[HN Gopher] Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now
___________________________________________________________________
Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now
Author : sanketpatrikar
Score : 940 points
Date : 2022-12-18 19:40 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| HellDunkel wrote:
| This guy is full of himself an d you guys know this. Stop adoring
| him.
| [deleted]
| barathr wrote:
| For those wondering about how to sign up to mastodon and what
| server to pick:
|
| It's like picking an email server. They all have their
| differences, but generally they are interoperable. You can read
| users from anywhere, and follow from anywhere. Better yet, it's
| fairly easy to move your account from one server to another if
| you don't like it.
|
| Your best bet is some of the bigger second-tier servers (ones
| that have thousands but not hundreds of thousands of users)
| because they aren't as heavily loaded.
|
| https://instances.social/
|
| https://github.com/McKael/mastodon-documentation/blob/master...
| granzymes wrote:
| Just be careful to choose a reputable server, because the
| moderators will be able to read your DMs.
| barathr wrote:
| I think DMs should be treated as semi-public on any platform
| without end-to-end encryption and a method for verifying keys
| of who you're DMing. So not really that different than
| Twitter, Facebook, and many others.
| rglullis wrote:
| > Your best bet is some of the bigger second-tier servers.
|
| Until they get overloaded, and face the same issues as the
| "first tier" ones...
|
| I know that what I am about to say is out of personal interest,
| but I really wish people took the analogy to email servers more
| seriously and started looking at _commercial_ providers. I 'm
| offering Mastodon services for about $0.50/user/month [0], and
| I have the infra to host 20-30k users efficiently.
|
| For this type of case, there is nothing more sustainable, fair
| and efficient than letting the market figure things out. But if
| we keep thinking that accounts should be offered for free,
| there will be always market distortions.
|
| [0] https://communick.com/packages
| ahepp wrote:
| Is there a way for me to export if I decide to self host
| later?
|
| I don't have the time to set up a Mastodon server right now,
| but part of the appeal of Mastodon is having more control
| over my data.
| orwin wrote:
| Yes, there is a button to export all your data as csv.
|
| Honestly, i think something better can be done around the
| Activitypub protocol than mastodon. And i'm not a social
| media guy, so i will wait until someting better is built.
| barathr wrote:
| Yes, you can export, and most servers will put up a helpful
| forward pointer once you move your account so people see
| where your new profile is. I haven't tried it but others
| who have seem to keep all their followers / following
| seamlessly.
| rglullis wrote:
| Yes, you can export your data to any new server and you can
| even redirect your followers to your new identity. You'd
| only have trouble if the instance admin blocks your account
| before you get to do any of that, but for anything like
| that to happen you'd have to have done something truly
| egregious and/or your admin is one shitty, petty person.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| I created my twitter account when sending tweet via text was
| still a thing. Never really used it, so I'm not the right
| demographic.
|
| But I do think your approach is the right one. I hope you
| succeed a breaking even and generate a margin for your time.
| rglullis wrote:
| Thank you for your kind words. If Twitter/Mastodon is not
| what you need, perhaps I could interest you in my hosted
| XMPP and Matrix offerings?
| dopidopHN wrote:
| I'm self hosting those, thanks. I did notice your
| offering in the prices.
|
| Maybe you could benefit from clearer price ? For instance
| not mixing group prices with prices for single accounts?
|
| Idk I suck at that, but I know all those services pretty
| well and I was having difficulty to follow prices.
| rglullis wrote:
| That page (like many others) do need a lot of UX love.
| Pretty soon I hope to be launching managed instance
| hosting (i.e, people that want to have their own
| instance, under their own domain) and I'm already
| scratching my head at how to present two complete
| different classes of products on the same page.
|
| Figuring out these small issues is hard, it gets even
| harder when I am promising that I am not doing any type
| of user tracking or analytics. I just saw a message on
| the support site about someone who wanted to make a
| deposit, but reported "on mobile, the button is grayed
| out". Turns out that on mobile there is no cursor to
| indicate that the user needs to select the payment method
| first. So, technically not broken, but functionally this
| issue could've cost me hundreds of dollars already?
| [deleted]
| haunter wrote:
| > It's like picking an email server. They all have their
| differences, but generally they are interoperable.
|
| Disagree. Mastodon servers can be all over the place from
| politics to hobbies to tech. It's not like an email handle at
| all your choice _matters_ because others moderate the server
| and who you can connect with.
|
| Self hosting is the only way to go with Mastodon (costs the
| same as Twitter Blue btw if you don't want to do your own)
| barathr wrote:
| Yes that's true in terms of the local feeds, but in terms of
| getting one's feet wet it's fine.
|
| For HN users, this is one among many reasonable tech-oriented
| choices:
|
| https://techhub.social
|
| Here are a couple that are infosec oriented:
|
| https://infosec.exchange
|
| https://ioc.exchange/
| krick wrote:
| But is there something, like, serving as a bridge to Twitter
| and stuff? I'm really uneducated in this stuff, I don't have an
| account neither on Twitter, nor on Mastodon, and I don't really
| understand, what people do on Twitter. For me, the only reason
| I ever wanted to join Twitter (but not strongly enough for me
| to type in my phone number) is being subscribed to all these
| celebrities like Musk, Kanye West or whoever is the most
| popular ATM, just to cut out one link in the chain and seeing
| that stuff before it appears in the news anyway.
| idlewords wrote:
| There should be a UI shortcut for bluechecks who want to post a
| dramatic tweet that they're leaving Twitter and then stay. Making
| the most common actions on the site easier would boost usability.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| It's interesting to see these tech influencers and their lag time
| on giving Elon the benefit of the doubt before they've had
| enough. Will Elon ever have a "coming to jesus moment" and
| realize that he's alienated so many of his peers that he is, in
| fact, in the wrong? Or is he so delusional that he really does
| believe he has the answers?
| noelsusman wrote:
| Elon has right-wing reactionary brain worms. In my experience,
| most people who fall in never get out. I don't have much hope
| that a billionaire will be an exception to that.
| ksherlock wrote:
| Elon Musk's peers are people like Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping,
| and Mohammed bin Salman. He's not alienating them.
| tootie wrote:
| Everyone shrugged off the "pedo guy" episode as a lapse of
| judgment and not a glimpse into his real personality.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| Musk did publicly apologize to the diver and the courts ruled
| that Musk was not liable, so lots of people considered it a
| settled matter. I considered Musk a cool tech person before
| that event, then a weird tech person after that. Since 2020
| though he has turned into just an awful tech person.
| adharmad wrote:
| Very likely the only people who can reliably send that message
| to Musk are $TSLA investors. Until he has the cushion provided
| by $TSLA stock price, he is pretty much going to continue doing
| whatever he wants to.
| thinking4real wrote:
| dahdum wrote:
| Not as long as Elon continues his trend of _acting_
| progressively stupider. At least to me, there's a stark
| difference in his public appearances. He used to appear
| intelligent, thoughtful, and nuanced. Now he's disjointed,
| often tired, and quick to deflect with jokes or political
| controversy. Doesn't seem like the same man.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I've seen people that were super intelligent and
| compassionate go on drug binges and come out like Musk.
| Just as intelligent, but now no longer able to empathize
| with others and using whatever intelligence was left for
| malice and damage.
| [deleted]
| adalacelove wrote:
| Terence Tao is on mastodon. Beat that!
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Flip the script: what evidence do we have that he's smarter
| than eight billion people?
| kukx wrote:
| Please explain what "smarter than eight billion people"
| mean? What is the smartness of eight billion people, is it
| some new aggregate? Do you sum it or get the mean? Are
| eight billion people by default always right? I am curious
| how it can make sense.
| insanitybit wrote:
| They're obviously talking about individuals, not a
| collective intelligence.
| andreygrehov wrote:
| Well, when it comes to Elon vs 8B people, money could be
| one metric.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| That metric is taking a real beating lately.
| andreygrehov wrote:
| I disagree, because it's not only Elon who is losing
| money these days. The economy is doing a nosedive.
| Everyone is affected, including Elon. It would've been a
| different conversation had everyone was making money, but
| Elon.
| insanitybit wrote:
| Yeah, I checked my portfolio this morning and I lost 10s
| of billions of dollars. This economy is killing me!
| aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA wrote:
| Henry Ford was very rich, and very stupid outside his
| fields of expertise. And supported antisemites along with
| the Nazi regime.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| What stupid things did he do? (I don't know much about
| him)
|
| It sounds like you might be mistaking ideology with
| intelligence?
| bestcoder69 wrote:
| Hm on the one hand we have survivorship bias, plus the fact
| that capital accumulates more capital near-automatically at
| some point, as well as his relative lack of qualms with
| committing fraud (that he's gotten lucky about going
| un/under-punished).
|
| But on the other hand, he built some impressive companies,
| he is the richest person in the world, and he has a lot of
| gumption, y'know?
| JoshTko wrote:
| It's simple to realize 1. People have finite capabilities to
| master subjects. 2. Elon is a master in hardware engineering
| businesses. 3. Twitter is not about hardware engineering.
| ep103 wrote:
| You're assuming that Elon isn't doing what he intended to do,
| turn Twitter into his own personal, right wing echo-chamber
| with political influence.
| throwawayoaky wrote:
| There's this weird thing where a principal might be deluded
| about their own intentions. It's useful because it allows
| them to give inaccurate information about their future
| behavior without 'lying'. If a sincere/passionate person's
| actions regularly mismatch their words, suspect this.
| wpietri wrote:
| As much as I dislike Musk and what he's done to Twitter, I
| suspect he didn't intend that. I just think that's the
| natural outcome of his feelings, his position in society, and
| his relentless self focus.
|
| David Roth did a good job looking at the dynamic:
| https://defector.com/the-eternal-mystery-of-a-rich-mans-
| poli...
|
| And Adam Serwer has a useful take as well:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/legal-
| righ...
| insanitybit wrote:
| He's tweeted out some pretty hard right wing talking points
| and advocated voting for conservatives. It seems pretty
| intentional.
| wpietri wrote:
| I agree he holds those opinions. I just don't think his
| intent in buying Twitter was to put it in the tank for
| the right.
|
| It's not clear to me that he had a fully formed intent
| when he made a bid for it. And a big piece of evidence
| there was that he tried to weasel out and was forced to
| buy it. Another bit of evidence is the way he has
| obviously been impulsively half-assing pretty much
| everything he's done since he took it over. He does not
| look like a man with a plan.
|
| But to the extent that he had clear intent, I think it
| was more about hubris. There's this phenomenon in the
| food industry where a rich person will basically say, "I
| have eaten at a lot of restaurants, so I'd be really good
| at running one!" So they will spend a bunch of money on
| launching and unless they hired competent industry
| experts and deferred to them, they'll create a
| clusterfuck. I think it's a similar deal with Musk: He
| was a dedicated and successful Twitter user, and he
| thought he could run it better. Turned out it was harder
| than it looks.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| He could have bought parler, truth or whatever for far less
| and already been closer to his goal.
| eternalban wrote:
| Twitter was/remains? a geopolitical & cultural instrument.
| The precise reason why there is a fight over who gets to
| say what on Twitter is because it is a powerful platform
| for propaganda and agitprop. You can organize uprisings on
| Twitter. That is why it is such a hot potato. (It is _not_
| about utility. think Payless vs Prada.)
|
| Elon apparently bet on the fact that the establishment
| could not stomach the idea of reconstructing that _high
| visibility platform_ elsewhere. Everyone knows it is not
| simply about technology. Twitter remains "the clown car
| that fell into a gold mine". He will probe on how far he
| can go but will promptly retreat (ex: EU).
|
| My guess is that his strategy is to prolong this period of
| uncertainty. Things like PG's decision may signal a
| consensus that they need to reconstruct humpty dumpty
| elsewhere.
|
| Watch for trends in use of twitter as a news source in
| establishment press. If that significantly declines, the
| political class will follow.
|
| p.s. It is upsetting to think that one of the immediate
| beneficiaries of Twitter itself being 'deplatformed from
| polite society' is the relief it offers regimes like
| Islamic Republic. They are happy, that much is fairly
| certain.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > Twitter was/remains? a geopolitical & cultural
| instrument.
|
| Give it a while.
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| It'd be missing the political influence though, those don't
| have any influence and nobody would be paying any attention
| to what he does there.
| morelisp wrote:
| I doubt Parler would have sold to him at the time, Owens
| and Farmer are probably still stoking Ye to make some
| ludicrous bid on it again.
|
| Musk, on the other hand, needs the audience.
| password54321 wrote:
| I like how people always assume there is some genius
| underlying plan. All I'm seeing is an egomaniac going on a
| tantrum with something he didn't even want. What you are
| describing is what Trump wants with 'Truth Social' who
| himself wants nothing to do with Twitter.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Those have never done well. They want the angry/upset
| reaction they can't get in an echo chamber; the Parlers,
| Truth Socials, Gabs etc. will never give them this.
|
| They're already asking Musk to stop lefties from being able
| to even block them; it's the same phenomeon as incels. Free
| speech was never enough; they want an audience guaranteed,
| too. https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1604052966839062528
| ghayes wrote:
| That's simply not true, per the policy:
|
| https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/social-
| platfo...
|
| > At both the Tweet level and the account level, we will
| remove any free promotion of prohibited 3rd-party social
| media platforms, such as linking out (i.e. using URLs) to
| any of the below platforms on Twitter, or providing your
| handle without a URL...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I don't follow. Did you mean to reply to a different
| comment?
| ghayes wrote:
| Yes I believe so. HN is loading too slow to find it, but
| a sister comment that stated the policy only applies to
| accounts whose primary purpose is to share other social
| media links. This is now further evidenced by PG's
| account being suspended.
| cratermoon wrote:
| There's this shading in free speech absolutists from "I
| have a right to say what I want" to "I have the right to
| the audience I want".
| josteink wrote:
| > You're assuming that Elon isn't doing what he intended to
| do, turn Twitter into his own personal, right wing echo-
| chamber with political influence.
|
| He simply unbanned accounts which were wrongfully banned.
| Accounts which simply communicated legal to hold opinions.
| There is nothing wrong or morally objectionable about this.
| I'd rather say it commendable.
|
| If Twitter is becoming a right-wing echo-chamber it's because
| left-wing accounts are leaving and nothing else.
|
| So why are they? Are they afraid of having an argument where
| they can't have the opposing view banned?
|
| Cmon! You can do better than this.
| wpietri wrote:
| > There is nothing wrong or morally objectionable about
| this.
|
| Depends on the opinion. "We must kill all the [insert
| ethnic group]" is a legal-to-hold opinion. But I'd say it's
| both wrong and morally objectionable to provide a platform
| for transmitting that opinion. Which is why Twitter banned
| people like that.
|
| And even for those without a moral sense, I should point
| out that it was also bad for business. Twitter had a
| business choice to make: they could keep all the blatant
| racists or they could keep the non-white audience they
| targeted plus the white people that don't like open racism.
| Even if you're a-ok with open bigotry, it's pretty obvious
| that the right financial choice is to boot most of the open
| bigots, so that the platform feels safe enough to everybody
| else.
| josteink wrote:
| > "We must kill all the [insert ethnic group]"
|
| To be fair, that has always been allowed to say on
| Twitter as long as the target is either white, men or
| both.
|
| The only news is now you're (equally) allowed to spread
| that kind of toxic hate towards other groups as well.
|
| Is that a good thing? Possibly not, but at least it is
| objectively more fair than it used to be.
| [deleted]
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| It's not though:
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/left-wing-activists-
| banned-f...
|
| https://www.salon.com/2022/12/01/elon-musks-twitter-is-
| purgi...
|
| https://observer.com/2022/12/left-wing-twitter-accounts-
| crit...
|
| https://theintercept.com/2022/11/29/elon-musk-twitter-
| andy-n...
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| In a large number of cases because they've been banned.
| vdnkh wrote:
| You're being downvoted because HN is a lolbertarian paradise,
| but this is correct. He wants the Parler audience.
| rsynnott wrote:
| So, like, Truth Social, only without, well, the main
| attraction? Hard to see much of a market for that.
| conradfr wrote:
| He's probably wrong but "previous Twitter" was not right
| either.
|
| It's funny how "Twitter is a private company they can kick who
| they want from their platform" is suddenly not so popular over
| the crowd that used to parrot it. Hypocrites from every side,
| unsurprisingly.
|
| Anyway, I can't believe his grand idea for Twitter was the
| botched "Twitter Blue", and the next version doesn't seem to
| make sense either.
| tamrix wrote:
| The internet has a short memory. No one's going to care in 6
| months and everyone will be back on twitter.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I highly doubt that.
| pavlov wrote:
| Musk seems to be speedrunning into Howard Hughes status.
|
| He has so much wealth that, like Hughes, he could alienate
| every business contact and still spend the rest of his life
| making leftfield investments and watching movies naked in a
| dark hotel room. (Well, replace watching movies with tweeting,
| I suppose.)
| Pxtl wrote:
| With the bigotry and cars I tend to think Ford, not Hughes.
| jacquesm wrote:
| He'll go well beyond that. Hughes stopped at self destruct.
| Musk is likely to take a lot of people and institutions with
| him on the way down.
| atonse wrote:
| This to me feels like the right analogy.
|
| It's both possible that Musk is a genius and that he's
| cracked as many geniuses do.
|
| His embarrassment in no way erases his accomplishments of the
| past decade and warrant a "he was never smart".
|
| But his downright pathetic demeanor the past few months do
| eclipse and ruin what could've been an incredible legacy.
| rvba wrote:
| There are press articles that say that Musk showed his
| friends the benefits of MDMA, Mushrooms, psychedelics,
| marijuana.
|
| I dont know if he does drugs, but sure he seems to behave
| strange.
| nwienert wrote:
| Just a reminder that just because liberals are freaking
| out, doesn't mean it's a shared opinion. I see this
| happening on HN constantly where over time the hivemind
| shares their in-group responses to articles blasting
| whatever their current enemy is (yes it's heavily liberal
| here).
|
| Then after a few weeks of this, you start seeing funny
| comment threads like this. Where there's this sort of this
| tactic to take control of the narrative, and make it seem
| like everyone agrees that X is bad.
|
| It works really well because of course even if only a few
| people leave Twitter in rage, now we can share that as
| proof of status quo and keep building the narrative.
|
| Just a reminder - this is only a view shared by the
| extremely online / tech / liberal bubble.
|
| As an example, on more conservative discussions boards you
| see the same thing happening on the opposite side. Until
| threads are literally fully premised on the fact that
| everyone agrees that someone or some org is "speedrunning
| Y" or whatever.
|
| My feedback is this: don't write like this. It makes you
| look daft, because it shows ether you don't realize you're
| in an opinion bubble, or you're a willing participant in
| gaslighting for the only purpose of back patting /
| narrative control. I see this stuff all the damn time and
| usually ignore, but nice to have a chance to clarify this.
| dd36 wrote:
| What even is this? They're sharing an opinion...
| paxys wrote:
| Elon has been in the middle of his "come to Jesus" moment for a
| while.
|
| He is running Twitter like an autocratic dictator. He is
| restoring extremist right wing accounts. He is banning open
| conversation and dissent. He is peddling QAnon conspiracy
| theories. He was against all covid measures and called for
| Fauci's arrest. He has cozied up to China and middle eastern
| dictatorships while putting up the "free speech" charade
| against democrats in the US. He was most recently hanging out
| with Jared Kushner in a private box at the world cup final.
|
| Why are people still doubting who he really is?
| ipsum2 wrote:
| It's news to me that that users are not allowed to mention other
| social networks' accounts on Twitter anymore. Seems short
| sighted, how many users is Twitter losing to
| Instagram/Discord/Mastodon?
| donkeyd wrote:
| Interestingly though, the accounts for Facebook, LinkedIn and
| Instagram are still on Twitter, but the one for Mastodon isn't.
| I wonder why...
| input_sh wrote:
| The policy change was on the frontpage of HN just a couple of
| hours ago, but you can imagine how comments went and why it's
| no longer there.
| permalac wrote:
| Self censoring? Or cease and desist?
| txru wrote:
| HN relatively deweights posts that get a lot of argument
| without a lot of insight. Things about politics, or tech
| involved culture war, or continuous divisive news stories
| disappear from the front page quickly.
|
| I would classify that as 'generic moderation policy' rather
| than censorship
| duskwuff wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34040165 is on the front
| page at #19 right now.
|
| There were a couple of other duplicate discussions, but
| that's the main one.
| K7PJP wrote:
| It's a brand new policy, and it was enforced before it was even
| declared. I just deleted my Twitter account after 14 years.
| It's over.
| r721 wrote:
| Here is the HN discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34040165
| purple_ferret wrote:
| There's an exception: TikTok
|
| Fortuitously preserving LibsOfTikTok and Elon's good
| relationship with the CCP
| russdill wrote:
| I'm fully willing to pile on, but I don't know that it's an
| example of a policy violation. It's linking to things people
| are doing on TikTok, not promoting a specific account or
| TikTok itself.
| purple_ferret wrote:
| The policy doesn't mention individual accounts but the
| platform itself:
|
| >we will remove any free promotion of prohibited 3rd-party
| social media platforms
|
| >Accounts that are used for the main purpose of promoting
| content on another social platform may be suspended
| vkou wrote:
| It's not short-sighted, Twitter is simply championing free
| speech.
|
| Free speech is defined as the intersection between anything-
| thats-legal and anything-that-doesn't-upset-its-owner.
| CryptoBanker wrote:
| Are you deliberately trolling?
| flutas wrote:
| >It's news to me that that users are not allowed to mention
| other social networks' accounts on Twitter anymore.
|
| Isn't that a mischaracterization though? The new policy they
| announced, as far as I've seen, only applies if the account is
| "solely" promoting other brands. [0]
|
| > Specifically, we will remove accounts created _solely_ for
| the purpose of promoting other social platforms and content
| that contains links or usernames for the following platforms:
| Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and
| Post.
|
| [0]:
| https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/160453126541959168...
|
| EDIT:
|
| The tweet linked seems to be the mischaracterization and not
| this take.
|
| Reading the full policy[1] does say that, while their tweets
| don't.
|
| [1]: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/social-
| platfo...
| tobylane wrote:
| That may be the written policy, but there were widespread
| reports of mastodon ('s largest sites) being considered too
| harmful a link to be put in a twitter bio.
| https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/15/23512113/twitter-
| blockin...
|
| I don't see PG reacting to that news on twitter. Is there a
| reaction anywhere?
| flutas wrote:
| > That may be the written policy, but there were widespread
| reports of mastodon ('s largest sites) being considered too
| harmful a link to be put in a twitter bio.
| https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/15/23512113/twitter-
| blockin...
|
| I saw that and assumed (maybe wrongly) that it was an
| automated ban from some internal automod-like system
| running amuck and due to the layoffs/quits/staff issues no
| body at Twitter knowing how to disable it.
|
| Guess the jury is still out, but does anybody know if that
| same error is showing up for facebook links for example? If
| so it's a smoking gun.
| mmastrac wrote:
| I just tested a few mins ago and I wasn't able to tweet a
| link to a post on hachyderm (not even just my profile)
| because it was "harmful".
| jeffbee wrote:
| flutas wrote:
| > Read it with your entire brain.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Don't be an ass.
|
| > we will remove accounts created solely for the purpose of
| promoting other social platforms
|
| > AND
|
| > content that contains links or usernames for the
| following platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth
| Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post.
|
| I'm reading it explicitly how it's written when taking the
| grammar into account. [0] I've even expanded it below, so
| that you can see how it reads without a comma.
|
| > we will remove accounts created solely for the purpose of
| promoting other social platforms
|
| AND
|
| > we will remove accounts created solely for the purpose of
| promoting content that contains links or usernames for the
| following platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth
| Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post.
|
| Looking at the full policy though, yeah their tweets aren't
| in line with what the full policy states.[1]
|
| [0]: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/comma-before-and/
|
| [1]: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/social-
| platfo...
| russdill wrote:
| "At both the Tweet level and the account level, we will
| remove any free promotion of prohibited 3rd-party social
| media platforms"
| andreyk wrote:
| Related to this - what's the deal with the HN new pages having a
| bunch of "[dupe] Twitter bans promotion of other social
| networks"? Shouldn't posting the same link add to its upvote
| count?
|
| Paul Graham is specifically leaving because of this, feels like a
| pretty major topic of interest to HN...
| haunter wrote:
| I wonder when, if ever, mainstream migration will happen. For
| example most TV channels were posting World Cup goals on Twitter
| asap. Same if you follow for example NFL. Easy to follow the
| games with instant highlights. When will these leave or simply
| stop posting?
| bluedino wrote:
| Why would they?
| smcn wrote:
| Social media is a massive advertising platform for these
| companies. They'll go where the people are. Most likely it'll
| begin with posts being mirrored between the two places, and
| then switching over when/if Twitter becomes less and less
| relevant.
| smcn wrote:
| Understandable, and I'm hoping we see more and more people make
| the switch.
|
| Has been hilarious watching this car crash.
| [deleted]
| phoe-krk wrote:
| Direct Fediverse link: https://mas.to/@paulg
| emadabdulrahim wrote:
| Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34040165
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Title: "Promotion of alternative social platforms policy"
|
| Context: This is specifically linked in pg's tweet.
|
| (Which should be reasonably obvious, though several comments to
| this thread suggest otherwise.)
| slowhadoken wrote:
| "I'm going to Mastodon!" Three weeks later "Mastodon Is awful!"
| kennedywm wrote:
| Looks like pg's account has been suspended. :/
| fortran77 wrote:
| I can't read this tweet because he's blocked me. Can someone tell
| me what it says?
| lapcat wrote:
| Just open it in a private/incognito window.
| lies_really wrote:
| It says "HN user fortran77 upset me so much that I blocked him
| here and am leaving Twitter forevermore. I just can't deal with
| these emotions, it's too much."
