Re: The Elon Musk Appreciation Thread

[FennecFox7]

https://psyarxiv.com/ay9q5

For the record, I'll throw in what I was referencing as well.

Okay. Reading yours first.

So what’s the criteria for democrat or republican users? Right away, this study is just putting these people into arbitrary boxes. It’s not elucidated at all. Furthermore, the sample size is 9,000 people. Really now??

And even then, “republicans” were still banned at a high rate compared to “democrats”. Now all of a sudden, it’s justified because it’s misinformation? Democrats spill just as many lies and misinformation as republicans. Both sides lie and manipulate, so what actually is misinformation? Is it lying about masks working? Is it saying vaccine mandates are necessary? Is it lying about racism not existing? If you say yes or no to these questions depending on who you are, that’s bias. I’m not going to answer whether that’s right or wrong to say, I’m going to defend your right to say masks work even though I disagree. I’m going to defend your right to say capitalism is evil, even though I disagree, Point is, my argument about freedom of speech stands. And that study didn’t really say a whole lot of anything

[FennecFox7]

False Accusation: The Unfounded Claim that Social Media Companies Censor Conservatives: https://bhr.stern.nyu.edu/bias-report-release-page

The authors of the study also suggested that claims of anti-conservative bias is in itself a form of disinformation, and that leading social media platforms have in fact amplified the right-leaning voices "algorithmically" to reach unprecedented audiences. The NYU study also suggested that this afforded conservatives greater reach than liberal or nonpartisan content creators.

There is no evidence to support the claim that the major social media companies are suppressing, censoring, or otherwise discriminating against conservatives on their platforms. In fact, it is often conservatives who gain the most in terms of engagement and online attention, thanks to the platforms' systems of algorithmic promotion of content," said Paul Barrett, the report's primary author and deputy director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights via a statement.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2021/02/01/conservative-twitter-trending-as-study-claims-there-is-no-anti-conservative-bias/?sh=6ed4248f6883

Read the first article. I agree with a whole lot of their solutions.. but then they turn around and say the problems don’t really exist, after proposing solutions on the first page. Kind of contradictory. And for example, shadow banning DOES happen, particularly on Instagram, proven by trying to search certain people and they only show up when you put the exact lettering in. I could keep going on, but yeah.

Second article is just a hit-piece, not interested.

[CBarca]

Dude is gonna get the shit sued out of him for trying to get out of this deal. What a mess lmao.

Best for all parties though. Twitter will get some free dough, Musk doesn't ruin Twitter, and he comes out with egg on his face again

Guy had the world eating out of his hands 10 years ago and just can't manage to get out of his own way ever since

[CBarca]

Guy had the world eating out of his hands 10 years ago and just can't manage to get out of his own way ever since

He said in July. Now it's October and a dude who is getting a lot of $$ from the federal government is spouting pro-Russia propaganda on Twitter. I don't know anything about the sustainabilities of Musks businesses (although I assume they're in very good shape, that's always been his clearly best facet)...so I don't think this is probably a big deal for him

BUT it's hilarious how much this dude gets in his own way.

People got annoyed with Nate Silver for spouting off about public health during the pandemic. Elon is like Silver but 1000x worse. He does it with *everything*

[Myesyats]

Tesla has a factory near Berlin and he was counting on the cheap russian gas. He doesnt give two shits about anything else other than profit

[BarrileteCosmico]

I hate elon these days as much as the next guy (in spite of making this thread and kinda buying into the hyperloop kool-aid back in the day), but tbf he has been offering free starlink to Ukraine at a loss, so I don't think we can say he's been a Putin puppet all along. But clearly he's wrong about his latest points on this conflict, and trying to appease him by cutting service in crimea.

[CBarca]

I hate elon these days as much as the next guy (in spite of making this thread and kinda buying into the hyperloop kool-aid back in the day), but tbf he has been offering free starlink to Ukraine at a loss, so I don't think we can say he's been a Putin puppet all along. But clearly he's wrong about his latest points on this conflict, and trying to appease him by cutting service in crimea.

