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

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119843641#Comment_119843641

Well unless Twitter was about to be very quickly insolvent, which looking at its last published accounts, it doesn’t seem very likely, it’s way, way too radical and too quick.

I mean what he’s doing looks more like what a liquidator might do to a failing conglomerate.

No organisation can survive that kind of seismic change, and particularly not one that’s based in knowledge economy type sectors. They are a team of people, its collective knowledge, a brand and good will and that’s pretty much it.

This is is like pruning a rose bush with a lawn mower.

He’s going to end up with a brand, and very little else and I suppose if you’ve $44bn to play with on this kind of thing as a hobby …

xxxxxxl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119843645#Comment_119843645

You don't put in that kind of cash if your breaking the company apart and selling off stuff you cannot re coupe that money from twitter that way. Musk bought it and the shares went to trash that shows exactly how inflated it was. The last guy basically passed a S*it sandwich on to someone. Either Musk will make it profitable or it will go to the wall.

It’ll go to the wall, or it’ll end up as some sad former brand bought by some dull company, when he gets bored and cuts his losses.

There’s nothing to break apart or sell other than the brand and maybe some national value of the data it probably holds, most of which isn’t all that useful as it’s not very deep or personally linked (unlike Google and Facebook)

xxxxxxl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119843650#Comment_119843650

So everyone's faux outrage about the employees is just a side show ?

Give it a few months. There’s a reality under the cloud of smoke.

As it’s now a private company, the markets won’t particularity care, other than the impact is might have on linked investments / loans etc.

It’ll be interesting…

Meta’s sloshing of billions upon billions into a large virtual reality hole in the ground seems to be more likely to cause a market panic.

xxxxxxl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119843654#Comment_119843654

True a refreshing opinion. But it was always touted as a private company.

Tell me how

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119843645#Comment_119843645

A brand that he has kicked the living sh*t out of.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119843659#Comment_119843659

Maybe someone will buy it and stick it on cheap TVs along side all the other random old brands …

Tell me how

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119843646#Comment_119843646

Come on now.

It's very early for the 'Dorsey made a mess of things and if it fails, it will be his fault' excuses.

If what you said is the case, it's still Musk's mistake because he waived option for due diligence. And as already said, the speed at which he is acting does not look like someone who assessed methodically what was being done, by who and then acted but rather someone who had already planned this course of action before he pulled that bizarre stunt of walking in with a sink.

If it goes to the wall, it's on Musk. It will be a case of 'he bought it, he broke it'

xxxxxxl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119843665#Comment_119843665

No no lets not rewrite history it's was profitable once in its entire life. If it goes to the wall that's on external factors not on Musk. Advertisers were fine to put adds on a none profitable platform for some reason. I cant think what that reason is....

Tell me how

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119843667#Comment_119843667

So he spent 44B on something that was or is likely to fail?

Rationalize that for us.

xxxxxxl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119843672#Comment_119843672

No he did not. When do advertisers care about people losing their jobs. losing a voice a certain voice is the core issue. Musk thinks he can turn it around. Why are we against that do we want all twitter staff out of jobs ? Seems an odd view. that was around 8k people world wide.

Tell me how

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119843675#Comment_119843675

Look, this attempted strawman of trying to pretend people should support what Musk is doing so as to avoid the potential of people losing their jobs is ignoring the bigger picture. Musk has made an impulse buy of a product that he doesn't really understand and he has immediately made dramatic and conflicting actions and statements on what is a global interface. And him doing so is very significant, even before we get anywhere close to assessing what the impact of his ownership is fully going to have.

Your inference would be similar to suggesting people appease Putin with respect to Ukraine so as to avoid the likely death of Ukranian defenders (deaths that have occurred and will continue to occur) but it fails to consider the impact of not resisting Putins actions longer term.

I would rather we see Musk's endeavor with respect to Twitter to fail because I feel he has is a volatile influence on the global conversation, he has indicated a tolerance, if not outright support for rhetoric that is extremely dangerous and I have never found him to be a likable character or one who has demonstrated any capacity to consider the greater good of society in his actions. And he is in a position to influence society, that's a fact. That does not mean I want people to lose their jobs, but if it was a choice between a few thousand highly qualified people who would stand a very high likelihood of getting replacement jobs losing theirs, or society moving further towards a place where uber-wealthy people have the power to negatively impact society in general, or other workers in particular, then print those P45's immediately.

God bless.

https://twitter.com/thegoodgodabove/status/1589411782032257025

xxxxxxl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119843684#Comment_119843684

sorry I stopped reading after putin... jesus. its sm not a bloody war.....

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119842688#Comment_119842688

“in his own image”?

Is he Jesus now?

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119842819#Comment_119842819

It almost as if the detailed, well thought out plan we were told about earlier didn’t actually exist.

AndrewJRenko

Equal speech apparently means amplifying child sexual abuse material producing Nazis.

https://twitter.com/sethcotlar/status/1589438688504999936?s=46&t=i2ASqhLpKgV1-V1F7CBg7w

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119843389#Comment_119843389

So what’s the purpose of his latest clarification about comedy?

