7 ms·

X says it is worth $19B, down from $44B last year

65 points by c420 3y ago

clouddrover 3y ago
> “For people that don’t see our vision yet, people that don’t see what’s happening here at X, stop giving any of that oxygen,” she said. “Don’t pay attention to it.” Does X pay its rent yet? Is that part of the Vision?
- gumballindie 3y ago
  Elon Musk could have let everyone work from home and save money on rent but he had to demand rto. Oh uh. Hope he fails soon, so others can learn.
  - ryanklee 3y ago
    > so others can learn The ones who need to won't.
  - valianteffort 3y ago
    RTO was an attempt to voluntarily cut headcount.
  - wernercd 3y ago
    Took Elon 17 years to get Tesla profitable... why do you think he'd give up in a year? The largest problem with businesses these days is the "we must make profit next quarter" mindset and the "I hope he fails" is either that - or a pocket dislike of free speech. Each option is questionable in it's own right. I hope Elon succeeds. Not because I agree with everything he says or does but because I value free speech. “I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it” -Voltaire
    - candiddevmike 3y ago
      What does free speech have to do with Twitter? https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/rcna81961 https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/rcna81961
      - sdfghswe 3y ago
        Don't you know, he's a free speech absolutist.
        SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
        Unless you're posting publicly available information about flights. Then that crosses the line.
      - stass 3y ago
        It essentially became a public square of the internet, so it's important to have it as censorship free as possible.
      - rez9x 3y ago
        It's an opinion article, so I wasn't expecting much, but it seems a little disingenuous. That said, an open-source platform more focused on decentralization would be a better solution, but nothing will be perfect while power and wealth are so centralized. I hope Damus is able to grow, but it's just not easy access enough as it is.
    - shapefrog 3y ago
      I, as a free speech advocate, agree Elon is free to say his core values are freedom of speech while censoring peoples speech.
    - clouddrover 3y ago
      > I hope Elon succeeds. Not because I agree with everything he says or does but because I value free speech. If you value free speech then you don't want Musk to run Twitter. Musk does not believe in free speech: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-04-20/news-analysis-what-does-elon-musk-know-about-free-speech-or-transparency-or-truth https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-04-20/news-analy... https://techxplore.com/news/2022-12-musk-free-speech-absolutism-fantasy.html https://techxplore.com/news/2022-12-musk-free-speech-absolut... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/15/twitter-suspends-accounts-journalists-musk https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/15/twitter-s... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/07/elon-musks-hypocrisy-about-free-speech-hits-a-new-low https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/07/elon-m...
    - didibus 3y ago
      You don't truly believe Twitter has become any better at free speech than it was before do you? Cause that's foolish. There's tons of bans and blocks, and there's still bias in the algorithms for promoting tweets. The only change is that what gets censored is now more aligned with Musk's own interests. That's all.
      - wernercd 3y ago
        How could it not be better? it's not working with the US Gov to censor free speech that's proven to be true after the fact. One of the biggest scandals of our time is "disinformation" that the government doesn't approve of being silenced by Government working with Private Industry to get around bans on government censorship of speech. Used for dissent around COVID "misinformation" or "election integrity". I didn't claim X is perfect but it's a lot better than twitter that banned, say, the post for putting up The Laptop Story - that's long since been proven 100% true and was suppressed by... drum roll! the FBI literally lying about "russia". The only thing that's changed is there's a top place for information that isn't controlled by the government - right or wrong. I understand that's scary but scary freedom is better than the safety of slavery.
        didibus 3y ago
        I'm sorry for doing this, but I'm going to defer to ChatGPT 4, as it does a better job than I could at explaining why I'm not convinced by what you're saying to believe it's any better now that Musk owns Twitter. 1. Instances of deceit, irrationality, or fallacious reasoning: - The claim "it's not working with the US Gov to censor free speech that's proven to be true after the fact" suggests that because something is proven true later, it was necessarily censored for being true. This is a post hoc fallacy. - Labeling disapproved "disinformation" as "literally the hallmark of fascism" is a slippery slope fallacy, as it makes an extreme conclusion based on limited data. - The claim that Twitter banned "the post for putting up The Laptop Story" and connects it with the FBI "literally lying about 'russia'" makes an assumption of causation without clear evidence. - The comparison "scary freedom is better than the safety of slavery" is a false dichotomy, suggesting only two extreme options exist. 