8 ms·

"Thin-skinned narcissist buys criticism machine." This is not "free speech absolutism" in the slightest. It's not even business-savvy. Elon's mask has truly c

by choult 4y ago

"Thin-skinned narcissist buys criticism machine." This is not "free speech absolutism" in the slightest. It's not even business-savvy. Elon's mask has truly cracked, and he proves he is nothing but a febrile mind who has bought into his own hype.

synu 4y ago
Maybe they should try letting Kanye run it next.
- karmicthreat 4y ago
  Mr Beast already called dibs.
  - the_only_law 4y ago
    I’m not completely sure, but I thought he was a benign enough guy?
    - karmicthreat 4y ago
      He seems to be. I'm just referring to a tweet where Mr Beast asked for twitter when Musk was done with it.
nopenopenopeno 4y ago
[flagged]
- acover 4y ago
  Plenty of social networks thrive while letting users link to other social networks. TikTok is famous for linking to YouTube. This is a sign of a bad product.
  - nailer 4y ago
    I don’t think youtube has direct competitors anymore. But it would be interesting if say vimeo got big again - would they block “moved to @mkbhd on vimeo” as a username for example?
- jacquesm 4y ago
  There are no real structural constraints to capitalism that I'm aware of.
  - flandish 4y ago
    Just the labor pool approaching zero. When it bounces along the bottom, capitalism hires children, etc.
- pjc50 4y ago
  Depending on what people mean by "socialism", a label so heavily overloaded it could refer to anything from mild social democracy to full communism, you're not going to get better free speech.
truth777 4y ago
[flagged]
highwaylights 4y ago
Twitter is competing for Parler’s audience now. This is just accelerating that process along.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  I think the actual internal business model is motivated more by the desire to capture the Tik-Tok audience than the Parler audience - it's much larger. However, it is true that from a purely business viewpoint, you'd want a platform that was equally popular with left-Democrats, right-Republicans, and unaffiliated-independents.
  - pjc50 4y ago
    It has been noted that Tiktok is not on the ban list, possibly because of Elon's personal decision to reinstate "libsoftiktok", a prominent harrasment account. > equally popular with left-Democrats, right-Republicans, and unaffiliated-independents A large number of forces are making this increasingly impossible.
    - richbell 4y ago
      Random unfounded speculation: he also doesn't want to risk souring his relationship with China.
    - yucky 4y ago
      > "libsoftiktok", a prominent harrasment account What? They literally post exact quotes that have aged poorly and/or posts that are evidence of clear double standards and hypocrisy. That's a public service if anything.
    - charcircuit 4y ago
      He didn't ban YouTube or Twitch either. TikTok isn't banned because it's not twitter like.
  - minimaxir 4y ago
    > desire to capture the Tik-Tok audience The TikTok audience is the one that would also refuse to use Twitter specifically because of Elon.
nailer 4y ago
- synu 4y ago
  I’ve definitely linked to my profiles on other sites before and never been banned or even warned.
  - nailer 4y ago
    There’s been reports of mastodon links being handled oddly for a while prior to this announcement. Not insta though. Odd Twitter considers them a competitor though Insta did get big through twitter originally.
    - belltaco 4y ago
      For a while? I've only heard of that in the past few days.
    - faefox 4y ago
      If by "a while" you mean the past handful of days, then yes. To suggest that this has been an unspoken policy for years is simply wrong and misleading.
    - synu 4y ago
      I more mean “on various occasions over the last several years”
- LordAtlas 4y ago
  Plenty of people have posted their Instagram profile links in their Twitter bios over the years and never got suspended or locked for it. I've posted tweets with links to my Instagram profile several times and never got even a warning. This is all new Musk policy.
