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Elon Musk: “thermonuclear name & shame” against advertisers pulling out
- 7e 4y agoMusk will soon set his bot army against his foes, including advertisers. Twitter will become the new Yelp.
- dereg 4y agoThere are few things in the world I’m more terrified of than Yelp’s salespeople. They give me Jack Lemon from Glengarry vibes.
- nebula8804 4y agoLouis Rossman beat them. He publicly embarrassed them so much that they put him on a no call list. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CIGKxLcoso https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CIGKxLcoso
- kyleee 4y agorossman is a legend, thanks i hadn't seen this
- quantified 4y agoLet's organize boycotts of companies that don't advertise on Twitter. I've got to stock up on popcorn!
- nmeagent 4y agoWe have to be mindful of order of operations here or we may narrow our available popcorn choices!
- colechristensen 4y agoWhy should anyone care one way or the other about this Twitter drama?
- zombiwoof 4y agoWhere else can I post random mindless useless thoughts
- akmarinov 4y agothe Notes app
- jareds 4y agoIn a private encrypted journal?
- MichaelCollins 4y agoLooks like you already found the answer.
- chomp 4y agoI mean… Twitter was a formative SV startup for most of us, post dot com bust. Its downfall is at least somewhat interesting.
- pixodaros 4y agoMany prominent birdsite people are US journalists, pundits, and celebrities. They thought that although social media are the Leopards Eating my Face Party, their faces would stay untouched, and it would just be the proles who were banned or shadowbanned or bullied off. Anyone who was on Photobucket or Tumblr or MySpace knows why this was not a wise thing to believe, but some people need to have the leopard actually bite them to believe it can happen. A scary amount of 'news' in the USA is rewritten twitter threads with the origin more or less hidden. So its as if the young people kicked off Tumblr had the mainstream media to amplify their complaints.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jleyank 4y agoThe way things are going, "the two minute hate" should be right along in the next day or two...
- cocacola1 4y agoCalling for advertisers to pull out of Twitter seems to be a proper exercise of free speech, not an attempt at destroying it. Then again, so is naming & shaming.
- tbrownaw 4y agoIt probably depends how that "calling for" works. A fair few historical examples of "nobody do business with X" have involved improper levels of coercion.
- someNameIG 4y agoThis seems to be an explanation of what it was. https://twitter.com/GoAngelo/status/1588696157794242560?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1588696157794242560%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url= https://twitter.com/GoAngelo/status/1588696157794242560?ref_...
- cocacola1 4y agoIf they’re calling for boycotts, for example, perfectly acceptable.
- VikingCoder 4y agoConvince me that's not extortion. Think about some company that was just starting to think about advertising on Twitter. And now Elon Musk is threatening that if you ever stop advertising with them, he will try to convince his followers to boycott your products.
- lupire 4y agoIt's not extortion because Elon's fan army is an irrelevant niche in the market for anything not sold by Tesla.
- VikingCoder 4y agoHe has like 103 million followers.
- anigbrowl 4y agoTrue, though a lot of them are disposable accounts.
- ahahahahah 4y agoSure, but as he well knows, they are all bots.
- manicdee 4y agoHow many of them will follow his instructions to boycott advertisers who stop filling their Twitter feed with promoted tweets?
- bamboozled 4y agoIt’s “free speech”, the dude has lost it
- Jerrrry 4y ago>Convince me that's not extortion. hard sell, considering you clearly don't know the meaning of the word.
- zetazzed 4y ago
- BonoboIO 4y agoThat’s a deep one ... 10 kids from 4 women, married 4 times, 2 times to the same woman.
- blue_light_man 4y agoWomen are totally fine with marrying and having kids with him even after that. So Elon should just keep going.
- gisely 4y agoDefinitely seems like more of reddit comment than a HN one. I had a laugh though so thanks and here's to more laughs until dang shows up and takes all the fun out of HN for umpteenth time.
- dang 4y agoPlease don't do this here.
- Jerrrry 4y agoSo thoughtless bashing is fine, as long as no attempt at humor is made?
- noltncy 4y agoThe only forum I browse is HN. I gets high out of the quality of the conversation here. I think dang is requesting is to avoid redditesque humor. I don’t think we need ‘pulling out’ jokes, especially hinting at Elon’s personal life to make the conversations livelier. We can do better for sure.
- Jerrrry 4y agoI agree wholeheartedly. I have asked many to stop parroting reddit style "humor" myself to obviously little affect. My point is that thoughtless Elon bashing is even more brain-dead and cancerous to genuine discussion then the cringey reddit-like tropes that he has an apparent issue with.
