4 ms·

Mark Zuckerberg goes in for the kill as Elon Musk’s Twitter bleeds ad dollars

9 points by antiviral 3y ago

babelthuap 3y ago
I've never used FB or Meta. I do find Elon's comments on free speech on target. We will find out together where this goes I guess. I personally like free speech and I mean all of it. Hatred, spite, honesty, truth, humility...all of it. Put it all out there and let it rip.
- codetrotter 3y ago
  > Elon's comments on free speech Until of course, the moment where after having bought Twitter he saw to it that they banned people saying things he didn’t like. Elon Musk is not about free speech. He is about speech that he likes. I used to look up to the guy when he was focusing on space and electric cars. But he’s just another wannabe, not a real cool person :(
  - sashank_1509 3y ago
    Amazing how many such cases we see: "Once I looked upto Elon, but now not anymore". This almost always occurs due to a very specific pathology: You've inferred motives based on outcomes. When he was focused on SpaceX, Tesla he was "earnest", "sincere", "cool". When he focuses on right wing politics and twitter, he's a "wannabe", "selfish", "duplicitous", there are many such descriptions I see online. The only conclusion I can come to upon seeing sentences like this is that you live in a comic book reality. When people have good outcomes, they decidedly have noble and good intentions, when people have bad outcomes, they have evil and selfish intentions. The possibility that someone can have objectively horrible outcomes with noble, pure intentions or vice versa does not exist in this world. To someone who does not live in a comic book, Elon has always had pure and earnest motives, in the sense that if he acted duplicitous he was not consciously aware of it. He does believe he is saving free speech, making humans multi-planetary, saving the environment, saving lives with autopilot etc. Now whether his earnest desires are leading to good real world outcomes is probably something you disagree with and that is a judgement you can make, yet it's very weird when you make assumptions on motivations. In the comic book world: 1. Journalists who often lead to good outcomes are earnest and moral in stature while when you actually interact with journalists you would realize they are easily the scum of the earth and the most deceptive group in real life to ever exist. You do not want to be their friend. When journalists are aware of their pathology you get amazing lines like: (from Hamilton Nolan in Gawker): " Because journalism, particularly at the highest level, is about raw power. It is about bringing important people to heel, on behalf of the public. All I know is that there is only one way the press maintains its power in society: by metaphorically putting the heads of powerful people on pikes. If the Post and all the other respectable media outlets lose their ability to do that, powerful people will, by extension, stop caring what the well-informed segment of the public thinks. " 2. Non Profit's often have very noble intentions and high aspirations Yet, a very large number of Non Profit's are the worst thing to happen to the society they're trying to help. One only needs to look at the drug problem at SF and their enablers, but one can also marvel at the death toll of the Arab Spring.
    - codetrotter 3y ago
      > He does believe he is saving free speech He calls himself a “free speech absolutist” and then he turns around and bans a bunch a people for speech he doesn’t like. So much for the “absolutist” stance on free speech my dude.
- activiation 3y ago
  Elon already banned at least one user that was highly critical of him...
- smt88 3y ago
  Elon's behavior never matches his words, and that's never been more true than with regards to free speech. He personally bans people who criticize him or just disagree with him. Twitter has also stepped up compliance with authoritarian governments around the world.
  - babelthuap 3y ago
