"we'll be greeted as liberators as soon as we can find the shadowban off switch," david sacks cries in a nasal tenor, railing a huge line of 2-CB and phenylpiracetam off of a rack of dying servers
— smub (@revhowardarson) November 19, 2022
Cranky conservative, expert on the former Soviet union:
For all of you who think Musk is some agent of Saudi investors or other nefarious actors who you think want to destroy Twitter, consider this: They're probably wincing right now. States with agendas want a strong and authoritative Twitter, not a joke site. Bear with me. /1
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) April 23, 2023
If your goal is to spread your agenda, you want the venue to be respected, full of dependable sources, so that your influence operations can be one more among those sources. If you’re putting out bullshit, you want it on the same rack as the NYT and WaPo, not tabloids. /2
You also want to use your influence with the owner so that when you slip pollution into the info stream, it doesn’t get lost. There are things regimes want to communicate. You want to create sources that *look* dependable and real. /3
Now, I get it that there’s a theory that what you really want is to create a shitstorm so chaotic that no one knows what’s what, but that’s not nearly as a useful and you’re not gonna spend billions just to let a child troll everyone. /4
My point is that what you’re seeing right now doesn’t help bad regimes. Musk is now giving gold badges to established media, but the rest of the site (where influence ops would need some stability and reliability) is now much less useful. /5
For the people who read tabloids and believe anything anyway, nothing here will make a difference. But the ability to impact a reasonable number of reasonable people is reduced when everything is a “look at me” pants-drop from Musk. /6
So, as usual, I’m suggesting that all this is not a plot, but merely that Musk has no idea what he’s doing, and this is a lot of panic and chaos because he can’t figure out (1) why people won’t do what he’s ordering them to do and (s) why he can’t make money out of this site. /7x
what actually happens is twitter takes the final jump from marginally useful platform with okay enough signposts to pointless platform littered with imposters and bad vibes nobody wants to use anymore https://t.co/meKIBhWZsO
— kilgore trout, blue check blocker (@KT_So_It_Goes) April 20, 2023
the network effects that lock people into the ecosystem are the same network effects that drive engagement stagnation once enough people have had enough of your shit and nobody new is coming along because the network is too fucking convoluted to put in the work to get inside
— kilgore trout, blue check blocker (@KT_So_It_Goes) April 20, 2023
that’s not any algorithm’s fault, it’s that my maximum reach is limited by the number of weirdos who want to read my trash. there’s only so many and new ones are not coming along because it’s now a closed ecosystem. that’s life in a market baby
— kilgore trout, blue check blocker (@KT_So_It_Goes) April 20, 2023
there’s a ceiling for every variety of account, some are higher than others, some are real real low. you can juice it catturd style, or go full blue or q anon, or you can be a weird anti-anti something, or you can be a pro wrestling gif account. but there’s a saturation point
— kilgore trout, blue check blocker (@KT_So_It_Goes) April 20, 2023
you have to go back to, like, the feudal era to find people with the kind of relative wealth and power he has who are this shallowly reckless and vapid. like, princes who are part of the fifth generation of inbreeding. pic.twitter.com/9V4Bmky6jJ
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) April 24, 2023
like, men and women (but, let’s get real, mostly men) who just have absolutely no concept of why their wealth and power demand some degree level of maturity and responsibility, or, at the very least, public restraint.
150 years ago, men like him would’ve shipped off to serve as some meaningless military figurehead for awhile, where they’d at least have to *pretend* that gravitas and seriousness were important, if only to maintain the respect of their peers.
the main thing that separates this era from that one is that he can’t realistically go out and buy a private army now, but don’t think he hasn’t considered it, and he may yet try.
there are plenty of more modern failures and fuckups you can cite, but his wealth relative to even other very wealthy people is what really pushes it way further back in time.
like, “late hapsburg with hair transplants” level of fuckup.
