It seemed to me like during the height of the Trump era he began leaning into the alt-right conspiracy side of the internet, in particular the very libretarian wing. He started parroting free...
Exemplary
It seemed to me like during the height of the Trump era he began leaning into the alt-right conspiracy side of the internet, in particular the very libretarian wing. He started parroting free speech to the extreme, backing conspiracy theories, and just in general having a really messed up view of the world revolving around individualism.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if it turned out that he stumbled upon the alt-right pipeline one day, because every single person who has gone down that rabbit hole has completely lost it, millionaire or not. It's what happened to Kanye in the past couple years too, for example.
Obviously I am not stating this as fact, just that he follows a very similar pattern to every other nutjob in that realm. He just happened to have a lot of money beforehand.
He comes from some explicitly racist lineage. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that he believe these things all along and found an audience that embraced his beliefs. Trump's victory gave a lot...
It wouldn't surprise me at all if it turned out that he stumbled upon the alt-right pipeline one day, because every single person who has gone down that rabbit hole has completely lost it, millionaire or not.
He comes from some explicitly racist lineage. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that he believe these things all along and found an audience that embraced his beliefs. Trump's victory gave a lot of people a green light to take off their masks and it feels like Musk is part of that cohort.
I'll offer a slight addition, I think the biggest switch was when he began having to pull funding and support from nation States and other corporations with a more authoritarian bend. The timing...
I'll offer a slight addition,
the alt-right conspiracy side of the internet funding.
I think the biggest switch was when he began having to pull funding and support from nation States and other corporations with a more authoritarian bend. The timing is also evident when he began being less the day-to-day owner and manager of the companies, arguably he hasn't ran day to day ops at Tesla or SpaceX in years.
From sueing to be called a co-founder, his questionable academic record, story of being self-made, or his first wife's account, a lot of the traits (imprecisely, "narcicissism") that can be seen...
From sueing to be called a co-founder, his questionable academic record, story of being self-made, or his first wife's account, a lot of the traits (imprecisely, "narcicissism") that can be seen at work in this meltdown seem to have existed for decades.
The Isaacson biography on Steve Jobs mentions how he'd refuse to shower for weeks, put his unshoed(?) feet up on the desk of a superior, developed a product to likely intentionally sabotage another, delayed shipping for weeks over minute changes in a bevel, publicly berate employees for being loser virgins who'd never take LSD, and a dozen other traits that traits that you'd think wouldn't make a good luminary.
I don't mean to paint Jobs as not gifted or as a villain, but he was flawed in ways that would destroy opportunities for others, and there's a large pool of possibly more competent, smart, driven people out there that didn't have his success. One explanation is the luck of time, field, and connections: the times make the man.
The business majors I knew that idolized him attributed it to his intangible "reality distortion field", and I think that's the more interesting angle. Tesla's valuation distorted reality. I don't have the right background to assess it, but a PE ratio of >1300 feels more based on a collective subconscious desire-made-manifest to have a Tony Stark who will make self-driving cars to save us from global warming than on anything rational.
Tesla/SpaceX/Apple tapped into that latent potential. They connected some dream with a sufficiently nearby reality and as a result squeezed out engineering talent for some amazing stuff. Colonizing Mars or chic, artistic technology made by elite programmers.
I think Musk rose to where he is by tapping into that potential and his successes led him think he had some control over it. Maybe even mistaking it as some property of himself, like his genius engineering/coding skills. You can see the same shift in the crowd he courts in Trump or Kanye. People that simplify reality to a meme (Mexico will pay for a wall) or believe if you HODL to your AMC or Dogecoin it'll go to the moon.
Colonizing Mars isn't possible (soon), though, and you can't heal cancer with a fruitarian diet. The strategy of reaching for something that isn't grounded in reality fails if it isn't close enough to make that bridge, and the person reaching for something intangible looks crazy.
I think Steve Jobs was somewhat of a crazy villain, actually. But as in the old joke goes: It’s pretty normal for weird people to get funded if they seem effective in the right way. I don’t know...
I think Steve Jobs was somewhat of a crazy villain, actually. But as in the old joke goes:
“Doctor, my brother’s crazy, he thinks he’s a chicken!”
“That’s terrible, why didn’t you bring him in sooner?”
“We needed the eggs.”
It’s pretty normal for weird people to get funded if they seem effective in the right way.
I don’t know how we can tell if Musk is committed to Mars or just really committed to the bit.
I doubt Musk was ever "normal." Bullying, bet-the-company risk taking, lawbreaking, and not listening to experts who say it won't work has worked out well for him, or was at least recoverable....
I doubt Musk was ever "normal." Bullying, bet-the-company risk taking, lawbreaking, and not listening to experts who say it won't work has worked out well for him, or was at least recoverable. Attention-getting antics won him many fans. Pushing people hard seemed to work at his previous companies. He's doing roughly similar things with worse results. It remains to be seen if these mistakes are recoverable.
More generally, there's plenty of precedent for people being really successful, becoming overconfident, and then trying a similar playbook in a new situation and failing badly. It's the basic archvillian tragedy. Napoleon in Russia comes to mind.
It could just be as simple as we all got to know him better. Internet fame and social media addiction probably were the catalysts but whether they made him worse or just expose himself more is...
It could just be as simple as we all got to know him better. Internet fame and social media addiction probably were the catalysts but whether they made him worse or just expose himself more is probably something only people close to him the entire time could say.
The crisis came in response to an ultimatum new owner Elon Musk issued Wednesday demanding that employees sign a pledge to work harder by 5 p.m. Eastern time Thursday or accept three months’ severance pay.
In an early sign that the number of those declining to sign was greater than anticipated, Musk eased off a return-to-office mandate he had issued a week ago, telling employees Thursday they would be allowed to work remotely if their managers assert they are making “an excellent contribution.”
But it was too late to keep Twitter from a precarious position, several workers said.
“I know of six critical systems (like ‘serving tweets’ levels of critical) which no longer have any engineers,” a former employee said. "There is no longer even a skeleton crew manning the system. It will continue to coast until it runs into something, and then it will stop.”
Workers offered varying estimates of how many people remained employed at Twitter, ranging from 2,000 to 2,500, down from the 3,500 or so believed to have remained after an initial round of layoffs this month.
Among those who were said to have declined to sign the pledge was half the trust and safety policy team, including a majority of those who work on spotting misinformation, spam, fake accounts and impersonation, according to one employee familiar with the team.
Meanwhile, several critical engineering teams were reported to have been hollowed out. The team that runs the service Gizmoduck, which powers and stores all information in user profiles across the site, was entirely gone, according to a recent department head who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to detail the departures.
Men's World Cup starts on Sunday and runs for a month. (credit to Alejandra Caraballo which is where I first saw this connection made explicit) under normal circumstances, we would expect to see...
“I know of six critical systems (like ‘serving tweets’ levels of critical) which no longer have any engineers,” a former employee said. "There is no longer even a skeleton crew manning the system. It will continue to coast until it runs into something, and then it will stop.”
Men's World Cup starts on Sunday and runs for a month.
(credit to Alejandra Caraballo which is where I first saw this connection made explicit)
under normal circumstances, we would expect to see large surges in traffic during matches, coming from every corner of the globe.
Qatar is 11 hours time difference from the US west coast, which means that many of the traffic surges will happen in the middle of the night, San Francisco time.
You know, like he does. We may be able to automate driving*, but not the genius of those shitposts. *Those people shouldn't have driven/cycled/walked/stood so close to innovation.
You know, like he does. We may be able to automate driving*, but not the genius of those shitposts.
*Those people shouldn't have driven/cycled/walked/stood so close to innovation.
Since 2020, nothing has been a surer way to trigger a mass walkout than to suddenly revoke WFH and threaten to fire everyone who doesn't comply. I also keep seeing all over twitter that Musk and...
Since 2020, nothing has been a surer way to trigger a mass walkout than to suddenly revoke WFH and threaten to fire everyone who doesn't comply.
I also keep seeing all over twitter that Musk and his fans seem to be taking a very hardline "my way or the highway" attitude to twitter staff that's common to see directed at minimum wage workers, but is very jarring to see directed at specialised engineering staff. These are staff who could not only find better options easily, but are likely to be approached by recruiters even if they aren't looking. It's equally wrong to disrespect workers of any kind, but on a strictly practical level it seems obvious that antagonising the engineering talent will backfire quickly.
Final thought, if you gave me the choice between working undefined 'extended hours' indefinitely with no WFH under constant threat of being fired, or three months' pay in exchange for doing nothing just before the christmas season, I know what I would pick.
Streisand Effect powers, ACTIVATE! the data powering that Twitter account came from ADSB Exchange, which is a completely open and crowd-sourced database of aircraft positions. you can bookmark...
Streisand Effect powers, ACTIVATE!
the data powering that Twitter account came from ADSB Exchange, which is a completely open and crowd-sourced database of aircraft positions.
the data is inherently public, FAA and international regulations require civilian aircraft to broadcast their position, speed, altitude, etc. as they fly.
other flight-tracking sites (FlightRadar24 and FlightAware are the two most well-known) put some of that information behind a paywall. ADSB-X is very opinionatedly open and unpaywalled.
How is ADSBexchange different than “other” flight tracking sites?
ADSBexchange operates a bit differently from other flight tracking sites. As a group of aviation enthusiasts, our primary goal is to answer the question of “what’s up there” rather than “is grandma’s flight on-time”.
You’ll never see an aircraft censored or “blocked” from our site. If one of our feeders is receiving it, the data will be there. This includes military, and other aircraft that attempt to be “unlisted”. Hint: to see some of the planes not shown by other sites, from the map page, right-hand column, Filters -> LADD -> Filter. This primarily applies to US registered aircraft.
We don’t “estimate” or “interpolate” positions. Every time you see an aircraft move on ADSBexchange it is based on actual data received and not an estimate of where the aircraft “should” be. Look at the unnatural movement of aircraft on some of the other sites – you’ll see what we mean. If we are receiving the data, we’ll update positions as often as once per second… with real data.
We don’t put features behind a “paywall”, then hold them ransom to encourage people to feed. Features are the features. If you enjoy them, we’d appreciate you setting up a feeder or adding ADSBexchange to your existing feeder.
anyone with an always-on computer (even just a Raspberry Pi) can contribute data to their network. it requires $50-100 in parts (USB dongle, antenna, and cable to connect them). the radio frequency ADS-B uses is limited to line-of-sight, so more feeders in more locations is always useful, and you'll get better reception if you're able to mount your antenna high up with a clear view of the sky.
In a fairly sizeable escalation, Twitter has banned a large handful of high profile journalists that Musk accuses of posting his real time location, a claim many of them dispute. Mastodon's...
Many of the journalists suspended Thursday had been covering that rule change, as well as Musk’s claims that he and his family had been endangered by location sharing.
None of the tweets from suspended reporters that The Post has reviewed revealed the location of Musk or his family.
It appears as if Twitter has pulled the plug on the Spaces feature, interrupting a gathering of journalists discussing these events after crashing the party.
And to round out the night it seems that Elon's banning links to an incredible number of Mastodon instances, both big and small.
Elon Musk booed by crowd after Dave Chappelle brings him on stage at comedy gig But despite the tweet being removed, and the twitter account that posted it mysterious being deleted shortly...
Technically, it was 90% cheers & 10% boos (except during quiet periods), but, still, that’s a lot of boos, which is a first for me in real life (frequent on Twitter).
It’s almost as if I’ve offended SF’s unhinged leftists … but nahhh.
Yeah, because there are just sooooooo many "leftists" going to Dave Chappelle gigs these days after all his "hilarious" transphobic rants. /s
I'm just going to say that there's A LOT of stand up fans out there that don't really care about what his personal opinions are on well anything and are just focusing on if he's funny and skilled.
Yeah, because there are just sooooooo many "leftists" going to Dave Chappelle gigs these days after all his "hilarious" transphobic rants. /s
I'm just going to say that there's A LOT of stand up fans out there that don't really care about what his personal opinions are on well anything and are just focusing on if he's funny and skilled.
That's true. Is he even that funny now, though? I remember watching one of his Netflix specials, and he got around to the 'kicked her in the pussy' bit. Did anyone actually find that shit funny?
That's true. Is he even that funny now, though? I remember watching one of his Netflix specials, and he got around to the 'kicked her in the pussy' bit. Did anyone actually find that shit funny?
Yes, it was funny in context. It was an interesting joke because he gave the punchline first, spent the entire show building context, and repeated the punchline in the end. And it made sense, and,...
