I legitimately think it's trendy to hate on Elon. Both Elon and Zuckerberg seem to have come to the conclusion that there was a lot of dead weight on their staff. One is hated on, the other is not.
I'm still using Twitter and only seeing improvements to the platform, plus promise of upcoming improvements.
Community Notes is a big deal. Company badges are helpful. The "Show more" gate is now properly hiding SPAM instead of "wrong think". The "For you" algorithm has actually improved, too.
Uhh Musk and Zuckerberg both get a lot of hate (rightfully in my opinion, but that’s not the point). People definitely hate Facebook and Zuckerburg. They even made a major motion picture about how much of an “asshole”[0] he is!
[0] Literally quoting part of a line from the movie:
“But you're going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won't be true. It'll be because you're an asshole.”
Overall, that movie painted him in a good light. "Strong leader bucks the system and makes a product that we all love" was the message I got from it.
My point is that the recent mass layoffs have negatively affected Musk's reputation and has not had an impact on Zuckerberg's. I think your illustration of his rep having a negative aspect as far back as the movie is in line with that.
With Musk's purchase of Twitter we've seen a lot more attention on alternative platforms such as Mastodon and Bluesky (?). I don't see anything like that with Facebook, other than the old struggles of any aging hangout spot. Also, note the difference in reaction to paying for verification on Twitter Vs. Instagram. People get mocked on Twitter for having the "blue checkmark". It's just silly.
There's been more new features and innovation on Twitter in the last 6 months then there has been in the last 6 years. The mental gymnastics you have to do to say Twitter is failing makes me tired just thinking about it.
Just to be clear we're talking about the same platform that while under Elon's ownership has censored references to outside platforms like Mastodon, censored users globally at the whims of foreign governments and outright banned individuals for their political beliefs.
> The people who hate on him have never done a single important thing in their entire lives.
That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it? For one thing, who gets to decide what’s important? If you want to take a utilitarian perspective, that’s fine; but you can’t legitimately condemn as unimportant the work and lives of others who happen to dislike Musk.
It is indeed resentment. It is also hilarious to see this sentiment in the comment sections in HN, Mastodon, Reddit, etc.
In reality, almost no-one cares and the 220M+ users continue to use the platform.
All the eternal Twitter doomsters are still praying for the downfall that never happened, which is why they are very emotional and angry at Elon Musk and the fact that Twitter did not collapse as they expected either.
- spreading conspiracy theories about the attack on Paul Pelosi
- spreading conspiracy theories about the Allen, TX shooter
I could go on. I do care about his character, because he's influential and because he's decided he's willing to tweet about whatever pops into his head, shaped by his biases and independent of confirmation or fact checking.
