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Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

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Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#272
post #78

It's interesting to see these tech influencers and their lag time on giving Elon the benefit of the doubt before they've had enough. Will Elon ever have a "coming to jesus moment" and realize that he's alienated so many of his peers that he is, in fact, in the wrong? Or is he so delusional that he really does believe he has the answers?

Musk seems to be speedrunning into Howard Hughes status. He has so much wealth that, like Hughes, he could alienate every business contact and still spend the rest of his life making leftfield investments and watching movies naked in a dark hotel room. (Well, replace watching movies with tweeting, I suppose.)

This to me feels like the right analogy.

It’s both possible that Musk is a genius and that he’s cracked as many geniuses do.

His embarrassment in no way erases his accomplishments of the past decade and warrant a “he was never smart”.

But his downright pathetic demeanor the past few months do eclipse and ruin what could’ve been an incredible legacy.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#273
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming that Elon isn't doing what he intended to do, turn Twitter into his own personal, right wing echo-chamber with political influence.

> You're assuming that Elon isn't doing what he intended to do, turn Twitter into his own personal, right wing echo-chamber with political influence. He simply unbanned accounts which were wrongfully banned. Accounts which simply communicated legal to hold opinions. There is nothing wrong or morally objectionable about this. I’d rather say it commendable. If Twitter is becoming a right-wing echo-chamber it’s because…

> There is nothing wrong or morally objectionable about this.

Depends on the opinion. "We must kill all the [insert ethnic group]" is a legal-to-hold opinion. But I'd say it's both wrong and morally objectionable to provide a platform for transmitting that opinion. Which is why Twitter banned people like that.

And even for those without a moral sense, I should point out that it was also bad for business. Twitter had a business choice to make: they could keep all the blatant racists or they could keep the non-white audience they targeted plus the white people that don't like open racism. Even if you're a-ok with open bigotry, it's pretty obvious that the right financial choice is to boot most of the open bigots, so that the platform feels safe enough to everybody else.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#275
post #171

I think the preferred approach if you’re outraged about Twitter management, is speak out about it on Twitter, as opposed to quit in protest. Fight the fight if it’s worth it.

So, if you’re pissed at twitter, you should do the very thing that keeps the money flowing in?

I don’t follow.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#276

It's interesting to see these tech influencers and their lag time on giving Elon the benefit of the doubt before they've had enough. Will Elon ever have a "coming to jesus moment" and realize that he's alienated so many of his peers that he is, in fact, in the wrong? Or is he so delusional that he really does believe he has the answers?

The internet has a short memory. No one's going to care in 6 months and everyone will be back on twitter.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#277

Amazing that just a month ago he tweeted[1]: "It's remarkable how many people who've never run any kind of company think they know how to run a tech company better than someone who's run Tesla and SpaceX.". It's been fascinating watching so many VC types ignore so many red flags just because some of Elon's early actions validated their priors (e.g. tech companies are bloated and need to layoff staff). [1] https://twi…

Quite the opposite, I think it shows that what you call a red flag, they analyzed seriously before making a judgment. And now that they have more data, they change their mind about their conclusion.

It's the sane thing to do.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in the replies to this tweet he insists[1] "Elon is a smart guy" in spite of all the evidence to the contrary [1] https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1604557444247539712

He can't alienate a big potential investor to future funds.

I think that, by leaving Twitter alone, he already has. If we've learned something about Elon so far, from previous episodes of the cursed news cycle we all inhabit, is that he's vindictive and petty to an irrational extent (calling rescue officers who don't agree with him pedophiles, banning journalists who report on the jet account, ...)

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#280
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure. Given that Musk was fired from [deleted, see note 1] and PayPal, you'd think they might have had more questions. But people look at failure much more carefully than they look at success. I think the next wave of interesting questions is around the extent to which Musk contributed the apparent successes, SpaceX and Tesla. We won't know for a long time, as a lot of the people in the know have a strong incenti…

Musk is a celebrity. Celebrities start successful companies all the time. Is Rihanna a brilliant business woman for starting a successful beauty line? Is she a business genius , which is what Musk gets labeled so often? Maybe she really is, but I don't see her get that label, I think her value add is very clearly "she is famous, people will buy shit that she puts her name on". What they have in common is that they ha…

This feels disingenuous.

Elon Musk was barely more than a nobody when he got involved with Tesla and started SpaceX.

Fenty was founded after Rihanna had scored countless hits and was basically a household name.

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