Elon & Twitter

[Knightshade]

Based on Elon believing in FB padding numbers. However he is conducting a test right now with starlink ads across the board of all social media networks.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1592014667521884160

Unless you just think EVERYONEs numbers are wildly fraudulent- even the ones that come from 3rd party sources rather than the companies themselves, that doesn't seem to make much sense? Plus even then "I think everyone else is lying though I have no actual evidence" STILL isn't really data, is it?

(Elon also appears to ignore the clicks generated by search engines, which are again gonna be hilariously greater than those generated by twitter)

 

[Beltsbear]

To be accurate Elon didn't suppress his speech, he's still on Twitter last I knew.

Full on BS. Elon firing the guy is cancel culture at its extreme. Penalizing those for explaining a situation with the truth in a non confrontational way is the opposite ”free speech absolutist” as well against the principles Elon espoused. one can argue that there are consequences for speech , but that SAME person should not be also railing against cancel culture.

 

[Singuy]

Unless you just think EVERYONEs numbers are wildly fraudulent- even the ones that come from 3rd party sources rather than the companies themselves, that doesn't seem to make much sense? Plus even then "I think everyone else is lying though I have no actual evidence" STILL isn't really data, is it?

(Elon also appears to ignore the clicks generated by search engines, which are again gonna be hilariously greater than those generated by twitter)

Numbers are real, but their perceived effectiveness may be BS. Elon thinks Twitter's BS too but less BS?. Who knows, hence he is conducting an experiment.

Ad buyers only care about results, and most are most likely overpaying for barely any result. The ebay team have done proper research on digital ad and it's mostly snake oil. Elon will likely find that he'll gain the same amount of sales from all of the platforms. Consulting firms that help companies do research on their effectiveness are mostly working for ad companies because if their research shows it's all BS, then their consulting firm goes out of business as the ad business collapse.

So yeah Elon will need to sell a lot of snake oil until he gets enough subs

Does Advertising Actually Work? (Part 2: Digital) - Freakonomics

Does Advertising Actually Work? (Part 2: Digital) - Freakonomics

freakonomics.com

 

[EVNow]

The reasons are many. If Elon heard that interview with Tim Pool, Vijaya Gadde, and Jack Dorsey on the JRE podcast 3 years ago, the seed could have been planted then. Elon was bullied a lot as a kid. I wouldn't put it past him to have purchased Twitter JUST to fire Vijaya and others on the way to fixing the platform and 'freeing the bird'.

He bought Twitter to “own the libs”.

Anyway, this also makes sense.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1592148060620361731

 

[EVNow]

Full on BS. Elon firing the guy is cancel culture at its extreme.

LOL. In 100% of the companies if you correct your CEO like that in public, you will get fired.

Heck, your boss might fire / give you a bad review if you correct him in a small internal meeting of no particular consequence ….

 

[ZenRockGarden]

Not to forget the added entertainment value - for those willing to look, this is the BEST real time *real* reality show (that's actually a real business firing on all cylinders publicly). And *anybody* can witness/ participate too.

Huge added value to Twitter 2.0

Please describe Twitter bleeding money in the billion per quarter as "firing on all cylinders" for us?

 

[Ogre]

He bought Twitter to “own the libs”.

Anyway, this also makes sense.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1592148060620361731

I love the way people just invent their own narrative for a situation and expect the world to accept it at face value.

Musk likes Twitter. It is probably his single biggest pass time aside from work. He wants to fix it because it’s something he likes.

 

[Daniel in SD]

I love the way people just invent their own narrative for a situation and expect the world to accept it at face value.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1525549535786717184

 

[Ogre]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1525549535786717184

So we’re in upside down world where Musk’s sarcasm is treated as truth and his frank comments are treated as a joke.

In this upside down thread I guess that checks out.

 

[Spacep0d]

He bought Twitter to “own the libs”.

Anyway, this also makes sense.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1592148060620361731

I would say 'own the Woke Left running Twitter' which is not the same as nominal liberals. Elon cares far more about what is true than political narrative, but this a quick path to heresy from the Leftist POV.

