Musk offers to buy Twitter

[Cmaier]

Elon Musk implies Apple hates free speech after 'mostly stopped' advertising on Twitter - 9to5Mac

In the latest development at Twitter, Elon Musk has taken to his social platform to share that Apple has “mostly...

9to5mac.com

Apple stopped advertising on twitter, and Elon is cranky about it.

 

[Pumbaa]

Cranky indeed. Multiple Apple-related tweets. And another attempt at “Vox Populi, Vox Dei”.


Tweet link

 

[dada_dave]

Elon Musk implies Apple hates free speech after 'mostly stopped' advertising on Twitter - 9to5Mac

In the latest development at Twitter, Elon Musk has taken to his social platform to share that Apple has “mostly...

9to5mac.com

Apple stopped advertising on twitter, and Elon is cranky about it.

The whole crazy right wing Twitter ecosystem is cranky about it.

 

[Pumbaa]

Elon just found out about Apple’s 30% App Store cut.

 

[Eric]

The whole crazy right wing Twitter ecosystem is cranky about it.

That's his echo chamber, he's alienated all the free thinkers and they're the only one's left. That's how he likes it and it's also why his polls (on his own platform) will always favor his goal. Meanwhile, the rest of the world are wiping their hands of him.

 

[dada_dave]

And misogynists.

Elon's attitudes to women also leave an awful lot to be desired.

And a dash of antisemitism in his own tweets now too - accusing Vindman of being a puppet and puppeteer because he joined a chain message describing musk of being erratic. This of course was met with glee by the hard core antisemites since Vindman is Jewish so the whole puppet/puppeteer is red meat to them.

 

[dada_dave]

An otherwise smart engineer friend of mine likes to insist to me that Elon Musk has the Midas touch; every company he touches turns to gold (SpaceX, Tesla) so how could Twitter be any different? He did great things for Paypal, SpaceX, Tesla, why should we have any reason to doubt that his plans for Twitter will similarly work out well?

Tell me the thing I need to say to him to set him straight.

Well if your friend wants to watch a 20 minute rant on the subject on Musk, Zuck, and SBF … here you go:



Truthfully he’s even a little kind to Musk in describing him as a founder of PayPal as it’s a little more complicated than that and there’s a lot of stuff he didn’t he even talk about which he could’ve.

Basically assholes are sometimes successful in spite of themselves. Don’t glorify them.

Although the ending remark in the video that you the viewer are smarter than them is also kind of bunk. The reality is none of us are as smart as we like to think we are, we all have egos, and thinking we are not susceptible to influence is a good way to make ourselves blind to when we are being hoodwinked. I don’t want to go too far the other way either … eventually we all have to put our trust in ground truths just to live our lives and make progress.

I’m getting preachy here and to be fair just a little earlier in the video he makes the same point: can you really blame people when our culture, our institutions, our information sources glorify these assholes? At the same time if you tear down trust in institutions, in common sources of information, in culture you end up with even more cranks and con men elevated. It’s a horrible balancing act we all have to walk.

Edit: the YouTube link doesn’t seem to be working for me anymore, gets stuck on some sort of captcha. Search “Adam conover musk idiot” should get you there.

 

[Edd]

Cranky indeed. Multiple Apple-related tweets. And another attempt at “Vox Populi, Vox Dei”.

View attachment 19691
Tweet link

That’s so fucking weak and desperate; he really is acting like Trump here.

 

[turbineseaplane]

I kind of hope he tries to make a phone too

I sort of want this guy to burn out at this point

He's gone crazy

 

[Cmaier]

Now he’s threatening to go to war with apple over Apple’s cut of subscriptions. That worked out real well for Epic.

 

[lizkat]

Apple stopped advertising on twitter, and Elon is cranky about it.

That's his echo chamber, he's alienated all the free thinkers and they're the only one's left. That's how he likes it and it's also why his polls (on his own platform) will always favor his goal. Meanwhile, the rest of the world are wiping their hands of him.

Some of the rest of the world is doing more than that. The main "thing" that's coming down the road to perturb Elon Musk's vision of Twitter: the EU's rules on data protection.

Meta is in the barrel on that right now, on a number of cases with more in the pipeline. Wait until they get around to Elon's new hellscape, which he has proposed to run on a quarter of the staff it had when he bought it. It's not like he left compliance and security offices for last. They were among the first to get decimated.

Ireland fines Meta €265M for ‘data scraping’ leak

The penalty is for a 2021 data breach, where more than half a million records of people’s personal information surfaced on a public forum.

www.politico.eu

Aside from Ireland's actions v Meta, Twitter was already fined around half a million dollars in 2020 by Ireland's Data Protection Commissioner, after a bug in the Android version of the app had made public some protected tweets in 2018, and after a two-year investigation with all due consideration of any mitigating circumstances.

In the fine print of that 188-page decision (pdf) by the Irish commissioner, she highlighted for attention a particular section of the EU's GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). That section may in future have augmenting effects on fines imposed for whatever violations Musk created for himself with respect to decimating the management and staffing of Twitter groups responsible for data protection.

Finally, as decision-maker for the Commission, I consider it important to strongly discourage the activity involved in these infringements. In this regard, I suggest that TIC [Twitter International Company] take particular note of Article 83(2)(e) GDPR (where past infringements can be taken into account in relation to any future exercise of corrective powers that may arise) going forward.

