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It's weird that you say both she had no material power and also seem to imply the valuation drop and lawsuits were due to her ineptitude? Anyway she volunteere
by sorcerer-mar 1y ago
It's weird that you say both she had no material power and also seem to imply the valuation drop and lawsuits were due to her ineptitude?
Anyway she volunteered to be a puppet for a man who is clearly off the rails and her legacy will forever be stained.
- josefresco 1y agoBoth things can be true: Valuation did drop during her tenure, AND she was not to blame. Therefore the praise is weird, because she seemingly neither helped nor hurt the business.
- mandmandam 1y ago> she was not to blame. Fall guys bear some of the blame in the fall. My long-held [0] personal theory - borne out by everything Musk has done, and by who bought Twitter - is that it was bought to curb the possibility of large positive social movements along the lines of OWS or BLM. Enabling that can entail being useless at your supposed job, while doing your actual job (which deserves some amount of blame, from a number of perspectives). 0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36685384 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36685384
- steveBK123 1y agoPretty good theory
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- harikb 1y agohmm... I am drawing a parallel between your theory on 'controlled opposition' from the linked thread from 2023, to the current M vs T fight. Plausible...
- ToucanLoucan 1y agoSee my only counterpoint to this theory is Musk has a long and well documented history of being absolutely stone desperate to be cool, which is the only thing he can't buy, and he simply revels in his ownership of Twitter even as he comprehensively runs it into the ground as a business. Now, would he be upset about such efforts being derailed as a result, or is he even slightly bothered about his website now being packed to the tits with Nazis? Absolutely not. But I do think as unbelievably cringe as it would be if true, I really think he bought the damn thing because he just wanted to be the meme lord. Mainly I just struggle with giving him as much credit as your theory does in terms of long term planning. He's an overgrown man-child.
- JohnBooty 1y agoI think you and the parent poster are doing a good job of describing the same thing from different angles. Both observations are true. Musk wanted to steer culture toward his own ends as the parent poster described and he wanted to be seen as some kind of.... cool vanguard of that, as you say. It's really different facets of the same thing, right?
- ToucanLoucan 1y agoI guess what I struggle with is seeing Musk taking that kind of top-down strategic view of things? Which that could entirely be a me problem. I think there's an inherent bias in the way a lot of people think where they assign these Machiavellian motives especially to the super-privileged and those in positions of power, the 5D chess type shit, and I tend to bias in the other direction where... a lot of times these guys are just fucking losers and they don't think terribly dissimilarly from your weird uncle who doesn't come to the reuinions anymore. Ultimately though, this is a bit of a weird aside to go on I fully admit. The "solutions" so to speak for people like this are basically the same whether they are dark-room schemers or dickheads with far too much money and not nearly enough accountability.
- JohnBooty 1y agoYeah, I don't think it was 5D chess at all. I think he saw a good (to him) opportunity to steer public discourse by tossing a big stack of cash at probably the most influential social media network in terms of mindshare, to push whatever ideas were careening through his mind at any given point. He may not have even been sober, much less playing 5D chess.
- woah 1y agoIt's conspiratorial thinking to assume that everything that happens in the world is perfectly executed by omniscient villains with 20/20 hindsight. Maybe a formerly-brilliant but drug-addled rich guy just bought a social media platform with bad fundamentals at the height of its valuation and then mismanaged it while flailing around with other ventures and political adventures. Occam's razor.
- cschep 1y agoI'd love to hear why this is being downvoted? Not agreeing is one thing, but it seems like a reasonable thing to suggest?
- anigbrowl 1y agoBecause Musk has provided abundant evidence of his political orientation over the last several years.
- andrewflnr 1y agoHe's provided evidence of being an impulsive fool for even longer. I defended Musk as a useful idiot for a while until be fully showed his true colors, but it has always been clear he's not a wise man. (His vigorous and pathetic efforts to get out of the purchase also push against it being a big master plan, FWIW.)
- greedo 1y agoWitness his entire Boring Company being a sock puppet project to derail California's High Speed Rail system.
- larkost 1y agoCan you provide more about this idea? I see the Boring company as being pretty feckless, and at the same time extremely boastful. They have gotten hopes up in a number of places about solving city traffic problems, only to go dark when the rubber (should have) met the road. But I don't see any of those having impacted the California High Speed Rail. Rather that has been harmed by lots of different groups throwing roadblocks up, sometime for ideological reasons (lots of this from State and National Republicans, sometimes with reasons, but often more political), and a whole lot of NIMBY (see: Palo Alto). What do you see the Boring Company having to do with that? As a side note: there are some really poorly thought through parts of the project, for example they don't have a plan for actually making it over the mountains into Los Angeles. I still want it to happen, but...
