26 ms·

Welcome to Hell, Elon

153 points by balaga01 4y ago

mikkergp 4y ago
“ Twitter, the company, makes very little interesting technology; the tech stack is not the valuable asset. The asset is the user base: hopelessly addicted politicians, reporters, celebrities, and other people who should know better but keep posting anyway. You! You, Elon Musk, are addicted to Twitter. You’re the asset. You just bought yourself for $44 billion dollars.”
labrador 4y ago
My first thought when Musk bought Twitter was "His engineering has team figured out content moderation" but I've seen no evidence or talk of that. So I think it's true that he impulsively bought himself his worst nightmare.
- datalopers 4y ago
  He's going find it's tough growing a company without a constant flow of government contracts and subsidies.
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    I'm pretty sure every MBA ever is laughing at the implicit assumptions in the article and these comments. It might not be pretty but there are other ways than growth to make a company more profitable/valuable...
    - pmoriarty 4y ago
      I'm not sure if Musk's goal is to make Twitter profitable or to make some sort of ideological point.
    - datalopers 4y ago
      Absolutely. I’m talking specifically about Elon Musk. He only knows how to run gov funded organizations. Just like his buddy Thiel and Palantir.
  - 93po 4y ago
    You mean like he did with Zip2 at over $300 million, and X.com at over $1.5 billion? As far as I know Starlink isn't getting subsidies either. Tell us about your experience at growing companies - do you know something about this that Elon doesn't?
    - datalopers 4y ago
      Hi Jason.
      - 93po 4y ago
        ?
  - qualudeheart 4y ago
    Biz constraints on Twitter don’t really matter to Elon. I take him at his word that be bought Twitter for ideological reasons.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  > bought himself his worst nightmare. His twitter profile currently says "Chief Twit". Teenage boy level humor but the joke is on the joker.
  - KeyBoardG 4y ago
    Even if Twitter is a complete financial loss (and I think he will lose a lot of it), Elon will still be a billionaire. His personal life will feel zero of that impact.
    - uni_rule 4y ago
      He doesn't know what he's doing unless his main goal was always just to distract a bunch of people away from something bigger. On the concrete end I think he'll eat shit like Verizon/Oath/Yahoo did when they lost $0.8 Billion dollars on from their initial purchase price reselling Tumblr after ~6 years of ownership after running its userbase into the ground and scaring away all of its most competent original staff.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  > His engineering has team figured out content moderation Which of his engineering teams? Tesla? SpaceX? I don't see why they would be working on content moderation.
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    Hot take: there is overlap between Dojo (Tesla’s self driving ML system they feed data into to tune “FSD” models) and ingesting Tweets and signal to automate content moderation. How good will it be? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ DALL-E is pretty good, let’s see where this goes.
    - danpalmer 4y ago
      Dojo is just machine learning optimised hardware, and it's optimised specifically for the FSD use-case which is lots of image processing. I can't imagine it having any benefit whatsoever for Tweet moderation above using some GPUs for ML. Also Musk likes to pitch integration between his companies but the reality is that there's very little.
  - SilverBirch 4y ago
    And if Tesla engineers are working on content moderation for Twitter I think a few Tesla share holders would be interested in why they're bankrolling Musk's other enterprises.
    - cma 4y ago
      Space X bailed out Solar City with NASA money by buying its junk bonds. Tesla bailed them out with a fake shingle presentation to drum up an acquisition. In the past the board of SpaceX got angry at its workers and resources working for Boring Company: > The arrangement alarmed some longtime investors in SpaceX, including its largest outside backer, Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, some of the people said. The investors learned in recent months that despite the diversion of SpaceX resources and staffing to the fledgling Boring startup, it was Musk who was in line to receive almost all of any future profits, these people said. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-questions-over-elon-musks-use-of-spacex-resources-for-boring-co-tunnels-2018-12-17 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-questions-over-elon-mu... It was basically embezzlement, but they ended up with a quiet settlement giving SpaceX some shares: > In early 2018, The Boring Company was spun out from SpaceX and into a separate corporate entity.[27] Somewhat less than 10% of equity was given to early employees, and over 90% to Elon Musk. Subsequent concerns by SpaceX shareholders resulted in a December 2018 reallocation of 6% of The Boring Company's equity to SpaceX. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boring_Company#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boring_Company#History
- pjkundert 4y ago
  Perhaps Elon has heard of K-Means Clustering, and you haven't... "Solving" content moderation is a losing battle -- there is no way to humanly moderate anything at the rate it can be produced, and Elon knows this. It's insane, so he probably won't do it. But, allowing content to be produced, but making sure no real person ever sees it, until the content producer earns their way into "your" group -- now that can be automated. Elon has access to Exascale hardware, so K-means Clusters with arbitrarily large dimensionality is at his disposal. Ya figure he might not have thought this through?
  - labrador 4y ago
    Oh sure, we can talk about Voronoi cells all day, but the Weber problem indicates an increasing number of k-medians and and a decreasing number of k-medoids. Anyone with the slightest familiarity with the Rocchio algorithm knows that.
    - pjkundert 4y ago
      So, if you know that Fermat-Weber had fast approximation solutions (O(logn)) published by 2003 (Bose, Mahashwari & Morin), and Rocchio "training" is linear O(|D| + |C|) (where D is the Document set (tweets) and C is the Class set (agents)), why wouldn't Elon maybe be able to use his existing automatic "Labelling" AI workflow to implement something like Rocchio and/or Fermat-Weber? I didn't meant to be rude; but, you claiming "I've seen no evidence of that" also seemed rude. Sorry for responding "in kind", and not assuming the best. But, seriously; I immediately thought "Wow, I've seen evidence of that", straight from Elon's latest "AI Day" presentation... My theory on "why" so many smart Google / Meta / Twitter / ... people have not implemented K-Means Clustering? Because it gives power back to the Agents in the system -- they can't shove their pre-selected content in your face to drive Ad clicks. I think Elon doesn't care so much about that. Or, sees how giving back authority to the agents will eventually attract orders of magnitude more agents / interaction into the system, offsetting the per-agent reduction in Ad revenue. EDIT: Sorry, O(nlogn) deterministic or O(n) time-random approximations for Fermat-Weber.
- mikkergp 4y ago
  > His engineering has team figured out content moderation Depending on how you define content moderation this is literally not possible, 1. Because content moderation is adversarial and has to adapt and 2. Content moderation is subjective, as the original article says content moderation is the product that companies sell, and it will likely have to change as time goes on (I’m not just talking “what’s popular/offensive” but like do you allow videos, how long are the videos, do videos get prioritized above text or audio, 280 character vs 144 character tweets, editing tweets, dislike button, etc.
