In other hashtags:Gentlemen, it has been a privilege tweeting with you tonight.#RIPTwitter pic.twitter.com/wDRHyWhwf3
— Mitchell Nagy (@mryannagy) November 18, 2022
They're all quitting & not an advertiser in sight. Everyone loves watching a sadistic billionaire fail & lose billions. 🍿#TwitterDown #TwitterMigration https://t.co/Yl58IGjx6B
— Jeffrey Ⓥ (@LiftForever67) November 18, 2022
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75 comments:
I gotta say the liberal rats calmly fleeing the ship gives me a nice start to the day….
.
Since all NYT reporting is now narrative, how is one to believe that a wave of employees are quitting at a time of growing layoffs in tech? There's a talent glut right now in Silicon Valley. For every butthurt Twit who leaves in a huff, there are 5-10 equally smart (or smarter) techies salivating at the chance to work with a giant platform.
This smells like a NYT Turd Take
The end of Twitter 1.0 is great for humanity no matter how it transpires. The meltdown provides entertainment if nothing more, as an ultra wealthy guy fights with a bunch of also wealthy people in front of us all. I want to hear a soundtrack on the world's smallest violin.
Many of us would walk away from the "extreme hardcore" requirement, and reject Musk's managerial tone. Imagine the calculations for a 50 year old engineer who made $200K or more per year and is set up for a luxury retirement already. Work 80 hours per week with Musk? Hang out at my lakeside cabin until something else comes along? Hmmm. Hmmm. Hmmm.
The beatings are continuing until morale improves.
Who in their right mind wouldn't take the 3 months pay? Actual startups that demand the same high demands for time and devotion to work are likely to offer a contract including a stake in the company.
Twitter might give out something more than money if Elon decides to, but is already at peak value and any equity they do distribute is unlikely to increase by multiples like a startups shares would.
The best and brightest have plenty of options and the first 50% cuts likely took most of those who were not.
Elon needs a management 101 class, though it may be far too late.
Many of us would walk away from the "extreme hardcore" requirement, and reject Musk's managerial tone. Imagine the calculations for a 50 year old engineer who made $200K or more per year and is set up for a luxury retirement already. Work 80 hours per week with Musk? Hang out at my lakeside cabin until something else comes along? Hmmm. Hmmm. Hmmm.
Those of us familiar with history see the words ‘50 year old engineer’ and ‘until something else comes along’ and cringe…
Now that we know that the FBI and the Biden Administration were behind the restrictions on free speech, and not the at-will decisions of a privately owned company, this is a hill worth dying on. The first amendment applies to the FBI, BTW.
Imagine the calculations for a 50 year old engineer who made $200K or more per year and is set up for a luxury retirement already. Work 80 hours per week with Musk? Hang out at my lakeside cabin until something else comes along? Hmmm. Hmmm. Hmmm.
Imagine the larger severance and potential costs of litigation avoided when the 50 year-old with a lake house who’s been phoning it in for some time decides to voluntarily terminate his employment.
Musk easily could bring about the changes he wants at Twitter in a less costly manner. But he doesn't care. It's more fun to piss people off than save a couple of billions making a smoother transition.
I think there's a self destructive side to Musk. He's accumulated about as much money as individual can and he's bored. His desire to go to Mars is a vanity suicide mission.
None of this tells us anything about where Twitter will be in six months. Since I have no dog in this hunt and no urge to beclown myself for the sheer fun of it, I'll wait before weighing in.
Toxic employees on parade. They'll move somewhere else, infect another carcass of a company. Maybe leave their blessings (/s) at Google.
ALSO. Maybe those memes of Twitter being heavily compromised by government contracts (buying AI that suppresses anti-gov opinions) are truer than first belief...and Musk has seen it now that he is on the inside. Maybe he is a believer in free speech, and is willing to burn down the entire platform than be coerced to sustain evil.
Twitter is not down. It has improved. they are now putting warnings on leftist bullshit. It's refreshing.
Toxic employees, doing evil things for lucre. Good riddance.
Also, maybe those memes of Twitter being compromised by state actors (USA, China, etc.) are true, and the AI really is suppressing caution about the growth of government into all areas of our life. Now that Musk is on the inside, and sees it, maybe he's willing to torch the platform in the effort to protect/promote free speech.
Or, maybe not.
Elon needs a management 101 class
Ummm . . . right.
Elon may have decided that if he can’t run Twitter on his own terms he will destroy it, write off his investment, and move on to his next good deed. But he will not “fail” for lack of “basic management skills.”
