So about Musk..

[onesteptwostep]

Guess he should have stuck to his strengths?

He's been pretty disappointing so far.

 

[Cognisant]

Last I heard he bought Twitter, fired all the content curators and has changed the monetization strategy from backroom deals with corporations and politicians to some kind of membership/subscription thing.

Twitter Blue is $8/month, so to recoup the 44 billion he spent that's:
44,000,000,000 / 8 = 5,500,000,000
5,500,000,000 / 12 = 458,333,333.333
458,333,333.333 / 1,000,000 = 458.333

Alright so if Elon gets one million subscribers he'll make back the 44 billion in about 458 years and generally when someone buys a business they intend to make back their money in about five years so he must be expecting something more like 100 million subscribers.

Assuming that's his only monetization strategy, which is unlikely, even if he doesn't do any backroom biased content curation deals he's still getting advertisement revenue and I'm sure the platform has value to him as a means to promote his other ventures.

 

[Old Things]

Last I heard he bought Twitter, fired all the content curators and has changed the monetization strategy from backroom deals with corporations and politicians to some kind of membership/subscription thing.

Twitter Blue is $8/month, so to recoup the 44 billion he spent that's:
44,000,000,000 / 8 = 5,500,000,000
5,500,000,000 / 12 = 458,333,333.333
458,333,333.333 / 1,000,000 = 458.333

Alright so if Elon gets one million subscribers he'll make back the 44 billion in about 458 years and generally when someone buys a business they intend to make back their money in about five years so he must be expecting something more like 100 million subscribers.

Assuming that's his only monetization strategy, which is unlikely, even if he doesn't do any backroom biased content curation deals he's still getting advertisement revenue and I'm sure the platform has value to him as a means to promote his other ventures.

Twitter also runs ads. Guessing that is how he plans to make some revenue as well. Also, I think he plans to roll out some other paid features as well like filters and such.

And I think getting 100 mill subscribers is technically doable for him. He just wants it to now be a paid service rather than a free service.

Not to mention Twitter is probably going to take a cut from "super followers" as well.

So there is more potential for Twitter to make money than just the paid service. And for people who have money to burn, I'm guessing the ceiling for how much money you can spend on Twitter will be quite high. I say this because I know businessmen like Musk don't do anything for free. That being said, Musk is pretty eccentric, so who knows if this is just a hobby thing for him. A very, very expensive hobby.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

Theoretically he still holds 44 billion in "value", he just exchanged- "traded" the Twitter operation for USD or whatever.

If he can literally not burn it to the ground, and in fact maybe in a year or two improve the perception of twitter and so on, he might have a sizable PR as well as financial win.

Whether he ever gets that amount in his personal bank account is another thing. (I doubt it).
Though, such assets are a buffer against inflation, which with billions he'd experience on a cosmic level, so he might have seen this as an all around net benefit seeing as was already said, he now has large apparatus to broadcast whatever he wants.

 

[Cognisant]

And I think getting 100 mill subscribers is technically doable for him. He just wants it to now be a paid service rather than a free service.

Disney+ allegedly has 164.2 million subscribers, Netflix has 209 million as of 2021.
Even if Musk doesn't reach 100 million I reckon he won't be far off which means in the next 10-15 years Twitter is likely going to be a big money maker for him.

If he can literally not burn it to the ground, and in fact maybe in a year or two improve the perception of twitter and so on, he might have a sizable PR as well as financial win.

The problem at the moment is that the mainstream media hates him, or rather the powers that be feel threatened by a man who makes such big moves without consulting them first.

Personally I'm pro Musk because of SpaceX, Neuralink, Starlink, Tesla, basically I'm pro-anything that advances technology and even though I have absolutely no illusions about Musk himself being some genius inventor, he gets the job done.

That being said he's a loose cannon and that much wealth and power in the hands of one man is a bit concerning.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

Saw a video with Hank Green, science communicator, and he pointed out that Musk isn't really going to change much about Twitter.

He is trying to increase monetization, but that will have a negligible impact on most Twits.

Green points out that it's just about the "vibes". Literally the keys to power were transferred to Musk and that's all people who support Musk seem to care about, and the main problem as you point out

that much wealth and power in the hands of one man is a bit concerning.

isn't addressed at all. They are just happy that instead of generic "leftly" corporate bureaucrats having influence over the "public square" it's a billionaire. Which, I suppose if he stands by the virtues he's signaling isn't so bad.

But we'll see. He's probably gonna get the economic victory, has super easy access to political victory, and time will tell if he get's the moral victory.

 

[Cognisant]

They are just happy that instead of generic "leftly" corporate bureaucrats having influence over the "public square" it's a billionaire. Which, I suppose if he stands by the virtues he's signaling isn't so bad.

The removal of politically biased curators (regardless of what their bias may be) can only be a good thing, but you're right it remains to be seen whether he replaces them and if so what biases the new ones might have.

But we'll see. He's probably gonna get the economic victory, has super easy access to political victory, and time will tell if he get's the moral victory.

Reminds me of something I read recently:

Freefall a webcomic.