2. Overt emotional appeals or attempts to manipulate the reader's emotions: - Using terms like "biggest scandals of our time," "hallmark of fascism," and "safety of slavery" are emotionally charged phrases meant to evoke strong reactions from the reader. - The phrase "drum roll!" is an attempt to heighten anticipation and add emphasis to the subsequent statement. - "I understand that's scary" acknowledges the emotional weight of the topic, attempting to resonate with readers who might feel the same. 3. Summary of the Overall Approach: The text primarily employs emotional appeals and fallacious reasoning to make its points. While it presents some claims as factual, it lacks concrete evidence or logical argumentation to support them. Instead, it relies on emotionally charged phrases and extreme comparisons to drive home its perspective. The text does not align strongly with Enlightenment values of reason, evidence, and logical argumentation. Instead, it leans heavily on emotional and manipulative tactics. Edit (to add my rational for why I'm not convinced it's any better): Like ChatGPT points out, the arguments against the prior Twitter and for the new I don't find fully logical or evidenced. And in my view, the transition of Twitter to private ownership under Elon Musk pose challenges to its role as a guardian of free speech, compared to its time as a publicly traded company. This change potentially alters the checks and balances in place, as the discourse and recourse now largely rest on Elon's discretion. And possibly on Elon's creditors, which some of them are questionable. Previously, various stakeholders could critique and influence Twitter's policies, fostering a level of transparency. Now, this dynamic is gone. So I'm left to take Elon's personal guarantee. To believe his claim that he's a good dictator. That he won't leave his personal beliefs and interests bias his platform. And to believe that it will end up being an overall net positive to truth seeking, and not devolve into another tool that helps falsehoods spread while truth erodes. Even if he does manage to do all that for some time, being privately held isn't a robust mechanism to protect free speech and promote truth long term. If he worked to somehow democratize, create check and bounds, and all that, I'll change my mind.
    - rez9x 3y ago
      I generally dislike publicly traded companies and wish stock markets and speculation didn't exist, but there's no hope of that, so instead I'll cheer on any public corporation that goes private. I think using mass social media is largely bad for your mental health, but I hope the company succeeds in some capacity.
    - didibus 3y ago
      > I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it” -Voltaire I also just want to elucidate this quote a bit in case you didn't know. Voltaire did not actually write these exact words. The line is a summary of his views on freedom of speech and thought, and it was penned by Evelyn Beatrice Hall in her 1906 biography of Voltaire titled "The Friends of Voltaire." Hall wrote this phrase to encapsulate Voltaire's beliefs on the subject. Given that Voltaire himself did not say these exact words, there is no specific context in which he was addressing someone or some particular statement he disagreed with. Voltaire was a man of the Enlightenment, which prioritized reason, evidence, and logical argumentation. He would likely have opposed the deliberate spread of falsehoods and deceit. However, he would also probably have advocated for the right of people to express even flawed arguments, as challenging such arguments through reason and debate is foundational to Enlightenment values. But when it comes to personal attacks, slander, deceit, and hate speech, he would have not been so tolerant, because the subtext is when he speaks of "speech" he means engaging in an enlightened conversation using reason, evidence, and logical argumentation. It's okay to have flawed logic, evidence or reasoning, but he was fighting the powers at be of his time, and those were using deceit, irrational and illogical fallacies, appeals to emotions, forced censorship and the like to push falsehoods. The values of the enlightenment were about working towards accurate truth seeking.
      - wernercd 3y ago
        I actually saw that when finding the quote but was too lazy to go deep into it. Yeah, it's not Voltaire quoted but her paraphrase. I think free speech is like all our other rights - absolute but your rights end where the rights of others begin. Which is a wonderful paradox in which to live. You have the right to self defense but don't have the right to own a nuke. You have a right to speak freely but not to defame/slander/incite violence. The question isn't are those rights yours but where your right ends and the line between your rights and mine. It's still probably my favorite quote - especially as a veteran - even if, like a lot of things, its not exactly 100% accurate lol. I should put it as "Voltaire, misquoted by Hall" My other favorite quote is: “When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say.” ― George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings
- frob 3y ago
  I read your comment using X with its historical meaning of "insert option here" instead of the rebranding of Twitter and it gave me one more reason to hate this stupid, stupid rebrand even as someone who doesn't use it.
seydor 3y ago
and how much is twitter worth
- kibwen 3y ago
  The cost of a therapist is in the ballpark of $100/hour, and Twitter is essentially anti-therapy in that one relieves psychological trauma and the other inflicts it, so to properly evaluate the profitablity of Twitter we must take into account that it should be paying its users $100/hour to use it.
ilamont 3y ago
