Because it's hard to write any other way when people are losing their minds over a storm in a teacup. Literally nothing meaningful has changed about Twitter in the last few months. This is an entirely self-induced panic, based on a couple cases of someone maliciously misinterpreting a tweet here and there and everyone else amplifying it, and fueled by irrational fear and hatred towards Musk. It would be funny to watch, if it were not saturating the media channels 24/7.
Twitter's future wasn't in any way more certain before, nor was the platform any more stable. Adding or removing random features, and screwing third parties over API T&C changes, were pretty much the trademark of Twitter already.
Sure, the site itself looks the same, the logo is the same, but there's a ton of turmoil for the people behind the scenes. Not everything is run by computers, there are a lot of humans in the loop for the day-to-day operations of the site. The core product of "post tweet" and everything else which is all automated, sure, but there's tons of stuff that isn't, because it can't be. All that backend stuff has changed, even if you don't see it.
Well, OK, assuming this all pans out to be true[0], that's one hell of a botched firing, which apparently (see [0]) Musk/Twitter is trying to back-track on... but that happened in the last few days. The Internet drama about Musk and Twitter started months ago, and reached its peak before the sale ultimately went through - which means it can't be attributed to this.
Or, in a hypothetical world in which the wellness team still got sacked, but the content moderation didn't, do you imagine the Internet getting any less hysteric? Do you imagine headlines saying, "In a surprising change of face, Musk did not fire Twitter's content moderators", or rather headlines trying to find nefarious reasons for why the team would've been retained?
I'm not denying the turmoil that's happening in Twitter, and the hard times that befell on its employees (and ex-employees). I'm denying the hysteria is in any way correlated with anything Musk actually does. It has its own life now.
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[0] - AFAIK we're still at the level of reporting of "sources familiar with the matter quoting two high-level people involved in the matter" - which ordinarily means journalists quoting random Twitter posts without attribution, but in this case, I don't know how to read that.
> Or, in a hypothetical world ... do you imagine the Internet getting any less hysteric? Do you imagine headlines saying...
Less hysterical? No. As far as headlines, I can totally see both; headlines saying it's a surprise, along with a different newspaper framing it negatively. (I think I heard the shadowban group survived unscathed.)
> I'm denying the hysteria is in any way correlated with anything Musk actually does.
I'd say it's quite correlated as it's all based off of things Musk has done (eg suspending users impersonating him) or said/tweeted (proclaimed that free speech will reign supreme). Normally I'd say saying things and doing this are two separate matters (talk is, after all, cheap), except that this is a social media site, who's entire purpose is for saying things. For Tesla it's easy to point at the number of Model 3's produced/wk or Autopilot's shortcomings and set aside things Musk has said for what he's done or not done. Twitter, on the other hand, is a place for talk, so when Musk says he's a free speech absolutist, and then proceeds to buy Twitter, people take notice, especially at junctures where it turns out he's not.
There is a lot of stuff about Mastodon flying around, which isn't really related to Musk's speech/actions, and supports your "life of its own" part though.
All your other point are good but this one surprises me. I think at this point people can have very rational fear and hatred of this guy. He's a 50 year old man with literally the world view of and politics a 14 year old edgelord on Fortnite but with enough money and following to do real damage with that. The biggest fears people seem to have is that he actually succeeds at his stated intentions for the platform.
I'll tell you where it comes from. I used to like Musk in early SpaceX / first Falcon landing / Tesla Model S era. Then I disconnected from the news a bit, for a couple of years, and started to pay more attention recently (~last year). I saw constant hatred of Musk on-line. I tried to investigate what he did to make people so upset, and besides a name calling here and there, I found literally nothing.
On the contrary, what I found is smart people who I used to respect retweeting or posting trivially disprovable soundbites like the whole apartheid money thing. I haven't seen an argument that wasn't overblown to ridiculous proportions.
This is not to say Musk didn't turn into villain. I'm not convinced either way, and I'm definitely not trying to claim he's pristine and good. I may have missed some important stories in ~2018-2021. What I am convinced about, though, is the whole anti-Musk crowd literally went high on their own bullshit, and is a perfect illustration how it ends when you have a feedback loop of people one-upping increasingly exaggerated claims.
But things probably will change meaningfully in the near future. You’d have to ignore everything the new CEO is saying, in order to believe otherwise.
People trade futures options all the time.
Thing is, he isn't saying that much. Most of what people are reacting to are people's interpretation of what Musk said, and then further interpretation of those interpretations, etc. That's what strikes me as completely bonkers.
> a proven history of public manipulation.
It's better when people say that they don't like Musk, than pretending there's some sort of higher political principle here. People don't have trouble believing that objectors don't like Musk, and disagree with him politically.
The trouble is in the appeal to principles that never come up in their discussions of e.g. the WaPo, which most of the objectors will defend to their last breath, along with Bezos. Like here, when the one of the wealthiest people in the world, owner of the largest retailer, that controls a massive part of internet infrastructure, also owns the second most influential paper, becomes 100x less important than Twitter changing ownership.
I'm just saying that Musk owning Twitter is that times 100(a made up number, obviously) because:
1. Twitter somehow became the place where most "journalists" get their news from.
2. Politicians spread their propaganda at
3. Musk has no scruples about public manipulation and abusing his power. He is set on whatever made up vision he has, and he'll do whatever it takes to get there.
Why won't he use his control of where journos and politicos create the public discourse? How is that not just expected? His company, his rules, no?
BTW you turning me calling out Musk as somehow diminishing Bezos damage is hardly in good faith. Same as your godlike mind reading , that I just hate musk and turning to principles is me hiding that fact.
Try to assume I'm speaking in good faith, it leads to much better discussions.
Twitter now has a burden of $1 billion in interest payments per year, which it did not several months ago. That's pretty meaningful. Completely apart from anything about Elon, it would be entirely reasonable to expect this additional burden to make the product worse, as debt obligations often do.
> it were not saturating the media channels 24/7.
You're accidentally making the Cultural Studies mistake of seeing the choices of a very small number of individuals at massive corporations that are broadcast to the general public as an expression of the general public themselves. It's not a self-induced panic, it's a media-induced panic that requires a media trust (in the antitrust sense) to sustain.
