41 ms·

Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]

• zephrx1111 4y ago
  With Elon, now Twitter is standing center of social media, literally everyday. I'm wondering if it is still a clawn game this time.
• rajamaka 4y ago
  The actual tweet that got him banned: https://twitter.com/samtabahriti/status/1604612720325697538/photo/1 https://twitter.com/samtabahriti/status/1604612720325697538/...
• retrocryptid 4y ago
  In the future, everyone will be banned for 15 minutes.
• m0d0nne11 4y ago
  OK, who is pg? Why do we have to click to find out?
  • selimthegrim 4y ago
    Founder of the site you are posting on right now
  • ericpauley 4y ago
    He started the site you are using right now.
• smashah 4y ago
  Confirmed. It's crazy out here in these stweets.
• catsforai 4y ago
• PestoDiRucola 4y ago
  I think Twitter is about to jump the shark. This is insane.
  • eclipxe 4y ago
    Already did.
  • ocdtrekkie 4y ago
    It's been off the shark for two months. We're already to the point we've been judging people still there for having not seen it yet. o.o Unbanning the alt-right wasn't jumping the shark? Firing over half the employees wasn't jumping the shark? Promoting COVID misinformation wasn't jumping the shark? Yeah, he finally started banning journalists, but he's been making the place unwelcome for anyone who isn't a Trump supporter for a long as heck time. If you are just now asking if it's going to jump the shark, and I mean this not to be sarcastic or mean, but in genuine hope for the future: Please spend some time asking yourself why banning PG was the last straw for you, and not any of the crazy stuff prior. Let's make this the last time we let hero worship blind us to the realities on the ground.
    • PestoDiRucola 4y ago
      At least unbanning alt-right figures (as much as I disagree with) was in line with Musk's free-speech pretense. Everything else that came after that... yikes. I wonder what juicy government contracts the GOP has promised him.
  • rinze 4y ago
    Apparently people are trying to save so many tweets right now that the Internet Archive is having a delay: https://paquita.masto.host/@SwiftOnSecurity@infosec.exchange/109536454876000846 https://paquita.masto.host/@SwiftOnSecurity@infosec.exchange... When all this started I thought that Twitter wouldn't make it to Christmas. Sometimes I think that was too much, that it'd take longer to collapse. This past week makes me think I might be right.
• teddyh 4y ago
  For those who missed it, his Mastodon is: https://mas.to/@paulg https://mas.to/@paulg
  • openair18 4y ago
    I’m guessing he got banned for posting this?
    • legi0nary 4y ago
      Banned for posting a link to his personal website (which has links to his other social media profiles) Ridiculous.
      • jaf656s 4y ago
        I don't think he posted a link to his personal site, just said the link was there.
        • cesarb 4y ago
          He didn't need to post a link to his personal site; it was already there in his twitter bio.
          • jacurtis 4y ago
            By that logic basically any Twitter user with a link on their profile should be banned. For example Microsoft would have a link to Microsoft.com on their profile and on that webpage there will be links to other competitive social media. In fact, Tesla's Twitter profile links to Tesla.com and at the bottom of that website is a link to Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn (in addition to Twitter). Almost anyone with a link to a site in their profile will likely have competitive social media links on that site. PG's website didn't even link to his Mastadon profile, its a plain text representation of his Mastadon handle.
      • Hoyadonis 4y ago
• ColinWright 4y ago
  Relevant context: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34040165 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34040165 : Promotion of alternative social platforms policy (help.twitter.com) * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34041985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34041985 : Paul Graham is leaving Twitter (twitter.com/paulg)
  • LinuxBender 4y ago
    He said in that second thread that he is not actually leaving Twitter.
    • hprotagonist 4y ago
      well, guess again!
    • dekhn 4y ago
      No, Twitter left him.
    • croon 4y ago
      Well, seems that choice was taken out of his hands by an insecure billionaire.
      • Hamuko 4y ago
        To be fair, that's most likely just a temporary ban.
        • croon 4y ago
          That's not fair.
        • Analemma_ 4y ago
          Boy the bar for the “to be fair” crowd sure has slipped. To be fair, pg was only temporarily banned for acknowledging the existence of competing social networks!
• berkle4455 4y ago
  Paul sure spent a lot of energy support Elon up until the very last minute.
  • jacquesm 4y ago
    That never happened.
• minimaxir 4y ago
  Alright, I legit can't think of a reason why he would ban Paul Graham before everyone else who has promoted Mastodon since the rule change. That's the literal opposite of low hanging fruit!
• ericmay 4y ago
  Hilarious. Sorry this is low effort but you can’t make this stuff up.
• rcarr 4y ago
  Musk has completely lost the plot.
  • elevenoh 4y ago
  • ulkesh 4y ago
    And his mind. Or perhaps that ship sailed long ago.
• Ferrotin 4y ago
  Possibly malicious enforcement by Twitter staff in light of https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604593057676300288 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604593057676300288 “Casually sharing occasional links is fine, but no more relentless advertising of competitors for free, which is absurd in the extreme”
  • soneca 4y ago
    The written policy contradicts his statement.
  • ipsum2 4y ago
    It's just "enforcement", there's nothing malicious about it. Elon Musk is the CEO and policymaker of Twitter now, he's responsible for the actions his company takes.
  • sytelus 4y ago
    Where interpretation of "casually" and "occasional" is left to the Emperor.
    • seydor 4y ago
      there was always an emperor
      • jacquesm 4y ago
        No, in the past there was a committee. There is zero evidence that the previous CEO of Twitter personally judged who was and who was not to be banned.
        • Ferrotin 4y ago
          We know that was Vijaya and Roth. Bringing up Dorsey is transparent sleight of hand.
        • hackernewds 4y ago
          The previous CEO of Twitter barely did any work. It was frequent to hear chickens and birds in the background of Jack's video calls.
• Hoyadonis 4y ago
  This is insane. Elon Musk himself [replied to @paulg](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604258004706201602 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604258004706201602) not even 24 hours ago. I bet this will be reversed (quite possibly along with the new anti-competitive, anti-free speech policy) but if not, this feels like an unprecedented death knell.
• sytelus 4y ago
  pg's twitter was amazing archive of insightful content. How do I get the backup of his tweets? I always thought it will be there all the time. Does he has backup that he can share? I am all but stunned right now. Need time to process this.
  • hprotagonist 4y ago
    > How do I get the backup of his tweets? You don’t. > I always thought it will be there all the time. Welcome to the fun times of walled gardens owned by capricious wankers! > Does he has back that he can share? Maybe!
  • CSMastermind 4y ago
    I suspect the account will be restored eventually but the wayback machine looks like it has a full snapshot: http://web.archive.org/web/20221218215229/https://twitter.com/paulg/ http://web.archive.org/web/20221218215229/https://twitter.co...
  • wittingtons 4y ago
    Do not stand By my page, and weep. I am not there, I do not tweet— I am the thousand winds that blow I am the diamond glints in snow I am the sunlight on ripened grain, I am the gentle, autumn rain. As you awake with morning’s hush, I am the swift, up-flinging rush Of quiet birds in circling flight, I am the day transcending night. Do not stand By my page, and cry— I am not there, I did not die.
  • cactusplant7374 4y ago
    > How do I get the backup of his tweets? When the account appears again you run one of the many archiving tools that downloads tweets to a json file. Preferably a tool that doesn’t require an API key.
• theSoenke 4y ago
  This is beyond ridiculous. Twitter has given me so much over the years and it’s dismantled in days
  • eclipxe 4y ago
    Same. It's sad how quickly this is getting absurd.
  • ipsum2 4y ago
    Twitter is great, but its the users that provide the value, not Twitter itself. If all the interesting people are moving to Mastodon, guess I'll need to move as well.
  • bell-cot 4y ago
    This is capitalism. He'd be completely within his rights to buy Twitter for cash...then completely shut it down, pay off A/P & such, and liquidate all assets.
    • maxerickson 4y ago
      It's allowed to be annoyed about it.
    • ssnistfajen 4y ago
      Individuals in societies have this thing called reputation. Him claiming to supportive of free speech while doing this to a social platform he now owns is pure hypocrisy and damages his reputation, whatever's left of it.
• britneybitch 4y ago
  Wow. PG did not even post any links, he pretty much just said "I have a Mastodon account." And just like that, banned. Looks like now you're not allowed to so much as mention that you use other websites on the internet besides Twitter.
  • danbmil99 4y ago
    Possibly of interest: : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34045737 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34045737
  • garbagetime 4y ago
    You are wrong about what PG said. In fact, his Tweet included an explanation of where to find a link to his Mastodon account. Elon has made it clear that these blatant attempts at ban evasion are not allowed.
    • meshugga 4y ago
      It's not what the TOS say though.
      • garbagetime 4y ago
        Note that Twitter's TOS are only one of the three components of the Twitter User Agreement. There are also the Twitter Rules and Policies. This is what Twitter's Rules and Policies page says: > At both the Tweet level and the account level, we will remove any free promotion of prohibited 3rd-party social media platforms, such as linking out (i.e. using URLs) to any of the below platforms on Twitter, or providing your handle without a URL:
        • meshugga 4y ago
          Both of which paulg didn't do.
          • tick_tock_tick 4y ago
• bcrosby95 4y ago
  The situation with Twitter has gotten so ridiculous that it's pretty much impossible to comment substantively on this topic at this point. So: lol
  • tahoelabs 4y ago
    absolutely. colbert-eating-popcorn.gif
    • rinze 4y ago
      There isn't enough popcorn on the planet for this show. 10/10 would watch again.
      • tahoelabs 4y ago
        i don't think there will be a season 2, though.
  • elevenoh 4y ago
  • d23 4y ago
    It's possible, it's just that Musk's behavior is so abhorrent there's essentially no remaining reasonable defense of any of his naked hypocrisy and childishness.
    • concordDance 4y ago
      On the grand scale of things, Musk's twitter behaviour isn't even a nanohitler, well bellow Bill Gates, the Koch brothers or Murdock and not even close to basically any world leader (Tony Blair, George W Bush, Barrack Obama, Emmanuel Macron). Don't overuse words like "abhorent" unless you want to seem like you're hysterically overreacting.
      • d23 4y ago
• easygenes 4y ago
  Free speech!
  • asteroidbelt 4y ago
    This is not exactly free speech issue, because Twitter does not ban based on political preferences/opinions. This is dishonest competition (all other major companies do the same but not as blunt: Facebook, Google, Amazon for example). Twitter could be an exception. But it won't.
    • joshfraser 4y ago
      It's both.
    • dawnbreez 4y ago
      > because Twitter does not ban based on political preferences/opinions. Because the journalists Musk banned were definitely not banned for their opinions on Musk? I'm going to preempt the 'harassment' argument--the photo Musk posted, when he was claiming that the journalists caused him to be stalked, was found to have been taken an hour after Musk's jet took off and nowhere near any airport.
      • asteroidbelt 4y ago
        > were definitely not banned for their opinions on Musk? They banned because they shared his jet location. > he was claiming that the journalists caused him to be stalked Did he claim that specifically? I'm not sure. But if he did, these claims are probably incorrect. But that does not cancel the fact that journalists were posting jet location after he asked (via twitter policies) not to.
        • ceejayoz 4y ago
          > They banned because they shared his jet location. This is false in some cases.
        • 4y ago
• eclipxe 4y ago
  lol. Twitter is a joke now. How sad.
• xyzzy4747 4y ago
  He mentioned the M word and got suspended for it.
• acaloiar 4y ago
  This is getting too comical.
• MiguelX413 4y ago
  Lmao
• fairity 4y ago
  Lolllllllllllllll. I'm sorry, but in all seriousness, that really is all there is to say about this. I guess he is leaving Twitter after all!
