You’re acting like he wants Xitter to succeed. I suspect he wants it dead because he thinks it contributed to his child being trans. And also because some of his financiers don’t want an Arab Spring.
I used to agree with you, but now I really think he's just a narcissist who wants the attention. If Twitter wasn't profitable, the longer he owns it the more money he's going to lose on top of how much he over paid for it. If he really wanted Twitter gone, he could have bought it and just... shut it off.
Like every single techbro, he thinks he's the smartest guy in the room and demands the masses worship him for that. He just was lucky enough to have money to buy an entire platform to stroke his ego.
If he didn't want it to succeed, he wouldn't have rebranded it the same exact way he tried to rebrand PayPal. He wants this X everything app to be a thing.
There would be much less compromising ways for him to destroy Twitter if that was what he really wanted. He could have left his puppet CEO to do all the ridiculous shit and sit on his real life Iron Man throne only to eventually say "Welp, we tried. Clearly this site was doomed from the start." and shut it down. Which people would have believed before he revealed what a clown he is.
No, no, no, it's not Elon who's out of touch. It's the advertisers who are wrong! Just wait until all of Earth, apparently, hears of how these big mean advertisers killed the wondrous and righteous place named X. There will be outrage!.... so thinks Elon anyway. What a deluded moron.
Musk responded that the advertising boycott is likely to kill the company. "What this advertising boycott is going to do is it's going to kill the company, and the whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company and we will document it in great detail,"
When Sorkin pointed out that advertisers see things differently, Musk replied, "oh yeah? Tell it to Earth."
Sorkin continued: "They're going to say, Elon, that you killed the company because you said these things and they were inappropriate things and they didn't feel comfortable on the platform. That's what they're going to say."
"And let's see how Earth responds to that," Musk replied.
I mean… I think that pretty much removes any last doubt anyone might have had that Elon Musk had any grasp on the reality that he himself exists in.
"If somebody is going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money? Go fuck yourself," Musk said.
Sorkin replied, "but," and trailed off. Musk wasn't done. "Go fuck yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is. Hey, Bob!" Musk said. Musk was apparently addressing Disney CEO Bob Iger, who previously said at the conference that advertising on X "was not necessarily a positive" association and so Disney "decided we would pull our advertising."
The Muskrat told Disney CEO to go fuck himself.
On video.
With a hard F. No dissembling.
The Tesla board should remove him as CEO as he is clearly unstable.
You can't hold a firm grasp on reality if it is distorted by your massive narcissism already. He thinks anyone but the bags of shit still on his platform care.
Twitter never actually mattered and nothing of value will be lost. He can pound sand.
Kanye's straight up bipolar, maybe even schizoaffective. Musk still just looks like a narcissistic asshole, and the grandiosity about "Earth" caring about Twitter is par for the course
In an old interview, Mr. Narcissus [Elon Musk] said he may have bipolar disorder; he said he experiences "great highs, terrible lows, and unrelenting stress".
He has doubts because his highs and lows follow events in his life, whereas episodes from bipolar disorder often appear without triggers. [...]
We'd know if he went for an evaluation/possible diagnosis, but I cannot even imagine him doing it.
Kanye West is usually manic when he acts this way. I guess this supports Musk's suspicion.
"It's not me being an antisemitic transphobic bigot that's killing Twitter; it's all the companies who don't want their brands next to my antisemitic transphobic comments!"
I have never in my life seen an interviewer try to get someone to save face like this. Elon has zero self awareness, and he's basically behaving like a petulant child. Who the fuck sees this man as a genius?
He needs to stop hitting the ke--actually, no. He needs to hit more of that shit. At least until the road dead ends.
He never actually wanted it as a company, he only wanted to open it up because he had a misguided belief it was some evil corporation controlling what people can say and he wanted that control instead.
Why wouldn't he have to pay? He already had to pay when he bought it. He put in cash and took on debt. The only real benefit to this thing tanking is he can take a massive capital loss and probably never pay income tax again.
The downside is he would owe a lot of money to people you don't want to owe and he looks like a bigger moron by the day. Sooner or later, Tesla investors are going to get spooked by his deranged behavior and then he's in a world of hurt. All his wealth is tied up in Tesla and he uses his position as CEO to pump the stock with all his bullshit lies. It's like a giant Ponzi scheme. As soon as the value comes back down to Earth and the stock is priced like a normal company he's in big trouble.
