The app is also "Twitter", the <title> tag is etc. Everyone is going to keep calling them tweets. It's just the logo and redirecting the x.com domain really. Which makes sense IMO (regardless of whether it was a good idea which I'm skeptical), I don't think they should go hard with the rebranding immediately. You need to slow roll it so people don't get confused. The logo is a good start making people notice and get curious without making a big disruption in Google results and mobile app discovery.

googling for photos or videos on twitter just got a whole lot better!

They suspended the XVIDEOS account (the porn site), apparently in prep to claim the name...

So searching for "xvideos" on google or DDG is going to be interesting going forward.

@xvideos seems to have been banned since at least 2018: https://archive.li/wH3B3

xvideos.com's account is @xvideoscom and is dated 2010.

To be fair, I find myself calling the things I post (and read) on threads tweets.

"Tweets" shall now be called "Xcrements"

That's hilarious. I honestly wonder if Elon decided to do this change on Friday and had people rushing all weekend to push it out the door.

* * *

Do you really have to wonder? I think it's one of his episodes, just like the purchase of Twitter itself, where the too quickly decides on something and pushes it through.

If I was a billionaire I would probably act like a spoiled 8th grader as well.

I'd like to think if I was a billionaire I would act the way that I think an ideal billionaire would, being shrewd with my money and making myself richer in an upright and respectable manner while also ensuring that the people who work with me get wealthy as well.

Proving to others that you can act like an 8th grader while pissing away $44 Billion (actually, closer to $33 Billion, maybe $24 Billion if we ignore the outside $9 Billion investors) on an asinine project and still living the life of private jets, and party yachts is the point.

Flaunting your wealth attracts supporters in this day and age. People *like* rich assholes. Its fashionable, or at least it was in the 2010s. The pendulum of society is finally swinging back and demonizing this outrageous display of wealth but we're still in an age where people literally worship wealth. Not the "figuratively literally", I mean literally literally worship as per the prosperity gospel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology).

Its not just Elon Musk, but also Arkk's Cathie Wood and Bill Hwang.

----------------

The outrageous displays of wealth is proof that you've achieved God's good graces. Its basically Mandate of Heaven (Chinese concept) except the American version of it.

I read a comment somewhere a while back:

Once you make $999,999,999.99 dollars, congratulations you have won at life!

All future income you make beyond $1B goes to helping society.

You should probably get a say into where the money goes (so it aligns with your values, whatever those may be) but that's it. You are done enriching yourself personally.

I kind of like that (although I'm sure plenty of people hate it).

Norway doesn’t have that, but it does have a wealth tax, which I like. If your net wealth sums to over 2mnok (approx $200k), you pay some percentage of tax on that wealth, every year. There are plenty of exemptions, your primary residence is only worth a quarter of assessed value, and of course this is net wealth, so mortgages and things subtract from this. But it does mean that if you’re just sitting on a horde of gold, you’ll anyways pay taxes, which makes sense to me. Just because you became wealthy enough to stop earning any income doesn’t mean you aren’t responsible for your share of keeping society running.

I've done some math on this. It's INSANE how tiny of a percentage you can usefully tax away and get enormous societal benefits. You really, really don't need to go all 'Beatles Taxman' on it and confiscate everything over X amount. You can take just 1% of the pool of wealth and come out with enormous funding by the standards of what we use social benefits for.

The play money is so many orders of magnitude beyond what's used to keep society creaking along, that it's positively silly. The tiniest of wealth tax percentages can amount to whole social services budgets. These social services stop people with pitchforks from going after the billionaires and each other.

> It's INSANE how tiny of a percentage you can usefully tax away and get enormous societal benefits

The problem in Norway's case is that the a lot of the richest people just moved to Switzerland or wherever...

A though occurred to me the other day. Taxes have become the offset for the inefficiencies capitalism. Each entity is independent, and therefore has to reproduce common things that could have been shared if society was organized differently.

Rabid liberalism is expensive.

Why would you do that when you can just hire PR to run a campaign about how great you are?

Why? I'd be hanging out with my loved ones in mountain cabins and beach houses. I truly cannot comprehend what makes these people want to spend their time and money on internet nonsense.

That's true: most people want to hoard wealth for personal consumption. That's the normal way for wealthy people to behave. Very few want to change the world. Some of those who want to change the world will change it for the better and some for the worse, but the hoard-and-consume lifestyle is most definitely the common lifestyle.

Are you equating engaging with internet nonsense to changing the world?

Helping vaccinate the 3rd world and fund the WHO, I can see a changing the world. Ranting on the internet 24/7, not so much.

Personally, I think the "spend time with loved ones and donate money" approach is the far preferable wealthy lifestyle over the "narcissistic egomaniac constantly talking about how theyre 'changing the world for the better' while mostly just being an asshole" approach.

From what I can tell, Most billionaires want to change the world.

Most are just far more considered and cautious in how they go about it, because getting it wrong _hurts_everyone_, including themselves.

If your character is about chilling and hanging out it's unlikely to be one a billionaire.

Most people getting into that group donthat by focussing their time on making money. This usually requires quite some dedication, which is a character trait you can't simply replace for going to the beach.

There are exceptions, but it's rare. And then there are the ones who got spoiled as a kid and were lucky with some decisions, like making some good real estate deals in Manhatten or finding the right partners to build some online payment service, who never learned about responsibility.

they are freaks poisoned by money and we should take it from them for the common good

One can also be very dedicated to the beach.

Do you see other billionaires wasting time on “internet nonsense”? This guy bought a social media network and was on it 24/7 before that.

Even Zuckerberg who made his fortune with social media seem to post less than him. I have never even heard of Bezos posting while Gates probably only post as PR for his foundation.

