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539 points donohoe | 143 comments | | HN request time: 1.744s | source | bottom
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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 #
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 #
1. 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 #
2. baobun ◴[] No.44515280[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 #
3. makeitdouble ◴[] No.44515328[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.

replies(9): >>44516253 #>>44517058 #>>44517480 #>>44517867 #>>44517885 #>>44518523 #>>44519853 #>>44519968 #>>44521342 #
4. CivBase ◴[] No.44515388[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 #
5. AirMax98 ◴[] No.44515763[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.

6. acjohnson55 ◴[] No.44515899[source]
I give a lot more weight to the $250M Elon spent on the campaign.
replies(3): >>44517510 #>>44518321 #>>44518814 #
7. Centigonal ◴[] No.44516253[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 #
8. Lu2025 ◴[] No.44516455[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.

9. ◴[] No.44516991[source]
10. raydev ◴[] No.44517018{3}[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 #
11. davidw ◴[] No.44517058[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

replies(5): >>44517233 #>>44518053 #>>44518173 #>>44521733 #>>44522339 #
12. goodkiwi ◴[] No.44517113[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
13. phs318u ◴[] No.44517159{4}[source]
Higher value AI company? Not for long if "mechahitler" keeps popping up.
replies(1): >>44517554 #
14. petesergeant ◴[] No.44517233{3}[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.
replies(3): >>44517271 #>>44519143 #>>44521324 #
15. davidw ◴[] No.44517271{4}[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 #
16. petesergeant ◴[] No.44517281{5}[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 #
17. biztos ◴[] No.44517322[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.

18. cryptoegorophy ◴[] No.44517329[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 #
19. mistermann ◴[] No.44517480[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 #
20. energy123 ◴[] No.44517510{3}[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 #
21. raydev ◴[] No.44517554{5}[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 #
22. Simon_O_Rourke ◴[] No.44517630[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 #
23. PicassoCTs ◴[] No.44517675{3}[source]
Proofing that it was a real good back end team..
replies(1): >>44519397 #
24. bydlocoder ◴[] No.44517682[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 #
25. jxjnskkzxxhx ◴[] No.44517867[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 #
26. motorest ◴[] No.44517873[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(3): >>44519307 #>>44520416 #>>44521642 #
27. motorest ◴[] No.44517885[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.

28. motorest ◴[] No.44517967[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 #
29. watwut ◴[] No.44518053{3}[source]
They liked the gesture. The rationalization is just public pretending they would theoretically mind.
30. watwut ◴[] No.44518063{3}[source]
See, example of a guy thay calls X uncensored despite it literally doing that. Just not to fascists.
31. watwut ◴[] No.44518089[source]
I domt see screenshots of tweeta anymore tho. That one defintely stopped in places where I go.
32. giingyui ◴[] No.44518173{3}[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 #
33. guelo ◴[] No.44518411{4}[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.
34. ulfw ◴[] No.44518510{4}[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 #
35. michaelmrose ◴[] No.44518523[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 #
36. giingyui ◴[] No.44518601{5}[source]
We all have our ideas on politics. Not all ideas are as universal as some think or pretend.
replies(3): >>44520904 #>>44521242 #>>44524161 #
37. collyw ◴[] No.44518725{5}[source]
"literal Nazi" What utter nonsense.
replies(2): >>44519138 #>>44519807 #
38. guappa ◴[] No.44518769[source]
> where the news happens

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

39. Cthulhu_ ◴[] No.44518814{3}[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.

40. makeitdouble ◴[] No.44518886{3}[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 #
41. guappa ◴[] No.44518928{3}[source]
Censoring people who disagree with you is not the same as no censorship.
42. notahacker ◴[] No.44519046{6}[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
43. notahacker ◴[] No.44519111[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...

44. Applejinx ◴[] No.44519143{4}[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.

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

Really? THAT is what you learned?

46. giingyui ◴[] No.44519178{5}[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.

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47. bbarnett ◴[] No.44519181[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,

48. pyrale ◴[] No.44519217{3}[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.
49. CursedSilicon ◴[] No.44519230{6}[source]
[flagged]
replies(1): >>44519485 #
50. ◴[] No.44519276{6}[source]
51. WindyMiller ◴[] No.44519280{6}[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 #
52. mnky9800n ◴[] No.44519287[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.
53. varjag ◴[] No.44519307{3}[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 #
54. Ray20 ◴[] No.44519311{7}[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 #
55. sflicht ◴[] No.44519397{4}[source]
Not good at engineering their own job security
56. mrcarrot ◴[] No.44519518{4}[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 #
57. guappa ◴[] No.44519530{6}[source]
Account created 3 days ago with the sole purpose of trolling.
58. mapt ◴[] No.44519539[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 #
59. guappa ◴[] No.44519542{8}[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.
60. jxjnskkzxxhx ◴[] No.44519550{4}[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 #
61. motorest ◴[] No.44519559{4}[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 #
62. mapt ◴[] No.44519602{8}[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 #
63. phanimahesh ◴[] No.44519623{4}[source]
Senior ICs tend to commit relatively unfrequently compared to junior ICs who keep pumping tickets.
replies(1): >>44520207 #
64. CPLX ◴[] No.44519660[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 #
65. ChocolateGod ◴[] No.44519668{9}[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 #
66. CPLX ◴[] No.44519678{6}[source]
Nazi is a noun.

