Support NeoGAF

[EviLore]

Since the Elon buyout

Pros:
-Community Notes
-Removal of unreasonable ultra-progressive community standards (e.g., permanent bans for stating that men and women are different, permanent bans for "deadnaming" even accidentally)
-Decreased censorship of legitimate news that falls on the wrong side of a partisan aisle (e.g. laptop story being buried, Wuhan)

Cons:
-Removal of virtually all standards has degraded the level of discourse down to zero -- the platform is overwhelmed with Nazis, porn spam, impersonators, scams, bots
-Blue checks are no longer a notability/authenticity filter, so parsing the platform is much worse
-Elon's personal posts are now effectively pinned to the top of the platform, so he dictates a large part of the daily discourse instead of it happening organically
-Revenue sharing has incentivized engagement farming/spam to new heights


It may or may not be an improvement to you depending on which issues you value.

Personally, I would not have chosen this path for the platform. There is a reasonable middle ground where people are not banned for nonsense ultra progressive reasons but are actioned for the usual things that civilized society expects out of people.

 

[Draugoth]

Dude spent 40 billion on a platform just because he got banned. Let that sink in.

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

I think the content is actually still very good if you follow a topical set of people. I have one account where I follow only machine learning / AI topics and researchers, and it is hands down the best information source on the web. Every day I see paper links, updates from notable researchers like Karpathy, etc. Absolutely unrivaled for keeping up with a professional topic.

The generic "for you" stuff is not good, but I haven't a clue why anyone would spend time on that side. Follow the notable people in a topic, stick to your feed page, and it will give you a heartbeat on a topic that can't be found anywhere. Waaaay better than following reddit topic communities etc.

 

[natjjohn]

Classic Musk fan fiction in the thread.

Do use it for fantasy football stuff, but if I ever accidentally not look at the peope I follow, I get immediately hit up with hard right political posts. Again, all my follows are fantasy football and Adam schefter. Why am I getting political content of any kind?

Oh wait, as Evil noted above, porn or who knows, maybe human trafficking posts also.

Bots galore. If want to start believing in the possibility of dead internet theory, go on Twitter. You’ll start to have some belief it’s possible.

 

[Robot Carnival]

that sounds like $9.4 billions too much still.

 

[MrMephistoX]

I love the guy. He's doing more for this world than everyone here combined and all of our relatives too.

I've never been a Twitter person until the last 6-8 months. I get unfiltered and unbiased bullshit which is constantly checked with community notes. Not the filtered BS the mainstream gives you.

I'll defend that until someone here does more than the guy.

The “unbiased” sources are biased one way or the other which is more of a problem with influencers and MSM writ large. What I like about Twitter begrudgingly is that I can follow boots on the ground journalists from MSM, Fox, Newsmax and PBS in one place so it’s like a clipping service for me and even with crazy right wing BS and crazy left wing BS filling my “For You” feed I can at least hear from both sides and make up my own mind. It’s a full fire hose of BS but somewhere therein lays the undigested corn kernel of truth.

 

[LiquidMetal14]

The “unbiased” sources are biased one way or the other which is more of a problem with influencers and MSM writ large. What I like about Twitter begrudgingly is that I can follow boots on the ground journalists from MSM, Fox, Newsmax and PBS in one place so it’s like a clipping service for me and even with crazy right wing BS and crazy left wing BS filling my “For You” feed I can at least hear from both sides and make up my own mind. It’s a full fire hose of BS but somewhere therein lays the undigested corn kernel of truth.

And this is where we meet on the same page. I'm an adult who would rather get all the info and parse, double and tripple check, then make up my own mind. I don't want it filtered through some news channel or someones opinon piece. I hated and just ignored X for a long time. Now the world is changing and shit is getting too crazy. I need to know what's happening in this crucial election year. I think an informed person knows how much this situation stinks right now.

 

[deriks]

X people are so sad now

 

[LegendOfKage]

Personally, I would not have chosen this path for the platform.

Dorsey should have taken responsibility, cleaned house, and publicly explained how the US government was circumventing the US constitution. Musk would never have wanted to buy twitter, and the platform would be in much better shape today. To say that what Musk has done with the platform is disappointing would be an understatement.

 

[SlimySnake]

I initially didnt mind Elon buying twitter because it was turning into a woke shithole. now its a conspiracy theory qanon shithole with most of the nonsense coming from Elon himself.

There is no middle ground anymore. Had he purchased it and fired a few of the activists mods, it wouldve sorted itself out. But he took it to the completely opposite direction.

 

[T-0800]

It's clear -- and was open in his statements about motivation from the beginning -- that making it a cash cow wasn't even one part of the reasoning. He took over Twitter to fight back against the absolutely soul crushing level of censorship and narrative control that it had grown into, coming from combined corporate and governmental sources.

Making it profitable would be a simpleton's game: do what was already being done, submit totally to corporate/regime interests, and the advertising money will flow. Thankfully, he isn't quite that level of simpleton, though I can't say the same for the opening post.

