Now that Elon Musk has bought Twitter - now the Pit edition (Part 1)

The BBQ Pit
2944

…I’m not seeing a "rightward trend.

I’m seeing people that ideologically generally agree with that I don’t follow at the same frequency I used to see the people that I follow.

Fixed to do what?

The chronological feed used to show tweets from people I follow, in chronological order. That got replaced by the following feed which shows just a fraction of the people that I follow in chronological order, while whole other people have completely disappeared. And that includes “not famous” local people that I’ve had extensive interactions with in the past.

The intent of the rebranded feed is quite clear. Musk has talked about how the feed will now prioritize ‘verified users’ and what we are seeing are just tweaks on the way to trying to make this work. So I’m not actually expecting this to eventually “get fixed.” This is actually the way they want it to work.

You can’t “try a feature” for two weeks with no announcement, no fanfare, and reach any sort of reasonable conclusion from that sort of rollout. For example, they experimented with a “you may like” feature at the bottom of each thread. You’d get to the end of the thread and it suggested some other tweets you might be interested in. It took me probably a week to even notice it was there: then a few days later it was gone.

What was the point of that? What could they have even learned from that type of rollout? No user surveys or feedback. Just there one day, then gone.

I’ve already told you about the shopping feature, which got torpedoed by Musk, but had the potential to actually generate revenue.

Which ones have “worked well?”

Treating them like shit though is a terrible way to build morale. Less pay, poorer working conditions, not paying the rent, having the threat of instant dismissal constantly hanging over their head are never a great way of building morale.

“Throwing shit at the wall” is not straight-up agile development. It’s just throwing shit-at-the-wall. Agile is a methodology, and a much more rigorous and robust process than simply whatever the hell it is they are doing at Twitter at the moment.

What are they “building constantly” now? It’s a mature product that is now billions of dollars in the hole. Revenue should be the primary concern, which means the focus should be on customer retention and making the advertisers happy.

But the algorithm is now borked, and even the biggest Musk boosters are complaining about it, the sales team have been depleted, they are being sued for non-payment of rent, they are at risk of not being in compliance with multiple EU regulations and have probably breached the FTC consent decree, so I ask again: what’s up with all of this building constantly, shipping often, rolling back and refactoring when things go wrong right now? (And “get feedback from customers”? LOL. Customers didn’t even know they had implemented new features, let alone have any way to give feedback)

What’s the end game here? Even though the platform pisses me off now I’m still using it. Its just that Musk has made it harder to use now. None of these “rapid changes” will bring in enough subscribers to make a dent on the debt Musk has saddled the company with. The only real hope they have, even in the short term, is to focus on bringing the advertisers back.

Twitter’s product isn’t its tech. Its a social media company. The main thing it should be investing in right now is a killer sales team. But even the best sales team in the world would struggle to sell a platform that has welcomed back with open arms the openly transphobic, the white supremacists, the misogynists.

It’s a philosophy that doesn’t work when you are essentially running a customer service operation. “Why is this supermarket giving me a smaller trolley with bigger wheels? And why are they suddenly taking it away from me?” A supermarket doesn’t need a dozen technical innovations every month. And neither does Twitter.

I just can’t emphasise enough how much poorer the Twitter experience is now. On pre-Musk Twitter, the emergency in Auckland would have gotten its own featured section in the explore feed, with information updated through the news team that was based in Australia. But that team is gone now. So the best we can get now are updates on NFT’s.

The damn thing’s broken.

2945

Next time I trip over my shoelaces and faceplant in public, I will call it “Agile Walking”.

2946

I find it amusing that Sam is defending everything changing, whether it be unavailable, less usable, missing features, or just hard to read in light of his known complaints about THIS board on discourse.

After all, it’s all the same, isn’t it? Except that Discourse is by all reports (I joined after discourse) working more stably than the old version.

For example “Just feeding back that virtually everything is awful” post 74…

2947

It’s not just more stable, it’s far more functional.

