Twitter

[Villanelle]

It's interesting to see that Mastodon usage appears to be dropping (slowly) back down.

The number of active users on the Mastodon social network has dropped more than 30% since the peak and is continuing a slow decline, according to the latest data posted on its website. There were about 1.8 million active users in the first week of January, down from over 2.5 million in early December.

Are those 700,000 people going back to twitter? Are they kicking the habit entirely and spending more time talking to people face to face or walking outside? Was this a temporary surge of people who weren't ever that active on social media but got excited about making a statement by jumping from twitter to mastadon but now don't have the habit of posting much?

I registered for Mastadon, poked around for a short while, felt confused and disinterested, and never returned.  I'm not sure I stayed long enough to even be counted in that spike (probably 20 minutes?), but maybe I am.  I was also motivated by the fact that, as a perpetual late adopter, I always get stuck with crappy user names, so I wanted to stake my territory, just in case.  In my case, I definitely didn't return to Twitter, because I never had a Twitter account in the first place. 

[Fru-Gal]

I went to Mastodon back when EM announced the purchase and tons of my contacts were migrating. I barely poked around it and haven’t really gone back. For me the core behavior of consuming and reacting to news as well as posting selfies is something I am trying to extinguish.

That said, am on a couple video platforms and this forum. But none of them hook me the way Twitter did. For a word-first person (literary, journalist, snark, comedy, commentary, news) Twitter is crack. Very happy EM’s presence keeps me from going back.

Plus the thought of spending nearly a decade on there, consuming and reacting reacting reacting…. The only really fun part of Twitter ever was live TV reactions. The last show I can remember doing that with was Succession. However, I always had a persistent feeling that the people I was discussing the show with were paid in some way.

[FINate]

Mastodon strikes me as a nicer looking Internet Relay Chat (IRC), it will probably suffer from the same problems with scaling, declining signal-to-noise ratio, and ultimately fracturing and infighting as nodes disagree on moderation standards. Holding together large scale social media site is extremely difficult and requires a lot of dedicated resources and painful trade-offs.

[GuitarStv]

Holding together large scale social media site is extremely difficult and requires a lot of dedicated resources and painful trade-offs.

Not according to Musk.

[FINate]

Holding together large scale social media site is extremely difficult and requires a lot of dedicated resources and painful trade-offs.

Not according to Musk.

I know you're being tongue-in-cheek. But that's the problem with Tech people seeing everything as solvable by an algorithm. Social media moderation is largely a people/societal problem. AI just pushes the judgement calls/trade-offs to the AI training.

[scottish]

Holding together large scale social media site is extremely difficult and requires a lot of dedicated resources and painful trade-offs.

Not according to Musk.

I know you're being tongue-in-cheek. But that's the problem with Tech people seeing everything as solvable by an algorithm. Social media moderation is largely a people/societal problem. AI just pushes the judgement calls/trade-offs to the AI training.

Isn't that how the Elongated one is going to make twitter profitable?   Replace the moderators with a neural network and voila, instant cost savings.

[bacchi]

Holding together large scale social media site is extremely difficult and requires a lot of dedicated resources and painful trade-offs.

Not according to Musk.

I know you're being tongue-in-cheek. But that's the problem with Tech people seeing everything as solvable by an algorithm. Social media moderation is largely a people/societal problem. AI just pushes the judgement calls/trade-offs to the AI training.

Isn't that how the Elongated one is going to make twitter profitable?   Replace the moderators with a neural network and voila, instant cost savings.

There will be a dual release of Level 5 FSD and Twitter AI moderation this year.

[Fru-Gal]

https://www.theverge.com/23551060/elon-musk-twitter-takeover-layoffs-workplace-salute-emoji

Very well-written and produced article (animated graphics and an animated wealth-o-meter on the left of the article). Skimmed a fair bit since I already know almost all these details. However this bit at the end, a quote from an anonymized engineer who was laid off from Twitter, reflects my opinion about the addictive nature of the product.

While both companies flail, Musk remains glued to his feed. It was an outcome Alicia predicted back in April when Musk first floated the idea of buying the company. “He’s too interested in seeking attention,” she said. “Twitter is a very, a very dangerous drug for anybody who has that personality.”

[ChpBstrd]

https://www.theverge.com/23551060/elon-musk-twitter-takeover-layoffs-workplace-salute-emoji

Very well-written and produced article (animated graphics and an animated wealth-o-meter on the left of the article). Skimmed a fair bit since I already know almost all these details. However this bit at the end, a quote from an anonymized engineer who was laid off from Twitter, reflects my opinion about the addictive nature of the product.

