@[e-mail]

December 15, 2022 11:20 PM

If you want to follow the progress of the private jet of the world's richest man, you're out of luck. Bernard Arnault, the LVMH CEO sold it over a month ago.
But suppose you want to follow the comings and goings of the private jet of the man who will soon be the third richest person in the world? That's a more interesting story. "Free speech absolutist" Elon Musk has not only banned the @elonjet account from his once-popular social media site Twitter, on Thursday night the accounts of multiple high profile journalists were banned apparently for reporting on the controversy.

The banned journalists include Micah Lee of The Intercept, Drew Harwell of the Washington Post, Steve Herman of Voice of America, and several more.

The elonjet account, now visible at https://mastodon.social/@elonjet toots the publicly available flight plan information about Musk's Gulfstream G650 with tail number N628TS. The information describes the airports the jet stops at.

In addition, Mastodon links are also being banned, as is the @joinmastodon account.

In other news beyond the banning of accounts for posting location information, Twitter is reportedly planning on requiring all users to share their location information with the service to help it sell ads.

Previously: Subterranean Birdsite Blues

posted by Superilla (525 comments total)

Sorry. Im sorry. Im trying to remove it
posted by Going To Maine at 11:28 PM on December 15, 2022 [2 favorites]

The speedrun of "I'm a free speech absolutist" to "free speech means I get to say what I want and no-one else gets to say things I don't like" is on track for an event record!

(I'm sure there are more entertaining examples!)
posted by Merus at 11:38 PM on December 15, 2022 [48 favorites]

Daring Fireball: Apparently I’m a very slow learner on the “Elon Musk is an absolute shithead” front

No fucking shit, John.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 11:55 PM on December 15, 2022 [49 favorites]

CWAA
posted by MengerSponge at 12:08 AM on December 16, 2022

The Meltdown continues. Is he actually even conscious? This guy has issues. What a windowless monad.
posted by y2karl at 12:09 AM on December 16, 2022 [9 favorites]

I'm astonished at the sheer amount of time Musk is spending on Twitter. Being a CEO is apparently not a very demanding job since he's at the helm of about three major companies atm, and has time to spare to shitpost all day long.
posted by Harald74 at 12:12 AM on December 16, 2022 [70 favorites]

Anyways, he's just this week sold a lot of Tesla stock (after he said he wouldn't) and the share price has taken a nosedive this year.
posted by Harald74 at 12:15 AM on December 16, 2022 [9 favorites]

No fucking shit, John.

I think this is a public mea culpa on Gruber's part, rather than him noticing for the first time that maybe things aren't playing out as rosily as he thought they would. I check in on Gruber on occasion, usually when there's Apple news I expect him to be spinning in as positive a way as possible, and he's been pretty diligent at noting the decline of the service.

I think various segments of the commentariat are accepting that Twitter has permanently changed for the worse. Popehat a few days ago was a big one for the blogging class - the one person they expect to stick it out, thrive, even, in Free Speech Twitter was Ken White, and if he's bailing then it's just not going to be workable for them. And now this - journalists getting banned on Twitter for pissing off the admin is something journalists won't take lightly. I think there were a lot of people who were willing to stick it out because they had nowhere else to go. I think the events of this week will change that; maybe they don't need to go somewhere better to leave Twitter any more. Maybe they just... go.

Anyways, he's just this week sold a lot of Tesla stock (after he said he wouldn't) and the share price has taken a nosedive this year.

Not just the stock; apparently the average used sale price of Tesla Roadsters compared to other cars in its category have dropped over 10% over the past six months.
posted by Merus at 12:23 AM on December 16, 2022 [17 favorites]

y2karl: What a windowless monad.

Ok this sounds like an incredible burn but can someone please explain what it means so I can properly appreciate it?
posted by a car full of lions at 12:25 AM on December 16, 2022 [23 favorites]

Being a CEO is apparently not a very demanding job since he's at the helm of about three major companies atm, and has time to spare to shitpost all day long.

No it's a super hard job full of responsibility and pressure, that's why CEOs need paying so much money, so Gilwern handshakes, parachutes, etc. Do not look behind the curtain! Working hard!
posted by Dysk at 12:27 AM on December 16, 2022 [30 favorites]

@falcennial: whomever tweeted "fragile narcissist buys criticism factory" I want u to know I remember these words and laugh every day
posted by Wordshore at 1:01 AM on December 16, 2022 [147 favorites]

a car full of lions. I read a lot of Philip K. Dick at an impressionable age.

See also Liebniz: Logic and Harmony

Baby Elon is like the semi-trillionaire version of Oliver Sack's The Man Who Mistook his Wife For a Hat Bizarro World Edition. He has an aphasia: an absence of humanity. His monad is most windowless of all.
posted by y2karl at 1:03 AM on December 16, 2022 [12 favorites]

The demise of the route whereby Twitter users can automatically cross post their (often very frequent) updates to Mastodon, is a welcome plus point, I believe.

There is a massive Barbara Streisand effect here too in that we all know that Elon's jet is currently sitting at San Jose airport - whereas before that information would have been available but only by looking at the (public) sources.

"The final days of Twitter" is proving to have absolutely enough drama and high comedy for the multi-part Netflix offering which I am sure is in planning.
posted by rongorongo at 1:11 AM on December 16, 2022 [8 favorites]

The brand is severely damaged. The kinds of people who typically buy Teslas don't like him and now don't like Tesla.

Considering the stock has taken a nosedive, some group should take advantage and buy it up--buy out Tesla and fire Elon Musk. The stock would then go back up, and $$profit$$.
posted by eye of newt at 1:11 AM on December 16, 2022 [11 favorites]

All major auto brands, even in the US, have cars in the segments that Tesla has. Even the F-150 is available as an EV and is selling well! The sole remaining advantages are the supercharger network (less of an advantage here in Europe) and the possibility of sub-3 seconds 0-100 km/h (0-60 mph) acceleration on your family car.

Creaky build quality, difficulty in sourcing parts for repair, and looming legal troubles in addition to the narcissist in command does not make for a rosy outlook.
posted by Harald74 at 1:18 AM on December 16, 2022 [18 favorites]

also lack of fart mode
posted by lalochezia at 1:46 AM on December 16, 2022 [6 favorites]

I have often wondered whether whoever chose his name realized how close they were coming to saddling their son with 'Musk, Melon', and whether that might have been the point.

Of course, if the great Ima Hogg is any example, that might have turned out pretty well.

It scarcely could have turned out worse.
posted by jamjam at 1:51 AM on December 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

in addition to the narcissist in command does not make for a rosy outlook.


The $3.6 billion worth of shares he recently sold would have gone for around $9.3 billion just over a year ago.

Have seen quite a few people posting screenshots of them cancelling their Cybertruck pre-orders (good news for this Glasgow company doing an electric take on the Land Rover).

I've gotten the impression that Tesla's value is mostly based on future potential rather than current production, so with the increasing competition and hit they are taking to their image it could end up being an order of magnitude less before it stops falling...
posted by Buntix at 1:59 AM on December 16, 2022 [8 favorites]

I've gotten the impression that Tesla's value is mostly based on future potential rather than current production

Tesla remains a company that has both a very commendable mission ("to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport by bringing compelling mass market electric cars to market as soon as possible") as well as a successful track record of bringing new electric vehicles to market that people like driving, which are profitable to manufacture, and which sell in large numbers. As a company that spends next to no money on adverting or PR - Musk's role as a promoter for Tesla (and his use of Twitter as a tool for doing so) has been crucial - and for a number of years has been somewhat positive. Not now.

So the company is, at the same time, both very attractive an investment opportunity and extremely poisoned by its CEO. I would therefore indeed expect somebody to come along and try to take it over imminently.
posted by rongorongo at 2:17 AM on December 16, 2022 [7 favorites]

as well as a successful track record of bringing new electric vehicles to market that people like driving, which are profitable to manufacture, and which sell in large numbers

I do wonder about this - Musk's long been observed to have a reality distortion field around him of weird nerds, and there's been lots of complaints in the past couple of years about build quality. Are the cars currently getting dispassionate scrutiny? Are they actually selling in large numbers, given Tesla's supply issues?
posted by Merus at 2:32 AM on December 16, 2022 [3 favorites]

We're Witnessing the Brain Death of Twitter
posted by cendawanita at 2:37 AM on December 16, 2022 [8 favorites]

”It appears Elon Musk had this Twitter Spaces discussion about his censoring of journalists shut down.

It didn't just end. The metadata and all the information about it was wiped.

There were upwards of 40,000 people in this conversation which was highly critical of him.”
posted by Silvery Fish at 2:39 AM on December 16, 2022 [33 favorites]

which are profitable to manufacture

Tesla’s profit doesn’t come from cars. It comes from carbon credits.
posted by warriorqueen at 2:55 AM on December 16, 2022 [31 favorites]

I worry that we're all underreacting to Elon Musk's takeover of twitter. If we're lucky, he just runs it completely into the ground and it's another parler or gab, basically an unpopular place that is mostly people who would be far right activists somewhere on the internet anyway, so the site isn't really making things much worse. If we're not, though, it's going to be an enormous machine for producing more far right activists and a machine for targeting individuals at Musk's whim - if what's happening with Roth gets turned into a routine while twitter activates more people as fascists, it is going to be extremely powerful and dangerous. In bad moments, I think of Musk using as some kind of overt militia-organizing tool with the goal - however much he borks it - of giving himself some kind of overt political/governmental role. I worry about him having a pretty solid shot at organizing his own fascist paramilitaries, I guess.

Again, it's easy to do the left wing thing of "by saying that things could get worse, you are problematically denying how bad they are right now" - like, yes, twitter is already used to target people, twitter is already used to organize the far right. But it's clear after only a couple of weeks that things on twitter can change fast and for the worse. The Roth thing was new, frankly - one member of a basically right-wing elite using a public media system very effectively to target another. (A mistake to think that Roth is a great guy; he's better than Musk, but that's not saying much.)

Musk is an idiot who can't run a company or keep his eye on the ball, but an idiot can still do a huge amount of social damage if you literally give him his own social media network. I'm hoping that his idiocy undoes him but I think he may have found his metier and that this goes well beyond just Musk wrecking a useful medium and into Musk having the tools to organize his own Purge.

Mere inertia kept me on there until basically now, but I'm moving, first to Mastodon and then, if necessary, elsewhere, wherever that turns out to be. But in the past week, my twitter has basically collapsed - a lot of antifa accounts have been banned, so a lot of people I follow are gone and a lot more have just left, ad changes mean that I'm getting simultaneously more ads and weirder ones - patent hair devices, that kind of thing. Cat accounts and art accounts are still going, that's about it.

When I was a kid, I was always mostly afraid of my horrible right wing classmates because they were so stupid; I was afraid that, given the chance, they'd hurt me badly because they were too dumb to understand that there were no backsies and that there would be some consequences that they would not enjoy. Unfortunately this has proved to be the basic condition of much of American society and having Musk to point them like a gun is not great.
posted by Frowner at 2:56 AM on December 16, 2022 [80 favorites]

Alongside Mastodon, Twitter's also added a link warning to pixelfed, the decentralized photo sharing service.

Anarchist new account @idg_news ("It's Going Down") has been banned.

But Musk's polls all have him reinstating the journalist accounts after some period of time, he hasn't included a "ban forever" option.

Musk's Twitter reminds me a bit of Putin's Russia. Putin allows a handful of tame "opposition politicians" to exist, to turn up on his TV shows and be humiliated as buffoons by his supporters. That helps Putin maintain the illusion that he's the popular leader of a pluralistic society. So while Musk has banned some left-wing accounts, I don't think he's going to ban all leftists and liberals altogether. He wants enough to stay to provide an illusion of debate. If any of them ever start to pose a threat or be a nuisance, he can just ban those individuals at any time.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 3:13 AM on December 16, 2022 [13 favorites]

Again, it's easy to do the left wing thing of "by saying that things could get worse, you are problematically denying how bad they are right now"

I understand your concern, but what I’ve seen over the past year is this: right-wingers thrive on victimhood, fragility, and the modus of attacking what they perceive as non-believers or non-loyalists. On Mastodon, there is already talk of major news outlets standing up their own Mastodon servers, and posting news from there. The usual exodus of non- right-wingers will continue, which invariably leads to what I’ve noted on Parler and ultra conservative spaces: they start to eat their own, because that is what they do.

The radicalized may become more radical, but that pool becomes smaller and less cohesive. It’s like yeast in a vat excreting alcohol until they’ve poisoned their environment to the point of their own demise. And I will tell you, the platform itself will start to fail in significant ways, because the only new people willing to work there will be right-wingers, and ultra-conservatives SUCK at coding and IT management because they lack critical thinking skills.

Short-term is going to be dicey, yes; but we’re going to be ok.
posted by Silvery Fish at 3:17 AM on December 16, 2022 [24 favorites]

I do wonder about this - Musk's long been observed to have a reality distortion field around him of weird nerds, and there's been lots of complaints in the past couple of years about build quality. Are the cars currently getting dispassionate scrutiny? Are they actually selling in large numbers, given Tesla's supply issues?

There's also the fact that Tesla only makes four car models, the newest of which (the Model Y) is 3 years old and was based on the older Model 3. Not to mention that the company announced earlier this year that future cars would no longer have ultrasonic sensors - something that's becoming a more common feature throughout the car industry.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:56 AM on December 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

I deleted my DMs and disabled my Twitter account this week. I saw friends and interesting people leaving, and a fog of shitheads rolling in. Makes me sad.

Second, I am glad that Tesla exists to displace incumbent gas car companies...but I wish Musk had nothing to do with it. Yes, their software isn't ready for prime time, but they are making cars that don't use gas and each one on the road is a net gain. Again, I just wish Musk wasn't part of the whole package.
posted by wenestvedt at 4:01 AM on December 16, 2022 [4 favorites]

I nominate y2karl for my annual 2022 Award for the Best Use of Leibniz as an Insult.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 4:35 AM on December 16, 2022 [33 favorites]

I'm glad that Tesla exists to make people see that electric cars can be cool and desirable. With any luck, they'll then be open to buying a more modest, more rational model of EV.
No one needs the acceleration of a Tesla. That energy can be put to better use.
posted by Too-Ticky at 4:39 AM on December 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

I've dabbled with various social media, yet never signed up with Twitter. Something about it just didn't appeal to me. And I find Twitter threads in blog posts to be extremely annoying to read, so over the years that just reinforced my reasoning not to sign up with Twitter. This recent Musk stuff with Twitter makes me much more curious, but I will not sign up now out of a tiny bit of spite. It's great to read articles about this mess, though. Thanks.
posted by SoberHighland at 4:40 AM on December 16, 2022 [9 favorites]

Harald74: Creaky build quality, difficulty in sourcing parts for repair, and looming legal troubles in addition to the narcissist in command does not make for a rosy outlook.

Not to mention how much worse Telsas apparently are at parking than competing vehicles.
posted by clawsoon at 5:05 AM on December 16, 2022 [3 favorites]

Reupping a thing I've mentioned before, but: if you use Twitter to log into any other service you care about - if you've clicked that "sign in with Twitter" button - you need to figure out how to get out from under that right now.

Our elongated muskrat friend has already disabled Ukrainian access to 2FA because he's an oligarch and oligarchs have class interests, he's shared former employee's emails and DMs with friendly pseudojournos, he's blocking any linking to prominent mastodon instances and he's basically making leadership decisions out of petulant tantrums and coke.

If any part of your life has a dependency on that site you should try to solve that problem as soon as you can.
posted by mhoye at 5:06 AM on December 16, 2022 [29 favorites]

Seen on Brian Beutler's masto, which is a repost of Don Moynihan's tweet: Musk went from telling journalists they were permanently banned, to then saying it was for a week, to then running a poll (where the result called for immediate reinstatement) to then complaining that journalists were overreacting to a 1 day ban.

Weak.
posted by cendawanita at 5:13 AM on December 16, 2022 [8 favorites]

For many people, Mr. Musk’s moves seemed like a case study in how not to manage a company. But for some Silicon Valley elites, they were a lightning bolt — a long-awaited answer to the question, “What if we just treated workers … worse?” (NYT, archive.org)

There are so many reasons not to keep propping up the man or the company.
posted by trig at 5:16 AM on December 16, 2022 [27 favorites]

Elon has been showing wannabe-fascist tendencies for a while now. With the banning of journalists, and even wiping the forum where people talk about it, it feels like he’s taken that last full step into the fascist camp. I agree with the concern stated above that we could see him radicalizing his followers in that direction as well.


I'm glad that Tesla exists to make people see that electric cars can be cool and desirable.

(Just an aside that, for cool and desirable, the new 2023 Prius redesign is pretty dang sweet.)
posted by darkstar at 5:21 AM on December 16, 2022 [8 favorites]

On that note, this post reports Ukrainian tweets are being treated as having adult content and this one tested crossposting to scholar.social vs Gab (both using the masto protocol). Guess which goes through?
posted by cendawanita at 5:33 AM on December 16, 2022 [4 favorites]

But Musk's polls all have him reinstating the journalist accounts after some period of time, he hasn't included a "ban forever" option.

These polls are how he’s justifying decisions, not making them, and leadership-by-polls-overrun-by-bots isn’t the reassurance you might believe it is.
posted by mhoye at 5:35 AM on December 16, 2022 [10 favorites]

Frowner: If we're not, though, it's going to be an enormous machine for producing more far right activists and a machine for targeting individuals at Musk's whim

The possibility is something like what Rupert Murdoch did to the news. It's plausible.

The Vox article The 80-year-old book that explains Elon Musk and tech’s new right-wing tilt makes fun of The Managerial Revolution, but I'm not sure if the basic observation of the book is wrong, even if it's only right because people inspired by it are making it a reality. There does seem to be something to summarizing today's elite conflict as being between publicly-traded companies and the university-educated managers who run them on the one side, and "self-made" (or "church-made") private company owners on the other.

It's the old GM vs. Henry Ford battle, but now it's corporate communication departments who release anodyne statements supporting Pride parades vs. Murdoch and Musk and the Koch brothers and Larry Ellison and Barre Seid and all the other Republican billionaires.
posted by clawsoon at 5:36 AM on December 16, 2022 [7 favorites]

(The electric Hummer is a Cybertruck that isn't vaporware (though I'd prefer an F-150 or Rivian), the hybrid Ford Maverick is the car that many Americans actually need, the hybrid Honda CR-V and Toyota RAV-4 are the cars that many Americans actually want, and the asshole techbros that Musk thinks are his target audience are a much smaller group than the rich liberals that buy Teslas. Car companies that go up against the big guys don't usually fare well--at this point, does Tesla look more like the exception, or more like the usual story?)
posted by box at 5:36 AM on December 16, 2022 [6 favorites]

Too-Ticky: I'm glad that Tesla exists to make people see that electric cars can be cool and desirable.

I've said this before in Musk threads, but part of what made them cool was that they were the first toxic masculinity EVs. Unlike previous EVs and hybrids, they had "fuck you" energy that allowed you to give some bro the finger as you peeled away from them when the light changed. That's what made them cool. If your gender expression was shaped by the lingering fear that you'd be targeted on the playground as having girl cooties, a Tesla was the first EV you could buy that definitely didn't have girl cooties.

A lot of us were raised with those fears, and they were pretty powerful. I think you could argue that a large chunk of the political split between Generation X men over the past decade or so has cleaved right down the line of how we responded to those fears. Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson and Elon Musk and the alt-right all decided that their fears contained important information and required them to lean into rigid gender binaries, and many Gen X men followed them. The rest of us tried to stumble one way or another into letting go of those fears and understanding the messier and more interesting nature of gender reality.
posted by clawsoon at 5:54 AM on December 16, 2022 [114 favorites]

I'm still going to laugh and point at Tesla drivers.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:59 AM on December 16, 2022 [9 favorites]

I cancelled my Model 3 order when he announced he was dropping the radar unit. It was obvious it was due to supply chain issues an I don't like being lied to. I was really disappointed at the time, this was a rare present to myself after a rough few years aside from the pandemic plus a big upgrade from my 17 year old Honda. But everyday it seems there's a reason to be glad I did. From decreasing service and build quality to hearing about the lack of improvement in Tesla Vision's ability to drive without phantom breaking to Musk's increasingly erratic behavior.

It seemed at first he was on a good path; cheap access to space, electric cars, solar power! But SpaceX seems be a success due to Gwen Shotwell and NASA, SolarCity is a joke and Tesla may succeed or it may be a house of cards. And none of his other side projects seem to be doing very well.
posted by beowulf573 at 6:00 AM on December 16, 2022 [9 favorites]

(box, that RAV4 Hybrid is looking pretty sweet, too.)
posted by darkstar at 6:06 AM on December 16, 2022

Something I was thinking about recently was this amazing thread about tesla from 2018, miraculously still up; personally this thread did in any perception I had at the time of teslas as cool and desireable. (Sorry, couldn't find a non-twitter link that summarizes...but previously.) Really a lot of previews of the current situation in there.
posted by advil at 6:09 AM on December 16, 2022 [4 favorites]

Can't stop the signal, Mal.

https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=a835af

I've been feeding FlightAware for a couple of years now. Tracking planes in your area is absurdly simple and (for certain kinds of nerds) fun. If you have a Pi and a $20 SDR dongle, you're 90% of the way there.
posted by jquinby at 6:17 AM on December 16, 2022 [13 favorites]

Not just the stock; apparently the average used sale price of Tesla Roadsters compared to other cars in its category have dropped over 10% over the past six months.

The damage to the Tesla brand has been huge. If I owned Tesla stock, or owned a Tesla and cared about resale value, I'd be pissed.

I use Twitter very minimally -- I don't post anything and I use it just to follow a set of journalists and academics, plus a few activists, who post mostly about Ukraine. That seemed to be unaffected by all the Musk stupidness but in the last few days it seems like fewer of them are posting. I don't know if that is because of people leaving, Twitter doing black magic to make it harder to see certain posts, or just a pre-holiday slow down. But if it deteriorates more, then the usefulness of it for me will be gone.

My guess, from reading the articles and accounts of how Twitter is blocking users and content, is that the utility of Twitter for a lot of people is declining rapidly. The value of a site like that is having so many people involved, so once an exodus starts it might be hard to reverse.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:18 AM on December 16, 2022 [5 favorites]

Burn, motherfucker. Burn.
posted by abulafa at 6:22 AM on December 16, 2022 [7 favorites]

@[e-mail] on the journalist migration away from Twitter: "Elon is so great at driving people to new places. He should start a car company or something."
posted by clawsoon at 6:28 AM on December 16, 2022 [41 favorites]

These polls are how he’s justifying decisions, not making them, and leadership-by-polls-overrun-by-bots isn’t the reassurance you might believe it is.

I absolutely believe that Elon is fragile enough to ban these journalists, realize how badly everyone is making fun of him for it, and then decide that actually, guys, the ban was intended to be temporary all along. The poll was a way to announce that.

Almost everything he does makes sense if you interpret him as the type of fragile narcissist who needs to believe he's a cool super genius and needs others to believe it too. I think this is part of his descent into explicitly fascist politics; after alienating a lot of the people who would have been his fanboys in the past, he's found a group that will fawn over him and excuse his every fault as being actually really smart. A bonus is that they tend to be extremely protective of public figures they think are theirs and much more resistant to cognitive dissonance. It's going to take more to piss them off than a little union busting. (The other reason is just money.)

When I looked at the poll last night, the "unban immediately" option was winning by a large margin. I don't trust his poll results at all (as you say, bots), but this looks to me like people who disagree with the banning are winning. Elon fanboys would choose "7 days," to confirm that a (temporary, really!!) banning was justified.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 6:34 AM on December 16, 2022 [8 favorites]

I'm astonished at the sheer amount of time Musk is spending on Twitter.

Musk is a true poster, a man compelled to post his thoughts online and make his little jokes. That at least is relatable. But he’s a poster who has become the mod. You should never let a true poster become a mod, the effects are immediate corruption of the poster’s soul. Who among us hasn’t wanted to ban someone we’re arguing with online? only the most beautiful souls could resist the urge to exercise that power immediately. Perhaps the Elon story could become a kind of fable, a warning about hubris, some fly too close to the sun, others are posters who become mods.
posted by dis_integration at 6:36 AM on December 16, 2022 [25 favorites]

Musk isn't a poster, he's a reply guy.
posted by thecaddy at 6:43 AM on December 16, 2022 [45 favorites]

Since it's been mentioned, I ended up with a RAV4 Hybrid, so far I've been very happy with it. I think we are going to need a major shift in battery technology before electric cars are adopted fully. Hopefully one or more of the chemistries being research become usable at scale and affordable.
posted by beowulf573 at 6:46 AM on December 16, 2022 [1 favorite]

(You should definitely not let a reply guy become a mod)
posted by thecaddy at 6:46 AM on December 16, 2022 [8 favorites]

Thanks for (somewhat) explaining the Tesla appeal clawsoon. I had been mystified at people's willingness to buy a car that was so expensive and also shoddily built and prone to catch on fire. Because there are plenty of fast/expensive cars that don't do that if you just like spending money.

