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People act like this is some spiteful thing he's doing in order to just post edgy memes or have a 'private' social media for himself. Twitter, despite being a

People act like this is some spiteful thing he's doing in order to just post edgy memes or have a 'private' social media for himself. Twitter, despite being a toxic place the majority of people avoid, brought in over 5 billion dollars last year. If elon removes bots, welcomes non-extremists back on, gets comedians and entertaining accounts back on board and lets people say what they want instead a bot army of shills repeating verbatim over and over and over... he could see that revenue rise quite a bit through people actually seeing value in advertising on twitter again. If he can keep operating costs down and get the ad revenue up further, he'll be repaying his initial investment within a few years, and if he takes this private he can IPO it again or sell it to someone else privately. I wish him the best and hope he truly makes twitter somewhere that you visit that isn't just rage bait again.

jmeister 4y ago
Man, another million comment thread wit the same arguments. Of course it can turn into a cesspool. Of course there are ways around that problem. Like allowing more customizability for users. Like a ‘old Twitter’ filter that would allow only content compatible with the old moderation norms.
- throwaway82652 4y ago
  The "showdead" option on HN does something similar and it's truly truly awful, I can't imagine why anyone would want to apply that at scale.
data-ottawa 4y ago
I find it strange that people assume Elon will get rid of bots as though Twitter weren’t already trying that.
cainxinth 4y ago
>I wish him the best and hope he truly makes twitter somewhere that you visit that isn't just rage bait again. You think "Lord Edge" is going to make Twitter less of a cesspool? Everything he's said and done indicates he wants the limits Twitter currently has on speech to be removed.
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  > he wants the limits Twitter currently has on speech to be removed Sounds amazing. Maybe then we'll finally have a truly neutral platform with no censorship of any kind.
  - metamet 4y ago
    Amazing? It would be immediately inundated with hateful content, driven by bots more than it already is. This utopian "free speech" bastion never works out on the internet and always devolves into congregations of hate groups, which normalize themselves and spread. Look at 4ch => 8ch => Brennan's postmortem on the experiment. Plus there will always be a level of moderation. No censorship of any kind would immediately become overrun with child porn. This has already happened countless times on other platforms. It simply will never work.
    - matheusmoreira 4y ago
      > always devolves in to congregations of hate groups, which normalize themselves and spread Nope. These places are full of all kinds of people. There's just a wider spectrum. You'll see the best and worst of humanity. > No censorship of any kind would immediately become overrun with child porn. That's obviously not allowed anywhere, not even on chans.
- glogla 4y ago
  - ericmay 4y ago
    This is an emotionally charged topic, apparently, but I just do not see any reason to believe that if Elon Musk takes Twitter private that they will start banning unions, journalists, and forcing people who are trans to come out. No evidence of that. W.r.t removing current limits, again I see no evidence of that, except maybe people who were banned for making fun of journalists for telling them the same thing they were telling other people (learn 2 code) might get reinstated. Death threats? No chance. Blatant racism? Nope. Harassment? Well does that happen already? It's not clear. Sexism? Again no clear lines here. Trump I hope never comes back and it may stay that way. I don't think Elon really cares about Trump.
nprateem 4y ago
Comedians like Stephan Fry left exactly because people were saying whatever they wanted and being abusive. You can't have it both ways.
- macinjosh 4y ago
  - citizenkeen 4y ago
    Do you know who Stephen Fry is?
    - oska 4y ago
      - bombcar 4y ago
        Twitter is/was unique in that there was a minuscule chance that someone rich and famous would actually read a regular response to a tweet, especially if it got a lot of traction. And that is what scares some people. The only other place I’ve seen it happen is some Reddit AMAs and it was always clear which ones were being coordinated by PR and which got unhinged and out of control.
  - karpierz 4y ago
    Yes, but unironically.
- core-utility 4y ago
  People will be hurtful and abusive no matter how moderated the platform is. Even HN has its share of colorful commentary from time to time. If individuals here and there decide it's best for them to not be on any social media, nothing the platform can do - even if it brings more users overall - will keep those individuals.
  - 4y ago
cedilla 4y ago
The 4chan model didn't even work for 4chan, but I wish Twitter the best of luck should that be the new strategy.
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  4chan got much more popular again in the last years because other platforms banned their worst users. If people would just have ignored tasteless internet comments we would probably see much less polarization. Suggesting as much will summon some wrath itself though.
  - phatfish 4y ago
    Tasteless trolling is far easier to produce than an insightful comment. That is why any platform that allows unmoderated "free speech" (with a large enough user base) will eventually degenerate into a cesspool. Even those that have the self control not to engage will eventually get tried of filtering content and leave. Then your are just left with the 4chan crowd.
- raspberry1337 4y ago
  What do you mean? 4chan as a cesspool has more activity than ever, there's no bottom to the bullshit that goes on there
  - optimuspaul 4y ago
    I think you proved their point.
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    ANd how much revenue has that activity earned them?
    - raspberry1337 4y ago
      Who is "them"? The users or the one owner?
fleetwoodsnack 4y ago
It goes without saying that this is a highly presumptive hypothetical. “If” is being asked to do more than its fair share here, as it not only bears the weight of these future aspirations, but must also disprove and disavow a fairly long history of social and managerial incompetence and malfeasance on the part of Musk, his following, and his companies. Let’s not forget the current lawsuits against Tesla for its treatment of minority employees, or the dead-on-arrival roll-out of the cyber truck, or the Boring Company’s baffling underground-tunnel-turned-traffic-jam-generator. The evidence and history points against “if.” Best of luck to it.
tmp_anon_22 4y ago
> he could see that revenue rise quite a bit The premise for this is that Twitter saw a huge loss of revenue as a result of deliberate actions like removing @realDT (Twitter share prices actually peaked a few weeks later in February 2021).
tcmb 4y ago
"If" he can do all that, you might be right. But why will he be able to do what current Twitter is not capable of? It's not like these are deep secrets to success nobody but Musk knows.
- dd36 4y ago
  Ask jack.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Likely because outside of external force a leaderless board is going to just slowly continue what they’ve done before until everything goes away. Very few companies make major changes without a major champion. Could apple have turned around without Jobs? Maybe. Did it? No.
- BurningFrog 4y ago
  Current Twitter is probably, like most large organizations, deeply dysfunctional. With a fresh start with new people where needed, it can have very different capabilities.
- kansface 4y ago
  It doesn’t feel like twitter wants to change.
i_like_waiting 4y ago
It's not even that, if he added "lookalike audience" for ad publishers, it could bring revenues significantly higher, twitters ad platform is disaster compared to other social media
CydeWeys 4y ago
> Twitter, despite being a toxic place the majority of people avoid, brought in over 5 billion dollars last year. If elon removes bots, welcomes non-extremists back on, gets comedians and entertaining accounts back on board and lets people say what they want instead a bot army of shills repeating verbatim over and over and over... Elon Musk is absolutely not the right person for this job though. Indeed, he's one of the main forces hell-bent on making Twitter a toxic place. Look at this tweet for example (I'm not cherry-picking something from way back in the past; this is the third most recent thing he's tweeted): https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1517707521343082496 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1517707521343082496 The quality of that post is significantly below the quality of anything that routinely makes it to my own personalized feed. And in case you don't understand the context of that post, it's because Bill Gates may have shorted Tesla or something. So in retaliation for that, Elon is making fun of Bill Gates's appearance on the largest platform he has, and countless of his followers will take up this mantle and run with it. It's actually hard for me to think of a worse person to come along and try to improve the quality of Twitter, except for maybe Trump.
- bombcar 4y ago
  But this kind of low-grade humor is exactly what people want to see. Look at how popular this tweet is compared to any of Elon’s about actual Tesla or Rocket things.
  - CydeWeys 4y ago
    There's very little value in elementary-grade humor, though. It's not advertiser friendly. If Twitter turns into primarily shit posts of this caliber then it ends up being worth a lot less money than it is now.
    - solenoidalslide 4y ago
      Shit posts are incredibly advertiser friendly. Most popular memes that define our current internet culture started out as juvenile shit posts.
evandale 4y ago
>gets comedians and entertaining accounts back on board and lets people say what they want instead a bot army of shills repeating verbatim over and over and over I'm most looking forward to Patti Harrison getting back on Twitter. context: https://youtu.be/HZIvpTrNNmo?t=127 https://youtu.be/HZIvpTrNNmo?t=127
photochemsyn 4y ago
