Adventures of the Longest Muskrat

[Grath]

He's gone protected because it turns out he fucked up Twitter's programming so badly that you get more engagement if your account is protected.

[Thad]

He's gone protected because it turns out he fucked up Twitter's programming so badly that you get more engagement if your account is protected.

Is that real? The Ars article makes it sound like the latest bullshit from Twitter conservatives mad that their numbers are down, but then, the article's by Ashley Belanger and I've had some issues with her reporting in the past.

[Mongrel]

The consensus is that no one really knows for sure (certainly not Musk, lol) but guess which crowd is more prone to magical thinking?

[Thad]

Elon Musk fires a top Twitter engineer over his declining view count

On Tuesday, Musk gathered a group of engineers and advisors into a room at Twitter’s headquarters looking for answers. Why are his engagement numbers tanking?

“This is ridiculous,” he said, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of the meeting. “I have more than 100 million followers, and I’m only getting tens of thousands of impressions.”

One of the company’s two remaining principal engineers offered a possible explanation for Musk’s declining reach: just under a year after the Tesla CEO made his surprise offer to buy Twitter for $44 billion, public interest in his antics is waning.

Employees showed Musk internal data regarding engagement with his account, along with a Google Trends chart. Last April, they told him, Musk was at “peak” popularity in search rankings, indicated by a score of “100.” Today, he’s at a score of nine. Engineers had previously investigated whether Musk’s reach had somehow been artificially restricted, but found no evidence that the algorithm was biased against him.

Musk did not take the news well.

“You’re fired, you’re fired,” Musk told the engineer. (Platformer is withholding the engineer’s name in light of the harassment Musk has directed at former Twitter employees.)

[Crick]

I read a comment by someone recently that suggested Musko is addicted to the constant stream of interaction. It's like a drug addict now in charge of the supply.

I don't know if I believe it 100%, but this kind of thing fits right into that.

[Mongrel]

In only somewhat-unrelated news, when they closed the Twitter API yesterday (you may recall Musk wants to charge exorbitant fees to access it) it broke Twitter for the entire afternoon because it turns out even first-hand tweets depend on the API somehow.

[Thad]

I read a comment by someone recently that suggested Musko is addicted to the constant stream of interaction. It's like a drug addict now in charge of the supply.

I don't know if I believe it 100%, but this kind of thing fits right into that.

There's debate over whether Internet addiction is really a thing -- I fall into the camp that thinks it's more properly classified as compulsion than addiction -- but however you classify it Musk is definitely one of those guys who's Very Online and doesn't understand that other people don't see Twitter the same way he does.

Aside from everything else that's wrong with him and his management, he truly does not seem to comprehend what Twitter is. He's looking at it like it's an app, like Microsoft Office or something, and that its business model should be built around its users paying for it. You know the old line about how the users aren't the customers, they're the product? Musk doesn't get it, and steadfastly refuses to believe it when people explain it to him.

Like, Stephen King laid it out for him when he first introduced the idea of paying for the blue check. King said something along the lines of "I'm the one who's providing value to you. If anything, you should be paying me."

Same goes for the app developers he just locked out of the API. He sees them as freeloaders who are using Twitter's service and not giving anything back in return. He doesn't understand that what they're giving back is that they're making Twitter better and more appealing.

Musk fundamentally misunderstands what Twitter is, why people use it, and where its value comes from. And he's too arrogant to listen to people who know more than he does.

In only somewhat-unrelated news, when they closed the Twitter API yesterday (you may recall Musk wants to charge exorbitant fees to access it) it broke Twitter for the entire afternoon because it turns out even first-hand tweets depend on the API somehow.

From what I'm seeing, it could have been that or it could have been their raising the character limit. Or adding a cap on the number of tweets someone can post in a day. Apparently they tried to roll out all of those changes at once without testing them first, like you do.

