Listening to this Twitter Spaces where Elon is talking about the tech stack and it's clear that no one has been in a position to actually ask him a follow up question in years. He thinks he knows everything and simply will not abide someone contradicting that notion.
Right after I sent this he demanded someone be cut off because he was pointing out correctly how ads work on the internet. Literally just said "cut him off"
“You are our philosopher king and Plato would be proud of you.” Amazing shit man.
The other fun tension is that George just wants the full stack refactor at all costs and is like “every new line of code is a sin.” Elon thinks they’ll be breakeven next year bc of cost cuts and subscriber revenue. Otherwise would be -$3B. What if both don’t know anything?
Acknowledges straight up that banning Paul Graham was a mistake. It's so funny because it's clear that he was fine with the policy until it hit a friendly and then the whole thing fell apart. He regrets that PG got banned. The way the policy came up isn't the error to him
Lollll Elon saying that $60M/yr was being spent in intl sms. This is truly hilarious because this actually got us back in the day too. Elon's solution was just to cut off all the telcos with "high fraud" and that of course fucked everyone using SMS 2FA.
I regret to inform you that Infinite Jest made an appearance just before Elon signed off.
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Elon says "We will have to do a total rewrite to gain velocity" and immediately @igb is says "tell me what's so crazy about the stack; just describe it and how rewriting will gain you velocity"
Literally Elon’s response to “describe the stack and why it’s crazy” was “you are a jackass.”
His complaint is very much that there are too many lines of code. This is INSANELY low competency.
Now he's banging on about buying gizmos again. Elon really wants Twitter to have the IG ads model and doesn't understand why the product models are different.
This one is so funny because Ross was on Bloomberg on 10/28 both endorsing the amazing possibilities of a web3 enabled twitter and auditioning to be on the Content Moderation Council (rip).
There is a tremendously loyalty that occurs when someone makes you an unreal amount of money. I’ve seen this repeatedly. But when fortunes turn the bit can flip so fast it breaks the sound barrier.
The only reason I remember this Ross Gerber hit on Bloomberg is bc I was on in the bottom half of the hour. And just to toot my own horn my predictions from October are pretty solid
Some context: there’s a complicated history of dominant social platforms trying to block emergent ones. But this is typically a fight at the API level. For example Facebook blocked Twitter from “find friends” functionality in 2010. Twitter reciprocated against Instagram in 2012.
What Twitter is doing here is unprecedented. It is putting the restrictions on the user and in an incredibly broad way. As has been the case with the “doxx” policy this will be selectively enforced to punish Elon’s enemies. (It is doubtful Jack will have to remove his nostr link)
But the important thing to understand about this move is how scared it is. Yes it’s a ridiculous restriction on speech from the free speech king but we know that was always bullshit. What matters more is that they are terrified of the exodus.
In addition to “releasing everything without filter” being a wildly dangerous thing to do to employees, it’s also clear the goal isn’t transparency to build trust. The goal is to cherry pick to breed conspiracy for specific partisan grievances.
IF THERE IS NOTHING TO HIDE RELEASE THE NAMES OF ALL CUSOTMERS WHO ORDERED PIZZA AT COMET PING PONG
The pathological indifference to the welfare of employees is a truly wild trend
It’s a very tailored apology: for the over hiring. But not for the lack of focus that can be argued led to the crisis. Nor, most critically, is it an apology for the full-throated embrace of Elon.
I do give him credit for eventually saying anything and recognizing he was going to get lit up regardless
Wow he’s def not my favorite billionaire but this played out significantly worse than I would’ve guessed on a pure comms basis. People are really mad.