Elon Musk - the world's "greatest" spiv?

[Tetchytyke]

Just log on, then. It doesn't require much PI. Handle name, display name, date of birth (for legal reasons) and phone number (use a burner?) appear to be it.

I'm with the others on this.

With Twitter, you can only see the most recent three or four tweets before a splash screen tells you to log in.

Where a TOC has chosen to only provide updates on Twitter this is a problem. I don't want to register with Twitter- there's a reason I deleted my account several years ago- and I have a big problem with being locked out of information from a public transport provider as a result.

 

[birchesgreen]

I wouldn't be sorry to see it go. A platform where ignorami can spout their views on an equal footing with respected experts in whatever field was never going to end well.

The way Musk is handling this makes Trump's outfit seem like a bastion of professonalism

Also a platform were people with like minded interests can gather and share, the railway community on twitter is amazing btw. But hey who cares huh?

 

[Bletchleyite]

I'm with the others on this.

With Twitter, you can only see the most recent three or four tweets before a splash screen tells you to log in.

Where a TOC has chosen to only provide updates on Twitter this is a problem. I don't want to register with Twitter- there's a reason I deleted my account several years ago- and I have a big problem with being locked out of information from a public transport provider as a result.

Generally speaking nationalrail.co.uk's updates page also carries any such information.

 

[Parjon]

I'm with the others on this.

With Twitter, you can only see the most recent three or four tweets before a splash screen tells you to log in.

Where a TOC has chosen to only provide updates on Twitter this is a problem.

Agree. It's one thing for them to provide extra ways of getting information out, but that must only be in addition to what they put into public domain.

Public domain = accessible with no login required. It doesn't matter how "easy" it is.

 

[dosxuk]

Generally speaking nationalrail.co.uk's updates page also carries any such information.

National Rail also point people to Twitter to get live updates on disruption, directly linking to an associated hashtag. They don't pretend to have the most recent or the most detailed information, just the overall summary on their site. Many of the TOCs do the same thing - real time relevant stuff is only on Twitter, but summarised, long term information on their websites.

 

[Tetchytyke]

Generally speaking nationalrail.co.uk's updates page also carries any such information.

No, it redirects you to a hashing on Twitter which you can only explore by logging in.

Twitter has long been a toxic cess-pit and I didn't want to support their business long before Musk came along. In general that's my choice, and one I'm very happy with, but where you can only find out about train delays on Twitter it's an issue.

 

[JamesT]

I'm with the others on this.

With Twitter, you can only see the most recent three or four tweets before a splash screen tells you to log in.

Where a TOC has chosen to only provide updates on Twitter this is a problem. I don't want to register with Twitter- there's a reason I deleted my account several years ago- and I have a big problem with being locked out of information from a public transport provider as a result.

If you just want to read some tweets from a particular person, something like Nitter ( https://nitter.net/about ) might be useful?

There's also the chance that Elon gets bored, gives up and flogs it to e.g. Meta (Facebook) who would have the resources to fix the mess he's made of it. Or might Microsoft be interested in a go? The only real social media they have is the business tool Yammer.

MS also own LinkedIn. Which is also much more business-focused than Twitter, but if MS want to expand into the consumer social media space they might think expanding their existing offering is a better bet than acquiring one that's had its reputation destroyed.

 

[Dent]

To use twitter you need an networked device, a contract with an internet provider, and a twitter account. Your internet company has your full personal details and knows which sites you visit.

To make a phone call you need a phone and contract with a phone company who carries the call. The phone company has your personal details and records who you phoned and when.

To send a letter you need buy a stamp from the Royal Mail, and Royal Mail knows who you got letters from, if the return address in on the envelope.

Why is one of those not available to the general public, and not the others? I genuinely am baffled what the difference is here. Please explain and don't just dismiss it as 'whataboutery'.

Why does the same issue also existing elsewhere make it any less of an issue? Data retention and abuse by ISPs and phone providers is also a legitimate concern.

There is, however, one big difference in that ISPs and phone providers are not monopolies. Twitter is controlled by a single company, on terms unilaterally dictated by that company, which includes handing over personal data which will then be open to abuse by that company.

 

[Tetchytyke]

If you just want to read some tweets from a particular person, something like Nitter ( https://nitter.net/about ) might be useful?

Thank you, I shall try that. I don't generally browse with JavaScript activated, except on websites I want it to be (Twitter is not such a website), so that's helpful.

