Twitter had a great thing going on. It was not perfect but I never thought it would get absolutely ruined in such a short amount of time
Just like a year ago it was considered an essential part of modern discourse and society. The media was heavily dependent on Twitter. Now, Twitter has lost a lot of influence.
If Elon had simply kept his stupid mouth shut, he wouldn’t have been forced to buy the company, let alone for such a high price. Once purchased, if he had been less of a maniac and just managed Twitter in a boring way that maintained the status quo, then it would still be better off today than it currently is. Everything Elon has done has made the company less valuable and driven away users.
on purpose. by design. with intent.
But what if he’s just a fucking idiot?
It’s possible that Musk is good at some things and not good at others, but his success at those things he’s good at have caused him to think he’s good at everything.
Becoming a billionaire requires winning so many dice rolls that it’s difficult (impossible?) to really understand that you can lose sometimes.
That’s the Techius Bromus Effect. They get too much smoke blown up their asses that they eventually believe they’re capable of solving every problem.
I made up the term but the idea is true.
Hanlon’s razor is reserved for people without a life long rap sheet of blatant malice.
For what it’s worth, I think Elon is both evil and an idiot.
Evil yes, so much that he’s making you believe they are just some idiot
You don’t think it takes a fucking idiot to be forced into spending 44 billion dollars, some of it other people’s money, to purposely destroy a social media platform because you (and the people who’s money you used) were upset how critical said platform was of you?
Then it’s unintelligent design.
They wouldn’t be the richest men in the world then.
Ever since he bought it and started basically wrecking the place, I’ve suspected that his goal has been to reduce the usefulness of Twitter to non-conservatives. Obviously he has a incredibly massive stick up his ass regarding politics, and Twitter failing would mean basically nothing to him personally.
Some people would call that a conspiracy theory or cite maxims such as 'never attribute to malice what could be attributed to incompetence" but I could find some counter-maxims I bet.
It just works.
No way he lost all that money on purpose. He’s just arrogant and makes stupid decisions.
For what purpose?
If Musk just shut his face and kept doing his thing, he would have been a historic figure. Not Edison or Tesla famous, but like an Alexander Bell tier name sure. Especially if his Mars plans panned out. But dude wanted to be Tony Stark and forgot that Stark was charming and likable (in the movies at least) and he… is not.
Not really. Not by any stretch of the imagination. He’s more of a Carnegie type. except Carnegie managed to convince people he was actually a good person. (his philanthropy is responsible for a LOT of the libraries. But also, he came down hard when it came to union busting, and a lot of his dirty work was done by Henry Frick.)
In any case, the reality is, his prior ‘good’ reputation- including for all things you’re saying he’s going to be famous for doing- is more the result of having a good PR staff keep him looking … like that. he’s not a founder of Tesla. he’s not a brilliant engineer (or a brilliant anything else.) he’s just a rich guy tossing money around to make it grow.
I mean, he had a genuinely good reputation prior to the big money and PR back in 2012-ish. I followed him because I love space stuff, and he was this awkward nerd pushing for electric cars, solar power, and reusable rockets, which were so insane it was basically considered impossible. Most of his early twitter conversations were discussing rocket details with other space nerds, pulling videos of RUDs on request, and sharing some of the hidden numbers that we’d normally never have access to. He was genuinely involved in the early years at SpaceX.
Up until he called the guy who saved the cave children a pedo, he was basically held up as one of the individuals who would be responsible for changing the world for the better. An actual example of capitalism being used to push society forward. Then it was a steady downward spiral, but early Elon was basically just a nerd that liked rockets and green tech. Had he stuck in that lane, and not been greedy about squeezing every penny of profit out of Tesla workers, he’d probably still be considered the “real life Iron Man” instead of another classic example of how capitalists are consumed by greed.
So, don’t get me wrong, I am deeply disappointed in what he’s decided to do with himself, but he was a legitimately popular figure and led SpaceX to face off against the military-industrial space industry and break a monopoly that’s been in place for half a century. The myth was exaggerated, but his initial popularity was earned before being wasted.
I’m sorry but only delusional 12 year olds ever believed Muskrat was anything but an attention whore, all of us engineers saw right through the act
Lol, I’m glad you were too cool for school, but his twitter conversations were actual sources used by Ars in the early days, which regularly called on actual rocket scientists. More than that, they were correct, so I’m not entirely sure what you were seeing through. He definitely became an attention whore by the time he started posting memes, but just because somebody became a garbage human being doesn’t mean everything they touched is trash.
