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

[birchesgreen]

An interesting theory i was reading earlier (on Twitter natch) is that the reason Musk doesn't get why advertisers are staying away is because his other companies don't advertise, thus he may not have much idea of how advertising works.

 

[takno]

This particular tweet reveals there is form for a media mogul buying a media platform for big bucks, only to sell it for peanuts in later years:

https://twitter.com/tombarton/status/1588552599200206850

Yahoo weren't a media mogul, and while they overpaid quite dramatically a lot of the loss of value happened after Yahoo themselves were taken over.

MySpace was an interesting one because while it was nominally a tech platform, it was never particularly tech-led, tending instead to look a lot more like a traditional media platform with a bunch of not-really-complementary features bought in on the cheap and held together with gaffer tape to form a platform. They were then run as a mature platform, even though they were clearly in a really competitive marketplace with not-particularly-strong brand loyalty. Facebook came along, offering access to the same people (basically all your friends), plus some people who were never going to fit on MySpace, and a growing package of features.

Twitter is astonishing because of the sheer extent to which it appears to be underperforming those examples. Mostly they were problems with overvaluing an existing asset and then not making any changes (or only changes which were pretty much legally essential), and watching while the whole thing ran slowly aground.

Twitter now feels irreversibly holed below the waterline even more quickly and severely than the UK managed under Truss.

 

[Cloud Strife]

This particular tweet reveals there is form for a media mogul buying a media platform for big bucks, only to sell it for peanuts in later years:

Indeed. Murdoch didn't have a clue what to do with MySpace, and it was textbook mismanagement on their part. Likewise, Yahoo didn't understand what Tumblr was or why it had to be left alone in order to thrive.

I wouldn't want to work for him.

Nor me. He appears to be even more toxic than Jeff Bezos, which is quite remarkable given how awful Amazon's working practices are.

 

[Strathclyder]

I have to admit that I'm baffled by the way Musk is revered as some kind of deity. I watched the three-part Elon Musk Show on BBC iPlayer last week and he comes across as a spoiled brat and, when it comes to industrial relations, a massive bully. I wouldn't want to work for him.

He manages to be worse than Bezos in quite a few ways, which is quite an achievement given Amazon's deplorable working practices.

He would have got away with the mass sackings and other things, but the Paul Pelosi conspiracy stuff really enraged a lot of people. He sent absolutely the wrong message to advertisers with that, because it showed that Twitter will tolerate the existence of really wacko stuff because the boss posts it too.

I'm not surprised that he's messing it up. It doesn't seem that he wanted Twitter for anything other than his personal vendettas, and it shows.

If nothing else, it shows him, yet again, for what he really is behind all that wealth: a thin-skinned narcissist who always has to be in the limelight.

 

[Busaholic]

He manages to be worse than Bezos in quite a few ways, which is quite an achievement given Amazon's deplorable working practices.


If nothing else, it shows him, yet again, for what he really is behind all that wealth: a thin-skinned narcissist who always has to be in the limelight.

Another Mummy's Boy - the world has always to be very watchful of these types e.g.Trump and Putin, they all have complexes about it and are obsessively paranoid of being made fun of. The rest of the world pays for these.

 

[jon0844]

He's saying tonight that he wants to allow long form posts on Twitter and content creators to be able to monetise content (presumably meaning charging for, or maybe sharing ad revenue if there was any).

Twitter was set up to be about short messages. It got extended to 200 characters and then threads, but if it becomes a blogging tool/Only Fans then goodness knows how people will use it.

Why does every service want to be like another? One size does not fit all.

Instagram trying to be TikTok is another perfect example.

 

[Cloud Strife]

Twitter was set up to be about short messages. It got extended to 200 characters and then threads, but if it becomes a blogging tool/Only Fans then goodness knows how people will use it.

There's actually an interesting point here: Twitter, until very recently, was used by a lot of models for their work. There was a huge banning spree a few weeks ago (I think?), and they banned pretty much anyone linking to their OnlyFans on there, as well as taking down a huge amount of content.

But yes, you're right. Twitter won't survive if it turns into a microtransaction hell with promoted posts everywhere, especially if Musk is desperate to raise revenue in the absence of advertisers.

If nothing else, it shows him, yet again, for what he really is behind all that wealth: a thin-skinned narcissist who always has to be in the limelight.

