7 ms·

It will be interesting to see how Elon defines success. Twitter in it's current form is a dead end, and there's no way "more free speech" is going increase eit

It will be interesting to see how Elon defines success. Twitter in it's current form is a dead end, and there's no way "more free speech" is going increase either revenue or users. So if you think Elon is going to succeed at making Twitter a better Twitter as we know it, then I'm confident this take is wrong. Which is why he's focused on the everything X app or whatever. Now, I wouldn't want to underestimate Elon, he is good at min-maxing, but I don't know that Twitter has a great competitive advantage to build on. It's one of the smallest social networks and Twitter as Twitter, i.e. the one big open forum with politicians, journalists scientists etc _is_ it's competitive advantage. So I don't know how you get from Twitter to X when almost every other social media does the things X would do better than Twitter. The biggest thing Elon would have to do is build trust with users and partner companies and that certainly does not seem like the direction he's heading. On the one hand I wouldn't bet against Elon, on the other hand the deck seems stacked against him. He'll have to prove he can run a SASS Twitter with minimal staff, which may be possible. But I don't know he does that and goes into al these other areas (payments, advertising, trust and safety) that seem very hands on to build relationships with partner companies, PCI Compliance, handle customer concerns, fraud etc. Managing people requires people. He wants to make the moderation process more transparent? He'll either have to invent perfect text analysis AI, or he'll need people to process and respond to abuse complaints and petitions. This TC article sums up the X challenges pretty well: https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/08/elon-musk-x-everything-wechat-tesla-app/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/08/elon-musk-x-everything-wec...

