im also not sure you can really correlate the fall of rome to a single oligarch hitman although im sure some of the HN history buffs could correct me.
the whole saga still gobsmacks me to this day. one of the wealthiest men in america tantrum-spends 44 billion dollars on a website, then goes through an agonizing six months pretending he didnt have to buy it and is eventually forced by a judge to complete the acquisition. next, said oligarch fumbles the execution so badly the company basically winds up firing everyone it can and accidentally lock themselves out of the headquarters for the weekend in the process. Eventually the man himself, Musk, desperately pleads for "anyone who writes code" to meet him in the dead of night on the tenth floor of his now empty office only to wind up with midlevel managers pledging their fidelity as the vichy scramble to find their place in the new order and various services begin to fail. Finally, mercifully, Musk is hauled back to Tesla where share prices are tumbling almost as quickly as twitter users are jumping ship, but not before unshackling a prison full of reprobates and racists to rejoin the site by un-suspending their accounts.
I'm not focusing on a single "hitman" taking down Rome. Who really knows but it was a multitude of factors. My point here is that large systems don't typically acutely fail. It's more of a gradual process of rust and decay that accelerates them into irrelevance.
Your point about what a total mess this was is absolutely spot on though. It didn't have to end like this. This was a tragedy of blunders.
The funniest thing to me is how the Billionaire railed about a lack of free speech, but then tried to turn free speech into a commodity that could be purchased for his own opportunistic profit.
Every day is a day closer to when Twitter will vanish, curing public addiction to and dependency upon it. Something else will come later, and slowly be corrupted again as well.
It would have been easier and much less costly to just have made an app from scratch and to have left Twitter to it's prior dysfunctional obscurity.
>I'm not focusing on a single "hitman" taking down Rome. Who really knows but it was a multitude of factors. My point here is that large systems don't typically acutely fail. It's more of a gradual process of rust and decay that accelerates them into irrelevance.
I think a lot of people with experience understood this fundamental concept but the issue is that it seems difficult to convey this into a headline grabbing series of news articles.
Therefore, it seems as if the whole hubub at the beginning of this saga was this concept but massively overinflated(OMG twitter is going to collapse overnight). In fact I guess you can argue that it was so overinflated that it was lying but thats the standard we have to live with for now.
> It's more of a gradual process of rust and decay that accelerates them into irrelevance.
precisely. entropy tends to increase in this universe. humans are special because our phenotypical effect of creating order is unparalleled in scale, precision, and sophistication.
Yep totally. Kind of like the "broken window" phenomena with a building/neighborhood where if one broken thing doesn't get fixed everything else goes pretty quickly
It’s a hypothesis, not a phenomenon. Several studies and statistical analyses shown that regression to the mean and external factors were better explanations for the decrease in crime than the zero-tolerance policy. The theory itself is based on a presumed correlation with no real proof of causality.
Something I find interesting are the parallels from current day billionaires to dictators and depots throughout history. I was recently listening to Behind the Bastard, where they spoke of Nicolae Ceaușescu [1]. Among the terrible things he did, he also constructed the largest civilian government building in the world, the Parliamentary Palace. It's sits at 30% capacity today; because it was built not to be used, but to fan his ego.
I remembered always being told growing up that capitalism was superior to communism because it intelligently allocated resources based on the market. But by giving a few people billions of dollars, we're seeing them do the same things communist dictatorships did; throwing money blindly into vanity projects. Like The Line [2], or Telosa [3]. I have to wonder if the modern billionaires are creating a similar instability in society, even if it is lessened by their not being the head of government.
I might be misremembering but it didn't actually end up as a judge's decision, did it? I remember that they were starting discovery, lots of amusingly embarrassing things old Elno did/said were coming out and he said "OK NEVER MIND I'll buy it then" which suspended the court case pending him actually doing that (which, as we all sadly know now, he did.)
> The Delaware Chancery Court judge has given Mr. Musk until Friday to close his long-promised, $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter. If he doesn’t, Chancellor McCormick will preside over a trial in November that could end with Mr. Musk being forced to make good on the deal he made with Twitter in April.
This might be semantic quibbling, but although it never came to decision, everybody with any legal knowledge whatsoever knew that the decision would be in Twitter's favor, and I assume eventually Elon's lawyers got it across to him that he had no chance of winning the case. IMO it's likely that, rather than discovery, prompted the surrender - if I could avoid paying $44 billion for Twitter with a couple embarrassing text leaks, I'd take that deal. So in that sense I don't think it's inaccurate to say he was forced by the judge, albeit indirectly.