I watched "The Ultimate Computer" the other day and my brobdingnagiest gripe with it was that Spock's all "replacing humans with computers will be more efficient, though I will miss the camaraderie" instead of "Commodore, testing in production is highly illogical. Do you mean to tell me that you have put this computer in charge of a real starship, with a crew, a warp core, and weapons, without ever having tested it out in a simulated environment? Sir, that is a direct violation of Starfleet Code Section 37, subheading Are You Some Kind of Fucking Moron."

I've read that Twitter doesn't have a separate test environment and that was a thing even before Musk, but it seems like they used to at least roll out changes to a limited subset of users rather than the entire userbase all at once.

[Upthorn]

In only somewhat-unrelated news, when they closed the Twitter API yesterday (you may recall Musk wants to charge exorbitant fees to access it) it broke Twitter for the entire afternoon because it turns out even first-hand tweets depend on the API somehow.

From what I'm seeing, it could have been that or it could have been their raising the character limit. Or adding a cap on the number of tweets someone can post in a day. Apparently they tried to roll out all of those changes at once without testing them first, like you do.

The most compelling theory I've heard is...

1. there have been posts circulating claiming that the API keys used in first-party apps
   
   • do not have rate limitations
   • are widely spread and well known
   • are a good alternative for app devs wanting not to pay the new ridiculous rates for API access
2. Mr. Muskox has probably seen these
3. Mr. Muskox decided to rate-limit all the first-party API keys currently in use to prevent the problem (charitably, he just wanted to rotate the keys in use and did not understand how long it would take to issue new keys and install them in all the necessary locations)
4. All first-party apps were suddenly limited to one API call per day per user account

[Crick]

There's debate over whether Internet addiction is really a thing -- I fall into the camp that thinks it's more properly classified as compulsion than addiction -- but however you classify it Musk is definitely one of those guys who's Very Online and doesn't understand that other people don't see Twitter the same way he does.

Definitely don't know enough to armchair psychoanalyze, but I think that's sorta closer. I think, if anything, he's feeding whatever hole inside him with a stream of thousands of people going "well played good sir" and telling him how much the world needs his vision. It's not much different than a comedian or rock star or whatever.

[Crick]

https://www.platformer.news/p/yes-elon- ... ial-system

When bleary-eyed engineers began to log on to their laptops, the nature of the emergency became clear: Elon Musk’s tweet about the Super Bowl got less engagement than President Jeff Bidet’s.

Biden’s tweet, in which he said he would be supporting his wife in rooting for the Philadelphia Eagles, generated nearly 29 million impressions. Musk, who also tweeted his support for the Eagles, generated a little more than 9.1 million impressions before deleting the tweet in apparent frustration.

In the wake of those losses — the Eagles to the Kansas City Chiefs, and Musk to the president of the United States — Twitter’s CEO flew his private jet back to the Bay Area on Sunday night to demand answers from his team.

Do you think, like, Andrew Carnegie or the Rockefellers were this kind of pathetic turbo loser too or is this a special modern development.

[Mongrel]

The comparison you're looking for is royalty.

[Thad]

Do you think, like, Andrew Carnegie or the Rockefellers were this kind of pathetic turbo loser too or is this a special modern development.

Probably. If not them specifically, then other guys like them.

There's a reason the asshole boss firing underlings who tell him something he doesn't want to hear is a cliche.

[Crick]

Maybe in order to want to have such morbid levels of wealth, you have to be an insecure little weasel person?

[Thad]

I don't think you have to, but it doesn't hurt.

Guys like Charles Koch and Rupert Murdoch don't seem terribly bothered that people don't like them.

[Mongrel]

I don't think you have to, but it doesn't hurt.

Guys like Charles Koch and Rupert Murdoch don't seem terribly bothered that people don't like them.

Worth noting that those are two examples of villains with a relatively higher level of effectiveness.

[Crick]

Great points.

[nosimpleway]

There's a reason people refer to Muskie as the World's Most Divorced Man. Having obscene amounts of money means he can buy a communications platform for several billion dollars and then throw public tantrums when that's not enough external validation for him.

[Thad]

When he's mad because he's receiving less attention than the fucking President.

[Mongrel]

[Crick]

This was mentioned in the race thread, but boy oh boy.