6 ms·

Interesting if he manages to take over twitter. For me Twitter has become full of people marketing themselves with lists, tweets that don't make sense out of c

Interesting if he manages to take over twitter. For me Twitter has become full of people marketing themselves with lists, tweets that don't make sense out of context, replies full of bile or inane comments and animated gifs. But I'm not convinced Musk's opinions of what is good for twitter is aligned with other content creators and consumers. Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX, Boring Company have clear goals - twitter is quite different.

metafunctor 5y ago
Yeah. I mostly left Twitter about 9 years ago (!) for the same reasons. I wonder if a celebrity like Musk is overestimating how important Twitter really is. Because in my view, it's a cesspool of self-promoters, hate, corporate marketing and superficial populism. I believe correcting that course is impossible. It's been like that for 10 years with no change.
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  > Because in my view, it's a cesspool of self-promoters, hate, corporate marketing and superficial populism. Isn't this all social media?
  - metafunctor 5y ago
    I count HN as a social media, so no.
gitfan86 5y ago
There are four goals. #1 make twitter efficient. firing 80-90% of the employees and replacing them with effective workers and management saves a ton of money. #2. Mitigate the bots and trolls by requiring payment and identification. #3. Open the feed algorithm and give people more control #4. Reduce the silencing of users. The last one is probably going to turn out to be harder than Elon expects. If Elon owned Youtube this week he would be sued for enabling the NYC subway terrorist. Same thing will happen on Twitter once he owns it.
- themitigating 5y ago
  Elon Musk doesn't seem to be a promoter of free speech when it affects him https://www.wired.com/2012/02/tesla-vs-top-gear/ https://www.wired.com/2012/02/tesla-vs-top-gear/
  - gitfan86 5y ago
    Did you read the lawsuit? He isn't saying that Top Gear has no right to say negative things about Tesla. He is saying that when those negative things are lies and damage the business Top Gear should pay for damages. But you're overall point is correct, Elon's definition of Free Speech is not universally agreed upon by everyone. However, it is impossible to draw a line between acceptable and unacceptable speech that everyone will agree with.
    - fbakrg 5y ago
      He does not care about damage in reputation: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50695593 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50695593 Twitter's current cancellation policies are an abomination, but we'll see whether it gets worse with a private Musk company.
      - gitfan86 5y ago
        He won the lawsuit. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/06/business/elon-musk-defamation-verdict.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/06/business/elon-musk-defama... According to the court no damages were done. Are you suggesting he wouldn't have paid if the court awarded the pedo guy damages?
    - themitigating 5y ago
      If I thought I could be sued for damages I would be less likely to talk about some subject than if the threat was I could lose my twitter account.
  - swalls 5y ago
    Tesla also fired a union organizer (while tweeting about how they are free to join a union) [0], banned a journalist from buying a Tesla[1], threatened to sue another journalist[2], and tried to destroy the life of a whistleblower[3]. [0]https://labortribune.com/tesla-found-guilty-of-union-busting/ https://labortribune.com/tesla-found-guilty-of-union-busting... [1]https://medium.com/@salsop/banned-by-tesla-8d1f3249b9fb https://medium.com/@salsop/banned-by-tesla-8d1f3249b9fb [2]https://www.fastcompany.com/90208132/elon-musk-allegedly-silenced-an-online-critic-with-peter-thiels-playbook https://www.fastcompany.com/90208132/elon-musk-allegedly-sil... [3]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when-elon-musk-tried-to-destroy-tesla-whistleblower-martin-tripp https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when-elon...
