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So this is how Twitter goes out: not with a bang but with a seemingly endless stream of stories about the little ways Elon is ruining the service each day. Jus
by afavour 4y ago
So this is how Twitter goes out: not with a bang but with a seemingly endless stream of stories about the little ways Elon is ruining the service each day.
Just staggers me that Elon could have just… not done any of this. And yet here we are. He’s had to sell billions in Tesla stock to finance this ongoing mayhem, this is surely going to be up there as one of the greatest examples of hubris in modern business.
- georgeg23 4y ago
- dbreunig 4y agoDude, go blog this and submit it instead of pasting it on everyone one of these threads.
- dole 4y agoAt least run it through GPT to make it sound new?
- Zachsa999 4y agoExplain like I'm a 5 year old Canadian please.
- georgeg23 4y agoRead here about Elon and then the Space Development Agency https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career
- ojbyrne 4y agoThis seems very conspiracy-theory-ish. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ojbyrne 4y agoThat's kind of the hallmark of conspiracy theory.
- Zigurd 4y agoEspecially when abundant stupidness has already been demonstrated with the blue checkmark botch. Ain't no 4 dimensional chess going on.
- georgeg23 4y agoThis is more history, to understand what motivated Musk in the past. At this point who can say..
- walrus01 4y agoThe military wanting to spend money on a starlink like low earth orbit system is nothing new or surprising. They have been spending vast amounts of money on various types of geostationary based two-way satellite communications technology for 40 years. And they currently do so on some very low term projects and contracts. Remember that the US DoD is what saved Iridium too. They are always on the lookout for new or better tech. Musk entirely aside for the moment, fact is that the starlink Redmond team has been first to market with something that is WAY ahead of kuiper, oneweb, telesat or any other leo satellite network in real world results.
- sitkack 4y agoDidn't the Redmond team get liquidated?
- kjksf 4y agoWhat happened was: Musk was unhappy with progress so he fired bunch of executives and promoted others to take their job. And voila: the new team successfully launched Starlink. Remind me, what was the other company where Musk fired a bunch of people? It's been in the news recently.
- le-mark 4y agoThis reads like an elaborate Skynet troll. Is this for real?
- lantry 4y agoThis seems to be giving him more credit than he deserves. If he's trying to get republicans on board, all he needs to do is keep crowing about free speech and cancel culture. Actually making any changes to twitter isn't required. IMO he banned journalists that criticized him... because they criticized him. occams razor
- krapp 4y agoStarlink would be the military industrial complex's wet dream, there's no way both parties aren't on board by default.
- georgeg23 4y agoTrump talks a lot lately about Mars and a nuclear defense shield in space... https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-promises-to-plant-the-american-flag-on-mars/ar-AA14ashl https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-promises-to-pl...
- pram 4y agoIt's pretty much just a more elaborate '4D chess' post
- georgeg23 4y ago⠀
- maxbond 4y agoThe references support facts that are not in dispute. The only fact in dispute is whether the Twitter purchase was instrumental to this contract, not that Starlink is a military contractor with industry connections. But I agree that we should be concerned about the military applications of Starlink, and that we should be discussing it more. And I appreciate you highlighting it because I wasn't aware.
- xenospn 4y agoRepublicans are strongest when they have plenty of liberals to criticize. No liberals on his platform means no ammo for Republicans which means they cannot get votes. It makes no sense.
- noelsusman 4y agoI'm highly skeptical that Elon decided to light billions of dollars on fire so he could get some DoD money for Starlink.
- the-printer 4y agoWe’re approaching one year since a world leader decided to burn the cash of his nation due to arrogance, overconfidence and shortsightedness.
- AYBABTME 4y agoI have to say this initially rings to me like a conspiracy theory, but there's lots of info you shared that I wasn't aware of and is quite interesting. I personally would not be against an interest group pushing over their lifetime for a common interest such as space exploration. Although turning this into a "Twitter is a way to curry favours" conclusion is a stretch.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- the-printer 4y agoThis comment reads like something that is probably true but is hard to prove because it’s a judgment of something that is intangible by nature (motivations) unless its complimented by a bevy of concrete evidence (e.g. emails, testimonies). I think that you’re tangentially right. I wouldn’t be surprised if Elon Musk purchased Twitter because he had to, but I wouldn’t be surprised if whatever motivated him to posture toward buying it in the first place was motivated by what you’re explaining.
