Twitter… what happens next

[Wade1865]

4 minutes ago, DMC said:

Sure you can.  You posed a hypothetical that hasn't been realized and ignored a glaring logical aspect of such a hypothetical.

DMC -- it wasn't a hypothetical, it was a fact. If Elon lost all invested into Twitter, Elon would still retain the top spot. You introduced a hypothetical.

[Varysblackfyre321]

46 minutes ago, Week said:

Cool, let me know what is response is. Pics plz.

You seem to be very concerned with giving him advice whereas the rest of us are reading the tea leaves. i.e., What is a plausible conclusion based on his verbalized intent (inconsistent), actions (inconsistent with his verbalized intent), the reaction and trust of users, and how the business model is likely to change based on all those (and other) factors.

The imagination of Musk...? My god. /Simpsons meme of weird nerds diving in front of a gun aimed a 'Musk'

How dare you peasant, think you can offer judgement against you’re better, the noble Musk,

4 minutes ago, Old Zog said:

With the exception of the number of employees, these are goals, not plans. Musk does have a habit of setting ambitions goals and not reaching them, so I hope you'll understand if many of us remain skeptical of his ability to deliver on these goals.

Including acquiring Twitter. He tried really hard to get out of the deal for months, because he recognized it’d being a black hole for money.

 

[Varysblackfyre321]

8 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Continue to undermine free speech, fair elections, democracy and grift the public globally, while spreading LIES, the conviction that cruelty is The Sport t

@Heartofice hey what did you think of him tweeting conspiracy theories on Paul pelosi’s assault?

[DMC]

7 minutes ago, Wade1865 said:

DMC -- it wasn't a hypothetical, it was a fact. If Elon lost all invested into Twitter, Elon would still retain the top spot. You introduced a hypothetical.

No, it's a hypothetical.  It's right there in your description of it.  If Elon lost all invested into Twitter.  And if that happened we shouldn't assume the value of all his other assets will remain constant.  That's an absurd assumption -- and it's particularly ludicrous to pose it as fact.  The only "fact" is that the difference between Musk's current estimated wealth and the second highest ranked person is greater than what he invested in Twitter.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

Just to chime in, his interest expense on Twitter is MASSIVE.  I’m really curious to see if his business model can generate enough liquidity to service the debt.  And if it can’t, I think he understands the doctrine of sunk cost in which case the lender consortium will own Twitter in about 5.5 years.  

 

[Wade1865]

1 minute ago, DMC said:

No, it's a hypothetical.  It's right there in your description of it.  If Elon lost all invested into Twitter.  And if that happened we shouldn't assume the value of all his other assets will remain constant.  That's an absurd assumption -- and it's particularly ludicrous to pose it as fact.  The only "fact" is that the difference between Musk's current estimated wealth and the second highest ranked person is greater than what he invested in Twitter.

DMC -- that rings true, thanks.

[LongRider]

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

he wants to introduce Crypto into verification processes to allow a much more secure platform that links into payments as well.

Crypto, secure?   

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

8 minutes ago, LongRider said:

Crypto, secure?   

Hey he can sell us all NFTs of photos of his Tesla in Orbit…

[Knight Of Winter]

For someone who thinks Twitter has a record of stupid bans for arbitrary reasons, Musk's proclaimed ability to stand by the idea of free speech would nominally be a good thing. I say nominally, because in reality I don't think much things will change. Twitter is far boo big, far too complex and far too popular system for any person to change it overnight, even if that person is the new owner and CEO. I think both left-wingers (who are afraid of Twitter becoming new alt-right breeding ground) and right-wingers (who seem to think Musk as their champion heralding new era of conservative revolution) are vastly off the mark.

As to what of Musk's motives are - I honestly have no clue about it. What he presents himself to be is laid-back provocateur with delusions of grandeur who is desperate for attention and constantly flirting with borderline crackpot ideas - but underneath it all I don't doubt there is an intelligent and shrewd businessman with strictly rational and calculating logic underpinning most of his actions. Whether his true goal in buying Twitter is ideological, economical or a mixture of both - I don't want to begin to guess.

