6 ms·

Trump snubs Twitter after Musk announces reactivation of ex-president's account

18 points by karp773 4y ago

seydor 4y ago
Twitter bankruptcy imminent
- karp773 4y ago
  I would not say imminent but it has increased considerably as Trump seemed to be one of the main bets of Musk to increase (double?) engagement.
  - mikkergp 4y ago
    Kara Swisher had a pretty good tweet thread about this. Essentially: Musk is doing a pretty good job single handedly attracting attention to Twitter, but where does he go from here, executing disloyal devs on livestream? https://nitter.net/karaswisher/status/1593970881352826880#m https://nitter.net/karaswisher/status/1593970881352826880#m
    - gsatic 4y ago
      How do they come up with so many gifs is mainly what I want to know...
  - Finnucane 4y ago
    He probably wouldn’t even get that much. It would just be a lousy sequel rehashing the same crap over and over again.
    - karp773 4y ago
      > It would just be a lousy sequel rehashing the same crap over and over again. Exactly this. This was the whole point of Musk's Trump survey and so on, to keep the Trump saga on Twitter going.
jimmydean12 4y ago
This isn’t a surprise, part of the financing deal for truth was that Donnie would always post on truth first before any other social media.
- karp773 4y ago
  To be honest, it's a surprise for me. Because in order to win, Trump needs to broaden his audience. What's the point of limiting himself to only his supporters on truth? They are his hardcore supporters anyway. It’s like preaching to the choir.
  - smt88 4y ago
    > in order to win, Trump needs to broaden his audience I don't think this is true. Trump's message, image, and behavior were possibly the most widely/frequently broadcast of any human in history. There is effectively no stone left unturned for him. There was also some analysis during his presidency that the more he tweeted, the worse his approval rating got. That might not be true these days, but it shows that not all publicity is good publicity. > What's the point of limiting himself to only his supporters on truth? He can squeeze them for donations, just as he does with his email campaigns.
    - karp773 4y ago
      I am not saying this is a winning strategy. Only that's the only reasonable strategy to have a shot on winning.
      - jfengel 4y ago
        In the last election, he got more votes than anybody had in history. He lost only because he opponent got even more than that. Much has changed since then. His opponent came with a relatively clean track record, at a time when he himself was seen to be struggling with a crisis. The opponent now has several crises of his own to deal with, most notably inflation, an issue that strikes close to home for a lot of voters. So broadening his base may not be necessary. His base is quite enthusiastic, and it may suffice merely to demoralize his opponents. That strategy had worked for him in his first election, and now can come with the advantage of spending two years harassing the incumbent. There are always too many variables to predict confidently, but his wisest course of action may simply be to do exactly what he's always done and hope that circumstances break his way -- which they very well could.
Finnucane 4y ago
“I’m not done squeezing my own platform dry, yet.”
mikkergp 4y ago
I’m firmly in the camp of not wanting to hear anything more from Trump in my lifetime, but I do wonder if there is any ideological side to this from Musk. It’s not clear at all that Trump coming back to Twitter is good for him, or for Republicans. Banning him I think took a lot of the bad side of the conservative culture out of the spotlight and bringing him back will make it front and center again. A consistent message I saw from Republicans was his policies aren’t bad but could he just stop Tweeting. It will get ugly but if Trump is able to rile DeSantis up into a public fight, it will probably be bad for discourse but good for Democrats. The ideological piece would be the bad ideas and sunlight thing. Trump, as an important voice in the Republican Party should be visible so people can vote against him if they so choose.
- karp773 4y ago
  Edit: the estimates were way off!
  - whatok 4y ago
    Elon took out loans with over 100% annual rates?
    - karp773 4y ago
      My bad! I I stand corrected.
    - karp773 4y ago
      By the way, thanks for pointing this out. With all this craziness around Musk's ventures and Twitter, my BS detector has become totally blinded. Hadn't I posted this comment and then had been corrected, I would have still believed Musk was able to commit to these crazy terms. Of course, this would be too much even for him. Speaking of the benefits of sharing one's thoughts on HN.
- smt88 4y ago
  > I do wonder if there is any ideological side to this from Musk. I think this is giving Musk too much credit. He hasn't shown ideological consistency on any issue, and that includes free speech.
karp773 4y ago
One more thing, which may be controversial here on HN, but which I think is nonetheless correct, is that Musk has been effectively cornered by the previous Twitter board. He has no other choice but to count every penny and squeeze the maximum from the remaining employees. See the revenue vs loan payments estimates. So the blame for all the drastic measures such as mass layoffs and such, should be equally shared by the ex-board if not solely.
- detaro 4y ago
  What exactly did the board do to "corner" him?
  - karp773 4y ago
    Didn't they sue him into shelling out $44 billion?
    - detaro 4y ago
      He voluntarily offered to pay $44 billion and voluntarily signed a contract saying he'd do so. Insisting that he follow through with what he voluntarily made a binding commitment to do is hardly "cornering". The debt that has been taken on was his idea, part of the original offer he made, it's not like he didn't plan for Twitter having that debt to pay off.
    - d_e_solomon 4y ago
      I mean, he did commit to buying them $44 billion. If he didn't want to buy them, he shouldn't have signed a contract agreeing to do so. You can't argue that Musk doesn't know what a contract is and can't get decent legal advice.
      - karp773 4y ago
        He signed the contract in a totally different market environment. Twitter's board knew this but still proceeded to sue him nonetheless. Did they understand the consequences for the company and the employees? Sure they did but went on anyway.
uejfiweun 4y ago
Trump's gonna HAVE to start posting again because of the optics. The most recent tweets on his profile are the tweets from right before he got banned - the Capitol insurrection tweets. His profile is now just a glowing reminder of the Capitol insurrection. Terrible look for Trump. He's gonna need to either start deleting, or start burying these with new tweets, because the current situation is not exactly positive for him.
- mikkergp 4y ago
  You think Trump’s strategy is going to shy away from the insurrection? I figured he would double down.
- karp773 4y ago
  Haha, that makes sense. If it's true, a good move for Musk would be to pin Trump's last tweets to the home page. :)
- m-p-3 4y ago
  He could simply post that he's on another platform and leave it, and/or make the account private, so that no one can create another account with the same Twitter handle 30 days after the account is closed.
- postingawayonhn 4y ago
  Isn't he proud of all that stuff?
- throwawaylinux 4y ago
  I don't think so. People who think there was an insurrection and Trump was behind it are not going to be swayed and believe Trump must be imprisoned if not for that then something else. Those who think it's a political witch hunt with about as much credibility of the Trump colluding with Putin to hack the election story won't be either, they'll only ever see it as evidence of political persecution. If anything I would say it's slightly more annoying for the insurrection conspiracy theorists to deal with because any time someone brings up those tweets they'll have to explain that when you connect all the dots it actually means Trump was behind it, and by that stage you've already lost the attention of most readers.
westcort 4y ago
“That is the talk of a loser who can’t win! His numbers have gone down. People are smart!” No worries, here are infinite Trump tweets generated by a Markov model: https://www.locserendipity.com/Markov_Trump.html https://www.locserendipity.com/Markov_Trump.html

