[HN Gopher] Linda Yaccarino is the new CEO of Twitter
___________________________________________________________________
Linda Yaccarino is the new CEO of Twitter
Author : lopkeny12ko
Score : 382 points
Date : 2023-05-12 15:51 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| jacquesm wrote:
| sCapegoat Executive Officer
| agnosticmantis wrote:
| I'm just gonna leave this here for the sweet irony and the sheer
| hypocrisy:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/05/business/media/elon-musk-...
| tinyhouse wrote:
| The only reason for her to get this job is to have her name known
| in public. No one knew who she was until now (not saying it as a
| bad thing). She is taking a sinking ship with lots of issues she
| won't be able to fix, like the thousands of lawsuits the company
| is facing. Now Elon will have someone to blame for the disaster
| he created. Google luck Linda, you'll need it.
| jimhi wrote:
| Bad tech CEOs all have the same playbook. Google "glass cliff."
| Elon will step down and have this new CEO execute all his most
| unpopular decisions. Then he'll swoop back in and be CEO again
| hoping to be the hero. Reddit did this. Yahoo did this. The
| lamest part is it kind of does help their image.
| antipaul wrote:
| Did SpaceX do this? Who's been their CEO?
|
| Edit: lol, I guess she's the President and COO, not CEO. Dunno
| if the point still stands, or not...
| jimhi wrote:
| Not the same. Hiring a female CEO can and should happen
| often. But when a company is publicly failing, this is a tool
| used by male boards frequently enough to have its own
| Wikipedia page.
| sharkweek wrote:
| How do I sign up to volunteer as one of these sacrificial lamb
| CEOs? Because I'd absolutely love to fail at something and then
| get paid a bunch of money to look bad for a few months before
| people forget and I can retire into the sunset.
| nostrademons wrote:
| First step: get a title where it wouldn't embarrass the board
| to put you in the CEO position. This could be founder of a
| hot startup, or an executive at a competitor, or CEO of a
| smaller company.
|
| Getting _there_ is left as an exercise for the reader.
| enumjorge wrote:
| Elon's circle is lousy with people begging to be that
| sacrificial lamb.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Be already rich and connected.
| faaabio1618 wrote:
| HN is the only place where you get real answers to that
| question!
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _How do I sign up to volunteer as one of these sacrificial
| lamb CEOs?_
|
| Be an executive at NBCUniversal in advertising, Twitter's
| revenue engine, and also be on _their_ CEO short list.
| nprateem wrote:
| What unpopular decisions are left?
| gtweg wrote:
| Reverting to the status quo before be bought the company and
| limiting free speech again to attract advertisers.
|
| When Tucker Carlson announced that he'd post his new show on
| Twitter, Musk already sent a cryptic mail saying that Carlson
| would be subject to the same "community notes" as everyone
| else.
|
| We'll see how it goes, I'm just getting vibes that everything
| will be reverted to a standard SV company.
| nailer wrote:
| That makes sense - online raconteurs were trying to act as
| if Twitter had some kind of unique deal with Tucker
| Carlson, so reiterating that Twitter is interested in
| factual truth, rather than partisan politics was a solid
| response.
| closetnerd wrote:
| Ya I think he's actually unlike most other CEOs. The man does
| super unpopular decisions in front of everyone.
| fullshark wrote:
| Returning verification back to the previous system and
| admitting it was a mistake.
| mbreese wrote:
| Didn't @jack kind of do this too?
|
| But it's different when the founder/CEO is replaced only to
| return later. That's a Steve Jobs play. When the CEO takes a
| new role, but still owns the company, that's completely
| different (and certainly fits here).
| x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
| And Bob Iger at Disney.
| nancyhn wrote:
| What in the world has given you the impression that he's afraid
| of making unpopular decisions?
| junipertea wrote:
| Not sure you can do anything more unpopular than lay off 80% of
| your workspace, saddle your company with 13B debt and drive
| away advertisers only to bet everything on a $8 subscription
| paid by right wing simps. Like, what else unpopular would he
| need a scapegoat for?
| drcongo wrote:
| I bet he's gonna give it a go though!
| INeedMoreRam wrote:
| [dead]
| supergram wrote:
| Twitter has 400m users. At $8 that's $3.2b/month, $38b/year.
| This might be a decision most social networks didn't take,
| and an unpopular one, but if it works it can have massive
| payoff.
| fckgw wrote:
| It's pretty clearly not working
| RoyGBivCap wrote:
| Based on what quantifiable criteria?
|
| All of twitter's usage records were broken _after_ he
| bought it. _All of them._
| zimpenfish wrote:
| How many are currently paying for Twitter Blue?
|
| Best estimates are "somewhere around 450k" which is
| $3.6M/month or $43.2M/year. Which is only $956.8M short of
| the $1B/year debt servicing he saddled Twitter with. It's a
| GENIUS PLAN.
| supergram wrote:
| [dead]
| pclark wrote:
| Who was the bad tech Reddit CEO?
| pooper wrote:
| I think they are talking about Ellen Pao
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Pao
|
| Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_Ohanian
|
| > [...] He was also a partner at Y Combinator.
|
| > [...]
|
| > On July 2, 2015, Reddit fired communications director
| Victoria Taylor, an administrator who coordinated celebrity
| interviews from Reddit's New York office. In protest,
| volunteer moderators of the IAmA community set their forum to
| private, effectively turning it off, and other volunteer
| moderators followed suit because of "anger at the way the
| company routinely demands that the volunteers and community
| accept major changes that reduce [their] efficiency and
| increase [their] workload".[40] The following day, a
| moderator of IAmA posted that "Chooter (Victoria) was let go
| as an admin by u/kn0thing [Alexis Ohanian]",[41] an assertion
| that was not widely reported on.[42] Media outlets such as
| Variety blamed interim CEO Ellen Pao for the dismissal.
| Harassment, which was already being directed toward Pao in
| relation to other controversies, intensified and she resigned
| a week later.[43] However, on July 12, former CEO Yishan Wong
| informed the Reddit community that Taylor was fired by "the
| CEO's boss" and accused Ohanian of scapegoating.[42] In the
| aftermath of Pao's resignation, Ohanian elaborated on his
| role in Taylor's dismissal, countering that even though the
| AMA/IAmA changes came from him, he still reported to Pao.[44]
| In 2017, Pao criticized Ohanian for avoiding the fallout by
| attending Wimbledon in the days immediately following
| Taylor's firing.[45]
| VHRanger wrote:
| Then Ohanian went on to become a crypto bro and tried to
| force crypto monetization down reddit.
|
| Great visionary here
| xeromal wrote:
| Ellen Pao. She fired Victory who was very popular for running
| AMAs (Ask me anythings) with a lot of high powered people.
| The popularity of those dropped a bit after that and they
| were never the same.
|
| Edit: Someone clarified below that Knothing took
| responsibility for firing Victory but Pao definitely took the
| heat for firing victory on top of nuking several popular
| (edgy and outright bad) subs
| misterprime wrote:
| I thought I had a vague sense of why they stopped doing
| AMAs, but for the life of me I can't remember why now.
| Those were great.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Pao did not fire Victoria, Ohanian did, as he later
| admitted:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cucye/comm
| e...
| xeromal wrote:
| That's kind of the point of my post. She was the initial
| fallguy for firing victory. Knothing may have clarified
| it was at his insistence but I can tell you that most
| people didn't read his silly little apology post.
| lazyeye wrote:
| I cant think of a CEO for which this comment is less accurate
| than Elon Musk.
| colpabar wrote:
| Can you explain? I find these threads fascinating because
| seemingly everyone has such ironclad logical reasons for
| thinking elon is actually just a big stinky doodoohead. Can
| you try to convince me?
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| Everyone parrots the same glass gliff term they recently
| learned but Musk has actually a good track record putting women
| to lead companies and them very much succeeding.
| teg4n_ wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| Please don't do this here.
| jimhi wrote:
| Because he has an outdated leadership playbook for Twitter.
| He has had a good track record and he also runs his other
| companies surprisingly well. I think this decision is set up
| for the new CEO to fail.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Who are these people?
|
| What is this, a track record of 1? 2?
|
| This doesn't seem like the type of thing you can do enough
| times to have a "track record" of.
| hartator wrote:
| SpaceX CEO should enough of an example.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| A sample of one is not a track record.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Musk is CEO at SpaceX. Shotwell is COO.
| jkubicek wrote:
| Gwynne was hired at SpaceX the year it was founded, so
| she's had ample opportunity to operate the company the
| way she felt it needed to be operated.
|
| Twitter is a well-established company that has been
| mismanaged for a decade and aggressively driven into the
| ground by Musk over the last 7 months.
|
| These two situations aren't even remotely equivalent.
| nojonestownpls wrote:
| Twitter is a well-established company with a huge
| userbase and existing infrastructure.
|
| Gwynne was hired to make something out of nothing in an
| unproven space (no pun intended), having to build
| everything from the ground up (also no pun intended).
|
| Framing is a fun exercise, you can do it a lot of ways.
| jkubicek wrote:
| Well sure, your framing is just as correct as mine.
|
| I don't think you're disagreeing with me that Gwynne and
| Linda Yaccarino are finding themselves in utterly
| dissimilar situations though, right?
| stnmtn wrote:
| How many opportunities has he had to do this? Certainly
| less than 5 at this high of a level right?
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| The critique is against saying someone has a "track
| record" with a sample size of one.
|
| Not that Musk is demonstrably the opposite.
| rcme wrote:
| > Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this
| platform into X, the everything app.
|
| I wish this notion of the "everything app" would die in the West.
| Yes, China has a highly successful everything app, but it exists
| because the government wants a centralized place to control
| digital activity. Such a model makes no sense in the west. We
| already have an everything app, it's called "App Store."
|
| So many apps try to this strategy. For instance, Snapchat added
| games to the app. Why would I want to play a game in Snapchat
| when I have a nearly unlimited selection of games in the app
| store?
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > Why would I want to play a game in Snapchat when I have a
| nearly unlimited selection of games in the app store?
|
| I agree with you for that specific case: Snapchat games. But
| for a lot of other things, like payments (as Elon himself
| discussed doing) I appreciate some degree of convergence.
| Google has already done this sort of thing to a large degree
| and it's one of the reasons I like using their products. The
| reason it's desirable is convenience: using one UI and one
| login can be a pleasant experience.
|
| Twitter has a long way to go though. I dislike their UI and my
| recent attempts to log in to their Android app resulted in me
| just deleting the app and using their web UI instead.
| bryananderson wrote:
| The payments thing is nonsense. Why would anyone want to use
| Twitter for payments when they could use a ton of existing
| options that work fine? Remember, Snapchat tried payments
| too. And that at least sort of made sense, since people
| already message their friends on Snapchat, and sending
| payments to friends is a common use-case. But Twitter?
|
| He's throwing stuff at the wall and hoping something sticks.
| Blue check subscriptions were a bust, so now he'll try hiring
| someone to woo advertisers back. If that doesn't work I guess
| he'll try payments or something.
| pembrook wrote:
| Along those same lines, the weirdest thing to me about the
| concept of an "everything app" is that it basically just
| describes an operating system.
|
| iOS, MacOS, Windows, Android, Linux, etc. are already the
| "everything" apps.
|
| Why the do we need an app that can do everything inside of an
| app that can already do everything?
|
| It's like wearing a hat on top of your hat.
|
| I think your thesis about WeChat being more about a domestic
| choke point over the freedom of computing in China is largely
| correct.
| pvillano wrote:
| We (consumers) don't need it, but companies like the idea of
| complete control over an app you never leave
| techolic wrote:
| > but it exists because the government wants a centralized
| place to control digital activity
|
| Speaking as someone who witnessed them from 0 to everything -
| it really has not much to do with that.
|
| It has to do with how fast mobile payment swept through the
| country to be the connecting factor for all online services and
| it has to do with how easy it was and is for big players to out
| compete or swallow small innovators and harvest their
| innovations.
| Klonoar wrote:
| _> Yes, China has a highly successful everything app, but it
| exists because the government wants a centralized place to
| control digital activity._
|
| You say this as if political parties here _wouldn 't_ be
| interested in that. ;P
| akiselev wrote:
| Not if they had to share with each other.
| mxkopy wrote:
| I think everything apps are actually sort of a logical
| conclusion for HCI. The one that my job uses has redundancies
| everywhere, i.e. a global search bar, multiple links to the
| same page spread across the website, etc. It's very
| disorganized, but I've also found it to be strangely useful.
|
| Maybe take this with a grain of salt but when I'm drunk I hate
| backtracking through UIs and being hampered by organization. I
| think an everything app would be useful in that case. And in
| the same vein as "the average human has less than two arms", I
| feel like the average end user is basically drunk.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It already did, that was what CompuServe, AOL, and arguably
| Facebook etc. were. Musk seems to be calling back to things
| that were big when he was growing up. I don't think there's
| such a demand for the return of the internet portal.
| thejarren wrote:
| I'm very interested in HN's perspective based on
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_cliff relative to this news.
|
| "The glass cliff is a hypothesized phenomenon of women being
| likelier than men to achieve leadership roles, such as executives
| in the corporate world and political election candidates, during
| periods of crisis or downturn, when the risk of failure is
| highest.Other research has expanded the definition of the glass
| cliff phenomenon to include racial and ethnic minority groups."
| nancyhn wrote:
| Elon has a strong track record of hiring great women leaders,
| like Gwynne and Shivon.
|
| I would give him and Linda the benefit of the doubt before
| jumping to any conclusions.
| blueboo wrote:
| There are indications to the opposite. What you have pointed
| out is that he has hired two female executives across the
| dozens of individuals in his portfolio. Better than zero, I
| suppose.
|
| Meanwhile:
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/12/14/former-spacex-engineer-e...
|
| https://finance.yahoo.com/news/one-tweet-elon-musk-captures-...
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/tesla-subjects-women-nightm...
| _Microft wrote:
| That's Gwynne _Shotwell_ , COO of SpaceX btw. Maybe the best
| that could happen to SpaceX. The other one is Shivon _Zilis_.
| What role does she have nowadays?
| throwaway4736 wrote:
| Shivon's role is to be a public simp for Elon and to raise
| his kids.
| dang wrote:
| No personal attacks, please.
| fargo wrote:
| [flagged]
| _Microft wrote:
| [flagged]
| asadm wrote:
| [flagged]
| fargo wrote:
| [flagged]
| nancyhn wrote:
| And she's happy about it. Why is that a problem for you?
| afavour wrote:
| It certainly speaks to a level of professional conflict.
| If you have children with an employee it could very
| easily affect the way you treat that person in the
| workplace. It can easily undermine them in the eyes of
| co-workers.
|
| She may well be perfectly happy with that but the OP was
| specifically holding her up as an example of Elon's track
| record with women in the workplace.
| osmsucks wrote:
| Mother to 2 of his 10 children?
| samstave wrote:
| [flagged]
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| If anyone else is wondering what WTF WEF is - it appears to be
| the world economic forum.
| starkparker wrote:
| Goes right into the textbook definition of "glass cliff". Musk
| still gets to sabotage the product, the CEO gets to be the chief
| executive of whatever Elon thinks is dull but not the company,
| and she still gets fired if things go sideways and Elon keeps
| doing whatever he's doing.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > Musk still gets to sabotage the product
|
| when is this going to happen? It's been a while now and seems
| to be the same twitter as usual.
| smcl wrote:
| Top replies to tweets are from blue-checks (nowadays,
| generally the worst posters) so to see any good interactions
| you either have to scroll pretty far or have used a
| blocklist. Twitter Blue is now completely tarnished - even if
| you just want to pay $8/month for the ability to edit posts
| or include longer videos in your tweets and don't care about
| "verified" status you're going to be lumped in with a really
| odd group of people and mocked for your blue check (i.e. he
| turned a consumer choice into an unpopular political
| statement). I'm not personally a heavy user anymore (moved to
| mastodon when they killed Tweetbot's API access), but either
| there's a lot of downtime or I've been _really_ unlucky when
| I have returned as I 've encountered a lot of issues with
| accessing the app - being completely locked out for a couple
| of days once. Also he unbanned a bunch of really pretty
| shitty people, who have picked up where they left off in
| directing their substantial following to abuse whoever they
| feel wronged them (usually someone in the LGBTQ+ community).
|
| It's still largely usable as a service, but it has absolutely
| gotten worse and to describe it as "sabotage" is definitely
| not a stretch.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| So pay 8 dollars a month and shut up.
| Havoc wrote:
| Not GRD after all haha
| Animats wrote:
| Who's running Tesla right now?
|
| Whomever is in charge of manufacturing over there seems to be
| doing well. It took Tesla over five years to get their
| manufacturing act together. (Which is what the manufacturing
| experts who quit in 2016 said it was going to take.) But they
| finally did, and at long last, cost per unit started to come
| down.
|
| New product development, though, is not going well. The
| Cybertruck is still not shipping. Nor is the big truck. A Model 2
| has been announced, but is not shipping. And, of course, there's
| Fake Self Driving, which isn't mentioned much any more.
|
| Come to think about it, Tesla as a high volume car manufacturer
| now seems to work better when Musk isn't around.
| ex3ndr wrote:
| How it is great? USS still not available on 100k+ car.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| a model 2 has been announced?
| hn_acc_2 wrote:
| Success is a lousy teacher. Mr. Musk has been dreaming about his
| "everything app" i.e. X.com for a very long time. The fact that
| he thinks the sinking Twitter ship will bring it to fruition is
| laughable.
| lazyeye wrote:
| [flagged]
| runesofdoom wrote:
| Perhaps his parents owned _two_ emerald mines, making his
| judgement twice as good as Elon 's?
| concordDance wrote:
| Elon'a parents didn't even own an entire Emerald mine...
| mr90210 wrote:
| Ad Hominem.
| ta8645 wrote:
| IMHO, Twitter fundamentally needed a huge shakeup, which Elon has
| done. I've enjoyed and used my account more since he took over
| than in any of the years prior. Still, it's obvious a lot of
| people are unhappy with the changes; but it's hard to judge how
| many people are quietly happy with them. Personally, I hope for
| Twitter's success under Yaccarino's leadership.
| thomasahle wrote:
| What changes have you personally experienced?
|
| For me it's mostly been (1) seeing less content from people I
| actually follow (because prioritization of Twitter Blue
| subscribers) while my own tweets are shown less; and (2)
| awkward conversations with people, where I can type 280
| characters, but they can respond with infinitely long answers.
| patrickmay wrote:
| Killing the APIs used by TweetBot and other third party
| products has made Twitter close to unusable.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| Fritter no longer works.
|
| At least on the aggregate.
| RoyGBivCap wrote:
| > _(1) seeing less content from people I actually follow_
|
| This is the Following tab. It's only the people you follow.
| The "For you" tab is stuff from the edge of your filter
| bubble.
| nojonestownpls wrote:
| As a previous non-regular-Twitter user, every time I checked
| in to see what the hype was about, it was full of people
| trying to create "personal brand"s and sounding very
| artificial. It had a very LinkedIn-ish vibe. Regular Twitter
| users probably had a very different experience, of course,
| but this average initial experience was a turn off.
|
| There are still faux-experts shilling their brand on Twitter
| for sure, but recently it feels like there are a lot more
| authentic and casual chat that's easy to get into.
|
| It may just be that Elon shaking things up and causing some
| people to move out destabilized existing cliques, thus making
| things more approachable to an outsider. But I for one am
| enjoying the current Twitter a lot more than the past one.
| TinkersW wrote:
| For me nothing much has changed..
|
| It is still a fairly slow and bloated site like always.
|
| Need to add lots of filters to block all the politic garbage
| people spew, and mute anyone that repeatedly does this. Same
| as always.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| The community notes is the best feature added to anything
| ever
| rcme wrote:
| I never used Twitter much, but one change I noticed is that
| there is more "angry political commentary" than before.
| Twitter has always been politically polarizing, but I feel
| like angry comments pop up on every thread now. For instance,
| when Musk announced he had picked a new CEO and referred to
| to her as "she", one of the replies visible at the top was
| how this specific Twitter user didn't want to use a product
| run by a woman.
| nailer wrote:
| Huh weird I didn't see that at all.
|
| I use Twitter throughout my day.
|
| The changes I have noticed are:
|
| I can now access the Babylon bee account.
|
| There are basic encrypted messages now.
|
| There is a non-algorithmic tab on the homepage.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| huh? Twitter has always had chronological timelines. Only
| thing Musk added in that regard is a buggy even more
| magic "For You" that's harder to ignore. On my phone at
| least the app switched to the For You tab every restart
| and on many of my refreshes.
| dmix wrote:
| That's not true. Twitter hid the chronological feed
| behind a small button barely anyone knew about. And
| before that there was a multi-year period where the only
| way to get chronological tweets was via using Lists.
| Which was extremely frustrating.
|
| I'm happy Twitter has made the followers only feed a
| prominent two-tab UI. The algorithmic one was always
| completely useless. If Twitter can do what YouTube did to
| their feeds recommendations feeds Twitter can do very
| well but without TikTok style engagement metrics with
| videos are well suited for I have a feeling it's always
| going to be bad on Twitter.
|
| I get the feeling the only people who (ever) liked and
| engaged with the Twitter AI feeds are the same people who
| like Reddits r/all, which aren't the sort of people I
| want to interact with anyway.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| That's a fair point, I'd forgotten it was hard to
| discover. That's because it worked well for me. I looked
| it up and one point and then I had it configured how I
| want.
|
| The new system is much more annoying for me, but it might
| be nicer for someone who wouldn't be able to learn about
| the old button.
| rcme wrote:
| I just went to the Babylon Bee's twitter page and looked
| at their latest tweet, which a Zelda joke about banning
| cross dressing in Florida: https://twitter.com/TheBabylon
| Bee/status/1657101451569537025
|
| The top reply says "I'm the thickest 18 year old on
| Twitter" and has an NSFW profile.
|
| The 5th reply tags a number of republican politicians and
| was posted by someone whose Twitter tagline is simply
| "Patriot".
|
| The 6th reply is an image that says "It was justified"
| and the person's profile posts and retweets a bunch of
| pro-Trump and pro-gun tweets.
|
| It really feels impossible to escape these types of
| political statements on the platform now.
| slily wrote:
| English-language Twitter has always had a huge amount of
| inflammatory political commentary. I gave up on the
| platform for many years because I couldn't follow
| artists, film directors, or engineers without seeing
| their political opinions plastered all over my feed and I
| found it distracting and obnoxious. As others have
| pointed out, you're looking at the comment section of an
| account that posts political satire.
|
| What do you mean by "these types of political
| statements"? Right-wing ones?
| rcme wrote:
| > As others have pointed out, you're looking at the
| comment section of an account that posts political
| satire.
|
| Which account is political satire? The Babylon Bee or
| Elon Musk's personal account? I kid.
|
| > What do you mean by "these types of political
| statements"? Right-wing ones?
|
| I intentionally didn't label it. Where on the spectrum
| does a statement like "women can't run companies" lie? To
| me, the issue isn't political. It's that people whose
| entire identity is founded upon fighting a culture war
| seem to be the loudest voices on Twitter. It makes the
| product very unpleasant.
| nailer wrote:
| > It really feels impossible to escape these types of
| political statements on the platform now.
|
| Following Babylon Bee isn't mandatory. If you do, nor is
| reading the replies. FWIW I see memes not the thickest 18
| year old on Twitter.
| rcme wrote:
| As I said, it's basically on every post, even a non-
| political post like announcing that a new Twitter CEO has
| been chosen. I used Babylon Bee as an example because you
| said that you didn't see this trend and mentioned that
| you read the Babylon Bee.
| nailer wrote:
| > As I said, it's basically on every post, even a non-
| political post like announcing that a new Twitter CEO has
| been chosen.
|
| OK I think I understand what you're saying - every
| discussion turns political? Twitter has been that way
| since 2015. It's the world's public square. Only
| difference is people are allowed to disagree with
| Californian liberals.
| noelsusman wrote:
| The decision to kill third party clients has cut my usage
| dramatically.
|
| Beyond that, the decision to show every single reply from a
| Twitter Blue subscriber above any reply from a non-subscriber
| is one of the worst changes I've seen in a social media
| product. Elon chose to brand subscribing to Twitter Blue as a
| political act, so now below every tweet there's nothing but
| people who have agreeing with Elon's politics as a significant
| part of their identity.
|
| It's not like Twitter replies were all that good before, and
| yet somehow he's made them significantly worse.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| The tricky thing about cutting third party clients is that
| those users were never counted as a 'mDAU' in their reports
| anyway. They could have brought other benefits (like 'power
| users' generating content to attract monetisable users).
| StopTheWorld wrote:
| > Still, it's obvious a lot of people are unhappy with the
| changes; but it's hard to judge how many people are quietly
| happy with them.
|
| I follow a number of accounts on Twitter. If someone tweets,
| previously it seemed the replies which would float to the top
| would be the ones which were liked the most - like on HN - or
| perhaps from users that had the equivalent of good karma. Since
| the sale of blue checkmarks, now the replies which float to the
| top are from those shilling out eight dollars a month for the
| blue checkmark, and those top replies are usually inane.
|
| Previously, well-known people would get a verified checkmark.
| One example talked about on the net is the singer Dionne
| Warwick, who lost her checkmark as she does not want to pay the
| eight dollars a month for it. There are two Twitter accounts
| calling themselves Clint Eastwood's official account - one has
| a blue checkmark and less than 3500 followers, one does not and
| has over 100,000 followers - I have no idea which is the real
| one, if either is. This also makes the platform less useful to
| use.
| nailer wrote:
| That seems like Clint Eastwood's agent's fault.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| _No, it is the children who are wrong_
| nailer wrote:
| Yes, but for the people blaming Elon Musk for Clint
| Eastwood's agent not spending eight bucks.
| [deleted]
| obblekk wrote:
| I think this is exactly the right profile for him to have hired.
| She led advertising (sales) at a top 3 media publisher. This is
| probably Elon's greatest area of weakness, and she's particularly
| good at it.
|
| I imagine this will be a bit like SpaceX where Sales and Ops is
| done by someone very good at that, and engineering is done by
| Elon.
|
| It takes a realistic, self-aware person to hire someone who's
| better than them at their weaknesses, and is harder done than
| said.
| rscho wrote:
| Engineering is done by Elon?
