Twitter's New Ownership

[kinker31]

Never thought I'd see this happen, but Elon Musk, the fella that runs SpaceX and Tesla Motors, now runs Twitter, at least as far as we know of.

You can check his profile to see for yourself, not to mention all the news outlets that are gonna be focusing on exclusively on that this week... or this month, for that matter.

Pretty big topic right now, I might dare say.

 

What I think about this will not go on this post, but you can DM me if you want to know.

[Rudolph]

Given Elon Musk's track record, it is probably going to end in failure like every thing he touches and he is going to have to sell it at a loss.

 

Let us not forget that he already tried to chicken out of the original deal and Twitter had to threaten to sue him for it to proceed as planned.

[Caffeine Freak]

Not trying to be a smartass here, but if you want people's thoughts on this, you'd probably have just as much luck reading through the last (now locked) thread that was posted about it. I can't see this thread ending any differently, tbh.

[omx32x]

i dont think all that much will change to be honest i really doubt musk will allow free speech in the level he says he will

 

twitter already has a lot of freedom when we compare to other mainstream social media sites and there are notorious groups that abuse it like maps so i dont think having even more freedom will change anything

[dasho]

Outstanding, I don't use Twitter at all but this pisses off the kind of people that I get amused by seeing pissed off. I also posted that in the first thread, but it's even more true now that it's come to fruition.

Edited October 29, 2022 by dasho

[kinker31]

12 minutes ago, Caffeine Freak said:

Not trying to be a smartass here, but if you want people's thoughts on this, you'd probably have just as much luck reading through the last (now locked) thread that was posted about it. I can't see this thread ending any differently, tbh.

Ah, didn't realize that thread was there, though I will admit I wasn't really looking that hard.

In hindsight, I probably wouldn't have made this thread if I knew about that thread ahead of time.

[Mr Masker]

I'm not currently all that fussed about the new ownership, but I found it funny when a bunch of Twitter higher-ups lost their jobs. Actual dumpster fire site

Edited October 29, 2022 by Mr Masker

[june gloom]

Twitter was garbage, but now it's going to be extra garbage. "Free speech" absolutism just means getting to say slurs without consequence. Meanwhile progressive causes will continue to be censored. Trans people can have violent threats directed at them, but will get banned for saying "go fuck yourself." All this already happens on Twitter, it's just going to get significantly worse.

 

The only mitigating factor that I can think of is that Musk likes money a lot more than he likes "free speech" (which he clearly doesn't believe in either considering how easily bruised his ego is) and if he lets Twitter descend into the anarchic fascist hellsite his fans so dearly want it to be he's looking at hefty fines from both the UK and the EU. Unfortunately he's also a moron so it may take a while for him to catch on.

[Rudolph]

38 minutes ago, Mr Masker said:

I found it funny when a bunch of Twitter higher-ups lost their jobs

It is hardly surprising, as that kind of things always happen and those higher-ups were given millions of dollars in compensation.

 

Elon Musk simply did not walk in and smugly show people the door like in the movies.

Edited October 29, 2022 by Rudolph

[esselfortium]

Twitter is a nightmare hell site and it's about to become more of one.

 

The one saving grace is that owning Twitter is also going to make Elon Musk miserable.

[holaareola]

1 hour ago, Rudolph said:

Given Elon Musk's track record, it is probably going to end in failure like every thing he touches and he is going to have to sell it at a loss.

Joining those enormous failures such as resupplying the ISS, keeping vital communcation operational in Ukraine and selling a few million electric cars? Is Tesla still worth more than Ford? I dunno, probably.

 

Twitter's real damage has been warping the worldview of the upper echelons of the information and political classes and driving polarisation and disconnection even further. Whatever stupid shit Musk might do would pale in comparison to that.

 

Given it was bought at a premium, I agree with you he'd probably have to sell it at a loss. Twitter has struggled to really execute on the financial side like other social media and I certainly find it difficult to see how they can squeeze more money out of it without compromising the addictiveness of the core product.

