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Or maybe the unelected moronic clown running it went in with a chainsaw like when he took over twitter. Giving zero f*cks for the massive harm caused or the le

Or maybe the unelected moronic clown running it went in with a chainsaw like when he took over twitter. Giving zero f*cks for the massive harm caused or the legality of it.

Aeglaecia 10mo ago
I don't think hanlon's razor applies to billionaires , unless the peter principle holds true all the way to the very top
- Nasrudith 10mo ago
  Why wouldn't Peter Principle apply just because the magical financial threshold is crossed? This is Peter Principle in a textbook way, a promotion from managing companies to managing the government.
  - Aeglaecia 10mo ago
    my original thesis is wrong - while musk may have petered up to the top, that doesnt imply his actions must also be attributed to stupidity. the error in the thesis is conflation of stupidity with the raw brutal strength of cancer
  - 7bit 10mo ago
    Was he ever competent in something, tho?
    - watersb 10mo ago
      Ah. That would be the Dilbert Principle: > Unlike the Peter principle, the promoted individuals were not particularly good at any job they previously had, so awarding them a supervisory position is a way to remove them from the productive workflow. > An earlier formulation of this effect was known as Putt's Law (1981), credited to the pseudonymous author Archibald Putt ("Technology is dominated by two types of people, those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand."). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert_principle
eru 10mo ago
Well, for Twitter it's fine. It's a private company, and the shareholders can only blame themselves for the management they put in charge. (From a broader society point of view, I'm a bit sad that they didn't actually manage to run Twitter into the ground. I think Twitter's a net-negative for humanity. But that's a different topic. People obviously like using it.)
- leosanchez 10mo ago
  Not just Twitter almost all of social media apps are net negative for humanity.
  - theoreticalmal 10mo ago
    Except Hacker News :)
    - iwdnqindjwn 10mo ago
      [dead]
    - saulpw 10mo ago
      The things that make social media net-negative--advertising, infinite scroll, global scale--aren't part of HN. Facebook wasn't net-negative when it was just a website that a few million people used to post semi-publicly with their community.
      - rationalist 10mo ago
        Don't forget "personalized" feed/home.
        etempleton 10mo ago
        Once content begins being served by algorithm social networks start taking a nose dive in terms of quality and user experience and they slowly spiral into lowest common denominator smut. It juices engagement and therefore advertising dollars for a time, but slowly half of users start to recognize the vapidness of it all and disengage for good.
UltraSane 10mo ago
Musk is uniquely stupid and arrogant for refusing to understand very complex systems before making radical changes to them. This behavior directly led to outages at Twitter after he bought it.
- pennomi 10mo ago
  If only that truly was a unique trait…
- etempleton 10mo ago
  I do think Musk correctly identified excess staff and irresponsible spending, but where he screwed up was being his toxic self which drove away even more of the audience and almost every big advertiser.
  - UltraSane 10mo ago
    Musk fired people before understanding what they did at Twitter. The best example is how he fired a Twitter employee who criticized him but it turned out to be the owner of a company Twitter bought and he had enormous legal protection and when Musk found this out he was suddenly much nicer to him.
  - firesteelrain 10mo ago
    And Twitter is running fine without all the excess staff
    - etempleton 10mo ago
      I mean, I don’t think it makes money and it is a cesspool of misinformation, hate, porn, and bots, but technically, it is fine.
      - firesteelrain 9mo ago
        It has had revenue declines and moderation problems, but it is still operating at internet scale, serving hundreds of millions of users, generating billions in annual revenue, and remaining technically stable. That’s not ‘fine,’ but it’s also not a failed or non-functional system.
etempleton 10mo ago
It was staffed with walking examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect. People who knew very little about the departments or the work that they were cutting but enough to assume they knew more than people who had spent their life working there. That requires a special level of arrogance. They went in with the idea that all of these people at this organization are lazy and stupid and so everything they didn’t understand must be a result of one of those things or the other.

Or maybe the unelected moronic clown running it went in with a chainsaw like when he took over twitter. Giving zero f*cks for the massive harm caused or the legality of it.

Aeglaecia 10mo ago

I don't think hanlon's razor applies to billionaires , unless the peter principle holds true all the way to the very top

Nasrudith 10mo ago
Why wouldn't Peter Principle apply just because the magical financial threshold is crossed? This is Peter Principle in a textbook way, a promotion from managing companies to managing the government.
- Aeglaecia 10mo ago
  my original thesis is wrong - while musk may have petered up to the top, that doesnt imply his actions must also be attributed to stupidity. the error in the thesis is conflation of stupidity with the raw brutal strength of cancer
- 7bit 10mo ago
  Was he ever competent in something, tho?
  - watersb 10mo ago
    Ah. That would be the Dilbert Principle: > Unlike the Peter principle, the promoted individuals were not particularly good at any job they previously had, so awarding them a supervisory position is a way to remove them from the productive workflow. > An earlier formulation of this effect was known as Putt's Law (1981), credited to the pseudonymous author Archibald Putt ("Technology is dominated by two types of people, those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand."). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert_principle

eru 10mo ago

Well, for Twitter it's fine. It's a private company, and the shareholders can only blame themselves for the management they put in charge. (From a broader society point of view, I'm a bit sad that they didn't actually manage to run Twitter into the ground. I think Twitter's a net-negative for humanity. But that's a different topic. People obviously like using it.)

leosanchez 10mo ago
Not just Twitter almost all of social media apps are net negative for humanity.
- theoreticalmal 10mo ago
  Except Hacker News :)
  - iwdnqindjwn 10mo ago
    [dead]
  - saulpw 10mo ago
    The things that make social media net-negative--advertising, infinite scroll, global scale--aren't part of HN. Facebook wasn't net-negative when it was just a website that a few million people used to post semi-publicly with their community.
    - rationalist 10mo ago
      Don't forget "personalized" feed/home.
      - etempleton 10mo ago
        Once content begins being served by algorithm social networks start taking a nose dive in terms of quality and user experience and they slowly spiral into lowest common denominator smut. It juices engagement and therefore advertising dollars for a time, but slowly half of users start to recognize the vapidness of it all and disengage for good.

UltraSane 10mo ago

Musk is uniquely stupid and arrogant for refusing to understand very complex systems before making radical changes to them. This behavior directly led to outages at Twitter after he bought it.

pennomi 10mo ago
If only that truly was a unique trait…
etempleton 10mo ago
I do think Musk correctly identified excess staff and irresponsible spending, but where he screwed up was being his toxic self which drove away even more of the audience and almost every big advertiser.
- UltraSane 10mo ago
  Musk fired people before understanding what they did at Twitter. The best example is how he fired a Twitter employee who criticized him but it turned out to be the owner of a company Twitter bought and he had enormous legal protection and when Musk found this out he was suddenly much nicer to him.
- firesteelrain 10mo ago
  And Twitter is running fine without all the excess staff
  - etempleton 10mo ago
    I mean, I don’t think it makes money and it is a cesspool of misinformation, hate, porn, and bots, but technically, it is fine.
    - firesteelrain 9mo ago
      It has had revenue declines and moderation problems, but it is still operating at internet scale, serving hundreds of millions of users, generating billions in annual revenue, and remaining technically stable. That’s not ‘fine,’ but it’s also not a failed or non-functional system.

etempleton 10mo ago

It was staffed with walking examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect. People who knew very little about the departments or the work that they were cutting but enough to assume they knew more than people who had spent their life working there. That requires a special level of arrogance. They went in with the idea that all of these people at this organization are lazy and stupid and so everything they didn’t understand must be a result of one of those things or the other.