 

[JohnMcL7]

If I understand this correctly:
Twitter staff were told you must work in the office (not at home);
Twitter staff were locked out of the office.

What on earth is the 'big cheese' doing? (I know, no one knows).

Twitter staff were given a short deadline to either agree to new long working hours or resign, it's then claimed a much larger proportion of staff chose not to agree and walk out leading to concerns there might be sabotage to Twitter systems so people were locked out of the office.

 

[brad465]

A video from Twitter HQ last night has been doing the rounds, showing someone projecting a load of names to describe Musk. My personal favourite, and the one that has gone viral, is "Space Karen":

https://twitter.com/JoshuaPHilll/status/1593432939127361542

Oh s**t lol. Twitter HQ in San Francisco tonight

Video attached

 

[AlterEgo]

I wouldn't be sorry to see it go. A platform where ignorami can spout their views on an equal footing with respected experts in whatever field was never going to end well.

Yet you post anonymously on this forum which does exactly the same thing, with almost entirely anonymous users, none of whom can prove any credentials they have.

 

[eastwestdivide]

I'm with the others on this.

With Twitter, you can only see the most recent three or four tweets before a splash screen tells you to log in.

At least on my browser, if you click that splash screen to join or log in, and then click the close button, you can keep scrolling down the list of tweets for a while. Splash screen will pop up again after a bunch more tweets, and I just repeat ad nauseam without ever having logged in or having an account

 

[AlterEgo]

I find watching all this quite amusing. I've had little time for Elon Musk since the "sorry pedo guy" incident, and even less time since he's revealed himself to be a sort of Victorian mill owner with ADHD.

Probably the best take I’ve seen on him for a while!

 

[tbtc]

Yet you post anonymously on this forum which does exactly the same thing, with almost entirely anonymous users, none of whom can prove any credentials they have.

Agreed

With Twitter, I could see who was verified (and there who wasn’t), so I knew which of the “John Smith” accounts was the real one - given that there may be JohnSmith, RealJohnSmith, OfficialJohnSmith, JohnSmith1986 etc

On this Forum there’s no way of a new poster knowing whether someone else works for a TOC/ in the industry with insider information/ a delusional teenager who can easily pretend to be someone important but it’s really just bluffing

(Obviously there are some select members who have verification for their fares knowledge, which is a good idea)

You could even have someone claim to live hundreds of miles from where they do (e.g. Reston…)

That’s one reason Twitter worked well - if there was a new development and you needed to learn about a subject that you knew nothing about, it was fairly straightforward to find someone you trusted to explain things

friends would retweet people that they respected, it was easy to see on someone’s profile whether they had millions/ thousands/ three followers (and whether any of your friends followed them)

You’d go from never having heard of a town in Wyoming to hearing about some school shooting and within a minute have established who the local news sources were and what was happening at ground level - finding video clips uploaded a couple of minutes ago (rather than wading through irrelevant things from the distant past), you wouldn’t have to wait for the BBC to show you what they dared to, in a few hours time

One problem with media in recent years is the “need” to have various separate subscriptions to get a comprehensive package - e.g. you couldn’t have all top fight English men’s football unless you had Sky + BT + Amazon… you’d find that some artists hadn’t agreed terms with Spotify so the only way to stream so the music you wanted was to post for multiple providers… if you wanted the latest spin offs in the extended universe of Star Wars, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad and Lord Of The Rings then it required four different subscriptions … Twitter was strong because everyone important (in terms of brands/ political figures/ celebrities/ firms had a presence)

People have tried to set up alternatives (Parler, Gab etc) but none has worked because they’ve only attracted the hardcore argumentative types, and they get bored of just chatting to each other, they need “normal” people to troll - but normal people aren’t going to join a site mainly populated by people with names like StalinWasRight1993 and Brexitb0y - they use Twitter because it’s a place you can keep up with what your favourite Chef/ Musician/ Footballer/ Supermarket / Retro Heart-throb are saying - everyone is on twitter because everyone is on twitter

if Twitter starts to lose that mass appeal then people are going to spread out between lots of other sites, and the logistics of finding/ following all the people you want to is going to be a lot harder (especially if you need to sign up for multiple sites in future)

