Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far • Hacker News Board

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#631

Post by s1artibartfast » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 10:09 PM UTC

saalweachter wrote: post #409

remram wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He bought it on the last possible day a court would allow, so I don't know how much he likes it really. He did try every possible move to get out of it.

The weirdest part to me about this saga is the extent to which Elon Musk is getting away with pretending he didn't spend the last six months trying very hard not to purchase Twitter.

Well he clearly wanted to own Twitter. He also clearly regretted the price that he was paying. I don't think the second point negates the first.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#632

Post by ausbah » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 10:09 PM UTC

skilled wrote: post #501

Sadly even after dang has stated that conversations should be thoughtful, people are still posting provoking and low-quality disingenuous comments. I don't even understand how a human being can get so invested in something they will never have control over, even more so now that Twitter is owned by a private person.

As rational and high minded as folks on hacker news like to position themselves, everyone here is just as susceptible to being drawn in towards drama involving their own set of celebrities and companies.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

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Post by throwaway821909 » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 10:10 PM UTC

kyle-rb wrote: post #496

not2b wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difficulty is that some of these objectives conflict with each other. Backing off on moderation is likely to drive advertisers away; bringing back banned people could in some cases cause legal problems in countries where publishing, say, pro-Nazi speech is against the law. Making major changes will require more people, but stopping the financial bleeding will require fewer people.

Twitter already has implementations for the Nazi stuff; e.g. images with Nazi flags are allowed in general but if you try to view them from an account with location set to Germany, it will give you a "this content is blocked in your country" error message. I'd definitely be worried about driving advertisers away though. They forced YouTube's hand at least to some degree with the whole adpocalypse thing.

The whole "advertisers don't want their ads appearing next to xyz" has always felt contrived to me, like, I can use Gmail to receive all sorts of wrongthink and I'll still see ads on it, similarly Twitter should be a neutral tool not a magazine. It's up to the users what they see.

You'd need a lot of market share and confidence as Musk to actually say "this is silly" but it is silly nonetheless. The big players started down the road of "ok we'll ban the worst stuff" and once they blinked it's been "but what about" all the way down.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

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Post by MarkMc » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 10:11 PM UTC

Whenever I go on vacation overseas Twitter shows me ads in a language I cannot understand. This is one of many clearly-identifiable problems that are not rocket science to fix. And Elon Musk has a reputation for fixing problems.

When Twitter shares are publicly traded again in a few years, Musk's purchase price of $44 billion will look like a bargain.

My prediction: In 5 years Twitter's market cap will exceed $150 billion.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

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Post by freejazz » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 10:11 PM UTC

OrangeMonkey wrote: post #523

neves wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we can see Twitter being supported by extreme right foundations. I'm from Brazil and the extreme right is abusing all the communication platforms. it's a complete madness in what people believe right now. Our society is on the verge of crumbling.

Twitter hasn't been burdened by "extreme right" "abusing all communication platforms." If it was, then we would have seen a left exodus years ago and not suddenly coming up now. This comment has me so confused.

Probably because you seemed to have partisan worms in your brain. Twitter HAS been burdened by the "extreme right" abusing its platform. Its the entirety of the debate around what should be moderated on twitter. Insisting that this can't be true because "the left" hasn't had an exodus doesn't seem to make sense to me.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#636

Post by mikkergp » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 10:11 PM UTC

spaced-out wrote: post #611

concinds wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people are focused on censorship/content issues, but I really think the X.com "mega app" vision is the most significant part of this. It'll be hard to gain a foothold in those markets, and there'll be antitrust challenges, but it really fits perfectly with the rest of Musk's vision: X.com Maps could tie in with Teslas, X.com Carhailing could tie-in with (future) full self-driving; Twitter could be expanded to be…

I wonder how this jives with his stated plan to lay off a lot of people? If he wants to implement that he'll need a lot more engineers and related support staff.

I think this was mostly bluster, sure hell have to lay off a lot of people to change the company direction but his pitch to investors said the company would grow to like 12000 people.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

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Post by mft_ » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 10:13 PM UTC

VBprogrammer wrote: post #316

Hermitian909 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: Previously worked in Toyota's EV R&D division, opinions my own. > Remember, Tesla has to become bigger than Toyota to justify the stock price. It is not possible to do that at Tesla's current price points. It is not possible to do that at Tesla's current price points. Long term Tesla has to create a balance sheet and a narrative that convince people that it's current valuation is justified. Based on my ti…

What I want to see is Tesla come up with a sequel which is another hit. I feel like their car styling was comfortably out there when electric cars first came on to the scene but now it's become incredibly safe. Other companies, now they are building specific EVs rather than throwing some batteries in the back of an existing car and calling it an EV, are really starting to play with the concept and are making some gre…

Well , there’s the Cybertruck…

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#638

Post by smt88 » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 10:14 PM UTC

MarkMc wrote: post #634

Whenever I go on vacation overseas Twitter shows me ads in a language I cannot understand. This is one of many clearly-identifiable problems that are not rocket science to fix. And Elon Musk has a reputation for fixing problems. When Twitter shares are publicly traded again in a few years, Musk's purchase price of $44 billion will look like a bargain. My prediction: In 5 years Twitter's market cap will exceed $150 bi…

> Elon has a reputation for fixing problems.

Based on Tesla, he not only isn't good at fixing problems, he actively pushes forward broken products and processes to save his stock price.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

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Post by munificent » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 10:15 PM UTC

ChainOfFools wrote: post #560

munificent wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> being honest is a tax Being honest is an investment in an honest society and a just future. Of course, the problem with being honest is that, as with any ideological conflict, those who volunteer for the front lines make the most sacrifices, and have to trust that the tide will someday turn in favor of their side, even though they may never see it happen. So there's a lot of "you go first" noise instead of active e…

I probably should have been clearer that I believe strongly that it's a tax worth paying. My point was just that I think it's statistically extremely unlikely for a consistently honest person to become obscenely wealthy because the cost/benefit proposition gets worse and worse the richer you are. It's relatively easy to walk away from a dishonest deal that nets you a hundred bucks. But it takes a lot more character to walk away from a dishonest deal that nets you a hundred million.

I tend to assume (possibly without sufficiently compelling evidence, but I'm allowed to believe what I want) that anyone who's reached stratospheric wealth has done so by not walking away from some of those shady deals.

You may be right that "tax" is not a good metaphor.

> to observe that having to constantly verify at great expense what in an honest society you could you could otherwise trusted at nearly zero expense, is the more costly and pernicious "tax" on total human productivity.

I agree 1000%. The value of a society made of honest people is radically improved efficiency.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#640

Post by ur-whale » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 10:17 PM UTC

The reason Musk bought Twitter is the same reason other billionaires own newspapers even though they're money-losing flame dumpsters: they're a tool to control the narrative.

When you're the richest man in the world, money does not matter any more. Power and influence do. And Twitter is a big league weapon in that game.

I don't think he cares at all about making Twitter profitable or catering to advertizers. He just bought himself the largest megaphone in the world, one with which he'll be able to sculpt the perception of the public at large any way he sees fit.