Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors
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Twitter is a stagnant company. They have thousands of engineers that in the span of a decade don't seem to produce much at all, nothing visible or memorable anyway. Long-lasting Twitter problems (culture, spam, algorithm issues) never seem addressed. User growth is stagnating as Twitter fails to appeal to "normies" in a way Facebook and other networks can.
A perfect target for Musk to come in, do a few sweeping changes, and get out. Thereby proving once again that he gets shit done where others can't. Case closed.
It doesn't take much. People have been begging for an edit button for a decade. If he'd get only that feature implemented, it will be remembered forever.
Why must every company sustain boundless growth and 24-hour engagement? Change and growth for their own sake can be cancers.
Twitter does what it does and people like it (as seen by the fact that they all use it), yet armchair generals cry out that twitter's refusal to turn into "not twitter" is somehow a failure of engineering and management, or some form of incompetence.
So, I disagree, I guess.
Whatever merit or lack thereof Musk on the Twitter board has, I would bet money this particular scenario does not happen. Musk is not a turnaround expert or corporate savior (and for the record he's not claiming to be).
And they haven't implemented it because it's a truly horrible idea. If you messed up your tweet delete it. If it's already got traction, then it shouldn't be changed, especially because the edit feature would mostly be used maliciously to cancel retweeters.
Ha! You are drinking straight from the hose pipe and having a hangover. Not having a Edit button was a strategic decision from Twitter and not a competency one. For the longest time, Facebook did not have Dislike button and still don't; sometime back, they added few options instead. It was their product vision that drove the decision behind their feature selections.
I'm confused as to how any of this makes it stagnant.
I have always wondered. Are there "projects" adjascent the core product that I'm not aware of? I can understand the infrastructure side of the work is pretty busy, but feature development and bugfixing don't require that many people even in a fast paced product development phase. What's everyone doing?
2) "do a few sweeping changes, and get out. Thereby proving once again that he gets shit done where others can't. " I'm doubtful as a board member he'll have the influence to make material changes. More like a series of publicly visible things.
Twitter doesn't have an 'edit button' because they're incompetent, it's just an odd choice they've made, and I think there are good reasons there. And 'edit button' is not any kind of material change.
3) I'll bet the speech issue is on his radar.
On the whole, I don't see how musk really changes the nature of what Twitter is, it's a mature product.
As a Twitter user since 2019, I’ve seen improvements even in my short time on the platform. The most obvious example is that you can now restrict who can reply to your tweets.
You could make the same argument about HN, and it’d be equally mistaken.
How quickly we forget the front end redesign that lets you tweet photos when you quote tweet. The old one didn’t.
Or that they collapse new tweets into a button you can click, rather than interrupting your reading flow when it loads more. (Admittedly the old site already had this.)
Why do you assume it's engineering problem? I think engineers at twitter are well capable to solve any problems, but it's just not a business need. The real problem are product owners/stakeholders/business people, incapable to transform, envision and lead at Twitter.
He is anything but conventional, he is not there to go for low hanging fruit I don't think
Funny you mention that: https://www.ign.com/articles/elon-musk-largest-twitter-share...
don't see how an edit button will change any of that!
Tesla: Sustainable transport
SpaceX: Becoming a multiplanetary species
Twitter: Free speech in the public square
IMO it's actually the most important mission of the 3 since it's the basis for societal progress.
Twitter WORKS. If it's profitable, it doesn't need more growth. Facebook got ruined because it thought everyone's parents and grandparents should be on it, and now that's the only people on it.
My parents and grandparents are scared of Twitter, and that's how I like it.
It also doesn't try to charge me for access to my own followers like Facebook does.
Twitter may have problems but I like the balance they've struck.
An edit button by the way would RUIN it because people who have gone viral with a bad take would simply edit it away.
Typical musk cult bullshit. I'm sorry, it sounds so wrong it makes me questions your honesty here.
He won't "do a few sweeping changes and get out". The only shit he will get done is abusing his influence over the top of the hierarchy to slowly but surely get more control over what gets fed to twitter users. Remember how Facebook has been crucial for election manipulation over the world? Now Musk gets to play this game too.