This is a good point. I can criticize re: recent comments and talking to Putin but I also need to give him credit for Starlink's use in Ukraine

[El Gunner]

Twitter takeover is complete. He already fired the person who was responsible for banning Trump.

[CBarca]

I don't think much is honestly going to change. It's clear Musk has little to no real knowledge on how to run a social media company, his text messages proved that in a pretty embarrassing fashion. He's pie in the sky.

He's gonna realize that his ideas about content moderation are insanely simplistic. Advertisers will get no where near Twitter unless he ultimately ends up basically replicating the same content moderation that already existed on Twitter.

Bigots, racists, homophobes and transphobes will have their day for a little bit, then they'll end up getting ran out because no one is advertising on a site where people keep getting called the n word

[Myesyats]

Twitter in one sentence: "L + ratio + weak af"

Why would anyone care what happens to this horrible platform aside from people who bought twitter stocks..

It must be nice to have "fuck you" money so that you can just buy companies and fire the executives you dislike.

[Art Morte]

I don't know if any of this is true, but I saw an analysis on Twitter that in order to finance his purchase of Twitter, Elon will need to be making, like, 10 times as much money from Twitter than the platform has been making previously. So, there could be lots more ads and fewer personnel = less moderation and technical development. Basically, he might try to monetize Twitter in a much larger way than it's been before and it remains to be seen how that might affect the platform.

[BarrileteCosmico]

Seems to me that the better play is to use Twitter to curry favor with the powerful.

Ie let Trump back in leading to his reelection, once Trump wins in 2024 he can return the favor by giving tesla juicy contracts and tax treatment.

[sportsczy]

I wouldn't bet against Elon... just sayin'

When he invested and then became chief executive of Tesla, a company apparently doomed to failure, people ridiculed him.  He literally invested 95% of the money he made from Paypal in this.

When he created SpaceX and stated that colonizing Mars and making space "commercial" were the goals, everyone laughed.

The guy knows exactly what he wants out of Twitter.  He's already made it clear that it will - block the spambots (first social media platform to do so), protect free speech and build an “everything app”.  "Everything app" is the commercial aspect... similar to apps that exist in Asia.  In the US, you need multiple social media platforms to do everything you want socially.

Knowing him, he'll pull it off.

[McLewis]

Pull what off? Making Twitter profitable?

That's some spin job. He didn't want Twitter at the price he paid for it. He was forced to buy it for 4 times its actual worth. He was fully ready to backout until threatened with lawsuits. Let's not pretend this was "all part of his ingenious master plan".

How exactly does he make Twitter profitable at this point? Either he increases moderation and keeps Twitter's advertisers happy at the expense of his rabid right-wing techbro fanboys, who will absolutely turn on him on a dime if they don't get troll and abuse people at will on the platform or he "protects free speech" making Twitter the Wild Wild West of racism, misogyny, discrimination and every other -ism which scares off the advertisers, hastening its then-inevitable transformation of just another right-wing app with a short shelf-life like Truth or Parler. Either way, he loses on this. Just like he's losing on Tesla now that actual automakers are beginning to eat its share of the pie as well as with PayPal now that the likes of Venmo, Zelle and Cash App are around.

This revisionist history that Musk is some kind of visionary wunderkind has really worn old.

[Myesyats]

I love how the term "free speech" is thrown around so regularly and lightly these days. Great tactic to cause a loss of meaning and impact of a phrase that once really meant something, really conservatives are ingenious.

TIL there was a platform called "Truth". You know when someone names themselves that, or "Law and Justice", they are exactly the opposite of it

[Harmonica]

[CBarca]

Elon has no clue what he wants out of Twitter. The text messages brought up in the lawsuit showed that. He's a smart guy who will come up with some sort of cohesive plan. Maybe it will work, maybe it won't, but it's abundantly clear that nothing has really gone to plan so far for him.

As McLewis mentioned, his purchase of Twitter was done in a haphazard way, and the texts illustrate a person who is all ideas with no real direction. The Twitter blue stuff is making it clear right away.