Yes, it was funny in context. It was an interesting joke because he gave the punchline first, spent the entire show building context, and repeated the punchline in the end. And it made sense, and, despite the dirty words, everyone understood the sentiment it expressed. It was deeply relatable and oddly wholesome, even more so to a black audience (which I am). That was the overall tone of most of his pre-TERF comedy.
Dave Chappelle used to be a brilliant comedian -- one of the best stand-ups of his generation. Back then, he covered subjects more closely related to his life experiences as a Black man in America. His comedic insight was often breathtaking.
In recent years, Dave Chappelle increasingly replaced comedy with charged rhetoric, and will gladly sacrifice a good joke in order to make a point. And it's usually a bad point to make.
When a famous artist does something we abhor, it's tempting to reassess their careers on a negative note. Unfortunately, I can't in good conscience watch any more specials by Dave Chappelle, in the same way that I'm not compelled to revisit the works of Cosby or Louis C.K. But, at some point in time, they were all comedy geniuses. That is just the truth.
I don't really think that applies for me. I never really liked any of his stuff on Netflix, even before all of the TERF nonsense. I didn't really get the deeper meaning to the joke, if there was...
When a famous artist does something we abhor, it's tempting to reassess their careers on a negative note.
I don't really think that applies for me. I never really liked any of his stuff on Netflix, even before all of the TERF nonsense.
And it made sense, and, despite the dirty words, everyone understood the sentiment it expressed.
I didn't really get the deeper meaning to the joke, if there was one. He spent 8 minutes telling a story about stovetop stuffing, said it, and then did a callback later on. It could 100% be that I'm daft and I missed something, though.
Instead of rolling back the ban on all Mastodon links, Twitter abruptly bans all links to Instagram, Mastodon, and other competitors (The Verge) Here's Twitter's actual Promotion of Alternative...
Instead of rolling back the ban on all Mastodon links,
Twitter will no longer allow users to promote their presence on certain social platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr, and Post. In a post outlining these changes, Twitter says it will take action against users that violate this policy “at both the Tweet level and the account level.”
Twitter already banned links to Mastodon and blocks users from posting them at a platform level. Trying to tweet out a link to several Mastodon servers or the site itself results in an error message, stating: “We can’t complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful.” It’s unclear whether Twitter will eventually disable links from the banned platforms in a similar manner, but at this time of writing, it seems users are still able to post links from these networks.
Here's Twitter's actual Promotion of Alternative Social Platforms Policy. It bans links, handles/usernames, replacing "." with "dot," link shorteners, social media aggregator sites like linktree, and sharing screenshots of your handle/username.
So, what the hell are you supposed to promote on Twitter? Are YouTube and Substack links are not really social media so much as they are content? Or can you not link out of Twitter period, unless...
So, what the hell are you supposed to promote on Twitter? Are YouTube and Substack links are not really social media so much as they are content? Or can you not link out of Twitter period, unless you're an official publication?
Only the named social media sites and third party aggregators are banned. TikTok, YouTube, Substack, Pinterest, Reddit, Discord, pretty much anything not in that very specific list (and sites that...
Only the named social media sites and third party aggregators are banned. TikTok, YouTube, Substack, Pinterest, Reddit, Discord, pretty much anything not in that very specific list (and sites that aggregate links to places that might include links to those sites) are good to go.
It doesn't make a lot of sense, a lot of those other places can aggregate socials just fine, and this really doesn't solve anything for Twitter. It only makes the fire bigger. It's really anyone's guess what Twitter/Elon hopes to get out of this. From what I understand this rips open huge legal issues for them in the EU.
Company officials told employees all buildings were temporarily closed, effective immediately, and that their badge access would be revoked for the time being, Platformer's Zoë Schiffer first reported. Insider confirmed that Twitter employees' badge access was suspended and that they were being told to leave the offices, which are expected to reopen on Monday.
The reason behind the abrupt closure was that Twitter CEO Elon Musk and others were afraid employees would "sabotage the company" and because they are working out whose access needs to be revoked, Schiffer reported.
[...]
The latest closure came just over one week after Musk put an end to remote work at Twitter.
I haven't commented because I'm frankly simmering with rage at the combined debacles in social media and finance. Musk, SBF, Meta, Google, SoftBank, et al. have collectively destroyed monetary...
I haven't commented because I'm frankly simmering with rage at the combined debacles in social media and finance. Musk, SBF, Meta, Google, SoftBank, et al. have collectively destroyed monetary value greater than the cumulative 2020 wealthy nation spending for climate mitigation in less developed (and most climate-affected) nations.
If money is a means of designating priority, we've all participated, in one way or another, in the fiction that it's more important to be heard than to fix things.
With apologies for bomb-throwing - I read the Oxfam reporting and just had a moment.
No, it's more about the general implosion of ad revenue and the fallout from destruction of the G+ platform. I shouldn't say that G+ was destroyed, it's just been packaged up in Workspaces as a...
No, it's more about the general implosion of ad revenue and the fallout from destruction of the G+ platform. I shouldn't say that G+ was destroyed, it's just been packaged up in Workspaces as a monetizable product.
In any event, a great deal of capital has been invested in various quixotic tech ventures (fintech, social media, entertainment), for little lasting value in return.
Well, it's true that lots of us techies got paid well to build things that didn't turn out to be successful. This isn't an accident; it's how venture capital works. The winners are supposed to...
Well, it's true that lots of us techies got paid well to build things that didn't turn out to be successful. This isn't an accident; it's how venture capital works. The winners are supposed to make up for the losers. There are also other risky and enormously wasteful ventures like medical research, but they're somewhat lower profile.
It does seem like any consumer product that Google invests in is cursed, but the failure rate outside Google is pretty high, too.
There is enormous waste everywhere, which is frustratingly hard to fix. Unfortunately, just going after suspected waste without understanding things doesn't work, as we're seeing. It also makes lots of enemies.
Not sure what you mean by "implosion of ad revenue." Do you mean for newspapers?
If Twitter does go down, I can’t even comprehend the consequences it would have on the broader culture and politics. Even though not very many people used twitter it had an outsized impact to the...
If Twitter does go down, I can’t even comprehend the consequences it would have on the broader culture and politics. Even though not very many people used twitter it had an outsized impact to the rest of the world. Probably due to many celebrities and politicians using the platform.
But I just don’t see how it can survive for very long under the current circumstances.
Not to be rude but I think you might need to go outside for a bit. This seems like a huge overreaction. The internet adapts VERY quickly and it's not like this is coming without any warning. Plus...
I can’t even comprehend the consequences it would have on the broader culture and politics.
Not to be rude but I think you might need to go outside for a bit. This seems like a huge overreaction. The internet adapts VERY quickly and it's not like this is coming without any warning. Plus there are an abundance of services ready to take over anything Twitter could do.
A number of public services and likewise use Twitter for announcements. For many countries, changing platforms for those will take time. Both practically, to regain their audiences and simply...
A number of public services and likewise use Twitter for announcements.
For many countries, changing platforms for those will take time. Both practically, to regain their audiences and simply because of logistics of making a switch.
For example, a number of police departments, traffic services, public services, airports etc. will have to find new places to make public announcements for events: like delays and other things they now push out Tweets for to reach their clientele instantly.
It's much the same for press releases and breaking news: If it's not on Twitter, it hasn't happened yet.
Secondary reporting or getting news around also relies extremely heavily on Twitter for meta-propagation. Facebook or others will not take that niche. The internet adapts very slowly for these network-level effects. Twitter's been this monopoly since it got big.
The only one even close to large enough is Facebook, and I don't think that fleeing a platform devalued by the narcissistic whims of its egotist billionaire owner to go to Facebook of all places...
The only one even close to large enough is Facebook, and I don't think that fleeing a platform devalued by the narcissistic whims of its egotist billionaire owner to go to Facebook of all places is the best answer.
I feel like one of the reasons Twitter is still going is that there is just nowhere for people to run to. Mastodon and cohost and similar places are not up to the job of being Twitter. Small...
I feel like one of the reasons Twitter is still going is that there is just nowhere for people to run to. Mastodon and cohost and similar places are not up to the job of being Twitter. Small communities might do well there but there is no way to have, say, @britneyspears on there with her 55 million followers. You need datacentre-grade infrastructure to deliver that sort of hosting.
Just this morning I was thinking if somewhere at Google someone is wondering how long it would take to dust off the Plus code and get that back up and running again. It was always a superior platform in terms of features and technology to both Twitter and FB, also consistently did better numbers than Twitter but then they did the Google thing and away it went.
It wouldn't happen that way. Dusting off old code is unlikely to make sense because of churn in the underlying infrastructure. If they try it, I would guess something new connected to YouTube....
It wouldn't happen that way. Dusting off old code is unlikely to make sense because of churn in the underlying infrastructure.
If they try it, I would guess something new connected to YouTube. Google is letting everyone with a YouTube channel pick a handle. I don't know what they plan to use it for, but adding a way to post text messages as well as videos probably wouldn't be too hard.
If Google wanted to build a Twitter competitor, refactoring old bits of Plus (and current bits of Workspaces) would almost certainly be cheaper and faster than building from scratch. The...
If Google wanted to build a Twitter competitor, refactoring old bits of Plus (and current bits of Workspaces) would almost certainly be cheaper and faster than building from scratch. The underlying infrastructure would probably be easier to manage now than then if they've been smart about modularising things like auth and profiles and so on.
However, Plus died when Vic Gundotra left, and it's almost certainly not coming back. They do appear to be trying to pivot/expand YT as a TikTok competitor which is probably a smart move given the persistent rumours about TikTok getting banned in the US and general loss of social traffic to there. Whether the new Youtube bits can take over from Twitter as well is a whole different question.
I don't think anyone could have foreseen the gargantuan mess Musk is making of Twitter so nobody has anything in the works to take over from it. Which is a shame because I sort of feel like a decent number of people are wanting to leave but don't know where to go.
I've consistently underestimated the damage they could do, and maybe I'm doing it again, but: If they started getting frequent "fail whales" like the old days, it wouldn't be the end of the world....
I've consistently underestimated the damage they could do, and maybe I'm doing it again, but:
If they started getting frequent "fail whales" like the old days, it wouldn't be the end of the world. It would mostly mean that us addicts would have to take a break for a while.
It might take them some time to figure out how to do a cold start, though.
In the meantime, they'd be getting no revenue (no ad impressions) and losing customers as people find other ways to spend their time.
(Bankruptcy probably wouldn't be the end, either. It would mean the bondholders own the business instead of Musk, and then it's more valuable to them to keep an ongoing business running.)
To be fair to you, I don't think even the biggest Musk critics (myself included) expected him to fail this spectacularly, this quickly, especially given how much of his own money and Tesla stocks...
To be fair to you, I don't think even the biggest Musk critics (myself included) expected him to fail this spectacularly, this quickly, especially given how much of his own money and Tesla stocks are on the line.
I never in my wildest dreams imagined the transition would go this incredibly bad. I assumed it would just be a gradual decline as Musk slowly began shaping Twitter into what he wanted it to be (freeze peach focused), not this instantly going from disastrous decision to disastrous decision completely destroying the very foundation of the business as soon as he stepped through the doors. Every single move he has made so far honestly feels like something only someone who was intentionally sabotaging the business would do. Because surely even Musk can't be this completely and utterly incompetent as a manager, right?
It's truly bizarre, but he is sounding more and more paranoid and unhinged with each tweet, action, and internal communication of his that gets leaked, so I don't think any of this is actually intentional. It genuinely feels like he drank his own Kool-Aid, and his insanely bloated ego has finally driven him over the deep end.
How it must now feel to have been one of those board members. Relieved of the headache of a never profitable burden, slowly grinding along keeping the lurching monster alive during its slow...
How it must now feel to have been one of those board members.
Relieved of the headache of a never profitable burden, slowly grinding along keeping the lurching monster alive during its slow demise, only to be given whatever the bird equivalent of a golden handshake is - a golden peck?
This is bad. Real bad. Remember why he was kicked off? For trying to overthrow the US government. Let’s hope he just stays on Truth Social and doesn’t come back out of some petty spite.
This is bad. Real bad. Remember why he was kicked off? For trying to overthrow the US government.
Let’s hope he just stays on Truth Social and doesn’t come back out of some petty spite.
He has no self control. Sooner or later something some other Republican says on Twitter will trigger him and he'll go off on a tear. Every time Trump opens his mouth on twitter he'll be doing the...
He has no self control. Sooner or later something some other Republican says on Twitter will trigger him and he'll go off on a tear.
Every time Trump opens his mouth on twitter he'll be doing the Democrats a favor. He's a dead brand that has been losing steam for three elections and nothing he says or does will get him any closer to the white house. All he can do is knock the rest of the Republicans down with him. I'm looking forward to his next batch of meltdowns.
