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A meta comment: since Elon’s takeover there has been an astounding volume of Twitter doom wishcasting. Almost none of these predictions have come true, and whi

by smeeth 4y ago

A meta comment: since Elon’s takeover there has been an astounding volume of Twitter doom wishcasting. Almost none of these predictions have come true, and while I suppose they may eventually, the posts/articles getting increasingly difficult to pay attention to. Every time I see another of these my reaction is “god, another one?” I’ve been struggling to evaluate these articles on the merits, I’m sure I’m not alone. If you want to write an article like this and avoid this problem I recommend that you take extreme care to at least pretend Elon failing wouldn’t give you profound schadenfreude.

dragontamer 4y ago
> Almost none of these predictions have come true There's only one prediction that really matters in my eyes: the prediction that Elon would win the October 2022 court case and somehow get out of his contractual agreement to buy Twitter. Can the future be predicted? Ehh, probably not. But the thing that has held up time-and-time again is legal, contractual obligations. 1. Elon Musk is terrible at understanding contracts. 2. Because of #1, Elon Musk breaks contracts on a regular basis. 3. In some cases, Elon Musk gets sued, it takes months (or even a year+) for the courts to address these contracts, and Elon eventually gets his ass kicked in court. #3 has the most uncertainty. But... Elon has been breaking contracts with such vigor this past year (including his attempts to "not buy Twitter", among others), that I'm willing to bet that he's going to make the same mistake again, and again, and again. ---------- Haraldur Thorliefsson and the FTC case are both similar events to the October 2022 court case in my eyes. They seem to have solid foundation of law. They seem to have been ignored by Elon Musk, and finally, there seems to be court action going on. I don't know how long the court action will take, but I'm willing to bet against Elon Musk on this one.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- smotched 4y ago
  None of those are/were predictions...
  - dragontamer 4y ago
    Were you around here for the last year? That bots and mDAU numbers are so awful that Elon Musk would obviously win the court case? TWTR stock price was $35 or less (despite Elon Musk's court-ordered offer of $54 per share). Then, there was a prediction of "If forced, where would Elon Musk's money come from??". And I think everyone knows that Elon's #1 source of money is TSLA shares. Lo-and-behold, TSLA drops dramatically as Elon sells $10s of Billions to fund the Twitter deal. This was probably some of the easiest money you could have made last year in the stock market. Short TSLA in 2022 (since Elon needs a source of funding) and long TWTR (because Elon would lose the court case). ---------- Now we have other, court-based predictions going on in this blog post. I'm not sure if there's much to trade on (maybe short Tesla? If Musk has to tap into TSLA shares to pay for these issues??)
retox 4y ago
The average person doesn't care about any of this crying, they will use twitter for another ten years.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  The average person probably doesn't use Twitter.
  - smotched 4y ago
    I think its obvious he means twitter user
    - smt88 4y ago
      Twitter needs to dramatically grow its user base to survive
edmundsauto 4y ago
To be fair to the doomers- slow failures can look like “business as usual” for a long long time. It’s very dependent on how someone defines success and failure. If Elon pours a billion a year into Twitter, is that a failure? Alternatively, is it really a success if it just keeps chugging along but doesn’t grow or innovate? Maybe Twitters ends up something like IBM. It’s still there, but people can differ on whether IbM of the last 20+ years is really successful. Edit - this is why most “predictions” are dumb, they are not concrete, measurable, or time bounded.
gary_0 4y ago
Elon/Twitter stories get clicks in part because of the "how's he going to get out of this one!?" factor. As the article points out, Twitter's financial numbers and upcoming liabilities don't look good. This is not subjective; Twitter is in bad fiscal shape. In some ways Elon walked the same knife's edge with Tesla and SpaceX (he himself admits how touch-and-go it was at various points), but he managed to pull it off. Now he's doing a similar stunt with Twitter, but with a much bigger and more attentive audience. And a far cockier attitude. And everyone's wondering how long he can play corporate Evel Knievel before his luck runs out.
- adamrezich 4y ago
  I thought it was quite well-understood that Musk has a long-term plan to turn Twitter into "the WeChat of the West", a centralized identity/payment platform, likely in the form of x.com?
  - gary_0 4y ago
    Sure, and he also has long-term plans to build a Tesla autonomous android, and a SpaceX Mars colony. I wish him the best of luck, but I'm not going to put money on any of those plans succeeding any time soon.
    - adamrezich 4y ago
      of those three things, turning Twitter into WeChat seems by far the most plausible, achievable, marketable, sustainable, and profitable—so, what point are you trying to make here?
      - dvngnt_ 4y ago
        I highly doubt twitter will be the wechat of the west. I don't think any app would be that at least for america for cultural/political reasons
      - LiquidSky 4y ago
        The way he's been running Twitter, at this point a Mars colony does seem more likely. It hasn't just been erratic but actively buffoonish. The "plan" seems to be whatever whim he has day-to-day, made infinitely worse by his seemingly 24/7 capering on Twitter himself.
ofcourseyoudo 4y ago
I mean... >More than 70 of Twitter’s top 100 advertisers from before Mr. Musk’s takeover weren’t spending on the platform as of the week ended Feb. 25, according to an analysis from research firm Pathmatics, which is part of Sensor Tower. -- WSJ, 3/3/2023 https://archive.ph/Uoge3#selection-483.0-483.228 https://archive.ph/Uoge3#selection-483.0-483.228

