To you (and me) he comes across that way.
But we're not his target audience.
He is an extremely busy man, and the same set of skills that lead to his success at engineering don't translate at all to success in the social realm. To simplify his social interaction decision making he looks for huristics, such as the tried and true: woke = bad!
So increasingly in following a simple heuristic he seems to have outsourced much of his personal philosophy to the Joe-Rogan-O-Sphere, and all the anti vax, transphobic, supplement pill pushing, pizzagate conspiracy believing, Jew-baiting quackery that entails.
The macho attitude of doubling then tripling down on unforced blunders works well if you are a contrarian podcast host "just following the questions...", but less so when you are CEO with obligations not to rock the boat, not to become a clown presiding over a circus.
It's worse than I expected. Musk is out of his gourd. I don't know if it's the drugs or actual insanity but I don't just see an asshole but someone losing touch with reality. It's not autism or even "outsourcing his politics", he is barely coherent. This man will likely need institutional help.
A topic that I became aware of at University is how society casts people with disabilities (sorry if that term if that offends anyone) as villains, ie Captain Hook becomes a big old meany because an alligator took his hand. Of course this is a harmful stereotype and should be retired as a crutch for lazy writers, thinkers and society at large.
But I also believe that anyone can be the hero or the villain, or think they are doing good when they are clearly misguided. Wouldn't it be just as weird if neurodivergent people were never actually the bad guy? Isn't never being allowed to think of someone as both autistic and in some way maladjusted also a harmful stricture?
You can read minds then?
I think you are exaggerating further beyond the line than one (likely autistic) man swearing in frustration.
Of all the dangers in the world today
This is no surprise. Aside from his Twitter bubble, he's in a bubble even offline. Tesla presentations are full of people profiting off Tesla YouTube videos, selling investment "lessons", crypto bros, and fanboys.
They DO laugh at all his jokes. They DO clap at everything edgy he says. And so he, almost reasonably, believes the rest of the world is like that, and the mass media just hates him for dropping heavy truths with a hammer.
He's deluded.
Curse you advertisers for ruining his company!
So… Twitter is shutting down? There’s really no other plan other than blaming advertisers for pulling out, and ranting about how earth will judge them?
One can only hope!
> "If somebody is going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money? Go fuck yourself,"
His team is probably trying to figure out how to spin everything even as we write here.
On a positive note, he's reacting a lot like the rest of us and not like a totally gone sociopath - there's a human inside that billionaire!
Narcissistic injury looks like normal emotional hurt because it is, but it comes from a very different place.
So he fails on that too.
But this way, when it happens he gets to blame all of that on “woke corporations“, rather than on himself.
I don't know to what extent he has made or could make it profitable, but I don't think he wants it to die. It dying, though, isn't the worst thing, and here he can turn it into a Braveheart moment to boot, winning hearts and minds -- like mine. I see what he's doing, but I love it; fuck advertisers. They've ruined the Internet. Or, rather, monetization in the abstract has.
It's disgusting to me how he was asked about trying to bend the knee to suits like Iger, turning the platform into some anemic, anodyne corporate candy world of devout Good Behavior, an eternal kindergarten where we're all trapped forever with the advertisers as our mental jailors, since that's how profits can flow most frictionlessly.
What he's doing is stupid -- people's 401ks are on the line. But it's wild how it doesn't seem to bother anyone how that's an argument for spinelessness. It's a New Hampshire license plate "live free or die" moment, and 90% of posters here are advocating for content slavery with tone policing and personal attacks.
Musk's present position is that he keeps saying and promoting repulsive stuff in public and so some advertisers prefer to stop supporting or being associated with his business. This isn't remotely like "blackmail": the repulsive stuff is all public to begin with.
So he’s going to sue people for not advertising with him? How can anyone who says this kind of thing claim to believe in free markets, libertarianism or capitalism?
I mean, realistically I'm not sure if Musk believes in anything much other than Musk.
It is compelling him to behave in an involuntary manner, thus coercion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coercion
Advertisers are attempting to gain benefit via coercion, so it is extortion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extortion
So far as we know, they are not threatening to air secrets, so it is not blackmail.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackmail
So it was a bad choice of language, but frankly it doesn't seem "incoherent," just off by a hair.
It also does not seem petulant, though telling advertisers to F themselves through that sneer of his certainly is.
> he keeps saying and promoting repulsive stuff
Yes, and the responses to him seem repulsive, too. Chicken? Egg? I don't care.
There is no coercion. Your first wikipedia link says "[c]oercion involves compelling a party to act in an involuntary manner by the use of threats." Saying, effectively, "I no longer wish to be associated with you" is not a threat.
