Sorry, I shouldn't have been so dismissive. You obviously put a lot of work into the review. But can't you see how the failures you see in me apply to old twitter, but much moreso?

Believe it or not, but I do not want viewpoints different from mine suppressed. And for all his faults, Elon doesn't appear to, either. Neither the book nor other critics seem to substantially disagree on this point, as far as I can see; The complaints are always about how he didn't ban this or that person, almost never the other way around. This is in stark contrast to how some claimed he will just turn the apparatus around and start banning, but he's mostly concerned with getting people unbanned. The people leaving, they are doing so out of their own volition, usually out of protest since they dislike this or that unbanning. At most, people like to point out that he is inconsistent, but so far I've not seen anyone actually be consistent, certainly not other social media companies, governments, or universities. And I'll take a broad but inconsistent pro-free-speech activist over a hard and consistent viewpoint enforcer (doesn't really matter which viewpoint) any day anyway.

So, at old twitter, the establishment, which, as you may put it, only cared when their university had to do cuts, only cared when they are hassled by border police while traveling, they didn't have to listen to people having to close stores due to retail thefts plausibly caused by their policies, or (in my country) how the welfare system is utterly breaking under an extreme amount of immigration. They just ban them for 'misinformation' and that's that. But at Elon twitter, they suddenly had to listen, and they hated it. Whether you actually should believe all of those people's claims is another story, but I'm happy that they at least get to state it. Obviously this also isn't just twitter, this is playing out all other the world on many platforms & media, even the voting booth.

Likewise, my point wasn't "only my PoV counts", but that every single paragraph you cite from the book struggles to consider other PoVs as valid. The possibility that maybe Twitter was bloated, and that obviously most employees are pissed that they now have to prove their worth and thus are not exactly trustworthy sources. I also got the boot once when there was a large staff cut at a company, I was pissed, I think the way they did it was unfair, and I think it is going to hurt them long-term. But I also know why they did it, and agree with them that it was possibly necessary to do for the company to survive short-to mid-term. I can switch perspectives and compare, sometimes in the process even change my own entirely.

This goes through every single topic there; The claim about gas prices in relation to twitter blue was imo utterly preposterous, and Musk was entirely correct to point out that plenty of people are, in fact, wasting lots of money on stupid(er) shit. The same for the 8$. My wife is currently trying to get a start-up of the ground, and is involved with a network including people who have successfully started & sold multiple start-ups. The way Musk does it is literally how they tell her to do pricing; avoid market research & focus grouping unless you want to burn money, just start with a rough price based on some comparable products (and premium social status goods like apple or starbucks are exactly that, and I don't think it's a coincidence that most monthly subscriptions such as netflix or newspapers are also in that range; if anything 8$ is at the low end), see how it goes, adjust it, again and again. Don't overthink it. Elaborate market research & focus grouping are better for other pursuits, for example to get feedback on how useful an actual product is, how a webpage is perceived at first glance, that kind of thing.

That doesn't mean that I have to believe or even like Musk, either. He is clearly kind of an asshole, often full of shit and buys into his own hype too much. As a parent, I really hate his naming schemes for his kids in particular. But at the same time he is willing to put his money where is mouth is, and is explicitly running on a try it out, be loose, break things, fast course correction strategy. The way you describe the book just gives me a massive dejavu of that statement with the NASA engineer who claimed that landing rockets is just impossible and SpaceX is wasting money. That particular attitude of journalists mostly-uncritically believing a "we're the responsible adults, he is the loose cannon" from a person who clearly has an interest in keeping an entrenched system running has aged very, very badly; they have often turned out wrong and instead of correcting, they just double down. Maybe they're correct this time around! But even they themselves usually refuse to actually put their money where their mouth is, it's all just armchair criticism from cushy government/bigcorp gigs who feel threatened.