• rdxm 4y ago
• popilewiz 4y ago
  This is just vindictive behavior. Wouldn't be surprised if Musk authorized it personally
• sytelus 4y ago
  Analogy of tyrant in other thread is very apt. Reminds me of Caesar who won impossible wars, gained huge respect and then took over the senate while still claiming that Rome was a republic. Interestingly he became dictator only because all other nobles thought he must be doing something right if he won all he impossible wars.
• chrisco255 4y ago
  There are less interesting ways to set $40B on fire I suppose.
• tambourine_man 4y ago
  It’s getting really hard for Musk supporters to justify him.
  • skc 4y ago
    You'd be surprised how resilient these people are
    • halfjoking 4y ago
      Musk supporter here, downvoted proof here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33985682 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33985682 I’m in agreement with all of you. This is some BS that goes against all the ideals of an open internet. He’s not just being petty by banning competitors, he’s banning link aggregators. A lot of them are used for organizing political movements or needed for running a business. This move means he doesn’t understand social media. Banning PG without even a link? That’s just icing on an authoritarian cake. Apparently all Elon cares about is usage so hopefully this policy causes a huge drop. I have hope that he’ll quickly reverse course.
      • Panzer04 4y ago
        Seems like its going to be a bit late - what better way to promote your competition than acknowledging it and banning it? Just streisanded himself.
  • berkle4455 4y ago
    Trump supporters haven't slowed down a bit. In fact, they tried to overthrow the government under his banner. Why do you think it will be any different for Musk supporters?
    • Hoyadonis 4y ago
      I am of the least charitable echelon of people when it comes to Trump supporters, but even I recognize that this is untrue. Trump has clearly fallen off, as is evident by the remarkable underperformance of his endorsed candidates in the midterm elections. I observe that many Redhats are moving on to DeSantis as their new GOP "God-Emperor." That said, this has little to nothing to do with the subject at hand.
• phoronixrly 4y ago
  Well this aged like milk https://mastodon.social/@edbott/109536397352268007 https://mastodon.social/@edbott/109536397352268007
  • Tomis02 4y ago
    "I never thought the leopards would eat MY face". Serves him right.
• paul7986 4y ago
  Elon Musk is going the way of Will Smith in terms of public goodwill and adoration! There's no turning back!
  • masklinn 4y ago
    Less Will Smith and more Kanye.
    • sillysaurusx 4y ago
      I was going to disagree, but then I thought about it and gave a reluctant upvote. Maybe it’s a bit crass, but I wonder if Elon is on some drugs or something. His behavior is bizarre, and I don’t buy the “he was always like this” line. He didn’t seem to be like this at all until recently.
      • pcbro141 4y ago
        Could be personal/family issues as well. Perhaps his daughter transitioning genders and disavowing him, combined with Grimes moving on to date a transgender woman triggered something inside of him to go on this crusade against the "Woke" who he blames for these things happening.
        • howinteresting 4y ago
          He's said as much in https://www.ft.com/content/5ef14997-982e-4f03-8548-b5d67202623a https://www.ft.com/content/5ef14997-982e-4f03-8548-b5d672026.... > Musk has a dystopian view of the left’s influence on America, which helps explain his wild pursuit of Twitter to liberate free speech. He blames the fact that his teenage daughter no longer wants to be associated with him on the supposed takeover of elite schools and universities by neo-Marxists. “It’s full-on communism . . . and a general sentiment that if you’re rich, you’re evil,” says Musk. “It [the relationship] may change, but I have very good relationships with all the others [children]. Can’t win them all.” Now what sort of character is required for a person to say, "Can't win them all," I won't speculate about.
      • 4y ago
• eigart 4y ago
  This is hilarious. I’ve been thinking that pg was probably invited to invest (earlier in 2022). Would be cool to hear his reasoning for turning it down at the time.
  • SilverBirch 4y ago
    Can you imagine how that conversation would go Elon: Hey I'm buying twitter, you want in? PG: Look Elon, I'm just trying to run a start up accelerator, I've already accidentally ended up in charge of one social media site and those nerds are a constant pain in the ass, I don't think you know what you're letting yourself in for Elon: Not even a billy? PG: No billies Elon.
• kache_ 4y ago
  this is so bad. at this rate it's over for twitter - the tech liberetraian folks are getting disenfranchised, when usually, they're the supporters of Elon antics. Wild Curious to see how other platforms react. Beginning to see a huge opportunity manifest
• IgorPartola 4y ago
  I would love to talk to one of the people that kept saying “you all don’t understand. Musk runs billion dollar companies, he knows what he is doing. He will fix Twitter” now that this is happening. What is the grand plan now in their world view?
  • dbreunig 4y ago
    Well you could ask paulg, who said that. But use email, not twitter.
    • ColinWright 4y ago
      Or use Mastodon ...
  • bioemerl 4y ago
    I had hopes. Twitter was terribly run and there was all sorts of examples of them being a typical social media platform trying to push various ideas using their control. Elon could have come in, aligned the website to be a lot more neutral, slimmed down the employee count and pushed for more features and more payments for features to get away from dependence on advertisers. I saw some headline a few weeks ago about Japanese trending on Twitter went from a whole bunch of political stuff to more neutral cultural stuff. Stuff like that is what I wanted to see. Instead we're getting this hilarious situation where Elon is using his authority to ban everything he doesn't like. It's worse than it was.
    • causality0 4y ago
      I miss the Elon Musk of a decade ago.
      • falcolas 4y ago
        He was totally better at masking a decade ago, I'll agree with that.
        • 4y ago
• Dreako 4y ago
  Turns out, running a consumer social company is a lot different than building rockets. a part of me still had some hope. "Maybe he has better plans, maybe he knows what he's doing" But nope. I was wrong.
  • kmonsen 4y ago
    Twitter is an advertising company not a consumer company (Tesla is a consumer company)
• ngoilapites 4y ago
  Elon does not get basic systemic issues in social media: when you bark against sth, you just make it big, and it will haunt you. Good "buy" Elon, and sorry for your German plans, which will be severely stressed by lack of water --- major drought in Brandenburg.
• hardlianotion 4y ago
  At this point, it's worth trying to think if and how Elon Musk can benefit by driving down the value of Twitter. It looks like he's doing it on purpose.
  • meindnoch 4y ago
    Tax writeoff?
  • d23 4y ago
    Makes me wonder what role the Saudis are playing here. Did they pay him to just destroy the place and hand over data on dissidents? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_infiltration_of_Twitter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_infiltration_of_Twitter * https://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/ny-elon-musk-twitter-saudi-prince-investors-20221101-szzgo3qoxvhpjmsya5nsq6clxu-story.html https://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/ny-elon-musk-twitter-...
• intunderflow 4y ago
  Paul an hour ago: "I'm not leaving Twitter" Guess he doesn't have much of a choice now https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34042993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34042993
  • kyleyeats 4y ago
    • BulgarianIdiot 4y ago
      That's one type of suspension. There are multiple types. Many of the suspended never got an email what's their violation, or which tweet to delete. Just "you violated the rules". More importantly, right now none of this matters, because you may get suspended, unsuspended, suspended and again unsuspended and then suspended on a whim. Happened to some of the journalists. It's a mess. This is not a left/right issue. It's shoddy management and leadership
    • wilg 4y ago
      "if you're on the left" lmao so persecuted
      • kyleyeats 4y ago
    • wereallterrrist 4y ago
      Do y'all not realize or not care how utterly petty, pathetic, and out-of-touch you come across? Like, you won, your guy is in charge acting like a petty baby tyrant and you still manage to frame as "conservatives are so persecuted". Sorry you can't post Hunter's nudes on Twitter, that must be tough. I love threads like this, with people furiously voting to try and offset the sinking realization as the cognitive dissonance gets too overwhelming to ignore.
      • kyleyeats 4y ago
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• mongol 4y ago
  Are these automated decisions?
  • runevault 4y ago
    I don't see how this one could be, there was no link. Unless they auto ban anyone who tweets the word Mastodon.
• wozer 4y ago
  This is really embarrasing. If feel so much Fremdschämen when I think of Elon Musk.
• version_five 4y ago
  Is is possible this is some sort of "lesson" about the dangers of platforms being able to arbitrarily ban stuff, that will be revealed in a week or two? It almost seems like the exact opposite of everything Musk was implying about a low-censorship platform. It's almost hard to believe that Musk/Twitter are at serious at this point
  • wfaler 4y ago
    It’d be great if some sort of self-professed free-speech absolutist could just take over Twitter moderation.. Oh, wait.
  • throwawaysleep 4y ago
    • dang 4y ago
      Ideological battle comments like this are off topic, regardless of which you're battling, because they have nothing to do with the curious conversation we want here and indeed are destructive of it. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
  • legi0nary 4y ago
    people have really got to stop pretending like Elon is smart lol
• yayr 4y ago
  This is an absurd situation. I wonder how many "promises" made by Elon have been broken regarding how he wants to manage Twitter and make it a better place. E.g. what about transparency here? Where is the explanation why this account was suspended? I am not sure, that with Elon in the hot seat the trust of the public into Twitter may be restored anytime soon... very sad.
  • srcreigh 4y ago
    PG left instructions for how to follow him on Mastodon, which is against the new policy. You may not like it, but you can’t say it’s not transparent.
• samstave 4y ago
  Don't forget, that during the Twitter FBI Email drops that have been happening recently, that in 2010 twitter gave a firehose of ALL tweets + Updates to the LIBRARY OF CONGRESS[0] And if you dont think the FBI/NSA havent had a palantir like view into all of those.... https://memex.naughtons.org/library-of-congress-drinks-from-twitter-firehose/10916/ https://memex.naughtons.org/library-of-congress-drinks-from-...
  • The_Double 4y ago
    Twitter gave a firehose access to just about everyone who asked in 2010. My university used to do all sorts of data science experiments with Twitter data around 2012.
• theSoenke 4y ago
  Ridiculous. Now you can’t even mention other websites exist?Time to post mastodon links on purpose to get it over with
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• KarlKemp 4y ago
  Let’s just hope this is a moment for people who didn’t see this dumpster fire coming to re-examine a few other beliefs.
• gkoberger 4y ago
  For anyone who missed it, his last tweet (there may have been something else in replies) was: "This is the last straw. I give up. You can find a link to my new Mastodon profile on my site." (Note that he didn't even link to it, but he did link to the Twitter privacy policy)
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• tomalaci 4y ago
  pg in the other thread: "I still think Elon is a smart guy." That didn't age well. Not even a full hour. I can't even think of a food item that would age that quickly.
  • dmitrygr 4y ago
    I’ll help you. Soufflé
  • raverbashing 4y ago
    Elon's vision is like Crypto exchange's balances, feeble at best when directly audited
  • apmee 4y ago
    I don’t think this necessarily is evidence of his not being smart, as it could just as well be ascribed to malice. Perhaps this will finally prompt Paul to stop giving him the benefit of the doubt though. I’ve long been flummoxed as to why he had continued to, long after it becoming obvious to most that it was not deserved.
  • dan_mctree 4y ago
    Eh, he still seems pretty smart. The issue is more his narcissistic traits, pettiness and emotional weakness
  • davidw 4y ago
    That's part of what's so crazy about it. I've "known" PG from afar via his writing since before reddit was a thing, and he has always seemed like a pretty decent guy, even when I disagree with him about something. "Levelheaded" is a word that comes to mind. Seems to have done him good to get out of SV; some of the folks there seem lost in their bubbles.