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| I'd hope so, he is the lead engineer of a company which is
| currently on a ~200 mission long streak of successful
| missions to space.
|
| Figuring out how twitter should work seems easier than that.
| greenhorn360 wrote:
| He can call himself an engineer but that doesn't mean he is
| one.
| rscho wrote:
| He's a full professor at Pretoria University, though...
| pprotas wrote:
| Didn't they blow up that huge rocket 2 weeks ago? Seems
| like there is some leeway in the definition of "successful
| mission" here xd
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| Yeah I'm just considering actual missions where a
| customer is paying them to deliver something to space
| (crew or satellites). If you include tests then they
| obviously have a much worse record.
| thewataccount wrote:
| Are you talking about starship?
|
| I'm not a big elon fan but that was objectively not a
| failed mission. They were very upfront that they expected
| it to destruct, and wanted to see how far it got.
|
| Their entire launch, navigation, communication,
| engine/fuel/structure, and the self-destruction
| teams/systems all performed, and they assuredly learned a
| ton from that - both sensor data - and other things such
| as concrete debris from the launch pad being a problem.
|
| From my understanding they were primarily were concerned
| about the launch stages and getting into an ascent and
| anything beyond that was icing on the cake. There was no
| payload, it's destination was to crash off the coast of
| hawaii.
| aik wrote:
| Is your argument that SpaceX is a failure?
|
| Wow the slant in this entire thread. When did HN become
| such a fervent Elon hate machine. Honestly curious, is
| most of this from his actions at Twitter?
| decremental wrote:
| It was exactly the moment the media started calling him a
| fascist for supporting free speech. I noticed the
| immediate transition of the rhetoric about Elon change
| here overnight.
| 8vectors wrote:
| My guess is one or more of the billionaires that Elon
| pissed off started funding a persistent anti-elon
| narrative, and that has shown up as bot farms especially
| on reddit. Then people who don't think for themselves
| started propagating it wherever they go... Because of how
| fun it is to argue on the internet and all of that.
|
| It started as an anti Tesla narrative which was obviously
| paid for by the Tesla shorts, but this new supercharged
| anti Elon narrative ramped up when it started to become
| clear he was actually going to buy Twitter. So my guess
| is it's related to the interests of whoever was
| benefiting from the old regime at Twitter.
| nojonestownpls wrote:
| You don't have to go that far. Elon just got more
| involved in politics than before (or at least more
| publicly than before - all billionaires are probably
| influential in politics, just not so explicitly), and the
| best move in that game is not to play. Politics is a mind
| killer, and instant enemy-creator.
| d23 wrote:
| Not bot here. I don't have enough digits to count the
| reasons I loathe him. I've yet to understand why the
| "media brainwashing" crowd never have a response to the
| very real argument that these types of people have made
| themselves so obnoxiously loud that you can't help but
| see every one of the unfiltered thought they have -- no
| third party media bias swaying the impression needed.
| Zetice wrote:
| Engineer, especially in rocket science, is a protected
| term, and I don't think Elon has obtained his PE, nor has
| he even gotten an informal education in the requisite
| engineering discipline.
|
| So I wouldn't call Elon an "engineer" per se.
| peterfirefly wrote:
| He most definitely has the latter.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| Have some respect you are talking to a prompt engineer
| right now.
|
| /s
| the-dude wrote:
| We are on a forum where everybody and their dog call
| themselves engineer. Whenever we feel like it, we just
| create disciplines on-the-fly.
| dmix wrote:
| Took a while to find someone actually discussing the hire
| instead of the usual "is Musk an engineer" debate for the 1000x
| time on HN.
| belter wrote:
| The FT got the scoop:
| https://www.ft.com/content/edfead7f-27b5-441b-8971-8a161bad4...
|
| "@LindaYacc will focus primarily on business operations, while I
| focus on product design & new technology."
|
| Looks like he found somebody to have the CEO title, while he
| keeps deciding the product strategy. So still runs Twitter while
| saying he kept the promise from his Twitter poll...
| justinator wrote:
| Glass Cliff.
| gsatic wrote:
| Someone else to deal with summons from govts.
|
| That said spam seems to have dropped and recommendations I get
| are pretty interesting so hope that continues.
| [deleted]
| atestu wrote:
| WSJ yesterday for what it's worth:
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/linda-yaccarino-in-talks-new-tw...
| Good writeup
|
| And to add to your comment:
|
| > Mr. Musk, who has been CEO since buying the company in
| October, said his role will shift to executive chairman and
| chief technology officer. But Mr. Musk also made clear he
| wasn't about to yield control over the platform, saying he
| would maintain responsibility for product, software and system
| operations.
| tootie wrote:
| He's only handing off the fiduciary duty. Basically he'll do
| what he wants with the platform and make someone else figure
| out how to make money with what he does.
| peyton wrote:
| Says he's still an officer, so I don't think this is true.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| He owns the company, so I'm not sure what you mean by
| fiduciary duty. Duty to who?
| [deleted]
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| I believe he borrowed a big chunk of the cash. So he owes
| these folks something for funding it. It might be kind of
| limited but he can't just treat it like his own fiefdom.
| gpm wrote:
| He owns _the majority_ of the company, but not all of it.
| There are other partial owners as well (Qatar, A Saudia
| Prince, Larry Ellison, Jack Dorsey, a venture capitalist
| or two, etc).
| samstave wrote:
| "fiduciary duty" == censorship over whatever narrative
| twitter is being used to push...
|
| Ill never forget my interview at twitter in ~2007
|
| >" _What do you think that twitter is_? "
|
| >>" _Well, most people think of twitter as a social media
| platform, but I think its a global sentiment engine and
| litmus_ "
|
| Yes that was my actual answer.
| samstave wrote:
| And now we have CCP fighting CIA/NSA and its weird how
| publicly we can see it? Are they failing forward???
| sharkweek wrote:
| If I was asked that now, I'd say:
|
| "Twitter is my drunk aunt and uncle who absolutely hate
| each other at this point at a family gathering."
| lazide wrote:
| Ah, memories.
|
| Sums up the political discourse pretty well though.
| jeegsy wrote:
| Did you get the job?
| justrealist wrote:
| That actually worked with SpaceX though. Elon handed off
| operations and "making money" to Gwynne Shotwell and she
| killed it.
|
| Elon is still working on moonshots like Starship, but it
| let the core F9 product run operationally smoothly and rake
| in cash.
| fubfjvdyvd wrote:
| [flagged]
| tootie wrote:
| But he never owned product or tech decisions at SpaceX.
| He was only ever the money guy.
| gizmo wrote:
| Not according to SpaceX engineers. Musk is hands-on.
| Always has been (for good and bad).
| justrealist wrote:
| Do you think SpaceX just accidentally became the first
| company to reuse a booster?
| Mouthfeel wrote:
| [dead]
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Sorry to be obtuse here, but does "killed it" mean that
| she brought in great revenues or did it mean that she
| sent it headed to oblivion? Slang can be kind of
| dangerous sometimes.
| astrange wrote:
| Means she's doing a great job.
|
| I do not believe Twitter is doing a great job or that
| they're somehow more profitable now.
| TheAlchemist wrote:
| Is SpaceX profitable ?
|
| Last estimates I saw suggested they are still bleeding a
| lot of money every month.
| anonporridge wrote:
| It's private, so we have no way of knowing.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| Who knows, but the question is more of unit economics
| than company profitability. Falcon could be profitable on
| a per-launch basis, and all the profit gets shuttled back
| into R&D.
| justrealist wrote:
| Not the company overall, but the Falcon 9 + Falcon Heavy
| platforms themselves are vastly profitable.
| mbesto wrote:
| "Our widgets are profitable, but all of the R&D, sales
| people, back-office people, etc. etc. required to
| actually run a business makes us unprofitable"
|
| So ummm who's gonna pay all of those people to make sure
| the robots and people make the widgets every day?
| justrealist wrote:
| The other expense is the novel Starship R&D program. It's
| not "back-office people". You're either very uninformed
| or just sniping in bad faith.
| arcticbull wrote:
| [flagged]
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| If he pays me CEO money, I'll happily be his fall guy.
| Elon, my e-mail is in my profile.
| [deleted]
| classified wrote:
| Doesn't matter now either way, he's destroyed twitter for
| me and I'm not coming back.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Likewise, especially because (1) he still owns it and (2)
| he can revert this at the drop of a hat and (3) he will
| likely be one heck of a backseat driver while she takes
| all the heat for his fuckups.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| What change "destroyed" it for you? Was it extending the
| tweet length limit? Opening up verification for
| individuals? Organization labels? Bringing back a
| "following" timeline?
|
| From my POV, it's gotten objectively better at a rapid
| clip over the past 6 months and I've been seeing less
| off-topic stuff in my feed (which is basically anything
| not programming-related) or a few other accounts I
| follow.
| IOT_Apprentice wrote:
| Courting actual Nazis, white supremacists, MAGA
| extremists and pushing them into prominence on feeds. And
| his constant need to feed his ego.
| lazyeye wrote:
| Can you provide examples of this? And I mean genuine
| extremists rather than just people you disagree with.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| He brought back anyone previously banned for open naziism
| such as Andrew Anglin and more recently Patriotic
| Alternative. And some suspicious several "14 88"
| referencing tweets. There's also the Nazi meme he posted.
| Then the Nazi with several huge Nazi tattoos that he
| defended as unlikely to be a Nazi. Or the groyper
| memeing. Then the Angelicism / Milady Maker memeing, an
| nft project made by crypto neonazis with anime swastika
| homepages
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| I get pushed openly Nazi content. Like Nazi symbology
| (the obvious ones, not the deep cut pseudo ambiguous
| ones) memes and art and quote accounts. I used to report
| but they get turned down or only suspended for some days.
|
| I also now get pushed a lot of fight and public freak out
| videos specifically of black people with pages of replies
| talking about eugenics
|
| The app pushes me back to "for you" repeatedly where this
| stuff mostly is, or I get a push notification, or it
| shows up in following feed sometimes for people I don't
| follow
| vidarh wrote:
| Over the last few days my feed have been full of actual,
| literal fascists and other people I have no interest in
| seeing anything from.
|
| I spend less and less time on Twitter, and it's less and
| less enjoyable. Unless it changes drastically I won't
| still be there very long.
| d23 wrote:
| He is actively amplifying what amounts to phrenology.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| What do you mean?
| d23 wrote:
| Here are a few threads you might find interesting:
|
| *
| https://twitter.com/maxberger/status/1654877506783137792
|
| * https://twitter.com/hello__caitlin/status/1654871770082
| 70950...
|
| *
| https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1655948197129494532
|
| I'm having trouble finding _another_ one I saw yesterday
| he tweeted basically implying black women were an order
| of magnitude more violent than white women.
|
| Edit: ah, found it, along with a couple inane
| conspiracies to boot, which has become standard for him
| these days:
|
| *
| https://twitter.com/maxberger/status/1655985143700389893
| dmuso wrote:
| Just add a bunch of political terms into your word block
| list. It helps make Twitter much more enjoyable.
| slily wrote:
| The links you posted are inflammatory nonsense that try
| to draw a line between concern over mainstream media
| coverage of race and crime and "fascism". It's contrived
| at best.
|
| Are the statistics wrong? Is it wrong to say that media
| coverage is slanted and focuses on the minority of racist
| white-on-black crime while ignoring the reverse? Seems
| like this is all fairly well documented. Slapping slurs
| on the posts that point that out and calling for the
| posters to be "cancelled" or suppressed by calling them
| "dangerous" - that, if anything, strikes me as fascistic.
| d23 wrote:
| > The links you posted are inflammatory nonsense
|
| What? They are screenshots of his responses!
|
| > Are the statistics wrong?
|
| They have been purposefully stripped of context and
| misrepresented to imply that black people are more
| violent than white people. The author literally worked
| backwards from the originally expressed percentages to
| deceive! It's not the statistics that are wrong, it's the
| way they've been presented.
|
| Over the last 10+ years on this site, I have mostly found
| this to be one of the higher quality places for
| discussion on the internet, but occasionally over the
| last few years I have questioned whether this is the
| right place for me. The responses to this have once again
| made me rethink whether this community is one I want to
| be a part of.
|
| I am genuinely revolted.
| slily wrote:
| Please be specific, the vague accusations and appeal to
| emotion are not conducive to a grounded high-quality
| discussion.
|
| What context is missing? What is being misrepresented?
| And what is wrong with reposting those statistics,
| calling them concerning, and expressing the idea that
| media coverage of it is unbalanced? You linked to posts
| that connect this to fascism instead of to the original
| tweets, so I assume your thinking is in line with that,
| but you're not giving us much to go off of, so we're
| spinning our wheels.
|
| From my standpoint, it looks like Elon Musk is not happy
| that American mainstream media covers white-on-black
| racism and homicides disproportionately. I can't see
| what's wrong with the statistics he reposted, or his
| concerns. I can only assume that you're attributing an
| entirely different conclusion to him, even though none of
| those tweets seem to support that if you take them at
| face value.
|
| Sorry if you feel revolted that there's been a shift in
| culture away from calling people racist over loose
| associations or things that they didn't say ("dog
| whistles"). I'm feeling optimistic myself.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| What does that have to do with phrenology? You could just
| say he is racist or whatever if you think so.
| d23 wrote:
| It's pseudoscientific bunk (in this case, statistics
| manipulated to deceive) designed push a narrative of a
| specific race being more violent. It is no more moral,
| intelligent, or useful than phrenology.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| I think saying that it amounts to phrenology is a
| manipulation designed to push a narrative. I expected
| something completely different than what you've
| presented. I think you aren't better than Elon Musk in
| that regard.
| rlt wrote:
| From a product perspective it's certainly better.
|
| But his antics drove away a significant chunk of the user
| base I care about.
| blisterpeanuts wrote:
| Also: long form videos, subscriptions, encrypted
| messaging.
|
| Upcoming possibilities: video conferencing, micropayments
| a la WeChat.
|
| I think the acquisition has opened up a lot of
| interesting possibilities and potential for a service
| that had become stale.
| djur wrote:
| Three of those four changes (tweet length, paid checks,
| timeline changes) have made Twitter substantially worse
| to use. Now every reasonably popular tweet's replies are
| drowning in irrelevant novel-length screeds and emoji-
| laden nonsense from paying users.
| naet wrote:
| Effectively taking away API access by charging a huge fee
| for it is what made me move on personally.
| pupperino wrote:
| It always makes me laugh how, for years, we mocked
| journalists because of their inflated blue check egos,
| and now every "free thinker" out there is eager to pay to
| be just like them. Verification is meaningless for most
| individuals since there's no real need to verify if
| @ronny2938742 is indeed Mr. Ron Whatever.
|
| However, it's crucial to know if an account claiming to
| be a big company, government agency, journalist,
| politician, etc. is legitimate. Opening verification to
| subscribers is absolutely scammy, just a way to make a
| couple of bucks off the victims of culture war
| brainwashing.
| westoque wrote:
| Funny. I see it differently. I pay for the blue check
| because it adds legitimacy. If I'm replying and having
| conversations with people with similar blue checks then I
| know I'm talking to real humans not hiding behind fake
| usernames. Also, any threats or anything from bad actors
| could otherwise be tracked based on payment method.
| pupperino wrote:
| When having conversations in HN does it bother you that
| you have no way to know if you're talking to a real
| human, not hiding behind fake usernames? What do you
| think underlies this feeling you seem to have?
|
| EDIT: what I do think was a tremendous success is the
| publicity stunt. I've never seen any platform where
| people felt they should pay to let people know they were
| who they claimed to be. Kudos to the people doing the
| whole "twitter is filled with bots" psyop, it worked.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| At least in my circles blue check marks were mocked
| because they became a symbol of endorsement of certain
| viewpoints by Twitter rather than a symbol of verified
| identity.
| pupperino wrote:
| And yet the process to grant bluecheck was to literally
| check personal id, and grant it to whoever had media
| presence. For years, you could request verification, send
| a couple of links citing you, provide a government-issued
| ID and that was it.
|
| Twitter verified literally every public figure it could -
| regardless of politics - even those who didn't seem to
| need verification. However, being a niche contrarian
| blogger does not make you a public figure, and that's
| where I feel the resentment is located.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| That's just straight up a total lie. Everyone who was
| self-aware in 2017 or is able to use Google can confirm
| that. I don't even understand what is the point of such
| blatant gaslighting.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/information-
| technology/2017/11/twitt...
|
| https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/15/twitte
| r-v...
| pupperino wrote:
| Yeah, I overstated that. It's not relevant to my main
| point, but I'll give you that.
| multjoy wrote:
| For me, it was killing the API access. The native client
| sucks.
| IOT_Apprentice wrote:
| See Sam Harris's interview about the issues with Musk
| that are directly done on Twitter by Musk himself.
|
| https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRKaMHCD/
| bavell wrote:
| I hadn't realized how lost Sam had gotten until I saw his
| Triggernometry interview [0]. I had a lot of respect for
| him once but he's clearly lost the plot.
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/DDqtFS_Pvcs
| kernal wrote:
| Sam Harris is a radical leftist.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| He's a liberal
| tootie wrote:
| The complete destruction of content moderation and his
| personal beefs with users. He has been preaching "free
| speech" but he is enabling the worst people in the world
| while laying dishonest criticism on anyone he doesn't
| personally like.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/cat-dog-torture-
| video...
| zorak8me wrote:
| My feed is no longer related to my interests and I don't
| know how to get it back on track. That and losing the
| confidence that the blue check posting is actually
| someone relevant. Really kills the enjoyment for me.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Not going back either, but mostly because it gave me the
| impetus to get off and discover what a useless timesink
| it was for me from the start. So Elon does get my thanks
| for that. I don't miss it just like I don't miss FB since
| dropping off that ~10 yrs ago.
| abirch wrote:
| I agree with you though I do miss PaulG. I was excited
| when he was on Mastodon because I could follow him with
| RSS.
| DoesntMatter22 wrote:
| I think he's primarily hiring her for advertiser relations.
| She knows all the advertisers and can placate them.
|
| Meanwhile hell drive the company and she can be the face
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| [flagged]
| tootie wrote:
| Advertising and product are not separate concerns.
| Advertising _is_ the business. If he doesn't take orders
| from her, the business will just get worse. His vision of
| "free speech" is in direct antagonism to the kind of
| brand-safe content that advertisers want.
| mbesto wrote:
| Which is exactly how Facebook works/worked - Sheryl was
| the person driving the business towards profitability and
| Mark wanted to "connect the world".
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| What are the chances that he actually will listen to her
| and take her advice? I kind of think he's not accustomed
| to doing that.
| DoesntMatter22 wrote:
| There is no chance. That's not what he hired her for.
| She's just handling the Ads section and being the face of
| the company. That's it.
| DoesntMatter22 wrote:
| He's not going to take orders from her. That's not her
| role. And him being a lightning rod of controversy is the
| only thing that hurt the company. They are grinding out
| features faster than ever, the got rid of a ton of staff
| but are moving faster than at any time in the past.
|
| You, and others like you want to paint Twitter as some
| huge failure because you dislike Musk, and that's fine,
| but in reality the biggest advertisers have come back and
| with her at the helm even more will.
|
| First of all, if you want to see some real crazy racist
| stuff go on LinkedIn or Facebook. People there are even
| worse than Twitter.
|
| All advertising companies took a hit, and Twitter is
| actually almost profitable at this point, so if she
| improves things it WILL be profitable. As soon as he can
| start paying down that 12 billion loan things will get
| even better.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > in reality the biggest advertisers have come back ...
| and Twitter is actually almost profitable at this point
|
| References?
|
| This is the closest thing I could find and it doesn't
| really back up your assertion:
| https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitters-advertising-
| busi...
| DoesntMatter22 wrote:
| Apple and Disney is what I'm referring to
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| > And him being a lightning rod of controversy is the
| only thing that hurt the company.
|
| Even if I take as granted the advertiser problem is
| solved, it seems like Twitter has still been hurt by much
| more than having a controversial CEO:
|
| 1. Musk took on significant debt in order to buy a
| company already slightly losing money. Because of this,
| it's not good enough for advertisers to just "come back",
| they need to greatly increase their ad spend on twitter.
|
| 2. Twitter's attempt to find an alternative revenue
| source (the significant changes to Twitter Blue) seem to
| have largely failed.
|
| 3. The disaster with verification is driving away some of
| Twitter's most important posters that generated content
| on the website for free.
|
| 4. Twitter's reputation as an employer has plummetted and
| they are presumably not attracting anywhere near the
| amount of talent they previously did.
| DoesntMatter22 wrote:
| 1. This would be true if he didn't massively axe the
| staff. So they are almost profitable now as he said. He
| has a lot of debt but even with the debt he's nearly
| break even.
|
| 2.First of all you don't really know the numbers, it's a
| guess at best.
|
| 3. They are getting bohemoth players who are going to be
| running shows on Twitter now. This is a huge deal and
| wasn't even possible on old Twitter.
|
| 4. People are desperate for jobs in tech right now.
| Besides they haven't been struggling to hire, they've
| been mostly laying off people.
|
| As they run a profit they will pay that debt down (or
| refinance if rates go lower).
|
| They are launching a lot of new stuff and the future
| looks way brighter
| jbigelow76 wrote:
| _but in reality the biggest advertisers have come back
| and with her at the helm even more will._
|
| I would bet advertisers like Apple got a huge sweetheart
| deal. The majority of advertising I see is (by volume),
| crappy "As Seen On TV" type products fronted by MANY
| different accounts (I can't block them fast enough),
| accounts promoting whatever thought leader angle they are
| working (also insta-blocked), and finally large brands
| that Twitter probably would like a lot more of.
| yumraj wrote:
| So effectively the COO, but with the title of CEO.
| atonse wrote:
| This is actually a smart model given Musk's strengths have
| always been in building things and not in the day to day
| running of companies.
|
| They are different skill sets.
|
| It's worked remarkably well to have Gwynne Shotwell run things
| at SpaceX (she's an awesome COO and also an aerospace
| engineer). I have wished for years that he do that at Tesla.
|
| Having an ad exec run Twitter will take care of all the "how do
| we pay the bills" part of running the business while he does
| the "fun" stuff of focusing on product.
|
| Update: Updated Gwynne Shotwell's title to COO, not CEO (and
| fixed spelling of her name).
| nostrademons wrote:
| It's an awkward structure to have the executive chairman
| and/or majority shareholder take a position (usually CTO or
| CPO) elsewhere in the org chart, because it means that that
| person is simultaneously the boss and subordinate of the CEO.
|
| It _can_ work - most famously, this was the structure that
| Google had in its golden years (2001-2011) with Eric as CEO
| and Larry & Sergey as presidents of Product & Technology,
| respectively. It also was sort of the structure of Apple with
| Steve Wozniak as an IC & founder. But it puts the CEO in a
| very awkward spot where they're in charge of the organization
| but not really in charge of the organization, which in turn
| requires leadership with great humility. That's not really
| what Elon is known for.
|
| The structure of SpaceX or Facebook or Apple 1998+, where you
| have a visionary CEO and then strong COO under them that
| makes the trains run on time, is much more common and less
| fraught with conflicting reporting lines.
| atonse wrote:
| Yes! How could I forget one of my favorite examples, Eric
| Schmidt at google. It was a brilliant move.
|
| But you have a great point about CEO vs COO. As the
| technical CEO of a small company myself (who loves building
| things), I know you just have to deal with certain things
| directly and dedicate your name and time (not complaining,
| that's just the job) and that takes time away from the day
| to day building.
| phkahler wrote:
| Yeah, imagine having to trust each other?
| dbbk wrote:
| Yeah, it basically means that at any moment he can decide
| to momentarily be the CEO again and overrule her.
| mjfl wrote:
| he paid $44 billion to own the company
| justrealist wrote:
| But in reality any CEO is at the whim of the board, and
| if Elon owns > 51% of the voting shares, that's true no
| matter who holds any nominal title.
| waffle_ss wrote:
| There is no board of directors. Twitter isn't a publicly-
| traded company any more; it's private and it's owned by
| Musk.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Private companies still have boards of directors. It's
| possible to have a board of directors with only one
| member but this is a rarity; even non-profits and pre-
| funding startups will usually have a board with more than
| one person.
| skissane wrote:
| > It's possible to have a board of directors with only
| one member but this is a rarity
|
| It is actually extremely common for corporations which
| aren't regular business as such - for example, trustees
| of family trusts are commonly corporations with a single
| director who is the person who ultimately controls the
| trust. Also a common structure for sole proprietorship
| businesses that want some protection from legal
| liability.
|
| I own a company which never has done anything (I was
| daydreaming). Its board of directors has one member-me.
| Legally, I am required to hold annual board meetings with
| myself, although I believe the legal obligation is met if
| I hold them in my head. "This year's financial results:
| zero revenue, zero expenses, zero assets, zero
| liabilities, zero employees-another great year at does-
| nothing-corp!"
| lazide wrote:
| Meetings - yes, but still a good idea to write down
| minutes (seriously). It's important documentation if you
| want the legal shield.
|
| Otherwise, it's easier to pierce the veil.
|
| I once worked for a small Corp that the office manager
| was the board secretary and literally had a meeting with
| just herself for such a purpose.
| 3r3rni9 wrote:
| Musk fired the board in Oct 2022. I can't find anything
| about them reforming it.
| lazide wrote:
| It's private now, they don't need to disclose anything.
| dbbk wrote:
| Don't they? In the UK at least they need to be disclosed
| to Companies House and that data is public.
| lazide wrote:
| Sure enough - but that is for the UK subsidiary, which is
| just going to follow the US companies directions. They
| wouldn't be independent.
|
| [https://find-and-update.company-
| information.service.gov.uk/c...]
|
| Interestingly, they're overdue on their bill with
| Companies House it looks like. Oops.
|
| Lots of entities in Delaware named Twitter Inc. (3) plus
| what might be a holding company or two. Hard to tell
| without more digging.
|
| [https://icis.corp.delaware.gov/eCorp/EntitySearch/NameSe
| arch...]
| dbbk wrote:
| I was just saying more generally, I don't know if the US
| has similar rules. Also I think the legal entity has
| changed to X Corp now.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| This is common in the US too, usually they need to file
| with their state. Going private will often remove the
| need to file publicly with the SEC though (though even
| then, that depends on things like how many shareholders
| there are, not the trading status as such).
| skissane wrote:
| All companies have boards of directors, even privately
| owned ones
|
| Small firms it is common to have a single person board of
| directors, where that single person is the 100% owner.
|
| When private equity takes a large firm private, they'll
| often appoint a board full of their own partners and
| consultants/advisers-if you own 20 different firms, you
| don't want to deal with all their CEOs, you want a layer
| between the CEO and you-which is where the board helps.
|
| 100% subsidiaries (such as a large multinational firm's
| local subsidiary in each country) commonly have multi-
| person boards of directors, with a handful of local
| senior staff on it (e.g. country director, head of local
| finance, HR and general counsel) - they usually all just
| rubber stamp whatever HQ wants, although occasionally
| they might refuse (e.g if local counsel insists HQ's
| demands are illegal and complying with them would make
| the directors personally liable)
| waffle_ss wrote:
| Not all companies. Only corporations are required to have
| boards. LLCs are not - their structure is dictated
| entirely by articles of organization.
| skissane wrote:
| It depends on the country. Where I live (Australia), we
| don't have "LLCs", we do have "PTY LTDs", which are like
| an LLC - but it is a corporation and all corporations
| have directors, although the majority of PTY LTDs are
| sole director sole shareholder. Here, all companies are
| corporations
|
| I should point out that in the traditional legal sense of
| the term, even US LLCs are corporations-it is just that
| people in the US have adopted some weird redefinition of
| "corporation" which excludes them. Under Australian law,
| a US LLC _is_ a corporation, albeit a foreign one.
| Worldwide, I think most countries legal systems would
| reach the same conclusion
|
| The British monarchy is a corporation (a corporation
| sole) - actually, a whole bunch of distinct single member
| corporations (the monarch), one for each Commonwealth
| realm, and also one for each Australian state and
| Canadian province - each called "the Crown in right of
| X". Maybe that's an example of a corporation without any
| directors, although one might (rather meaninglessly)
| claim the monarch is the sole director
| karpierz wrote:
| The difference is that normally, the CEO answers to the
| board every few months. And the board doesn't tell the
| CEO what to do; the point of a CEO is that they can be
| trusted to do the right move. If they can't, then they
| serve no purpose and will be fired.
|
| In this structure, Elon is embedded in the decision
| making loop directly. The CEO normally is responsible for
| the company, but instead, Elon has decided that the CEO
| will deal with making money while he makes all of the
| decisions as to how the product works. Which essentially
| cuts the CEO of of any decision making aside from
| business partnerships, making her more of a VP of Sales
| than CEO.
| lazide wrote:
| Easier to sell if you're CEO (in title, if not in actual
| job) than VP of Sales though.
|
| If the issue is the advertisers need someone to escalate
| too (and someone who Elon would listen to when he needs
| talking out of some half baked idea), then it is a good
| fit.
|
| If the idea is to have Twitter actually functional as a
| product driven engineering company, then yeah that won't
| work. But baby steps.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| > VP of Sales though
|
| They all want to be CROs (Chief Revenue Officer) now.
| nostrademons wrote:
| The complexity with the Executive Chairman -> CEO -> CTO
| sandwich is that Elon also has a day-to-day operating
| role at the company.
