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Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

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531–540 of 1001 posts

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#531
post #350

I'm not leaving Twitter. It seems more likely than not that Elon will reverse the ban on links to other social media sites. I just don't want to hang out there in the meantime. Plus given the way things are going, it seemed like a good time to learn about alternatives. I still think Elon is a smart guy. His work on cars and rockets speaks for itself. Nor do I think he's the villain a lot of people try to make him out…

> Plus I don't think he realizes that the techniques that work for cars and rockets don't work in social media.

You have someone with Asperger's who is self aware enough to go on SNL and laugh about it, but for some reason also wants to spend 40B on owning and running a social platform, thinking they can "improve" by working on it part time despite having zero actual experience in the field. The ego is unbelievable.

> He could still salvage the situation

I hope so, but these billionaire ego megaprojects just don't seem to be die. Neom, Metaverse, dystopia-twitter...

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#532
post #350

I'm not leaving Twitter. It seems more likely than not that Elon will reverse the ban on links to other social media sites. I just don't want to hang out there in the meantime. Plus given the way things are going, it seemed like a good time to learn about alternatives. I still think Elon is a smart guy. His work on cars and rockets speaks for itself. Nor do I think he's the villain a lot of people try to make him out…

No post body was provided.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. I don't think he will be able to salvage this and I've deleted my account to reduce the temptation to return. A reputation is not like a piece of software that you fix and then re-run as though it never broke in the first place. Elon has utterly wrecked his reputation over the last couple of months (and probably longer than that) and it is getting worse, not better. Edit: I guess Paul won't be going back…

Do you have a Mastodon account yet? I'd like to continue to follow you.

I'm still on the fence about what to do. As I've written elsewhere today I'm not currently in the best of health and social media takes up a lot of time and energy, also I am wondering whether I should simply not let that go and concentrate on more real world stuff. I do still blog every now and then and I'm on HN in waves depending on how much free time I have.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#534
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it's a flawed system to begin with. When someone is incapable of building stuff or running a company, we (as a society, collectively) hand them shittons of money to be a VC.

I don't think the investments of what, the 0.1% wealthiest of society is the same as "society collectively" doing anything!

It is society collectively, by allowing those .1% of people have enough money to be able to fund such things on a whim.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#535
Seem crazy to leave Twitter to me.

Elon's takeover of Twitter is one of the most significant periods in Internet history.

It's a great show.

It's an education in how not to do things.

It's a thrill ride.

You get a front row seat for the show if you're on the platform.

I would have thought Paul Graham would want to be there because of all this.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#536
post #350

I'm not leaving Twitter. It seems more likely than not that Elon will reverse the ban on links to other social media sites. I just don't want to hang out there in the meantime. Plus given the way things are going, it seemed like a good time to learn about alternatives. I still think Elon is a smart guy. His work on cars and rockets speaks for itself. Nor do I think he's the villain a lot of people try to make him out…

I think adding support for ActivityPub to twitter would be a smart move but that would require a complete U-turn

I think Twitter would find itself de-federated from a lot of the Fediverse pretty quickly as long as Ol' Muskie is in charge.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#537
A really large use of social media is for corporate interests and "influencers" to cross promote themselves around different social media to increase their reach.

Banning Instagram and Facebook just pissed off a whole new group of people who previously didn't give any fucks about this at all.

It'll get real weird if he decides to be "consistent" and go after YouTube as well.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://mas.to/@paulg

I only see a spinning circle. What a future.

The server is probably overloaded right now — which, I agree, is frustrating. Even the biggest instances are struggling tonight.

You may be able to load it via one of the bigger instances, though. Try going to https://mastodon.online/@paulg@mas.to.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#539
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in the replies to this tweet he insists[1] "Elon is a smart guy" in spite of all the evidence to the contrary [1] https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1604557444247539712

Elon could both be smart and making huge mistakes. It happens all the time.

He could be a dumb guy make much right. It happens all the time.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#540
post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. I don't think he will be able to salvage this and I've deleted my account to reduce the temptation to return. A reputation is not like a piece of software that you fix and then re-run as though it never broke in the first place. Elon has utterly wrecked his reputation over the last couple of months (and probably longer than that) and it is getting worse, not better. Edit: I guess Paul won't be going back…

Well said, good analogy. There’s the immediate issues of the policy. But there’s the bigger issue of the thought process that led to the policy. One of Elons central criticism of old Twitter management was unfair content moderation policy. And almost immediately he enacts a far worse content policy than anything old management did, in a brazen display of hypocrisy. Even if he reverses course on this one issue, he’s d…

If enough high profile people took a stronger stance that might just be enough to make Musk see the light. I'm not going to hold my breath for that though.
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