matthewaveryusa 4y ago
He won't need PCI compliance. He's going to attempt to make a wechat with cryptocurrency as a method of payment in collaboration with binance. We'll see if it sticks.
- mdaEyebot 4y ago
  It'll probably stick for however long it takes for Musk to publish a history of someone's paid-video purchases in response to a mean tweet. Not sure what problem a cryptocurrency would solve in this case.
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    There's a lot of porn on Twitter. The "paid videos" feature that you get with a blue check seems to be focused on this crowd. Can you imagine someone as volatile and vain as Elon Musk having your porn viewing history? There's a good reason why most sex entrepreneurs stay off the radar. I personally can't wait for him to kinkshame a Twitter influencer who makes him mildly upset.
- pjc50 4y ago
  Isn't this the Facebook Libera plan, which got lolnoped by regulators before it even got off the ground?
  - notahacker 4y ago
    Pretty much, although Musk might be more persistent in the face of being lolnoped by regulators than Facebook and the financial institutions they invited along to try to add credibility to their project.
rockostrich 4y ago
I have no doubts that a super app will succeed in the US like Pinduoduo has in China but I highly doubt that's going to come from the environment that Elon is already establishing at Twitter. You can't successfully build dozens of new products by laying off a big chunk of the staff and telling people to work 12 hour shifts 7 days a week when they've gotten comfortable with a reasonable work-life balance (I know Tesla and SpaceX are notorious for rejecting work-life balance in general but they aren't software companies).
- lupire 4y ago
  996 (72hr weeks) apparently works in China, so why wouldn't it be made to work here, especially if all the rich companies use the economic headwinds to collude and reduce compensation/QoL/perks? Also a massive fraction of young US techies are Chinese immigrants -- are they as vulnerable to 996 in US or are they a select group who escaped it? And can Musk and others staff up in China (if US and Chinese politics/government allows it)?
  - mikkergp 4y ago
    Apparently it's illegal and ByteDance (TikTok's parent company) stopped doing it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system#ByteDance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system#ByteDa... I think you'd have to provide a lot more research to "996 (72hr weeks) apparently works in China". What type of companies, what type of jobs, ubiquity etc.
  - throw8383833jj 4y ago
    China has a vast vast oversupply of software engineers. In order to make 996 work in the US, there would need to be a pretty big oversupply of talent (and a lower standard of living) to make people desperate enough to give up their entire lives to their work. Unfortunately, I think we may be getting close to that about now or at least heading down that path.
    - jupp0r 4y ago
      What makes you think that there is an oversupply of (good) Software Engineers? All I see every day is that it's still pretty difficult to hire good people.
lupire 4y ago
If the guy can make a fully self-driving car, he can make a fully self-moderating social network. He'll either be the GOAT or the goat, but the gamble is clearly on the table, and Musk being Mush will declare victory before the dice even start to roll.
- llbeansandrice 4y ago
  He hasn’t made a fully self driving car. Not even close.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    I think you missed the point. He is saying that Musk will either do these things or fail spectacularly.
- mikkergp 4y ago
  He hasn't made a self driving car, but I think this applies here: https://xkcd.com/1425/ https://xkcd.com/1425/
  - humanistbot 4y ago
    I think this one is even more apt: https://xkcd.com/1831/ https://xkcd.com/1831/
- compiler-guy 4y ago
  If the guy can blow enough hot air about self driving cars to make people buy the hype, he might be able to blow enough hot air about a self-moderating social network to make people buy the hype. Unfortunately, eventually you need more than hype before the public and regulators come for you because you haven’t delivered. And musk hasn’t delivered.
naasking 4y ago
> It's one of the smallest social networks and Twitter as Twitter, i.e. the one big open forum with politicians, journalists scientists etc _is_ it's competitive advantage. So I don't know how you get from Twitter to X when almost every other social media does the things X would do better than Twitter. Being the elites' gathering place is indeed its biggest advantage, and the fact that consumers can get public visibility on issues they're facing helps companies with their public image. There are many times where I or friends have posted about issues after exhausting the standard support channels, and quickly cut through the bureaucratic red tape and got our problem solved. I think that's a monetizable angle. I think something similar would apply to other elites as well. Politicians can get direct feedback from constituents, music artists get direct feedback from fans (see the recent Lizzo "spaz" thing), and so on. However, in the current climate, elites are getting skewed feedback, so "more free speech" could actually help, if it's done right.
- mikkergp 4y ago
  Maybe, but most of these things would require "brand safety" which is in the opposite direction of free speech. Maybe if twitter had billions of users like facebook, they could strongarm companies and get away with it, but all of the things you describe are probably going to require twitter directly interfacing with said celebrities/politiians/journalists, which will require lots more employees and a different tact than Musk seems to be taking. Besides the fact that "more free speech" seems to involve making fun of trans people and bringing back donald trump, which do not correlate with more accurate feedback to elites.
  - naasking 4y ago
    We'll see how it goes, but "making fun of trans people" is an unfair summary of the situation. Megan Murphy and Rowling were not making fun of trans people, for instance.
    - pjc50 4y ago
      No, they were calling for their elimination from the public sphere, forced outing etc.
Consultant32452 4y ago
>Twitter in it's current form is a dead end, and there's no way "more free speech" is going increase either revenue or users. Twitter was on its death bed until Trump signed on and became the shit-posting President. This is not an endorsement of Trump or bringing him back, but the type of "free speech" people are talking about saved Twitter, made it a pile of money, and made other media/press companies billions of dollars covering the chaos.
- r00fus 4y ago
  I do not have that impression at all. Twitter was made more relevant by Trump's presidency but you'd have to show me revenue numbers that somehow he saved it.
  - mikkergp 4y ago
    According to this: https://www.zippia.com/twitter-careers-11916/revenue/ https://www.zippia.com/twitter-careers-11916/revenue/ It seems like Growth was actually lowest during Trump's presidency.
    - KerrAvon 4y ago
      Trump's presence on Twitter was a major factor in deleting my account a few years ago. Have not regretted it.
    - Consultant32452 4y ago
      Trump announced his run for the Presidency and began shit-posting his way into the White House in 2015, the year Twitter had over a 50% increase in revenue.
danans 4y ago
> Twitter in it's current form is a dead end, and there's no way "more free speech" is going increase either revenue or users. I think this is failing to imagine how bad things could get societally. Imagine if more consumers and advertisers start enjoying consuming and being associated with malevolent, hateful, and violence-inducing speech. Many in the 1930s-40s enjoyed the hateful caricatures of Jews that the Nazis produced in their propaganda, and hateful people also buy refrigerators and sneakers today. Yes, that would mean a majority of people would have to adopt those perspectives - to the detriment of society at large - but it's happened before in many parts of the world, and could happen again. That is a long-term goal of fascists anyways - to re-normalize that kind of thing, and to re-combine industry and media with a religious ethnostate. At the very least, the previously quiet pre-existing enjoyment of malevolent speech has been exposed for all to see over the last several years. The question is whether it has a growing audience. I'm not saying that's Elon's goal, but accelerationism seems to be something he is aligned with as long as it doesn't come at a cost to him.
- mikkergp 4y ago
  Ironically? I think in order for this to happen we would have to be _less_ polarized. I don't think in the current state you could _increase_ revenue from it's current place by splitting the customer base. On the one hand if this keeps going bad maybe he just says fuck it and goes accelerationist like you said. On the other hand, there's a lot of people who put money into this. I truly hope it remains sensible, and do still have faith that our nation isn't this bad off.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  My read on the libertarian, free-speech Twitter pitch was that the mainstream media typically uses a straw man to dismiss it. If you start with the proposition "Anyone should be able to post anything on Twitter"... ... and want to get to "Everyone enjoys reading Twitter," then there's a lot of black box space in the middle. You can have the most vile things on your platform, but your userbase self-censors. E.g. crowdsourced shadow-banning / down-voting. Or reputation with verified identities underneath. Or just... more transparency. Empowering the public to data-mine Twitter opens some interesting windows to a platform that has terrible things, but empowers interested parties to fruitfully research who they're coming from.
brightball 4y ago
The one thing Twitter has going for it is network effect. Tons of people are trying to spin up competitors and encouraging people to go there based on political leanings or other reasons. The fragmentation will just lead to Twitter remaining as the place where everybody comes back. I’ll be shocked if it doesn’t work out for him because network effects are really hard to overcome.

