Musk's Twitter Purchase

[villakram]

8 hours ago, Genie said:

Who governs Twitter?

It feels like a dangerous watershed moment for the internet. People like Trump and Tommy Robinson will be back stirring up hate in no time.

vs all the pro-war in Ukraine stuff that currently dominates discourse...

[Guest av1]

18 minutes ago, Genie said:

Exactly. You could probably feed the poorest half of the world for a few years with $44b. Or buy a shitty app.

And that’s exactly what I’d do if I had that sort of money. 
 

The trouble is, and this is probably for a different thread, very few people amaze that sort of wealth without being words removed. 

[Genie]

20 minutes ago, av1 said:

And that’s exactly what I’d do if I had that sort of money. 
 

The trouble is, and this is probably for a different thread, very few people amaze that sort of wealth without being words removed. 

Bezos is another, could end world famine at a stroke, but instead pisses away billions on flying a few miles above the earths atmosphere. 

Back on topic, I’d love these ex-Twitter shareholders to launch a new rival site that takes all the users across. That would be hilarious.

Edited October 28, 2022 by Genie

[tonyh29]

He could do human kind a favour and close it down , it’s just a cesspit of hate from what I’ve seen of it  …

And he can afford it 

[tonyh29]

8 hours ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

the crackpots find one-another and feel their views are validated because "everyone I follow on Twitter agrees with me".    

Remove “follow on Twitter “ from your comment and you would be describing a bolitics thread on VT

 

[Mandy Lifeboats]

12 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

Remove “follow on Twitter “ from your comment and you would be describing a bolitics thread on VT

 

In all seriousness..........

I know what you are trying to say but Villa Talk Off Topic is a joy.  Its possible to disagree with the majority view without being personally attacked or bombarded with hostile intent.  

It is against VillaTalk rules to comment on Moderation so I will not.  But I wish that wasn't the case because sometimes people might want to comment that (on the whole)  the Moderation of VillaTalk is excellent.  

 

[fruitvilla]

57 minutes ago, villakram said:

vs all the pro-war in Ukraine stuff that currently dominates discourse...

You must be confounding pro-war in Ukraine with Ukraine defending itself. 
I have not seen anyone saying war is a good idea. Even Russia to some extent disguises this with Special Military Operation. 

Perhaps the West should obfuscate with Special Ukraine Defence?

[tonyh29]

3 minutes ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

In all seriousness..........

I know what you are trying to say but Villa Talk Off Topic is a joy.  Its possible to disagree with the majority view without being personally attacked or bombarded with hostile intent.  

It is against VillaTalk rules to comment on Moderation so I will not.  But I wish that wasn't the case because sometimes people might want to comment that (on the whole)  the Moderation of VillaTalk is excellent.  

 

Agreed 

That said and I know the mods hated it but I did use to love the late night meltdowns in the bolitics threads , there was something rewarding about lighting the touchpaper and then standing back .. shame that reward was usually a yellow card or warning  points  

but all in all the site is better without it 

[KentVillan]

11 minutes ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

In all seriousness..........

I know what you are trying to say but Villa Talk Off Topic is a joy.  Its possible to disagree with the majority view without being personally attacked or bombarded with hostile intent.  

It is against VillaTalk rules to comment on Moderation so I will not.  But I wish that wasn't the case because sometimes people might want to comment that (on the whole)  the Moderation of VillaTalk is excellent.  

 

I agree. The nice thing with the rules here is they force people to (mostly) argue the point or at least be fairly civil when making jokes etc… not always perfect, obviously, and doesn’t mean you’ll reach agreement… but generally it’s the form of “free speech” that I think is more in line with what people originally meant by it. And what Twitter maybe could be with a few more rules.

Twitter’s version of free speech just results in pile ons, insults, bullying by blue ticks and bots, and then in order to make it readable, people start muting and blocking, and you end up with echo chambers of likeminded people.

Tbf it sounds like Musk might already be realising that his vision of a libertarian free for all is going to run into legal and commercial difficulties. Be interested to see how it evolves.

[ml1dch]

10 hours ago, LondonLax said:

If sponsors flee because it has become a toxic environment he’ll be in a bind. 

e.g

 

[Mandy Lifeboats]

Twitter moderation is just ridiculous and will get worse. .  If you deny the Holocaust your post will be removed as spreading disinformation.  If you deny the Katyn Massacres your tweet will probably remain.   You can't be hateful towards a gay celebrity because of his sexual orientation but you be hateful towards him because he is (in your words) a perverted sexual deviant.  

Some would say that it's impossible to moderate because of the number of inappropriate tweets.  Others may say that the number of inappropriate tweets would fall after a period of moderation. 

But its definitely not on Musk's agenda.  

Edited October 28, 2022 by Mandy Lifeboats
Spelling mishsteaks

[ml1dch]

I have no really strong opinions on any of this (apart from Elon Musk is clearly a terrible person), but this made me feel good about whatever is happening.

 

Quote

 

Twitter is a disaster clown car company that is successful despite itself, and there is no possible way to grow users and revenue without making a series of enormous compromises that will ultimately destroy your reputation and possibly cause grievous damage to your other companies.

