this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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This was seriously the perfect response. Nice job.
I'm getting a lot of mileage out of it these days.
doesn't load.
It's the surprised Pikachu face
thx.
Loads fine
Now it does.
Honestly, I'm impatiently waiting for the downfall/closure of X/twitter. Site is just filled with garbage/Nz propaganda now. Disgusting
Are we at the point that we can admit ElMo is doing this on purpose to shut down free speech that stands in opposition to wealthy authoritarian regimes?
https://gizmodo.com/twitter-saudi-arabia-x-jack-dorsey-areej-al-sadhan-abdu-1850805085
I'm not going to pretend I have absolute proof, nor that I am an expert on the subject matter. I do believe it stands to reason that he isn't an idiot (nor as intelligent as he portrays himself for that matter) - not enough of an idiot to actively degrade a prominent social media platform to the tune of tens of billions of dollars without a goal in mind.
He's still an idiot, in my opinion. Money isn't worth a damn if there aren't peasants. He might have to wipe his own ass at this rate.
I hope he becomes irrelevant. I'll do my part moving forward.
This "he isn't an idiot" or "not enough of an idiot" is the wrong way to think about things. Smart people believe all sorts of dumb things, and plenty of smart people can delude themselves, especially when they surround themselves with "yes men".
The other thing is X isn't the only social media platform, nor was ever a particularly large one as users go. Getting rid of Twitter just pushes people to threads, mastodon, bluesky and others. It doesn't actually shut down much speech at all.
I think the non-conspiracy thinking is just - Musk was addicted to twitter, liked saying edgy and engaging stuff and because of what was more of a boast but legally was a binding sort of offer to buy ended up forced to buy Twitter. The legal forces were well documented at the time. Now that Musk has Twitter, he decided to make it into what he always professed it should be, along with his egomania has made it more and more like any number of "free speech absolutest" spin offs that turned into right wing cesspools that regular people find less and less appealing, and advertisers really find concerning.
People who think there's some huge conspiracy everywhere have never worked for a narcissist executive. It feels like an extension of "they're rich and powerful means they have to be cunning", no they clearly get caught up in their own delusions of aptitude.
Think of all the group projects you've ever worked on and multiply that by huge egos. I find it hard to believe that any of these people can coordinate with the level of precision most conspiracy theories claim. Do they happen? Definitely. Is it as commonplace as they think? Definitely not.
Americans have an innate cultural belief that if someone has money, they are therefore smart. It doesn't matter how the person got their money - whether they inherited at birth, or they stole it, or they had a relative who won the lottery. In the US, we will defer decisions to others who we perceive to have wealth because it is a cultural belief.
This is, of course, obviously wrong. A person who is born into wealth as an infant has no influence on their own success any more than any other infant.
There is also a culture where those who are born into wealth also believe they are smarter than everyone else, and the lack of accountability in their lives often leads to wildly incorrect business ventures, doubling down on narcissistic behavior, and a complete disconnect with how 99% of the human population thinks and lives.
Elon Musk has lost $40 billion dollars worth of value in just over a year on one business venture. He won't be able to make Twitter work, because he doesn't have any better ideas than anyone else who ran Twitter. He's also quickly proving that his ideas are far worse. There's no grand plan. There's no conspiracy. He's just a lazy rich kid who smokes weed all day and thinks he's a genius.
Agreed. That’s why I really dislike the theory it’s some 4D chess. More prof of that is if he wanted it to burn he wouldn’t have renamed it his precious X.com. He wants to still show the world what PayPal would have been if they hadn’t removed him. The same reason he wanted to review all of the code and be in charge of development at X, he still is holding onto the image he’s a rockstar dev and everyone else just doesn’t know what they’re doing.
The sad fact is he may be intelligent in some stuff, but he also lucked out. And as you said he’s increasingly got surrounded by “yes men”, and let go of the people that had tried to mitigate some of tendencies. Not realizing they helped get him to where he was. Even in the original x.com days he had someone help manage and buffer him because he had the tendency to scare off investors.
I was starting to think I was the only person around here that wasn’t falling for conspiracy theories.
I work in the physics world and I am continually surprised by how dumb smart people can be, especially if ego is involved.
Not Elmo. Elmo is a delight. Musk is a sentient trash heap.
Good.
On the one hand I really want Musk to go bankrupt, but at the same time I don't want him to gut spaceX to avoid bankruptcy.
Similarly I really want to see Tesla succeed as it’s really been the driving force behind the industry electrifying.
But Musk is an awful human being, and awful to his workers.
It’s awfully conflicting. Maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll sell a controlling stake in one or both companies?
Tesla is a driving force for both the automotive industry electrifying and worsening worker rights, safety, pay, and labor practices.
Only the bougie and the rich focus on the first part even though the second part has much bigger consequences for humanity.
Long live the Fediverse.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Oct 4 (Reuters) - Monthly U.S. ad revenue at social media platform X has declined at least 55% year-over-year each month since billionaire Elon Musk bought the company formerly known as Twitter in October 2022, according to third-party data provided to Reuters.
The company has struggled to retain some advertisers since the takeover, as brands have been wary of rapid changes under Musk's ownership.
Musk has previously acknowledged that the platform has taken a hit on revenue and has blamed activists for pressuring advertisers.
Last month, he accused the Anti-Defamation League of being the primary cause behind a 60% decline in U.S. ad revenue, though he did not provide a time frame.
The organization added it was prepared to begin advertising itself on the platform "to bring our important message on fighting hate to X and its users."
This includes building peer-to-peer payment features and increasing the amount of video content on the platform, Reuters previously reported.
The original article contains 353 words, the summary contains 157 words. Saved 56%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Hasn't ad revenue across the board been falling for years now? Musk didn't help, but wouldn't this trend exist no mater who was in charge?
Here's twitters ad revenue by quarter from 2013 to 2022Q2
There's a spike in 2021 and then things started to come back to earth, but its an overall upward trend throughout that time.
Excellent. Mwa ha ha ha ~ Musk probably
Technically it didn't decline each month, but it's been lower each month than before the takeover. For the past 6 months staying steady at about 60% lower YoY.
If musk can manage it all by himself, he may actually succeed to make it profitable. /s
Yeah because he is like super smart and shit
Exactly, there is zero doubt he sees himself as super-duper-uber-smart, he seriously claimed in an interview, that he knows more about manufacturing than anybody else on earth.
That's quite an ego.
https://min.news/en/economy/aa9ecf402dc7d5b2ecbdd4160696bf2f.html
That website makes me want to shit in my hands and rub it in my eyes
I just closed the tab but whatever floats your boat I guess.
He is just some rich bitch