[pg]

I'm not leaving Twitter. It seems more likely than not that Elon will reverse the ban on links to other social media sites. I just don't want to hang out there in the meantime. Plus given the way things are going, it seemed like a good time to learn about alternatives.

I still think Elon is a smart guy. His work on cars and rockets speaks for itself. Nor do I think he's the villain a lot of people try to make him out to be. He's eccentric, definitely, but that should be news to no one. Plus I don't think he realizes that the techniques that work for cars and rockets don't work in social media. Those two facts are sufficient to explain most of his behavior.

He could still salvage the situation. He's the sort of person it would be a big mistake to write off. And I hope he does. I would be delighted to go back to using Twitter regularly.

[baxtr]

> seemed like a good time to learn about alternatives.

Would be great to see you being more active on HN again!

[pg]

Thanks, but as I learned when I was running HN, being a regular user of a forum (which the moderator necessarily is) and writing essays are fundamentally incompatible.

If you're known to be a regular user of a forum, then when someone says something about you and you don't reply, it reads as a tacit admission that they're correct. And when you write essays people say all kinds of things about you. The combination is a disaster. Forum users can sense that you're compelled to respond, and it encourages them to pick fights with you.

Back when I used to moderate HN, hitting publish on an essay was usually followed by several hours of saying various forms of "No, what I said was..." Life is much better now that I never look at the HN threads on them.

[mcv]

> His work on cars and rockets speaks for itself.

I used to think that too, but I've since come across a story that SpaceX actually has people who's informal job is to manage him, and they present their ideas in such a way that he thinks they're his, in order to keep him happy. He's mostly there to bring money and hype.

No idea if that story is true, but honestly, it would explain some things.

The impression he's been giving me recently is that his success may have broken him. Too many people worshipping him and praising literally every crazy thing he does, may have made him believe he can do literally everything including run a social media company on his own without first learning how social media companies work. He honestly seems to be running Twitter into the ground. The mass firings he started with, followed by ruining the blue checkmark feature, really didn't make it look like he knows what he's doing. His management style sounds like hell.

[ramraj07]

I did my PhD under possibly the most narcissistic, ruthless, and petty professors anyone around me had ever heard of, so I might be able to comment on this.

I and the few people who managed to actually graduate with our sanity intact (out of like 50) learned to play this game you suggested where we have to play to their egos, and try and salvage their shitty, shitty ideas into workable projects that will end with us publishing. Every week they will suggest experiments that are nonsensical, and we will huddle and discuss how to do some preliminary work and present it in a way such that they will think it’s their idea to change it in a more productive direction.

When smart people are forced to work with egotistical pricks like this, I think it’s inevitable such a system comes in place.

The interesting thing is my professor kinda knew we do this, he just acknowledged it as part of the dance of their system. For Better or worse this shitty lab actually put out a drug that helps patients (I constantly think about how and why that happened). Could this lab have been more productive? Absolutely. Would this lab have existed without these people though? Probably not though.

The question here is whether Elon is aware this is why spacex and Tesla succeeded or he’s too deranged now to remember it. Looks like it’s the latter and that just sucks. My professors too have gotten unhinged (they’ve been literally pushed out of two universities and an entire country, though they always find another sucker, which at this point is the wellcome institute lol). When you’ve been doing this shitty shtick for too long I suppose it gets to you.

[Moto7451]

I worked on the Engineering side of compliance at my last job managing Compliance and Security. As part of going public, part of my job was keeping some executives away from the Auditors. This was not because the Auditors wanted information from them that we didn’t want to share, but because the auditors actually had zero interest in what they had to say. I.e. they did not care about Joe Techbro and his Git front end and how it would allow us to avoid having an Internal Audit team (news flash: it didn’t).

All these pointless conversations would slow the process down and the auditors would bill (aggressively) for these pointless interjections.

My job for a while was listening for signs they would do this, create a meeting, take notes, email the notes to our Eng team, and then fein concern. This worked as the audit team were able to do what they needed to do and we went public. Eventually half the people I was playing interference against were asked to leave the company or were otherwise fired for unrelated reasons that I’d roughly group into being unprofessional or poorly prepared for their role.

In my subsequent job (years later and at a multinational) I’ve seen more of this. I’ve learned that at any sufficiently large company there will be at least one person paid to keep one person from messing things up with their presence.

Overall, I find the stories about keeping Elon placated completely believable.

[ShredKazoo]

I read this book a few years back: https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-SpaceX-Fantastic-Future/dp/... Here are my recollections/opinions (stripping out further qualifiers to save space)

The truth is somewhere between what the boosters want you to believe and what the detractors want you to believe. Elon's very smart and works incredibly hard, but has a serious ego problem and isn't pleasant to work for. A bit like Steve Jobs maybe.

No CEO can succeed without attracting talented people and inspiring them to excel, and Elon has been very successful at that. By working incredibly hard, thinking incredibly big, and setting high expectations, he inspires everyone else in the company. But he's also capricious in a way that demoralizes people and burns them out.

We like the story of a lone hero who does everything. But there are many people who worked at Elon's companies and played a key role, but feel underappreciated in a way that the author seemed sympathetic to.

The "people managing Elon" thing is true to a degree. It so happens that I've spoken to a couple employees (one SpaceX one Tesla) who both told me stories like this. (Specifically the two stories were something like: (1) "We adjusted the Tesla to optimize for the route Elon drives, even though that hurt autopilot performance overall" and (2) "We keep having to explain to Elon the basic probability math that explains the importance of continually testing rocket components")

At the same time, "he's mostly there to bring money and hype" seriously underplays his role. As an extreme analogy, imagine you had a toddler who told you "[Mommy/Daddy] I designed an awesome treehouse and I want you to build it". You keep saying you're busy and treehouses are impractical. But your toddler gets you to buy into their vision, and challenges you to overcome obstacles until an awesome treehouse is built. Even if you did all the work in this analogy, you have to give your toddler some credit. The power of visionary leadership and extreme determination was one of my big takeaways from the book -- again similar to Jobs with the "reality distortion field", I guess.