You have chosen 4D Chess as your defense.

 

[Trunx81]

The left: „I’m done with twitter, I’m leaving to other platforms.”

Now: “Why are there only right wing people?”

 

[MisterFalcon]

The left: „I’m done with twitter, I’m leaving to other platforms.”

Now: “Why are there only right wing people?”

That's easy, author_is_elon is harcoded in the algorithm so no matter what you do, Elon and what he likes is there.

 

[BadBurger]

Dude is the worst businessman on the planet. Ever. It's comical to watch.

 

[Drew1440]

And to think people were speculating this would have been bankrupt within the year, never underestimate the Musk.

 

[StueyDuck]

I dropped twitter many many many years ago.

but when the the odd tweet gets posted here or there, or shown on the news or youtube etc. It's seems to be the exact same shithole prior to Musks Involvement and i genuinely don't know what people are on about when they say he's made it worse.

it's still just assholes craving attention, posting the wildest most extreme views or opinions just to farm likes or follows, it still seems like a circle jerk for losers to pretend they are friends and are really popular.

I guess at least from what people are saying here that the content has strayed more from progressive shit to controversial shit but it's all still shit. I don't see how the prior shit was nicer.

 

[Valedix]

 

[tommib]

Twitter is a complete sewage of “Hitler was right” accounts. I hope that garbage site just burns to the ground.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Unrelated:

SpaceX is now worth $200 billion as of the last funding round

Also unrelated:

Tesla is now worth $830 billion though that one trades publicly and is well known for wild swings

 

[yet_another_alt]

Not my money, not my problem. I got entertainment out it, and that's all that matters.

 

[rm082e]

He took over Twitter to fight back against the absolutely soul crushing level of censorship and narrative control that it had grown into, coming from combined corporate and governmental sources.

Twitter was run by a liberal oligarchy. He replaced them with a conservative dictator. There's plenty of censorship still going on today (not as much due to 1/5th the workforce), it's just in the opposite direction. If you're aligned with the dictator's views, it's great. If you're not, it's terrible.

 

[EverydayBeast]

Valuing things is getting on my nerves

 

[jufonuk]

It’s a shame that the people who were working there trying to make a living pay the bills etc got fired. But I haven’t used it in ages and I feel better off for it.

I don’t think Elon is as smart as he thinks he is, he surrounds himself with smart capable people. I’m glad the pandemic showed this. I’m kind of fed up of society idolising Billionaires.
Seeing as the big firms are the ones pushing for AI to take over a lot of jobs.

 

[chris121580]

I had an account for 10+ years and deactivated it a few months ago and have never looked back. I used it to keep up with my sports teams mostly. I didn't care who owned it but when my feed is more ads than posts, mostly political ads, then I no longer see a reason to stay on there. It was a disaster every time I logged in

 

[March Climber]

The generic "for you" stuff is not good, but I haven't a clue why anyone would spend time on that side.

I’m glad you are at least finally acknowledging this. Current day twitter is not a perfect platform by any means but some posters here are treating it as flawless as long as it defies the side they don’t like.

 

[XXL]

Dude is the worst businessman on the planet. Ever. It's comical to watch.

This quite the take considering Teslas valuation is higher than most of the other automobile companies combined and SpaceEX is having to complete Nasa missions for them (while also sending civilians to space).

Not to mention what Neurolink is doing and the fact he's one of the richest people in the entire fucking world.

 

[Dacvak]

Since the Elon buyout

Pros:
-Community Notes
-Removal of unreasonable ultra-progressive community standards (e.g., permanent bans for stating that men and women are different, permanent bans for "deadnaming" even accidentally)
-Decreased censorship of legitimate news that falls on the wrong side of a partisan aisle (e.g. laptop story being buried, Wuhan)

Cons:
-Removal of virtually all standards has degraded the level of discourse down to zero -- the platform is overwhelmed with Nazis, porn spam, impersonators, scams, bots
-Blue checks are no longer a notability/authenticity filter, so parsing the platform is much worse
-Elon's personal posts are now effectively pinned to the top of the platform, so he dictates a large part of the daily discourse instead of it happening organically
-Revenue sharing has incentivized engagement farming/spam to new heights


It may or may not be an improvement to you depending on which issues you value.

Personally, I would not have chosen this path for the platform. There is a reasonable middle ground where people are not banned for nonsense ultra progressive reasons but are actioned for the usual things that civilized society expects out of people.

Most measured and reasonable take in this whole thread.

 

[WhamBamThankYouMaam]

The thinnest of skins and the thickets of wallets.

 

[DragoonKain]

Don't think it was ever worth 44 billion tbh. He overpaid.

 

[TheChumpNation]

It was too "left" before he bought it, now it's too "right" and is a cesspool of bots, porn and whatever other clickbait mechanisms exist today.

I was happy when he bought it due to the suffocating censorship, but I think what we've gotten is actually worse.

