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Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors

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Re: Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors

#461

This is great news! Twitter and the rest of the rotten and censorious platforms could use a proper shake-up. Hope the authoritarians and political repressives and anyone who works on the content moderation team all resign in protest! Good riddance!

jfyi, if this is in reference to a certain viral tweet going around, you got trolled.

Re: Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors

#462
post #418

This is the biggest thing to happen to twitter since the trump presidency. Both big for twitter, and awful for society.

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. That’s why free speech policies shouldn’t be dictated by partisan concerns. You never know who will be in control of your social media platform in the future.

[deleted]

Re: Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors

#463
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without irony, you probably would have less censorship than should a private company own it. Is that a good thing? Not sure. Seems like spam would overtake it quickly.

Sure, until an American president decides to ban another country's account for disrespecting him, or use it for leverage in negotiations, or have the NSA bulk scan their citizens private messages for 'terrorist' communications, or have the algorithm bias other country's newsfeeds in favor of American propaganda. Twitter is a global platform and much of the world wouldn't trust the US as far as they could throw an Ame…

> Sure, until an American president decides to ban

Well, that is what the court system, and the supreme court is for.

The court system puts very strong restrictions on what the government is able to do, regarding speech.

Sure, maybe a president would want to do something. And the courts, which have a very established history of protecting speech rights would stop them.

A better solution, though, would be to make a new law that requires twitter to follow similar standards as the government has to follow, in the same way how we put strong restrictions on what telephone companies are allowed to do

(So don't give me any objections about how such laws would be illegal, when we already have them! Use our phone laws as the model, to do something similar, if not exact the same).

Re: Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors

#464

This is great news! Twitter and the rest of the rotten and censorious platforms could use a proper shake-up. Hope the authoritarians and political repressives and anyone who works on the content moderation team all resign in protest! Good riddance!

His family are in the club, he's only playing a role. And its not going to be about increasing freedom, sorry.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140809023548/http://www.forbes...

In South Africa, my father had a private plane we’d fly in incredibly dangerous weather and barely make it back. This is going to sound slightly crazy, but my father also had a share in an Emerald mine in Zambia. I was 15 and really wanted to go with him but didn’t realize how dangerous it was. I couldn’t find my passport so I ended up grabbing my brother’s – which turned out to be six months overdue! So we had this planeload of contraband and an overdue passport from another person. There were AK-47s all over the place and I’m thinking, “Man, this could really go bad.”

His grandfather (Dr Joshua Haldeman) was head of Technocracy Inc:

https://www.technocracy.news/shock-elon-musks-grandfather-wa...

Re: Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors

#465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does Elon run his companies any differently than the vast majority of tech companies out there?

He calls himself of founder of some things he never founded!

People are so obsessed with that detail. Elon and JB wanted to start their own company and they had the money.

Tesla had no money and was going nowhere without Musk.

Instead of creating his own company he agree to join forces and basically fund Tesla.

Seems like not just starting a competitor was the nice thing to do. As doing so would have 100% doomed Tesla.

Re: Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors

#466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the person, doesn't it? If I were at Twitter, I would be excited about this. I would be expecting the work to become more challenging, but also more important.

Praise for Elon tends to diminish the closer you get to him. He’s kind of notorious for being a bad boss; impulsive, poor temperament, and petty. Even if you like his achievements, chances are you would very much not enjoy having him as a boss.

This is flat out not true. JB, Shotwell, Mueller, Riseman and I could name many more are mostly positive on him.

Re: Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors

#467

you're right, hopefully all those political woke people will go elsewhere. Then they can be replaced by people who believe in minimal oversight and free speech, and then twitter will be truly apolitical.

I take your point--that the choice to stop smothering people in woke content is itself a political decision (for sufficiently abstract notion of "political"), but it seems infinitely better than smothering people in any particular ideological content at all. The woke people can still opt into their own filter bubbles without their ideology being foisted on everyone.

Re: Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors

#468

This is great news! Twitter and the rest of the rotten and censorious platforms could use a proper shake-up. Hope the authoritarians and political repressives and anyone who works on the content moderation team all resign in protest! Good riddance!

It’s easy to call for change without actually having to build any of it.

Odds are zero things change about Twitter’s content policy, as it’s about as permissive as you can get while operating in the US.

There’s a lot less sinister intent than one might think at first blush; Twitter wants users to stick around, banning them is a really bad way to do that.

Re: Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors

#469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His companies compensate engineers below market, does he not? Also- weird take that both of your examples seem to focus on one specific genre of role. I’ve dealt with many more useless software engineering and product managers on a day-to-day basis than HR-types, who are there if you want/need to contact them or in the background if you don’t. Maybe Musk would benefit from them, actually …especially considering Tesla…

Regarding the CA issues, as I noted on a similar comment: > I'm sure this is all 100% true and in no way backlash for Musk's decision to shift operations away from California and very loud criticism of CA's politicians/bureaucrats.

Tesla was found guilty by the court, and other employees have come out with evidence/witnesses of the same experiences and recordings/videos. Of course the state must pursue. The state _should_ have a legal grudge against Tesla -- if it's unsubstantiated, the courts (and Tesla's top-tier legal representation) will absolutely find that.

Also, as a lifelong Texan and a recent Californian, if you don't think Texas will find a way to sink its political might into extracting as much wealth and political favors out of Tesla you are sorely mistaken. If you don't abide by the Texas governments whims, they will shut you down or run you out -- Tesla still isn't allowed to sell Teslas directly in the state, for example, because all car sales must go through a dealership; if you want to buy one, you must go to a different state (even if it was made in the state). Tesla's lobbying this latest legislative session didn't even get close to changing that, the amendment died in committee.

https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/texas-law-keeps-teslas-made...

Re: Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors

#470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parag was extremely lucky to have been appointed CEO despite his lack of qualifications. He's only ever worked at Twitter and was appointed CTO before ever holding a management position. He's not going anywhere because he won't get as lucrative of a gig anywhere else.

This type of career progression interests me. What type of internal politics did Parag have to maneuver to be appointed to these high profile roles? As someone with C-level career aspirations, it makes me wonder if I'm not cut out for the politics. I'm not Machiavellian. Can people make it to C-suite via merit alone?

No merit alone doesn’t work. You absolutely need to be both charismatic and that guy who’s constantly asking their boss what they can do for promotions or more money. Bonus points if you’re tall. That’s pretty much it.
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