I'm glad that I never fell through the hype of him being the real life Tony stark, 10 years ago people were sure this guy was going to get us on Mars and save the world. There are Comics out there of him being not only supportive of trans rights, but inventing the Tesla Model TG in order to give us all cat girls
The best part was the dead silence when he was waiting for laughter or something, the silence was murder on his soul. Not unlike when Dave Chapelle brought him out on stage for who knows why and he was booed like .....how fucking out of touch are you Dave, and why would you bring that turd out?
Or when he died on his ass on SNL. Or when he appeared in a Rick & Morty episode and managed to kill it by his mere presence. He thinks he is edgy, funny and cool but he isn't. Instead he is awkward, unfunny, weird and deeply unpopular for being a dick.
The other day I rewatched Iron Man 2, and that was the first time I realized Elon was in it. It was only for like 2 seconds, but still it caught me completely off guard
You know looking back on the history of Dave Chappelle and his blatant misogyny, it's not surprising in hindsight that he turned out to be a piece of shit. He doesn't seem to be fond of the idea of minorities getting rights unless it is specifically the minority he belongs to. If this guy were a white man, he would be up on stage saying the n-word twice is often and screaming about how the radical left wants to cancel him.
He did a comedy show where he repeatedly professed respect fir trans people but criticised the way some people behave, and you're acting like he "isn't fond or minorities getting rights"
It's just fucking psychopathic gibberish with you lot.
If this guy was white he'd be racist against blacks.
I don't think Dave Chappelle is a piece of shit. I think a lot of criticism towards him is exactly what his recent gripes about the alphabet people are about. He made fun of everyone and nobody cared, but when he makes fun of the LGBT then all of a sudden people like you say "he's always been a bad guy."
"What this advertising boycott is going to do is it's going to kill the company, and the whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company and we will document it in great detail," Musk said.
No need, you making twitter toxic to advertisers and the resulting fallout is already very well documented.
Even if it wasn't obvious that he is the problem, he's underestimating how many people think that toxic shithole has run its course already. Those advertisers might as well be cheered for it.
I actually really feel bad for Grimes now. If this is at all indicative of how he acts in personal relationships, he had to have been emotionally abusing and gaslighting her.
He's defending himself... I guess, due to some antisemitic remarks he made recently and all his advertisers are bailing on xtwitter. So he said 'fuck you' to the advertisers and accused them of blackmail basically. So, ya know, billionaire fascist shit.
I interpreted that as a veiled threat of reprisal against the companies boycotting it. Maybe that's a darker way of thinking about it, but I wouldn't be too surprised.
He seriously thinks the public will blame the former advertisers and be angry at them when the issue was obviously Musk running the company into the ground?
He's the right age for a midlife crisis and a lot at that point can get triggered by growing mortality combined with a perceived lack of accomplishment in life. Additionally, as others have said, substance abuse is likely a factor in his life. A lot of wealthy people have huge substance abuse issues that their access to vast resources allows them to buffer most of the usual consequences of such. On top of all of that, he's going through a divorce and child custody case with Grimes that is gearing up to be more toxic than a bottle of freshly pumped reactor four coolant water from the Chernobyl disaster.
Yeah I think mental breakdown is a pretty good bet. It is highly likely Musk has a substance abuse issue on top of all of that which is likely not helping anything. The wealthy in the United States do have some of the highest substance abuse rates because for many of them, their lifestyles and access to their vast wealth helps to buffer pretty much a lot of the usual consequences that people face with substance abuse issues. It wouldn't surprise me the least to hear Musk diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder and that he's largely avoided his "come to Jesus" moment in that due to his vast wealth.
the way hes talking is weird
Yeah, it looks exactly the same way my Aunt used to talk when she was heavy on psychedelics, including the body language. It's a kind of disinhibition where the mind isn't firing any of the parts that would usually guide a person on making thoughtful responses and keeping up with the current situation. Like Musk in the video constantly looks like he's talking to someone out in the audience rather than responding to the person asking the questions but then after talking jets his head right back to the person asking questions like he's asking "more fuel please".
I would be surprised if all of this isn't driven by some substance abuse. But that said, none of anything that's happening is likely good for his mental state, even with his wealth all of this is likely taking a toll on his mental state. The drugs only beg the question of how aware he might be of his declining mental health. But he'd likely tell any doctor concerned about Musk's mental state to go fuck themselves at this point.
