You own a social network. Isn’t it fun?
November 2, 2022 11:24 AM Subscribe
Unrelated to the current topic, but if you haven't read his "Hello! You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Section 230 Of The Communications Decency Act", it's well worth it too.
posted by bcd at 11:42 AM on November 2, 2022 [12 favorites]
posted by bcd at 11:42 AM on November 2, 2022 [12 favorites]
I really thought this was going to be about Jessamyn and getting cats stuck in scanners.
posted by k3ninho at 11:47 AM on November 2, 2022 [31 favorites]
posted by k3ninho at 11:47 AM on November 2, 2022 [31 favorites]
>It only gets worse, and you will make mistakes, and people will get mad and personally blame you and insist that you are deliberately trying to “censor” their brilliant ideas,
Yeah, not to immediately take this in a crabby direction, but one of the first things Musk did after assuming control of Twitter was effectively post "I heard he got beat with a hammer by his GAY ESCORT LOL" about Paul Pelosi. All this "gosh I'm doing my best with the best of intentions" stuff does not fit on Musk. He's a monster.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 11:57 AM on November 2, 2022 [102 favorites]
Yeah, not to immediately take this in a crabby direction, but one of the first things Musk did after assuming control of Twitter was effectively post "I heard he got beat with a hammer by his GAY ESCORT LOL" about Paul Pelosi. All this "gosh I'm doing my best with the best of intentions" stuff does not fit on Musk. He's a monster.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 11:57 AM on November 2, 2022 [102 favorites]
TechDirt is a national treasure.
posted by hypnogogue at 12:00 PM on November 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by hypnogogue at 12:00 PM on November 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
Thanks for this. I also liked this thread from IT law professor, Paul Bernal - about the rocky ride Musk has embarked on. Like Mike Masnick, he makes the point that Musk has spent his money on what is really a community which he appears to think of as a tech company.
posted by rongorongo at 12:02 PM on November 2, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by rongorongo at 12:02 PM on November 2, 2022 [4 favorites]
Sing Or Swim: Yeah, I read this piece as "shit on Elon under the guise of pretending to sympathize with him," not as a genuine attempt to be helpful to him. It's gleeful commentary on the grave he keeps digging for himself.
(The alt-right is already getting furious with him. It's great.)
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 12:05 PM on November 2, 2022 [20 favorites]
(The alt-right is already getting furious with him. It's great.)
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 12:05 PM on November 2, 2022 [20 favorites]
So you're telling me no-one has been able to master full self driving content moderation yet?
Surely it's just a couple of years around the corner.
posted by clawsoon at 12:09 PM on November 2, 2022 [41 favorites]
Surely it's just a couple of years around the corner.
posted by clawsoon at 12:09 PM on November 2, 2022 [41 favorites]
Soundtrack for this thread? (Penelope Scott - Rät, explicit lyrics)
posted by xedrik at 12:12 PM on November 2, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by xedrik at 12:12 PM on November 2, 2022 [3 favorites]
"And because I do hope that Musk succeeds and Twitter remains viable..."
This is the part I don't get. Why is anyone rooting for Musk or Twitter? They are individually despicable and jointly irredeemable. Wouldn't the best outcome be for them to crash and burn together?
posted by angrynerd at 12:17 PM on November 2, 2022 [23 favorites]
This is the part I don't get. Why is anyone rooting for Musk or Twitter? They are individually despicable and jointly irredeemable. Wouldn't the best outcome be for them to crash and burn together?
posted by angrynerd at 12:17 PM on November 2, 2022 [23 favorites]
I also quite liked this article from The Verge, entitled “Welcome to Hell, Elon.”
posted by holborne at 12:27 PM on November 2, 2022 [10 favorites]
posted by holborne at 12:27 PM on November 2, 2022 [10 favorites]
Slate’s longtime community moderator, Evan Urquhart, had some thoughts on this subject, which he put forth in a Twitter thread. Excerpt:
posted by Kattullus at 12:29 PM on November 2, 2022 [43 favorites]
I think a lot of us are thinking about "to leave or not to leave" right now.The whole thread is worth reading.
Some people have left or are leaving- GOOD. Not going to tell you not to.
Some of us, for whatever reasons, are sticking it out a little longer. This thread is intended for you (we) sickos.
It's GOOD for loads of people to leave Twitter. Anything that threatens Musk financially is good.
However. There is another way to threaten his financials. I know this way, my friends, because I have been Slate's sole staff comment moderators for the past 7 yrs or so.
Comment sections below the articles were once widespread on all news sites and really all websites. They were the default.
You know what killed them? Lack of moderation. They became so unpleasant and toxic that they were a net negative on news sites, so the sites killed them.
Slate did something different, but it was a close thing, and when I came in Slate comments were in a death spiral.
And the really interesting and relevant thing was that it WASN'T just spammers and racists who were killing comments, but the superfan power users of the website.
Take it from a moderator: People who use the N word are EASY to moderate.
Unruly superfans who hate you because you're doing moderation badly? THEY are a nightmare. Bc they know where the lines are, and they evade bans, and they argue, and they complain amongst each other.
posted by Kattullus at 12:29 PM on November 2, 2022 [43 favorites]
on what is really a community which he appears to think of as a tech company
I think that is an important insight. And I want to point to wooh's comment from an earlier thread that helped remind me that even though the above statement is true, it also remains a hugely complex piece of technology that needs to be maintained.
I can't find the source (it was on Twitter, natch) but someone put the hubris of Musk and his ilk well: These guys don't think "We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard", they think "We do these things not because they are easy, but because we thought they were easy"
They are individually despicable and jointly irredeemable
Twitter is like a library with all of the worst books on the "Recommended by the Librarian" section at the entrance. There's so much great stuff in the stacks, but the "librarians" have done such a shit job that you rarely see it. It's a fucking tragedy.
posted by gwint at 12:31 PM on November 2, 2022 [24 favorites]
I think that is an important insight. And I want to point to wooh's comment from an earlier thread that helped remind me that even though the above statement is true, it also remains a hugely complex piece of technology that needs to be maintained.
I can't find the source (it was on Twitter, natch) but someone put the hubris of Musk and his ilk well: These guys don't think "We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard", they think "We do these things not because they are easy, but because we thought they were easy"
They are individually despicable and jointly irredeemable
Twitter is like a library with all of the worst books on the "Recommended by the Librarian" section at the entrance. There's so much great stuff in the stacks, but the "librarians" have done such a shit job that you rarely see it. It's a fucking tragedy.
posted by gwint at 12:31 PM on November 2, 2022 [24 favorites]
I'm starting to think that any technology that makes it easier for people to communicate and exchange ideas is, fundamentally and inescapably, a bad idea. This includes, e.g., language.
posted by Faint of Butt at 12:37 PM on November 2, 2022 [46 favorites]
posted by Faint of Butt at 12:37 PM on November 2, 2022 [46 favorites]
I root for Musk in a way. I think he's suffering from a severe form of 'Engineer's disease' combined with 'Rich person's disease'.
Engineer's disease is when an engineer is very competent in certain areas (engineering), and decides, by extension, that they are therefore experts in everything--giving unwanted and often quite incorrect comments and advice.
By any measure Elon Musk has been amazingly successful. There has been no major successful new car company of any kind in the US for a 100 years, and electric cars were thought to be slow, short range glorified golf carts. He changed the world's EV perception with very fast, long range electric vehicles and has built that up into one of the biggest and fastest growing car companies in the world, along with building up a world-wide fast charging network along freeways (something else no on had done). In addition, he's built the most productive and cheapest rocket launch companies in the world--including manned launches, which is extremely difficult. He's launched satellites that provide reasonably fast internet service to just about everywhere in the world, something else that many have tried and failed. He's one of the richest people in the world and Tesla is one of the richest companies in the world.
I could go on-and-on. You've just got to imagine what all this success does to someone's head. It is amazing it hasn't popped. He's certainly gone off the deep end--supporting anti-environmental politicians who would probably try to ban Teslas if they got elected, and weird conspiracy theory politics indicated by that Pelosi thing he posted.
What he clearly needs is a great humbling. I don't know if Twitter will be enough for this to happen. I'm rooting for Elon Musk sanity, which is why I'm rooting for Twitter to be a resounding failure, or at least so difficult to make successful that he has to recover his sanity in order to make it work.
posted by eye of newt at 12:38 PM on November 2, 2022 [23 favorites]
Engineer's disease is when an engineer is very competent in certain areas (engineering), and decides, by extension, that they are therefore experts in everything--giving unwanted and often quite incorrect comments and advice.
By any measure Elon Musk has been amazingly successful. There has been no major successful new car company of any kind in the US for a 100 years, and electric cars were thought to be slow, short range glorified golf carts. He changed the world's EV perception with very fast, long range electric vehicles and has built that up into one of the biggest and fastest growing car companies in the world, along with building up a world-wide fast charging network along freeways (something else no on had done). In addition, he's built the most productive and cheapest rocket launch companies in the world--including manned launches, which is extremely difficult. He's launched satellites that provide reasonably fast internet service to just about everywhere in the world, something else that many have tried and failed. He's one of the richest people in the world and Tesla is one of the richest companies in the world.
I could go on-and-on. You've just got to imagine what all this success does to someone's head. It is amazing it hasn't popped. He's certainly gone off the deep end--supporting anti-environmental politicians who would probably try to ban Teslas if they got elected, and weird conspiracy theory politics indicated by that Pelosi thing he posted.
What he clearly needs is a great humbling. I don't know if Twitter will be enough for this to happen. I'm rooting for Elon Musk sanity, which is why I'm rooting for Twitter to be a resounding failure, or at least so difficult to make successful that he has to recover his sanity in order to make it work.
posted by eye of newt at 12:38 PM on November 2, 2022 [23 favorites]
A note on all those fun new Mastodon instances, and the existing ones that are beginning to scale: All of this is just as much a potential problem for them as it is for Twitter. Even if they're run by two people with a budget of 5 dollars and some goodwill. This is something with potential to become a big problem for them.
Still, I wish them well. I wish nuTwitter a "fuck you and collapse fast".
posted by Artw at 12:45 PM on November 2, 2022 [6 favorites]
Still, I wish them well. I wish nuTwitter a "fuck you and collapse fast".
posted by Artw at 12:45 PM on November 2, 2022 [6 favorites]
Faint of Butt,
Easy communication is bad is an old idea. Let's make it hard to communicate due to different languages and let's put people far away from each other.
Take your pick. Rebuild the Tower with social media? Tough question.
posted by zengargoyle at 12:47 PM on November 2, 2022 [7 favorites]
1 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2 And as they migrated from the east,[a] they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar. 4 Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." 5 The LORD[b] came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. 6 And the LORD said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech." 8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9 Therefore it was called Babel,[c] because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth, and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.Tower of Babel - Wikipedia
— Genesis 11:1–9 NRSVUE[7]
Easy communication is bad is an old idea. Let's make it hard to communicate due to different languages and let's put people far away from each other.
Take your pick. Rebuild the Tower with social media? Tough question.
posted by zengargoyle at 12:47 PM on November 2, 2022 [7 favorites]
Some people like a beer or two after mowing the lawn and watching the game. Some people like a cognac before the fireplace, maybe with a cigar. For some it's wine and a cheeseboard. Then there are people who drink a litre of everclear, fuck a pig and burn down the barn.