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119843431#Comment_119843431

Doesn’t look like “equal speech” to me.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119843449#Comment_119843449

You don’t need to twist 240 million to corrupt the election, Look at what Cambridge Analytica did for Trump and Brexit, focusing on a small number of persuadable voters in swing constituencies.

Tonesjones

In a bit of positive news so called "comedian " Kathy Griffen has been suspended from Twitter for impersonating Elon Musk and being a total gobshite about it.

Twitter is a better place already

Remember the time she thought she was funny with the Trump head? Horrible person

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589450155723722752?s=20&t=v9cXzoCB6pGWi2Pt6Izvpg

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119843479#Comment_119843479

So well funded campaigns will be paying for their bots.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119843509#Comment_119843509

Early voting is a big thing over there.

Tonesjones

https://twitter.com/simplyebad/status/1589450450319077376?s=20&t=KpqdPV6e7d_dTovQMvJYZQ

"Griffin used her "Elon Musk" account Sunday to urge Americans to vote for Democrats in the midterm elections Tuesday to preserve abortion rights"

It has always been against Twitter rules to impersonate someone. Kathy isn't too smart

McFly85

So, Elon breaks fundamental Twitter functionality before realising how ripe it is for exploitation, so enforces some ham-fisted new rules along with swift banning. Not off to a great start, is it?

Musk implementing these things makes him look proactive but I’m not sure you can run a company like Twitter that way. Everyone knows most of twitters money comes from being a big advertising board - and why would advertisers give you money if you’re going to keep f*cking with how the board works?

circadian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119843646#Comment_119843646

Why would anyone spend that amount of money on a **** sandwich? It'd be cheaper to attempt to start an alternative and if it was a **** sandwich then it would inevitably fail leaving space for said alternative.

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119843821#Comment_119843821

Not to mention that paying for Twitter Blue will means those users will see half the amount of ads, which either means they'll see fewer ads than they currently do (which won't make advertisers happy), or the amount of ads are going to double meaning Twitter Blue users will see the same amount of ads they currently do, but ads for everyone else will double (which will p*ss off users and could drive people from the site).

Musk has also talked about greater targeted ads, which means more data collection which could also drive people from the site. Which again, could p*ss off users and therefore advertisers.

pjohnson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119843858#Comment_119843858

Brilliant business men are well known for buying overpriced **** sandwiches. Apparently. Charles Manson didn't have a cult as commited as Musky!

Why are Tech Bros always so incredibly thin-skinned?

bokale

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119843789#Comment_119843789

"Being a total gobshite about it", What did she do exactly?

...Ghost...

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119843612#Comment_119843612

I'm not aware of any nurses or doctors vlogging during their work. Firstly, they wouldn't be allowed to and secondly they wouldn't have the time to. If any of them had done so without express permission, then they should definitely be thinned from the herd.

The twitter staff vlogging videos are many. I've only watched a couple of short ones, but what struck me was that they were not actually doing any work and there was a distinct lack of staff anywhere in the vicinity. It was like the whole place they worked was some sort of safe space with quiet rooms and free stuff. Much closer to what you would see on a college day free of lectures than a place of work.

It would be easy to see where productivity was happening, so i'm sure the vast majority of positions axed were places of little importance, in need of major change, or with little to no productivity. They're all getting paid for 3 months, so plenty of time to find new employment for their valuable transferable skills.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119843620#Comment_119843620

I've had clients who work(ed) in all the major tech companies including twitter, facebook, linkedin and google. The general consensus over the years is that the only people doing any work are the people on the advertising campaigns, R&D and the engineers (mostly pm). The common term I heard across the sector was "flake" referring to a large portion of staff who did almost no work and spent their time in huddle meetings, or chill rooms. Seems there is a lot of money floating around and few with real responsibility or skin in the game.

It doesn't matter if staff are on site for 40, 50, 60 hours per week if they are spending almost all that time doing no tangible work. Sure, who would want to go home when it's so comfortable being at work and nobody is putting you under pressure? The open letter to Elon Musk from the staff was a prime example of the sense of entitlement many of the staff have. Many of them will now have to enter the real world of work and I feel sorry for them and their new employers, because there is going to be some serious learning curves up ahead. The reduction of mental health weeks off will be a shock to their system. Assigned gender toilets will have some fainting in corridors. Lack of safe space and yoga rooms will be too much to handle for the veteran twits.

Christy42

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119843912#Comment_119843912

Insult someone that people who care about free speech cared about.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589413653190938624

Musk stating that they want to be a very accurate source of information implies a massive, massive amount of censorship will be coming down the line. He is already contradicting himself as "free" speech that he claims to want on twitter no longer includes the right to be wrong. Does this mean people will get immediately banned for all those right wing conspiracy theories about Paul Pelosi?

Granted he says a lot of things so we will see.

Sleepy

I'll be honest, I hope Musk loses every cent he's invested in Twitter. The more of these tech billionaires that go spectacularly bust, the quicker politicians will be to finally tax the bastards properly.

