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Paul Graham on Twitter's anti-Substack measures: “It's a mistake.”

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Re: Paul Graham on Twitter's anti-Substack measures: “It's a mistake.”

#31

Post by atoav »

extr wrote: post #3

I've run out of the mental energy to give Musk the benefit of the doubt. His capricious and poor decision-making is ruining one of my favorite products day and day. It's so frustrating to watch, a complete train wreck in slow motion. I'm simultaneously beyond caring and unable to ignore it at this point.

I remember being on a hacker camp ca. 2016 and arguing the position that he is not the genius as which he was presented, because some of the stuff he said made no sense at all and ao I checked a little deeper and there was more of that. Back then he still had many convinced. Or at least they accepted thst the guy was supporting the cool companies. That was 7 years ago.

Nowadays that guy is a joke in the same circles because it has become glowingly obvious just how much of his persona was a lie.

The one thing I can give him credit for is that he knew which companies to bet on... and apparently the damage he could do was limited by others there. Now that he is in full control his style of doing things is out there in the daylight.

And quite frankly: I don't even know why it is out in the daylight — Elon could have done the smart thing and let the company do it's thing and give them goals that they should find a route to in the next years. But Elon being Elon he just had to make it about himself and micromanage Twitter into chaos.

So if you have run out of mental energy to give the guy the benefit of the doubt, that is a bit late, but hey, better late then never.

Re: Paul Graham on Twitter's anti-Substack measures: “It's a mistake.”

#32

Post by [deleted] »

forgingahead wrote: post #29

What if this is just his "4D chess" move to condition people that removing ANY links to ANY domain on Twitter is wrong? Twitter pre-Musk would arbitrarily remove links they went against party orthodoxy (The NY Post during the Hunter Biden laptop story was the biggest example I remember). Just declaring "we won't censor anyone any time" is fine, but you still get all corners clamoring for their "opponent side" to be s…

[deleted]

Re: Paul Graham on Twitter's anti-Substack measures: “It's a mistake.”

#34

Post by mindcrime »

baxtr wrote: post #11

I’m not a Musk fan. But all these mistakes and twitter still running?

So is Myspace as far as that goes. So just that fact that the lights are still on isn't saying a whole lot. And considering how much trouble Twitter seem to be having just paying their bills, I wouldn't be surprised if the lights literally do go out before much longer. shrug

Re: Paul Graham on Twitter's anti-Substack measures: “It's a mistake.”

#35

Post by lelanthran »

garrettgarcia wrote: post #26
baxtr wrote: post #11

I’m not a Musk fan. But all these mistakes and twitter still running?

"Still running" is a pretty low bar. Is that really how success should be measured? Yahoo! and AOL are also "still running".

> "Still running" is a pretty low bar. Is that really how success should be measured? Yahoo! and AOL are also "still running".

I'm no Musk fan, quite the opposite (check my old comment history), but "still running" is exactly the opposite of what I (and many other naysayers) thought would happen if a tech company laid off over 50% of their staff.

Whether you like it or not, "still running" is the bar for success for every business.

Re: Paul Graham on Twitter's anti-Substack measures: “It's a mistake.”

#36

Post by maxbond »

HopenHeyHi wrote: post #28
extr wrote: post #3

I've run out of the mental energy to give Musk the benefit of the doubt. His capricious and poor decision-making is ruining one of my favorite products day and day. It's so frustrating to watch, a complete train wreck in slow motion. I'm simultaneously beyond caring and unable to ignore it at this point.

This is the last straw. I give up. You can find a link to my new Mastodon profile on my site. https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1604556563338887168 Heh. Y'all are hilarious. 6 months in and countless predictions of imminent doom, site will collapse, everybody will leave for Mastodon, its all going to shit.. Meanwhile dude changes the logo to Doge and the building sign to Titter. I think you're taking a silly website w…

This is the moral equivalent of telling people to stop hitting themselves. Musk starts damaging something people care for very much (people found friendship and community on Twitter and it became a big part of their lives), they get upset about it, and the fact that they are emotionally invested is presented as evidence they are unserious and their views can be dismissed. Even outright mocked.

