You mean he thinks that every user is a trolley looking to own their enemies?
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He certainly acts that way - pure projection - and he’s rebuilding Twitter partially under that model. (Though only partially, as there’s nothing remotely like a coherent vision, much less execution.)
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“This feature is so unpopular that we’ll provide it free to the only people who might be tempted to pay for it.”
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… but then again anybody who cared enough to pay for a no-ads experience could also get that for free with an ad blocker 
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I don’t think a standard ad-blocker would work, as the “ads” are in the form of promoted tweets.
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… a bargain at twice the price 
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uBlock origin handle the original style of promoted tweets, at least the way they used to work. The blue promoted 
I’m gone now so couldn’t tell you
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This, but somehow less mature.
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https://www.axios.com/2023/03/31/twitter-verification-white-house-biden-check-mark
Something I hadn’t noticed on the top 10,000 articles before:
an exception for its top 500 advertisers
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At .02% uptake of Blue I would say that it still does…
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Which is what was so insane - Musk looked at the tiny number of subscribers and somehow thought he could wildly increase the number by making it worse.
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This is like watching a fish try to get out of a toilet bowl. He has only the vaguest sense of how much trouble he’s really in, has no understanding at all of the landscape, and keeps trying increasingly ridiculous things with no chance of moving the needle even a little.
But also the fish bought the toilet for 44 billion dollars and jumped in.
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You could even use bots for ranking assassination: Boost other ids to shove a person or company off the free list.
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Or maybe he does, and really believes that his wealth and “public” support will insulate him. That’s a not uncommon mindset of the wealthy, after all.
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I dunno. There’s a massive difference with YT: since it launched the length of videos people watch has rocketed. Often now it is relatively long form content and the cost to the viewer of ads every few minutes is enough that I simply won’t watch. Twitter is all about the users, and the access to them. YouTube’s “social” elements are toxic enough that Google more or less deprecated them. It’s not what drives revenue. There isn’t really much of a cost for Twitter users with ads. Scroll on. I can’t see the market for ad free Twitter.
That said I have a proven track record IRL of missing the bloody point with social networks. Maybe it taught me something and I’m sharing my wisdom, or maybe I continue to be an idiot!
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Stumbles.
Much like Wile E. Coyote stumbled into a canyon wall at 200 mph while riding an Acme Rocket!
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that’s because musk added that exception after the initial announcement, and after companies complained
he wasn’t smart enough to realize (any of) his mistakes in advance, that’s for sure
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