Prediction: Brain drain at Twitter begins as Elon starts enacting unpopular policies. Valuation tanks. Morale becomes non-existent and Twitter slowly starts to fade from existence while competitors begin to fill the void. I give it 3-5 years before it's gone full husk.
Prediction: Twitter becomes more efficient, focused and profitable than they ever have been. And it will return to the platform neutrality and free speech ideals it had prior to 2015ish.
"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor"
Of course, it's not always clear what injustice is and reasonable people might disagree, but I think there are certain minimum standards, like "anti-semitism and blatant racism are bad".
In my experience with Twitter, and most situations, the who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed is largely subjective. There is very little objectivity. The old twitter way was; "any speech that makes me offended or uncomfortable is oppressive" ...which would ultimately lead to a shadow ban or permanent "suspension" of the account labelled as "oppressive."
A great example of this is the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of accounts, which were permanently banned in October of 2021. Their own thought crime was posting revelations from Ashely Biden's diary and Hunter Biden's laptop. The excuse was " Russian disinformation" but news of late have proven Twitter's statement as clear disinformation in itself.
Musk had already said content that is illegal won't be permitted, and troublemakers will be dealt with, and that perma-ban will be final course, not the first & only.
The American constitution has done a uniquely good job of enumerating those limits. It seems like a stretch to paint a de facto adherence to free speech (as outlined by the law of the land in a given jurisdiction) as oppressive, when the status quo has been unilateral normative judgements of relevant political speech by an unrepresentative cabal of employee-activists.
> The American constitution has done a uniquely good job of enumerating those limits.
Assuming you're referring to constitutional law jurisprudence here and not the First Amendment's meager words here, I don't think I can agree with this statement. The short summary of the jurisprudence is that the government has no powers of censorship whatsoever, and the margins of where speech can become illegal are so far away that it's basically impossible to reach them (e.g., to reach the bar in Brandenburg, you more or less need to be at the head of a literal mob getting ready to lynch somebody). Unless you're a student.
As a guideline for moderation, it's absolute shit. There's ample evidence that absence of moderation will cause forums to degrade into cesspools, and the guideline of First Amendment jurisprudence is that the government is not permitted to be a moderator.
The American constitution contains like ten words about free speech, zero of which provide any explanation for what free speech means. Maybe you could say that the particular legal interpretation of those words in the US has done a good job enumerating the limits of free speech - but the text of the constitution sure as hell hasn't.
Legal interpretation of the constitution has also very clearly found that a huge collection of actual literal Nazis marching around shouting "death to jews" at the top of their lungs is a-okay. Excuse me if I'm not super excited for that to be present on various social media platforms.
Sorry, I should have been clearer, I thought it'd be evident that I meant the legal understanding that emerged from the constitution, rather than the text itself.
Of course I despise the vitriol spewed on twitter as much as anyone else, but I'd sooner that idiocy be exposed and ridiculed than cede control over acceptable speech to ideologically motivated moderators in the inevitable instances where the ethical lines are blurrier. I realize that's a bit of an antiquated view, and the prevalent opinion is that these people can't be reasoned with and thus shouldn't be platformed, but I truly believe that that cynicism is a greater threat to our liberal institutions than the odd troll or bigot making racist remarks with 25 followers.
I think it is rather important. Because once you recognize that this is the legal understanding rather than the text itself a really critical thing emerges. Interpretation has not been the same throughout history. When was the time when our interpretation of the constitution produced optimal social media moderation policy? If it is now, what happens when in the future interpretation of speech rights changes? Or even right now? "Bong hits for Jesus"-kid was punished and that was upheld as consistent with the 1st amendment.
> but I'd sooner that idiocy be exposed and ridiculed than cede control over acceptable speech to ideologically motivated moderators in the inevitable instances where the ethical lines are blurrier.
Great. Will you also be willing to be the person who experiences a torrent of hate speech directed at them? This is not an abstract thing where somebody else can "expose and ridicule" proponents of hate. You need to be willing to have the Nazis literally protest at your home and your job every single day and not leave.
> the odd troll or bigot making racist remarks with 25 followers.
If you think this is an honest portrayal of the state of hate on social media when moderation is reduced to "everything that isn't illegal" then you are grossly mistaken.
The fact that legal interpretation has changed over time is a feature; the essential point is that it is within the democratic institution of the judicial system that the debate over and enforcement of acceptable speech should occur.
Yes, I am committed to backing up my philosophical attachment to free speech at the expense of personal inconvenience. I realize that's an empty statement without actually being subjected to that reality, but that's the best I can do.
If I'm wrong about the extent to which hate speech proliferates in unmoderated spaces (absent the adverse selection effect for sites like 4chan), then that's all the more reason to address that undercurrent of our societies. If anything, I'd argue pushing people off platforms where they might encounter dissenting views exacerbates radicalization.
I don't believe that it is the best you can do. What you can do is become an active ally, through your time or money, for the people who will suffer by having hate invade their spaces.
> Legal interpretation of the constitution has also very clearly found that a huge collection of actual literal Nazis marching around shouting "death to jews" at the top of their lungs is a-okay.
Not okay, but not illegal, and better than the alternative i.e. a society without freedom of speech (as the Reich was, or Weimar Germany).
