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Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far
981–990 of 1001 posts
Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far
#982It's very strange to me he intends to un-ban Trump when he gave up trying to work with him on that advisory council thing early in Trump's presidency.
Why is that strange? It's a principled position unrelated to not liking him or not wanting to work with him.
"Principled positions" aren't exactly Musk's forte. See also: sending private investigators after the guy he falsely called a pedophile, his vendetta against a single lawyer, trying start up an "alternative facts" news site after mainstream media wrote a series of articles about poor safety conditions in Tesla facilities, etc.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with his statements that Twitter and the internet at large need less censorship and thicker skin. I just don't have any faith those statements are going to be backed up because Elon Musk is a petulant child.
Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far
#983Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many people say they dislike Musk because of his ego, his shitposting, his tendency to lash out at critics, etc. I like him specifically because of those attributes: he may be the richest man on the planet, but he never gives the impression of being a lizard person like e.g. Bezos does. He's a normal guy, including plenty of normal-guy flaws, just an extremely successful one.
You think being a legitimately terrible person is "normal"? That's extremely depressing, and I think you want to possibly re-evaluate your general outlook in life.
You (statistically, possibly not literally) know someone, and call them a friend, who is, as a person, worse than Elon. But you don't view billionaires the way you view people you know - billionaires are supposed to be perfect people chiseled out of ivory. I don't know where the façade comes from, but Elon never does that. And so I can have just a little bit more faith in him than in any other tech billionaire, because I know the motivation and vision he acts like he has is the one he actually has.
Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far
#984> 9. Elon says there will be a content council – but not the one that already exists Lots of people are fearful twitter will change dramatically. I suspect that Elon might find it easier to criticize Twitter, than to run it :) Moderating discourse is not a task I would want.
Yes, lots of people are fearful that they no longer have control over the discussion. The same people who had no business being arbiters of truth in the first place, and demonstrated with stunning brilliance why.
You hit the nail on the head. Mess or not, it was a controlled mess with people getting to shape not just their message, but in many cases actual public debate.
Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far
#985Earlier 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.
> He really hates the bots, so he'll probably close up the API. How relevant is the API though? Is it possible to put together a Selenium script that posts a tweet?
Might require changing some parameters of the browser / tweaking it a little or getting an older version, because nowadays browsers have a flag that says "hey, I'm being automated!"
But other than that, I don't see how they could prevent it
Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far
#986Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly I think we’re all just scared he is going to help get the boy king elected and if that’s the case, if that happens there’s a good chance that will be the end of civilization as we know it. That is legit the only reason anyone I know of cares at all about this deal.
The drama is unbecoming. Contrary to claims, civilization didn't end when Trump took office. The economy didn't crash, it grew. Food prices didn't soar, they went down. Unemployment didn't go up, it went down, especially for minorities. Gas prices didn't hit $7 in California. Home energy bills went down. People had more disposable income and less tax burden. We didn't experience wild inflation. There was no prospect…
Are you actually serious or trolling?
The guy lost the election and did everything in his power to hang onto it, this is a serious and dangerous threat to modern western democratic civilization.
There was no prospect for a third world war.
Who is being dramatic now?
We didn't experience wild inflation.
No but the Trump administration helped cause it? Inflation is not something that just happens because Joe Biden likes inflation, it happens because of policy.
Funny how the real world works :)
Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far
#987High-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…
>Wikipedia has been far more resilient to misinformation, politicisation, and such
wikipedia outsources the duty of figuring out what is misinformation or not by trusting secondary sources, which themselves can and quite often are wrong. And while sure, they do have far less politization as twitter I'm unconvinced that isn't just due to a difference in mediums, because there is a massive amount of politization under the hood there. Just go into any mildly controversial figure's talk page and you'll find out.
Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far
#988Based on an interview I saw I suspect Musk will strive to make Twitter a platform for user-to-user messaging and payment services. Community moderation without banning might be possible by establishing "spheres" akin to reddit boards so things people see is to some degree curated.
You mean a crappier version of Discord? Whatever Twitter "reinvents" itself into, it needs to be in a social-networking niche that's not already served. Otherwise, their competitors will just have an edge-up on them. Video games? Twitch will beat them. Longer form videos? Youtube. Short form videos? Tiktok. Etc. etc. Twitter needs to figure out how to make money without simply becoming a clone of something else. Othe…
Isn't discord itself a crappier version of IRC? You can always out execute.
Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far
#989Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sounds like Musk is going to tell advertisers to kick rocks and try to monetize the platform. Where are people gonna go if not on Twitter? The left isn't gonna have better luck with their own truth social or parler. The network effect is too big with Twitter. It's not fun if you're not dunking on your enemies. That's the fun of Twitter.
> Where are people gonna go if not on Twitter? I think you may be over-estimating how much most people "need" something like Twitter. For the vast majority of users, a news feed and private messaging (WhatsApp, iMessage, etc.) are good enough.
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Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far
#990Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sounds like Musk is going to tell advertisers to kick rocks and try to monetize the platform. Where are people gonna go if not on Twitter? The left isn't gonna have better luck with their own truth social or parler. The network effect is too big with Twitter. It's not fun if you're not dunking on your enemies. That's the fun of Twitter.
> Where are people gonna go if not on Twitter? I think you may be over-estimating how much most people "need" something like Twitter. For the vast majority of users, a news feed and private messaging (WhatsApp, iMessage, etc.) are good enough.
I think this comment will age well.
My guess is that the percent of people who use social media will decrease by half over the coming decade, at least in the US and Europe.