Spyke
technology·TechnologybyMysticSmear

Elon refusing to pay google for hosting could be behind the instability issues.

It’s possible that the enforcement of a rate limit isn’t because of AI scraping, but rather because they failed to migrate before the June 30th deadline.

View original on lemmy.world
lemmy.world

It's so fucking funny how Twitter and Reddit are imploding on the exact same day lmao.

266
lemm.ee

Spez did say Musk's Twitter was something to be admired and emulated lol

171

Regardless of whether you mean Musk or Spez: no. He did not do anything right. Probably hasn't for years.

13
senkorareply
lemmy.zip

End-of-quarter. Companies often make decisions quarter by quarter and 6/30 was the last day of Q2.

77
Empyreusreply
lemmy.world

I always forget how important quarters are in the business world.

43

Companies would rather cut their noses of in the end of a quarter, to claim a weight loss, than do something that would spell positive results for its lifetime...

17

50 Cent's success as a business man suddenly starts making a lot more sense, eh?

16

I work in financial reporting. Hard thing for me to forget. Our stuff could suffer literal days long outages and like 99% of our clients wouldn't care. But when a quarter rolls around? We need like 99.9999999% uptime through it.

I swear quarters are the only time C level people are doing any sort of work.

7
ijeffreply
lemdro.id

It's too early to tell but I'm spending more time on Lemmy.

46
jarfilreply
lemmy.world

Depends on where you go.

Subs like r/worldnews and r/tech have bottom of the barrel comments, but still manage to get some posts.

r/IAmA had many of the mods leave, so the remaining ones are stopping all "out of Reddit" activities, like recruiting celebrities, verifying identities, and so on. It's pretty much worthless now.

Small niche subs are still working, but the equivalent communities on Lemmy are getting better quality right now.

31
lemm.ee

Worldnews has always skewed a little to the right but the comments I read on a post about the immigrants drowning absolutely disgusted me

13
jarfilreply
lemmy.world

There have been some posts where the comments have been 100% memes and off-topic.

IMHO the strongest point of news aggregators like Reddit, is the extra information that isn't in the linked article, otherwise there is no benefit over an RSS feed reader.

6

There are also probably many bot answers now at the top.

1

I was wrongly banned from that place three years ago for posting a comment that was critical of how Saudi Arabia and other conservative Middle Eastern nations treat women. I'd say they're far from a right-wing place.

-1
ijeffreply
lemdro.id

Out of curiosity, what app are you using to post with? I notice that your comment posted three times.

7
jarfilreply
lemmy.world

I used Jerboa, but lemmy.ml seems to be having some serious overload problems and Jerboa doesn't seem to recover gracefully. I've switched to Liftoff and while it still gets errors from lemmy.ml, at least it retries better, or doesn't timeout, or something.

6
lemmy.world

I'm on lemmy.world and jerboa seems to constantly log me out after a relatively short period of time. I've also switched to lift off and that seems to be a bit better. Just as many errors but I don't need to back all the way out to log in again all the time

2

Most of my favorite smaller communities on Reddit (50-500k members) are gone permanently. A couple of them were basically forums run by a niche YouTuber with a couple of helper mods, to talk about topics related to their channel. Those people didn’t want to deal with trying to use Reddit anymore, so they just closed down. It’s basically impossible to bring a community like that back, when the person it exists around is gone.

I don’t see Reddit stepping in for all of those smaller communities, so they’re just gone entirely. And that was where most of the value was for me. So yeah, its completely worthless to me at this point to even use Reddit.

6

A few subs like r/news, r/leagueoflegends and r/worldnews crossed the picket line without so much as acknowledging the blackout.

2
Obinicereply
lemmy.world

I've been wondering. I'm not giving them the satisfaction of getting the traffic so I can check, but who knows, really.

21

for me it's been a slow process to transfer my reddit addiction to lemmy, so i'm still somewhat on there, but it's nowhere close to what it has been like before the protests. a lot of my communities are still closed, others have reopened but there's a noticeably lower volume.

reopen/stay closed discussions also show an interesting pattern of skewing more and more towards reopen the longer they go on, suggesting that the people who want reddit to stay closed have left, which is consistent with how the rest of the platform feels.

i doubt that many lurkers have seen the same effect yet (in fact, i noticed a pattern with the people expressing support for reopen, that they rarely comment at all, so my guess is the lurkers heavily favor reopening) but we'll likely see a delayed effect in their numbers and/or engagement as well, as the content they're supplied gets fewer and lower quality.

5
feddit.de

It comes down to finances, right? Hard to tell what those currently look like, but I read that their evaluation estimate dropped by something like 7% to 5,5 billion USD in recent time.

9

That was as of May 31st, before any of the drama. So it's too soon to tell what the impact was from June's events.

12
reverendzreply
lemmy.ml

Not to sound paranoid, but it’s kind of worrying.

In recent years, these sites have been used to pass information quickly during crisis. This can be anything like natural disaster, or uprising and protests.

These big aggregators being incompetently, mismanaged and taken down from public use at the same time, makes me wonder if it’s an attempt to quash communication that’s not coming from a government or mega-corp.

