Elon & Twitter

[italian bread]

Musk would need to admit (at least to himself) that there are people who could run Twitter better than he can, before he would cede control of Twitter over to someone else.

Why advertisers aren’t coming back to Twitter
Elon Musk is still the problem.

Twitter’s new advertising model will be similar to Google’s in that it will target ads to people based on what they’re interested in, Musk said.

Many people with knowledge of the online ads industry — including former Twitter advertising and product employees Vox spoke with — agree with Musk that Twitter’s advertising products have room for improvement. But some questioned whether Musk’s approach made sense, since Twitter, unlike Google and Facebook, has less data it can use to target ads.

Facebook knows people’s backgrounds, friends, and interests because people largely use their real name to sign up and are friends with their real-world connections. Google knows its users’ interests based on what they’re actively typing in their search bar. Twitter, by contrast, doesn’t have all of that information for most of its users, since you don’t need to share your real name to make an account and most people passively scroll Twitter rather than search for specific content.

“Search advertising and advertising on Twitter are just different models altogether. It’s not even an apples-to-oranges comparison, it’s just completely different,” said Jason Goldman, the former VP of product at Twitter from 2007 to 2010. Goldman said Musk’s comments about making Twitter’s ads more like Google’s “reveal a pretty profound ignorance of how the online advertising industry has evolved in the last 20 years.”

 

[cdub]

Goldman said Musk’s comments about making Twitter’s ads more like Google’s “reveal a pretty profound ignorance of how the online advertising industry has evolved in the last 20 years.”

Sometimes this is a good thing.

It's how he's able to achieve great things. (And fails a lot too)

 

[Buckminster]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1639626522653872130

 

[advocate8]

WHO should have just replied to Musk.

Elon Musk, WHO chief spar on Twitter over U.N. agency's role

“Countries should not cede authority to WHO,” Musk, whose Twitter account has more than 132 million followers, wrote in response to a video of right-wing Australian senator Malcolm Roberts criticising the organisation.

“Countries aren’t ceding sovereignty to @WHO,” Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tweeted in response. “The #PandemicAccord won’t change that. The accord will help countries better guard against pandemics,” he added.
...
“If any politician or businessperson, or anyone at all is confused about what the pandemic accord is and isn’t, we would be more than happy to discuss it and explain it,” Tedros said, in an apparent reference to Musk’s comments.

Since COVID-19 first emerged more than three years ago, the World Health Organization has complained of an “infodemic” of misinformation and disinformation around the pandemic.
...
The WHO is made of 194 member states which take major decisions on its health policies and budgets through an annual assembly attended by governments.

They MUST reply to things like that if only in the name of trying to be transparent to all the nations they serve.
Unlike Musk they can’t just do a drive-by spraying 12-gauge BS and then go off to the next misconception based on nutty conspiracy theories.

 

[Gigapress]

Yes and I am deeply familiar with what the word trolling means. Thanks much.

I originally made a statement with analysis about 2022 because California’s government has published that data and I gave reasons why I thought the data was relevant. DrGriz said that wasn’t good enough by replying “Show us 2023. This was last year, mostly before the antics ramped up.” In the absence of any 2023 data available, I did the next best thing and made some specific, falsifiable predictions instead and gave a promise to return for accountability when CA publishes the 2023 data next January.

Then upon receiving some Jan and Feb data for Santa Clara county from EinSV, I shared it here immediately. What more do you want and how do you propose I do it?

 

[Crutonius]

Tweet in discussion:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1639397290237480961

Will accelerate WFH

Then UBI

Then we are just left with memes

All good news for Twitter.

The only practical applications these current advances in AI have is to create artwork for memes and find new and exciting ways to irritate people seeking customer assistance.

I can understand people who aren't well versed in tech wetting themselves over an AI apocalypse. But someone like Elon should really know better. For Christ's sake, after ten years we can't even get it to drive a car without hitting something.

I also strongly disagree that if AI took over a huge chunk of jobs then it would result in UBI. We know what will happen from history. Whenever a new technology emerges that makes a few people rich and a lot of people unemployed, the unemployed ask to tax the rich so they won't starve to death and the rich will always scream "COMMUNIST!". If it gets really bad then the rich would rather pay one half of poor people to murder the other half rather than give up any of their wealth.

 

[Buckminster]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1639681386318536706

 

[STS-134]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1639681386318536706

Break even in Q2? Is this like FSD out of beta "next year"?

 

[tivoboy]

Break even in Q2? Is this like FSD out of beta "next year"?

Probably more like 'every Tesla will have the ability to be a robotaxi within a couple years' (said ~ over 2 years ago)... or something to that effect.

 

[stopcrazypp]

I originally made a statement with analysis about 2022 because California’s government has published that data and I gave reasons why I thought the data was relevant. DrGriz said that wasn’t good enough by replying “Show us 2023. This was last year, mostly before the antics ramped up.” In the absence of any 2023 data available, I did the next best thing and made some specific, falsifiable predictions instead and gave a promise to return for accountability when CA publishes the 2023 data next January.