While both companies flail, Musk remains glued to his feed. It was an outcome Alicia predicted back in April when Musk first floated the idea of buying the company. “He’s too interested in seeking attention,” she said. “Twitter is a very, a very dangerous drug for anybody who has that personality.”

This raises interesting questions.

Suppose EM was going to be the Rockefeller / Edison / Ford / Gates of our era. Just assume this for now.

Then suppose he encountered a social media product he COULD NOT LEAVE ALONE and started spending more and more of his time on addictive social media instead of accomplishing his life goals of electrifying transportation before runaway global warming demolishes the human species and making us an interplanetary species. Suppose the same personality traits Musk possesses, the trait which Twitter hacked to take over his behavior, are present in others who would have changed the course of history.

It would mean we've created a world where there are fewer and fewer bold leaders or technological innovators. One by one, they each encounter a social media product which fits into their brains like an opioid molecule, and one by one they become glued to a screen playing what is essentially a video game rather than contributing to our world. Somewhere there is a failed medical student who would have cured pancreatic cancer or Alzheimer's. Somewhere there is a young engineer who under-performs because there are flame wars to be fought, and they could have invented artificial gravity. Somewhere a 10-year old would have been the scientist who came up with a Unified Theory, but they're playing on a tablet instead. Somewhere the next titan of business, whose company creates millions of jobs in a whole new industry, is scrolling through an endless feed and making of ass of themselves by amplifying internet conspiracy theories.

Technological growth and societal improvement could grind to a halt, couldn't they?

[LennStar]

And how many brilliant minds have been killed by war, by pollution, by cars?

Sigh.

[Paul der Krake]

Holding together large scale social media site is extremely difficult and requires a lot of dedicated resources and painful trade-offs.

Not according to Musk.

I'm old enough to remember when you predicted in this very thread the imminent collapse of Twitter. Do you ever, like, sit back and reflect on your predictions?

We're now 3 months later. Maybe you should perhaps give some credit to the guy who has repeatedly proven he can run and exponentially grow extremely successful businesses?

[GuitarStv]

Holding together large scale social media site is extremely difficult and requires a lot of dedicated resources and painful trade-offs.

Not according to Musk.

I'm old enough to remember when you predicted in this very thread the imminent collapse of Twitter. Do you ever, like, sit back and reflect on your predictions?

We're now 3 months later. Maybe you should perhaps give some credit to the guy who has repeatedly proven he can run and exponentially grow extremely successful businesses?

Can you quote me?  I must be old enough to not remember making a comment about Twitter's imminent demise.

I did however say that it looked to me like Musk was driving the company into the ground.  My thoughts on that haven't really changed.  Huge loss of ad revenue, multiple widespread service outages, failed attempts at new streams of ad revenue (blue tick disaster), failure to pay rent and bills, huge class action lawsuits regarding wrongful dismissal and failure to pay contractual severance, regulatory non-compliance lawsuits on the horizon, and difficulty keeping staff . . . I know that Musk is an infallible genius God-king, but these don't strike my own very average intelligence as the path to running an extremely successful business.

These changes certainly haven't put Twitter on better financial footing than when Musk paid 44 billion for the company.

[ChpBstrd]

Maybe you should perhaps give some credit to the guy who has repeatedly proven he can run and exponentially grow extremely successful businesses?

Musk bought shares in Tesla as a venture capitalist, not as a founder or manager. As CEO, he seemed to spend a lot more time tweeting than one would expect a CEO to have time for. I also have doubts he does much actual work as CEO for SpaceX, Neuralink, Solar City, or The Boring Company.

Think about it. If Musk spent only two hours per day doing some nominal duty (like sitting in on one meeting and reading emails) for all the 5 non-Twitter companies he is CEO of, that would be ten hours. I've never heard of an actual CEO job that could be done in 2 hours per day, or even 8 hours per day.

Plus, even this 2h/day joke level of commitment would seem to leave Musk with little time for his newest toy, Twitter, or the time he spends tweeting, or his sexual flings. If he's really sleeping in Twitter's San Francisco offices, who's running the other companies?

All this suggests to me he delegates most day-to-day running of businesses to executives, and is generally an absentee CEO. Musk is sort of like the queen/king of England - a symbolic role that generates lots of buzz but does not do the actual work of leadership. To think otherwise is to attribute some sort of superhuman ability to someone who regularly makes very dumb mistakes ("funding secured" tweet, purchase of Twitter for too much money in order to make a 4/20 joke, thinking the Boring Company would ever work).

