10 ms·

I don’t remember who stated this but basically there is this thought that Musk was in fact mad about how on Twitter the “common man” could indeed vocally and ef

I don’t remember who stated this but basically there is this thought that Musk was in fact mad about how on Twitter the “common man” could indeed vocally and effectively share their disagreement with his decisions. It also might have been an impulsive decision to become relevant in “new tech” at the same time (why would he care so much about this, boredom?). Ultimately he probably just wanted to get out of that impulsive deal again though but it was too late. Lastly he probably also had/has some WeChat ambitions. We can see how most of these potential goals are now falling apart spectacularly due to extreme unreflected and unchecked ego. He seems to have succeeded in the first case though, the “moderated”/“mostly sane”(?) free speech “town square” basically destroyed and replaced by an increasingly irrelevant echo chamber for his greater brand.

gjsman-1000 3y ago
[flagged]
- jmondi 3y ago
  Aah yes, everyone knows that google trends is the best way to judge the health of a business.
  - gjsman-1000 3y ago
    It's only one example. Look into it. Sure, Elon has no doubt pissed off some bubbles that you frequent or some advertisers, but any evidence that Twitter as a whole is dying is purely anecdotal, or so small that it's not worth registering. (For example, the Financial Times said Twitter is "dying"... by citing SimilarWeb showing a 5% decline since Elon's takeover.)
    - jmondi 3y ago
      Google Trends has literally nothing to do with twitter succeeding or failing as a business. Literally nothing. If twitter went offline, it would be skyrocketing in Google Trends, does that mean twitter is successful then? Also: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1680082007873953794 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1680082007873953794
      - jahsome 3y ago
        It doesn't have _literally_ nothing to do with it; there is a correlation, even if a weak one. The two are just independent. I'm not disagreeing with your point just nitpicking word choice; the best kind of annoying comment!
    - justjoined2 3y ago
      It's a bad example. Here's some actual reporting on the health of the company: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/may/31/twitters-value-down-two-thirds-since-musk-takeover-says-investor https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/may/31/twitters-.... To say that "Elon has no doubt pissed off [...] some advertisers" is such a hilarious understatement.
    - sidfthec 3y ago
      It's not an example at all. It's just as baffling to use it as an example when there are much better sources. Pre-Elon, you have financial statements showing the strength of the company. Profitable before Covid before they hired a massive number of people (like a lot of companies during covid) and then dropped below profitability. It's very possible that a smaller layoff and a focus on fundamentals could have brought them back to profitability. Elon has admitted that they've lost around 50% in ad revenue since the takeover and that they're not cash-flow positive. Reports are saying 59%-70%. I'm inclined to believe that Elon is under reporting to the public (based on his history of exaggerating/under-reporting/lying about this kind of stuff). Either way, it's clear Twitter is in a much weaker position now than pre-takeover.
    - mhoad 3y ago
      It’s the 50% drop in revenue with no viable path back combined with the huge brand damage he has done that is causing people to say it’s dying. The only question left at this point is how soon.
    - musha68k 3y ago
      Twitter is dying and Musk might actually be OK with this. From a certain angle it clearly looks like that was the brute force plan all along (Hanlon’s razor not applied). Maybe he just wants to build WeChat ultimately to be sold to the US government, in the same vain as with his other ventures where he runs on government subsidies and/or full-on exclusive privatization mandates. Extrapolate a potential future for “x.com” from here with what economist Richard Wolff is seeing #trending for the west: https://youtu.be/w0c5Gfh2ZWY https://youtu.be/w0c5Gfh2ZWY
      - sanderjd 3y ago
        haha what? The government has negative interest in purchasing a social media company.
        musha68k 3y ago
        I’m not saying any reasonable government would be buying services from Musk at this point but so far he is doing fine for probably more than one perverse reason. Again, extrapolate mid/long-term with “new” Republicans (don’t care about small gov at this point) potentially winning next election(s) and him providing an “AI” enabled personal interface for every US citizen… what could go wrong? It’s a natural sell / setup for “we must win against evil empire of China, be as efficient, yaddayadda”.
        sanderjd 3y ago
        It's not because of Musk that this particular hypothesis doesn't make sense, this is just not something that the US government has any interest in touching with a million foot pole.
    - sanderjd 3y ago
