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Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

nytimes.com

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Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More and more I think Musk managed to his take over of Twitter pretty successfully. X still isn't as strong a brand as Twitter where, but it's doing okay. A lot of the users who X need to stay on the platform, journalists and politicians, are still there. The only issue is that Musk vastly overpaid for Twitter, but if he plans to keep it and use it for his political ambitions, that might not matter. Also remember tha…

Well sure if you give up on moderation, and close the platform to people who aren't signed in, and shut off the API then yes you didn't need the people supporting those parts of the platform. And I guess if you consider "the place with the MechaHitler AI" as good branding there's no arguing with you that it's doing just as well as Twitter.

I will fondly remind folks that Grok isn't even the first LLM to become a Nazi on Twitter.

Remember Tay Tweets?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(chatbot)

Honestly I really don't think a bad release of an LLM that was rolled back is really the condemnation you think it is.

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#182

One time they let her speak publicly it turned out to be a disaster. She never had any say and worst part is she was not even a good fall guy, it was clear who’s pulling the strings. The most immaterial and inconsequential hire ever. I love all the replies on Twitter thanking her but during her time the valuation dropped 80% and they were suing advertisers for not advertising. Remarkably inept.

if she had no power to make decisions then how would the company's decline in valuation be her fault?

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#183
The AP News story[1] had a tidbit I missed:

  In late June, [Elon Musk] invited X users to help train the chatbot on their commentary in a way that invited a flood of racist responses and conspiracy theories.

  “Please reply to this post with divisive facts for @Grok training,” Musk said in the June 21 post. “By this I mean things that are politically incorrect, but nonetheless factually true.”
Yaccarino is obviously not Executive Of The Year, but what are you supposed to do when your boss is even more reckless and stupid than Donald Trump? I'm surprised it took this long.

[1] https://apnews.com/article/x-ceo-linda-yaccarino-elon-musk-g...

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#184
post #50

X has been nothing short of an exercise in brand destruction. However, despite all the drama, it still stands, it still exists, and it remains relevant.

More and more I think Musk managed to his take over of Twitter pretty successfully. X still isn't as strong a brand as Twitter where, but it's doing okay. A lot of the users who X need to stay on the platform, journalists and politicians, are still there. The only issue is that Musk vastly overpaid for Twitter, but if he plans to keep it and use it for his political ambitions, that might not matter. Also remember tha…

I think it’s hard to conclude that the people weren’t needed given how spectacularly it tanked.

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To some other founder/acquirer that wants to maintain control while putting somebody else in the seat. You're acting like Elon is uniquely stupid.

Elon's level of stupid feels unique at first glance but then if you look at how many people elected the current president...well.

Which given the nature of democracy are many of the same as the people who elected the last one and the one before, etc. Are we not all snowflake-unique kinds of stupid?

My point of gratitude for today is that my level of stupid is not nearly as consequential to others as some folks'.

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#187

When I saw this news, my first thought was that she lasted about 1 year and 11 months longer than I expected after the first few weeks. I know Twitter had many terrible aspects, but I do miss the world voice old Twitter provided for quotes that could be engaged with in an "everyone is here" kind of feeling that doesn't exist on any other platforms right now.

Of course I hate what Elon has done to Twitter but you're feeling previously that everyone was there was an illusion brought on by massive propaganda and manipulation of the conversation. The same thing has happened to Reddit now, well it feels more inclusive and open it's actually an incredibly controlled enclosed system that only allows one specific viewpoint. Now of course to the people inside that bubble it feels like freedom but to everyone else it looks like a liberal echo chamber.

For example, when the actual owner of the at Bitcoin handle wasn't pushing the narrative that Jack Dorsey wanted they hijacked the moniker and gave it to a pro b Blockstream (THE COMPANY THAT CONTROLS THE BITCOIN CODE BASE) individual. For most people that support Bitcoin and blockstream it looks like a victory of free speech but in reality they're just controlling more and more of the speech and kicking out anyone from the conversation who disagrees.

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#188
post #50

X has been nothing short of an exercise in brand destruction. However, despite all the drama, it still stands, it still exists, and it remains relevant.

X is still ground zero for news, and it saved free speech. In the fullness of time and distance it will be viewed by historians as one of the most important events in history.

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#189

The AP News story[1] had a tidbit I missed: In late June, [Elon Musk] invited X users to help train the chatbot on their commentary in a way that invited a flood of racist responses and conspiracy theories. “Please reply to this post with divisive facts for @Grok training,” Musk said in the June 21 post. “By this I mean things that are politically incorrect, but nonetheless factually true.” Yaccarino is obviously not…

Yeah, never understood why she took this job. It could only really end one way.

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#190
post #25

Have any of the people who noisily joined X to make a big impact fast actually had a big impact over any time frame? Remember when G. Hotz said he was going to fix Twitter search in 6 weeks, and then it turned out that G. Hotz is just another midwit like anyone else and Twitter search is still as bad as ever? Yaccarino said they were going to transform Twitter into the "everything app" with payments, marketplaces, an…

Search is a pretty solved problem if you are willing to invest the resources to create a inverted index of all the text you want to search. An inverted index of all tweets would be pretty expensive. Creating text embeddings for semantic search would be the next stage and even more expensive.

It is very much not a solved problem. Because the implication behind search is not "well the result you need is technically in the result set", it's "the result you need as at the top", and that remains an extremely difficult problem for anything but a trivial scale.
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