    I have no info on what he banned or blocked. All I am saying is if someone wants a KKK platform or a white hate platform then so be it. As long as they are not harming anyone physically or financially it is fair game. We can't have this now for some reason but I grew up in a time when it was allowed. Nothing bad happened unlike today. The more things are banned the more bad thing happen. Maybe stop banning things? Just a suggestion from personal experience.
    - kmos17 3y ago
      You are quite deluded if you think you grew up in a time that allowed unlimited hate speech on major media platforms.
      - babelthuap 3y ago
        I grew up in a time when David Duke was allowed to speak on campuses. He is still a joke just like he was then. You are deluded being there was no major media platforms back then. Major media platforms didn't exist outside of antenna TV.
        smt88 3y ago
        > I grew up in a time when David Duke was allowed to speak on campuses. College campuses are not major or important platforms. > Major media platforms didn't exist outside of antenna TV. Cable news has been huge and important for 40 years. Before that (and today), there are thousands of widely-circulated publications with dissenting opinions that reach millions of people. There's no reasonable argument that information is censored since it became essentially free to publish on the web in the 90s.
impulser_ 3y ago
I'm all for a replacement for Twitter. The changes made by Elon has made Twitter so unbearable. The pay to win aspect of promoting tweets showing up on For You page and replies is absolute cancer. The For You page is literally unusable if you don't want to rot your brain. Before Elon made changes, I barely had to block people. Now I have to block people all the time just to try to make For You page worth looking at. The ads on Twitter are almost always scam products. Some of them even have community notes saying it a scam product yet they are still showing the ads lol. The old twitter was great once you figured out how to use it, but that all went away once they started promoting only tweets/replies from paid users. I just want to follow some topics and people and get tweets related to that like you could with the old twitter.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
scrum-treats 3y ago
Whatever Zuckerberg rolls out, it'll be spyware for whatever government agency wants to disseminate propaganda, target and manipulate subgroups, and surveil innocent people. Somehow this is allowed. I choose not to use any of Zuckerberg's offerings going forward.
- CaptainZapp 3y ago
  Not that Mr. Musks Twitter is any better in this regard. https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-05-24/under-elon-musk-twitter-has-approved-83-of-censorship-requests-by-authoritarian-governments.html https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-05-24/under-el...
  - scrum-treats 3y ago
    Oh, I don't use Twitter. I set up a handful of accounts to look at information spread, for academic research purposes, and that was it. Once I learned nothing can be deleted, it was enough to deter me from the platform.
antiviral 3y ago
There are many free versions of Twitter clone source code, including this Ruby on Rails tutorial: https://web-crunch.com/posts/lets-build-with-ruby-on-rails-7-twitter-clone https://web-crunch.com/posts/lets-build-with-ruby-on-rails-7... The real challenge isn’t building a Twitter clone, it’s everything that comes around it- like having a consistent content moderation policy, following relevant privacy laws, growing engagement with a good discovery engine, and most of all getting people to be willing to try your app in the first place.
Zigurd 3y ago
This isn't about speech. This is Zuck doing what he is really good at: making a place advertisers want to be on, providing the best tools for advertisers, making money for advertisers and, hence, for Meta. Twitter, meanwhile, has hired an ad sales head, called her CEO but denied her the tools to make Twitter a good place to advertise, which puts her on the "glass cliff." Elon has someone to blame for failing at ads.

