So "X" - nothing to see here. Elon's in control - Part XXX

Ashbourne hoop

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120956351#Comment_120956351

But Twitter didn't need significant alterations, it was working just fine, and the last thing it needed was a rebrand.

kowloon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120955925#Comment_120955925

I'd argue that Blue Origin did a better job of making space travel more phallic.

Run Forest Run

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120956388#Comment_120956388

How is "X" being successful in the long term, secondary?

If his objectives are mostly long term, then it would be the early mistakes or blunders that could be considered "secondary" to the overall big picture goal.

Unless you are referring to certain people's short term objective to take down a powerful individual, who they identify as some sort of ideological threat? I guess that would supersede any of the longer term objectives/visions.

Run Forest Run

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120956421#Comment_120956421

Interesting.

So, you think his goal is to deliberately take down a popular platform and sabotage it? What do you think the end game of that is?

Or perhaps I'm misinterpreting your point.

Ashbourne hoop

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120956494#Comment_120956494

He's acting like the taking down of the site IS his end goal. Why ? I'm not sure, boredom, spite, see if he can, who knows? He's certainly not running it like he wants to protect his investment, but I guess he has the money to be ok with that.

Quin_Dub

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120956469#Comment_120956469

It's secondary because the purchase of Twitter will play no hand act or part in whether it's a success or not.

Why did he buy Twitter as part of his plan to build this "Everything App" ?

• The Twitter code base is of little to no use to him as it doesn't have any of the features that he claims he will provide with "X"
• He fired most of the staff so he wasn't "aqui-hiring" specific engineering talent.
• He clearly doesn't value the brand name as he's just binned it
• If he was buying the user-base , he isn't doing a good job holding on to them.
• Twitter wouldn't have been a competitor to "X" so he wasn't "taking out an oppenent"
• He wasn't buying the infrastructure as he's cancelled (or trying to cancel) all those contracts.

So again , in the journey to the creation of "X , the Everything App" , why on earth did he spend $44B buying Twitter??

The purchase of Twitter has no necessary part to play in Musks plan to build "X" , so its just money completely and utterly wasted.

eightieschewbaccy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120956469#Comment_120956469

Thing is, I would suspect that engagement in the platform has dropped drastically. Advertisers have dropped off drastically too. That's long term reputational damage based on spur of the moment decisions from Musk.... That's gonna impact any long term future.

Kevrano

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120956552#Comment_120956552

The only thing I can think is the Twitter data itself, i.e. billions of tweets. But what value does it have? Maybe an AI project?

AndrewJRenko

What a surprise

https://twitter.com/ejdickson/status/1689278648996524033?s=46&t=3l1OhjvjsuAh4w9RMjlH8g

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120956552#Comment_120956552

The TLDR being that he didn't buy Twitter for any valid business reason. Bolstered by the fact that he tried to get out of his decision to buy.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120956894#Comment_120956894

To indulge in a degree of mild Devil's Advocate: I'd say this isn't a question of Musk being directly racist; rather that in firing all those content moderation teams without so much as a second's thought, he sacked whole teams whose job it was was to track & audit prejudice on the system ... which yeah, would be something you'd be more likely to hire PoC as the best perspective to police that toxicity. So the raw numbers look like blanket racism, as opposed to merely a degree of accidental racism from a thoughtless bit of showmanship masquerading as leadership.

VinLieger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120956883#Comment_120956883

The simplest and stupidest answer is probably the correct one, he made a stupid 420 joke and then was forced to follow through on it. We know he tried to get out of buying it and he ended up wildy overpaying so for me its the real reason.

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120956906#Comment_120956906

Look at me thanking your post :)

But, if they are seeing racism where there is none, or if they are playing the race card with this trial, were they fit for purpose in a content moderation team? Isn't it better now when there is none, or only moderation which deals with heavy and illegal stuff?

Doctor Jimbob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120956122#Comment_120956122

The dismissal of experts and trust of Musk's decision making ability is really strange to me. He has frequently shown himself to be an absolutely terrible decision maker.

