Pedo guy megalomaniacal manchild officially owns Twitter

[Chadatog]

25 minutes ago, Brian said:

Devolver Digital lololol

Still the best publisher that has an E3 show

[legend]

13 hours ago, Comet said:

So I checked out Mastodon and it seems like there’s nothing there at all. I suppose I may have to stick with Reddit then 

 

It's not polished and has a content problem, I agree. That said, make sure you are reading the "federated" timeline for something more similar to the Twitter timeline. If you read "home" you'll only get content from people you're following, which, especially at this stage, is basically nothing.

[Firewithin]

3 hours ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

We've discussed BlueSky already and because it's a "framework" rather than an actual platform, we're pretty sure that his intent is to eventually sell it to the Muskrat as replacement for Twitter's existing architecture.

 

Also, it's goddamned Jack Dorsey.

 

didnt these two dimwits have a falling out or something?

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

26 minutes ago, Firewithin said:

 

didnt these two dimwits have a falling out or something?

 

No idea, but Dorsey was a pretty big cheerleader in favor of Muskrat's takeover.

[TwinIon]

While I trust The Verge, I also don't think that Musk can be trusted to follow through, even if he did indeed order something to be done.

 

However, if they do go through with charging people to be verified, it could well be a stress test for the resilience of the platform. As I've long argued, it's almost a mistake of history that Twitter somehow became the default place for news to happen online. It's a poor technical platform with significant limitations and a user base much smaller than its competitors. Looking at it from a distance, it seems like there is little reason that it should have the place it currently does in modern discourse. I also think that its unique position is entirely dependent on those users Musk is now trying to monetize.

 

Charging for verification seems to me like it carries with it two primary risks. Should users decide to not pay, even if they continue to use the service as before, it'll make the experience for everyone else worse in making it less clear if a given source can be trusted. The bigger concern is if those users leave the platform. If twitter loses the interest of journalists, academics, and politicians, it could quickly lose the only thing that keeps it relevant at all. I think those users generate far more for twitter than $20/m.

 

Now, I do think that there is some subset of people that actually generate money on Twitter and for whom $20 a month is easily worth it, but I think that's a very small percentage of verified users. This isn't Instagram, where a big follower count can quickly lean to significant income, directly or indirectly from the site.

 

If anything, it should almost be the opposite. It should be the regular users who should want to pay to access the content generated by the power users. We've never seen a subscription model like that succeed at scale in social networking, but it feels much more plausible than the reverse.

[Kal-El814]

The odds that news outlets are going to be willing to pay for verification for all of their journalists seem pretty slim. I don’t know how this doesn’t cause fake news to proliferate as confusion abounds regarding whether or not something is a legislate source or employee of a paper / broadcast network.

 

It’s a stupid fucking idea.

[Jason]

3 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

I don’t know how this doesn’t cause fake news to proliferate as confusion abounds regarding whether or not something is a legislate source or employee of a paper / broadcast network.

 

I've seen someone point out that blowing up Twitter majorly increases the extent to which politicians et al can't effectively communicate with the public without going through a rightwing media bubble filter. So if you're trying to communicate with the public, the rightwing media filter will either just not let it through, or massively intentionally garble it.

[Jwheel86]

6 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

The odds that news outlets are going to be willing to pay for verification for all of their journalists seem pretty slim. I don’t know how this doesn’t cause fake news to proliferate as confusion abounds regarding whether or not something is a legislate source or employee of a paper / broadcast network.

 

It’s a stupid fucking idea.

 

Journalist friend of mine: "imagine paying to be cyber bullied"

 

[Firewithin]

5 minutes ago, Jwheel86 said:

 

Journalist friend of mine: "imagine paying to be cyber bullied"

 

im sure thats somebodies fetish 

[Ghost_MH]

19 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

While I trust The Verge, I also don't think that Musk can be trusted to follow through, even if he did indeed order something to be done.

 

However, if they do go through with charging people to be verified, it could well be a stress test for the resilience of the platform. As I've long argued, it's almost a mistake of history that Twitter somehow became the default place for news to happen online. It's a poor technical platform with significant limitations and a user base much smaller than its competitors. Looking at it from a distance, it seems like there is little reason that it should have the place it currently does in modern discourse. I also think that its unique position is entirely dependent on those users Musk is now trying to monetize.

 

Charging for verification seems to me like it carries with it two primary risks. Should users decide to not pay, even if they continue to use the service as before, it'll make the experience for everyone else worse in making it less clear if a given source can be trusted. The bigger concern is if those users leave the platform. If twitter loses the interest of journalists, academics, and politicians, it could quickly lose the only thing that keeps it relevant at all. I think those users generate far more for twitter than $20/m.

 

Now, I do think that there is some subset of people that actually generate money on Twitter and for whom $20 a month is easily worth it, but I think that's a very small percentage of verified users. This isn't Instagram, where a big follower count can quickly lean to significant income, directly or indirectly from the site.

