Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll

Musk knows in his heart of hearts that he is the most interesting and newsworthy person on the planet, so it makes sense the front page articles are about him.

Besides, I don't think Twitter is what did Elon's reputation as a "savior" in. The current affair is more reaffirming than opinion shifting, for everyone I've talked to.

Are you kidding? He loves the attention, and we are only talking about Twitter because Elon bought it rather than some boring guy.

I still don't see the impending death of Twitter. Where is the evidence that it is going down the tubes? PG will be back, because everything bad about Twitter is even worse on Mastodon -- instead of one narcissistic Napoleon running things like Twitter, Mastodon has hundreds of them, and they are even less accountable than Elon.

If you want to kill Twitter, stopping giving it free publicity would be a good start. But you can't help yourselves, so it survives and thrives on your outrage.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/13/reddit-ce...

At the time, yishan drew a ton of criticism, but now what has happened at Twitter dwarfs that story.

Recall that yishan was also from the Paypal mafia and had early experience at facebook. Yet was unable to make things work. Important for any of the current would-be Twitter investors to ponder.

Frankly, at least this crazy guy running Twitter is openly doing it

I'm speculating a bit, and I'm not supporting his actions, I'm trying to explain then. I think he already had disagreement with his son that came out as trans later, and I think the major reason he changed his political position is because of his child. The child also cut all ties with him.

He said "The woke mind virus must be destroyed, nothing else matters".

It's not Elon the entrepreneur, or Elon the management genius, or even Elon the troll on social media.

What's really driving him is Elon the father that views leftism and woke as a mind virus that had possessed his child.

When you reach that position as a father, there's no loyalty to old political parties, there's no choosing words carefully or looking at Twitter as a regular business.

This is a person who could not care much about ideology until ideology reached his house and destroyed it - and only at that point he actually started fighting the fight.

He treats Twitter and leftists as the enemies because in his mind they are enemies, enemies that managed to destroy his child. It might seem inconceivable that someone might change his position so radically, and surprise everyone, but that's because they don't understand the real motivation.

Anyway, I'm not supporting his actions, this is meant to empathize with him so I'll understand what's going on and where all this is coming from, and therefore, where is it going.

I wish one could take a step back and just see how ridiculous of a statement this is. There is nothing about Musk’s history and management style that is even remotely close to what could be called “scientific first principles type of thinking”. Musk’s management style is a bull in a china closet, he manages via personal vendettas, and he follows the marketing and hype first, delivery second product development cycle. See full self-driving, Cybertruck, Tesla robot, Tesla tunnel, and whatever else he’s promised over the years but never delivered on.

Edit: striking out comment about the Cybertruck’s airflow until I can find the article I read to back it up.

That didn't pan out too well either.

https://i.redd.it/manager-does-a-little-code-cleanup-v0-5cxg...

The problem with this is that Twitter didn't have any technical problems that it needed Musk to solve. "Bots" were not a major problem for day-to-day usage. What it needed was a product vision to reach sustainable profitability. Not a huge amount of additional debt, massive internal disruption, and a catastrophic reputational collapse.

i mean, i guess, if you don't consider having a job- and or career-ending gun pointed at your head to be at all influential or coercive.

https://chomsky.info/consent01/#:~:text=SIZE%2C%20OWNERSHIP%...

I don't think what you describe is actually possible. Compare Glenn Greenwald's writing about his work at an organization funded by Pierre Omidyar ( https://greenwald.substack.com/p/pierre-omidyars-financing-o... ):

> Any time I speak or write about Omidyar, the proverbial elephant in the room is my own extensive involvement with him: specifically, the fact that the journalistic outlet I co-founded in 2013, and at which I worked for eight years, was funded almost entirely by him. For purposes of basic journalistic disclosure, but also to explain how my interaction with him informs my perspective on these issues, I will describe that experience and what I learned from it.

