This was an epic debacle. Musk invested 4 BILLION dollars in an asset of questionable value, because "free speech". If he times it right he could come out ahead financially. But in general this was a pointless distraction and public fiasco that served no one.
I have no idea what he was doing or what his goals were. It looks like he was upset that people he liked were getting banned by twitter and was afraid that he'd run afoul of their rules himself, so he tried to buy the company. And despite being one of the richest humans to ever live, he failed at that.
This is just a head scratcher and a massive L. I don't see another way to view it.
he wants to see the first amendment function with autistic precision. he wants to remove any messy personalization because it interferes with that purity. he wants fully transparent moderation and proof of fairness. he doesn't like the idea that one organization has such control and he likely wants to turn the company into a dao. he's searching for a problem to apply cryptocurrency technologies to.
what i think he doesn't get are the messy realities of the real world. we're already on the cusp of world war iii, can we chill for just a few minutes?
I might also settle for a really quality sci-fi novel in which this takes place.
The fact of the matter is that such a system absolutely would not scale. USENET crumbled under the weight of early 90s AOL subscribers; imagine even a fraction of today's Facebook or Twitter users moving to a similarly open system. It would be absolutely unusable chaos.
The thing is, these systems are not "the whole psyche of humankind projected into public view". That's far, far too generous for it. What usually happens is that the loudest extremists scream over everyone else, sock-puppet support for each other, create an echo chamber, and then proclaim that everyone who doesn't think like them isn't a real human being. The vast majority of people do not actually interact with the system.
[0] Technically speaking it was some extra overlay software on top of Freenet. I don't remember the name.
The sender anonymity part could just be having every node act as part of a mixnet- wait until you receive X messages and/or Y time has elapsed, shuffle messages, send them out to randomly chosen nodes, repeat this for 3 hops and then your message is propagated.
I've wanted to make something like this for ages since 4chan has gone so downhill. Perhaps it should happen then. It would probably be easier to adopt than something as complex as Freenet FMS for sure.
how could it be abused by trolls? both local and nation state funded?
the human condition sucks sometimes, but wow, that's pretty dark.
you could also consider, you know, actions that make your life or the lives of others better. it's likely a more rewarding endeavor.
> What problem would it solve
Well, we could have a bunch of discussion boards again, ones that aren't at the permanent whims of profiteers or atrocious moderation. And strong anonymity even against global passive adversaries. Clearly there is a case for it, I know a lot of people who would find lots of joy in such a thing!
sum[user_i in users](opinion(user_i)•engagement(user_i))
It's the second factor that causes all of the problems. But much like fast-food companies get a large fraction of their revenue from a small fraction of their customers, social media companies have trouble disempowering highly engaged users when functioning as a profit-oriented business.
It's interesting to consider what would happen with a "less moderated" messageboard where an individual's daily engagement is capped (supposing you solve the multiple account problem). It doesn't seem likely that we'll see that any time soon, though.
Somebody writes a unlock euqivalent and maintains ban lists. Everyone subscribes, because otherwise it's full of ads, spam, and edgy 14 year olds repeating slurs like it's Xbox live.
You can't go back home.
it's not some mirror that reflects who we really are, it's the chaos that comes from navigating entirely new paradigms of attention games and connectedness at scales we haven't yet evolved for.
Brilliant!
Can’t help but wonder if over time – having the ability to peek into our collective psyche – this would trigger a significant divergence from the present evolutionary trajectory of our unexamined collective mind; maybe for the better, maybe for the worse.
It would be like any other lightly-moderated or unmoderated spaces we've seen before: the wildest days of 4chan, etc.
It would quickly be dominated by niche individuals and clumps of people who are good at attracting attention because they yell the loudest, are the most outrageous, tell the most compelling lies, etc.
In my opinion the fundamental needs of humans being meant is part of the social machine. Not rich people getting to whine.
