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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35397 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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It looks like it's finally happening: Elon Musk Twitter deal back on in surprise U-turn

Billionaire Elon Musk has apparently changed his mind about buying Twitter, again, and is now willing to proceed with his takeover of the social media platform.

In a letter to the firm, Mr Musk agreed to pay the price he offered months ago before trying to quit the deal.

The surprise reversal comes just weeks before the two sides were due in court.

I wonder if the recovery of Tesla stock has anything to do with this reversal. TSLA got as high as $310 two weeks ago (now back at $250), which is around the same price when he originally made the offer.

It will be interesting to see what happens if it does go through. Will Elon fix the bot problem for good? (likely not). Will some famous previously banned users be restored, notably Trump? Same for Jordan Peterson, who has not tweeted since July after being forced to delete a tweet, which he has refused. Same for The Babylon Bee, which stopped tweeting out of protest. Probably. Not good news for the left though if he does succeed.

Maybe it was the release of the conversation between Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk? Who knows except Elon himself?

The machinations of this deal are probably going to be unknown for us unless we get a memoir/autobiography in two decades in the future or something. As for what will happen after he takes over only the future will tell. But as for the 'bot' problem I never thought it was only that, the issue here is a media wanted to spin it to that but the issue you could infer from the court filings that there was something strange with the actual "eyeball-time", I've tried to comment on it in different places but they can't seem to get past the idea that is in reporting that it is only bots. I was actually slightly excited if they had an argument that Twitter misrepresented actual usage of the service, because it could have had an effect on the valuation of ad-driven Silicon Valley companies.

Edit to amend: I just stumbled upon the messages from discovery related to the Elon vs. Twitter trial https://www.scribd.com/document/598550927/Musk-Messages It might sway my opinion on this issue a little.

I just want my account back which was permanently banned for criticizing mRNA jabs and declaring war on the CIA.

Imagine wanting to be on twitter.

Just use Nitter.net follow your celebrities and agencies of interest while ignoring the rest like a normal person.

I'm the opposite. I ignore celebrities, block NYTimes writers, and follow an extensive collection of ~10,000 follower anonymous accounts.

Also, I want to see all the permanently suspended returned, my personal favorite was Brick, AKA @thehindudindu.

The tweet that got him banned?

"What's the matter Twitter, don't like being banned? Why don't you build your Uganda?"

I cannot tell if the censorship is merely petty or how power consolidates.

What you're telling me is that you're part of the problem. People like you and the incentives you create/perpetuate are why I say "Twitter Delenda Est".

I somehow doubt that getting banned from Twitter for wrongthink creates incentives. Maybe disincentives.

What do you want Twitter for?

For tweets. And liking tweets. And to see my old friends. It will be like the Resurrection if everyone gets a Jubilee!

There is a way that his investment could be nullified, if a few powerful players chose to do so.

Some Twitter alternative could be settled upon (doesn't matter which; let me make up "BuzzBuzz") and a news blitz saying "BuzzBuzz: the Twitter alternative everyone who's not a racist is fleeing to" (It doesn't need to be "racist," but I think that would be the most effective option) can be conducted, full of interviews of concerned citizens and celebrities and experts whose tepid support can be put alongside those who have no professional need to stay restrained, all distressed about the "unmoderated racist content."

And all at once, the "tweet on Twitter" bluebirds at the bottoms of articles on other sites get replaced with "buzz on BuzzBuzz" bees; search engines change their algorithms to keep up-to-date with what content is good; all the respectable normal people who don't want to be considered racist will hop over to BuzzBuzz, and the whole incident will go down in history as proof of the persistent, insidious power of racists, for they took over and destroyed Twitter.

Now. Of course it's true that all of that is nothing but a lurid fable. I would be astonished if anything even suggesting an attempt at that happened, much less with the speed it would probably take to succeed. But the point does remain that "established network" effects aren't so insurmountable if there exists some common signal people can look to telling them where to regroup. NYT+CNN would be more than sufficient, I think, but I am not so conspiracy-minded as to think they would really make the attempt.

