Musk offers to buy Twitter

[Eric]

 

[Andropov]

A lot of us were expecting a slow decline under the weight of the debt and Elon’s management style. We weren’t expecting Musk to come in and immediately go for the back-breaker with a baseball bat a week into ownership.

Yep, I was expecting the same thing. More right-wing accounts running unmolested causing people to leave or things like that. Certainly not this trainwreck on the first week.

I think it's time to start questioning his real motives here, nobody with two successful companies like Space X and Tesla could ever be THIS stupid intentionally. The only way this makes sense is if his goal is to deliberately drive it into the ground and cut his losses.

I'm not sure about that. I've seen former competent people enter a bubble of believing in being much smarter than everyone else and screwing very simple tasks due to not listening to anyone's warnings.

Yah it's not a simple app download and a set of clicks to set up housekeeping on Mastodon... so that's not going to be a post-Twitter choice for most people and not for agencies of governments either. the latter might go back to or establish for the first time either FB or IG accounts. Individuals who came to prefer Twitter to FB not so much -- people like photographers, textile artists and other craftsmen.

Some of them seem to be looking around at or trying venues like Pinterest or Instagram now, but not liking idea of having to leave a familiar setup and also knowing they'll lose track of communities they were part of or had followed on Twitter.

I do see more and more accounts putting up pinned tweets of their alternate social media setups and urging people to download or otherwise preserve info on their own Twitter lists and etc data.

I follow upwards of a thousand people in Twitter so trying to find alternate platforms to follow them on is not viable. I downloaded a copy of the people I follow and, if things go down, I'll try to search for their usernames in other platforms, hoping they're using the same one.

People creating adult content seem to be the ones with less options. All other major platforms (Instagram, TikTok, Twitch... ban those contents). I expect those people to remain even if the platform starts having frequent outages. It could very well be the thing that keeps Twitter alive after major outages. Tumblr learned the hard way that it drives a lot of traffic.

 

[lizkat]

This is really the Hanukah story all over again, isn’t it? Enough employees to keep Twitter functioning for one night, but miraculously Twitter holds on for eight?

There's talk that Twitterati attention to FIFA World Cup championship matches will put paid to all that in the coming days... starts November 20 and runs to December 18th. If Twitter stays up through that it will be amazing.

 

[shadow puppet]

I follow upwards of a thousand people in Twitter so trying to find alternate platforms to follow them on is not viable. I downloaded a copy of the people I follow and, if things go down, I'll try to search for their usernames in other platforms, hoping they're using the same one.

I spent quite a bit of time last night paring down my 1000+ follow list. Now looking for a way to download my follow list since my Twitter archive request (placed 4 days ago), never came through. What method did you use to DL your follow list? I'm seeing Twitodon can DL a CSV file for import into Mastodon.

 

[Andropov]

I spent quite a bit of time last night paring down my 1000+ follow list. Now looking for a way to download my follow list since my Twitter archive request (placed 4 days ago), never came through. What method did you use to DL your follow list? I'm seeing Twitodon can DL a CSV file for import into Mastodon.

I used listfollowers.com. Allows downloads via JSON or CSV, and you can either download your followers, the people you follow, or your mutuals. And it worked with all 1200+ people I follow.

 

[Nycturne]

I'm not sure about that. I've seen former competent people enter a bubble of believing in being much smarter than everyone else and screwing very simple tasks due to not listening to anyone's warnings.

Yeah, and as I'm sure someone probably already pointed out, Twitter is the first company Elon has taken over that was well established. It had a culture, rhythm, and a business plan that they were executing on. And now he wants to reshape it in his image. Something he's never actually done before.

SpaceX was started from scratch, so Elon got to define the culture. Government funding helped it go through that early rough phase, and now they are seemingly firing on all cylinders when it comes to the Falcon 9. You can see some the seams though, whenever Musk talks up work yet to be done as it churns and iterates. While this is somewhat normal for a company, it's generally not done in public, but the public has a short memory when it comes to the sort of shifts SpaceX has done over the last decade. That short memory, and being able to deliver cheaper rockets to the market than "old space" has really helped SpaceX be a bit of a darling despite Musk's eccentric behavior.