Because Trump, as weirdly as he may go about it, has made his way through life on his (inherited fortune from his from his crook of a father and) force of personality.
He gets people to do what he wants them to do by projecting an image, a brand, through the way he acts and speaks. Look at The Apprentice. He's playing this role that says (without saying out loud), "Look at me. I'm a straight shooting, no nonsense business leader and my personality and business sense have brought me success, money, fame, luxury, and power. You want that too? You want to be like me? Then do what I say."
Not saying it's authentic or that it should work, but Trump's entire existence is based on this tactic. He's constantly projecting an image, and it's that projection of that image that gets him his way. His force of personality is just as, if not more central to his power as his money (make no mistake, the money is necessary too).
This, in contrast with Musk, who's typically cultivated his following based on ideas and drive. He gets people to go along with him because he's seen as a modern day Edison (and to be fair, the comparison, in some ways, is apt... especially the less flattering ones), a groundbreaker, rules breaker...a visionary.
Simply put, among the people who follow these guys, people follow Musk for what he says (in terms of his big ideas), people follow Trump for the way he acts (in terms of the image he projects). It takes a strong set of blinders to ignore Musk's sharing of his worse ideas and Trump's less than impressive antics, but their respective cults have had plenty of practice in those mental gymnastics.
Thus you're left with the mind boggling (to the rest of us) situation where Musk's followers don't care how he acts, because they are laser focused on his ideas, while Trump supporters couldn't care less about the crazy or incoherent stuff he says, so long as he keeps projecting that macho, confident persona.
So that's how Musk gets away with being "Trump, but more childish": he's not depending on the personality like Trump, so he can act that way without turning his supporters off, because they don't care about that in the first place.
Musk's entire angle is "it's okay to be a humongous asshole if you achieve your goals.
Trump's is, "It's okay to be a humongous asshole, as long as you can sell it as arrogance bred from success."
This is spot on accurate, Donald Trump is a Salesman who sells the character of trump. He knows that No Nonsense billionaires with a genius intellect who are well first in the art of the deal do not exist, but he will sell you the fantasy.
His perspective is like a kid kicking a sandcastle that he gave another kid $10 to buy because he thought it was neat.
What does he care if Twitter doesn't make money? He is personally set for life, and the world would basically have to end for that to change.
Why does someone worth 11 digits of greenback currency have to understand what brand safe content is? He could shoot a man in the middle of the street and toss his equivalent of pennies to the witnesses and never see consequences.
All of this criticism he's seeing on public airwaves, and his reaction, is revealing him for what he actually is: The single most richly spoiled baby in all of human history.
My guess is he probably knows more about it, than anyone else alive on earth today. /s https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/elon-musks-confusing-twitter-grab
I hope his arrogance will be his downfall, and not just from being #1 richest person in the world, but to actual bankruptcy.
I don't usually enjoy Schadenfreude, but Elon Musk has become such a cancer on humanity. I'll make an exception.
This barrier of capitalism loving fascists finding that capitalism works best with maximum participation therefore maximum diversity is infinitely entertaining to me.
Because while the concept isn't too difficult to understand once it's explained to you, it's not easy as going to "Mastodon and signing up".
The different servers, having to remember other people's instances along with their username (for example, you can't just say "omg check out Jack Froth on Mastodon! He's so funny!", because where? What instance? Who is it?
Not to mention Mastodon, much like Lemmy, dropped the ball hard when it came to onboarding during the peak interest. When you downloaded the app, you had to manually type in your instance, username, and password, which you had to go to an instance in your web browser to sign up for first.
Now Mastodon gives you the option to sign up like a regular app and it'll pick a default server for you. Way more friendly, but no one cares, because they already have the bad confusing taste in their mouth.
Then comes the community. Twitter is extremely toxic, but somehow Lemmy and Mastodon are worse. I know a few people I follow have recently discussed wanting to leave Mastodon because the Mastodon community attacks them, saying they don't want them there, because they have a successful YouTube channel. The type of people that the fediverse attracts are FOSS users, and FOSS users can be really.. particular.
I've been attacked on both Lemmy and Mastodon because I made some pro-windows comments. It's pretty exhausting. The hard pill to swallow is that the fediverse isn't accepting and isn't kind towards "normal" people.
