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0 pointsjimbob453y ago0 comments

Before Musk's takeover Twitter was reliable, predictable and somewhat boring

It was none of those things and was widely regarded to be the worst-run company in tech not named Theranos or WeWork, including on this very website. It's fine to dislike Musk and it's fine to dislike the moves he's made but this revisionist history has to stop.

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afavour3y ago· 2 in thread

Maybe you can explain to me the way in which Twitter was deeply unpredictable before Musk took over because I don't really see it. I agree that it was a badly run company but in a way that meant it didn't really change very much about its product in the last few years. That's what I mean about predictable and boring. If you looked at Twitter as product in 2017 and looked at it in 2022 you wouldn't see a whole lot of difference.

jimbob45OP3y ago

Take your pick between employees acting as agents on behalf of foreign governments[0], suspending POTUS for rules not uniformly applied to other users[1], introducing a fact-checking system with poor community reception[2], changing the core feature of the product (post length)[3], or improperly collecting data and accruing fines such that the US FTC now has the company under tight investigation. All done before Musk ever owned the company.

[0]https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-twitter-employee...

[1]https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...

[2]https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/25/22248903/twitter-birdwatc...

[3]https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/21/twitter-to-expand-into-lon...

[4]https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/twitter-pre-musk-data...

EricE3y ago

Don't forget the bribes to get a blue checkmark.

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