From a separate NYT article: Last year, Twitter’s interest expense was about $50 million. With the new debt taken on in the deal, that will now balloon to about $1 billion a year. Yet the company’s operations last year generated about $630 million in cash flow to meet its financial obligations. That means that Twitter is generating less money per year than what it owes its lenders. The company also does not appear to have a lot of extra cash on hand. While it had about $6 billion in cash before Mr. Musk’s buyout, a large portion of that probably went into the cost of closing the acquisition. ... To make ends meet, Mr. Musk probably has to slash costs — by a lot. Over the weekend, he was said to be already moving to do so by ordering job cuts across Twitter. One investor who put less than $1 million in the buyout of the company said he was told by the head of Mr. Musk’s family office to expect that around 50 percent of Twitter’s 7,500 employees would be laid off. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/30/technology/elon-musk-twitter-debt.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/30/technology/elon-musk-twit...
- XorNot 3y ago
  Yeah there's no way it's worth $19 billion. With its current expenses you can just sit back and wait for bankruptcy proceedings to pick it up cheap if you wanted it.
  - c420 3y ago
    Was that his 4D chess plan all along?
    - TylerE 3y ago
      That doesn’t work so well when you’re the seller.
    - pstuart 3y ago
      The fact that he tried to get out of the deal is evidence that he had acted impulsively.
      - tim333 3y ago
kevmo 3y ago
$19B seems high.
- thghtihadanacct 3y ago
  But $26B seems like a pretty good tax write off. Seriously tho, How much of this drop (adjustment to reality) could Musk potentially write off on taxes, etc? Especially when it was pretty obvious he tanked it on purpose.
  - asylteltine 3y ago
    Can you write off this stuff? You can only personally write if like 3k of loses per year
    - gowld 3y ago
      $3,000 loss limit is the amount that can offset ordinary income. Capital losses can offset unlimited capital gains.
      - asylteltine 3y ago
        [dead]
  - ars 3y ago
    That's not how tax write offs work. You can write that off against profits, and save around 20% - but you still lost 80% of the money. So what would be the purpose of tanking it on purpose? He could just send the US Treasury the money for less trouble.
  - guntars 3y ago
    Losing actual money is not a good tax write off strategy.
  - KMag 3y ago
    I'm not an accountant, but doesn't he need to realize investment losses in order to write them off? Capital expenses can be depreciated for tax write-offs, but I wasn't aware that corporate investments could be marked to market for write-offs.
fakecontent000 3y ago
[dead]
arnvald 3y ago
I’m quite surprised it’s dropped “only” by 55%. Musk made the offer just before a big drop in valuation of tech companies. Even if Twitter revenue remained stable it probably wouldn’t be worth $44B Musk paid. With a drop in usage, drop in ads, controversy around the bots, misinformation, failure of Twitter Blue, I would expect that the actual value is quite below the said $19B. Maybe the cost saving measures partially offset the drop in revenue? They crippled functionality for guest users quite a lot (I’m not logged in on my work laptop and I can’t see quote tweets nor replies), their workforce is 5x smaller, it seems their costs are way lower than before.
- silverbax88 3y ago
  Agreed. It wasn't worth $44B when he bought it, so I'm not sure why the NY Times would even use that number in any way. If I pay someone $100,000 for a stick they found on the side of the road, it doesn't make that stick worth $100k. I doubt Twitter was worth $19B even before Musk overpaid for it. It was a 15 year old company that couldn't make money.
  - omarfarooq 3y ago
    > If I pay someone $100,000 for a stick they found on the side of the road, it doesn't make that stick worth $100k. So why did you pay $100,000?
    - klyrs 3y ago
      This line of thinking is so basic. Say I bought a lotto ticket for $5. Does that mean it's worth $5?
      - the_gastropod 3y ago
        Say I bought this cabbage... When you bought that $5 lotto ticket, it was worth $5. After the lotto is drawn, it's either worth approximately nothing or potentially a lot more than $5.
  - 3y ago
nova22033 3y ago
Phantom braking but for market cap
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
Related from earlier: Fidelity has marked down the value of Twitter/X by 65% https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38073218 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38073218
TheAlchemist 3y ago
$19B ?! I think they forgot the comma here. And even that would be generous. All advertisers are gone - it seems like most advertising is some absolute crap. No way it brings any real money. Linda Yaccarino was recently caught lying (or rather, presenting the state of affairs in Elon's way) - suggesting and even naming some big brands that are supposedly back, while they are not (or spend 0.1% of their previous spending). Creators revenue sharing seems to be a 'fake it till you make it' attempt - with first payouts an order of magnitude higher than the last ones. And of course, it's completely opaque - nobody has any idea what the payouts are really based on. But hey, Twitter open sourced 'the algorithm' ! Even Elon fans appear to complain and realize that they may have been mislead. We are definitely witnessing history in the making. A guy, that 4 years ago had a legitimate shot at becoming an absolute legend, decided to push his 'optimism' way too far (for which, I believe, he will end up in prison) and then on a whim, to buy Twitter for $44B, only to burn it to the ground.
- strangesmells02 3y ago
