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539 points donohoe | 387 comments | | HN request time: 3.376s | source | bottom
1. Hoasi ◴[] No.44511157[source]
X has been nothing short of an exercise in brand destruction. However, despite all the drama, it still stands, it still exists, and it remains relevant.
replies(23): >>44511323 #>>44511451 #>>44511453 #>>44511457 #>>44511712 #>>44512087 #>>44512184 #>>44512275 #>>44512704 #>>44513825 #>>44513960 #>>44514302 #>>44514688 #>>44516258 #>>44517308 #>>44517368 #>>44517871 #>>44517980 #>>44519236 #>>44519282 #>>44520336 #>>44520826 #>>44522391 #
2. alpha_squared ◴[] No.44511323[source]
Which really says a lot about how hard it is to leave platforms. The network effect is hard to overcome.
replies(3): >>44512006 #>>44518114 #>>44518410 #
3. ◴[] No.44511451[source]
4. rvz ◴[] No.44511453[source]
..and 3 years later has a combined valuation with xAI of $113B.

Those waiting for X to collapse are going to wait a lot longer than the original 6 months that it was predicted to collapse after the November 2022 takeover.

replies(5): >>44511615 #>>44511625 #>>44511645 #>>44512209 #>>44518771 #
5. djeastm ◴[] No.44511615[source]
>..and 3 years later has a combined valuation with xAI of $113B.

This might be like Stacey King, a Chicago Bulls player, jokingly claiming he and Michael Jordan "combined to score 70 points" on a night when Jordan scored 69 points

replies(2): >>44512288 #>>44513746 #
6. CyberMacGyver ◴[] No.44511625[source]
xAI tried to raise $20 billion in equity in April but wound up with only $5 billion & had to issue $5 billion in junk bonds last week. You can value yourself $44 billion but the market doesn’t think it’s anywhere close
7. matwood ◴[] No.44511645[source]
> ..and 3 years later has a combined valuation with xAI of $113B.

Haha...ok. I gave a bunch of stock from one of my companies to another one of my companies and made up a value during the transaction.

8. mrweasel ◴[] No.44511712[source]
More and more I think Musk managed to his take over of Twitter pretty successfully. X still isn't as strong a brand as Twitter where, but it's doing okay. A lot of the users who X need to stay on the platform, journalists and politicians, are still there.

The only issue is that Musk vastly overpaid for Twitter, but if he plans to keep it and use it for his political ambitions, that might not matter. Also remember that while many agree that $44B was a bit much, most did still put Twitter at 10s of billions, not the $500M I think you could justify.

The firings, which was going to tank Twitter also turned out reasonably well. Turns out they didn't need all those people.

replies(14): >>44511868 #>>44512165 #>>44512334 #>>44512898 #>>44513148 #>>44513174 #>>44513350 #>>44514035 #>>44514544 #>>44514680 #>>44515018 #>>44516438 #>>44517692 #>>44518854 #
9. threetonesun ◴[] No.44511868[source]
Well sure if you give up on moderation, and close the platform to people who aren't signed in, and shut off the API then yes you didn't need the people supporting those parts of the platform.

And I guess if you consider "the place with the MechaHitler AI" as good branding there's no arguing with you that it's doing just as well as Twitter.

replies(2): >>44512101 #>>44512116 #
10. taurath ◴[] No.44512006[source]
There's no technical reason that one couldn't move from platform to platform and link identities - the restrictions around IP and platform lock-in only benefit the platform owner, ensuring that competition will be stifled rather than the platform made useful for its users.

The sad part is that ad networks know more about our connections across platforms than we're allowed to.

replies(2): >>44512468 #>>44515027 #
11. guywithahat ◴[] No.44512087[source]
I certainly wouldn't call it brand destruction, a lot of people returned to X and while the branding has changed, I certainly wouldn't call it brand destruction
replies(1): >>44512521 #
12. mrweasel ◴[] No.44512101{3}[source]
I don't agree with the direction Musk has set for X, but businesswise it's not doing worse. Twitter was a financial catastrophe before the take over, so you didn't need much improvement. Moderation was a financial drain, the API didn't make them any money and none of the users seems to care all that much about the platform not being open to users without an account... because they all have accounts and wasn't able to interact with you anyway.

The media seems to get a good laugh out if Grok arguing the plight of white South Africans and is fondness to Hitler, but I'm not seeing journalists and politicians leaving X in droves because of it.

replies(5): >>44512258 #>>44512363 #>>44513205 #>>44513798 #>>44517300 #
13. rockemsockem ◴[] No.44512116{3}[source]
I will fondly remind folks that Grok isn't even the first LLM to become a Nazi on Twitter.

Remember Tay Tweets?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(chatbot)

Honestly I really don't think a bad release of an LLM that was rolled back is really the condemnation you think it is.

replies(2): >>44512219 #>>44512638 #
14. moomin ◴[] No.44512165[source]
I think it’s hard to conclude that the people weren’t needed given how spectacularly it tanked.
replies(1): >>44512222 #
15. gorwell ◴[] No.44512184[source]
X is still ground zero for news, and it saved free speech. In the fullness of time and distance it will be viewed by historians as one of the most important events in history.
replies(3): >>44512318 #>>44512472 #>>44512549 #
16. moomin ◴[] No.44512209[source]
To misquote an adage: Elon Musk can stay irrational longer than I can stay solvent.
replies(1): >>44519291 #
17. amrocha ◴[] No.44512219{4}[source]
There’s a difference between a 3rd party twitter bot and grok. And it’s not a “bad release”, it’s been like this ever since it launched.

Funny how ChatGPT is vanilla and grok somehow has a new racist thing to say every other week.

replies(3): >>44512620 #>>44513304 #>>44513883 #
18. mrweasel ◴[] No.44512222{3}[source]
Has it tanked? X is still running, it still has millions of users.
replies(5): >>44512287 #>>44512346 #>>44512716 #>>44516736 #>>44518759 #
19. amrocha ◴[] No.44512258{4}[source]
Most of the local journalists, politicians, game devs, and open source maintainers i followed left. It’s just US national pundits, bots, and bait monetization accounts there at this point.
20. sixothree ◴[] No.44512275[source]
I feel like I need to shower every time I end up there. The place is repulsive to me.
21. reverendsteveii ◴[] No.44512287{4}[source]
it's worth less than half of what he paid for it, lost 30 million users and went from being the default microblog to facing real competition in daily active users from ~~bluesky~~threads (https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/07/threads-is-nearing-xs-dail...). Building what X is today from nothing would be an incredible accomplishment but building what X is today out of what Twitter was in 2022 is still a pretty miserable failure.

Not to mention that now Grok is just openly white supremacist, calling itself MechaHitler and is flat out accusing Jewish people of wanting to kill white babies (https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/elon-musk-grok-antisem...)

replies(3): >>44512343 #>>44512394 #>>44512793 #
22. shortrounddev2 ◴[] No.44512288{3}[source]
"Dinesh, don't fall for his “aw, shucks" routine. He is a shrewd businessman, and together, we have over $20,036,000 at our disposal"
23. baseballdork ◴[] No.44512318[source]
Legitimately can't tell if this is sarcasm or not. Saved free speech??
replies(2): >>44512580 #>>44512612 #
24. egorfine ◴[] No.44512334[source]
Same opinion. I absolutely hate what he did to Twitter and never in my life I will call it "X" - BUT - it looks to me as if the engagement is thriving.

Edit: clarified that the engagement is thriving

replies(2): >>44512375 #>>44512500 #
25. bpodgursky ◴[] No.44512343{5}[source]
https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats

You can judge for yourself whether bluesky is a competitive threat.

replies(1): >>44512491 #
26. amrocha ◴[] No.44512346{4}[source]
Revenue and monthly active users are still lower than in 2022, and decreasing. And thats based on estimates, because twitter doesn’t report those numbers.
replies(2): >>44512737 #>>44512742 #
27. greenie_beans ◴[] No.44512363{4}[source]
you must not know many journalists because they certainly left in droves
replies(1): >>44516537 #
28. BolexNOLA ◴[] No.44512375{3}[source]
Thriving? Its valuation has tanked since his purchase and last I read they’re still actively losing users.
replies(1): >>44512501 #
29. apwell23 ◴[] No.44512394{5}[source]
but thats due to musk poising the platform not due to cutting people.
30. gchamonlive ◴[] No.44512468{3}[source]
There is also no technical reason people have to stay, because tech isn't the problem here. The value in these platforms aren't in the range of features they provide, but the engagement between individuals and the community and the value of the information it generates.
31. pram ◴[] No.44512472[source]
Oh for sure, it's so important we should restart the count of years to mark the significance. 2022 will be year 1, the rest 'Anno X'
32. mh- ◴[] No.44512491{6}[source]
That link errors ("Failed to fetch" banner on the page) for me. Perhaps hugged to death, but I would be interested in the DAUs/MAUs if they're available.
replies(2): >>44512646 #>>44513846 #
33. isleyaardvark ◴[] No.44512500{3}[source]
Estimates are that its revenue has decreased by half. Even if Musk decreased operating expenses enough to keep or even increase profits, a 50% drop in revenue is not at all a good sign for the health of business.
replies(1): >>44513200 #
34. egorfine ◴[] No.44512501{4}[source]
Yes I know. But the platform has lots and lots of engagement. Stagnation did not happen. Quite the opposite.
replies(2): >>44515418 #>>44516341 #
35. rtkwe ◴[] No.44512521[source]
They had managed to get a verb into relatively common speech and their revenue has collapsed since the Musk take over I'd say it's pretty thoroughly destroyed.
replies(1): >>44512819 #
36. rtkwe ◴[] No.44512549[source]
Your post gets shadow banned for the word cisgender on X... the only speech it saved was low effort trolling, misinformation and hate speech. Musk's version of free speech is just changing the dials on the moderation machines to boost speech he prefers and shadow ban speech his doesn't.
37. gorwell ◴[] No.44512580{3}[source]
Yes, it did. Every large platform including Twitter was censoring its users due to state pressure. Even Facebook has since admitted that they were told to censor information that was true, and they knew to be true.
replies(3): >>44512845 #>>44512889 #>>44519294 #
38. timschmidt ◴[] No.44512620{5}[source]
This ChatGPT? https://futurism.com/chatgpt-encouraged-murder-sam-altman
replies(1): >>44515302 #
39. blargey ◴[] No.44512638{4}[source]
I don’t think the third+ flavor of “bad release” this year, of the sort nobody else in this crowded space suffers from, is as innocuous as you think it is.

And Tay was a non-LLM user account released a full 6 years before ChatGPT; you might as well bring up random users’ markov chains.

replies(1): >>44513907 #
40. reverendsteveii ◴[] No.44512646{7}[source]
https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/07/threads-is-nearing-xs-dail...

I misremembered an article from yesterday. It's threads that's catching up w twitter.

41. sergiotapia ◴[] No.44512704[source]
X saved free speech online. Without Musk acquiring it, we would have continued to slip into this franken-Resetera level of discourse. Thank God!

X is the platform where everyone can speak as long as it doesn't break the law. That's fantastic. If you don't like a particular subject, you can just move on. That's what the internet was in the 2000s!

replies(5): >>44513165 #>>44513355 #>>44513398 #>>44513645 #>>44518869 #
42. jcranmer ◴[] No.44512716{4}[source]
The people I've seen who have talked about their engagement numbers--as measured by something like "how many visitors do we get to a story based on a Bluesky/Facebook/ex-Twitter/etc. link", so independent of the social media's self-reported metrics--have all reported that Twitter is generally among the poorest-performing social media sites. Especially if you're looking at it from a perspective of "how much engagement do we get on social media [likes, quotes, replies, etc.] per conversion to visiting the site," where it strongly looks like Twitter is massively inflating its reported engagement.

I don't know how true that was of Twitter pre-Musk takeover, especially as many of the most direct comparisons didn't exist back then, so I can't say if Musk's takeover specifically made it less effective or not.

replies(2): >>44513822 #>>44514144 #
43. ◴[] No.44512737{5}[source]
44. mrweasel ◴[] No.44512742{5}[source]
Revenue is meaningless for a company that has never been close to covering the cost of building it.

Monthly active users, fair, but it also depends on the type of users that remain. My take still is that the users X cares about are politicians, journalists and the general elite. They are still on X. It doesn't matter that some random tech worker switched to Bluesky or Mastodon, those were never profitable anyway, complained a lot and used third party apps.

replies(2): >>44512779 #>>44513004 #
45. basisword ◴[] No.44512779{6}[source]
Having those users doesn't matter if the people they are trying to communicate with leave - as eventually they will too. Every single person I know who used Twitter (which was already the least popular of the main social networks in my region) has deleted their account. Politicians and journalists shouting into a void isn't sustainable.
46. mrweasel ◴[] No.44512793{5}[source]
> it's worth less than half of what he paid for it

But it was always worth less that half of the purchase price. The Twitter board completely ripped of Musk. Remember that he tried to back out of the deal, arguing that he had been lied to in regards to the number of bots and actual users.

replies(7): >>44513054 #>>44513334 #>>44513501 #>>44513731 #>>44516534 #>>44517128 #>>44520722 #
47. pstuart ◴[] No.44512815{4}[source]
Oh, the irony of all of these "free speech" defenders celebrating their "right" to be offensive online, when the OG free speech (1st Amendment) is actively being attacked and dismantled by a regime that they likely worship.

Their viewpoints border on religious zealotry and it's pointless to try and reason with them.

48. guywithahat ◴[] No.44512819{3}[source]
I find this X doomsday talk is pretty isolated to reddit/other minor social media sites. The site itself is doing fine, and maintains a strong investor/startup ecosystem, with a slight fall in usage after the election (which isn't uncommon for Twitter/X). My understanding is that a few advertisers threatened to leave and then returned after a few days/weeks.

It's a private company now so I don't know what their revenue looks like but they certainly don't seem to be low on cash given how much they've invested in AI. You may not use X but it's definitely not "destroyed" lol

replies(3): >>44512931 #>>44514216 #>>44515033 #
49. gorwell ◴[] No.44512828{4}[source]
You are projecting. Nazis were against free speech and big on censorship and ideological conformity. You are aligned with them.
50. pstuart ◴[] No.44512845{4}[source]
You mean the story about Hunter Biden's laptop? That story? About Hunter Biden supposedly selling access to the president?

I find it odd now that Trump is in office and has the entirety of the government to investigate corruption in the executive office he's suddenly gone silent about that.