matthewaveryusa 4y ago

He won't need PCI compliance. He's going to attempt to make a wechat with cryptocurrency as a method of payment in collaboration with binance. We'll see if it sticks.

mdaEyebot 4y ago
It'll probably stick for however long it takes for Musk to publish a history of someone's paid-video purchases in response to a mean tweet. Not sure what problem a cryptocurrency would solve in this case.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  There's a lot of porn on Twitter. The "paid videos" feature that you get with a blue check seems to be focused on this crowd. Can you imagine someone as volatile and vain as Elon Musk having your porn viewing history? There's a good reason why most sex entrepreneurs stay off the radar. I personally can't wait for him to kinkshame a Twitter influencer who makes him mildly upset.
pjc50 4y ago
Isn't this the Facebook Libera plan, which got lolnoped by regulators before it even got off the ground?
- notahacker 4y ago
  Pretty much, although Musk might be more persistent in the face of being lolnoped by regulators than Facebook and the financial institutions they invited along to try to add credibility to their project.

rockostrich 4y ago

I have no doubts that a super app will succeed in the US like Pinduoduo has in China but I highly doubt that's going to come from the environment that Elon is already establishing at Twitter. You can't successfully build dozens of new products by laying off a big chunk of the staff and telling people to work 12 hour shifts 7 days a week when they've gotten comfortable with a reasonable work-life balance (I know Tesla and SpaceX are notorious for rejecting work-life balance in general but they aren't software companies).

lupire 4y ago
996 (72hr weeks) apparently works in China, so why wouldn't it be made to work here, especially if all the rich companies use the economic headwinds to collude and reduce compensation/QoL/perks? Also a massive fraction of young US techies are Chinese immigrants -- are they as vulnerable to 996 in US or are they a select group who escaped it? And can Musk and others staff up in China (if US and Chinese politics/government allows it)?
- mikkergp 4y ago
  Apparently it's illegal and ByteDance (TikTok's parent company) stopped doing it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system#ByteDance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system#ByteDa... I think you'd have to provide a lot more research to "996 (72hr weeks) apparently works in China". What type of companies, what type of jobs, ubiquity etc.
- throw8383833jj 4y ago
  China has a vast vast oversupply of software engineers. In order to make 996 work in the US, there would need to be a pretty big oversupply of talent (and a lower standard of living) to make people desperate enough to give up their entire lives to their work. Unfortunately, I think we may be getting close to that about now or at least heading down that path.
  - jupp0r 4y ago
    What makes you think that there is an oversupply of (good) Software Engineers? All I see every day is that it's still pretty difficult to hire good people.

lupire 4y ago

If the guy can make a fully self-driving car, he can make a fully self-moderating social network. He'll either be the GOAT or the goat, but the gamble is clearly on the table, and Musk being Mush will declare victory before the dice even start to roll.

llbeansandrice 4y ago
He hasn’t made a fully self driving car. Not even close.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  I think you missed the point. He is saying that Musk will either do these things or fail spectacularly.
mikkergp 4y ago
He hasn't made a self driving car, but I think this applies here: https://xkcd.com/1425/ https://xkcd.com/1425/
- humanistbot 4y ago
  I think this one is even more apt: https://xkcd.com/1831/ https://xkcd.com/1831/
compiler-guy 4y ago
If the guy can blow enough hot air about self driving cars to make people buy the hype, he might be able to blow enough hot air about a self-moderating social network to make people buy the hype. Unfortunately, eventually you need more than hype before the public and regulators come for you because you haven’t delivered. And musk hasn’t delivered.