2. I probably take the threats to your elections more seriously than you (I read whole of the the Antrim County computer forensics report, I'll never get that time back but I put in the effort).
3. To label ideological opponents with the label of a mental illness simply for disagreement is a poor show.
4. I take anyone being banned from anything for speech that should be free (which is almost all speech) very seriously.
5. "haha Nazis are shit" is below par for HN. Try not to waste my time and others with stuff you can safely spew out on Twitter and get likes for even though it's vapid.
> I probably take the threats to your elections more seriously than you (I read whole of the the Antrim County computer forensics report, I'll never get that time back but I put in the effort).
I don't think that's true, since you think that people being banned on social media is a greater threat to a fall to authoritarianism.
> To label ideological opponents with the label of a mental illness simply for disagreement is a poor show.
I did not do this. Nor is this just "simply for disagreement." Argument over the best way of funding retirement savings programs is distinct from arguments over whether or not to throw gay people in prison, for example.
> I take anyone being banned from anything for speech that should be free (which is almost all speech) very seriously.
I'm sure you do. I hope that you also donate your time and money to those who suffer at the hands of people spreading hate.
> haha Nazis are shit" is below par for HN. Try not to waste my time and others with stuff you can safely spew out on Twitter and get likes for even though it's vapid.
Nazis are shit. You are treating me like a child. You use this "you talk like you are on Twitter" move pretty often as a way of talking down to people.
> you think that people being banned on social media is a greater threat to a fall to authoritarianism.
That's a strange reading that seems to assume that free speech goes hand in hand with authoritarianism, a laughable notion. Free speech is the antithesis of authoritarianism. No authoritarian has ever allowed anything approaching freedom of speech within their jurisdiction and sometimes even enforce it far beyond. As such, what you think is wrong.
> > To label ideological opponents with the label of a mental illness simply for disagreement is a poor show.
> I did not do this.
A phobia is a mental illness, you call your ideological opponents transphobes, so you did do this. It's pathetic name calling.
> I hope that you also donate your time and money to those who suffer at the hands of people spreading hate.
I'm here right now spending my time doing just that because you quite clearly do hate your opponents.
> Nazis are shit. You are treating me like a child.
No one here has claimed that Nazis aren't shit but you're acting like a teenager high on self righteousness that thinks proclaiming that is some kind of insight for the rest of us. It is childish.
As I wrote, HN isn't the place, and one reason I bring it up far too often is because far too often of late I see people, like yourself, treating it as such. I make no apologies for wanting the standards to remain high.
Wow. You complain about the quality of discourse and then resort to arguing that transphobia means something completely different than its ordinary use (and obviously my intention) based entirely on definition-by-etymology. Of everything in this thread between you and me, this is the most clearly in bad faith.
Tell you what. I'll change all my words if it'll make you take me seriously. Substitute "bigots against trans people." It'll change none of my meaning.
It's ordinary use is the one I'm complaining about. It's a slur that implies irrational hatred, disgust and fear - that is a mental illness, hence why phobia is appended to the objects of fear.
There's a reason such a misnomer is used, and there's a reason why those using it such as yourself, seem to overlook its utterly mistaken connotations.
> Substitute "bigots against trans people." It'll change none of my meaning.
I know, but you're begging the question, while being an ironic hypocrite. How about you substitute a specific and accurate term for those you disagree with, or would it be too difficult for you to actually drop the ad hominem for even a moment out of fear of being shown up?
It's tricky because these platforms are huge, and are a public square in many ways. But they are also companies. The local newspaper is not required to print some anti-semitic screed. A local bar can kick out nazis. People do have alternative ways of freely expressing themselves.
Due to the massive size of these platforms, it feels a bit different, though in that being removed from one could really alter your online presence.
I don't have all the answers. And I suspect that Elon Musk does not, either, but we will have to wait and see...
Sure, I agree Musk underestimates the scope of the challenge.
I'm personally of the belief that network effects have granted Twitter a relatively unassailable cultural position, or at least enough of a moat to greatly reduce competitive pressures, and so should be subjected to different standards than a local bar or paper -- and if the analogy is to a newspaper, then Twitter should be treated as a publisher with all the attendant regulatory baggage that carries. It's hard for them to argue they have a right, as a private company, to shape the conversation, and in the same breath claim they're shielded from legal responsibility for what takes place on their site.
It's definitely a tricky debate, but in my personal value stack I place individuals' freedom of speech much higher than a private company's right to refuse service, so that's where I fall.
If twitter held itself to the same standard as the government regarding free speech everyone would leave within a year. Unmoderated platforms have never been successful.
As with many of the things Elon has tweeted or said, appearing to value free speech for Twitter was just him appealing to conservatives, upset with their perception of cancel culture.
Wait to see if Elon actually makes any TOS and policy changes in the next month, and debate then.
The classic definition was basically the freedom to criticize your government without repercussions.
Conservatives now define it as the permission to spread deliberate misinformation and overt racism and bigotry without consequences from either the government OR private entities.
Because liberal used to mean "supporting liberty" (the classical definition). But it has come to mean "agreeing with a certain set of beliefs and policies", and (recently) trying to de-platform anyone who publicly disagrees. And, in our bipolar political spectrum, those who disagree with the "liberals" are the "conservatives", who are therefore the ones the "liberals" are trying to de-platform.
