Elon Musk reportedly fires top Twitter executives as he takes over company https://t.co/n8rnMYKOzs
— The Guardian (@guardian) October 28, 2022
One thing that cuts against the idea that Musk's ownership of Twitter will make it vastly worse is that a big part of his gripes are based on delusion. The left-wing censoriousness he decries doesn't exist, and the hate speech that is suppressed is more odious than he imagines
— Hemry, Local Bartender (@BartenderHemry) October 27, 2022
MTG, Paul Gosar, Trump Jr, Ron DeSantis and his various PR flunkies, and all the MAGA influencers who retweet and amplify them are here now, cheerfully spreading lies and demanding violence. Hard to see leftist authoritarianism in that
Even the elephant not in the room, Trump himself, gets his lies spread dutifully by both rightwing sources and ostensibly liberal journalists et al (“I don’t usually share Trump’s messages, but you have to see how bad this is”). It’s pretty much like he’s still on here
At the ground floor, for the average user it’s still incredibly common to face threats and harassment and all manner of hate speech. Even when I was new to Twitter I would get the occasional threat in DMs. The censorship regime Musk imagines simply doesn’t exist to be dismantled
On the other hand, Musk’s imagined free speech ideal exists in a fantasy world of his own concoction. He mistakenly thinks there’s a reservoir of annoyingly confident dumbasses like him waiting to speak instead of a horde of pedophile nazis
Musk is an idiot but he’s not an ideological fascist like Thiel. He’ll post a Kanye meme and then get sad people don’t like it and delete. He’s a desperate loser who craves adulation more than authority. If people hate him for running a nazi pedo website he’ll stop doing it
So yeah, I think that Musk buying Twitter is bad for everyone involved, but the fact that he’s an idiot whose views aren’t based in reality and a coward who reverses himself constantly make him at least susceptible to being like “actually you guys were right all along”
Another thing to keep in mind is that all this takes place more or less in the realm of politics Twitter, which has an outsize influence on real-world discourse relative to its importance to the site.
Musk wants Twitter because it has credibility with elite opinion-makers whose approval he desires. If he nukes that part of it into a disgusting hellhole then he’s destroyed the one thing about it that had any value to him and his ego
Maybe he destroys Twitter maybe he doesn’t. It’s not generally good for delusional childish narcissists to get what they want. All I’m saying is the possibility for an “oh shit” moment exists
"Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape," says Musk now. This essentially concedes that "free speech absolutism" is bunk, which is exactly what many of us have been arguing for months, earning nothing but sneering contempt from Musk's following. https://t.co/xW7FigaFrX
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) October 27, 2022
A day before Elon Musk's deadline to complete his acquisition of Twitter, he posted a message to advertisers in an apparent attempt to soothe nerves about how he intends to run it. He said he wants Twitter to be "the most respected advertising platform." https://t.co/fOwWAnf4W0 pic.twitter.com/CzaguaBVt2
— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 27, 2022
Maybe Musk can’t afford to be the Emperor of Edgelordville right now…
… Advertisers, which account for about 90 percent of Twitter’s revenue, have been watching the deal drama, and some have been concerned about how the uncertainty will affect the service as an ad platform. Mr. Musk has said he is a “free speech absolutist” and wants to loosen rules around content moderation on the service, including reversing the ban on former President Donald J. Trump from the platform. Advertisers typically shy away from promotions alongside toxic content and misinformation.
Twitter and other social media platforms are also grappling with a broader slowdown in digital advertising. Meta said on Wednesday that its profit in the most recent quarter was down more than 50 percent from a year earlier. The company, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, warned that it didn’t see any relief on the horizon for the declining ad market.
“Twitter aspires to be the most respected advertising platform in the world that strengthens your brand and grows your enterprise,” Mr. Musk wrote in his note Thursday. “To everyone who has partnered with us, I thank you. Let us build something extraordinary together.”
also big w for the chancery court, signed merger agreements still mean something
— Matthew Zeitlin (@MattZeitlin) October 28, 2022
I expect Twitter to remain mostly the same under Elon except it’ll somehow get massive federal subsidies and occasionally burst into flames
— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) October 26, 2022
Honestly if Elon Musk can make this site better on those terms while slashing moderation budgets and mechanisms God Bless Him, but the overwhelming likelihood is slashing the moderation budget will make this site work less effectively, and automated mechanisms harder to correct pic.twitter.com/JoMbDlM50p
— Lord Businessman (@BusinessmanLego) October 26, 2022
I won't die when twitter crashes itself into the sea, I'll just resurface on reddit or whatever and all of these clowns will move to Truth or whatever other place is next, man, can't stop the signal. Can't stop the poasters.
