Balaji Srinivasan Profile picture
Nov 4 3 tweets 1 min read
Why does everyone know Mark Zuckerberg, but almost no one knows AG Sulzberger?

Somehow, the guy who inherited the NYT — who’s surrounded by 1000 journalists at all times — is the only one in the modern world with any privacy.

He doesn’t get great coverage. He gets no coverage.
Love or hate him, Zuck has been in the public eye for years. The son of a dentist who founded Facebook — he’s out there, taking the hits.

But Sulzberger, the guy who inherited the NYT from his father’s father’s father’s father — he’s invisible! Journos scared to investigate him.
The point is that NYTCO is just Sulzberger’s family office.

And his corporate journalists are only so brave as to investigate *your* boss, but not their own.

They’re just dogs on a leash, hit men for old money, assassins for the establishment.

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More from @balajis

Nov 5
Mobility is liquidity.
Cash is king, but passport is queen.
Buffett likes cash because of its optionality. That’s also what mobility gives: optionality. archive.ph/cFuJ6 Image
Read 5 tweets
Nov 5
The answer may be a flipped conference, by analogy to a flipped classroom.

In a normal classroom, you attend lectures as a group and do homework by yourself.

But in a flipped classroom, you watch lecture videos by yourself and discuss homework in a group.
Similarly, in a normal conference you attend the talks in person & get people’s contact info to talk to them afterwards.

But now that all talks are recorded, you can flip the conference. All talks are posted online and watched at your leisure, while in-person is for discussion.
Public is online, private is encrypted.

That is, if you give a public talk, you should probably do the effort to post it online. Largest possible audience, and people can consume it at their leisure.

Conversely, if you are speaking privately, better be end-to-end encrypted.
Read 6 tweets
Nov 5
This is another possible outcome: rather than Twitter decentralizing because it becomes a protocol, Twitter decentralizes because of unbundling and defection.

Quite possible we see more left-wing Gabs, Parlers, and Truth Socials arise, like Tribel.
Personally, I’m more bullish on tech-focused communities like @farcaster_xyz and pseudonymous communities like @poasterapp than I am on communities born mainly out of political warfare.

Does the community have a positive mission, or just a negation?
In my view, this is a win for the world even if not a win for Twitter.

There wouldn’t be one central forum anymore that the US establishment can just censor with a keystroke. There’s less mimesis, more innovation.

And…more chaos. Then we gradually, consensually recentralize.
Read 5 tweets
Nov 3
Legacy media hates tech because tech disrupted them. Image
Media couldn’t build search engines or social networks. But they could write stories and shape narratives.

Faced with decline, starting precisely in 2013 after Obama was re-elected, there was a visible editorial decision to push wokeness to drive clicks.

That drove the 2010s.
Yglesias’ thread has many aspects of truth.

One thing to add is that legacy media is actually simultaneously far to the left, far to the white, *and* far to the West of tech.

As @OoTheNigerian wrote, tech journalism is less diverse than tech. oonwoye.com/2020/07/31/tec… Image
Read 7 tweets
Nov 1
The blue checks wanted to abolish billionaires, in the name of equality.

The billionaire will end up abolishing the blue checks, in the name of equality.
Of course, these aren't disjoint sets. Many billionaires have blue checks.

But roughly speaking: blue checks are about status and tech billionaires about startups. It's old money vs new money.

Old money wanted to kill new money.
New money is wiping out the status of old money.
The blue check actually arose as an anti- impersonation tool. Twitter was *forced* to implement it after complaints.

But people who are impersonated tend to be "important". So it became a status symbol. Especially for writers.

Now that may dissolve.
techcrunch.com/2009/06/06/fac… Image
Read 7 tweets
Oct 31
Remember, the Ochs-Sulzbergers profited from covering up the Holodomor when it was happening — the intentional starvation of millions of Ukrainians by Stalin.

They won a Pulitzer Prize for lying about a genocide.
And they've admitted it.
archive.ph/gzlZs
The fact that the Ochs-Sulzbergers have now reinvented themselves as cheerleaders for Ukraine (!) after literally abetting the Holodomor is like Julius Streicher turning himself into a champion of Israel.

The level of brazen fraud is off the charts.
newcriterion.com/issues/2012/6/…
If companies are paying reparations for the Holocaust, as they should, what should the New York Times Company pay for the Holodomor?

Well, we can liquidate NYTCO.
And send the $4.8B to Ukraine.
It's a drop in the bucket for millions dead.
But Ukraine certainly needs the money!
Read 8 tweets

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