Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022 • Hacker News Board

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#331

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 2:54 PM UTC

memish wrote: post #312

brethil wrote: post #58

Is he talking about ActivityPub[1, 2] and the Fediverse[3]? Just look at Mastodon[4, 5] if you're looking for something like twitter without the centralization and the corporate greed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub [2] https://activitypub.rocks [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software) [5] https://joinmastodon.org/servers

How long as Mastodon been out and still no one uses it? Obviously a different approach is needed to replace Twitter. Mastodon is a dead end.

[deleted]

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#332

Post by yamtaddle » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 2:57 PM UTC

lovich wrote: post #234

GuB-42 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A CEO is just an employee, paid by the shareholders to do the job shareholders want him to do. Usually, the job is "get us rich". The CEO can do a lot of things regarding the company direction, but it has to match the shareholders goals. Generally, if it doesn't make profit short term or long term, it is unacceptable, and here, Jack Dorsey essentially wants to kill Twitter as a company, so of course he can't do that.…

A CEO is not “just an employee”, even when they are not a founder. You don’t get to accept that much power and that much money and then pass off any responsibility because you have someone to answer to. Like really, if we accept that proposition how would society function? Youd have people in charge of tens to hundreds of thousands of peoples daily lives and output who just pass the buck on any issues because they go…

> Like really, if we accept that proposition how would society function? Youd have people in charge of tens to hundreds of thousands of peoples daily lives and output who just pass the buck on any issues because they got orders? Is that in anyway functionality different from a monarchy?

1) Exactly as it does. You're looking at it.

2) Yeah, that's pretty much how it's going. Like, half the time they pass the buck even when there's no-one "above" them and they were the originator of all the orders, and somehow that seems to work out much better for them than one might hope. Did you see that last presidency the US just had?

3) More like feudal aristocracy in general, not just a monarchy, except that the serfs get to pick which of several bad lords they'll serve, but you're on the right track.

Welcome to the first steps toward left-libertarianism.

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#333

Post by ForHackernews » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 2:58 PM UTC

flavius29663 wrote: post #326

Schroedingersat wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot the bit where you inherit an apartheid emerald fortune.

emerald fortune? His father paid 275k USD or so for that mine. It's not that much...average people on HN make that in a year. He says his father invested 20k or so in his business, again very little by comparison. Elon Musk was definitely privileged, but he built himself up.

> Elon Musk was definitely privileged, but he built himself up.

Mostly he got lucky that his early crappy company got acquired by Paypal, and then he won the Paypal lottery. The Musk story is about 70% right-place-right-time, 25% great salesmanship and 5% actual engineering genius.

Keep in mind this is a guy who thinks a billion dollar explosive vacuum tube[0] is a better idea than... a train.

[0] https://www.imeche.org/news/news-article/'serious-engineerin...

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#334

Post by dontreact » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 3:01 PM UTC

qprofyeh wrote: post #240

It's so obvious that Musk was not really interested. The social balance was totally non-existent in this conversation. Musk's one line replies sound so generic. Seems like he wanted to keep the door open but Dorsey hadn't convinced him really yet. "I'd like to help if I can" is such a without obligation sentence. Then Jack replies with another well-designed text.

I agree. My read on this set of texts is Musk trying to get Dorsey on his side to help with the acquisition.

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#335

Post by adolph » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 3:03 PM UTC

asoneth wrote: post #265

adolph wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's right, CEO needs to focus on those quarterly numbers. For example, Apple should never have let that phone operation cannibalize their perfectly good music player business. Total mistake to let a CEO have that much control and "vision."

This is a strawman because no one has claimed that a CEO must focus on short-term shareholder profit. The point is that the CEO works for the owners of the company. (In a publicly traded company that's typically shareholders represented by a board.) To keep their job the CEO just needs to be able to convince the owner(s) that they're making the right decisions. In the case of Apple, most owners (shareholders) trusted…

No it isn't. The claim is "A CEO is just an employee, paid by the shareholders to do the job shareholders want him to do." That claim lets four words, "the job chareholders want," work pretty hard. Could mean anything. Could be "run great shareholder meetings with lots of swag" or it could mean "do something that we can't imagine ourselves because otherwise we'd do it instead of investing here."