|
| That means that he's visible in the office (because bye-
| bye remote work), and when there are product/technical
| questions, _it 's unclear to employees whether Elon or
| Linda is the ultimate decider_. It's normally not a
| problem that the board can fire the CEO, because
| employees never interact with the board and often don't
| know who they are. But when the chairman of the board is
| also an ordinary employee, some fraction of employees
| will follow the official reporting structure and do what
| the CEO wants, while some other fraction of employees
| will follow the "power behind the throne" and do what
| Elon wants. The result will be a company that can't agree
| what it's doing, with multiple competing groups working
| at cross purposes.
|
| This was a huge problem at Google, both in the early days
| and today. Larry and Sergey would go directly to
| engineers with ideas, and then those engineers (hoping to
| get a coveted Founder's Award, and out of respect for the
| founders) would drop what they were doing and work on
| Larry's ideas. It _worked_ in the 2000s, because Larry &
| Sergey's product judgment actually was really good -
| that's how we got GMail, and Chrome, and YouTube, and
| Android. But it's also the root cause of much of the
| organizational dysfunction that affects Google today.
| Google culture follows _competence_ , not reporting
| lines, which means that one giant company is actually
| 1000+ small groups of unrelated projects, most of which
| duplicate each other, that never integrate quite right,
| which will often be technically brilliant but then
| blocked or unlaunched as soon as they cross some
| competing executive's path.
| skissane wrote:
| > and when there are product/technical questions, it's
| unclear to employees whether Elon or Linda is the
| ultimate decider.
|
| Linda, because she is the one who is there every day. If
| Linda thinks Elon has made the wrong call, she just has
| to work out how to talk him out of it while soothing his
| ego, and in the meantime get her team to focus on how to
| implement the right one. She probably already has that
| skill, but if she needs mentoring, Gwynne Shotwell can
| help her out
| nostrademons wrote:
| With Musk in the CTO role, he's either going to be there
| every day, or Twitter is going to have an absent CTO.
| Both of them are bad for decision-making efficiency.
| skissane wrote:
| Given he is also CEO/CTO of SpaceX and Tesla, I don't
| think he physically can be at Twitter every working day -
| unless he's secretly cloned himself
| iudqnolq wrote:
| He obviously can't be at all three full time. Investors
| in SpaceX and Tesla have complained he's spending
| significant time in the Twitter office and neglecting the
| other two. Just because it would make business sense for
| him to focus less on Twitter doesn't mean you can assume
| he will - surely we can all agree, regardless of our
| opinion on Musk, that he frequently bucks the
| conventional wisdom on how a CEO should behave?
| nostrademons wrote:
| Then he's going to be the absent (or worse,
| inconsistently-present) CTO, which is _worse_. If he 's
| there then there's at least a chance of him and Linda
| working out clear roles and responsibilities. If he's
| totally absent then technical decisions are not going to
| get decided, which holds up engineering. If he's
| inconsistently absent then decisions may get decided when
| he's absent and then _reversed_ when he shows up to the
| office, which makes it impossible to do any sort of long-
| term planning.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| YouTube was bought and Eric Schmidt was the one who
| suggested it.
| nostrademons wrote:
| I thought Susan Wojciecki was the one who suggested it,
| she got Larry & Sergey's ear, and then together they
| convinced Eric.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| Ah we are both wrong it was Jeff Huber:
|
| https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1433837480449613839
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| > _The result will be a company that can 't agree what
| it's doing, with multiple competing groups working at
| cross purposes._
|
| That sounds exactly like the Twitter I've known for
| nearly twenty years.
| miohtama wrote:
| Eric's position was "golden handcuffs" from investors.
| Musk's case is a bit different.
| easytiger wrote:
| > _It 's an awkward structure to have the executive
| chairman and/or majority shareholder take a position
| (usually CTO or CPO) elsewhere in the org chart, because it
| means that that person is simultaneously the boss and
| subordinate of the CEO._
|
| That's a good description and it is the de facto structure
| of a great many companies I've worked in/with. I would say
| it's relatively normal to be honest
| skissane wrote:
| Oracle has had Larry Ellison as chairman/CTO, and someone
| else as CEO, for almost 10 years now - and they've done
| well (financially at least) over the period. They even
| started out with two joint CEOs (Mark Hurd and Safra Catz),
| but were reduced to one by Mark Hurd's sudden untimely
| death. Ellison isn't majority owner, but he does own over a
| third of the stock.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Oracle, what a crazy company. Its only goal seems to be
| to buy things, and then destroy them.
|
| I interviewed there a decade ago. Response: someone told
| me I wasn't a culture fit.
|
| But this wasn't the normal "culture fit" response, oh no.
| You could tell it was a "you aren't willing to drink the
| coolaid" type of response. I feel I dodged a bullet.
| lazide wrote:
| From the rumor mill, Oracle sales teams are amazingly
| amoral, even by enterprise standards. But very pleasant
| to be around if you have money.
| skissane wrote:
| I used to work very closely with Oracle sales teams in
| Australia-and I never saw anyone I worked with directly
| do anything "amoral".
|
| I heard about a few things on the grapevine, but in a
| 100,000 person company things are going to happen, you
| can't really generalise from the occasional incident.
| lazide wrote:
| The rumors were specifically what happened when no one
| was looking, and the customers were always happy with it.
| But who knows. All second hand.
| skissane wrote:
| I worked for Oracle for almost 10 years. My memories of
| working there is of just a lot of totally normal everyday
| people doing the same things as at any other large
| corporation. Some of the business and technical decisions
| were disappointing, yet somehow they found a way to just
| keep on making boatloads of money anyway.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Oracle isn't exactly a shining example. If you ask anyone
| technical who professionally came of age in the last 25
| years what they're known for, the answer will be
| "lawsuits".
|
| Your comment is a pretty good example of the _kind_ of
| organizational dysfunction that results from unclear
| reporting and leadership vacuums. From the inside, lots
| of people are doing their job and doing their job well.
| From the outside, all this activity and all these highly-
| paid and highly-talented employees don 't result in
| anything novel or useful. The company keeps chugging
| along, making boatloads of cash from its existing
| customers because old habits die hard, but gradually
| loses its capacity to adapt to market shifts. Then when a
| market shift happens, it goes out of business.
|
| Twitter's problem is that a market shift is already
| underway, and their financials are precarious. Companies
| like Oracle or IBM can limp along for decades as long as
| their customers stay in business. Google is in the middle
| - their business is probably more precarious now than
| it's been in 20 years. Twitter is at imminent risk of
| death in the next 1-3 years if they don't turn the ship
| around.
| skissane wrote:
| I've seen people choose Oracle Cloud because it was
| cheaper than AWS/GCP/Azure. Maybe Oracle is selling at a
| loss to gain more market share, but if you design things
| right, moving to another provider isn't that hard. In
| practice, AWS seems to have much more vendor lock-in
|
| Oracle has so many acquired products, many businesses are
| paying for one and people don't even notice. For example,
| NetSuite for accounting. Cerner runs hospitals. Lots of
| industry-specific software in utilities, insurance,
| manufacturing, etc
|
| Compared to (say) IBM, Oracle is much keener on killing
| legacy products
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| It's the model his friend Larry Ellison uses with Oracle.
| athenot wrote:
| Indeed, these are 2 different skill sets. But wouldn't that
| be a Chief _Operating_ Officer then, instead of a CEO?
| bobsil1 wrote:
| > Musk's strengths have always been in building things
|
| *Hyping things, pumping stock, raising $.
| kernal wrote:
| How many Billion dollar companies have you created?
| belter wrote:
| How many have you run to the ground?
| andrewjl wrote:
| In the case of both Apple and Meta the (then, in the case of
| the former) founder-CEOs delegated the "how do we pay the
| bills" thing to a trusted COO instead, a markedly different
| approach from what Musk did.
| dwater wrote:
| To make money she has to sell ads, to sell ads she needs to
| make the platform palatable for advertisers, which means
| going back to pre-Elon content moderation, which he clearly
| doesn't want to do. Her title might as well be VP of Sales
| given the power dynamic he's communicating.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| > which means going back to pre-Elon content moderation
|
| Not necessarily, it depends how things get implemented.
|
| There isn't any reason Twitter couldn't build content
| classification tools that allowed advertisers to select
| which content to cluster and be targeted with and which
| content to exclude for perception reasons. The latter is
| easier than full moderation because it is much more
| tolerant of false positives.
|
| Or it could focus on distinct product, like whatever their
| new video content platform thing is going to be.
|
| Or maybe DM based ads.
|
| Or opening up the third party ecosystem again and doing
| more on the channel side.
|
| Or Musk has said a bunch of things about payment platforms
| that he wanted to do a paypal and wasn't able to implement
| but now has an opportunity to try. Similarly for things
| like identity/IAM products or other internet glue.
|
| Or they could pivot into other advertising platforms and
| manage spend and and automation across different social
| media properties in addition to Twitter's own.
|
| Lot's of different potential direction.
| dboreham wrote:
| "Golden parachute collector"
| lapcat wrote:
| For her sake, I hope the parachute is not in X/Twitter
| stock...
| asmor wrote:
| given the number of (far) right figureheads she follows[1],
| appealing to advertisers that care about these kinds of
| optics doesn't seem to be part of the plan
|
| [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughMuskSpam/comments/13f45
| mw/com...
| mrguyorama wrote:
| That doesn't seem a useful metric, as surely that isn't
| an exhaustive list, and following someone on twitter is
| not a useful signal that you share their philosophy.
| Lot's of "hate" following on twitter.
| asmor wrote:
| As a future CEO of Twitter trying to get advertisers back
| on board, I'd sure as hell curate my follows. It's not
| like she's a random user.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| If "follow" would be replaced with "observe", I might
| observe some peoples activities.
|
| But actually following any of them? No thanks.
|
| Language is important and I think lots of it, like
| "facebook friends" was not choosen well.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| But I don't think advertisers GAF about her personal
| beliefs or philosophy, as long as their ads don't show up
| next to beheadings or nazis. She is already an
| advertising executive
| zassy wrote:
| Nah dude, the huge companies that use record profits to
| buy back stock instead of giving raises to their
| employees struggling to afford their cost of living and
| who routinely pull shit like laying off and rehiring
| people to new positions so they have a reason not to give
| them raises and closing down stores that even discuss the
| idea of unionizing would totally draw the line at
| advertising at a company that has a CEO that follows
| rightoids instead of leftists.
|
| If there's one thing that massive for profit corporations
| can't stand it's capitalism.
| Veserv wrote:
| Musk is not a engineer and has never been good at making
| things. What he is good at is marketing and raising
| ridiculous gobs of money which he plows into various
| companies. All credit for engineering successes at those
| companies is entirely because of the leadership of those
| companies, like Gwynne Shotwell, and despite Musk's
| interference which we have seen time and time again to be
| actively detrimental to engineering success.
|
| That is not to say that Musk's interference is "bad" from a
| company valuation standpoint as he clearly has a pretty good
| idea of what features he can effectively market to customers,
| it is just that those features are not markers of good
| engineering or actively detract from good engineering. For
| instance, selling FSD to the general public despite it not
| working is a criminal engineering decision, but it has done
| wonders for cash flow and their stock price.
| Dig1t wrote:
| >Musk is not a engineer and has never been good at making
| things
|
| There is ample proof that this is a patently false
| statement.
|
| Link with sources: https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/co
| mments/k1e0ta/eviden...
|
| My favorite from John Carmack: John Carmack (Twitter,
| Wikipedia) is a programmer, video game developer and
| engineer. He's the founder of Armadillo Aerospace and
| current CTO of Oculus VR. "Elon is definitely an engineer.
| He is deeply involved with technical decisions at spacex
| and Tesla. He doesn't write code or do CAD today, but he is
| perfectly capable of doing so."
|
| There are tons of pictures of Elon in the early days of
| SpaceX literally using CAD software to design rockets: http
| s://i.insider.com/63a0c11eb5600000185b5e8d?width=1300&fo...
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-history-biggest-
| momen...
|
| His title at the company is Founder and Chief Engineer, and
| there are tons of anecdotes from employees, as well as
| statements directly from Musk that major engineering
| decisions go directly through him.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" He doesn't write code or do CAD today, but he is
| perfectly capable of doing so."_
|
| Can't speak to what it takes to do CAD, but as a
| developer I know for a fact that being capable of writing
| code is a very low bar.
| Dig1t wrote:
| Yeah I'm not sure either TBH, I'm not a CAD person, just
| a programmer.
|
| I do think the picture painted of him tracks with what I
| know life is like as a senior engineer.
|
| Above L5 at Google, most engineers do not spend much time
| coding. Most time is spent approving CLs, mentoring,
| collaborating on design docs, and helping to make major
| engineering decisions.
|
| Same with other faangs. This tracks with Carmack's (and
| others') description of Musk's role.
| belter wrote:
| They said Steve Jobs was not a coder or hardware engineer
| but I just found undeniable proof. It was not Wozniak but
| instead, Steve Jobs that was doing the software
| development at Apple": - https://photos5.appleinsider.com
| /gallery/30494-50055-001-Job...
| Dig1t wrote:
| Well if you don't like that pic you can also read the
| other links, which themselves include sources.
| Veserv wrote:
| Elon Musk is a compulsive serial liar about his personal
| qualitys.
|
| In Paypal's S-1 filing with the SEC in 2002 [1] to go
| public Elon Musk is listed as a director of the board and
| is reported as having graduated from UPenn in 1995. Elon
| Musk received his degrees in 1997 [2]. I do not know
| about you, but I do not know any college graduate who can
| not tell me the exact year of their graduation after a
| little thinking even if they graduated decades ago, but
| in this case he could not even accurately recall what
| occurred 5 years ago and he reported that in a SEC filing
| of a company where he was on the board (and formerly
| CEO?). Sometimes people forget the year they graduated,
| but not in SEC filings reviewed by lawyers, that is 100%
| deliberate.
|
| Elon Musk viciously attacks his critics like when he
| viciously accused Vernon Unsworth, the cave diver, of
| being a pedophile, doubled down, and sent a investigator
| to harass him [3].
|
| Elon Musk actively cultivates a cult of personality and
| directs them to attack his critics [4] causing them to be
| fired or quit due to the harassment.
|
| He is also well known to impulsively fire employees that
| speak out against him. Also to harass employees who are
| being fired such as when he declared that the Iceland
| Person of the Year was faking his lifelong disability to
| get out of work [5].
|
| Elon Musk does not get the benefit of the doubt when
| discussing his personal qualitys and when looking for 3rd
| party support since he makes significant effort to
| actively shape the narrative.
|
| His personal statements are useless as support. Most of
| the people quoted were employees speaking on the record.
| You would be hard pressed in any company to find
| employees who would speak negatively on the record, let
| alone in a Elon company where he would fire, harass, and
| sue you if you did so. So, those are worthless. The rest
| of the people are then largely people who have not worked
| with Elon or are not experts in the field. And frankly,
| since Elon does not get the benefit of the doubt, the
| burden of proof is not on me to discredit their
| statements, but on the opposing perspective to provide
| proof that their statements are informed and credible.
|
| As to the photos, the first one is obviously staged. The
| photo of him looking at wreckage unrelated to
| demonstrating engineering competence. It is also likely
| staged. No other images presented are relevant.
|
| Labeling yourself as a Chief Engineer does not make you a
| engineer. In anything it lends support to the opposite
| because what actual engineer constantly broadcasts that
| at every possible opportunity so that everybody knows.
|
| [1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1103415/00009
| 1205702...
|
| [2] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/musk-physics-
| degree/
|
| [3]
| https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/08/elon-
| musk...
|
| [4] https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/10/28/cars/tesla-ntsb-
| cummings/...
|
| [5]
| https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2023/mar/07/elon-
| musk...
| peteradio wrote:
| Ya know I was doubtful of Elons engineering chops but
| that pic certainly seals the deal. Elon is in fact a
| rocket engineer and the proof is in the pudding. The
| pudding being that pic that is.
| Dig1t wrote:
| Well if you don't like that pic you can also read the
| other links, which themselves include sources. You could
| also read his biography, which details his early life,
| credentials, and daily work life, and includes sources. I
| included the picture as just another detail.
| RegularOpossum wrote:
| It might not even be raising money that he's good at but
| rather structuring business to optimize around government
| subsidies (ev credits, government space contracts).
| Veserv wrote:
| Nah, he is shockingly good at raising money. SpaceX has
| been losing billions of dollars per year and making it up
| by raising money to cover the shortfall. In the last year
| or so they raised $1.7B at a $137B valuation [1]. This is
| a company that is only estimated to make $4.6B in revenue
| [2] in a industry with a total addressable market (TAM)
| of ~$13.5B. SpaceX is being valued at ~30x revenue and
| ~10x the revenue of the entire industry, not earnings,
| revenue.
|
| Of course, this is all small potatoes compared to the
| immense amount of money Musk has raised for Tesla from
| consumers by falsely claiming they will have autonomous
| vehicles next year, every year, for 7+ years.
|
| These raises are distinct from any government support
| they may have received, though his ability to structure
| the companys to receive government support and the cash
| flow generated from those activitys may have been helpful
| in supporting the companys and the narratives they built
| to achieve the valuations and funding levels they got. It
| really just all leads back to him being amazing at
| getting his hands on huge gobs of money.
|
| [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2023/01/03/
| spacex-...
|
| [2] https://payloadspace.com/predicting-
| spacexs-2023-revenue/
|
| [3] https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-
| analysis/spac...
| RegularOpossum wrote:
| But the logical question is, could any of that been
| possible without the government subsidies he received? I
| think without that prior optimization for subsidies, he's
| not given the creditability or ever actual credit to do
| any of the other shenanigans.
| zassy wrote:
| Even if he couldn't, so what?
|
| EV subsidies were made as a way for the government to
| encourage consumers to buy electric cars and encourage
| car producers to make electric cars. It's not like they
| were made with the purpose of making Musk rich and
| literally any other car manufacturer or rich person
| wanting to make a car manufacture could have done the
| same. Should the US have never subsidized electric
| vehicles or should have all the car manufacturers have
| ignored the subsidies and continued to to completely
| ignore the EV market?
|
| Complaining that someone filled a market niche that the
| government very intentionally created just seems so weird
| to me.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > government space contracts
|
| Honestly, I would rather send my tax dollars to SpaceX,
| that over-delivered on it's promises than to other
| players, like ArianeEspace... [0]
|
| [0] https://www.space.com/europe-no-reusable-rocket-
| until-2030s
| jdiez17 wrote:
| I'm no Elon fan but as an aerospace engineer, I can at
| least vouch that he knows what he is talking about when it
| comes to rockets (wasn't the case when SpaceX started) and
| has steered his army of engineers in useful directions that
| weren't obvious to other people at the time (reusable
| rockets, Starlink, etc.)
|
| If you have watched Everyday Astronaut's tours of Starbase
| with Elon[0], where he explains in significant detail
| pretty much everything that is going on with the various
| prototypes, you'll know what I mean.
|
| He's not a guy with an MBA that has somehow lucked out by
| throwing gobs of cash at various Hard Engineering Problems
| (although there's that, too.) Of course the bulk of the
| work is done by "rank and file" engineers.
|
| [0] e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7MQb9Y4FAE and
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t705r8ICkRw
| bobsil1 wrote:
| >he knows what he is talking about when it comes to
| rockets
|
| At a surface level. If you ever drill down on his shallow
| tech understanding, he sputters, kicks you out or flees.
| jdiez17 wrote:
| No, at the level of knowing off hand the design
| considerations down to thermodynamics for practically
| every design decision that Tim asks about. In many cases
| to a much greater depth than I, an average engineer, know
| about these things.
| bobsil1 wrote:
| He can regurg briefings, look again at what he says in
| anything you're an expert in. E.g. software: he's a total
| fraud.
| dang wrote:
| Would you please stop posting like this? It's tedious,
| not what this site is for, and you've unfortunately been
| doing it repeatedly.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| p.s. I don't care whether it's boo or yay, we just don't
| want shallow flamewars on this site.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| You're replying to an aerospace engineer talking about
| aerospace engineering.
| tmn wrote:
| The amount of effort people take to try to convince
| themselves Elon is just a relatively average (or even
| moronic!) intellect who got successful via non virtuous
| means is absolutely impressive.
|
| To attempt to be civil, I will also state I find the hero
| worshiping of Elon to be similarly deranged.
| jdiez17 wrote:
| The stochastic parrot argument. It seems there's no
| evidence that will change your opinion.
|
| Also, have a look at recent unedited videos of Tesla's
| self driving. It's not everything that was promised and
| it's much later than promised, but it sure is impressive.
| However I agree it is being oversold and that's extremely
| scummy.
| agumonkey wrote:
| In my noob eyes, I think he just doesn't care much about
| software. He kinda have the same radical motto (delete,
| reduce, combine, forget the past, forget the mainstream..
| basically what he says around min 20 in the video above.
| which is not far from move fast and break things) and he
| got a lot of success before with that so he just barged
| in twitter applying this brainlessly.
| jpamata wrote:
| With rockets, he is deeply involved in the area and his
| proficiency have been confirmed by top engineers, a few
| quotes from them here:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/evi
| den...
|
| I'm not sure about Elon's proficiency with software, but
| based on his comments on twitter I'd lean on him being
| out of touch there. He does seem to be knowledgeable on
| the AI/DL side though, see Andrej Karpathy's comment:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33703617
| electrondood wrote:
| This comment is ridiculous. The guy understands every
| single facet of every process at his companies. If he
| "sputters," it's because that's how he normally speaks.
| arcticbull wrote:
| > This is actually a smart model given Musk's strengths have
| always been in building things and not in the day to day
| running of companies.
|
| Are they? The majority of his successes came from investment,
| not from building.
|
| [edit] I think his superpower may be wealth, like iron man.
| concordDance wrote:
| The baseless myth that Elon inherited millions still won't
| die it seems...
|
| (To cut to the chase there, Elon seems to have gotten
| around $90k from his father, of which $28k was a loan. You
| can check out Errol Musk's Sun interview and the wikipedia
| article for more info)
| arcticbull wrote:
| I didn't say anything about the emerald mine rumor that
| Elon himself is responsible for. It was his quote from a
| 2014 Forbes article no longer live on their site. [1]
|
| > Elon Musk: "... In South Africa, my father had a
| private plane we'd fly in incredibly dangerous weather
| and barely make it back. This is going to sound slightly
| crazy, but my father also had a share in an Emerald mine
| in Zambia."
|
| I was talking about how a lot of his success came from
| Tesla, where he wasn't a founder, but instead an early
| investor. He started calling himself a founder one day,
| and the actual founders sued him. They settled. [2]
|
| [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20140729222547/http://www
| .forbes...
|
| [2] https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/tesla-ceo-
| settles-for-...
| greenyoda wrote:
| > Having an ad exec run Twitter will take care of all the
| "how do we pay the bills" part of running the business while
| he does the "fun" stuff of focusing on product.
|
| And apparently, Twitter has millions of dollars in bills that
| it hasn't been paying. See this other interesting article,
| posted today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35918253
| megaman821 wrote:
| Not paying vendors and landlords as a negotiation tactic
| seems slimy. I assume they will eventually sue Twitter and
| win, but is there any punitive damages? If not, I am
| guessing Twitter will be rewarded for not paying by getting
| better terms on existing contracts.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I don't think it's uncommon. Big companies have always
| played dumb games with billing and contracting unless you
| can nail them to the wall with an ironclad "you pay us X
| on Y day or you pay us an extra Z per day" contract.
| failuser wrote:
| Big companies have a lot of leverage. Vendors don't want
| to antagonize them in hope of getting paid eventually and
| due to a risk of retaliation. Going to court might be a
| suicide by legal expenses.
| dboreham wrote:
| They would at least get interest. But yes there isn't
| much in the way of consequences for being an asshole
| regarding AP.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Large companies not paying their bills because they can get
| away with it is such bullshit. Trump famously did this with
| small business contractors at some of his casinos.
|
| The reason it's such bullshit is that it's essentially
| hostage taking: "Why yes, I know we owe you $10 million and
| that's what we agreed to, but we're just not going to pay.
| You can sue us, but we have top notch lawyers that can drag
| it out for a long time, or else you can settle with us for
| $7 million right now."
|
| I think there should be an equivalent of "small claims
| court" for cases like these where flat out missed payments
| are handled quickly and without the need for expensive
| lawyers, e.g. "Here's our contract, there is no
| disagreement that we delivered, so freeze their bank
| accounts if they don't pay us immediately."
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Even if you have top notch lawyers, what exactly can they
| do, when there is a clear rent contract and no payment?
| lazide wrote:
| For a random Joe Schmoe, retaliation via collections
| harassment, eviction, and credit score problems is a real
| worry.
|
| For a multibillion dollar company, especially one trying to
| STOP using things it's currently obligated to use, the math
| works out different.
|
| After all, being evicted actually helps them, as it breaks
| the lease and they don't need to keep paying.
|
| Especially when there is a huge commercial real estate
| crunch looming in many of these markets.
|
| Plenty of delay and hassle tackles can be used to get some
| leverage when the letter of the contract/law isn't in your
| favor.
|
| Scummy, but often effective.
| concordDance wrote:
| Tenporarily not paying vendors is pretty standard for cash
| strapped companies. (I've worked for some, we got away with
| a lot)
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| Shotwell is COO, Musk is CEO
| jonathankoren wrote:
| And she runs the show at SpaceX.
|
| Musk, CEO and "Chief Engineer", mainly just fucks things up
| like causing DOD investigations into his pot use (a
| disagreeable government contracting clause due to the War
| of Drugs), and now most famously overruling the real
| engineers and thus overseeing the destruction of the
| Starship launch pad, and promoting an FAA and environmental
| investigation.
|
| See also: Overruling Tesla engineers and ordering the
| removal of radars, directly leading to multiple preventable
| accidents.
|
| He's fuck up. Rich. But still a fuck up.
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1313952039869788173?s=2
| 0
|
| https://www.drive.com.au/news/elon-musk-overruled-tesla-
| engi...
| frellus wrote:
| Elon just wants to build things, have autonomy and also
| dictatorial control of the process. He doesn't care about how
| things are monitized (although in the case of Twitter, where he
| didn't build it from the start, he has to worry about it quite
| deeply).
|
| There is nothing more complicated in his decision here. Elon is
| a visionary and a builder. That's all his ventures.
| DoesntMatter22 wrote:
| I think he's always cared heavily about how they are
| monetized. Tesla is the most profitable (per car) large car
| company for a reason.
|
| But this girl knows all the advertisers and can bring people
| back that he cant
| davedx wrote:
| Woman
| DoesntMatter22 wrote:
| Girl - "a young or relatively young woman"
|
| She's relatively young. So girl
| afavour wrote:
| That doesn't work with Twitter, though. You can't just build
| stuff with total autonomy without worrying about how it'll
| make money when your company is in a deep, deep financial
| hole.
|
| Because of the way Elon bought the company it needs to make a
| shit-ton of money and fast. Elon can't just sidestep that
| responsibility by vacating the CEO role.
| awestroke wrote:
| AFAIK they are not doing too bad financially any more.
| They've cut a lot of costs and almost all advertisers are
| back
| dog321 wrote:
| Ad revenue is down 40% from $5B in 2021 to a projected
| $3B in 2023. For reference, most other social media ad
| companies have had flat or slightly negative (~2%)
| revenue growth.
|
| https://www.marketingbrew.com/stories/2023/04/12/twitter-
| s-a...
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/271337/twitters-
| advertis....
|
| https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/snap-q4-2022-earnin
| gs-...