I guess that means that the executive office is now free of any taint of corruption!

replies(1): >>44516022 #
51. navigate8310 ◴[] No.44512889{4}[source]
X censors journalists and media handles regularly in India
replies(1): >>44516729 #
52. throw310822 ◴[] No.44512898[source]
And btw, how many features have been brought live since Musk's takeover? If I'm not wrong, at least: long tweets, paid subscriptions, community notes, native video (?), grok... Anything else? Seems quite a lot after years of stagnation.
replies(4): >>44513361 #>>44513430 #>>44513870 #>>44516656 #
53. rtkwe ◴[] No.44512931{4}[source]
It's growing... but from an all time low. Estimates put it at half of their ad revenue pre acquisition. A lot of advertisers did actually leave and seem to have largely stayed away or their CPM numbers are just way way down both of which are pretty bad.

Also X isn't funding Grok, it's a separate B corp with funding of it's own, it's just been tightly integrated into X, so it doesn't really say anything about the money situation at Twitter/X.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/x-report-first-annual-ad-...

replies(1): >>44516302 #
54. brabel ◴[] No.44512998{4}[source]
Can you point at any comment by them that is reminiscent of Nazi ideologies?
replies(1): >>44519040 #
55. sjsdaiuasgdia ◴[] No.44513004{6}[source]
> for a company that has never been close to covering the cost of building it

Twitter was profitable in 2018 and 2019

replies(1): >>44513161 #
56. miltonlost ◴[] No.44513054{6}[source]
The Twitter board ripped him off? When he was the one who brought in the initial offer? He tried to back out of the deal once people told him how foolish he is.
57. archagon ◴[] No.44513148[source]
Fundamentally, the problem with Twitter is the burned bridge: there is a sizable population of interesting people who will never, under any circumstance return due to Musk’s insane behavior and ideology. This irreparably cripples it as a universal social network.
replies(1): >>44514067 #
58. mrweasel ◴[] No.44513161{7}[source]
I was going to argue that they lost most of the 2019 profit in 2020, but you are technically correct (the best kind). Twitter probably made around $1.5B in profit ever, maybe a little more. That actually should just about cover the cost of building the company.

I was wrong.

59. big_toast ◴[] No.44513165[source]
Saved?

Seems like it harmed the migration to more free protocol oriented services. One company controlling the algorithm and API to a global conversation. Verified badges getting ranked priority in replies and For You. A DM function that barely functions. Private chats as a promise instead of cryptographic guarantee?

replies(1): >>44513435 #
60. ◴[] No.44513174[source]
61. egorfine ◴[] No.44513200{4}[source]
My bad: I have now edited the comment and clarified that I have meant engagement thriving, not financials.
62. archagon ◴[] No.44513205{4}[source]
The job of journalists and politicians is to broadcast to as wide an audience as they can. It is not particularly surprising that many retain Twitter accounts for the marketing value.
replies(1): >>44514078 #
63. MetaWhirledPeas ◴[] No.44513304{5}[source]
> Funny how ChatGPT is vanilla and grok somehow has a new racist thing to say every other week

To be fair, 'exposing' ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini as racist will get you a lot fewer clicks.

Musk claims Grok to be less filtered in general than other LLMs. This is what less filtered looks like. LLMs are not human; if you get one to say racist things it's probably because you were trying to make it say racist things. If you want this so-called problem solved by putting bowling bumpers on the bot, by all means go use ChatGPT.

replies(3): >>44514913 #>>44515232 #>>44516458 #
64. joering2 ◴[] No.44513334{6}[source]
> Remember that he tried to back out of the deal, arguing that he had been lied to in regards to the number of bots and actual users.

True but since he never provided any hard numbers, especially after totally owning the thing, makes this point moot.

65. ahmeneeroe-v2 ◴[] No.44513350[source]
>A lot of the users who X need to stay on the platform, journalists and politicians, are still there

Twitter/X is the reason DJT became President. It happened accidentally (ie against the wishes of Twitter management) in 2016, they successfully suppressed him in 2020, and then Elon gave MAGA that platform in 2024, leading to DJT's successful election.

As long as X is seen a kingmaker, someone will find it profitable to own/maintain, even if it doesn't convert Ads like Meta/Google.

replies(4): >>44513482 #>>44513686 #>>44513978 #>>44518822 #
66. UncleSlacky ◴[] No.44513355[source]
> everyone can speak as long as it doesn't break the law

I have one word for you: "cisgender".

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/x-cisgender-slur-cis-elon...

replies(1): >>44518190 #
67. martythemaniak ◴[] No.44513361{3}[source]
From your list, only grok. All the other stuff was already there.
68. ixtli ◴[] No.44513398[source]
what speech specifically did it save?
69. joering2 ◴[] No.44513430{3}[source]
As a medicore programmer, other than AI I would imagine the rest of the list would take 2 weeks to program and implement.
replies(3): >>44514470 #>>44517906 #>>44519777 #
70. sergiotapia ◴[] No.44513435{3}[source]
>free protocol oriented services.

Love all of these on paper, I think any tech person would. But they are non-starters. Normies have zero chance of ever deciding to use these.

replies(1): >>44513512 #
71. mvdtnz ◴[] No.44513482{3}[source]
If you think twitter made even 1% difference in 2016 I urge you to go and touch some grass. This stuff doesn't matter.
replies(3): >>44513599 #>>44513735 #>>44521012 #
72. mvdtnz ◴[] No.44513501{6}[source]
They ripped him off? He made an unsolicited offer, signed, sealed and delivered.
replies(1): >>44524912 #
73. big_toast ◴[] No.44513512{4}[source]
Just like all the normies who don't use web browsers, email, podcasts, calendars, jpeg image standards. Like how btc and ethereum finally died out and companies aren't adopting stable coins.

Yes.. non-starters, too complicated and fiddly..

74. aaronax ◴[] No.44513599{4}[source]
Way more likely that it was /r/the_donald. In my humble, biased opinion--since I was around there but never really active on Twitter.
replies(2): >>44513784 #>>44517044 #
75. lukas099 ◴[] No.44513645[source]
He said he would reinstate freedom of speech, but did he actually? [1][2][3][4]

[1] https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-promised-free-speech-twit...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/15/elon-m...

[3] https://www.thefire.org/news/twitter-no-free-speech-haven-un...

[4] https://gizmodo.com/10-times-elon-musk-censored-twitter-user...

76. petersellers ◴[] No.44513686{3}[source]
> Twitter/X is the reason DJT became President.

I really don't think so, at least not in isolation. It probably contributed a small part but the right wing media machine is multi-faceted. There were a lot of podcasters (i.e. Joe Rogan), comedians and youtubers all publicly in support of a second DJT presidency and I think that had a much bigger factor overall than Twitter.

replies(2): >>44513840 #>>44521857 #
77. moomin ◴[] No.44513731{6}[source]
This argument has been made, at length, in court. It was found wanting.
replies(1): >>44514008 #
78. ahmeneeroe-v2 ◴[] No.44513735{4}[source]
DJT's use of Twitter in 2016 allowed him to operate within his opponents' OODA loops.

DJT and his supporters could craft narratives directly, rather than going through traditional media.

DJT's information flow: DJT -> Twitter-based Supporters -> News Orgs -> Electorate

Other Candidate's info flows: Candidate -> News Orgs -> Electorate

So not only could DJT move faster, but he also didn't need permission/buy-in from Editors/Owners of news orgs.

79. nailer ◴[] No.44513746{3}[source]
But Twitter/X owns that training data. Tesla (or whatever else you’re trying to say is Stacey King) does not.
80. JSteph22 ◴[] No.44513784{5}[source]
But Trump won more convincingly in 2024 without it? That doesn't support your argument.
replies(1): >>44513835 #
81. kevinventullo ◴[] No.44513798{4}[source]
I don’t think we can say for sure whether it’s doing worse businesswise since the numbers aren’t public. But consider e.g. https://www.adweek.com/media/advertisers-returning-to-x/

“From January to September 2024, marketing intelligence platform MediaRadar found that (X’s former top advertisers including Comcast, IBM, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Lionsgate Entertainment) collectively spent less than $3.3 million on X. This is a 98% year-over-year drop from the $170 million spent during the same period in 2023.”

82. SV_BubbleTime ◴[] No.44513822{5}[source]
> The people I've seen who have talked about their engagement numbers

Now do bluesky. X is doing fine. Turns out network effects are real.

replies(2): >>44515335 #>>44516355 #
83. whalesalad ◴[] No.44513825[source]
Does it? It is 100% a bot farm full of right-wing propaganda. Create a new account and start tweeting. Every single like/reply you get will be from a bot pretending to be either Elon, or Elon's mom, or someone who has recently won the lottery and is going to give it away to all of their followers. Every single recommended post you'll get in your feed will be the most unhinged q-anon conspiracy shit you can imagine. There is zero discourse happening there. It is an echo chamber of psychotic individuals.

Threads on the other hand is actually a pretty fun place to be these days. I get a lot of interaction with random strangers on all kinds of topics, and it is as good or bad as you want it to be.

replies(1): >>44514773 #
84. lesuorac ◴[] No.44513835{6}[source]
Trump won by <1% in an election against a candidate who lost her only attempt at a primary and during a time period where western incumbents saw a 10+% drop due to their handling of covid inflation.

2024 isn't a story of how Trump outwitted his opponents but one of how his opponents tied their shoelaces together.

replies(1): >>44519247 #
85. throwaway48476 ◴[] No.44513840{4}[source]
The media gets their news from Twitter and Twitter drives the questions the media asks. It's indirectly a bigger factor than you give it credit for.
replies(2): >>44514237 #>>44517033 #
86. SV_BubbleTime ◴[] No.44513846{7}[source]
It goes up and down. The stats site, not BlueSky, that seems to only go down.
87. ceejayoz ◴[] No.44513870{3}[source]
Long tweets: 2017 (https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/07/twitter-officially-expands...)

Subscriptions: 2021 (https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-launches-subscrip...)

Community Notes: 2021 (https://blog.x.com/en_us/topics/product/2021/introducing-bir...)

Native video: 2012-2015 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vine_(service) / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periscope_(service) / https://www.videonuze.com/article/twitter-unveils-30-second-...)

Musk buys Twitter: late 2022.

That leaves… Grok.

replies(2): >>44514201 #>>44514268 #
88. rockemsockem ◴[] No.44513883{5}[source]
It absolutely has not been claiming that it's "MechaHitler" since it was released.

Try.

replies(1): >>44515258 #
89. rockemsockem ◴[] No.44513907{5}[source]
I posted the Wikipedia page, do you really think I don't know how long ago Tay was? I don't think the capabilities matter if we're just talking about chat bots being racist online.

Also IDK what you mean by third+ flavor? I'm not familiar with other bad Grok releases, but I don't really use it, I just see it's responses on Twitter. Also do you not remember the Google image model that made the founding fathers different races by default?

replies(1): >>44516405 #
90. BeetleB ◴[] No.44513960[source]
Twitter's brand was quite stained before Elon took over, so this is really a case of "continuing the brand destruction"

But really, the brand doesn't matter if you can't keep the lights on. If Elon has managed to make X profitable, it is more successful than Twitter likely would ever have been.

91. BeetleB ◴[] No.44513978{3}[source]
This is far more nuanced (and disputed) than you make it out to be.

> It happened accidentally (ie against the wishes of Twitter management) in 2016

I think the whole Cambridge Analytica fiasco played a bigger role, and I don't think they utilize Twitter. On top of that, frankly, TV and his behavior at rallies/debated helped him a lot more than Twitter did in 2016. I don't know a single MAGA supporter who was even on Twitter in 2016.

> they successfully suppressed him in 2020

How? He was banned after the election.

> and then Elon gave MAGA that platform in 2024, leading to DJT's successful election.

DJT was not on Twitter in 2024. Did it really make a difference when he had his own social network? We all have our opinions, but is there actual data supporting this for the 2024 election?

replies(2): >>44514418 #>>44518100 #
92. AtlanticThird ◴[] No.44514008{7}[source]
Good thing 35% of the country still trusts the courts https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-joe-biden-courts-ame...
replies(1): >>44524895 #
93. andrewflnr ◴[] No.44514035[source]
His mistakes cost less than they could have, sure, but to call it "pretty successful" I think it would have be better than if he just... didn't do much. He didn't have to be as open and aggressive about firing people or opening up the content policy. Openly insulting advertisers, for instance, was a completely unforced error. I think doing less would have kept more value (leaving ethics/morality entirely aside), and if that's true it's silly to say he managed well.
replies(1): >>44514367 #
94. timeon ◴[] No.44514067{3}[source]
Good example is here on HN. There used to be at least one (often more) Twitter link per day on the front page. Now it is around 3 per month.
95. bikezen ◴[] No.44514078{5}[source]
After NPR left twitter they saw a 1% drop in traffic from socials. It is not a useful platform.

Source: https://niemanreports.org/npr-twitter-musk/

96. pjc50 ◴[] No.44514144{5}[source]
Twitter explicitly down ranks off-site links to prevent this kind of "conversion".
replies(1): >>44516523 #
97. sunaookami ◴[] No.44514201{4}[source]
Chronological feed by default with a setting that actually sticks, private favorites, new media gallery, "E2E" messages.

(side note: Birdwatch was a way better name than Community Notes)

replies(2): >>44514275 #>>44514290 #
98. jjfoooo4 ◴[] No.44514216{4}[source]
X didn't "invest in AI", it was rolled into a buzzy AI company. Before that the holders of it's debt could not find buyers (aka buyers willing to bet against X bankruptcy)
99. sillyfluke ◴[] No.44514237{5}[source]
To be fair, as I understand it they're saying the podcasters were most likely the ones that pushed him over the edge this time around. "Small part" meaning 10-15 percent is not too bad for twitter. And I do think rightwing podcasters and tiktok got the young male votes out more than twitter did this time around.

I also doubt hispanics and other minorities voted for Trump because they were obsessively on twitter. Not being able to make ends meet, a weekend at Bernie's president, and the over-the-top blank check given to Israel played more of a role than Elon buying twitter.

replies(1): >>44515602 #
100. throw310822 ◴[] No.44514268{4}[source]
Thanks for the reply, but you get a number of things wrong.

The 2017 "long tweets" are actually 280 characters. 4k characters tweets have been introduced in 2023.

The "subscription feature" is a content creator one, while I meant paid blue check.

"Community notes" had not been publicly launched before Musk did, renaming them from "Birdwatch".

The "native video" feature you mention is Vine, which had been discontinued.