I really wish we'd stop defining social media broadly as a first amendment issue. Elon Musk has the right to speak his mind without fear of government reprisal, he doesn't have a constitutional right to broadcast his asinine opinions to millions of people.
Like, you can probably imagine at least one person you know acting this way if they discovered a genie.
This has been my thought for a while. Dudes is a character, playing a part.
What has he done to deserve that label?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50695593
his defense being....
> Mr Musk told the court this week the phrase "pedo guy" was common in South Africa, where he grew up.
But since you want an actual link, here: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=elon+musk+douchebag&ia=web
My main point was that saying "nuh uh" isn't a substantive rebuttal to a claim, especially when there's a pretty solid wealth of evidence in both directions (Musk has been a real turd to some people, specifically unionizers or laborers in his domain as well as that one anti-submarine guy who he leveraged his wealth to slander as a paedophile, but has helmed pioneering work in battery tech, propulsion, and non-government viable (!) approaches to lots of technological hurdles).
So, given the context of him being a known polarizing figure, "what has he done to deserve 'asshole':(" is not a substantive comment. LMGTFY is appropriate here, if anywhere?
And regardless of that, it is still a massive asshole move to call someone a pedophile because they told you to shut up. Those two insults couldn't be more different in severity and social implications.
> Every billionaire is supposedly an "asshole"
I don't know if this is true; I think some have a pretty strong image in the public eye. Gates for a long time hit that mark, though the COVID vaccine era allegations work against him now. Musk himself - case in point - is polarizing, but beloved by many. Buffet AFAICT is seen as a kindly, humble market guru with a penchant for helping those who need it. The Kardashians' (specifically Kylie Jenner's) wealth is admired and lauded by many. Tony Khan is ranked highly in sentiment across billionaires, and even the polarizing Vince McMahon is well beloved by an adoring group. Donald Trump, who is maybe a billionaire?, is the actual locus of much attention, merchandise, and adoration, of a large portion of the USA. Mukesh Ambani is a respected and admired figure in India. I don't know what the burden of proof to countermand this is.
> the only reason is because they have the money to do all of the things that regular people would also do but pretend they don't because they don't have the power to do anything.
This seems wildly, unsupportably reductive. Could you back this up with anything? I've engaged with the thought for a bit and am now more genuinely curious that I was before, so - W there for the HN zeitgeist, probably.
> I do understand though that your comment adds no value and should supposedly be downvoted according to the community standards of this site.
Maybe, maybe not. I'd rather call out a troll and help others see it if it'd otherwise fly under the radar and scum up conversation.
> My point is not a troll, it is always the case that people who have no power pretend that <if you just give me the power> I will be the <really good person>. They just want power like everybody else.
This is completely unfounded, and - to me, very subjectively - sounds like projection. I vehemently do not want unilateral power, but I also don't want others to have it. Where do I fall on your political compass graph?
Would it be illegal for him to launch a Twitter competitor, take 40 million followers with him, and sell all of his Twitter shares on the same day?
Perhaps that is the strategy? A 1-2-3 punch to launch his own network.
I agree.
This is the same man that at one point tried to say that he was the founder of Tesla.
Saying things that I agree with doesn't mean that I should inherently be in favor of said person doing X, Y, or Z.
Just look at the conditions in any society without free speech and you'll find your answer.
More abstractly, free speech is required for free thought. Without free thought, we're all thought prisoners to whomever controls the information we received. Musk's contention with Twitter is that they have been positioning themselves as that entity.
And two, how?
He's heavily invested in AI and machine learning, could he be interested in twitter's data?
It's very possible that his AI investments have yielded developments that we can't imagine. But it's hard to see the value of twitter's data over that of, say, the internet cache that gpt-3 uses.
I have no idea what the plan b he alluded to is.
Reliably parsing and interpreting new, potentially unreliable data is part of that whole AI-complete thing.