- tsunamifury 4y agoTo people who have seen similar deals in the past like this it was also my conclusion. It’s like Elon is the modern government agency cut out, but instead of having a handler or agency association - he’s just generally a free agent cut out for anyone who will fund him. But it’s also the plot of the much maligned movie ‘Aloha’. To the keen eye it is a disturbingly insightful film.
- maxbond 4y agoI dunno. Why wouldn't Starlink have gotten that contract anyway...? And why would he threaten to cut off Ukraine if securing this contract were a number one priority for him...? Democrats aren't really less keen on military spending than Republicans, if you want to be a huge military contractor, you'd want the support of both.
- DiNovi 4y agoflaming out and setting billions on fire does not accomplish this
- eyesee 4y agoI mean this is an intriguing rationalization, but I don’t buy it. Buying votes simply doesn’t cost this much, by orders of magnitude. Burning your empire to ashes as a loyalty test doesn’t hold water either: It’s politicians that partake in loyalty tests, not donors.
- LarryMullins 4y ago> a massive DoD program, which requires Republicans to fund. Contrary to the partisan memes, support for military funding is actually bipartisan. Republicans often like to say that Democratic politicians don't support the military, to pander to their base, but this isn't actually true. And Democratic Party sometimes like to play at being peaceniks, again to pander to their base, but this isn't true either. Look up the composition of the United States Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. 50/50 split between parties. You don't get DoD projects funded by sucking up to Republicans, you need to convince politicians on both sides of the aisle. @georgeg23, comments in this thread are now disabled for new users so I'll reply here. It doesn't matter if SDI was originally Reagan's baby. Reagan is dead and nothing will get funded without approval from both parties. The Republicans can't fund the SDA on their own.
- georgeg23 4y agoBut in this case, the DoD project is decidedly Republican. The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was a Reagan initiative and an attempt at rebooting it is a hallmark of every Republican administration since.
- drunkpotato 4y agoIt seems to be the case that all social networks decline eventually. This one is rather remarkable for the speed and intensity of its fall.
- SpicyLemonZest 4y agoIt's a particularly spectacle-heavy fall, but it's actually not that uncommon for social networks to decline quickly. Digg famously had their userbase fall apart near-instantly after their v4 launch.
- marcosdumay 4y agoAbout a week after the slashdot sale/redesign nobody seemed to be there anymore.
- maegul 4y agoUnderrated take IMO. Something many haven't learned ... these things are ephemeral. In the same way they are made new they are made old. If you care about your online presence and the branding "value" it has, then work to separate the brand from the platform as much as possible. If you care about your social connections, find some way to separate them from the platform too: follow them on another platform, learn their general identity so you can find them elsewhere, and maybe we can all try to value having our own personal homes on the web separate from any real platform again.
- mrits 4y agoFall in what? I'm sure they took a big hit in revenue even though some major brands are already back. They took a hit in public perception. Do you actually need a good reputation to be successful in a platform that caters to mostly brain dead on the toilet chatter?
- duxup 4y agoEven if he felt he could do all this as far as bans and etc goes. Why do it by saddling the company with so much debt that it seems financially so difficult to survive? Just from a business standpoint it doesn’t make sense.
- mindslight 4y agoMaybe milking elderly people with robocalls about the "liberal conspiracy" is really that lucrative, and lighting $44B on fire was just an investment to get into that club?
- nickthegreek 4y agoIf that turns out to be true, I am very happy that he cannot run for President.
- scaramanga 4y agoHe doesn't have to, he can just buy his way in.
- afavour 4y agoAs best I’ve been able to discern it, Musk said he was going to buy Twitter for a way overvalued sum ($44bn) as a troll? But ended up getting in so deep that he found himself with a legal obligation to buy the thing for an absurd price. It’s the explanation that makes the most sense to me: obscenely rich man is very used to doing whatever the hell he wants with no repercussions, particularly when shitposting on Twitter (see: SEC) and there was no-one around to tell him to stop.
- hinkley 4y agoWhat kinds of fines would he have been facing for pulling the ejection lever? How much has he lost on this deal by taking it?
- 4y ago
- pigsty 4y agoElon is certainly awful for all that he’s doing, but couldn’t Twitter have simply told him to buzz off when he proposed buying the company instead of taking legal action to ensure he did it? People up top were eager to cash out at the expense of all the employees under them. That’s equally disgusting to me.
- rrmm 4y agoHe was paying a premium. Shareholders wanted their payout.
- influxmoment 4y agoIt's a public company and the company executives act in the best interest of the shareholders not on their own personal political preferences
- kasey_junk 4y agoThe shareholders voted for it. The board effectively had to comply.
