Elon Musk & Twitter thread (updates) -- free speech and information control unrest

[Yazata]

Will Elon Musk's ultimatum cost him Twitter?

Of course not. He still owns it.

His whole poll is about whether he should keep operating it day to day, or deputize somebody else to do it (with Elon remaining the owner and ultimate boss).

The poll has either spectacularly backfired - if Musk was looking for an ego-boost - or it has been a huge success in getting him off the rather large hook he has found himself caught on since his purchase of Twitter was, basically, forced through.

The BBC will have to explain their thinking there.

Elon has already said that he planned to appoint somebody else to head up Twitter, since despite being a fabled workaholic, he's spread very thin between Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and now Twitter. (Any one would be a big job for any single CEO.) So his "stepping down" would just be him putting that plan into effect now rather than later.

The BBC would probably love to think that his "stepping down" will humiliate him, discredit his free-speech activism and restore the left to control of the conversation. (The BBC is the paradigm of "Establishment Journalism".) But it wouldn't, since I'm sure whoever Elon chooses to manage Twitter's day-to-day operations will be somebody Elon trusts and who shares his free-speech vision and his vision of what Twitter can potentially be.

And it doesn't get Elon off any "hooks" either, since he will remain as Twitter's owner.

So... if he does what he's been told by the people and quits - who takes over?

That's a good question. I'm sure that Elon knows a lot more high-level people than me, so he can probably short-list some names and sound them out.

He's been a one-man band since his arrival at the social media company. There's been no regular mention of a deputy, or someone with whom he has worked closely...

His first job has been to clean out the rot that infested the place. And that means 90% of the people that worked there. He's gotten rid of about 75% of Twitter's workforce, and Twitter is working just as well as before. (That says something.) Seeing as how Twitter's biggest expense was probably payroll, it may be operating in the black now. (Something the old management couldn't manage.)

But before you dust off your CV, consider for a moment the job description of Twitter CEO. You have the world's most demanding boss

Who built Tesla, the world's most exciting and valuable automobile company, when everyone said that Tesla was going to go bankrupt and how starting a new automobile company in this day and age is almost impossible. Remember how everyone was shorting the stock, since there was no way it could possibly succeed. And now look: One of the automotive majors up with Ford and GM, the world leader in EVs (supposed to be the wave of the future according to the greenies), to say nothing of full-self-driving, the Tesla-bots, and the AI advances...

Who created SpaceX, which again was never expected to succeed (a little start-up company, compete with the likes of Boeing?? That's crazy!!), but today provides the United States its only human spaceflight access to space, launches more mass to orbit than all other launchers in the world combined, which remains the only space organization public or private able to land and reuse orbital class boosters, and has the potential to become the world's largest telecommunications company with Starlink. And beyond all that, has the crazy ambition to open up the entire solar system to human spaceflight with Starship. (Pure science-fiction...)

And who has visions of Twitter taking on Youtube by showing longer videos and livestreams, of Twitter replaying the success of Paypal (Elon was one of its founders too) by processing payments (so he knows that business), with Twitter becoming a source of crowd-sourced news that threatens to replace conventional journalism (that's already happening), and ultimately serving as the venue for much of the world's conversation, without BBC or Washington Post style partisan thumbs on the scale.

I think that quite a few business people would jump at the opportunity to work with Elon and be a major part of making a his dreams a reality yet again.

you inherit a demoralised workforce - half of it recently laid off

One reason why Twitter had become so "woke" is its workforce of young San Francisco hipsters. Elon needs to replace most of them with people enthusiastic about and loyal to his vision, not an internal "resistance" more interested in advancing their own social-change agendas.

and the remainder under instruction to work long hours.

Isn't that traditional in Silicon Valley startups? At least it was, in the Valley's golden years. Time for Elon to bring it back and re-inject a little excitement. Pay top performing employees with ownership stakes in the manner of traditional SV stock options. Low pay, long hours, but with the opportunity to get filthy rich if the company succeeds.

The finances are bleak according to Musk: he says Twitter is operating at a loss of $4m per day.

Maybe, but I'd guess that cutting Twitter's payroll cut much of its costs. And there's that potential on the horizon of even bigger things.

And then there is the legacy of chaotic decision-making which has defined recent months at Twitter...

It isn't nearly as chaotic as it appears to the establishment news who base their opinions on interviewing angry laid-off former employees.

A new CEO who is less intent on relentless revolution might calm investors and improve employee morale.

"Relentless revolution" (in the business sense) is what made Tesla and SpaceX the biggest entrepeneurial success stories of the last 20 years. It's precisely the promise of Twitter and what will differentiate it from declining social media platforms like Facebook.