erellsworth 4y ago
You done messed up E-Elon.
- erellsworth 4y ago
  Man, I guess folks here don't like Key & Peele jokes.
  - aaronbrethorst 4y ago
    I’m quite fond of that sketch.
    - zote 4y ago
      It is a wonderful sketch A-aron
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - jayd16 4y ago
    Funny references alone will get down voted. It's just the culture of this board. If you want to joke you'll need some more substance as well.
    - Freak_NL 4y ago
      If I wanted comments where I could correctly guess what the first ten most popular posts would be if I had an encyclopaedic knowledge of memes, I'd go to Reddit. I don't think that this is a uncommon view to hold here. Just different cultures, as you say.
    - Koshkin 4y ago
      Then it won't be a joke anymore...
      - spacemadness 4y ago
LatteLazy 4y ago
It's very very unclear to me why he bought it. He said it was about free speech but Twitter is already about as free as it's possible to be without permitting a whole bunch of content that is NOT protected under the first amendment (CP, calls to violence etc). And if it is about free speech then it cannot be an automated moderation play, because there is nothing to moderate if you're a pure free speech platform. The best I can guess, is it's a political play? Turn down politicians who he dislikes? Or he just had a drunk/high/bipolar period and did it without a plan.
- paulpauper 4y ago
  It was a joke. He didn't want to buy it.
- yreg 4y ago
  >Twitter is already about as free as it's possible E.g. in Trump's case they could have deleted the few tweets which they considered calls to violence instead of handing out a permanent ban. (I'm not saying they should have done that.)
- Chris2048 4y ago
  You are suggesting the only people banned from twitter are those posting "CP, calls to violence etc" - not true. Also, other than bans there are suspensions such as the New York Post for a story on Hunter Biden. Plus there are plenty posting call to violence who are not banned, but are suspiciously on the "right" side of politics.
- bpodgursky 4y ago
  > Twitter is already about as free as it's possible to be without permitting a whole bunch of content that is NOT protected under the first amendment This is just wildly untrue. There is a huge range of gender-critical views, vaccine skepticism, any combination of race/gender/genetics/IQ discourse, and a ton of other topics that will get you banned, that come nowhere near first amendment protections. You might think that's a good thing, that's a valid argument, but it's simply untrue to imply that the limit is similar to 1A protections.
- 4y ago
pipeline_peak 4y ago
- happytoexplain 4y ago
  Yes, but we should probably avoid framing those two sides so hatefully and over-broadly, as you and the author have done. Edit: After my post, the parent was edited to include the qualifier, "both of these opinions are the extreme".
  - pipeline_peak 4y ago
    I don't think what I'm saying is broad, there are many SJW minded people who fall into harassing/blacklisting/doxxing
    - happytoexplain 4y ago
      I think it's as broad and uncharitable as saying Republicans are racist. It's not that there aren't a lot of people who fall into the category, it's that, by itself, the phrase adds nothing and acts only as an insult to the entire group. You can certainly say that same thing as part of a larger, refined context that trims away the implied spit-at-the-feet of the broader group.
      - pipeline_peak 4y ago
        I said SJW bullies, that is people of the SJW type who bully, not SJW's are bullies
- Covzire 4y ago
  Right, I think Elon's idea is moving censorship into everyone's own responsibility, something like: Follow who you want to, ignore who you don't, it's not your responsibility nor your right to silence other people off a monopoly platform just because you disagree with them.
  - 4y ago
nelsonic 4y ago
Never bet against Elon. Starlink alone will make more money than twitter ever could. If you don’t see the potential for Twitter. That’s fine. But don’t write an article about how it’s “hell” if you don’t have the vision for how to improve it. That’s like someone who has no idea how to cook leaving a bad review for food they could never hope to improve on. If Elon listened to Haters/Doubters like this Verge journo, the world would be worse off.
- paulpauper 4y ago
  yeah, many hedge funds and individuals have lost serious $ betting against tesla
  - cma 4y ago
    Don't bet against him getting away with scamming. And don't bet against politicians wanting to affiliate with his celebrity/interact with his clout giving him subsidies.
    - dymk 4y ago
      Yeah, all those Teslas which deffo weren’t sold, what a scam
      - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
        Are you saying the Tesla valuation is only due to the cars that have been sold?
        dymk 4y ago
        I'm saying where's the scam?
      - jjeaff 4y ago
        Those that paid $10k+ for full self driving got at least partially scammed.
karaterobot 4y ago
I am personally hoping that Twitter will break Elon Musk, and then go out of business. That would be the best possible outcome. I am not holding my breath that it will happen, but it would be incredible.
- influx 4y ago
  Why would losing Tesla and SpaceX be incredible?
  - IgorPartola 4y ago
    Tesla existed before Musk. He bought it and by arbitration got listed as a founder.
    - 93po 4y ago
      This is such a tired take. Tesla was worth, at most, a few million dollars when Elon became their largest investor. They had no products. They had no sales. He turned a $2 million company into a $700 billion company, but he's not the founder because he wasn't in the paperwork for the first year of its existence in which very little happened? Ok.
  - beardyw 4y ago
    I think the post was referring to Musk, not those companies.
  - inkcapmushroom 4y ago
    Those companies would not evaporate without Elon.
    - influx 4y ago
      Would they be where they are without him?
  - neonsunset 4y ago
    To people downvoting this message - I do sincerely hope we get to live in two separate lifetimes: me in the one where SpaceX succeeds and you in the one where it fails.
evouga 4y ago
Fascinating that the OP compares Twitter to “living at Disney World”! I can’t stand the obviously fake facades and carefully curated costumes and fake smiles at Disney in large doses and never understood the mindset that could drive adults to want to live full-time at the park. Twitter addiction has wasted the best minds of my generation and if it implodes and takes Musk with it… win-win!
hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
While I agree with the author on many things, this one upset me: > fucking government... They’re out here banning books, Elon! I don't believe that repeating a lie will make it true. The government is not banning any books, Nilay. Parents do. And not globally, but at a local level. It's another question whether they should or not, but I'd expect more precision and integrity from a prominent journalist. Most people don't fact check everything and if they learn something from a reputable source, they believe it.
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  The Verge is actually a subsidiary of Vox, the far-left tabloid. It's not surprising then that Vox-like traits appear in their articles.
- pionar 4y ago
  Parents through their local school boards, AKA, government.
  - amanaplanacanal 4y ago
    Apparently some people think public schools are not a government institution?
- objectivetruth 4y ago
- dymk 4y ago
  Who do you think enforces a book ban at a local school?
  - hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
    Parents aka the people. Literally the opposite of the government.
    - 4y ago
joshstrange 4y ago