Elon was involved with Tesla rather early, but he was more involved with the Roadster from an engineering perspective at first, and took on larger ownership roles as time goes on. So again, he's there as the culture was defining itself, and Elon was aligned with what would become Tesla's long term goals and business model. Here, you see some of Musk's eccentric vision thinking at play here too. The almost scattershot upcoming product portfolio now that the core vision has been delivered (the S3XY lineup), churn and issues with FSD, etc.

Being listed as the wealthiest person in the world certainly would inflate one's ego, especially if they consider Ayn Rand a must-read.

 

[Cmaier]

@cmaier@mastodon.social

 

[bunnspecial]

When my nephews were younger, any new toy they got was really just a challenge to see how long it would take them to break it, and then of course they were done with it.

How long until this petulant man-child decides he's broken his new toy enough that he can toss it into the corner?

 

[lizkat]

I used listfollowers.com. Allows downloads via JSON or CSV, and you can either download your followers, the people you follow, or your mutuals. And it worked with all 1200+ people I follow.

That's what I did for now, and just the accounts I follow. Haven't decided whether to set up over at mastodon but probably that's where I'd land if Twitter falls apart. Still hoping some of the dire "missing key people for recovery situations" stories that one hears are not the case or anyway not the end operationally. There are some pretty alarming assertions floating around.

What gets me is that Twitter is clearly not in compliance with assorted regulations so how is it even staying up? Musk might be counting on "shrug power" for now, i.e., a wait-and-see attitude from regulators figuring if the bird tumbles down and can't get back up in the trees again, well... "problem solved." ?!

 

[fooferdoggie]

What gets me is that Twitter is clearly not in compliance with assorted regulations so how is it even staying up? Musk might be counting on "shrug power" for now, i.e., a wait-and-see attitude from regulators figuring if the bird tumbles down and can't get back up in the trees again, well... "problem solved." ?!

well things are happening so fast no way any regulations can keep up. that may be the idea too.

 

[lizkat]

well things are happening so fast no way any regulations can keep up. that may be the idea too.

Not the regulations Musk has been working around -- could be some SEC issues by now... certainly the data privacy laws, risk management, moderation rules and lack of compliance officers... all that stuff is in flux from day to day. He could be importing warm bodies to fill those slots but sooner or later he'll get called on it if he doesn't step back and get a proper c-suite and staffing of those functions.

 

[Cmaier]

This is also unconfirmed. Seems too crazy.

 

[shadow puppet]

Quite a read. Long but very interesting.
1/2

 

[shadow puppet]

2/2

 

[rdrr]

Quite a read. Long but very interesting.
1/2

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Personally being in IT for 25+ years (infrastructure services mostly), I can say this for sure... The disasters you plan for is not the one that actually happens. Complex systems break in complex ways.

Lots of rumors and conspiracy theories starting around why Twitter is seemingly failing so quickly. One I gather is mostly conspiracy. Twitter good or bad, does have it checks on folks like Trump, other high profile personalities, and governments. Most of the big scandals of late were exposed on Twitter and other major social media platforms. Twitter although costly could have been the easiest to pick off by Trump and his foreign backers, Russia... Saudis...

 

[Herdfan]

At least he hired back Ligma and Johnson.

 

[Eric]

Personally being in IT for 25+ years (infrastructure services mostly), I can say this for sure... The disasters you plan for is not the one that actually happens. Complex systems break in complex ways.

Lots of rumors and conspiracy theories starting around why Twitter is seemingly failing so quickly. One I gather is mostly conspiracy. Twitter good or bad, does have it checks on folks like Trump, other high profile personalities, and governments. Most of the big scandals of late were exposed on Twitter and other major social media platforms. Twitter although costly could have been the easiest to pick off by Trump and his foreign backers, Russia... Saudis...

We're watching it before our very eyes, the most disorganized high-profile takeover we've ever witnessed by a man who purports to be a genius yet thinks the person who writes a routine in 50 lines of code is smarter than the one who writes it in 20.

It's gotten to be comical at this point and he's so shrouded by yes men and his little right-wing bubble that he doesn't realize he's mocked at nearly every turn in the real word.

 

[Andropov]

This is not gonna fly in Europe

 

[Cmaier]

This is not gonna fly in Europe

He’s saying that he will leave up hate speech. I’m out.

 

[Eric]

This is not gonna fly in Europe

Sounds like something he came up with over the last hour and spontaneously tweeted about it after talking to one of the remaining yes man engineers on the 10th floor who "thinks" he can pull of the algorithm.