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Nitter is your friend:
|
| <https://nitter.kavin.rocks/paulg/status/1604556563338887168>
| norwalkbear wrote:
| He'll be back. If you hate Twitter you will despise Mastodon.
| bsaul wrote:
| Never understood how people would leave twitter for mastodon
| (which is federated) as a way to protest against nonregulated
| free speech (not the case for pg, but that's what's started the
| trend).
| mmastrac wrote:
| That's easily disprovable, as I hate Twitter and like Mastodon.
| Some small growing pains, but it's been the best experience
| I've had on social media since Google+.
| azangru wrote:
| What's wrong with Mastodon? I thought that because it isn't
| serving you ads, it has much less incentive for keeping you
| constantly engaged and outraged.
| jansan wrote:
| Following Paul Graham's link to his profile was my first
| visit to Mastodon. This was hugely underwhelming. It looks
| and feels just slow and sad, not sure how this should attract
| the average user.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > It looks and feels just slow and sad
|
| Honestly, this is the same feel I get when I visit Twitter.
| Thing is - I don't have an app, so it's always slow.
| teddyh wrote:
| So, when is @HNStatus leaving Twitter?
| nedsma wrote:
| Can't say about pg, but I left Twitter (I'm a regular, non-blue
| user) because the ads lately got out of control. Every other post
| is a promoted ad from a totally unrelated category, which I can't
| relate to. Ads targeting either stopped working, or Twitter
| allowed large numbers of low quality advertisers to push their
| ads.
| starik36 wrote:
| I experienced a similar phenomenon. I have 2 accounts, the
| latter following very few people. So it's showing almost
| exclusively ads and promoted tweets since there is nothing else
| to show.
| optionalsquid wrote:
| I turned my ad-blocker off a while ago, out of curiosity, and
| my ads have been a mix of (mostly) no ads at all or
| (occasionally) a bunch of ads at once for really strange
| things. One time I got six ads in a row for locations in China.
| Not tourist spots, mind, but stuff like a dig site in a Chinese
| city. Another time I got amateurish Christian evangelism and a
| guy promoting a article in Nature about cats recognizing their
| names. I'm not even sure why the second guy was promoting that
| article, as they were neither a co-author nor affiliated. Very
| rarely do I get ads that are even remotely related to the kind
| of accounts I follow on Twitter.
| kristiandupont wrote:
| How does one find a good Mastodon server? On his website it says
| "Follow me at @paulg@mas.to" -- does that mean that he is on
| mas.to? What if I want to follow him but also someone on another
| server? Or do I not understand how it works?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Yes, he's on mas.to, but you can follow him from an account
| elsewhere.
| navanchauhan wrote:
| You can join any mastodon server and follow someone from any
| other server.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| (with some complexities about defederation; Gab is on a
| Mastodon fork, but most of the Mastodon world has blocked
| interchange with it.
| rglullis wrote:
| It goes both ways. Gab has also closed federation.
|
| Same for Truth Social.
| xenodium wrote:
| You can follow on any server. For example, I'm on
| indieweb.social but follow folks in all kinds of instances:
| ruby.social, fostodon.org, emacs.ch, aus.social, mstdn.jp...
|
| ps. You can also follow hashtags if interested in a specific
| topic.
| cesarb wrote:
| > ps. You can also follow hashtags if interested in a
| specific topic.
|
| AFAIK, only if your server is on Mastodon 4.0.0 or newer, as
| Mastodon 3.x didn't have that feature yet.
| cldellow wrote:
| > How does one find a good Mastodon server?
|
| Hm, what makes a good server? I think for me, I want: not going
| to disappear, high uptime, low latency, moderate moderation.
|
| You can measure moderation by going to most server's /about
| page, to see which servers they've limited interactions with.
|
| I'm on hachyderm.io. It's good, but could be better. I expect
| it will remain at least at this baseline level of quality, so
| I'm too lazy to search out other options.
|
| My wife is on wandering.shop. I'd say it struggles much more
| with latency/availability, but is still fine, especially if you
| use an app, which can paper over some of the latency issues.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Yes, this is the thing. Mastodon has a bit of a discovery
| issue that other social network options don't have (it's akin
| to asking "What's a good email provider?").
|
| I haven't tried it myself, but this purports to suggest a
| server based on some info about you
| (https://instances.social/). And
| (https://joinmastodon.org/servers) is kind of the "main"
| list.
| cldellow wrote:
| Yeah, it's pretty frustrating.
|
| I initially tried the https://joinmastodon.org/servers
| thing in November, but the things proposed seemed like very
| niche communities.
|
| I just tried the https://instances.social/ link -- the top
| 2 hits for me were very small instances (fewer than 5
| people), which I wouldn't have much faith in joining.
|
| Actually, I guess I should have mentioned how I _actually_
| chose a server. I used https://fedifinder.glitch.me/ and
| joined the first fast-enough server that most of my
| existing contacts were on.
| unshavedyak wrote:
| Disclaimer: Novice, who also signed up. I've barely looked into
| anything, this info is just my experience.
|
| So it's mostly like email. Logic that would work for email i
| think works for Mastodon. Just like with email you can
| generally email anyone and anyone emails you, the same applies
| to mastodon in my experience. However, if a server is being too
| <insert reason here> for your server's admins, they may block
| the entire thing. I don't know the finer details of how
| blocking can take place, but my loose belief is that you won't
| see posts from blocked servers. Though i may still be possible
| to explicitly follow someone on a blocked server.. i'm unclear
| there.
|
| This amount of moderation will obviously vary from server to
| server. It is one of the criteria you'd look at for choosing a
| server.
|
| Likewise local community is another, if you should care. There
| is a special Local feed, which i've found to be quite handy if
| the server you're on is specialized to a content type.
|
| As for choosing your server, i think the above two points are
| useful metrics to help you decide. However if you're just
| looking to dip your toes in, pick any server. You can always
| decide to switch later, as you can set your old account to
| indicate that you moved to a different account. I've seen
| several accounts like this and it seems to be sane and easy.
|
| So far i've been quite happy with Mastodon.
| cesarb wrote:
| > You can always decide to switch later, as you can set your
| old account to indicate that you moved to a different
| account.
|
| A small cool detail you didn't add: when you do that, anyone
| who was following you will automatically and seamlessly
| follow the new account.
| plorg wrote:
| Lots of incomplete answers - you can maybe probably follow
| anyone you want from any decent server. But servers block each
| other for a number of reasons, so for good or bad you probably
| want to just pick one, see if it works, and if there are people
| you can't reach you'll need to find another. It's possible to
| migrate to a different server in a relatively seamless way.
| From what I can tell choosibg a server is based a lot on word
| of mouth. Which I assume is difficult if the site you're using
| explicitly forbids discussion of Mastodon.
| atlacatl_sv wrote:
| By going to the following link and creating a handle, you'll
| come across a lot options of severs. https://joinmastodon.org/
|
| Say you create the following named handle kd at server mas.to.
| If someone else would want to follow you, you'd just give that
| @kd@mas.to. Note that when you join a server, you'll have to
| abide by their rules.
| schuyler2d wrote:
| I'd suggest not being afraid to have two accounts -- join one
| that's more niche where the local instance community might be
| interesting and join one of the main/large ones.
|
| It's easy enough to sync up follows.
|
| Some small ones block the large ones (for their moderation
| policies), so having the small account will let you follow
| anyone, and the large can be a hedge if the smaller one becomes
| unstable
| lettergram wrote:
| Seems relevant
| https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1604069050220519424
| Nomentatus wrote:
| Worth pointing to but in this case it's not a disagreement over
| X, it's Elon breaking the law.
| qaq wrote:
| Would be cool if there was low resource mastodon server to run
| for a single user.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I think Musk is intentionally creating controversies, as he can
| roll them back anytime after a poll. These antics get a lot of
| press coverage, and no longer impact the price of Twitter shares,
| so he can play around as much as he wants.
| [deleted]
| firstSpeaker wrote:
| It might be that I am too biased now, but when I visited twitter
| today the only feed that I saw (default ordering, whatever that
| is) was the blue mark tweets. Anyone else experiencing something
| similar?
| rpgbr wrote:
| I'm glad I jump Twitter's sinking ship last week[1]. There's no
| way for Twitter to have a good outcome as long as Musk in on
| charge.
|
| [1] https://notes.ghed.in/posts/2022/leaving-twitter/
| tptacek wrote:
| He hasn't left Twitter. He's just using (and learning) Mastodon
| while Twitter pretends to have this ludicrous linking policy.
| commandersaki wrote:
| Watching Elon handle Twitter reminds me of how Andrew Lee handled
| Freenode.
| belligeront wrote:
| paulg has now been banned from twitter (presumably for noting
| that he was making a mastadon account) https://twitter.com/paulg
| softwaredoug wrote:
| I have for years posted to Twitter via LinkedIn. Presumably this
| is some kind of official relationship between the platforms or a
| sanctioned use of Twitters API.
|
| I wonder what risk my Twitter account would have for closure?
| LinkenIn originated posts refer to LinkedIn if the post exceeds
| Twitters character limits.
|
| (In case you're wondering I do this to keep my Twitter active but
| avoid having to actually login and see Twitter :) )
| zzleeper wrote:
| Sorry but what's his mastodon account? I can only see this stupid
| blocked message:
|
| > Promotion of alternative social platforms policy
| davidbarker wrote:
| https://mas.to/@paulg
| qwertox wrote:
| I only see a spinning circle. What a future.
| davidbarker wrote:
| The server is probably overloaded right now -- which, I
| agree, is frustrating. Even the biggest instances are
| struggling tonight.
|
| You may be able to load it via one of the bigger instances,
| though. Try going to https://mastodon.online/@paulg@mas.to.
| TekMol wrote:
| This is his Mastodon account:
|
| https://mas.to/@paulg/with_replies
|
| His first toots remind me of his first tweets:
|
| https://twitter.com/paulg/status/22300310058
|
| https://twitter.com/paulg/status/22307238459
| quaintdev wrote:
| The most ridiculous problem with Mastodon I think is the fact
| that even if I visit his profile I can't follow him because we
| are on two different servers. I have to copy his profile url
| and paste it in my logged in instance. This then takes me to
| his profile where I can follow him. That's just too much work!
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The mechanism is not friendly or intuitive but:
|
| 1. On your own instance ...
|
| 2. Paste "@paulg@mas.to" into the search dialogue and click
| the magnifying glass ...
|
| 3. Paul's profile will pop up in the results under "People".
|
| 4. Either click on the person icon to follow directly, or ...
|
| 5. Click on the avatar / profile name/description to view the
| profile page itself.
|
| If you do click the "Follow" icon from mas.to (and don't
| already have an account there), you'll be prompted to do what
| I've described above.
|
| Keep in mind that the Fediverse is, well, _Federated_.
| Someone _else 's_ home instance is where _their bits_ and
| _their configuration_ live. _Your_ instance is where _your_
| configuration lives. You subscribe from _your_ instance for
| that reason.
|
| Some instances block others, in which case the profile won't
| appear, though odds are low that mas.to is among those yours
| has blocked.
|
| (I've been on Mastodon since 2016, yes, this was confusing at
| first. I've since sorted it out.)
| russdill wrote:
| It's a valid criticism. There's many browser extensions that
| "fix" this.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| There's a few browser extensions that help with that. I just
| started using this one, it's pretty slick:
| https://github.com/Lartsch/FediAct
|
| The underlying problem is that browsers are not designed with
| this sort of federated application use case in mind, so
| Mastodon and friends have to do some awkward tricks to get it
| to work at all.
| tekla wrote:
| Wow, why the hell would any normie use this?
| rvz wrote:
| That's why you see Mastodon customer support here and on
| Mastodon itself by the techies here just for choosing an
| instance and even explaining why it is all slower than
| Twitter. For example: [0]
|
| Normal people do not care enough to go on a safari hunt
| for finding instances, user names of those claiming to
| have left Twitter or deleting their accounts or even
| bothering self-hosting just for a username on their own
| instance.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34042216
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Having to install a browser extension makes it a hard no
| for many, the most annoying thing for me is there's no
| app like Tweetbot for Mastodon that's even like 5% as
| useful.
|
| I know many people used Twitter.com or their official
| app, but many people find a simpler native app experience
| much more useful.
| ihuman wrote:
| The Tweetbot developers are making a Tweetbot for
| Mastodon https://tapbots.social/@ivory
| ryukafalz wrote:
| To make the user experience more like what they're used
| to from Twitter.
|
| It's frustrating that the web platform doesn't
| accommodate federated services like Mastodon that span
| multiple servers very well, but those are the cards we're
| dealt. It does work, it's just not ideal.
| wardedVibe wrote:
| Many servers have a link that let's you sign in when you
| click the follow button. it's a bit janker than ideal.
| [deleted]
| shafyy wrote:
| I hope this will be made easier in the near future. In the
| meantime, you can use this browser extension:
| https://github.com/lartsch/FediAct#installation
| cesarb wrote:
| > I have to copy his profile url and paste it in my logged in
| instance.
|
| It used to be different; in older versions of Mastodon, when
| you clicked on the Follow link on another instance, it asked
| for the name of your home instance, and redirected to a pre-
| filled follow screen on it. This was probably changed because
| it's an obvious phishing risk: it could redirect you to a
| fake domain which asked for your Mastodon account credentials
| (as if your login had expired), so it's not good to get
| people used to that kind of mechanic.
| yunohn wrote:
| First time I'm using Mastodon, and it's incredibly slow. Is the
| app any faster than the web app?
| Pxtl wrote:
| Mastodon is getting slammed by the twitter exodus, this is
| the first time it's being truly tested.
| _fizz_buzz_ wrote:
| It's usually pretty fast for me, but I am also experiencing
| quite a bit of lag at the moment.
| bennyp101 wrote:
| There's another exodus of twitter users, and most servers are
| run by individuals, give them time or run your own instance
| and federate
| rvz wrote:
| > There's another exodus of twitter users, and most servers
| are run by individuals
|
| Again, Expecting non-techies to self-host their own
| instances after several of them falling over due to light
| usage and signups is quite wishful thinking and reiterates
| the need for users to heavily rely on more centralized
| instances to on board users.
|
| Well all know what happened to mastodon.technology which
| was run by an individual. It doesn't look smart to sit on
| an instance that can barely handle hundreds of thousands of
| users signing up at once and ends up folding up.
|
| > give them time or run your own instance and federate
|
| Yeah, the journalists at journa.host has never been more
| alive for journalists and is going just great with a much
| better reach than Twitter [1] /s.
|
| [0] https://ashfurrow.com/blog/mastodon-technology-
| shutdown/
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/ajaromano/status/1594432548222152705
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| For some reason the link here points to the slowest Mastodon
| instance in the world. From the one I use (indieweb) it's
| quite fast:
|
| https://indieweb.social/@paulg@mas.to
| vijaybritto wrote:
| Depends on the instance. I have signed up in hachyderm.io and
| its okay
| TekMol wrote:
| There are many Mastodon providers, just like there are many
| email providers.
|
| How fast it is depends on the provider you use.
| Tepix wrote:
| Which instance are you on? Mastodon is decentralized, there
| may be servers that are overloaded whereas other are fast.
| Like email.
|
| I haven't noticed any big differences in speed, i use both
| Mastodon for iOS and Pinafore (https://pinafore.social/ ), a
| PWA. Just add it to your homescreen and it will behave like a
| native app (and sometime in 2023 Apple has said they will add
| push notifications to PWAs).
| Terretta wrote:
| It's not one app, it's many servers, individually hosted. The
| one paulg chose appears to be slower than, say, the one I'm
| using:
|
| https://mas.to/@paulg
|
| https://mastodon.social/@terretta
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| This. I'm on the fosstodon.org server and it seems to be
| holding up pretty well. That's one reason I chose it: the
| people running it know what they're doing.
| strtby wrote:
| Hug of death?
| quaintdev wrote:
| You can try another server!
| https://toot.community/@paulg@mas.to
|
| That's advantage of federation!
| svnpenn wrote:
| They aren't called toots anymore.
| jansan wrote:
| Gave up after 20 seconds waiting for the website to load. Is
| that supposed to be some retro 90s experience?
| ZacnyLos wrote:
| Says the one using HNews which looks like it's from the 90's
| lol
| jansan wrote:
| HN is minimalism with less than 65kB resources to download.
| This is a deliberate decision, it works very well and it is
| usually very fast (not right now though).
|
| Mastodon on the other hand downloads 2.6MB resources to
| display what exactly? Some tiny images, three posts and an
| ad. That does not look like a winner.
| dang wrote:
| Related ongoing thread:
|
| _Twitter Suspends PG 's Account_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34044047
|
| I'm moving the current thread (the earlier one) off the front
| page, partly because these are more or less the same story, but
| mostly because the traffic on this is boiling our poor server and
| I need to resort to tricks. Sorry all!
|
| In case you're not aware: you need to click on the "more
| comments" links at the bottom of the pages to get to the rest of
| the thread; also, you can make HN faster by logging out when it's
| keeling over. Also, genuine performance improvements shouldn't be
| too far off now.
| 0x737368 wrote:
| When it's our side o propaganda getting promoted and the other
| side censored it's "start your own platform, private companies
| don't owe you anything". When it's our side of propaganda getting
| censored it's "death of free speech".
| hakanderyal wrote:
| Relevant discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34040165
| andrewstuart wrote:
| If you Qwit then they win.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| But what is the game and what is the prize.
|
| Personally, I quit years ago when old ownership responded to a
| major nation electing a known troll President by modifying
| their TOS to make a "newsworthiness" carve-out.
|
| Their game and their rules and none of us have to play it.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Here's the problem: https://mas.to/@paulg/109536476979036192
|
| I can see that he's replying to somebody, but can't actually see
| the conversation (presumably because there is some problem with
| the servers all trying to talk to each other to reassemble it?)
|
| This is terrible.
| mef wrote:
| entire conversation shows up fine for me. i have no mastodon
| account nor am i logged in.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Hmm, maybe it's failing silently then?
|
| Seems like if it fails to load something upstream that it
| should _say_ that?
| pat2man wrote:
| These services have hyper growth right now but that will die
| down and become stable. Email is similar, things can get queued
| up and no way to see what's going on. But most of the time it
| just works.
| nla wrote:
| Paul,
|
| Why was it ok for you to be on Twitter when the platform was
| loaded with child porn?
|
| And it seems a little hypocritical that this is the red line that
| cannot be crossed when you seem to have had no problem with other
| news outlets and journalists getting deplatformed.
|
| Maybe get out of that glass house every now and again?
| eastendguy wrote:
| Wow, Twitter is collapsing much faster than I expected. With PG
| and some other high-profile accounts gone, many will loose
| interest in their Twitter feed fast. Rinse and repeat.
| cdash wrote:
| Except for the fact it isn't really collapsing. A couple people
| throwing a fit and saying they are leaving doesn't change the
| majority.
| skilled wrote:
| No offense, but pg doesn't really post all that much stuff that
| would make me reconsider Twitter as a platform if he left. And,
| to be fair, neither does anyone else. Twitter is a marketing
| platform not a social network.
|
| I use it primarily as a RSS feed and the occasional "get up to
| speed with the latest news fast" alternative.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I thought it'd collapse on the tech side before the policy
| side. Rather shocked the mask has come off this quickly on what
| "free speech" actually meant.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| While I sort of expected the same... I think our HN crowd
| (myself included) is biased to assume the importance of
| technology more than the importance of the social dimension.
| But also, I think Musk put a heavy hand on the tiller far
| faster than I expected he would (the wise thing to do would
| have been to assume there was much to learn; he seems to have
| stomped into his new company with a belief he knows what's
| best, and that's not meshing well with what was already
| there).
|
| But we should remember our own tech-first biases. Twitter ran
| in frequent-fail-whale mode for months with users accepting
| that because it fed their social needs. The moment it stopped
| serving those needs, people started leaving no matter how
| good the tech is.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Large distributed systems that have already been built can
| often limp along for a very long time before falling over. I
| would give Twitter at least another 3-6 months for stuff to
| start breaking.
| mmastrac wrote:
| Yep. Distributed systems, like any complex systems, follow
| "slowly at first, then all at once."
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Agreed entirely, but I thought the "free speech" stuff
| would last longer than that 3-6 months, if for no other
| reason than to avoid the embarassment of it.
| runevault wrote:
| On what level do you mean? 2fa already broke at one point
| (no clue if they fixed it I don't use two-factor as my
| twitter account is not terribly important)
| belligeront wrote:
| Amazing that just a month ago he tweeted[1]: "It's remarkable how
| many people who've never run any kind of company think they know
| how to run a tech company better than someone who's run Tesla and
| SpaceX.".
|
| It's been fascinating watching so many VC types ignore so many
| red flags just because some of Elon's early actions validated
| their priors (e.g. tech companies are bloated and need to layoff
| staff).
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1592852796185128961
| threeseed wrote:
| Some of those people especially the YC alumni need to be
| upfront about whether they've invested in Musk's Twitter.
| Because direct questions have been asked without answer.
|
| Because otherwise I can not understand the logic behind
| defending Musk's reign as CEO. Ignoring the chaotic policy
| changes what bothers me is the treatment of Twitter's
| employees. Nobody should ever have to leave their house because
| of death threats. And surely Parag/Jack should be ultimately
| held accountable for what happened at the company under their
| reign.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Then today, he said
|
| > I don't think [Musk] realizes that the techniques that work
| for cars and rockets don't work in social media
| baxtr wrote:
| _Strong Opinions, Weakly Held_ comes to mind.
| outside1234 wrote:
| On the positive side - you have to give it him for realizing
| his error and facing up to it
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| > Amazing that just a month ago he tweeted[1]: "It's remarkable
| how many people who've never run any kind of company think they
| know how to run a tech company better than someone who's run
| Tesla and SpaceX.".
|
| That is still a valid point tho. The thing is, we're not going
| to know who is right or wrong until it all plays out. And
| considering there are billions on the lines and Musk plays fast
| and loose with the rules, he's probably going to come out of
| the otherside better for it.
|
| > It's been fascinating watching so many VC types ignore so
| many red flags just because some of Elon's early actions
| validated their priors (e.g. tech companies are bloated and
| need to layoff staff).
|
| Again it's still a valid point. Tech companies are bloated and
| need to layoff staff, that's why they're ALL doing it.
|
| People can be right and still do dumb jackass moves.
| JasserInicide wrote:
| Obsession with politics is a cancer that infects even the
| brightest
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Obsession with weird/extremist polarizing politics is a
| cancer. I don't think you're necessarily going to become
| incompetent just because you decided to get involved in city
| government. The critical thinking capability that keeps you
| from wasting time on QAnon and conspiracy theories is the
| same stuff that lets you accomplish useful things in the
| world.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| And then immediately blocks anyone criticizing his asinine
| take:
| https://twitter.com/fennecsound/status/1592855964474298368
|
| Called this a month ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33659020
|
| "The emperors have no clothes"
| metadat wrote:
| Another well-known notable over-eager divergent opinion
| blocker is Garry Tan [0].
|
| This is the first time I've seen the finger of accusation
| point to Paul Graham for excessively blocking. Is it possible
| the @fennecsound account participated in previous harassment
| and the target doesn't wish to endure more low-quality
| interactions?
|
| My expectation is: HN folks, being generally sensitive souls,
| would have spoken up vocally on this site if it were a common
| ocurrence. I couldn't find any such prior accusations on
| algolia or web search.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32639125
|
| Edit: Thanks for the reality check replies! Perhaps story
| submissions and discussions on this matter get flagged and
| die at a high rate.
| dmitriid wrote:
| Paul Graham bans people left and right. He's not nearly
| notable enough for it to become a phenomenon.
|
| He banned me, and I think I've never had an interaction
| with him.
|
| I've seen people I follow mentioning these bans, but most
| just shrug.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Yep, there have been many on HN mentioning they were
| banned by him, like
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34042395 in this
| thread
| theCrowing wrote:
| Typical Hot Hand Fallacy [0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_hand
| tlogan wrote:
| Majority of people here on HN were also convinced he will try
| to make Twitter better. Not everybody believed that he will
| succeeded but it seems like majority belived that he will at
| least try hard. Like improve app to purchase things (one click
| checkout), integrate with real time news, some free speech,
| sports, ... so many ideas
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| People believed he could make Twitter better based on the
| assumption that he will implement these changes. I personally
| thought it'd be great if we could tailor our own
| recommendation algorithms. Turns out none of those happened
| and this has been a dumpster fire all along.
| equalsione wrote:
| But this sounds incredibly like "buy the dip!" The situation
| with twitter is dire. Nothing indicates that any of the
| things listed are remotely achievable.
| TuringTest wrote:
| How can they brag about freedom of expression and then forbid
| promoting their competitors through their site? [1]
|
| They are well within their rights to do so, but that's the
| exact opposite of competing purely in the market of ideas.
|
| 1. https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/social-
| platfo...
| EarlKing wrote:
| ...except they don't do that. This is no different than
| Reddit's own policies on spam and self-promotion. You're
| expected to use the site for discussion and building
| community, not directing people elsewhere. If the latter is
| your goal then you can pay for advertising. What's changed
| here is that people who previously were given free reign to
| promote themselves without paying a dime are now being told
| they need to pay up. I'm finding it hard to sympathize with
| them.
| TuringTest wrote:
| Well I find hard to sympathize with the people saying
| that horrible abuse will not be moderated because "free
| speech", yet mentioning the fact that you use other
| social media apps will get your account banned as "unpaid
| self-promotion".
|
| It doesn't inspire confidence in that their previous
| stance was truly motivated by their love of the
| unrestricted diffusion of ideas.
| mjmsmith wrote:
| See also Donald Trump, 2016.
| tpush wrote:
| > Majority of people here on HN were also convinced he will
| try to make Twitter better.
|
| Speaking only for myself, but I'd honestly contest that.
| drc500free wrote:
| Personally, I assumed he had multiple overlapping
| motivations. Prove that he knew tech products better than
| SV insiders, own a major media platform to push his
| viewpoint, save a media platform from "woke" people and let
| people like Trump back on, silence his critics, make money,
| pretend he really intended to purchase something he didn't
| actually want to. I'm not sure that even he knows why he
| does what he does, because so much of it is impulsive and
| can't be attributed to a coherent plan with specific goals.
|
| The only thing that will definitely hold true is that there
| is an audience of tens of millions of Americans who feel
| mocked by "the Elites." They will shower adoration on
| anyone with Elite creds - be it academic, media, or
| business - who tells them there really is a conspiracy to
| oppress them and that they're the straight shooter who will
| go to battle for them. That is a very seductive amount of
| positive feedback when the other things you're doing aren't
| home runs.
| Uninen wrote:
| I confess, I was one of those people who believed that he'd
| try hard to make a positive change. The reality seems to be
| exactly what the most cynical takes were; it's all about
| money and petty personal things. It's a shame. The wasted
| potential is enormous.
| krisoft wrote:
| > Majority of people here on HN were also convinced he will
| try to make Twitter better.
|
| I mean. I still think he is trying to do that. Is he
| succeeding? I don't think so.
|
| If it all hits the ground and twitter is no more a going
| concern will he claim that was his plan all along? Probably.
| Doesn't mean it is true.
|
| Even on the day he offered to buy twitter he was offering
| more money than the stock was worth. That is only rational if
| you believe you have a plan to run it better.
|
| According to reports he is spending a lot of his time
| managing twitter in quite a hands-on way. Do you think he is
| not trying to make it better in his own mind?
| lancesells wrote:
| > Even on the day he offered to buy twitter he was offering
| more money than the stock was worth. That is only rational
| if you believe you have a plan to run it better. >
| According to reports he is spending a lot of his time
| managing twitter in quite a hands-on way. Do you think he
| is not trying to make it better in his own mind?
|
| I think it's a case of the gambler having enough money to
| buy the casino.
| [deleted]
| threeseed wrote:
| The thing is that Twitter 1.0 had the exact same ideas. Every
| one of them that Musk has thought of to date.
|
| They simply were too slow in implementing them. Some of them
| eg. payments are due to all of the regulatory challenges that
| Twitter faces as a top tier social network. Others are just
| incompetence eg. not doing more with Vine.
|
| They needed a better executor. Problem is Musk immediately
| fired everyone. And has constantly underestimated the
| complexity of the system. So bit hard to see how they were
| ever going to do better as Twitter 2.0.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| > Majority of people here on HN were also convinced he will
| try to make Twitter better.
