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Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

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611–620 of 1001 posts

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#611
The best thing to come out of all of this is people questioning their continued use of social media. Switching to Mastodon, it being different, not liking it and just dropping it all entirely. It's the BEST outcome. Social media is a fucking cancer on society and it's fantastic to see it being questioned. It's like soda and candy - empty calories that does absolutely nothing for you.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#612
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 all social media have terms and conditions similar to this, it just seemed a bit dramatic the way they laid it out. I enjoy your tweets and would miss you if you left.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#613
I think it’s beautiful that more and more people are being forced to confront what U.S plutocracy looks like in real-time. It’s usually caked in legalese and unspoken cultural assumptions that finance and tech people exploit while the rest of us just watch. Musk, Trump and a handful of these other cranks are turning this sociopathic toxic mess into real-time online cartoon that even a 13 year old can understand. The result can either be a new healthy awareness of how public policy is leveraged to make society more healthy and fair , or the Elon Musks of the world can continue living in a bubble, being flaming arrogant narcissist perpetually in fear of ending up like Paul Pelosi - in our real-time geo located world.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#614

Maybe it is time for Google to fan their Social Network ambitions. They have enough brainpower to get a functional/scalable Mastodon server by Christmas. They may get the traction and later EEE it.

Honestly Circles was a great idea with poor UI/UX. It would be interesting to see a rebrand. However, I have doubts about people wanting to use another Alphabet product considering they seem to kill everything that isn’t a massive success.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#615
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…

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…

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Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#616
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 don't think he realizes that the techniques that work for cars and rockets don't work in social media.

That’s what I find so peculiar. I thought he made so much progress on cars and rockets by trusting experts to help him. But with Twitter there have been lots of experts who keep trying to tell him he’s seriously misunderstanding how social media works, and he will just give them a snarky tweet reply and act like he knows better. Maybe it’s the fact that on twitter everyone can see the discussion and he’s got to project this persona with bravado that he probably doesn’t do in a private meeting.

Maybe he will turn it around but for a lot of us he’s destroyed our hang out spot and we’ve embraced alternatives. Mastodon isn’t perfect but it feels really great to see a problem, open a GitHub issue, and get a genuine discussion of how to implement it.

And no one is going to come crashing in and tear it all down.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#617
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…

[deleted]

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Organizing the efforts of large teams of smart people is one of the most high value activities you can do in our society. Edit: not saying that's happening at Twitter, but it has demonstrably occurred at Tesla and SpaceX.

You mean he hired product managers?

I'm curious why do you think SpaceX and Tesla are market leaders in their niches? Is Elon the only person who hires product managers?

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, it seemed that Elon's mind was more with manipulating Bitcoin rates, and then buying and changing Twitter the last few years. Tesla and SpaceX must be run by other people, which investors and Elon conveniently keep out of the picture.

Elon is certainly laser-focused on self-promotion, no doubt. I suspect most of the value he will deliver at those companies is in the past, but that doesn't detract from it.

Perhaps founders are not all that different from the companies they run. In time, bloat and complacency will twist them into unrecognizable shapes, until they too are disrupted by upstarts.

Why should Musk be any different?

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#620
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.
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