Maybe, maybe not. But I get the feeling talking to a couple of engineers that we contract with that there are small dev teams at places you’d expect (Apple and yeah, Google) and places you might not think of immediately (Amazon, WalMart), who have functional code that they developed for some kind of social interaction application that was set aside because it was looking a lot like twitter with nothing to really differentiate it. We’ll see.
Kanye bought Parler. It’s like cesspool squared.
Canuck
2054
I had to do a search and this was one of the first things that came up lol.
Wish I could say that kind of stupidity was limited to Musk, but I’ve known a few leads that ranked their reports by number of checkins. Probably the easiest way to tell all your engineers that you don’t have any clue how development works.
I cannot comprehend owning a space rocket company and an electric vehicle company – and then deciding to spend any of my time and treasure on this mess.
Quaro
2057
Every single ad buy for the foreseeable future is now a risk for every company. Elon literally threatening his customers.
This is a whole new level of off the rails in my opinion. Anyone can clearly see the consequences of that single Tweet. But he still Tweeted it out.
To me this is the ‘oh actually Twitter really is doomed’ movement. Never could I imagined Elon would screw up this epically.
C’mon over to counter.social, folks, the water’s fine!
I was thinking something a little different - this week will provide endless material for the people who make the training programs for corporate social media policies. You know the kind of thing:
“Elon was browsing the Internet when he saw a post from one of his company’s advertisers that he disagreed with. Elon should:
a) Send a link to the post to his company’s Marketing department, along with a description of his concerns.
b) Send a link to the post to his company’s Social Media department, along with a description of his concerns.
c) Immediately respond to to the advertiser with his own post threatening a thermonuclear name and shame.
d) Immediately respond to to the advertiser with 420 references and a meme from 2011.”
cmwolfe
2062
What are the odds this thing crashes on election night?
I sure hope so. At least there are a ton of people suddenly available with experience in that area.
Editer
2064
Twitter just better hope that nothing goes awry with the servers this weekend since it sounds like Elon and maybe five other people can access the network right now.
I had two friends who worked for Twitter, an experience designer and an engineer. They both got hit. One’s not happy about being on the job market with Google, Amazon, etc. all in the midst of hiring freezes due to the economy, of course. The other is relieved to not be working for Elon and said this week has been insanely toxic.
The real shame of this is that Musk could have been remembered very positively by history, with SpaceX and Tesla. But he’s now establishing his public persona with behavior that comes across as unhinged. Instead of being remembered as the man who got Americans back into space from their own soil and opened the door to Mars, he’s going to be remembered as the guy who tried to get advertisers back on his platform by threatening to out them to extremist right-wingers.
Sigh. I hate this planet sometimes.
I guess lots of people remember Henry Ford positively. History has a tendency to edit out parts of the story, or to decide that some accomplishments are more important than how hateful and harmful a little shit one happens to be. Sigh.
Possibly naïve question but in addition to being bad business strategy, isn’t such a threat actual extortion? As in illegal? He is telling firms he will cause them financial harm/ruin if they don’t pay him money. Sounds like extortion to me.
Hopefully the Justice Department is paying attention.
How long before twitter is just wall to wall My Pillow and Medic Alert ads.
Elmo could also be remembered as a guy that bought stakes in things, pushed out the people that actually created the things, then took all the credit for creating the things. Or inheriting apartheid emerald mine wealth. Lots to choose from! ¯\(ツ)/¯
Alstein
2069
It depends who writes history what gets remembered.
This is why winning culturally in the present, and the war on education is so important. They who control the past control the future. The fascists know this quite well. We need to learn this lesson fast.
Aceris
2070
Those words were written as a warning for people on the left like you and those who might listen to them.
The first “checks notes” (since the original) that I’ve actually loved.