[sportsczy]

lol at people thinking Elon Musk has no idea what he wants out of Twitter. Really? Because in his career he's taken on companies and failed?

There's naive and gullible... and then there's GL.

[Myesyats]

I think he comes across as more stupid than he actually is... I mean, he acts in a childish way, but he knows what he wants out of his businesses and they are successful.

This purchase is hardly haphazard, it was brewing since about 7 months when he bought shares and tried to get on the board but backed out once he realized he wouldn't gain much power over actual decision-making that way, he probably thought about buying twitter even earlier than april 2022, although initially he wanted to be just part of the executive board and not the main guy yet

[BarcaLearning]

He also has apparently a lot of ppl worldwide believing he would colonize Mars so that humans are gonna move there when earth goes to ruins in a few decades XD Definitely a genius - in frauding ppl XD

[McLewis]

lol at people thinking Elon Musk has no idea what he wants out of Twitter. Really? Because in his career he's taken on companies and failed?

There's naive and gullible... and then there's GL.

I believe he has a clear idea for what he wants from Twitter. What I said is that those clear ideas are not going to make Twitter profitable. If that was possible, it would've already been done by his predecessors.

And it's not just that he's failed. It's that he continues to fail upwards. The billionaire class has to be the only group on earth whose utter failure is rewarded with more and more power and responsibility.

[Hapless_Hans]

Elon Musk is one striking example of why it's good that 12 year old boys are not allowed to vote

[CBarca]

lol at people thinking Elon Musk has no idea what he wants out of Twitter. Really? Because in his career he's taken on companies and failed?

There's naive and gullible... and then there's GL.

There's zero evidence musk has anything even coming close to a cohesive vision on Twitter right now. I'm obviously overreaching to say he has no idea. He has an idea. His problem right now is he's got 100's of ideas, many of which aren't cohesive, and one overarching general principle that revolves around him thinking free speech is under attack and being sad no one likes him as much as they did.

I'd think really differently if he had been laying out a vision that was radically different, but better! for Twitter since he became interested over a year ago. But everytime he opens his mouth, it's just a bunch of shit. Then the text messages came out and it became clear how much of a billionaires club ideas forum Elon's headspace is/was.

Maybe now that he's in charge he'll act differently because profit is on the line. Him encouraging his engineers to work on shit and sell it to him is a start. Of course, it's also another point in the column of "does Elon know what he wants?".

Look at the damage control he's already running on the hate speech campaign. Everybody thought "free speech" was back when he said "free the bird", only for hate speech to rise sharply and for him to back off and tell everyone that content moderation policies haven't changed yet.

By saying he has no clue what he wants out of Twitter I never implied he couldn't be successful. I said it's very possible he still ends up successful. I only made one claim: he's been direction less so far. And between buying, backing out, getting sued, going through litigation that was not kind to him, realizing he pickle he's in, deciding to buy it anyway, then announcing the return of free speech, then having to immediately combat a rise in hate speech by backing down on content moderation changes, then announcing a headscratching change to the verification system which may or may not be an attempt to make misinformation more easily spreadable/prevalent...it's been a mess. There is absolutely no other way to put it.

Don't take it personally. Like I said, I'm not saying Musk won't be successful. He might be. You might be right. But it's been a mess and so far it's hard to put it any other way. I'm not sure how you could, considering the entire buying/backing out/buying debacle. Right now he has zero cohesive vision or clue. Maybe he'll get one.

[BarrileteCosmico]

Fwiw musk has been a Twitter super user for a while and he bought the platform because he gets a lot of entertainment out of it. That stands out from the prior CEOs and board who never even used it. So on the very least that's an improvement, and he might have ideas on how to improve it for people that actually do use it. Let's see.

From there to turning it into a successful business is something else tho

[El Gunner]

seems like some plans are already in motion... click on tweet to read the whole thread

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1587498907336118274

[Art Morte]

Imagine if turning Twitter profitable was as simple as charging people 8 bucks a month for a little blue tick on their screen. It's so crazy that I kinda want it to work. Then again I don't, because Musk is a dick.

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