This is only tangentially gaming related and probably not of interest
to most people here - I mean, really, how many of us are active
Twitter users? - but the official Twitter Gaming account is apparently
a victim of that corporation's recent and very messy acquisition.

Is this is a loss to gaming? I can't say. It /was/ the one of the most
active gaming accounts on Twitter, with a million followers, so
obviously it affects more than a few people, but who is to say much
each follower really got out of it? I certainly have no idea.
Honestly, I'm only mentioning it because I think the entire Twitter
debacle is absolutely fascinating to me; rarely do we watch a company
destroy itself so quickly and publicly. And while I had no love for
the service personally (as might be inferred about anything that
limits me to a mere 140 characters per post ;-) I also know that there
were a number of useful communities to be found there.

(Also a lot of celebrity-watching nonsense - ooh, what has Beyonce
done today? - but burled beneath all that noise could be found useful
- if short - communiques.)

So I'm sure some gamers are upset.

That's not to say gamers have been silenced on Twitter, but with the
main account shuttered - apparently the entire team got canned in the
initial round of layoffs - everyone will need to find or create their
own newer - and probably smaller - groups.

(Hey, you think some of them might wander off to Usenet during this
Diaspora? Nah, probably not.)

On 13/11/2022 00:28, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>
> This is only tangentially gaming related and probably not of interest
> to most people here - I mean, really, how many of us are active
> Twitter users? - but the official Twitter Gaming account is apparently
> a victim of that corporation's recent and very messy acquisition.
>

I've never really understood the appeal of Twitter as it just seems
something like Facebook can perform the same role. I also didn't really
understand why its takeover generated so many news stories.

Still though it's been amusing (probably not for the people who got laid
off) to see the whole blue tick thing collapse in a heap. I could
understand the whole you have to pay to keep your blue tick but saying
you can just pay and get one, what's that all about. Oh and it was also
amusing to see Musk's views on freedom of speech don't apply to accounts
that poke fun at him personally.

On Sun, 13 Nov 2022 11:21:25 +0000, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:
>On 13/11/2022 00:28, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

>I've never really understood the appeal of Twitter as it just seems
>something like Facebook can perform the same role. I also didn't really
>understand why its takeover generated so many news stories.

Neither did I. It's rise to success was based more on luck and timing
than on utility. It's relevance was maintained only by its involvement
with American politics, and it became a darling of journalists. It
acted as a sort of third-party forum for news-sites (no need to pay
for the maintenance and moderation of your own forum, just use
Twitter!), and because it's limited message length enabled
easy-to-digest "sound bites".

But even before Mr. Musk got involved, Twitter was struggling. For
only two years of existence (2019-20) did it ever make more money than
it spent, and even then it was barely over margin; otherwise, it was
burning through its cash reserves. Its board didn't seem to have any
plan for turning this around except 'stay the course and hopefully
things will get better', and it's quite possible that within a few
years it would have faded into irrelevance, becoming another Yahoo, or
MySpace, or AOL, or some other tech-co that lingered on despite not
having any significant audience.

But I don't think anyone expected that demise to happen so quickly.

>Still though it's been amusing (probably not for the people who got laid
>off) to see the whole blue tick thing collapse in a heap. I could
>understand the whole you have to pay to keep your blue tick but saying
>you can just pay and get one, what's that all about. Oh and it was also
>amusing to see Musk's views on freedom of speech don't apply to accounts
>that poke fun at him personally.

To some degree Mr. Musk's actions are understandable. Twitter was a
struggling business, and Musk has a reputation for moving his
companies in risky directions regardless of what more established
businessmen might recommend. Sometimes this works for him, sometimes
it doesn't, but the general direction he's headed is par for the
course for Mr. Musk. However, it's the reckless speed at which he is
making these course corrections that are leading him down folly.

There's nothing actually wrong (from a business perspective anyway)
with mass layoffs after an acquisition; the company may have been
overstaffed, it shakes up the status quo, it and it can make it easier
for the company to pivot into new directions. But the layoffs are
rarely so large (50% of the workforce), so sudden (half the workforce
all at once), or only a week after the company is purchased. Other
changes - like the aforementioned changes to the 'Blue Checkmark' -
are neither outright bad ideas... if the time is taken to consider
(and prepare for) the downsides. Even his idea to make Twitter a
payment processor - similar to China's WeChat - isn't outrageous (it's
incredibly blind, though, especially given Elon Musk's tenouous
acceptance of government regulations when finance is perhaps the most
regulated business in the world). But these ideas are being tossed out
without any consideration.