 

[BadBurger]

This quite the take considering Teslas valuation is higher than most of the other automobile companies combined and SpaceEX is having to complete Nasa missions for them (while also sending civilians to space).

Not to mention what Neurolink is doing and the fact he's one of the richest people in the entire fucking world.

Other people run those companies.

Look at what he did when he was in charge of Twitter. He's hilariously stupid.

Not to mention he was born rich. He did not earn anything.

 

[XXL]

Other people run those companies.

Look at what he did when he was in charge of Twitter. He's hilariously stupid.

Not to mention he was born rich. He did not earn anything.

 

[BadBurger]

Jesus you're actually stanning one of the dumbest dudes ever. Rich.

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

Other people run those companies.

this is a bit ridiculous; he's still CEO of SpaceX, for example. Every company has delegation structures, but to ignore Musk's track record, or pretend he isn't one of the handful of most influential businessman & tech entrepreneurs of the past century, love him or hate him, doesn't make you a serious person.

 

[12Goblins]

I don't care what his motivations were. The world is better off because of his purchase.

By stripping +30 billion dollars from the guy who champions your ideology?

 

[Shake Your Rump]

he was on the record and it was reported everywhere

This dude is on record saying all sorts of crazy shit and lies. Someone retweeting him doesn’t make it true.

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

This dude is on record saying all sorts of crazy shit and lies. Someone retweeting him doesn’t make it true.

again, this is simply absurd -- I'm not talking about someone retweeting him, I'm saying that all the mainstream press at the time of his purchase was reporting his clear and unambiguous public statements about why he wanted to buy Twitter.

It's simply a matter of public record that Musk didn't buy it to make bank, and that his entire motivation was openly all about changing free speech and public discourse from day one. I mean it's clear even in the base Wikipedia article, and if you don't know that Wikipedia editors are overwhelmingly progressive and anti-Musk in orientation, I don't know how to catch you up on things - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquisition_of_Twitter_by_Elon_Musk

It's also clear on the public record that Musk got into a little war over the evaluation of Twitter's value since, after making his initial offer, he alleged that Twitter over-reported its value due to counting all kinds of effectively dead and bot accounts. He was pretty open about Twitter being overvalued but buying it anyway.

 

[Pagusas]

It just went from one extreme to the other. Taken over by the clowns who couldn't see anything past their own fucked up extreme agendas and hatred of this world. The same thing you'll see in any Trump thread on Dpad, or any Harris thread on Era (Gaf has it too, but at least Evilore helped push it down with killing political threads). Completely blind hatred spewing.

 

[Trilobit]

Elon Musk is on track to soon become the world’s first trillionaire

To put this in context. One trillion is one million millions or a thousand billions. So imagine you are worth a thousand billions and something cost you 55 billions, relatively speaking it's nothing to cry over. Especially as he has virtually a communication platform where he can't get banned and where he can speak to millions of people.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

I never kept track of musks net worth. I thought he was up there with the Warner buffets and bill gates at maybe a couple hundred billion. But he’s on his way to a trillion???!

 

[RAÏSanÏa]

Elon Musk is on track to soon become the world’s first trillionaire

To put this in context. One trillion is one million millions or a thousand billions. So imagine you are worth a thousand billions and something cost you 55 billions, relatively speaking it's nothing to cry over. Especially as he has virtually a communication platform where he can't get banned and where he can speak to millions of people.

Article claims it relies largely on Tesla thriving to quadruple his speculated current worth. Seems to assume smooth sailing, but, if there are any unexpected disruptions projections would be off. Tesla is even said to be overvalued currently.

Selling more Tesla stock, on top of what was sold for purchase, to keep X/Twitter solvent has been speculated. Less of a burden on him than on other Tesla shareholders. Yet, if Tesla is shaky due to whatever factors then X could be a significant burden.

 

[skneogaf]

I still don't understand why he didn't just pay developers to make a rip off of twitter and call it X

I'd have joined it

 

[BadBurger]

this is a bit ridiculous; he's still CEO of SpaceX, for example. Every company has delegation structures, but to ignore Musk's track record, or pretend he isn't one of the handful of most influential businessman & tech entrepreneurs of the past century, love him or hate him, doesn't make you a serious person.

Sorry. He is on record dumb as fuck.

Tesla and SpaceX are not run by him. Take a look at Twitter, which was and is run by by him. It quickly tanked.

Anyways I feel dumber for even talking about this guy.

 

[mindfreak191]

DIAMOND HANDS

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Other people run those companies.

Look at what he did when he was in charge of Twitter. He's hilariously stupid.

Not to mention he was born rich. He did not earn anything.

I wonder what it's like being as delusional as you

 

[BennyBlanco]

Musk’s twitter is fucking nuts. 4chan has more strict moderation. I see the most wild, racist memes on there and it’s coming from blue check paid accounts that make money on the platform. Easy to see how they scared off advertisers.

 

[Trogdor1123]

Dude is the worst businessman on the planet. Ever. It's comical to watch.

I can never tell when we are being sarcastic anymore…