8 ms·

Most people were betting on X going under in some way or another within a year. From that POV, it's survival in itself can be seen a success for Musk. I'm genu

Most people were betting on X going under in some way or another within a year. From that POV, it's survival in itself can be seen a success for Musk. I'm genuinely surprised at the amount of people that stuck to it.

Centigonal 1y ago
Whether or not X goes under is almost fully dependent on whether it services its debt. That debt is backstopped by Elon Musk, who has enough assets to service that debt for at least another few decades. Whether or not X goes under is almost entirely one man's choice.
- raydev 1y ago
  The Twitter-purchase debt problem is a lot less relevant now that he's rolled X into xAI. Now X the app gets to tag along with a higher value AI company (or at least it is currently valued much higher due to investors dreaming big).
  - phs318u 1y ago
    Higher value AI company? Not for long if "mechahitler" keeps popping up.
    - raydev 1y ago
      Honestly, after years of hearing that Elon's mishaps and faceplants will actually have a meaningful impact, with no meaningful impact, I'm sure xAI will be fine as long as they stay somewhat competitive.
      - notahacker 1y ago
        Isn't that the point though? In a market of multiple competently-executed chatbots, a entrant whose distinguishing feature is edgelordism isn't likely to stay competitive. There is a market for "like the other chat bots in terms of parsing instructions, but with clumsy ad hoc prompting to make it generate more racist output rather than less racist output" but it isn't a particularly lucrative one Cf Musk's other businesses with lockin effect or massive technical advantages, and in some cases where his politics are largely irrelevant
  - guelo 1y ago
    Investors are insane throwing money at elon's xai at a $75 billion valuation. And knowing that elon is probably taking their cash to pay twitter's debt. How is that possible? That shitty also-ran mechahitler ai is never going to make any money. It makes me suspect that a lot of these VCs are more political than rational.
davidw 1y ago
> I'm genuinely surprised at the amount of people that stuck to it. I thought more people would see a guy doing ... that salute, or things like the antisemitism in Grok in the past few days and say "no", but a huge number of people seem to be able to rationalize things away. I'm with Wil Wheaton https://bsky.app/profile/wilwheaton.net/post/3ltkjyzjb4k2p https://bsky.app/profile/wilwheaton.net/post/3ltkjyzjb4k2p
- petesergeant 1y ago
  I am seriously restricting my inbound and outbound reach by boycotting X. It's a hit I can afford to take, but for some people they'd be making a very foolish choice when that's where their audience and the content they want to read is.
  - davidw 1y ago
    NPR found that they really didn't lose much: https://bsky.app/profile/carlquintanilla.bsky.social/post/3ltkgw5tavs2c https://bsky.app/profile/carlquintanilla.bsky.social/post/3l... But sometimes you have to make some sacrifices in life over your principles. And the more people move, the easier it is for everyone else.
    - petesergeant 1y ago
      NPR's audience is very different from mine (AI researchers and thinkers) though. Some communities seem to have managed the move wholesale: all the cartoonists I like switched, for example.
      - guappa 1y ago
        [flagged]
        MSFT_Edging 1y ago
        The "thinker" is one of the main audiences of twitter now. The Statue PFP, incorrect assumptions about the path, and extreme dunning kruger.
mistermann 1y ago
I joined it about 6 months ago and absolutely love the ~uncensored free for all nature of it! And while the format and content varies in many ways from other sites, one thing they all have in common is millions of humans who cannot distinguish facts from personal opinions. I do not know why but I am absolutely fascinated by the phenomenon, and on Twitter/X you can discuss such things fairly seriously, at least with some people.
- watwut 1y ago
  See, example of a guy thay calls X uncensored despite it literally doing that. Just not to fascists.
- guappa 1y ago
  Censoring people who disagree with you is not the same as no censorship.
- MSFT_Edging 1y ago
  > ~uncensored The term "cis" will still get you a warning while my for-you page has been consistently filling up with more and more far right content. I regularly see blue checks espousing actual jewish-conspiracy antisemitism. Every time something happens to anyone, blue check comments asking if any of the parties were black, sometimes not even asking just assuming and blaming it on black people. Elon has truly created a cesspit Nazi bar of that site.
  - PaulHoule 1y ago
    Which leaves me asking: why are you still there?
    - MSFT_Edging 1y ago
      Some good tech content and the regular thrill of telling racists their mom regrets not getting that abortion.
      - 1y ago
jxjnskkzxxhx 1y ago
Were they? My recollection is that in the tech space a lot of people were saying "it's just an app, why do they need so many people"
- makeitdouble 1y ago
  The "why do they need so many people" were probably in favor of Musk ? On the other side people were already asking why Twitter didn't do more moderation and better filtering (= more people). And we expected that breaking rules would have serious repercussions, which was a foolish assumption as we've seen.
  - jxjnskkzxxhx 1y ago
    > The "why do they need so many people" were probably in favor of Musk ? I can speak for myself. I think Enron Musk is a despicable person, and at the same time I don't understand why a shitty app needs so many people.
    - stirfish 1y ago
      It's an easy (but often wrong) transition from "I don't understand why" to "it must not be necessary".
      - jxjnskkzxxhx 1y ago
        "I don't understand why ..." is a polite way of saying "I have some experience on the matter and have come up the belief that ...". The actual conclusion may still be wrong, but I hope this helps with your reading of my comment.
- pyrale 1y ago
  Tech industry has been perpetually growing in the last decades. That means juniors are always a large share of the tech population, and as any demographic, some are bound to be clueless and still vocal. The issue is that in more stable industries, there would be a larger share of seniors to respond with more grounded takes. In ours, these voices are drowned, especially on relatively anonymous media such as HN.
motorest 1y ago
> Most people were betting on X going under in some way or another within a year. From that POV, it's survival in itself can be seen a success for Musk. Is this where the bar is set now? Not tanking a $40B corporation within a year now passes off as success? Really? You people are desperately grasping at straws.
michaelmrose 1y ago
Virtually nobody said that it would go under in a year because that makes no sense. It's financially possible for it to tread water for years whilst losing money. I don't see how this could be deemed a success when a magic 8 ball or a hamster attached to a giant pile of money could keep it going as long.
- bitlax 1y ago
  Lol the overwhelming tech jerk opinion was that he was firing elite engineers and the site would be unmaintainable as a result, and that he had over-leveraged himself to the point of bankruptcy.
  - michaelmrose 1y ago
    He can't go bankrupt in any sane length of time whilst having the dragon hoard he has. I think you are cherry picking a few folks and assigning them the roles of "the public". He's probably at more risk of falling out a window Soviet style than poverty. It probably is unmaintainable but it was already feature complete at time of purchase.
myko 1y ago
Seems like it is mostly bots and neo-Nazi adjacent folks
rob74 1y ago
Ok, everything can be seen as a success if you set your expectations low enough...
emodendroket 1y ago
I don’t think most people were betting that or if they were they weren’t thinking that hard about it. Musk can run a money loser as a hobby if he likes.