Not saying that Musk innovated (doesn't take much to make blue checks subscription-based or to increase the length of tweets) but he did act decisively to introduce changes in the good old Twitter, something the previous CEOs had hesitated to do.

replies(1): >>44514332 #
101. throw310822 ◴[] No.44514275{5}[source]
Private likes too.
replies(1): >>44514292 #
102. ceejayoz ◴[] No.44514290{5}[source]
> Chronological feed by default with a setting that actually sticks…

Musk killed third-party clients, which all had that already.

> private favorites

To conceal the plunge in activity post-acquisition, and to soothe the owner. https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-boosted-elon-musk-tw...

> new media gallery

We're not really calling a bit of a redesign "innovation", are we?

> "E2E" messages

Anything using Twitter for this in a scenario where said encryption is important is a loon, IMO. That's what Signal is for.

replies(1): >>44517168 #
103. ceejayoz ◴[] No.44514292{6}[source]
They renamed favorites to likes. It's the same thing.
replies(1): >>44514313 #
104. TheAlchemist ◴[] No.44514302[source]
I was following fintwit quite a lot at a time, and some accounts already moved to Bluesky some time ago. I'm periodically checking via nitter, and 90% of answers are spam at this point.

It will take some time for complete destruction, but the path is quite clear.

105. throw310822 ◴[] No.44514313{7}[source]
Sorry, you're right of course. I was thinking of bookmarks.
106. ceejayoz ◴[] No.44514332{5}[source]
> The 2017 "long tweets" are actually 280 characters.

So, longer.

> The "subscription feature" is a content creator one, while I meant paid blue check.

I consider the paid blue checks a negative, not a positive.

> "Community notes" had not been publicly launched before Musk did

As with the long tweets, this then becomes a pretty minor tweak.

> The "native video" feature you mention is Vine, which had been discontinued.

I mentioned three iterations. The last link, in 2015, is the current native video handling.

If I, personally, went to my boss and rattled this off as a list of primary personal achievements in the past couple of years, they'd say "you're padding things"… and I'm a single developer.

replies(1): >>44521894 #
107. consumer451 ◴[] No.44514367{3}[source]
> pretty successful

What are the metrics of success in this case? Making more money, a failure. Moving the Overton window to the very far-right, success.

I would argue that the goal is quite obviously the latter, and Musk was very open about this. Given that was the goal, his takeover of Twitter was extremely successful!

replies(3): >>44516404 #>>44517245 #>>44520821 #
108. throwpoaster ◴[] No.44514418{4}[source]
> How? He was banned after the election.

By suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story before the election.

replies(3): >>44514492 #>>44514866 #>>44519185 #
109. throwpoaster ◴[] No.44514470{4}[source]
Keep trying, estimation is hard! You’ll improve!
110. BeetleB ◴[] No.44514492{5}[source]
It's a stretch to say this would have made a major impact. Biden won fairly comfortably. COVID was Trump's bad luck.
replies(1): >>44515921 #
111. JeremyNT ◴[] No.44514544[source]
As a business it's a failure.

As a way to influence public opinion? It's almost invaluable.

For the world's richest man, that's a bargain at half the price.

replies(2): >>44517242 #>>44522271 #
112. jbreckmckye ◴[] No.44514680[source]
I cannot see how it was a success.

1. He overpaid by tens of billions. That is a phenomenal amount of money to lose on an unforced error.

2. Enough users, who produce enough content, have left to make X increasingly a forum for porn bots, scam accounts and political activists. It's losing its appeal as the place "where the news happens" and is instead becoming more niche.

3. The firings did not go well. X has struggled to ship new features and appears nowhere closer to the "everything app" Musk promised. It posts strange UUID error codes. The remaining developers seem to implement things primarily client side, to the extent I even wonder if they have lost their ability to safely roll out backend changes.

4. The capture of X by far-right agitators has led to long term brand damage for Tesla, Musk's most important business property.

I can't see any positive outcome from it.

replies(18): >>44515280 #>>44515328 #>>44515388 #>>44515763 #>>44516007 #>>44516991 #>>44517113 #>>44517322 #>>44517329 #>>44517682 #>>44518769 #>>44519181 #>>44519287 #>>44519539 #>>44520027 #>>44520721 #>>44520963 #>>44522558 #
113. beambot ◴[] No.44514688[source]
Tesla itself seems primed for a similar fate at an even greater magnitude -- the bigger they are, the harder they fall.
114. calmoo ◴[] No.44514773[source]
I’ve only been on twitter for a year and at the start my algo feed was full of awful crap, but after I followed a few good accounts I mostly now just get AI focussed tech stuff. I think your experience isn’t universal.
115. the_why_of_y ◴[] No.44514866{5}[source]
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/12/07/hello-youve-been-referre...
replies(1): >>44519079 #
116. mrguyorama ◴[] No.44514913{6}[source]
>This is what less filtered looks like

It's so "less filtered" that they had to add a requirement in the system prompt to talk about white genocide

This idea that "less filtered" LLMs will be "naturally" very racist is something that a lot of racists really really want to be true because they want to believe their racist views are backed by data.

They are not.

replies(1): >>44515014 #
117. MetaWhirledPeas ◴[] No.44515014{7}[source]
I asked MS Copilot, "Did the Grok team add a requirement in the system prompt to talk about white genocide?"

Answer: "I can't help with that."

This is not helping your case.

Gemini had a better response: "xAI later stated that this behavior was due to an 'unauthorized modification' by a 'rogue employee'."

replies(3): >>44515282 #>>44515287 #>>44516695 #
118. baby ◴[] No.44515018[source]
It's interesting because, as I'm reading this I agree with y'all, it's still stand and I'm still on it. Yet, as a major twitter user, who has a large number of followers and has benefited from twitter a lot (made many relationships, got a job through it, successfully launched a book and a company thanks to it, etc.) I seem to be using twitter less and less these days.

I dislike Elon, but I need twitter so much that I can't leave. And yet, my feed which was so useful in the past, and filled with cryptography content, has become pure political ragebait content. To the point that it's less and less useful to me.

I'm sad because there's just nowhere for me to go, all my followers are there.

replies(1): >>44515385 #
119. baby ◴[] No.44515027{3}[source]
how do you move platform when you have >10k followers on twitter?
120. baby ◴[] No.44515033{4}[source]
you realize Threads basically have the same amount of daily users now? This should never have happened
121. amrocha ◴[] No.44515232{6}[source]
Nobody’s trying to get grok to talk about MechaHitler. At that point you just know Musk said that out loud in a meeting and someone had to add it to groks base prompt.
122. amrocha ◴[] No.44515258{6}[source]
Right, it’s just been talking about white genocide and generating nazi images instead.
replies(1): >>44515363 #
123. baobun ◴[] No.44515280{3}[source]
I don't think DOGE would have happened without it. Maybe not even Trump winning the election.

It wasn't good for the company but allowed Musk huge influence in politics and likely making it out with some really juicy data.

replies(2): >>44515899 #>>44519111 #
124. amrocha ◴[] No.44515282{8}[source]
Avoiding sensitive subjects is not the same thing as endorsing racist views if that’s what you’re implying.
replies(1): >>44517309 #
125. amrocha ◴[] No.44515302{6}[source]
Not to say there aren’t problems with ChatGPT, but it generally steers clear of controversial subjects unless coaxed into it.

Grok actively leans into racism and nazism.

replies(1): >>44516006 #
126. makeitdouble ◴[] No.44515328{3}[source]
Most people were betting on X going under in some way or another within a year. From that POV, it's survival in itself can be seen a success for Musk.

I'm genuinely surprised at the amount of people that stuck to it.

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127. tristan957 ◴[] No.44515335{6}[source]
I've seen people report they get better engagement on Mastodon and Blue Sky than they ever did with Twitter, based on percentages.
replies(1): >>44515508 #
128. rockemsockem ◴[] No.44515363{7}[source]
What Nazi images?

The white genocide thing I remember hearing about and looked really forced

129. fsflover ◴[] No.44515385{3}[source]
Make a Mastodon account and post to both places simultaneously. They say Mastodon brings real discussions and engagement.
130. CivBase ◴[] No.44515388{3}[source]
> It makes X an increasingly niche website.

I did not use Twitter. I do not use X. I'm even less inclined to become a user after the Musk takeover. I don't even know anyone who is active on X. However, I still constantly get linked to tweets and see screenshots of tweets (or whatever they're called now). And I never see anything from competing platforms.

X may be failing by many metrics, but in terms of popularity it is still the undisputed king of its market. It's by no means "niche".

replies(2): >>44516455 #>>44518089 #
131. BolexNOLA ◴[] No.44515418{5}[source]
My understanding is overall engagement is also currently down
132. SV_BubbleTime ◴[] No.44515508{7}[source]
And I’ve seen people report the complete opposite. Both can be true. The reality is BlueSky pushed echo chambering even harder than X and it’s a dying platform - maybe those two things are unrelated but not for me they aren’t. Unless some miracle happens to reverse its trend, BlueSky already had its shot.
replies(2): >>44515801 #>>44526583 #
133. SonOfLilit ◴[] No.44515602{6}[source]
Did any Trump voters think he will be harder on Israel than Biden or Kamala?

In Israel the debate was "should we be rooting for Trump because of how much of a blank check he will give our government, or against him because of the damage he will do to the free world that we are part of and also the blank check that he will give our government?"

Since this prediction turned out basically correct, I wonder if across the seas people had different expectations?

replies(2): >>44518989 #>>44519597 #
134. AirMax98 ◴[] No.44515763{3}[source]
> The remaining developers seem to implement things primarily client side, to the extent I even wonder if they have lost their ability to safely roll out backend changes.

Thanks for putting this into words — I have also noticed this and felt that product decisions have been shaped by this force of institutional rot.

135. tristan957 ◴[] No.44515801{8}[source]
Luckily Blue Sky isn't the only competitor in the space, then.
replies(1): >>44526548 #
136. acjohnson55 ◴[] No.44515899{4}[source]
I give a lot more weight to the $250M Elon spent on the campaign.
replies(3): >>44517510 #>>44518321 #>>44518814 #
137. wredcoll ◴[] No.44515921{6}[source]
Bad luck? Covid was the definition of an easy layup. It's like bush and 9/11, should be a trivial re-election.
replies(4): >>44516516 #>>44517041 #>>44517177 #>>44519749 #
138. timschmidt ◴[] No.44516006{7}[source]
It seems that there is tremendous incentive for people like yourself (I see you're very active in these comments) to claim that. But I see you've presented no quantitative evidence. Given the politicization of the systems and individuals involved, without evidence, it all reads like partisan mud slinging.

Any LLM can be convinced to say just about anything. Pliny has shown that time and time again.

replies(1): >>44516493 #
139. rejekt ◴[] No.44516022{5}[source]
Biden issued a full and unconditional pardon for his son for any crimes during a 10 year period 2014-2024. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3dx9n3m9y2o He later pardoned other family members and political allies.
replies(2): >>44516217 #>>44518803 #
140. pstuart ◴[] No.44516217{6}[source]
That was disappointing but understandable, considering who was following him into office.

The Hunter Biden corruption story was true in the sense it was old school genteel corruption that virtually everybody in politics does: trade on their connections with promise of getting deals done and/or a veneer of legitimacy. It's a problem worthy of scrutiny but only if it is done across party lines.

But this misses the entire point: the whole part about the Hunter Biden laptop story was to paint Joe Biden as crooked and was being done solely as negative campaigning. That's it, and it is self evident in how the story dropped once it was no longer useful for that means.

But the millions of Americans who were outraged by this supposed corruption are just fine with it when it's done by their Dear Leader.

That in a nutshell summarizes the "values" of the modern American conservative movement.

replies(1): >>44523913 #
141. Centigonal ◴[] No.44516253{4}[source]
Whether or not X goes under is almost fully dependent on whether it services its debt. That debt is backstopped by Elon Musk, who has enough assets to service that debt for at least another few decades.

Whether or not X goes under is almost entirely one man's choice.

replies(1): >>44517018 #
142. jgrowl ◴[] No.44516258[source]
Was pretty effective using as a propaganda tool to get a candidate of the owner's choice elected. I don't see any reason to assume that wasn't the intended goal from the beginning. No reason to assume that won't be how it is used in the future.
143. aorloff ◴[] No.44516302{5}[source]
My very first thought on the news that Yaccarino is leaving is that Twitter needs a new CEO who can sell some shares.
replies(1): >>44521892 #
144. Intermernet ◴[] No.44516341{5}[source]
When I finally left Twitter most of the engagement was obviously bots either repeating other tweets or spamming unrelated dross on high activity threads for engagement farming. The number is high, but the quality is negligible.
replies(1): >>44518698 #
145. wasabi991011 ◴[] No.44516355{6}[source]
Anecdotal, but everone that I've heard do those comparisons have done Bluesky vs X, and every time they've noticed better engagement ratio and higher quality engagement on Bluesky.
146. andrewflnr ◴[] No.44516404{4}[source]
He sure claimed to also want to make money on it. With how much debt he took on, he didn't have much choice. Even with the political goal, he could have moved the overton window better by less ridiculous means. (And as I mentioned in another comment, his attempts to squirm out of the sale are evidence against it being a big master plan; for that to be a fakeout requires an unlikely level of depth.)
147. sjsdaiuasgdia ◴[] No.44516405{6}[source]
To catch you up, this happened 2 months ago -

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/may/14/elon-musk...

replies(1): >>44517351 #
148. Lu2025 ◴[] No.44516438[source]
It successfully served its purpose: gave us Trump.
149. Lu2025 ◴[] No.44516455{4}[source]
Yeah screenshots getting around is a funny metric but it's a good one.

I see BlueSky picking up and occasionally Threads. Sometimes you can't tell where it's from due to crop.

150. arp242 ◴[] No.44516458{6}[source]
> if you get one to say racist things it's probably because you were trying to make it say racist things.

When it started ranting about the Jews and "Mecha Hitler" it was unprompted on unrelated matters. When it started ranting about "white genocide" in SA a while ago it was also unprompted on unrelated matters.

So no.

151. arp242 ◴[] No.44516493{8}[source]
Does ChatGPT start ranting about Jews and "White Genocide" unprompted? How can I even quantify that it doesn't do that?

This is a classic "anything that can't be empirically measured is invalid and can be dismissed" mistake. It would be nice if we could easily empirically measure everything, but that's not how the world works.