The Trump Republicans had their asses kicked in three separate election cycles since then, losing worse every time. I hope they are stupid enough to try it again.
The Trump Republicans had their asses kicked in three separate election cycles since then, losing worse every time. I hope they are stupid enough to try it again.
For the most recent election, that seems a bit exaggerated? Republicans did worse than expectations, but they regained control of the House, which is gaining some ground.
For the most recent election, that seems a bit exaggerated? Republicans did worse than expectations, but they regained control of the House, which is gaining some ground.
For context, though, this was the best performance of an incumbent party at the midterms in the postwar era. The best performance was during a time of 10% inflation with a president whose approval...
For context, though, this was the best performance of an incumbent party at the midterms in the postwar era. The best performance was during a time of 10% inflation with a president whose approval rating is in the 40%s. For incumbent presidents with an approval rating below 50%, the average seats lost in the house is 45.
Republicans had a 2 point turnout edge against Democrats.
They did gain ground, but had to be dragged kicking and screaming by the natural dynamics of US midterm elections. In places like New York (with moderate Republican candidates, no threat of abortion restriction, and no election certification shenanigans), there was a mini red-wave, with moderate republicans winning numerous house seats, which goes to show how the opposition party should perform with their natural tailwinds.
No, I don't think so. We were all set for a legendary 'red wave' that would retake the house and the senate. The polls were so universally wrong on this one that they lost scientific credibility....
No, I don't think so. We were all set for a legendary 'red wave' that would retake the house and the senate. The polls were so universally wrong on this one that they lost scientific credibility. The GOP spent several fortunes and barely got the house, which should have been effortless for them. They always do well in the mid-terms - but not this time. Even Fox News has realized Trump is a losing brand, go check out their coverage of his announcement.
Republicans want Trump gone. They know if he is the face of their party it's game over for another decade. They only just now figured this out for sure thanks to the mid-term numbers. They got what they wanted out of him, and since he can no longer deliver for them it's time to drop him like a used condom. His ego may even form a DJT party all by itself and split 10-15% off their base, which is a great incentive for them to lock him up. Watching him rip the GOP apart yet again is going to be entertaining.
Having him back on Twitter will be great. Every time he opens his mouth more districts turn blue.
From what I've read the polls were pretty accurate this year. It wasn't the polls that predicted the 'red wave', it was the pundits. Often, though, in close races the polls will predict a toss-up,...
From what I've read the polls were pretty accurate this year. It wasn't the polls that predicted the 'red wave', it was the pundits.
Often, though, in close races the polls will predict a toss-up, in which case the polls aren't that useful for predicting the outcome, however useful they might be strategically to election campaigns.
Does he come back? He has his own social network now, and there may be some exclusivity reason that he would stick to his own little fiefdom, plus the inherit control of owning your own platform....
Does he come back? He has his own social network now, and there may be some exclusivity reason that he would stick to his own little fiefdom, plus the inherit control of owning your own platform.
Now if Twitter opens up the ability to protocol with other networks and one of the first compatible ones is Truth Social... Or Trump just runs over to the place with the loudest audience.
This is not happening. Even if there were the will for it, they no longer have the engineering talent (to say nothing of institutional knowledge about how their own systems work). Federation is...
Now if Twitter opens up the ability to protocol with other networks
This is not happening. Even if there were the will for it, they no longer have the engineering talent (to say nothing of institutional knowledge about how their own systems work). Federation is actually extraordinarily difficult to do even poorly, and at Twitter's scale it would be an unprecedented exercise.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/21/22242718/twitter-bluesky-decentralized-social-media-team-project-update https://twitter.com/bluesky I wouldnt trust it though since I'm reading Elon will have...
Musk’s Twitter disbands its Trust and Safety advisory group (AP) p.s. Since this one of getting crowded, I will probably make a new Elon/Twitter mega-thread come the 18th (one month after this one...
Elon Musk’s Twitter has dissolved its Trust and Safety Council, the advisory group of around 100 independent civil, human rights and other organizations that the company formed in 2016 to address hate speech, child exploitation, suicide, self-harm and other problems on the platform.
The council had been scheduled to meet with Twitter representatives Monday night. But Twitter informed the group via email that it was disbanding it shortly before the meeting was to take place, according to multiple members.
The council members, who provided images of the email from Twitter to The Associated Press, spoke on the condition of anonymity due to fears of retaliation. The email said Twitter was “reevaluating how best to bring external insights” and the council is “not the best structure to do this.”
“Our work to make Twitter a safe, informative place will be moving faster and more aggressively than ever before and we will continue to welcome your ideas going forward about how to achieve this goal,” said the email, which was signed “Twitter.”
The volunteer group provided expertise and guidance on how Twitter could better combat hate, harassment and other harms but didn’t have any decision-making authority and didn’t review specific content disputes. Shortly after buying Twitter for $44 billion in late October, Musk said he would form a new “content moderation council” to help make major decisions but later changed his mind.
p.s. Since this one of getting crowded, I will probably make a new Elon/Twitter mega-thread come the 18th (one month after this one was posted).
Twitter’s former head of trust and safety has fled his home due to an escalation in threats resulting from Elon Musk’s campaign of criticism against him, a person familiar with the matter told CNN on Monday.
Yoel Roth, who resigned from the social media company in November, has in recent weeks faced a storm of attacks and threats of violence following the release of the so-called “Twitter Files” — internal Twitter communications that new owner Musk has released through journalists including Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss.
Roth’s position involved him working on sensitive issues including the suspension of then-President Donald Trump’s account in 2021. On Monday, Weiss posted a series of screenshots purported to show internal Twitter documents where Roth and others discussed whether to ban Trump’s account, with some employees questioning if the former president’s tweets violated the platform’s policies.
[...]
[...] things took a dark turn over the weekend when Musk appeared to endorse a tweet that baselessly accused Roth of being sympathetic to pedophilia [...]
A mega thread in roughly chronological order with Musk saying what he plans do do around Blue, and people telling him it'll be a bad idea, and him ignoring all the very many warnings, and then all...
A mega thread in roughly chronological order with Musk saying what he plans do do around Blue, and people telling him it'll be a bad idea, and him ignoring all the very many warnings, and then all the stuff he was warned about happening.
This kind of screenshot gotcha culture is a thing I won’t miss about Twitter. None of us need to know who this guy is or how he’s screwing up, assuming it even counts as a screwup.
This kind of screenshot gotcha culture is a thing I won’t miss about Twitter. None of us need to know who this guy is or how he’s screwing up, assuming it even counts as a screwup.
Well, yeah, it probably is chaotic. On the other hand, I'm not sure we know what he's in charge of? At Google any intern could send a pull request; it doesn't mean it would be accepted by the...
Well, yeah, it probably is chaotic. On the other hand, I'm not sure we know what he's in charge of? At Google any intern could send a pull request; it doesn't mean it would be accepted by the owners.
With all the people who left, I doubt they have a clear idea about who approves code changes now, though.
Knowing that it's George Hotz is kind of the point though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hotz Musk is saying that coding Twitter is easy, and you don't need all those engineers, you just...
Knowing that it's George Hotz is kind of the point though.
Musk is saying that coding Twitter is easy, and you don't need all those engineers, you just need a few 10x engineers. Hotz is supposedly one of those super engineers, and here he is, giving up.
Another thing about screenshot culture is that people make claims about screenshots that aren't actually backed up by the screenshots, which means you have to look at such claims skeptically - and...
Another thing about screenshot culture is that people make claims about screenshots that aren't actually backed up by the screenshots, which means you have to look at such claims skeptically - and if you do that, you're wasting more time on it. This does seem like a peculiar recruitment gimmick but it's not all that clear what he's trying to do. People are sure to interpret it as badly as possible, though.
One thing that's fascinating about this website is how, despite us being locked in here together, there is still so much unhinged misrepresentation of what people say, think, or do. Like, it's right there! And still, everyone takes their cues from the cool kids rolling their eyes
It's the damn quote tweets feature, naturally. You only ever see the dunks.
Earlier this year, Twitter confirmed that the private user data for 5.4 million users was stolen due to an API vulnerability, but the company said it had "no evidence" that it was exploited. Now, all of those accounts have been exposed on a hacker form, BleepingComputer has reported. On top of that, an additional 1.4 million Twitter profiles for suspended users was reportedly shared privately, and an even larger data dump with the data of "tens of millions" of other users may have come from the same vulnerability.
The owner of hacking forum called Breached told BleepingComputer that it was responsible for exploiting the weakness (originally obtained from another hacker called "Devil") and dumping the user records. It said that it also obtained 1.4 million Twitter profiles for suspended accounts, obtained via another API, but only shared those privately among a few individuals.
Twitter on Thursday suspended the accounts of journalists who cover the social media platform and its new owner Elon Musk, including reporters working for The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and other publications.
The company hasn't explained to the journalists why it took down the accounts and made their profiles and past tweets disappear. But Musk took to Twitter on Thursday night to accuse journalists of sharing private information about his whereabouts, which he described as "basically assassination co-ordinates." He provided no evidence for that claim.
The official account for Mastodon, a decentralized social network billed as an alternative to Twitter, was also banned. The reason was unclear, though it had tweeted about the jet tracking account. The person behind the jet account has opened an account on Mastodon, doing the same thing his other accounts were doing — giving live updates on the whereabouts of Musk's jet, based on publicly available FAA data.
The Washington Post's executive editor, Sally Buzbee, called for technology reporter Drew Harwell's Twitter account to be reinstated immediately. The suspension "directly undermines Elon Musk's claim that he intends to run Twitter as a platform dedicated to free speech," Buzbee wrote. "Harwell was banished without warning, process or explanation, following the publication of his accurate reporting about Musk."
CNN said in a statement that "the impulsive and unjustified suspension of a number of reporters, including CNN's Donie O'Sullivan, is concerning but not surprising."
"Twitter's increasing instability and volatility should be of incredible concern for everyone who uses Twitter," CNN's statement added. "We have asked Twitter for an explanation, and we will reevaluate our relationship based on that response."
Another suspended journalist, Matt Binder of the technology news outlet Mashable, said he was banned Thursday night immediately after sharing a screenshot that O'Sullivan had posted before the CNN reporter's suspension.
The screenshot showed a statement from the Los Angeles Police Department sent earlier Thursday to multiple media outlets, including The Associated Press, about how it was in touch with Musk's representatives about the alleged stalking incident, but that no crime report had yet been filed.
"I did not share any location data, as per Twitter's new terms. Nor did I share any links to ElonJet or other location tracking accounts," Binder said in an email. "I have been highly critical of Musk but never broke any of Twitter's listed policies."
Binder said a message he received while trying to access his Twitter account showed that his suspension was permanent. But Musk later suggested the penalty would last a week in response to a question about his suspension of former ESPN and MSNBC host Keith Olbermann.
Late Thursday, Musk briefly joined a Twitter Spaces conference chat hosted by journalist Kate Notopoulos of Buzzfeed. He reiterated his claims that the journalists Twitter banned were "doxxing" him when they were reporting on the jet tracking accounts being banned.
"There is not special treatment for journalists," Musk said, after being asked by the Post's Drew Harwell if he had a connection between the stalking incident and posting of real-time information.
"You dox, you get suspended, end of story," he added, before abruptly signing out.
The nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists, which defends journalists around the world, said Thursday night it was concerned about the suspensions.
"If confirmed as retaliation for their work, this would be a serious violation of journalists' right to report the news without fear of reprisal," the group said.
European Union Commissioner Vera Jourova, who heads up the 27-nation bloc's work on values and transparency, also weighed in.
"News about arbitrary suspension of journalists on Twitter is worrying," she tweeted. Existing EU media rules and new digital regulations taking effect next year require "respect of media freedom and fundamental rights."
Jourova said, "(at)elonmusk should be aware of that. There are red lines. And sanctions, soon."
Musk restores journalists' Twitter accounts after suspensions criticized (CBC) "doxxed"... You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Elon Musk reinstated the Twitter accounts of several journalists that were suspended for a day over a controversy on publishing public data about the billionaire's plane.
The reinstatements came after the unprecedented suspensions evoked stinging criticism from government officials, advocacy groups and journalism organizations from several parts of the globe on Friday, with some saying the microblogging platform was jeopardizing press freedom.
A Twitter poll that Musk conducted later also showed that a majority of the respondents wanted the accounts restored immediately.
"The people have spoken. Accounts who doxxed my location will have their suspension lifted now," Musk said in a tweet on Saturday.