My greatest hope is that a. Someone successfully prosecutes/shuts down that Libs of TikTok asshole but b. before that, that lack of tech people means the whole thing just stops working. Musk is helping there by being the absolute worst dude to work for and firing nearly everyone with skills or talent.

I do wish we could rescue the ones he has left who are stuck with him due to visa issues --- how would that work?
posted by emjaybee at 6:54 AM on December 16, 2022 [1 favorite]

What a scheizeshow. On my second go-round of Twitter I finally managed to find a good crew of local people to follow which helped engage me in local politics and activism. Now everyone is scattering to the winds because Elon is such an enormous douchecanoe.

There is nothing else quite like Twitter - which just yesterday helped me get an insurance claim sent to an auto body shop while my account rep was on vacation! - and I will miss it.
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:02 AM on December 16, 2022 [5 favorites]

he's found a group that will fawn over him and excuse his every fault as being actually really smart.

and this behavior is not different from a group that sees a lot of dumb money in play. Musk is God's Own Mark: someone convinced that a) he's rich because of his exceptional cleverness and that b) because he's so clever he could never fall for the grifters and conmen who are now trying separate him from his billions.
posted by logicpunk at 7:03 AM on December 16, 2022 [3 favorites]

What if we just treated workers … worse?

I've been trying to organize tech workers in the USA since 2017. It's been ... Hard. A lot more failure than I was planning for. Software engineers are (were) very comfortable, and rarely ideologically inclined.

The thing that kept me going was an old adage: "The boss is the best organizer." We figured that quality of life would get worse, and when it did we'd be there with our tshirts, Robert's Rules, and email groups.

Elon is making organizing conversations a lot easier.
posted by constraint at 7:09 AM on December 16, 2022 [35 favorites]

It appears Elon Musk had this Twitter Spaces discussion about his censoring of journalists shut down.

Oh, it's much dumber than that. He had all of Twitter Spaces shut down. The whole product was disabled. Supposedly because there's a bug where disabled accounts could still join a Twitter Space which if true is kinda hilarious.

Things are falling apart there fast. I still think the site will recover and continue to cause long-term harm but it remains to be seen if it retains its previous stature or only does Parler levels of harm. Either way it sickens me to see what's become of this product I worked on and used to love.
posted by Nelson at 7:14 AM on December 16, 2022 [11 favorites]

Musk isn't a poster, he's a reply guy.

Totally agree with this; Elon Musk longs to be a poster. Being a poster is not necessarily morally good. For example, you do not under any circumstances "gotta hand it to him" and Donald Trump is a terrible terrible person but the man can post and Elon Musk just can't. He's not funny, he's not snappy, he's not memorable, and he has less charisma than a turnip. He wants SO BADLY to be a poster and his attempts are pathetic. It would be sad if he weren't rich, loathsome, and morally destitute.
posted by an octopus IRL at 7:14 AM on December 16, 2022 [37 favorites]

I think we are going to need a major shift in battery technology before electric cars are adopted fully. Hopefully one or more of the chemistries being research become usable at scale and affordable.

I keep an eye on sodium battery news, since there’s literally an ocean of that element vs lithium which is pretty rare. Really any technology that moves us to commonly available materials and not rare and exotic conflict minerals is going to be welcome news.
posted by Artw at 7:16 AM on December 16, 2022 [7 favorites]

Confession - I own a Tesla (Model Y). Got it when it first came out, near the start of the pandemic, before I realized what a massive asshole Musk was (although the signs were certainly there, I just wasn't paying attention). I'm not a Tesla fanboy, but I love my car. I don't care about the acceleration, I don't care about FSD, the games and "easter eggs" were amusing for about a month then I never thought about them again.

It's the range, and the supercharger network. I've gone on multiple 500+ mile road trips that would just not be feasible in any other EV model, even now. It's so amazingly convenient. I really need other manufacturers to catch up - I think the range is there now, but there's still nothing like the supercharger network for other models. Knowing I will always be able to reach the next one, knowing the car will automatically navigate me to any needed charging stops along the way, and that I'll only need to stop for about 20 minutes, enough time to stretch my legs, and then get on my way. It's truly a game changer.

I don't want to go back to a gas car. But at this point I really don't want to buy another Tesla... I'm not yet to the point of wanting to immediately sell mine, but I hope to deity that in a few years I can buy another model of EV and know I'll be able to go on long road trips without a second thought. Is anyone even close to having that?
posted by Roommate at 7:18 AM on December 16, 2022 [25 favorites]

Yesterday afternoon someone in a Tesla picked up their kid from school and the thought that immediately popped into my mind was, "lol, how embarrassed are you right now."
posted by clawsoon at 7:21 AM on December 16, 2022 [5 favorites]

The speedrun of "I'm a free speech absolutist" to "free speech means I get to say what I want and no-one else gets to say things I don't like" is on track for an event record!


Every person who says the first thing means the second thing.
posted by Reyturner at 7:21 AM on December 16, 2022 [37 favorites]

It seems like under Musk's rules, every news story that mentions that Biden is at the White House or that Trump is at Mar-a-Lago would be subject to banning.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:26 AM on December 16, 2022

Don't fall into that trap. Musk's only rule is whatever is good for Musk himself.

Someone could make a killing selling just the right bumper sticker for embarrassed Tesla owners. "I bought it before we knew he was an asshole", only something more clever than that.
posted by Nelson at 7:32 AM on December 16, 2022 [11 favorites]

I'm still going to laugh and point at Tesla drivers.

Why? Admittedly buying one today is questionable considering what Musk is doing. But for all I know Ford's and Hyundai's CEOs are just as big assholes, they just don't buy/media companies and fuck around with them, they do their damage in the shadows.

But to come back at Tesla, for a while it was the only interesting electric car if you had longer range requirements, they came with lots of interesting features, have a good charging network in NA. They don't emit CO2 post production (well depending on where you live). That makes them a reasonable product to own.

Not every act is a political statement, and a car isn't a band t-shirt you can just throw away when it becomes embarrassing. Most Tesla owners aren't die hard Musk apologists, they just wanted/needed an electric car.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 7:36 AM on December 16, 2022 [15 favorites]

@CheeseDigestsAll - that's an excellent point. Ironically, very little of the President's security relates to his physical location, except in a few exceptional circumstances (e.g., visit to a war zone). Almost 100% of the time, everyone know exactly where he is. His travel outside the WH is even published in advance, which is something EM doesn't do.
posted by scolbath at 7:40 AM on December 16, 2022

There's probably a buck to make by designing/manufacturing some add-on you can stick on your outside Tesla logos that make them into some kind of "Fuck Elon" symbol.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 7:43 AM on December 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

It’s like yeast in a vat excreting alcohol until they’ve poisoned their environment to the point of their own demise.

Le MetaFilter: tagline du jour. Sinon le siècle.
posted by y2karl at 7:46 AM on December 16, 2022 [4 favorites]

Everything you say is true, WaterAndPixels, and yet it's hard to shake the association. It's the expensive version of being someone who liked red baseball caps before 2016.
posted by clawsoon at 7:46 AM on December 16, 2022 [13 favorites]

He really should fire his press secretary. Oh, wait.
posted by y2karl at 7:51 AM on December 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

There's probably a buck to make by designing/manufacturing some add-on you can stick on your outside Tesla logos

Between this and the sticker idea, you folks need to get a store going ASAP. Large dollars and fame await, not joking.
posted by aramaic at 7:52 AM on December 16, 2022 [1 favorite]

"I bought it before we knew he was an asshole"

To counter that: he's been known to be an asshole for a long time.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 7:56 AM on December 16, 2022 [7 favorites]

Is he actually even conscious?

Well, he has claimed to tweet under the influence of Ambien and alcohol, so...
posted by credulous at 7:57 AM on December 16, 2022 [1 favorite]

Apartheid Clyde’s Electric Ride.
posted by Artw at 7:58 AM on December 16, 2022 [14 favorites]

Considering the stock has taken a nosedive, some group should take advantage and buy it up--buy out Tesla and fire Elon Musk. The stock would then go back up, and $$profit$$.

Tesla's stock P/E is still in the mid-40s, compared to 5-10 for Ford, GM, Honda, etc. In sales value and manufacturing capacity it's minor. Add in that you need to pay a premium to complete an acquisition, and another company looking for "value" need to wait for it to drop another 90% or more.
posted by mark k at 8:07 AM on December 16, 2022 [6 favorites]

Elon Musk is such an asshole, even Dave Chappelle fans booed him, when he got on stage. Chappelle's audience can't even stand him. The dregs.

I'm not sure when I need to close my account, as I still use Twitter to keep tabs on what colleagues are doing in my line of work. But my Post account sign-up was approved yesterday, so I set that up as a backup.

Guess we'll see how long it all takes — maybe when Musk runs out of Tesla stock to sell to prop up Twitter and is finally booted from the car company. I can't imagine that Tesla can keep losing shareholder value indefinitely, before he is ousted or a takeover happens at the right price.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:25 AM on December 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

My account no longer serves as a place to show my forwarding address on masto, as this shit happens, so I’ll be giving some thought to closing it or further shuttering it.
posted by Artw at 8:28 AM on December 16, 2022

If my mom had to log onto the computer to go to bat for me I would probably log off forever is but one of the many QTs to Ma Musk replying to David Axelrod.
posted by cendawanita at 8:31 AM on December 16, 2022 [7 favorites]

which are profitable to manufacture

Tesla's first profitable year was last year.
posted by praemunire at 8:42 AM on December 16, 2022 [6 favorites]

The couple of Tesla owners I know are basically just people who wanted an electric car and had the money. They took the tax credit and also installed solar panels. So not all bros … but I think maybe now Tesla has served its purpose in making electric cars a Real Thing in people’s minds and it’s better for Ford, Honda etc. to run with it.
posted by caviar2d2 at 8:48 AM on December 16, 2022 [3 favorites]

I am shocked at this kind of paranoid behavior from a guy who thought that a sniper on the roof of the ULA building blew up his rocket.
posted by credulous at 8:51 AM on December 16, 2022 [3 favorites]

I bet everyone at SpaceX right now is feeling a little sad now because, when Twitter's controlled-flight-into-terrain is done and Tesla's collateral damage, you-know-who is going to come skulking back into the office looking for a win.

Lots of dunking on Musk being the CEO triple-threat, but I'm guessing the last year has been more productive at SpaceX and Tesla than any time in the past.
posted by fatbird at 8:52 AM on December 16, 2022 [9 favorites]

I’m amazed NASA hasn’t yanked all funding from them as a security threat.
posted by Artw at 8:54 AM on December 16, 2022 [9 favorites]

caviar2d2: I think maybe now Tesla has served its purpose in making electric cars a Real Thing in people’s minds and it’s better for Ford, Honda etc. to run with it.

Yes, exactly so.

Renault has been running with it for over ten years now, without making a fuss or buying any social media networks. Just quietly chipping away at the fossil fuel dependency of mostly Europeans, I guess. One car at a time.
posted by Too-Ticky at 8:55 AM on December 16, 2022 [5 favorites]

I know a guy who bought a Tesla back in the initial waitlist days...it seemed pretty cool at the time. I suspect our politics would not match up exactly, but he wasn't a toxic bro type. Just a guy at a small hedge fund who'd made a lot of money doing math.
posted by praemunire at 9:01 AM on December 16, 2022

NASA is somewhat dependent upon them now for access to ISS, though I imagine they're glad they insisted on redundancy with Boeing's Starliner, even if has had its share of issues.

I would not be surprised if there have been talks with Gwen Shotwell to ensure the adults are in charge. From reading Eric Berger's book on SpaceX I gather while Musk had the idea and the drive, they would not have gotten past their first four Falcon 1 launches without Shotwell. Her experience and ability, along with a nice big contract from NASA, allowed them to become what they are.
posted by beowulf573 at 9:01 AM on December 16, 2022 [5 favorites]

Per his Wikipedia lede Elon is “chief engineer”, which is fucking hilarious.
posted by Artw at 9:06 AM on December 16, 2022 [4 favorites]

Supposedly because there's a bug where disabled accounts could still join a Twitter Space which if true is kinda hilarious.

It is certainly true that this bug exists. There were banned accounts in the Twitter space that Elon fled.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:07 AM on December 16, 2022

Spaces was primarily a means of hawking NFTs even back in the pre-Elon days so I doubt it mattered much.
posted by Artw at 9:09 AM on December 16, 2022

To counter that: he's been known to be an asshole for a long time.

GoatsElon.cx, amirite?
posted by y2karl at 9:10 AM on December 16, 2022

IMO, a Tesla is less about exuding masculinity than it is about exuding wealth and style (though masculinity is certainly key). Which I thought was kind of the plan - sell fancy sports cars that will eventually lead to making a people’s car. The current problem is that Elon exudes toxic monadicity and is entwined with the brand. Kick Elon, save the car.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:13 AM on December 16, 2022 [1 favorite]

praemunire: I suspect our politics would not match up exactly, but he wasn't a toxic bro type.

I think the bro-respectability of the Tesla carried over into being able to relax about not having to face the kind of toxicity that you would if you were driving, say, a Prius. It wasn't useful just for what it projected, but also for what it fended off.
posted by clawsoon at 9:14 AM on December 16, 2022 [4 favorites]

The fawning praise of tech journalists was critical to his public image. I wonder how this will affect him going forward.
posted by interogative mood at 9:20 AM on December 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

As an old I am likely buying one more vehicle. Whatever I choose for my last ride that vehicle will not have Tesla on it.
posted by aiq at 9:23 AM on December 16, 2022 [3 favorites]

Here is a fun theory Matt Levine is idly kicking around as a 5-D chess explanation:

Tesla Inc. is the main source of Musk’s wealth, and his main goal in life is selling lots of Teslas. He has sold all the Teslas that he can sell to coastal elite liberals, and now he faces the daunting challenge of selling electric cars to social conservatives. Acquiring Twitter and turning it into a right-wing media company with himself as the main character might be bad for, like, Twitter ad sales, but that is small potatoes if it is good for selling Teslas to Republicans. “Our cars are electric, yes, but they are free from the woke mind virus” is perhaps a good pitch.

(He acknowledges that this is a riff/gloss on a Twitter thread by David Risher.)
posted by Going To Maine at 9:40 AM on December 16, 2022 [3 favorites]

Just now from Musk:

"And soon, ladies & gentlemen, the coup de grâce"

So, what's the odds on the coup being even dumber than NFT trading cards?
posted by Buntix at 9:41 AM on December 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

He has sold all the Teslas that he can sell to coastal elite liberals, and now he faces the daunting challenge of selling electric cars to social conservatives.

People need to replace their cars regularly. If this was 5d chess, it would be like planning to lose within a move or two.
posted by UN at 9:47 AM on December 16, 2022 [6 favorites]

I do wish we could rescue the ones he has left who are stuck with him due to visa issues --- how would that work?

Just hire them. The new employer adopts their visa application process, etc.

As I recall, there was some measure of how legitimate our company was. I think we needed $100k in the bank? Also the company should pay for lawyers to handle the process/paperwork. But yeah, it's totally possible for even tiny businesses and garage startups to sponsor work visas, if you want to.
posted by ryanrs at 9:50 AM on December 16, 2022 [4 favorites]

Everything you say is true, WaterAndPixels, and yet it's hard to shake the association. It's the expensive version of being someone who liked red baseball caps before 2016.

You're not wrong, I'm slightly embarrassed for my friends and neighbors who have one, I know why they bought one, and it was not because they were Elon fans. I just feel mocking people for past reasonable choice is not productive.

I was considering getting one for when the current car I own dies, but while my next-car will 100% for sure be electric it won't be a Tesla.

I also disagree with that Matt Levine/ David Risher theory, he's not prentending to be an asshole to sell more Tesla, he's the real deal.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 9:56 AM on December 16, 2022 [6 favorites]

I had a weird thing happen to me, am wondering if anyone else has experienced it. I had a Twitter account that I never did much with. After Musk bought Twitter, I started receiving a constant stream of "Tweets you don't want to miss" emails. At first, the tweets in these emails were from people I followed, but the selected tweets started to... drift. After a few weeks, I was shown tweets from accounts that fetishize trans women. That quickly turned to hate speech from transphobic accounts. That's when I deactivated. It's weird how fast it escalated with no input from me.
posted by LindsayIrene at 10:00 AM on December 16, 2022 [12 favorites]

Just now from Musk:

"And soon, ladies & gentlemen, the coup de grâce"

Well, the literal meaning of “coup de grâce” is “blow of mercy”, as in, to put an animal or enemy out of their misery. I feel like it’s too much to hope for that he’s going to literally put Twitter out of its misery.
posted by notoriety public at 10:01 AM on December 16, 2022 [11 favorites]

When Tesla started, they had a plan I could get behind: Speed the transition to electric vehicles. I'm fortunate to be able to support that plan with my $$ and have driven Teslas since 2014. I have recently gotten rid of my last gas vehicle and replaced it with a Rivian. Great truck.

If there are other better vehicles out there when next I'm ready to upgrade, I will consider them on the merits. I don't need to check in and see what Mary Berra of GM thinks about the social medial bull of the day before considering a Chevy EV. Additionally, the history of Henry Ford is also a rich stew of toxins that would melt the belt buckles of most F-150 drivers, but yet they need a work truck.

I believe in the mission of SpaceX, and have Starlink. Again you get my $$ and I will support your work.

Twitter, however, is a completely different topic. No mission, no story, no logic - just lampshade on head and pants around the ankles. I hope that the blowback from these nonsensical actions and twitchy "policy" decisions knocks him out of control of his other assets. Reap the whirlwind.
posted by HannoverFist at 10:01 AM on December 16, 2022 [8 favorites]

I think the bro-respectability of the Tesla carried over into being able to relax about not having to face the kind of toxicity that you would if you were driving, say, a Prius.

This was a genuine math nerd who was able to retire in his ~late 40s and, like, sponsor small museums while enjoying his obscurity and could cope with having an obnoxious woman lawyer such as myself. In ~2008, the idea just seemed neat. Obviously, that is no longer the case. By the time a few years later that I had my next professional encounter with Musk-adjacent businesses, it was clear to me that he was shady. Over the holidays my brother reminded me that I had been talking crap about Musk well before anyone else he knew.
posted by praemunire at 10:04 AM on December 16, 2022 [4 favorites]

Regarding Elon's posting desires vs. his posting abilities, please consider this tweet from Ashley Feinberg containing a screenshot of several of Elon's tweets in a row. I'll attempt to transcribe them here:

Elon Musk @elonmusk 14h
The Branch Covidians are upset lol

Elon Musk @elonmusk 16h
The woke mind virus is either defeated or nothing else matters

Elon Musk @elonmusk Dec 11
| My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci
|
Elon Musk @elonmusk Dec 11
Truth resonates ...

Elon Musk @elonmusk Dec 11
| Calling all [robot emoji I don't have] & [troll emoji I also don't have]
|
| Please attack me!
|
Elon Musk @elonmusk Dec 11
Cool, the bots are so far unable to swarm to the top of my replies!

Elon Musk @elonmusk Dec 11
Hope you're having a lovely Sunday! 😀

Elon Musk @elonmusk Dec 11
Now things get spicy 🌶

Rather weak tea.
posted by mhum at 10:07 AM on December 16, 2022 [1 favorite]

Rather weak tea.

Are you saying he's Ben Garrison without the talent?
posted by clawsoon at 10:10 AM on December 16, 2022 [5 favorites]

Those of us who followed Tesla with extreme interest before Elmo got involved have known since then he's a toxic little shit.
posted by seanmpuckett at 10:12 AM on December 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

Christ, what an asshole Elon.
posted by y2karl at 10:27 AM on December 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

I think we needed $100k in the bank? Also the company should pay for lawyers to handle the process/paperwork.

Who even knows how much Twitter actually has in the bank now? Or has competent lawyers?

Musk’s Twitter reportedly hasn’t paid rent on its office spaces for weeks
Twitter has reportedly dismissed Elon Musk's personal lawyer
posted by meowzilla at 10:31 AM on December 16, 2022 [1 favorite]

The current problem is that Elon exudes toxic monadicity and is entwined with the brand. Kick Elon, save the car.

And unlike KVD Cosmetics there's no need to resort to initials the way they had to post-Kat Von D stepping down after being associated with antisemitism (I'm not trying to underplay it - i don't actually remember the details).
posted by cendawanita at 10:34 AM on December 16, 2022 [1 favorite]

Y'all perspectives from other areas is interesting. Tesla here (previously the land of Prius) is certainly not any kind of status symbol or driver's car. It is the 'default' new car, because even non-car people recognize that electric is better and everyone knows someone who already has a Tesla and won't shut up about how much better it is than gas. Non-car people also find that "pay money online and enter a waitlist" is less aggravating than going to a dealership.
posted by meowzilla at 10:39 AM on December 16, 2022 [7 favorites]

Kind of suprised a vehicle that appears to be a nested collection of poorly thought out hacks is that popular, TBH.
posted by Artw at 10:43 AM on December 16, 2022 [5 favorites]

meowzilla: Tesla here (previously the land of Prius) is certainly not any kind of status symbol or driver's car.

And where is that?
posted by Too-Ticky at 10:48 AM on December 16, 2022 [5 favorites]

Fired Twitter cleaning staff 'treated like garbage'

It's gonna get gross at twitter headquarters
posted by LindsayIrene at 10:49 AM on December 16, 2022 [4 favorites]

Tesla here (previously the land of Prius) is certainly not any kind of status symbol or driver's car. It is the 'default' new car, because even non-car people recognize that electric is better and everyone knows someone who already has a Tesla and won't shut up about how much better it is than gas.

Interesting indeed. I’m in a city and my neighbors would be interested in going electric but they don’t have an easy way to plug it in. We only recently moved somewhere with garage parking. Someone nearby runs a cord from their house to a car parked on the street which seems silly. And we don’t drive enough to be very motivated by gas mileage.
posted by kat518 at 10:49 AM on December 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

In other fragile ego news, Twitter has implemented a Search ban and Search suggestion ban on Akiva M. Cohen, the attorney who posted his demand letter on Twitter in his representation of fired and uncompensated Twitter employees.
posted by Silvery Fish at 10:55 AM on December 16, 2022 [11 favorites]

Teslas have always represented a kind of conspicuous consumption for (male) geeks who had "made it" and I think that makes the cars toxic-adjacent by definition. Apart than their initial availability and performance, they've always been terrible cars whose reputations have been subsidized by people that can afford to overlook how dumb the rest of the car is praise how innovative and disruptive it is.

And arguing that buying a Tesla will eventually lead to more affordable EV cars for the masses is kind of like arguing that allowing rich douchbags to hunt big game provides money for conservation through sales of permits--it might be technically true, but that still doesn't make it something to be proud of.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 10:57 AM on December 16, 2022 [9 favorites]

After Musk bought Twitter, I started receiving a constant stream of "Tweets you don't want to miss" emails.

I do seem to have had an uptick on those, generally delete unread so only see the Subject header items, which have been almost exclusively tweets by Claudia Black, up until recently when they've become interspersed with a load from Christopher Judge. No idea why. Have also seen a massive increase in DM requests from obvious spammers, as in more this December than from whenever the feature was first introduced up until then.

---

Tesla’s Third Largest Shareholder Calls For the Ouster of Elon Musk as CEO -- although it looks like he only has about the same amount of shares (20k) as Musk just sold and Musk still has around 400k, so "Third Largest" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that headline.
---

People need to replace their cars regularly.
Between Tesla selling off their carbon-credits to enable other manufacturers avoid having to improve the efficiency of their IC engines, and a potentially high replacement rate due to poor build quality / catching fire they are fairly carbon negative. All of which are probably down to Musk rather than the original company founders.

Not to say that even with those faults what they've done to normalise EVs isn't more important than their actual EVs. Just that the chances are it could have been done a lot better by someone who knew what they were doing.

