Right?

> Twitter's communications shop now simply responds to reporters' emails with poop emojis.

Like, does Musk realize the market of trolls, clowns, and morons who enjoy his adolescent antics is... not worth $44 B?

He certainly figured it out, which is why he worked so hard to back out of the deal.

Though he never really expected it to earn its price back. As a large-fraction-of-a-trillion-aire, he may well have found that having trolls, clowns, and morons to enjoy his adolescent antics is worth $44B in pure enjoyment. He was buying a chance to put a significant thumb on the finger of world culture.

Musk has so much money that he doesn't really care if there's a net positive return to his purchases. He spends money to enjoy it. Which I actually find bizarrely refreshing, compared to the ones who want to use it for the purpose of acquiring more money, plus the occasional conspicuous consumption that seems more like a performance than actual enjoyment (e.g. megayachts).

Too bad he's such an asshole, though.

> he may well have found that having trolls, clowns, and morons to enjoy his adolescent antics is worth $44B in pure enjoyment

This is the most disappointing part. I have a hard time imagining that any of these billionaires are "good people" in a way that I would recognize. But before this Twitter thing I felt like at least I can respect the things Musk chooses to spend his time and money on. How much would that $44B have moved the needle on on his Mars dream? Seems like a waste to me.

> How much would that $44B have moved the needle on on his Mars dream

It would make 0 difference, SpaceX is already moving as fast as possible, throwing money at them would not make things go faster. In the future when actual ships start flying to Mars Elon will still have plenty to fund that personally if he needed to.

In other news, the first flight test of the largest rocket ever built is scheduled for Monday the 17th

Forget about Mars, what about spending that $44B to lobby the government to end poverty for children in the US, feels like a noble cause. Senators and Congressmen/women are bribed, excuse me, lobbied, for peanuts (< millions).

For $44B, he could have just given every child $2,000. Not enough to end poverty, but surely enough to keep them fed for a year.

I realize that this isn't practical; the causes of poverty are complex and just giving people money won't solve all of it. But it does give some notion of the scope of what could have been accomplished directly.

It's not worth it to you, of course.

But if you already have $100 billion dollars; and all you wanted in the world was adoration and accolades from adoring masses; and you didn't care those masses are trolls, clowns, and morons; then maybe $44 billion is the right price.

How is this bad? NPR receives money from the US government - why is it bad to let people know?

Because the "government funded media" was a last minute save, the original "state affiliated media" is a false claim. Surely you grasp the difference between the two labels? The latter has corporate and editorial control in case you were unaware.

Anyone providing money to a media org has some amount of editorial control. The newer version is more specific but it doesn’t mean state affiliated is inaccurate.

It does mean it's inaccurate because state affiliated is already a specific term to describe editorial control. I don't know how else to put it to you, maybe an example.

You can publish a podcast or article or whatever on NPR right now about how much you hate the current administration and want them replaced. You cannot do that with state affiliated media, if CGTN tomorrow did the same, the state has the direct ability to take action against that by firing people, changing management, altering funding, etc. That's if they even get past initial filters!

To argue that "state affiliation" is meaningless by handwaving it as "anyone providing money to a media org has some amount of editorial control" is bad faith.

Aren’t you assuming bad faith by claiming that Twitter is somehow conspiring against NPR by labelling the state sponsored media as being state sponsored?

Because "state-affiliated" specifically means the state has editorial control - which is certainly not the case here - not merely that they provide some funding.

Please act in good faith. You know why Twitter did what it did, and you know why it was wrong. We know you know that. NPR is not state affiliated, or even government funded. Fox news airs ads from the US Military - is it state affiliated?

Your logical fallacy is incredulity. What Twitter did was absolutely ethical, and since it applies to all government funded media, it is not political in nature. Yes anyone accepting government ad money should be labelled as well.

I'm not sure what ethical means in this context, or what it has to do with them being wrong. What responsibility does Twitter have to anyone? They are a privately held corporation. Where they were 'wrong' is in not being consistent in their labeling, and the subtext surrounding that - of which we are all aware but some of us (like you) are unwilling to acknowledge in order to advance an argument or to just Troll. But go on...

I think you don’t understand the difference between wrong and incorrect.

It isn't. What's bad is that by singling NPR out for receiving less than 1% of their revenue from the government implies that's something unusual. It isn't. Almost every business receives money from the government.

>... why is it bad to let people know?

It's not, as long as you're not doing it to specifically target one company or be a dick about it. Is he going to label his own companies with the same thing?

>According to a Los Angeles Times investigation, Musk's companies had received an estimated $4.9 billion in government support by 2015, and they've gotten more since.[1]

[1]https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-list-government-su...

Musk doesn’t own a media company.