Mr. Musk's problem is that - for whatever reason - he's rushing
forward without a plan, and apparently without clear knowledge of how
Twitter works. Even if his support of some of the more 'ardent' of one
side of the political spectrum weren't making his /real/ customers
(his advertisers) nervous, the instability he's creating in the
business certainly would. When money is involved, nobody likes betting
on somebody ELSE'S risk.

But this just reveals - again - that with CEO's it's always a case of
the emperor having no clothes. While Mr. Musk is certainly making a
hash of this acquisition, I'm not sure /anyone/ could have turned
Twitter around. Still, business leaders are often treated as
infallible geniuses: the heart and soul of modern Western culture,
whose words and deeds are almost solely responsible for its
prosperity. But increasingly we're seeing that they are as cluelessly
human as anyone else. Mr. Musk is just a more extreme example. Yet we
continue to pay them - in homage and currency - far beyond their
actual worth. For me it's this very public, very visible
disintegration of the myth of the CEO that makes this story so
incredibly fascinating.

On Sunday, November 13, 2022 at 3:21:29 AM UTC-8, JAB wrote:
> On 13/11/2022 00:28, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> >
> > This is only tangentially gaming related and probably not of interest
> > to most people here - I mean, really, how many of us are active
> > Twitter users? - but the official Twitter Gaming account is apparently
> > a victim of that corporation's recent and very messy acquisition.
> >
> I've never really understood the appeal of Twitter as it just seems
> something like Facebook can perform the same role. I also didn't really
> understand why its takeover generated so many news stories.
>

Twitter is the circle jerk of news basically. It's something with ready
made sound bites that news outlets and celebs both participate in and use to
push their own service. Facebook is a bit more opaque. I was reading today
that Facebook pushes 10x more clicks, so for advertisers it's way more
important.

> Still though it's been amusing (probably not for the people who got laid
> off) to see the whole blue tick thing collapse in a heap. I could
> understand the whole you have to pay to keep your blue tick but saying
> you can just pay and get one, what's that all about. Oh and it was also
> amusing to see Musk's views on freedom of speech don't apply to accounts
> that poke fun at him personally.

- Justisaur

JAB <noway@nochance.com> writes:

> I've never really understood the appeal of Twitter as it just seems
> something like Facebook can perform the same role.

I use Twitter as a news aggregate. The format is perfect for that, news
outlets post headline and a link to an article and if I think it's
interesting, I'll check it out. This is my main source of tech and
science news.

Also Twitter allows third party mobile apps which are not required to
show ads. It's really weird that they allow this but I'm not
complaining. Maybe it's why they're in the red.

> I also didn't really understand why its takeover generated so many
> news stories.

As I understand it, a lot of politicians like to have "discussions" on
twitter and the short lengths provide a perfect platform for intentional
misunderstandings to generate heated (mini-)discussions. Which are the
fuel of politics and media so of course it generates news stories.

On 14/11/2022 05:58, Anssi Saari wrote:
> As I understand it, a lot of politicians like to have "discussions" on
> twitter and the short lengths provide a perfect platform for intentional
> misunderstandings to generate heated (mini-)discussions. Which are the
> fuel of politics and media so of course it generates news stories.

It was more that it generated news on the likes of the BBC and Twitter
very rarely gets mentioned there. Possibly it's a combination of Musk
has himself become a celebrity and Twitter has a much stronger usage
amongst journalists so they themselves see it as more important.