nonbirithm 4y ago
Pure speculation, but maybe this was exactly what he wanted. He originally didn't want to buy Twitter after changing his mind, he was forced to. Maybe this is in a sense his retribution for what he perceived originally as the "botting problem" or whatever else he dislikes about Twitter, by burning the thing he was forced to take ownership of to the ground. Many people say social media is unhealthy. Is Elon trying to say with the capital he wields that everyone is better off without it? (Even though I think this is a terrible way of doing it, as it places his other companies as collateral.)
- richbell 4y ago
  > Pure speculation, but maybe this was exactly what he wanted. He originally didn't want to buy Twitter after changing his mind, he was forced to. Maybe this is in a sense his retribution for what he perceived originally as the "botting problem" or whatever else he dislikes about Twitter, by burning the thing he was forced to take ownership of to the ground. Many people say social media is unhealthy. Is Elon trying to say with the capital he wields that everyone is better off without it? (Even though I think this is a terrible way of doing it, as it places his other companies as collateral.) This is incredible amount of mental gymnastics to rationalize his behaviour. There is no "4D chess", he is demonstrably a petulant and vindictive bully. Read about how he treated his ex-wife, or employees and journalists who were even mildly critical of him.
  - nonbirithm 4y ago
    Not saying that he isn't a petulant and vindictive bully, just that maybe he never cared much about keeping Twitter profitable to begin with.
bko 4y ago
- kevinmgranger 4y ago
  It's because Musk is commonly defended, and borderline worshiped across most of HN. The downfall of twitter is the perfect opportunity for a wake-up call. And that's why this type of comment is more and more visible.
  - bko 4y ago
    So you're saying that low quality low information comments are "sticking it to him and his supporters" as opposed to a more thought out comment regarding the policy or direction? And this will "wake up" his supporters by calling him a narcissist and thin skinned for the umpteenth time (in the same comment thread!)
    - grogenaut 4y ago
      I'd say more that there have been years of fawning comments with no value over Elon being a genius... Those low quality comments are turning to follow the trend to Elon hate. Call it virtual signaling, following the crowd, echo chamber. It happens. I see the same thing for the hype cycle with kube and other tech cycles as well. It's actually an indirect benefit for me with hn as it's usually ahead of the hype cycle.
      - bko 4y ago
        Yes, the "he's a genius" posts are equally as cringy. As were the "its a private platform, build your own if you don't like it posts" circa earlier last year were awful too. The answer isn't to do the same thing but switch sides.
    - MrMan 4y ago
      maybe low-quality comments will drive you to consider the nature of Reality, it could be a game-changer for you. wide-eyed curiosity, steel man, high quality good faith sanctimonious snobbery, I am human not a bot.
echelon 4y ago
I tried really hard to stay an Elon fan. SpaceX is a step function game changer, and Starlink was such a cool related market to break into. Now I have to go change my Twitter profiles that have been the same for ages... Has Musk never heard of the Streisand effect? I've always been bearish on TSLA. Now I think the narrative is changing. The market monopoly bull case never made sense. Every car company and nation will be pumping out EVs soon. I think the true value is half of Toyota's market cap, and I'll be buying puts on Monday.
- greggarious 4y ago
  > I tried really hard to stay an Elon fan. If a relationship feels like work, you should break up.
- richbell 4y ago