It's also not extortion. Your second link says "[e]xtortion is the practice of obtaining benefit (e.g., money or goods) through coercion."
Again, there is no coercion, and advertisers choosing not to advertise on his platform are not "attempting to gain benefit" at all. They are trying to avoid what they perceive as harm to themselves.
He is not "off by a hair," and neither are you. You're both miles away from even being able to see the ballpark.
Yaccarino was apparently at NBC for 12 years. This leads me to suspect that 30 Rock was a documentary.
Probably adequate to put up with this for a bit.
https://www.semafor.com/article/11/19/2023/twitter-bets-big-...
I’d have quit months ago.
But no one gave you the chance. Why not, pray tell, since you were by far the better choice?8-))
Why? It's not like she was at Twitter when Musk bought it. She knew what she was signing up for. If she didn't, she's a moron. I feel sorry for all the H1B engineers getting the short end of the deal now that the tech job market is shit. Linda is going to be fine.
He's occupying enough brainspace as it is and I've had enough.
They have to display that they're worthy of being followed or listened to. It's their burden, not mine, and this proved to be very effective filter for regulating my brain time on people I don't know.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/1/23895069/walter-isaacson-...
I searched for "Isaacson hagiography" and grabbed the first article from a major outlet...
For example, if I suggested that the world would be better if he hadn't basically done a right wing radicalization speedrun, didn't endorse people with hateful ideologies, didn't act in ways that even made his trans daughter want nothing to do with him, or if he was just nicer in general. That point of view is known, yet doesn't add much, aside from grounds for disagreement in the eyes of some.
As for the actual impact of running a company like Twitter/X is run, a few years are probably needed to gather all the facts - then it can be used as an example of what not to do in business school, or how big/small the impact of certain choices actually is. I look forwards to this being reposted in maybe 2026.
If you claim it won't be a "worthwhile discussion", what exactly qualifies as a worthwhile discussion to you? Are we changing the world when we talk about Rust or the latest Nvidia GPU?
And how is it not worthwhile for the HN community to reason about the impact of a quarter-trillionaire who insists on putting himself in the center of EVERYTHING from kids trapped in mines, to Ukraine/Russia, to Israel/Palestine, to climate change, to space exploration?
If getting a handle on this guy isn't worthwhile, what is?
Talking about programming languages, hardware or even things like biology, nature and so on can be useful learning experiences, when wonderful people with relevant knowledge drop by and share what they know, how things have gotten to where they are and how they might evolve in the future. Some of the more grounded and practical discussions might lead to actionable advice, such as which languages and frameworks to look into over a weekend, what databases to toy around with for a bit, what coding approaches might save a headache in the future, or even just empathy towards the challenges that someone has faced in the past, or that someone might have to deal with in the future, as well as advice for that.
Threads like this won't always lead to worthwhile discussion, because someone like me might be upset at someone like Elon for being rather mean towards others (sometimes bordering on sinister), someone else might celebrate some of his behavior as breaking a very watered down mold, yet not much of that would change as a consequence in the world. It will, however, almost inevitably lead to arguing with one another, even in communities like HN, or just feeling bad about the state of the world.
> And how is it not worthwhile for the HN community to reason about the impact of a quarter-trillionaire who insists on putting himself in the center of EVERYTHING from kids trapped in mines, to Ukraine/Russia, to Israel/Palestine, to climate change, to space exploration?
I'm just going off of the Guidelines here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity.
In that regard, all I can say (aside from the example above, which is probably already over the line) is that there was probably a more tactful way for him to get his message across, that wouldn't be so brash. That the way the company is run is quite far off from how most companies are run and future will show how that works out. I wish people were nicer. That's about it.
As for geopolitical events, I guess I can (and have in the past) send donations for humanitarian aid to Ukraine, as well as support initiatives like Wren for carbon offset, in addition to personal life choices in regards to my environmental footprint. I don't need to care about what some rich guy has in his personal agenda, because I have no impact on that, so it shouldn't live in my head rent free.
But maybe I'm wrong and someone else will "get a handle on this guy", whatever that means. It feels to me like any sort of progress would most likely be made in the court system, not any comments section. Or maybe I'm just wrong in that what he said deserves to be seen and saved, as a historical record or something.
A change in behaviour towards irrational aggression could be due to extreme stress, lack of sleep, drugs, a brain tumour, bipolar disorder, etc.
