Elon Musk

[gordondaviesmoustache]

Do you think he did it on purpose? Just to show how rich and powerful he is?

I think like most of us when we have a good run, we think we’re fucking infallible - and we’re not.

 

[Iassel]

Do you think he did it on purpose? Just to show how rich and powerful he is?

It’s public domain that he made the offer as a joke, never expecting Twitter to accept and was then forced to complete the purchase.

Musk was openly negative about twitter and got into several spats, my suspicion has always been that his intention was to get access to their data, reveal how many bots exist, damage Twitter and then back out of the deal.

We know that 75% of Musks followers are bots and he must have known it too so I imagine he was hoping to ‘reveal’ that most celebrities and political figures aren’t actually followed by real accounts, but the judge ultimately ruled this was irrelevant and he couldn’t get out of the deal.

As he doesn’t have $44bn cash, he then had the choice of true bank loans secured against Tesla, or Russian and Saudi backers funding the purchase and making it what they wanted. They’re now keeping it afloat and so it dies when they’ve got what they need out of it.

 

[MCFC Wirral]

Thanks guys. So he didn’t want to protect free speech after all?!

I’ve deleted Twitter. Cold turkey. It was very addictive and I largely feel better for it.

 

[BridgyDids]

Thanks guys. So he didn’t want to protect free speech after all?!

I’ve deleted Twitter. Cold turkey. It was very addictive and I largely feel better for it.

Same.

I realised that along with the algorithms being untenable for me to use, that when I boiled it down, there wasn’t a lot I used it for.

I enjoyed it for funny tweets. That’s it.

I did use to say I got my news from there, but that’s wrong. I got the news quickest from there. And often not correctly interpreted. I still take an interest in current affairs, but I don’t NEED it first and quickly.

I think society would be in a much better if people didn’t feel compelled to be the first to break news. This fuels short termism in the news cycles, and can see important things quickly become tomorrow’s chip paper. The dead cat policy if you will.

 

[domalino]

Yep, story.



Oh dear, how sad, never mind.

The funny thing is we knew this 6 months ago, but he came out and lied saying they'd all returned to the platform and things were going great to satiate his fanboys.

Ad revenue was about $4.5Bn before the takeover.

So when he says it's down by half, he means there's a $2,250,000,000 hole in the accounts.

 

[Iassel]

The funny thing is we knew this 6 months ago, but he came out and lied saying they'd all returned to the platform and things were going great to satiate his fanboys.

Ad revenue was about $4.5Bn before the takeover.

So when he says it's down by half, he means there's a $2,250,000,000 hole in the accounts.

But as said, it’s ultimately pretty irrelevant as the Saudis & Russians will front the cash to plug the hole, at least until after the next US election.

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

It’s public domain that he made the offer as a joke, never expecting Twitter to accept and was then forced to complete the purchase.

That cannot be correct, legally speaking, assuming it was just the price that was offered. The doctrine of offer and acceptance on a transaction of that magnitude cannot apply to a simple coming to terms on the price. The offer is inchoate.

There is so much to be determined around that, as to render any such ‘agreement’ to be utterly unenforceable.

No lawyer worthy of respect would argue otherwise.

 

[MCFC Wirral]

I’ve no desire to try and think like an egotistical tyrant but perhaps he went through with the purchase to save face?

He’s been far too hands on rather than appointing good management and allowing them to do their job.

 

[mexico1970]

I’ve no desire to try and think like an egotistical tyrant but perhaps he went through with the purchase to save face?

He’s been far too hands on rather than appointing good management and allowing them to do their job.

Twitter is a turd that needs flushing, if he kills it he will be doing the world a favour.

Meanwhile droves of upset people have joined threads and given a human calculator all of their details for the privilege.

 

[meltonblue]

Thanks guys. So he didn’t want to protect free speech after all?!

I’ve deleted Twitter. Cold turkey. It was very addictive and I largely feel better for it.

I still use it but only for the “following” tab, the for you bit of it is just carnage and designed to drag you into the rabbit hole.

It’s such a shame as if done right, it’s such a good app.

 

[jrb]

Is there any way of blocking Manchester United Tweets when you put Manchester into Twitter search? I just want general Manchester Tweets, instead all I get is Manchester United Tweets, one after another.

 

[MCFC Wirral]

Twitter is a turd that needs flushing, if he kills it he will be doing the world a favour.

Meanwhile droves of upset people have joined threads and given a human calculator all of their details for the privilege.

But everyone who is anyone is (was) on Twitter from pop stars to politicians.

I often used it to get the team an hour before kick off or find out who was touring next.

