USCE Autumn: Well Actually, This IS somethingpedantic.com

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > USCE Autumn: Well Actually, This IS somethingpedantic.com

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cat botherer: Jan 6, 2022; I am interested in most phases of data processing.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

The study linked earlier about 1 in 7 men saying they have 0 friends is pretty stark.

"Bowling Alone" is a little outdated with its references and examples, but the general thesis still seems to hold.

If anybody hasn't read it before, this interview with the author is a pretty good summary and discussion.

https://twitter.com/ssoreagan/status/1582808464572968960

Yeah, I'd say its thesis has been strengthened quite a bit.

Capitalism drives a tendency to commodify everything. This alienates people from themselves and others: this drive often degrades social relations as a side-effect of profit generation (people living in car-dependent burbs), but also as a direct effect with things like making friendships feel transactional, like when everyone around a table is venmoing each other for lattes, or dating apps specifically designed to make people frustrated and obsessive.

# ? Oct 20, 2022 17:01

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# ? May 24, 2024 12:55

Eric Cantonese: Dec 21, 2004; You should hear my accent.

I feel like you have to be wary of anything done by Rolling Stone, but this is a weird story. I wonder what Meek was up to.

https://twitter.com/RollingStone/status/1582707631990493186

# ? Oct 20, 2022 17:14

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Just absolutely LOL that a fracking vote took down a Tory government when the same vote probably wouldn't even get Democrat support here.

# ? Oct 20, 2022 17:24

Ghost Leviathan: Mar 2, 2017; Exploration is ill-advised.

Jaxyon posted:

Just absolutely LOL that a fracking vote took down a Tory government when the same vote probably wouldn't even get Democrat support here.

Kinda lol because I imagine Labour wouldn't even entertain it if there was actually anyone intersted in fracking the UK. From what I've heard, there's absolutely fuckall resources actually worth fracking there, even if they literally paid oil and gas companies to do it there'd probably be zero interest.

# ? Oct 20, 2022 17:28

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Eric Cantonese posted:

I feel like you have to be wary of anything done by Rolling Stone, but this is a weird story. I wonder what Meek was up to.

https://twitter.com/RollingStone/status/1582707631990493186

This not very well-written story is getting a lot of right-wing spin and reframing to suggest that Meek has been disappeared to a government blacksite- in practice it looks like he's just not talking to anyone except through his attorney (who does not seem to have expressed any concern about his "disappearance").

# ? Oct 20, 2022 17:28

evilweasel: Aug 24, 2002

Eric Cantonese posted:

I feel like you have to be wary of anything done by Rolling Stone, but this is a weird story. I wonder what Meek was up to.

https://twitter.com/RollingStone/status/1582707631990493186

that he isn't saying a goddamned thing and immediately quit his job says to me it's not something like "he had classified documents" or other freedom of the press sort of things, and is instead a normal criminal investigation

if it was the sort of thing that was being insinuated - investigating him because he is going to publish something that the government would not like - his lawyer would be having his news org fighting it and being in the public eye, not having him resign and keep his mouth shut

evilweasel fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Oct 20, 2022

# ? Oct 20, 2022 17:29

Angry_Ed: Mar 30, 2010; Grimey Drawer

evilweasel posted:

that he isn't saying a goddamned thing and immediately quit his job says to me it's not something like "he had classified documents" or other freedom of the press sort of things, and is instead a normal criminal investigation

if it was the sort of thing that was being insinuated - investigating him because he is going to publish something that the government would not like - his lawyer would be having his news org fighting it and being in the public eye, not having him resign and keep his mouth shut

Its also weird as gently caress that only in the last couple days have people suddenly starting claiming Meek is missing...6 months after he allegedly disappeared following the raid

Everything about this is weird up to and including Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeting about it and asking why it's not a story as opposed to "a white suburban girl going missing", and then walking that tweet back, claiming the FBI raid was due to allegations that Meek had CSAM on his laptop (and of course because she's MtG she used it to complain about the FBI not doing this more often and instead harassing parents at school board meetings or something).

However, nobody else seems to be claiming that this is why the raid happened. So either she's making poo poo up to self-own herself, or she just leaked details of an active investigation.

Whatever is going on, it's really baffling.

# ? Oct 20, 2022 17:47

Cranappleberry: Jan 27, 2009

Bear Enthusiast posted:

Also your average man is much more likely to have a satisfying encounter with a stranger, and your average woman has to worry about the much higher odds of things going even worse than just "not good."

this is a big one for women but it's multi-factor. Almost every woman has a story to tell about this. Everyone very likely knows someone or someones who have had a horrible experience from online dating (or just dating in general).

Some of it is younger people growing up more online, socializing differently, as someone mentioned (arguably not a good thing and socially stunting). Some of it is also a "generational" turn away from perceived promiscuity of older generations, as well as drug use. Going along with that is media, some of it propaganda, that is being put out and absorbed, turning younger people away from sex.

there is a backlash against perceived openness of/about sexuality, including among younger lgbtq+ people, with the idea that being openly gay/lesbian/trans is inherently sexual, which is a rehash of old bigotry. There is a kerfuffle over Pride because of this, despite the fact that Pride has been both accepted and co-opted by the mainstream, though more adult parts have always been segregated to a degree and are more so now.

cat botherer posted:

Yeah, I'd say its thesis has been strengthened quite a bit.

