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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

#671
post #568

It's either this or one of its competitors rises to take them on at some point and we get a bifurcated society where specific companies cater to specific politics. That may be unavoidable anyways. I think people outside the SV bubble (I grew up there, don't live there anymore) don't realize how hated and despised their censorship policies really are. Musk has his pulse on that, so I'm happy to see him step in and sha…

Outside of the SV bubble people have actual lives that don't resolve around tech companies. Until someone shows actual evidence with real numbers behind it it's hard to take the whole "people don't realize how much people do or think X" seriously.

Most people get their information and communicate through internet tech companies.

If they think the information is censored by tech companies, they'll care a lot about that!

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

#672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think Elon will provide a valuable counter-balance to the current monoculture that drives Twitter. But I do not believe Elon in of himself can really resolve Twitter's ills (by my subjective assessment). Twitter and other social networks are ultimately reflections of parts of humanity. Us humans have our biases and our drives that don't just go away. You can obviously (and should ) tweak the product to incentivi…

I recommend this paper: https://philpapers.org/archive/NGUHTG.pdf or this podcast on the same topic: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/25/podcasts/transcript-ezra-... Social media is a mirror in the same way that baseball is a mirror. Individual personalities are tested and the fact we're playing it is because we're human, but the rules of baseball are not the rules of life. When we're playing baseball we're doing some…

Baseball is a game, and a little bit of "relating to each other or spending time together" (which is why there are sometimes brawls).

Twitter is "relating to each other or spending time together" to a much larger extent, even though some people are using it as a game or (more commonly) a business.

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

#673
post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside of the SV bubble people have actual lives that don't resolve around tech companies. Until someone shows actual evidence with real numbers behind it it's hard to take the whole "people don't realize how much people do or think X" seriously.

As someone who lives in the midwest, very disconnected from the SV bubble, this is spot on. I know several conservative-minded people that absolutely care about the censorship and policies SV companies push and despise them for it.

And yet, they all have Facebook, Google, and Apple accounts. You can hate them all you want, but you're not going to change them by shoveling money into their pockets. They care enough to bitch, but not enough to do anything about it.

These people who hate Twitter probably don't even use Twitter. If you're not interesting or important, then nobody on Twitter cares what you have to say. It's not like Facebook, where you can argue politics with someone from high school. A nobody on Twitter is just screaming at the clouds.

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

#675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, wha?

If you're wondering about the neutrality premise. The furthest ~25% on the left and right have an increasingly extreme, partisan, borderline psychotic view of the world that you're either with us or against us. That polarization has become radically more aggressive over the past decade. Just to use a simple example: someone might might say it's not enough to not oppose men becoming women and dominating female swimmin…

I haven't encountered a single person in my young, left-wing, NYC bubble that demands I actively support trans women in female sport leagues, as opposed to not opposing them. I don't even know what the difference is between these things (does active support mean lobbying or volunteering?).

I do, however, have some family members that demand I actively oppose this, and get very mad when I profess neutrality.

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

#676
post #539

Weird that Elon musk would do something like this I assumed he would optimize how he spends his time. He mentioned once that he sometimes sleeps/slept at the factory. I had a similar thought on Putin: as long as the war is ongoing he has less time to do other things. When Biden took over trump I also thought that bidens team might be able to do more change than the trump team because he fired so many and golfed often…

This is just a 2022 version of a billionaire buying a newspaper. Not shocking.

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

#677
post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recommend this paper: https://philpapers.org/archive/NGUHTG.pdf or this podcast on the same topic: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/25/podcasts/transcript-ezra-... Social media is a mirror in the same way that baseball is a mirror. Individual personalities are tested and the fact we're playing it is because we're human, but the rules of baseball are not the rules of life. When we're playing baseball we're doing some…

Baseball is a game, and a little bit of "relating to each other or spending time together" (which is why there are sometimes brawls). Twitter is "relating to each other or spending time together" to a much larger extent, even though some people are using it as a game or (more commonly) a business.

Yes, twitter has more interpersonal than baseball does, but the points system looms large over every word.

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

#678
I think people are really over-analyzing this move. I think it's motivated by prestige, not money, nor is free speech the heart of the matter.

Twitter is a stagnant company. They have thousands of engineers that in the span of a decade don't seem to produce much at all, nothing visible or memorable anyway. Long-lasting Twitter problems (culture, spam, algorithm issues) never seem addressed. User growth is stagnating as Twitter fails to appeal to "normies" in a way Facebook and other networks can.

A perfect target for Musk to come in, do a few sweeping changes, and get out. Thereby proving once again that he gets shit done where others can't. Case closed.

It doesn't take much. People have been begging for an edit button for a decade. If he'd get only that feature implemented, it will be remembered forever.

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

#679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since when is "published" a meaningful quality barrier to content? Any idiot with a WP site can "publish" a "news story". Besides, if I reply to your tweet, "My child just died in a fire." with an article about how fire deaths are among the most painful ways to die, it doesn't really matter much how "published" that "news story" is, it's hateful and has no place on the Internet.

> it's hateful and has no place on the Internet. Well that’s where we (you and I, but also us collectively as a country, it seems) disagree. I don’t care that it’s hateful, and I think it should have a place on the internet, and so long as we allow monopolies on the internet, then it needs to have a place on whatever monopoly platform there is. Anyone who thinks they should be deciding what is “hateful and has no pla…

And yet, you're a long time, heavy-ish poster on the more heavily moderated Hacker News.

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

#680
post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: have any far left politicians/celebrities/blue checkmark people been banned from twitter?

What do you consider "far left"? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_suspensions

This link answers my question - thanks.

Far left is the opposite of far right, for which we can all point to many of them that have been banned from twitter.

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