His initial wealth of 42 million dollars came from working on travel software. He used that wealth to become rich by founding x.com, a payments company that failed. How does a failing company lead to massive wealth you might ask? Well, that failing company merged with PayPal.com, and Musk was CEO of the merged company for about 6 months before he got fired. PayPal went on to be huge, so after he was fired he made his fortune on his shares. Next he invested money in Tesla, bought the title of “co founder” even though he wasn’t, waited 7 years passively then noticed the company wasn’t going anywhere, replaced an exec or two and then took credit for turning the company around. So yeah, maybe that’s his end game? Make Twitter (now x.com) as bad as the old x.com so someone merges and gives him stocks and fires him again?
And yet, despite all that, this somehow still feels notably inept, even for a man whose primary goal in life, at the moment, appears to be demonstrating how thin his attachment to reality grows by the day.
The level of ineptitude is common, the combination of wealth and that much ineptitude, usually less so, given being able to afford the best education and advisers. So it takes a special sort of billionaire to be this inept.
While that’s true, I think it’s more that rich people tend to insulate themselves from actually driving direct actions most of the time, so we see their stupid decisions after they’ve filtered from the Board, to the CEO, to the VPs, to the directors, to the managers, and finally, to the workers that actually do things. Really stupid things filter slowly back up as impossible, or as they hit snags over weeks and months, so it takes a couple rounds for them to really mess things up. Not to mention people softening the edges as it passes through the chain to make it more reasonable.
Elon being front and center, and actually ramming things through is what makes this so uniquely inept. Normally we wouldn’t know that all of these terrible ideas are straight from him, and blame could be shifted around to scape goats.
It’s just the Dunning-Kruger effect at work, he thinks because he successfully ran a rocket manufacturing company to viability that he’s definitely going to be able to run a social media company too.
Turns out the B2B style government contract model isn’t exactly the same as B2C social media advertising model.
It was on purpose. Its completely obvious the powerful right in America wanted Twitter gone. I bet it could have swung the overton window with how much influence it had.
Unfortunately, once you get enough money the system is designed to keep you wealthy no matter how much you fuck up.
Like, Trump has had multiple failed companies including casinos thay failed because he had them competeing with each other.
Yet while he’s probably not a billionaire he still has the status of “wealthy” and managed to fail into the most powerful position in government.
Musk had more money, and therefore can fuck up way harder and still be fine. He could burn Twitter to the ground for all the effect it would have on him.
The reason is that they know people with money, and those people listen. For example, Musk only had to post about his attempt to buy Twitter in a groupchat, and he got Billions of Dollars from them to do it, unchecked. Regular people don’t get their ear, and even if they do for some unfathomable reason, everything is checked meticulously.
I think this gives him credit where it isn’t due 😂
Personally, I think he’s just a magic blend of incompetent, arrogant, and in over his head. Large companies are slow moving for a reason and we’re seeing why in real time.
Whether or not it’s on purpose, I think that Twitter was vulnerable to this outcome due to literally years of mismanagement. Dorsey hadn’t given a fuck for quite some time, and Twitter’s problems always grew faster than its solutions.
At this point, I’m gonna say yes. Yes, he did do it on purpose. Why? The conspiracy theorist in me says it’s to push people into Meta’s Threads, building it up even more before it federates, in an attempt to kill the Fediverse like Google did with XMPP, because the Fediverse is the fastest growing bastion of corporate-influence-free speech on the Internet.
Yeah I've got a feeling this guy isn't a master of 6D chess, planning some far flung strategy 10 steps ahead. I think he just likes to shitpost and cause drama
I still think if you look at his investors it spells out leaders who want Twitter not to be viable as a platform for coordinating democratic efforts. So yes, he did it deliberately.
I’m trying, lol. Just followed a bunch of accounts on Mastodon in an attempt to make my homepage more interesting. Loving Lemmy, but while I don’t necessarily want the absolute deluge of bullshit like reddit has, for my taste the fediverse still has a lot of growing to do (and I hope it gets there!)
people also left AOL once they realized tf’n browser works without a monthly sub. wrote WordPress after geocities sucked so bad. tech baby boomers? so 2k
You always get a boost when Elon does something stupid but I’m not seeing anything unusual about this one… ‘soaring’ is relative. Usual is 500-1000 an hour and we’re currently at 1500.
I think people get excited because hypothetically, growth should accelerate. The more people are using mastadon, the more mastadon becomes a viable alternative to shitter
I keep trying to twitter and :( not liking it and i want Mastodon but :( not liking it (likely for similar reasons) and my tumblr is my zero effort and is well and alive longer than anything else ever was.
Is there actually any evidence whatsoever of the rebranding that hasn’t even fully happened yet is causing a “user exodus”? Why would people leave because it’s renamed and has a different logo?
The issue is brand brand loyalty. My younger siblings was looking for his Twitter app earlier and was like, “where is Twitter… Oh wait I forgot it’s an X now.”
Mastodon is great, I like it way more than lemmy. TBH its the only federated social I think is actually doing really well, way more users but still a small town vibe. People posting art or pics of their gardens or linux posts. Better moderation overall. It’s very gay and I love it.
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