Can't wait to see that hot takes from the free speech absolutists who have never experienced that first-hand on a platform they frequent regularly. We already know what that looks like, it's 4chan/8kun/etc and surprise, it's absolute shit.
- Spivak 4y ago
  And if you want a more direct analogue if you assume that the problem with 4chan is the culture and not the moderation that the absolute worst most vile Mastadon servers are no moderation to the point where major servers had to just completely blacklist them. If you want to lose all faith in humanity peruse the Gab database dump. No moderation is a loosing game because any platform that offers better moderation will be attractive to the masses leaving the people whose decorum is so abhorrent that the "free speech" servers are the only ones that will take them.
  - joshstrange 4y ago
    Yep, I used to be a free speech absolutist when I was younger, back when I thought the world was black and white and that simple ideas could "solve everything". Then I participated in forums/groups that had zero moderation and it was hell. Even then I didn't recognize the issues fully. It wasn't until I moderated a community myself that it finally clicked. I tried to be unbiased as possible but that lead to me silencing people who stepped over the line who I agreed with and me giving people I didn't agree with a ton of leeway to avoid seeming biased, it nearly killed the community. Once I started trying to enforce right down the center I got to experience the backlash of the people who I had given leeway to (not the same people, same group of people). Death threats, attacks, etc. It was not fun. I didn't want to be seen as a "dictator" but that experience taught me that if you want to have a good environment for discussion/community you have to crack down hard on the people who keep pushing the line. Short-term bans resulted in lots of complaining with zero change in behavior for 99% of the offenders. Permanent bans were the only useful tool, even then they'd still sometimes come back under new accounts but eventually get bored. People complain about reddit moderation but I totally get it in most cases. If you let people push the line they will just keep going until it gets really bad, much better to nip it in the bud. Especially when we are talking about unpaid moderators. Moderation is not an easy or fun job.
nemo44x 4y ago
I'm betting that something like the Google Circles gets implemented but at a higher level. In order to engage with certain people you have to be a member of certain groups/circles or not a member of certain circles/groups. These groups would be moderated by the people that run them. So instead of having Twitter pick and choose who is allowed on the platform, you crowdsource it to the people who want to moderate their groups - and lots of these people exist.
- SilverBirch 4y ago
  Isn't that... reddit?
  - nemo44x 4y ago
    I don’t think so. Reddit is about topical groups. Circles are more like trusted connections between people. Like how society works. I should be able to see the content “everyone” makes or be able to limit myself to exclude certain groups or only include certain groups of people. This way if there is content that you consider harmful to yourself or you are unable to live with it, you can still participate on the platform. It’s an individuals choice, not a corporations.
    - uni_rule 4y ago
      Sounds like what Discord is slowly becoming as it adds forum pages with comment threads as an option on public servers.
- notacoward 4y ago
  > I'm betting that something like the Google Circles gets implemented This would actually be a great outcome IMO. Supporting shared blocklists would have similar effect, and probably be easier to implement. Unfortunately, I very much doubt than Elmo Nutsack would allow that. Despite all his claims about "free speech" I'm pretty sure enabling those who would silence people they deem too "woke" via harassment is very much part of the reason behind his takeover. Check out the #TwitterTakeover tag to see the hordes slavering at the prospect (but be aware that it's hard on the stomach if you're a decent person).
popilewiz 4y ago
SilverBirch 4y ago
Yeah, I think this absolutely nails it, and what I find interesting is that in all the time this acquisition has been up in the air Musk has failed to ever engage in the detail of how to address these issues. Elon Musk is interestingly probably the worst person to run Twitter, because whilst the previous guys running twitter weren't very competent, they had their product and they were navigating through issues under extreme pressure. Musk on the other hand, has 1,000 pain points to press on that everyone who previously tried to coerce twitter will now be looking at. Whether it be the federal government pressing on SpaceX, Union busting at Tesla, or whether it's Texas coming after Twitter for abortion information, he is going to be so much more exposed.
- 93po 4y ago
  > Musk has failed to ever engage in the detail of how to address these issues Do you mean engage publicly, or engage even privately within his own teams?
  - SilverBirch 4y ago
    Both, even within what we learned about through the chancery discovery and the leaks (lots of information leaked about what Musk presented to the bankers and investors as the business plan which is where the 75% cut number came from)
    - 93po 4y ago
      Can you tell me more about his private teams and their interactions with Elon? How often have they been reaching out to Elon, what do those communications look like, and what does it look like when Elon declines to provide them that information?
harshaw 4y ago
Hell indeed. A problem space with intractable non technical challenges. The saddest part for me is the distraction from the potential of his other businesses, most specifically SpaceX. I just want to see Starship succeed.
jongjong 4y ago
This article makes no sense; it sounds like leftist propaganda. Advertisers only care about 'brand safety' to the extent that it impacts their ability to sell stuff. So long as users keep using the platform, advertisers will keep coming back - They're not going to vacate the platform and let their competitors get all the eyeballs... If they did, those competitors would gain market share and make incumbents irrelevant. Users have made it clear that they want free speech on social media platforms so I don't see how giving users what they want would cause them to leave. The problem with Twitter so far is that they sold out to big governments and big corporations and completely neglected their users in the process. Having front-row access to users, Twitter is actually in a position to dictate the rules; it should not be taking orders from politicians and corporate executives when those orders are harmful to its users.
- _hcuq 4y ago
  Advertisers love 4chan type sewers. So do users.
  - jongjong 4y ago
    This makes no sense because people on Twitter choose who they follow. If some 'deplorables' want to follow some other deplorables, then let them; I'm sure some companies will still want to advertise to them. The people who only want to consume government and corporate propaganda will only see content from like-minded people anyway; they will get the safe experience that they want. No problem! Companies can target them and sell them cricket flour, dried maggots, lab-grown meat and COVID booster vaccine number 27... These people won't even realize that the deplorables also use Twitter because they will be in a different filter bubble.
    - ilyt 4y ago
      You don't get only stuff you follow tho, you get anything whoever you subscribed to retweeted.
      - jongjong 4y ago
throwaway71271 4y ago
half the article is about moderation because of advertisement, but he could just not do advertisement.
- lastofthemojito 4y ago