On 13/11/2022 00:28, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>
> This is only tangentially gaming related and probably not of interest
> to most people here - I mean, really, how many of us are active
> Twitter users? - but the official Twitter Gaming account is apparently
> a victim of that corporation's recent and very messy acquisition.
>
> Is this is a loss to gaming? I can't say. It /was/ the one of the most
> active gaming accounts on Twitter, with a million followers, so
> obviously it affects more than a few people, but who is to say much
> each follower really got out of it? I certainly have no idea.
> Honestly, I'm only mentioning it because I think the entire Twitter
> debacle is absolutely fascinating to me; rarely do we watch a company
> destroy itself so quickly and publicly. And while I had no love for
> the service personally (as might be inferred about anything that
> limits me to a mere 140 characters per post ;-) I also know that there
> were a number of useful communities to be found there.
>
> (Also a lot of celebrity-watching nonsense - ooh, what has Beyonce
> done today? - but burled beneath all that noise could be found useful
> - if short - communiques.)
>
> So I'm sure some gamers are upset.
>
> That's not to say gamers have been silenced on Twitter, but with the
> main account shuttered - apparently the entire team got canned in the
> initial round of layoffs - everyone will need to find or create their
> own newer - and probably smaller - groups.
>
> (Hey, you think some of them might wander off to Usenet during this
> Diaspora? Nah, probably not.)
>

It sounds as though it's going from bad to worse. Threatening staff that
they must have a long hours culture and now temporarily locking the offices.

On Fri, 18 Nov 2022 10:34:46 +0000, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:

>On 13/11/2022 00:28, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>>
>> This is only tangentially gaming related and probably not of interest
>> to most people here - I mean, really, how many of us are active
>> Twitter users? - but the official Twitter Gaming account is apparently
>> a victim of that corporation's recent and very messy acquisition.
>
>It sounds as though it's going from bad to worse. Threatening staff that
>they must have a long hours culture and now temporarily locking the offices.

Yeah. And it was such a surprise Mr. Musk's letter had that effect:

"Hey, everybody who works at Twitter; this is your God Emperor Elon
Musk here. Since this whole debacle has started, I've shown that I
have no respect for you employees and have no understanding of how the
company works. Under my guidance the company has become a laughing
stock, we've driven away all our customers and advertisers, and some
banks are valuing us at 1/5 of what I paid for it.

"Anyway, if you want to keep the privilege of working for me, I need
you to do one of two things. Either click "yes" on this website to
pledge to not quit and then work super extra-hard for me at the same
pay, with no guarantees that the company will exist in three months or
that I won't fire you anyway because I ate a bad burrito or something
and get in a mood.. or click 'no' to get three months severance during
which time you won't be doing the work of three people for a boss who
despises you, and can probably find another job at your leisure. I'm
sure that - even though 89% of my remaining employees think that
Twitter is going to fail under my management - all of you will make
the right choice because you all value of working with such a
super-intense genius like myself who is personally responsible for all
the great things that happen at Tesla and SpaceX."

"Wait... why is everyone clicking 'no'?!?!?"

I mean, seriously, even The Onion can't make up a narrative as good as
this. Soap opera villians are less ridiculous than this. Captain
Planet cartoons showed more understanding of how the world works than
Mr. Musk seems to have. The story is fascinating and just keeps on
giving. It's like the planned explosive demolition of a building,
watching the supports get blown away and seeing the floors crash down
one upon another - thump thump thump - until the whole collapses onto
the ground in a giant pile of debris. Except I can't imagine this is
in any way planned...

It still has nothing to do with gaming, though ;-)

Am 13.11.22 um 01:28 schrieb Spalls Hurgenson:
> This is only tangentially gaming related and probably not of interest
> to most people here - I mean, really, how many of us are active
> Twitter users? - but the official Twitter Gaming account is apparently
> a victim of that corporation's recent and very messy acquisition.
Wow such an account did exist?

By now probably only the ones on H1B Visas are left.
If Musks plan was to kill something which he paid 40 billion upfront in
weeks, he probably has succeeded.

