Thoughts on Elon Musk buying a stake in Twitter?

Just read this in my local paper. A dumpster fire is an understatement.

There was a cartoon 1000 years ago that was identical only ā€œon the internetā€¦ā€

Love it!

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image

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ā€œDon’t worry you won’t go to jail if we break the law.ā€

That’s about as reassuring as the time my company planned a trip to Mexico when there was a lot of violence happening. They sent out an email basically saying, ā€œDon’t worry about your personal safety, we hired a top team of international mercenaries to provide security.ā€ I was sooooo reassured.

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A trip that requires protection by Wagner’s army?! No thanks. :laughing:

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Geniuses like to work together from this article.

Bankman-Fried was apparently into some pretty shady activities with customer funds. I’m glad Elon didn’t pursue anything with him. It might get interesting regarding the whole situation around Bankman-Fried.

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Too bad EM wasn’t smart enough to realize that.

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I never thought he would buy the company, but was doing it for PR/ego gratification. I really don’t understand whether he actually wanted to buy it (when the market was strong) but it seems like he was forced to do so because of his sloppiness.

Now, he seems to be destroying the company with almost impetuous decisions. It seems like being able to buy certification for $8/mo and firing staff is losing huge advertising clients (Eli Lilly). Is there method to the madness or is it just impetuosity?

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Now a number of the Twitter engineers have started criticizing Musk publicly for his lack of technical understanding and he’s rage firing them. This was yesterday but I’ve seen several more since then:

He decided to turn off various features which caused parts of the site to break yesterday including 2FA texts to confirm logins.

And more broadly, Musk’s ongoing attempts to fight with lawmakers on Twitter seem to be an attempt to get ahead of federal charges (with him perhaps being charged with fraud over FSD?) and portray them as politically motivated.

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I’ve seen enough. He’s intentionally sinking it. Question is…why? Who does that benefit? :thinking:

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The alternative is that he’s just mentally disintegrating as the walls close in with potential legal troubles.

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No idea. Do Parler, Truth Social, and Gab win if there is no agreed monitored platform? Right now, everything on those platforms is immediately assumed to be by/for wingnuts.

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The whole of society?

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well, I don’t disagree with you that society would likely be better off without most (all?) social media, but I doubt he’s that altruistic.

The platforms you mention are already dumpster fires, with no moderation—Twitter may join them soon.

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I’ve heard Mastodon has had a uptick in users since the Twitter dumpster fire got started.

There is still time for things to turn around, and Elon certainly has enough money that he can keep trying things until something works if he wants… however, this appears to be a perfect example of what happens when someone buys their own hype and lives in a tightly controlled information bubble and is not keen to take in new information.

Ever since he called that one British rescuer of the Thai children stuck in a cave a pedophile because the rescuer didn’t like his mini-submarine suggestion/offer, I’ve suspected that Elon is not in the most healthy mental state. It appears that he’s chosen to prioritize the culture wars over good business sense - his main customer base is left-leaning consumers and the government and he’s gone out of his way to antagonize them. It doesn’t make good business sense. But it’s also his money, so he can do what he likes but I suspect he’ll end up hurting a number of his businesses.

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I thought he’s a mess for a long time even before he bought Twitter. His personal live is a pretty good indication. Maybe it’s a gene he inherited from his dad.

Musk is known to be an unpleasant employer. High turnover and poor work-life balance at Tesla.

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Well documented here:

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