Yea, he weaseled out of the trial like he does everything. I wish the judge would have instead forced the trial to move forward no matter what, making him pay both financially and politically/socially.
>im also not sure you can really correlate the fall of rome to a single oligarch hitman although im sure some of the HN history buffs could correct me.
The imperial administration never really recovered from Commodus (who had a bunch of high-ranking officials murdered), although there were plenty of good emperors after him (e.g. Diocletian, Constantine, Justinian), but their achievements tended to be lost by their successors.
>im also not sure you can really correlate the fall of rome to a single oligarch hitman
Probably not, but Crassus did live in the time of Rome's centuries-long inflection point.
It's hard to use a phrase like "richest person in the world" in an age where living standards and currencies varied so much, but he was extremely, notoriously, extravagantly wealthy.
He cornered the housing market by showing up to burning buildings with a fire brigade, and offering to put out the fire only if the owners sold the property to him at a steep discount. If they didn't, he let the property burn.
He was eventually killed in a war with the Parthians, and legend has it that they found him so repulsive, they poured molten gold down his corpse's throat as a message.
Purposefully didn't focus on "whose fault it is". A long chain of bad decisions led to this situation. Twitter's board shares a fair amount of the blame too, for example. So does Jack Dorsey for not giving twitter much attention during his reign as CEO.
Wait, why does Jack Dorsey deserve blame? He took a failing company and conned an idiot into paying 2.5x market value for it. Measured by shareholder value, he's one of the most brilliant CEOs in history.
15 years ago it wasn't clear whether Facebook or Twitter was going to be the winner (or if they'd both just be another MySpace).
Jack is responsible for Twitter losing.
It always felt like Twitter co didn't actually understand what Twitter was and almost all of the product innovation came from the community rather than twitter itself.
Twitter's only failure is that it never returned a profit. When you look at the social landscape, it's hard to argue anyone has succeeded other than Facebook.
Twitter's product is great and it didn't need to be as large as Facebook. It shouldn't need to twist itself for the greatest common denominator users who required immediate gratification via algorithmic feeds and short memes.
TikTok is private, but is said to be losing money. Snap is in the same boat as Twitter as being largely unprofitable. It is unclear if Twitch is profitable either.
And they still believe it! He's an unparalleled genius and every single breath he takes directly contributes to saving the world. Unfortunately there's a queer globalist Hollywood blue tick pizza trafficking Democrat conspiracy making it look like Twitter is a massive dumpfire, trying to make him look bad despite every single one of his decisions being unquestionably perfect and logical.
I can't figure out which takes you're talking about. I have to assume they're the takes that twitter is closing up shop and that everyone is moving to Mastodon, and that Mastodon is scalable enough to accept those people.
Journalists Remain on Twitter, but Tweet Slightly Less
> only a small handful have deactivated their accounts
This is a bad metric. Twitter takes the dubious position that it's a good idea to allow usernames to be re-registered when people delete their accounts (this one can't be blamed on naughty ol' Mr Car; it's a _vintage_ design flaw). So deleting your account, particularly if you're prominent, is a bad idea as it allows for impersonation.
A better metric would have been how many accounts went silent, but they don't seem to have done that one.
Elon Musk is never going to be able to buy twitter
oh wait maybe he got the deal, but he'll never pay for it, the whole thing is just a stunt
oh wait maybe he got the deal, but he's so stupid, he'll never be able to pay for it, but he'll be forced to buy it anyway, bankrupting him in the process!
oh wait I guess he just bought twitter. well it's going to fall apart immediately next week now that he fired everyone who kept the lights on!
Nice fanfic, but no one ever said he wasn't able, just that he was not willing. I think this is pretty clear by the fact that he tried to wiggle out of it and had to be forced by the court. No one was ever doubting that he didn't have the money to buy twitter, just that he wasn't stupid enough to go through with something so dumb just because he got triggered.
nah, people did say that. there was a lot of hyperbole. what's important is whether there were folks who who said all those things, and as to whether they were worth paying attention to their opinion in the first place.
When someone calls essentially half the population as "reprobates" and "racists", then please explain how my tone and my response is inappropriate? It is more than appropriate! It is far past time to call out that the actual demons are those who spend their time dishonestly demonizing others.