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Damn, if it wasn't for the debt he dragged the company
| into that could actually be manageable. There is a
| possible steady state for twitter to be more focused on
| right wing minded people who don't like being told
| unhappy truths or have their lies questioned, like
| tumbler has for dumb teens. It could very well just be
| smaller and continue on with that "niche" because it's a
| big niche. But that debt really puts some limits on
| future options.
| afavour wrote:
| I haven't seen any official statements to that effect.
| This is from a month ago:
|
| > Last November, General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM) was
| among the first companies to announce pausing Twitter
| ads. Among those that took a similar path were General
| Mills, Inc. (NYSE: GIS) and Volkswagen AG's Audi unit.
|
| > Brands such as Mondelez International Inc. (NASDAQ:
| MDLZ), Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE: KO), Merck & Co Inc. (NYSE:
| MRK), Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. (NYSE: HLT) and AT&T
| Inc. (NYSE: T) have also not returned to Twitter in terms
| of advertising as of February, Bloomberg noted.
|
| > Last month, Musk said that Twitter's revenue had fallen
| by 50% since October because of a decline in advertising.
|
| https://finance.yahoo.com/news/twitters-revenue-drops-
| advert...
|
| Don't forget that the company also has to pay $1.5bn a
| year to service the debt Musk used to buy it.
| gyudin wrote:
| He announced that he was looking for a CEO straight after
| acquisition. Twitter hasn't been profitable for 11 years
| straight from 2006 to 2017 and even after that it revenue
| was relatively low. Atm company is financially break even,
| so I wouldn't panic much. It's kinda funny that some US
| advertisers left the platform after some rednecks were
| unbanned, yet they were totally okay with things before
| when Taliban and other state terrorist organizations were
| literally using it as an official PR platform (with huge
| success btw, if you read the articles of that time). Or the
| fact that Twitter has been flooded with porn made by
| teenagers. But that's typical corporate America))
| neuronexmachina wrote:
| > Atm company is financially break even, so I wouldn't
| panic much.
|
| Do you have a source for this? All I can find is an
| interview remark from Musk about the company "roughly
| breaking even," without any actual numbers cited.
| cma wrote:
| He said profitable then clarified to cash-flow positive
| in the BBC interview, so likely losing money after
| servicing the debt he strapped them with.
| libraryatnight wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| Hey, obviously you can't post like this on HN regardless of
| how sad someone is or you feel they are. We have to ban
| accounts that do, and unfortunately you have a history of
| doing it.
|
| I don't want to ban you! so if you'd please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick
| to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
| belter wrote:
| What is the vision for Twitter?
| bfors wrote:
| WeChat
| creaghpatr wrote:
| Haven't seen that theory before, very interesting and
| makes sense.
| drstewart wrote:
| It's not really even a theory, he flat out says it:
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1657050349608501249
|
| >Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this
| platform into X, the everything app.
| sixQuarks wrote:
| I'm not surprised, if you don't follow Elon closely and
| only read the nonstop clickbait headlines, you will be
| severely misinformed. Elon has been talking about the
| "everything app" forever. Elon has had the idea going
| back to the X.com days, that's what he wanted to do with
| Paypal.
|
| Another thing you may not know: Twitter will soon be
| competing with Youtube.
| morelisp wrote:
| > Twitter will soon be competing with Youtube.
|
| In the sense my walk through the park today "competed"
| with Kipchoge because we both propelled ourselves forward
| on legs, sure.
|
| Twitter video is _by far_ the least functional it 's ever
| been, and this is a relatively recent (past ~month)
| development.
| blisterpeanuts wrote:
| I'm pleased that speed control has appeared on many
| videos recently. I'm not sure if this is brand new, or
| restored, but anyway it makes videos a lot more useful to
| me at least.
| afavour wrote:
| Some more background here:
|
| https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/4/18/23687125/elon-
| musk-...
|
| It makes sense in terms of how I can imagine Elon's
| vision. It doesn't (to me) make sense as any kind of
| realistic proposition.
| colordrops wrote:
| He made some statements about making Twitter into the one
| place to do everything before he bought it, and it
| sounded a lot like WeChat. He might of even mentioned
| WeChat directly but I don't recall
| tofuahdude wrote:
| He's been broadcasting exactly this plan for several
| months ("X", The Everything App), which is what WeChat
| is.
| nailer wrote:
| This. The everything app that uses chat to push payments
| and other commerce.
| drcongo wrote:
| Gab
| braxvc wrote:
| A platform for everything, competitor to YouTube etc., but
| more centrist. I'm getting the impression that the whole
| placate-the-right "free-speech" thing was meant to get the
| people back from TruthSocial and get street cred.
|
| Now he'll move left again and cash in. Also of course there
| are considerations like Tesla subsidies and DoD contracts.
| But perhaps those institutions approved the above plan to
| restore centrist views.
| eecc wrote:
| Meh, the plan is to turn Twitter into an American TikTok.
| Great pivot given the timing, but he first had to destroy
| the "liberal stronghold" image it had acquired. It's
| cynical af, but yeah... also the milquetoast Jack was
| appeasement all the way down
| asmor wrote:
| How is YouTube not centrist?
|
| Their entire platform is geared to be maximum advertiser
| friendly, aka the status quo.
|
| It really isn't like YouTube doesn't discriminate
| equally, I'd even say in some cases they do so more
| strongly towards certain groups that tend to be left wing
| (e.g. queer people immediately being demonitized when not
| shrouding words like "biosexual").
| brabel wrote:
| It seems to me the YT algorithm doesn't care about
| left/right.
|
| Sometimes I watch a rightwing video, and then all I get
| is more and more extreme rightwing videos suggested.
|
| Then I have to watch some leftwing video to get back to
| more balanced content :D... but there seems to be plenty
| of content on both sides, with suggestions leaning
| heavily on which side you watched the most.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Youtube algorithm only cares about "engagement". How long
| do you watch, do you stay on youtube and watch another
| video, do you click any of the buttons like subscribe, do
| you comment.
|
| Content that gets an extreme emotional reaction is
| strictly better at causing engagement, that's just like a
| basic sociological thing.
|
| The result is that youtube pretty much constantly tries
| to radicalize everyone. It doesn't care if you get
| radicalized left or right, it cares that you go into
| rabbit holes that make you angry or emotional and have a
| reaction. I watched youtube attempt to do this to me, as
| I watched a singular video by a more radical than average
| leftist youtuber, and youtube immediately started
| recommending me the classic "angry incel right wing"
| content that so many young men are deeply entrenched in,
| but I have never been recommended in my 15 year old
| youtube account. Depending on your beliefs or research
| I'm not aware of, right wing radicalization might be more
| effective, as "it's not your fault, we just have to hurt
| and remove certain people" is more palatable to certain
| people than "the system is fucked and we have to gut it
| and work hard to build it back". In that case, it would
| naturally push right wing radicalization over left wing
| radicalization.
|
| None of this has to be purposeful. However, willfully
| ignoring this outcome because it makes you a lot of money
| is actively evil in my opinion.
| astrange wrote:
| You're describing the YouTube algorithm from 2016 or so.
| It doesn't do that anymore because people yelled at them
| enough; that's why the comment sections are a nice
| experience now.
| asmor wrote:
| Left wing radicalization makes you depressed, right wing
| radicalization is congruent with fascism in the
| absoluteness of not just us versus them, but us _or_ an
| apocalyptic, demonic, absolute and all-encompassing evil
| them. My favorite Innuendo Studios essay is dealing with
| this concept.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Luu1Beb8ng
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What is the vision for Twitter?_
|
| An LBO. It's become clear Musk's employment cuts haven't
| brought Armageddon. He's now installing an advertising
| executive as CEO, which portends a return to the _status
| quo_ business model. This is a classic cut-the-fat
| corporate raid.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Classic cut-the-fat corporate raids don't start out with
| decimating your revenue stream and wrecking your brand.
| jkubicek wrote:
| > It's become clear Musk's employment cuts haven't
| brought Armageddon.
|
| Is it clear? I haven't really used Twitter since well
| before the acquisition, but I've heard nothing but
| complaints about bugs, ad revenue falling off a cliff and
| replies being nothing but right-wing reply guys.
|
| > This is a classic cut-the-fat corporate raid.
|
| If this were true, Elon would have cut the actual fat.
| Instead he (directly and indirectly) destroyed Twitter's
| relationship with advertisers, which was the only meat in
| the company. All that's left is fat.
| twic wrote:
| I use twitter basically non-stop. I haven't noticed
| anything like armageddon. I have noticed a few things
| going wrong, and i have noticed people who hate Musk
| crowing over every one of these as if it was the opening
| of the first seal.
|
| (i should perhaps disclose that i have a very low opinion
| of Musk, but don't hate him)
|
| At the moment it's hard to say whether the stream of
| small bugs (the one that annoys me is that the unread
| notifications indicator seems to be perenially out of
| sync) is just normal enshittification, or the foreshocks
| before The Big One.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| > Is it clear? I haven't really used Twitter since well
| before the acquisition, but I've heard nothing but
| complaints about bugs, ad revenue falling off a cliff and
| replies being nothing but right-wing reply guys.
|
| I think it's _pretty_ clear that there was a _lot_ of fat
| to cut. From a technical perspective Twitter hardly seems
| to be suffering at all.
|
| The biz move (to pivot to a right-leaning social network)
| is what scared off users and advertisers, not the layoffs
| per se. In a counterfactual world where Elon slashed
| staff but left the existing policies and target
| demographics in place, Twitter would've been a lot
| healthier.
| astrange wrote:
| > From a technical perspective Twitter hardly seems to be
| suffering at all.
|
| Posts and quotes fairly frequently don't load (though
| QRTs were never reliable) but more importantly they've
| stopped moderating everything, which is why searching for
| "cat" has returned animal abuse videos for the last week,
| and their solution was to turn off autocomplete of search
| terms.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _I 've heard nothing but complaints about bugs, ad
| revenue falling off a cliff and replies being nothing but
| right-wing reply guys_
|
| They're allegedly approaching cash-flow breakeven [1].
| Musk is notoriously unreliable with timelines, but he
| tends to be conservative with purely financial ones.
| That, assuming this is actual cash flow and not an
| unlevered metric like Ebitda, signals stability.
|
| I'm not calling it a success. But Twitter is operational.
| People complained but, largely, haven't left. The new
| product initiatives were busts, but quickly withdrawn
| when the data showed they didn't work. Stability is on
| the horizon; it's not Armageddon.
|
| > _Elon would have cut the actual fat. Instead he
| (directly and indirectly) destroyed Twitter 's
| relationship with advertisers_
|
| He did both. He's now trying to reverse on the latter.
| Given the financial stability, Yaccarino has a solid
| foundation from which to do so.
|
| [1]
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-07/musk-
| says...
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| Is an LBO possible with the huge debt Twitter now has?
| Elon is barely able to break even, even after firing most
| of the company, due to the interest payments. It seems
| like the LBO has already been done, by Elon, and that a
| second one on top of the first will be like squeezing
| water from a stone that someone already squeezed the
| little water out of.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _seems like the LBO has already been done, by Elon_
|
| This is what I meant. The vision is that of a classic LBO
| play. Cut the fat. Survive long enough to pay down the
| debt. Now you own a profitable company.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| Ah, gotcha.
| tonetheman wrote:
| right wing echo chamber
| asmor wrote:
| It feels like Twitter was always designed as an echo
| chamber with the occasional deliberate clash between
| different kinds of echo chambers. Flip-flopping well
| enough between outraged debate and friendly clout-chase
| space to keep engagement going.
|
| Musk is just steering it one particular way.
| frellus wrote:
| Free, non-government controlled or censored speech
| [deleted]
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Unless your speech happens to make Elon angry or get in
| his way.
| jkubicek wrote:
| or unless your speech happens to make actual governments
| angry
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/04/27
| /tw...
| InitialLastName wrote:
| > The majority of recent requests have come from foreign
| governments, such as India, Turkey, the United Arab
| Emirates and Germany, all of which have increased
| internet regulations in the past year, according to the
| report--none came from the U.S.
|
| Be careful, you might be undermining a narrative.
| nojonestownpls wrote:
| The US doesn't have to bother with formal requests of
| course.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Unfalsifiable assertions should probably be accompanied
| by evidence.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| Cool story, bro
| dang wrote:
| Please don't do this here, regardless of how bad another
| comment is or you feel it is.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| itsoktocry wrote:
| And a prominent WEF board member will agree with this?
| BryantD wrote:
| The one who follows Catturd, LibsofTikTok, Ron DeSantis,
| Tulsi Gabbard, and Bari Weiss? Yeah, I think she will.
|
| I am not normally a fan of the term "virtue signaling"
| but I think her involvement with WEF might just fit.
| braxvc wrote:
| She lists "Global Leader" in her LinkedIn biography and
| did a vaccine campaign for the Ad Council
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_Council#Criticism).
|
| It could be virtue signaling, but in theory following
| these people could be virtue signaling as well.
| BryantD wrote:
| One way or the other, yep.
| plagiarist wrote:
| No, that's not correct.
| afavour wrote:
| Genuinely amazes me that people still believe this after
| all we've seen since Elon's takeover.
| no1groyp wrote:
| [flagged]
| colpabar wrote:
| Idk it amazes me a lot more that people online think that
| they're so privy to the internal workings of _twitter_
| that they feel confident enough to proclaim that
| everything elon does is actually going to destroy the
| company. The vitriol in this thread is so absurd, you'd
| think elon killed puppies as a hobby or something.
| delecti wrote:
| I don't personally have any special insight into the
| internal workings of twitter, but we don't need to rely
| on anecdotes to know that Elon is objectively not
| delivering on "Free, non-government controlled or
| censored speech":
|
| > Twitter has fully complied with more than 80% of
| government and courts' requests to remove or alter
| content since Elon Musk bought the company, up from
| around 50% before he took over, according to a report
| from the technology publication Rest of World, reflecting
| a discordance with the billionaire's promises to limit
| political censorship.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/04/27
| /tw...
| astrange wrote:
| They're also now responding to takedown requests from
| places like India globally, where previously it'd only be
| in the country.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "you'd think elon killed puppies as a hobby or
| something."
|
| Well, "Hack jobs" with living, sentient beings is close
| enough for me:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/05/neural
| ink...
| afavour wrote:
| I don't think you need to be privy to the internal
| workings of Twitter, Elon's public actions make it very
| clear he's been extremely erratic up until this point.
| I'm not saying it's going to destroy the company but at
| the current moment it's very difficult to see his
| involvement as an overall positive.
| idontpost wrote:
| [dead]
| browningstreet wrote:
| He doesn't have policies. He has whims. Doesn't work for
| platforms.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > He doesn't have policies. He has whims
|
| Well, come on, that was true under Dorsey too, he was
| just criticized for it by the half of the people who are
| now praising Elon for it.
| astrange wrote:
| Jack just didn't do anything. He spent the whole time
| meditating under waterfalls, but that means he didn't
| mess with the platform and become the "main character".
| thenayr wrote:
| [dead]
| tootie wrote:
| Personally, I think he just wants attention. Twitter was
| already built when he showed up. So was Tesla.
| guyzero wrote:
| He just wants to design products without caring how they make
| money?
|
| That's how money-losing products get designed.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| In normal circles, this is known as "Being really bad at
| business"
| donmcronald wrote:
| > Elon is a visionary and a builder. That's all his ventures.
|
| I don't understand how people view him as a product person.
| How is he making the product (Twitter) better?
|
| Taking away an existing feature like verification and selling
| an objectively worse version back to people doesn't make the
| product better. Strengthening the silo effect by banning talk
| about competitors doesn't make the product better. Charging
| $50k / month for business verification doesn't make the
| product better, especially for businesses users.
|
| I thought Twitter might improve because I believed the
| rhetoric about Musk being a product person, but I don't
| believe that any more. All of his moves have been short
| sighted cash grabs.
|
| Is there a single thing about the (technical) product that's
| improved since Musk took over?
| tmn wrote:
| Maybe your confusion is because of the scope you're using.
| If someone says Elon is a product person or a visionary.
| The judgement was with high likelihood formed well before
| Musk's involvement with Twitter. As new information comes
| it will continue to inform that judgement.
| suddenclarity wrote:
| He also added a ton of features. Bookmarks, encrypted DMs,
| subscriptions, longform text, pushed the chronological
| feed, view count, improved video, added meetings, improved
| notes. I'm probably forgetting something but Twitter has
| definitely added more features under Musk than the previous
| 10 years.
| astrange wrote:
| Bookmarks was already there. Adding bookmark and view
| counts was a bad idea designed to cause people to fight
| more.
|
| Only use of long form text posts is so you know to block
| the person without reading them.
| pupperino wrote:
| Chronological feed was always a thing, I've used it for
| years. In fact, one of the first noticeable changes was
| that this config stopped being persistent. I had to
| manually switch to chronological for months and still get
| "For You" as the default. Community notes precedes Musk
| too. View count is not only unreliable (because counting
| things is hard) but of dubious value. What do you get
| from it? Longform text is literally what twitter is _not_
| about, and a major turn-off for so many people.
|
| Twitter as of 2020 was fantastic, and these features
| added essentially no value to it. On the other hand, the
| public API is now a mess, twitter circle tweets are being
| shown to people who were not supposed to see them, I get
| logged out of all my accounts at least once a week and
| most notifications have serious delays. I've been using
| twitter since the whale days back in 2010, and it feels
| like we lost a decade of SRE progress.
| suddenclarity wrote:
| > Chronological feed was always a thing
|
| Yes, that's why I wrote "pushed". Before Musk it was
| hidden behind a stars button. After Musk it became a huge
| button at the top of your feed.
|
| > Community notes precedes Musk too.
|
| Which is why I wrote "improved".
|
| > Longform text is literally what twitter is not about,
| and a major turn-off for so many people.
|
| People have circumvented that since the start with
| screenshots or 15 tweet long threads. It makes a lot of
| sense to offer the option that a lot of people have been
| asking for and using through different hacks.
|
| > I've been using twitter since the whale days back in
| 2010, and it feels like we lost a decade of SRE progress.
|
| I joined in 2008 and my experience is that the
| development has been nonexistent for 10+ years.
| Rebranding bookmarks into likes was probably the worst
| idea. The fact that it doesn't do video well despite
| being the #1 news source for breaking news surprises me
| the most.
| retornam wrote:
| Bookmarks launched in 2018
| https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/28/twitter-launches-
| bookmarks...
|
| Super Follows in 2021 https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topi
| cs/product/2021/introduci...
|
| Birdwatch (community notes) in 2021 https://blog.twitter.
| com/en_us/topics/product/2021/introduci...
|
| all launched before Musk took over.
| davidbarker wrote:
| I'm trying to find the source, but I read the other day
| (I think from a Twitter exec on Bluesky) that all of the
| features launched since Musk bought Twitter were being
| worked on long before Musk bought Twitter. Which is as
| you'd expect, at least for the majority. These things
| don't happen overnight, or even in the space of a few
| months.
|
| Also, bookmarks have been there for years. As have
| subscriptions, and Community Notes.
| nojonestownpls wrote:
| I believe Bookmarks existed before Elon, he just made it
| more visible in the UI (or approved the change, or
| however it happened).
|
| > pushed the chronological feed
|
| It's funny how many people who did not even know they
| weren't using a chronological feed before, are now
| cussing him out for showing a "For You" page - when he
| just made it much more visible and easier to switch to
| the "Following" feed.
| lph wrote:
| There are some people for whom Elon Musk could stroll into
| their house with a sledge hammer, smash through the walls,
| douse it with gasoline, and set it on fire---and they would
| still call him a visionary and a genius.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| He's not working on making Twitter better. He bought
| twitter because it had a ton of users and he can push his X
| vision to them for free without working to build his own
| network. This is why the spam account numbers were so
| important to him. Basically imagine everything WeChat does
| and put that functionality into twitter for western
| audiences.
| astrange wrote:
| He's annoyed about bots mainly because they replied to
| him a lot and he thinks his experience is universal.
| mcguire wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_cliff
| mjfl wrote:
| I think people who are angry with Twitter, really tend to
| overestimate how many people leave. Only 1/61 of my followers
| left twitter after Musk took over, and this includes a few
| outright leftist/communist types who stayed.
| syngrog66 wrote:
| good she comes from advertising. seemed like Musk wrecked that
| aspect of Twitter. lets see if she has enough power to impact it
| given Musk is still the de facto boss
| karaterobot wrote:
| People have been screaming for him to step down as CEO of Twitter
| for a long time, and he's doing it. It looks like the general
| reaction in this thread is that this is somehow _even more evil_
| than not stepping down. What makes this either a catastrophic
| mistake, or a malicious act?
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| If Elon Musk (or one of his companies) cured cancer tomorrow a
| significant part of the population would find a way to hate him
| for it.
| Larrikin wrote:
| The more realistic outcome would be that Elon promises a cure
| for cancer is coming next year and repeats saying that every
| year until all of his competitors have caught up.
| d23 wrote:
| And then he calls the people who call him out on it
| pedophiles.
| wilg wrote:
| Yes, because famously his competitors have caught up in
| rockets and electric cars.
| travisporter wrote:
| SpaceX is just an amazing anomaly in every sense of the
| word. Tesla is nowhere near that.
| wilg wrote:
| Point is they're ahead of the competitors on pretty much
| any metric you could point to.
| danaris wrote:
| ...or he finds someone who's just about to find one, buys
| the rights from them to say that it was him, and then
| charges $millions a head for the cure.
| shmatt wrote:
| I think they were expecting someone who has been a CEO before.
| My money was on Marissa Mayer personally
| noelsusman wrote:
| He doesn't seem to be stepping down from much of anything. It's
| an online social media company and he's still going to be in
| charge of product and technology, so what exactly is this new
| CEO going to be doing? This just looks like he hired a VP of
| Advertising and decided to call her a CEO for no reason. What
| kind of tech CEO doesn't control product and technology?
| prng2021 wrote:
| So if Twitter fails, she'll be the one to blame. If it succeeds,
| do you think she'll get the credit or will people assume it was
| all his doing?
| flavius29663 wrote:
| > So if Twitter fails, she'll be the one to blame
|
| not really, it's still his Twitter
| patrickmay wrote:
| I think it's a win-win for her. If Twitter pulls out of its
| nosedive, she'll be seen as a genius. If it splatters all over
| the ground, everyone will blame Musk and agree that she was put
| in an impossible position.
|
| I just hope she's getting paid upfront, given Twitter's current
| cashflow issues.
| nimbius wrote:
| call a spade a spade: this is a last-ditch effort coming about
| six months too late.
|
| In the seven months since Musk bought the company he
| singlehandedly fired nearly every employee, accidentally locked
| the remainder out of the headquarters, turned blue-check
| validation into a living nightmare for international brands, un-
| banned some of the most notorious and repugnant users from white
| nationalists to bigots and racists, mis-branded news outlets as
| state-sponsored, threatened to open a news agency to
| impersonation on his platform, cancelled most of the API, and
| tried to extort the very brands his platform depended on in a
| cash-for-validation scheme that backfired spectacularly.
|
| This is 44bn of musks backing investors finally waking up to the
| fact that the willy-wonka they trusted to shepherd a
| communications platform was in fact just a billionaire heir to an
| emerald mine on track to grift them out of their dosh for his own
| petty feud with 'the libs.' Frankly its astounding theyre
| permitting musk to continue to do _anything at all_ , albeit i
| suspect his new r&d role is about as authentic as his college
| credentials.
| FredPret wrote:
| You not agreeing with his choices != Twitter is doomed.
|
| I've noticed zero difference as a too-frequent daily user. In
| fact, Twitter seems more fun now. Plus, community notes are
| sorely needed. In addition to all that, I'm also seeing an
| uptick in activity on my business account.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Twitter isn't doomed. But rumors are that it is even more of
| a money pit than before, now that numerous advertisers have
| left the platform or reduced their spending.
|
| The hiring of a mass media ad-exec seems to support the
| validity of those rumors.
| BryantD wrote:
| Community notes existed way before Musk, FWIW.
| FredPret wrote:
| Never saw one until he took over
| mrguyorama wrote:
| You being unaware of history is not the same as that
| history not existing.
| jsheard wrote:
| It was in beta for a limited number of users exclusively
| in the US, but it certainly already existed before he
| took over. The feature was announced as "Birdwatch" at
| the beginning of 2021, Elons only contributions were
| renaming it to "Community Notes", and getting it out of
| beta if you're feeling generous, but that probably would
| have happened without him.
|
| https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/product/2021/introd
| uci...
| caconym_ wrote:
| > I've noticed zero difference as a too-frequent daily user.
|
| I assumed this was how it would go for me too, but after the
| change to elevate tweets and replies by blue check accounts I
| actually stopped using it because now, every time I look at
| it, it's just an orgy of the dullest and most ignorant and
| intellectually dishonest people in the world posting the
| worst crap I've ever seen. Last time I checked twitter.com
| the tweet at the top of my timeline was somebody
| "questioning" whether a recent mass shooter's multiple
| tattoos of nazi iconography could reasonably be interpreted
| to mean that he was in fact some flavor of neo-nazi. And so
| on and so forth.
|
| I don't follow any of these fucking people! and I don't want
| to see this shit. It's absolutely soul-draining.
|
| I'm sure there are plenty of people who'll say I'm using
| Twitter wrong, blah blah, whatever. I don't really care--all
| I know is I was enjoying using it in the way its UX
| encouraged me to use it and now it's horrible and I've
| stopped, probably for good. I do wonder how many others
| had/are having a similar experience.
| gisely wrote:
| So fun much scrolling past all the blue check morons at the
| top of all the replies to any popular post. No changes at
| all.
| amyamyamy2 wrote:
| I completely stopped using the app after his choice to
| elevate blue check replies instead of relevant ones. The app
| genuinely made me angry and it felt like my curation was
| pointless, especially since it would keep feeding me drivel
| from people I didn't follow
| FactKnower69 wrote:
| [flagged]
| zzleeper wrote:
| I used to be addicted to Twitter, checking it 10+ times a day
| at the very least. Now the content I get is awful, and I only
| end up there whenever I follow someone else's link :/
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| It's possible it changed. It's also possible you
| interpreted all the news about Twitter and your view of it
| changed.
|
| Regardless, welcome to the real world. It's not so bad
| sometimes. :)
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| I don't get why people complain about the content they get
| on Twitter. Curate carefully who you follow, only follow
| people who stick to a topic of interest and don't intermix
| pics of their dinner or other random BS.
|
| Then change the option at the top of your timeline from
| "For You" to "Following" to only see posts from people you
| follow. Voila, now you get decent content that's of
| interest to you.
|
| Using this is way makes it like an RSS feed.
| krisoft wrote:
| Except you know when the people I used to follow for
| interesting content abandoned the platform in all the
| turmoil.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| If there's no one on Twitter you find worth following,
| then of course don't use it anymore.
| zzleeper wrote:
| I follow a few folks writing on war in Ukraine, but since
| maybe Nov-Dec they all disappeared from page, and I have
| to go all the way to the bottom of the barrel to see
| anything tangentially related. Only after the algo was
| released I understood that was a decision by Elon, for
| whatever reason...
| octernion wrote:
| yeah except now when you do that (which I have), you get
| a list of boosted blue checks under every tweet that are
| just banal and dumb.
| TinkersW wrote:
| right click name-> mute
| TinkersW wrote:
| click name-> mute
| sputr wrote:
| I used to have a lot of fun reading Twitter while watching
| eurovision.
|
| It's way worse now. It may be less content. Or it's showing
| me less relevant content. Or it may be due to eurovision
| apperatly dropping hashtags from onscrean promotion.
|
| But the end result is, it's worse.
| stiltzkin wrote:
| Weird I have same relevant content.
| JyB wrote:
| I seriously cannot tell if this comment is supposed to be taken
| as sarcasm.
| tehjoker wrote:
| I agree with all this, except for the part where he accurately
| described US media as state sponsored. The US state works for
| US corporations and US corporations own the media. Also, NPR
| does get some public money.
| Lendal wrote:
| Less than 1% of NPR funding is from govt. Tesla and SpaceX
| get far more public money than NPR does. $7500 per vehicle
| subsidy. Lucrative NASA contracts.
| uxp100 wrote:
| Wikipedia says more like 11%, but it's pretty complex. NPR
| produces programs that local stations play, and pay for. So
| while you might hear someone say they're listening to NPR,
| they're listening to a "member station," that is paying
| NPR. They might get some money from federal grants, some
| from the corporation for public broadcasting, which is
| federally funded, some from member stations who get some
| federal grants. So I'm not sure if all the info you'd need
| to figure it out completely is public. I assume corporate
| sponsorship beats out federal funds by quite a bit though.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| SpaceX is a subsidy to the government now saving NASA
| hundreds of millions on launches.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Citation needed. Several sources at the air force are
| saying that launches are more expensive from SpaceX than
| other providers.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| https://medium.com/geekculture/spacex-vs-nasa-
| cost-4fae45482...
|
| I would be interested in what cost/kg other providers are
| referencing.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Delta and Soyuz rockets. NASA flights are horrendously
| expensive in comparison.
| hersko wrote:
| I imagine the only people saying that are those
| benefiting from the ULA contracts.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Care to elaborate on how mid-level air force officers are
| "benefitting" from ULA contracts? A rocket is a rocket,
| buyers should be fairly vendor-agnostic.
| tehjoker wrote:
| You're forgetting the corporate funding and that their
| editorial line parrots the state department.
|
| Also, SpaceX deployed Starlink to provide guidance to (US
| provided) Ukrainian weapons. Field commanders said without
| it they wouldn't be in the fight. That sounds aligned with
| US foreign policy and statecraft to me.
|
| They backpedaled after the use of the technology became so
| aggressive it would be reputationally damaging for
| starlink.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64579267
| [deleted]
| vkou wrote:
| Considering that amplifying alt-right populism was half the
| point of buying Twitter, you shouldn't list that as a con of
| his tenure.
| 0xDEF wrote:
| The @CommunityNotes feature is genius but it's too slow on
| disinfo related to the Russia/Ukraine war and it doesn't work
| against people like AOC and Tucker Carlson who have big
| extremely loyal fanbases that mark notes as "not needed".
| samstave wrote:
| Where exactly did that $44 billion go? With the tax incentives
| Twitter had from SF, and the massive layoffs... There was a
| fuck-ton of money that went _somplace_... to where?
| kaynelynn wrote:
| To the previous shareholders of Twitter to compensate them
| for the shares.
| samstave wrote:
| So what audience did this equate to WRT Musk with the top
| "shareholders"?
| compiler-guy wrote:
| The shareholders.
|
| Anyone who had stock in Twitter got a big pile of cash.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| To all the former owners of Twitter. Twitter never controlled
| it.
| zdp7 wrote:
| The 44B was to buy ownership of Twitter. It went to the
| shareholders.
| samstave wrote:
| So what audience did this equate to WRT Musk with the top
| "shareholders"?