SpaceX is a treasure, and I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise.
Yep, I remember years ago when at a national student aerospace conference, attending a small talk by some guy named Elon Musk about his fairly new company, SpaceX. At this point I think they had only launched one (failed) rocket. He was a bit awkward, but seemed passionate about his Mars vision, and did a great job answering a bunch of technical questions by a group of aerospace engineering students. A lot of us were skeptical of him and his company, but more from the standpoint of aerospace being hard for even the least aspirational companies to succeed in.
Later when I starting hearing more about SpaceX I learned that Elon was also an asshole as a manager, but he still came across at least as being technically competent. And he was great at getting funding and driving excitement in an industry that desperately needed it. While there were already some cracks showing in his public image, it was only around the time of that sub rescue pedo incident where that erratic edgelord and asshole behavior became too much too ignore for myself and other people I know.
Yeah? Then why didn’t all the engineers decry him right then and there? Didn’t see much talk calling him out. Ya’ll just let that shit ride? Especially seeing the popularity he was building?
You ever look at his Hyperloop proposal from 2014?
Its not even an engineering CAD drawing. Its three lolipops drawn on FEA (I don’t think even with ANSYS but some cheaper program instead…) with Elon Musk saying that its simulations for an earthquake.
It was hilariously bad. All the engineers I knew of the Hyperloop proposal told me that Elon Musk was an idiot back then.
Squeezing every penny of profit from workers is awful of course, but pretty much par for the course. Where he went wrong was in being a sad and desperate acting attention whore and never shutting the fuck up, while pushing ideas, people and viewpoints that a large amount of people find objectionable. It’s what make people like Zuckerberg or Spez not seem quite as douchey. If they tried to make themselves the #1 star on their platforms they’d probably end up embarrassing themselves too, but they mercifully don’t.
This is a great summary of the fall of Elon Musk. I admired him too years ago until he went off the rails. RIP to the better decisions and the their benefits that this man could have made.
Especially if his Mars plans panned out.
His Mars plan cannot pan out, no more than using rockets in place of airplanes for international travel.
The man is a compulsive attention seeker. He owns some companies that legitimately are good at what they do, arguably pioneers in their field. It’s not enough for him. SpaceX being the leading rocket launcher is not enough for him. Doing something already possible, even if done many times better or cheaper is not flashy enough for him. He needs to go to Mars.
The problem with that is that he is probably going to at least destroy the companies having them chasing his pie in the sky ideas as well as possibly having people die (depending on how far along he manages to take some of his plans).
I thought what he said about his new AI company was hilarious. His new AI company seeks to ‘understand the true nature of the universe’. Just jaw droppingly pretentious, and it is so on-brand for him, as techno-Jesus. Just having a normal AI company isn’t enough - it has to be accomplishing something ridiculous.
There’s nothing wrong with SpaceX’s Mars launch plan, and while the rocket travel plan is niche (read: ultra rich), it’s viable assuming Starship winds up hitting the same reliability levels as airplanes. Course, worst thing that happens is a couple hundred millionaires and billionaires die, so… I see no downsides lol.
Obviously, I’m not gonna defend Elon himself, but sending a Super Heavy to Mars isn’t some grand project like it would be for NASA. For one, other than the engines it only takes a couple of months to build a new booster and Starship, and for two it would take a minimum of 6 months for the Starship to reach Mars after launch (from the optimal window), essentially tying up a single Starship. It also tests low gravity propulsive landing, which is being designed for one of the Artemis landers, as well as the fuel conversion process using solar power to convert CO2 into methane rocket fuel. Which would greatly simplify future NASA projects for Mars.
I doubt there would be a NASA mission on an untested launch platform, but the lack of payload is also what makes it so cheap. They might toss some projects as a just in case, but it’s otherwise an interplanetary proof of concept. I might hate Elon, but SpaceX is currently the best rocket company around, with the Super Heavy likely to make the Space Launch System obsolete the moment it’s certified for government launches.
If you mean launching a rocket to Mars, yes eventually they will be able to do that. That is not what Musk’s bullshit. It’s a permanent base with people on Mars.
