Elon Musk Buys Twitter

[Edge-]

Sadly yes.

People have become too intellectually lazy to do any sort of critical thinking.

It also doesn't help that we have a fairly large group of people who think sites like The Babylon Bee (before they got kicked off Twitter for repeat rule violation lol) and The Onion aren't satire and are actually in fact very very serious journalism.

Usually also the same crowd that feeds on misinformation and struggles to differentiate between reality and their fantasies.

[Endus]

It also doesn't help that we have a fairly large group of people who think sites like The Babylon Bee (before they got kicked off Twitter for repeat rule violation lol) and The Onion aren't satire and are actually in fact very very serious journalism.

Usually also the same crowd that feeds on misinformation and struggles to differentiate between reality and their fantasies.

This said, the Onion's recent amicus brief to SCOTUS is an amazing read.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketP...us%20Brief.pdf

Not only because the whole thing is deeply satirical, but it's also presented straight-facedly, and the primary subject is the nature of satire itself and how it has to be delivered that way, and how it has to be plausible-enough to be taken seriously for there to be any possibility of humour. It has to trick people into thinking for a hot second it might be true; that's how satire works, and that people who are too fucking dimwitted to recognize it as satire should be recognized for being fuckwit morons and their stupidity is only their own fault and not that of the satirist they were too dense to understand was joking. If you're that fucking dumb, you're not a "reasonable reader", and your reaction is your fault, and yours alone.

[Edge-]

I read part of their brief when they filed it and it was absolutely hilarious. Some of the best quality work their writers have done, period. (I imagine alongside their legal team helping out, so props to them as well)

[Forogil]

also if it were a protocol, some means of communication that is inherently decentralized and allows anyone to talk to anyone, it would just be.... email.
except, it wouldn't be posted in public for everyone to look at.

Well, we had newsgroups and the NNTP protocol that sort of did that during the 1980s.

[Malkiah]

Well, we had newsgroups and the NNTP protocol that sort of did that during the 1980s.

aaahhh yes but that wasn't out in public where everyone was looking at it all the time, and that's the entire point of twitter.

[Poopymonster]

This said, the Onion's recent amicus brief to SCOTUS is an amazing read.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketP...us%20Brief.pdf

Not only because the whole thing is deeply satirical, but it's also presented straight-facedly, and the primary subject is the nature of satire itself and how it has to be delivered that way, and how it has to be plausible-enough to be taken seriously for there to be any possibility of humour. It has to trick people into thinking for a hot second it might be true; that's how satire works, and that people who are too fucking dimwitted to recognize it as satire should be recognized for being fuckwit morons and their stupidity is only their own fault and not that of the satirist they were too dense to understand was joking. If you're that fucking dumb, you're not a "reasonable reader", and your reaction is your fault, and yours alone.

MMOchamp's second favorite lawyer covered it yesterday.

[Flarelaine]

social media is not responsible for the overwhelmingly vast majority of humans being literally, physically, retarded.

Arguably, but social media is responsible for showing them they are in the majority.

[Nymrohd]

Didn't even one of the founders of Twitter say he wish he'd never created it?

It's the worst - social media was a turning point of our society. A bell that can never be unrung.

I mean Twitter is bad but have you seen Tik Tok??? It gets worse.

[NED funded]

I mean Twitter is bad but have you seen Tik Tok??? It gets worse.

Yeah but tiktok is transparent abt being chinese gov spyware so I dont think the person that made it feels bad abt it. Its fulfilling goals

[Paranoid Android]

So AOC and Elon are going back and forth about $8 subscription.

Elon posts this as an own and I have seen this by his fans.



Reply by AOC.

Proud of this and always will be.

My workers are union, make a living wage, have full healthcare, and aren’t subject to racist treatment in their workplaces. Items are made in USA.

Team AOC honors and respects working people. You should try it sometime instead of union-busting.