• apengwin 4y ago
  LMAOOOOOOOO
• NKosmatos 4y ago
  Space Karen :-(
• WrtCdEvrydy 4y ago
  LOL, this is /r/agedlikemilk content. I could swear he posted he wasn't leaving like minutes ago...
• mmastrac 4y ago
  The traffic, maybe because of the drama and maybe because of the exodus, seems to have swamped his instance. As an interesting side-effect of federation, you can still browse his profile on other instances, however: https://hachyderm.io/@paulg@mas.to https://hachyderm.io/@paulg@mas.to
• kylecordes 4y ago
  Previous, I thought the "he's trying to destroy Twitter along with a good chunk of his own fortune" idea was ludicrous. I assumed he was trying his best, in his own way, and would take a few months to rediscover how to run things. Eventually end up a good business, somewhat more Free than before. Now... not so sure. Anything's possible.
  • d23 4y ago
    The links to the Saudis and their previous attempts to infiltrate Twitter make me wonder just how much the destruction was planned (and what else they're getting out of the deal): * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_infiltration_of_Twitter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_infiltration_of_Twitter * https://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/ny-elon-musk-twitter-saudi-prince-investors-20221101-szzgo3qoxvhpjmsya5nsq6clxu-story.html https://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/ny-elon-musk-twitter-...
  • nitwit005 4y ago
    It just seems like he has poor emotional control, and perhaps emotionally he's fine with lashing out at Twitter itself. He's already reversed multiple decisions on short notice, which makes it seem like the decision making would be better if he just thought about things for a day or two.
• Crontab 4y ago
  I closed my account earlier this week. Between Musk’s erratic behavior, the fact that they aren’t paying their rent, and are trying to get out of contractual software licensing fees, I decided that it was time to go.
• DogOfTheGaps 4y ago
  Paul Graham probably gonna dump a bunch of money into Post now.
• echelon 4y ago
  I was a pretty big Elon fan a year ago. SpaceX is/was a monumental achievement. He's gone insane. Suggesting Taiwan and Ukraine surrender, all this Twitter nonsense... I'm shorting TSLA to $50 on Monday.
  • computerex 4y ago
    Meanwhile others have been warning about his lunacy for years and up till recently have faced nothing but backlash from his internet armies. It just feels so good to see comments like yours. It's out in the open now, everyone now knows he is a greedy charlatan.
    • chasil 4y ago
      I really don't know who he is. I see him make "pedo" commentary and I cringe, but reusable rockets are an enormous achievement. I don't see any compelling reason to buy an electric car, but his execution of the Twitter buyout has revealed biased regulation in the extreme, perhaps by illegal proxy from the FBI. These are important questions, and he has admitted that he is under stress and not completely stable. I'm not sure what to think.
      • shadowgovt 4y ago
        > the Twitter buyout has revealed biased regulation in the extreme, perhaps by illegal proxy from the FBI. I haven't seen this; what does it refer to?
        • chasil 4y ago
          What? Really? The House of Representatives controls the money for the FBI. The Senate, as you might know does not. The FBI should be anticipating a haircut. https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/3770060-with-new-twitter-files-musk-forces-a-free-speech-reckoning-for-politicians-and-pundits/ https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/3770060-with-new-twitt... Jack Dorsey can certainly be prosecuted for perjury. https://www.foxnews.com/media/twitter-files-flashback-jack-dorsey-testified-oath-twitter-censor-shadow-ban-conservatives https://www.foxnews.com/media/twitter-files-flashback-jack-d...
• meshugga 4y ago
  This is amazing. He basically said, he'd return if elon comes around, and wishes him the best. And just said "my mastodon is on my website". No violation of those new "TOS" of any kind. https://mas.to/@paulg https://mas.to/@paulg seems to have been hugged to death already :)
  • cesarb 4y ago
    > https://mas.to/@paulg https://mas.to/@paulg seems to have been hugged to death already :) You can watch the account in your own instance (if someone on your instance has already followed him, which is likely for larger instances). Just go to https://example.org/@paulg@mas.to https://example.org/@paulg@mas.to (replace the domain with your favorite instance's domain). (Edit: fixed typo)
    • DonHopkins 4y ago
      Does it make any sense to spin up your own little Mastodon server just for you and your most trusted friends, so you don't have to spend any time moderating content?
      • davidgerard 4y ago
        Yes, but the main problem is that Mastodon is very large and fat. Running it for more than a few people is expensive. There's also Pleroma (the Akkoma fork is recommended) and Misskey. There are people working on server software to be fully a part of Mastodon without spending $30/month. It should be possible to do this much more efficiently.
        • davidw 4y ago
          As a BEAM fan, Pleroma looks interesting, but "which fork of the Elixir project that is related to Mastodon" is... peak open source isn't it? In all the good ways and bad ways. https://www.reddit.com/r/Pleroma/comments/yu8xof/pleromas_rebased_fork_vs_akkoma_fork/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Pleroma/comments/yu8xof/pleromas_re... I wonder what the resource requirements of that look like compared to the default Mastodon thing.
• cactusplant7374 4y ago
  Someone tweeted that it’s not possible to screenshot the new terms on mobile. This makes me wonder if preventing tweet exports and DRM are next on the list. Can widevine be applied here even if in a somewhat hacky way?
  • hadrien01 4y ago
    That would be contrary to the GDPR export rules in the EU.
    • cactusplant7374 4y ago
      Also, preventing links to competitors is probably going to cost Twitter in the EU. https://twitter.com/juddlegum/status/1604564509884030977?s=46&t=Rch2sPyGBxnzHz2Cz_yH7Q https://twitter.com/juddlegum/status/1604564509884030977?s=4...
      • hadrien01 4y ago
        Unfortunately, the DMA and DSA are more than a year away from enforcement.
      • srcreigh 4y ago
        We’ll see if twitter gets gatekeeper status. They have significantly less MAU in the UK than the example qualifications here. https://www.dpocentre.com/the-digital-markets-act-and-gdpr-considerations-for-gatekeepers/#:~:text=The%20digital%20gatekeeper%20is%20the,organisations%20and%20millions%20of%20consumers https://www.dpocentre.com/the-digital-markets-act-and-gdpr-c....
• robbie-c 4y ago
  A week ago ago it seemed like a reasonable person could thing there was a chance (however small) that Musk would turn things around for twitter. Banning paulg though… surely he has no idea wtf he is doing
• clouddrover 4y ago
  Paul Graham said he wasn't leaving Twitter (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34042993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34042993), but apparently Twitter has left him. Graham excused Musk as being "eccentric". It's foolish to make excuses for authoritarian, attention seeking narcissists like Musk. They will always let you down in the end. When they show you who and what they are you ought to believe them.
• Fede_V 4y ago
  I distinctly remember a prescient thread from Yishan Wong (former Reddit CEO) about how trying to run Twitter would break Musk - and - it looks like it was spot on. He paid 44 billion dollars to be a mod - I hope he is getting his money's worth.
  • sc68cal 4y ago
    https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1514938507407421440?s=20&t=vFJujUzn2unpSfQLcMDNYQ https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1514938507407421440?s=20&t... For those curious
    • tonightstoast 4y ago
      Do I have to be logged in to see threads now? I can only see the first tweet that ends in “Long thread emoji”
      • richbell 4y ago
        For some reason his replies aren't at the top, you have to expand past the first few replies.
      • ssnistfajen 4y ago
        Remove the trackers (everything behind ? in the link) and you will see the thread. I was logged in but couldn't see the thread until I removed the tracker.
    • bentcorner 4y ago
      The interesting takeaway is that this means the mastodon migration is having a notable enough effect that Twitter is now blocking it.
  • sytelus 4y ago
    He had a different reasons however. He said it would be because he can't make any political side happy. We see here different behavior which is tyranny and unrelated to any political aspects. Probably most entrepreneurs have some level of egoistic, self-righteous, tyrant behavioral aspects but private control of social media, gateway to all people, really allows one to exercise and amplify it without any controls. This is why democracy was invented.
• booleandilemma 4y ago
  You will enjoy Twitter or else you will be banned from Twitter.
  • selimthegrim 4y ago
    This is like an old joke in the USSR. If you don’t like life in USSR, KGB will be interested in you. If you love life in USSR, OBKhSS (economic crimes/anti-profiteering department) will be interested in you.
• areoform 4y ago
  I posted this in another thread, but this is the worst possible decision Musk could have made. Here's my explanation as to why, So far no one seems to have discussed that this choice is the worst possible decision Musk could have made, which is impressive, because it's not often that you can credibly state that. His actions have compelled everyone to ask the question that shouldn't have to be asked. Is this the man whom you'd like to hand the keys to a global communications network to? SpaceX's real customer, the one who signs most of the cheques, is the US Government. And right now, after ambitiously building out a cutting-edge satellite communications network, SpaceX is trying to sell them a battlefield communications network, https://www.spacex.com/starshield/ https://www.spacex.com/starshield/ Their customer isn't dumb. The customer has been aggressively going back to their old friends and are getting them to create a parallel version of this network, > The new birds will host sensors that comprise seven capability layers, to seamlessly perform data communications, track hypersonic and cruise missiles, and provide enhanced battle management, navigation, ground support, and deterrence from space. Lockheed Martin and York Space Systems are each building 10 satellites for the initial data communications transport layer, while L3Harris Technologies and SpaceX will develop four satellites each for an advanced missile tracking layer. The average cost of these satellites is about $14.1 million, per Tournear. https://www.sda.mil/us-military-places-a-bet-on-leo-for-space-security/ https://www.sda.mil/us-military-places-a-bet-on-leo-for-spac... More recently, > SDA recently awarded nearly $1.8 billion in contracts for 126 satellites for the Transport Layer. By some estimates, about $500 million of that total would be for optical terminals, said Michael Abad-Santos, senior vice president of business development and strategy at BridgeComm, a Denver-based optical communications startup. https://spacenews.com/dod-space-agency-funds-development-of-laser-terminal-that-connects-to-multiple-satellite-at-once/ https://spacenews.com/dod-space-agency-funds-development-of-... SpaceX's cut has been a tiny sliver so far. And so they're seeking to upsell their central customer and they're doing this by playing as nice as possible. SpaceX is packaging interoperability into StarLink and is offering the customer the ability to integrate additional payloads. > Starlink's inter-satellite laser communications terminal, which is the only communications laser operating at scale in orbit today, can be integrated onto partner satellites to enable incorporation into the Starshield network. But what they're really doing is that they're telling the DoD to entrust their battlefield comms and some portion of their launch detection capabilities to them. To let a private company develop and help operate their very shiny new toy. A toy that's likely to become the future of warfare. And in the middle of all of these talks. A certain someone announced that he'd be cutting off Ukraine — a place where the customer is fighting an active proxy war & has a substantial geopolitical + practical vested interest – from a version of the fancy constellation they want to upsell the customer on. Not only that, the CEO of SpaceX then more or less steps back from his active role, doesn't relinquish his title and starts spending his time launching attacks on some of the customer's sub-departments. Accuses the customer's sub-departments of (relatively unfounded) corruption and creates a political headache for senior leaders at the customer. The SpaceX CEO's replacement, the SpaceX COO, is very levelheaded and competent. Someone the customer can do business with, but the CEO hasn't given this person any true power or control. The CEO is unwilling to let go. And even more recently, the bizarre attacks have transformed into erratic behavior and a very public (and embarrassing) meltdown of the CEO. The customer is watching this and asking themselves the deca-billion dollar question, Is this the man whom you'd like to hand the keys to a global communications network to? Now, the customer has been nervous about the CEO for some time. Things have been building up to this for some time now. And some sub-departments of the customer have been using their deep pockets to prop up potential competitors and force existing laggards to achieve parity. But it'll take time for results to materialize. https://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2021/04/06/lockheed-martin-space-abl-small-satellites-ula.html https://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2021/04/06/lockheed-... https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/01/rocket-lab-carves-off-defense-focused-subsidiary-for-national-security-customers/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/01/rocket-lab-carves-off-defe... https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/2772358/new-program-helps-dual-use-hardware-startups-accelerate-product-development/ https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/27... https://spacenews.com/spinlaunch-joins-cadre-of-small-launch-companies-dod-wants-to-try-out/ https://spacenews.com/spinlaunch-joins-cadre-of-small-launch... https://spacenews.com/dod-wants-to-change-how-it-buys-space-technology-but-can-it/ https://spacenews.com/dod-wants-to-change-how-it-buys-space-... So most of their eggs are already in this basket, and they're stuck. For now. Should the customer commit even more resources & critical functionality to this basket? What if the CEO has an episode and decides to shut off the network impromptu? Who would stop him in the short term? Who has the power to stop him inside the company? No one. Of course, if the CEO did that, the customer would step in with guns and politely force the CEO to divest from the company and resign. It's not like they haven't done this before, https://spacenews.com/russian-co-founders-out-of-momentus/ https://spacenews.com/russian-co-founders-out-of-momentus/ But if it comes to that, it's going to become a political headache. And some damage would have already been done. Maybe even gotten people killed. The customer doesn't really like unnecessary embarrassments. Their plate is, after all, already full of the many, many things their many, many, many sub-departments do (and screw up). --- Making predictions is difficult. Especially if they're about the future. But right now, it seems that SpaceX will either undergo a leadership shakeup, or they'll come to an agreement of some sort with the Pentagon. Stasis seems to be unsustainable.