  > I've always been bearish on TSLA though. Every car company and nation will be pumping out EVs soon. The market monopoly bull case never made sense. I think the true value is half of Toyota's market cap, and I'll be buying puts on Monday. IIRC Elon himself has said that Tesla is doomed without the success of FSD. I think any rational person would agree it's baffling how high a valuation Tesla has held for so long, especially when you compare them to any other car manufacturer, but as the saying goes "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."
- RivieraKid 4y ago
  But why, hasn't it been obvious for years that he's a terrible person? I honestly can't believe that many smart people don't see through Elon's BS. It's as if people don't understand this personality type (machiavellian psychopath/sociopath/narcissist). I find Elon repulsive but at the same time I'm still kind of a fan of SpaceX and to a lesser extent Tesla. It's like with Woody Allen, most likely not a pretty bad person but I love his films.
- wasabi991011 4y ago
  My question reading the linked article is: how will it be enforced, when millions of people like you have already linked other sites? Is there a time limit before banning (not specified), or will they delete tweets/reset profiles, or will they only check for new changes? I don't know how much you are attached to your Twitter account, but I'd be curious to see what happens if you don't change your profile. I bet nothing for a long time, unless maybe someone specifically reports you.
ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
With every new thread about Twitter I lose more respect for this community. It is comment after comment of sneer, puerile insults, and caricaturally one-sided remarks.
- lapcat 4y ago
  Serious question: If you find them subpar, why do you keep reading the comments in threads about Twitter?
  - ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
    Because they come up on the front page multiple times a day and often the titles don't make it obvious they are related to Twitter, like this one or the other one from today "Spacekaren.sucks"
- pjc50 4y ago
  I don't think you're helping? Do you have anything to say that isn't also an insult?
  - ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
    I don't think you can tell someone they're acting childish without being insulting, by definition, that doesn't mean it serves no purpose. One would hope that push back would lead to self-reflection. What else do you want me to say? Compare the threads about twitter to any other and the difference should be self-evident.
- dang 4y ago
  I agree that these threads have been appallingly bad* but the solution isn't to post more bad comments, it's to find things that do gratify your curiosity and comment on those. * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33992824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33992824, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34020263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34020263
  - 4y ago
29athrowaway 4y ago
When you are a billionare you have a bunch of people praising you all day, and if you listen to them you eventually become an ultimate moron, because they will justify and validate everything you do, and reinforce all your negative traits.
dang 4y ago
Ok, but please don't fulminate on HN. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. (This is not a comment on cracked narcissists, febrile hype minds, or anything related to the OP.) A comment like this should never be the top comment on the top HN story (as it was just now). It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. We want curious conversation here. For that, we need commenters to track whether they're functioning in a state of curiosity or not. It's true that the greater damage is done by upvoters than by the original comment in cases like this, but the only solution to that is to not break the site guidelines in the first place.
- choult 4y ago
  Point taken! I shall refrain from the emotional responses in future.
HD103720b 4y ago
so ignore he's taken those steps because a elon tracking account potentially endangered his 2 year old son?