Run Forest Run

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120956552#Comment_120956552

Even if X loses some of it's user base in the short term, it's a far more established platform than anything Musk could hope to build. He would have to wait many years to build up anything close to the same level - assuming he could even do it at all. It's far easier to just buy the leading player in the market and turn it into your own project. That's why mergers and acquisitions are so popular in business.

According to Musk, he fired a bunch of useless staff that we're unnecessarily weighing the company down. So I guess we'll have to wait and see on that one.

It's very unlikely that the platform will just wither away and die off in popularity. It's too well established. I like Ryan Reynold's description of twitter when asked about Musk's takeover: "it is, was, and always will be a dumpster fire!"

I agree wholeheartedly with this assessment. I think that's what twitter was before Musk took over.... and I see X as being more or less the same deal. Just a slightly different flavour of nutty. Just a more varied demographic buffet of loonies really. 😂

eightieschewbaccy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120957460#Comment_120957460

The fact that the platform couldn't stream audio to 300 thousand people a few months back and has had multiple performance issues since the takeover indicates the platform is experiencing plenty of technical issues.. Firing key staff and cutting corners is the reason for that. So ya, saying we just have to wait and see is pretty dishonest since the issues are already apparent.

silliussoddius

....

NONE of it makes much sense.

1. Pay WAY over the odds for a social media network, which is a bit of a bubble of journalists at the best of times. It's actually a lot smaller than the likes of Instagram or Facebook and far less mainstream.
2. Wreck it
3. Fire everyone who actually ran it.
4. Drive its advertisers away
5. Drive much of its core user base away
6. Let it run riot with bots and trolls
7. Rebrand it!?
8. Turn it into a haven for the extremes of US culture war politics.
9. Imagine that somehow you can turn that into a launch platform for some app that seemingly nobody actually wants and has a ton of competitors that are well established and far more trusted.

Putting $46 billion into the toilet and flushing would have been a better strategy.

If he had actually wanted to launch some completely new 'everything app' called X he could have spent a few billion on doing that and it would have had HUGE traction due to scale of spend and his own notoriety and ability to build on his name.

I've no doubt X will limp along for a year or two and then who knows, probably written off as part of the excesses of tech bro history.

ForestFire

If he wanted to go with 1 letter, I think B would have been a much better choice...sem to suit his decision making style....

But obviously, I mean by 1 letter, just changing the first letter of Twitter....to

....Bitter

francois

Fined for contempt, for feet dragging

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/09/twitter-fined-contempt-trump-case?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

McHardcore

I don’t understand what his game plan with twitter is either. I suspect that he saw it as the modern day equivalent of owning newspapers. If you can control what the public see you can control the politicians. He haphazardly edged it towards the right of the political spectrum by unbanning the extremists, and responding to their tweets thus giving them a platform. He probably thought he could make it the Fox News of politics. He thought he could increase user engagement through discourse. But he ended up alienating the core users and particularly the advertisers

Musk only bought Twitter because he was on a drug-fueled bender and had his phone in his hand.

Most of us have sent a stupid drunk text, posted bollocks on Boards, or bought something we didn't really want/need after a few bevvies but thankfully none of us are in a position to offer $44,000,000,000 for a social media platform.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120957896#Comment_120957896

He's actually being banging on about 'X' since about 1999 and he was pushing to rebrand PayPal to that before he was bought out in the early 00s.

The whole vision as it is now seems to be inspired by WeChat in China, which is a TOTALLY different set of circumstances, which I think I posted about before further back up the thread. The circumstances that cause WeChat to be so dominant there don't exist outside China - a lot of it is to do with state control / single online entity being government controlled and the reason it became a payment app so readily was that China developed mass market consumer banking technology much later, so you didn't have millions of credit and debit cards and a whole massive infrastructure which exists in in the US, Europe etc. There's no reason why everyone would suddenly start using X as a payment platform.

X.com : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com_(bank) (founded in 1999) 7 years before Twitter existed.

He seems to think he can somehow turn Twitter into "the most valuable financial institution in the world" ...

If he had wanted to launch X.com as a bank, he's had 20+ years of opportunity to do so and hasn't.

I won't be holding my breath.

Run Forest Run

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120958635#Comment_120958635

I thought twitter was the digital town square?