"doxxed"... You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Twitter is blocking users from tweeting links to many major servers for Mastodon, one of the most notable Twitter alternatives. The ban was enacted sometime during what’s been a chaotic Thursday evening on the platform after journalists and Mastodon’s own account were unexpectedly suspended.
Attempting to tweet many Mastodon links will result in an error message saying, “We can’t complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful.” Twitter is currently blocking links to the original mastodon.social server and more than 10 other domains The Verge tested.
The ban on Mastodon follows the recent controversy around @ElonJet, an account that tracks the whereabouts of Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s private jet. On Wednesday, Twitter suspended the @ElonJet Twitter account and soon after suspended the personal account of the person who manages it. Twitter also introduced a new policy that bans people from sharing live locations of another person.
On Thursday, Mastodon’s Twitter account was suspended, and while we don’t know exactly why, the ban happened soon after the account tweeted a link to @ElonJet’s page on Mastodon.
Twitter didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, though it has dissolved its press office. Mastodon also hasn’t responded to a request for comment.
New York Times: Elon Musk’s Twitter Teeters on the Edge After Another 1,200 Leave By my arithmetic, that means Twitter has reduced in size from ~7500 employees to ~2500 employees over the past few...
Holy shit, this post from Donald Trump about Musk on Truth Social from earlier this year is vicious. (Screenshot for those who want to avoid visiting Truth Social) I wonder if Musk ever saw that....
One way Twitter could make money if they didn't want advertisers could be a Patreon esque model where you pay for access to star and influencer tweets. Would be a hell of a pivot from where...
One way Twitter could make money if they didn't want advertisers could be a Patreon esque model where you pay for access to star and influencer tweets. Would be a hell of a pivot from where Twitter is now, but maybe that's the kind of Twitter Elon wants?
Who would buy? The banks are in a similar position. Musk borrowed a lot of money and normally they would sell the bonds, but can you imagine that sales pitch? Under the circumstances, there’s...
Who would buy?
The banks are in a similar position. Musk borrowed a lot of money and normally they would sell the bonds, but can you imagine that sales pitch? Under the circumstances, there’s nothing to do but wait and hope things improve.
Yea it may be too late now. I think I remember reading they had been offered 60 cents on the dollar a week or two ago but that was 'too low' and they were seeking other offers. I bet they would...
Yea it may be too late now. I think I remember reading they had been offered 60 cents on the dollar a week or two ago but that was 'too low' and they were seeking other offers. I bet they would take that in a heartbeat today.
Who would buy a share of Twitter now? It would have to be the beefiest of discounts. I might pay a hundredth of a cent on the dollar, but even then I'm not confident that Twitter has 54 Million...
Who would buy a share of Twitter now? It would have to be the beefiest of discounts. I might pay a hundredth of a cent on the dollar, but even then I'm not confident that Twitter has 54 Million worth of value anymore. The used office furniture market is beyond flooded.
It’s a bet. If Twitter does survive the next couple weeks there is a high chance it will survive much longer and become something … different. It certainly won’t be old Twitter anymore but who...
It’s a bet. If Twitter does survive the next couple weeks there is a high chance it will survive much longer and become something … different. It certainly won’t be old Twitter anymore but who knows what that means. It could still find success a different way.
I suspect the various Saudis and Qataris providing the funds for the buyout have a bit more sway than most minority stakeholders otherwise would. And if they start to worry that their investments...
I suspect the various Saudis and Qataris providing the funds for the buyout have a bit more sway than most minority stakeholders otherwise would. And if they start to worry that their investments in Twitter are now at risk, and so tell Musk to step aside to let someone who actually knows what they're doing run the day to day operations, I am sure he would actually seriously consider doing as they ask. He may be a billionaire, but they have State apparatus and geopolitical influence behind them, and much much deeper pockets. They're also not the sort of people you would want to piss off by losing them billions of dollars, especially Prince Alwaleed.
General amnesty announced for all suspended accounts. This'll mix nicely with their recent genocidal rhetoric. Advertisers must be tripping over their weenies to come rushing back to Twitter.
General amnesty announced for all suspended accounts. This'll mix nicely with their recent genocidal rhetoric. Advertisers must be tripping over their weenies to come rushing back to Twitter.
In case you're wondering how this meshes with his previous promise of an independent council. Musk on October 28: Musk less than a month later: Apparently it's a council of one now.
In case you're wondering how this meshes with his previous promise of an independent council.
A large coalition of political/social activist groups agreed not to try to kill Twitter by starving us of advertising revenue if I agreed to this condition.
I may be off here but it’s sounding like Elon doesn’t care about advertisers. It makes sense that he wouldn’t. None of his businesses have been ad based and the ad model doesn’t necessarily look...
I may be off here but it’s sounding like Elon doesn’t care about advertisers.
It makes sense that he wouldn’t. None of his businesses have been ad based and the ad model doesn’t necessarily look profitable at Twitter for someone who just came in. Twitter hasn’t succeeded at following Facebooks footsteps there.
If Twitter stops relying on ads… well, fucking great honestly. I’m a strong believer that the ads model is one of the great evils of the current internet.
Twitter is investigating why some staff in Europe have not received their November salaries in a timely manner amid sweeping cuts and layoffs across the company since Elon Musk’s takeover.
Twitter staff in the UK received an email just before 1 pm London time on November 25 telling them their pay date would be November 28. Alongside the email, sent from the EMEA Payroll Team, staff received their usual monthly payslips. However, staff in the UK and Germany appear not to have been paid on time.
[...]
Four independent sources in the UK and Germany told Ars Technica that they had not received payment on the morning their salaries were due.
Sales employees signed on to his vision in greater numbers than workers on the technical side, which saw mass resignations, according to people familiar with the matter. Musk is using the cuts to balance out the remaining staff, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal decisions.
Some of those who were fired started to receive notice on Sunday, according to two people familiar with the matter, though it’s unclear how many will be impacted in the current round. Platformer earlier reported the news.
Speaking of Platformer; It kinda sucks seeing so many other news sites these days mentioning it as being the source of the news they're reporting on. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Casey...
Speaking of Platformer; It kinda sucks seeing so many other news sites these days mentioning it as being the source of the news they're reporting on. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Casey Newton and have been for years, and I'm glad that he is finally off on his own now, doing his own thing. But I seriously hate that all of his content is behind such an expensive hard paywall now. Even though that content is often great stuff, and he is often still breaking huge stories due to all his tech industry connections, I unfortunately just can't justify the USD $100/yr for access. That's almost as much as I pay for Netflix!
Ah well... at least he still shares some of his stories for free, includes some others in his weekly newsletter, occasionally co-publishes some of his biggest stories with The Verge, and I can also read about some of his reporting secondhand from places like Bloomberg. But I would honestly much rather read it all on Platformer to support him.... if only it was a bit more reasonably priced though. Sigh. :(
In recent weeks, 50 of the top 100 advertisers have either announced or seemingly stopped advertising on Twitter. These advertisers have accounted for nearly $2 billion in spending on the platform since 2020, and over $750 million in advertising in 2022 alone.
In addition to advertisers that have seemingly stopped all advertising on Twitter as of November 21, there are an additional seven advertisers which appear to be slowing the rate of their advertising on the platform to almost nothing. Since 2020, these seven advertisers have accounted for over $255 million in spending on Twitter, and nearly $118 million in advertising in 2022.
The question now is will there be enough MyPillow money to close the hole left behind. On a more serious note, I and many others have noticed our ads on twitter becoming not only less relevant but...
The question now is will there be enough MyPillow money to close the hole left behind.
On a more serious note, I and many others have noticed our ads on twitter becoming not only less relevant but completely nonsensical. Like ads for Chinese provinces and whatnot.
This is why I really fail to understand why Musk's continuing on down this path of unbanning and engaging with Nazis and pedophiles. $8 cannot ever make up for the millions that advertisers were...
This is why I really fail to understand why Musk's continuing on down this path of unbanning and engaging with Nazis and pedophiles. $8 cannot ever make up for the millions that advertisers were dumping into the platform. Forget the long term, what does he think is going to happen next month? Is he going to become the platform's sole income source himself so he can keep stroking his ego with it?
Twitter said it will no longer enforce its longstanding Covid misinformation policy, yet another sign of how Elon Musk plans to transform the social media company he bought a month ago.
In 2020, Twitter developed an extensive set of rules that sought to prohibit “harmful misinformation” about the virus and its vaccines.
Between January 2020 and September 2022, Twitter suspended more than 11,000 accounts for breaking Covid misinformation rules and removed almost 100,000 pieces of content that violated those rules, according to statistics published by Twitter. The policy received acclaim from medical professionals: In an advisory to technology platforms, US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy cited Twitter’s rules as an example of what companies should do to combat misinformation.
Twitter did not appear to formally announce the rule change. Instead, some Twitter users Monday night spotted a note added to the page on Twitter’s website that outlines its Covid policy.
“Effective November 23, 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy,” the note read.
Musk has promised to restore many previously banned Twitter accounts as soon as this week. It is possible that among the restored accounts will be some of the 11,000 banned under Twitter’s former Covid misinformation rules.
March 6, 2020
As worldwide Covid-19 cases topped 100,000 and deaths exceeded 3,000, Musk tweeted, “the coronavirus panic is dumb.”
March 19, 2020
The United States reported just under 2,000 new coronavirus cases in a single day, but Musk predicted the country was headed toward “zero new cases” by the end of April (by Musk’s deadline, daily case counts had topped 20,000). ...
May 9, 2020
After local rules in Alameda County, Calif., forced Tesla to shut down its assembly line, Musk vowed to sue the county (Tesla filed a federal lawsuit that day, but the company voluntarily dropped the suit less than two weeks later). ...
Sept. 28, 2020
Musk told the New York Times’ Kara Swisher he won’t take a Covid-19 vaccine once it’s available, arguing he and his kids are not at risk, and he asserted the virus (which has killed more than 2.6 million people worldwide) has a low mortality rate.
March 12, 2021
Musk appeared to question whether it’s safe to get the second shot of a coronavirus vaccine, citing “quite a few negative reactions.”
Elon Musk is under renewed pressure from the US and EU over his ownership of Twitter, as regulators clamp down on the billionaire’s push to transform the social network into a freewheeling haven of free speech.
The European Commission on Wednesday threatened Musk with a ban unless Twitter abides by strict content moderation rules, as US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen indicated that Washington was reviewing his purchase of the social network.
The warning from Brussels came in a video call between Musk and Thierry Breton, the EU’s commissioner in charge of implementing the bloc’s digital rules, according to people with knowledge of the conversation.
Breton told Musk that Twitter must adhere to a checklist of rules, including ditching an “arbitrary” approach to reinstating banned users, pursuing disinformation “aggressively” and agreeing to an “extensive independent audit” of the platform by next year.
Musk was warned that unless he stuck to those rules Twitter risked infringing the EU’s new Digital Services Act, a new law that sets the global standard for how Big Tech must police content on the internet. Breton reiterated Twitter could face a Europe-wide ban or fines of up to 6 per cent of global turnover if it breached the law.
Twitter’s owner said repeatedly that he thought that the DSA was “very sensible”, said people briefed on the conversation, adding that he had read the legislation and thought it should be applied everywhere in the world. Musk has previously said Twitter would adhere to all relevant laws.
Among the EU’s demands is that Musk provides clear criteria on which users are at risk of being banned. Musk has reinstated Donald Trump’s account after holding a poll of users on whether the former US president should be allowed to return to the site.
In a blog post, Twitter said none of its policies had changed and that its trust and safety team remained “strong and well-resourced”, but added: “Our approach to policy enforcement will rely more heavily on de-amplification of violative content: freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.”
The company said it still sought to “promote and protect the public conversation” but that it had changed its “approach to experimentation” by undergoing more “public testing”.
Senior EU officials have expressed concerns over whether Twitter has enough staff to comply with the new rules after Musk fired more than half of its 7,500 workforce this month.
In the US, authorities’ scrutiny of Twitter appears to be focused on foreign ownership of the social media platform. In comments at a New York Times conference, Yellen mentioned the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US when asked about Twitter, saying it looked at transactions involving “foreign investment . . . to see if they create national security risk”.
The Treasury secretary added: “We don’t comment on work that’s in progress. But if there are such risks, it would be appropriate for Cfius to have a look.”
Securities filings show Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia rolled over 35mn shares, or 3.5 per cent of the total shares of the public Twitter, into the new private company as part of Musk’s $44bn buyout.
Kingdom Holding Company, an investment fund controlled by the prince, owns stakes in US companies, including Citigroup, Uber and Lyft, according to its website.
US president Joe Biden this month said Musk’s “co-operation” with other countries was “worthy of being looked at” by American authorities. While Yellen herself had previously dismissed the likelihood of such a probe, on Wednesday she said she had “misspoke”.