> When I left the Guardian in 2013 at the height of the Snowden/NSA reporting to co-found a new media outlet along with two other journalists, it was Omidyar who funded the project, which ultimately became The Intercept, along with its parent corporation, First Look Media. Our unconditional demand when deciding to accept funding from Omidyar was that he vow never to have any role whatsoever or attempt to interfere in any way in the editorial content of our reporting, no matter how much he disagreed with it or how distasteful he found it. He not only agreed to this condition but emphasized that he, too, believed the integrity of the new journalism project depended upon our enjoying full editorial freedom and independence from his influence.

> In the eight years I spent at The Intercept, Omidyar completely kept his word. There was never a single occasion, at least to my knowledge, when he attempted to interfere in or override our journalistic independence.

> For the first couple of years, adhering to that promise was easy: [...] our journalism and Omidyar's worldview were fully aligned

> The arrival of Donald Trump on the political scene in 2015 changed all of that, and did so quite dramatically.

> the Trump-centric worldview that I spent most of my time attacking and mocking on every platform I had — in speeches, interviews, podcasts, social media and in countless articles at The Intercept — was the exact political worldview to which Omidyar had completely devoted himself and was passionately and vocally advocating.

> The radical divergence between my worldview and Omidyar's did not end there.

> This extreme divergence between my public profile and Omidyar's core views expanded for years. Often Omidyar would promote and herald a view on Twitter in the morning, and I would then publish an article on The Intercept attacking that same view in the afternoon, and then go on television that night to attack it some more.

> It was an irresistible story to journalists: at the time, I was the most prominent and the highest-paid journalist associated with The Intercept, which relied almost entirely on Omidyar's annual multi-million dollar largesse, and yet my primary political and journalistic focus at The Intercept was tantamount to a war on Omidyar's most cherished political beliefs and core objectives.

> On at least two occasions, journalists with major outlets contacted each of us to let us know they wanted to write about this glaring split. Yet neither ended up doing so for a simple reason: Omidyar made it emphatically clear that I had the absolute right to express whatever views I wanted, and that my doing so would never create a problem with him, let alone cause him to rethink his funding of The Intercept.

> Omidyar told me privately on both occasions that he knew when he decided to fund The Intercept that the day would come, likely soon, when not just me but other journalists there would be publishing articles with which he vehemently disagreed or even undermined his other interests. When he decided to fund The Intercept, he told me, he was supporting independent journalism, not promoting a particular ideology or political agenda. And indeed, no matter how much my attacks escalated on his core beliefs and the other groups he was heavily funding — and escalate they did! — I never received any remote signal that my outspoken journalism and commentary were imperiling his ongoing funding of The Intercept.

> I recount all of that for two reasons. First, I want to make clear that my analysis of Omidyar's role in this scam Facebook "whistleblower” campaign and the dangers it presents is in no way motivated by personal animus toward him.

> But the second point is the more important one. When it comes to billionaire funders of political and journalistic projects, Omidyar — despite the long list of political views and activities of his that I regard as misguided or even toxic — is, for the reasons I just outlined, as good as it gets. And yet despite all that, it is simply unavoidable — inevitable — that the ideology, views and political agenda of a billionaire funder will end up contaminating and dominating any project for which they are the exclusive or primary funder. Omidyar is not some apolitical or neutral guardian of good internet governance; he is a highly politicized and ideological actor with very strong views on society's most debated questions.

> To understand the dangers of a small group of billionaires funding campaigns like this [...] put yourself in the place of senior editors of The Intercept. Despite Omidayr's genuine affirmation of editorial independence, they live in complete captivity to, and fear of, Omidyar's whims and preferences.

> As is true of so many billionaire-funded NGOs and “non-profits,” editors and senior writers at The Intercept receive gigantic, well-above-the-market salaries. Because the site depends almost entirely on Omidyar's infinite wealth, it does not sell any subscriptions or ads and it therefore does not have any pressure to produce at all in order to generate revenue. It is a dream job for most of them: enormous salaries, endless expense accounts, a complete lack of job requirements, and no need even to attract an audience. For years, outside of three or four journalists, articles published by The Intercept produce almost no traffic.