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > cancelled most of the API, and tried to extort the very
| brands his platform depended on in a cash-for-validation scheme
| that backfired spectacularly.
|
| Rumor has it they lacked the manpower to actually keep the API
| running and it was a last-ditch attempt at getting rid of bots.
| Same bots who flocked to the platform after the layoffs started
| since people in charge of mitigating these were fired.
|
| Firing abuse and content moderation teams meant there was a lot
| more unsavory spam on the platform and advertisers didn't want
| any of it near their brand. In a few week Twitter lost half of
| it's top 100 biggest advertisers [0] and it doesn't seem they
| are coming back.
|
| What's crazy to think about is that, despite being "bloated"
| Twitter managed to have profitable quarters pre-acquisition.
|
| [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-lost-half-top-
| advert...
| stronglikedan wrote:
| And it's a better than ever experience for the average Twitter
| user such as myself, so a win-win all around!
| theturtletalks wrote:
| Pay-to-play is better now?
| GaggiX wrote:
| I believe that I represent the average user, and in my
| opinion, Twitter has become worse than before, especially
| regarding the comments section. It appears that comments are
| no longer sorted by relevance, but rather by whether the user
| has paid for Twitter or not.
| erk__ wrote:
| How has your experience on Twitter gotten better over the
| last half year?
|
| And are you sure that you are "The average Twitter user"
| since I am not even sure what that really means.
| hersko wrote:
| Community notes is a big part of it.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Personally, my experience remains almost entirely
| unchanged, so I've never really understood what the whole
| "Twitter is dead" stuff was about.
|
| I am salty about the Twitter API though
| mrguyorama wrote:
| My use of twitter has been made worse. There's always a
| popup nag now to "create an account" where I never had
| one before
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| So Twitter is now like...everyone else? Instagram,
| Facebook and even Reddit (on mobile) don't let you see
| their content without a login prompt either. Yet there
| are no 100 articles about Reddit dying.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| and you cant search without having an account or being
| logged in.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| That was there way before Elon. If anything the login
| spam has been reduced.
| 10xDev wrote:
| As someone who uses mostly to keep up with the progress of
| AI, the recommended tweets are actually good for a change.
| distrill wrote:
| people who like elon musk feel better using musk's twitter,
| so their experience is probably objectively better since he
| took over.
|
| people who dislike elon musk feel worse using musk's
| twitter, so their experience is probably objectively worse
| since he took over.
|
| i really don't think it's much more deep than that.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| Every popular political thread on there is now a blue-check
| right-wing echo chamber. I guess if that's your personal
| political bubble it feels great, but I don't think that's the
| "average" user.
| dandellion wrote:
| How can we tell if that's not the average user and they are
| in a bubble, or that is the average user and it's us in a
| bubble?
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| Right, that's the propaganda game, to make normies think
| that these right wing trolls are the average opinion.
| RoyGBivCap wrote:
| Right, that's the propaganda game, to make normies think
| that these left wing trolls are the average opinion.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| Are you a bot?
| [deleted]
| prepend wrote:
| If this stops every political threads then I'm all for it.
| It's weird to me how people were so into it and I had a few
| friends who became tough to talk to because it was always
| trying to convey some esoteric (to me) twitter screaming
| match.
|
| This doesn't seem like a loss to me as I feel that kind of
| stuff isn't only boring to me but kind of worse to have
| people so angry about politics. So this seems like a
| positive development to me if it's now clearly just a
| right-wing echo chamber that people can now ignore.
|
| I'm not a heavy user and haven't noticed any changes
| really, but I never interacted with blue check mark people
| and always thought it was kind of a lame feature. And is
| still lame that people can pay for it.
| stainablesteel wrote:
| what's crystal clear to me is that your specific echo bubble
| (we all have one), advertises constant negative press about
| him. it doesn't make it real, twitter is booming and people
| love him more than ever
|
| i hope you someday find the happiness to stop micro-observing
| everything about what elon is doing in his day to day life
| dahwolf wrote:
| Exactly. The list of talking points are a Mastodon meme.
| Catastrophizing everything into fascism.
| matwood wrote:
| > twitter is booming and people love him more than ever
|
| Booming with cat and dog torture videos?
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/cat-dog-torture-
| video...
| citizenkeen wrote:
| > In the seven months since Musk bought the company he
| singlehandedly fired nearly every employee, accidentally
| locked the remainder out of the headquarters, turned blue-
| check validation into a living nightmare for international
| brands, un-banned some of the most notorious and repugnant
| users from white nationalists to bigots and racists, mis-
| branded news outlets as state-sponsored, threatened to open a
| news agency to impersonation on his platform, cancelled most
| of the API, and tried to extort the very brands his platform
| depended on in a cash-for-validation scheme that backfired
| spectacularly.
|
| Which one of those claims wasn't real?
| stainablesteel wrote:
| what isn't real is the disaster you're trying to paint, its
| the framing
|
| elon's a great guy who does amazing work, and twitter is
| booming, making more money than ever even
| concordDance wrote:
| "Singlehandedly fired nearly every employee" <- false for
| normal uses of "nearly every", going from 8000 to 1500 but
| a ton will be voluntary leavers
|
| "turned blue-check validation into a living nightmare for
| international brands" <- brands now have yellow checks
|
| "mis-branded news outlets as state-sponsored" <- all the
| ones with that label that I'm aware of have state funding
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| Yet, twitter has been going along just fine, despite all the
| negative press, nay sayers and nonsense you have been talking
| about.
|
| Not to say Musk has been a little careless with his
| communication through all of this, but still, people want to
| sit in front of there computer and think they know better.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Musk has some good ideas among the bad ones, I'm kind of happy
| with the developments. It was fun to watch removing pieces of
| the company and infrastructure, it was fun to see him expose
| himself as Free-speech NIMBY. It was fun to see how much people
| are willing to pay for status. All the risks about the fascists
| and media manipulations? Well, all those had been realised
| already, Twitter was horrible place. It kind of improved
| actually.
|
| If everything goes south, It's on the Musk and company's tab
| anyway. So, en expensive drama to watch on some rich people's
| dime.
| concordDance wrote:
| That's an amazing gish gallop you have there. Every single
| entry being misleading, wrong or lacking important context.
| saberience wrote:
| The "Elon had it easy because he had a fortune from emerald
| mining" is total bollocks. He was certainly not "rich" when he
| came to US and was in university here, and when he badly needed
| money at the beginning of Tesla and SpaceX there was certainly
| no secret backup of "Emerald Mine" money.
|
| I'm not sure where this rubbish conspiracy came from but if
| there was Emerald Mine money there wasn't much of it. You may
| not like to hear it, but Elon's big start came from the success
| of X and Paypal which then bankrolled the beginnings of SpaceX
| and Tesla, it wasn't from a rich daddy.
| la64710 wrote:
| It does not matter if Musk had an emerald mine or not. For
| sure he turned a diamond mine (Twitter) to a shit pool. Do
| you trust him to be the CEO of your company? Ask yourself. I
| personally want a level headed guy.
| throw93 wrote:
| Because he said it himself? Why else would anyone come up
| with such specific source of income? Source: https://web.arch
| ive.org/web/20140413112637/https://www.askme...
|
| His dad invested $200k at 10% at a later stage. I'm pretty
| sure it qualifies as rich daddy. Source:
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1211064937004589056
|
| Btw Musk had little to do with the success of X. The revenue
| of PayPal was merely $61 million at the time Musk was fired
| as CEO of X.com(later PayPal).
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| There's an unimaginable gulf between buying books paying
| tuition to college (especially back when that was
| affordable), and an investment in a business that's the
| equivalent of about $350k today.
|
| Elon was never going to have to eat rice and beans, or go
| work in a cubicle for a big corp to pay the bills if any of
| his ventures failed.
| concordDance wrote:
| > His dad invested $200k at 10% at a later stage
|
| You're reading that wrong. Elon is claiming his dad
| invested 10% OF a $200k round of seed funding. The actual
| amount was $28k. (See wiki:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip2 )
| throw93 wrote:
| I was being more charitable to Elon by trusting what he
| said himself. I know the $28k number. Almost 40% of the
| households with college age kids earn less than 70k
| before taxes. How many would be able to afford to give a
| $28k loan to their kids?
|
| Source -
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/782411/parental-
| income-o...
| concordDance wrote:
| You weren't being charitable to Elon, you just either
| misread what was in the tweet or mistyped and claimed his
| dad invested $200k.
|
| Median household income is $70k, so I'd expect you'd need
| to be upper middle class or quite good with money to loan
| $28k to your kids. I certainly won't argue that the Musks
| were poor, but there's a very big difference between
| "able to help their kids through college and loan $28k"
| and "silver spoon trust fund kids".
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Elon's big start came from the success of X and Paypal
|
| To which Elon contributed, AFAICT, money (both directly and
| in his ability to scare up capital), not management.
|
| He was forced out as CEO of X when they had no product
| success, X bought the company that owned PayPal and briefly
| brought him back as CEO then forced him out against six
| months later, after which X renamed itself after its one
| successful product, which it had acquired.
| zamalek wrote:
| > if there was Emerald Mine money there wasn't much of it.
|
| You don't go to an American University as anything but a very
| rich African, or as a sponsorship. Source: I am a born
| African. I sure hope it was emerald money, else his father
| has some explaining to do to SARS.
| concordDance wrote:
| University was much cheaper back then and he apparently got
| a student loan somehow.
| afavour wrote:
| You're correct that Musk isn't a "billionaire heir to an
| emerald mine" but his own father has said the emerald mine
| was real and that it helped pay Musk's living expenses at
| college:
|
| > Errol went as far as to say that emerald money paid for his
| son's move to the US, where Elon would go on to attend the
| University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Business School on
| scholarship -- with, apparently, emerald-generated cash in
| his pocket for living expenses.
|
| https://futurism.com/elon-musk-dad-emerald-mine
|
| > when he badly needed money at the beginning of Tesla and
| SpaceX there was certainly no secret backup of "Emerald Mine"
| money
|
| That's not personal wealth, that's company investment. Just
| because you (or your family) doesn't have spare money kicking
| around to _finance a space rocket company_ doesn 't mean that
| you're not personally rich and able to pay for things
| "regular" folks cannot and have connections they don't.
| rayiner wrote:
| It's incredibly disingenuous to suggest that the people who
| are invoking Musk's emerald mine are actually complaining
| about the "cash in his pocket for living expenses."
|
| Musk's parents helping with living expenses is actually
| _the norm_ in America. Parents pay over 50% of the costs of
| tuition, room and board for American students: https://www.
| bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-23/universit...
| aurelius83 wrote:
| So the big question I think is who to trust here.
|
| Here is his mother denying it:
| https://twitter.com/mayemusk/status/1654983542336520192
|
| Here is Elon's story:
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1654971702571331584
|
| Here's a video of Elon back in the day on CNN talking about
| sleeping on the floor and buying his first expensive car
| with the money he was making from x.com and Justine Musk
| saying she fears they will become spoiled brats:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9mczdODqzo
|
| So who to believe?
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| toronto had widespread rent control since 1975 without
| means testing so what this really means is that they
| rented in toronto. wow, we are just beginning to peel
| back the layers on this!
| Jeanbu wrote:
| I think that people get too visceral on this topic.
|
| Elon has obviously managed to create incredibly
| successful businesses. And he is also from an upper class
| background, which makes things easier, but hey, doesn't
| mean he isn't talented and that he worked really hard to
| get where he is.
|
| Another thing that also seems pretty obvious is that he
| wants to hide his privileged background. Here is an
| archived interview from Forbes where he openly talks
| about his father's private plane and the emerald mine:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20140802011449/http://www.for
| bes...
|
| I wouldn't call that lower middle class, not even upper
| middle.
| jackmott42 wrote:
| Believe elon's mother. Elon and his dad are nuts
| belter wrote:
| Here is his father confirming it:
|
| "Errol Musk Claims He Visited Emerald Mine With Son Elon"
| - https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/after-elon-musks-
| strong-deni....
|
| "Elon Musk's dad Errol says he can 'prove' existence of
| emerald mine in new bombshell claim revealing its
| location" - https://www.the-sun.com/news/7911051/elon-
| musks-dad-errol-em...
| concordDance wrote:
| Go to the original source not the misleading futurism
| article that got made from it: https://www.the-
| sun.com/news/7911051/elon-musks-dad-errol-em...
|
| This says that Errol claims he managed to give his two sons
| about $115k in total. Which makes sense given he got his
| Emerald mine share for less than that.
|
| There's also literally zero evidence that Errol had any
| useful connections here.
|
| It really irritates me how many myths float around because
| people cannot be bothered to go find the original
| sources...
| rayiner wrote:
| My dad worked in the non-profit world making federal
| senior executive salary, and my mom made over $100k/year
| as a retail salesperson in a furniture store. My parents
| managed to pay about $300k in college tuition between me
| and my brother.
|
| I'd never claim to be anything other than upper middle
| class (even though my dad grew up in a village in
| Bangladesh and his elementary school had no walls). But
| at the same time, if I became a billionaire it would be
| extremely disingenuous to imply that it was the result of
| family wealth. This level of family wealth is mundane in
| top American schools. The journalists whining about Musk
| almost certainly had similar support from their parents.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| If you look at inflation calculator 115K in 1997 is worth
| 290K today. I don't know a single parent that would or
| could hand over that amount of cash in 97 or today. It's
| wealthly regardless of how you slice it.
| concordDance wrote:
| It's definitely closer to "doctor married a lawyer"
| levels of money than "single mother barista" levels of
| money, but "wealthy" normally implies enough money to
| live comfortably without working, not upper middle class.
|
| For context, a doctor and lawyer family in a state
| capital will earn $2-3m per decade, which is MUCH more
| than any reasonable estimates of the Musk family's wealth
| or income.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I don't get why people argue like this. It's so obviously
| disingenuous. Owning a share of an emerald mine doesn't
| make your family super rich and it's obviously,
| demonstrably, not where Musk's wealth comes from.
|
| Musk's wealth is well documented. It comes from founding
| and selling a series of companies - not an emerald mine.
| Repeating the emerald mine meme is just a way to declare
| yourself a dishonest participant in the conversation - or
| perhaps you genuinely think you can fool people with
| obvious lies?
| jjeaff wrote:
| The apparent existence of the emerald mine does put some
| shade on musk's purely "self-made" story. Even though, in
| reality, no one is truly, completely self made. But Musk
| has fully denied the existence of an emerald mine. But
| now his father confirmed it. So I don't think we can
| trust Musk's account here and I'm not sure we can trust
| his father's. So I think it remains to be seen how much
| family money supported Elon while he became "self-made".
| concordDance wrote:
| The evidence we have is his father claiming to have
| helped his sons out to the tune of $115k and said father
| becoming essentially bankrupt in the 90s.
|
| The Emerald mine denial was shady and dishonest, Elon
| probably thinking he can get away with it as "technically
| correct" because there was no actual mine that anyone can
| point to, just paying locals for any emeralds they have
| found lying around.
|
| Elon seems about as self made as you can get in the USA,
| with the approximate amount of support you'd expect from
| an upper middle class family (helping pay for college and
| a small $28k business loan).
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Where does Musk claim to be purely self-made?
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| The first company, Zip2, was started with $28k of his
| dad's money.
|
| If he hadn't been given that, he might not have been in a
| position to sell Zip2 for a massive profit during the
| dotcom boom. That sale is what made Elon personally very
| wealthy.
|
| Where did the $28k come from? How much money did Elon's
| dad provide for his living expenses, international moves,
| etc while going through college and the Zip2 startup?
| Where did that money come from?
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Musk's father invested 20-30k in Zip2 out of a 200k angel
| investment. That doesn't seem like a huge deal to me. For
| context, Musk dropped out of a grad program at Stanford
| to pursue Zip2. How many Stanford graduate students could
| raise 30k from their parents for a business venture?
|
| As for where the money came from, I believe Musk's father
| owned an engineering business. Or maybe it was profits
| from a share in an emerald mine - what does that matter
| though?
| concordDance wrote:
| The $28 was a small portion of a second round of funding
| (and was a loan). Not really a make or break amount.
|
| > How much money did Elon's dad provide for his living
| expenses, international moves, etc while going through
| college and the Zip2 startup?
|
| The Sun Errol interview answers that. About half of $115k
| (as he had to split it with his brother).
| oluwie wrote:
| I don't get why people argue like this. It's so obviously
| disingenuous. Owning a share of an emerald mine makes
| your means your family is somewhat rich maybe not filthy
| rich but rich enough to own a share of an emerald mine,
| which trust me, isn't cheap.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Mining companies are on stock exchanges, you can buy
| shares in them and their mines for dollars each, or even
| cents each, depending on the company.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| You have no idea how large a share it is or how large a
| mine it is. You simply discredit yourself and your
| arguments by assuming things without evidence. The
| description of the mine I'm aware of comes from Erol Musk
| where he says he traded a used plane that he had bought
| for 50k for 120k plus a share of a mine. Musk describes
| the mine as "a deposit in the middle of nowhere rather
| than a modern mine" [1].
|
| So, he has an unknown share of a mine of dubious value.
| "Trust me, that isn't cheap." I think you've done a very
| good job of explaining why people shouldn't trust you,
| because, unbothered by a lack of knowledge you are happy
| to leap to conclusions.
|
| 1 - https://www.the-sun.com/news/8014711/elon-musk-dad-
| errol-cha...
| mistermann wrote:
| > I don't get why people argue like this. It's so
| obviously disingenuous. Owning a share of an emerald mine
| doesn't make your family super rich and it's obviously,
| demonstrably, not where Musk's wealth comes from.
|
| Interestingly, the intelligence level of the observer
| very often seems to have no effect. It's a very
| interesting phenomenon, I simply can't understand why
| humanity essentially ignores it.
| waboremo wrote:
| Errol claims they sold two emeralds randomly for ~$1000,
| which was then listed for a 10x markup, certainly a far
| cry from the "low quality emeralds" Elon stated. So we
| already see three things here: access to your
| investment's goods, a nonchalance about emerald access,
| and Elon attempting to downplay.
|
| According to Federal Reserve, only ~15% of American
| families directly hold _any_ stock. We 're not even
| talking about direct investments to a private company
| here and the % is already low. There seems to be an
| inability to determine direct relationship from Errol to
| mine owner (to justify a very low investment at an early
| stage), so using logic, Errol passed some figure needed
| to gain any access. Likely not as high as people assume,
| but also not the nothing you've been attempting to brand
| it as in this thread.
|
| The reason I'm calling out your lack of integrity is
| because you're attempting to shift discussion away from
| Elon's inability to be honest as the focus is on his
| upbringing, and instead trying to make this about his
| current forms of wealth. The latter of which, is not what
| people are discussing. Certainly you understand how
| peculiar this is correct? Defending someone by shifting
| focus to another topic and calling those you disagree
| with disingenuous while you do the same is a very good
| indication this is no longer rational for you, it's
| purely emotional.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| You've already established your brazen disregard for the
| truth and ideological motivations - you don't need to
| keep demonstrating them.
|
| That someone might've marked up a couple emeralds Musk
| may have sold once (I believe the story is disputed)
| doesn't prove the quality of emeralds at the mine. Your
| point about Americans holding any stock is equally
| bizarre. "Directly" does a lot of work there, indirectly,
| it's closer to two thirds of American adults, so I'm not
| even sure what point you _think_ you 're making. Nobody,
| including Elon, disputes that his parents were relatively
| wealthy, so even if the 15% figure you're citing weren't
| misleading it would be irrelevant.
|
| Your general pattern of argument here is to tell obvious
| lies and then, when confronted, to spin off on pointless
| digressions. Musk came from a relatively wealthy family -
| that was never disputed by anyone, Elon included, and
| it's obviously not the source of his present-day wealth.
| What I would like to return to is my original question of
| why you would do this? I mean, you understand this is
| totally transparent, right? I get why your politics or
| ideology might compel you to slander people you dislike,
| but why wouldn't you try to do a good job of it?
| deelowe wrote:
| Am I rich because I've funded a 529 plan for my kids? This
| story is way overblown.
| samstave wrote:
| I funded a 529 plan with $40,000 19 years ago. It lost
| money.
|
| 529s are a fucking scam.
| steelframe wrote:
| In 2004 VTI was about $55. It's now $200. On a 19-year
| time frame a broad market index fund like VTI is the only
| thing you ought to have been invested in.
|
| Perhaps the scam is when banks let people choose their
| own investments rather than have it be fully managed.
| samstave wrote:
| The thing was that it was invested by family, in banks
| that failed, and failed and failed... being collapsed and
| bought/bailed out through the rape...
|
| And so the account ended up continually ending up in the
| hands of even seedier banksters....
|
| I didnt discover this until after my grandmother passed,
| and I was able to trace it back through various funds -
| and they just raped the account...
| Gobd wrote:
| I don't know what 529 you guys invested in but Utah's 529
| which anyone can use whether or not they live in Utah
| allows you to invest in regular old Vanguard funds like
| VSTSX. They also offer target dates funds that handle
| gradually shifting to a more conservative allocation as
| enrollment date nears if that's what you want.
|
| I agree that not all 529s are good, only 2 plans received
| a gold rating from Morningstar in 2022: Utah & Michigan.
| I wouldn't choose anything other than those.
| nradov wrote:
| Bullshit. 529 plans are great for tax avoidance. If you
| picked the wrong plan, or the wrong investments within
| that plan, then that's on you. Try a reputable, low-cost
| plan from a company like Vanguard.
| deelowe wrote:
| I'm starting to feel the same, honestly. Do you know if
| it was just your plan or is there something where I can
| find more info showing how these are not smart
| investments?
| samstave wrote:
| They are not smart investments because you have no
| control over where the money is pointed in the plan.
|
| So if you call your advisor, and say "i want my 529 to
| only focus on X" they tell you that you have no control
| over the index and the plan will be the most conservative
| 50-year-old actuary data which has no fucking clue where
| the market is heading and then berate you for when their
| 529 index loses value...
|
| I was ready to pay that investment banker's family a
| personal visit with skills that I have accumulated over a
| number of decades.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| This is not true in most states. My 529 is just a normal
| investment account like my ira.
| pjscott wrote:
| Any investment that includes stock can go down in value.
| That doesn't make it a scam.
| phailhaus wrote:
| Crazy, what did you invest it in?