Not even in the most feverish reactionary vision of America does anybody seriously think that 50% of Americans believe the drivel that comes out of Twitter's racist peanut gallery.
Put another way: you may or may not believe it, but the overwhelming majority of people do not. Plenty may find it entertaining or even cathartic (given preconceptions about their own political tribe), but that's a far cry from agreeing with it.
Who are the censored racists that got freed under Musk? Did you view the links in my posts? Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is not a racist. Neither is the Babylon Bee. Neither is the attorney general of Texas. Neither is Jordan Peterson. These peoples' views represent mainstream conservatism, and their censorship was dissolved under Musk.
Now, point me to the throng of racists Musk also unshackled. I'm guessing you can't, because not a single person in this comment thread can be bothered to come up with a spec of evidence supporting their claims.
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
This is far from the “strongest possible interpretation” of that comment. You’re not ChatGPT; stick to what’s written not a hallucinated interpretation.
It is not even remotely far from the "strongest possible interpretation" at all. It is a mainstream belief of the democrat party that Republicans are racist reprobates. Someone who won the popular vote for presidency of the United States has said as much: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basket_of_deplorables
Whenever anyone makes a blanket statement about a group of people being racists and has zero evidence of said alleged racism, it is a very plausible interpretation that they are blanket-insulting conservatives en masse.
Regardless, My criticism stands even without this interpretation. He claimed a bunch of racists and reprobates got unshackled on Twitter via Musk. He has provided zero evidence to back that up despite me challenging his claim and calling his behavior reprobative.
I don't give a shit what the "mainstream belief" is. I don't give a shit what the house minority leader said. I don't give a shit what you think the parent commenter said. Stick to what was actually said and the best possible interpretation of it. The parent commenter did not talk about any of that. They did not bring it up. You are entirely the one that brought this whole 50% topic in here when it wasn't being discussed, and then hyperfixated on it instead of what was actually being talked about.
> He claimed a bunch of racists and reprobates got unshackled on Twitter via Musk. He has provided zero evidence to back that up despite me challenging his claim and calling his behavior reprobative.
Great, focus on that instead of something that just plain wasn't said in this comment thread.
You also never "challenged his claim". You straight up said you don't believe him based on one sentence, and then immediately flew off on a tangent based on something that wasn't said. At no point did you stick to the topic being talked about. That is the antithesis of that HN guideline, plain and simple.
As I previously said, you're not ChatGPT. Don't hallucinate things into this thread that wasn't said and then fly off on a tangent based on those.
I don't really care what you care about either. I directly challenged one of his claims. That is extremely obvious in my post. I only brought the 50% up later in response to another person's comment. So OP didn't even need to address that directly. You are the one now not taking people's words at face value, and therefore violating HN guidelines based on your own intepretations.
> Great, focus on that instead of something that just plain wasn't said in this comment thread.
That was my focus. How well did you read my original comment?
> You also never "challenged his claim".
I certainly did. I said I no longer trust him because of his claim. How much stronger of a challenge could you get than that?
> and then immediately flew off on a tangent based on something that wasn't said
False.
> Don't hallucinate things into this thread that wasn't said
If you think mainstream beliefs held by people in society who make similar statements isn't relevant context to an Internet discussion, then you and I probably aren't going to agree on much.
> When someone calls essentially half the population as "reprobates" and "racists",
Half the population wasn't banned from Twitter before Musk bought it.
Half the population doesn't consist of people like Andrew Tate and Donald Trump, and Andrew Anglin (Shout out to him and his boys at the Daily Stormer for getting their megaphone back), and Alex Jones (Although that last one's still banned.) Why do you think that it does?
Because the twitter bots says so. Twitter amplifies extreemist views. In this case it has agin amplified extreem opinions, convincing someone that an extreem is actually a norm. That person then amplifies that in anohter froum, where a twitter bot or ai will no doubt pick it up, returm it to twitter and repeat the cycle.
Right wingers: "Liberals are so closed minded, they should read more than just their side and should find ways to agree with other people, there's more opinions out there than just your MSNBC/reddit echo chamber"
Also: "You said something I disagree with, all your other arguments are invalid and I can entirely stop listening to you"
Did I say they were invalid, or that I no longer trust him and would need to corroborate with other sources? I swear people on the left either have really bad reading comprehension, or just make a habit of twisting and distorting other peoples' words as a default tactic. I'm leaning towards the latter explanation at the moment, though I go back and forth.
