Besides, I don't think Twitter is what did Elon's reputation as a "savior" in. The current affair is more reaffirming than opinion shifting, for everyone I've talked to.
Yes, I understand that and we know that WSJ leans more conservative than New York Times. Murdoch's empire reflects his worldview.
I mean "stay out of it" as in micro-managing day-to-day newspaper stories or writing constant op-eds to respond to his critics. That's the type of distracting minutiae that Elon has sucked himself into with hyper-reactive Twitter bans and incoherent replies with juvenile statements.
"Special report: Rupert Murdoch, a hands-on newspaperman"
"To illustrate the extent to which Rupert Murdoch used to micro-manage his newspapers,..."
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-newscorp-murdoch-papers-i...
The article is past tense, but there's no reason for it to have changed.
The difference between Musk and Murdoch is that Murdoch lets other people do the talking, even if they are his words.
The 2011 article you linked emphasizes his activity with tabloid newspapers. I'm unfamiliar with those. From what I've read, he doesn't meddle with his "prestige" newspaper like WSJ. Maybe that's why the WSJ didn't censor itself on negative Theranos stories even though he invested $125 million in it and Elizabeth Holmes asked him to kill the articles.
Rupert Murdoch's influence is a very hot topic in Australia, with 2 former prime ministers from opposite sides teaming up to try to push a royal commission into his media monopoly, and in particular his influence on elections. Some of the commission is directed at the actions of his properties, but a lot of it is directed at his specific meddling as an individual. There have been many claims of directives and squashed stories coming straight from the top, whether that's from him or Lachlan Murdoch.
Rupert Murdoch on the other hand is quite possibly the biggest piece of shit in the entire world outsides of dictators, the tailban , etc.
You should read how he meddled in UK politics and played king maker
https://www.businessinsider.com/gordon-brown-rupert-murdoch-...
I can't wait until he dies
They meddled in USA politics to throw the presidential election.
I assume you’re very mad at Russia too?
Would you like to buy this bridge I have for sale?
NFI why you’re on about election fraud, you’ll have to show me where I made any claims about that.
Had xcrunner simply asked for proof the burden would be on Alvah to provide it, but because xcrunner made a claim he took the burden of proof on himself.
I was never discussing the leaks. I was discussing what Twitter took down (aka what was reported to them).
> I assume you’re very mad at Russia too?
But, but, whatabout the other guys!
No, because I don't have a reason to trust Putin or the Russians, and neither do US citizens. But they do have a reason, and a right, to trust their elected officials.
And no they don’t have a right for something illegal (revenge porn, unconcent) and the company certainly has their own right to censor how they want and choose who they listen to.
The Russian thing was about the actual facts about Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election and if you were crowing about that influence too.
The emails are probably the most politically relevant, and possibly damaging, as they contain possible evidence of corrupt dealing.
Earlier in this thread you made a claim that the leak was only dick pics, have you read a source which claimed that, or is it only that you haven't seen a source talk about anything else?
There're these, many of which are verified: https://bidenlaptopemails.com/
I don't know the entire contents but it is certainly more than just dick pics. I've heard someone discuss using the dates in those to corroborate other stories which means they aren't just salacious either.
Because Jack Dorsey said to congress that they blocked the NYPost story because of reports by the dems and the FBI. The NYPost's story didn't have porn thus they reported at least some non-porn links.
We've known the broad strokes of this for quite a while and it's just the emails and chat logs of the conspirators that we're seeing for the first time now.
I cannot think of a more fundamental violation of the US first amendment.
https://bidenlaptopemails.com/
We also know that the emails, or at least many of them, are valid. The signatures, made years before the leaks, check out.
https://blog.erratasec.com/2020/10/yes-we-can-validate-leake...
It contains possibly legal things that the voters might find to be a turn-off, such as the ne'er-do-well son selling access to his dad in his official position.
Considering Hunter appears to be speaking to leaders and oligarchs it feels that Joe needs to control him, and imho could easily do it through the courts by making Hunter's allowance conditional on not claiming a business relationship with his dad.
> It’s laughable you think any American cares after all the selling access the Trump admin did and the kids getting access without clearances.
Biden thought they would, or they wouldn't have tried to squash the story.
> Fuck off.
What's that, you say I'm right in every way?
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
This isn't a partisan viewpoint. I'm not in the USA or attached to either party.
The Murdoch dynasty (Keith, Rupert, Lachlan, ...) are master newspapermen. Why burn goodwill killing a story about money that is already lost when that goodwill could be spent on influencing even bigger things?
To be clear - I’m not trying to suggest one is better than the other. Just that they are a very interesting comparison.
The rest of Murdoch's business empire is nothing like it, compare WSJ.com to FoxNews.com at any given point and you'll see a drastic difference.
The WSJ had a right-wing political bias (beyond just a vague pro-business bias) under Dow Jones (in the news, not just the–even then–absurdly right-wing opinion pages), and it got stronger under Murdoch (I haven’t read it as much in recent years, but I did regularly around and for a while after the takeover.) It’s not strident in tone (outside of the opinion pages) the way that Fox News is, but its notable both in story selection and focus.