So the "conservatives" believe very strongly in free speech (at the moment) because it's their speech that is currently getting crimped. And, seeing the trends, they think it's likely to get worse in the future. (As, say, anything disagreeing with the current "liberal" position gets labeled "racist" or "transphobic" or something, designed to make it virtuous to censor.)
free speech is a liberal value. The conservatives, however, have tried to hide behind 'free speech' in order to compel speech from private entities, and have tried to pretend that they don't have a hammerlock on the mainstream media, and have tried to pretend that 'big tech' is nebulously conspiring against them whenever it enacts basic decency community standards.
Liberalism is now conservative. Note that conservative and progressive as labels apply relative to the status quo - what was in your youth is not necessarily any longer.
Conservatives have shown they have a blind spot for perceived persecution, at least from the perspective of moderates on the sidelines.
It leaves conservatives open to being conned by everything from Chinese electronics manufacturers [1] to bankrupt reality TV stars [2]. Misconstruing TOS agreement violations as censorship persecution makes it easy for billionaires to win conservative admiration without actually doing anything.
There's a lot of people on twitter who just want to say the n-word, want to say Kanye is right about Jewish people, want to say LGBT people are groomers, etc. I personally don't see the justice in letting people who want to cause material harm to others - people who'd put me in a camp if they had their way - like that have a platform, no-questions-asked
There's a philosophical thing here and people have different views. The ACLU used to defend the right for the KKK and neo-nazis to parade around in jewish neighborhoods doing holocaust denial, etc, and if I remember correctly many of their lawyers doing such work were Jewish. The view if those people are idiots, and they can say this if they want, and more decent people (who outnumber the bigots) will counter the bigoted speech with their own.
No one can credibly deny that some speech is harmful. We'd all like to suppress some speech that we don't like, but the reason free speech advocates take the position they take (generally) is that once speech is prohibited the status quo regime will ban legitimate criticisms. So the good has to be accepted with the bad.
It's a tough issue. If I'm honest I favor censorship of views that I believe are harmful, but would object strenuously if my point of view is censored. I also think being called slurs, etc, is an unpleasant user experience, to say the least, so from a business perspective if nothing else I get why that is censored. Still, the censorship has gone too far in my view. We need to figure out a way to circle this square.
There's quite a difference between Twitter and public street demonstration permits. Allowing Nazis to get the same opportunity to gather on a public street as any other interest group is inherently limited. If they were gathering in front of every house of every Jewish person in the country 24/7/365, that would no longer be protected speech. It would be harassment.
Granting, of course, Twitter goes beyond this. They ban all hate speech at all, no matter how limited it is, but they're a private platform, which gets to the real heart of the issue. Everyone that cares deeply about this who is in agreement with Elon's side and isn't just being petulant about having personally been banned seems to equate Twitter with some kind of true public square or some necessary platform that handicaps a political movement if it can't access it. I just don't see this. The public streets, the government itself, I have no choice but to use and participate in. Everyone has to. But I have never had a Twitter account, never visit the site, and seem to have gotten along fine like that for over 40 years. Trump got banned and is still likely to win his party's presidential nomination in two years. It hasn't materially impacted his ability to get his message out and reach followers at all. Everything Kanye says is still going to be on every headline in every news service in the country the same day, and if he releases an album, his fans will still know. He doesn't need Twitter. I just don't see how that isn't definitive proof that Twitter is not this true common carrier people seem to think it is. You don't need access to one specific private platform to be heard. They're not like an electric utility with a local monopoly that is truly your only option to access a critical service. Trump and Kanye were both well known with hoards of followers before Twitter ever existed, and people would still hang on their words if Twitter completely disappeared tomorrow.
They still take these cases. (It is a bit complicated, individual ACLU chapters have a lot of autonomy, and they do not all agree with each other in all ways.)
So I see a substantial difference.
On one hand, you have lawyers from a nonprofit arguing in court that, while someone's views may be abhorrent, they are legal, and the principle matters more than the harm.
On the other, you have a for-profit entity tilting the landscape upon that speech rests, and as the raging debates about this stuff have shown, is difficult to distinguish profit from other motives.
Running a company with specific ideological priors looks a lot different to me than defending assholes for past speech on principle.
I suppose I have a biased view on this, as a holder of some beliefs that already get censored by normal society, but I really just see it as the cost of doing business. It isn't the end of me as an active agent in society who tries to spread my views, in the same way that blocking Nick Fuentes would end Nazism; just something you work with or around.
Following that logic, I support censoring/deplatforming fascists et al. because I want to hurt their ability to do fascism, not for some higher principle of striving towards a perfect, values-neutral marketplace of ideas. Speech is just another front on the plains of power.
I'd be curious to hear examples of views that people consider reasonable that are censored by normal society. Not implying that they don't exist, just that most of the views that are "censored by normal society" that I'm personally aware of are views that I have no interest in defending.
Beyond all that, which is a tough issue, Twitter is also a company, and if people are freely throwing around the N word and crazy conspiracy garbage, normal people are going to leave. Advertisers are going to leave with them.
