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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

#931

Post by Talanes »

martin_a wrote: post #711
deanCommie wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: Twitter is the only social network I use where I get an unfiltered balance of ideas big and small - CEOs and random Joes. It's where memes are born and proliferate everywhere else (other than TikTok). Twitter WORKS. If it's profitable, it doesn't need more growth. Facebook got ruined because it thought everyone's parents and grandparents should be on it, and now that's the only people on it. My parents…

> If it's profitable, it doesn't need more growth. Stakeholders will think otherwise. > An edit button by the way would RUIN it because people who have gone viral with a bad take would simply edit it away. Just add a change history like (I think) FB has. No big deal.

>Just add a change history like (I think) FB has. No big deal.

If the Hacker News crowd isn't even sure that the feature exists, there's no way the majority of users are actually checking it. That may solve the problem for the most careful of users, but the conversation is going to be driven by the people who just react to what's in front of them.

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

#932

Post by bruhhh »

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…

a proof that he get shit down? Yah just like he got the underground tunnel project don-... oh wait, he ended up building 10% of the original plan and it sucked

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

#933

Post by chmod600 »

oneplane wrote: post #840
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…

The two word combination "Free speech" is so Americanised that it needs a bunch of asterisks to define what it's supposed to mean. Is it the legal thing where the government isn't allowed to arbitrarily censor citizens? Or is it the "I want everything I think to be received by everyone" that a good chunk of people seem to think it means? Or is it "I want to be a dick and everyone has to keep dealing with my shit"? As…

"Or is it the "I want everything I think to be received by everyone" that a good chunk of people seem to think it means?"

Tweets aren't forced upon anyone. Twitter isn't a megaphone in a library. It's a flexible medium that allows you to follow the people who write/retweet stuff you want to read, and ignore others.

Face it: if you interfere between Sally who writes something she wants Bob to read, and Bob who wants to read what Sally wrote, that's censorship.

(No, I am not making a legal argument. And no, I'm not interested in exploring extreme exceptions to the general principle.)

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

#934

Post by [deleted] »

devmunchies wrote: post #928
spurgu wrote: post #859

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love it! Thanks for sharing, I just discovered Edward Abbey. > Abbey also left instructions on what to do with his remains: Abbey wanted his body transported in the bed of a pickup truck and wished to be buried as soon as possible. He did not want to be embalmed or placed in a coffin. Instead, he preferred to be placed inside of an old sleeping bag and requested that his friends disregard all state laws concerning bu…

if you're interested in some more hot takes, try Pentti Linkola's "Can Life Prevail". Be warned about his views of democracy and the US. He opposed the consumerism of the US and sees democracy as "me, me, me" politics, where people vote for what they want now (or what they're told they want) rather doing the uncomfortable thing today for the sake of tomorrow.

[deleted]

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

#935

Post by cryptonector »

elicash wrote: post #13

He filed forms that he was going to be a passive investor, and the same day joined the board after discussion that had been in the works for weeks. This is strike two on misleading investors. I haven't seen analysis on whether it was illegal, but I wouldn't want somebody like him on my board even if it succeeded in keeping him from buying up more stock. With him on the outside, maybe he causes more trouble than on th…

Does an investor who declares himself to be passive lose forever the ability to become active?

Suppose he comes in saying "hey, I'm going to be a passive investor" and the subtext is "funny you didn't notice me amassing so much of your stock", meaning "I could yet become an active investor and do a hostile takeover".

It's not farfetched that management might react to that by saying "we'd rather you become an active investor, and here, you can take a seat on the board if you promise you won't mount a takeover".

His intent could have been "passive for now" and mgmt maybe immediately changed his mind. Would that be a crime, or a violation of any kind, or misleading? Would saying "passive" commit him to being passive even if mgmt preferred him to be active? How would other investors get misled by any of this? Couldn't he just as quickly have decided to get out of TWTR and sold his shares, and if so, wouldn't that possibly have done more harm to other investors? What's the law say about this?