- mmastrac 4y agoIt seems unwise to pick a fight with advertisers, especially while there are multiple brand safety conferences going on.
- pixodaros 4y agoIts almost like the guy who spent $44 billion to buy an ad-funded social media company did not understand that advertisers and data buyers are the customers and users are the product. Its not rocket science!
- CincinnatiMan 4y agoCan you expand on what a brand safety conference is? Sounds interesting.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- moistly 4y agoI just DDG’d “brand safety conference”. Turns out to be an executive-class professional role. > The Brand Safety Institute was founded to professionalize and advance the executive capacity needed at every company to protect their brands. > There are certified brand safety practitioners at the world’s largest advertising agency holding companies, global 500 brands, and major technology platforms. Makes sense that someone has to be responsible for making sure their brand not be associated with bad things.
- pj_mukh 4y agoCancel Culture is so bad...oh..
- RavingGoat 4y agoYeah, Musk is starting to ban anyone that rationally argues with him on twitter.
- yumraj 4y agoIsn’t the list of companies already public? I’ve seen it at a few places.
- xupybd 4y agoNot the most diplomatic move but it's baller as. I like it. $44 billion on the line and he comes out swinging against his customers. It might actually work and have a massive impact on our our culture. On the other side it could burn Twitter to the ground.
- kcplate 4y agoEither is fine by me
- lupire 4y agoHe's replying to a GOP operative. I figured that once Elon sold Teslas to all the green Democrats he could, he'd flip hard right so he could sell to Republicans.
- georgeg23 4y agoIt's a bit more than that. His real enterprise is a massive DoD program*, which requires Republicans to fund. Twitter helps him curry favors to earn these Republican backed contracts. Mike Griffin is the ringleader but he's only useful when Republicans are in power. There is a goal to Elon's madness, but it's unclear his ploys will pay off. * DoD program is basically SDI 2.0 as discussed in this link: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career
- fallingknife 4y agoNo other company can match SpaceX launch capabilities, so no complex political maneuvering is needed to land DoD contracts.
- georgeg23 4y agoThere are more than the launches up fo grabs.. building the satellites and platforms. The funding doesn't exist without Republicans in power. The decimation of Twitter moderation before the election helps.
- MichaelCollins 4y agoMilitary funding is fairly bipartisan, despite what Republican politicians may have you believe.
- georgeg23 4y agoThis one is specifically a Republican led program. See https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/12/16/approaching-third-rail-trilateral-treaty-to-prohibit-space-based-missile-defenses-pub-85965e https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/12/16/approaching-third-r...
- rdtwo 4y agolol I love me a good dumpster fire. Gather round folks is warm and fun to watch, just don’t hang out down wind
- undoware 4y agoHe might be a terrible CEO, but he sure is entertaining <3_<3 The last time I enjoyed watching a money bonfire this big was Windows Phone
- anigbrowl 4y agoTired: Legs! Wired: Kicking your customers
- Tuna-Fish 4y agoThis sounds like such a dumb and self-defeating response. Advertisers have pulled ads from all kinds of platforms before as a performative act. But if that's where the eyeballs are, they'll just wait a few months and come back. Striking back at them seems like it might prevent that.
- anigbrowl 4y agoTwitter's also far from being the biggest social media platform. I'm not sure how useful it is to advertisers going by the kind of ads I see. Barrons (sorry, paywall) says they only have about 1% of the ad market. https://www.barrons.com/articles/twitter-advertising-ad-business-51667319592 https://www.barrons.com/articles/twitter-advertising-ad-busi...
- rtpg 4y agohttps://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588599808587345921 https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588599808587345921 from this post sure seems like the advertisers aren't really worried about being named. https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1588668007244759041 https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1588668007244759041 sounds like Elon was caught flatfooted, and his continued behavior is just another in a series of unforced errors. Probably doesn't help that the guy is taking advice from Jason and David Sacks (classic "oh you're mad at me? That means I'm right" personalities). The best thing Musk could do right now is find someone who does not have a twitter account (or doesn't care) and talk to them. Yet another case study for "don't just work with people because you are friends".
- kashprime 4y agoIn behaving this way, he is erasing a tremendous amount of the goodwill he generated from his space and electric car businesses. The world's media, political, business, scientific elite are on Twitter and watching carefully. It's all very upsetting to watch. I hope that, as you've said, he finds a better management team to fix this ongoing trainwreck.