Sorry, but saying I don't trust your paragraph of claims because I know at least one of those claims is grotesque and false doesn't shut down debate. More importantly, the point needs to be expressed. No one should get away with a statement like that unquestioned.
I feel again like you're not comprehending what I wrote, and I'm going to assume you're not intentionally being dishonest in doing so.
> without mindlessly discarding everything else the person said.
It's a good thing I didn't do that.
> That will be a very successful way to never have to challenge any of your opinions since nobody is infallible.
Funny because I don't have a strong opinion either way on how badly Musk has behaved relative to the Twitter acquisition, so there is no opinion of mine to even protect. Again, you don't seem to understand what the following statement means: "I don't trust what you're saying and will have to corroborate it with other sources". Because it definitely doesn't mean what you think it means.
The only people mindlessly, and without evidence, calling others racists for the past 30 years are Democrats in reference to Republicans. My inference is not even remotely a stretch or controversial and is likely 100% correct.
Furthermore, did you look at any of my links or read any of what I said? Twitter was extremely left-biased and the internal docs prove it.
He only talked about reprobates and racists? What does that have to do with conservatives, unless you believe that these groups are equal? That is quite the self report.
So brave of you to stand up for racists's sensitive feelings and god-given rights to not have their beliefs questioned or feelings hurt. They're the real victims here, not the people they consider less than human and exercise their absolute free speech to tell everyone that.
The only people today who see others as less than human are the same people who falsely demonize others as racists. The whole point of demonization is to enable you to view your opponent, not as a human, but as a demon. The evidence can't be any more obvious.
Riiiiight, because racism doesn't exist any more, now that we've had a black president (even though he was born in Kenya, as our orange president went to so much effort and expense to made sure everyone believes).
>"America is one of the least racist places overall in recorded history." -PathOfEclipse
And then you went on to demonize your opponent (without even having your own facts straight), which is just fine for you to do apparently, just nobody else:
>"It is still a very evil thing to defame someone with such a horrible accusation when you couldn't even be bothered to take two minutes to get your facts straight! ... which is even more evil ... significant evil in my book ..." -PathOfEclipse
Now that America's racism problem has been solved, is that why you put so much time and energy and commitment into fighting so hard against reverse racism, by linking to the writings of Thomas Sowell, who has literally claimed that Black Americans were better off during slavery than they are today, and has defended Trump against charges of racism?
Are you also a huge Kanye fan, too? Obviously we no longer live in a racist society, now that black people can love Hitler, and Trump owns his very own black friend who he invites to Thanksgiving dinner along with his Neo-Nazi White Supremacist friend. The Great American Melting Pot.
Yeah, I'm not going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you have terrible reading comprehension. You're probably just a very dishonest person.
In my comment, I said "[racism] is something we can always improve on", and you framed it as "Riiiiight, because racism doesn't exist any more." I don't know how to paint it more clearly that you're either very dishonest or not a careful reader.
> And then you went on to demonize your opponent
No. More incredible dishonesty from you.
> Now that America's racism problem has been solved
More dishonesty from you.
> by linking to the writings of Thomas Sowell, who has literally claimed that Black Americans were better off during slavery than they are today
Wow you're incredibly dishonest.
> has defended Trump against charges of racism?
Trump is many bad things, but racist is not one of them. But, you're behaving so dishonestly, I would guess you probably even know that already.
> The Great American Melting Pot.
Race relations got significantly worse under Obama. It turns out, when you put people in power who are race grifters, they'll actually fracture society through their demagoguing. That's what leftists have been doing for decades now. The melting pot may fail, and it's through deliberate action from people probably a lot like you.
Qanon right-wingers view "the other side" as literal, baby-eating, satan-worshipping demons. You had Alex Jones saying that Obama and Hillary "reek of sulphur".
I don't know anything about Alex Jones other than that he is on the fringe. People on the fringe can mostly be ignored unless they become dangerous, and they do so be acquiring significant power and influence. The difference between the extreme right and the extreme left is that the former has virtually no political, cultural, or other power in our society, while the latter is ascendant and yields vast amounts of power today.
Hillary Clinton called middle America the "basket of deplorables" and "racist", "sexist", "homophobic" "xenophobic", "Islamophobic." Hillary is not on the fringe. She has ties to some of the most powerful people in the world! She almost become the President of the United states. And, her opinion is frankly mainstream in the Democrat party. Alex Jones's opinion, however, is shared by no one with power or influence. He really is on the fringe. The comparison is not remotely apples to apples. The extreme left is the greatest existential threat to our society today. The extreme right is a joke.