The danger is, if Musk doesn’t look after the site then it’s going to be hard to bring back that “essential” status - we’ve only really seen social media sites expand and then contact - I’m not aware of any that have subsequently bounced back - pop stars can have a renaissance but once the game was up for Google+/ Bebo/ MySpace/ Friends Reunited then that was critical, no way back, once people/ firms/ stars start to leave, that just encourages others to leave

And for what? What is Musk gaining here? Other than accessing his ex-partner’s DMs… It’s not like he’s done anything in the range of reinstating Donald Trump or banning someone high profile that he held a grudge about - it just seems like he’s doing his typical “libertarian” / disrupter/ “move fast and break things” schtick without really understanding the situation or planning for what his desired end game is - the “disruptor” approach has worked for some Tech people in singer industries but he’s spent billions of pounds, upset a lot of people and put his other business at risk/ under scrutiny - given the way that banks work, it might only take one domino to topple the empire

 

[gingerheid]

pop stars can have a renaissance but once the game was up for Google+/ Bebo/ MySpace/ Friends Reunited then that was critical, no way back, once people/ firms/ stars start to leave, that just encourages others to leave

At this stage I wonder if Google+ could actually have a winning comeback. I think the problem with it is that your e-mail is definitely your real you, and people might not want their online persona too closely associated with the real them!

 

[Cloud Strife]

And for what? What is Musk gaining here? Other than accessing his ex-partner’s DMs… It’s not like he’s done anything in the range of reinstating Donald Trump or banning someone high profile that he held a grudge about - it just seems like he’s doing his typical “libertarian” / disrupter/ “move fast and break things” schtick without really understanding the situation or planning for what his desired end game is - the “disruptor” approach has worked for some Tech people in singer industries but he’s spent billions of pounds, upset a lot of people and put his other business at risk/ under scrutiny - given the way that banks work, it might only take one domino to topple the empire

To be honest, at this point, I can see the US government making a strong hint that SpaceX would be better off in the hands of an established defence contractor.

Tesla is of little importance, but SpaceX is now just too important to be left alone in the hands of someone irrational like Musk, who might well destroy the company (and with it, American uplift capacity) out of spite.

 

[yorksrob]

To be honest, at this point, I can see the US government making a strong hint that SpaceX would be better off in the hands of an established defence contractor.

Tesla is of little importance, but SpaceX is now just too important to be left alone in the hands of someone irrational like Musk, who might well destroy the company (and with it, American uplift capacity) out of spite.

Indeed. And someone with questionable allegiance to Western objectives. If I were the Pentagon, I'd be looking to remove Musk from SpaceX ASAP.

 

[tbtc]

At this stage I wonder if Google+ could actually have a winning comeback. I think the problem with it is that your e-mail is definitely your real you, and people might not want their online persona too closely associated with the real them!

Yeah, I think that’s a Facebook problem too- I’m definitely me on there, you can easily find my profile if you search for people you know who used to be my friends and look at their “friends lists”… what you can’t do is see much of my profile because the photo albums and posts are generally locked/ filtered etc since I don’t want members of the public who encounter me in my job (or my boss etc) to know what I was blethering about last night or see personal photos (imagine phoning in stuck at nine o’clock in the morning, unaware that colleagues will have seen you tagged in a photo stumbling out of a pub after midnight…)

That’s why I’m reluctant to get involved with political stuff on Facebook - I might see an article on a newspaper’s Facebook about something contentious (“is it ethical for Trans Vegan Jewish Remainers to boycott the alcohol-free World Cup in Qatar?”) but I wouldn’t dare comment on that “public” page since it’ll come up in the feed of all of my friends, just like it comes up in my feed when they’ve commented on a public page - I have some political convictions but it’s not worth

(I made up the headline to try to incorporate a few different issues which people I know have strong feelings about, its not real)

Meanwhile, on Twitter, lots of people have different names/ handles, and a comment I make to a newspaper tweet would only come up in a friend’s feed if they also followed that newspaper, so I don’t have to worry whether random relatives or former colleagues decide I’m “woke”/ “bigoted” / “a beta cuck” / “a neoliberal Red Tory” etc

A site can either be your personal private space to share pictures of babies/ see what colleagues did on holiday/ check how you compare to school friends when it comes to thinking hairlines etc OR it can be a place where you let of steam and can be honest about wanting to quit your job, but I don’t think that one site can cover both

 

[jon0844]

Hard to tell what's real or parody, but it seems Elon has decided that new policy (for today at least) will be to allow anything to be posted but hate speech, or anything Elon doesn't like, can be downrated so nobody sees it unless they look for it/the poster.