Capitalism drives a tendency to commodify everything. This alienates people from themselves and others: this drive often degrades social relations as a side-effect of profit generation (people living in car-dependent burbs), but also as a direct effect with things like making friendships feel transactional, like when everyone around a table is venmoing each other for lattes, or dating apps specifically designed to make people frustrated and obsessive.

atomization has been increasing due to the way social media works, yeah, and there's a whole other issue with tech actually decreasing productivity (in the sense that it distracts) and increasing overall unhappiness despite the fact that it makes certain things far easier. Many things have been streamlined, difficult or dangerous jobs have become automated, which is good, but wages and work have not. The industry of playing games to gather and sell items (now under a boss or company, even if the grey market is against a TOS), doing certain menial tasks machines can't do easily, gig work and etc which all suck and don't really produce much. A saturation of influencing, "brand ambassadors," parasocial trades, commodification of experiences and so on, which, on top of traditional advertising, exist only to create or focus demand, while increasing unhappiness. Economic exploitation through crypto and NFTs is now pushed as a gateway to getting rich or making some money.

Cranappleberry fucked around with this message at 19:13 on Oct 20, 2022

# ? Oct 20, 2022 19:00

Leon Trotsky 2012: Aug 27, 2009; YOU CAN TRUST ME!*

_{*Israeli Government-affiliated poster}

Cranappleberry posted:

this is a big one for women but it's multi-factor. Almost every woman has a story to tell about this. Everyone very likely knows someone or someones who have had a horrible experience from online dating (or just dating in general).

Some of it is younger people growing up more online, socializing differently, as someone mentioned (arguably not a good thing and socially stunting). Some of it is also a "generational" turn away from perceived promiscuity of older generations, as well as drug use. Going along with that is media, some of it propaganda, that is being put out and absorbed, turning younger people away from sex.

there is a backlash against perceived openness of/about sexuality, including among younger lgbtq+ people, with the idea that being openly gay/lesbian/trans is inherently sexual, which is a rehash of old bigotry. There is a kerfuffle over Pride because of this, despite the fact that Pride has been both accepted and co-opted by the mainstream, though more adult parts have always been segregated to a degree and are more so now.

I think this has a lot of good insights, but the thing kind of blows me away and doesn't really track with that is how different it was ~9 years earlier. Is 9 years really enough for such a dramatic culture shift? Online dating was still big in 2009 or 2010. There was worse youth unemployment and housing independence in 2009 than 2018.

I think that a portion of LGBT people being less sexually active wouldn't move the needle that much either. Even if the percentage was as high as 20% of the LGBT population, that would be a very small percentage of the total U.S. population.

# ? Oct 20, 2022 19:09

ManBoyChef: Aug 1, 2019; Deadbeat Dad

What do you folks think of the "voter fraud" investigations and arrests happening in Florida right now?

# ? Oct 20, 2022 19:13

Timeless Appeal: May 28, 2006

ManBoyChef posted:

What do you folks think of the "voter fraud" investigations and arrests happening in Florida right now?

From the anecdotes, it sounds like the people involved were like, "I probably can't vote," the people who registered them were like, "Well maybe not but obviously there are going to be failsafes and they just won't let you vote so don't worry about it, just register and see if you're eligible" and then the people were allowed to vote. It sounds like it's not fraud, but a minor oversight issue that impacted no actual elections, and impacted less than a couple dozen people in the US's most populous states. DeSantis sucks.

# ? Oct 20, 2022 19:16

Leon Trotsky 2012: Aug 27, 2009; YOU CAN TRUST ME!*

_{*Israeli Government-affiliated poster}

ManBoyChef posted:

What do you folks think of the "voter fraud" investigations and arrests happening in Florida right now?

It's DeSantis being a psycho with peoples' lives to help his inevitable Presidential campaign.

Even more psychotic is the reason that most of those people couldn't vote is because DeSantis personally sued to allow himself to not restore all voting rights under the constitutional amendment they passed to restore felon voting rights.

NYT background for anyone who isn't up to date on it.

quote:

Videos Show Confusion as Florida Police Arrest People on Voter Fraud Charges

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida announced in August �a first salvo� of criminal charges in what he called a long-overdue crackdown on voter fraud by his newly created Office of Election Crimes and Security.

But recently released body camera footage indicates that people arrested on charges of voting illegally seemed puzzled and appeared to have run afoul of the law through confusion rather than intent. The arrests targeted people convicted of felonies.

In Florida, under a constitutional amendment approved by voters in 2018, many former inmates had their voting rights restored, but others did not, leaving many people uncertain or misinformed about their eligibility to vote.

In the videos that were obtained on Wednesday by The New York Times from the Tampa Police Department, those arrested repeatedly told officers that they were blindsided by the charges and had been cleared to vote by election officials. The videos were published earlier by The Tampa Bay Times.

The emergence of the videos brought fresh scrutiny to Mr. DeSantis�s pursuit of voter fraud allegations, which critics said disproportionately focused on people of color and have netted fewer than two dozen arrests this year in a state that cast 11 million votes in the 2020 election.

In one of the videos, Tony Patterson, 43, was standing outside his Tampa residence when officers approached him on Aug. 18 to tell him that they had an outstanding warrant for his arrest.

�For what?� Mr. Patterson asked the officers, who explained that he was not eligible to vote as a convicted sex offender and was being charged with two felonies for voting illegally.