Thanks for the laugh.
I realize this is part of his narrative but I struggle to find the genius. As best i can tell he's a generally successful businessman.
But I think Musk is also a good example of the reason that I would probably not work for a company whose head is a sales guy. Salespeople are great at hype, but they often do it by living in a fantasy land, and someone insufficiently connected to reality is in charge, things can get wacky. I knew of one place where the CEO was absolutely great at closing deals, but he would do it by promising more new features than the company could build. The well-meaning tech people did their best, but rushing to meet the CEO's promises meant a worse and worse code base, with bug counts skyrocketing and feature velocity slowing.
At Tesla and SpaceX, he apparently had competent people in charge to buffer his impulses and direct him toward what he's good at. But here we see that fantasy dynamic play out as he absolutely flails around trying to run a business that he doesn't really understand after firing most of the people who did and terrifying the remainder. If anything, I think the Twitter saga demonstrates that on his own, he's actually bad at a bunch of core business skills.
A big falsifying hypothesis from this would be to predict that there are NOT any high-up PR staff of notable quality that have been around him for a long time.
If the PR people around him evince no particular talent for it and have been in constant flux for the duration of Musk's career such that he is the only constant, then yea, there'd probably be something to this.
Otherwise, if there is at least one person that was in his inner circle for a critical period of time that can also be said to have strong PR talent, then it's questionable ... sometimes success is having, on top of other things, the right team.
Elon had a lot of luck, no doubt, but his track record is simply impressive and for that, I think it's fair to say that he has extraordinary talent.
Sure, but it becomes hard to distinguish luck from talent. How would you know that an up and coming but talented PR person didn’t pick him? Or that was random?
It’s the major flaw with idolisation. Ends and means aren’t that tightly coupled. Against the utility of idolising someone, is the noise worth it? Ever?
That it coincided with a period of advertiser regression doesn't help.
I think we need to stop pretending that the only possible answer for seemingly misguided decisions is secret brilliance.
EV cars have existed for more than a century and been tried out by many companies. They all failed to mark a significant dent in the market because batteries technologies weren't as advanced as now, and because regulations weren't as strict as they are now.
Tesla was founded right when at a crossing point when California and European Union emissions regulations started to be more and more stringent and efficient batteries affordable enough. Being an EV-only company it was granted a very generous loan from the US government. This is a kick start no small automotive company ever got.
Not saying Musk hasn't any part in how the development, manufacturing and sale process was done. He certainly is one of the first to make people accept and even pay to be beta testers of an unfinished product/vehicle.
SpaceX was truly his and he found great people to lead the company judging by their results. Contrary to your statement though, space travel wasn't dead at all. During the early SpaceX era when they launched zero rockets there were still a number of successful missions from organizations around the globe as well as routine commercial satellite launches. The key thing SpaceX did was cheapen launch costs to the point where existing launch companies had to start competing. This is down to the engineering achievements at SpaceX.
Musk is a face for businesses but if I were an investor in those other two ventures I'd definitely be concerned that this focus on Twitter is distracting him from his actual important work at those other companies, and I'd probably be pissed about what he's done to the share price of Telsa.
"In 2002, Griffin was President and COO of In-Q-Tel, a private enterprise funded by the CIA to identify and invest in companies developing cutting-edge technologies that serve national security interests. During this time, he met entrepreneur Elon Musk and accompanied him on a trip to Russia where they attempted to purchase ICBMs. The unsuccessful trip is credited as directly leading to the formation of SpaceX.[11] Griffin was an early advocate for Musk calling him a potential “Henry Ford for the rocket industry".[12]"
You clearly have different sources from me (which are primarily Wikipedia).
My understanding was that Tesla did not have: - Ownership of the Tesla brand - Any real funding. During the Series A founding in 2004, Elon contributed $6.5M / $7.5 total. - An actual car. During the development of the Roadster, Elon was both Chairman and Architect/CTO. - Employees, beyond Eberhard and Tarpenning.
Before Elon, Tesla seems to have been only one of many early stage electric car startups with poor prospects for their future.
As for the developments around 2008, it becomes speculation who is telling the more true story between Musk and Eberhard. But as for what both have achieved elsewhere, it seems to me that Musk is also more effective as CEO.
Maybe you have sources that can contradict the above.
- Ownership of the Tesla brand
Tesla was founded (as Tesla Motors) on July 1, 2003, by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in San Carlos, California.
- Employees, beyond Eberhard and Tarpenning.
Ian Wright was the third employee, joining a few months later.[2] The three went looking for venture capital (VC) funding in January 2004[2] and connected with Elon Musk, who contributed US$6.5 million of the initial (Series A) US$7.5 million[10] round of investment in February 2004 and became chairman of the board of directors.[2] Musk then appointed Eberhard as the CEO.
- Any real funding. During the Series A founding in 2004, Elon contributed $6.5M / $7.5 total.
- An actual car. During the development of the Roadster, Elon was both Chairman and Architect/CTO.
