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I made a half-joke here on HN a few months ago that Musk was buying Twitter just to destroy it for the lols. Maybe everyone's wasting their time with rational
by nonrandomstring 4y ago
I made a half-joke here on HN a few months ago that Musk was buying
Twitter just to destroy it for the lols.
Maybe everyone's wasting their time with rational economic analysis,
trying to figure out a pretty simple guy with an obscene pile of
fuck-you money and an axe to grind.
- notacop31337 4y agoI made this comment to a friend recently that I don't think enough people are considering that he might actually be mad enough to have spent $44B to destroy a toxic business.
- PartiallyTyped 4y ago> destroy a toxic business Twitter is more toxic under musk..
- bilvar 4y agoIt's been barely a week he's at the helm and you came to that conclusion? I'm indifferent about Musk, but that's absurd.
- PartiallyTyped 4y agoIt doesn't come from me, it comes from people who care about brand image.
- bilvar 4y agoWho are these people?
- ekleraki 4y agoPeople like this guy https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588599808587345921 https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588599808587345921
- bilvar 4y agoNo idea who that person is, why they're important and how this proves that Twitter became more toxic in just two weeks of Musk compared to 20 years of the previous management. Care to enlighten me?
- ekleraki 4y agoThat person is president and COO of MMA global, huge marketing firm, given the fact that he was in a call with Elon, along with that class of people regarding brand safety; he is an important person and his comments describe the situation. He mentioned that their concerns are brand safety and moderation, and that’s why people are pulling out. For them to pull out it seems that associating with twitter harms their image, and that’s - according to them - related to moderation. As for “proof” that twitter is more toxic; > In the week leading up to Musk's acquisition, researchers said there were no more than 84 hostile tweets an hour on the platform. But from midnight on October 28 – the day Musk took ownership – to noon the next day, there were 4,778 hate-filled tweets. That accounts for more than 398 tweets an hour, about 4.7 times higher than the seven-day average leading up to that day. The potential reach for those tweets was more than 3 million, researchers found. > Researchers also said there was an increase in negative sentiment, with more than 67% of the tweets sent after Musk's takeover having a negative tone. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-twitter-caused-measurable-spike-hate-speech-study/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-twitter-caused-measur...
- refurb 4y agoWhat brand image? A bunch of random people posting ridiculous things one massive flame war?
- PartiallyTyped 4y agoSee the parallel chain.
- PM_me_your_math 4y agoSo much more toxic, 15 million people joined ...In a week.
- ericd 4y agoSpending $44B to prevent the endless terrible hot takes of the Twitterati from polarizing the world to the point where the rest of his stash becomes worthless. I like it.
- FireBeyond 4y agoHe's doing his own fair share of polarization too. "Ukraine should just let Russia keep what they've got now, and agree to their demands and wrap this all up."
- PM_me_your_math 4y agoRight? They should led the blood bath continue until we're tossing nukes at each other!
- mcv 4y agoRussia should just withdraw and stop invading its neighbours.
- ohiovr 4y agoWould we do the same?
- mcv 4y agoI would. But it's true, aggressors rarely listen to reason. They care about strength and about cost. The US didn't withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan because it was the right thing to do, but because it was too expensive and there wasn't anything to gain. Russia may also withdraw once it becomes undeniable to them that there's no winning this and it's too expensive to continue trying. There's lots of people arguing for peace talks, and I'd love for that to work, but it won't work if Putin isn't interested in peace, and by all appearances, he isn't. He's made pretty clear that he isn't. The only alternative is to make is aggression unsuccessful.
- chipotle_coyote 4y agoThe hole in that theory is that by all appearances, Elon Musk really, really likes using Twitter. I don't think he wants to kill it. I think the madness is two-fold: (1) he approached this with a "pfft, I could run that business better than the bozos in charge" attitude -- it's not as if Twitter has been known for great management up to this point, right? -- but never actually came up with a plan beyond "not what they've been doing." After he initially made the offer, he spent all the time he should have been formulating business plans trying to get out of the deal instead. Then it got forced on him, and he's had to scramble. (2) Elon has millions of people who treat him as a combination of Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison, and Tony Stark, and bluntly, I think he's started believing his own press to the point where he just figures, "Why, yes, I am a super genius who can do anything, and anyone who contradicts me is clearly not worth listening to." I would be very surprised if Twitter recovers from what Elon Musk, Super Genius is doing to it; the question is whether Elon Musk is going to recover from it. The best case is that this will be his Steve Jobs Exiled From Apple moment; the worst case is that he becomes Howard Hughes.
