Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Elon’s Twitter is an “Inverse Startup””.
Should we talk about the changes to Twitter, blue, slash Legacy, verification sure I don’t even know what they are. I was kind of eloned out for a long time there, but this is a pretty big change uh. This is this is like he’s reached the end game. Now of destroying the platform, so where is this um Twitter Legacy? Verification will be sun setting tomorrow? This does not appear to be an April Fool’s joke. Very amazingly timed, though yeah corporations and organizations that are looking to retain their verified status will have to pay a thousand dollars a month for their main account plus fifty dollars a month for any additional accounts. So that would be any users all the user accounts are 50 bucks corporations and organizations; okay, okay, so a thousand dollars a month for the parent company and then like each YouTube channel for us and, for example, would be 50 bucks um. I will not be paying that yeah screw that noise.
In a reply to William Shatner Elon Musk said that the move to Sunset Legacy – verification was about fairness in unrelated news, Twitter’s top 500 advertisers and its top 10 000 most followed accounts will be exempt from the one thousand dollar a month fee. Okay, are we completely done now? Are we completely done pretending that any of this was about Free Speech, anything or Public Square? Anything? What is this reduction do with it? I mean yeah uh, okay, what is this cool verification do check my point, but more on April 15th. Twitter’S for you page will only contain tweets from accounts that the user follows directly and accounts that are subscribed to Twitter, blue. So, okay, with the check mark, as promised by musk Twitter, recently made a portion of its code public, including its recommendation algorithm. The for you page currently contains an average of a 50 50 mix of accounts that the user directly follows and those that they do not. So you may also like that sort of thing.
It also contains a list of notable users called Power users, as well as the option to increase the visibility of these users at will. From the back end, the algorithm also notes whether a tweet was created by a power user and what their political affiliation is. If they are a public figure or a political figure. Excuse me, there is a separate flag for if the author of the Tweet is Elon Musk, okay. So as far as my understanding goes, they open source the Twitter algorithm, and I saw screenshots of this and I literally thought it was a joke what okay yeah. So I I saw this, it said: Democrat Republican uh power, user and Elon Musk. Those were the four different like user Flags. I 100 thought it was a joke really musk states that he was not previously aware of the labels and that it doesn’t make sense to divide users on the basis of political allegiance. A Twitter engineer has said that they were used purely for metrics.
In a memo to employees, musk claimed that Twitter is now worth 20 billion dollars and that Twitter can be thought of as an inverse startup, but that he sees a clear but difficult path to a future valuation of more than 250 billion. Our discussion question is: is this a purposeful attempt to make the Twitter user experience more hostile? I can’t I could kind of see it. I can kind of see it because obviously he needs a way out of this thing like this is awful and he needs to spend his time running SpaceX and Tesla, and is he still spending like all his time, whatever it seems to be not zero and the Correct amount of time for Elon Musk to spend managing Twitter is from zero.
However, he has third-party investors that help to make this acquisition if he doesn’t at least in good faith over some period of time, that we would have no way of knowing um make some kind of arguably Earnest effort to turn this thing around he’s not only going To be on the hook for any kind of operating costs that he’s on the hook for now, but he could be on the hook for paying back those investors. We have no idea what the terms of those deals were yeah, so he must be. It seems maybe again, though, maybe I’m attributing 4D chess moves to someone who I mean. Why did you buy this thing, yeah um, so so it could be that these legitimately are attempts to make the user experience more hostile and worse so that hostile in this situation um? Is it exactly making the user experience hostile? Well, it’s hostile to anyone who’s trying to grow on the platform.
I would make that argument. If you can’t get featured on the for you page, I think that it makes a clear divide between the Haves and the have-nots yeah. So will this would this? I guess I have a lot of questions here like would this still show like if you, if, okay, I won’t put it on you I’ll put it on me, say uh. This is never gon na happen say I was a paid subscriber to Twitter, whatever paid verification thing yeah Twitter, so my stuff can show up in the verified page yeah.