I'm perfectly happy with Musk building his own little empire insofar as his pursuit of self interest doesn't come into conflict with everybody else's interests and the pursuit of technological development is arguably beneficial to everybody.

 

[Hadoblado]

The account impersonation fiasco has been delightful.

 

[onesteptwostep]

The account impersonation fiasco has been delightful.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

If the admin of this forum only allowed lefty/right narratives to flourish I wouldn't use it.

I'm not in the business of the car industry nor aerospace engineering, so I'm not really concerned eitherway.
===============

I wrote this before that news broke, yeah it's pretty fucking wild for everyone I guess lmao

 

[dr froyd]

which part is disappointing?

 

[birdsnestfern]

Now they are saying Twitter might be going bankrupt. Not enough revenue as is. Maybe it will be good for business loss totals on income taxes. (Losses can reduce income taxes in general).

 

[onesteptwostep]

which part is disappointing?

Well gutting his staff and then asking them to come back again. Allowing the $8 subscription fee for verification, then going back on that. Twitter is being sued by multiple countries because Elon broke the labor laws. Twitter Korea and Twitter Japan are going to court soon.

He said he was 'going to save free speech' but I'm not sure what he's trying to do. I honestly don't trust his finesse and character.

From the reports I'm reading about Twitter, that platform hasn't been making profit for the majority of its lifespan, and Musk literally broke the brand Twitter has built up to this point.

He's looking rather pathetic, and it's going to be a while until he's able to rescue his reputation.

 

[dr froyd]

the thing that looked slightly disappointing to me was when he started supplicating to corporations with respect to the planned policies on moderation of free speech the platform. It seemed like a reaction to the outflow of advertisers or whatever, and he seemed to suggest they would go beyond merely respecting the law.

he does seem a bit erratic and reactive.

but we'll see. Twitter was always a failure both as a business and as a platform for discourse. It essentially devolved into a platform where speech was ruled by commerical and political interests. Whatever the outcome is, it's hardly possible to make it worse than it was.

 

[onesteptwostep]

Hmm well it's tough to say really. I don't think we as a society really valuated what Twitter was to the world. Who knows, being able to tweet to a corporation or a politician directly, out in the open sphere, might have been a net plus. But then again because of the nature of it being so public, the discourse had sometimes been something that was disconcordant, which could muddle discourses.

I can't be too sure whether it was a net positive for society overall in enacting change or forcing progress, but I personally don't think I'll miss it.

But I think in retrospect, burning down a business like that means people's livlihoods, their effort that went into the company, all goes down the drain. I guess because they have a resume of being at Twitter helps with a referral to another job, but it must suck for a lot of those people. Either way Musk's ineptitude is full on display at the moment.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

Twitter was infinitely better off before Musk attached to it.

Again, all he had to do was buy it and hold it and he probably would've been fine in the long run. It's a dumpster fire right now.

To go off the OP assertion that he should've stuck to his strengths, he made plenty of gaffs before, he just has always had the platform to yell over criticisms of himself unless you're specifically looking for the critisims. I wonder how he will do that now.

The money being generated with the content being made around this is competing with the negative losses to Musk's networth.

 

[Old Things]

Personally, I think Musk is going to be able to turn it around. I don't think Twitter is going to be a failure. I don't think Musk would have gotten this deep without thinking he could be successful with it.

[Edit] After watching the video that @EndogenousRebel posted, I have very strong doubts that Musk is really doing anything at all.

 

[onesteptwostep]

Twitter was infinitely better off before Musk attached to it.

Again, all he had to do was buy it and hold it and he probably would've been fine in the long run. It's a dumpster fire right now.

To go off the OP assertion that he should've stuck to his strengths, he made plenty of gaffs before, he just has always had the platform to yell over criticisms of himself unless you're specifically looking for the critisims. I wonder how he will do that now.

The money being generated with the content being made around this is competing with the negative losses to Musk's networth.

Pretty much. He's "sinking" Twitter to the grave, to use his own meme.

 

[dr froyd]

its a bit unclear to me what all these apocalyptic impressions of twitter's and musk's situations are based on though. Some sort of commie/democrat propaganda? He fired a bunch of people, yes, but that's normal - especially for an unprofitable business and especially in the current economic environment. It looks way worse for e.g. facebook who is firing people in the tens of thousands, and this is not a unique case in the tech sector in US right now. Also, musk has owned twitter for what - a few weeks? Very unclear to me how people already supposedly know the operative and financial state of the company. A lot of drastic adjustments are being made, yes, but what these mean for twitter down the road is still completely unknown.

to me it looks more like leftists and militant political-correctness aficionados losing their shit because they got used to having twitter as their own personal circle-jerk echo chamber and tool for applying mob rule against people they disagreed with

my personal hope is that this will lead to more breadth in mainstream opinion and less polarization

and btw im saying all this as someone who has never been a fan of musk - i consider him to be a guy who built a corporate empire on state subsidies, and someone who has exploited a carefully crafted image as a genius tech guy to make an almost religious movement of people who are willing to invest in his projects at literally any cost regardless of the underlying values. He also routinely uses his influence to manipulate markets - in both share prices and crypto. This twitter case is the first time he's done something i find agreeable.