|
| I was one of them. But slowly we saw him fuck it up, and then
| double down. Twitter is toast unless Elon is dumped by his
| investors
| redbell wrote:
| Paul's first comment [1] in the referenced tweet says: "Do you
| think Elon will fail and Twitter will go out of business?" and
| finished it with: " _Bet your reputation on a prediction now_
| ".. it's a heavy prediction and a bold statement to bet your
| reputation on!!
|
| 1. https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1593199305384685573
| distantsounds wrote:
| considering how many YC-funded ventures have failed, it's hard
| to believe he'd be wrong about this, too.
| sdiacom wrote:
| It's interesting how VCs suddenly seem to believe "tech
| companies are bloated and need to layoff staff", now that they
| can't just show up at a bank and get literal buckloads of other
| people's money with no justification or due diligence, but were
| all in on "tech startups must continually grow at any cost"
| just a few months ago.
|
| Once again, society will be left holding the rich sociopaths'
| bags and dealing with the externalities of their uncontrolled
| gambling.
| agrippanux wrote:
| I think we can be honest and admit many large tech companies
| are bloated and can lay off staff - with the proper planning
| and care. Taking an axe to an org you just took over is
| typically not associated with proper planning and care.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I think the way Twitter is faring is actually proof to the
| contrary, you _can 't_ lay off half your staff and expect the
| machine to just keep chugging along. You either design it
| from day #1 to be run with a very tight crew or it becomes a
| much larger machine with a different kind of profile.
|
| Compare Instagram with Twitter.
| jerlam wrote:
| Counterpoint: Netflix, which did a lot of layoffs in the
| 2000s and as the story goes, redesigned their entire HR
| process around 'lean'.
| abdabab wrote:
| I'm sure Netflix in 2000 had a lot simpler tech stack
| than Twitter in 2020. However your point is taken.
| [deleted]
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Why is that amazing? When people do what you think is right, or
| what you think might be right, you agree with them or willing
| to see where things go. When people do what you think is wrong
| you disagree or break with them. That seems perfectly
| reasonable.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > Why is that amazing?
|
| PG mocked those who thought we would end up here.
| shanebellone wrote:
| PG confuses me. Sometimes he seems extremely rational but
| other times he tweets obvious fallacies.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I think that spells 'human'.
| dnissley wrote:
| Where is "here" exactly?
| pavlov wrote:
| Every promise Musk made about Twitter broken in less than
| two months?
| wpietri wrote:
| And the demolition of Elon's image as a tech/business
| genius. If I'd set out to wreck his reputation, I could
| not have done half the job Musk has done since he bid for
| Twitter.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The big question now is how much damage can he do? To the
| world, not just Twitter.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I'm not sure what the damage is supposed to be, in apart
| from to Musk and co-investors. There are enough
| alternatives, including Mastodon - that people will still
| be able to share short form content if Twitter
| disintegrates.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Twitter has the ability to start revolutions and change
| the course of the war in Ukraine by manipulating support
| or a lack thereof.
|
| Just imagine the kind of damage that would ensue if for
| instance all of Twitters DMs became somehow public.
| cyberphobe wrote:
| And in the replies to this tweet he insists[1] "Elon is a smart
| guy" in spite of all the evidence to the contrary
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1604557444247539712
| wpietri wrote:
| I am not an Elon fan, but I agree Musk is a smart guy. I just
| don't think smartness on its own is very valuable. Indeed, it
| can be very dangerous when it lets you think that you know
| better than everybody else despite them having way more
| experience in their fields. A classic example is the XKCD
| cartoon "Physicists": https://xkcd.com/793/
|
| I've met some incredibly smart narcissists, and you know what
| they use their smarts for? The same sort of continuous ego
| inflation that less smart narcissists do. Their smartness
| just makes things worse, because they're less likely to have
| the sort of comeuppance that leads to a moment of clarity.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| He can't alienate a big potential investor to future funds.
| philjohn wrote:
| That relies on Elon still having a lot of funds to invest,
| not a foregone conclusion at this rate.
| mjmsmith wrote:
| TikTok isn't on the list of banned social media links.
| sdiacom wrote:
| I think that, by leaving Twitter alone, he already has. If
| we've learned something about Elon so far, from previous
| episodes of the cursed news cycle we all inhabit, is that
| he's vindictive and petty to an irrational extent (calling
| rescue officers who don't agree with him pedophiles,
| banning journalists who report on the jet account, ...)
| KMag wrote:
| Elon could both be smart and making huge mistakes. It happens
| all the time.
| elliekelly wrote:
| This is absolutely true. But I think "smart" leadership
| avoids _repeatedly_ doubling down on their mistakes. You
| can, very rarely, double down on what looks like a bad bet
| and come out ahead. I'm not even sure I'd call that smart
| but it does happen. But it takes a _not-smart_ person to
| see the losses stacking up over and over and decide to dig
| in their heels.
|
| Even if you're absolutely _certain_ your goals and overall
| strategy are right a smart person would understand that
| something needs to change in the messaging and /or
| execution given the overwhelmingly negative feedback.
| ehsankia wrote:
| I really don't want to be defending Elon, but I think
| saying "Elon must be stupid because of how he handled
| Twitter" is as silly as "Elon had success with Tesla and
| SpaceX therefore he knows how to run companies". Those
| two seem like two extremes.
|
| The answer seems more along the lines of, Twitter and its
| problems are very very different from Tesla/SpaceX, and
| while Elon may have been good at the latter, he has zero
| experience with the former.
|
| That being said, not realizing the above I guess makes
| him partly not-smart, and I assume the shortsightedness
| was due to the inflated ego caused by his previous two
| successes.
| nradov wrote:
| For a classic example see former Secretary of Defense
| Donald Rumsfeld. By any conventional measure he was very
| smart, and yet he made a series of catastrophically bad
| decisions which are still impacting US national security
| today.
|
| Intelligence is overrated in leaders. Character, humility,
| principles, and discipline are far more valuable in
| avoiding huge mistakes.
| flyinglizard wrote:
| It really depends on the organization being led. Vision
| is not something you can easily outsource or task
| subordinates with. I mean one of the classic leader types
| would never set himself up to fail in early days SpaceX.
|
| What a startup, a market leader and a government
| organization need are distinct types of leadership.
| Sometimes there are prodigies who can do two of these.
| Musk did.
| croes wrote:
| He could be a dumb guy make much right. It happens all the
| time.
| blobster wrote:
| Also, people can be both smart and stupid at different
| times and sometimes even at the same time. It's not a
| binary thing.
| shanebellone wrote:
| Elon's behavior, opinions, and points of view suggest
| otherwise. His only notable quality is his wealth.
| throwntoday wrote:
| I think they are laying the groundwork to allow creators to
| monetize their tweets and additional content. As it stands
| a lot of creators are monetizing their content off platform
| (patreon, substack, youtube, onlyfans, etc.) and the goal
| is to lock them and their content into twitter.
|
| I think it's a good idea as content is king, but they
| should have rolled this out _after_ they had established an
| ability to monetize. Once people leave the platform it will
| be tough to get them back unless they offer a very
| lucrative comission split with creators.
| cyberphobe wrote:
| Yeah it's probably that, not that everyone is fleeing
| Elon's $44 billion dying platform and he's is trying to
| stop it in whatever way he can.
| throwntoday wrote:
| Do you even use twitter? Activity is the same as it's
| ever been. I think many people are overstating how many
| people are "fleeing" because of their personal disdain
| for Musk.
|
| If they were actually concerned with people fleeing why
| would they do something which is more likely to make
| creators leave?
| cyberphobe wrote:
| > If they were actually concerned with people fleeing why
| would they do something which is more likely to make
| creators leave?
|
| you're asking this in a sub-thread about if Elon is smart
| or not? I thought the answer was obvious.
| rc_mob wrote:
| Elon is definitely not a smart human. Maybe 25 years ago he
| did a thing. Ok.
| ben_w wrote:
| Someone can be both smart _and_ Dunning-Kruger themselves
| in the face.
|
| I don't know why someone who (self-diagnosed?) as having
| Asperger's thinks they'd be a good fit for leading a
| social media company, that feels like having a an amputee
| selling staircases [0]; but the rocket nerds I follow
| seem pretty convinced Musk genuinely knows actual rocket
| science.
|
| [0] as in: it could work, but you'd not expect it by
| default
| elcritch wrote:
| Well its not like Zuckerberg is the epitome of normal
| "humanness".
| wardedVibe wrote:
| Intelligence is overrated for it's utility in navigating
| the world.
| cyberphobe wrote:
| This is true. Wealth is what matters in this world, not
| intelligence.
| KMag wrote:
| Okay, so what's you over-under for Elon's IQ, or are you
| making a subtle distinction between intelligent and
| smart?
| jacquesm wrote:
| He's smart. He's also the last person on the planet that
| should be in charge of a social media platform.
|
| Smart + deficient in the ethics department is a recipe for
| disaster.
| class4behavior wrote:
| Intelligence is neither a binary nor a one-dimentional
| concept. Within certain contexts Musk is certainly a smart
| entrepreneur but I would not call him that without a lot of
| such qualifiers.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Elon is undoubtedly smart. It also seems like maybe he's on a
| mental health episode or just got so rich he decided he's
| done with building companies and just wants to be an asshole
| out of spite. Who knows? But he's accomplished plenty of
| things that suggest he's not an idiot.
| rc_mob wrote:
| inglor_cz wrote:
| He is smart, but smartness is overrated.
|
| How do I know? Because I am pretty smart as well, with a
| PhD from math, but that didn't stop me from making a
| series of stupid mistakes in my life. Sometimes out of
| sheer optimism, sometimes because I missed some crucial
| information, sometimes because closeness to some other
| person made me miss important red flags, sometimes
| because I overextended my abilities, sometimes because I
| underestimated my adversaries.
|
| If I bought Twitter, I would have run it into the ground
| in days.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| do morons get accepted into Stanford's STEM PhD programs?
| You can hate Musk for his personality and maybe say he
| has mental health issues but to say he's stupid seems
| strange
| gre wrote:
| Money can get you into any university program. I did a
| google search, he left after two days. This is not
| impressive.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| If this is to be believed [1], what you describe:
|
| > do morons get accepted into Stanford's STEM PhD
| programs
|
| is a lie perpetuated by Musk and co. [1] contains links
| to court documents.
|
| According to the court documents, not only does he not
| have a physics or other technical degree, he obtained a
| bachelor in Econ in 1997, not a physics degree in 1995.
|
| The scan of the diploma does not specify department, has
| no year date, and is a bachelor of arts.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/capitolhunters/status/15933075419
| 3247436...
| vikramkr wrote:
| Wait also the date is literally right there on the
| diploma so idk where the no date statement comes from -
| that frankly calls the credibility of that "reporting"
| into question when it literally says anno salutis mcmxvii
| right on the image they've annotated with the claim that
| the diploma doesn't contain the date
| vikramkr wrote:
| The diploma is a bachelor of arts, so that's definitely
| not the business degree and is probably for physics.
| Penn, like most liberal arts schools, offers a bachelor's
| in arts for stem fields. IIRC he did an uncoordinated
| dual degree and his wharton degree would have been a
| bachelor of science in economics (its not really an econ
| major, its a business major, the real econ major is a
| bachelor of arts), while his college of arts and science
| degree was a bachelor of arts in physics.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Given that the degree does not list a department, and
| that the court documents claim otherwise, I am inclined
| to disagree with your conclusion.
| vikramkr wrote:
| So, if his only degree is a bachelor of science in
| economics like the filing claims, what's the scan of the
| bachelor of arts degree then? He's got some sort of
| secret other degree in biology or chemistry he's never
| told anyone about? Fwiw he's listed as having a ba
| physics and bs econ in the alumni directory, and penn has
| confirmed those in emails, so like, you can pretend that
| he doesn't have the degrees he has, but idk what that
| accomplishes. And maybe he said a few times that he had a
| b.s. in physics (which is not a thing at penn) instead of
| a ba but that's meaningless
| gateorade wrote:
| I'm not an Elon basher but I'm genuinely confused by what
| you're saying. You're saying the fact he has a BA implies
| it's something in STEM rather than Econ? Maybe I'm wrong
| but isn't a BA the degree you would expect to get an
| basically any school when studying Econ?
| rocho wrote:
| Among many other lies, Musk lied about his Physics PhD
| too and that's now well known and documented.
| xupybd wrote:
| He waited for evidence. I think PG made a good call. Based on
| the weight of Elon's past achievements PG gave him the benefit
| of the doubt. Then when Elon overstepped he reacted
| appropriately.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The evidence was in plain sight before Musk took over. He's
| not the kind of person that should run something like
| Twitter, it was going to be a disaster.
| duckfruit wrote:
| Social media promotes a vicious callout culture where
| everything you say in the past is permanently used against you
| in the court of public opinion whenever you change your mind.
| While I did not share PG's opinion at the time I also don't
| think it was completely unreasonable to think that someone like
| Musk would be capable of running Twitter judiciously after the
| acquisition. I appreciate that instead of digging in his heels
| PG seems to have evolved his judgement after recent
| developments.
| dheera wrote:
| I mean, it's a flawed system to begin with.
|
| When someone is incapable of building stuff or running a
| company, we (as a society, collectively) hand them shittons of
| money to be a VC.
| lreeves wrote:
| I don't think the investments of what, the 0.1% wealthiest of
| society is the same as "society collectively" doing anything!
| topaz0 wrote:
| It is society collectively, by allowing those .1% of people
| have enough money to be able to fund such things on a whim.
| lreeves wrote:
| Allowing is doing a lot of work in this sentence when in
| North America pretty much all political parties I can
| vote for (that have a chance of winning) support the
| status quo in power.
| topaz0 wrote:
| Very true. That too is a feature of our society.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| The hubris is what gets me. The sheer audacity that the peons
| had in suggesting Musk didn't know what he was doing!
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Yet, he has the courage of expressing those opinions without
| sarcasm, on his own public account, and later own admit to
| change his mind, while being a very exposed figure.
|
| And you use a throwaway.
| topaz0 wrote:
| Without sarcasm?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| he also had a similar take that I've seen from technologists
| more than a few times "the man runs a rocket company, how hard
| can running a social media site be?"
|
| A lot of tech folks seem to have a mindset of a 60s Soviet
| technocrat. "We shot a dog into space comrades, let's apply our
| engineering genius to all the social problems the stupid
| managers can't solve". Spoiler alert, it is pretty hard to
| govern hundreds of millions of people
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Quite the opposite, I think it shows that what you call a red
| flag, they analyzed seriously before making a judgment. And now
| that they have more data, they change their mind about their
| conclusion.
|
| It's the sane thing to do.
| konschubert wrote:
| He could have seen it earlier but I appreciate that he is able
| and willing to change his angle.
| morelisp wrote:
| Did he change his angle, or is all of it (the initial
| statement, the leaving, the clarification) just a rich man's
| self-interest, and no real semantic content?
|
| https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1604557444247539712
| dnissley wrote:
| When I disagree with someone, I do not necessarily think
| they're stupid. That's a needlessly polarizing mindset.
| xcambar wrote:
| You're a rare person, in 2022.
| gernb wrote:
| Maybe you could be come one too
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Never-Thought-That-Way-
| Conversations/...
| braingenious wrote:
| What sort of decisions or behavior _would_ lead you to
| believe that somebody is stupid?
| themitigating wrote:
| I'll bite
|
| - the ability to explain why you think a certain way or did
| something (i.e. when you ask a child why they threw a glass
| they'll say "I don't know"
|
| - the speed at which you learn/process new information
|
| - the ability to understand your emotions and the level of
| control you have over them
|
| - your willing to engage in debate
|
| - how inquisitive you are
| lost_tourist wrote:
| Someone who claims to hold a basic concept of something as
| straight forward as "free speech absolutist" and doesn't
| see the logical incoherence of proceeding to ban reporters
| and others who publish and aggregate publicly available
| information (@elonjet).
| braingenious wrote:
| I personally agree with this.
|
| Further, I think "somebody that spends an extraordinary
| amount of money to become admin on a forum (one of the
| worst jobs on earth)" qualifies as "a stupid person" well
| before "being incredibly, laughably, hilariously inept at
| being a forum admin" even gets factored into the "How
| stupid can a person be?" equation.
| docandrew wrote:
| Just because somebody does something different than us
| doesn't mean they are stupid, how ridiculous and reductive
| is that?
|
| They might just be evil.
| [deleted]
| blowski wrote:
| Is it necessary to believe anyone is "stupid" as a
| personality?
|
| I just disagree with people's opinions on certain things.
| And if I frequently disagree with someone enough, then I
| just quietly stop paying any attention to what they say.
| braingenious wrote:
| How is judging people's way of thinking as being a binary
| between "necessary" and "unnecessary" not just calling
| people "stupid" or "not stupid" the same thing just using
| different words?
| molszanski wrote:
| stupid doesn't end a conversation. It starts it. Ok, someone
| thinking is different (stupid). But how exactly do they
| think? Why? What drives? Where does the break or wrong start?
| 123pie123 wrote:
| correct - I've learnt different perspectives and expanded
| my way of thinking
|
| and also learnt many many people do not bother with
| thinking, and just throw crap out - due to their immediate
| emotions
| kyleyeats wrote:
| If you don't hate stupid people, how do you know that you're
| smart?
| aussiesnack wrote:
| Perhaps not your intent, but you have hit on the entire
| social media mindset, distilled.
|
| TV debate long ago decided that every complex human concern
| can be profitably reduced to a crass binary which can be
| argued about in front of a camera for the audience's thumbs
| up or down.
|
| Social media democratised this decerebrate approach. A
| thumbs up or down from your tribe. Mastodon, Post.news et
| al only replicate the Twitter model.
|
| It doesn't matter which platform PG, or anyone else, is on.
| They're all worthless distraction. Fiddling while Rome
| burns etc.
| kyleyeats wrote:
| You can tell who's actually discussing a person's
| intelligence and who's status-signaling how _smurt_ they
| are because only one group gets terribly offended when
| you disagree.
| talkingtab wrote:
| When I think someone is stupid, I don't necessarily disagree
| with them. That's a needlessly polarizing mindset.
| dnissley wrote:
| Also true! Stopped clocks, etc.
| cyberphobe wrote:
| I don't think people are calling Elon Musk stupid because
| they disagree with him.
| throwaway0asd wrote:
| Still nothing compared to the billions so many VCs have lost on
| crypto this year ignoring those far more obvious red flags. No
| matter how bad Elon damages Twitter at the very least its
| actually still generating revenue. I cannot tell what crypto
| generated.
| MandieD wrote:
| Several hundred terawatt hours of electricity consumption.
| rchaud wrote:
| VCs made plenty of money, they receive pre-mined amounts of
| whatever token they're investing in, and then dump it on
| retail once the coin lists on the exchanges.
| 3327 wrote:
| carlosdp wrote:
| > just because some of Elon's early actions validated their
| priors (e.g. tech companies are bloated and need to layoff
| staff).
|
| You're right that assuming success at Tesla/SpaceX indicated
| success at Twitter ended up being wrong.
|
| But these "priors" are still very true. Tech companies _are_
| bloated, Elon sucking at running a social network doesn 't
| change that fact
| ajross wrote:
| OK, but to be fair[1], that's what we want, right? Our thought
| leaders _should_ change their minds when they turn out to have
| been wrong, and correct. pg is doing good here, and that needs
| to be celebrated and not mocked. We all get stuff mixed up.
|
| [1] And for the record I think pg indeed ignored WAY too many
| red flags for WAY too long in this particular case.
| BryantD wrote:
| Absolutely. I'm glad to see this.
|
| If I was a friend of his, I'd suggest that it's a good chance
| to think about why he was convinced Elon would do well and
| adjust as necessary, but it's also quite possible that he
| doesn't feel like he's obliged to do that self-examination in
| public. And he's not.
| wpietri wrote:
| For sure. Given that Musk was fired from [deleted, see note 1]
| and PayPal, you'd think they might have had more questions. But
| people look at failure much more carefully than they look at
| success.
|
| I think the next wave of interesting questions is around the
| extent to which Musk contributed the apparent successes, SpaceX
| and Tesla. We won't know for a long time, as a lot of the
| people in the know have a strong incentive to keep quiet. But
| one possible explanation is that he is good at PR and using
| hype to raise money, but is not a competent manager without
| help. Consider, for example, this bit from someone who says
| they were a SpaceX intern:
| https://www.tumblr.com/numberonecatwinner/701567544684855296...
|
| I asked a former SpaceX person about that and was told it
| seemed right, that SpaceX worked because everybody believed in
| the mission and worked hard at managing Elon so that they could
| get the actual work done.
|
| [1] I incorrectly thought he was fired by the board from Zip2,
| but they just refused to make him CEO. Thanks to dontknowwhyihn
| for the correction:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34042958
| dontknowwhyihn wrote:
| I worked at Zip2, and am pretty sure Elon was not fired.
| wpietri wrote:
| Thanks for the correction! That's my mistake. I remembered
| it as the board firing him from CEO, as happened at PayPal,
| but according to Wikipedia, at Zip2 the board only refused
| to make him CEO.
| richbell wrote:
| IIRC some pieces frame Sorkin joining as Elon being
| "demoted" to CTO; after ousting Sorkin, he tried to
| become CEO but, as you said, the board shot him down.
| pardon_me wrote:
| Musk is a fraudster. Someone must compile a timeline of his
| claims. Just the content that pops up from Thunderf00t on
| Youtube calling it out is enough for investigations. The only
| way I see investors going along with it is embarassment,
| riding the tide and not knowing when it will change. SoftBank
| style. It's changing now, economic corrections, just a time
| he's leveraged more than a sane person would value his
| companies at. lol
|
| Then there's China. Tesla's 25% yearly revenue after being
| the first US company to launch without being 50% hand-in-hand
| with a local business. He agreed to teach the locals his
| methods, and they now sell straight-up copies at half the
| price. lol
|
| I'm sorry but this whole thing is one big joke.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| SpaceX worked because they hired experienced people from ULA
| and other launch services companies who weren't held back by
| the fear of risk taking that is endemic in the MIC. They
| wouldn't have succeed if they just tried to play rocket
| engineer like Carmack did.
| BryantD wrote:
| To be absolutely fair... do you have a reference for Zip2? I
| was at AltaVista for the acquisition and while I wasn't close
| enough to it to be sure, I know he walked away with a bunch
| of money.
| [deleted]
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| All we can really compare Musk to is to Bezos. Bezos
| basically destroyed Blue Origin in 2017 after they blew up a
| test stand. This is the sort of thing that happens when
| you're developing rockets. You just have to accept it and
| move on. It'll cost you millions and many months, but if you
| want to develop rockets... After the test stand incident
| Bezos fired the CEO, brought in an incompetent one and
| brought in a "no mistakes" type of culture that doesn't get
| anything done.
|
| In contrast, check out the Tom Mueller interview about Elon
| Musk and "face shut off". This feature is one of the top
| reasons why the SpaceX Merlin rocket engine is such a great
| engine. Mueller thought it would be very hard to get it to
| work in a large engine and he was right. They blew up
| hundreds of engines and a bunch of test stands. But Musk was
| supportive the whole time. That's a big deal, and what you
| want from a CEO during development.
|
| But "better than Bezos running a rocket company" is a pretty
| low bar to hurdle.
|
| Tory Bruno at ULA and Peter Beck at Rocket Lab from the
| outside appear to be outstanding CEO's. But they've been
| starved for resources for different reasons. What could they
| have done with the resources that Musk & Bezos brought to
| their companies?
|
| Rocket Lab in particular is one of the companies that could
| challenge SpaceX's dominance.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "Bezos basically destroyed Blue Origin in 2017"
|
| This sort-of implies that BO was functional prior to that
| incident.
|
| BO was founded in 2000. By 2017, they had existed for 17
| years without reaching the orbit. (Which SpaceX managed in
| 6 years, Astra managed in 17 years, RocketLab in 12 years).
|
| It seems to me that BO is just continuing to be an
| expensive failure, which, unlike all the other failed space
| startups, keeps dragging itself on, because it can rely on
| basically unlimited funding.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| For the first part of its existence Blue Origin was
| basically a think tank. For a while its only employee was
| a science fiction author. Neal Stephenson is great, but
| he's not a rocket designer. As a think tank it was highly
| successful -- they successfully identified VTVL
| reusability as the future of space independently from
| SpaceX and similarly chose methalox. By 2017 Blue Origin
| was basically about a decade old as a "real" company. And
| progress was reasonable. New Shepherd was real and
| successful and looked like it could launch humans at any
| time. New Glenn was ambitious and BE-4 looked close.
|
| Expecting them to reach orbit as quickly as SpaceX or
| Rocket Lab is unfair since SpaceX & Rocket Lab had an
| orbital rocket as their first product, and Blue Origin
| didn't.
|
| It's unfair to compare everybody to SpaceX -- their
| success is exceptional. Pre-2017 Blue Origin wasn't as
| functional as SpaceX but I wouldn't call them
| dysfunctional. Post-2017 Blue Origin is dysfunctional.
|
| This is all based on heresay, so take from it what you
| will.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Thank you for providing context that I wasn't aware of.
|
| That said, they _are_ backed by Bezos, one of the richest
| people on the planet, so I think it is fair to expect
| some real achievements from them.
| insanitybit wrote:
| Musk is a celebrity. Celebrities start successful companies
| all the time. Is Rihanna a brilliant business woman for
| starting a successful beauty line? Is she a business _genius_
| , which is what Musk gets labeled so often? Maybe she really
| is, but I don't see her get that label, I think her value add
| is very clearly "she is famous, people will buy shit that she
| puts her name on".
|
| What they have in common is that they have fame and money,
| and it turns out you can do a lot with that.
| tedunangst wrote:
| They also start moderately but not wildly successful
| companies and then leak fake tax returns to look more
| successful, like Kylie Jenner.
| naet wrote:
| Many celebrities end up burning out or spending all their
| money, start failed businesses, etc.
|
| Rihanna imo is very savvy and the Fenty brand was a very
| successful business, involving a couple pivots from fashion
| to more lingerie and beauty. The big Savage x Fenty musical
| production event every year is a smart move that leverages
| her music industry connections and draws lots of interest
| and new customers.
|
| Arguably she is doing better than Musk atm, given that he
| started life with a huge capital advantage and is likely
| losing big on Twitter right now (as well as tanking his
| public image).
| jacquesm wrote:
| Fame is like a flywheel with a feedback loop. Once famous
| everything you do makes you more famous, even bad stuff.
|
| Hence celebrities getting married and divorced every three
| weeks, it keeps them in the news.
| dnissley wrote:
| This feels disingenuous.
|
| Elon Musk was barely more than a nobody when he got
| involved with Tesla and started SpaceX.
|
| Fenty was founded after Rihanna had scored countless hits
| and was basically a household name.
| insanitybit wrote:
| > Elon Musk was barely more than a nobody when he got
| involved with Tesla and started SpaceX.