Those latter people should never drink. They can't handle it. Guess what? One of them just bought the biggest distillery in the world. Let's watch!
posted by adept256 at 12:49 PM on November 2, 2022 [27 favorites]
Those latter people should never drink. They can't handle it. Guess what? One of them just bought the biggest distillery in the world. Let's watch!
posted by adept256 at 12:49 PM on November 2, 2022 [27 favorites]
Why is anyone rooting for Musk or Twitter? They are individually despicable and jointly irredeemable. Wouldn't the best outcome be for them to crash and burn together?
I have never had a Twitter account, but I know there are a lot of people who find Twitter very helpful for a variety of their needs, whether it's sharing information or obtaining information. (Despite not having a Twitter account, I have read a lot of Dr. Bob Wachter's Twitter updates, and I occasionally view other people's Twitter threads as well.)
There have been several people here on MetaFilter in the past week who have talked about how valuable Twitter is to them and what they will lose if it goes away.
Twitter obviously has massive problems, and they're almost certainly about to get much worse - but that doesn't mean there's nothing there that matters to people. There is useful, helpful information (and yes, community) on Twitter, and the fact that people have been able to work around or carefully ignore the ugliness that infests Twitter is actually testament to its value. If I can learn how to ignore the comments on my favorite public health officials' tweets so I can benefit from the actual content, surely others can - and have, and do - too.
posted by kristi at 12:49 PM on November 2, 2022 [23 favorites]
I have never had a Twitter account, but I know there are a lot of people who find Twitter very helpful for a variety of their needs, whether it's sharing information or obtaining information. (Despite not having a Twitter account, I have read a lot of Dr. Bob Wachter's Twitter updates, and I occasionally view other people's Twitter threads as well.)
There have been several people here on MetaFilter in the past week who have talked about how valuable Twitter is to them and what they will lose if it goes away.
Twitter obviously has massive problems, and they're almost certainly about to get much worse - but that doesn't mean there's nothing there that matters to people. There is useful, helpful information (and yes, community) on Twitter, and the fact that people have been able to work around or carefully ignore the ugliness that infests Twitter is actually testament to its value. If I can learn how to ignore the comments on my favorite public health officials' tweets so I can benefit from the actual content, surely others can - and have, and do - too.
posted by kristi at 12:49 PM on November 2, 2022 [23 favorites]
(The alt-right is already getting furious with him. It's great.)
Elon was moving to the untapped coal-rollin' market for Tesla now that he's in the diminishing returns part of the curve on people to the left of Ronald Reagan. Actually having to buy twitter, and not being able to monetize the great troll masses is going to seriously hamper that pivot.
posted by tclark at 12:55 PM on November 2, 2022 [3 favorites]
Elon was moving to the untapped coal-rollin' market for Tesla now that he's in the diminishing returns part of the curve on people to the left of Ronald Reagan. Actually having to buy twitter, and not being able to monetize the great troll masses is going to seriously hamper that pivot.
posted by tclark at 12:55 PM on November 2, 2022 [3 favorites]
The past week my three Twitter accounts -- one explicitly me, two sockpuppets -- have been inundated with follows from what are very clearly bots: attractive women who post exactly three photos, have made no likes or replies, and have been created in the past three months. They are almost always named in the structure "Jane Doe @DoeJane" . They are following 1000+ people and have less than a hundred followers.
Methinks there aren't going to be any drops in Twitter account numbers with the exodus, because someone's deliberately inflating Twitter's numbers via bots despite all the chest-beating over "GET RID OF THE TWITTER BOTS BEFORE I BUY".
posted by AzraelBrown at 12:57 PM on November 2, 2022 [3 favorites]
Methinks there aren't going to be any drops in Twitter account numbers with the exodus, because someone's deliberately inflating Twitter's numbers via bots despite all the chest-beating over "GET RID OF THE TWITTER BOTS BEFORE I BUY".
posted by AzraelBrown at 12:57 PM on November 2, 2022 [3 favorites]
MeFi's own™ John Scalzi also has some predictably insightful things to say.
posted by bcd at 12:57 PM on November 2, 2022 [31 favorites]
posted by bcd at 12:57 PM on November 2, 2022 [31 favorites]
I have never had a Twitter account, but I know there are a lot of people who find Twitter very helpful for a variety of their needs, whether it's sharing information or obtaining information.
"People find ways to make Twitter useful despite Twitter's best efforts" is sort of the whole story of that company.
posted by mhoye at 1:01 PM on November 2, 2022 [18 favorites]
"People find ways to make Twitter useful despite Twitter's best efforts" is sort of the whole story of that company.
posted by mhoye at 1:01 PM on November 2, 2022 [18 favorites]
Can we please just let Elon stew in a Hell of his own making and sip our schadenfreude quietly? If it totally breaks him and leaves him begging for back-alley meth, still nothing of value will have been lost.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 1:02 PM on November 2, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 1:02 PM on November 2, 2022 [2 favorites]
"We do these things not because they are easy, but because we thought they were easy"
I believe this witticism was coined by Maciej Ceglowski, known in these parts as pinboard.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:04 PM on November 2, 2022 [29 favorites]
I believe this witticism was coined by Maciej Ceglowski, known in these parts as pinboard.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:04 PM on November 2, 2022 [29 favorites]
I'm sorry, I guess I just don't understand why we need three current active threads on this piece of shit and his new toy. None of these are filled with comments that are noticeably different from the others.
posted by kitten kaboodle at 1:06 PM on November 2, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by kitten kaboodle at 1:06 PM on November 2, 2022 [6 favorites]
I remember thinking a few years ago - and maybe making a comment here? - that Musk succeeded in electric cars by creating the first toxic masculinity electric car. It was the first electric car that was marketed as being more aggressive, more powerful, more fuck-you.
It turns out that, unlike electric cars, online comment sections don't need billions of dollars of investment to become aggressive fuck-you toxic masculinity spaces.
posted by clawsoon at 1:08 PM on November 2, 2022 [18 favorites]
It turns out that, unlike electric cars, online comment sections don't need billions of dollars of investment to become aggressive fuck-you toxic masculinity spaces.
posted by clawsoon at 1:08 PM on November 2, 2022 [18 favorites]
Yes yes but: what have the Romans ever done for us?
posted by alex_skazat at 1:10 PM on November 2, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by alex_skazat at 1:10 PM on November 2, 2022 [3 favorites]
Metafilter: None of these are filled with comments that are noticeably different from the others
posted by gwint at 1:11 PM on November 2, 2022 [36 favorites]
posted by gwint at 1:11 PM on November 2, 2022 [36 favorites]
"People find ways to make Twitter useful despite Twitter's best efforts" is sort of the whole story of that company.
I don't know if it gets brought up much, but Twitter's original schtick was that you could microblog by sending a text to your twitter account from a non-smart-phone, so the reason for the original limitation of tweet size was the SMS size limit established back in the 90s.
Hashtags and @ing people also weren't originally part of the system -- they were adopted by users who wanted a means to tag and/or respond to others which weren't part of Twitter but once users started doing it Twitter adopted the schema. I believe images also weren't originally supported but added by user demand.
In the end, Twitter went from being a different way to use celphones on the internet to a site which acts like the tried-and-true online message board which had been around since the 80s.
posted by AzraelBrown at 1:12 PM on November 2, 2022 [12 favorites]
I don't know if it gets brought up much, but Twitter's original schtick was that you could microblog by sending a text to your twitter account from a non-smart-phone, so the reason for the original limitation of tweet size was the SMS size limit established back in the 90s.
Hashtags and @ing people also weren't originally part of the system -- they were adopted by users who wanted a means to tag and/or respond to others which weren't part of Twitter but once users started doing it Twitter adopted the schema. I believe images also weren't originally supported but added by user demand.
In the end, Twitter went from being a different way to use celphones on the internet to a site which acts like the tried-and-true online message board which had been around since the 80s.
posted by AzraelBrown at 1:12 PM on November 2, 2022 [12 favorites]
Is the 45 billion price tag too high to create an opportunity for massive election rat fuckery? The part that made this all add up to me was the announcement that people who have been banned from Twitter would not be restored until "some new process" could be established.
This is less a conspiracy theory and more finally getting inside the mind of people who are desperate to maintain and increase their hold on power, have insanely deep pockets and exactly zero concern for democracy or the well-being of human beings, and they know that Twitter still provides a very low friction path to massive media reach for any election counterfactual that care to imagine.
As ever, the cruelty, inanity, spectacle, is the point. If you go along with it (I'm looking at you virtually every journalist and media organization who will happily reprint Twitter rather than risk their access and ease of acquisition by sourcing from other less tainted channels) then they know you will put up with whatever the next big lie is.
For everyone who has managed to find that amazing library behind the stupid recommendations, if you have to walk past openly bigoted, racist, and fascist propaganda to get to the good stuff. stuff then it seems like the good stuff should just get stuffed in a duffel bag and walked out of there to someplace else. The building has been handed over to the fascists, walking into it is an act of complicity.
posted by abulafa at 1:12 PM on November 2, 2022 [9 favorites]
This is less a conspiracy theory and more finally getting inside the mind of people who are desperate to maintain and increase their hold on power, have insanely deep pockets and exactly zero concern for democracy or the well-being of human beings, and they know that Twitter still provides a very low friction path to massive media reach for any election counterfactual that care to imagine.
As ever, the cruelty, inanity, spectacle, is the point. If you go along with it (I'm looking at you virtually every journalist and media organization who will happily reprint Twitter rather than risk their access and ease of acquisition by sourcing from other less tainted channels) then they know you will put up with whatever the next big lie is.
For everyone who has managed to find that amazing library behind the stupid recommendations, if you have to walk past openly bigoted, racist, and fascist propaganda to get to the good stuff. stuff then it seems like the good stuff should just get stuffed in a duffel bag and walked out of there to someplace else. The building has been handed over to the fascists, walking into it is an act of complicity.
posted by abulafa at 1:12 PM on November 2, 2022 [9 favorites]
@alex_skazat allow me to offer the musical version of What Have The Romans Ever Done For Us? from Eric Idle's comic oratorio Not The Messiah (He's a Very Naughty Boy) based on that masterpiece, the Life of Brian.
posted by Shunra at 1:16 PM on November 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Shunra at 1:16 PM on November 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
Tower of Babel
"Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth."
You know who the "us" is when you talk about ancient people trying to build the biggest building they can? Slaves. You know how you control slaves? Stamp out their native culture and language and assimilate them to yours.
Connecting everybody into one big thing (the biggest thing!) all speaking the same language is about control. Scattering everyone into lots of subcultures and languages is a blessing of greater freedom and greater autonomy.
posted by straight at 1:18 PM on November 2, 2022 [11 favorites]
"Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth."
You know who the "us" is when you talk about ancient people trying to build the biggest building they can? Slaves. You know how you control slaves? Stamp out their native culture and language and assimilate them to yours.
Connecting everybody into one big thing (the biggest thing!) all speaking the same language is about control. Scattering everyone into lots of subcultures and languages is a blessing of greater freedom and greater autonomy.
posted by straight at 1:18 PM on November 2, 2022 [11 favorites]
What he clearly needs is a great humbling.
I think the problem is that he's just too big to be humbled.
