Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#781

Post by xwdv » Sat, Apr 16, 2022, 7:33 AM UTC

darth_avocado wrote: post #706

memish wrote: post #696

Some points from the All in Pod. 1. The Twitter board of directors has become a status thing. It's like a country club. They don't have real skin in the game; they don't own much stock. They're not aligned with the shareholders. It's about status and cultural power. 2. Why should we believe that the company will become more valuable when the stock price is where it was way back in December 2013? Compare to how the S&…

> One AI engineer from Tesla could solve Twitter’s bot and spam problem I think you underestimate how hard the problem is or you don’t fully understand how it works. The scale at which Twitter operates makes it near impossible to take down spam in real time. You don’t think Twitter is working on it, but they are. What you see is a much smaller percentage of the actual spam generated, and the reason you see it is beca…

AI Engineers at Tesla also deal with spam, just not in the way you think. Self driving AI has to deal with input spam from all sorts of details in the real world, most of which are irrelevant to making driving decisions. So yes, I’d be reasonably certain AI Engineers at Tesla could easily solve spam on a simple web platform.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#782

Post by faeriechangling » Sat, Apr 16, 2022, 7:35 AM UTC

memish wrote: post #696

Some points from the All in Pod. 1. The Twitter board of directors has become a status thing. It's like a country club. They don't have real skin in the game; they don't own much stock. They're not aligned with the shareholders. It's about status and cultural power. 2. Why should we believe that the company will become more valuable when the stock price is where it was way back in December 2013? Compare to how the S&…

>5. The elites have somehow inverted history so they now believe that it is not censorship that is the favored tool of fascists and authoritarians, even though every fascist and despot in history used censorship to maintain power, but instead believe free speech, free discourse, and free thought are the instruments of repression.

Fascists and authoritarians took advantage of freedom of speech to gain power, the censorship came after they seized power. Hitler promoted himself through his right to speak at his trials, and through his book Mein Kampf, things the Weimer Republic could have absolutely chosen to censor. Karl Popper made a rather infamous observation of the "Paradox of tolerance" where tolerating the intolerant could result in more intolerance, if the intolerant happened to be Hitler in Nazi Germany.

I find the biggest objection to this entire line of thought is that censors always consider themselves to be the ones resisting the next Nazi Germany rather than being Nazi Germany themselves. Anybody who openly censors others is more likely than the general person in the population to be some sort of totalitarian authoritarian, so trusting them with power so they can stop some sort of Nazi uprising is foolish. It's the same kind of issue as "Bombing for peace", pretty much 100% of the people who have ever bombed people have said they were doing it for the sake of peace.

This all being said, I don't think giving Musk 100% of twitter and the effective absolute power to censor others on the platform is a good idea.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#783

Post by prvc » Sat, Apr 16, 2022, 7:36 AM UTC

darth_avocado wrote: post #706

memish wrote: post #696

Some points from the All in Pod. 1. The Twitter board of directors has become a status thing. It's like a country club. They don't have real skin in the game; they don't own much stock. They're not aligned with the shareholders. It's about status and cultural power. 2. Why should we believe that the company will become more valuable when the stock price is where it was way back in December 2013? Compare to how the S&…

> One AI engineer from Tesla could solve Twitter’s bot and spam problem I think you underestimate how hard the problem is or you don’t fully understand how it works. The scale at which Twitter operates makes it near impossible to take down spam in real time. You don’t think Twitter is working on it, but they are. What you see is a much smaller percentage of the actual spam generated, and the reason you see it is beca…

Some scammers who appear in Musk's replies impersonating him use similar or identical avatars and screen names in order to perpetrate their fraud. Removing and preventing the creation of this type of account would not even require "AI". It hasn't happened yet because Twitter lacks the will to do it, for whatever reason.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#784

Post by Closi » Sat, Apr 16, 2022, 7:36 AM UTC

captainmuon wrote: post #766

memish wrote: post #696

Some points from the All in Pod. 1. The Twitter board of directors has become a status thing. It's like a country club. They don't have real skin in the game; they don't own much stock. They're not aligned with the shareholders. It's about status and cultural power. 2. Why should we believe that the company will become more valuable when the stock price is where it was way back in December 2013? Compare to how the S&…

> 5. The elites have somehow inverted history so they now believe that it is not censorship that is the favored tool of fascists and authoritarians, even though every fascist and despot in history used censorship to maintain power, but instead believe free speech, free discourse, and free thought are the instruments of repression. Not every speech is equal. If you are living in a Weimar-Republic scenario, yes, free s…

> Not every speech is equal. If you are living in a Weimar-Republic scenario, yes, free speech can be repressive and I can see why people will call for censorship. Personally, I think censorship and speech taboos just keep a lid on certain problems instead of solving them

The problem with this is that it always ends up as “censorship is ok, as long as it’s for opinions I disagree with”.

