free speech, $8/month speech.

Makes sense if you vote Twitter as a private business (which it is). Prioritize the needs of paying customers who have skin in the game. Like any business would.

On the other hand, it makes less sense if you view Twitter as a public utility (which it is not).

Maybe just let advertisers vote. I mean, they are the ones really paying the bills.

Yes, but you also need to attract new customers too, which sometimes requires features people don’t actually use, but think they’ll use.

From what I understand, a free user is actually worth more to the company than the $8 user from ad supported standpoint.

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