The growth of Musk's businesses is less a testament to his personal genius as a manager, technician, tactician, or leader than it is to the fact that his businesses have had access to lots of venture capital and investment markets capital, and that they used these funds for R&D instead of dividends, buybacks, earnings manipulation, or executive compensation like a lot of peers do. If Musk forced them to behave this way, that's the credit he is due. I doubt he could manage a McDonald's.

[maizefolk]

I also have doubts he does much actual work as CEO for SpaceX, Neuralink, Solar City, or The Boring Company.

Think about it. If Musk spent only two hours per day doing some nominal duty (like sitting in on one meeting and reading emails) for all the 5 non-Twitter companies he is CEO of, that would be ten hours. I've never heard of an actual CEO job that could be done in 2 hours per day, or even 8 hours per day.

Jared Birchall is the CEO of Neuralink.
Solar City isn't a company anymore (it's a division of Tesla, and before that it was run by another Musk, not Elon Musk) and so don't have a CEO.
SpaceX has an extraordinarily capable leader in Glenn Shotwell. I think Musk is the "Chief Engineering Officer" at SpaceX.

In terms of actual CEO work for Elon Musk today, it's really just Tesla and Twitter (with The Boring Company being a small rounding error that likely either has a different de facto leader like Shotwell or is indeed getting neglected).

[scottish]

SpaceX has an extraordinarily capable leader in Glenn Shotwell. I think Musk is the "Chief Engineering Officer" at SpaceX.

Gwynne Shotwell.   She's a woman.   Call me pedantic.

[maizefolk]

SpaceX has an extraordinarily capable leader in Glenn Shotwell. I think Musk is the "Chief Engineering Officer" at SpaceX.

Gwynne Shotwell.   She's a woman.   Call me pedantic.

Yikes. Yes you were right. I knew she was a woman but was also remember her name as Glenn and at no point did my brain notice the likely inconsistency between those two things. Thanks for the correction.

[Paul der Krake]

Ah yes, he's not really a CEO, he's just the face of the company and the real execs call the shots. He's not really the founder, just an investor who got lucky and pushed the real genius out. This one mediocre guy manages to have a string of ventures fall into his lap one after the other for 20+ years without doing any of the real work himself.

I too would have fared similarly under the right circumstances.

[GuitarStv]

Ah yes, he's not really a CEO, he's just the face of the company and the real execs call the shots. He's not really the founder, just an investor who got lucky and pushed the real genius out. This one mediocre guy manages to have a string of ventures fall into his lap one after the other for 20+ years without doing any of the real work himself.

I too would have fared similarly under the right circumstances.

Why the straw man?

Credit where it's due, Musk has generally done pretty great as an executive.  After he bought Tesla with his Paypal money, he helped to make it an incredibly successful company.  He somehow managed to turn Spacex from an incredibly long shot money bleeding project into a profitable company.  It seems likely that Musk's Starlink will become profitable in the next couple years.  He seems to be good at picking leaders to handle day to day operations, which is definitely a skill.  Musk definitely helped take these companies from being nothing and created something cool from them.

Way back when he was acting in an engineering role at paypal, everything that I've read says that he was pretty good at that too.

Maybe there's a master plan for twitter that I'm not smart enough to see.  But it seems very different from his successes.  Twitter was already a global leader at what it did.  Musk has damaged revenue streams, caused employees to flee the company, and racked up a whole bunch of unnecessary lawsuits.  The company is doing significantly worse today because of the actions he has taken.  I'm totally willing to admit that I was wrong if/when Musk turns everything around.

It kinda seems like you're personally offended by criticism of Musk though, which is confusing to me.  So far, all the information that has come out about his time at twitter seems to be pretty bad.  It's all the more strange because of his past successes.

[Herbert Derp]

The Verge is a left-leaning publication which is biased against Elon Musk and his companies, but I think this article is a good read:
https://www.theverge.com/23551060/elon-musk-twitter-takeover-layoffs-workplace-salute-emoji

It gives a lot of details about the sort of stuff that’s been going on at Twitter since the takeover.

[maizefolk]

Ah yes, he's not really a CEO, he's just the face of the company and the real execs call the shots. He's not really the founder, just an investor who got lucky and pushed the real genius out. This one mediocre guy manages to have a string of ventures fall into his lap one after the other for 20+ years without doing any of the real work himself.

I too would have fared similarly under the right circumstances.

