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News Elon Musk completes Twitter takeover and fires most top executives

Chaotic Neutral

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Well, we knew this was coming eventually but there it is. After a long saga and a court battle during which Musk tried to break himself free from a deal he obviously regretted, the £38.1 takeover has finally gone through. The new owner's first task was to fire most of the company's top executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, financial executive Ned Segal, and chief lawyer and head of policymaking Vijaya Gadde. Bret Taylor has left as chairman of the board as well, and shares will be taken off the market today. Apparently, Agrawal and Segal were escorted out of Twitter HQ yesterday. Stories about 75% of the company's employees are said "inaccurate", but not denied. The "original figure" was apparently only 50%.

www.bbc.com

Elon Musk completes $44bn Twitter takeover

A number of top executives are reportedly ousted as the billionaire acquires the social media platform.
www.bbc.com

This is all in pursuit of Musk's "free speech absolutism" ideology. Personally, I am probably going to delete my Twitter account since I don't want to support Musk's business ventures or the kind of business practices described above. What are your thoughts on the new development?
 
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I had been scaling back my Twitter postings considerably after the purchase began, so it’ll drop to basically zero. Don’t want to support Musk yet I also don’t want to let him rip apart all of my friends and connections either. My immediate, close friends and I have plans to try out other social media like Cohost and Mastodon. Hopefully enough people jump to an alternative (whatever it is) and I can pull the plug entirely.

Twitter is inevitably going to collapse under Musk as all of his views and ideas suck. The bloodbath at the top and the Bloomberg report of reversing all lifetime bans suggests its sooner rather later. Going to be an increasingly awful experience until the collapse.
 
xghost777 said:
I had been scaling back my Twitter postings considerably after the purchase began, so it’ll drop to basically zero. Don’t want to support Musk yet I also don’t want to let him rip apart all of my friends and connections either. My immediate, close friends and I have plans to try out other social media like Cohost and Mastodon. Hopefully enough people jump to an alternative (whatever it is) and I can pull the plug entirely.

Twitter is inevitably going to collapse under Musk as all of his views and ideas suck. The bloodbath at the top and the Bloomberg report of reversing all lifetime bans suggests its sooner rather later. Going to be an increasingly awful experience until the collapse.
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Tbh I've been using Twitter less and less in recent months. I don't know how much of it is just busy with life and how much of it is that the posting culture on the platform has stopped appealing to me. But from my POV Musk is straight up providing a huge platform for neofascists and that is something I wouldn't have been for anyway, so it's probably a good time to pull the plug entirely (like your phrasing here!) either way.

It sucks, I've been active on the platform for 8 years and enjoyed it immensely especially between 2014 and 2019, but it's been a long time coming, I suppose.
 
Spooky Neutral said:
Tbh I've been using Twitter less and less in recent months. I don't know how much of it is just busy with life and how much of it is that the posting culture on the platform has stopped appealing to me. But from my POV Musk is straight up providing a huge platform for neofascists and that is something I wouldn't have been for anyway, so it's probably a good time to pull the plug entirely (like your phrasing here!) either way.

It sucks, I've been active on the platform for 8 years and enjoyed it immensely especially between 2014 and 2019, but it's been a long time coming, I suppose.
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Yeah I had mine eight years too and while the platform inherently has a lot of problems (especially if you attract a sizable following) it definitely was my favorite of the big platforms since you can tailor it to yourself to get what you want out of it.

Hope we get a true, better alternative with decent reach before it blows up.
 
It's funny that he fired the board, who all fought so hard to force him to go through with the deal so they could get their huge paydays.

I'm not sure any group of people has fought so hard to be fired, or been so happy either.
 
A social media platform as big as twitter under the hands of a bourgeois lunatic is appalling.
Even if the new management ends up respecting each and every user's right to free speech, I find it very concerning the possibility that Elon and his elite friends might abuse the platform to push their political agenda.
 
Deactivated my account a few minutes ago. End of an era - my most used social media for 8 years. A certain relief though.
 
www.theguardian.com

Banned British far-right figures return to Twitter within hours of takeover

Extreme group Britain First publishes series of anti-immigrant videos in first 24 hours after getting its new account
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

So basically Musk says
In a statement on Friday, the world’s richest man moved to assuage concerns about a rise in harmful content under his ownership by announcing the creation of a content moderation council that would bring together “diverse views”, adding that “no major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before the council convenes”.
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Conveniently ignoring the loop hole that banned far right groups can now just… instantly make an account and, even once restricted, have those restrictions quickly lifted.