I guess Musk is going to put less emphasis on outright bans, and more on “quarantining”. He might not ban an account posting racial slurs all day long, but it won’t be recommended, it won’t come up in search unless you set some special flag, and non-followers who visit it will get some kind of warning interstitial “Many users have reported this content as highly offensive, are you sure you want to view it?” Ads will only be displayed if the advertiser explicitly opts in.
> I personally don't see the justice in letting people who want to cause material harm to others - people who'd put me in a camp if they had their way - like that have a platform
Should Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, and Smith & Wesson be allowed to have Twitter accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers each?
Honestly, if you want to be really consistent, almost every world government should have its officials off Twitter. Any US politician who was in power between 2001 and 2020 did far more "material harm to others"[0] than any given teenager who wants to say racial slurs.
> Should Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, and Smith & Wesson be allowed to have Twitter accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers each?
> Any US politician who was in power between 2001 and 2020 did far more "material harm to others"[0] than any given teenager who wants to say racial slurs.
That comparison is invalid because those companies don't commit their purported harm on Twitter. Same with government officials. Even Kim Jong Un has a Twitter account https://twitter.com/official_kju
The "teenager" (or billionaire influencer) dropping racial slurs and either targeted or broad threats uses social media as the method of the harm they inflict. Mainstream social media companies are concerned with their platforms being used for harm.
"Material harm"? As in physical harm via threats of violence or calls to violent behavior? Or emotional and damaging harm? I honestly think people should generally just be nicer, it's more productive.
Kayne saying "death", but he has since claimed he reversed "def" and "death", that tweet is understandably considered violence. I don't believe hate is violence. I believe this is a common misconception of people who haven't experienced actual violence or true personal danger. I in no way claim this should be some right of passage. Speach isn't deformative or physically damaging. The idea speach is a "frontier" or is the "catalyst" is misleading. Many organizations have direct calls to action for violence and are still posting today.
I think they should be free to say it. I don't think it should promoted by twitter. I'd like that tweets by people with followers over 1 million be subject to some sort of accuracy standards
Hasn’t ISIS been allowed to be on Twitter? Who could possibly be worse than ISIS?
My neighbor Sam down the street likes to say the n-word sometimes and thinks offering hormones to kids is grooming. Still, I don’t think all the Sams in the US would ever be able to do as much material harm by having access to Twitter as ISIS does in one afternoon. Could be wrong.
I don’t think ISIS is currently on Twitter. They were some years back, but was that because Twitter had decided to allow them, or was that just tardiness in enforcement?
ISIS is a sanctioned entity. Knowingly allowing them, or anyone identified as a member, to post on Twitter, would likely be illegal under sanctions laws.
To the extent that Twitter’s approach to ISIS is not mandated by sanctions laws-I don’t see Musk changing Twitter’s corporate policies on ISIS-he has zero sympathy for them and no doubt views them as a threat to humanity’s future.
Musk is likely good news for Donald Trump, Babylon Bee, Jordan Peterson, Libs of TikTok, etc - but no change for ISIS.
The Taliban is somewhat of a different situation - they are the de facto government of Afghanistan, and are far less extreme than ISIS. While they have supported anti-Western terrorist attacks in the past, they claim to have changed, and it looks like their claim may be true.
I still wonder about the legalities of Twitter allowing them to use the site, given they are still under US sanctions. It is possible, however, that the US government has (quietly) asked Twitter to allow it, as a diplomatic/political calculation. Sanctions concerns disappear if the government is asking you to disregard them (they can give you a formal legal exemption from them - even secretly; even without a formal exemption, if the government asks you to do something, that is an estoppel against them taking legal action for acceding to your request.)
What is your point? I am not sure why I even have to mention this, because to me it is apparent, but statements and opinions that are already a part of the currently shared belief system do not need protections at all. It is the all the other stuff that is often ugly, which is why it DOES require protection ( precisely because people are scared of things that make them uncomfortable and will seek to restrict them as much as possible ).
<<people who'd put me in a camp if they had their way
Eh. This train is never late. Just wait until you find out that eventually all the out groups are thinned out and you are identified as the next one in line. That is the normal course of things. People are assholes. Freedom of speech is a basic safety valve.
I dislike that I even have to explain those. All this stuff should be covered in basic social studies.
I don't think views deserve protection just by dint of existing and being expressed. Someone calling me Jew, Jew, Jew isn't a brave or novel thought that lamestrain society is too square to stomach, it's just a pretense to murder.
If you want to talk about basic social studies, I'd suggest the paradox of tolerance.
It is not about being new or being novel ( edit1: or breaking new ground, or waking up squares, being hip or any of those labels ). It is about something a lot simpler than that and this goes to the crux of the matter.
Would you feel comfortable if your opinion that you just expressed above was being targeted for no other reason that it exists and someone somewhere finds it abhorrent. Do you not agree it is a rather bad standard just because, well, it is very general and can be applied to anything down the line?
Edit2:
Yes, I am invoking the "what if that was done to you".
edit3:
<<I'd suggest the paradox of tolerance.
There is no paradox. What you have is a conflict of values. From my perspective, things are either in balance or they are not. I personally would postulate that "escape from freedom" is a much more applicable here, where the pendulum swings from one extreme to the other.
Personally, I do find it mildly amusing that the groups that were persecuted not that long ago are embarking on their own witch hunts shortly thereafter. It is a fascinating insight into the human condition.