by choult 4y ago

synu 4y ago

Maybe they should try letting Kanye run it next.

karmicthreat 4y ago
Mr Beast already called dibs.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  I’m not completely sure, but I thought he was a benign enough guy?
  - karmicthreat 4y ago
    He seems to be. I'm just referring to a tweet where Mr Beast asked for twitter when Musk was done with it.

nopenopenopeno 4y ago

[flagged]

acover 4y ago
Plenty of social networks thrive while letting users link to other social networks. TikTok is famous for linking to YouTube. This is a sign of a bad product.
- nailer 4y ago
  I don’t think youtube has direct competitors anymore. But it would be interesting if say vimeo got big again - would they block “moved to @mkbhd on vimeo” as a username for example?
jacquesm 4y ago
There are no real structural constraints to capitalism that I'm aware of.
- flandish 4y ago
  Just the labor pool approaching zero. When it bounces along the bottom, capitalism hires children, etc.
pjc50 4y ago
Depending on what people mean by "socialism", a label so heavily overloaded it could refer to anything from mild social democracy to full communism, you're not going to get better free speech.

truth777 4y ago

[flagged]

highwaylights 4y ago

Twitter is competing for Parler’s audience now. This is just accelerating that process along.

photochemsyn 4y ago
I think the actual internal business model is motivated more by the desire to capture the Tik-Tok audience than the Parler audience - it's much larger. However, it is true that from a purely business viewpoint, you'd want a platform that was equally popular with left-Democrats, right-Republicans, and unaffiliated-independents.
- pjc50 4y ago
  It has been noted that Tiktok is not on the ban list, possibly because of Elon's personal decision to reinstate "libsoftiktok", a prominent harrasment account. > equally popular with left-Democrats, right-Republicans, and unaffiliated-independents A large number of forces are making this increasingly impossible.
  - richbell 4y ago
    Random unfounded speculation: he also doesn't want to risk souring his relationship with China.
  - yucky 4y ago
    > "libsoftiktok", a prominent harrasment account What? They literally post exact quotes that have aged poorly and/or posts that are evidence of clear double standards and hypocrisy. That's a public service if anything.
  - charcircuit 4y ago
    He didn't ban YouTube or Twitch either. TikTok isn't banned because it's not twitter like.
- minimaxir 4y ago
  > desire to capture the Tik-Tok audience The TikTok audience is the one that would also refuse to use Twitter specifically because of Elon.

nailer 4y ago

synu 4y ago
I’ve definitely linked to my profiles on other sites before and never been banned or even warned.
- nailer 4y ago
  There’s been reports of mastodon links being handled oddly for a while prior to this announcement. Not insta though. Odd Twitter considers them a competitor though Insta did get big through twitter originally.
  - belltaco 4y ago
    For a while? I've only heard of that in the past few days.
  - faefox 4y ago
    If by "a while" you mean the past handful of days, then yes. To suggest that this has been an unspoken policy for years is simply wrong and misleading.
  - synu 4y ago
    I more mean “on various occasions over the last several years”
LordAtlas 4y ago
Plenty of people have posted their Instagram profile links in their Twitter bios over the years and never got suspended or locked for it. I've posted tweets with links to my Instagram profile several times and never got even a warning. This is all new Musk policy.

nonbirithm 4y ago

Pure speculation, but maybe this was exactly what he wanted. He originally didn't want to buy Twitter after changing his mind, he was forced to. Maybe this is in a sense his retribution for what he perceived originally as the "botting problem" or whatever else he dislikes about Twitter, by burning the thing he was forced to take ownership of to the ground. Many people say social media is unhealthy. Is Elon trying to say with the capital he wields that everyone is better off without it? (Even though I think this is a terrible way of doing it, as it places his other companies as collateral.)

richbell 4y ago
> Pure speculation, but maybe this was exactly what he wanted. He originally didn't want to buy Twitter after changing his mind, he was forced to. Maybe this is in a sense his retribution for what he perceived originally as the "botting problem" or whatever else he dislikes about Twitter, by burning the thing he was forced to take ownership of to the ground. Many people say social media is unhealthy. Is Elon trying to say with the capital he wields that everyone is better off without it? (Even though I think this is a terrible way of doing it, as it places his other companies as collateral.) This is incredible amount of mental gymnastics to rationalize his behaviour. There is no "4D chess", he is demonstrably a petulant and vindictive bully. Read about how he treated his ex-wife, or employees and journalists who were even mildly critical of him.
- nonbirithm 4y ago
  Not saying that he isn't a petulant and vindictive bully, just that maybe he never cared much about keeping Twitter profitable to begin with.

bko 4y ago

kevinmgranger 4y ago
It's because Musk is commonly defended, and borderline worshiped across most of HN. The downfall of twitter is the perfect opportunity for a wake-up call. And that's why this type of comment is more and more visible.
- bko 4y ago
  So you're saying that low quality low information comments are "sticking it to him and his supporters" as opposed to a more thought out comment regarding the policy or direction? And this will "wake up" his supporters by calling him a narcissist and thin skinned for the umpteenth time (in the same comment thread!)
  - grogenaut 4y ago
    I'd say more that there have been years of fawning comments with no value over Elon being a genius... Those low quality comments are turning to follow the trend to Elon hate. Call it virtual signaling, following the crowd, echo chamber. It happens. I see the same thing for the hype cycle with kube and other tech cycles as well. It's actually an indirect benefit for me with hn as it's usually ahead of the hype cycle.
    - bko 4y ago
      Yes, the "he's a genius" posts are equally as cringy. As were the "its a private platform, build your own if you don't like it posts" circa earlier last year were awful too. The answer isn't to do the same thing but switch sides.
  - MrMan 4y ago
    maybe low-quality comments will drive you to consider the nature of Reality, it could be a game-changer for you. wide-eyed curiosity, steel man, high quality good faith sanctimonious snobbery, I am human not a bot.