Social media moderation requires a humility and good judgement -- not Elon's strengths. But it's definitely not a coincidence that he's started so many successful companies.

[atombender]

The difference with Twitter is that, being a web site and app, his decisions have immediate visibility. Bans, unbans, blue checkmarks — those become visible to everyone in the world to see right away.

With his other companies, the lag time before anything becomes public is longer. We presumably don't see a lot of the eccentric decisions Musk makes because the companies are able to course-correct before they end up becoming real.

Of course, we still get screws-ups like the Cybertruck and whatever that robot was.

[randomcarbloke]

He's good at finding the right people and putting them in a room, and convincing other people to give him money...that's it.

[asmor]

SpaceX has talented people working there despite Elon, not because of him.

They supposedly have an entire handbook on "managing Elon" for deflecting his weird requests and framing things in a way that doesn't provoke his ire. They put up with it because they only have so many opportunities to work on space.

Twitter has people dependent on their H-1B and very few true believers that are unfit to serve in their role. Ella Irwin has apparently personally ghost banned ("Hide Reply" but with lying to the user about being hidden) any mention of libsoftiktok - a stochastic terror organization just itching for a lynching of queer people - made anywhere close to TwitterSafety recently.

[ehsankia]

Right, Twitter is absolutely nothing like SpaceX or Tesla. Twitter's problems aren't engineering issues, they're political and related to moderation. Content moderation is one of the hardest problems current which no company has managed to solve. Especially when you have the user-creator-advertiser triangle. It was clear from the very start Elon has no clue what he was walking into.

[mcv]

> They supposedly have an entire handbook on "managing Elon" for deflecting his weird requests and framing things in a way that doesn't provoke his ire.

I heard that too. Is it just a rumour or do we know this is true?

And if it's true at SpaceX, is it also true at Tesla?

[dan-robertson]

I’ve heard about people depending on Twitter for visa sponsorship but I don’t think I’ve seen any firsthand accounts. Is it actually happening? I’ve also heard that people who work for (or were fired from) twitter were deluged with job offers despite it not being a great time for hiring (so my guess is that people on H1-B visas could find sponsorship elsewhere)

It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that some people are staying for risk-aversion reasons but I feel like most people are there because:

- they actually like Elon or believe in the future of Twitter under different management

- they see it as an opportunity for career growth (you can have proportionally larger impact on the business; fewer senior positions at the company; they will likely hire more people soon, just not at salaries that are effectively inflated by Elon’s purchase)

- they correctly infer that they would be in a worse position if they moved to some other firm. (I think most people thinking this underestimate themselves, however)

It seems like it could be possible for employees to have a big impact on the platform or the business. It also seems like the whole thing could go up in flames. I don’t really know how bad it is to be associated with a site that goes up. I guess not that bad for job prospects for an average employee, especially if they got to learn about putting out fires / many more parts of the system than an average big tech employee. But then experience hacking in minimal fixes to keep mountains of software going perhaps isn’t going to teach you as much as properly understanding and improving fewer systems and making more changes that will have impact over a longer timescale.

[rizoma_dev]

It really is criminal how much preferential treatment lott is getting both now and under the previous administration. This alone should be grounds for an investigation into the site

[secos]

> Plus I don't think he realizes that the techniques that work for cars and rockets don't work in social media.

This argument made sense a month ago. Unfortunately he really hasn't shown any improvement since then that would lead me to agree with you on that point.

It's now a situation where he has to either find enough new people who agree with whatever his approach is or /win people back/ - both of those are quite a bit harder than keeping people who already loved the app.

I also hope he - or someone - is able to recover Twitter. But I'm not betting on it at this point.

[thereare5lights]

This.

Continuing to give him the benefit of the doubt just reeks of

> I can be tricked by anyone who looks like Mark Zuckerberg.

And yes, I know that was a joke but obviously the unconscious bias is quite strong, stronger than a lot of these investors want to admit.

[davidgerard]

looking forward to the Morgan Stanley era of Twitter ownership

really, the first job is to put an adult in charge

[raspberry1337]

Twitter has less bots yets more activity than ever. In what dimension do these Hacker news posters live?

[asim]

Unfortunately for those who idolised Elon, their world view is beginning to crumble. His actions are not justifiable. The way he treats people, the way he rules his companies, the way he governs his new "free speech" platform. The man is a tyrant. He's idolised for the things he's achieved but if he had not achieved them would he be given the same benefit of the doubt?

Hypocrisy. The way people treat this man versus others who act the same, it's two faced. The who's who of silicon valley were championing him right up until a few hours ago. Everything that he says or does that is deplorable, people eat up. But I guess if he's "changing the world" he should get to be a dick right?

[cgh]

Imagine if it were Tim Cook who called Vern Unsworth, the British diver who helped rescue the trapped Thai kids in the flooded cave, a "pedo guy". Or, if you want to picture an amazing shitstorm, Barack Obama.

[nrdvana]

Or the easier explanation, that Elon has changed. He was my favorite billionaire back when all his prospects related to colonization of Mars and all his investments were aimed at creating new technology. But power can corrupt people, and he seems particularly prone to it. The entire Twitter episode is at odds with everything he did 10 years ago; Mars doesn't need a social network, and he's not innovating anything here. Not to mention that part where he's spent the last 7+ years sleeping around and fathering as many children as possible.

A different way of looking at "power corrupts" is that negative social interactions are an important part of the feedback loop that calibrates a person's sense of right and wrong. When a person decides that they don't want to hear conflicting opinions, they loose out on accurate feedback, and de-calibrate, unless they have a strong internal sense of empathy. Empathy is a disadvantage to becoming a billionaire in the first place, so very few of them have much of it. Guys like Musk and Bezos and Trump end up victims of their own success and echo chamber.

[phs318u]

We saw this writ large with the evangelical support for Donald Trump. It's crystal clear that DT is a huge "family values" hypocrite, yet he's seen to be a global change agent (of God, no less), so that justifies their uncritical support.

It's no different with Musk. His work with SpaceX and Tesla are seen as worthy goals at the whole-of-humanity scale, so that justifies (in some people's eyes) glossing over any character defects.