<<If you say yes, then...well there's no further discussion to have, and you scare me.
Heh. I too would love to live in such a binary word, where things are simply black or white and there are no shades of grey. I also love how you think this allows to bow out of the discussion. For the record, it does not and I challenge you to openly discuss it. Otherwise, and I am not using this phrase lightly here, you are an intellectual fraud pretending to engage in a good faith argument.
Now, the actual response to:
<< Should I be allowed to hold a rally and say "Someone needs to start lynching some $RACIAL_SLURs"?
Is that even a real question? Are you really drawing a line at name calling? This the hill you are willing to die on? I might be willing to accept some limits along the lines of the precedent that happens to include relatively conclusive standard of "immediate and present danger", but KKK members going through the streets shouting slogans using words you find offensive is absolutely something I am willing to defend, because I actually happen to believe in the founding document of this nation. Hell, I actually promised I will uphold it. I was not born into it and blessed with apathy. I voluntarily chose that path, because I happen to believe in ideals it espouses.
If you think I am the person to be scared of, I feel genuinely concerned for you. I would recommend less.. whatever it is that got you wound up.
Wait.
Are you arguing that "Someone needs to start lynching" equates to clear and present danger", because I am relatively certain a lot would depend on the context AND the resulting consequences? Like.. not to search very far, and to put things in perspective, to what extent did BLM protest rhetoric contributed to the resulting riots. Should we start locking them up?
I can give you that it is a close call, but nowhere near as clear you as you make it seem.
Either way, you may want to reconsider your argument a little. Those same rules are supposed to protect everyone. There is a reason for it.
Edit:
<< How far are you willing to take the notion of Freedom of Speech?
Notion. It is an idea enshrined in god damn law. It is a right. And it is one of the few things founders agreed upon. And it is the very first one.
You know what is a notion? Deconstructionism. There is a difference.
"Consequences" are enacted by an authority. The thing that happens on Twitter is "mob justice". EDIT: I did not read carefully before commenting, this comment is irrelevant.
The 'authority' mentioned was an employer, who is free to hire and fire people at will in he US, in many cases. Turns out that employing, say, a nazi, is not popular at many companies.
This can certainly go to far, but it's kind of up to the employer, isn't it.
In that case, it is impossible for Twitter to achieve neutrality (in that they can't control how viewers respond to a particular individual's odious tweets). If anything removing these sorts of tweets was a nice gift to bigots, covering their tracks for them.
Neutrality is neutrality. <---- that's a big period. Last time I went to Switzerland, didn't look like an oppressive place to me. Actually the rest of the world did.
Yes, my guess is they piss off the least amount of people right now, Musk is likely to make it much worse. Still, I might get an edit button so I'll be happy about that!
What is this pre-2015 neutrality you speak of? Wikipedia mentions a 2015 campaign of trying to ban ISIS propaganda accounts. Are you talking about that?
Twitter is already biased towards right-wing sources, despite the right being the loudest at claiming persecution. [1] If Twitter actually became more platform neutral, then ironically we should see a shift towards the left.
> And it will return to the platform neutrality and free speech ideals it had prior to 2015ish.
I'm not sure that's possible. Even if you could magically roll back Twitter to pre-2015 (staff, code, rules, etc.), the world has changed and the average Twitter user has changed.
For all of Musk's proponents' claims that this is a boon for "free speech", such free speech is anathema to corporate interests, particularly advertisers and corporate partners (we only need to look at the recent Ye + Adidas bustup).
Thus, it will likely devolve into "Free Speech (TM)", the my-way-or-the-highway speech policing that we see in places like /r/conservative where any criticism of Musk's preferred views is silenced. Again, we only need to take his own history towards criticism to see what Musk with a bullhorn is likely to do.
And, thus, we can only hope that it becomes such a cesspool of hatred such as Parler and other so-called liberterian free-speech platforms that it becomes toxic for investors and users, save for those who relish the echo-chamber.
It wasn't that early. YouTube was, and still is, full of vine compilations. It really blew up for a while just serving 6 second videos at a low/moderate resolution. It could have been TikTok easily.
That's a great point tbqh. Had vine lived I'm guessing they would have had to play catch up with that feature and who knows maybe they would have been too late.
The entire platform essentially died in 2015 and then was resurrected by Donald Trump being obsessed with it, which got a ton of political and finance people to join. None of their recent initiatives have moved the needle. Musk is going to lose a lot of money on this deal, but they'd probably be better off under him if not for the crushing debt load
There are still a lot of smart people there that are working on hard at scale problems. Just because the stock is stagnant doesn't mean there aren't smart people there keeping it running.
For some reason, people seem to assume that people will like virtual reality. It all seems very forced to me, much like 3D TVs, and won't live up to the hype.
VR mini golf with my friends is the closest thing to hanging out in person without actually doing so. It’s a pretty dramatic difference over a phone call or other type of video game together.
Have you tried it Oculus or similar tech? I found it to be a different level than 3D TV and 3D cinema, both of which were cool when you first saw them but quickly lost their novelty factor. To me, VR hasn't, and the immersive experience is still great.
I haven't tried the Metaverse and have no clue whether that'll take off, I'm more talking about the general technology. I have to admit, I'm still surprised it hasn't taken off stronger.
