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Things that seem to be clear at this point: - Musk has at least some level of interest in solving the fundamental problem of how to build and manage a public s

Things that seem to be clear at this point: - Musk has at least some level of interest in solving the fundamental problem of how to build and manage a public square, even if the purchase of twitter itself was initially presented as a joke - despite having a clear, at least quasi-principled interest in the topic, his actual attempts to manage twitter have been juvenile and ham-handed at best and if continued are almost certain to doom the platform both financially and engagement-wise - his recent activity indicates that he’s not oblivious to this fact - it’s a sinking ship and he openly acknowledges it - but does he view himself as some kind of uniquely-qualified savior? At this point there are still more questions than answers. Will he actually step down? Who would replace him and what could they possibly hope to achieve at this point? Will the inevitable devaluation of Twitter stock take down Tesla with it? Will the other stakeholders in Tesla acquiesce to a humbled Musk returning to business as usual, or will this taint him forever? Has his behavior irreparably damaged the Tesla brand? Does any of this actually matter?

jacquesm 4y ago
Who will pay for the shortfall? The bills Twitter runs up won't pay themselves and I don't see it recovering from the tailspin that Musk has put it in. Who is at the helm may no longer be all that important.
- lern_too_spel 4y ago
  If they reverse Musk's policies, Twitter could return to profitability and paying its debt. Twitter's problem is that if new management does reverse Musk's policies, Musk would just fire them like he did the previous people running the company, costing the company more golden parachutes and leaving it even worse off.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    Precisely. As long as Musk owns it I don't see Twitter as salvageable, and even afterwards, you have to wonder who he gave access to the data. Twitter is now a time bomb for any future owner.
  - spacemadness 4y ago
    Wasn’t Twitter’s policies prior to Musk essentially a reversal of Musks policies already? Would that really do it on its own?
  - hejaodbsidndbd 4y ago
    You haven’t been paying attention. Elon has made Twitter’s debt situation so much worth that even if they could do a full reset to what the company was like before he acquired it, they would still be on the fast path to bankruptcy. It has been such a colossally fucking stupid move. He needs to be checked into rehab for his substance abuse before he loses it all.
  - mlyle 4y ago
    > Twitter could return to profitability and paying its debt. Twitter was profitable in 2018-2019, but that was a brief blip and wasn't profitable before or afterwards. And, with a bunch of debt piled on from the acquisition, they need a fair bit of operating profit to cover it.
    - lern_too_spel 4y ago
      https://www.statista.com/statistics/299119/twitter-net-income-quarterly/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/299119/twitter-net-incom...
CogitoCogito 4y ago
> Things that seem to be clear at this point: > - Musk has at least some level of interest in solving the fundamental problem of how to build and manage a public square, even if the purchase of twitter itself was initially presented as a joke It’s interesting how different people can see the same thing and reach opposite conclusions. It’s crystal clear to me that Musk has no interest in solving these problems.
- plaidfuji 4y ago
  The evidence is very noisy, for sure. My only basis for this is the private text exchange with Jack Dorsey where they discussed how Twitter should have been built. To me that’s the only true window into his intentions - all other public comms are tainted by other potential motivations. To me, Musk is kind of the quintessential engineering bro, who’s fundamentally motivated by wanting to be the one who solves the trickiest problems. Sometimes his actual decision-making is influenced by vanity and voyeurism, but the underlying theme seems to be rooted in problem-solving.
  - bmitc 4y ago
    It's not noisy at all. It's perfectly clear. > My only basis for this is the private text exchange with Jack Dorsey where they discussed how Twitter should have been built. To me that’s the only true window into his intentions - all other public comms are tainted by other potential motivations. You have to understand that text message thread in context. It's two narcissistic billionaires who think they're above everyone else talking to each other. It's a sort of billionaire pissing contest where they both also pat each other on the back. It's two people thinking they're the smartest in the room. It just so happens they were the only ones in the room. For Dorsey, if he knew how Twitter should have been built since the beginning, then why didn't he do so? He claims to have known this from the start, but he was in full control for years. Musk was just chiming in to showcase that he gets it, whatever it is.
  - gamblor956 4y ago
    And yet, Musk has never solved "the trickiest problems." He simply does "first order thinking" that conveniently ignores the real issues with whatever he claims he's solving. (See, e.g., Hyperloop, Boring Co, Cybertruck, FSD, Tesla's robotic factory, the cave submarine, etc.) At every step of the way, Musk is just cosplaying as an engineer and interfering with the actual work being done.
birdyrooster 4y ago
Also Twitter peaked in its traffic rankings recently which is weird timing to buy something. Why was he so insanely late to the party?
MuffinFlavored 4y ago
> a public square I must be out of touch or have a dead imagination but I have no clue what this means/what this looks like hypothetically.
- baandang 4y ago
  Hundreds of thousands of people screaming at each other. It really needs a better model because the idea of scaling up the town square is just a terrible idea.
  - gardenfelder 4y ago
    Robin Dunbar must be laughing now...
  - BulgarianIdiot 4y ago
    How about... a recursive network of medium-sized public squares.
- adamrezich 4y ago
  it's the Section 230 platform/publisher conundrum, which itself is kind of just a moral-positioning smokescreen for "we want advertisers to buy ads on our website and advertisers don't want their ads to appear alongside objectionable content".
  - JakeTheAndroid 4y ago
    And I am again forced to ask this silly question, but what are you referencing in regards to Section 230? There is no such delineation that is made as part of Section 230[0] and there is no legal definition for being a platform. Thusly there is no conundrum here. This is a talking point that got beat dead in 2020 and I am shocked that it still has any life on HackerNews. It's not only moral positioning, it's a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes someone a publisher and what is actually covered as part of Section 230. [0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/publisher-or-platform-it-doesnt-matter https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/publisher-or-platform-...
aaroninsf 4y ago
Contemporary social media is not a "public square." Weaponized speech is real, and "more speech" is zero defense against it. Content moderation is a hard problem, in multiple dimensions, and blundering erratically from rookie mistake into rookie mistake serves by design or by accident mostly to enable and empower the worst exploitation, and the worst voices. The pretense that there is some design and genius behind pathetic Dunning-Kruger narcissism and cognitive errors and neurological deficits has expired. How's that anagram go, "a man, no plan, root canal: painful yawn"?
papito 4y ago
"quasi-principled interest". That's not even near that. It's all been hypocritical through the through. "Free speech" is "me speech". The man doesn't even know about Section 230 and referred to Twitter as a "publisher". He is completely clueless as to what it is that he bought for $44 billion. Most of us spend more due diligence buying a coffee grinder.
- mbg721 4y ago
  I continue to be amazed how much vitriol Musk manages to stir up by being an arbitrary agent of chaos for the wrong side. Who cares if he wastes $44B? If anything, he's fighting inflation by removing mistakenly-assigned value of $44B from circulation.
  - papito 4y ago
    It's him - he assigned the value.
  - ryanwaggoner 4y ago
    I care for a number of reasons: 1. I had friends at Twitter who were laid off 2. I actually do think Twitter has value 3. I don’t think Elon is good for public discourse 4. I don’t think Elon is good for tech culture 5. I think we’d all be better off if he STFU and went back to working on rockets and electric cars.