- afasdfsadfsa 1y ago[flagged]
- RugnirViking 1y agoI find myself suspicious of your numbers given I don't get the sense blm changed much about policing but can you cite some source numbers?
- ceejayoz 1y agoThey're conducting some sleight of hand here. There was indeed a bit of a violent crime spike post-George Floyd in the US. But... there was also an unprecedented global pandemic and resulting economic shutdown, and the same crime spike happened in other countries that didn't have a BLM movement to speak of.
- mrguyorama 1y agoIt's not even sleight of hand, it's just lying by omission. "Our boat sank because you chose to go left instead of right" while not even mentioning the giant hole that opened up in the boat isn't sleight of hand.
- breppp 1y agoMy conspiracy theory was that because of Musk's involvement in OpenAI he had foreknowledge of the impeding release of ChatGPT. In that context, Twitter as a source for AI training can be far more valuable than a rage filled social network. However he still failed horribly to time the market
- debugnik 1y ago> Twitter as a source for AI training can be far more valuable than a rage filled social network Isn't Twitter the go-to example of a rage filled social network?
- fpia 1y agonah, that's 4chan
- foobarchu 1y agoI took them to mean it can be both things at once, and one is more valuable than the other. Not that being an ai training source would make it a rage filled social network.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- debugnik 1y ago> I took them to mean it can be both things at once Thanks, now I get the intended reading. > Not that being an ai training source would make it a rage filled social network. I clearly didn't mean that would be the cause, though. Twitter's current state had been cooking for a decade.
- claytonjy 1y agohow would you explain how hard he fought to NOT buy twitter? people seem to forget he was legally forced to buy Twitter after he tried for months to get out of his joke bid, primarily through claiming he was misled about the extent of bots on the platform
- jjfoooo4 1y agoI think Elon truly believed in the subscription model, which would free him from advertiser content influence. That and being terminally addicted to the platform himself, and being an impulsive gambler. I really don't think we've gotten where we are due to any (successful) master plan
- reactordev 1y agoThis. He was addicted to Twitter. He saw value in it and thought he could run it better. He wanted to be “The Place” where things were talked about. Where he could control the narrative. History has shown us, the more you try to control it, the more it slips through your fingers. The best surfers know, you ride the wave, not fight it.
- yibg 1y agoThing is, she failed at being the fall person. It's clear to everyone who was calling the shots, so ironically she was ineffective as the fall person.
- PaulHoule 1y agoNothing positive can come out of Twitter for McLuhanite reasons. Zohran Mamdami's greatest attribute in media is that if you see him in video you see him listening to people. Even people who aren't inclined to agree with him talk to him and say "he was so nice, he listened to me." High-D [1] billionaires who support High-D candidates such as Clinton, Cuomo and Adams are driven crazy by this. [2] Even though Twitter does provide a back channel and a Twitter user may really be a nice guy who listens and replies, the structure of the thing is such that you don't see that user listening and in fact the user interface on Twitter makes it really hard to see that conversation for outsiders in the way that the heavy Twitter user doesn't get. Not least because the heavy Twitter user might not realize that people who aren't logged in don't see anything at all (pro tip: just don't post links to Twitter on HN, you might see a great discussion with a lot of context, the rest of us just see a single sentence floating in space without any context) On video though, the person who listens listens visibly, you see the microexpressions in real time as they react to what the other person is saying. It's a thing of beauty. (Coalition leaders such as Chuck Schumer and Nancy Peloci do a lot of listening as part of their job but constituents only see them talking!) The above is a second order concern compared to the general compression of discourse in Twitter which is talked about in [2]. Twitter addicts spend 4-5 hours a day traversing graphs to follow discussions and understand (or think they understand?) context, the rest of us just see "white farmers" which means one thing if you're racist, another if you're "anti-racist", and just means "move along folks, nothing more to see here" for the great silent majority. When Twitter is at equilibrium every movement creates and equal and opposite amount of backlash, nothing actually changes except polarization increases, there is more and more talking and less and less listening, and the possibility of real social change diminishes. Burn it down. [1] https://darkfactor.org/ https://darkfactor.org/ [2] for once good NYT content that isn't paywalled: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/28/opinion/ezra-klein-show-chris-hayes.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/28/opinion/ezra-klein-show-c...
- cindyllm 1y ago[dead]
- gsf_emergency_2 1y agoStyle: Manhattan Generation: Zohran https://indianexpress.com/article/fresh-take/zohran-mamdani-wife-hinge-politics-gen-z-10097377/ https://indianexpress.com/article/fresh-take/zohran-mamdani-... High time the left reinvented memes their own way, "mutability over machismo" (& not a shred of maudlin) Better link for dark factors imho https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=9935796152480174745&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=9935796152480174745...
