A nice spelling out (with sources) of what most of us are kinda thinking right now, I guess. That's actually an interesting point: Not only is it the user base (not the tech) that he bought with...
A nice spelling out (with sources) of what most of us are kinda thinking right now, I guess.
The essential truth of every social network is that the product is content moderation, and everyone hates the people who decide how content moderation works. Content moderation is what Twitter makes — it is the thing that defines the user experience. It’s what YouTube makes, it’s what Instagram makes, it’s what TikTok makes. They all try to incentivize good stuff, disincentivize bad stuff, and delete the really bad stuff.
That's actually an interesting point: Not only is it the user base (not the tech) that he bought with twitter, it's the content moderation pipeline. And his entire plan is to get rid of content moderation. And... replace it with his own, totally free-speech and science-based content moderation, of course! It's like Zuckerberg dreaming about the metaverse, only that the metaverse could actually become a reality in a few decades.
I suspect a lot of his pronouncements on moderation are just kayfabe and posturing to get public support TBH. He does tend to embellish the truth a lot.
I suspect a lot of his pronouncements on moderation are just kayfabe and posturing to get public support TBH. He does tend to embellish the truth a lot.
Musk's statement here is uselessly vague, and I assume it was purposefully crafted that way. It reads less like a plan and more like a Rorschach, simultaneously appeasing both his critics and...
Musk's statement here is uselessly vague, and I assume it was purposefully crafted that way. It reads less like a plan and more like a Rorschach, simultaneously appeasing both his critics and supporters.
I kind of agree with the quoted statement and kind of don't. Social media exists to connect people (at least, that was the original idea). Twitter is just exceptionally bad at that. What it's...
I kind of agree with the quoted statement and kind of don't. Social media exists to connect people (at least, that was the original idea). Twitter is just exceptionally bad at that. What it's great at instead, is to give out rapidly changing info in bite-sized tweets (great for revolutions and chaotic situations), and to follow big names of various industries in their day-to-day lives. But even then, it still feels like it's better to be used for those announcements that often are big enough to be a blog post, if everybody had a personal blog instead.
Twitter is closer to being a news site than being a social network. I think this is why it's so tiny compared to other social networks.
This was a good breakdown of the challenges Musk will have on turning the ship around on Twitter. I find Musk as annoying as the next person but I do have to admit he is an above replacement level...
This was a good breakdown of the challenges Musk will have on turning the ship around on Twitter. I find Musk as annoying as the next person but I do have to admit he is an above replacement level senior executive so, while I'm not exactly optimistic about him being a good skipper, I do harbor some glimmer of hope that he can shake things up enough that they reassemble themselves into a less garbage configuration. But I agree with Nilay on this that it's a pretty intractable problem.
Nilay Patel has an especially good perspective on this, I think, because he basically had Verge build it's own version of Twitter for Verge journalists (called Storystream, which you can find on the bottom of the linked article). In an interview with John Gruber on The Talk Show he basically said he wanted to build something that his team wants to use more than Twitter because they have more fun/less stress using it than they do Twitter. According to him, he liked using the internal Verge micro-blogging tool enough that it dramatically cut his twitter usage, even when he was only talking to the handful of other Verge people in the dev environment.
A nice spelling out (with sources) of what most of us are kinda thinking right now, I guess.
That's actually an interesting point: Not only is it the user base (not the tech) that he bought with twitter, it's the content moderation pipeline. And his entire plan is to get rid of content moderation. And... replace it with his own, totally free-speech and science-based content moderation, of course! It's like Zuckerberg dreaming about the metaverse, only that the metaverse could actually become a reality in a few decades.
I suspect a lot of his pronouncements on moderation are just kayfabe and posturing to get public support TBH. He does tend to embellish the truth a lot.
Thank you for the new word.
So you too watched that video about Kanye West? ;)
Seems like that's the case: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1585619322239561728
Musk's statement here is uselessly vague, and I assume it was purposefully crafted that way. It reads less like a plan and more like a Rorschach, simultaneously appeasing both his critics and supporters.
The Tweet isn't available anymore.
Really? Still there for me.
The gist is he's at least saying he wants to avoid a "free-for-all hellscape".
Oh huh, I guess it was my adblock settings. Odd, they've never resulted in what looked like a deleted Tweet message like that before.
I kind of agree with the quoted statement and kind of don't. Social media exists to connect people (at least, that was the original idea). Twitter is just exceptionally bad at that. What it's great at instead, is to give out rapidly changing info in bite-sized tweets (great for revolutions and chaotic situations), and to follow big names of various industries in their day-to-day lives. But even then, it still feels like it's better to be used for those announcements that often are big enough to be a blog post, if everybody had a personal blog instead.
Twitter is closer to being a news site than being a social network. I think this is why it's so tiny compared to other social networks.
This was a good breakdown of the challenges Musk will have on turning the ship around on Twitter. I find Musk as annoying as the next person but I do have to admit he is an above replacement level senior executive so, while I'm not exactly optimistic about him being a good skipper, I do harbor some glimmer of hope that he can shake things up enough that they reassemble themselves into a less garbage configuration. But I agree with Nilay on this that it's a pretty intractable problem.
Nilay Patel has an especially good perspective on this, I think, because he basically had Verge build it's own version of Twitter for Verge journalists (called Storystream, which you can find on the bottom of the linked article). In an interview with John Gruber on The Talk Show he basically said he wanted to build something that his team wants to use more than Twitter because they have more fun/less stress using it than they do Twitter. According to him, he liked using the internal Verge micro-blogging tool enough that it dramatically cut his twitter usage, even when he was only talking to the handful of other Verge people in the dev environment.