Tesla, a government-funded company, has the ability to remotely disable your car. Surely they'd be happy to do this at the government's request, no? Locking your car mid-drive and rerouting you using FSD because you said something the government didn't like?

SpaceX, a government-funded company, has the ability to put all kinds of invasive, espionage-focused payloads into space.

The point is, if we're going to insinuate that NPR is doing the bidding of the US government simply because a portion (however large or small) of the money they receive comes from the government, then we can insinuate the same kind of sentiment towards Musk's companies.

If you think it's important to know that a media company takes government money, why wouldn't it be important to know if other companies in other industries are similarly connected?

Ragequitting is also degrading to NPR.

Why engage on the platform when it’s rigged by a narcissist? Like the Greyrock method, disengage.

Twitter only has value so long as it has network effect. People leaving diminish it. So why not?

What part of accurate labeling is it being "rigged"?

Tesla and SpaceX combined have obtained $5 billion in subsidies from the US government. NPR’s budget subsidy is less than one percent (~$3M).

The label is not accurate, it’s a weapon of childish behavior.

Indeed, SpaceX must have "state affiliated media" label...

SpaceX doesn’t report the news.

I was sarcastic, sorry if it wasn't clear.

They have not. You are relying on a false headline that calls things like contracts, loans, zev credits from other automaters as ' government subsidies', which is obviously incorrect.

Tesla is only just now receiving subsidies to produce batteries from the IRA that was passed last year, but previously had received no subsidies from the federal government

Are Tesla or SpaceX media companies? I thought they were in manufacturing.

You are comparing apples to oranges.

It feels like you’re attempting to make excuses for bad faith behavior through contortions of criteria. That is a choice, but not one I think that would stand up to scrutiny (based on the facts of the matter and Elon’s very public history of how he exists and operates).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini's_law

No really SpaceX isn’t a media company.

State funded is not the same as state affiliated. The government doesn't have any editorial control of NPR.

>The government doesn't have any editorial control of NPR.

Yeah, it's not like the government literally put their own guy as NPRs CEO: https://www.usagm.gov/who-we-are/management-team/john-lansin...

NPR hired him away from the USAGM; "selected by NPR's corporate board". https://www.npr.org/2019/09/05/758047287/npr-names-veteran-m...

"Russia Today hired its CEO, Ivan Muchosranov, away from Russian People's Propaganda Bureau; selected by RT's independent corporate board"

xD

Yeah, no. https://medium.com/dfrlab/question-that-rts-military-mission...

> RT’s parent company, TV-Novosti, is registered as a state-owned Autonomous Non-commercial Organization (ANO) with the Russian Ministry of Justice. According to TV-Novosti’s official filings with the Ministry, it is almost entirely funded by the state budget, with the exact figure ranging annually between 99.5% and 99.9%.

So if it was instead registered as a private company, with, say, Medvedev as CEO, it would be fine?

That would depend entirely on the specific details, including that 99% funding number. If you wanna allege specifics about NPR beyond "they once hired someone who used to work for the government", go for it.

So here's where we disagree: to me, any institution led by Medvedev won't be independent; funding formalities don't matter at all.

Also, once again: there's a fundamental difference between "used to work" and "was a CEO".

I'd be very skeptical of Medvedev, yes. The burden of proof for his independence would be... high.

Do I think Lansing is anything comparable? No.

He who pays the piper calls the tune.

True but it does lean heavily in one political direction. If it is receiving any federal funding then it should be pushed to neutrality, and remove the one-sidedness of their news programing.

I think NPR would be very upset if the government required political neutrality as part of its funding.

NPR seems plenty neutral to me. Neutral is not defined as the midpoint between our two main US political parties (as your username would suggest you know).

I always hear more than one side to each story, when they're long enough, and a good mix of brief stories about either side, positive and negative.

I am a regular listener to at least Morning Edition and All Things Considered, and I can assure you their reporting is very biased to the Left.

The credulous reporting of politically left ideas, policies, and positions on news stories without even strawman explanations of competing ideas is very frequent.

I listen to podcasts for long form, fair discussions of issues, but NPR used to (seemed to?) hew to an objective ideal of reporting, and the new crew happily crusades for their team/goals.

Or maybe your perception of what is actually neutral is too skewed by American political extremism. It seems any source that isn’t ranting about trans folk and teachers being groomers or that the 2020 election was stolen is somehow “left leaning” to many people in this country.

When Trump threatened to cut their funding because they weren't friendly enough to him, their funding increased from donations quite a bit. They're making content their listeners want.

Having standards and self respect isn't rage quitting.

Not at all ragequitting and not degrading to NPR. Staying on the platform tacitly implies NPR accepts the label ...which would be degrading, from their perspective.