18 points by karp773 4y ago

seydor 4y ago

Twitter bankruptcy imminent

karp773 4y ago
I would not say imminent but it has increased considerably as Trump seemed to be one of the main bets of Musk to increase (double?) engagement.
- mikkergp 4y ago
  Kara Swisher had a pretty good tweet thread about this. Essentially: Musk is doing a pretty good job single handedly attracting attention to Twitter, but where does he go from here, executing disloyal devs on livestream? https://nitter.net/karaswisher/status/1593970881352826880#m https://nitter.net/karaswisher/status/1593970881352826880#m
  - gsatic 4y ago
    How do they come up with so many gifs is mainly what I want to know...
- Finnucane 4y ago
  He probably wouldn’t even get that much. It would just be a lousy sequel rehashing the same crap over and over again.
  - karp773 4y ago
    > It would just be a lousy sequel rehashing the same crap over and over again. Exactly this. This was the whole point of Musk's Trump survey and so on, to keep the Trump saga on Twitter going.

jimmydean12 4y ago

This isn’t a surprise, part of the financing deal for truth was that Donnie would always post on truth first before any other social media.

karp773 4y ago
To be honest, it's a surprise for me. Because in order to win, Trump needs to broaden his audience. What's the point of limiting himself to only his supporters on truth? They are his hardcore supporters anyway. It’s like preaching to the choir.
- smt88 4y ago
  > in order to win, Trump needs to broaden his audience I don't think this is true. Trump's message, image, and behavior were possibly the most widely/frequently broadcast of any human in history. There is effectively no stone left unturned for him. There was also some analysis during his presidency that the more he tweeted, the worse his approval rating got. That might not be true these days, but it shows that not all publicity is good publicity. > What's the point of limiting himself to only his supporters on truth? He can squeeze them for donations, just as he does with his email campaigns.
  - karp773 4y ago
    I am not saying this is a winning strategy. Only that's the only reasonable strategy to have a shot on winning.
    - jfengel 4y ago
      In the last election, he got more votes than anybody had in history. He lost only because he opponent got even more than that. Much has changed since then. His opponent came with a relatively clean track record, at a time when he himself was seen to be struggling with a crisis. The opponent now has several crises of his own to deal with, most notably inflation, an issue that strikes close to home for a lot of voters. So broadening his base may not be necessary. His base is quite enthusiastic, and it may suffice merely to demoralize his opponents. That strategy had worked for him in his first election, and now can come with the advantage of spending two years harassing the incumbent. There are always too many variables to predict confidently, but his wisest course of action may simply be to do exactly what he's always done and hope that circumstances break his way -- which they very well could.