Edited October 29, 2022 by holaareola

[Mr Masker]

3 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

It is hardly surprising, as that kind of things always happen and those higher-ups were given millions of dollars in compensation.

 

Elon Musk simply did not walk in and smugly show people the door like in the movies.

Yeah, I suppose this is hardly going to destroy these big higher up people. But hey I'll celebrate anyway out of spite.

 

 

[Rudolph]

11 minutes ago, holaareola said:

Joining those enormous failures such as resupplying the ISS, keeping vital communcation operational in Ukraine and selling a few million electric cars? Is Tesla still worth more than Ford? I dunno, probably.

All of those happened thanks to the very government subsidies and support that Elon Musk claims to be so opposed to and also the workers that he clearly despises, as evidenced by his long history of shitty business practices and union-busting.

 

And it is also well documented that Elon Musk simply took over Tesla from its original owners and then proceeded to take all the credit for himself. The man is nothing short of a parasite and the only thing he is (sort of) good at is lying about his own importance and accomplishments.

Edited October 29, 2022 by Rudolph

[holaareola]

Just now, Rudolph said:

None of those happened because of Elon Musk, but due to the very government subsidies that Elon Musk claims to be so opposed to.

 

It is also well documented that Elon Musk simply took over Tesla from its original owners and took all the credit for himself. The man is nothing short of a parasite and the only thing he is (sort of) good at is lying.

You said "failure like every thing he touches". According to wiki he became CEO in 2008. For 14 of Tesla's 19 years then, and it's the company that has sold the most non-fossil fuel cars in the world (EV have their own trade-offs admittedly). Is that failure? "Took all the credit" in year 1 of 5 perhaps, maybe even year 3 of 8. But year 14 of 19? It's a bit like saying Steve Jobs took all the credit from Steve Wozniak.

 

Could say you hate his guts without letting the animus warp your sense of reality, which it appears to be doing.

[Mr. Freeze]

Hard to say what this will actually change minus the ability to say slurs freely now. Twitter has always been shit whether in the hands of Delusional Drug-Addled Dorsey or the Muskrat himself. I'm still interested in the Cybertruck though. 

 

And if you want to hate on Musk, hate on him for union-busting. Or coming up with ridiculous ideas to fight traffic. Or bothsidesing the Russia/Ukraine conflict. Not for taking over a company, that's something dumb Redditors care about. 

Edited October 29, 2022 by Mr. Freeze

[LexiMax]

Twitter is basically a glorified self-promotion RSS feed at this point.  It's certainly worthless as a social network, and Twitter has been alienating active users since before the deal was announced.  I don't really see a realistic avenue for the new ownership to improve upon things.  They certainly don't have a prayer of fixing any bot problem, and if they relax their moderation or unban shitheads for "free speech" reasons it's probably just going to chase more profitable users off the site.

 

I'm not sure where the Twitter diaspora is headed.  Most of my online socialization these days takes place on Discord, and discord servers are moderated by actual humans capable of judgement calls - sometimes bad ones, but that's why multiple servers exist.  But if you like the microblogging format of Twitter (and want to actually talk to people instead of using it as a vehicle of self promotion), Mastodon has been a better Twitter than Twitter for years now.

Edited October 29, 2022 by AlexMax

[june gloom]

51 minutes ago, holaareola said:

Twitter's real damage has been warping the worldview of the upper echelons of the information and political classes and driving polarisation and disconnection even further. Whatever stupid shit Musk might do would pale in comparison to that. 

 

I'm not sure what you mean by this. While it's true that Twitter has twisted Discourse™ into a bad faith hellscape (nevermind that it was already well on its way there thanks to a decade of TERFs and sociopaths on Tumblr before they all moved to Twitter) I'm not sure where "the upper echelons of the information and political classes" come into it.