I'd argue the most important of the changes Musk has suggested are transparency around the recommendation and ranking algorithms and the datasets used to train them, and increasing the character count of posts up to 512-1024 characters. There's a lot of mystery about how these algorithms are designed, trained and used in practice - and not just at Twitter - and having all that open-sourced would in itself be a huge benefit to the whole world. A whole lot of authoritarian outfits are trying to use these algorithms as a means of social control and popular opinion manipulation - and not just in places like Russia and China - and it's reached the point where understanding how such systems are used is kind of critical to preserving the future of non-authoritarian society. As far as long-form Twitter, at the very least doubling the character count would allow for a lot more nuance in Twitter communication, which is defintely lacking at present. And no, multiple posts in threads don't really work for that purpose because of the way those individual posts are distributed elsewhere, without context.
- interblag 4y ago
  There might be some value in opening these algorithms up but, also, the moment you reveal how they work you will immediately start to see them gamified. Aspects of content recommendation/moderation will always be adversarial, and there are many good arguments in favour of some opacity in these types of systems.
  - photochemsyn 4y ago
    I feel they're already being gamified, but by people with an inside line to Twitter, i.e. shareholders and advertisers. If you mean something like search engine optimization on Google by random people wanting to get their content on the front page, I believe there are ways to prevent or minimize that. Of course Google has just gone and pumped advertiser content to the top of search rankings...
    - HWR_14 4y ago
      > search engine optimization on Google ... there are ways to prevent or minimize that If that was true, I'd imagine you could get quite a nice payday from Google.
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mark_l_watson 4y ago
I agree with you. Also, it would be great to be able to pay $5/month for no advertisements.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  If I pay $5/month for social media, I expect more than just no advertising. I want strong moderation, a la Hacker News. Make some bubbles, let me choose the moderation focus.
mikepurvis 4y ago
> gets comedians and entertaining accounts back on board IMO this is a lost cause— they're on Tiktok now, and it's in many ways a better platform for that type of content in terms of its ability to drive engagement and also deal with abuse.
elorant 4y ago
Ads on Twitter have very low ROI. And that’s not because there are bots and toxicity, which certainly play a role, but mostly because there are no data points. Twitter doesn’t know its users, and thus can’t provide value to advertisers. I can’t see how Elon’s mindset would improve this.
1270018080 4y ago
Honest question to you and anyone reading: Is Trump a non-extremist?
- garbagetime 4y ago
  Another question: Is extremism inherently wrong?
  - bastardoperator 4y ago
    If you have to ask the question you already know the answer...
    - garbagetime 4y ago
      I don't see the logic there, but in case it adds to the conversation, I will say that I think that it is fairly clear that extremism is not inherently a bad thing, unless it is defined as such (rather than literally) - in which case I think the word would lose most of its utility in conversations like this.
      - rosmax_1337 4y ago
        I find "extremism" to be used as a pejorative that is better interpreted as "non-mainstream" nowadays. Most people labeled as extremist are simply just that, not mainstream. Infact it is quite cynical of those within the mainstream to use this pejorative, since it by sleight of hand assosciates any ideas that the mainstream does not hold with what most others see as "violent extremists, wearing white robes and/or bombing subway stations".
  - TMWNN 4y ago
    >I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue! —Barry Goldwater, 1964
- ProjectArcturis 4y ago
EricE 4y ago
Indeed - if he brings back neutrality to their “content moderation” I would even be willing to pay, especially if it came with extra tools to filter out the bots and other nuisance content - i.e. pay for the blue checkmark and be able to restrict my feed to only other blue checkmarks. Or whatever they pick to delineate those who pay. Paywalls are the most effective way to screen out bots and frivolous bullshit.
CommieBobDole 4y ago
But that's the reason that Twitter is Twitter - the algorithm optimizes for engagement, and as it turns out, the most engaging thing is conflict. Twitter is so fantastically successful because they've created a platform that both feeds their users a constant stream of enraging content, and more importantly, incentivizes the creation of content that's enraging to someone else. In the process they've managed to mold almost the entirety of mainstream public discourse into an endless supply of hot takes, sick burns, and us-vs-them polarization that results in Twitter being an essential tool for anyone who wants to participate. If they get rid of the rage bait and toxicity, then people won't need Twitter anymore and will move on to whatever new platform provides it for them.
- kansface 4y ago
  Continual rage and social justice mobs surely keep a ton of people off the platform, myself included, even if the vitriol drives the existing crowd into a fervor of usage. I don’t think rage is a prerequisite for engagement in general.
  - CommieBobDole 4y ago
    I'm sure there's plenty of demand for non-rage-based engagement, and in fact there are a lot of platforms that offer that (HN being one of them). I just don't think there's a demand for that on the scale that Twitter wants and needs to operate. In my opinion, there's two reasons for this; first, Twitter has largely moved mainstream discourse to a superficial conflict-based format, even among those who might previously have enjoyed quiet reasonable discussion; a lot of these people are no longer going to get what they need, emotionally speaking, from a less confrontational platform. Second, the nature of Twitter has brought a lot of people into the mix who were not interested in participating in online discussion at all, but have been energized by the presence of a platform that provides an opportunity to dunk on jerks all day. These people, likewise, are not going to be served by a less-confrontational platform, and are going to move to the next thing or just disperse if no suitable platform is offered. Twitter is huge; it's scaled for the kind of vast crowds that are attracted by the particular flavor of discourse it offers; if any significant portion of those vast crowds go away because it starts offering a different kind of discourse, then it will collapse under the cost and complexity of running a platform of that size.
Waterluvian 4y ago
I don’t think we can just disregard the fact that he constantly shitposts like a 12 year old. I don’t think people really appreciate how messed up that is, for someone who should be insanely busy with multiple wildly successful corporations. I’m confident a logical case can be made. But… seriously?
- EricE 4y ago
  lol - what does it do to you, personally? If he can shitpost while continuing to be wildly successful then what of it? Don’t care for his style? Don’t follow him. Pretty easy. Life is a lot more fun when you stop trying to police others thoughts or behaviors. Heck you might even learn something new by experiencing true diversity instead of mouthing useless platitudes about it.
  - autophagian 4y ago
    Where did they mouth a useless platitude about diversity? I cannot see it in the post you're replying to.
  - phatfish 4y ago
    Elon's fans really are insufferable.
rco8786 4y ago
You're describing an old version of Twitter that did not bring in over 5 billion dollars.
tyingq 4y ago
>People act like this is some spiteful thing he's doing in order to just post edgy memes Well, he did reveal the intent to do it with a series of snarky tweets.
- adamesque 4y ago
  I mean, if that's not evidence he deeply understands Twitter then I'm not sure what is.
brightball 4y ago
I think a lot of people see the potential that Twitter has but it's unattainable in the current structure. The changes needed are drastic and in any environment where there's a lot of ceremonial overhead that slows down a clear vision, those changes can't be attained. Having somebody in a leadership position who can clearly say, "this is where we are going, this is how we are going to get there and no, I don't have to run it by anybody for approval" is worth it. The users are already there.
peterkos 4y ago
I'd really suggest you read this article to understand why he's already starting with little knowledge of how to begin solving the problems he claims to be important ("free speech", in his eyes) -- https://www.techdirt.com/2022/04/15/elon-musk-demonstrates-how-little-he-understands-about-content-moderation/ https://www.techdirt.com/2022/04/15/elon-musk-demonstrates-h...
- EricE 4y ago
- SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
  I do wish he would engage a bit more with the "spam is legal" problem. But this article dismisses out of hand what I think is the key premise, that existing thought on content moderation has large, core components which are inimical to conservative thought. Kate Klonick's paper is great and I second the Techdirt guy's recommendation to read it, but it also reveals some pretty obvious blind spots. She approvingly describes a story where the Youtube content moderation team traveled to Thailand, and agreed to censor (with a geofence) gratuitous insults to their king. But it's hard to imagine they would have even considered this if, say, Alabamians wanted them to take down some blasphemous material. In another case, she mentions that "the video was restored once its political significance was understood", but have they ever made such an exception when it's significant towards political causes Youtube trust and safety team doesn't agree with?
dragonwriter 4y ago
> Twitter, despite being a toxic place the majority of people avoid, brought in over 5 billion dollars last year. “Despite” is misplaced. Twitter has carefully calibrated toxicity as part of it's engagement model. > If elon [...] welcomes non-extremists back on, [...] and lets people say what they want You do realize that those are opposed goals, the first about decreasing and the second increasing Twitter’s existing toxicity, right?
sleepybrett 4y ago
Perhaps it's partially a bid to get a wiretap on all twitter dms.
Abishek_Muthian 4y ago
> If elon removes bots I haven't received a good answer yet for how Elon would solve the bot problem. It's as if misinformation/disinformation/harassment are propagated only by bots and not real people, So would these people be blocked along with the bots? Would censorship be fine here then? Social media firms have turned a blind eye towards bots/click farms because it has helped them to exaggerate their engagement figures to the advertisers, Just like any other online-advertising firm. Then again, Elon seems to have expressed some views against advertisements on Twitter.
- jen20 4y ago