 

If anything, it should almost be the opposite. It should be the regular users who should want to pay to access the content generated by the power users. We've never seen a subscription model like that succeed at scale in social networking, but it feels much more plausible than the reverse.

 

This is what I don't understand about this move. Twitter's one and only value comes from the public interaction with those verified sources. These are the people that platforms like Twitch and YouTube pay to remain. Instead, Musk is looking to charge those very same people.

 

I can't help but think Musk overestimates how much most people care about recognition. The vast majority aren't narcissists and I doubt many of them would even care for the check.

[Guest]

The value of Twitter to media brands is certainly more than $20 per employee per month, otherwise they wouldn’t have their staff spend hours a day engaging with the platform.

[Guest]

Also, the paid verification idea didn’t come from Musk, his friend Jason Calcanis has been selling him on it for months now. Calcanis is currently at Twitter HQ assisting Musk’s team with the transition, so not just a buddy who made a suggestion. Dude is crafting policy for the company.

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

1 hour ago, sblfilms said:

The value of Twitter to media brands is certainly more than $20 per employee per month, otherwise they wouldn’t have their staff spend hours a day engaging with the platform.

Big media can afford this but smaller outfits going through round after round of layoffs and smaller following (~5/10k followers) independent/freelance journalists really can’t

[mclumber1]

2 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

Big media can afford this but smaller outfits going through round after round of layoffs and independent/freelance journalists really can’t

This is as lame of an excuse as businesses saying they can't afford to pay their workers $15 an hour.

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

4 minutes ago, mclumber1 said:

This is as lame of an excuse as businesses saying they can't afford to pay their workers $15 an hour.

Let me rephrase: for example the Richmond times dispatch could afford it even with layoffs but they won’t because the point is to bleed the paper for everything it is worth by the private equity vultures who own it

[Firewithin]

cant wait until user TRUMPWON42069 has a checkmark and taken "seriously" over actual normal sane people 

[TwinIon]

3 hours ago, sblfilms said:

The value of Twitter to media brands is certainly more than $20 per employee per month, otherwise they wouldn’t have their staff spend hours a day engaging with the platform.

I don't entirely disagree, but much of what makes Twitter interesting is verified people that may be part of an institution but aren't always communicating on behalf of that institution. Be it a film critic or an investigative reporter, those people use their accounts quite differently than they might an official account from their employer. If someone has their subscription paid for by their employer, all the sudden that changes how they use the service, probably for the worse.

[TwinIon]

This piece from the Times is pretty bleak for Twitter. Thanks to being the biggest leveraged buyout of a tech company ever, Twitter's interest expense went from $50 million a year, to $1 billion a year. That's a whole lot for a company that hasn't made money 8 of the last 10 years.

[Comet]

5 hours ago, legend said:

 

It's not polished and has a content problem, I agree. That said, make sure you are reading the "federated" timeline for something more similar to the Twitter timeline. If you read "home" you'll only get content from people you're following, which, especially at this stage, is basically nothing.

Thank you, this made a notable difference 

[Nokra]

I found a relevant article from The Atlantic that I'll post a couple snippets from, not with the intention of trying to change anyone else's mind about Twitter necessarily, but more as a discussion point that I found interesting.  

 

 

 

...

 

This is, of course, as much their right as it is Musk’s to buy the platform and run it as he pleases. But I think leaving is a mistake. Twitter, so far, is still Twitter: infuriating and fascinating, disgusting and enlightening, full of very nice people and intelligent interlocutors, along with the usual cohort of angry losers, bored juveniles, and wannabe keyboard heroes. Musk’s ownership isn’t going to change that. So I will put in a word here for a calm and measured response to his arrival.

 

If we were to avoid every forum or product owned by a reprehensible narcissist, we’d live a pretty simple life. Staying on Twitter does not mean you approve of Musk any more than reading The Washington Post means you’re a fan of Jeff Bezos. As my Atlantic colleague Norm Ornstein puts it, he can stipulate that Elon Musk is “a disgrace and a partner with the murderous Saudi regime”—the Saudis are now the second-largest shareholder in Twitter after Musk, and they are crowing about it—but still realize that many of us have “built a community of friendships that [we] would never have found otherwise,” including people who are “interesting, morally strong and admirable.” Norm does not want to lose that, and neither do I.

 

More to the point, if you believe that it is important to combat disinformation, spread reliable information, and in general try to defend some basic notions of civility, social media is an important arena for doing all of those things. Abandoning this part of the public square to vandals and extremists—who became more vocal on the platform practically from the moment Musk took over—accomplishes nothing.

 

...

 

Still: When the world’s richest man (and the Saudis, among others), own a huge slice of the public space, it matters. It would matter even if Musk did not have the Twitter persona, as he unfortunately does, of a shitposting teenager. Musk, if he is to be believed, plans to loosen the restrictions on Twitter—again, as is his right—to allow more disinformation. Yesterday, he even tweeted (then deleted) links to a discredited conspiracy theory about the Paul Pelosi assault. He may allow Trump back on the platform.

