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

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    #7502
    Ashbourne hoop
    Registered Users Posts: 1,018 ✭✭✭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.



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    #7503
    kowloon
    Registered Users Posts: 13,454 ✭✭✭✭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.



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    #7504
    Run Forest Run
    Registered Users Posts: 478 ✭✭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.



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    #7505
    Run Forest Run
    Registered Users Posts: 478 ✭✭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.



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    #7506
    Ashbourne hoop
    Registered Users Posts: 1,018 ✭✭✭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.



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    #7507
    Quin_Dub
    Moderators, Politics Moderators, Social & Fun Moderators Posts: 15,481 Mod ✭✭✭✭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.



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    #7508
    eightieschewbaccy
    Registered Users Posts: 2,739 ✭✭✭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.



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    #7509
    Kevrano
    Registered Users Posts: 158 ✭✭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?



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    #7510
    AndrewJRenko
    Registered Users Posts: 28,969 ✭✭✭✭AndrewJRenko


    What a surprise

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




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    #7511
    Dohnjoe
    Registered Users Posts: 17,977 ✭✭✭✭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.



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    #7512
    pixelburp
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 36,469 CMod ✭✭✭✭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.



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    #7513
    VinLieger
    Registered Users Posts: 17,998 ✭✭✭✭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.



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    #7514
    Cordell
    Registered Users Posts: 5,964 ✭✭✭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?



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    #7515
    Doctor Jimbob
    Registered Users Posts: 7,637 ✭✭✭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.



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    #7516
    Run Forest Run
    Registered Users Posts: 478 ✭✭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. 😂



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    #7517
    eightieschewbaccy
    Registered Users Posts: 2,739 ✭✭✭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.



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    #7518
    silliussoddius
    Registered Users Posts: 4,071 ✭✭✭silliussoddius


    ....



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    #7519
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 0 ✭ [Deleted User]


    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.



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    #7520
    ForestFire
    Registered Users Posts: 2,368 ✭✭✭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



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    #7521
    francois
    Registered Users Posts: 3,466 ✭✭✭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



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    #7522
    McHardcore
    Registered Users Posts: 349 ✭✭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

    Post edited by McHardcore on


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    #7523
    Davis Salmon Scumbag
    Posts: 13,688 ✭ Davis Salmon Scumbag


    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.



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    #7524
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 0 ✭ [Deleted User]


    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.



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    #7525
    Run Forest Run
    Registered Users Posts: 478 ✭✭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.



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    #7526
    pixelburp
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 36,469 CMod ✭✭✭✭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




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    #7527
    McFly85
    Registered Users Posts: 3,079 ✭✭✭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.



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    #7528
    Tony EH
    Registered Users Posts: 19,277 ✭✭✭✭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.



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    #7529
    Run Forest Run
    Registered Users Posts: 478 ✭✭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.



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    #7530
    McFly85
    Registered Users Posts: 3,079 ✭✭✭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?



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    #7531
    Run Forest Run
    Registered Users Posts: 478 ✭✭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.



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