As for this “agile development” stuff, advancing technology and the large body of experience in software development has enabled legitimate new methodologies, but from my outsider perspective, what’s happening at Twitter isn’t “agile” or “RAD” or any other formal methodology. When Elmo randomly introduces changes that either don’t work or else don’t work AND break other things, and does it in a totally undisciplined and unstructured manner, that’s not “agile development”, that’s what is technically known as “being a clueless idiot”.

I once led a large project where we legitimately employed a limited form of RAD (rapid application development)l which is a related methodology. It did not bear even the remotest resemblance to Elmo’s directionless flailing. The major aspect of RAD that we were interested in was prototyping, an approach we had to take because the front-end user requirements were far too vague. So we had an ongoing process of building hundreds of UI screens with the back-end functionality temporarily simulated, and worked very closely with the client in refining those screens and documenting all the relevant workflows. It was a continuous process of incremental development with constant client involvement. This eventually led to a working model that was a solid embodiment of the system functional requirements that the client could sign off on. The back end could then be completed in a more traditional fashion.

Which is not the same as “make a bunch of changes on a whim and throw all the shit at the wall to see what sticks” – with hapless Twitter users generally being completely unaware of what’s going on, or else strongly objecting to the changes.

2948

No, he really isn’t, and there’s no credible evidence that he is. I know and work with a lot of genius level people. He definitely isn’t one of them. By leagues. He’s probably pretty average overall.

Yes.

There is no evidence at all that he has any kind of high-level understanding of engineering at all. In fact, when he speaks in public about technical and engineering issues, he doesn’t sound very bright or informed at all.

Nope, I’ve never liked Musk.

Except they weren’t beyond a small handful of the absolute worst of the worst. Conservative voices simply are not popular outside of the right-wing echo chamber, because they’ve gone completely insane.

2949

This. I went from knowing virtually nothing about Musk to reading the Ashley Vance biography and deciding that he was a major asshole. But his venture into Twitter opened up whole new levels of revelation. He’s a major asshole who has apparently lost his mind, and is in the process of losing his fortune, too.

I’m sure he’ll survive as a very wealthy man because not even the worst kind of gross stupidity can make that kind of money disappear, but he’s definitely doing his best to drive Twitter into the ground. The best hope for Twitter is Elmo’s promise to fuck off and hopefully appoint someone competent to run the place.

2950

Wrong. Irate customers are not an inevitable part of agile. Rolling back software is a solution to mistakes, not an integral or inevitable part of agile.

If you’re releasing software that’s so broken that you’re making customers irate and you have to roll it back, either:

You haven’t accurately identified the small incremental value you want to deliver or,

your testing process is fatally flawed.

Rolling back released features represents wasted effort- the exact thing agile is designed to avoid.

2951

For examples of Mr. Tweet’s past management and engineering idiocy, here’s a YouTuber who’s covered them often enough to have a seperate playlist for them: Elon Musk-related - Adam Something. Covers the Vegas Loop, the Dugout Loop, the Hyperloop, Starship Earth to Earth, the Tesla Semi, and the Mars Colony. All of which demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of practical engineering on behalf of Mr. Tweets. As a warning to poor Mr. Stone, Adam Something is a flaming leftist who has thought Musk was an idiot long before Twitter and ‘discovering that he didn’t belong to their tribe.’

2952

Let’s see what some of Musk’s engineering colleagues say about his skills. From this Reddit thread, with sources to each statement:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/evidence_that_musk_is_the_chief_engineer_of_spacex/

Garret Reisman is another heavy hitter, both astronut and engineer.

Josh Boem:

John Carmac:k

Bob Zubrin:

But sure, let’s go with some rando’s opinion on Youtube, rather than the engineers who worked with him.

2953

Why Does Sam_Stone tell this lie? (This link may be behind a paywall.)

  • A. He really and truly wants it to be true.
  • B. He does not understand the difference between fact and fiction.
  • C. He does not understand what he reads.
  • D. He knows it is not true, but it serves his agenda (whatever that may be).
  • E. He is too stupid to realize he is repeating a lie.
  • F. Other (Please specify in a post below.)
  • G. Oh, Hell; any combination of one or more of the choices above.
0 voters
2954

Okay, but as someone who is still somewhat open-minded about Elon’s skills, for me those quotes you gave are near meaningless. They are character references from people who worked with him - there’s no objective substance there, I have no way to know if these people are telling the truth. It’s argument from unknown authority.