Wait, do you actually think Hillary Clinton is part of the "extreme left wing"?
Have you even like, talked to someone who is moderately left wing like say a Bernie Sanders supporter about how they view Clinton?
And you're aware Bernie Sanders lost because the Democrats considered him a threat from the left?
And that every single person in the Democratic party is to the right of him?
And that theres significant amounts of political thought to the left of him?
Like go ask anyone living in a country with actual left wing politicians what they think about Hillary Clinton's politics and they will tell you shes a center-right politician.
Do you actually think real extreme leftists like communists or anarchists are Hillary Clinton supporters?
Do you really think anything left of very slightly center-left is even included in the overton window in the US?
How do you expect anyone to respect your opinions on politics when you very clearly don't even understand what the terms like left and right wing that you are using mean and seem to lack any understanding of what the actual full landscape of political theory looks like?
You're right in that Hillary is fairly mainstream leftist, and her views are absolutely awful and inline with the original comment I responded to. It only gets worse as you go even further left! And that's my point. The extreme right poses not even 1% of the threat of the extreme left. Your criticism really only strengthens the evidence I've presented.
> How do you expect anyone to respect your opinions on politics when you very clearly don't even understand what the terms like left and right wing
Hillary may be mainstream, but she takes her cues from the extreme left. Starting with the Marxist movements of the 50s and 60s, she knows that she can get votes by dividing people into various oppressor/oppressed categories and riling up the alleged oppressed into activism. You don't have to be hard left to be influenced by the hard left and to operate under their rules and frameworks and further their agendas.
At the end of the day, I've articulated my points more than well enough for an open-minded person to gain something from it. I'm sorry if that doesn't describe you as a person.
Do you really have to lie so transparently? You're not fooling anyone that you don't know anything about Alex Jones, because we all know you haven't been living under a rock for the past 10 years, because you are parroting so many current talking points that there is no way you never heard anything from or about Alex Jones. You sound exactly like Trump trying to deny he knew anything about the latest White Supremacists he retweeted or invited to Thanksgiving dinner. Everybody knows he's lying when he denies knowing somebody like that, and everybody knows you're lying too.
We all certainly know you're lying you when you claim that despite not knowing anything about Alex Jones, you just happen to know that nobody takes him seriously. How can you not know anything about him, yet know who takes him seriously and not? You certainly do know who takes him seriously and embraces him, and that includes you, despite your denials, and Donald Trump, who has given Jones interviews, invited Jones to speak at his rallies, and praised him with flattery like "Your reputation is amazing". Trump even invited Alex Jones to BROADCAST FROM INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE. That proves you're totally full of shit about nobody taking Jones seriously, and you know it.
So stop feigning ignorance and pretending that everyone doesn't know you're lying through your teeth. If you don't want people to know you embrace and take Alex Jones seriously, then stop parroting him and spreading his lies and covering for him.
How Alex Jones was embraced by Trump, Rogan years after Sandy Hook lies
In roughly 10 years since he declared the deadliest elementary school shooting in U.S. history to be a “giant hoax,” Infowars founder Alex Jones has been denounced and de-platformed by tech giants such as Facebook, YouTube and Spotify, and faced significant financial blows. The latest came Thursday when a jury ruled that Jones had to pay $4.1 million in compensatory damages to the parents of a 6-year-old boy killed in the Sandy Hook mass shooting after he created a “living hell” for the family.
But as Jones’s false claims and rants launched him into the national political dialogue, his ascent has arguably been solidified, thanks to Donald Trump and Joe Rogan embracing Jones and endorsing his ideas to online audiences of millions of people in recent years.
Jones’s 2015 interview with Trump offered a window into some of the future president’s talking points at his rallies.
“Your reputation is amazing,” Trump told Jones at the time.
Tell the White House: Don't welcome Sandy Hook deniers!
Alex Jones and his colleagues at Infowars have spent years insulting and dismissing the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School as a “hoax” and the work of “crisis actors.” They’ve propagated conspiracy theories aimed at dismissing the pain of parents who have lost their children. And they’ve pushed other theories which have led to actual incidents of gun violence perpetrated by fanatical listeners and viewers.
Any one of those things should be enough to keep Jones and Infowars out of the White House briefing room. Together, they are unimpeachable evidence that they don’t belong.