  You are letting perfect be the enemy of the good here. There are millions upon millions of bot accounts, trivially identifiable as “word647829585729” with a profile that reads “Soccer mom. Ohio. Loves baseball. Hates cheese.” or similar. Every single one of those could be removed and the problem would be improved even if not eliminated. Pick the low-hanging fruit first… That said I don’t imagine Elon Musk has any intention of doing that, and don’t intend to stick around on Twitter to find out.
  - notahacker 4y ago
    There are also millions of people with low effort accounts that mostly just retweet stuff, often precisely the bot-amplified political topics that show up in their feed. Those people are going to whine just as loudly about censorship as the people kicked off because someone reported them. It's not like bot operators can't change handles or like the flags which would really catch them "engages on $politicalwedgeissue and amplifies "$particularpoliticalcause" are uncontroversial
  - pmyteh 4y ago
    It's not at all trivial, and there's a surprising amount of academic research on whether it's even possible. Take the most extreme case: a bunch of new accounts with long-numbered names posting identical political messages. It turns out that many of these have (unique!) real people behind them. They're not bots, they're coordinated people who are part of a campaign that's either grassroots (sign up and make ourselves heard!) or AstroTurf (I've been paid by a PR company to...). Are these excluded as bots? After all, a lot of PR accounts are paid to post. Many other 'bot' accounts have scheduled high-volume posting, but are directly operated by a single human; they may be spammers, but they aren't anything other than who they claim to be. What about political clubs brigading? If I get my mates to set up alts and frequently shitpost about politicians we dislike, is that a bot army, or privacy-friendly political activism? In the end, you just have to take a view and decide what you're prepared to accept.
ixtli 4y ago
“Elon” is going to jam through some changes that disrupt the company and get a lot of press for n months then get bored and go do something else.
MichaelMoser123 4y ago
i thinks it's more about the influence that twitter has with the establishment i.e. 'people that matter'. Being able to exert influence in these quarters is what power is all about. however I am not quite sure why Mr. Musk needs that. He once declared that his goal was to go to Mars, in other words he was about "Flyin' mother nature's silver seed to a new home in the sun"
dimitrios1 4y ago
I am laughing at the thought that there is a significant amount of people out there who seriously think someone tosses 43 billion dollars around for anything other than a business reason, including some sort of expected return. Everything else is bonus, but clearly Elon thinks there is something there. Although it makes for a funny thought, you don't become the richest person on earth by throwing your money around at memes or for some sort of "revenge".
slg 4y ago
Sure, he could do all those things you list, but I have no idea why anyone would expect him specifically to be able to do it while no one else could. Just a couple examples: >gets comedians and entertaining accounts back on board Musk's personality and actions turn off many of these people. It will much harder for Musk to get these people back than it would be for a publicly traded company. >lets people say what they want instead a bot army of shills repeating verbatim over and over and over Musk himself controls an army of shills who attack anyone who disagrees with him. It has now become common for people criticizing him to stop using his name because some of his fans will search Twitter for anyone talking about him in order to aggressively defend him. Why would we expect him to work to stop shills site wide when he has put no effort into stopping his fans from exhibiting this same behavior?
- scotuswroteus 4y ago
  Most comedians are turned off by audiences who cancel. Anyone not in tune with that trend in Chappelle's work isn't credible to make broad sweeping comments about that.
  - ProjectArcturis 4y ago
    Ah yes, Dave Chappelle, the cancelled comedian who recently got paid $24M to produce a 1-hour set for the biggest streaming network.
    - scotuswroteus 4y ago
      Ah yes, a failure in reading comprehension coupled with a lack of cultural knowledge. No one said he got cancelled. He specifically took his audience to task for the way they scrutinize performers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MZZ__5F_-A&ab_channel=NetflixIsAJoke https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MZZ__5F_-A&ab_channel=Netfl... You're not credible if you say comedians don't want a platform that cracks down on mob cancellation.
- president 4y ago
  What happened to just letting things play out? You don't know what's going to happen.
probIs8 4y ago
Yeah but even with an honest profile at one, I asked Twitter for the data they had one; I’m an early 40s single dad and Twitter thought I was a late 40s married mom. Then there’s his view of what Twitter is; de facto public square. When the user base is 300 million MAU minus bots and spam, it’s hardly pushing numbers that make me believe it’s to be taken seriously as a place for discourse. His greater good pandering to the middle ground who just want the Clinton years back, appeals to his wealth as some sort infallible measure of his correctness, it’s all just more of the same human lizard brain going where it feels warm and fuzziest; no one has any evidence any of these efforts are helping the future and the industrial and social wasteland they create seem to indicate the opposite.
pkulak 4y ago
> welcomes non-extremists back on He's come out and said that he's buying it to fulfill some kind of free-speech absolutism fantasy. If you think Twitter is toxic now, wait until it's just Parlor with 100x the users.
- 650REDHAIR 4y ago
  I had a moderately successful Twitter profile years ago. Few thousand followers, good engagement, etc, but left after awhile because of the effort and the fact that I was no longer in a position that benefited from minor social media stardom. I recently returned with a new account and holy crap the toxicity within the crazy-silo’d communities is off the chains. It’s not a fun place to be if you aren’t specifically using it to advance your own agenda. Occasionally I will end up on Twitter to read a thread linked from somewhere else, but if I’m forced to log in to read I always close the tab and move on with my day…
  - nerfhammer 4y ago
    only a tiny, tiny percent of users achieve "minor social media stardom". solving their problems actually doesn't strictly relate to the experience of the vast majority of users.
- andrew_ 4y ago
  It's currently the same, but inverse audience in the majority. Whether or not one sees it as favorable depends on individual bias.
- deleted 4y ago
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- tmaly 4y ago
  He owns or has a major stake in OpenAI LP ( GPT-3 ) right? Maybe he plans on using some of that tech to make moderation better.
- parkingrift 4y ago
  It is alarming that you, and so many others, talk about freedom of speech in such a derogatory or negative manner. Humans and human societies are capable of self governance. It's worked just fine for speech in the real world.
TameAntelope 4y ago
I'm pretty sure the whole "people are getting removed from Twitter for expressing themselves" thing is just plain not true, and when very little changes on that particular front, I'm very curious about how that's going to go.
raydev 4y ago
> gets comedians and entertaining accounts back on board So is this a generational thing? Much like YouTube, where I spend a lot of my time instead of watching TV, the people I follow on Twitter are practically nobodies posting really funny and interesting stuff. Since 2015-2016, I'd say there really hasn't been a need for the old celebrities as we used to know them, there's plenty of people creating good content now. You don't need to be approved by Netflix or HBO and be paid millions just to be funny. > a bot army of shills repeating verbatim over and over and over I really only see this under crypto tweets, and I've eliminated most crypto talk from my feed. Problem solved.
scarface74 4y ago
Twitter may have brought in over 5 billion in revenue. But it’s net profit was nothing to write home about. It’s not about how much you make. It’s about how much you keep. Besides the demographics of people who want the crazies back on Twitter are not exactly the type that mainstream advertisers care about. Have you seen the types of advertisers on most far right sites?
bastardoperator 4y ago
I think his presence will cause more people to leave and he'll be left holding a 43 billion dollar potato. Not going to lie, tiktok and snap are just better. Twitter is where old people go to debate sports and politics like it's their job.
verisimi 4y ago
I think this is a further 'end of privacy' thing. As Elon himself says: "If our twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying!" "And authenticate all real humans" https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1517215066550116354 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1517215066550116354 & https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1517215736606957573 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1517215736606957573 If Elon erodes privacy even more than at present, won't everyone else follow suit?
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aeturnum 4y ago
I feel like most of the pro-Elon-takeover takes rely on the idea that the current Twitter management does not understand what would make Twitter better and has not taken a lot of low hanging fruit. It's possible! Maybe Elon will just be able to "remove the bots" - but like...it seems unlikely? I don't agree with everything that the twitter leadership does but I'd be shocked if there were simple actions they're deciding not to take that would dramatically increase the quality of the site.
- gitfan86 4y ago
  Have you ever worked at a large corporation or organization? Here is a real world example: A technology company I was at was acquired by Cisco Systems. During onboarding Cisco said that usernames on e-mail addresses couldn't be longer than 8 characters. Someone raised their hand and said "What do you mean? E-mail addresses can be longer than 8 chars. Cisco responded well that may be true technically, it isn't possible at Cisco" Allowing 20 char e-mail addresses is a very simple action, but that organization couldn't do it.
  - efitz 4y ago
    The likely reason for this sort of restriction is having to maintain compatibility with some legacy or third-party system that is too expensive or disruptive to replace.
  - ProjectArcturis 4y ago
