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I did say social media companies for the record which is what we are actually talking about here.

by mhoad 4y ago

shanebellone 4y ago
Fair. It's worth pointing out we have about 20 years of "historical record", and none have attempted to niche down. I would argue both crypto and gold could drive revenue for an alt-right social media platform.
- mhoad 4y ago
  Maybe “revenue” is masking the reality of the situation here. No alt right echo chamber is ever in a million years going to be able to provide a good return on investment for $44B. If they go down that path they WILL die which was my original point.
  - shanebellone 4y ago
    Eh, that almost feels like a strawman argument. Pre-Musk Twitter wasn't worth $44b either. By normal metrics, it only needs to be profitable to sustain. It might be more accurate to interpret Twitter as a luxury good (from Elon's perspective). Similar to how other billionaires build lavish yachts. With that being said, there is no argument for his purchase or subsequent actions being construed as a viable investment strategy. The whole debacle looks like child's tantrum.
    - mhoad 4y ago
      It’s not a strawman. I’m talking about very concrete facts. 1. There is not a single instance in the entire history of the internet of a profitable alt right social media website that anyone actually uses. 2. The price he paid was indeed so overvalued and has only dramatically dropped in value since then that they can already no longer pay their bills after just 7 weeks.
      - shanebellone 4y ago
        You are but it's ignoring other concrete facts. The concept of alt-right social media is ~2 years old. 1. Facebook took 5 years to become profitable. 2. Twitter took 12 years. 3. Instagram had no revenue before Facebook bought it.
        skinnymuch 4y ago
        Gab is nearing age 6. Stormfront and chans with alt-right focus have been around longer than 2 years. Qanon began on 4chan over 5 years ago. Rumble is 9 years old at a $2B market cap with no profits in sight. Parler is over 4 years old and tried to sell itself by tricking Kanye West. Rumble and Gab should be profitable now if you brought up FB becoming profitable at 5. This is all before FB found it’s mobile ads focus and became the behemoth it is now.
    - skinnymuch 4y ago
      The argument still works even at a $24B valuation (45% discounted). No right wing platform is going to be worth $25B in the foreseeable future.
- skinnymuch 4y ago
  No crypto company is worth that much. Coinbase market cap is under $10B. Binance can’t really be trusted and isn’t transparent. We don’t know how much true crypto activity there is. Most daily activity could be wash trading and other activities that don’t help a legit platform. We don’t know if crypto can be a strong part of a huge right wing platform. There’s no reason to believe it can be in the foreseeable future. Fox owned MySpace and failed spectacularly with it. They technically tried niching down when they sold the site to Justin Timberlake. Fox itself is doing well enough, but only has a market cap of $16B including their non-right wing assets too. Truth and Gab have to use non right wing code for their platforms. Code that the coders don’t want either platform to use. Truth wasn’t even giving them credit before.

I did say social media companies for the record which is what we are actually talking about here.

by mhoad 4y ago

I did say social media companies for the record which is what we are actually talking about here.

Fair. It's worth pointing out we have about 20 years of "historical record", and none have attempted to niche down. I would argue both crypto and gold could drive revenue for an alt-right social media platform.

mhoad 4y ago
Maybe “revenue” is masking the reality of the situation here. No alt right echo chamber is ever in a million years going to be able to provide a good return on investment for $44B. If they go down that path they WILL die which was my original point.
- shanebellone 4y ago
  Eh, that almost feels like a strawman argument. Pre-Musk Twitter wasn't worth $44b either. By normal metrics, it only needs to be profitable to sustain. It might be more accurate to interpret Twitter as a luxury good (from Elon's perspective). Similar to how other billionaires build lavish yachts. With that being said, there is no argument for his purchase or subsequent actions being construed as a viable investment strategy. The whole debacle looks like child's tantrum.
  - mhoad 4y ago
    It’s not a strawman. I’m talking about very concrete facts. 1. There is not a single instance in the entire history of the internet of a profitable alt right social media website that anyone actually uses. 2. The price he paid was indeed so overvalued and has only dramatically dropped in value since then that they can already no longer pay their bills after just 7 weeks.
    - shanebellone 4y ago
      You are but it's ignoring other concrete facts. The concept of alt-right social media is ~2 years old. 1. Facebook took 5 years to become profitable. 2. Twitter took 12 years. 3. Instagram had no revenue before Facebook bought it.
      - skinnymuch 4y ago
        Gab is nearing age 6. Stormfront and chans with alt-right focus have been around longer than 2 years. Qanon began on 4chan over 5 years ago. Rumble is 9 years old at a $2B market cap with no profits in sight. Parler is over 4 years old and tried to sell itself by tricking Kanye West. Rumble and Gab should be profitable now if you brought up FB becoming profitable at 5. This is all before FB found it’s mobile ads focus and became the behemoth it is now.
  - skinnymuch 4y ago
    The argument still works even at a $24B valuation (45% discounted). No right wing platform is going to be worth $25B in the foreseeable future.
skinnymuch 4y ago
No crypto company is worth that much. Coinbase market cap is under $10B. Binance can’t really be trusted and isn’t transparent. We don’t know how much true crypto activity there is. Most daily activity could be wash trading and other activities that don’t help a legit platform. We don’t know if crypto can be a strong part of a huge right wing platform. There’s no reason to believe it can be in the foreseeable future. Fox owned MySpace and failed spectacularly with it. They technically tried niching down when they sold the site to Justin Timberlake. Fox itself is doing well enough, but only has a market cap of $16B including their non-right wing assets too. Truth and Gab have to use non right wing code for their platforms. Code that the coders don’t want either platform to use. Truth wasn’t even giving them credit before.