 

[Daniel in SD]

I would say 'own the Woke Left running Twitter' which is not the same as nominal liberals. Elon cares far more about what is true than political narrative, but this a quick path to heresy from the Leftist POV.

His political tweets are 100% about narrative. I don’t recall seeing a single policy based tweet recently. When he tweeted that there would be no investigation of Bankman-Fried was that true? Of course not, it’s all about political narrative.

 

[Spacep0d]

Full on BS. Elon firing the guy is cancel culture at its extreme. Penalizing those for explaining a situation with the truth in a non confrontational way is the opposite ”free speech absolutist” as well against the principles Elon espoused. one can argue that there are consequences for speech , but that SAME person should not be also railing against cancel culture.

Being fired for underperforming, having a bad attitude, or trying to 'own' your boss on a public platform is hardly "Cancel Culture".

Cancel Culture is a Leftist mob tactic as a way to punish heretical thought crime, even if the thoughts are true and based on settled science. It's a perception thing, because mobs have no time for conversation, let alone nuance or context.

E.g., James Damore being fired from Google for his rational written rebuttal to internal woke ideology training which attempted to redefine the interest gap as 'discrimination'. The mob came out en masse with virtual torches and pitchforks and Damore was unfairly fired.....for being too rational about facts perceived to be offensive by the mob.

Damore was recruited specifically by Google and had a stellar performance review history until said firing. Google is a little evil.

 

[Dave EV]

I was just sitting around doing nothing and an idea popped into my head. After Elon sacked so many Twitter employees, did his zeal create a feeling that tech sector staffing levels were universally bloated? Sure, the macroeconomic conditions are a great excuse for layoffs, but maybe Amazon, Meta and even small players like Global Foundries are partly cutting the "fat" because Twitter started a trend. The good news is that maybe all these high profile layoffs will influence the Fed.

Interesting thought - I would not be surprised that all these other tech companies are performing these layoffs under the cover of Elon's mass firing of Twitter engineers. A lot of inflation is actually due to the same thing - a lot of companies in general are pushing price increases under the guise of "sorry, inflation", even if inflation is not affecting them as much as their price increase.

Except he didn’t want to - he tried to get out of the deal but was forced to go through with it after being sued by Twitter. It was definitely expensive. Bold? I suppose that’s in the eye of the beholder, but it’s pretty evident that Elon didn’t want to pursue anything. If he did he would have completed the deal without being sued.

This is funny - if he didn't want to buy Twitter, he should have done some due diligence before entering into a binding, $44B agreement to purchase Twitter. A LOT of people gave him flak for that, so this is a mess of his own doing. Really no reason to give him any slack.

Heck, your boss might fire / give you a bad review if you correct him in a small internal meeting of no particular consequence ….

If a boss fires someone because the employee has better info or ideas that were shared where others, you don't want to work for that boss, anyway. As a manager, you WANT people smarter than you. If you find yourself to be the smartest guy in the room and you're in charge, you're made a mistake.

That said, I honestly think that Elon fired the guy because he didn't think his ideas were good enough to drive the type of change Elon wants to see - not because he got fact-checked in public. Where the guy's ideas bad? No, not really. But they also weren't the type of ideas that Elon wants to hear - Elon wants to hear him KISS - and say something like "Elon, we've been carrying 80% baggage in the app that nobody uses slowing everything down from app load times to bandwidth consumption - I have a plan to rip all that out and streamline the rest of the app to improve home feed load times by 100x. Let's meet later at Twitter HQ and go over it."

I agree that engaging into public debate on Twitter about internal issues is not smart unless you are not worried about getting fired. But then again, Elon seems to do just about everything on Twitter these days and has yet to face any repercussions for his crazy online behavior. I can't imagine anyone else getting away with his behavior online without getting fired.

 

[cwerdna]

Twitter fired employees who publicly called out Elon Musk | Engadget mentions two more that TIL of.