The revolution will not be televised.. by the people.

9
Grayreply
lemmy.ca

Yeahhhh, I've been getting less news information since moving to Lemmy. The communities are here, but they have some growing to do.

And then there's the issue of them growing into the correct servers. For example, my first day here I caught a mod on lemmy.ml banning a user for posting an Axios article about China on World News because "Orientalism". The article was a pretty common western take on the Xi Xinping succession plan. Really nothing uniquely anti-China. That especially raises eyebrows given the many conversations had about Lemmy's communist roots from its devs.

Which isn't to say Lemmy as a whole is tainted - just the dev community, lemmy.ml. So I ethically feel the need to avoid their World News community and only use lemmy.world's World News community, but that places me into an even smaller and more split community, giving me even less information. All I can think is that I need to be the change I want to see and intentionally post to/comment on the lemmy.world World News community.

0
TheHogreply
lemmy.world

I, and many others, truly believe it is deliberate and orchestrated, primeraly to shut down the likes of r/superstonk and other subs that are fighting wall street corruption.

3
TheHogreply
lemmy.world

This is not "Another theory". This is a great discription of what wall street are doing. It has the added bonus of keeping even you, someone with there eyes open, distracted and not seeing how the Banks, hedge funds and "market makers" are running the show.

They have built a system to take all the money from the people and provide nothing in return.

They control majority shares in all the major news outlets and control the narrative.

If one person's looks at this and checks our DRSGME.COM it will be worth it. (or read the endless DD in r/superstonk but as I'm here I don't really wanna encourage anyone to go to reddit, fuck spez)

Buy DRS & Book GME then HODL (repeat where possible 😁, see you on the moon)

1
TheHogreply
lemmy.world

100%. If they are not in your name your broker can and do lend them (to short against us) also more importantly they can and will sell them whenever they want for any price. Then claim it was for your own safety due to it being a volatile stock. If it's not in your name (DRS'd) then you do not own it.

0

Just checked, and it'll cost me about 3 times the worth of the 4 stocks I have. Not exactly a sound investment when I'm not looking to get more.

0

Im enjoying the shit show Elon is providing. It's definitely entertaining watching a "genius" at work.

185
lemmy.world

I used to work for a local company that sold parts to Tesla. They were a huge nightmare and wouldn’t pay us. I think that is their whole deal. Not paying the small companies.

FUCK them

155
MerfMerfreply
lemmy.world

Unfortunately that sort of behaviour is common in many sectors where large companies subcontract with smaller companies.

The tactic basically created the whole factoring concept (buying invoices, or using invoices as security for a "loan"/credit).

Over here in Sweden it was construction companies that initially fuelled the development, and the large companies basically required very long payment terms (60+ days) from their subcontractors and then waited to the very last day to dispute the invoice by complaining on some part of the work, further delaying payment. A small subcontractor could often not front being out that much money (2+ months of salaries, materials and other operating costs, cost of fighting the dispute etc) and ended up going bust. Enter financial institutions buying (or "lending" with the invoice as security) the invoice, letting the subcontractor get paid immediately, but of course not the full amount since the factoring company wants to profit from the deal. The factoring companies being backed by large financial institutions (banks typically) have enough money that they can sit out those long payment terms and other "bullshit" since they know those large construction companies ARE good for the money they are owed EVENTUALLY.

Still carves into the margins for the small actors.

55
PR_freakreply
vlemmy.net

Wow such a toxic mechanism should be banned, if I was the small company i would literally perma-call their offices and spam emails all day until payment is sent

I would argue 50% payment upfront and 50% on delivery could be somewhat of a solution, worst case scenario they don't pay on delivery and you wait for half payment

17

I used to work at an electronics manufacturer in the US and our vendors had the same deals etched out in their invoices.

14

As a small business/consultant, I generally won’t work for larger corporations, and when I do I get a retainer up front. I don’t have the time or the lawyers to chase down bad accounts. Even for small clients, anything new is 1/3 to 1/2 up front and it’s applied to the final balance (ie you pay 1/3, but when I progress bill that deposit doesn’t get credited to the bill. When I send my final bill for completed work, that’s when I apply the deposit).

Sometimes I’ll send a proposal and get push back on my terms (I don’t accept hold harmless agreements). Most of the time I get my way. The rest I refer to a large firm (that can afford lawyers) 100 miles away.

2

And that's especially a thing in specialized industries. If you manufacture e.g. car parts then there only is a handful of companies possibly buying your products at all, and that one product you specifically designed for one particular car manufacturer you naturally can only sell to that one company anyway. So you simply cannot afford to decide not to do business with one of your customers just because they play dirty games when it comes to paying the bills.

4
lemmy.world

What's up with billionaires and not paying their bills?

88
lemmy.world

I think it’s more that people who tend to be billionaires tend to also be kinda scummy people.

117
lemmy.world

You dont make that kind of money being honest and empathetic. The most honest ppl I know that run businesses are barely paying themselves. There's a reason CEOs have higher than normal representation of psychopaths. It allows them to make the best decisions even if it means running the orphan killing machine 24/7.

