Elon Musk needs his own thread because he's in every damn thing

Tech media like The Verge have now covered Elrond Musks recent insanity. Main takes

1. This is mostly about the downside brand risks - it's just easier not to spend money with twitter right now because of Musk's personal behaviour. The media matters nazi thing is not so important

2. Musk's main problem is unlike SpaceX he doesn't have the market position to do this. Zuck could have entire nazi groups and everyone still advertised on facebook. Twitter has shit adtech and questionable ROI so easy to walk away.

They also covered how damaging this is to the Tesla brand compared to how the brand was perceived a couple of years back - but Tesla still has a strong performing product - unlike twitter

 

That's the problem with it - it's like some loser who watched Logan's run decided this is what the future looks like instead of any creativity. Plus from a design perspective it is functional trash.

It's obviously garbage as an actual truck, and as a street car it's laughable IMO

 

NYT brings the lulz

A conversation between two idiots pic.twitter.com/2lsLqmOdXE

— Dan Brooks (@DangerBrooks) December 4, 2023

 

Not talking about speed, talking about steering and road feel.

 

Good luck getting it repaired

 

For those following along at home, industry commentators like Ed Zitron, Verge etc etc have all noted that Musk has basically lost the advertiser struggle and Yacc, instead of quitting, decided to go full Muskboi with her internal memo. She will now try to scrape together revenue from small advertisers and other pathetic bottom feeders and crypto scammers, but that story is written. The plan is now apparently Grok AI lol - but that creates cost control problems as AI is really expensive per query.

https://wheresyoured.at/p/elons-gordian-knot

As I’ve said before, Musk’s “sell the sizzle” strategy is antithetical to Twitter’s future, because Twitter’s real value isn’t in its product but in hosting a real-time feed of the world’s thoughts. Grok is financial cancer for an already-dying company, and may precipitate the actual death of Twitter — or, as Musk has threatened in the past, its bankruptcy.

...

Twitter as a business and as a website is unique, in that it deeply punishes this kind of attitude. One can improve Tesla’s health by selling more vehicles, or SpaceX’s by raking in government subsidies, but there is no real product for Twitter to sell other than premium versions of a thing that people are used to getting for free. Musk was half right that Twitter’s value lay in its data, but misunderstood that every effort to monetize that data — by selling people the right to prioritize their posts, for example — destroys the egalitarian value of a free-for-all firehose of the world’s thoughts. The only other valuable part was in its advertisers and the reliability of said data, and both have been so thoroughly damaged it’s impossible that Musk can fix it without stepping away from the site for good.​

 

Ryan Broderick who writes the fantastic Garbage Day tech newsletter had some fascinating comments about twitter and the impact of journalism.

One powerful comment is that journalists have unfortunately lost a critical source of truth. Many of us have experienced that with breaking news over the years. You could jump on and get a valuable mix of citizen video, commentary, analysis etc etc in real time.

That's gone now. The feed is at least 50% disinfo, with no way to tell what is real because we no longer have bluechecks we can somewhat trust.

That thing is probably not going to exist again, because Elmo broke it. Which is odd, because when he bought the company, he himself recognised that it was the main value twitter had.

 

Great news everyone!