It was similar with Steve Jobs, a reputed workplace bully and tyrant.

[ss108]

The worldview of people who like Musk, Trump, etc., will never crumble. It is built on a religious belief in contrarianism, as well as moral autism.

[smrtinsert]

Techies are very susceptible to the cult of personality. How many times do we have to watch that play out?

[samtp]

Well he did very publicly call the cave diver who saved 12 children a pedophile because he was jealous of him. He also called for a leading infectious disease expert to be jailed, further endangering someone who was already under armed protection from previous threats. And there was that one time that he shared an unfounded conspiracy theory about an elderly man who was attacked with a hammer in his own home. There was also the time when he tried to trade a horse for a handjob from one of his employees.

That's all pretty clearly in villain territory.

[occamsrazorwit]

He also tried to anonymously get news agencies to publish that the cave diver was a pedophile too [1].

[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/elon-musk-thai-...

[mhss]

No no no, all of that is just he's eccentric, not understood by the common person.

[kmlx]

> Well he did very publicly call the cave diver who saved 12 children a pedophile because he was jealous of him.

this is false. he called him that after the cave diver told Musk to “stick his submarine where it hurts”.

it only takes 1 minute to search google.

[magicloop]

I think pg is one of the best placed people to critique the situation because he knows what a start-up is and how to do one, he's in the same tier of society (top tier wealth), and he knows what is takes to run a social network.

The "it is going to be hardcore from here" email the CEO sent to Tesla employees 'worked', but the same email to Twitter employees resulted in significant resignations. I think the CEO was shocked and this underlies pg's point.

Given that it was a forced buy, the game was always that of a corporate raider approach - go in, make the unpleasant but needed decisions, and then sell out as soon as the value uptick became realisable. pg applauded the cut to staff IIRC.

CEO should have taken a leaf out of Rupert Murdoch's book - as the owner don't write the headlines - let the editor do that. Being behind the scenes to just make the most considered accurate business decisions was the right way.

If instead you are out in front of the public, you're emotional side will kick in due to the slings-and-arrows coming from the audience. Hence the wrong decisions will be made.

You can't wear both the hats of 'eccentric' Corporate Jester and Corporate Raider at the same time. The Dave Chapelle boo-ing incident just underlies this.

[ragebol]

What i hoped he would he'd do was to find another Gwynne Shotwell and have them run the company while taking his advice and kindly ignore it when it makes sense.

Alas, I don't see something like this panning out, that future is gone.

[toomuchtodo]

Tom Zhu, Tesla’s China president, is likely to be head of Tesla Automotive in the near future.

[sanderjd]

"Villain" isn't the word I'd use, but he has been increasingly indulging in gleeful cruelty and childish nonsense, both of which are very off putting.

I also admire his car and rocket businesses, but he seems to have gotten sucked deeply into the very online culture war grievance trap in the past few years, to the point that it now seems to be taking up essentially all of his time now. It's really a shame to see.

[fallingknife]

Gleeful cruelty? Really? That's quite an overstatement for a bit of social media drama.

[adverbly]

> Plus I don't think he realizes that the techniques that work for cars and rockets don't work in social media.

You have someone with Asperger's who is self aware enough to go on SNL and laugh about it, but for some reason also wants to spend 40B on owning and running a social platform, thinking they can "improve" by working on it part time despite having zero actual experience in the field. The ego is unbelievable.

> He could still salvage the situation

I hope so, but these billionaire ego megaprojects just don't seem to be die. Neom, Metaverse, dystopia-twitter...

[rising-sky]

Well account is now suspended so I guess you were "made to leave"

[dredmorbius]

Confirming archive: <https://archive.vn/ucUdh>

[ssnistfajen]

Elon is so incredibly thin-skinned that he's burning bridges with anyone who dares to not agree with him even once. First Bari Weiss, now Paul Graham. Paul clearly stated here & on Mastodon that he still believes in Elon Musk. This is classic self-sabotage of a deranged dictator.

[ngoilapites]

When you say "I still think Elon is a smart guy" every every time you write about your departure statement, you just communicate lots of things: too much respect and consideration for despicable actors just conveys fear.

[noelsusman]

Calling somebody like Elon eccentric is political correctness for rich, powerful people. It's a polite way of calling him a crazy asshole.

[dredmorbius]

eccentric (adj) 1. Socially maladjusted + wealth.

<https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/107453472642613292>

[hermitcrab]

Rich and deranged = eccentric

Poor and deranged = mad

[fzeroracer]

I don't understand how he can salvage this situation. You cannot simply go 'lol jk' with policy changes like this and reverse them because once you've lost user trust it cannot be easily regained. Individuals may not remember, but groups as a whole can have a long lasting memory and once the various subgroups like art twitter, influencer twitter etc leave they aren't coming back without serious enticement which Twitter can barely afford as they're burning money.

[TaylorAlexander]

> I don't think he realizes that the techniques that work for cars and rockets don't work in social media.

That’s what I find so peculiar. I thought he made so much progress on cars and rockets by trusting experts to help him. But with Twitter there have been lots of experts who keep trying to tell him he’s seriously misunderstanding how social media works, and he will just give them a snarky tweet reply and act like he knows better. Maybe it’s the fact that on twitter everyone can see the discussion and he’s got to project this persona with bravado that he probably doesn’t do in a private meeting.

Maybe he will turn it around but for a lot of us he’s destroyed our hang out spot and we’ve embraced alternatives. Mastodon isn’t perfect but it feels really great to see a problem, open a GitHub issue, and get a genuine discussion of how to implement it.

And no one is going to come crashing in and tear it all down.

[zelias]

In what context does a "smart guy" truly not realize that growing industrial manufacturing companies ("cars and rockets") from scratch is a fundamentally different challenge than running a mature web-only social media company?

Is he simply blinded by success?

[themitigating]

You can be smart and impulsive at the same time. Remember, he tried to get out of the purchase probably after thinking about it.

[bambax]

> I'm not leaving Twitter

Yes you are. The smart guy that works on cars and rockets and who's not a villain and who's a political moderate and a totally reasonable guy, just made you.

