What is the vision for Twitter?
An LBO. It’s become clear Musk’s employment cuts haven’t brought Armageddon. He’s now installing an advertising executive as CEO, which portends a return to the status quo business model. This is a classic cut-the-fat corporate raid.
This is what I meant. The vision is that of a classic LBO play. Cut the fat. Survive long enough to pay down the debt. Now you own a profitable company.
Is it clear? I haven't really used Twitter since well before the acquisition, but I've heard nothing but complaints about bugs, ad revenue falling off a cliff and replies being nothing but right-wing reply guys.
> This is a classic cut-the-fat corporate raid.
If this were true, Elon would have cut the actual fat. Instead he (directly and indirectly) destroyed Twitter's relationship with advertisers, which was the only meat in the company. All that's left is fat.
(i should perhaps disclose that i have a very low opinion of Musk, but don't hate him)
At the moment it's hard to say whether the stream of small bugs (the one that annoys me is that the unread notifications indicator seems to be perenially out of sync) is just normal enshittification, or the foreshocks before The Big One.
They’re allegedly approaching cash-flow breakeven [1]. Musk is notoriously unreliable with timelines, but he tends to be conservative with purely financial ones. That, assuming this is actual cash flow and not an unlevered metric like Ebitda, signals stability.
I’m not calling it a success. But Twitter is operational. People complained but, largely, haven’t left. The new product initiatives were busts, but quickly withdrawn when the data showed they didn’t work. Stability is on the horizon; it’s not Armageddon.
> Elon would have cut the actual fat. Instead he (directly and indirectly) destroyed Twitter's relationship with advertisers
He did both. He’s now trying to reverse on the latter. Given the financial stability, Yaccarino has a solid foundation from which to do so.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-07/musk-says...
I think it's pretty clear that there was a lot of fat to cut. From a technical perspective Twitter hardly seems to be suffering at all.
The biz move (to pivot to a right-leaning social network) is what scared off users and advertisers, not the layoffs per se. In a counterfactual world where Elon slashed staff but left the existing policies and target demographics in place, Twitter would've been a lot healthier.
Posts and quotes fairly frequently don't load (though QRTs were never reliable) but more importantly they've stopped moderating everything, which is why searching for "cat" has returned animal abuse videos for the last week, and their solution was to turn off autocomplete of search terms.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1657050349608501249
>Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app.
https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/4/18/23687125/elon-musk-...
It makes sense in terms of how I can imagine Elon's vision. It doesn't (to me) make sense as any kind of realistic proposition.
Another thing you may not know: Twitter will soon be competing with Youtube.
In the sense my walk through the park today "competed" with Kipchoge because we both propelled ourselves forward on legs, sure.
Twitter video is by far the least functional it's ever been, and this is a relatively recent (past ~month) development.
Now he'll move left again and cash in. Also of course there are considerations like Tesla subsidies and DoD contracts. But perhaps those institutions approved the above plan to restore centrist views.
Their entire platform is geared to be maximum advertiser friendly, aka the status quo.
It really isn't like YouTube doesn't discriminate equally, I'd even say in some cases they do so more strongly towards certain groups that tend to be left wing (e.g. queer people immediately being demonitized when not shrouding words like "biosexual").
Sometimes I watch a rightwing video, and then all I get is more and more extreme rightwing videos suggested.
Then I have to watch some leftwing video to get back to more balanced content :D... but there seems to be plenty of content on both sides, with suggestions leaning heavily on which side you watched the most.
Content that gets an extreme emotional reaction is strictly better at causing engagement, that's just like a basic sociological thing.
The result is that youtube pretty much constantly tries to radicalize everyone. It doesn't care if you get radicalized left or right, it cares that you go into rabbit holes that make you angry or emotional and have a reaction. I watched youtube attempt to do this to me, as I watched a singular video by a more radical than average leftist youtuber, and youtube immediately started recommending me the classic "angry incel right wing" content that so many young men are deeply entrenched in, but I have never been recommended in my 15 year old youtube account. Depending on your beliefs or research I'm not aware of, right wing radicalization might be more effective, as "it's not your fault, we just have to hurt and remove certain people" is more palatable to certain people than "the system is fucked and we have to gut it and work hard to build it back". In that case, it would naturally push right wing radicalization over left wing radicalization.
None of this has to be purposeful. However, willfully ignoring this outcome because it makes you a lot of money is actively evil in my opinion.
Musk is just steering it one particular way.
Well, "Hack jobs" with living, sentient beings is close enough for me:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/05/neuralink...
> Twitter has fully complied with more than 80% of government and courts’ requests to remove or alter content since Elon Musk bought the company, up from around 50% before he took over, according to a report from the technology publication Rest of World, reflecting a discordance with the billionaire’s promises to limit political censorship.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/04/27/tw...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/04/27/tw...
Be careful, you might be undermining a narrative.
Well, come on, that was true under Dorsey too, he was just criticized for it by the half of the people who are now praising Elon for it.
I am not normally a fan of the term "virtue signaling" but I think her involvement with WEF might just fit.
It could be virtue signaling, but in theory following these people could be virtue signaling as well.