Brain drains usually happen due to low or uncompetitive pay, not because of corporate ideology. Otherwise Facebook/Meta would have had a brain drain years ago.
I know one insider at Meta that I could ask about this. I suspect they can't really retain talent like they used to.
The only other anecdote I have is an acquaintance who was early (i.e. the first web-dev) at YouTube. He _hated_ working for Google and left as soon as his shares vested. That was my first experience with someone simply rejecting a fat paycheck because _Google_ was to buttoned down for them.
People are strange (and software engineers are a whole different level of people).
> He _hated_ working for Google and left as soon as his shares vested. That was my first experience with someone simply rejecting a fat paycheck because _Google_ was to buttoned down for them.
It's easier to reject a fat paycheck after your shares vest, I imagine.
I think I will disagree here. Admittedly, I base this on anecdata only, but among my work colleagues, political affinity got weirdly important. To me it is odd, because I genuinely doubt that outside outliers like Ben and Jerry, companies care about anything other than their specific bottom line ( and policies supporting it ).
The companies might not care, but the perception of working for them might matter. I wonder if your colleagues would care if nobody knew who they worked for, when it's "do I want to work for this company", not "do I want my neighbors to know that I work for this company".
I doubt that will happen, I’m no Elon fanboy but he is a very capable business leader. He has clear plans to increase growth, and increase revenue. Both of those require policies that don’t push either users or advertisers away.
I suspect he will surprise us with some product decisions, but I wouldn’t bet against him.
I’m sure he will upset some users and some advertisers, but on the whole he understands that in order for his investment to make a return Twitter needs to be popular.
Elon may be notorious for his big statements, and he has certainly made a few around twitter, but I don’t believe he is doing anything other than investing in a business that he is personally interested in. That’s his MO, it’s about growth not ideology.
If you haven’t seen them take a look at the released email/text exchanges between Elon and the Twitter CEO and board from the lawsuit. They offer a good insight into what his thought process is.
Tesla and SpaceX have hired a ton of hard-to-hire talent. I don't understand why people might want to work for those companies because as far as I know the working condition is horrible. But again, his companies hire really good people to work on their problems.
From the software engineering side, it's still an opportunity to work on one of the highest traffic web sites on the internet. There's not a massive number of opportunities to do that.
They also made a whole lot of progress on those big problems before Musk's public face-heel turn.
IMO Tesla -- we owe them a bit, for revitalizing electric cars. Now that the big brands have come around, I'm not sure Tesla has such a huge draw (?). Like if you are an engineer, you could work on the same problems at Ford, but with fewer CEO antics, your designs will probably be implemented with better build quality, and I bet your employment would be more stable.
They're given the opportunity to work on big, macro problems (efficient space travel, energy generation/storage/security, climate change, etc). What's not to get?
What valuation? Per the article, it's being delisted and taken private. Which, may attract talent who wants to build something for the long term rather than being pinned to quarterly reports.
My money would be on software developers with certain personality quirks being drawn to Musk's leadership while those who have been building Twitter's compliance and moderation infrastructure would be repulsed. But, I don't think we'll really ever know because - as a private company - I expect Twitter to not disclose that information in the future.
Maybe - they better make sure to negotiate a killer employee contract given they won't be getting stock which is fungible. BTW - all software developers have certain personality quirks:)
I have zero information on how X (i.e. Musk's holding company for Twitter) is structured but it's possible to issue stock in a private company. The difference is that you cannot sell that stock on the public markets and need to find a buyer through a secondary market. Your requirements for selling are also typically more restricted.
There are many people who support Elon and the policies he intends to enact. And if you don’t believe that’s the case, then I’d encourage you to have more conversations with people who don’t align with your views. I’m fairly confident he’ll have no shortage of talent willing
to help implement his vision.
Not going to lie, whoever owns it, I have an inner hatred for that hell site. The way I see it, it can go two ways...either Musk somehow manages to actually make the site tolerable, or it dies. Its going to be one or the other...nobody really knows which way yet. Either direction is a win in my eyes though. If it changes for the better: great! If it dies: even better! More social media sites will take its place.
This is my thought. One way or the other, Twitter is going to be less of a blight on society a year from now. I consider them far worse than Facebook, even though Facebook gets more criticism.
Agreed. Although I do think following just a few hand curated accounts has a lot of value as a topical news feed. Or to get local news in near real-time. The rest of it is worthless to me.
For one, the lack of any nuance. 240 characters is not enough to accurately articulate a persons thoughts, so people infer meaning from otherwise harmless statements. Places that allow for longer comments, like HackerNews, have better discussion because you can post what you actually think.
Second, I just don't like the site. You go to the site, click on the news ticker for any topic, and you see a million of the worst takes ever dreamed up by mankind. The format also encourages mob mentality which I find very disturbing.
Not the person you asked, I wouldn't say I have a visceral hatred for twitter but I do have a strong dislike.
One issue I find just generally with social media is that it incentivizes some inherent qualities in people that are detrimental to a functioning society. The nature of twitter encourages two behaviors that seem antithetical to constructive dialog.