 

[The Gopher]

its a bit unclear to me what all these apocalyptic impressions of twitter's and musk's situations are based on though. Some sort of commie/democrat propaganda? He fired a bunch of people, yes, but that's normal - especially for an unprofitable business and especially in the current economic environment.

Just cutting to this. I think people are brushing over that Musk spent what 44 billion on an unprofitable business?

 

[Hadoblado]

As far as I'm aware, twitter is not a circle jerk for the left. It's where the left goes to eat itself. At least that's what my twitter feed is - only in-fighting.

A while back I remember Cog mentioning imgur is a leftist circle jerk, I thought he was exaggerating and said as much, but I've changed my mind after surfing there a bit. It's the worst. Maybe I'm wrong about twitter too :/

 

[onesteptwostep]

@Hadoblado

How come you have a Twitter account? I personally don't see the appeal in having it.. don't most people use IG for social media now?

 

[Old Things]

As far as I'm aware, twitter is not a circle jerk for the left. It's where the left goes to eat itself. At least that's what my twitter feed is - only in-fighting.

A while back I remember Cog mentioning imgur is a leftist circle jerk, I thought he was exaggerating and said as much, but I've changed my mind after surfing there a bit. It's the worst. Maybe I'm wrong about twitter too :/

It is largely going to depend on what content you choose to engage with on Twitter, but there are pockets of good conversations there. I agree that cancel culture is at an all-time high, and people are all sorts of divisive there, and the vitriol can be extreme. But I have had a good amount of good conversations with people on Twitter. I even have some people I met on Twitter that I plan on meeting someday IRL. Of course, my Twitter account is filled with Christ-minded individuals, but even they can be quite spicy sometimes. So it's really on all sides. Mostly I see it in "hot takes," where someone says something meant to spark the ire of others. Sometimes they get an avalanche of negative comments. It's happened to me, but for me, it was not as bad as it could have been. I've only had a few people say something I thought you should never say to someone. But my tolerance for vitriol is probably pretty high since I've been through the wringer on some sites. It makes me want to be kind and be the difference I want to see in the world and on Twitter.

 

[Hadoblado]

@Hadoblado

How come you have a Twitter account? I personally don't see the appeal in having it.. don't most people use IG for social media now?

Originally a gaming clan I was a part of joined an anonymous pseudorationalist meme movement. Nobody knew who each other were, but you had a list of 300 or so accounts from which to sniff them out. Basically, you had to try and be consistently witty while osmosing and iterating the lingual conventions of the movement, and then we had the additional layer of identifying the people we knew from their posting style. Games within games. I set out to identify my clan leader before they figured out what I was doing, but someone spoiled it for me about a month in.

Other than that, I'm very interested in how information behaves. Twitter is a fairly unique environment in that it's where celebrity interacts casually with the rest of society. While celebrities themselves are generally not too interesting to me, the way people behave around them is.

 

[scorpiomover]

If the admin of this forum only allowed lefty/right narratives to flourish I wouldn't use it.

I'm not in the business of the car industry nor aerospace engineering, so I'm not really concerned eitherway.

OK. Then consider this:

Spoiler

1. Elon Musk gets into Tesla.
2. Tesla makes ridiculously over-expensive electric cars that have lots of faults.
3. Lots of left-wingers in Silicon Valley start buying Teslas, because they're green.
4. Millions of people who care about climate change start praising Tesla to the skies. They don't even seem to care that Tesla cars have lots of problems and are extremely over-priced. They were so cringe, I found it sickening.
5. That goes on for several years.
6. Then Musk says he's in support of Trump.
7. Suddenly, there's nothing but bad things reported about Elon Musk. It's like the world has done a 180 on their views, for no reason.
8. Musk is reported as denying his employees bathroom breaks.
9. No-one seems to ever say that he used to give his employees bathroom breaks.
10. #8 + #9 => Eith
11. Musk never gave his employees bathroom breaks and still doesn't, which means that when people who care about the environment and climate change used to praise Musk and buy Teslas, he was just as much of a scumbag as he is now. So if they bought his Teslas and praised him then, they'd be doing the same now.
12. ) Musk used to give his employees bathroom breaks and still does, which means that when people who care about the environment and climate change used to praise Musk and buy Teslas, he is just as nice, moral and capable now, as he was when the left-wing loved Tesla. So if they bought his Teslas and praised him then, they'd be doing the same now.

The only difference I can discern, is that Musk came out in support of Trump, as that's when people's views completely changed.

Same thing happened to Kanye West (Ye). Same thing happened to Trump when he switched from being a Democrat, to being a Republican.

Can you explain that?

 

[Kuu]

It's all fucking political.

Buying Twitter isn't about making money, he already has enough. It's about acquiring the power of shaping the narrative, or at the very least, taking that power away from others.

The whole chaos he's wrought is exactly what he wants: he's a massive troll and is having his opponents go hyperbolic and self-own with unparalleled circlejerking while he acts dumb, and it's all out in the open for everyone to see (that is, for all of us outside of said circlejerk). If you think he's "unhinged" then you clearly haven't understood anything about american political optics in the past 6 years. It's literally the same social media drama strategy that Trump used.