- tptacek 4y agoNot really, at least not within a reasonable amount of time to close the deal. Lots of Levine about how Musk couldn't really force the deal with a tender offer, right? But, I mean, the board did the right thing; their obligation is to the shareholders, and the price Musk offered was absurdly high.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kasey_junk 4y agoOnce the vote happened I’m not sure the board could have stopped the deal without being sued forever. Rightly so, because it was such a high offer.
- OneLeggedCat 4y ago
- beachy 4y agoElon's slide into max doucheness is a real shame. I used to tell my kids he was one of the most admirable people around for jump starting the EV industry (yes, I know he didn't do it all). Then came the pedo guy comments. I cut him slack, he must be tired/strung out, he'll apologise. He never did. Now he's become like a meme of himself, or perhaps just himself as he always was but now right out there, and it's not good to see.
- award_ 4y agoI feel this comment. I wasn't always a 'fan' per-se of Elon, but I was definitely able to appreciate what his associated companies had put forth. Anymore, I can't stomach the continuous news stream of awful behavior, treatment of others displayed, etc. I cannot support a person like him or what he stands for/represents at this time (or in the foreseeable future).
- FormerBandmate 4y agoTwitter was always his weakness and now he's ODing on it. Like a crack addict in charge of a cartel superlab
- DonHopkins 4y agoIt's bound to end just like Scarface, he'll go to war tooting and tweeting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuygJnnyiYI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuygJnnyiYI
- galaxyLogic 4y agoThey say money affects people like drugs. They get high on it. But this kind of erratic behavior makes me wonder, maybe he's on drugs.
- woodruffw 4y agoThis seems like the right place for me to speculate idly: I've often wondered about sufficient margins for social engagement on these sorts of things. For example: how would you or I behave if, no matter what we did, over 50,000 people immediately reaffirmed us online? Would it take 50,000, or would 10,000 be enough? 5,000, 1,000? This isn't mean to exculpate Musk: he's encouraged this behavior for years, and his own behavior long predates mega-engagement by his fans on social media. And still I can't help but wonder how many of us would be able to similarly contort ourselves, if so much affirmation was on the line.
- numpad0 4y agoI think Twitter was long dead. It just had no prospect of making money, but slowly degrade into more “heavy VF” propaganda machine it had been for years, and recent series of events is its heart attack at Leviathan timescale.
- woodruffw 4y agoI don’t understand why people say this: Twitter wasn’t lucrative in the way that Facebook is, but they made a healthy profit in 2019 and probably would have made a small profit in 2021 had it not made settlement payments. Their revenue per employee was close to $1M, which is about 2/3rds of Google’s. It’s not clear, either then or now, that Twitter “had no prospect of making money.” By most metrics, it was a potentially (and in actuality) very profitable company with a history of mismanagement.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- inferiorhuman 4y agoTwitter was already struggling with right wing nutjobs and banana republics before El Muskrat got into the mix. Beyond that, Twitter was absolutely struggling to monetize eyeballs. While it wasn't about to implode in the short-term I don't think anyone expected Twitter to stick around long-term without significant changes. El Muskrat just doused the whole thing in acetone and dropped a big fat blunt on it.
- Dylan16807 4y ago> Beyond that, Twitter was absolutely struggling to monetize eyeballs. It was struggling in the "big tech megaprofit" way, not in the "pay for the servers" way.
- inferiorhuman 4y agoTwitter was profitable for, what, a single quarter in 2019? That's not sustainable. But yeah we're talking years before a major cash crunch not weeks. Elno accelerated that timeline pretty dramatically.
- patentatt 4y agoStep 1: get real drunk and/or high. Step 3: have billions to burn. Step 4: you know the rest.
- pbj1968 4y ago2 - you bait the line.
- UncleOxidant 4y agoIt seems as though he's entered his "let's build large airplanes out of spruce" stage.
- theteapot 4y ago*Spaceships out of stainless steel. Good on him though.
- FooHentai 4y agococks gun I said Get. In.
- WalterSear 4y agoHow far are we from the "Shoes by Kleenex" stage, I wonder. Ah, apparently he mistaken the Streisand Effect for a "coordinated campaign". We are closer than I thought.
- anigbrowl 4y agoA lot closer in the last 30 minutes :-/
- JohnMunsch 4y agoExactly! I couldn't help but think of Hughes recently with his crazy choices. He hasn't got the injury from a plane accident to attribute his awfulness to though.
- silisili 4y agoFun fact: The spruce goose was made of Birch.
