Not sure what to make of Elon Musk’s interview yesterday. It’s so easy to say he’s unhinged that I’m questioning whether I should dig deeper. Ultimately my core belief about huge social networks hasn’t changed in years: too much centralized power opens the door for user-hostile, dev-hostile leaders.
@manton I think a platform without ad revenue is a good start. So, good on him for starting that process 😜😅
@manton I like to go by what Maya Angelou once said, “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.”
@manton If he looks unhinged, acts unhinged and says unhinged things maybe the simplest explanation is he is... unhinged?
@manton Here's a question I've pondered that I imagine you've pondered as well: is Micro.blog cloneable (theoretically)? Like, could there or should there be a "developers.micro.blog" for a specific sub-community, and a "sports.micro.blog" for another interest group? Something kind of mastodon-y, I guess?
@manton Not disagreeing with you (but...) Observation: centrality = core principle of corporate commercial development — which is central to market capitalism, much of Silicon Valley, VCs, etc.
This wld not be a panacea, but I think that every company with even a glimmer of interest in going public/growing significant market share/etc. (not sure of all qualifying parameters but many, many companies) should have **independent** C-Suite level Office of #ChiefEthicist. Details TBD.
cc: @tchambers
@manton My feeling on the matter is that when someone is behaving like an abusive jerk I don’t need to concern myself with whether there are some underlying causes unless (1)I’m family that can pressure them into getting help or (b) on a jury and might send them to jail.
EM doesn’t qualify under either so he just gets filed under avoid & don’t support.
@darby3 Not yet, but yes, eventually. We need to release more of the platform as open source, so that other people can run with it. I've thought specifically about the "sports" community too... Twitter was good at that and it's not clear there will be a single platform that takes over those communities.
@manton His biography puts a lot of this in context. He's pushed himself so far he can't hold it together, and he just doesn't feel empathy.
@manton he's not unhinged. he's just a rich idiot. he's got himself into a situation that is way over his head and he keeps showing everyone that's the case. Any normal intelligent person would know if you're the most famous visible person for a company or social media platform that you don't say controversial things. He's too stupid to do that. And he's too right wing and reactionary to have any palatable socially acceptable opinions so he's going to keep repeating this mistake
@manton I think he's one of those people that's always been privileged so he's never encountered real consequences to his inadequacy so he doesn't think his bad behaviour matters, and ultimately it doesn't really. Even if he tanks Twitter he's still a rich man who owns a bunch of companies. He doesn't care about the damage he does. Why would he? I think he does also lack empathy but I saw someone on here yesterday explaining wealth creates effect in people isolated from other people's suffering
@manton "what this advertising boycott is going to do is it’s going to kill the company"
Isn't that the *point* of a boycott? Either change or kill the company. In a profit-based company, it makes it his own fault for ignoring the desires of their source of revenue if the company dies (though it's already pretty clear he's killing the company).
@manton He is fixated on this “everything app” idea where he won’t really need advertisers if he’s getting a cut of purchases, money transfers, and subscriptions. I think part of him has the idea that the faster Old Twitter dies, the more urgency there is on the staff to create the everything app. But another part of him knows he needs cash flow to fund that development effort, so you get this weird back and forth.
@manton I don’t think you need to dig deeper, and I don’t think he’s unhinged: he’s just *unfiltered.*