�What is wrong with this state, man?� Mr. Patterson said. �You all put me in jail for something I didn�t know nothing about. Why would you all let me vote if I wasn�t able to vote?�

The officer acknowledged that he was not familiar with the specifics of Mr. Patterson�s case or Florida�s election law, which bars convicted murderers and sex offenders from voting.

When officers carry out warrants, they often do not know the details of the cases, one officer told Mr. Patterson, who is Black.

According to court records, Mr. Patterson pleaded not guilty to charges that he made a false statement about his voting status and cast a ballot when he was not eligible to do so, which are third-degree felonies. A public defender for Mr. Patterson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

Mr. Patterson is among 20 former felons statewide whose arrests on fraud charges were showcased by Mr. DeSantis in an August news conference touting work by his new election crimes office, which received about $1 million in state funding. Mr. DeSantis had asked the State Legislature last winter to create the office to aggressively prosecute voter fraud, despite compelling evidence that fraud in Florida elections � and elections elsewhere � is a minuscule problem.

Critics have called the arrests a political stunt staged to burnish Mr. DeSantis�s conservative credentials as he seeks a second term as governor in November � and after that, a possible bid for the Republican presidential nomination.

�This is absolutely nothing but political theater,� Mark P. Rankin, a lawyer in Hillsborough County, Fla., who is representing one of the 20, said on Wednesday. �It�s sad because these are people who were put in handcuffs, taken to jail, charged with felonies and are facing prison sentences.�

Mr. DeSantis�s office had no immediate comment. But in August, he defended the arrests against criticism, saying that when people sign up to vote, �they check a box saying they�re eligible. If they�re not eligible and they�re lying, then they can be held accountable.�

Mr. Rankin said his client, 56-year-old Romona Oliver, had been convicted of second-degree murder but had completed her sentence and rebuilt her life, marrying and holding a steady job.

Legal experts, including at least one Republican state legislator, have said that many if not all of the 20 arrests appear unjustified because the supposed perpetrators had no idea that they were breaking the law. In Florida, a conviction of voter fraud requires proof of intent.

Some defendants have said they registered to vote only after being wrongly assured that they could cast ballots under the constitutional amendment that restored voting rights to many former felons. In fact, the amendment excluded people convicted of murder or felony sex offenses, who must apply separately to have their rights reinstated.

All of the 20 defendants had been convicted of murder or sex crimes. But each of them was issued a registration card after an application was approved by the secretary of state.

And in each case, the defendants were told they had voted illegally long after their ballots had been cast.

�The statute says they have to willfully vote knowing that they�re not eligible to vote,� said Roger L. Weeden, an Orlando lawyer who represents two of the 20 defendants. �That�s going to be very hard for them to prove.�

Mr. Weeden, who said he was helping coordinate legal help for some defendants, said he was unaware of any of the 20 cases that have been fully adjudicated.

Jonathan Olson, a supervisor in the state attorney�s office in Lake County in central Florida, has said in a letter that his office would not prosecute six people arrested on identical charges because each appears �to have been encouraged to vote by various mailings and misinformation.�

The police officer who drove Mr. Patterson to jail acknowledged that Florida�s voter eligibility laws have been a source of confusion.

�There�s fine print, as far as my understanding goes,� the officer said.

In another video, Ms. Oliver, of Hillsborough County, was backing out of her driveway to go to work on the morning of Aug. 18 when officers confronted her and told her to get out of her vehicle because they had a warrant for her arrest.

�Oh my God,� Ms. Oliver said when one of the officers told her that she was being charged with voter fraud.

In the back of a police SUV, Ms. Oliver said that she had been told that she was eligible to vote when she was released from prison three years ago after a 19-year stint for second-degree murder. Her lawyer, Mr. Rankin, said she had applied to vote after a worker for a voter-registration drive approached her at a bus stop.

Ms. Oliver later received a registration card from the state and was sent another after she moved to a new address, he said.

As officers removed her jewelry and took a cellphone from Ms. Oliver, who is Black, they said that they had few details about her case and that she would eventually be released on her own recognizance after being taken to jail.

�I know you�re caught off guard,� an officer said. �I understand. You�re going to be right back out.�

Ms. Oliver also pleaded not guilty, according to court records.

At a news conference on Wednesday, the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, an advocacy group for former felons, called for an overhaul of the state�s felony records to make it simple for former felons to see whether they are eligible to vote.

And Nicole D. Porter, the senior director of advocacy at a national prison rights group, the Sentencing Project, upbraided the state for making the arrests to begin with.

In many cases, �these folks were in contact with government officials, nonpartisan officials, who talked to them about voting, and they took action to participate in their civic democracy,� she said. �And now they are being prosecuted and subjected to imprisonment and jail time because of it.�

�What we�re seeing right now in Florida is absolutely egregious,� she added. �And these videos are just heartbreaking.�

# ? Oct 20, 2022 19:17

Cranappleberry: Jan 27, 2009

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

I think this has a lot of good insights, but the thing kind of blows me away and doesn't really track with that is how different it was ~9 years earlier. Is 9 years really enough for such a dramatic culture shift? Online dating was still big in 2009 or 2010. There was worse youth unemployment and housing independence in 2009 than 2018.

I think that a portion of LGBT people being less sexually active wouldn't move the needle that much either. Even if the percentage was as high as 20% of the LGBT population, that would be a very small percentage of the total U.S. population.

online dating apps were less exploitative. I won't say it was the wild west, because people have been meeting people they talk to on the internet for long before that, but it started getting bigger in the early aughts and eventually huge with the advent of widespread social media.

