Got a question for Twitter's press team? The answer will be a poop emoji | Hacker News Reader

Got a question for Twitter's press team? The answer will be a poop emoji

npr.org

49 pointstjwds38 comments

The kicker is that Musk himself clarifies Poop Emoji = "BS".

So press@twitter.com official's, automatic response is... fake news? A pre-emptive dismissal of criticism or questions with 'it must be bullshit'?

There's a tacit endorsement of raw power here - the strong do what they can (lol! poop emoji!), the weak endure what they must (I guess the powerful can just send us poop emojis in response to questions now...)

Another public square is destroyed. Another means of organization co-opted.

We are in trouble.

Maybe you're overreacting a little bit? This is an automated poop emoji email response from a social media site and you've quickly translated that into "poop emoji = BS = fake news = a tacit endorsement of raw power of the strong over the weak = a public square has been destroyed = we are all in serious trouble".

This isn't DEFCON 2, this isn't our generation's Cuban Missile Crisis, this is a dumb thing that affects nobody and will be forgotten 24hrs from now.

The public square is still right there. Go tweet, it’s the same as ever.

Whenever I follow a link to a Twitter post now, after maybe five replies there's a bunch of Musk's irrelevant tweets wheeled about. Quite the stench on that public square.

If I needed Twitter for anything, I'd have registered and blocked the stench. But it's easier to just pass by and laugh at the antics from afar.

> Quite the stench on that public square.

That's what public squares have always been.

Looks more and more like a circus where people pay to cheer on the director clown.

And lest somebody overinterprets this analogy: I don't doubt that some groups are using Twitter just fine and don't care about the brouhaha.

The town square is for the people who hang out there. It sounds like you don’t hang out there.

There's a lot more overt racism now!

A lot more overt racism? You could always search "white people" and find plenty of dark and nasty things, including from very public people who get plenty of praise for it. Overt and celebrated racism has always had a home on Twitter, and if anything there seems to be somewhat less of it.

If you think the problem with racism on twitter is people being mean to white folks you are probably thrilled with the changes yes.

The difference is I'm of the somehow-rare (on Twitter at least) opinion that ALL racism is a problem.

Well the question is, do you want a town square or do you want a gated community? Town squares have a lot of filth. To filter it out is to pretend that humanity is something that it isn’t.

You can filter it out in your own Twitter by following people you like.

You can have a town square without nazis actually it turns out if you want to which obviously we don't right?

Town squares have racists, hedonists, nihilists, globalists, misanthropists, moralists, pacifists, anarchists, theologists and everything else. The only new thing about this town square is that everyone has a megaphone. It’s up to you to find the crowd you want.

Some of the things you don’t tolerate are benign to others. And some of the things you like are cancerous to others.

You're reading too much into one of Elon Musk's many attention-seeking stunts..

> Another public square is destroyed.

Twitter is just a big group chat. What’s happening is basically discord mod drama.

The only difference is that journos are among the addicts melting down.

I thought twitter was a private company not a public square.

It's both. We allowed it to function as a public square, but without any of the accompanying rules. This was a bad decision.

Musk seems to be more like an immature high school student than anything else. If he's always been this way it shows how much "meritocracy" is completely untrue. I just don't get it.

meritocracy is rewarding what matters (building sustainable cars, launching rockets) and not-rewarding what doesn't (classic rent-seeking activities -- PR, Ethics, DEI)

You think rent seeking isn't being rewarded? What planet do you live on? Landlords are making out like bandits and even raising rents just because they can

How about patent trolls? The list goes on, rent seeking is capitalism at its finest

Reading narrowly, isn’t this an overreaction? Why does every company need a permanent press team?

Yes, generalizing a specific concrete case into a universal principle is difficult in this case, as it is in every case, of everything. Did you have a particular reason to bring that up other than to deflect from the actual topic at hand?

Anyway I won't try to make the point that every company needs a permanent press team. But twitter certainly does, and that's what we're talking about!

> twitter certainly does

I suppose I’m pushing back on this. Why? They’re their own media platform. If the negative reporting isn’t impacting usage or sales (a big if), why is it relevant?

What's the objective requirement for meritocracy? One can both be a petulant child and a good businessman. Musk has gotten ultra wealthy for being the latter, but that does not change his attention-seeking antics. There's no appointed board deciding who merits wealth and fame or something...it just happens to some people.

Any Tesla or Space X workers want to weigh in here, can't feel good to be under the pump 24/7 while your CEO has spent most of his time since November arguing with everyone online.

Not at SpaceX anymore but when I was, things went best when he left us alone.

Thanks for your work. Looking forward for our first ride on a Falcon in Q4

Unrelated to anything, but we might as well get something useful out of this thread - for all the SpaceX-ers, is Mars actually a thing or just an abstract concept that no one is really working on?

Remember when Musk promised to resign as CEO of Twitter as the result of a poll he posted? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

Well, he said he'll resign after finding a suitable replacement without giving a specific time frame on doing so...it can be tomorrow or in the next 10 years and he won't be technically lying

Ah, not technically lying, the gold standard of integrity among politicians and charlatans.

Enjoy your ad revenue not coming back!

There's one thing most ad money cares about: brand management. If you can't answer questions to the client they'll happily find other places to advertise.

ad sales and press are different functions.

Parent commenter is saying that you have a brand management problem if you respond to press inquiries with a poop emoji. Not that advertisers are also getting a poop emoji reply.

Oh ok. That's a silly thing to say. Twitter's brand does fine without the 'help' of competing press.

So, some newspapers have a policy that they will publish whatever the company replies with when they enquire about upcoming stories, as a sort of right of response.

This may be the first time that the poop emoji will grace the pages of respectable broadsheets (I wonder does the printing tech support emojis, actually…)

I do wonder if Musk is in a bit of a bubble with all his weird twitter sycophants, and doesn’t understand how _bad_ the company looks right now.

Nice.

===============

from: Shaftway <my@email.address>

to: press@twitter.com

date: Mar 20, 2023, 3:29 PM

subject: Elon Musk

What is Twitter's official opinion of Elon Musk?

--------------------

from: Press <press+noreply@twitter.com>

to: my@email.address

date: Mar 20, 2023, 3:30 PM

subject: Re: Elon Musk

signed-by: twitter.com

security: Standard encryption (TLS) Learn more

===============

I plan on keeping this email in case it turns out to be useful.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com