Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1585341984679469056

by mfiguiere • 4 years ago

64 57 4 years ago

twitter.com

onychomys• 4 years ago

Welp, it was fun while it lasted.

smt882• 4 years ago

It absolutely wasn't. Twitter has been a cesspit of rage bait and idiotic hot takes since it became popular.

I'm sure it's about to get a lot worse, but that doesn't mean it was ever good.

delecti2• 4 years ago

I keep my feed reverse-chronological (and avoid their "home" feed), and the worst thing I see in my feed is people complaining about all the rage bait. Their algorithmic feed tries to put "engaging" content in your face, but it's so easy to avoid that it honestly seems negligent that most people don't bother with the two clicks it'd take to make the change.

Yes it'd be better if that stuff didn't exist, but it's hardly as bad as other sites' feeds.

JustSomeNobody2• 4 years ago

Twitter is much like Reddit in that if you actively avoid the shit, you won't get any on you and it's not that bad.

ghusto• 4 years ago

Remember when the "mobile version" was just SMS? It was fun back then.

Fun fact: A couple of years ago, I wanted to see some of those first tweets I made over SMS, and they were gone. My guess is that they had major data loss at one point, and just never told anyone.

fernandotakai2• 4 years ago

i've been on twitter since 2007. it's not going to get worse, because honestly, i don't think it's possible for twitter to actually get worse.

peak twitter, imho, was 2010~2012.

andrewinardeer2• 4 years ago

I met my wife on Twitter in that timeframe.

olliecornelia• 4 years ago

It’s lasted much longer than it was fun.

tanseydavid• 4 years ago

That's a decent pun.

onionisafruit• 4 years ago

I'm a little lost here. Why was he carrying a sink? Was it just so he could use the line "let that sink in", or is there something else I'm missing?

fishtoaster• 4 years ago

That's correct. It's a bit of a meme on twitter where someone will make some statement, then that phrase. Eg "20k seagulls die every day from choking on keurig pods. Let that sink in." Musk is parodying that with a physical sink.

whoibrar• 4 years ago

yes. Let that "sink" in.

skybrian• 4 years ago

Yes, that's probably why. Musk likes dumb puns. Or maybe knows that his fans like them and that it gets attention without saying anything real.

anshumankmr• 4 years ago

I am still not sure what he really plans to accomplish,as it really isn't going to have any meaningful impact to improving anyone's lives except maybe online discourse on Twitter will be potentially more right wing than left wing (just like every other social media platform) with the purchase of Twitter.

ben_w• 4 years ago

I am still not sure what he really plans to accomplish

Likewise, but it will be nice if he does follow through with turning the HQ into a homeless shelter.

Not particularly efficient, but nice.

Apocryphon3• 4 years ago

Tweets will provide the training data for Neuralink wetware. Twitter will be the official default communications platform for when you're jacked in.

outworlder2• 4 years ago

That's some bad fanfic.

TigeriusKirk• 4 years ago

Who knows, maybe that's the long term plan.

In the medium term, Twitter might be the best place to train models on the zeitgeist of the moment. For whatever reason you'd want to do that.

My personal fanfic for neuralink is that it's the reason the Tesla bot has human like hands.

option2• 4 years ago

I am very happy that the person who describes themselves as “free speech absolutist” will be in charge of a platform such as Twitter.

This was obvious to me because I was born in USSR and I hope after the past two years it is more evident to those who grew up in free countries.

justapassenger• 4 years ago

Keep in mind that he DESCRIBES himself as that.

Look at his actions, not words.

option2• 4 years ago

agree. Track record says way more than words.

hunterb123• 4 years ago

Well don't leave us in the dark...

What actions have you noticed that contradicts his statements?

So we can debate whether or not you came to the right conclusion in interpreting said actions.

Or were you just making general hand waving statements?

noxer• 4 years ago

Heard this many times since the whole Musk/twitter thing started, yet no one actually comes up with any action he did.