The ChatGPT article is of a rather different nature where ChatGPT went off the rails after a long conversation with a troubled person. That's not good, but just no the same as "start spewing racism on unrelated questions".

replies(2): >>44516588 #>>44523505 #
152. Lu2025 ◴[] No.44516516{7}[source]
> Covid was the definition of an easy layup. It's like bush and 9/11

Anything but. Trump could have won in 2020 if not for Covid. A lot of turnout was anti-Trump protest vote.

replies(1): >>44516696 #
153. Lu2025 ◴[] No.44516523{6}[source]
At least it allows links; Instagram doesn't without paying.
154. theshackleford ◴[] No.44516534{6}[source]
> The Twitter board completely ripped of Musk.

He ripped himself off because he couldn’t keep his big trap shut.

155. Lu2025 ◴[] No.44516537{5}[source]
Left where?
replies(1): >>44516810 #
156. timschmidt ◴[] No.44516588{9}[source]
Friend, if you can't empirically measure the outputs of LLMs which provide lovely APIs for doing so, what are you doing?

20 lines of code and some data would really bolster your case, but I don't see them.

replies(2): >>44518947 #>>44521615 #
157. numpad0 ◴[] No.44516656{3}[source]
Do you consider massive reduction of impression/reacheability and "shadowbans" for organically influential users features? Lots of users are seen reporting those. Tweets and replies not showing or made "unavailable", followers silently deleted or muted without user input, etc.
158. saagarjha ◴[] No.44516695{8}[source]
If you're asking a coding LLM about facts I don't really think you are capable of evaluating the case at all.
replies(1): >>44517323 #
159. sleepybrett ◴[] No.44516696{8}[source]
he lost because of covid because everyone watched him fucking botch the response.

'it will go away in two weeks, no one will even remember...'

injecting bleach

getting uv light 'inside the body'

the look on all his health advisors faces whenever he showed up at a press conference.

160. numpad0 ◴[] No.44516729{5}[source]
They don't just censor, they limit organic influences. Your content won't get displayed more than n times, so you can't get more popular than n views, unless the system selects you as today's lottery winner, in which case it will be (reported as)viewed trillion times.

The only defense against this is the fact that Twitter users know system too well for this to be not immediately obvious.

161. SchemaLoad ◴[] No.44516736{4}[source]
The site is incredibly broken. It returns API errors randomly and shows profile tweets out of order. It's on Pintrest levels of broken.
replies(1): >>44517315 #
162. greenie_beans ◴[] No.44516810{6}[source]
twitter
163. ◴[] No.44516991{3}[source]
164. raydev ◴[] No.44517018{5}[source]
The Twitter-purchase debt problem is a lot less relevant now that he's rolled X into xAI. Now X the app gets to tag along with a higher value AI company (or at least it is currently valued much higher due to investors dreaming big).
replies(2): >>44517159 #>>44518411 #
165. raydev ◴[] No.44517033{5}[source]
The vast majority of his base, and a majority of his voters, doesn't even trust legacy media unless it agrees with Trump. Even Fox News is routinely under fire not by Trump, but by his fans and Republicans broadly.

I very much doubt there was a different set of questions that would change peoples' minds about him after how his first term went.

replies(1): >>44517286 #
166. raydev ◴[] No.44517041{7}[source]
The extended lockdowns 100% ended his term. It upset too many people for too long. Regardless of actual responsiblity, big nationwide negative events always get laid at the feet of the current sitting president.
167. raydev ◴[] No.44517044{5}[source]
There weren't a lot of 50+ year old folks on Reddit in 2016. Now there are, but that's because they've aged into that range.
168. davidw ◴[] No.44517058{4}[source]
> I'm genuinely surprised at the amount of people that stuck to it.

I thought more people would see a guy doing ... that salute, or things like the antisemitism in Grok in the past few days and say "no", but a huge number of people seem to be able to rationalize things away.

I'm with Wil Wheaton https://bsky.app/profile/wilwheaton.net/post/3ltkjyzjb4k2p

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169. goodkiwi ◴[] No.44517113{3}[source]
Can confirm the frontend piece - there is previously available functionality that was removed from the ui that you can still access via the web api
170. freejazz ◴[] No.44517128{6}[source]
Did he argue in that case that it was worth less than half the purchase price? I do recall he argued it was a material misrepresentation by twitter, but that the terms of the contract ran against him there. I do not recall it having been valued to that extent. It did seem like a facially bullshit excuse at the time. I'm curious as to why you're credulously repeating it now, after it's already been disposed of.
171. phs318u ◴[] No.44517159{6}[source]
Higher value AI company? Not for long if "mechahitler" keeps popping up.
replies(1): >>44517554 #
172. sunaookami ◴[] No.44517168{6}[source]
>Musk killed third-party clients, which all had that already.

Irrelevant for the point but yes, API changes and killing TweetDeck was a shit move.

>To conceal the plunge in activity post-acquisition, and to soothe the owner

I don't care about your opinion on that, for me it's great and made me like more posts. I don't engage in politics on Twitter.

>We're not really calling a bit of a redesign "innovation", are we?

We are listing changes. Seems like you are just biased against Musk instead of engaging in a discussion.

>Anything using Twitter for this in a scenario where said encryption is important is a loon, IMO. That's what Signal is for.

Agreed but it's a new feature.

173. usefulcat ◴[] No.44517177{7}[source]
Nope. In terms of presidential politics, covid was basically the same as an economic downturn; if it happens while you're the president, the electorate will blame it on you regardless of whether you had anything to do with it.

In the case of Bush in the 2004 election, at that time they were pushing the story that Iraq had been developing WMDs; that was the initial justification for the invasion. Obviously false in hindsight, but at the time people were still pretty raw about 9/11, so critical thinking was in short supply, but--most importantly--it provided an enemy to focus on.

In the case of covid there was no comparable enemy. "Declaring war" on a virus would not have anywhere near the same impact as using the military to actually wage war on another country.

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174. petesergeant ◴[] No.44517233{5}[source]
I am seriously restricting my inbound and outbound reach by boycotting X. It's a hit I can afford to take, but for some people they'd be making a very foolish choice when that's where their audience and the content they want to read is.
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175. ActorNightly ◴[] No.44517242{3}[source]
I mean it didn't really influence public opinion that much, just enough to push election over the edge, and that was not just due to Twitter, but mostly due to non-voters.
176. petesergeant ◴[] No.44517245{4}[source]
> I would argue that the goal is quite obviously the latter, and Musk was very open about this

I mean he sued in order to not to have to buy it. To describe this as the _goal_ rather than just him making what he considers to be the best of a bad situation feels like a reach.

177. davidw ◴[] No.44517271{6}[source]
NPR found that they really didn't lose much:

https://bsky.app/profile/carlquintanilla.bsky.social/post/3l...

But sometimes you have to make some sacrifices in life over your principles.

And the more people move, the easier it is for everyone else.

replies(1): >>44517281 #
178. petesergeant ◴[] No.44517281{7}[source]
NPR's audience is very different from mine (AI researchers and thinkers) though. Some communities seem to have managed the move wholesale: all the cartoonists I like switched, for example.
replies(1): >>44518868 #
179. ChocolateGod ◴[] No.44517286{6}[source]
I think you're confusing the majority with the most audible.

The silent majority imho exists and is still the one deciding, not political activists on social media of both ends of the spectrum in their respective echo chambers.

180. freejazz ◴[] No.44517300{4}[source]
Well, the HitlerGrok thing happened yesterday...

I ask this genuinely and without any intent to cause offense: given your name, are you a bit?

181. happosai ◴[] No.44517308[source]
Relevant to who? My employers marketing has stopped using X and posts now on LinkedIn exclusively (we do B2B software).

My partners workplace does consumer marketing and only TikTok (for young people) and Facebook (for old people) are truly relevant anymore. If a customer has lots of money to waste, they'll also do Instagram and YouTube.

182. MetaWhirledPeas ◴[] No.44517309{9}[source]
No I'm saying the consequences of over-filtering are apparent with Copilot 's response: no answer.

And I'm also saying Grok was reportedly sabotaged into saying something racist (which is a blatantly obvious conclusion even without looking it up), and that seeing this as some sort of indictment against it is baseless.

And since I find myself in the position of explaining common sense conclusions here's one more: you don't succeed in making a racist bot by asking it to call itself Mecha Hitler. That is a fast way to fail in your goal of being subversive.

183. ChocolateGod ◴[] No.44517315{5}[source]
I believe showing tweets out of order on profiles is a feature to show the most engaging content to unlogged in users.

It's annoying as hell

184. biztos ◴[] No.44517322{3}[source]
I’m pretty lazy about curating my feed, but I do a little. And I never see any porn bots and only rarely any spam accounts. Political stuff, yes, but I don’t mind and it’s not a ton, in fact my feed has a lot more insightful analysis than advocacy. I still get a lot of “breaking news” that I’d otherwise have to be very active on Facebook to get, especially regarding other countries.

I guess that’s just TL;DR: YMMV, but I do think there are a lot of people on X who find it very useful and don’t run into the problems you listed.

As for Elon’s overpayment, I have thought about actually paying for an account, which I never would have done on Old Twitter.

185. MetaWhirledPeas ◴[] No.44517323{9}[source]
If you wish to do better, please enlighten us with facts and sources.
replies(1): >>44518242 #
186. cryptoegorophy ◴[] No.44517329{3}[source]
3. Didn’t go well? I don’t remember twitter (x) crashing for days or data erased. Means that organizations don’t need that many people. One thing I learned from this is to not trust so called “experts” or loud voices.
replies(4): >>44517630 #>>44517967 #>>44519167 #>>44520179 #
187. rockemsockem ◴[] No.44517351{7}[source]
Yes, I had forgotten about that. Was super weird and forced into conversations from what I saw.

Definitely a bit of a trend now with mecha hitler...

188. grishka ◴[] No.44517368[source]
And most people, me included, still call it Twitter.
189. mistermann ◴[] No.44517480{4}[source]
I joined it about 6 months ago and absolutely love the ~uncensored free for all nature of it!

And while the format and content varies in many ways from other sites, one thing they all have in common is millions of humans who cannot distinguish facts from personal opinions. I do not know why but I am absolutely fascinated by the phenomenon, and on Twitter/X you can discuss such things fairly seriously, at least with some people.

replies(3): >>44518063 #>>44518928 #>>44519844 #
190. energy123 ◴[] No.44517510{5}[source]
Advertising works well on local races. But for POTUS, I don't believe it moves the needle much.

The bigger factors are whether the large media players back you (Murdoch, Musk), whether social media personalities back you, and whether the foreign intelligence agencies back you in their spamouflage and information ops (e.g. via the Internet Research Agency).

replies(1): >>44521774 #
191. raydev ◴[] No.44517554{7}[source]
Honestly, after years of hearing that Elon's mishaps and faceplants will actually have a meaningful impact, with no meaningful impact, I'm sure xAI will be fine as long as they stay somewhat competitive.
replies(1): >>44519046 #
192. Simon_O_Rourke ◴[] No.44517630{4}[source]
Crashing isn't the totality of unsupported code. I previously worked in a company where a goodly proportion of the back end product team was let go, and their system stayed running for two plus years without a single fix or update going in.
replies(1): >>44517675 #
193. PicassoCTs ◴[] No.44517675{5}[source]
Proofing that it was a real good back end team..
replies(1): >>44519397 #
194. bydlocoder ◴[] No.44517682{3}[source]
Twitter's back-end is written in Scala, but they used "better Java" style so an average developer should have no problems making changes

Anyway, what kind of features Twitter (or any social network for that matter) needs after it existed for so many years? Hacker News haven't changed a bit a it does what it does perfectly well

replies(1): >>44517873 #
195. ◴[] No.44517692[source]
196. jxjnskkzxxhx ◴[] No.44517867{4}[source]
Were they? My recollection is that in the tech space a lot of people were saying "it's just an app, why do they need so many people"
replies(2): >>44518886 #>>44519217 #
197. beAbU ◴[] No.44517871[source]
And I blame the media. Politicians continue to post, and the media continue to quote them from twitter. I think it's shameful that politicians and other officials are using twitter as some sort of official media/announcement platform.

In my own African country twitter has become the de-facto channel for various updates and announcements by various state organs and officials. Makes it even worse when you consider the majority of the population has no reliable way to access this information.

And now its locked behind a user account! And it's owned by a potentially rival politician!

replies(1): >>44518752 #
198. motorest ◴[] No.44517873{4}[source]
> Twitter's back-end is written in Scala, but they used "better Java" style so an average developer should have no problems making changes

You sound like someone completely oblivious to software development practices who somehow felt compelled to post opinions on software engineering.

Your choice of language is irrelevant if your goal is to maintain software. What matters is systems architecture and institutional knowledge of how things are designed to work. If you fire your staff, you lose institutional knowledge. Your choice of programming language does not bring it back.

replies(4): >>44519307 #>>44520416 #>>44521642 #>>44529493 #
199. motorest ◴[] No.44517885{4}[source]
> Most people were betting on X going under in some way or another within a year. From that POV, it's survival in itself can be seen a success for Musk.

Is this where the bar is set now? Not tanking a $40B corporation within a year now passes off as success? Really?

You people are desperately grasping at straws.

200. chgs ◴[] No.44517906{4}[source]
“Long tweets” could be anything from changing a config variable to rewriting massive tomes of code.

Unless you have knowledge of x’s internal code?

201. motorest ◴[] No.44517967{4}[source]
> 3. Didn’t go well? I don’t remember twitter (x) crashing for days or data erased. Means that organizations don’t need that many people.

I don't think you have a solid grasp on the problem. To start off, Twitter did experienced major outages that it never experienced before. Also, you hire and retain people when you need to implement changes. If your goal is to cease any form of investment in your platform, like rolling out a new product or providing a new service, then your responsibilities are limited to keep the business barely aflost while coasting.

See it as a navy ship. You need full crew to perform all your missions, but mothballing the ship requires a skeleton crew.

Here you are, boasting that a ship doesn't require more than a skeleton crew to be kept afloat. I mean, sure why not? But are you saying what you think you're saying?

replies(2): >>44521730 #>>44521887 #
202. paride5745 ◴[] No.44517980[source]
Let's be honest, there is no real alternative.
replies(2): >>44519210 #>>44519729 #
203. watwut ◴[] No.44518053{5}[source]
They liked the gesture. The rationalization is just public pretending they would theoretically mind.
204. watwut ◴[] No.44518063{5}[source]
See, example of a guy thay calls X uncensored despite it literally doing that. Just not to fascists.
205. watwut ◴[] No.44518089{4}[source]
I domt see screenshots of tweeta anymore tho. That one defintely stopped in places where I go.
206. 71bw ◴[] No.44518100{4}[source]
>and I don't think they utilize Twitter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8Y-P0v2Hh0

207. 4gotunameagain ◴[] No.44518114[source]
Which reinforces the concept of a digital fiefdom; the owners of said platforms have this immense power only because they were the first to implement their ideas during the internet boom.