This great big megaphone/loudspeaker for want of a better term, where you could reach a very large audience with your views and opinions. And you could banish all the people you didn't like or agree with... keep all the "undesirables" out of the conversation etc.

I think Musk liked the idea of twitter, but just disagreed with the level of censorship and banning of anyone who dared to question the popular consensus/narrative on many topics. So he saw the platform as a valuable tool for free speech and large scale dialogue, but through heavy censorship and over-moderation it was not really achieving this goal. I was inclined to agree with this... a potentially useful tool, but not really being used properly. In fact, being somewhat abused tbh.

Whether or not he will achieve his goals, and transform it into a different type of town square... we'll really have to wait and see. Obviously, he is facing very strong opposition. But it seems to me that he expected this. He even appears to be having some fun turning the entire thing on it's head and ripping up much of the previous practices. That can obviously go either way, disaster or success. But I don't think we'll know either way for several years.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120959112#Comment_120959112

This is not born out by the words of Musk himself however. He wants Twitter to become an "everything app" on a par with China's WeChat... and for a host of reasons this has the smell of Folly about it.

Again to use your own words, if one wants to be "objective" about things then you park the grand and empty rhetoric about "Free Speech" and censorship to just focus on words and deeds of Musk himself, and apply critical analysis to that (and in any case: "Free Speech" as some halcyon ideal brought about my Musk immediately gets undercut by dint of Twitter Blue's subscription; something that by design makes some opinions more important than others, the lack of moderation now causing a groundswell of noise. Twitter doesn't have more Free Speech, it has less)

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1577428272056389633

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jul/29/elon-musk-wechat-twitter-rebranding-everything-app-for-west

McFly85

I don’t understand how people are still peddling the narrative that Musk bought twitter to turn it into some absolute free speech haven where there are examples of him banning accounts he didn’t like or was offended by.

Musk bought twitter because he was made to buy twitter. There is no grand plan.

Tony EH

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120959260#Comment_120959260

Some people want to peddle the narrative because they're more comfortable believing their lie than observing the truth or facts of the matter.

Any objective analysis of all of this can only come to the conclusion that Musk's takeover of Twitter has been nothing but a complete disaster.

Run Forest Run

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120959260#Comment_120959260

What type of accounts has he banned?

Is there any clear type or demographic that he has been targeting, or is it just more random?

I don't think it's reasonable to expect zero bannings. But obviously everyone's perception of a ban can be different, depending whether they agree with it or consider it a unjust ban. You only need to look at a site like boards, to see how certain posters being banned can completely divide opinion. It's very often a highly subjective issue.

McFly85

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120959329#Comment_120959329

Accounts being banned previously were accounts judged to have repeatedly violated Twitters ToS.

So Twitter had a clear set of rules to follow and you’d be fine, which is a completely normal way to moderate.

It doesn’t matter what type of accounts he banned, the fact that it was his decision makes for an unstable platform. Are you suggesting not having a set of rules and leaving it up to the current whim of the owner is a better system than having a set of defined posting rules?

Run Forest Run

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120959391#Comment_120959391

A clear set of rules written by whom though?

Twitter was famous (even infamous) for being run by people with certain societal views / political persuasions...

So if you happened to be on the opposite end of the spectrum ideologically or politically... well, tough luck, you were persona non grata on their platform. So I wouldn't exactly say that made twitter's house rules exactly fair or reasonable to a large cohort of users. And also, it very often came down to personal interpretation of people's tweets, as to whether they actually broke the rules. Which very often led to extremely arbitrary decisions to ban people - which is not really all that different to someone like Musk taking a personal dislike to your tweets.

Quin_Dub

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120959453#Comment_120959453

It's Musks toy now so he can play with it how he likes .

But, he doesn't get to spout nonsense about being all for "Absolute Free Speech" and then ban accounts that say things about him he doesn't like.

McFly85

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120959453#Comment_120959453

Does it matter who wrote them?

The rules were there and available to read. If you don’t like them you don’t have to post. Bans were generally preceded by warnings too so it wouldn’t have come as a surprise.

Also, there is zero evidence that Twitter was being moderated politically. You could absolutely post your opinions through the political spectrum without issue, but when it devolved into hate speech or unsubstantiated claims then you’d be violating the terms of service.

