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The advertisers pulled before any layoffs. Actually they started pulling the day before he took over. The teams he cut are mostly silly teams. A climate team?

The advertisers pulled before any layoffs. Actually they started pulling the day before he took over. The teams he cut are mostly silly teams. A climate team? At twitter? AI Ethics? He has to stop burning money. He is moving twitter from ad funded (which never paid the bills) to subscription funded (which might pay the bills? $8/mo is nothing. It will certainly make bans hurt more. It will significantly help spam.)

addajones 4y ago
Absolutely! People love to hate it’s very infectious. I personally believe for-profit social media companies should have always charged a subscription. People tend to be more respectful and use things they pay for.
- thedrbrian 4y ago
  none of the big social media companies would have gotten big if the users had to pay. See something awful where you had to pay a tenner to post.
  - addajones 4y ago
    You're correct 100%. I just think the entire idea of building a userbase for free isn't so great.
noahtallen 4y ago
How the hell is AI Ethics irrelevant to a company that uses AI to determine what tweets people are shown?
sigmar 4y ago
The ad model works for instagram, youtube, and tiktok. Why can't it work for twitter? I don't understand why the mostly text-based site would be so much more expensive than the various other social media sites that don't require subscriptions to achieve high-reach. I'm sure it'll massively cut down on spam, but think Elon might be overestimating how much other ppl care about spam based on his own feed/replies/notifications.
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  It works financially but not ethically. Tracking users to maximize ad revenue is something advertisers demand and it's frowned on more and more. In the EU it's now illegal to do so without the user's consent. So.think it's smart to look at subscription business models and much more ethical too. At least you can give the user a choice now.
- briantakita 4y ago
  > Why can't it work for twitter? Don't know. Perhaps the fired management can comment on why it didn't work for Twitter? > Elon might be overestimating how much other ppl care about spam based on his own feed/replies/notifications. Difference is one does not need to follow Elon if one thinks his content is spam. Disincentivizing ubiquitous spam created by bots out of the platform will reduce the noise overall so one can curate the list of those who they follow.
  - sigmar 4y ago
    I'm not describing Elon's content as spam. I'm saying he receives more spam than most people, particularly because he likes to respond to ppl that @ him and is very into crypto.
chmars 4y ago
Do you have a source for those 'silly teams'?
- sieabahlpark 4y ago
therouwboat 4y ago
Are they going to ban paying customers? Thats like throwing money away.
GekkePrutser 4y ago
A climate team at a company with a huge energy footprint is absolutely a great idea IMO. Twitter operates a lot of servers and I'm sure some optimization can be done there.
- UncleEntity 4y ago
  Laying off half the workforce will probably save more electricity than whatever schemes the climate team ever dreamed up. Just saying…
  - GekkePrutser 4y ago
    How will that save electricity for society? Those people will just work somewhere else (if they're not working at home already which is super common in IT). It's not really solving the problem, just shifting it onto someone else's plate. Reducing things like underutilized servers could really make a big difference that won't just shift to somewhere else like fired employees would. Especially storage is something that is pretty energy intensive even when not in use very much. Our SAN systems were by far the hottest things in our datacenters even though the amount of compute capacity done on those boxes is negligible.
_djo_ 4y ago
The advertisers began pulling ads after ad agency execs met with him and failed to get satisfactory answers[0] and after he posted that conspiracy theory about Paul Pelosi. It didn't help that he ignored and then blocked the head of MMA Global just after the layoffs started.[1] If he wanted to keep advertisers on board this is an odd way to go about it. The Ethical AI team wasn't 'silly', it was working on ways to make the algorithms used at Twitter more transparent to users, avoid bias, and potentially allow for multiple algorithm choices. Subscription funding for Twitter is never going to work as Twitter Blue showed quite clearly. At best it'll result in marginal profit on a substantially smaller and less interesting site, dominated by a few voices and with many of its members leaving to other places. Nor will it block scammers, who'll be able to use stolen cards and other payment methods to pay for access the same way they currently pay for hacked accounts. It'll just be even cheaper for them. Nor is $8/mo 'nothing' for large groups of people, especially in the developing world, and would result in them being excluded from the platform. Musk made one vague statement about the price being adjusted for different regions but nothing further has emerged on that. [0]https://www.adweek.com/media/elon-musk-fails-to-answer-brands-questions-in-private-meetings/ https://www.adweek.com/media/elon-musk-fails-to-answer-brand... [1]https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588599808587345921?s=20&t=SguSYedGWKG78GxG9dRGoQ https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588599808587345921?s=20&t...
- PM_me_your_math 4y ago
  You don't need a blue check mark to have an account or post.
  - _djo_ 4y ago
    Musk has openly stated that those without Twitter Blue will have their tweets substantially deprioritised and de-emphasised.[0] [0] https://twitter.com/somebadideas/status/1588876465915166721?s=46&t=sfuIQVNAM-m1voXowfiY2w https://twitter.com/somebadideas/status/1588876465915166721?...
    - PM_me_your_math 4y ago
      What does that have to do with the facts I posted?
youngtaff 4y ago
He’s burning money because he loaded the company with a billion dollars of debt Without that debt Twitter was in much better shape
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  Twitter took the debt. Twitter did not have to take the debt. Twitter made that choice before agreeing to Elon.
  - _djo_ 4y ago
    Nope. This was taken on as part of Musk's acquisition which is structured as a leveraged buyout and saddled Twitter with nearly $13 billion in additional debt. Twitter's annual debt service cost before Musk took over was an entirely manageable $60 million a year. Now it's somewhere around $1 billion.
pjc50 4y ago
> $8/mo is nothing. Most of non-Western Twitter will vanish overnight if this is a requirement to use the platform. But it's still not clear what it will actually mean and how it will affect the site culture.
- shultays 4y ago
  It is not a requirement to use platform, it is for blue checkmark
- PM_me_your_math 4y ago
  Do you need a blue check mark to use Twitter? Ask yourself that question.
CuriousCosmic 4y ago
An AI ethics team is 100% a core team for a business like twitter. Facebook has already proven that such a team is necessary [1] to prevent atrocities from occurring. Being able to identify biases in the content selections by "the algorithm" (read: a bundle of fancy heuristics) is a core part of their job. Their job is to identify ways bad actors are abusing their content propagation algorithms and ways to mitigate these abuses. 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...
- pseudo0 4y ago
  An AI ethics team isn't going to catch promotion of violence or genocide in Myanmar, that is a problem that requires local cultural and language expertise and staff performing 24/7 real-time moderation. An AI ethics team is just a PR prop for companies to trot out when something bad happens to show that they care, not an effective solution.
nemo44x 4y ago