Just look at his Hyperloop tunnel in Las Vegas. It's literally a Tesla driving a few people at a time through a tunnel built with a second-hand TBM. It's so comically inefficient in every way imaginable and compared with any modern mass transit solution it should be an embarrassment. And yet other municipalities are still lining up to join in the "genius" of doing everything in the stupidest way possible.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 1:30 PM on November 2, 2022 [9 favorites]
I think the problem is that he's just too big to be humbled.
Just look at his Hyperloop tunnel in Las Vegas. It's literally a Tesla driving a few people at a time through a tunnel built with a second-hand TBM. It's so comically inefficient in every way imaginable and compared with any modern mass transit solution it should be an embarrassment. And yet other municipalities are still lining up to join in the "genius" of doing everything in the stupidest way possible.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 1:30 PM on November 2, 2022 [9 favorites]
“Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.”
posted by whuppy at 1:39 PM on November 2, 2022 [30 favorites]
posted by whuppy at 1:39 PM on November 2, 2022 [30 favorites]
What he clearly needs is a great humbling.
For an insane second I read this as him needing "a goat humbling", and....even though I don't know what that is, I'm almost disappointed to be wrong.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:39 PM on November 2, 2022 [19 favorites]
For an insane second I read this as him needing "a goat humbling", and....even though I don't know what that is, I'm almost disappointed to be wrong.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:39 PM on November 2, 2022 [19 favorites]
Goats were added to Minecraft some time back. To find them you'll have to find a Snowy Peaks biome and climb to the top of a mountain. Once there, respect the goats by not turning your back to them. Otherwise you'll get a goat humbling, as they ram you off the mountain to your likely death.
posted by adept256 at 1:48 PM on November 2, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by adept256 at 1:48 PM on November 2, 2022 [8 favorites]
they know where the lines are, and they evade bans, and they argue, and they complain amongst each other
(whistles nervously, guiltily edges towards the door at the back of the room....)
posted by gimonca at 1:48 PM on November 2, 2022 [5 favorites]
(whistles nervously, guiltily edges towards the door at the back of the room....)
posted by gimonca at 1:48 PM on November 2, 2022 [5 favorites]
Just look at his Hyperloop tunnel in Las Vegas. It's literally a Tesla driving a few people at a time through a tunnel built with a second-hand TBM. It's so comically inefficient in every way imaginable and compared with any modern mass transit solution it should be an embarrassment.
Well, if that's what you think, I guess it's more of a Shelbyville idea.
posted by The Bellman at 1:51 PM on November 2, 2022 [50 favorites]
Well, if that's what you think, I guess it's more of a Shelbyville idea.
posted by The Bellman at 1:51 PM on November 2, 2022 [50 favorites]
“Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.” ― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
posted by SPrintF at 1:58 PM on November 2, 2022 [10 favorites]
posted by SPrintF at 1:58 PM on November 2, 2022 [10 favorites]
I have — er had — a one-and-done twitter block policy
I’d blocked Elon for some stupid s—- he’d tweeted, but his recent Pelosi attacker fake news boost prompted me to deactivate my account
There were over 9000 blockees after 6 years. So many idiots and people with broken brains in this world
I rented a Model 3 last week and loved it, but man is Elon a problematic persona
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 2:21 PM on November 2, 2022 [3 favorites]
I’d blocked Elon for some stupid s—- he’d tweeted, but his recent Pelosi attacker fake news boost prompted me to deactivate my account
There were over 9000 blockees after 6 years. So many idiots and people with broken brains in this world
I rented a Model 3 last week and loved it, but man is Elon a problematic persona
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 2:21 PM on November 2, 2022 [3 favorites]
From Scalzi's post, linked above:
Trump is thin-skinned, but he's also genuinely shameless. Elon Musk is arguably the most shameable man in existence. It's awful in so many ways that he was able to buy Twitter and that he owns it, and he is a despicable human being who flicks shit onto everything he touches; it'll be worse for him than for anyone, though. He doesn't have the spine to be a bona fide criminal, or to be hated for that matter. He's going to curl up in a ball and keep spamming toothless memes, trying to get people to like him. (And he only went alt-right, I think, because the alt-right has the most pathetic and easy-to-please fanbase of any political group nowadays. But even they will turn on him, now. Sad little fuck.)
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 2:26 PM on November 2, 2022 [37 favorites]
5. I don’t expect Musk to keep Twitter for long. Or at the very least I don’t expect him to have it be his focus for very long. Right now Musk is in the “oh, shit, how do I make money from this” phase of things, and once he figures out he can’t (or alternately, realizes what he’s doing will just make things worse), I think his attention will drift to the other companies of his that actually do make money and will need his attention. At which point he’ll either foist the service off to someone at a substantially reduced price (Google could take it on and happily mine it for all the ad data it’s worth), or hire a caretaker CEO, whose job is to keep the bleeding to a minimum as the service deflates like a sad balloon, and then go back to his previous role on Twitter, which is stoned billionaire iconoclast occasionally posting an outrageous opinion for lulz.This has been my expectation. He's too much of a coward, honestly, to be the alt-right icon that he wants to be. Unlike Trump, he is a Redditor to the bones: he wants approval, even from the people who despise him. Total bootlicker billionaire. And once he realizes how futile his attempts to make people happy will be, he'll joke away how much European hate-speech laws suck, grouse about it every few months, keep Twitter basically stagnant, and pop up three times a year to add a temporary "doge" button or make the whole site respond to the Konami code.
Trump is thin-skinned, but he's also genuinely shameless. Elon Musk is arguably the most shameable man in existence. It's awful in so many ways that he was able to buy Twitter and that he owns it, and he is a despicable human being who flicks shit onto everything he touches; it'll be worse for him than for anyone, though. He doesn't have the spine to be a bona fide criminal, or to be hated for that matter. He's going to curl up in a ball and keep spamming toothless memes, trying to get people to like him. (And he only went alt-right, I think, because the alt-right has the most pathetic and easy-to-please fanbase of any political group nowadays. But even they will turn on him, now. Sad little fuck.)
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 2:26 PM on November 2, 2022 [37 favorites]
WOW. That TechDirt link is gold - as someone who moderates a fairly large online community, so much of it rings true. Sigh. There is no easy way.
posted by davidmsc at 2:45 PM on November 2, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by davidmsc at 2:45 PM on November 2, 2022 [7 favorites]
I rented a Model 3 last week and loved it, but man is Elon a problematic persona
I rented a Model Y, and am now waiting for the shareholder revolt.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:52 PM on November 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
I rented a Model Y, and am now waiting for the shareholder revolt.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:52 PM on November 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
Commenters on the TechDirt article are working on a new card game, Moderate It All:
The MIA game has roles:posted by clawsoon at 2:54 PM on November 2, 2022
the troll/bully
*the oddball target of the minority
*the normie, the mythical *average person
*the moderator.
pop up three times a year to add a temporary "doge" button or make the whole site respond to the Konami code.
Shit, we already have Discord. Do we need another Discord?
posted by jackbishop at 2:58 PM on November 2, 2022 [3 favorites]
Shit, we already have Discord. Do we need another Discord?
posted by jackbishop at 2:58 PM on November 2, 2022 [3 favorites]
Ah, in other words, an AI generated, never-ending discussion between Werner Herzog Elon Musk and Slavoj Žižek Alex Jones.
posted by y2karl at 3:06 PM on November 2, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by y2karl at 3:06 PM on November 2, 2022 [5 favorites]
Pardon my ignorance but what has the Muskrat actually done himself, other than emerge from a rich family who exploited people in South Africa to mine precious jewels that built a trust fund (I suppose) that financed His Muskiness’s fantasy about being a genius entrepreneur tech god. People keep attributing to him the design of an electric car, spaceships, etc. I will give him though that tunnel thing, a brilliant example of engineering beyond your grade level or ability or intelligent thought. So the guy is a billionaire. So what. It doesn’t seem to be because of his skills or thoughts, he just lucked out on a big scale. Buying Twitter was just that luck finally running out. As a high school English teacher told us, the key to Greek tragedy is that the main character will be brought down through their own hubris. We have a good example of that here.
posted by njohnson23 at 3:07 PM on November 2, 2022 [23 favorites]
posted by njohnson23 at 3:07 PM on November 2, 2022 [23 favorites]
Elon and his goatse butthole at Tanagra.
posted by y2karl at 3:13 PM on November 2, 2022 [17 favorites]
posted by y2karl at 3:13 PM on November 2, 2022 [17 favorites]
There is a very long history of industrial technocrats failing spectacularly to grasp the implications of communications technology - especially those aspects which are about de-centralised, distributed communities.
For example, the Théâtrophone was an innovation of the 1880s which was based on the assumption that surely the thing everybody would want to do with these new-fangled telephones - was to dial in to listen to a performance at the local opera house.
The first SMS text message ("Merry Christmas") was sent between a couple of engineers in 1992 - but it was several years before anybody thought anybody other than test engineers playing about might want to use it - let alone pay for the privilege.
Likewise, the first tweet - "just setting up my twttr" - was send in 2006 by Dorsey and friends who were playing about with the idea of an SMS based social network. It was a pretty low-fi and simple technology for the time and it appears to have taken a year or so for the true potential to have been grasped.
So - the simple idea that people like to have a safe, neutral and reliable platform to talk with others (and that they often prefer a technologically simple way of doing so) continues to get overlooked. Right now we have Zuckerberg pouring billions into pushing an idea which was invented by Neil Stephenson - brilliant storytelling device but with 30 years of proven unpopularity in implementation - and now Musk proposing to make Twitter so much better by relaxing regulations and handing control to AI moderators.
posted by rongorongo at 3:24 PM on November 2, 2022 [10 favorites]
For example, the Théâtrophone was an innovation of the 1880s which was based on the assumption that surely the thing everybody would want to do with these new-fangled telephones - was to dial in to listen to a performance at the local opera house.
The first SMS text message ("Merry Christmas") was sent between a couple of engineers in 1992 - but it was several years before anybody thought anybody other than test engineers playing about might want to use it - let alone pay for the privilege.
Likewise, the first tweet - "just setting up my twttr" - was send in 2006 by Dorsey and friends who were playing about with the idea of an SMS based social network. It was a pretty low-fi and simple technology for the time and it appears to have taken a year or so for the true potential to have been grasped.
So - the simple idea that people like to have a safe, neutral and reliable platform to talk with others (and that they often prefer a technologically simple way of doing so) continues to get overlooked. Right now we have Zuckerberg pouring billions into pushing an idea which was invented by Neil Stephenson - brilliant storytelling device but with 30 years of proven unpopularity in implementation - and now Musk proposing to make Twitter so much better by relaxing regulations and handing control to AI moderators.
posted by rongorongo at 3:24 PM on November 2, 2022 [10 favorites]
Slate’s longtime community moderator, Evan Urquhart, had some thoughts on this subject, which he put forth in a Twitter thread.
His plan boils down to people trolling Musk, and generally making Twitter an even worse cesspit of a**holery than it already is.
I don't relate to anyone who has the time and energy to burn on doing something that pointless and/or toxic. Better to just leave.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 3:36 PM on November 2, 2022 [3 favorites]
His plan boils down to people trolling Musk, and generally making Twitter an even worse cesspit of a**holery than it already is.
I don't relate to anyone who has the time and energy to burn on doing something that pointless and/or toxic. Better to just leave.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 3:36 PM on November 2, 2022 [3 favorites]
Ahem. Metafilter: they know where the lines are, and they evade bans, and they argue, and they complain amongst each other.
posted by away for regrooving at 3:37 PM on November 2, 2022 [9 favorites]
posted by away for regrooving at 3:37 PM on November 2, 2022 [9 favorites]
Elon and his goatse butthole at Tanagra.
