I mean, the argument that this is probably no big deal is an argument that every single technology company should immediately fire 70% of their staff and lock them out. Does anybody think that is a good idea?
ShivaX
3137
I’ve seen it from all quarters, experts, laymen, whatever, is the idea that if Elon wanted to destroy Twitter it wouldn’t be distinguishable from what he’s currently doing. It’s so bad that the government is starting to ask questions about the people that are funding it.
When it’s all said an done the economic damage is likely to be fairly massive. A lot of companies use Twitter almost exclusively and I’m not even talking about big ones. Imagining thousands or even tens of thousands of businesses being impacted isn’t out of the question. Many which might not make it. It’s akin to economic warfare and one dude did it for the lulz. That seems untenable to me.
Just as an example, Fox News’ is smaller than Twitter was (total share value near as I can tell is around $16 billion). Imagine if Elon had bought it instead and then instantly destroyed it. Now we might think “that would’ve been great” and we’d be right on one hand, but on the other, a single dude could single-handedly destroy the largest new organization in America? That seems like an extremely untenable position for us to all be living in.
Guys I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that anything could happen.
Lurb
3139
So I’m wondering who will play Elon in the movie. Jim Carrey is a bit too old isn’t he?
garin
3141
My partner suggested Mickey Rourke, which I love purely for how insulting it is to Elon.
It’s almost like having a single person be rich enough to be a significant % of the economy on his own has issues…
KevinC
3143
Are we at the point where we need to buckle up yet?
Jazar
3144
This person says exactly what I was saying: no vision, no retention plan, legacy maintenance = good luck trying to find any good talent.
LeeAbe
3145
Looking at my Twitter feed this morning and thinking about if this goes away. I don’t care about most of it, even if I enjoy Twitter quite a bit at times. I first started using Twitter as a way of getting more info on the Tour de France as I watched it, and it was great seeing people post things you would never get to see by just watching TV. You don’t have to read the “comments” and I could curate it to my liking. Not all the crap of something like Reddit. I will miss that kind of thing, but I can live without it. What I am really going to miss is the little updates I get from various hobbies. App updates, website status, local traffic, weather reports, etc. There isn’t really a good way to replace that, at least that I can think of right now.
Let’s be honest. Twitter as a platform had become massive but also was mostly massively liberal. If you were a conservative entity and could buy and shut down a liberal communication platform… THE liberal communication platform, then you’d probably do that. Surely if Saudi and Chinese money was a large part of the financing, they have reason to get the platform shut down.
Making it look like everyone just left because the owner acts like an asshole, the exact thing people who built Twitter and use Twitter would hate, is an easy out for a reason it blows up.
Rock n roll!
There’s a part in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 where Hunter S Thompson examines some of the players in the race, and tries to deduce which drug they’re on based on their behavior and the crazy shit they say.
It comes back to me any time I see a public figure acting erratically.
There’s absolutely no way he’d judge Elon “I’ve been up all night trying to think of any possible way to de-escalate this war” Musk to be sober in any way, shape or form.
Imagine being so unbelievably high that you start trying to think up solutions for a war that no one has asked you for?
“Dude, last night, I was so high, I thought I was a member of the UN”.
Aceris
3148
We can’t stop here, this is tech country.
Doubt dot gif.
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
Houngan
3150
Again, this theory, which is pretty much a conspiracy theory, is still more believable than the amount of incompetence it would take to explain recent events.
Re: crashing, if what we’ve read is true, then it will be a slow cascade of performance problems until failure, not a big bang. You lose an instance, everything else has to work hard. Everything slows down, stuff starts queuing up, stuff gets slower, etc. etc. Way up thread someone said Twitter doesn’t use hyperscalers? That would leave open the door for a catastrophic failure at an edge point or in the mechanicals.
I’m highly skeptical too, but you have to admit that shutting down a communication platform while claiming you’re protecting free speech is right out of the Republican playbook. It’s definitely something they’d do, it’s just that Elon seems to be blowing the place up through sheer stupidity so there’s no need.
Given the cost/benefit analysis of doing so, no I honestly do not think it is something they would do based upon that motivation, especially given the timing at which it appears to be happening.
Thrag
3153
He’s smoking dope and doing rails with Joe Rogan. That’s my theory.
Lurb
3154
I’ve read that they are mostly based on on premises kubernetes. Kubernetes is a good fit for their use case, but in the wrong hands is the perfect nuclear footgun, so a catastrophic event isn’t a far fetched prediction.
This guy paid for the creation of two highly successful startup companies, one of which has massive Government ties. He’s likely on the target list of all the World’s dictators as a guy they’d love to have on his side. He tells us who he is daily when it comes to “free speech”.
Conspiracy theory sure, but it’s not at all far fetched. The fact that same Government with a big G is interested in the money part of it says enough for me to think it’s quite possible.
Also, people want to love the guy for his electric cars and his rockets. They think he’s a genius.