By the way, that's how he took over Tesla from its original founders. He invested an amount of money large enough so that he could force his way into becoming CEO. Then he fired the few remaining people who could oppose him.
So, no, he's not going to get out. Your post sounds more like "nothing to see here" than anything else. There's a big thing to see here. The richest US person calmly and openly taking over one of the largest social network in the world.
It's not over-analyzing, it's obvious. But in our troubled times such things are somehow happening in plain sight and nobody bats an eye.
> He’s both a passionate believer and intense critic of the service which is exactly what we need on @Twitter, and in the boardroom, to make us stronger in the long-term. Welcome Elon!
But I do not believe Elon in of himself can really resolve Twitter's ills (by my subjective assessment). Twitter and other social networks are ultimately reflections of parts of humanity. Us humans have our biases and our drives that don't just go away. You can obviously (and should) tweak the product to incentivize more productive dialog, but you can't overwrite our biases/drives/distribution of competencies by updating Twitter.
Personally, I view these social networks as mirrors, revealing parts of our humanity as it currently is. A lot of us don't like what we see, and we fixate strictly on the mirror, suggesting it's strictly the mirror's fault for displaying the unflattering image.
Social media is a mirror in the same way that baseball is a mirror. Individual personalities are tested and the fact we're playing it is because we're human, but the rules of baseball are not the rules of life. When we're playing baseball we're doing something very different from when we're relating to each other or spending time together.
Twitter is a social game, and distorts the behavior of its participants. Its a fun house mirror, not a reflecting pool.
Why does a critic make Twitter stronger? And why is that needed?
Will that account that tacks his plane continue tracking his plane?
> eh wow lol
or something to that effect
I think people outside the SV bubble (I grew up there, don't live there anymore) don't realize how hated and despised their censorship policies really are. Musk has his pulse on that, so I'm happy to see him step in and shake up the group think.
If they think the information is censored by tech companies, they'll care a lot about that!
"Elon will improve Twitter by expanding freedom of speech on the platform"
https://twitter.com/NarrativesProj/status/151139309757754574...
one can dream. as of now all corporations follow the same ideology of neoconservative imperialism because they are all owned by the same people (blackrock, etc)
Or Ukraine or many other countries. Not sure why you singled out Russia specifically.
However, if you are just watching corporate media you're not getting the full picture either. CNN and Fox News have very similar opinions on non-culture war issues.
Not ideal, but better than the status quo where there is 1 company catering to 1 group.
Majority of Americans (and most people I'd imagine) do not really care about their policies. They don't give two figs about it, and just go about their life just fine without being affected by it one bit. I'm sure you can find some people on both sides of the spectrum regarding their policies, but the vast majority don't. As someone who isn't from SV or has ever worked for in or for an SV company, my bubble is surrounded by farmers.
That's the problem with not giving a shit. When things finally do become bad enough that it affects you personally, it's too late. When it comes to standing up for what's right - and I define what's "right" as mostly what the Constitution of the United States lays forth as our inalienable rights, you better give a shit from the word "go" and you better oppose it stridently because once freedoms get stripped away from you, they're nearly impossible to recover.
I can't even imagine how the Founders would react to things like the PATRIOT Act.
And we can blather on all goddamn day about "muh private corporations!" but when these corporations are actively suppressing competitors and are working hand-in-hand with news outlets to label any new alterative as a Mos Eisley-esque shithole that no respectable person would frequent, the point is moot.
Facebook and Twitter are the modern day public square. Some people will want to claim it's "The Internet" itself; you can just go make your own public square and publish your own website, etc., but that's not actually how a public square works. Just because you hop on your tractor and box blade your front yard flat and pave it over with concrete and add some park benches to it, doesn't turn it into the public square. You actually have to have the public actively occupying it. The public square is where the people are. And the people are on Facebook and Twitter... at least in America.
That's exactly where we are now? When twitter censors right of center ideas and de-platforms those who think them, we invariably seek refuge in alternatives that engender far more radical thinking than if we had stayed in a larger public discussion.
The ideological complex has not allowed anyone to rise. That's the issue. Even neutrality is considered distasteful.
https://web.archive.org/web/20140809023548/http://www.forbes...
