Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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

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.

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?

We all have our ideas on politics. Not all ideas are as universal as some think or pretend.

"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.

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.