> It does not get better than that, and that is why almost nobody ever quits The Intercept. Why would they? They just stay for years and years, collecting a huge salary, with no need to do anything but avoid angering one man. They work in an industry where jobs disappear with astonishing frequency, where layoffs are the norm, where the very existence of most organizations is precarious, and where the slightest dissent from liberal orthodoxies can render someone permanently unemployable. Those who work in outlets funded by billionaires have essentially won a type of lottery, at least temporarily, and very few people are willing to risk losing a winning lottery ticket, especially if they know they have no alternatives

> That means that the entire news organization has a constituency of one: Pierre Omidyar. If you were an Intercept editor who knows you could never get anywhere near that high salary working anywhere else — and that is true for virtually the entire senior editorial staff at The Intercept other than its Washington Bureau Chief Ryan Grim — you will of course be desperate to keep the sinecure going. That is not really corrupt as much as it is just basic self-preservation. If remaining in Omidyar's good graces is the only way to pay your large mortgage and maintain your lifestyle — which is true for most of them — then that will be all you ever think or care about.

> Consider the power that bestows on Omidyar in the lives of those dependent on him.

> They wake up knowing every day that one man has the power, on a whim, to destroy their livelihood. That desperate dynamic produces a climate where catering one's worldview and work product to Omidyar's ideological preferences becomes the overarching imperative. The only thing that matters to them in their work is keeping their sole benefactor happy and avoiding his wrath.

> I want to avoid the caricature here. This need to please Omidyar is often more subliminal than conscious. There are numerous journalists who work at The Intercept who do great work and rarely think about Omidyar in any conscious or direct way.

> But the inescapable reality is that the senior editorial management absolutely knows that their only real job is to foster a climate that will keep Omidyar happy, which means only hiring or publishing voices that will not offend him, ensuring that The Intercept's political and journalistic posture is aligned with his ideological worldview and, most of all, prohibiting anyone or any journalism from remaining at The Intercept if it strays too far from Omidyar's political project.

-----

When the owner is ideologically committed above all else to not interfering with what his organization publishes, when he makes repeated public statements to that effect and demonstrates his sincerity over and over and over again, the result is that the organization adheres slavishly to every quirk of the owner's beliefs, and devotes all its effort to bringing itself into line and expelling anyone who might think differently.

Jeff Bezos is part of every decision about what gets run on the front page of the Washington Post, whether he'd like that to be true or not.

The Atlantic is now visibly more biased towards the "left."

The original Atlantic was pretty much neutral.

These are outdated legacy systems that don't have the impact they once did. So there is not much point to comparing how they operate with Twitter.

One thing interesting that's happening with Elon's polls is ppl will notice who runs polls about their own decisions. And that's a good thing.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk blasts Rep. Adam Schiff in deleted tweet: 'Your brain is too small'[1]

1. https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/twitter-ceo-elon-musk-b...

EDIT: Another example of scientific first principles

https://twitter.com/badlin/status/1604689299701911552/photo/...

Many would happily dance on his grave, and raise a toast to his departure from this realm.

To say that he has a hands off approach to his editorial board, because of his handling of Theranos, is an unkindness to the harm he has caused to the fabric of decent society.

If any lesson is to be learned from Murdoch’s, it would be on silencing detractors, and holding the levers of political power.

Murdoch staying out of content would be like Musk staying out of tech.

Stating unilaterally that Bezos & Murdoch exert no influence over the content of their publications can't be grounded in any fact because any potential influence they might exert would never be public knowledge. It's falsifiable (as many commenters have done with Murdoch) but it's not provable. There's a lot of circumstantial evidence Bezos does too: it will probably remain circumstantial since he is in a position to keep it that way.