Elon is deliberately demolishing the value of the bluecheckmark. Public discourse should not be dominated by "authority figures", a priestly class to interpret reality and tell people what to think, nor corporate brands and their sanctimonious bullshit. By destroying the platform for would-be authority figures he is further undermining the power base of his opponents, right in their former stronghold. And by opening the bluecheckmark to anyone it opened the gates for people to come and attack celebrities and companies on their own, while Elon pretends it was a dumb mistake and not precisely what he wanted.

This nudges the internet to a more neutral state (i.e. not disproportionately dominated by one political faction), closer to what it used to be before social media turned it into a hellscape. And this will ultimately drive more people towards twitter, reverting the exodus provoked by mass censorship and ideological one-sidedness.

As far as I'm aware, twitter is not a circle jerk for the left.

LOL, this is what happens when you are so deep in the circlejerk you don't even realize it.

 

[washti]

Gvrmnt forced him to buy it.

 

[Old Things]

Elon is deliberately demolishing the value of the bluecheckmark.

From what I have seen, there have been some instances where some people paid Twitter under the table, like $15,000, to get their check mark. FMPOV this would infuriate plenty of people to make it available to the public.

 

[Hadoblado]

It's all fucking political.

Buying Twitter isn't about making money, he already has enough. It's about acquiring the power of shaping the narrative, or at the very least, taking that power away from others.

The whole chaos he's wrought is exactly what he wants: he's a massive troll and is having his opponents go hyperbolic and self-own with unparalleled circlejerking while he acts dumb, and it's all out in the open for everyone to see (that is, for all of us outside of said circlejerk). If you think he's "unhinged" then you clearly haven't understood anything about american political optics in the past 6 years. It's literally the same social media drama strategy that Trump used.

Elon is deliberately demolishing the value of the bluecheckmark. Public discourse should not be dominated by "authority figures", a priestly class to interpret reality and tell people what to think, nor corporate brands and their sanctimonious bullshit. By destroying the platform for would-be authority figures he is further undermining the power base of his opponents, right in their former stronghold. And by opening the bluecheckmark to anyone it opened the gates for people to come and attack celebrities and companies on their own, while Elon pretends it was a dumb mistake and not precisely what he wanted.

This nudges the internet to a more neutral state (i.e. not disproportionately dominated by one political faction), closer to what it used to be before social media turned it into a hellscape. And this will ultimately drive more people towards twitter, reverting the exodus provoked by mass censorship and ideological one-sidedness.

As far as I'm aware, twitter is not a circle jerk for the left.

LOL, this is what happens when you are so deep in the circlejerk you don't even realize it.

I've talked to you about this before, so not worth going over our disagreements regarding Musk here.

Regarding the circle-jerk, no, you don't get to decide the reality of a feed you haven't seen. I left scope on the table for my experience to not represent the greater twittersphere, but I assure you my feed is mostly leftists taking down themselves or cons :shrug:.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

OK. Then consider this:

Spoiler

1. Elon Musk gets into Tesla.
2. Tesla makes ridiculously over-expensive electric cars that have lots of faults.
3. Lots of left-wingers in Silicon Valley start buying Teslas, because they're green.
4. Millions of people who care about climate change start praising Tesla to the skies. They don't even seem to care that Tesla cars have lots of problems and are extremely over-priced. They were so cringe, I found it sickening.
5. That goes on for several years.
6. Then Musk says he's in support of Trump.
7. Suddenly, there's nothing but bad things reported about Elon Musk. It's like the world has done a 180 on their views, for no reason.
8. Musk is reported as denying his employees bathroom breaks.
9. No-one seems to ever say that he used to give his employees bathroom breaks.
10. #8 + #9 => Eith
11. Musk never gave his employees bathroom breaks and still doesn't, which means that when people who care about the environment and climate change used to praise Musk and buy Teslas, he was just as much of a scumbag as he is now. So if they bought his Teslas and praised him then, they'd be doing the same now.
12. ) Musk used to give his employees bathroom breaks and still does, which means that when people who care about the environment and climate change used to praise Musk and buy Teslas, he is just as nice, moral and capable now, as he was when the left-wing loved Tesla. So if they bought his Teslas and praised him then, they'd be doing the same now.

The only difference I can discern, is that Musk came out in support of Trump, as that's when people's views completely changed.

Same thing happened to Kanye West (Ye). Same thing happened to Trump when he switched from being a Democrat, to being a Republican.

Can you explain that?

The explanation is that you constructed a simplistic narrative and want everything outside that narrative to be irrelevant. In your frameworks it's only possible to do something bad if it's obvious that you did something bad, and if it is obvious, you think people only care if there is a partisan motive behind it.

I don't know who these millions of people are, but theres been a billionaire hate club for ages. They didn't just materialize when these people made their "rebellious" stances, their rebellious stances simply managed to piss off the establishment and co-opted these already existing communities.