- madeofpalk 1y agoOne would imagine that a CEO lacking power is the precise reason a company would perform poorly.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- falcor84 1y agoIndeed. It was such a paradoxical situation from the start, with her both reporting to Musk as the chairman and owner, while at the same time "managing" him as the CTO. I'm surprised that the charade went on for as long as it did.
- lenkite 1y ago> Valuation did drop during her tenure Valuation also bounced back during her tenure.
- lenkite 1y agoNo idea why the truth is being downvoted so heavily ? X is valued at $44 billion by the financial times as of March 2025.
- Spooky23 1y agoShe shut her mouth and didn’t cause trouble.
- thayne 1y agoI don't think she is entirely to blame, but I think there is some blame for not standing up to Musk and leading better.
- dctoedt 1y ago> I think there is some blame for not standing up to Musk and leading better. That seems in the same category as saying there's some blame on her for not working harder on basketball in her youth and so never becoming a WNBA Finals MVP. (Narrator: Um, no, she's not nearly tall enough ....)
- SpicyLemonZest 1y agoI'm just not sure her complete lack of power to stand up to Musk is a defense. If a controversial rich guy offers you a CEO job that consists entirely of laundering his reputation by pretending his decisions are your own, you have a social responsibility not to take it. I'd be more sympathetic if she were some random person who couldn't otherwise dream of an executive level pay package, but she was the head of ads at NBC.
- greedo 1y ago“We have established what you are, madam. We are now merely haggling over the price.”
- michaelt 1y ago> If a controversial rich guy offers you a CEO job that consists entirely of laundering his reputation by pretending his decisions are your own, you have a social responsibility not to take it. I don't think you become the CEO of any major company by believing that "social responsibility" exists. Doesn't the job pretty much select for the type of person who thinks the world owes them $20+ million a year? With that said - it's dumb to blame the puppet for the acts of the ventriloquist.
- XorNot 1y ago
- selcuka 1y agoIt is possible that people think that the valuation would be even worse if she wasn't the CEO. Unlikely, but possible.
- rendaw 1y agoGP is specifically responding to > Remarkably inept. She did exactly what she was hired for. The plan was terrible, but she executed it as well as expected. It's hard to see any ineptitude.
- xnx 1y ago> her legacy will forever be stained Where can I sell my legacy for $6 million/year?
- belter 1y agoI will do it for half that price....
- geodel 1y agoDon't wait. Pick up your phone and Call Elon right now as this position is filling up fast.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- abirch 1y agoMy question is where does she go from here? Like if she became my CEO, I'd really worry about my company/job.
- rtkwe 1y agoDepends on how likely you think it is she's a puppet CEO for a drug crazed, edge lord, owner or if she'll actually be allowed to do the job.
- pavlov 1y agoShe’s 62 years old. She can just retire.
- snickerdoodle12 1y agoInvest the 6mil and enjoy a carefree life?
- deathanatos 1y ago$6M/y, for 2 years. $12M. I'd take the carefree life.
- mcphage 1y ago(1) She had no power (2) If she did have power, nothing good happened during her tenure, so what would she even be thanked for?
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoI'm not suggesting she should be thanked. I'm suggesting that the failures listed are hard to ascribe to her ineptitude.
- anonymars 1y agoRight but the point was: > *I love all the replies on Twitter thanking her* but during her time the valuation dropped 80% and they were suing advertisers for not advertising. Remarkably inept. What was there to thank her for?
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoNothing! That's why I didn't comment on that. I commented on "remarkably inept."
- anonymars 1y agoGotcha. I guess another episode of "both participants think the other is crazy" My read wasn't that the "inept" was specifically her, but rather the leadership of the company at the time in general (for which, regardless, she is being thanked on Twitter). In other words, either (1) she was a figurehead that didn't do anything and thanking her is stupid (2) she wasn't a figurehead and actually was in charge, in which case thanking her is still stupid because such leadership was inept (suing their advertisers, etc.)
- jauntywundrkind 1y agoReally good call out. Hitting someone from above & below seems not quite square. In my view, there was plenty of opportunity to make a mark & do things, even with a ultra involved Musk. But this person didn't bring much product leadership, didn't have a vision for the product. Having good business relationships might have been its own core competency, but whether Linda's fault or no, suing and going after businesses to try to score some vengeance for your own terrible behavior, and maybe coerce some people back: that's a terrible tactless look, that one would hope a leader like Linda could have helped steer away from.
- babypuncher 1y agoI don't think this is what was happening. It's weird that people are thanking her when she functionally did nothing of value while the company has been spiraling. Either she was complicit in the whole thing, or she really did nothing at all. In either case, what is there for the users to thank?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- olalonde 1y agoYou may not like Elon Musk but he's doing remarkably well for someone who is "clearly off the rails".