Some of younger lgbtq+ people turning away from sex, or even buying into bigoted propaganda, is an example rather than responsible for the dramatic shift itself.

Also, with people moving away from areas that they can't get work or is dangerous for them to exist in, as well as often zero support for grass-roots efforts, support networks that existed collapsed or are in a constant state of forming and breaking, with those who are different and/or marginalized refusing to expose themselves to potential dangers, despite the narrative that they are accepted and things are "better." It might be statistically small, but it's important to recognize. Conformity can seem protective.

Cranappleberry fucked around with this message at 19:22 on Oct 20, 2022

# ? Oct 20, 2022 19:20

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

It's DeSantis being a psycho with peoples' lives to help his inevitable Presidential campaign.

Even more psychotic is the reason that most of those people couldn't vote is because DeSantis personally sued to allow himself to not restore all voting rights under the constitutional amendment they passed to restore felon voting rights.

NYT background for anyone who isn't up to date on it.

It doesn't matter if they were doing fraud, GovRon needs some some fraud to point at to do more fascism.

Like it literally doesn't matter at all if they did fraud knowingly or at all.

It's all about narrative, same as the Martha's Vineyard stunt.

# ? Oct 20, 2022 20:38

Koos Group: Mar 6, 2013

mawarannahr posted:

If this is some new rule, put it in the rules thread. Also, just because someone is from somewhere doesn�t make them an expert. I�m not an expert on Turkey and if someone got probed for disrespecting my lived experience or whatever I�d think it extremely silly.

It may be a good idea to codify it. I haven't done so because it doesn't come up very often and still falls under Rule I. But the idea is that if someone has any kind of specialized knowledge, that is valuable to the forum and we ought to do what we can to keep them interested and welcomed. This does not mean you can't disagree with them, but if you do you should be extra careful with the quality of your arguments.

# ? Oct 20, 2022 20:48

Heck Yes! Loam!: Nov 15, 2004; a rich, friable soil containing a relatively equal mixture of sand and silt and a somewhat smaller proportion of clay.

https://twitter.com/nixonron/status/1583022972109197315

This seems relevant to the recent discussion of 'should we send troops to Haiti or literally anywhere else'

It's pretty big :yikes:

but extremely par for the course as far as historical precedent.

# ? Oct 20, 2022 22:00

SirFozzie: Mar 28, 2004; Goombatta!

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/midterm-elections-jim-banks-debt-limit-house-republican-majority/

This tactic hasn't worked all the other times they tried it, but please Republicans, please keep sticking your collective dicks into this wasp's nest.

# ? Oct 20, 2022 22:16

BIG-DICK-BUTT-FUCK: Jan 26, 2016; by Fluffdaddy

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

I think this has a lot of good insights, but the thing kind of blows me away and doesn't really track with that is how different it was ~9 years earlier. Is 9 years really enough for such a dramatic culture shift? Online dating was still big in 2009 or 2010. There was worse youth unemployment and housing independence in 2009 than 2018.

nuh uh, tinder didnt get released until Sept 2012 and didnt catch on until a year or two after that. in 09/10 it was all POF and okcupid and it was still 'weird' to date online, at least in my experienecs. I'd say it didnt really become a 'thing' until 2013-2014 or so. This graph from "businessofapps.com" suggests it was even later but idk how trustworthy their data is

e: oops, this is just paying subscribers and not active users. Couldnt find that info easily, but this is the source for the number of paying subscribers:
https://www.businessofapps.com/data/tinder-statistics/

BIG-DICK-BUTT-FUCK fucked around with this message at 12:10 on Oct 21, 2022

# ? Oct 21, 2022 12:08

Leon Trotsky 2012: Aug 27, 2009; YOU CAN TRUST ME!*

_{*Israeli Government-affiliated poster}

Musk says he wants to:

- Cut 75% of Twitter's work force.
- Double revenue in 3 years by increasing ads, enabling ads that are embedded to avoid adblockers, and finding other ways to monetize the platform.
- Shutdown Twitter's AI division, content moderation division, health division, and most of its security and IT division.
- Stop banning or suspending celebrity accounts (including Kanye West and restoring Trump's account).
- Enable a new premium subscription version of Twitter with a monthly fee.

I was not even aware that Twitter had a health science division.

Musk also wants to implement a real version of the story about Henry Ford firing the bottom 10% of employees every year (regardless of how well they are performing) for Twitter staff:

quote:

The company is instituting a performance review system called stack ranking that requires managers to grade employees on a numerical curve, so that a set percentage of workers will always be marked as low performers, according to one of the company documents obtained by The Post. The move has been protested by staff members.

https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1583206149297696768

quote:

Twitter�s workforce is likely to be hit with massive cuts in the coming months, no matter who owns the company, interviews and documents obtained by The Washington Post show, a change likely to have major impact on its ability to control harmful content and prevent data security crises.

Elon Musk told prospective investors in his deal to buy the company that he planned to get rid of nearly 75 percent of Twitter�s 7,500 workers, whittling the company down to a skeleton staff of just over 2,000.

Even if Musk�s Twitter deal falls through � and there�s little indication now that it will � big cuts are expected: Twitter�s current management planned to pare the company�s payroll by about $800 million by the end of next year, a number that would mean the departure of nearly a quarter of the workforce, according to corporate documents and interviews with people familiar with the company�s deliberations. The company also planned to make major cuts to its infrastructure, including data centers that keep the site functioning for more than 200 million users that log on each day.

