Elon Cleaning House

Remember how Russia took over internet from Ukraine. Essentially silencing or at least severely censoring any Ukranian message?

Here's a link for a quick catch up
How Russia Took Over Ukraine’s Internet in Occupied Territories

Now that we are caught up, who is providing internet for Ukraine?

Elon Musk says SpaceX will keep funding Starlink internet in Ukraine

Crypto currencies are decentralized and while governments have banned them they can't stop them.

So we have a guy who can provide internet access to anywhere in the world, who now owns a social media platform providing a place to be heard at anytime, anywhere on this planet and to top it off Musk likes cryptocurrencies which banks nor governments can control.

What I'm not following is how you believe because a government "bans" something that this thing will no longer exist.

 

Compared to Facebook or Amazon or Google, Twitter provides very little in the way of data. It is one of the reasons that advertisers haven't jumped on the platform particularly hard: it is not a platform that makes targeting small segments easy. You can buy much better data much cheaper than this.

 

You said those (crypto, twitter, and starlink) were things."to which no government can stop or control".

See china ... Where crypto and twitter are banned, and the internet is censored. There are dozens of other counties that have similar bans on one or all three of those. Caught up, now?

 

Fascinating the dichotomy of elon wanting to own the libs and also placate them.

 

There appears to be opportunity for improvement of twitter’s income statement: Reduce cost/staff which even Dorsey admitted was bloated (But don’t eliminate key personnel). Increase revenue. The $8/month or whatever. However, Elon’s mocking & boasting about removing censorship is unnecessary and costing him advertising. Maybe roll that out with less bluster and antagonism. When companies like Pfizer are pulling out is not a good sign.
A issue is Elon likes to Big Dog it. “I’m buying twitter!” (“oh twitter is in bad shape financially and my offer was ridiculous? ok I want out. Oh they are making me stick to original contract?”).
“I meant to buy twitter!, no more censorship!” (“Oh racist/hate speech is spiking and we’re losing ad revenue?, ok we’ll censor”)

Every advertiser to pull out of Twitter since Musk's takeover—full list

 

The routine of a buyer/consultant coming in and trying to cut costs to the bone while maximizing revenue is a tale as old as time. Sometimes it works, but more often it signals a stagnant or declining business that has run out of ideas.

It’s tough to innovate, grow, or defend yourself against market disruption when all your corporate energy is directed towards just keeping your head above water.

 

great point. Plus a massive layoff reduces morale of those remaining and increases work loads. many top performers will now look elsewhere. I work in a large corp and it takes years to recover after a company uses a cleaver for job cuts.

 

I don't know how it is in the tech industry but it is really difficult to hire quality staff in this market mainly because they have the luxury of always looking for something better. It's an employees market and my impression is that terminating this many employees at once will result in only those without options returning.

 

You may be correct he may have other interests motivating him, but clearly money was a factor and he certainly regretted the valuation. It also outwardly has the appearance that he’a flailing, strategy wise, with what exactly to do with Twitter.

Using it to pump and dump dogecoin and Tesla (and Saudi Aramco!) is probably more likely than it’s service as an AI data trove. I don’t think a bunch of people spouting nonsense (including hatespeech) and posting memes has much societal or AI value. If anything, social media is more efficient at driving human behavior than the reverse, and memes are a tool used to manipulate humans in simplistic terms (delivering talking points without any reading or thinking, or even basic fact verification, on the human’s part). AI learning from social media tends to end badly. Case in point: Twitter taught Microsoft’s AI chatbot to be a racist asshole in less than a day

Interestingly, Musk does actually seem to have indicated some thinking along your lines (“a neuron doesn’t know it’s a neuron”). Musk is much smarter than me, but I see him as really misguided on this, either that or he has ill intent with the manipulative side. Otherwise it seems to ignore that a bunch of the “neurons” are misfiring or dysfunctional, the old adage “garbage in-garbage out”. Rather than being used to create high functioning AI, using Twitter data would be akin to creating schizophrenic AI, or something destructive (like Skynet).

 

Also, what is known as the "firehose," which is basically every Tweet, in a searchable format, has been readily available to anybody who wants to pay for it for a while now. And it doesn't cost $44 billion to obtain it.