jacquesm 4y ago

Who will pay for the shortfall? The bills Twitter runs up won't pay themselves and I don't see it recovering from the tailspin that Musk has put it in. Who is at the helm may no longer be all that important.

lern_too_spel 4y ago
If they reverse Musk's policies, Twitter could return to profitability and paying its debt. Twitter's problem is that if new management does reverse Musk's policies, Musk would just fire them like he did the previous people running the company, costing the company more golden parachutes and leaving it even worse off.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Precisely. As long as Musk owns it I don't see Twitter as salvageable, and even afterwards, you have to wonder who he gave access to the data. Twitter is now a time bomb for any future owner.
- spacemadness 4y ago
  Wasn’t Twitter’s policies prior to Musk essentially a reversal of Musks policies already? Would that really do it on its own?
- hejaodbsidndbd 4y ago
  You haven’t been paying attention. Elon has made Twitter’s debt situation so much worth that even if they could do a full reset to what the company was like before he acquired it, they would still be on the fast path to bankruptcy. It has been such a colossally fucking stupid move. He needs to be checked into rehab for his substance abuse before he loses it all.
- mlyle 4y ago
  > Twitter could return to profitability and paying its debt. Twitter was profitable in 2018-2019, but that was a brief blip and wasn't profitable before or afterwards. And, with a bunch of debt piled on from the acquisition, they need a fair bit of operating profit to cover it.
  - lern_too_spel 4y ago
    https://www.statista.com/statistics/299119/twitter-net-income-quarterly/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/299119/twitter-net-incom...