This culture war is rotting people's brains clearly, and it's not just libs and conservatives. It's hard. I get it, but just to hammer the nail in the coffin to your point trying be like "tHey oNly Go AfTEr FreE ThinKers!!*)![imath]#U)[/imath]UE"



Thunderf00t owning the libs (there is a whole fucking playlist of him attacking SJW)





Thunderf00t owning random scam artists




Thunderf00t calling out Musk 6 YEARS ago as a scam artist (continues to attack him to this day)

It's obnoxious when people pretend that there is only a partisan nature to ongoing events, and instead trying to claim that something they identify with is the reason for victimization or some bs. Hardcore coping mechanism.

 

[Kuu]

I assure you my feed is mostly leftists taking down themselves or cons :shrug:.

And if it is 'leftist' ideas that dominate the platform (and they do) even if they are eating themselves, then there is no air in the room for much of anything else. So that's still a circlejerk of the left, a masochistic one.

 

[onesteptwostep]

@Hadoblado

How come you have a Twitter account? I personally don't see the appeal in having it.. don't most people use IG for social media now?

Originally a gaming clan I was a part of joined an anonymous pseudorationalist meme movement. Nobody knew who each other were, but you had a list of 300 or so accounts from which to sniff them out. Basically, you had to try and be consistently witty while osmosing and iterating the lingual conventions of the movement, and then we had the additional layer of identifying the people we knew from their posting style. Games within games. I set out to identify my clan leader before they figured out what I was doing, but someone spoiled it for me about a month in.

Other than that, I'm very interested in how information behaves. Twitter is a fairly unique environment in that it's where celebrity interacts casually with the rest of society. While celebrities themselves are generally not too interesting to me, the way people behave around them is.

Haha, interesting.

Yeah true, Twitter is the one major social media platform I've never set my hands on. From what I understand a lot of Japanese right wingers use Twitter so I always wondered how they festered.

 

[birdsnestfern]

I think we are about to head into a recession now

 

[scorpiomover]

OK. Then consider this:

Spoiler

1. Elon Musk gets into Tesla.
2. Tesla makes ridiculously over-expensive electric cars that have lots of faults.
3. Lots of left-wingers in Silicon Valley start buying Teslas, because they're green.
4. Millions of people who care about climate change start praising Tesla to the skies. They don't even seem to care that Tesla cars have lots of problems and are extremely over-priced. They were so cringe, I found it sickening.
5. That goes on for several years.
6. Then Musk says he's in support of Trump.
7. Suddenly, there's nothing but bad things reported about Elon Musk. It's like the world has done a 180 on their views, for no reason.
8. Musk is reported as denying his employees bathroom breaks.
9. No-one seems to ever say that he used to give his employees bathroom breaks.
10. #8 + #9 => Eith
11. Musk never gave his employees bathroom breaks and still doesn't, which means that when people who care about the environment and climate change used to praise Musk and buy Teslas, he was just as much of a scumbag as he is now. So if they bought his Teslas and praised him then, they'd be doing the same now.
12. ) Musk used to give his employees bathroom breaks and still does, which means that when people who care about the environment and climate change used to praise Musk and buy Teslas, he is just as nice, moral and capable now, as he was when the left-wing loved Tesla. So if they bought his Teslas and praised him then, they'd be doing the same now.

The only difference I can discern, is that Musk came out in support of Trump, as that's when people's views completely changed.

Same thing happened to Kanye West (Ye). Same thing happened to Trump when he switched from being a Democrat, to being a Republican.

Can you explain that?

The explanation is that you constructed a simplistic narrative and want everything outside that narrative to be irrelevant.

6 years ago, I thought that Tesla and Musk had been well over-hyped. As you can see, Thunderf00t was criticising Musk 6 years ago. So I was not the only one.

Likewise, all those people who thought Twitter was a curse on humanity in 2014, and still think that, probably didn't change their views because of politics.

In your frameworks it's only possible to do something bad if it's obvious that you did something bad,

Do you agree that most of the Tories who voted for Liz Truss, expected her to tank the UK economy and ruin their reputation?

and if it is obvious, you think people only care if there is a partisan motive behind it.

Do you agree that the Tories who voted for Liz Truss were not trying to pwn the Labour Party by ruining their own party's reputation?

I don't know who these millions of people are, but theres been a billionaire hate club for ages. They didn't just materialize when these people made their "rebellious" stances, their rebellious stances simply managed to piss off the establishment and co-opted these already existing communities.

The Billionaire Hate Club hate Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos, and Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and Richard Branson, because they are all billionaires.

They also hate the billionaires funding the Democrat Party.

Here Are The Billionaires Funding The Democratic Presidential Candidates, As Of December 2019

Joe Biden is up to 60 billionaire donors while Pete Buttigieg hits 56. Bernie Sanders? Zero.

www.forbes.com

All of them also hate Musk because he's a billionaire.

What about all the people who like Bill Gates, the people who like Jeff Bezos, and like all the billionaires who back the Democrats, but hate Musk?

What's their excuse?