And now we're stuck with Zuckerberg, Musk and Bezos. Out of all people, the last ones I would choose to have unelected power. Okay maybe the last one would be Joe Rogan.

replies(1): >>44519701 #
208. giingyui ◴[] No.44518173{5}[source]
I profoundly dislike the politics of most “leaders” for lack of a better word in the world of tech, but here I am typing these words in an iPhone. Refusing to use something because of who created it or who benefits from it is a bit too much I think, to the point of being unworkable depending on the case.

In other words as much as I’d like to vote with my wallet that is not always practical. And that extends to everything, not only tech.

replies(5): >>44518485 #>>44518510 #>>44519151 #>>44520760 #>>44522121 #
209. throwaway37153 ◴[] No.44518190{3}[source]
> “You may not directly attack other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease,”

How does this make it different than other website's policies in terms of free speech?

replies(2): >>44519724 #>>44523267 #
210. saagarjha ◴[] No.44518242{10}[source]
Why should I do extra work when you are unwilling to do so?
211. conradfr ◴[] No.44518410[source]
I just think that apps / social networks / whatever are usually not replaced by a copy of the same thing.

Google+ didn't replace Facebook, Signal didn't replace Whatsapp, Bluesky won't replace Twitter.

212. guelo ◴[] No.44518411{6}[source]
Investors are insane throwing money at elon's xai at a $75 billion valuation. And knowing that elon is probably taking their cash to pay twitter's debt. How is that possible? That shitty also-ran mechahitler ai is never going to make any money. It makes me suspect that a lot of these VCs are more political than rational.
213. ulfw ◴[] No.44518510{6}[source]
I'd love to know a reason why not to use an iPhone because of Apple's leader. Is he not right wing enough like Musk?
replies(1): >>44518601 #
214. michaelmrose ◴[] No.44518523{4}[source]
Virtually nobody said that it would go under in a year because that makes no sense. It's financially possible for it to tread water for years whilst losing money.

I don't see how this could be deemed a success when a magic 8 ball or a hamster attached to a giant pile of money could keep it going as long.

replies(1): >>44520157 #
215. giingyui ◴[] No.44518601{7}[source]
We all have our ideas on politics. Not all ideas are as universal as some think or pretend.
replies(3): >>44520904 #>>44521242 #>>44524161 #
216. egorfine ◴[] No.44518698{6}[source]
That was my experience as well.

But then people came back. The "For you" tab has been much more interesting for me than previously and in my industry I see tons of interesting content.

Again, I hate what EM did to Twitter but there's that.

replies(1): >>44526036 #
217. collyw ◴[] No.44518725{7}[source]
"literal Nazi" What utter nonsense.
replies(2): >>44519138 #>>44519807 #
218. brigandish ◴[] No.44518752[source]
I've been able to access posts for a while now without logging in, I think that might have changed when they got rid of blocking.
replies(1): >>44518963 #
219. n4r9 ◴[] No.44518759{4}[source]
Does anyone outside X actually know the current monthly active users and revenue figures? They stopped releasing them publicly when Musk took over. It's all guesswork at this point as far as I can tell.
220. guappa ◴[] No.44518769{3}[source]
> where the news happens

It never was, despite what lazy journalists led people to believe.

221. stephen_g ◴[] No.44518771[source]
I will admit that I was surprised and agree it was a clever move to extend his runway, but it relies on xAI being able to make huge amounts of profit eventually. Twitter/X’s brand value has declined so much and xAI has such a ridiculous cash burn and it really looks to me like he’s just delayed the inevitable by a bit by combining them…
222. collyw ◴[] No.44518803{6}[source]
And Fauci. Why would he do that?
replies(1): >>44521359 #
223. Cthulhu_ ◴[] No.44518814{5}[source]
That was a factor, but his CV stating "I cut Twitter's expenses and staff by 80%" or however much was probably a big factor too. Of course, he's the only one actually bragging about that being a success.

Twitter's takeover also helped him get a number of loyalist goons that he sent out to various US federal agencies to extract data from.

224. camgunz ◴[] No.44518822{3}[source]
This is maybe true for 2016. In 2020 and 2024 Trump/Biden/Harris were just part of larger trends that saw Western incumbents worldwide lose their seats.

As a thought experiment, do you think X would have made the difference if Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis were the GOP nominee? I would bet either people think X couldn't have helped enough (candidates didn't have the rizz) and ultimately they'd have lost, or they wouldn't be as toxic as Trump and wouldn't need whatever theoretical help X would provide.

Or if you like stats, Harris broadly lost on all social media platforms [0].

Years ago now I predicted Musk would burn through Twitter's attention capital and it'd become less and less relevant over time. I think that's happening: all the stats I can look up show declining users, usage, and revenue. A lot of people use X as "write only" now, or have very sporadic interactive use.

Another way of saying this is Musk bought the peak, and is running this new Nazi-friendly version as a short position against American democracy. The only way he gains attentional or financial capital from that position is if something even more illiberal happens to society and this far-right version of X is suddenly as relevant as center-left Twitter was in 2016, like Nick Fuentes becomes president or something.

[0]: https://navigatorresearch.org/2024-post-election-survey-a-ma...

225. makeitdouble ◴[] No.44518886{5}[source]
The "why do they need so many people" were probably in favor of Musk ?

On the other side people were already asking why Twitter didn't do more moderation and better filtering (= more people).

And we expected that breaking rules would have serious repercussions, which was a foolish assumption as we've seen.

replies(1): >>44519550 #
226. guappa ◴[] No.44518928{5}[source]
Censoring people who disagree with you is not the same as no censorship.
227. amrocha ◴[] No.44518947{10}[source]
idk friend, it seems kind of presumptuous to demand other people’s time like this.

It’s pretty evident that the people building grok are injecting their ideology into it.

I don’t need more evidence, and I don’t need you to agree with me. Go ahead and write those 20 lines if you so desire. I’m happy to be proven wrong.

replies(1): >>44522292 #
228. beAbU ◴[] No.44518963{3}[source]
It's usually possible to access a single post if it's directly linked, but not possible to go to the profile from there, or access other tweets or relevant discussions about the post you have open.

That's my experience anyway.

229. guappa ◴[] No.44518989{7}[source]
Did Kamala ever say anything at all against what israel is doing?
230. thrance ◴[] No.44519040{5}[source]
At this point in time, if someone is still hailing Musk as a champion of free speech, I can't see any other explanation than that they're ideologically a nazi themselves. The guy outed himself several times as a nazi, doing salutes on national TV, twitting anti-semitic bullshit, and now tweaking their AI to promote a new holocaust and glorify Hitler. There comes a time when you have to call out nazism for what it is.
231. notahacker ◴[] No.44519046{8}[source]
Isn't that the point though? In a market of multiple competently-executed chatbots, a entrant whose distinguishing feature is edgelordism isn't likely to stay competitive. There is a market for "like the other chat bots in terms of parsing instructions, but with clumsy ad hoc prompting to make it generate more racist output rather than less racist output" but it isn't a particularly lucrative one Cf Musk's other businesses with lockin effect or massive technical advantages, and in some cases where his politics are largely irrelevant
232. throwpoaster ◴[] No.44519079{6}[source]
> The fact that, much later on, many elements of the laptops history and provenance were confirmed as legitimate (with some open questions) is important

“The story was true but…”

Stopped reading here.

replies(1): >>44524107 #
233. notahacker ◴[] No.44519111{4}[source]
He doesn't seem particularly happy with how things are going with the new administration, and Trump seems to be enjoying the fall out rather more. As Elon himself acknowledged, to the extent he actually believed in cutting the deficit the Big Beautiful Bill is doing the opposite, and I'm pretty sure some of the cuts that actually are taking place are ones he isn't happy with.

He could have gained valuable information and he certainly got to exact petty revenge on regulators that crossed him, but I'd have a hard time putting a higher valuation on that than the tangible revenue drops of some of his businesses, not to mention risk of repercussions. I also think Trump is remarkably easy to get close to for someone with Elon's money,came and social circles whilst spending a lot less, especially if he's offering unqualified endorsement. Don't forget DOGE was launched as a collab with a relatively minor Silicon Valley player whose other claim to fame was running against Trump...

234. Applejinx ◴[] No.44519143{6}[source]
By the time I left I was deleting multiple bot followers a day. You cannot take X's claims at face value, everything about the platform is aggressively dishonest. NPR's experience is instructive: https://niemanreports.org/npr-twitter-musk/

I don't think it's realistic to pretend that abandoning X is seriously restricting anyone. If anything, sticking with it is brand endangerment and by leaving it you're making the smart move, with or without animus.

235. UltraSane ◴[] No.44519167{4}[source]
"One thing I learned from this is to not trust so called “experts”"

Really? THAT is what you learned?

236. giingyui ◴[] No.44519178{7}[source]
>"If there's a Nazi at the table and ten other people sitting there talking to him, you got a table with eleven Nazis."

Change nazi for any other adjective and you will see how absurd it is.

replies(5): >>44519276 #>>44519280 #>>44519530 #>>44519678 #>>44520779 #
237. bbarnett ◴[] No.44519181{3}[source]
This msy surprise you, but the average person doesn't even know who owns what tech platform. Not Meta or X or Google. They don't care either.

Most don't even know Musk bought Twitter.

To complete this thought, most users of X are siloed too. There is no "capture" of the platform, whatever thst means, for them.

I agree that in some circles there may be brand damage,

238. UltraSane ◴[] No.44519185{5}[source]
Why does Hunter Biden matter at all in anything?
replies(1): >>44520728 #
239. spacechild1 ◴[] No.44519210[source]
What's wrong with Bluesky?
replies(2): >>44527042 #>>44529484 #
240. pyrale ◴[] No.44519217{5}[source]
Tech industry has been perpetually growing in the last decades. That means juniors are always a large share of the tech population, and as any demographic, some are bound to be clueless and still vocal. The issue is that in more stable industries, there would be a larger share of seniors to respond with more grounded takes. In ours, these voices are drowned, especially on relatively anonymous media such as HN.
241. CursedSilicon ◴[] No.44519230{8}[source]
[flagged]
replies(1): >>44519485 #
242. spacechild1 ◴[] No.44519236[source]
> and it remains relevant.

Which I find truely shocking. Who in their right mind still wants to support such a platform (except for Elon's target audience, of course)? Just don't use the damn thing. (I have never used Twitter I the first place and I don't think I've been missing out.)

243. lynx97 ◴[] No.44519247{7}[source]
That is so true, and needs to be repeated more. DJT didn't win because he was so great. DJT won because the DMC candidate was so hilariously bad.
244. ◴[] No.44519276{8}[source]
245. WindyMiller ◴[] No.44519280{8}[source]
Different words mean different things.

"Tall people can reach things on high shelves." Change "tall" for any other adjective and you will see how absurd it is.

replies(1): >>44519728 #
246. mnky9800n ◴[] No.44519282[source]
X collects data in all the places Teslas don't get sold. That is why it continues to remain of value. It is an intelligence generating engine for places that otherwise have very little.
247. mnky9800n ◴[] No.44519287{3}[source]
X exists in other languages than english. it provides insight into non-english speaking places that other platforms owned by elon musk do not.
248. Applejinx ◴[] No.44519291{3}[source]
Does it count as irrational if he can get a puppet President elected, have his child mock that person publically while he's present, and repeatedly urge the trusted AI authority he presents for people's use into opinionizing on Boers and Mecha-Hitler?

It sounds like he is getting exactly what he wants. That's the most rational thing about him in what's otherwise a storm of ketamine. I think all the other stuff he thinks is flat-out insane, but exploiting X and pushing it as hard as he can, that's about as rational and effective as Elon ever gets.

249. invalidusernam3 ◴[] No.44519294{4}[source]
What are you basing this on? Because:

https://www.carolinapoliticalreview.org/editorial-content/20...

> the report shows X’s dedication to content moderation by suspending millions of accounts and removing harmful posts, which could potentially help rebuild trust among users concerned with safety and dangerous behavior. On the other hand, this increased moderation contradicts Musk’s earlier promise of promoting free speech, something he has been very vocal about, potentially alienating users who see X becoming more restrictive.

250. varjag ◴[] No.44519307{5}[source]
From what we gathered on the kitchen side he fired the most infrequent committers. Which statistically speaking would not affect the institutional knowledge much.
replies(3): >>44519518 #>>44519559 #>>44519623 #
251. Ray20 ◴[] No.44519311{9}[source]
What probably puzzles me the most is the cowardice of multi-billion dollar corporations developing AI, whose main goal is to make sure that no one, God forbid, is offended by a chat bot

They are really ready to castrate their models to the point of complete uncompetitiveness, but without any mean words in 0.01% of use cases. WTF? Is it because all people are complete idiots? Or because they think that all people are complete idiots? Or do they think that the jews running media is hypocritical scumbags who are ready to destroy them for the sake of activism and, most importantly, have enough power to do it, as soon as they see something unpleasant in their chatbot?

Why doesn't anyone come out and say openly "this is a language model, a computer program that, like any other language model, is not designed to speak on behalf of the company or describe the real world. And if you are afraid of stumbling upon a mean word, please contact any of our competitors with their weak castrated soyjak models, thank you very much"

replies(2): >>44520787 #>>44521881 #
252. sflicht ◴[] No.44519397{6}[source]
Not good at engineering their own job security
253. mrcarrot ◴[] No.44519518{6}[source]
Or alternatively (assuming that's true) he fired the people who thought about what they commit and kept those whose commit logs look like: "push feature WiP", "fix", "more fixes", "push", "maybe this works?"...
replies(1): >>44520250 #
254. guappa ◴[] No.44519530{8}[source]
Account created 3 days ago with the sole purpose of trolling.
255. mapt ◴[] No.44519539{3}[source]
Unfortunately, Bluesky has not taken off. The network effects of Twitter are too great to lose its journalists & public figures.

What has happened instead is that we're back on Facebook. Errm... Threads by Instagram by Meta née Facebook. And it's reached a stage where public figure migration is actually becoming feasible.

https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/07/threads-is-nearing-xs-dail...

