6 ms·
I’m not a fan of Musk but Musk isn’t trying to make Twitter better… He’s trying to make Twitter able to pay its own bills. Twitter has never made money (except
by thrashh 3y ago
I’m not a fan of Musk but Musk isn’t trying to make Twitter better…
He’s trying to make Twitter able to pay its own bills. Twitter has never made money (except once) in its 17 years of existence.
Twitter as it was should not exist. It’s like a bakery that sells loaves for bread for 20c at a loss. It’s going to eventually implode unless something changes.
- discardable_dan 3y ago[flagged]
- nwiswell 3y agoI see a lot of conspiracy theories like this one but zero explanation of motive. WHY would Musk act as a stooge for the Saudis in this way, at a cost of $44 billion? He's the richest man in the world, he doesn't have to do errands for anyone. "Parag hurt his feelings, so he impulsively and vengefully made a buyout offer. He almost immediately came to his senses, and unsuccessfully tried for months to wiggle out of the deal" fits the fact pattern. Once he realized he actually had to try and run the thing, he failed. It's a lot simpler than the Saudi thing.
- post-it 3y agoHe's the richest man in the world partially because he's desperate for money. Being bottomlessly greedy is a necessary prerequisite to being a multibillionaire, any normal person would retire before they get there. And although he's one of the wealthiest people in the world, his wealth is dwarfed by that of the Saudi state.
- Wowfunhappy 3y agoHow is Saudi Arabia paying him without anyone noticing?
- fakedang 3y agoTechnically the Saudi PIF and the Saudi ownership of Aramco, which runs into trillions, is all property of the Saudi royalty, and increasingly the personal property of the current rulers, father and son. So no, Musk isn't the richest man on the planet.
- danjac 3y agoIt's Musk we're talking about here, so Hanlon's Razor probably applies. Unlike his other companies he doesn't have handlers to mitigate his poor decision-making.
- concordDance 3y agoI think his main issue here is that quickly trying lots of things to see what works works way better with cars than social networks.
- danjac 3y agoWell, if you don't mind your cars randomly catching fire...
- hw 3y agoIs it really suppressing liberal discourse, or is the new Twitter balancing the sides by letting the conservative discourse run freely? It’s a common fallacy for folks to think that just because they are seeing tweets from the opposite side more that they think their side is being suppressed Many have doubted Elon Musk during the early days of Tesla and SpaceX thinking he was incompetent in running those companies and the goals were lofty. People still doubt him with as much ferocity as his fans that adore him. It’s super fascinating IMO. That being said, I do think Instagram will have some success with threads the same way Reels has been successful in fending off TikTok (as in not made completely irrelevant). People who share on TikTok also cross post on IG reels for more views and for eyeballs that are not on TikTok. I think the same thing will happen, where there will be some crossposting. Twitter still has a large audience - that will still make it relevant for some time.
- rustedspoon 3y agoFrom an Indian perspective, from the Twitter files, shadow banning 40k accounts 99 percent of them being conservative while all the while saying they aren’t doing anything like this was shady. Add to that there was no prep to the accounts too, it was just provided without any evidence by an online only news publisher who recently posted fake news about Facebook and got caught.
- rustedspoon 3y agoWhy the down vote ? Reference from times of India https://m.timesofindia.com/world/uk/twitter-files-reveal-hindu-nationalists-were-targeted-by-us-think-tanks-disinformation-lab/articleshow/98402238.cms https://m.timesofindia.com/world/uk/twitter-files-reveal-hin... Article from 2019 Twitter denying any such shadow bans are occurring https://theprint.in/politics/new-allegation-against-twitter-modi-supporters-say-pm-is-shadow-banned/193916/ https://theprint.in/politics/new-allegation-against-twitter-... Another reference from bbc that shows wire.in removing fake articles about Facebook/meta https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-63226111 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-63226111 If I’m missing something here let me know, I don’t want to be misinformed
- zogrodea 3y agoMusk has been accused of bringing anti-Muslim content to the attention of his millions of followers (like Amy Mek's tweets about the France riots and other things[0]) and I'm sure that wouldn't sit well with Saudi Arabia. I understand worries of Musk supporting the right, but your interpretation is a unique one that seems highly unlikely. [0] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1671397462043512833 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1671397462043512833
- fakedang 3y agoSaudi Arabia doesn't care about Muslims and Yada Yada. If they did, where's the outcry over Uighurs and what not? Saudi Arabia just cares about one thing and that's securing the interests of the royal Al Saud family.
- mullingitover 3y ago> He’s trying to make Twitter able to pay its own bills. He could've bought seats on the board to accomplish this through standard shareholder activism. By committing a leveraged buyout and saddling the company with an additional >1 billion a year in added debt payments, while simultaneously driving advertising revenue into the ground, he's basically sent the company on a beeline toward insolvency.
- thrashh 3y agoI didn’t say he did anything right. I’m just saying his goals and his poor ability to achieve them.
- nl 3y agoI agree that Twitter should pay it's own bills. But the causes for that are obvious from my POV: * Their add platform is truly terrible. Ask anyone who deals in that area to compare it with Meta or Google's and they will laugh. * They can't ship new products. Since 2008 they have increased the size of tweets from 140 characters to 280 characters, and that is the biggest change. Look how many things Facebook has tried in the same time. Some failed, but lots succeeded. Also in the history of bad decisions, surely the decision to kill Vine is right up there? Occasionally people still find an old Vine video and share it. What could have been...
- te_chris 3y agoThat’s not true about new products: since idk, 2018 or so, they’ve been constantly shipping new ML crap to ruin the main feed. This is why I closed my account in 2020. “Person you follow liked…” is the literal worst feature.
- codethief 3y ago> Look how many things Facebook has tried in the same time. Some failed, but lots succeeded. Like which ones? Not being sarcastic, I just can't think of any off the top of my head.
- ulfw 3y agobecause there are none. (on Facebook core product) I am leaving out their never really widely launched crypto hype disaster of a product on purpose.
- nl 3y agoReally? Facebook Events? Groups? Marketplace? These are pretty major, successful features that drive a lot of use.
- codethief 3y agoThose features drive use but did they also increase profit, given that Facebook successfully enshitified their main product (the news feed)? I don't disagree with your main point, though: Facebook certainly developed lots of new features, whereas Twitter pretty much stood still.
- upon_drumhead 3y agoTwitter was profitable for two years, 2018 and 2019. https://www.statista.com/statistics/274563/annual-net-income-of-twitter/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/274563/annual-net-income... My understanding is the majority of those loss years was due to how they accounted for RSUs, however I can’t find that easily right now. I don’t get the impression that it was at all close to imploding pre-musk. Do you have any links to back up that claim?
- zimpenfish 3y agoAlso "technically profitable" in 2021 -- except for a $760M legal settlement they had to pay out which dropped them to a ~$490M loss.