Musk breaks promise to form Twitter moderation panel, blames activists

AndrewZ

Ars Legatus Legionis
11,720
Musk taking lessons on how to lie from the Orange One. Don't just lie, layer your lies deep. That way critics have to work harder to untangle the lies.

Claim your critics are doing something without evidence. Then claim they backed out of a deal to stop doing it.
This is classic narcissist/sociopath behavior. We will see a lot more of it in the years to come. Laying off "legacy" employees and replacing them with "my own" new hires. is typical. Lying as it suits you is typical behavior. Treating employees like farm animals, ditto. Treating all relationships as transactions, the same.
 
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co-lee

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6,123
I don't think he could. The loss of institutional knowledge alone from all of the people he fired is going to be fatal to the site probably sooner rather than later. If they can't keep stuff like 2FA or copyright detection working, what happens when something really vital breaks down?
2 weeks ago, he could have turned it around. Now? World's more expensive dead bird on the thanksgiving table ....
 
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If we ever re-run November 2022, we should try "Qatar buys Twitter" and "Musk hosts World Cup" instead of the opposite.
Sharia laws on Twitter and absolute freedom for drunk, high and/or belligerent football fans to yell/do whatever they want?
I‘m sure it would be different in possibly interesting ways, but I don’t necessarily see much of an improvement overall.
 
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Martin Blank

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Musk has fucked around and he is now finding out.

The customer always, always, always calls the shots because if you have no customers, you have no business.

And for Twitter, the customers are the advertisers.

He could actually turn this around if he were to get a Shotwell-level CEO to run Twitter and go back to just sending stupid tweets. But that would involve him admitting that he isn't as smart as he thinks he is and that will never happen.
Word is that the debt that he took out was getting offers for 60 cents on the dollar almost two weeks ago, but the current holders are trying to get something closer to 70 cents on the dollar. Everyone is fully expecting this to fail.
 
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traumadog

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8,225
What did you all used to say to people who complained about twitter.

"Leave if you don't like it, it's their platform, their rules"

Now, it's effecting you personally, well you all sing a different tune.

Liberal logic at its best. two faced, hypocritical.
You mistake schadenfreude for criticism.
 
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traumadog

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8,225
I don't think he could. The loss of institutional knowledge alone from all of the people he fired is going to be fatal to the site probably sooner rather than later. If they can't keep stuff like 2FA or copyright detection working, what happens when something really vital breaks down?
Never mind that unless Musk stops tweeting, every message he posts essentially would continue to reflect corporate policy.
 
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They're hurting poor Elon's ego and his Stans are mad about it.
I used to admire Musk, but his increasingly unhinged behavior made me see the light. Anyone who hasn't admitted to themselves the truth right before their eyes are just hero worshipers and perpetuating their cult of personality. It's pretty much child-like behavior.
 
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Drang

Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
133
I live three miles away from Musk's version of what I believe is becoming Helstrom's Hive.

Bastrop County Texas has: a Boreing Company testsite with illegal housing, SpaceX is building a "shell" warehouse across the street, Neuralink has been mentioned somewhere. I'm just waiting for Twitter to announce that the hardcore programers are being relocated to Bastrop to protect them from mean activists/outsiders.

<edit grammar.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/busi...5fb9aa-996a-11ec-9987-9dceee62a3f6_story.html
https://www.statesman.com/story/bus...-million-facility-in-austin-area/65470736007/
Nice deep cut there to an old Hebert title.
 
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33 (34 / -1)
I’m not sure “please pull back from this plunge into a far-right abyss” will work even when it comes from advertisers. It offers no opportunity for Musk to have a dumb idea in the spur of the moment that he halfway walks back a day later and then doubles down on again the next week.

(For the full rhetorical effect, please sprinkle bluecheck marks through this post and pretend it was written by me, Northrop Grumman.)
 
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traumadog

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Because conservatives are dishonest people and will never call out a fellow conservative who states an obvious and provable lie.
I don't think they're dishonest. I think it's callous self-interest.

Those voting R don't want the truth, they want what the liars are saying. So the supposed leadership ducks their head and wishes it all go away.

And we all know how effective "thoughts and prayers" are.
 