 

[I'm With Stupid]

But everyone who is anyone is (was) on Twitter from pop stars to politicians.

And that's where he's fucked up, seemingly not realising that that's where the value is, not in the platform itself. Sure, the platform has got to work reliably and be able to deal with the demand, but the real value of Twitter was that you could connect with high profile people and be fairly sure it was them posting. Musk fucking this up would be like LinkedIn pissing off all the recruiters and thinking they still had a valuable platform.

Now you could shift the focus and potentially get a more valuable user base. Instagram has basically spent the past 5 years pissing off all of the photographers that were the early lifeblood of the app but they're probably getting higher engagement and more revenue as a result. Twitter, on the other hand, has tanked.

 

[Gareth Barry Conlon]

And that's where he's fucked up, seemingly not realising that that's where the value is, not in the platform itself. Sure, the platform has got to work reliably and be able to deal with the demand, but the real value of Twitter was that you could connect with high profile people and be fairly sure it was them posting. Musk fucking this up would be like LinkedIn pissing off all the recruiters and thinking they still had a valuable platform.

Now you could shift the focus and potentially get a more valuable user base. Instagram has basically spent the past 5 years pissing off all of the photographers that were the early lifeblood of the app but they're probably getting higher engagement and more revenue as a result. Twitter, on the other hand, has tanked.

Musks term as ceo of Twitter will go down as possibly the worst bit of strategic leadership of all time. He took what Twitter had as a usp, and killed it off (allowing anyone a blue tick and any username killed of the draw of the big verified celebs, journalists and institutions). He also made the major problem, bots and spam, 10x worse.

Threads doesn’t have the same functionality yet but give it a few months and Twitter will be dead.

 

[MCFC Wirral]

I know a Wales and Swansea fan who paid for the blue tick when all he posts is football. He’s an administrator at the DVLA.

 

[Johnny Mars Bar]

And that's where he's fucked up, seemingly not realising that that's where the value is, not in the platform itself. Sure, the platform has got to work reliably and be able to deal with the demand, but the real value of Twitter was that you could connect with high profile people and be fairly sure it was them posting. Musk fucking this up would be like LinkedIn pissing off all the recruiters and thinking they still had a valuable platform.

Now you could shift the focus and potentially get a more valuable user base. Instagram has basically spent the past 5 years pissing off all of the photographers that were the early lifeblood of the app but they're probably getting higher engagement and more revenue as a result. Twitter, on the other hand, has tanked.

Instagram have actually acknowledged that deranking photography and trying to copy TikTok was a mistake. They’re rolling back on it to an extent.

 

[I'm With Stupid]

Instagram have actually acknowledged that deranking photography and trying to copy TikTok was a mistake. They’re rolling back on it to an extent.

Really? They could have fooled me. When you look at suggested content, it is almost exclusively video-based. Often reposted content from TikTok. Instagram is where you go to find what was trending on TikTok a week ago, and Facebook is where you go to find what was trending on Instagram a month ago.

This is my experience with Instagram...



Except I don't mind seeing sexy dancing ladies.

 

[Johnny Mars Bar]

Really? They could have fooled me. When you look at suggested content, it is almost exclusively video-based. Often reposted content from TikTok. Instagram is where you go to find what was trending on TikTok a week ago, and Facebook is where you go to find what was trending on Instagram a month ago.

Rolling back on it is going to take a while but they are definitely tweaking the algorithm to promote photography again. It’s been covered quite a bit in the tech and marketing press.

And Facebook is where you go to find out what was trending in the 1970s as it’s only boomers who use it these days ;)

 

[BlueHammer85]

Rebranding to some X app or something.

Think that’s the final nail in coffin for me , it’s been annoyingly addictive getting wound up by GB News and right wing bots but was only a matter of time I got rid, toxic and poisonous to the core and a stain on humanity.

 

[Summerbuzz]

Yeah, the bird is clearly too effeminate. Twitter needs to roll out the "No homo" stuff rapidly to an insecure masculine crowd. The laugh being, because it's all in their heads, there's never enough, you can never keep them forever without jumping the shark and losing the mainstream big time. But here, Elon has got you all beat, there is a massive amount of slack in this system before it gets to that stage. And he wants twitters users and data now and in the next few years, and he definitely wants the madness to continue, it's subtly very much in his interest to have people gawping at their own imaginary egos, rather than knowing, cool and detached and making good decisions for themselves. He's right about one thing, there are probably a billion out there who don't know they are born, have less wisdom passed on to them than we should ever have allowed.... a large part of humanity is super duper up for this experiment in how vacuous and shallow society can get.