The different servers, having to remember other people's instances along with their username.
This is just like email, I see no problem here.
I think the problem is about the mindset and the onboarding experience. We've used too much proprietary products and prefer something easy and not too much diverge from the norms. Recently, I tried to advertise Mastodon and Lemmy to my non-techie friends, which are using X and Reddit. Some did try but gave up. They said they didn't understand the concept, and didn't want to bother with choosing an instance in the first place, because they didn't understand the federation concept. It's just hard to explain the benefits of the fediverse to non-techie people.
The type of people that the fediverse attracts are FOSS users.
I have the same observation as your view. Current fediverse communities are heavily towards tech. Some of my friends joined but gradually left because they had a few to no interactions or no interesting people in their interested areas to follow.
God all the imported garbage and dead subs that you have to wade through here on lemmy. You cant find anything and you have deal with digital hoarders veing excited that it's a mess here.
I cant even be bothered with mastodon if its more of the same. I'm here because i absolutely hate the absolute unending barage of ads on reddit and i havent figured put how to patch my app yet. Sometimes i find this place fun when it has its own identity like the star trek memes but im so tired of it.
Social media should be you come for a purpose and then stay for the conversation but now its just people not wanting to be alone but not wanting the conversation either.
I only have Linux on my machine, and have been an advocate for FOSS for many years. But even then I have to begrudgingly admit Windows does some things better. I don't see why anyone would get all bent out of shape about that. Yeah, evil corporation and massive privacy issues, but that doesn't change its technical merits.
What was it that people got upset over if you don't mind sharing?
You start by finding an "instance" that fits you. There are gardening ones, texh ones, regional ones, fandom ones, whatever. You can easily (and should) join more than one.
Then you hang out on the Local feed, follow people whose stuff you like, follow the people they follow, etc.
After a few days of this your homepage will fill up with stuff for you.
For me, it started slower than Lemmy but I spend way more time there now.
By left is crazy, do you mean people who will try to dox you to find out if you've ever laughed at a racist joke before, or people who are literally not nazis?
SpaceX isn't having an IPO. They are selling shares, which they have done many times in the past. That's different from listing your shares on a public stock exchange.
To clarify after further research what they are doing is called a "Tender Offer"
Do you not understand what he’s fighting for? No matter what you think about him the fact that other companies feel like they can gang up together to manipulate another company is concerning. Especially when it’s to enforce controlled speech.
I guess I don't understand what he is fighting for no. Twitter users are free to say whatever they want. Equally, companies are free to spend their dollars in any way they want. If Twitter and its users really want free and uncontrolled speech, they should move to a completely user-subsidised model with no ads. "Uncontrolled" or unmodderated speech isn't always brand safe content, so it seems valid advertisers wouldn't be keen to sponsor that. Maybe I'm missing something but that's how I see it.
You can stop simping for Daddy Musk any time now, he's not going to give you a reach-around.
If Twitter was a "left-leaning platform" before, it was because of the userbase, not the company. In fact, studies showed that the algorithm was more likely to bury posts from left-wing politicians/users and promote right-wing politicians/ideologies than the other way around. The reason right-wing people were being banned was for posting "right-wing opinions/values" - such as antisemitism, racism, homophobia, posting misinformation/lying about elections and other events, and a laundry list of other user policy breaking infractions. And even then, Twitter was often more lenient in what it allowed those kinds of people to get away with compared to other groups. I distinctly remember seeing people posting support for the genocide of trans people and how Twitter responded to reports of the comments violating their rules saying that they weren't violating any rules, while at the same time banning transgender users for publicly calling it out.
This kind of "freeze peach" complaining from the "enlightened centrists" has always stunk of right wingers with shitty opinions who don't want to face the consequences of having those opinions. Just like those politicians who complained about reality having a liberal bias. The First Amendment doesn't free you from the consequences of your words, nor does it cover all forms of speech. Under Fighting Words laws, threats of violence are legal grounds to act in self defense as if they were the actions themselves. If you threaten to punch someone in the face, don't be surprised when the court says that they were justified in breaking your nose. Your use of "woke agenda" - a propaganda slogan used by right-wingers to destroy the actual meaning of the word and instead mean "anybody doing something I don't like" - further down in the comments clearly shows where your political opinions actually fall.
