The ongoing Elon Twitter saga: "insert demographic" melts down

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I listened to Radio 4 this afternoon and The Media Show were discussing Twitter. From my perspective it was quite a glass half empty kind of panel. It seemed that all the guests were allowed to offer up a strawman of what the worst thing possible that could happen and agree how terrible it would be without any opposing view or even sense moderation.
 
PlacidCasual said:
I listened to Radio 4 this afternoon and The Media Show were discussing Twitter. From my perspective it was quite a glass half empty kind of panel. It seemed that all the guests were allowed to offer up a strawman of what the worst thing possible that could happen and agree how terrible it would be without any opposing view or even sense moderation.
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Possibly because at the moment Musk hasn't offered anything positive?

I've been seeing people who've been involved in running other social media systems (big and small) commenting about how musk seems to be just starting to learn about how and why twitter will have the sort of policies it does,.

As I, and others have pointed out several times in this thread for example Musk seems to think that blue ticks/verification is there for the benefit/ego of the people who have them, whilst in reality it was the result of a lawsuit twitter lost about an impersonator and so the verification was rolled out not to benefit the user with it, but because it was the cheapest/easiest way to show to the courts they were at least doing something in future cases.

If musk had any clue about what he was doing he could have announced actual policies with details on day 1 of the purchase rather than playing games and tweeting whatever comes into his head and thus worrying his customers (the advertisers), his product (the users, especially the blue ticks), his creditors (who are saying publicly they expect to make a loss), and his staff who seems to want to avoid paying at all costs and doesn't have a clue what they're doing.
On the plus side the lawyers are probably looking at getting some more money out of him if he blunders through the laws that twitter has to operate under (and the reason for many of it's policies), and the contracts he's broken with regards to his now ex employees (not to mention any from the staff he's now expecting to work 60-80 hours a week).
 
VincentHanna said:
www.independent.co.uk

Tweets claiming that Donald Trump has died test Elon Musk’s Twitter

Tweets falsely suggesting that Donald Trump has died are testing the content moderation of Elon Musk’s Twitter.
www.independent.co.uk www.independent.co.uk
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That makes little sense given there haven't yet been any major changes to content moderation and this sort of thing has been done plenty of times on Twitter in the past - see previous times when the Queen was alive and Twitter starts a rumour that she's dead.

Still, it gets lapped up right away by the usual suspects:

Jono8 said:
Free speech innit lads.
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dowie said:
That makes little sense given there haven't yet been any major changes to content moderation
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Which means 1) there have been changes, based in what you've said, just not major ones,

And 2) they are testing it out to see if and what changes have been made.

Surely you can work this out? You don't always have to be confused and think things make no sense.
 
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Elon needs lessons on how to tweet
 
Here's a great article about just how dire Twitter's financial situation is. https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/2/...ubscription-verification-revenue-debt-finance

The company was making a $300m+ loss and Musk's takeover has added a one billion dollars per year interest payment to that figure, whilst also spooking advertisers with his 'free speech' ideas. There's a good reason he tried so hard to get out of the deal.
 
Yeah, I'm almost enjoying the saga now..

He's getting stick from all sides, slightly left/right, far left/right.. and I have no doubt he realises (as my opinion always has been) twitter cannot be fixed.

I will give Elon credit if he does create a better public space, with general intolerance to hateful conduct (equally applied to all human beings) and allow a bit more discourse on subjects that are best kept out in the open and not pander to certain ideological narratives (i.e. both far left and far right), and then get the money in..

Something tells me there is not a hope in hell, but for me, twitter dying would be an improvement anyway, so it's almost a win-win for some of us.
 
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Demon said:
Yeah, I'm almost enjoying the saga now..

He's getting stick from all sides, slightly left/right, far left/right.. and I have no doubt he realises (as my opinion always has been) twitter cannot be fixed.

I will give Elon credit if he does create a better public space, with general intolerance to hateful conduct (equally applied to all human beings) and allow a bit more discourse on subjects that are best kept out in the open and not pander to certain ideological narratives (i.e. both far left and far right), and then get the money in..