The rocket travel plan is not niche, it’s impossible. Sound (environmental) concerns, refueling time cutting into the flight time benefit on turnover, Gs exerted on launch etc. Moreover Musk billed it as a regular service not a “dive to Titanic” kind of activity for billionaires.
It’s also impossible to make a rocket as reliable as a plane. If you seriously consider that possible I cannot argue with you on any other point. Just the planes ability to land and maneuver unpowered makes it much more safer and reliable. The nature of it’s fuel itself makes it much safer and reliable.
Starship/SuperHeavy is not ready. Engine production rate is a huge problem and they need a lot of them per vehicle. They also currently are unreliable with quite a few failures on the last launch. Some might be a result of the first failing but there were at least two clusters of failure, suggesting at least two independent failures.
So when they get SS/SH working the best thing to do would be to take government contracts, or fly Starlink satellites up if it’s profitable. But yeah sending a rocket to Mars for free is exactly the kind of stunt I would expect Musk to do. Like demanding the launch to be on 4/20.
Oh don’t be so hard on the idea… I think we should encourage Musk to launch himself and other billionaires to Mars 💪
Unfortunately I don’t think he is the guy to actually put himself in harm’s way l.
That is not what Musk’s bullshit. It’s a permanent base with people on Mars.
I once watched a press conference with him talking about his plans for SpaceX. The responses he gave about human factors were making cuckoo clock sounds. When asked about the issue of solar radiation exposure his response was along the lines of we don’t need to worry about that. What!? That’s one of the major engineering and safety issues in long duration space flight and habitation. You’ve not even thought about it? So basically he’ll be sending people into space with no concern about turning them into crispy critters.
forgot that Stark was charming and likable (in the movies at least)
But is he, really? I haven’t watched much Marvel but I distinctly remember Tony Stark as a jerk, and that’s even dismissing his bullshit ideology of
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That’s kinda the point of his character ark. It takes till the end for him to really show us who he is deep down. Also, RDJ nailed the balance of ego and redeeming qualities.
But Elon is not the hero of any story. He’s the evil child playing with a magnifying glass on an anthill and he views everyone but him as an ant.
Fuck Elon and I can’t wait till the Saudis come to collect on that $44B they loaned him.
Fuck Elon and I can’t wait till the Saudis come to collect on that $44B they loaned him.
Well, this is news to me. The Saudis owning Tesla is definitely going to be a bitter joke.
Saudi Group is the 2nd largest investor in Elon’s buyout and the largest single entity investor.
Basically America’s billionaire class (aka Elon’s alt right clubhouse gang), now are in the pockets on the evil empire with the single worst human ethics record in modern day society.
If that doesn’t scare the shit out of you, I don’t know what will.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/10/28/saudis-kingdom-holding-company-to-maintain-twitter-stake
Out of all the insane made up things in comic books, a “billionaire with a heart of gold” is the least believable
But Stark was so arrogant
if he had been less of a maniac and just managed Twitter in a boring way that maintained the status quo, then it would still be better off today
The problem is Twitter has almost never been profitable. Changing nothing would have ensured that trend. Especially in this economy.
No, once purchased, the problems were already insurmountable. The company was bought on company debt, meaning that it was in deep shit on day 1 of him owning it. It wasn’t profitable before that move, and adding a ton of debt didn’t improve the situation.
All moves Musk did are essentially cost-cutting measures (except for the ones where he’s trying to establish it as a social network for Nazis).
Firing 75% of the staff works as cost cutting but is very short-sighted. Acting like an attention-starved “fellow kids!!” edgelord and ruining the Verified program wasn’t cost cutting. And then, his edgelordness led to losing 60-70% of ad revenue, which surely nullified any legitimate cost cutting attempts.
There was a method behind these things, which are the exception I mentioned. He removed the moderation staff, because he wanted to encourage Nazi content on the platform, and moderators are bad for that. The paid verified program meant that only fans of him and Nazis would pay money and thus be verified, so he could legitimately amplify their voice on the platform.
The problem he ran into is that advertisers don’t like their ads next to Nazi propaganda, so now revenue is down.
I really don’t understand why he doesn’t see that Coca-Cola doesn’t want their product next to some guy just posting the N-word over and over.
He’s one of the richest men in the world, you are not even a billionare. Can you really point out that his business is off?