Twitter content being crowdsourced means that Musk as owner has far less direct influence. All he can really do is censor, which is exactly what we've seen play out.

That's even the actual title ("Kingmaker, The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty") of a BBC documentary about him: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000kxvz

https://cdn.masto.host/bitcoinhackers/media_attachments/file...

Every time he suspends a high profile Twitter account for posting Mastodon links (or, as he did recently, changes the T&Cs to explicitly "prohibit sharing Mastodon links"), we get a new spike of users and content on the Fediverse.

He's doing more to bring people to the Fediverse than years of enthusiasts trying to explain normal folks what an instance and an ActivityPub inbox are.

There are significant technical, scalability and user experience challenges with ActivityPub-based systems that people refuse to acknowledge and address. Some of those challenges may not even have a good solution - turns out there are also advantages to centralisation, and fixing social media toxicity doesn't necessarily require throwing the baby out with the bathwater and going all-in on a decentralised solution.

Although I'm not sure who would want to run Twitter now.

"As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it"

https://notabird.site/elonmusk/status/1604623424164282368

Lex Fridman just volunteered

https://twitter.com/lexfridman/status/1604627087385661440

The issue with this is obvious: there’s only one “you fucked up” option and the “I agree but let’s talk specifics” group is divided into three. So even though the majority of people said “I agree”, the “you fucked up” got the most votes. Classic first-past-the-post failure mode.

That said, the later poll didn’t reflect this dynamic. My suspicion is that early on in polls the answers are likely to lean pro-Elon, as the votes are more likely to to be Twitter stan’s. As time goes by word of mouth spreads news of the poll to people who aren’t as active on twitter and accordingly are less likely to be pro-elon.

It was the same with the “should I step down” poll, started out pro-Elon, flipped as popularity increased.

https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/16036000010571857...

He’s also facing a huge amount of backlash, pent-up backlash, that he hasn’t experienced before or more successfully insulated himself from before. For example, when he was recently booed off stage.

I saw someone comment elsewhere that he is also highly leveraged, and that if Twitter tanks and Tesla’s stock keeps falling, he stands to lose a lot of money and even potentially control of Tesla. I haven’t looked into the veracity of the argument, but it seems plausible that he’s in over his head in more ways than one.

Agreed, and this move would almost certainly be more of a distraction than an actual stepping down. Whoever is put in charge will still be under Elon’s thumb, but with a different person in the CEO seat, Elon can pass blame for the bad decisions and ride in like a white knight to reverse any unpopular actions.

Not true, he changed the poll well before its conclusion. Then he abided by the majority vote and unbanned those users. But you're not happy, and need to make stuff up about what he did or didn't do.

His latest poll deciding his own fate reveals the bold transparency approach. People can't handle transparency it seems. Almost like they want things decided behind closed doors that decide the terms they agree to. The world needs more transparency not less.

It will be sad to see him step down, if the poll decides that. It's been highly entertaining. The outrage and temper tantrums sparked in entitled over-sensitive Twitter users and commentators, is quality popcorn material. Must the curtain close?

He wanted something to anger people right before the poll so it’s guaranteed he gets voted out.

Delegation is part of the job but you don't get to delegate consequential executive decisicions to something as capricious as an internet poll...

All of those obvious moves were possible straight after the acquisition though. Now your final sentence is far more realistic.

Scrap all the moderation changes musk has made, apologise to all the advertisers, keep headcount at a sustainable level (more than they have now but less than they had when musk bought it), and look to launch some new products (reviving Vine is the obvious one).

One person suggested Matt Mullenweg which is about the best answer any of us could think of.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604628761395138561?s=46...

Context:https://twitter.com/search?q=%22blocked%20by%20lex%22&src=ty...

Sure. He can have my 38 bucks. I can't do any worse than he's doing.