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

#936

Post by wilg »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #488
NelsonMinar wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One problem is the culture he's created at his other companies. "Black Tesla employees describe a culture of racism: ‘I was at my breaking point’ " https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-03-25/black-tesl... "California sues Tesla, alleging rampant racism at factory" https://www.npr.org/2022/02/15/1080884899/california-sues-te... "Black workers accused Tesla of racism for years. Now California is stepping in" htt…

It's remarkable how all the replies to my message here completely ignore the comments in the articles made by actual Tesla employees who've been victims of racism.

To me, it doesn't seem likely (from the evidence I've seen) that Elon has created a culture of racism at Tesla such that it led to some blue-collar auto workers making racist jokes and comments to each other in the factory.

I am sure that happened, and it is awful, and Tesla should answer for it in court and through the proper channels. But to some degree, this seems like the type of thing that (unfortunately) can happen in an environment like that. It doesn't seem like there is much indication that is a part of Tesla at a high level or happening in Elon's other companies.

(Also all 3 of those articles refer to the same lawsuit.)

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

#937

Post by cryptonector »

srameshc wrote: post #812

I suspect it's about 2024 elections. In my opinion Elon doesn't like the current government and likes a change.

Or maybe he wants his Starship launch plans approved. "Oh hi lol [I'm going to be a PITA to you all until I get what I want]"

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

#938

Post by chmod600 »

csee wrote: post #929
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.

> 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 problem is that in the real world you can't silo off dicks like that. Bad opinions (e.g. racial hatred) can spread through the society and cause tremendous damage. If you're going to argue for zero content moderation, the only good faith way to do so is to first admit that this could be a problem, and secondl…

I've been on the internet for quite some time, and I just haven't seen a lot of the bad stuff, or even the dumb stuff, that people say is unavoidable.

I struggle to think of examples, and the worst ones are things that might be described as "sounds kinda racist but the person who wrote it is probably not the cross-burning type".

Sure, I could find it if I went looking. But I don't.

You could argue that this is because of some kind of benevolent filtering, and I'll grant that dang (of HN) does a great job. But I think it's mostly because I don't delve into the kinds of places where that would happen.

So I'm honestly just not sure what you mean when something will devolve into 8chan. I've heard of that but I don't know anyone on there, so I don't even really know what it is or how the devolution might happen. Mechanically, what would take place? Would I follow a friend, and then start getting weird flat-Earth stuff because of their second cousin?

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

#939

Post by jayd16 »

caffeine wrote: post #428

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!

What are you guys trying to post that can't be posted on Twitter or on some other private service?

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

#940

Post by csee »

chmod600 wrote: post #938
csee wrote: post #929

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 problem is that in the real world you can't silo off dicks like that. Bad opinions (e.g. racial hatred) can spread through the society and cause tremendous damage. If you're going to argue for zero content moderation, the only good faith way to do so is to first admit that this could be a problem, and secondl…

I've been on the internet for quite some time, and I just haven't seen a lot of the bad stuff, or even the dumb stuff, that people say is unavoidable. I struggle to think of examples, and the worst ones are things that might be described as "sounds kinda racist but the person who wrote it is probably not the cross-burning type". Sure, I could find it if I went looking. But I don't. You could argue that this is becaus…

There is automated moderation of Twitter, Youtube, etc, that aggressively blocks or downweights such comments, so it is not surprising that you don't find it. Go and make a Twitter account and start spewing racial hatred, and see what happens. Do you remember all the anti-semitic crap in the Youtube comments from a few years ago (all the triple parentheses etc) that are now mostly gone thanks to AI moderation? The comments section is now actually alright. So your argument is based on the incorrect premise that the sanitized nature of these online spaces is organic. It is actually heavily engineered.

> Mechanically, what would take place?

You would likely get three things:

- Informal networks of political extremists with a recruitment platform of global reach. Similar to r/genzedong in extremism, but far worse. Think ISIS, The Base.

- A tool that authoritarian regimes can use to exercise influence over open societies via coordinated misinformation and sowing division. This centralized effort to divide Western societies via coordinated social media manipulation is already being done.

- A society overtaken by conspiracy theories, with unpredictable consequences. Empirically, sunlight isn't the best disinfectant.

I make these claims by observing the local gradient and extrapolating.

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