barnabee 5y ago
I feel like most people must use Twitter wrong. Despite how common a criticism it is, your description is not even remotely my experience. I don’t know why. Maybe most users follow people who they like or respect or think are good people not people who share content they care about or write interesting original tweets? Maybe they think the only recourse to not liking what they see on their timeline is to complain and wish people were better rather than unfollow? Or maybe some whole major topics/spheres of interest are just entirely toxic to the core. Twitter is incredibly valuable to me as a source of news, insight, and discussion on a wide range of topics (from programming to space to politics to skiing and more). It’s been nothing short of revolutionary for my consumption of news and information. Twitter is actually better than RSS (though I do miss RSS being a thing) at what RSS was designed for, because curating your follows can give a better signal to noise ratio than taking everything from a given site, AND gives you a wider range of sources because you don't personally need to discover a source to see articles from it. It also provides for some excellent debates, discussion, and interactions between really smart people. I do agree with Elon though. The direction of the product is poor and there are many baffling decisions. It sometimes seems like Twitter themselves don’t even know why their product is valuable or what it’s potential really is. I’d love to see some really radical changes. The kind that might not work and could be the end of Twitter if they fail. I’d love to see Twitter become really open, even open source, become a federated network, integrate privacy and anonymity tech, etc. We don’t know his plans and I doubt it’ll happen, but Elon is one of the few people who has demonstrated willing to risk everything on an outcome he thinks is important. I hope this is one of this cases, and his instincts are at least reasonable.
- lupire 5y ago
  Twitter (and Reddit, and Facebook) is like beans. Beans are a great nutritious tasty food of you know how to prepare them. But if you eat raw beans directly out of the package from the producer, you will get sick or die.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    And even if you DO eat them correctly, you're likely to subject everyone around you to random chemical attacks. The analogy works!
palebluedot 5y ago
> For me Twitter has become full of people marketing themselves with lists, tweets that don't make sense out of context, replies full of bile or inane comments and animated gifs. I've found twitter's quality is a direct correlation to how discerning I am about who I follow. I don't really tweet or reply, so for me it is a read-only exercise. As such, the people I follow tend to be really high-quality (I am not typically following "regular" people like friends, etc.). Journalists, experts in specific domains, etc. And I try to make sure I am following people that have views different than mine along with those I do agree with. As a result, I've noticed I read pretty detailed information well before I see it break in major news organizations, and it is surprising balanced on the whole.
- paufernandez 5y ago
  Same experience here. I interact quite a bit, though
MadSudaca 5y ago
I mean, what else can you ask for if you're limited to 240 characters?
photochemsyn 5y ago
"Twitterized" - means you can no longer absorb anything but simple concepts that can be delivered in a few lines, due to too much time spent on Twitter. To quote some early 20th century propaganda monkey, "The essence of propaganda is to take a complex subject, reduce it to a simple concept that a small child can understand, and then repeat, repeat, repeat." That's what Twitter is ideal for, and that's what political and media types use it for. Add in siloed echo chambers like Facebook groups and Reddit subreddits... I urge everyone to flush it all down the toilet.