I would be more interested in him implementing certain features like a journalistic credibility score for outlets and individuals. Base it on number of retractions, mistakes, and outright lies. Surely a score like that might put certain fake news propagators in line.
This is something he pitched before although as a standalone website. Integrating into twitter seems more useful.
Which then raises the issue of who scores the scorer. You already have people throwing fits because the garbage they post gets labeled as misleading or not true. So how would this be any different besides you liking the person in charge of the scoring?
I think there are probably other factors at play too. His ego, of course. And also the general desire, also evident among VCs like Andreesen, to discipline the Silicon Valley workforce and remind the uppity code-monkeys who's really in charge.
To step through this... So we have someone with a net worth near 300 billion dollars that is going to go through all this trouble to:
-Unblock one user
-Which will then trigger an American political party to like him
-This political party will then make it less likely the SEC will bother him, potentially saving him tens of millions of dollars (or 0.01% of his current net worth) in some hypothetical scenario
What a theory! This same political party and twitter user was in power when the SEC fined him+Tesla $40 million in 2018. How do you make sense of that with your theory?
If politics was his main driver, why wouldn't he just use his wealth to directly incentivize politicians?
And why when Trump and the Republican party was in power in 2018, did they allow Musk+Tesla to be fined if there is such a tight relationship along 'anti-regulation' lines between the SEC and the President/political party in power?
And again, if he cares about political influence, why go through all this trouble and why not just directly incentivize politicians?
I think this is probably only one factor at play here, and who really knows to what degree, but it's certainly more of a factor than marketing pablum about Elon being a futurist deeply concerned with the optimal future of humanity or whatever.
Would the fact that Tesla mostly just donates to Democrats alter anything [1]?
Or that Elon Musk makes more personal donations to Democratic politicians [2]?
I'm guessing not. I'm guessing you'll ignore this and see that he and his companies donated some money to Republicans (even though he gives more to Democrats) and that therefore means he's a diehard Republican who is driven to look out for the party.
Have a nice day!
[1] https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/totals?cycle=A&id=D00005751...
[2] https://www.opensecrets.org/donor-lookup/results?name=elon+m...
Elon Musk, who:
-Is CEO of an electric car company and produces solar panels to help mitigate climate change
-Donates mostly to Democrats personally and through his companies
-Did not donate to Donald Trump, and said "I feel a bit stronger that he is probably not the right guy. He doesn't seem to have the sort of character that reflects well on the United States."
-Was fined by the SEC when Trump & the Republican party were in power in 2018
-In June 2017, announced that he would be leaving Trump's business advisory council in protest of the president's pulling the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement. "Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world,"
-Has a net worth of nearly 300 billion dollars
-------------------------------------------------
Wants to buy Twitter for $43 billion, because:
-It'll curry favor from Trump and the Republican party
-And if elected, Trump/the Republican party will make it so the SEC is easier on him (even though they were in power when he did get fined before)
-In a hypothetical scenario where he would get fined, this preferential treatment could save him 0.01% of his net worth
You are right, I am very confused, and this has to be the end of the thread for me. I do like probing conspiratorial thinking, but I think we've reached a dead-end. I bid you adieu.
Given that this is your second attempt at quitting the thread with a pre-emptory sign off, I would like to apologize for agitating you so much with my idle speculation here, and I sincerely hope you're able to make this attempt stick.
In fact free speech is in direct contradiction to other rights, and these have to be balanced against each other for society to function.
Take the right to privacy, for example. My right to privacy necessarily entails restricting your right to disseminate information about me.
Or the rights to life and bodily autonomy - the prohibition on inciting violence is a restriction of free speech.
Have you looked at some crazy behaviours from Musk?
Like how he teased SEC. How he tried to falsely accuse British diver as a child rapist.
Not to mention, the price isn't that good. There were people who bought at 70 a few months ago.
Offering at 44 is kinda meh.
If musk offered 1000 per share, then the lawsuit may have had some weight.