This culture war is rotting people's brains clearly, and it's not just libs and conservatives. It's hard. I get it, but just to hammer the nail in the coffin to your point trying be like "tHey oNly Go AfTEr FreE ThinKers!!*)![imath]#U)[/imath]UE"

"tHey oNly Go AfTEr FreE ThinKers like dEmOCraTs!!*)! MuSK is eWWWil[imath]#U)[/imath]UE"

It's obnoxious when people pretend that there is only a partisan nature to ongoing events, and instead trying to claim that something they identify with is the reason for victimization or some bs. Hardcore coping mechanism.

It's Dorsey's fault for selling Twitter to Musk. Do you think that all Democrat-supporting billionaires are saints who have never done anything wrong?

 

[EndogenousRebel]

In your frameworks it's only possible to do something bad if it's obvious that you did something bad,

Do you agree that most of the Tories who voted for Liz Truss, expected her to tank the UK economy and ruin their reputation?

and if it is obvious, you think people only care if there is a partisan motive behind it.

Do you agree that the Tories who voted for Liz Truss were not trying to pwn the Labour Party by ruining their own party's reputation?

I can hardly keep up with American politics on a comprehensive level. No clue what's going on over there. Seems like a shit show for everyone involved. Much like Musk.

I don't know who these millions of people are, but theres been a billionaire hate club for ages. They didn't just materialize when these people made their "rebellious" stances, their rebellious stances simply managed to piss off the establishment and co-opted these already existing communities.

The Billionaire Hate Club hate Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos, and Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and Richard Branson, because they are all billionaires.

They also hate the billionaires funding the Democrat Party.

Here Are The Billionaires Funding The Democratic Presidential Candidates, As Of December 2019

Joe Biden is up to 60 billionaire donors while Pete Buttigieg hits 56. Bernie Sanders? Zero.

www.forbes.com

All of them also hate Musk because he's a billionaire.

What about all the people who like Bill Gates, the people who like Jeff Bezos, and like all the billionaires who back the Democrats, but hate Musk?

What's their excuse?

Isn't this a straw man? The hypothetical person you're talking about simply doesn't realize that these billionaires all have the same underlying problem cloud looming over them. They are a single individual that has immense power that they can wield on a whim.

Gates conquered software space, then moved over to Health space to promote ideas of population control, Bezos conquered distribution and web hosting space and is expanding to space exploration to get resources and there isn't going to be anyone to hold him accountable. This is a universal problem with billionaires.

It's obnoxious when people pretend that there is only a partisan nature to ongoing events, and instead trying to claim that something they identify with is the reason for victimization or some bs. Hardcore coping mechanism.

It's Dorsey's fault for selling Twitter to Musk. Do you think that all Democrat-supporting billionaires are saints who have never done anything wrong?

Once agan, that's a simplistic narrative. Corporations and individuals will fund and support both sides because they don't care who's in power, they lobby to protect their interests no matter the party. Trump switched to Democrat once he realized how stupid conservatives were. Democrats responding in any measure is going to be framed as a double standard I guess *shrug*

I'm not defending partisan narratives nor individuals. I'm just pointing out that people don't have to pander to political ideologies to criticize something. Musk has objectively made a lot of bad decisions.

 

[Daddy]

I learned that Musk likes drama. He's entertained by his companies and he doesn't really care about the money or he would have retired a long time ago.

Owning a company and deciding its direction and steering it towards his own vision is like some kind of gigantic dopamine hit that he can't get enough of. He's his own Twitter and all of this drama is probably just giving him free publicity for Twitter anyway. He has definitely mastered the art of Donald Trumpian drama.

 

[birdsnestfern]

Oh, he's like Mr. Toad, so giddy he can't stop himself.

Whatever you do, don't buy a self driving Tesla. The semi trucks on the road that are run by computers and electronics?
Can you imagine what will happen when they are hacked? They would be like AI weapons against everyone else on the road.
There are billionaires trying to prevent this stuff for a reason. It could become a nightmare.

 

[Cognisant]

It's fairly trivial to setup a remote-control system in a conventional truck if some psycho or terrorist wanted to weaponize it, you could even send such a truck overseas if you want to attack people in another country or go there, conduct the attack and fly out before anyone can trace it back to you.

I'm not saying it's not a potential problem, just that it's nothing new and I'm sure these trucks will be so overburdened with proprietary black-box bullshit that weaponizing a conventional truck would probably be easier and most definitely cheaper if you have to actually buy the truck.

 

[scorpiomover]

In your frameworks it's only possible to do something bad if it's obvious that you did something bad,

Do you agree that most of the Tories who voted for Liz Truss, expected her to tank the UK economy and ruin their reputation?

and if it is obvious, you think people only care if there is a partisan motive behind it.

Do you agree that the Tories who voted for Liz Truss were not trying to pwn the Labour Party by ruining their own party's reputation?

I can hardly keep up with American politics on a comprehensive level.

Were you aware that Liz Truss is the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?

Isn't this a straw man? The hypothetical person you're talking about simply doesn't realize that these billionaires all have the same underlying problem cloud looming over them. They are a single individual that has immense power that they can wield on a whim.

Gates conquered software space, then moved over to Health space to promote ideas of population control, Bezos conquered distribution and web hosting space and is expanding to space exploration to get resources and there isn't going to be anyone to hold him accountable. This is a universal problem with billionaires.