      By far the best evidence is the ads one gets on Twitter now. I haven't been using it for about a month, but before I stopped, the ad deterioration was striking to the point of absurdity. It went from being like any other mainstream thing - sports or primetime on TV or google or instagram ads or whatever - to being the kind of stuff you get at 2am on local access channels. They struggled to have a competitive ad business for their size of audience before, and it could not be clear now that they are making absolute peanuts on ads now, and there's just no way subscription revenue is going to make up even a small sliver of that squandered advertising opportunity.
  - giaour 3y ago
    Just like how pets.com's market value was measured in "eyeballs" rather than dollars.
  - numpad0 3y ago
    That's the highest resolution picture that the bossman understands perhaps lol
- mjburgess 3y ago
  Not shown: advertising revenue; debt load; rise of competing services; probability of bankrupsy over time; number of staff; market cap... It might, perhaps, almost be that a google trends graph isn't a reliable measure of business sustainability.
  - gjsman-1000 3y ago
    > It might, perhaps, almost be that a google trends graph isn't a reliable measure of business sustainability. Twitter was only profitable for one year while it was public (2018). It's not like Elon could make that much worse. For what it's worth, he claims (edit: claimed before the advertisers left) it's break-even now. As for competing services, Facebook has their work cut out for them. Active Daily User count on Threads has gone down 70% from it's bombastic launch. Average user engagement time has also gone down to 4 minutes from 19. https://www.wsj.com/articles/threads-user-engagement-continues-to-drop-adding-urgency-for-new-features-8ed2f384 https://www.wsj.com/articles/threads-user-engagement-continu... https://www.forbes.com/sites/willskipworth/2023/07/21/threads-user-engagement-reportedly-plummets-after-explosive-start/?sh=2169f7c76d1f https://www.forbes.com/sites/willskipworth/2023/07/21/thread...
    - CharlieDigital 3y ago
      > It's not like Elon could make that much worse As if this scale were merely binary rather than a continuum.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > It's not like Elon could make that much worse Musk is swimming upstream, having notched the top-tick LBO of a decade-long ZIRP run. With Twitter's original finances, in a strong economy, the debt would have been difficult. As currently configured, with ad revenue down 50% [1], it's obviously unsustainable, a reality reflected in its bonds' prices. > he claims it's break-even now Musk expected, last year, Twitter to break even this year [2]. He claimed break-even in April, but conceded profitability was still away [3], implying an unlevered definition of breaking even, i.e. before financing costs. [1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-says-twitters-cash-flow-still-negative-ad-revenue-drops-2023-07-15/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-says-twitters-c... [2] https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-expects-twitter-be-cash-flow-break-even-next-year-2022-12-21/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-expects-twitter... [3] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/elon-musk-twitter-is-operating-at-break-even-and-could-turn-profitable-in-a-matter-of-months-18e98e4d https://www.marketwatch.com/story/elon-musk-twitter-is-opera...
- _jal 3y ago
  So I guess we're back 90s-style business hype? "We're losing money on every click, but will make it up in volume!" Maybe the lawyers and landlords will take payment in blue checks.
  - ethbr0 3y ago
    That hype didn't stop until interest rates started adjusting back to low-normal in 2022/23. It's been 30 full years of questionable debt-dependant business models.
- lutoma 3y ago
  This is how often people search for "twitter" on Google, not how many people are happily using the platform. Of course there's substantial search volume for a company that is in the headlines every other day for some controversy or another.
- Fatnino 3y ago
  You didn't read the last paragraph of the linked article.
finikytou 3y ago
that is pretty unfair. the common man never had that amount of freedom on twitter. the lobbies, the blue elite and the powerful however lost a similar if not more amount of control over the masses thanks to Musk.
- libraryatnight 3y ago
  What are you talking about? I used to be able to interact with interesting people in the public sphere on twitter, now it's just a bunch of people verified that I never cared who they were anyway, and everyone I joined to follow has been gradually leaving. My own account is still in a banned state for telling Microsoft they suck for making their OS bloated. Before I was off twitter, because fuck deleting a reasonable tweet to appease some censorship bot and its review team, twitter was less and less 'free' for anyone not worshiping that rich ass-hat.
  - intelVISA 3y ago
    Banned for speaking the truth? Sad to hear of this.
  - spookthesunset 3y ago
    Twitter was the only platform I could tell our public health director they were doing way more damage with their insane covid mandates than good. I even got replies from the dude. There isn't any other platform out there where you can do this. So while Twitter is indeed a toxic hellhole, it is oftentimes the only way you can directly attempt to communicate with "the right people" in an organization.
