Musk and Twitter

[LDAHL]

I think there’s a significant difference between doing a restructuring and what has happened at Twitter over the last few weeks. When one uses the word restructuring it implies some sort of organized, coherent decision making process. Shedding 2/3 of a company’s employees through a fairly random process that includes large scale layoffs and large scale quits seems to be more of a destructuring.

He conducted a round of layoffs at Tesla in June. I suppose starting out with a mass purge is one way to establish your control and clearing the board of bold rebels playing to the gallery. More quitters is helpful from an unemployment compensation standpoint.

That said, it does seem like a pretty chaotic transition. He seems to be enjoying the drama; as do our outraged chattering class and narrative gatekeepers.

[flowerseverywhere]

he's back. Musk Reinstated Trump. Wonder how advertisers will react.

[LDAHL]

I heard about that. He held a vote, and then drew a pentagram in virgins’ blood to summon Trump back from the chthonic depths.

[bae]

I glanced at Twitter and saw Trump's account go from ~2,000 followers to ~87 million followers in the space of a couple of hours. Just glanced again and see he has not yet posted.

I created a "burner" Twitter account a couple weeks back, followed a handful of popular TV and political figures, hit "like" one dozen times, and made one dozen short comments on timelines. I took no other actions.

Within a week, I had about 150 followers. About 15-20 a day were arriving when I shut things down. All with totally-empty cookie cutter accounts. Profile photos used were all Eastern-European-looking female faces. I suspect the bot population is huge.

[LDAHL]

I always think it’s funny when some figure or other tries to show their impressive power and reach by the number of their Twitter followers or YouTube subscribers.

[Alan]

I always think it’s funny when some figure or other tries to show their impressive power and reach by the number of their Twitter followers or YouTube subscribers.

And that's why everyone tweeting that they're leaving Twitter will not actually leave. The official CBS account tweeted the day before yesterday that they were "pausing" their account due to "an abundance of caution", but that only lasted a day.

[mschrisgo2]

Apparently every Tweet Trump has posted has been reinstated on his account. For all the world to see. Public information. Presumably also available to the special prosecutor… this is going to be interesting.

[LDAHL]

I see such dangerous types as Kathy Griffin, Jordan Peterson and the Babylon Bee are allowed back in now. Oh, the humanity.

[jp1]

he's back. Musk Reinstated Trump. Wonder how advertisers will react.

For the first time in his life trump actually won the popular vote for something.

[LDAHL]

For the first time in his life trump actually won the popular vote for something.

That’s because he could cast votes for himself in this one.