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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

#501

Post by julianeon »

woodruffw wrote: post #244
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…

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…

Maybe OP's statement should be revised from "staying out of it" to "giving the appearance of staying out of it."

You are undoubtedly right that Murdoch's political influence is everywhere in Fox News and his other, very profitable, properties.

But have you ever heard a single juicy sound bite by Murdoch about Hillary Clinton, or Obama, or "wokeness?"

I just checked: turns out he's made a handful of comments, all of which basically qualify as obscure. He stays out of the way, despite running what is maybe the most politically impactful business of our times.

Compare to Musk, who, just a week or two ago, tweeted "My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci."

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

#502

Post by themitigating »

LawTalkingGuy wrote: post #471
themitigating wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though I don't agree with the WSJ I trust their reporting to the extent that if someone used it as a source I would accept it without debate. Rupert Murdoch on the other hand is quite possibly the biggest piece of shit in the entire world outsides of dictators, the tailban , etc. You should read how he meddled in UK politics and played king maker https://www.businessinsider.com/gordon-brown-rupert-murdoch-... I…

I assume you hate everyone who worked at Twitter on the "Trust and Safety" team, the FBI, mainstream media outlets, etc, and want them to die as well? They meddled in USA politics to throw the presidential election.

No post body was provided.

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

#503

Post by dragonwriter »

FormerBandmate wrote: post #347
jasode wrote: post #268

Earlier 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…

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.

> 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 WSJ had a right-wing political bias (beyond just a vague pro-business bias) under Dow Jones (in the news, not just the–even then–absurdly right-wing opinion pages), and it got stronger under Murdoch (I haven’t read it as much in recent years, but I did regularly around and for a while after the takeover.) It’s not strident in tone (outside of the opinion pages) the way that Fox News is, but its notable both in story selection and focus.

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

#504

Post by chrisweekly »

It occurs to me that voting the "wrong" way (or maybe even commenting here on HN) might lead to getting booted. Despite all the nonsense, I've continued to derive value from twitter, by:

- following accounts that share interesting things

- refusing to engage in arguments

- choosing "Not interested in this ad" for every ad

- avoiding "doom-scrolling"

I'd be sad to lose my account, given I don't have a way to recreate the "feed" of my curated following list, let alone easily interact w/ those people.

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

#505

Post by jacquesm »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #494
jacquesm wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for posting that, it is a very interesting viewpoint. I do think there is a bit of an inconsistency in Greenwald's reasoning though, he can't really speak for his colleagues, but he can speak for himself. So maybe he's not so much talking about his colleagues at the end as he is talking about himself? Or does he see himself as more principled than they are?

He's writing about how he ended up being forced out of his own media outlet (his words; he was co-founder). If he sees himself as more principled than they are, I would argue that the sequence of events he describes is sufficient justification for that view. It might not be, in a deep sense, true -- you could easily interpret him as being less afraid of losing a well-paid sinecure than the rest of the editorial board…

I have been following that around the time that it happened and one thing that struck me is that Greenwald had been losing the plot, his subsequent writings have - so far - confirmed that for me so I'm not quite sure I buy all of his reasonings but I wasn't aware of the exact interplay between him and the financiers.

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

#506

Post by Kronopath »

penjelly wrote: post #469
MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #196

Earlier 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?

has ambien script, has admitted to it influencing his behaviour on twitter in the past https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/79457837541523865...

I have no idea why people take Ambien when low-dose (<0.5mg) melatonin exists over-the-counter in abundance in the US.

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

#507

Post by howtousethetime »

motohagiography wrote: post #451
camel_Snake wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fun theory, but these kind of mental exercise to re-interpret an irrational decision as rational, repeatedly for certain individuals, seems frighteningly familiar. Not everything is 4-D chess. Sometimes unforced errors are just that.

Sometimes they are, but this isn't the category of error you make at that level of risk. Theorizing about rationality is no less rigorous than standing him up as a hate figure though, but it's a lot more interesting.

- "but this isn't the category of error you make at that level of risk." People do make all types of errors at all levels of risk. I often see comments in the vein of "He spent 44 billion dollars, I'm sure he has a plan", as support for theories that give Elon more credit, in terms of intelligence or capability. There are countless examples of humans through history throwing away fortunes or destroying kingdoms over petty spats, or out of ego, or stupidity, or for no discernable reason at all. I don't think giving powerful people the benefit of the doubt in this way is a good idea. It lends support to the idea that they're more rational in general (because all their choices likely have higher risk, they have more to lose after all), and from there it would be easy to argue that they deserve their power and should have more.

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

#508

Post by TheDudeMan »

xracy wrote: post #478

The phrasing of this is... weird. What does it mean to "step down as head of Twitter?" Is he going to sell the company? Is he going to hire someone else as CEO to make decisions? What are people actually voting on here... it feels simultaneously obvious, and completely unclear to me.

Step down means not be CEO. I'm sure he'd love to get his money back by selling, but that is not an option.

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

#509

Post by Davesjoshin »

krapp wrote: post #493
Davesjoshin wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just really liked him as a bad ass engineer. Sucks that he went this far

He isn't a badass engineer. He hires badass engineers and gets the credit for their work.

ehh yea, maybe he just sees this as an opportunity to do the same thing. Hire people at some point to fix all this.. seems like a tall order

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

#510

Post by neycoda »

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…

Why would Bexzos buy the Post if not to influence its narrative? I don't think he's gonna own a news agency that will run stories undercutting Amazon.
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