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Elon Musk and the Twitter acquisition saga

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E-Cat

Member
It's human nature. He claims he wants the platform to be a "public square" for the debate and discussion of idea in a civilised way. That's not happening. It will continue to just be idiots from either side yelling at each other until they are inevitably blocked by one or the other.

You don't need to see the future to know that. You just have to have eyes and ears.
I don't think that's what he's saying, that it will be civilized. We don't need freedom of speech for saying stuff that everybody already agrees with.

He wants idiots from the left and the right to have the privilege of yelling at each other freely instead of being insulated in their own echo chambers.

Elon in 2018: "Twitter's a warzone. If somebody is gonna jump in the warzone, it's like, okay, you're in the arena. Let's go."

 
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Here is the stated reason:


I was picking you up on the things you said it "will" be, which without evidence just isn't true.

On this statement, it's a load of nothing. It already is all the things he says he wants it to be. It's already a privately moderated "digital town square". Just because someone doesn't agree with how it's moderated doesn't mean it's not that. It already obeys the laws of the land. On top of that this is just cosy wording to placate advertisers and remind them not much will change, while telling them that somehow they're the most important part of a "town square" which is hilarious.

And another thing I've just picked on is tailoring your experience to your preferences . That doesn't sound like a "town square" to me, more of a market. Tailoring your experience as you would a hobby sounds like more echochambers, basically Reddit.
 
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E-Cat

Member
I was picking you up on the things you said it "will" be, which without evidence just isn't true.

On this statement, it's a load of nothing. It already is all the things he says he wants it to be. It's already a privately moderated "digital town square". Just because someone doesn't agree with how it's moderated doesn't mean it's not that. It already obeys the laws of the land. On top of that this is just cosy wording to placate advertisers and remind them not much will change, while telling them that somehow they're the most important part of a "town square" which is hilarious.

And another thing I've just picked on is tailoring your experience to your preferences . That doesn't sound like a "town square" to me, more of a market. Tailoring your experience as you would a hobby sounds like more echochambers, basically Reddit.
To say "won't without X" =/= "will with X"
 

Nobody_Important

“Aww, it’s so...average,” she said to him in a cold brick of passion
He wants idiots from the left and the right to have the privilege of yelling at each other freely instead of being insulated in their own echo chambers.
No he doesn't. In his statement to advertisers he literally talks about the ability of users to choose their experience based on their preferences. Which allows people to insulate themselves from content they don't want.


Now that concept sounds familiar 🤔
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
Bobs rule.
bob ross GIF
 

ShadowLag

Member
Yeah he spent almost a FIFTH of his wealth on a social media platform and will probably never recoup anywhere near that amount on it. He's a moron.
Money isn't an object for this guy any more, and he got there by making the right decisions and doing the right kind of work. He could buy this thing out of pocket in cash right now, and still have 168 billion dollars, still the richest human being in history. Sure it's a huge chunk, but he's not buying things left and right like this. He obviously has a specific goal to achieve with Twitter and he wants it enough that the money didn't matter.

Sometimes people believe in things and want a change to be made. Whether he accomplishes that or not, we can't say yet. It's incredibly odd to me how many people are so whacked out over this guy though. I haven't seen anyone else in modern history successfully pushing incredibly difficult technologies further than him. Last I knew everyone loved the guy, then one day it's as if a light switch was flipped and a mob appeared after him. That's the way the Internet works now, though - partly thanks to the company he's buying out.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Money isn't an object for this guy any more, and he got there by making the right decisions and doing the right kind of work. He could buy this thing out of pocket in cash right now, and still have 168 billion dollars, still the richest human being in history. Sure it's a huge chunk, but he's not buying things left and right like this. He obviously has a specific goal to achieve with Twitter and he wants it enough that the money didn't matter.

Sometimes people believe in things and want a change to be made. Whether he accomplishes that or not, we can't say yet. It's incredibly odd to me how many people are so whacked out over this guy though. I haven't seen anyone else in modern history successfully pushing incredibly difficult technologies further than him. Last I knew everyone loved the guy, then one day it's as if a light switch was flipped and a mob appeared after him. That's the way the Internet works now, though - partly thanks to the company he's buying out.
People take the guy too seriously. He says some dumb things sometimes like calling the rescuer a pedo for balking at his custom made submarines, but compared to the typical suit and tie golden parachute grey haired CEO you'd think the average social media whore would love the guy for speaking his mind and yucking it up with the rest of them.

Problem is too many hardcore whiny baby liberals see him as potentially cracking down on Twitter woke-ism and pink haired employees steering the company into left wing politics, when in reality a long time ago when social media was new it was just normal people gabbing about boring shit in their lives which are neutral topics.
 