[TBH one of the things that impressed me most about the Munro MK1 I mentioned upthread is that one of the things they are trying to emulate from the original Series Land Rovers is the lifespan, i.e. it's vehicle that gets passed down to the grandkids many re-welded sills later. Also that they are deliberately not doing soft-roaders as they don't want to encourage people to buy SUVs unless they have a practical reason to do so. -- Not sponsored, no connection to, just a bit of a LR nerd chuffed to see their potential successor made down the road].
posted by Buntix at 11:02 AM on December 16, 2022 [3 favorites]

I couldn't resist going into the Spaces chat last night when alerted on Mastodon, although I missed Elon's grand flounce. Now that I can't see Spaces at all, I was thinking that it was globally yanked, but I hear reports it's still there for some people. Can any of you with active twitter accounts who didn't go in to last night's chat still see/enter Spaces?
posted by maudlin at 11:36 AM on December 16, 2022

And arguing that buying a Tesla will eventually lead to more affordable EV cars for the masses is kind of like arguing that allowing rich douchbags to hunt big game provides money for conservation through sales of permits--it might be technically true, but that still doesn't make it something to be proud of.

It's not even technically true - the future of affordable EVs are things like Honda's upcoming EV kei van which will be priced comparably to its ICE counterpart.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:37 AM on December 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

I suspect that Elon’s deal with the bankers that financed this whole thing included some specific financial targets for Twitter to show and failing that they can probably call the notes and force Elon to pay out of his own pocket. It is as though he bought Twitter on margin and with the revenue plummeting the value of those shares is less; so he’ll need to cover a margin call to pay down some of the debt and make the bankers whole. It won’t be $44 billion but with a 70%+ rumored drop in revenues it is potentially $30 billion or more that he’s going to have to pay up soon. It gets difficult through because as CEO he’ll need to file paperwork before he makes a sale of that magnitude. Also since his sale or transfer of stock is a taxable transaction he’s going to need to sell about 35 billion in stock to cover it.
posted by interogative mood at 11:41 AM on December 16, 2022 [3 favorites]

Not sure why people are talking about Teslas as if they are the only electric car ever made.

But if we really want to tackle climate, we should be investing in dense cities with socialized support for affordable housing, transportation, walkable mixed-use neighborhoods, child and family support, and more.

Or we can do what we've been doing: suburban sprawl, multilane freeways with gridlock traffic, road rage, particulate pollution, ecological destruction, and unwalkable pedestrian deathzones.
posted by splitpeasoup at 11:51 AM on December 16, 2022 [21 favorites]

I have a model 3 that I bought before Musk went full melt-down. I'd like to trade it in on something that doesn't support the jack-ass (although he's already gotten my money) but as others have mentioned, it's the only EV that has a usable charging infrastructure.

I just finished a 2,000 mile road trip, and charging was a complete non-issue. The nav computer tells you exactly how much battery you'll have left at the next stop and how long you'll need to charge to continue. Stop every couple of hours, charge for 20 minutes while you're taking a bathroom break, and then hit the road again.

Tesla claims to be opening their chargers to other cars soon. As soon as that happens the only remaining reason to have a Tesla will be gone and I'll happily trade in on a new EV before the used prices for Teslas collapse completely.
posted by Eddie Mars at 11:52 AM on December 16, 2022 [4 favorites]

It's not even technically true - the future of affordable EVs are things like Honda's upcoming EV kei van which will be priced comparably to its ICE counterpart.

Why all the hate on the Tesla electric cars? They sell more cars than most luxury manufacturers in the US, they dominate the electric car market, and they absolutely drug the major manufacturers kicking and screaming into the future doing it. Honda's EV strategy was nothing before Tesla came in and ate their lunch, even if Honda ultimately is the future. And they are the future, because Honda currently has 0 electric vehicles that rate top 10 in sales.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:52 AM on December 16, 2022 [5 favorites]

Can I just say I still don't get how the original purchase of Twitter came about? Like, if I said "I ought to buy twitter, how about $60 a share?" nobody would hold me to that--nobody would even take me seriously.

If I'm shopping at Walmart, and I'm, say, carrying a fishing rod around, I can just set it down on a shelf somewhere and leave the store, no one would demand that I purchase it just because I was considering it. So if Elon didn't want to buy Twitter, how was it somehow his obligation to go through with the purchase, after he'd decided he didn't really want it? It just seems like it was in nobody's interest.
posted by newdaddy at 11:53 AM on December 16, 2022

He signed a binding agreement to buy Twitter in April 2022, but the actual exchange of ownership and money was set for a later date because these things require coordinating a bunch of banks and lawyers, which takes time. So in a sense he “bought” Twitter back in April when he made his offer and the board accepted it, even if the deal didn’t close until October.
posted by mbrubeck at 11:58 AM on December 16, 2022 [12 favorites]

It’s like, if you have ever bought a house, there is a period of time when you have signed a purchase agreement but you have not yet handed over money and transferred the title and keys and so on. At this point the house is “under contract” and you can’t just back out of the deal for no reason.
posted by mbrubeck at 12:01 PM on December 16, 2022 [11 favorites]

I see. Thanks!
posted by newdaddy at 12:03 PM on December 16, 2022

From the link posted way above by cendawanita:
MIT Technology Review ran an analysis in Hoaxy, a tool created by Indiana University to show how information spreads on Twitter by looking at both keyword frequency and interactions between individual accounts. The results hint at Musk’s new role in this network: as effectively a hall monitor for the far right. What frowner said basically.
posted by Bella Donna at 12:05 PM on December 16, 2022 [6 favorites]

Lol one of the Trailer Park Boys explains everything.
posted by interogative mood at 12:09 PM on December 16, 2022 [5 favorites]

Our landlords have a Tesla which they leave parked in the driveway behind the house we rent, which is not included in the lease. At one point I was concerned that the Tesla, which seemed noticeably fancier than other cars around here, would make us a target for burglary as it would seem like we were the people rich enough to own a Tesla. Now I'm just worried that it will make us look like we're the sort of assholes who would buy a Tesla.
posted by grouse at 12:11 PM on December 16, 2022 [7 favorites]

as if they are the only electric car ever made

I'd buy the Ioniq 5 tomorrow if I could actually get one; I'd settle for a Bolt except I can't seem to get one of those either (to be frank, I trust Super Cruise more than I'd ever trust Autopilot).
posted by aramaic at 12:25 PM on December 16, 2022 [4 favorites]

it's the only EV that has a usable charging infrastructure.

Which was done intentionally, as Teslas use a proprietary charge plug that is incompatible with the industry standard plug. Which also locks Tesla owners into that infrastructure, as they can only use Superchargers for DC fast charging.

Tesla claims to be opening their chargers to other cars soon.

They're not doing this out of the kindness of their hearts - they can see that EU style plug regulations are coming. But even given that, how will they do that - Superchargers are literally designed to work with Teslas specifically and making them interoperable will likely require retrofitting (read: this is another one of the company's long term liabilities.)

Why all the hate on the Tesla electric cars?

Let's see - the company is helmed by a bigoted manchild who stole the company out from under its actual founders after rejecting their first investment proposal, the cars have build quality issues in large part due to said manchild, their owners are used as beta testers for self-driving systems that are unsafe and have a body count, and the company has racked up racial and sexual discrimination lawsuits. Oh, and given that the company was started by two ex-GM engineers, it was likely that if they didn't realize EVs were feasible, someone would.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:27 PM on December 16, 2022 [44 favorites]

their owners are used as beta testers for self-driving systems that are unsafe and have a body count, and the company has racked up racial and sexual discrimination lawsuits. Oh, and given that the company was started by two ex-GM engineers, it was likely that if they didn't realize EVs were feasible, someone would.

discrimination:
Ford
GM

Toyota

Driving has a serious bodycount, far in excess of Tesla.
And again, Tesla didn't make electric cars feasible, they sold them in large numbers.

If inside baseball about ownership bugs you, well fair enough.
I'm sorry Elon sucks, but that has little to do with the cars themselves.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:49 PM on December 16, 2022

I'm sorry Elon sucks, but that has little to do with the cars themselves.

What you say is true. And yet...
posted by clawsoon at 12:52 PM on December 16, 2022

Eh, I dunno, that ridiculous and poorly-designed yoke steering thing seems to have been pretty much just his Big Brain idea. I mean, really, if you're gonna do yoke steering at least make it usable first -- other people have. Why do it the stupidest way instead?
posted by aramaic at 12:52 PM on December 16, 2022

Tesla hyping their lane-keeping system as "Full Self Driving" is 100% Elon-brand dangerous bullshit.
posted by ryanrs at 12:53 PM on December 16, 2022 [19 favorites]

but as others have mentioned, it's the only EV that has a usable charging infrastructure.

This is changing; it varies spatially but is no longer true in most places. From Calgary to Vancouver (973 km), you go past 9 Tesla Superchargers and 17 towns with generic Level 3 (ie as fast as Tesla) chargers supporting both CCS and CHAdeMO standards (ie everybody but Tesla). Most of those 17 towns have several charging locations rather than the one for Tesla. There are now a lot more trips where there are more generic fast DC chargers than Tesla chargers, and that is only going to get better through time. From a quick look, it's only eastern Montana and Wyoming, and South Dakota where Tesla has better infrastructure. Even in say, Nebraska, there's 7 Tesla chargers and 29 generics.
posted by Superilla at 12:57 PM on December 16, 2022 [14 favorites]

> Teslas use a proprietary charge plug that is incompatible with the industry standard plug

Because the rest of the industry didn't have a fast charge plug when Superchargers debuted. (CCS finalized in 2011 and wasn't a certain winner over CHAdeMO, Schg first installed in 2012)

Rich Rebuilds has a style that might grate on a lot of people's nerves, but his 17 hour drive from Florida to Massachusetts in a non-Tesla electric vehicle shows how important the charging network is. Chargers only available to hotel guests, broken chargers, chargers where fast charging is broken and 70 cents per kilowatt hour.

I don't see why Tesla needs to worry about the cost to make their stuff interoperable—they can pass it on to the CCS users, no?
posted by ASCII Costanza head at 1:03 PM on December 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

discrimination:
Ford
GM

Toyota

And your point is? "But others do it too!" isn't a justification for abusive behavior. Not to mention that your whole argument is that Tesla should be put on a pedestal instead of attacked.

Driving has a serious bodycount, far in excess of Tesla.

See above. There's also the fact that automotive engineers have noted that the type of self-driving system that Tesla uses is inherently unsafe and thus should not be sold.

And again, Tesla didn't make electric cars feasible, they sold them in large numbers.

Define "large", because as most assessments have pointed out, Tesla sales are a drop in the ocean of luxury car sales, let alone total sales. And as they actually get competition, they're fucked from both sides as their carbon credits become less valuable.

If inside baseball about ownership bugs you, well fair enough.
I'm sorry Elon sucks, but that has little to do with the cars themselves.

Tesla is literally how the manchild funds his abusive endeavors (as seen with his recent $3.5B sale), so no, you can't uncouple him from the cars. Not to mention that many of the issues plaguing Tesla cars can be laid at his feet in particular.

So yeah, people have legitimate complaints about the company.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:07 PM on December 16, 2022 [21 favorites]

Rich Rebuilds has a style that might grate on a lot of people's nerves, but his 17 hour drive yt from Florida to Massachusetts in a non-Tesla electric vehicle shows how important the charging network is. Chargers only available to hotel guests, broken chargers, chargers where fast charging is broken and 70 cents per kilowatt hour.

Both Technology Connections/Aging Wheels and The 8-Bit Guy did similar road trip videos, and they showed that the infrastructure, while needing development, isn't that bad today.

And the reality was that Tesla could have put their support behind one of the proposed standards, or released their plug as an open standard - and they didn't.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:18 PM on December 16, 2022 [6 favorites]

From Garbage Day's Ryan Broderick:
Twitter’s core experience has been, and still is, disruption. And we have spent over a decade trying to determine if it’s good disruption or bad, left-wing or right, progressive or conservative, but the truth is, it’s just disruption. It’s a random social chaos machine. Over the summer, as Elon Musk finalized the purchase of the site, that chaos machine was turned in on itself. The company was overrun with leaks and drama, which all became trending topics. And after Musk bought it, the company literally began livetweeting its own dismantling. Now that it has toppled itself, and all that’s left is Musk’s various whims, the manic energy of the app appears to be localized entirely inside of Musk’s brain. The man is jacked directly into the feed and it turns out the feed is screaming back at him, “you fucking suck.”

And so we all have to sit around and watch the richest man in the world process in real-time how cringe, how embarrassing, how hated he is. The joke has always been that Twitter causes “psychic damage,” but that joke is real now. Twitter is currently doing to one man’s psyche what it has done to countless societies around the world. He paid $44 billion for a website he believed was a “biological neural net,” a digital collective unconscious that he could use to take us to Mars, and it turns out that frothing Id hates him.
posted by Bella Donna at 1:20 PM on December 16, 2022 [21 favorites]

we can do what we've been doing: suburban sprawl

Speak for yourself, man. I'm in early middle age and have never owned a car. Won't mind a teeny bit if I get too old to drive never having owned one.
posted by praemunire at 1:23 PM on December 16, 2022 [7 favorites]

When it comes to a Tesla, do you own both the hardware and the software? Or do you just license the latter? Because in the US at least that could go to some interesting places if Elon’s capriciousness starts to extend into meatspace. I’m thinking specifically of what happened with Revolv devices after Nest bought them out for their IP.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 1:43 PM on December 16, 2022

Elon Musk's team is seeking new investors for Twitter

Musk’s money manager, Jared Birchall, reached out to potential investors this week, offering shares of Twitter at the same price, $54.20, that Musk paid to take the company private in October, the people said.

“Over recent weeks we’ve received numerous inbound requests to invest in Twitter,” it read, according to a copy reviewed by Semafor. “Accordingly, we are pleased to announce a follow-on equity offering for common shares at the original price and terms, targeting a year-end close.”

Careful response from one of the investors who already had a small stake in the initial deal: "One could argue he has created value or destroyed value at Twitter. It’s hard to tell at this point."
posted by clawsoon at 1:58 PM on December 16, 2022 [4 favorites]

When it comes to a Tesla, do you own both the hardware and the software? Or do you just license the latter?

You're just licensing the hardware in a Tesla.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:02 PM on December 16, 2022 [3 favorites]

"And soon, ladies & gentlemen, the coup de grâce"

So, is it going to be The Aristocrats or The Producers?
posted by cheshyre at 2:06 PM on December 16, 2022 [7 favorites]

The thing to realize about charging infrastructure is that it can be rapidly deployed. Unlike traditional gas stations or hydrogen it is really just a matter of pulling electrical permits and having parking. The standards are starting to coalesce and with the flood of EVs you’ll see them everywhere soon.
posted by interogative mood at 2:12 PM on December 16, 2022 [13 favorites]

It sounds like he's threatening to go full Lowtax?
posted by ryanrs at 2:12 PM on December 16, 2022 [3 favorites]

You're just licensing the hardware in a Tesla.

That seems to be becoming more common, e.g. BMW wants you to pay monthly fees for luxury features: "The BMW ConnectedDrive shop showcases a range of options that you can add to your BMW, many of which will simply enable features for hardware that's already built-in for your car."

At least it's not the airbag vest for motorcycles that stops working if you don't pay your subscription.
posted by clawsoon at 2:15 PM on December 16, 2022 [3 favorites]

The thing to realize about charging infrastructure is that it can be rapidly deployed.

Level 1/2, sure. But Level 3 (DC Fast Charging) requires the deployment of significant gearing to handle the current conversion.

Also, you have to make sure that the infrastructure can be maintained. I rented a Model Y a few months back, and the one hotel we stayed at that had chargers kept having them trip the breaker they were on.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:21 PM on December 16, 2022 [3 favorites]

Twitter stiffs software vendor with $8 million left on contract. A lawsuit says Twitter failed to pay a $1,092,000 invoice in a software contract that doesn't expire until late 2024, and that the Elon Musk-led company apparently intends to stiff the vendor on another $7 million worth of payments.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 2:44 PM on December 16, 2022 [4 favorites]

Twitter stiffs software vendor with $8 million left on contract.

I guess you don't become a billionaire without the overwhelming feeling, "But the money is mine!"
posted by clawsoon at 2:47 PM on December 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

All I can say is however fashy he may become, a demitrillionaire with ten kids total really has no business getting around to tweeting about the Great Replacement, so hopefully we may miss that. Let us pray.
posted by y2karl at 2:59 PM on December 16, 2022 [1 favorite]

I had been mystified at people's willingness to buy a car that was so expensive and also shoddily built and prone to catch on fire.

Two things, aside from the price the other issues are vastly overblown. Even at their worst the build quality issues were relatively minor, being better than what you could get anywhere except Mercedes-Benz until less than 20 years ago. It's just that even the worst automakers of today have fit and finish that is crazy good now. The fire issue is again not really an issue, it's just that EV fires are newsworthy while car fires in general just aren't. ICE cars catch fire at a much higher rate than even the worst EVs, like the Bolts with the bad LG packs.

The other thing about Tesla is that you can actually buy the car for the advertised price with no hassle. With few exceptions it's difficult to get any of the newer EVs from the traditional manufacturers, especially at MSRP. The production volumes are nowhere near sufficient to keep up with demand.

All that said, while I would have loved to have a Model S when they were newish, everything Tesla has done since then has been downhill in my view. Maybe I'm a Luddite, but I like buttons, knobs, and switches. I want the important status information like my speed directly in front of me. I want an actual wheel and not a boy racer yoke to steer the car with. There is nothing Tesla currently sells that I'd be willing to buy. I'd rather buy a Leaf if I had to buy a car. Thankfully, I'm still able to get by without one, though it would be nice if it weren't just getting by, but rapid rent increases in my area over the past couple of years pushed me out into suburbia with roads wide enough to be freeways, so it's a hell of a lot less convenient than it was in a more walkable/bikeable area.

Still I persist because I'm fucking stubborn. Plus owning even a cheap car would cost half as much as my rent, so yeah, fuck cars in general. Well, I don't hate cars so much as I hate how the US has been made so car dependent. Cars are (mostly) fine by me when they're truly optional and the volume of traffic is commensurately lower.
posted by wierdo at 3:03 PM on December 16, 2022 [8 favorites]

When I was a kid, my father had a joke sign up in the garage that said, “If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?” I guess in this context, the appropriate sign is “If you’re so rich, why ain’t you smart?”
posted by njohnson23 at 3:09 PM on December 16, 2022 [18 favorites]

My account no longer serves as a place to show my forwarding address on masto, as this shit happens, so I’ll be giving some thought to closing it or further shuttering it.

My mastodon account is my Twitter account name. Waiting to see what happens with that.
posted by oneirodynia at 3:43 PM on December 16, 2022 [1 favorite]

Looks like my last tweet, also with that link, may have been deleted? Unless it glitched when I posted it and never actually went up. Annoying.
posted by Artw at 4:22 PM on December 16, 2022

> Artw: "Unless it glitched when I posted it and never actually went up."

I've been seeing reports that Twitter is just not letting any Mastodon links post (e.g.: this BBC article).
posted by mhum at 4:30 PM on December 16, 2022 [3 favorites]

The "this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful" language they're using to block links to (some?) mastodon servers is kind of funny. I mean, it's not potentially harmful to the users.
posted by nobody at 4:43 PM on December 16, 2022 [6 favorites]

While I largely disagree with its thesis, I think this article from Slate has some good observations to contrast Trump and Elon's relationship with posting and online behavior in general, "The Case for Ignoring Elon Musk":

Both Trump and Musk are trolls, but of two distinct varieties. Trump is a natural troll. His only talent is for celebrity, and he has an animal cunning that long ago informed him that conflict is the best way to drum up attention. He dislikes being criticized, but it’s the cost of doing his kind of business, and his instinctive response is to fight back in spectacular fashion, turning the dispute into a show. Furthermore, despite the infamy of his Twitter account, Trump was not truly online. He used Twitter to broadcast his pronouncements, but there’s little evidence that he read anyone else’s tweets, let alone responded to them. The medium that created and shaped Trump is television, and when he felt attacked anywhere, he wanted his proxies to go on TV to fight for him.

Musk, on the other hand, is extremely online, having apparently been redpilled in the various internet hangouts favored by the medium’s edgelords. When this happened and just how trollish Musk was beforehand is not clear, as he is secretive, granting few candid interviews. Even Ashlee Vance’s authorized biography of Musk, published in 2015, has little information about his childhood in South Africa and his apparently abusive father (another experience Musk shares with Trump). Both Trump and Musk have fragile egos made more fragile by years spent in cocoons built of wealth and yes men. Unlike Trump, though, when Musk is criticized, he doesn’t see it as part of the game, or an opportunity to commandeer the spotlight with a fight. He wants to erase the insult. His trumpeting about the return of “free speech” and “comedy” to Twitter was immediately followed by a crackdown on accounts parodying him. It often seems that Musk paid $44 billion for the ability to delete other people’s tweets.

Later in the article, though, the author says, "It’s overheated to claim that “people will die” as a result of Musk’s regime, a symptom of internet poisoning almost as extreme as Musk’s own." Perhaps a deeper understanding of things like, say, Radio et Télévision des Milles Collines would be helpful to understand what a real worst-case scenario could be here.
posted by mhum at 4:58 PM on December 16, 2022 [4 favorites]

It's probably just coincidence, but the few people I follow on Mastodon have started posting like normal, instead of trying to cross-post from Twitter, or talking about the different vibe of Mastodon instead of Twitter.
posted by meowzilla at 5:14 PM on December 16, 2022 [5 favorites]

"It’s overheated to claim that “people will die” as a result of Musk’s regime, a symptom of internet poisoning almost as extreme as Musk’s own." Perhaps a deeper understanding of things like, say, Radio et Télévision des Milles Collines would be helpful to understand what a real worst-case scenario could be here.

In theory, that's true, and social media has already been used to incite genocide, but the other side of the coin is that Musk has been working just as hard at making Twitter irrelevant. What good is having an active Twitter account again if the people you're trying to reach and/or present yourself as an alternative to are all gone? It's like having an account on Gab.

And that's not mentioning the lawsuits Musk has opened himself up to in the way he's run his business - if he's going to incite a genocide, he'd better do it before the American, and then the European courts, tear strips off him.
posted by Merus at 6:54 PM on December 16, 2022 [4 favorites]

Also in the negative column for Tesla is Elon's virulant anti worker stance. Tesla is the only major munfacturer of cars in thw US without unionized ŵorkers and he has already had enforcement action against him as recently as this year by the NLRB for illegal union busting actions at Tesla. See also firing people for quarantining.

That alone is enough for me to not buy a Tesla.
posted by Mitheral at 7:03 PM on December 16, 2022 [10 favorites]

Elon is in the top two for "Worst Boss of 2022" at Ask A Manager. People are warning her not to tweet the results.

It's occurred to me today that Elon just wants love (and for people to think he's funny). But he seems incapable of doing anything that would make people love him, and he doesn't get that treating people nicely would make them like you. I think he wants to metaphorically abuse people...and be loved for being himself, be loved for being an abusive stupid fuckwad. And guess how well that works?
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:31 PM on December 16, 2022 [11 favorites]

I think he wants to metaphorically abuse people...and be loved for being himself, be loved for being an abusive stupid fuckwad. And guess how well that works?

Pretty well in some circles, unfortunately. Which is why he's turning all of twitter into a "no girleys allowed" tree fort.
posted by Popular Ethics at 8:32 PM on December 16, 2022 [7 favorites]

Tesla has always said the plan was to make an affordable EV for the masses, but they just kind of haven't gotten around to it. And right now, the redesigned Chevy Bolt, at $25,000 and with a charger that you can plug into any US outlet (albeit for slow, overnight charging) seems an awful lot like the EV car for the masses.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:15 PM on December 16, 2022 [16 favorites]

Tony Webster on masto: CNN, WaPo, NYT journalists' accounts were restored. The Intercept and independent journalists were not. We've gotten the worst of it all: the criticism of being the “mainstream media” but without the backing or protection of being the “mainstream media.”
posted by cendawanita at 9:57 PM on December 16, 2022 [6 favorites]

At least one of the suspended journalists, Matt Binder, is back on twitter.

Also, she criticized the banning of journalists, Elon unfollowed Bari "Twitter Files" Weiss.