|
| He was extremely wealthy and had a lot of connections
| from buying his way into other companies. He was not yet
| a household name/ global celebrity, only one in more
| niche (but very powerful) circles, that changed soon
| after.
| dnissley wrote:
| But so were hundreds/thousands of other people, most of
| whom did not go on to found companies rivaling Tesla and
| SpaceX.
| insanitybit wrote:
| How many tried? Lots of people don't actually want to do
| that. I know lots of very wealthy people who are not at
| all interested in increasing their wealth or running
| companies or being famous.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| The cemetery of defunct space startups is pretty big,
| including the one founded by John Carmack.
| chess_buster wrote:
| He in fact forced the founders of Tesla out of the
| company to call himself founder.
| hammock wrote:
| You've completely moved the goalposts there
| insanitybit wrote:
| I don't see how. I said celebrity and wealth are what
| they have in common and what they have leveraged. Elon
| was wealthy before he was famous, he became famous in
| important circles, and eventually he became globally
| famous.
| neltnerb wrote:
| Yeah... I'm failing to see how "barely more than a
| nobody" can be applied to anyone who had access to lot of
| wealthy networks. Maybe in comparison to others in that
| universe, but put any one of them out in the general
| public and the imbalance of power is pretty obvious.
|
| If you can reasonably self-fund a startup with employees
| for a while, you are not a nobody and you are likely far
| more powerful than 95% of the population. You can
| literally dictate what other human beings do for 40 hours
| a week. That's not being a nobody...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Who is "Rihanna" ?
| proamdev123 wrote:
| Rihanna is one of the most successful musical artists of
| all time. Her net worth is near or at a billion dollars.
| lossolo wrote:
| > I think her value add is very clearly "she is famous,
| people will buy shit that she puts her name on".
|
| Musk example[1] of this, he sold 1 million USD worth of
| perfume with smell of burnt hair in a few hours.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/oddly-enough/elon-musk-
| sel...
| class4behavior wrote:
| Musk simply does a lot of the basics right and knows how to
| talk bullshit, had the assets to start at all, is apathetic
| to social perception (his narcissistic sociopathic
| tendency) which makes it easier to go against the flow both
| in a good and bad way, and has the mental ability to work
| long hours.
|
| His successes just delivered what the market demanded but
| established powers did not want to pursue for one reason or
| another. He knows to outsource actual work to experts and
| offers them attention which is easier due to his interest
| in tech/science. Of course, he sees them as tools and he
| doesn't need to care about labor laws but that's a part of
| the longer list of his flaws and mistakes.
|
| After Tesla/SpaceX took off, it has been as you described.
| bluedino wrote:
| Is her beauty line worth more than (top three classic
| beauty supply companies)?
| insanitybit wrote:
| Can you just make your point?
| onion2k wrote:
| Yes. That's what market cap means. I can understand you
| might disagree with the valuation, but that doesn't
| change it.
|
| Also, don't forget that Rihanna has something the top
| three beauty supply companies don't have - a growing
| brand. That has a massive impact on market cap.
| bluedino wrote:
| So her brand has a higher market cap than L'Oreal, Estee
| Lauder, etc?
| labster wrote:
| Does her beauty line rival that of the gods? Because I
| don't want another Trojan War starting.
| pavlov wrote:
| Rihanna's underwear company Savage X Fenty was estimated
| to be worth $3 billion earlier this year, which is
| roughly the same as the market cap of Victoria's Secret.
|
| Probably that estimate would be lower now, given the
| market downturn. But clearly she's well on her way to
| building up a competitor to the established brands.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Kranar wrote:
| Don't see any evidence that it's worth 3 billion dollars.
| All I see is a quote from Rihanna herself saying she
| thinks her company can raise that much by the time they
| IPO. Forbes estimates the value of her company at 1
| billion on the high end.
|
| And while it's true that VSCO's current market cap is 3
| billion, at the time that Rihanna made her comment VSCO's
| market cap was 5-6 billion. It has dropped significantly
| in recent months.
| abdabab wrote:
| Where did you find that Elon was fired from Zip2 and PayPal?
| wpietri wrote:
| As I mentioned elsewhere, I was wrong about Zip2; the board
| just refused to let him become CEO. But at PayPal, the
| board fired him after 6 months as CEO. That's documented in
| many places, including here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#X.com_and_PayPal
| littlestymaar wrote:
| No later than Friday, I was discussing with an acquaintance
| working for Tesla who compared Musk's leadership here to
| Trump at the white house: there is an entire team responsible
| for doing internal damage control after Musk announcements on
| Twitter. It's a lot of work, and sometimes the entire company
| just need to cope with the boss's whims ("ok next year
| there's going to be the Cybertruck thing [which he basically
| compared to the "not a flamethrower"] but fortunately for
| 2024 we're working on real cars").
| adolph wrote:
| In the bigger picture, Elon in SF twittering around while
| Gwynne runs Boca Chica may be a good thing.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Musk is a victim of his own success. Even if he isn't solely
| responsible for the success of Tesla and Space X in his mind
| enough of it is him.
|
| The problem here is overconfidence / blind spots. Twitter is
| a different type of business. Musk looks to be doing a Mike
| Jordan or a Shaq. Basketball isn't baseball, nor is it
| rapping. Both of them recovered from those bad decisions.
| Will Musk? Time will tell.
| wpietri wrote:
| Yeah, there's a phenomenon called "Acquired Situational
| Narcissism", where if somebody spends enough time in an
| environment that's all about them, they start thinking it's
| all about them.
|
| There's some evidence Musk was like this all along, but it
| is a lot harder to learn humility when you're doing well.
| [deleted]
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Right? Mass random firings of employees in multiple incompetent
| waves, blocking and expelling journalists and activists, re-
| enabling known hate-speech accounts, walking out of press
| conferences when questioned, spreading QAnon adjacent
| conspiracy theories... none of this annoyed Paul Graham enough
| to leave.. and in fact he defended the guy...
|
| But blocking links to Mastodon? That makes him leave? Like, uh,
| fine, but... maybe he could have not mocked us for pointing out
| the dysfunction weeks and weeks ago?
|
| Between all the crypto implosions happening and this, wealthy
| Silicon Valley investor types and their hanger-ons are really
| having a "moment" these past few months. Sheesh.
| willis936 wrote:
| None of those things incurred opportunity cost. I don't know
| who invests in what, but a cynical, logical explanation is on
| the table.
| josteink wrote:
| > re-enabling known hate-speech accounts
|
| "Hate speech" is left-wing code for "someone with an opposing
| point of view".
|
| Having those accounts unbanned, if nothing else, is a healthy
| sign.
|
| What this thread is about though (banning outbound links to
| other platforms), not so much. That plain reeks of
| desperation.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| No, it's not code in this case. Many of the accounts he re-
| enabled were full-on white supremacists. That's not an
| "opposing point of view" it's beyond the pale of civilized
| society and we literally fought wars to defeat it last
| century.
|
| And the list of accounts he banned were from a list left-
| wing/anarchist accounts given to him by known self-
| proclaimed fascists.
|
| If you think that's healthy, you have problems.
| bfrog wrote:
| That seems to be a real boon for advertising revenue there
| at twitter. Just what advertisers dream of, their ad next
| to a post by some antisemitism/racism/lgbt hate.
|
| You just lost a large group of potential customers.
| Brilliant marketing strategy.
|
| Maybe if you sell flags that go on oversized pickups. About
| everyone else is a miss in that sort of stupidity.
| rossjudson wrote:
| Conversely, "an opposing point of view" is right-wing code
| used to mask hate speech, when it occurs.
|
| Does hate speech exist? Yes. Are we in danger of overusing
| the term? Yes.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| "Deathcon 3 on jews" is more valuable speech than links to
| facebook profiles, gotcha.
| josteink wrote:
| Uh. Did you miss the part of my comment which said that
| link-banning being bad?
|
| Also nice hyperbole you got there.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| What hyperbole? We've got a policy that is link-banning
| while unbanning people who are holding "legally allowed
| opinions" (nice edit) like Mr. West and other racists.
| josteink wrote:
| The edit was a clarification based on your comment which
| was clearly misunderstanding what I was trying to say.
| Nothing malicious/nefarious intended.
|
| Also: while Kanye is clearly his own kind of category of
| crazy, what "other racists"?
|
| I don't know a single such case.
| optionalsquid wrote:
| > Also: while Kanye is clearly his own kind of category
| of crazy, what "other racists"?
|
| >
|
| > I don't know a single such case.
|
| One example I remember reading about was Andrew Anglin
| [1], the founder of The Daily Stormer [2], a website
| that, to save you a click, Wikipedia describes as "an
| American far-right, neo-Nazi, white supremacist,
| misogynist, Islamophobic, antisemitic, and Holocaust
| denial commentary and message board website that
| advocates for a second genocide of Jews".
|
| As his Wikipedia article [1] notes,
|
| > Anglin was banned from Twitter in 2013, but was
| reinstated weeks after the site was acquired by Elon Musk
| in 2022.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Anglin
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Stormer
| [deleted]
| diydsp wrote:
| This was the straw that broke the camel's back. that doesn't
| mean he adores the other changes.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| In a free country there's this thing called the first
| amendment and freedom of speech; because someone doesn't like
| a certain opinion doesn't make it hate speech.
|
| However, blocking links to a competitor is pretty clear-cut
| anticompetitive behavior. Imagine AT&T refusing to serve
| Verizon's websites.
| [deleted]
| verdenti wrote:
| ldjkfkdsjnv wrote:
| My recent impression of pg is that he is raising his family and
| is wealthy beyond measure. He doesn't need to influence anyone,
| and aside from his small quips on startups, seems to be checked
| out. He's not irrelevant but not being on twitter has zero impact
| on his life, because he doesnt need a mouth piece anymore
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| Most people are on there for a sense of validation. And I
| imagine 1 million followers is pretty validating.
| DogOfTheGaps wrote:
| Paul Graham was suspended from twitter now.
| neilv wrote:
| Regarding behavior of Twitter's current leadership, the
| personality of recent years...
|
| When people who seem intelligent and sensible achieve success,
| and then start to have a kind of jerk-y metamorphosis, I wonder
| whether it's not just that their voice is amplified or no longer
| suppressed, nor that "power corrupts", but... whether and how
| much drugs are involved.
|
| Imagine a stereotypical young Wall Street bro of decades past,
| who starts doing cocaine. If their personality changes, I might
| wonder how much it was the money, and how much it was the echo
| chamber in their new social scene, but one really can't ignore
| the coke (where at least temporary personality change is
| basically on the label as an effect).
|
| With some people, I also wonder about the awful effects of sleep
| deprivation. But usually first about drugs.
| CrimpCity wrote:
| He'll be back.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I'm not so sure. I left a month ago and apart from the current
| tire fire, I'm just glad not to be using it. Or anything else.
| It was almost strictly a waste of my time, and I'd really lost
| sight of how rarely it wasn't wasteful.
|
| At this point it genuinely seems as though doing nothing would
| be better than using Twitter. It produces a convincing illusion
| of being entertaining or even useful at times, but for me it
| truly and wholly lacked any significant utility or fulfilling
| elements.
|
| Apart from HN, I'm totally off the social media train and
| fairly content with it being that way.
|
| I suppose PG has more use for social media than I do, so the
| case may be a little different. Even so, I doubt very much that
| him returning to Twitter (or anyone for that matter) is
| inevitable.
| CrimpCity wrote:
| That's great it sounds like Twitter and social media in
| general isn't a big value add for you.
|
| I think for Paul Graham it's a different story since he talks
| to other influencers and occasionally goes viral. That sort
| of feedback loop well that's quite addictive. There's a
| reason why there's no obvious Twitter competitor.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| He's ... somewhat said as much:
|
| <https://mas.to/@paulg/109536542792559441>
| CrimpCity wrote:
| Didn't see that but just saw the top voted comment here and
| yeah def feel like I called it haha :)
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Decision's been made for him: <https://archive.vn/ucUdh>
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| It's my feeling that most will be back. But the frothy frenzy
| will have to burn itself out first.
| [deleted]
| bluedino wrote:
| What's the point of announcing that you're leaving a social media
| platform?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Brief reflection might suggest a few self-evident reasons:
|
| 1. Letting people know where and how you can be found,
| followed, and contacted.
|
| 2. To voice dissatisfaction with practices and/or policies of
| the old platform.
|
| 3. To encourage others to do similarly.
|
| I'm surprised the question is necessary, but appreciate the
| opportunity to clarify.
| DiNovi wrote:
| Paul is an out of touch reactionary billionaire. when you've lost
| your own, maybe it's time to acknowledge you don't know what
| you're doing
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| I find quite amazing that expressing such mild opinion as Paul
| Graham does can yield reactions so strong and labels so intense
| as "out of touch reactionary x".
|
| I have at least half of my friends that express weirder, more
| dangerous opinions that are in total opposite to mine. Is that
| what internet is all about now? Taking every people we disagree
| with and dress them as Hitler so we can shit on them? It used
| to be were I went to actually meet people with different point
| of views and new things.
|
| On hacker news, I expect people that disagree with Graham to
| prove him wrong with an argument.
|
| Name calling feels more like being with my mom on facebook.
| jdgoesmarching wrote:
| You finding his opinions "mild" doesn't make them so, and
| half of your friends are probably not billionaires with a lot
| of power and influence in the tech industry.
|
| If you want to defend Paul then do so, but most of this
| comment is just hyperbolically complaining about how he is
| criticized.
| consumer451 wrote:
| > Paul is an out of touch reactionary billionaire
|
| My theory is that humans are just not evolved for billionaire
| levels of wealth disparity. It's not a criticism, it just
| appears to be a fact.
|
| Honest question: are there any "in touch" billionaires? Maybe
| Mark Cuban in some ways for example?
| adharmad wrote:
| Gates or Warren Buffet. Both of them seem pretty grounded for
| the amount of wealth they possess.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| They are just out of touch in different ways. Gates' banana
| comment became the quintessential example of how out of
| touch rich people are even though it was ultimately
| inconsequential.
| jacquesm wrote:
| You - urgently - need to read up on Gates then.
| adharmad wrote:
| Any suggested readings/links? I am merely going by his
| current public persona and whatever the Gates Foundation
| is doing.
| ahansen wrote:
| It's not a short summary, but if you are into podcasts
| then Behind the Bastards have a two parter on him.
|
| https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/part-one-the-
| ballad-of...
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| You have to start reading about Gates before he spent
| millions to wash his reputation and adopted a disguise of
| philanthropist to buy a stairway to heaven. Anything
| before he left Microsoft, with the corruption scandals,
| the insults, the patent trolling, and so on.
|
| It's getting harder and harder to find though. I should
| have saved offline compiled files.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| I think there's a legitimate line to draw between
| "bastard does capitalism" and "philanthropist post
| capitalism". Bill Gates could have laundered his
| reputation just fine without committing to give away the
| majority of his wealth.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| The foundation is not meant to give away Gates money
| while he is alive.
|
| It's a way to be able to keep investing his money without
| paying taxes.
|
| It only spends the legal minimal amount for charity, 5%
| (way less than taxes that would go to build roads,
| hospitals and schools). The rest is invested in a
| portfolio that, by the magic of being in a non profit,
| can make billions without paying any tax.
|
| Since he directs the charity, he can therefore move the
| capital where he needs it to, including founding Monsanto
| and weapon makers, which he had to withdraw from after
| people noticed that it was quite the opposite of the
| claimed foundation mission.
|
| That's why most billionaires have some kind of charity:
| they keep all the power of their money, get good PR
| (which given that the wealth gap makes people grumpy, is
| a great shield) and they optimize their finance while
| people defend them.
|
| The PR operations worked well: most people on the
| internet now believe that Gates is a good person. A
| statement that would have made anybody smile in the 90'.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Ah ok. Well, after he quit MS as day to day leader there
| was that bit around his divorce, the Epstein link and
| more sordidness.
|
| Gates didn't really change, he just used his fortune to
| whitewash his reputation. He's still smart and I would be
| happy read what he has to say but a nice person he isn't
| and never was.
| mjmsmith wrote:
| MacKenzie Scott.
| abdabab wrote:
| I think she never intended to be a billionaire. She doesn't
| fall under the usual bucket of billionaires.
| kawera wrote:
| Laurene Powell Jobs
| mjmsmith wrote:
| Joan Kroc
| jacquesm wrote:
| Mark Cuban is not the example that I would reach for. He's
| been an asshole since before Yahoo! threw too much money at
| him.
|
| I know a few, but they're modest people and that's why I will
| not name them here, I will name one that is deceased, Rene
| Sommer, if you want to know more about him, I wrote about him
| here:
|
| https://jacquesmattheij.com/in-memoriam-rene-sommer/
| dendrite9 wrote:
| I've taken to skimming through the Elon/twitter threads
| curious to see if there's anything actually new. I'm glad I
| saw your post and clicked the link, that was a very
| pleasant story to read.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I still miss the man, in spite of our infrequent contact.
| DiNovi wrote:
| no one who hoards wealth that could save the lives of
| thousands is in a healthy mental space
| baxtr wrote:
| Great, now we're fighting who is the dumber billionaire.
|
| We're doomed.
| zzzeek wrote:
| > Paul is an out of touch reactionary billionaire.
|
| Elon Musk is billionaire reactionary distilled into its purest
| form. I mean the guy is literally spending 100% of his time
| reacting to things he doesn't personally like.
| DiNovi wrote:
| i know the brain poison social media gives us all... it's
| wild to see
| m_fayer wrote:
| Yep. Along with Musk and Kanye. Those are cases where the
| poison has fully penetrated. How many of our elites are
| less noticeably but still significantly impaired though?
| It's a frightening thought.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| Well I mean Trump was the scariest.
| JamesSwift wrote:
| Ehh, I mean Kanye has been on this journey for a long
| time. Talking about how "George Bush doesnt care about
| black people" in 2005 and grabbing mics to announce that
| "Beyonce had the best video of all time" in 2009. I was a
| fan and apologist of his for sometime after these
| incidents, but he lost me somewhere around his 2011 album
| with Jayz.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I really wish I could see Twitter's internal dashboards. One
| thing I have a hard time estimating is, outside of my bubble,
| how is Twitter doing? Are these things hurting Twitter? Is the
| controversy helping it?
|
| I can't imagine what would motivate the decision to ban
| Mastodon links. Were they really losing users to Mastodon? That
| would be a huge problem, but not one that banning links would
| solve.
| starik36 wrote:
| Wasn't the only mastodon account banned the one that was
| posting links to the doxer account?
| wardedVibe wrote:
| It was any server that shared links with the server which
| hosted that. So mathstodon.xyz, for example, which is where
| a bunch of math Twitter ran to, and not particularly
| political, was also hit. Even if you endorse banning links
| to someone sharing public information, it was an extremely
| broad brush.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| No, all links to a variety of Mastodon servers, plus
| official Mastodon account, plus hashtags mentioning
| Mastodon... were banned.
|
| No idea if they still are. I don't hang out on Twitter. But
| sheesh.
| tayo42 wrote:
| in the short term controversy and events drive traffic up.
| world cup going on, holidays and seasonal traffic, elon
| chaos. all probably makes twitter looks like a success at the
| moment. it would be to hard to separate out the traffic i
| think.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| They have lost many of their previous highend brand
| advertising. I now see almost exclusively advertisting from
| right wing alt brands like 'black rifle coffee'. One can
| safely assume that their advertising revenue has taken a huge
| hit. A few thousand people tossing elon $8 a month isnt going
| to make up for that.
| dusing wrote:
| You think coffee is "alt" right?
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| Anecdotally the content in my feed seems to be drying up,
| with less and less fresh new tweets every time I open the
| app. Either people are posting less, leaving or there's
| technical issues around serving content.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Are you confusing Paul Graham with Peter Thiel?
|
| PS: You're posting this on pg's site.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| PG used to post here but he left because of the negative
| comments as I remember. A couple of users got banned as well.
| Twitter allows you to just post and forget without much blow
| back except for the weird subtweets where people take you out
| of context. As such successful tweets tend to overgeneralize
| to avoid nuance or imply that there is nuance but not discuss
| it. A lot of YC tweeters do this. The problem is we have to
| take them at their word.
|
| What would be more interesting would be to discuss specific
| things as evidence for a more general truth.
|
| For example there is a huge criticism of the social sciences
| in this website (and in general) but none of it is specific
| criticism of specific hypotheses. (Yes, yes I know people
| will argue that there are no hypotheses in the social science
| literature and it is not testable etc... but that is a weak
| argument and not always true).
| bestcoder69 wrote:
| In a meritocracy, this would be dang's site.
| jacquesm wrote:
| To all extents and purposes that are relevant it is, or you
| can treat it as such. I'm not aware of pg overruling dang
| on anything, though obviously it is property of YC and
| there are limits to what dang can do when it comes to
| risking the site (legal risk, for instance).
| DiNovi wrote:
| no i'm not confused, and yes i'm aware where i am
| tptacek wrote:
| This isn't pg's site, and hasn't been for a long time.
| ericzawo wrote:
| imagine still unironically saying stuff like "i support Elon's
| vision but this is a singular bad decision" -- you either lack
| the capacity to understand there's no vision here other than off
| the cuff decision making or wildly intellectually dishonest and
| are playing both sides.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| Remember how George Lucas made Star Wars and became the genius
| billionaire who could do no wrong. Then he got a divorce and made
| Howard the Duck (quite possibly the worst movie of all time).
|
| I think the same thing is happening here. As a startup founder
| you have guardrails, spouses, investors. You have Brian De Palma
| rewriting the opening trailer crawl, you have Marcia Lucas
| helping the edit, and you have your old professor at USC Irvin
| Kershner guiding your hand.
|
| Now, Elon is the wealthiest man in the world and he has turned
| into Jar Jar Musk. It's time to see how this bird themed turd
| pans out.
| [deleted]
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| Whoa whoa whoa! Worst movie of all time? I still mutter "Slice
| salami!" To myself while cutting things.
| malteof wrote:
| > Elon is the wealthiest man in the world
|
| Second wealthiest now...
| ncallaway wrote:
| I've had the exact same though about George Lucas. Having
| constraints often forces us to listen to other people, take on
| advice we don't want to hear, and tamp down our worst excesses.
|
| When all external constraints are taken away, it's probably
| much more of a challenge to stay grounded.
|
| Incidentally, this latest action immediately brought to my mind
| a Star Wars quote:
|
| "The more you tighten your grip, Elon, the more star systems
| will slip through your fingers."
| jacquesm wrote:
| I'll have to go watch that now.
| layer8 wrote:
| Maybe watch the pitch meeting first:
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=3JGmGR9meNc
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's just weird...
| ericzawo wrote:
| This is a phenomenal metaphor that I concur wholeheartedly with
| and will be stealing. My Star Wars fan friends will understand
| the point immediately :)
| hyperhopper wrote:
| This comment really adds nothing that an upvote wouldn't.
|
| (Yes, ironic since this comment is just a vocalized downvote,
| but I figured I'd tell you why)
| Keyframe wrote:
| OT, but that take on Lucas has to stop. Was he surrounded by
| many capable people that contributed to his works in great
| ways? Of course, that's what collaborative art of movie making
| is all about. Spielberg movies would probably suffer a lot
| without Kahn editing them, so would Scorsese's without Thelma
| Schoonmaker, etc.. Look at the other world-building things
| Lucas did to gain some perspective on him as an artist - from
| THX 1138 and Graffiti, over Star Wars OT to Indiana Jones,
| Willow, and ultimately the prequels - yes, the prequels;
| Compare their cultural presence and impact (even mentioning Jar
| Jar here) to what Disney Juggernaut with all of the talent and
| money couldn't bring to presence. Now, combine that with the
| gravity around him that brought in people that managed to pull
| technical wonders of digital video editing (AVID) and image
| manipulation (Photoshop), and many many other things (THX,
| Pixar, etc.) on top of all of the legendary businesses that
| spawned up from Lucas Film itself, to Lucas Arts, Skywalker
| Sound (THX), and ILM. That's not a coincidence, and not on his
| ex wife (alone) - that's a bunch of smart and hard-working
| talented people around guy that told them a story, people
| including Spielberg, and De Palma, and Coppola... Story which
| they all liked. Give the guy a break, number of successes
| around him, and not any of the mentioned individuals, is no
| coincidence. One Howard the Duck does not his legacy make.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| If you want a really invaluable insight into the early life of
| Elon, the interview with his first wife is fantastic-
| https://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/a5380/millionaire-start...
| . It paints an incredible picture of the man behind the brand
| and... kind of explains a lot.
| ThouYS wrote:
| thanks for that link. that pretty much is exactly how I
| imagine him. I remember reading Ashley Vance's biography. At
| some point Elon makes a calculation about how many hours a
| girlfriend would need.
| yarg wrote:
| "I am your wife," I told him repeatedly, "not your employee."
|
| "If you were my employee," he said just as often, "I would
| fire you."
| 88 wrote:
| This is beginning to feel like the Freenode takeover drama
| Octokiddie wrote:
| He didn't exactly say he's leaving Twitter. He said he disagrees
| with the moderation policy and gives a link to his Mastodon
| account.
|
| That part about this being "the last straw" implies some change
| of view. Read in a certain way it could be a goodbye.
|
| Kind of ambiguous and non-committal.
| [deleted]
| 323 wrote:
| Maybe Elon is playing 15D chess, and crashing Twitter into the
| ground is part of a bigger plan.
| elforce002 wrote:
| Hehe, that's 44b crash so I'd assume he's posed to get at least
| double than that on this bigger plan.
| threeseed wrote:
| There's an old adage about never meeting your heroes that applies
| well to PG.
|
| Some of his daily takes were so embarrassing and insipid that it
| was hard to maintain respect. It's funny because his long form
| posts which are often insightful were likely reviewed/edited by a
| third person. A concept he has actually said only exists in the
| modern commercial publishing era.
| mjklin wrote:
| Something I explained to my children today: don't tweet about
| things you explained to your children today apropos of nothing,
| it makes you sounds like a jackass
| memish wrote:
| PG still has an excellent batting average and is more
| insightful than not even on Twitter.
| zug_zug wrote:
| So I notice a trend for people to take seem to take stabs at PG
| whenever he's brought up, and sometimes not seemingly even
| relevant to the article at hand.
|
| I suppose you can only speak for yourself, but I find the words
| "insipid" and "embarrassing" particularly emotional /
| unscientific. Out of curiosity, what is there a connection to
| the article at hand or alternatively why do you feel it's
| important to spread awareness of his incompetence?
| sdiacom wrote:
| Just last month, he was passionately defending Elon Musk's
| decisions running Twitter, on Twitter, from all those
| annoying plebs who dared to speak their minds about it, not
| even having ran any companies themselves.
|
| The topic of "the article at hand" is, inevitably, his
| incompetence.
| zug_zug wrote:
| Are you saying frustration is simply that he changed his
| mind on this issue then? And actually it sounds like you
| think he changed his mind in the right direction.
|
| Was he rude to you personally or something?
| bowsamic wrote:
| Why would you think that science has anything to do with
| this?