MastaKiiLA

Member
Musk's lame public letter is probably related to this:

Source: WSJ
Advertisers are concerned about the billionaire’s plans to soften content moderation and what they say are potential conflicts of interest in auto advertising, given that he is chief executive of Tesla Inc., say people familiar with the situation.
Mr. Musk said this spring that as owner of Twitter he would reinstate former President Donald Trump’s account, which the platform suspended indefinitely after linking Mr. Trump’s comments to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. That would be a red line for some brands, said Kieley Taylor, global head of partnerships at GroupM, a leading ad-buying agency that represents blue-chip brands.

About a dozen of GroupM’s clients, which own an array of well-known consumer brands, have told the agency to pause all their ads on Twitter if Mr. Trump’s account is reinstated, Ms. Taylor said. Others are in wait-and-see mode. Ms. Taylor said she expects to hear from many more clients if Mr. Trump’s account returns.
Advertising provided 89% of Twitter’s $5.08 billion revenue in 2021. Mr. Musk has said he hates advertising. In a series of tweets earlier this year, he suggested Twitter should move toward subscriptions and remove ads from Twitter Blue, a premium program that gives users additional features.
It's the hand that feeds.
 

Darkmakaimura

Can You Imagine What SureAI Is Going To Do With Garfield?
So I am hearing he officially owns it now?

If so, congratulations Elon Musk! Hopefully things get just slightly better in this world now.
 

Pilgrimzero

Member
Money isn't an object for this guy any more, and he got there by making the right decisions and doing the right kind of work. He could buy this thing out of pocket in cash right now, and still have 168 billion dollars, still the richest human being in history. Sure it's a huge chunk, but he's not buying things left and right like this. He obviously has a specific goal to achieve with Twitter and he wants it enough that the money didn't matter.

Sometimes people believe in things and want a change to be made. Whether he accomplishes that or not, we can't say yet. It's incredibly odd to me how many people are so whacked out over this guy though. I haven't seen anyone else in modern history successfully pushing incredibly difficult technologies further than him. Last I knew everyone loved the guy, then one day it's as if a light switch was flipped and a mob appeared after him. That's the way the Internet works now, though - partly thanks to the company he's buying out.

He believed in it so much he tried in court to get out of buying it
 

cormack12

Gold Member
All of the people threatening to leave Twitter over this are just lying to themselves.
Even if they signed up to competing platforms, they'll still come back to twitter. They're too starved for indignation and attention to stay away.
Echo chambers are boring, regardless of the ideology.

Yep, people on twitter don't like the interactions, evidenced by the blacklists. What they like is the audience.

And like it or not the twitter audience is not shrinking no matter who owns it until a platform comes along that is a genuine social and cultural leap.
 

BadBurger

Many “Whelps”! Handle It!
That press release / statement from Musk isn't a surprise, have to soothe the nerves of the advertisers - it's just funny how he talks up the users and free speech and money, then addresses his advertisers first. He seriously needs to listen to his PR people if he even has them. The guy is terrible at messaging.

Anyways, as others have pointed out, Twitter already does the things he mentions. People are banned for bigotry or racism, threatening violence, spreading dangerous conspiracies (anti vaxx is probably the biggest example here), or are harassing people. No one is ever banned for being a Marxist, or atheist or christian, or for expressing a desire for less government in our lives, etc.

Regarding some of his other comments - Twitter is designed so that people can create their own custom echo chamber if they want. It's pretty much one of the points of the platform. So good luck trying to change how people behave - unless he's going to take away the concept of followers, the ability to block or mute others, takes away the custom content filters, etc. That would be one wild experiment to witness, but I doubt it would have the effects he desires.

Man what an adventure. And it's still not even finally over yet.


Out of curiosity, I checked out Mastodon. I had my first boomer moment. I have no clue how the hell you’re supposed to use it. I can’t imagine too many people will find a successful alternate when they flee the nest.

It's pretty much just Twitter with private servers. Like Discord in a way, or if Twitter had the equivalent of subreddits. I find it easy to connect with communities there, but the clients or web interfaces available, in my experience, are all just so basic and lacking in features.
 
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I love how y'all's hanging on his balls cause money.

Fact is, for anything he's done which really is taking credit for those who actually do the real work, he's done so many other shitty things it's pretty baffling he's got any stans - especially on a message forum. I just find it fascinating y'all really are so vested.

It's like some weird meta-proxy war for dorks on both sides of this one.

And yeah - he's stupid. :)
And now strawman arguments from the triggered kiddo. Keep projecting.
 

RoboFu

One of the green rats
Funny at the people here pretending Twitter has been “ fair “ to everyone when Twitter employees are losing their shit because they fear they can’t censor conservatives or anyone who is against far leftist think.

But really Even democrats are starting to push back against far leftist think now so it was only time before the big sites had to follow.
 

