Most people were betting on X going under in some way or another within a year. From that POV, it's survival in itself can be seen a success for Musk.
I'm genuinely surprised at the amount of people that stuck to it.
I'm genuinely surprised at the amount of people that stuck to it.
I thought more people would see a guy doing ... that salute, or things like the antisemitism in Grok in the past few days and say "no", but a huge number of people seem to be able to rationalize things away.
I'm with Wil Wheaton https://bsky.app/profile/wilwheaton.net/post/3ltkjyzjb4k2p
https://bsky.app/profile/carlquintanilla.bsky.social/post/3l...
But sometimes you have to make some sacrifices in life over your principles.
And the more people move, the easier it is for everyone else.
I don't think it's realistic to pretend that abandoning X is seriously restricting anyone. If anything, sticking with it is brand endangerment and by leaving it you're making the smart move, with or without animus.
In other words as much as I’d like to vote with my wallet that is not always practical. And that extends to everything, not only tech.
We're not talking "has different ideas about corporate taxation or environmental regulation" like, say, Mitt Romney.
Connecting the USSR with free health care and education is, uh, "nice try, but completely wide of the mark". We have free education in the US after all, as do most wealthy countries. Denmark and Italy are night and day from the USSR politically and economically.
I think you can both recognize that the past of the US has some very ugly moments while still thinking the ideals were directionally correct and that we should attempt to live up to them.
Most left left left folk that I know have zero idealization about Rome or the USSR, and haven’t forgotten the atrocities the US has committed both home and abroad.
Anyone who seriously talks about the Roman Empire without wrestling with the realities of it is putting their head in the sand.
Anyone pining for the USSR probably doesn’t know a lot of what went on during its existence. Similarly most people actually wanting some form of communism or socialism probably don’t mean “just like the USSR”.
I think all Nazis should be socially shunned. I think all those willing to knowingly socialize with Nazis should also be socially shunned.
20 years of anti-fascists who are jealous that some other people have better footwear calling wolf was a magic spell that brought real fascists into existence.
(If you had to say what was wrong about Twitter in a short text it is that it is easy to say something like the above message in a short text but impossible to conclusively refute as it involves introducing concepts such as "The meaning of a communication is its effect", "The purpose of a system is what it does", "Chaos Magick is real", and that even though physics is real some things obey the laws of 'pataphysics instead.)
Having a hard and fast rule that can always be applied about this is impossible. We're just too interconnected and interdependent, and there are too many unknowns.
That doesn't mean we can just ignore it and not think about it. We owe it to each other to still do our best, even if it's not going to be perfect.
I don't think that gesture was a nazi salute and was grossly taken out of context by everyone who hates the guy. I don't like Elon Musk either but stressing over something like that exacerbates the appearance that the accuser has a biased opinion. It also made the media who covered this for weeks desperate and very shallow.
[0] https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/did-i-publish-the-private...
And I find that there are some thoughtful conservatives who do ok there. I follow some of them.
On the other side people were already asking why Twitter didn't do more moderation and better filtering (= more people).
And we expected that breaking rules would have serious repercussions, which was a foolish assumption as we've seen.
I can speak for myself. I think Enron Musk is a despicable person, and at the same time I don't understand why a shitty app needs so many people.
I don't see how this could be deemed a success when a magic 8 ball or a hamster attached to a giant pile of money could keep it going as long.
He's probably at more risk of falling out a window Soviet style than poverty.
It probably is unmaintainable but it was already feature complete at time of purchase.
Whether or not X goes under is almost entirely one man's choice.
Is this where the bar is set now? Not tanking a $40B corporation within a year now passes off as success? Really?
You people are desperately grasping at straws.
And while the format and content varies in many ways from other sites, one thing they all have in common is millions of humans who cannot distinguish facts from personal opinions. I do not know why but I am absolutely fascinated by the phenomenon, and on Twitter/X you can discuss such things fairly seriously, at least with some people.
The term "cis" will still get you a warning while my for-you page has been consistently filling up with more and more far right content. I regularly see blue checks espousing actual jewish-conspiracy antisemitism.
Every time something happens to anyone, blue check comments asking if any of the parties were black, sometimes not even asking just assuming and blaming it on black people.
Elon has truly created a cesspit Nazi bar of that site.