Similarly, "before they had funding, they didn't have any vehicles to show for it." A car is not software, to actually build a functioning vehicle takes quite a bit of time. It took Tesla two full years after his investment to demonstrate a prototype Roadster. Musk had left the CEO position when the first Roadsters started shipping.
From reading the original founders' thoughts about where they initially wanted to go, it seems that the company was going to be focused on automotive technology, with their cars being largely showcases for their technology, essentially the way Unreal engine used to be sold and the way the Doom games have been showcases for id's engines. They were not really setting out to be a mass-market automaker, is the gist I get from their various interviews. It's very possible that this was because they believed they couldn't disrupt the automotive market, feeling it was too entrenched, and Musk had the money to put that goal within reach.
He definitely reset Tesla's aim and the company demonstrated there was money to be made making EVs. He had a big part in it but a lot of the engineering work was courtesy of Lotus' engineering teams[2]. His main contribution appears to have been forcing the team to pursue carbon fiber and pushing them to make custom headlamps that met DOT standards, in spite of costs associated with both. Despite how Wikipedia words it, if you look at the source - [2] below - it makes the following mention about the headlights, for example:
Again, Elon pushed us to spend the considerable money necessary to develop custom (and DOT-compliant) headlights to make the front look great.
Eberhard acknowledged that Musk was the person who insisted from the beginning on a carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer body and that Musk led design of components ranging from the power electronics module to the headlamps and other styling
As to this point:
As for the developments around 2008, it becomes speculation who is telling the more true story between Musk and Eberhard. But as for what both have achieved elsewhere, it seems to me that Musk is also more effective as CEO.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tesla,_Inc.#The_beg...
The name was taken:
https://fortune.com/2018/12/09/tesla-name-faraday-elon-musk/
> I don't understand this argument. It basically says "before they sought funding they didn't have any funding"
It was in reference to this:
>> The ball was already rolling on Tesla before Elon came along though.
In what way do you think "the ball was rolling" before Elon came along?
> They were not really setting out to be a mass-market automaker, is the gist I get from their various interviews. It's very possible that this was because they believed they couldn't disrupt the automotive market, feeling it was too entrenched, and Musk had the money to put that goal within reach.
In other words, Tesla as we know it today, is due to Elon.
> From all the sources, it appears that he was a guiding influence on style and basic statements about features and materials, rather than actually sitting down and designing individual components.
Well, I suppose he was clearly in charge of it, Kind of like Steve Jobs for the iPhone. Unlike Steve, though, Elon has a technical (physics) education and a background as a developer, so he had the ability to drill into more details than Steve.
> Billionaires make effective CEOs is the argument here?
Effective CEO's tend to become Billionaires, especially if they're owners/founders. Musk has done so twice, at the same time, in Tesla and SpaceX, while also playing a key role in the creation of several other companies.
And this empire was built from essentially nothing (a few thousand dollars from his father at some point). It's not like Musk was born a billionaire.
Eberhard has far less to show for.
You are undoubtedly right that Murdoch's political influence is everywhere in Fox News and his other, very profitable, properties.
But have you ever heard a single juicy sound bite by Murdoch about Hillary Clinton, or Obama, or "wokeness?"
I just checked: turns out he's made a handful of comments, all of which basically qualify as obscure. He stays out of the way, despite running what is maybe the most politically impactful business of our times.
Compare to Musk, who, just a week or two ago, tweeted "My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci."
Murdoch is of course well known for using his media empire to promote his own political interests. His British tabloids were ridiculously strongly pro-Brexit because Murdoch was a respected guest at Downingstreet, but didn't have any meaningful influence in Brussels.
https://www.theguardian.com/global/2021/jun/24/rupert-murdoc...
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/feb/10/ban-on-rupert-...
During the Brexit referendum campaign, one came out pro-Remain (The Times), and one pro-Leave (The Sun). Which one did Rupert want to win?
In truth his media has perfected the echo chamber: they echo back to the audience what they already believe.
It’s for this reason a middle class paper and working class paper can be so divided and why his US operational flagship (Fox News) can be vehemently politically opposed to his UK operational flagship (The Times).
He’s not schizophrenic - he knows to play his hand very, very lightly and the rest of it is all based on audience research these days.
Musk knows in his heart of hearts that he is the most interesting and newsworthy person on the planet, so it makes sense the front page articles are about him.
The problem is right now he’s driving so much bad publicity. He’s engaged in one of the worst LBOs in modern history. He’s had a shambolic takeover (even in the realm of fire sales where firing everyone is the plan), he’s set his credibility on fire with his customers, he’s shown himself as terminally thin skinned, and he’s made a mockery of his supposed principles.
If he went back to pushing the state of normal on electric cars and space flight that would be covered, but he doesn’t seem capable of it currently.
If someone on HN pooped on Elon's desk, I'd find that compelling to look into. It wouldn't be interesting in a positive way though. That's what the parent comment was implying.
The real comparison is that the owners are billionaires and giants in their “industries” in some fashion.
Elon forgot capitalist step zero: Choose profit before ego.
That he is a bad capitalist will become apparent at a long enough temporal scale..
