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538 points donohoe | 5 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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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.
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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.

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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.

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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.

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1. 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.

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2. watwut ◴[] No.44518063[source]
See, example of a guy thay calls X uncensored despite it literally doing that. Just not to fascists.
3. guappa ◴[] No.44518928[source]
Censoring people who disagree with you is not the same as no censorship.
4. MSFT_Edging ◴[] No.44519844[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.

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5. PaulHoule ◴[] No.44522463[source]
Which leaves me asking: why are you still there?