The EU ban seems like a straightforward threat, very understandable. The US scrutiny seems murkier. If they made Saudi Arabia sell their shares, who would they go to and what would be the price?...
The EU ban seems like a straightforward threat, very understandable. The US scrutiny seems murkier. If they made Saudi Arabia sell their shares, who would they go to and what would be the price? Also, why wasn't it a problem with the old Twitter?
Alwaleed and Co were just minority shareholders before, and there was at least some transparency involved due to SEC regulations. Whereas now all these powerful, foreign state-associated, former...
Also, why wasn't it a problem with the old Twitter?
Alwaleed and Co were just minority shareholders before, and there was at least some transparency involved due to SEC regulations. Whereas now all these powerful, foreign state-associated, former minority shareholders are partial owners of a private company with few transparency requirements, have unknown levels of influence within the company, and what they might demand/expect in the future for their continued financial support of the company is also as yet unknown.
And considering the level of global influence Twitter has, especially regarding information (and misinformation) dissemination which has the potential to influence election results (amongst other things), I can totally understand why governments around the world might find this new arrangement quite concerning from a National security standpoint.
There's a question about what it would really do, given that you only need a web browser to use Twitter, even on mobile. (I have never installed a Twitter app.) I guess some people would say "oh...
There's a question about what it would really do, given that you only need a web browser to use Twitter, even on mobile. (I have never installed a Twitter app.)
I guess some people would say "oh well, nothing lost" and stop using it, and Twitter will lose engagement and revenue. But I expect anyone who is at least somewhat hooked on Twitter and has something better than a dial-up connection would switch to the web app.
And then Twitter could cut costs by firing all their Android and iOS developers.
Before Elon Musk bought Twitter last month, the company’s executives had racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel invoices that the social media service planned to pay.
But once Mr. Musk took over the company, he refused to reimburse travel vendors for those bills, current and former Twitter employees said. Mr. Musk’s staff said the services were authorized by the company’s former management and not by him. His staff have since avoided the calls of the travel vendors, the people said.
[...]
Mr. Musk also issued an order to slow or in some cases halt transfers of funds to Twitter’s vendors and contract services, the people said. Any expenditures for services need to be approved by Mr. Birchall, three people said. Mr. Musk has since declined to pay for the travel services incurred by the former Twitter executives, the people said.
He is also looking at the company’s leases for office space, three people said, bucking on making payments and hoping to renegotiate or opt out of some commitments entirely. Twitter leases office space across the world, but the layoffs have reduced the need for much of that real estate.
Twitter’s partnerships team was also instructed to renegotiate its multiyear content deals with major sports entities, like one it struck with the N.F.L. in which the social media company pays the league to produce exclusive audio and video content for its platform, two people familiar with the plans said. Twitter has struck similar deals with other media companies, including Condé Nast, the N.B.A. and Fox Sports Network.
[...]
Mr. Davis, the president of the Boring Company, has also directed Twitter employees to renegotiate the deals that the company has with firms such as Amazon and Oracle, which provide computing and tech services, the people said. The employees were told to suggest to those companies that Mr. Musk’s firms would not work with them in the future if they refused to renegotiate, the people said.
After Twitter’s contract with one software vendor expired under Mr. Musk’s ownership, that company voided a discount it had given to Twitter, one engineering manager said.
Pulling from the Trump playbook - cut business costs by just not paying the people you owe money to. It's a brialliant business move. I think Oracle and Amazon would both probably laugh at this....
Pulling from the Trump playbook - cut business costs by just not paying the people you owe money to. It's a brialliant business move.
The employees were told to suggest to those companies [Amazon and Oracle] that Mr. Musk’s firms would not work with them in the future if they refused to renegotiate
I think Oracle and Amazon would both probably laugh at this. Twitter is likely using more resources from both of those companies than Tesla or SpaceX, and besides - where would Musk's companies get something like cloud computing? I doubt Microsoft is just salivating at the thought of jumping into business with Musk, and offering deep discounts to boot.
Well, it's a competitive industry so some cost-cutting may be possible. Google and Microsoft might very well offer discounts. Also, some companies even run their own datacenters to save money....
Well, it's a competitive industry so some cost-cutting may be possible. Google and Microsoft might very well offer discounts. Also, some companies even run their own datacenters to save money. This isn't a change to be made suddenly, though.
During the transition, I don't think Twitter has the technical capacity to do either; they will have a hard enough time keeping the services running as they are. So it doesn't seem like a credible threat.
Google and most certainly MS are both going to be offering heavy discounts. Azure still a year ago was the most discount heavy in cloud sales. I know a small company that got 1MM in credits, and...
Google and most certainly MS are both going to be offering heavy discounts.
Azure still a year ago was the most discount heavy in cloud sales. I know a small company that got 1MM in credits, and that’s just an SME!
The BBC has been given photos of Twitter office space that has been converted into bedrooms, which San Francisco authorities are probing as a possible building code violation.
One image shows a room with a double bed, including a wardrobe and slippers.
An ex-worker said new Twitter boss Elon Musk has been staying at the headquarters since he bought the firm.
San Francisco's Department of Building Inspection has confirmed it is investigating potential violations following a complaint.
Mr Musk said the city was attacking companies for providing beds to "tired employees".
The BBC has also been given pictures of sofas at Twitter being used as beds.
Another conference room has an alarm clock, and a picture placed over a made-up bed.
"It looks like a hotel room," said one former worker. They went on to say that Mr Musk regularly sleeps at the Twitter HQ in San Francisco.
In a reply to a journalist on Twitter, Mr Musk posted that the city should prioritise protecting children from the consequences of opioid drug misuse.
Forbes broke the story of "sad little conference-room sleeping quarters at the company's recently depopulated headquarters", noting it was an apparent improvement on the improvised sleeping-bag-on-the-floor arrangement posted on Twitter by one employee.
The bedrooms, Bloomberg reported, are also said to accommodate staff from Tesla and other Musk-owned businesses brought in to work at Twitter, "some of whom travel to Twitter for work meetings", sources told the publication.
Department of Building Inspection official Patrick Hannan told the San Francisco Chronicle it investigated all complaints and there were different rules for residential buildings, even those used for short-term stays.
There's like a lot of levels to this. Like for one, the implication is that Twitter employees are going to work nights - "extremely hardcore" - which probably isn't great. But also, I think the...
There's like a lot of levels to this.
Like for one, the implication is that Twitter employees are going to work nights - "extremely hardcore" - which probably isn't great.
Musk's whataboutism about the children and fentanyl is also stupid but that there are, post-covid, dozens of empty office buildings which are illegal to convert into housing is dumb for an area famous for its high rent. Even the villainized luxury high rises DO lower rents in the area.
When I still worked out of an office in SF, my company had a leasing deal with an apartment elsewhere for long term corporate housing. You could use it for travel to meetings, as temporary housing when you're a new employee, and it was pretty neat. If you're a tech company with an office that's like 60% empty now, is converting some floors to temporary housing that bad of an idea?
This seems to be about building codes, not zoning? Even when zoning allows a building to be converted to residential use, there are things that building codes say you need to do for safety in case...
This seems to be about building codes, not zoning? Even when zoning allows a building to be converted to residential use, there are things that building codes say you need to do for safety in case of a fire, etc. High-rise buildings tend to have stricter regulations.
As a temporary measure, I think it's unlikely there's anything all that safety-critical in a commercial building. Illegal rental units likely have worse problems, and building codes aren't always as sensible as they could be. But the rules generally do exist for good reasons.
It is not my intention to excuse Musk's actions in any way shape or form. However, his recent erratic pattern seems at odds even with his excentric past, and does make me think that he may be...
It is not my intention to excuse Musk's actions in any way shape or form. However, his recent erratic pattern seems at odds even with his excentric past, and does make me think that he may be experiencing a mental crisis of some kind.
Remember when Twitter literally filed a Lawsuit to force Musk to buy Twitter when Musk was about to leave? I can only imagine how much the people who filed this lawsuit regret doing so.
Why would they regret it? The stockholders all received $54.20 per share, significantly more than the $30-40 per share they would have otherwise gotten by selling on the open market. And even...
Why would they regret it? The stockholders all received $54.20 per share, significantly more than the $30-40 per share they would have otherwise gotten by selling on the open market. And even beyond the shares, every former senior exec is set to receive massive golden parachutes. Musk is trying to prevent them from getting their payouts by claiming they were all fired "for cause" but he will very likely lose all those inevitable lawsuits.
The people who filed this lawsuit got enormous golden parachutes, and would have been sued in turn by Twitter's shareholders for not going after Musk to buy it. The amount he was offering was way...
The people who filed this lawsuit got enormous golden parachutes, and would have been sued in turn by Twitter's shareholders for not going after Musk to buy it. The amount he was offering was way above anyone else's valuation, and the benefits to the prior shareholders from this buyout were immense.
That said, Twitter did a couple of things of value, and I hope we'll find a new way for organizations to broadcast information to the public fairly soon.
The executives got paid well (in theory) for siding with the shareholders. This is what "golden parachutes" are for, to make sure that they don't stand in the way of a merger if it's a good price....
The executives got paid well (in theory) for siding with the shareholders. This is what "golden parachutes" are for, to make sure that they don't stand in the way of a merger if it's a good price.
(In practice, they're going to have to sue to get that money.)
If Musk tries to bundle this all under an application called Twitter, it's not going to go well. Even Musk wont convince everyone that Twitter is the place to go to broadcast inane hot takes...
If Musk tries to bundle this all under an application called Twitter, it's not going to go well.
Even Musk wont convince everyone that Twitter is the place to go to broadcast inane hot takes publicly to the world but also securely call or text your mom or maybe Elon's mum.
It's a common mistake to make. Even Google made the tragic mistake of calling their social network Google+, Google Buzz & Google Friend Connect.
When I think about privately texting or calling mum, I don't think facebook, I think WhatsApp. When i am sending a private email, I don't go to Google, I go to Gmail. When I want to see what my idiot cousin is up to, I go to Facebook, not Google+.
The smart way to do this would be to buy someone like Signal, then keep the Signal as is, but authenticate Signal with twitter handles in addition to phone numbers. No confusion there. Twitter is for publicly embarrassing myself, and Signal is for privacy. Plus you get all the Signal tech and know how.
The reason why I suspect Musk is likely to go the stupid path, is that businesses do this all the time. It's a classic business blunder because it seems so intuitively obviously right.
I don't think that necessarily maps to everything, though, especially in the other parts of the world. In India or Brazil, when people think of social media (sharing personal status, news,...
When I think about privately texting or calling mum, I don't think facebook, I think WhatsApp. When i am sending a private email, I don't go to Google, I go to Gmail. When I want to see what my idiot cousin is up to, I go to Facebook, not Google+.
I don't think that necessarily maps to everything, though, especially in the other parts of the world. In India or Brazil, when people think of social media (sharing personal status, news, etc.)... they think of WhatsApp. When they think of messaging their grandma... they think of WhatsApp. Same with China and WeChat.
Similarly, I know a lot of people for whom Instagram is a one-shop area. It's social media and their main instant messaging service (especially now that you can DM messenger accounts on it).
Discord is also becoming an omni-service. Social channels, DMs, everything.
Great points. I don't know much about Instagram, but I suspect it positions itself as a way to share your life through photos. When kids want to know what their friends are up to, I suspect they...
Great points. I don't know much about Instagram, but I suspect it positions itself as a way to share your life through photos. When kids want to know what their friends are up to, I suspect they either think "Instagram" or "Snapchat." That is a natural brand extension. Adding the ability to text your friends or call your friends makes the instagram and the snapchat brand stronger.
Same goes for WhatsApp. When my kid thinks of Grandma, he thinks WhatsApp. It's a natural brand extension to enable social media for WhatsApp. In fact, that is pretty much what we use WhatsApp groups for. A private social media channel.
For me personally, when I think of my friends, the last thing I think of is Twitter.
When I think of influencers, I think of Twitter, as well as Instagram and Youtube. But that doesn't mean Youtube should try to enable texting or phone calls.
Will I ever accept Twitter as the natural way to communicate with both friends and influencers? In Musks world, these two things are largely the same thing. In my world, they are very distinct things.
Also, in my mind, Twitter has negative brand value when it comes to phone calls and texts. When I think of phone calls and texting, I think of spam. When I think of spam, I think of bots. And when I think of bots, I think of Twitter. And the more I think about it, the more I am convinced this is another branding problem. Do I really want my publicly verified twitter handle to effectively be my phone number? Do I trust Musk to solve the inevitable spam problem?