• CodeWriter23 4y ago
  • d23 4y ago
    This comment is so depressing. Is there no limit to what he can do? Is there no point at which you'll stop defending him?
    • CodeWriter23 4y ago
      Is there no point at which you’ll stop defending SPAM? Because that’s straight up what I saw at least 5x in my feed over about 24 hrs “How to leave Twitter for Mastodon”. He did clearly define that causal sharing was fine just not spamming out free advertising.
  • asadotzler 4y ago
    So you walk into Walmart with a Target shirt on and get banned from Walmart for life? Yeah. That's surely gonna happen. Not.
  • Chinjut 4y ago
    What do you all think would happen if you mentioned Verizon while on an AT&T phone?
  • mtmail 4y ago
    It's an town square where everybody can parade around with signs (tweets) for the public to read, that's the whole purpose of the online platform. And where the owner claimed it'll be a bastion of freedom of speech.
• mysecretaccount 4y ago
  n=1 but I previously thought the reports of Twitter dying were overblown and I just signed up for Mastodon.
• FredPret 4y ago
  I'm a Musk fan in general but this is hard to defend
• d23 4y ago
  Musk is a tin pot tyrant and wannabe fascist requiring complete fealty from all his loyalists -- nothing else will suffice. How many more straws must break before his supporters will see this blindingly obvious truth?
  • mhss 4y ago
    How many straws did it take for Trump's supporters? oh, right ...
• salea 4y ago
  very emotional response from Musk. Twitter feels more like a discord server with some teenage mods.
• benmorris 4y ago
  If it isn't obvious this is the new norm for Twitter. Elon is making up the rules as he goes and ruling like a pissed off insecure reddit mod. I don't buy into all the freedom of speech rhetoric he has been spewing. This is about control and fueling his ego. It is a real shame because I wanted to continue using Twitter like I always have, but I don't think that will be possible.
  • sytelus 4y ago
    Please don't compare Emperor with "insecure reddit mod". Whatever sentence he may utter is the law of the land.
  • falcolas 4y ago
    > ruling like a pissed off insecure reddit mod Ya know, I've heard a lot worse comparisons. And I've seen this kind of thing happen there... Knowledge and money don't a good moderator make. And Elon Musk has clearly taken on the role of moderator, not just CEO. So, a spot on comparison.
  • paxys 4y ago
    Elon has been pretty consistent about his rules. You are either 100% loyal to him or you will be banned from the platform.
    • richbell 4y ago
      The closest comparison would be Reddit powermods who ban users from hundreds of the most active subreddits because the user: a) posted in a subreddit they don't like (this is often automated); or b) did or said something the moderator didn't like.
    • jasonhansel 4y ago
      "Free speech, but dissenters will be exiled."
  • wombatpm 4y ago
    Emperor Elon, First of his Name, Savior of Twitter, Defender of Freedom merely desires the respect and adoration he deserves. If some ungrateful blue check freeloaders disagree they may experience his evenhanded judgment and wrath.
• jamesredd 4y ago
  I had Paul Graham muted on Twitter. I can’t recall what he said, but it was absurd, and he won’t be missed.
  • zug_zug 4y ago
    Out of curiosity I notice a handful of Hn users seem pretty frustrated at pg to the point of sticking a jab in whenever his name is mentioned. Obviously you can only speak for yourself, but I’m curious if there’s a common thread I’m not aware of leading to this personal bitterness?
    • jamesredd 4y ago
      I have nothing against pg, except for the fact that when he said something I found absurd I had to mute him on Twitter. I don’t find propagandist compelling at all and have no interest in reading the outcome of their thoughts.
      • zug_zug 4y ago
        So when you say propagandist does that mean he spreads lies on behalf of a government? Reading between the lines it sounds like you find him to be deliberately dishonest about something(s)?
        • jamesredd 4y ago
          Propaganda has nothing to do with the government. It has to do with perverting the truth in favor of a narrative.
          • zug_zug 4y ago
            Okay. You don't have to answer this if you don't want to. I have no dog in this race, I'm just curious. But if you do want to answer, when you say "perverting the truth" does that mean deliberately saying inaccurate things in bad faith for self-interest? Or do you think he genuinely believes what he says but is incorrect in what he believes? Also, I'm curious does it bother you equally when other people push a narrative, or moreso because he's famous/mildly-influential?
• joshfraser 4y ago
  In the words of Elon Musk: The acid test for any two competing socioeconomic systems is which side needs to build a wall to keep people from escaping? That’s the bad one! https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1533616384747442176 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1533616384747442176 The importance of decentralized social media has never been more obvious.
• cyberphobe 4y ago
  I wonder if pg still thinks Elon is "a smart guy"[1]? [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20221218210821/https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1604557444247539712 https://web.archive.org/web/20221218210821/https://twitter.c...
• AstixAndBelix 4y ago
  You don't understand! Elon just wanted to lighten the load on Mastodon's servers! He saw that PG's instance was slow to load from all the traffic and he felt really bad that Twitter was enabling this DDOS!
• mmaunder 4y ago
  So leave. Not sarcasm - I’m hoping to provoke self analysis. How much of a hold does Twitter have on us? On me? On my company? These are things I’m thinking about. Let’s assume Musk is a rational market participant making rational choices based on what he thinks is reliable data and accurate assumptions. He would be assuming Twitter’s network effect is strong enough to allow authoritarian leadership and decisions that are counter to the majority will. If most of us are still on Twitter, Musk is right and is exercising the control he has of the platform knowing there will be little cost. So is he?
• SilverBirch 4y ago
  There's kind of three options here: * Elon is personally policing twitter, and has banned PG in a fit of pique, despite literally being at a party in Doha the world cup * Twitter's staff are just being crazy over the top with bannings - this might actually be the most likely. It's kind of obvious that Twitter has some automated systems that suspend accounts when they get mass reported, and some people with a sense of humour may well have taken Elon at his word and msas reported PG's account, and Twitter is so understaffed slips like this will happen * With so few staff left, and only the True Believers, twitter's remaining staff have adopted a "fuck you, I'm the law" approach to moderation.
  • throwawaysleep 4y ago
    He is pretty clearly personally policing Twitter. The extent is unclear, but he is clearly doing at least some of it.
  • easygenes 4y ago
    I’d bet on a good mix of 2 and 3 here.
    • prawn 4y ago
      Why not all three, in a way? In a rage, he's set a blanket rule about suspending accounts that do a specific thing. At his request, staff or system have resulted in PG getting suspended. With minimal pushback from remaining staff, no one's ensured that actions against major accounts gets checked first.
  • watwut 4y ago
    Musk personally policing twitter is pretty obvious for, like, last month or more. He personally picks accounts to restore and accounts to close. And there are very clear patterns in both. Including him announcing some of these on Twitter.
    • richbell 4y ago
      Someone does something Elon doesn't like, magically the next day there's a rule against it that's arbitrarily defined and enforced, even if it contradicts something Elon has said in the past. Like revealing a "bombshell" that Twitter was shadow banning users... only to then shadow ban the @ElonJet account. https://archive.ph/jhJHd https://archive.ph/jhJHd
• bumbledraven 4y ago
  PG’s final tweet before suspension (https://archive.ph/p3ElV https://archive.ph/p3ElV): > This is the last straw. I give up. You can find a link to my new Mastodon profile on my site. > [embedded link to new Twitter policy]
• jules 4y ago
  His mastodon account has also been suspended on the server I'm on. Ugh, what is it with person C deciding that person B is not allowed to see what person A says. I dislike human nature sometimes. Or at least the personality type that is attracted to moderator positions.
  • ahelwer 4y ago
    So go to a different instance or even start up your own! That's the beauty of it, now you don't have to care what person C thinks - you can just go elsewhere.
    • jules 4y ago
      Except that persons C, who control the instances where many interesting people are, have banned instances run by people who are not like the Cs. Furthermore, I don't even want to bother with all this stuff, playing detective trying to figure out the character of the moderators of different instances, figuring out how to migrate, and figuring out which other instances they federate with. There is no beauty to be found here, just human nature being such that as a species we can't even accomplish a platform where we can read the text messages from people we want to follow.
• dekhn 4y ago
  And so this is how twitter ends. Not with a twang, but a simper.
• willmadden 4y ago
  He’s on the cap table, right? I bet they got several hundred of you to click Twitter links just from hacker news alone.
  • hnbad 4y ago
    That doesn't sound like a good advertising strategy for a well established platform, especially given how likely HN users are to block ads.
    • willmadden 4y ago
      Not a good advertising strategy? Really? https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604617643973124097 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604617643973124097
      • hnbad 4y ago
        What's your point? That it gets people to click on links? I'm not disputing that. I'm merely stating that doesn't translate into anything useful. I don't think many will sign up to Twitter over this and clicks alone don't make Twitter money (ads do, but HN users are more likely to have them blocked or at least not click on them) so this is just adding load to their systems for nothing in return.
        • willmadden 4y ago
          My points are: 1. Elon was planning to put in a new CEO all along. He admitted this back in November! 2. The erratic behavior was a publicity stunt (which PG was in on). The purpose is to get lots of stagnant and new users engaged with Twitter as the saga unfolds, and to set the stage for the new “hero” CEO to take the reigns from the eccentric owner and lead Twitter into a “new era” etc. This spikes their active user count, boosts all of their KPI’s, and gets those new/reactivated users following the saga until they form a Twitter habit. It also gives Twitter more favorable optics with “establishment” advertisers as the “bad guy” is dethroned to go focus on rockets and cars, while the tension and drama remain with Elon on the board. I’m sure there will be future drama between Elon and the new CEO that will unfold openly on Twitter. That is also by design. It’s obvious. They know mastedon isn’t a threat. It’s a federated mess and can’t handle the load. More on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33594961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33594961 There are independent Twitter alternatives that are a threat, refuse to to respect any facet of the establishment Overton window and allow all legal speech, don’t rely on their 3rd party hosting services/app stores, and could easily scale, but notice PG didn’t go to any of those. The Twitter policy also didn’t mention any of the real threats. That is by design. I’m not sure why people here can’t see it.