Couldn't agree more. For one, I won't cry if this all goes incredibly wrong for him.

The worst thing for me is that him (and Bezos, and a few others) are very much responsible for the tech industry being a highly toxic place to work in. I work on the edges of it, and the amount of unbearable Musk-lite types that I meet is beyond belief.

 

[jon0844]

Back when I worked for a publisher, we were in total control of our output. We managed the editorial, the printing and (to a degree) the distribution. We got the revenue from the sales of the magazines and the advertising.

Now, so many content creators are at the mercy of the platforms they choose to use, which can change their terms and conditions at any time, and even change their entire business model.

OnlyFans temporarily seeking to ban adult content, YouTube changing algorithms to punish creators that don't churn out content daily (and reducing payments), Instagram trying to stuff photographers by turning it into TikTok and being video focussed, Facebook doing goodness knows what and so on.

For newspapers and magazines, you may reach a wider audience (fair to say the Internet has killed print sales) but you are never in total control because you can't even control the editorial at times (it may breach terms, or not get promoted) and certainly have zero control of the publishing element, as well as the revenue.

I realise this is off topic, but it IS relevant IMO because Twitter has become a platform a lot of businesses rely on for customer services. It works well most of the time, but if it dies - what replaces it? How many people are used to going on to Twitter to get information about a delayed train, flight, bus, or whatever?

 

[takno]

I realise this is off topic, but it IS relevant IMO because Twitter has become a platform a lot of businesses rely on for customer services. It works well most of the time, but if it dies - what replaces it? How many people are used to going on to Twitter to get information about a delayed train, flight, bus, or whatever?

I always thought that use of Twitter for this was a terrible sticking plaster over the abdication of responsibility that was National Rail Enquiries. You funnel the vast majority of customers through awful third-world contact centres with poor response times and zero awareness of the thing they are supporting, while providing a relatively Rolls-Royce service to your loudest and most public complainers.

If that elitist nonsense disappears then good riddance to it.

 

[Busaholic]

Back when I worked for a publisher, we were in total control of our output. We managed the editorial, the printing and (to a degree) the distribution. We got the revenue from the sales of the magazines and the advertising.

Now, so many content creators are at the mercy of the platforms they choose to use, which can change their terms and conditions at any time, and even change their entire business model.

OnlyFans temporarily seeking to ban adult content, YouTube changing algorithms to punish creators that don't churn out content daily (and reducing payments), Instagram trying to stuff photographers by turning it into TikTok and being video focussed, Facebook doing goodness knows what and so on.

For newspapers and magazines, you may reach a wider audience (fair to say the Internet has killed print sales) but you are never in total control because you can't even control the editorial at times (it may breach terms, or not get promoted) and certainly have zero control of the publishing element, as well as the revenue.

I realise this is off topic, but it IS relevant IMO because Twitter has become a platform a lot of businesses rely on for customer services. It works well most of the time, but if it dies - what replaces it? How many people are used to going on to Twitter to get information about a delayed train, flight, bus, or whatever?

That's a very apposite posting. I hadn't realised quite how authoritarian the whole situation had become, though I should have guessed. The internet really has become like the atomic bomb now, if only it could have remained uninvented we, as a human race, would be so much better off; yes, I do realise that without it I wouldn't be spouting on here, but that would be a tiny loss.

 

[takno]

That's a very apposite posting. I hadn't realised quite how authoritarian the whole situation had become, though I should have guessed. The internet really has become like the atomic bomb now, if only it could have remained uninvented we, as a human race, would be so much better off; yes, I do realise that without it I wouldn't be spouting on here, but that would be a tiny loss.

I'm not convinced that's true at all. There was plenty of misery before the internet, and content creators were largely at the mercy of large soulless publishing companies who (spoiler alert) tended to spread toxic ideologies and retained the vast majority of the profit for themselves.

There's a lot to hate about social media companies, and the internet can and should be better and fairer, but the existence of the internet itself isn't the problem here.

 

[nw1]

I do find the way you have to log in to view tweets from a given user most irritating.

This happened I think before Musk but it certainly wasn't the case around three years ago (at the time of Boris' ascendency).

I suppose they have commercial reasons for doing so, but it's ethically questionable as I really do dislike this whole data-harvesting stuff.