Are you kidding? He loves the attention, and we are only talking about Twitter because Elon bought it rather than some boring guy.
I still don't see the impending death of Twitter. Where is the evidence that it is going down the tubes? PG will be back, because everything bad about Twitter is even worse on Mastodon -- instead of one narcissistic Napoleon running things like Twitter, Mastodon has hundreds of them, and they are even less accountable than Elon.
If you want to kill Twitter, stopping giving it free publicity would be a good start. But you can't help yourselves, so it survives and thrives on your outrage.
Whether or not that works out is not something I can predict, but having more user engagement than ever before is not a bad thing for a platform that makes literally every penny from exploiting user engagement in some way.
I would say that 95% of my professional circle was on Twitter 3 months ago. Today, it feels like less than 50%. Of that same circle, I only know one who paid $8 for Twitter Blue, and he canceled this month.
Outrage-driven engagement is definitely happening. But it needs to happen on Twitter, and in a way that doesn't threaten Twitter's ad sales, for it to be of any value to Twitter.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/22/technology/elon-musk-twit...
But nowhere does it mention cutting servers.
Twitter has their own datacenters, so this is likely to be peripheral. But we do know they've fired the majority of the staff actually operating those datacenters.
*Speculation on my part* I think that's why Elon did the poll about stepping down. He probably went to Qatar for the World Cup final not just as a spectator but also looking to sell more shares. His poll was a result of the Saudis not being interested. He'll back away and let Twitter go into bankruptcy under someone else.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/13/reddit-ce...
At the time, yishan drew a ton of criticism, but now what has happened at Twitter dwarfs that story.
Recall that yishan was also from the Paypal mafia and had early experience at facebook. Yet was unable to make things work. Important for any of the current would-be Twitter investors to ponder.
Frankly, at least this crazy guy running Twitter is openly doing it
I'm speculating a bit, and I'm not supporting his actions, I'm trying to explain then. I think he already had disagreement with his son that came out as trans later, and I think the major reason he changed his political position is because of his child. The child also cut all ties with him.
He said "The woke mind virus must be destroyed, nothing else matters".
It's not Elon the entrepreneur, or Elon the management genius, or even Elon the troll on social media.
What's really driving him is Elon the father that views leftism and woke as a mind virus that had possessed his child.
When you reach that position as a father, there's no loyalty to old political parties, there's no choosing words carefully or looking at Twitter as a regular business.
This is a person who could not care much about ideology until ideology reached his house and destroyed it - and only at that point he actually started fighting the fight.
He treats Twitter and leftists as the enemies because in his mind they are enemies, enemies that managed to destroy his child. It might seem inconceivable that someone might change his position so radically, and surprise everyone, but that's because they don't understand the real motivation.
Anyway, I'm not supporting his actions, this is meant to empathize with him so I'll understand what's going on and where all this is coming from, and therefore, where is it going.
I think this is made all the more powerful by being imaginary: if there really was some organized group he'd at least have some way of knowing who’s in it or what they do. Since it’s basically a conspiracy theory driven by not wanting to consider what he could have done differently, there’s nothing falsifiable, he can find signs of it almost anywhere, and anyone who tries to talk him out of it is suddenly a traitor. Since his son was trans, there’s an entire preexisting opposition group all ready to provide reassurance any time his faith wavers, too.
Anyway I’m not inclined to believe this given that he’s cozied up to people who are openly hostile to trans people (calling them groomers etc) rather than “Trans people deserve our love and support but actually are just confused we can fix them!”
I don't think this is his motivation, because if it was, this isn't how he'd go about doing it. I mean, maybe it is - but if so, he's doing a lousy job affecting any kind of change in his child. I suppose that's on brand for him.
Personally I think he doesn't give a fuck about anything because $$ and just does whatever comes to mind (cf. his twitter poll about stepping down).
It takes a certain kind of social intellect to understand which actions will actually psychologically affect someone for the better.
Does he consciously tie his actions directly to this? Or is it indirectly, by getting very negative emotions and associations to leftism, which are then turned into this culture war?
wat? no.
It was a satire on USA Today naming a man as one of their Women Of The Year. One would have hoped that Twitter moderators would recognize satirical content when they see it, but unfortunately they did not.
I think you're probably right about Musk's motivations though. Not only did his son get transed, but his wife left him for a trans-identifying male too. And the US is in the middle of a trans mania where people are just identifying as such because it's popular. Non-binary too, which really underlines how sexist trans ideology is.
Maybe, but I find it more likely that his child cut ties with him because he was always fucking awful.
I wish one could take a step back and just see how ridiculous of a statement this is. There is nothing about Musk’s history and management style that is even remotely close to what could be called “scientific first principles type of thinking”. Musk’s management style is a bull in a china closet, he manages via personal vendettas, and he follows the marketing and hype first, delivery second product development cycle. See full self-driving, Cybertruck, Tesla robot, Tesla tunnel, and whatever else he’s promised over the years but never delivered on.
Edit: striking out comment about the Cybertruck’s airflow until I can find the article I read to back it up.