If I like your Tweet and you’re, not with that interaction show up. No because for you is tweets, oh it’s just tweets yeah not likes from people that you follow: okay, yeah yeah. What page shows that I think that’s just the notification feed. I can’t remember.
I I’ve hardly used it lately. I go on as little as possible. I do there’s a few people like industry, people that I DM on Twitter. That’S our main method of communication, so I open the app fairly often, but I try not to linger um yeah.
I don’t know this is weird he mentioned previously about like Free Speech. Absolutism for the Town Square, but no free. What did he call it? No free like lunch. No, I don’t know uh that we won’t like broadcast your voice for free, basically yeah. So then it’s not a town. You can like whisper in the corner of the Town Square yeah, which is exactly what he claimed was a problem before suppression of particularly yeah anyway. This is never gon na be worth 250 billion dollars. How like? How? How that’s one of my arguments that I’ve, I believe I’ve been rather consistent about with Twitter, is just like: it’s never gon na make money.
Well, I think he has to say this, though no I I hear you if he doesn’t say this then, but just like how do you, how do you fall for that and, like maybe in let’s say, 10 years from now, someone brings this up and Twitter’s worth A quarter billion dollars and I look like an idiot but like what are you talking about? How how I don’t I don’t get it? You bought a garbage fire and it’s still a garbage fire. I don’t know um I mean that’s the thing about a garbage. Fire, though, is eventually either.
Eventually, all the garbage and all the fire are gone. It can’t burn forever. I feel like all the people like just continuing to use it, no matter what is adding the fuel.
I I’m I’m quite surprised at the amount of people that are still on the platform, but I think for a lot of people. It’S like basically Irreplaceable, but they’re not it’s Irreplaceable, but they are 100, not willing to pay for it, which is a very interesting setup yeah. They will not stop using it, but they also will not pay for it.
Yeah. It’S the internet, yeah yeah, yeah! That’S everything! Yeah yeah, like we like we’ve, we’ve talked a lot about about the. Could there be a paradigm shift between an ad supported internet and a paid internet and we’ve basically gone like no it’ll, never happen because people are, they don’t want ads, but they accept them because they are utterly unwilling to pay for services.
I have not experienced this. We’Re speaking broadly, obviously, yeah yeah yeah, of course, someone in China stop float plane, chat screaming because they’re an example of the other side. But it’s not it’s not most people um. I I have not personally experienced this, so I can’t verify it’s.
It’S truth and images are mean literally nothing for verification these days, but someone showed me a screenshot of apparently Bing chat, inserting an ad into a conversation that they had with it. They asked it about buying a certain product and they’re like what about this one. It has a good affiliate program yeah. This is exactly why I was saying I was very happy that, like the the chat GPT thing or I was hoping that they went in the direction of a subscription and then I’m sure, I’m very happy that they did uh is because yeah, like everything you have To find, like other indirect ways of monetization, because no one’s going to pay for stuff bruh crazy.
Well, I hated Twitter before and it sounds like it’s going to be even less useful, yeah opinion. The biggest thing that gets hurt here is another point that he used to make, which was about which is about the proliferation of news from like individuals, because someone an individual will like witness something, and then they are the first point of Truth. For this news thing, that’s going on um! That’S now gon na go nowhere unless they subscribe to Twitter, blue yeah in the Town Square, which I mean it almost doesn’t matter how much it costs it’s in USD I’m assuming so there’s going to be places in the world where it’s just not feasible to purchase. For a huge percentage of people, I have no idea they may have Regional pricing.
I just I I sort of don’t care at this point. This is not going to work. This is this is going to disappear. It’S also not going to make up a 250 billion dollars. I said a quarter billion dollars before quarter trillion dollars. Sorry, yeah 250 billion dollars is super deduper, not happening laughs.
Oh boy, .