Elon Musk Slides Into Twitter Leadership [Content Made Simple]
Elon Musk Slides Into Twitter Leadership [Content Made Simple]
Issue #264: The greatest internet art war, Twitch streamers handling trauma, and more.
TOP OF THE WEEK:
What Elon Musk Could Mean for Twitter
Quote:
But it’s also true that this sort of thing can be a real distraction for a CEO who absolutely has bigger fish to fry. As Dorsey’s hand-picked successor, Agrawal was already going to face criticism that he was simply more of the same from a company that has struggled to live up to its potential. The fact that Dorsey left the board, though, had given Agrawal an opportunity to begin crafting Twitter according to his own plans.
Now that Musk is around, though, with his viral polls and stream-of-consciousness product suggestions, Agrawal may find himself struggling to balance his own vision against that of an unpredictable board member with a much louder megaphone.
Commentary:
Such an interesting story, Elon Musk purchasing a strong stake in Twitter. Never saw this one coming, yet not at all surprising at the same time. Casey Newton has some good thoughts on this in the article linked above. It could be somewhat inconsequential, but it will almost make some significant impact.
It seems to me that a lot of folks have very strong opinions, either positive or negative, about Elon Musk. I don’t have a strong opinion about him, really. I just think it is kinda fun that the richest person in the world is an extremely-online memelord who goofs around on Twitter. That’s more fun that some dude who just chills on his yacht off the coast of Spain or something. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
HITTING THE LINKS
Link #1: The FBI Is Investing Millions in Social Media Surveillance Software
Cool………………………
More troubling still is the way in which the FBI plans to utilize this new trove of data. The Bureau isn’t just collecting data — it’s attempting to interpret it. More specifically, the FBI wants to analyze social media patterns to identify bad actors — a process that essentially amounts to educated guessing.
Internet safety experts and activists agree that this process will be highly problematic. Speaking to the FBI’s hope for predicting the future, ACLU staff attorney Matt Cagle said: “… not only is this impossible, in all likelihood it will risk further bias and harm against the same people that the government has historically mislabeled as suspicious, including movement leaders, immigrants and members of religious and ethnic minorities.”
Link #2: The Life and Death of r/Place, Home to the Internet's Greatest Art War
I had vaguely heard of r/place before, but it was wild to watch it in action this last week.
r/Place is a social experiment that launched on Reddit back in 2017. Its founder, Josh Wardle (founder of Wordle, ever heard of it?) called r/Place "a screenshot of the Internet at this moment in time." Five years later, on April 1, 2022, the subreddit made its massive and triumphant return. r/Place offers a giant, open canvas that allows anyone and everyone to place one colored pixel. Each pixel has its own timer, meaning no individual or group can endlessly spam their shapes, which forces either coordination between users (if you want beauty), or absolute chaos, if that's what you're into. r/Place mixes art, teamwork, and sheer randomness into an awe-inspiring tapestry that the designer in me finds truly beautiful.
Link #3: Twitch streamers are struggling with 'trauma dumping'
I watch a lot of Twitch. Like a lot. And I have seen this sort of thing in action. We ask too much of online content creators.
Toph is one of many Twitch streamers worried about the issue of trauma dumping, the act of offloading emotional problems without invitation. According to content creators on the platform, viewers are increasingly bombarding stream chats and their accompanying Discords with their IRL problems, which streamers are often not equipped to deal with.
The issue has become so prevalent that some streamers have started speaking out on Twitter. One fed-up influencer even put out a guide to dissuade people from trauma dumping on her streams.
THE FUNNY PART
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