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

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

#591

Post by Consultant32452 » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 6:26 PM UTC

davesque wrote: post #585

Here's the mental hurdle I have to get over with all this. And call me old fashioned, but I'm trying to figure out how a guy who has himself essentially proved to be a troll is supposed to be the right person to improve the quality of human interaction on the platform. The whole "pedo guy" episode comes to mind. Are my concerns too simplistic here? Somebody help me feel better about all this.

I don't mean this as the attack it's going to sound like, but your comfort isn't a concern.

We've seen the social media companies work in unison to censor important information that later was proven to be true. Examples are abound and I'm not going to debate them here.

I'm hopeful that will come to an end. This kind of censorship only works if "everyone" is doing it. With the reduced censorship, there will be lots of nonsense I'm uninterested in. I will not follow nonsense accounts and will simply block them if necessary.

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

#592

Post by nailer » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 6:27 PM UTC

davesque wrote: post #585

Here's the mental hurdle I have to get over with all this. And call me old fashioned, but I'm trying to figure out how a guy who has himself essentially proved to be a troll is supposed to be the right person to improve the quality of human interaction on the platform. The whole "pedo guy" episode comes to mind. Are my concerns too simplistic here? Somebody help me feel better about all this.

Pedo guy wasn’t a troll. Musk believed that a man of a certain age that lives alone in Thailand might be a paedophile and this wouldn’t be the first example.

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

#593

Post by munk-a » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 6:27 PM UTC

davesque wrote: post #585

Here's the mental hurdle I have to get over with all this. And call me old fashioned, but I'm trying to figure out how a guy who has himself essentially proved to be a troll is supposed to be the right person to improve the quality of human interaction on the platform. The whole "pedo guy" episode comes to mind. Are my concerns too simplistic here? Somebody help me feel better about all this.

He's got money and in theory he can float the existence of Twitter in an unprofitable state for a while. The fact that he's borrowing so much for the purchase means it's unlikely that's how it will actually work but Twitter feels much more utility-like than a profitable business. Some rando rich guy stepping in to float the bill for a decade or so seems reasonable to me.

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

#594

Post by psychlops » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 6:28 PM UTC

davesque wrote: post #585

Here's the mental hurdle I have to get over with all this. And call me old fashioned, but I'm trying to figure out how a guy who has himself essentially proved to be a troll is supposed to be the right person to improve the quality of human interaction on the platform. The whole "pedo guy" episode comes to mind. Are my concerns too simplistic here? Somebody help me feel better about all this.

What qualities does the "right" person have? Is the goal of a financial takeover actually finding the right people to run it? Are the current people the right people?

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

#595

Post by Pxtl » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 6:29 PM UTC

davesque wrote: post #585

Here's the mental hurdle I have to get over with all this. And call me old fashioned, but I'm trying to figure out how a guy who has himself essentially proved to be a troll is supposed to be the right person to improve the quality of human interaction on the platform. The whole "pedo guy" episode comes to mind. Are my concerns too simplistic here? Somebody help me feel better about all this.

> The whole "pedo guy" episode comes to mind

Yeah, I think HNers supporting this should reflect on the fact that comments like this would get you moderated and rate-limited here on HN, and that's generally considered a good thing.

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

#596

Post by speedyb » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 6:29 PM UTC

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.

Completely agree, you're very much in control of what you see, and who you interact with. There's plenty of features in place to aid with not seeing things you don't want to.

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

#597

Post by nailer » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 6:29 PM UTC

sidcool wrote: post #564

Musk has seen production hell. This is a different kind. Good luck Elon. Make good on your promises. EDIT: What I will be watching for is what Elon will do when freedom of speech is at odds with a big chunk of revenue. He is investing a boatload of money and at his philanthropic worst, he would like to break even in a few years.

You can fix a lot of the interaction at scale by allowing mass verification (there are third party APIs for this) and allowing people to filter on verified real human interactions.

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

#598

Post by jdrc » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 6:30 PM UTC

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 believe it becomes a shitshow if you start twitting. Thats because twitter will notify you of replies to your posts (it shouldn't maybe). there are mobs of political trolls that trigger each other and it can become pretty funny. if you can ignore it , fine, but most of them are being deliberately provocative

twitter should be for top-most posts only.

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

#599

Post by realmod » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 6:31 PM UTC

He, undoubtedly, overpaid for Twitter. Also, the blue-check allows key users to distinguish themselves and is one major reason that "notable" people are using Twitter for essentially all their communications. Elon's plan to diminish the blue-check by giving it to anyone who has verified themselves by buying Twitter Blue would be very destructive and hurt Twitter's moat.

-- Edit --

Actually, disregard the blue-check comment. I oversold it. A blue-check is actually not that important.

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

#600

Post by smegsicle » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 6:33 PM UTC

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #535

It's absolutely wild that many of the same people against Elon Musk controlling twitter are okay with the Chinese Government controlling an app with literally 10x as many users.

that's just conspiracy theory garbage- there's no way the chinese govenment has a political agenda