It depends on if Twitter under Musk will really be that bad. History suggests you have to really piss off enough people so that all of a modal user's friends on a feed will see the complaints. See Digg and Tumblr for example.

digg and tumblr died because better stuff like Facebook, Reddit, and Instagram came along. I don't see the same happening with twitter.

digg and tumblr died because, as in the meme, they shoved a stick in their own spokes. There needs to be alternative stuff available, but there is also often a sudden shock: with digg the atrocious frontpage redesign, with tumblr the porn ban. (With LessWrong the end of Eliezer's posts...)

The digg frontpage redesign was also at the same time as some pretty big revelations about how content made it to the front page. Back when large internet communities cared about that sort of thing on principle rather than whether it was useful.

There was the meme with the DeCSS AACS decryption key. A bunch of Digg users wanted it posted, Digg did not want it posted. I kind of get why Digg did not want to become a home to a bunch of piracy stuff, and I did not realize or had forgotten they had DMCA letter demanding its removal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy#DMCA_notices_and_Digg) but going to war with their own users at the same time of these other controversies killed the camel.

What does it mean for them to succeed? People say that a lot of the draw of twitter is that it lets the common person talk with celebrities. If enough of a coordinated media effort happened like, the kayfabe will definitely look as if Buzz Buzz won, and there will be a bunch of the usual suspects declaring victory over racism.

Even if Buzzbuzz amassed only one-tenth the users of twitter (in real people, not bots), who's won? Keep in mind that knowing the true statistics and trying to publish them would probably be hatefacts. How would normies learn the user statistics? There are a lot of people who think /r/The_Donald's subscriber and active user counts were throttled and generally subreddit population numbers were astroturfed back then. These people also anticipate that Buzzbuzz's user counts would be inflated.

In short, wouldn't a world where barely anyone migrated to BuzzBuzz look very similar to a world where most people did?

Maybe I'm just a cynical biased culture warrior, but Elon's acquisition doesn't seem like it changes any culture- or Truth- producing institutions, so does it really matter which social media sites have more active users?

Would people actually jump ship?

For those who are already on Twitter, their retweets and followers and twitlords aren't going to go away. Activists will still feel like they're rallying the proles. Journalists get to participate in the Dialogue. Those are the "network effects" which keep people on board.

When BuzzBuzz^TM launches, it might be marginally more effective than Voat or Mastodon. That's a pretty low bar.

Could we make some predictions on what we can expect from Musk's ownership of Twitter. I'd bet that even after one full year of Musk officially owing Twitter, Trump will have remained banned.

Also that Peter Jordan will have resumed tweeting within a year regardless of Musk/Twitter making any explicit policies changes he can point to.

Why do you think Trump will remain banned? That doesn't seem likely to me.

Establishment Republicans will want Trump to remain banned, and Musk might want them to do well.

no way. Trump's fan base is 50x bigger than every establishment republican combined. Elon by unbanning Trump will have the loyalty of not only many republicans but also this huge fan base.

But Elon is going to care a lot more about Mitch McConnell than Trump's fan base. At a minimum, I suspect Trump stays banned until after the midterms.

But Elon is going to care a lot more about Mitch McConnell

Why?

Tax treatment for electric cars, US government spending on space.

A few months ago, someone here said he analysed such things for a living in order to identify arbitrage opportunities and this was a sure thing, since Musk had no case. He also said that the decision would be made quickly. It now looks like he was probably right. Does anyone have a link?

Thread 1

Thread 2

I'm up about $50k from betting on this circus.

That guy made me a few hundred bucks.

It’s better to declare victory than lose in court. Twitter is still the most powerful news organization on earth.

Whether it can ever be monetized I do not know. Before something is in the WSJ or the evening news it was on twitter 24-48 hrs earlier.

One simple way for twitter to monetise would be to charge for Blue Checkmarks. Maybe offer some power-tools in response (e.g., analytics). Maybe you could even charge different amounts for different tiers of Bluecheck.

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