> I would be delighted to go back to using Twitter regularly

It's not your decision to make, apparently.

[cmatthias]

> I still think Elon is a smart guy.

> Plus I don't think he realizes that the techniques that work for cars and rockets don't work in social media.

Given his behavior and the results over the last ~month or however long he's owned Twitter, how can both of these possibly be true?

[systemvoltage]

My prediction is that Elon will realize how badly he is fucking up things and change. I was listening to All-in-podcast and there was a really good comment that was made - "He[Elon] needs to just get back to landing rockets on barges" which I agree, moderating and micromanaging a massive social media platform doesn't feel like a good use of his time.

Edit: annnnd he reversed the whole thing and apologized: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604616863673208832

[keepper]

So your initial comments have aged poorly…

From your own feed:

“ People are rooting for him to fail because he's a rich white guy and a political moderate. “

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1593206076983635968?s=46&t=...

I really really really dislike this whole trend to feel “victimized” while being some of the most successful people in earth. People are “turning” on Elon after being hugely beloved, purely cause he’s doing idiotic things. Plain an simple.

Furthermore, we should hold someone who’s the richest person on earth to higher standards.

[bambax]

"a political moderate"?? PG said this a month ago? (Nov. 17th) Wow. That tells us much more about PG's politics than I would ever have wanted to know.

Also, "rich white guy" adds a nice vibe of "all lives matter". It's a truth universally acknowledged that white people are victims. Esp. if they're male. And rich.

[bdn_]

Hey Paul, legitimate question. What actions from Musk would it take for you to stop supporting him?

[mola]

Becoming poor and powerless I'd bet... Any of us plebs behaving so erratically and cruel wouldn't get support from the like of PG. But the rich sympathies with the rich. So for now Elon is eccentric and smart, not mad and dangerous

[bloopernova]

How do you feel about his "anti-woke" behaviour? His banning of journalists? His tweets with nazi coded language like "88"?

Would you return to a site where the owner uses his considerable power/money to promote fascism?

[drusepth]

> His tweets with nazi coded language like "88"?

Do you have links to these tweets? I couldn't find any from a brief perusal of this recent tweets.

[boudin]

If the same techniques would have been applied to Tesla and SpaceX the result would be different. I guess there must be quite a few people much smarter than Musk behind the success of those companies.

Calling abusive and intolerant behaviour "eccentric" is really weak.

[locallost]

You have in fact left Twitter, your account was just suspended. Crazy times...

[hakanderyal]

I'm starting to believe being a Twitter user is the worst thing that happened to Elon.

[raverbashing]

Sounds like it's a theme with certain people, interestingly enough

[quantified]

Twitter is incidentally a tech company. Fundamentally, it's a "people communicating with each other in people-configurable groups" and that is quite unlike building vehicles.

[JumpinJack_Cash]

> > He's eccentric, definitely

Eccentric people buy stuff and are too busy enjoying them .

This guy searches for mentions of himself to silence critics while sitting on 200bn dollars. When that wasn’t enough to silence everybody he went on to buy the platform.

If that is the end of the road then it’s better to get lost on the way like the Dan Bilzerians , and the other truly eccentric guys

[michaelmrose]

Nobody has ever pay nor will ever pay Elon to work on cars or rockets. He is solely responsible for working on people a job which by all accounts he does very poorly.

With twitter his poor performance is merely on display for the whole world in tweets. It is yet another poor decision in an entire life full of poor decisions ranging from paying a cut rate private investigator to investigate a hero spearheading the effort to save children and then publicly and falsely proclaiming that person a pedophile, then lying about pedophile just being used as a generic insult, allegedly trying to bribe an employee to have sex with him for a pony by her account, an entire series of failed relationships, abandoning his wife after their kid died by her account of the matter, spreading conspiracy theories that the psycho that attacked pelosi was a prostitute rather than a deranged conspiracy theorist.

He doesn't do anything but buy the services of people smarter and better than himself and take credit for their success while continually making poor choices and offering an example of terrible leadership.

You act as if his failure with twitter is forgivable because its a different sort of business from his other ventures but its really not. Nobody expects Elon to design a rocket either he's supposed to be an expert in leading people and he's stunningly poor at it.

There is little chance of turning twitter around with Elon at the helm. It was barely been profitable in its whole history and now its becoming a pariah to both the potential employees who could serve in that role and the advertisers who pay all of the bills. It's going to steadily lose money until Elon steps away and makes a firm commitment not to ratfuck it any longer and puts someone in charge that both sides trust. Then MAYBE it can stop hemorrhaging money. It will remain a black eye both personally to him and his business acumen.

Twitter introduced the world to the real Elon and its not a person worth knowing. If you have positive feelings towards him I would suggest its because as a fellow rich person you have more in common with him than with us even if you are a better man. I would suggest not lowering your own stock by defending those so obviously inferior to yourself.

[morelisp]

In your tweet you said "I give up."

Given that you're not giving up your Twitter account, nor something less tangible like your belief Elon is acting in good faith, nor even something the evidence keeps building against like his ability to run Twitter well - what exactly are you giving up, or giving up on?

[ignostic]

Not leaving Twitter, just not reading or posting and using alternative platforms.

Not to play word police, but I think that's what people meant when they said 'leaving'. But if you mean that it's not necessarily forever, I understand what you're saying.

[pfoof]

Good job OP. You managed to ressurect pg since 2 years ago

[Imnimo]

>Plus I don't think he realizes that the techniques that work for cars and rockets don't work in social media.

>It's remarkable how many people who've never run any kind of company think they know how to run a tech company better than someone who's run Tesla and SpaceX.

If the techniques for cars and rockets don't work in social media, why were people wrong to write him off despite his Tesla and SpaceX experience?

[SpeedilyDamage]

Twitter just has to be predictable, that's it. That's all anyone wants, IMO, when you boil the controversies down to its essence. People will always complain, but the brands, the journalists, the users, they all just want something they can understand.

That might come in time. Surely it can't continue to be this chaotic forever, right? At least then we'll know what this site's future is.