In South Africa, my father had a private plane we’d fly in incredibly dangerous weather and barely make it back. This is going to sound slightly crazy, but my father also had a share in an Emerald mine in Zambia. I was 15 and really wanted to go with him but didn’t realize how dangerous it was. I couldn’t find my passport so I ended up grabbing my brother’s – which turned out to be six months overdue! So we had this planeload of contraband and an overdue passport from another person. There were AK-47s all over the place and I’m thinking, “Man, this could really go bad.”
His grandfather (Dr Joshua Haldeman) was head of Technocracy Inc:
https://www.technocracy.news/shock-elon-musks-grandfather-wa...
Odds are zero things change about Twitter’s content policy, as it’s about as permissive as you can get while operating in the US.
There’s a lot less sinister intent than one might think at first blush; Twitter wants users to stick around, banning them is a really bad way to do that.
This is the second line in the linked filing, and something a number of people have not read.
Not sure it's that it was left unread or if it just doesn't matter.
As best as I can tell, it just means he won't overtly threaten the company with a takeover or equivalent because he's been given soft power to influence.
My lay reading suggests that Twitter is now basically operating at his whims to keep him from leaving the board and executing a takeover plan 90 days thereafter.
Well, he can overtly threaten all he wants. He can begin the process. He can make all the money arrangements and make agreements with other shareholders. He just cannot complete the takeover by actually acquiring more stock (or other instruments) until after 90 days. Imho that isn't a practical limit on threats.
Honestly, it might be amusing if he does do that. Twitter stock looks to still flat from the IPO price, even after the spike after this announcement.
I say, let him tie up a significant portion of his net worth in a vanity project with no real growth potential.
So he doesn't down the stock with his decisions and buys it cheap later?
The big knock against it is that users and brands are afraid of spontaneous howling mobs. Fewer users means less reach and fewer brands means less $$$. My guess would be that he has some ideas about how to change this. Maybe (spitballing here) more tools for users who are QT'd?
Yes - slowing down the rate of Twitter pile ons would help a lot. Rate limiting QTs from non-followers would help a lot I think. You could even extend this to manual text quotations and screenshots, using either printer dots or OCR. Subtweeting is fine - the point should be to avoid making randos the "it" person on Twitter.
I got as far as "bot" <-> "the cloud is just someone else's computer" <-> "tree that owns itself" before my train of thought SEGVed loudly in complaint.
That’s why free speech policies shouldn’t be dictated by partisan concerns. You never know who will be in control of your social media platform in the future.
Most people (or at least HNers) would agree that decreasing the likelihood of another Trump presidency would be a good thing.
"Black Tesla employees describe a culture of racism: ‘I was at my breaking point’ " https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-03-25/black-tesl...
"California sues Tesla, alleging rampant racism at factory" https://www.npr.org/2022/02/15/1080884899/california-sues-te...
"Black workers accused Tesla of racism for years. Now California is stepping in" https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/18/tesla-cal...
This is acknowledging that he also shares awesome stuff, like technical SpaceX details, and that he often engages with people in a real cool way.
The man definitely seems to float from one controversy to another and quite a few of those controversies seem to involve Twitter. Buying a big share in Twitter is kind of a ballsy thing to do. But why not? Might I suggest shorting the stock if you disagree ;-).
- Haters who can't stand people more successful than them, and who is more successful than Elon Musk? So anything he does is terrible.
- Since Trump, HN mostly supports social media censorship of opposing political ideas, and Elon Musk has expressed that he doesn't like this censorship.
Making $1 billion by simply spending $3 billion is pretty sweet.
Some people have about $260.00 in their name and spend $6 at Starbucks on some caramel coffee.
Think Different might have more than one meaning.
I can’t help but think this is sarcasm.
The story is always bigger than what plays out in the shadows. I wouldn't base my decision on what is being extensively reported.
I haven't seen analysis on whether it was illegal, but I wouldn't want somebody like him on my board even if it succeeded in keeping him from buying up more stock. With him on the outside, maybe he causes more trouble than on the inside but I would be wary of the association.