Tweets are short. This makes it extremely difficult to have nuance in any conversation and makes it really easy for people to take a tweet that might be part of a larger thread or a series of replies out of context. There are lots of examples of a tweet blowing up someone's life and then you come to find out that the reality was, unsurprisingly, unable to be captured in 140 (or 280) characters.
Tweets are algorithmically promoted based on engagement. This really isn't just a Twitter thing, most social media works this way. The problem comes when you combine this with the first issue. "Hot takes" and things that outrage are pretty engaging and end up going far on the site.
So you take these two things together and what you end up with is a lot of content that takes complex topics and turns them into snappy hot takes. People then engage with those and our natural tribal tendencies take over and people fall into camps of either agreeing or disagreeing with the tweet. Now their agreement or disagreement might not be total, but in comes the format of twitter, it's hard in so few characters to express a nuanced opinion like "Well I agree with these parts of the tweet because of XYZ but I disagree with ABC and I think it totally misses the complexities of JKL."
In my experience a lot of twitter ends up devolving into a rabid sort of tribalism. But that's not universal, many people carefully curate who they follow and derive a great deal of value from the site. I think though when people have a strong negative reaction to it, they are probably considering what they (and I) perceive to be the majority case of people following popular twitter accounts (by definition they are popular because they have lots of followers) and taking part in the lower quality dialog trap I described above.
Twitter clearly has a problem of technical competence somewhere. It may be withing the people he is planning to change, or it may be somewhere else and those people are the only reason it barely works.
But the one thing that is obvious is that everything there is not fine.
In this age of remote work if they open positions remotely to anyone in the world on SF salaries they will have access to an infinite pool of competent engineers, taking into account that Twitter isn't rocket science, and also that Elon has his fans. Brain drain is not a risk.
If this is a normal Silicon Valley deal, until Twitter relists or sells the valuation at vest of the already granted RSUs will be $54.20. So from an employee perspective the valuation will stay high.
I would be really surprised if this remains privately-held for very long. It's a LOT of capital (and a lot of it borrowed) so my guess would be that he has an eye on Zuckerberging it (issuing himself a class shares with all the votes, but marketing another class of shares without them).
It sure was. I’ve been on HN for more than 10 years with my real name.
I know it sounds silly that I’d use a throwaway to say I want to work for Twitter now.
But if I do end up working there I have a feeling some in my network may not be so happy about this. I’d have to come to terms with that and plan some things out.
Maybe I’m overreacting, maybe not. But it’s on my mind these days when I say I support free speech within the confines of existing US law.
This is a honest question. Why do people talk about "free speech" because there is no such thing outside of 1st Amendment which is to ensure that Govt. cannot do anything to an individual. For private businesses, where is this free speech coming from ? Twitter banning someone (whether you agree or disagree) is not a violation of free speech unless the definition has changed.
Yes, that’s fair. I’m using colloquial shorthand on mobile.
What I mean to say is that I support a company freely choosing to adopt a content moderation policy that aligns as closely as possible to the US 1st Amendment.
I think the US 1st Amendment is among (if not the) strongest free speech laws in the world, and it would be beneficial to society to have a major social media platform adopt that ideal as their North Star.
Right now presents an interesting and rather unique opportunity to convert a major social media platform from an ad-driven model with shareholders seeking endless growth to a sustainable, long-term business model with a revenue model that aligns closer to users. And sprinkle on top the idea of making the platform more inclusive to diverse groups and opinions with less echo-chamber. That interests me.
Freedom of speech is a principle. The US 1st Amendment is one specific implementation of that principle, but generally people asking for free speech are making a moral argument, not a legal one.
They don't need to worry about valuation, they're just going to cut costs and extract revenue.
Politicians and sports media aren't going to abandon twitter any time soon, so I expect revenue will hold for quite some time.
It seems that many people abandoned FB already. If those same people abandon twitter, where will they go? I personally don't use twitter because I don't want to see updates from random people on the internet, but is there a replacement for that? I'm not sure.
With a strong vision for freedom of speech and actual value enforcement (edit: of the transparency value, not just start censoring the other side), it would attract the right people. We can argue the recent dilution of Twitter's values to meddle with U.S. politics was the actual brain drain.
I think the Venn Diagram of free speech absolutists and competent developers is a lot smaller than Elon and most people realize.
Twitter has never been nor propertied itself to be a bastion of free speech, so I always find this pearl-clutching at "meddling in X" funny. It's a private company, it can do as it please.
I think there are hardly any free speech absolutists these days. Who's standing up for free speech when it's free speech they detest? Instead it's a bunch of people loudly defending their free speech.
I propose a new term for the "Free speech" to say whatever hateful, bad-faith, trolling and ignorant thing anyone wants to say on someone else's website: "Platform entitlement".
>With a strong vision for platform entitlement and actual value enforcement, it would attract the right people. We can argue the recent dilution of Twitter's values to meddle with U.S. politics was the actual brain drain.
After all, the ideological concept of "free speech" as is commonly used in the United States and regarding political freedom is the freedom from government persecution to say whatever you want. It is being transformed by propagandists and those who would see our democracy crumble to mean "being allowed to freeload off of dominant viral message boards to spread whatever misinformation is deemed beneficial to my worldview".