[martythemaniak]

I don't think Musk has any negative feedback loops anymore, it's highly unlikely said there is a single person who can tell him when he's screwing up.

Or maybe he needs something of Twitter going bust magnitude to get feedback now. I hope that happens so that he can go back to making great stuff again

[thrown1212]

Any first degree negative feedback loops. But reality has a way of poking its head in, like getting booed in public forums that should have been adoring you.

Fortunately second and third degree feedback loops are notoriously stupid, and wrong, and they’re the problem there, not you.

[bombolo]

Great things like digging tunnels to put a few cars in them? :D

The man sells hype, and has always done so. It seems the mask is falling.

[jacquesm]

That seems to be mostly because he's firing anybody that is even mildly critical of him.

[highwaylights]

I can get on board with all of the above in principle, but I think you've made a strong case for suggesting it's in a tailspin.

It's theoretically salvageable, but I don't see a version of a salvaged Twitter that is compatible with his worldview.

He is a colourful, loud, opinionated public figure. That's great for his personal Twitter and his follower count, but it's terrible if you're trying to convince the world that you're a suitable custodian of a free public square.

Mark Zuckerberg is beige as often as he's able to be on just about everything. Tim Cook speaks on issues of privacy when it's relevant and otherwise says as little as possible. Reddit is as un-opinionated on content as they can possibly be.

Having any divisive opinion by definition divides your support base. Usually in half.

I can only assume Musk-brand libertarian free-for-all social media is a niche product (potentially a large niche, but a niche nonetheless) that's very probably worth some amount significantly less than $40 billion.

[pySSK]

> Plus I don't think he realizes that the techniques that work for cars and rockets don't work in social media.

How do you reconcile this with

> I still think Elon is a smart guy

[tim333]

He's now at https://mas.to/@paulg by the way. Twitter account suspended.

[skywhopper]

He has nothing to do with the quality of the cars or rockets. He’s done none of the “work” there. He gets attention with overpromises and straight up lies.

[marvin]

I've kept a pretty distanced opinion about Musk's Twitter dramas, figuring that the network effect and having access to the thoughts of whichever thinkers I enjoy reading is what matters. Most other stuff is ancillary to that, and challenging the ad-based funding model of media is a very interesting experiment.

But now that he's started banning the A list of intellectually interesting people, I don't see how it can end well. This decision needs to be reversed very soon, or the network effect will be destroyed.

Your tweets are the reason I bothered to register an account in the first place, so hoping that Musk figures this out sooner than the hopefully short time that's needed for most to accrete somewhere else.

[CodeWriter23]

Just going to leave this here for you @pg

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604593057676300288?s=61...

[mmmmpancakes]

> I still think Elon is a smart guy.

> I don't think he realizes that the techniques that work for cars and rockets don't work in social media.

Hmmm...

[bane]

As Musk slowly (or rapidly depending on your point of view) turns Twitter into an expensive version of Truth Social and Parler, being "seen" there threatens to associate users with his overriding POV -- it's going to start sending a message just for being there. Running a forum that's even handed is pretty hard and requires a different kind of idealism.

[smrtinsert]

I'm deleting my account in the hope it will keep that data safe. I have 0 confidence in his ability to run a massive application safely and securely.

What a shit show, as if he needed to add the managerial drama on top of getting rid of 75% of his staff.

I would say delete your account while you still can. Who knows what he will do your data.

[d3vmax]

Paul, on Nov. 16 you mentioned on twitter, "It's remarkable how many people who've never run any kind of company think they know how to run a tech company better than someone who's run Tesla and SpaceX." Source: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1592852796185128961

In hindsight do you now think that Musk is not suitable anymore? He is too thin-skinned to be running a public forum and not being able to anticipate consequences that his new rules/actions have on the brand value of twitter and musk. He and Peter Theil are extremely anti-democratic as it all comes down to money and power trips. What are your thoughts?

[irthomasthomas]

I was just about to share your tweet, and... account suspended. Things sure do escalate quickly, these days!

[pupppet]

He’s not eccentric, he’s a troll.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604329282796457984?s=46...

[xupybd]

I'm impressed that one of your tweets could generate almost 600 comments in 1 hour. This should be an interesting stress test of HN. Often when something generates this level of interaction performance suffers.

[MylesDelfin]

The man making the decisions in Twitter may be smart but that's irrelevant because of the fact that he's irresponsible. Others might find it outlandish but social media is a tool for tyrants in some parts of the world such as where I'm living. By tyrant, I don't mean someone who merely violates the right to free speech. Thousands have lost their lives because of the irresponsible implementation of ideas in places where loss of revenue is the only consequence for mistakes.

[chrchang523]

I've deactivated the account that I created last month.

I agree that he may still salvage the situation, and I hope to reactivate or create a new account if/when that happens. For now, though, the best thing I can do is reinforce the signal that this was a major misstep, for a reason he should be well aware of: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1533616384747442176

[IAmGraydon]

I’m curious to hear your thoughts on him banning Ukrainian phone numbers, effectively making it so that Ukrainians can’t sign up to share information about the war.

[jacquesm]

I would chalk that up to slow service degradation more than malice. Twitter is likely slowly running aground.

[fundad]

He chose his side in that war and it’s totally legal to use a private company to aid genocide.

[lph]

It's astonishing how much benefit of the doubt Elon Musk gets from his cult of personality. Whether or not he's smart, the things he's doing at Twitter are /glaringly/ not smart from a business perspective: He's driven away advertisers, alienated users, crippled system resilience by firing so many engineers, and set the stage for dozens of lawsuits that will run the gamut from employment law to SEC oversight to EU compliance. Twitter is burning, and it's increasingly hard to see how genius Elon Musk is going to salvage it when he keeps throwing gasoline on the fire.

If you were presented this whole debacle in an anonymized format, without Elon Musk's name attached, how would you judge these actions?

[AnonCoward42]

Not everyone that does not hate Elon Musk is following a personality cult. I have not much of an opinion of Elon Musk in general and kinda ignore the person himself, but what he did to Twitter is awesome for everyone, but the woke bubble. It's definitely fun to watch it.