Britain First, an extreme group whose leader has spent time in jail for hate crimes against Muslims, rejoined the social media network on Friday. It had been banned in 2017 under Twitter’s hate speech rules after posting inflammatory anti-Muslim videos. Some videos posted by its then deputy leader were retweeted by US president Donald Trump.

Twitter has mechanisms to detect when banned users set up accounts, and the new Britain First account quickly had its features limited after being found to violate rules. But it was later restored to full functionality, according to screenshots shared with members in a group for Britain First supporters. The account was still live on Saturday evening.
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‘It was later restored to full functionality’.

Interested to see what happens to Twitter here now that it’s effectively decided not to do anything about hate speech.

Hate speech laws in the United Kingdom - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org
Hate speech laws in England and Wales are found in several statutes. Expressions of hatred toward someone on account of that person's colour, race, sex, disability, nationality (including citizenship), ethnic or national origin, religion, gender reassignment, or sexual orientation is forbidden.[1][2][3][4] Any communication which is threatening or abusive, and is intended to harass, alarm, or distress someone is forbidden.[5] The penalties for hate speech include fines, imprisonment, or both.[6]
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Last edited:
PixelKnight said:
www.theguardian.com

Banned British far-right figures return to Twitter within hours of takeover

Extreme group Britain First publishes series of anti-immigrant videos in first 24 hours after getting its new account
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

So basically Musk says


Conveniently ignoring the loop hole that banned far right groups can now just… instantly make an account and, even once restricted, have those restrictions quickly lifted.



‘It was later restored to full functionality’.

Interested to see what happens to Twitter here now that it’s effectively decided not to do anything about hate speech.

Hate speech laws in the United Kingdom - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org
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This is a clear example of why Twitter is rapidly going to fall apart under Musk. Moderation before wasn’t great, but it did have some effort put in to keep things just smooth enough for advertisers and to keep things legal / good enough in other countries.

Apparently he just fired the senior leadership team entirely with cause (more lawsuits likely from that!) and plans to fire 50% of normal staff. Twitter itself is going to collapse under him. None of this is sustainable.
 
It feels like he is trying to publicly backtrack a bit now, as per the statement @PixelKnight shares? Talking about a moderation council, waiting on actions until it convenes, and of course nothing more coming out about further layoffs yet (whether he’s waiting or has found out that maybe it might not be popular outside of your group chat to lay off 50-75% of your staff to make a statement). Wonder if something in their internal data made him dial it back a bit? If that were the case, I’d reckon probably advertiser and business partner inquiries rather than account deactivations since I figure there should be a boost to new accounts and dormant account activity for the first week or two after this.

Listen, Elon, I don’t know how to tell you this, but people tend to take the soft boss approach with a grain of salt if you’ve just showed up the first day with theatrics and literal bathroom hardware props, sacked every other person in the room, and have them escorted out of the building.
 
Elon can't commit to his lunatic freeze peach 4chan ideal for Twitter and keep advertisers on side. He's going to have to pick one or the other, and if he doubles down on the former he's going to have to find ways to squeeze that lost revenue out of them.

I'm going to wait and see what happens, as I don't currently think any of the alternatives are super credible (cohost in particular looks hideous). If there's a mass exodus I'll probably join.
 
Yeah I feel like this'll become a race between "keep muh free speech" and "keep advertisers" and the latter might win out. Maybe if we're lucky they'll get fined in certain countries (UK, Germany, etc) for not following hate speech laws in the interim.

This might sound a bit jaded but honestly it doesn't change my Twitter experience much so far. It was already a site where you needed to aggressively block and otherwise curate if you didn't want to be overwhelmed with bigotry because of how woefully inadequate moderation was. More often than not if someone directed hate speech at you and you reported them, you would be the one getting suspended. And it's not like they were making money off me anyway since I use Tweetduck and don't get ads.
 