Whereas I have just watched the first 4 of the youtube videos that @Dissonance linked above - on Musk’s tunnels, Hyperloop and Starship Earth to Earth. Have you watched them? I have no idea who the guy is, but they are educational and informative, and explain clearly and factually why these ideas are ridiculous (maybe Hyperloop slightly less so than the others). Do you have any factual rebuttal you can link to?

2955

Can you call yourself an engineer if you are elected to the National Academy of Engineering?

2956

Just to be clear, the quotes below (the parts within quote marks) are quotes attributed to Elmo’s employees, helpfully provided by @Sam_Stone, but they aren’t from Sam directly.

Is this supposed to be an actual endorsement, or a comical parody? I’m imagining the engineer uttering that sentiment being on his knees with tears in his eyes, worshipping the genius of Elmo.

Like nobody else, ever! :grin:

Does anyone need to wonder any more about the parallels often drawn between Elmo and Trump?

Now that one might be true. For all I know, he may be an idiot savant.

The other side here is what we’ve actually witnessed Elmo do – in interviews, in his wild claims, in his behaviours, and most of all, in his decimation of Twitter, a once-functional organization that once had some semblance of social responsibility and managerial sanity.

2957

And I’m sure none of those engineers were ever made to sign non-disparagement clauses or are worried about getting fired if they say something that bruises the Boy Emperor’s ego.

2958

Rich boss praised in public by his employees - film at 11.

2959

No, but you can elected for being CEO of a company that has produced some pretty cool rockets.

I know you love resorting to sycophantic quotes of Musk’s genius, but as has been pointed out, they’re pretty over the top to the bottom of having clear and obvious falsehoods. All this proves is people like sucking up to a billionaire with very thin skin. Quelle surprise.

Musk, when speaking on his own and not having somebody speak for him, doesn’t sound very bright. Why is that? Shouldn’t his genius be recognizable? I know when I speaking a genius (every morning in the mirror /s) I can tell. There’s a certainty that comes from listening to them that they definitely absolutely know what they’re talking about. I never get that sense from Musk. Ever. I mean the guy wanted to build a submarine too big for a hole. He “invented” the subway, but worse. He at a minimum okayed, if not designed, the escape hatches in Tesla’s being relatively inaccessible (an engineering genius should have noticed that this would be a problem). And of course we have the Cybertruck, which is so laughably poorly designed in both form (subjective) and function (objective) that no genius engineer would okay this. I actually expect that Musk may be responsible directly for a lot of the poor design of the Cybertruck. It reeks of form over function, and a look that is “futurey and cool” (citation needed) that would be on brand for Musk.

Plus, let’s now forget his failures at PayPal at design, development, and leadership. And of course we have the very public failure at Twitter.

You can post all the quotes from people all you like that may or may not be sucking up to Musk, but what really counts for me is where the rubber meets the road.

2960

The patterns people report gives me the impression that ELoon tried to “fix” the algorithms to provide some affirmative action to the poor put-upon right-wingers, which worked slightly but mostly ended up breaking everything.

2961

I can’t be arsed to find it again (see broken search), but he did tweet something along the lines of “that being said, I apologize”. Which is a quarter-assed apology stand-alone, but a little better in the thread. In addition, when Jenna Ellis (one of Trump’s “lawyers”) asked what he was apologizing for, he pointed to his JAQ post, so I think that counts.

2962

This is ridiculous. Let’s try rephrasing it.

Musk advocates for issues that most folks on the left advocate for, such as reducing climate change, and so many folks on the left appreciated him; but when he started acting in ways that many on the left found destructive to issues they advocated for, many folks on the left appreciated him less.

2963

The right (apparently including Sam) tend to think in tribal terms and assume that others do too. When others don’t, they declare this to be evidence of hypocrisy rather than consider that the assumption they’ve based this conclusion on is fundamentally wrong.