  Then how does Twitter make money? According to their latest quarterly report they had $1.18B in revenue, $1.08B from advertising. Is there really enough potential in "premium users" or something else to forgo that billion dollars per quarter? https://s22.q4cdn.com/826641620/files/doc_financials/2022/q2/Final_Q2'22_Earnings_Release.pdf https://s22.q4cdn.com/826641620/files/doc_financials/2022/q2...
  - qualudeheart 4y ago
    Musk can afford to sink money into it. It’s an important enough propaganda platform to be worth operating even at a less.
minimaxir 4y ago
The key quote which other comments are overlooking: > Here are some examples: you can write as many polite letters to advertisers as you want, but you cannot reasonably expect to collect any meaningful advertising revenue if you do not promise those advertisers “brand safety.” That means you have to ban racism, sexism, transphobia, and all kinds of other speech that is totally legal in the United States but reveals people to be total assholes. So you can make all the promises about “free speech” you want, but the dull reality is that you still have to ban a bunch of legal speech if you want to make money. And when you start doing that, your creepy new right-wing fanboys are going to viciously turn on you, just like they turn on every other social network that realizes the same essential truth. The one thing that can be counted on Elon doing is Elon doing what makes him the most money.
- lastofthemojito 4y ago
  Elon has also talked about open sourcing "the algorithm" or letting people customize the algorithm that suggests content for them, etc. I suspect that plays in here - by default, Twitter users (and unauthenticated browsers) will probably continue to see Twitter the same way as today, with relatively safe, moderated content. Logged-in folks will also have the option to go into unmoderated mode, which will drop you into the cesspool if you so desire. Presumably respectable companies will only advertise on the default layer; ads in the cesspool will be for "edgy" t-shirt companies and extremist politicians and others who don't care about their brand being displayed next to questionable content (or prefer it!). Illegal content of course must continue to be moderated regardless.
  - ilyt 4y ago
    Well, giving users of social media tools to filter stuff they want to see themselves rather than making site's moderators be moral guardians of the site (lmao) is certainly a better approach.
- ThrowawayR2 4y ago
  To play the devil's advocate: So why haven't advertisers abandoned Fox News? As long as Musk limits his newly acquired toy to being no worse than Fox News (which is plenty bad!), he can still keep advertising dollars coming in.
screye 4y ago
> Twitter is a disaster clown car company that is successful despite itself Isn't this the best kind of company to acquire ? A product that has such inherent value that even a bumbling clown car of company could not sabotage its ability to retain users. Imo, Reddit and Twitter have monopolized 2 of the most effective forms of communication to have existed on the internet: Forums and memes (memes in the Dawkinian sense) and their tiny size is entirely a result of terrible leadership. While musk didn't buy it for a particularly cheap price (at least in Winter 2022 prices), He should be able to justify the net worth as well as any competing tech company will be able to. To quote Charlie Munger: > Never underestimate the man who overestimates himself. These weird guys who overestimate themselves occasionally knock it right out of the park. I would never buy Tesla stock and I would never sell it short.
- incomingpain 4y ago
  >Isn't this the best kind of company to acquire ? Elon isn't worried about valuation. His consideration could be 'can I fix low hanging fruit and provide value' If elon is right the current content moderation has gone wrong, and it has. Then by fixing this it should provide a return on his investment. Not to mention the counter force of those who cannot allow free discussion who may buy him out in order to stop it. But more important, what elon also understands. What is a billion $? Elon is wealthy enough he can own any toy or thing he ever wants. It has less to do with some currency and himself. He has surpassed this point in economics placing him amongst a select few who have won this game. Now he has the chance to use this excess wealth to form the future. Which scares people.
throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
twitter could be in the green tomorrow if he really did fire all the useless mouths there. I will be very happy if all their frontend people get axed.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
lemondrink 4y ago
Is Twitter not dying? The youth don’t care, the elderly don’t care, and those in the middle (late twenties, early forties) are ending their terminally online lives for families, careers, travel, etc. Twitter is being distilled into a political tool - both side, endlessly crying into the void, appealing to their confirmation biases. Hop on over to /pol/ to see what unregulated politic speak turns into. I give it 10 years and it’ll be a ghost town.
- badcppdev 4y ago
  Your demographic breakdown is priceless. * Youth * Late 20s to early 40s * Elderly
- qualudeheart 4y ago
  I don’t think it’ll be like /pol/ if you mean that it’ll be a right wing monopoly. There are too many leftists for that to happen. There wasn’t a right wing monopoly 10 years ago when Twitter barely had any moderation and people were more conservative. There won’t be one in the future, unless Elon bizarrely goes fascist and bans all the liberals.
diimdeep 4y ago
Everyone who owns mass media[1] and now will be competing with Elon is playing a game of throwing rotten hate tomatoes in his direction, very entertaining to watch. [1] https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/futureofmedia/index-us-mainstream-media-ownership https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/futureofmedia/index-us-mains...
twoWhlsGud 4y ago
"Content moderation is what Twitter makes" - that's a brilliant summation of the problem. These social networks have turned themselves into publishers (by centering the recommendation algorithms where else could you end up?). That's the thing no one wants to think too hard about because of the very uncomfortable implications...
entropicgravity 4y ago
A lot of worrying here about moderation in the new Twitter. Musk though will just whip up a version of Full Self Driving to automate the moderating and problem solved, I'm pretty sure.
TradingPlaces 4y ago
Nilay Patel is a national treasure. Every word is true, but especially this: >The essential truth of every social network is that the product is content moderation, and everyone hates the people who decide how content moderation works.
keeperoftruth 4y ago
NN88 4y ago
#MurderedByWords
amai 4y ago
"Are you excited for the Chinese government to find ways to threaten Tesla’s huge business in that country over content that appears on Twitter? Because it’s going to happen." This will happen and not only with China. Just think about Bezos, the Washington Post and Saudi Arabia. But on the other side I think Tesla and SpaceX shouldn't do business with dictatorships anyway. So maybe in the end this will be a good thing.
Marazan 4y ago
First they came for Nazis and I did not speak out for I was not a Nazi. Technically I did say something. I said "Cool, get those Nazi's out of here, good job."
18pfsmt 4y ago
This is quite a ridiculous blog post. Hyperbole is way too common these days, and this is the type of submission that drove away many of the smartest HN users. I will always remember when I first learned about bitcoin here in 2010 when the white paper was linked. Now we have shrieking missives warning about mean people writing stuff on the internet.
valeg 4y ago
Full of spite. We'll see. But moderation was kinda solved at Something Awful by demanding to pay 10 bucks at sign up. Mr. Musk may use something like this; he can demand 10 dogecoins in order to unblock someone mischievous. Hell, it could even be proportional to the reach of the account.

