drdavid

9secondkox2 said:

So now that Twitter is finally being taken seriously, NOW Apple wants out? These advertisers should be ashamed. Nothing but a political shove. 

They can't take about trust and safety while trying to boycott Twitter to ensure it gets hurt. As if their tactic isn't blatantly ovious.

9secondkox2 said:

drdavid said:

9secondkox2 said:

So now that Twitter is finally being taken seriously, NOW Apple wants out? These advertisers should be ashamed. Nothing but a political shove. 

They can't take about trust and safety while trying to boycott Twitter to ensure it gets hurt. As if their tactic isn't blatantly ovious.

I can assure you, no one with a brain is currently taking Twitter seriously. 

LOL. Some assurance. 

Literally EVERYONE with a brain is taking Twitter seriously. Now more than ever. 

Only the advertisers with money to burn and who can afford to limit their reach by “cancelling” Twitter are doing so. 

Business usually suffers when it gets political. 

Marvin said:

seanj said:

9secondkox2 said:

So now that Twitter is finally being taken seriously, NOW Apple wants out? These advertisers should be ashamed. Nothing but a political shove. 

They can't take about trust and safety while trying to boycott Twitter to ensure it gets hurt. As if their tactic isn't blatantly ovious.

It’s always had a low user-base and failed to grow like other social media networks.

Twitter is one of the most used services in the world with nearly 400 million users:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_platforms_with_at_least_100_million_active_users

For social media conversation, it is only behind Facebook, WeChat and Weibo.

The ad spend is quite large. Twitter makes nearly 90% of their revenue from ads. This was $4.5b out of $5b in 2021.
This is small relative to Facebook where the ad revenue in 2021 was $115b but it's still a lot of revenue.
Costs were $1.8b direct costs, $1.2b R&D, $1.2b marketing, $0.6b general/admin, $0.7b litigation.
Net income was loss of $0.5b.
In the recent quarter (before Musk takeover), the losses have been $340m, which is nearly $4m/day.

Firing 3500 employees likely saved around $0.5b/year in payroll costs and there's an aim to cut some of the direct infrastructure costs by up to $1b/year at the risk of service outages under heavy load:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/musk-orders-twitter-cut-infrastructure-213643529.html

Musk owns $200b in other companies. If he needed to bankroll Twitter, at $5b/year, he could for a while and it's not likely it would lose $5b/year. Plus Twitter has around $6b in current assets so most likely sustainable for at least 3 years.

AppleInsider said:

It's unclear why Musk thinks that Twitter is entitled to the advertising dollars since the companies are executing the free speech rights they are entitled to in pulling the ads.

It demonstrates what Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey had conversations about, as does the EU trying to dictate what's permitted under their rules:

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/04/26/eu-warns-elon-musk-that-twitter-must-play-by-its-tough-new-rules

Advertisers threatening to defund Twitter and the EU threatening fines for speech that doesn't conform to their preference is restricting the freedom for people to say what they want. Restrictions are necessary if the aim is to have meaningful, civil conversations but having corporations and politicians determining this standard for public conversation is not ideal. People just assume that it's right for elected representatives to determine the status quo but imagine a time in history when people believed the Earth was the center of the universe and people were prosecuted for saying otherwise:

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/galileo-is-accused-of-heresy

The modern equivalent would be that if Galileo spread his (now known to be correct) ideas on Twitter, companies would stop running ads and the EU would fine Twitter unless they were removed.

This is why Musk wants to move Twitter's revenue stream to subscriptions because it takes away the control of the conversation from corporations and puts it in control of the people having the conversations. Most of the normally suppressed content is unlikely to be Galileo quality information, the vast majority of suppressed content is justifiable but once in a while there will be information suppressed that shouldn't be.

There's probably a way to make it work well for most people. What people want is control over their association. Companies don't want their brands to be shown next to offensive content because it makes it look like they are directly funding it. Twitter would need to identify offensive content/language and users and isolate the advertising from it and give advertisers assurance that this is happening. They can give advertisers the option to only run ads on selected groups of users with different grades of content.

Tweets from the most followed account would generally be safe:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-followed_Twitter_accounts

If the replying comments have offensive content, they can hide the ads when a user opens the comments or hide those replies as sensitive and hide the ads when they are opened.

It would be easier to manage if the topics were tagged by category. The most likely comments to be offensive will be political. They can have a bot tag political comments and allow advertisers to avoid those conversations.

eightzero said:

OK, I'll 'fess up here. I do have a twitter account, and I follow a few entertaining accounts (at least for now). But what are these "twitter advertisers" you speak of? I'm looking at a twitter client on my desktop, and I don't see any ads. Yes, if I click on something there, I'm directed to something that does, but all I see is the 140 characters. Am I doing something wrong, because...boy...if I'm missing ads on twitter, I feel really like I'm missing out.