I respect the idea that the Internet is a prerequisite to effective political speech in the Western world for audiences larger than a small town. I believe that certain layers of the World Wide Web, namely DNS/TLS/Network/Hosting do have a "common carrier" obligation to some extent which should possibly be codified.
I do, however, take issue with the idea that individual websites currently have any obligation to be "neutral", though I do believe in being transparent in any potential bias. I also believe it's misleading to call taking down trolls and bad faith bots as "biased".
To be straight to the point, I honestly doubt the motive of anyone who actively criticizes about free speech issues on twitter, given the kinds of democracy-destroying people who have been largely affected by their moderation policies.
Very well put. It should go both ways, and the perception that the platform is fair to each respective stakeholder need not be symmetrical. It should be possible that one political demographic is "deplatformed" more, based purely on their promotion of values that are antisocial and immoral in a community setting. Fairness cannot be determined on a demographic basis alone.
They’re not, they come in opposition to each other so the more you value one aspect the weaker the other becomes.
I don’t know how people who describe themselves as free speech absolutists and claim no one will be censored are even given the time of day when they simultaneously discuss enforcement policies.
We already have and had multiple sites for absolute free speech short of actual government intervention on the internet. They are either small(the various chans) or go out of business(voat and the like) because no advertiser wants to associate with the content that is created, and free speech absolutists only appear to value free speech as long as someone else is covering the costs for propagating said speech.
Musk specifically has described himself as one several times. On a less public note, I run into people online describing themselves as such fairly frequently as well
Social media are free because they act as a lubricant for commerce, especially e-commerce, via advertising. The whole freedom of speech thing, the public square, section 230 they are a bunch of distractions.
At the end of the day you gotta do what media entrepreneurs have always done: shove stuff down people's throats in exchange for money. That's it. There is nothing tough, poetic or ideological about it.
Twitter has been trying to monetize its users but they had scarce success. That was without an ideologue at the helm. Or an ideologue-lite when Dorsey was in charge.
With an ideologue at the helm the bird will fly right into the ground. Twitter needed somebody who knows how attract the crowd which buys stuff online. Paradoxically Bezos was the right fit for the bird app.
Alex Jones. Gavin McInnis. James O'Keefe. Breitbart, which is banned 2/3rds of the time.
Fox News is for your 65+ year old uncle. It's harmless, controlled opposition. Look at the Jan 6th coverage. It exists for the left to point at and say, "see, there it is! Right wing bias!" - for one example.
Read the article, can't argue with numbers. Twitter biases towards recommending right-wing sources. Your personal experience will differ because everyone is placed in their own echo chamber.
> According to a 27-page research document, Twitter found a “statistically significant difference favouring the political right wing” in all the countries except Germany. Under the research, a value of 0% meant tweets reached the same number of users on the algorithm-tailored timeline as on its chronological counterpart, whereas a value of 100% meant tweets achieved double the reach.
There are crazy left-wing sources that are also banned, are you going to use that as "proof" that Twitter is biased against the left? You're cherrypicking.
If you think the most popular singular news source, with all it's own personalities, funding, controlling executives, and consistent for decades opinions is "controlled opposition", I just don't know what to tell you anymore.
There are a few reasons technical people go to work.
1. Interesting challenges
2. Exchange labor for money
3. Good working environment
4. As a nice to bullet point on their resume
It would be a very naive thing to work for a for profit company owned by a billionaire to think that you have any other “mission” than to line the pockets of a reluctant owner.
And most people who “believe in their company’s mission” aren’t working for one. Mostly it’s naive employees with statistically worthless “equity” in a startup who believed the founders Ted Talk hype.
Even if the founder sincerely believes that, once he takes VC money it doesn’t matter what he believes.
Or Elon fixes San Francisco’s “use your platform” “inclusion by exclusion” culture as thousands of those kind of people disassociate and are replaced with a reversion to the mean of people that just want a paycheck
They aren't comparable in any meaningful way. They have quite different classes of problems, not to mention the scale of Twitter completely dwarfs that of Wikipedia.
The brain drain was well under way already. A bunch of people I know who used to work at Twitter started looking the moment the deal was announced, and have already landed elsewhere.
You’re wrong, as a staunch advocate of free speech on the web and as a near victim of cancel culture I would gladly work at twitter as long as I were paid more than what I earn now, and I’m sure many people would feel the same. Twitter was already a crappy place to work before Elon with all its woke polítics, now though it may become more tolerable.
"as long as I were paid more than what I earn now" is such a funny term to include. There's a lot of places I'd consider working if they offered me a raise!
Since I go to work exclusively to exchange labor for money, if, most other things being equal, I can find a job that allows me to exchange more money for the same amount of labor, who wouldn’t I be looking for another job anyway?
Working for Twitter in 2022 sounds about as exciting as working for Yahoo as it was going through the same type of turmoil.
>Ethically challenged software engineer working for a major tech company you know. Used to have close to 1000 karma, got destroyed over time by hackernews cancel culture and a change in downvote algorithms. But now that the algorithm has been changed back to classic style, I'm rising up again.
The doctors are indeed worried about his karma count. It's dropped a lot because he is ethically challenged. But it's sounds like the doctors are working hard to bring that karma count back up.
That’s very anecdotal. You’re not going to get the best engineers who could get a job anywhere giving up much better compensation because of “idealism”
