3 ms·

Wouldn't it have been more effective for him to have just closed it on day one? Why leave it around for years, and have 75% of the users still there? That's b

Wouldn't it have been more effective for him to have just closed it on day one? Why leave it around for years, and have 75% of the users still there? That's being pretty incompetent at destroying it.

anigbrowl 3y ago
The same reason that when a military force used to seize radio stations and telephone exchanges, it took them over rather than demolishing them.
mandmandam 3y ago
There's a word for this: "Plausible deniability". Overly blatant actions like that have a tendency to rile people up to tipping points. Then there's the money - closing it day 1 leaves money on the table. There's the ego. Even Musk fan boys would have a hard time swallowing the wilful destruction of a beloved (and expensive) site. For those and other reasons (anigbrowl hit the nail on the head!), it's far easier to just gut all the parts that made the platform a threat to the mega-yacht class.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
  > There's a word for this: "Plausible deniability". There's a word for _this_: "self-sealing" [0]. A believer in a conspiracy theory, when presented with evidence contrary to the conspiracy theory, will often "reinterpret it as originating from the conspiracy" [1], or otherwise treat it "as further evidence for the conspiracy" [1]. The simplest explanation for elmu acting like an uninformed, out-of-touch narcissist is that is who he is. Many narcissists genuinely believe they are pro-free-speech even while they attack speech they dislike. Toss him on the pile. 0: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585 1: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/scholcom/246/ https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/scholcom/246/
  - krapp 3y ago
    At this point it's pretty clear that when Elon Musk talks about "free speech" he means the freedom to spread right-wing speech without consequence. I honestly believe a lot of what he's doing is, in his mind, liberating the site from the "woke mind virus" he believes turned his daughter trans. Most of the rest is boredom, because I also don't believe he really cares about the platform. He didn't even really want it, but he's stuck with it, so he's mostly just screwing around. If you interrogate Musk's action from the point of view of the bored, redpilled sociopath behind the mask of a brilliant entrepreneur playboy genius engineer, a lot of his decisions make sense.

Wouldn't it have been more effective for him to have just closed it on day one? Why leave it around for years, and have 75% of the users still there? That's being pretty incompetent at destroying it.

anigbrowl 3y ago

The same reason that when a military force used to seize radio stations and telephone exchanges, it took them over rather than demolishing them.

mandmandam 3y ago

There's a word for this: "Plausible deniability". Overly blatant actions like that have a tendency to rile people up to tipping points. Then there's the money - closing it day 1 leaves money on the table. There's the ego. Even Musk fan boys would have a hard time swallowing the wilful destruction of a beloved (and expensive) site. For those and other reasons (anigbrowl hit the nail on the head!), it's far easier to just gut all the parts that made the platform a threat to the mega-yacht class.

ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
> There's a word for this: "Plausible deniability". There's a word for _this_: "self-sealing" [0]. A believer in a conspiracy theory, when presented with evidence contrary to the conspiracy theory, will often "reinterpret it as originating from the conspiracy" [1], or otherwise treat it "as further evidence for the conspiracy" [1]. The simplest explanation for elmu acting like an uninformed, out-of-touch narcissist is that is who he is. Many narcissists genuinely believe they are pro-free-speech even while they attack speech they dislike. Toss him on the pile. 0: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585 1: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/scholcom/246/ https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/scholcom/246/
- krapp 3y ago
  At this point it's pretty clear that when Elon Musk talks about "free speech" he means the freedom to spread right-wing speech without consequence. I honestly believe a lot of what he's doing is, in his mind, liberating the site from the "woke mind virus" he believes turned his daughter trans. Most of the rest is boredom, because I also don't believe he really cares about the platform. He didn't even really want it, but he's stuck with it, so he's mostly just screwing around. If you interrogate Musk's action from the point of view of the bored, redpilled sociopath behind the mask of a brilliant entrepreneur playboy genius engineer, a lot of his decisions make sense.