Of course Musk's counsel could argue that Dorsey and not Musk caused the prior situation. But to me it sounds like that might get him about a dollar and a half off whatever humongous fines could be imposed. Somewhere in the EU rules it lays out fines which can run to €30m or 4% of global turnover, whichever is HIGHER, so it won't help Musk that he's not making money off his broken toy. And those are just administrative fines. For noncompliance with the orders after such incidents there can be other and larger fines...

 

[dada_dave]

I set up my post account today. Played around with it for a bit, but there isn’t really anyone I’m interested in following yet.

Someone said there's some sort of weird gamification/crytpo-adjacent point system on Post? Have you seen anything like that?

 

[dada_dave]

Some of the rest of the world is doing more than that. The main "thing" that's coming down the road to perturb Elon Musk's vision of Twitter: the EU's rules on data protection.

Meta is in the barrel on that right now, on a number of cases with more in the pipeline. Wait until they get around to Elon's new hellscape, which he has proposed to run on a quarter of the staff it had when he bought it. It's not like he left compliance and security offices for last. They were among the first to get decimated.

Ireland fines Meta €265M for ‘data scraping’ leak

The penalty is for a 2021 data breach, where more than half a million records of people’s personal information surfaced on a public forum.

www.politico.eu

Aside from Ireland's actions v Meta, Twitter was already fined around half a million dollars in 2020 by Ireland's Data Protection Commissioner, after a bug in the Android version of the app had made public some protected tweets in 2018, and after a two-year investigation with all due consideration of any mitigating circumstances.

In the fine print of that 188-page decision (pdf) by the Irish commissioner, she highlighted for attention a particular section of the EU's GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). That section may in future have augmenting effects on fines imposed for whatever violations Musk created for himself with respect to decimating the management and staffing of Twitter groups responsible for data protection.



Of course Musk's counsel could argue that Dorsey and not Musk caused the prior situation. But to me it sounds like that might get him about a dollar and a half off whatever humongous fines could be imposed. Somewhere in the EU rules it lays out fines which can run to €30m or 4% of global turnover, whichever is HIGHER... so it won't help Musk that he's not making money off his broken toy.

The FTC was also already on their case as well I believe.

 

[lizkat]

The FTC was also already on their case as well I believe.

Correct. For using members' phone numbers for advertising purposes w/o prior consent. $150m fine. So of course now looking to see what else Twitter is doing under Musk...

FTC says it's tracking developments at Twitter with 'deep concern' after key security departures

The statement comes after several key security and privacy executives resigned or were dismissed from the company, after Elon Musk acquired Twitter.

www.cnbc.com

 

[Cmaier]

Someone said there's some sort of weird gamification/crytpo-adjacent point system on Post? Have you seen anything like that?

The only gamification i saw was that you move up the invite list if you get others to put their names on the list. But i haven’t really done anything with Post yet. Just logged in and stared at the prepopulated feed.

 

[dada_dave]

Also the talk about legal difficulties brings up another great point: Elon Musk claims he wants twitter to be a "townhall where all opinions can be shared as long as they aren't illegal or spam" - I'm paraphrasing from memory but that's pretty close. Well even we believed his sincerity and integrity (ha!) - that's basically impossible for an international communications company where the legal frameworks in different countries around speech can be difficult to navigate if not down right contradictory. So it's something that sounds good but is basically impossible to pull off if you actually mean it.

If on the other hand you mean "anything covered by the first amendment goes" which is the implication he's doubtlessly going for talking like that, you'll quickly find yourself swamped in pretty hateful conduct as the first amendment is deliberately permissive since it describe what the *government* can and cannot restrict legally (and yes I know there are fights over that as well, but it turns out a lot of what people think violates free speech like "yelling fire in a crowded theatre" or "hate speech" doesn't). So that's just a recipe for disaster for a private corporation trying to build a community. The only hope for Twitter is that Twitter users are already so numerous that they can block/mute their way out of all that to encapsulate themselves, but that can grow tiresome over time and Twitter risks in the end being left with nothing but the worst people. Which isn't financially stable even beyond advertisers pulling out because of Musk's erratic behavior. Even Parler/Truth social realized that their "first amendment only" regulations weren't going to work and had to instill a bit more moderation than that. And of course as many others have pointed out, even with that extra moderation part of the reason those social networks have still largely failed to gain much traction is because the "normies", "liberals", "elite media", etc... aren't there to be yelled at so even for the right wing nut job trolls, where's the fun?

 

[Cmaier]

NY Times has picked up on the Apple angle. Paywall removed:

Elon Musk Takes On Apple’s Power, Setting Up a Clash

In a series of tweets on Monday, Mr. Musk accused Apple of threatening to pull Twitter from its App Store and of trying to censor.

www.nytimes.com

 

[dada_dave]

I kind of hope he tries to make a phone too

I sort of want this guy to burn out at this point

He's gone crazy

Freedom phone II the revenge?

 

[ronntaylor]

Musty is the crazy drunk uncle that everyone remembers as pissy and slightly frazzled. He's invited everyone to Thanksgiving Dinner, taken a dump in the middle of the parlor and doesn't understand why everyone is going elsewhere. They simply want him to clean up, tone down the crazy talk, and maybe they'll be back after the place airs out.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Someone said there's some sort of weird gamification/crytpo-adjacent point system on Post? Have you seen anything like that?

Yeah, the whole "funding from a16z" thing is going to keep me from even bothering with Post