This article on The Verge is a pretty good read on how this situation might go down - and how it can easily go south for Elon.
The essential truth of every social network is that the product is content moderation, and everyone hates the people who decide how content moderation works. Content moderation is what Twitter makes — it is the thing that defines the user experience. It’s what YouTube makes, it’s what Instagram makes, it’s what TikTok makes. They all try to incentivize good stuff, disincentivize bad stuff, and delete the really bad stuff. Do you know why YouTube videos are all eight to 10 minutes long? Because that’s how long a video has to be to qualify for a second ad slot in the middle. That’s content moderation, baby — YouTube wants a certain kind of video, and it created incentives to get it. That’s the business you’re in now. The longer you fight it or pretend that you can sell something else, the more Twitter will drag you into the deepest possible muck of defending indefensible speech. And if you turn on a dime and accept that growth requires aggressive content moderation and pushing back against government speech regulations around the country and world, well, we’ll see how your fans react to that.
Anyhow, welcome to hell. This was your idea.
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So have fun, Elon - hope you lose a lot of money and tank your already low credibility.

I don't really use Twitter for original posting more than retweets, but if people have cohost, I'd love to start using it and follow more people on there.
 
It was weird not opening Twitter at all this weekend. Several times I found my unconscious going for the app in my phone before I remembered. But I can't say I feel like I miss it much yet TBQH. Like @paranoodle says, it's not like I'm missing out on a premium experience, I suppose.
 
For the time being, I'm in no hurry to leave the platform. At least, not yet. Unfortunately, too many of my independent friends rely on the platform for the sake of business, and so, I'd feel wrong leaving them in the lurch for no good reason.

However, when the deal was already going to be a thing, I started getting my ducks in a row as far as making sure I got my contacts in other places like discord and the like. If, or rather more like when things pop off...I hopefully will have everything I need to move on.
 
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No idea how to use cohost or mastodon or anything like that or who's gonna jump ship to what so I'll stick with Twitter for the time being until it starts getting actually unusable.
 
Apopheniac said:
No idea how to use cohost or mastodon or anything like that or who's gonna jump ship to what so I'll stick with Twitter for the time being until it starts getting actually unusable.
Click to expand...

This is gonna be a link I'm gonna repost a lot in the coming future: https://yesterweb.org/

It's 2022. Making your own simple website to post stuff and interacting and establishing meaningful connections with other people outside of mass market social media is possible. It's time to return to the small web.
 
I like the throwback of more small web ventures and connections, but I don't think I have any strong enough connections or social pull for any of it to mean anything. I have used Mastodon before, but it really struggles under the weight of any considerable number of people, so I reckon if things go south I might not 'replace' Twitter with anything.

I have this place for video game stuff and I've been using Letterboxd for movies lately too, though even that is just me reviewing into the void lol. I've found over the years that I'm not making as many lasting connections online as I did, say, 15 years ago. I think it's a combination of not having the energy and not having much of note to say or share. I've made some IRL friends fairly quickly via Discords though (i.e. we're going to the same shows or something, let's hang out, oh hey let's also go to this club night, &c. &c.).

Morbidly curious to see how this all goes down though. $20/mo for verification is loopy.
 
Ramune said:
$20/mo for verification is loopy.
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it actually makes a lot of sense when you consider it to be monetizing the free public relations platform they've given huge companies. individuals probably won't pay that shit though
 
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Ramune said:
$20/mo for verification is loopy.
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Someone did the math on how much money it would make Twitter if every verified account paid up and how long it would take to pay off the buyout price from just that.

Can't find the tweet anymore, but they estimated it was somewhere in the realm of 2000+ years.
 
For a while I was full set on grabbing a Tesla, until I realized what type of guy the head of Tesla is (and the real quality of their vehicles). Since then dropped my order, and choosing a different EV brand.

Charging for verification is so off and all it does is give the scammers options to look more "legit". I never used Twitter in a way that I barely post anything. All my social media presence for the most part is appreciating other people's art or news stories. If it wasn't for the fact that I only have IG, or Twitter to sate my news (sports, games, irl) needs I would deactivate it. The guy's moves he's made since he took over just furthers my beliefs into what I think of him
 
Well hey, let's be the change we want to see in the world. Here's my cohost page - don't have anything on there at the moment, but I also only follow a few people right now. Not like we're any strangers to switching platforms, lol.

There's also tumblr, but I never left there, so...
 
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