  He didn't pay 44 billion for Twitter. He paid 44 billion to restore free speech. I think his cause is more noble than sheer capitalism Edit: down vote and hate all you want... mark my words .. Elon is going to go down in history as a visionary, a hero and a champion of free speech. a bunch of angry ex-twitter employees on hacker news is not an accurate representation of reality
  - ipqk 3y ago
    TIL free speech was dead in 2022.
  - kalupa 3y ago
    lol, you can't be serious ...
    - SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
      I think they are, which really speaks to the information asymmetry people face in their various circles.
strangesmells02 3y ago
That's the cost of free speech apparently. Elon's cause is more noble than sheer capitalism. Advertisers don't want to be on a platform that allows honest, open communication. A sterile non-controversial platform is much safer for them. At some point as our rights and our freedoms in this country slowly erode, we're going to be grateful to have Twitter and to Elon Musk for being one of the last platforms to put our freedoms over sheer capitalism.
- qotgalaxy 3y ago
  [dead]
- nickthegreek 3y ago
  Not being able to see replies without logging isn’t putting freedoms over capitalism. Twitter Blue replies pushed to the top of threads isn’t putting our freedoms over capitalism.
- sdfghswe 3y ago
  Can you give us an example of things that can't be said anywhere else but twitter?
  - stass 3y ago
    From the recent stuff, remember the lab leak theory where any mentions of which were getting removed from Twitter, Facebook and Youtube, including the scientific papers that looked into it?
  - ceasefire 3y ago
    Can you give an example of any of these places that get universally used and cited by news organizations and politicians the world over?
- clouddrover 3y ago
  > At some point as our rights and our freedoms in this country slowly erode, we're going to be grateful to have Twitter and to Elon Musk for being one of the last platforms to put our freedoms over sheer capitalism. Musk isn't interested in your rights or freedoms: https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/rcna81961 https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/rcna81961 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/15/twitter-suspends-accounts-journalists-musk https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/15/twitter-s...
TradingPlaces 3y ago
That’s the equity. If someone were to buy Twitter for $19b, they would also be assuming $13b of debt, which means Elon thinks Twitter is worth $32b. LOL. It wasn’t worth that much when he bought it, which is why he tried to bail.
mcpackieh 3y ago
The sooner it dies, the better.
mullingitover 3y ago
The "Elon is saving free speech, so this is worth it" argument for this incredible destruction of value is what cracks me up. The internet had/has no problem hosting repugnant viewpoints. Plenty of web hosting providers are available for you to share your most vile, hateful thoughts. We're watching a very powerful person discover in real time that free speech isn't something that generates value on its own.
- partiallypro 3y ago
  Saying Elon is "free speech" at all is a joke. He could have lined up certain principles and been fine. It's not like the last CEO and ownership group was really killing it. There was a lot of unfairness. Elon just made it much worse. He has even suspended accounts that have merely said something negative about him. On a few popular threads critical of Elon, likes keep disappearing and reach gets limited.
  - qzw 3y ago
    All speech are equal, but some speech are more equal than others.
- realcertify 3y ago
  "Destruction of value" assumes that Elon paid what Twitter was worth back then, which is not necessarily true.
  - goalieca 3y ago
    It’s definitely not true. Elon way overpaid for Twitter and even tried to back out. Twitter was also in poor financial shape and it was losing money. Frankly after this many years I couldn’t see it as a growth stock.
    - dragontamer 3y ago
      Twitter was losing $200 million/year in 2021 IIRC. Taking a $13 Billion loan and therefore being charged $1.3 Billion/year in interest payments means its going down the Xitter faster than ever before. The amount of loan-payments Twitter had to make this year alone dwarfs the losses Twitter had over the past decade.
partiallypro 3y ago
Given he also destroyed the brand name and all brand value associated with it, this number still seems way too high. Especially when you see downloads have dipped drastically. Accounts that get payouts now just post nonsense trying to get engagement, it's like the "click fraud" of social media posting. No idea why any advertiser would touch it. To me Twitter was once the most valuable social media platform that no one could figure out how to monetize...now it's, I don't even know what it is now. Unless he's trying to recreate The Producers in tech, almost nothing he's done makes much sense.
reddog 3y ago
Meanwhile, SpaceX valuation has increased about $35 billion over the same time period. At his current net worth, Musk will be able to underwrite Twitter for the next 3 centuries before he starts running out of money.
- Exmoor 3y ago
  ...And TSLA is down about $80 billion in that time period.
DueDilligence 3y ago
[dead]
rsynnott 3y ago
> “For people that don’t see our vision yet, people that don’t see what’s happening here at X, stop giving any of that oxygen,” she said. “Don’t pay attention to it.” Yes, don't listen to the outsiders who question the Vision. They're only doing so because they haven't purged themselves of their body thetans, yet. There's a blurry line between over-enthusiastic corporate-speak, and cult-speak, and this is sitting somewhere on the line.

