Is your sacking really necessary? Elon Musk’s ship of twits sails on
Head twit Elon Musk told employees your sacking is necessary. What he told Yoel Roth and Robin Wheeler, two ex-members of his new “leadership” team, no one knows. But the word is, they have jumped ship anyway, necessarily.
When Musk bought Twitter last month, one of the first things he did was fire most of the board and appoint some chums. Seems like those chums are now being thrown to the sharks.
Roth was in charge of safety, whatever that means – presumably trying to stop stupid people who read something silly from doing something silly. Save yourself, Yoel! Wheeler was dealing with disgruntled advertisers – the people who give up their (your) dough so that there may be an abundance of silly things to be read (but not acted upon, if they are too silly).
Musk’s toy walkie-talkie is already just about to bust. So much so that you might think Musk is doing a great job of levelling up. The Twitterscape has always been a vacuous pit of silliness and irrelevance, evil and lies, so with moral bankruptcy already achieved, all that remains to be done is throw the money overboard along with the facade of relevance and go for full-on financial bankruptcy.
As things get hotter and hotter, the world is set to throw all sorts of things around, mostly under buses or onto scrap heaps. Twitter must be pretty high on the list of things we never needed nor wanted, things that have done us no good whatsoever, while belching out more pollutants than all the cattle in Canada.
Musk wants the company to start charging US$8 (290 baht) as soon as possible. Twitter Blue is something users would want to pay for, he thinks.
Is your sacking really necessary? Musk rallied employees on Wednesday by telling them there was “no way to sugarcoat the message.” And the message is, “I’m rich and you’re fired.”
But while the staff are having a lifeboat party, the Twitteratti are happier, and more numerous, than ever. According to some internal documents purloined by The Verge, daily user growth reached has reached “all-time highs” – over 20%, whatever that means – since Musk’s takeover. That’s growth though, not user numbers. And in an industry built on the systematic production and distribution of post-facts, any lie will do. A good lie is anything people believe.
Musk and his gang have managed to torture the numbers into giving the impression that more than 15 million users have signed up since Elon got his hands on the books. Musk would like you to know that there has been no mass exodus under Musk’s ownership, according to Musk. Very Twittery!
“Hate speech levels remain within historical norms,” he tells us as if anyone really cared. But the company has seen a “massive drop in revenue” due to “activist groups pressuring advertisers.” Is he seriously trying to tell us that advertisers fear and hate the activists more than the actual haters? Advertisers don’t care who buys their toxic waste. Adolf Eichmann’s money is just as good as a pig in pyjamas’.
According to a FAQ for advertisers published on Monday, “levels of hate speech remain within historical norms, accounting for 0.25% to 0.45% of tweets per day among hundreds of millions.” Well, “hundreds of millions” means at least 200 million, right? And 0.25% of 200 million is 500,000?
So let’s dump the percentages, Elon, and focus on the minimum of half a million gobs of catarrh you tweet into people’s faces every day.
Another source of concern for advertisers is Musk’s own tweeting. He’s more of a loose thermonuclear device than a loose canon. “Do the same rules apply to Elon as to everyone else on Twitter?” read one of the questions that have been asked frequently.
“Yes,” is the given answer, which must be true. It was in a FAQ, not a tweet.
Musk says Twitter will not change its content moderation policies until a “content moderation council of widely diverse viewpoints” is formed and convened, an admirable standpoint. To make things easier, Twitter already has a Trust and Safety Council comprised of outside experts. Perhaps it’s the wrong kind of diversity for the South African?
