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Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

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Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#931
post #897

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are spot on. That style of working or perspective towards policy is exactly what Musk wants to remove at the grassroots level. Agreed that this wisdom and experience is not replaceable. But Musk intends to replace it with something else. If you think about it, Vijaya's perspectives and intuition is only going to pull back Musk's vision however vague that might be. Musk doesn't want to sit around and convince Vija…

> plan Plan? You say "i don't what his plan is", and then "this was a mastermind move for him to execute his plan".

I don't think you have to claim to know what his plan is, to know what it is not. Why would he pay $50 billion dollars to buy Twitter only to leave the same people in charge of what he thinks was a broken platform?

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#932

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAICT he's planning on folding to any authoritarian governments demands [1], while fighting for free speech mostly in the American context (and that too, just online). For that, he probably doesn't need Vijaya. I hope someone pays her buckets of money now to fight at the actual frontline of free speech (Texas government sanctioned book bans perhaps?) [1]: https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-free-speech-twitter-gl.…

> AFAICT he's planning on folding to any authoritarian governments demands citation needed

"Authoritarian government" is a redundant statement in 2022.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#933

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.

Does he really hate bots, or was it just something he came up with to try to get out of buying it?

My guess is he wanted to lower the price... He's friend with Jack Dorsey, who said the bot problem is worse than Twitter is admitting. And nobody want's a social media platform discussion is ran by sucky AI.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#934
High-indignation, low information commentary is... I feel, almost inevitable here.

Elon himself has not really, IMO, provided any information about his plans. His points about making Twitter free, bot problems and such are themselves low-information, high-indignation. The "business plan" regarding advertisers, revenue and such that we have seen so far is basically boilerplate. It reads like generic business school wordage, rather than an actual plan. We don't really know anything.

So... what we're left with is a detached, high-level commentary that is more about the commentor's broader views than Twitter or this acquisition specifically.

I suspect that ambiguity isn't just a communications strategy. I don't think there is a real, ready-to-use conceptual model for free speech on social media. Elon doesn't have one. These problems aren't Twitter specific. Facebook, youtube and other meta/alphabet sites have even deeper issues. Those sites are just less prone to meta debates about the platform itself.

Compare modern social media to Wikipedia, for example. Does Wikipedia uphold free speech? You could argue either yes, no or n/a. I would argue not applicable. Meanwhile, Wikipedia has been far more resilient to misinformation, politicisation, and such. This despite being a high value target with far less resources than comparably important sites. Also despite being more user-controlled.

So... I think free expression related issues are artefacts of what Twitter is, not what the CEO of Twitter does. One giant, centralised, social media site will have the characteristics of a Twitter. The focus may shift around. The political orientation may shift left or right. Maybe content policies go from being US-centric to something else.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#935

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.

> He really hates the bots, so he'll probably close up the API.

That term bot conflates at least three distinct meanings. Not sure how blocking the API would affect #2 or #3

1) Automated accounts probably using the API that are run by a program to post content. Can be benign. Here's an example:

https://twitter.com/happyautomata/

2) Large accounts that push a particular point of view, often state sponsored, run in teams. Does not need an API. Here's an example:

https://twitter.com/sprintermonitor

3) Small accounts paid to push or disrupt a particular agenda in replies. Often state sponsored. Example I suspect:

https://twitter.com/DaBoy1804/with_replies

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#936

High-indignation, low information commentary is... I feel, almost inevitable here. Elon himself has not really , IMO, provided any information about his plans. His points about making Twitter free, bot problems and such are themselves low-information, high-indignation. The "business plan" regarding advertisers, revenue and such that we have seen so far is basically boilerplate. It reads like generic business school w…

> Meanwhile, Wikipedia has been far more resilient to misinformation, politicisation, and such

How could you tell? It's wikipedia (well, the information aggregate that includes wikipedia as a major component) that decides what is or isn't misinformation.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#937

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…

Twitter should remove Communities, Lists, Professional Profiles, Long Notes (their new take on blogging smh) and Spaces (you know that audio thing)?. These are failed experiments no? Twitter should improve Bookmarks. I bookmark a lot of Tweets since it was introduced to the public and scrolling down for hundreds of tweets is not fun.

Even moving the bookmark function out of the 'share' menu would be a nice improvement!

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#938
As we get older, the world gets older with us. The tides are softer, the lines are much more graceful, and the disruption is only in our minds.

We disrupted the old ways of thinking, so the new ones had a path to walk upon. Let us not fret, as this is the way of the world.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#939

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…

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…

It sounds like we're back in 1999.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#940
post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> managing the exodus of users (size:?) that will happen regardless; This is probably the biggest risk in this acquisition. Twitter wasn't doing anything special, and it's easy to launch a clone of their business model. Elon's talking about taking an axe to the things that keep the lights on at Twitter: effective content moderation and talent.

> Elon's talking about taking an axe to the things that keep the lights on at Twitter: effective content moderation and talent. I don't think it's clear this is the case. It's just the network effect that keeps it in such a dominant position. Plenty of Twitter clones have been created, yet neither conservatives have migrated to Truth/Parler/Gab/whatever, nor have or will liberals/the anti-Musk contingent to Mastodon,…

I don't know much about it, but I've always assumed Mastodon was apolitical. What makes it 'left-leaning'?
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