On 11/18/2022 6:13 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> On Fri, 18 Nov 2022 10:34:46 +0000, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:
>
>> On 13/11/2022 00:28, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>>>
>>> This is only tangentially gaming related and probably not of interest
>>> to most people here - I mean, really, how many of us are active
>>> Twitter users? - but the official Twitter Gaming account is apparently
>>> a victim of that corporation's recent and very messy acquisition.
>>
>> It sounds as though it's going from bad to worse. Threatening staff that
>> they must have a long hours culture and now temporarily locking the offices.
>
> Yeah. And it was such a surprise Mr. Musk's letter had that effect:
>
> "Hey, everybody who works at Twitter; this is your God Emperor Elon
> Musk here. Since this whole debacle has started, I've shown that I
> have no respect for you employees and have no understanding of how the
> company works. Under my guidance the company has become a laughing
> stock, we've driven away all our customers and advertisers, and some
> banks are valuing us at 1/5 of what I paid for it.
>
> "Anyway, if you want to keep the privilege of working for me, I need
> you to do one of two things. Either click "yes" on this website to
> pledge to not quit and then work super extra-hard for me at the same
> pay, with no guarantees that the company will exist in three months or
> that I won't fire you anyway because I ate a bad burrito or something
> and get in a mood.. or click 'no' to get three months severance during
> which time you won't be doing the work of three people for a boss who
> despises you, and can probably find another job at your leisure. I'm
> sure that - even though 89% of my remaining employees think that
> Twitter is going to fail under my management - all of you will make
> the right choice because you all value of working with such a
> super-intense genius like myself who is personally responsible for all
> the great things that happen at Tesla and SpaceX."
>
> "Wait... why is everyone clicking 'no'?!?!?"
>
>
>
> I mean, seriously, even The Onion can't make up a narrative as good as
> this. Soap opera villians are less ridiculous than this. Captain
> Planet cartoons showed more understanding of how the world works than
> Mr. Musk seems to have. The story is fascinating and just keeps on
> giving. It's like the planned explosive demolition of a building,
> watching the supports get blown away and seeing the floors crash down
> one upon another - thump thump thump - until the whole collapses onto
> the ground in a giant pile of debris. Except I can't imagine this is
> in any way planned...
>
Nah, this isn't like a controlled demolition. Its like an intended
controlled demolition where they got the timing of the detonations wrong
and started them at the bottom. :D

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

On Fri, 18 Nov 2022 15:47:51 +0100, "Werner P." wrote:
>Am 13.11.22 um 01:28 schrieb Spalls Hurgenson:

>> This is only tangentially gaming related and probably not of interest
>> to most people here - I mean, really, how many of us are active
>> Twitter users? - but the official Twitter Gaming account is apparently
>> a victim of that corporation's recent and very messy acquisition.

>Wow such an account did exist?

Apparently, although what it actually contained I've no idea. I'm
guessing it was less about its content and more as a hub for following
various trends and people. It had a million followers, and even taking
into account journalists and bots, that were probably still a
significant number of real people who found the thread useful.

But at this point moaning about the whole "Twitter gaming is dead"
seems so... quaint. Oh, my sweet summer-of-November-12th child,
you've no idea what the winter of November 18th holds! ;-)

It's a shame I closed my Twitter account, I could have invited some
Twitter refugees to c.s.i.p.g.action. Sure this isn't the busiest of
forums, but odds are we will still have more activity here than
Twitter in a few months, anyway ;-)

Am 18.11.22 um 18:07 schrieb Spalls Hurgenson:
> Apparently, although what it actually contained I've no idea. I'm
> guessing it was less about its content and more as a hub for following
> various trends and people. It had a million followers, and even taking
> into account journalists and bots, that were probably still a
> significant number of real people who found the thread useful.
>
> But at this point moaning about the whole "Twitter gaming is dead"
> seems so... quaint. Oh, my sweet summer-of-November-12th child,
> you've no idea what the winter of November 18th holds! 😉
>
> It's a shame I closed my Twitter account, I could have invited some
> Twitter refugees to c.s.i.p.g.action. Sure this isn't the busiest of
> forums, but odds are we will still have more activity here than
> Twitter in a few months, anyway

There are tons of people opening secondary accounts on Mastodon, just in
case Twitter goes down the gutter and it seems like it could atm.
Musk really managed to fire most of his stuff or at least managed that
they simply left because they did not work under his conditions. Now he
has the panic that not enough people are left to run the show.

On 21/11/2022 15:31, Werner P. wrote:
> There are tons of people opening secondary accounts on Mastodon, just in
> case Twitter goes down the gutter and it seems like it could atm.
> Musk really managed to fire most of his stuff or at least managed that
> they simply left because they did not work under his conditions. Now he
> has the panic that not enough people are left to run the show.

