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Personally, I think the value of Twitter will be much higher under Elon Musk than under old management. I don't know if it was undervalued or overvalued, so I d

by blagie 5y ago

Personally, I think the value of Twitter will be much higher under Elon Musk than under old management. I don't know if it was undervalued or overvalued, so I don't know if he's going to make money on it, but from the outside, it felt mismanaged. I do think employees will scream "bloody murder," but it will be the wrong employees screaming the hardest. Twitter should be neutral, and support diversity. Twitter employees can't tolerate red states, let alone the diversity of the broader world. Muslims constitute over a billion people. Chinese are over a billion. Toss in Latin America, Slavic countries, and so on, and you have a broad swath of cultures which views out-of-line with woke Twitter employees. If Elon can make Twitter less progressive, white, affluent, Western, blue state value aligned, that's a bigger, broader userbase. On the other side, Twitter hasn't really improved since coming out. The number of employees has more than doubled since 2017, and it's not quite clear why. There's a lot of work to be done on either the cost side or the product improvement side. I don't feel like it has much beyond momentum. A key question is whether Elon will be able to make a workplace environment competitive with FAANG. He's not known as a great guy to work for. He will need that calibre of talent (if not the current quantity).

Barrin92 5y ago
>and you have a broad swath of cultures which views out-of-line with woke Twitter employees. I hope you realize they're also out of line with Elon's eclectic libertarianism, and that those cultures not only disagree with woke employees but also with his 'free speech absolutism' and I hope Elon recognizes this because I have no interest in having American 'free speech' imported.
- olliej 5y ago
  Elon has classic tech/rich person “libertarianism”. He has benefited his entire life by massive government support: his early money largely coming through growing up with access to what was essentially slave labour, to his modern successes in which he took massive amounts of money from the government, while also refusing to pay taxes. He demands law enforcement protect his interests, while intentionally and repeatedly ignoring the law himself. That is his “libertarianism” is a return to his heritage: he should be a part of a privileged society, where the core cost of keeping the country running should be borne by people have as few rights and resources as possible. Anything he can do to create his childhood utopia he will do.
- Dma54rhs 5y ago
  No one is forcing German users to use twitter first place. Also your post reads awfully xenophobic.
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    I don't think I was and I promise you my intent wasn't to be xenophobic. I make no judgement about how the US governs itself but it's important to point out, and Elon Musk has a track record of not understanding this, following the law and regulations isn't optional. And if I understood Elon correctly by the way, the reason he took Twitter over in the first place is precisely because he considers it 'the public town square' that everyone is forced to use.
olliej 5y ago
So to be clear, you believe the Twitter should be unbiased towards terrorist videos, Child abuse, etc? Or is it just the white supremacy, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia that you want back? This is a very simple question. You either want unbiased or you are saying that the stuff that “wokeness” limited is good, and should be given a large platform. Yes or no? This is a very simple binary question
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  No, it's not binary. There are plenty of answers beside "yes" and "no".
  - olliej 5y ago
    The question is: "do you censor some content?"
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      We get it. You've got your "gotcha" question that you keep hammering on because you think you can force us to agree with you if you just keep asking it enough times. We aren't interested in playing your game or having a conversation where you lead us by the nose. We talk in absolutist terms, not because we all are actually absolutists, but because the moment you say you favor restrictions on speech, someone wants you to support restrictions big enough to cover a "military operation". We aren't interested in going there. If we can't actually make absolute free speech work, that's at least where our hearts are and the direction we push toward. So, OK, if you want to say "aha, see, you really don't believe in absolutely free speech", well, great, enjoy your pointless victory. We're going to keep pushing in the direction of speech that is as unrestricted as possible.
      - olliej 5y ago
        It is not a gotcha question, you talk in absolute terms of "free speech", because you know it is less acceptable to say "I want to call LGBT people a disease", "I want to be able to blame minorities". What I am trying to say, is that I am sick of pandering to that bullshit deflection. If you hate some minority, and think that you are in the right for doing so, you should just be saying that. You shouldn't be claiming other stuff is being censored, and that's what you're correcting, as a cover to get back to bigotry, attacking minorities, and of course that other favorite: trying to overthrow elections. Because that's the only significant censorship that twitter has added, and even that is fairly minimal.
nebula8804 5y ago
>Muslims constitute over a billion people. Chinese are over a billion. Toss in Latin America, Slavic countries, and so on, and you have a broad swath of cultures which views out-of-line with woke Twitter employees. The same could be said if you compared these groups to Republican Trump voting god fearing peoples. Thats how we ended up with things like the Muslim ban and evidently a response to that mentality in the form of the extreme left(Twitter woke mob, Antifa, etc.) On sites like HN and popular commentary like Joe Rogan I only ever hear this argument in one direction: against Leftists and never hear the criticism of the same being done (for a lot longer) by the Right.
s1artibartfast 5y ago
>A key question is whether Elon will be able to make a workplace environment competitive with FAANG. He's not known as a great guy to work for. He will need that calibre of talent (if not the current quantity). I really wonder about this part. His model with SpaceX was basically the opposite- Lots of cheap junior areospace engineers backed a small quality of top tier experts.

