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Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

reuters.com

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Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#361

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

boredumb wrote: post #105

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…

> If elon removes bots

I haven't received a good answer yet for how Elon would solve the bot problem.

It's as if misinformation/disinformation/harassment are propagated only by bots and not real people, So would these people be blocked along with the bots? Would censorship be fine here then?

Social media firms have turned a blind eye towards bots/click farms because it has helped them to exaggerate their engagement figures to the advertisers, Just like any other online-advertising firm.

Then again, Elon seems to have expressed some views against advertisements on Twitter.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#362

Post by JimmaDaRustla »

Jaruzel wrote: post #254

The ONLY way to solve the toxic nature of Twitter is to enforce a)a real name policy, and b)fully verified[1] identities for all users/bots (opt-in, where others by default filter out non-verified accounts in their feeds) Bots can continue to exist, but must be identifiable as such and connected to a verified real user. Not only will this clean up twitter dramatically, it will also push off those who wish to hide beh…

I've been conceptualizing an open and decentralized identity system that would be based on the person's enrolment within organizations. Each organization participating in the identity system would provision something like an OAuth token to its' users for the duration of their memberships. These organizations could be employers, volunteer groups, schools, etc. Third-parties could then leverage a user's collection of tokens as a "strength" of identity and build that into their platform.

I would use Twitter daily if I had an option to control an "identity strength threshold" where I would then only see comments from people who have implemented their organization memberships into an online identity.

Of course this is wildly conceptual and would be an impossible feat to implement, but it's a fun thought exercise.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#363

Post by rootusrootus »

bitshiftfaced wrote: post #188
altacc wrote: post #41

He's already said that he'd follow all local laws so it would be interesting to see if he can find the elusive path of maintaining free speech, following the law and not having Twitter being a toxic cesspool used mainly to shout down those not our your "side". Personally my reservations are because I think running a social media site is a lot about understanding people and defining a healthy culture for your elusive…

> Musk has admitted he doesn't understand people, is a self-confessed troll & edgelord and and Tesla's culture seems less than ideal. So lacks any of the qualifications I see as being needed to run something like Twitter. That's why he's perfect for this task. Most decision-makers feel intense scrutiny and tip toe around things that cause backlash, especially things that threaten the status quo. When you're oblivious…

What does "the other side" look like in this case?

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#364

Post by ng12 »

mrkramer wrote: post #358

Zuck offered $500m for Twitter 14 years ago and they refused it so I guess it paid off looking at the price but man Twitter sucks. They have incompetent management that destroyed $100bn opportunity called Vine and that can't get their shit together. Elon might help but Twitter is doomed in the long term imo.

I'm still mad about Vine, it had such a cool community of creators. I was shocked when they shut it down.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#365

Post by wraptile »

MarcScott wrote: post #178

Am I the only person here that finds Twitter a nice place? I'm careful about who I follow, most of whom are tech people or educators. My feed is a really nice place to go, and I can't remember the last time I read or saw anything that triggered me in the slightest. I'm seeing loads of comments about how toxic Twitter is, but isn't that on you? Don't follow or engage and the algorithm will skip you over.

I've tried to like Twitter a million times over but "the algorithm" keeps spewing outrage spam at me through recommendations, notifications and basically every free piece of white space on the website. The whole social network looks like one of those ad-ridden top 5 things spam site - I really don't understand how can anyone tolerate this. Especially when clean, beautiful alternatives like Mastodon exist.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#366

Post by Splendor »

billiam wrote: post #335

My life will get a lot better when I abandon the platform the second this deal goes through. It's just the last reason, not the first.

Same here. I've had an account since 2007. This will be the thing that nudges me far enough to delete my account.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#367

Post by axg11 »

jasonwilk wrote: post #359

While I don’t advocate for anyone losing their job, my partial view on what Elon will do with Twitter once he takes it private is to shut down their ad business and focus on Twitter Blue (or some variation of subscription based product announcements). This will have several benefits. 1. Simplifies the business operation by reducing fixed headcount significantly 2. This will have a hard hit to Twitter revenue but Musk…

Without the ads business, Twitter will be operating at huge loss, much larger than recent times. The best way to monetize attention is through ads. I'm not saying that I am happy with that, but there is a lot of evidence to suggest that subscriptions will lead to much lower revenue/profit than ads. There's a reason why no other social media platform has ever succeeded through a subscription model.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#368

Post by zionic »

Jaruzel wrote: post #254

The ONLY way to solve the toxic nature of Twitter is to enforce a)a real name policy, and b)fully verified[1] identities for all users/bots (opt-in, where others by default filter out non-verified accounts in their feeds) Bots can continue to exist, but must be identifiable as such and connected to a verified real user. Not only will this clean up twitter dramatically, it will also push off those who wish to hide beh…

>The ONLY way to solve the toxic nature of Twitter is to enforce a)a real name policy, and b)fully verified[1] identities for all users/bots

Have you uh, seen "NextDoor"?

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#370

Post by IE6 »

artur_makly wrote: post #340

Having the 'richest' man w/ social Asperger fully control the largest 'public town square" seems..ironic and frankly dangerous. To me it feels like twitter or something better should simply be a DAO. What are the chances of that?

Not a Musk fan or a Twitter user but is the sentiment here that someone with ASD cannot properly create policy or (more likely) employ people to create policy? Just curious.
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