Yes, but the prompt was that I'm a billionaire. And I'm the way I am, and described the way I believe I would be as a billionaire. But there was no part of the prompt about the path I took to become a billionaire, just that I am one.

That's simply nonsensical selection bias. You just simply don't hear about the quiet,family oriented billionaires because they're quiet!

You're wrong. Look at Zuckerberg. He spends months of quality time with his family in Hawaii.

Right? I would be enjoying life to the fullest, privately. This guy has already reached end game, instead of enjoying it, he's squandering his name/reputation for internet points.

Honestly, he's squandering his name/reputation and his internet points.

No it has probably been a plan since the beginning. He wants to build an everything app like wechat.

Most likely, both are true.

If it was the plan from the beginning then why announce it via rambling tweets late at night, before it's even announced to the employees? LOLOLOL. UNICODE X "ICON" LOLOLOL

It’s a Unicode symbol that can’t be copyrighted that was suggested in a comment reply and the CEO had to spin the rebrand after Musk tweeted for 12 hours through the night with no sleep.

He has no plan. How is that not painfully obvious at this point

Musk has owned x.com for many years. It goes back to paypal days.

First of all by saying “the PayPal days” shows you have very little idea what you’re talking about and I’m not going to elaborate.

Second of all, so what? What does that have to do with him just picking a Unicode character at 4am on a Saturday?

Your argument was this logo change was planned.

Okay, so he’s planning on turning it into a finance platform, and you’re saying it was “part of his master plan” to pick a logo at 4am that can’t be trademarked (because it’s just a Unicode character), such that any one can setup a login page for using the logo, to harvest X.com credentials, and they can’t do anything because they don’t own the trademark?

Brilliant plan.

I don't understand the vitriol. Why do you care? It's like half the internet has Musk derangement syndrome.

Because you’re defending a grifter, claiming “this was all part of a plan” when it’s clearly either a manic episode or him on drugs.

> him on drugs.

Hey isn't he still majority owner of SpaceX (Jesus, there's the X again, somehow that hadn't dawned on me yet)?

Doesn't a huge proportion of their income come from government contracts?

Aren't there... you know, some laws about that exact thing?

Oh who'm I kidding, only the peons have to sweat about their lives being ruined by getting high on the weekends. Rich people are too good for that, of course.

Besides, he's probably got bullshit prescriptions for most of it.

I believe the WSJ reported that his security clearance is being reviewed over his ketamine usage

Absolutely. He's been open, even evangelistic about that, and anyone familiar with drugs can quickly recognize that it's a WHOLE other thing beyond your basic Joe Rogan bakemind routine. Elon has gone full Syd Barrett. It's not going to get better.

I remember back in 2018/ 2019 in SF, when "microdosing" ketamine and/ or LSD started becoming big with tech folks. It was (and still is) always painfully and embarrassingly obvious when someone is "microdosing".

I really don't see how it's any different than having a drink every day....

Which by definition makes one an alcoholic.

> embarrassingly obvious when someone is "microdosing".

Maybe because of the placebo effect. Chances are that if you were actually microdosing but didn't knew about it you wouldn't even notice it.

You’re acting as if Musk’s actions don’t affect anyone. Ask the two decapitated individuals who died at the hands of Tesla auto pilot how they feel about Musk’s poor decision making. People had communities they liked on Twitter and Musk destroyed them ruining careers and upending lives in the process.

And he did it all so capriciously. There still doesn’t seem to be any reason for it.

Seriously, fuck that guy.

(As a fly on the wall, I’m sorry you had to experience this side of HN. There are better threads. Keep remembering that.)

“Best response goes live today.”

Musk sending the new branding to all his 14 devs on Sunday

https://i.redd.it/g4i702g8xe751.png

> That's hilarious.

You don't have to make change atomically. Eventual consistency is sufficient and very practical.

Combined with "Our [bird] logo is our most recognizable asset. That’s why we’re so protective of it" I think it is indeed a bit funny

Doubt anyone who worked on that still is employed there. And even if, they surely weren't asked their opinion, nor informed about the decision.

I guess not. https://twitter.com/martingrasser/status/1683266038602010624

Can't even view a thread without logging in now, got to hand it to Musk for reducing my Twitter usage from passive to non-existent.

you can still view it through https://nitter.net, which I guess makes the open source Javascript-less front-end to Twitter more accessible for SEO? maybe Google should start indexing that lol

Same. I don't intend to either.

https://archive.li/b4Ylw

I honestly didn't even know that I could still view individual tweets. I used to go read new tweets from my favorite posters from time to time, but I haven't been back since they forced that behind a login.

As soon as I deleted the app from my phone and established a "can only view Twitter on my laptop" rule, I basically stopped using it.

https://nitter.net/martingrasser/status/1683266038602010624 courtesy link for those without an $8 X Blue membership.

See also: https://twitter.com/anothercohen/status/1683282922617315329

for some relevant humor.

definitely not:

  > Anyone looking for a little horror story?
  >  
  > I'm one of the only two in-house designer in the whole Twitter corporate, and I wasn't told anything about this rebranding...

1: (screenshot)https://twitter.com/gtmhouse/status/1683336936222781440

2: (gone)https://kokoholt.com/

3: (gone)https://jp.linkedin.com/in/koko-watanabe-holt

4: (privated)https://www.instagram.com/kokoholt/

Absolutely crazy, even by X Corp. standards

Perhaps you should email [email protected] to let them know.

Wait is this just because they aren’t rebranding Twitter? Just the company that operates it? I don’t have Facebook but I was under the impression that it was still Facebook even though the company rebranded to Meta.

Holy shit I did a literal spit take when I read that. Way too funny.

The site favicon hasn't been updated either. I imagine that last employee working at Twitter who hasn't been fired has had a difficult weekend updating the logo.