CogitoCogito 4y ago

> Things that seem to be clear at this point: > - Musk has at least some level of interest in solving the fundamental problem of how to build and manage a public square, even if the purchase of twitter itself was initially presented as a joke It’s interesting how different people can see the same thing and reach opposite conclusions. It’s crystal clear to me that Musk has no interest in solving these problems.

plaidfuji 4y ago
The evidence is very noisy, for sure. My only basis for this is the private text exchange with Jack Dorsey where they discussed how Twitter should have been built. To me that’s the only true window into his intentions - all other public comms are tainted by other potential motivations. To me, Musk is kind of the quintessential engineering bro, who’s fundamentally motivated by wanting to be the one who solves the trickiest problems. Sometimes his actual decision-making is influenced by vanity and voyeurism, but the underlying theme seems to be rooted in problem-solving.
- bmitc 4y ago
  It's not noisy at all. It's perfectly clear. > My only basis for this is the private text exchange with Jack Dorsey where they discussed how Twitter should have been built. To me that’s the only true window into his intentions - all other public comms are tainted by other potential motivations. You have to understand that text message thread in context. It's two narcissistic billionaires who think they're above everyone else talking to each other. It's a sort of billionaire pissing contest where they both also pat each other on the back. It's two people thinking they're the smartest in the room. It just so happens they were the only ones in the room. For Dorsey, if he knew how Twitter should have been built since the beginning, then why didn't he do so? He claims to have known this from the start, but he was in full control for years. Musk was just chiming in to showcase that he gets it, whatever it is.
- gamblor956 4y ago
  And yet, Musk has never solved "the trickiest problems." He simply does "first order thinking" that conveniently ignores the real issues with whatever he claims he's solving. (See, e.g., Hyperloop, Boring Co, Cybertruck, FSD, Tesla's robotic factory, the cave submarine, etc.) At every step of the way, Musk is just cosplaying as an engineer and interfering with the actual work being done.

birdyrooster 4y ago

Also Twitter peaked in its traffic rankings recently which is weird timing to buy something. Why was he so insanely late to the party?

MuffinFlavored 4y ago

> a public square I must be out of touch or have a dead imagination but I have no clue what this means/what this looks like hypothetically.

baandang 4y ago
Hundreds of thousands of people screaming at each other. It really needs a better model because the idea of scaling up the town square is just a terrible idea.
- gardenfelder 4y ago
  Robin Dunbar must be laughing now...
- BulgarianIdiot 4y ago
  How about... a recursive network of medium-sized public squares.
adamrezich 4y ago
it's the Section 230 platform/publisher conundrum, which itself is kind of just a moral-positioning smokescreen for "we want advertisers to buy ads on our website and advertisers don't want their ads to appear alongside objectionable content".
- JakeTheAndroid 4y ago
  And I am again forced to ask this silly question, but what are you referencing in regards to Section 230? There is no such delineation that is made as part of Section 230[0] and there is no legal definition for being a platform. Thusly there is no conundrum here. This is a talking point that got beat dead in 2020 and I am shocked that it still has any life on HackerNews. It's not only moral positioning, it's a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes someone a publisher and what is actually covered as part of Section 230. [0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/publisher-or-platform-it-doesnt-matter https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/publisher-or-platform-...

aaroninsf 4y ago

Contemporary social media is not a "public square." Weaponized speech is real, and "more speech" is zero defense against it. Content moderation is a hard problem, in multiple dimensions, and blundering erratically from rookie mistake into rookie mistake serves by design or by accident mostly to enable and empower the worst exploitation, and the worst voices. The pretense that there is some design and genius behind pathetic Dunning-Kruger narcissism and cognitive errors and neurological deficits has expired. How's that anagram go, "a man, no plan, root canal: painful yawn"?

papito 4y ago

"quasi-principled interest". That's not even near that. It's all been hypocritical through the through. "Free speech" is "me speech". The man doesn't even know about Section 230 and referred to Twitter as a "publisher". He is completely clueless as to what it is that he bought for $44 billion. Most of us spend more due diligence buying a coffee grinder.

mbg721 4y ago
I continue to be amazed how much vitriol Musk manages to stir up by being an arbitrary agent of chaos for the wrong side. Who cares if he wastes $44B? If anything, he's fighting inflation by removing mistakenly-assigned value of $44B from circulation.
- papito 4y ago
  It's him - he assigned the value.
- ryanwaggoner 4y ago
  I care for a number of reasons: 1. I had friends at Twitter who were laid off 2. I actually do think Twitter has value 3. I don’t think Elon is good for public discourse 4. I don’t think Elon is good for tech culture 5. I think we’d all be better off if he STFU and went back to working on rockets and electric cars.