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SixDegrees

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I used to admire Musk, but his increasingly unhinged behavior made me see the light. Anyone who hasn't admitted to themselves the truth right before their eyes are just hero worshipers and perpetuating their cult of personality. It's pretty much child-like behavior.
And this will become a bigger problem. Right now, Musk's other companies are doing OK, but given his disastrous performance and behavior at Twitter, every move he makes elsewhere now will be put under a microscope looking for signs of similar incompetence. News that in the past might have been viewed as neutral or even positive is now going to be taken badly, and valuations will suffer, affecting both his public and private holdings.
 
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traumadog

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Musk spent the months before buying Twitter screaming as loud and as often as he could that advertisers were getting swindled because Twitter lied about user counts.

Speaking of which, I haven't heard a peep about bots since he took over. Wonder why that is.

Heck, as if you cull the people trying to identify the bots, and call a subsequent Twitter poll "Vox Populi"...
 
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SixDegrees

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Where are the advertisers going to go? There's 2 or 3 Twitter replacements that I know of and they don't have anywhere near the numbers that this "lesser" version of Twitter has. Are they just multiplying the money spent on other social media to balance the books?
Per the article, many of them will simply disappear altogether, as Twitter isn't a sales outlet, it's a brand promoter, and that's something easy to do without.

Or, they'll switch to some other platform where branding doesn't boil down to "Buy my product, supported by homophobic nazi misogynists everywhere!"
 
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traumadog

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Where are the advertisers going to go? There's 2 or 3 Twitter replacements that I know of and they don't have anywhere near the numbers that this "lesser" version of Twitter has. Are they just multiplying the money spent on other social media to balance the books?
For what it's worth, I've seen way more ads on YouTube than on Twitter. I've kept my account just to watch the fire from inside, as it were.

And no advertiser is leaving YouTube, which is heavily moderated... (go figure)
 
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Kelcrow

Smack-Fu Master, in training
4
It's interesting to watch Musk learning that he is still free to say whatever he wants but not free from the consequences of said speech. It just wasn't until it started hitting him harder in the pocketbook that he started paying attention, but naturally he's blaming everyone else except himself. Such is a recurring theme in conservative tactics but thankfully more people are having none of it.
 
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I'd like to point out that Twitter was under an FTC consent decree before Musk purchased them. He now owns a company that is still under this consent decree which requires Twitter to:
  • Submit to periodic audits performed by a third party.
  • Request pre-clearance for any features that are to be added to the service.
The FTC consent decree originated as a result of Twitter asking for personal information and telling users that the information was to be used to secure their accounts, while in reality, Twitter used this information to target users with ads.

The next audit is due in January 2023 and Twitter was struggling to comply before the mass layoffs occurred. The consent decree has significant penalty provisions if Twitter fails to meet the requirements.

Source: Legal Eagle on Nebula
 
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graylshaped

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Musk spent the months before buying Twitter screaming as loud and as often as he could that advertisers were getting swindled because Twitter lied about user counts.

Speaking of which, I haven't heard a peep about bots since he took over. Wonder why that is.
Could be the report that an analysis showed 3/4s of his own followers were bots or spammers.
 
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MightyPez

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Where are the advertisers going to go? There's 2 or 3 Twitter replacements that I know of and they don't have anywhere near the numbers that this "lesser" version of Twitter has. Are they just multiplying the money spent on other social media to balance the books?
Literally anywhere?

If my brand of pizza oven is popping up next to a neo-nazi saying "We all know where the jews need to go" I'm taking that 10% of my advertising budget and reallocating it. Maybe more TV, maybe more YouTube, maybe Instragram/Facebook/whatever; but less eyeballs on my terms certainly beats more eyeballs on the terms of some white nationalist dipshit.
 
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AusPeter

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And this will become a bigger problem. Right now, Musk's other companies are doing OK, but given his disastrous performance and behavior at Twitter, every move he makes elsewhere now will be put under a microscope looking for signs of similar incompetence. News that in the past might have been viewed as neutral or even positive is now going to be taken badly, and valuations will suffer, affecting both his public and private holdings.
I'd say that given his preoccupation with Twitter right now, his lack of engagement at his other companies is already being put under the microscope.
 
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