Yaksha
Paul GrahamFWIW I still hope Elon succeeds with Twitter. Why wish failure on anyone? But for me, not letting people post links to their other accounts was just too much.
François Fleuret@paulg you should make the mastodon link on your page clickable.
rednaks@paulg I didn't expect to see here one day I'm very pleased to keep following your stories here !
Johannes@paulg 100% agree
Leia Ruseva@paulg Agreed. While I don't intend to completely leave Twitter, this new policy is way too restrictive. Censoring content is a slippery slope.
Steve Simitzis@paulg 100% this goes beyond “moderation decisions that I personally dislike”. Banning valid urls fundamentally breaks the structure of the web. Time for the internet to once again route around damage
Gustavo Martin 🇪🇺@paulg For me, the way he treated his employees.
Paulo Franco 
@gumartinm @paulg for me, he was enough.
Elizabeth Tai | 戴秀铃 🇲🇾@gumartinm @paulg same. that was the final straw for me. I hate bullies.
Már Örlygsson :nerd:@gumartinm @paulg
+1. He's acting like a mean, spiteful bastard.
Erratic TOS edits that affect his famous supporters, as an accidental side effect are also worrisome, but not as much, IMO.
Something, something, face-eating leopards.
Carwan Rasoal@paulg can you explain why it was too much? Do you also think he will regret it?
Josh Pigford 
@paulg The anti-link stance feels so antithetical to the internet we've all worked so hard to build.
Taha Mubashir@paulg I am just not sure what he is doing at this point. Twitter will lose high quality accounts because of this.
Sarcastic Penguin
Grant Pal@paulg his success rests on hubris... Fat chance.
Carlos Baquero@paulg welcome to this new space, it’s a little more complex but also refreshing not to bother with timeline algorithms.
Konstantin Schubert
Hans Gerwitz
Jörg Preisendörfer
SolarAquarion
Thomas@paulg it looks a lot like a long aweful meltdown. For most suffering from ASD that's just an episode - but looping it through an organization, not just one's body may make it last days, not minutes.
Erik MoellerI think it's a question of what success looks like.
So far Elon has spent an awful lot of time amplifying far-right voices, starting with that deleted homophobic conspiracy theory tweet about Nancy Pelosi's husband, and continuing with taking directions on who to suspend from some of the worst alt-right trolls.
He's also actively rejected taking steps against COVID misinformation, which is the sort of thing that can, in aggregate, kill people.
Should we wish him success in that?
Joseph k@eloquence @paulg I came here to say exactly that but you said it better and eight hours sooner.
Thank you!
dmoon@paulg I don’t feel like there has even been a lot of traction in the move to other platforms. People keep claiming they will, but the conversations all seem to still happen mostly on Twitter. Maybe they’re seeing some metrics on user bleed to these sites that aren’t obvious to casual users, but it seems like a rule that solves a non-existent or minor problem and creates bigger ones.
Altryne@paulg I hope twitter survives too.
This was too much, information wants to be free, going from "I'm a free speech absolutist" to "you can't post your own content from another site" is fucking bonkers
This was too much, information wants to be free, going from "I'm a free speech absolutist" to "you can't post your own content from another site" is fucking bonkers
@altryne @paulg free speech Absolutism is never about actually about having everyone speak, it's about that certain people deserve the right to speak more. Think about how he buddy's around with right wing accounts, because he's a absolutist about their right to speech, and not the lefts right to speak.
Tea time.
Julian ♪🌻🥥🌴♫@KraftTea Have you seen his new poll? Asking people if he should step down 😶
@TFFPrisoner
Have you seen the photo from today, of him watching the World Cup in Qatar... with Jared Kushner?!
It can always get worse.
Marek Gibney@paulg Well, competition is good. This feels like the beginning of something new.
For me it was when he started sharing insurrectionist talking points. The US is a great country and overthrowing the strongest democracy on earth is not okay.
@paulg
I miss twitter every day and I haven't yet found a social network that replaces it.
I miss twitter every day and I haven't yet found a social network that replaces it.