Elon, when the valuation fell.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 3:41 PM on November 2, 2022 [46 favorites]
Elon, when the valuation fell.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 3:41 PM on November 2, 2022 [46 favorites]
I think that Scalzi piece nails it. Musk has no idea what he's doing. People smarter and more level-headed than he have tried to make Twitter profitable, and haven't been able to. He certainly won't. And I don't believe he bought it just to spend vast amounts of capital while turning it into a fascist dumpster. He may be quasi-alt-right, but he's not interested enough in subsidizing that end of the political spectrum to light his personal fortune on fire.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 4:08 PM on November 2, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 4:08 PM on November 2, 2022 [4 favorites]
NYT: Elon Musk’s Twitter Faces Exodus of Advertisers and Executives (Archive)
posted by y2karl at 4:23 PM on November 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by y2karl at 4:23 PM on November 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
He’s got other billionaires paying this off
I believe the impetus is working toward a GOP takeover this decade so it’s not necessarily money lit afire
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 4:26 PM on November 2, 2022 [5 favorites]
I believe the impetus is working toward a GOP takeover this decade so it’s not necessarily money lit afire
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 4:26 PM on November 2, 2022 [5 favorites]
Slate’s longtime community moderator, Evan Urquhart, had some thoughts on this subject
Threadreaderapp
posted by bendy at 5:23 PM on November 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
Threadreaderapp
posted by bendy at 5:23 PM on November 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
When one of The Guardian's long-time moderators resigned/retired, she wrote that she enjoyed reading the comments and the community that generated the comments, and so she was able to do the job for a long time and consistently, because the job wasn't emotionally and mentally draining and she did not have to be hyper-vigilant worrying about booby-traps.
I imagine that the mods on MeFi would recognise the same issue, namely, that if you are having to play whack-a-mole against bad faith players, the job burns you out in no time. And I think Twitter's "power users" have an awful lot of such bad faith.
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 6:59 PM on November 2, 2022 [5 favorites]
I imagine that the mods on MeFi would recognise the same issue, namely, that if you are having to play whack-a-mole against bad faith players, the job burns you out in no time. And I think Twitter's "power users" have an awful lot of such bad faith.
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 6:59 PM on November 2, 2022 [5 favorites]
Step 1: Fire everyone who is good at Levels 1-20...
Step 2: Um, winning?
posted by Chuffy at 7:33 PM on November 2, 2022
Step 2: Um, winning?
posted by Chuffy at 7:33 PM on November 2, 2022
Scattering everyone into lots of subcultures and languages is a blessing of greater freedom and greater autonomy.
posted by straight at 1:18 PM on November 2
[7 favorites +] [!]
Also, God is apparently the original trust buster?
posted by klanawa at 8:17 PM on November 2, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by straight at 1:18 PM on November 2
[7 favorites +] [!]
Also, God is apparently the original trust buster?
posted by klanawa at 8:17 PM on November 2, 2022 [2 favorites]
Scalzi: and the companies who advertise on the service don’t want to have their ads served next to an orgy of bigoted utterances by shitty people.
Expect this to change when fascism becomes entrenched again.
posted by klanawa at 8:24 PM on November 2, 2022 [2 favorites]
Expect this to change when fascism becomes entrenched again.
posted by klanawa at 8:24 PM on November 2, 2022 [2 favorites]
scalzi: Elon Musk may be an authoritarian-frotteuring bore...
heh.
posted by j_curiouser at 8:58 PM on November 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
heh.
posted by j_curiouser at 8:58 PM on November 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
I believe the impetus is working toward a GOP takeover this decade so it’s not necessarily money lit afire
That's probably overthinking it. He only got into this deal on the basis of a stupid boast, then tried to get out of it. Scalzi points out that Twitter held him to it because they knew the company was hemmorhaging money, and saw this as a much-need bailout.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 9:10 PM on November 2, 2022 [4 favorites]
That's probably overthinking it. He only got into this deal on the basis of a stupid boast, then tried to get out of it. Scalzi points out that Twitter held him to it because they knew the company was hemmorhaging money, and saw this as a much-need bailout.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 9:10 PM on November 2, 2022 [4 favorites]
As Trevor Noah said recently, "he thinks he bought Disney World, but he really bought the rest of Orlando."
I don't know if he'll be the face of it, but I have to think that the Saudis will keep their money in at least long enough to see if they can fuck with the '24 election.
posted by rhizome at 2:25 AM on November 3, 2022 [3 favorites]
I don't know if he'll be the face of it, but I have to think that the Saudis will keep their money in at least long enough to see if they can fuck with the '24 election.
posted by rhizome at 2:25 AM on November 3, 2022 [3 favorites]
I'm trying to figure out if this is confirmation bias or nah, but my timeline changed a lot just recently. I follow a lot of art, photography, history, folklore tweeters, but now my stream is almost all just that, whereas I used to have a lot of Black twitter, some politics and news, transgender accounts, and also just various novelty accounts and tweeters that make me laugh or are particularly sassy or whatever. It was a pretty good mix of eye candy, history, maps, etc., news updates, more personal accounts, and funny stuff. Now it's like 90% or more art and photography. Which I like, but I like variety. Though I did add a lot of art accounts lately, so maybe it was enough to make a pretty big difference in the algorithm, idk. Anyone else seeing what seems like a big difference in their timeline?
posted by taz at 3:38 AM on November 3, 2022
posted by taz at 3:38 AM on November 3, 2022
Are you using “Latest Tweets”? Theoretically that should give you an unencumbered by algorithm view to judge against.
(Fucking with that used to be a previous red line for me, before the line became “purchased by obviously untrustworthy creep”)
posted by Artw at 6:39 AM on November 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
(Fucking with that used to be a previous red line for me, before the line became “purchased by obviously untrustworthy creep”)
posted by Artw at 6:39 AM on November 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
So, Elon has a lot of money. Enough so that he can afford to employ very, very good public relations professionals. We have to assume that everything we see about him is fictional; that the personality he presents to the public is intentionally curated.
So, it's possible that he's a total goof. It's possible that he's a moron who can't figure out what to do with the massive propaganda outlet he's just bought.
Or, possibly, the idiocy he's displaying might be deliberate. Which is less scary; the wealthiest man in the history of the world, with ties to despotic dictators and a fetish for movements trying to overturn democracy acquiring the world's largest public relations outlet? Or a total goofball making a terrible deal and screwing it up while being a really, really obvious idiot?
Competent billionaires are scary. Incompetent goofballs are funny. If you were a competent rich person in search of power, you'd probably be well served by making your public image kind of weird, kind of goofy, kind of stupid, kind of folksy, so that people could relate to you and wouldn't take the threat you present seriously.
You know. Like Trump.
posted by MrVisible at 6:48 AM on November 3, 2022 [2 favorites]
So, it's possible that he's a total goof. It's possible that he's a moron who can't figure out what to do with the massive propaganda outlet he's just bought.
Or, possibly, the idiocy he's displaying might be deliberate. Which is less scary; the wealthiest man in the history of the world, with ties to despotic dictators and a fetish for movements trying to overturn democracy acquiring the world's largest public relations outlet? Or a total goofball making a terrible deal and screwing it up while being a really, really obvious idiot?
Competent billionaires are scary. Incompetent goofballs are funny. If you were a competent rich person in search of power, you'd probably be well served by making your public image kind of weird, kind of goofy, kind of stupid, kind of folksy, so that people could relate to you and wouldn't take the threat you present seriously.
You know. Like Trump.
posted by MrVisible at 6:48 AM on November 3, 2022 [2 favorites]
So, Elon has a lot of money. Enough so that he can afford to employ very, very good public relations professionals.
While he can hire PR professionals, do remember that he famously axed Tesla's PR division - a move that has not gone well for the company.
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:00 AM on November 3, 2022 [6 favorites]
While he can hire PR professionals, do remember that he famously axed Tesla's PR division - a move that has not gone well for the company.
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:00 AM on November 3, 2022 [6 favorites]
The funny thing about narcissists is that they don’t take advice from PR professionals
posted by Skwirl at 7:04 AM on November 3, 2022 [16 favorites]
posted by Skwirl at 7:04 AM on November 3, 2022 [16 favorites]
Right. James Corden has PR professionals and look at how his last few weeks have gone.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 7:15 AM on November 3, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 7:15 AM on November 3, 2022 [3 favorites]
He’s absolutely not goofy in an unterrifying way to me - he’s an idiot who wants to make the world in a number of dumb and bad ways, all of them skewed to giving similar idiots more control, and malice and stupidity are both present and do not cancel each other out.
I don’t know, do people other than the cultists find him wacky and fun anymore, or has he crossed the Trump barrier?
posted by Artw at 7:24 AM on November 3, 2022 [4 favorites]
I don’t know, do people other than the cultists find him wacky and fun anymore, or has he crossed the Trump barrier?
posted by Artw at 7:24 AM on November 3, 2022 [4 favorites]
I don't get the move to charge Twitter users $8 a month to be verified. I would charge the unverified to be on my service, and let the verified stay for free. I bet advertisers would applaud that.
(For me this is just hypothetical; I've never warmed to the concept of Twitter and have never joined)
posted by Artful Codger at 7:53 AM on November 3, 2022 [3 favorites]
(For me this is just hypothetical; I've never warmed to the concept of Twitter and have never joined)
posted by Artful Codger at 7:53 AM on November 3, 2022 [3 favorites]
Guardian article from today: “ He is poised to open the floodgates’: can Twitter survive Elon Musk – or even thrive?” - interesting for its observation on the importance of “heavy tweeters” to the platform - the relatively small (and declining) number of people who produce the overwhelming proportion of the content that drives the rest of the site - including eyeballs for advertisers . Musk’s interest in Twitter seems to derive from his obsessive interest in it as a poster. His initial involvement seems to be making things much worse.
I don't get the move to charge Twitter users $8 a month to be verified. I would charge the unverified to be on my service, and let the verified stay for free.
Or ask everybody for a one time $5 up front to show willing - and a subsequent regular donation if they can afford it. Heard that plan somewhere.
posted by rongorongo at 9:01 AM on November 3, 2022 [3 favorites]
I don't get the move to charge Twitter users $8 a month to be verified. I would charge the unverified to be on my service, and let the verified stay for free.
Or ask everybody for a one time $5 up front to show willing - and a subsequent regular donation if they can afford it. Heard that plan somewhere.
posted by rongorongo at 9:01 AM on November 3, 2022 [3 favorites]
The funny thing about narcissists is that they don’t take advice from PR professionals
Right. James Corden has PR professionals and look at how his last few weeks have gone.
If you want an example of "guy who listens to his PR professionals," that'd be Brad Pitt these days because somehow this hasn't become a big thing and every few days I see some article about Brad's artwork or skirts of some shit to push down his Google results.
Back on topic....
As Trevor Noah said recently, "he thinks he bought Disney World, but he really bought the rest of Orlando."
I liked this quote from Scalzi's comments: "Elon Musk bought a toilet, looked around and said: “You know what? This toilet doesn’t have enough shit in it. What’s the point of a toilet if it isn’t full of shit?”