    - sanderjd 3y ago
      You could do that. It was that platform. As it increasingly loses its universality in favor of incentivizing subscriptions, it will increasingly lose that position.
      - red-iron-pine 3y ago
FreshStart 3y ago
It pokes a hole in the yes man bubble. Ironically society Algo bubbles it's leaders since the dawn of time and they can't stand it to rupture. Loyalty and uniform support or else the big boss gets anxiety atracks.At the same time they can not stop lurking near dissent, cause it's the last window to reality they have. Next on mamal brain bugs..
- ModernMech 3y ago
  I feel like a lot of people don’t fully appreciate this point because they are well adjusted and hear no constantly. You have to view these billionaires as toddlers. They never hear a simple “no”, and when they do they go apoplectic.
  - noelherrick 3y ago
    Not disagreeing, but these aren't just toddlers, but insecure toddlers who have never been told no and think people pushing back is equivalent to hate. A normal toddler who has caretakers who are loving and accepting does not respond like this.
    - jahsome 3y ago
      How often do you tell people no? I find it pretty common to get a visceral reaction when I disagree with people, and that's even after spending years working on delivering that disagreement in more friendly ways, both professionally and personally. I think it's a relatively universal human trait to resent dissent, these guys just have more resources to make their distate known.
      - ModernMech 3y ago
        Many billionaires, especially the top celebrity billionaires, seem to have extremely disordered and malignant personalities. Narcissism and sociopathy seem to run strong in these individuals. Their money amplifies and multiplies the reach and effect of their narcissism. Most people when they hear “no” feel a little upset and get over it. When a narcissist hears “no” he suffers a narcissistic injury and seeks revenge. When a narcissistic billionaire hears “no”… well, buckle up. 1/6 showed us how bad that can get.
hosh 3y ago
Elon Musk founded X.com before it bought one of its competitors and changed its name to PayPal. He bought the domain name back from PayPal in 2017 and had been sitting on it for a while. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com It looks like this isn't a rebranding so much as making an "everything app". > On October 4, 2022, Elon Musk described his acquisition of Twitter as "an accelerant to creating X, the everything app".[28] This has been linked to x.com.[29] In conversation with Ron Baron a month later, Musk said he will execute the X product plan "with some improvements" which will make Twitter "the most valuable financial institution in the world."[30] Well, it'll be interesting whether he succeeds or fails. But this does not look like it is impulsive.
- libraryatnight 3y ago
  Probably still can't believe nobody likes his cool domain name.
- jkestner 3y ago
  "If a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we'll make go live worldwide tomorrow" sounds impulsive to me. A rebranding would make more sense at the point where you actually roll out those everything features. Him being a marketing engineer, I guess he just had to stay in the conversation this week.
  - red-iron-pine 3y ago
    the people he's marketing to will eat that shit up. those who are already looking at him skeptically will not care and were already on the way out / not using the app. dumb, but riding the hype train is really his only play IMO.
  - whywhywhywhy 3y ago
    It’s marketing and storytelling. The impulsiveness and crowd sourcing writes the headline itself. I’m not implying it’s a super calculated masterplan, more that he just knows it’ll grab headlines and mindshare cheaper than any paid marketing launch ever could.
- 3y ago
alexpotato 3y ago
> Lastly he probably also had/has some WeChat ambitions. Years ago I remember reading something about the Chinese microblogging sites and it was mentioned "these sites also have a character limits. However, b/c in Chinese a character can be an entire word, the 'word limits' are much longer." Moving to the 4000 character limit feels very much a response to the above.
- WeylandYutani 3y ago
  This is my problem with Twitter. It's not meant for serious discussion. We have blogs for that. Nobody wants to read it for an interesting article about geopolitics- foreignaffairs.com already exists. Know your audience.
  - joshmanders 3y ago
    > It's not meant for serious discussion. What exactly is it meant for then if not serious discussion? > We have blogs for that. You mean the one sided discussions? Also not every thought is worthy of a blog post, but is worthy of being put out there. > Nobody wants to read it for an interesting article about geopolitics- foreignaffairs.com already exists Geopolitics isn't the only thing longer convos are for... The problem with pre-Musk/4000 char limit Twitter is that nuances are heavily lost because of the lack of characters and that nobody wants to do thread storms. > Know your audience. Ironic.
    - oneeyedpigeon 3y ago
