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So it looks like Elon Musk officially owns all of Twitter now, and he's already fired the CEO, CFO, and policy chief. I don't have any strong opinions on this, but does anyone want to stake some predictions?
Musk presents himself as a free speech absolutist, which is encouraging to me, but I'd be concerned about the conflict of interest. I anticipate there will be some accusations of throttling unfavorable opinions about either him or his companies (RIP rogue driverless Tesla videos). I think the tension between unrestricted speech and a quality user experience will continue to be a problem, as I can't identify an obvious solution. Blue checkmarks are making hilariously cataclysmic remarks but I predict Twitter will remain a favored haven for the journalist class.
My opinion of Musk is very low, I think he's essentially a fraud, so I don't have much hopes for his ability to improve Twitter.
Even if he does end up being a competent leader, I worry he will simply be unable to do much. It turns out Dorsey was a libertarian-leaning idealist all along, and he was unable to push his own company in that direction, and had to wait until retirement to actually start making idealistic noises again. If Musk does do anything, we're going to see another round of "No Clicks For Hate" or that WSJ article about Youtube that triggered the Adpocalypse.
I think the best case scenario we can realistically hope for is that he drives Twitter into the ground.
Then I guess I'll have to be optimistic based on Musk's track record with products I've personally witnessed:
Tesla really changed the game for electric cars. They're fast, powerful, cool, techy. People want them. At least in my PNW costal city, you see them everywhere now.
Starlink allows a friend to live in the middle of nowhere and still remote-desktop to work seamlessly. He reports that even online multiplayer gaming is doable with satellite internet.
SpaceX developed into an (I think, as a layman) impressive technology, doing things that previously weren't possible.
Like, I look around and really do see the Teslas on the street. I really do see the Starlink satellites in the sky. I've watched SpaceX launches. Admittedly, I haven't paid any attention to the financials, so maybe it's all going to come crashing down, but people have been saying that for years, and they're still going strong.
I'm a dilettante myself (went Applied Math, haven't even been to an AIAA conference in a decade), but it doesn't take a lot of knowledge to be impressed. Manned orbital launches have been accomplished by Russia, major US consortiums (e.g. Mercury was accomplished by like 5 companies working with 3 government agencies), China ... and SpaceX. Their workhorse rocket isn't quite "doing things that previously weren't possible" (unless you count the longest string of launches without a failure in history), but it is doing things that weren't possible economically, and it was created for a tenth the cost that NASA would have taken to develop it, according to reports from NASA. In each of the first three quarters of this year, the "most orbital launches" competition has ended up with SpaceX in 1st place, China in 2nd, and "everybody else in the entire world put together" in 3rd. They're on track to soon have more satellites in orbit than the rest of the world (including China, this time) put together. Their biggest problem right now is that their current R&D project is so ambitious that, despite a vehicle like Starship being a clear necessity for any significant exploitation or human exploration of space, none of their competitors would even attempt anything like it.
About the only thing I wouldn't expect a layman to be at all aware of is just how long the list is of other space industry outsiders trying to do what Musk did and failing. This isn't "oh, he just saw an opportunity and grabbed it"; the "smart" money in the beginning would have been split between "Blue Origin will beat him to the punch and make SpaceX irrelevant" and "the outsiders will all fail, again; yes this actually is rocket science".
Neither has anyone else who isn't a major private investor; they've been keeping details under tight wraps. Best guess seems to be that they're raking in profit on Falcon 9 but can't really expand that market much more, and that they're still losing money on Starlink. The big question is whether Starlink goes into the black as soon as they're done with the build out costs, or when their number of subscribers increases past some point, or not until they have a fully-successful Starship cutting down on constellation maintenance costs. Even if the latter isn't the case, the cost of Starship development is another open question. If there's a bigger downturn and they have to tighten their belts and Starship ends up getting delayed a decade because Musk burned "I need to finance tens of billions of dollars fast" credibility on Twitter of all things I'm going to be grossly disappointed.
The other question is how much of this is Musk's track record. I suspect he'd have failed before Falcon 9 if not for Gwynne Shotwell and Tom Mueller, but what the hell do I know (archive link because apparently when you're shut down that hard you go back and "protect" your tweets).
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Musk's product range from working-I-suppose-but-wildly-overhyped to "I am confident we will have working in two years (or two years more... or two years more... or two years more...) .
And likewise I might very well be wrong, and Musk is going to change the world, but I'm worried about a lot of contrarians I sympathize with staking their reputation on him.
I could agree that Musk has many times over-promised and under-delivered, but there's no way I can turn that into "Musk is a fraud." There's far too many actual delivered, working products for that to be anywhere close to true.
The only universe where "Musk is a fraud" would make sense is if Musk is pure front-man to a secret behind-the-scenes mastermind. He's not even a great front-man though, his presentations are often awkward and primarily engaging because of the products involved.
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Man, why should you care how hyped they are? Objectively I think some might actually be underhyped, but regardless, why judge accomplishments by whether you think that people under- or overestimate them? Some of these products are enormously important.
My impression is his reputation is based on the hype around his products, rather than their actual value.
For example, a lot of people are pointing to SpaceX's cost reduction, but from what I'm reading that relies on overestimating the Space Shuttle launch costs, and some creative accounting on SpaceX's side. Take out the hype, and it seems you're left with some decent rockets, that haven't revolutionized anything.
OK, look, reputation is ALWAYS based on hype rather than based on actual value. That's kind of by definition how hype and reputation work--while they may have slightly different meanings, both refer to social standing rather than actual accomplishments. So having a "reputation based on hype around his products, rather than their actual value" is just usually true of all people in general.
But sorry for being overly literal, I get that what you're saying is that the hype outpaces the actual products. I don't really agree--my understanding is that both Tesla and SpaceX really have made some pretty major advancements--but I don't know enough to argue the point. The point I was making is that if we're trying to judge a man, we should judge his accomplishments, not judge whether his accomplishments match the hype around them. It's just SO MUCH more productive to argue about whether Edison invented the lightbulb than to argue about whether he deserves 1 million or 100,000 fans for his accomplishments.
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It's at least important to be familiar with "Elon time" if you're planning to be a consumer of his upcoming products.
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The new orbital payload economics just from Falcon 9 have already changed the world. Starship would represent a revolution.
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