ManaByte

Gold Member
It's pretty much just Twitter with private servers. Like Discord in a way, or if Twitter had the equivalent of subreddits. I find it easy to connect with communities there, but the clients or web interfaces available, in my experience, are all just so basic and lacking in features.
Mastodon server admins can read anyone's DMs.
 

///PATRIOT

Banned
Good.

Pieces of shit had a really good time banning and silencing people, they felt the owners of morality and discourse, and also partnered with democrats to ban and remove conservative voices, they also fucked over people(including doctors) who went against the current narrative of covid back at two years ago.

They literally deserved to get kicked the fuck out of the building.
 

BadBurger

Many “Whelps”! Handle It!
Woof. Letting go of the CEO, CFO, and essentially their top ethics advocate is an extreme move that will likely lead to their best engineers and other creatives to shortly follow suit and leave. Investors and the stock market are already shaky given that this deal loaded Twitter with $25bn in debt, and increased its interest expense to $845m a year (up from $51m in 2021 - and remember this is a leveraged buyout, Musk didn't just come up with $44bn of his own money - there are massive stakes here for investors and the banks). So now he goes and throws the company into even more uncertainty / turmoil on day one?

This could end up exceeding expectations on how rapidly a company falls. The sky seemed the limit when he kind of expressed a desire to keep things the same but improve upon it. But this bullish behavior? We may be looking at Twitter filing bankruptcy in a year or two from now. This is going to be so fun.
 

Porcile

Member
I think he is an absolute fucking moron when it comes to Russia and China but hopefully he can improve the product of Twitter itself. But I have my doubts. I'm using Amazon Music because of a free trial and despite Bezos' billions and the high salaries they pay to their developers it's the biggest piece of shit app I have ever used. Website, software and app technology has stagnated like hell these last few years. Places like Twitter and Facebook seem like inevitable sinking ships to me.
 

LegendOfKage

Gold Member
Woof. Letting go of the CEO, CFO, and essentially their top ethics advocate is an extreme move that will likely lead to their best engineers and other creatives to shortly follow suit and leave.
If the people running the company were already doing a great job, then I don't see why investors would have backed Musk in the first place. They would have all just invested in twitter as it already was, right? Instead, they're quite literally betting Musk's vision for the company will ultimately be more popular and make them more money.
 

BadBurger

Many “Whelps”! Handle It!
If the people running the company were already doing a great job, then I don't see why investors would have backed Musk in the first place. They would have all just invested in twitter as it already was, right? Instead, they're quite literally betting Musk's vision for the company will ultimately be more popular and make them more money.

I'm guessing they lept at that initial offer which at the time was above what Twitter was trading for. Musk made an official offer for a publicly traded company after all, and it looked at the time like a fantastic deal for the shareholders. That's my guess anyways.
 

akimbo009

Gold Member
I think he is an absolute fucking moron when it comes to Russia and China but hopefully he can improve the product of Twitter itself. But I have my doubts. I'm using Amazon Music because of a free trial and despite Bezos' billions and the high salaries they pay to their developers it's the biggest piece of shit app I have ever used. Website, software and app technology has stagnated like hell these last few years. Places like Twitter and Facebook seem like inevitable sinking ships to me.

He's an equal moron in his other areas too. We can only be lucky if he drives it into the ground with stupidity which aligns with a/ the death of Twitter which is a net good and b/ continued validation of his stupidity.

And as far as Tesla engineers talking to Twitter... That's stupid too. Device and automotive embedded engineering is way different than service operations/and approaches. But yes, just what we need is people who are programming cars to crash into people some how becoming service side scaling engineers.

It couldn't be going any better.
 

ManaByte

Gold Member
I'm guessing they lept at that initial offer which at the time was above what Twitter was trading for. Musk made an official offer for a publicly traded company after all, and it looked at the time like a fantastic deal for the shareholders. That's my guess anyways.
Nah, Twitter user numbers have been plummeting over the last two years after a power hungry authoritarian took control of the platform and everyone with a brain knows it. She got perp walked out of the building tonight.
 

BadBurger

Many “Whelps”! Handle It!
Nah, Twitter user numbers have been plummeting over the last two years after a power hungry authoritarian took control of the platform and everyone with a brain knows it. She got perp walked out of the building tonight.

I haven't seen reports of a decrease in users, merely slowing growth - something that plagues all older social media. The recent stories about falling activity from heavy Twitter users are merely days old, and seem to be coinciding with this buyout.

But if you have solid sources for this it would be interesting. I have a feeling though it's nothing new, the same trends Facebook and Reddit have been challenged with.

Edit: NM, I see they've been losing highly active accounts since the pandemic began, just like Facebook and Reddit, so that's not a surprise
 
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