    Okay, think about why that might have happened. Clearly they're running their servers on legacy code. What does that code do? Well, probably... everything. At this point they've been building on it for decades, and nearly everyone who was there when it started has retired or died. So they have a huge, mission-critical business platform that no one truly understands. And everyone is afraid that minor changes could have horrible, unforeseen downstream consequences, so it probably just gets edited at the margins at this point. If you're the CTO of Cisco, what do you do there? Do you risk your job and the continued existence of the company, spending God knows how many developer hours refactoring your codebase? Or do you just deal with 8-character email addresses?
Aunche 4y ago
> lets people say what they want instead a bot army of shills repeating verbatim over and over and over I think what people want is to act like a bot army of shills repeating verbatim over and over. I doubt that bots are to blame when it comes to harassment campaigns in rather niche fandoms. A frightening number of people I respond to are somehow convinced that toxic echo chambers are a good thing.
daenz 4y ago
I've seen people who are angry about Musks actions say that they're going to be the most toxic, anger-inducing, irrational users they can be to test his limits of speech. Some people just want to watch the world burn because they can't get their way.
matchagaucho 4y ago
> seeing value in advertising on twitter again Isn't "remove ads" on his takeover agenda?
godot 4y ago
I don't totally disagree with you but that is a pretty purely monetary investment point of view. From Musk's position it seems unlikely he's viewing it as an investment; there are plenty of better investments in the world and he also has plenty of room to grow in his own companies already. It seems much more likely he has things in mind he wants to do about Twitter with regards to it being the de facto town square.
- unglaublich 4y ago
  Musk wants to own social media just like Buffet wants to own newspapers. It's critical to have a say in what people read and think about you and your interests.
sircastor 4y ago
> People act like this is some spiteful thing he's doing in order to just post edgy memes or have a 'private' social media for himself. I think more likely, he feels like if he owns the platform he will be free of legal oversight and SEC interference in regards to whatever he wants to say over his bully-pulpit - Twitter. We have (literally) the richest man in the world being told that he's not allowed to do something, and he thinks he has the means to fix that.
- fleshdaddy 4y ago
  This doesn’t seem right. I would think that the SEC would be more interested in his Twitter account if he actually owned the company. If anything it leads to more scrutiny right?
ck2 4y ago
He's doing it to let a certain specific person back on the platform Because he can, it's a flex
toephu2 4y ago
But Elon has stated numerous times his reason for the takeover is not for economic reasons. He's not doing this for money, he has zero desire to turn this into a very profitable company (watch his TED talk interview). He's doing this to protect free speech.
- bluedays 4y ago
  I believe everything billionaires say
  - btirnsltuebn 4y ago
    You do if they run Pfizer.
- emkoemko 4y ago
  can't tell if your being sarcastic ?
  - toephu2 4y ago
    I do believe he is not doing it for the money. He's already the richest man in the world. He doesn't care about material goods, he owns no houses, no yachts, the only luxury item he has is a private jet but that's to save time (and work more).
- unglaublich 4y ago
  He is doing this because it's his main communication channel and it's of extreme importance that it remains under his control.
toephu2 4y ago
But Elon has stated numerous times his reason for the takeover is not for economic reasons. He's not doing this for money, he has zero desire to turn this into a very profitable company (watch his TED talk interview). He's doing this to protect free speech (from his point of view).
- ModernMech 4y ago
  > But Elon has stated numerous times his reason for the takeover is not for economic reasons. This is a hedge. If Twitter loses money Elon will say "I wasn't trying to make money"; and if Twitter makes money Elon will say "I made money despite not even trying". Win-win.
- hunterb123 4y ago
  He stated the offer isn't for economic reasons. That's not mutually exclusive to wanting a profitable company in the longer term. You can want to protect free speech and want the company to do well too. But I do believe his priority is free speech first. Profits, if possible, second.
micromacrofoot 4y ago
"maybe a billionaire could independently change society" is a hell of a take
Abishek_Muthian 4y ago
> he could see that revenue rise quite a bit through people actually seeing value in advertising on twitter again. While TikTok is eating Meta, YouTube and Twitter together for lunch? Twitter's problem with making money are not just internal anymore, There's an established competitor to which young people are flocking to just like we did with Twitter when we were younger and advertisers go behind the young.
- Melatonic 4y ago
  And on top of that the market for Twitter has always seemed to be baby boomer aged people. The entire design of the site / word limit / text to tweet functionality seemed like it was a way to make it easily accessible for those not regularly using social media or internet forums in general.
ytdytvhxgydvhh 4y ago
> If elon removes bots Why would he remove bots? Isn’t having bots post on my behalf covered under my free speech?
gotaquestion 4y ago
> just rage bait again. But he IS rage bait. He taunts, mocks, and slimes social media constantly. How could his leadership look any better if he treats it like shit personally?
apeconmyth 4y ago
Why would someone so successful with productive work take on something so unproductive? This looks like classic overstep. If only there was a rational segment of investors ready to make a counterpoint here about anyone saying they are going to fix Twitter ... LOL ... This is the universe balancing itself. Elon will have to mess up Elon, and my bet (or wishful thinking) is this inflection point right here. He'll be going to Mars to forget this mess. Popcorn, please!
ericls 4y ago
Twitter's toxicity comes from human being human not twitter being twitter
Melatonic 4y ago
None of these things would even remotely make me consider using Twitter regularly
croes 4y ago
>lets people say what they want At that point twitter will get problems with many countries and their laws like the Network Enforcement Act in Germany. It could get a similar reputation like telegram as a place for conspiracy theorists and extremists. I don't know if this attracts many ad partners.
- ergocoder 4y ago
  Forcing everyone to be verified, and the problem will be mostly solved. As long as it doesn't violate the laws, conspiracies and extremists should be allowed. If anything is wrong, court should be the one who decides that, not a random twitter employee.
  - croes 4y ago
    >If anything is wrong, court should be the one who decides that, not a random twitter employee. Which court? Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia? This is good for repressive regimes, as their critics can no longer express themselves on Twitter without revealing their identity. Doesn't sound like free speech to me
dannyr 4y ago
"let people say what they want" I actually think this will be the demise of Twitter. No content moderation makes harassment and abuse rampant and the good users will flee and you're left with a cesspool of hate.
- ergocoder 4y ago
  Not if you force people to verify themselves.
nopenopenopeno 4y ago
> and welcomes non-extremists back on What is this even supposed to mean? Extremist in what sense? If we are talking about politics, a common context for this kind of language, the United States is the most extreme capitalist nation in human history, so just being a US patriot should reasonably be considered an extremist position.
a5aAqU 4y ago
> removes bots, welcomes non-extremists back on ... hope he truly makes twitter somewhere that you visit that isn't just rage bait again. He's probably going to unban Trump and other awful people. His buying Twitter is literally a risk to the foundation of civilization (if far-right clowns gets into power again and destabilize the US and Europe). Billionaires gained a lot of money and power in the past few years.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
sixQuarks 4y ago
Elon says he is not buying Twitter for economic reasons, he doesn't care about that. Hear it from the horses mouth directly here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdZZpaB2kDM&t=930s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdZZpaB2kDM&t=930s
Tiktaalik 4y ago
Elon only started buying twitter stock after someone started tweeting where his jet was, so seems pretty spiteful to me.
hackernewds 4y ago
Twitter has been immune from being an advertising cesspool, and an excellent information source. As much revenue as an Edit button would drive, you can imagine the kinds of abuse and scams that one will encounter right away. Being financially sound is not always great for society.
sytelus 4y ago
And what is the chance that Twitter's refusal to ban someone in future will cause Musk to get "cancelled"? I don't think you have seen the power of cancel culture. Once, X number of celebrities decide that Y needs to be cancelled, the pressure is enormous on all businesses and their CEOs to join the cancel parade. It's literally you are with us or against us. In fact, these cancel culture torch bearers will now use Twitter itself to put pressure on subscribers and advertizers. Just imagine Trump coming back, posting something very controversial and all celebreties up in arm against Musk to ban him again. At that moment, it is no-win scenario (I call it getting "Zucked"). If you ban him, republicans paints target on you. If you don't then dems do that job. Musk has companies that require belovancy from government and it is not really hard to put him at enormous disadvantage.
kjkjadksj 4y ago
What you are asking for is impossible essentially. We users, who are the product, want this rage free environment where we arent manipulated. That can’t happen because twitters actual customers, the advertisers, make money hand over fist with the rage bait. The company wouldn’t be worth anything if its customers stopped valuing it, and its customers will instead buy whoever offers them a higher quality product on the market place.
Heyso 4y ago
And what is an extremist ? People tend to call extremist anything that is far from their own opinion, or what the media tell them to think as extremist. A good example is France right now. Many peoples voted against Lepen. But do they know what exactly they voted against, can they elaborate ? No. One example, the media say she is racist, but she got 60-70 % score in DOM-TOM (Martinique, Guadeloupe, etc). I would call Macron an extremist. Of the rich, of the globalist and europeanist.