Especially on twitter itself its a very common "argument", usually followed by the burden of proof fallacy calming that it is "common knowledge" and its up to me to research if I dont already know the free speech "wrongdoings" of Musk.

Comevius• 4 years ago

He talks the talk, but never walks the walk.

https://www.techdirt.com/2022/05/24/stop-saying-elon-musk-su...

oska• 4 years ago

Once is fine but I hope you're not planning on spamming that link throughout this thread (this is now the 2nd time I see you've linked it)

christkv• 4 years ago

I'm looking forward to all the celebrity grandstanding about how they are leaving twitter and joining network X before crawling back to their accounts a week later to get another dopamine hit from the retweet and like counts.

huitzitziltzin• 4 years ago

Probably one of the worst investment decisions (outside of cryptocurrency) that I’m aware of. 40 billion dollars for a platform with such negligible reach and even lower potential for monetization?

On the other hand… If he can run Twitter into the ground I think he’ll be doing the world a service.

TylerE• 4 years ago

Do not misunderstand why he is doing this. He is doing this because (as anyone with even a partial understanding of the law would understand) is that the Delaware court case was going very very badly for him, and he did not want to be subject to discovery.

delecti2• 4 years ago

You're talking about the wrong "this". I think you're right, and that's why he went through with the purchase instead of fighting the lawsuit, but he was only facing that lawsuit because he moved to buy it in the first place. He didn't accidentally sign a bunch of paperwork to buy a company for $40bn, he at some point made a bunch of deliberate decisions.

pixxel• 4 years ago

Would you kindly expand briefly on what you are alluding to? I’m unaware of the court case. TIA.

tablespoon2• 4 years ago

40 billion dollars for a platform with such negligible reach...

It might have "negligible reach" amongst the general population, but it does seem to have an extraordinary amount of cultural power. Whatever upside there is, it seems like it's more like the one you get from bankrolling political candidates and paying to disseminate ideological propaganda.

rektide• 4 years ago

100%. It may or may not sell products, be good for ads. Those engagements might not be ideal, for those stakeholders-bearing-checkbooks.

But it is by orders of magnitude highest radix connector of humanity we have. I've probably clicked fav on a million different people's tweets, I've probably written messages to tens of thousands of different people I've never met. I've seen multiple sides of millions of topics & synthesized my own opinion.

Nothing comes remotely close. Highest human engagement platform of all time.

dave78• 4 years ago

I think many/most criticisms of Twitter are valid, but "negligible reach"?

KptMarchewa• 4 years ago

Well, according to Musk himself, a giant percent of claimed user base are bots.

outworlder2• 4 years ago

Yeah, all the banks have made a pretty poor decision.

Unclear if Musk himself will lose any money once all "investors" pitch in. His change of tone in the past few weeks gives a hint on who would actually be funding this.

JustSomeNobody2• 4 years ago

Can he do anything at all without acting like a douche?

SxC97• 4 years ago

Seems like a win-win for me. Either he actually makes Twitter better or he completely destroys it. The internet would be better off either way.

izzydata• 4 years ago

Since the worst is probably going to happen this means he will make no discernable changes.

Apocryphon3• 4 years ago

Though we will be subject to a lot of irritating social media drama and pointless public controversy despite no material changes.

joshka• 4 years ago

third option, twitter destroys the <insert hyperbolic predicted thing here>

diimdeep2• 4 years ago

There is apparently already a narrative war between NYT and WP(owned by Bezos) and Twitter(owned by Elon) if you look at recent replies by Elon to other people [1]

[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/with_replies

tablespoon2• 4 years ago

between NYT(owned by Bezos)

Bezos owns the Washington Post, not the New York Times.

diimdeep2• 4 years ago

Oops, my bad, and there was a tweet earlier this week about WP throwing narrative in Elon way, he replied about that too.

sn0w_crash• 4 years ago

Is a 75% headcount reduction enough?

Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in

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