65 points by c420 3y ago

> “For people that don’t see our vision yet, people that don’t see what’s happening here at X, stop giving any of that oxygen,” she said. “Don’t pay attention to it.” Does X pay its rent yet? Is that part of the Vision?

gumballindie 3y ago
Elon Musk could have let everyone work from home and save money on rent but he had to demand rto. Oh uh. Hope he fails soon, so others can learn.
- ryanklee 3y ago
  > so others can learn The ones who need to won't.
- valianteffort 3y ago
  RTO was an attempt to voluntarily cut headcount.
- wernercd 3y ago
  Took Elon 17 years to get Tesla profitable... why do you think he'd give up in a year? The largest problem with businesses these days is the "we must make profit next quarter" mindset and the "I hope he fails" is either that - or a pocket dislike of free speech. Each option is questionable in it's own right. I hope Elon succeeds. Not because I agree with everything he says or does but because I value free speech. “I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it” -Voltaire
  - candiddevmike 3y ago
    What does free speech have to do with Twitter? https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/rcna81961 https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/rcna81961
    - sdfghswe 3y ago
      Don't you know, he's a free speech absolutist.
      - SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
        Unless you're posting publicly available information about flights. Then that crosses the line.
    - stass 3y ago
      It essentially became a public square of the internet, so it's important to have it as censorship free as possible.
    - rez9x 3y ago
      It's an opinion article, so I wasn't expecting much, but it seems a little disingenuous. That said, an open-source platform more focused on decentralization would be a better solution, but nothing will be perfect while power and wealth are so centralized. I hope Damus is able to grow, but it's just not easy access enough as it is.
  - shapefrog 3y ago
    I, as a free speech advocate, agree Elon is free to say his core values are freedom of speech while censoring peoples speech.
  - clouddrover 3y ago
    > I hope Elon succeeds. Not because I agree with everything he says or does but because I value free speech. If you value free speech then you don't want Musk to run Twitter. Musk does not believe in free speech: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-04-20/news-analysis-what-does-elon-musk-know-about-free-speech-or-transparency-or-truth https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-04-20/news-analy... https://techxplore.com/news/2022-12-musk-free-speech-absolutism-fantasy.html https://techxplore.com/news/2022-12-musk-free-speech-absolut... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/15/twitter-suspends-accounts-journalists-musk https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/15/twitter-s... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/07/elon-musks-hypocrisy-about-free-speech-hits-a-new-low https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/07/elon-m...
  - didibus 3y ago
    You don't truly believe Twitter has become any better at free speech than it was before do you? Cause that's foolish. There's tons of bans and blocks, and there's still bias in the algorithms for promoting tweets. The only change is that what gets censored is now more aligned with Musk's own interests. That's all.
    - wernercd 3y ago
      How could it not be better? it's not working with the US Gov to censor free speech that's proven to be true after the fact. One of the biggest scandals of our time is "disinformation" that the government doesn't approve of being silenced by Government working with Private Industry to get around bans on government censorship of speech. Used for dissent around COVID "misinformation" or "election integrity". I didn't claim X is perfect but it's a lot better than twitter that banned, say, the post for putting up The Laptop Story - that's long since been proven 100% true and was suppressed by... drum roll! the FBI literally lying about "russia". The only thing that's changed is there's a top place for information that isn't controlled by the government - right or wrong. I understand that's scary but scary freedom is better than the safety of slavery.
      - didibus 3y ago
        I'm sorry for doing this, but I'm going to defer to ChatGPT 4, as it does a better job than I could at explaining why I'm not convinced by what you're saying to believe it's any better now that Musk owns Twitter. 1. Instances of deceit, irrationality, or fallacious reasoning: - The claim "it's not working with the US Gov to censor free speech that's proven to be true after the fact" suggests that because something is proven true later, it was necessarily censored for being true. This is a post hoc fallacy. - Labeling disapproved "disinformation" as "literally the hallmark of fascism" is a slippery slope fallacy, as it makes an extreme conclusion based on limited data. - The claim that Twitter banned "the post for putting up The Laptop Story" and connects it with the FBI "literally lying about 'russia'" makes an assumption of causation without clear evidence. - The comparison "scary freedom is better than the safety of slavery" is a false dichotomy, suggesting only two extreme options exist. 