by blagie 5y ago

Barrin92 5y ago

>and you have a broad swath of cultures which views out-of-line with woke Twitter employees. I hope you realize they're also out of line with Elon's eclectic libertarianism, and that those cultures not only disagree with woke employees but also with his 'free speech absolutism' and I hope Elon recognizes this because I have no interest in having American 'free speech' imported.

olliej 5y ago
Elon has classic tech/rich person “libertarianism”. He has benefited his entire life by massive government support: his early money largely coming through growing up with access to what was essentially slave labour, to his modern successes in which he took massive amounts of money from the government, while also refusing to pay taxes. He demands law enforcement protect his interests, while intentionally and repeatedly ignoring the law himself. That is his “libertarianism” is a return to his heritage: he should be a part of a privileged society, where the core cost of keeping the country running should be borne by people have as few rights and resources as possible. Anything he can do to create his childhood utopia he will do.
Dma54rhs 5y ago
No one is forcing German users to use twitter first place. Also your post reads awfully xenophobic.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  I don't think I was and I promise you my intent wasn't to be xenophobic. I make no judgement about how the US governs itself but it's important to point out, and Elon Musk has a track record of not understanding this, following the law and regulations isn't optional. And if I understood Elon correctly by the way, the reason he took Twitter over in the first place is precisely because he considers it 'the public town square' that everyone is forced to use.

olliej 5y ago

So to be clear, you believe the Twitter should be unbiased towards terrorist videos, Child abuse, etc? Or is it just the white supremacy, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia that you want back? This is a very simple question. You either want unbiased or you are saying that the stuff that “wokeness” limited is good, and should be given a large platform. Yes or no? This is a very simple binary question

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
No, it's not binary. There are plenty of answers beside "yes" and "no".
- olliej 5y ago
  The question is: "do you censor some content?"
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    We get it. You've got your "gotcha" question that you keep hammering on because you think you can force us to agree with you if you just keep asking it enough times. We aren't interested in playing your game or having a conversation where you lead us by the nose. We talk in absolutist terms, not because we all are actually absolutists, but because the moment you say you favor restrictions on speech, someone wants you to support restrictions big enough to cover a "military operation". We aren't interested in going there. If we can't actually make absolute free speech work, that's at least where our hearts are and the direction we push toward. So, OK, if you want to say "aha, see, you really don't believe in absolutely free speech", well, great, enjoy your pointless victory. We're going to keep pushing in the direction of speech that is as unrestricted as possible.
    - olliej 5y ago
      It is not a gotcha question, you talk in absolute terms of "free speech", because you know it is less acceptable to say "I want to call LGBT people a disease", "I want to be able to blame minorities". What I am trying to say, is that I am sick of pandering to that bullshit deflection. If you hate some minority, and think that you are in the right for doing so, you should just be saying that. You shouldn't be claiming other stuff is being censored, and that's what you're correcting, as a cover to get back to bigotry, attacking minorities, and of course that other favorite: trying to overthrow elections. Because that's the only significant censorship that twitter has added, and even that is fairly minimal.

nebula8804 5y ago

>Muslims constitute over a billion people. Chinese are over a billion. Toss in Latin America, Slavic countries, and so on, and you have a broad swath of cultures which views out-of-line with woke Twitter employees. The same could be said if you compared these groups to Republican Trump voting god fearing peoples. Thats how we ended up with things like the Muslim ban and evidently a response to that mentality in the form of the extreme left(Twitter woke mob, Antifa, etc.) On sites like HN and popular commentary like Joe Rogan I only ever hear this argument in one direction: against Leftists and never hear the criticism of the same being done (for a lot longer) by the Right.

s1artibartfast 5y ago

>A key question is whether Elon will be able to make a workplace environment competitive with FAANG. He's not known as a great guy to work for. He will need that calibre of talent (if not the current quantity). I really wonder about this part. His model with SpaceX was basically the opposite- Lots of cheap junior areospace engineers backed a small quality of top tier experts.