Then upon receiving some Jan and Feb data for Santa Clara county from EinSV, I shared it here immediately. What more do you want and how do you propose I do it?

I think the point is it's misleading to suggest the 2022 numbers really show anything, given the purchase didn't complete until the end of the year and the worst of the twitter shenanigans didn't come until afterwards. This is putting aside that Tesla was only able to hold on to sales in 2023 by doing a discount that was unprecedented in scale, so it's really impossible to say that Elon's antics had zero effect, given they had to pull other demand levers (so it could be argued demand really did go down, otherwise the discounts wouldn't have been necessary). If instead, sales continued growing while prices continued to ramp up slowly as it did for the previous periods, that's a different story, but that didn't happen.

 

[DrGriz]

I originally made a statement with analysis about 2022 because California’s government has published that data and I gave reasons why I thought the data was relevant. DrGriz said that wasn’t good enough by replying “Show us 2023. This was last year, mostly before the antics ramped up.” In the absence of any 2023 data available, I did the next best thing and made some specific, falsifiable predictions instead and gave a promise to return for accountability when CA publishes the 2023 data next January.

Then upon receiving some Jan and Feb data for Santa Clara county from EinSV, I shared it here immediately. What more do you want and how do you propose I do it?

Thank you for bringing the more recent information. It is more interesting than your original graphs. However, I would still ask you and anyone else to share your methodology for teasing out the relative weight of the effects of price slashing, tax incentives, and Elon's antics. Because until you can show that, it's all a matter of opinions, or as some have said up thread "beliefs". It's like arguing religion: My god is tougher than your god. No way to prove it.

And I would again point out that for a new version of my car, the wait time is as short as a week, compared to 6 months a year ago. That has to be a reflection of demand. It doesn't feel exponential now. You would need to prove that's not the Elon effect.

I am not saying I know either way. I just don't think anyone can say just now.

 

[Electroman]

Yeah, sure, my twitter feed is full of "news" from the individuals experiencing the event. Charlie Kirk, for instance, has been in the right place a the right time a lot, I guess.

Interact with people once, and you get inundated with their tweets.

Not sure how amplification of tweets, based on Twitter's algorithm, is supposed to be less biased...but alrighty.

Thats not how how you effectively use Twitter. You should follow select individuals who you think you trust, on both sides of the debate. And most of your feed will be from those individuals.

Now how do you find out who are the sources that are good enough for you? That takes time that you wade through initially read tweets from a variety of people and only select those that you think are high quality sources for both news and opinion. But once you built that solid list, then your feed becomes a rich set of items that are far better than anything fake media can throw at you.

You have to first understand this: 90% of the media out there are gaslighting. Seemingly give you facts without the context.

 

[Electroman]

What @Gigapress posted was positive news, but not evidence of Elon's Twitter antics having effect or not, because we cannot measure sales that didn't occur. It's like proving a negative, if you know what I mean.

Whatever the rosy sales scenario you can still claim, we cannot measure sales that didn't occur.

 

[Electroman]

ANOTHER simple fact is that the number of people turned off by Elon is essentially a rounding error.

Absolutely. But the media makes it sound as if the sky is falling. That is clickbait fake media for you.

 

[tivoboy]

Thats not how how you effectively use Twitter. You should follow select individuals who you think you trust, on both sides of the debate. And most of your feed will be from those individuals.

Now how do you find out who are the sources that are good enough for you? That takes time that you wade through initially read tweets from a variety of people and only select those that you think are high quality sources for both news and opinion. But once you built that solid list, then your feed becomes a rich set of items that are far better than anything fake media can throw at you.

You have to first understand this: 90% of the media out there are gaslighting. Seemingly give you facts without the context.

I would say, that is technically the way it is SUPPOSED to work, but in the past 3-4 months that has 100% not been my experience. I have not added anyone or removed anyone and yet my feed on Twitter has become utterly and completely polluted with conspiracy posts, either direct or RT, signifiant right wing narratives, total whack jobs, either direct or RT (think, MTG and MG and DJTJR) NOTHING i would have historically seen in my feed.

I consume that information in more limited fashion via other channels, to see - as you say, BOTH sides and to understand either the spin, narrative, direct of discussion from BOTH sides.

But historically, my Twitter feed was really ONLY the people I followed or companies or organizations I followed and that has not been the case for many months.

At this point, the "feed" is totally unusable and unmanageable to the extent that it's no longer of direct use.

At one point it was clear, posted and confirmed that either A) the firehose had been turned on or B) that Elons feed was somehow driving the overall algorithm influence for ALL feeds. This could have been a point in time issue, but whatever has occurred in the past 3-4 months has persisted to this day, for this user at least and others I have discussed it with AT THE COMPANY.

 

[DrGriz]

Whatever the rosy sales scenario you can still claim, we cannot measure sales that didn't occur.

I made no claim of a rosy sales scenario. That was someone else. I think you are confused.

Other than that, what you seem to be saying agrees with my point. Sorry if I wasn't clear enough for you.

It was someone else that started the discussion claiming that sales prior to Elon's purchase of Twitter, and his subsequent antics, proved that those things had had no effect on sales. That person then forecast incredible sales numbers that haven't occurred, or at least been published.