Spent last night reading about the imminent demise of Twitter and everyone’s goodbyes. Sort of disappointed to wake up this morning that it’s still here.
People always get hairball during kinetic transition phases. Or is it during phase transitions, I forget. Just fucking breathe.
Just reading the comment you can tell who has had management experience and who hasn't. It falls along expected lines.
Biggest disappointment of all the Twitter employees who quit is to find that it functions without their “vital” contributions.
Great!! Good time to join twitter!!! No more hate and victimhood crying.
So, aside from all the media attention and dramatic tweeting, how does this differ from the ordinary practice of reducing a workforce by offering a generous severance package?
They closed their offices until Monday.
Everyone there is a remote worker until they sort out who quit because Twitter no longer regularly allows remote work.
Scott Johnson over at Powerline has captured some other tweets that might be relevant.
Scroll down to the fourth one.
Yes, Twitter seems to be running just fine, and I suspect the company will have no trouble hiring whatever replacements they need given all the layoffs at other tech firms.
I wonder if it would be feasible to force everyone with an account to re-register within, say 60 days and go through some kind of authentication process (captcha, etc.) to prove they are a real person. Or at least make at an option with a bit of a reward (like a blue--or some other color--check).
Haha. All these people saying they're going to leave Twitter won't actually leave Twitter. The dopamine is too much.
Musk can do what he wants. Twitter worked way worse for me a year ago than it does now. And I have the same amount of advertising as before. Unlike Facebook, every other post there is an ad, which is why I stopped visiting.
Twitter failing? Did the software suddenly refuse to be loaded onto the bus? If I’m not mistaken, the software is still executing as compiled. So how is twitter failing, exactly?
Musk said he would reduce Twitter’s work force by 75%. Step 1 was to have management identify the deadwood and fire them. Step two is to have the employees truly committed to Twitter self identify by passing this initiation by fire. Fill in any missing gaps with SpaceX employees interested in moving up in Musk world. Backfill with ambitious new employees- I’m sure they are out there.
In a prior work-life, I designed advanced network controlling software (in the area then called Advanced Intelligent Networks). My mentor had a very simple view of the technology- everything in networking and computing is replicating a very simple task or situation that already exists in life. All our work in Advanced Intelligent Networks was basically an attempt to replicate the operator in a small town manning the switch board, who intelligently knew that “Doctor Jones wasn’t at her office, so I’ll connect you to the Diner where she is having lunch right now.”
So I’ve often wondered what is the plain world analog of Twitter - what basic task or situation was Twitter replicating? I concluded that Twitter was in essence the internet-ization of the bathroom stall wall. Not an exact fit, but pretty close.
At some point, very soon, an update to a driver or library, or or api change, or whatever they used these days is going to come in, and the code will have to be re-compiled and tested and seamlessly rolled out, or Twitter will be vulnerable to some new hack that is only a gleam in the CIA's eye right now, or Anonymous, which has all of the exact same enemies as the CIA, by some weird coincidence.
That will be the true test.
AIN? Blast from the past.
Wasn't Musk sorta legally committed to buying twitter? Even After he saw the second set of books?
Didn't Musk previously Say, that he wanted MOST of the staff to leave (preferably, to quit?)
IF both of my questions are answered positively, what is Musk doing wrong now?
Seems like, Worst Case Scenario; he is out the money that he is ALREADY out of
I think that email he sent out was nice and clear: He wants the place cleared out of trouble-makers. What will remain will look more like SpaceX or Tesla. It remains to be seen if he can make a success out of it.
Trump should have done the same, with the federal government. Probably illegal.
In the meantime, idiots will continue to comment on it as if any of this was not an inevitable part of the process.
We should be so lucky.
Twitter usage hit an all time high last night.
This is playing out a lot like the Republican GOPe attempt to take out Trump.
Trump and Musk are going to be just fine.
The Regime propaganda is out in the open now.
People have been predicting Musk's failure since he bought Tesla. My money's on Musk.
All the leftists like Dumb Lefty Mark are still all over Twitter talking about how Twitter is already dead and there are lefty high fives all around........on twitter.
Blogger Michael said...
.
... For every butthurt Twit who leaves in a huff,...
whilst leaving his BMW in the parking lot,
Trump should have done the same, with the federal government. Probably illegal.
