5 ms·

Most of what he's saying makes sense to me as well. But isn't he a rich capitalist dude, who greatly benefited from the rise of the mentioned platforms? Thus i

by hfbjh 4y ago

Most of what he's saying makes sense to me as well. But isn't he a rich capitalist dude, who greatly benefited from the rise of the mentioned platforms? Thus incentivizing him greatly to take the decisions motivated by money and not some imaginary neutrality or "fight the bad behaviors" concept? He mentioned this tangentially right before delving into how hard those jobs are which one absolutely doesn't have to take. So to me, the whole thread is like "running social platforms and making a lot of money is tricky, because a lot of people will rightfully hate you, but you still need to make the money, so... poor Elon?" I don't think so. p.s. I would also prefer Elon to work on spaceships, cars, leaving social platforms to run for somebody else

mcphage 4y ago
> So to me, the whole thread is like "running social platforms and making a lot of money is tricky, because a lot of people will rightfully hate you, but you still need to make the money, so... poor Elon?" I don't think so. No, the whole thread is "running social platforms and making a lot of money is tricky, because a lot of people will rightfully hate you, so Elon should just not do it."
- hfbjh 4y ago
  fair enough, but didn't Elon specifically say he didn't care about the economics of the whole endeavor? Doesn't this, essentially, underpin the whole endeavor?
  - mcphage 4y ago
    > Doesn't this, essentially, underpin the whole endeavor? Not really—the poster (ie, a previous CEO of Reddit) is trying to tell Elon that what he wants to do is impossible, and Elon attempting to do so will just make everyone mad at him, as well as making him completely miserable in the process. One of those "this will kill you, and it will hurt the whole time you're dying" sort of things). I don't know if he's right or not, but I do agree that running a social media company is messy for social, not technical reasons—and brilliant engineers generally struggle with complex social dynamics. (As always, there's a relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/592/ https://xkcd.com/592/)

by hfbjh 4y ago

mcphage 4y ago

> So to me, the whole thread is like "running social platforms and making a lot of money is tricky, because a lot of people will rightfully hate you, but you still need to make the money, so... poor Elon?" I don't think so. No, the whole thread is "running social platforms and making a lot of money is tricky, because a lot of people will rightfully hate you, so Elon should just not do it."

hfbjh 4y ago
fair enough, but didn't Elon specifically say he didn't care about the economics of the whole endeavor? Doesn't this, essentially, underpin the whole endeavor?
- mcphage 4y ago
  > Doesn't this, essentially, underpin the whole endeavor? Not really—the poster (ie, a previous CEO of Reddit) is trying to tell Elon that what he wants to do is impossible, and Elon attempting to do so will just make everyone mad at him, as well as making him completely miserable in the process. One of those "this will kill you, and it will hurt the whole time you're dying" sort of things). I don't know if he's right or not, but I do agree that running a social media company is messy for social, not technical reasons—and brilliant engineers generally struggle with complex social dynamics. (As always, there's a relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/592/ https://xkcd.com/592/)