Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors

sec.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

891–900 of 1001 posts

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

#891

Post by kumarvvr »

PostOnce wrote: post #698
fleddr wrote: post #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…

"stagnant company" Why must every company sustain boundless growth and 24-hour engagement? Change and growth for their own sake can be cancers. Twitter does what it does and people like it (as seen by the fact that they all use it), yet armchair generals cry out that twitter's refusal to turn into "not twitter" is somehow a failure of engineering and management, or some form of incompetence. So, I disagree, I guess.

I think the correct word is a "changing" company. In a static environment, without competing products like IG, FB etc, Twitter can afford to stay the way it is and probably do incremental improvements.

However, in a competitive environment, and with proof that the market is expanding (Newer generation of kids are using social media), if it fails to capture the market, the company will die out.

So, there is this need to focus on user number growth.

I am sure that if the company was only adding older people, the stock would be punished inspite of growing numbers.

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

#892

Post by [deleted] »

whimsicalism wrote: post #850
nopenopenopeno wrote: post #848

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It means nobody is allowed to police public discourse and that anyone who wants to be a dick can be a dick and if others don’t want to deal with it they can ignore it. The only complications have always been situations where private enterprise dominates or impedes on public discourse.

Sure, now you're just laundering the explanation into what public discourse is.

[deleted]

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

#893

Post by ehnto »

fleddr wrote: post #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…

> They have thousands of engineers that in the span of a decade don't seem to produce much at all

I have always wondered. Are there "projects" adjascent the core product that I'm not aware of? I can understand the infrastructure side of the work is pretty busy, but feature development and bugfixing don't require that many people even in a fast paced product development phase. What's everyone doing?

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

#894

Post by nullc »

PostOnce wrote: post #698
fleddr wrote: post #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…

"stagnant company" Why must every company sustain boundless growth and 24-hour engagement? Change and growth for their own sake can be cancers. Twitter does what it does and people like it (as seen by the fact that they all use it), yet armchair generals cry out that twitter's refusal to turn into "not twitter" is somehow a failure of engineering and management, or some form of incompetence. So, I disagree, I guess.

Well, if they're not going to develop new things they could take big hunk of the billion dollars a year that they're spending on it and return it to the shareholders.

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

#895

Post by johnny22 »

pengaru wrote: post #781
olliej wrote: post #770

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 217 million active daily users? It is "only" $~80 million in the US, I'd love to know how a quarter of the US population using it daily represents an insignificant user base.

> I'd love to know how a quarter of the US population using it daily represents an insignificant user base I'd love to know which variant of the English language treats "all" as analogous to not "insignificant".

I read it as "all the people who use twitter" not "all people use twitter"

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

#896

Post by pcmoney »

dnissley wrote: post #887
pcmoney wrote: post #837

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5yr returns: Twtr: 235% Fb: 65%

Excellent. Now do returns since IPO through April 1st, 2022: Twtr: -5% Fb: +488%

Literally doesnt matter unless you have been holding since 2006. I invested in twtr in Feb 2020. Its been a ride

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

#897

Post by misiti3780 »

gnicholas wrote: post #619
dmamills wrote: post #24

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

This development makes Trump being reinstated on Twitter more likely. His reinstatement would make a Trump presidency less likely, IMO. Most people (or at least HNers) would agree that decreasing the likelihood of another Trump presidency would be a good thing.

totally agree. trump not being on twitter is increasing any chance he has in 2024

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

#898

Post by ehnto »

PostOnce wrote: post #698
fleddr wrote: post #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…

"stagnant company" Why must every company sustain boundless growth and 24-hour engagement? Change and growth for their own sake can be cancers. Twitter does what it does and people like it (as seen by the fact that they all use it), yet armchair generals cry out that twitter's refusal to turn into "not twitter" is somehow a failure of engineering and management, or some form of incompetence. So, I disagree, I guess.

I agree on one hand, it's a perversion of business that seems to manifest in venture capital bubbles that growth is never satisfied. On the other hand, what are they doing with all that talent?

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

#899

Post by fastball »

consumer451 wrote: post #867
caffeine wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant every word (and more.)

Honest question, and not snark: We have 4chan and 8chan. Those are absolute free speech. Don't we already know how "absolute free speech" works out on digital platforms? Why do we need another one? Or am I missing something major here?

I guess the problem with those platforms is that most privately censored speech is still the actual hate speech stuff like Nazism/racism/homophobia/etc, so those platforms have taken on all of those aspects because those people have nowhere else to go.

But Twitter is not already a cesspool of those things, and I guess the feeling is that loosening up on the reigns a little bit won't suddenly cause Twitter to turn into a neo-nazi dominated platform. You'll just have things like not banning Donald Trump or not squashing factually correct NYPost articles – which of course are things that you can still debate the merits of but are different from Twitter becoming 4chan.

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

#900

Post by misiti3780 »

malwarebytess wrote: post #220

Fascinating to me the level of vitriol that spews from people on this guy. He's just a guy, you know?

Someone said it better than me, but a lot of HN users are smart engineers and are basically jealous of what he has achieved. The pile on hate of Elon Musk in here is hilarious to watch, and it happens like clockwork.
Post reply on HN