Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources • Hacker News Board

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

#461

Post by robonerd » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 4:27 PM UTC

khazhoux wrote: post #434

What most troubles me about this whole ordeal: The lack of upper limits on wealth accumulation by an individual means that a single person can eventually directly control enough funds to simply decide one day to buy one of the world's largest communication channels. No one here seems to have a problem with this. For as much as the tech community generally despises generational-wealth families like the Waltons, or for…

Even if this deal goes through, Elon Musk will still own much less media than several other billionaires do. He's scarcely on the leading edge of this trend.

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

#462

Post by sircastor » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 4:27 PM UTC

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…

> 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.

I think more likely, he feels like if he owns the platform he will be free of legal oversight and SEC interference in regards to whatever he wants to say over his bully-pulpit - Twitter. We have (literally) the richest man in the world being told that he's not allowed to do something, and he thinks he has the means to fix that.

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

#463

Post by rib3ye » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 4:27 PM UTC

khazhoux wrote: post #434

What most troubles me about this whole ordeal: The lack of upper limits on wealth accumulation by an individual means that a single person can eventually directly control enough funds to simply decide one day to buy one of the world's largest communication channels. No one here seems to have a problem with this. For as much as the tech community generally despises generational-wealth families like the Waltons, or for…

Not sure what you want to do about this. In our system, every governmental action to ease poverty and spur economic activity has a knock-on effect of increasing the wealth of the 1%, and every wealth redistribution action has the effect of decreasing non-governmental economic activity making the middle-class more poor and forcing people already on the margins into poverty.

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

#464

Post by data-ottawa » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 4:28 PM UTC

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…

I find it strange that people assume Elon will get rid of bots as though Twitter weren’t already trying that.

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

#465

Post by wedowhatwedo » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 4:29 PM UTC

khazhoux wrote: post #434

What most troubles me about this whole ordeal: The lack of upper limits on wealth accumulation by an individual means that a single person can eventually directly control enough funds to simply decide one day to buy one of the world's largest communication channels. No one here seems to have a problem with this. For as much as the tech community generally despises generational-wealth families like the Waltons, or for…

"No one here seems to have a problem with this." That is not true. A true statement is "Not enough people seems to have a problem with this." The American political system is setup so one vote is not equal so those with more voting power can win with fewer votes. I would argue that a majority care about these issues and would like to fix it, but the votes of the minority count more. Look at the US Senate and count the number of people each senator represents. The electoral college guarantees inequality in votes for the president.

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

#466

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 4:30 PM UTC

khazhoux wrote: post #434

What most troubles me about this whole ordeal: The lack of upper limits on wealth accumulation by an individual means that a single person can eventually directly control enough funds to simply decide one day to buy one of the world's largest communication channels. No one here seems to have a problem with this. For as much as the tech community generally despises generational-wealth families like the Waltons, or for…

[deleted]

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

#467

Post by anovikov » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 4:31 PM UTC

We will soon find out what's harder: settle Mars or make a public place where everyone can post, anything but a cesspool of bullshit. I think we will see Mars colony first.

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

#468

Post by distrill » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 4:31 PM UTC

i wonder if musk will finally get out of my news cycle for 10 minutes now

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

#469

Post by generalizations » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 4:34 PM UTC

I'm surprised no one has mentioned that Twitter is probably the best social media platform for interplanetary communication, where low bandwidth and delayed transmission are fundamental bottlenecks, and both limitations are considered part of the appeal (character limitations and a format where you simply disperse messages and have no real notion of when they'll be received).

In that case, I wonder if the monetization will ultimately be based on latency and message size: pay more for your message to be sent from Mars in the next transmission, and pay more to send a larger message. Locally, I wonder if Twitter will be tied to starlink in some fashion.

If this does become some kind of interplanetary messaging system, I wouldn't be surprised if other technologies are built around it. Maybe Dorsey's decentralization attempt will be used as the infrastructure for the free tier of Twitter, and starlink is the infrastructure for the paid version (pay more to send faster, or to another planetary body).

Edit: I can imagine a rebuilt backend that's decentralized across large (planetary?) regions, where messages are just the tweet content & metadata and passed between nodes. Very efficient, and the non-technical user already has the right expectations.

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

#470

Post by honkycat » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 4:35 PM UTC

khazhoux wrote: post #434

What most troubles me about this whole ordeal: The lack of upper limits on wealth accumulation by an individual means that a single person can eventually directly control enough funds to simply decide one day to buy one of the world's largest communication channels. No one here seems to have a problem with this. For as much as the tech community generally despises generational-wealth families like the Waltons, or for…

This has already happened.

The wealthy elite want people frothing at the mouth over identity / social issues so nobody notices how much money they are stealing and how much toxic sludge they are polluting our environment with.

All of our mass media news is owned by one oligarch or another. That is why CNN only talks about Trump and Fox News only talks about whatever controversy-de-jour is going on for the day.