It is a little interesting to consider that none of the board- the people steering the largest semi-public space there is online- lack any mass reputation or pr

It is a little interesting to consider that none of the board- the people steering the largest semi-public space there is online- lack any mass reputation or presence to speak of. And they are bound not by what they think is right or their hopes or their values, but by fiduciary duty to stakeholders. There is a certain something to the idea of having people who have reputations they care about having their reptuations on the line, publicly, having staked in to doing a good job, not just sitting quietly on boards. The current board mainly fears for profitability, wants to make sure everyone gets paid, even if they kind of ruin the utility in the process or change the system to try & get there. Elon would, I imagine, mostly fear being uncool, fear making jackass moves that hurt twitter's values. That's what he's conveying here, to me: that he's hip and savvy to the deeper value, that he would make sure the real potential is guarded, no matter the cost. Whether or not I trust him to do that, I honestly don't know (but have a hard time imagining faith in any one person or product/service), but that he can identify & label the battle for what it is is a step beyond the staid limited low potential corporatized bottom-line thinking that alas infects & capitalizes so much of this world. He's not wrong. (But I also don't get why there aren't more people chomping at the bit to go fund federated & p2p alternatives, so we can de-risk humanity's online existential crisis & insure an open future... we need some frontiering, not just new town planners for the de-jure monopoly of join online public space.) ((Strangely to me, there's a lot of attention to algorithms, which frankly I think we have radically overhyped as important & deliberate, when in fact they're fairly random & chaotic & not that impactful at all, in spite of the colossal amount of data we gather. I fall way more on the Corey Doctorow side of how important I think algorithms are than the Shoshana Zuboff side: we culturally have hyped ourselves up into believing in quasi-religious powers of something that's really not very special or good. I do believe in platforms having transparency, and think trust is necessary & presently weak, but I just don't think the algorithm really matters. It'd be bareley on my top 10 of issues at Twitter. Issues like moderation & governance & interoperability/competitive compatibility obstruct alternate modes of operation, exploration of the problem. Little else feels like it holds a candle.))