      > What exactly is it meant for then if not serious discussion? All other types of discussion. Promoting serious discussion elsewhere.
      - joshmanders 3y ago
        That's a byproduct of a lack of characters, not the reason it was created.
kfrzcode 3y ago
[flagged]
- danudey 3y ago
  Most people aren't willing to spend so much time and energy working against the algorithm that's deliberately trying to push this content that people loathe. If I have to see a bunch of toxic BS in my timeline, and spend my time blocking people, reporting them, etc., only to see more of the same moments later, what's the point? The problem is that there is a clash between what users want to see and what the company's algorithm wants you to see, and it seems like there's strong evidence to conclude that Musk and his platform are trying to push the kinds of things that a lot of people don't want to see. So yes, you can spend the time and energy to self-curate and find people who have interesting opinions. I could also go to a white supremacist march and find people who have interesting things to say about classic Dr Who episodes or who have the same passion for Dungeons and Dragons as I do, but I'm not going to tolerate all that toxic crazy to find them when I can go literally anywhere else. In the end, you're still stuck in a cesspool trying to filter out the content that Twitter really, really wants you to see. If I have to work at not seeing the stuff I've explicitly chosen to see, I'm going to find anywhere else (or nowhere).
  - luxuryballs 3y ago
    I’m curious what kind of content this tends to be, I am not a frequent Twitter user but the content moderation doesn’t seem to be wildly different than before. What kind of toxic BS are you seeing that was previously not there?
Balgair 3y ago
> (why would he care so much about this, boredom?) > due to extreme unreflected and unchecked ego Unfortunately, I think it's worse than that. My belief is that it's manic phases caused by bipolar disorder. If you squint and chart these 'manic' decisions, it seems to be about every 4-5 months. In between he'll often (though not always) post some self-reflective and more 'down' things and be generally more quiet (remember the diet-coke and gun pics?). Then, like with many bipolar sufferers, he'll get 'manic' again and do these kinda things to his businesses and to those around him who care. His personal life is famously a mess. I want to be clear, I'm not a shrink, I have no degrees in this, and I'm 'diagnosing' this very far removed from the guy. But I do have a few bipolar people in my life and, to me, the parallels are very striking. I feel for him in that way. Despite all the money and fame, the disease that I suspect he suffers from (with, again, low evidence) is a very tough one to accept. Of the people in my own life that suffer from it, none have moved past a confirmed diagnosis and started the long road to recovery and acceptance.
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
  I'm not sure when in the last 9 months since he bought Twitter you found Elon reflective and "down". It's been lunacy after lunacy every single week. Does it seem like manic? Yes. But when this behavior is persistent, not sure bipolar is the diagnosis per se.
  - shagie 3y ago
    https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/31/elon-musk-is-bipolar-has-terrible-lows-and-unrelenting-stress.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/31/elon-musk-is-bipolar-has-ter... > Sunday, on Twitter, Musk was also asked if he was bipolar, to which Musk replied, “yeah,” but then he explained further, saying his psychological highs and lows are associated with actual ups and downs in his life. > “Maybe not medically tho,” says his tweet. “Dunno. Bad feelings correlate to bad events, so maybe real problem is getting carried away in what I sign up for.” https://sports.yahoo.com/entertainment/elon-musk-tweeted-bipolar-190955762.html https://sports.yahoo.com/entertainment/elon-musk-tweeted-bip...
    - 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
unboxingelf 3y ago
He certainly has WeChat ambitions, he said it himself! video: https://werunbtc.com/wechat.mp4 https://werunbtc.com/wechat.mp4
baby 3y ago
This just happened a few weeks after Geohot said that Facebook was the only alive startup company out there because they managed to change their name to Meta. (He said something like that on the lex friedman podcast.)
stevenjgarner 3y ago
IMHO think it is something of a looking back / looking forward situation. Looking back, the Twitter brand has indeed accumulated massive goodwill. Looking forward, it would appear that some kind of LLM is replacing search (bard.google.com replacing google.com; chat.openai.com replacing bing.com). Elon has been very busy establishing the new https://x.ai/ https://x.ai/ as an alternative LLM "to understand the true nature of the universe", with no fewer than 11 new key executive technical employees this July. It is clear that looking forward, Elon has a hybrid vision of Twitter morphing not just into a WeChat clone, but going well past that and potentially knocking on the heals of ChatGPT/Bard as the next obvious incarnation of search.
ecf 3y ago
The jet guy broke Elon and there’s no putting him back together.