Ad-based Tweets get promoted into people's feeds:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Xsongkm8dg&t=1136s

When corporate accounts like Apple's sends out a tweet, it's probably an ad campaign for a new product:

https://twitter.com/Apple/status/1435307157944078336

https://twitter.com/Apple/status/1569424565637611521

It's quite an effective way to advertise because people don't know they are ads. Apple's main account seem to not be loading past tweets in the main feed, maybe it's just a glitch or maybe that's how they suspended the campaigns:

https://twitter.com/Apple

Twitter is a private company and Elon can do whatever he wants. He can try and implement your plan and see how that goes. But no one has any obligation to advertise there. Especially since they have no idea what they are going to get. Several companies have already seen huge stock hits from impersonators on Twitter. This is a very straightforward private commerce issue, not a political one like the EU making regulations and comparing the two is apples and oranges. 

“Advertisers threatening to defund Twitter”

By that logic the advertisers are defunding me.

Madbum said:

ilarynx said:

Madbum said:

mikethemartian said:

Madbum said:

Be very careful there Phil. More than  Half of this country  and likely more than half of the Apple users agree with Musk and his views on Free speech .

So political statements like this is not what shareholders want to see. 

Ironically you are advising him to be weary of expressing his own free speech.

Well no, as long as he represents Apple and is beholden to shareholders, he has a duty to act in a manner that will not damage the shareholders

if he resigns, he can ran around with his pants off protesting a Twitter no problem!

While the execs and C-level personnel have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders, I'm not sure an Apple "Fellow" does, senior or otherwise. 

Regardless, a lot of companies and shareholders are learning that remaining on Twitter is a bit of a gamble these days:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2022/11/11/kari-lake-lockheed-martin-and-eli-lilly-here-are-the-companies-celebrities-and-politicians-impersonated-in-twitter-blue-chaos/?sh=6b2cb94b3871

"Half of this country... agrees with Musk"? Either you live in a country different than mine, or you need to share what you're smoking with the rest of the group. 

I think you like imagine your coastal state as America. Or did you think Biden won 140 million to 15 million? And not 80 million to 74 million? (California and New York was responsible for most of the difference) And the US senate is not 50-50 or Republicans don’t have the house?

and I say this as somebody who voted for Biden

and I will say it’s likely way more than half agree with Musk when it comes to free speech, I do and many of my friends who vote Democrat do as well.

lastly, Schiller part of the executive team so he is c-suite

coolfactor said:

Oh, hail thee great Musk.... (bows to the great one)

Blocking gets abused too much by those that want to have the last word without hearing a rebuttal, so I applaud this experimental change.

PaulBiC said:

ericthehalfbee said:

The “spirit of the law” is quite clear in Apple Developer Guidelines. Removing the ability for someone to block another account eliminates their ability to prevent “bullying”, an activity clearly stated by Apple in more than one area of their guidelines.

Direct messages are only one way to bully someone. Constantly showing up in a persons threads and making comments is another form of bullying. I think Apple will respond if Musk removes the ability for users to block any account they wish.

Appleinsider has blocked 5 accounts of mine - They can correct me - They will block me shortly. 

tht said:

Feels like they should have started 4 years ago, but good to hear they are committed. They could have switched Macs to Apple Silicon in 2018. And their own cellular modems could have been started in 2016 or 2017. They basically wasted billions and 4 years to groom Intel to be a secondary or primary modem provider, but Intel has poorly performed in virtually everything they have touched the past 3 to 4 years.

chutzpah said:

mrshow said:

This is disgusting. Stock buybacks should be illegal again. 

When were they ever illegal?

davidw said:

drdavid said:

coolfactor said:

Oh, hail thee great Musk.... (bows to the great one)

Blocking gets abused too much by those that want to have the last word without hearing a rebuttal, so I applaud this experimental change.

Abused? Freedom of association (which includes freedom to not associate) means I am not required to listen to someone’s bs. No matter how much you personally value getting “the last word”. 

That's the function of "mute". That is still available. A user can "mute" another user and not ever have to see any of their comments. That's your  right to "freedom of association". However, when a user "block" another user, that is preventing other users from exercising their "freedom of association". Even if the other users completely agree with you that the comments of the user you blocked, are BS, they might have a better understanding of the "spirit of the law" we here in the US refer to ....... as our 1st Amendment rights.

Now I'm never been on twitter (X), but I'm assuming the "mute" function on twitter (X) works the same way as on most of the other forums that I am familiar with. Including this one. "Muting" protects my right to "freedom of association" by not having to see any of the comments of the user that I don't agree with and "blocking" would be me censoring the user whose comments I don't agree with, by preventing them from commenting at all.