Agreed. But the interesting question for me is: what are people seeing that they would mistake for that?
Trump, Musk, Thatcher. All they have to do is tell them what they want to hear and throngs of unwashed masses, filled with their insecurities and fear, will worship at their feet.
"All you have to do is support me and I'll make everything allright" - any of the above
“The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity”
Normal people are often full of doubt, their comments are often guarded by caveats etc. Dictators, populists, narcissists, confidence tricksters speak in absolutes. Their messages are very appealing because they seem so clear and straightforward. They can seem brilliant because of this certainty and sometimes can achieve a lot because they aren’t held back by the kinds of reservations and scruples that most people suffer from.
[1] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-comi...
Fascist dictators are often "the weak person's idea how a strong person would look like". That means they are not strong in the sense that they have discipline, can carry a lot for other people, can defend their values etc. They are strong because they act strong.
Similar to that Musk is the mediocre person's idea of what a really smart person would look like. He managed to convince quite some people — even very intelligent ones — that he is an actual genius.
They wanted it to be true, so they ignored all the red flags. Replacing a train in a tunnel with a tunnel full of Teslas? Surely might look like the future, unless you have just a slight understanding of engineering, physics and safety rules. A scientific first principle would quickly let you optimise this: a fixed route? Rails are more efficient than rubber wheels, so put the Teslas on rails. Moving the batteries around is inefficient and a fire hazard, so let's move them out of the cars and replace them with the elctrical grid. The cars are bad at taking many passengers, replace them by fewer, bigger cars.
If you apply the "scientific" method you would not end up with the stuff Elon does like.
You know what Elon Musk is? It is flying cars. Everybody who didn't think them through at least for a minute thinks they are the future. Why? Because they look like they are the future. I loved these illustrations as a kid and I bet Elon did too. The problem is just that they make no sense in the real world.
Elon Musk has an exceptional sensitivity in identifying products and solutionz that look like the future. He has a very bad sense of going for actual good, efficient, workable solutions that make sense. Of anything really good comes up, it almost always seems to be despite him, not because of him.
The touch screens in the Teslas are another example. Looks like the future, while being less usable than what we had in the 90s. All the good ("boring") EV stuff in Tesla comes from actual good engineers who, you guessed it, apply the scientific method.
Sorry, did you just pull this out of your ass?
https://insideevs.com/news/600765/tesla-cybertruck-aerodynam...
My understanding is that the design is a mix of aesthetics and to keep production costs down.
I was going in your direction by saying that Paul Graham and Elon Musk have very different personas; to the point that Graham got banned because he wasn't happy with Elon's choices.
Why not just develop the thing instead of playing this “oh, we didn’t fail, we were just doing this other thing all along” game.
Remember that one of the very first Tesla investors, Mike Griffin, since way before a rocket engine had even fired, later became Trump's Undersecretary of R&D, and had previously been a high-ranking scientist of the Star Wars satellite missile defense program (and head of NASA).
> Seems to be barely viable financially
They're betting big on reusable rockets, and so far it seems to be paying off. If they succeed in getting a fully reusable rocket flying several times a week, as they claim they can, the no other launch provider will be able to compete.
That didn't pan out too well either.
https://i.redd.it/manager-does-a-little-code-cleanup-v0-5cxg...
I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here? People should vote with their wallets/service usage but never ever discuss why? Public figures should be able to do whatever they want with no criticism?
When was Twitter censoring “right wing opinion”. Do you mean bigotry?
Franklin Veaux (a famous writer on Quora), for example.
> Leftists don’t believe in private for profit corporations. It’d be weird for them to care about capital ownership all of a sudden.
That's what I find the most perplexing about it.
> When was Twitter censoring “right wing opinion”.
Specifically, it was applying different rules to different groups. For example, hateful posts about white people were allowed, whereas hateful posts about black people were not.
Example of a hateful post of a white person? I highly doubt this is true. Do you believe calling a white person cracker is hate? Funnily enough, leftist and actually famous (in streaming + political circles) Hasan Piker, a white guy, got de-platformed temporarily because right wingers hate watched him and reported him for using cracker. Cracker comes from the whips cracking...because white people in America OWNED other human beings and still benefit from the systemic racism that is integrated into society.
> Franklin Veaux
I don't think Franklin Veaux is that big of a leftist. If at all. I spent a few min looking him up. I found a post talking about left and right politics. It is filled with inaccuracies and appears to be written by some one who consumes the most basic of news and politics. Here: https://blog.franklinveaux.com/2022/06/7985/
He equates liberals and the left. He doesn't seem to understand what liberal means. This is politics 101. He says "Liberals don’t accept this. Liberals are biased toward egalitarianism; the same rules apply to everybody." This isn't true. By definition liberals believe in capitalism. Capitalism by definition is not "the same rules apply to everybody". The blog post seems more like anti-leftist propaganda. Making liberals seem like they are on the left is so wrong.
Unless you have some evidence that not only shows he's a leftist (a socialist), but can answer why he made such a bad blog post and still keeps it up, he's probably a full blown liberal.