• kuahyeow 4y ago
  Capricious enforcement sucks See also Andor episode 8 (spoilers so I won't post exact details) ;)
• spritefs 4y ago
  Every day I feel like more of an idiot for giving Elon the benefit of the doubt with this whole freedom of speech thing At this point he's so completely tarnished his public image, I don't see Tesla surviving this long term unless he sells out and rides off into the sunset
• ZuLuuuuuu 4y ago
  I wonder if Jack Dorsey will get suspended as well, because he shares his Nostr account on his Twitter profile and Nostr is specifically mentioned among the prohibited social media sites.
• RivieraKid 4y ago
  Honestly it's hilarious to see the Elon worshippers turn against him. Paul Graham and Ryan Jones - check. Tim Urban, Andrej Karpathy, Sam Altman - no comment so far, but I suspect they're not on Elon team anymore. Lex Fridman - no chance, that guy would gladly follow him to grave.
  • paxys 4y ago
    Not surprising at all. This happened consistently with Trump and all the moderate republicans who supported his rise but eventually realized that his extremism wasn't an act and he was never on their side, just his own.
  • robbomacrae 4y ago
    David Sacks would follow also. Seeing him constantly defend Musk on that All In podcast is painful. "he will never do that" one week turns into "ok he did that but...". It's like a weekly no true scotsman act watching him try and reinvent an argument that fits the very short lived situation into some grand humanity saving strategy. And you have to seriously question his motivation.
    • timdaub 4y ago
      he also started a poll asking if people are in favor or against „realtime doxxing of a person“ which soberly isn‘t what the ElonJet incident was about. I don‘t even know what my opinion is. I just think it‘s really lame, like a parent that executes on a principle they don‘t wanna back off from.
      • hackernewds 4y ago
        David Sacks is in the inner circle of the Twitter executive team. He has financially benefited from being a "Yes man". One need only refer to the texts released in the Discovery phase
  • roflyear 4y ago
    Lex is a strange human. Seemingly smart, but also supportive of a lot of weird shit. Also he says he's neutral - but don't criticize Joe Rogan!! lol
• dang 4y ago
  Previous threads in this sequence: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34041985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34041985 Promotion of alternative social platforms policy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34040165 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34040165 I moved 34041985 off the front page, partly because these are more or less the same story, but mostly because the traffic on this is boiling our poor server and I need to resort to tricks. Sorry all! In case you're not aware: you need to click on the "more comments" links at the bottom of the pages to get to the rest of the thread; also, you can make HN faster by logging out when it's keeling over. (Make sure you know your password and/or have a usable email address in your profile before logging out!) Also, performance improvements shouldn't be too far off now... but not today.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• hooande 4y ago
  Twitter is not an institution. It is not a utility. People can just leave and go to another website. It will take time for a new website or websites to figure things out at scale, both technologically and socially. But people were patient with twitter in the fail whale days and I assume they'll be patient with another service in the future. This guy is running twitter like it's his personal website. Which, it is. But people prefer services offered by businesses instead of individuals, because businesses have stable incentive structures and fiduciary responsibilities. No one likes it when the rules change arbitrarily every week, so businesses don't do that. This level of chaos just isn't sustainable. I would never have thought that twitter could lose a significant portion of its user base in a short period. But that could very well happen now, and it's crazy.
  • TillE 4y ago
    It is kind of an institution, it really has been a de facto town square of the internet in a way that no other social media platform ever was. But it could die. The network effect works both ways, and if big accounts emigrate it's in real trouble.
    • dgudkov 4y ago
      And yet, lots of people in pre-Musk times said "Twitter is not a government body, it's a private company, it can ban whoever it wants to ban". Now these people are leaving in droves. I hope it's a good lesson for everybody that a private company can't be a de facto town square. An internet town square must be based on open protocols and, like an IRL town square, paid with taxpayers money. Otherwise, we're doomed to have this story repeated again and again.
      • Sebb767 4y ago
        > And yet, lots of people in pre-Musk times said "Twitter is not a government body, it's a private company, it can ban whoever it wants to ban". Now these people are leaving in droves. Usually, this was followed by "and users are free to leave if they disagree". Nobody said you have to accept these decisions.
• mvkel 4y ago
  It's baffling to me that Elon seems to be taking the opposite of a first-principles view on Twitter. He fails to realize _why_ Twitter uniquely has the reach that it does. It's because it's platform-agnostic in a lot of ways. It's the base-level social protocol that all other platforms are adjacent to. By removing that connection, it completely nerfs that influence and Twitter becomes just another social network. I also fail to see how users could think this is reasonable considering Twitter has no way to upload long-form video. So how could YouTube be a competitor? And the policy doesn't talk about Tiktok whatsoever, which is arguably an actual threat to Twitter, since it replaced Vine. Overall, something's fishy.
  • rsanheim 4y ago
    It isn't baffling at all. It was entirely predictable by looking at his past behavior. The thai cave diver incident and Elon's slander. The hyperloop failure. The continual empty promises of FSD for tesla. His attempts to manipulate the market thru his posts, which the SEC slapped his write for. Why would Elon take a first-principles approach, instead of the selfish, short-sighted approach of an insecure, lonely, overbearing billionaire with too much money and too many adoring fans?
    • TOMDM 4y ago
      Hyperloop wasn't a failure at all, it did exactly what it was meant to; kill off attempts to get more railway projects started in California.
      • wilg 4y ago
        This take on the Hyperloop thing is totally trumped-up. There is no evidence it was meant to kill off new railway projects, nor any evidence that it did. Elon was just paraphrased in a book about how he thought the particular California HSR project was a boondoggle (a view shared by many) and he published an idea for how to do it better.
        • jeffbee 4y ago
• imwillofficial 4y ago
  Man the last two weeks have been wild
• jp57 4y ago
  @paulg@mas.to is his mastodon address, FYI. He got banned for saying that it was on his website, without any actual links.
• jmoak3 4y ago
  He didn't link to his mastodon at all, did he? Twitter is one of the reasons I became an engineer - I was able to follow and see the mutterings of indie game devs in Copenhagen (vlambeer, if anyone knows them). 15 year old me responded the most inane things to their posts, but it exposed me to work ethics, communities, and possibilities in the computing world I never would have found growing up in Kentucky. I taught myself how to code to make games. I left the state to get a CS degree (the state's schools didn't offer a dedicated one at the time), made a game, and I now work at a FANG. Without that online twitter community of people who really got what I was interested in, it might have been a passing interest. Even if I couldn't participate at the same level, at least I could watch them do so! I'll never forget watching Ferguson happen live, the Arab Spring, or even the initial days of Covid in Jan 2020 as I scoured it for morsels. I stopped using it a while ago, but this is so sad, feeling eulogistic.
  • cesarb 4y ago
    > He didn't link to his mastodon at all, did he? Very indirectly. He mentioned that his mastodon handle was at his site, which was linked in his twitter bio, and had said handle as the first line (excluding sidebars); only the handle, no links at all, but it's trivial to construct the link given that piece of information.
    • chipgap98 4y ago
      But handles are the thing they are specifically trying to stop people from linking. Cross posting content is okay, but not profiles
      • marcinzm 4y ago
        They are specifically trying to block whatever is annoying Elon at this particular second. Clearly PG's tweet annoyed Elon and that is the only thing that matters.
        • thombat 4y ago
          Or it's a flunkey, trying to anticipate what will displease Kaiser Musk today. Pity that flunkey: guessing wrong will cost them the job.
• RivieraKid 4y ago
  Someone needs to build a Twitter clone, with the exact same UX and features as Twitter, just a different branding and an adult CEO.
  • jdhdjdbdjdbd 4y ago
    no
• busymom0 4y ago
  What happened to the whole “it’s a private company so it can do whatever”? Looks like people don’t like it when the winds blow against them.
  • dragonwriter 4y ago
    > What happened to the whole “it’s a private company so it can do whatever”? Most people with that position take the viewpoint that it is consistent with their view of free speech that Musk can do this, but it is still undesirable that he does do it, What happened to the whole “as the modern digital public square, it is important to the ‘principal of free speech’, even if not required by the legal doctrine of free speech, that Twitter allow all lawful speech” crowd (including Elon himself)? What happened to the whole “it’s a private company so it can do whatever”?
• jhatemyjob 4y ago
  This only happened 30min ago, hopefully this was just a rogue employee.
• wnevets 4y ago
  Do you think paulg will admit he was wrong about elon?
• rsanheim 4y ago
  hilarious. after PG was bending over backwards to still give oh elon the benefit of the doubt, still a smart guy, etc etc. this is a complete and utter clown show. elon has shown his true colors, as have the many tech luminaries who still claim the twitter titanic can be righted and make it home after its half underwater and folks are running for the lifeboats.
  • watwut 4y ago
    That saying about leopard eating peoples faces comes to mind.
• lvl102 4y ago
  Elon Musk is quite literally destroying the platform all on his own. Utter waste of $44B. Once there's a critical mass of news outlets on a competing platform, that will be the end of Twitter in my opinion. In fact, I think it makes a lot of sense for news outlets to invest in such a platform.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• Analemma_ 4y ago
  I think there’s a decent chance this was a bit of “malicious compliance” by someone inside Twitter, rather than a personal decision by Musk himself. And lest you think this sounds like I’m defending him, I think that explanation actually makes it funnier: give a brutally honest demonstration of the absurdity and hypocrisy of this policy by banning someone Musk probably wouldn’t actually enforce the policy on, and then say you were just following orders.
• monksy 4y ago
  This is the greatest internet drama I've seen in a while. Billionaire cosplays as a knowledge leader. Does things that hurts him self and new company. People leave Billionaire can't figure out why and tried to stop the bleed. I can't wait for eu fines Burn baby burn
• easygenes 4y ago
  Slight tangent: What is going on with the HN post ranking system? This post is showing in rank 2 with over 400 points while being submitted under an hour ago, while the IRS post at number one right now has barely over 100 points and was submitted over an hour ago. This post is both fresher and with more overall points, shouldn’t it outrank?
  • d23 4y ago
    I think it tries to downrank "controversial" posts. I assume this thread has a lot of downvotes from people who support him. I do wish that wasn't the case. This stuff is directly related to the industry.
  • kayodelycaon 4y ago
    I think flags adjust the ranking. The moderators can adjust the weighting on a story. If a story has a lot of people starting flame wars, it often gets knocked off the front page. Duplicate or similar posts with a lot of traffic, will get merged or one will be picked and the others pushed off the front page.
• carabiner 4y ago
  Musk is doing the things that he would have made fun of other CEO's doing two years ago.
• barathr 4y ago
  The mastodon server he's on is getting overwhelmed; here are a few decent options I shared elsewhere for HN folks: https://techhub.social https://techhub.social https://infosec.exchange https://infosec.exchange https://ioc.exchange https://ioc.exchange
• xupybd 4y ago
  That is insane. They have jumped the shark on this one. My prediction is that they will reverse many of these policies but the damage is done. Banning controversial figures will always stir people in different directions. Banning PG when he has clearly done nothing violating the TOS will cause a storm. I had to quit Twitter as it was far too addictive for me. If I'd not already done that this would have caused me to bail out.
• breck 4y ago
  PG/YC: banned me from Bookface, kicked me out of the email groups from the 2 YC classes I was a part of (which happened to be their #1 and #2 most valuable classes - coincidentally), and Reddit is one of the most censored places on the net (easy to get something to go viral, but then it's flagged by anon mods unless you participate in payola). I still give out "Hackers and Painters" to high school kids, but the recent reputation of YC toward free speech is laughable.