57

I think you mean the "most profitable in the next 3 months on average" decision. It certainly isn't the best decision by any other metric.

24
sh.itjust.works

This is so much more true than I think most people believe.

My husband and I have a small engine business, and I took a free "community entrepreneur bootcamp" class through the local university this spring in the hope that we might learn something helpful. Instead, I learned fun things like leaning on your customers' fears as a marketing tactic (?? 😔🤦) and that the most prominent local accountant - brought in as an expert speaker by the university! - advises his clients to pay as little as possible as late as possible, and most appallingly, I'm not exaggerating, these are the actual words I heard this man say in front of a room full of people: "if one of your employees gets hurt at your business, it's better for you to stand on their neck until they stop breathing than to call for help, because it's so much easier and cheaper to settle a death claim then an injury." And he actually said that it sounds like he's joking but he's not, this is his understanding of the situation.

I genuinely want to see the best in everyone, and I have never before had the experience of fantasizing about a person's death while they were talking in front of me, and it was abhorrent and awful but also... Wtf? How do we even help someone who sees other people as expendable tools the way this person does?

What can we even do about people who not only don't want to live up to their agreements and commitments, but are just straight up out to fuck everyone else over? How do we help/fix that?

77
lemmy.world

It sounds very similar to when I was in seminary. They literally had classes on how to manipulate your audience. How to “use vocal patterns and body language to make yourself appear more sincere.”

People severely underestimate how many shitty people there are in this world (and even those who appear trustworthy) that would eat your firstborn to increase their net worth if it wasn’t illegal.

40
lemm.ee

I read an article years ago that explained why so many people get "religious" feelings at big revival-type events at Six Flags, Carowinds, etc, even if they're not particularly devout.

There's a thing called respiratory alkalosis (essentially hyperventilation) which makes you light-headed and confused. At it's really easy to trigger by making people stand up quickly, sing really hard, sit back down, stand up and cheer, etc.

30
Deestanreply
lemmy.world

That sounds interesting! Do you remember where you found it? I would love to read it.

3
lemm.ee

I'm back! I couldn't find the specific thing I read, but I found something probably better, an actual study published in Pubmed:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8871314/

Statistical analyses showed that the psychological disposition during the religious worship experience speeds up the physiological responses, which was indicated by increases in HR [hear rate] and RR [respiratory rate]. Hence, the activation hypothesis was accepted, and the pacification hypothesis was rejected.

3

Thanks! You made my day, my good lemming.

The conclusion fits what you said earlier, and it is easy to see how this is probably used cynically for these cult bro events:

The first analysis was an exploration of the physiological data, where it was seen that HR and RR were significantly correlated. The values of how strongly the participants were able to focus on God were strongly associated with the intensity of the experience as well as with the physiological variables

2

This sounds like an unfortunate consequence of the evolutionary pressure that has been allowed to take place within humanity for the past ~150 years. Profit is more important than anything else. So of course you'll have sociopathic "profit-above-all-else" mindsets among influential business figures.

16

From a business standpoint I would never want to hire that accountant. If he openly talks about employees that way and being a bad customers to others he would probably also be a very bad supplier.

7

If one of your employees gets hurt at your business, it's better for you to stand on their neck until they stop breathing than to call for help, because it's so much easier and cheaper to settle a death claim then an injury

That is because of regulations that pass the buck. If the US had public health care, and fines for negligence and OSHA violations, this wouldn't be true. Public health care would be the best thing for small businesses because it removes the health insurance benefits and workers' compensation issues completely. One big problem with the GOP is they are half right a lot, regulations are problematic, but not in the way they think. They take this half rightness and use it to do the wrong thing.

2
Triazyzereply
sh.itjust.works

You don't become a billionaire by being honest and spending your money.

23
clickyreply
lemm.ee

This is not a thoughtful reply. Hopefully Lemmy can do better. I dislike Elon more than most people, but just reading uninformed ragebait like this is exhausting. Yes his parents managed an emerald mine, no they weren’t that wealthy, and no it didn’t make a substantial impact on the source of his wealth.

Edit: most of his wealth originated from PayPal. Yes the money from the emerald mine helped him get to the US, and get an education. And it may have even helped him in his earlier career a bit. But it wasn’t like hundreds of millions of dollars that were just given to him like “here, go be rich!”.

So he basically had as much monetary benefit as an upper-middle-class kid in America. Not the same as the commenter I’m replying to who implied that Elon is only wealthy because of his parents wealth, which is just obviously wrong.

Just to be clear again, I think he’s a scumbag. BUT I don’t think we should blindly agree with something just because it fits our narrative… we should have intellectual curiosity for the truth. If anyone has any evidence that Elon received a substantial portion of his wealth from his parents’ emerald mine, please show that because I couldn’t find it.

Sources:

https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/11/17/elon-musk-emerald-mine/

https://people.com/human-interest/who-is-errol-musk-elon-musk-father/

-26
clickyreply
lemm.ee

? What’s your source that he received his billions of dollars from an emerald mine?