It sounds like you don't like ANY billionaires. So I don't think you ever liked Musk.

I am talking about the rest of the world, who don't say they hate most billionaires, but also rag on Musk.

I'm just pointing out that people don't have to pander to political ideologies to criticize something. Once agan, that's a simplistic narrative. Corporations and individuals will fund and support both sides because they don't care who's in power, they lobby to protect their interests no matter the party. I'm not defending partisan narratives nor individuals.

I agree. I think that most people think they're being honest. They probably heard their criticisms of Musk from a source like CNN, which is a corporation, or The New York Times, which is a corporation, or The Washington Post, which is a corporation.

As you said, corporations don't care about you. They just back whichever side is currently going to make them more money. Criticising the right wing is a lot more popular than criticising the left wing.

When things reverse, and it's the left wing that most people criticise, I would not be surprised if the shareholders of CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post support hiring right-wing CEOs who criticise left-wingers all the time, and then likely, people will read/watch what the news stations say, and so would likely be criticising billionaires who say they support the left-wing.

 

[birdsnestfern]

US wants to look into Musk’s international relations with foreign countries, being that Musk’s SpaceX operates its Starlink satellite internet access service to 40 countries.
Additionally, SpaceX is a key private sector partner of the Pentagon and NASA, so Musk is deeply connected to the federal government.

 

[scorpiomover]

It's fairly trivial to setup a remote-control system in a conventional truck if some psycho or terrorist wanted to weaponize it, you could even send such a truck overseas if you want to attack people in another country or go there, conduct the attack and fly out before anyone can trace it back to you.

I recall that Al-Quaeda terrorists bombed a train station in Spain by connecting the detonator to a mobile phone. IIRC, AQ terrorists had not done that before, and so had managed to come up with that themselves. So it could be quite possible for terrorists to do.

Scratch that. IoT has become very prevalent. Lots of people have these intercom systems that link into your phone, as if you're there and show you live feeds from a webcam. A lot of IoT is now controlled through smartphones. So it would not be that complicated to make the truck entirely remote-controlled through any smartphone in the world.

Can't even shoot the driver, because there is no driver. So no way to stop the truck, short of nuking it.

I'm not saying it's not a potential problem, just that it's nothing new and I'm sure these trucks will be so overburdened with proprietary black-box bullshit that weaponizing a conventional truck would probably be easier and most definitely cheaper if you have to actually buy the truck.

I'm in IT. Been doing home automation as a hobby for a few years. From what I've learned, you could buy a basic truck and fit software and hardware to do this. You can also automate almost any device, including a basic gas oven.

But it requires so much effort and practical expertise to convert a basic gas oven or a basic truck to be automated, that 99% of automation tends to be found in devices that were engineered to be automated.

OTOH, there's been so many hacks these days, that were due to poor security. Poor security is everywhere, especially in modern software. So it's easy to hack a truck with software already pre-loaded.

So if a terrorist wanted to remote-control a truck, they'd probably buy a truck with the latest automatic driving software and hardware, and hack the software. It's just sooo much easier and sooo much quicker.

 

[Cognisant]

So if a terrorist wanted to remote-control a truck, they'd probably buy a truck with the latest automatic driving software and hardware, and hack the software. It's just sooo much easier and sooo much quicker.

I know how I'd setup a remote control system I built myself from of the shelf parts, certainly in theory hacking a Tesla truck would be easier if I knew how but I don't. It's not like you can just plug into something and immediately access the onboard computer, it's going to have some kind of security.

How would you do it?

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

Twitter Blue is $8/month, so to recoup the 44 billion he spent that's:
44,000,000,000 / 8 = 5,500,000,000
5,500,000,000 / 12 = 458,333,333.333
458,333,333.333 / 1,000,000 = 458.333

Alright so if Elon gets one million subscribers he'll make back the 44 billion in about 458 years and generally when someone buys a business they intend to make back their money in about five years so he must be expecting something more like 100 million subscribers.

Apparently the ads bring 6 dollars per free user without an ad block. So an ad-free subscription for 8 loses 6USD and makes only 2 monthly. It won't help at all.

They're now trying to change it to twitter blue being an 8 USD sub with 50% ad reduction kek. So not even ad-free experience. This is just amusing.

 

[Old Things]

Twitter Blue is $8/month, so to recoup the 44 billion he spent that's:
44,000,000,000 / 8 = 5,500,000,000
5,500,000,000 / 12 = 458,333,333.333
458,333,333.333 / 1,000,000 = 458.333

Alright so if Elon gets one million subscribers he'll make back the 44 billion in about 458 years and generally when someone buys a business they intend to make back their money in about five years so he must be expecting something more like 100 million subscribers.

So not even ad-free experience. This is just amusing.

I've seen some people say you can't use an ad blocker, but my Malware Bites ad blocker works just fine.

 

[Cognisant]

Apparently the ads bring 6 dollars per free user without an ad block.

According to Google Twitter has 396.5 million users, at 6 per user (ignoring the extra gained by subscriptions and lost by people using ad blockers) that's 2,379,000,000 per year.