Also, Washington Post article: Musk’s Trump-style management rattles Twitter workers awaiting layoffs Literally nothing is being announced formally at the company, including when people quit/get fired, and they're having to read tweets or snoop around to find out shit.
Right. James Corden has PR professionals and look at how his last few weeks have gone.
If you want an example of "guy who listens to his PR professionals," that'd be Brad Pitt these days because somehow this hasn't become a big thing and every few days I see some article about Brad's artwork or skirts of some shit to push down his Google results.
Back on topic....
As Trevor Noah said recently, "he thinks he bought Disney World, but he really bought the rest of Orlando."
I liked this quote from Scalzi's comments: "Elon Musk bought a toilet, looked around and said: “You know what? This toilet doesn’t have enough shit in it. What’s the point of a toilet if it isn’t full of shit?”
Also, Washington Post article: Musk’s Trump-style management rattles Twitter workers awaiting layoffs Literally nothing is being announced formally at the company, including when people quit/get fired, and they're having to read tweets or snoop around to find out shit.
“We’re all working for the Trump White House,” the worker said, comparing the atmosphere to Donald Trump’s administration, where tweets from the president announcing policies that hadn’t been discussed internally could come at any time.posted by jenfullmoon at 9:44 AM on November 3, 2022 [5 favorites]
I don’t know, do people other than the cultists find him wacky and fun anymore, or has he crossed the Trump barrier?
I always feel a little self-conscious about how frequently my takes on the cultural landscape split the difference between "there's nothing to worry about" and "abject terror," but... I feel pretty ambivalent about Musk. By which I mean, I think that he supports extremely awful political things, and I also think that he's more an opportunistic reactionary rather than a Thiel-style zealot; I think that he possesses an abjectly horrendous amount of power, and I also think that he's an incompetent idiot.
On some level, I feel like my view of the world (and of America in particular) is the kind of cynical and pessimistic that makes me perversely hopeful: I don't think that we've hit rock bottom, I think that things are going to get worse, and I also think that this is going to be Yet Another Time To Be Alive rather than the literal end of the world, or even the nation. I also feel like most of the worst things we're seeing today aren't as abnormal as they seem, not because things now are okay but because, as someone who was born two years past the end of Reagan, I feel like America has been fundamentally undemocratic for the entirety of my life, and I feel like "people with power can wreak devastating havoc" is more-or-less the default world order. (I think a better world is possible, and I don't expect it to happen overnight; pre-2016 I had hopes that we'd made a lot more progress than we have, but my adjustment afterwards was to decide that that was too bright-eyed, and that the country was less collapsing than it hadn't ever been built up the way I thought it had to begin with.)
In other words, I don't think that Elon is a barrel of laughs; I think his choices hurt people; I think it is bad for society and the state of media in general that he owns Twitter; I think it might be bad for American democracy in general. But I also do ultimately see him as a symptom of the times, not a harbinger of them. I also think that he's an idiot and I laugh when bad things happen to him. And I don't know if I feel like there's a whole lot of enlightenment to be gleaned from thinking about How Bad He Is, whereas there's a whole lot of enjoyment to be gleaned from laughing at how terrible he is at this. So I mostly only think about him in ways that amuse and entertain and delight me, despite the fact that I think he's mainly an unequivocal bad influence on the world.
(I also think that Twitter was/is also an unequivocal bad influence on the world, yet use it primarily because it entertains and amuses etc. So I don't see the shift towards Musk as a fundamental shift in its status quo: it feels like a fitting next step for both it and him, and the fact that that next step leads in the direction of Worse is, not good, but also no different than what I expected.)
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 11:34 AM on November 3, 2022 [11 favorites]
I always feel a little self-conscious about how frequently my takes on the cultural landscape split the difference between "there's nothing to worry about" and "abject terror," but... I feel pretty ambivalent about Musk. By which I mean, I think that he supports extremely awful political things, and I also think that he's more an opportunistic reactionary rather than a Thiel-style zealot; I think that he possesses an abjectly horrendous amount of power, and I also think that he's an incompetent idiot.
On some level, I feel like my view of the world (and of America in particular) is the kind of cynical and pessimistic that makes me perversely hopeful: I don't think that we've hit rock bottom, I think that things are going to get worse, and I also think that this is going to be Yet Another Time To Be Alive rather than the literal end of the world, or even the nation. I also feel like most of the worst things we're seeing today aren't as abnormal as they seem, not because things now are okay but because, as someone who was born two years past the end of Reagan, I feel like America has been fundamentally undemocratic for the entirety of my life, and I feel like "people with power can wreak devastating havoc" is more-or-less the default world order. (I think a better world is possible, and I don't expect it to happen overnight; pre-2016 I had hopes that we'd made a lot more progress than we have, but my adjustment afterwards was to decide that that was too bright-eyed, and that the country was less collapsing than it hadn't ever been built up the way I thought it had to begin with.)
In other words, I don't think that Elon is a barrel of laughs; I think his choices hurt people; I think it is bad for society and the state of media in general that he owns Twitter; I think it might be bad for American democracy in general. But I also do ultimately see him as a symptom of the times, not a harbinger of them. I also think that he's an idiot and I laugh when bad things happen to him. And I don't know if I feel like there's a whole lot of enlightenment to be gleaned from thinking about How Bad He Is, whereas there's a whole lot of enjoyment to be gleaned from laughing at how terrible he is at this. So I mostly only think about him in ways that amuse and entertain and delight me, despite the fact that I think he's mainly an unequivocal bad influence on the world.
(I also think that Twitter was/is also an unequivocal bad influence on the world, yet use it primarily because it entertains and amuses etc. So I don't see the shift towards Musk as a fundamental shift in its status quo: it feels like a fitting next step for both it and him, and the fact that that next step leads in the direction of Worse is, not good, but also no different than what I expected.)
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 11:34 AM on November 3, 2022 [11 favorites]
Matt Levine is still on the Musk beat; today's Money Stuff:
I don't think Musk is interested in #1; he almost certainly doesn't think Twitter users should be able to filter out the fash, because (a) he's very much wedded to his free-speech fair-exchange-of-views ideology and (b) he's more aligned with the fash anyway and they will of course kick up a lot of HELP ME ELON I'M BEING CANCELED noise at him if any kind of "fewer Nazis" filter impacts them.
Musk's entire plan for product improvement throughout the offer was "fewer bots and spam" and it seems to me that that's pretty much entirely about improving his experience on Twitter: fewer crypto shills and scammers clogging up his mentions.
And I don't think #2, destroying Twitter's reputation, is hard at all. It was already kind of reputationally Nazi-friendly under Jack's leadership; it's clearly teetering on the edge now as the alt-right assholes noisily and gleefully anticipate unbannings and laxer moderation; it could slide downhill fast with just a little push.
(And c'mon: Musk's persona on Twitter is not so much fighty as it is shitposting.)
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 12:47 PM on November 3, 2022 [8 favorites]
Because he is a real poster, and he is very online. I have often said that Elon Musk is the first Twitter executive who is also a Twitter user; that is partly a joke but not really. Other Twitter executives have used Twitter, but Musk is a real Twitter user. And so his view of Twitter is a Twitter addict’s view of Twitter, which is … not entirely positive? [...]I am a lot more skeptical than Levine, who always seems to have a grudging admiration for Musk's committment to his bit.
Twitter, for Musk, is a place to get in fights. He loves getting in fights on Twitter. He would pay any amount of money to do that. He did pay $44 billion to do it. (He got a ton of fighting for his money!) He thinks that everyone should be happy to pay $8 a month to do it.
[...]
I could imagine a future where:
1. Musk does a really good job on product, such that everybody who uses Twitter has a good time. If you want to use Twitter to get in arguments with Nazis, that will be easily available; if you want to use Twitter without hearing from Nazis, there will be reliable simple tools that can guarantee that too. Everyone gets the Twitter experience that they want in a way that is intuitive and satisfying.
2. The public perception of Twitter — driven by Musk’s own tweeting, disgruntled media narratives, and the mechanics of what goes viral and attracts attention — will be “oh right, Twitter, the place for Nazis.” Lots of other online message boards have, over time, become “the place for Nazis” in public perception, even if some people were probably still using them to swap soup recipes. The point is that big advertisers do not buy ads against those message boards, because of the risk to their brands from appearing next to Nazi content, and because the value of appealing to Nazis is low.
I do not think this is imminent or anything; both parts of that — improving the product and destroying its reputation — will take a lot of work. I will say that Elon Musk is a talented guy who achieves a lot of what he sets his mind to, and he seems incredibly committed to both parts of that.
If this comes true, then Musk might have a really good time running Twitter? Why not? He’ll run a good message board where he can get in fights at all hours of the night, which I think is deep down what he really wanted.
I don't think Musk is interested in #1; he almost certainly doesn't think Twitter users should be able to filter out the fash, because (a) he's very much wedded to his free-speech fair-exchange-of-views ideology and (b) he's more aligned with the fash anyway and they will of course kick up a lot of HELP ME ELON I'M BEING CANCELED noise at him if any kind of "fewer Nazis" filter impacts them.
Musk's entire plan for product improvement throughout the offer was "fewer bots and spam" and it seems to me that that's pretty much entirely about improving his experience on Twitter: fewer crypto shills and scammers clogging up his mentions.
And I don't think #2, destroying Twitter's reputation, is hard at all. It was already kind of reputationally Nazi-friendly under Jack's leadership; it's clearly teetering on the edge now as the alt-right assholes noisily and gleefully anticipate unbannings and laxer moderation; it could slide downhill fast with just a little push.
(And c'mon: Musk's persona on Twitter is not so much fighty as it is shitposting.)
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 12:47 PM on November 3, 2022 [8 favorites]
Bullies don’t like fights, they like picking on people. A fight isn’t going to be of any interest o him at all.
As for Nazis, sure they like ruining places and spouting fash shit, but they don’t really do it for each other they do it to alarm or convert normies. If it becomes too nazi and tribes off all the normies then it just becomes gab, which is an extremely boring time for them. To whatever extrent they are a user base they are not going to stick around.
posted by Artw at 12:59 PM on November 3, 2022 [3 favorites]
As for Nazis, sure they like ruining places and spouting fash shit, but they don’t really do it for each other they do it to alarm or convert normies. If it becomes too nazi and tribes off all the normies then it just becomes gab, which is an extremely boring time for them. To whatever extrent they are a user base they are not going to stick around.
posted by Artw at 12:59 PM on November 3, 2022 [3 favorites]
Twitter has also always carried an outsized cultural cachet compared to its relatively small userbase.
A huge reason for this is that journalists and celebrities are absolutely addicted to the up-to-the-second news updates, and easy access to attention.
Lose that audience, and Twitter's place in the public image will suddenly align with the reality that it has fewer users than Pinterest, and barely more than Quora or Reddit. Quora!!!!
If that happens, it's hard to see it being anything other than a death-spiral.
posted by schmod at 5:30 PM on November 3, 2022 [10 favorites]
A huge reason for this is that journalists and celebrities are absolutely addicted to the up-to-the-second news updates, and easy access to attention.
Lose that audience, and Twitter's place in the public image will suddenly align with the reality that it has fewer users than Pinterest, and barely more than Quora or Reddit. Quora!!!!