I don’t trust Elon as a source at all!

The parent comment literally said that he was a billionaire from inheriting an emerald mine. That’s patently untrue, and I’m curious why you disagree? Or what information you have that I’ve missed, looking at the sources I cited (which discuss the mine). I’m not doubting that the mine existed, or that it helped him get started at life.

Tesla is worth almost a trillion dollars. And Elon owns 23% of Tesla shares. So that’s ~200B right there alone. Then add in his shares of SpaceX. It’s clear that his wealth is directly tied to the shares he owns of Tesla skyrocketing, not from an emerald mine.

0

Yeah, I marked it with edit to give more information, but the point was the same, I’m so confused. Just genuinely trying to act in good faith here

0

In this case I think he doesn't understand cloud hosting at all, so he doesn't see the cost making sense. If you don't value something, the pricetag seems ridiculous and you won't even consider paying it. He will probably realize the mistake eventually.

17

with higher interest rates, it means they can't get cheap loans, these companies will go under if the rates keep rising

7
lemmy.world

I'm not going to claim I know what's happening, but I like the self-DDoSing explanation because it's even funnier

60

How else will Elon and team know that their migration was a success? IIRC, load testing is valid QA.

9
lemmy.world

It's ok guys, Elon told his engineers to just rewrite the stack, so all problems will go away!

51

Don't worry, I read lex friedman offered his services, must be even better than before.

13

It's probably the Tesla engineers he brought in who are doing that so it should go great. If you can build the best, self driving car in the world, building a little social network is easy peasy.

9
lemmy.world

I think it's probably a combination of self-DDOSing and not paying providers. Which any intelligent experienced dev could've told him, but they all got fired months ago.

46
Capt. Wolfreply
lemmy.world

When all this crap started, my guess was that he is some sort of captured asset that's using his position to sabotage the platform to hinder free speech. Initially, he was so strongly targeting any anti-trump/anti-republican assets that it seemed blatantly obvious, but my money is on Russia or China. China being the more obvious option, given they supply a lot of Tesla's materials.

That's all conjecture of course, he could just be an insane despot cutting his nose off to spite his face like Steve Huffman.

24

That's all conjecture of course, he could just be an insane despot cutting his nose off to spite his face like Steve Huffman.

I luled. Fuck that dweeb.

18

Seems to be utilizing the Trump business model, where the check is perpetually in the mail.

13
wwaxworkreply
lemmy.world

Someone owes some Russian & Middle Eastern Oligarchs a lot of money for his Twitter buying fiasco. Same as Trump did for his fiascos. The business model is just them doing what they were told to do.

6
psilocybinreply
discuss.tchncs.de

Lol, what?

He is one of the richest oligarchs in the world, its people like him that the whole system caters to.

Nobody is controlling him, he can do whatever the fuck he wants and he just happens to want a lot of dumb shit.

8

It's not like he just wrote a check. He took out loans and got other investors to sign on to fund the Twitter purchase. Even someone as wealthy as him has to answer to others.

4

He needs a complex system of propping up crap to maintain a certain measure of wealth. Sure, he could totally cash out and live extremely comfortably for the rest of his life, but it seems like ego is driving him to chase that ephemeral number and status.

1

When all this crap started, my guess was that he is some sort of captured asset that's using his position to sabotage the platform to hinder free speech. Initially, he was so strongly targeting any anti-trump/anti-republican assets that it seemed blatantly obvious, but my money is on Russia or China. China being the more obvious option, given they supply a lot of Tesla's materials.

That's all conjecture of course, he could just be an insane despot cutting his nose off to spite his face like Steve Huffman.

1
wwaxworkreply
lemmy.world

Someone owes some Russian & Middle Eastern Oligarchs a lot of money for his Twitter buying fiasco. Same as Trump did for his fiascos. The business model is just them doing what they were told to do.

-3
wwaxworkreply
lemmy.world

Someone owes some Russian & Middle Eastern Oligarchs a lot of money for his Twitter buying fiasco. Same as Trump did for his fiascos. The business model is just them doing what they were told to do. In this case take down social media.

-3

Is this the first use of being such a Redditor as an insult on Lemmy?

6

Are you actually so new to the internet you've never seen the same thing posted multiple times when there are server issues? You can find a dozen examples of this on practically every post right now.

And yes, Musk's main backes in his Twitter purchase are Saudi and Russian. You would be absolutely blind to think that has nothing to do with his actions. Twitter's content has bent further and further right, towards the general russo-slurping conservative side of things, ever since he took over.

Why do you think they got rid of the "state backed media" tag on RT and others?

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/10/28/saudis-kingdom-holding-company-to-maintain-twitter-stake https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musks-twitter-takeover-faces-backlash-over-saudi-financing-1755606 https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/technology/elon-musks-twitter-bid-leans-on-financier-linked-to-russian-tycoon/articleshow/92093745.cms?from=mdr

If you don't like those sources just search for others. This is public information, not subject to argument.