Let's be specific, "pedo guy". And that was an insult in response to an equally profane insult from the other guy. Two wrongs don't make a right, but he apologized and people who have said equally bad or worse things also occupy high places...
Weeks later someone talked to musk about it, and he replied "Bet ya signed dollar it's true".
Elon also hired private investigator to dig dirt on the diver but found nothing.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/15/elon-musk-tweets-hell-bet-...
Musk also emailed BuzzFeed reporter suggesting that the diver was a child rapist. Source: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/elon-musk-cant-...
Some of my friends even said that musk was this confident, maybe musk knew something we didn't.
His excuse in court saying that "pedo guy" is just a common insult in Africa. Nobody in Africa uses this term.
The BuzzFeed email wasn't included in court because it wasn't public communication. Okay, dude, great justice system.
Please stop simping for musk. This person tried to destroy innocent lives with false pedophile accusation.
What it emphasises is the need for self-moderation especially when your state of mind is in fight mode. The mistake here is Elon's stream of consciousness doesn't stay off of twitter for his own determent. That is not an inherently malicious thing. People get into arguments all the time and say stupid regrettable things in the moment. Playing out on the internet--especially with a big power dynamic at play no doubt is bad. But let's not forget we're not robots here--hence we're not sending people to jail after arguments.
He sent email to BuzzFeed report trying to get them to write about the child rapist.
He hired PI to dig dirt on the diver.
This is not a response to an insult.
Musk intended to destroy the diver's life with a false child rapist accusation.
Nah, he didn't apologize. He said in court that insisting somebody is a pedo is a common playground insult in Africa.
> he didn't apologize > He said in court that insisting somebody is a pedo is a common playground insult in Africa.
Apologizing and making this clarification are not mutually exclusive things.
Except that Elon hired a PI to do that way before he got sued.
Also, if child rapist is a common insult (this is elon's main defense in court), why would he need to dig up dirt on the diver?
Because Elon wanted to figure out if the diver had some history related to sexual assault.
> Yes Elon is known for manic states, it's not a new detail.
Are you implying it is okay for Elon to make false child rapist accusation?
I have no idea how his general trait is relevant with this specific event.
> Apologizing and making this clarification are not mutually exclusive things.
Nobody said they were mutually exclusive.
I am saying that he didn't apologize.
> And a jury decided, unanimously after viewing the totality of the case
First of all because BuzzFeed email wasn't included in the case
Second the diver had to prove damage, which was hard to do.
This is like Donald trump never commits sexual assault because he is not convicted.
Stepping back, are you normally calling your friends and families child rapists as a fun insult? Are those normal insults to you?
> Are you implying it is okay for Elon to make false child rapist accusation?
People say much worse than "pedo guy" in arguments, although this is subjective. In a response to another insult, I'll mark "Sorry pedo guy..." as an informal childish remark, not a sober threat with the intent to harm someone.
> Nobody said they were mutually exclusive. > I am saying that he didn't apologize.
I don't understand what you're saying here. This means he can apologize for and also clarify the context behind the insult. So far, his last words on the topic in sworn statements are that he didn't mean the comments to be a statement of fact and apologized.
> Second the diver had to prove damage, which was hard to do.
They had to prove if a reasonable person would take the statement as a fact of matter. Whatever dirt he dug up with an investigator is something that happened after the fact, and private comments he made digging in are self-inflicted collateral damage, not preceding the comments in question.
> I have no idea how his general trait is relevant with this specific event.
The totality of the case also needs to mention the context that he was trying to help, on his own dime, children who were trapped underground. It doesn't make his comments right, but taking statements at face value lacks human context.
for example at market close of $45.08, the market is betting there is a $45.08/$54.20 = 83% chance that this transaction goes through.
there are certainly individual stockholders who are buying because they like his involvement, but that is tiny compared to people buying and selling a very near-term bet
This assumes the price without the transactions goes to $0.00!