153 points by balaga01 4y ago

“ Twitter, the company, makes very little interesting technology; the tech stack is not the valuable asset. The asset is the user base: hopelessly addicted politicians, reporters, celebrities, and other people who should know better but keep posting anyway. You! You, Elon Musk, are addicted to Twitter. You’re the asset. You just bought yourself for $44 billion dollars.”

labrador 4y ago

My first thought when Musk bought Twitter was "His engineering has team figured out content moderation" but I've seen no evidence or talk of that. So I think it's true that he impulsively bought himself his worst nightmare.

datalopers 4y ago
He's going find it's tough growing a company without a constant flow of government contracts and subsidies.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure every MBA ever is laughing at the implicit assumptions in the article and these comments. It might not be pretty but there are other ways than growth to make a company more profitable/valuable...
  - pmoriarty 4y ago
    I'm not sure if Musk's goal is to make Twitter profitable or to make some sort of ideological point.
  - datalopers 4y ago
    Absolutely. I’m talking specifically about Elon Musk. He only knows how to run gov funded organizations. Just like his buddy Thiel and Palantir.
- 93po 4y ago
  You mean like he did with Zip2 at over $300 million, and X.com at over $1.5 billion? As far as I know Starlink isn't getting subsidies either. Tell us about your experience at growing companies - do you know something about this that Elon doesn't?
  - datalopers 4y ago
    Hi Jason.
    - 93po 4y ago
      ?
- qualudeheart 4y ago
  Biz constraints on Twitter don’t really matter to Elon. I take him at his word that be bought Twitter for ideological reasons.
andsoitis 4y ago
> bought himself his worst nightmare. His twitter profile currently says "Chief Twit". Teenage boy level humor but the joke is on the joker.
- KeyBoardG 4y ago
  Even if Twitter is a complete financial loss (and I think he will lose a lot of it), Elon will still be a billionaire. His personal life will feel zero of that impact.
  - uni_rule 4y ago
    He doesn't know what he's doing unless his main goal was always just to distract a bunch of people away from something bigger. On the concrete end I think he'll eat shit like Verizon/Oath/Yahoo did when they lost $0.8 Billion dollars on from their initial purchase price reselling Tumblr after ~6 years of ownership after running its userbase into the ground and scaring away all of its most competent original staff.
andsoitis 4y ago
> His engineering has team figured out content moderation Which of his engineering teams? Tesla? SpaceX? I don't see why they would be working on content moderation.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Hot take: there is overlap between Dojo (Tesla’s self driving ML system they feed data into to tune “FSD” models) and ingesting Tweets and signal to automate content moderation. How good will it be? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ DALL-E is pretty good, let’s see where this goes.
  - danpalmer 4y ago
    Dojo is just machine learning optimised hardware, and it's optimised specifically for the FSD use-case which is lots of image processing. I can't imagine it having any benefit whatsoever for Tweet moderation above using some GPUs for ML. Also Musk likes to pitch integration between his companies but the reality is that there's very little.
- SilverBirch 4y ago
  And if Tesla engineers are working on content moderation for Twitter I think a few Tesla share holders would be interested in why they're bankrolling Musk's other enterprises.
  - cma 4y ago
    Space X bailed out Solar City with NASA money by buying its junk bonds. Tesla bailed them out with a fake shingle presentation to drum up an acquisition. In the past the board of SpaceX got angry at its workers and resources working for Boring Company: > The arrangement alarmed some longtime investors in SpaceX, including its largest outside backer, Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, some of the people said. The investors learned in recent months that despite the diversion of SpaceX resources and staffing to the fledgling Boring startup, it was Musk who was in line to receive almost all of any future profits, these people said. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-questions-over-elon-musks-use-of-spacex-resources-for-boring-co-tunnels-2018-12-17 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-questions-over-elon-mu... It was basically embezzlement, but they ended up with a quiet settlement giving SpaceX some shares: > In early 2018, The Boring Company was spun out from SpaceX and into a separate corporate entity.[27] Somewhat less than 10% of equity was given to early employees, and over 90% to Elon Musk. Subsequent concerns by SpaceX shareholders resulted in a December 2018 reallocation of 6% of The Boring Company's equity to SpaceX. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boring_Company#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boring_Company#History
pjkundert 4y ago
Perhaps Elon has heard of K-Means Clustering, and you haven't... "Solving" content moderation is a losing battle -- there is no way to humanly moderate anything at the rate it can be produced, and Elon knows this. It's insane, so he probably won't do it. But, allowing content to be produced, but making sure no real person ever sees it, until the content producer earns their way into "your" group -- now that can be automated. Elon has access to Exascale hardware, so K-means Clusters with arbitrarily large dimensionality is at his disposal. Ya figure he might not have thought this through?
- labrador 4y ago
  Oh sure, we can talk about Voronoi cells all day, but the Weber problem indicates an increasing number of k-medians and and a decreasing number of k-medoids. Anyone with the slightest familiarity with the Rocchio algorithm knows that.
  - pjkundert 4y ago
    So, if you know that Fermat-Weber had fast approximation solutions (O(logn)) published by 2003 (Bose, Mahashwari & Morin), and Rocchio "training" is linear O(|D| + |C|) (where D is the Document set (tweets) and C is the Class set (agents)), why wouldn't Elon maybe be able to use his existing automatic "Labelling" AI workflow to implement something like Rocchio and/or Fermat-Weber? I didn't meant to be rude; but, you claiming "I've seen no evidence of that" also seemed rude. Sorry for responding "in kind", and not assuming the best. But, seriously; I immediately thought "Wow, I've seen evidence of that", straight from Elon's latest "AI Day" presentation... My theory on "why" so many smart Google / Meta / Twitter / ... people have not implemented K-Means Clustering? Because it gives power back to the Agents in the system -- they can't shove their pre-selected content in your face to drive Ad clicks. I think Elon doesn't care so much about that. Or, sees how giving back authority to the agents will eventually attract orders of magnitude more agents / interaction into the system, offsetting the per-agent reduction in Ad revenue. EDIT: Sorry, O(nlogn) deterministic or O(n) time-random approximations for Fermat-Weber.
mikkergp 4y ago
> His engineering has team figured out content moderation Depending on how you define content moderation this is literally not possible, 1. Because content moderation is adversarial and has to adapt and 2. Content moderation is subjective, as the original article says content moderation is the product that companies sell, and it will likely have to change as time goes on (I’m not just talking “what’s popular/offensive” but like do you allow videos, how long are the videos, do videos get prioritized above text or audio, 280 character vs 144 character tweets, editing tweets, dislike button, etc.