- lmm 4y agoI feel like the media determined they were going to report it as a failure regardless of what the facts are. Remember all the stories about how Twitter was definitely going to fall apart during the world cup?
- cratermoon 4y agoThe World Cup isn't over. The final is France v Argentina on Sunday morning US time.
- sillysaurusx 4y agopg thread on the topic: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1603572959758663680?s=61&t=A6emIApIhVwETpbe9EOmEQ https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1603572959758663680?s=61&t=... You can practically see the switch flip. I’m not sure he’s openly said Musk has made bad decisions until this moment.
- malshe 4y agoPG has been a Musk fanboy defending his every crazy action on Twitter. Even now his first instinct was to assume that there was some foul play. Anyway he saying it’s bad is a change for sure.
- rideontime 4y agoHe's confidently stating now that there was a "coordinated campaign" to continue posting the jet tracker link (e.g. https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=a835af https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=a835af). From the chrysalis emerges the caterpillar.
- malshe 4y agoOh God what a disappointment!
- jacobsenscott 4y agopg's been like this for a long time though. He's basically a poorer version of elon.
- shrimpx 4y agoCheck out the follow up, he immediately pivots to accusing the journalists of a “coordinated campaign”.
- sillysaurusx 4y agoI read it that way at first too, but I think he’s saying that’s why he originally suspected the bans were due to an algorithm gone awry. And that’s a reasonable worry — it was possible that a particular url was causing the accounts to be banned, e.g. if Musk added ElonJet to some kind of internal ban list, that’d do it. pg’s still on the side of journalism.
- thwoeiuro23432 4y agoElon has made the rule-clear: real-time doxxing is banned on Twitter. I'm surprised people think creepy stalking is free-speech.
- duxup 4y agoHe seemed to say the opposite about that jet account… Now anyone who reports on it is banned too?
- thwoeiuro23432 4y ago
- inferiorhuman 4y ago"My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk," he tweeted on Nov. 6.
- jakelazaroff 4y agoIt’s fine as long as you simply obey an ever-growing list of rules that he changes on a whim, you see.
- afavour 4y agoOK, which of the journalists real time doxxed Elon?
- zeebeeblebrox 4y ago
- lettergram 4y ago> So this is how Twitter goes out: not with a bang but with a seemingly endless stream of stories about the little ways Elon is ruining the service each day. He also brought back a ton of banned people … who were similarly banned without explanation. In this case, he needs to set rules and judges for his kingdom if he wants a certain group to keep using it. As an aside, one of the people banned was known to take clips out of context. Add commentary on top, and actively mislead people. Imo these aren’t journalists, they’re activists
- D-Coder 4y ago> one of the people banned was known to take clips out of context Certainly a good reason to ban everyone who had the same vowel in their name... or something.
- ceejayoz 4y ago> As an aside, one of the people banned was known to take clips out of context. Add commentary on top, and actively mislead people. Imo these aren’t journalists, they’re activists All of these things - mischaracterization, commentary, misinformation, activism - fall well within the "free speech" Musk said he'd be protecting, even if your assertions are true.
- lettergram 4y agoCertainly, I don’t think banning anyone is okay. Musk isn’t actually doing anything but applying the already existing anti-doxing rules. Project Veritas (also a “journalists”) was banned for over a year for accidentally having an address in one of their videos. I think both cases are ridiculous, but the same journalists who were recently banned cheered veritas being banned. No banning, anyone, for any reasons, besides direct threats - aka first amendment (I would argue real-time tracking is probably a threat, but idk)
- ceejayoz 4y ago> Musk isn’t actually doing anything but applying the already existing anti-doxing rules. False. They very publicly tweaked those rules after the ban. (They also include a media exemption, which is being ignored.) https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1603165959669354496 https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1603165959669354496 > Project Veritas (also a “journalists”) was banned for over a year for accidentally having an address in one of their videos. No, he wasn’t. https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/15/twitter-bans-james-okeefe-of-project-veritas-over-fake-account-policy/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/15/twitter-bans-james-okeefe-... “A Twitter representative said the action followed the violation of rules prohibiting “operating fake accounts” and attempting to “artificially amplify or disrupt conversations through the use of multiple accounts,” as noted here.” “Update: The image was in fact redacted, I thought it was done by the person who took the screenshot but the first digits were removed in the original tweet.”