Here are some examples I've collected: https://freeimage.host/a/pre-musk-twitter-racism.f55mv
Franklin is left-wing in the modern sense, which is more about social politics than distribution of money. I didn't mean to imply that he was a socialist. Sorry for the confusion.
(A) You incorrectly insulted leftists. (B) You used Franklin, a huge liberal (like yourself), to make your point. Franklin knows jack shit about politics. (C) You incorrectly stated leftist in the modern sense means liberal. I’m American. I know there’s a world outside the right-wing brain rotted USA. (D) You incorrectly stated modern leftism is more about social politics. The control of the means of production and thus surplus value going to capitalists vs workers is Capitalism 101. A capitalist provoking the left should know what capitalism and thus leftism is about.
The analogue of the GOP are the Torys in the UK and the Liberal Party in AU. They are huge liberals. Reagan and the Tory leader of the 80s, Thatcher, ushered in neoliberalism.
You should educate yourself before incorrectly insulting leftist ideology. You sound like a Ben Shapiro or Bill Maher NPC. I shouldn’t have to teach you basic politics.
The left of the political spectrum in the USA is mostly to the right of actual communism.
Last time I checked this is a discussion forum where many people gather together to express thoughts and opinions about various topics that they may not have "leverage" to argue about.
The problem with this is that Twitter didn't have any technical problems that it needed Musk to solve. "Bots" were not a major problem for day-to-day usage. What it needed was a product vision to reach sustainable profitability. Not a huge amount of additional debt, massive internal disruption, and a catastrophic reputational collapse.
i mean, i guess, if you don't consider having a job- and or career-ending gun pointed at your head to be at all influential or coercive.
https://chomsky.info/consent01/#:~:text=SIZE%2C%20OWNERSHIP%...
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
We can reasonably take the comment along the lines of "even Murdoch didn't step in in this potentially harmful scenario." It doesn't necessarily hold him up as a paragon of impartiality overall.
I don't think what you describe is actually possible. Compare Glenn Greenwald's writing about his work at an organization funded by Pierre Omidyar ( https://greenwald.substack.com/p/pierre-omidyars-financing-o... ):
> Any time I speak or write about Omidyar, the proverbial elephant in the room is my own extensive involvement with him: specifically, the fact that the journalistic outlet I co-founded in 2013, and at which I worked for eight years, was funded almost entirely by him. For purposes of basic journalistic disclosure, but also to explain how my interaction with him informs my perspective on these issues, I will describe that experience and what I learned from it.
> When I left the Guardian in 2013 at the height of the Snowden/NSA reporting to co-found a new media outlet along with two other journalists, it was Omidyar who funded the project, which ultimately became The Intercept, along with its parent corporation, First Look Media. Our unconditional demand when deciding to accept funding from Omidyar was that he vow never to have any role whatsoever or attempt to interfere in any way in the editorial content of our reporting, no matter how much he disagreed with it or how distasteful he found it. He not only agreed to this condition but emphasized that he, too, believed the integrity of the new journalism project depended upon our enjoying full editorial freedom and independence from his influence.
> In the eight years I spent at The Intercept, Omidyar completely kept his word. There was never a single occasion, at least to my knowledge, when he attempted to interfere in or override our journalistic independence.
> For the first couple of years, adhering to that promise was easy: [...] our journalism and Omidyar's worldview were fully aligned
> The arrival of Donald Trump on the political scene in 2015 changed all of that, and did so quite dramatically.
> the Trump-centric worldview that I spent most of my time attacking and mocking on every platform I had — in speeches, interviews, podcasts, social media and in countless articles at The Intercept — was the exact political worldview to which Omidyar had completely devoted himself and was passionately and vocally advocating.
> The radical divergence between my worldview and Omidyar's did not end there.
> This extreme divergence between my public profile and Omidyar's core views expanded for years. Often Omidyar would promote and herald a view on Twitter in the morning, and I would then publish an article on The Intercept attacking that same view in the afternoon, and then go on television that night to attack it some more.
> It was an irresistible story to journalists: at the time, I was the most prominent and the highest-paid journalist associated with The Intercept, which relied almost entirely on Omidyar's annual multi-million dollar largesse, and yet my primary political and journalistic focus at The Intercept was tantamount to a war on Omidyar's most cherished political beliefs and core objectives.
> On at least two occasions, journalists with major outlets contacted each of us to let us know they wanted to write about this glaring split. Yet neither ended up doing so for a simple reason: Omidyar made it emphatically clear that I had the absolute right to express whatever views I wanted, and that my doing so would never create a problem with him, let alone cause him to rethink his funding of The Intercept.
> Omidyar told me privately on both occasions that he knew when he decided to fund The Intercept that the day would come, likely soon, when not just me but other journalists there would be publishing articles with which he vehemently disagreed or even undermined his other interests. When he decided to fund The Intercept, he told me, he was supporting independent journalism, not promoting a particular ideology or political agenda. And indeed, no matter how much my attacks escalated on his core beliefs and the other groups he was heavily funding — and escalate they did! — I never received any remote signal that my outspoken journalism and commentary were imperiling his ongoing funding of The Intercept.
