Where's Everyone Going?

Yes, I do. Completely different things. One is rocket science, which is just math. The other is a mass of human interactions using the vagaries of language to establish relationships, discuss critical ideas, and find p*rn. The latter is infinitely more complex. The fact that Musk said the heart of Twitter is servers shows he has no idea what he bought.

 

Twitter is reliant on tech, but it is not a tech business. It's a content business and the content comes from the users and benefits the users. That's one reason it is has become so critical and yet so difficult to monetize. Another is that it was designed so you could create your own walled garden and just follow the accounts you wanted without having too much pushed to you.

For example, in my world of disaster response, we absolutely depend on Twitter like no other to both deliver real-time info to those affected and receive real-time info which sometimes changes our response plan. If Twitter goes away or becomes less available to the larger public, it will increase the complexity of disasters and increase exposure to risk for both the public and responders. I guarantee Musk had no idea when he bought the place that every federal, state, county, and city emergency management agency and every governmental and volunteer response org across the country is invested in Twitter and has spent years building up their following and the credibility of their accounts. Once you get beyond celebrity, sports, and p*rn, there is a much greater depth to Twitter than any other platform.

If you go back to the first few pages of the big COVID thread, I was one of the few taking it seriously in the early stages. I stocked up before there were shortages, I bought masks before they were unavailable. I made plans for the kids to be home from school for an extended period. I was able to do that because I follow some smart public health folks on Twitter.

It's social media, not just media. Musk sees banks of servers and thinks code, not people. You can code all you want and buy as many servers as you want, but unless you understand what you're coding for, you'll fail. His actions will not only be jokes in business schools for years to come, but are also a really strong argument for the Humanities.

Plus, the way he is treating employees is a lesson in bad leadership. He can't define what he wants because he doesn't know what he wants and he never bothered to truly understand the business. If I had a boss using language like he is, changing policies on a whim and then reversing them on a whim, and making demands without clear and understood direction, I'd bolt at the first opportunity. I've done "hardcore" jobs and worked "hardcore" hours. You can't do it for long and you can't do it without tremendous support and having everyone aligned as to mission.

 

By the way, Mastodon was really slow yesterday as numbers are climbing exponentially, but things seem to be snapping around nicely today. We'll see what Monday holds.

It seems most of my science types are already there but a lot of my disaster folks and others have yet to make the jump. It will take awhile to build up my following list the way I want it.

 

It is relevant. I have no doubt there are software engineers available but the assumption Elon seems to be making is that the availability allows bad leadership and bad direction. Working in a social space is different than designing a distribution system for Amazon. It's not plug and play. You're not coding for efficiency or to do something with a thing, you're coding to enhance human interactions. Again, that's more difficult and the difficulty increases greatly if the guy running the place doesn't understand that.

Also, I work in a field where we've taken advantage of people who feel a calling. It doesn't last. Eventually, the system becomes brittle and starts to break down as people realize the sacrifice is not worth it. Resentment sets in. That's why we've had a shortage of wildland firefighters in recent years. If he runs SpaceX and Tesla like he does Twitter, they're already failing.