[deanCommie]

Of all the scenarios with Twitter in the last several months where people talk past each other, this is the one I am most confused by.

You got startup CEOs (not just Elon Musk brownnosers) talking about how some of the most innovative things get built at startups.

Which is true! Big, world-changing ideas, don't get built 9-5. And especially if you have some competitive advantage, you need to rush to market, to beat the others.

But Twitter is (was) a 40+ Billion dollar company. None of the people in this photo have any reasonable equity (the kind that makes people work nights and weekends in the hope that an IPO makes them a millionaire). And Twitter has a massive network effect of the kind meaning that if you don't screw it up (and god is Elon trying), none of these people are going anywhere.

I can understand that it's in Musk's interest to create a reality distortion field and convince the employees that they need to stay and go Hardcore so that he can create the American Weechat, or whatever he's got in mind.

But what do the other CEOs that are swooning over this have to gain except a dry run for also starting to treat their employees like garbage...

[wskish]

> so that he can create the American Weechat, or whatever he's got in mind.

What if what he has in mind is attempting to undo the negative effects that social networks have had on our society and democracy and instead attempt to rebuild this particular network in a way that can have a positive effect on society? It seems like that is a technological possibility and also something he could plausibly be interested in.

[giraffe_lady]

What if what if what if. What about his actions leads you to believe he's more capable of that than the thousands of people who were already working on it? If that were easy to do it would have been done, social media companies are full of people who care very deeply about this exact issue and who are also not absolute fucking neophytes at understanding and managing the constraints of a large social media network.

And what about the positive effects that twitter was already having? I'm part of something adjacent to and with overlap into the canadian disability rights movements; they are devastated by what's happening with twitter and widely considered it to be a unique and unprecedentedly powerful space for community and organization for them. It's not all shitposts and fascism you know.

[wskish]

> what about his actions leads you to believe he's more capable of that than the thousands of people who were already working on it?

My sense is that the 1000's of people who where already working on it have been working on it from the perspective of how to make a billion dollars while working at it. EM is free from that constraint.

[detaro]

That's why he settled Twitter with additional debt and talked about how it might go bankrupt soon if it doesn't make more money, to make it clear that profit is not important?

[ModernMech]

Never trust a billionaire who tells you they’re not interested in making money. That’s like a crack addict telling you they’ve had enough crack.

[pasttense01]

Elon believes in "free speech" and these unmoderated free speech networks rapidly become filled with toxic garbage.

[wskish]

historically, yes; but might that be a function of both the platform incentives (advertising, engagement) and poor technology?

[yosame]

Well twitter is in more debt than ever, so it might be even more beholden to advertisers now. And as for the technology, they just fired most of their engineers...

[MiguelX413]

It's still centralized, proprietary, and going to have the harmful business model of advertising, no?

[wskish]

Of all those, "advertising" is the only fundamentally evil one, and he is chipping away at that one.

[MiguelX413]

I strongly disagree. Also what would he replace it with? You seriously don't think his alternative revenue sources meant to be anything but supplementary, do you?

[wskish]

given the strength of the network effects a subscription model is worth exploring, which seems to be what he is pursuing.

[nickthegreek]

Pretty sure he has stated he wants an American WeChat.