141–150 of 1001 posts
Part of me hopes this is the end of the social media age. I've been on twitter since the very beginning and lately it feels like it's a toxic cesspool on all sides. I say this as a twitter addict and prolific poster over more than a decade.
Now you know how the old school Useneters feel. Welcome to Eternal September.
I feel like people have invested in Elon in large part because of his alignment with i) moving humanity away from fossil fuels and ii) making life multi planetary. He is obviously free to do as he pleases with this new wealth but I cant help but feel this as a huge redirection of resources (in terms of both capital and focus) from those goals
I've said it before but Twitter is like a cancer, it begins to grow in some poor unfortunate souls irrespective of wealth, knowledge, or privilege, and slowly overtakes their whole being.
Looking at the problems Twitter has, why does anyone think Musk can even solve one? If one believes Twitter has a free speech problem: Musk shouts about free speech but shut down Teslas PR department, lashes out against any criticism against him, canceled a preorder because he didn't like a journalists' article etc. Musk is great at self-promotion and this often helps his companies in some sense, but what else does h…
As usual for Musk, this is a business decision that is meant to benefit him that he is trying to sell as benefitting other people.
Edit - Musk's other companies, SpaceX, Boring, and Tesla, rely heavily on government subsidies and contracts. The access he gets to politicians by controlling their newsfeeds on the social network they pay attention to is also very valuable. Not valuable for Twitter, valuable for Musk.
I feel like people have invested in Elon in large part because of his alignment with i) moving humanity away from fossil fuels and ii) making life multi planetary. He is obviously free to do as he pleases with this new wealth but I cant help but feel this as a huge redirection of resources (in terms of both capital and focus) from those goals
People invest with Elon because he has, objectively, an extraordinary track record of success.
- SpaceX's market capitalization has surpassed $100 billion [1].
- Tesla's market cap has topped $1 trillion, eclipsing the combined value of all other automakers [2].
- Elon's latest venture, The Boring Company, is currently valued at $5.7 billion [3].
[2] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/tsla/key-statistics/
[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/21/elon-musks-boring-company-hi...
I'm confused about the series of events here. What happened to the poison pill?
Elon asked the board if he could buy Twitter. If the board were to say "no", the poison pill protects Twitter against Elon buying up all the shares in the open market anyway.
The board saying "yes" bypasses all that.
Looking at the problems Twitter has, why does anyone think Musk can even solve one? If one believes Twitter has a free speech problem: Musk shouts about free speech but shut down Teslas PR department, lashes out against any criticism against him, canceled a preorder because he didn't like a journalists' article etc. Musk is great at self-promotion and this often helps his companies in some sense, but what else does h…
He cannot even solve moderation of racism in his own factory, let alone online.
I'll be ditching twitter completely. The whole thing rubs me up the wrong way in terms of what I want to associate myself with.
Facebook vibes.
Just another facebook run by another egotistic billionaire.
Not my cup of tea.
Looking at the problems Twitter has, why does anyone think Musk can even solve one? If one believes Twitter has a free speech problem: Musk shouts about free speech but shut down Teslas PR department, lashes out against any criticism against him, canceled a preorder because he didn't like a journalists' article etc. Musk is great at self-promotion and this often helps his companies in some sense, but what else does h…
The mission of Tesla is not free speech, but to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy. Tesla seems to be doing just fine without a PR department, so it seems he was right to shut it down.
The mission of SpaceX is to make life multi-planetary. So of course there is no right to free speech for the employees.
But the mission of twitter should be free speech within the bounds of the law, at least according to Elon.
Currently it seems to be to move the Overton window so much to the left that you can be banned for giving the definition of what a woman is that was commonly accepted by everybody in 2010.
When Trump was banned in Jan 2022, most of his 88 million followers never heard from him again. No matter your feelings or leanings, that’s a lot of power - to instantly mute a president.
This has nothing to do with turning Twitter around as a business.
It may have something to do with fostering freedom of expression globally.
It definitely confers a huge amount of power on the new owner and ensures no one can mute them.
Given the adversarial nature that Musk has with the current US administration, I expect an almost immediate regulatory action if this deal completes.
People act like this is some spiteful thing he's doing in order to just post edgy memes or have a 'private' social media for himself. Twitter, despite being a toxic place the majority of people avoid, brought in over 5 billion dollars last year. If elon removes bots, welcomes non-extremists back on, gets comedians and entertaining accounts back on board and lets people say what they want instead a bot army of shills…