Two of the key factors that determines success are knowing when to delegate and being able to hire the right people (both identifying the right people and being able to convince them to come work for you).

If Musk really was working as the day-to-day CEO of SpaceX, and NeuralLink, and The Boring Company, and somehow was running Solar City as a separate company and being the CEO of that too, it would indicate that he either wasn't able to hire good people or wasn't willing/able to let things go when someone else could do an equally good (or better job) of management than he could.

[dividendman]

Ah yes, he's not really a CEO, he's just the face of the company and the real execs call the shots. He's not really the founder, just an investor who got lucky and pushed the real genius out. This one mediocre guy manages to have a string of ventures fall into his lap one after the other for 20+ years without doing any of the real work himself.

I too would have fared similarly under the right circumstances.

Two of the key factors that determines success are knowing when to delegate and being able to hire the right people (both identifying the right people and being able to convince them to come work for you).

If Musk really was working as the day-to-day CEO of SpaceX, and NeuralLink, and The Boring Company, and somehow was running Solar City as a separate company and being the CEO of that too, it would indicate that he either wasn't able to hire good people or wasn't willing/able to let things go when someone else could do an equally good (or better job) of management than he could.

OR he is a once in a millennium genius who can do all of it... lol

[ChpBstrd]

Ah yes, he's not really a CEO, he's just the face of the company and the real execs call the shots. He's not really the founder, just an investor who got lucky and pushed the real genius out. This one mediocre guy manages to have a string of ventures fall into his lap one after the other for 20+ years without doing any of the real work himself.

I too would have fared similarly under the right circumstances.

Two of the key factors that determines success are knowing when to delegate and being able to hire the right people (both identifying the right people and being able to convince them to come work for you).

If Musk really was working as the day-to-day CEO of SpaceX, and NeuralLink, and The Boring Company, and somehow was running Solar City as a separate company and being the CEO of that too, it would indicate that he either wasn't able to hire good people or wasn't willing/able to let things go when someone else could do an equally good (or better job) of management than he could.

Right, so calling Musk a great leader is kinda like calling the King of England a great leader. He gets the attention, but doesn't actually have any leadership responsibilities beyond self-promotion.

Maybe there's a master plan for twitter that I'm not smart enough to see... 

...So far, all the information that has come out about his time at twitter seems to be pretty bad.  It's all the more strange because of his past successes.

We have a strong internalized belief that success comes from competence and hard work. When the results don't confirm that belief, we rationalize about a possible "master plan" or say give the previously successful person more time. We do not believe in luck. We do not believe people change. We do not believe people's behavior can be inconsistent.

People who work at restaurants can be fired for getting a detail wrong on an order ("I said no ketchup!") but when a wealthy businessperson/influencer screws up to the point tens of billions of dollars evaporate, we say give them another chance, they must have a master plan.

[FireLane]

Musk's leadership style is to come up with crazily ambitious dreams and then order his subordinates to work themselves to burnout to make those dreams a reality.

At his past companies, this might actually have worked. The kinds of people who'd seek out jobs at Tesla (saving the planet with electric cars!) or SpaceX (sending humanity to the stars!) would be more likely to have a sense of mission that would motivate them to push themselves in accordance with Musk's demands. Plus, those companies were underdogs with enormous growth potential.

Neither of those things are true of Twitter. Its user base is fairly stable, and its place in the social-media ecosystem is well established. It's already changed the world as much as it's going to. No one wanted to work at Twitter because they dream of saving the planet. They worked there because of the sweet Silicon Valley paycheck and employee perks.

Musk's chaotic, throw-everything-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks philosophy is ill-suited for a mature company that's already run up against natural growth limits. What Twitter needed was a steady hand who could keep it running smoothly, help it clean up its tech debt, and explore ways to make it profitable. The only thing Musk knows how to do is to burn everything to the ground and start over. For a startup struggling to get off the ground, that's sometimes what you need, but once you've taken off you can't rebuild your plane from scratch in midair.

[Taran Wanderer]

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jan/29/tears-blunders-and-chaos-inside-elon-musk-twitter

[maizefolk]

The tech is definitely starting to wobble a bit. In the last week I've noticed notifications frequently seem to be duplicated (e.g. "person X retweeted your tweet" followed by "people X, Y and Z retweeted your tweet") for the same events. The system may well still collapse between the shrinking number of hands to keep things running, the loss of institutional knowledge, and burn out by the employees who still have jobs and know what they're doing. Or it may still course-correct and stabilize. Will be interesting to watch in either case.