The guy is doing exactly what they want to do, if they are letting the platform fall off like that is because that’s what their goal is. They build monopolies.
Do you even billionaire, bro?
I dont understand this sentiment. When Jack Dorsey sold twitter he wanted it delisted so someone could make it more publicly owned. He thought Elon could do that and so it was sold. Its essentially the opposite of what Reddit is trying to do.
If Elon comes in amd says “this company needs to change or else it wont survive” i would believe that. People are essentially mad that the company doesnt have investor funding.
@PatFussy People are essentially mad that the company doesnt have investor funding.
lolwhat. That is not the issue anyone has, have you been paying even the slightest bit of attention?!
@BlackRose @NeutralFlame @phoneymouseSorry, you believe what Elon Musk says about anything at this point?
Dorsey sold Twitter for a reason. It wasmt money. You tell me why he thought Elon was the best option
Why wasn’t it money? Are you saying he isn’t a greedy billionaire like all of the other tech CEOs?
Twitter wasnt profitable and had net losses as it was losing hundreds of millions a year. Dorsey wanted to make twitter profitable while making it more inclusive and trusted. At the time he saw Elon as the best leader based on how he had led Tesla.
Dorsey only held about 2% of the company. The only winners on that sale were the investors. All i was trying to say is if Elon had done nothing, the only winners would have been investors.
You are implying that Dorsey picked Musk to take over Twitter. He didn’t. Musk tried to do a pump-and-dump like he always does and he fucked around and found out. He even tried to back out of buying it. You’re basically telling me to ignore the whole history of the lead-up to Musk’s purchase in exchange for some conspiracy theory involving Jack Dorsey that doesn’t even make sense.
Companies change hands. Governments change parties. People seem to forget that, and they want to hand absolute power over to their buddies in companies or in the government, with no regard for those facts.
Remember what happened here, and know that it can happen again at any time.
Twitter was a cesspool, good riddance
It’s probably because all the pictures of Elon and this lain would post. I’m sure he’s destroying it out of ego
It’s interesting how everyone keeps saying it’s ruined while I personally don’t notice any difference. If I didn’t read posts about it on reddit/lemmy I wouldn’t know any changes have been made
Edit: I wonder what the downvotes are for?
Pushing blue checks to the top of every comment thread has amplified the worst voices on the platform.
If that really is so then that’s quite a stupid feature. I don’t personally read comment threads there so I haven’t noticed
Oh it’s very true. No badges are at the very bottom every single time. Stupid comments with blue badges are always top.
I wonder if there’s some add-on that automatically filters out comments from blue checks. That way they’d be self-selecting themselves out of our feeds
Can you describe how it’s been absolutely ruined?
No way to verify accounts, weird paywalling, pay for views, losing tons of money, mostly just that
And like Reddit, they shut down the 3rd party apps that made it more pleasant to use, especially on mobile. I didn’t realize how shitty native Twitter is until I lost Tweetbot.
It was always losing tons of money. Nothing changed there.
The amount of money it’s losing now is a LOT more. Advertising is down 70%, so someone definitely noticed a difference. Also they are now $13 billion in debt, owing a billion a year just on interest.
Sorting Elon stans to the top of reply chains is a negative change. Hate speech is now only regulated for Liberals. Also, they ruined the entire concept of verification.
comment history shows this is the user’s only comment
Well shit, astroturfing has made its way here
Yeah dude, it’s the brand that’s the problem, you’ve figured it out.
After this, everyone will love it.
Yep, just like all of Facebook’s problems went away after they renamed to Meta. Turns out it was all just a bad brand image to begin with! Nothing to do with out of touch billionaires running companies into the ground, just slap a new logo on it.
Dude needs to stop posting every time he tries a new psychedelic.
Could “Billionaire X’s latest stupid remark” not be considered “technology” news?
It’s not “news” either.
Please welcome the new “Truth Social 2.0”!
The content is becoming that, but since it’s Musk, the name will probably be ”8008Z 420”
No, it’ll just be shortened to, “Twit” and the bird logo will be replaced with his face.
Well, that’d be the most appropriate new branding anyway.
Pravdanet
If not for Elon I wouldn’t have gone to Mastodon and in extension to Lemmy.
So, this is kinda nice. :)
Really wish this was a PSA-type ad campaign, throw in Reddit -> Lemmy and warn the overlords their days and dollars are numbered.