Twitter spaces are still working but unfortunately the only proof I have of that is that Nick Fuentes under a pseudonym is hosting one currently.
posted by LostInUbe at 9:57 PM on December 16, 2022 [4 favorites]

At the start of 2022, I knew five people who worked in Twitter.

This morning the last of those has been laid off by email. Dave's job title was Senior Staff Site Reliability Engineer at Twitter. Three days ago he tweeted this and I guess knew it was likely; his twitter feed is quite the read (though I hope it's not why he was laid off).
posted by Wordshore at 12:21 AM on December 17, 2022 [6 favorites]

at least this narcissist still isn't broke enough, isn't in enough foreign-held debt to run for president or senator
posted by eustatic at 2:47 AM on December 17, 2022

In Europe the superchargers are open to all EVs and my favourite thing to do when I charge my (boring, crappy software but otherwise fine) ID4 is to loudly say “hey, these new Toyotas looks kind of cool”.
posted by boogieboy at 2:59 AM on December 17, 2022 [3 favorites]

Someone nearby runs a cord from their house to a car parked on the street which seems silly.

In the old days when cars with carbs for the most part wouldn't start at face freezing temperatures without being plugged in all night it was extremely common for people to do this in neighbourhoods where you had to park on the street but always in front of your residence. In places where it is cold enough for this to still be a problem you sometimes see gantries installed to elevate the cords over the sidewalk to allow for snow removal and eliminate the trip hazard.

If you own your house it's not all that expensive to put an outlet for charging at the corner of your property or if you have a boulevard/verge, and local ordinance permitting, right at the street.

And there are all sorts of cord chases that can be put over the cord to mitigate tripping if you just stretch it across the sidewalk.

Here is how Vancouver (BC) is enabling this method of charging.
posted by Mitheral at 4:56 AM on December 17, 2022 [3 favorites]

This was the plan all along.

Text messages to Musk from the Musk/Twitter law suit a few months ago. The replies indicate the messages were sent by Stephen Miller.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 6:00 AM on December 17, 2022 [8 favorites]

Looks like my last tweet, also with that link, may have been deleted? Unless it glitched when I posted it and never actually went up. Annoying.

I had a link to my mastodon.scot account as a pinned tweet, just checked and it's no longer pinned. It doesn't appear to have been deleted, so I've repinned it and will see how that goes.
posted by Buntix at 6:41 AM on December 17, 2022

A lot that could be blamed on weird Elon decisions could also be blamed on it being shit as hell right now, though that is also a weird Elon decision.
posted by Artw at 7:15 AM on December 17, 2022

This was the plan all along.

Back when Musk said "I'm gonna make a free speech platform", we all said, "lol, he has none of the skills needed and he thinks this is a tech problem", and we were right.

But now that it's "shift the platform to the right" it seems much more doable for him.

In related news, Elon says, "Twitter will start incorporating mute & block signals from Blue Verified (not Legacy Blue) as downvotes."
posted by clawsoon at 7:45 AM on December 17, 2022 [2 favorites]

A lot that could be blamed on weird Elon decisions could also be blamed on it being shit as hell right now

Just ran fedifinder on my account and it found 436/4792 accounts, which is more or less (less than 10 diff) the same as when I last ran it back on the 6th, so (assuming fedifinder doesn't cache previously found links) it looks like there probably isn't any systemic targeting of people's mastodon links on their twitter bios/pinned tweets.
posted by Buntix at 8:00 AM on December 17, 2022

In related news, Elon says, "Twitter will start incorporating mute & block signals from Blue Verified (not Legacy Blue) as downvotes."

Which is essentially handing moderation control over to the alt-right, crypto-bros, and other assorted sycophants and scammers, as they're the only ones signing up for it to any degree. It's supercharging the dogpile.

And on that note, there's a chrome extension to automatically block all Twitter Blue users.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/blue-blocker/jgpjphkbfjhlbajmmcoknjjppoamhpmm
posted by Buntix at 8:48 AM on December 17, 2022 [5 favorites]

Firefox version
posted by Buntix at 8:51 AM on December 17, 2022 [2 favorites]

If I sign in the pinned tweet with the Mastodon link is visible, if I sign out it is not. Weird. Have added Linktree to the profile as well as the Mastodon account name ( non-linked).
posted by Artw at 10:12 AM on December 17, 2022 [1 favorite]

Not another column about Elon Musk, a WaPo column by Alexandra Petri.

In “The Madness of King George,” there are several scenes where very learned doctors dedicate considerable time and effort to squinting at the contents of the king’s chamber pot. Watching the movie, you think, “Well, at least we are at a stage of civilization where we don’t have to do that! We do not live in a world that hinges so completely on the condition of one or two powerful men that it is worth our while to spend hours every day examining their stools in minute detail and trying to draw conclusions from them." But then Elon Musk buys Twitter, and — I can think of no better analogy for what has ensued.

There are so many people who are interesting. And instead we have to follow Elon Musk and Donald Trump. We have to watch them host SNL, and read their inane tweets, and know precisely what they are going through at all times, because their whims can cost people jobs and ruin lives.

There is something desperately boring about despots and plutocrats. And one of the frustrating consequences of an unequal society is that the rest of us have to care what is going on with them. Now Trump might be gone, but we still have a main character we don’t want. 

I hate that we have to pay attention. Our lives will be impacted if Trump is again elected president, say, or the roads are suddenly filled with exploding cars, or if the place where journalists go to water-cooler about breaking news gets seized up and its rules rewritten, seemingly arbitrarily, on the fly. Mark Zuckerberg changes an algorithm, and livelihoods in the content economy shudder in terror. I would like nothing better than to not have to know or care about these people. With the amount of time I pour into them, I could have invented Narnia twice. But instead we are sitting there squinting into the king’s stool.

posted by jenfullmoon at 10:13 AM on December 17, 2022 [44 favorites]

Musk's purchase and destruction of Twitter strangely parallels Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

I think there's a case to be made that Musk bought Twitter, even though he didn’t really want to, because Putin told him to.

The head of Russia's space program actually threatened Musk back in May for supplying Starlink technology to Ukraine, and Musk responded by saying something like 'well, if I disappear suddenly, it’s been nice knowing you'. Then in July, Putin fired that guy, who had been an important ally for a long time, and the general opinion was that the threat to Musk was one of the biggest reasons. And Musk is clearly worried about assassination, since he described the tracking of his private jet as 'assassination coordinates' — somewhat ludicrously, since the locations were public information and only specified the airport where the jet landed.
posted by jamjam at 10:39 AM on December 17, 2022 [5 favorites]

https://nitter.net/BriannaWu/status/1604170562011795456#m:

Tesla stock now firmly at $149.08 in after-hours trading.

This is huge. And according to Fortune, the value is only going to plummet from here.

Folks, we’re well on our way to Elon getting margin called on the Tesla stock propping up Twitter, meaning multiple companies crash.
--
2/ Why do I tweet about this so much?

Because if we want Twitter to return to sanity, that means new leadership. And the most expedient way to do that is to help investors understand how overvalued Tesla stock is.

Musk gets margin called = Banks own Twitter, not Elon.

posted by Buntix at 10:44 AM on December 17, 2022 [4 favorites]

somewhat ludicrously, since the locations were public information and only specified the airport where the jet landed.

Even more ludicrous that the bullshit 'stalking' incident happened a day after the plane flight and miles away from its destination (LAX), and was so serious that it still hasn't been reported to the LAPD.

Tesla stock now firmly at $149.08 in after-hours trading.

For context, it started the year at $402.67 and was still worth over $300 in mid-September. Nice going. Reminds me of the observation from early November:

Ken(neth)
@disasterlaster
Elon Musk right now is like if Elmer Fudd bought a website of Bugs Bunnies

posted by hangashore at 10:58 AM on December 17, 2022 [5 favorites]

New character: John Mastodon
posted by Artw at 11:41 AM on December 17, 2022 [10 favorites]

Meanwhile, last night Musk apparently laid off more employees from the infrastructure team.
posted by cheshyre at 11:58 AM on December 17, 2022 [1 favorite]

Twitter doesn’t need a big team if it’s just Elmo tweeting and everyone else fawning and faving him. Could really wind that shit down to a couple dozen at most. Doesn’t matter how much non-Elmo traffic gets dropped on the floor. He bought a bullhorn for his bullshit and as long as he gets that sweet sweet egoboo he’s getting what he paid for.
posted by seanmpuckett at 12:13 PM on December 17, 2022 [3 favorites]

Folks, we’re well on our way to Elon getting margin called on the Tesla stock propping up Twitter, meaning multiple companies crash.

Can anybody explain-like-I'm-five the margin call thing?

And why would anybody set a "here's where disaster happens" line at a stock price that's still 3-10x the market cap of any other car company based on revenue or net income? Why would you be, like, "Let's set things up so that if the market becomes slightly less irrational we blow ourselves up"?
posted by clawsoon at 2:41 PM on December 17, 2022 [2 favorites]

There's an explanation here: https://electrek.co/2022/12/08/elon-musk-tesla-backed-margin-loans-to-support-twitter/.

Though it also says he doesn't have any for the Twitter purchase. I guess Brianna Wu may have been talking about other loans he'd taken out with Tesla shares as collateral...

Ah yup, looks like:

Tesla’s last proxy statement disclosed that at the end of March, Musk had about half of his Tesla shares already pledged to secure an existing margin loan. After accounting for subsequent share sales, his remaining unpledged shares could secure a margin loan of more than $5 billion at a 20% loan-to-value ratio, according to Bloomberg calculations.

From: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-08/musk-bankers-mull-tesla-margin-loans-to-cut-risky-twitter-debt?leadSource=uverify%20wall
posted by Buntix at 3:18 PM on December 17, 2022 [3 favorites]

Anyone else starting to wonder if he has serious mental health issues, beyond being an asshole? Because THE PARANOIA IS KICKING IN. Like, I get why he thinks people would want to assassinate him because everyone hates him, but possibly making up this attempt on his kid...?
posted by jenfullmoon at 3:32 PM on December 17, 2022 [1 favorite]

One time, when one of his rockets blew up in a not spectacularly unheard of way, he started freaking out and saying it must have been a sniper, so this isn’t new bullshit.
posted by Artw at 3:40 PM on December 17, 2022 [2 favorites]

Speaking of watching Elon's chamber pot, I missed last week that he took a dump on Wikipedia [Vice article].
posted by clawsoon at 3:40 PM on December 17, 2022

Speaking of watching Elon's chamber pot, I missed last week that he took a dump on Wikipedia [Vice article].

He's been dumping on any platform that doesn't have centralized ownership. Real "Steve Ballmer calling Linux a cancer" vibes. Hasn't gone after Post that I've noticed. Probably a gentleman's agreement there.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 3:46 PM on December 17, 2022

jenfullmoon: Because THE PARANOIA IS KICKING IN. Like, I get why he thinks people would want to assassinate him because everyone hates him

I read this the other day, and it got me thinking about the old South African system of working incredibly hard to oppress people until they want to kill you, and then worrying about being killed.

...his father Errol Musk told AFP in an interview that he had tried to raise his sons "as South African boys", instilling in them the same discipline he learnt in the military.

"I was a strict father. My word was the law. They learnt from me," the 76-year-old said.

He said that even as a pre-schooler, Elon had set his sights on becoming the wealthiest man alive, crediting that uber-macho "South African boy" upbringing with driving his ambition.

"It's part of the way we lived, the way I lived. We strove to be the best we could," he told AFP...

And then later, a cute little story of Elon as a boy:

He also recalled a time when Elon made a hurtful comment to a schoolmate about his father's suicide.

The boy pushed Elon down a staircase at school, injuring him so badly he had to be hospitalised.

When he heard what had happened, Errol wanted to defend his son.

"But I realised Elon overstepped the mark with this little boy. I had to drop it," he said.

posted by clawsoon at 3:47 PM on December 17, 2022 [5 favorites]

Anyone else starting to wonder if he has serious mental health issues, beyond being an asshole? Because THE PARANOIA IS KICKING IN. Like, I get why he thinks people would want to assassinate him because everyone hates him, but possibly making up this attempt on his kid...?

I’ve heard a fair few people comment on how long-term overuse of uppers has a way of leading to paranoia …
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:24 PM on December 17, 2022 [4 favorites]

Wikipedia's most recent fund raising header is interesting:

We are the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia and 12 other free knowledge projects. Being a nonprofit means there is no danger that someone will buy Wikipedia and turn it into their personal playground.

posted by jamjam at 6:31 PM on December 17, 2022 [10 favorites]

Being a nonprofit means there is no danger that someone will buy Wikipedia and turn it into their personal playground.

Which is interesting, because I've heard rumours that the Wikimedia Foundation has been turned into the board's personal piggybank
posted by Merus at 6:40 PM on December 17, 2022 [1 favorite]

So the latest thing is that people who have blue checks can reduce the reach of the plebs without them by blocking them, the more people that block you the fewer people can hear what you have to say .....

Which basically leaves us with this new way to survive on twitter .... block every blue tick you see before they can block you ..... maybe not quite what Elron had in mind ...
posted by mbo at 8:19 PM on December 17, 2022 [4 favorites]

"Mediaite right wing writer Isaac Schorr misread the Twitter account @joinmastodon as "John Mastodon," and referred to him as the founder of the platform in his article https://www.mediaite.com/opinion/hypocrisy-and-fear-all-the-way-down-at-twitter/ #tech #twitter #twittermigration #twitterexodus #news #media"
-- @[e-mail]

John Mastodon is now officially the first Mastodon-wide meme.

Link to tag search for #JohnMastodon
posted by umber vowel at 9:22 PM on December 17, 2022 [6 favorites]

what a bizarre fucking metagame that shitheel hath wrought
posted by glonous keming at 9:23 PM on December 17, 2022 [1 favorite]

Elon Musk's jet landed at Luton Airport, UK a little while ago, in case anyone was wondering.
posted by ryanrs at 10:40 PM on December 17, 2022 [4 favorites]

It wouldn’t shock me to find out that he’s abusing a stimulant like Adderal to keep those long hours and getting testosterone injections to fight off the effects of middle age. We could be seeing some combo of roid rage / amphetamine psychosis that has dialed all the shittiest parts of his personality to maximum asshole.
posted by interogative mood at 10:41 PM on December 17, 2022 [4 favorites]

Wait! The plane has taken off again, possibly pursued by snipers.
posted by ryanrs at 10:44 PM on December 17, 2022 [2 favorites]

An explanation about the various steps some private plane owners have been taking, to evade tracking, and of their futility (given the number of people crowdsourcing information with software controlled radios).
posted by rongorongo at 11:55 PM on December 17, 2022 [2 favorites]

Wait! The plane has taken off again, possibly pursued by snipers.

On its way to Qatar, apparently, possibly to get a talking to from investors, possibly to drop off data on how to do an authoritarianism.
posted by Artw at 6:17 AM on December 18, 2022

Wait! The plane has taken off again, possibly pursued by snipers.

Now in Qatar, whose sovereign wealth fund [Forbes] helped fund his purchase of Twitter.
posted by Buntix at 6:19 AM on December 18, 2022

which I guess could be why he’s been freaking out about elonjet this last few days, so I hope every banned/formerly banned journalist does a big piece on it.
posted by Artw at 6:25 AM on December 18, 2022

Qatar, apparently, possibly to get a talking to from investors

Yes, I can't imagine any other reason why someone would fly to Qatar on today of all days.
posted by Slothrup at 6:31 AM on December 18, 2022 [23 favorites]

Anyone else starting to wonder if he has serious mental health issues, beyond being an asshole? Because THE PARANOIA IS KICKING IN. Like, I get why he thinks people would want to assassinate him because everyone hates him, but possibly making up this attempt on his kid...?

>We could be seeing some combo of roid rage / amphetamine psychosis that has dialed all the shittiest parts of his personality to maximum asshole.

Maybe, but it's also the case that the right wing for a while now has been irresistibly drawn to and rewarded seemingly insane, outrageous, aggressive, unpredictable behavior - the more spectacle the better - and to victimization narratives on top of that. It's fun when you can't actually tell the difference between psychosis and effective demagoguery.
posted by trig at 6:39 AM on December 18, 2022

Taylor Lorenz: Elon Musk banned me from Twitter

Earlier tonight, Elon Musk suspended my Twitter account. I only had three tweets live on my account when it was banned. Two were promoting my social media profiles on other platforms (follow me on TikTok and IG @taylorlorenz!), and one was the tweet below where I asked Musk for comment.

My colleague Drew Harwell, who has also been suspended, and I have been working on a story involving Musk and were hoping to get comment from him. We attempted to reach him several times through email over the past few days. At 8:30pm EST I tried reaching out for comment on Twitter by posting this:

[screenshot of innocuous tweet follows]
posted by Artw at 7:01 AM on December 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

Yes, I can't imagine any other reason why someone would fly to Qatar on today of all days.

Hadn't realised that thing was still going on. But yeah, there are pics now showing his current assassination coordinates at the world cup finale.
posted by Buntix at 7:02 AM on December 18, 2022

Twitter just outright banning links to other social media now, from Twitter Support.

We recognize that many of our users are active on other social media platforms. However, we will no longer allow free promotion of certain social media platforms on Twitter.
--
Specifically, we will remove accounts created solely for the purpose of promoting other social platforms and content that contains links or usernames for the following platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post.

Also looks like Musk is buddying it up with Kushner at the cup, so quite possibly some (humour is now legal) business going on there...
posted by Buntix at 9:44 AM on December 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

"free speech absolutist"
posted by glonous keming at 9:55 AM on December 18, 2022

free speech solipsist
posted by away for regrooving at 10:02 AM on December 18, 2022 [10 favorites]

Wonder if they're actually going to nuke the official Facebook and Insta Twitter accounts...

(Bit of a diss on MeFi that they haven't included it in the list...).

The full policy is even worse than the absurd tweets I posted, it looks like there's probably going to be a hell of a lot of accounts getting suspended requiring tweet deletion / bio-modification if they implement it according their stated rules:

What is a violation of this policy?

At both the Tweet level and the account level, we will remove any free promotion of prohibited 3rd-party social media platforms, such as linking out (i.e. using URLs) to any of the below platforms on Twitter, or providing your handle without a URL:

Prohibited platforms:

Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Post and Nostr

3rd-party social media link aggregators such as linktr.ee, lnk.bio

Examples:

“follow me @username on Instagram”

“[e-mail]”

“check out my profile on Facebook - facebook.com/username”

Accounts that are used for the main purpose of promoting content on another social platform may be suspended. Additionally, any attempts to bypass restrictions on external links to the above prohibited social media platforms through technical or non-technical means (e.g. URL cloaking, plaintext obfuscation) is in violation of this policy. This includes, but is not limited to, spelling out “dot” for social media platforms that use “.” in the names to avoid URL creation, or sharing screenshots of your handle on a prohibited social media platform.
Example: “instagram dot com/username”

What is not a violation of this policy?

We recognize that certain social media platforms provide alternative experiences to Twitter, and allow users to post content to Twitter from these platforms. In general, any type of cross-posting to our platform is not in violation of this policy, even from the prohibited sites listed above.

Additionally, we allow paid advertisement/promotion for any of the prohibited social media platforms.

What happens if you violate this policy?

Tweet deletion and temporary account locks

If violations of this policy are an isolated incident or first offense, we may take a number of actions ranging from requiring deletion of one or more Tweets to temporarily locking account(s). Any subsequent offenses will result in permanent suspension.
Temporary suspension

If violations of this policy are included in your bio and/or account name, we will temporarily suspend your account and require changes to your profile to no longer be in violation. Subsequent violations may result in permanent suspension.

posted by Buntix at 10:04 AM on December 18, 2022

Wow not being even able to tweet your own username on other accounts. That is just pathetic by Twitter. And announcing it during the World Cup Final no less. Real shameless.
posted by Room 101 at 10:07 AM on December 18, 2022 [13 favorites]

Well he just really believes no one should know where you are.

(Except in the office. You should always be in the office.)
posted by trig at 10:10 AM on December 18, 2022 [5 favorites]

So now you gotta leave Twitter like you're defecting from the Soviet Union?
posted by clawsoon at 10:11 AM on December 18, 2022 [10 favorites]

I wonder if other platforms are going to take steps in kind - you can link anywhere but to Twitter.

Because this policy is more than a little lopsided:

We recognize that certain social media platforms provide alternative experiences to Twitter, and allow users to post content to Twitter from these platforms. In general, any type of cross-posting to our platform is not in violation of this policy, even from the prohibited sites listed above.

posted by trig at 10:14 AM on December 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

Really going for it with the Freeze Peach there.

I hear they may have also banned linktree so I’m going to have to do even more fucking around with my profile, unless I get rid of it entirely which is basically where this is going. I guess you are either in, or out, no toe holds.
posted by Artw at 10:18 AM on December 18, 2022

So now you gotta leave Twitter like you're defecting from the Soviet Union?

Trying to think of any form of online I've been in the 2.7 decades that's had such draconian restrictions, perhaps AOL back in the walled-garden days?

I hear they may have also banned linktree

Yup, I was gonna make the joke that at least it means I'd finally get round to learning how to use linktree. But no, may have to put an About page on my actual website...
posted by Buntix at 10:21 AM on December 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

In “The Madness of King George,” there are several scenes where very learned doctors dedicate considerable time and effort to squinting at the contents of the king’s chamber pot. Watching the movie, you think, “Well, at least we are at a stage of civilization where we don’t have to do that!" ... But then Elon Musk buys Twitter, and — I can think of no better analogy for what has ensued. (Alexandra Petrie)
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 10:30 AM on December 18, 2022 [6 favorites]

Molly White:

no URLs. no usernames without the URL. no bypassing restrictions on URLs (like writing example dot com). no posting images with usernames in them.

free speech!
posted by Artw at 10:32 AM on December 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

Another very good point from @[e-mail]

Somebody: *steals your artwork, cuts off sig, it goes viral*

Helpful samaritan: hey that's actually by at-foo on insta

Twitter: fuck you, traitor

---
Will have been posted in previous threads, but for anyone bailing out, good to remove any content you've provided.

https://tweetdelete.net/ Free for less than 3200 tweets.
https://tweetdeleter.com Slightly cheaper ($11.99) for deleting > 3200 if you cancel during the first month. Also claims to be able to delete unlimited likes.

Need to have the downloaded twitter archive for both for more than 3200.

There's also a wee snippet of javascript [Github Gist to copy and paste] to iterate through all your likes in the browser and unlike them. Suspect it may cause browser crashes if dealing with more than thousands...
posted by Buntix at 10:49 AM on December 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

Everyone has uninstalled the app, right? That’s a huge security hole, you should absolutely do that.
posted by Artw at 10:56 AM on December 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

Real boosts for tribel and nostr there. Two services I hadn’t heard of, one of which appears to just be an idea that didn’t exist before Musk’s takeover and is mostly a GitHub page and a telegram channel.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:56 AM on December 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

Is the anti-competitive behavior that might rise to the level of anti-trust enforcement in the USA, EU, or elsewhere? It would be hilarious if Musk hands regulators an absolute open-and-shut anti-trust case by tweeting out a signed confession via official company accounts.
posted by rustcrumb at 11:00 AM on December 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

I wonder if there are any conversations at Google about returning Mastodon toots when someone is searched for in addition to (or instead of) Twitter tweets like they do now.
posted by clawsoon at 11:03 AM on December 18, 2022 [4 favorites]

Everyone has uninstalled the app, right? That’s a huge security hole, you should absolutely do that.

How is the Twitter app a security hole, different from any other app? Unless you mean in the way that it will slowly force-feed you a lot of dumb information.
posted by meowzilla at 11:07 AM on December 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

Everyone has uninstalled the app, right?

Just did.
posted by grouse at 11:17 AM on December 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

I don’t know, why wouldn’t you want an untrustworthy Nazi creep with a history of leaking private information to bad actors have an app on your phone? What could go wrong with him having tracking software installed there + whatever random crap the next upgrade has?

Plus there’s a fair chance that whatever random crap gets added will be added by Tesla bros, so it will probably explode.

