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Thoughts about Twitter

nolancaudill.com

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Re: Thoughts about Twitter

#51

Post by fooey »

mjr00 wrote: post #20

> But, what is gone? Twitter was a unique spot where journalists, celebrities, titans of industries, your family, friends and co-workers, would join a daily mosh pit filled with a mix of truly important cultural moments and the most inane things you’ve ever seen. [...] Twitter will likely go from Elon’s new toy that is too difficult for him to play with, to being passed on to his legal and finance advisers to sort ou…

The NAACP is officially calling for an advertiser boycott of Twitter

> It is immoral, dangerous, and highly destructive to our democracy for any advertiser to fund a platform that fuels hate speech, election denialism and conspiracy theories. Until actions are taken to make this a safe space, we call on companies to pause all advertising on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/DerrickNAACP/status/1588600470259789824

Re: Thoughts about Twitter

#52

Post by jemmyw »

friedman23 wrote: post #33
marcinzm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then he shouldn't have signed a binding contract. Only an idiot investor wouldn't take twice the market value for an asset when given the chance.

Ok, so he signed the contract. Decided not to buy it because it was a massively overvalued money pit but they forced him anyway. So now he is supposed to keep dumping money into the burning dumpster fire that is twitter?

They didn't force him. He could have backed out by paying the contract breaking fee. Once you sign you have to stick to it one way or the other. He could have written in a due diligence clause, but did not.

Re: Thoughts about Twitter

#53

Post by seydor »

mjr00 wrote: post #20

> But, what is gone? Twitter was a unique spot where journalists, celebrities, titans of industries, your family, friends and co-workers, would join a daily mosh pit filled with a mix of truly important cultural moments and the most inane things you’ve ever seen. [...] Twitter will likely go from Elon’s new toy that is too difficult for him to play with, to being passed on to his legal and finance advisers to sort ou…

I don't even consider Twitter a social medium. Most people don't tweet, they treat it as an RSS feed with emojis. Only the rich and the famous use it to "socialize publicly". There are no real friendships or social networks, just subscription lists. It's more of a modern-era mass medium, with an agenda and all, and a feedback button.

I dont think twitter changes caused much of uproar in the past, like when they extended the character limit painlessly (unlike facebook). The audience is there mostly for the narrative, not the format.

Re: Thoughts about Twitter

#54

Post by gwbas1c »

usaphp wrote: post #38

> They were dumped unceremoniously, the result of the addled whims of a walking meme How is that different from Stripe layoffs from yesterday? I believe Stripe employees also didn't know that they will be laid off, and they got similar compensation to what Twitter employees got.

~15% versus ~50%.

Stripe's layoffs were part of the business climate; Twitter's layoffs are the result of the new owner deciding to fire half the company.

Re: Thoughts about Twitter

#55

Post by o_1 »

Ahh yes doomed to fail. When your speach isn't as protected because others are allowed to talk. Jack Dorsey literally bet the farm on the Elon could fix twitter. Twitter jobs seemed like the comfy lets push 1 feature a quarter. The amount of ex gov employees is also an astonishing statistic. Makes you wonder what this article is even talking about. The only thing I think elon really gets wrong is the "Work from Home" deal.

Re: Thoughts about Twitter

#56

Post by kenhwang »

theCrowing wrote: post #8

I believe Elon will learn the hard way that yes you can solve tech problems by throwing humans at them but you can't solve human problems by throwing tech at them.

Advertising is a human problem.

I think Elon is already feeling the blowback from immediately misunderstanding it based on this tweet[1]. It's going to be interesting to see how he intends on making up that $5b/year.

[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1588538640401018880

Re: Thoughts about Twitter

#57

Post by arein3 »

vineyardmike wrote: post #43
mjr00 wrote: post #20

> But, what is gone? Twitter was a unique spot where journalists, celebrities, titans of industries, your family, friends and co-workers, would join a daily mosh pit filled with a mix of truly important cultural moments and the most inane things you’ve ever seen. [...] Twitter will likely go from Elon’s new toy that is too difficult for him to play with, to being passed on to his legal and finance advisers to sort ou…

It’s too early to claim it’s dead but he’s right that it’s a coin toss to see if the service can stay running (without downtime). With 50% layoffs (and the rumors of how lax their security was) it’s only a matter of time before the on-call needed to save some issue won’t exist. A breach or bug or something is inevitable. Remember when meta -a far bigger and richer company- messed up basic networking and took the comp…

You need a few people to maintain the servers, not a few thousand people.

Re: Thoughts about Twitter

#58

Post by jimbokun »

tomlue wrote: post #11

I don't work at a giant company, but I'm curious: > Anyone that has worked on large, complex system knows that the margin of error in uptime and downtime is often whether the right person is within arms’ reach of their laptop. Is this true? Shouldn't giant tech companies obsess about reducing the need for human intervention?

> Shouldn't giant tech companies obsess about reducing the need for human intervention?

They do. You automate recovery for all the failure modes your system has encountered. Then the system promptly fails in a new way you've never seen before.

Often because some totally different part of the system fails when scaling to new levels.

Re: Thoughts about Twitter

#59

Post by friedman23 »

marcinzm wrote: post #44
friedman23 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so he signed the contract. Decided not to buy it because it was a massively overvalued money pit but they forced him anyway. So now he is supposed to keep dumping money into the burning dumpster fire that is twitter?

He approached twitter and signed a binding contract to buy them. They simply made him follow what he himself agreed to do in writing. If it's a dumpster fire then what does that make Elon for willingly signing a contract to buy it for $45 billion? Actions have consequences which is a basic thing that it seems some people have a really hard time understanding. edit: If one can ignore contracts at will then much of mod…

It's interesting how you all are bringing up the law and contracts but simultaneously moaning about how cruel he is for firing everyone.

He OWNS the company.

> Actions have consequences which is a basic thing that it seems some people have a really hard time understanding.

Yes, this is what happens when you choose to be an employee of a company someone else owns. You are at their mercy. That's the deal.

So you are Elon and have some shitty company that is burning $200m or more a year. Are you all saying he should keep paying these overpaid yuppies to do nothing but come into work 3 hours late and drink matcha lattes? Even if he was feeling generous, don't you think there are more deserving people of that charity?

Re: Thoughts about Twitter

#60

Post by chowchowchow »

friedman23 wrote: post #45
grumpitron wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correction - HE forced himself to buy it by signing a binding contract to buy it.

No. Not even semantically correct. If he didn't want to do something and the other party in the negotiation used the legal system to make him do it he was forced by someone else to do it. Anyway, it's beside the point. Elon OWNS twitter. Do you all understand what ownership means? Like how you own a phone? If he wants to smash his new toy into the ground and break it that's his prerogative. Employees need to stop del…

This is a very tabula rasa approach to personal responsibility. He was compelled by enforcement of a prior binding agreement that he entered into freely. More than freely. That he proposed and originated!
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