Twitter reportedly set to accept Musk's offer [Twitter accepts deal]

[Brooksie359]

18 hours ago, Sauron said:

I can understand the first one being petty but doing youtube reviews on tech from a company you work for is just plain stupid and I wouldn't he surprised if there was something in their employment agreement that prohibited them from doing this without getting fired. I mean it might be different for other people but for me I am not surprised someone got fired for doing tech reviews of technology from the company you work for. 

[HenrySalayne]

17 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

i mean if you go by his words thats what hes advocating for. a platform with basically no moderation 

Which will not work. With the DSA (digital service act) coming into effect in 2024, they'll need even more moderation than they have today. Or Twitter has to pull out of Europe making the platform more and more irrelevant. But just if the platform isn't already irrelevant in 2024 when people turned their back on Twitter because the amount of stupid became unbearable.

 

Either Elon removes most forms of moderation and it will slowly but steadily go down the drain or - and this is the sensible plan - he will not change anything but minor details. I'm betting on the latter.

[cat milker]

I think it's cool. Hopefully he will ban the dream stans.

[Levent]

I have no clue how that made sense business wise. Twitters board of directory agreed to sell the company to him despite Dorsey making this take over to be a terrible thing. That really shows even the board had no trust in the product anymore.

[NomBread]

Hopefully changes it to make it better if that is even possible but I know some people want the website deleted and wiped from the world.

[Blademaster91]

I think it couldn't get any worse, hopefully he makes it a better platform though.

[poochyena]

Its funny seeing someone praise Musk and then get mad his art is being spread without credit when Musk himself does the same thing. A real "leopards at my face" scenario.

 

So how long until Musk starts claiming to be a Twitter founder?

[Mark Kaine]

2 hours ago, Blademaster91 said:

I think it couldn't get any worse, hopefully he makes it a better platform though.

... I dont get this take... i suppose its an algorithm thing, or people just not using it much or at all, or too much... or what?

 

i have barely seen any bad twitter accounts in the last couple of months  (and before that i used it exclusively for certain >HIGH QUALITY ARTISTS< , ahem... and even then it wasn't bad lol... )

 

 

What ya'll probably dont get, its a massive network for high quality journalism and co-operation between journalists and analysts (and actual insiders)... i think i have learned more in the last 2 months than i did the last 2 years otherwise,  just massive amounts of information and analytics, easily digestible.

 

Not to mention some accounts being really incredibly funny while also being very critical about current events and, politics etc...

Its a nice distraction from otherwise serious subjects...

 

 

So, yeah, I really dont get it whats so bad about it... i get there are probably lots of terrible/ toxic accounts,  but why would you care about those, why would you even get stuff suggested that you dont care about? Thats not at all how it works in my experience.

Honestly baffling how someone can say twitter is bad, *especially* with the most toxic accounts not being around anymore -- which of course, musk will change,  because "free speech, yo". So yeah, it can get a *lot* worse. Sadly. 

 

 

[Sauron]

4 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

I can understand the first one being petty but doing youtube reviews on tech from a company you work for is just plain stupid and I wouldn't he surprised if there was something in their employment agreement that prohibited them from doing this without getting fired.

You're right, if only on twitter there was some sort of agreement, some kind of terms of the service so to say, that clearly lay out what you can or can't do on the platform...

4 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

I mean it might be different for other people but for me I am not surprised someone got fired for doing tech reviews of technology from the company you work for. 

I am not surprised. My point isn't that he didn't have a right to fire that person, it's that he doesn't actually believe free speech is absolute. He only pretends to when it suits him.

[Brooksie359]

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

You're right, if only on twitter there was some sort of agreement, some kind of terms of the service so to say, that clearly lay out what you can or can't do on the platform...

I am not surprised. My point isn't that he didn't have a right to fire that person, it's that he doesn't actually believe free speech is absolute. He only pretends to when it suits him.

I mean I guess if you want to take everything and reduce them down to absolutes then I guess you have a point but personally I think this is a huge simplification. There is a time and a place for everything. To me it seems like they want Twitter to be a place where people can speak their mind without getting censored which sorta makes sense to me. Now that doesn't mean that he should have to allow Tesla employees to create tech reviews about the companies products. It seems silly to make that connection. 

[idkwhat]

9 hours ago, Taf the Ghost said:

5 Billion revenue, average basically flat profit for 5 years with barely positive cash flow. 9x Revenue is a good deal for Twitter in a "hostile" takeover. Realistically it's a $20 Billion USD company before a close analysis of its IP Assets. But Value vs the overpay to push a sale, the price is "reasonable".  Considering it was agreed to, I'm going to assume the IPs weren't worth much.