My previous math was waaaaay off

 

[dr froyd]

you don't need to make back the entire purchase value of a company to make it a good investment.. but this purchase was clearly total shit from an investment perspective as twitter book value is about $8bn and earnings are negative.

 

[scorpiomover]

So if a terrorist wanted to remote-control a truck, they'd probably buy a truck with the latest automatic driving software and hardware, and hack the software. It's just sooo much easier and sooo much quicker.

I know how I'd setup a remote control system I built myself from of the shelf parts, certainly in theory hacking a Tesla truck would be easier if I knew how but I don't. It's not like you can just plug into something and immediately access the onboard computer,

All modern vehicles have USB ports and sensors, which are designed to work with software that can be purchased from the car's manufacturer. When a mechanic at a garage gets your car, he literally plugs a laptop with the software into the car's USB port, and then the laptop tells him what's wrong, and allows him to amend whatever he likes.

it's going to have some kind of security.

Yes, it does. The security is that the software costs £10,000, and is only valid for the vehicles the manufacturers. So it's £10,000 for Volvos, £10,000 for VWs, £10,000 for BMWs, etc. The only people who would do the work themselves and can afford that kind of expense, are the garage owners.

Your average suicide bomber who never had much money, and is thus not bothered about staying alive, can't afford that.

But the people who find potential suicide bombers, train them, plan out missions, and supply the suicide bombers with resources, have millions of pounds, if not billions. So for them it's cheap, and they can keep using the software again and again on every new truck that they want to control remotely.

How would you do it?

1) Get an organisation or government who wants the same people dead that I would, to bankroll me.

2) Buy a cheap truck with remote-control. The cheaper and nastier the better, as the cheap trucks will have the most cut-corners and thus are probably the easiest to hack.

3) Buy a laptop. Plug a USB cable into the USB port (all modern vehicles have one), and plug the other end into a laptop.

4) Download some hacking tools from the net. See if I can hack the built-in
software.

5) If I can, great. If not so easy, I can probably download the source code for self-driving cars from the net. Then find the security, and simple delete the bits of security from the code that stop me from hacking it. Then upload the code over USB.

6) If that works, great. If the hardware has some built-in features that stop me from doing that, like a ROM chip, then read the model number on the chip, order a new chip from Japan/Taiwan, along with a ROM programmer, and then copy the old ROM chip's software, amend it, and then upload the amended code into the new ROM chip with the programmer.

7) Alternatively, do what Justin Long did in Die Hard 4: Phone the company, pretend that there's an emergency and I need to override the safetys, and get them to send a signal to give me full control.

I'm much better at IT than persuading people. So #1 to #6 is easier for me.

For some other people that I know, #7 would probably be a breeze.

 

[washti]

According to Alone shit is loosing 4 mln per day.
But good new is all lefitist scientist are moving to fediverse. Rejoice!

I hope all good boys will help keep the platform going now. What is 8 or even 100$ monthly for place like that. Now, after its cleansing is done. And Feee speach is back.

Elon sacrificed substantial part of his wealth and connection. He could found other 1000 personal spermbanks to aid one of longtermism agendas.

But he has seen and aided silecend and cornered conservatives here and now. A bit of a stray from effective altruism but in essence still in the same vein? Mission like that is too noble for quarrels about pricetag. It never was about money.

 

[Old Things]

Apparently the ads bring 6 dollars per free user without an ad block.

According to Google Twitter has 396.5 million users, at 6 per user (ignoring the extra gained by subscriptions and lost by people using ad blockers) that's 2,379,000,000 per year.

My previous math was waaaaay off

Note that the average is 6 per person. I would think this would mean there are a lot of bots. Some people must have a ton of bots which would leave much fewer real accounts.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

Were you aware that Liz Truss is the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?

No. I quickly looked at her wiki page. She seems like a clown.

It sounds like you don't like ANY billionaires. So I don't think you ever liked Musk.

I am talking about the rest of the world, who don't say they hate most billionaires, but also rag on Musk.

Musk has progressively lost my good graces in the past couple years. Started shifting perspective on him with that one incident where he called a rescue diver a pedophile. The diver died, the news wouldn't publicize it, but I don't think he ever apologized for that. He just got assmad when the diver told him to mind his own business.

I didn't think he was an outright scam artist till the last two years or so. I just thought he was overly optimistic like a child.

Billionaires are always in a purgatory for me, because they inevitable have contributed to a stupid system that stifles competition and says profits over people. I don't condemn them for this until they cross certain lines that I can see as shameless, entitled, manipulative. All qualities which Musk seems to brag about.

As you said, corporations don't care about you. They just back whichever side is currently going to make them more money. Criticising the right wing is a lot more popular than criticising the left wing.

When things reverse, and it's the left wing that most people criticise, I would not be surprised if the shareholders of CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post support hiring right-wing CEOs who criticise left-wingers all the time, and then likely, people will read/watch what the news stations say, and so would likely be criticising billionaires who say they support the left-wing.

I don't understand what you wrote at that last part, but if that means that they are maximizing profit, then yes I agree.