The extent of the cuts, which have not been previously reported, help explain why Twitter officials were eager to sell to Musk: Musk�s $44 billion bid, though hostile, is a golden ticket for the struggling company � potentially helping its leadership avoid painful announcements that would have demoralized the staff and possibly crippled the service�s ability to combat misinformation, hate speech and spam.

The impact of such layoffs would likely be immediately felt by millions of users, said Edwin Chen, a data scientist formerly in charge of Twitter�s spam and health metrics and now CEO of the content-moderation start-up Surge AI. He said that while he believed Twitter was overstaffed, the cuts Musk proposed were �unimaginable� and would put Twitter�s users at risk of hacks and exposure to offensive material such as child pornography.

�It would be a cascading effect,� he said, �where you�d have services going down and the people remaining not having the institutional knowledge to get them back up, and being completely demoralized and wanting to leave themselves.�

On Thursday evening, Twitter�s top lawyer Sean Edgett sent out a note to all employees saying the company did not have any confirmation from Musk about his plans. Twitter�s own, smaller-scale �cost savings discussions� were put on hold once the merger agreement was signed, Edgett said, according to an email viewed by The Post.

In internal Slack groups, Twitter employees reacted to the news with anger and resignation, supporting each other and making jokes about the turmoil of the past few months, according to people familiar with the conversations.

Twitter and Musk are expected to close the purchase by Oct. 28. Planning for the closing is moving forward in apparent good faith after months of legal battles, say people familiar with the negotiations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. If the deal closes, Musk would immediately become Twitter�s new owner.

Twitter did not immediately respond to request for comment.

�The easy part for Musk was buying Twitter and the hard part is fixing it,� said Dan Ives, a financial analyst with Wedbush Securities. �It will be a herculean challenge to turn this around.�

Nell Minow, a corporate governance expert who is vice chair of ValueEdge Advisors, said Musk was likely shopping ambitious plans to potential investors but will face challenges in implementing his proposals.

�He�s got to be able to show if he makes those cuts, what happens next?� she said. �What�s he gonna replace it with, AI?�

Company executives have repeatedly told employees that there are no immediate layoff plans during town hall meetings. In the one town hall that he attended, in June, Musk was pointedly asked a question about layoffs. He answered that he didn�t see a reason low performers should remain employed.

But the new details, which reflect conversations over the last few months, highlight the extreme nature of Musk�s planned transformation of Twitter amid the challenge of making the long struggling company more profitable. Twitter has never achieved the profit margins or size of other social sites like Meta and Snap. And Musk�s plan to take the company private � freeing it from having to please Wall Street � was a key reason former CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey got behind Musk�s bid.

Musk and his representatives did not respond to requests for comment.

The months-long roller-coaster saga of Musk�s on-again off-again bid for ownership � coupled with a tense legal battle � has left Twitter battered and bruised. It faces significant worker attrition, slowed hiring, stalled projects and a volatile stock price.

Recently Andrea Walne, a general partner at Manhattan Venture Partners, a firm that has invested in the deal, told Business Insider that she thinks Twitter is worth only $10 billion to $12 billion and that other partners were trying to get out. Musk himself said that he and his investors were �obviously overpaying� for the site during Tesla�s earnings call on Wednesday. Walne did not respond to requests for comment.

Musk has suggested he�ll loosen content moderation standards and favors restoring former president Donald Trump�s account (on Tuesday he posted a meme of himself, Kanye West and Trump each holding a sword for the social media company he owns or is in the process of purchasing).

Musk has told investors that he plans to double revenue in three years, and would triple the number of daily users that can view ads in the same period, though he�s offered scant details on how he would accomplish those goals.

Twitter estimates that its monetizable daily active users (MDAU), defined as the number of users eligible to see ads, is 237.8 million, up 16.6 percent compared with the same quarter last year. But documents that have emerged in Twitter�s court battle with Musk point to far lower numbers, with Musk�s side claiming, using Twitter�s own data, that fewer than 16 million users see the vast majority of ads.

Moreover, the time those users spend browsing Twitter declined 10 percent over the course of 2021 and only recovered slightly in the first quarter of 2022, according to the interviews.

Gutting and then reshaping the workforce through rehiring chosen people is a huge part of Musk�s ambitions, according to interviews and documents. Though Musk has previously indicated he would be open to cutting staff � legal filings show that he agreed with a friend over text that the company�s head count wasn�t justified by its revenue when compared with other tech companies � he has not offered specific numbers publicly.

In presentations prepared for investors and other interested parties, Musk�s optimistic business projections were fueled in part by steep jobs cuts across what was termed a �bloated� organization. One prospective investor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly describe Musk�s proposals, likened them to leveraged buyouts, where companies are made profitable through devastating cuts to labor and operations.

But Musk has told associates he thinks that dramatically slimming down the company is the first step to executing a turnaround strategy that would then involve bringing in more effective workers and profitable innovations. Those include expanding on new services that he has claimed could bring in more revenue, such as a subscription business where people pay to subscribe to exclusive content from powerful figures and influencers. (Twitter is currently experimenting with such a model, called Twitter Blue).