echelon 4y ago

I tried really hard to stay an Elon fan. SpaceX is a step function game changer, and Starlink was such a cool related market to break into. Now I have to go change my Twitter profiles that have been the same for ages... Has Musk never heard of the Streisand effect? I've always been bearish on TSLA. Now I think the narrative is changing. The market monopoly bull case never made sense. Every car company and nation will be pumping out EVs soon. I think the true value is half of Toyota's market cap, and I'll be buying puts on Monday.

greggarious 4y ago
> I tried really hard to stay an Elon fan. If a relationship feels like work, you should break up.
richbell 4y ago
> I've always been bearish on TSLA though. Every car company and nation will be pumping out EVs soon. The market monopoly bull case never made sense. I think the true value is half of Toyota's market cap, and I'll be buying puts on Monday. IIRC Elon himself has said that Tesla is doomed without the success of FSD. I think any rational person would agree it's baffling how high a valuation Tesla has held for so long, especially when you compare them to any other car manufacturer, but as the saying goes "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."
RivieraKid 4y ago
But why, hasn't it been obvious for years that he's a terrible person? I honestly can't believe that many smart people don't see through Elon's BS. It's as if people don't understand this personality type (machiavellian psychopath/sociopath/narcissist). I find Elon repulsive but at the same time I'm still kind of a fan of SpaceX and to a lesser extent Tesla. It's like with Woody Allen, most likely not a pretty bad person but I love his films.
wasabi991011 4y ago
My question reading the linked article is: how will it be enforced, when millions of people like you have already linked other sites? Is there a time limit before banning (not specified), or will they delete tweets/reset profiles, or will they only check for new changes? I don't know how much you are attached to your Twitter account, but I'd be curious to see what happens if you don't change your profile. I bet nothing for a long time, unless maybe someone specifically reports you.

ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago

With every new thread about Twitter I lose more respect for this community. It is comment after comment of sneer, puerile insults, and caricaturally one-sided remarks.

lapcat 4y ago
Serious question: If you find them subpar, why do you keep reading the comments in threads about Twitter?
- ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
  Because they come up on the front page multiple times a day and often the titles don't make it obvious they are related to Twitter, like this one or the other one from today "Spacekaren.sucks"
pjc50 4y ago
I don't think you're helping? Do you have anything to say that isn't also an insult?
- ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
  I don't think you can tell someone they're acting childish without being insulting, by definition, that doesn't mean it serves no purpose. One would hope that push back would lead to self-reflection. What else do you want me to say? Compare the threads about twitter to any other and the difference should be self-evident.
dang 4y ago
I agree that these threads have been appallingly bad* but the solution isn't to post more bad comments, it's to find things that do gratify your curiosity and comment on those. * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33992824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33992824, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34020263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34020263
- 4y ago

29athrowaway 4y ago

When you are a billionare you have a bunch of people praising you all day, and if you listen to them you eventually become an ultimate moron, because they will justify and validate everything you do, and reinforce all your negative traits.

dang 4y ago

Ok, but please don't fulminate on HN. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. (This is not a comment on cracked narcissists, febrile hype minds, or anything related to the OP.) A comment like this should never be the top comment on the top HN story (as it was just now). It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. We want curious conversation here. For that, we need commenters to track whether they're functioning in a state of curiosity or not. It's true that the greater damage is done by upvoters than by the original comment in cases like this, but the only solution to that is to not break the site guidelines in the first place.

choult 4y ago
Point taken! I shall refrain from the emotional responses in future.

HD103720b 4y ago

so ignore he's taken those steps because a elon tracking account potentially endangered his 2 year old son?