- wpietri 4y agoIt might also be how Tesla goes out. A lot of people have lost a lot of money on Telsa lately: https://www.investors.com/etfs-and-funds/sectors/tesla-stock-investors-lose-132-5-billion-from-musks-twitter-fiasco/ https://www.investors.com/etfs-and-funds/sectors/tesla-stock... It's hard to overstate what a crucial time this is for Tesla. They had early-adopter success when they had the field to themselves. But now every major car company plus a bunch of other people (possibly including Apple) are coming for them. Pivoting to the mainstream market and fending off all the competition is going to take both dedication and gobs of capital. Capital that is going going to be harder to raise with a distracted CEO and a bunch of investors who've had their fingers burned.
- theteapot 4y agoApple. LOL.
- threeseed 4y agoIt's been known for years that Apple has been working on a car project. The latest is that they have given up trying to make it autonomous-only and will be looking to launch in the next few years. Not entirely implausible given that their close partner Foxconn is already making EVs: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/18/business/foxconn-electric-vehicles/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/18/business/foxconn-electric...
- kjksf 4y agoLatest rumor is that they pushed it from 2025 to 2026. By 2026 it'll be next to impossible to make any serious impact in EV market, certainly not serious enough to affect Tesla. In 2026 Tesla will be at run rate of 5+ millions cars. There's no magic in this business. Even if Apple has a car with that kind of demand, it takes 1 year to build a factory and 3 years to ramp it to 1 million cars a year. This is what Giga Shanghai did and that's faster than anyone ever done it. So we're talking 2030 for 1 million cars, if somehow Apple can build it's first factory at the same scale and speed as Tesla it's second factory, after lots of painful learning scaling Fremont production. Plus, without robotaxi what's the point? Luxury brands like BMW / Audi / Mercedes top out at ~2.5 million a year. That's a business, but it's not a Tesla destroying business.
- xeornet 4y agoNot sure what indications we have that Twitter is "going out". User numbers are higher than ever. He unbanned a lot of people that were also banned previously for no reason. I think a lot of the outrage comes from the "unfairness" now being dished out to those people with whom the outraged agree with...
- xcrunner529 4y agoHis advertising has plummeted, the service is now in extreme debt and he’s not even paying the bills lol. There’s plenty of evidence if you bother to look.
- etchalon 4y agoThe user numbers are self-reported, and unlike when Twitter was a public company, the owner has no legal reason not to lie.
- rayiner 4y agoIf Musk does end up taking out Twitter, it’ll be up there with electric cars and rebooting the private space travel industry as a service to humanity. Twitter is an awful platform that relies on cognitive hacks to elevate the worst people (across the spectrum) to prominence. Do you remember the last few years? We got to the point where respectable news outlets were reporting on cable news the insane takes that were flitting through Twitter. Nuking Twitter from orbit is a goddamn public service.
- galaxyLogic 4y agoElon Musk is much like Henry Ford. "In 1918, Ford purchased his hometown newspaper, The Dearborn Independent.[76] A year and a half later, Ford began publishing a series of articles in the paper under his own name, claiming a vast Jewish conspiracy was affecting America.[77] The series ran in 91 issues. Every Ford dealership nationwide was required carry the paper and distribute it to its customers. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford#Antisemitism_and_The_Dearborn_Independent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford#Antisemitism_and_Th... I think Musk bought Twitter to serve as his own platform, to spread his ideas and to suppress those of others.
- sillysaurusx 4y agoWhoa. I didn’t downvote, but that’s a surprising take from you. One obvious problem with it is that if Twitter dies, some other site will take its place. The idea of tweeting isn’t going anywhere. It’d be a bit like trying to uninvent a bicycle. More generally, a bunch of thoughtful people use Twitter, and Twitter DMs changed my life. It’s the AOL messenger of the 2020s. A low friction “DMs open” platform is very hard to come by — the closest before the messenger era was email, which usually isn’t a conversation. So there would be a real loss in terms of social value. E.g. TikTok requires both people follow each other before DMing, so there’s not even an option. You’re not entirely mistaken, but the caveats seem worth calling out. On the whole it seems like more harm than good would come from the implosion.
- tedunangst 4y agoHe can turn it off without the theatrics at any time.