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| How? The market has generally risen since then
| ar_lan wrote:
| What did you invest in? If you just did S&P 500 it would
| have gone up pretty significantly.
| mateo411 wrote:
| Well, 529s are a good way to avoid capital gains taxes on
| investments dedicated for education. In your case, they
| wanted to be extra sure that you would avoid capital
| gains taxes, so they lost money.
| taeric wrote:
| I'm more than a little curious on this one. How did you
| lose money in a 529? Are you saying you lost opportunity
| cost of having put that money somewhere else?
| jandrese wrote:
| I was always confused because it seemed like his dad
| bought a handful of shares in a mining company and people
| think this means he owns it? Like if I went and bought 10
| shares of Apple suddenly Tim Cook is answering to me?
| Elon seems to have had a nice upper-middle class/lower
| end rich childhood, but from what I've been able to
| discover he's not some trust fund baby. He wasn't the
| money guy at Paypal I don't think, but he did manage to
| turn his Paypal money into successful car and rocket
| companies.
| afavour wrote:
| This thread is a good example of how silly the debate has
| gotten.
|
| "You're trying to tell me Musk's family is rich? He
| couldn't even pay for SpaceX himself, how could he be
| rich?!"
|
| "I've put away some cash for my child to go to college,
| are you saying I'm as rich as Elon Musk?!"
|
| It's all just so ridiculous. A lot of people here seem
| convinced that there are only two arguments to be made:
| that Musk is a spoiled trust fund baby that deserves no
| credit for everything, or that Musk was a hard-scrabble
| self-starter that did everything on his own. Maybe, _just
| maybe_ the truth is somewhere in the middle?
| mistermann wrote:
| > It's all just so ridiculous.
|
| And yet so fascinating, and ubiquitous.
|
| Human consciousness is a hell of a drug.
| expensive_news wrote:
| I think the point is the only evidence that you provided
| for the argument that "Musk got his wealth from his
| family's emerald mine" is that his parents paid for his
| college expenses. And that is, in my and many others
| minds, is a pathetically weak argument.
|
| Full disclosure - my parents paid for a lot of my college
| expenses. At least half of the people who go to Ivy
| leagues have parents that will pay for their college
| expenses. It's almost entirely, if not completely
| irrelevant to his work at PayPal, the founding of SpaceX,
| and the building of Tesla.
|
| So it's baffling (to me, at least) that it keeps getting
| brought up as a reason to hate Elon Musk. It feels that
| people want to find reasons to deeply hate this person,
| and they through anything they possibly can against him,
| nonsensical or not.
| afavour wrote:
| > I think the point is the only evidence that you
| provided for the argument that "Musk got his wealth from
| his family's emerald mine"
|
| But at no point was I making that argument. The OP
| suggested (as Musk has many times) that the mine
| literally didn't exist. I was simply pointing out that
| according to his father it very much did exist and paid
| for Elon's college.
| jonas21 wrote:
| You're suggesting that Elon Musk has family wealth
| because his father funded his living expenses in college.
|
| @deelowe points out that they're also saving to fund
| their child's expenses in college.
|
| Therefore, you're either suggesting that @deelowe has
| family wealth or you're arguing in bad faith.
| afavour wrote:
| I'm not arguing in bad faith. I'm making specific points
| that, for reasons unknown, @deelowe and yourself are
| making a wider inference from.
|
| The post I replied to said:
|
| > I'm not sure where this rubbish conspiracy came from
| but if there was Emerald Mine money there wasn't much of
| it.
|
| My reply clarified that there was indeed an emerald mine
| (according to Musk's father) and that it paid for his
| college living expenses. I then went on to say that an
| inability to pay for SpaceX does not mean you are "not
| rich".
|
| > you're either suggesting that @deelowe has family
| wealth or you're arguing in bad faith.
|
| But that's silly too. With no numbers attached "family
| wealth" doesn't mean anything. Almost all families have
| "family wealth", if anything the bad faith argument here
| is trying to suggest that all wealth is somehow equal.
|
| You'll note in my original reply I didn't even say that
| Elon's family was inordinately wealthy, just that the
| mine was real and that it paid for his college. Any "bad
| faith" on top of that is your own interpretation, not my
| words.
| 55555 wrote:
| IIRC the claim is that Musk's dad's share was worth 50
| grand USD when he bought it. There are individual
| emeralds worth that much. It likely wasn't much of a mine
| if it did exist. A tiny artisanal mine.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| You might be rich if you funded the 529 plan with
| proceeds from your emerald mine. Outside of that
| scenario, your kids' 529 plan doesn't really have
| anything to do with this.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| " _Regarding the so-called "emerald mine", there is no
| objective evidence whatsoever that this mine ever
| existed. He told me that he owned a share in a mine in
| Zambia, and I believed him for a while, but nobody has
| ever seen the mine, nor are there any records of its
| existence._ " - Elon Musk,
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1654971702571331584
|
| " _I will pay a million Dogecoin for proof of this mine's
| existence!_ " -
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1646272562488569857
| bawolff wrote:
| How much money you have makes you rich or not rich, not
| where it came from.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| Yes, that was my point.
|
| Someone with an ownership stake in a mine that produces
| material with a variety of industrial and commercial uses
| is not necessarily rich. But that person is in a
| relatively tiny group compared to the group containing
| all parents who are able to contribute to their
| children's educational expenses. And the "owns <part of>
| a mine" group's average net worth is probably a fair bit
| higher than that of the "can contribute to the kid's
| college" group.
|
| Hence, if you own an emerald mine, you might be rich.
| bawolff wrote:
| And if you own a failed emerald mine you might be poor.
| If you own an emerald mine that just barely broke even
| (admittedly that is a bit unlikely), you might end up
| middle class in the end. Of course you can also end up
| being obscenely wealthy from such a venture.
|
| I don't think anyone is suggesting elon musk rose from
| being a homeless person to a billionaire. I guess this
| internet dispute is whether he made his own money, or
| inherieted it (e.g. like trump). Whether or not his
| parents owned an emerald mine doesn't really shed much
| light on that debate. Its entirely possible they were
| moderately wealthy but the emerald mine wasn't super
| lucrative and musk still made money mostly by means of
| his own combination of skill and luck.
| syngrog66 wrote:
| my parents helped pay some of my college expenses, and they
| didnt have an emerald mine
|
| this is extremely common for young adults
| akavi wrote:
| "Heir to an emerald mine" is intended to paint a very
| specific picture, and "some occasional spending cash from a
| handshake claim to a chunk of namibian rock outcropping (if
| we believe a man who doesn't exactly present as super
| trustworthy)" is definitely not it.
|
| I'm no fan of Musk, but I'm even less a fan of being
| intentionally misleading.
| afavour wrote:
| Which is why my comment literally started with:
|
| > You're correct that Musk isn't a "billionaire heir to
| an emerald mine"
| coliveira wrote:
| Elon received a lot of money from his Father during his
| college years, and the very reason why he was in college in
| America is that he was bankrolled by a South African
| entrepreneur. Without this father he would be nowhere close
| to where he is.
| concordDance wrote:
| Note to readers: the claimed amount he received from his
| father is $115k split between him and his brother.
| danenania wrote:
| Can't you say the same about anyone who grows up upper
| middle class or above in the US? Paying for kids' college
| is pretty standard. Many middle class families do it too.
|
| There's plenty to criticize Elon about, but this one's a
| bit of a reach.
| jeffwask wrote:
| > I'm not sure where this rubbish conspiracy came from
|
| Umm... his father.
|
| https://futurism.com/elon-musk-dad-emerald-mine
| FireBeyond wrote:
| And Elon himself:
|
| https://twitter.com/parismarx/status/1611861409733967872?la
| n...
|
| > This is going to sound slightly crazy, but my father had
| a share in an Emerald mine in Zambia.
|
| The call is coming from inside the house, Elmo.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Shhhh you're supposed to ignore all the things Elon has
| said in the past that directly contradict things he says
| now.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Simply prove it and get $93,000 -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35920193
| FireBeyond wrote:
| What's hilarious is that okay, even if his dad made it
| up...
|
| Elon has -also- said that he and his family would stuff
| their pockets with money and stones that wouldn't fit in
| the safe from overflowing.
|
| What next? "I only said I did it, but I never actually
| saw myself doing it?"
|
| At some point there is a recognition that (at least) one
| of two things is accurate: 1) that a mine exists, or 2)
| that Elon is a serial liar.
|
| Also, "get a million dogecoin"... is that before or after
| he hires a PI to go into your background for a little
| light character assassination for making him look
| foolish?
| james-redwood wrote:
| I'm a former Rhodesian (present day Zimbabwe) who moved to
| South Africa after things went south in Zim. For context, I'm
| white, so it's not like I have a racial gripe against Musk.
| Elon went to one of the fanciest private schools in the
| country's capital and lived in one of its richest suburbs.
| Yes, technically Boys High is a public school, but people
| from outside South Africa don't know what the Model C school
| policy was. His father was extraordinarily wealthy and if you
| do read interviews by both Elon and Errol, they both admit
| this. His mother was an international supermodel and his
| family was generally pretty well connected in the greater
| scheme of things. The entire story about him struggling
| during college (where he went to an Ivy League university
| paid for by his father) is complete bullshit. I don't dispute
| his ingenuity in starting Zip2 (funded by his father too by
| the way), but he wasn't starting from the bottom with no help
| - that's the grossly inaccurate part that Elon still pushes
| for optics and people who are too stupid or unaware of how SA
| works lap it up.
| ep103 wrote:
| > Elon's big start came from the success of X and Paypal
|
| Funny you mention this as why he was self-made, where by all
| accounts he was considered an awful coder in this Paypal
| position, and was only able to be in the country (illegally)
| at the time, or secure this job, was because of his family's
| money and connections.
| concordDance wrote:
| I'd love to hear what people who talk about these family
| connections actually think they were and where they got
| this idea from.
|
| I've heard it claimed hundreds of times but with no clear
| idea what these connections were, how they came about or
| what they were used for. Or even any evidence whatsoever
| that they existed...
| colpabar wrote:
| can you post a link to one of the "all accounts" you're
| referring to?
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| I wouldn't say _awful_ but it 's clear that he and Max
| Levchin did not see eye to eye, at least judging from
| Levchin's interview in Founders At Work. Musk pushed for
| them to move from Unix to Windows and Levchin disagreed
| with that move.
| belter wrote:
| Max Levchinin in Founders At Work pag 7:
|
| "...Peter took some time off. The guy who ran X.com
| became the CEO, and I remained the CTO. He was really
| into Windows, and I was really into Unix. So there was
| this bad blood for a while between the engineering teams.
| He was convinced that Windows was where it's at and that
| we have to switch to Windows, but the platform that we
| used was, I thought, built really well and I wanted to
| keep it. I wanted to stay on Unix..."
|
| "...I had this intern that I hired before the merger, and
| we thought, "We built all these cool Unix projects, but
| it's kind of pointless now because they are going to
| scrap the platform. We might as well do something else."
| So he and I decided we were going to find ourselves fun
| projects. We did one kind of mean project where we built
| a load tester package that would beat up on the Windows
| prototype (the next version was going to be in Windows).
| We built a load tester that would test against the Unix
| platform and the new Windows one and show in beautiful
| graphs that the Windows version had 1 percent of the
| scalability of the Unix one. "Do you really want to do
| that?"...
|
| ...It was me acting out, but it was kind of a low time
| for me because I was not happy with the way we were
| going..."
|
| "...At the time, already I had hated the guy's guts for
| forcing me to do Windows, and then, in the end, I was
| like, "You gotta go, man." My whole argument to him was,
| "We can't switch to Windows now. This fraud thing is most
| important to the company. You can't allow any additional
| changes. It's one of these things where you want to
| change one big thing at a time, and the fraud is a pretty
| big thing. So introducing a new platform or doing
| anything major--you just don't want to do it right now."
| That was sort of the trigger for a fairly substantial
| conflict that resulted in him leaving and Peter coming
| back and me taking over fraud...."
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > Musk pushed for them to move from Unix to Windows and
| Levchin disagreed with that move.
|
| Because Musk's push came from no objective reason beyond
| he "didn't know it". The Board said "you're the CEO, you
| don't need to know all the technologies".
| prepend wrote:
| > considered an awful coder in this Paypal position
|
| This is an odd criticism as he was the CEO of PayPal. Why
| would it be important if he was an awful coder or not?
|
| I'm not a proponent of Musk but this seems like odd shade
| to throw on him.
| sulam wrote:
| He was CEO of X.com for less than a year and was fired by
| the board. Then they merged with the predecessor to
| PayPal, which was more successful. He become CEO of the
| merged company, but was again fired for poor technical
| decision making (among other things, he insisted that the
| company build on the Windows stack instead of Linux)
| before the company rebranded itself as PayPal.
|
| So, technically he was never the CEO of "PayPal", just
| the company that became PayPal, and he got himself fired
| by the boards of both the companies that turned into
| PayPal. He retained 11% ownership of PayPal and ended up
| making a decent amount of money from the EBay
| acquisition.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > This is an odd criticism as he was the CEO of PayPal.
|
| He was an awful CEO of X (which is why he was forced out
| as CEO _twice_ , and was never CEO of PayPal), too, which
| may be more to the point, and the successful product X
| named itself for after forcing himself out the second
| time was acquired (and was the occasion of his brief
| return) after Musk's visions had failed.
|
| > Why would it be important if he was an awful coder or
| not?
|
| It probably wouldn't, if he didn't spend his time as CEO
| trying to do some other job instead. It's not _always_
| bad if your CEO is doing some other role as well as being
| CEO, but its a doubly bad thing if they are doing some
| other role _and they are a poor choice for the other
| job_.
| scottiebarnes wrote:
| lol, where did you learn your Elon Musk history?
|
| He started X.com which was an online payments company.
| Later, X.com and Confinity Inc, would merge and rename
| themselves Paypal.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Except even that also implies that Elon had some say in
| PayPal, when in reality, Confinity had already developed
| what would become PayPal, including filing trademarks and
| such, at the merger.
|
| Musk's tenure in the newly merged company consisted of
| complaining incessently that he didn't like/know Solaris
| and Java so the working POC/prototype should be thrown
| away and rebuilt in Windows/ASP, for four months until
| the board had enough and terminated him as CEO.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >he didn't like/know Solaris and Java so the working
| POC/prototype should be thrown away and rebuilt in
| Windows/ASP, for four months until the board had enough
| and terminated him as CEO.
|
| Goddamn the man hasn't changed one iota in twenty years.
| throw310822 wrote:
| The funny thing about it is that, even if the emerald mine
| had been real, it would explain maybe 1/10000 of Musk's
| wealth. If those who talk about the "emerald mine" had
| managed to multiply the wealth of their family by 10000 they
| would consider it an incredible success.
| runesofdoom wrote:
| It's a lot easier to gamble with your future when failure
| means a comfortable life of freedom, than when it means
| poverty and destitution.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It's also significantly easier to turn $100k into
| infinite money in the dot com boom
| fakedang wrote:
| Time value of money is a thing, you know?
|
| Back in those days, emerald mines were literally the
| equivalent of present-day tech IPO money. And if you read
| his biography by Ashlee Vance, you'll find out how the
| family would take vacations and travel to places by private
| plane.
| warent wrote:
| This is certainly the image he would love people to have: a
| humble immigrant from the poor South Africa, hustling his way
| into the American dream.
|
| The reality is that he is from a wealthy, well-connected,
| post-apartheid white family. They funded his coming to
| Canada, the US, University, and getting first business off
| the ground. The reality is that he has had a silver spoon his
| entire life.
| eecc wrote:
| Yeah, and you had an authoctonous whose family bankrolled
| him all the way up to the White House and all you got was
| the Second Gulf War! And daddy's boy even managed to drive
| into the ground all the businesses that he laid out for him
| to manage. Musk's track record is at least better than that
| JVillella wrote:
| Who cares?
| afavour wrote:
| Musk certainly does.
| JVillella wrote:
| Let me be more specific: why do the people speaking out
| about his "fortunate" past care so much? As long as it
| didn't come from something unethical, why does it matter
| to you?
|
| I don't want read between the lines, but it's hard not to
| think it's a way for people to feel better about their
| own accomplishments by saying someone else had a massive
| head start.
|
| Whether others do or don't, we should all be trying our
| best, be grateful for what we have, and proud of where we
| came from.
| warent wrote:
| There are at least two big points for people to care
| about.
|
| The money _did_ come from something unethical--his family
| was enriched by segregation; racism; apartheid. That
| emerald money is dirty and is likely a key reason why
| Elon would deny its existence.
|
| This brings us to the second thing: Elon lying about
| this. He has demonstrated that he is willing to lie about
| something this significant, which should do real damage
| to his credibility and trustworthiness if we are being
| logical and objective. What else is he willing to lie
| about?
| 55555 wrote:
| Is there any business one could have owned in southern
| Africa as a white person during that period that you
| wouldn't rule as tainted and unethical?
| zassy wrote:
| Nope, they also conviently leave out that Errol was an
| anti-apartheid member of a city council and actively
| tried to abloish Apartheid. If Errol is to be believed,
| his role in the history of Apartheid is probably the most
| commendable thing about him.
| concordDance wrote:
| The Emerald mine money (whatever small amount it was,
| likely under $70k given that seems to be the value of the
| plane he traded for the share) came from Zimbabwe. Its
| cleaner that Errol's propery money.
|
| And Elon was misleading and disingenuous but could still
| make a case that he hasn't explicitly lied on these
| things.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > As long as it didn't come from something unethical
|
| Ahhh, those historic pillars of morals and ethics, sub-
| Saharan Africa precious stone mines...
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| People will a silver spoon their entire life usually don't
| end up well. It's why wealth typically leaves a family
| after only three generations.
| quickndirty2 wrote:
| [flagged]
| skeaker wrote:
| Not to defend him, but having your parents pay for your
| education is hardly a rare circumstance. It's not the case
| for everyone, sure, but it is for plenty of ordinary
| people. I don't understand why Musk is supposed to be
| outstanding in this regard.
| xracy wrote:
| I think the way to take this comment is "He didn't pull
| himself up by his own bootstraps. And people need to stop
| pretending like any of his history means that he did."
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Two thirds of Americans don't have a college degree. The
| most common professions in the country are clerk,
| cashier, food prep worker and truck driver. If your
| parents were able to pay for your university education
| you probably grew up at the upper end of the upper middle
| class, which is already a very lucky position to be in.
|
| Ordinary people make about 35k per year, half make less.
| They're not paying for an expensive college education.
| berkes wrote:
| Maybe not rare in a very small bubble. That bubble of
| graduates, for example. But _certainly_ rare given the
| entire world population. And even rare, within a generic
| western, white, culture (hardly a fraction goes to
| university of those, let alone being paid for it by
| family).
| [deleted]
| warent wrote:
| Being born with privilege is not a choice, and so you are
| right people should not be shamed for that. The problem
| is something else. Details here
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35919637
| hodgesrm wrote:
| > Not to defend him, but having your parents pay for your
| education is hardly a rare circumstance.
|
| This. Parents have worked their tails off to build a
| better life for their kids for millenia. Calling it a
| form of privilege seems like a gross misunderstanding of
| human behavior.
| waboremo wrote:
| He's outstanding because he cannot be honest about the
| situation. Even his father contradicts Elon's claims.
| Elon claims he was in 100k debt during schooling, it's
| revealed he had scholarships and his father paid living
| expenses. It's revealed his father had involvement with
| emerald mines, going as far as to state they were
| regularly sold for upwards of $500 a piece, Elon then
| claims he doesn't remember anything except seeing a small
| jewelry box filled with "low quality emeralds".
|
| Do you sense the pattern? It would be as if Paris Hilton
| went around repeatedly saying she was dirt poor and used
| her galaxy sized brain to start her own business without
| any help. People would, obviously and quite reasonably,
| mock it for its absurdity. Yet when the same happens to
| Elon Musk, there are endless hysterical defenses ready.
| As if you are telling a child that Santa isn't real.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _but having your parents pay for your education is hardly
| a rare circumstance._
|
| Having your father pay for Wharton Business School isn't
| the same thing as having your father pay for the College
| of New Jersey.
| concordDance wrote:
| His father claims to have given $115k to his two sons,
| with the rest being them working and getting student
| loans.
| throw93 wrote:
| "having your parents pay for your education is hardly a
| rare circumstance" - What is your source for this? Why do
| you think the President wanted to forgive student loan if
| paying for education was not such a big problem?
|
| Median American household income is $70k before taxes. Do
| you think this household can afford college tuition and
| expenses?
| rayiner wrote:
| That's not the median income of households with college-
| aged kids. On average parents pay over half of tuition
| and living expenses for children: https://www.bloomberg.c
| om/news/articles/2021-07-23/universit...
|
| It's fair to say Elon's family wasn't poor. But the level
| of support he got wasn't any more than the typical
| journalist who is criticizing him.
| throw93 wrote:
| Taking a loan is not the same as able to afford it. 40%
| of the households with college aged kids earn less than
| 74k. https://www.statista.com/statistics/782411/parental-
| income-o...
|
| Also it's insane to compare Elon's family with a
| Journalist. Elon's father invested $200k for 10% in his
| first venture while half the journalist earn less than
| 50k. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/media-and-
| communication/reporters-co...
| rayiner wrote:
| And the median family income of a U Penn undergraduate is
| almost $200,000 annually. Heck at Georgia Tech, where I
| went, it's $130,000, and almost 1/4 of the students come
| from the top 5%. To put it another way--Musk's level of
| family support is hardly unusual compared to that of the
| thousands of engineers who work for him.
|
| Journalism at the national level is extremely
| competitive, and draws from a highly credentialed talent
| pool. The reason people with such credentials pursue such
| a low paying job is because their families are often
| quite affluent--they are often doctors, lawyers, etc.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Hah. Spoken with privilege.
|
| University is far more expensive today than back then,
| too. Ironically this supports your point in Elon's case,
| but today it's very much not a given that parents can
| even minimally help their kids get through college. My
| wife's couldn't.
| concordDance wrote:
| This is bullshit.
|
| There is no evidence his family was wealthy by American
| standards. Errol has claimed in the interview with the Sun
| to have helped his sons at uni to the tune of $115k and
| gave them a $28k loan (as part of a $200k round of seed
| funding) for their first business. The only sources on the
| emerald mine are the Musks, where the claim is they
| acquired a share of an informal mine by trading in a small
| plane they owned (likely a $70k Cessna). Errol Musk went
| bust in the 90s and there's no evidence of any other family
| wealth flowing to Elon.
|
| There is no evidence they had any useful connections to
| speak of and no evidence any family gave more than a
| fraction of his uni (half of $115k) and business ($28k)
| funding.
|
| People endlessly repeat random rumors they've heard which
| grow in the telling. People should go read the original
| sources wherever possible, such as the Sun article:
| https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/22104496/elon-musks-dad-
| errol-...
| khazhoux wrote:
| And even if he had been fabulously wealthy since childhood,
| it still wouldn't discredit his accomplishments. There's how
| many tens of thousands of mega-rich kids right now who won't
| do a single thing of note with their lives?
| wbharding wrote:
| Wow, a much more vitriolic first comment than I would expect
| from HN. The last six months has not lacked for Musk-hating
| enthusiasts howling "Twitter is dead." But when I look at
| Google Trends, its story is that interest in Twitter is almost
| identical to where it was 5 years ago. Doesn't seem so dead to
| me?
|
| Have Musks changes have been net positive or negative? No
| shortage of internet opinion on that Q. Regardless of one's
| personal feelings on it, it seems hard to dispute that Twitter
| moves faster than before. I consider that no small feat given
| how much legacy code and bureaucracy the company had at the
| time of his acquisition.
|
| If he can free more of his time by making this hire, I am
| looking forward to seeing whether that translates to even
| faster iteration times. pg and all the others I followed are
| still there, so still plenty of potential to create quality
| entertainment/learning w less regret than Facebook
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| _> This is 44bn of musks backing investors finally waking up to
| the fact that the willy-wonka they trusted to shepherd a
| communications platform was in fact just a billionaire heir to
| an emerald mine _
|
| In his investors' defense, Elon had a singular track record
| prior to Twitter. And his proposal to turn Twitter into X, aka
| US--based WeChat, was not a terrible one. It was an expensive
| investment, but there was a plausible positive outcome.
|
| His complete and total bungling of it all would have been
| difficult to predict in advance based only on what was known
| then. He is seemingly oblivious to the unintended consequences
| and second order effects of both his actual decisions, and
| their rash and heavy-handed manner. It's odd, and not
| surprising they forced a professional CEO on him.
| ericmay wrote:
| The thing is he really could have done it. But he went "rich
| person crazy" and lost it all instead. Really sad to see.
| Marc Andreessen said something like " Taylor Swift announces
| her concert on Twitter and then you go buy the tickets on
| Ticketmaster - why not buy them on Twitter?"
|
| 100%
| jackmott42 wrote:
| Only correction I would add here is the emerald mine is a red
| herring, if it existed at all Elon didn't get any significant
| money out of it.
| awill wrote:
| This is very well written and made me laugh. When you're
| objective about it, it's all accurate, and pretty shocking.
| What's shocking to me is that Elon could be so successful at
| Tesla, and fail so spectacularly at Twitter. Of course the
| skills are different, but the general skillset of being a COE
| and not making stupid business decisions should be universal.
|
| Also, he claimed Twitter was losing millions per day and that's
| why he had to fire everyone, when in reality, the millions per
| day in loses were interest on the loan he'd used to buy
| Twitter. So he created the problem, and then blamed that.
| Pretty shocking.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Has he really failed at Twitter?
|
| Twitter was pretty awfully run even before he bought it.
| Their business metrics were absolute crap for a business of
| their scale and in the pandemic environment.
|
| The jury is still out if new Twitter has failed or not.
| 542458 wrote:
| > Twitter was pretty awfully run even before he bought it.
|
| What metrics are you looking at? Pre-Musk Twitter didn't
| seem that badly run - it was profitable outside of a one-
| time court judgment.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Their margin was 1% during the pandemic in 2020.
|
| If your mature social media site that's been around for
| over a decade and has hundreds of millions of users has a
| 1% margin and effectively lost money in 2020, you're not
| a well-run organization.
|
| To give you an idea of their incompetence, when you
| create a Twitter Ads account, you're asked to choose your
| time zone. I'm in UTC+5:30. Except you can't choose half
| hour increments, so I was forced to choose UTC+5:00. All
| the data and reports had the time error.
|
| My time zone is home to over 1.4 billion people.
|
| If your billion dollar corporation that depends on ads
| can't even be bothered to fix the time zone selection for
| 1/6th of the world's population in its flagship product,
| its not a well-run business.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Before his purchase, twitter was a company that had hope of
| profitability as a regular occurrence, if they could adjust
| some spend on infrastructure and engineering.
|
| That's a lot harder to do with a giant debt crushing your
| soul, by a guy who can't really put any extra money into it
| to give it runway. All of the changes Elon has made to
| twitter have been desperate attempts to get some cash to
| stay alive, because the company is in a desperate position.
| At one point, they were down something like 50% in ad
| spend. Not many places can survive with new billions in
| debt and half the revenue. I don't know if he has been able
| to convince advertisers to come back, but they are fickle,
| stupid, and have no memory so surely that's a possibility,
| and this new CEO might be an attempt to convince
| advertisers his hands are off the wheel.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Isn't it in the news now or very very recently that Tesla
| isn't really run by Musk as much as people might think?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Reportedly the leadership of SpaceX manages him like he's a
| medieval boy king. They spend a lot of time figuring out
| how to get him to come to the right conclusions and making
| him feel like he's in charge. I would bet that Tesla does
| the same thing.
|
| Twitter didn't have this management layer, and we have now
| seen the result.
| a1pulley wrote:
| > Reportedly the leadership of SpaceX manages him like
| he's a medieval boy king
|
| A family friend who works closely with Elon at SpaceX
| puts it like, "you have to make him believe that your
| technical conclusions and recommendations are actually
| his to have any hope of traction." Otherwise, even if
| you're proven right years later when Elon's strategy
| fails, he will hold you to task for, "not convincing him
| hard enough."
| alexose wrote:
| I wonder if part of his "effectiveness" is that he seems so
| willing to burn everything down. As long as he preserves this
| image, he can maintain a level of control that other CEOs
| can't. Kind of the CEO version of the Madman Theory:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_theory
| dale_glass wrote:
| I think the answer is pretty obvious: the skills are wildly
| different, and Musk obviously didn't even understand what
| he's supposed to be doing at Twitter.
|
| Tesla is relatively simple: you've got to make cool cars.
| They have to work and people have to want to buy them.
|
| SpaceX is relatively simple: you've got to make rockets. They
| have to work, and be cheaper than the competition.
|
| With Twitter it seems he doesn't understand that there's
| nothing to build really. The software's already there.
| Twitter's main job is purely social, trying to please a whole
| bunch of governments and advertising agencies, as well as
| understanding why people post there and how to make them post
| more. There's no straightforward technical test to it, it's a
| delicate social balancing problem, and one awfully ill-suited
| to Musk's typical "move fast and break things" approach.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| >he singlehandedly fired nearly every employee, accidentally
| locked the remainder out of the headquarters
|
| And yet the site still works and engagement is up.
|
| >mis-branded news outlets as state-sponsored,
|
| BBC is state sponsored as long as they larp as an arm of the
| government with their fake "TV Licensing" arm with threats of
| government punishment for not paying. If they want to stop
| doing that then they can claim independence but while they use
| government powers and police to fund themselves through
| threats, they're state sponsored.
| syngrog66 wrote:
| most of what you said rang true. except the "wealth from
| emerald mine" attack. that appears to be a myth
|
| his big score was PayPal, and it seeded what followed. Tesla
| and SpaceX very early almost wrecked him financially
|
| we can criticize his Twitter shenanigans. but he's clearly a
| workaholic, highly effective, and helped put humanity in a
| better place (via SpaceX and Tesla, anyway
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I, for one, believe that Twitter is better now than it was
| before. But I'm a free speech proponent, and very not in favour
| of a previous approach of banning and muffling anyone who fell
| out of party line.
|
| I think the stance on this issue greatly influences how one
| perceives changes at twitter.
| lerchmo wrote:
| The emerald mine + hand wavy dismissal of his achievements is
| pretty wishful thinking. You can be totally repulsed by his
| behavior and trolling. But he has taken a few giant swings and
| hit them out of the park.
| sixQuarks wrote:
| You are severely misinformed. You just repeated all the BS
| talking points from the MSM. Stop reading clickbait and
| actually follow the guy closely if you want to know what's
| going on.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| [flagged]
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Look, found an Elon stan_
|
| Comment stronger without the name calling.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| [flagged]
| stiltzkin wrote:
| Using names like a redditor.
| mellosouls wrote:
| _LOL. Look, found an Elon stan._
|
| LOL. Look, found an NPC.