Centigonal 1y ago

Whether or not X goes under is almost fully dependent on whether it services its debt. That debt is backstopped by Elon Musk, who has enough assets to service that debt for at least another few decades. Whether or not X goes under is almost entirely one man's choice.

raydev 1y ago
The Twitter-purchase debt problem is a lot less relevant now that he's rolled X into xAI. Now X the app gets to tag along with a higher value AI company (or at least it is currently valued much higher due to investors dreaming big).
- phs318u 1y ago
  Higher value AI company? Not for long if "mechahitler" keeps popping up.
  - raydev 1y ago
    Honestly, after years of hearing that Elon's mishaps and faceplants will actually have a meaningful impact, with no meaningful impact, I'm sure xAI will be fine as long as they stay somewhat competitive.
    - notahacker 1y ago
      Isn't that the point though? In a market of multiple competently-executed chatbots, a entrant whose distinguishing feature is edgelordism isn't likely to stay competitive. There is a market for "like the other chat bots in terms of parsing instructions, but with clumsy ad hoc prompting to make it generate more racist output rather than less racist output" but it isn't a particularly lucrative one Cf Musk's other businesses with lockin effect or massive technical advantages, and in some cases where his politics are largely irrelevant
- guelo 1y ago
  Investors are insane throwing money at elon's xai at a $75 billion valuation. And knowing that elon is probably taking their cash to pay twitter's debt. How is that possible? That shitty also-ran mechahitler ai is never going to make any money. It makes me suspect that a lot of these VCs are more political than rational.

