I can’t think of another product I know more about that I don’t use. Just die already, elon is killing you in public to remove the threat of Twitter as an organizing tool for social uprisings and labor as a favor/brownie points/roundabout contracting for other billionaire “buddies”.
If was always about limiting the ability to organize using Twitter and Reddit. They want things to go differently in 2024, not because of any conservative political ideology even though most of them skew that way. But because they make more money when the monsters are in charge.
And that will be when I completely stop browsing Reddit. I already dropped my useage by probably 95%. If they do that, it’ll drop to about 99.9% since I do most of my browsing away from my desk.
The thing to remember is that CEOs aren’t typically any smarter than the average person. They ended up in that position from inheritances, personal connections, etc. In the case of Musk, he has so much disposable income around that he can throw $30B at something and still have more than you or I will ever earn in a lifetime.
But you just know he has people that are on the payroll specifically to advise him and develop strategy. Either they’re surrounded by yesmen or they’re too arrogant to listen to the people they pay for advice. Okay, it’s probably both.
Spez sold Reddit for some small $mils before failing his other project and returning as a hired CEO. He is a cheapskate among media magnates. He isn’t clever and is a loser. He adores Elon because he wishes he can throw money around just like him, but on the day’s end he knows he doesn’t have comparable wealth and he is there just because he happened to be around Aaron Swartz and other cool dudes. He himself couldn’t create Reddit. And being the top admin of it now is probably the closest thing in corporate world to cuckolding, for he doesn’t have a word in managing the ‘frontpage of the internet’ he once owned, he just follows what the board says him to. Sad piece of shit he is. Won’t cry about him tho. Let misery fall onto his little empty head.
They also gifted a statuette to u/violentacrez or what’s his handle? for powermodding dozens of nsfw subs, including borderline paedophilic, violent and abusive ones, like revenge porn partners upload after a break up to hurt their ex-couple.
They did great at handling the search of a boston bomber. Fuck ups happen way more often than forum dudes finding ISIS camp by triangulating the sky in a picture. I’m kinda happy to have this viral and well-documented drama to refer.
They rarely ever did their job before the press got involved, or they step into prison sentence territory. My personal favorite waa when altright sub stickied a link to crowdfund a contract killer for a guy who punched a right-wing talking head Robert Spencer on camera. Then, you have fatpeoplehate and other subs that weren’t as dense and worked for years. Right before Spez’s very eyes. Not to say some mass-shooters were frequenting and were inspired by these spaces too.
While modding jailbait is discussed (like, you could promote to a mod role everyone – that’s how he excuse it), these things were consciously enabled by him. He platformed the worst people you can think of. And it sure shall not be forgotten.
It would be interesting to see it all lead up to some master plan like Elon gaining some hug political favor or something with all his actions with someone.
I dunno, I guess the fact that I’ve never been very active on Twitter. I use it occasionally and reply to the odd thread, but I never even knew only fans bots was a thing there.
I’m astounded that people use it for anything other than this. I have received some decently fast customer service via twitter. However one glance at the content and I got tf out.
I think it’s important to remember that musk has never actually done anything to innovate the companies he’s been a part of. He didn’t create PayPal, he just bought his way in and made a series of dumb suggestions. He didn’t create Tesla, he bought Tesla right after they had fine tuned their models, and then he made a series of changes that likely resulted in a worse product.
Elon Musk is not a good businessman, he’s just rich and has a habit of purchasing profitable companies. Anyone could do this with his wealth. I’m not even really convinced that he’s offered many technical ideas or designs for any of his companies, as it seems that would be the first thing he would mention every single time someone brought up one of his companies.
But open AI wouldn’t even exist without him! After all, he contributed less than 10% of their raise and he suggested the name. You can’t have a company called Open AI if nobody names it Open AI.
Why couldn’t he just close it, if that was his goal? He owns it outright doesn’t he? He could announce that Twitter was ceasing operations, sell off the remaining assets, cover (or default on) the debts, and then Twitter would be no more.
So no, I don’t think destroying it was his aim. He’s just really, really bad at this.