jmeister 4y ago

Man, another million comment thread wit the same arguments. Of course it can turn into a cesspool. Of course there are ways around that problem. Like allowing more customizability for users. Like a ‘old Twitter’ filter that would allow only content compatible with the old moderation norms.

throwaway82652 4y ago
The "showdead" option on HN does something similar and it's truly truly awful, I can't imagine why anyone would want to apply that at scale.

data-ottawa 4y ago

I find it strange that people assume Elon will get rid of bots as though Twitter weren’t already trying that.

cainxinth 4y ago

>I wish him the best and hope he truly makes twitter somewhere that you visit that isn't just rage bait again. You think "Lord Edge" is going to make Twitter less of a cesspool? Everything he's said and done indicates he wants the limits Twitter currently has on speech to be removed.

matheusmoreira 4y ago
> he wants the limits Twitter currently has on speech to be removed Sounds amazing. Maybe then we'll finally have a truly neutral platform with no censorship of any kind.
- metamet 4y ago
  Amazing? It would be immediately inundated with hateful content, driven by bots more than it already is. This utopian "free speech" bastion never works out on the internet and always devolves into congregations of hate groups, which normalize themselves and spread. Look at 4ch => 8ch => Brennan's postmortem on the experiment. Plus there will always be a level of moderation. No censorship of any kind would immediately become overrun with child porn. This has already happened countless times on other platforms. It simply will never work.
  - matheusmoreira 4y ago
    > always devolves in to congregations of hate groups, which normalize themselves and spread Nope. These places are full of all kinds of people. There's just a wider spectrum. You'll see the best and worst of humanity. > No censorship of any kind would immediately become overrun with child porn. That's obviously not allowed anywhere, not even on chans.
glogla 4y ago
- ericmay 4y ago
  This is an emotionally charged topic, apparently, but I just do not see any reason to believe that if Elon Musk takes Twitter private that they will start banning unions, journalists, and forcing people who are trans to come out. No evidence of that. W.r.t removing current limits, again I see no evidence of that, except maybe people who were banned for making fun of journalists for telling them the same thing they were telling other people (learn 2 code) might get reinstated. Death threats? No chance. Blatant racism? Nope. Harassment? Well does that happen already? It's not clear. Sexism? Again no clear lines here. Trump I hope never comes back and it may stay that way. I don't think Elon really cares about Trump.

nprateem 4y ago

Comedians like Stephan Fry left exactly because people were saying whatever they wanted and being abusive. You can't have it both ways.

macinjosh 4y ago
- citizenkeen 4y ago
  Do you know who Stephen Fry is?
  - oska 4y ago
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Twitter is/was unique in that there was a minuscule chance that someone rich and famous would actually read a regular response to a tweet, especially if it got a lot of traction. And that is what scares some people. The only other place I’ve seen it happen is some Reddit AMAs and it was always clear which ones were being coordinated by PR and which got unhinged and out of control.
- karpierz 4y ago
  Yes, but unironically.
core-utility 4y ago
People will be hurtful and abusive no matter how moderated the platform is. Even HN has its share of colorful commentary from time to time. If individuals here and there decide it's best for them to not be on any social media, nothing the platform can do - even if it brings more users overall - will keep those individuals.
- 4y ago

cedilla 4y ago

The 4chan model didn't even work for 4chan, but I wish Twitter the best of luck should that be the new strategy.

raxxorraxor 4y ago
4chan got much more popular again in the last years because other platforms banned their worst users. If people would just have ignored tasteless internet comments we would probably see much less polarization. Suggesting as much will summon some wrath itself though.
- phatfish 4y ago
  Tasteless trolling is far easier to produce than an insightful comment. That is why any platform that allows unmoderated "free speech" (with a large enough user base) will eventually degenerate into a cesspool. Even those that have the self control not to engage will eventually get tried of filtering content and leave. Then your are just left with the 4chan crowd.
raspberry1337 4y ago
What do you mean? 4chan as a cesspool has more activity than ever, there's no bottom to the bullshit that goes on there
- optimuspaul 4y ago
  I think you proved their point.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  ANd how much revenue has that activity earned them?
  - raspberry1337 4y ago
    Who is "them"? The users or the one owner?

fleetwoodsnack 4y ago

It goes without saying that this is a highly presumptive hypothetical. “If” is being asked to do more than its fair share here, as it not only bears the weight of these future aspirations, but must also disprove and disavow a fairly long history of social and managerial incompetence and malfeasance on the part of Musk, his following, and his companies. Let’s not forget the current lawsuits against Tesla for its treatment of minority employees, or the dead-on-arrival roll-out of the cyber truck, or the Boring Company’s baffling underground-tunnel-turned-traffic-jam-generator. The evidence and history points against “if.” Best of luck to it.

tmp_anon_22 4y ago

> he could see that revenue rise quite a bit The premise for this is that Twitter saw a huge loss of revenue as a result of deliberate actions like removing @realDT (Twitter share prices actually peaked a few weeks later in February 2021).

tcmb 4y ago

"If" he can do all that, you might be right. But why will he be able to do what current Twitter is not capable of? It's not like these are deep secrets to success nobody but Musk knows.

dd36 4y ago
Ask jack.
bombcar 4y ago
Likely because outside of external force a leaderless board is going to just slowly continue what they’ve done before until everything goes away. Very few companies make major changes without a major champion. Could apple have turned around without Jobs? Maybe. Did it? No.
BurningFrog 4y ago
Current Twitter is probably, like most large organizations, deeply dysfunctional. With a fresh start with new people where needed, it can have very different capabilities.
kansface 4y ago
It doesn’t feel like twitter wants to change.

i_like_waiting 4y ago

It's not even that, if he added "lookalike audience" for ad publishers, it could bring revenues significantly higher, twitters ad platform is disaster compared to other social media

CydeWeys 4y ago

> Twitter, despite being a toxic place the majority of people avoid, brought in over 5 billion dollars last year. If elon removes bots, welcomes non-extremists back on, gets comedians and entertaining accounts back on board and lets people say what they want instead a bot army of shills repeating verbatim over and over and over... Elon Musk is absolutely not the right person for this job though. Indeed, he's one of the main forces hell-bent on making Twitter a toxic place. Look at this tweet for example (I'm not cherry-picking something from way back in the past; this is the third most recent thing he's tweeted): https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1517707521343082496 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1517707521343082496 The quality of that post is significantly below the quality of anything that routinely makes it to my own personalized feed. And in case you don't understand the context of that post, it's because Bill Gates may have shorted Tesla or something. So in retaliation for that, Elon is making fun of Bill Gates's appearance on the largest platform he has, and countless of his followers will take up this mantle and run with it. It's actually hard for me to think of a worse person to come along and try to improve the quality of Twitter, except for maybe Trump.

bombcar 4y ago
But this kind of low-grade humor is exactly what people want to see. Look at how popular this tweet is compared to any of Elon’s about actual Tesla or Rocket things.
- CydeWeys 4y ago
  There's very little value in elementary-grade humor, though. It's not advertiser friendly. If Twitter turns into primarily shit posts of this caliber then it ends up being worth a lot less money than it is now.
  - solenoidalslide 4y ago
    Shit posts are incredibly advertiser friendly. Most popular memes that define our current internet culture started out as juvenile shit posts.

evandale 4y ago

>gets comedians and entertaining accounts back on board and lets people say what they want instead a bot army of shills repeating verbatim over and over and over I'm most looking forward to Patti Harrison getting back on Twitter. context: https://youtu.be/HZIvpTrNNmo?t=127 https://youtu.be/HZIvpTrNNmo?t=127

photochemsyn 4y ago

I'd argue the most important of the changes Musk has suggested are transparency around the recommendation and ranking algorithms and the datasets used to train them, and increasing the character count of posts up to 512-1024 characters. There's a lot of mystery about how these algorithms are designed, trained and used in practice - and not just at Twitter - and having all that open-sourced would in itself be a huge benefit to the whole world. A whole lot of authoritarian outfits are trying to use these algorithms as a means of social control and popular opinion manipulation - and not just in places like Russia and China - and it's reached the point where understanding how such systems are used is kind of critical to preserving the future of non-authoritarian society. As far as long-form Twitter, at the very least doubling the character count would allow for a lot more nuance in Twitter communication, which is defintely lacking at present. And no, multiple posts in threads don't really work for that purpose because of the way those individual posts are distributed elsewhere, without context.