|
| Etc etc
|
| Not helpful or constructive.
| snarkyturtle wrote:
| Most of those aren't even allegations they happened in the
| open for everyone to see.
| swalsh wrote:
| have to agree, I love new Twitter. No complaints, it's
| working great for me. The content matching is just fine...
| and as a blue subscriber I seem to actually get interactions
| when I post, which makes me want to keep posting.
| matsemann wrote:
| I hate how blues are boosted to the top, since most of them
| are unhinged and derail all discussion.
|
| My solution is that on my tweets, I hide most blue
| comments. Pay me $8 if you want to be unhidden and seen,
| lol.
| fckgw wrote:
| It's literally a list of all the things he actually,
| factually did. Maybe you're the one who is misinformed?
| switchbak wrote:
| The editorializing going on there is miles away from being
| an objective summary.
| nwatson wrote:
| Elon should not walk into any Saudi embassies or consulates.
| Anywhere. Any time.
| rozal wrote:
| Tldr for above comment: I hate Elon so much
| colpabar wrote:
| > Just two more weeks and it's gonna collapse this time I
| swear!
| runesofdoom wrote:
| It's going to collapse when the lawsuits from the former
| employees (from the C-suite down to janitors) catch up, and
| when the fines from the FCC and EU hit.
|
| That could be 3 months or 18, but it's going to happen unless
| there's a complete about face at Twitter.
| nomel wrote:
| Which lawsuits, specifically?
| runesofdoom wrote:
| All the fired employees Musk didn't treat as he was
| obligated to. From the former CEO [1], to the rank and
| file [2], down to the contracted out janitors [3].
|
| 1.https://www.google.com/amp/s/fortune.com/2023/04/11/twi
| tter-...
|
| 2.https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/musks-
| twitt...
|
| 3.https://www.kqed.org/news/11935439/fired-twitter-
| janitors-de...
| Culonavirus wrote:
| Let's see:
|
| - $$$ from the blue (new thing)
|
| - $$$ from subscriptions (new thing)
|
| - $$$ from almost all advertisers returning
|
| - effective $$$ from cutting the workforce by a small stadium
| worth of people
|
| - ad revenue sharing in development
|
| - long form video in development
|
| - streaming video/podcasts in development
|
| - encrypted dms being tested
|
| And that's all there or coming in hot over the next few
| months. Pretty damn good for a company that apparently just
| barely operates if you listen to its detractors.
|
| Over a couple of years it will morph into #1 news and media
| site on the planet (it's not really a social network).
| jeromegv wrote:
| By all metrics the blue revenue are much smaller than the
| drop in advertising dollar they experienced.
|
| You live in an echo chamber if you think advertising has
| returned to the same level, it's been well reported through
| various sources.
|
| Anyway it's all private so we can only argue against
| imaginary number. If you think that Elon is getting rich
| from this 44 billion purchase, only time will tell.
| smcl wrote:
| Yeah whenever I visit twitter now the adverts are
| _really_ frequent, so maybe they just think "oh lots of
| ads, I guess the advertising revenue is normal". Like for
| every 5 normal tweets I see one "promoted" tweet, and
| about a third of the time it's some scammy product or
| service. I just went to twitter.com now and scrolled to
| check "normal tweets" (tweets or RTs from people I
| follow) and which were adverts:
|
| - 3 x normal tweets
|
| - advert (alza.cz)
|
| - 3 x normal tweets
|
| - advert (some scammy weight loss program called "mad
| muscles")
|
| - 4 x normal tweets
|
| - advert (t-mobile)
|
| - 4 x normal tweets
|
| - advert (some rubber feet product for washing machines
| so they don't jump around or fall over? is this a problem
| people have?)
| DoesntMatter22 wrote:
| You also live in an echo chamber. Twitter has put out
| more features in 6 months than in the previous 10 years.
|
| Reduced headcount drastically and it's still working very
| well.
|
| The biggest TV hosts are now moving to Twitter.
| colpabar wrote:
| We'll see. I honestly hope that happens just so I can read
| all the hate comments.
| 650REDHAIR wrote:
| The top replies to this tweet are batshit crazy and a great
| representation of why I nuked my Twitter account.
|
| Twitter was never my favorite web property and I checked out a
| long time ago, but I would come back to read long form tweets,
| developing stories, and the occasional rant. Now? Few people I
| look up to are using it and I feel like every time I look at a
| reply it's flooded with blue check marks spouting absolute
| nonsense or hate.
|
| Are normal people still using it?
| [deleted]
| whalesalad wrote:
| totally vibe with this. feels like a community of incels, elon
| fanboys and jan6 type individuals now.
| tenpies wrote:
| > The top replies to this tweet are batshit crazy and a great
| representation of why I nuked my Twitter account.
|
| Ironically, if you had not nuked your account you would
| probably see better replies. Twitter does after all, tailor
| which replies you see first to your account and followings.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| Elon tweets have always had terrible replies, I have no idea if
| they are better or worse than it used to be. Probably about the
| same.
|
| In general I think twitter is slightly better since the
| takeover. I'm sure that someone who follows and engages with
| different people could come to completely the opposite opinion.
| dmix wrote:
| Every major Twitter account has the lowest quality replies.
| Always has been.
|
| It's just like popular threads on /r/all on Reddit. Good luck
| finding something that's not cringey, blowing things out of
| proportion, or a bad joke.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| Yes. If you stay away from high follower accounts and
| block/ignore blue checks it's still ok. But you're right, those
| comments are awful.
|
| > "she"
|
| > Well there goes the neighborhood
|
| > Twitter was nice while it lasted. Women are always the ones
| who usher in radical leftism
| rch wrote:
| Blue check on the app: probably 70/30 negative, with _all_
| the negative comments focusing on Yaccarino 's official WEF
| involvement. Zero gender based or obviously biolus comments,
| even after going back to try to scroll down into the content
| you're describing.
|
| Incognito on the web: all negative, mostly WEF new world
| order scaremongering, anti-woke hand wringing, and outright
| offensive comments.
| tric wrote:
| Here's the nitter link:
|
| https://nitter.net/elonmusk/status/1657050349608501249
|
| A few days ago, Twitter started requiring cookies when not logged
| in.
| bryan0 wrote:
| I'm not a regular twitter user, but do people really get decent
| information from this platform? The comments to this tweet are a
| cesspool of anger and conspiracy theories.
| sixQuarks wrote:
| There's incredible content that is found on Twitter. It takes
| time to curate your feed though, but once curated, I would say
| it's definitely in the top 3 best sources of info on the
| internet.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Back when the Science Twitter was a thing:
|
| Start by following people who do interesting stuff. Avoid the
| ones who post every day, because it doesn't scale. Once you are
| following a few hundred accounts, the frequent posters will
| drown out everyone else and the signal-to-noise ratio will be
| terrible.
|
| Don't read the comments. Approximately 100% of them are
| garbage. Comments from the people you follow will appear in
| your feed anyway.
|
| If the people you follow frequently retweet stuff from someone,
| consider following them. But only if you find their posts
| interesting and they don't post too often.
|
| I guess this should still work, if the people you want to
| follow are still on Twitter.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| This has been my experience across a number of platforms
| _other_ than Twitter (I 've not used it in any significant
| fashion).
|
| On Mastodon (and previously on Google+), my _strong_ advice
| is to use lists, and to essentially treat those as _priority_
| rather than _topical_ classifications.
|
| Usually that ends up being three tranches, high, medium, and
| low interest, where the high-interest list is about 10--20
| _active_ profiles (with time there may be inactives which
| accrue, though my tier-I list remains about 40--50 profiles).
| The 2nd and 3rd tiers are less selective, generally if
| someone doesn 't seem to rate tier-I I'll bump them to II,
| and if they're getting too annoying there, to III.
|
| Mastodon has the option to limit boosts (retoots) and replies
| by profile, so toggle those if someone's a good primary
| source but is overly profligate in their amplification.
|
| More on lists generally:
| <https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/109305354126509106>
|
| I _rarely_ view either my own "Home" stream (all profiles I
| follow) or the local instance / global federated streams.
|
| Fuckwits get blocked:
| <https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/104371585950783019> It's
| _AMAZEBALLS_ how much s /n improves when n is explicitly
| filtered.
|
| On post/response type platforms (Google+, Diaspora* (yes,
| it's still around), _good hosts_ are key, and what you 're
| looking for is someone who posts interesting prompts _and_
| hauls out the trash in terms of low-quality comments. (HN 's
| moderation team does a generally excellent-job-at-scale of
| that here ... present thread notwithstanding.)
|
| Highly-voluable posters are almost _never_ worth following
| directly --- what they lack is a self-editor, and you 'll
| usually catch their interesting stuff through boosts or the
| equivalent. There's phenomenon I've noticed since the days of
| print newspapers where the highly-curated selected
| syndication of content gives a _tremendously_ distorted view
| of the representative quality of a publication: when you 're
| reading at the far end of a highly-selective filter, the crap
| and cruft has been cut and blocked. Prolific posters may
| achieve occasional hits and high notes, but the wheat::chaff
| ratio is often very, very low.
|
| Similarly, there are profiles which post rarely but almost
| always with high salience. In a strictly streams-based view,
| these tend to get lost.
|
| Another useful tool is directed search. Google+ actually had
| useful search at several points in its evolution (though it
| rather famously launched without any). HN's Algolia tool is a
| key value point to this site, and I mine both my own and
| others' content frequently, as well as search either articles
| or concepts as they appear or occur to me, with varying
| levels of success _but at least the possibility is there_.
| Occasional gems to appear. The Fediverse has taken a
| generally adversarial approach to comprehensive search
| (largely a futile effort as Alex Stamos has pointed out, and
| I strongly agree), though there are hashtags which can be
| searched, pinned, and /or followed, and some limited full-
| text search (your own toots, followers / local instance)
| which is quite useful. Platforms lacking effective search
| (Reddit, for comments, Diaspora* at all, Ello (back when it
| was more alive) in any useful sense) are severely
| handicapped. Yes, the feature can be abused, but it's also
| highly useful.
| dorkwood wrote:
| I follow artists and developers who post interesting things
| they're working on. It's the best place online I've found for
| this content.
| manicennui wrote:
| I do the same and don't have the complaints that many people
| have. I never check the trending hashtags and recommended
| nonsense. I unfollow anyone who gets involved in and retweets
| a lot of Twitter/political drama (they are free to use their
| account how their like, but I don't need this sort of thing
| in my life).
| jeffbee wrote:
| Why would this tweet ever come to anyone's attention? I see
| tweets of people I follow, a few hundred users, most of whom I
| know in real life and the rest of whom are experts in fields of
| interest.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Musk is the most followed user on Twitter. On average, it
| seems like it would come to the attention of 'most'.
| delecti wrote:
| Twitter recently implemented a change to prioritize replies
| from Twitter Blue subscribers over all others, so the replies
| you're seeing first are all people who paid for Twitter. That
| means they're either people who support Elon, or people for
| whom Twitter is a significant part of their job, either way
| they're likely to be terminally online and probably
| insufferable. The top replies to any prominent account tend to
| be awful these days.
| neom wrote:
| It was interesting to see Amanda Silberling try to sus this out
| through deduction, Elon follows 30 women and of those 30 only so
| many are qualified:
|
| https://twitter.com/asilbwrites/status/1656764510311514113
| ratonofx wrote:
| IMHO, Twitter has so much network effect that it kept frozen in
| time lacking features. It's one of the best study case on MVPs as
| Craigslist, Reddit, Slashdot, 4Chan...
|
| Musk just showed us how a "not anti-capitalism" product
| management, from top down, could make Twitter catch up and keep
| up on the Zeitgeist of Internet User Experience.
|
| Twitter and part of the public discourse was saved, Musk
| companies can benefit a lot from the same leadership and
| governance model spearheaded by Google on the 'Alphabet move'.
|
| It's sad that people just want to buy the media buzz and witch-
| hunting because 'it is too much power in one person's hands'. I
| don't see this amount of critical thinking about Sergey and
| Larry, Besos or Zuckerberg.
| smcl wrote:
| The biggest complaint I've seen hasn't been that it's too much
| power in one person's hands, it's that he's just been fucking
| around with the service and annoying people.
| oldtownroad wrote:
| [flagged]
| tonetheman wrote:
| [dead]
| srameshc wrote:
| Hiring a new CEO won't erase the bad policy decisions that Elon
| made and what he stands for. Jack Dorsey has a better chance of
| success since he knows the game. However, I am truly hoping
| Mastodon or federated social network will succeed.
| lazyeye wrote:
| What if they aren't bad policy decisions and his critics are
| too short-sighted?
| dorkwood wrote:
| I agree. People are saying no one wants the blue check mark
| anymore because it is no longer "cool". I say give it time.
| It will become cool again once people realize all the
| features they can get for only $8.
| d23 wrote:
| What features? Pay to be ranked higher in the cess pool
| along with the phrenologists?
| boldslogan wrote:
| kind of agree as well. linkedin premium is a good case
| people will pay for irl video game points.
| Me1000 wrote:
| The value of the check mark (to twitter and non-verified
| users) was never that it was "cool", it was that you knew
| the account wasn't a random bot/troll/throwaway. That's
| something Musk clearly didn't understand because the blue
| check now has basically no value at all. The fact that a
| lot of people think it's uncool to have a checkmark now is
| just another self-inflicted challenge the company has to
| overcome.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Is this satire?
| input_sh wrote:
| Twitter has no policies anymore, it's all one guy's whim that
| subsequently gets translated into a "policy".
| ldjkfkdsjnv wrote:
| [flagged]
| mkr-hn wrote:
| There are plenty of reasons to not like him. Few of them relate
| to business.
| lazyeye wrote:
| Tons of reasons to like him too.
| [deleted]
| frellus wrote:
| [flagged]
| BryantD wrote:
| Also:
|
| - spreading conspiracy theories about the attack on Paul
| Pelosi
|
| - spreading conspiracy theories about the Allen, TX shooter
|
| I could go on. I _do_ care about his character, because he 's
| influential and because he's decided he's willing to tweet
| about whatever pops into his head, shaped by his biases and
| independent of confirmation or fact checking.
| sixQuarks wrote:
| Couldn't have said it better myself.
| kashunstva wrote:
| > The people who hate on him have never done a single
| important thing in their entire lives.
|
| That's a bit extreme, isn't it? For one thing, who gets to
| decide what's important? If you want to take a utilitarian
| perspective, that's fine; but you can't legitimately condemn
| as unimportant the work and lives of others who happen to
| dislike Musk.
| lispm wrote:
| > He's what we used to label as classical liberal, middle.
|
| Who is that "we"? That label is long gone for Elon.
|
| His Twitter "social media" service is now toxic waste and I
| doubt this will change.
| marcusverus wrote:
| It seems to me that the only people who complain about
| Twitter are those who are nostalgic for the days of
| political censorship. It's pretty gross.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| Just to be clear we're talking about the same platform
| that while under Elon's ownership has censored references
| to outside platforms like Mastodon, censored users
| globally at the whims of foreign governments and outright
| banned individuals for their political beliefs.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| > What more is there than that? The people who hate on him
| have never done a single important thing in their entire
| lives.
|
| Exactly, its just resentment. "How you feel about Elon is how
| you feel about yourself."
| rvz wrote:
| It is indeed resentment. It is also hilarious to see this
| sentiment in the comment sections in HN, Mastodon, Reddit,
| etc.
|
| In reality, almost no-one cares and the 220M+ users
| continue to use the platform.
|
| All the eternal Twitter doomsters are still praying for the
| downfall that never happened, which is why they are very
| emotional and angry at Elon Musk and the fact that Twitter
| did not collapse as they expected either.
| [deleted]
| misterprime wrote:
| I legitimately think it's trendy to hate on Elon. Both Elon and
| Zuckerberg seem to have come to the conclusion that there was a
| lot of dead weight on their staff. One is hated on, the other
| is not.
|
| I'm still using Twitter and only seeing improvements to the
| platform, plus promise of upcoming improvements.
|
| Community Notes is a big deal. Company badges are helpful. The
| "Show more" gate is now properly hiding SPAM instead of "wrong
| think". The "For you" algorithm has actually improved, too.
| sixQuarks wrote:
| There's been more new features and innovation on Twitter in
| the last 6 months then there has been in the last 6 years.
| The mental gymnastics you have to do to say Twitter is
| failing makes me tired just thinking about it.
| Pulcinella wrote:
| Uhh Musk and Zuckerberg both get a lot of hate (rightfully in
| my opinion, but that's not the point). People definitely hate
| Facebook and Zuckerburg. They even made a major motion
| picture about how much of an "asshole"[0] he is!
|
| [0] Literally quoting part of a line from the movie: "But
| you're going to go through life thinking that girls don't
| like you because you're a nerd. And I want you to know, from
| the bottom of my heart, that that won't be true. It'll be
| because you're an asshole."
| misterprime wrote:
| Overall, that movie painted him in a good light. "Strong
| leader bucks the system and makes a product that we all
| love" was the message I got from it.
|
| My point is that the recent mass layoffs have negatively
| affected Musk's reputation and has not had an impact on
| Zuckerberg's. I think your illustration of his rep having a
| negative aspect as far back as the movie is in line with
| that.
|
| With Musk's purchase of Twitter we've seen a lot more
| attention on alternative platforms such as Mastodon and
| Bluesky (?). I don't see anything like that with Facebook,
| other than the old struggles of any aging hangout spot.
| Also, note the difference in reaction to paying for
| verification on Twitter Vs. Instagram. People get mocked on
| Twitter for having the "blue checkmark". It's just silly.
| hakanderyal wrote:
| I think that will turn out to be a great move for Twitter.
|
| I don't get the negativity expressed by top comments.
|
| Yeah things were hectic at the beginning, but Twitter nowadays is
| a much better product than it was a year ago for me. Find a good
| niche for yourself and it's a gold mine for socializing online
| with a bit of curating.
| fernandotakai wrote:
| >I don't get the negativity expressed by top comments.
|
| feels like people want musk and twitter to fail just for the
| sake of it.
|
| i, myself, want the platform to thrive, because i absolutely
| love the idea of twitter.
| neurobama wrote:
| >I don't get the negativity expressed by top comments.
|
| Lots of ideologically-opinionated users are mad Twitter no
| longer censors and bans their opponents. They're upset that
| their patrons who enforced this got fired by Musk. Much
| seemingly unrelated criticism flows from this.
|
| As to the actual Twitter experience, I've always used a
| chronological feed and never understood complaints about the
| algorithm. Step one to not being bothered by an opaque
| algorithm's control of your attention is withholding that
| control in the first place. I haven't noticed any change in my
| daily Twitter browsing in this regard under Musk.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| > Twitter no longer censors and bans their opponents
|
| Unfortunately, Twitter still censors and bans their
| opponents.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/15/twitter-s.
| ..
|
| https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/04/elon-musk-twitter-
| st...
| jmclnx wrote:
| Per the link seems she believes in science in regards to
| vaccines. So I guess this is an improvement I guess. The thread
| in there are some rather nasty comments.
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| kashunstva wrote:
| > there was never any good reason to give them to children
|
| Except for lower rates and severity of SARS-CoV-2 infection
| in this population. See for example this recent meta-
| analysis: JAMA Pediatr. 2023;177(4):384-394.
| doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2022.6243[1]
|
| [1]https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticl
| e/...
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| That's what I'm saying. The risks of testing this
| technology on children does not outweigh the possible
| benefits. More children have died of drowning in pool
| accidents than covid-19. Furthermore, young men and boys
| are at higher risk of vaccine-induced myocarditis, which is
| why some countries have stopped giving them this jab
| altogether.
|
| In the study it notes "Moreover, the risk of vaccine-
| related serious adverse events (AEs), including
| myocarditis, in this age group was reported to be
| low.16,18."
| 10xDev wrote:
| > While most children developed local AEs, severe AEs were
| rare, and most of AEs resolved within several days.
|
| > Future studies with longer follow-up are warranted to
| monitor the long-term safety of mRNA vaccines.
|
| The above seem reasonable enough to not give the vaccine to
| children who aren't vulnerable.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_cliff
|
| > The glass cliff is a hypothesized phenomenon of women being
| likelier than men to achieve leadership roles, such as executives
| in the corporate world and political election candidates, during
| periods of crisis or downturn, when the risk of failure is
| highest.
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| What is he thinking? Putting this person in charge, with her ties
| to the global censorship-obsessed WEF, seems contrary to Elon's
| mission to make Twitter a place for free speech.
| [deleted]
| sonofaplum wrote:
| He's thinking that he needs to repair his advertising business
| because subscriptions have been an enormous, costly flop.
| dbbk wrote:
| I mean you could apply "What is he thinking?" to almost
| anything he's done with Twitter. Which leads you to the obvious
| conclusion... he does not think.
| typon wrote:
| > global censorship-obsessed WEF
|
| Can you elaborate on this? How is the WEF tied to global
| censorship?
| kgwxd wrote:
| > Elon's mission to make Twitter a place for free speech
|
| How much unambiguous proof does he need to provide before all
| people realize his stated mission is not his actual mission?
| runesofdoom wrote:
| Doing one thing and saying you're doing something else is an
| astonishingly effective tactic.
| frellus wrote:
| And what is his actual mission?
| coolbreezetft22 wrote:
| My best guess is he's just an idiot and doesn't really
| think things through, just saying/doing whatever dumb idea
| pops into his head at the moment
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| I don't want to be confused for an Elon Musk fanboy, but
| he's definitely not stupid, having founded Tesla, Spacex,
| and other companies.
| [deleted]
| runesofdoom wrote:
| My best guess is that he wants to raze it to the ground and
| salt the earth on which it once stood so that nothing can
| grow there again. Not just destroy it, but destroy it so
| thoroughly and comprehensively that it cannot be rebuilt.
| machdiamonds wrote:
| A lot of people in this thread saying "Musk isn't an engineer."
| According to Jim Keller, John Carmack and others, this simply
| isn't true:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...
| 77pt77 wrote:
| He's definitely not a pure snake-oil salesman like Jobs.
| [deleted]
| biohacker85 wrote:
| I don't know if he's a good engineer or not, but people that
| don't like him want it to be true and will propagate it
| regardless. All negative news or rumors about him--twitter is
| failing, his companies succeed despite him, SpaceX launchpad
| exploded, Tesla kills pedestrian, stock is tanking, etc..."
| grants a huge dopamine boost to these people. Unfortunately I
| understand this well as I have my own areas where this is true.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| For me at least, this perception comes from the level of hubris
| that Elon exhibits in public. Statements like "At this point, I
| think I know more about manufacturing than anyone currently
| alive on earth" is not something you hear from good engineers
| very often because it reeks of Dunning Kruger. Elon also
| frequently chooses to make statements with high certainty about
| areas far outside his expertise ("Based on current trends,
| probably close to zero new cases in US too by end of April")
| and consistency overpromises and under-delivers with some
| technologies (FSD).
|
| So I don't know. Maybe he's a good engineer when he's not on
| camera. But as a public figure I think he's massively
| overexposed, largely by choice, and it's doing him no favours
| in terms of perception lately.
| David_Axelrod wrote:
| I remember my perception changed when I watched an interview
| with musk talk about the material science challenges of panel
| gaps on teslas. You can't have that level of knowledge unless
| you worked very close to the problem.
|
| https://youtu.be/YAtLTLiqNwg?t=1100
| facet1ous wrote:
| I mean, he might pay very close attention to everything at
| his company. That doesn't mean he's deeply involved with
| the engineering.
|
| For all you know he had some technical presentations given
| to him by his engineers and is just repeating the info
| within. I don't doubt he himself has enough engineering
| background to follow or contribute to the technical
| conversations at Tesla et al, but yeah.
|
| At some point you just have to reason about how many
| companies he has and how much work he already has merely
| being CEO or chairman of these firms and how he could
| possibly be doing day-to-day engineering decision-making on
| top of that. And given the very public and embarassing
| exposes we've gotten from engineers at Twitter, I have
| deep, deep reservations that Elon is really a saavy
| engineer.
| machdiamonds wrote:
| I also found this to be pretty impressive: https://twitter.
| com/elonmusk/status/1560720224588120064?lang...
| Avshalom wrote:
| when does he get to the material science challenges in that
| video.
| David_Axelrod wrote:
| How many people know what galvanic corrosion means?
| armadsen wrote:
| I am an engineer, though not at all involved in materials
| science/engineering, and I've known what galvanic
| corrosion is since I was a teenager. It's not exactly an
| obscure phenomenon.
| Avshalom wrote:
| every one who has ever owned an aluminum boat, or
| generally worked with aluminum that's anywhere near
| electricity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galvanic_anode
| It's not an obscure thing; field specific maybe, but it's
| very much sub-table-stakes.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| Most people who've done secondary school chemistry would
| know what that is. Uses technicals terms != is engineer.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Every single electrician I know is familiar with galvanic
| corrosion as well as how to mitigate it with insulation,
| dielectric grease, sacrificial anodes, etc. Steel and
| aluminum are the two most common metals that we use to
| make things. Galvanized steel has a zinc coating that
| acts as a sacrificial anode, almost any steel that is
| installed outside that isn't stainless is galvanized.
| jjulius wrote:
| Worked very close to the problem != is an engineer
| David_Axelrod wrote:
| Not sure why people gate keep so hard around "he'S NOt An
| engiNEER". Even if he's not writing the code anymore,
| having deep technical understanding of important day to
| day tasks is an important quality in any leader in an
| engineering organization.
| jjulius wrote:
| I wasn't taking a position on Musk with that specific
| comment, and I don't disagree with your latter point at
| all.
|
| _Broadly_ speaking, I wouldn 't rush to consider anyone
| a doctor, an engineer, a pilot, so on and so forth simply
| because I watched a video of them speaking so well to a
| very specific problem that they just so happened to work
| so closely on. That's all I was getting at.
| RoyGBivCap wrote:
| [flagged]
| TheAlchemist wrote:
| Yeah. It's a bit like a junior programmer saying
| architects are not software engineers because they don't
| write the code.
|
| (Btw, software engineers are not really engineers.)
| jackmott42 wrote:
| I would characterize him as a bad engineer. Which for a CEO
| is a lot better than nothing, if one does not become too
| arrogant and stops listening. Which, by now he seems to have
| done. He clearly can do the math of rocket science, but that
| math is not actually super hard, but its still better than
| your average CEO he can do. He can understand math and
| physics based arguments.
|
| But he has never understood people, politics, etc. Which is
| what twitter is all about.
| javier123454321 wrote:
| I don't know man. I'll often hear things to the effect of I
| can't believe how incompetent the developers of this app are,
| regardless of the complexity of the app.
| neurobama wrote:
| >But as a public figure I think he's massively overexposed,
| largely by choice, and it's doing him no favours in terms of
| perception lately.
|
| I think you'll find there's a significant split in perception
| between, for example, the average American and the pseudo-
| elites who inhabit Bluesky and Hacker News. Or the latter and
| the average actual hacker, for that matter.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Golly, how do average Americans perceive Elon?
|
| Is there direct evidence of Elon's personal engineering
| prowess? All I can find are his own boasting and second
| hand reports of folks impressed by his familiarity with
| jargon.
| neurobama wrote:
| >Is there direct evidence of Elon's personal engineering
| prowess?
|
| Yes: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0t
| a/eviden...
