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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

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 5y 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 5y 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 5y 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?
  - gitfan86 5y ago
    If you are the CTO of Cisco you don't risk your job, because you put in 20 years kissing ass and climbing the corporate ladder, and at the end of the day you don't give a shit about e-mail servers running legacy code, you're here for the executive perks.
    - ProjectArcturis 5y ago
      Exactly. And if you're Elon Musk, you run amok like a bull in a china shop, breaking everything while chasing after whatever shiny object caught your eye recently.
      - gitfan86 5y ago
        You would prefer that we have more executives that don't get things done and instead focus on not getting fired? The Climate change situation would be better off if we didn't have Tesla disrupting the status quo on EVs? Rural and Emergency responders and the Ukrainian civilians would be better off if Starlink didn't exist?
- aeturnum 5y ago
  Did you look into how much work it would take to allow Cisco to accept email addresses longer than 8 chars? That is kind of my point. Like, the work to change the internal systems at Cisco does not get easier depending on who owns the company. The idea that a problem "looks easy to solve" and therefor the problem is that the people in charge are dumb is a childish way of looking at the world. All of large companies I've worked in / with have dumb restrictions. Everyone knows they are dumb. In my experience they are sometimes right and sometimes wrong but it's true that implementing "obvious" fixes is much, much harder than you might imagine.
  - gitfan86 5y ago
    My point is that if you made Elon CEO of Cisco, he could make e-mail addresses longer than 8 chars within a week. I know it isn't a simple as editing a config file that has "MAX_CHARS=8". It is going to break some peoples' spreadsheets and processes, but the world will not end, and the company will not go bankrupt because of that change.
    - aeturnum 5y ago
      I think you're really under-estimating the difficulty of changing these kinds of things but if Elon buys Twitter we'll both see soon!
andreilys 5y ago
There are different incentives and dynamics at play for a public vs. private company. A privately owned twitter will behave very different from a public one. Great example is that the bot problem contributes to MAU's, which impact Twitter's quarterly earnings. This means that they *can* solve the bot problem, but don't want to solve it right away lest it impact their metrics. So ultimately the decision to take the company private will help execs stop focusing on short-term earnings and focus on long term values
- aeturnum 5y ago
  The public / private angle is a good point! Though I am a little skeptical about magnitude. > the bot problem contributes to MAU's, which impact Twitter's quarterly earnings. For instance - I don't think MAUs "impact" Twitter's quarterly earnings - it is a stat that contextualizes their quarterly earnings for the market. So they have an incentive to not solve the bot problem if not solving it makes the site seem more popular - but that is very different from "being able to solve it." Like, I just think that problems at scale are hard. There are bots that seem, to me, to be hurting Twitter's apparent position as a public company and it seems like, if they could fix those bots, they would.
- kjkjadksj 5y ago
  I think a lot of people are making the assumption that long term values in this case would somehow mean a less toxic place. Toxicity and rage bait is of course highly profitable, and users who can actually put twitter aside and not let it invade their day are the least profitable users. Private or public the incentives of a business are always to not leave any money on the table.
fundad 5y ago
especially because without content moderation, it's going to be ALL BOTS. His money is probably invested in a bot provider.
layer8 5y ago
It would be depressing to think that current Twitter is the best that can be achieved. Twitter is such a mess and has been for long enough that I think the risk of making it even worse is worth a try letting Elon shake things up, to maybe get out of the current local maximum (if that’s what it is). If Elon fails, it won’t be a critical loss IMO. If anything, if it fails badly enough that might in turn open up an opportunity for a new platform.
- aeturnum 5y ago
  I fully agree that twitter has problems and that escaping a local maximum might be just what it needs. That said, given what Elon has said, I am skeptical that he thinks twitter is in a "local maximum" or needs a real shakeup. We'll see tho!

gitfan86 5y 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 5y 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 5y 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?
- gitfan86 5y ago
  If you are the CTO of Cisco you don't risk your job, because you put in 20 years kissing ass and climbing the corporate ladder, and at the end of the day you don't give a shit about e-mail servers running legacy code, you're here for the executive perks.
  - ProjectArcturis 5y ago
    Exactly. And if you're Elon Musk, you run amok like a bull in a china shop, breaking everything while chasing after whatever shiny object caught your eye recently.
    - gitfan86 5y ago
      You would prefer that we have more executives that don't get things done and instead focus on not getting fired? The Climate change situation would be better off if we didn't have Tesla disrupting the status quo on EVs? Rural and Emergency responders and the Ukrainian civilians would be better off if Starlink didn't exist?
aeturnum 5y ago
Did you look into how much work it would take to allow Cisco to accept email addresses longer than 8 chars? That is kind of my point. Like, the work to change the internal systems at Cisco does not get easier depending on who owns the company. The idea that a problem "looks easy to solve" and therefor the problem is that the people in charge are dumb is a childish way of looking at the world. All of large companies I've worked in / with have dumb restrictions. Everyone knows they are dumb. In my experience they are sometimes right and sometimes wrong but it's true that implementing "obvious" fixes is much, much harder than you might imagine.
- gitfan86 5y ago
  My point is that if you made Elon CEO of Cisco, he could make e-mail addresses longer than 8 chars within a week. I know it isn't a simple as editing a config file that has "MAX_CHARS=8". It is going to break some peoples' spreadsheets and processes, but the world will not end, and the company will not go bankrupt because of that change.
  - aeturnum 5y ago
    I think you're really under-estimating the difficulty of changing these kinds of things but if Elon buys Twitter we'll both see soon!

andreilys 5y ago

There are different incentives and dynamics at play for a public vs. private company. A privately owned twitter will behave very different from a public one. Great example is that the bot problem contributes to MAU's, which impact Twitter's quarterly earnings. This means that they *can* solve the bot problem, but don't want to solve it right away lest it impact their metrics. So ultimately the decision to take the company private will help execs stop focusing on short-term earnings and focus on long term values

aeturnum 5y ago
The public / private angle is a good point! Though I am a little skeptical about magnitude. > the bot problem contributes to MAU's, which impact Twitter's quarterly earnings. For instance - I don't think MAUs "impact" Twitter's quarterly earnings - it is a stat that contextualizes their quarterly earnings for the market. So they have an incentive to not solve the bot problem if not solving it makes the site seem more popular - but that is very different from "being able to solve it." Like, I just think that problems at scale are hard. There are bots that seem, to me, to be hurting Twitter's apparent position as a public company and it seems like, if they could fix those bots, they would.
kjkjadksj 5y ago
I think a lot of people are making the assumption that long term values in this case would somehow mean a less toxic place. Toxicity and rage bait is of course highly profitable, and users who can actually put twitter aside and not let it invade their day are the least profitable users. Private or public the incentives of a business are always to not leave any money on the table.

fundad 5y ago

especially because without content moderation, it's going to be ALL BOTS. His money is probably invested in a bot provider.

layer8 5y ago

It would be depressing to think that current Twitter is the best that can be achieved. Twitter is such a mess and has been for long enough that I think the risk of making it even worse is worth a try letting Elon shake things up, to maybe get out of the current local maximum (if that’s what it is). If Elon fails, it won’t be a critical loss IMO. If anything, if it fails badly enough that might in turn open up an opportunity for a new platform.

aeturnum 5y ago
I fully agree that twitter has problems and that escaping a local maximum might be just what it needs. That said, given what Elon has said, I am skeptical that he thinks twitter is in a "local maximum" or needs a real shakeup. We'll see tho!