And, no, we actually don't have to let bigots voice their opinions wherever they want. Not only because social media platforms are considered private property, meaning the owners can do whatever they want so long as it doesn't break the law, but because the free exchange of ideas isn't a carte blanche to spout hatred. The free exchange of ideas is a part of the social contract and more like a potluck supper than anything else. Just because Carol showed up with a piece of poop between two slices of bread and called it a sandwich doesn't mean we have to take a bite to know it's a piece of shit. People who break the social contract that keeps society running can't expect to be treated under the same rules themselves.
Plus, if you let the worst people in, they'll simply end up harassing and driving off everyone who isn't a part of their echo chamber. You only have to look at Trump's social network or any of the myriad of other "free speech absolutist" platforms that have sprung up over the years. Every single one of them has eventually devolved into an echo chamber of bigotry. As a wise bartender once said, "If you let one Nazi in, you no longer have a bar. You have a Nazi bar. Because it starts off with one who talks nicely, and then they bring a few friends who aren't as nice, who bring a few friends who are even worse, and before you know it, all the regular patrons are gone and they've started hanging Swastikas on the walls."
It's not companies pulling ads that kills the platform. That's not a root cause. Ads pulling out is a consequence.
The root cause of this, is the platform owner choosing to publically engage with a heavily charged emotional minefield where everyone and their dog has chosen hills to die on.
If your goal is to try make Twitter a successful company, wading into that mess is simply not a high quality decision.
This is what got me. 1. I couldn't believe he would come out and say it. 2. When i watch the clip he was saying "Just ask Earth"
What do you mean ask earth? Is it a dumb way of saying "the history books will tell the tale" or "the people will know what happened". Just ask earth... i thought he was advocating about global warming or some shit
"But those clarifications were ignored by the media and essentially I handed a loaded gun to those who hate me and arguably to those who are antisemitic. And for that I'm quite sorry, that was not my intention."
You hear that? He's sorry.
Sorry that he's facing consequences for his actions.
He’s probably not all that worried about Xwitter. He’s got billions to spare. Be like wrecking your Ferrari, blaming the wet road when you were just going too fast, and still having 4 more in the garage.
He’s just worried about saving face and how the boards of his companies are going to view his behavior.
He doesn't care about Twitter cause he never wanted to buy it. Claiming he was going to was just a justification so he could sell Tesla stock without shareholders questioning it.
The dude's got a habit of using social media to influence the stock value of his own companies so he can buy low and sell high. The Twitter acquisition was a complete farce to cover up his market manipulation tactics.
He thought Twitter was owned by leftwing "libtards" that would never in a million years sell to him. It was just puffing smoke trying to manipulate stocks and prove a point about the "evil liberalism" of twitter.
But that wasnt true.
Twitter was run by business people, as a business, and when his insane offer came in to buy it, they leapt at the chance.
and when they did that, he got scared and tried to back out.. until he was legally forced to make good on his offer.
and unlike spacex, where they created an insulating crumplezone of people around Musk for the express purpose of ignoring 99% of his requests and demands, Twitter is run by him bare metal. and he cant stand that its collapsing around him, and that its his fault, and that its shattering the image of the brilliant self made business genius that he had of himself in his head.
Imagine watching Kanye West destroy his public image and then in the same year thinking "Nothing bad will happen if I make antisemitic comments on the media platform I own."
At this point I do not think that he is sane. Such people should not be commanding such great resources as he does, and so many people should not be dependent on his decisions. This is just immoral at this point.
Elon Musk addressed an antisemitism controversy in characteristically unwise fashion during a public interview today, telling businesses to "go fuck yourself" and to stop advertising on the social network formerly named Twitter.
Musk spoke on stage at The New York Times' DealBook Summit in an interview conducted by journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin.
"I should in retrospect not have replied to that one person and should have written in greater length what I meant," Musk reportedly said.
"But those clarifications were ignored by the media and essentially I handed a loaded gun to those who hate me and arguably to those who are antisemitic.
On November 15, Musk replied, "You have said the actual truth" to an X post that said Jewish communities are "pushing hatred against whites."
A White House spokesperson condemned Musk's post as "abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate."
The original article contains 471 words, the summary contains 142 words. Saved 70%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Bob Iger still has an account even if he doesn't advertise. He's not being censored. He's just being told "don't think you can bully me". Very reasonable in my opinion