gjsman-1000 3y ago

[flagged]

jmondi 3y ago
Aah yes, everyone knows that google trends is the best way to judge the health of a business.
- gjsman-1000 3y ago
  It's only one example. Look into it. Sure, Elon has no doubt pissed off some bubbles that you frequent or some advertisers, but any evidence that Twitter as a whole is dying is purely anecdotal, or so small that it's not worth registering. (For example, the Financial Times said Twitter is "dying"... by citing SimilarWeb showing a 5% decline since Elon's takeover.)
  - jmondi 3y ago
    Google Trends has literally nothing to do with twitter succeeding or failing as a business. Literally nothing. If twitter went offline, it would be skyrocketing in Google Trends, does that mean twitter is successful then? Also: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1680082007873953794 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1680082007873953794
    - jahsome 3y ago
      It doesn't have _literally_ nothing to do with it; there is a correlation, even if a weak one. The two are just independent. I'm not disagreeing with your point just nitpicking word choice; the best kind of annoying comment!
  - justjoined2 3y ago
    It's a bad example. Here's some actual reporting on the health of the company: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/may/31/twitters-value-down-two-thirds-since-musk-takeover-says-investor https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/may/31/twitters-.... To say that "Elon has no doubt pissed off [...] some advertisers" is such a hilarious understatement.
  - sidfthec 3y ago
    It's not an example at all. It's just as baffling to use it as an example when there are much better sources. Pre-Elon, you have financial statements showing the strength of the company. Profitable before Covid before they hired a massive number of people (like a lot of companies during covid) and then dropped below profitability. It's very possible that a smaller layoff and a focus on fundamentals could have brought them back to profitability. Elon has admitted that they've lost around 50% in ad revenue since the takeover and that they're not cash-flow positive. Reports are saying 59%-70%. I'm inclined to believe that Elon is under reporting to the public (based on his history of exaggerating/under-reporting/lying about this kind of stuff). Either way, it's clear Twitter is in a much weaker position now than pre-takeover.
  - mhoad 3y ago
    It’s the 50% drop in revenue with no viable path back combined with the huge brand damage he has done that is causing people to say it’s dying. The only question left at this point is how soon.
  - musha68k 3y ago
    Twitter is dying and Musk might actually be OK with this. From a certain angle it clearly looks like that was the brute force plan all along (Hanlon’s razor not applied). Maybe he just wants to build WeChat ultimately to be sold to the US government, in the same vain as with his other ventures where he runs on government subsidies and/or full-on exclusive privatization mandates. Extrapolate a potential future for “x.com” from here with what economist Richard Wolff is seeing #trending for the west: https://youtu.be/w0c5Gfh2ZWY https://youtu.be/w0c5Gfh2ZWY
    - sanderjd 3y ago
      haha what? The government has negative interest in purchasing a social media company.
      - musha68k 3y ago
        I’m not saying any reasonable government would be buying services from Musk at this point but so far he is doing fine for probably more than one perverse reason. Again, extrapolate mid/long-term with “new” Republicans (don’t care about small gov at this point) potentially winning next election(s) and him providing an “AI” enabled personal interface for every US citizen… what could go wrong? It’s a natural sell / setup for “we must win against evil empire of China, be as efficient, yaddayadda”.
        sanderjd 3y ago
        It's not because of Musk that this particular hypothesis doesn't make sense, this is just not something that the US government has any interest in touching with a million foot pole.
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    By far the best evidence is the ads one gets on Twitter now. I haven't been using it for about a month, but before I stopped, the ad deterioration was striking to the point of absurdity. It went from being like any other mainstream thing - sports or primetime on TV or google or instagram ads or whatever - to being the kind of stuff you get at 2am on local access channels. They struggled to have a competitive ad business for their size of audience before, and it could not be clear now that they are making absolute peanuts on ads now, and there's just no way subscription revenue is going to make up even a small sliver of that squandered advertising opportunity.
- giaour 3y ago
  Just like how pets.com's market value was measured in "eyeballs" rather than dollars.
- numpad0 3y ago
  That's the highest resolution picture that the bossman understands perhaps lol
mjburgess 3y ago
Not shown: advertising revenue; debt load; rise of competing services; probability of bankrupsy over time; number of staff; market cap... It might, perhaps, almost be that a google trends graph isn't a reliable measure of business sustainability.
- gjsman-1000 3y ago
  > It might, perhaps, almost be that a google trends graph isn't a reliable measure of business sustainability. Twitter was only profitable for one year while it was public (2018). It's not like Elon could make that much worse. For what it's worth, he claims (edit: claimed before the advertisers left) it's break-even now. As for competing services, Facebook has their work cut out for them. Active Daily User count on Threads has gone down 70% from it's bombastic launch. Average user engagement time has also gone down to 4 minutes from 19. https://www.wsj.com/articles/threads-user-engagement-continues-to-drop-adding-urgency-for-new-features-8ed2f384 https://www.wsj.com/articles/threads-user-engagement-continu... https://www.forbes.com/sites/willskipworth/2023/07/21/threads-user-engagement-reportedly-plummets-after-explosive-start/?sh=2169f7c76d1f https://www.forbes.com/sites/willskipworth/2023/07/21/thread...
  - CharlieDigital 3y ago
    > It's not like Elon could make that much worse As if this scale were merely binary rather than a continuum.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > It's not like Elon could make that much worse Musk is swimming upstream, having notched the top-tick LBO of a decade-long ZIRP run. With Twitter's original finances, in a strong economy, the debt would have been difficult. As currently configured, with ad revenue down 50% [1], it's obviously unsustainable, a reality reflected in its bonds' prices. > he claims it's break-even now Musk expected, last year, Twitter to break even this year [2]. He claimed break-even in April, but conceded profitability was still away [3], implying an unlevered definition of breaking even, i.e. before financing costs. [1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-says-twitters-cash-flow-still-negative-ad-revenue-drops-2023-07-15/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-says-twitters-c... [2] https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-expects-twitter-be-cash-flow-break-even-next-year-2022-12-21/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-expects-twitter... [3] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/elon-musk-twitter-is-operating-at-break-even-and-could-turn-profitable-in-a-matter-of-months-18e98e4d https://www.marketwatch.com/story/elon-musk-twitter-is-opera...
_jal 3y ago
So I guess we're back 90s-style business hype? "We're losing money on every click, but will make it up in volume!" Maybe the lawyers and landlords will take payment in blue checks.
- ethbr0 3y ago
  That hype didn't stop until interest rates started adjusting back to low-normal in 2022/23. It's been 30 full years of questionable debt-dependant business models.
lutoma 3y ago
This is how often people search for "twitter" on Google, not how many people are happily using the platform. Of course there's substantial search volume for a company that is in the headlines every other day for some controversy or another.
Fatnino 3y ago
You didn't read the last paragraph of the linked article.