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I feel that there's a fitting SMBC on this topic.
|
| https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2010-01-29
| wwweston wrote:
| It's very hard to be smart all the time, and you don't have to
| be stupid to be wrong.
| the_cat_kittles wrote:
| what you have to do is correctly assess yourself, which is
| impossibly rare among people who made a bunch money
| hyperhopper wrote:
| Especially amoung the people that will get in front of a
| crowd and shout "I'm rich, bitch!"
|
| Doubly so when intersected with the crowd that publicly
| eschews earthly possessions.
|
| Turns out hypocrites aren't self aware
| eikenberry wrote:
| I've met PG at a book signing and he was quite pleasant. I
| asked about when Arc would be released (this was a while back)
| and he laughed and joked about it. Really nice guy.
|
| Do you really think twitter equates to meeting someone?
| threeseed wrote:
| > Do you really think twitter equates to meeting someone?
|
| I think you learn more about a person through Twitter than
| meeting them since for better or worse people drop the
| polite, professional veneer that normally associates face to
| face meetings.
|
| It showcases (a) what concerns them so much they have to
| Tweet about it, (b) what their values are, (c) how they read
| situations, (d) how they treat people etc.
|
| It's weirdly like you're watching them perform in some
| scientific experiment and seeing how they react to different
| stimuli.
| eikenberry wrote:
| But you go to far. "Meeting someone" is meeting that public
| veneer that they use when meeting new/random people. It is
| not spending a lot of time with them and getting to know
| them. It is about how first, in-person impressions match up
| against your expectations.
| garbagetime wrote:
| Do you think that meeting someone at his book signing equates
| to meeting him?
| bestcoder69 wrote:
| GP is calling pg dumb, not mean - your anecdote is
| compatible.
| eikenberry wrote:
| You cannot be both pleasant and dumb. Dumb people are
| inherently annoying.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| > Do you really think twitter equates to meeting someone?
|
| That really is one of the worst parts of Twitter. The form of
| short-form drive interaction encourages some of the most
| pithy and dismissive conversations and leads to some really
| hostile interactions that often dispense with human decency.
|
| (I mean, not restricted to Twitter, I've experienced it here,
| and on Mastodon, but Twitter really takes the cake.)
| jedberg wrote:
| > were likely reviewed/edited by a third person
|
| You don't have to guess, he lists the names of every person who
| reviews his posts at the bottom of the posts.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _There 's an old adage about never meeting your heroes that
| applies well to PG._
|
| I wonder how much of that is down to the person themselves
| (judging someone else, through the lense of whatever prejudices
| and biases) and not their heroes.
|
| As they say from where I am: short of meeting true evil,
| there's no one worse than your own self.
| bestcoder69 wrote:
| Dude the other day he said "Automation is inductive proof that
| Marx is wrong"! A mistake you wouldn't make if you sniffed
| Marx's wikipedia page, let alone opened your eyes to read it.
|
| pg deleted it and posted this response:
| https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1600122386346450944
|
| (...after, hilariously, Matt Bruenig replied with a correction
| from ChatGPT - which is also deleted because he auto-deletes
| tweets.)
|
| e: Reading the thread now, I love this reply from pg, who I've
| seen attack marxism, socialism, leftism, what-have-you,
| endlessly and smugly in the past:
|
| > I freely admit I have only a superficial grasp of Marxist
| doctrine. I could no more debate the finer points of it with an
| actual Marxist than I could debate the finer points of church
| doctrine with a Jesuit. (Nor would I want to be able to do
| either.)
|
| The _finer_ points!!! Amazing. Something to keep in mind when
| the billionaires tell the ol ' lefties to read econ 101!
| tpush wrote:
| That particular exchange really was one of the most
| embarrassing and ignorant ones I've seen on part of pg.
| tedunangst wrote:
| I hope he got a refund from the ghostwriter for that one.
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| Quoting the GP tweet to the one you linked:
|
| > You still occasionally hear people saying that founders
| don't deserve to be rich, because their employees created all
| the value. But the falsity of this claim becomes increasingly
| obvious as automation enables founders to grow companies with
| fewer and fewer employees.
|
| Do you disagree with this, or just disagree that it's in
| contradiction to Marx?
| topaz0 wrote:
| To start with, "don't deserve [...] because employees
| created all the value" is a straw man. Lots of other value
| Out There that they exploit that comes from other places
| than their employees' labor. Also lots of reasons people
| shouldn't be rich, whether or not they are founders and
| whether or not they "created" value.
| tim333 wrote:
| Twitter now says paulg account suspended
| alangibson wrote:
| He actually wrote a blog post about how he writes. He sends
| drafts to people and heavily rewrites, sometimes over the
| course of weeks or months (IIRC).
|
| So, yea, the agitated dad vibes get (dare I say) edited out in
| the process.
| notatoad wrote:
| >were likely reviewed/edited by a third person
|
| or else just had the benefit of more time to think about them.
| i certainly know i say some dumb stuff, but if i write it down
| and think about it for a week before saying it to anybody else,
| i'm going to censor like 90% of the stuff that comes out of my
| head.
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| That was always the dumbest criticism of Obama - that he took
| frequent pauses when speaking (the uuuuhs) and chose his
| words carefully - his critics used it against him where
| anyone with half of brain understood why. That being said,
| Trump essentially DDoS the art of the inartful / wrong /
| dumb, so maybe that was a better way to go. Who knows....
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| There's another one: the medium is the message
| 0xFEEDC0DE wrote:
| People dramatically exiting twitter is childish to me. Why do you
| need validation for using social media? Also people having fake
| outrage over twitter drama and smear merchant journalists who
| push terms of service boundaries on purpose is equally childish.
| Grow up.
| zzzeek wrote:
| This should cause a significant degree of cognitive dissonance
| for quite a lot of Hacker News users. fascinating to see two
| members of the billionaire tech class disagree publicly like
| this.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| I mean my reaction is: ok I don't care about this billionaire
| spat
| photochemsyn wrote:
| As an HN user who is mostly interested in open source projects
| of various sorts, I don't really care that much about
| 'billionaire tech class' conflicts. I do appreciate Elon Musk's
| successful effort with electric vehicles and reusable rockets,
| though I expect others to eventually catch up, as is normal
| with tech innovation (VW electric vehicles are looking good).
|
| As far as social media, if it all goes away I wouldn't be that
| concerned. Net neutrality and access to basic Internet services
| for all is a much more important issue, IMO. Blocking servers
| from the Internet (unless they're actually hosting criminal
| content and taken down by legal prosecution) would be the more
| serious free speech violation.
| [deleted]
| brainphreeze wrote:
| This website is heavily left leaning, like most of the internet
| these days.
| vdnkh wrote:
| Do you live under a rock? This place has always been
| libertarian, and since Trump has turned into an echo chamber
| of alt-right grievances in tech. The initial burst of
| cheering from this forum over Elon initially buying twitter
| to "destroy wokeness" was deafening.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| what do you consider a centrist website?
|
| (I am centre-right by my country's standards, yet my
| perception of HN is that it leans even more right)
| tauntz wrote:
| ..like most of the world, really. I'm not sure where some
| people got the impression that people are anywhere close to
| being 50/50 between left vs right.
| elboru wrote:
| Elections?
| elforce002 wrote:
| Not the world, just the West.
| weaksauce wrote:
| only if people haven't been paying attention to the absolute
| shitshow that musk was doing with twitter. elon is not a smart
| man even if he cosplays one.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| I have seen 0 people who support Elon in this.
| jasmer wrote:
| There's a bit of Putin invading Ukraine effect - Putin and
| frankly probably most Russians and frankly everyone else realizes
| it's a mistake. But it would be the end of him if were perceived
| to 'fail' on such a grand scale. The Ukrainian invasion continues
| (aka ending untrained soldiers as fodder) in order to salvage his
| status, and indirectly, the reputation of Russia.
|
| Elon might be perceived to be too 'damaged' to fix anything now -
| his credibility on Twitter shot, but, were he to do a giant 'mea
| culpa' right now and put some other person in charge, he might
| win a few points frankly but it's going to be really hard for
| him.
|
| Perhaps Elon could make a 'Freedom of Expression Constitution'
| and then put someone in place to 'Enact the Constitution' - maybe
| he could head the 'Constitutional Board' and then walk away
| saying: 'I've done what I've come to do, Mars needs me more than
| Twitter, it's in good hands, I'm on the Constitutional Board to
| make sure they follow the right path!'. That would give him
| public cover for his motivations and maybe save just enough face
| for him to get out his own way. I suggest most people would agree
| Twitter could have used some reforms anyhow and so even if the
| market didn't buy the 'narrative' they would see the reality of
| the situation and some upside.
| Flatcircle wrote:
| What's the best general server to join? I noticed the one Paul
| joined isn't avaible to join anymore?
| santopol wrote:
| "I haven't "left Twitter." I just don't want to keep using it
| while it's banning links to other sites. Plus given the way
| things are going, it seemed like a good time to learn more about
| Mastodon."
|
| https://mas.to/@paulg/109536542792559441
| wnevets wrote:
| Do people on HN still believe Elon isn't destroying Twitter?
| bmelton wrote:
| I'll take the hit here.
|
| I thought electric vehicles were a really dumb idea. Too many
| problems to be solved for. Range. Charging. Depreciation.
| Getting people to switch. All of the other infrastructure. Now
| it's what everyone does, and Tesla is (last I checked) one of
| the _very_ few EV makers that is able to make a profit on EVs,
| while upstarts in the space (including Ford) are losing money
| on every EV sale.
|
| I thought self-landing rockets was a dumb idea.
|
| I thought Starlink was a dumb idea.
|
| I think a lot of what Elon is doing now is a very dumb idea,
| but as a Twitter user with friends across the political
| spectrum, I have seen what has appeared to be a suppression of
| speech that largely affected my right leaning friends, while my
| left leaning friends gloated about it. I've watched journalists
| like Taylor Lorenz break the rules with impunity while
| journalists on the right were deplatformed for doing less.
|
| This is clearly a departure, and I would argue that many right
| leaning friends were hoping that Elon would stop the pendulum
| swing, I don't think any were expecting the pendulum to swing
| back the other way so hard. Elon's actions have seemed
| arbitrary, but a) Every change looks bad when you don't know
| their motivations, and b) I've been wrong about Elon's entire
| life to this point.
|
| It's possible that he's done surveys or polls or gotten data
| indicating that fear of doxxing is a thing that is meaningfully
| suppressing Twitter engagement. It is possible that he knows
| what he's doing, but it isn't what he's said he's doing and it
| definitely isn't what we expected him to be doing.
|
| I don't know the answer to those questions, and so I don't know
| if he's ruining Twitter or just transforming it into something
| that it hasn't been, and I'm mindful of the fact that
| practically every single change that Twitter has ever made has
| been received as "the end of Twitter," from verified accounts,
| to changing their API ToS, to blocking apps, to suing users
| with any vague reference to 'tweet' in their apps, to
| bookmarks, analytics, 280 characters, etc., etc.
| Nomentatus wrote:
| Agreed, well said.
|
| Elon's had a busy productive life, and my take on my
| University friends who've had busy productive lives is that
| they now have the self-insight of a baked potato, roughly. No
| doubt because they haven't had spare time to reflect on their
| actions or motivations. But that doesn't mean they can't
| self-correct, it just means they usually have to run into a
| brick wall or two before they do. I'm guessing he'll correct
| this latest boner.
| bmelton wrote:
| I'm still highly critical of what Musk is doing (again,
| without knowing the 'why') but something that seems
| important and is going unnoticed is that while the previous
| administration's actions were just as arbitrary and
| capricious, they almost always related to events that were
| popular topics of discussion like recent elections, a
| global pandemic, and other things that are naturally topics
| of discussion.
|
| I think the current rules are likely just as dumb, but the
| number of people likely to be suspended for doxxing Elon or
| posting about Mastodon is undoubtedly a MUCH smaller
| segment of the population.
|
| It's amusing watching the reactions to it. I've run enough
| communities in the past to appreciate how many times you
| have to make decisions that go against your personal ethics
| for the sake of the community. Everyone draws different
| lines on the sand on what they consider "free" speech, and
| anything closely resembling what is protected in America
| will likely get you into trouble internationally. Elon is
| finding out that it's hard, and while it may seem like he's
| setting his lines in untenable spots, it seems just as
| possible to me that we're all wrong and he isn't.
| Nomentatus wrote:
| You're right, about the previous Twitter administration
| and how it worked. Take away this (big) pinch and Twitter
| can be a real improvement on the last version.
|
| I have trouble swallowing this abuse of market power
| because the courts and govts have allowed so much such
| abuse for so long. It's a big issue for me (and the EU.)
| Without that context, I might find it easier to shrug
| off.
|
| No question, speech and community make for interesting
| decisions; if he can stay within the law, he'll have a
| fair bit of leeway from me.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| The bustiest times twitter has ever been have all been after he
| bought it, if you believe him.
|
| And he's so controversial - even here - that all he has to do
| is keep fiddling with it and people flock to the circus with
| popcorn.
|
| What evidence does anyone have that it's being destroyed? What
| are the metrics for any social media site being destroyed?
|
| Thinking about myspace and digg - it seemed to be loss of user
| base. Does anyone have metrics independent of Musk/twitter
| insiders that it's losing users? Seems like https://alexa.com/
| is dead...
| mrtksn wrote:
| You know how Musk promises one thing and delivers something else?
| I'm not the biggest Musk fan but I believe he has a very
| effective process and he is a product person - that is
| understands what is a good product.
|
| He will never deliver a free speech platform, he is a free-speech
| NIMBY and has an agenda os something that drives him but he can
| still turn Twitter into something valuable.
|
| Then people will come back for whatever Twitter will become. But
| because he claimed free-speech absolutism he will be held
| accountable for it and his persona will degrade and people won't
| cut him a slack and that's the risk for him to fail completely.
| Until very recently he was able to get thousands of dollars of
| payment for a product that don't exists and he even jacked up the
| price over the years, many people are called frauds for less than
| this but Musk has huge social credit among the techies and He can
| continue selling that product and continue claiming that it will
| deliver next year - indefinitely.
|
| He needs to figure out Twitter before his personality loses
| credit completely and losing the support of Paul Graham, a
| prominent persona from the scene, is not a good sign.
| dale_glass wrote:
| > You know how Musk promises one thing and delivers something
| else? I'm not the biggest Musk fan but I believe he has a very
| effective process and he is a product person - that is
| understands what is a good product.
|
| No, in the case of Twitter he clearly doesn't. Twitter's
| business model is advertising, yet he's been driving them away
| since he's started.
|
| Even in the user-facing side he made a weird mess with the blue
| checkmarks that was completely unnecessary, didn't make
| anything better and only created confusion.
| mrtksn wrote:
| > Twitter's business model is advertising
|
| That's true but as I've learned here on HN, that wasn't
| working very well already and Twitter was just an
| afterthought for the large advertisers. Twitter wasn't huge
| money maker.
|
| That's something that he can change, this is not something
| fundamental about the product.
| dale_glass wrote:
| Yeah, but he's making it even worse.
|
| Now one might argue that Musk wants to ignore advertisers
| entirely and target the actual users. That could be an
| interesting thing to try. But when why is he naming and
| shaming and whining about advertisers? If he decided to
| change business models, then it doesn't matter whether
| Apple advertises.
|
| If he's aiming to profit from the users, he's also doing it
| wrong by bringing back all kinds of formerly banned
| unsavory people. This will over time reduce the market
| share to the very specific audience that's in line with his
| preferences, and probably invite trouble from the EU.
| mrtksn wrote:
| > But when why is he naming and shaming and whining about
| advertisers? If he decided to change business models,
| then it doesn't matter whether Apple advertises.
|
| So far he sucks at managing a community and apparently
| doesn't understand the business he got it. Can he get his
| understanding to a point where he doesn't screw up every
| time and gets some sizeable wins? I don't know, I think
| it's not impossible and I think he is trying hard. But
| maybe before he gets on track for success, he will need
| to distance himself from the alt-right folks because as I
| see it they have completely different agenda and it's not
| their money and reputation on the line so they fight
| their ridiculous culture wars in their fantasy world and
| if Musk keeps feeding himself from these people He won't
| get real signals, real feedback and won't be able to
| correct course.
| dale_glass wrote:
| I highly doubt it. He's drastically overpaid for Twitter,
| to the point that it ever being profitable dubious.
|
| Twitter is also not really that important. He's paid way
| too much for something that on the user side is
| unimpressive tech, and that is only valuable because of
| its inertia, and that's by no means guaranteed.
| mrtksn wrote:
| As I understand it, if Twitter shuts down tomorrow Musk
| will still be tremendously rich man. Sure, he will upset
| some investors but the debt he took for the buyout was
| actually in the name of Twitter and he won't be exposed
| to it.
|
| Maybe he doesn't have to make Twitter profitable to
| justify the outrageous price he paid, maybe it's good
| enough to make it break even?
| dale_glass wrote:
| > As I understand it, if Twitter shuts down tomorrow Musk
| will still be tremendously rich man.
|
| What does that have to do with anything? My argument is
| that I disagree that he "understands what is a good
| product", and is a good business person, at least in the
| context of Twitter.
|
| Whether he can survive Twitter failing is not part of the
| discussion.
|
| > Maybe he doesn't have to make Twitter profitable to
| justify the outrageous price he paid, maybe it's good
| enough to make it break even?
|
| Profit is anything right above break even, even just one
| cent. So no.
| vdnkh wrote:
| > I'm not the biggest Musk fan but I believe he has a very
| effective process and he is a product person
|
| What a weird thing to say after he killed twitter with his
| "process". Perhaps this dumpster fire is the best view yet into
| what he really believes, and how he really runs his companies.
| Elon is a modern day Kissinger
| mrtksn wrote:
| His process as, I understand it, is to re-discover the wheel
| and see how else it could have been done. It is messy and
| might not yield good results if his predecessors already did
| a good job but I think he has a chance and will look like a
| dumpster fire until he learns and finds a new path. If he
| fails, it will look like extinguished dumpster fire :)
| vdnkh wrote:
| It's not a dumpster fire, its 5d chess!
| mrtksn wrote:
| I'm sure some fanboy will say that but that's not what I
| say. He is still just learning how the product works and
| tries things. Will he succeed? More likely than not, I
| think.
| abraae wrote:
| > Elon is a modern day Kissinger
|
| You're going to have to elaborate on that fascinating
| historical reference.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| He could be, but I'm looking at Musk and seeing big Howard
| Hughes energy.
| Veedrac wrote:
| I wish it were not so, but Apple has shown you can get away
| with a whole truck of anticompetitive 'no you may not hear
| about my competitor' behavior without harming a business.
| kgwgk wrote:
| > You know how Musk promises one thing and delivers something
| else?
|
| He promises one thing and delivers a new promise for something
| else. Or a flamethrower.
| Gatsky wrote:
| Sigh these 'What is Elon Musk thinking?' discussions are so
| tiresome, devoid of any useful content. Do we really need 600+
| comments about this issue? Is everyone really so upset about some
| guy they don't know?
| anticristi wrote:
| > Twitter will no longer allow free promotion of specific social
| media platforms
|
| I can foresee that Twitter Orange will be launched next week,
| which for 8$/month allows you to link to other social media
| platforms.
|
| On a more serious tone, does anyone know if this is legal in the
| EU, given the recent Digital Services Act?
| input_sh wrote:
| It's absolutely not compatible with Digital Services Act:
| https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-...
|
| > Example of the "don'ts" - Gatekeeper platforms may no longer:
|
| > treat services and products offered by the gatekeeper itself
| more favourably in ranking than similar services or products
| offered by third parties on the gatekeeper's platform
|
| > prevent consumers from linking up to businesses outside their
| platforms
| mazurnification wrote:
| Honest question. What is probability that Elon will run poll and
| revert policy change? (My pick 80%)
| pg wrote:
| I'm not leaving Twitter. It seems more likely than not that Elon
| will reverse the ban on links to other social media sites. I just
| don't want to hang out there in the meantime. Plus given the way
| things are going, it seemed like a good time to learn about
| alternatives.
|
| I still think Elon is a smart guy. His work on cars and rockets
| speaks for itself. Nor do I think he's the villain a lot of
| people try to make him out to be. He's eccentric, definitely, but
| that should be news to no one. Plus I don't think he realizes
| that the techniques that work for cars and rockets don't work in
| social media. Those two facts are sufficient to explain most of
| his behavior.
|
| He could still salvage the situation. He's the sort of person it
| would be a big mistake to write off. And I hope he does. I would
| be delighted to go back to using Twitter regularly.
| [deleted]
| tootie wrote:
| Elon is smart but irrational. This goes for a lot of people who
| are highly accomplished and yet have bizarre opinions and
| behavior
| sanderjd wrote:
| "Villain" isn't the word I'd use, but he has been increasingly
| indulging in gleeful cruelty and childish nonsense, both of
| which are very off putting.
|
| I also admire his car and rocket businesses, but he seems to
| have gotten sucked deeply into the very online culture war
| grievance trap in the past few years, to the point that it now
| seems to be taking up essentially all of his time now. It's
| really a shame to see.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Gleeful cruelty? Really? That's quite an overstatement for a
| bit of social media drama.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| >Nor do I think he's the villain a lot of people try to make
| him out to be
|
| So how do you explain his targetting of Fauci? Or the horrible
| things he said about that cave diver?
| quantified wrote:
| Twitter is incidentally a tech company. Fundamentally, it's a
| "people communicating with each other in people-configurable
| groups" and that is quite unlike building vehicles.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Just going to leave this here for you @pg
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604593057676300288?s=61...
| keepper wrote:
| So your initial comments have aged poorly...
|
| From your own feed:
|
| " People are rooting for him to fail because he's a rich white
| guy and a political moderate. "
|
| https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1593206076983635968?s=46&t=...
|
| I really really really dislike this whole trend to feel
| "victimized" while being some of the most successful people in
| earth. People are "turning" on Elon after being hugely beloved,
| purely cause he's doing idiotic things. Plain an simple.
|
| Furthermore, we should hold someone who's the richest person on
| earth to higher standards.
| bambax wrote:
| "a political moderate"?? PG said this a month ago? (Nov.
| 17th) Wow. That tells us much more about PG's politics than I
| would ever have wanted to know.
|
| Also, "rich white guy" adds a nice vibe of "all lives
| matter". It's a truth universally acknowledged that white
| people are victims. Esp. if they're male. And rich.
| mcv wrote:
| There are plenty of rich white guys I'm not actively
| rooting to fail. In fact, until quite recently, I really
| believed Musk was doing good, was as smart as he presented
| himself, and was a decent human being. Quirky maybe, but I
| love quirky.
|
| He has since exposed himself as a massive asshole and
| idiot.
| rizoma_dev wrote:
| It appears you won't be returning to twitter
| baxtr wrote:
| _> seemed like a good time to learn about alternatives._
|
| Would be great to see you being more active on HN again!
| pg wrote:
| Thanks, but as I learned when I was running HN, being a
| regular user of a forum (which the moderator necessarily is)
| and writing essays are fundamentally incompatible.
|
| If you're known to be a regular user of a forum, then when
| someone says something about you and you don't reply, it
| reads as a tacit admission that they're correct. And when you
| write essays people say all kinds of things about you. The
| combination is a disaster. Forum users can sense that you're
| compelled to respond, and it encourages them to pick fights
| with you.
|
| Back when I used to moderate HN, hitting publish on an essay
| was usually followed by several hours of saying various forms
| of "No, what I said was..." Life is much better now that I
| never look at the HN threads on them.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Rule #1 of any forum is don't moderate the forum that you
| are active on. Musk is finding out the hard way why this is
| the case.
|
| Happy to see your post here though!
|
| Edit: and while we have you here briefly, Happy Holidays!
| panarky wrote:
| pg will almost certainly be reinstated because he's a
| high-profile supporter.
|
| But just because the new owner makes exceptions to his
| ridiculous anti-free-speech policy for high-profile
| supporters doesn't make it better.
|
| In fact, selective enforcement of batshit policies makes
| it all much worse.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, but it would be folly to continue to invest into a
| forum that is run in such a capricious way.
| AbpSch wrote:
| You should check out Radiopaper (radiopaper.com), which was
| designed to address this dynamic: when someone sends you a
| message or comments on something you wrote, their comment
| is only visible to you and remains unpublished until/unless
| you reply.
|
| HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31210680
| Marazan wrote:
| Remember when Elon baselessly called someone a peadophile.
|
| Repeatedly.
|
| So eccentric.
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| I was just about to share your tweet, and... account suspended.
| Things sure do escalate quickly, these days!
| pfoof wrote:
| Good job OP. You managed to ressurect pg since 2 years ago
| marvin wrote:
| I've kept a pretty distanced opinion about Musk's Twitter
| dramas, figuring that the network effect and having access to
| the thoughts of whichever thinkers I enjoy reading is what
| matters. Most other stuff is ancillary to that, and challenging
| the ad-based funding model of media is a very interesting
| experiment.
|
| But now that he's started banning the A list of intellectually
| interesting people, I don't see how it can end well. This
| decision needs to be reversed very soon, or the network effect
| will be destroyed.
|
| Your tweets are the reason I bothered to register an account in
| the first place, so hoping that Musk figures this out sooner
| than the hopefully short time that's needed for most to accrete
| somewhere else.
| roland35 wrote:
| I'm sorry but saying "he is a smart guy" is a bit ridiculous at
| this point. A "smart guy" certainly may not know everything
| about running a social network, but he _would_ listen to the
| advice from those around them.
|
| Being smart also means understanding what you don't know and
| not surround yourself with sycophants.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > but he _would_ listen to the advice from those around them.
|
| At this point, I'm assuming he is surrounded by people too
| eager to please him.
|
| > Being smart also means understanding what you don't know
| and not surround yourself with sycophants.
|
| The inescapable conclusion is that Elon is not as smart as he
| thinks. Whether he can learn is open to debate and will
| become evident shortly.
| roland35 wrote:
| I have no inside info of Twitter besides being an
| interested bystander, but it seems like he's flat out
| ignored advice (and later fired the advice givers) at
| multiple points since taking over. I'm sure anyone left is
| only still around by being a yesman.
| mcv wrote:
| > At this point, I'm assuming he is surrounded by people
| too eager to please him.
|
| He definitely is. Or at least people pretending to.
|
| I think this is one of the biggest risks of being too
| successful, too rich: it becomes too easy to surround
| yourself with people who will only agree with everything
| you say, and you end up believing in yourself too much, any
| criticism is jealousy, any contradiction is sabotage, and
| obviously you must really be so smart you can do anything,
| because look at all the people telling you so.
|
| (Unrelated, but I think that's also what hurt the Star Wars
| prequels; Lucas was the legend. He either didn't get or
| didn't accept the constructive criticism that made the
| originals great.)
