I was somewhat miffed when apple included Twitter on it’s iOS, and I was suspicious as to why that platform was being pushed onto us. Trump’s use of it and now Musk furthers my suspicions that something really bad is up with it.
I’m a very active Twitter user. As of now, I’m changing nothing. Of course, I have always thought that there will be some new next best thing eventually anyway.
I need to be deliberately vague here, but it will probably have a bigger effect on my work than on my personal life.
I use Twitter. I make one or two posts every couple of weeks, almost always about football or baseball. I very much doubt this’ll affect my experience at all.
I had (have?) an account that I just disabled, and it will be deleted in a month. I’ve hardly looked at twitter in recent years, and it got to where I was annoyed by emails telling me to check my account. So this just pushed me to split from the platform, especially if it allows the banned jerks back. Not that I paid it much attention anyway…
I don’t think we’d have even the tiny election reform movement we do without Twitter helping reformists to raise awareness.
And I’m totally convinced that tweets from smart folks like Jay Bilas convinced the sports public to come around on the issue of college athletes making money.
So there’s good in Twitter. Wherever there are stupid, lying tweets from RWNJs, what I mostly see is an avalanche of mocking pushback and right wing disinformation artists may be disappointed upon their return if they’re hoping that Musk will somehow save them from ridicule.
It’s important here to note that Musk actually hasn’t bought Twitter. He came to terms with the board, and the board will recommend that the shareholders accept those terms. This is contingent on completion of the due-diligence process.
I think it’s far from settled that the shareholders will actually approve the deal. Musk is financing it with loans whose per-year interest payments will be larger than Twitter’s before-tax income last year.
If I were a Twitter shareholder, I would want to see some concrete plan of how Musk thinks he’s going to increase Twitter’s income by a billion dollars (give or take). Musk seems to have no ideas here except “ban the anons” and “I like free speech”, so this deal sort of looks like it will destroy some shareholder value for his little vanity-fluffing project. That seems like it would be a stumbling block to approval.
Good points.
I’d add that as of today, Donald Trump is saying that he won’t come back to Twitter even if permitted.
If I were a Twitter investor, I’d be skeptical too. Musk is offering $54.20 for a stock that was trading above $60 a few months ago.
There are a number of accounts (such as Tucker Carlson) that are taking the opportunity to announce that they have returned.
By doing so, they seem to be purposely creating the appearance that they’ve been unbanned due to a change in moderation. We can’t really know that since Twitter isn’t super-transparent about such changes. But nothing has been announced, and it seems premature to suppose that Musk is already changing policy before shareholders even approved the deal.
So it’s more likely that these people are previously suspended users who chose this moment to obey Twitter’s conditions of reinstatement by deleting the posts that got them suspended in the first place. They are exploiting the confusion around Musk’s deal to create a narrative of liberation and triumph, when the simple fact is they chose to bend the knee and conform to Twitter’s reinstatement policy.
Evidently the plan is to go private. Current shareholders will get a one-time buyout, and then the company’s finances are Musk’s problem.
What is the value of twitter? Is it the infrastructure, the data centers and other hardware, the employees, or the users?
I argue that 99% of the value of a social media platform is the users. And users are fickle, remember when myspace was the place to be?
I assume that overwhelming vast majority of twitter users use it to keep in contact with acquaintances, or they are businesses or public figures announcing developments of projects. The political stuff is a tiny percent of the actual traffic that goes over the twitwaves, but it is the stuff that is most noticed and amplified.
Personally, I have an account, but I’ve never tweeted. There are a couple of accounts that I follow to keep up on some things, and I occasionally look at other accounts to see what’s going on with them. If they chose to change platforms I would quickly follow suit.
Indeed. And with every new “right wing free speech” platform added there’s been a flood of right wingers tweeting about how they were leaving and people should follow them to “Twatter”, only to resume tweeting in between an hour and a week.
Why should that matter to the shareholders? They’ll be paid and Musk is the one who will have to deal with repaying the loans.
Musk has said he doesn’t care if Twitter becomes a money maker for him. How many shareholders in Twitter do you think are going to choose a possible rosy future for Musk-less Twitter over a guaranteed premium on their investment right now?
As to the topic of the thread. I’ve been spending, at times, too much time on Twitter, and it’s not actually that good content in the end, it’s just slightly addictive, so I’ve already deleted the app and will try to remember not to access it in my browser. I think it’s become too much of “the thing”, with the number of articles in media that rely on quoting tweets, and I don’t particularly want to frequent a club that Musk owns.
You might be right, and if so those tweets would live in closed loops of friends, but in my experience it is much more about being able to read tweets from or about famous people, and/or sports, and/or politics/politicians, and/or more niche topics, and hash it out with other tweeters, and sometimes the famous people/athletes/journalists/politicians, in the replies.
Who here believes that?
Agreed. Most people use Twitter to see what famous people or journalists are saying and discuss those things. There are definitely people who use it as a general discussion platform. The draw of Twitter is you don’t have to follow people to read their tweets or to engage in discussion with them. And anyone can engage in a discussion with you (generally that’s what hashtags help with)
What people who don’t use Twitter much don’t seem to get about it is: Politics is a tiny part of the platform’s content. It gets a lot of news mentions but it’s not what most people go there to discuss.
As I’ve said before: Talk about pop culture (music, movies, etc.) is maybe ten times bigger than talk about politics. What I personally like about Twitter is that I can follow my favorite artists and get news about them faster than any other way.
Talk about sports is maybe a hundred times bigger than talk about politics.
It’s unclear what Musk’s effect will be in these areas.
This is pretty much me. I find the whole Twitter experience almost impossible to use for any significant discussion. Short of short breaking news items that prompt me to google for more information elsewhere, I find very little use for it.
So I might just delete my account as a matter of principle, just to be all edgy 'n shit.
If I were that kid, I’d take it as a challenge. How many billions can I make Musk waste trying to shut me up? Force him to buy every damn social media platform in the world!
I saw a news article about all of the celebrities who have stopped using Twitter / deleted their accounts already. The deal has not gone thru yet; if it doesn’t for whatever reason, it won’t be the first in history, either. He hasn’t made any changes yet but people are already publicly fleeing.
I’m no fanboi of his, & maybe he doesn’t care if he drives it into the ground & loses a couple dozen billion but I’ve said stuff that I want to do before to ‘fix’ things when I have no power to do such (ie. hire more customer service reps at just about everywhere) but wouldn’t necessarily do such if I was president of the company & responsible for the bottom line. I just think people are jumping the gun by giving it up now before he owns it & makes any changes.
Fucker didn’t tweet for all of 33 days. 
I don’t Tweet much, and I don’t give a rats ass about Musk buying it. Musk is not evil… like several others I could name.
Okay time for Deth Rant- Twitter is designed for short, pithy statements or comments. If your screed is gonna take a dozen tweets, get a blog.