Well I'm sure that the people who are left are going to be the top
workers and not those who don't think they can get a job someone else!

Am 22.11.22 um 11:32 schrieb JAB:
> On 21/11/2022 15:31, Werner P. wrote:
>> There are tons of people opening secondary accounts on Mastodon, just
>> in case Twitter goes down the gutter and it seems like it could atm.
>> Musk really managed to fire most of his stuff or at least managed that
>> they simply left because they did not work under his conditions. Now
>> he has the panic that not enough people are left to run the show.
>
> Well I'm sure that the people who are left are going to be the top
> workers and not those who don't think they can get a job someone else!

Probably the only ones left are H1B Workers, they do not have a choice.

Werner P. <werpu@gmx.at> wrote:
>There are tons of people opening secondary accounts on Mastodon, just in
>case Twitter goes down the gutter and it seems like it could atm.

I don't understand this. Mastodon is nothing like Twitter, it's closer
to Discord or Slack, both of which seem to be better alternatives than
Mastodon.

--
l/ // Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo] rridge@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
-()-/()/ http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca:11068/
db //

On 11/23/2022 8:35 PM, Ross Ridge wrote:
> Werner P. <werpu@gmx.at> wrote:
>> There are tons of people opening secondary accounts on Mastodon, just in
>> case Twitter goes down the gutter and it seems like it could atm.
>
> I don't understand this. Mastodon is nothing like Twitter, it's closer
> to Discord or Slack, both of which seem to be better alternatives than
> Mastodon.
>
But those are both so 15 minutes ago!

:P

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

On Wed, 23 Nov 2022 22:50:56 -0800, Dimensional Traveler
<dtravel@sonic.net> wrote:

>On 11/23/2022 8:35 PM, Ross Ridge wrote:
>> Werner P. <werpu@gmx.at> wrote:
>>> There are tons of people opening secondary accounts on Mastodon, just in
>>> case Twitter goes down the gutter and it seems like it could atm.
>>
>> I don't understand this. Mastodon is nothing like Twitter, it's closer
>> to Discord or Slack, both of which seem to be better alternatives than
>> Mastodon.
>>
>But those are both so 15 minutes ago!

I'm surprised https://post.news isn't making more inroads, since it
seems to be Twitter except without that annoying 140-character
limitation.

(Although maybe it's because the site isn't actually active yet. Hard
to build up momentum when you haven't started running ;-)

Although I fear that lack of a character limit may work against it.
While I - all too obviously, right? - prefer long-form discussions, I
think the bulk of the world actually seems to enjoy 'conversations'
that can fit into neat, sentence-long soundbites...

Still, if there has to be a replacement to Twitter, news.post seems
the best option.

On Thursday, November 24, 2022 at 6:40:01 AM UTC-8, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Nov 2022 22:50:56 -0800, Dimensional Traveler
> <dtr...@sonic.net> wrote:
>
> >On 11/23/2022 8:35 PM, Ross Ridge wrote:
> >> Werner P. <we...@gmx.at> wrote:
> >>> There are tons of people opening secondary accounts on Mastodon, just in
> >>> case Twitter goes down the gutter and it seems like it could atm.
> >>
> >> I don't understand this. Mastodon is nothing like Twitter, it's closer
> >> to Discord or Slack, both of which seem to be better alternatives than
> >> Mastodon.
> >>
> >But those are both so 15 minutes ago!
> I'm surprised https://post.news isn't making more inroads, since it
> seems to be Twitter except without that annoying 140-character
> limitation.
>
> (Although maybe it's because the site isn't actually active yet. Hard
> to build up momentum when you haven't started running ;-)
>
> Although I fear that lack of a character limit may work against it.
> While I - all too obviously, right? - prefer long-form discussions, I
> think the bulk of the world actually seems to enjoy 'conversations'
> that can fit into neat, sentence-long soundbites...
>
> Still, if there has to be a replacement to Twitter, news.post seems
> the best option.

Bah, I hope nothing replaces Twitter and it goes down in flames
permanently.

I'm sure something will replace it though, who wouldn't chase
after billions of dollars?

