51–60 of 149 posts
It's more of an example why nobody should have that much power and money. We should depend on which side one person chooses.
It's like a monopoly of money and power and we know monopolies are bad.
I appreciate this considerably more nuanced and thoughtful view of the modern history of Twitter. So much coverage of Twitter since the Musk acquisition is entangled with partisan politics, ultimately in part thanks to Musk provoking such a reaction. That makes this post feel ever more illuminating and thoughtful—it avoids the partisan pitfalls and irrational extremism seen in virtually every other article on the top…
I spend time on Twitter. It certainly seems less interesting and more annoying than it did before EM took over.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I spend time on Twitter. It certainly seems less interesting and more annoying than it did before EM took over.
Aside from the feature changes, it seems about the same to me. I think it largely depends on who you follow and whether you use the "Following" or "For you" tab. I recommend the "Following" tab since this allows you to manage your feed by, unsurprisingly, selecting who you follow.
He's providing a platform and cover for a child pornographer, live, in realtime, in public. There is something profoundly wrong in your worldview that's going to snap in one direction or another, and it's probably time for some self reflection.
It's cargo cult intellectualism. Too often people believe that if they write and think in a detached and dispassionate way that their approach is intrinsically superior. Terms like "partisan pitfalls" and "irrational extremism" stake a claim that these things this person disagrees with are inherently bad. As you say, we don't need a nuanced take on the "difficulty" of tolerance for intolerance. This is a solved probl…
It seems to me that, in the context of Popper's idea, what should be tolerated vs. what should not can be largely subjective and is often just weaponized against ideological opponents.
And yet, it's also self-evidently true at the margins -- we cannot tolerate Nazism or those who call for ethnic cleansing and so on.
But it's so overused on social media as a way to say - "I find your politics to be gross, and I will use the Paradox of Tolerance to claim moral superiority."
For example, I have seen people claim you should not tolerate Republicans or fundamentalist Christians or figures like Jordan Peterson. That seems quite extreme to me, as these are all within the American mainstream.
I think this bit here drives the love-hate views on him. Most mature orgs are overly bureaucratic with small visions and strongly conservative views about what can be accomplished. Some play-act at having big visions for marketing and ego, but internally few line employees believe that they are achievable, and there is rarely a plan that could achieve the vision.
Musk seems to come in - similarly to Trump - and simply disbelieves the expertise of the managerial class, and comes with enough accumulated power to bulldoze them instead of playing political games. The managerial class is the connective tissue of all but the tiniest of orgs, so encountering them is a given.
The pitfall to me is that he extends that to all expertise - engineering, science, marketing. His opening belief seems to be that most professionals are bullshit artists who spend their whole day lying to justify their jobs. And while the professionals are often wrong about what organizations of people can achieve, they are much less often wrong about how engineering needs to work, and they are hardly every wrong about the core science.
So my general view is that he is pathologically convinced that everyone but him is a parasite. And in a world full of managerial parasites, that's a pretty effective strategy.
But he can't turn it off once he breaks through the connective tissue and gets to the actual expertise. It doesn't matter if you are an expert on cave diving, or scalable architecture, or the behaviors of your core customers. I think it says more about our organizations than it does about him that just spamming a strategy of saying "I think you're a parasite with no actual expertise" and only believing in someone in extremely rare cases can make you the richest man in the world.
> Colleagues openly talked about how Twitter was being sold because leadership didn’t have conviction in their own plan or ability to fix longstanding problems. I think, in this case, the colleagues were wrong. Twitter was sold because an idiot offered far more money than it was worth. If I have a coffee shop that earns me $100,000 in profit per year, and somebody offers to buy it from me for $10 million, I'm going t…
Agree that the offering price and foolishness of the buyer was too good to pass up, but the particularities of Twitter leadership also helped set up an opportunity cost in the overall deal. Twitter never pursued ads as ruthlessly as Facebook.
I appreciate this considerably more nuanced and thoughtful view of the modern history of Twitter. So much coverage of Twitter since the Musk acquisition is entangled with partisan politics, ultimately in part thanks to Musk provoking such a reaction. That makes this post feel ever more illuminating and thoughtful—it avoids the partisan pitfalls and irrational extremism seen in virtually every other article on the top…
musk has a vast amount of power and influence due to his wealth, links to several corporations, links to other rich people, and his control of a social media site. I believe that someone with that much power has an obligation, a responsibility to improve the world for humanity. Whether elected or not. he instead chooses to do what he does. That is why I dislike him. he could offer so much more but messes around "trol…
It's easy to be an armchair critic and say you would do more good if you had those resources at your disposal. But I will admit that I have never worked and will never work a quarter as hard as any of the names I've mentioned here. Despite my criticism of Gates, for example, he has done more good with his resources post-Microsoft than I expect I would have been able to do with the same.
"At times it seemed he trusted random feedback more than the people in the room who spent their lives dedicated to tackling the problem at hand." But also "Twitter moved at the speed of molasses and suffered from bureaucracy" I think this blog points at a common issue in the tech world. Many want to have a hand in the majority of decisions, but also deride at how slowly things end up moving. It's very hard to have it…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aside from the feature changes, it seems about the same to me. I think it largely depends on who you follow and whether you use the "Following" or "For you" tab. I recommend the "Following" tab since this allows you to manage your feed by, unsurprisingly, selecting who you follow.
The rolling waves of drama around Musk's latest "idea" eventually got more annoying to read on my Following feed so I left Twitter.
Here is the original Tweet: https://twitter.com/esthercrawford/status/168429104868268441...
Now I’m not one to promote the use of Twitter, but in this case Esther actually had a very nice video at the end where she reads out what her post said in her own voice and I think it comes out better that way. It is 15 minutes though, but you can just have it on in the background, most of it is just text from the post. The important thing is hearing it in Esther’s voice.