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

I think most people do not consider enough the importance of timing.

EV cars have existed for more than a century and been tried out by many companies. They all failed to mark a significant dent in the market because batteries technologies weren't as advanced as now, and because regulations weren't as strict as they are now.

Tesla was founded right when at a crossing point when California and European Union emissions regulations started to be more and more stringent and efficient batteries affordable enough. Being an EV-only company it was granted a very generous loan from the US government. This is a kick start no small automotive company ever got.

Not saying Musk hasn't any part in how the development, manufacturing and sale process was done. He certainly is one of the first to make people accept and even pay to be beta testers of an unfinished product/vehicle.

I think if we follow Hacker News Guidelines here:

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

We can reasonably take the comment along the lines of "even Murdoch didn't step in in this potentially harmful scenario." It doesn't necessarily hold him up as a paragon of impartiality overall.

I think that the shift towards open protocols is just inevitable at some point. The ads-funded and surveillance-based business model is getting backlash both from users and regulators.

The EU's DMA is forcing giants to open up their platforms and APIs, which means opening up the walled gardens, which means that Twitter and Meta will no longer hold a monopoly on how their information is presented (i.e. there will be a blossoming of apps that deliver the content without all the spyware, which kicks surveillance capitalism directly in its bollocks).

Users are also becoming more sensitive about who stores their data and how it's used. As platforms become more aggressive about defending their profit margins, and start shovelling more ads down people's throats, more sponsored results and deploy more trackers, people are actually starting to quit those platforms and move somewhere else - a reversal of the network effects that made these platforms' popularity about 10-15 years ago.

I really believe that within 5-10 years the idea of using a closed, proprietary and surveillance-based piece of software to stay in contact with your friends will sound as dumb as using proprietary and paid protocols for computer networking instead of TCP/IP, or some proprietary implementation of messaging instead of emails.

The hard right, and their conspiracy theories about Pizzagate, Voting Machines, Mail-in Balloting and Fake school shootings are crazy and disgraceful, in my opinion. And I lost any respect I might have had for Trump after the aftermath of the 2020 election.

But I'm equally disapproving of the left in their handling of the 2016 election and its aftermath, and the way they represented it as "stolen", as well as their narratives during the BLM "protests" and January 6 "insurrection". Imo, if Trump had really wanted a coup, he would have placed his people in top positions of the armed forces, and used actual armed soldiers. Q-anon and others involved on January 6 did not seem to have anywhere near the kind of organization to carry out an actual coup.

Also, Twitter and outher outlets suppressing (then and even now) the Hunter laptop (not the porn, but the actual evidence of corruption that looked like it involved Joe) made it look super-partisan.

Later on, the partisan divide arround covid, with crazy anti-vaxxers on one side, and similarly irrational support for excessive lockdowns and suppression of the WIV story on the other, it seemed like Twitter was contributing to the excesses of both sides.

The world (and perhaps especially the US) needs a platform where moderates of both sides can meet to discuss their differences, and where moderation is (to the extent it is carried out) applied to the crazy people of BOTH sides when it becomes excessive.

That way, one can hope, it may be possible to separate facts from matters of opinion from outrights falsehoods.

If too many people consistently tow the party line (which many be the case for anyone consistently agreeing with their own side on all issues above), I think a breakup of the USA is inevitable. The result will be one Woke-merica and one Maga-merica, and quite possibly civil war.

When Musk took over, I was hoping he would take the platform in a direction where it would support a moderate centre.

So far, he has not made much progress.

Earlier in this discussion someone posted a link to Musk’s post on Nitter (which seems to be notabird.site), which is one of many Twitter alternate UIs/proxy/mirror sites.

Anyway here it is: https://notabird.site/elonmusk/status/1604617643973124097