In all his other businesses Elon started by offering a grand vision of where they were going: “electric cars for everyone”, “humans on mars”, “tunnels everywhere”, “direct mind machine interface”. It was often ridiculed, but the goal made sense. What is the vision for twitter? I still don’t know. Nothing he says makes any sense.
Impossible, I know.
"humans on mars" is just repeating standard sci-fi tropes that have been around for 50+ years, while not actually solving any problem.
"tunnels everywhere" makes sense for public transit, and literally any other case it's just extremely expensive roads - making it a vacuum just makes it expensive and also impractical.
"direct mind machine interface" I dunno, it's just another sci-fi trope since basically the moment electrical computers, it has actual value for many injuries, _maybe_ it has value beyond that, but again he's not coming up with anything novel or new.
Musk isn't some amazing genius, or revelatory thinker. His "let's populate mars" to solve "over population" surely indicates the opposite.
"tunnels everywhere" was, by his own admission, a ploy to destroy the public will to build public transit because it would have been a problem for selling cars. He never wanted to actually build tunnels, he just wanted to lure people into not supporting public transit.
Do you have a source? Not that I don't believe it, but I'd like to see for myself where he was stupid/brazen enough to outright admit this.
> As I’ve written in my book, Musk admitted to his biographer Ashlee Vance that Hyperloop was all about trying to get legislators to cancel plans for high-speed rail in California—even though he had no plans to build it.
You're missing the core. He wants Twitter to be a functional and inclusive town square for public, and world wide, discussion.
There is the bot and manipulation problem. Which is deeper and more extensive than anyone seems to really believe. Frankly, I'm not sure how anyone solves this without pretty stiff vetting during on boarding. Any community that provides free signups is going to have bot problems. Period. Facebook is losing this war. So is Google.
I think he should punt the prevention of AI data scraping as not worth the cost. But it's value he is leaving on the table if he doesn't, though I think this one is detrimental to the users. Put it in the EULA or content licensing or where ever and be satisfied. Don't throw it in front of your legit users.
Well, aside from people he doesn't like, and content he doesn't like. Let's face it: he wants Twitter to be a town square with topics he likes and with people who support him.
Thank you for the realistic correction.
This was not a "we are going to Mars" moment - it was more of a "I am a petulant child, why does no one like me when I am acting horribly" moment.
Needless to say, there will be fewer takers for a one-way ticket to Mars with this sort of management.
Is OnlyFans really social media?
Maybe they should have kept the puritan version US-only (don't worry, glorifying violence is still PG only)
As an counterexample, Discord specifically is trying a subscription “free-to-play” model. I think this could work pretty well for future sites - a little more expression or some cosmetics to make you stand out, but still a very usable and unobtrusive service.
It’s interesting, I’ve seen ton of my people I follow complain about Twitter yet they still keep posting. The site is only going to go under if people start if actually leaving.
(That's not to say I like the decisions that are being made)
I also think the staff cuts were the right call in principle. I believe that tech products are better when you have a small team of really good people and get out of their way.
This paywall could be the thing that brings them down though. There must be millions of people per day being trained not to click on Twitter links. I myself have done this a few times on different devices and incognito windows and I’m a paying subscriber. They will also slowly be evicted from Google SERPs.
Engagement on the platform for creators was already terrible, and this must accelerate people looking at other platforms.
To do a paywall or forced login to reduce spam/bots/scraping is throwing the baby out with the bathwater unless it’s an existential risk.
And I still see Twitter users on the platform still using it?
Same thing but on a different time scale.
Don't really get why people are hating so much. Finally there is somewhere where people can post without being banned or having posts removed. Why do you want filtered social media it's fake.
If I wanted an unfiltered experience, there's 4chan and the like. Notice that I'm not there, but somewhere I don't have to wade through mountains of crap. HN is very much moderated, that's what keeps it useful.
Musk even admitted doing so at the behest of foreign governments something Twitter 1.0 used to aggressively fight and prevent from happening.
By the way, Twitter under Elon supposedly obeys more government censorship demands than before: https://cyber.harvard.edu/story/2023-04/twitter-complying-mo...
So if you believe twitter is now a free speech platform, it just means that you’re no longer the one being censored. That doesn’t mean no one is.
> Why do you want filtered social media it's fake.
There's no such thing as unfiltered social media. Every website is subject to laws, demands from the hosts, and business constraints. If you want ads, the advertisers want a say in what content you have.
What you didn't know 4chan, 8chan/8kun, paler, truth social and a myriad of other "free speech fundamentalist" sites before?
Musk wanted to destroy that guy. He repeatedly accused him of pedophilia and clarified that he specifically meant sex with young Thai boys. He then paid for an investigation to dig up dirt.
But I'm sure you've got a post hoc justification for that.