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120959453#Comment_120959453

Written by people. Previously Twitter was addressing and tackling disinformation and fringe political extremes with a set ToS and guidelines.

Now Musk just treats it as his "forum" and bans/unbans whomever based on his personal views and poo emojis. This is a guy with some pretty crazy anti-vax and other views. The equivalent of some conspiracy theorist buying Boards.ie for non-business reasons, getting rid of most of the mods and opening all the cages under the guise of "free speech".

VinLieger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120959453#Comment_120959453

Written by the people who turned it into the town square, if the rules were so terrible how was it so successful that your beloved musk bought it for a massive overpriced number?

Surely a hard coded set of rules is better than the simple whims of a man as thin skinned as a wet napkin.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120959453#Comment_120959453

All the first two paragraphs are just speculation based on those on one side of the ideological fence cribbing 'cos - let's be honest here - they couldn't punch down and be shítheads to those they didn't like getting "protected" status. Then hid behind a mantra of "Free Speech" which loosely translated as a desire to be a shíthead without consequence.

But in any case, you're talking around the issue, again: which is that some people talk big about Musk's Free Speech absolutist paradise, when simple aspects like Twitter Blue show that the game is not just rigged, but more than it ever was prior to the takeover. Free Speech Paradises don't have paywalls, and certainly don't show bias towards those paid users for their thoughts to have more import and prominence than others.

Not to mention the ignored part that Musk has already outlined his vision for Twitter and he's quite clear: it's not about "Free Speech", that's just some empty rhetoric the American socially-right absorbed as their cause de jour.

Ashbourne hoop

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120959453#Comment_120959453

Absolute nonsense posted without any evidence. Twitter had posts of all political persuasions with a clear set of rules. If you broke the rules you got banned, usually (not always)after a warning, and so much better than the **** show it is now with anti-vax/conspiracy theorists running wild.

mcmoustache

Musk is being seen as a God by some people since the time he took a very public hard right for some reason after the sexual harassment allegations came out. As he's a god in their eyes now, every action, no matter how stupid it looks is all part of a greater plan. It's the same mentality as QAnon - trust the plan, no matter how stupid it makes you look.

Kevrano

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120960097#Comment_120960097

A few of them are contributing to this thread. Of course when confronted, they insist they are "just casual observers". We see you.

kerplun k

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120960097#Comment_120960097

One man’s god is another man’s cod 😀

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120960097#Comment_120960097

Except it's called X-Anon

fullstop

Anyone else finding the app completely unusable since the man child changed it to this stupid ‘X’?

Home button no longer works on mine, have to use the X symbol to navigate to timeline. Search button will work when I first open the app, but if I want to use it a 2nd time I have to force quit the app and reopen.

If I go to another app and come back, a stupid trends bar appears on the right hand side of the screen, again requiring force quit to get rid of.

All of the above on iPad app.

Tony EH

Well, I don't have an account, but I used to like checking in on several feeds. All that's turned to shit now with dickhead in control. The feeds are all out of date and everything is an absolute mess.

The thing is a complete joke these days.

pixelburp

Jesus it's still happening: the stuff about Ancient Rome just toe-curling immaturity. The proceeds are going to charity, cool - though not clear what charity or charities.

Not that I'd trust either of them to run a legitimate charity that wasn't some kind of tax dodge ... though I'd give Zuckerberg some respect & kudos if he changed his charities to those aimed at trans or LGBT+ activism and support.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1689963696703848449

Agent Coulson

So I'm guessing he is hinting about the Colosseum.

Italy should look for tens of millions off both of them

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120965727#Comment_120965727

will there be lions involved? please say there will be lions involved.

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120965836#Comment_120965836

The one from The Wizard of Oz.

nachouser

"Are you not entertained?"

Russell Crowe tweets, after, hopefully, one or both of them is maimed.

Tony EH

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120965678#Comment_120965678

Pollice Verso

Penn

Well, Musk did spend 3 hours in an MRI machine on Monday, so chances are the fight will go ahead because Musk now has superpowers.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1689969006910861312?s=20

Agent Coulson

I wonder will Musk put his Neuralink in his own brain and then upload MMA skills Neo style