Network effected spaces front-loaded by the power of Mark Zuckerberg, third richest person in the world, stand a chance.

replies(2): >>44519660 #>>44520395 #
256. guappa ◴[] No.44519542{10}[source]
Well, right wing lovers at work have asked me to take down sarcastic images of elon musk doing a "totally not nazi" salute, just in case someone who voted for trump might be offended.
257. jxjnskkzxxhx ◴[] No.44519550{6}[source]
> The "why do they need so many people" were probably in favor of Musk ?

I can speak for myself. I think Enron Musk is a despicable person, and at the same time I don't understand why a shitty app needs so many people.

replies(1): >>44520106 #
258. motorest ◴[] No.44519559{6}[source]
> From what we gathered on the kitchen side he fired the most infrequent committers. Which statistically speaking would not affect the institutional knowledge much.

This take is, quite bluntly, stupid and clueless. Do you think each commit reflects the volume of institutional knowledge of any individual? Unbelievable.

replies(2): >>44520225 #>>44521521 #
259. sillyfluke ◴[] No.44519597{7}[source]
>Did any Trump voters think he will be harder on Israel than Biden or Kamala?

I don't think they would phrase it like that, but I think they thought he had a better chance of ending the war.

I listed the reasons in order of importance. People voted against the incumbent because they couldn't make ends meet first and foremost.

But as for Israel, one would be hard pressed to find any gaps between the blank check Biden gave and the blank check Trump is giving Israel now. After Biden left office, people close to or in his administration admitted there was zero pressure applied to Israel for a ceasefire, despite public statements by the admin in support of a ceasefire at the time. But there were Muslim mayors and politicians as well as regular citizens in Michigan, some with family in Palestine, who thought it would be madness to vote for more of the same, knowing full well that Trump might not be better. They ultimately thought betting on Trump's ego and meglomania and his desire for getting the Nobel peace prize had the potential to shake the things up and was the preferrable option out of the two terrible choices. Now I don't think that was the right calculation at the time, but I wouldn't fault anyone who didn't want to try the same thing and expect different results.

260. mapt ◴[] No.44519602{10}[source]
He's not a member of the Nazi Party. The Nazi party hasn't existed in a long time. At this point in time, "literal Nazi" cannot mean, contextually, direct subservience to Adolph Hitler. He's dead.

He's a member of a loose collection of white nationalist and "neo-Nazi" belief circles, and has promoted the modern counterpart to the Nazi ideology, the AFD, "urging them to move beyond guilt about their past".

Notably, he's not as fully committed to nativism or racial purity as some of his counterparts; He unilaterally caused a bit of a split in the GOP due to his need to rely on H1B labor, and we have hours-long recordings of his discussions & arguments with other people in this ideological cluster on Twitter Live.

replies(1): >>44519668 #
261. phanimahesh ◴[] No.44519623{6}[source]
Senior ICs tend to commit relatively unfrequently compared to junior ICs who keep pumping tickets.
replies(1): >>44520207 #
262. CPLX ◴[] No.44519660{4}[source]
Bluesky seems to be doing reasonably well all things considered. It’s active and relevant. They also seem to have a pulse and ship new features.

Not saying it will emerge from being a niche thing and take over but it’s a pretty big niche. And Twitter is about half an inch from a platform ending meltdown at any time so it seems like the future isn’t yet set.

replies(3): >>44519686 #>>44521303 #>>44524634 #
263. ChocolateGod ◴[] No.44519668{11}[source]
For someone to be a literal nazi, to meet the "literal" part they must either be a member of a nazi party or subscribe to beliefs of them.

You can and should criticise Musk for his actions and views, especially his populist dogma, but calling him a nazi in hyperbole is a disrespect to the actual victims of Nazis, especially as anti semitism is alive and kicking again.

I personally believe Musk knows next to nothing about European politics, and his random support for people is more about rocking the boat and "trolling" the establishment than any meaningful support as he once did to Trump.

replies(1): >>44522012 #
264. CPLX ◴[] No.44519678{8}[source]
Nazi is a noun.

Also try swapping in the word “criminal” and you’ll understand the argument being made.

replies(1): >>44520014 #
265. nlitened ◴[] No.44519701{3}[source]
Sir, I've seen whom you _elected_, let's be humble here about preferred choices
replies(1): >>44520268 #
266. sunbum ◴[] No.44519724{4}[source]
Its pretty easy to find large profiles calling others the n word without any reprocussions. cisgender is the only one that gets automatically filtered no matter the context.
267. ChocolateGod ◴[] No.44519728{9}[source]
If I'm at a bar and one man is a pedo, does that mean all people at the bar are pedos?

If we're going by objectively terrible things to be, even though the definition of nazi is very loose to now mean anyone to the right of far left because of it's overuse.

The Nazi bar argument does not do itself any favours and is in ways self-defeating. The majority do not care what someone else's political views are and arguments that shame people for doing so will just lead to increases in populism.

replies(2): >>44520593 #>>44521185 #
268. codingdave ◴[] No.44519729[source]
"Not using it." is a completely acceptable alternative. It does not actually solve a problem in one's life.
replies(1): >>44529438 #
269. theonething ◴[] No.44519749{7}[source]
> Covid was the definition of an easy layup.

I don't understand this at all.

Covid was devastating for the whole world. I don't see how it is an "easy layup" for anybody or any country. Was there any country or scenario where it was an "easy layup"?

replies(1): >>44524135 #
270. motorest ◴[] No.44519759{10}[source]
[flagged]
replies(1): >>44519967 #
271. theonething ◴[] No.44519777{4}[source]
Yes, you are imagining.
272. MSFT_Edging ◴[] No.44519807{8}[source]
If it quacks like a duck.
273. MSFT_Edging ◴[] No.44519819{9}[source]
The "thinker" is one of the main audiences of twitter now.

The Statue PFP, incorrect assumptions about the path, and extreme dunning kruger.

274. MSFT_Edging ◴[] No.44519844{5}[source]
> ~uncensored

The term "cis" will still get you a warning while my for-you page has been consistently filling up with more and more far right content. I regularly see blue checks espousing actual jewish-conspiracy antisemitism.

Every time something happens to anyone, blue check comments asking if any of the parties were black, sometimes not even asking just assuming and blaming it on black people.

Elon has truly created a cesspit Nazi bar of that site.

replies(1): >>44522463 #
275. myko ◴[] No.44519853{4}[source]
Seems like it is mostly bots and neo-Nazi adjacent folks
276. rob74 ◴[] No.44519968{4}[source]
Ok, everything can be seen as a success if you set your expectations low enough...
277. giingyui ◴[] No.44520014{9}[source]
Swap it for vegan. Or cricketer. Or beekeeper.
replies(2): >>44520078 #>>44520174 #
278. brookst ◴[] No.44520027{3}[source]
There an argument that he paid $44B to get a Us administration that would hugely advantage him and his companies. Certainly he’s made billions from contracts initiated by this administration and seen many regulatory difficulties removed.

Of course it may all fall apart because everyone involved has the temperament of a five year old on a meth bender, but the basic “buy media to influence politics to multiply wealth” approach seems to have worked well.

replies(2): >>44520729 #>>44520744 #
279. stirfish ◴[] No.44520076{10}[source]
He knew what he was doing, and he knew people would say "what about Obama" or whatever. This is not the first time Musk has violated a societal norm for attention, he just went way too far this time.
280. CPLX ◴[] No.44520078{10}[source]
If anyone is in fact confused instead of being purposefully obtuse, the point being made that being a Nazi (like being a member of a criminal conspiracy) has the attribute of conveying responsibility to those who associate with the group.
replies(1): >>44520390 #
281. stirfish ◴[] No.44520106{7}[source]
It's an easy (but often wrong) transition from "I don't understand why" to "it must not be necessary".
replies(1): >>44521599 #
282. bitlax ◴[] No.44520157{5}[source]
Lol the overwhelming tech jerk opinion was that he was firing elite engineers and the site would be unmaintainable as a result, and that he had over-leveraged himself to the point of bankruptcy.
283. stirfish ◴[] No.44520174{10}[source]
You didn't need to make an account for this.
284. mortehu ◴[] No.44520179{4}[source]
Twitter has a permanent outage reporting breaking news. Whenever something big happens now, the feed looks like any other day. This didn't use to be the case.
285. foldr ◴[] No.44520185{8}[source]
Even the literal literal Nazis didn’t campaign for minorities to be sent to gas chambers. If you’re going to do this silly pedantic act about how no-one in 2025 can literally be a Nazi, at least do it right.
286. varjag ◴[] No.44520207{7}[source]
Not in my experience, as long as we are talking about ICs.
287. varjag ◴[] No.44520225{7}[source]
Twitter had thousands of coders, each certainly with varying cadence and style of committing. But variation goes only so much and taken in aggregate yes, the amount of commits/diff size is correlated to contributor prominence. It's kinda hilarious the "my -2000 lines" types deny the obvious.
288. varjag ◴[] No.44520250{7}[source]
Reportedly a portion of them were thinking so hard they did not commit anything at all.
replies(1): >>44520630 #
289. 4gotunameagain ◴[] No.44520268{4}[source]
I'm wildly offended that you called me an american.
replies(1): >>44522943 #
290. wonderwonder ◴[] No.44520336[source]
There is not a single place on the internet that comes close to providing up to the minute news and updates. X was the only place one could monitor the Israel / Iran conflict in almost real time. Same for a variety of other events. There is nothing else like it. Its the only place where anyone can have interactions with politicians, scientists, CEOs, etc.

It is the only place that covers and provides a wide variety of information that traditional media does not. Almost no media companies reported that a dozen domestic terrorists ambushed ICE officers and shot one in the neck this past week. As far as I know, none reported on the Minnesota Department of Human Services requiring that hiring managers must provide a hiring justification to hire a white man. Violation of that policy results in termination. So state sponsored racism in the state of the governor that would have been our VP.

Its the only place you can get a picture of what's going on. There is of course mountains of lies you have to filter through, no doubt spurred on by the monetization of X for posters.

For all its faults and madness (Grok going full mecha-hitler was wild) there is no where else like it. Side note, the day after mecha-hitler xAi released Grok4 which appears to be the most powerful model to date on some tests, beating o3, Gemini 2.5 Pro and Anthropic Claude 4 Opus.

There is a non zero chance that xAi, which is part of the same company that holds X wins the AI race

291. giingyui ◴[] No.44520390{11}[source]
And I’m saying I disagree. I don’t need to associate with someone else’s political beliefs to sit with them. Unless you go around asking people if they are <thing you don’t like> before you share a meal. I doubt you do. And if you found out accidentally that you find their beliefs unsavoury (say, they like abortion whilst you don’t, whatever) would you not sit with them? I believe this to be an apt comparison because abortion has killed orders of magnitude more humans than nazis ever did.
replies(2): >>44520962 #>>44521293 #
292. wonderwonder ◴[] No.44520395{4}[source]
BlueSky has not taken off because its the far left version of Twitter. If you stray even to the center you are doxxed and banned. They banned the sitting vice-president within a couple of hours of him joining.
replies(2): >>44520947 #>>44521746 #
293. morngn ◴[] No.44520416{5}[source]
“Your choice of language is irrelevant if your goal is to maintain software.”

It may not be the most important choice, but it’s not irrelevant. And whether the staff he fired had useful institutional knowledge is an open question. Didn’t he fire a lot of non-technical, recent hires and people likely to leave eventually due to his muskism? I’m not convinced that his initial firings are the wpest move he made. Sadly, being overconfident, he assumed the same model could be applied to government, a mistake that will take a long time to fix if it is even fixable given America’s overall trajectory and the fate of the dollar.

294. guappa ◴[] No.44520593{10}[source]
If you are a regular at a bar of a well known nazi, you're a nazi.
295. maest ◴[] No.44520621{10}[source]
He didn't just extend his arm, the whole motion matters. I am having a hard time believing you are arguing in good faith.
replies(3): >>44522284 #>>44523185 #>>44525802 #
296. morngn ◴[] No.44520630{8}[source]
Ironically, those may have been the staff with the most institutional knowledge. Seeing people argue, here of all places, that loc or commit frequency == institutional knowledge is … unexpected. New hires committing “whitespace cleanup” != institutional knowledge.
replies(1): >>44521801 #
297. karel-3d ◴[] No.44520721{3}[source]
He did not make X "everything app" but X is still somehow still working, functioning, and somehow adding new features, even if they suck.

Also it made him win an election.

298. reverendsteveii ◴[] No.44520722{6}[source]
You'll remember that first he waived the right to make his offer contingent on that fact, then he tried to back his offer out because of that fact.
299. HideousKojima ◴[] No.44520728{6}[source]
Because the laptop includes a lot a emails. A lot of those emails include Hunter selling access to his father and suggesting that his father was in the the scheme with him. Whether or not Joe was actually involved vs. Hunter making it up to get these people to give him what he wanted is an open question, but this isn't something that should have been actively suppressed by the media just a few weeks before the election.
replies(2): >>44521878 #>>44525711 #
300. intended ◴[] No.44520729{4}[source]
The evidence is that Trumps win has more to do with the dynamics of the party+media symbiosis on the right side of the spectrum, than anything X did.

If your media ecosystem can get away with selling narratives and conspiracies as facts, without any pushback, then this allows you to set the topics of discussion for any debate. Agenda setting power > platform power.

replies(1): >>44528732 #
301. monocasa ◴[] No.44520744{4}[source]
A US administration does not cost tens of billions. He paid $250M to the trump campaign making him the single largest donor of all time, and that's what let him buy the current admin. And that was close to 1% of what he paid for twitter.
302. matthewdgreen ◴[] No.44520760{6}[source]
It’s not a question of who benefits from it. It’s that the place got weird and creepy and the algorithm is maximizing for engagement of an unpleasant type. I quit last July because I couldn’t stand the angry know-nothing blue checks being promoted into my replies and the cryptocurrency scams.
303. ◴[] No.44520779{8}[source]
304. matthewdgreen ◴[] No.44520787{10}[source]
Do you think that reprogramming a smart model to the point where it produces Hitler takes is any better?
305. matthewdgreen ◴[] No.44520821{4}[source]
He also damaged one of the most valuable companies in existence. I don’t think “moving the Overton window slightly to the right in 2024,” if that’s what he did, is going to be as durable.
306. grafmax ◴[] No.44520826[source]
That’s because it’s not really brand destruction so much as normalizing the support for fascism by a brand.
307. davidw ◴[] No.44520904{8}[source]
"Nazis are bad" ought to be pretty damn universal.

