I was referring to this being made into some huge news story, when literally nothing changed. Why were we not blasted with scary missives about this consent decree 2 months ago or 2 years ago?
There are people trying to flood the internet with non-stop negative Twitter stories, which is the part I find fascinating. I don't find the consent decree to be fascinating at all. It will be interesting to see how selective enforcement is though.
Because the people who were in charge two months/years ago understood the consent decree, were afraid of the FTC, had the manpower to actually obey it without having software engineers to self-certify with possible legal repercussions to themselves. The new guy doesn't give a shit about the consent decree, the FTC, or his employees' exposure. He also released a new feature without going through rigorous safety and compliance review, exactly the thing the consent degree mandates. If that's "nothing has changed", I'd hate to see what your busy weeks look like.
The Elon-Twitter saga is fascinating in quasi r/ABoringDystopia meets, well, Twitter sort of way.
The stage is set with a billionaire doubling down on a meme and then stumbling into an absurd $45B baby trap. The Internet loves watching a fool and their money parted; Twitter definitely loves watching a fool and their money parted.
And then, for some, it’s dawning that Musk has been on this MAGA-infused, grade-school-interpretation-of-free-speech trajectory and the stakes of this Twitter acquisition are suddenly much higher. Doubly so when you review the behind the scenes discussions [1] and believe Musk is completely disingenuous (any guess who “the boss himself” is?) in his desire for a neutral platform[2].
I’ve been doom-scrolling the Elon-Twitter news mostly for the rapid unravelling of Musk’s ur-engineer persona. His engineering management has been a cavalcade of bully choices: shitcan half the company, stack rank your engineers by LOC, enforce work-the-weekend death marches, and throw all your coders on to a manager schedule...in an office...in 2022.
Maybe my opinion will change when I start hearing stories about the first of his Twitter pull requests, but right now he’s looking like a dilettante who meme'd into a shit show and has forgotten his ambitions to make us a multi-planet species.