 

Also if any one particular site is most to blame for "polarization" (considering the sheer amount of smug centrists with incoherent politics still active on the site I'm not sure what you mean by "polarization" either) it's Facebook. As bad as Twitter is, Facebook is orders of magnitude worse. Every time I go on it I feel insane.

Edited October 29, 2022 by june gloom

[LexiMax]

26 minutes ago, june gloom said:

As bad as Twitter is, Facebook is orders of magnitude worse. Every time I go on it I feel insane. 

 

Facebook is a portent for what Twitter could turn into.  Not "dead" but not a terribly attractive place to visit, especially for younger generations of social media users.  Basically, "uncool."

Edited October 29, 2022 by AlexMax

[VoanHead]

Idgaf. As long as I still have my daily memes, funny posts, cute animal videos, art, and sometimes loods on my feed and nothing changes for my personal experience, I’m honestly unbothered.

[Lizardcommando]

 

 

Granted, I barely even used Twitter since I signed up for it years ago just to tweet out a dumb meme picture to the Angie Tribeca twitter account or whatever, I see bad things coming for Twitter.

[indigotyrian]

55 minutes ago, june gloom said:

As bad as Twitter is, Facebook is orders of magnitude worse. Every time I go on it I feel insane.

 

I'm gonna be straight up I think Twitter is just as bad as (if not worse than) Facebook, it's just that certain cohorts (read: Millenials) tend to use Twitter more than Facebook so they've managed to curate an experience that isn't utterly godawful, whereas they hadn't done that with Facebook.

 

Twitter's entire ecosystem and primary purpose is built around group harassment. It's something that most people on the site engage in. Consider how much of Twitter's own specific jargon is built around dogpiling or dominating another person; "The Ratio," "Twitter's Main Character," "Twitter Do Your Thing," "Corncobbed," "They're Beating Your Ass In The QRTs," etc. etc. The entire design of Twitter is built around encouraging and disseminating drama, rewarding bon mots and snide repartees over discussion and collaboration, and quickly forming ever-shifting tribes and alliances built around instinctual gut feelings based on snippets of information that end up mutating through the world's fastest telephone game. It's an utter wolves' den and is, IMO, a more toxic place for people to brine in than 4chan -- and that's not an endorsement of 4chan by any means.

 

Nor do I think a pompous billionaire parasite (I repeat myself) is going to fix Twitter, or fix anything. I don't think he's particularly worse than the slugs who previously owned the site but I also don't think anything's going to change long term. Best case scenario he runs the site into the ground, there's a mass exodus, and nature can start healing again.

Edited October 30, 2022 by segfault

[Caffeine Freak]

From the figures I've read, Twitter has only seen a net profit for 2 out of the last 10 years of it's existence. It wouldn't be unfair to argue it's been stagnating for years before Musk took it over. Whether or not he can reverse that course or even slow it down is something I'm certainly interested in seeing. I'll keep my expectations modest. 

 

Personally, I see Twitter as somewhat a microcosm of the early 2000's internet---it can be a huge drain on your mental health if you spend too much time there, and it certainly deserves much of it's reputation as a toxic, vitriolic hellscape. On the flipside, it's also a bit liberating to be able to go on there and shitpost a few random things, and promptly hop back off. If you want it to be anything approaching a productive experience that goes beyond shitposting, memes and the like, you have to do some serious work curating your feed with accounts that post useful, informative stuff that interests you. This is especially true because the most thought-provoking stuff on Twitter is rarely what gets the most traction---often, the most visible things are half-thought Tweets that go viral because they get mass-shared by simpletons. 

 

Back on topic, if Musk re-directs the company resources away from some of the more frivolous stuff they've been focused on for years and more towards cracking down on some of the actual shady shit happening regularly on the site (scamming, botting, swatting, doxing, violent threats, posting of illicit porn, directed harassment, mass flaggings, etc.) then I think the site as a whole would vastly improve. Again, I'm keeping my expectations in check.