If NPR doesn’t wish to accept the label it should refuse government funding.

So any company accepting grants is a state-affiliated company?

Honestly I kinda like it. I would extend it to any company accepting tax breaks.

Imagine the headline 'The church of the Last days, a state-affiliated non-profit, is warning that the end is near'.

McDonalds, a state funded eatery,... (because they accept tax breaks)

Amazon, a state funded company,... (because they shopped around for the best tax breaks)

Or any single other company that does what a company does by making any deal they can to better their bottom lines by taking tax breaks or gov't funding in any form would need to be called state funded.

It sort of loses its stigma from that view point.

The "known to the state of California to cause cancer" of funding-labeling.

i was thinking the cookie consent banner numbing, but yeah, i've always joked that i'm glad to live in a much less carcinogenic state than california.

Any media company accepting grants from the state is indeed state affiliated, yes.

If Twitter wants to survive it should stop antagonizing large users to make political statements

The policy isn’t political, it applies to all government funded media accounts.

BBC just had their state-affiliated label removed.

https://twitter.com/BBC

It’s been replaced with “publicly funded” which I think will also apply to NPR.

Which makes you wonder why it was never applied.

I think people should be slower to act.

Around the time they left, the label had already been improved to mention funding instead of affiliation.

If they could just be a bit chill about it, is quite possible within a month it might have been replaced with a approximate-percentage-funding label, which should not be particularly offensive.

Would be really slick to see all media accounts have company ownership / funding listed.

"people" here refers to elmu,

and the acting refers to his label changes,

right?

Both. Elon's approach to all this is pointlessly erratic, alienating himself from numerous people and orgs he could really use as allies. He might be right that moving entirely to paid verification is needed... but even if that is needed, it could be rolled out over a long time, with much less alienation of the user base.

NPR could benefit from a bit of patience also: realize how erratic the counterparty is, and wait a bit to see what shakes out.

asking NPR to be patient while elmu abuses and insults them is like asking an abused spouse to just stick around in case their abuser with a history of abuse & gaslighting suddenly and inexplicably cleans up their act

at the very least, twitter & elmu have to understand their actions were wrong and show conciliation for wronging them – if they're incapable of that bare minimum, there's obviously no hope of them cleaning up their act

Or maybe they realize there's no benefit of being on Twitter anymore and they're not willing to take disrespect from a trollish man-child?

It's a pit of right-wing extremism and some of the most fawning sycophancy I've ever seen.

Experiences seem to vary a lot. Some people report the Twitter feed changed radically for the worse. Others (including me) have found it's about the same. I think it must depend greatly on what accounts you follow.

How, specifically, does it degrade anybody to stop using Twitter?

I think it speaks well of NPR.

People keep saying this but I haven't noticed at all, I stopped using it for years but now I am back and have noticed only improvements

Sometimes it wont show me current tweets. My timeline is full of accounts that I don't follow and nobody I follow replied. I had to block musk's account because it was the only thing I was seeing. Tweets disappear when I try to look at them. Its been frustrating to say the least.

yeah, I noticed they divided your timeline to 'for me' and 'following' you just have to click 'following' and then its back.

There is a following accounts tab, and you can make lists to improve your your timeline.

It's waaaaay better for those of us without an account. It loads every time, rather than failing about 2/3 of the time (at least on mobile—always figured that was some weird dark pattern to try to get me to use the app, did it to me consistently for years across multiple devices), and doesn't block me with a loginwall if I scroll too far before hitting "more replies" anymore.

All the drama around Twitter's also flat-out hilarious if one doesn't care whether Twitter lives or dies, and lots of that drama's on Twitter, so I'd call that an improvement, too.

same

I take it for what it is, a notification engine for "influencers" and media, and a time-waster, and basically nothing else

it's essentially not good for anything else, if you put too much faith in it to do things like learning or discovering new things, you're going to be disappointed

but at what it does I think it's better than a couple of years ago when I last spent some time using it - it was unmitigated garbage at everything back then

It really underscores how the Internet needs a notion of social networking that is based on open standards and open infrastructures. Imagine if it was 2002 and Bill Gates pulled a similar gambit and just "bought the web."

Fortunately that was actually impossible, but it underscores how a thing like Twitter is also too important to be a plaything of investors and playboys.

Every time someone mentions Mastodon here, we get a bunch of responders saying "they blew their chance" as if they're copy-pasting off of a script… I hate to be conspiracy-brained, but a quick note to those guys: if you are Twitter insiders, you're not being very subtle.

From where I'm sitting, Mastodon — and more importantly, ActivityPub — is doing great. For those that thing the standard is too weird for normies, keep in mind that the way things are going, more startups are going to follow Medium and Substack’s approach.