Getting political here with AOC but for this thread purpose, Elon is trying to make a big deal about the sweater price when as stated it's made in USA and union jobs. Elon is trying to dunk on items manufactured in the USA and I guess who followers who always yell maga, are here for it.

Also ironic that Tesla's is a very high end product.


https://shop.tesla.com/product/men_s...u=1740176-00-A. Doesn't say were it is manufactured.

[PC2]

Yes, it's called human nature you may have heard of it.

The person I was responding to was talking about social media. What I'm saying is that it's not fair to blame most of our online social problems on the platform/technology itself. Some problems do arise solely because of the nature of social media but most of it is caused by human error and is not due to technology/platform error.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juicero

This was a fairly un-iron-outable flaw with a new technology. Almost like some new technology is actually just a bad idea!

Again we were talking about social media. As I've said multiple times on this forum you have to realize that about 70%-90% of new ideas, new inventions, and new businesses will fail and that is completely normal. If a person could make it so that most of their new ideas were good ideas then they would be an extremely rare genius. In the case of Juicero it didn't do anything to solve an unsolved problem so obviously the product was a mistake. Social media sites such as Twitter did solve an unsolved problem though because before social media was invented people couldn't really interact with the authors and content they consumed in a two-way manner.

[Draco-Onis]

Myself and the person I was responding to were talking about social media. What I'm saying is that it's not fair to blame most of our online social problems on the platform/technology itself. Some problems do arise solely because of the nature of social media but most of it is caused by human error and is not due to technology/platform error.

Social media greatly profits from abusing the worst of human nature, that's why algorithms are written for engagement even if that means radicalization. Social media pushes people to believe in falsehoods because it drives profits. If you think about it social media is a failure in its basic premise which was connecting people. If you look at the data people are more depressed, angry and isolated than ever.

[Endus]

Social media greatly profits from abusing the worst of human nature, that's why algorithms are written for engagement even if that means radicalization. Social media pushes people to believe in falsehoods because it drives profits. If you think about it social media is a failure in its basic premise which was connecting people. If you look at the data people are more depressed, angry and isolated than ever.

The problem with the algorithm argument is that the algorithms largely just reflect humanity. They give us more of what we want. Stuff that other people who like what we like also like. That's the "engagement". It only leads to radicalization for people who are already predisposed to radicalization. When I'm flipping through Youtube Shorts mindlessly to kill time and a Jordan Peterson clip shows up, I Dislike it and tell the system not to recommend that channel. I do that every time it's something like that. Because that's the only way to "teach" the algorithm, which you've got to be doing.

The radicalization happens because you get radicalization-curious idiots who don't know how to think critically about anything who let the algo feed their biases and preferentially buy into that content. It doesn't take active choice, but it does require passive engagement and incuriousity.

We both need to be teaching critical thinking as a fundamental technique in schools from primary onward, and we need to consider what we want algorithms to "do". Because the alternative to the customer-appeal method they're currently running on is any number of flavors of directed manipulation, to intentionally guide users down the "correct" paths. And that's so much more exploitable.

[Draco-Onis]

The problem with the algorithm argument is that the algorithms largely just reflect humanity. They give us more of what we want. Stuff that other people who like what we like also like. That's the "engagement". It only leads to radicalization for people who are already predisposed to radicalization. When I'm flipping through Youtube Shorts mindlessly to kill time and a Jordan Peterson clip shows up, I Dislike it and tell the system not to recommend that channel. I do that every time it's something like that. Because that's the only way to "teach" the algorithm, which you've got to be doing.

The radicalization happens because you get radicalization-curious idiots who don't know how to think critically about anything who let the algo feed their biases and preferentially buy into that content. It doesn't take active choice, but it does require passive engagement and incuriousity.

We both need to be teaching critical thinking as a fundamental technique in schools from primary onward, and we need to consider what we want algorithms to "do". Because the alternative to the customer-appeal method they're currently running on is any number of flavors of directed manipulation, to intentionally guide users down the "correct" paths. And that's so much more exploitable.