- IAmGraydon 4y agoElon erased his goodwill when he started his crypto pump and dump scams. Or there's the whole vaporware thing to sucker in more investors. Or there's the fact that he argued Ukraine should concede to Russia's demands. No, I'm pretty sure this is just another in a long list of mistakes by Elon. I don't believe he knows what he's doing here.
- Waterluvian 4y agoThere’s some axiom here… something about wherever you get off the hype train, you still think the earlier stops made sense. “It’s at X that he lost me.”
- threatofrain 4y agoAnd when Elon decided to call a rescue worker a pedophile. To me that demonstrated that Elon was willing to truly destroy people for merely offending him on social media. He later double-downed on the pedophile claim by elaborating on his reasoning for why he thought the rescue worker was a pedophile.
- mdaEyebot 4y agoMaybe he can convince Tesla to buy some ad spots. The deal would have great synergy, since Tesla's share price is also on the line.
- bmitc 4y agoHe already has that with the Tesla bots.
- nmeagent 4y agoMaybe we should boycott any advertisers on any surveillance capitalist platform. I'm only half kidding...I think. I do recall having a bit of fun when I used to have a Twitter account (maybe a year ago) by consistently clicking 'not interested' (or whatever the label was in the UI) for every ad in my feed. After a few weeks, the system began to show me some fairly unusual and occasionally bizarre ads. Edit: Actually, come to think of it, I wasn't just clicking 'not interested' but instead blocking the advertisers' accounts entirely. I remember thinking that it was kind of hilarious that doing so was even possible.
- tbrownaw 4y ago> Maybe we should boycott any advertisers on any surveillance capitalist platform. I'm only half kidding...I think. uBlock Origin: make the web usable again. A boycott implies intent that really isn't needed. Don't block specific ones because of political differences, block them all because they're overall seriously annoying.
- _hcuq 4y agoAt one stage I used to click on ads that annoyed me (which is almost all). Make ‘em pay…
- Imnimo 4y agoSo the message is "if you advertise with us, we will try to sink you if you ever decide to stop". I'm sure companies will be rushing to sign up.
- KVFinn 4y ago>So the message is "if you advertise with us, we will try to sink you if you ever decide to stop". I'm sure companies will be rushing to sign up. How can he not see this? With a single Tweet Elon made buying Twitter ads into a risk companies will have to weigh against any benefit from the ads. Literally threatening your customers. I was convinced it was fake Tweet. He needs to hire someone to delay all his Tweets by 24 hours so he can sleep on them.
- klyrs 4y ago> How can he not see this? Stoned off his duff, probably. He might sober up in the morning
- MBCook 4y agoAs I saw someone point out somewhere in the last few days, he can’t see it because he’s Elon Musk. He’s rich and seemingly successful at everything he does. People fawn all over him. He has enough money to buy his way out of almost anything, and he’s been able to get away with insane stuff like naming Autopilot, testing it on public roads w/o any oversight, lying to the SEC, ignoring his deal with the SEC, stuff in his personal life, etc. He seemingly hasn’t ever had to face real consequences. At least not since he was a child. So he’s not scared of them. He doesn’t care. Doesn’t think about it. He’s always right because he’s Elon Musk. So when he doesn’t get his way he doesn’t understand and lashes out (e.g. pedo remark over sub to help kids in cave). And he was getting more fans! The right wing had started to embrace him! He knew what to say to them! More praise! Then something happened. He screwed up massively. He jokingly(?) made an offer to buy Twitter with moronic terms. And based on what we’re seeing that probably would have gone badly. But it got worse. The market dropped a bunch and now his high price was crazy. But he couldn’t back out because he agreed to terms preventing it! He lost a ton (stock holdings) and now had to overpay for Twitter or face a lawsuit. And he seemed to be more scared of the lawsuit than wasting all that money and destroying Twitter. It’s all consequences. And Elon Musk doesn’t know about consequences. So he’s responding to them like a 5 year old, lashing out. But that’s causing more consequences. Advertisers/etc got nervous about his “no moderation” approach. Consequences. He tried to reassure them and pissed off all his new right-wing friends. Consequences. But the advertisers are holding back so now Twitter has less money (and new heavy debt). So he tries to raise money with the blue check thing and everyone gets mad. Consequence. Decided to cut a ton of jobs to save a lot of money. Now EVERYONE is unsure about Twitters future and advertisers get MORE scared. Consequences. He’s not living in Elon world any more. And he can’t take it. It can’t be his fault. He’s perfect. It must be someone else’s fault. Begun, the conspiracy theories have.