 

Seems like all is going to plan there. I’m pretty firm this will be the single most expensive mistake by anyone ever.

Twitter Now Asks Some Fired Workers to Please Come Back

 

Again, to be crystal clear, Twitter’s strong commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged. In fact, we have actually seen hateful speech at times this week decline *below* our prior norms, contrary to what you may read in the press.

Interesting comment by Musk, but if the moderation of reported posts is based at least somewhat on human review and judgement, they may not have changed their rules, but changed their interpretation of the rules.

Twitter saw an "immediate, visible and measurable spike" in hate speech after Elon Musk takeover, researchers find - CBS News

 

Same thing happened to facebook more recently in their attempt to have AI learn how to talk to humans by studying their platform.

The company's new BlenderBot 3 AI chatbot — which was released in the U.S. just days ago on Friday, August 5 — is already making a host of false statements based on interactions it had with real humans online. Some of the more egregious among those include claims Donald Trump won the 2020 U.S. presidential election and is currently president, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, as well as comments calling out Facebook for all of its "fake news." This, despite being owned by the company formerly known as Facebook. It told a Wall Street Journal reporter that Trump "will always be" president and touted the anti-semitic conspiracy theory that it was "not implausible" that Jewish people control the economy.

 

this is just dumb

“Some of those who are being asked to return were laid off by mistake, according to two people familiar with the moves. Others were let go before management realized that their work and experience may be necessary to build the new features Musk envisions,”

 

Elon’s fanboys want to act like he has it all under control and has a master plan. It looks to me like he’s winging it. From the $20 blue checks switching to $8 to threatening customers to firing and rehiring… it is just too chaotic to be thoughtful.

 

Good for SK but I fear the die is cast in that regard. Think I will immerse my self in Season 2 of Warrior Nun dropping Wednesday, and read a lot of history.

 

Sarah Silverman had some fun with the obvious flaw in his “blue checkmark”… and apparently “free speech absolutist” Elon Musk didn’t like it, and locked here account…. From CNN…

Comedian Sarah Silverman used her verified account to troll Musk, copying his profile picture, cover image and name. The only thing distinguishing a tweet coming Silverman’s account was the @SarahKSilverman handle.

“I am a freedom of speech absolutist and I eat doody for breakfast every day,” Silverman tweeted Saturday. Her account also retweeted posts supporting Democratic candidates.

Silverman’s account was labeled as “temporarily restricted” Sunday, with a warning that “there has been some unusual activity from this account” shown to visitors before clicking through to the profile. The comedian then changed her account back to its usual form, complete with her own name and image.

 

Yeah, and we all know that it does not work because the Dems have tried that strategy dozens of times when they don't like companies/corporations.

I remember when the commie/Leftists attempted a boycott of Chick-fil-A...LMFAO, that attempted boycott backfired stupendously. Made Chick-fil-A even more popular than ever, and the increase in demand for their food worked in their favor.

We'll see if Elon ends up on top or not, but I would not count him out just yet.

 

Lol Like when conservatives boycott everything in sight?

The NFL? Ratings are way up since 2015 and 2021 was up 10% over 2020. Boycott failure there.

Keurig? They pulled their sponsorship from Hannity and conservatives boycotted and smashed their coffee makers. Keurig sales are way up and they are making a ton of profit. Boycott failed.

Starbucks was another conservative boycott try. Nope, they are reporting record sales and have for a while. Fail!

You guys apparently boycotted Nordstrom because they cut ties with Ivanka. Didn't last too long either and sales have been big for a while now. Up 14% this year. Fail.

Conservatives boycotted Kellog for dropping Breitbart in 2017 and then again for Pride themed boxes in 2021. Sales are great and up 10% since last year and higher since 2017. Another fail.

Boycotted Target for it's transgender bathroom policy. It lasted about 2 quarters in 2016, but since then their sales have blown up and they've turned huge profits. Fail.

And let's not bring up you guys going as far back as cancelling "French" fries and calling them freedom fries because of France opposing the Iraq war. You guys are the boycotting professionals going back decades and it's a joke when you whine about the other side.

But back to the topic that you sent on a tangent....