naasking 4y ago

> It's one of the smallest social networks and Twitter as Twitter, i.e. the one big open forum with politicians, journalists scientists etc _is_ it's competitive advantage. So I don't know how you get from Twitter to X when almost every other social media does the things X would do better than Twitter. Being the elites' gathering place is indeed its biggest advantage, and the fact that consumers can get public visibility on issues they're facing helps companies with their public image. There are many times where I or friends have posted about issues after exhausting the standard support channels, and quickly cut through the bureaucratic red tape and got our problem solved. I think that's a monetizable angle. I think something similar would apply to other elites as well. Politicians can get direct feedback from constituents, music artists get direct feedback from fans (see the recent Lizzo "spaz" thing), and so on. However, in the current climate, elites are getting skewed feedback, so "more free speech" could actually help, if it's done right.

mikkergp 4y ago
Maybe, but most of these things would require "brand safety" which is in the opposite direction of free speech. Maybe if twitter had billions of users like facebook, they could strongarm companies and get away with it, but all of the things you describe are probably going to require twitter directly interfacing with said celebrities/politiians/journalists, which will require lots more employees and a different tact than Musk seems to be taking. Besides the fact that "more free speech" seems to involve making fun of trans people and bringing back donald trump, which do not correlate with more accurate feedback to elites.
- naasking 4y ago
  We'll see how it goes, but "making fun of trans people" is an unfair summary of the situation. Megan Murphy and Rowling were not making fun of trans people, for instance.
  - pjc50 4y ago
    No, they were calling for their elimination from the public sphere, forced outing etc.

Consultant32452 4y ago

>Twitter in it's current form is a dead end, and there's no way "more free speech" is going increase either revenue or users. Twitter was on its death bed until Trump signed on and became the shit-posting President. This is not an endorsement of Trump or bringing him back, but the type of "free speech" people are talking about saved Twitter, made it a pile of money, and made other media/press companies billions of dollars covering the chaos.

r00fus 4y ago
I do not have that impression at all. Twitter was made more relevant by Trump's presidency but you'd have to show me revenue numbers that somehow he saved it.
- mikkergp 4y ago
  According to this: https://www.zippia.com/twitter-careers-11916/revenue/ https://www.zippia.com/twitter-careers-11916/revenue/ It seems like Growth was actually lowest during Trump's presidency.
  - KerrAvon 4y ago
    Trump's presence on Twitter was a major factor in deleting my account a few years ago. Have not regretted it.
  - Consultant32452 4y ago
    Trump announced his run for the Presidency and began shit-posting his way into the White House in 2015, the year Twitter had over a 50% increase in revenue.

danans 4y ago

> Twitter in it's current form is a dead end, and there's no way "more free speech" is going increase either revenue or users. I think this is failing to imagine how bad things could get societally. Imagine if more consumers and advertisers start enjoying consuming and being associated with malevolent, hateful, and violence-inducing speech. Many in the 1930s-40s enjoyed the hateful caricatures of Jews that the Nazis produced in their propaganda, and hateful people also buy refrigerators and sneakers today. Yes, that would mean a majority of people would have to adopt those perspectives - to the detriment of society at large - but it's happened before in many parts of the world, and could happen again. That is a long-term goal of fascists anyways - to re-normalize that kind of thing, and to re-combine industry and media with a religious ethnostate. At the very least, the previously quiet pre-existing enjoyment of malevolent speech has been exposed for all to see over the last several years. The question is whether it has a growing audience. I'm not saying that's Elon's goal, but accelerationism seems to be something he is aligned with as long as it doesn't come at a cost to him.

mikkergp 4y ago
Ironically? I think in order for this to happen we would have to be _less_ polarized. I don't think in the current state you could _increase_ revenue from it's current place by splitting the customer base. On the one hand if this keeps going bad maybe he just says fuck it and goes accelerationist like you said. On the other hand, there's a lot of people who put money into this. I truly hope it remains sensible, and do still have faith that our nation isn't this bad off.
ethbr0 4y ago
My read on the libertarian, free-speech Twitter pitch was that the mainstream media typically uses a straw man to dismiss it. If you start with the proposition "Anyone should be able to post anything on Twitter"... ... and want to get to "Everyone enjoys reading Twitter," then there's a lot of black box space in the middle. You can have the most vile things on your platform, but your userbase self-censors. E.g. crowdsourced shadow-banning / down-voting. Or reputation with verified identities underneath. Or just... more transparency. Empowering the public to data-mine Twitter opens some interesting windows to a platform that has terrible things, but empowers interested parties to fruitfully research who they're coming from.

brightball 4y ago

The one thing Twitter has going for it is network effect. Tons of people are trying to spin up competitors and encouraging people to go there based on political leanings or other reasons. The fragmentation will just lead to Twitter remaining as the place where everybody comes back. I’ll be shocked if it doesn’t work out for him because network effects are really hard to overcome.