erellsworth 4y ago

You done messed up E-Elon.

erellsworth 4y ago
Man, I guess folks here don't like Key & Peele jokes.
- aaronbrethorst 4y ago
  I’m quite fond of that sketch.
  - zote 4y ago
    It is a wonderful sketch A-aron
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jayd16 4y ago
  Funny references alone will get down voted. It's just the culture of this board. If you want to joke you'll need some more substance as well.
  - Freak_NL 4y ago
    If I wanted comments where I could correctly guess what the first ten most popular posts would be if I had an encyclopaedic knowledge of memes, I'd go to Reddit. I don't think that this is a uncommon view to hold here. Just different cultures, as you say.
  - Koshkin 4y ago
    Then it won't be a joke anymore...
    - spacemadness 4y ago

LatteLazy 4y ago

It's very very unclear to me why he bought it. He said it was about free speech but Twitter is already about as free as it's possible to be without permitting a whole bunch of content that is NOT protected under the first amendment (CP, calls to violence etc). And if it is about free speech then it cannot be an automated moderation play, because there is nothing to moderate if you're a pure free speech platform. The best I can guess, is it's a political play? Turn down politicians who he dislikes? Or he just had a drunk/high/bipolar period and did it without a plan.

paulpauper 4y ago
It was a joke. He didn't want to buy it.
yreg 4y ago
>Twitter is already about as free as it's possible E.g. in Trump's case they could have deleted the few tweets which they considered calls to violence instead of handing out a permanent ban. (I'm not saying they should have done that.)
Chris2048 4y ago
You are suggesting the only people banned from twitter are those posting "CP, calls to violence etc" - not true. Also, other than bans there are suspensions such as the New York Post for a story on Hunter Biden. Plus there are plenty posting call to violence who are not banned, but are suspiciously on the "right" side of politics.
bpodgursky 4y ago
> Twitter is already about as free as it's possible to be without permitting a whole bunch of content that is NOT protected under the first amendment This is just wildly untrue. There is a huge range of gender-critical views, vaccine skepticism, any combination of race/gender/genetics/IQ discourse, and a ton of other topics that will get you banned, that come nowhere near first amendment protections. You might think that's a good thing, that's a valid argument, but it's simply untrue to imply that the limit is similar to 1A protections.
4y ago

pipeline_peak 4y ago

happytoexplain 4y ago
Yes, but we should probably avoid framing those two sides so hatefully and over-broadly, as you and the author have done. Edit: After my post, the parent was edited to include the qualifier, "both of these opinions are the extreme".
- pipeline_peak 4y ago
  I don't think what I'm saying is broad, there are many SJW minded people who fall into harassing/blacklisting/doxxing
  - happytoexplain 4y ago
    I think it's as broad and uncharitable as saying Republicans are racist. It's not that there aren't a lot of people who fall into the category, it's that, by itself, the phrase adds nothing and acts only as an insult to the entire group. You can certainly say that same thing as part of a larger, refined context that trims away the implied spit-at-the-feet of the broader group.
    - pipeline_peak 4y ago
      I said SJW bullies, that is people of the SJW type who bully, not SJW's are bullies
Covzire 4y ago
Right, I think Elon's idea is moving censorship into everyone's own responsibility, something like: Follow who you want to, ignore who you don't, it's not your responsibility nor your right to silence other people off a monopoly platform just because you disagree with them.
- 4y ago

nelsonic 4y ago

Never bet against Elon. Starlink alone will make more money than twitter ever could. If you don’t see the potential for Twitter. That’s fine. But don’t write an article about how it’s “hell” if you don’t have the vision for how to improve it. That’s like someone who has no idea how to cook leaving a bad review for food they could never hope to improve on. If Elon listened to Haters/Doubters like this Verge journo, the world would be worse off.

paulpauper 4y ago
yeah, many hedge funds and individuals have lost serious $ betting against tesla
- cma 4y ago
  Don't bet against him getting away with scamming. And don't bet against politicians wanting to affiliate with his celebrity/interact with his clout giving him subsidies.
  - dymk 4y ago
    Yeah, all those Teslas which deffo weren’t sold, what a scam
    - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
      Are you saying the Tesla valuation is only due to the cars that have been sold?
      - dymk 4y ago
        I'm saying where's the scam?
    - jjeaff 4y ago
      Those that paid $10k+ for full self driving got at least partially scammed.

karaterobot 4y ago

I am personally hoping that Twitter will break Elon Musk, and then go out of business. That would be the best possible outcome. I am not holding my breath that it will happen, but it would be incredible.

influx 4y ago
Why would losing Tesla and SpaceX be incredible?
- IgorPartola 4y ago
  Tesla existed before Musk. He bought it and by arbitration got listed as a founder.
  - 93po 4y ago
    This is such a tired take. Tesla was worth, at most, a few million dollars when Elon became their largest investor. They had no products. They had no sales. He turned a $2 million company into a $700 billion company, but he's not the founder because he wasn't in the paperwork for the first year of its existence in which very little happened? Ok.
- beardyw 4y ago
  I think the post was referring to Musk, not those companies.
- inkcapmushroom 4y ago
  Those companies would not evaporate without Elon.
  - influx 4y ago
    Would they be where they are without him?
- neonsunset 4y ago
  To people downvoting this message - I do sincerely hope we get to live in two separate lifetimes: me in the one where SpaceX succeeds and you in the one where it fails.

evouga 4y ago

Fascinating that the OP compares Twitter to “living at Disney World”! I can’t stand the obviously fake facades and carefully curated costumes and fake smiles at Disney in large doses and never understood the mindset that could drive adults to want to live full-time at the park. Twitter addiction has wasted the best minds of my generation and if it implodes and takes Musk with it… win-win!

hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago

While I agree with the author on many things, this one upset me: > fucking government... They’re out here banning books, Elon! I don't believe that repeating a lie will make it true. The government is not banning any books, Nilay. Parents do. And not globally, but at a local level. It's another question whether they should or not, but I'd expect more precision and integrity from a prominent journalist. Most people don't fact check everything and if they learn something from a reputable source, they believe it.

gjsman-1000 4y ago
The Verge is actually a subsidiary of Vox, the far-left tabloid. It's not surprising then that Vox-like traits appear in their articles.
pionar 4y ago
Parents through their local school boards, AKA, government.
- amanaplanacanal 4y ago
  Apparently some people think public schools are not a government institution?
objectivetruth 4y ago
dymk 4y ago
Who do you think enforces a book ban at a local school?
- hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
  Parents aka the people. Literally the opposite of the government.
  - 4y ago

joshstrange 4y ago

Can't wait to see that hot takes from the free speech absolutists who have never experienced that first-hand on a platform they frequent regularly. We already know what that looks like, it's 4chan/8kun/etc and surprise, it's absolute shit.

