He starts by saying that this is what fashionable progressives think:
According to bien pensant opinion, the acquisition has been a catastrophe. A disaster for the social media network, which has lost both revenue and users; for the finances of everyone backing the deal; and for Musk’s personal reputation as the greatest industrialist of the post-industrial era.
But he never clarifies whether their opinion is valid. In fact he says that while the progressive types are constantly threatening to quit the platform, they never really do. That would suggest they are not correct in their view that Twitter has lost users.
I can’t comment on revenue or the financial health of the company but I would certainly disagree that Musk’s reputation is damaged. He seems to be wildly popular and influential if we judge this by the column inches devoted to him (including these).
Matt, I’m sorry I couldn’t provide the moral clarity you wanted in 600 words. But that might because the real picture is much more complex than the Anti Musk activists would like us to think, and sometimes you have to examine the evidence. I think Twitter has got much more interesting, but less reliable, and some of the decisions were objectively stupid. (No one says “X”).
Recall that Musk was compelled to complete the acquisition of Twitter by a Delaware court, having concluded he didn’t really want to buy it.
He has since found it much more difficult to operate in an environment dominated by NGOs which I think he underestimated. Posturing as an anti-woke warrior was relatively easy.
Thanks for replying Andrew (I love it when authors engage below-the-line).
I wasn’t looking for moral clarity at all, I just couldn’t fathom your argument.
He has since found it much more difficult to operate in an environment dominated by NGOs which I think he underestimated. Posturing as an anti-woke warrior was relatively easy.
I am sure you are right about this but I cannot see the evidence of it in the article. You say that bien pensant opinion predicted catastrophe but has it actually arrived? Have revenues tanked? Have users deserted the platform? Has Musk’s reputation taken a hit?
As far as I can see – and I don’t use Twitter or any social media and in fact don’t really read or watch any news expect for UnHerd and the Spectator – Musk seems to be as influential as ever and everyone who claims to have left Twitter never seems to do so in reality. I know Twitter, like GB News and others, struggles to get advertisers due to activist campaigns but is the company really in trouble?
As I said above, I sometimes feel that active Twitterers don’t realise that normal people haven’t even heard some of the things they take to be common knowledge. In this case, I feel I might be missing some vital information to make sense of the story.
We can’t really tell what revenue and usage are today, because Musk took Twitter (oops, X) private and he isn’t obliged to report it publically any more.
You are onto something, though. I wanted to include this detail, but cut it to make room. The active user number is the last reported public data.
Twitter, with 237.8 million active users, was less popular than the most subscribed YouTube channel, operated by Super Cassettes Industries Private Limited (better known as T-Series), is today, and slightly ahead of the stuntman Mr Beast, with 204 million YouTube subscribers. You don’t hear much of either.
Fair enough – though ‘posturing’ is one of those loaded BS sneer-words that, in my view, should be read with great suspicion and almost never be used (rather like ‘rhetoric’, ‘rant’ and ‘troubling’). I don’t think Musk is posturing: he’s doing his level best for the First Amendment, though with scant help from anyone in the Corporate/ State/ Global Blob world.
Summed up in the final paragraph, Matt M. One could go further and argue that democracy itself is part of the great egalitarian delusion. In our less than ideal world the levers of power fall to those who are able to gain the most influence – either openly or covertly.
So is the argument that the advertising boycott instigated by Musk’s progressive enemies has worked and that he has capitulated to them in some way or is about to? If so, how? I am still not clear what is being said. Perhaps there is some news out there that I don’t know – I will go an have a look.
(I often find that people that use Twitter talk as though everyone knows what they are talking about when in reality only Twitter users have the foggiest).
Last edited 6 months ago by Matt M
Mike Downing
6 months ago
Aren’t we just all spending more and more or our (post-Covid) decreasing lifespans disappearing up our own online fundaments chasing ever more ghostlike presences on the Internet ?
I saw a TV program about Iceland aeons ago and there the government turned off the TV in the Summer months to make sure that the population and kids in particular took advantage of the longer daylight hours.
Maybe we need a compulsory digital detox for every 3rd month of the year ?
Justin Clark
6 months ago
Author doesn’t like Musk.
Reader does.
Ben Day
6 months ago
No mention of the Twitter files here?
Extremely important intervention by Musk, but here I only read the ‘failings’
Dermot O'Sullivan
6 months ago
After a while on Twitter you can distinguish the wheat from the chaff. Also to note I appear to be able to block nuisance tweets.
Gerald Arcuri
6 months ago
Musk is an enigma. He does enigmatic things. X was an enigma going someplace to happen. Look for more from this maverick genius. It’s just how he rolls…
Nik Jewell
6 months ago
I am reply deboosted on Twitter to the point that I have given up replying. That happened under Roth, not Musk/Yaccarino, but it is inescapable despite appealing.
Yanis Varoufakis, in his recent book Technofeudalism, has a rather different take to the author on the ‘Everything app’. It is not a youthful fantasy; it is the sole reason for acquisition.
Quoting my own review:
Varoufakis has an interesting analysis of Musk’s Twitter purchase here. I think most of us are now aware that the ‘free speech’ line was somewhat a ‘bait and switch’, the truth revealed by the choice of Linda Yaccarino as CEO. Varoufakis’s take is that despite everything Musk has achieved, he is not yet a cloudalist because he lacks the means to extract cloud rents. His frequent statements that he wants to turn Twitter/X into an ‘everything app’, tying in a digital payments system, indicate his intent to join this class.
This time, your comment has some merit; your comment last week didn’t.
Anyway, my underlying point is that what Musk says about Twitter and what happens in reality are two completely different things.