We're not talking "has different ideas about corporate taxation or environmental regulation" like, say, Mitt Romney.

replies(1): >>44522200 #
308. HDThoreaun ◴[] No.44520947{5}[source]
The sitting vice president is a monarchist, not just a little right of center
replies(2): >>44521335 #>>44521669 #
309. wrboyce ◴[] No.44520962{12}[source]
Abortions kill _people_? Hundreds of millions of people?
310. ghaff ◴[] No.44520963{3}[source]
From my perspective personal perspective, that whole category of social media has been destroyed. Pretty much no one I know/followed still posts. It’s gone from something I watched/posted very frequently to something I might glance at once in a very great while. And after initial flurries of interest neither Mastodon or Bluesky really achieved critical mass.
311. HDThoreaun ◴[] No.44521012{4}[source]
Trumps ability to control the narrative is pretty much wholly based on his tweeting skills. He is legitimately a top tier tweeter up there with @dril and the likes. It is incredibly entertaining and end of the day that’s what politics is about now.
replies(1): >>44522149 #
312. motorest ◴[] No.44521185{10}[source]
> If I'm at a bar and one man is a pedo, does that mean all people at the bar are pedos?

If that guy is a regular known for being a vocal supporter and often engages in discussions in said bar with attendees over how right he is and how reasonable his opinions are, and you still decide to stay and engage in those discussions still without thinking there is anything wrong with that... yeah, you are.

313. ncallaway ◴[] No.44521242{8}[source]
Right. And in my idea of politics, people who are willing to tolerate Nazis in social company are completely and utterly morally compromised.

I think all Nazis should be socially shunned. I think all those willing to knowingly socialize with Nazis should also be socially shunned.

replies(2): >>44522439 #>>44523455 #
314. diputsmonro ◴[] No.44521293{12}[source]
>> And if you found out accidentally that you find their beliefs unsavoury (say, they like abortion whilst you don’t, whatever) would you not sit with them?

Yes; if I find out that someone has the firmly held belief that me or my friends should be dead (I have several trans friends for example), then I would absolutely not sit with them. And if I found out that a friend of mine sat with people who had the "political opinion" that I should be "dealt with decisively", then I would be pretty upset with them and wonder if they feel the same way about me.

You cannot just treat "being a Nazi" as some normal difference of political opinion. There is a reason that being a Nazi is verboten. Their political ideology is that some people should be removed from society, by violence if necessary. I shouldn't have to say this, but murdering people you don't like should be off the table in civilized political discourse. And if you break bread with such people, then I believe you have something to answer for. What is so valuable about their friendship that you're willing to break bread with people who want to use the power of the state to murder people?

This is all happening in the context of, just yesterday, Grok literally praising Hitler, by name, for dealing with jews decisively - which it claims strong leaders need to do "every damn time"

(https://www.npr.org/2025/07/09/nx-s1-5462609/grok-elon-musk-...)

One needs to ask why Grok continues to have these nazi outbursts while other modern chatbots don't.

315. 0_____0 ◴[] No.44521303{5}[source]
I check in on bsky every now and then and I'm kind of surprised at how much is happening. My city posts bulletins there. I follow journos and some individuals I used to follow on twitter who migrated. There are shitposters. Idk why people think it's dead?
316. ghaff ◴[] No.44521324{6}[source]
Are you really? I found my personal network got pretty much shredded. At this point it doesn’t matter much if I used X or didn’t use it.
317. AnimalMuppet ◴[] No.44521335{6}[source]
Is he? I'm not so sure.

Yes, he endorses Yarvin. And that could be real. He could really believe it, and really want to follow it.

But it seems to me that Vance has been, shall we say, rather mobile on his positions. I wonder if we have ever seen what he really thinks. (You decide whether that would make him less dangerous, or more.)

318. emodendroket ◴[] No.44521342{4}[source]
I don’t think most people were betting that or if they were they weren’t thinking that hard about it. Musk can run a money loser as a hobby if he likes.
319. hypeatei ◴[] No.44521359{7}[source]
Because the new administration promised an unhinged DOJ. Biden was already vindicated in these pardons once Trump dropped legitimate charges against Eric Adams to try and further his political agenda. That and arresting judges, starting political witch hunts, etc...
320. CydeWeys ◴[] No.44521521{7}[source]
Hey man, just wanted to let you know, I had to downvote a bunch of your comments in this thread, not because I disagree with you, but because your commenting style is unnecessarily hostile and abusive. You can politely disagree with someone without calling their take "stupid and clueless", or any of the other mean-spirited things you've said elsewhere in the thread.
321. jxjnskkzxxhx ◴[] No.44521599{8}[source]
"I don't understand why ..." is a polite way of saying "I have some experience on the matter and have come up the belief that ...". The actual conclusion may still be wrong, but I hope this helps with your reading of my comment.
322. arp242 ◴[] No.44521615{10}[source]
You can't just run a few queries and base conclusion off that, you need to run tens of thousands of different ones and then somehow evaluate the responses. It's a huge amount of work.

Demanding empirical data and then coming up with shoddy half-arsed methodology is unserious.

323. dinkumthinkum ◴[] No.44521642{5}[source]
I generally agree with you but I think you were a little strong in your view that the OP was "oblivious." I only say this because an enormous percentage of companies hiring software engineers specifically with requirements of X years with Y language and W years with framework with silly name Z. I think they are also misguided in that but I think it is is too prevalent to say they are all oblivious but honestly that may actually be more of an apt description.
324. dinkumthinkum ◴[] No.44521669{6}[source]
A monarchist? Can you explain what a monarchist is? I would think having the position of Vice President would largely imply one is particularly not a monarchist.
replies(1): >>44522272 #
325. dinkumthinkum ◴[] No.44521730{5}[source]
It never experienced before? Were you aware of the Twitter "fail whale"? I think it is very hard to say that it has been a complete technical failure as many anticipated. I think if Musk had the "correct opinions" as you see them then many people would probably not have been making these proclamations.
326. irusensei ◴[] No.44521733{5}[source]
> I thought more people would see a guy doing ... that salute

I don't think that gesture was a nazi salute and was grossly taken out of context by everyone who hates the guy. I don't like Elon Musk either but stressing over something like that exacerbates the appearance that the accuser has a biased opinion. It also made the media who covered this for weeks desperate and very shallow.

replies(1): >>44523101 #
327. gammarator ◴[] No.44521746{5}[source]
JD Vance is not banned, he’s just widely blocked, which is something BlueSky users are free to do.
328. dinkumthinkum ◴[] No.44521774{6}[source]
You don't think the left had all these things in their favor? You think the media are all far right wing conservatives? People like Rachel Maddow and Oprah, you might consider to be much more right wing than even Dick Cheney? You don't think maybe there might be some issues out there that people voted on and maybe saying "I'm a middle class kld" and "I'm speaking" on a loop just didn't do it for them? No, it must be Murdoch, because Soros is a relative pauper by comparison. Really?
329. varjag ◴[] No.44521801{9}[source]
Someone had to actually write all that code and it inevitably shows up in the stats. People who work on the code most tend to know it the most. Although people in non-coding roles sometimes prefer to deny it.

Sure there had so be some frequent but low impact committers. But implying that people with lowest amount of code contribution must have more impact is ridiculous.

I mean, a staff engineer who stopped committing couple years ago? Yeah could be burnout, or could be some major contribution that's not in the stats. OTOH an IC on their second year in position who hadn't pushed a single line? Nah the institutional knowledge is safe without.

330. dinkumthinkum ◴[] No.44521857{4}[source]
So, you really think there are no issues that anyone voted on? It's just that the left has no money and no audience? People like Soros and Oprah are just so unbelievably poor that they are no match? Basically, if it were not for Joe Rogan, who has a large audience but hardly captures half of the country, and other comedians, people would have been sublimely enamored with the intellectual tour de force that is "I'm a middle class kid" and "Today is the day that we will do what we do every day?" Basically, this view is that if it wasn't for podcasts and perhaps "foreign intelligence operations" people would have right realized that they agree with a litany or far left extremist positions. I guess that must be the only answer ::shrug::.
replies(1): >>44523400 #
331. UltraSane ◴[] No.44521878{7}[source]
Fox News hyped up Hunter to distract people from the immense corruption between Jared Kushner and the Saudis. Kushner got a $2 billion investment fund from the Saudis.
replies(1): >>44522650 #
332. UltraSane ◴[] No.44521881{10}[source]
I'm not going to use a LLM that praises Hitler but you do you.
333. tonyhart7 ◴[] No.44521887{5}[source]
discord is manned in 20s-30s employee, valve who makes steam is also has small number of team

if you thinking you need 500s employee or something well you are wrong since many company do this for a long time and still do well

replies(1): >>44528527 #
334. rtkwe ◴[] No.44521892{6}[source]
I don't follow, why couldn't Yaccarino sell shares and to whom? As a fund raising?
replies(1): >>44526927 #
335. dinkumthinkum ◴[] No.44521894{6}[source]
> So, longer.

Yes, an order of magnitude longer.

replies(1): >>44522324 #
336. mapt ◴[] No.44522012{12}[source]
Actual victims of people like Elon Musk, Stephen Miller, and Laura Loomer are literally being gathered off the streets thousands at a time and sent to concentration camps.

Call it trolling all you like, but we just funded our immigration enforcement agency at a level consistent with being one the larger militaries in the world.

Adolph Hitler's partisan ideology, to the extent that it different from general German ideology at the time, was a phenomenon from 1919 to 1945. The Holocaust death camps range from 1942 to 1945.

If you're examining "Ideology" from a behavioral lens, you don't get to look at behavior analogous to the Nazis in the 1930's and excuse it as "Not Nazi Enough".

If you're examining "Ideology" as explicit/implicit endorsement by reference, that's happening too, regardless of whether you want to wrap it in layers of irony. Elon Musk just set his large AI company's flagship up as a 4chan/pol/ member that calls itself "Mecha-Hitler" and offers explicit, detailed antisemitic critiques; This is not even the first time (see the South African Genocide).

If you want to see the character of these people, prove it in the breach - listen to him argue with his collection of ethnonationalist sycophants on Twitter about whether he should be allowed to hire Indian slave labor to run his tech.

Your motte appears to be that the use of the word "Nazi" must refer to a direct continuation of the political party of Adolph Hitler as passed down through partisan rules of succession, for the usage of "literally", as opposed to either of these frames. I reject this pedantry as motivated reasoning. This term has power and that power is needed because shit's going down again in similar ways.

In critiquing a cartoon not produced by Disney as derivative, "He's a sort of Mickey Mouse" might describe any number of cartoon characters that give off the same vibe, versus saying "He's literally Mickey Mouse" describes a blatant ripoff or even actionable IP violation. Obviously these people are not being selected for office by the Fuhrer, and "Literally" has a useful meaning here separate from that designation.

Whereas "Nazi" might be diluted into common hyperbole over the decades, "Literal Nazi" stands as essential terminology to refer to somebody who endorses ideas compatible with Umberto Eco's list, who puts into practice Roger Griffin's "Palingenetic ultranationalism", who scapegoats an ethnic minority to the point of advocating violent action, while at the same time adopting & hanging out with those adopting some of the symbology of the historical German fascist state.

337. jmcqk6 ◴[] No.44522121{6}[source]
> Refusing to use something because of who created it or who benefits from it is a bit too much I think, to the point of being unworkable depending on the case.

Having a hard and fast rule that can always be applied about this is impossible. We're just too interconnected and interdependent, and there are too many unknowns.

That doesn't mean we can just ignore it and not think about it. We owe it to each other to still do our best, even if it's not going to be perfect.

338. exoverito ◴[] No.44522200{9}[source]
The Roman Empire engaged in genocide and slavery against many of their adversaries, yet Rome is still viewed as the peak of ancient civilization. The USSR imprisoned millions and caused the deaths of tens of millions more, yet leftists try focusing on the free healthcare and education. The United States engaged in ethnic cleansing of the native Americans, yet given enough time, such crimes have faded in saliency. Manifest Destiny was actually the inspiration for Hitler's ideas of lebensraum, invasion of Russia, and genocide of the Slavs. If Hitler had won he probably would have been considered more akin to Caesar or Napoleon. History is written by the victors and all that.
replies(2): >>44522829 #>>44526936 #
339. wredcoll ◴[] No.44522226{8}[source]
> In the case of covid there was no comparable enemy. "Declaring war" on a virus would not have anywhere near the same impact as using the military to actually wage war on another country.

I disagree. Look at the way we talk about it, "the covid", "covid did this", etc. It absolutely would have worked as an enemy to declare war on and I don't think the vast majority of people would consider it trump's fault if he just got out ahead of it.

Imagine a world where he didn't do trumpy things and instead did things like talking about how this is a national, world wide foe we all need to work together to defeat, I know it's hard, we'll all make sacrifices, but we're the nation that beat the nazis and went to the moon, we can win this war on covid. For further details here are my science advisors talking about the latest info on counter measures.

Obviously this is imagining a world where trump isn't trump, but I very much believe obama/clinton/bush/etc would have been re-elected.

Keep in mind that we also have a strong tendency to re-elect the incumbent anyways and covid is an amazing opportunity to blame all your previous fuck ups on this new "totally unforseeable/preventable disease cataclysm!"

replies(1): >>44525978 #
340. mgdev ◴[] No.44522271{3}[source]
Profitable operations, doubling previous adjusted EBITDA. [0]

While not a yet an ROI-positive takeover, on an incredible valuation growth trajectory from the post-acquisition low. Likely to be positive the minute xAI meaningfully monetizes Grok. [1]

Gains strategic access to global training data, and real-time human sentiment. [2]

Incredible built-in distribution for new AI-powered products. [3]

Literally tipped the scales in an election, a role typically reserved for traditional media companies. [4]

Yes, a total failure of a business. /s

[0]:https://x.com/Austen/status/1887363437518270757

[1]:https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/12/the-xai-x-merger-is-a-good...

[2]:https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-says-xai-will-u...

[3]:https://digiday.com/marketing/with-600-million-users-xs-lind...

[4]:https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/07/x-formerly-twitter-becomes...

341. mapt ◴[] No.44522272{7}[source]
JD Vance is/was the personal assistant to Peter Thiel, a tech billionaire who believes we need to get beyond the weaknesses of democracy & egalitarianism in order to preserve the sort of freedom that billionaires need to have. Thiel and Musk are also the financial & political patrons of Mencius Moldbug / Curtis Yarvin, who AFAICT is the person to reintroduce the idea of non-electoral monarchy/autocracy as a credible goal to politics, out loud.

