# Now that Elon Musk has bought Twitter - now the Pit edition (Part 1) **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 25, 2022, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442 "2022-04-25T22:50:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 249
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2023, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/4964 "2023-05-28T12:04:22Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Elmo’s retweeting Nazi quotes again. > > [x.com](https://twitter.com/Shayan86/status/1662543296453812224) I can’t wait to see how Elmo’s chief apologist is going to explain away this, extremely clear, bit of agile anti-Semitism. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2023, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/4965 "2023-05-28T12:17:00Z")
Seems pretty clear that Musk, who grew up as a white boy in during apartheid, either absorbed those white supremacist lessons and had managed to keep them reasonably well hidden until now, or, even worse, came by his present white supremacist sympathies as an adult because he can’t handle being criticized. ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2023, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/4966 "2023-05-28T14:01:29Z")
The man is so rich he can’t be wrong, unlike Soros who is so Jewish he can’t be right. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2023, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/4967 "2023-05-28T15:07:53Z")
> **[Elon Musk pulled Twitter from the EU's anti-disinformation agreement and...](https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-pull-twitter-european-commission-digital-services-act-2023-5)** > > Twitter's withdrawal from an agreement on disinformation could signal Elon Musk is preparing to cease operations in Europe entirely, a report says. My guess is he doesn’t voluntarily shut down in Europe, he waits until he’s forced so he can claim victimhood. ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2023, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/4968 "2023-05-28T15:21:37Z")
> [@crowmanyclouds](#): > > I can’t wait to see how Elmo’s chief apologist is going to explain away this, extremely clear, bit of agile anti-Semitism. Regardless of whether the quote was misattributed or not, Musk’s tweet was of a meme making fun of how dumb the quote was. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2023, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/4969 "2023-05-28T15:40:37Z")
Obviously, there’s more money in Turkey than the EU…? I’d assume that the EU misinformation laws are structured like a defamation law where factuality is an ultimate defense. In Turkey, that is not the case. If the Turks don’t want you to say something then you’re just not allowed to say it, no matter how ridiculous their request is. (I also note that Musk’s act of subservience was in the middle of the Turkish elections. He could have say least give to court and dragged it out until after the elections, so people had the freedom of speech under Erdogan long enough to decide whether they wanted to hire him back.) There’s no argument that the EU is worse for speech than Turkey is. I’d assume that the cost of policing speech is pretty much a factor of the number of people that you need to police so you could make an argument that he’s trying to keep what he can afford to keep. But it’s not clear to me why Turkey would be worth that effort for a free speech absolutist. It’s like Musk is trying to signal that he’s been compromised in some way, by someone. Turkey isn’t a Republican fetish kingdom like Hungary or anything. Most don’t know anything about it. I guess if you’ve had ten children, you might have a “keep it in the pants” problem… ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2023, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/4970 "2023-05-28T16:29:53Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > But it’s not clear to me why Turkey would be worth that effort for a free speech absolutist. It’s clear to me that he is not any such thing at all and that he is chronically biased in favor of supporting right wing authoritarians, racists, and other assorted enemies of progress and equality. All of his behavior makes sense if you ignore what he says about himself and just look at what he does. ---
**Author:** ![epbrown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e47774/32.png) [@epbrown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/epbrown)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2023, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/4971 "2023-05-28T22:27:19Z")
He’s booted a bunch of people off Twitter for criticizing him - how does he not realize this? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2023, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/4972 "2023-05-29T00:06:12Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Firing the staff appears to have been a good thing. Twitter is running fine […] > > I’m sure Musk cut the wrong people in some places, and there will likely be new hiring in the future […] > > Before Musk bought Twitter, it had 7500 employees. The year before, it had 5,500. They hired two thousand people in one year. In 2017, Twitter only had 3300 employees. […] > > The nature of takeovers is that when you make large changes you are bound to get some stuff wrong because you don’t have as much knowledge as you’d like, but that’s the price you pay. You cut, and then rehire where you made mistakes. Honestly, Sam, it’s exactly this kind of desperate defensive weaseling that prompts posters to write you off as a mere “Musk fanboy”. Can you really not see why most rational people don’t consider a major sustained livesteam-event failure to meet any reasonable definition of “Twitter running fine”? And why they don’t buy your feeble motte-bailey attempts to claim that because Twitter was arguably overstaffed at 7500 employees, therefore cutting its workforce down to under 2500 must have been “a good thing”? You make these exaggerated stupid claims and then, when the facts contradict them, try to move the goalposts to a somewhat less exaggerated claim, without acknowledging that you were wrong about anything at all that you said. Would it really kill you to make even the most moderate admission along the lines of “yeah, it was a bit over-optimistic to make an unqualified assertion as sweeping as ‘Twitter is running fine’”? Well, we’ll never find out because you’ll never do it; you’ll just pile on another couple paragraphs of your latest reinterpretation of what you “really” meant by Twitter “running fine”. Sheesh. ---