 

For reference, AMD back during the $2 per share period and a company valuation under 8 Billion USD would have gone for at least 50 Billion. That's what IP Assets can be worth. (AMD functionally cannot be sold to anyone but Intel, but that's a different topic.)

FWIW I don't disagree with any of this and i'm not arguing that the price Musk paid for Twitter is bad. None of this is relevant to what I said though, which is that there is no metric for defining the "reasonable" price of a stock, i.e. you can't say "the reasonable per share value of Twitter should be X." Perhaps we could also have a discussion on EMH and maybe argue that the reasonable price for any company at any point is whatever it costs right now, but that's out of scope (and wrong). 

[Kisai]

7 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

... I dont get this take... i suppose its an algorithm thing, or people just not using it much or at all, or too much... or what?

 

i have barely seen any bad twitter accounts in the last couple of months  (and before that i used it exclusively for certain >HIGH QUALITY ARTISTS< , ahem... and even then it wasn't bad lol... )

 

It's not that bad really unless you live in certain left or right wing echo chambers, then it's literal hell. "both sides" are censored, but the troubling problem is how the site elevates engaging hateful content. Change the algorithms to only elevate "good news" and people will be a lot less hostile to it, but that would require kicking all the politicians off the site.

 

Basically the best way to use Twitter is to either:

a) curate who you follow (don't follow people who like rolling around in the internet sewers)

b) block the asshats, and everyone following the asshat (there's a tool ironically called "block-chain" that does this)

 

Basically even following artists is a problem as most artists tend to be in a bit of a (poverty) bubble of their own. I follow lots of artists, but I regret following anyone that constantly retweets every pet cause they're into, because that gets excessive when multiplied across 100 people, let alone 1000.

 

[poochyena]

2 hours ago, Kisai said:

Basically the best way to use Twitter is to either:

a) curate who you follow (don't follow people who like rolling around in the internet sewers)

b) block the asshats, and everyone following the asshat (there's a tool ironically called "block-chain" that does this)

Thats, like, general life advice, not even specific to twitter.

2 hours ago, Kisai said:

Basically even following artists is a problem as most artists tend to be in a bit of a (poverty) bubble of their own. I follow lots of artists, but I regret following anyone that constantly retweets every pet cause they're into, because that gets excessive when multiplied across 100 people, let alone 1000.

THAT is twitter specific though. If an artist's account isn't 95% art, then i'm not going to follow it. I don't get the people who follow artists and want to see a bunch of random tweets too. Twitter really needs a follow filter where I only get updates on their own tweets or only updates on any media posts.

[Taf the Ghost]

3 hours ago, Kisai said:

It's not that bad really unless you live in certain left or right wing echo chambers, then it's literal hell. "both sides" are censored, but the troubling problem is how the site elevates engaging hateful content. Change the algorithms to only elevate "good news" and people will be a lot less hostile to it, but that would require kicking all the politicians off the site.

 

Basically the best way to use Twitter is to either:

a) curate who you follow (don't follow people who like rolling around in the internet sewers)

b) block the asshats, and everyone following the asshat (there's a tool ironically called "block-chain" that does this)

 

Basically even following artists is a problem as most artists tend to be in a bit of a (poverty) bubble of their own. I follow lots of artists, but I regret following anyone that constantly retweets every pet cause they're into, because that gets excessive when multiplied across 100 people, let alone 1000.

 

I've got a couple of years of comments on this forum about how Silicon Valley tech companies have a hyper-specific set of views. And they're basically the only people on the planet that have them, which is why the actually most suppressed interest group is Union Activists. And I'm really not joking. (The hilarity of the hypocrisy isn't lost on me, but this is a very real thing that Big Tech does.) Next is anyone that's fallen out of line with Big Tech's current narrative structure. Eminent expert in your field that makes a slightly critical post about a current topic de jure? Say good by to your social media accounts. (Let's also ignore the blatantly obvious collusion via data sharing that happens.)

 

That's what all of this is really about and why the topic can get so rough. There's those that understand this and those that, at this point, refuse to understand when the emperor has no clothes. It's a weaponization of data analysis and content delivery positions, while *testifying* that it isn't done like that. Keep that last bit in mind in the coming years. 

 

Early reports are still holding that they've turned off at least some of the suppression functions they use. It's hard to say if it's just the numerical ones (cutting numbers down) or a shift back to a more popularity focused highlighting of content, but something has definitely changed. Will be interesting to watch it play out.

[Sauron]

9 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

To me it seems like they want Twitter to be a place where people can speak their mind without getting censored which sorta makes sense to me.

That has largely been the case except for illegal content and dangerous (and easily disprovable) lies.

9 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

Now that doesn't mean that he should have to allow Tesla employees to create tech reviews about the companies products. It seems silly to make that connection.

