Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 757 posts

Re: Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll

#171

Post by j_crick »

hobbitstan wrote: post #49
modeless wrote: post #12

I think he only posts polls when he believes he knows the outcome already. Yesterday he posted a poll about unsuspending the journalist accounts and when the outcome wasn't what he wanted instead of following the majority vote he posted it again with different options (with the same result, which he did abide by the second time). I think this indicates he's tired of Twitter already. But he still owns it, so who will…

He can likely manipulate the results on the backend anyway. This is a real cowardly way to make decisions, by pretending they come from someone else.

Some people have different modes of making decisions and framing the results, like all good outcomes being on them and all bad outcomes being due to external circumstances and “wasn’t me”. You think that’s cowardice (and assume morals), for other people it could be just convenience

Re: Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll

#172

Post by parker_mountain »

wereallterrrist wrote: post #161

Can we please stop falling for this obvious tactic? How many days in a row does he have to do something seemingly-unhinged, and then follow it with some spectacle of a poll to shift the narrative? Is it really that easy ?

I don't even think he's doing it on purpose, I think he's completely in over his head.

Someone referred to Elon as "speedrunning being a forum moderator", or "running a Lowtax" and yeah, so far.

Re: Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll

#173

Post by sf_rob »

neonate wrote: post #124
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #85

I voted No because this is the most interesting content to come out of Twitter in years and the spice must flow. It would've been fine if he published planned policy changes and asked the community for feedback before putting it in place. But actually making random policy changes and then rolling it back hours later is such bad form. The latest policy changes were so half-assed and dumb that it makes me wonder what's…

David Sacks?

Likely and somehow even worse.

Edit: Actually, Elon doesn’t seem to do polls without wanting an outcome and his follow up “Careful what you wish for” would support Sacks.

Re: Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll

#174

Post by Dudelander »

yongjik wrote: post #117
aliqot wrote: post #26

Elon owning Twitter is the most public accountability Twitter has ever had. Him owning Twitter, the way he's currently operating, will force a critical eye toward a lot of bad behaviors that we all experience but nobody really talks about on every network. I say bravo. Twitter is dead. Long live Twitter.

> Him owning Twitter, the way he's currently operating, will force a critical eye toward a lot of bad behaviors that we all experience but nobody really talks about on every network. Are you talking as a communist meaning "The society has been too lenient on the class of billionaires, but now that one of them is exposed as a destructive idiot, people will be forced to ask whether the rest of them deserve their power…

How did you jump from that to Communism? I though the meaning was pretty clear: People will be more critical regarding social networks. Meaning they will more carefully assess the merits and flaws of Social Networks, instead of just assuming they're good and fun with no real drawbacks.

Re: Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll

#175

Post by prawn »

louthy wrote: post #59

The fact that he can’t lead without doing these idiotic polls shows that he’s not fit to lead twitter. The whole point of being an exec is that you make the big difficult decisions, not defer them to a mass of people who couldn’t possibly understand the nuance of any one decision.

I agree, but I could see a mode where he was livestreaming insights into the days of a billionaire, and taking some direction via vote - whether what to have for breakfast, or as feedback on a Twitter feature. But using it as a face-saving crutch on divisive topics is off-putting (at least to me).

Re: Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll

#176

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

wereallterrrist wrote: post #161

Can we please stop falling for this obvious tactic? How many days in a row does he have to do something seemingly-unhinged, and then follow it with some spectacle of a poll to shift the narrative? Is it really that easy ?

I guess I'm not sure what you mean by "shift the narrative". The fact that Musk is considering stepping down as head of Twitter is an entirely reasonable thing to be interested in as a followup to bad decisions he's made as head of Twitter.

Re: Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll

#177

Post by drumhead »

modeless wrote: post #12

I think he only posts polls when he believes he knows the outcome already. Yesterday he posted a poll about unsuspending the journalist accounts and when the outcome wasn't what he wanted instead of following the majority vote he posted it again with different options (with the same result, which he did abide by the second time). I think this indicates he's tired of Twitter already. But he still owns it, so who will…

He's stuck with Twitter now, at an overinflated price. He'll never be able to make enough money from it to justify the valuation. Will he leave, no he wont, he'll still pull the strings from behind the scences. He just wont be doing it so publically anymore, he'll get a front to do it for him.

Re: Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll

#179

Post by amelius »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #85

I voted No because this is the most interesting content to come out of Twitter in years and the spice must flow. It would've been fine if he published planned policy changes and asked the community for feedback before putting it in place. But actually making random policy changes and then rolling it back hours later is such bad form. The latest policy changes were so half-assed and dumb that it makes me wonder what's…

> who do you think he'll chose as his successor?

It will probably be another poll. With one option, him.

Re: Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll

#180

Post by pseudo0 »

bb88 wrote: post #137
pseudo0 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What it looks like Elon is trying to do is: - Level the playing field between the "blue-checks" and everyone else. I think the intent of that is to encourage the 90% of people who passively consume content to engage more, and encourage lurkers without accounts to sign up. - Reduce the dependency on advertisers by pivoting to a model that is partly user-funded. Reddit seems to have had some success with this, for exam…

> ... probably in an attempt to rope back in users who moved to right-wing Twitter clones. The problem with Twitter isn't free speech, but objective reality. There's only room for one reality on Twitter -- not two, or three, or four. Truth Social and the right wing platforms don't challenge people's view that the 2020 election was a fraud, that pizza gate really happened, so they will probably continue now as they ar…

For a lot of right-wing people I have spoken to, the Hunter Biden story getting falsely removed for "Russian disinformation" was the last straw. Think of it as a dumb scandal if you want, but the issue was a legitimate news story published by high-profile mainstream news outlets getting removed using counter-disinformation tools. That really damaged Twitter's credibility.

Now they would rather hang out on a site where they don't have to worry about overbearing moderation, at the cost of a handful of nutters talking about Satanic rituals or whatever. I think Musk had a plausible route to getting those users back if he could promise slightly more limited and fair enforcement of the rules.

Post reply on HN