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

reuters.com

961–970 of 1001 posts

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

#961

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 monetizatio…

This post is sort of an update of "A Fire Upon The Deep" by Vernor Vinge.

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

#962
> "Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated," Musk said in a statement.

Uhhh... objection.

A digital town square is more like Reddit or Hacker News or an online forums, where people are gathered by discussions, not someone attractive. Twitter and other social medias however, is where people go if they want to watch someone.

From this perspective, I think Mr Musk bought the wrong company...

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

#963
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…

- Down voting button, this allows people to express disagreement without feeding the trolls and deranging the conversation. - More visibility to smaller tweeters. My feed is full of boring/dumb comments from "big tweeters" that get thousands of likes because of their large number of followers. Smart tweets from upstarts often get little to no viewings.

How would you prevent abuse of the downvoting button? Any serious feature proposal should explain how it’s useful but also how its abuse would have limited effects.

> More visibility to smaller tweeters. My feed is full of boring/dumb comments from "big tweeters" that get thousands of likes because of their large number of followers. Smart tweets from upstarts often get little to no viewings.

Switch to the "regular" feed that shows only content from people you follow. That won’t help you discover small accounts but at least you won’t get the boring accounts.

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

#964
post #962

> "Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated," Musk said in a statement. Uhhh... objection. A digital town square is more like Reddit or Hacker News or an online forums, where people are gathered by discussions, not someone attractive. Twitter and other social medias however, is where people go if they want t…

Yeah I too found that comparison to town square a bit odd.

However, these comparisons are bound to fail, town square is a physical space that has natural limits such as number of people who can gather, speed of discussion and communication, tolerance to hostility and such. Almost none of these limits apply to a digital space. Humans just don’t know how to deal with these new media we are making up rules as we go along.

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

#966
A thing people seem to forget is that Elon isn't your average guy. He's consistently shown that he has wild ideas that fit the times.

Prepare for a new Twitter cryptocurrency that is based on verified humans, and instantly has more users than any others out there.

The price he paid to be able to do that is a steal.

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

#967
I welcome the acquisition, but we have to see if Musk can live up to his free speech standards.

We also must consider the fact that the government has leverage in the form of subsidies to Tesla and Space X. For example, this leverage could be used to get an interface to all private messages for some agency.

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

#970
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…

He's not paying for that, he's paying to reach more people with his stock manipulations while silencing his critics.
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