Musk / Moderation / Algos

[theflashunc]

If the plans that have leaked today are any indication, we're going to watch someone light $44 bln on fire with lightning speed.

$20 blue check mark verification is not going to fill a $13 bln debt hole, nor make celebs, politicos and the like stick around.

[caleb]

Others have probably already seen this, but here's a quick analysis of the numbers from the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/30/t...tter-debt.html

Perhaps most importantly, Twitter is very unlikely to be able to pay its bills without help.

Last year, Twitter’s interest expense was about $50 million. With the new debt taken on in the deal, that will now balloon to about $1 billion a year. Yet the company’s operations last year generated about $630 million in cash flow to meet its financial obligations.

That means that Twitter is generating less money per year than what it owes its lenders. The company also does not appear to have a lot of extra cash on hand. While it had about $6 billion in cash before Mr. Musk’s buyout, a large portion of that probably went into the cost of closing the acquisition.

I don't understand how this is a viable business.

[Mabouya]

I don't understand how this is a viable business.

There is a tiny possibility that it was purchased for reasons other than to make a profit.

[vertical_doug]

There is a tiny possibility that it was purchased for reasons other than to make a profit.

Since Musk is often compared to Henry Ford, his purchase of Twitter is like Ford's publication of the Dearborn Independent.
That did not end well.

[Chik]

$20 blue check mark verification

Yeah, that had me chortling. The bigger beneficiary of such a verification system is the platform, not the verified users.

[Marvinlungwitz]

“It’s becoming apparent that in order to save Twitter, Elon’s going to have to ban himself”.

Yup.

[Too Tall]

There is a tiny possibility that it was purchased for reasons other than to make a profit.

I see what you did there.

My worst fears about this are << (content deleted by the moderators due to less than sufficient boot licking).

[sk_tle]

I have a an account on a mastodon instance and what I am currently seeing is a huge influx of new accounts on the fediverse coming from people fleeing twitter.

Will see how it evolves but I do think that twitter is already dead. It just doesn't know yet. Facebook is geriatry, snapchat was a soufflé au fromage that will likely go the way of myspace very soon. That leaves us with instagram and tiktok competing in the same area. I refuse to use tiktok and I am about to delete my instagram account as I see logging to it less and less (I am using the browser in incognito mode instead of the data sucking app). Whenever someone send me a link of facebook/twitter/tiktok/instagram on instant messaging I will now tell my contacts to send me the screenshot or the video directly or I won't bother.

I wish people would stop using whatsapp and other centralized messaging apps. This is the hardest to leave.

[Too Tall]

Not everything makes sense Thomas. Suppose E.M. et. al. decide it is more prosperous to bankroll the bleedin' thing until their objective(s) are met than sell it for .10c on the dollar?

When money does not matter it does not matter.

[bcm119]

If the plans that have leaked today are any indication, we're going to watch someone light $44 bln on fire with lightning speed.

$20 blue check mark verification is not going to fill a $13 bln debt hole, nor make celebs, politicos and the like stick around.

You're probably right, but don't underestimate the number of blue checkers whose entire ego and identity is wrapped up in their twitter account.

[j44ke]

I have a an account on a mastodon instance and what I am currently seeing is a huge influx of new accounts on the fediverse coming from people fleeing twitter.

Will see how it evolves but I do think that twitter is already dead. It just doesn't know yet. Facebook is geriatry, snapchat was a soufflé au fromage that will likely go the way of myspace very soon. That leaves us with instagram and tiktok competing in the same area. I refuse to use tiktok and I am about to delete my instagram account as I see logging to it less and less (I am using the browser in incognito mode instead of the data sucking app). Whenever someone send me a link of facebook/twitter/tiktok/instagram on instant messaging I will now tell my contacts to send me the screenshot or the video directly or I won't bother.

I wish people would stop using whatsapp and other centralized messaging apps. This is the hardest to leave.

Hey Thomas - what do you use for messaging?