What that employee did was not worse than what people Musk cited as being unfairly "censored" did. The only difference is that Musk didn't personally like what he did while he did like what those others did. That's not "free speech absolutism", it's free speech for me and not for thee.

[wanderingfool2]

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

What that employee did was not worse than what people Musk cited as being unfairly "censored" did. The only difference is that Musk didn't personally like what he did while he did like what those others did. That's not "free speech absolutism", it's free speech for me and not for thee.

I think you completely misunderstand even what free speech absolutism is.  It's not that you are welcome to say anything at all no matter what without consequences.  Even then there is a major difference in wanting to apply free speech to the platform itself vs punishing an employee who broke their contractual obligation.  You wouldn't prevent them from posting or censoring them but you still have more than enough rights to fire them if you are abiding by "free speech".

 

The fact is firing someone over breaching the contractual obligation, I mean the guy literally identified himself as a Tesla employee working on FSD and he didn't have his hands in position to take over.  It has absolutely zero to do with twitter itself being a town square.

[Sauron]

18 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

I think you completely misunderstand even what free speech absolutism is.  It's not that you are welcome to say anything at all no matter what without consequences.

Yes it is, that's what "absolutism" means. Otherwise you have free speech*, which is what is actually protected by the US constitution and is fully respected by twitter and any other private platform that enforces terms of service. Once you start adding exceptions you'll quickly get to exactly what you had before: mostly free expression except for what is illegal and what the owners of the platform subjectively decide is unacceptable.

20 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

You wouldn't prevent them from posting or censoring them but you still have more than enough rights to fire them if you are abiding by "free speech".

Threatening someone's livelihood is a much more effective method of shutting them up than banning them from twitter.

21 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

The fact is firing someone over breaching the contractual obligation, I mean the guy literally identified himself as a Tesla employee working on FSD and he didn't have his hands in position to take over.  It has absolutely zero to do with twitter itself being a town square.

 Twitter is a private platform, not a town square. The closest physical analog is a private conference room where people are allowed turns to speak - the owner of the conference room is allowed to kick you out for whatever reason and is also allowed to revoke your membership if you don't abide by their rules. Forcing them to host you no matter what would be a violation of their freedom. If you have a problem with the amount of control Twitter has over public discourse then the solution is to break it up, not change its ownership to be controlled by a single oligarch - that would be the exact opposite of the solution.

[wanderingfool2]

10 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Twitter is a private platform, not a town square

Except that in talks Elon Musk has now mentioned town square notion quite a bit.  This could greatly affect things, if he declares it as a town-square as even if it's a private business if it's considered to meet a town-square in the courts eyes then the free speech aspect falls out of it.

 

12 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Threatening someone's livelihood is a much more effective method of shutting them up than banning them from twitter.

Under the way you keep arguing it, no one ever should be allowed to be fired based off of what they do in their "non working time" without it being called censorship.  I mean give me a break, I doubt anyone else here would feel that firing someone who represents themselves as an employee outside of work while using the product in an unsafe manor that is also against the contract is limiting his free speech.

 

The government needs to abide by free speech, and yet their employees are held to a tighter standard.  You are failing to understand that declaring twitter as a free speech tool is completely different than running a company and disciplining an employee for breach of contract.

[Sauron]

21 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Except that in talks Elon Musk has now mentioned town square notion quite a bit.  This could greatly affect things, if he declares it as a town-square as even if it's a private business if it's considered to meet a town-square in the courts eyes then the free speech aspect falls out of it.

He's free to do that if he wants to lose all control over something he just spent 44 billions on I guess. I somehow doubt he will but we'll see, perhaps I'm underestimating his stupidity. Bear in mind that by doing this he'd open himself up to charges if at any point he failed to provide a platform to anyone who demanded it for any reason and under any conditions.

22 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Under the way you keep arguing it, no one ever should be allowed to be fired based off of what they do in their "non working time" without it being called censorship.  I mean give me a break, I doubt anyone else here would feel that firing someone who represents themselves as an employee outside of work while using the product in an unsafe manor that is also against the contract is limiting his free speech.

At this point I have to assume you're doing this on purpose. I have already repeated multiple times that I do not believe this. It just indicates that Musk is lying when he claims he's a free speech "absolutist" and he holds essentially the same position on this as the former Twitter management.

[mr moose]

16 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

... I dont get this take... i suppose its an algorithm thing, or people just not using it much or at all, or too much... or what?

 

i have barely seen any bad twitter accounts in the last couple of months  (and before that i used it exclusively for certain >HIGH QUALITY ARTISTS< , ahem... and even then it wasn't bad lol... )

 

 

What ya'll probably dont get, its a massive network for high quality journalism and co-operation between journalists and analysts (and actual insiders)... i think i have learned more in the last 2 months than i did the last 2 years otherwise,  just massive amounts of information and analytics, easily digestible.