• jwmoz 4y ago
  tldr; Musk is an idiot.
• Barrin92 4y ago
  I think we're speedrunning Soviet history here or something. It started with the journalists and the peasants and within weeks we're already at infighting among the party leadership. Paul actually got the Trotsky treatment lol. In a week or two we'll be engaging in samizdat and try to climb over the Twitter walls to Mastodon while Elon is sniping people from his throne
  • selimthegrim 4y ago
    See my remark at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34047006 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34047006
• BurningFrog 4y ago
  Elon keeping his promise from Nov 9: Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months. We will keep what works & change what doesn’t. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1590384919829962752 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1590384919829962752
  • ncallaway 4y ago
    I believe the first line. I'm not convinced about the second...
• meerab 4y ago
  The sad part was Elon's responded @paulg tweet with two ROFL emojis.
• timgriffin77 4y ago
  So much for free speech, this is the definition of policing information - can’t believe this is what will actually bring Twitter to its knees.
• jyu 4y ago
  interesting when a public good is privately owned
• userbinator 4y ago
  One can only hope this is some sort of publicity stunt, and he later unbans everyone and changes course again with a "now that you've experienced what real censorship looks like" sort of excuse, but I don't have much hope left. Then again, Elon is far more unpredictable than I thought.
• AtNightWeCode 4y ago
  He tried to rage quit but Twitter did it for him. The amount of bs in this thread is amazing. He posted a link to to the status with the rule update and wrote that one could find his Mastodon account on his site. So not much to fuzz about. I am more upset that someone like PG don't have working TLS on his site.
• colinrtwhite 4y ago
  Test
• jacquesm 4y ago
  So, how long before we finally figure out that this centralized web that we've built is fundamentally broken. Time for the pendulum to start swinging the other way again. The whole idea that a single individual can waltz in with his money and take over a massively successful platform and wreck it within a few weeks should give us all pause with respect to the services that we use - even those that are not social media.
• Tycho 4y ago
  This is pretty funny. If you have to spend $44 billion, might as well have some fun.
• Flatcircle 4y ago
  Elon has lost his mind
• alfiedotwtf 4y ago
  Twitter to me started to feel like you were at a party having a good time, but then the host had too many drinks and started vomiting on the floor. But because it was his house, anyone who tried to help would be yelled at because it was HIS house and HE was having a good time. At what point does every right-minded person just nope the situation and leave because they don't want to be that person left cleaning up for an asshole.
• TOMDM 4y ago
  Is there an exception for brands for this lunacy? If Nestle links to their Instagram is that bannable? What about their site which would likely host all their socials?
• mkl95 4y ago
  The current state of Twitter reminds me of the startups I worked at in the beginning of my career, where unstable people made stupid decisions all the time.
• weinzierl 4y ago
  I hope his Tweets are archived by someone.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• legi0nary 4y ago
  he hasn't gotten dril yet https://twitter.com/dril/status/1604547162708185088 https://twitter.com/dril/status/1604547162708185088
• seydor 4y ago
  Didn't he supposedly want to make twitter make money? For most of its highly followed people, twitter is basically that, a feed to lure users to other venues where they sell their stuff. He could have requested a fee for promoting those sites. This makes zero sense, twitter will never be a facebook replacement, not even instagram replacement. looking forward to more craziness as the week unfolds
• the_duke 4y ago
  No one seems to have mentioned the really interesting aspect here: Twitter must be bleeding DAUs. There are other indicators too. After the takeover they dropped the login wall, but it is back, and way more aggressive than before. You can't even scroll down to see more tweets now, or view replies. The ads are also really weird and odd. Either their ad targeting system is broken, or they just lost so many advertisers that they have nothing good to show. I bet the initial influx of previously turned away users is over, as well as the returning users just there for the show, and now the effects are compounding.
  • timdaub 4y ago
    this isn‘t totally true. Today I also noticed that we login wall takes more screen space - but you can click it away and it didn‘t return for me anymore on iOS
  • dm319 4y ago
    Wasn't there something about Elon trying to sell Twitter stock privately? I think in the financial times. They have probably lost a lot of advertisers, and Elon might be in financial trouble.
    • rinze 4y ago
      It was in several places, Bloomberg among them: https://archive.ph/0P9i7 https://archive.ph/0P9i7 The entire thing is a joke.
    • meepmorp 4y ago
      Not just sell stock, but sell it at the meme-o-rific $54.20 price he paid. Just unbelievable.
  • cesarb 4y ago
    > After the takeover they dropped the login wall, but it is back, and way more aggressive than before. At least in one small aspect it's better now: the X in the corner is back, so you can dismiss it. Shortly before the takeover, the X in the login wall was hidden unless you somehow found out the trick (you had to click as if you were going to login with an username and password, and that second form had the X in the corner to dismiss it).
• deleted 4y ago
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• neilv 4y ago
  This comes across as especially petty of Elon Musk, to do it to another prominent dotcom-boom rich-guy. (Even if it was an accident of automation this time, it's easy to believe Musk personally ordered it.)
• paxys 4y ago
  The silicon valley VC class failed a basic history lesson - never prop up a dictator thinking your are his equal and will be spared from having to kiss his ring. They are all going to have to fall in line or be labeled the enemy. The All In podcast crew must be sweating right now.
• ALittleLight 4y ago
  Trying to come up with a theory that makes sense. This is my best effort - Elon Musk as the Beast Rabban. Rule with an iron fist, brutal, harsh decisions and insane demands. Then, step out, to be replaced by a leader who is demanding but comparatively much more reasonable and lenient. Remaining staff and users will appreciate the new leader, though they might have resented the change if they weren't first shocked by the Beast Musk.
• retrocryptid 4y ago
  Okay. That's weird. I commented on this thread and now I can't log into twitter. It doesn't say I'm suspended, it just tells me @retrocryptid doesn't exist when I try to log in. Then intarwebs are weird, yo.
• rdl 4y ago
  I am in shock. I don't really care that much about anything on Twitter, but this implies either 1) we're not going to get to Mars from SpaceX or 2) the level of capriciousness is in excess of my tolerance for life support/other critical operations. I hope someone else steps up, because I'd like to get to Mars.
  • sgt 4y ago
    Yes, it's frustrating to see Elon spending so much time on social media crap when he could be focusing on things that actually has real long term value for humanity.
• nwoli 4y ago
  Obviously an automated mistake people, he’ll be back in a few hours
• appel 4y ago
  Wow. This is insanity. I really fail to understand Musk's end game here. You'd almost think running Twitter into the ground is the goal.
• wereallterrrist 4y ago
  I'm going to die from eating popcorn. What an epic battle of parasocial allegiance, for some here, this must be.
• malloc2048 4y ago
  How do we know his account is suspended and not deleted/disabled by himself?
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• Ciantic 4y ago
  My only gripe is that Paul Graham chose mas.to, there are famous people running instances that know a thing or two. For instance, Alex Stamos is running https://cybervillains.com/ https://cybervillains.com/ it's relatively small, and these famous people know how to connect with each other. Scaling something run by an anonymous Trumpet (mas.to) is a bit harder. Edit: Like on cue, the whole mas.to is now unaccessible from where I am.
• s-xyz 4y ago
  This is the post that he was banned for: https://mas.to/@google/109537142875594917 https://mas.to/@google/109537142875594917
  • gundmc 4y ago
    Is this some random user squatting on the @google identity? I'm not too familiar with how mastodon identity works
• drakmo 4y ago
  Twitter is now the mother of all BBS and Elmo is its paranoid psychopath only sysop.
• markthethomas 4y ago
  Wow. Wrote this in jest but seems like it won’t be long before it’s practically, if not actually, true https://unicorn.computer/twitter-suspends-all-users-who-have-other-social-accounts https://unicorn.computer/twitter-suspends-all-users-who-have...
• weare138 4y ago
  The suspensions will continue until morale improves.
• ohhell 4y ago
  Ah man, you guys are gonna freak when they point you in the direction of the next bad man
• deleted 4y ago
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• seba_dos1 4y ago
  So first they blocked links to Libera Chat and OFTC, and now accounts that merely talk about them? Oh wait, wrong take-over. Feels so similar though!
• IAmGraydon 4y ago
  This is like watching a train wreck in slow motion.
• gog 4y ago
  Are you supposed to follow Elon or Twitter Support accounts to find out about changes in the Terms of Service? This is crazy, I never got an email that something in ToS is changing.
• docmars 4y ago
  The outraged responses to all of these suspensions is pure gold. Contrast this with medical doctors who were banned for sharing their own expertise because it contradicted the prescribed narrative around the pandemic, and realize how absurd that sounds, just as this very suspension does. I think Elon is making a point here, and if it gets lost on people, it really speaks to how little attention was being paid to pre-Musk suspensions for absolutely ludracris reasons. Now average people know how conservatives have felt for the past several years as they've been targeted by TLAs and taken down for completely baffling reasons.
• a_d 4y ago
  It is possible that this becomes the inciting incident that leads to a viable twitter alternative. Making many programmers and tech people annoyed at the same time isn't a wise move by Twitter.
  • lcnmrn 4y ago
    Subreply.com is one good alternative.
• tus666 4y ago
  Imagine being so rich you could just flush $40B down the toilet.
• memish 4y ago
  If PG isn't a case of malicious enforcement by moderation and doesn't reverse this policy, he's truly lost the plot. Now let's see if he bans and fires George Hotz, who is working at Twitter. "Agreed that’s this is an absolutely ridiculous policy. My bio link has been a link to my Instagram since I created this Twitter. Feel free to ban me." https://twitter.com/realGeorgeHotz/status/1604597899295236097 https://twitter.com/realGeorgeHotz/status/160459789929523609... "Btw follow me on Instagram in case I get banned here, you know how to find me If saying that is banned, this isn’t somewhere I want to be anymore. That’s so far from free speech." https://twitter.com/realGeorgeHotz/status/1604599855560605696 https://twitter.com/realGeorgeHotz/status/160459985556060569...
• iamsanteri 4y ago
  Is Mastodon always this slow? Maybe something could be done to make it run faster now that they have a chance?
  • KZerda 4y ago
    No. The servers are just getting hit hard because of everyone rushing to see what all the hubub's about.
• dredmorbius 4y ago
  I've just caught the BBC's top-of-the-hour newscast, and the fact that Twitter is banning posts / profiles for referencing other services made the news summary. Web story: <https://www.bbc.com/news/business-your-money-64021412 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-your-money-64021412>' NPR as well as of the 5pm E.T. news rundown. For anyone who doesn't think this isn't huge news with global impact, think again. NYTimes: <https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/18/business/twitter-ban-social-media-competitors-mastodon.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/18/business/twitter-ban-soci...> Washington Post: <https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/12/18/twitter-policy-links-to-social-sites/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/12/18/twitter...> Deutschlandfunk: <https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/links-zu-konkurrierenden-online-plattformen-werden-verboten-106.html https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/links-zu-konkurrierenden-onli...> And since that Twitter link may change, and archive I captured a short while ago: <https://archive.vn/ucUdh https://archive.vn/ucUdh>
• hairofadog 4y ago
  Wow, that Twitter Moderation Council must be working overtime, what with having to convene and hash out the merits of each of these bans. I bet they'll be getting good bonuses.
• justapassenger 4y ago
  TBH, I have 0 sympathy for PG. he was excusing Elon’s Twitter actions, with roughly “he lands rockets, and you don’t, so he knows what he’s doing”. He only has an issues with him when he’s personally affected? Cool.