[bigbill]

Five years ago, my then-18-year-old son told me that Facebook was for old people. He used Instagram for messaging, and I never set up my account. Never on Twitter either. I'm on FB, but most of my posts are in small, "private" groups. I'm under no illusion that the groups are private. As a historian, I see FB posts that are shared by friends that are full of false information. What are the motivations for posting false information on pages that appear to be official other than to cause division? I read everything with skepticism because of my background, but folks that see a post that aligns with their beliefs, even though false, feel the need to share it. Who benefits from this?

[j44ke]

I can't believe the number of companies that use some product like What'sApp for their intra-firm messaging. Or allow people to install social media on their company phones. Makes no sense to me.

[caleb]

There is a tiny possibility that it was purchased for reasons other than to make a profit.

I appreciate that, but I still didn't think the biggest banks in the world were in the business of lending billions to other businesses that are, on their own terms, insolvent. I realize EM's personal wealth means he plays by different rules, but there seems to be a nonzero chance that the lenders get hung out to dry if all the Tesla stock backing the deal continues to crater.

Anyway, how long is it going to take for a moderated Twitter alternative to emerge if/when Twitter becomes socially toxic?

[j44ke]

I appreciate that, but I still didn't think the biggest banks in the world were in the business of lending billions to other businesses that are, on their own terms, insolvent. I realize EM's personal wealth means he plays by different rules, but there seems to be a nonzero chance that the lenders get hung out to dry if all the Tesla stock backing the deal continues to crater.

Anyway, how long is it going to take for a moderated Twitter alternative to emerge if/when Twitter becomes socially toxic?

I think the business of loans is not based on solvency just like the business of insurance is not based on insuring anything.

[72gmc]

https://gizmodo.com/twitter-content-...rms-1849726968

Just an unfortunate coincidence?

[theflashunc]

You're probably right, but don't underestimate the number of blue checkers whose entire ego and identity is wrapped up in their twitter account.

True, but even with existing blue check marks, I've seen estimates this'll only bring in tens of millions in revenue. The company needs hundreds of millions, if not billions, in new revenue streams.

And this risks alienating the very influencers and high profile public figures that make Twitter such a town square to begin with.

Never mind making it pay for play on the verification removes the entire cache of the verification itself. It's just a paid for check mark at that point.

I wonder what Tesla shareholders think about their CEO violating his fiduciary duty to them by pulling Tesla employees in to work at a private company for free on projects unrelated to Tesla's business.

[sk_tle]

Hey Thomas - what do you use for messaging?

I still use a bit whatsapp due to network effect but I havr contacts on xmpp (formerly called jabber), matrix and deltachat. Deltachat use regular emails as backend and is the easiest to make people switch to. XMPP is an ietf standard and whatsapp used to be bog standard xmpp, as well a facebook messenger and google <whateveritwascalledatthetime) but they all decide to close their network to remove any interoperability possibility. Matrix is free (as in open source) but is not so decentralized as way too many people use the official matrix.org instance. It is more an alternative to discord than whatsapp.

The most interesting to me are briar and tox which are fully focused on privacy and targeting people who may be at risk: activists, journalists, etc. Problem is they are the hardest in term of adoption because their privacy/security focus is incompatible with an auto discovery of contacts or link to an universal identifier (phone number, pseudo, email address).

[Saab2000]

I wonder what Tesla shareholders think about their CEO violating his fiduciary duty to them by pulling Tesla employees in to work at a private company for free on projects unrelated to Tesla's business.

I am one of those shareholders and am not loving this whole situation. And anyone with a 401k with any shares in the S&P 500 is also a shareholder.

[sk_tle]

Hey Thomas - what do you use for messaging?

Forgot to say that ultimately having more choice is a double edged sword. It makes it more difficult to do advocacy for alternatives and it is also annoying to not be able to have only one application.

There is actually an IETF working group to standardize instant messaging interoperability. Hoping it will end up with something concrete and adopted:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/bof...eroperability/