I do think that might just be a personal thing, though. I've seen a lot of communities where Twitter DMs are a common way to communicate with people (in fact, in some, it's the only way to do so...
For me personally, when I think of my friends, the last thing I think of is Twitter.
I do think that might just be a personal thing, though. I've seen a lot of communities where Twitter DMs are a common way to communicate with people (in fact, in some, it's the only way to do so even if you're seeking a business relationship; email is for boomers, I suppose). Splatoon and smash bros are like this, for instance.
I think this is just a difference between the Twitter users who use it as a glorified RSS feed (almost all consumption, no production) and the users that use it much more on a 50/50 consumption/production basis.
I feel like encrypted messaging is a great way to talk to friends you already have on Twitter. I have twitter friends that I dont know IRL and dont want to fold them into my personal messaging...
For me personally, when I think of my friends, the last thing I think of is Twitter.
I feel like encrypted messaging is a great way to talk to friends you already have on Twitter. I have twitter friends that I dont know IRL and dont want to fold them into my personal messaging apps. But I would love for Twitter to have a better DMing system and encrypted chat.
It seemed to me like during the height of the Trump era he began leaning into the alt-right conspiracy side of the internet, in particular the very libretarian wing. He started parroting free speech to the extreme, backing conspiracy theories, and just in general having a really messed up view of the world revolving around individualism.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if it turned out that he stumbled upon the alt-right pipeline one day, because every single person who has gone down that rabbit hole has completely lost it, millionaire or not. It's what happened to Kanye in the past couple years too, for example.
Obviously I am not stating this as fact, just that he follows a very similar pattern to every other nutjob in that realm. He just happened to have a lot of money beforehand.
He comes from some explicitly racist lineage. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that he believe these things all along and found an audience that embraced his beliefs. Trump's victory gave a lot of people a green light to take off their masks and it feels like Musk is part of that cohort.
I'll offer a slight addition,
I think the biggest switch was when he began having to pull funding and support from nation States and other corporations with a more authoritarian bend. The timing is also evident when he began being less the day-to-day owner and manager of the companies, arguably he hasn't ran day to day ops at Tesla or SpaceX in years.
From sueing to be called a co-founder, his questionable academic record, story of being self-made, or his first wife's account, a lot of the traits (imprecisely, "narcicissism") that can be seen at work in this meltdown seem to have existed for decades.
The Isaacson biography on Steve Jobs mentions how he'd refuse to shower for weeks, put his unshoed(?) feet up on the desk of a superior, developed a product to likely intentionally sabotage another, delayed shipping for weeks over minute changes in a bevel, publicly berate employees for being loser virgins who'd never take LSD, and a dozen other traits that traits that you'd think wouldn't make a good luminary.
I don't mean to paint Jobs as not gifted or as a villain, but he was flawed in ways that would destroy opportunities for others, and there's a large pool of possibly more competent, smart, driven people out there that didn't have his success. One explanation is the luck of time, field, and connections: the times make the man.
The business majors I knew that idolized him attributed it to his intangible "reality distortion field", and I think that's the more interesting angle. Tesla's valuation distorted reality. I don't have the right background to assess it, but a PE ratio of >1300 feels more based on a collective subconscious desire-made-manifest to have a Tony Stark who will make self-driving cars to save us from global warming than on anything rational.
Tesla/SpaceX/Apple tapped into that latent potential. They connected some dream with a sufficiently nearby reality and as a result squeezed out engineering talent for some amazing stuff. Colonizing Mars or chic, artistic technology made by elite programmers.
I think Musk rose to where he is by tapping into that potential and his successes led him think he had some control over it. Maybe even mistaking it as some property of himself, like his genius engineering/coding skills. You can see the same shift in the crowd he courts in Trump or Kanye. People that simplify reality to a meme (Mexico will pay for a wall) or believe if you HODL to your AMC or Dogecoin it'll go to the moon.
Colonizing Mars isn't possible (soon), though, and you can't heal cancer with a fruitarian diet. The strategy of reaching for something that isn't grounded in reality fails if it isn't close enough to make that bridge, and the person reaching for something intangible looks crazy.
I think Steve Jobs was somewhat of a crazy villain, actually. But as in the old joke goes:
It’s pretty normal for weird people to get funded if they seem effective in the right way.
I don’t know how we can tell if Musk is committed to Mars or just really committed to the bit.
I doubt Musk was ever "normal." Bullying, bet-the-company risk taking, lawbreaking, and not listening to experts who say it won't work has worked out well for him, or was at least recoverable. Attention-getting antics won him many fans. Pushing people hard seemed to work at his previous companies. He's doing roughly similar things with worse results. It remains to be seen if these mistakes are recoverable.
More generally, there's plenty of precedent for people being really successful, becoming overconfident, and then trying a similar playbook in a new situation and failing badly. It's the basic archvillian tragedy. Napoleon in Russia comes to mind.
It could just be as simple as we all got to know him better. Internet fame and social media addiction probably were the catalysts but whether they made him worse or just expose himself more is probably something only people close to him the entire time could say.
Hundreds said to have opted to leave Twitter over Musk ultimatum (Washington Post)
Men's World Cup starts on Sunday and runs for a month.
(credit to Alejandra Caraballo which is where I first saw this connection made explicit)
under normal circumstances, we would expect to see large surges in traffic during matches, coming from every corner of the globe.
Qatar is 11 hours time difference from the US west coast, which means that many of the traffic surges will happen in the middle of the night, San Francisco time.
What the fuck
You know, like he does. We may be able to automate driving*, but not the genius of those shitposts.
*Those people shouldn't have driven/cycled/walked/stood so close to innovation.
I believe he wants people to leave so that everyone that remains will be faithful to him and he can start from scratch.
Since 2020, nothing has been a surer way to trigger a mass walkout than to suddenly revoke WFH and threaten to fire everyone who doesn't comply.
I also keep seeing all over twitter that Musk and his fans seem to be taking a very hardline "my way or the highway" attitude to twitter staff that's common to see directed at minimum wage workers, but is very jarring to see directed at specialised engineering staff. These are staff who could not only find better options easily, but are likely to be approached by recruiters even if they aren't looking. It's equally wrong to disrespect workers of any kind, but on a strictly practical level it seems obvious that antagonising the engineering talent will backfire quickly.
Final thought, if you gave me the choice between working undefined 'extended hours' indefinitely with no WFH under constant threat of being fired, or three months' pay in exchange for doing nothing just before the christmas season, I know what I would pick.
ElonJet, the account that tracks Elon's Jet, has been suspended.
It hasn't even been a month since Elon said it would never be suspended.
Streisand Effect powers, ACTIVATE!
the data powering that Twitter account came from ADSB Exchange, which is a completely open and crowd-sourced database of aircraft positions.
you can bookmark this page to view the current position of his jet and its most recent flight: https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=a835af
the data is inherently public, FAA and international regulations require civilian aircraft to broadcast their position, speed, altitude, etc. as they fly.
other flight-tracking sites (FlightRadar24 and FlightAware are the two most well-known) put some of that information behind a paywall. ADSB-X is very opinionatedly open and unpaywalled.
from their FAQ:
anyone with an always-on computer (even just a Raspberry Pi) can contribute data to their network. it requires $50-100 in parts (USB dongle, antenna, and cable to connect them). the radio frequency ADS-B uses is limited to line-of-sight, so more feeders in more locations is always useful, and you'll get better reception if you're able to mount your antenna high up with a clear view of the sky.
Looks like the account has come back?
Edit: elonjet is now on mastodon if you want to follow there.
Yup https://twitter.com/ElonJet/status/1603174681439526913
And he's gone again.
In a fairly sizeable escalation, Twitter has banned a large handful of high profile journalists that Musk accuses of posting his real time location, a claim many of them dispute. Mastodon's official @joinmastodon account has been banned as well, for posting a link to ElonJet's new home on mastodon.social.
A Washington Post article on the topic
It appears as if Twitter has pulled the plug on the Spaces feature, interrupting a gathering of journalists discussing these events after crashing the party.
And to round out the night it seems that Elon's banning links to an incredible number of Mastodon instances, both big and small.
Elon Musk booed by crowd after Dave Chappelle brings him on stage at comedy gig
But despite the tweet being removed, and the twitter account that posted it mysterious being deleted shortly afterwards, you can still watch the video on YouTube, and elsewhere.
Elon's response is also 🤦:
Yeah, because there are just sooooooo many "leftists" going to Dave Chappelle gigs these days after all his "hilarious" transphobic rants. /s
I'm just going to say that there's A LOT of stand up fans out there that don't really care about what his personal opinions are on well anything and are just focusing on if he's funny and skilled.
That's true. Is he even that funny now, though? I remember watching one of his Netflix specials, and he got around to the 'kicked her in the pussy' bit. Did anyone actually find that shit funny?
Yes, it was funny in context. It was an interesting joke because he gave the punchline first, spent the entire show building context, and repeated the punchline in the end. And it made sense, and, despite the dirty words, everyone understood the sentiment it expressed. It was deeply relatable and oddly wholesome, even more so to a black audience (which I am). That was the overall tone of most of his pre-TERF comedy.
Dave Chappelle used to be a brilliant comedian -- one of the best stand-ups of his generation. Back then, he covered subjects more closely related to his life experiences as a Black man in America. His comedic insight was often breathtaking.
In recent years, Dave Chappelle increasingly replaced comedy with charged rhetoric, and will gladly sacrifice a good joke in order to make a point. And it's usually a bad point to make.
When a famous artist does something we abhor, it's tempting to reassess their careers on a negative note. Unfortunately, I can't in good conscience watch any more specials by Dave Chappelle, in the same way that I'm not compelled to revisit the works of Cosby or Louis C.K. But, at some point in time, they were all comedy geniuses. That is just the truth.
I don't really think that applies for me. I never really liked any of his stuff on Netflix, even before all of the TERF nonsense.
I didn't really get the deeper meaning to the joke, if there was one. He spent 8 minutes telling a story about stovetop stuffing, said it, and then did a callback later on. It could 100% be that I'm daft and I missed something, though.
I don't know about that specific bit but generally his material seems to be lacking quality IMO.
Instead of rolling back the ban on all Mastodon links,
Twitter abruptly bans all links to Instagram, Mastodon, and other competitors (The Verge)
Here's Twitter's actual Promotion of Alternative Social Platforms Policy. It bans links, handles/usernames, replacing "." with "dot," link shorteners, social media aggregator sites like linktree, and sharing screenshots of your handle/username.
So, what the hell are you supposed to promote on Twitter? Are YouTube and Substack links are not really social media so much as they are content? Or can you not link out of Twitter period, unless you're an official publication?
Only the named social media sites and third party aggregators are banned. TikTok, YouTube, Substack, Pinterest, Reddit, Discord, pretty much anything not in that very specific list (and sites that aggregate links to places that might include links to those sites) are good to go.
It doesn't make a lot of sense, a lot of those other places can aggregate socials just fine, and this really doesn't solve anything for Twitter. It only makes the fire bigger. It's really anyone's guess what Twitter/Elon hopes to get out of this. From what I understand this rips open huge legal issues for them in the EU.
Elon Musk abruptly shut down Twitter offices as workers resign en masse (Business Insider)
[...]
The NY Times article Bussines Insider reported on.
Archived.
I haven't commented because I'm frankly simmering with rage at the combined debacles in social media and finance. Musk, SBF, Meta, Google, SoftBank, et al. have collectively destroyed monetary value greater than the cumulative 2020 wealthy nation spending for climate mitigation in less developed (and most climate-affected) nations.
If money is a means of designating priority, we've all participated, in one way or another, in the fiction that it's more important to be heard than to fix things.
With apologies for bomb-throwing - I read the Oxfam reporting and just had a moment.
I'm wondering why Google is in that list. Is it because their stock went down?
No, it's more about the general implosion of ad revenue and the fallout from destruction of the G+ platform. I shouldn't say that G+ was destroyed, it's just been packaged up in Workspaces as a monetizable product.
In any event, a great deal of capital has been invested in various quixotic tech ventures (fintech, social media, entertainment), for little lasting value in return.
Well, it's true that lots of us techies got paid well to build things that didn't turn out to be successful. This isn't an accident; it's how venture capital works. The winners are supposed to make up for the losers. There are also other risky and enormously wasteful ventures like medical research, but they're somewhat lower profile.
It does seem like any consumer product that Google invests in is cursed, but the failure rate outside Google is pretty high, too.
There is enormous waste everywhere, which is frustratingly hard to fix. Unfortunately, just going after suspected waste without understanding things doesn't work, as we're seeing. It also makes lots of enemies.
