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Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

nytimes.com

391–400 of 1001 posts

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#391
post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A lot of the users who X need to stay on the platform, journalists and politicians, are still there Twitter/X is the reason DJT became President. It happened accidentally (ie against the wishes of Twitter management) in 2016, they successfully suppressed him in 2020, and then Elon gave MAGA that platform in 2024, leading to DJT's successful election. As long as X is seen a kingmaker, someone will find it profitable…

If you think twitter made even 1% difference in 2016 I urge you to go and touch some grass. This stuff doesn't matter.

DJT's use of Twitter in 2016 allowed him to operate within his opponents' OODA loops.

DJT and his supporters could craft narratives directly, rather than going through traditional media.

DJT's information flow: DJT -> Twitter-based Supporters -> News Orgs -> Electorate

Other Candidate's info flows: Candidate -> News Orgs -> Electorate

So not only could DJT move faster, but he also didn't need permission/buy-in from Editors/Owners of news orgs.

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I find myself suspicious of your numbers given I don't get the sense blm changed much about policing but can you cite some source numbers?

They're conducting some sleight of hand here. There was indeed a bit of a violent crime spike post-George Floyd in the US.

But... there was also an unprecedented global pandemic and resulting economic shutdown, and the same crime spike happened in other countries that didn't have a BLM movement to speak of.

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#393
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

..and 3 years later has a combined valuation with xAI of $113B. Those waiting for X to collapse are going to wait a lot longer than the original 6 months that it was predicted to collapse after the November 2022 takeover.

>..and 3 years later has a combined valuation with xAI of $113B. This might be like Stacey King, a Chicago Bulls player, jokingly claiming he and Michael Jordan "combined to score 70 points" on a night when Jordan scored 69 points

But Twitter/X owns that training data. Tesla (or whatever else you’re trying to say is Stacey King) does not.

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#394
post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think twitter made even 1% difference in 2016 I urge you to go and touch some grass. This stuff doesn't matter.

Way more likely that it was /r/the_donald. In my humble, biased opinion--since I was around there but never really active on Twitter.

But Trump won more convincingly in 2024 without it? That doesn't support your argument.

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not respond with an actual rebuttal of these points instead of downvoting? Are you 12-year-old schoolkids?

I don't think anyone has any interest in "debating" you. Personally, I don't get into arguments with people who do not seem connected to reality. There is no point in it. That seems like the sort of thing a 12 year old would do. You'd probably find more purchase with your arguments at an adolescent playground anyway. >I simply don't see the destructiveness and failure that many people, here on this site and elsewhere…

Hence the idiocy of downvoting.

What's disconnected from reality in what I said? As for Grok, so? It's an LLM and all of them are prone to saying all kinds of invented bullshit. Are you seriously going to get morally scandalized by an LLM parrot, with no self-awareness, saying some racist nonsense? It would be better to know how it was prompted into this, and by whom, then blame them more specifically.

Also note that I was referring to X having the potential to be a valuable asset to Musk, and a business asset that grows back in value in a financial/user sense. I didn't mention any moral considerations. That aside, even if it's loaded with racism, do you think other social media platforms aren't? Or in other cases, aren't loaded with their own brand of intolerant fanaticism?

To call a social network deploraable is fine, but at least should be done with a bit of perspective for your own personal biases in favor of or against anything, and of course, it's useful to remember that something being morally deplorable to a bunch of people doesn't translate to it being a bad business, or a failure in that sense for its owner.

Either way, Musk is definitely a narcissist and almost certainly strays off into derangement at times, but a stupid man, no, and even with X it's shortsighted to say anything about failure.

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 don't agree with the direction Musk has set for X, but businesswise it's not doing worse. Twitter was a financial catastrophe before the take over, so you didn't need much improvement. Moderation was a financial drain, the API didn't make them any money and none of the users seems to care all that much about the platform not being open to users without an account... because they all have accounts and wasn't able to…

I don’t think we can say for sure whether it’s doing worse businesswise since the numbers aren’t public. But consider e.g. https://www.adweek.com/media/advertisers-returning-to-x/

“From January to September 2024, marketing intelligence platform MediaRadar found that (X’s former top advertisers including Comcast, IBM, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Lionsgate Entertainment) collectively spent less than $3.3 million on X. This is a 98% year-over-year drop from the $170 million spent during the same period in 2023.”

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#397

Good for her. Got paid a ton of money to be the fall guy and no one ever believed anything that went wrong with the company was her fault. That's a clean getaway in my book. Hopefully she can move on to something that isn't building Nazi chat bots.

> to be the fall guy

People keep saying that, but what did she take the fall for?

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has it tanked? X is still running, it still has millions of users.

The people I've seen who have talked about their engagement numbers--as measured by something like "how many visitors do we get to a story based on a Bluesky/Facebook/ex-Twitter/etc. link", so independent of the social media's self-reported metrics--have all reported that Twitter is generally among the poorest-performing social media sites. Especially if you're looking at it from a perspective of "how much engagement…

> The people I've seen who have talked about their engagement numbers

Now do bluesky. X is doing fine. Turns out network effects are real.

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#399
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.

Does it? It is 100% a bot farm full of right-wing propaganda. Create a new account and start tweeting. Every single like/reply you get will be from a bot pretending to be either Elon, or Elon's mom, or someone who has recently won the lottery and is going to give it away to all of their followers. Every single recommended post you'll get in your feed will be the most unhinged q-anon conspiracy shit you can imagine. There is zero discourse happening there. It is an echo chamber of psychotic individuals.

Threads on the other hand is actually a pretty fun place to be these days. I get a lot of interaction with random strangers on all kinds of topics, and it is as good or bad as you want it to be.

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Way more likely that it was /r/the_donald. In my humble, biased opinion--since I was around there but never really active on Twitter.

But Trump won more convincingly in 2024 without it? That doesn't support your argument.

Trump won by 2024 isn't a story of how Trump outwitted his opponents but one of how his opponents tied their shoelaces together.
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