 

[jon0844]

I'm not convinced that's true at all. There was plenty of misery before the internet, and content creators were largely at the mercy of large soulless publishing companies who (spoiler alert) tended to spread toxic ideologies and retained the vast majority of the profit for themselves.

There's a lot to hate about social media companies, and the internet can and should be better and fairer, but the existence of the internet itself isn't the problem here.

Oh for sure the Internet has given more people an ability to have a platform (hence the village pub bore with racist views now gets an audience globally and even the chance to make money) but as they say, at what cost?

People initially found a way to bypass the traditional channels and now it's coming back to bite because these free (at the time) platforms have now got so big and become the new publishers. They can terminate your business and stop paying you at any given moment, saying you've breached rules they just made up.

 

[brad465]

Oh dear:

https://twitter.com/MattNavarra/status/1589345067013378048

CONFIRMED: Twitter is now asking some fired workers to please come back - Some were laid off by mistake - Some were let go before management realized their experience is needed to build new features Elon Musk is planning FFS

 

[jon0844]

Oh my! That's comedy gold.

 

[WatcherZero]

Already seen half a dozen blue tick 'Elon Musks' lol.
Also some celebrities who criticised Musk seem to be losing their ticks today, well ahead of the 90 days.

It's surprisingly difficult to define as gambling. You're purchasing a box, not what is inside it, and each box does have something inside it. Legally it's almost impossible to draw a distinction between that and, say, Panini football stickers.

We define gambling as "playing a game of chance for money or money's worth", and even then it doesn't neatly fit.

Believe its illegal in a few European countries, Belgium I think?
The distinction is when you advertise the contents as being of higher value than the price of entry. Raffles are classed as gambling in the UK by law and the proceeds must go to a charitable cause. You can have a commercial profit one which is legally classed as 'corporate advertising' but only if you offer a method of free entry (e.g. postcards) and dont favour the paid entries any more highly than the free entries. So for example for a lootbox to not be classed as gambling but advertising you would have to have a method to obtain them for free.

 

[brad465]

Already seen half a dozen blue tick 'Elon Musks' lol.
Also some celebrities who criticised Musk seem to be losing their ticks today, well ahead of the 90 days.

And this seems to have caused him to backtrack on his pledge to cease permanent suspensions:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589390597798125568

Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying “parody” will be permanently suspended

 

[Purple Train]

Oh dear:

https://twitter.com/MattNavarra/status/1589345067013378048

Already seen half a dozen blue tick 'Elon Musks' lol.
Also some celebrities who criticised Musk seem to be losing their ticks today, well ahead of the 90 days.

And this seems to have caused him to backtrack on his pledge to cease permanent suspensions:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589390597798125568

The clowns are running the circus - the amount of backtracking and confusion and self-promotion in Camp Musk is astounding. Camp Musk makes the government look organised.

 

[GusB]

Well, I didn't expect the wheels to come off quite so quickly!

Twitter is a platform could quite happily do without. I rarely post and only use it for information such as travel updates and occasionally chastising BT. When Google+ was shut down, some of my contacts from there moved to Twitter, but I've noticed that some of them are moving over to Mastodon now.

 

[jon0844]

What l don't get is that he's always been like this. And even now, his loyal followers will defend him and continue to share memes, hoping for the best thing of all - for Elon to reply, like or re-tweet their show of loyalty.

In the last few days, besides the $8 jokes it seems to be an awful lot about 'owning AOC'.

 

[Tetchytyke]

Believe its illegal in a few European countries, Belgium I think?
The distinction is when you advertise the contents as being of higher value than the price of entry.

They should be illegal, or at least restricted to under 18s.

Where it gets really tough is assigning a value to this type of non-convertible virtual currency. Clearly a virtual avatar of Cristiano Ronaldo is more popular than a virtual avatar of some third division clogger, but neither have any tangible real world value.

So for example for a lootbox to not be classed as gambling but advertising you would have to have a method to obtain them for free.

Gambling companies in the US already use a variation of this loophole, so I'm sure EA would pile in too.

What l don't get is that he's always been like this

He's a spoiled little rich kid who turned daddy's mining fortune into a bigger fortune through a combination of claiming the credit for other people's ideas (PayPal, and Tesla to an extent) and the power of BS over substance (Tesla).