by smeeth 4y ago

dragontamer 4y ago

> Almost none of these predictions have come true There's only one prediction that really matters in my eyes: the prediction that Elon would win the October 2022 court case and somehow get out of his contractual agreement to buy Twitter. Can the future be predicted? Ehh, probably not. But the thing that has held up time-and-time again is legal, contractual obligations. 1. Elon Musk is terrible at understanding contracts. 2. Because of #1, Elon Musk breaks contracts on a regular basis. 3. In some cases, Elon Musk gets sued, it takes months (or even a year+) for the courts to address these contracts, and Elon eventually gets his ass kicked in court. #3 has the most uncertainty. But... Elon has been breaking contracts with such vigor this past year (including his attempts to "not buy Twitter", among others), that I'm willing to bet that he's going to make the same mistake again, and again, and again. ---------- Haraldur Thorliefsson and the FTC case are both similar events to the October 2022 court case in my eyes. They seem to have solid foundation of law. They seem to have been ignored by Elon Musk, and finally, there seems to be court action going on. I don't know how long the court action will take, but I'm willing to bet against Elon Musk on this one.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
smotched 4y ago
None of those are/were predictions...
- dragontamer 4y ago
  Were you around here for the last year? That bots and mDAU numbers are so awful that Elon Musk would obviously win the court case? TWTR stock price was $35 or less (despite Elon Musk's court-ordered offer of $54 per share). Then, there was a prediction of "If forced, where would Elon Musk's money come from??". And I think everyone knows that Elon's #1 source of money is TSLA shares. Lo-and-behold, TSLA drops dramatically as Elon sells $10s of Billions to fund the Twitter deal. This was probably some of the easiest money you could have made last year in the stock market. Short TSLA in 2022 (since Elon needs a source of funding) and long TWTR (because Elon would lose the court case). ---------- Now we have other, court-based predictions going on in this blog post. I'm not sure if there's much to trade on (maybe short Tesla? If Musk has to tap into TSLA shares to pay for these issues??)

retox 4y ago

The average person doesn't care about any of this crying, they will use twitter for another ten years.

ceejayoz 4y ago
The average person probably doesn't use Twitter.
- smotched 4y ago
  I think its obvious he means twitter user
  - smt88 4y ago
    Twitter needs to dramatically grow its user base to survive

edmundsauto 4y ago

To be fair to the doomers- slow failures can look like “business as usual” for a long long time. It’s very dependent on how someone defines success and failure. If Elon pours a billion a year into Twitter, is that a failure? Alternatively, is it really a success if it just keeps chugging along but doesn’t grow or innovate? Maybe Twitters ends up something like IBM. It’s still there, but people can differ on whether IbM of the last 20+ years is really successful. Edit - this is why most “predictions” are dumb, they are not concrete, measurable, or time bounded.

gary_0 4y ago

Elon/Twitter stories get clicks in part because of the "how's he going to get out of this one!?" factor. As the article points out, Twitter's financial numbers and upcoming liabilities don't look good. This is not subjective; Twitter is in bad fiscal shape. In some ways Elon walked the same knife's edge with Tesla and SpaceX (he himself admits how touch-and-go it was at various points), but he managed to pull it off. Now he's doing a similar stunt with Twitter, but with a much bigger and more attentive audience. And a far cockier attitude. And everyone's wondering how long he can play corporate Evel Knievel before his luck runs out.

adamrezich 4y ago
I thought it was quite well-understood that Musk has a long-term plan to turn Twitter into "the WeChat of the West", a centralized identity/payment platform, likely in the form of x.com?
- gary_0 4y ago
  Sure, and he also has long-term plans to build a Tesla autonomous android, and a SpaceX Mars colony. I wish him the best of luck, but I'm not going to put money on any of those plans succeeding any time soon.
  - adamrezich 4y ago
    of those three things, turning Twitter into WeChat seems by far the most plausible, achievable, marketable, sustainable, and profitable—so, what point are you trying to make here?
    - dvngnt_ 4y ago
      I highly doubt twitter will be the wechat of the west. I don't think any app would be that at least for america for cultural/political reasons
    - LiquidSky 4y ago
      The way he's been running Twitter, at this point a Mars colony does seem more likely. It hasn't just been erratic but actively buffoonish. The "plan" seems to be whatever whim he has day-to-day, made infinitely worse by his seemingly 24/7 capering on Twitter himself.

ofcourseyoudo 4y ago

I mean... >More than 70 of Twitter’s top 100 advertisers from before Mr. Musk’s takeover weren’t spending on the platform as of the week ended Feb. 25, according to an analysis from research firm Pathmatics, which is part of Sensor Tower. -- WSJ, 3/3/2023 https://archive.ph/Uoge3#selection-483.0-483.228 https://archive.ph/Uoge3#selection-483.0-483.228