I am not sure about Canada but the American public educational system is designed to produced workers/consumers not critical thinkers. You don't get exposed to much of it until college depending on where you go, private education is much more adept but obviously out of reach for most people. We have a society designed to produce people susceptible to this, that's why the right wing is laser focused on higher education because they can't afford to have more thinkers.

[Endus]

I am not sure about Canada but the American public educational system is designed to produced workers/consumers not critical thinkers. You don't get exposed to much of it until college depending on where you go, private education is much more adept but obviously out of reach for most people. We have a society designed to produce people susceptible to this, that's why the right wing is laser focused on higher education because they can't afford to have more thinkers.

It's not that different in Canada, though good teachers do what they can. I'm still maintaining my license, though between the Ford government and the pandemic and the looming strike action I'm super glad I'm not actually working in the public school system right now.

Education needs to be based on self-advancement, not job prep. Some job prep will naturally filter in with the self-advancement; there's a whole host of ancillary skills you end up needing, it's about what the primary focus is.

[Doctor Amadeus]

LOL Elon is already in trouble between shilling $8 Blue Verify and already backpedaling on the rabid rights thinking he was going to let them run free reign on twitter.



That said I think Elon Musk will manage Twitter about as well as it ever has been. I honestly like the direction he is taking it in terms of getting rid of bots I do think having a paid tier system is a GREAT IDEA.

The Problem though is nobody is going to pay for that shit really. Some will thus it could make it more sustainable, the BAD news is Twitter is what it is because it provides advertisers with the one thing they can almost never get anywhere else, and that is eyeballs on their product and interaction.

A tiered system could improve their position with quality over quantity, but THEN the problem becomes twitter is about 12 years old, it's competing on what was already diminishing platform, SO all in all, at best Elon Musk is just going to be the final nail in a slow lowering coffin.

All the resurrecting of Vine or Periscope isn't going to save it.

There is a reason Twitter never had anyone to want to buy it and here was a reason it was and always has been dying.

[Edge-]

That said I think Elon Musk will manage Twitter about as well as it ever has been.

Oh no, he's already doing much, much, much worse.

Advertisers are already pausing ad buys and others are considering doing so depending on how things unfold. Power users (who are super valuable) are starting to leave. He has no plan at all and is just looking to cut costs with big layoffs a week after buying the company and well before he can even have a full understanding of the business.

Elon is an idiot. He trolled and played a game of chicken and lost, and now has no plan or idea what the fuck to do with his new social media company. And as with every problem, Elon views Twitter's problems as, apparently, engineering problems. It's not, Twitter's problems have never been "engineering" and they've always been political in nature.

And given how we've seen him handle the whole political/social aspect so far, it's pretty safe to assume that unless he makes a major course change soon that Twitter will be a glorious dumpster fire to watch as it fades into obscurity alongside Gab, Gettr, Parler, and whatever the other low-effort "freeze peach" social media sites that can't attract advertisers.

[Jotaux]

That said I think Elon Musk will manage Twitter about as well as it ever has been.

The problem is that he doesn't have that option. He massively overpaid for it and used borrowed money to do so. The interest on that is too high for him to do nothing so he's stuck trying to monetize the platform far beyond the previous management.

[Edge-]

The problem is that he doesn't have that option. He massively overpaid for it and used borrowed money to do so. The interest on that is too high for him to do nothing so he's stuck trying to monetize the platform far beyond the previous management.

I'm surprised he hasn't floated Dogecoin yet, tbh. Why not bring out all the greatest hits of his shitposting?

[Rasulis]

When you break it down to basics only real difference imo was Instagram focused more on pictures.

The biggest difference is that Citizen Zuck got Instagram for a steal for 1billion. In 2021, Instagram revenue was 41B with 2.1B users.

Correction, Instagram revenue was 47.6b in 2021.