- IMTDb 4y ago> The best case is that this will be his Steve Jobs Exiled From Apple moment Didn't Steve Jobs return to this company when it was bleeding money, cut 4000 employees as his first move and turned it into a cash cow ?
- chipotle_coyote 4y agoDespite recent stories making this claim, no, not exactly. The 4,100 jobs that were cut in 1997 -- 2,700 full-time and the rest contract and part-time -- came while Gil Amelio was still CEO, and there's a bit of revisionism in attributing it just to Steve Jobs having been brought on as an advisor. Apple had already laid off 2,800 people in 1996 and the cuts in 1997 were widely expected by analysts. They were made with Apple's existing executive team intact and were executed in a considered, directed fashion. I do not think anyone can make a credible claim that Musk's approach so far could be described as considered and directed.
- mcv 4y ago
- fortuna86 4y agoThat's a very funny spin to still make Elon look good in all this.
- bart_spoon 4y agoI think his ego is too massive for that. The man bristles at the slightest criticism. Destroying Twitter, even intentionally, will provide enough fodder to his critics that I don't think he'd be able to actually suck it up and follow through.
- drcross 4y agoWatch Musks interview with Ron Baron instead of reading second hand quality hack articles if you want to understand the scale of his plans for twitter.
- rchaud 4y agothe scale of his plans so far includes slashing Twitter Blue prices from $20 to $8 on a whim after talking to Stephen King, a horror author. yesterday, he also killed a feature that was introduced the day before, because MKBHD, a Youtuber criticized it. https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1590383366213611522 https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/15903833662136115...
- zen21 4y ago“Bankruptcy is a possibility”
- barbazoo 4y agoIs it true that $13bn came in the form of loans and that those loans are secured by Twitter, not Musk or any entity he'd personally be responsible for? If so, how does that work?
- mahkeiro 4y agoJust google LBO, plenty of site explain that better than me
- supertrope 4y agoIf the business under new ownership turns a profit their bankers make money. If the business folds or is not turned around then the loans sour but the private equity owner also loses their money. In bankruptcy bond holders get paid before shareholders.
- ericmcer 4y agoEveryone is looking at it too short term. Twitter isn’t going to disappear and he has shown a willingness to ride through rough economic times to reach his vision. Social Media is how people interact with the world now, most info we receive is filtered through it in some form. In the last 10 or so years the idea that these platforms need tight moderation to control what and who is speaking on them has become ubiquitous. I think his main gamble is that the future of social media does not involve automated moderation and tight content restrictions, but a more open platform and he is gonna use twitter to play that bet out. It isn’t a horrible bet.
- bergenty 4y agoIt’s not a new idea though, having a completely open platform. It quickly devolves into cp, racism and general abstract violence. We’ve learned this lesson already at this point.
- ericmcer 4y agoObviously not completely open. Open in the sense of ideas and viewpoints, not like an open market for illegal activity. More like one where Trump wouldn't be banned. Is that a good or bad thing? I don't know, in an ideal world humans could self-regulate and make good decisions about how they use information. The status quo is that we cannot control ourselves, and need to have sophisticated controls that filter out objectionable info.
- heavyset_go 4y agoIs that why Twitter is suspending accounts that tweet things that hurt Musk's feelings? That sounds like tight content restrictions to me.
- norwalkbear 4y agoHurt his feelings or impersonating him. I've seen him replying to people insulting him and not suspending them.
- dnissley 4y agoWhat's the axe he's grinding?
- fortuna86 4y agoNot for the lols, I dont care how rich you are losing 44b hurts. But he is clearly out of his depth.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago> Not for the lols, I don't care how rich you are losing 44b hurts. A band named KLF burned a million quid back in the mid 90s. It was ostensibly "performance art" [1]. In 2000 formative internet commerce pioneer Josh Harris blew about 80 million in a few weeks on an "arts project". He is the subject of Ondi Timoner's 2009 documentary "We Live in Public" [2] He described it as "liberating" and said that other dot-com millionaires had "wasted their money" and didn't "know how to live". Maybe Elon fancies himself as an artist? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation_Burn_a_Million_Quid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation_Burn_a_Million_Qu... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Live_in_Public https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Live_in_Public
- matthewdgreen 4y agoMusk loves Twitter. You don’t have to point to the billions he spent on it, you can just see that he loves using it. He might want to change it, might destroy it accidentally in the process (like a kid who hugged their beloved pet too hard), but he didn’t set out to destroy it.
- type0 4y agoHe wants to turn it into Wechat-like platform.