But Twitter�s own data has found that subscriptions may not bring in significant new revenue, according to the interviews. That�s because the users who view the most ads � roughly the top 1 percent of users in the United States � are also the ones most likely to join a subscription service. If they began paying a monthly subscription and went ad-free, the program could cannibalize the most lucrative part of Twitter�s current ad business.

Twitter�s budget for head count � roughly $1.5 billion last year � includes many highly paid ad salespeople and several thousand engineers. The company also spends hundreds of millions on contracting firms that pay people to review reports of hate speech, child sexual abuse, and other ugly and rule-breaking content on the internet. Twitter�s median compensation � the point at which half make more and half make less � is about $240,000 for all employees and $308,000 for engineers.

Some of the planned cuts were put on hold pending the sale to Musk, which was announced in April.

The company is instituting a performance review system called stack ranking that requires managers to grade employees on a numerical curve, so that a set percentage of workers will always be marked as low performers, according to one of the company documents obtained by The Post. The move has been protested by staff members, but Twitter says other tech companies have the same practices.

Human resources staff at Twitter have told employees that they aren�t planning for mass layoffs, but documents show that extensive plans to push out staff and cut down on infrastructure costs were already in place before Musk offered to buy the company. Musk would then have built on those plans by first targeting low performers � people the company�s human resources system designated as �not on track� or receiving below a 3 out of 5 rating � before moving to other phases of downsizing.

For weeks leading into the acquisition announcement, Musk and his attorney Alex Spiro pitched a who�s who crowd of elite investors in Silicon Valley and Wall Street on a deal that was billed as a chance not only to transform underperforming Twitter, but to work with the celebrated Musk. Not all potential investors received the same details from Musk�s team.

Some of Musk�s biggest partners in the deal, including Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and Sequoia partner Doug Leone were also Trump supporters and self-proclaimed believers in the type of free speech ideology Musk promised to bring back to the platform. (Leone is no longer a Trump supporter but is said to take an expansive view of free speech). Hedge fund manager Kenneth Griffin, the second largest GOP donor in the current midterm cycle, also committed a smaller amount � under $20 million compared with $1 billion from Ellison � to the deal, The Post has learned.

But many potential notable funders passed.

Private equity giants T. Rowe Price, TPG and Warburg Pincus, who collectively control more than $1.4 trillion, all decided not to invest after being approached by Musk�s representatives, according to people familiar with the process.

And other prominent Silicon Valley heavyweights said no as well. LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman helped connect Musk with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella as part of the money-raising process, but decided not to invest himself, according to people familiar with the situation. Hoffman is a major Democratic donor, and Musk at the time was already talking about restoring Trump.

Founders Fund, the Silicon Valley venture firm founded by billionaire Republican donor Peter Thiel, also said no. Thiel first worked with Musk in 2000 when the two merged their companies to form PayPal, and Thiel�s associates have said he is a fan of Musk running Twitter.

It�s unclear whether these parties didn�t buy into Musk�s lofty projection, or didn�t want to be involved politically.

Some passed after the company�s finances and Musk�s own predicament began to look less attractive.

One person who lost interest told The Post that he was alarmed after the market downturn and the cost of the deal began taking a toll on Musk�s finances and the crown jewel of his portfolio, Tesla.

It hasn�t helped that Musk relentlessly attacked Twitter and its leadership after announcing his takeover, pushing down its stock price. Musk�s latest turnabout only added to the sense of chaos.

�[It�s] like you bought a new car, you decided you didn�t want it, and then you crash it,� the person said. �And then you�re like �I�ll keep it.��

On the hand, it sounds like Elon might be doing the world a favor by killing Twitter.

On the other hand, it could very possibly survive and just be far worse.

Also, it sounds like working for Elon/Twitter will be hell for the 25% for survive.

# ? Oct 21, 2022 14:22

Clarste: Apr 15, 2013; Just how many mistakes have you suffered on the way here?

An uncountable number, to be sure.

RIP Twitter, we hardly knew ye.

# ? Oct 21, 2022 14:27

Eric Cantonese: Dec 21, 2004; You should hear my accent.

Clarste posted:

RIP Twitter, we hardly knew ye.

Is that really going to happen? I feel like Twitter is so embedded in how people go through the internet now that it'll take a while for its userbase to erode. I don't know anything else that competes.

Maybe Musk is right and everything will be just great for his new version of Twitter because God seems to love him.

# ? Oct 21, 2022 14:36

ColdPie: Jun 9, 2006

It's not like Twitter is terribly well run right now, so I'd probably stick around for a while to at least see what happens with the changes. There's room for other approaches, like more self-selected moderation (e.g. subscribe to someone else's ban list or something, I dunno). But I will close my account the day they unban Trump.

Eric Cantonese posted:

Is that really going to happen? I feel like Twitter is so embedded in how people go through the internet now that it'll take a while for its userbase to erode. I don't know anything else that competes.

Yeah. Back when the deal was first announced, a bunch of folks were talking about moving to Mastodon (which is federated, so a totally different approach to moderation, and with all those accompanying challenges). But new social networks tend to come from nowhere, so probably it will be something we've never heard of.

ColdPie fucked around with this message at 14:41 on Oct 21, 2022

# ? Oct 21, 2022 14:37

FlamingLiberal: Jan 18, 2009; Would you like to play a game?

If Musk takes direct charge of Twitter (which I imagine he will) then it will be a disaster. Getting rid of all content regulation is going to make it a nightmare.

# ? Oct 21, 2022 14:38

the_steve: Nov 9, 2005; We're always hiring!