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

replies(1): >>44520014 #
67. ChocolateGod ◴[] No.44519728{7}[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 #
68. motorest ◴[] No.44519759{8}[source]
[flagged]
replies(1): >>44519967 #
69. MSFT_Edging ◴[] No.44519807{6}[source]
If it quacks like a duck.
70. MSFT_Edging ◴[] No.44519819{7}[source]
The "thinker" is one of the main audiences of twitter now.

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

71. MSFT_Edging ◴[] No.44519844{3}[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 #
72. myko ◴[] No.44519853[source]
Seems like it is mostly bots and neo-Nazi adjacent folks
73. rob74 ◴[] No.44519968[source]
Ok, everything can be seen as a success if you set your expectations low enough...
74. giingyui ◴[] No.44520014{7}[source]
Swap it for vegan. Or cricketer. Or beekeeper.
replies(2): >>44520078 #>>44520174 #
75. brookst ◴[] No.44520027[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 #
76. stirfish ◴[] No.44520076{8}[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.
77. CPLX ◴[] No.44520078{8}[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 #
78. stirfish ◴[] No.44520106{5}[source]
It's an easy (but often wrong) transition from "I don't understand why" to "it must not be necessary".
replies(1): >>44521599 #
79. bitlax ◴[] No.44520157{3}[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.
80. stirfish ◴[] No.44520174{8}[source]
You didn't need to make an account for this.
81. mortehu ◴[] No.44520179[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.
82. foldr ◴[] No.44520185{6}[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.
83. varjag ◴[] No.44520207{5}[source]
Not in my experience, as long as we are talking about ICs.
84. varjag ◴[] No.44520225{5}[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.
85. varjag ◴[] No.44520250{5}[source]
Reportedly a portion of them were thinking so hard they did not commit anything at all.
replies(1): >>44520630 #
86. giingyui ◴[] No.44520390{9}[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 #
87. wonderwonder ◴[] No.44520395[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 #
88. morngn ◴[] No.44520416{3}[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.

89. guappa ◴[] No.44520593{8}[source]
If you are a regular at a bar of a well known nazi, you're a nazi.
90. maest ◴[] No.44520621{8}[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 #
91. morngn ◴[] No.44520630{6}[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 #
92. karel-3d ◴[] No.44520721[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.

93. intended ◴[] No.44520729[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 #
94. monocasa ◴[] No.44520744[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.
95. matthewdgreen ◴[] No.44520760{4}[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.
96. ◴[] No.44520779{6}[source]
97. matthewdgreen ◴[] No.44520787{8}[source]
Do you think that reprogramming a smart model to the point where it produces Hitler takes is any better?
98. davidw ◴[] No.44520904{6}[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 #
99. HDThoreaun ◴[] No.44520947{3}[source]
The sitting vice president is a monarchist, not just a little right of center
replies(2): >>44521335 #>>44521669 #
100. wrboyce ◴[] No.44520962{10}[source]
Abortions kill _people_? Hundreds of millions of people?
101. ghaff ◴[] No.44520963[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.
102. motorest ◴[] No.44521185{8}[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.

103. ncallaway ◴[] No.44521242{6}[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 #
104. diputsmonro ◴[] No.44521293{10}[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.

105. 0_____0 ◴[] No.44521303{3}[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?
106. ghaff ◴[] No.44521324{4}[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.
107. AnimalMuppet ◴[] No.44521335{4}[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.)

108. emodendroket ◴[] No.44521342[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.
109. CydeWeys ◴[] No.44521521{5}[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.
110. jxjnskkzxxhx ◴[] No.44521599{6}[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.
111. dinkumthinkum ◴[] No.44521642{3}[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.
112. dinkumthinkum ◴[] No.44521669{4}[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 #
113. dinkumthinkum ◴[] No.44521730{3}[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.
114. irusensei ◴[] No.44521733{3}[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 #
115. gammarator ◴[] No.44521746{3}[source]
JD Vance is not banned, he’s just widely blocked, which is something BlueSky users are free to do.
116. dinkumthinkum ◴[] No.44521774{4}[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?
117. varjag ◴[] No.44521801{7}[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.

118. UltraSane ◴[] No.44521881{8}[source]
I'm not going to use a LLM that praises Hitler but you do you.
119. tonyhart7 ◴[] No.44521887{3}[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 #
120. mapt ◴[] No.44522012{10}[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.

121. jmcqk6 ◴[] No.44522121{4}[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.

122. exoverito ◴[] No.44522200{7}[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.
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123. mapt ◴[] No.44522272{5}[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.

124. bbarnett ◴[] No.44522284{9}[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?

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125. isolli ◴[] No.44522339{3}[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 #
126. PaulHoule ◴[] No.44522439{7}[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.)

127. PaulHoule ◴[] No.44522463{4}[source]
Which leaves me asking: why are you still there?
128. xnx ◴[] No.44522558[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.

129. davidw ◴[] No.44522793{4}[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.

130. davidw ◴[] No.44522829{8}[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.

131. jhp123 ◴[] No.44523101{4}[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 #
132. EnergyAmy ◴[] No.44523185{9}[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.

133. ◴[] No.44523455{7}[source]
134. engineer_22 ◴[] No.44523462{5}[source]
yes
135. davidw ◴[] No.44523599{5}[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.
136. freejazz ◴[] No.44524161{6}[source]
For sure, hence the question...
137. mapt ◴[] No.44524634{3}[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 #
138. UltraSane ◴[] No.44525802{9}[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"
139. UltraSane ◴[] No.44525822{10}[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.

140. CPLX ◴[] No.44526805{4}[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.

141. phatskat ◴[] No.44526936{8}[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”.

142. motorest ◴[] No.44528527{4}[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?

143. phatskat ◴[] No.44528732{3}[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)