This makes you wonder what their real plan is. They have everyone data, they know what people do and their preferences, they act after these not before
Ideas for the new logo? I think he should go with a black-red motif, with lots of right angles.
We’ll call it the Musk-stika!
Take this upvote and get out!
I did na - zi that coming.
A Phoenix perhaps.
Lol, spend billions to make a brand. Then overhype it, pay inflated price to acquire said brand and now decide to kill the brand. Master genius!
Buy high sell low. He must have learned from r/wallstreetbets
Double burn.
“Quick, our ad revenue is shrinking, what do we do? Restricting people from seeing tweets and defeating the whole purpose of why they’re on the platform didn’t work (yet)!”
“I’ve got it, we get rid of the whole name. From now on companies will say to follow them on X! That won’t lose them any viewership at all!”
“But if they’re going to mention a new name to people anyway, wouldn’t this be the perfect opportunity for them to leave for another platform? All they have to do is say to follow on them Mastodon instead of X”
“Fire them, now.”
8D Bingo!
The poes law on Musk tweet screenshots is through the roof. I have absolutely no idea if this is real.
Oh it’s real. It’s part of Musk’s whole stupid “X the everything app” bullshit he has been talking about for years. He is a huge moron. I mean the first sentence in the description of the site for his new company xAI is: “xAI is a new company founded by Elon Musk that sets out to understand the universe” …he is such a fuckin loser.
Imma make a company called yAI and our goal is going to be to solve all the problems everyone has ever had. Don’t ask me how yet because that doesn’t matter but the solutions will involve AI and my genius ability to solve all the problems. All banks give me money now please thank you.
If all these scientists and engineers are so much smarter than Musk, how come they never had the idea to just understand the universe? 🤔
It’s called physics, you should check it out.
Whoosh?
It’s called physics, you should check it out.
X. sooooo edgey.
Can the band X trademark claim him?
Just for fun.
Also: vAI so you get called on before Elon in alpha(betical) order.
get in line
That would be a great logo for an I.U.D. company
Exactly what I thought
Stop giving these dumb fucks attention, good lord
Every single tweet is getting attention. It’s so weird. These guys have all kinds of disorders and mental issues but the world loves their every comment. I guess we don’t have anything better to do than discuss what they are saying. Sad.
All the employees left are just doing what he says without any questions. It’s becoming malicious compliance and I love it.
“You want our recognizable blue bird to be replaced by an X?.. You’re the boss!!”
He fired everyone who tried to question him on the spot, sometimes even by public tweets.
Except that one guy who had a long-term contract with Twitter. He was threatened to be fired by Musk. Then he showed off a huge $hundred-million portion of his contract if he were ever laid off or fired, and suddenly Elon Musk treated him with a lot of kindness and respect online.
Did that guy actually take back his job? Since he already got the firing in writing, I’d totally have run with it.
Allowing Elon Musk to run a company is like electing a kid who thinks the government should give everyone free icecream and make crime ok on Thursdays.
Someone needs to find him a role where he can feel like he’s helping without getting in everyone else’s way.
Don’t insult the kid like that. They are nothing alike!
I mean that role was SpaceX. Give them lots of money and get cool rockets. It was going great, and it was great for his image as it’s not very political. But I guess he got bored.
I think the people working at SpaceX are probably glad Elon has his mind and hands preoccupied with other stupid shit so he’ll leave them the hell alone.
Can you imagine if he were as convinced that he needed to have his hands in every little piece of that pie?
It would probably be a complete disaster.
When you see what a massive moron he is it makes you wonder all of the people behind the scenes at spacex that had to deal with his stupid and make the company succeed despite him.
Every day some engineer would have to answer his questions. “Can we remove brown?” “Pardon me?” “The color, brown, can we remove it?” “I’m sorry I don’t understand, remove it from where? I don’t think our rocket has any b-” “No, I mean from the world. Maybe with our satellites?” “I…don’t think that’s something we’ll be able to-” “How about birds? I don’t like them. They remind me of god.” “We…we’ll look into it.”
Old mate certainly has birds flying around in his empty head, that’s for sure
The 52 year old cringe-lord ladies and gentlemen…
Honestly it’s better off that he changes the name. It’s not really Twitter anymore.