> In his blog Unqualified Reservations, which he wrote from 2007 to 2014, and in his later newsletter Gray Mirror, which he started in 2020, he argues that American democracy is a failed experiment[10] that should be replaced by an accountable monarchy, similar to the governance structure of corporations.[11]

Thiel runs Palantir, whose specialization (again: competing with Musk) is making the authoritarian, panopticon dystopias of science fiction more physically feasible with AI analysis of large volumes of arbitrary data. A system like West Berlin where every third person is informing on their neighbors to a human Stasi officer is horrendously inefficient firehose of data, almost impossible to administrate effectively, and Palantir aims to fix that. Palantir was responding to a market demand from the resurgent US intelligence agencies for this sort of administration for COIN / counterterrorism / occupied territory in Iraq & Afghanistan.

https://zeteo.com/p/peter-thiel-jd-vance-trump-maga-broligar...

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/06/09/curtis-yarvin-...

Thiel in his VC hat has also been deeply involved with ycombinator.

342. bbarnett ◴[] No.44522284{11}[source]
Yes, the whole motion matters. I've seen lots of historical documentaries with footage, and I've never seen a nazi salute with that motion.

You have to really work at it, to think Elon made such a salute, but others have not. It's ridiculous and absurd.

When I see and hear mad lunacy amd character assassination such as this, I immediately think "well everything else said about Elon must be made up too"

You speak of "good faith", do you know what this means?

It means that best intentions should be presumed, not worst, when examining the acts of others.

Have you done this?

replies(2): >>44522741 #>>44525822 #
343. timschmidt ◴[] No.44522292{11}[source]
I don't think I'm the one being presumptuous or demanding. I've actually tried to help you make a stronger argument. Shooting a hundred or even a thousand queries to 3 or 4 LLMs and shoving the results through established sentiment analysis algorithms is something ChatGPT can one-shot in just about any language. You demand people agree with your opinion and refuse to spend 20 minutes supporting it with facts. Not my problem, I tried to help. You may not see it that way. That's fine.
344. ceejayoz ◴[] No.44522324{7}[source]
If you were asked "what have you accomplished over the last couple of years" and your answer was "I increased the maximum character count config setting", do you expect a raise from your boss for the great work?

If you wanna make the case for "Musk accelerated innovation at Twitter", more is required than "you can make longer posts" IMO.

345. isolli ◴[] No.44522339{5}[source]
Bluesky is not better (see for instance [0]). I think no one has cracked how to properly run a microblogging website.

[0] https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/did-i-publish-the-private...

replies(1): >>44522793 #
346. PaulHoule ◴[] No.44522391[source]
It's the horror of two-sided markets. You could probably turn off the DNS and unplug the server it would keep running somehow.
347. PaulHoule ◴[] No.44522439{9}[source]
Calling people names to dehumanize them is a page from the Nazi playbook.

20 years of anti-fascists who are jealous that some other people have better footwear calling wolf was a magic spell that brought real fascists into existence.

(If you had to say what was wrong about Twitter in a short text it is that it is easy to say something like the above message in a short text but impossible to conclusively refute as it involves introducing concepts such as "The meaning of a communication is its effect", "The purpose of a system is what it does", "Chaos Magick is real", and that even though physics is real some things obey the laws of 'pataphysics instead.)

348. PaulHoule ◴[] No.44522463{6}[source]
Which leaves me asking: why are you still there?
349. xnx ◴[] No.44522558{3}[source]
1. Agreed. One of the worst timed purchases of all time.

2. Unfortunately, nothing has truly displaced Twitter. Is Meta even still trying with Threads? I don't see ads, but I have to wonder why any real company would risk advertising on Twitter.

3. Eh. As a casual user, I haven't noticed any difference. For a mostly finished product, there were probably were a bunch of overpaid do-nothings on staff.

4. TSLA stock price seems impervious to reality.

350. HideousKojima ◴[] No.44522650{8}[source]
It was the New York Post (not Fox) that broke the story about the laptop, and that got censored by various social media companies acting on the (false) advice of federal agents to do so.
replies(1): >>44525778 #
351. davidw ◴[] No.44522793{6}[source]
Blue Sky has a lot of left leaning folks, but the ownership isn't putting their thumb on the scales for that; it occurred naturally.

And I find that there are some thoughtful conservatives who do ok there. I follow some of them.

352. davidw ◴[] No.44522829{10}[source]
Ancient Rome is history, not an example to follow.

Connecting the USSR with free health care and education is, uh, "nice try, but completely wide of the mark". We have free education in the US after all, as do most wealthy countries. Denmark and Italy are night and day from the USSR politically and economically.

I think you can both recognize that the past of the US has some very ugly moments while still thinking the ideals were directionally correct and that we should attempt to live up to them.

353. nlitened ◴[] No.44522943{5}[source]
Now I’m curious to know whom you’ve elected in your home country
354. jhp123 ◴[] No.44523101{6}[source]
I watched the video with surrounding context and it looked like a Nazi salute. Did he ever deny it was a Nazi salute?
replies(2): >>44523462 #>>44523599 #
355. EnergyAmy ◴[] No.44523185{11}[source]
Can't reply to the parent comment directly, but no, they're not arguing in good faith. The Wikipedia article has a gif of it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk_salute_controversy

That wasn't a wave and the other commenter is full of shit.

356. driverdan ◴[] No.44523267{4}[source]
cis is not a slur or attack. The only people who believe this are the transphobes.
357. petersellers ◴[] No.44523400{5}[source]
There's a lot of assumptions being made in this comment and none of them are correct.
358. ◴[] No.44523455{9}[source]
359. engineer_22 ◴[] No.44523462{7}[source]
yes
360. engineer_22 ◴[] No.44523505{9}[source]
> Does ChatGPT start ranting about Jews and "White Genocide" unprompted? How can I even quantify that it doesn't do that?

Grok doesnt do that.

361. davidw ◴[] No.44523599{7}[source]
It's not just the salute, either, which was pretty clearly a Nazi salute that he did twice. It was support for the white Afrikaaners and the AfD in Germany and ripping the aid away from children in Africa, killing them, and on and on.
362. rtkwe ◴[] No.44523913{7}[source]
There was also AFAIK never any real evidence Hunter actually succeeded in doing anything of actual value for his clients. He was definitely going around representing that he could influence or get people meetings with his dad but there was never an actual tat from the Joe Biden side.
363. gjm11 ◴[] No.44524107{7}[source]
More fool you.

There are two separate "the story"s. One is a story about Hunter Biden's laptop. One is a story about political interference and/or bias at Twitter.

At least some of the story about Hunter Biden's laptop was true. That doesn't tell us anything about whether the story about political interference and/or bias at Twitter was true.

The linked article argues that (1) there wasn't in fact political interference at Twitter, (2) although Twitter employees (like employees of many many many tech companies) lean left, there was no sign that anything in the company's treatment of the H.B. laptop story was politically motivated, and (3) the fact that Twitter nerfed links to the NY Post's story about H.B.'s laptop for one day (a) more likely increased than decreased interest in that story and (b) had no impact to speak of on the presidential election anyway.

Of course it might be wrong about any or all of those things, but whether the NY Post's story about the laptop was actually true or not has nothing to do with any of them.

(The assertion being made upthread here is that Twitter's handling of the story was a deliberate attempt to "suppress" Donald Trump and that it handed the election to Joe Biden. It's all about the second story, not the first one.)

replies(1): >>44527591 #
364. gjm11 ◴[] No.44524135{8}[source]
wredcoll doesn't mean that COVID-19 was good for the US, any more than they mean that 9/11 was good for the US. They mean (rightly or wrongly) that it should have been easy for the sitting US government to respond to it in a way that made itself look good and helped it get re-elected, just as G W Bush was able to respond to 9/11 in a way that made him look good and helped him get re-elected.

(I'm not convinced that that's right, but it isn't refuted by the fact that COVID-19 was devastating for the world in general and the US in particular.)

365. freejazz ◴[] No.44524161{8}[source]
For sure, hence the question...
366. mapt ◴[] No.44524634{5}[source]
Bluesky only has a future as a Twitter replacement. There are strong network effects favoring high utility of the dominant platform.

Take a look at the graph I linked. Threads drank Bluesky's milkshake.

replies(1): >>44526805 #
367. reverendsteveii ◴[] No.44524895{8}[source]
Not at all relevant. Address the merits of the argument, not whether or not most people like the person who heard it. Though you'll be happy to find out that this disagreement never actually made it to court and eventually Elon went through with his original deal voluntarily.
368. reverendsteveii ◴[] No.44524912{7}[source]
When you're used to having an entire team of people to act as a buffer between your impulses and their easily predictable consequences following through on your commitments and getting exactly what you asked for feels unfair.
369. gamblor956 ◴[] No.44525711{7}[source]
Trump's children are Hunter Biden on crack. There's more of them and they're way worse than Hunter.

We literally have multiple Trump children openly bragging in public about how paying them gives one access to their father.

Nobody cares. Nobody would have cared about Hunter either.

370. UltraSane ◴[] No.44525778{9}[source]
Again, Hunter Biden is completely irrelevant and hyped up by the GOP Propaganda machine to distract people from Trump's blatant corruption. Biden was 1 million times less corrupt as President than Trump. This is a really standard part of the GOP playbook, they did it with Hillary Clinton and Benghazi. They did it with the "migrant caravan of DOOM".
371. UltraSane ◴[] No.44525802{11}[source]
There is also the REALLY strange expression he has on his face when he does it. No one has that expression when just "waving"
372. UltraSane ◴[] No.44525822{12}[source]
" and I've never seen a nazi salute with that motion."

That is interesting because Musk's salute is so identical to Hitler's including timing he must of practiced it.

373. ndiddy ◴[] No.44525978{9}[source]
I agree with everyone else that Covid definitely lost Trump the 2020 election. Saying it would have been a lay-up for someone who isn't Trump is meaningless when we're talking about Trump. When there's a crisis people crave strong leaders who can guide them through it, and Trump completely fucked up his messaging. One day everything will be fine in a few weeks, the next day Covid is extremely serious, then he's trying to get people to use horse medicine from Tractor Supply as a home remedy, etc. Compare that to how people around the nation were paying attention to Andrew Cuomo's daily press conferences. Despite Cuomo making extremely incompetent decisions around Covid (such as using nursing homes as overflow space for Covid patients, causing over 15,000 deaths), he got a huge popularity bump at the time because he appeared strong and competent and Trump didn't.
replies(1): >>44527851 #
374. BolexNOLA ◴[] No.44526036{7}[source]
That may be the case but from what I’m reading overall engagement is down this year. So I’m not really sure what metrics we’re using to say “they’re thriving” when ad dollars are down, engagement is down, user acquisition is down, valuation is down…
375. SV_BubbleTime ◴[] No.44526548{9}[source]
Yes, right.

There is mastadon - dead for mass market, threads - dead entirely.

How many times do people need to be told that network effects are really real?

376. api ◴[] No.44526583{8}[source]
I have no interest in any of them. The Twitter-style format is inherently toxic and always devolves into a trolling competition or echo chambers. The short format prioritizes stupid takes that fit in a sentence or two over well thought out ideas.
377. CPLX ◴[] No.44526805{6}[source]
I have my doubts about how real that Threads traffic is. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an organic link to Threads or a business list a profile, I don’t even know what the icon looks like. Bluesky I am seeing all the time.

Maybe that’s just anecdotal but given how frequently meta tries to trick me into clicking on a Threads link I have my suspicions about all that traffic.

378. aorloff ◴[] No.44526927{7}[source]
Its called a road show.
379. phatskat ◴[] No.44526936{10}[source]
This feels like a lot of putting positions onto a group for them in order to discount their beliefs.

Most left left left folk that I know have zero idealization about Rome or the USSR, and haven’t forgotten the atrocities the US has committed both home and abroad.

Anyone who seriously talks about the Roman Empire without wrestling with the realities of it is putting their head in the sand.

Anyone pining for the USSR probably doesn’t know a lot of what went on during its existence. Similarly most people actually wanting some form of communism or socialism probably don’t mean “just like the USSR”.

380. jacooper ◴[] No.44527042{3}[source]
It's irrelevant, no body uses it
381. throwpoaster ◴[] No.44527591{8}[source]
> At least some of the story about Hunter Biden's laptop was true. That doesn't tell us anything about whether the story about political interference and/or bias at Twitter was true.

Yes it does.

382. wredcoll ◴[] No.44527851{10}[source]
Ok, yes, taking it from the other perspective, trump being trump he was incapable of handling covid in a way that would get him re-elected.

If he had a chance of being re-elected, it was certainly dead after his attempts at dealing with covid.

383. motorest ◴[] No.44528527{6}[source]
> discord is manned in 20s-30s employee, valve who makes steam is also has small number of team

Discord is renowned for it's small engineering team, but I'm afraid you somehow claimed it has half the staff it does. A few years ago Steam reportedly employed around 90 engineers. Is it less than 500? I guess. What does that comparison tells you? Well, nothing. You need staff to roll out new features on multiple projects. If you add no feature, have no projects to work on, or have nothing to do then you don't need engineers. If your business plan has ambitious goals then you need engineers to achieve them. If all you're doing is keeping the lights on then you barely need anyone. Does this sound obvious?

I've been at companies that doubled their engineering staff overnight because they made a call to invest in a feature. I worked at companies that fired an entire floor of engineers because management decided some projects could be put on cold storage to improve financials. Why do staffing agencies are so popular? Have you ever thought about it?

384. phatskat ◴[] No.44528732{5}[source]
> Agenda setting power > platform power

The Alt-Right Playbook feels like a bummer version of XKCD for these discussions: [Control the Conversation](https://youtu.be/CaPgDQkmqqM)

385. paride5745 ◴[] No.44529438{3}[source]
Definitely.

RSS is still great for news and Signal/Telegram/Whatsapp are more than enough to keep connected with friends&family.

386. paride5745 ◴[] No.44529484{3}[source]
Bluesky is not a real decentralized system as the company behind it say. Bluesky (the company) controls most key parts of the network, and it is basically impossible to setup a really decentralised alternative provider for the ATProto network, like you can do today with ActivityPub (Mastodon) or Nostr.

Sure, you can setup you PDS and own your data, but it is useless without the Relays and a self-hosted Firehose, and running you own website is basically impossible.

And lastly, let's keep in mind that BSky is a commercial entity, not a no-profit like Mastodon or a commmunity effort like Nostr.

And yes, I am ignoring the political toxicity of the network because I think the technical aspects are bad enough.

387. bydlocoder ◴[] No.44529493{5}[source]
Language is relevant, Haskell or Scala written in functional style uses quite foreign terms and paradigms. Like, wtf is Kleisli arrow?