(And yes, a lot of apps also do the same snitching on you. That’s a sign you should consider deleting them as well, not that you shouldn’t delete Twitter)
posted by Artw at 11:19 AM on December 18, 2022 [9 favorites]

Is the anti-competitive behavior that might rise to the level of anti-trust enforcement

https://twitter.com/tracedominguez/status/1604541565346934784

“a firm with market power cannot act to maintain or acquire a dominant position by excluding competitors or preventing new entry.” - from the @FTC’s anticompetitive practices website

-- screenshot of tweet by @FrancescoNicoli (typos mine) from downthread:
Censoring Mastodon social IDs could be a major violation of EU competition law (abuse of a dominant position, art 102) which could lead to billions in fines. Have you any proof? If so, sent it to [e-mail] @vestager @EU_Competition

--
I haven't deleted the app yet (can't watch it get buggy without it) as so far the location sharing permission hasn't been activated yet, but have been using it exclusively with burner twitter account for a month or so now, rather than main).
posted by Buntix at 11:22 AM on December 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

Forbes: European Union Official Warns Elon Musk Of Sanctions Over Twitter Banning Journalists.

"Under a set of new digital rules, Twitter could face sanctions ranging from from billion-dollar fines to being banned across the European Union over suspending the Twitter accounts journalists who report on owner Elon Musk, an EU official warned early Friday."

posted by amf at 11:24 AM on December 18, 2022 [4 favorites]

Also see: Tagesschau: EU threatens Musk with sanctions. (Google translation of German news site into English, original version here.)
posted by amf at 11:27 AM on December 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

Threats aren’t going to do shit, mind. Regulators either take action or don’t exist.
posted by Artw at 11:29 AM on December 18, 2022 [6 favorites]

"The acid test for any two competing socioeconomic systems is which side needs to build a wall to keep people from escaping? That’s the bad one!" - Elon Musk
posted by sukeban at 11:34 AM on December 18, 2022 [17 favorites]

He neglects Tumblr? He ignores her users for the soccer ball? Oh! Oh! Mockery for Elon! Torment for Elon by One Million Jeers!

Seriously, I see more newly-blue checkmarked users on Tumblr than Twitter these days. I wonder how they'll respond to this slight.

And I guess I'd better visit those sides that scan your following list for forwarding addresses before the links go down.

(Btw, for Android users who prefer an app to loading the site in your browser, I've been using "Tinfoil for Twitter" which acts as a wrapper for the mobile site. It's no longer in the Play Store, but you can easily find the apk by googling.)
posted by cheshyre at 11:44 AM on December 18, 2022 [7 favorites]

I wonder if posting your new mastodon address in a series of tweets, one character per tweet would break the new policy? They can't ban every letter of the alphabet.
posted by Lanark at 11:51 AM on December 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

They can't ban every letter of the alphabet.

Never say never with Elon....
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:53 AM on December 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

I wonder why TikTok cross-pollination is still allowed.
posted by Selena777 at 12:13 PM on December 18, 2022

Fun thread on Twitters location snitching BEFORE Elon.
posted by Artw at 12:25 PM on December 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

More on the EU rules from @[e-mail]

IMPORTANT:
@elonmusk's new policy preventing linking to competitors is in DIRECT VIOLATION of European Union rules.

Penalty can be a fine of up to 20% of Twitter's annual revenue

The Digital Markets Act: ensuring fair and open digital markets [commission.europa.eu]
--
NOTE: This law will not be enforced until next year, so Musk has some time before facing these fines

“The DMA will be applicable as of beginning of May 2023.”

[screenshots of the relevant in tweet]

Also is it just me that keeps confusing the tab I have open with the quote tweets ratio-ing the Twitter Support tweet announcing the wall going up and their main timeline.

And has there ever been an open mockery season of anyone like Elon? (Pig fucker and Covfefe are like Ephemera danica in comparison -- and the Hawthorn is losing its flowers...).

He may only be the second richest money man in the world now, but he is for sure the richest in having the funniest dunks at/against/on/(never with) him.
posted by Buntix at 12:31 PM on December 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

It used to be people would avoid unfavorably mentioning Elon by name because all the weird nerds/bots/shills that would show up and argue with you. But he's generated so much opprobrium for himself that they can't keep up anymore.
posted by grouse at 12:36 PM on December 18, 2022 [5 favorites]

The way friends and colleagues are gradually leaving Twitter for elsewhere feels like the von Trapp family gradually slipping away from the Salzburg Festival and fleeing to Switzerland to escape the nazis. #SoLong #Farewell #AufWiedersehen #GoodBye
posted by Wordshore at 1:39 PM on December 18, 2022 [18 favorites]

Idly wondering how garius's Trust Thermocline watchlist is doing.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 2:06 PM on December 18, 2022 [4 favorites]

Ha, he banned Paul Graham.

(PG how it started / how its going.)
posted by Winnie the Proust at 2:13 PM on December 18, 2022 [6 favorites]

(PG how it started / how its going.)

heh

heh heh
posted by clawsoon at 2:15 PM on December 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

paul graham here is real “worst person you know makes a good point”
posted by dis_integration at 2:16 PM on December 18, 2022 [8 favorites]

...when it affects him personally
posted by trig at 2:36 PM on December 18, 2022 [4 favorites]

@[e-mail]: "It's honestly hilarious how every time a weirdly arbitrary change is made to Twitter, you can always trace it back to a recent moment when people made fun of Elon for something."
posted by clawsoon at 3:05 PM on December 18, 2022 [21 favorites]

Elon just posted a new poll:

Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.

So far, the yes's are ahead 55% to 45%

Added: Looks like Brianna Wu may have goaded him into this.
posted by cheshyre at 3:49 PM on December 18, 2022 [12 favorites]

Elon just posted a new poll:

I’m torn. My immediate reaction is to vote Yes. Get the hell out of there.

On the other hand, this whole meltdown has been so entertaining. And some other CEO might actually be able to successfully transform Twitter into global fascist network. At this point I really just want Twitter to fail so we can all move on.

So I guess I’m voting No.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 4:09 PM on December 18, 2022 [4 favorites]

If Oxboy steps down, he'll just put a toady of his in charge, I'm betting. Ergo no change to the current evil chaos.

My read is Oxboy doesn't think birdsite is fun any more and wants a figleaf for petulantly quitting.
posted by humbug at 4:14 PM on December 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

Or will he just ban everyone who votes yes?
posted by Devils Rancher at 4:22 PM on December 18, 2022 [4 favorites]

Note this doesn't mean he'll sell Twitter. He'll just put one of his neo-Nazi friends in charge.
posted by dirigibleman at 4:22 PM on December 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.

Whatever his pathologies are, they are not the same as Trump's. Just as dangerous, maybe, but not the same.
posted by clawsoon at 4:26 PM on December 18, 2022

I don't trust any of his polls, they are probably just intelligence gathering so they can decide which accounts get priority in the algorithm. Also he will have fixed the result in advance.
Give the little people a nice illusion that they matter.
posted by Lanark at 4:31 PM on December 18, 2022

Based on his moves so far, we're probably looking at Andy Ngo, CEO.
posted by clawsoon at 4:41 PM on December 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

He's already stated the algorithm is going to prefer paying Blue users, and those are probably the same people who are going to vote to keep him as CEO. It doesn't really matter though, he has no principles.
posted by meowzilla at 4:44 PM on December 18, 2022

Well, a few minutes after posting the poll he posted "As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it".

Whatever his pathologies are, I wish I didn't have to find out about them.
posted by trig at 4:48 PM on December 18, 2022 [5 favorites]

Hmmm…

@iamraisini Just overheard Elon Musk discussing investment opportunities from the Amir of Qatar
@TamimBinHamad
& other Saudi Royals for his businesses, specifically Twitter,but from their body language & diplomatic response, it didn’t seem very positive. They asked him to find a suitable CEO
posted by Artw at 5:07 PM on December 18, 2022

Are the polling results not showing up for anyone else?
posted by Selena777 at 5:32 PM on December 18, 2022

Lex Fridman is now offering to run Twitter.

Certain forms of Engineer's Disease are contagious. Please talk to your doctor about prevention and treatment options.
posted by clawsoon at 6:09 PM on December 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

Snoop Dogg now running a poll asking if he should run Twitter.
posted by clawsoon at 7:20 PM on December 18, 2022 [7 favorites]

Gonzo (a cat) is, too:

Should i, Gonzord, be CEO of Twerter should I rool twerter? I wil abide by resolts of pole.

posted by cheshyre at 7:34 PM on December 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

Twitter kept itself running for multiple years with a CEO who barely paid attention to it.

Now, after just a month of decisions by Musk, Musk is saying (correctly), "No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive."

It's gone from cruising along to life support, and Musk is painting himself as the only person who can keep alive the patient that he's been killing.
posted by clawsoon at 7:35 PM on December 18, 2022 [5 favorites]

Sort of a Baron von Munchausen by Proxy.
posted by darkstar at 7:40 PM on December 18, 2022 [7 favorites]

UPDATE: The tweets by @TwitterSupport this morning, announcing a new policy banning linking to competing websites, have been deleted.

The policy itself was deleted from Twitter’s website. -- Judd Legum
posted by valkane at 7:53 PM on December 18, 2022 [6 favorites]

The gossip is that he flew to the World Cup with Jared Kushner to beg the Saudi’s to bail him out.
posted by interogative mood at 8:03 PM on December 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

Also if Brianna Wu pulls this off it is the ultimate revenge against the gamer gate mother fuckers. So please go login to twitter and vote like hell to oust. Musk as CEO.
posted by interogative mood at 8:04 PM on December 18, 2022 [5 favorites]

On the rare occasions he can sleep are his nightmares about being on stage while 300 million people boo him or are they about the guys with bonesaws paying him a visit?
posted by thatwhichfalls at 8:05 PM on December 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

The policy itself was deleted from Twitter’s website.

But, because all things must be as stupid as possible, there is a poll on reinstating it.
posted by Artw at 8:05 PM on December 18, 2022 [4 favorites]

The story that kicked off the Taylor Lorenz ban, which was on the false doxxing story that kicked off the ElonJet ban:

Musk blamed a Twitter account for an alleged stalker. Police see no link.

Twitter owner Elon Musk threatened legal action, changed the platform’s rules and suspended journalists’ accounts after a confrontation involving his security team at a gas station. But the incident’s timing and location cast doubt on a link to the @ElonJet account.

By Drew Harwell and Taylor Lorenz
posted by Artw at 8:30 PM on December 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

Oh and I understated just how stupid things were getting, because now there’s this.
posted by Artw at 8:35 PM on December 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

So, to summarize:

Elon gif upset about the ElonJet account, and made up a false story about doxxing.

As a prop in this false story he used a video of an interaction between one of his security guys and a guy who stalks Grimes. Assuming Elon is telling the truth about X being there this was probably a custody handover and it seems like some wildly incompetent shit was going on.

Elon then bans ElonJet, assorted people talking about Elon Jet, random journalists.

Then Elon gets word the story is coming out and bans the journalists working on the story. He retroactively instates the incredibly fucking stupid no-outside-links policy as justification for this.

Journalists banned en mass. Lotta journalists and other people freaking out and leaving the site anyway.

Assorted begging for money in Qatar occurs.

The stupid poll goes out… and if you think Elon “stepping down” while still owning the place will make a damn bit of difference I have multiple bridges to sell you.

The story comes out anyway, Musk was utterly lying all along and probably butting Grimes and the kid in even more danger by giving this psycho a spotlight and riling them up.

BOUNDING INTO COMICS, the right wing asshole comicsgate poster and one of the more dumb and unpleasant people on the whole site, somehow has Elons ear and convinced him to rescind or maybe rescind the dumb as fuck no-outside-links policy.

This is so, so fucking stupid all the way down.

What a world.
posted by Artw at 8:47 PM on December 18, 2022 [17 favorites]

Re: the Saudis - Raisini: Just overheard Elon Musk discussing investment opportunities from the Amir of Qatar @TamimBinHamad & other Saudi Royals for his businesses, specifically Twitter,but from their body language & diplomatic response, it didn’t seem very positive. They asked him to find a suitable CEO

Elon tweeted this after he was told by his Saudi & Qatari investors to get his shit together. They are not happy with the way he is proving to be an amateur CEO and asked him to step down. [qt of EM about major policy changes]

That tweet followed by this ‘pretend’ poll asking if he should step down as CEO to save the embarrassment. Remember that Saudi Prince @Alwaleed_Talal invested $1.89 Billion and Qatar @QIA about $400 Million in Twitter. They are the real Power at Twitter.

I have spoken.

Don't know how legit is the guy, but at least the goss sounds more legit than a typical deuxmoi post.
posted by cendawanita at 9:12 PM on December 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

I mean, can you imagine being a Wired cover-boy and ending up like this?
posted by valkane at 10:04 PM on December 18, 2022

Once again the EU rules forced Musk‘a hand. Under the EU Digital Markets act the stuff Twitter did in banning Mastodon and other social media accounts is illegal and the fines can be 20% of a company’s revenues .
posted by interogative mood at 12:05 AM on December 19, 2022

Trump taking over twitter via Kushner and Saudi cash? I could see this happening.
posted by UN at 12:08 AM on December 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

valkane:
> UPDATE: The tweets by @TwitterSupport this morning, announcing a new policy banning linking to competing websites, have been deleted.
> The policy itself was deleted from Twitter’s website. -- Judd Legum

Just to be sure, I verified this: here's the archived tweet, here's the link to the policy, and these links are presently 404s.

(Also, I misread "juddlegum" as "juddle gum" and now I can't stop.)
posted by Pronoiac at 12:10 AM on December 19, 2022 [4 favorites]

Twitter Safety also has a poll on banning links to other media sites, with an overwhelming vote against (80+%). Elon's poll has 20 minutes to go and 58% of voters want him to resign. Honestly, you'd think he likes being booed.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 2:57 AM on December 19, 2022 [3 favorites]

final result:
Yes 57.5%
No 42.5%
posted by Lanark at 3:32 AM on December 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

Do you remember back when it seemed that the stupidest, most chaotically reckless thing Elon would do with Twitter was to charge people $8 to be verified?

Pepperidge Farm remembers.
posted by darkstar at 3:58 AM on December 19, 2022 [10 favorites]

So, who had MySpace Tom on their bingo cards?

Meanwhile, RyanAir awards the gold medal for longevity to the head of lettuce.

(Juddle glum sounds like a character from Narnia)
posted by cheshyre at 5:27 AM on December 19, 2022 [8 favorites]

Snoop Dogg now running a poll asking if he should run Twitter.

Snoop Dogg is a genius for getting himself mentioned in dozens of widely reported news articles by piggy backing on the drama, and he got a million responses. Just guessing here, but Musk may have inadvertently put a lower enterprise value on Twitter, which is currently around 37 billion, and used to price the ads which take in about 5 billion.
posted by Brian B. at 8:16 AM on December 19, 2022

Gary Black: (part of a thread) What’s clear from Elon’s tweets last night:
1) Twitter in far worse shape than many believe (“be careful what you wish for”)
2) Elon believes there are few who can save Twitter from bankruptcy (“there is no successor”)
3) Elon likely being pressured to step down as TWTR CEO

I chose this one because it's got a collection of screenshots of MuskTweets in the last day - man's really going through it.
posted by cendawanita at 8:38 AM on December 19, 2022

Elon wins Worst Boss of 2022 at Ask A Manager.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:53 AM on December 19, 2022 [9 favorites]

Elon wins Worst Boss of 2022 at Ask A Manager.

This asshole woulda won Worst Boss of 2022 if he was working at a Pret a Manger.
posted by Etrigan at 9:45 AM on December 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

Parker Molloy with a take I greatly enjoyed: Can I interest you in the 1999 Cleveland Browns?
posted by box at 10:21 AM on December 19, 2022 [5 favorites]

The Media Is Making the Same Mistakes with Musk That It Did with Trump
posted by Artw at 10:25 AM on December 19, 2022 [4 favorites]

Oh, and Elon just doxxed Hunter Biden.

He really wants a staring role in the upcoming incredibly stupid congressional hearings about bullshit and fuck all.
posted by Artw at 10:43 AM on December 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

Musk is a fine example of hypocrisy and bad customer relations in one mannequin.

Democrats and independents who lean to the Democratic Party are much more likely than Republicans and GOP leaners to say they favor incentives to increase the use of electric vehicles (84% to 46%)... Democrats are more inclined than Republicans to say they are at least somewhat likely to consider purchasing an electric vehicle the next time they buy a vehicle (58% vs. 23%).
posted by Brian B. at 11:22 AM on December 19, 2022

> The Media Is Making the Same Mistakes with Musk That It Did with Trump

That is a surprisingly thorough and clear-eyed article. (I had no idea that NBC suspended a reporter for lightly mocking Musk. Or that Time still had content worth reading.)
posted by trig at 11:30 AM on December 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

More bankruptcy rumblings

So we see the Toys r Us cycle complete… Some kind of restructuring or buy out to leave the debt behind seems highly likely, probably with Elon still ending up owning it because the ways the laws are structured assholes always win.

Leveraged buyouts - should be illegal, do nothing but make the world shittier, never going to go away because they’re a tool of the richest most awful people.
posted by Artw at 12:28 PM on December 19, 2022 [8 favorites]

Brianna Wu asked people what changed their mind about Musk. Many of the responses referenced the Thai cave "pedo guy" incident, with a sprinkling of labour issues, broken promises, Covid denialism and general Musk asshattery.

Then there's this response, which says that his behaviour at sex parties was "when I knew he’s a fascist", with no other explanation.

Now I want to know what the sex party "tells" are for fascists.
posted by clawsoon at 12:47 PM on December 19, 2022 [11 favorites]

So we see the Toys r Us cycle complete… Some kind of restructuring or buy out to leave the debt behind

I'm fairly confused by this, I admit, but I believe key loans have been secured by Musk's Twitter Tesla stock and he'd be on the hook for them regardless?

Does anyone have more familiarity with this?
posted by mark k at 12:58 PM on December 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

Now I want to know what the sex party "tells" are for fascists.

#1: Invading Poland
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 1:02 PM on December 19, 2022 [12 favorites]

My impression - probably incorrect - of leveraged buyouts is that they're structured basically like buying a house with a mortgage, where the loan is secured by the asset being purchased, except that in the LBO case the buyer often tries to strip and sell as much copper wire and siding from the house as they can in order to pay the loan.
posted by clawsoon at 1:06 PM on December 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

LBOs often use the purchased company as collateral, but it's been widely reported that Musk's Tesla stock was the collateral for his loan. And that the sinking Tesla stock price puts Musk in an uncomfortable situation.

So if this is right, it's more like if I'm buying a house, the bank says I'm overpaying and they won't give me a lone, so I take out second mortgage on my first house to fund it. If I stop payment on the second house, I'd lose my first home.

But it's also true that Musk's debt is now owned by Twitter, and bankruptcy laws is labyrinthine, so I'm confused by the implications of the various shenanigans.
posted by mark k at 1:12 PM on December 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

Now I want to know what the sex party "tells" are for fascists.

The leather daddy outfit is by Hugo Boss?
posted by Clever User Name at 1:18 PM on December 19, 2022 [4 favorites]

I expect it means he didn't respect boundaries in "ha ha only kidding but not really" way but didn't get thrown out because he was the richest guy in the room. Not respecting boundaries, intentionally, at a sex party is a very definite tell for other extremely bad personalty traits.
posted by seanmpuckett at 1:20 PM on December 19, 2022 [5 favorites]

My impression - probably incorrect - of leveraged buyouts is that they're structured basically like buying a house with a mortgage, where the loan is secured by the asset being purchased, except that in the LBO case the buyer often tries to strip and sell as much copper wire and siding from the house as they can in order to pay the loan.

You do know that Twitter is auctioning off tons of assets - including the full kitchen??
posted by Silvery Fish at 1:23 PM on December 19, 2022 [4 favorites]

I’d also note that handing over control just before the car crashes is part of the Tesla business model.
posted by Artw at 1:24 PM on December 19, 2022 [32 favorites]

it's been widely reported that Musk's Tesla stock was the collateral for his loan. it's been widely reported that Musk's Tesla stock was the collateral for his loan.

As far as I can tell he planned to initially, but in the end the $13b of loans he got from banks didn't use Tesla stock as collateral. There has also been talk about him possibly trying to get more loans now on that basis, but either he hasn't managed or it never happened.

He does apparently have an existing loan pre-the-Twitter-nonsense that is secured on half his Tesla stock: at the time, given the way it's been nose-diving since then it's entirely possibly he's had to put up a lot more of it down as collateral (possibly a helluva lot more verging on all).

The whole meeting with Kushner (albeit speculative as to whether it was just two buds meeting up randomly with the representatives of various countries they are indebted to) followed by trying to hand off management does suggest he doesn't have the liquidity (or stocks available as collateral) to keep Twitter going himself.

I’d also note that handing over control just before the car crashes is part of the Tesla business model.

To paraphrase from memory a tweet I saw, way way back in the before times when Twitter was banning links to other social media...

"This shouldn't be surprising: Elon's business model has always been locking people into his properties and then setting them on fire."
posted by Buntix at 1:44 PM on December 19, 2022 [5 favorites]

You do know that Twitter is auctioning off tons of assets - including the full kitchen??

This reminds me of when my employer at the time ending their free bagel service was, in retrospect, our first clue to the rapidly approaching bankruptcy.

Like... sure, Twitter probably doesn't need to keep those three bar stools, but the fact that it feels the need to sell them probably isn't a good sign.
posted by clawsoon at 1:45 PM on December 19, 2022 [13 favorites]

Brianna Wu asked people what changed their mind about Musk. Many of the responses referenced the Thai cave "pedo guy" incident, with a sprinkling of labour issues, broken promises, Covid denialism and general Musk asshattery.

Academic degrees?
posted by Brian B. at 1:48 PM on December 19, 2022 [3 favorites]

including the full kitchen??

the sink, anyway
posted by trig at 1:48 PM on December 19, 2022 [5 favorites]

I saw the kitchen auctions. But that doesn’t seem like it would even make a dent in the billions of debt.

The massively in debt rich person’s version of check for change in the sofa to pay the electric bill, I assume.
posted by Silvery Fish at 2:10 PM on December 19, 2022

My assumption has been that selling off the kitchen and all the layoffs/sadism to employees is basically signaling to other rich people. It won’t pay off the unplayable debt and may make the business unworkable but it shows an ability to make tough! hardheaded! decisions and not be swayed by woke lawyers and accountants - clearly a guy to invest in! Any actual reduction in overheads being irrelevant to that.

But if the unplayable dent is just getting memory holed by some private equity dodge then I guess it could be an actual attempt to keep costs down - the question then being is the reduced cost Twitter something he thinks hd can run as a business or is it just a pricey toy he puts money into and encourages fellow rich fash to put money into.

It might be he’s still thinking he can have his cake and eat it - it can be a fash toy AND a working business. I think he’s be wrong on that count though.
posted by Artw at 2:19 PM on December 19, 2022 [4 favorites]

This reminds me of when my employer at the time ending their free bagel service was, in retrospect, our first clue to the rapidly approaching bankruptcy.

We have a joke in our office about "recession cookies." When I started in 2007, the cookies at firm lunches were huge and delicious. After September 2008, the cookies got much smaller.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 3:09 PM on December 19, 2022 [4 favorites]

I worked at a company that featured free lunch. One morning I arrived at work and overheard someone tell someone else that free lunch is gone. Huh? An hour and a half later, I and few others got laid off. TINSTAAFL
posted by njohnson23 at 3:19 PM on December 19, 2022 [7 favorites]

A small thing amongst all Musks belligerent cruelty - all that free lunch stuff is offered as a convenience so workers will happily stay in the office and put in extra hours. Now Musk is basically forcing them to live there but has also made a big show of taking all that shit away.
posted by Artw at 3:24 PM on December 19, 2022 [8 favorites]

I wonder if Musk feels morally unsettled when people around him aren't punishing themselves.
posted by clawsoon at 3:55 PM on December 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

I wonder if Musk feels morally unsettled when people around him aren't punishing themselves.

So, Elon's sort of thinking, "Since I am empty and unable to feel joy, no-one else should feel joy either." ?
posted by mikelieman at 4:34 PM on December 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

“Why would anyone else not want to live in the office and never see their children?”
posted by Artw at 4:35 PM on December 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

The academic degrees thing is FASCINATING. How does he have two "degrees," one of which doesn't mention the actual degree topic?! Good lord, that looks fake. If you tried to go through National Student Clearinghouse, would he even have anything in that?