— Lord Businessman (@BusinessmanLego) October 26, 2022
Everyone realizes the GOP *wants* you to leave Twitter, right? It’s one of our most effective messaging platforms.
— Angry Staffer 🌻 (@Angry_Staffer) October 28, 2022
Shalimar
The numbers I have read is that Twitter had $630 million in revenue last year, ad income has been declining dramatically lately for the entire industry, and he just saddled the company with $1 billion a year in debt payments. That won’t leave any capital to develop the super-app he says will be the company’s salvation. None of the math on this works without him investing additional billions from selling his Tesla stock, and why would he do that when he already got financing for the deal?
Martin
@Shalimar: Yep, you got the correct read on this. Twitter is fucked. There’s no revenue model that will bail them out of this – even if they keep their users.
And Musk has no concept of how to develop his ‘super app’. So much of that potential ground is gone. Apple took payments. Nobody has the backing of government to take identity. Maybe 15 years ago that could have been attempted, or maybe Facebook could make a decent go at it given they have 8x the number of users, but they don’t have remotely the developer base they need to pull that off. These dipshits can’t even ship a decent client.
opiejeanne
I’m not going to hold my breath while waiting for Elon to figure out what a hellscape Twitter will become.
Also, I sincerely wish that so many blue check accounts that I follow didn’t retweet every GOP trolling post by the likes of Gym Jordan or the GOP account. I don’t want to see them because they are really just trolling the rest of us.
Martin
The *one* thing that could make Twitter work better and minimize the need for moderation is something Musk proposed, and that was to end anonymity. If every user had their identity exposed, it would sort out a LOT of problems. But I’m not sure how many people would stay on the platform in that case. It might not even survive the attempt, since that’s a policy change that you can’t reverse.
eclare
@Martin: If everyone had their identity exposed, I bet a *lot* of women (including this one) would leave twitter.
HumboldtBlue
@eclare:
Just a lot of people in general.
Barbara
I use my real identity but I never tweet and only rarely reply. I think most account holders are “read only” like me.
cain
@opiejeanne: In a lesser way, they do the same thing that news people are doing – create outrage or some other thing by quoting some GOP person.
cain
@Martin: It’s hard to shit talk if you are a real person. I mean, we shit talk here all the time thank goodness nobody knows my name.. the only non-anonymous person on this site is John Cole and even we don’t know what he is or what he does.
Splitting Image
@cain:
The counter-argument to that is that a lot of Republicans are perfectly happy to shit talk under their own names, That Fucking Guy being the most obvious.
They do it because they will not be held accountable for it by their fellows. Liberals speak carefully because what they say will be held against them, right-wingers let their freak flag fly because they know that what they say won’t be.
James E Powell
I worked pretty hard at avoiding politics on twitter, following only music, movies, and sports accounts, but politics – nearly always right-wing stuff – always found a way in. Also too, racism, misogyny, etc., are not limited to political discussions.
ant
make him at least susceptible to being like “actually you guys were right all along”
The person who wrote this doesn’t get what kind of person “pedo guy” is.
Nothing is ever his fault. And the only mistake he has ever made is admit that he made a mistake.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@cain: Water Girl knows who we are!
Brachiator
@Martin:
The ability to publish anonymously has been a necessity for some since the invention of various means of communication. Some people’s lives depend on it.
I wonder whether Musk is smart enough to avoid destroying Twitter.
Baud
Fixed.
oldster
I don’t care whether Twitter survives, and I would positively prefer that musk lose all of his money and off himself in despair.
But I worry for the Iranians and Ukrainians who are using Twitter to get the word out to the world about their struggles. For them, the site is an important part of their struggle.
If Twitter goes down, then they’ll eventually find a new way — back to FB, or off to insta, or some new thing that will spring up. After some period of signal loss, the Ukrainian meme teams and social media whizzes will kick ass elsewhere.
Anyhow, those are the only people I feel bad for — they and other dissidents around the world who have benefitted from the platform.
Brachiator
Just posted on Twitter.
It will be interesting to see how far he goes into the realms of stupidity.
Paul W.
Yeahhh, there are a variety of hellscaoe options short of “total free for all” and I think we will get them because I 100% disagree Elon will respond to shame or reason now that this is a sunk cost for him.
my only question is if the former guy comes back and how much additional harassment my fellow Twitter users will receive. Especially women who have large followings, unfortunately my wife is one of them so this concerns me as it is far more likely than Musk doing one single thing to actually make Twitter better.