Not sure what you mean by "implosion of ad revenue." Do you mean for newspapers?
If Twitter does go down, I can’t even comprehend the consequences it would have on the broader culture and politics. Even though not very many people used twitter it had an outsized impact to the rest of the world. Probably due to many celebrities and politicians using the platform.
But I just don’t see how it can survive for very long under the current circumstances.
Not to be rude but I think you might need to go outside for a bit. This seems like a huge overreaction. The internet adapts VERY quickly and it's not like this is coming without any warning. Plus there are an abundance of services ready to take over anything Twitter could do.
A number of public services and likewise use Twitter for announcements.
For many countries, changing platforms for those will take time. Both practically, to regain their audiences and simply because of logistics of making a switch.
For example, a number of police departments, traffic services, public services, airports etc. will have to find new places to make public announcements for events: like delays and other things they now push out Tweets for to reach their clientele instantly.
It's much the same for press releases and breaking news: If it's not on Twitter, it hasn't happened yet.
Secondary reporting or getting news around also relies extremely heavily on Twitter for meta-propagation. Facebook or others will not take that niche. The internet adapts very slowly for these network-level effects. Twitter's been this monopoly since it got big.
The only one even close to large enough is Facebook, and I don't think that fleeing a platform devalued by the narcissistic whims of its egotist billionaire owner to go to Facebook of all places is the best answer.
I feel like one of the reasons Twitter is still going is that there is just nowhere for people to run to. Mastodon and cohost and similar places are not up to the job of being Twitter. Small communities might do well there but there is no way to have, say, @britneyspears on there with her 55 million followers. You need datacentre-grade infrastructure to deliver that sort of hosting.
Just this morning I was thinking if somewhere at Google someone is wondering how long it would take to dust off the Plus code and get that back up and running again. It was always a superior platform in terms of features and technology to both Twitter and FB, also consistently did better numbers than Twitter but then they did the Google thing and away it went.
It wouldn't happen that way. Dusting off old code is unlikely to make sense because of churn in the underlying infrastructure.
If they try it, I would guess something new connected to YouTube. Google is letting everyone with a YouTube channel pick a handle. I don't know what they plan to use it for, but adding a way to post text messages as well as videos probably wouldn't be too hard.
If Google wanted to build a Twitter competitor, refactoring old bits of Plus (and current bits of Workspaces) would almost certainly be cheaper and faster than building from scratch. The underlying infrastructure would probably be easier to manage now than then if they've been smart about modularising things like auth and profiles and so on.
However, Plus died when Vic Gundotra left, and it's almost certainly not coming back. They do appear to be trying to pivot/expand YT as a TikTok competitor which is probably a smart move given the persistent rumours about TikTok getting banned in the US and general loss of social traffic to there. Whether the new Youtube bits can take over from Twitter as well is a whole different question.
I don't think anyone could have foreseen the gargantuan mess Musk is making of Twitter so nobody has anything in the works to take over from it. Which is a shame because I sort of feel like a decent number of people are wanting to leave but don't know where to go.
I've consistently underestimated the damage they could do, and maybe I'm doing it again, but:
If they started getting frequent "fail whales" like the old days, it wouldn't be the end of the world. It would mostly mean that us addicts would have to take a break for a while.
It might take them some time to figure out how to do a cold start, though.
In the meantime, they'd be getting no revenue (no ad impressions) and losing customers as people find other ways to spend their time.
(Bankruptcy probably wouldn't be the end, either. It would mean the bondholders own the business instead of Musk, and then it's more valuable to them to keep an ongoing business running.)
To be fair to you, I don't think even the biggest Musk critics (myself included) expected him to fail this spectacularly, this quickly, especially given how much of his own money and Tesla stocks are on the line.
I never in my wildest dreams imagined the transition would go this incredibly bad. I assumed it would just be a gradual decline as Musk slowly began shaping Twitter into what he wanted it to be (freeze peach focused), not this instantly going from disastrous decision to disastrous decision completely destroying the very foundation of the business as soon as he stepped through the doors. Every single move he has made so far honestly feels like something only someone who was intentionally sabotaging the business would do. Because surely even Musk can't be this completely and utterly incompetent as a manager, right?
It's truly bizarre, but he is sounding more and more paranoid and unhinged with each tweet, action, and internal communication of his that gets leaked, so I don't think any of this is actually intentional. It genuinely feels like he drank his own Kool-Aid, and his insanely bloated ego has finally driven him over the deep end.
How it must now feel to have been one of those board members.
Relieved of the headache of a never profitable burden, slowly grinding along keeping the lurching monster alive during its slow demise, only to be given whatever the bird equivalent of a golden handshake is - a golden peck?
Trump has now been reinstated
This is bad. Real bad. Remember why he was kicked off? For trying to overthrow the US government.
Let’s hope he just stays on Truth Social and doesn’t come back out of some petty spite.
I think there won't be much of a Twitter to tweet from in a couple of weeks.
He has no self control. Sooner or later something some other Republican says on Twitter will trigger him and he'll go off on a tear.
Every time Trump opens his mouth on twitter he'll be doing the Democrats a favor. He's a dead brand that has been losing steam for three elections and nothing he says or does will get him any closer to the white house. All he can do is knock the rest of the Republicans down with him. I'm looking forward to his next batch of meltdowns.
That’s exactly what we all said in 2015.
The Trump Republicans had their asses kicked in three separate election cycles since then, losing worse every time. I hope they are stupid enough to try it again.
For the most recent election, that seems a bit exaggerated? Republicans did worse than expectations, but they regained control of the House, which is gaining some ground.
For context, though, this was the best performance of an incumbent party at the midterms in the postwar era. The best performance was during a time of 10% inflation with a president whose approval rating is in the 40%s. For incumbent presidents with an approval rating below 50%, the average seats lost in the house is 45.
Republicans had a 2 point turnout edge against Democrats.
They did gain ground, but had to be dragged kicking and screaming by the natural dynamics of US midterm elections. In places like New York (with moderate Republican candidates, no threat of abortion restriction, and no election certification shenanigans), there was a mini red-wave, with moderate republicans winning numerous house seats, which goes to show how the opposition party should perform with their natural tailwinds.
And the dems may yet gain a seat in the senate. What an embarrassment that would be.
No, I don't think so. We were all set for a legendary 'red wave' that would retake the house and the senate. The polls were so universally wrong on this one that they lost scientific credibility. The GOP spent several fortunes and barely got the house, which should have been effortless for them. They always do well in the mid-terms - but not this time. Even Fox News has realized Trump is a losing brand, go check out their coverage of his announcement.
Republicans want Trump gone. They know if he is the face of their party it's game over for another decade. They only just now figured this out for sure thanks to the mid-term numbers. They got what they wanted out of him, and since he can no longer deliver for them it's time to drop him like a used condom. His ego may even form a DJT party all by itself and split 10-15% off their base, which is a great incentive for them to lock him up. Watching him rip the GOP apart yet again is going to be entertaining.
Having him back on Twitter will be great. Every time he opens his mouth more districts turn blue.
From what I've read the polls were pretty accurate this year. It wasn't the polls that predicted the 'red wave', it was the pundits.
Often, though, in close races the polls will predict a toss-up, in which case the polls aren't that useful for predicting the outcome, however useful they might be strategically to election campaigns.
We are off-topic, by the way.
Despite his account being back, Trump claims he's not coming back.
https://twitter.com/bestofdyingtwit/status/1594094425843515392
Does he come back? He has his own social network now, and there may be some exclusivity reason that he would stick to his own little fiefdom, plus the inherit control of owning your own platform.
Now if Twitter opens up the ability to protocol with other networks and one of the first compatible ones is Truth Social... Or Trump just runs over to the place with the loudest audience.
This is not happening. Even if there were the will for it, they no longer have the engineering talent (to say nothing of institutional knowledge about how their own systems work). Federation is actually extraordinarily difficult to do even poorly, and at Twitter's scale it would be an unprecedented exercise.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/21/22242718/twitter-bluesky-decentralized-social-media-team-project-update
https://twitter.com/bluesky
I wouldnt trust it though since I'm reading Elon will have his hands in tjis as well.
Musk’s Twitter disbands its Trust and Safety advisory group (AP)
p.s. Since this one of getting crowded, I will probably make a new Elon/Twitter mega-thread come the 18th (one month after this one was posted).
Former top Twitter official forced to leave home due to threats amid ‘Twitter Files’ release (CNN)
[...]
A mega thread in roughly chronological order with Musk saying what he plans do do around Blue, and people telling him it'll be a bad idea, and him ignoring all the very many warnings, and then all the stuff he was warned about happening.
https://twitter.com/christapeterso/status/1592317592966168576?s=20&t=hSQRCxfU5ZiDYaS7Eoj1vQ
(Because it's come up before, I am not linking to a single tweet. I am linking to the first post in a long thread of connected tweets).
Fun thread. They missed the $20/mo to $8/mo haggling between Musk and Stephen King though.
What is blue?
Twitter Blue was the service that Musk wanted to bring in where anyone could pay to get a Twitter verification blue check mark.
And instead, Twitter blew.
George Hotz finds out how hard development is: https://twitter.com/corg_e/status/1595287073547862018?s=20&t=y-6YHf7EKiwG78NK-tba2A
This kind of screenshot gotcha culture is a thing I won’t miss about Twitter. None of us need to know who this guy is or how he’s screwing up, assuming it even counts as a screwup.
Well, yeah, it probably is chaotic. On the other hand, I'm not sure we know what he's in charge of? At Google any intern could send a pull request; it doesn't mean it would be accepted by the owners.
With all the people who left, I doubt they have a clear idea about who approves code changes now, though.
Knowing that it's George Hotz is kind of the point though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hotz
Musk is saying that coding Twitter is easy, and you don't need all those engineers, you just need a few 10x engineers. Hotz is supposedly one of those super engineers, and here he is, giving up.
Another thing about screenshot culture is that people make claims about screenshots that aren't actually backed up by the screenshots, which means you have to look at such claims skeptically - and if you do that, you're wasting more time on it. This does seem like a peculiar recruitment gimmick but it's not all that clear what he's trying to do. People are sure to interpret it as badly as possible, though.
George Hotz officially gives up
source
Ran into a very similar take recently: https://twitter.com/tobiaschneider/status/1595279130723078150
Looks like someone actually pulled through after all?
https://twitter.com/TJEvarts/status/1595600733914669062
Twitter data leak exposes over 5.4 million accounts (Engadget)
Elon Musk suspends journalists from Twitter, bans official account of rival Mastodon (CBC)
Musk restores journalists' Twitter accounts after suspensions criticized (CBC)
"doxxed"... You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Potentially related:
Twitter is blocking links to Mastodon (Verge)
By my arithmetic, that means Twitter has reduced in size from ~7500 employees to ~2500 employees over the past few weeks.
Your link is broken (you spelled twitter as twittea ;). FTFY:
New York Times: Elon Musk’s Twitter Teeters on the Edge After Another 1,200 Leave
Thanks (and fixed)! I don't even know how that happened, considering I copy/pasted the link. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
NSFW - https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1594500655724609536
Elon Musk has lost his fucking mind.
Holy shit, this post from Donald Trump about Musk on Truth Social from earlier this year is vicious.
(Screenshot for those who want to avoid visiting Truth Social)
I wonder if Musk ever saw that. I doubt it, because if he had I don't think he would still be courting Trump so hard to get back on Twitter.
One way Twitter could make money if they didn't want advertisers could be a Patreon esque model where you pay for access to star and influencer tweets. Would be a hell of a pivot from where Twitter is now, but maybe that's the kind of Twitter Elon wants?
I am going to miss Foone.
they also switched to masto: https://mastodon.social/@Foone
Just so you know, Foone uses they/them pronouns
i forgot :(
english isn't my native language, and we don't have that many gendered pronouns here
Wow, now I think I will too. I never knew there were so many types of floppies, let alone sizes!
I’m wondering what Musk’s investment partners think about all this, and how soon they’ll take action publicly.
I don’t think they can do much as minority shareholders in a private company. They don’t have the votes.
I'm kind of surprised no one has cut bait yet. Sell your investment for fifty cents on the dollar and get off the roller coaster.
Who would buy?
The banks are in a similar position. Musk borrowed a lot of money and normally they would sell the bonds, but can you imagine that sales pitch? Under the circumstances, there’s nothing to do but wait and hope things improve.
Yea it may be too late now. I think I remember reading they had been offered 60 cents on the dollar a week or two ago but that was 'too low' and they were seeking other offers. I bet they would take that in a heartbeat today.