> I recount all of that for two reasons. First, I want to make clear that my analysis of Omidyar's role in this scam Facebook "whistleblower” campaign and the dangers it presents is in no way motivated by personal animus toward him.
> But the second point is the more important one. When it comes to billionaire funders of political and journalistic projects, Omidyar — despite the long list of political views and activities of his that I regard as misguided or even toxic — is, for the reasons I just outlined, as good as it gets. And yet despite all that, it is simply unavoidable — inevitable — that the ideology, views and political agenda of a billionaire funder will end up contaminating and dominating any project for which they are the exclusive or primary funder. Omidyar is not some apolitical or neutral guardian of good internet governance; he is a highly politicized and ideological actor with very strong views on society's most debated questions.
> To understand the dangers of a small group of billionaires funding campaigns like this [...] put yourself in the place of senior editors of The Intercept. Despite Omidayr's genuine affirmation of editorial independence, they live in complete captivity to, and fear of, Omidyar's whims and preferences.
> As is true of so many billionaire-funded NGOs and “non-profits,” editors and senior writers at The Intercept receive gigantic, well-above-the-market salaries. Because the site depends almost entirely on Omidyar's infinite wealth, it does not sell any subscriptions or ads and it therefore does not have any pressure to produce at all in order to generate revenue. It is a dream job for most of them: enormous salaries, endless expense accounts, a complete lack of job requirements, and no need even to attract an audience. For years, outside of three or four journalists, articles published by The Intercept produce almost no traffic.
> It does not get better than that, and that is why almost nobody ever quits The Intercept. Why would they? They just stay for years and years, collecting a huge salary, with no need to do anything but avoid angering one man. They work in an industry where jobs disappear with astonishing frequency, where layoffs are the norm, where the very existence of most organizations is precarious, and where the slightest dissent from liberal orthodoxies can render someone permanently unemployable. Those who work in outlets funded by billionaires have essentially won a type of lottery, at least temporarily, and very few people are willing to risk losing a winning lottery ticket, especially if they know they have no alternatives
> That means that the entire news organization has a constituency of one: Pierre Omidyar. If you were an Intercept editor who knows you could never get anywhere near that high salary working anywhere else — and that is true for virtually the entire senior editorial staff at The Intercept other than its Washington Bureau Chief Ryan Grim — you will of course be desperate to keep the sinecure going. That is not really corrupt as much as it is just basic self-preservation. If remaining in Omidyar's good graces is the only way to pay your large mortgage and maintain your lifestyle — which is true for most of them — then that will be all you ever think or care about.
> Consider the power that bestows on Omidyar in the lives of those dependent on him.
> They wake up knowing every day that one man has the power, on a whim, to destroy their livelihood. That desperate dynamic produces a climate where catering one's worldview and work product to Omidyar's ideological preferences becomes the overarching imperative. The only thing that matters to them in their work is keeping their sole benefactor happy and avoiding his wrath.
> I want to avoid the caricature here. This need to please Omidyar is often more subliminal than conscious. There are numerous journalists who work at The Intercept who do great work and rarely think about Omidyar in any conscious or direct way.
> But the inescapable reality is that the senior editorial management absolutely knows that their only real job is to foster a climate that will keep Omidyar happy, which means only hiring or publishing voices that will not offend him, ensuring that The Intercept's political and journalistic posture is aligned with his ideological worldview and, most of all, prohibiting anyone or any journalism from remaining at The Intercept if it strays too far from Omidyar's political project.
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When the owner is ideologically committed above all else to not interfering with what his organization publishes, when he makes repeated public statements to that effect and demonstrates his sincerity over and over and over again, the result is that the organization adheres slavishly to every quirk of the owner's beliefs, and devotes all its effort to bringing itself into line and expelling anyone who might think differently.
Jeff Bezos is part of every decision about what gets run on the front page of the Washington Post, whether he'd like that to be true or not.
If he sees himself as more principled than they are, I would argue that the sequence of events he describes is sufficient justification for that view. It might not be, in a deep sense, true -- you could easily interpret him as being less afraid of losing a well-paid sinecure than the rest of the editorial board, as opposed to being more strongly attached to his own principles -- but it is true on the surface and it's an accusation he can fairly lodge. They caved; he didn't.
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/my-resignation-from-the-int...
> the intended core innovation of The Intercept, above all else, was to create a new media outlets where all talented, responsible journalists would enjoy the same right of editorial freedom I had always insisted upon for myself.
> The current iteration of The Intercept is completely unrecognizable when compared to that original vision. Rather than offering a venue for airing dissent, marginalized voices and unheard perspectives, it is rapidly becoming just another media outlet with mandated ideological and partisan loyalties
> the brute censorship this week of my article — about the Hunter Biden materials and Joe Biden’s conduct regarding Ukraine and China, as well my critique of the media’s rank-closing attempt, in a deeply unholy union with Silicon Valley and the “intelligence community,” to suppress its revelations — eroded the last justification I could cling to for staying. It meant that not only does this media outlet not provide the editorial freedom to other journalists, as I had so hopefully envisioned seven years ago, but now no longer even provides it to me. In the days heading into a presidential election, I am somehow silenced from expressing any views that random editors in New York find disagreeable, and now somehow have to conform my writing and reporting to cater to their partisan desires and eagerness to elect specific candidates.