Actually Trump had a plan in place near the end of his term to do exactly that (after earlier efforts had gotten struck down by judges like Ketanji Jackson Brown):
The Astonishing Implications of Schedule F
So he had to be taken down, and Biden reversed Trump's executive order on his first full day in office.
I'm surprised he's still granting 3 months severance when all he needs to grant by law, is 2 (from what I've read). Watch him cut that next, when the self-righteous whining hits pitch. MAybe, just to twist the knife a little, he can grant 2 weeks and 10 minutes.
Elon needs a management 101 class, though it may be far too late.
Lefty Mark, who is the world's second richest man is offering to conduct that class, aren't you Mark?
LOL rumors of its demise are a bit premature. It's software. It doesn't stop running just because Becky left the building. Good to know the job market is so strong in Silicon Valley that so many can just bail like that, even with three months severance. Of course, in three months the recession will be even worse and of course Big Tech is doing the opposite of hiring right now, but sure.
OTOH there are a lot white male programmers who can't even get an interview in San Jose or San Fran that can probably be tapped in emergencies. I'll be curious to read about the true behind the scenes action on this transaction. The only thing I know for certain is the press is about as accurate reporting on Musk and Twitter as they are everywhere else, which is to say, shitty. For the love of Pete anchors are still crying about how Ligma and Johnson were mistreated and now they're "apparently not happy to be back at Twitter." (True paraphrase, even after Ligma tweeted yesterday, "How is the press still falling for this?")
If I was Musk, I'd get the company to a right size; then relocate it. Twitter, like Google and Facebook, was most successful when it was a simple software concept. All got bigger by adding other capabilities, but bigger didn't necessary mean greater success for dollar spent.
As for the employees, as many have noted, it is not a great time to be job hunting when there are so many others with similar talent looking for a job as well. Put a chip on your shoulder on what you expect from your employer, and you'll be sure to jump off the Titanic and still go down with it.
The best and brightest have plenty of options and the first 50% cuts likely took most of those who were not.
Elon needs a management 101 class, though it may be far too late.
I'm going to archive this as the dumbest take so far, but the day is young. Funny how his management style only clashed with ONE organization out of all the disruptive technology Musk has been involved in.
But I'm not just shitting on this hot take. I'll counter with my own prediction: There's no way Elon put that offer on the table without having a good notion of how many would accept and who they are.
My goodness! The WaPo and NYT reporters are telling everyone they have opened accounts on Mastadon (whatever that is). "Start following me there!" Then post that it's kind of wonky and things aren't easy to use. Until it gets easy to use and they have enough followers that it's worth closing their twitter accounts they will still be on Twitter trying to spew their vileness and disgust at Elon.
An additional villain in all of this is a man named David Sacks. Back in the day he helped start Paypal. He's part of a very good podcast with 3 liberals (he's the lone conservative) called "All In". (These 4 guys play poker together but they are all venture capital guys now) Podcast is done on a Friday and posts on Saturday. Very entertaining and interesting. I recommend it highly.
Twitter USE is at all-time high among actual humans. Square that with your Chicken Little bullshit people.
The same people who assured us they were moving to Canada after Trump was elected.
And you believe this Narrative put forth? Guffaw.
Marcus B. THEOLDMAN
@Althouse, do you post this drivel because you actually believe any of it?
Musk's sin is annoucing layoff before the midterms. Note big tech waited post midterms, they are Dem supporters. Railroad unions made a deal with Biden to wait till after the midterms.
How many tweets will these people issue saying
'Okaaaay...I'm jumping off this bridge right now!'
I have to agree with Achilles on this one. This is the powers continuing their push against Musk from all sides. And in the end, I think he'll be just fine. Actually, he'll be just fine with or without Twitter. But I think he'll attract the right people, who aren't afraid of work, who understand what it takes to rebuild (or build) a company properly. Those coming in won't be reported on much. Those leaving will have microphones waiting for them in the street. But in the end, he'll do for Twitter what he's done for NASA.
If the pinkos can't have it neither can anyone else.
Musk is becoming like Trump, provoking MDS. He's proving that the Dems hate free speech and the the cprporations are in it with them.
Update at 9:01 PST
Mitchell Nagy, the whiner featured in Althouse's post saying goodbye... is still Tweeting today up to about an hour ago. That's some boycott these fools are running! Or maybe they are quitting the job but staying on the app because that'll show Elon.
LOL!
And if Twitter is still going strong a year from now and beginning to turn a sustainable profit, I am going to retweet some of these comments and tweets as screenshots.