In TFA Dorsey briefly describes his vision of what to do after taking Twitter private. He is speaking to who would become the effective owners. In the car repair analogy it is as if a rental van was in a fender bender. The rental co can get it fixed with a normal bodyshop or has an option to sell it.

Down the street there is a body shop with a vision. The owner of that shop knows a lady who wants to wants to start a food van and is telling her, "I know a dinged rental van you can get at a discount and when we finish conversion it will look better than new."

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#336

Post by unity1001 » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 3:04 PM UTC

Trufa wrote: post #30

Unlike everyone else here apparently, I find his attitude pretty positive. You all act as if you would have know what twitter would become from the beginning and you would have done better, I've been in infinitesimally smaller projects with pressures that have nothing to do with building Twitter and still I thought like I was losing control of the direction the product was going.

Ditto. That conversation and the ideas contained within look !extremely! good to me.

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#337

Post by whatgoodisaroad » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 3:05 PM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #57

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #25

Shame he couldn't do anything about that when he was either CEO, chairman or on the board of Twitter (for most of its existence). As Bloomberg said yesterday: "Twitter Is in This Mess Because Jack Dorsey Was Too Busy Being a Bitcoin Influencer" https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-29/twitter-t... https://archive.ph/7ugqn

Bloomberg are idiots talking out of their asses. They have never worked in tech companies

Bloomberg also still hasn't printed a redaction of "The Big Hack" which is extremely damning to their journalistic credibility.

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#338

Post by unboxingelf » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 3:06 PM UTC

swamp40 wrote: post #275

once_inc wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering Dorsey's active participation and evangelising on Bitcoin and the Lightning Network, I expect that he will be working in that direction; building a messaging protocol based on the Lighting Network that allows users to upvote with satoshis. This monetises the user engagement and makes bots less feasible, aligning user incentives.

It's funny how you can take a multi-billion dollar idea, write it all out for the world to see, and it still gets ignored or ridiculed by everyone. It's also funny how you can take two of the greatest minds in our generation and dismiss them out of hand, mostly due to your previous biases of what you think they are all about. If email cost the sender 1 cent per email, spam could have been eliminated. This system woul…

Mentioning BTC/LN on HN has a way of provoking irrational group think. It’s frustrating that proposing a v2 of the ad-laden hellscape that is the current internet economic structure is so vehemently opposed. But then again most folks here are probably paid in some way, shape, or form from this status quo.

Anyway, great synopsis above.

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#339

Post by jacooper » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 3:06 PM UTC

kethinov wrote: post #112

brethil wrote: post #58

Is he talking about ActivityPub[1, 2] and the Fediverse[3]? Just look at Mastodon[4, 5] if you're looking for something like twitter without the centralization and the corporate greed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub [2] https://activitypub.rocks [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software) [5] https://joinmastodon.org/servers

It frustrates me that Jack seems to have genuine interest in this topic but seems to be totally averse to discussing Mastodon. It's hard to believe he's unaware of Mastodon, so we have to believe he thinks it's not the solution for some reason. But how could it not be? Why doesn't he just use his big name and significant influence to throw his weight behind Twitter's most successful open protocol competitor if he rea…

He said earlier that he wants to do it differently.

Which I totally understand, Activity pub is an absolute failure when it comes to user discovery especially when a user is using his/her own server, which is the whole point of the entire protocol.

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#340

Post by flavius29663 » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 3:09 PM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #333

flavius29663 wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

emerald fortune? His father paid 275k USD or so for that mine. It's not that much...average people on HN make that in a year. He says his father invested 20k or so in his business, again very little by comparison. Elon Musk was definitely privileged, but he built himself up.

> Elon Musk was definitely privileged, but he built himself up. Mostly he got lucky that his early crappy company got acquired by Paypal, and then he won the Paypal lottery. The Musk story is about 70% right-place-right-time, 25% great salesmanship and 5% actual engineering genius. Keep in mind this is a guy who thinks a billion dollar explosive vacuum tube[0] is a better idea than... a train. [0] https://www.imeche.…

I think Musk is both an engineer but also a great salesman. The stupid tube is the salesman part...

A lot of people won the paypal lottery, also other lotteries...if you keep winning the lottery(paypal, starlink, tesla, spaceX) maybe it's not a lottery after all. Few have driven a handful of companies to success like he did.

That being said, it's hard to trust the guy, because you never know when it's the salesman or the engineer making the pitch. Also, I wouldn't want to work for him.