5
lemmy.world

At this point I have no idea if twitter dying is a planned thing or mismanagement. I made my profile my freshman year of high school and never logged back on. The only thing I'll miss is having a general place for quick updates on projects that I'm keeping an eye on. Guess it's time to fully utilized discord.

38
Strangianreply
lemmy.world

Yeah Elon is an idiot, but its hard to believe someone could burn Twitter to the ground this fast unintentionally

16

Especially with how much money was spent on acquiring it. If it is on purpose, he has unimaginable capital.

2
gressenreply
lemmy.world

Reddit is getting dismantled way faster than Twitter.

2
Strangianreply
lemmy.world

True, twitter has been a slow burn. Meanwhile, reddit gave themselves a countdown clock

6

I haven't been, has it truly been such a rapid burn? What is it like now? There is no way my curiosity will give them more traffic at this point, so any run down would be awesome.

1
lemmy.world

Especially with how much money was spent on acquiring it. If it is on purpose, he has unimaginable capital.

-1

Someone literally hacked my account and bot posting for cryptocurrency. I requested account recovery from Twitter and it all just went to hell after that. The process was bizarre. Repeated instructions for steps I already finished, the entire process starting from scratch, no replies.

So my account is out there now, doing who knows what. Congrats, it's a bot.

12

Someone literally hacked my account and bot posting for cryptocurrency. I requested account recovery from Twitter and it all just went to hell after that. The process was bizarre. Repeated instructions for steps I already finished, the entire process starting from scratch, no replies.

So my account is out there now, doing who knows what. Congrats, it's a bot.

4

I read that Elon is moving Twitter from Google Cloud over to Oracle Cloud with his buddy Larry Ellison. The rate limiting may be due to this migration.

37
lemmy.world

Twitter isn’t paying any bills. They have a contract with us as well and haven’t been paying anything for months.

37
gabevillreply
lemm.ee

What business do they have with you if you can say?

14

So do you still provide your service to Twitter?
Can you maybe tell a bit more?

2
lokereply

Are you still providing services to them?

1
lemmy.world

Image Transcription: News Article Screenshot:


[A screenshot of a section of an article by the news outlet "Engadget". Text reads as follows.]

More platform instability could be in Twitter's near future. In 2018, Twitter signed a $1 billion contract with Google to host some of its services on the company's Google Cloud servers. [Hyperlink begins] Platformer reports [Hyperlink ends] Twitter recently refused to pay the search giant ahead of the contract's [Highlighted in yellow] June 30th renewal date. [Highlighting ends] Twitter is reportedly rushing to move as many services off of Google's infrastructure before the contract expires, but the effort is "running behind schedule," putting some tools, including Smyte, a platform the company [Hyperlink begins] acquired in 2018 [Hyperlink ends] to bolster its moderation capabilities, in danger of going offline.


^I'm a human volunteer transcribing posts in a format compatible with screen readers, for blind and visually impaired users!^

36
Teriserreply
lemmy.fmhy.ml

You're doing important work! Just wanted to drop a small correction, the news outlet is actually called "engadget" Cheers!

7

Autocorrect I swear to God...

Sorry about that! I was doing some quickly this morning while on hold calling the doctor's office so I guess I didn't proofread it great. Thank you!

3

The corporate internet is killing itself, and we'll all be better for it.

3
lemmy.world

I see that a lot of people complain about reddit, twitter, and whatever mainstream website completely fuck the consumer, but fail to realize one crucial thing. The only time change happens in mob settings is when the pain of no change is greater than the pain of change. I applaud Elon, spez, and who ever else wishes to put there services behind their paywall whether it's an API or just simply viewing tweets. Anyone in the know knows that it's a crock of shit and anyone who isn't is annoyed to the point where change is preferable. The sooner people figure out posting information, entertainment, and other forms of media/knowledge to the benefit of a company is horrendous the better. Now we have the opportunity to get rid of the corporate greed and basically open-source peoples knowledge from around the globe. Although like with reddit, mob mentality poses a real threat to communities like this one, I trust that you all are normal and level headed individuals who can come to disagreements but still respect eachother (as corny as that sounds). I much prefer it over giving more information to companies who use it to profit off of my content, while I receive nothing.

*Edit: Thank you kind stranger for the reddit gold! Glad you spent real hard cash so I can have reddit premium and reddit coins! The lovely people at reddit will be spending your money sitting on a yacht eating grapes in one hand and lobster in the other. I'm sure they are real thankful too! :) *

30

What can i say ? I just don´t care anymore about twitter. Also any misfortune for space Karen is just a plus at this point

29
OasissisaOreply
lemmy.world

I especially enjoy that, no matter how much he drives the value down, he's always going to owe the full value of the loans.

15

Yeah and he used tesla actions as a collateral. So if he is not able to make money to pay for the loans, he will lose control of Tesla. I´m savoring every moment that things are blowing up in his face. After this venture fails, he will probably still be rich, but surely not a billionaire anymore and i will vicariously enjoy his fall from billionaire extraordinaire to just a legacy common stock millionaire.