  • JulianMorrison 4y ago
    He employs rocket scientists. And also, I hear, a layer of glad-handing management dedicated to keeping him from putting his thumb in the rocket scientist pie, patting him on the head for his cockamamie ideas, and faking up Potemkin demonstrations to keep him happy.
    • ericmay 4y ago
      Anyone can employee rocket scientists
      • JulianMorrison 4y ago
        Anyone with heaps of money
    • slaw 4y ago
      How the world changed. I was heavily downvoted for a comment like this few months ago.
  • toss1 4y ago
    It does not seem that PG is seeking sympathy, and it wasn't what bothered him The post indicated that what bothered PG, was the 'last straw', was the new policy against directly "advertising"/"promoting" other social media such as Mastadon, FB, and a few others. PG indicated that his personal webpage had his new socmedia addresses, and apparently got banned for that. Not even directly posting them. Pretty damn far from Free Speech Absolutism. Hell, this is not even close to being a Sec230-protected "carrier", it is straight up editorial control, which means Musk/Twitter could be solely responsible for all posted content...
• hmate9 4y ago
  By the way twitter dropped this policy change during the World Cup finals, trying to minimize the amount of attention it gets. Doesn't seem to be working for them.
• TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  We seem to be well into "Actions speak louder than words" territory.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• lolinder 4y ago
  This whole situation feels like Musk saw the Freenode meltdown last year and thought "I could do that... but bigger". There was speculation at the time that the new owner was deliberately destroying the network just for funsies, because no one could possibly be so consistent at making the wrong decision at every turn. That's what Twitter feels like right now.
  • SicSemperUranus 4y ago
    I didn't really believe in schadenfreude until this happened. Now, every day is filled with pleasure!
• braingenious 4y ago
  I think it is high time that HN steps in and just becomes the new twitter. dang I propose that the admins here enable multimedia posts and explicitly allow porn. You’ll have a sensation overnight! hahaha
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• SoftTalker 4y ago
  I have two questions: 1) What happened to "it's a private platform, they can do what they want?" 2) Does anyone think Musk bought Twitter to deliberately destroy it?
  • srcreigh 4y ago
    1) still true. And I for one think Elon’s utter transparency if all his flaws and explicit policy about sharing competitors is categorically better than the vague policy games and hidden algo promotions that nearly every other site runs. You may not like Twitters rules, but at least you are allowed to have an opinion since it’s all out in the open. Contradictions and all. It’s an easy target.
  • hackerlight 4y ago
    Nobody is saying he can't do what he wants with Twitter. He's being criticized for being hypocritical and untrue to his professed "free speech absolutist" ideals. Also, criticized for being an all around jackass.
• jacquesm 4y ago
  This is what training on the job looks like, even moderation is a much harder job than it may seem to be at first glance.
• jonnycomputer 4y ago
  Elon is doing God's work, killing Twitter.
• airocker 4y ago
  It is not right that TOS can be changed abruptly and people made to comply at once. Why not just delete a post than suspend account?
  • meepmorp 4y ago
    Because Musk got angry about pg's tweet and lashed out, then pretended it was about policy instead of his lack of emotional regulation. He's not really making deeply reasoned choices.
• ckastner 4y ago
  The guy who said he'll be the champion of free speech is now banning even the mention of other social networks. Imagine setting yourself such virtuous goal, but not 6 weeks later ending up with your own Great Firewall of China. Journalists banned for mentioning a suspended account, pg banned for mentioning his website, banning every mention of other social networks. And that's a recap of just the last 72 hours.
• jonnycomputer 4y ago
  Trump tried to make Truth Social the new Twitter. Musk is trying to make Twitter the new Truth Social.
• pardon_me 4y ago
  Is this real life?
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• capex 4y ago
  Elon now reminds me of the many characters talked about in 'Ego is the enemy' https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27036528-ego-is-the-enemy https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27036528-ego-is-the-enem...
• user- 4y ago
  Why?
• jdiez17 4y ago
  Musk just tweeted that @paulg will be restored shortly: https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604616426114932737 https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/16046164261149327... And “Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes. My apologies. Won’t happen again.” https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604616863673208832 https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/16046168636732088... Edit: and now he’s asking if he should step down https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604617643973124097 https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/16046176439731240...
  • sytelus 4y ago
    Just voted using all of my 12 Twitter accounts. There is a huge startup opportunity to let customers buy poll outcome through human farms in Indonesia. They will need to compete with state sponsored bots but that's ok.
    • MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
      What's the problem, money is just another form of free speech isn't it?
      • PartiallyTyped 4y ago
        One shouldn’t have more free speech by virtue of their net worth or disposable income.
        • nickthegreek 4y ago
          Ideally, but we would apparently need an amendment to the Constitution for that too be true.
  • 542458 4y ago
    This whole “Elon Musk polls Elon Musk’s followers and acts like it’s a) representative of the Twitter userbase in general and that b) the results of the poll are an infallible measure of which option is best” thing is just bizarre to me. The former is pretty clearly untrue, and the latter is untrue for most definitions of “best”.
• verdenti 4y ago
• adharmad 4y ago
  It seems that PG's account will be restored shortly: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604616426114932737 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604616426114932737
• fleddr 4y ago
  Musk really gets Twitter. It's always been an outrage machine, and he's just fueling the fire. Pretty brilliant...in his mind.
• domador 4y ago
  Is there an archive of Paul Graham's tweets somewhere? I was hoping to get around to reading all of them at some point, but now I might never get that chance. pg's current Twitter ban and my desire to read pg's full tweet archive reflect two things I despise about common design practices for contemporary social media sites: 1) When a user's account is banned, all their content is made unavailable, even if the rest of their content didn't run afoul of the site's policies. (In other words, user-provided content bans are almost universally draconian.) 2) A user's content can only be accessed linearly. I'd be more likely to have read the full set of pg's tweets by now if I didn't have to always start from the most recent tweet and start scrolling backwards. We've regressed to the time when data storage was primarily tape-based... except that now I, the user, am the human, manually-operated (and frustrated) tape drive. (Sites do tend to provide text-based search but that doesn't fix the full-content-access problem, since I'd have to know the keywords for every bit of content that I'd want to find.)
  • roland35 4y ago
    Eh you'll probably be fine without his Twitter history. A lot of his takes (such as the recent one on Marxism and the one on editors) were basic and laughable.
• deleted 4y ago
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• seo-speedwagon 4y ago
  It’s interesting to consider that this is likely the “less online” crowd’s (i.e. what I suppose to be the vast majority of Twitter users) first experience with capricious and arbitrary moderation of their online discussions. Folks who have posted a lot in smaller forums with moderation drawn up from the user base are a lot more familiar with this kind of thing, but if you’ve only posted on corporate, “professionally moderated” platforms, it must be quite disorienting
• imwillofficial 4y ago
  It seems Elon might be rolling this back. Check His latest tweet
• satysin 4y ago
  Would love to hear Paul’s response to this.
• SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  Is anyone keeping a list of twitter and it's TOS changes? I feel like it'd be hilarious to get a git history of all these.
• g42gregory 4y ago
  Interesting turn of events. I do not think that Elon suspended PG's account. Maybe it's an act of sabotage, or AI systems running amok? It looks like there could be more to this story. I guess we will find out soon enough, one way to the other.
• reneberlin 4y ago
  The hyperlink is the crucical element that made the www become the success that enabled these corporations in the first place. Any restrictions at that level ...
• jaimex2 4y ago
  who?
• AndyNemmity 4y ago
  He's now back on, but with all of his followers gone.
• karmasimida 4y ago
  Elon pulled a power move
• mike-cardwell 4y ago
  They must be leaking real users pretty hard if they're having to resort to banning people from even mentioning that alternatives exist.
• anigbrowl 4y ago
  Musk now inviting people to vote on whether he should step down as CEO. I guess that's one approach to getting people back. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604617643973124097?s=46&t=A9jNxttou0uolOkLpNl0NQ https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604617643973124097?s=46...
• cactusplant7374 4y ago
  His account is back up. The follower count is slowly increasing. I guess the counter is part of some other process? Event driven?
  • puyoxyz 4y ago
    This always happens when an account gets unsuspended on twitter, it shows up as 0 followers and goes back up to the original count over a few hours
• felipemesquita 4y ago
  Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34045423 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34045423
• rendall 4y ago
  And he's back
• aschearer 4y ago
  I just tried tweeting my mastodon URL and Twitter won't even let me send it! "this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful." LOL
• geuis 4y ago
  Unbanned now. However, it looks like all of his following/followers have been reset to 0.
• rocauc 4y ago
  @paulg has been restored
• Geeek 4y ago
  Looks like its reactivated. Wild
• yelong 4y ago
  [dead]
• imwillofficial 4y ago
  Holy crap, a poll to see if Elon stays running twitter. A bold move.
  • CoastalCoder 4y ago
    If I'm being really skeptical, I see two outs here: (1) Musk could lie about the results. (I don't know much about Twitter polls, but when I looked at that one, I didn't see a running tally.) (2) He owns the company. So he could still get his way without being CEO (AFAIK).
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• timar 4y ago
  Paul is back but has 600 followers.
• Gravityloss 4y ago
  It seems the account is back. I assume the damage is quite irreparable though.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• xupybd 4y ago
  His Twitter account is no longer suspended as at 2022-12-18T23:34:19+0000
• Cantinflas 4y ago
  It has been restored a few minutes ago
• jacquesm 4y ago
  Paul's account is back up, but I don't think that the feeling will fade as quickly as the ban. Musk can and will do all kinds of stuff and test the waters to see what he can get away with, then backpedal when it blows up in his face. But if he could have gotten away with it he would have. So if you don't have Pauls' stature you are on thin ice.
  • jerrygenser 4y ago
    This could have been some content moderator doing a casual override to something soft flagged, might not have been intentionally targeting pg
    • jacquesm 4y ago
      It doesn't really matter does it? Because if idiot policies can be made, implemented and executed to a degree that people like Paul get banned and then be rescued by the CEO of the company you have to wonder how many people without that kind of stature are going to be treated the same way. This is simply no way to run a social media website. You need care and delibration, not spur-of-the-moment changes with massive impact on the site and its users, including some of your most steadfast supporters, which Paul clearly was up to that point.
• Geee 4y ago
  Now it's back up. Also, Elon just apologized for the rule change.
• rukuu001 4y ago
  It's back up
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• PaulHoule 4y ago
  I think people haven't quite gotten yet what's going on. Twitter fell out of the news cycle about two weeks ago because SBF outdid Musk on "CEO from Hell". For the past year or so, whenever Musk has dropped out of the news cycle he has started acting out to get more attention. Reinstating accounts like Trump's did not give Musk much of a boost, so Musk decided to try banning accounts. Musk will have to find some exit eventually (he can't afford to spend $40B every time he gets bored) but if whatever he does is not outrageous enough to outrage people he'll just do something more outrageous. For now we could quit posting links to Twitter and Mastodon. I followed a link to those "Twitter Files" and it was so awful to see the first post and a bunch of mindless comments from people who'd just seen the first post. Maybe people who read the whole thing might have something to say about it, but that cacophony reminded me why I say "the less people have to say, the more they are worried about being censored online". I clicked on the author's link and found the story on that author's twitter... Backwards. Reading the story backwards I did find there was a coherent (if boring) story there. Twitter's ability to drain anything interesting out of content like that is a reason why Twitter would have been a rip-off at $40 million, never mind $40 billion.
  • paxys 4y ago
    Here is a much simpler explanation - there is no "4D chess" involved. Musk overpaid for a social network and is wildly incompetent at running it.