If that happens, it's hard to see it being anything other than a death-spiral.
posted by schmod at 5:30 PM on November 3, 2022 [10 favorites]
I liked this zinger from the article: Hire BETTER engineers! If a car can drive itself, surely a computer can understand fair use!
posted by whir at 8:47 PM on November 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by whir at 8:47 PM on November 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
I stumbled across this thread by someone named John Bull, about mass user exodus from published products (print and/or digital).
The concept of the Trust Thermocline is really one I wish I had twenty years ago (along with the concept of 'opportunity costs' and 'reputational costs') for arguing against some dumb things that were happening in my job.
posted by Mutant Lobsters from Riverhead at 9:00 PM on November 3, 2022 [3 favorites]
The concept of the Trust Thermocline is really one I wish I had twenty years ago (along with the concept of 'opportunity costs' and 'reputational costs') for arguing against some dumb things that were happening in my job.
posted by Mutant Lobsters from Riverhead at 9:00 PM on November 3, 2022 [3 favorites]
After reading down this thread, I thought I'd check out Mastodon. First take: Mastodon is hard. As in complicated. Like which server to choose... ad infinitum. Pray tell, is there an Idiot's Guide to Mastodon for Dummies? If so, MeMail me the details. Thank you for your time and attention, yr obt svt... [oh, Asking for a friend, obviously...]
posted by y2karl at 9:18 PM on November 3, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by y2karl at 9:18 PM on November 3, 2022 [2 favorites]
I stumbled across this thread by someone named John Bull
MeFi's own! I'm glad to see Napoleon is home and well.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 10:59 PM on November 3, 2022 [6 favorites]
MeFi's own! I'm glad to see Napoleon is home and well.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 10:59 PM on November 3, 2022 [6 favorites]
Re: picking a Mastodon server: just go with mastodon.social, the big early one. Think of it like picking an email address. Your email domain name might say something about your academic or work affiliation, but most likely it just says “gmail”.
posted by migurski at 11:06 PM on November 3, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by migurski at 11:06 PM on November 3, 2022 [2 favorites]
Twitter, for Musk, is a place to get in fights. He loves getting in fights on Twitter.
Something interesting about Musk's use of Twitter - versus that of other narcissistic celebrities - is that he uses the platform not just for fights but also for turning ideas in executive orders. Tesla users can discover, hidden away in a corner of their car's settings, something called "Joe Mode" which came about after the following exchange:
I'd expect Musk to continue to try the same approach with Twitter - he likes being a kind of Santa Claus. The problem is that the design of cars or rockets works in a realm of engineering where one way of doing things is usually objectively better than another. Social media: not so much.
posted by rongorongo at 11:08 PM on November 3, 2022 [8 favorites]
Something interesting about Musk's use of Twitter - versus that of other narcissistic celebrities - is that he uses the platform not just for fights but also for turning ideas in executive orders. Tesla users can discover, hidden away in a corner of their car's settings, something called "Joe Mode" which came about after the following exchange:
@schristakos :Elon can we get the auto lane correction feature without sound? Young kids in car, want to keep feature on but not wake them up.So some random person suggested something to Musk - maybe that tweet was boosted by likes and comments to the point where action was taken: make the thing, push it out in a release, job done. This kind of interaction is a fairly typical event for Tesla. Sometimes this leads to something great, sometimes it it disastrous - but it is an agile, interactive and somewhat democratic use of the platform. Like the fights, the jokes, the announcements - it is all about shining light on Musk specifically - but it is notably two way; born from a dialogue rather than a re-tweet or an @ tweet.
@musk: Hoping to get 'Joe Mode' into V10. The default, of course, is normal volume, but selecting “Joe Mode” would lower the volume of strident beeps & chimes by half
I'd expect Musk to continue to try the same approach with Twitter - he likes being a kind of Santa Claus. The problem is that the design of cars or rockets works in a realm of engineering where one way of doing things is usually objectively better than another. Social media: not so much.
posted by rongorongo at 11:08 PM on November 3, 2022 [8 favorites]
Re: picking a Mastodon server: just go with mastodon.social, the big early one
Unfortunately, Mastodon.social isn't open to new accounts at the moment. Someone suggested that mastodon.online is similar, in that its owner by the same core Mastodon org, and has similar policies, but I haven't verified that myself.
posted by scorbet at 12:59 AM on November 4, 2022
Unfortunately, Mastodon.social isn't open to new accounts at the moment. Someone suggested that mastodon.online is similar, in that its owner by the same core Mastodon org, and has similar policies, but I haven't verified that myself.
posted by scorbet at 12:59 AM on November 4, 2022
mastodon.online is a big instance run by the creator of Mastodon, and still seems to be open. But the usual recommendation is to look at the list of servers on joinmastodon.org and pick one you like. To be listed there a server has to accept the Mastodon server covenant which includes "active moderation against racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia".
But as people keep saying, Mastodon isn't Twitter. It's a different experience, not a replacement.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 3:45 AM on November 4, 2022 [4 favorites]
But as people keep saying, Mastodon isn't Twitter. It's a different experience, not a replacement.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 3:45 AM on November 4, 2022 [4 favorites]
Lose that audience, and Twitter's place in the public image will suddenly align with the reality that it has fewer users than Pinterest, and barely more than Quora or Reddit. Quora!!!!
Even so, that is a few hundred million users who have been moderated hy a staff of 8000? And Elon Musk plans to cut that staff by half? Um, perhaps his handle of Chief Twit should be changed to Chief Twubgirl, considering in what the users left will be aswim.
Picture the future as "OK, coffee breaks over! Back to standing on your heads!"
posted by y2karl at 5:54 AM on November 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
Even so, that is a few hundred million users who have been moderated hy a staff of 8000? And Elon Musk plans to cut that staff by half? Um, perhaps his handle of Chief Twit should be changed to Chief Twubgirl, considering in what the users left will be aswim.
Picture the future as "OK, coffee breaks over! Back to standing on your heads!"
posted by y2karl at 5:54 AM on November 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
50% layoffs expected later today.
Twitter employees are all quickly trying to unlink their Twitter accounts from their work emails, since the company mandates they be connected and use a physical 2FA system. “Pure chaos,” one tells me.
Twitter is starting to have that feeling of the last few hours on the Titanic!
posted by Lanark at 6:07 AM on November 4, 2022 [5 favorites]
Twitter employees are all quickly trying to unlink their Twitter accounts from their work emails, since the company mandates they be connected and use a physical 2FA system. “Pure chaos,” one tells me.
Twitter is starting to have that feeling of the last few hours on the Titanic!
posted by Lanark at 6:07 AM on November 4, 2022 [5 favorites]
Yeah, the entire content moderation workforce worldwide off today. I think that off the Masnick scale.
posted by bluesky43 at 6:55 AM on November 4, 2022
posted by bluesky43 at 6:55 AM on November 4, 2022
This is painful to watch.
posted by interogative mood at 4:43 PM on November 5, 2022
posted by interogative mood at 4:43 PM on November 5, 2022
Can we get Musk to purchase Facebook next?
posted by whir at 10:05 PM on November 6, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by whir at 10:05 PM on November 6, 2022 [4 favorites]
No need. Musk is an inspiration:
Zuckerberg had a look at twitter and liked what he saw. Meta is preparing mass layoffs.
posted by UN at 10:36 PM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
Zuckerberg had a look at twitter and liked what he saw. Meta is preparing mass layoffs.
posted by UN at 10:36 PM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
After vowing to make Twitter a bastion of “free speech,” Elon Musk announced a new policy on Sunday that will remove accounts engaging in the type of “impersonation” that comedians and others have used to humorously protest his takeover of the social network in recent days.Musk Bans ‘Impersonation’ After Parody Elons Flood Twitter
“Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying ‘parody’ will be permanently suspended,” Musk tweeted Sunday evening.
The mogul added that while users previously received a warning before suspension, moving forward “there will be no warning.”
Celebrities such as Kathy Griffin, Sarah Silverman, and Mad Men star Rich Sommer quickly had their accounts removed for changing their usernames and photos to match Musk’s.
Elon Q. Sensitive: poor widdle skookums has such thin thin skin.
posted by y2karl at 10:41 PM on November 6, 2022 [4 favorites]
Elon Musk may have lost whatever credibility he had left, but no worries — he can rent it for $8 a month.
posted by UN at 4:57 AM on November 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by UN at 4:57 AM on November 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
Elon Musk may have lost whatever credibility he had left, but no worries — he can rent it for $8 a month.
I like Garius's description of this in terms of it being a "trust thermocline". - that sudden unexpected chilling of customer relationships when warning signs of grumbling and complaint suddenly transform into an exodus. Not reversible either. Musk has taken Twitter there in "ludicrous mode".
posted by rongorongo at 5:22 AM on November 7, 2022 [5 favorites]
I like Garius's description of this in terms of it being a "trust thermocline". - that sudden unexpected chilling of customer relationships when warning signs of grumbling and complaint suddenly transform into an exodus. Not reversible either. Musk has taken Twitter there in "ludicrous mode".
posted by rongorongo at 5:22 AM on November 7, 2022 [5 favorites]
Question… If I pay the 8 bucks, do I get a check mark? But how do they verify that I am me? Will they be really trying to verify? Are you you? Yes. No.
posted by njohnson23 at 9:09 AM on November 7, 2022
posted by njohnson23 at 9:09 AM on November 7, 2022
You get a checkmark, but there's no verification anymore. All the checkmark means from now on is "I paid the 8 bucks."
posted by Servo5678 at 10:09 AM on November 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Servo5678 at 10:09 AM on November 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
Question… If I pay the 8 bucks, do I get a check mark? But how do they verify that I am me? Will they be really trying to verify? Are you you? Yes. No.
[thatsthejoke.gif]posted by rhizome at 11:23 AM on November 7, 2022
Elon Musk Posted a Nazi Picture, and Then Called for People To Vote for Republicans
posted by y2karl at 12:03 PM on November 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by y2karl at 12:03 PM on November 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
Dude treats his own children as a weird breeding program so it probably shouldn’t be surprising he’s anti abortion.
posted by Artw at 12:06 PM on November 7, 2022
posted by Artw at 12:06 PM on November 7, 2022
If Musk was looking for a photo of carrier pigeons to make a point about his new role as CEO as Twitter, he didn’t have to pick one of a Nazi soldier.To be fair to the tinpot dictator, this is almost certainly case of "stole a meme, didn't think any more deeply about it" rather than than "deliberately manufactured Nazi propaganda."
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 12:34 PM on November 7, 2022
Right, but it does say something of the tinpot dictator that "whatever you do, be careful you don't even ACCIDENTALLY post something having to do with Nazis" isn't something he does.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:38 PM on November 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:38 PM on November 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
It probably was deliberate to post a Nazi photo just to troll the audience and get the outrage; then attack the critics for being hypersensitive.
posted by interogative mood at 1:02 PM on November 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by interogative mood at 1:02 PM on November 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
One-month and YTD TSLA stock price graph looks "yikes". Unrelated, I'm sure.
posted by ctmf at 1:04 PM on November 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by ctmf at 1:04 PM on November 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
The other automakers are enjoying suspending their Twitter ads just to fuck over Elon Musk a little bit more.
posted by interogative mood at 1:21 PM on November 7, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 1:21 PM on November 7, 2022 [3 favorites]
The funny thing about narcissists is that they don’t take advice from PR professionals
I said this in another Elongated Muskrat thread but I'm absolutely appalled and more than a little impressed that whatever handlers and PR managers he might have in his circle have not managed to corral him into any kind of public speaking course even if it was just a couple of C-list Toastmasters showing him how to handle (or more importantly not handle) a microphone.