addajones 4y ago

Absolutely! People love to hate it’s very infectious. I personally believe for-profit social media companies should have always charged a subscription. People tend to be more respectful and use things they pay for.

thedrbrian 4y ago
none of the big social media companies would have gotten big if the users had to pay. See something awful where you had to pay a tenner to post.
- addajones 4y ago
  You're correct 100%. I just think the entire idea of building a userbase for free isn't so great.

noahtallen 4y ago

How the hell is AI Ethics irrelevant to a company that uses AI to determine what tweets people are shown?

sigmar 4y ago

The ad model works for instagram, youtube, and tiktok. Why can't it work for twitter? I don't understand why the mostly text-based site would be so much more expensive than the various other social media sites that don't require subscriptions to achieve high-reach. I'm sure it'll massively cut down on spam, but think Elon might be overestimating how much other ppl care about spam based on his own feed/replies/notifications.

GekkePrutser 4y ago
It works financially but not ethically. Tracking users to maximize ad revenue is something advertisers demand and it's frowned on more and more. In the EU it's now illegal to do so without the user's consent. So.think it's smart to look at subscription business models and much more ethical too. At least you can give the user a choice now.
briantakita 4y ago
> Why can't it work for twitter? Don't know. Perhaps the fired management can comment on why it didn't work for Twitter? > Elon might be overestimating how much other ppl care about spam based on his own feed/replies/notifications. Difference is one does not need to follow Elon if one thinks his content is spam. Disincentivizing ubiquitous spam created by bots out of the platform will reduce the noise overall so one can curate the list of those who they follow.
- sigmar 4y ago
  I'm not describing Elon's content as spam. I'm saying he receives more spam than most people, particularly because he likes to respond to ppl that @ him and is very into crypto.

chmars 4y ago

Do you have a source for those 'silly teams'?

sieabahlpark 4y ago

therouwboat 4y ago

Are they going to ban paying customers? Thats like throwing money away.