[FINate]

More Twitter news: https://www.platformer.news/p/elon-musk-fires-a-top-twitter-engineer

Other than the fragility of Musk's ego, the bit about internal struggles to keep the service running is interesting:

“As the adage goes, ‘you ship your org chart,’” said one current employee. “It’s chaos here right now, so we’re shipping chaos.”

Interviews with current Twitter employees paint a picture of a deeply troubled workplace, where Musk’s whim-based approach to product management leaves workers scrambling to implement new features even as the core service falls apart. The disarray makes it less likely that Musk will ever recoup the $44 billion he spent to buy Twitter, and may hasten its decline into insolvency.

[FireLane]

Talk about shooting the messenger. The more I read about Musk's management style, the more astonished I am that he's gotten even as far as he has.

[NorCal]

Talk about shooting the messenger. The more I read about Musk's management style, the more astonished I am that he's gotten even as far as he has.

My wife had a friend that left Tesla corporate when she got pregnant.  While they had a maternity leave policy on paper, it was pretty clear that actually taking the leave would destroy any possibility of future promotions.  Although I got this mostly second-hand through my wife.

It's sad how much bluster and litigation have let him get away with.

[bacchi]

It's sad how much bluster and litigation have let him get away with.

He's the west coast Donald Trump, circa 1985.

[LennStar]

Talk about shooting the messenger. The more I read about Musk's management style, the more astonished I am that he's gotten even as far as he has.

My wife had a friend that left Tesla corporate when she got pregnant.  While they had a maternity leave policy on paper, it was pretty clear that actually taking the leave would destroy any possibility of future promotions.  Although I got this mostly second-hand through my wife.

It's sad how much bluster and litigation have let him get away with.

Yes, I have read that two times before also. Similar with sickness.
But you don't understand it. Musk simply wants you to give your all for the company. It's very clear that with a child that can e.g. get sick you can't do that, so of course you can't be promoted.

[LennStar]

Musk is still tweeting dots to find out why they get more attention than his attention seeking rants.

Help him find out the truth! Like and repost his dots so he sees that people don't like his shit! Or, more likely, see him explode like one of his rockets!

[NorCal]

Musk is still tweeting dots to find out why they get more attention than his attention seeking rants.

Help him find out the truth! Like and repost his dots so he sees that people don't like his shit! Or, more likely, see him explode like one of his rockets!

Even better, you could just ignore him altogether.

[LennStar]

Musk is still tweeting dots to find out why they get more attention than his attention seeking rants.

Help him find out the truth! Like and repost his dots so he sees that people don't like his shit! Or, more likely, see him explode like one of his rockets!

Even better, you could just ignore him altogether.

But where is the fun in that?????

[maizefolk]

Hahahaha. Okay I guess the remaining engineers at twitter give Musk what he wanted (i.e. higher view counts on his tweets).

Of the several hundred people I follow apparently two follow Elon Musk and now the top two tweets in my feed are random tweets of his neither of them interacted with based simply on "person X and person Y follow Elon Musk". Each tweet shows millions of views which would make sense if the engineers pinned them to the top of the feeds of every twitter user who follows anyone who follows Elon Musk.

[ChpBstrd]

Hahahaha. Okay I guess the remaining engineers at twitter give Musk what he wanted (i.e. higher view counts on his tweets).

Of the several hundred people I follow apparently two follow Elon Musk and now the top two tweets in my feed are random tweets of his neither of them interacted with based simply on "person X and person Y follow Elon Musk". Each tweet shows millions of views which would make sense if the engineers pinned them to the top of the feeds of every twitter user who follows anyone who follows Elon Musk.

That's stage 4 narcissism!

[Fru-Gal]

I know purchasing a news brand/media outlet is a common millionaire/billionaire move, but how does Musk’s everpresent narcissism compare to Bezos (seems hands off WaPo, dunno if true), Murdoch, and historic scions like Hearst and Pulitzer?

[Travis]

Hahahaha. Okay I guess the remaining engineers at twitter give Musk what he wanted (i.e. higher view counts on his tweets).

Of the several hundred people I follow apparently two follow Elon Musk and now the top two tweets in my feed are random tweets of his neither of them interacted with based simply on "person X and person Y follow Elon Musk". Each tweet shows millions of views which would make sense if the engineers pinned them to the top of the feeds of every twitter user who follows anyone who follows Elon Musk.

Pretty much confirmed.

https://www.platformer.news/p/yes-elon-musk-created-a-special-system

https://www.twitter.com/caseynewton/status/1625666368430551041

[bacchi]

There's a little bit of Citizen Kane in all of us.