I'm no skilled orator and I'm not expecting much at all. Just some basics like how to turn a microphone on and off or how to not hold it right up to your stinking gobhole while you're nervously laughing at your own dumb jokes and comments, humming and hawing or openly breathing heavily right into the mic while on stage presenting something worth millions or billions of dollars.
I don't even remotely have misophonia but I seem to get a raging case of it every time I've seen a video of him doing a live presentation or presser. And it's absolutely indicative of how much narcissism is going on and how much self awareness he lacks.
posted by loquacious at 1:42 PM on November 7, 2022 [4 favorites]
I said this in another Elongated Muskrat thread but I'm absolutely appalled and more than a little impressed that whatever handlers and PR managers he might have in his circle have not managed to corral him into any kind of public speaking course even if it was just a couple of C-list Toastmasters showing him how to handle (or more importantly not handle) a microphone.
I'm no skilled orator and I'm not expecting much at all. Just some basics like how to turn a microphone on and off or how to not hold it right up to your stinking gobhole while you're nervously laughing at your own dumb jokes and comments, humming and hawing or openly breathing heavily right into the mic while on stage presenting something worth millions or billions of dollars.
I don't even remotely have misophonia but I seem to get a raging case of it every time I've seen a video of him doing a live presentation or presser. And it's absolutely indicative of how much narcissism is going on and how much self awareness he lacks.
posted by loquacious at 1:42 PM on November 7, 2022 [4 favorites]
When it comes to Emotional Intelligence, the dude is about 37 cards short of a full deck.
posted by y2karl at 2:02 PM on November 7, 2022
posted by y2karl at 2:02 PM on November 7, 2022
Elon Musk Posted a Nazi Picture, and Then Called for People To Vote for Republicans
I didn't expect anyone to make Jack Dorsey look, by way of comparison, like a reasonable, fair-minded, mature CEO. But here we are.
posted by clawsoon at 2:53 PM on November 7, 2022 [4 favorites]
I didn't expect anyone to make Jack Dorsey look, by way of comparison, like a reasonable, fair-minded, mature CEO. But here we are.
posted by clawsoon at 2:53 PM on November 7, 2022 [4 favorites]
It is depressingly like how Trump made me feel about Bush.
posted by bcd at 3:21 PM on November 7, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by bcd at 3:21 PM on November 7, 2022 [7 favorites]
Circling the drain can lull you into thinking that you are moving more sideways than down.
posted by y2karl at 3:28 PM on November 7, 2022 [11 favorites]
posted by y2karl at 3:28 PM on November 7, 2022 [11 favorites]
from the careening-along-the-curve-of-hypocrisy dept.
posted by y2karl at 11:44 PM on November 7, 2022 [6 favorites]
...I don’t begrudge Musk trying to deal with real potential issues that might come with impersonation. But… if he had even an ounce of self-reflection he might realize that all of these hypocritical moves he is making suggests that maybe, just maybe, Twitter and all the employees he fired, actually did have a decent (or, let’s say, very, very firm) grasp on what free speech actually means and how to manage a platform like Twitter.Techdirt: The Elon Speedrun Continues; Apparently Comedy Is Not Quite Legal On The New Twitter
And while I really had hoped that maybe he secretly did understand all this and was just hamming it up for his fans, it really appears that Musk is rushing headlong through the content moderation learning curve and making all the same moves as everyone else before him. It’s easy to declare “free speech for all” until suddenly all hell breaks loose and people are mocking you left and right.
Anyway, comedy remains legal, and in some ways, this is all very, very funny.
posted by y2karl at 11:44 PM on November 7, 2022 [6 favorites]
@oneunderscore__:
Like I always say with content moderation, every social media site owner who is “pro free speech” meets their line eventually.posted by clawsoon at 3:12 PM on November 8, 2022 [10 favorites]
For 4chan, it was anime child porn. For Facebook and YouTube, it was white nationalist terror. For Elon, it was people making fun of him.
@lopezlinette:
posted by clawsoon at 3:35 PM on November 8, 2022 [6 favorites]
How do I know so much about how @elonmusk does things? I spent 3 years investigating Tesla at @BusinessInsider from 2018-2021. Here are some of sloppy, dangerous, callous, things I learned:...followed by 16 stories she wrote about the way he ran his businesses, including things like, "Tesla put batteries with potentially defective cooling systems in people's cars. And they knew about it", "That time Elon told his engineers to stop doing brake tests on Model 3s. The tests were finding too many defects, and he wanted speed up the manufacturing process", and "if you're wondering how long @ElonMusk has been surrounded exclusively by sycophants, Tesla's last respectable general counsel quit after just 2 months in 2019."
posted by clawsoon at 3:35 PM on November 8, 2022 [6 favorites]
>Elon Musk Posted a Nazi Picture, and Then Called for People To Vote for Republicans
it's over-reductive to say that was a "Nazi" picture, but I love this as an example of how the well-swizzled lie is 10X harder to refute with rebuttals.
if it were an SS solder in the pic, it'd be nazi-adjacent at best. But that's a Heer helmet so it's just a plain German soldier . . . but by the time I'm talking about which decal is on the helmet I've already lost the information battle . . .
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 4:21 PM on November 8, 2022
it's over-reductive to say that was a "Nazi" picture, but I love this as an example of how the well-swizzled lie is 10X harder to refute with rebuttals.
if it were an SS solder in the pic, it'd be nazi-adjacent at best. But that's a Heer helmet so it's just a plain German soldier . . . but by the time I'm talking about which decal is on the helmet I've already lost the information battle . . .
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 4:21 PM on November 8, 2022
Heywood Mogroot III, is your argument that the Wehrmacht weren't nazis?
posted by sagc at 4:25 PM on November 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by sagc at 4:25 PM on November 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
it's over-reductive to say that was a "Nazi" picture, but I love this as an example of how the well-swizzled lie is 10X harder to refute with rebuttals
By the same token, it is optimistic to assume Musk would be aware of this, so we are still left with a dude who thought there was nothing wrong about using a picture of a Nazi even by accident and WHY are you trying to defend him actually?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:58 PM on November 8, 2022 [4 favorites]
By the same token, it is optimistic to assume Musk would be aware of this, so we are still left with a dude who thought there was nothing wrong about using a picture of a Nazi even by accident and WHY are you trying to defend him actually?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:58 PM on November 8, 2022 [4 favorites]
I'm wondering if this might be a spoof but Esther Crawford @Twitter 'early stage products' is claiming they are about to launch a system of TWO VERIFICATION ticks, one to say you are verified through Blue and one to say you are really verified verified.
And they say Mastodon is complicated!
posted by Lanark at 5:49 AM on November 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
And they say Mastodon is complicated!
posted by Lanark at 5:49 AM on November 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
I don't want to be mistaken for a Nazi sympathizer, right wing conspiracy theorist or the like. To me, those are pretty obviously bad things and I don't want to support them.
So I don't post memes and tweets that might confuse people into thinking I could be a Nazi sympathizer or Qanon nut or whatever.
Obviously, Elon Musk doesn't feel the same way. He's the genius CEO so I'm sure he's right that reposting Qanon level conspiracy theories and such is just free speech and doesn't mean anything.
And some agree that sometime a Nazi is just a joke and that reposting obvious right wing bullshit is fine. There's no patterns, nothing means anything, and people should just keep consuming according to some.
posted by jclarkin at 6:41 AM on November 9, 2022
So I don't post memes and tweets that might confuse people into thinking I could be a Nazi sympathizer or Qanon nut or whatever.
Obviously, Elon Musk doesn't feel the same way. He's the genius CEO so I'm sure he's right that reposting Qanon level conspiracy theories and such is just free speech and doesn't mean anything.
And some agree that sometime a Nazi is just a joke and that reposting obvious right wing bullshit is fine. There's no patterns, nothing means anything, and people should just keep consuming according to some.
posted by jclarkin at 6:41 AM on November 9, 2022
The two ticks are live, POTUS gets a little flag with "United States government official"
posted by Lanark at 6:53 AM on November 9, 2022
posted by Lanark at 6:53 AM on November 9, 2022
Two check marks AND a flag?
This is gonna be like videogame achievements or pokemon soon. Gotta catch 'em all!
posted by jclarkin at 6:55 AM on November 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
This is gonna be like videogame achievements or pokemon soon. Gotta catch 'em all!
posted by jclarkin at 6:55 AM on November 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
Someone is probably crafting up an icon for a little MAGA hat for when Trump comes back
posted by Lanark at 6:58 AM on November 9, 2022
posted by Lanark at 6:58 AM on November 9, 2022
It looks like POTUS only gets one checkmark (and a flag) since he hasn't paid for Twitter Blue.
So does that mean POTUS will get downgraded in the algorithm unless he pays Elon Musk $8 per month?
posted by TheophileEscargot at 8:18 AM on November 9, 2022
So does that mean POTUS will get downgraded in the algorithm unless he pays Elon Musk $8 per month?
posted by TheophileEscargot at 8:18 AM on November 9, 2022
WTF… That idiot is not POTUS. Whose game are you playing?
posted by njohnson23 at 8:55 AM on November 9, 2022
posted by njohnson23 at 8:55 AM on November 9, 2022
Somewhat confusing in the context of the thread, but I believe POTUS above refers to Biden.
That Guy is still not back on Twitter AFAIK.
posted by Not A Thing at 9:04 AM on November 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
That Guy is still not back on Twitter AFAIK.
posted by Not A Thing at 9:04 AM on November 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
Back in the day if they fucked with the “latest tweets” tab (ie chronological order without shitty algorithm) that was a red line that had many long term tweeters threatening to head for the door, so I’m assuming that’s next.
Is it me or they limiting the amount you can see without logging in a lot heavier now? Cutting that off completely would also seem like a bad idea so fingers crossed.
posted by Artw at 9:08 AM on November 9, 2022
Is it me or they limiting the amount you can see without logging in a lot heavier now? Cutting that off completely would also seem like a bad idea so fingers crossed.
posted by Artw at 9:08 AM on November 9, 2022
Is it me or they limiting the amount you can see without logging in a lot heavier now?
Feels a bit heavier to me, but I am not a person of the tweets. Seems a little funny to me. If you want to grow twitter, shouldn't you make it so people can read MORE of it to get hooked? With the login/signup pop-up coming so quickly it's way easier for me to disengage and remind myself I really didn't need to click on the link in the first place.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 9:15 AM on November 9, 2022
Feels a bit heavier to me, but I am not a person of the tweets. Seems a little funny to me. If you want to grow twitter, shouldn't you make it so people can read MORE of it to get hooked? With the login/signup pop-up coming so quickly it's way easier for me to disengage and remind myself I really didn't need to click on the link in the first place.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 9:15 AM on November 9, 2022
Back in the day if they fucked with the “latest tweets” tab (ie chronological order without shitty algorithm) that was a red line that had many long term tweeters threatening to head for the door, so I’m assuming that’s next.