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| Power and fame are intoxicating, moreso than any known
| chemical drug compound. Elon just didn't have the means to
| express this version of himself before his companies took
| off.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Smart and wise are related but somewhat orthogonal, Elon is
| quite smart but not very wise.
| dist1ll wrote:
| This is a ridiculous statement. Smartness and wisdom are
| _most definitely_ very strongly correlated.
|
| Complete absurdist take.
| dekhn wrote:
| To expand on this: intelligence (smarts, IQ, etc) is the
| ability to come up with what appears to be the objectively
| best answer to a problem or action to take, often in a
| situation with only partial information.
|
| Wisdom is the ability to evaluate many solutions to a
| problem or required action, and choosing the one which has
| the greatest utilitarian value, for some complex utility
| function that attempts to incorporate a far wider
| collection of evidence than intelligence does.
|
| Somebody can be quite intelligent but lack wisdom.
| Intelligent people are also much better at self-delusion,
| and erection of reality distortion fields, than wise
| people. They are also prone to assuming that their
| intelligence transfers- for example between engineering and
| social media.
|
| Hopefully, he'll shut down twitter sooner rather than later
| and then we won't have to listen to this ongoing blather.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| I hope you write a blog about the process of staying off
| twitter. It's a system that has a lot of psychological rewards
| and I believe quitting it is almost like changing an addictive
| habit.
| [deleted]
| rdxm wrote:
| Marazan wrote:
| Account suspended.
|
| Guess you are.
| xqcgrek2 wrote:
| Why shouldn't you have to pay a few bucks to advertise your
| other social media sites? Surely you're wealthy enough.
| ragebol wrote:
| What i hoped he would he'd do was to find another Gwynne
| Shotwell and have them run the company while taking his advice
| and kindly ignore it when it makes sense.
|
| Alas, I don't see something like this panning out, that future
| is gone.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Tom Zhu, Tesla's China president, is likely to be head of
| Tesla Automotive in the near future.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Where did you pick that tidbit up?
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| I'm curious to hear your thoughts on him banning Ukrainian
| phone numbers, effectively making it so that Ukrainians can't
| sign up to share information about the war.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I would chalk that up to slow service degradation more than
| malice. Twitter is likely slowly running aground.
| sulam wrote:
| So I agree that he did smart things in the past. However he is
| totally incompetent managing Twitter in a rational business
| way. For a while there I thought he might be trying to get the
| debt reduced substantially and was preserving cash in the
| meantime. The last few weeks and the constant own-goal-via-
| shitposting that he does are solid evidence that any strategic
| plot has been well and truly lost.
|
| I get the sense that he wants to "own the libs" to build
| credibility with US "conservatives" -- despite the fact that
| the libs regularly own themselves more thoroughly than he can
| -- but he's mostly just scoring goals against his own pocket
| book right now. The people I feel sorry for are TSLA investors.
|
| Edit: oh and the rank and file Twitter employees who are either
| having to put up with his BS or haven't been paid the severance
| they were promised. He seems to be taking a "sue me" approach
| to that, which is really really shitty for a typical employee
| who uses their income to pay rent/mortgages and buy groceries.
| I hope he loses another billion in back payments and penalties
| on that shit, because he's setting awful examples right now.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > He's eccentric, definitely, but that should be news to no
| one.
|
| Being "eccentric" usually means non-mainstream clothing, music
| taste, a big ass selection of historic cars or similar things.
|
| Musk? Dude literally interacts with or unbans high-profile neo-
| Nazis and antisemites. That's not "eccentric" by any
| definition, that's _enabling_ the vilest of the vile. No,
| banning Kanye again doesn 't excuse all the other Nazi
| accounts.
| mcv wrote:
| > His work on cars and rockets speaks for itself.
|
| I used to think that too, but I've since come across a story
| that SpaceX actually has people who's informal job is to manage
| him, and they present their ideas in such a way that he thinks
| they're his, in order to keep him happy. He's mostly there to
| bring money and hype.
|
| No idea if that story is true, but honestly, it would explain
| some things.
|
| The impression he's been giving me recently is that his success
| may have broken him. Too many people worshipping him and
| praising literally every crazy thing he does, may have made him
| believe he can do literally everything including run a social
| media company on his own without first learning how social
| media companies work. He honestly seems to be running Twitter
| into the ground. The mass firings he started with, followed by
| ruining the blue checkmark feature, really didn't make it look
| like he knows what he's doing. His management style sounds like
| hell.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| I did my PhD under possibly the most narcissistic, ruthless,
| and petty professors anyone around me had ever heard of, so I
| might be able to comment on this.
|
| I and the few people who managed to actually graduate with
| our sanity intact (out of like 50) learned to play this game
| you suggested where we have to play to their egos, and try
| and salvage their shitty, shitty ideas into workable projects
| that will end with us publishing. Every week they will
| suggest experiments that are nonsensical, and we will huddle
| and discuss how to do some preliminary work and present it in
| a way such that they will think it's their idea to change it
| in a more productive direction.
|
| When smart people are forced to work with egotistical pricks
| like this, I think it's inevitable such a system comes in
| place.
|
| The interesting thing is my professor kinda knew we do this,
| he just acknowledged it as part of the dance of their system.
| For Better or worse this shitty lab actually put out a drug
| that helps patients (I constantly think about how and why
| that happened). Could this lab have been more productive?
| Absolutely. Would this lab have existed without these people
| though? Probably not though.
|
| The question here is whether Elon is aware this is why spacex
| and Tesla succeeded or he's too deranged now to remember it.
| Looks like it's the latter and that just sucks. My professors
| too have gotten unhinged (they've been literally pushed out
| of two universities and an entire country, though they always
| find another sucker, which at this point is the wellcome
| institute lol). When you've been doing this shitty shtick for
| too long I suppose it gets to you.
| landemva wrote:
| > try and salvage their shitty, shitty ideas into workable
| projects that will end with us publishing.
|
| Maybe the university publish or perish system is the real
| problem, with the egojerks being symptoms?
| LegitShady wrote:
| >No idea if that story is true, but honestly, it would
| explain some things.
|
| this is the crux of the issue. if people started posting
| baseless stories about you perhaps you'd understand instead
| of repeating them.
|
| He's a mega billionaire. He has entire staffs of people at
| each company managing his communications, schedule, etc. I
| know people with fewer responsibilities and a lot less money
| who have a dozen people on staff to deal with this stuff for
| them.
|
| The idea that having executive staff whose job is to 'manage
| elon' is not understanding who is the boss. They manage
| things for elon, if elon decides something it goes. And I
| don't know if you've heard him speak before, but if you want
| to pretend he has 75 IQ and people "present ideas in such a
| way that he think they're his" maybe you're the one being
| sold a bill of goods.
|
| He is constantly being appealed to by people for money and
| attention. He didn't get where is by not spotting those who
| think they can 'handle' him. They can't. He has no reason to
| allow it and those people only 'handle' what he allows them
| to because its convenient for him.
|
| Think about things rationally for a bit instead of pretending
| this ultra rich multiple big company builder dude can't see
| past his own nose and is being handled like a 5 year old.
| It's not happening. It's just stupid anti elon sentiment on
| HN by people who have nothing in this but sour grapes and an
| easily repeatable lie you repeated yourself.
|
| >The impression he's been giving me recently is that his
| success may have broken him.
|
| my impression is he's completely stopped caring about the
| opinion of people like you who are easily led to repeat lies.
| mcv wrote:
| > if you want to pretend he has 75 IQ
|
| I don't think anyone has ever argued that. He obviously has
| above-average IQ. That does not automatically make his
| claims of working on rocket designs himself, credible. In
| fact, I think those claims put credence to the story that
| they present ideas in such a way that he _thinks_ he 's
| designing rockets himself.
| LegitShady wrote:
| >In fact, I think those claims put credence to the story
| that they present ideas in such a way that he thinks he's
| designing rockets himself.
|
| Write it out. explain to me how it would work, such that
| elon wouldn't notice.
|
| You've been told a lie and repeated it on the basis of no
| knowledge or access to the truth, and now you're the one
| who is arguing its truth to strangers because...why? on
| the basis of what? that you don't like something he said?
| You have no idea what he did or didn't do.
|
| Isn't there enough verified stuff you dislike about him
| to talk about without just making it up whole cloth like
| you have?
| phs318u wrote:
| > explain to me how it would work, such that elon
| wouldn't notice
|
| He's a narcissist. At least, it seems obvious to me that
| he is. And narcissists are absolutely amenable to co-
| opting other people's ideas. It's what they do, because
| everything is about them.
| mcv wrote:
| Please read again. I'm not arguing its truth, I'm arguing
| its credibility. Those are not the same thing.
|
| How would it work? I'm not even remotely an expert on it,
| but one of the things I heard they did with Trump, was to
| present several options, some obviously good, others
| obviously, bad, and then let him choose. (On that
| particular issue, Trump apparently picked the bad option
| that nobody expected him to pick. So there's a level
| where this trick stops working.)
| salad-fan wrote:
| Username checks out there Elno, but we see through it.
| LegitShady wrote:
| go back to reddit
| Moto7451 wrote:
| I worked on the Engineering side of compliance at my last job
| managing Compliance and Security. As part of going public,
| part of my job was keeping some executives away from the
| Auditors. This was not because the Auditors wanted
| information from them that we didn't want to share, but
| because the auditors actually had zero interest in what they
| had to say. I.e. they did not care about Joe Techbro and his
| Git front end and how it would allow us to avoid having an
| Internal Audit team (news flash: it didn't).
|
| All these pointless conversations would slow the process down
| and the auditors would bill (aggressively) for these
| pointless interjections.
|
| My job for a while was listening for signs they would do
| this, create a meeting, take notes, email the notes to our
| Eng team, and then fein concern. This worked as the audit
| team were able to do what they needed to do and we went
| public. Eventually half the people I was playing interference
| against were asked to leave the company or were otherwise
| fired for unrelated reasons that I'd roughly group into being
| unprofessional or poorly prepared for their role.
|
| In my subsequent job (years later and at a multinational)
| I've seen more of this. I've learned that at any sufficiently
| large company there will be at least one person paid to keep
| one person from messing things up with their presence.
|
| Overall, I find the stories about keeping Elon placated
| completely believable.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| My dad's oldest living friend worked at Koch industries for
| years. I forget his official title, but they way he
| describes his role was "I ran interference to keep the
| brothers from killing each other."
| smrtinsert wrote:
| I'm deleting my account in the hope it will keep that data
| safe. I have 0 confidence in his ability to run a massive
| application safely and securely.
|
| What a shit show, as if he needed to add the managerial drama
| on top of getting rid of 75% of his staff.
|
| I would say delete your account while you still can. Who knows
| what he will do your data.
| chrchang523 wrote:
| I've deactivated the account that I created last month.
|
| I agree that he may still salvage the situation, and I hope to
| reactivate or create a new account if/when that happens. For
| now, though, the best thing I can do is reinforce the signal
| that this was a major misstep, for a reason he should be well
| aware of:
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1533616384747442176
| jacquesm wrote:
| Fair enough. I don't think he will be able to salvage this and
| I've deleted my account to reduce the temptation to return.
|
| A reputation is not like a piece of software that you fix and
| then re-run as though it never broke in the first place. Elon
| has utterly wrecked his reputation over the last couple of
| months (and probably longer than that) and it is getting worse,
| not better.
|
| Edit: I guess Paul won't be going back to Twitter because his
| account just got suspended...
|
| See for yourself: https://twitter.com/paulg/
| xupybd wrote:
| Hi jacquesm, I noticed that you have both a strong background
| in business and a negative opinion of Elon Musk. As someone
| who is interested in understanding different perspectives, I
| would love to hear more about your thoughts on this topic.
| Could you please share more about the actions or decisions by
| Elon that have led you to form this negative opinion? I'm not
| looking to engage in an argument, but rather just to gain a
| better understanding of your perspective. Thank you for your
| time and consideration.
| xupybd wrote:
| Is there anything about this comment that is attracting the
| down votes?
|
| I would like to avoid future mistakes.
| concordDance wrote:
| Don't say anything that could be seen as positive about
| Elon Musk unless you are the founder of this website.
| xupybd wrote:
| I'm really not trying to say anything positive about him.
| I'm guessing there are things I don't know and I would
| like to understand them.
| bioemerl wrote:
| > Edit: I guess Paul won't be going back to Twitter because
| his account just got suspended...
|
| I had hopes Elon would be good for Twitter, but this is just
| comedic
| jacquesm wrote:
| There is an 'in Soviet Russia' joke in there somewhere but
| I'm not going to get burned like that ;)
| canadaduane wrote:
| Do you have a Mastodon account yet? I'd like to continue to
| follow you.
| concordDance wrote:
| Why Mastadon rather than nostr or farcaster?
| jacquesm wrote:
| I'm still on the fence about what to do. As I've written
| elsewhere today I'm not currently in the best of health and
| social media takes up a lot of time and energy, also I am
| wondering whether I should simply not let that go and
| concentrate on more real world stuff. I do still blog every
| now and then and I'm on HN in waves depending on how much
| free time I have.
| tayo42 wrote:
| > social media takes up a lot of time and energy, also I
| am wondering whether I should simply not let that go and
| concentrate on more real world stuff.
|
| I dont see why more people arent doing this. How much
| value are these places really providing you in your life.
| I think its mostly fomo. Maybe theres a gem somewhere in
| there.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I've gotten a ton of mileage out of social media, met
| lots of interesting people, made friends from all over
| the world, made start-up investments (some good, some
| bad), helped people, have been helped by people and in
| general found that there are interesting stories
| everywhere. But that was when I was still swimming in
| time and now the trade-off is different. As I wrote, I'm
| on the fence, but the value is/was definitely there.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I will say since Mastodon blew up, I've found a lot less
| need for HN in my life. I'm still getting all the
| interesting tech news and projects, but I'm not doing
| battle with crazy fanatics. It's more pleasant, and I
| probably spend less overall time on it because of it.
| weinzierl wrote:
| Same for me and I was surprised how many people I know
| were already there. I didn't do the statistics for a
| while but for the people I follow on Twitter it was 10%
| on 22-11-06 and 23% on 22-11-29.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Which instance did you choose and why that one?
| weinzierl wrote:
| Not ocdtrekkie and I hope you don't mind me adding my
| opinion: I'm on my own instance but I don't host it
| myself and that's what I'd recommend. Your home is your
| castle.
|
| Just use any of the hosters, set up the DNS record and be
| done. It's pretty similar to hosted e-mail under your own
| domain and even cheaper than a Twitter Blue subscription.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Which hoster do you use?
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I've been on mastodon.social for like five years. The
| choice was entirely practical: I didn't want to deal with
| server shutdowns or defederations, so I joined the
| biggest instance which is pretty core to the whole
| network.
|
| Laughably, this is a very centralizing choice. And now I
| am starting to feel the downsides: Mastodon.social has a
| really hard time coping with server load when Elon does
| something dumb!
|
| Fosstodon and Hachyderm would be really good choices
| though too, I follow a lot of people on both, and they're
| well-run by decent folks.
|
| I do think articles hype up the choice a lot more than
| necessary though. The differences are primarily "the
| moderators", and most people don't do stuff to get
| moderated anyways. And the platform includes good tools
| for changing instances too.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Ok. Thank you for answering!
| weinzierl wrote:
| Health and well-being come first. I just wanted to let
| you know that your comments and contributions are always
| appreciated!
| waprin wrote:
| Well said, good analogy.
|
| There's the immediate issues of the policy. But there's the
| bigger issue of the thought process that led to the policy.
| One of Elons central criticism of old Twitter management was
| unfair content moderation policy. And almost immediately he
| enacts a far worse content policy than anything old
| management did, in a brazen display of hypocrisy.
|
| Even if he reverses course on this one issue, he's
| demonstrated that any previous advocacy for free speech was
| completely disingenuous. He wants to run Twitter like he's
| the dictator of a banana republic. And any time you spend on
| the platform strengthens his ability to do so.
|
| It was disturbing and confusing watching people like pg and
| Lex Fridman seemingly throw their apparent principles to the
| wind tolerating this type of behavior. I do sympathize there
| was some ambiguity about Elons plans for Twitter before this
| last week but with the banning of journalists and the banning
| of links to Mastodon, that ambiguity has been removed.
|
| I'm relieved pg took a stand here but like you I wish it was
| a much stronger one.
| threatofrain wrote:
| Elon Musk's social media policy is now so sensitive that
| repeatedly linking to other platforms will get you banned.
| This is coming from the guy who thinks it's fair play to
| repeatedly call a rescue worker a pedophile -- of all
| things that shouldn't be considered fair play on or off
| social media.
| samstave wrote:
| > _to repeatedly call a rescue worker a pedophile_
|
| Just devils advocate ; Perhaps Elon knows something we
| don't?
| jacquesm wrote:
| If he knew he would definitely make it public so we can
| stop with that line of nonsense.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| I vaguely remember hearing he hired a private
| investigator to dig up dirt on the guy to ruin his life
| but there was no dirt to be dug up. But maybe I am
| misremembering things.
| nier wrote:
| Then there would be at least two people misremembering.
| He wanted to navigate the tight system of a water filled
| cave with a submarine and felt insulted that his idea was
| non-sense. The rescue operation involved divers holding
| their oxygen tanks in front of them to squeeze through
| holes.
| gyc wrote:
| He paid some ex-con $50k to dig up dirt on the guy.
| mynameisash wrote:
| As I recall, when it went to trial, Musk's defense was
| basically, "I wasn't _serious_ about him being a
| pedophile. This kind of trolling is what happens on the
| Internet. "
|
| If he actually had any dirt on the guy, his defense
| wouldn't be, "Don't take my claim seriously," but rather,
| "Here's the evidence to back up my claim."
| noncoml wrote:
| This is not playing the devil's advocate. Your argument
| lacks any standing whatsoever. It's an attempt to divert
| the discussion.
| samstave wrote:
| apologies, i was not attempting to divert ; its just
| simply all i ever hear is "he called a guy a pedo"
|
| but i never hear WHY he did so....
|
| thanks
| theGnuMe wrote:
| Stand up for your principles and reason from them.
| mccorrinall wrote:
| > banning of links to Mastodon
|
| I'd like to point out that this is what everyone says is
| happening, but actually that's not what's happening.
|
| Twitter allows linking to other social networks as long as
| that's not the only thing you do. Twitter is suspending
| accounts which were made sorely for linking to another
| network. (The mastodon account was only used for promoting
| mastodon's alternative social network).
|
| Here is a thread by twitter which explains the policy: http
| s://twitter.com/twittersupport/status/160453126541959168...
|
| This FUD is almost on crypto twitter levels, and this is
| very behavior is very unusual for HN.
|
| (I don't mean you specifically, a lot of people and even
| major news outlets got this wrong)
| profmonocle wrote:
| If you try to post a link to a mastodon profile, it will
| fail. Old links will bring up a "this site may be
| harmful" interstitial. Most large instances seem
| affected.
| jacquesm wrote:
| If enough high profile people took a stronger stance that
| might _just_ be enough to make Musk see the light. I 'm not
| going to hold my breath for that though.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| What "light" would he see?
|
| That censoring whatever and whomever he wants on a whim
| is not the same as guaranteeing a platform without
| censorship?
|
| And he will somehow change his personality and thinking
| and put the integrity of the platform above his own small
| thinking limited to self interest?
|
| I really don't see it. His reputation of an unstable,
| vindictive, insecure person with the power to annihilate
| any voice he dislikes and the track record of doing so is
| precise.
|
| How does one climb back from that kind of chasm and
| establish public trust?
|
| Twitter used to have certain policies. Now seemingly
| replaced to "whatever Elon likes, today".
|
| This is 100% toxic, I stand destruction of trust.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| What "light" would he see?
|
| That censoring whatever and whomever he wants on a whim
| is not the same as guaranteeing a platform without
| censorship?
|
| And he will somehow change his personality and thinking
| and put the integrity of the platform above his own small
| thinking limited to self interest?
|
| I really don't see it. His reputation of an unstable,
| vindictive, insecure person with the power to annihilate
| any voice he dislikes and the track record of doing so is
| precise.
|
| How does one climb back from that kind of chasm and
| establish public trust?
|
| Twitter used to have certain policies. Now seemingly
| replaced by "whatever Elon likes, today".
|
| This is 100% toxic, I stand destruction of trust.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That he can't do this and drop it.
| noncoml wrote:
| pg calling him a smart guy is quite disappointing.
|
| The guy is happy to consume and repeat QAnon
| propaganda(E.g. Pelosi's husband).
|
| Is happy to lie(journalists who didn't fix him got banned).
|
| Takes emotional decisions to only reverse them hours later.
|
| Lacks any logical thinking, keeps gaslighting and cannot
| keep a consistent line(he is a free speech absolutist who
| believes hate speech and call to insurrection is ok but not
| doxxing)
|
| Has no morals and uses anything under his power to achieve
| his goals(banning external links to social media)
| arisAlexis wrote:
| He also predicted no COVID cases by April 2020 when a
| rock knew that yes it will take a long time.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It's a pretty technical argument but being an asshole
| does not necessarily mean you aren't smart.
| hospadar wrote:
| But buying twitter for billions more than it's worth and
| driving it into the ground _might_ mean that you aren't
| smart
| noncoml wrote:
| I think my arguments above demonstrate that he is not as
| smart as people portray him.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Definitely a point for the prosecution.
|
| The question is: was Musk in the past as smart as he is
| today or is that changing. This could point to either
| mental health issues or drug usage or some other factor.
| But this is becoming farcical.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| I think even your critical statement gives Elon too much
| credit. I think he might genuinely think he is doing good,
| but is just completely out of his depth and is at the same
| time convinced that he will succeed in improving it. Any
| thread by Yishsn has more insight to offer on content
| moderation than Musk is exhibiting and could have easily
| predicted the failed he makes. Mental issues or his
| (warranted) arrogance from his incredible past success are
| clouding his judgment. He also has clearly a lot of penned
| up culture war anger and might not be aware of that bias
| either. His behavior is just too erratic to seem like any
| kind of evil plan. After all he tried to get out of buying
| Twitter fort months.
| sroussey wrote:
| PG's account is now suspended by Twitter.
|
| The ironic thing is that one of his latest posts was
| about dumb people and identity politics.
|
| The whole group of tech luminaries turned political
| whiners just goes to show that it's time for a new
| generation and they should not bend the knee for the last
| one but forge their own way.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > A reputation is not like a piece of software that you fix
| and then re-run as though it never broke in the first place
|
| In a way it is, but it differs from software in that fixing
| it involves more than reverting the action by which you broke
| it.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Any good examples?
|
| 'Reputation is like a crystal vase, you can drop it, and
| glue it back together again but it will never again be the
| same vase that it was before you dropped it'.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanessa_Williams
| andirk wrote:
| "Reputation is like a refrigerator. About 6 feet tall.
| 300 pounds. They make ice. And when if your refrigerator
| isn't running, you will get spoilage."
| breck wrote:
| > Elon has utterly wrecked his reputation over the last
| couple of months (and probably longer than that) and it is
| getting worse, not better.
|
| Lol. This could be the worst prediction from an otherwise
| smart person I've ever seen. Please elaborate and define it
| mathematically. (My guess in trying to do so you'll either
| discover the errors in your thinking or double down on your
| intellectual dishonesty)
| dang wrote:
| No personal attacks, please.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| [deleted]
| breck wrote:
| You are right. Yet, why is his not a personal attack on
| Elon?
| xd wrote:
| vertis wrote:
| I read some advice that it's better to lock the account than
| delete it, especially if you had a decent number of
| followers. Reduces the likelihood of impersonation.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Good point, well, too late for that I guess.
|
| But at the rate Twitter is heading for the scene of the
| crash I don't think it will matter for much longer.
| vertis wrote:
| It's not too late, you have a full month to reverse the
| deactivation.
| [deleted]
| jacquesm wrote:
| Don't tempt me.
| weinzierl wrote:
| Not necessarily, I think you can reactivate your account
| within 30 days. If you had a blue checkmark I believe
| reactivation is possible for one year.
| searchableguy wrote:
| Is it just me or pg's twitter account is suspended now?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Definitely not just you, I see the same thing.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I feel terrible for Paul -- imagine having a decade of
| work wiped out overnight. Hopefully it's not permanent.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Maybe he had a download. Let's hope for that.
| Marazan wrote:
| If I had as many bad tweets as Paul I would take this for
| the blessing that it is.
| skywhopper wrote:
| He has nothing to do with the quality of the cars or rockets.
| He's done none of the "work" there. He gets attention with
| overpromises and straight up lies.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Nobody has ever pay nor will ever pay Elon to work on cars or
| rockets. He is solely responsible for working on people a job
| which by all accounts he does very poorly.
|
| With twitter his poor performance is merely on display for the
| whole world in tweets. It is yet another poor decision in an
| entire life full of poor decisions ranging from paying a cut
| rate private investigator to investigate a hero spearheading
| the effort to save children and then publicly and falsely
| proclaiming that person a pedophile, then lying about pedophile
| just being used as a generic insult, allegedly trying to bribe
| an employee to have sex with him for a pony by her account, an
| entire series of failed relationships, abandoning his wife
| after their kid died by her account of the matter, spreading
| conspiracy theories that the psycho that attacked pelosi was a
| prostitute rather than a deranged conspiracy theorist.
|
| He doesn't do anything but buy the services of people smarter
| and better than himself and take credit for their success while
| continually making poor choices and offering an example of
| terrible leadership.
|
| You act as if his failure with twitter is forgivable because
| its a different sort of business from his other ventures but
| its really not. Nobody expects Elon to design a rocket either
| he's supposed to be an expert in leading people and he's
| stunningly poor at it.
|
| There is little chance of turning twitter around with Elon at
| the helm. It was barely been profitable in its whole history
| and now its becoming a pariah to both the potential employees
| who could serve in that role and the advertisers who pay all of
| the bills. It's going to steadily lose money until Elon steps
| away and makes a firm commitment not to ratfuck it any longer
| and puts someone in charge that both sides trust. Then MAYBE it
| can stop hemorrhaging money. It will remain a black eye both
| personally to him and his business acumen.
|
| Twitter introduced the world to the real Elon and its not a
| person worth knowing. If you have positive feelings towards him
| I would suggest its because as a fellow rich person you have
| more in common with him than with us even if you are a better
| man. I would suggest not lowering your own stock by defending
| those so obviously inferior to yourself.
| tim333 wrote:
| He's now at https://mas.to/@paulg by the way. Twitter account
| suspended.
| xupybd wrote:
| I'm impressed that one of your tweets could generate almost 600
| comments in 1 hour. This should be an interesting stress test
| of HN. Often when something generates this level of interaction
| performance suffers.
| martythemaniak wrote:
| I don't think Musk has any negative feedback loops anymore,
| it's highly unlikely said there is a single person who can tell
| him when he's screwing up.
|
| Or maybe he needs something of Twitter going bust magnitude to
| get feedback now. I hope that happens so that he can go back to
| making great stuff again
| thrown1212 wrote:
| Any _first_ degree negative feedback loops. But reality has a
| way of poking its head in, like getting booed in public
| forums that should have been adoring you.
|
| Fortunately second and third degree feedback loops are
| notoriously stupid, and wrong, and they're the problem there,
| not you.
| bombolo wrote:
| Great things like digging tunnels to put a few cars in them?