"I'm going to archive this as the dumbest take so far, but the day is young."
We still haven't had Daniel12, Inga, Gadfly, or Readering weigh in yet, so don't close the archive early.
You know the funniest thing is that all these people are posting their hot takes on Twitter itself, which is still up an running this morning like always.
All this flailing at Musk. Children, really. Stomping, slamming doors on their way out. Mad at...Dad. Because he's so mean, taking away the keys. But mostly because he's so annoyingly smarter than they think they are.
Oh sure, having the gov (Dem party, Hilary, DOJ) come after you and after your advertisers isn't fascism at all, nosiree.
paminwi said: "My goodness! The WaPo and NYT reporters are telling everyone they have opened accounts on Mastadon (whatever that is)...Then post that it's kind of wonky and things aren't easy to use."
This is nothing new. For as long as there has been twitter, there have been attempts to popularize twitter alternatives that use decentralized architectures. As far as I can tell, all of them have failed because they are "kind of wonky and things aren't easy to use."
It's almost as if the journalists are "27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns...They literally know nothing."
So thousands of H1B visa holding employees never were needed afterall. I wonder how many will actually go back home, wherever that might be.
Via Instapundit: Twitter’s Moderation System Is in Tatters:
Disinformation researchers have spent years asking Twitter to remove toxic and fake posts. After Elon Musk’s staff cuts, there’s hardly anyone to talk to.
“At this moment, we have nobody to reach out to,” says Nina Santos, a researcher at the Brazilian National Institute of Science & Technology in Digital Democracy. “All the people that we were talking with are no longer there.” Santos says that until Musk’s takeover, Twitter had been “quite responsive” in taking down rule-breaking content that could undermine trust in the election or spread disinformation, compared to Meta and Google. The entirety of Twitter’s Brazil team was included in the 7,500 people laid off earlier this month.
Although Lula was declared the winner of the election, Santos says she still sees tweets questioning the result or calling for mobilization against the government. All of these, she says, are dangerous. Twitter’s current policy states that the company will “label or remove false or misleading information intended to undermine public confidence in an election or other civic process.” Christopher Bouzy, founder and CEO of Bot Sentinel, a project to fight disinformation and harassment on Twitter, was also monitoring the Brazilian elections, as well as the US midterms. Like Santos, he noticed that tweets claiming the Brazilian election was stolen remained up on Twitter.
Disinformation also flooded Twitter during the US midterms, particularly around the race in Maricopa County, Arizona, the state’s largest county and a consistent target of right-wing election deniers. Bouzy, who was monitoring thousands of right-wing accounts, says he had “no idea who to contact” at the company to get tweets containing disinformation taken down. “Twitter is a shit show,” he says.
Damn it! We stole the election, fair and square, and Twitter now won’t automatically deplatform those whom we identify as questioning the stolen election(s).
It's because he's African-American, a Person of Color, right?
The first rule of progressive liberal club is take a knee, beg, "donate".
Twitter and company enjoyed their secular lucre through financing. Why Musk, why?!
Stage 4 cancer is almost never cured. It has spread throughout
the body and is unlikely to be completely removed.
But what if the cancer decides to remove itself?
Elon you're in my thoughts, buddy.
Take extra good care of yourself and
feel better soon!
I hear a lot of complaining about Twitter since Musk took over, but I haven't seen a single difference in the content I get.
Same Wired article:
Bouzy, who was monitoring thousands of right-wing accounts, says he had “no idea who to contact” at the company to get tweets containing disinformation taken down. “Twitter is a shit show,” he says.”
…
On November 15, more than 70 civil society organizations across the globe wrote to Musk demanding he take action to stop hate speech becoming more prevalent on Twitter. In the weeks leading up to the US midterms, the nonprofit advocacy group Free Press released a report highlighting how all social platforms were allowing election disinformation to persist.
…
Even when researchers can get through to Twitter, responses are slow—sometimes taking more than a day. Jesse Littlewood, vice president of campaigns at the [leftist] nonprofit Common Cause, says he’s noticed that when his organization reports tweets that clearly violate Twitter’s policies, those posts are now less likely to get taken down.
The volume of content that users and watchdogs may want to report to Twitter is likely to increase. Many of the staff and contractors laid off in recent weeks worked on teams like trust and safety, policy, and civic integrity, all of which worked to keep disinformation and hate speech off the platform.
