Elon Musk

lol Josh - "it's true, this man has no dick"

I love people who are posting things like, "Now that we have free speech on Twitter, I can say ..." and then proceed to post dumb shit that was already on Twitter all the time.

I still think the best analogy to this is rich guys buying newspapers, which was also traditionally much more for clout and bragging rights than as a business proposition. But also, those rich guys almost always end up getting antsy when it turns out it's hard to actually make money running a media company, and one thing most rich guys really don't like is losing money. It's inconceivable to me that even as big a troll as Elon will not want return on $44 billion. And the reality is, there are only a few ways to make money from a media platform, no matter how large — basically some combination of advertising and subscriptions. Musk is apparently banking heavily on the latter, which seems like a reach to me, but who knows. People pay for all kinds of things I guess.

I remember the big deal when Sam Zell bought Tribune...then unceremoniously dumped it.

Anyone who is willing to pay for access to tweets doesn't deserve respect of any kind.

good summary

https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/28/23428132/elon-musk-twitter-acquisition-problems-speech-moderation

Like, a substack or a Patreon, I get it— oftentimes people are paying for long-form thinkpieces, or mixes, and they get something special out of supporting someone who isn't part of the regular media environment. Foxy Digitalis' return is a good example of this, at least in the music world.

But seriously— paying for some media asshole's tweets? Paying to access 280 character sharts? Please, only an absolute fucking dummy would do that.

I was thinking ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/14/technology/elon-musk-is-a-digital-citizen-kane.html

"But imagine that Musk eventually buys Twitter from the stockholders who own it today. The closest comparison to this might be the 19th-century newspaper barons like William Randolph Hearst, Joseph Pulitzer and the fictional Charles Foster Kane, who used their papers to pursue their personal agendas, sensationalize world events and harass their enemies."

Yep, but the difference is that at that point newspapers were pretty good business propositions.

Sam Zell destroyed the Tribune, and the assholes he hired there were like a preview of the Trump administration.

rosebud:
https://www.carscoops.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/c99fb3ee-tesla-fire-moscow.gif

subscriptions will never work for twitter. it will fail just like ilx premium did.

Maybe Twitter needs a 77 board

x post what if you had to pay to cancel?

Not surprisingly, as a long-time poster on a tiny niche message board, I kind of feel like all the big social media platforms are lame and the internet was better when it was made up mostly of small niche blogs and boards. So its hard for me to get too worked up about what will happen to Twitter.

Yeah I don't want to downplay its significance (e.g. Trump), but people on Twitter vastly overrate Twitter's actual importance.

"LIMITED OFFER: Get a FREE Twitter account when you buy any dozen at participating Krispy Kreme™ Doughnuts! Open your account today!"

A lot of the freakout over the acquisition of Twitter seems to be the particular kind of upper-middle-class ladder-climbing liberal media professional just manifesting anxieties that there are massive structural disincentives in place to prevent. That Verge piece linked about goes into it well.

Musk can’t do all the nightmare horde unleashing that media types fret about and dumbass online rightwing trolls slather over because it would make the userbase flee in droves, and that userbase is the thing that gives the platform its relevancy Musk do desperately wants.

From that Verge post:

Here are some examples: you can write as many polite letters to advertisers as you want, but you cannot reasonably expect to collect any meaningful advertising revenue if you do not promise those advertisers “brand safety.” That means you have to ban racism, sexism, transphobia, and all kinds of other speech that is totally legal in the United States but reveals people to be total assholes. So you can make all the promises about “free speech” you want, but the dull reality is that you still have to ban a bunch of legal speech if you want to make money. And when you start doing that, your creepy new right-wing fanboys are going to viciously turn on you, just like they turn on every other social network that realizes the same essential truth.

Yeah I don't want to downplay its significance (e.g. Trump), but people on Twitter vastly overrate Twitter's actual importance.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Friday, October 28, 2022 12:41 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

would say its importance is generally underrated eg the famous expression twitter is not real life, it has reach way beyond the platform, watch any cable news show and like half of it is them reading tweets, trump obvs the ultimate example he prob wouldnt have won without it, having said that i do think it peaked a while ago and will be fairly irrelevant before long, for instance athletes are way more likely to post on instagram these days than twitter where a few years ago if you watched espn it was full of tweets

I don't know, if it's all about the grift then can't he just charge right wing advertisers and cons political players and the like a lot of money, a la Trump overcharging people to stay in his hotel?

Yeah I don't want to downplay its significance (e.g. Trump), but people on Twitter vastly overrate Twitter's actual importance

Definitely, and I think it works from the ego entanglement and self-identification and self-branding that the particular kind of user who needs social media to exist as a promotional tool. The network they identify with just simply must be important because they view themselves as very important people.

that sounds weirdly like an argument for its importance

every sentence in that verge piece makes sense, but i think this is the correct take on it

imagine going up to elon of all people and being like Sir you have to take your job seriously

— stephanie (@isosteph) October 28, 2022

also this is terrible

You fucked up real good, kiddo.