 

[Gigapress]

Thank you for bringing the more recent information. It is more interesting than your original graphs. However, I would still ask you and anyone else to share your methodology for teasing out the relative weight of the effects of price slashing, tax incentives, and Elon's antics. Because until you can show that, it's all a matter of opinions, or as some have said up thread "beliefs". It's like arguing religion: My god is tougher than your god. No way to prove it.

And I would again point out that for a new version of my car, the wait time is as short as a week, compared to 6 months a year ago. That has to be a reflection of demand. It doesn't feel exponential now. You would need to prove that's not the Elon effect.

I am not saying I know either way. I just don't think anyone can say just now.

The overall weight of the evidence shows no signs of a substantial problem and in fact it indicates that demand is probably stronger than ever after compensating for macroeconomic factors.

1) Tesla cut prices all around the world, not just in areas where many people would care about his activities with respect to Twitter and US politics, including China where Twitter is illegal and far fewer people use it than in Western markets. The absence of any differential suggests that Elon’s actions have not had a differential impact on the propensity of American liberals to buy Teslas compared to people not in this demographic group.

2) Per a recent report from the California New Car Dealers Association, Q4 ‘22 was Tesla’s best quarter ever in California by a wide margin. Tesla sold 53k vehicles in Q4, up 36% YoY from Q4 ‘21. This yielded 12.6% market share, up from 8% for Q1 thru Q3 and 6.5% for 2021. This occurred in a rising interest rate environment and before the major price cuts that came in January. The preliminary data for Jan and Feb for Santa Clara County indicates that Q1 looks set to be yet another new record topping that of Q4, although the price cuts do muddy the comparison.

3) Tesla’s vehicle prices are now back where they were at the beginning of 2021 after adjusting for inflation, but sales volume is much higher now than it was then. This means demand has increased majorly over that time period, including the months since October.

4) This:

And inventory did grow at the end of the year (but all auto inventory grew - that was not specific to Tesla). But, the macro effects of the FED pushing us into a full blown recession with auto loan rates rising by 3-4X what they were previously was a far larger effect than Elon's actions and the reason inventory grew more (as @Gigapress demonstrated with his very in-depth post that showed the rates of auto purchases in the two most left-leaning cities in CA had not dropped relative to where they were previously). This was no unique to Tesla, it happened with all autos. Plus, with the IRA tax credit going into effect, you had a lot of people putting their purchase on hold for a few weeks/months if they thought they would qualify for that.

5) As shown in my OP, Tesla’s sales and market share in CA are heavily concentrated amongst the most liberal counties. As this entire story has unfolded the correlation of Tesla sales strength and local tendency to vote Democratic has not changed, and this has remained true since 2020 when Elon's political involvement first began to rise noticeably.

At some point the "it's too early to tell" and the "there's too many moving parts to estimate an effect" arguments need to show some actual evidence that at least suggest at the possibility that they might be true.

 

[DrGriz]

At some point the "it's too early to tell" and the "there's too many moving parts to estimate an effect" arguments need to show some actual evidence that at least suggest at the possibility that they might be true.

How about when we see the sales figures, then? Then we can start the autopsy.

I'm not the one in a hurry to stake a claim. That was...let's see...oh yeah! You!

 

[Bet TSLA]

I would say, that is technically the way it is SUPPOSED to work, but in the past 3-4 months that has 100% not been my experience. I have not added anyone or removed anyone and yet my feed on Twitter has become utterly and completely polluted with conspiracy posts, either direct or RT, signifiant right wing narratives, total whack jobs, either direct or RT (think, MTG and MG and DJTJR) NOTHING i would have historically seen in my feed.

I consume that information in more limited fashion via other channels, to see - as you say, BOTH sides and to understand either the spin, narrative, direct of discussion from BOTH sides.

But historically, my Twitter feed was really ONLY the people I followed or companies or organizations I followed and that has not been the case for many months.

At this point, the "feed" is totally unusable and unmanageable to the extent that it's no longer of direct use.

At one point it was clear, posted and confirmed that either A) the firehose had been turned on or B) that Elons feed was somehow driving the overall algorithm influence for ALL feeds. This could have been a point in time issue, but whatever has occurred in the past 3-4 months has persisted to this day, for this user at least and others I have discussed it with AT THE COMPANY.

Me, I'm not seeing what you're seeing. My feed hasn't changed much, aside from getting a few extra "Promoted" tweets appearing in it. But I'm strictly looking at what's now called "Following" and never look at the "For you" feed. Is that what you're doing?

If so, have you checked the list of accounts you're following? There was a period where people were saying that they were falling off of follower lists for no apparent reason. If who you're following can change no apparent reason, then maybe things have changed out from underneath you.

 

[Bet TSLA]

How about when we see the sales figures, then? Then we can start the autopsy.

I'm not the one in a hurry to stake a claim. That was...let's see...oh yeah! You!

When somebody makes a prediction, and clearly labels it as a prediction, complaining that it isn't proven is kind of stupid. The best you can do is point out what you think are issues with the data or the logic and wait to see how things turn out.