Far more interesting discussion is one of Twitter's monopoly in its intended market. Whether you think "old" Twitter did some stupid stuff or "new" Twitter will start doing stupid stuff under Musk's regime - core problem underpinning all of it is that it has basically no competition. There is not another billions-users-wide platform for exchange of short messages and statement. If you're pissed with e.g. quality of your car, you can always sell it and buy a new model from different manufacturer. Whereas if you're pissed with Twitter, you can either...retreat from that model of online communication entirely or remain pissed on Twitter. If you want to hear and be heard by billions in form of quick messages - Twitter has no serious competition, and that kind of nigh-monopoly can't be good for end users.

I'm just diagnosing a problem here, for I have no idea of how to solve it, if it's even solvable and if yes, should if be solved. All I can say is that I suspect current model is flawed, and don't know how to have better one while still retaining basic principles of democracy, ownership rights etc.

 

[Kalbear]

So another delusional part of this is the idea that people will routinely pay $8 a month to verify themselves. He wants to monetize the entire userbase, and is using that as a way to inflate the value of the proposal. 

Anyone who has done any Free to play games knows the outcome here. The amount of people who will pay for a F2P service is, hopefully, around 2-4%. And that's if you're doing well; many F2P services get far less conversion and far more bounce. Many very sketchy F2P games will say 'imagine if all the people who use this spend this much!' and that's a great way to identify what games are not actually legitimately run businesses or have any idea of how to run them. 

BUT, that also implies that the other 96% of the people stick around, and here's the biggest fallacy Musk is making here. Part of the reason that people use Twitter is for news from actual sources that they care about. As mentioned above political discourse and news discourse dominate Twitter relative to other platforms. The blue check is useful there because it verifies that the person tweeting is that actual person. But if you take that away and make it simply a prestige value? The value of that checkmark drops significantly to the rest of the user base. There is no real value in using Twitter to listen to Nate Silver discuss things if you have to spend minutes trying to figure out who the 'real' Nate Silver is, least of all by Nate Silver himself. 

The features that Musk mentions - things like prioritization of replies, fewer ads, etc - those are things that he might appreciate getting. But it's not things that most people are clamoring for. It's especially not what most people who are having conversations with other blue checks are clamoring for - Matt Y talking with Ezra Klein in a thread has a value in prioritization of those two people, but Matt Y talking with Ezra Klein and having that be the same priority as Catturd1 replying to Matt Y is not actually that useful. 

[Varysblackfyre321]

Just now, Knight Of Winter said:

For someone who thinks Twitter has a record of stupid bans for arbitrary reasons,

What reasons do you find arbitrary?

And are those reasons bad?

1 minute ago, Knight Of Winter said:

I say nominally, because in reality I don't think much things will change. Twitter is far boo big, far too complex and far too popular system for any person to change it overnight, even if that person is the new owner and CEO. I think both left-wingers (who are afraid of Twitter becoming new alt-right breeding ground) and right-wingers (who seem to think Musk as their champion heralding new era of conservative revolution) are vastly off the mark.

 

Potentially.

[Zorral]

8 minutes ago, Knight Of Winter said:

Twitter is far boo big, far too complex and far too popular system for any person to change it overnight, even if that person is the new owner and CEO.

You're wrong about that.  We see it happen all the time with institutions that even bigger, more complex and popular than this -- nations.

Also this ignores the fact that twitter is already a massive influencer for toxicity, lies, hate and violence, not to mention racism and sexism and political organization for bring down governments.

[Varysblackfyre321]

16 minutes ago, LongRider said:

Crypto, secure?   

I’d be sad by all the people who’ve been scammed through crypto and NFts if they weren’t usually insufferable human beings.

[Varysblackfyre321]

9 minutes ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

There is no real value in using Twitter to listen to Nate Silver discuss things if you have to spend minutes trying to figure out who the 'real' Nate Silver is, least of all by Nate Silver himself. 

 

I just imagine people trying to ruin certain celebrities or politicos reputations by tweeting as the verified x.

Idk it seems like something that could lead to musk getting in more legal trouble.