Spivak 4y ago
And if you want a more direct analogue if you assume that the problem with 4chan is the culture and not the moderation that the absolute worst most vile Mastadon servers are no moderation to the point where major servers had to just completely blacklist them. If you want to lose all faith in humanity peruse the Gab database dump. No moderation is a loosing game because any platform that offers better moderation will be attractive to the masses leaving the people whose decorum is so abhorrent that the "free speech" servers are the only ones that will take them.
- joshstrange 4y ago
  Yep, I used to be a free speech absolutist when I was younger, back when I thought the world was black and white and that simple ideas could "solve everything". Then I participated in forums/groups that had zero moderation and it was hell. Even then I didn't recognize the issues fully. It wasn't until I moderated a community myself that it finally clicked. I tried to be unbiased as possible but that lead to me silencing people who stepped over the line who I agreed with and me giving people I didn't agree with a ton of leeway to avoid seeming biased, it nearly killed the community. Once I started trying to enforce right down the center I got to experience the backlash of the people who I had given leeway to (not the same people, same group of people). Death threats, attacks, etc. It was not fun. I didn't want to be seen as a "dictator" but that experience taught me that if you want to have a good environment for discussion/community you have to crack down hard on the people who keep pushing the line. Short-term bans resulted in lots of complaining with zero change in behavior for 99% of the offenders. Permanent bans were the only useful tool, even then they'd still sometimes come back under new accounts but eventually get bored. People complain about reddit moderation but I totally get it in most cases. If you let people push the line they will just keep going until it gets really bad, much better to nip it in the bud. Especially when we are talking about unpaid moderators. Moderation is not an easy or fun job.

nemo44x 4y ago

I'm betting that something like the Google Circles gets implemented but at a higher level. In order to engage with certain people you have to be a member of certain groups/circles or not a member of certain circles/groups. These groups would be moderated by the people that run them. So instead of having Twitter pick and choose who is allowed on the platform, you crowdsource it to the people who want to moderate their groups - and lots of these people exist.

SilverBirch 4y ago
Isn't that... reddit?
- nemo44x 4y ago
  I don’t think so. Reddit is about topical groups. Circles are more like trusted connections between people. Like how society works. I should be able to see the content “everyone” makes or be able to limit myself to exclude certain groups or only include certain groups of people. This way if there is content that you consider harmful to yourself or you are unable to live with it, you can still participate on the platform. It’s an individuals choice, not a corporations.
  - uni_rule 4y ago
    Sounds like what Discord is slowly becoming as it adds forum pages with comment threads as an option on public servers.
notacoward 4y ago
> I'm betting that something like the Google Circles gets implemented This would actually be a great outcome IMO. Supporting shared blocklists would have similar effect, and probably be easier to implement. Unfortunately, I very much doubt than Elmo Nutsack would allow that. Despite all his claims about "free speech" I'm pretty sure enabling those who would silence people they deem too "woke" via harassment is very much part of the reason behind his takeover. Check out the #TwitterTakeover tag to see the hordes slavering at the prospect (but be aware that it's hard on the stomach if you're a decent person).

popilewiz 4y ago

SilverBirch 4y ago

Yeah, I think this absolutely nails it, and what I find interesting is that in all the time this acquisition has been up in the air Musk has failed to ever engage in the detail of how to address these issues. Elon Musk is interestingly probably the worst person to run Twitter, because whilst the previous guys running twitter weren't very competent, they had their product and they were navigating through issues under extreme pressure. Musk on the other hand, has 1,000 pain points to press on that everyone who previously tried to coerce twitter will now be looking at. Whether it be the federal government pressing on SpaceX, Union busting at Tesla, or whether it's Texas coming after Twitter for abortion information, he is going to be so much more exposed.

93po 4y ago
> Musk has failed to ever engage in the detail of how to address these issues Do you mean engage publicly, or engage even privately within his own teams?
- SilverBirch 4y ago
  Both, even within what we learned about through the chancery discovery and the leaks (lots of information leaked about what Musk presented to the bankers and investors as the business plan which is where the 75% cut number came from)
  - 93po 4y ago
    Can you tell me more about his private teams and their interactions with Elon? How often have they been reaching out to Elon, what do those communications look like, and what does it look like when Elon declines to provide them that information?

harshaw 4y ago

Hell indeed. A problem space with intractable non technical challenges. The saddest part for me is the distraction from the potential of his other businesses, most specifically SpaceX. I just want to see Starship succeed.

jongjong 4y ago

This article makes no sense; it sounds like leftist propaganda. Advertisers only care about 'brand safety' to the extent that it impacts their ability to sell stuff. So long as users keep using the platform, advertisers will keep coming back - They're not going to vacate the platform and let their competitors get all the eyeballs... If they did, those competitors would gain market share and make incumbents irrelevant. Users have made it clear that they want free speech on social media platforms so I don't see how giving users what they want would cause them to leave. The problem with Twitter so far is that they sold out to big governments and big corporations and completely neglected their users in the process. Having front-row access to users, Twitter is actually in a position to dictate the rules; it should not be taking orders from politicians and corporate executives when those orders are harmful to its users.

_hcuq 4y ago
Advertisers love 4chan type sewers. So do users.
- jongjong 4y ago
  This makes no sense because people on Twitter choose who they follow. If some 'deplorables' want to follow some other deplorables, then let them; I'm sure some companies will still want to advertise to them. The people who only want to consume government and corporate propaganda will only see content from like-minded people anyway; they will get the safe experience that they want. No problem! Companies can target them and sell them cricket flour, dried maggots, lab-grown meat and COVID booster vaccine number 27... These people won't even realize that the deplorables also use Twitter because they will be in a different filter bubble.
  - ilyt 4y ago
    You don't get only stuff you follow tho, you get anything whoever you subscribed to retweeted.
    - jongjong 4y ago

throwaway71271 4y ago

half the article is about moderation because of advertisement, but he could just not do advertisement.