2. Overt emotional appeals or attempts to manipulate the reader's emotions: - Using terms like "biggest scandals of our time," "hallmark of fascism," and "safety of slavery" are emotionally charged phrases meant to evoke strong reactions from the reader. - The phrase "drum roll!" is an attempt to heighten anticipation and add emphasis to the subsequent statement. - "I understand that's scary" acknowledges the emotional weight of the topic, attempting to resonate with readers who might feel the same. 3. Summary of the Overall Approach: The text primarily employs emotional appeals and fallacious reasoning to make its points. While it presents some claims as factual, it lacks concrete evidence or logical argumentation to support them. Instead, it relies on emotionally charged phrases and extreme comparisons to drive home its perspective. The text does not align strongly with Enlightenment values of reason, evidence, and logical argumentation. Instead, it leans heavily on emotional and manipulative tactics. Edit (to add my rational for why I'm not convinced it's any better): Like ChatGPT points out, the arguments against the prior Twitter and for the new I don't find fully logical or evidenced. And in my view, the transition of Twitter to private ownership under Elon Musk pose challenges to its role as a guardian of free speech, compared to its time as a publicly traded company. This change potentially alters the checks and balances in place, as the discourse and recourse now largely rest on Elon's discretion. And possibly on Elon's creditors, which some of them are questionable. Previously, various stakeholders could critique and influence Twitter's policies, fostering a level of transparency. Now, this dynamic is gone. So I'm left to take Elon's personal guarantee. To believe his claim that he's a good dictator. That he won't leave his personal beliefs and interests bias his platform. And to believe that it will end up being an overall net positive to truth seeking, and not devolve into another tool that helps falsehoods spread while truth erodes. Even if he does manage to do all that for some time, being privately held isn't a robust mechanism to protect free speech and promote truth long term. If he worked to somehow democratize, create check and bounds, and all that, I'll change my mind.
  - rez9x 3y ago
    I generally dislike publicly traded companies and wish stock markets and speculation didn't exist, but there's no hope of that, so instead I'll cheer on any public corporation that goes private. I think using mass social media is largely bad for your mental health, but I hope the company succeeds in some capacity.
  - didibus 3y ago
    > I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it” -Voltaire I also just want to elucidate this quote a bit in case you didn't know. Voltaire did not actually write these exact words. The line is a summary of his views on freedom of speech and thought, and it was penned by Evelyn Beatrice Hall in her 1906 biography of Voltaire titled "The Friends of Voltaire." Hall wrote this phrase to encapsulate Voltaire's beliefs on the subject. Given that Voltaire himself did not say these exact words, there is no specific context in which he was addressing someone or some particular statement he disagreed with. Voltaire was a man of the Enlightenment, which prioritized reason, evidence, and logical argumentation. He would likely have opposed the deliberate spread of falsehoods and deceit. However, he would also probably have advocated for the right of people to express even flawed arguments, as challenging such arguments through reason and debate is foundational to Enlightenment values. But when it comes to personal attacks, slander, deceit, and hate speech, he would have not been so tolerant, because the subtext is when he speaks of "speech" he means engaging in an enlightened conversation using reason, evidence, and logical argumentation. It's okay to have flawed logic, evidence or reasoning, but he was fighting the powers at be of his time, and those were using deceit, irrational and illogical fallacies, appeals to emotions, forced censorship and the like to push falsehoods. The values of the enlightenment were about working towards accurate truth seeking.
    - wernercd 3y ago
      I actually saw that when finding the quote but was too lazy to go deep into it. Yeah, it's not Voltaire quoted but her paraphrase. I think free speech is like all our other rights - absolute but your rights end where the rights of others begin. Which is a wonderful paradox in which to live. You have the right to self defense but don't have the right to own a nuke. You have a right to speak freely but not to defame/slander/incite violence. The question isn't are those rights yours but where your right ends and the line between your rights and mine. It's still probably my favorite quote - especially as a veteran - even if, like a lot of things, its not exactly 100% accurate lol. I should put it as "Voltaire, misquoted by Hall" My other favorite quote is: “When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say.” ― George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings
frob 3y ago
I read your comment using X with its historical meaning of "insert option here" instead of the rebranding of Twitter and it gave me one more reason to hate this stupid, stupid rebrand even as someone who doesn't use it.