Yesterday, he commented “Shocking” on a testimony detailing shadowbanning re. Ukraine, under the previous administration. The day before, Thomas Fazi was being ghost-banned and deboosted for a thread supporting his article here a few days ago.
Smoke and mirrors.
UnHerd Reader
6 months ago
Hello
j watson
6 months ago
Groan, the Blob to blame again!
At least a bit of originality please. This gets v boring.
I can’t understand what the author is trying to say. Why has the blob won? It isn’t clear from the article (not, at least, to a thicko like me).
You’re not the only one
He starts by saying that this is what fashionable progressives think:
But he never clarifies whether their opinion is valid. In fact he says that while the progressive types are constantly threatening to quit the platform, they never really do. That would suggest they are not correct in their view that Twitter has lost users.
I can’t comment on revenue or the financial health of the company but I would certainly disagree that Musk’s reputation is damaged. He seems to be wildly popular and influential if we judge this by the column inches devoted to him (including these).
Matt, I’m sorry I couldn’t provide the moral clarity you wanted in 600 words. But that might because the real picture is much more complex than the Anti Musk activists would like us to think, and sometimes you have to examine the evidence. I think Twitter has got much more interesting, but less reliable, and some of the decisions were objectively stupid. (No one says “X”).
Recall that Musk was compelled to complete the acquisition of Twitter by a Delaware court, having concluded he didn’t really want to buy it.
He has since found it much more difficult to operate in an environment dominated by NGOs which I think he underestimated. Posturing as an anti-woke warrior was relatively easy.
Thanks for replying Andrew (I love it when authors engage below-the-line).
I wasn’t looking for moral clarity at all, I just couldn’t fathom your argument.
I am sure you are right about this but I cannot see the evidence of it in the article. You say that bien pensant opinion predicted catastrophe but has it actually arrived? Have revenues tanked? Have users deserted the platform? Has Musk’s reputation taken a hit?
As far as I can see – and I don’t use Twitter or any social media and in fact don’t really read or watch any news expect for UnHerd and the Spectator – Musk seems to be as influential as ever and everyone who claims to have left Twitter never seems to do so in reality. I know Twitter, like GB News and others, struggles to get advertisers due to activist campaigns but is the company really in trouble?
As I said above, I sometimes feel that active Twitterers don’t realise that normal people haven’t even heard some of the things they take to be common knowledge. In this case, I feel I might be missing some vital information to make sense of the story.
We can’t really tell what revenue and usage are today, because Musk took Twitter (oops, X) private and he isn’t obliged to report it publically any more.
You are onto something, though. I wanted to include this detail, but cut it to make room. The active user number is the last reported public data.
I enjoyed the piece but also felt it was a bit short. I’m wondering why you were limited to 600 words given that it’s not a piece for print.
I think we should all refer to it as “X-Twitter” which sounds about right.
I thought the article was fascinating, but it ended rather abruptly. Any chance of a longer piece with a bit more moral clarity?
Fair enough – though ‘posturing’ is one of those loaded BS sneer-words that, in my view, should be read with great suspicion and almost never be used (rather like ‘rhetoric’, ‘rant’ and ‘troubling’). I don’t think Musk is posturing: he’s doing his level best for the First Amendment, though with scant help from anyone in the Corporate/ State/ Global Blob world.
I was agreeing with you.
Summed up in the final paragraph, Matt M. One could go further and argue that democracy itself is part of the great egalitarian delusion. In our less than ideal world the levers of power fall to those who are able to gain the most influence – either openly or covertly.
So is the argument that the advertising boycott instigated by Musk’s progressive enemies has worked and that he has capitulated to them in some way or is about to? If so, how? I am still not clear what is being said. Perhaps there is some news out there that I don’t know – I will go an have a look.
(I often find that people that use Twitter talk as though everyone knows what they are talking about when in reality only Twitter users have the foggiest).
Aren’t we just all spending more and more or our (post-Covid) decreasing lifespans disappearing up our own online fundaments chasing ever more ghostlike presences on the Internet ?
I saw a TV program about Iceland aeons ago and there the government turned off the TV in the Summer months to make sure that the population and kids in particular took advantage of the longer daylight hours.
Maybe we need a compulsory digital detox for every 3rd month of the year ?
Author doesn’t like Musk.
Reader does.
No mention of the Twitter files here?
Extremely important intervention by Musk, but here I only read the ‘failings’
After a while on Twitter you can distinguish the wheat from the chaff. Also to note I appear to be able to block nuisance tweets.
Musk is an enigma. He does enigmatic things. X was an enigma going someplace to happen. Look for more from this maverick genius. It’s just how he rolls…
I am reply deboosted on Twitter to the point that I have given up replying. That happened under Roth, not Musk/Yaccarino, but it is inescapable despite appealing.
Yanis Varoufakis, in his recent book Technofeudalism, has a rather different take to the author on the ‘Everything app’. It is not a youthful fantasy; it is the sole reason for acquisition.
Quoting my own review:
Gibberish
If you want to damn his post as gibberish, then explain why.
The big “I” again Jewell. As I said last week: too self-referential.
This time, your comment has some merit; your comment last week didn’t.
Anyway, my underlying point is that what Musk says about Twitter and what happens in reality are two completely different things.
Yesterday, he commented “Shocking” on a testimony detailing shadowbanning re. Ukraine, under the previous administration. The day before, Thomas Fazi was being ghost-banned and deboosted for a thread supporting his article here a few days ago.
Smoke and mirrors.
Hello
Groan, the Blob to blame again!
At least a bit of originality please. This gets v boring.
Let’s go back to TTFIC , The Taxpayer Funded Industrial Complex.