GekkePrutser 4y ago

A climate team at a company with a huge energy footprint is absolutely a great idea IMO. Twitter operates a lot of servers and I'm sure some optimization can be done there.

UncleEntity 4y ago
Laying off half the workforce will probably save more electricity than whatever schemes the climate team ever dreamed up. Just saying…
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  How will that save electricity for society? Those people will just work somewhere else (if they're not working at home already which is super common in IT). It's not really solving the problem, just shifting it onto someone else's plate. Reducing things like underutilized servers could really make a big difference that won't just shift to somewhere else like fired employees would. Especially storage is something that is pretty energy intensive even when not in use very much. Our SAN systems were by far the hottest things in our datacenters even though the amount of compute capacity done on those boxes is negligible.

_djo_ 4y ago

The advertisers began pulling ads after ad agency execs met with him and failed to get satisfactory answers[0] and after he posted that conspiracy theory about Paul Pelosi. It didn't help that he ignored and then blocked the head of MMA Global just after the layoffs started.[1] If he wanted to keep advertisers on board this is an odd way to go about it. The Ethical AI team wasn't 'silly', it was working on ways to make the algorithms used at Twitter more transparent to users, avoid bias, and potentially allow for multiple algorithm choices. Subscription funding for Twitter is never going to work as Twitter Blue showed quite clearly. At best it'll result in marginal profit on a substantially smaller and less interesting site, dominated by a few voices and with many of its members leaving to other places. Nor will it block scammers, who'll be able to use stolen cards and other payment methods to pay for access the same way they currently pay for hacked accounts. It'll just be even cheaper for them. Nor is $8/mo 'nothing' for large groups of people, especially in the developing world, and would result in them being excluded from the platform. Musk made one vague statement about the price being adjusted for different regions but nothing further has emerged on that. [0]https://www.adweek.com/media/elon-musk-fails-to-answer-brands-questions-in-private-meetings/ https://www.adweek.com/media/elon-musk-fails-to-answer-brand... [1]https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588599808587345921?s=20&t=SguSYedGWKG78GxG9dRGoQ https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588599808587345921?s=20&t...

PM_me_your_math 4y ago
You don't need a blue check mark to have an account or post.
- _djo_ 4y ago
  Musk has openly stated that those without Twitter Blue will have their tweets substantially deprioritised and de-emphasised.[0] [0] https://twitter.com/somebadideas/status/1588876465915166721?s=46&t=sfuIQVNAM-m1voXowfiY2w https://twitter.com/somebadideas/status/1588876465915166721?...
  - PM_me_your_math 4y ago
    What does that have to do with the facts I posted?

youngtaff 4y ago

He’s burning money because he loaded the company with a billion dollars of debt Without that debt Twitter was in much better shape

vorpalhex 4y ago
Twitter took the debt. Twitter did not have to take the debt. Twitter made that choice before agreeing to Elon.
- _djo_ 4y ago
  Nope. This was taken on as part of Musk's acquisition which is structured as a leveraged buyout and saddled Twitter with nearly $13 billion in additional debt. Twitter's annual debt service cost before Musk took over was an entirely manageable $60 million a year. Now it's somewhere around $1 billion.

pjc50 4y ago

> $8/mo is nothing. Most of non-Western Twitter will vanish overnight if this is a requirement to use the platform. But it's still not clear what it will actually mean and how it will affect the site culture.

shultays 4y ago
It is not a requirement to use platform, it is for blue checkmark
PM_me_your_math 4y ago
Do you need a blue check mark to use Twitter? Ask yourself that question.

CuriousCosmic 4y ago

An AI ethics team is 100% a core team for a business like twitter. Facebook has already proven that such a team is necessary [1] to prevent atrocities from occurring. Being able to identify biases in the content selections by "the algorithm" (read: a bundle of fancy heuristics) is a core part of their job. Their job is to identify ways bad actors are abusing their content propagation algorithms and ways to mitigate these abuses. 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...

pseudo0 4y ago
An AI ethics team isn't going to catch promotion of violence or genocide in Myanmar, that is a problem that requires local cultural and language expertise and staff performing 24/7 real-time moderation. An AI ethics team is just a PR prop for companies to trot out when something bad happens to show that they care, not an effective solution.

nemo44x 4y ago