12
lemmy.fbxl.net

First, watching what's going on with Twitter is like you're in a roundabout and there's a giant car crash right in the middle of the roundabout, and all you need to do is just keep on going around and around and you keep keep on watching it as it keeps getting worse. Lmfao

On the other hand, I can totally understand why he's batting at hornet's nests. He's got to find a way to make that crappy investment somehow profitable. Yeah, you can do whatever you want with unlimited resources, but he's dealing with multiple new realities where Twitter actually needs to figure out how to run as a business instead of as a political charity.

25
SJ_Zeroreply
lemmy.fbxl.net

Not really. It might have had a profitable quarter or a profitable year now and again, but overall it was a highly unprofitable company almost every year it was public. That was before the current moment where ad rates have collapsed on every platform which is why many other companies which depend on advertising have been suffering at the same time.

Besides Twitter, a lot of ad reliant businesses are in big trouble this year.

1

Sounds like you're making assumptions. And I'm telling you that it was profitable before purchase. It doesn't matter where it would be today or where they were before being profitable because both of those things aren't relevant.

1
niktemadurreply
kbin.social

find a way to make that crappy investment somehow profitable

With this sudden, reckless implementation of shit, alienating more and more of the very user base that gives the business its' value?

He's created a cascade effect that didn't need to turn into an avalanche, at this point he's just piling one half-baked idea on top of another, and another, and another.
Unless the petty goal is to turn that place into a toxic right-wing playground, which in turn... what does he gain from that, exactly, in case it works out and has a societal/electoral effect? Lower taxes and less oversight, so he can do as he pleases?

Occam's Razor suggests his mind is broken by stress, willful lack of sleep and social media addiction - the attention of millions of both haters and worshippers - incompetently "getting high on his own supply" like Tony Montana, and went into this convinced his shit doesn't stink. And now flailing at the lack of success and here comes A.I. with its' scrapers.

3

You'll never hear me disagreeing with the concept that Elon Musk is a guy with big problems.

Just look at the variety of broken promises at all his companies. The guy is a snake oil salesman, and twitter is no different.

He happened to win on the stock market roulette wheel, but his barely profitable car company didn't have to be the thing that pulls in all the extra liquidity in the system -- it could have just as easily been something completely different.

Worst part is that Twitter won't even be a toxic right-wing playground, because one of the patented Elon Musk broken promises he made was that twitter would become a free speech haven and it didn't really. People are still getting banned regularly for non-illegal speech.

Algorithm driven social media seems to be scrambling the brains of the elites just as much as they scramble the brains of regular people.

1
lemmy.world

this is old information being recycled to spread misinformed? they renewed their hosting with google several weeks ago.

21
lemmy.world

I don't know what will happen with Twitter. Maybe it succeeds, maybe it fails, maybe it just keeps humming along in mediocrity. But what I do know is that wherever it ends up, there was surely a much simpler way to get there.

21

Well he did try pulling out the cables going into the server clusters. Maybe he got tired and bored before he could pull them all out

2
lemmy.world

Twitter was an important unifying communications tool during the Arab Spring. The Arab spring was a threat to biz as usual in places like Saudi Arabia. The second largest investor in Twitter is Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia killed and dismembered a journalist from the US, more or less in plain sight. Elon is now killing and dismembering Twitter in plain sight to limit its power as a unifying tool that stands as a demonstrable, active threat to capitalism and oligarchs around the world.

Billionaires do favors for other billionaires. It's part of why spez is trying to tank Reddit. Remember how dangerous Reddit was to capitalism's status quo around the time of GME/Robinhood/Antiwork recently.

The specific moment we're in right now is meant to shatter consolidated organizing power on Reddit as we splinter into several smaller alternative platforms (or for some, disconnect entirely). Not saying we shouldn't be in Lemmy, but calling out the larger reality of the moment.

Billionaires do favors for other billionaires.

20

The more I've been watching this whole thing play out, the more I'm inclined to believe that something like this is possible.

Unfortunately for these dipshits masquerading as geniuses, the genie is out of the bottle, and there's no way he's getting corked back in. The internet is really all we need, and in the event of the mass coordination required to organize a protest or anything of the sort, the first best option will win. Whether that's Signal, or Lemmy, or Facebook, or whatever. Necessity is the mother of invention and the amount of resources that a pissed off population has will always win out in the long-term. Hell, we'll pull a fucking sneaker net if we really have to.

Reddit has already been compromised for a few years now anyways. I noticed when they started banning people for not subscribing to group think or the more recent examples of permabanning users for anti-Russian rhetoric. There are only a few vestiges of Aaron's original dream of Reddit, found in places like Antiwork or WSB, but they're a drop in a bucket full of site-wide dogshit.

10
Myroreply
lemm.ee

That's a bit too much conspiracy for my taste, but for sure, billionaires don't do anything for our good.

10

Exactly. Billionairs look out for themselves first and foremost. They try to maximise their profit.

Musk wants to push more people to pay for verified. The reddit board (not only Spez) wants people to download their app to make it seem like their growing right before their IPO, while simultaneously forcing more ad views. Probably downloading the app also lets them track a lot of extra data about you as well.

No conspiracy needed to explain all this.