Nukular Biskits
As a frequent user of social media (and occasional troll), I have been on both sides of the posting anonymity fence.
I strongly believe that, to hijack an old cliche’, anonymity breeds contempt, encouraging the worst among us to engage in antisocial/belligerent behavior due to the lack of any means of true accountability.
I’ve also been on the receiving end of cyberstalking, doxxing and thinly-veiled intimidation attempts by what I call “belligerently ignorant” rightwingers who thought it was their GAWD-granted duty to harass anyone who didn’t agree with them.
My take? Social platforms should either require verifiable identity … or they should implement an aggressive moderation regime. Admittedly, neither of those two options are perfect.
geg6
@cain:
Some of us do.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I see Free Speech Absolutism isn’t so much fun for Musk when Musk is the one facing legal problems defending the rights of some perv posting child porn.
Argiope
@Baud: “A free-for-all hellscape” would make a nice rotating tag.
brantl
@Argiope: Seconded!
Matt McIrvin
@Martin: Enforcing real names mostly drives away abuse victims, the politically oppressed and trans people. Fascists like using their real names just fine. We’ve been through this in other platforms.
Geminid
@Barbara: Like you, I post on Twitter under my own name but only reply. I will probably give myself an anonymous handle now.
My presence is pretty minimal with few “likes” and only an occasional retweet. But I’ve discovered that posts about Iran can get a lot of attention.
And I recently made a comment about Israel that got caught up in an argument between an Israel advocate and an Iranian one. Ten days later I was still seeing “someone replied to a reply that mentioned you” notifications, brcause the two guys were still thumping their chests at each other.
Geo Wilcox
I’d never heard Musk speak before but I listened to him talking about making Twitter into some super app. He sounds like my neighbor’s 15 year old son. Lots of ums, likes, and some weird dude bro slang tossed in to make his speaking even more unintelligible than is already is.
Ken
My main hope is that he doesn’t fix the bug (?) that lets you read twitter without joining it. Because I’m not joining it, and I’d miss the deep political analysis of Number10cat and dick_nixon.
Geminid
@Ken: I’d miss Democrats like Ragnarok Lobster, Buffalo Meg, Propane Jane and others. And it looks like Xeni Jardin, who is not so political, has already left the platform at least temporarily.
I will be watching @MichaelPaulauski’s response. He’s an IT professional as well as a very combative advocate against what he refers to as the “Dirtbag Left.”
Princess
I mean, I know a lot of nice left leaning influencer types want Twitter to remain a thing, but all the above posts are wrong and it’s not so much because Trump will be back. It’s because of all the bots he’s going to allow back so he can convince himself Twitter is growing and he didn’t just set 44 billion on fire.
But he did. Sigh, I remember when the internet was useful and fun.
errg
The reason I like Twitter is that you can follow very smart (and often funny) people commenting about things in almost real time. Balloon Juice also fills that role. I think it wouldn’t take that many people for some other site to reach a critical mass, for example if a bunch of commenters and front pagers from here joined a site that would be a great start. I’m hoping that Mastodon can be that site, I just joined, I’m [email protected].
I’d encourage people to give it a try, so far I’m liking it quite a lot.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Barbara: I use my real name. Most writers do. We’re on there because our editors told us we had to have a social media presence and “get our names out there.”
Betty Cracker
Looks like a lot of people have already bailed on Twitter. I’m sticking with it for now on the rationale that almost all big social media platforms are owned/managed by narcissistic douchebags anyway. But if Musk turns it into anything like a 4chan-like cesspool, I’ll delete my account. I’ll truly miss it if Musk ruins it, which seems likely since he’s shit-canning the trust and safety people. I think he’s going to discover that content moderation is a lot harder than he imagines.
prostratedragon
Mondrian painting has been hanging upside down for 75 years
Matt McIrvin
I’m not particularly concerned about Twitter getting worse–I’ve mostly bailed on it as a platform already. I’m concerned about its weird status as a conduit to the mainstream political media. The population at large don’t consider Twitter significant, but people with media influence still, weirdly, do. If it means Trump comes back and his stupid tweets get plastered all over the front pages and TV news again, that’s the first step in putting him back in the White House. If Nazis romp free there it means they once again get normalized in the mainstream-media mind.
lowtechcyclist
@prostratedragon:
Amazon.com: The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian (Bernie Rhodenbarr): 9781724189592: Block, Lawrence: Books
Hamlet of Melnibone
I’m not going to spend time on Twitter when I know it is putting money in Musk’s pocket. It’s a huge waste of time anyway.