| :D
|
| The man sells hype, and has always done so. It seems the mask
| is falling.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That seems to be mostly because he's firing anybody that is
| even mildly critical of him.
| boudin wrote:
| If the same techniques would have been applied to Tesla and
| SpaceX the result would be different. I guess there must be
| quite a few people much smarter than Musk behind the success of
| those companies.
|
| Calling abusive and intolerant behaviour "eccentric" is really
| weak.
| JacobHenner wrote:
| Quite a bit of equivocation here. Would have hoped for more
| integrity.
| morelisp wrote:
| In your tweet you said "I give up."
|
| Given that you're not giving up your Twitter account, nor
| something less tangible like your belief Elon is acting in good
| faith, nor even something the evidence keeps building against
| like his ability to run Twitter well - what exactly are you
| giving up, or giving up on?
| pardon_me wrote:
| The best choice. Twitter was Twitter before Elon Musk and it
| could be Twitter again after Elon Tusk - although it is likely
| to tank unless he has the balls to move on before say 2024.
|
| I wonder what's next...
| mcv wrote:
| If Twitter is going down, I think it's going down well before
| 2024 rolls around.
|
| Also, I don't think Twitter is ever going to be the same. It
| trades heavily on its reputation, and reputation damage isn't
| so easily undone. People who left and found something else,
| won't be coming back.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| rihegher wrote:
| I think adding support for ActivityPub to twitter would be a
| smart move but that would require a complete U-turn
| zimpenfish wrote:
| I think Twitter would find itself de-federated from a lot of
| the Fediverse pretty quickly as long as Ol' Muskie is in
| charge.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > He could still salvage the situation.
|
| That would involve him spending the time to learn how social
| media works. No doubt he's smart enough, but it seems like he
| may no longer have the attention span required to learn this.
| raspberry1337 wrote:
| I give as much credence to these thoughts as I do to all the
| Hacker News users predicting the imminent software-crash of
| twitter one month ago when Elon fired 80% of the employees. My
| reflection is that HN just seems smarter than reddit and other
| places, but it's just an illusion.
| bdn_ wrote:
| Hey Paul, legitimate question. What actions from Musk would it
| take for you to stop supporting him?
| asmor wrote:
| SpaceX has talented people working there despite Elon, not
| because of him.
|
| They supposedly have an entire handbook on "managing Elon" for
| deflecting his weird requests and framing things in a way that
| doesn't provoke his ire. They put up with it because they only
| have so many opportunities to work on space.
|
| Twitter has people dependent on their H-1B and very few true
| believers that are unfit to serve in their role. Ella Irwin has
| apparently personally ghost banned ("Hide Reply" but with lying
| to the user about being hidden) any mention of libsoftiktok - a
| stochastic terror organization just itching for a lynching of
| queer people - made anywhere close to TwitterSafety recently.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Right, Twitter is absolutely nothing like SpaceX or Tesla.
| Twitter's problems aren't engineering issues, they're
| political and related to moderation. Content moderation is
| one of the hardest problems current which no company has
| managed to solve. Especially when you have the user-creator-
| advertiser triangle. It was clear from the very start Elon
| has no clue what he was walking into.
| mcv wrote:
| > They supposedly have an entire handbook on "managing Elon"
| for deflecting his weird requests and framing things in a way
| that doesn't provoke his ire.
|
| I heard that too. Is it just a rumour or do we know this is
| true?
|
| And if it's true at SpaceX, is it also true at Tesla?
| layer8 wrote:
| Regarding your first question, see here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34042340
|
| I see no reason why Tesla would be substantially different.
| rizoma_dev wrote:
| It really is criminal how much preferential treatment lott is
| getting both now and under the previous administration. This
| alone should be grounds for an investigation into the site
| echelon wrote:
| I think a lot of us would love to see you post more on HN!
|
| Twitter may be bigger and more discoverable, but the discussion
| pales in comparison to what happens here. This is a much more
| special place.
| hakanderyal wrote:
| I'm starting to believe being a Twitter user is the worst thing
| that happened to Elon.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Sounds like it's a theme with certain people, interestingly
| enough
| mcv wrote:
| Yeah, I don't think excessive Twitter use is healthy. Or at
| least not for a certain type of person.
| [deleted]
| fzeroracer wrote:
| I don't understand how he can salvage this situation. You
| cannot simply go 'lol jk' with policy changes like this and
| reverse them because once you've lost user trust it cannot be
| easily regained. Individuals may not remember, but groups as a
| whole can have a long lasting memory and once the various
| subgroups like art twitter, influencer twitter etc leave they
| aren't coming back without serious enticement which Twitter can
| barely afford as they're burning money.
| magicloop wrote:
| I think pg is one of the best placed people to critique the
| situation because he knows what a start-up is and how to do
| one, he's in the same tier of society (top tier wealth), and he
| knows what is takes to run a social network.
|
| The "it is going to be hardcore from here" email the CEO sent
| to Tesla employees 'worked', but the same email to Twitter
| employees resulted in significant resignations. I think the CEO
| was shocked and this underlies pg's point.
|
| Given that it was a forced buy, the game was always that of a
| corporate raider approach - go in, make the unpleasant but
| needed decisions, and then sell out as soon as the value uptick
| became realisable. pg applauded the cut to staff IIRC.
|
| CEO should have taken a leaf out of Rupert Murdoch's book - as
| the owner don't write the headlines - let the editor do that.
| Being behind the scenes to just make the most considered
| accurate business decisions was the right way.
|
| If instead you are out in front of the public, you're emotional
| side will kick in due to the slings-and-arrows coming from the
| audience. Hence the wrong decisions will be made.
|
| You can't wear both the hats of 'eccentric' Corporate Jester
| and Corporate Raider at the same time. The Dave Chapelle boo-
| ing incident just underlies this.
| secos wrote:
| > Plus I don't think he realizes that the techniques that work
| for cars and rockets don't work in social media.
|
| This argument made sense a month ago. Unfortunately he really
| hasn't shown any improvement since then that would lead me to
| agree with you on that point.
|
| It's now a situation where he has to either find enough new
| people who agree with whatever his approach is or /win people
| back/ - both of those are quite a bit harder than keeping
| people who already loved the app.
|
| I also hope he - or someone - is able to recover Twitter. But
| I'm not betting on it at this point.
| raspberry1337 wrote:
| Twitter has less bots yets more activity than ever. In what
| dimension do these Hacker news posters live?
| videah wrote:
| I have never had as many spam bots in my DMs and replies as
| I have right now.
| wsc981 wrote:
| Yeah, I feel Twitter has improved under Elon's leadership.
| In the past my account was banned and I could never get
| Twitter Support to explain what tweet caused my ban. Then I
| stopped using Twitter for a very long time. Perhaps a year
| ago created a new account and since Elon took over I am
| much less worried for unfair bans.
|
| I like that many doctors who were silenced during COVID
| pandemic have been allowed to speak once more. Censorship
| was ridiculous under the old leadership. It seems Twitter
| is now much more a free speech platform and I feel Twitter
| is better for it being so.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Silicon Valley CA where the only politics is left, and even
| more left.
|
| Twitter post Elon is Awesome,
|
| They are crying foul now that rules are actually being
| evenly enforced instead of just on the right. The activists
| that claim to be journalists having to follow actual rules
| for once in their life
|
| What is the saying... To the privileged equality looks like
| oppression, well that is what the Activists that work for
| mainstream media are feeling today on twitter
| randomsearch wrote:
| Whilst I strongly disagree with the banning of links and
| accounts without good reason, it is true for me that
| Twitter has greatly improved since Musk took over.
|
| Part of that is that interesting voices like PG's are not
| so drowned out by background noise, so losing folks like PG
| begins to undo that improvement.
| thereare5lights wrote:
| This.
|
| Continuing to give him the benefit of the doubt just reeks of
|
| > I can be tricked by anyone who looks like Mark Zuckerberg.
|
| And yes, I know that was a joke but obviously the unconscious
| bias is quite strong, stronger than a lot of these investors
| want to admit.
| davidgerard wrote:
| looking forward to the Morgan Stanley era of Twitter
| ownership
|
| really, the first job is to put an adult in charge
| jacquesm wrote:
| That moment may be much closer than we think.
| moultano wrote:
| You were just suspended though, so at least in the short term
| it's out of your hands.
| highwaylights wrote:
| I can get on board with all of the above in principle, but I
| think you've made a strong case for suggesting it's in a
| tailspin.
|
| It's theoretically salvageable, but I don't see a version of a
| salvaged Twitter that is compatible with his worldview.
|
| He is a colourful, loud, opinionated public figure. That's
| great for _his_ personal Twitter and his follower count, but it
| 's _terrible_ if you 're trying to convince the world that
| you're a suitable custodian of a free public square.
|
| Mark Zuckerberg is beige as often as he's able to be on just
| about everything. Tim Cook speaks on issues of privacy when
| it's relevant and otherwise _says as little as possible_.
| Reddit is as un-opinionated on content as they can possibly be.
|
| Having _any_ divisive opinion by definition divides your
| support base. Usually in half.
|
| I can only assume Musk-brand libertarian free-for-all social
| media is a niche product (potentially a large niche, but a
| niche nonetheless) that's very probably worth some amount
| significantly less than $40 billion.
| samtp wrote:
| Well he did very publicly call the cave diver who saved 12
| children a pedophile because he was jealous of him. He also
| called for a leading infectious disease expert to be jailed,
| further endangering someone who was already under armed
| protection from previous threats. And there was that one time
| that he shared an unfounded conspiracy theory about an elderly
| man who was attacked with a hammer in his own home. There was
| also the time when he tried to trade a horse for a handjob from
| one of his employees.
|
| That's all pretty clearly in villain territory.
| occamsrazorwit wrote:
| He also tried to anonymously get news agencies to publish
| that the cave diver was a pedophile too [1].
|
| [1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/elon-musk-
| thai-...
| kmlx wrote:
| > Well he did very publicly call the cave diver who saved 12
| children a pedophile because he was jealous of him.
|
| this is false. he called him that after the cave diver told
| Musk to "stick his submarine where it hurts".
|
| it only takes 1 minute to search google.
| adverbly wrote:
| > Plus I don't think he realizes that the techniques that work
| for cars and rockets don't work in social media.
|
| You have someone with Asperger's who is self aware enough to go
| on SNL and laugh about it, but for some reason also wants to
| spend 40B on owning and running a social platform, thinking
| they can "improve" by working on it part time despite having
| zero actual experience in the field. The ego is unbelievable.
|
| > He could still salvage the situation
|
| I hope so, but these billionaire ego megaprojects just don't
| seem to be die. Neom, Metaverse, dystopia-twitter...
| mmmmpancakes wrote:
| > I still think Elon is a smart guy.
|
| > I don't think he realizes that the techniques that work for
| cars and rockets don't work in social media.
|
| Hmmm...
| bloopernova wrote:
| How do you feel about his "anti-woke" behaviour? His banning of
| journalists? His tweets with nazi coded language like "88"?
|
| Would you return to a site where the owner uses his
| considerable power/money to promote fascism?
| calculatte wrote:
| zelias wrote:
| In what context does a "smart guy" truly not realize that
| growing industrial manufacturing companies ("cars and rockets")
| from scratch is a fundamentally different challenge than
| running a mature web-only social media company?
|
| Is he simply blinded by success?
| themitigating wrote:
| You can be smart and impulsive at the same time. Remember, he
| tried to get out of the purchase probably after thinking
| about it.
| zelias wrote:
| This is fair, but you would think that once he realized
| what kind of bag he was holding, he would also possess the
| clarity of mind to realize a need to step back and learn
| something about the internal workings of the industry, let
| alone the company he had just acquired without any due
| diligence.
|
| If Elon had simply sat back and done "almost nothing" after
| the purchase, instead taking the time to really learn about
| something he had just bought, he would not be in this PR
| firestorm, let alone getting forced to sell off billions in
| TSLA stock.
| neltnerb wrote:
| He had plenty of time to think about it before deciding to
| fire all the people he fired in the cruelest way possible.
|
| It may have been satisfying to him because he has a
| caricature in his head of who they are and what they did
| and it made his fans happy. But impulsive? No, there was
| plenty of time for smart to override impulsive here. This
| is something -- arbitrary, chaotic, intentionally cruel --
| but it isn't impulsive.
| SpeedilyDamage wrote:
| Twitter just has to be predictable, that's it. That's all
| anyone wants, IMO, when you boil the controversies down to its
| essence. People will always complain, but the brands, the
| journalists, the users, they all just want something they can
| understand.
|
| That _might_ come in time. Surely it can 't continue to be this
| chaotic forever, right? At least then we'll know what this
| site's future is.
| peter_retief wrote:
| I think all social media have terms and conditions similar to
| this, it just seemed a bit dramatic the way they laid it out. I
| enjoy your tweets and would miss you if you left.
| locallost wrote:
| You have in fact left Twitter, your account was just suspended.
| Crazy times...
| bombolo wrote:
| > His work on cars and rockets speaks for itself.
|
| You mean hiring engineers to work on cars and rockets?
| eterevsky wrote:
| Jeff Bezos is hiring engineers to work on rockets. Blue
| Origin is older than SpaceX and still hasn't reached orbit.
| So, I don't think it's that simple.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Don't care that much for Tesla - the EV ship has sailed - but
| I hope he doesn't destroy the work being done by SpaceX's
| team.
| speakfreely wrote:
| Organizing the efforts of large teams of smart people is one
| of the most high value activities you can do in our society.
|
| Edit: not saying that's happening at Twitter, but it has
| demonstrably occurred at Tesla and SpaceX.
| amelius wrote:
| However, it seemed that Elon's mind was more with
| manipulating Bitcoin rates, and then buying and changing
| Twitter the last few years. Tesla and SpaceX must be run by
| other people, which investors and Elon conveniently keep
| out of the picture.
| speakfreely wrote:
| Elon is certainly laser-focused on self-promotion, no
| doubt. I suspect most of the value he will deliver at
| those companies is in the past, but that doesn't detract
| from it.
| concordDance wrote:
| > Elon is certainly laser-focused on self-promotion, no
| doubt.
|
| Strongly doubt. But we will have to wait until he's no
| longer relevant before we get a good view of this man's
| inner workings.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Perhaps founders are not all that different from the
| companies they run. In time, bloat and complacency will
| twist them into unrecognizable shapes, until they too are
| disrupted by upstarts.
|
| Why should Musk be any different?
| croes wrote:
| You can also hire people for that
| jdgoesmarching wrote:
| It's crazy how people can look at Elon's twitter saga and
| come away with the impression that he is a good people
| manager.
| asmor wrote:
| This wasn't an achievement for SpaceX. Lots of very
| talented people _wanted_ to work on space based on passion
| alone. It just came down to providing funding at a time
| space privatization was an uncertain venture.
|
| Compare to Neuralink mostly being a failure.
| kjksf wrote:
| No one wanted to work at SpaceX initially. It took Musk's
| persistence and ability to sell a vision to hire first
| employees. And yes, also money. But just money gives you
| Blue Origin, not SpaceX.
|
| It took SpaceX many years and a few rockets blowing up
| before they had first successful lunch so what you expect
| Neuralink to have achieved by now?
|
| They're making progress. Let's revisit the "Neuarlink is
| a failure" 10 years from now.
| kortilla wrote:
| There is still something special about spacex. There are
| many other space companies that get the same passionate
| people but they get very little done by comparison.
| bombolo wrote:
| You mean he hired product managers?
| speakfreely wrote:
| In my experience, product managers do not spontaneously
| organize to create successful, billion dollar companies,
| either.
| Strom wrote:
| I'm curious why do you think SpaceX and Tesla are market
| leaders in their niches? Is Elon the only person who
| hires product managers?
| bombolo wrote:
| Testla is market leader in "tesla cars"... which is an
| odd way to define a market leader.
|
| Spacex, I honestly don't know enough to comment about.
| cmatthias wrote:
| > I still think Elon is a smart guy.
|
| > Plus I don't think he realizes that the techniques that work
| for cars and rockets don't work in social media.
|
| Given his behavior and the results over the last ~month or
| however long he's owned Twitter, how can both of these possibly
| be true?
| systemvoltage wrote:
| My prediction is that Elon will realize how badly he is
| fucking up things and change. I was listening to All-in-
| podcast and there was a really good comment that was made -
| "He[Elon] needs to just get back to landing rockets on
| barges" which I agree, moderating and micromanaging a massive
| social media platform doesn't feel like a good use of his
| time.
| ragtete wrote:
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| > I don't think he realizes that the techniques that work for
| cars and rockets don't work in social media.
|
| That's what I find so peculiar. I thought he made so much
| progress on cars and rockets by trusting experts to help him.
| But with Twitter there have been lots of experts who keep
| trying to tell him he's seriously misunderstanding how social
| media works, and he will just give them a snarky tweet reply
| and act like he knows better. Maybe it's the fact that on
| twitter everyone can see the discussion and he's got to project
| this persona with bravado that he probably doesn't do in a
| private meeting.
|
| Maybe he will turn it around but for a lot of us he's destroyed
| our hang out spot and we've embraced alternatives. Mastodon
| isn't perfect but it feels really great to see a problem, open
| a GitHub issue, and get a genuine discussion of how to
| implement it.
|
| And no one is going to come crashing in and tear it all down.
| [deleted]
| EGreg wrote:
| pg, yes Elon's $8 a month and now this has generated _terrible_
| optics. But like Donald Trump with politicians, isn 't he just
| saying the quiet part out loud that most capitalists _actually
| do_? I think it is valuable to _examine_ why we were against
| Donald Trump doing, but somehow in the _broader picture_
| everyone was doing it (e.g. Bill Clinton cracking down on
| "illegal immigrants", building border fences etc.) The
| important thing is the broader industry, not one player.
|
| You want to see alternatives? Here is an alternative we've been
| building since 2011, it's a labor of love in which we invested
| over $1 million and 10 years. It is far, far more extensive
| than Mastodon and you can see below why that matters. Would you
| check it out? It's free and open source:
| https://github.com/Qbix/Platform
|
| Not only have we built it, but we've interviewed a ton of
| people around the broader topics of capitalism and free speech.
| There is the idea that capitalism is the best system for
| promoting free speech, but that is not, in fact, the case. Just
| as one example of many, Sinclair Television told their anchors
| word-for-word what to say, and anyone who doesn't do what the
| employer says is fired and replaced by a different mouthpiece.
| Intellectual property, and other forms of ownership, are _by
| their very definition_ designed to exclude people from using
| certain content / property in certain ways.
|
| In fact, conservatives who bristled at Obama's "you didn't
| build it" used to say "I built it, I own it!" In that case,
| they should celebrate the way that Twitter and Facebook were
| privately managed. But many of them instead were calling for
| regulations to prevent them from doing just that. So which is
| it? I had an interview with Noam Chomsky twice about that, here
| is the latest: https://qbix.com/chomsky
|
| If you allow me to bring up a taboo for a bit, I think it's
| important to bring it up on Hacker News. VCs as an industry,
| and YCombinator as part of that, specifically try to fund
| platforms that end up being managed by only a few people and
| extract rents. Most of them avoid funding open source
| platforms, which end up crowdfunding from the People (thanks to
| the JOBS act, for instance). Or from the Knight Foundation. Or
| Matt Mullenweg of Wordpress funding Matrix.org
|
| VCs specifically tell you that they want you to "focus" on one
| feature, to "capture" enough of the market, and some of them
| (e.g. Peter Thiel) unabashedly proclaimed that "competition is
| for losers", build a monopoly. Zuck used to be a guy who turned
| down a $1M acquisition offer from Microsoft, and open sourced
| his code. He wanted to build Wirehog as a decentralized
| platform for the people
| (https://techcrunch.com/2010/05/26/wirehog/) Peter Thiel and
| Sean Parker "put a bullet in that thing" (their words) and
| groomed him to build a monopoly and extract rents. Zuck and
| Elon privately control the major PUBLIC forums we all use. And
| are we all better for it?
|
| I think the work of Tim Berners-Lee, Linus Torvalds, Vitalik
| and others has benefitted the world far more and enabled
| _trillions_ in new ideas (including Google, Facebook, Amazon)
| _precisely because_ it was based around open source and
| protocols, and didn 't prevent people and organizations from
| using it the way they wanted! Google, Amazon etc. could have
| never started as "keyword: Google" on AOL, for instance. Think
| about it.
|
| Over the last decade I have been steadily drawn into the open
| source camp. My team and I started an open source alternative
| to Big Tech 10 years ago. We've applied to YC probably around 8
| different times, as we kept growing and reaching 10 million
| users. We never even got to the interview. Such general-purpose
| ideas are just not something interesting to most VCs. It took
| MySQL, NGiNX, and other platforms 7-10 years before they got
| funded in a capitalist manner. By then, they'd taken over the
| world.
|
| I'm sure there are exceptions, and YCombinator has recently
| started to fund open protocols and nonprofits - I'm glad to see
| it. For reference, our pitch to VCs for years had been along
| these lines:
|
| https://qbix.com/deck.pdf
|
| https://qbix.com/blog/2021/01/15/open-source-communities/
|
| PS: For those who downvote, please write a response. After all,
| I've spent a decade and $1M of my own money putting together an
| alternative pg is looking for, seeing the need for it way
| before others. I give it away for free. All I ask is that you
| take a minute to write your own words in the conversation about
| why you disagree :)
|
| PPS: I think the rule that you can downvote on HN to signal
| mere disagreement (as opposed to logical issues, dishonesty,
| etc.) is _flawed_. This is also a free speech issue ... on this
| site, if we want to be intellectually honest, we should at
| least _downvote and then comment_.
| MisterMower wrote:
| Re your PPS, maybe it's not the platform but the users of the
| platform. Maybe Elon's long game is to get the toxic users
| off the platform. It has a lot more value with diverse views
| (meaning ideas you disagree with) than the current echo
| chamber.
| rising-sky wrote:
| Well account is now suspended so I guess you were "made to
| leave"
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| Elon is so incredibly thin-skinned that he's burning bridges
| with anyone who dares to not agree with him even once. First
| Bari Weiss, now Paul Graham. Paul clearly stated here & on
| Mastodon that he still believes in Elon Musk. This is classic
| self-sabotage of a deranged dictator.
| LegitShady wrote:
| What do you think the odds are that elon did it or even
| knew about it?
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| My own personal sense tells me no employee/subordinate
| would carry out such abrupt and drastic actions without
| explicit approval from above, no matter how much they
| want to please their boss. I could be wrong though.
|
| Unfollowing Bari Weiss and suspending Paul Graham over
| very minor disagreements they voiced seems like a very
| personal & impulsive decision that I don't see why anyone
| besides Elon himself decided on it.
| LegitShady wrote:
| > My own personal sense tells me no employee/subordinate
| would carry out such abrupt and drastic actions without
| explicit approval from above, no matter how much they
| want to please their boss. I could be wrong though.
|
| outside of a very small bubble no one knows who PG is and
| I promise you his twitter status account doesn't matter
| if it was breaking the rules.
|
| Go ask your mother if she knows who elon musk, bill
| gates, steve jobs, and paul graham are/were. No one
| outside of computer science/business people looking for
| VC know who he is.
| ccn0p wrote:
| wondering the same thing....
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Confirming archive: <https://archive.vn/ucUdh>
| robomartin wrote:
| > I don't think he realizes that the techniques that work for
| cars and rockets don't work in social media.
|
| So, you are calling him stupid then?
|
| You really think the man does not have the ability to think
| critically enough to understand a social media platform is
| different from a car company and different again from a rocket
| company?
|
| I can't identify a single person in history who has dared to
| risk so much, personally and financially, in support of freedom
| in many forms. He is showing the world what so many have
| suspected and known to be putrid in social and other media
| platforms dominated by a single ideological faction.
|
| Don't think that's important?
|
| Well, sir, imagine a world where the opposite ideological
| faction had the reach and domination instead. It would be just
| as horrific as what we have today.
|
| Instead of being critical and abandoning his effort, anyone
| truly interested in justice, fairness and freedom should join
| and support his effort. That's not going to happen, right? Just
| like Peter Thiel was abandoned and maligned for daring to see
| the world through a different lens.
|
| What's interesting about these kinds of things is that history
| has a way to ultimately bring the truth and reality to the
| surface. Sadly, until then, entire populations have to suffer
| with injustice and more. Time will tell. I certainly hope that,
| in this case, it's a matter of a few years rather than decades,
| because we just don't have that kind of time.
| malermeister wrote:
| > I can't identify a single person in history who has dared
| to risk so much, personally and financially, in support of
| freedom in many forms.
|
| The guy literally banned a bunch of people for making fun of
| him shortly after he took over, then proceeded to ban
| journalists for... doing journalism.
|
| Now he's censoring any mention of competitors in an obviously
| anti-competitive move
|
| What are you talking about?
| dd36 wrote:
| What are you even referring to?
| sandofsky wrote:
| Two years ago you published an essay that seemed to argue that
| criticism against Elon Musk was simply from "Haters," jealous
| of his success.
|
| http://paulgraham.com/fh.html
|
| In light of recent events, have you considered updating the
| essay?
| occamsrazorwit wrote:
| After seeing PG claim that the criticism of Musk was rooted
| in politics yesterday, I think it's clear that he's become a
| Musk fanboy. Ironically, this very article is pretty useful
| in prescribing how to react towards PG himself.
|
| Edit: Maybe the suspension will break PG's fanboy-ism, and
| he'll emerge humbler and wiser.
| concordDance wrote:
| That's definitely not what he argues there. It's quite
| possible for 95% of hate to be mostly unfounded while that
| person is still worthy of hate. It's just that the existence
| of haters does not necessarily mean that person is hate-
| worthy.
|
| The different rates and ways that various types of
| information travels through media (both social and not) and
| gets distorted by it are fascinating and there's probably
| been some good books written on them...
| themitigating wrote:
| To be a great villian you have to be smart. Otherwise you
| wouldn't be able to get support and would likely make too many
| mistakes.
| [deleted]
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| > > He's eccentric, definitely
|
| Eccentric people buy stuff and are too busy enjoying them .
|
| This guy searches for mentions of himself to silence critics
| while sitting on 200bn dollars. When that wasn't enough to
| silence everybody he went on to buy the platform.
|
| If that is the end of the road then it's better to get lost on
| the way like the Dan Bilzerians , and the other truly eccentric
| guys
| TwiceCubed wrote:
| space_fountain wrote:
| I think villains don't exist in the real world. There are no
| Voldemort with no discernible reason for doing bad things, but
| Elon has been doing a lot of bad things lately and is inching
| into the realm that seems worth calling a villain to me
| MisterMower wrote:
| How can Elon be a villain if you don't think villains exist
| in the real world? Your comment doesn't make sense.
| InsOp wrote:
| can you elaborate on what bad or evil things he is doing?
| BulgarianIdiot wrote:
| Dude, he BANNED YOU. He's running this site like a banana
| republic.
|
| How many stupid things in a row does Elon Musk have to do
| before you realize this guy isn't wired quite right?