But Donald Trump’s White House press office still issued them a pass, legitimizing the offensive and frankly dangerous rhetoric Infowars spreads. And on Monday, Infowars broadcast from inside the White House.
Join us in calling on the White House to deny any future applications made by Infowars for press passes and credentials which would allow them access to the White House.
Alex Jones and Donald Trump: A Fateful Alliance Draws Scrutiny
The Infowars host tormented Sandy Hook families and helped elect President Donald J. Trump. His role in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack is now of growing interest to congressional investigators.
Alex Jones speaking on the East Front of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as rioters breached the building.
WASHINGTON — The day President Donald J. Trump urged his supporters to “be there, will be wild!” at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Alex Jones spread the message to millions.
“This is the most important call to action on domestic soil since Paul Revere and his ride in 1776,” Mr. Jones, the Infowars broadcaster, said on his Dec. 19, 2020, show, which airs live online and on a network of radio stations. Mr. Jones, whose lies about the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting fueled years of threats against the 26 victims’ families, urged his listeners to take action.
A little more than two weeks later, Mr. Jones joined his followers at the Capitol as a behind-the-scenes organizer — a crucial role in the riot that is under increasing scrutiny by congressional investigators.
Notice how you didn't address the fact that you know very well that Trump supports and embraces Alex Jones, yet you lied about it.
Edit: You certainly know that now, whether or not you were totally ignorant about it before (which I simply don't believe), because I just proved it to you with several citations and quotes so you don't have to take my word for it, and now you are incapable of countering that proof, so all you proved was that you're not arguing in good faith by simply calling me a liar and not bothering to say what I said was a lie, or refute any of my arguments.
Your Sgt. Schultz "I Know Nothing!!! Nothing!!!" Defense doesn't convince anyone, and just beclowns you and amuses me.
If you can refute any of my arguments, then do so, but by refusing to address and counter any of my specific points or provide any proof of your insanely ignorant claims, and just arguing in bad faith and calling me a liar, you've just proven my point.
You're not going to convince anyone that all those videos of Alex Jones at the January 6 Insurrection Rally were computer generated and he was just sitting at home all that time.
But don't bother trying, because as histrionic and incoherent and disingenuous as you are, there's no chance in hell you can win this argument you've already lost many times over in every thread, since you're simply and absolutely wrong, foaming at the mouth batshit crazy, and nobody could possibly believe you. You need to get help for your mental and emotional and honesty problems, not spend your time screaming and lying at people on the internet.
> Notice how you didn't address the fact that you know very well that Trump supports and embraces Alex Jones
I didn't know that and I still don't know that. I certainly wouldn't take your word for it. You have to be the most dishonest person I've engaged with in a long time, and that's really saying something.
I don't know anything about Alex Jones other than that he is on the fringe. People on the fringe can mostly be ignored unless they become dangerous, and they do so be acquiring significant power and influence. The difference between the extreme right and the extreme left is that the former has virtually no political, cultural, or other power in our society, while the latter is ascendant and yields vast amounts of power today.
The comparison is not remotely apples to apples. The extreme left is the greatest existential threat to our society today. The extreme right is a joke.
I mean, from my point of view as a passive Twitter user whose life has been unaffected by Elon taking over, I read this just as another repeat of the same ‘Anti-Musk narrative’ that keeps getting tossed around like a football. I don’t care either way, I’m not a Musk apologist, but I would just ask why this whole ordeal upsets you (and others) so much?
Okay he immediately fired a ton of people from a company that was notorious for setting money on fire. Is that really surprising, that he guts his newly acquired company, so he can rebuild it the way he sees fit? Especially considering every single other huge tech company has laid off enormous amounts of employees in the last year? Are you just as mad at them as you are Elon?
Again, I just don’t get why it makes folks so mad? Elon is going to do Elon things, and if it bothers you so much maybe try blocking him on Twitter, and ignoring any news you see about him. It’s not worth the stress. Especially if it causes you to take time out of your day to write such a rage filled post. Just go about your day, and don’t worry about how Elon chooses to run his companies. I doubt everyone cared this much about how Twitter was run before this, just go back to that and we’d all be happier.
Elon was just unnecessarily cruel with the layoffs imo, if he had been more professional and less political I think people would have had a different reaction.
The anti Elon group grew pretty massively when he laid off people in the way that he did.
Anecdotally, I was neutral of Elon before the layoffs but that changed when I saw the way he conducted himself.