And with your Weimar-republic scenario, if the implied claim is that more censorship would have stopped either the radicalisation or rise of Adolf Hitler, I think that’s very simplistic and highly suspect.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#785

Post by systemvoltage » Sat, Apr 16, 2022, 7:38 AM UTC

aaronblohowiak wrote: post #759

systemvoltage wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sad truth is that this is an intense political battle. I would personally favor Elon Musk taking over and shaking things up, any other position is untenable. And, I am saying this as a progressive. I think an open and transparent social platform would be great for the society. The issue is that managerial class of America, both in private and public sector, are in bed with each other. The government cannot suppre…

Even aclu doesn’t believe in free speech anymore, at least not like they used to

ACLU has been gutted out and running on fumes off of donor class. I'll leave you with guessing who these people are.

Btw, I've never seen my comment go from 6 votes to 0 in a matter of 30 mins. Insane.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#786

Post by IshKebab » Sat, Apr 16, 2022, 7:38 AM UTC

vasco wrote: post #726

s1artibartfast wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So almost $6/share was left on the table. This is only true if the there is no uncertainty. If you think the value without the takeover is $30, and it is trading at 48, and buyout is $54, that means the market thinks it 75% likely. downside -$18, upside +$6 = 75% likely

It means the market doesn't think it's likely but it doesn't mean it's 75%. To illustrate why that makes no sense, if Musk had offered $35 instead of $54, the buyout would be much less likely, since the price would be way lower and the board and shareholders less likely to accept it, yet under your model the likelihood would go up. Estimating probability from price action is something you can do, but not like you did…

Why would the likelihood go up under his model? If Musk had only offered $35 and people thought that was only 20% likely to happen (for the reasons you listed) then the market price would have only gone up to $31.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#787

Post by murbard2 » Sat, Apr 16, 2022, 7:46 AM UTC

darth_avocado wrote: post #706

memish wrote: post #696

Some points from the All in Pod. 1. The Twitter board of directors has become a status thing. It's like a country club. They don't have real skin in the game; they don't own much stock. They're not aligned with the shareholders. It's about status and cultural power. 2. Why should we believe that the company will become more valuable when the stock price is where it was way back in December 2013? Compare to how the S&…

> One AI engineer from Tesla could solve Twitter’s bot and spam problem I think you underestimate how hard the problem is or you don’t fully understand how it works. The scale at which Twitter operates makes it near impossible to take down spam in real time. You don’t think Twitter is working on it, but they are. What you see is a much smaller percentage of the actual spam generated, and the reason you see it is beca…

Spam on most platform is a complicated engineering challenge. However, for some inexplicable reason, Twitter features a kind of spam that you don't see on any other platforms because it could be caught with a regex.

It's almost never the case that spam issues on popular social networks can be alleviated with some easy fixes, because obviously if they could they would already have done that. Twitter is a very weird exception.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#788

Post by _benedict » Sat, Apr 16, 2022, 7:47 AM UTC

athrowaway3z wrote: post #773

syshum wrote: post #767

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large part of the problem for twitter Google and Facebook is their ever shifting goals for content moderation to appease their politically activist employees and media critics. Something tells me Elon would have different goals that should be less of a moving target and easier to accomplish. Less subjective target like "hate speech" and more objective target like true threats of violence, illegal activity, actual b…

No. Not relevant to the discussion. Gmail has no content moderation, but spam still gets through occasionally.

Spam volumes are also down dramatically due to conventional means like making it illegal, and taking down bot farms that were sending it. Also the introduction of DKIM and DMARC making it harder across the board to be seen as a legitimate sender, and the fact that many-to-many emails are a huge red flag for spam filters, and not a concept for social media.

Spam is a dramatically easier problem, and has many more mechanism to suppress it both legally and technologically.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#789

Post by aaronbrethorst » Sat, Apr 16, 2022, 7:48 AM UTC

memish wrote: post #696

Some points from the All in Pod. 1. The Twitter board of directors has become a status thing. It's like a country club. They don't have real skin in the game; they don't own much stock. They're not aligned with the shareholders. It's about status and cultural power. 2. Why should we believe that the company will become more valuable when the stock price is where it was way back in December 2013? Compare to how the S&…

Oh, is that a white nationalist? No, it’s a stoplight! Very well, carry on.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#790

Post by beebmam » Sat, Apr 16, 2022, 7:50 AM UTC

memish wrote: post #696

Some points from the All in Pod. 1. The Twitter board of directors has become a status thing. It's like a country club. They don't have real skin in the game; they don't own much stock. They're not aligned with the shareholders. It's about status and cultural power. 2. Why should we believe that the company will become more valuable when the stock price is where it was way back in December 2013? Compare to how the S&…

Why should a company be forced to carry, host, and service the speech of others?

If Twitter is a monopoly, apply anti-trust laws to it and break it up. If Twitter isn't a monopoly, then they should every right to decide what their service does, as long as it's within the law. If you don't like the current laws, change them.

I am totally, 100% opposed to privately owned companies being forced to carry speech that they don't want to carry. That itself is a violation of the free speech of people that operate businesses.