interblag 4y ago
There might be some value in opening these algorithms up but, also, the moment you reveal how they work you will immediately start to see them gamified. Aspects of content recommendation/moderation will always be adversarial, and there are many good arguments in favour of some opacity in these types of systems.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  I feel they're already being gamified, but by people with an inside line to Twitter, i.e. shareholders and advertisers. If you mean something like search engine optimization on Google by random people wanting to get their content on the front page, I believe there are ways to prevent or minimize that. Of course Google has just gone and pumped advertiser content to the top of search rankings...
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    > search engine optimization on Google ... there are ways to prevent or minimize that If that was true, I'd imagine you could get quite a nice payday from Google.

deleted 4y ago

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mark_l_watson 4y ago

I agree with you. Also, it would be great to be able to pay $5/month for no advertisements.

rootusrootus 4y ago
If I pay $5/month for social media, I expect more than just no advertising. I want strong moderation, a la Hacker News. Make some bubbles, let me choose the moderation focus.

mikepurvis 4y ago

> gets comedians and entertaining accounts back on board IMO this is a lost cause— they're on Tiktok now, and it's in many ways a better platform for that type of content in terms of its ability to drive engagement and also deal with abuse.

elorant 4y ago

Ads on Twitter have very low ROI. And that’s not because there are bots and toxicity, which certainly play a role, but mostly because there are no data points. Twitter doesn’t know its users, and thus can’t provide value to advertisers. I can’t see how Elon’s mindset would improve this.

1270018080 4y ago

Honest question to you and anyone reading: Is Trump a non-extremist?

garbagetime 4y ago
Another question: Is extremism inherently wrong?
- bastardoperator 4y ago
  If you have to ask the question you already know the answer...
  - garbagetime 4y ago
    I don't see the logic there, but in case it adds to the conversation, I will say that I think that it is fairly clear that extremism is not inherently a bad thing, unless it is defined as such (rather than literally) - in which case I think the word would lose most of its utility in conversations like this.
    - rosmax_1337 4y ago
      I find "extremism" to be used as a pejorative that is better interpreted as "non-mainstream" nowadays. Most people labeled as extremist are simply just that, not mainstream. Infact it is quite cynical of those within the mainstream to use this pejorative, since it by sleight of hand assosciates any ideas that the mainstream does not hold with what most others see as "violent extremists, wearing white robes and/or bombing subway stations".
- TMWNN 4y ago
  >I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue! —Barry Goldwater, 1964
ProjectArcturis 4y ago

EricE 4y ago

Indeed - if he brings back neutrality to their “content moderation” I would even be willing to pay, especially if it came with extra tools to filter out the bots and other nuisance content - i.e. pay for the blue checkmark and be able to restrict my feed to only other blue checkmarks. Or whatever they pick to delineate those who pay. Paywalls are the most effective way to screen out bots and frivolous bullshit.

CommieBobDole 4y ago

But that's the reason that Twitter is Twitter - the algorithm optimizes for engagement, and as it turns out, the most engaging thing is conflict. Twitter is so fantastically successful because they've created a platform that both feeds their users a constant stream of enraging content, and more importantly, incentivizes the creation of content that's enraging to someone else. In the process they've managed to mold almost the entirety of mainstream public discourse into an endless supply of hot takes, sick burns, and us-vs-them polarization that results in Twitter being an essential tool for anyone who wants to participate. If they get rid of the rage bait and toxicity, then people won't need Twitter anymore and will move on to whatever new platform provides it for them.

kansface 4y ago
Continual rage and social justice mobs surely keep a ton of people off the platform, myself included, even if the vitriol drives the existing crowd into a fervor of usage. I don’t think rage is a prerequisite for engagement in general.
- CommieBobDole 4y ago
  I'm sure there's plenty of demand for non-rage-based engagement, and in fact there are a lot of platforms that offer that (HN being one of them). I just don't think there's a demand for that on the scale that Twitter wants and needs to operate. In my opinion, there's two reasons for this; first, Twitter has largely moved mainstream discourse to a superficial conflict-based format, even among those who might previously have enjoyed quiet reasonable discussion; a lot of these people are no longer going to get what they need, emotionally speaking, from a less confrontational platform. Second, the nature of Twitter has brought a lot of people into the mix who were not interested in participating in online discussion at all, but have been energized by the presence of a platform that provides an opportunity to dunk on jerks all day. These people, likewise, are not going to be served by a less-confrontational platform, and are going to move to the next thing or just disperse if no suitable platform is offered. Twitter is huge; it's scaled for the kind of vast crowds that are attracted by the particular flavor of discourse it offers; if any significant portion of those vast crowds go away because it starts offering a different kind of discourse, then it will collapse under the cost and complexity of running a platform of that size.

Waterluvian 4y ago

I don’t think we can just disregard the fact that he constantly shitposts like a 12 year old. I don’t think people really appreciate how messed up that is, for someone who should be insanely busy with multiple wildly successful corporations. I’m confident a logical case can be made. But… seriously?

EricE 4y ago
lol - what does it do to you, personally? If he can shitpost while continuing to be wildly successful then what of it? Don’t care for his style? Don’t follow him. Pretty easy. Life is a lot more fun when you stop trying to police others thoughts or behaviors. Heck you might even learn something new by experiencing true diversity instead of mouthing useless platitudes about it.
- autophagian 4y ago
  Where did they mouth a useless platitude about diversity? I cannot see it in the post you're replying to.
- phatfish 4y ago
  Elon's fans really are insufferable.

rco8786 4y ago

You're describing an old version of Twitter that did not bring in over 5 billion dollars.

tyingq 4y ago

>People act like this is some spiteful thing he's doing in order to just post edgy memes Well, he did reveal the intent to do it with a series of snarky tweets.

adamesque 4y ago
I mean, if that's not evidence he deeply understands Twitter then I'm not sure what is.

brightball 4y ago

I think a lot of people see the potential that Twitter has but it's unattainable in the current structure. The changes needed are drastic and in any environment where there's a lot of ceremonial overhead that slows down a clear vision, those changes can't be attained. Having somebody in a leadership position who can clearly say, "this is where we are going, this is how we are going to get there and no, I don't have to run it by anybody for approval" is worth it. The users are already there.

peterkos 4y ago

I'd really suggest you read this article to understand why he's already starting with little knowledge of how to begin solving the problems he claims to be important ("free speech", in his eyes) -- https://www.techdirt.com/2022/04/15/elon-musk-demonstrates-how-little-he-understands-about-content-moderation/ https://www.techdirt.com/2022/04/15/elon-musk-demonstrates-h...

EricE 4y ago
SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
I do wish he would engage a bit more with the "spam is legal" problem. But this article dismisses out of hand what I think is the key premise, that existing thought on content moderation has large, core components which are inimical to conservative thought. Kate Klonick's paper is great and I second the Techdirt guy's recommendation to read it, but it also reveals some pretty obvious blind spots. She approvingly describes a story where the Youtube content moderation team traveled to Thailand, and agreed to censor (with a geofence) gratuitous insults to their king. But it's hard to imagine they would have even considered this if, say, Alabamians wanted them to take down some blasphemous material. In another case, she mentions that "the video was restored once its political significance was understood", but have they ever made such an exception when it's significant towards political causes Youtube trust and safety team doesn't agree with?

dragonwriter 4y ago

> Twitter, despite being a toxic place the majority of people avoid, brought in over 5 billion dollars last year. “Despite” is misplaced. Twitter has carefully calibrated toxicity as part of it's engagement model. > If elon [...] welcomes non-extremists back on, [...] and lets people say what they want You do realize that those are opposed goals, the first about decreasing and the second increasing Twitter’s existing toxicity, right?

sleepybrett 4y ago

Perhaps it's partially a bid to get a wiretap on all twitter dms.

