Comment by GuB-42
5 days ago
If Elon Musk really as narcissistic as you paint him, he would definitely take credit for these bans, or at least comment on them.
A narcissist wants to be the center of attention, by definition, and you are actually playing his game here. A "legitimate f-up" is the worst for a narcissist, as it would show he is nothing special, and incompetent.
That's why I go with the "legitimate f-up" explanation. There is no clear intent, it lacks flair, and it can just cause a mild controversy at best. Though I am still pissed that it turned out to be something about Elon Musk again and not Twitter/X. As much as a "nanomanager" he likes to call himself, he is not the only one working at Twitter/X, there are still people with some responsibilities there. It is not all a masterplan by Elon Musk.
As for banning links to other platforms like Mastodon, it was mentioned explicitly on the Twitter Support account that "we will no longer allow free promotion of certain social media platforms on Twitter", followed by a list of platforms that included Mastodon, but not Signal. I don't think it is still the case, and I am not aware of anything similar regarding a ban on signal.me links.
> If Elon Musk really as narcissistic as you paint him, he would definitely take credit for these bans, or at least comment on them.
That's like saying a liar will always lie. Real people do not have min-maxed traits, he has obviously non-zero self-control. If it's an action that benefits him in some way but knows will alienate his followers, he is perfectly capable of doing it in secret.
> A narcissist wants to be the center of attention, by definition
Definition of which subtype?
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I never said it was a masterplan or his personal decision. Culture comes from the top (only people with very strong principles will resist and many most likely quit when he took over). All he needed to do is make visible his displeasure at (free) competitors in front of the right people.
He AFAIK also tweeted about not allowing free promotion for mastodon. Which again speaks volumes about how much he values freedom of speech. If a free (as in speech and beer) and decentralized platform can be a credible competitor to twitter - serve the same amount of users but be self repairing and resistant to takeovers - than that would be a win, even if his company would no longer be needed.
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If you take anything from this discussion, please at least look up different types of narcissism. Far too often people reduce them all to the "standard" overt archetype (usually even an overdone caricature of it) and it's hard for victims of other subtypes to convince others what they are dealing with.