The "Latest Tweets" tab will be offered as a premium (paid) feature. A new "Chronological Tweets" tab is planned, which will allow you to see tweets in chronological order, but not from any users you follow.
posted by UN at 9:18 AM on November 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
The "Latest Tweets" tab will be offered as a premium (paid) feature. A new "Chronological Tweets" tab is planned, which will allow you to see tweets in chronological order, but not from any users you follow.
posted by UN at 9:18 AM on November 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
The two ticks have disappeared again, did they put Liz Truss in charge of this?
posted by Lanark at 9:59 AM on November 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Lanark at 9:59 AM on November 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
The two ticks have disappeared again, did they put Liz Truss in charge of this?
Musk killed it. See over here in one of the other threads.
posted by scorbet at 11:01 AM on November 9, 2022
Musk killed it. See over here in one of the other threads.
posted by scorbet at 11:01 AM on November 9, 2022
Yeah, I thought we were talking about @POTUS, the official President Of The United Stages account.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 11:19 AM on November 9, 2022
posted by TheophileEscargot at 11:19 AM on November 9, 2022
Official President of the account aside, them United Stages is how we got to the Moon.
posted by y2karl at 11:39 AM on November 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by y2karl at 11:39 AM on November 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
Is it me or they limiting the amount you can see without logging in a lot heavier now?
I remember thinking that it got more limited a few months ago. I don't perceive it as being screwed down further since the change of ownership.
posted by pianissimo at 2:25 AM on November 10, 2022
I remember thinking that it got more limited a few months ago. I don't perceive it as being screwed down further since the change of ownership.
posted by pianissimo at 2:25 AM on November 10, 2022
As a never-want-to-Twitter-login user, it (and Instagram) have been massively more locked down in the past half year. at least. part of why I am enjoying the mastodon migration is that I am considerably less worried about my login or attention being tracked and used against me there.
posted by abulafa at 10:27 AM on November 10, 2022
posted by abulafa at 10:27 AM on November 10, 2022
Yeah, Twitter's been locked down for a while. I get past Twitter's login barrier by clicking the "Log in" button and then X'ing out of the sign-in dialog, or you can use the "Behind the Overlay" extension to get rid of the banner.
posted by ectabo at 3:45 PM on November 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by ectabo at 3:45 PM on November 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
Gergerley from Pragmatic Engineer attempts to summarise the litany of of cruel chaotic or plain crazy changes within Twitter in the last week.
posted by rongorongo at 10:21 AM on November 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by rongorongo at 10:21 AM on November 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
Gergerley and other software developers react to Musk’s CEO driven drive to rid the homepage load of “>1000 remote procedure calls”. Which I believe is his third batshit crazy technical decision of the day.
posted by rongorongo at 11:04 AM on November 14, 2022
posted by rongorongo at 11:04 AM on November 14, 2022
I've been browsing best of dying Twitter today , clicking on linked threads and it hasn't asked me to login once. Usually it would be after maybe the third or fourth tweet. Something broken or a new strategy to drive "engagement"?
posted by pianissimo at 8:24 PM on November 25, 2022
posted by pianissimo at 8:24 PM on November 25, 2022
I've been browsing best of dying Twitter today , clicking on linked threads and it hasn't asked me to login once. Usually it would be after maybe the third or fourth tweet. Something broken or a new strategy to drive "engagement"?
I think I figured out exactly what it was doing before: Once you scrolled down to the "More tweets" link, it would throw up a login screen. If you were looking at a tweet where "More tweets" was already visible on your screen, it would throw up the login screen immediately. On a desktop web browser you could get around that by making your browser window shorter and scrolling down very carefully.
posted by clawsoon at 8:48 AM on November 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
I think I figured out exactly what it was doing before: Once you scrolled down to the "More tweets" link, it would throw up a login screen. If you were looking at a tweet where "More tweets" was already visible on your screen, it would throw up the login screen immediately. On a desktop web browser you could get around that by making your browser window shorter and scrolling down very carefully.
posted by clawsoon at 8:48 AM on November 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
Oh inspect and delete element is your friend there. And if scrolling is locked just delete individual tweets to see lower ones.
But really I need to stop looking at the thing directly altogether and switch to Nitter.
posted by Artw at 9:36 AM on November 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
But really I need to stop looking at the thing directly altogether and switch to Nitter.
posted by Artw at 9:36 AM on November 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
Is there any evidence that the site is “dying,” other than wishful thinking by those of us who fervently hope the place will crash and burn and Musk will take a bath? I’ve mostly switched to Mastodon and Post, but frankly, I haven't seen any diminution of activity on my Twitter timeline at all. I’ve lost a bunch of followers, but I think it was mostly people who weren’t that active anyway, and the most active accounts I follow, including a few blue checks, seem to be as prolific as ever.
I don’t know — the constant cheering about how the site is imploding feels an awful lot to me like the usual magical thinking that we've seen for the past six or seven years when we kept hearing that Trump is through” or “No one will ever vote Republican again.” Yeah, we've seen how that went. Even if it’s losing a ton of advertisers, five will get you ten that it’s being propped up by dark money from some source or another, and that there’s more than enough of it to keep the site alive indefinitely. I wish I was as optimistic as everyone else seems to be, but is there objectively any reason to be? I mean, other than the hope that the place will stop being a malign force without doing some hard work to make that so?
posted by holborne at 4:17 PM on November 26, 2022 [4 favorites]
I don’t know — the constant cheering about how the site is imploding feels an awful lot to me like the usual magical thinking that we've seen for the past six or seven years when we kept hearing that Trump is through” or “No one will ever vote Republican again.” Yeah, we've seen how that went. Even if it’s losing a ton of advertisers, five will get you ten that it’s being propped up by dark money from some source or another, and that there’s more than enough of it to keep the site alive indefinitely. I wish I was as optimistic as everyone else seems to be, but is there objectively any reason to be? I mean, other than the hope that the place will stop being a malign force without doing some hard work to make that so?
posted by holborne at 4:17 PM on November 26, 2022 [4 favorites]
I've read enough stuff by techies that essentially say that once something breaks, the site is effed because they won't have the ability to fix anything with who they have left. So as long as nothing breaks, they're fine, but.....
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:06 PM on November 26, 2022
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:06 PM on November 26, 2022
I think I figured out exactly what it was doing before: Once you scrolled down to the "More tweets" link, it would throw up a login screen.
I'm not seeing any kind of "more tweets" thing, it's just endlessly scrolling (ok I haven't scrolled literally forever, but definitely way past the point it would usually ask me to login). On my very limited experience with Twitter in desktop, I reckon a popup blocker stopped the login nag.
The one thing I can believe is that twitter engagement has gone up. Even if most of it is snarking about Twitter dying. I'm also am skeptical that Twitter will actually cease to exist, but it might become something that most people choose to ignore.
posted by pianissimo at 5:06 PM on November 26, 2022
I'm not seeing any kind of "more tweets" thing, it's just endlessly scrolling (ok I haven't scrolled literally forever, but definitely way past the point it would usually ask me to login). On my very limited experience with Twitter in desktop, I reckon a popup blocker stopped the login nag.
The one thing I can believe is that twitter engagement has gone up. Even if most of it is snarking about Twitter dying. I'm also am skeptical that Twitter will actually cease to exist, but it might become something that most people choose to ignore.
posted by pianissimo at 5:06 PM on November 26, 2022
Is there any evidence that the site is “dying,” other than wishful thinking by those of us who fervently hope the place will crash and burn and Musk will take a bath?
The debt and the decline in income absolutely kills it as a conventional business, that’s what I’m assuming will take it out. There’s a chance it continues to operate as a subsidized loss making busines of course - there’s some very rich fascists out there.
posted by Artw at 5:19 PM on November 26, 2022
The debt and the decline in income absolutely kills it as a conventional business, that’s what I’m assuming will take it out. There’s a chance it continues to operate as a subsidized loss making busines of course - there’s some very rich fascists out there.
posted by Artw at 5:19 PM on November 26, 2022
I've read enough stuff by techies that essentially say that once something breaks, the site is effed because they won't have the ability to fix anything with who they have left. So as long as nothing breaks, they're fine, but....
Well, also it’s still running because it turns out what the people built there was incredibly stable. If they go and CHANGE anything about that, though, all bets are off.
posted by Artw at 5:21 PM on November 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
Well, also it’s still running because it turns out what the people built there was incredibly stable. If they go and CHANGE anything about that, though, all bets are off.
posted by Artw at 5:21 PM on November 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
What, like changing the check marks? Or perhaps adding video? I seem to recall hearing rumors about those things being added....
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:14 PM on November 26, 2022
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:14 PM on November 26, 2022
If they screw up modifying a flag on accounts that is used to color the existing checkmark routine, that'll be a harbinger for sure.
posted by rhizome at 11:54 PM on November 27, 2022
posted by rhizome at 11:54 PM on November 27, 2022
Elon Musk goes full Pepe, tweeting frog image ADL says is used by alt right
Now, for the Trifecta, all he has to do is tweet he's planning on building a multi-billion dollar theme park named NaziLand.
posted by y2karl at 2:03 PM on November 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
Now, for the Trifecta, all he has to do is tweet he's planning on building a multi-billion dollar theme park named NaziLand.
posted by y2karl at 2:03 PM on November 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
Interesting Guardian article from journalists writing about how Twitter changed things for them - both for better and worse. I like Jim Waterson's tale of how the tweet “Someone in the office is claiming ‘millennials don’t answer doorbells unless people text to say they’re outside’. Is this A Thing?” morphed into a culture war topic and led to an investigation of the future of the doorbell industry. Twitter may not have affected the wider world of everyday users as much as other social media platforms - but it had a massive influence on journalism/activism and politics generally. For writers of all persuasions- the disproportionate chances of success of any tweet that managed to be brief, emotive and provocative - was a big cultural influence.
posted by rongorongo at 2:11 AM on December 1, 2022
posted by rongorongo at 2:11 AM on December 1, 2022
That’s a pretty great article IMHO. Sums a lot of things up nicely.
posted by Artw at 6:25 AM on December 1, 2022
posted by Artw at 6:25 AM on December 1, 2022
As a techie I’m skeptical that they won’t be able to repair critical systems as they break. There may be some multi hour downtimes and instability in the next few months but I think it is a bit of wishful thinking that it is going to be in some unrecoverable fucked state.
The questions of long term viability of a toxic shitshow as a place where journalists, celebrities and others want to be and where advertisers want to spend money is a larger problem. Most of the new users and traffic are not monetizable. The jump in traffic because of all the news is going to fade as people’s attention shifts elsewhere.
posted by interogative mood at 6:47 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
The questions of long term viability of a toxic shitshow as a place where journalists, celebrities and others want to be and where advertisers want to spend money is a larger problem. Most of the new users and traffic are not monetizable. The jump in traffic because of all the news is going to fade as people’s attention shifts elsewhere.
posted by interogative mood at 6:47 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
By all accounts shit is regularly breaking now and staying unfixed for longer than it would pre purchase, also all content moderation has effectively ceased except occasional purges of left wing accounts. Twitter is going to be a janky and unpleasant experience from here on out even if they don't have a major outage. Mastodon may actually end up being the smoother experience and that's made of chicken wire and the average instance is run by an anticapitalist linux nerd furry who lives in a squat.
posted by Artw at 8:26 AM on December 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by Artw at 8:26 AM on December 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
Generate image: smooth mastodon experience made of chicken wire run by an anticapitalist linux nerd furry who lives in a squat.
posted by UN at 12:15 AM on December 2, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by UN at 12:15 AM on December 2, 2022 [2 favorites]
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