Manufactured consensus on x.com • Hacker News Board

Re: Manufactured consensus on x.com

#191

Post by Dylan16807 » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 9:15 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #182

jandrese wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many years ago I was really rooting for Tesla and Elon as they dragged the auto industry kicking and screaming towards electrification. How they focused on the underserved whole home battery market. He even kept his manufacturing domestic unlike most other big companies. Some cracks started to form in this when he made a reckless wall street bet that he could make a million cars in a year or something and had his emp…

> In the end he won the bet and got an enormous payout. I remember calculating that if he divided the award in half and split that half evenly among every single Tesla employee that it would amount to about $40,000 per person, a life changing amount of money for most people. Instead he kept it all for himself and gave a press conference about how big of a genius he is. You call the bet "reckless", but are seemingly o…

> You call the bet "reckless", but are seemingly only opposed to it because he didn't share the winnings? Which one is it?

What's the conflict? I can call something reckless without the recklessness itself making me particularly opposed to it.

Also it's not just that he didn't share the reward, it's that he forced a whole lot of extra difficult work and then also didn't share the reward.

Re: Manufactured consensus on x.com

#192

Post by fkyoureadthedoc » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 9:19 PM UTC

alabastervlog wrote: post #69

ty6853 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most glaring example of this was how reddit did a total 180 before/after the election. Before the election questioning putting a candidate in without a primary was sacrilege. Afterwards it was a popularly supported reason for the loss. It was like watching an inflated balloon of propaganda deflate.

That's bizarre. Putting her at the top of the ticket was very clearly the better of two bad options (it was too late for the better options, by the time the call was made). There exist people who think Biden had a better shot and replacing him with Harris was a mistake? Did they not look at his approval ratings earlier that year, then look up what that's historically meant for presidential re-elections? Dude was gonn…

No I don't think people are saying Biden was the better option. At first, as I recall, people were fairly outraged that they were left with two bad options.

The general tone very quickly shifted to Kamala's brat summer, Kamala is bae type shit.

Even after the fact nobody was questioning Kamala's qualifications. Why, at the 11th hour, were we left with demented grandpa and someone that couldn't win a primary the first time? Whose fault was this? What consequence did they suffer?

The dialogue was mostly around trying to figure out who to blame for people not voting for Kamala. Men? Black dudes? Mexicans? Misogynists? Anyone but whoever was actually responsible for the situation? Idk what it's like now though, I haven't used Reddit in months.

Re: Manufactured consensus on x.com

#193

Post by Dylan16807 » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 9:28 PM UTC

seanw444 wrote: post #121

lynndotpy wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, the API change was the last nail in the coffin, honestly. Reddit was always bad for several reasons, but it always had some availability of smart people that placed it alongside StackExchange and Hacker News. But 2022 and 2023 really saw a mass exodus of expertise from Reddit (and Twitter, etc.) Lots of smart people left to Mastodons, at least.

I like how you both responded to GP's roast of "I agree" comments by saying "I agree". Maybe that was intentional. Anyway, I agree. I used Reddit fairly regularly before the API change, though I was already starting to get disenfranchised by the political hive mind by that point. The death of FOSS third party clients that made the platform bearable to use was the straw that broke the camel's back, for me. I've comple…

The complaint was about comments that are functionally an overly large upvote, not comments that have the word agree in them.

Re: Manufactured consensus on x.com

#194

Post by gruez » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 9:30 PM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #191

gruez wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the end he won the bet and got an enormous payout. I remember calculating that if he divided the award in half and split that half evenly among every single Tesla employee that it would amount to about $40,000 per person, a life changing amount of money for most people. Instead he kept it all for himself and gave a press conference about how big of a genius he is. You call the bet "reckless", but are seemingly o…

> You call the bet "reckless", but are seemingly only opposed to it because he didn't share the winnings? Which one is it? What's the conflict? I can call something reckless without the recklessness itself making me particularly opposed to it. Also it's not just that he didn't share the reward, it's that he forced a whole lot of extra difficult work and then also didn't share the reward.

>What's the conflict? I can call something reckless without the recklessness itself making me particularly opposed to it.

see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov's_gun

If you start off a sentence with "Some cracks started to form in this when", and then describe a situation using negative adjectives (ie. "reckless"), it's fair for most assume that the "recklessness" was your justification for the aforementioned claim. If that detail is irrelevant to your argument, then you shouldn't include it.

As for the object level question of whether taking such a bet is "reckless" at all. It's entirely impossible to tell without knowing the bet amount, and his finances at the time. Musk was recently able to take a $40B hit to his finances when he was forced to buy twitter (after trying to back out), with seemingly little consequence, so it's unclear whether an absurdly large bet would actually be "reckless".

>Also it's not just that he didn't share the reward, it's that he forced a whole lot of extra difficult work and then also didn't share the reward.

Bosses telling non-equity owning subordinates to work harder is hardly a phenomenon limited to Musk.

Re: Manufactured consensus on x.com

#195

Post by awkwabear » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 9:32 PM UTC

OmarShehata wrote: post #142

casenmgreen wrote: post #124

It looks like Twitter is suppressing posts until they are spammed by hate bots and then making those posts visible. https://bsky.app/profile/willhaycardiff.bsky.social/post/3lk... I've also seen evidence of posts Twitter likes (violent and hateful anti-immigration posts - literally a photo of a dummy tied to a chair being shot in the back of the head) being spammed by love bots. Twitter seems to be a propaganda chann…

important notes from the essay, this not unique to twitter: > And if you think this only happens on one social network, you’re already caught in the wrong attention loop. > The most effective influence doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t censor loudly, or boost aggressively. It shapes perception quietly — one algorithmic nudge at a time.