> To say that such censorship is a red line for me, a situation I would never accept no matter the cost, is an understatement. It is astonishing to me, but also a reflection of our current discourse and illiberal media environment, that I have been silenced about Joe Biden by my own media outlet.
The Atlantic is now visibly more biased towards the "left."
The original Atlantic was pretty much neutral.
https://nypost.com/2022/04/29/elon-musk-says-woke-progressiv...
Before we descend into both-sideism, though, it's worth to get a bit more perspective: the left-wing version of the comic looks at the growing divide over a period of decades; just after WW2, social democracy was strong in the US. Support for unions was strong, workers' rights, social security, all sorts of social democratic programs were broadly supported. Only with Reagan, did the Republicans suddenly start moving to the right: lower taxes, end social programs, deregulation, privatisation. And in the 1990s, the Democrats followed them on that part; both the regulation of the banks that enabled the 2008 crash and the crime bill that gave the US the largest prison population in the world, happened on Clinton's watch.
So the left-wing version of the comic is absolutely correct, and people have started to push back, which may have inspired the right-wing version of the comic.
Except I've got the feeling that the right-wing version is about something completely different: the pronouns issue. And frankly, that's barely a left-right issue. It's got nothing to do with economic inequality. It's entirely possible to support economic equality yet oppose accepting transgender people as their target gender (see JK Rowling, for example), or to oppose economic equality yet support accepting transgender people (classic/economic/neo-liberalism, many corporations).
Politics is simply not the one-dimensional field that these comics suggest it is.
Who has not been saved? Child sexual abuse material has been drastically reduced including cases that lingered for years, fake fact checks are gone, suppression of news stories is gone.
> and let some more level-headed less-emotional people manage the editorial aspects
He removed the editorial aspect, that's the point. It had failed.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2022/a...
These are outdated legacy systems that don't have the impact they once did. So there is not much point to comparing how they operate with Twitter.
One thing interesting that's happening with Elon's polls is ppl will notice who runs polls about their own decisions. And that's a good thing.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk blasts Rep. Adam Schiff in deleted tweet: 'Your brain is too small'[1]
1. https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/twitter-ceo-elon-musk-b...
EDIT: Another example of scientific first principles
https://twitter.com/badlin/status/1604689299701911552/photo/...
Many would happily dance on his grave, and raise a toast to his departure from this realm.
To say that he has a hands off approach to his editorial board, because of his handling of Theranos, is an unkindness to the harm he has caused to the fabric of decent society.
If any lesson is to be learned from Murdoch’s, it would be on silencing detractors, and holding the levers of political power.
That's the worst kind of pedantic whataboutism.
The first world had the resources to fight issues of speech/civil liberties and courts which were not utterly corrupt.
The impact of Murdoch’s success in the hardest environment available, has been the long ringing death knell of many ideas we hold as intrinsic to civilized society.
The fact that Rupert Murdoch’s model worked, has not been lost on hundreds of tyrants around the world.
Murdoch staying out of content would be like Musk staying out of tech.
Stating unilaterally that Bezos & Murdoch exert no influence over the content of their publications can't be grounded in any fact because any potential influence they might exert would never be public knowledge. It's falsifiable (as many commenters have done with Murdoch) but it's not provable. There's a lot of circumstantial evidence Bezos does too: it will probably remain circumstantial since he is in a position to keep it that way.
Twitter content being crowdsourced means that Musk as owner has far less direct influence. All he can really do is censor, which is exactly what we've seen play out.
Whether they have been pressured by Bezos or in some way, is uncertain, but it certainly leaves the benefit of the doubt.
That's even the actual title ("Kingmaker, The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty") of a BBC documentary about him: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000kxvz
- Jeff Bezos personally bought Washington Post but he left it alone and let the editors run it. What Jeff did do was invest some money into the IT department to modernize the workflow tools (metrics dashboards, etc) for journalists. He stayed out of the decisions of what stories get run on the front page.
- Rupert Murdoch owns Wall Street Journal but when Elizabeth Holmes asked him to squash negative stories about Theranos, he refused and stayed out of it. He let his editors run the stories even though it embarrassed him because he was a big investor.
Both those guys are more detached from those media outlets and don't meddle in it day to day.
What tech people like Paul Graham and others were hoping was for Elon to apply his scientific first principles type of thinking that he demonstrated previously at SpaceX+Tesla to Twitter. E.g. Tesla A.I. competency to clean up the bots and make the platform better.
Instead, Elon let the Twitter monster abuse his ego and his reputation as a savior is ruined.
Best thing Elon should have done was to focus only on the technical aspects of Twitter and let some more level-headed less-emotional people manage the editorial aspects.
Hopefully, Elon notices that we don't have endless HN and reddit front page articles about Rupert Murdoch's jet.