Others own equity, approximately 1/3 of the initial payment he made was from some of his close friends. Close friends or not, they’re not going to let him off the hook for about 7b, additionally he could not afford to pay them if he shuts it down, he had to borrow between 2 and 3 billion to secure the deal in the first place beyond what they’d invested.
If Twitter becomes profitable, they get paid and everyone on their side is happy. If Twitter doesn’t become profitable, Elon is the one that takes the fall and they get paid anyway so they don’t care, although I’m sure they’d prefer more than their investment back.
But as the richest man in the world, he could cover their stakes. If the goal was to end Twitter, he has the resources to do so without losing anyone else’s money.
But as the richest man in the world, he could cover their stakes.
As previously stated, no. He couldn’t. He needed their money just to acquire the company, he did not have enough liquid assets himself to make the purchase and sold a lot of his stock in Tesla beyond just the equity shares. If Twitter fails he’ll be on the losing end financially for once, so he needs it to be successful. The courts did the world a favor and forced a purchase by actually upholding the law.
“mistake” in this case actually means by shooting his mouth off and thinking he was smarter than everyone else in the room. He fucked around, then immediately began finding out.
It’s so frustrating to be in the Valley, and be subjected to one set of rules to tightly follow, while a group of special sociopaths (e.g., Musk, SBF, Holmes, Neumann) are free to do whatever they like.
I should have been more clear: The Valley allows and even encourages certain sociopaths to flout rules and conventions around ethics and reporting, while the rest of us are held tightly to those rules and conventions. For example, Sequoia seemingly didn’t even perform de minimis due diligence when leading a nine-figure round in FTX.
You give Musk too much credit. The fucking guy is a big baby with impulse issues - who happens to have billions of dollars at his disposal. He is running Twitter exactly as I would think a dipshit narcissistic tantrum baby would run it, although dismantling Twitter does coincidentally benefit the top .1% for now
He bought Twitter because he (along with the Saudi royal family, the monarchy ruling Qatar, and the larger worldwide cabal of authoritarians) thought he could use it to control public discourse in the same way oligarchs bought up newspapers, radio stations, and TV stations in the past. He's killing it because he never understood what most people liked about Twitter, he only understood what he liked about Twitter (getting a lot of attention and being able to be shitty to people without having to actually socialize).
Nah the purchase itself saddled Twitter with $13bn of debt. Even before Musk started tanking their revenue, Twitter was never really going to be able to pay that off, not without further investment. Either Twitter became what they wanted it to be, or (more likely) it would die.
The $44bn purchase breakdown:
$26bn was from Musk, underwritten by stocks in Tesla (which since have lost value)
$5bn from other investors, including the Saudi prince
$13bn in a loan Twitter took out to buy itself on Musk's behalf.
Leveraged buyouts have killed lots of staple companies. It's what took down Toys R Us.
he offered to buy twitter for a joke, and he actually did buy twitter because a court forced him to. not because this was some grand plan to accomplish anything - he literally spent months in court arguing that he shouldn’t have to buy twitter, and he lost. that’s the only reason he owns twitter now.
I don’t think so, solely because his ego wouldn’t allow it. Tanking Twitter is making him a laughingstock. There’s no way he would’ve done that intentionally.
100%. He’s not the only one in on it either. Its in many rich peoples interest to destroy the biggest communication platforms the world has ever seen. Same thing is happening at Reddit, and with many TV and radio stations. It’s a minor investment for these people.
Another platform may eventually take over, but 2024 is the goal, nothing will be even close to the level Twitter and Reddit were at in 2020 by then. Maybe never again.
Do the TikTok users of the newest generation vote? Might explain why these same people are seeking bans on it and trying to raise the voting age.
Really? I didn’t think it was anywhere near that big. But A. are those users even old enough to vote, B. Do they vote, C. what is the political atmosphere over there? I wouldn’t touch it with a 10 foot VPN.
Which also has momentum to get it shut down. The fact that I agree with shutting it down makes me wonder if it’s actually the smart idea or if I’ve just bought the propaganda behind that drive.
He’s banking on the name “Twitter” still meaning something and there being no viable alternatives. Threads has really shown that twitter isn’t as ubiquitous as we all assumed.
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