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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

#541

Post by PragmaticPulp »

sytelus wrote: post #200
wch wrote: post #162

Now that the poll is leaning toward "yes", Elon is adding conditions, namely, you have to invest your life savings. Lex Fridman volunteered to do it for free, and Elon replied: > One catch: you have to invest your life savings in Twitter and it has been in the fast lane to bankruptcy since May. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604626103326253056

So, the guy who has blocked half of the Internet for having any kind of counter-argument whatsoever will become its new CEO? Context: https://twitter.com/search?q=%22blocked%20by%20lex%22&src=ty...

Lex‘s subreddit (where he is a mod) is also famous for removing any posts that don’t enthusiastically agree with Lex. A lot of confused Lex fans are surprised to find themselves banned from his subreddit after making the mistake of questioning something he said.

Podcast skills aside, this is not a guy with a track record of healthy social media engagement or moderation.

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

#542

Post by jacquesm »

The_Double wrote: post #411
j_crick wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s up this a little bit to Eric Weinstein.

Based on his recent company, Jared Kushner. If he can bring peace to the Middle East then fixing Twitter should be a breeze.

He could do it before lunch probably and then go on and solve the world energy crisis in time to make dinner.

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

#543

Post by jacquesm »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #541
sytelus wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, the guy who has blocked half of the Internet for having any kind of counter-argument whatsoever will become its new CEO? Context: https://twitter.com/search?q=%22blocked%20by%20lex%22&src=ty...

Lex‘s subreddit (where he is a mod) is also famous for removing any posts that don’t enthusiastically agree with Lex. A lot of confused Lex fans are surprised to find themselves banned from his subreddit after making the mistake of questioning something he said. Podcast skills aside, this is not a guy with a track record of healthy social media engagement or moderation.

He'll do just fine then. Compared to Musk, that is. In fact, I'd wager a crash test dummy would do fine, compared to Musk.

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

#544

Post by salamo »

wmf wrote: post #28
pseudo0 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like it would be the smart move to hire someone with expertise in social media, give them his high-level vision, and let them implement the details. The last few weeks of Elon's micromanagement have been a complete shitshow.

Everyone with expertise in social media hates Elon's high-level vision.

More fundamentally, it's not clear there is a coherent high-level vision. You can either

- allow all legal speech; or

- ban doxxing, publicly available location info, bots, spam, info critical of Musk/Twitter, parody, links to other social media, and Kanye West

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

#545

Post by jacquesm »

sytelus wrote: post #250
moneywoes wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who has he blocked? Context?

He has blocked almost everyone. He has blocked extremely well respected researchers and academics at top institutes who don't even follow him or even haven't tweeted at him just because he disagrees with his views. He once blocked someone for praising danish pastry. https://mobile.twitter.com/search?f=top&q=lex%20fridman%20bl...

> just because he disagrees with his views

He even blocked himself? Wow. But points for consistency, at least.

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

#546

Post by woodruffw »

danaris wrote: post #520
woodruffw wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expensive enough to try and shirk the bills, it seems[1]. I would say that 95% of my professional circle was on Twitter 3 months ago. Today, it feels like less than 50%. Of that same circle, I only know one who paid $8 for Twitter Blue, and he canceled this month. Outrage-driven engagement is definitely happening. But it needs to happen on Twitter, and in a way that doesn't threaten Twitter's ad sales, for it to be o…

That article seems to suggest that Musk has considered cutting just about everything except servers (including paying the lease on the buildings). But nowhere does it mention cutting servers.

> Mr. Davis, the president of the Boring Company, has also directed Twitter employees to renegotiate the deals that the company has with firms such as Amazon and Oracle, which provide computing and tech services, the people said. The employees were told to suggest to those companies that Mr. Musk’s firms would not work with them in the future if they refused to renegotiate, the people said.

Twitter has their own datacenters, so this is likely to be peripheral. But we do know they've fired the majority of the staff actually operating those datacenters.

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

#547

Post by jacquesm »

dekhn wrote: post #313
x0x0 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true. Twitter was already losing money, whilst ads, their primary income source, is taking a hit due to economic problems. At the same time, the way they did ads is (the same as FB) running against secular trends against data sharing and privacy. Jack and previous management had utterly failed on the product front. Excluding Spaces and Blue (for news junkies, which already got shot), what product changes h…

Twitter pre-elon had a long runway to slide down. Musk turned that into an "immediate emergency" through unforced errors. Before, a better leader than Parag could have steered the company to higher profitability- trim some cost/product/teams, improve the ads a bit, and they'd have been back to profitability. Now, it's unlikely Twitter will survive this mortal blow.

> Twitter pre-elon had a long runway to slide down. Musk turned that into an "immediate emergency" through unforced errors.

To be fair though, Musk probably sees that as optimizing for speed.

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

#548

Post by postingawayonhn »

grecy wrote: post #94
ckastner wrote: post #36

In the six weeks he's been CEO, he totally gutted Twitter, and chased away who knows how many advertisers. There's no reasonable way to right that ship. I think he knows he's on the Titanic. I think he's looking for a pretense to get out, to stop this from taking TSLA down with it even further. TSLA is down -50% in three months, whereas the S&P500 is flat.

What's interesting though is that it's now his private play-toy. If you want to buy a $1,000,000 Ferrari and thrash it into oblivion in 1 week that is totally your choice, have fun with that. It wouldn't be a free country if people could stop you doing so. He's doing the same thing here, he just has more money to play with, which I think it what people are ultimately annoyed about. Also worth pointing out that for ye…

> If you want to buy a $1,000,000 Ferrari and thrash it into oblivion in 1 week that is totally your choice

Musk basically did just that with a Mclaren F1.

https://www.thedrive.com/news/32191/did-you-know-elon-musk-w...

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

#549

Post by PragmaticPulp »

jacquesm wrote: post #543
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lex‘s subreddit (where he is a mod) is also famous for removing any posts that don’t enthusiastically agree with Lex. A lot of confused Lex fans are surprised to find themselves banned from his subreddit after making the mistake of questioning something he said. Podcast skills aside, this is not a guy with a track record of healthy social media engagement or moderation.

He'll do just fine then. Compared to Musk, that is. In fact, I'd wager a crash test dummy would do fine, compared to Musk.

I have no doubt he’d end up as a puppet for Musk’s whims. Perhaps a great fall guy if Musk wants to blend into the background without actually ceding control.

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

#550

Post by jacquesm »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #549
jacquesm wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He'll do just fine then. Compared to Musk, that is. In fact, I'd wager a crash test dummy would do fine, compared to Musk.

I have no doubt he’d end up as a puppet for Musk’s whims. Perhaps a great fall guy if Musk wants to blend into the background without actually ceding control.

That looks to be the plan. Whoever takes this job at this point is setting themselves up for failure. Anybody smart enough to run Twitter will pass and anybody stupid enough to try will end up being blamed even though there isn't a thing they could do about it at this point.

I'm open to being surprised.

Plan 'C':

Musk eats his loss, re-IPO's twitter at 10 cts on the dollar, prays the investors will cut him a deal and the new owners will do what they can to salvage the wreck. That would probably still be a dicey proposition. The cat is out of the bag now, Mastodon and a couple of others are now suffering growth pains for the first time in a long time and the most active users are all wondering if they should bail or have already done so.

It's the biggest self-own in the history of tech. But hopefully it will result in centralized social media becoming a thing of the past. That at least would be one positive thing to come out of this.

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