This was almost certainly done by a lawyer working on his behalf. This strikes me as a technicality of paperwork that is being seized upon by the media as a way to portray Musk in the worst possible light.
> I wouldn't want somebody like him on my board
In this hypothetical, what is your role (i.e. fellow shareholder, CEO, employee)? I ask because shareholders (aka the owners of the company) choose the board. Musk owns nearly 1/10th of the company, and is now the largest shareholder, institutional or individual, by a good margin. In other words, whatever your hypothetical role, you wouldn't have much of a choice.
Setting the mechanics of boards aside, there is strong case for him being the most successful business person alive. He is right up there with Bezos, Gates, and Zuckerberg. Shareholders should be cheering this on. And there is some evidence, in the form of the stock price, that they are.
He and Twitter will pay the SEC a fine and be done with it. The SEC is a civil agency. And this doesn't seem to rise to the level of criminal negligence.
(Practically speaking, he's probably losing his Tesla tweet-review case as a result of this. If he can't figure out if he's an activist when considering a Board seat, he probably needs someone with domain experience looking over his public statements.)
You wouldn't want the CEO of two of the most innovative, most successful companies of all time on your board? Why?
Suppose he comes in saying "hey, I'm going to be a passive investor" and the subtext is "funny you didn't notice me amassing so much of your stock", meaning "I could yet become an active investor and do a hostile takeover".
It's not farfetched that management might react to that by saying "we'd rather you become an active investor, and here, you can take a seat on the board if you promise you won't mount a takeover".
His intent could have been "passive for now" and mgmt maybe immediately changed his mind. Would that be a crime, or a violation of any kind, or misleading? Would saying "passive" commit him to being passive even if mgmt preferred him to be active? How would other investors get misled by any of this? Couldn't he just as quickly have decided to get out of TWTR and sold his shares, and if so, wouldn't that possibly have done more harm to other investors? What's the law say about this?
It's his board.
No he didn't.
That's just a going rule but I just checked. 80% of twitter is held by institutions. Only 2.5% is owned by insiders.
No dorsey to be seen here? No elliot management? https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2020/02/29/twitters-...
Unless I'm missing something... Elon owns Twitter. This was a super easy hostile takeover... he doesn't need 14%
Elon probably doesnt want any sort of key position because afterall he's in constant fight over tesla and sec.
Twitter will get more attention for sure, but possibly not the kind of attention they want. But apparently there's no such thing as bad publicity.
I think of of the interesting things to watch for is if he starts pressuring for the guy who tracks the movements of his private jet to have his account terminated.
Re (a) achievements, the man has basically bootstrapped space travel and electric vehicles. Seems like a big deal. Yes, I know it's more nuanced than that, but you get the point. Can you name someone else who broke through two fundamentally stalled/deadlocked industries on such scale? Now here he is putting his plow to the field of one of the most difficult problems of our age: information and social media.
Re (b) his mind, I have been very impressed by his interviews on podcasts as well as his willingness to go on various long-form podcasts. He seems to be somebody who is very eager to learn about a great variety of fields (history, software, hardware, physics). He also seems to take great care in extrapolating side-effects down a chain of events in order to think in a complex way of "what would happen if we do X". The world is not black & white and Elon seems to operate very comfortably in known & unknowns.
I don't agree with everything Elon says or does. But it's so bloody stupid that I have to even say that. What sort of bubble do you live in where you actually have various people who you fully agree with across all spectrums? Get out in the real world for goodness sake.
We need more Elon Musks.
Addendum:
(he also posts dank memes while on the pot, which is another plus)
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYOI8h9-uXs
I cannot find the complete interview on YouTube unfortunately.
In this other interview, I am disappointed at how she didn't even push on some of his answers, for example when talking about his "rabid fan base". You just need to look at this thread for proof.
[2]:https://youtu.be/sM9RyZT0Rrg?t=219
Also, she is not as technically informed about the mistakes his companies made. Would love someone to challenge him on the obvious mistakes he has made with Tesla that everyone else in the industry were adamant would be failures. Things such as the "Alien Dreadnaught" were repeats of documented mistakes that GM and Ford made back in the 80s. Even technical interviewers always gush over him about how amazing he is and never challenge him. They all just don't want to lose access.