> I would just ask why this whole ordeal upsets you (and others) so much? ...
Again, I just don’t get why it makes folks so mad? ...
> I doubt everyone cared this much about how Twitter was run before this
There are two very separate issues. Some people are upset and mad (so good question, and I bet you get some good answers). Other people, including me, are not at all upset or mad BUT we think it's extremely interesting. And important.
Quite the patronizing tone to say basically nothing.
But I’ll add: tech forums (like this) are built for discussions about tech stuff (like twitter), so of course you’ll hear people floating their opinions about these topics. That doesn’t mean they care more/less than you.
We get it, you’re above such petty discourse, but many tech employees see a difference between market layoffs and the richest man in the world buying a company on a whim and firing people over printed code reviews. Does holding that opinion mean that they’re stressing? Probably not. I’d bet most are just replying on the toilet.
It's because a lot of people have invested time into curating their little social sphere on Twitter and Mad Car Guy has set the company on a path to utter destruction. People don't like to have their things taken away.
You may think Twitter "set money on fire" before Musk but objectively they were approximately breaking even and now they clearly are not.
For someone that says they're not a Musk apologist or to ignore Musk, you seem to have a rather long history of coming out specifically to defend Musk. You realize your immediate comment history is apparent, right?
I guess you got me? You pointed out comments that came from one particular issue/ thread. That’s not a ‘rather long’ history. And as I said in those comments it had nothing to do with Elon. That was doxxing, plain and simple. And my mind hasn’t changed on that. Doesn’t matter If it’s Elon, Taylor Swift, or my next door neighbor. It’s wrong. Mind you, a high profile celebrity’s convoy got attacked right after all that happened, supposedly because they thought they were getting Elon. My point is just move on with your lives. It’s just recreational outrage at this point.
>Again, I just don’t get why it makes folks so mad?
The people who are mad are the type of people who were used to having the illusion of influence, or thought they had the social currency to do/get what they wanted with Twitter.
They've lost that perceived control, and are suddenly anxious that they're addicted to a service they cannot influence or use for social power. They get happy for being able to drill in Musk's failure. To them, Musk is a convenient "rich" that they can finally apply "eat the rich" to.
I am for instance not and have never been a twat and have disliked most of the discourse there and certainly resented the disproportionate amount of attention the twats got.
However, I had and have little reason to trust that Musk won’t make twitter into simply a different kind of hell. He certainly said as much with all his (ultimately) fake “free speech” stance.
Basically just because a thing is bad doesn’t mean it can’t get worse.
If Musk manages to make twitter irrelevant though I’ll thank him for it.
I mean, from my point of view as a passive Twitter user whose live has been unaffected by Elon taking over, I read this just as another repeat of the same ‘Anti-Musk narrative’ that keeps getting tossed around like a football. I don’t care either way, I’m not a Musk apologist, but I would just ask why this whole ordeal upsets you (and others) so much?
Okay he immediately fired a ton of people from a company that was notorious for setting money on fire. Is that really surprising, that he guts his newly acquired company, so he can rebuild it the way he sees fit? Especially considering every single other huge tech company has laid off enormous amounts of employees in the last year? Are you just as mad at them as you are Elon?
Again, I just don’t get why it makes folks so mad? Elon is going to do Elon things, and if it bothers you so much maybe try blocking him on Twitter, and ignoring any news you see about him. It’s not worth the stress. Especially if it causes you to take time out of your day to write such a rage filled post. Just go about your day, and don’t worry about how Elon chooses to run his companies. I doubt everyone cared this much about how Twitter was run before this, just go back to that.
the whole saga still gobsmacks me to this day. one of the wealthiest men in america tantrum-spends 44 billion dollars on a website, then goes through an agonizing six months pretending he didnt have to buy it and is eventually forced by a judge to complete the acquisition. next, said oligarch fumbles the execution so badly the company basically winds up firing everyone it can and accidentally lock themselves out of the headquarters for the weekend in the process. Eventually the man himself, Musk, desperately pleads for "anyone who writes code" to meet him in the dead of night on the tenth floor of his now empty office only to wind up with midlevel managers pledging their fidelity as the vichy scramble to find their place in the new order and various services begin to fail. Finally, mercifully, Musk is hauled back to Tesla where share prices are tumbling almost as quickly as twitter users are jumping ship, but not before unshackling a prison full of reprobates and racists to rejoin the site by un-suspending their accounts.