FlamingLiberal posted:

If Musk takes direct charge of Twitter (which I imagine he will) then it will be a disaster. Getting rid of all content regulation is going to make it a nightmare.

I figure he'll end up selling it off once he's done running it into the ground to prove whatever point he thought he was making by buying it in the first place, at which point the new owners will probably revert back to something closer to how it was before the buyout, but by then the damage will have been done and we'll probably be on some new Twitter-like that someone else puts out once Twitter gets all of their Nazis back.

# ? Oct 21, 2022 14:49

Eric Cantonese: Dec 21, 2004; You should hear my accent.

I keep hearing about how Facebook is supposedly in danger but they seem to be doing just fine in terms of userbase. Their main problem seems to be lighting money on fire trying to establish the Metaverse.

# ? Oct 21, 2022 14:50

haveblue: Aug 15, 2005; Toilet Rascal

It's hard to kill something like Twitter from the outside, but it can absolutely be killed by rot from within. If he fucks it up badly enough it could start experiencing long and frequent periods in which the fundamentals of using the site at all are difficult for most or all of the users, whether this is due to downtime, major bugs, or security breaches. It will also be very hard to attract new engineering staff to fix these things

# ? Oct 21, 2022 15:02

cat botherer: Jan 6, 2022; I am interested in most phases of data processing.

Koos Group posted:

It may be a good idea to codify it. I haven't done so because it doesn't come up very often and still falls under Rule I. But the idea is that if someone has any kind of specialized knowledge, that is valuable to the forum and we ought to do what we can to keep them interested and welcomed. This does not mean you can't disagree with them, but if you do you should be extra careful with the quality of your arguments.

So where exactly did I fail to address the "specialized knowledge" about their parents owning a house and a restaurant? Sorry, just trying to figure out how these intricate rules get applied, because I'm confused as to why I got probed twice in that conversation for posts that I put a good deal of thought into.

# ? Oct 21, 2022 15:04

FlamingLiberal: Jan 18, 2009; Would you like to play a game?

Eric Cantonese posted:

I keep hearing about how Facebook is supposedly in danger but they seem to be doing just fine in terms of userbase. Their main problem seems to be lighting money on fire trying to establish the Metaverse.

Zuckerberg with the Metaverse is like Howard Hughes with the Spruce Goose

# ? Oct 21, 2022 15:08

evilweasel: Aug 24, 2002

Eric Cantonese posted:

I keep hearing about how Facebook is supposedly in danger but they seem to be doing just fine in terms of userbase. Their main problem seems to be lighting money on fire trying to establish the Metaverse.

facebook is a tremendously, incredibly uncool thing among anyone younger than 30 or so and it is steadily bleeding even the people who are over 30 but not yet boomers mostly just sort of keep it around from when it used to be cool

it is now a boomer paradise nobody else wants to be involved with, which is fine for the present but because it's value comes from the network effect it also tends to collapse exponentially

that's the reason they keep desperately buying whatever the new social network is but instagram has also started to fall off too

# ? Oct 21, 2022 15:13

Devor: Nov 30, 2004; Lurking more.

haveblue posted:

It's hard to kill something like Twitter from the outside, but it can absolutely be killed by rot from within. If he fucks it up badly enough it could start experiencing long and frequent periods in which the fundamentals of using the site at all are difficult for most or all of the users, whether this is due to downtime, major bugs, or security breaches. It will also be very hard to attract new engineering staff to fix these things

There will be a very interesting crop of lawsuits when the content moderation stops.

And the plaintiff getting discovery showing that the CEO told them to stop banning terrorists, or whatever, will be good evidence of negligence.

# ? Oct 21, 2022 15:19

evilweasel: Aug 24, 2002

Devor posted:

There will be a very interesting crop of lawsuits when the content moderation stops.

And the plaintiff getting discovery showing that the CEO told them to stop banning terrorists, or whatever, will be good evidence of negligence.

i'm not sure there will be, because of section 230

that said, there is a reason nobody ever wants to use the "twitter, but without moderation" clones

# ? Oct 21, 2022 15:20

Oxyclean: Sep 23, 2007

If Musk takes over Twitter it sounds like it will get much, much worse before it ever goes away. Or at least, I think whatever damage will be done by his approach to moderation and wanting to unchain right wing psychos is going to do a whole lot of harm long before anyone seriously starts to abandon the site, not to mention there just isn't much to fill the void for a large demographic. Odds are you now just have a more mainstream parler/gab/whatever.

At that point I feel like the best you can hope for is it loses Musk a ton of money and makes more of his stans realize he's a moron.

# ? Oct 21, 2022 15:22

haveblue: Aug 15, 2005; Toilet Rascal

Yeah, it's not going to be lawsuits, it's going to be the service becoming more trouble than it's worth. Even if you're willing to put up with the torrents of replies from horrible people, or if you're forced to because you get paid to, if the site just straight up does not work to the point that it can't accept or show new posts, and this continues on and off for a long time, it's hard to see how it recovers from that

haveblue fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Oct 21, 2022

# ? Oct 21, 2022 15:28

Devor: Nov 30, 2004; Lurking more.

evilweasel posted:

i'm not sure there will be, because of section 230

that said, there is a reason nobody ever wants to use the "twitter, but without moderation" clones

Open question whether ole Musky is going to keep them around to cover them under the 230 exceptions

18 U.S. Code � 1591 - Sex trafficking of children or by force, fraud, or coercion
18 U.S. Code � 2421A - Promotion or facilitation of prostitution and reckless disregard of sex trafficking

# ? Oct 21, 2022 15:34

Leon Trotsky 2012: Aug 27, 2009; YOU CAN TRUST ME!*

_{*Israeli Government-affiliated poster}

Devor posted:

Open question whether ole Musky is going to keep them around to cover them under the 230 exceptions

18 U.S. Code � 1591 - Sex trafficking of children or by force, fraud, or coercion
18 U.S. Code � 2421A - Promotion or facilitation of prostitution and reckless disregard of sex trafficking

To be fair to Musk, when he says he will eliminate content moderation, I don't think he is talking about child porn or prostitution.