- Justisaur

On 11/24/2022 8:02 AM, Justisaur wrote:
> On Thursday, November 24, 2022 at 6:40:01 AM UTC-8, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>> On Wed, 23 Nov 2022 22:50:56 -0800, Dimensional Traveler
>> <dtr...@sonic.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On 11/23/2022 8:35 PM, Ross Ridge wrote:
>>>> Werner P. <we...@gmx.at> wrote:
>>>>> There are tons of people opening secondary accounts on Mastodon, just in
>>>>> case Twitter goes down the gutter and it seems like it could atm.
>>>>
>>>> I don't understand this. Mastodon is nothing like Twitter, it's closer
>>>> to Discord or Slack, both of which seem to be better alternatives than
>>>> Mastodon.
>>>>
>>> But those are both so 15 minutes ago!
>> I'm surprised https://post.news isn't making more inroads, since it
>> seems to be Twitter except without that annoying 140-character
>> limitation.
>>
>> (Although maybe it's because the site isn't actually active yet. Hard
>> to build up momentum when you haven't started running ;-)
>>
>> Although I fear that lack of a character limit may work against it.
>> While I - all too obviously, right? - prefer long-form discussions, I
>> think the bulk of the world actually seems to enjoy 'conversations'
>> that can fit into neat, sentence-long soundbites...
>>
>> Still, if there has to be a replacement to Twitter, news.post seems
>> the best option.
>
> Bah, I hope nothing replaces Twitter and it goes down in flames
> permanently.
>
> I'm sure something will replace it though, who wouldn't chase
> after billions of dollars?
>
The World Domination is just a fringe benefit.

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

On 24/11/2022 16:02, Justisaur wrote:
> Bah, I hope nothing replaces Twitter and it goes down in flames
> permanently.
>
> I'm sure something will replace it though, who wouldn't chase
> after billions of dollars?
>

Maybe we'll see Twitverse, that would be good :-)

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
>Although I fear that lack of a character limit may work against it.
>While I - all too obviously, right? - prefer long-form discussions, I
>think the bulk of the world actually seems to enjoy 'conversations'
>that can fit into neat, sentence-long soundbites...

I made a similar argument when comparing Google+ to Twitter, as the
main difference between the two was that the former allowed for much
longer posts. I'm not sure if that's what really caused Google+ to fail,
even something that was unambigously better but only incrementally so
would have had a hard time competing.

What might end up causing Twitter to fail is if Elon Musk goes ahead
with his plans to drastically limit moderation, as most people seem to
prefer forums with a pretty liberal (in the non-political sense of the
word) dose of it. What he really might mean though, is is just giving
moderation a heavy conservative (in the Americian political sense of
the word) bias and turning Twitter into what Truth Social wants to be,
the Fox News of social networking.

--
l/ // Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo] rridge@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
-()-/()/ http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca:11068/
db //

On Fri, 25 Nov 2022 09:03:41 -0000 (UTC), rridge@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
(Ross Ridge) wrote:

>Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
>>Although I fear that lack of a character limit may work against it.
>>While I - all too obviously, right? - prefer long-form discussions, I
>>think the bulk of the world actually seems to enjoy 'conversations'
>>that can fit into neat, sentence-long soundbites...
>
>I made a similar argument when comparing Google+ to Twitter, as the
>main difference between the two was that the former allowed for much
>longer posts. I'm not sure if that's what really caused Google+ to fail,
>even something that was unambigously better but only incrementally so
>would have had a hard time competing.
>
>What might end up causing Twitter to fail is if Elon Musk goes ahead
>with his plans to drastically limit moderation, as most people seem to
>prefer forums with a pretty liberal (in the non-political sense of the
>word) dose of it. What he really might mean though, is is just giving
>moderation a heavy conservative (in the Americian political sense of
>the word) bias and turning Twitter into what Truth Social wants to be,
>the Fox News of social networking.

Twitter is going to fail because Mr. Musk is behaving chaotically, and
chaos in business is something most companies prefer to avoid. The
loss of users and a swing to appeal to the American Far Right* are
survivable (sadly) but the manner in which Musk has been going about
it is driving away his business partners and customers. His actions
have attracted the attention of government agencies everywhere.**

Elon Musk could have transitioned the company into a leaner, more
popular version of Parler or 8Chan in a way that would not have driven
off all the advertisers or users (or, at least, chased them away
slowly enough that they could be replaced by more right-leaning
alternatives), but his methods are crashing his company faster than
those alternatives can be sourced.

