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

341–350 of 757 posts

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

#341

Post by rvnx »

bmitc wrote: post #310
jasode wrote: post #226

It's instructive to contrast what other billionaires did with media properties they owned: - Jeff Bezos personally bought Washington Post but he left it alone and let the editors run it. What Jeff did do was invest some money into the IT department to modernize the workflow tools (metrics dashboards, etc) for journalists. He stayed out of the decisions of what stories get run on the front page. - Rupert Murdoch owns…

> What tech people like Paul Graham and others were hoping was for Elon to apply his scientific first principles type of thinking that he demonstrated previously at SpaceX+Tesla to Twitter. I wish one could take a step back and just see how ridiculous of a statement this is. There is nothing about Musk’s history and management style that is even remotely close to what could be called “scientific first principles type…

You mean the Paul Graham that was banned today from Twitter for "violating Twitter rules" ? https://twitter.com/nearcyan/status/1604598879973883905

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

#342

Post by bmitc »

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…

> I think this indicates he's tired of Twitter already.

He’s also facing a huge amount of backlash, pent-up backlash, that he hasn’t experienced before or more successfully insulated himself from before. For example, when he was recently booed off stage.

I saw someone comment elsewhere that he is also highly leveraged, and that if Twitter tanks and Tesla’s stock keeps falling, he stands to lose a lot of money and even potentially control of Tesla. I haven’t looked into the veracity of the argument, but it seems plausible that he’s in over his head in more ways than one.

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

#343

Post by braingenious »

bigbillheck wrote: post #289
braingenious wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main difference between Musk and Lowtax is that Lowtax actually built something rather than buying it.

Lowtax, at least for a while, had a Poster's Heart, something Musk does not and will never have.

>Poster’s Heart

Thank you for making me explain to my wife why I was cackling at my phone.

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

#344

Post by modeless »

iconjack wrote: post #330
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…

That is not what happened at all. In the first poll, he asked when the journalists should be unsuspended and the options were (a) now, (b) tomorrow, (c) in 7 days, and (d) longer. Choice (a) got 43%, not the majority. Choices (c) and (d) totaled 52.5%, which means the 𝗺𝗮𝗷𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘆 voted for a minimum suspension of 7 days. Elon then essentially invoked "rank choice" voting and ran a new poll with only the top two…

Look, if you want to claim you are governing by poll and have people believe it then you can't change the rules after you start no matter how bad they are. It's far too easy to manipulate the result by adding or removing options after you know the voting trends. It's not as if this was that important of a decision anyway. There was no downside to simply respecting the first poll result and counting it as a lesson to think about the options a little harder next time.

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

#345

Post by LudwigNagasena »

JumpinJack_Cash wrote: post #188
pantalaimon wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But he still owns it, so who will he put in his place? Lex Fridman just volunteered https://twitter.com/lexfridman/status/1604627087385661440

Amazing this guy was ready to get on his knees for Putin up until January. Lots of stuff are known about Putin since 2000 till January 2022, some perhaps even worse than Ukraine invasion For sure he has a soft spot for Autocrats both in Moscow and in San Francisco

> Amazing this guy was ready to get on his knees for Putin up until January.

What do you mean exactly?

> For sure he has a soft spot for Autocrats both in Moscow and in San Francisco

The West establishment has a soft spot for autocrats: whitewashing the wealth of oligarchs, buying cheap oil stolen from common people, selling anti-protest crowd control gear and tear gas, etc, etc; even though "lots of stuff are known about Putin since 2000 till January 2022, some perhaps even worse than Ukraine invasion". I don't think Lex has done or has expressed a wish to do anything comparable to that.

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

#346

Post by spamizbad »

machina_ex_deus wrote: post #305
jasode wrote: post #226

It's instructive to contrast what other billionaires did with media properties they owned: - Jeff Bezos personally bought Washington Post but he left it alone and let the editors run it. What Jeff did do was invest some money into the IT department to modernize the workflow tools (metrics dashboards, etc) for journalists. He stayed out of the decisions of what stories get run on the front page. - Rupert Murdoch owns…

If you go back to Musk deal, it was immediately after Babylon bee was banned for an anti trans remark about man of the year. I'm speculating a bit, and I'm not supporting his actions, I'm trying to explain then. I think he already had disagreement with his son that came out as trans later, and I think the major reason he changed his political position is because of his child. The child also cut all ties with him. He…

He should sit down with some conservative Christian parents and ask them if the culture wars un-gay’d their children.

Anyway I’m not inclined to believe this given that he’s cozied up to people who are openly hostile to trans people (calling them groomers etc) rather than “Trans people deserve our love and support but actually are just confused we can fix them!”

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

#347

Post by FormerBandmate »

jasode wrote: post #268
woodruffw wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bezos is one thing, but I'm not sure if Murdoch is a great example: he perhaps refused to spike specific articles, but his entire media empire is built around promulgating his (increasingly revanchist) politics. His success is attributable not to "staying out of it," but to having a receptive audience that he (to waxing and waning degrees) has successfully influenced for the last 30 years. Besides, I don't think Twit…

>, but his entire media empire is built around promulgating his (increasingly revanchist) politics. Yes, I understand that and we know that WSJ leans more conservative than New York Times. Murdoch's empire reflects his worldview. I mean "stay out of it" as in micro-managing day-to-day newspaper stories or writing constant op-eds to respond to his critics. That's the type of distracting minutiae that Elon has sucked h…

Outside of the absurdly conservative WSJ opinion pages, I wouldn't even say that. The Wall Street Journal is the paper of Wall Street, it has a slight inherent pro-business bias but besides that it reports the news fairly and accurately.

The rest of Murdoch's business empire is nothing like it, compare WSJ.com to FoxNews.com at any given point and you'll see a drastic difference.

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

#348

Post by bmitc »

c22 wrote: post #327
bmitc wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What tech people like Paul Graham and others were hoping was for Elon to apply his scientific first principles type of thinking that he demonstrated previously at SpaceX+Tesla to Twitter. I wish one could take a step back and just see how ridiculous of a statement this is. There is nothing about Musk’s history and management style that is even remotely close to what could be called “scientific first principles type…

My pet theory is that the cybertuck is just an excuse to start prototyping a future martian ground transport, in which case atmospheric drag may be less of a concern.

That’s an incredibly generous take.

Why not just develop the thing instead of playing this “oh, we didn’t fail, we were just doing this other thing all along” game.

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

#349

Post by tootie »

xenospn wrote: post #81
tootie wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has muted his account, it's already baked in that only his followers are voting.

I muted his account months ago, but still got the retweets. I voted yes, which seems to be getting momentum and is now leading by a very comfortable margin.

If you mute, the rewtweets will be masked unless you reveal them. I saw this one because it was on HN before it closed. I never saw the previous polls until they were closed.

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

#350

Post by wilg »

bmitc wrote: post #310
jasode wrote: post #226

It's instructive to contrast what other billionaires did with media properties they owned: - Jeff Bezos personally bought Washington Post but he left it alone and let the editors run it. What Jeff did do was invest some money into the IT department to modernize the workflow tools (metrics dashboards, etc) for journalists. He stayed out of the decisions of what stories get run on the front page. - Rupert Murdoch owns…

> What tech people like Paul Graham and others were hoping was for Elon to apply his scientific first principles type of thinking that he demonstrated previously at SpaceX+Tesla to Twitter. I wish one could take a step back and just see how ridiculous of a statement this is. There is nothing about Musk’s history and management style that is even remotely close to what could be called “scientific first principles type…

No post body was provided.
Post reply on HN