[ragtete]

"Eccentric" is not the best way to describe him. He's full of hate, vengeful, reactionary, abusive, and surrounded by yes men/women.

You've slowly been piecing each of them together over the past month, but clearly still don't get it. I don't know why you're still giving so much benefit of the doubt, other than the fact that he's also a billionaire.

[tootie]

Elon is smart but irrational. This goes for a lot of people who are highly accomplished and yet have bizarre opinions and behavior

[rihegher]

I think adding support for ActivityPub to twitter would be a smart move but that would require a complete U-turn

[zimpenfish]

I think Twitter would find itself de-federated from a lot of the Fediverse pretty quickly as long as Ol' Muskie is in charge.

[sandofsky]

Two years ago you published an essay that seemed to argue that criticism against Elon Musk was simply from “Haters,” jealous of his success.

http://paulgraham.com/fh.html

In light of recent events, have you considered updating the essay?

[occamsrazorwit]

After seeing PG claim that the criticism of Musk was rooted in politics yesterday, I think it's clear that he's become a Musk fanboy. Ironically, this very article is pretty useful in prescribing how to react towards PG himself.

Edit: Maybe the suspension will break PG's fanboy-ism, and he'll emerge humbler and wiser.

[concordDance]

That's definitely not what he argues there. It's quite possible for 95% of hate to be mostly unfounded while that person is still worthy of hate. It's just that the existence of haters does not necessarily mean that person is hate-worthy.

The different rates and ways that various types of information travels through media (both social and not) and gets distorted by it are fascinating and there's probably been some good books written on them...

[mschuster91]

> He's eccentric, definitely, but that should be news to no one.

Being "eccentric" usually means non-mainstream clothing, music taste, a big ass selection of historic cars or similar things.

Musk? Dude literally interacts with or unbans high-profile neo-Nazis and antisemites. That's not "eccentric" by any definition, that's enabling the vilest of the vile. No, banning Kanye again doesn't excuse all the other Nazi accounts.

[brazzledazzle]

> unbans high-profile neo-Nazis and antisemites

I think this is often ignored given the daily deluge of chaos but this move was only ever arguably valid in the context of being a free speech absolutist. It's clear at this point that free speech absolutism is not at all what he's interested in.

[moultano]

You were just suspended though, so at least in the short term it's out of your hands.

[sulam]

So I agree that he did smart things in the past. However he is totally incompetent managing Twitter in a rational business way. For a while there I thought he might be trying to get the debt reduced substantially and was preserving cash in the meantime. The last few weeks and the constant own-goal-via-shitposting that he does are solid evidence that any strategic plot has been well and truly lost.

I get the sense that he wants to “own the libs” to build credibility with US “conservatives” — despite the fact that the libs regularly own themselves more thoroughly than he can — but he’s mostly just scoring goals against his own pocket book right now. The people I feel sorry for are TSLA investors.

Edit: oh and the rank and file Twitter employees who are either having to put up with his BS or haven’t been paid the severance they were promised. He seems to be taking a “sue me” approach to that, which is really really shitty for a typical employee who uses their income to pay rent/mortgages and buy groceries. I hope he loses another billion in back payments and penalties on that shit, because he’s setting awful examples right now.

[fundad]

I think we can stop thinking he’s running Twitter for revenue. This is clearly politically motivated and he’s even quite open it.

[jacquesm]

Fair enough. I don't think he will be able to salvage this and I've deleted my account to reduce the temptation to return.

A reputation is not like a piece of software that you fix and then re-run as though it never broke in the first place. Elon has utterly wrecked his reputation over the last couple of months (and probably longer than that) and it is getting worse, not better.

Edit: I guess Paul won't be going back to Twitter because his account just got suspended...

See for yourself: https://twitter.com/paulg/

[waprin]

Well said, good analogy.

There’s the immediate issues of the policy. But there’s the bigger issue of the thought process that led to the policy. One of Elons central criticism of old Twitter management was unfair content moderation policy. And almost immediately he enacts a far worse content policy than anything old management did, in a brazen display of hypocrisy.

Even if he reverses course on this one issue, he’s demonstrated that any previous advocacy for free speech was completely disingenuous. He wants to run Twitter like he’s the dictator of a banana republic. And any time you spend on the platform strengthens his ability to do so.

It was disturbing and confusing watching people like pg and Lex Fridman seemingly throw their apparent principles to the wind tolerating this type of behavior. I do sympathize there was some ambiguity about Elons plans for Twitter before this last week but with the banning of journalists and the banning of links to Mastodon, that ambiguity has been removed.

I’m relieved pg took a stand here but like you I wish it was a much stronger one.

[vertis]

I read some advice that it's better to lock the account than delete it, especially if you had a decent number of followers. Reduces the likelihood of impersonation.

[bioemerl]

> Edit: I guess Paul won't be going back to Twitter because his account just got suspended...

I had hopes Elon would be good for Twitter, but this is just comedic

[searchableguy]

Is it just me or pg's twitter account is suspended now?

[canadaduane]

Do you have a Mastodon account yet? I'd like to continue to follow you.

[dragonwriter]

> A reputation is not like a piece of software that you fix and then re-run as though it never broke in the first place

In a way it is, but it differs from software in that fixing it involves more than reverting the action by which you broke it.

[xupybd]

Hi jacquesm, I noticed that you have both a strong background in business and a negative opinion of Elon Musk. As someone who is interested in understanding different perspectives, I would love to hear more about your thoughts on this topic. Could you please share more about the actions or decisions by Elon that have led you to form this negative opinion? I'm not looking to engage in an argument, but rather just to gain a better understanding of your perspective. Thank you for your time and consideration.

[breck]

> Elon has utterly wrecked his reputation over the last couple of months (and probably longer than that) and it is getting worse, not better.

Lol. This could be the worst prediction from an otherwise smart person I've ever seen. Please elaborate and define it mathematically. (My guess in trying to do so you'll either discover the errors in your thinking or double down on your intellectual dishonesty)

[Alex3917]

> He could still salvage the situation.