Bianca
Beardverse 
Jörg@paulg I do not wish success to someone taking sides with people promoting conspiracy “theories” by demanding Fauci’s prosecution - and on the top of that mixing in an anti-trans statement. Just pointing to one of the many questionable, to say the least, things Musk did in the last weeks.
GanWeaving@paulg That's nice of you. But I can't be like that. I hope he will fail bigly. And quite sure he will if he continues like that.
Rant Ninja@paulg Sensible. And me too, if he can realize how I understood his stated objectives, it’ll be a win for discourse on the internet.
Kevin Walker@paulg Ditto. So much of what he said he wanted to do was good, or at least had the potential to be good. Even the "real time doxxing" fiasco was defensible (if trollishly managed.)
But, this is just dumb. Like an abusive SO trying to cut everyone off from the outside world.
hayden aiken 🇺🇲@paulg I'm surprised this was the straw, of everything... But glad you're here!
enmodo ⚛️ 🧬 🇺🇦 🍉@paulg my metric for his "success" with Twitter is he sells it and the buyer converts it to just another node in the Fediverse. That's what happened, or rather is happening, with Tumblr.
I wonder though, is he coming up with these censorship ideas himself or are people whispering their fever dreams in his ear? After all if you want to accelerate Twitter's transformation to Truth Social, Gab, or 4Chan this is a great way to quickly flush out those to the left of Musk's new target demographic.
David@paulg yeah this was pretty surprising. Guessing it will reverse within 48 hours
Racka🚀@paulg but you said he can figure out Twitter because he has worked with cars and rockets
Zak@paulg I don't wish failure on him, not exactly. What I do hope is that social sharing will be dominated by federated protocols rather than centralized platforms in the future. It might even help accelerate innovation since a new startup wouldn't have massive network effects to overcome.
alex rudloff@paulg Glad you're here, Paul. Mastodon just got a lot better.
Rumblestiltskin@paulg
I hope eventually he is forced to open up his network to other social media networks. There may be the case that certain brands leave Twitter and he needs these brands available to his users to stay relevant.
I hope eventually he is forced to open up his network to other social media networks. There may be the case that certain brands leave Twitter and he needs these brands available to his users to stay relevant.
Brandon Werner@paulg I think you and others are just caught in the sunk cost fallacy. You aren’t as popular on other platforms so you want to hold on to your megaphone. All things end.
braulio@paulg you need not wish that Elon personally fails, but it's perfectly fine to wish that an anti-competitive platform doesn't succeed at its goals
Boaz Barak@paulg I was very much hoping Twitter succeeds (and in fact initially only joined here because of my 10 year old https://twitter.com/boazbaraktcs/status/1589989673945812993?s=20&t=VViiWa8jW_MDxwrQ-i3xvg ) but for me a social media platform should enable discussions about the wider world.
The combination of censorship of other accounts and constant chaos currently makes my Twitter account dysfunctional for anything except talking about Twitter
Boaz Barak (boazbaraktcs at sigmoid dot social) on Twitter
“Moving to Mastodon is so easy that even my 10-year old kid could do it. On the other hand, this is the same 10-year old kid that wrote a webpage tutorial how to do it and is serving it to our home wifi from an Apache server on their Linux laptop.”
Beloved Aristocrat@paulg Sure do wish that Elon would connect with you and see how HN is moderated/handled. Such high quality content more than a decade later. Kudos, and welcome.
Severin M. A. Kistner@paulg he could’ve built a fusion reactor with 44 billion. He chose to do this instead.
Iván Cavero Belaunde@paulg The behavior is far too erratic to be able to understand the goal and thus decide on whether wishing success or failure is appropriate. But whatever the goals are, the behavior along the way is insupportable.
sippndipp@paulg well said.
I'm someone who isn't into cars - but for my next car I wanted it to be electric and originally I wanted a Tesla.
That has changed in the last couple of month. That's not because Tesla is bad (they're still ahead the competition) - it's more I don't want to give Elon money.
John Carter Wood@paulg Great to see you here. Pleased to see more of the people who made Twitter worth using are now making the shift.
Would be interested in your thoughts on this: https://knightcolumbia.org/content/protocols-not-platforms-a-technological-approach-to-free-speech
Ashish Nagar@paulg thank you for showing the way.