6

The new ceo restarted the payment supposedly, so if it is because of Google, that would mean they didn't renew which isn't on Elon for failing to pay.... unless his petulant refusal to pay when he was in charge made them refuse to renew.

17
aussie.zone

Classic Elon playbook. Make wild statement in public to cover for a wild business decision which is the real result. "HAHA oh yea Twitter is down cuz of these limits I put in place, not the fact that one of our core cloud providers shut us off."

16
toasteecupreply
lemmy.world

There was a post earlier today, but the post limit implementation legitimately did take down Twitter.

In short, twitter ddosed it's self by making 10 calls to its self every couple of time intervals (a minute or less) which would fail, refresh the UI and kick off even more self requests.

21
ironcrotchreply
aussie.zone

Ah the classic deploy to prod right before the weekend WCGW

19

But it NEEDS to go out before the end of the quarter, there's no way around it! /s

6

"All the woke posts are causing network disruptions because their cancel culture leaks into the routers."

3
lemmy.dbzer0.com

Sometimes, I wonder if Elon is really smart? Or he's just super dumb and lucky? The things he said and did are plain weird. I have a feeling Twitter will be going down along with Reddit. Funny thing is, I've never had a Twitter account to start with.

13
wwaxworkreply
lemmy.world

He was born rich, bought businesses where other people had done all the heavy thinking already and marketed himself well. Like Trump is a poor persons idea of a rich man, Elon is a dumb person's idea of a smart person.

33

Wow, thats...thats right...
I like the line of thinking there:

Jordan Peterson is the insane person idea of a sane person.

Alex Jones is the grifter person ideia of a stand up bussines person.

Please continue to add.

13

After these last nine months, it's become brutally and very publicly clear that this dude was lucky to be born rich. Doesn't seem like it was that long ago that the world thought he was a visionary, but oh well, the truth had to come out eventually.

21
Chadsmoreply
lemmy.world

Yeah I don’t think he’s really terribly intelligent. I do think that he’s a good ideas person perhaps , but he’s also arrogant and lacks the people around him to tell him NO when he has a bad one.

To open the 2013 WWDC Apple said "there are a thousand no's for every yes".’

We lost Steve Jobs and got to keep Musk , doesn’t seem terribly fair lol.

5
9point6reply
lemmy.world

Steve Jobs wasn't all that great either when you read into him

17

Jobs was an asshole to his colleagues and he made grave mistakes about how to treat his own cancer which led to his death.

But with that being said, he helped make Apple, left Apple to make NeXTSTEP, then when Apple was in the dumps they re-hired him, at which point he turned the ship around and put Apple onto the path to becoming the hegemon it is today. Apple’s well-being appears to have had a clear response to Jobs’s presence. So while he may have been an asshole, but he was at least a functional asshole who got stuff done professionally.

That’s pretty much the exact opposite of what Elon is doing with Twitter.

3

Lucky enough to have been born rich. He's had a lot of talented people working under him but he, himself, is not that smart and given the past several years, is seeming rather stupid.

3
Chadsmoreply
lemmy.world

Yeah I don’t think he’s really terribly intelligent. I do think that he’s a good ideas person perhaps , but he’s also arrogant and lacks the people around him to tell him NO when he has a bad one.

To open the 2013 WWDC Apple said "there are a thousand no's for every yes".’

We lost Steve Jobs and got to keep Musk , doesn’t seem terribly fair lol.

0
Chadsmoreply
lemmy.world

To be fair I said ‘perhaps’.

Edit ; I think the Hyperloop is a pretty good idea , the above ground one. And the underground stuff is good too. He just seems to be awful at execution.

-3

I used to work in the railways.

Hyperloop is a stupid idea that doesn't solve any real problems.

8

hyperloop is so old that in 1829 there was already people poking fun at the concept

4

I used to work in the railways.

Hyperloop is a stupid idea that doesn't solve any real problems.

3
lemmy.world

This is hilarious. Elon musk has shown he's a moron. He's a serial lier. Elon Musk has once again proven himself to be a foolish and dishonest individual.

13
makabayanreply
lemmy.world

and yet there are people who vehemently defend him. they scare me tbh, makes one wonder if they are paid shills or just voluntary ass-kissers.

5
lemmy.world

Well, something like 82% of people in Russia support Putin. A bunch of other countries, like China, which had 75% of people polled stating that the Russia/Ukraine conflict was good for China. Bush 2 had overwhelming support during the early-mid 2000s. Hitler still has fanatics and followers. There will always be a segment of the population willing to straight up murder others, in order to make their own lives more comfortable, no matter how misguided their ideology is.

4
lemmy.world

A bunch of other countries, like China, which had 75% of people polled stating that the Russia/Ukraine conflict was good for China.

It kinda is in some ways because it's basically left China as Russia's only option for a lot of import/export, so China gets a ton of leverage in determining prices. It's also solidifying China as a regional hegemon and opens up a lot of opportunities for China diplomatically.

