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Elon musk’s behavior seems crazy only when you believe his goal is to win by building the best product for its users. But I don’t think that’s what he’s trying

Elon musk’s behavior seems crazy only when you believe his goal is to win by building the best product for its users. But I don’t think that’s what he’s trying to do right now. Instead, he understands that the main asset of twitter is owning peoples network and relationships. If we had a simple way to migrate all our relationships elsewhere all at once, everyone would have jumped ship already. So the biggest threat to him is other social platforms that try to replicate / copy the social graph of twitter. That’s what substack is doing behind the scenes for years with their newsletter product, and now they announced a direct competitor to twitter. This is an existential threat to twitter, so musk sets out to destroy them. Not because it’s best for its users, but because it will make sure they never get a good enough alternative to leave. And in the end, people will stay on twitter because the core value isn’t the ux or who the CEO is. The value is that they invested years into relationships and network effects, and don’t want to lose them. I don’t think musk is crazy, although he is brutal, sociopathic and ruthless. I think he’s simply making power moves to keep his advantage. Similar to how Jobs set out to destroy Adobe by removing Flash from iPhones. How Apple set to hurt Facebook by removing ad tracking. Or how Amazon shamelessly copies successful marketplace sellers to get more profits. Ruthless power moves, not ideal for users, but not craziness.

aaomidi 4y ago
It’s a failure of our political and economic system for not penalizing this behavior. A lot of this can fit under existing anti-competitive laws.
bmarquez 4y ago
> So the biggest threat to him is other social platforms that try to replicate / copy the social graph of twitter. > And in the end, people will stay on twitter because the core value isn’t the ux or who the CEO is. The value is that they invested years into relationships and network effects, and don’t want to lose them. Absolutely true, which is why people are also stuck using Facebook and Instagram. Can't export those social graphs to other apps, as much as I and others would like to divest from Meta products completely. Twitter is taking a page from their competitors, for worse.
sonofhans 4y ago
> Similar to how Jobs set out to destroy Adobe by removing Flash from iPhones. This isn’t a correct take, and your facts are wrong. For one thing, Flash never existed on iPhones to begin with, so there was nothing to remove. Adobe spent years talking about their plans to get Flash working on phones, but never succeeded, not on iOS or on Android. Come on — if Flash were really that great on mobile devices, why isn’t everyone still using it on Android? Answer — sucked. Performance and stability sucked, security sucked. Apple said for years that their most commonly-reported crashes were caused by Flash. Flash was great for creators, one of the best such tools ever made, but after acquiring it from Macromedia, Adobe never improved the fundamentals. Even more important, the interaction model didn’t work. Many Flash sites/apps depended on hover/mouseover which didn’t translate to touch screens. Neither Adobe nor anyone else has demonstrated how to make this work. And as for destroying Adobe, well, they seem to be doing just fine, even though Flash has been gone for years. Apple never wanted Adobe to die, nor intended to. Steve Jobs made clear why Apple wasn’t supporting Flash on iOS, and his reasons still hold — https://newslang.ch/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Thoughts-on-Flash.pdf https://newslang.ch/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Thoughts-on-F...
- dagorenouf 4y ago
  I could find you similar articles saying that Steve Jobs wanted to hit back at Apple because he was mad at them, and merely used the tech reason as an excuse. I think you’re right though, I don’t know for a fact that that’s true. Nobody can really know the deeper reasons behind this move. But my point is that people should stop looking at Elon musk as a “fun and weird guy doing crazy things” and more as a ruthless shark who will take whatever is required to win. Which is typical of Silicon Valley CEOs
  - user982 4y ago
    [flagged]

aaomidi 4y ago

It’s a failure of our political and economic system for not penalizing this behavior. A lot of this can fit under existing anti-competitive laws.

bmarquez 4y ago

> So the biggest threat to him is other social platforms that try to replicate / copy the social graph of twitter. > And in the end, people will stay on twitter because the core value isn’t the ux or who the CEO is. The value is that they invested years into relationships and network effects, and don’t want to lose them. Absolutely true, which is why people are also stuck using Facebook and Instagram. Can't export those social graphs to other apps, as much as I and others would like to divest from Meta products completely. Twitter is taking a page from their competitors, for worse.

sonofhans 4y ago

> Similar to how Jobs set out to destroy Adobe by removing Flash from iPhones. This isn’t a correct take, and your facts are wrong. For one thing, Flash never existed on iPhones to begin with, so there was nothing to remove. Adobe spent years talking about their plans to get Flash working on phones, but never succeeded, not on iOS or on Android. Come on — if Flash were really that great on mobile devices, why isn’t everyone still using it on Android? Answer — sucked. Performance and stability sucked, security sucked. Apple said for years that their most commonly-reported crashes were caused by Flash. Flash was great for creators, one of the best such tools ever made, but after acquiring it from Macromedia, Adobe never improved the fundamentals. Even more important, the interaction model didn’t work. Many Flash sites/apps depended on hover/mouseover which didn’t translate to touch screens. Neither Adobe nor anyone else has demonstrated how to make this work. And as for destroying Adobe, well, they seem to be doing just fine, even though Flash has been gone for years. Apple never wanted Adobe to die, nor intended to. Steve Jobs made clear why Apple wasn’t supporting Flash on iOS, and his reasons still hold — https://newslang.ch/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Thoughts-on-Flash.pdf https://newslang.ch/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Thoughts-on-F...

dagorenouf 4y ago
I could find you similar articles saying that Steve Jobs wanted to hit back at Apple because he was mad at them, and merely used the tech reason as an excuse. I think you’re right though, I don’t know for a fact that that’s true. Nobody can really know the deeper reasons behind this move. But my point is that people should stop looking at Elon musk as a “fun and weird guy doing crazy things” and more as a ruthless shark who will take whatever is required to win. Which is typical of Silicon Valley CEOs
- user982 4y ago
  [flagged]