But all of that makes it imperative to stay, not go. Disinformation and trolling works best when the malefactors who engage in it create an impression of being a reliable and trustworthy majority, when they can say that “everybody knows this.” Abandoning such places out of some misplaced sense of moral rectitude simply clears the field for more lies and mischief. The trolls delighting in Musk’s purchase are a very small fraction of the world—and we should not encourage the delusion that there are more of them than there are normal and decent human beings.
 

 

 

TL;DR: The argument is that, at least for now, Twitter is still Twitter, and abandoning it as a platform does more harm than good because it will create yet another echo chamber for idiots, lies, and conspiracy theorists. 

 

I think I agree in principle, though it's hard to see how Twitter won't become a shithole with fewer restrictions, since a very small minority of idiots can flood the zone faster than people can clear up the bullshit. 

 

The article also does talk about not engaging with trolls, complete fools, the inconvincible, etc. but we all know how well that works.  

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

Sources: Elon Musk has pulled more than 50 of his trusted Tesla employees, mostly software engineers from the Autopilot team, to help at Twitter

WWW.TECHMEME.COM

---

Lora Kolodny / CNBC: Sources: Elon Musk has pulled more than 50 of his trusted Tesla employees, mostly software engineers from the Autopilot team, to help at Twitter

If you can write code to drive a car you can write code just as easily for a dumb social media site *
 

[Ricofoley]

Excited for my phone to somehow crash into a tree when I refresh my timeline

[Kal-El814]

12 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

Sources: Elon Musk has pulled more than 50 of his trusted Tesla employees, mostly software engineers from the Autopilot team, to help at Twitter

WWW.TECHMEME.COM

---

Lora Kolodny / CNBC: Sources: Elon Musk has pulled more than 50 of his trusted Tesla employees, mostly software engineers from the Autopilot team, to help at Twitter

If you can write code to drive a car you can write code just as easily for a dumb social media site *
 

 

Trusted = best at ball fondling?

[chakoo]

Looks like 25% of the workforce will be cut in first round layoffs

Elon Musk plans Twitter layoffs with new team - The Washington Post

WWW.WASHINGTONPOST.COM

---

Elon Musk plans to cut Twitter's workforce just days after taking control of the company.

 

non paywall version

Elon Musk plans Twitter layoffs with new team - The Washington Post

WEB.ARCHIVE.ORG

---

Elon Musk plans to cut Twitter's workforce just days after taking control of the company.

 

[Ricofoley]

Jackie Davalos of Bloomberg says the number of people on the trust and safety team with the ability to remove posts is down from "hundreds" to "about 15." They have a paywalled story up.

 

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

WWW.BLOOMBERG.COM

 

[ort]

It will be hilarious if twitter completely crumbles into a total ghost town in a matter of months. I’m starting to think that may actually happen.

[Spork3245]

Oh my

[Comet]

1 hour ago, Spork3245 said:

Oh my

Lol I just watched the Always Sunny podcast where they go over this episode 😂

[Ghost_MH]

 

We're seeing more celebs jump on the bandwagon.

[Firewithin]

i mean most who arent grifters/bootlickers can clearly see how fucking stupid this idea is for any amount

[SuperSpreader]

The fact that this business strategy is happening in the open says it all. Typically you study this internally and have a rollout plan. Not "HAY WILL Y'ALL PAY $20.00!? Ok how bout 8?"

[CitizenVectron]

20 minutes ago, SuperSpreader said:

The fact that this business strategy is happening in the open says it all. Typically you study this internally and have a rollout plan. Not "HAY WILL Y'ALL PAY $20.00!? Ok how bout 8?"

 

"My buddy Chad who works in Tesla engineering said it was a great idea!"

[finaljedi]

58 minutes ago, SuperSpreader said:

The fact that this business strategy is happening in the open says it all. Typically you study this internally and have a rollout plan. Not "HAY WILL Y'ALL PAY $20.00!? Ok how bout 8?"

 

I don't think his revenue generating acumen is very good in general.  Tesla sells cars to upper middle class people as a sort of fashionable status symbol and charges an insane amount for a software patch that turns on autonomy that will never really work.  Even with that apparently they aren't profitable without selling carbon credits.  SpaceX is propped up by tax dollars and what seems to be 31 rounds of investment funding.

 

So yeah, not terribly surprised he doesn't get how to make Twitter make money while not relying on advertisers who are hesitant to hawk their wares on a "free speech" platform.

[Spork3245]

1 hour ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

We're seeing more celebs jump on the bandwagon.

I don’t know if it’s real, but there’s a Musk reply where he says something like “We can’t ever be profitable with advertisers alone! How about $8/month?”

[CitizenVectron]

I just don't see how Musk can have Twitter survive even a single year with their new debt servicing payments of $1 billion/yr (and their income is only $630 million/yr).