- feoren 1y agoYes, corruption pays. Although if "doing remarkably well" means being addicted to ketamine, having many exes and children who refuse to speak with you, tanking multiple businesses to the point that your products get sabotaged just for being associated with you, getting booed off stages, licking the boots of fascists in the hope they'll let you call them "daddy", paying people to play online games for you to impress nerds (unsuccessfully, instead getting online-bullied for it), etc., etc., then I think I'd rather not "do remarkably well", thank you very much. Elon does not seem like a happy man. Is money the only points humans score themselves by? It's like watching someone bragging about getting the highest ever score at a game that they hate.
- AlexandrB 1y ago> licking the boots of fascists in the hope they'll let you call them "daddy" Which fascists?
- therouwboat 1y agoGerman far-right party AfD?
- blockmarker 1y ago[flagged]
- lawlessone 1y agoThey are fascist.
- therouwboat 1y agoWhat does sexual orientation or adopted daughter have to do it?
- scyzoryk_xyz 1y agoShe was hired to perform stunt, a nose-dive with the company. Folks hired for something like that aren’t in it for “legacy”.
- oooyay 1y agoThere's a market for CEOs that are "puppets" or managed by another CEO. In that way I doubt her reputation is necessarily stained as anyone making that much money lives in a different world and under different terms than (presumably) you and I do.
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoOh sure, I have no doubt she can get another cushy job if she wants it. I just mean that she has revealed herself as a coward at best, and a deplorable snake at worst.
- Onavo 1y agoNo, she's just helping to sculpt the glass cliff.
- librasteve 1y agowell, yes. but she now has a much enriched resume
- sdegutis 1y ago> her legacy will forever be stained I would like to believe that people can change over time.
- DonHopkins 1y agoShe had one job, and that was to get Musk to keep his fucking mouth shut, at which she failed spectacularly.
- Imnimo 1y agoThe way I see it, her job had two parts - reign in Elon, and then run the show. But she couldn't (or wasn't interested in) doing the first part, and so her tenure was a failure. Gwynne Shotwell at SpaceX does a great job at both, by contrast.
- egl2020 1y agoShotwell is amazing. She runs SpaceX, which is rocket science, and she has to manage Musk, which is harder than rocket science.
- npc_anon 1y agoWhat legacy? She's not a well known public figure. She ran the ad department at NBC. Is now very rich and at age 61, close enough to retirement age.
- recursive 1y agoIf you have enough money, any age can be retirement age. The whole concept of "retirement" is really for the working class anyway.
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoDo you not think someone who ran the ad department at NBC has a reputation? "Legacy" doesn't mean "guy-on-the-street's perception of you."
- jazzyjackson 1y ago?? I don't guess a guy on the street would have ever spared a thought for the head of NBC's ad department.
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoCorrect, which does not mean she doesn't have a legacy.
- npc_anon 1y agoThat's exactly what it does mean. If you're not famous, you have no legacy.
- pharrington 1y agoLegacy means having a lasting impact on society or culture. As another example, the average Joe Schmoe has no clue that Fabrice Bellard even exists, yet Bellard inarguably has one helluva legacy. On the other hand, there are many people who are famous, but will probably leave no legacy.
- thaumasiotes 1y ago> It's weird that you say both she had no material power and also seem to imply the valuation drop and lawsuits were due to her ineptitude? Why is that weird? Say you have a company operating normally. The CEO dies and isn't replaced. Do you think it's weird for the company's value to drop?
- trimbo 1y ago> her legacy will forever be stained Interesting. My hot take is 99% of the time non-founder CEOs end up on the dustbin of history, successful or unsuccessful. Terry Semel. John Akers. John Sculley, Carly Fiorina. Except among those of us in tech, all are now long forgotten failures. Even Gil Amelio, who made one of the most genius acquisitions ever, was fired and his name lost to the sands of time. My bet is nobody's going to remember Tim Cook or Sundar or Satya in 50 years, maybe even 20. Possibly the only non-founder CEO who has made a real legacy in the last 100 years is Elon. I would also say TJ Watson Jr. but I very much wonder if that many HN commenters know who he is!
- ocdtrekkie 1y agoI think the founders tend to have a love for the business and a long-term plan for it. Followup CEOs are more about the stock performance and happy to sell it for parts if it serves their bonus. Sundar and Satya took all of the strengths of those respective companies and burned them to the ground. Made a lot of money doing it, stockholders love them, but they're pale husks of their former businesses.
- Civitello 1y agoPerhaps if there was success she would have had no material power and not have been responsible for the success.