Shadowbanning now made official.

Quite the U-turn, and it also seems he's telling staff to come meet him in San Francisco (flying if they have to) by midnight to say how they can do it.

I would love it if nobody turns up!

 

[adc82140]

Yet you post anonymously on this forum which does exactly the same thing, with almost entirely anonymous users, none of whom can prove any credentials they have.

But this forum is proactively moderated. I'm certain if I started flinging around extremist views, bullied other users, or insulted others I wouldn't last long.

 

[Dent]

Yet you post anonymously on this forum which does exactly the same thing, with almost entirely anonymous users, none of whom can prove any credentials they have.

This forum is not used by any serious organisations as an official means of communication, no one should be trusting any forum posts as a definitive source of reliable information.

 

[AlterEgo]

This forum is not used by any serious organisations as an official means of communication, no one should be trusting any forum posts as a definitive source of reliable information.

Yes it is. There are verified reps on here doing the same sort of customer service comms you see on Twitter.

 

[Cloud Strife]

Hard to tell what's real or parody, but it seems Elon has decided that new policy (for today at least) will be to allow anything to be posted but hate speech, or anything Elon doesn't like, can be downrated so nobody sees it unless they look for it/the poster.

Shadowbanning now made official.

Quite the U-turn, and it also seems he's telling staff to come meet him in San Francisco (flying if they have to) by midnight to say how they can do it.

I would love it if nobody turns up!

So he's copying Reddit?

They (or rather he) have reinstated Jordan Peterson as well, who was previously banned for making reference to Elliot Page's breasts and calling her surgeon a criminal. It's a green light for transphobia, and Musk knows fine well that the 'own the libs' crowd will eagerly upvote such content.

 

[gingerheid]

Musk knows fine well that the 'own the libs' crowd will eagerly upvote such content.

You can only congratulate him on the world's most expensive owning of the libs. I doubt the shares would even be worth $4.20 each now...

 

[jon0844]

Video description: Elon Musk sent an email to Twitter employees telling them they would have to be "Hardcore" or leave. 75% of the remaining employees of the social media platform reportedly took him up on the offer. Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uygur discuss on The Young Turks. Watch TYT LIVE on weekdays 6-8 pm ET. http://youtube.com/theyoungturks/live Read more HERE: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/17/tech/t... "Another employee exodus appears to be underway at Twitter as many workers rejected Elon Musk’s terms for staying with the company, choosing instead to depart, according to multiple current and former employees. As the deadline approached for Twitter employees to respond to Elon Musk’s ultimatum to commit to working in an “extremely hardcore” fashion at the company or leave, some employees appeared to publicly indicate they had chosen the latter option. On Thursday afternoon, Twitter staffers began posting the salute emoji, which has become a signal that someone is exiting the company. One Twitter employee said in a tweet that deciding to join the company was “one of the easiest decisions ever made. Deciding to leave today was 100% the opposite.” Meanwhile, an internal Slack channel at the company was filled with employees posting the salute emoji after the 5pm ET deadline, indicating they had chosen not to sign Musk’s pledge and depart the company, employees told CNN.

While the channel is obviously to the left of politics, I think this video is pretty neutral.

Now he's running a poll on whether to reinstate President Trump.

Thing is, I am not sure everyone knows if he means to Twitter or by claiming the election was stolen and Trump should replace Biden...

 

[brad465]

Looks like Trump's reinstatement is not far away, as Musk has done a Twitter poll for it, although the way the platform is going one wonders how long he'll be on it for simply because Twitter may not last much longer.

 

[johnnychips]

Pardon me for being extremely thick, but how does Twitter make money? This isn’t me being sarcastic or anything like that, I’m genuinely interested.

 

[jon0844]

Pardon me for being extremely thick, but how does Twitter make money? This isn’t me being sarcastic or anything like that, I’m genuinely interested.

For the most part, advertising and promoted Tweets. Secondly there's a premium paid-for account for users, but the income from that is/was small.

The thing is, Twitter wasn't making enough money before Elon came along and he's scared off the bulk of advertisers leaving some pretty ropey ads that I'm seeing now (presumably very low paying clients).

 

[SJL2020]

Hey Elon, if you are reading this could you please consider buying Liverpool or Man Utd next please.