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Second and third hand accounts are nice. Even better when
| they come from folks no longer financially dependent on
| Elon's good graces.
|
| But I was hoping to see some of his source code for Zip2,
| some CAD he'd done himself, or even a video of him
| solving some intractable problem in one of these rooms
| full of stumped geniuses.
| Natsu wrote:
| So this guy has founded multiple successful engineering-
| heavy companies, did not receive any actual financial
| support past 18 (despite inflated myths of an "emerald
| mine"), is attested by multiple skilled engineers, and
| has given videos where he talks in depth about
| engineering, but we're still looking for new & different
| kinds of evidence that he has skills?
|
| Are we testing whether he knows anything at this point,
| or whether he's a literal Tony Stark? This thread started
| with discussion of whether he's any kind of engineer at
| all now we're looking for "rooms full of stumped
| geniuses" as if this was something every random engineer
| experienced.
| bena wrote:
| There's a difference between "an engineer" and "a good
| engineer".
|
| So those saying he's not an engineer at all are probably
| wrong, but those saying he's a good engineer probably aren't
| correct either.
|
| I think it's also the case where his misses are more evident.
| If you said "We'll get to Mars in 10 years", people will
| likely have forgotten you said that after 5 years, much less
| 2 years after your boasted time frame expires. So people
| credit you for big ideas while not having to deliver on
| anything. Every year, we've been about a year away from fully
| autonomous self-driving cars.
|
| Complaining about twitter and saying how you'd fix it is easy
| when you don't control twitter. But actually fixing it is a
| different story once you have all the control.
|
| Promises are easy to make, harder to deliver.
| VikingCoder wrote:
| "I know more about rockets than anyone at the company by a
| pretty significant margin."
|
| That sounds way more like an arrogant micro-manager than an
| engineer to me.
|
| The quotes I read there make it sound to me like he's about as
| involved as Steve Jobs was. Which is not a compliment, coming
| from me.
| IMTDb wrote:
| > Which is not a compliment, coming from me.
|
| But a compliment for anyone looking at the final results
| rather than focusing on an incomplete and external perception
| of the process.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| I think he has some instinctive proficiency at the intersection
| of product design and PR. I wouldn't consider him an engineer.
| dgs_sgd wrote:
| did you read the reddit thread and still come away with this
| conclusion?
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| Yes. See my reply to @cyrux004 at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35921138.
| chippiewill wrote:
| Elon is just as much an engineer as Steve Jobs was.
|
| That is to say, Elon is not an engineer.
| cyrux004 wrote:
| Show me where Steve jobs talks about internals of macbook
| components like the way Elon talks about spaceship rockets;
| then i will believe you you
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| I'm not the person you replied to, but I'm struck by two
| things about that Reddit post. First, all but one of the
| quoted people who are engineers [1], are also Musk's
| subordinates. And second, there are suspiciously few (as
| in zero) dissenters listed.
|
| I've no doubt Musk can _talk_ convincingly about engines
| or whatever, and maybe even about physics, but I don 't
| think he could function as a professional engineer. I'm
| just not getting the impression that he has much depth.
|
| [1] discounting Carmack who is brilliant but is a
| different kind of engineer
| darawk wrote:
| Carmack is widely considered one of the greatest software
| engineers ever, and knows Musk well. Either he's outright
| lying to make his friend look good, or I'll take his
| opinion over basically anyone. He certainly isn't Musk's
| "subordinate" in any meaningful sense.
|
| Even when Carmack was Zuckerberg's "subordinate" he was
| independently wealthy and could do whatever the fuck he
| wanted, and has been for a long time. You didn't see him
| going around, even then, talking up Zuckerberg's
| engineering chops. Despite the fact that we know Zuck did
| in fact write a lot of the early code for FB.
|
| Carmack is also not a "different kind of engineer". Guy
| is primarily famous for his software, but he had a rocket
| company of his own, ran Meta's VR labs which involved
| quite a bit of hardware, etc.
| Zetice wrote:
| All due respect to John, but what the hell qualifies him
| to classify Elon as an engineer of rockets?
|
| I trust John Carmack in his wheelhouse, but without
| knowing him better I wouldn't trust him to fix my car or
| recommend a beer, just because he's prolifically
| qualified at building and shipping software.
|
| I would even argue his recent work on VR for Facebook
| makes me question if he's still "got it", considering how
| wildly that seems to have flopped.
|
| I'm excited to see what he does with his new AI startup,
| but let's not canonize the man.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| Carmack's _Armadillo Aerospace_ landed rockets
| vertically, years before SpaceX did (albeit much smaller
| ones). He built the company as a hobbyist labor of love
| and it won NASA 's _Lunar Lander Challenge_ in 2008.
|
| Carmack is absolutely qualified to talk about aerospace
| engineering. He also knows quite a bit about cars, FWIW.
| Zetice wrote:
| Did not know that! Maybe you're right about Carmack, but
| I'm still skeptical of Elon.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| At risk of creating a circular discussion, how much
| rocket engineering was Carmack doing at Armadillo?
| deburo wrote:
| You're basing this opinion on nothing but gut feeling.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| We all are. Like everyone else here, I haven't met the
| guy. Have you?
| typeofhuman wrote:
| What's your definition of "engineer"?
| ilamont wrote:
| In the Isaacson biography, Steve Jobs viewed himself as an
| "engineer." It comes up in some of the quotes when they
| were working at Atari and early in Apple's existence. I
| don't have a copy of the book anymore, but it's hinted at
| here:
|
| _But he had a way with words, seemed to have a passion for
| technology, and probably lied about having worked at
| Hewlett-Packard. "I figured, this guy's gotta be cheap,
| man. He really doesn't have much skills at all," Alcorn
| remembers. "So I figured I'd hire him." A Diet Of Air And
| Water Jobs was hired as Atari employee #40, as a technician
| fixing up and tweaking circuit board designs. One of his
| first roles was finishing the technical design of Touch Me,
| a simple arcade memory game similar to Ralph Baer's later
| Simon toy._
|
| https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/steve-jobs-atari-
| empl...
| nailer wrote:
| So you read that thread of all the other engineers and that
| was genuinely your conclusion?
| [deleted]
| darawk wrote:
| The idea that HN commenters who have never met the guy have
| opinions that contradict the statements of John Carmack, Jim
| Keller, Tom Mueller, Andrej Karpathy, etc.
|
| These people are not sycophants. These people do not need Musk.
| They have plenty of their own money. They are not speaking
| highly of him because they want a promotion, or they want to be
| in his good graces, or they're afraid of being fired.
|
| You can still hate him for the way he behaves. You can still
| think he's a bad guy. But if you think your opinion of his
| talent or engineering depth is better than these people's
| who've worked with him, you should seriously reconsider your
| epistemic blind spots.
|
| It's ok for him to be a good engineer and a bad person. Von
| Braun designed rockets for the Nazis and later the US space
| program. Nobody doubts his engineering brilliance.
| TheAlchemist wrote:
| I share your point of view, 100%.
|
| As much as I don't like Musk behaviour lately, or how he try
| to picture himself as the founder of Tesla, it's really
| ridiculous to deny his achievements. And the money argument -
| "oh he just paid good engineers to create the companies" - is
| pretty dumb too - he wasn't that rich until 2 years ago, so
| why other billionaires didn't do the same thing ? Or all
| those other more talented engineers.
| epgui wrote:
| I'm with you, but:
|
| > or how he try to picture himself as the founder of Tesla
|
| I think this can actually be reasonably argued both ways.
| tootie wrote:
| I can believe he's very smart, but he's also wildly
| irrational. He's also been caught out since taking over
| Twitter of broadcasting very inaccurate things about the
| state of Twitters software stack. Hyperfocus on the software
| is also definitely the wrong thing to be worrying about when
| it comes to running a content company and he's only made the
| product worse in his time there and has shown close to zero
| understanding what makes the site valuable.
| asveikau wrote:
| > The idea that HN commenters who have never met the guy have
| opinions that contradict the statements of John Carmack, Jim
| Keller, Tom Mueller, Andrej Karpathy, etc.
|
| Those people can also be wrong about stuff. This is just an
| appeal to the reputation of those names. It doesn't give
| weight pro se.
|
| I don't have an opinion on Musk's skills as an engineer. I
| know I've seen him be very arrogantly and confidently wrong
| about things I know pretty well. That's a bit of a red flag
| trait that probably bleeds into other areas of his life and
| work. But also, i don't draw this conclusion out of hate or
| prejudice for the man. I don't care.
| lolinder wrote:
| But given a conflict between the opinions of a random
| person on HN and prominent engineers who've worked directly
| with Musk, I'll place more emphasis on the words of the
| prominent engineers. It's not that they _can 't_ be wrong,
| it's that they're less likely to be wrong than people whose
| only interaction with Musk is reading his Twitter.
| asveikau wrote:
| > conflict between the opinions of a random person on HN
| and prominent engineers
|
| On HN, i don't think you entirely know who among
| commentators is a prominent engineer.
| lolinder wrote:
| > prominent engineers who've worked directly with Musk
|
| The full phrase was important. If someone has worked
| directly with Musk and is basing their opinion on that, I
| expect them to say so.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| So Musk owns ~80% of the shares but Yaccarino is his boss? Good
| luck with that - I hope she's good at tightrope walking.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| He is also chairman. He remains in control. Just hired somebody
| to take care of ad customer relations, which is a thing he
| certainly can't do and have her a good title.
| abvdasker wrote:
| I give her less than a year. The job description is to be the
| public face of Twitter's ongoing collapse.
| RoyGBivCap wrote:
| ...ongoing collapse?
|
| Every usage record twitter has broken has been _since he took
| over._
| [deleted]
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| Usage is not really the metric that counts when Twitter's
| ad revenue is down 89% since Musk took over [1]. I find it
| hard to believe they're selling enough $8/mth subscriptions
| to fill the gap.
|
| [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-30/twit
| ter-s...
| input_sh wrote:
| Furthermore, there's absolutely zero evidence that
| Twitter's usage is up. There's no actual data to draw
| that conclusion from, Twitter is now private and under no
| obligation to share.
|
| If you ask for a source, you're gonna get linked to one
| tweet of his dated Dec 18th. In totally unrelated news,
| Dec 18th just happens to be the date when World Cup
| finals in Qatar were held, before all the mindblowingly
| stupid changes.
|
| But even if it did increase, it's just bots. There's a
| crypto scam at the top of US trending every day, and when
| you click on it and then click on latest and scroll down
| a bit, you just see a bunch of random 5-10 words followed
| by a hashtag. There's one right now, #Kicks. About 12
| hours ago it was #Wednesdaytoken. It's gonna get purged
| when some employee finally gets around to doing that, and
| then the next one's gonna happen tomorrow.
| WestCIDR wrote:
| I could care less about who is in charge of Twitter or if there
| is such a platform.
|
| Twitter is a private corporation and therefore has no legal
| obligation to provide nor promote "free speech." To imply that it
| has this authority is to flatter it, over-state its power, and
| misrepresent it as having any interest in or obligation to the US
| Constitution, which it clearly does not.
|
| That said, prior to Musk, the Twitter owners/leaders behaved
| terribly by "de-platforming" voices and sources of information.
| In so doing they debased themselves, demonstrating that they have
| no moral compass and demolishing what little trust there was in
| the technocracy and its faux institutions.
|
| Musk claims to intend to restore "trust" in Twitter (I guess for
| those naive bubble people who obediently believe everything they
| read on the Internet). I could care less if he means what he
| says.
|
| But Musk's stated positive mission is there for all to witness.
| So I don't get why he's being pilloried for it. What's all the
| clamor about? Just another stage-play from the Drama Dept, I
| imagine.
| scythe wrote:
| Previously, Linda Yaccarino helped launch Peacock, the
| NBC/Comcast streaming service that was provided free with our
| Internet connection for a few months. I would have to give this
| strategy credit: we actually watched it quite a bit.
| Unfortunately, the Peacock UX is quite bad, since resuming an
| episode often simply doesn't work and jumping forward forces you
| to watch commercials twice. So we may not end up subscribing when
| the free period ends.
|
| If this was Yaccarino's decision, that's good marketing. But you
| need some follow-through as well.
| seshagiric wrote:
| It does seem like Peacock's success was a factor in her getting
| chosen as Twitter CEO. I find it hard to believe there's any
| nefarious intent e.g. finding a scapegoat. Its more like there
| are not too many takers for the job and they had to go with the
| best possible choice.
| isbjorn16 wrote:
| > She knows all the advertisers and can placate them.
|
| I hope she has an infinite supply of lipstick because this pig
| will need it :|
| zadler wrote:
| Twitter is doing great.
| Xorlev wrote:
| There is no war in Ba Sing Se.
|
| Just saying it doesn't make it true. Twitter has a long way
| to go to regain advertiser confidence, and Blue is barely a
| footnote.
| concordDance wrote:
| He's probably thinking of it from a user experience point
| of view, where there are lots of shiny new features and no
| big downsides.
| d23 wrote:
| I must be using a different site from you. Letting people
| pay to get boosted has turned the top of every thread
| into a hive of emoji-pasting, cruel, low-effort cretins.
| warning26 wrote:
| Is it though? The new verified system was rolled out
| really poorly.
|
| There should have been a migration path from legacy to
| new verified, but instead they just unverified everyone
| (including obviously government accounts that under the
| new rule should retain a grey check).
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments. It's
| not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
|
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35920114.
| isbjorn16 wrote:
| With respect, you don't think it's substantive to point out
| that the new CEO has a rather tall job in order, using
| colloquial language?
|
| I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.
| dang wrote:
| I think it was both unsubstantive and flamebait.
|
| None of the boo vs. yay wars that plague this topic are
| interesting; it's really just "I feel boo" and "I feel
| yay". We're trying for something else here.
| drumhead wrote:
| He's trying to turn it into the Fox News of social media, a
| hardcore or uses being bombarded with my pillow ads. Seeing how
| profitable Fox is he seems to want to follow that path.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I'm going to guess that the either new CEO will quit in 12-18
| months or Elon will drift away from being closely engaged with
| Twitter.
|
| I don't think any decent CEO will tolerate perpetual undermining
| and I don't think Elon has a "medium" setting.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| What type of person would accept this CEO role? Surely the
| problems are known, so whoever accepts would be happy with
| them?
| gjvc wrote:
| Who?
| dang wrote:
| All: could you please not post unsubstantive and/or flamebait
| comments? There are a ton of them in this thread, unfortunately.
| They're tedious and not what HN is for. HN is for _curious_
| conversation, not boo-vs.-yay celebrity wars or mudslinging (or
| mud wrestling for that matter).
|
| If you're about to comment in this thread, please make sure
| you're up on the site guidelines at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and comment in
| the intended spirit.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I have to admit to eating crow. I thought for sure that Elon was
| quietly hoping people would forget about the "Should I step down"
| poll and he was going to stay on as CEO. I was wrong.
|
| For me personally it's largely academic at this point since I'm
| not coming back to Twitter without Tweetbot. But it's nice to see
| the follow-through on this one.
| moskie wrote:
| Don't eat crow simply because he followed through on one thing.
| He's still a blatant liar and fascist, spewing bullshit about
| things like being a "free speech absolutist." Giving him credit
| on this one thing is playing into his hand by scrubbing his
| reputation in way that allows him to get away with his more
| insidious plans (e.g. making Twitter more right-wing).
| felistoria wrote:
| More right wing or just more neutral?
| user982 wrote:
| More right-wing.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into ideological
| flamewar. Regardless of how right you are or feel, it's not
| what this site is for and destroys what it is for.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| [deleted]
| HellDunkel wrote:
| I am not returning either the vox populi polls were simply
| intolerable.
| yalogin wrote:
| I think you are not eating crow. He had no intention of
| stepping down. He thought he would be loved and tried but
| realized he is not going to be able to pull through the
| management stuff. I think the poll and this decision aren't
| related.
| byyyy wrote:
| Can the CEO fire the CTO if the CTO isn't performing well?
|
| If not who is really the CEO?
| weinzierl wrote:
| When I go from Musk's Tweet to Linda Yaccarino (@LindYacc) I see
| a tweet that starts with _" If we abandon our history [..]_" and
| ends with _" You're unable to view this Tweet because this
| account owner limits who can view their Tweets. Learn more"_
|
| Why does it say I cannot see a tweet in a tweet I can see?
| sonofaplum wrote:
| She quote tweeted a tweet from an account that was later
| probably set to private
| sp332 wrote:
| The text you can see is a quote-tweet. You can see the comment
| she added, but the tweet she quoted is from a private account.
| JosephRedfern wrote:
| Most likely because she quote-tweeted a another tweet,
| originating from a private account.
| majikaja wrote:
| I don't understand how other people can tolerate using Twitter.
|
| I just want to view people's comments in a compact form - one
| line per tweet, even if RSS or equivalent is not supported. How
| do people have time in their day to scroll down the page to see
| all the tweets (&ads) on their timeline when they're following
| hundreds/thousands of people? If I can't integrate it into my RSS
| reader realistically I have <15 minutes per day to spend on such
| a platform.
| tgv wrote:
| The appeal of twitter is the fame. They may look down upon
| traditional media, but it's those that give twitter users their
| megaphone. If you've got 1000 followers that may or may not
| glance upon your tweets, that nice. But to see your opinion
| broadcasted as the voice of the people, that's attractive.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Effective twitter usage is about maximizing the signal to noise
| ratio. Aggressively unfollow accounts that have low SNR.
|
| A few hundred accounts will give you enough high quality tweets
| for <15 min a day.
| paulgb wrote:
| Fun fact, early in Twitter's life, RSS was supported. There was
| even a brief period where it supported XMPP! I remember
| following along with 2008 election tweets in Pidgin.
| belter wrote:
| Fun fact, many years ago, Google had a SOAP interface. But it
| got removed as machines are not interested in Internet Ads.
| :-)
|
| How time flies...
|
| Edit: http://radar.oreilly.com/2006/12/google-deprecates-
| their-soa...
| paulgb wrote:
| I remember building an early "infinite scroll" search
| interface with it!
| adamiscool8 wrote:
| Tweets are often rich media and aren't designed to be one line,
| but Twitter has a Lists function that does basically this if
| you're willing to make manual groupings of users by topic.
| the-printer wrote:
| My assumption is that we shouldn't underestimate the volume of
| nonsense that a person can tolerate when their attention span
| has been reduced to banana skin fiber over the course of their
| lifetime. Combine that with the addictive qualities of the
| platforms and a desire to harvest maximum stimulation with
| minimal effort.
|
| Recently I noticed how overwhelming some posts on HN can
| appear. 400-500 comments, the top rated comment alone splinters
| into 78 sub-narratives and criticisms. Contrarily I feel like
| parsing this takes a lot more effort than Twitter. People put a
| lot more effort in their HN comments compared to a Tweet, and
| we are held to a different standard here in terms as what we
| say and how we say it. Also consider the fact that Twitter
| offers a variety of content while HN offers one primary form
| (text; I'm purposely excluding what links that are shared offer
| and am discussing primarily the core of the HN experience which
| is the conversation on the actual site).
|
| I say all of this to say, how do people have the time in their
| day to even scroll _here_? When you follow nobody (unless you
| subscribe to some users comments with an RSS reader, an option
| I'm becoming more fond of) and you actually have to do a lot of
| _reading_ and _thinking_ as compared to a deluge of Tweets that
| can be grasped in a matter of seconds.
|
| On one hand, this is what makes HN an exceptional website in a
| way. On the other hand, what makes Twitter appealing to others
| is what makes it exceptional compared to other websites and why
| it's doubtful that the majority of its user base will leave,
| unless the layout changes.
|
| Overall, I think topics like literacy, intellectual curiosity,
| taste...and a lack thereof, contribute to why Twitter is either
| appealing and unappealing (I don't tweet).
| majikaja wrote:
| >how do people have the time in their day to even scroll
| here?
|
| Yeah this site can be a massive time-waste. I try to only
| scroll through a thread if it's of significant interest to me
| or I'm on the train or something. Some days that effort fails
| and I spend too much time passively consuming trivia from
| here when I should be working. When it comes to non-tech
| topics I don't think the level of discussion on this site is
| particularly high but the quality of prose may give the wrong
| impression on first glance.
|
| I get several thousand items in my RSS reader inbox each day
| (including HN headlines) - no way can I read a significant
| portion of that. Thankfully most news articles have limited
| new information beyond the title.
| afavour wrote:
| Twitter's answer to this is to use an algorithm to prioritize
| the content the user is mostly likely to want to see.
| Certainly, I never read every unread tweet in my feed.
|
| Ironically that same algorithmic approach has been subject to
| complaint from all sides, with "shadow ban" accusations thrown
| around, including by Musk himself. So it's now less effective
| than it used to be, in the name of "equality".
| ecliptik wrote:
| The Twitter frontend Nitter [1] has RSS built in for posts. I
| don't think it can do full threads, but it's a compact read-
| only design is much easier to read than proper Twitter.
|
| Unfortunately the public instances can get overloaded and
| really slow.
|
| To get a more real-time like experience it's better to stand up
| your own instance and put it behind something like Tailscale so
| only you are using it.
|
| 1. https://github.com/zedeus/nitter
| Palomides wrote:
| there are two ways to use twitter: curate a small number of
| follows you read most tweets from, or follow many and treat
| twitter more like an endless river to sample from
| majikaja wrote:
| Yeah I figure that's how people use it - for entertainment or
| sampling user sentiment. It's not even good at the latter
| because the act of following often is in essence cherry
| picking and the sample size from scrolling is so low.
|
| Something so cripplingly limited shouldn't have a near-
| monopoly...
| celtoid wrote:
| [flagged]
| prh8 wrote:
| He's going to continue running Twitter into the ground while now
| being able to make her the scapegoat for it. Typical glass cliff
| nprateem wrote:
| Well that might be a strategy if it wasn't his own money he was
| burning.
| prh8 wrote:
| [flagged]
| ldjkfkdsjnv wrote:
| Dude havent you come to terms with the fact that hes competent?
| Twitter never went down after firing all those engineers?
| __jem wrote:
| The vibe on Twitter has become totally noxious since
| bluechecks started getting promoted under every single tweet.
| I'm still on there because of inertia, but from my feed there
| are plenty of people like me waiting to jump ship to bluesky.
| Twitter's brand is toxic now. Maybe they'll make up the
| difference with users coming over from Parler or whatever,
| but I doubt it.
| theturtletalks wrote:
| Turning Twitter into pay-to-play will look "competent" in the
| beginning, but we're not sure how it'll work in the long run.
|
| Lately, it looks like lower level (non-twitter blue) users
| have no incentive to come up with new content. If they do,
| high level users (twitter blue) will regurgitate it to their
| audience and it'll be amplified to the top. Before, the
| playing field was level.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Whats the definition of down?
|
| Twitter has had many outages; the objective stability of the
| webpage is worse after acquisition than before.
| d23 wrote:
| By his own admission the value of Twitter has dropped 50%,
| and he has suggested bankruptcy is on the table. This will be
| a case study of bad management in textbooks for decades to
| come.
| flerchin wrote:
| Yes it did.
| chucky_z wrote:
| Twitter never went down _because_ of those engineers and the
| great work they did. Elon has been making all kinds of shit
| up as he goes. He is not an engineer, and never will be one.
| He can be a great businessman (and at times -- he has made
| great decisions _for businesses_.) and be a terrible
| engineer. He seems to be stuck on the latter even being
| possible.
| Danjoe4 wrote:
| He is chief engineer of SpaceX. The rockets seem pretty
| good to me.
| bobsil1 wrote:
| Oh yes, also CTO Twitter, chief neuroscientist Neuralink,
| chief researcher OpenAI, a regular Renaissance man. Never
| studied STEM.
| peterfirefly wrote:
| > Never studied STEM.
|
| He has a physics degree.
| bobsil1 wrote:
| He bought a physics diploma with a large donation years
| after dropping out.
| karpierz wrote:
| He has the title 'Chief Engineer' at SpaceX, a company
| which he owns.
|
| Turns out, when you own the company, you can make the
| company call you whatever will best serve your ego.
| FredPret wrote:
| Yes but the rockets will only go up if the engineering is
| actually good.
|
| So either he's a really good engineer or he's really good
| at hiring them, which means he's a really good engineer.
|
| It's comical how much people hate this guy. He's a smart
| person you don't like, why is that so hard to accept.
| qsdf38100 wrote:
| Yeah, his ideas are so smart! The hyperloop, the boring
| company, rocket mass transportation, etc He is a fraud. A
| very successful fraud.
| karpierz wrote:
| > either he's a really good engineer or he's really good
| at hiring them, which means he's a really good engineer.
|
| Or someone else at SpaceX is good at hiring engineers? Is
| your conclusion that everyone who owns a successful
| engineering company is a really good engineer?
| robryan wrote:
| Still have to be good at hiring those people that are
| good at hiring. And giving them the funding, culture and
| vision to succeed.
| karpierz wrote:
| I'm not saying Elon succeeds by accident. I think he's a
| very smart man who despite that, manages to think he's
| smarter than he is.
|
| I think that his unique talents are not in engineering
| but sales. He's great at selling his vision to some
| people who will then bleed for him. He's great at
| fundraising and convince people to fund his ventures.
|
| I don't think he's an engineering prodigy like Carmack or
| Wozniak. I don't think he's a product genius like Jobs. I
| think he's a fantastic salesman who finds bets that will
| pay off if you can keep at them for long enough, and uses
| his fundraising talents to keep his companies afloat
| until they do pay off.
| xeromal wrote:
| What's your criteria for Elon's decisions being bad? I'm
| curious.
| [deleted]
| bobsil1 wrote:
| Elon's hourly clown show? What are you watching?
| lazyeye wrote:
| I think for most of the Elon critics here, his real crime is not
| being sufficiently left-wing.
| chasing wrote:
| I think for most Elon lovers here, claiming people don't like
| him because he's "not being sufficiently left-wing" is a way to
| distract from the fact that his stewardship of Twitter has thus
| far been an embarrassing disaster of unforced errors.
| lazyeye wrote:
| Twitter is running fine with lots of improvements in the
| pipeline (video and E2E DMs due soon). It will be interesting
| to see how it evolves now that the company is back to
| focusing on the product rather than activism/censorship etc.
|
| Like I said...
| jmkni wrote:
| Great! Good luck to her.
|
| The negativity here is weird.
| bluescrn wrote:
| To the left, she's failed the purity test already by following
| a handful of 'evildoers' on Twitter.
|
| To the right, the WEF connection is concerning, and her
| commitment to free speech is in question.
|
| But perhaps she just wants to make money from both sides of the
| political divide?
| fraaancis wrote:
| Yeah, it is. The only glaring issue I see is that Yaccarino
| will definitely have to compromise by kicking some of the more
| radical people off the platform to get the high-dollar accounts
| advertising on Twitter again, which will draw fire from what is
| now the most visible user base. Or at the very least, reducing
| the "freedom of reach" I've seen Elon refer to. Otherwise, she
| seems to be a decent hire, catering to a lot of groups.
| cogitoergofutuo wrote:
| Too little too late. I left Twitter a few days ago after I saw
| some users complaining about animal torture videos showing up in
| their feeds and search suggestions, and this was on the heels of
| the footage of the shooting in Texas making the rounds.
|
| It's a completely unsurprising thing to see when you actively
| court channers after kneecapping content moderation.
| neurobama wrote:
| [flagged]
| cogitoergofutuo wrote:
| Yeah those videos are certainly despised by channers, what
| websites did they run into those videos on in the first
| place?
| neurobama wrote:
| Like CASM, there are groups of sociopaths who share these
| videos in private and occasionally in public. Everything
| from Facebook groups to small YouTube channels to private
| forums. The people who hunt them down, gather evidence and
| send it to the cops are true heroes in my view, alongside
| paid Facebook content moderators.
| cogitoergofutuo wrote:
| That's cool, all manner of illegal shock content has
| always shown up on the chans as well, since day one.
| "Channer" as a term applies equally to all people in that
| ecosystem, even those that are reviled by the rest. :)
| secretsatan wrote:
| Is this that thing where someone else is setup for the fall?
| mr90210 wrote:
| I truly hope she made a good deal and got herself a loaded
| contract because the challenge ahead is simply not worth it.
| DueDilligence wrote:
| [dead]
| hartator wrote:
| Seems like a boring ads-friendly pick, she was leading
| advertising at NBC for the past 11 years?
| luckydata wrote:
| he hired a COO and called her CEO
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