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

961–970 of 1001 posts

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

#961

Post by singlow »

k__ wrote: post #789
singlow wrote: post #777

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, Elon, lets settle. Let's give you a board seat but you have to promise not to try and buy up controlling shares in the company and privatize it in a hostile takeover.

So, they really think he could improve the value of their shares?

I really don't understand how you pull that from my comment. They are trying to avert a hostile takeover. Elon may not even be interested in making twitter more profitable. It may just be a pet project for him to take over the company and shutter it out of spite or use it to further some other goals. They gave him a board seat to try to get him to back off.

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

#962

Post by mlindner »

jarrettcoggin wrote: post #723
Closi wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk has proven to be a 'get shit done' kind of guy though, so if he did want to push through changes he certainly has the capability to do it.

He often doesn't do things "by the book" and will not wait for what he thinks is unnecessary red-tape. He will skirt around regulations and taunt the process the entire way. We've seen it many times before, and it's always purely in the benefit of whatever company he's helping at the time. He has no problem throwing people/money/etc. at the problem to get the result he wants and if someone so much as says the opposit…

> I personally don't see what benefit he can bring to Twitter other than shaking up the culture. Who knows, he may even come in, take over, and claim to be a founder of Twitter, just like he did with Tesla.

He didn't "come in", in as much as he "made the company". The company was "two guys and some incorporation papers" before Musk's involvement. The company, for all intents and purposes, did not exist before Musk's involvement.

Whether that made him a founder is irrelevant, but it's important to not imply that he just "bought" a company that already had a product. There was no product.

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

#963

Post by mlindner »

heavyset_go wrote: post #821
jarrettcoggin wrote: post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He often doesn't do things "by the book" and will not wait for what he thinks is unnecessary red-tape. He will skirt around regulations and taunt the process the entire way. We've seen it many times before, and it's always purely in the benefit of whatever company he's helping at the time. He has no problem throwing people/money/etc. at the problem to get the result he wants and if someone so much as says the opposit…

> He has no problem throwing people/money/etc. at the problem to get the result he wants and if someone so much as says the opposite, they are removed from the equation (fired, publicly ridiculed, etc.). Not just fired or ridiculed, Musk and Tesla have also tried to have a whistleblower murdered by accusing them of being a mass shooter and having them SWAT'd[1]. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/…

It's amazing what people make up to discredit Musk.

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

#964

Post by mlindner »

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?

Those are free speech but also anonymous. In real free speech you still have to put your name to what you're saying. If you suddenly stuck everyone's real name on every single comment they wrote then it'd suddenly become a lot more civilized.

Conversely, because there are no identities, there's no way to follow specific people you agree with.

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

#965

Post by hackyhacky »

zaptrem wrote: post #433
hackyhacky wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has it occurred to you that social media tilts left because lefty people are more likely to use the internet? Internet and social media use use track closely with education level, which correlate to position on the political spectrum. If that's true, then an attempt to make social media more "neutral" would in fact be giving rightists an unfair advantage.

While this might have been true a decade or two ago, nearly everybody uses the internet now. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/02/7-of-americ... (this is a year out of date -- 93%)

Maybe, but not everyone uses the internet equally.

Educated people, professors, lawyers, doctors, programmers, and others with desk jobs are more likely to participate heavily in social media than the uneducated and, working class, and menial laborers.

Just because most people have a Facebook account doesn't mean that representation is equal, and there is no reason to expect that a preponderance of lefty posts necessarily implies systemic bias.

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

#966

Post by hackyhacky »

stale2002 wrote: post #445
hackyhacky wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has it occurred to you that social media tilts left because lefty people are more likely to use the internet? Internet and social media use use track closely with education level, which correlate to position on the political spectrum. If that's true, then an attempt to make social media more "neutral" would in fact be giving rightists an unfair advantage.

There are lots and lots of lefty places on the internet. I am sure that people on the left will do just fine, if there happens to be 1 major neutral platform that doesn't do as strict moderation.

You've not understood my post at all.

I am not arguing against more strict moderation. I am saying that the apparent leftist tilt of, for example, Twitter, is not in fact a consequence of biased moderation, but rather a consequence of a bias in the underlying population: internet users tend to be more left.

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

#967

Post by hackyhacky »

stale2002 wrote: post #421
protomyth wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

9% is a hell of an insurance policy. I don't disagree, the man does not do small things, but I do wonder if he just bought insurance for more people than himself.

>? 9% is a hell of an insurance policy I mean, you say that. But the literal former president of the USA got de-platformed from twitter, and we don't hear about him nearly as much as when he had a twitter. Maybe it is actually worth that amount of money, if entire elections can be influenced like that.

Really? He seems to be in the news pretty regularly. He even created his own social network. So he certainly has no trouble reaching his fans, and it's clear that he isn't censored or banned in the same way that, say, Alexei Navalny is in Russia.

If there's declining interest in him among the public, maybe it's because he isn't president anymore.

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

#968

Post by spurgu »

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.

I actually started reading it a couple of days ago. :)

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

#969

Post by tharne »

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.

> Why must every company sustain boundless growth and 24-hour engagement? Change and growth for their own sake can be cancers.

I agree with you on this, but I think the parent commenter was implying that if you're going to be employing thousands of engineers, you ought to have something to show for it.

It's fine to move into a "steady state", but your engineering team should eventually reflect that reality.

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

#970

Post by tharne »

honkdaddy wrote: post #796
MisterSandman wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> at the same time if Twitter as a company isn't really doing much, why do they have thousands of developers on staff? ...to keep the app running? New devices, new standards, a lot of things change that you need devs to keep up with. Also, what's up with people saying twitter is stagnant? They've added Spaces, Twitter Blue and Crypto Profile Pictures - all 3 massive features added to their product. They're all trash,…

FWIW, I have a close friend who worked on Twitter's "Health" team whose job at one point was building mini games for the support/moderation staff to play during company mandated breaks in between looking at racist tweets and CP. He coasted for a while then moved onto a job with more work. This is entirely anecdotal, but from the little I know from his couple months there, Twitter has no idea what to do with the huge…

> This is entirely anecdotal, but from the little I know from his couple months there, Twitter has no idea what to do with the huge amount of engineers they employ.

I wonder why I keep getting LinkedIn and email notifications about engineering jobs at Twitter.

Post reply on HN