[Fru-Gal]

Citizen Kane is a relevant story, to be sure, but how is he in all of us? The point then and now is how an oligarch seeks to control mass media.

[LennStar]

Jan Böhmermann (famous German satirist) just tweeted, and I admit I chocked a bit on that:

Elon Musk wants the same as the Ukrainian artillery: more reach.

[bacchi]

Citizen Kane is a relevant story, to be sure, but how is he in all of us? The point then and now is how an oligarch seeks to control mass media.

Always searching for that tiny, fleeting, happiness from your past...

In the meantime, addiction and the adulation of millions fills the void.

[bacchi]

Jan Böhmermann (famous German satirist) just tweeted, and I admit I chocked a bit on that:

Elon Musk wants the same as the Ukrainian artillery: more reach.

And you'll read his thoughts, goshdarnit, or he'll fire someone!

[Travis]

By the end of March, Twitter will disable Two-Factor Authentication through SMS except for paid users. Musk claims its because Twitter was paying excessive fees to telecoms for fake authentication messages.

https://twitter.com/tittertakeover/status/1626781483435188226

https://www.twitter.com/racheltobac/status/1626760590629933057

https://twitter.com/racheltobac/status/1626775287546671106

[FINate]

By the end of March, Twitter will disable Two-Factor Authentication through SMS except for paid users. Musk claims its because Twitter was paying excessive fees to telecoms for fake authentication messages.

https://twitter.com/tittertakeover/status/1626781483435188226

https://www.twitter.com/racheltobac/status/1626760590629933057

https://twitter.com/racheltobac/status/1626775287546671106

Yep. I had a Twitter account that I rarely used. This prompted me to finally log in today and deactivate my account. Sorry, not paying monthly for basic security hygiene, and I don't want to deal with someone potentially hijacking my account.

[LennStar]

Other 2FA still works and those SMS (10% fraud or not) are costing the company money.

[FINate]

Other 2FA still works and those SMS (10% fraud or not) are costing the company money.

Sure, but I logged on after a long absence and it was the Elon Musk show in there. For something I already don't use very much, and is now objectively worse, it wasn't worth the effort to set up the other 2FA methods. Besides, when a company starts limiting security options to save (or make, in this case) money that's a pretty strong cue for me to get out.

[LennStar]

Other 2FA still works and those SMS (10% fraud or not) are costing the company money.

Sure, but I logged on after a long absence and it was the Elon Musk show in there. For something I already don't use very much, and is now objectively worse, it wasn't worth the effort to set up the other 2FA methods. Besides, when a company starts limiting security options to save (or make, in this case) money that's a pretty strong cue for me to get out.

Well, just don't use 2FA then?
I have never done that. Because why? Worst case is that someone uses my account to post porn and the account gets blocked for a while.

[FINate]

Other 2FA still works and those SMS (10% fraud or not) are costing the company money.

Sure, but I logged on after a long absence and it was the Elon Musk show in there. For something I already don't use very much, and is now objectively worse, it wasn't worth the effort to set up the other 2FA methods. Besides, when a company starts limiting security options to save (or make, in this case) money that's a pretty strong cue for me to get out.

Well, just don't use 2FA then?
I have never done that. Because why? Worst case is that someone uses my account to post porn and the account gets blocked for a while.

LOL, why do you care? I wasn't really into Twitter, this was just the final push I needed to deactivate my account. No thanks, don't want it!

[scottish]

Other 2FA still works and those SMS (10% fraud or not) are costing the company money.

Sure, but I logged on after a long absence and it was the Elon Musk show in there. For something I already don't use very much, and is now objectively worse, it wasn't worth the effort to set up the other 2FA methods. Besides, when a company starts limiting security options to save (or make, in this case) money that's a pretty strong cue for me to get out.

Well, just don't use 2FA then?
I have never done that. Because why? Worst case is that someone uses my account to post porn and the account gets blocked for a while.

LOL, why do you care? I wasn't really into Twitter, this was just the final push I needed to deactivate my account. No thanks, don't want it!

Like a lemming, I just jumped on the deactivate account bandwagon.    Elon will miss me and my 3 tweets over the last 15 years.   :-P

[Herbert Derp]

Apparently Mark Zuckerberg thought Elon's paid Twitter verification was such a good idea that he wants in on it too! Fascinating.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/19/meta-is-rolling-out-a-new-paid-verification-subscription-service-for-instagram-and-facebook-users.html