Something tells me there is not a hope in hell, but for me, twitter dying would be an improvement anyway, so it's almost a win-win for some of us.
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He won't do it, because it is quite obvious where Elon's allegiances lie and what he actually thinks politically.
 
Craterloads said:
He should have just paid the fine, if that was possible, and bailed out.

Buyers remorse must be epic :D
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He didn't have that option - there wasn't a clause in the contract which allowed him to back out after agreeing to the sale. He tried to complain about the number of bots, but this wasn't in the contract either. His worst action was not doing due diligence, and agreeing to skip it which gave him no legal comeback about the sale or the state of the company. The court was going to force him to buy it at the original (ridiculous) offer price, so he had to go ahead with it to avoid the case.

What was he originally thinking? Well, it was either a way to free up some liquidity from Tesla by selling his stock, but then pulling out of the deal and keeping the cash (to pay all his child maintenance...) or a way to appear at the top of the news feeds for several months and make himself feel relevant/feed his narcissism. Either way, the idea that he actually cares about free speech or Twitter in general is just ludicrous.

Even funnier was the interview he gave not long after announcing his interest in buying it where he stated he didn't care about the economics of it all, just the free speech platform. Apparently that is no longer the case as he does sort of need to find a way to pay off all his creditors...
 
FishFluff said:
Here's a great article about just how dire Twitter's financial situation is. https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/2/...ubscription-verification-revenue-debt-finance

The company was making a $300m+ loss and Musk's takeover has added a one billion dollars per year interest payment to that figure, whilst also spooking advertisers with his 'free speech' ideas. There's a good reason he tried so hard to get out of the deal.
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It's funny how it's been run badly for years, barely making any profit yet within days of Elon taking over various blue checks are suddenly critical of the various plans he's suggesting.
 
dowie said:
It's funny how it's been run badly for years, barely making any profit yet within days of Elon taking over various blue checks are suddenly critical of the various plans he's suggesting.
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Because no-one was having to pay for it and thus the management was not their problem. Now Elon is trying to put the problem of making money on the people using it, so shouldn't be surprised if people choose not to. If he didn't have any other ideas apart from charging people, and they refuse to pay, then that's his problem, not theirs.
 
Penfold101 said:
Because no-one was having to pay for it and thus the management was not their problem.
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No one has to pay for it now either.

Twitter had already introduced some monetisation - you can pay a subscription if you want to edit tweets etc.. you can pay to "super follow" someone etc.

No one *has* to use the additional features.

He's also mentioned paying creators, if you're a big name and you're generating traffic then that should eclipse any $8 monthly fee. Currently, twitter does have a problem with bots and spammers, expanding verification beyond the opaque class system he highlighted seems like a good move in principle.
 
Jono8 said:
Just lol :cry:
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It's super lol when you consider dowie wrote that sentence after writing the one about twitter possibly paying it's big content creators, so the super freaking obvious result is that the lower class with less followers/money have to pay for the tick, whole the elites get paid to have the tick.

Super lol at dowie
 
dowie said:
No one has to pay for it now either.

Twitter had already introduced some monetisation - you can pay a subscription if you want to edit tweets etc.. you can pay to "super follow" someone etc.

No one *has* to use the additional features.

He's also mentioned paying creators, if you're a big name and you're generating traffic then that should eclipse any $8 monthly fee. Currently, twitter does have a problem with bots and spammers, expanding verification beyond the opaque class system he highlighted seems like a good move in principle.
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I think he's only mentioned paying creators after the likes of Stephen King basically told him to go do one.

Again it's something if he'd actually got a plan before deciding he'd buy Twitter like I decide I'll buy a mars bar at the checkout, he wouldn't be coming out with all sorts of contradictory statements as soon as he faces pushback, he would have posted an actual statement of plans with reasoning and exemptions, but no he decided that the likes of King should pay $20 for the privilege of having an indicator Twitter started using to avoid legal action and then when King et al said no asked if $8 would be ok, then tried to spin it as anyone could now get it for $8 a month.

He's gone into his purchase of twitter without a clue, and i'm starting to think my brothers comment about him probably being high when he made the offer/signed the contracts might be right.
 
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