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| > Plus given the way things are going, it seemed like a good
| time to learn about alternatives.
|
| There's HN and Reddit. It helps to dog-food your own
| investments every now and then.
| concordDance wrote:
| Good lord, don't recommend reddit in general! Recommend
| specific subreddits!
|
| r/all and similar are populated by politically active teens
| with no understanding of context or nuance or how to have a
| level headed discussion.
| ignostic wrote:
| Not leaving Twitter, just not reading or posting and using
| alternative platforms.
|
| Not to play word police, but I think that's what people meant
| when they said 'leaving'. But if you mean that it's not
| necessarily forever, I understand what you're saying.
| jackmott wrote:
| taurath wrote:
| His intelligence and maximum capability aside, it is his
| inconsistency and sociopathic levels of impulsivity that are
| what is causing his bank to drain right now. I'm surprised I
| have any surprise left that pg has so much tolerance for
| complete disregard for principles or users. All my friends, the
| hackers makers annd those who are on the forefront are leaving
| Twitter.
| [deleted]
| Imnimo wrote:
| >Plus I don't think he realizes that the techniques that work
| for cars and rockets don't work in social media.
|
| >It's remarkable how many people who've never run any kind of
| company think they know how to run a tech company better than
| someone who's run Tesla and SpaceX.
|
| If the techniques for cars and rockets don't work in social
| media, why were people wrong to write him off despite his Tesla
| and SpaceX experience?
| lph wrote:
| It's astonishing how much benefit of the doubt Elon Musk gets
| from his cult of personality. Whether or not he's smart, the
| things he's doing at Twitter are /glaringly/ not smart from a
| business perspective: He's driven away advertisers, alienated
| users, crippled system resilience by firing so many engineers,
| and set the stage for dozens of lawsuits that will run the
| gamut from employment law to SEC oversight to EU compliance.
| Twitter is burning, and it's increasingly hard to see how
| genius Elon Musk is going to salvage it when he keeps throwing
| gasoline on the fire.
|
| If you were presented this whole debacle in an anonymized
| format, without Elon Musk's name attached, how would you judge
| these actions?
| AnonCoward42 wrote:
| Not everyone that does not hate Elon Musk is following a
| personality cult. I have not much of an opinion of Elon Musk
| in general and kinda ignore the person himself, but what he
| did to Twitter is awesome for everyone, but the woke bubble.
| It's definitely fun to watch it.
| dd36 wrote:
| Despite what you've been told, Twitter is just a platform.
| Political ideologies won't be affected by whether it
| succeeds or fails. Indeed, failure may even reinforce the
| woke bubble because no moderation is toxic to advertisers
| and you'll have proof.
| SalmoShalazar wrote:
| I think the fact that pg himself is frustrated and pausing
| his Twitter presence is evidence enough that this is not
| awesome for everyone except those in the "woke bubble".
| Paul Graham is very obviously not a "woke" guy. You are
| very obviously inside an "anti-woke" bubble yourself if
| this nonsense is your main takeaway from Musk's tactics as
| Twitter CEO.
| bambax wrote:
| > _I 'm not leaving Twitter_
|
| Yes you are. The smart guy that works on cars and rockets and
| who's not a villain and who's a political moderate and a
| totally reasonable guy, just made you.
|
| > _I would be delighted to go back to using Twitter regularly_
|
| It's not your decision to make, apparently.
| olzn wrote:
| Check out Lens Protocol if you're looking for a viable
| decentralised alternative, Paul.
| r_hoods_ghost wrote:
| Not a villain? Well he's utterly screwed his employees and
| broken employment law in multiple countries by not giving
| proper notice or consulting on redundancies, but hey who gives
| a shit about workers rights? Not you obviously.
| stefan_ wrote:
| No he's rich, so he is just "eccentric". What a sellout.
| the_snooze wrote:
| Yup, it's exactly that deference that gives people like
| Musk a permission structure to thrive as sociopaths. pg is
| part of the problem.
|
| Leaders need to have enough integrity and humility to admit
| when they're wrong. Giving them a pass for being
| "eccentric" denies them opportunity for self-correction.
| mcv wrote:
| That's one of the rules I learned long ago. When you're
| rich enough, you're not crazy, you're "eccentric".
| LawTalkingGuy wrote:
| You don't need to give notice as long as you give proper
| severance pay.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I am fine with this actually. It is not Amazon warehouse
| workers we are talking about. These people were highly paid
| and Twitter seems to run just fine without them. FAANG can
| probably get rid of 70% of the bloat.
|
| Elon did give them 3 months severence which is quite amazing.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| Elon is literally trying to deny the severance packages he
| promised to give. How is this amazing?
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/12/musk-brings-
| spac...
| systemvoltage wrote:
| If this is true that that's inexclusable and shitty.
| Still legal(?), but not ethical. Looks like the they're
| being challenged in the court.
|
| Whether firing was done ethically or not, I still think
| that Twitter was bloated af and needed trimming. The
| macroeconomic conditions led to a huge hiring spree for
| last 8 years of 0% interest rates. We fucked around in
| the silicon valley and we are about to find out.
|
| Overall, on a national/GDP scale, we can use these
| employees for betterment of other things than wasting
| their time at FAANG/Twitter. I'd like to see 1000 lean
| and mean companies than 10 bloated FAANGs.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| That's just, like, your opinion. What matters here is
| employees were fired on extremely arbitrary grounds, then
| had their labour rights infringed upon.
| Lich wrote:
| I'm guessing you haven't been keeping up with the news. 2FA
| not working for some, countries missing from account
| recovery process, axes Twitter Spaces after being
| criticized by a journalist, and last bit not least...he
| seems to have decided he will not pay severance.
| Eji1700 wrote:
| Let's not forget calling a man a pedo in a public tantrum AB
| and advocating for prosecuting Fauci among a litany of
| terrible anti worker positions.
|
| Assholes can do good things. I just don't get why we can't
| call them assholes
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| FWIW, he has called two people paedophiles, an ex twitter
| employ, and a diver. The ex employee left his home as he
| received death threats.
|
| By all means, I am holding Elon responsible for this. Here
| is the reasoning:
|
| 1. Either he is too stupid to understand the power he
| yields, and therefore should not yield it, or
|
| 2. He knows and does not care about anyone other than Elon,
| or
|
| 3. He knows and did it on purpose.
|
| Hanlon's razor says 1, Occam's razor says 2. My priors say
| 1 is not possible, he can't be _that_ stupid. I hope that
| he is not that vindictive for 3 to be true.
| asabjorn wrote:
| The former Twitter head of trust and safety Elon called
| pedo in his PhD thesis argued grindr should accommodate
| underage queer youth on their platform.
|
| Arguably, that's creepy. Also, he did not act upon child
| porn on Twitter while as the Twitter files show he was
| perfectly capable of acting upon legal speech.
| ngoilapites wrote:
| When you say "I still think Elon is a smart guy" every every
| time you write about your departure statement, you just
| communicate lots of things: too much respect and consideration
| for despicable actors just conveys fear.
| noelsusman wrote:
| Calling somebody like Elon eccentric is political correctness
| for rich, powerful people. It's a polite way of calling him a
| crazy asshole.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| eccentric (adj) 1. Socially maladjusted + wealth.
|
| <https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/107453472642613292>
| asim wrote:
| Unfortunately for those who idolised Elon, their world view is
| beginning to crumble. His actions are not justifiable. The way
| he treats people, the way he rules his companies, the way he
| governs his new "free speech" platform. The man is a tyrant.
| He's idolised for the things he's achieved but if he had not
| achieved them would he be given the same benefit of the doubt?
|
| Hypocrisy. The way people treat this man versus others who act
| the same, it's two faced. The who's who of silicon valley were
| championing him right up until a few hours ago. Everything that
| he says or does that is deplorable, people eat up. But I guess
| if he's "changing the world" he should get to be a dick right?
| nrdvana wrote:
| Or the easier explanation, that Elon has changed. He was my
| favorite billionaire back when all his prospects related to
| colonization of Mars and all his investments were aimed at
| creating new technology. But power can corrupt people, and he
| seems particularly prone to it. The entire Twitter episode is
| at odds with everything he did 10 years ago; Mars doesn't
| need a social network, and he's not innovating anything here.
| Not to mention that part where he's spent the last 7+ years
| sleeping around and fathering as many children as possible.
|
| A different way of looking at "power corrupts" is that
| negative social interactions are an important part of the
| feedback loop that calibrates a person's sense of right and
| wrong. When a person decides that they don't want to hear
| conflicting opinions, they loose out on accurate feedback,
| and de-calibrate, unless they have a strong internal sense of
| empathy. Empathy is a disadvantage to becoming a billionaire
| in the first place, so very few of them have much of it. Guys
| like Musk and Bezos and Trump end up victims of their own
| success and echo chamber.
| smrtinsert wrote:
| Techies are very susceptible to the cult of personality. How
| many times do we have to watch that play out?
| ramraj07 wrote:
| As opposed to which group of people who are more immune to
| it?
| lanstin wrote:
| We are the ones extracting all the surplus money from
| society, so it is more important for us to stay good than
| for a random person to stay good.
| [deleted]
| phs318u wrote:
| We saw this writ large with the evangelical support for
| Donald Trump. It's crystal clear that DT is a huge "family
| values" hypocrite, yet he's seen to be a global change agent
| (of God, no less), so that justifies their uncritical
| support.
|
| It's no different with Musk. His work with SpaceX and Tesla
| are seen as worthy goals at the whole-of-humanity scale, so
| that justifies (in some people's eyes) glossing over any
| character defects.
|
| It was similar with Steve Jobs, a reputed workplace bully and
| tyrant.
| cgh wrote:
| Imagine if it were Tim Cook who called Vern Unsworth, the
| British diver who helped rescue the trapped Thai kids in the
| flooded cave, a "pedo guy". Or, if you want to picture an
| amazing shitstorm, Barack Obama.
| ss108 wrote:
| The worldview of people who like Musk, Trump, etc., will
| never crumble. It is built on a religious belief in
| contrarianism, as well as moral autism.
| [deleted]
| BonoboIO wrote:
| Prohibited platforms:
|
| Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Post and
| Nostr
|
| So onlyfans is save. We have to change to that ...
| [deleted]
| pgl wrote:
| Suspended. That was quick.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| It takes about 2 weeks to detox from social media if you go cold
| turkey.
| mempko wrote:
| And he's ... suspended from Twitter. Didn't take long!
| vdnkh wrote:
| The post that killed HN
| juliushuijnk wrote:
| I'm not famous, but it was the last straw for me too.
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| If Paul Graham does leave Twitter and leaves a link to HN, it'll
| likely get shadow banned for being a link to another social
| network.
| mebassett wrote:
| twitter has just suspended pg's account.
| mvkel wrote:
| It's baffling to me that Elon seems to be taking the opposite of
| a first-principles view on Twitter.
|
| He fails to realize _why_ Twitter uniquely has the reach that it
| does. It's because it's platform-agnostic in a lot of ways. It's
| the base-level social protocol that all other platforms are
| adjacent to.
|
| By removing that connection, it completely nerfs that influence
| and Twitter becomes just another social network.
|
| I also fail to see how users could think this is reasonable
| considering Twitter has no way to upload long-form video. So how
| could YouTube be a competitor?
|
| And the policy doesn't talk about Tiktok whatsoever, which is
| arguably an actual threat to Twitter, since it replaced Vine.
|
| Overall, something's fishy.
| yalogin wrote:
| I am not on twitter and the link doesn't clearly tell my what
| happened. Can someone tell me what the last straw was for him?
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| There are a lot of things that happened where I could see both
| sides of the debate. As usual, a lot of outrage on Tweeter was
| more about the reflex of it than something really meaningful, the
| Tweeter files were underwhelming and I didn't find anything in
| the new Twitter that I thought was completely bonkers.
|
| But this ban on link is, indeed, in my book, a bad move. And it
| will also make me reevaluate the past Tweeter drama in the light
| of this decision.
|
| I always was of the opinion that eventually things would settle
| down and Twitter would go on its merry way.
|
| But I'm not so sure anymore. I don't think I'll leave right now,
| but I'm not giving the benefit of the doubt to any of this
| anymore.
| red_trumpet wrote:
| Are you talking about Paul Graham or Elon Musk?
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Edited for clarity.
| hmate9 wrote:
| This twitter policy change is the greatest thing that could have
| happened for Mastodon. They couldn't buy better advertisement
| than this.
| brightball wrote:
| It's pretty common for platforms to combat promotion of
| competitor platforms on their sites.
|
| I'm a member on the Clemson Rivals.com site and they regularly
| combat promoting competing sites. Have for years.
|
| 10 years ago I work for an audio equipment trading site and
| competitor sites constantly tried to use our own systems to
| promote their sites to our users.
|
| IMO this behavior is fairly common and expected.
| newobj wrote:
| Nice to see. The last week of dingdongery was my final straw too.
| tonkawonka321 wrote:
| Twitter will be part of the entertainment center of every self
| driving/electric car and new mobility device. That is where Daddy
| Musk is taking us. Either you get on board or you lose out and
| play with your VR toys from daddy Zuckerberg. Either way, you
| can't escape it. We are going ahead ladies and gents. I would get
| in early if I was you.
|
| Just like Daddy Jobs did for most of us. RIP. Those that shared
| the vision went far.
| donkeyd wrote:
| As a European, I'm surprised about the silence from Brussels
| around this. They're always really good at calling things anti-
| competitive, but this is just about the most anti-competitive
| thing I've ever seen and I've not heard anything about this yet.
| Maybe they're just slow, but it's kinda disappointing.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| Elon is speed running on how to make $44B disappear
| tester756 wrote:
| >You'll be back
|
| >It's not impossible. Elon is a smart guy. He doesn't currently
| understand how different social media is from cars and rockets,
| but he could well figure it out before it's too late.
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| Twitter - the global town square, but you dare not mention the
| address of that little park down the road, because Elon's
| feelings might get hurt.
| petilon wrote:
| Elon Musk has done a lot of nasty things after taking over
| Twitter. He has acted basically like a conquerer taking over an
| evil country, then publicizing all the evil things that have been
| happening in the country: publicly deriding engineers and their
| work, deriding management decisions with his "Twitter files"
| exposes, public firings, followed by abusing remaining employees,
| refusing to pay bills, letting nazis and vaccine deniers back in,
| and so on.
|
| Of all those things that Musk has done, the one that paulg chose
| to highlight is Twitter banning links to competitors? That
| doesn't even seem like an unreasonable restriction!
| reducesuffering wrote:
| PG is now banned from Twitter over that comment? The death spiral
| continues
| kethinov wrote:
| They're literally banning mentioning your Mastodon handle.
|
| Unbelievable. Like Paul, I will not be adhering to this absurd
| new rule. If they ban me for that, then I guess that's that.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Twitter is dead as dead as MySpace now. Time to move on.
| MrRiddle wrote:
| ogogmad wrote:
| What triggered this?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| There's a remote possibility it's the Twitter policy he's
| linked in his tweet:
|
| <https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/social-
| platfo...>
|
| Archive: <https://web.archive.org/web/20221218173806/https://he
| lp.twit...>
| gnicholas wrote:
| Probably the policy change forbidding posts that promote
| competitor platforms, currently being discussed here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34040165
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Seem crazy to leave Twitter to me.
|
| Elon's takeover of Twitter is one of the most significant periods
| in Internet history.
|
| It's a great show.
|
| It's an education in how not to do things.
|
| It's a thrill ride.
|
| You get a front row seat for the show if you're on the platform.
|
| I would have thought Paul Graham would want to be there because
| of all this.
| paxys wrote:
| Just because he won't post on Twitter doesn't mean he won't go
| on Twitter at all.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| That's not leaving.
| andreygrehov wrote:
| Unless there is a massive domino effect, there won't be even a
| blip on Twitter's MAU dashboard. With all respect to Paul, he
| only has 1.5M followers, which is not _that_ much. Let's be
| honest, how many people know Paul Graham outside of the tech
| industry? Justin Bieber has 113.6M followers. Rihanna has 107M
| followers. Heck, even Snoop Dogg has 20.8M followers. These are
| 20-100 times bigger accounts that are not going anywhere (yet).
| qaq wrote:
| He has a certain type of followers though, and he is not the
| only person making this move.
| paul7986 wrote:
| Totally agree and deleted all my excitement (Tweets) for Musk
| buying Twitter.
|
| He's just another Trump/slick then unslick showman who says one
| thing then and promises one thing then goes back on that promise.
|
| Telsa's self driving tech is lol
|
| Another rich megolmaniac's mouth moron destroys years of public
| goodwill like Will Smith did in a second with that slap!
| ctvo wrote:
| Paul, how do you reconcile your previous statements about how
| long (easy) it'd take to create something like Twitter with the
| reality of the challenges facing Elon _with an already built_
| Twitter?
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Okay so I tried to join his new mastadon server and it says I
| can't.
|
| So...what?
| ZacnyLos wrote:
| Choose another. They don't all have to be on one email server,
| and they don't all have to be on one Mastodon server.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Pick any other one, sign up there, then click the "follow"
| button on his profile for instructions.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| How do I pick one?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Pick at random, or find one with a theme you enjoy. You can
| always move off it; a few clicks and your followers migrate
| over to the new one.
| smcn wrote:
| I picked for you, it's https://hachyderm.io
| thepasswordis wrote:
| That looks to have some pretty radical politics at its
| core. No thanks.
| smcn wrote:
| What is it you were looking to partake in? Racism,
| violence, fascism, colonialism, white supremacy,
| religious extremism, nationalism, homophobia, or
| transphobia?
| cesarb wrote:
| You can join any other Mastodon server, and still follow him
| even though you're on a different server. Just put his handle
| (the one you can find on his site) on the search bar of your
| Mastodon server after logging in.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I don't use Twitter much and never followed pg there. I do read
| his pieces that get posted here. What would someone like me gain
| from having followed him on Twitter, or following him on some
| other platform now?
| Khoth wrote:
| For anyone who didn't see this tweet before it got pg suspended:
|
| > This is the last straw. I give up. You can find a link to my
| new Mastodon profile on my site.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| He is a dog whistler but not surprised since he grew up in South
| Africa during the same time as I.
|
| Roelof Botha shows it is possible to outgrow a toxic upbringing.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| https://mastodon.social/@mmasnick/109536569876597972
|
| LOL.
| lamontcg wrote:
| A really large use of social media is for corporate interests and
| "influencers" to cross promote themselves around different social
| media to increase their reach.
|
| Banning Instagram and Facebook just pissed off a whole new group
| of people who previously didn't give any fucks about this at all.
|
| It'll get real weird if he decides to be "consistent" and go
| after YouTube as well.
| top_post wrote:
| The best thing to come out of all of this is people questioning
| their continued use of social media. Switching to Mastodon, it
| being different, not liking it and just dropping it all entirely.
| It's the BEST outcome. Social media is a fucking cancer on
| society and it's fantastic to see it being questioned. It's like
| soda and candy - empty calories that does absolutely nothing for
| you.
| dusing wrote:
| Twitter makes a great news reader. Never read replies. Facebook
| is cancer.
|
| I agree it does seem folks are reevaluating their social life,
| lucky that was happening before Elon.
| archb wrote:
| Paul is now suspended on Twitter: https://twitter.com/paulg
| madelyn wrote:
| Wow, incredible. You can't make this stuff up.
| whitepaint wrote:
| What the fuck?!
| aeharding wrote:
| Can be found at @paulg@mas.to
| BashiBazouk wrote:
| It's fine for my use case. I only go to twitter through links,
| mostly from here and Reddit. IMO Mastodon has a slightly better
| interface for linked to reading but it's six of one, one half
| dozen of the other at the end of the day. Occasionally I read
| replies on tweets and always regret it...
| dpweb wrote:
| I think the preferred approach if you're outraged about Twitter
| management, is speak out about it on Twitter, as opposed to quit
| in protest. Fight the fight if it's worth it.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Exit, Voice, and Loyalty:
|
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty>
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Nope. The only way to win here is not to play. The more you try
| to "stay and fight" the more that gives twitter traffic and
| attention. Best to realize that Twitter is now as dead as
| MySpace and move on. Federation is the way so the fediverse it
| is.
| omginternets wrote:
| So, if you're pissed at twitter, you should do the very thing
| that keeps the money flowing in?
|
| I don't follow.
| _fizz_buzz_ wrote:
| Why? It's a free market, easiest thing to do is vote with your
| feet.
| russdill wrote:
| Your solution is to try and convince Elon?
| blackoil wrote:
| Maybe it is time for Google to fan their Social Network
| ambitions. They have enough brainpower to get a
| functional/scalable Mastodon server by Christmas. They may get
| the traction and later EEE it.
| tonightstoast wrote:
| Honestly Circles was a great idea with poor UI/UX. It would be
| interesting to see a rebrand. However, I have doubts about
| people wanting to use another Alphabet product considering they
| seem to kill everything that isn't a massive success.
| lcnmrn wrote:
| Call it Google Social. Get the usernames from Gmail. Contribute
| to Mastodon like their are doing on Chromium or do a fork. Get
| the same policy and terms from YouTube. What can be that hard?
| wturner wrote:
| I think it's beautiful that more and more people are being forced
| to confront what U.S plutocracy looks like in real-time. It's
| usually caked in legalese and unspoken cultural assumptions that
| finance and tech people exploit while the rest of us just watch.
| Musk, Trump and a handful of these other cranks are turning this
| sociopathic toxic mess into real-time online cartoon that even a
| 13 year old can understand. The result can either be a new
| healthy awareness of how public policy is leveraged to make
| society more healthy and fair , or the Elon Musks of the world
| can continue living in a bubble, being flaming arrogant
| narcissist perpetually in fear of ending up like Paul Pelosi - in
| our real-time geo located world.
| teekert wrote:
| So, what was the last straw?
| mritun wrote:
| pg is definitely not leaving Twitter. It's impossible for two
| billionaires to quit each other. It's a small close knit
| community and everyone is on first name terms with the other and
| their family. Not happening!
| [deleted]
| twayt wrote:
| How much of the recent tomfoolery in world leadership is due to
| COVID / Vaccine related brain damage?
| Julesman wrote:
| Dude's website is a sin against the future. heh.
| [deleted]
| lol768 wrote:
| Archived tweet/mirror:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20221218204403/https://twitter.c...
| wintorez wrote:
| He'll be back
| icodestuff wrote:
| Did anyone get a screenshot before the account was suspended?
| posharma wrote:
| So? Why so much discussion about this? Are we going to discuss
| this again when he's back on Twitter?
| bowsamic wrote:
| He owns Hacker News
| posharma wrote:
| Yes, I'm aware of that. I still don't feel it is worth so
| much discussion.
| qaq wrote:
| Well you are discussing it
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| There are a few types of people on twitter.
|
| 1. People building their business/brand. They are not going to
| like this, since the reason they are on Twitter is to build an
| audience. The idea that you share your handle from Twitter to
| Facebook .... and vice versa is good for everyone.
|
| 2. People who want to speak freely. Well you are telling them
| they can't offer another way to contact them. What if they are
| the last refuge for someone under oppression? Twitter is blocked
| in their country but nostr isn't (it would be hard to block)?
|
| There are probably other groups as well. This move just makes
| Twitter a bit useless, which is much much worse than
| controversial for the site's popularity.
| [deleted]
| cryptonector wrote:
| Twitter has done a lot of things worthy of boycotts. This seems
| like the least of them, though it does strike me as rather petty
| and telling (that the moves off Twitter are hurting). The whole
| thing is fascinating. Is he destroying Twitter or saving it? More
| time is needed to find out.
| MasTwit wrote:
| jolmg wrote:
| The tweet before ban:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20221218204403/https://twitter.c...
| bachmeier wrote:
| I'll admit that I didn't care much when Elon took over. I assumed
| it wouldn't have much impact on me. Now that he's compiling an
| ever-growing list of unacceptable speech, I've stopped using
| Twitter, and may very well not return.
| SamvitJ wrote:
| And pg's Twitter account has been suspended. Crazy times.
| labrador wrote:
| What happened to the early idea that the internet views
| censorship as damage and routes around it? If Musk keeps this up
| he's might as well buy Gab, Parlor and Truth Social and merge
| them with Twitter because that's the audience he'll have left.
| [deleted]
| nemo44x wrote:
| Lol Paul Graham is drunk after that WC match. Clearly his
| business interests were stunted if he's at all near sober.
| Chinjut wrote:
| Paul Graham has now been banned from Twitter:
| https://twitter.com/paulg
| omgomgomgomg wrote:
| And right now, he has been banned on twitter.
|
| Does not Musk realize that this makes him look really bad?
| Nomentatus wrote:
| I'm in the same position as Paul Graham. Happy to support Elon...
| until he flagrantly broke the law. My twitter tabs are closed,
| when Twitter reverses I'll open them again. I was having fun.
|
| IANAL but: You can't use market power to extend or preserve
| market power (monopoly isn't necessary nor the term in law.) The
| courts could and should enforce interoperability; never mind
| mentions of other services being censored. Restraint of trade.
|
| There are lots of dumb criticisms of the transition - nothing is
| more difficult than changing a corporate culture, hence
| capitalism that allows the death of companies no matter how
| large. Changing software and systems is also difficult. Elon
| should be given time and considerable leeway. But the law is a
| bright red line.
|
| Elon fired his main inhouse lawyer recently, he needs another
| fast. He'll figure out that this plow won't scour, and reverse
| himself, and I'll be back. If not, Congress or Biden will rectify
| the situation, probably with clear and close regulation of the
| sector.
| vadym909 wrote:
| It won't shock me if Elon is going alt-right to get the only
| remaining segment of the US population that is currently global
| warming deniers and ICE car pushers to start supporting
| Tesla/electric cars. If he gets conservatives and governments in
| Texas, Florida and other Red states to move to EVs, he'll really
| have done more for the environment than any other human alive.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| BTW, he's already backtracking and stating he has not "left
| twitter":
|
| https://indieweb.social/@paulg@mas.to/109536543079310226
|
| _" I haven't "left Twitter." I just don't want to keep using it
| while it's banning links to other sites. Plus given the way
| things are going, it seemed like a good time to learn more about
| Mastodon."_
|
| Expect Musk to reverse this policy, and all the people who were
| fine with all the even more terrible things to just hush down and
| return.
| fairity wrote:
| There's nothing to backtrack on. Go re-read the original tweet
| - he never said he was leaving Twitter. If that was his
| intention, he probably would've explicitly said so. The OP's
| post title is based on an incorrect assumption.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Fair enough, it's left ambiguous.
|
| He's applying pressure/lobbying in a passive-aggressive way.
| Even _less_ principled.
| [deleted]
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| His pearl clutching at moderation decisions made by the old
| Twitter contrasts badly with his series of arbitrary, self-
| interested moderation decisions under his leadership. But
| hypocrisy is one other luxury of the perversely rich.
| duxup wrote:
| Elon seems to try so hard to show people how he is, people just
| don't want to take him at his actions...
| golemiprague wrote:
| [deleted]
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Is there a HN Mastodon server?
| mmastrac wrote:
| Lots of us are on hachyderm, but there's no official HN one.
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