VinLieger

A lot of reports confirming twitter are trying to rehire many of the people they dropped last week. Im guessing somebody realised axing virtually your entire SRE team is a pretty terrible idea, especially considering all the changes elon is looking to implement.

...Ghost...

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119843978#Comment_119843978

Yes....I see your logic. Billionaires who go bust pay more tax. Wait.....

kippy

Watching on with interest here. I have a twitter account but rarely use twitter.

I think 44BN for it was absolutely nuts. It will NEVER be worth that kinda coin again. Not sure what Musk is hoping to achieve - he could have setup his own platform for a fraction of the cost and with far more control!

Sleepy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119844003#Comment_119844003

/whoosh... let me break it down for you:

Billionaires only exists because of a failure of tax policy.

As we're seeing with Zuckerburg and Meta and Musk and Twitter, allowing spoiled twats to control such amounts of wealth is a bad idea.

So if we tax them properly on their way up, preventing them from ever becoming billionaires in the first place, we'll avoid the problems they create when they get bored of having too much money.

hotmail.com

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119844045#Comment_119844045

You won't find anyone in America looking to raise taxes for rich people.

hotmail.com

Twitter trying to turn into boards by the sounds of it. Remove any sense of humour.

magicbastarder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119843863#Comment_119843863

For $8 a month I'd want to see *no* ads.

Sleepy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119844062#Comment_119844062

Which is why parts of America are beginning to resemble a 3rd world country with huge homelessness, high crime and disgusting levels of medical bankruptcies.

It's unfair to say that no-one in America has the sense to raise taxes on the rich, they just don't exist in high enough numbers (yet?) to overcome their flawed electoral system and the embedded corruption. One can only hope that younger generations who are growing up with the likes of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez getting high profile media coverage will learn from the mistakes of their forebears.

bokale

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119844015#Comment_119844015

The right don't seem to be able to set up a successful one.

They need the wokey leftists to do it for them.

Some of the security issues with Parler were hilarious.

TomTomTim

Half of this thread were "worrying" about impersonations in regard to people losing blue check marks, someone then impersonates another blue check mark, something we were told is a serious and dangerous thing. Musk then reacts and punishes the person who did the act we were warned about, yet still somehow he's in the wrong? All this shows us is that the crying class are literally unpleasable.

Danzy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119843863#Comment_119843863

There are only 500k blue tick users , their not seeings ads will be negligible.

McFly85

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119844112#Comment_119844112

People were pointing out that that impersonation will become a lot easier if people can just buy a blue tick - which is the thing it was designed to stop.

I actually think he was wrong to ban her so quickly, too. He came up with new rules for parody accounts when he saw what could happen due to his new policy but didn’t even give her a chance to cooperate with them in the form of a warning(which is very much the approach old twitter would have taken with ToS breaches).

But I’m sure everyone who’s been crowing about Elon “Free Speech” Musk in this thread will have no problem with him immediately booting someone off the platform for mocking him. And I’m sure advertisers will love the idea of an unstable platform that can change completely on the whim of one man.

Christy42

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119844126#Comment_119844126

The point of the blue tick users is that there should be more of them. That is the point that ordinary people and "elite" people would be treated the same and you can't do that without both sides of that having the blue tick mark. This is also the way that he wants to combat bots, if everyone buys it means people with bots would need to spend 8 dollars a bot to be a realistic bot (as most unverified will be bots). So if it doesn't have a large effect on advertising then the entire blue tick overhaul will be a failure.

hotmail.com

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119844112#Comment_119844112

Yeah Musk has become a hysterical hate figure for some reason.

Many in Ireland probably hadn't even heard of him til this hysteria broke out on RTE.

I read that twitter isn't even in the top 10 used social media platforms. It's a niche social media platform for those interested in the news and politics.

Quin_Dub

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119843985#Comment_119843985

That was bound to happen when they rushed the cuts.

Not a chance in hell that they had the time to properly review who/what they were cutting..

So now they'll have to go back and either re-hire or bring them back as contractors for way more money.

I mean if you were a person that was summarily booted on Friday morning and today they are back saying "Actually , we really need you back as we forgot you were working on this really important stuff" you are going to absolutely go to town on them before you'll come back.

My own employer made that mistake years ago during the dot com bust - Laid off a load of engineers and then had to bring them all back as contractors a few days later at rates massively above what their salaries were. Kept them as contractors for about 2 years and then hired them all back as employees several grades higher than when they laid them off.

...Ghost...

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119844045#Comment_119844045

Thank you for that very detailed tax plan for billionaires, or wannabe billionaires. To summarise: Don't let anyone become a billionaire because they won't pay tax. Hmmmm. If billionaires don't pay tax, does that mean you (presumably a PAYE worker) have paid more tax than Musk?

Just to be clear here. As we are discussing Twitter and Musk, you do know the man paid $11 BILLION in taxes last year, right? Of course, certain agenda driven folk don't think that's enough and wouldn't be happy until everyone is on the average industrial wage no matter what they do, or don't do in life. Just look at the equality.org story about his unfair share of taxes paid. Bleeding heart society. They seem to bent out of shape because he found ways to only pay 11 billion 😂