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Elon Musk Owns Twitter; CEO and CFO have left

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71–80 of 135 posts

Re: Elon Musk Owns Twitter; CEO and CFO have left

#71
post #8

This whole thing has been rather interesting to observe. I do wonder how the platform will change now that it's privately owned. I don't really care a lot about the platform itself, but it's influence on politics is very real. Personally I don't think this acquisition is healthy for a democracy, but nonetheless, it's something I want to observe. I've always thought these platforms need more democratic structures of g…

> Personally I don't think this acquisition is healthy for a democracy,

Only a fascist would force free speech onto people.

Re: Elon Musk Owns Twitter; CEO and CFO have left

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discoverability is important, but imo there should be a dedicated section for it instead of mixing it with the tweets of the people you actually follow. But on the other hand, people might not really be willing to "switch tabs" and so if you move the feature somewhere else then people will never really see it. It's kind of a trade off. I think what's a bit annoying is that often times these discovery features are use…

I like that idea, but note that youtube already has that - the default "home" tab is the recommendation engine, you can go to the "subscriptions" tab to show only your subscriptions - and people still keep whining about it.

I didn't know that... Thank you.

Ps: I don't use Twitter, frequently only when a very interesting hn discussion points there

Re: Elon Musk Owns Twitter; CEO and CFO have left

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discoverability is important, but imo there should be a dedicated section for it instead of mixing it with the tweets of the people you actually follow. But on the other hand, people might not really be willing to "switch tabs" and so if you move the feature somewhere else then people will never really see it. It's kind of a trade off. I think what's a bit annoying is that often times these discovery features are use…

I like that idea, but note that youtube already has that - the default "home" tab is the recommendation engine, you can go to the "subscriptions" tab to show only your subscriptions - and people still keep whining about it.

YouTube spams the "watch next" spam list on every video you watch.

Re: Elon Musk Owns Twitter; CEO and CFO have left

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People will leave pretty quickly if there is no moderation. People don't want to be in such places. Just check the missing popularity of Parler.

Network effects are a perfectly sufficient explanation for why people don't use parler. Can you name one example where people switched from a bigger to a smaller network, because the bigger one allowed too much freedom of speech?

Why don't "free speech" networks ever grow to be the bigger one in the first place?

Re: Elon Musk Owns Twitter; CEO and CFO have left

#75
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it's influence on politics is very real. > Personally I don't think this acquisition is healthy for a democracy Fewer than a quarter of Americans use Twitter. Empty rhetoric is empty.

This is assuming that political power comes from influencing all Americans rather than a small fraction who hold true power (politicians, donors, journalists, industry groups, etc.). If the small fraction is all on Twitter then viola the rhetoric is meaningful.

> politicians, donors, journalists, industry groups, etc

Do you have any reason to believe they are? Except journalists, I he obviously are.

Re: Elon Musk Owns Twitter; CEO and CFO have left

#76
post #8

This whole thing has been rather interesting to observe. I do wonder how the platform will change now that it's privately owned. I don't really care a lot about the platform itself, but it's influence on politics is very real. Personally I don't think this acquisition is healthy for a democracy, but nonetheless, it's something I want to observe. I've always thought these platforms need more democratic structures of g…

This is a significant misunderstanding of what shareholder oversight does. All the biggest shareholders were humongous asset managers; hard to call that "democratic" governance.

Shareholder oversight is limited to addressing the agency problem (i.e., by firing executives if they egregiously harm profits). It's simply not a "democratic structure of governance", and has nothing whatsoever to do with content or moderation decisions. Even "activist investors" focus on things like dividends and buybacks, not content moderation.

Twitter's stock tanked 12% after Trump was permabanned; shareholders clearly had no say in it, or he would never have been banned.

Since shareholders' main impact is to incentivize management to maximize long-term value, and Musk will now own the majority of Twitter stock himself, the incentive has not changed. Even if Twitter was still public, shareholders would have no say in Musk's decision to reinstate (or not) Trump, for example. And importantly, a company being private doesn't mean it has no shareholders; it just means shares are not traded on public exchanges.

Re: Elon Musk Owns Twitter; CEO and CFO have left

#77
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like if people voted him back into the presidency. That would be terrible for democracy.

The people didn't vote him in the first time. We just have weird rules that enable our minority party to win the presidency. This is often claimed to prevent tyranny of the majority, but it's not a boon for democracy, rather a way to limit the extreme outcomes of democracy. It's never good when someone denies the legitimacy of the very system that brought them into power. This is the part that makes him "terrible for…

Come on. 50million+ people voted for him. Maybe he "shouldn't have won" in some technical senses (but not others), but to say he wasn't hugely supported by the Demos, the People, is ridiculous.

Embezzling every penny he could, modeling himself after Hitler, raising a mob to storming the capital to kidnap the vice president, and filing fake lawsuits about the election, was far far worse than losing the unofficial popular vote.

Re: Elon Musk Owns Twitter; CEO and CFO have left

#79
post #53

The odds are that Twitter will probably be dead in a year. He'll bring on a few yes-men executives that'll applaud him when he guts development and then when everything grinds to a halt they'll catch the blame. Especially since he'll probably force something like integrated NFTs on a whim. Unlike Facebook and how it's captured an older audience that's relative inelastic to moving to other platforms, I don't see peopl…

> The odds are that Twitter will probably be dead in a year. And that's based on what exactly? > He'll bring on a few yes-men executives that'll applaud him Again, based on what? Now here's a prediction actually based on Musk's past perf: He'll bring in people who get shit done, and get it done fast. Twitter will achieve things everyone says is stupid, ridiculous and impossible now as he's done in the past 20 years w…

That worked when Musk bought a functional company and added his brand of PR on top. Not for saving a company in trouble.

Re: Elon Musk Owns Twitter; CEO and CFO have left

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can like or hate Elon Musk but it is not going to happen. It is really hard for tech giants to die, if companies that were run way worse didn't die, Twitter is not going to die. And he has experience of running tech companies anyway.

A social media company is a very different beast from a tech company, and very easy to quickly run into the ground. We've seen other platforms die very quickly because they institute things that chase off a bulk of users.

Marissa Mayer tried to murder Tumblr but it is still alive. Everyone hates Facebook but it lives.
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