If they don't immediately abandon the platform (because they want to stay connected to that community) that's presented as evidence their views are shrill whinging, that they actually consent to their mistreatment, and can again be dismissed and derided.

This is just a rhetorical device to deflect criticism.

Re: Paul Graham on Twitter's anti-Substack measures: “It's a mistake.”

#37

Post by MattGaiser »

kevinventullo wrote: post #16
23547234573457 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the Twitter example entirely true though? Arguably Twitters actions helped fuel its buyout from an activist billionaire. That's hardly non-consequence.

And that buyout netted far more money for shareholders than a fair price would have at the time of selling.

Why I don't think anyone at Twitter regrets it.

When have bans and restrictions hurt an established social company of some sort?

Re: Paul Graham on Twitter's anti-Substack measures: “It's a mistake.”

#38

Post by mcintyre1994 »

HopenHeyHi wrote: post #28
extr wrote: post #3

I've run out of the mental energy to give Musk the benefit of the doubt. His capricious and poor decision-making is ruining one of my favorite products day and day. It's so frustrating to watch, a complete train wreck in slow motion. I'm simultaneously beyond caring and unable to ignore it at this point.

This is the last straw. I give up. You can find a link to my new Mastodon profile on my site. https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1604556563338887168 Heh. Y'all are hilarious. 6 months in and countless predictions of imminent doom, site will collapse, everybody will leave for Mastodon, its all going to shit.. Meanwhile dude changes the logo to Doge and the building sign to Titter. I think you're taking a silly website w…

That was when he attempted to ban links to other social networks and to things like linktree. No surprise that people would have left if he’d gone ahead with that, but he rolled it back.

Re: Paul Graham on Twitter's anti-Substack measures: “It's a mistake.”

#39

Post by NhanH »

hinkley wrote: post #12
extr wrote: post #3

I've run out of the mental energy to give Musk the benefit of the doubt. His capricious and poor decision-making is ruining one of my favorite products day and day. It's so frustrating to watch, a complete train wreck in slow motion. I'm simultaneously beyond caring and unable to ignore it at this point.

I had a coworker who would have anger lines come out of his skull if you said Musk had anything to do with PayPal success. It was like Barney Stinson talking about Ralph Macchio. Then Tesla and SpaceX happened and I was like, “hmm, maybe he was wrong” and then Twitter happened and I’m thinking, “no, I get it now”.

Recently, I have a theory that Musk is a politician, not an entrepreneur. It just so happened that he wasn't born in the US to formally pursuit the politician career (yes, I know that President is nominally the only office limited to US-born citizen. That isn't the point, it's still vastly harder to be a high ranking politician without being born in the country)

From that viewpoint, it makes sense as to how he could be successful in some venture and not so in others. The hypothesis would mean that he's very good at organizing, dealing with bureaucracy, doing PR etc. Not so much at actually building things, designing, engineering, or basically building consumer business.

Re: Paul Graham on Twitter's anti-Substack measures: “It's a mistake.”

#40

Post by samwillis »

HopenHeyHi wrote: post #28
extr wrote: post #3

I've run out of the mental energy to give Musk the benefit of the doubt. His capricious and poor decision-making is ruining one of my favorite products day and day. It's so frustrating to watch, a complete train wreck in slow motion. I'm simultaneously beyond caring and unable to ignore it at this point.

This is the last straw. I give up. You can find a link to my new Mastodon profile on my site. https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1604556563338887168 Heh. Y'all are hilarious. 6 months in and countless predictions of imminent doom, site will collapse, everybody will leave for Mastodon, its all going to shit.. Meanwhile dude changes the logo to Doge and the building sign to Titter. I think you're taking a silly website w…

> I think you're taking a silly website way too seriously.

What may be a silly website to you is a major revenue channel, community lifeline, platform for change, or a free and safe space for others.

Twitter is many different things to many different people. It clearly has its flaws, and always has, but dismissing it as a "silly website" does disservice to the impact and importance it has on people's lives.

Twitter isn't really the software, or the business that owns it. It's the people who use it, the community. Sadly that's been forgotten under its current ownership.

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