Unsurprised he made up BS about grad school at Stanford.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:00 PM on December 19, 2022 [4 favorites]

Remember the adage that in a free service like twitter the end users are the product, not the customer. In this case that is the thing that makes Musk’s strategy to terrible. His moves have flooded the platform with a bunch of low quality product, while driving off the high value ones.
posted by interogative mood at 9:54 PM on December 19, 2022 [3 favorites]

I Speak Fluent ‘New Social Media CEO Who’s In Over Their Head’; Let Me Translate The Last Few Days Of Twitter Policy
posted by Artw at 10:31 PM on December 19, 2022 [11 favorites]

In the meantime the EU is funding the Fediverse including the Mastodon protocol via their Next Gen Internet initiative: announcement on masto; press release.

Chris Trottier of Hootsuite is also going thru Friendica's features, and he thinks organizations might find that protocol useful as their Fediverse engine (my description).

Twitterjaya is still on the birdsite but in the last 2 weeks I'm seeing more and more Pinoy twitter moving onto the Fediverse, and they're big users especially for social media so let's see if there's going to be a significant network effect there. I'm still hunting for other regionalities of my personal interests - still haven't found analogous nodes the way I've hit gold with Singaporeans and Filipinos.
posted by cendawanita at 1:50 AM on December 20, 2022 [5 favorites]

one of which doesn't mention the actual degree topic?

Bachelors of Arts commonly do not list a department or topic. It is nominally a general degree. I have a BA myself. To get a BS I would have had to take an additional 8 hours of coursework, but I had the opportunity to instead get out in three years with a degree and I took it.

My diploma is technically not “in computer science” but I did literally all but two courses in that major, so I keep it on my resume as a “BA in Computer Science”.

I suppose the difference is that, when asked, I don’t lie about it. And I’m not running a massive corporation.
posted by Room 101 at 4:08 AM on December 20, 2022 [2 favorites]

Turns out that binding poll was not so binding after all! Surprise: the CEO stays.
posted by UN at 8:26 AM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

I have never seen a general degree of a BA without a degree topic on the diploma in my life. That doesn't exist at my alma mater or at its numerous sibling colleges. (Disclaimer: I have a BA and BS degrees, both of which are a degree in a major, at one point I was assigned to research what other colleges did.) I don't know squat about Penn or what colleges might(?) do that, but it's not something I have ever heard of.
Even then, Elon apparently claims he has a physics degree in addition to a bachelors in economics, which doesn't appear to be accurate from that degree investigation thread.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:27 AM on December 20, 2022

In the meantime the EU is funding the Fediverse including the Mastodon protocol via their Next Gen Internet initiative: announcement on masto

We may never be able to match the incredible achievements of #JohnMastodon, but the European Union still plays its part!

:D
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:20 AM on December 20, 2022 [6 favorites]

If there’s one thing they love, it’s a *standard*, and activityPub sure is a standard.

Meanwhile WIRED is turning on its tech capitalist masters: Billionaires Are A Security Threat
posted by Artw at 9:29 AM on December 20, 2022 [3 favorites]

Turns out that binding poll was not so binding after all! Surprise: the CEO stays.

Kind of glad it looks less likely assorted journalists and influencer types desperate to pretend it’s gone back to “normal” will get their chance, tbh. Jason Calacanis wasn’t ever going to be anything other than Musk’s Renfield.
posted by Artw at 9:34 AM on December 20, 2022 [3 favorites]

I have never seen a general degree of a BA without a degree topic on the diploma in my life.

From the FAQ on my alma mater’s website:

You will have a bachelor of arts degree. The diplomas don't specify the specific genre of B.A., but graduates often place the field of their concentration after the B.A. in resumes and applications. (For example, they might list a B.A. in multimedia design and educational psychology.)

It’s definitely A Thing.
posted by wemayfreeze at 9:44 AM on December 20, 2022 [2 favorites]

That is so bizarre. People at my school nitpick their degrees to death, I can't even imagine that would be ok to not list a major.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:24 AM on December 20, 2022

Heh well my school has no majors so *shrug*
posted by wemayfreeze at 10:31 AM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?!I I've never heard of that either! (In that case, I guess it makes more sense.)

Back on topic: check this out at Twitter HQ.

I guess this is Elon's response to people wanting him out: Only blue tick users to vote in Twitter polls on policy
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:57 AM on December 20, 2022

> jenfullmoon: "I guess this is Elon's response to people wanting him out: Only blue tick users to vote in Twitter polls on policy"

I would just like to note how this is essentially the American conservative approach to democracy: voting is great... so long as only "our people" get to vote.
posted by mhum at 11:13 AM on December 20, 2022 [7 favorites]

Re: degrees - the question is just what Penn's degrees look like, not universities in general. (I have no idea what they write on theirs.)

I would just like to note how this is essentially the American conservative approach to democracy: voting is great... so long as only "our people" get to vote.

With the added twist that "our people" in this case are the ones paying the... taxes?
posted by trig at 11:40 AM on December 20, 2022

Pretty sure they can mint as many bots with as many check marks as they want. So it’s both franchise restriction and ballot stuffing!
posted by notoriety public at 11:48 AM on December 20, 2022 [4 favorites]

Whoever posted that pic of the nameless degree specifically wrote on it, "no department specified (not the norm)" on there. Also fishy that there's no date on the degree--that's another thing that people nitpick about big time on diplomas and I'd really be surprised if it was standard at Penn to not mention one. Also, "Elon claims it's a BS in Physics," lolnope.

WaPo: No word from Musk on whether he’ll resign. He lost a poll he said he’d abide: The Twitter CEO had said he would abide by results of the 12-hour poll. But hours later, he appeared to be laying the groundwork to potentially invalidate the results.

Note: no real news after that other than the aforementioned votes thing and "no response from Musk."
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:29 PM on December 20, 2022 [2 favorites]

From some googling it does appear to me as if UPenn may not show major on the diploma itself, which some schools don't (actually I notice that just the normal example of a BA diploma on wikipedia doesn't show a major). This isn't unique to BA as a degree type, though certain types of degrees have more specific info in the degree name itself (e.g. MSW). It's impossible to graduate without a major at UPenn currently; and in my experience in higher ed, currently a faculty member at a similarly ranked school, it's exceedingly rare for a non-major BA to be something you can graduate with. There would be no way to do this at my university either, though I believe we may put the major(s) on the diploma. Too bad it wasn't his transcript that was subpeona'd (I expect this would be legally much harder to do).

Of course, the situation could have been different in the 90s.
posted by advil at 12:35 PM on December 20, 2022

Tesla stock having quite the plummet today, down 8%/$12 to $137.8.
posted by Buntix at 1:38 PM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

Tesla stock having quite the plummet today, down 8%/$12 to $137.8.

Not sure exactly where the number is that he gets hit with a margin call on his other loans, but I’m sure he knows exactly where that number is. I’m growing more and more convinced that his refusal to pay any of twitter’s obligations is because he’s completely insolvent and inching toward full bankruptcy. Who’s gonna lend that chump any money right now?
posted by notoriety public at 1:45 PM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

Regarding the poll - It's also another instance of Musk rushing headlong into a "simple" but idiotic plan, finding out almost immediately that there are lots of very easily foreseen negative consequences, and then trying to change the terms/rules etc. after the fact.

It's just a replay in fast forward of the acquisition saga really. "Should I step down Y/N. I will abide by the results" becomes "Well obviously I didn't mean that I would count bots! And clearly it is such a blindingly rational idea that only paying Twitter Blue subscribers should have a voice in policy polls that you'd be an idiot to think I meant anything besides exactly that when I put the poll up in the first place. And the voters could not have known that if anyone else besides me were to be CEO, this place would hit bankruptcy basically overnight, so we must include that..." and so on and so forth.

Set out a simple proposal demanding an answer immediately, find out that the answer he got was not what he expected, and that the consequences are terrible but also could have easily been predicted and avoided with even the smallest amount of imagination, and that he's left himself no choice but to try to create outs for himself after the fact.
posted by rustcrumb at 1:52 PM on December 20, 2022 [5 favorites]

No, The FBI Is NOT ‘Paying Twitter To Censor’
posted by Artw at 2:11 PM on December 20, 2022 [2 favorites]

I don't work on subpoena'd transcripts ,but I know that it is absolutely a thing that can and IS subpoena-requested--people I know who have worked on that have indicated that usually all student records are asked for and that's definitely on the list. I also had someone pass me a book on phony diplomas/diploma mills once and that was some fun reading, which is also why I think the blank degree one is likely to be fake. Degree, major, and date are super crucial information on a diploma, and nothing is on there but the BA? Really?! I don't pay attention to East Coast high class schools, but I have the impression that Penn is supposed to be reasonably high class/not divey, other than when the Trumps are around.

Upon looking at Penn's diploma webpage, the Latin diplomas are legit (not a point I was arguing), but they do mention name, degree, major, and graduation date. Year is supposed to be written out on the Latin degrees too.

I'm pretty sure that at least one of those diplomas is badly faked and the other one, while at least having bachelor's in economics on it, doesn't have a date either, so I wouldn't count on that one being the original authentic diploma, even if he does actually have an earned econ degree.
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:12 PM on December 20, 2022

Musk's poll never said when he'd step down...

As far as only blue-ticks getting the vote, I've seen comparisons to poll taxes and apartheid, with one wag quipping "which is it? Only $8 or skin in the game?"

Iff blue-ticks will have the ability to downrank the visibility of free-users' tweets, sharing blocklists of blue-tick users seems like a good strategy. If they can't see it, they can't downvote it.

(Meanwhile, I'm still entirely overthinking mastadon server selection, going thru rules and privacy policies at the various instances)
posted by cheshyre at 2:15 PM on December 20, 2022 [3 favorites]

SBF tried to be the next Elon Musk. Now Elon Musk is trying to be the next SBF.
posted by notoriety public at 2:42 PM on December 20, 2022 [2 favorites]

> Tesla stock having quite the plummet today, down 8%/$12 to $137.8.

probably related to this from yesterday: Tesla stock downgraded on Wall Street over Elon Musk's Twitter antics [CNN Lite]

"We believe Mr. Musk is increasingly isolated as the steward of Twitter's finances with his user management on the platform. We see potential for a negative feedback loop from departure of Twitter advertisers and users," Oppenheimer analyst Colin Rusch wrote to clients.

and

"We believe banning journalists without consistent defensible standards or clear communication in an environment where many people believe free speech is at risk is too much for a majority of consumers to continue supporting Mr. Musk/TSLA, particularly people ideologically aligned with climate change mitigation," Rusch wrote.

posted by glonous keming at 3:15 PM on December 20, 2022 [3 favorites]

Upon looking at Penn's diploma webpage, the Latin diplomas are legit (not a point I was arguing), but they do mention name, degree, major, and graduation date. Year is supposed to be written out on the Latin degrees too.

It feels weird devoting space to this, because whatever level of education he achieved on paper he clearly didn't absorb much beyond superficialities and is demonstrably an idiot and a liar and, much more importantly, happy to demagogue and oppress. But it would also feel weird not to point out that the link in the bolded section wasn't to Penn, the Ivy in Philadelphia (upenn.edu) - it was to Penn State, the state school that used to be proud of its football history (psu.edu). The (U)Penn diploma page, also linked, says "You can also request a personalized, electronic English translation that includes your name, degree, and graduation date" - but note that it doesn't mention a major. And if you look carefully the subpoenaed diploma does include a date - it's just spelled out in Latin. And we don't know who wrote the comments on that image, but I assumed it was just the guy who posted it on Twitter.

I would not be surprised if Musk's degree were fake, but that doesn't mean whoever faked it couldn't have done a thorough job of it.
posted by trig at 3:32 PM on December 20, 2022

TBH a rich kid having a bachelor degree is not THAT much of an achievement - basically means at minimum they attended, if that.
posted by Artw at 3:38 PM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

"Degree, major, and date are super crucial information on a diploma, and nothing is on there but the BA? Really?! I don't pay attention to East Coast high class schools, but I have the impression that Penn is supposed to be reasonably high class/not divey, other than when the Trumps are around."

To add to this, it's not uncommon for top-25 US universities (/flagships of states) not to include major on the diploma. The valuable part of the diploma is the the brand name of the university, and the assurance that if you have a BA from Dartmouth, nobody really gives a shit what it's in, they care that you went to Dartmouth and Dartmouth agreed to let you graduate. Moreover, diplomas aren't FOR anything anymore, except display. If you're apply to graduate school, or a job that requires 30 hours of physics education, or whatever, you're going to have to have transcripts sent from the registrar, which today requires you to fill out a form only and then 24 hours to process. Anyway, my diploma doesn't say what I majored in, and I don't think that's weird. Most people I know have degrees that just say the degree (BA, BS, BBA, etc.) and not the major.

THAT SAID, it should be trivially easy to check up on some of the basic claims, since Universities generally publish the names of all degree-earners in the graduation program or whatever, and you can generally go physically look at those in the university archives, and often at nearby public libraries too.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:46 PM on December 20, 2022 [3 favorites]

Previously on StackExchange - answer there suggests he has both a BA in physics and a BA in economics - includes a link to source docs.
posted by timlimfimbim at 3:49 PM on December 20, 2022

California police say member of Elon Musk's security team is a suspect following stalker claim

So not only has Elon lied his head off about the inciting incident for all this bullshit, it looks like one of his own guys actually kicked it off.
posted by Artw at 3:52 PM on December 20, 2022 [8 favorites]

According to Tesla’s Q3 report they have just over a billion dollars in customer deposits. It will be interesting to see how these numbers change based on increasingly negative views of Musk.
posted by interogative mood at 5:01 PM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

"Previously on StackExchange - answer there suggests he has both a BA in physics and a BA in economics - includes a link to source docs."

Note that the "source docs" are a single e-mail from Penn media relations and does not actually answer the question (about which degrees he got when). It's not from the registrar, or the president, and no actual evidence is presented. It's a three-line e-mail from PR.

If you go to the second source, there are very low-quality scans of his alleged degrees, which are a BA (no major) and a BSE (no major), both awarded May 19, 1997. Penn does not offer a BSE in either of the areas he's claimed (physics and economics), so I'm not sure what the BSE is supposed to be about. (They do offer a BSE in materials science, see below.)

And all the evidence entered from Stanford relies on the word of a woman WHO IS DEAD and no actual statements by the school's official channels, who have consistently refused to confirm or deny the dead woman's statement. (I am totally willing to believe he was accepted into a materials science Ph.D., but Stanford has flatly refused to confirm that statement, that Elon has never claimed he was doing materials science.)

BUT ALSO, that second "source link" that includes scans of his degrees include a signed letter from the SAME dead woman who said he was admitted to Stanford, saying some years earlier, in 2008, that they could find no record of his application. That was her sworn statement in a lawsuit; the e-mail she sent him not long before her death was just an e-mail. The e-mail statement is dated 2009 but ODDLY didn't surface until 2017, DESPITE MULTIPLE LAWSUITS IN WHICH IT OUGHT TO HAVE APPEARED IN DISCOVERY. And her "2009 message" included a typo in the department's name.

Moveover, Elon keeps talking about "paying tuition" as a Ph.D. student, and withdrawing before he paid it (so there's no record of him), but no Ph.D. students at Stanford pay tuition. They're all fully funded, or not admitted. It sounds like he was given a polite tour by important professors who wanted his money, and they're willing to nod along to his lies thereafter.

I'm not going to stan for Stanford here -- they're clearly pretty willing to sign on to all kinds of errant nonsense for funding -- but Musk has not delivered a clear set of evidence that he graduated from Wharton and got accepted to Stanford, and apparently CANNOT deliver it, or he would have by now, because it's come up now in SEVERAL LAWSUITS.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:19 PM on December 20, 2022 [23 favorites]

Elon Musk tweets he’ll resign as Twitter CEO when he finds a replacement
posted by team lowkey at 7:27 PM on December 20, 2022

Oh, how noble of him
posted by notoriety public at 7:42 PM on December 20, 2022 [2 favorites]

Lolllll like that stops people from laughing at him.

In any case, it's not quite corporate but another sign of the times: Mozilla will launch its own instance in 2023.
posted by cendawanita at 8:13 PM on December 20, 2022 [4 favorites]

If he steps down as CEO he’ll remain in charge of software and servers, which I’m sure everyone who works there is real excited about.
posted by Artw at 8:59 PM on December 20, 2022 [4 favorites]

In any case, it's not quite corporate but another sign of the times: Mozilla will launch its own instance in 2023.

I believe, in a few years time, we will come to thank both Musk and Zuckerberg for their their acts of hubris in damaging Facebook and Twitter to the point where the idea of the Fediverse moves from niche to achieve critical mass. People have long been talking about the dangers of centralised, monolithic social media platforms where user's data is sold as the product - and a few people were sufficiently motivated to design, build and start to use a viable alternative. But the platforms in questions where far to well established and profitable for anything other than a tsunami event to damage them significantly and get users to move on. In both cases that event has come from idiot CEOs.
posted by rongorongo at 9:26 PM on December 20, 2022 [13 favorites]

This thread, summarizing Elmo, Geohot and assorted weirdos talking about Twitter’s architecture, is jaw dropping.
posted by Artw at 12:05 AM on December 21, 2022 [9 favorites]

Representing the "in the meantime" beat once again, news that web3 people (i guess?) Pawoo.net just bought up mastodon.cloud and mstdn.jp. iow, recentralization with VC money is happening (per Chris Trottier)
posted by cendawanita at 2:35 AM on December 21, 2022 [8 favorites]

So not only has Elon lied his head off about the inciting incident for all this bullshit, it looks like one of his own guys actually kicked it off.

Someone should tell these guys about the EBay harassment case, and that in that matter, the people at their level wound up going to prison.
posted by NoxAeternum at 5:39 AM on December 21, 2022 [1 favorite]

Elon Musk was never a liberal, and his plans for Twitter were never benevolent
posted by Artw at 7:07 AM on December 21, 2022 [1 favorite]

This thread, summarizing Elmo, Geohot and assorted weirdos talking about Twitter’s architecture, is jaw dropping.

Reading through that, and the sub-threads it really brings home the difference between being an engineer and a systems engineer/architect. That they even thought about a complete rewrite, or even major refactoring (by which I suspect they do mean complete rewrites of various modules, rather than polishing existing code) is insane as there's going to be just so much domain knowledge embedded in the code from years of trial and error and experimentation.

And they've fired all the people who could have helped them interpret it, and who knew what was where and why.
posted by Buntix at 7:12 AM on December 21, 2022 [8 favorites]

Last I checked my timeline on Twitter is almost entirely on lock and the it’s remarkable the number of accounts that have just stopped posting. In my case I followed roughly a twelve hundred accounts with an emphasis on progressives, accessibly and such.

I’ve given permission to a tool that goes through and attempts to track down any alt points of contacts which I’ve used to import into mastodon. The first time I imported it got around 80, last time it was almost 400. I’ll run it a few more times to catch and in the meantime put up my alt and have kept my account on lock.
posted by zenon at 7:16 AM on December 21, 2022 [5 favorites]

Neither Musk nor Geohot really count as engineers, either.
posted by Artw at 7:48 AM on December 21, 2022 [1 favorite]

I never followed many accounts on Twitter and just sort of used it as a news feed from some journalists and legal folks. I’ve noticed that many who migrated to mastodon slowed the pace of their updates markedly. Think a lot of people may have just taken the opportunity to unplug a bit from social media altogether.
posted by Room 101 at 9:02 AM on December 21, 2022 [3 favorites]

This thread, summarizing Elmo, Geohot and assorted weirdos talking about Twitter’s architecture, is jaw dropping.

Way too short, IMO. I want the audio, I want a play by play.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:42 AM on December 21, 2022 [2 favorites]

man who recently bought website for $44 billion dollars infuriated to hear the basics of online advertising accurately explained
posted by Artw at 11:47 AM on December 21, 2022 [9 favorites]

Stealin’ from Matt Levine again:

if Musk does a bad job as head of software and servers, can the new CEO fire him? To be clear I would never, ever, ever want to be CEO of Twitter — even before Musk took it over, and certainly not after — but wouldn’t it be a little tempting to be CEO just so you could fire Musk? Like obviously he would then fire you, more or less immediately; you are both his boss (you’re the CEO and he is the head of a division) and his employee (you’re a manager and he’s the majority shareholder). But you’d have, like, 15 minutes. You could order security to escort him out of the building; you could put out a press release; you could tweet from the official account “Elon has been fired for not being hardcore enough, let that sink out.” Oh then he’d fire you and deny you severance and call you a sex criminal; your life would be horrible forever. But for a minute it would be very funny.

posted by Going To Maine at 12:04 PM on December 21, 2022 [14 favorites]

More audio

You ever interview someone who knows nothing about the position and just tries to bullshit their way through?
posted by Artw at 12:11 PM on December 21, 2022 [7 favorites]

78 minutes of the space are on YouTube
posted by Going To Maine at 12:32 PM on December 21, 2022 [6 favorites]

Twitter loses free speech case in Canadian court.
posted by sardonyx at 8:46 AM on December 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

https://www.google.com/search?q=tsla continues to be interesting to watch. Down almost 10% today, meaning Musk is worth just over 2 billion less than he was 4 hours ago.
posted by Buntix at 9:51 AM on December 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

Speaking of geohot, he's fled the SS Twitter.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:59 AM on December 22, 2022 [2 favorites]

From the linked court ruling above:

The Court ruled against Twitter and allowed the lawsuit to proceed. It held that Cool World could base its claim on the intersection of contract law and constitutional guarantees of free speech, because of Twitter’s central role as a public arena and its arbitrary and discriminatory decisions on content.

Though the term "intersection" is too abstract outside of traffic laws, the idea that speech can violate a premise of a constitution, such as "to insure domestic Tranquility" should support the private regulation of any speech that promotes violence or threats of harm to citizens.
posted by Brian B. at 10:28 AM on December 22, 2022

Speaking of geohot, he's fled the SS Twitter.

I prefer to think of him as someone who believed getting on the SS Twitter was a good idea.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:33 AM on December 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

Came in as a high profile “intern”, messed around without achieving anything for a few weeks, quit and declared the need for a top down rewrite.

Quite a guy.
posted by Artw at 10:33 AM on December 22, 2022 [3 favorites]

tbf, if you're logged out you can now close the nag message that asks you to make an account. But that thing seems to have changed what it does so many times I have no idea what it’s history is or who to actually credit changes to it too. Feel like the general point here is devs should not tweet about their plans for projects as if Twitter is some kind of public issue tracker.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:38 AM on December 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

Or beg other people to make the changes for them over Twitter.

Dude is not an engineer. Dude is a guy who did a hack once and is now coasting off that as some kind of half assed tech celeb.
posted by Artw at 10:49 AM on December 22, 2022 [2 favorites]

Back in my "full time industry employed" days, I kind of developed the view that there's a strain of coder, especially among those with little or no work experience, who can't seem to understand any code but their own and therefore think if they could just rewrite everything it would make it "make sense."
posted by house-goblin at 11:43 AM on December 22, 2022 [14 favorites]

I'll also mention that I worked under the CEO from this ancient FPP and Twitter's ongoing rolling dumpster fire has been giving me flashbacks. Like... the accountant coming to me on the sly and saying the CEO asked her to secretly bill the employees for the cost of the water cooler, but not him because he doesn't drink water. I suppose the moral of this anecdote is everybody should shudder at the thought of the nascent musk's who walk among us.
posted by house-goblin at 11:58 AM on December 22, 2022 [4 favorites]

Okay, “nascent musks” has got to be a new phrase for the English language.

I stand corrected.
posted by darkstar at 12:08 PM on December 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

declared the need for a top down rewrite

To be fair, probably any codebase over five years old could benefit from a rewrite. The problem is, is almost never worth the destabilization it would bring, to say nothing of the cost.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 12:12 PM on December 22, 2022 [2 favorites]

Seems like everywhere I’ve worked over the last decade there’s been something referred to as “the old codebase” and something that everyone refers to as “the new codebase” and what goes into prod is a weird mixture of the two.
posted by Artw at 12:53 PM on December 22, 2022 [3 favorites]

With microservices like Twitter’s that’s true across all fractal scales.
posted by migurski at 1:08 PM on December 22, 2022 [3 favorites]

Sorry, that service can’t directly talk to that other service because it uses legacy ids so you’ll have to use a workaround until the New Service Migration project is done.
posted by Artw at 1:31 PM on December 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

Catherynne M. Valente: Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things: Three Decades of Survival in the Desert of Social Media
posted by Artw at 1:43 PM on December 22, 2022 [8 favorites]

who can't seem to understand any code but their own and therefore think if they could just rewrite everything it would make it "make sense."

