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

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

#701

Post by sidibe » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 8:11 PM UTC

lucius_verus wrote: post #646

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…

The bit about "following the law" was so poorly thought out. Musk's comments at TED made it seem like he both: (1) confused Bill of Rights guarantee that the government won't censor speech with some law that prohibits private companies from moderating speech on their platforms (not a thing) (2) failed to consider what it means to "follow the law" when your platform operates in multiple countries with incompatible law…

Noone could have known social media moderation could be hard! Just like in 2017 he had no way of knowing his cars wouldn't drive themselves cross country by 2018

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

#702

Post by pfarrell » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 8:12 PM UTC

jprd wrote: post #654

Pulling for dang over this thread, server must be on fire at this point.

Last time this happened, dang asked us to log out while browsing and not commenting/voting which greatly eases the server strain.

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

#703

Post by pieter_mj » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 8:13 PM UTC

Nobody is ready for US style free speech.

In Europe some of it will be illegal.

Musk is seriously underestimating the toxicity of "liberated" social media in its current form and seriously overestimating the nuggets of truth and criticism we would not be able to read in the absence of it.

His human authenticating scheme is unimplementable in the EU.

It's a shame, because I'm all for a real free speech platform.

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

#704

Post by zelon88 » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 8:13 PM UTC

abnry wrote: post #631

Ways I think Twitter could immediately improve, from the perspective of users: - Optional verification check marks for anyone who wants them. Throw out the Blue Check status symbol. Offer "real person" twitter filter. - Transparent and consistent moderation policies. Bans are inconsistently applied for reasons that are often hard to figure out. - Return to a reverse chronological time and/or down selection of rage-ba…

> - Optional verification check marks for anyone who wants them. Throw out the Blue Check status symbol. Offer "real person" twitter filter.

What problem does that solve? Nobody on Twitter sees or engages with posts without a blue checkmark anyway. Twitter is the Hollywood of social media. You're either an influencer or you're a lurker. There is no middle ground.

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

#705

Post by robbomacrae » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 8:15 PM UTC

This could be dangerous for democracy. The worlds richest man can influence whether a politician is de-platformed or re-instated to Twitter whilst legally protected in such decision making by section 230. We have seen him act petty when offense is taken [0]. We have seen him be quite opinionated on tax proposals [1]. Is no one else concerned by this? It seems a more powerful control of the narrative and politics than Bezos owning Washington Post.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/15/elon-musk...

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-democrats-billiona...

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

#706

Post by taubek » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 8:15 PM UTC

Twitter PR has released that the offer was accepted.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/elon-musk-to-acquir...

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

#707

Post by beebmam » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 8:16 PM UTC

shrimpx wrote: post #698

What’s the consequence for employees? People with 3 years left of vesting RSUs. Will those keep vesting somehow? Or they’ll get an upfront payout? And what’s my incentive to work for an established private company with no stock growth prospect? I guess Twitter will have to pay 500k senior eng. salaries in cash instead of stock?

Superb question. If I were an employee there, I certainly would be sending out applications elsewhere.

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

#708

Post by fleddr » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 8:16 PM UTC

I'm optimistic from a nihilistic point of view: for Twitter the only way is up, and yet even a complete failure would be a net improvement to the world.

There's a laundry list of uncontroversial improvements he can make to the product itself. Twitter as a product is broken in so many ways. Musk is the kind of outcome-driven character to get things done. And it will be done in a way that does not directly conflict with existing pressures, like ads.

He claims to commit to get an understanding of the algorithms for both censorship and promotions/verifications, and make them more transparent. As to what this will reveal, or how this will be changed, we don't know, except for a general direction of less censorship. So far he mentioned to want to strike a balance where both extremes (left, right) are equally unhappy.

My hope, but I expect to be disappointed, is that the influence that both extremes have on Twitter is nuked. A reversal of roles, where sane and reasonable voices capture the majority of attention, instead of rage-addicted mobs.

The truly tricky thing though is that if you dis-empower these extremists, you'll find that there's not much else. Twitter is basically those people and the rest retweeting it. What remains when you take away this outrage snowball activity...not very much. Twitter isn't at all a mainstream platform.

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

#709

Post by wwweston » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 8:16 PM UTC

Lendal wrote: post #649

abnry wrote: post #631

Ways I think Twitter could immediately improve, from the perspective of users: - Optional verification check marks for anyone who wants them. Throw out the Blue Check status symbol. Offer "real person" twitter filter. - Transparent and consistent moderation policies. Bans are inconsistently applied for reasons that are often hard to figure out. - Return to a reverse chronological time and/or down selection of rage-ba…

Interesting. So dark money can remain secret, but on Twitter you'll be forced to doc yourself to prove you're human. I don't see how that's improved anything.

"Human" and "pseudonymous" aren't exclusive, and there's a number of ways to verify the former w/o documenting real identity.

Keeping things as human only as possible means that you can't scale-up apparent vocality of opinion via automation.

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

#710

Post by exhaze » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 8:16 PM UTC

shrimpx wrote: post #698

What’s the consequence for employees? People with 3 years left of vesting RSUs. Will those keep vesting somehow? Or they’ll get an upfront payout? And what’s my incentive to work for an established private company with no stock growth prospect? I guess Twitter will have to pay 500k senior eng. salaries in cash instead of stock?

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