{"id":37492,"date":"2022-10-28T16:16:03","date_gmt":"2022-10-28T20:16:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=37492"},"modified":"2022-10-28T18:11:49","modified_gmt":"2022-10-28T22:11:49","slug":"elon-musk-finalizes-twitter-acquisition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2022\/10\/28\/elon-musk-finalizes-twitter-acquisition\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk Finalizes Twitter Acquisition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kate Conger and Lauren Hirsch<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

After months of waffling, lawsuits, verbal mudslinging and the near miss of a full blown trial, Elon Musk now owns Twitter.<\/p>\n

On Thursday night, Mr. Musk closed his $44 billion deal to buy the social media service, said three people with knowledge of the situation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Elon Musk<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

the bird is freed<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

David Faber and Jonathan Vanian<\/a> (Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and finance chief Ned Segal have left the company’s San Francisco headquarters and will not be returning, sources said. Vijaya Gadde, the head of legal policy, trust and safety, was also fired, The Washington Post<\/a> reported.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

MacRumors<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Musk’s executive firings followed news last week that the billionaire planned to slash Twitter staff numbers by 75% in an effort to pay down the company’s debt burden. Musk later dismissed<\/a> those reports, saying he would not cut that amount of employees.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Elon Musk<\/a> (Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence. There’s currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right wing and far left wing echo chambers that generate more\nhate and divide our society.<\/p>\n

In the relentless pursuit of clicks, much of traditional media has fueled and catered to those polarized extremes, as they believe that is what brings in the money, but, in doing\nso, the opportunity for dialogue is lost.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences! In addition to adhering to the laws of the land, our platform must be warm and welcoming to all, where you can choose your desired experience according to your preferences, just as you can choose, for example, to see movies or play video games ranging from all ages to\nmature.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Nick Heer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

How in the world he expects to accomplish that is something I am curious to learn more about. I have an open mind. Yet, nothing in this letter is much different from the kind of stuff any social network says it does. Every platform says it has policies that are simultaneously inclusive and permissive until they are tested.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

As far as I know, the major social networks don’t currently let you turn off certain kinds of algorithmic moderation. Perhaps his idea is to allow all legal posts, but to hide some potentially unwanted ones using controllable filters. Or perhaps some tweets would only be visible if you follow the poster, so that you wouldn’t accidentally come across them.<\/p>\n\n

John Gruber<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

But as a privately-held company Musk is free to make changes that move Twitter away from being optimized for engagement<\/em> and towards being optimized for enjoyment<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The risk of fading into irrelevance<\/a> is far greater, if not nearly certain, under Twitter’s current leadership. I think Twitter is worth saving. I think Twitter requires massive changes in order to be saved — both outward-facing as a service and platform, and internally as a company. I would not have picked Elon Musk as the person to lead the company through those changes. But you dance with the one who bought the company and took it private.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Nilay Patel<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Twitter, the company, makes very little interesting technology; the tech stack is not the valuable asset. The asset is the user base: hopelessly addicted politicians, reporters, celebrities, and other people who should know better but keep posting anyway.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

The essential truth of every social network is that the product is content moderation, and everyone hates the people who decide how content moderation works. Content moderation is what Twitter makes<\/em> — it is the thing that defines the user experience. It’s what YouTube makes, it’s what Instagram makes, it’s what TikTok makes. They all try to incentivize good stuff, disincentivize bad stuff, and delete the really bad stuff.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n