metafunctor 5y ago

Yeah. I mostly left Twitter about 9 years ago (!) for the same reasons. I wonder if a celebrity like Musk is overestimating how important Twitter really is. Because in my view, it's a cesspool of self-promoters, hate, corporate marketing and superficial populism. I believe correcting that course is impossible. It's been like that for 10 years with no change.

AlexandrB 5y ago
> Because in my view, it's a cesspool of self-promoters, hate, corporate marketing and superficial populism. Isn't this all social media?
- metafunctor 5y ago
  I count HN as a social media, so no.

gitfan86 5y ago

There are four goals. #1 make twitter efficient. firing 80-90% of the employees and replacing them with effective workers and management saves a ton of money. #2. Mitigate the bots and trolls by requiring payment and identification. #3. Open the feed algorithm and give people more control #4. Reduce the silencing of users. The last one is probably going to turn out to be harder than Elon expects. If Elon owned Youtube this week he would be sued for enabling the NYC subway terrorist. Same thing will happen on Twitter once he owns it.

themitigating 5y ago
Elon Musk doesn't seem to be a promoter of free speech when it affects him https://www.wired.com/2012/02/tesla-vs-top-gear/ https://www.wired.com/2012/02/tesla-vs-top-gear/
- gitfan86 5y ago
  Did you read the lawsuit? He isn't saying that Top Gear has no right to say negative things about Tesla. He is saying that when those negative things are lies and damage the business Top Gear should pay for damages. But you're overall point is correct, Elon's definition of Free Speech is not universally agreed upon by everyone. However, it is impossible to draw a line between acceptable and unacceptable speech that everyone will agree with.
  - fbakrg 5y ago
    He does not care about damage in reputation: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50695593 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50695593 Twitter's current cancellation policies are an abomination, but we'll see whether it gets worse with a private Musk company.
    - gitfan86 5y ago
      He won the lawsuit. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/06/business/elon-musk-defamation-verdict.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/06/business/elon-musk-defama... According to the court no damages were done. Are you suggesting he wouldn't have paid if the court awarded the pedo guy damages?
  - themitigating 5y ago
    If I thought I could be sued for damages I would be less likely to talk about some subject than if the threat was I could lose my twitter account.
- swalls 5y ago
  Tesla also fired a union organizer (while tweeting about how they are free to join a union) [0], banned a journalist from buying a Tesla[1], threatened to sue another journalist[2], and tried to destroy the life of a whistleblower[3]. [0]https://labortribune.com/tesla-found-guilty-of-union-busting/ https://labortribune.com/tesla-found-guilty-of-union-busting... [1]https://medium.com/@salsop/banned-by-tesla-8d1f3249b9fb https://medium.com/@salsop/banned-by-tesla-8d1f3249b9fb [2]https://www.fastcompany.com/90208132/elon-musk-allegedly-silenced-an-online-critic-with-peter-thiels-playbook https://www.fastcompany.com/90208132/elon-musk-allegedly-sil... [3]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when-elon-musk-tried-to-destroy-tesla-whistleblower-martin-tripp https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when-elon...

barnabee 5y ago

I feel like most people must use Twitter wrong. Despite how common a criticism it is, your description is not even remotely my experience. I don’t know why. Maybe most users follow people who they like or respect or think are good people not people who share content they care about or write interesting original tweets? Maybe they think the only recourse to not liking what they see on their timeline is to complain and wish people were better rather than unfollow? Or maybe some whole major topics/spheres of interest are just entirely toxic to the core. Twitter is incredibly valuable to me as a source of news, insight, and discussion on a wide range of topics (from programming to space to politics to skiing and more). It’s been nothing short of revolutionary for my consumption of news and information. Twitter is actually better than RSS (though I do miss RSS being a thing) at what RSS was designed for, because curating your follows can give a better signal to noise ratio than taking everything from a given site, AND gives you a wider range of sources because you don't personally need to discover a source to see articles from it. It also provides for some excellent debates, discussion, and interactions between really smart people. I do agree with Elon though. The direction of the product is poor and there are many baffling decisions. It sometimes seems like Twitter themselves don’t even know why their product is valuable or what it’s potential really is. I’d love to see some really radical changes. The kind that might not work and could be the end of Twitter if they fail. I’d love to see Twitter become really open, even open source, become a federated network, integrate privacy and anonymity tech, etc. We don’t know his plans and I doubt it’ll happen, but Elon is one of the few people who has demonstrated willing to risk everything on an outcome he thinks is important. I hope this is one of this cases, and his instincts are at least reasonable.

lupire 5y ago
Twitter (and Reddit, and Facebook) is like beans. Beans are a great nutritious tasty food of you know how to prepare them. But if you eat raw beans directly out of the package from the producer, you will get sick or die.
- bombcar 5y ago
  And even if you DO eat them correctly, you're likely to subject everyone around you to random chemical attacks. The analogy works!

palebluedot 5y ago

> For me Twitter has become full of people marketing themselves with lists, tweets that don't make sense out of context, replies full of bile or inane comments and animated gifs. I've found twitter's quality is a direct correlation to how discerning I am about who I follow. I don't really tweet or reply, so for me it is a read-only exercise. As such, the people I follow tend to be really high-quality (I am not typically following "regular" people like friends, etc.). Journalists, experts in specific domains, etc. And I try to make sure I am following people that have views different than mine along with those I do agree with. As a result, I've noticed I read pretty detailed information well before I see it break in major news organizations, and it is surprising balanced on the whole.

paufernandez 5y ago
Same experience here. I interact quite a bit, though

MadSudaca 5y ago

I mean, what else can you ask for if you're limited to 240 characters?

photochemsyn 5y ago

"Twitterized" - means you can no longer absorb anything but simple concepts that can be delivered in a few lines, due to too much time spent on Twitter. To quote some early 20th century propaganda monkey, "The essence of propaganda is to take a complex subject, reduce it to a simple concept that a small child can understand, and then repeat, repeat, repeat." That's what Twitter is ideal for, and that's what political and media types use it for. Add in siloed echo chambers like Facebook groups and Reddit subreddits... I urge everyone to flush it all down the toilet.