[Edit]: Also, it's a bit of a stage rule as most of Musk's wealth is still in SpaceX and Tesla.

No way Elon follows through, surely?

I don't really see a problem here that was not already a problem before.

I am also not going to lie, I think social media as a whole is really not that big of a deal. I know many people have built businesses through social media and benefit from it, but businesses live and die naturally everyday, don't put your eggs into one basket. I know some people that had some level of popularity on LiveJournal, they all survived it's death. You will too.

Not everything is 4-D chess. Sometimes unforced errors are just that.

It sucks to see people with near-limitless resources just sit and wallow in (self-inflicted) misery when they could probably do something about it.

And how long before he has another poll on whether or not to fire them?

It's his thought process that is the problem. I feel Twitter would have died Elon, or no Elon. But this sort of spectacular flameout ending is really what Elon brings to the table because his leadership style does not lend itself to stability.

the federated social web will outlive this.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604628761395138561?s=46...

Still playing games.

It will probably be another poll. With one option, him.

Twitter has been a pit of outrage, fuelling mobs to attack people for so long — will this new version of it be any worse? I’m curious to find out (from the sidelines)

Someone referred to Elon as "speedrunning being a forum moderator", or "running a Lowtax" and yeah, so far.

Among other things, he is one of the founders of Ycombinator. He is quite known in the tech world. You've might stumbled across one of his essays which are frequently linked here.

Probably people think him being back at Tesla more of the time is better for the company. I have my doubts about that. My big hope is he doesn’t screw up SpaceX close to Starship launching.

https://openargs.com/oa663-elon-dumps-42-million-more-shares...

https://mastodon.weinzierlweb.com/@ludwig/109537268355917100

He also has no plan… his successor needs a holistic strategic mindset and a business development methodology. Perhaps he had support from leadership lieutenants at Tesla and Space X and is trying to solo this one. Something’s different enough with his floundering at Twitter.

Best case we get a more decentralized option or a centralized option that isn’t so politicized by the owners… or at least an owner who isn’t a contentious celebrity that is a black/white villain/hero to a big portion of the population.

Unfortunately all of my experiences with Mastadon have been negative (particularly the UI and how it encourages bubbles harder than Reddit hypermodding), but Mastadon seems to be all people talk about.

Remember people getting banned for saying "learn to code", disallowing certain news links even in DMs, shadowbanning undesirables with no transparency.

Yes, running an engine at eleven will show you where it creaks. But it may also fling shrapnel through itself and everyone nearby.

Are you talking as a communist meaning "The society has been too lenient on the class of billionaires, but now that one of them is exposed as a destructive idiot, people will be forced to ask whether the rest of them deserve their power over us"?

Because that's the only logically consistent interpretation of your statement I can find.

Maybe he's even sicced his bots to vote yes.

He's doing the same thing here, he just has more money to play with, which I think it what people are ultimately annoyed about.

Also worth pointing out that for years and years everyone said the way he was going about aerospace was impossible and stupid and was never going to work. They said the same thing about his approach to automobiles.

By very definition to shake up an industry you need to go against the status quo. You need to do something others have not, and you need to take risks. Otherwise you're just going to get a 1 or 2% improvement. So actually I see him messing with Twitter so fundamentally as a good thing, because there's a chance it will result in something great. It might burn to the ground too, but that's the risk you take when you actually do something.

I mean, the worst thing about Facebook/YouTube is the relentless advertising, so maybe there's a chance that Elon chasing away advertisers is actually a good thing for Twitter users? He owns the thing, what do you care if it makes very little money?

I guarantee YouTube and Facebook would be more enjoyable to use with 1/10th the number of ads (and as a result, 1/10th the profit, which means nothing to me)

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604626103326253056

To be fair to the lunatic currently in charge of Twitter, I don't think he's actually getting big bucks to be CEO, is he?

Anyway here it is: https://notabird.site/elonmusk/status/1604617643973124097