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

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#861

Post by awb » Sat, Oct 29, 2022, 4:29 AM UTC

skissane wrote: post #799

novok wrote: post #789

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been in companies where 1/5th of engineer was laid off. The state of company infra and the product dropped significantly and it took a long time to approach recovery, where they hired the same amount of staff back. I can't imagine how dysfunctional twitter would be with %75 of staff gone, I don't even know if it will continue running as a business after that.

Will Musk actually cut 75%? Musk tends to do a lot of “thinking out loud” - so even if he really spoke that number, he won’t hold himself to it. Whatever the actual figure is, it is unlikely to be the same figure across all departments - likely some departments will be cut much more than others. Probably engineering will experience significantly less cuts than marketing, PR, HR, government relations, business develop…

Threatening to fire 75% of the staff might have been a last ditch attempt to turn public, shareholder, board and/or Parag’s opinion against the deal.

It didn’t work, and I doubt he’ll follow through on it. Otherwise, it’s sure to freeze almost all future initiatives and turn the team into caretakers instead of innovators and I’m not sure what the point of that would be.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#862

Post by kart23 » Sat, Oct 29, 2022, 4:43 AM UTC

planetsprite wrote: post #768

As much as people dislike Musk, he draws excitement and captivation not only to himself, but to whatever he touches. Now for the first time people actually care about the "future" of Twitter, or in a sense, have a vision for its future that isn't defined by its frequent moderation-related controversies. Is Musk's financial success and unparalleled cultural relevance a science that can be replicated? I mean, as much a…

SpaceX is cool. I think musk definitely draws excitement and his companies have great brand reputation. Tesla sells an idea, a lifestyle. When you look at the product, its not great. ill-thought out features (camera rain sensor, parking sensors being taken out), crappy materials, and promises that might never be delivered (self-driving).

I think musk really just is an optimist and a big thinker that is driving constantly towards the future, and people love that. Even if he accomplishes 10% of what he sets out to do, thats still a massive step forward.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#863

Post by grogenaut » Sat, Oct 29, 2022, 5:08 AM UTC

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…

why is open sourcing the code in this list? I don't recall a musk company that's big on open source. is this for visibility into how it works?

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#864

Post by EMM_386 » Sat, Oct 29, 2022, 5:13 AM UTC

I am not sure what Elon's vision of a "free speech" platform is, but if you allow absolutely all legal free speech, with limited/no moderation, it will turn into a cesspool.

This "Welcome to Hell, Elon" article sums up most of my points so I won't bother to repeat them all here.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/28/23428132/elon-musk-twitt...

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#865

Post by gamegoblin » Sat, Oct 29, 2022, 5:14 AM UTC

georgeg23 wrote: post #781

planetsprite wrote: post #768

As much as people dislike Musk, he draws excitement and captivation not only to himself, but to whatever he touches. Now for the first time people actually care about the "future" of Twitter, or in a sense, have a vision for its future that isn't defined by its frequent moderation-related controversies. Is Musk's financial success and unparalleled cultural relevance a science that can be replicated? I mean, as much a…

He had help from the government, specifically Mike Griffin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career The rocket landing stuff largely borrow from DC-X and the spinoff work at NASA (+Lars Blackmore), all originally Strategic Defense Initiative stuff. He used all that money from Mike as collateral for loans to Tesla. He deserves some credit for impressive financial engineering and attracting talent under…

If it were just a matter of money, any of the other billionaires who tried to build rocket companies would have succeeded. SpaceX got payload to orbit with ~$100M. The only other company that has come close to this is Rocket Lab with a bit over $200M invested.

By comparison, Bezos has been sinking > $1B per year into Blue Origin for nearly a decade without making it to orbit, and probably won't until 2024 at the earliest.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#866

Post by nurettin » Sat, Oct 29, 2022, 5:19 AM UTC

Dear Elon,

This bot discussion is just very strange to me. If it is a bot, just attach a bot icon next to the name. Let people filter bots all together, or keep some that they like. If the status was changed or the message was sent via API, print a computer icon above it. Let people know. And again, let people filter those as well.

The spam part is also a solved problem. Gmail solved it 20 years ago. Spam filters are a thing. Activate them to stop elon bots harm.

API discussions are also out of this world. Let people use read-only APIs freely to see their timeline. Give them atom and rss. Vet apps that want to use write APIs. Wall garden your search API all you like. It is a waste of money and time anyway. Even Quora has better results. You may also decentralize search to take some load off your servers and incentivise index hosting. This is a perfect fit for de-fi.

About the toxic waste dump that is the Twitter user base, just teach them some morals and manners. Be courteous and precise, and let people know that they should do better for all humankind and not write everything their inside voice tells.

-- a fediverse user

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#867

Post by sfmike » Sat, Oct 29, 2022, 5:32 AM UTC

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…

Yes like GNIP around that time these firehose startups were amazing and it was a golden age of metadata and then Twitter Killed the Golden Goose. Bring back open data! Let Open Source and all the hackers from second order efforts give back value to Twitter's Value.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#868

Post by bryanrasmussen » Sat, Oct 29, 2022, 5:32 AM UTC

_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.

half of what I tweet could be done by a bot, that is to say answer to writerslift posts with links to books and articles. the other half could not. I'm currently real, but would I be a bot if I automate my bot half?

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#869

Post by sfmike » Sat, Oct 29, 2022, 5:34 AM UTC

dymk wrote: post #796

madrox wrote: post #790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the ship has sailed on the API. It was a different time, and the people that used Twitter's API to do fun things didn't just give up...they migrated to mastodon and discord. I don't think the golden years of twitter are coming back.

Like 5 people "migrated" to Mastodon, and Discord isn't a comparable product

Discord is a very different product but the demographics of users are very much those that have migrated from hackers on twitter to being in discord groups as of today.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#870

Post by shaburn » Sat, Oct 29, 2022, 5:35 AM UTC

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…

This was stock market crack when they first did it