Finnucane 4y ago

“I’m not done squeezing my own platform dry, yet.”

mikkergp 4y ago

I’m firmly in the camp of not wanting to hear anything more from Trump in my lifetime, but I do wonder if there is any ideological side to this from Musk. It’s not clear at all that Trump coming back to Twitter is good for him, or for Republicans. Banning him I think took a lot of the bad side of the conservative culture out of the spotlight and bringing him back will make it front and center again. A consistent message I saw from Republicans was his policies aren’t bad but could he just stop Tweeting. It will get ugly but if Trump is able to rile DeSantis up into a public fight, it will probably be bad for discourse but good for Democrats. The ideological piece would be the bad ideas and sunlight thing. Trump, as an important voice in the Republican Party should be visible so people can vote against him if they so choose.

karp773 4y ago
Edit: the estimates were way off!
- whatok 4y ago
  Elon took out loans with over 100% annual rates?
  - karp773 4y ago
    My bad! I I stand corrected.
  - karp773 4y ago
    By the way, thanks for pointing this out. With all this craziness around Musk's ventures and Twitter, my BS detector has become totally blinded. Hadn't I posted this comment and then had been corrected, I would have still believed Musk was able to commit to these crazy terms. Of course, this would be too much even for him. Speaking of the benefits of sharing one's thoughts on HN.
smt88 4y ago
> I do wonder if there is any ideological side to this from Musk. I think this is giving Musk too much credit. He hasn't shown ideological consistency on any issue, and that includes free speech.

karp773 4y ago

One more thing, which may be controversial here on HN, but which I think is nonetheless correct, is that Musk has been effectively cornered by the previous Twitter board. He has no other choice but to count every penny and squeeze the maximum from the remaining employees. See the revenue vs loan payments estimates. So the blame for all the drastic measures such as mass layoffs and such, should be equally shared by the ex-board if not solely.

detaro 4y ago
What exactly did the board do to "corner" him?
- karp773 4y ago
  Didn't they sue him into shelling out $44 billion?
  - detaro 4y ago
    He voluntarily offered to pay $44 billion and voluntarily signed a contract saying he'd do so. Insisting that he follow through with what he voluntarily made a binding commitment to do is hardly "cornering". The debt that has been taken on was his idea, part of the original offer he made, it's not like he didn't plan for Twitter having that debt to pay off.
  - d_e_solomon 4y ago
    I mean, he did commit to buying them $44 billion. If he didn't want to buy them, he shouldn't have signed a contract agreeing to do so. You can't argue that Musk doesn't know what a contract is and can't get decent legal advice.
    - karp773 4y ago
      He signed the contract in a totally different market environment. Twitter's board knew this but still proceeded to sue him nonetheless. Did they understand the consequences for the company and the employees? Sure they did but went on anyway.

uejfiweun 4y ago

Trump's gonna HAVE to start posting again because of the optics. The most recent tweets on his profile are the tweets from right before he got banned - the Capitol insurrection tweets. His profile is now just a glowing reminder of the Capitol insurrection. Terrible look for Trump. He's gonna need to either start deleting, or start burying these with new tweets, because the current situation is not exactly positive for him.

mikkergp 4y ago
You think Trump’s strategy is going to shy away from the insurrection? I figured he would double down.
karp773 4y ago
Haha, that makes sense. If it's true, a good move for Musk would be to pin Trump's last tweets to the home page. :)
m-p-3 4y ago
He could simply post that he's on another platform and leave it, and/or make the account private, so that no one can create another account with the same Twitter handle 30 days after the account is closed.
postingawayonhn 4y ago
Isn't he proud of all that stuff?
throwawaylinux 4y ago
I don't think so. People who think there was an insurrection and Trump was behind it are not going to be swayed and believe Trump must be imprisoned if not for that then something else. Those who think it's a political witch hunt with about as much credibility of the Trump colluding with Putin to hack the election story won't be either, they'll only ever see it as evidence of political persecution. If anything I would say it's slightly more annoying for the insurrection conspiracy theorists to deal with because any time someone brings up those tweets they'll have to explain that when you connect all the dots it actually means Trump was behind it, and by that stage you've already lost the attention of most readers.

westcort 4y ago

“That is the talk of a loser who can’t win! His numbers have gone down. People are smart!” No worries, here are infinite Trump tweets generated by a Markov model: https://www.locserendipity.com/Markov_Trump.html https://www.locserendipity.com/Markov_Trump.html