Twitter is a disaster clown car company that is successful despite itself,

Here are some examples: you can write as many polite letters to advertisers as you want, but you cannot reasonably expect to collect any meaningful advertising revenue if you do not promise those advertisers “brand safety.” That means you have to ban racism, sexism, transphobia, and all kinds of other speech that is totally legal in the United States but reveals people to be total assholes. So you can make all the promises about “free speech” you want, but the dull reality is that you still have to ban a bunch of legal speech if you want to make money. And when you start doing that, your creepy new right-wing fanboys are going to viciously turn on you, just like they turn on every other social network that realizes the same essential truth.

I'd like for this to be true, I hope it's true, but I'll believe it when I see it.

I don't know, if it's all about the grift then can't he just charge right wing advertisers and cons political players and the like a lot of money, a la Trump overcharging people to stay in his hotel?

Not enough advertisers in that market niche, but more importantly, doing that kills all the cache Musk compulsively needs.

So much of what Musk does can be seen as just a dumb rich guy/con man who so desperately wants social legitimacy from a certain cadre of the cultural establishment. (Kinda like Trump and Vince McMahon in the 80s, come to think of it.) There’s a reason he went on SNL.

The other half is just hype shit up to keep the government contracts coming, and to kill any project like high-speed rail in California or elsewhere that might encroach on the shitty car company he bought.

people on Twitter vastly overrate Twitter's actual importance

Ha.. In MAU's (monthly active users), it's below platforms I've never even heard of.. it's even below Pinterest!

1. Facebook — 2.9 billion MAUs
2. YouTube — 2.2 billion MAUs
3. WhatsApp — 2 billion MAUs
4. Instagram — 2 billion MAUs
5. Facebook Messenger — 1.3 billion MAUs
6. WeChat — 1.26 billion MAUs
7. TikTok — 1 billion MAUs
8. Sina Weibo — 573 million MAUs
9. QQ — 538.91 million MAUs
10. Telegram — 550 million MAUs
11. Snapchat — 538 million MAUs
12. Kuaishou — 519.8 million MAUs
13. Qzone — 517 million MAUs
14. Pinterest — 444 million MAUs
15. Twitter — 436 million MAUs

people who work in media use it so it has an outsized influence on the culture

it is where consent is manufactured

one of the problems with twitter as a business is that its niche as a broadcast platform for powerful, famous, and various other power users way outclasses the baseline numbers that advertisers care about

I'd like for this to be true, I hope it's true, but I'll believe it when I see it.

― DPRK in Cincinnati (WmC), Friday, October 28, 2022 12:57 PM (nine seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

it is true advertisers are very picky about this stuff

also, it’s a private company without any meaningful regulatory comms framework? (such as might be produced by the FCC or Ofcom). why would anyone/Musk care apart from a revenue/profitability pov?

overreliance on a non-publicly regulated or owned company for communications strategy is a problem, right?!

What *are* the US regulatory frameworks that cover twitter?

the outsized nature of it as a platform for pols, companies and media definitely has an impact.

you dont see your uncles facebook posts complaining about masks or whatever slapped up on cnn too much

xp the FTC. it's under a consent decree right now. none of that changes with it going private. https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2022/05/twitter-pay-150-million-penalty-allegedly-breaking-its-privacy-promises-again

yeah "importance" is too ambiguous a term really, but lagoon is otm

there's also the infamous https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230

it's the only social network that gets mentioned regularly on TV news. seems like denial to say it's not "important". it's probably becoming less important.

will be interesting to see how the "repeal 230" right respond to this change of ownership. seems like its repeal would be a danger to musk personally now haha.

that’s interesting caek, thanks. makes sense it’s on the data management side.

wonder what happens after twitter, notice a lot of non american journalists celebrities and whatnot have channels on messaging apps telegram wechat etc that people can subscribe to, americans have never really gotten into those mega chat apps tho, maybe someone should create x

it's the only social network that gets mentioned regularly on TV news. seems like denial to say it's not "important". it's probably becoming less important.

How important is TV news?

definitely important, for all the reasons stated. it’s interesting it has such importance with so little regulation. in other areas i’d say regulation was slow in catching up, on the comms (not the data) side im not so sure. feels like the publisher/platform difficulty is a genuinely problematic area.

that was an xpost rather than a response to the tv news point!

it's subject to local laws too. i don't know much about DSA but it seems like it should be on his radar.

👋 @elonmusk

In Europe, the bird will fly by our 🇪🇺 rules.#DSA https://t.co/95W3qzYsal

— Thierry Breton (@ThierryBreton) October 28, 2022

my instinct rn is that unless musk rly fucks up the high profile users and many others won’t go anywhere.

yeah europe def has the capacity to hamstring the business model - just look at GDPR.

seems like section 230 tbh (but unlikely to be repealed, unlike 230) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Services_Act#New_obligations_on_platform_companies

maybe they start making subtwitters to cater to niches - ie. /garfield

yeah europe def has the capacity to hamstring the business model - just look at GDPR.

my instinct rn is that unless musk rly fucks up the high profile users and many others won’t go anywhere.

Twitter has largely replaced PR firm press releases... I remember Whoopie Goldberg eulogizing Lou Reed on twitter (!) rather than quietly sending flowers to his widow.. in that respect, it's dirt cheap and purely performative