9 points by antiviral 3y ago

I've never used FB or Meta. I do find Elon's comments on free speech on target. We will find out together where this goes I guess. I personally like free speech and I mean all of it. Hatred, spite, honesty, truth, humility...all of it. Put it all out there and let it rip.

codetrotter 3y ago
> Elon's comments on free speech Until of course, the moment where after having bought Twitter he saw to it that they banned people saying things he didn’t like. Elon Musk is not about free speech. He is about speech that he likes. I used to look up to the guy when he was focusing on space and electric cars. But he’s just another wannabe, not a real cool person :(
- sashank_1509 3y ago
  Amazing how many such cases we see: "Once I looked upto Elon, but now not anymore". This almost always occurs due to a very specific pathology: You've inferred motives based on outcomes. When he was focused on SpaceX, Tesla he was "earnest", "sincere", "cool". When he focuses on right wing politics and twitter, he's a "wannabe", "selfish", "duplicitous", there are many such descriptions I see online. The only conclusion I can come to upon seeing sentences like this is that you live in a comic book reality. When people have good outcomes, they decidedly have noble and good intentions, when people have bad outcomes, they have evil and selfish intentions. The possibility that someone can have objectively horrible outcomes with noble, pure intentions or vice versa does not exist in this world. To someone who does not live in a comic book, Elon has always had pure and earnest motives, in the sense that if he acted duplicitous he was not consciously aware of it. He does believe he is saving free speech, making humans multi-planetary, saving the environment, saving lives with autopilot etc. Now whether his earnest desires are leading to good real world outcomes is probably something you disagree with and that is a judgement you can make, yet it's very weird when you make assumptions on motivations. In the comic book world: 1. Journalists who often lead to good outcomes are earnest and moral in stature while when you actually interact with journalists you would realize they are easily the scum of the earth and the most deceptive group in real life to ever exist. You do not want to be their friend. When journalists are aware of their pathology you get amazing lines like: (from Hamilton Nolan in Gawker): " Because journalism, particularly at the highest level, is about raw power. It is about bringing important people to heel, on behalf of the public. All I know is that there is only one way the press maintains its power in society: by metaphorically putting the heads of powerful people on pikes. If the Post and all the other respectable media outlets lose their ability to do that, powerful people will, by extension, stop caring what the well-informed segment of the public thinks. " 2. Non Profit's often have very noble intentions and high aspirations Yet, a very large number of Non Profit's are the worst thing to happen to the society they're trying to help. One only needs to look at the drug problem at SF and their enablers, but one can also marvel at the death toll of the Arab Spring.
  - codetrotter 3y ago
    > He does believe he is saving free speech He calls himself a “free speech absolutist” and then he turns around and bans a bunch a people for speech he doesn’t like. So much for the “absolutist” stance on free speech my dude.
activiation 3y ago
Elon already banned at least one user that was highly critical of him...
smt88 3y ago
Elon's behavior never matches his words, and that's never been more true than with regards to free speech. He personally bans people who criticize him or just disagree with him. Twitter has also stepped up compliance with authoritarian governments around the world.
- babelthuap 3y ago
  I have no info on what he banned or blocked. All I am saying is if someone wants a KKK platform or a white hate platform then so be it. As long as they are not harming anyone physically or financially it is fair game. We can't have this now for some reason but I grew up in a time when it was allowed. Nothing bad happened unlike today. The more things are banned the more bad thing happen. Maybe stop banning things? Just a suggestion from personal experience.
  - kmos17 3y ago
    You are quite deluded if you think you grew up in a time that allowed unlimited hate speech on major media platforms.
    - babelthuap 3y ago
      I grew up in a time when David Duke was allowed to speak on campuses. He is still a joke just like he was then. You are deluded being there was no major media platforms back then. Major media platforms didn't exist outside of antenna TV.
      - smt88 3y ago
        > I grew up in a time when David Duke was allowed to speak on campuses. College campuses are not major or important platforms. > Major media platforms didn't exist outside of antenna TV. Cable news has been huge and important for 40 years. Before that (and today), there are thousands of widely-circulated publications with dissenting opinions that reach millions of people. There's no reasonable argument that information is censored since it became essentially free to publish on the web in the 90s.

impulser_ 3y ago

I'm all for a replacement for Twitter. The changes made by Elon has made Twitter so unbearable. The pay to win aspect of promoting tweets showing up on For You page and replies is absolute cancer. The For You page is literally unusable if you don't want to rot your brain. Before Elon made changes, I barely had to block people. Now I have to block people all the time just to try to make For You page worth looking at. The ads on Twitter are almost always scam products. Some of them even have community notes saying it a scam product yet they are still showing the ads lol. The old twitter was great once you figured out how to use it, but that all went away once they started promoting only tweets/replies from paid users. I just want to follow some topics and people and get tweets related to that like you could with the old twitter.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

scrum-treats 3y ago

Whatever Zuckerberg rolls out, it'll be spyware for whatever government agency wants to disseminate propaganda, target and manipulate subgroups, and surveil innocent people. Somehow this is allowed. I choose not to use any of Zuckerberg's offerings going forward.

CaptainZapp 3y ago
Not that Mr. Musks Twitter is any better in this regard. https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-05-24/under-elon-musk-twitter-has-approved-83-of-censorship-requests-by-authoritarian-governments.html https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-05-24/under-el...
- scrum-treats 3y ago
  Oh, I don't use Twitter. I set up a handful of accounts to look at information spread, for academic research purposes, and that was it. Once I learned nothing can be deleted, it was enough to deter me from the platform.

antiviral 3y ago

There are many free versions of Twitter clone source code, including this Ruby on Rails tutorial: https://web-crunch.com/posts/lets-build-with-ruby-on-rails-7-twitter-clone https://web-crunch.com/posts/lets-build-with-ruby-on-rails-7... The real challenge isn’t building a Twitter clone, it’s everything that comes around it- like having a consistent content moderation policy, following relevant privacy laws, growing engagement with a good discovery engine, and most of all getting people to be willing to try your app in the first place.

Zigurd 3y ago

This isn't about speech. This is Zuck doing what he is really good at: making a place advertisers want to be on, providing the best tools for advertisers, making money for advertisers and, hence, for Meta. Twitter, meanwhile, has hired an ad sales head, called her CEO but denied her the tools to make Twitter a good place to advertise, which puts her on the "glass cliff." Elon has someone to blame for failing at ads.