# ? Oct 21, 2022 15:37

the_steve: Nov 9, 2005; We're always hiring!

Having thought about it some more since my last post, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if he's saying 3/4 of this poo poo because he thinks he's playing some sort of Nth dimensional chess and still trying to get out of buying it or manipulate the market somehow for when he tries to sell it.

In all honesty, I'm really kind of just expecting him to have Trump/whoever else he likes unbanned, maybe ban some people who made fun of him, and then gently caress off and try to unload it onto some other sucker.

# ? Oct 21, 2022 16:04

Leon Trotsky 2012: Aug 27, 2009; YOU CAN TRUST ME!*

_{*Israeli Government-affiliated poster}

The law that created DeSantis' voter fraud prosecution department didn't actually give the office jurisdiction to prosecute voter fraud and the charges from the arrests have been dismissed.

https://twitter.com/lbarronlopez/status/1583474870242840578

# ? Oct 21, 2022 16:09

Skippy McPants: Mar 19, 2009

Eric Cantonese posted:

Is that really going to happen? I feel like Twitter is so embedded in how people go through the internet now that it'll take a while for its userbase to erode. I don't know anything else that competes.

Maybe Musk is right and everything will be just great for his new version of Twitter because God seems to love him.

It happened to Tumblr and has been slowly happening to Facebook for over a decade. I don't think Twitter will die, but I could definitely see it decaying to the point that it's no longer the mainstay social media platform for trends and current events.

Would love to think that the sunset of Twitter would be a good thing for the internet overall, but I can't imagine whatever replaces it being better.

# ? Oct 21, 2022 16:10

Timeless Appeal: May 28, 2006

evilweasel posted:

facebook is a tremendously, incredibly uncool thing among anyone younger than 30 or so and it is steadily bleeding even the people who are over 30 but not yet boomers mostly just sort of keep it around from when it used to be cool

I feel like Facebook has done a pretty decent job at making itself valuable to the lives of adults. I left Facebook shortly after undergrad, and signed back up once I had a kid for the parent groups, buy nothing groups, and so on.

# ? Oct 21, 2022 16:13

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 24, 2024 12:55

Main Paineframe: Oct 27, 2010

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Musk says he wants to:

- Cut 75% of Twitter's work force.
- Double revenue in 3 years by increasing ads, enabling ads that are embedded to avoid adblockers, and finding other ways to monetize the platform.
- Shutdown Twitter's AI division, content moderation division, health division, and most of its security and IT division.
- Stop banning or suspending celebrity accounts (including Kanye West and restoring Trump's account).
- Enable a new premium subscription version of Twitter with a monthly fee.

I was not even aware that Twitter had a health science division.

Musk also wants to implement a real version of the story about Henry Ford firing the bottom 10% of employees every year (regardless of how well they are performing) for Twitter staff:

On the hand, it sounds like Elon might be doing the world a favor by killing Twitter.

On the other hand, it could very possibly survive and just be far worse.

Also, it sounds like working for Elon/Twitter will be hell for the 25% for survive.

I can't think of a bigger red flag of institutional rot in Twitter than newly instituting stack ranking in 2022. It's an infamously bad practice in the tech industry, notorious for its longtime use in Microsoft, where its numerous flaws have been very well documented. Throwing Twitter's entire workforce into a crab bucket and only keeping the first 25% to climb out could very well be devastating.

A potential issue I don't see coming up much in the media reporting about the Twitter deal, though, is how blatantly politicized it's already become. Hardcore Trump supporters are ecstatic at the idea of Musk buying Twitter, and start screaming about liberal plots to sabotage Musk every time anything slows the deal. I wonder about the long-term impact that'll have on Twitter's business under Musk.
https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1583414733478064128

Eric Cantonese posted:

I keep hearing about how Facebook is supposedly in danger but they seem to be doing just fine in terms of userbase. Their main problem seems to be lighting money on fire trying to establish the Metaverse.

Facebook's user numbers are dropping, and (more importantly) they're having a harder time effectively monetizing those users. The drops in revenue and userbase are fairly small so far, but Facebook doesn't have any real path to reversing either, and if advertisers start to lose faith in them it could rapidly turn into a death spiral (though companies that big don't die fast, no matter how disastrous their business model becomes).

That's exactly why they're shoveling money into the metaverse furnace. Their core business is starting to disappoint the markets, and they don't seem to have a way to get those numbers back to levels the investor types will be happy with, so they're going back to the tried-and-true startup tactic of promising some big moonshot breakthrough in hopes that it'll distract the media from their dwindling revenue.

# ? Oct 21, 2022 16:19

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > USCE Autumn: Well Actually, This IS somethingpedantic.com

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