lastofthemojito 4y ago
Then how does Twitter make money? According to their latest quarterly report they had $1.18B in revenue, $1.08B from advertising. Is there really enough potential in "premium users" or something else to forgo that billion dollars per quarter? https://s22.q4cdn.com/826641620/files/doc_financials/2022/q2/Final_Q2'22_Earnings_Release.pdf https://s22.q4cdn.com/826641620/files/doc_financials/2022/q2...
- qualudeheart 4y ago
  Musk can afford to sink money into it. It’s an important enough propaganda platform to be worth operating even at a less.

minimaxir 4y ago

The key quote which other comments are overlooking: > Here are some examples: you can write as many polite letters to advertisers as you want, but you cannot reasonably expect to collect any meaningful advertising revenue if you do not promise those advertisers “brand safety.” That means you have to ban racism, sexism, transphobia, and all kinds of other speech that is totally legal in the United States but reveals people to be total assholes. So you can make all the promises about “free speech” you want, but the dull reality is that you still have to ban a bunch of legal speech if you want to make money. And when you start doing that, your creepy new right-wing fanboys are going to viciously turn on you, just like they turn on every other social network that realizes the same essential truth. The one thing that can be counted on Elon doing is Elon doing what makes him the most money.

lastofthemojito 4y ago
Elon has also talked about open sourcing "the algorithm" or letting people customize the algorithm that suggests content for them, etc. I suspect that plays in here - by default, Twitter users (and unauthenticated browsers) will probably continue to see Twitter the same way as today, with relatively safe, moderated content. Logged-in folks will also have the option to go into unmoderated mode, which will drop you into the cesspool if you so desire. Presumably respectable companies will only advertise on the default layer; ads in the cesspool will be for "edgy" t-shirt companies and extremist politicians and others who don't care about their brand being displayed next to questionable content (or prefer it!). Illegal content of course must continue to be moderated regardless.
- ilyt 4y ago
  Well, giving users of social media tools to filter stuff they want to see themselves rather than making site's moderators be moral guardians of the site (lmao) is certainly a better approach.
ThrowawayR2 4y ago
To play the devil's advocate: So why haven't advertisers abandoned Fox News? As long as Musk limits his newly acquired toy to being no worse than Fox News (which is plenty bad!), he can still keep advertising dollars coming in.

screye 4y ago

> Twitter is a disaster clown car company that is successful despite itself Isn't this the best kind of company to acquire ? A product that has such inherent value that even a bumbling clown car of company could not sabotage its ability to retain users. Imo, Reddit and Twitter have monopolized 2 of the most effective forms of communication to have existed on the internet: Forums and memes (memes in the Dawkinian sense) and their tiny size is entirely a result of terrible leadership. While musk didn't buy it for a particularly cheap price (at least in Winter 2022 prices), He should be able to justify the net worth as well as any competing tech company will be able to. To quote Charlie Munger: > Never underestimate the man who overestimates himself. These weird guys who overestimate themselves occasionally knock it right out of the park. I would never buy Tesla stock and I would never sell it short.

incomingpain 4y ago
>Isn't this the best kind of company to acquire ? Elon isn't worried about valuation. His consideration could be 'can I fix low hanging fruit and provide value' If elon is right the current content moderation has gone wrong, and it has. Then by fixing this it should provide a return on his investment. Not to mention the counter force of those who cannot allow free discussion who may buy him out in order to stop it. But more important, what elon also understands. What is a billion $? Elon is wealthy enough he can own any toy or thing he ever wants. It has less to do with some currency and himself. He has surpassed this point in economics placing him amongst a select few who have won this game. Now he has the chance to use this excess wealth to form the future. Which scares people.

throwaway0x7E6 4y ago

twitter could be in the green tomorrow if he really did fire all the useless mouths there. I will be very happy if all their frontend people get axed.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

lemondrink 4y ago

Is Twitter not dying? The youth don’t care, the elderly don’t care, and those in the middle (late twenties, early forties) are ending their terminally online lives for families, careers, travel, etc. Twitter is being distilled into a political tool - both side, endlessly crying into the void, appealing to their confirmation biases. Hop on over to /pol/ to see what unregulated politic speak turns into. I give it 10 years and it’ll be a ghost town.

badcppdev 4y ago
Your demographic breakdown is priceless. * Youth * Late 20s to early 40s * Elderly
qualudeheart 4y ago
I don’t think it’ll be like /pol/ if you mean that it’ll be a right wing monopoly. There are too many leftists for that to happen. There wasn’t a right wing monopoly 10 years ago when Twitter barely had any moderation and people were more conservative. There won’t be one in the future, unless Elon bizarrely goes fascist and bans all the liberals.

diimdeep 4y ago

Everyone who owns mass media[1] and now will be competing with Elon is playing a game of throwing rotten hate tomatoes in his direction, very entertaining to watch. [1] https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/futureofmedia/index-us-mainstream-media-ownership https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/futureofmedia/index-us-mains...

twoWhlsGud 4y ago

"Content moderation is what Twitter makes" - that's a brilliant summation of the problem. These social networks have turned themselves into publishers (by centering the recommendation algorithms where else could you end up?). That's the thing no one wants to think too hard about because of the very uncomfortable implications...

entropicgravity 4y ago

A lot of worrying here about moderation in the new Twitter. Musk though will just whip up a version of Full Self Driving to automate the moderating and problem solved, I'm pretty sure.

TradingPlaces 4y ago

Nilay Patel is a national treasure. Every word is true, but especially this: >The essential truth of every social network is that the product is content moderation, and everyone hates the people who decide how content moderation works.

keeperoftruth 4y ago

NN88 4y ago

#MurderedByWords

amai 4y ago

"Are you excited for the Chinese government to find ways to threaten Tesla’s huge business in that country over content that appears on Twitter? Because it’s going to happen." This will happen and not only with China. Just think about Bezos, the Washington Post and Saudi Arabia. But on the other side I think Tesla and SpaceX shouldn't do business with dictatorships anyway. So maybe in the end this will be a good thing.

Marazan 4y ago

First they came for Nazis and I did not speak out for I was not a Nazi. Technically I did say something. I said "Cool, get those Nazi's out of here, good job."

18pfsmt 4y ago

This is quite a ridiculous blog post. Hyperbole is way too common these days, and this is the type of submission that drove away many of the smartest HN users. I will always remember when I first learned about bitcoin here in 2010 when the white paper was linked. Now we have shrieking missives warning about mean people writing stuff on the internet.

valeg 4y ago

Full of spite. We'll see. But moderation was kinda solved at Something Awful by demanding to pay 10 bucks at sign up. Mr. Musk may use something like this; he can demand 10 dogecoins in order to unblock someone mischievous. Hell, it could even be proportional to the reach of the account.