**Author:** ![BeepKillBeep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9e8a1a/32.png) [@BeepKillBeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BeepKillBeep)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2023, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/4973 "2023-05-29T00:22:49Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Can you really not see why most rational people don’t consider a major sustained livesteam-event failure to meet any reasonable definition of “Twitter running fine”? Narrator: He could not. ---
**Author:** ![Chisquirrel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6bbea6/32.png) [@Chisquirrel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chisquirrel)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2023, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/4974 "2023-05-29T00:25:33Z")
It’s free speech, except for those who say things Musk doesn’t like, which everyone can see Sam doesn’t give a shit about, either. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Bravo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_bravo/32/493_2.png) [@Johnny\_Bravo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Bravo)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2023, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/4975 "2023-05-29T00:27:36Z")
But but telling Musk who he can’t silence is infringing on HIS free speech. Your move, libs. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2023, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/4976 "2023-05-29T00:29:08Z")
> ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2023, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/4977 "2023-05-29T00:29:33Z")
@Sam_Stone, I’m genuinely curious: what, hypothetically, could happen — over the next month, or over the next _year,_ or whatever — that would make you say, “huh, maybe he’s no better at running Twitter than your average college graduate would be; or college _dropout,_ or high-school dropout?” ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2023, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/4978 "2023-05-29T00:39:55Z")
Analysis of Elmo’s response to criticism that Twitter has approved 83% of censorship requests by authoritarian regimes: 1. _You’re such a numbskull._ The mature and productive dialog continues. Surprised Elmo didn’t post a poop emoji, too. 2. _Please point out where we had an actual choice and we will reverse it._ You’ve had unrestricted choices since the day you took over Twitter. You’ve been exercising them freely, and now we know what you are. ---
**Author:** ![Palooka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/palooka/32/2902_2.png) [@Palooka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Palooka)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2023, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/4979 "2023-05-29T00:59:38Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Can you really not see why most rational people don’t consider a major sustained livesteam-event failure to meet any reasonable definition of “Twitter running fine”? To be fair, six months ago the expectation was that Twitter would fall apart and no one could access the site. That a server crashed during a live stream hit by a few hundred thousand people (which isn’t a particularly heavy load for a major corporation, for sure) isn’t really the same thing. Twitter is more or less running fine, on a technical level. No comment on how its revenues are doing. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2023, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/4980 "2023-05-29T01:17:29Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > @Sam_Stone, I’m genuinely curious: what, hypothetically, could happen — over the next month, or over the next _year,_ or whatever — that would make you say, “huh, maybe he’s no better at running Twitter than your average college graduate would be; or college _dropout,_ or high-school dropout?” I don’t know if he’s any good at running Twitter _now_. I never said he was, and I also said that it’s entirely possible that the skills that make him successful at SpaceX may not translate to social media, or maybe even a negative. That was the source of the ‘agile’ jokes that are still being beaten to death. I said that it looked like Musk was trying to bring the same kind of rapid iteration/agile style managemnet to social media. What the ‘hur hur’ assholes have forgotten is that I also said that it may be a mistake and he’ll screw up trying it. You all are just laying into me because I refuse to just assume that Musk is screwing everything up. Should we go back and revisit the estimates many here made for how long Twitter would survive with Musk? You all are the ones jumping to sweeping conclusions based on feelz and partisan stories of Musk’s failure. I’m the one saying, “Maybe, maybe not. I don’t have enough evidence to say, but Musk has a pretty good track record, so I’ll keep my powder dry for now.” That gets me attacked. Such is the fate of a buzzkill in the middle of a good old SDMB hate-fest. Just the fact that you’re ready to put Elon Musk’s business acumen in the same category as a high school dropout is amazing. The most successful businessman in history should get a little more credit than that, even if you don’t like his politics. So I will reserve judgment until I see this story play out. A year from now Twitter could be transformed and growing or it could be bankrupt. I have no idea which way it will go, and neither do any of you. I’m pretty sure most of the people constantly attacking me here don’t even read what I write - they just join in when others go after me. Either that, or they have serious literacy issues. ---
**Author:** ![BeepKillBeep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9e8a1a/32.png) [@BeepKillBeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BeepKillBeep)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2023, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/4981 "2023-05-29T01:22:26Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Either that, or they have serious literacy issues. Says the guy who doesn’t even read his own cites. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2023, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/4982 "2023-05-29T01:28:55Z")
The ~~article~~ post should be titled, “here’s what happens when you decide to use a technology you don’t understand, then don’t even bother to check the results.” This ~~lawyer~~ poster was just ignorant and stupid and lazy. The fault was not ~~ChatGPT’s~~ the cites. ---
**Author:** ![Chingon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chingon/32/17645_2.png) [@Chingon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chingon)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2023, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/4983 "2023-05-29T01:41:21Z")
I’ll save you time, by definition, there is nothing Musk can do that can be considered failing. He’s his Heinlein hero. You see this a lot with these libertarian sci-fi nerds. I mean he thinks ChatGPT is going to drive a car for God’s sake. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442.md?page=248) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442.md?page=250)