 

Not to mention some accounts being really incredibly funny while also being very critical about current events and, politics etc...

Its a nice distraction from otherwise serious subjects...

 

 

So, yeah, I really dont get it whats so bad about it... i get there are probably lots of terrible/ toxic accounts,  but why would you care about those, why would you even get stuff suggested that you dont care about? Thats not at all how it works in my experience.

Honestly baffling how someone can say twitter is bad, *especially* with the most toxic accounts not being around anymore -- which of course, musk will change,  because "free speech, yo". So yeah, it can get a *lot* worse. Sadly. 

 

 

The problem with twitter and facebook are not bad accounts or bad information from users.  The real problem is that these two companies make up the lions share of information being dispersed to people, so when they (as people managed companies) decide to start censoring political or sociopolitical users they are in effect controlling which side of specific cultural divides people get to hear from. 

 

It's really hard to highlight the issue with these companies without talking politics,   But it's shouldn't have to be said that when one side of politics gets deleted from twitter and "fact checked" on facebook in the run up to an election you know the platforms have real ethical management issues.     They should just let everyone have their say and let us "the people" decide if those speaking are worth listening to.

[Paul Thexton]

34 minutes ago, mr moose said:

They should just let everyone have their say and let us "the people" decide if those speaking are worth listening to.

In principle I agree, but the problem also comes because of the algorithms that decide what to show you - it can result in a highly concentrated echo chamber, which is not a good environment for encouraging critical thinking.

[Taf the Ghost]

28 minutes ago, Paul Thexton said:

In principle I agree, but the problem also comes because of the algorithms that decide what to show you - it can result in a highly concentrated echo chamber, which is not a good environment for encouraging critical thinking.

Their data analysis systems are advanced enough that Echo Chambers are structured results not unintended consequences. In a purely open system, it's actually ends up Darwinian and "whatever actually works" ends up becoming dominant. Which is why that ability is suppressed. Echo Chambers require active enforcement, which is different than sorting into similar interest groups.

 

Edit: wanted to add a few more thoughts on Echo Chambers. To maintain one always requires enforcement. That means the ability to eliminate counter-voices. In a self-selected Interest group (Tech Enthusiasts on forums like this, for instance), there will be general consensus on only the topics that bring the group together there, while massive disagreement on everything else. The difference between an Echo Chamber and self-selected forum thus ends up being the difference between "only this is acceptable" and "these are the rules, abide by them". The problem that Social Media has -- aside from being destructive on people in general -- is that it's become the first when it was originally the latter. And, the "acceptable opinions" are a moving target. It's why too many of the terminally online types are in such bad shape. They have to actually keep up with what's acceptable to remain even in a static position within their peer group.

[Taf the Ghost]

54 minutes ago, mr moose said:

The problem with twitter and facebook are not bad accounts or bad information from users.  The real problem is that these two companies make up the lions share of information being dispersed to people, so when they (as people managed companies) decide to start censoring political or sociopolitical users they are in effect controlling which side of specific cultural divides people get to hear from. 

 

It's really hard to highlight the issue with these companies without talking politics,   But it's shouldn't have to be said that when one side of politics gets deleted from twitter and "fact checked" on facebook in the run up to an election you know the platforms have real ethical management issues.     They should just let everyone have their say and let us "the people" decide if those speaking are worth listening to.

Doesn't even have to be about politics. We have plenty of historical examples of what happens when information is consistently & intentionally suppressed.  It would be extremely valuable if more understood what the concept of Lysenkoism is, because it's going to be an issue in most of the sciences for a few decades. It's the same effect. When a very tiny group with outsized power gets some stupid stuck in their mind, the damage can be catastrophic. 

 

I feel like this is also a great time to suggest people look up why Corn Flakes development and what its original purpose was. It's some high comedy, so I'll leave that to others. Because if you think "Tech Moguls Have Strange Ideas" is new, you're in for a world of insight.

[Brooksie359]

5 hours ago, Sauron said:

That has largely been the case except for illegal content and dangerous (and easily disprovable) lies.

What that employee did was not worse than what people Musk cited as being unfairly "censored" did. The only difference is that Musk didn't personally like what he did while he did like what those others did. That's not "free speech absolutism", it's free speech for me and not for thee.

Honestly there are a few examples that I can think of that were censored that aren't illegal content and are more controversial topics that Twitter has taken a stance on one side of. Also I think you fail to realize that asking for free speech from a platform isn't the same as asking for freedom from getting in trouble with your employer if you do something you aren't supposed to. 

[Heliian]

Tesla lost 112 billion in valuation.  It's like their product relies on elons musings and not the actual product.  

 

If elon were to die would his companies all just fold?