Elon Musk Archives - Page 2 of 2

November 14, 2022

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Elon Musk and Sam Bankman-Fried’s recent actions show how narratives can lead people astray.
Musk’s attempt to take Twitter private was rooted in his personal grievances, and his letter to advertisers was mostly wrong.
Bankman-Fried’s political activism was seen as a way to hide his fraud, and his ambition to change the world was a distraction from his business.
Changpeng Zhao of Binance is an example of an entrepreneur who focused on his business, rather than on political activism.
The article discusses the importance of product-based narratives over theory-based narratives when it comes to understanding the implications of new technologies such as crypto and AI.
It argues that the narrative of crypto being a decentralizing force has been challenged by its product manifestation, which tends towards centralization.
Similarly, the narrative of AI being a centralizing force has been challenged by the emergence of decentralized and open source AI projects.
The article concludes that the best way of knowing is starting by consciously not-knowing, and that narratives that are right follow from products.

Click HERE for original. Published November 14, 2022

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Elon only trusts Elon [Casey Newton & Zoë Schiffer, Platformer]

November 14, 2022

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Elon Musk’s Twitter halted new enrollment into its $8-a-month Blue subscription offering after it led to widespread impersonation of government officials, corporations, and celebrities.
Days before the launch, the company’s trust and safety team had prepared a seven-page list of recommendations intended to help Musk avoid the most obvious and damaging consequences of his plans for Blue.
On Saturday afternoon, a week after an initial round of layoffs had cut Twitter in half, a second massive wave of cuts hit the company, targeting contractors.
On Monday morning, at around 1:45 AM, Twitter engineers were called into an emergency meeting and told they couldn’t even write any code — “until further notice.”
Eli Lilly, Volkswagen, Pfizer, IPG’s Mediabrands, and Omnicom Media Group have all paused their ad campaigns on Twitter, potentially costing the company millions of dollars in revenue.
GroupM has told its clients that Twitter is a high-risk media buy, and mid-afternoon on Monday, after Musk announced he would begin disconnecting up to 80 percent of unspecified microservices, two-factor authentication temporarily stopped working via SMS.

Published November 14, 2022

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November 10, 2022

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Elon Musk held an hour-long Spaces call to reassure advertisers, but VPs Yoel Roth, Robin Wheeler, Damien Kieran, Lea Kissner, and Marianne Fogarty all resigned the next day.
Musk sent an email to the team demanding they return to the office and prioritize finding and suspending verified bots/trolls/spam.
A lawyer on Twitter’s privacy team posted a rebuttal to Musk on the company’s Slack, warning of potential legal risks and violations of the FTC consent decree.
Musk held an unannounced all-hands meeting with staff, where he said bankruptcy was not out of the question and threatened to accept resignations from those who did not return to the office.
Musk’s plan to make verification checkmarks available to anyone willing to pay $8 for a subscription to Twitter Blue was abused, and he is also working to make Twitter a payments company.
There is a real sense of doom that Twitter could become a shadow of its former self, and Musk and his team were unable to access the @twitter account until Wednesday.

Published November 10, 2022

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