What saves me from that is that I've failed to understand my own code enough times that I know rewriting it from scratch wouldn't help much compared to just hunkering down and reading the existing code.
posted by clawsoon at 1:58 PM on December 22, 2022 [4 favorites]

Seems like everywhere I’ve worked over the last decade there’s been something referred to as “the old codebase” and something that everyone refers to as “the new codebase” and what goes into prod is a weird mixture of the two.

I watched this Strange Loop talk by Jean Yang a couple of days ago and it was great. She describes her "anthropological expedition" seeing how all the actual dev teams work after leaving her Carnegie Mellon academic "cult" (her word) of trying to prove all lines of code correct.

This - what you describe - is one of the things she saw pretty much everywhere. (She also found that every team is deeply embarrassed by the fact that they don't do unit tests nearly as much as they believe they should. Perhaps if you were to start a guilt-based religion for developers, this is where you'd start...)
posted by clawsoon at 2:10 PM on December 22, 2022 [5 favorites]

Twitter loses free speech case in Canadian court.

Anybody know if this can be appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada? I assume it can, but I don't know for sure... nor do I have any idea which way the top court would go with this case. The reasonable limits clause gives Canadian courts a *lot* of leeway.
posted by clawsoon at 2:13 PM on December 22, 2022

The court case is far from final: it was just a rejection of Twitter's motion to dismiss. The trial has yet to take place. It can then be appealed to the Court of Appeal for Ontario, and ultimately to the Supreme Court of Canada.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 2:29 PM on December 22, 2022 [4 favorites]

Perhaps if you were to start a guilt-based religion for developers, this is where you'd start.

St. Kernighan's Church of Holy Unit(testing)y
posted by cortex at 3:00 PM on December 22, 2022 [4 favorites]

(I like this talk very much. It all extremely checks out.)
posted by Artw at 3:02 PM on December 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

Funny thing... what led me to the talk was earlier talks by former Twitter developers talking about all the observability they'd built into their systems and how much it helped them diagnose and fix problems quickly. In a couple of weeks, Musk changed Twitter from a "1%" development environment to the "99%" environment that Yang is describing, where the remaining developers are forced to struggle to understand what the hell is going on because so much institutional knowledge has been lost.
posted by clawsoon at 3:26 PM on December 22, 2022 [2 favorites]

“I’ve lost the will to live, death emoji” is both a thing I’ve said myself while upgrading things X and Y to do thing Z and, I assume, what Twitter devs say to each other every day now.
posted by Artw at 3:37 PM on December 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

Apologies if this has been posted already: Musk wants to rewrite the Twitter stack from the ground up because it's too complicated and features can't be added fast enough. Former senior engineering manager at Twitter (now with Netflix) Ian Brown challenges Musk to describe the Twitter stack and how it's abnormal compared to "every other large-scale system on the planet" since Musk is now, y'know, in charge of servers and software.

Musk asks "Who are you??", calls him a jackass, and then he gets booted from the call.
posted by clawsoon at 4:23 PM on December 22, 2022 [8 favorites]

This is why I am fully in support of Musk personally leading a team to rewrite the stack from the ground up, taking an extremely hands on role in the process.
posted by Artw at 4:30 PM on December 22, 2022 [9 favorites]

I've now seen multiple comparisons of Musk to Eddie Lampert, the "genius" hedge fund manager who decided he knew everything about retail and proceeded to buy and then destroy Sears with one stupid idea after another.
posted by clawsoon at 4:42 PM on December 22, 2022 [10 favorites]

Currently he’s doing the Dril tweet about never logging off but it’s about never stopping posting about how he hates trans people… on some kind of Tesla stockholders call.
posted by Artw at 5:55 PM on December 22, 2022 [5 favorites]

Another stupid thing I learned today: Telsa's models are named to spell "SEXY", except that some other car company already had "Model E" so it ended up as "S3XY".

No word on whether that was Musk's idea, but it seems to fit his sense of style.
posted by clawsoon at 6:46 PM on December 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

Adding “disrespect of leetspeak” to his crimes.
posted by Artw at 6:59 PM on December 22, 2022 [6 favorites]

It's a funny thing. It doesn't make me like him any less, it just expands my dislike of him into directions I hadn't yet explored.
posted by mochapickle at 7:01 PM on December 22, 2022 [11 favorites]

Multi-dimensional Muskhaters Are W3
posted by y2karl at 7:54 PM on December 22, 2022

"Seems like everywhere I’ve worked over the last decade there’s been something referred to as “the old codebase” and something that everyone refers to as “the new codebase” and what goes into prod is a weird mixture of the two."

As Maya Angelou said, "At the end of the day, people won't remember what you said or did; they will remember when you pushed to prod on a Friday."
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:52 PM on December 22, 2022 [14 favorites]

To be fair to Elon: Just as your personal homepage doesn't need to run on Kubernetes, you don't need highly-complex distributed systems to serve a few thousand users. A ground-up rewrite of Twitter as a Rails/Postgres app makes a lot of sense at the scale they'll be operating on soon.
posted by The Lurkers Support Me in Email at 7:42 AM on December 23, 2022 [16 favorites]

A ground-up rewrite of Twitter as a Rails/Postgres app makes a lot of sense at the scale they'll be operating on soon.

How long until they've converted to a Mastodon instance? A decade, give or take?
posted by clawsoon at 7:54 AM on December 23, 2022 [1 favorite]

“Basically becomes gab” certainly on the cards in more ways than one.
posted by Artw at 8:55 AM on December 23, 2022 [1 favorite]

No word on whether that was Musk's idea, but it seems to fit his sense of style.

It very much was, and the attitudes it engendered are why Tesla is currently facing a class action sexual harassment lawsuit.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:37 AM on December 23, 2022 [6 favorites]

Exclusive: Elon Musk orders removal of Twitter suicide prevention feature, sources say
posted by Artw at 2:44 PM on December 23, 2022 [4 favorites]

Looks like that one asshole manager who made himself famous by bashing laid off employees is out.
posted by Artw at 2:57 PM on December 23, 2022 [5 favorites]

I"m sure this sentiment has been broadcasted on twitter many times by many people before, but this situation is extremely 90's Gibsonian - as in William Gibson the writer. Near everyone else fails that metric of "not predicting" smart phones - so whatever.

"The street finds its own uses." [paraphrased] is both explicit and implicit in his early works.

Twitter became popular not because of what it was (an SMS thing), but what people actually ended up using it for.

Then throw in vast amounts of money, originating from a sole human attempting (in a very flawed way) to transcend humanity, which fucks everything up and leads to consequences for the rest of civilization.
posted by porpoise at 11:37 PM on December 23, 2022 [4 favorites]

"Twitter has removed a feature in the past few days that promoted suicide prevention hotlines and other safety resources to users looking up certain content," and all I can think is WTF! People who might have been helped are doing to die but Musk is cool with that.

From the Artw link above: Alex Goldenberg, lead intelligence analyst at the non-profit Network Contagion Research Institute, said prompts that had shown in search results just days ago were no longer visible by Thursday.

He and colleagues in August published a study showing that monthly mentions on Twitter of some terms associated with self-harm increased by over 500% from about the year before, with younger users particularly at risk when seeing such content.

“If this decision is emblematic of a policy change that they no longer take these issues seriously, that’s extraordinarily dangerous,” Goldenberg said. “It runs counter Musk’s previous commitments to prioritise child safety.”
posted by Bella Donna at 4:50 AM on December 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

Here’s who helped Elon Musk buy Twitter (WaPo)
posted by achrise at 6:47 AM on December 24, 2022 [3 favorites]

Musk and his ilk have an advantage because overt evil is so shocking to the middle/chattering/voting/opining class that people just refuse to believe it or refuse to take it seriously. We're accustomed to evil being done behind closed doors or in pleasant disguise or by people with liberal bona fides and a high-handed attitude; a well-known businessman openly saying "I hate trans people and think that Libs of T-T should be able to encourage their murder" or "I think that gays are groomers but straights should have sexual access to children" (to paraphrase) is so unprecedented that it just breaks people's brains.

We make excuses, we minimize, we assume that he was just shitposting or didn't really mean it or is just "very divorced" because that requires less change to our worldview than that he is an evil person. He wants to do evil things that hurt people because he likes doing it and it makes him feel good. Peter Thiel and Steve Bannon want to rule as fascist tyrants because they like the idea. They may or may not literally think "I want to rule as a fascist tyrant" but they certainly literally do think "people I don't like or find inconvenient should be murdered out of hand".

There's certainly more to unpack, but the fundamental issue is that these people aren't lukewarm or weak or distracted or confused or greedy - they are evil people who espouse evil ideologies because they like doing it.

That whole "new society struggling to be born, now is the time of monsters" thing, that's now. This is an inflection point in history. The old post-war liberal narratives that had enough force to keep people in check or at least discrete (while operating in Europe and the United States anyway) have crumbled and there are very few people still alive with real, adult memories of the time before.

I was thinking the other day that as an Old I really have to make a concerted effort to accept that the norms I grew up with are gone and that the norms of Twitter and Tik-Tok and Fox News and Facebook etc etc etc are in fact what drive culture. I can't just point to some less-crass and less-stupid medium of the past as if it could come back or as if it had some standing; now is now. It's also shed a lot of light on the past - when Orwell says that Hitler is a cartoon villain (I paraphrase) this is the stuff he meant - that the fascists were crass, grotesque, weak, disorganized, willfully ugly - and none the less murdered millions of people and corrupted millions more. The Klan is grotesque, crass and stupid, the alt-right is crass, grotesque and stupid; but they still have tremendous power.

Anyway. My point is that Musk is using Twitter to forward fascist aims because he is a fascist. He knocked most of the main antifascist accounts off twitter because he is a fascist and wants to advance fascist, racist, misogynist, violent goals. His view of sexuality and gender are vile, he hopes that people who are tormented on his platform are driven to suicide because he thinks people he doesn't like should be killed, he hates his trans child because he hates trans people. He is a vile, monstrous person and his aims are vile and monstrous.
posted by Frowner at 8:08 AM on December 24, 2022 [36 favorites]

Twitter brings Elon Musk’s genius reputation crashing down to earth

A lot here. Couple of bits that stuck out:

On giving Bar Weiss full access:
Please give Bari full access to everything at Twitter,” Musk wrote to a subordinate in a Signal message viewed by The Washington Post. “No limits at all.”
Journalists who won’t delete tweets remain locked out of Twitter
That was concerning to many inside Twitter — particularly those familiar with the 2011 FTC settlement after hacks of high-profile accounts, including that of then-President Barack Obama. Staffers responsible for her onboarding pushed back and refused to grant Weiss the full access Musk had requested, saying it would violate the settlement.
One former employee described that step as “super unprecedented” and “highly inappropriate,” saying Twitter would never have granted that level of access to an outside party who might suddenly be able to read direct messages, for example.

On the FTC:
When one executive met with Musk and voiced concerns about the Federal Trade Commission’s consent decree, Musk assured that person there was nothing to worry about. He said Tesla had plenty of experience on privacy matters, and pointed to his deep knowledge and awareness of the constraints Twitter was under.
Minutes after the meeting concluded, a subordinate of Musk emailed: Would the executive be willing to send over a copy of the consent decree they had just discussed?

On the plus side Tesla stock price collapse is going nicely.
posted by Artw at 8:23 AM on December 24, 2022 [13 favorites]

On the plus side Tesla stock price collapse is going nicely

Just closed at $109.10, another 11% down (72% YTD).

If he did have an existing loan back in march based on 1/2 his Tesla shares, which were are $360 at the time, with a 20% loan to collateral I'd make the loan about (0.5 * 420 million total shares * 0.2 * 360) $15 billion, but with the stock price falling he'd now need (210 * (360 / 110)) 688 million shares to secure it at the same ratio. Which is 267 million shares more than he has.

[numbers from various articles from places like Bloomberg, but not 100% sure of them by any means]. Also he may have repaid some of the loan and hence the amount of shares needed as collateral.

Have seen one finance type on Twitter speculating that it may hit the $60 pre-pandemic price, which TBH isn't looking that unlikely now with it going down 10% a day fairly consistently.
posted by Buntix at 1:17 PM on December 27, 2022 [2 favorites]

Elon Musk Claims He’s Not Worried About The FTC; He Should Be

Seems a little optimistic given how everything legal seems to slide off the guy Trump-style, but things aren’t going so well for Trump these days so maybe there’s room for optimism in the world.

Maybe the SEC will even start meaning something again.

…kidding.
posted by Artw at 1:26 PM on December 27, 2022 [3 favorites]

On the plus side Tesla stock price collapse is going nicely

To be fair, this week's drop seems to be more about China/COVID than Musk shooting off his mouth.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 3:43 PM on December 27, 2022

Did the Tesla Story Ever Make Sense?
posted by Artw at 4:18 PM on December 27, 2022 [1 favorite]

No matter the reason for the continued stock collapse, it's still gonna cause Oxboy a pain in the Twitter-funding organ. C'mon, margin calls!
posted by humbug at 4:22 PM on December 27, 2022 [1 favorite]

FACTS ABOUT MASTODON
posted by Artw at 10:52 PM on December 27, 2022 [2 favorites]

FACTS ABOUT MASTODON

I keep seeing that quote tweets are either evil or the greatest. Not being a user, I'm not sure why. Can anybody explain?
posted by clawsoon at 2:50 AM on December 28, 2022

QTs are a tool for calling attention to someone else's post while adding your own context. It's the greatest when you're helping raise awareness about something important, and it's evil when you're dogpiling someone saying "look at this idiot!"
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:16 AM on December 28, 2022 [4 favorites]

It also didn't help that the latest round wasn't triggered by Black users (though that convo happened earlier and mostly on Twitter pre-journo lockout), but by Taylor Lorenz. So there was a lot of bad faith telephone taking place (e.g. how journalists are lazy; white cis women don't know how it's like being dogpiled - take a moment to note which journalist asked the question and she asked because the editorial function is useful ; if you're against QTs you're a racist maybe but at least not a terf definitely).

So the first wave of oh hell no made the mistake of presenting Mastodon as equaling all of Fediverse - but there are forks as well as other protocols and clients that're providing this function and we all can mutually follow each other. Then research gets cited, except those are very much looking into how it's used on Twitter, and there are distinct differences that would pretty much minimize a lot of that evil-eye-inviting-virality. But people are a bit entrenched, and started boosting Eugen's old post on the matter. Which of course unearthed the politics behind all the forks and devs. I mention this, because that poster in particular, doesn't find Eugen's PR on the whole federated system (the strategy that does present Mastodon as synecdoche for all protocols) very much worth applauding (so if you're wondering who's Website Boy in that post, that's his codename).
posted by cendawanita at 6:08 AM on December 28, 2022

Twitter’s Quote Tweets postdate Gamergate, which got on quite handily without them, so I real doubt they are quite the be all and end all of harassment culture some people make out.
posted by Artw at 6:51 AM on December 28, 2022 [2 favorites]

Mastodon is one part of a wider system called the "Fediverse" of social media sites which can interact with each other.

Mastodon deliberately does not have the Quote Tweet feature. The main Mastodon developer Eugen Rochko has explained this:

I've made a deliberate choice against a quoting feature because it inevitably adds toxicity to people's behaviours. You are tempted to quote when you should be replying, and so you speak at your audience instead of with the person you are talking to. It becomes performative. Even when doing it for "good" like ridiculing awful comments, you are giving awful comments more eyeballs that way. No quote toots. Thank's

Every time a wave of people come from Twitter to Mastodon they ask for quote tweets, and it's always denied.

There are other Fediverse protocols than Mastodon which do support Quote Tweets, such as Pleroma. However they are smaller than Mastodon. Pleroma in particular is often used by far right groups.

There is currently a very large group of recent arrivals from Twitter who are demanding that Mastodon implement Quote Tweets particularly loudly. Most of the long term Mastodon users are against this.

The fundamental problem is that Mastodon was deliberately designed to be different to Twitter. But a lot of the recent arrivals want Mastodon to be basically the same as Twitter the day before Musk walked in with his sink.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 7:06 AM on December 28, 2022 [6 favorites]

That's not quite true, at least for the devs for glitch-soc and hometown forks. The treehouse instance also just had that functionality go live. It seems just like you can't generalize the newbies, you can't generalize the oldies either. Even the newbies who's holding forth on that feature found their points (something with more user control; more tiers of allowance) in actual convergence with the people actually working on it already. So already a lot of the summaries from those against the feature is inaccurate. There's even indication that Eugen's bending on this (but i didn't follow up on this claim or the github discussion, so don't take my word on this).

Anyway, I'm just waiting for editing to go live on the fork the Mefi-folk instance is on, lol (disclaimer: not officially Metafilter)
posted by cendawanita at 7:26 AM on December 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

The main Mastodon developer Eugen Rochko has explained this

That’s the reasoning given, yeah. I think it’s become a bit of a Shibboleth TBH, given the number of holes that are easily knocked into it.

I believe the thing that will most make the fediverse like old school Twitter is “having lots of people on it”, and that ship has sailed.
posted by Artw at 7:29 AM on December 28, 2022

The other big feature driven ruckus, Content Warnings, seems to have settled down a bit and a broad consensus of “use them as you see fit and don’t give other people grief about how they use them” seems to have been established.
posted by Artw at 7:46 AM on December 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

I don't think anyone knows how things will play out.

My hunch is that fairly soon Musk will hand Twitter over to a calmer and more pragmatic CEO, who still works for Musk, who will run it along the lines of "only the maximum level of fascism that can be done without scaring the advertisers away". Some of the worst fash trolls will be banned, the rest will have to go back to dog-whistles rather than overt hate if they want the alogorithm to boost them.

At that point most of the ex-Twitter people on Mastodon will say "problem solved" and head straight back. But as with every wave, a minority will stay back on Mastodon because they've found they like it.

So I think it's a bit premature to start turning Mastodon into a Twitter clone.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 7:54 AM on December 28, 2022 [2 favorites]

Some of those things may happen? Certainly there were people ready to leap back as soon as Musk lost that stupid poll. Kind of hoping he white knuckles it to the end and manages to kill it off entirely instead of handing it over to Jack Dorsey and a gang of investors or whoever but there’s no guarantees there.

Meanwhile I don’t think the Fediverse is ever going to turn into a 1:1 Twitter clone, but it’s never going to turn back into what it was six months ago, and it’s probably going to be more Twitter* like than before because a lot of what Twitter was like was a function of having people on it.

(Also worth remembering that both the retweet and the quote tweet are user invented features that were later formalized, as were hashtags. Wherever people go, people will come up with shit like that. )

* specifically like early 2010s Twitter seems to be where it is ending up
posted by Artw at 8:12 AM on December 28, 2022 [3 favorites]

I don't think Infosec Twitter is ever going back to Twitter. They seem quite well-ensconced and happy in the fediverse. (I follow a few infosec folks -- definitely can't keep up with the whole of infosec.exchange though.)

Personally, I don't think it's safe or wise to stay or to return. Reminds me of my public librarian friends telling me about seniors pooh-poohing COVID in early 2020 because "the library's still open; that must mean this is all a silly panic." (That's actually when I started howling on Twitter for libraries of all stripes to close. It ain't good when the availability of your premises amounts to a sort of dangerous and inadvertent misinformation.) Oxboy may go, but the implicit-knowledge destruction and whacko "moderation" would remain, to the detriment of many. Staying/returning is telling others those things are okay. They're not.
posted by humbug at 12:59 PM on December 28, 2022 [2 favorites]

It’s the journalists I don’t trust.
posted by Artw at 1:13 PM on December 28, 2022 [2 favorites]

Mastodon rejects funding to preserve nonprofit status [Ars Technica]

Twitter rival Mastodon has rejected more than five investment offers from Silicon Valley venture capital firms in recent months, as its founder pledged to protect the fast-growing social media platform’s non-profit status.

[...]

[Eugen] Rochko told the Financial Times he had received offers from more than five US-based investors to invest “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in backing the product, following its fast growth.

[...]

Rochko is Mastodon’s sole shareholder and, according to its 2021 annual report, he paid himself €2,400 per month last year, a figure he said has since risen by €500.

Mastodon will continue to rely on donations to fund the platform. The site has more than 8,500 donors on the membership platform Patreon, through which it is raising over £25,000 a month. This compares with total earnings of just over €55,000 in the six months from June to December 2021.

[...]

Rochko said his long-term ambition for Mastodon was to replace Twitter and other commercial social networks. “It’s a long road ahead but at the same time, it’s bigger than it ever has been.”

posted by glonous keming at 4:49 PM on December 28, 2022 [3 favorites]

Mastodon is almost as vulnerable to the billionaire attack vector as twitter was.
For all I know, Rochko is a wonderful person, but under capitalism most people can't afford to not have a price.
posted by tigrrrlily at 6:59 PM on December 28, 2022 [2 favorites]

Not sure that it is, being an open source project where significant forks have no involvement from him.
posted by sagc at 7:05 PM on December 28, 2022 [4 favorites]

Mastodon is almost as vulnerable to the billionaire attack vector as twitter was.

Even if Rochko sold out to the worst interests, that would only impact the two (large, but not remotely irreplaceable) servers out of thousands. The code has already been forked multiple times and the servers are run independently with their own moderation and rules. Avoiding single points of failure is core to the design, and that applies when the failure mode is end-stage capitalism as well.
posted by bcd at 7:08 PM on December 28, 2022 [14 favorites]

I think it’s too late to infect the fediverse with capitalism. I may be wrong but i actually have hope and optimism.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:08 PM on December 28, 2022 [2 favorites]

Here's to hoping. But, that said, the fediverse reminds me very much of late 80s/early 90s Usenet, before Eternal September and then Green Card Lottery incident. Rhyming history, etc, etc. It will be much harder/slower to corrupt than billionaire owned options, but not invulnerable.
posted by bcd at 7:29 PM on December 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

Mastodon rejects funding to preserve nonprofit status [Ars Technica]

Per this thread's comments following that link, a reply that I saw via Charlie Stross's boost:

@pre @jeff @Gargron

Gargron can't sell Mastodon as a whole because he doesn't own it.

All he can sell is the non-profit Mastodon gGmbH, and that only controls two servers out of 11,000.

This is a point he makes himself in official documentation, and this decentralisation is the whole reason he built the platform software in the first place, but it seems to have passed the FT by.

Basically as bcd says. That's the thing about his PR now (not being very interested to present that distinction) that's worth keeping a side eye at.
posted by cendawanita at 8:21 PM on December 28, 2022 [3 favorites]

And i forgot to mention, but as mentioned upthread anyway, web3 money is beginning to poach big instances. There is energy coalescing about having a shared code of conduct etc but in terms of coordinating material resources to provide pro bono protection (as an example) is not yet being fully explored. If there is, I haven't seen Rochko anywhere near such discussions. Which is too bad, because Germany and EU in general are basically (to be cynical about it) honeypots for development assistance in related areas here.

This is important for me personally because for much of the less-free parts of the world, the value an American-governed space that twitter brings is incalculable in providing at least some distant protection on the right to present ourselves in digital speech. This is also why earlier episodes of discussions that it's as simple as setting up your own instances is poor advice. Like, my feed right now seems pretty robust, but there's a marked difference between the accounts that've dared to set up in country specific instances and the myriad of Filipino, Malaysian etc accounts that've decided to take cover at other instances.
posted by cendawanita at 8:29 PM on December 28, 2022 [3 favorites]

Idle question, buct with the Washington Post & other corporations starting Mastodon instances, could Mastodon be forked into a commenting tool comparable to Disqus?
Extend comment threads on news sites & blogs into the fediverse?
posted by cheshyre at 8:39 PM on December 28, 2022

Do you mean longform and threaded replies? Yes that's already built-in. I've seen such action already. There's an issue however that your server/instance might not be fetching all replies to a post (so if you suspect it's a popular post, you have to do a force/hard refresh), as well as people opting to set visibility to direct messaging (so only the @ sees the comment). In any case, the uneven fetching is being speculated to be a factor to the relatively high occurence of Reply Guys.

If you mean even longer wordcounts, there are instances and protocols (friendica; write.as) that exist already so you can treat them like full blogs.