This definitely happens on other platforms as well but there is a key difference in noting that twitter is now privately owned by a single person who has shown themself to be insecure and prone to lashing publicly at critics.

I think twitter is uniquely concentrated in its influence by its owner and willingness to do things so blatantly, other platforms need to at least pretend to not steer things so directly as not to upset shareholders.

Re: Manufactured consensus on x.com

#196

Post by jandrese » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 9:36 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #182

jandrese wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many years ago I was really rooting for Tesla and Elon as they dragged the auto industry kicking and screaming towards electrification. How they focused on the underserved whole home battery market. He even kept his manufacturing domestic unlike most other big companies. Some cracks started to form in this when he made a reckless wall street bet that he could make a million cars in a year or something and had his emp…

> In the end he won the bet and got an enormous payout. I remember calculating that if he divided the award in half and split that half evenly among every single Tesla employee that it would amount to about $40,000 per person, a life changing amount of money for most people. Instead he kept it all for himself and gave a press conference about how big of a genius he is. You call the bet "reckless", but are seemingly o…

Oh it was reckless. That was the era when built quality was rock bottom. People were getting cars that were missing parts, or where things were attached completely wrong.[1] He was expanding production so fast that it caused a serious liquidity crunch at Tesla. But he got lucky and managed to squeeze through the problem.

I will have to look harder to find the name of the investor whom Elon made the production bet against, but I think this article is talking about it: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/teslas...

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/15/tesla-workers-in-ga4-tent-de...

Re: Manufactured consensus on x.com

#197

Post by janalsncm » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 9:37 PM UTC

ruleryak wrote: post #136

janalsncm wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EM directly manipulates the algorithm to suit his interests. Here’s one we know about: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/15/elon-musk...

This article does not offer any proof. It's hearsay, from the title saying he "reportedly" forced it, in turn citing a Platformer article that itself also provides no proof and instead accepts the stories from fired engineers as gospel. The platformer article then goes on to say that views still fluctuate wildly, and that it isn't in line with a supposed 1000x boost. The same Platformer article then says that they be…

> This story is based on interviews with people familiar with the events involved and supported by documents obtained by Platformer.

I think you might want to check the article again. The interviews were not just based on fired engineers. EM did fire one engineer after he told Musk that interest in Musk was declining.

Re: Manufactured consensus on x.com

#198

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 9:38 PM UTC

jampa wrote: post #59

mrdoops wrote: post #20

Manufactured consensus is everywhere there is enough attention to incentivize such an effort. The worst by far is Reddit.

I've been using Reddit for 12 years. After the API fiasco, the quality dropped a lot. Most popular subreddits are now astroturfed, where every week there is a crusade against something (First it was for banning Twitter, now it is against banning AI Art). Even in regular posts, Reddit has been a hive mind lately. If you scroll through the comments, most of them will have the same opinion over and over, with comments t…

[deleted]

Re: Manufactured consensus on x.com

#199

Post by _DeadFred_ » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 9:40 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #165

guywithahat wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all the negative things one can say about X, their fact checking (community notes) has actually gotten pretty good, which is something Reddit has yet to implement. Pew has also been ranking them more politically center than most social media sites, although I suppose that's subjective

I like the community notes as a concept, but they're often a day late and a dollar short. By the time the community note appears the post has been squeezed of all of its juice and was already on the way out. It's better than nothing, but the entire mechanism runs slower than the speed of propaganda.

This. It's technically a solution but not a solution at all. It's like giving a calorie count AFTER someone's eaten a meal (or in this case after the tweet has been viewed by the majority of people that are going to view it).

Re: Manufactured consensus on x.com

#200

Post by gruez » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 9:47 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #196

gruez wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the end he won the bet and got an enormous payout. I remember calculating that if he divided the award in half and split that half evenly among every single Tesla employee that it would amount to about $40,000 per person, a life changing amount of money for most people. Instead he kept it all for himself and gave a press conference about how big of a genius he is. You call the bet "reckless", but are seemingly o…

Oh it was reckless. That was the era when built quality was rock bottom. People were getting cars that were missing parts, or where things were attached completely wrong.[1] He was expanding production so fast that it caused a serious liquidity crunch at Tesla. But he got lucky and managed to squeeze through the problem. I will have to look harder to find the name of the investor whom Elon made the production bet aga…

>I will have to look harder to find the name of the investor whom Elon made the production bet against, but I think this article is talking about it: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/teslas...

Unless there's something the article totally omitted, your original retelling of the story was heavily misleading. For one, it's not a bet and is seemingly actually a performance bonus, which nearly every F500 company has for their executives. As such, there was very little downside if he lost the bet. It's also unclear why CEOs trying to hit aggressive performance targets is a bad thing in and of itself. You could still object to it on the basis of bad working conditions for workers, or corners cut on the product being made, but you mentioned none of that in your original comment, which seems to imply you were fine with all of those things, and was only upset that Musk didn't share in the rewards (???).