> The social media company’s shares were little changed at $45.81 in New York on Thursday, a sign there’s skepticism that one of the platform’s most outspoken users will succeed in his takeover attempt. -- Bloomberg
So while the news of a major stakeholder with the power to join the board and affect how things are run did cause a significant blip in Twitter's stock price, the attempt to buy it outright doesn't seem to have affected things much. Even if we (incorrectly) assumed that all of the rise from ~$40 to ~$45 is associated with the possibility of Musk paying $54 a share, that suggests the market assigns only a ~36% chance of the deal going through.
Musk’s recent stock purchase and discussion about joining the board made the price jump significantly. You’re right that there’s no obvious reason that his involvement should change Twitter’s value, but the market appears to think otherwise. If he walks away, at a minimum, I would expect that the stock price will drop to what it was before he started playing around.
But if he walks away, I believe he’ll also do something to make the stock drop more. For instance, he’ll stop Tweeting, which should have a measurable impact on the number of people actually using Twitter regularly.
There are that many people whose engagement depends entirely upon whether Elon Musk is actively tweeting? I don't use Twitter much, but that seems pretty amazing if true.
2. The market observes a very capable businessman, after discussion with management, deems it incompetent and value-destructive.
3. Said businessman, with a track record of remarkable success in a variety of ventures and demonstrated skill with social media, may launch a competitor service.
All three of these are bad signals for Twitter's future cash flows.
He will start something to compete against Twitter.
Twitter will be stuck with their current management and cultural problems.
(By “nobody” I mean both nearly 0% of users and only people who will not be missed on Twitter)
Meanwhile any number of near-exact replicas of it exist with a different flavor: freer speech, paid service, decentralized, specifically for particular political affiliations to name a few. None of them have made a dent.
I don’t claim to know exactly what it takes to successfully achieve this but one or even several content / creator verticals won’t cut it IMO.
Twitter won’t be destroyed by someone making a slightly different Twitter clone, it’ll be destroyed by something that re-imagines entirely in a way that also supplants it, and it’ll probably come from someone we don’t know yet.
Pop culture places MySpace somewhere contemporary with the rotary phone, but there were undoubtedly people who heard of and used The Facebook first.
Gettr seems to be making positive inroads on the conservative/libertarian population, particularly those for whom twitter is not an option due to previous banning/shadow-banning, and de-boosting.
As I expect there to be consolidation between truth social, gettr, parler, and others, think this will only get stronger.
Part of this is also that younger populations are preferring tiktok to Twitter imo.
If the board acted against the usual shareholder interest (to make money) by turning down an offer 54% above premium, would it not be easy to claim that the board is not in it to make the average investor money on $TWTR?
Therefore, wouldn't the value of $TWTR as an investment be far far less than companies who do make it their primary goal?
That's not to even mention the 9% of Elon's stock that he claimed he would now sell.
In reality though, the shareholders are a giant mob of people with wildly varying views about Twitter’s place in society, its true value as an asset, its ability to achieve its true value, and just generally what the best way to “make the most money for the shareholders” is. So I don’t think it’s an open-and-shut case that the board betrayed the shareholders. It’s probably a muddy case that’ll play out in court over months or years.
Does management want to maximize the value of Twitter? Er, no. Management wants to maximize some combination of their compensation, their agency controlling a company, and their social capital controlling a social media platform. Maximization of shareholders' value is a legal objective to which management must pay legal lip service, but it is not in any way shape or form the interest of management, save insofar as management compensation is related to share price.
If management cared about shareholder value, it would not have induced the board to enact this poison bill nonsense.
Shareholders can appoint, remove or replace directors, or even the entire board.
But at the end of the day, if the board thinks that Twitter may be worth more long term than what Musk is proposing to buy it for, then it’s perfectly reasonable to argue that it’s in the shareholder’s interests not to sell it.
Maybe Twitter was always doomed because it was just fad. But the idea Musk alone can save it is absurd.