Abishek_Muthian 4y ago

> If elon removes bots I haven't received a good answer yet for how Elon would solve the bot problem. It's as if misinformation/disinformation/harassment are propagated only by bots and not real people, So would these people be blocked along with the bots? Would censorship be fine here then? Social media firms have turned a blind eye towards bots/click farms because it has helped them to exaggerate their engagement figures to the advertisers, Just like any other online-advertising firm. Then again, Elon seems to have expressed some views against advertisements on Twitter.

jen20 4y ago
You are letting perfect be the enemy of the good here. There are millions upon millions of bot accounts, trivially identifiable as “word647829585729” with a profile that reads “Soccer mom. Ohio. Loves baseball. Hates cheese.” or similar. Every single one of those could be removed and the problem would be improved even if not eliminated. Pick the low-hanging fruit first… That said I don’t imagine Elon Musk has any intention of doing that, and don’t intend to stick around on Twitter to find out.
- notahacker 4y ago
  There are also millions of people with low effort accounts that mostly just retweet stuff, often precisely the bot-amplified political topics that show up in their feed. Those people are going to whine just as loudly about censorship as the people kicked off because someone reported them. It's not like bot operators can't change handles or like the flags which would really catch them "engages on $politicalwedgeissue and amplifies "$particularpoliticalcause" are uncontroversial
- pmyteh 4y ago
  It's not at all trivial, and there's a surprising amount of academic research on whether it's even possible. Take the most extreme case: a bunch of new accounts with long-numbered names posting identical political messages. It turns out that many of these have (unique!) real people behind them. They're not bots, they're coordinated people who are part of a campaign that's either grassroots (sign up and make ourselves heard!) or AstroTurf (I've been paid by a PR company to...). Are these excluded as bots? After all, a lot of PR accounts are paid to post. Many other 'bot' accounts have scheduled high-volume posting, but are directly operated by a single human; they may be spammers, but they aren't anything other than who they claim to be. What about political clubs brigading? If I get my mates to set up alts and frequently shitpost about politicians we dislike, is that a bot army, or privacy-friendly political activism? In the end, you just have to take a view and decide what you're prepared to accept.

ixtli 4y ago

“Elon” is going to jam through some changes that disrupt the company and get a lot of press for n months then get bored and go do something else.

MichaelMoser123 4y ago

i thinks it's more about the influence that twitter has with the establishment i.e. 'people that matter'. Being able to exert influence in these quarters is what power is all about. however I am not quite sure why Mr. Musk needs that. He once declared that his goal was to go to Mars, in other words he was about "Flyin' mother nature's silver seed to a new home in the sun"

dimitrios1 4y ago

I am laughing at the thought that there is a significant amount of people out there who seriously think someone tosses 43 billion dollars around for anything other than a business reason, including some sort of expected return. Everything else is bonus, but clearly Elon thinks there is something there. Although it makes for a funny thought, you don't become the richest person on earth by throwing your money around at memes or for some sort of "revenge".

slg 4y ago

Sure, he could do all those things you list, but I have no idea why anyone would expect him specifically to be able to do it while no one else could. Just a couple examples: >gets comedians and entertaining accounts back on board Musk's personality and actions turn off many of these people. It will much harder for Musk to get these people back than it would be for a publicly traded company. >lets people say what they want instead a bot army of shills repeating verbatim over and over and over Musk himself controls an army of shills who attack anyone who disagrees with him. It has now become common for people criticizing him to stop using his name because some of his fans will search Twitter for anyone talking about him in order to aggressively defend him. Why would we expect him to work to stop shills site wide when he has put no effort into stopping his fans from exhibiting this same behavior?

scotuswroteus 4y ago
Most comedians are turned off by audiences who cancel. Anyone not in tune with that trend in Chappelle's work isn't credible to make broad sweeping comments about that.
- ProjectArcturis 4y ago
  Ah yes, Dave Chappelle, the cancelled comedian who recently got paid $24M to produce a 1-hour set for the biggest streaming network.
  - scotuswroteus 4y ago
    Ah yes, a failure in reading comprehension coupled with a lack of cultural knowledge. No one said he got cancelled. He specifically took his audience to task for the way they scrutinize performers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MZZ__5F_-A&ab_channel=NetflixIsAJoke https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MZZ__5F_-A&ab_channel=Netfl... You're not credible if you say comedians don't want a platform that cracks down on mob cancellation.
president 4y ago
What happened to just letting things play out? You don't know what's going to happen.

probIs8 4y ago

Yeah but even with an honest profile at one, I asked Twitter for the data they had one; I’m an early 40s single dad and Twitter thought I was a late 40s married mom. Then there’s his view of what Twitter is; de facto public square. When the user base is 300 million MAU minus bots and spam, it’s hardly pushing numbers that make me believe it’s to be taken seriously as a place for discourse. His greater good pandering to the middle ground who just want the Clinton years back, appeals to his wealth as some sort infallible measure of his correctness, it’s all just more of the same human lizard brain going where it feels warm and fuzziest; no one has any evidence any of these efforts are helping the future and the industrial and social wasteland they create seem to indicate the opposite.

pkulak 4y ago

> welcomes non-extremists back on He's come out and said that he's buying it to fulfill some kind of free-speech absolutism fantasy. If you think Twitter is toxic now, wait until it's just Parlor with 100x the users.

650REDHAIR 4y ago
I had a moderately successful Twitter profile years ago. Few thousand followers, good engagement, etc, but left after awhile because of the effort and the fact that I was no longer in a position that benefited from minor social media stardom. I recently returned with a new account and holy crap the toxicity within the crazy-silo’d communities is off the chains. It’s not a fun place to be if you aren’t specifically using it to advance your own agenda. Occasionally I will end up on Twitter to read a thread linked from somewhere else, but if I’m forced to log in to read I always close the tab and move on with my day…
- nerfhammer 4y ago
  only a tiny, tiny percent of users achieve "minor social media stardom". solving their problems actually doesn't strictly relate to the experience of the vast majority of users.
andrew_ 4y ago
It's currently the same, but inverse audience in the majority. Whether or not one sees it as favorable depends on individual bias.
deleted 4y ago
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tmaly 4y ago
He owns or has a major stake in OpenAI LP ( GPT-3 ) right? Maybe he plans on using some of that tech to make moderation better.
parkingrift 4y ago
It is alarming that you, and so many others, talk about freedom of speech in such a derogatory or negative manner. Humans and human societies are capable of self governance. It's worked just fine for speech in the real world.

TameAntelope 4y ago

I'm pretty sure the whole "people are getting removed from Twitter for expressing themselves" thing is just plain not true, and when very little changes on that particular front, I'm very curious about how that's going to go.

raydev 4y ago

> gets comedians and entertaining accounts back on board So is this a generational thing? Much like YouTube, where I spend a lot of my time instead of watching TV, the people I follow on Twitter are practically nobodies posting really funny and interesting stuff. Since 2015-2016, I'd say there really hasn't been a need for the old celebrities as we used to know them, there's plenty of people creating good content now. You don't need to be approved by Netflix or HBO and be paid millions just to be funny. > a bot army of shills repeating verbatim over and over and over I really only see this under crypto tweets, and I've eliminated most crypto talk from my feed. Problem solved.

scarface74 4y ago

Twitter may have brought in over 5 billion in revenue. But it’s net profit was nothing to write home about. It’s not about how much you make. It’s about how much you keep. Besides the demographics of people who want the crazies back on Twitter are not exactly the type that mainstream advertisers care about. Have you seen the types of advertisers on most far right sites?

bastardoperator 4y ago

I think his presence will cause more people to leave and he'll be left holding a 43 billion dollar potato. Not going to lie, tiktok and snap are just better. Twitter is where old people go to debate sports and politics like it's their job.

verisimi 4y ago

I think this is a further 'end of privacy' thing. As Elon himself says: "If our twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying!" "And authenticate all real humans" https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1517215066550116354 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1517215066550116354 & https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1517215736606957573 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1517215736606957573 If Elon erodes privacy even more than at present, won't everyone else follow suit?

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aeturnum 4y ago

I feel like most of the pro-Elon-takeover takes rely on the idea that the current Twitter management does not understand what would make Twitter better and has not taken a lot of low hanging fruit. It's possible! Maybe Elon will just be able to "remove the bots" - but like...it seems unlikely? I don't agree with everything that the twitter leadership does but I'd be shocked if there were simple actions they're deciding not to take that would dramatically increase the quality of the site.

gitfan86 4y ago
Have you ever worked at a large corporation or organization? Here is a real world example: A technology company I was at was acquired by Cisco Systems. During onboarding Cisco said that usernames on e-mail addresses couldn't be longer than 8 characters. Someone raised their hand and said "What do you mean? E-mail addresses can be longer than 8 chars. Cisco responded well that may be true technically, it isn't possible at Cisco" Allowing 20 char e-mail addresses is a very simple action, but that organization couldn't do it.
- efitz 4y ago
  The likely reason for this sort of restriction is having to maintain compatibility with some legacy or third-party system that is too expensive or disruptive to replace.
- ProjectArcturis 4y ago
  Okay, think about why that might have happened. Clearly they're running their servers on legacy code. What does that code do? Well, probably... everything. At this point they've been building on it for decades, and nearly everyone who was there when it started has retired or died. So they have a huge, mission-critical business platform that no one truly understands. And everyone is afraid that minor changes could have horrible, unforeseen downstream consequences, so it probably just gets edited at the margins at this point. If you're the CTO of Cisco, what do you do there? Do you risk your job and the continued existence of the company, spending God knows how many developer hours refactoring your codebase? Or do you just deal with 8-character email addresses?