I wouldn't go as far as to say the conflict is good, but there are benefits and it's not as simple as "people are brainwashed"

2
lemmy.world

Okay then, when surveyed in 2022, 40% of Chinese residents polled said that they support the Russian invasion, and another 30% said the actions weren't necessarily right, but should be considered. Sounds pretty fucking brainwashed to me.

1

Count me in that 30%

Russia's invasion was wrong, but it goes back to the Euromaiden government upheaval and that should be considered. Russia isn't just a crazy warband of orcs that wanted to restart the Tsar's empire for no reason. What's brainwashed about that?

-2
lemmy.world

i wonder if we will end using personal webpages with FOSS/affordable domains and integration to forums and video platforms, just to avoid some crazy CEO screwing our content again.

i think social media was good, but we gave the CEOs too much power over our content and accounts.

so... we went from "social media is where society creates media" to "social media is where tech CEO's control and keep society's media hostage".

13
cley_fayereply
lemmy.world

i wonder if we will end using personal webpages with FOSS/affordable domains and integration to forums and video platforms, just to avoid some crazy CEO screwing our content again.

That's what we had before. And it never stopped to exist, it just dwindled out for convenience.

  • no more personal website but just a "facebook page", for convenience
  • no integration between sites, just a few huge ones, for convenience
  • no customisation and personal expression but large, uniformised experience, for convenience
  • no small hosting and individual presence online, just a few massive (corporate) infrastructures graciously given to us, for convenience
  • no control over policies and content, just be happy with what our generous overlord allows us to do, for convenience

The "fediverse" is a step in the good direction, but as long as the general user don't care, these huge services will keep being the "main" internet for the forseeable future. Even abusing the userbase and getting batshit crazy with rules and restrictions isn't stopping them.

Meanwhile, some of us are happy on out littler corner of the internet, using RSS to see what's new on individual websites, and depending on services that are either sanely hosted or even self-hosted and interoperable. But that's not for everyone.

11

thank you for your reply. yes, i agree with your comment.

it's like internet freedom is a forever refugee in constant diaspora, as it is always forced to exile itself from the places conquered by economic and sociopolitic warmongers who only seek profit and population control.

all the time, over and over. one jump every few years.

but we will make it! ^^

3
lemmy.world

I mean it’s all speculation at this point. The guy isn’t honest and wouldn’t admit he brought down the whole site due to his hubris.

17

I think he can't keep proper track of reality at a level where things don't break. This is one of those "sleep machismo" idiots who hasn't had a proper, healthy sleep in years and years. With the stresses he has brought on himself, plus being a willful lightning rod addicted to the attention of millions of people - both the haters and worshippers - his mind is in some sort of late-stage erosion.

What a wasted opportunity of a man. What an embarrassment.

1

For the average user maybe, but for a client as big as Twitter they're probably going to want to take a more hands-on/careful approach, so whatever's in the contract would probably supersede their standard terms.

18

To be fair, Google Cloud is an overpriced and unreliable dumpster fire of a service. I'm surprised Twitter was using them at all. Although, I guess when you're paying billions of dollars, the service you get is different.

3

Doesn't change the fact that if you agree to pay someone for their service, you must pay someone for their service. I guess being a deadbeat is different when you're purportedly worth billions of dollars.

8

At this point I have no idea if twitter dying is a planned thing or mismanagement. I made my profile my freshman year of high school and never logged back on. The only thing I'll miss is having a general place for quick updates on projects that I'm keeping an eye on. Guess it's time to fully utilized discord.

-2
lemmy.nz

How is this "news" relevant to technology. Seems like complete speculation.

-26
hitmyspotreply
lemmy.world

It's speculation, but still relevant to technology. You'll find speculation in most news sources about technologym, otherwise it's just press releases. How large platforms develop is technology news.

In Musk's case, he's divisive so people are more likely to share or comment on posts about him. There's also a large element of schadenfreude.

If you don't think it should be here, downvote away. However, your low effort comment becomes more virtual trash than the post it intends to berate. Instead, you could post better content too.

29
Fizzreply
lemmy.nz

If I see a post as bullshit as this I would expect the comment section to call it out. The fact that most people here are blindly taking it as fact is more of a show of virtual trash. There's no good discussion here only "ha knew elon was driving this platform into the ground"

-14

And just what briliant insights do you think you're bringing to yhe table here, exactly?

8
lemmy.world

Ahh there’s that rudeness I was missing from Reddit. Everyone being so nice was starting to feel twilight zone-y

91

Meh, we have an opportunity to set a new tone and culture. Just power through the noise. I thoroughly enjoyed your post. Cheers!

15
XINreply

To be fair most of us are pretty new.

4

Blocking them is easy though.

If we block all the tools, they can all howl into a void. Then their online world will be just like their real world.

2

the people who downvote for no apparent reason with no comment have showed up recently, too

-5
lemmy.world

Haven't there been multiple reports of Musk refusing to pay a bunch of shit? Rent, that guy that was disabled and Musk explicitly fired him for it and then had to pay him millions per his contract, oracle for services.

22

Yes, he's refused to pay rent on Twitter HQ. Also got kicked out of their (empty) office in Boulder for not paying the rent.

9