I say this with utter confidence because the problems with Twitter are not engineering problems. They are political problems. Twitter, the company, makes very little interesting technology; the tech stack is not the valuable asset. The asset is the user base: hopelessly addicted politicians, reporters, celebrities, and other people who should know better but keep posting anyway. You! You, Elon Musk, are addicted to Twitter. You’re the asset. You just bought yourself for $44 billion dollars

 

(actual article good, quoted bit only there to [ironically] ensure site moderation rules are diligently adhered to)

[maqroll]

 

[sidcow]

https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/28/23428132/elon-musk-twitter-acquisition-problems-speech-moderation

Quote

Twitter is a disaster clown car company that is successful despite itself, and there is no possible way to grow users and revenue without making a series of enormous compromises that will ultimately destroy your reputation and possibly cause grievous damage to your other companies.

Quote

Here are some examples: you can write as many polite letters to advertisers as you want, but you cannot reasonably expect to collect any meaningful advertising revenue if you do not promise those advertisers “brand safety.” That means you have to ban racism, sexism, transphobia, and all kinds of other speech

Quote

the dull reality is that you still have to ban a bunch of legal speech if you want to make money. And when you start doing that, your creepy new right-wing fanboys are going to viciously turn on you, just like they turn on every other social network that realizes the same essential truth.

Quote

it turns out that most people do not want to participate in horrible unmoderated internet spaces full of shitty racists and not-all-men fedora bullies. (This is why Twitter is so small compared to its peers!) What most people want from social media is to have nice experiences and to feel validated all the time. 

Quote

you have to make the experience much, much more pleasant. Which means: moderating more aggressively! Again, every “alternative” social network has learned this lesson the hard way. Like, over and over and over again.

Quote

The essential truth of every social network is that the product is content moderation, and everyone hates the people who decide how content moderation works. Content moderation is what Twitter makes — it is the thing that defines the user experience. It’s what YouTube makes, it’s what Instagram makes, it’s what TikTok makes. They all try to incentivize good stuff, disincentivize bad stuff, and delete the really bad stuff. 

 

[OutByEaster?]

Out of interest, who are the people that Musk bought Twitter from?

 

[bickster]

34 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

Out of interest, who are the people that Musk bought Twitter from?

 

Shareholders, I mean that in a humorous way, Twitter had floated so was a public company.

The board recommended to the shareholders to….

Take his money and run, run, run. He's giving you a get out of jail free card. 

 

[OutByEaster?]

34 minutes ago, bickster said:

Shareholders, I mean that in a humorous way, Twitter had floated so was a public company.

The board recommended to the shareholders to….

Take his money and run, run, run. He's giving you a get out of jail free card. 

Ah, the usual suspects, Vanguard, Blackrock, Abigail Johnson et al.

Morgan Stanley loaned him $12.5bn (secured against Tesla shares) in order to help him finalise the sale, ensuring big profits for the existing Twitter shareholders that include (checks notes) erm...Morgan Stanley, the third largest shareholder at 8.5%. They also advised him on the sale, so they'll make a couple of hundred million on the loan, maybe half a billion on the advice and a several hundred million on the sale of their shares.

Nice work if you can get it.

 

[KentVillan]

11 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

Ah, the usual suspects, Vanguard, Blackrock, Abigail Johnson et al.

Morgan Stanley loaned him $12.5bn (secured against Tesla shares) in order to help him finalise the sale, ensuring big profits for the existing Twitter shareholders that include (checks notes) erm...Morgan Stanley, the third largest shareholder at 8.5%. They also advised him on the sale, so they'll make a couple of hundred million on the loan, maybe half a billion on the advice and a several hundred million on the sale of their shares.

Nice work if you can get it.

 

Most of these shareholders like Vanguard, BlackRock, etc are simply passive intermediaries for actual investors. It’s not as sinister as it sounds. Mostly it’s someone’s pension fund.

[OutByEaster?]

3 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

Most of these shareholders like Vanguard, BlackRock, etc are simply passive intermediaries for actual investors. It’s not as sinister as it sounds. Mostly it’s someone’s pension fund.

Indeed, but those at the top of the tree are very aware that controlling money is as good as owning money, I'm not sure whether it's correct to say that the intermediaries are the passive participant in the relationship between those companies and their investors. The investors give money and take profit, they don't make the decisions.

Abigail Johnson for example doesn't appear very often on those 'worlds richest' lists, but she controls a fund that has about the same financial power as Spain, the influence her decisions on what that money does means that she is most likely the most powerful woman on the planet.

 

[KentVillan]

26 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

Indeed, but those at the top of the tree are very aware that controlling money is as good as owning money, I'm not sure whether it's correct to say that the intermediaries are the passive participant in the relationship between those companies and their investors. The investors give money and take profit, they don't make the decisions.

Abigail Johnson for example doesn't appear very often on those 'worlds richest' lists, but she controls a fund that has about the same financial power as Spain, the influence her decisions on what that money does means that she is most likely the most powerful woman on the planet.

 

I meant passive in the sense that they are just index tracking.

But in the case of Vanguard, for example, I don’t think there’s much evidence of them behaving irresponsibly with their proxy voting role.

They held about 8-9% of Twitter stock, and would likely have just gone with the board  recommendation to sell at the hugely inflated fee Musk proposed.

I doubt individual shareholders would have done anything different. It’s not like Vanguard actively sought out Musk as an investor or meddled in the internal structure of the company.

In the end this is just what happens with publicly listed companies.

As the Verge article above suggests, Musk may quite quickly find that his investment isn’t as useful as he thought it was. If he plays around with it too much he risks losing even more money, and opening the door to a rival platform that isn’t riddled with racism and disinformation. If he keeps it as it is, then what has he achieved?