That would involve him spending the time to learn how social media works. No doubt he's smart enough, but it seems like he may no longer have the attention span required to learn this.

[xnx]

You can fix policies, but trust is very difficult to build back. Elon is very lucky there's not a viable alternative to Twitter, otherwise there would be a true Myspace to Facebook style exodus.

[whoisthisguy]

Yes. Just happened.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604616863673208832

[echelon]

I think a lot of us would love to see you post more on HN!

Twitter may be bigger and more discoverable, but the discussion pales in comparison to what happens here. This is a much more special place.

[peter_retief]

I think all social media have terms and conditions similar to this, it just seemed a bit dramatic the way they laid it out. I enjoy your tweets and would miss you if you left.

[LastTrain]

He can be good at rockets and cars and still be a villain. Being eccentric on its own doesn’t involve victimizing innocents, which he does on the regular…

[ush]

I hope he does salvage the situation and find someone else to run Twitter and saves himself from being eaten alive. The world needs him.

[fundad]

Running Twitter seems to be more important than money or anything else the world expects from him.

[kybernetikos]

Would you mind posting your mastodon link here? Twitter have replaced the 'my site' link in your tweet.

[Marazan]

Account suspended.

Guess you are.

[nacs]

> I'm not leaving Twitter.

This aged poorly.. just 2 hours later and Paul has now been suspended on Twitter.

[olzn]

Check out Lens Protocol if you’re looking for a viable decentralised alternative, Paul.

[taurath]

His intelligence and maximum capability aside, it is his inconsistency and sociopathic levels of impulsivity that are what is causing his bank to drain right now. I’m surprised I have any surprise left that pg has so much tolerance for complete disregard for principles or users. All my friends, the hackers makers annd those who are on the forefront are leaving Twitter.

[raspberry1337]

I give as much credence to these thoughts as I do to all the Hacker News users predicting the imminent software-crash of twitter one month ago when Elon fired 80% of the employees. My reflection is that HN just seems smarter than reddit and other places, but it's just an illusion.

[space_fountain]

I think villains don't exist in the real world. There are no Voldemort with no discernible reason for doing bad things, but Elon has been doing a lot of bad things lately and is inching into the realm that seems worth calling a villain to me

[InsOp]

can you elaborate on what bad or evil things he is doing?

[MisterMower]

How can Elon be a villain if you don’t think villains exist in the real world? Your comment doesn’t make sense.

[r_hoods_ghost]

Not a villain? Well he's utterly screwed his employees and broken employment law in multiple countries by not giving proper notice or consulting on redundancies, but hey who gives a shit about workers rights? Not you obviously.

[Eji1700]

Let’s not forget calling a man a pedo in a public tantrum AB and advocating for prosecuting Fauci among a litany of terrible anti worker positions.

Assholes can do good things. I just don’t get why we can’t call them assholes

[stefan_]

No he's rich, so he is just "eccentric". What a sellout.

[LawTalkingGuy]

You don't need to give notice as long as you give proper severance pay.

[systemvoltage]

I am fine with this actually. It is not Amazon warehouse workers we are talking about. These people were highly paid and Twitter seems to run just fine without them. FAANG can probably get rid of 70% of the bloat.

Elon did give them 3 months severence which is quite amazing.

[droopyEyelids]

I hope you write a blog about the process of staying off twitter. It's a system that has a lot of psychological rewards and I believe quitting it is almost like changing an addictive habit.

[myko]

> I still think Elon is a smart guy

Against all available evidence

[rizoma_dev]

It appears you won't be returning to twitter

[Dracophoenix]

> Plus given the way things are going, it seemed like a good time to learn about alternatives.

There's HN and Reddit. It helps to dog-food your own investments every now and then.

[concordDance]

Good lord, don't recommend reddit in general! Recommend specific subreddits!

r/all and similar are populated by politically active teens with no understanding of context or nuance or how to have a level headed discussion.

[pardon_me]

The best choice. Twitter was Twitter before Elon Musk and it could be Twitter again after Elon Tusk - although it is likely to tank unless he has the balls to move on before say 2024.

I wonder what's next...

[mcv]

If Twitter is going down, I think it's going down well before 2024 rolls around.

Also, I don't think Twitter is ever going to be the same. It trades heavily on its reputation, and reputation damage isn't so easily undone. People who left and found something else, won't be coming back.

[pellucide]

With all due respect for you, I hereby am writing elon musk off. elon and trump have same mental make up.

[adl]

I do not agree with your opinion on Elon Musk, but I admire how calm, rational and polite your response to this situation is. Most people (including me) would let our emotions take over. You, sir, are a class act.

[BulgarianIdiot]

Dude, he BANNED YOU. He's running this site like a banana republic.

How many stupid things in a row does Elon Musk have to do before you realize this guy isn't wired quite right?

[andyshi]

"the techniques that work for cars and rockets don't work in social media." hmm... Elon Musk was a software engineer in the beginning, you know?

[roland35]

I'm sorry but saying "he is a smart guy" is a bit ridiculous at this point. A "smart guy" certainly may not know everything about running a social network, but he _would_ listen to the advice from those around them.

Being smart also means understanding what you don't know and not surround yourself with sycophants.

[rbanffy]

> but he _would_ listen to the advice from those around them.

At this point, I'm assuming he is surrounded by people too eager to please him.

> Being smart also means understanding what you don't know and not surround yourself with sycophants.

The inescapable conclusion is that Elon is not as smart as he thinks. Whether he can learn is open to debate and will become evident shortly.

[jacquesm]

Smart and wise are related but somewhat orthogonal, Elon is quite smart but not very wise.

[ssnistfajen]

Power and fame are intoxicating, moreso than any known chemical drug compound. Elon just didn't have the means to express this version of himself before his companies took off.

[emsy]

You a G!

[hermitcrab]

>Nor do I think he's the villain a lot of people try to make him out to be

So how do you explain his targetting of Fauci? Or the horrible things he said about that cave diver?

[hatenberg]

I got a bridge to sell to you too.

He’s 1:1 replaying the Trump playbook and there will be no salvaging, only escalation.