finikytou 3y ago

that is pretty unfair. the common man never had that amount of freedom on twitter. the lobbies, the blue elite and the powerful however lost a similar if not more amount of control over the masses thanks to Musk.

libraryatnight 3y ago
What are you talking about? I used to be able to interact with interesting people in the public sphere on twitter, now it's just a bunch of people verified that I never cared who they were anyway, and everyone I joined to follow has been gradually leaving. My own account is still in a banned state for telling Microsoft they suck for making their OS bloated. Before I was off twitter, because fuck deleting a reasonable tweet to appease some censorship bot and its review team, twitter was less and less 'free' for anyone not worshiping that rich ass-hat.
- intelVISA 3y ago
  Banned for speaking the truth? Sad to hear of this.
- spookthesunset 3y ago
  Twitter was the only platform I could tell our public health director they were doing way more damage with their insane covid mandates than good. I even got replies from the dude. There isn't any other platform out there where you can do this. So while Twitter is indeed a toxic hellhole, it is oftentimes the only way you can directly attempt to communicate with "the right people" in an organization.
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    You could do that. It was that platform. As it increasingly loses its universality in favor of incentivizing subscriptions, it will increasingly lose that position.
    - red-iron-pine 3y ago

FreshStart 3y ago

It pokes a hole in the yes man bubble. Ironically society Algo bubbles it's leaders since the dawn of time and they can't stand it to rupture. Loyalty and uniform support or else the big boss gets anxiety atracks.At the same time they can not stop lurking near dissent, cause it's the last window to reality they have. Next on mamal brain bugs..