I dunno, it used to be that if you fucked up running your castle bad enough it got burned down by peasants or captured by the duke next door, I think what makes our current crop of millionaires so vapid is that none of them are within ten degrees of anything real.
— Nathan Goldwag 🇺🇦 (@GoldwagNathan) April 24, 2023
NotMax
Citizen Vain.
//
opiejeanne
@NotMax: Ha!
Yutsano
To be fair, we really have no idea why he stopped being a scion of an apartheid emerald mine to come to the US. I mean, he was so ridiculously wealthy back there as it was. Was it just to pass up his dad? Mission accomplished Elmu. Go home.
West of the Rockies
By what measures can Twitter’s collapse be measured? Presumably the estimated value of the site is greatly reduced. But are there millions fewer users? Is ad revenue down?
We heard people say the platform would crumble quickly with so many layoffs, but it still is up and running. Is its collapse wishful thinking?
Splitting Image
I don’t think you have to go all the way back to the feudal era to find somebody as rich, vapid, and incompetent as Musk.
Consider Leopold of Belgium for example. He persuaded the government of Belgium to hand over Congo, including all of its land, minerals, and people, to him as his personal property. That adds up to a heck of a lot of money. Leopold’s plans for turning Congo into a paradise ended up being only partially fulfilled. (He got as far as reducing the entire population to slavery to farm rubber for export and support his paradise-making bureaucracy.)
A little further back you get to Versailles. Marie Antoinette was probably as stupid and vapid as popular imagination suggests, but the more I study the era, the more I think that she might have been the most intelligent person in the entire nobility. Half of them were undermining the royals for their own intrigues, including members of Louis XVI’s immediate family. Nothing bad could come of that, right?
NotMax
@West of the Rockies
Here ya go. From the end of March
AlaskaReader
Musk can pound sand.
Instead of feeding that, ….I’ve got good news:
In a landmark decision, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled Friday that partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional under the Alaska Constitution’s equal protection doctrine.
The blatant Republican orchestrated gerrymandering that led up to this decision wasn’t even attempted to be disguised by the wholly dishonest wingers who carried out the injustice. Binkley and his sidekicks didn’t even put up any pretense to what they were about.
Read the whole thing.
There’s value in this decision that can benefit activists fighting gerrymandering and voter suppression in other states.
(…working now to prevent Marcum’s confirmation to the University of Alaska Board of Regents)
Anne Laurie
If you believe Dear Ol’ Dad (exercise left to the reader), Elon was ‘too depressed’ to survive in post-apartheid South Africa; he got shipped off to another colony (Canada), where there wouldn’t be so many scary… troublemakers. (Such is the way of the soutpiel.)
We also got Peter Thiel and David Sacks under the same rules. Toughening immigration rules against White South Africans raised under apartheid is a change I could *absolutely* get behind.
Someday, theses will be written about whether Elon is the way he is because his old man rejected him (and his mom, in consequence, fiercely defended his every flaw)… or whether Errol rejected his firstborn for being, as the Anglo-aristocracy would phrase it, not quite right from the start.
eclare
@Splitting Image: King Leopold’s Ghost was a very sad but important story of what happened in Congo. Highly recommended book.
Splitting Image
@eclare:
Thanks. I have put it on my to-read list.
rikyrah
The thing is..Musk has done everything he could to damage what made Twitter special. Ruined every good part of the app🙄
OzarkHillbilly
I can do without reading those psychoanalyses, thank you very much.
OzarkHillbilly
Republicans ‘glorify political violence’ by embracing extreme gun culture
Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot and killed two people at an anti-racism protest, was guest of honor at Idaho Republican party fundraiser
I’m not even gonna read the article. Imagine for a second, if you can, looking at that vapid face and thinking, “My hero…”
different-church-lady
@Anne Laurie: I’d rather see a thesis on why “Be asshole, win prizes” seems to have become our society’s only operating principle.