    • PaulHoule 4y ago
      It's more like 1D chess. The trouble with your explanation is that Musk was well-established in an escalating cycle of acting out to get attention before he announced his plan to buy it. That situation naturally kept him in the news as it developed but he's going to have to try increasingly drastic actions to prevent people from losing interest.
• atregir 4y ago
  It's back up! The account is back up
• mindcrime 4y ago
  Now Musk is running a poll on whether or not he should step down as head of Twitter. Claims he will abide by the results. Hrrmmm. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604617643973124097 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604617643973124097
• irthomasthomas 4y ago
  Musk's hierarchy of disagreement: Banned Name calling
• swyx 4y ago
  apparently the policy is being reversed now https://twitter.com/realgeorgehotz/status/1604621935438336000 https://twitter.com/realgeorgehotz/status/160462193543833600... to say this is a shitshow is an insult to shitshows
• alalpert 4y ago
  Looks like it's back up already
• uptownfunk 4y ago
  Why so afraid of masto? Twitter seems way better
• jacquesm 4y ago
  So, any guesses as to whether Starlink will start filtering access to Mastodon instances and other Twitter competitors? Or do you folks believe that would be a bridge too far for Elon?
  • kragen 4y ago
    this is a very serious concern, but i'd be more worried about starlink filtering access to news media carrying anti-musk or anti-spacex stories
• paultopia 4y ago
  Damn, startup people were like the last crowd that might have had any sympathy for elon. way to alienate your last non-fashy constituency.
• 00F_ 4y ago
  i posted on twitter for the first time a little while ago and it was a terrible experience. i got into an argument with someone, a youtuber i subscribe to who has more than a million subscribers. it was weird talking to someone ive watched. i resorted to nastiness and veiled insults. it felt disgusting and wrong. other people came in and insulted me. it was disgusting. their insults hurt my feelings and distracted me from other things for a little while. i think that insults get their hooks in you no matter what, even if you "dont care." if you see an insult, you read that comment. you look into their history. the nice comments you skip past and dont even care. even if an insult is totally wrong, or their point is wrong, as long as that thing is triggered where you feel like youre being attacked, now that insult is a splinter in your well-being and you will engage with that insult, instinctively scratching at the splinter. the fundamental truth is that the insult or attack has altered your mental state and theres nothing you can do about it. the only way to beat it is to wait or never have it happen in the first place. joe rogan said "dont read the comments" and thats the reason. it doesnt matter if the attacks are right or wrong they will hurt you. theres no point to it. i think its similar to road rage because in both cases the primitive parts of the mind that interpret attack and mobilize stress are stimulated in an unnatural way that was never intended by nature. its simply undefined behaviour. imagine someone came along and pinched you. ouch. hurts for a while. imagine that you were in a situation where you got pinched hundreds of times a day. really hard, randomly. that might cause you to go insane. most people would say that such a person should try to escape that situation or fight against the pinchers or call the police on them. but when the sensation of pain in the brain is caused by an insult, then the advice changes to "toughen up" "maybe if you werent doing X people wouldnt insult you" etc. we treat words like they cant have an effect. but they have a visceral effect. maybe some headway would be made on the problem if we simply accepted the idea without changing any of the rules. when elon suspended journalists, i thought he was right to do that because they all were linking to and promoting activity that they all would themselves classify as doxxing, especially in light of the foiled stalker attack. when elon created the policy that promotion of other social media platforms was not allowed it didnt really bother me. paul g said he had had the last straw, i wonder what that was. it didnt line up with anything. as of right now, twitter has much more free speech than before. before, you could be banned for misgendering people. you could be banned or suspended for saying almost anything contradicting liberal ideas or federal government propaganda. so roughly half of people in the US were not able to use twitter. now only people who doxx or promote other social media platforms are being kicked off which is much less than half no matter how you slice it.
• redbell 4y ago
  I'm watching @paulg account gets hundred of followers each minute. Initially, I saw it at 22 followers and after about 10 mins it jumped to 1784 and, within just 3 mins, it crossed 2K, what a chart!
• insanitybit 4y ago
  Is Musk the most publicly pathetic loser? I'm trying to think of someone who can compete.
• Blue111 4y ago
  Wow... If Twitter survives Musk I would be surprised.... but whenever I try to make a prediction, the opposite happens.
• trap_goes_hot 4y ago
  It is a bit humorous to see people project their own insecurities onto Elon with the flimsiest of evidence. "pissed that he overpaid on twitter" "must be angry" "must be mad that TSLA is going down", etc.
• palijer 4y ago
  Looks like they ended the suspension.
• rad_gruchalski 4y ago
  Elon Musk farts, drama on the internet. The world holds its breath. Really, who cares. Free speech my ass. The guy was the richest dude on this planet and he’s acting like a 5yo. Who cares. An attention seeker, that’s what he is.
• Blue111 4y ago
  Musk should get a Neuralink to let us know what is going on....
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• sytelus 4y ago
  pg's account is back but all of his followers and followees were removed. Probably a bug?
• 11thEarlOfMar 4y ago
  His account is restored and he's quickly accumulating followers: https://twitter.com/paulg/ https://twitter.com/paulg/
• ManuAloha 4y ago
  Elon is making all the same newbie mistakes in community building I made when I was running my first phpBB forum in the 90s... :D
• whatsu 4y ago
  Lets bring Elon down, hah https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604617643973124097 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604617643973124097
• bkohlmann 4y ago
  Looks like PGs account is now back up.
• hoschicz 4y ago
  Elon just posted a pool[1]: Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll. paulg is now no longer suspended[2]. In the words of Jack Dorsey, wow 1: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604617643973124097 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604617643973124097 2: https://twitter.com/paulg https://twitter.com/paulg
• michpoch 4y ago
  It really surprises me how much attention twitter is getting on HN. I must be living in some bubble, because not only I have never had an account there, I also do not know anyone who would be using it. From my perspective I'd judge the popularity of Twitter to be similar to e.g. Soundcloud - people know what it is, but very few people use it.
  • LAC-Tech 4y ago
    It's eye opening. Really makes me think HN is not a healthy place and I spend too much time here. Maybe we need a new site. Well adjusted no public meltdown hacker news.
  • dorkwood 4y ago
    It was once a really great place to follow developers and artists. My feed was once a gold mine of tips and tricks and interesting projects that other people were working on. It wasn't just for unhealthy political discussions, as a lot of HN posters like to make out. I managed to block all of that out, for a time.
    • krapp 4y ago
      It was actually the best place to follow developers and artists, and a lot of niche communities had a home there. A lot of accounts just posting artwork or ephemeral things. Unfortunately the "lol woke mind virus" crowd won and Elon came riding in on his white horse to wreck it all. I'm enjoying Mastodon but it isn't the same.
• logicallee 4y ago
  Wow, since running the poll about whether Musk should step down (with a clear Yes in the lead) he decided to unban pg.
• hbarka 4y ago
  pg is Silicon Valley royalty. jack is SV royalty. So is sama. They all seem to be getting a little distaste for space karen.
• JumpinJack_Cash 4y ago
  I can’t for the life of me understand how people can still defend this guy. The only possible explanation is that they hate people that Musk claims to oppose even more and that causes them a blindspot on Musk himself. Namely Biden, Dems, Unions, Pelosi etc. That might be, but we just came off an historic World Cup Final. The lesson is that the leader of a social group cannot be an emotional mess. You need somebody like Bellichick or Argentina’s penalty kickers. Trump lost 2 popular votes out of 2 that Romeny would have won, if Musk was eligible he would lose too because he is essentially Trump 2.0 The leader cannot be as vitriolic as you are if you want to win, no matter how cool it is to identify with them.
• cokeandpepsi 4y ago
  i'm so tired of musk related shit, it's exhasusing to read -- i had to delete my twitter account because his stuff was constnatly surfaced to the top of my feed no matter how much i marked it as `not interested` i do not care if he owns twitter, i'm just tired of hearing about it
• anonu 4y ago
  FWIW: This got me to look into Mastodon. I saw it was too complicated to setup and gave up. Lost opportunity IMO.
• Blue111 4y ago
  Trump made a good move by not coming back.
• spritefs 4y ago
  Looks like Elon is going to step down if the current poll stays at the same numbers (57% yes to Elon stepping down) Vox populi, Vox Dei https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604617643973124097 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604617643973124097
• kranke155 4y ago
  The internet is being destroyed by the reckless acquisition of centralised systems that support vibrant communities and subsequent annihilation through mismanagement. It’s literally not even funny. Tumblr, Flickr, now twitter. Major social networks and useful services are destroyed for no reason!
• Blue111 4y ago
  I tried to get my account banned by posting Mastodon links and I was not successful... my account must be too insignificant.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• Blue111 4y ago
  https://i.redd.it/99mtbmwnnq6a1.jpg https://i.redd.it/99mtbmwnnq6a1.jpg
• pwdisswordfish9 4y ago
  I was hoping for bigger drama after some EU institution gets banned for advertising social.network.europa.eu, but I'll take what I get…
• Blue111 4y ago
  @dang it would be nice if instead of moving comments and taking off submissions off of the front page if you could instead merge them (in some cases)... i.e.: all those merged submissions would show all posted URLs and comments.
• kumarm 4y ago
  Interestingly, PG had 1.5Million followers before account got suspended. Now it shows as 1 Million.
• wellbehaved 4y ago
  Paul finally got a taste of his own medicine? Good.
• kranke155 4y ago
  Elon’s attitude is hilarious because even highly technical people I know who tried mastodon thought the UX is overall beyond terrible and the complexity is too high and too weird for the average user. Mastodon was not a threat to twitter. Elon is the only threat to twitter that matters.
• andrewstuart 4y ago
  What's worse, an oppressive regime, or an oppressive regime that quickly makes exceptions for the rich and famous?
• LinuxBender 4y ago
  Could it be this was all a publicity stunt to introduce and have welcomed the new CEO that Elon was going to put in place regardless? Am I giving him too much credit? i.e. Make people dislike him even more and then let the people of Twitter think they are voting him out?
  • adharmad 4y ago
    Yes this is giving him too much credit, seeing what we see as his first hand actions. Before he learns to play 3D or 4D chess, he needs to learn to play regular chess.
• hestefisk 4y ago
  Who is Paul Graham and why is it controversial?
  • dorkwood 4y ago
    Co-founder of Y Combinator.
• agowa338 4y ago
  When I read this I was thinking of Procter & Gamble, the other PG...
• herpderperator 4y ago
  Interesting how opinions changed so quickly: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1592852796185128961 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1592852796185128961
• anigbrowl 4y ago
  Meantime the page of new rules has now been deleted. https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/social-platforms-policy https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/social-platfo...
• outside1234 4y ago
  Nothing was “fixed” - this is a horrible breach of trust!
• esalman 4y ago
  At some point during the Covid pandemic, Paul Graham said something to the effect of, the pandemic has accelerated how quickly and often people are proven wrong. Twitter situation is similar. Until very recently, PG himself and a lot of other seemingly smart people backed Elon Musk. Elon was given a pass for, among other things, smoking weed on camera, claiming Covid panic was dumb, Covid will be over in months, using subsides, manipulating stock and crypto prices, pedo guy comment, labor suppression in his companies etc. and the list goes on. After all of that, it is sharing social links on Twitter that breaks the camels back. It is at the same time kinda hilarious and also puts the smartness of those who backed Elon into question.
• andsoitis 4y ago
  Chaotic. Not eccentric. This week Musk banned journalists and then lied about it, suggested the former head of trust & safety was a child abuser (he had to leave his home), stopped paying bills and, announced the ridiculous policy to ban all links to other social platforms before abruptly changing his mind. Lastly, he launched a Twitter poll asking whether he should remain CEO, and then says the person who takes on the job would be a fool.