[bombolo]

> His work on cars and rockets speaks for itself.

You mean hiring engineers to work on cars and rockets?

[speakfreely]

Organizing the efforts of large teams of smart people is one of the most high value activities you can do in our society.

Edit: not saying that's happening at Twitter, but it has demonstrably occurred at Tesla and SpaceX.

[rbanffy]

Don't care that much for Tesla - the EV ship has sailed - but I hope he doesn't destroy the work being done by SpaceX's team.

[eterevsky]

Jeff Bezos is hiring engineers to work on rockets. Blue Origin is older than SpaceX and still hasn't reached orbit. So, I don't think it's that simple.

[Marazan]

Remember when Elon baselessly called someone a peadophile.

Repeatedly.

So eccentric.

[EGreg]

pg, yes Elon's $8 a month and now this has generated terrible optics. But like Donald Trump with politicians, isn't he just saying the quiet part out loud that most capitalists actually do? I think it is valuable to examine why we were against Donald Trump doing, but somehow in the broader picture everyone was doing it (e.g. Bill Clinton cracking down on "illegal immigrants", building border fences etc.) The important thing is the broader industry, not one player.

You want to see alternatives? Here is an alternative we've been building since 2011, it's a labor of love in which we invested over $1 million and 10 years. It is far, far more extensive than Mastodon and you can see below why that matters. Would you check it out? It's free and open source: https://github.com/Qbix/Platform

Not only have we built it, but we've interviewed a ton of people around the broader topics of capitalism and free speech. There is the idea that capitalism is the best system for promoting free speech, but that is not, in fact, the case. Just as one example of many, Sinclair Television told their anchors word-for-word what to say, and anyone who doesn't do what the employer says is fired and replaced by a different mouthpiece. Intellectual property, and other forms of ownership, are by their very definition designed to exclude people from using certain content / property in certain ways.

In fact, conservatives who bristled at Obama's "you didn't build it" used to say "I built it, I own it!" In that case, they should celebrate the way that Twitter and Facebook were privately managed. But many of them instead were calling for regulations to prevent them from doing just that. So which is it? I had an interview with Noam Chomsky twice about that, here is the latest: https://qbix.com/chomsky

If you allow me to bring up a taboo for a bit, I think it's important to bring it up on Hacker News. VCs as an industry, and YCombinator as part of that, specifically try to fund platforms that end up being managed by only a few people and extract rents. Most of them avoid funding open source platforms, which end up crowdfunding from the People (thanks to the JOBS act, for instance). Or from the Knight Foundation. Or Matt Mullenweg of Wordpress funding Matrix.org

VCs specifically tell you that they want you to "focus" on one feature, to "capture" enough of the market, and some of them (e.g. Peter Thiel) unabashedly proclaimed that "competition is for losers", build a monopoly. Zuck used to be a guy who turned down a $1M acquisition offer from Microsoft, and open sourced his code. He wanted to build Wirehog as a decentralized platform for the people (https://techcrunch.com/2010/05/26/wirehog/) Peter Thiel and Sean Parker "put a bullet in that thing" (their words) and groomed him to build a monopoly and extract rents. Zuck and Elon privately control the major PUBLIC forums we all use. And are we all better for it?

I think the work of Tim Berners-Lee, Linus Torvalds, Vitalik and others has benefitted the world far more and enabled trillions in new ideas (including Google, Facebook, Amazon) precisely because it was based around open source and protocols, and didn't prevent people and organizations from using it the way they wanted! Google, Amazon etc. could have never started as "keyword: Google" on AOL, for instance. Think about it.

Over the last decade I have been steadily drawn into the open source camp. My team and I started an open source alternative to Big Tech 10 years ago. We've applied to YC probably around 8 different times, as we kept growing and reaching 10 million users. We never even got to the interview. Such general-purpose ideas are just not something interesting to most VCs. It took MySQL, NGiNX, and other platforms 7-10 years before they got funded in a capitalist manner. By then, they'd taken over the world.

I'm sure there are exceptions, and YCombinator has recently started to fund open protocols and nonprofits - I'm glad to see it. For reference, our pitch to VCs for years had been along these lines:

https://qbix.com/deck.pdf

https://qbix.com/blog/2021/01/15/open-source-communities/

PS: For those who downvote, please write a response. After all, I've spent a decade and $1M of my own money putting together an alternative pg is looking for, seeing the need for it way before others. I give it away for free. All I ask is that you take a minute to write your own words in the conversation about why you disagree :)

PPS: I think the rule that you can downvote on HN to signal mere disagreement (as opposed to logical issues, dishonesty, etc.) is flawed. This is also a free speech issue ... on this site, if we want to be intellectually honest, we should at least downvote and then comment.

[MisterMower]

Re your PPS, maybe it’s not the platform but the users of the platform. Maybe Elon’s long game is to get the toxic users off the platform. It has a lot more value with diverse views (meaning ideas you disagree with) than the current echo chamber.

[michaelmrose]

Other presidents built border walls and tried to put the brakes on immigration. They on the other hand didn't pretend we were under attack by an army of brown people who could only be defeated by destroying immigrants civil rights, punishing them by stealing their children, spending 10s of billions of additional funds building an unfeasible great wall of America, and ending democracy in order to install dear leader the only hope for the white race about to be replaced by brown people and liberals. This is to say context matters.

Trump didn't just say the quiet part out loud he turned it into a battle flag for hate and bigotry. Bringing him into the discussion basically ensures you wont have a good discussion on anything else its the current variation of Godwins Law.

[dd36]

What are you even referring to?

[malermeister]

> I can't identify a single person in history who has dared to risk so much, personally and financially, in support of freedom in many forms.

The guy literally banned a bunch of people for making fun of him shortly after he took over, then proceeded to ban journalists for... doing journalism.

Now he's censoring any mention of competitors in an obviously anti-competitive move

What are you talking about?

[xqcgrek2]

Why shouldn't you have to pay a few bucks to advertise your other social media sites? Surely you're wealthy enough.

[themitigating]

To be a great villian you have to be smart. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to get support and would likely make too many mistakes.