- toss1 4y agoIt's really simple Unlike at Musk's corporations, big corp mgt is all about managing uncertainty Execs work to ensure success on big bets (new products/directions/++) by mitigating uncertainties & risks Yet since buying Twitter, Elon Musk has done almost nothing but maximize uncertainty. Of course they're stepping back He may resolve much uncertainty about how things will go over time, and many will come back But making excuses like "it's activist groups that are making them pull out" makes him look ineffective and whiny, and would he accept such an excuse from any exec reporting to him? They guy/gal would be out the door in a New York second. And this? Threatening advertisers? Yeah, that'll convince 'em. With that one 30sec post, he's probably just convinced a half dozen to never return — if anything goes wrong with the relationship, he'll turn on them in a microsecond. Looks like massive flailing. Unfortunate.
- clouddrover 4y ago> But making excuses like "it's activist groups that are making them pull out" makes him look ineffective and whiny Rule 1 of CEOing: it's always someone else's fault. Success is "We" or even "I", failure is "You".
- toss1 4y agoHa! (I assume that's sarcasm,because that's a sure way to lose the respect of your employees, costumers, and the market in general.)
- clouddrover 4y agoThreats are unlikely to make advertisers want to advertise on Twitter.
- whateveracct 4y agoThe dude he's replying too is Neil Gorsuch's clerk.
- bmitc 4y agoWhy does he refer to "we" when mentioning making up for lost revenue? Is he referring to "we" as in a person invested financially in the company or as in a Musk fanboy who is apparently signing up for $8/month to help a billionaire and company?
- whateveracct 4y agoI think it's American right-wing identity politics. Using "we" to refer to the "Free Thinkers."
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- systemvoltage 4y ago
- 63 4y agoEveryone involved in these tweet threads seems so overly aggressive and dedicated to this cause that, as a person who has never used Twitter, I feel like doesn't really matter. I don't particularly care that Musk owns Twitter but I do think he would be better off staying off the platform until he has a solid strategy worked out. The way things keep changing every couple hours seems stressful. I don't want this to come off as high and mighty or anything but I really think everyone (advertisers, Musk, his cronies, etc) just needs to take a break from social media for a week and come back to it with a clear head.
- georgeg23 4y agoHe needs to make moves before the Nov 8 election.
- boc 4y agoI know I’m not a big fish in the SF tech pond. I lead performance marketing/growth at my startup - spend a few grand a day across the typical channels. Seeing things like this from Elon make it nearly certain that my company won’t be advertising on Twitter in the foreseeable future. I was actually considering jumping in while other larger corps were pulling out (better CPMs), but I can’t risk the act of advertising on Twitter becoming a brand liability, especially on the off chance that Elon publicly unleashes millions of followers in anger on my startup. Elon is making a massive mistake picking fights with advertisers. It’s a new brand attack surface that didn’t exist last week.
- yucky 4y agoReally? Facebook and Google have provided homes for Farrakhan, ISIS, etc. and they're the two largest advertising platforms on the planet, yet Elon is a dick so that it as bridge too far? Fascinating lol
- xkjkls 4y agoIt's advertising, literally the only thing that matters is public perception. If Elon dickishness makes public perception toxic that's all that matters.
- yucky 4y agoThe fact that public perception is so ass backwards and easily manipulated speaks volumes about the value of it.
- dangerface 4y agoPublic perception really doesn't matter to advertisers all publicity is good publicity.
- fzeroracer 4y agoI pretty much called this, because Musk (and a lot of his fans, it seems) don't understand how hard it is to monetize social networks and how much power advertisers have on the platform. This isn't always a good thing mind you, especially when one single advertiser holds a lot of power, but ultimately Musk invited this upon himself and he's just digging a deeper hole with each comment. Once the advertisers are gone, Twitter dies. And he isn't going to monetize users directly enough to change course.
- kyleee 4y agoit is pretty crazy but on the optimistic side maybe he'll come up with a successful non ad driven monetization strategy. it sucks in so many ways to be beholden to scummy advertisers, and with the sheer amount of money and rep on the line here mayhe there is a chance they'll innovate away the advertisers. here'a to hoping
- someNameIG 4y agoI'm not sure how they could. Last year they made around $4.5 billion in revenue from ads, they'd need around 50 million people paying the $8/month blue checkmark thing to replace that. iirc there's currently around 400,000 verified users now.