Currently every second tweet in my timeline is people threatening to leave Twitter or complaining about it. A social network obsessed with itself is arguably not fulfilling its potential.

That depends on who you "follow". Follow establishment media accounts and celebrities, and you might hear many threats to leave. (Few of them will, because Twitter is where the conversation is and all of the excitement.)

perhaps he's now learning the hard way that social media, and the people who bring it to life, are not machines. Perhaps the future of this troubled firm lies not in the stars, but with feet firmly on solid ground. If he'll allow it...

Elon's the most successful entrepeneurial visionary of his generation (todays Andrew Carnegie and Thomas Edison rolled into one), while the BBC struggles along on government subsidies. The fact that they are talking about Elon and Elon isn't talking about them shows very well where the excitement is.

[Yazata]

There's talk that Twitter has just filed the regulatory paperwork needed to become a payment processor similar to Paypal. Elon was one of the founders of Paypal, so he already knows that business.

And it appears that Elon is currently back in Starbase and is once again "Elon Musk" and is no longer "Mr Tweet" in San Francisco. Unclear if the has found a new manager for Twitter yet.

[Yazata]

Elon says that the last three months have been "extremely tough" for him, since he had to save Twitter from bankruptcy while devoting necessary attention to Tesla and SpaceX.

But things are looking up and Twitter is "trending to break-even"

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1622299765848395779

In other Twitter news, they have just expanded the character limit for tweets from 200 characters to 4000. This only applies to paid members of Twitter Blue. (It's only $8/mo.) Twitter is also expanding the length of videos that Twitter Blue users can post on the service and are rolling out a monetization scheme that allows content creators to make money from their content. This moves Twitter more squarely into the Youtube space.

[RainbowUnicorn]

micro payment system on twitter so you can send someone $5.00 from your credit card
with an ability to load for instance, $10.00 on to your twitter account and then donate $1.00 to any other twitter user.

[Yazata]

https://twitter.com/carlabitcoin/status/...3946380288

[Yazata]

Elon has just announced that he's hired a CEO for Twitter. It's a woman, identity still unknown, and she starts in ~6 weeks he says. "My role will transition to being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops." (And remaining owner of course.)

Predictably, Twitter is abuzz about who it will be:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1656748197308674048

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[C C]

Elon has just announced that he's hired a CEO for Twitter. It's a woman, identity still unknown, and she starts in ~6 weeks he says. "My role will transition to being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops." (And remaining owner of course.)

Predictably, Twitter is abuzz about who it will be:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1656748197308674048

Here's that April 18 interview that has been posited as being what caused Musk to take notice of or consider Linda Yaccarino as his successor.

EXCERPT (Elon): "It's totally cool to say that you want to have your advertising appear in certain places in Twitter and not in other places. But it is not cool to try to say [advertisers dictate] what Twitter will do [overall], and if that means losing advertising dollars, we lose it. But freedom of speech is Paramount..."

Linda Yaccarino interviews Elon Musk ... https://youtu.be/ypZNWjPpOuI

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/ypZNWjPpOuI

[Yazata]

Great video by the Babylon Bee in Twitter Headquarters (and Elon Musk was there too)

https://twitter.com/TheBabylonBee/status...1956236288

They talk a lot about Twitter, how it was when Elon arrived, what happened then, what's happening now, and what Elon envisions for Twitter in the future. Elon talks about Twitter's financial health, whether it's losing money and how it's doing with advertisers. He lets drop how Twitter lost a $40 million advertising account because something the advertiser said was fact-checked, the advertiser demanded the fact-check be taken down, and Elon refused. But he says most advertisers that supposedly left Twitter just paused their advertising because they wanted to see what was going to happen, they liked Twitter's changes and are back.

Elon says that he lets advertisers choose what kind of content their ads will appear with, but won't let them dictate what content is allowed on the platform. Most of the advertisers are ok with that. They just don't want bad publicity for their brands.

The Babylon Bee guys note that they were banned from Twitter a few months ago, now here they are in its headquarters. Elon laughs about how the barbarians crashed in the gates and here they are drinking beers in the enemy's castle.

They talk about censorship, the Twitter files, wokeness, and the current state of comedy (such as it is). Then they talk quite a bit about Elon's favorite video games.

[Yazata]

Everyone (all the democrats at least) predicted that Twitter was going to collapse and disappear under Elon's control.

Well, in a way it was true. Twitter really is going away! It's being rebranded as X.com

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Everyone is trying to figure out if Tweets are now X's and if Tweeting is now X'ing.

Here's X headquarters in San Francisco last night

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[Yazata]

The establishment media are not happy

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