SFAW
The “maybe Musk will have an epiphany etc etc” people are almost as delusional as I was when I (briefly) thought in 2016 that TFG was (maybe) running a scam on Rethugs re: his political positions, in order to cater to the “base.”
Ella in New Mexico
Apparently my count-down to being Twitter-banned begins today as I’m sure that will be my consequence for Tweeting Musk is a buffoon with too much money who should just STFU.
I mean, I’ve been put in Twitter jail for much less so
Geminid
@Ella in New Mexico: Ragnarok Lobster spent a few days in Twitter jail this spring. He called it “Twitmo.”
Kay
I de-activated. Although I like lurking on Twitter – I just lurk. I can’t see any situation where Elon Musk having more power ends in something good and I don’t want any part of his project.
Twitter mostly benefits media people and people who use it to promote their own work. One would think they would be more invested in it not turning it into a far Right shithole since they need eyeballs who will buy their work, but I guess not. I don’t use it to make money so have a lot less skin in the game.
Steve in the ATL
@Princess
Don’t fret—all the pr0n is still there!
LiminalOwl
OT but: Breaking news is that someone broke into Nancy Pelosi’s house. She wasnhome, but her husband was “violently assaulted “ and has been hospitalized.
WaterGirl
Have some of you guys not seen the way women are harassed in real life if people know their real names. I expected more self-awareness from the males on this blog. If a man gets harassed, they are not threatened with rape. Female gamers, for instance.
The world is not the same for me and women.
Kropacetic
If he nukes that part of it, he’s done us all a favor; albeit accidentally.
Matt McIrvin
@WaterGirl: I saw this whole “let’s enforce real names” drama play out on Google+ right after it launched. Of course, in their case it was because the parent company saw Google+ primarily as some kind of online identity management platform, which was a terrible mistake. I think that was one of the things that killed it aborning.
The thing that makes 4chan and such a real cesspit is that there’s not even a public concept of a persistent identity that can have a reputation there. I think that’s bad. But forcing it to be the same as the name you use in real life just hurts a lot of people who have legit reasons to be pseudonymous, and does nothing to stop a large class of jerks.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Steve in the ATL: and cats!
Scout211
Racist tweets quickly surface after Musk closes deal.
Kosh III
I’ve never had an account with Twitter and never will.
When we finally buy an electric vehicle it will be Subaru or Rivian or anything but Tesla.
Fok hom! (Afrikaans)
Matt McIrvin
The distinction between “anonymous” and “pseudonymous”, I think, is valuable. I don’t need to know who any of you are in the real world, but if you post consistently under the same identity, then there’s a reputation I can go by and it actually becomes something of value to you. Allowing completely frictionless switching of identities, or having no concept of identity at all, can be corrosive because it leads to trolls you can’t block spamming you with garbage. But if a persistent identity posts garbage you can at least boot it and force the perpetrator to start over. On the other hand, to insist on linking that to a real-world identity puts people in danger and there’s no reason to believe it will only or mostly be for good reasons.
Tenar Arha
The news about trust & safety firing makes me think…Anyone know how to delete all the tweets on my pseudonymous Twitter without resorting to paying a service for it? Or am I going to have to do it in batches manually?
ETA changing “anonymous” to “pseudonymous”
Kyle Rayner
@Steve in the ATL:
God, I wish this was true. These days, my choices for sharing any new porn I paint with the people who want to see it is like… risking using Twitter or just straight up collecting email addresses from my Tumblr followers and sending it as attachments.
SteverinoCT
@prostratedragon:
A similar painting by Mondrian was the cause of an epiphany on my part– I’m not a “modern art” guy, but in my HS textbook was an image of a painting. Just a bunch of colored lines; then I read the title, “Broadway Boogie-Woogie”, and I *got* it. The lights, the traffic, the action. Amazing. This with the tape reminds me of that Vonnegut book with the artist whose house-paint and tape paintings were decaying.
Bill Arnold
@Martin:
You are literally proposing to ban the use of twitter to express dissent vs the powerful and vindictive.
Which includes current and potential employers, criminals, and in other countries includes those who kill or imprison the opposition.
There was a big scandal with Twitter a few years back when it was leaked that the Saudis had infiltrated operations and were supplying IDs of those who supplied real-world ID information to the Saudi intelligence/dissent-suppression services.
Bill Arnold
@cain:
Some of us use our true meat names here. I’ve been thinking of spinning up a secure alt anonymous nym but have not.