 

[birchesgreen]

I'm glad people who don't or barely use twitter are happy for it to die. Gee thanks for that.

 

[JKF]

MySpace was an interesting one because while it was nominally a tech platform, it was never particularly tech-led, tending instead to look a lot more like a traditional media platform with a bunch of not-really-complementary features bought in on the cheap and held together with gaffer tape to form a platform. They were then run as a mature platform, even though they were clearly in a really competitive marketplace with not-particularly-strong brand loyalty. Facebook came along, offering access to the same people (basically all your friends), plus some people who were never going to fit on MySpace, and a growing package of features.

I think one of the reasons Facebook thrived at the expense of MySpace was the simplicity of the page layout, MySpace allowed all sorts of customisable graphics, backgrounds, animated gifs etc leading to many pages being barely loadable and visually abhorrent (I think the industry term for webpages like this is ‘clown pants’). Facebook was much more presentable and slick.

Similarly, the attraction of Twitter was its simplicity, elegant and succinct. That’s been slowly eroded over the years but it’s still quite tidy. I think Musk might finally break this.

What l don't get is that he's always been like this. And even now, his loyal followers will defend him and continue to share memes, hoping for the best thing of all - for Elon to reply, like or re-tweet their show of loyalty.

In the last few days, besides the $8 jokes it seems to be an awful lot about 'owning AOC'.

I’m never sure what these weirdo bootlickers expect to get in return for this sort of behaviour. It’s kind of cult like. Plus I get the impression the guy has a contrarian nature and likes winding people up or causing conflict. The assorted internet oddballs who hang in every word and agree with his world view offer him none of this, they’re worth nothing as he can’t upset them.

But seriously, you'd think that he would take a basic look at how other far right platforms have fared (i.e. badly) and realise that you can't build a successful internet company around 'muh free speech'.

The reason all these far-right Twitter clones haven’t succeeded is because most of the alt-right trolls get their kicks from winding people up and bullying. If there’s nobody but them on a site, no victims or anyone to argue with, they get bored very quickly. For most it’’s the conflict that is the attraction to them. You can’t ‘own the libs’ if there aren’t any libs around.

 

[jon0844]

Anyone signed up to Mastodon? I joined earlier and it's full of people joining 'just in case'. Bit of a learning curve, but should be a good backup if Twitter gets so bad nobody can stand it any longer.

 

[birchesgreen]

Anyone signed up to Mastodon? I joined earlier and it's full of people joining 'just in case'.

Yes including me

 

[takno]

I think one of the reasons Facebook thrived at the expense of MySpace was the simplicity of the page layout, MySpace allowed all sorts of customisable graphics, backgrounds, animated gifs etc leading to many pages being barely loadable and visually abhorrent (I think the industry term for webpages like this is ‘clown pants’). Facebook was much more presentable and slick.

Similarly, the attraction of Twitter was its simplicity, elegant and succinct. That’s been slowly eroded over the years but it’s still quite tidy. I think Musk might finally break this.

One of the key selling points for a large proportion of the MySpace userbase was exactly that level of customisation, and many of the changes Fox made were to lock the display down. Personally the Facebook aesthetic has always struck me as pretty abhorrent, to the point where it delayed me from using it for a year or so. Now I have a theme installed over the top to completely hide their weird super-conformist mid-2000s hellscape.

I've never made much use of the the Twitter clients or website, although when I have I've found their taste in blues to be mildly less irksome. I doubt Musk will change that tbh

 

[D365]

Oh dear:

https://twitter.com/MattNavarra/status/1589345067013378048

Well… reportedly the firing process involved shortlisting the people who wrote x% lowest number of lines of code in the last 12 months.

Can anyone see the problem with that?

 

[jon0844]

If he gets any more incompetent, he'll decide to get into politics. He can't be President in the USA so maybe the Conservatives here will be a better bet?

 

[DC1989]

Well… reportedly the firing process involved shortlisting the people who wrote x% lowest number of lines of code in the last 12 months.

Can anyone see the problem with that?

Please come back, you won't be fired again in 3 months I promise !!

 

[pdeaves]

Please come back, you won't be fired again in 3 months I promise !!

"Please come back and write inefficient code..."