OzarkHillbilly
And there you have it. It is Catholic doctrine that women should not be allowed to travel.
Yah, I kinda have to agree.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Thou shall not fly.
mrmoshpotato
@OzarkHillbilly:
Fixed.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: Citizen Assclown Manbaby
Frank Wilhoit
@Yutsano: “…But as it is…! My patience fails! Go out and govern New South Wales!”
Frankensteinbeck
@West of the Rockies:
Outages are 10x pre-Musk levels and there have been numerous bugs, some big and scary. The site hasn’t actually permanently stopped, though.
EDIT – And, full disclosure, I thought it would have by now.
OzarkHillbilly
Florida prosecutor investigates shots at couple lost while delivering groceries
Fuck the NRA.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
As brave people do.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Yah, my first thought too.
OzarkHillbilly
I had no idea that fire breathing dragons were a part of Tom Sawyer’s world.
evodevo
@Yutsano:
How about the era of deKlerk and Mandela? given Elon’s favoritism for white supremacy, I’d say that played a big part in his emigration…
eldorado
elon has accomplished a major, if not the primary goal of making twitter unusable for left leaning users and has diminished their reach and influence . it doesn’t have to be an effective tool for the newly boosted authoritarians because they have plenty of other outlets for that
but hey, the nazi bar thrives on attention so maybe a few more posts a day and we can get it back into the top 10
Shalimar
@eldorado: It will be a long wait before DeSantis launches his Star Wars Cantina-inspired “Nazi Bar”, the prime attraction in his new theme park next to Disney World. Twitter is the only place we can point and laugh right now.
The Moar You Know
The two “dog people” sites I frequent both decided last week that their main source of income/clicks, Twitter, is on the way out and have both fired up their old email distro lists.
Finally!
But in seriousness Twitter’s demise, which I have no personal problem with whatsoever as every form of social media is part of the problem in America today, is going to ruin some decent people financially and will really hurt/impede the work of quite a few animal rescue organizations, among others. I acknowledge that; but will still be cheering as Elon’s Nazi Bar burns to the fucking ground.
catmandid
The biggest mystery is how anyone still believes that Melon is playing some kind of 4-D chess when he’s clearly trying to play Monopoly on a Hi-Ho! Cherry-O board.
Ruckus
@West of the Rockies:
A lot of the people who invest(ed) time and effort at/in twit are still there, like kilgore trout or golikehellmachine. But a lot of people don’t show up any more. They still have accounts, (like me) but have stopped showing up, (like me). Since elon started destroying the place I’ve gone from 30-60 minutes a day to maybe 10 minutes per week and often zero. Sure there are still a lot of people using the site but the number keeps dropping. Especially because he keeps screwing up, making it even less useful but more his own toy. 44 billion is a lot to pay for a toy that he breaks a little/lot more every time he tries to do whatever the hell it is that he’s trying to do. He’s making it in his own shadow. And it shows. And the funny part? No one expected any different from the spoiled rich kid.
Ruckus
@Splitting Image:
It might be the old adage of the ages. Money is good, too much money is anything but. I’d say most people with lots of money – and I met a few when I worked in professional sports – are spoiled brats who think even their shit smells like money. And the thing is, it does. That does not make it smell good. It just smells like rich shit. What’s the old saying – Money corrupts, too much money corrupts absolutely. Or something like that.
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
It is absolutely nothing new. They become those assholes because they came into money. Especially if they did nothing but be born into it, like elon. Sure he’s made more with what he started with but he started with a lot, born with a diamond spoon.
kmax
A Twit thread used to bring in 300+ comments.
Now 30+.
Ads also down 90%.
A measure of where the Tweet shop is headed? or are they already there?
The snark was fun for a while but now it just seems sad (and somewhat boring).
GibberJack
Oh dear, that’s a gonna prick an apartheid princeling’s notoriously thin skin…
It’s as if having billions of dollars also reveals who you really are.