[polishgenius]

19 minutes ago, Knight Of Winter said:

but underneath it all I don't doubt there is an intelligent and shrewd businessman with strictly rational and calculating logic underpinning most of his actions.

 

Why wouldn't you doubt that? He provides evidence to doubt it all the time.

[Knight Of Winter]

14 minutes ago, Zorral said:

You're wrong about that.  We see it happen all the time with institutions that even bigger, more complex and popular than this -- nations.

I don't disagree with you; however that's not what I was saying. I didn't state it's hard for nations (or Twitter) to change, just that it's very difficult for single individual to do much to enact that change in any system. You can look at nations as ever-changing flux of individuals, groups, information and ideas constantly appearing and disappearing on a public scene. Some people die or become disinterested in politics. New people come of age or become political. Some groups gain popularity, other groups fall into obscurity. Yesterday's crackpot ideas become mainstream, or vice versa. Random things influence public opinion in one way or the other. Of course nations change - otherwise we'd still be stuck in the Stone Age. That's not point of contention.

Whereas, if you compare day before Musk's acquisition of Twitter and day after it - you'll see almost everything remained the same. It's users remained the same, it's staff remained the same, it's low and mid level management is the same - only thing that changed is the very person at the top. Twitter will change in some form for sure - in this age of ever-increasing flow of information and ideas everything changes at a hereto unprecedented rate, and so will Twitter. What I'm saying if that change will happen mostly independent of Musk. I'm saying that despite his position as new CEO, Twitter is far too big and complex for him and him alone to be a major agent of change.

[Varysblackfyre321]

6 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

 

Why wouldn't you doubt that? He provides evidence to doubt it all the time.

Tbf He’s probably not the worst incarnation of his critics of being a complete blubbering idiot or the best interpretation of his fans a genius who will save humanity and revolutionize civilization.

 

[Week]

4 minutes ago, Knight Of Winter said:

Whereas, if you compare day before Musk's acquisition of Twitter and day after it - you'll see almost everything remained the same. It's users remained the same, it's staff remained the same, it's low and mid level management is the same - only thing that changed is the very person at the top. 

He fired much of the leadership -- allegedly for 'cause' to avoid golden parachutes -- and is cutting significant numbers of jobs. His viewpoints of the moderation policy and account banning is well known.

All of the above does not happen in a vacuum. From personal experience across witnessing, being impacted by (fortunately never riffed though picking up the job of colleagues), and then planning significant organizational change (significant reorga, relocations, riffs, overall business transformation etc) -- there is a profound impact at all levels. Managers, VPs, and individual contributors responses run the gamut of refusing to do their job, fearing for their job, schmoozing and angling to expand spheres of influence, etc. etc. The company does not function the same way - it simply cannot.

If I saw the top leaders in my company fired for some bullshit and treated terribly -- I would not expect to have a very happy future at that company. Fortunately, that would be antithetical to our core values -- something that some companies actually take seriously.

[polishgenius]

1 minute ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

He’s probably not the worst incarnation of his critics of being a complete blubbering idiot

 

Remember when he wanted to heroball his way to glory by building a rescue submarine from scratch to save those kids in the cave, but when one of the rescue divers on scene told him he wasn't being helpful he publicly called him a nonce? 

Remember when he spent much of the pandemic spreading Covid misinformation and forcing workers to go in to his factories even if there were local lockdown orders?

Remember when he claimed Ian M Banks would have been anti-union because there are no unions in the Culture series?

Remember when Tesla investors had to tell him to stop tweeting for a bit coz he kept posting stupid shit that was tanking their stock?

Remember when he called his kid X Æ A-12?

Remember when he thought a system of underground roads would solve traffic problems?

Like, I'm sure he can tie his own shoes, and he's got a certain cleverness in hiring clever people and persuading them to work on his projects, but the man is a buffoon. 

[Kalbear]

Yeah. Nations - at least developed ones - often have bureaucracy, institutions and tradition that makes change hard.

Twitter is a web based company that can change things easily and quickly. And is doing so! The idea that things haven't changed when users have dropped already by 2-3%, we are already seeing more abuse and more previously banned behavior. This take that things can't change quickly is not based on facts.