Honestly, I think that being Twitter CEO could really be what Lex Friedman was put on Earth to do. https://mobile.twitter.com/lexfridman/status/160462708738566...
We'll find a way to seethe at Lex. He is already unpopular on HN although unclear why.
Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll
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Re: Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
>, 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…
Murdoch is the worst possible example, being in it up to his eyeballs. It's especially the case in Australia, where his empire started and still dominates. This article is one of many, its headline and opening line being: "Special report: Rupert Murdoch, a hands-on newspaperman" "To illustrate the extent to which Rupert Murdoch used to micro-manage his newspapers,..." https://www.reuters.com/article/us-newscorp-murdo…
>"To illustrate the extent to which Rupert Murdoch used to micro-manage his newspapers,..."
The 2011 article you linked emphasizes his activity with tabloid newspapers. I'm unfamiliar with those. From what I've read, he doesn't meddle with his "prestige" newspaper like WSJ. Maybe that's why the WSJ didn't censor itself on negative Theranos stories even though he invested $125 million in it and Elizabeth Holmes asked him to kill the articles.
Re: Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
Elon is not a savior because no one is purely a savior. He is a genius at hardware who badly needs to shut the fuck up and have people rein him in sometimes. Twitter has always been his weakness, and he needs to have emotional maturity and hire a new CEO, then stay off of it entirely for two weeks
> He is a genius I realize this is part of his narrative but I struggle to find the genius. As best i can tell he's a generally successful businessman.
I am a big Musk critic, but I think his rise demonstrates a genius for hype and PR. The amount of free media and cheap capital that Tesla got was extraordinary, and I think that was down to Musk.
But I think Musk is also a good example of the reason that I would probably not work for a company whose head is a sales guy. Salespeople are great at hype, but they often do it by living in a fantasy land, and someone insufficiently connected to reality is in charge, things can get wacky. I knew of one place where the CEO was absolutely great at closing deals, but he would do it by promising more new features than the company could build. The well-meaning tech people did their best, but rushing to meet the CEO's promises meant a worse and worse code base, with bug counts skyrocketing and feature velocity slowing.
At Tesla and SpaceX, he apparently had competent people in charge to buffer his impulses and direct him toward what he's good at. But here we see that fantasy dynamic play out as he absolutely flails around trying to run a business that he doesn't really understand after firing most of the people who did and terrifying the remainder. If anything, I think the Twitter saga demonstrates that on his own, he's actually bad at a bunch of core business skills.
Re: Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll
#374I 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 just going to put someone like Blake Masters or David Sacks in charge. Which, honestly, would be worse than old Twitter but better than erratic Elon Twitter.
"eratic Elon twitter" - ignoring the news, what exactly is erattic about twitter right now? Doesn't it basically work exactly the same?
Re: Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll
#375Earlier 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…
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No, I did not. I read it recently when searching for turbulence, not even searching for the Cybertruck. I’ll try and find the article again. The article you posted doesn’t say anything though and refers to a Reddit post that isn’t even linked, that I could find.
Re: Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll
#376It'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…
> There is nothing about Musk’s history and management style that is even remotely close to what could be called “scientific first principles type of thinking”.
Agreed. But the interesting question for me is: what are people seeing that they would mistake for that?
Re: Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll
#377It'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…
> What's really driving him is Elon the father that views leftism and woke as a mind virus that had possessed his child.
I don't think this is his motivation, because if it was, this isn't how he'd go about doing it. I mean, maybe it is - but if so, he's doing a lousy job affecting any kind of change in his child. I suppose that's on brand for him.
Personally I think he doesn't give a fuck about anything because $$ and just does whatever comes to mind (cf. his twitter poll about stepping down).
Re: Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe he's got a stimulant (or other psychoactive) prescription that renews around this time of the month and we're witnessing a periodic, chemically induced mania?
He did admit to being on a new weight loss drug https://www.thequint.com/fit/elon-musk-uses-this-diabetes-dr...
GLP-1 agonists aren't stimulants and don't tend to cause this kind of side effect. Although I guess stomach cramps could cause bad posting.
Re: Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll
#379Re: Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll
#380Earlier 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.
I have him blocked. Surprisingly, I can still click through and it looks like I could vote if I wanted to (which feels like a bug, but, eh, probably not Twitter's biggest issue right now).