My questions:
1. Has his behaviour changed, or has he always been this unstable?
2. Are there any evidence of health problems?
Is that the goal of Bluesky, to be Twitter for non-tech people? Seems like a surprising approach, given that the first users of Twitter were exclusively tech peeps.
Then, peek into their own “following“ lists, and follow everybody you recognize/like.
Then go into their “following” lists, and do the same. Rinse and repeat.
Eventually, the algorithm will take the hint and start recommending you more tech stuff.
Good luck building that everything app out of pure spite for your real customers.
The level of entitlement and social disconnect this guy has is astonishing.
This seems like him trying to turn the narrative around in order to kill the company without making it look like a failure. He was just trying to save the world, but these companies were blackmailing him and he had to put his foot down. Better scuttle the ship than to let it fall into the hands of the enemy!
"By the numbers: Engagement metrics are down across the board.
App downloads fell roughly 38% globally between October 2022 and September 2023, according to Sensor Tower estimates. In the U.S., mobile app downloads fell 57% in the same time period. Data from Data.AI, another app tracking firm, shows similar trends.
Usage has also decreased, with monthly active Android users falling 14.8% globally and 17.8% with mobile users in the U.S. year-over-year for the month of September, per SimilarWeb.
Average time spent, daily per user, fell 2% year-over-year globally in the third quarter of 2023. Sessions dipped 4% in that same time period, per Sensor Tower. User churn, or users who stop using the app, increased more than 30% year-over-year as of September 2023, per Sensor Tower.
Web traffic was down 7% globally and 11.6% in the U.S. for the first nine months of 2023 compared to the same period in 2022, per SimilarWeb."
Twitter has always been a power-user platform, but lacks mass appeal.
MAUs are down 15-20% YoY, gross churn is up 30%, but time spent is only down 2%.
https://youtu.be/XamC7-Pt8N0?si=NlT0ZRjgLbwtZcSG
How can a true source of truth free speech platform be anything other than a non profit model like Wikipedia? Free speech requires speaking the truth, and the truth makes most people, including companies / advertisers uncomfortable.
He is calling this a "business" but what were Twitter's profits. Perhaps it's not a business. Perhaps it's just a website having special agreements with some cellular carriers that has grown too large.
Regardless of whether the Twitter "business" survives, the ability to run a "Twitter"-like website is never going away. And the cost of doing so should continue to decline. Website size and inclusion of other peoples' content is a separate issue.
"I want to control a website with hundreds of millions of pages of content uploaded by other people" <--- If this is prohibitively expensive then perhaps that is rightfully so. What are the damaging effects of so-called "social media". Why are advertisers pulling out. "Blackmail". No doubt Zuckerberg is similarly delusional.
Musk is free to run his company as he sees fit. If he decides to follow a particular ideology to run his site, that is his prerogative. And lets say left wing users find it terrible. They can't say - "Hey Musk, you are *blackmailing* us to use this site with this right wing nonsense". If they did others would kindly remind them that one, no one is forcing them to use the site. and two, if they don't like it, they can go somewhere else.
And the left wing users can try to "document" all the right wing stuff on Twitter which they think is nonsense. Except some hardcore left wing users, no one would care.
Same logic goes for the advertisers. They can spend their money as they see it. Saying GFY and "it is blackmail" is pure nonsense.
Except his hardcore followers no one is going to care for his "documentation".
I loaded up the boat with Tesla shares and made a lot of money(that I’ve since spent on drugs, alcohol and women, no regrets). I figured a man who can kickstart our space ambitions like Elon did, he can build a car, a toy in comparison to a rocket. Elon restored my hope in humanity.
I reevaluated my views on him when he called the diver trying to help those lost boys in the Thai caves a pedo and wasted everyone’s time with some dumb contraption.
When he purchased Twitter for $45B is when I lost faith in him as a businessman. Elon is flying too close to the sun, and I hope he makes it back on track. For all his faults, Elon Musk is a great engineer, I just hope he stops with this X nonsense and get back to working on things that matter.
Sorry for the long rant
Is your contention that the headline should have included an ellipsis?
My opinion: it will backfire more on the advertisers than it does for X, with so much of the country taking Elon’s side.
I have access to an internet browser. How can I see that? Who orchestrated it? Which companies were coordinating things together?
> It was done exclusively for political reasons. Media Matters doesn’t care about anti-semitism, they’re a political lobby and their purpose is getting Democrats elected.
How do you know that? What was wrong with their reporting?
Twitter has 360m MAUs, 225m DAUs globally. That's less than what Facebook does in Europe.
I think I've read twice about him in the last 6 months, and I read 3 different weekly papers.
LOL
