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Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

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Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#851

Post by fleischhauf »

fleddr wrote: post #827

Twitter is a mob launch pad. It's ran by outrage addicted, sadistic, cruel bullies. It's as if all of the world's village idiots joined forces and became the ruling class in culture and speech. It is Twitter that has normalized and promoted inhumane tactics like context switching, bad faith discussion, talking behind you to others instead of towards you (quote tweeting), screenshotting, obsessively digging through on…

while this might be true for most of Twitter, my experience is very different. I've been following researchers mostly and aside from very recently published work there are very interesting conversations or thought threads.so i guess it heavily depends on your Twitter bubble

Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#852

Post by runjake »

fleddr wrote: post #827

Twitter is a mob launch pad. It's ran by outrage addicted, sadistic, cruel bullies. It's as if all of the world's village idiots joined forces and became the ruling class in culture and speech. It is Twitter that has normalized and promoted inhumane tactics like context switching, bad faith discussion, talking behind you to others instead of towards you (quote tweeting), screenshotting, obsessively digging through on…

As a counterpoint, you are also describing any large group of people at scale.

On Twitter, you can follow, mute, use lists, or block anyone you want so you don’t have to see any of the stuff you don’t want.

Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#853

Post by OliverGilan »

LocalPCGuy wrote: post #838
thepasswordis wrote: post #249

Can anybody make a good argument as to why Twitter (in its current form) isn’t a major detriment to society? If Twitter poofed out of existence today, it would be a major win for this planet. People talk about a frightening future with a human hostile AI that wants to destroy humanity. That exists, it’s twitter. Elon buying it, even if he runs it into the ground is a good thing. Getting rid of some of the hostile AI…

Only 23% of the US public uses Twitter, and of that 23%, 80% of the posts come from about 10% of those users. These are the numbers I point to when people want to call Twitter the "modern day public square". I don't buy it, and think that the only real significant problem with Twitter is how much credence folks that are on it (including media personalities) give it.

This is true and I bring this up as well BUT consider this: probably less than 23% of US citizens make 90% of the important decisions for this country (the power law still holds) and if all of those people are on Twitter then OP's point still stands. I deleted Twitter about 3 months ago and it's been great. I can just focus on life and talking to my friends still on the platform I realize just how much of a bubble it really is and how most of the issues everyone gets hysterical about is just irrelevant in my life. That being said it seems to hold an insane amount of influence in the minds of journalists, business leaders, and politicians and thus it is an incredibly powerful platform.

Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#854

Post by hi5eyes »

fleddr wrote: post #827

Twitter is a mob launch pad. It's ran by outrage addicted, sadistic, cruel bullies. It's as if all of the world's village idiots joined forces and became the ruling class in culture and speech. It is Twitter that has normalized and promoted inhumane tactics like context switching, bad faith discussion, talking behind you to others instead of towards you (quote tweeting), screenshotting, obsessively digging through on…

Sir you are engaging with negative communities, out of your own free time

Twitter, is just how you construct your feed; if you gravitate towards toxic communities/follows, that's just a reflection of yourself

Twitter in my experience has some incredibly informative people from multiple industries and plenty of positive ribbing, but mainly used to collaborate and support each other

Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#855

Post by jstream67 »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #706
dgudkov wrote: post #661

I bet some of those who advocated "it's a private company, it can deplatform whoever it wants" are probably re-thinking their stance on deplatforming from a major social media.

Not really. When moderation goes away, platforms become rife with racism, spam, scams and less than desirable actors. We've seen this with Gab and Parler.

but twitter is already all of those things.

Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#856

Post by javajosh »

fleddr wrote: post #827

Twitter is a mob launch pad. It's ran by outrage addicted, sadistic, cruel bullies. It's as if all of the world's village idiots joined forces and became the ruling class in culture and speech. It is Twitter that has normalized and promoted inhumane tactics like context switching, bad faith discussion, talking behind you to others instead of towards you (quote tweeting), screenshotting, obsessively digging through on…

>Twitter is a mob launch pad.

True, but you don't have to participate and you can try to stop it, if you want.

>It's ran by outrage addicted, sadistic, cruel bullies.

Not sure, but I think this is false. It seems to be run professionally, for profit, and with a great deal of thought.

> It's as if all of the world's village idiots joined forces and became the ruling class in culture and speech.

False, but with a seed of truth: Twitter has undue influence over decision makers because it satisfies their constant need for feedback. Powerful people take Twitter feedback far more seriously then they should. The worst example being businesses that fire people because of a cancel mob to "protect their reputation". (IMO such cancellations do far more harm to the business reputation demonstrating terrible judgement)

>No normal person engages with another person like this.

False. Or rather, you characterize Twitter engagement in one way, and ignore all the other ways. I, for example, enjoy engaging with smart, good people from around the world. The key is to a) be careful about who you follow, and b) give 0 care about likes, retweets, etc. Twitter is not really one place, it's a huge network of places, a bit like Reddit, and so behavior and content varies significantly.

Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#858

Post by jereees »

bspear wrote: post #846
gunapologist99 wrote: post #521

So Twitter was at $70 per share a year ago. So what? Jack Dorsey was CEO a year ago, too. The share price was $33 less than a month ago. But, despite an absolutely incredible roller-coaster news cycle, things have been definitely trending down at Twitter ($33/share last month), which was reflected in its share price. The current executive team (and Dorsey) had wasted time focusing on things that didn't matter instead…

All I can think is... lucky Jack, and poor Parag

The ultimate scapegoat tbh. The whole things was just for show (completely unfounded statement, but I hold it to heart).

Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#860

Post by dpweb »

fleddr wrote: post #827

Twitter is a mob launch pad. It's ran by outrage addicted, sadistic, cruel bullies. It's as if all of the world's village idiots joined forces and became the ruling class in culture and speech. It is Twitter that has normalized and promoted inhumane tactics like context switching, bad faith discussion, talking behind you to others instead of towards you (quote tweeting), screenshotting, obsessively digging through on…

It needs to be better policed but I sense it's way undervalued being one of the few huge media platforms. It's a smart move. Meta market cap was 1T down to 600B. Other techs market caps? 43B sounds like a bargain.

Just the hype off this, and the excitement that will inevitably follow every tweak to the platform - tens of billions up in value.

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