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Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

reuters.com

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Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#351

Whoever you are, whatever your politics and positions are, you have to admit and appreciate the humor in the saying: “it’s a private company, they can do what they want”. Full 180 and probably shouldn’t use an argument you don’t believe in to help make your point if you are on the receiving end of that joke. Just trying to enjoy the ride on by this one… I’m still much more concerned with the on-demand Ludovico Techni…

Can you expand on what you're specifically referring to regarding TikTok?

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#352

I've always wanted a feature that just bins similar reactions together, so I don't have to read them. For example, I'd love replies to be binned into categories like "cruel disparagement", "wilful misunderstanding", "mindless agreement", "fallacious", "opinion as fact", and "threats and doxing". Ideally the last category would be taken seriously by law enforcement. People who write things who get binned into these ca…

Crowd-sourcing moderation, including flagging for categories you've outlined, will fail utterly.

Spend some time on /r/BestOfReports and you'll see what moderators deal with. People use reports like a "super downvote" button for things they disagree with, and I don't mean the "things they disagree with" as the racism/bigotry dog whistle it often means.

Reddit somewhat recently added a option to report a post for describing intent to self-harm, and if someone hits it, it sends a message to the user containing resources for seeking help, and spend enough time on reddit and you'll see people edit posts/comments saying "Apparently someone reported this for self-harming?"

I think the only way to make crowd-sourced content flagging and moderation work is if you see a post that's been flagged that clearly shouldn't be, you should be able to click a button that unflags it for yourself, AND adds everyone who flagged it to a list of accounts to ignore their flags. But that list must be kept personal. As soon as you allow that data to train an algorithm that detects false flaggers, the system gets broken again.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#353
post #147

Honest question, why can Elon, and only Elon solve the bot problem? Software devs have been trying to solve this problem since the beginning of the internet and yet bots still fill every space on the web.

Most large companies have trouble breaking out of a local maximum. The incentives align to just keep climbing the gradient and never go down.

Elon has the cash + clout to solve the problem. Is he unique in the ability to solve it? No. But he may be in a unique position to solve it.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#354
post #41

He's already said that he'd follow all local laws so it would be interesting to see if he can find the elusive path of maintaining free speech, following the law and not having Twitter being a toxic cesspool used mainly to shout down those not our your "side". Personally my reservations are because I think running a social media site is a lot about understanding people and defining a healthy culture for your elusive…

>> He's already said that he'd follow all local laws Is Twitter available in on of the following countries? China, Saudi-Arabia, Russia, Turkey? Since we know the answer I'm looking forward to see how helping those local governments go after "dissidents" will be aligned with Musk's high ideals of free speech.

it really doesn't require such extreme examples. The EU will also ask for all kinds of censorship. Germany just made wearing the 'Z' illegal, meaning that any kind of pro-russian viewpoint will have to be censored. There is only one country on earth that has decent free speech and it's the US

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#355

People act like this is some spiteful thing he's doing in order to just post edgy memes or have a 'private' social media for himself. Twitter, despite being a toxic place the majority of people avoid, brought in over 5 billion dollars last year. If elon removes bots, welcomes non-extremists back on, gets comedians and entertaining accounts back on board and lets people say what they want instead a bot army of shills…

I'd really suggest you read this article to understand why he's already starting with little knowledge of how to begin solving the problems he claims to be important ("free speech", in his eyes) -- https://www.techdirt.com/2022/04/15/elon-musk-demonstrates-h...

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#356

People act like this is some spiteful thing he's doing in order to just post edgy memes or have a 'private' social media for himself. Twitter, despite being a toxic place the majority of people avoid, brought in over 5 billion dollars last year. If elon removes bots, welcomes non-extremists back on, gets comedians and entertaining accounts back on board and lets people say what they want instead a bot army of shills…

> Twitter, despite being a toxic place the majority of people avoid, brought in over 5 billion dollars last year.

“Despite” is misplaced. Twitter has carefully calibrated toxicity as part of it's engagement model.

> If elon [...] welcomes non-extremists back on, [...] and lets people say what they want

You do realize that those are opposed goals, the first about decreasing and the second increasing Twitter’s existing toxicity, right?

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#358
Zuck offered $500m for Twitter 14 years ago and they refused it so I guess it paid off looking at the price but man Twitter sucks. They have incompetent management that destroyed $100bn opportunity called Vine and that can't get their shit together. Elon might help but Twitter is doomed in the long term imo.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#359
While I don’t advocate for anyone losing their job, my partial view on what Elon will do with Twitter once he takes it private is to shut down their ad business and focus on Twitter Blue (or some variation of subscription based product announcements). This will have several benefits.

1. Simplifies the business operation by reducing fixed headcount significantly

2. This will have a hard hit to Twitter revenue but Musk will have the benefit of downgrading the new ad-free business valuation and using the haircut against his future personal Tesla stock sales. Losing the ad business doesn’t actually cost him anything.

3. Product will now be more user friendly than competition, focusing more on product Vs ad tech. Eventually because it doesn’t have ads it could reignite growth to become a dominant social network.

Whether it grows in value or not is irrelevant to Musk and because of this, he seems like the most aligned to improve the product Vs any other financial suitor.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#360

People act like this is some spiteful thing he's doing in order to just post edgy memes or have a 'private' social media for himself. Twitter, despite being a toxic place the majority of people avoid, brought in over 5 billion dollars last year. If elon removes bots, welcomes non-extremists back on, gets comedians and entertaining accounts back on board and lets people say what they want instead a bot army of shills…

Perhaps it's partially a bid to get a wiretap on all twitter dms.
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