- foogazi 4y ago> iirc there's currently around 400,000 verified users now. Doesn’t mean anything as none of those ever paid for verification
- someNameIG 4y agoI'm aware, I was trying to put into context how many payed users Twitter would need to replace add revenue, it's just unfeasible.
- Ice_cream_suit 4y agoMr Musk fails to see the irony in his statement. In reality any advertiser who fails to be named as "pulling put" is going to be asked, why they are not pulling out of Twitter. Of course, advertisers who want to appeal to the far right market are going to be perfectly happy, and will keep sponsoring Twitter. Sending money to any of Musk's companies is being seen as a brand liability.
- naveen99 4y ago1. Why isn’t Elon on hacker news himself ? 2. I wish Twitter would allow sorting of replies (by likes or whatever).
- _zzaw 4y agoI have a suspicion that about 10% of the people in any Elon Musk-related thread are Elon Musk.
- anigbrowl 4y ago1. Little to gain for most tech CEOs, and a lot to lose; a much less dramatic environment than twitter, but one where missteps or embarrassment could have more serious consequences. 2. I hate the UI but the API is pretty dope
- LinuxBender 4y agoHe is probably on here under a different name just like many celebrities are in video games using alt names. I suspect he would only use his real name with proof if he felt this was an audience for him. Most of the HN audience will expect references and afaik Elon just posts his opinions and not references, so this is not likely a receptive audience.
- RantyDave 4y agoDoes he mean the advertisers or the "activist groups"? Either which way, I thought the basic concept was that publicity was a good thing.
- _hcuq 4y agoElon made a category error in thinking Twitter is a free speech platform. It is an advertising sales platform, just like NBC or whatever.
- _hcuq 4y agoHow to burn 44 billion dollars……
- gary11 4y agoWhat a joke. Everyone who thinks Elon is actually on one side or another needs to look into his history. He's a globalist technocrat. His mission like all globalist technocrats is to continue to divide the useless eaters while the globalist neofuelist scumbags Implement their social Darwinism and destroy the infrastructure built over the last century plus. Won't be that hard considering fractional Reserve banking created a house of cards that's just about done. You can't make as many poor business decisions as Musk and have the government keep you afloat if you aren't owned by them. Everyone commenting in this thread will be collateral damage of the great reset if people don't wake up and start working together.
- cloakedcode 4y agoI feel like I’m missing a huge amount of context to what you’re talking about, especially that last sentence. Where do I catch up?
- anigbrowl 4y agoYou gotta do your own research, look into Pepe Silvia
- thordenmark 4y agoTwitter has been unprofitable for years, it has just become even more profitable. Elon has to focus on making it a better product before he can expect anyone to pay money to use it. Right now it is a truly horrible piece of software. As for the employees that got fired. So what? I've worked in tech for decades, layoffs are commonplace. They're getting generous payouts and if they have any skills they'll land another job in no time.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- LastTrain 4y agoIf pulling your ads from twitter is actually performative, wouldn’t getting named help?
- richardatlarge 4y agoAfter reading all this about Musk on HN, I would pay $8/m for the rest of my life to never see his name in ‘print’ again
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y agoI've posted this before, but sometimes a quote can have multiple applications. This was apocryphal company wide email: "Some of you are concerned about the recent change in leadership and of the changes they have enacted. Many feel that Elon is just an MBA wielding moron who has no business running a social media company. I have personally known Elon since we were kids and I just want to set the record straight: Elon does not have an MBA."
- 28304283409234 4y ago"I am the true defender of freedom of speech. And if you speak out against my way of running this company and leave twitter I will name and shame you." What a child.
- dogma1138 4y agoTwitter is a huge source for retail data science when it comes to sentiment analysis about products and brands. That ecosystem is quite fragile and pretty much the one reason that brands to advertise or are active on Twitter despite it’s having by far the lowest conversion rates and by a long margin is that it’s a platform where advertisement and brand engagement sparks conversation the most and the Twitter commercial API makes is easy to get access to all the tweets and analyze the data. And this is really their entire value proposition they are pretty much the only platform where you can show an ad or actively engage with customers or potential customers and get immediate feedback that isn’t just a binary yes/no on the conversion. So not only does this hurts them on two fronts as reduced advertisement and brand engagement reduces the value of their data considerably it’s also going to quickly snowball once only a handful or major brands drop it since the value proposition would completely collapse.