This is not entirely out of character for Musk. With Tesla and SpaceX
his boar-headed obstinance has allowed him to unexpectedly push those
companies to unlikely success, and I think that history is partially
responsible for his current actions with Twitter. "It worked before,
even when everybody else told me I was wrong" is a difficult mindset
for anyone to break out of, especially when previous examples of his
behavior had proven to be so wildly successful. But even at his
wildest he never swept at a company's infrastructure in the same way
he did with Twitter, and he shows no sign of slowing down.

Businesses generally are agnostic when it comes to a partner's
messaging, so long as it doesn't reflect badly on them and they get
what they pay for. IBM famously doing business with the Nazi regime is
perhaps the most prominent example, but there are thousands of others.
What they want from Twitter is a stable platform; one where they can
predict how much income they can get from how much outlay.

It's a simple calculation: if business X pays Twitter dollar amount Y,
how much (dollar value Z) will that marketing earn them in the next
six months? But with the rapidly changing demographics of the Twitter
audience, the rapidly shrinking population of its users, and the
incredibly unstable state of the company (losing employees, changing
directions) this equation becomes impossible to solve. And so
advertisers are saying, "No thank you," and leaving... not because its
CEO is an unhinged right-wing nutter, but because the maths just isn't
working out.

And that's what is going to kill Twitter. If it wants to survive, Elon
Musk has to get the company out of the news cycle and present it as a
stable, reliable business again. If he does, he can probably
transition it into whatever new, obscene form he imagines (possibly
not as successful as he'd like but the company will survive). But if
he pushes forward with these wild shenanigans, Twitter will end up in
an unrecoverable tailspin.

But Elon Musk shows no sign of shutting up.

------------------------------
* that seems triply redundant
** he's cut back his European teams so drastically, for instance, that
Twitter likely can not claim to have a headquarters in Ireland anymore
- too few people there - and thus won't be eligible for any tax
benefits or EU-wide GPDR protections (local laws will apply instead,
and he can thus be sued for violating GPDR in multiple countries
now... each demanding significant fines).

On 25/11/2022 14:44, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> ** he's cut back his European teams so drastically, for instance, that
> Twitter likely can not claim to have a headquarters in Ireland anymore
> - too few people there - and thus won't be eligible for any tax
> benefits

Unless they tightened up the rules, which is possible, it's really quite
easy to fudge where your company is based for tax purposes. Rent an
office, have a few people employed to go there and have a meeting every
so often. The EU bring up the idea of tax being payable in the country
is was generated from every so often but nothing seems to happen.

On Sat, 26 Nov 2022 11:53:45 +0000, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:

>On 25/11/2022 14:44, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>> ** he's cut back his European teams so drastically, for instance, that
>> Twitter likely can not claim to have a headquarters in Ireland anymore
>> - too few people there - and thus won't be eligible for any tax
>> benefits
>
>Unless they tightened up the rules, which is possible, it's really quite
>easy to fudge where your company is based for tax purposes. Rent an
>office, have a few people employed to go there and have a meeting every
>so often. The EU bring up the idea of tax being payable in the country
>is was generated from every so often but nothing seems to happen.

I can't say to be an expert on these matters, but apparently whatever
it is that is happening in Twitter Ireland is putting it in jeopardy
of losing a lot of its benefits, tax or otherwise (the GRPD violations
seemt the more serious, actually, since they can cost he company
several percent of its yearly revenue... and if the company isn't in
EU compliance, it can be held accountable - and fined - by each of the
member states individually. A 3% fine doesn't sound too bad... until
you remember there are 27 countries in the EU ;-) It doesn't help that
the CEO keeps putting the company back into the limelight, which only
attracts the attention of government regulators.

It's the not direction - rightward - that Twitter is moving that will
kill it; it's the chaos of the method. A slower progression and the
company would probably survive (possibly not as large, influential or
profitable, but there is sadly a market for right-wing echo chambers).
But if Twitter collapses, it will be entirely because of the
slash-n-burn tactics employed by Mr. Musk that give confidence to
neither his customers nor partners.