davidw 1y ago

> I'm genuinely surprised at the amount of people that stuck to it. I thought more people would see a guy doing ... that salute, or things like the antisemitism in Grok in the past few days and say "no", but a huge number of people seem to be able to rationalize things away. I'm with Wil Wheaton https://bsky.app/profile/wilwheaton.net/post/3ltkjyzjb4k2p https://bsky.app/profile/wilwheaton.net/post/3ltkjyzjb4k2p

petesergeant 1y ago
I am seriously restricting my inbound and outbound reach by boycotting X. It's a hit I can afford to take, but for some people they'd be making a very foolish choice when that's where their audience and the content they want to read is.
- davidw 1y ago
  NPR found that they really didn't lose much: https://bsky.app/profile/carlquintanilla.bsky.social/post/3ltkgw5tavs2c https://bsky.app/profile/carlquintanilla.bsky.social/post/3l... But sometimes you have to make some sacrifices in life over your principles. And the more people move, the easier it is for everyone else.
  - petesergeant 1y ago
    NPR's audience is very different from mine (AI researchers and thinkers) though. Some communities seem to have managed the move wholesale: all the cartoonists I like switched, for example.
    - guappa 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - MSFT_Edging 1y ago
        The "thinker" is one of the main audiences of twitter now. The Statue PFP, incorrect assumptions about the path, and extreme dunning kruger.

mistermann 1y ago

I joined it about 6 months ago and absolutely love the ~uncensored free for all nature of it! And while the format and content varies in many ways from other sites, one thing they all have in common is millions of humans who cannot distinguish facts from personal opinions. I do not know why but I am absolutely fascinated by the phenomenon, and on Twitter/X you can discuss such things fairly seriously, at least with some people.

watwut 1y ago
See, example of a guy thay calls X uncensored despite it literally doing that. Just not to fascists.
guappa 1y ago
Censoring people who disagree with you is not the same as no censorship.
MSFT_Edging 1y ago
> ~uncensored The term "cis" will still get you a warning while my for-you page has been consistently filling up with more and more far right content. I regularly see blue checks espousing actual jewish-conspiracy antisemitism. Every time something happens to anyone, blue check comments asking if any of the parties were black, sometimes not even asking just assuming and blaming it on black people. Elon has truly created a cesspit Nazi bar of that site.
- PaulHoule 1y ago
  Which leaves me asking: why are you still there?
  - MSFT_Edging 1y ago
    Some good tech content and the regular thrill of telling racists their mom regrets not getting that abortion.
    - 1y ago

jxjnskkzxxhx 1y ago

Were they? My recollection is that in the tech space a lot of people were saying "it's just an app, why do they need so many people"

makeitdouble 1y ago
The "why do they need so many people" were probably in favor of Musk ? On the other side people were already asking why Twitter didn't do more moderation and better filtering (= more people). And we expected that breaking rules would have serious repercussions, which was a foolish assumption as we've seen.
- jxjnskkzxxhx 1y ago
  > The "why do they need so many people" were probably in favor of Musk ? I can speak for myself. I think Enron Musk is a despicable person, and at the same time I don't understand why a shitty app needs so many people.
  - stirfish 1y ago
    It's an easy (but often wrong) transition from "I don't understand why" to "it must not be necessary".
    - jxjnskkzxxhx 1y ago
      "I don't understand why ..." is a polite way of saying "I have some experience on the matter and have come up the belief that ...". The actual conclusion may still be wrong, but I hope this helps with your reading of my comment.
pyrale 1y ago
Tech industry has been perpetually growing in the last decades. That means juniors are always a large share of the tech population, and as any demographic, some are bound to be clueless and still vocal. The issue is that in more stable industries, there would be a larger share of seniors to respond with more grounded takes. In ours, these voices are drowned, especially on relatively anonymous media such as HN.

motorest 1y ago

> Most people were betting on X going under in some way or another within a year. From that POV, it's survival in itself can be seen a success for Musk. Is this where the bar is set now? Not tanking a $40B corporation within a year now passes off as success? Really? You people are desperately grasping at straws.

michaelmrose 1y ago

Virtually nobody said that it would go under in a year because that makes no sense. It's financially possible for it to tread water for years whilst losing money. I don't see how this could be deemed a success when a magic 8 ball or a hamster attached to a giant pile of money could keep it going as long.

bitlax 1y ago
Lol the overwhelming tech jerk opinion was that he was firing elite engineers and the site would be unmaintainable as a result, and that he had over-leveraged himself to the point of bankruptcy.
- michaelmrose 1y ago
  He can't go bankrupt in any sane length of time whilst having the dragon hoard he has. I think you are cherry picking a few folks and assigning them the roles of "the public". He's probably at more risk of falling out a window Soviet style than poverty. It probably is unmaintainable but it was already feature complete at time of purchase.

myko 1y ago

Seems like it is mostly bots and neo-Nazi adjacent folks

rob74 1y ago

Ok, everything can be seen as a success if you set your expectations low enough...

emodendroket 1y ago

I don’t think most people were betting that or if they were they weren’t thinking that hard about it. Musk can run a money loser as a hobby if he likes.