 

[TSLY]

Shhh... Really want to bum Elon Musk out? Just stop talking about him. The dude is jonesing on his own limelight.

 

[Knightshade]

Numbers are real, but their perceived effectiveness may be BS. Elon thinks Twitter's BS too but less BS?. Who knows, hence he is conducting an experiment.

So when you previously wrote:

"Elon seems to be basing his actions off best available data."


You meant he looked at available data, didn't believe it, then just made up a completely nonsense claim that says the opposite of the data and presetend it as fact regarding twitters click through ranking.

And even appear to admit his claim was...the opposite of based on best data...here:

So yeah Elon will need to sell a lot of snake oil until he gets enough subs[/URL]

BTW, at least some of the sources that were used to debunk Elons claims were not from "consulting firms that help companies do research on their effectiveness are mostly working for ad companies"

There's companies whose only business is monitoring web traffic and clicks, that have been around for decades doing ONLY that job. And their #s largely line up with others on this.

So that's a helluva conspiracy at this point if you think ALL those numbers are fake.


None of that means the ads are effective in making anyone BUY anything- but Elon said 0 about -that- he was specifically talking about generating clicks and made an outrageous claim that even you now seem to admit was the opposite of "based off best available data"


He seems to have done the same with his "Others have 3000 people on their self driving AI teams" claim which many have already debunked as well.



I have no doubt Tesla has a brilliant team that engineer-for-engineer is way better than anybody else in this space.

But he's again projecting hilariously wrong numbers onto the situation without any data to support it.

Which is.... not what I expect from Elon, but seems a growing trend.

 

[Singuy]

So when you previously wrote:

"Elon seems to be basing his actions off best available data."


You meant he looked at available data, didn't believe it, then just made up a completely nonsense claim that says the opposite of the data and presetend it as fact regarding twitters click through ranking.

And even appear to admit his claim was...the opposite of based on best data...here:





BTW, at least some of the sources that were used to debunk Elons claims were not from "consulting firms that help companies do research on their effectiveness are mostly working for ad companies"

There's companies whose only business is monitoring web traffic and clicks, that have been around for decades doing ONLY that job. And their #s largely line up with others on this.

So that's a helluva conspiracy at this point if you think ALL those numbers are fake.


None of that means the ads are effective in making anyone BUY anything- but Elon said 0 about -that- he was specifically talking about generating clicks and made an outrageous claim that even you now seem to admit was the opposite of "based off best available data"


He seems to have done the same with his "Others have 3000 people on their self driving AI teams" claim which many have already debunked as well.



I have no doubt Tesla has a brilliant team that engineer-for-engineer is way better than anybody else in this space.

But he's again projecting hilariously wrong numbers onto the situation without any data to support it.

Which is.... not what I expect from Elon, but seems a growing trend.

Yeah, Elon in his mind believes a good portion of the clicks are bot generated, or click farm generated from the big guys. There is an entire industry that serves companies who want to buy views so it's a thing. How big of a thing? We don't know because why would anyone wants to investigate that?

So I agree Musk prematurely announcing Twitter is the greatest "real click" generator by far. Maybe he has some plimenary data that points to this. Maybe he is full of Sugar.

 

[thx1139]

LOL. In 100% of the companies if you correct your CEO like that in public, you will get fired.

Heck, your boss might fire / give you a bad review if you correct him in a small internal meeting of no particular consequence ….

Yes you would aka free speech can have consequences. Just like getting suspended/banned etc from a private social media company is a consequence of spewing vile hate speech, misinformation, and inciting people towards violence.

 

[thx1139]

So we’re in upside down world where Musk’s sarcasm is treated as truth and his frank comments are treated as a joke.

In this upside down thread I guess that checks out.

The best sarcasm has a degree of truth to it.

 

[ohmman]

So I agree Musk prematurely announcing Twitter is the greatest "real click" generator by far.

Prematurely is an overly generous word.

Aspirationally is perhaps a little better, but in any case if you use the present tense, and it's not accurate in the present tense, it's just plain wrong.