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Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

techcrunch.com

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Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#541

Post by edwnj »

munificent wrote: post #504
wzyoi wrote: post #349

I always wonder: how much honesty is in him? For example, he stopped talking about the bot population on the platform altogether after he could not get out of the deal. Was he honest about this being a big issue in the first place? For me, it’s not easy to believe this because this bot issue appeared right after Twitter staff did not like his speech, and talks with the CEO fell apart. Am I mistaken about how it all p…

Every one of us has run into situations where choosing to be honest has materially cost us. You accidentally scratch a parked car on your way out. Do you stop and leave a note with contact info or not? The richer you are, the more leverage you have and larger the material cost for these situations. A fellow rich friend gives you a little insider info that a stock you hold is about to crater. Do you sell some? In othe…

No post body was provided.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#542

Post by memish »

causality0 wrote: post #471

It's very strange to me he intends to un-ban Trump when he gave up trying to work with him on that advisory council thing early in Trump's presidency.

Why is that strange? It's a principled position unrelated to not liking him or not wanting to work with him.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#543

Post by bradgessler »

cutenewt wrote: post #289
thinkingemote wrote: post #248

They need to re-free up the API. Early adopters and hackers really did some great work using the API until they walled-gardened it and rate limited it to make it unusable. They need to do this for goodwill at the very least, but I think it will spark the fire to make it popular with techies again. Based on the recently published discovery chats we will probably see: * High def video * Focus on music publication * The…

I think it's going to be more in the other direction. He really hates the bots, so he'll probably close up the API. Until bots gets solved, no developer should expect the API to open up.

IMO framing it as "get rid of the bots" is the wrong way to solve the problem because it's unsolvable, especially as we head more towards a world of content being generated by increasingly sophisticated ML algorithms.

It's probably best to embrace the bots and instead think about it as a problem of categorizing, quantifying, and applying more metadata to messages that let people, agents, or other bots determine the qualities about the information that they want to know.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#544

Post by bauble »

seydor wrote: post #480
anamexis wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who claimed it was a kitchen sink?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2022-10-27/why-did-elo... https://news.yahoo.com/elon-musk-shows-twitter-hq-192220624.... https://www.marketwatch.com/story/elon-musk-shows-up-at-twit... https://www.bbc.com/news/business-63408384 in twitter fashion i should tag this as #fakenews

Sloppy reporting? In MY mainstream media?!

Currently the linked story, from TechCrunch, doesn't call it a "kitchen" sink. Kudos to them.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#545

Post by tim333 »

koonsolo wrote: post #388

I was a big Elon Musk fanboy for what he was able to accomplish on both Tesla and SpaceX. I had the impression that he was very genuine and really wanted to "save humanity". I ignored the crazy things he said on twitter. I think his accomplishments overshadowed his less favorable behavior. But after his tweets about Ukraine, it really started to dawn on me that his "save humanity" was not really save humanity, but ju…

I've been following Ukraine and read his tweets and I'd say he was just a bit under informed which is not surprising given he's busing running like five companies and doesn't have a background in Russian/Ukrainian history.

It's easy to think you should get peace by giving away some land until you look into the details. Though ask any of the Eastern Europeans who have lived their lives near Russia and they will generally point out flaws with that scheme. (To name but one subtlety Ukraine signed an agreement with Russia and the US in 1994 to secure its borders in return for giving up its nukes. Do we now say disarmament agreements are worthless and the aggressive countries can just say ha ha suckers and take land if you don't have nukes? - would be a bad precedent.)

>like jump into bed with Russia or China in a heartbeat, as long as it delivers the extra buck

doesn't really fit with him supplying loads of Starlinks much to Russia's annoyance.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#546

Post by sbf501 »

_fat_santa wrote: post #312
cutenewt wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's going to be more in the other direction. He really hates the bots, so he'll probably close up the API. Until bots gets solved, no developer should expect the API to open up.

The problem isn't the bots, the problem is the lack of differentiation between bots and real accounts. I say open up the API and let people make whatever bots they wish, but if you tweet through the API then you get a big "BOT" tag next to your username on the feed.

When I used twitter a decade ago, I used TweetDeck, which used the API to post to twitter for me. So that would label me as a Bot just because I like a better UX/UI.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#547

Post by fleddr »

Random thoughts.

1. I think any effort to figure out rational motives for this buy are in vain. It seems things just pop into his head and if considered a fun challenge, then why not? A child-like YOLO attitude.

2. Town square. The one thing that keeps Twitter standing is its cultural relevance. It is the town square for the elite (politicians, celebrities, experts). There isn't really anywhere else to go. An exodus to what? The fact that Twitter has almost never made money in its entire history yet is still so culturally relevant is quite telling.

3. Brain drain. I expect the exact opposite. This is the part where Musk thrives and also where he's at his cruelest. He will remove slackers and non-performers without mercy and surround himself with class A players only. Next he'll overload them with near impossible targets and you can't bullshit yourself out of it. You deliver or you're out. I would expect him to run this for a year or so and accomplish more than Twitter's dysfunctional product team did in their entire history.

4. Free speech. His goals are good: focusing on the 80% bandwidth of free speech, but getting there for sure is going to be tricky. This has to be by far the biggest risk factor.

Concluding, I'm mildly optimistic. I wouldn't care if Twitter totally sinks, but it's so bad currently that in a way the only way is up.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#548

Post by tptacek »

Beltalowda wrote: post #457
maxerickson wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if he just loses a big pile of money while Twitter twists in the wind because there isn't much of a plan? That seems likely enough really.

Isn't that kind of the story of Twitter thus far already? Certainly on the financial front they never seemed to have much of a plan, and on the product side things always seemed like a bit of a mess to me as well. Some fresh leadership might not be a bad thing for Twitter. Whether Musk is the right person for that...

What these comparative analyses keep missing is that Musk Twitter is an LBO company with billions in loans on its books. It's private, which takes public shareholder pressure off, but it's also directly losing billions of dollars in debt service. The pressure to generate some kind of stable income, soon, is probably immense.

It's worth keeping in mind that despite the brave face, Musk didn't want to buy Twitter. In fact: he desperately didn't want to buy Twitter. He's been forced to do so by the Delaware courts.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#549

Post by sbf501 »

julianeon wrote: post #57

In the spirit of trying to be high-information and add value: Where Musk is going, there are no maps. So it's very very hard to project. But we can predict likely developments. At a very high level, it's going to involve: bringing back controversial personalities like Donald Trump; increasing Twitter's commitment to 'free speech'; assuaging skittish advertisers; retaining users who might be concerned, while bringing…

We know one thing: half of the $44B was loans that will cost Twitter around $1B per year, so it has to make some kind of profit. Otherwise who will pay?

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#550

Post by yurikoif »

julianeon wrote: post #57

In the spirit of trying to be high-information and add value: Where Musk is going, there are no maps. So it's very very hard to project. But we can predict likely developments. At a very high level, it's going to involve: bringing back controversial personalities like Donald Trump; increasing Twitter's commitment to 'free speech'; assuaging skittish advertisers; retaining users who might be concerned, while bringing…

Saying it is some country’s WeChat is like a curse… as WeChat is notorious for its closed mindedness and probably hated by most of its users… and they won’t even have any other option because Tencent is actively striking down all potential competitors…
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