Aunche 4y ago

> lets people say what they want instead a bot army of shills repeating verbatim over and over and over I think what people want is to act like a bot army of shills repeating verbatim over and over. I doubt that bots are to blame when it comes to harassment campaigns in rather niche fandoms. A frightening number of people I respond to are somehow convinced that toxic echo chambers are a good thing.

daenz 4y ago

I've seen people who are angry about Musks actions say that they're going to be the most toxic, anger-inducing, irrational users they can be to test his limits of speech. Some people just want to watch the world burn because they can't get their way.

matchagaucho 4y ago

> seeing value in advertising on twitter again Isn't "remove ads" on his takeover agenda?

godot 4y ago

I don't totally disagree with you but that is a pretty purely monetary investment point of view. From Musk's position it seems unlikely he's viewing it as an investment; there are plenty of better investments in the world and he also has plenty of room to grow in his own companies already. It seems much more likely he has things in mind he wants to do about Twitter with regards to it being the de facto town square.

unglaublich 4y ago
Musk wants to own social media just like Buffet wants to own newspapers. It's critical to have a say in what people read and think about you and your interests.

sircastor 4y ago

> People act like this is some spiteful thing he's doing in order to just post edgy memes or have a 'private' social media for himself. I think more likely, he feels like if he owns the platform he will be free of legal oversight and SEC interference in regards to whatever he wants to say over his bully-pulpit - Twitter. We have (literally) the richest man in the world being told that he's not allowed to do something, and he thinks he has the means to fix that.

fleshdaddy 4y ago
This doesn’t seem right. I would think that the SEC would be more interested in his Twitter account if he actually owned the company. If anything it leads to more scrutiny right?

ck2 4y ago

He's doing it to let a certain specific person back on the platform Because he can, it's a flex

toephu2 4y ago

But Elon has stated numerous times his reason for the takeover is not for economic reasons. He's not doing this for money, he has zero desire to turn this into a very profitable company (watch his TED talk interview). He's doing this to protect free speech.

bluedays 4y ago
I believe everything billionaires say
- btirnsltuebn 4y ago
  You do if they run Pfizer.
emkoemko 4y ago
can't tell if your being sarcastic ?
- toephu2 4y ago
  I do believe he is not doing it for the money. He's already the richest man in the world. He doesn't care about material goods, he owns no houses, no yachts, the only luxury item he has is a private jet but that's to save time (and work more).
unglaublich 4y ago
He is doing this because it's his main communication channel and it's of extreme importance that it remains under his control.

toephu2 4y ago

ModernMech 4y ago
> But Elon has stated numerous times his reason for the takeover is not for economic reasons. This is a hedge. If Twitter loses money Elon will say "I wasn't trying to make money"; and if Twitter makes money Elon will say "I made money despite not even trying". Win-win.
hunterb123 4y ago
He stated the offer isn't for economic reasons. That's not mutually exclusive to wanting a profitable company in the longer term. You can want to protect free speech and want the company to do well too. But I do believe his priority is free speech first. Profits, if possible, second.

micromacrofoot 4y ago

"maybe a billionaire could independently change society" is a hell of a take

Abishek_Muthian 4y ago

> he could see that revenue rise quite a bit through people actually seeing value in advertising on twitter again. While TikTok is eating Meta, YouTube and Twitter together for lunch? Twitter's problem with making money are not just internal anymore, There's an established competitor to which young people are flocking to just like we did with Twitter when we were younger and advertisers go behind the young.

Melatonic 4y ago
And on top of that the market for Twitter has always seemed to be baby boomer aged people. The entire design of the site / word limit / text to tweet functionality seemed like it was a way to make it easily accessible for those not regularly using social media or internet forums in general.

ytdytvhxgydvhh 4y ago

> If elon removes bots Why would he remove bots? Isn’t having bots post on my behalf covered under my free speech?

gotaquestion 4y ago

> just rage bait again. But he IS rage bait. He taunts, mocks, and slimes social media constantly. How could his leadership look any better if he treats it like shit personally?

apeconmyth 4y ago

Why would someone so successful with productive work take on something so unproductive? This looks like classic overstep. If only there was a rational segment of investors ready to make a counterpoint here about anyone saying they are going to fix Twitter ... LOL ... This is the universe balancing itself. Elon will have to mess up Elon, and my bet (or wishful thinking) is this inflection point right here. He'll be going to Mars to forget this mess. Popcorn, please!

ericls 4y ago

Twitter's toxicity comes from human being human not twitter being twitter

Melatonic 4y ago

None of these things would even remotely make me consider using Twitter regularly

croes 4y ago

>lets people say what they want At that point twitter will get problems with many countries and their laws like the Network Enforcement Act in Germany. It could get a similar reputation like telegram as a place for conspiracy theorists and extremists. I don't know if this attracts many ad partners.

ergocoder 4y ago
Forcing everyone to be verified, and the problem will be mostly solved. As long as it doesn't violate the laws, conspiracies and extremists should be allowed. If anything is wrong, court should be the one who decides that, not a random twitter employee.
- croes 4y ago
  >If anything is wrong, court should be the one who decides that, not a random twitter employee. Which court? Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia? This is good for repressive regimes, as their critics can no longer express themselves on Twitter without revealing their identity. Doesn't sound like free speech to me

dannyr 4y ago

"let people say what they want" I actually think this will be the demise of Twitter. No content moderation makes harassment and abuse rampant and the good users will flee and you're left with a cesspool of hate.

ergocoder 4y ago
Not if you force people to verify themselves.

nopenopenopeno 4y ago

> and welcomes non-extremists back on What is this even supposed to mean? Extremist in what sense? If we are talking about politics, a common context for this kind of language, the United States is the most extreme capitalist nation in human history, so just being a US patriot should reasonably be considered an extremist position.

a5aAqU 4y ago

> removes bots, welcomes non-extremists back on ... hope he truly makes twitter somewhere that you visit that isn't just rage bait again. He's probably going to unban Trump and other awful people. His buying Twitter is literally a risk to the foundation of civilization (if far-right clowns gets into power again and destabilize the US and Europe). Billionaires gained a lot of money and power in the past few years.

deleted 4y ago

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sixQuarks 4y ago

Elon says he is not buying Twitter for economic reasons, he doesn't care about that. Hear it from the horses mouth directly here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdZZpaB2kDM&t=930s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdZZpaB2kDM&t=930s

Tiktaalik 4y ago

Elon only started buying twitter stock after someone started tweeting where his jet was, so seems pretty spiteful to me.

hackernewds 4y ago

Twitter has been immune from being an advertising cesspool, and an excellent information source. As much revenue as an Edit button would drive, you can imagine the kinds of abuse and scams that one will encounter right away. Being financially sound is not always great for society.

sytelus 4y ago

And what is the chance that Twitter's refusal to ban someone in future will cause Musk to get "cancelled"? I don't think you have seen the power of cancel culture. Once, X number of celebrities decide that Y needs to be cancelled, the pressure is enormous on all businesses and their CEOs to join the cancel parade. It's literally you are with us or against us. In fact, these cancel culture torch bearers will now use Twitter itself to put pressure on subscribers and advertizers. Just imagine Trump coming back, posting something very controversial and all celebreties up in arm against Musk to ban him again. At that moment, it is no-win scenario (I call it getting "Zucked"). If you ban him, republicans paints target on you. If you don't then dems do that job. Musk has companies that require belovancy from government and it is not really hard to put him at enormous disadvantage.

kjkjadksj 4y ago

What you are asking for is impossible essentially. We users, who are the product, want this rage free environment where we arent manipulated. That can’t happen because twitters actual customers, the advertisers, make money hand over fist with the rage bait. The company wouldn’t be worth anything if its customers stopped valuing it, and its customers will instead buy whoever offers them a higher quality product on the market place.

Heyso 4y ago

And what is an extremist ? People tend to call extremist anything that is far from their own opinion, or what the media tell them to think as extremist. A good example is France right now. Many peoples voted against Lepen. But do they know what exactly they voted against, can they elaborate ? No. One example, the media say she is racist, but she got 60-70 % score in DOM-TOM (Martinique, Guadeloupe, etc). I would call Macron an extremist. Of the rich, of the globalist and europeanist.