Edited October 30, 2022 by Caffeine Freak

[Herr Dethnout]

2 hours ago, june gloom said:

if he lets Twitter descend into the anarchic fascist hellsite

 

It's not yet? With or without Musk Twitter is a complete Tumblr level clusterfuck.

[7Mahonin]

Don’t care. Twitter is stupid with or without Elon. 

[Gregor]

In Elon we trust.

[Rudolph]

2 hours ago, holaareola said:

Is that failure?

Yes. Self-driving Tesla cars have proven to be a disaster, the Cybertruck is a deathtrap, electric cars are not the solution to the climate crisis as they rely on mineral extraction that is devastating for both the environment and the local population, Tesla as a company is willing to back coups d'état and is also a terrible place to work for, SpaceX's rockets are shit and caused tremendous damage to the environment, the Boring Company is an embarrassing scam that was explicitly designed to discourage investment in public transit system (something that would actually help not just reduce pollution but improve American supply infrastructure), Starlink is making the job of astronomers harder and of course there is the whole cigar-shaped submarine fiasco...

 

The only thing Elon Musk has been good at so far is getting mainstream media to frame him as some sort of genius inventor.

Edited October 30, 2022 by Rudolph

[Dubium]

49 minutes ago, Gregor said:

In Elon we trust.

 

[Biodegradable]

I like how the only reason this has happened at this point is so Muskrat can avoid a lawsuit. My opinion on the matter hasn't changed since the last thread. Mind you, I get some people's concerns of his "free speech" rhetoric bringing back all the worst of hateful scumbags, but it might not happen as dramatically as that. A social media site heavily relies on its reputation and its abilities to attract new users and advertisers in regards to its future. Allowing Twitter to essentially transform into a clone of 4chan's notorious /pol/ board in the coming months as some fear would be suicide for the site. This would be especially damning given how much Twitter has been struggling stock-wise and the massive debt it currently owes. Given those little factoids and the fact that the obscure little platforms alt-right shitlords use in place of Twitter have shown no growth or profitability whatsoever over the years; I have a feeling Muskrat isn't going to be the saviour some right-wing blowhards want him to be.

 

Time will tell, kids.

[RDETalus]

I enjoy using twitter. I apparently don't suffer from all the mentally harmful twitter stuff you guys talk about, but I definitely recognize that they exist. I think it is a good place to debate with different people and learn new things, provided you choose to engage with reasonable people. It's not hard to figure out who's on twitter to converse and who's on twitter for tribal harassment.

 

I don't think the free speech, or left wing vs. right wing stuff is the real focus here. I'm not really sure what Elon's motive is. His stated goal is to "do something" about the profit driven media where bad news sells better than good news and causes people to 1) think the world is very terrible, and 2) stoke tribal divisions, but it's not very clear to me how controlling twitter or changing how twitter works is going to address that when twitter is really just a small player in a market dominated by media company giants.

Elon's a weird guy. I wouldn't say I trust him. He has ideas I like and don't like, but I will give him the benefit of the doubt for now.
 

Edited October 30, 2022 by RDETalus

[PineFresh]

I barely care anything about Twitter. However,

29 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

The only thing Elon Musk has been good at so far is getting mainstream media to frame him as some sort of genius inventor.

THIS this this this this.

 

Musk is just one modern example of how much ridiculous hero worship our society bestows upon the rich. We all seem to be drunk on this idea that anyone who's rich earned that money from some mythical quantity of hard work that us normal plebs could never be capable of, when more likely it's either blind luck or a long-term pattern of screwing people over. It's like no one's ever heard of survivor's bias.

 

That's not to say that wealthy people are inherently assholes (though there's a strong correlation). But in Musk's case, his history is clear and his attitude is maybe two notches away from Martin Shkreli territory. So yeah. He can rot in the hell he's being forced to purchase for all I care.

 

For my money, I'm just curious what's eventually going to emerge as the next Twitter.