[w______roy]

But, he did. That's like saying "Hey, this company would have done this bad thing under any leadership, so let's not hold current leadership accountable." He bought it, all the shares, eliminated the board, eliminated leadership from many departments. He wanted it all, and now he has it, and so he's way more accountable for EVERY decision than the average CEO.

[dcow]

That’s 100% not what I’m saying. I literally said we should criticize Twitter for being stupid. I then said this sounds like something any stupid company would do, especially Twitter given their track record with 3rd party API and data access. I don’t find Elon’s position as CEO a notable detail here. People never criticized Dorsey for stupid Twitter stuff of yesteryear. They criticized Twitter.

[ajross]

It's more "this bad thing isn't notable, it's just one of many events like it".

Musk draws negative attention like no figure in the modern era. He is just too fun to hate. This story amounts to a mildly anticompetitive action by a middle tier social network. It's just not a big deal[1] in any reasonable context. It's a front page freakout on HN only because Musk was involved[2].

We're here for entertainment value, basically. For myself: the Taibbi angle here is absolutely hilarious, given the level of spin in the "Twitter Files" you really would have thought the guy would have bought some loyalty, but Musk's brain doesn't work that way.

[1] But, of course, bad.

[2] c.f. all the front page coverage here of Tesla foibles that would be 100% ignored on the cars of any other manufacturer.

[camjohnson26]

Unfortunately what EM does and Twitter does is being watched extremely closely by the entire tech industry, so like it or not it has massive ripple effects. We saw this when Twitter cut staff to a shoestring, and suddenly other companies also started cutting costs, assuming those costs were unnecessary overhead.

[ajross]

You're blaming the entire tech industry downturn on Twitter? That's just too much. They weren't even the first tech company to do layoffs!

Again, it's just too fun to pin this on the nutjob CEO with the bad takes. But step back and... it's just not that notable. Well, except for the employees laid off. I'm not saying I'd want to work for the guy, but even then "asshole tech bro CEOs" are a dime a dozen too.

[rchaud]

No company slashed 90pct of staff in attempting to follow Twitter. Most just overhired during the pandemic. Twitter doesn't even have an ad sales team anymore.

[w______roy]

I mostly agree with you, especially the Matt Taibbi thing, which gives me nostalgia for the weekly firings and excommunications Trump did to his loyal grovelers.

However, I resist letting this turn into merely a spectacle. I don't think it's a good idea to stop criticizing bad practices (in this case, making unwitting members of the public skeptical of links posted by independent journalists) just because it's fairly mundane in the scope of social media company practices. It's important to hold leadership accountable, but you're right that we shouldn't let Elon become the pariah for bad leadership/practices in way that lets others off the hook.