Elon Musk buys Twitter

Lol. Apparently.

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Truly a surprise.

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to be fair, he DID put it to a vote via a poll, and trump barely won, rom what i saw. but iā€™m also interested to see how many more people flee as a result. Mastodon has been suffering a tsunami of new accounts.

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Weird how a Tory only schedules a vote when it wonā€™t affect them personally, after making sure the rolls are expunged in every seat. I prefer Oregon, where voting affects actual governance.

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Does anybody have a list of whoā€™s still advertising on Twitter? I feel the need for some boycotting and maybe to agitate a little. I mean beyond Twitter itself, since I donā€™t go there anymore and used an adblocker when I still did.

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Iā€™m doing a Google search, ā€œwhoā€™s still advertising on Twitterā€ and even when I pick ā€œNewsā€, the results are who isnā€™t advertising there any more.

But one corp. bought an ad package:

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Iā€™m not sure this is related. It seems to me that EM has forgotten, or maybe never knew of, this:

Mr. Brooks just passed, btw; heā€™s on Wikipediaā€™s recent death list today, which is how I found out about him and went down a short info-silo.

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i read this morning thast CBS is the first news organization to go silent on twitter. they are stopping all usage for the time being. I hope this means that John Dickerson will start up a Mastodon feed. i miss him.

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Yes, thank you, I had already done that. I was hoping for answers from people who still use Twitter. But I got nothing, both here and over at BB. I guess nobody is buying ads on Twitter anymore! Good, good. :laughing:

Canā€™t do much about SpaceX. Somehow I doubt that their buy was completely voluntary. But the only thing they sell to consumers is StarLink, which is oversubscribed in many places already. I doubt itā€™s making much money, though it does certainly provide some cash flow. I know their FB ads get a lot of clicks but few actual subscribers.

I was even more amused that even Trumpy said ā€œno thanksā€ to Elon.

I canā€™t wait to see what comes next. All those former Twitter engineers and managers, sitting home while still getting paid, waiting out their non-competes, thinking about what theyā€™d like to see. Besides Elon sitting broke in a pile of shit, of course. Heā€™s made some bad enemies for a guy who relies on tech hires.

Reminds me of the first dot-bomb timeline. All those CEOs and VCs, who, with a very few exceptions, never got back to their former glory because nobody would work for them.

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I suppose it makes senseā€¦ whatā€™s he going to do, admit that ā€œTruthā€ social is a flop?

Iā€™m sure Elon took the snub well. Especially when he went through the trouble to run a poll that mostly only people who closely follow him would see, and still ended up with it just barely coming out with ā€œlet Trump back inā€ winning.

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I notice that heā€™s been vewwy vewwy quiet about the ā€œhow many botsā€¦ā€ question lately as well. Funny, a month or two ago that was his biggest question.

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Iā€™m reasonably certain that non-compete clauses are unenforceable in California. As Twitter is based in California, I would expect many of its employees to also be based there, and therefore not subject to any sort of non-compete. It would not surprise me if their employees not based in California were not asked to sign a non-compete agreement, but it also wouldnā€™t surprise me if they were. In any case, Iā€™m not sure there are any staff left at Twitter who would be suitable to pursue any action against former employees anyway.

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Generally, yes. Except in cases where the employer continues to pay salary and benefits, which heā€™s doing. Heā€™s using the word ā€œseveranceā€ but that is not whatā€™s actually happening. Severance is typically paid out all at once, but heā€™s not doing that. Essentially, they are still employed but have no work nor any jobs to go to, so the non-compete is valid.

This also give him time to file his CA WARN Act notices, which he did last week, after he had already ā€œfiredā€ everybody. See current WARN Act notices here.

As I think I mentioned before, heā€™s an idiot but heā€™s getting decent advice from somewhere all of a sudden. Now if heā€™d just keep his fingers off his keyboardā€¦

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Is he an idiot, or merely a rich jerk?

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Iā€™ve been trying out mastodon (step 1 for me was reprogramming the wordā€™s spelling in my brain because I kept spelling it with two 'aā€™s and Iā€™ve never written the word with the spell checker on before apparently) and it definitely doesnā€™t fill the toxic hole that twitter does. Not a bad thing. Maybe Iā€™ll just go back to shitposting my nerdrage here.

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I used to think the latter, but enough evidence has come to light (not just his politics and the Twitter debacle) that I now think the former. I really donā€™t know. To be fairā€¦ Maybe itā€™s organic? Drug abuse? Unmanaged or undiagnosed mental issues that are getting worse?

This is the same guy who, 20 years ago, said of one of his companies: ā€œYou want to wake up in the morning and think the future is going to be great - and thatā€™s what being a spacefaring civilization is all about. Itā€™s about believing in the future and thinking that the future will be better than the past. And I canā€™t think of anything more exciting than going out there and being among the stars.ā€

And of another: ā€œWe want to reshape the energy landscape by making solar power accessible and affordable for everyone.ā€

Heā€™s changed. And not for the better.

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It seems like he has a really out of control drug problem to me.

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Was considering deactivating my account, but when I went into my app settings this popped up:


Itā€™s like they were doing everything they could to get me off the platform :face_vomiting: :roll_eyes:

edit
Fuck, I canā€™t even blame Space Karen for this one:

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