ETA: IF you mean if there's ActivityPub bridging, yes if your main site is powered by WordPress. People are exploring to what extent comments can be imported.
posted by cendawanita at 9:33 PM on December 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

Meanwhile, back on the birdsite: looks like it's starting to really properly break now, just in time to get absolutely hammered by New Years'.
posted by Merus at 10:49 PM on December 28, 2022 [5 favorites]

I think beyond the existence of separate instances, switching between them is (I think?) much easier than switching from, say, Twitter to Mastodon or any other different service, so you don't have as much of a captive audience effect and less disruption of communities. (Am I wrong? I'm not actually on Mastodon and could be misunderstanding things.)
posted by trig at 1:37 AM on December 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

By default, you can see any public post on any instance. But in practice, most instances follow the Mastodon Server Covenant and block the minority of instances which allow hate speech.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 1:44 AM on December 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

Idle question, but with the Washington Post & other corporations starting Mastodon instances, could Mastodon be forked into a commenting tool comparable to Disqus?
Extend comment threads on news sites & blogs into the fediverse?

Technically I guess you could do that. The Washington Post could have a comment section underneath each article with comments coming from their Mastodon instance. It would have to be coded, I don't think there's anything existing that lets you embed a screen of specific Mastodon comments onto a web page.

I think moderation and blocking would be a nightmare though. News comment sections are troll magnets so the Washington Post instance would attract a ton of hate speech accounts. That would probably lead to the Washington Post instance being blocked by most other instances, which would annoy anyone who wants to be part of the Fediverse from their Washington Post account. But maybe it could be made to work.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 1:53 AM on December 29, 2022

Definitely a moderation/blocking nightmare, but that nightmare is already priced in for any sort of comment section on a big news site like that, isn't it?

Seems they would basically have to run two Mastodon instances - a 'normal' one for journalists that's fully federated, and one for comments/commentors that only federates 'in'?

(I'm no Mastodon admin/dev so I don't how viable that is technically, but I do work in adjacent spaces and it seems plausible.)
posted by bcd at 6:51 AM on December 29, 2022

Sooo: first i saw this post that Instagram is planning to take action on pixelfed, an image-sharing protocol on the Fediverse (linking this post first because it's got an update). Then I saw the pixelfed account posting about it. Now there's some confusion if "someone on Meta giving me a heads up about the filters' names" constitutes legal action. But more importantly (and amusingly), it got us involved into this somehow.
posted by cendawanita at 7:34 AM on December 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

When a billion dollar company with a thousand lawyers on staff says to you, an individual person, working on your thing for donations, "would you change the name of this thing please," then the only sane response is, "yep, doing right now," unless you like the idea of your primary focus being changed 180 degrees to trying to find funding for your penny-ante lawyer who is going to lose anyway.

I have received such letters twice over the decades of my tech career and, buddy, I caved both times.

NO PROBLEM, I CAN RENAME THE THING, JUST DO NOT SEND ME A REGISTERED LETTER AGAIN, THANKS.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:00 AM on December 29, 2022 [5 favorites]

It Took Just Four Days From Elon Gleefully Admitting He’d Unplugged A Server Rack For Twitter To Have A Major Outage

there have been reports that Musk decided (with little to no notice, and almost no planning) to shut down its Sacramento data center and massively downsize their Atlanta data center. Twitter only has one other data center in the US, in Portland, Oregon.

This is followed up with quotes from the whistleblower report noting "that a data center failure could be catastrophic."

New Year's Eve is known to be a major stressor on the service, with tons of people posting videos as midnight rolls around for each time zone. Twitter managed to handle the World Cup traffic, but based on the last couple days, this may be the death-knell.
posted by cheshyre at 11:14 AM on December 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

hey, I'm in the neighborhood if anybody needs me to drop by the local one and just Old Yeller this thing
posted by cortex at 11:21 AM on December 29, 2022 [21 favorites]

Whoa, cortex, spoiler alert
posted by migurski at 1:05 PM on December 29, 2022 [3 favorites]

cheshyre's link further along talks about a 2021 event where Twitter was a) unsure they could keep the service running and b) unsure they could "cold boot" (IE: restart the service from the ground up) the service if it did go down.

In the end, Twitter engineers working around the clock were narrowly able to stabilize the problem before the whole platform shut down.

And since Elon Twitter has shed 70+% of it's staff - the bulk of those engineers who saved the company's bacon last time are gone and haven't been replaced (and considering the deep knowledge that went with them might not even be replaceable in any short term time frame). It really is possible that if Twitter goes down the decision whether to move to another platform becomes academic because Twitter might only come up after months of work or possibly never.
posted by Mitheral at 1:20 PM on December 29, 2022

Fingers crossed.

For observability fans there is a dashboard.
posted by Artw at 1:22 PM on December 29, 2022 [2 favorites]

Speaking of crashing and burning, climate activist Greta Thunberg owned alt-right misogynist, human trafficker, and rapist Andrew Tate so hard on Twitter that Tate revealed his current whereabouts in Romania, where there was a warrant for his arrest for the latter two things.

Jailarity ensued.
posted by NoxAeternum at 5:14 PM on December 29, 2022 [11 favorites]

There is a Minsky model projection that "we face a somewhat steady state for the future of Twitter", despite Musk, Mastodon, etc. It seemingly does not model how whole professional circles could migrate together though.
posted by jeffburdges at 5:51 PM on December 29, 2022

Tate's self-immolation has its own thread.
posted by NoxAeternum at 6:00 PM on December 29, 2022 [4 favorites]

As somebody else pointed out, being allowed back on Twitter got Tate caught.

In other Twitter news, Seattle employees were told to start working from home again (unconfimed rumors say the company was evicted for nonpayment of rent). And the New York Times reports that the San Francisco HQ quite literally stinks since Musk fired the janitorial staff, and employees are now bringing in their own toilet paper from home.
posted by cheshyre at 7:27 PM on December 29, 2022 [4 favorites]

Minsky model projection

Sine interesting assertions, some more solid than others, and some guesses about the future, which… who knows? And then the model which seems like be astrology level nonsense to me.
posted by Artw at 7:28 PM on December 29, 2022

At least a few professions like Infosec should've widespread migrations to their own couple preferred mastodon instances. Ain't clear how they'll fair once cut off from say the wider programming language or devops communities on Twitter of course, but within a few niche professions the migration really should be widespread.

I'll conjecture Infosec picks right up within mastodon like nothing happened, except whatever their vulnerabilities they discover wind up being patched less widely, due to devops learning about them less, and making blackhats slightly more successful. I conversely doubt those wider communities migrate just because particular important niche sub-communities do, due to reasons not unlike what the Minsky model guy claims.

Afaik all Twitters' own security folk departed, so anything new Twitter deploys should wind up being a disaster. lol
posted by jeffburdges at 7:56 PM on December 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

Find awesome people
on Mastodon.
posted by Artw at 9:47 AM on January 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Ugh, the followgraph app is tempting, but isn't working for me on mefi.social. I should file an issue.
posted by Pronoiac at 11:45 AM on January 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Twitter Sued For Failing To Pay Rent Of San Francisco Office

Twitter hasn't paid rent on its headquarters, or any of its other global offices, in weeks, the New York Times reported on December 13. The company was also sued earlier this month for refusing to pay for two charter flights.

posted by achrise at 1:39 PM on January 1, 2023 [6 favorites]

Last line of the story, for real: “Twitter, which doesn't have a media department, didn't respond to a request for comment.”
posted by mochapickle at 2:06 PM on January 1, 2023 [4 favorites]

I real wish I knew whether this is an intentional tactic to short term bump the bottom line; some sort of "alpha" power move; or just that Elon fired/let quit the people who could cut the cheques for rents without reassigning the responsibility.
posted by Mitheral at 4:06 PM on January 1, 2023

I thibk it’s standard issue rich bastards not paying for shit, Trump style.
posted by Artw at 4:12 PM on January 1, 2023 [5 favorites]

Last line of the story, for real: “Twitter, which doesn't have a media department, didn't respond to a request for comment.”

There was once a school of thought that called for a celebration of how much cash Tesla was saving by cutting out advertising (eager customers would sell the cars for free!) and media relations (Not needed when journalists could just ask for Elon’s honest, definitive and direct take by tweet). It was sour grapes, of course for all those ad agencies and PR firms and newspapers titles who might otherwise have been ad-supported … but who on earth needed those people in the new world! And no reason why Twitter should be any different of course.
posted by rongorongo at 4:22 PM on January 1, 2023

It’s literally a case of “So sue me.” Lawsuits take money and legal resources that Musk has and his opponents may not. He’s counting on it.

I feel awful for those two employees who shelled out for charter flights at Musk’s demand and won’t see a penny in reimbursement.
posted by mochapickle at 4:24 PM on January 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

It’s literally a case of “So sue me.” Lawsuits take money and legal resources that Musk has and his opponents may not. He’s counting on it.

His problem is that there are a lot of lawyers who would like to take a swing at him now who will happily file a case against him, especially if it's on black letter law (like, say, violating a leasing agreement.) And there are some, like Akiva Cohen, who want to make it hurt - remember his letter where he said he would file individual arbitration cases for the workers laid off - similar strategies wound up making companies like Uber cry uncle.
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:31 PM on January 1, 2023 [5 favorites]

Oh absolutely. And I really hope so. I just have this awful feeling that even if it catches up to him -- not just here but all the comic book villain stuff over at tesla -- he'll just fall back on his remaining billions, not a worry in the world.
posted by mochapickle at 4:54 PM on January 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

even if it catches up to him . . . he'll just fall back on his remaining billions, not a worry in the world.

Even in the worst case (for him) scenario, he ends up with billions. That part's right.

But one thing that is now clear about Musk is he is going to be intensely worried about what people think about him. Dick Cheney or the Koch brothers I can shrugging off all the bad press in the world as long as they've won. Musk? He is obsessed with convincing people that he's funny and smart, and it eats at him when they don't.

So there's that.
posted by mark k at 5:13 PM on January 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

Also, class action lawsuits are harder to make disappear than individual ones.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 5:39 PM on January 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

No doubt if Twitter gets evicted from his headquarters, Musk will make the Trumpian claim that he's now homeless.
posted by clawsoon at 6:25 PM on January 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Last line of the story, for real: “Twitter, which doesn't have a media department, didn't respond to a request for comment.”

This is at the end of every Elon Musk article these days.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:20 PM on January 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

It’s literally a case of “So sue me.” Lawsuits take money and legal resources that Musk has and his opponents may not. He’s counting on it.

I'm kind of curious now how non payment of rent works in regards to eviction on commercial properties. Laws are pretty slanted in favour of landlords even in residential cases most places.

Be interesting to know whether someone is paying the hydro bill for his data centres and offices.
posted by Mitheral at 10:14 PM on January 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm guessing that the kind of people /companies that own office buildings in San Francisco aren't short of money and lawyers themselves.

If the laws there are similar to here, the landlord can eventually lock them out. Although this would be trickier if the folks in Twitter HQ never leave.
posted by pianissimo at 2:16 AM on January 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

No doubt if Twitter gets evicted from his headquarters, Musk will make the Trumpian claim that he's now homeless because the landlords are liberal and some say there was tremendous pressure from the government
posted by trig at 2:32 AM on January 2, 2023

According to https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/evicting-a-commercial-tenant-in-california.html it looks like CA law doesn't allow the use of force or lock changing, etc. to evict commercial tenants, and instead it has to be left to the courts to handle (after about 8 days worth of notice).

I'm guessing that since Musk is almost certainly going to shift Twitter to TX or FL then the landlords don't really need to be nice or flexible to keep relations cordial as they are ending anyway.

That said, dunno they'd really want to be known as the people that killed Twitter if the eviction caused it to collapse, so suing after the fact probably makes more sense.

FWIW thinking that having people sleep over and converting offices to bedrooms is also probably pretty good grounds for eviction.
posted by Buntix at 2:39 AM on January 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

it looks like CA law doesn't allow the use of force or lock changing, etc. to evict commercial tenants,


From your link, emphasis mine.

>Lastly, a commercial landlord must give the tenant five full days to vacate the premises. This means they cannot change the locks, call law enforcement to remove them, or put their personal belongings on the curb before that time is up. However, once five full days have passed, the landlord is only required to keep personal property for 18 days. If the tenant has not claimed it after 18 days, then the landlord can do what they want with that property.
posted by mikelieman at 4:57 AM on January 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

That said, dunno they'd really want to be known as the people that killed Twitter if the eviction caused it to collapse, so suing after the fact probably makes more sense.

I cannot fathom the sheer breadth and depth of any spin campaign that could successfully cast anyone who is not Elon Musk as “the people that killed Twitter”.
posted by Etrigan at 6:35 AM on January 2, 2023 [13 favorites]

The entire right-wing media system runs on actively nurturing a victimization complex, and Musk has been telling his online mob since the beginning that activists and liberals are responsible for various Twitter issues because they hate free speech, so it seems a pretty straightforward sell to around half the country...

Since when does truth have anything to do with anything?
posted by trig at 7:54 AM on January 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

That half of the country* doesn't seem like the half that gets his bills paid.

* a little less than half. And how many of them are really full crazy? Can’t be more than two thirds.

I dunno, maybe he can use them as political leverage to be the first narcissist to get “you must pay attention to me” legislation passed.
posted by Artw at 8:05 AM on January 2, 2023

And apparently Twitter is cutting employee benefits now, because it's not like employee loyalty is a problem.
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:12 PM on January 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

But it still runs smoothly! Give or take a massive outage taking out Australia and New Zealand for half a day.
posted by Artw at 7:23 PM on January 4, 2023

But it still runs smoothly! Give or take a massive outage taking out Australia and New Zealand for half a day.

Yeah, my local Mastodon feed (mastodon.nz) was full of toots about it! Sign of the times.
posted by vac2003 at 8:10 PM on January 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

Haven’t noticed a serious Mastodon slowdown for ages. TBH didn’t resent it when it did used to happen as it meant everyone was scaling for new users.
posted by Artw at 10:09 PM on January 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

And apparently one the benefits being cut in SF is a legally mandated commuter benefit. So once again Musk is breaking the law.
posted by Mitheral at 3:37 AM on January 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

I don't think this has been linked yet, but I found it a useful breakdown of Musk's behaviour:

"In the dystopian novel I wish I’d read to prepare for this moment, Musk’s antics aren’t strategic moves in a battle for hearts and minds, because those are wars he no longer needs to bother fighting. This is all a game to him, and it’s one he’s already won. What his fans vote for matters as little as what his critics do; the Muskian assertion that polls are binding, which he makes often, is laced with real irony. And so we’re reduced to psychologizing the man and trying to figure out what he does care about—and what private incentives, if any, he responds to. Because those, in the end, are the ugly and unbalanced rules of power: The less a billionaire cares about anything, the more we have to care about him."
posted by Rumple at 10:11 AM on January 5, 2023

WaPo: Twitter said it fixed ‘verification.’ So I impersonated a senator (again). Elon Musk said Twitter would begin authenticating users who pay $8 for Blue. Our tech columnist was still able to get a checkmark for an impostor Sen. Ed Markey.

After Blue 2.0 (my term for it) launched on Dec. 12, I made another faux Markey and applied for verification. Some of Twitter’s new requirements slowed down the process — and might dissuade some impatient impersonators — but the company never asked to see a form of identification. Last week, up popped a blue check mark on my @SenatorEdMarkey account. Oops! I did it again.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:39 AM on January 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

Near the end of 2022, Elon Musk issued an edict to the journalism community. Obey me, he said, or you will be banned from posting on Twitter.
This should have been a pivotal moment in media history — an inflection point when journalists realized how dangerous it is to put their fates in the hands of people who claim to revere free speech but use their power to control it. It should have been the moment when media companies decided to take back control of their social media presence.

Journalists (And Others) Should Leave Twitter. Here’s How They Can Get Started
posted by Artw at 12:36 PM on January 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

"Firefox Monitor" informed me this morning that my email was in a breach but the 1/1/21 date seems odd

On January 1, 2021, Twitter (200M) was breached. Once the breach was discovered and verified, it was added to our database on January 5, 2023.

Twitter hacked, 200 million user email addresses leaked, researcher says
posted by achrise at 7:55 AM on January 6, 2023

The hack appears to have occured more than a year ago but was exposed much more recently.
posted by Mitheral at 8:05 AM on January 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

If you are concerned that you may have been caught in this breach, Have I Been Pwned has added it to its datasets, so check there.
posted by humbug at 8:08 AM on January 6, 2023 [3 favorites]

The crawling text on the bottom of my tv screen during the news said that his Muskiness supports Kevin McCarthy. Maybe this will help.
posted by njohnson23 at 8:17 AM on January 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

In the past few days, Twitter has unbanned General Mike Flynn and Liz Crokin (a Qanon influencer).
They also unbanned David Icke, presumably so that Elon can learn about reptilians without having to go to youtube.
posted by LostInUbe at 6:57 PM on January 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

Musk's Twitter is trying to renege and shortchange all those it fired or tried to get rid of with redundancy deals.

@helensagelee:

🧵To every ex-Twitter employee I can reach:
Severance packages are coming. Do not click or accept ANYTHING in that package w/o speaking to an attorney first. I was part of the 11/4 layoffs, this is far less than what was promised in writing repeatedly in the acquisition. (1/6)

posted by Buntix at 7:13 AM on January 8, 2023 [9 favorites]

Cigars and Cry Rooms: Meet Elon Musk’s New ‘Cutthroat’ Twitter VP

Profile on , the Head of Trust and Safety whose watermark appears on all the shaky phone pictures of internal tools Bari Weiss released.
posted by Artw at 7:34 AM on January 9, 2023

Her response to questions about informal 'cry rooms' at places she previously managed is very indicative: effectively boils down to "I do not recognise this, besides, the place was way too busy for anyone to have designated a permanent cry room". I suspect she thinks this comes off quite differently to how I read it.
posted by Dysk at 8:30 AM on January 9, 2023 [2 favorites]

Further details on the settlement requirements from Atty. Lisa Bloom.
In order to receive their settlement, workers basically have to sign a lifetime nondisparagement contract.
posted by cheshyre at 4:08 PM on January 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

Isn’t that illegal in California?
posted by Artw at 4:51 PM on January 9, 2023 [2 favorites]

At a minimum anyone who was part of a mass layoff is entitled to the legally mandated minimum severance/notice and they don't have to agree to anything.
posted by Mitheral at 6:09 PM on January 9, 2023

Elon Musk now holds world record for largest loss of wealth ever.

But temper that schadenfreude with the knowledge that his tally sheet still runs over $100B.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 6:24 PM on January 10, 2023 [2 favorites]

200 billion here, 200 billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:36 AM on January 11, 2023 [6 favorites]

NYT: Twitter Said to Consider Selling User Names to Boost Revenue. The company has discussed selling some user names through online auctions, people with knowledge of the plans said.

But Mr. Musk said last month that he wanted to start eliminating inactive accounts on Twitter and free up 1.5 billion user names. Only certain user names — such as those of well-known people, brands and popular names — may have value.
Twitter’s rules forbid the buying and selling of handles. The trade has previously attracted hackers. In 2020, a 17-year-old in Florida was arrested after hacking Twitter to obtain user names to sell, compromising the accounts of Mr. Musk and celebrities.

posted by jenfullmoon at 1:32 PM on January 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

More payola fakesters? Greeeeeeeeeeeeeat. I'm sure that'll really improve Twitter's brand safety in the eyes of advertisers and politicians.
posted by humbug at 3:57 PM on January 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

Apparently the Australian and Singaporean offices are shuttered:

Casey Newton: I'm told Twitter employees were just walked out of its Singapore office — its Asia-Pacific headquarters — over nonpayment of rent. Landlords walked employees out of the building

Sydney Morning Herald: Social media giant Twitter is in the process of ending its physical presence in Australia, cutting the handful of staff that survived its previous rounds of layoffs.
posted by cendawanita at 8:45 PM on January 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

After posting video of a Full Self-Driving Tesla causing a major wreck in San Francisco, Intercept reporter Ken Klippenstein is having his tweets replaced in searches by Musk's.

Every accusation a confession.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:19 PM on January 12, 2023 [8 favorites]

Reports across Fediverse from Twitter users: third party apps are failing their authentication attempts with twitter API.
posted by cendawanita at 9:52 PM on January 12, 2023 [3 favorites]

I'm seeing ads in reddit now (where before the usual "make money trading" or "buy crypto" or whatever ads would be) advertising trading aps specifically so you can short Tesla stock.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 2:25 AM on January 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

Some apps working some not - It’s very weird if it is down to some policy change and not just brokenness. If it IS brokenness I’m not sure I would expect a fix.
posted by Artw at 6:25 AM on January 13, 2023

Third-party Twitter apps are facing issues, users say

A post on Twitter’s developer forum said that on the developer portal, these apps show up as “Suspended”.
posted by Artw at 6:38 AM on January 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

Tapbots announced on the fedi that because Tweetbot got hit with this, they're turning up the heat on Ivory, their under-development iOS Mastodon client.

Soooooooo Oxboy (because I strongly suspect this is Oxboy being petty again) just drove away the developers of a very popular app for his platform, right into the arms of a substantive rival.

Heckuva job, Oxboy.

Does anyone know which Twitter apps do/don't present ads? The thought occurs that this would be an almost-sensible rationale for some apps being blocked but not others.
posted by humbug at 10:15 AM on January 13, 2023

I don't think any of the third party apps displayed ads. Echofon sure as fuck didn't. That's the only reason I stayed on birdsite as long as I did.
posted by seanmpuckett at 10:58 AM on January 13, 2023

Musk on trial for “funding secured” tweet—experts predict he’s going to lose

The class-action lawsuit alleges Musk harmed investors with this tweet from August 7, 2018: "Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured."

"Elon's going to lose, and he's going to lose for a significant amount. We're just talking about exactly how much."

posted by 1970s Antihero at 11:27 AM on January 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

Peeps who reached out to the mefi dot social account, check your mefimail. It's easy to forget to set up forwarding to email. I write that as someone who did just that for weeks.
posted by Pronoiac at 12:47 PM on January 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

Heckuva job, Oxboy.

I've heard a lot of great nicknames for Musk over the past few months, but yesterday I saw him referred to as "Phony Stark" and I declared that to be my new favorite.

Bonus points because the guy actually did a cameo in Iron Man 2, thirteen innocent years ago.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 2:00 PM on January 13, 2023 [6 favorites]

Hope absolutely everyone who crammed him into their work of fiction as a result of his PR at the time is thoroughly kicking themselves, tbh.
posted by Artw at 2:06 PM on January 13, 2023 [6 favorites]

“Please meet my eight year old twins, Elon and Daenerys.”
posted by Going To Maine at 3:28 PM on January 13, 2023 [8 favorites]

Just this evening the Tweetdeck view, which had held up quite nicely, seems to be fucked up - set to Latest Tweets First, it's showing tweets from all over the last twenty-four hours, with batches of five or so getting stuck at the top of the feed for minutes at a time.

So this guy took out a big mortgage on a house so he could just burn it down? (Metaphorically.) And he assumes people will be impressed but this?

Leon Skum.
He's rich but dumb.
posted by Grangousier at 4:00 PM on January 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

He also wanted to own the libs, don’t forget that.
posted by Artw at 4:02 PM on January 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

Quite a lot of them he could have just bought outright, for a lot less than $44B.

Oh, well, I suppose a man has to have hobbies. And whatever Leon is.
posted by Grangousier at 4:05 PM on January 13, 2023

Actually, looking at it... none of the tweets are new. The same ones keep popping up and disappearing again. Impressively broken. Or maybe that's my computer. Which is old and randomly malfunctioning, but I'm still inclined to think that Tweetdeck is broken.
posted by Grangousier at 4:08 PM on January 13, 2023

On the general theme of Musk-behaving-badly, here's a telling bit where he amplifies former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's prediction of civil war in the US, back in late December.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/star-rising-kremlin-russias-medvedev-predicts-war-west-2022-12-27/
posted by sebastienbailard at 7:25 PM on January 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

poor elon works 5 part-time jobs and still can't make ends meet. MAYBE IF YOU DIDN'T WASTE $44 BILLION ON AVOCADO TOAST, STARBUCKS & TWITTER YOU COULD AFFORD RENT
posted by clawsoon at 7:31 PM on January 13, 2023 [17 favorites]

Erin Woo at The Information reports [link is paywalled] that leaked internal Slack messages confirm the third-party apps were blocked intentionally.

The Information and Platformer should start billing Musk for their new job as, apparently, Twitter’s communications team.
posted by mbrubeck at 5:21 PM on January 14, 2023 [4 favorites]

The Shit Show

Well, it happened.

We knew it was coming.

A prick pulled the plug. And what bothers me most about it is how Space Karen did it.
posted by Artw at 7:16 PM on January 15, 2023 [8 favorites]