ModernMech 3y ago
I feel like a lot of people don’t fully appreciate this point because they are well adjusted and hear no constantly. You have to view these billionaires as toddlers. They never hear a simple “no”, and when they do they go apoplectic.
- noelherrick 3y ago
  Not disagreeing, but these aren't just toddlers, but insecure toddlers who have never been told no and think people pushing back is equivalent to hate. A normal toddler who has caretakers who are loving and accepting does not respond like this.
  - jahsome 3y ago
    How often do you tell people no? I find it pretty common to get a visceral reaction when I disagree with people, and that's even after spending years working on delivering that disagreement in more friendly ways, both professionally and personally. I think it's a relatively universal human trait to resent dissent, these guys just have more resources to make their distate known.
    - ModernMech 3y ago
      Many billionaires, especially the top celebrity billionaires, seem to have extremely disordered and malignant personalities. Narcissism and sociopathy seem to run strong in these individuals. Their money amplifies and multiplies the reach and effect of their narcissism. Most people when they hear “no” feel a little upset and get over it. When a narcissist hears “no” he suffers a narcissistic injury and seeks revenge. When a narcissistic billionaire hears “no”… well, buckle up. 1/6 showed us how bad that can get.

hosh 3y ago

Elon Musk founded X.com before it bought one of its competitors and changed its name to PayPal. He bought the domain name back from PayPal in 2017 and had been sitting on it for a while. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com It looks like this isn't a rebranding so much as making an "everything app". > On October 4, 2022, Elon Musk described his acquisition of Twitter as "an accelerant to creating X, the everything app".[28] This has been linked to x.com.[29] In conversation with Ron Baron a month later, Musk said he will execute the X product plan "with some improvements" which will make Twitter "the most valuable financial institution in the world."[30] Well, it'll be interesting whether he succeeds or fails. But this does not look like it is impulsive.

libraryatnight 3y ago
Probably still can't believe nobody likes his cool domain name.
jkestner 3y ago
"If a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we'll make go live worldwide tomorrow" sounds impulsive to me. A rebranding would make more sense at the point where you actually roll out those everything features. Him being a marketing engineer, I guess he just had to stay in the conversation this week.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  the people he's marketing to will eat that shit up. those who are already looking at him skeptically will not care and were already on the way out / not using the app. dumb, but riding the hype train is really his only play IMO.
- whywhywhywhy 3y ago
  It’s marketing and storytelling. The impulsiveness and crowd sourcing writes the headline itself. I’m not implying it’s a super calculated masterplan, more that he just knows it’ll grab headlines and mindshare cheaper than any paid marketing launch ever could.
3y ago

alexpotato 3y ago

> Lastly he probably also had/has some WeChat ambitions. Years ago I remember reading something about the Chinese microblogging sites and it was mentioned "these sites also have a character limits. However, b/c in Chinese a character can be an entire word, the 'word limits' are much longer." Moving to the 4000 character limit feels very much a response to the above.

WeylandYutani 3y ago
This is my problem with Twitter. It's not meant for serious discussion. We have blogs for that. Nobody wants to read it for an interesting article about geopolitics- foreignaffairs.com already exists. Know your audience.
- joshmanders 3y ago
  > It's not meant for serious discussion. What exactly is it meant for then if not serious discussion? > We have blogs for that. You mean the one sided discussions? Also not every thought is worthy of a blog post, but is worthy of being put out there. > Nobody wants to read it for an interesting article about geopolitics- foreignaffairs.com already exists Geopolitics isn't the only thing longer convos are for... The problem with pre-Musk/4000 char limit Twitter is that nuances are heavily lost because of the lack of characters and that nobody wants to do thread storms. > Know your audience. Ironic.
  - oneeyedpigeon 3y ago
    > What exactly is it meant for then if not serious discussion? All other types of discussion. Promoting serious discussion elsewhere.
    - joshmanders 3y ago
      That's a byproduct of a lack of characters, not the reason it was created.

