Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it? • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#501

Post by smcl » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 3:02 PM UTC

PM_me_your_math wrote: post #499

smcl wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't this logic make basically all SV giants "failing" until they hit that hockey stick turning point? Hell even Tesla didn't turn a profit until 2020, and it is pretty universally considered to be a success (even if there are some raised eyebrows over their the source of the profits being tax credits, and sky-high stock price)

Twitter actually turned a profit only twice in 10 years (FY18/19) but then went right back to hemorrhaging money. There was ostensibly no reason for it beyond mismanagement and staggering waste.

No objections over it being described as mismanaged and wasteful, but "failing" implies it was on the brink of collapse. It certainly wasn't my idea of a model company, but it wasn't exactly Lehman Brothers during the financial crisis.

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#502

Post by devmor » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 3:32 PM UTC

googlryas wrote: post #453

devmor wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, his plan was to build greenhouses on Mars.

Perhaps that's just because he was talking to people who think another literal moonshot was a figurative moonshot.

Er, no. That was his stated goal as a member of the Mars Society's board of directors when these talks happened. He wanted to purchase a Dnepr ICBM and retrofit it for that purpose. When the deal was rejected, he discussed building his own rockets with Michael Griffin.

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#503

Post by FooBarBizBazz » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 4:14 PM UTC

I don't understand how people can --

-- on the one hand, be outraged that Elon bought Twitter, and be upset that he's doing layoffs --

-- and on the other, enjoy schadenfreudistic pleasure that Elon has just been forced to pay $40B for an obvious pile of garbage --

-- all because they love to hate the loud rich guy.

I mean, I do understand, but the two thoughts don't seem logically compatible. Either Twitter is shit, layoffs were overdue, and he's a bagholder; or it's a valuable thing with necessary staff that he's acquired; I don't see how it can be both.

It seems like the anger is misplaced. Who pocketed the $40B? If the whole thing was bullshit all along, and somebody just checkmated Elon into bribing him $40B to end the grift and hang the Potemkin employees out to dry -- who was that person who took the money? Who cashed out, betraying the lower employees? Who did Elon buy Twitter from?

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#504

Post by baby » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 4:17 PM UTC

mjr00 wrote: post #403

toss1 wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If so, he's doing an absolutely fabulous job of trashing his reputation inside of a week. Musk can be great when he does his homework and first principles analysis. It is obvious he hasn't done it here. Having advertisers take a huge step back because they seek minimal uncertainty and you spend the entire week maximizing uncertainty is bad (& shows incompetence). Having advertisers drop campaigns literally in the mid…

I agree that his approach is odd, to say the least. But Elon is clearly marketing himself as part of a counter-culture movement that's opposed to the current dominant neoliberal/corporate zeitgeist (but isn't quite alt-right). It's extremely deliberate. Whether or not it's a good idea remains to be seen. Certainly in the short term it hasn't been.

There’s good and bad. I for one am happy he decided to smoke that joint on joe rogan

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#505

Post by boston_clone » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 4:51 PM UTC

the_third_wave wrote: post #479

boston_clone wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gab_(social_network) > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gab_(social_network)#By_Gab >> Part of a series on Antisemitism https://www.dailydot.com/debug/andrew-torba-deactivates-gab-... yeah, kinda checks out.

Quoted post unavailable.

Huh? 250+ citations that support their assertions are all just some part of a narrative? The CEO being a holocaust-denying anti-semite is just coincidental? Their SEC filing saying Gab is meant for nationalists and conservatives was a mischaracterization of their own platform? Being dropped from a litany of service providers for violating hate speech policies (and abject / nonexistent moderation against it) were fabrications?

That sounds like a denial of reality…

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#506

Post by _djo_ » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 4:55 PM UTC

PM_me_your_math wrote: post #493

_djo_ wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The advertisers began pulling ads after ad agency execs met with him and failed to get satisfactory answers[0] and after he posted that conspiracy theory about Paul Pelosi. It didn't help that he ignored and then blocked the head of MMA Global just after the layoffs started.[1] If he wanted to keep advertisers on board this is an odd way to go about it. The Ethical AI team wasn't 'silly', it was working on ways to ma…

You don't need a blue check mark to have an account or post.

Musk has openly stated that those without Twitter Blue will have their tweets substantially deprioritised and de-emphasised.[0]

[0] https://twitter.com/somebadideas/status/1588876465915166721?...

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#507

Post by the_third_wave » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 5:31 PM UTC

the_third_wave wrote: post #448

rolenthedeep wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're complaining that you can't migrate your account to a Nazi server. This sounds like a feature , not a bug.

No, it sounds like censorship. Apart from the fact that Gab is not a "Nazi server" just like your average Mastodon server is not a "Communist server" even though there may be some neo-Nazis on the former and are sure to be a number of communists on the latter it sounds like a petty action by the project maintainers if certain servers are blocked by default. It sounds like a form of digital McCarthyism. I'll have a lo…

Having checked the Pleroma source [1] I can state that there are no default domain or user blocklists. It does support blocking on domain and user level but it is up to the administrator to provide blocklists.

[1] https://git.pleroma.social/pleroma/pleroma

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#508

Post by GekkePrutser » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

UncleEntity wrote: post #409

GekkePrutser wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A climate team at a company with a huge energy footprint is absolutely a great idea IMO. Twitter operates a lot of servers and I'm sure some optimization can be done there.

Laying off half the workforce will probably save more electricity than whatever schemes the climate team ever dreamed up. Just saying…

How will that save electricity for society? Those people will just work somewhere else (if they're not working at home already which is super common in IT). It's not really solving the problem, just shifting it onto someone else's plate.

Reducing things like underutilized servers could really make a big difference that won't just shift to somewhere else like fired employees would. Especially storage is something that is pretty energy intensive even when not in use very much. Our SAN systems were by far the hottest things in our datacenters even though the amount of compute capacity done on those boxes is negligible.

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#509

Post by the_third_wave » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 6:36 PM UTC

boston_clone wrote: post #505

the_third_wave wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Huh? 250+ citations that support their assertions are all just some part of a narrative? The CEO being a holocaust-denying anti-semite is just coincidental? Their SEC filing saying Gab is meant for nationalists and conservatives was a mischaracterization of their own platform? Being dropped from a litany of service providers for violating hate speech policies (and abject / nonexistent moderation against it) were fabr…

[flagged]

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#510

Post by boston_clone » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 7:04 PM UTC

the_third_wave wrote: post #509

boston_clone wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? 250+ citations that support their assertions are all just some part of a narrative? The CEO being a holocaust-denying anti-semite is just coincidental? Their SEC filing saying Gab is meant for nationalists and conservatives was a mischaracterization of their own platform? Being dropped from a litany of service providers for violating hate speech policies (and abject / nonexistent moderation against it) were fabr…

[flagged]

"they're not neo-nazis, they're just self-identified nationalists and anti-semites! and yeah okay the platform has a ton of neo-nazis, and the CEO of the platform is a holocaust denier and says Jews should die, but c'mon! free speech!"