They are trying to make it seem like it’s about the coders being let go. Nope. The good ones will probable get raises to keep them around. The left is melting down because it’s censors are being fired by Musk. It isn’t just DHS. There is apparently an entire subculture of leftist couch potato truth monitors who spend their days looking for right wing hate speech and misinformation on Twitter, FB, Google, etc. They had their inside contacts at Twitter, to whom they reported their complaints, and the spewers of right wing hatred and misinformation were almost immediately shut down. Now they complain, and nothing happens, because all of their inside contacts at the company were laid off. Boo Hoo.
It reminds me of the statement about FNC’s marketing strategy - by positioning themselves center right, they had half the market to themselves. By hiring this army of censors, and allowing them to hook up with and be driven by left wing militants, the Old Twitter was essentially alienating a good part of its potential market.
Nobody quits Twitter
Don’t know where I found this. Apologies if a repeat. But I found Musk’s Tweats here hilarious: REPORTS OF TWITTER’S DEATH
A celebratory glee is descending on mainstream media outlets retailing the impending death of Twitter. The theme is that Elon Musk is killing it since he took it over. The AP reports, for example, under the byline of three reporters: “More Twitter workers flee after Musk’s ‘hardcore’ ultimatum.” The New York Post has a good story here. The glee is also manifested on Twitter itself by some of its users.
One has to turn to Twitter to find Musk’s response. One of my favorites:
Elon Musk
@elonmusk
·
How do you make a small fortune in social media?
Start out with a large one.
It Begins: Democrats Demand The Federal Government Begin Punishing Elon Musk for Twitter's Noncompliance In The Government-Mandated Nationwide Censorship Regime
The Biden Administration has been demanding that social media companies execute their censorship schemes for years. In the lawsuit that Republican AGs and others have filed against the social media monopolies, the claim will be made that compliance with the government is "voluntary." They'll claim they're not being forced to act as deputy censorship enforcement agents of the government, but are doing so of their own free corporate will.
But all of these companies are, in fact, monopolies, and thus exist in a precarious legal state -- presently tolerated, but open to government harassment and persecution any time they do not follow the government's commands.
As proof of that, Democrats are now demanding that the Federal Trade Commission investigate Elon Musk for "undermining Twitter." By which they mean -- they want him investigated for abandoning the censorship scheme they demanded the old regime imposed.
Blogger Mike (MJB Wolf) said...
"....OTOH there are a lot white male programmers who can't even get an interview in San Jose or San Fran that can probably be tapped in emergencies. I'll be curious to read about the true behind the scenes action on this transaction."
DH and I laughed last night, discussing the current dumpster fire that is Twitter's state. Then he stopped laughing and said this might just be the opportunity to get in there and actually do stuff. He's not afraid of long hours.
I suspect the work hard at the office or quit email was the second phase of communication. I bet his Tesla people had identified key players who Twitter needed to keep the ship afloat. I bet those people were offered a very nice compensation package and reasonable flexibility in their work schedules.
“Welcome Back Ligma Johnson”
Hah!
Musk seems very worried about all this, doesn’t he?
Good to know the job market is so strong in Silicon Valley that so many can just bail like that, even with three months severance. Of course, in three months the recession will be even worse and of course Big Tech is doing the opposite of hiring right now, but sure.
This is one of the funniest takes of all. I wonder if travel to India will increase? Going outbound, of course.
Reality Doesn’t Care What Twitter Employees Think or Nobody Has Repealed the Laws of Supply and Semand
It used to be that a CS degree was hard to get, because it involved math and logic, so programmers were often worth their weight in gold. Not anymore. Plenty of people have become decent at programming over the last 52 years, since my first Basic class. I was initially surprised that programming (in Python) was required for my daughter’s STEM PhD. It’s no longer really rocket science. So, Musk will likely face no problems replacing any of the EDP staff who leave, and if he can’t hire replacements here, he can get them elsewhere. In my experience, (dot) Indians are better than most ethnicities with software, and there are over a billion of them. So, if there are problems, just open a software center in Mumbai, and connect the programmers there with the servers by, say, something exotic like the Internet.
I love this topic. It brings out the best in your readers Althouse.
"esse Littlewood, vice president of campaigns at the [leftist] nonprofit Common Cause, says he’s noticed that when his organization reports tweets that clearly violate Twitter’s policies, those posts are now less likely to get taken down."
I distinctly remember being told, when conservatives were unhappy with how Twitter was being run, that Twitter was a private company and they could do what they want.
Are we over that now?
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