kfrzcode 3y ago

[flagged]

danudey 3y ago
Most people aren't willing to spend so much time and energy working against the algorithm that's deliberately trying to push this content that people loathe. If I have to see a bunch of toxic BS in my timeline, and spend my time blocking people, reporting them, etc., only to see more of the same moments later, what's the point? The problem is that there is a clash between what users want to see and what the company's algorithm wants you to see, and it seems like there's strong evidence to conclude that Musk and his platform are trying to push the kinds of things that a lot of people don't want to see. So yes, you can spend the time and energy to self-curate and find people who have interesting opinions. I could also go to a white supremacist march and find people who have interesting things to say about classic Dr Who episodes or who have the same passion for Dungeons and Dragons as I do, but I'm not going to tolerate all that toxic crazy to find them when I can go literally anywhere else. In the end, you're still stuck in a cesspool trying to filter out the content that Twitter really, really wants you to see. If I have to work at not seeing the stuff I've explicitly chosen to see, I'm going to find anywhere else (or nowhere).
- luxuryballs 3y ago
  I’m curious what kind of content this tends to be, I am not a frequent Twitter user but the content moderation doesn’t seem to be wildly different than before. What kind of toxic BS are you seeing that was previously not there?

Balgair 3y ago

> (why would he care so much about this, boredom?) > due to extreme unreflected and unchecked ego Unfortunately, I think it's worse than that. My belief is that it's manic phases caused by bipolar disorder. If you squint and chart these 'manic' decisions, it seems to be about every 4-5 months. In between he'll often (though not always) post some self-reflective and more 'down' things and be generally more quiet (remember the diet-coke and gun pics?). Then, like with many bipolar sufferers, he'll get 'manic' again and do these kinda things to his businesses and to those around him who care. His personal life is famously a mess. I want to be clear, I'm not a shrink, I have no degrees in this, and I'm 'diagnosing' this very far removed from the guy. But I do have a few bipolar people in my life and, to me, the parallels are very striking. I feel for him in that way. Despite all the money and fame, the disease that I suspect he suffers from (with, again, low evidence) is a very tough one to accept. Of the people in my own life that suffer from it, none have moved past a confirmed diagnosis and started the long road to recovery and acceptance.

3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
I'm not sure when in the last 9 months since he bought Twitter you found Elon reflective and "down". It's been lunacy after lunacy every single week. Does it seem like manic? Yes. But when this behavior is persistent, not sure bipolar is the diagnosis per se.
- shagie 3y ago
  https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/31/elon-musk-is-bipolar-has-terrible-lows-and-unrelenting-stress.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/31/elon-musk-is-bipolar-has-ter... > Sunday, on Twitter, Musk was also asked if he was bipolar, to which Musk replied, “yeah,” but then he explained further, saying his psychological highs and lows are associated with actual ups and downs in his life. > “Maybe not medically tho,” says his tweet. “Dunno. Bad feelings correlate to bad events, so maybe real problem is getting carried away in what I sign up for.” https://sports.yahoo.com/entertainment/elon-musk-tweeted-bipolar-190955762.html https://sports.yahoo.com/entertainment/elon-musk-tweeted-bip...
  - 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

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unboxingelf 3y ago

He certainly has WeChat ambitions, he said it himself! video: https://werunbtc.com/wechat.mp4 https://werunbtc.com/wechat.mp4

baby 3y ago

This just happened a few weeks after Geohot said that Facebook was the only alive startup company out there because they managed to change their name to Meta. (He said something like that on the lex friedman podcast.)

stevenjgarner 3y ago

IMHO think it is something of a looking back / looking forward situation. Looking back, the Twitter brand has indeed accumulated massive goodwill. Looking forward, it would appear that some kind of LLM is replacing search (bard.google.com replacing google.com; chat.openai.com replacing bing.com). Elon has been very busy establishing the new https://x.ai/ https://x.ai/ as an alternative LLM "to understand the true nature of the universe", with no fewer than 11 new key executive technical employees this July. It is clear that looking forward, Elon has a hybrid vision of Twitter morphing not just into a WeChat clone, but going well past that and potentially knocking on the heals of ChatGPT/Bard as the next obvious incarnation of search.

ecf 3y ago

The jet guy broke Elon and there’s no putting him back together.