Elon Musk

"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

Oh lol at my half thought fucking up the quote anyway YOU GET WHAT I MEAN

i do and it’s absolutely right. things don’t change v much until they do very rapidly.

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

lol i have been trying all day to get hold of a large publisher's publicity dept (via phone, via email and via twitter) and none of these avenues work

i blame elon musk

lol ok maybe just add twitter to the ways people won’t respond to you.

:(

no not that face! not you personally! i just mean channels of non-communication from businesses and people.

it is true advertisers are very picky about this stuff

― lag∞n, Friday, October 28, 2022 12:01 PM (fifty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

how many advertisers still run ads on Tucker's show? its the most watched thing on cable news but I know for a while it was nothing but ads for reverse mortgages and My Pillow

yeah the ads across fox news are all over priced gold coins and reverse mortgages lol

fwiw even with the efforts of the previous regime twitter still made less money per user than the other comparable sites because of the problem of being a bit of a hell hole

That Verge piece linked about goes into it well.

otm. once I found time to read it, it felt like the author accurately puts his finger upon the many constraints Twitter faces and how little Musk can do about them without ruining Twitter even worse and fucking himself out of billions of dollars. def worth a read.

the most muskian playbook here, considering his history with tesla, would be to manipulate the media into inflating twitters valuation, gonna be a lot harder than just saying full self driving is a year away every year tho

cut costs introduce some new features juice the numbers then take it public with the hope that the fanboys will buy it up

what happens when twitter bursts into flames

🙏🙏🙏

Congratulations to @elonmusk Maybe now I can get @verified pic.twitter.com/nlij2dPnnr

— O.J. Simpson (@TheRealOJ32) October 28, 2022

what a lovely welcome

Evidence suggests that bad actors are trying to test the limits on @Twitter. Several posts on 4chan encourage users to amplify derogatory slurs.

For example, over the last 12 hours, the use of the n-word has increased nearly 500% from the previous average. pic.twitter.com/mEqziaWuMF

— Network Contagion Research Institute (@ncri_io) October 28, 2022