- skissane 4y ago> not with a bang but with a seemingly endless stream of stories about the little ways Elon is ruining the service each day Is Musk making mistakes in his management of Twitter? I'm sure he is. On the other hand, it is also true that a lot of people now have it in for him, and will amplify any story about such a mistake, regardless of how real it is, simply because it is what they want to hear, it feeds the current narrative, it makes great clickbait. In terms of how Twitter actually turns out, I think we are really going to have to give it time, including waiting until the media gets bored with it and moves on to some other topic. It is probably going to do worse than Musk hopes, but also not as badly as many of his detractors predict. Of course, Musk isn't helping things by feeding that media outrage cycle himself. But I can only imagine that behind the scenes, cooler heads – such as Gwynne Shotwell and Robyn Denholm – are urging him to step away from the controversy for a bit, stop feeding it and let it die down. Hurry up and find a new CEO for Twitter, then go spend a few weeks chilling on a tropical island. > He’s had to sell billions in Tesla stock to finance this ongoing mayhem, this is surely going to be up there as one of the greatest examples of hubris in modern business. He's always been willing to stake it all on the left field idea. Sometimes that has worked really well for him (Tesla, SpaceX), other times it has gone rather poorly (Twitter). But, you can't really have one without the other – either you take big risks, sometimes strike it lucky and make it big, other times get badly burnt; or else you don't, and you avoid the burns, but you'll never make it as big either. The kind of person who always takes the right big risks and never the wrong ones, is either too lucky or too wise to actually exist. He made a huge amount of money really fast, and now he's gone back a lot on that. But he's likely got another 20-40 years of life ahead of him, he could easily make it all back and then some.
- wpietri 4y ago> I think we are really going to have to give it time Yes and no. The acquisition is now complete, so we can judge what led up to that. And it was terribly done. The dude made an offer on a lark, thought he could wiggle out, and discovered that, however much he normally can get away with shenanigans, a Delaware chancery judge was not among the people who would let him slide. So he was forced to buy a business he had spent months trashing publicly. He easily lost $20 billion the moment the deal closed. It's one of the most spectacular own-goals in business history. We can also start judging the actual takeover. There is absolutely no reasonable business goal that justifies the level of chaos and mismanagement during the takeover. Even if one believes that cutting 75-80% of the staff was necessary, it was very poorly done. If someone had wanted to maximize the level of media attention, they could have hardly done better than all the dramatics. So is it possible that he'll pull Twitter out of a dive and turn it into a functioning business again? Yes. Network-effects businesses are notoriously hard to kill, which is why Twitter survived all these years despite its problems. But it it likely he'll ever turn a profit on it? I doubt it. But I think the real long-term cost here to Elon is in brand damage. He was a media darling for quite a while, with a lot of people buying his Tony Stark/Edison 2.0 routine. But those days are over. Tech reporters can be pretty credulous, as they are paid to get eyeballs. But business reporters are much less forgiving, as they're paid to be useful to people trying to make money. And now that Musk has made himself look so erratic, there will always be questions about his competence. His media honeymoon is over, and given how much he used his brand to hawk products and get cheap capital, that's going to be a big problem for him going forward.
- wittycardio 4y agoYup I don't like Elon but I assumed twitter would mostly stay the same with a bit more trumpism. I was fine with that but after the sheer stupidity of the last few weeks I'm going to have to leave.
- paxys 4y agoHe has lost 40% of his net worth (over $110 billion) so far this year largely because of this one deal. Truly one of the most disastrous business decisions of all time.
- hinkley 4y ago<Donald Trump has entered the chat>
- GaylordTuring 4y agoWho said it was a business decision on his part? If Elon Musk just tried to make money, do you think this is the way he would behave?
- ramesh31 4y agoTBF anyone who has their net worth almost entirely tied up in the US stock market has seen their wealth decrease by nearly 40% in the last year.
- paxys 4y agoThe market is down ~15% this year. 40% is massive underperformance compared to it.
- paulpauper 4y agoNot at all. the S&P 500 only down 20%, dow down just 10%.
- EFreethought 4y agoTrue, but Musk is supposed to be smarter than us mere mortals.
- hinkley 4y agoThe silver lining here is that we are quickly learning beyond all shadow of doubt that you would not want to live on Mars in a dome owned by Elon Musk, at the same time the odds of that ever happening are dropping faster than his net worth.
- docmars 4y agoThis is ultimately a long awaited revenge against sour activism taken too far, and exposure of alarming things hidden or ignored for ages — things Twitter and its Big Club have been known for for a long time.
- openair18 4y agoHe just tweeted that doxxing is a 7 day ban.
- RhysU 4y agoWhat if he's slowly trashing it so that it's dead for the 2024 elections but not so dead so quickly that something else has replaced it by 2024? It'd arguably be nice to have a national election without Twitter.
- afavour 4y agoNot while Facebook is still there, IMO. A way more toxic and widespread influence.