Who would buy a share of Twitter now? It would have to be the beefiest of discounts. I might pay a hundredth of a cent on the dollar, but even then I'm not confident that Twitter has 54 Million worth of value anymore. The used office furniture market is beyond flooded.
The Elon fans would buy it if he pushed it to them.
It’s a bet. If Twitter does survive the next couple weeks there is a high chance it will survive much longer and become something … different. It certainly won’t be old Twitter anymore but who knows what that means. It could still find success a different way.
I suspect the various Saudis and Qataris providing the funds for the buyout have a bit more sway than most minority stakeholders otherwise would. And if they start to worry that their investments in Twitter are now at risk, and so tell Musk to step aside to let someone who actually knows what they're doing run the day to day operations, I am sure he would actually seriously consider doing as they ask. He may be a billionaire, but they have State apparatus and geopolitical influence behind them, and much much deeper pockets. They're also not the sort of people you would want to piss off by losing them billions of dollars, especially Prince Alwaleed.
General amnesty announced for all suspended accounts. This'll mix nicely with their recent genocidal rhetoric. Advertisers must be tripping over their weenies to come rushing back to Twitter.
In case you're wondering how this meshes with his previous promise of an independent council.
Musk on October 28:
Musk less than a month later:
Apparently it's a council of one now.
Oh, the "I am the senate" approach. I wish I could pretend to be surprised, but instead I'll just be a sarcastic bastard. 🙃
Activists Accuse Elon Musk of Banning 'Anti-Fascist Accounts' on Twitter
Looks like Musk is going full tilt right?
I may be off here but it’s sounding like Elon doesn’t care about advertisers.
It makes sense that he wouldn’t. None of his businesses have been ad based and the ad model doesn’t necessarily look profitable at Twitter for someone who just came in. Twitter hasn’t succeeded at following Facebooks footsteps there.
If Twitter stops relying on ads… well, fucking great honestly. I’m a strong believer that the ads model is one of the great evils of the current internet.
Twitter is now having trouble paying some employees on time (Ars Technica)
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A little bit of humor about the situation.
Right on cue, Musk posts a poll asking whether Trump should get unbanned or not.
And when it moves from 80/20 to 50/50 as more than just his followers notice, he follows up with bot accusations precisely according to schedule.
Musk Fires More Twitter Sales Workers After ‘Hardcore’ Purge (Bloomberg)
Speaking of Platformer; It kinda sucks seeing so many other news sites these days mentioning it as being the source of the news they're reporting on. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Casey Newton and have been for years, and I'm glad that he is finally off on his own now, doing his own thing. But I seriously hate that all of his content is behind such an expensive hard paywall now. Even though that content is often great stuff, and he is often still breaking huge stories due to all his tech industry connections, I unfortunately just can't justify the USD $100/yr for access. That's almost as much as I pay for Netflix!
Ah well... at least he still shares some of his stories for free, includes some others in his weekly newsletter, occasionally co-publishes some of his biggest stories with The Verge, and I can also read about some of his reporting secondhand from places like Bloomberg. But I would honestly much rather read it all on Platformer to support him.... if only it was a bit more reasonably priced though. Sigh. :(
Alt-right YouTuber and relic of the 2010s Sargon of Akkkad has been reinstated.
Check twitterisgoinggreat.com for your daily dose of Musk/Twitter drama.
In less than a month, Elon Musk has driven away half of Twitter’s top 100 advertisers (MediaMatters)
The question now is will there be enough MyPillow money to close the hole left behind.
On a more serious note, I and many others have noticed our ads on twitter becoming not only less relevant but completely nonsensical. Like ads for Chinese provinces and whatnot.
This is why I really fail to understand why Musk's continuing on down this path of unbanning and engaging with Nazis and pedophiles. $8 cannot ever make up for the millions that advertisers were dumping into the platform. Forget the long term, what does he think is going to happen next month? Is he going to become the platform's sole income source himself so he can keep stroking his ego with it?
Some believe that Musk was never a good businessman, but rather an opportunistic griefer.
Twitter is no longer enforcing its Covid misinformation policy (CNN)
Added context, a partial timeline of Musk on COVID:
EU and US turn up the heat on Elon Musk over Twitter (FT)
The EU ban seems like a straightforward threat, very understandable. The US scrutiny seems murkier. If they made Saudi Arabia sell their shares, who would they go to and what would be the price? Also, why wasn't it a problem with the old Twitter?
Alwaleed and Co were just minority shareholders before, and there was at least some transparency involved due to SEC regulations. Whereas now all these powerful, foreign state-associated, former minority shareholders are partial owners of a private company with few transparency requirements, have unknown levels of influence within the company, and what they might demand/expect in the future for their continued financial support of the company is also as yet unknown.
And considering the level of global influence Twitter has, especially regarding information (and misinformation) dissemination which has the potential to influence election results (amongst other things), I can totally understand why governments around the world might find this new arrangement quite concerning from a National security standpoint.
There's a question about what it would really do, given that you only need a web browser to use Twitter, even on mobile. (I have never installed a Twitter app.)
I guess some people would say "oh well, nothing lost" and stop using it, and Twitter will lose engagement and revenue. But I expect anyone who is at least somewhat hooked on Twitter and has something better than a dial-up connection would switch to the web app.
And then Twitter could cut costs by firing all their Android and iOS developers.
Kanye is also back
As Elon Musk Cuts Costs at Twitter, Some Bills Are Going Unpaid - NY Times (archive)
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Pulling from the Trump playbook - cut business costs by just not paying the people you owe money to. It's a brialliant business move.
I think Oracle and Amazon would both probably laugh at this. Twitter is likely using more resources from both of those companies than Tesla or SpaceX, and besides - where would Musk's companies get something like cloud computing? I doubt Microsoft is just salivating at the thought of jumping into business with Musk, and offering deep discounts to boot.
Well, it's a competitive industry so some cost-cutting may be possible. Google and Microsoft might very well offer discounts. Also, some companies even run their own datacenters to save money. This isn't a change to be made suddenly, though.
During the transition, I don't think Twitter has the technical capacity to do either; they will have a hard enough time keeping the services running as they are. So it doesn't seem like a credible threat.
Google and most certainly MS are both going to be offering heavy discounts.
Azure still a year ago was the most discount heavy in cloud sales. I know a small company that got 1MM in credits, and that’s just an SME!
Here's some chatter on Hacker News about capacity problems in Azure. Glad I don't have to be the one doing the negotiating.
Indeed. I would never go with Azure cloud. I’m already queasy enough with one of my startups on GCP.
Good point - will certainly be interesting to see where it goes.
Elon Musk turns Twitter into 'hotel' for staff (BBC)
There's like a lot of levels to this.
Like for one, the implication is that Twitter employees are going to work nights - "extremely hardcore" - which probably isn't great.
But also, I think the zoning regulations in SF are dumb. Look, if the Governor of California is angrily tweeting at your zoning policy, you probably have some issues. The whole bay area was NIMBY area 0 - Berkeley was the first to start.
Musk's whataboutism about the children and fentanyl is also stupid but that there are, post-covid, dozens of empty office buildings which are illegal to convert into housing is dumb for an area famous for its high rent. Even the villainized luxury high rises DO lower rents in the area.
When I still worked out of an office in SF, my company had a leasing deal with an apartment elsewhere for long term corporate housing. You could use it for travel to meetings, as temporary housing when you're a new employee, and it was pretty neat. If you're a tech company with an office that's like 60% empty now, is converting some floors to temporary housing that bad of an idea?
Not what Musk is doing, though.
This seems to be about building codes, not zoning? Even when zoning allows a building to be converted to residential use, there are things that building codes say you need to do for safety in case of a fire, etc. High-rise buildings tend to have stricter regulations.
As a temporary measure, I think it's unlikely there's anything all that safety-critical in a commercial building. Illegal rental units likely have worse problems, and building codes aren't always as sensible as they could be. But the rules generally do exist for good reasons.
It is not my intention to excuse Musk's actions in any way shape or form. However, his recent erratic pattern seems at odds even with his excentric past, and does make me think that he may be experiencing a mental crisis of some kind.
Remember when Twitter literally filed a Lawsuit to force Musk to buy Twitter when Musk was about to leave? I can only imagine how much the people who filed this lawsuit regret doing so.
Why would they regret it? The stockholders all received $54.20 per share, significantly more than the $30-40 per share they would have otherwise gotten by selling on the open market. And even beyond the shares, every former senior exec is set to receive massive golden parachutes. Musk is trying to prevent them from getting their payouts by claiming they were all fired "for cause" but he will very likely lose all those inevitable lawsuits.
The people who filed this lawsuit got enormous golden parachutes, and would have been sued in turn by Twitter's shareholders for not going after Musk to buy it. The amount he was offering was way above anyone else's valuation, and the benefits to the prior shareholders from this buyout were immense.
That said, Twitter did a couple of things of value, and I hope we'll find a new way for organizations to broadcast information to the public fairly soon.
The executives got paid well (in theory) for siding with the shareholders. This is what "golden parachutes" are for, to make sure that they don't stand in the way of a merger if it's a good price.
(In practice, they're going to have to sue to get that money.)
Elon Musk says he wants 'Twitter 2.0' to have video chat, voice calls, and encrypted DMs — and has enlisted the help of Signal's founder
If Musk tries to bundle this all under an application called Twitter, it's not going to go well.
Even Musk wont convince everyone that Twitter is the place to go to broadcast inane hot takes publicly to the world but also securely call or text your mom or maybe Elon's mum.
It's a classic brand extension failure similar to Zippo Perfume or Harley Davidson cake decorating kit. Zippo Perfume? Really?
It's a common mistake to make. Even Google made the tragic mistake of calling their social network Google+, Google Buzz & Google Friend Connect.
When I think about privately texting or calling mum, I don't think facebook, I think WhatsApp. When i am sending a private email, I don't go to Google, I go to Gmail. When I want to see what my idiot cousin is up to, I go to Facebook, not Google+.
The smart way to do this would be to buy someone like Signal, then keep the Signal as is, but authenticate Signal with twitter handles in addition to phone numbers. No confusion there. Twitter is for publicly embarrassing myself, and Signal is for privacy. Plus you get all the Signal tech and know how.
The reason why I suspect Musk is likely to go the stupid path, is that businesses do this all the time. It's a classic business blunder because it seems so intuitively obviously right.
I don't think that necessarily maps to everything, though, especially in the other parts of the world. In India or Brazil, when people think of social media (sharing personal status, news, etc.)... they think of WhatsApp. When they think of messaging their grandma... they think of WhatsApp. Same with China and WeChat.
Similarly, I know a lot of people for whom Instagram is a one-shop area. It's social media and their main instant messaging service (especially now that you can DM messenger accounts on it).
Discord is also becoming an omni-service. Social channels, DMs, everything.
Great points. I don't know much about Instagram, but I suspect it positions itself as a way to share your life through photos. When kids want to know what their friends are up to, I suspect they either think "Instagram" or "Snapchat." That is a natural brand extension. Adding the ability to text your friends or call your friends makes the instagram and the snapchat brand stronger.
Same goes for WhatsApp. When my kid thinks of Grandma, he thinks WhatsApp. It's a natural brand extension to enable social media for WhatsApp. In fact, that is pretty much what we use WhatsApp groups for. A private social media channel.
For me personally, when I think of my friends, the last thing I think of is Twitter.
When I think of influencers, I think of Twitter, as well as Instagram and Youtube. But that doesn't mean Youtube should try to enable texting or phone calls.
Will I ever accept Twitter as the natural way to communicate with both friends and influencers? In Musks world, these two things are largely the same thing. In my world, they are very distinct things.
Also, in my mind, Twitter has negative brand value when it comes to phone calls and texts. When I think of phone calls and texting, I think of spam. When I think of spam, I think of bots. And when I think of bots, I think of Twitter. And the more I think about it, the more I am convinced this is another branding problem. Do I really want my publicly verified twitter handle to effectively be my phone number? Do I trust Musk to solve the inevitable spam problem?
I do think that might just be a personal thing, though. I've seen a lot of communities where Twitter DMs are a common way to communicate with people (in fact, in some, it's the only way to do so even if you're seeking a business relationship; email is for boomers, I suppose). Splatoon and smash bros are like this, for instance.
I think this is just a difference between the Twitter users who use it as a glorified RSS feed (almost all consumption, no production) and the users that use it much more on a 50/50 consumption/production basis.
Crypto twitter is like too, and it's becoming a huge part of Twitter and gaining Musk's attention.
I feel like encrypted messaging is a great way to talk to friends you already have on Twitter. I have twitter friends that I dont know IRL and dont want to fold them into my personal messaging apps. But I would love for Twitter to have a better DMing system and encrypted chat.