1) Twitter doesn't ban people for wrong think! That's a myth!
2) Musk was accused of racism!
3) Musk isn't doing this for freedom of speech, he's only doing it for his own interests!
I want to see the Venn Diagram of people who said one of these things, and were glibly sharing XKCD #1357 whenever someone got banned from Twitter that they disagree with.
The tides have started to slowly turn, and all they can do is play the same three cards over and over: "that's not true, this is racism, capitalism bad!"
Surprise! Nobody believes this anymore. They're sick and tired of being told what to believe by "experts". They're tired of you crying wolf. And they're tired of being gaslit that none of this is happening.
Maybe it's worth a board seat to not get boxed out, esp if the media owned by your opponents has been demonstrably unfriendly and you're ramping up your goals.
https://twitter.com/davidpowellbham/status/15113983601372774...
Elon is being forced (or heavily incentivized at least) to liquify Tesla stocks, so he's going to be looking for alternate places to put that money to avoid the consequences of holding on to liquid capital, this limits him from putting too much of it into Twitter, and being more than just a board member.
Gives stockholders & existing board members what they want (retaining control of the business, and makes it harder for Elon to build a competitor), while giving Elon what he wants (influence in the business). This sounds like a win-win.
So how you go about this? As a mere mortal you are damned to create a new thing, create a PR-campaign from the outside to pressure Twitter ... the usual things. But as the richest person on the planet you don't only possess the resources to do all the above way better, additionally you can simply just buy up "Twitter". Which is kind of crazy like buying up a restaurant after not being satisfied with the service.
Well, the stock price did go up significantly and yeah, in order to make things "more fun" for Twitter users again (the most active being obviously not underclass) one can relax some "out of control" censorship practices.
But also quite frightening given how much I see it here in a forum of self-diagnosed geniuses[0].
[0]do your own research, have being poor
"He's not going to join the board" said the smart set.
I am undone.
the question, is it worth investment?
He already has a very questionable reputation as an "example to all humans".
Extremely powerful people do extremely stupid things. Examples:
- Trump ("Charge the White house!")
- Putin ("Invade Ukraine")
- Musk ("Make Twitter an absolute free speech platform!")
It's going to be fun to watch this over the next couple of months. And when I say "fun" I actually mean the exact opposite.
A truth is that this guy is irrelevant. It's just your ideas that make him relevant. Just face the reality of your daily lives, and look away from some random stimulant on the net that try to rub your rough corners one way or another. Either you like him or hate him, you're just wasting your energy, people...
I'm wary of Musk because he comes from the same "memelord shitposter" tradition that has served the right wing so well in the past few years, but I don't think he's angling for the return of Trump?
Imagine Trump will be brought back on Twitter, he’ll radicalize 40% of Americans into QAnon disciples and try to topple the United States government again. He’ll have thousands like him joining in in spreading mass amounts of fake news exactly like the Russian propaganda machine.
You’ll see extreme science denial, a boatload of new Covid myths, drinking bleach, Ivermectin, Covid is just the flu propaganda all over again, just 5 times worse.
I assumed he would optimize how he spends his time.
He mentioned once that he sometimes sleeps/slept at the factory.
I had a similar thought on Putin: as long as the war is ongoing he has less time to do other things.
When Biden took over trump I also thought that bidens team might be able to do more change than the trump team because he fired so many and golfed often.
My impression is that he uses his wealth mostly to invest in other ventures that he feels are important causes to him.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30921167.
Never would have bothered before but I'm long TWTR now, worth a gamble since everything Elon touches turns to gold, even if only because of cult of personality...
Internet and social media use use track closely with education level, which correlate to position on the political spectrum.
If that's true, then an attempt to make social media more "neutral" would in fact be giving rightists an unfair advantage.
I'm beyond tired of the hyperbole and hysteria any time <personal internet doesn't like> <does thing>. And I can back my assertion up with an example: you.
Not even Elon could save that dumpster fire. Android is so bad that even Google doesn't want to use it anymore (see: Fuchsia).
https://www.reuters.com/business/us-sec-says-teslas-musk-sho...