4 ms·
Elon Musk buying Twitter is our prompt to leave
- JoeMayoBot 4y agoNo one really knows what's going to happen until it happens. This is full of hyperbolic phrases, designed to leave the reader with a negative view of the acquisition. "deluged with Musk wisdom", "warnings about porn", "death of a Tesla driver", "baseless conspiracy theory", "feed the monster", "teetering on the brink of civil war", "twitter czar", "ignorant, manipulative, or deceitful", "hate speech", "orcs". I get it that some people have a low opinion of Elon Musk and might be skeptical of his motivations. I don't and think he's doing and will do a lot for humanity. That said, I'm sure there will be things I like and dislike about what he does at Twitter, just as it has always been. I do believe the article was quite extra.
- red_Seashell_32 4y agohttp://archive.ph/7zSCK http://archive.ph/7zSCK
- tomrod 4y agoMakes sense. Elon and Bezos have several spheres they overlap in now. From a business perspective having Elon own a core distribution of Bezos' news business doesn't make sense. This is likely true for the less-public families that own a lot of the media conglomerates as well.
- emedchill 4y agoThe article was not about The Washington Post leaving Twitter; it was suggesting everyone to leave it.
- tomrod 4y agoCorrect. If everyone leaves, this implicitly includes WaPo, and they have less competition from Twitter through news distribution.
- jfengel 4y agoThis article doesn't really have anything to do with the Washington Post, and it's not any more about WaPo than any other twitterer. It's an opinion piece that happens to be by one of the Washington Post's stable of writers, but she has no more say over their policy than you do.
- tomrod 4y agoEditorial pieces are chosen to be printed by the news group. While it "might not represent [news group] opinion" it usually does unless the topic is not meaningful to the news group. This seems like a pretty basic strategy to me -- my high school current events teacher would always remind us to "consider the source". Is this really controversial?
- jfengel 4y agoThis isn't an editorial. It's an opinion piece, by a regular columnist. They get printed on the same page of the paper, but they have a different relationship to the newspaper itself. The editorial staff work directly for the paper, and have a fair bit of say in its operations. This is a regular columnist. The news group didn't select this piece. They just ran the text in the (probably weekly) slot reserved for this columnist. They did hire her in the first place, but not because she reflects their opinions. Columnists are hired specifically not to repeat what the editorial staff would say. They often represent a diversity of opinions. More relevantly here, they get to work independently: they produce their material without oversight of the editorial staff. Their actual hiring structure can be complicated. They may be syndicated, or they may get their paycheck directly from the newspaper. But either way, they don't have any control over the newspaper's policy. The only power they have is to put words on the page -- an important platform, no doubt, but the newspaper doesn't have to listen to them.
- tomrod 4y ago> More relevantly here, they get to work independently: they produce their material without oversight of the editorial staff. In theory. Hard to prove the practice doesn't align to WaPo's strategic interests.
- rogerkirkness 4y ago
- beardyw 4y ago> keeps winning At what?
- sidibe 4y agoWhere's the next place for journalists? If Google Plus were still around I feel like this would have been their moment.
- bediger4000 4y agoSeems wise. If you're a corporation, you don't want to associate your brand with something as capricious as Twitter. I left this spring because I didn't want my content to make Dorsey money. I imagine WaPo and other corporations might calculate the same.