seydor 3y ago

and how much is twitter worth

kibwen 3y ago
The cost of a therapist is in the ballpark of $100/hour, and Twitter is essentially anti-therapy in that one relieves psychological trauma and the other inflicts it, so to properly evaluate the profitablity of Twitter we must take into account that it should be paying its users $100/hour to use it.

ilamont 3y ago

From a separate NYT article: Last year, Twitter’s interest expense was about $50 million. With the new debt taken on in the deal, that will now balloon to about $1 billion a year. Yet the company’s operations last year generated about $630 million in cash flow to meet its financial obligations. That means that Twitter is generating less money per year than what it owes its lenders. The company also does not appear to have a lot of extra cash on hand. While it had about $6 billion in cash before Mr. Musk’s buyout, a large portion of that probably went into the cost of closing the acquisition. ... To make ends meet, Mr. Musk probably has to slash costs — by a lot. Over the weekend, he was said to be already moving to do so by ordering job cuts across Twitter. One investor who put less than $1 million in the buyout of the company said he was told by the head of Mr. Musk’s family office to expect that around 50 percent of Twitter’s 7,500 employees would be laid off. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/30/technology/elon-musk-twitter-debt.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/30/technology/elon-musk-twit...

XorNot 3y ago
Yeah there's no way it's worth $19 billion. With its current expenses you can just sit back and wait for bankruptcy proceedings to pick it up cheap if you wanted it.
- c420 3y ago
  Was that his 4D chess plan all along?
  - TylerE 3y ago
    That doesn’t work so well when you’re the seller.
  - pstuart 3y ago
    The fact that he tried to get out of the deal is evidence that he had acted impulsively.
    - tim333 3y ago

kevmo 3y ago

$19B seems high.

thghtihadanacct 3y ago
But $26B seems like a pretty good tax write off. Seriously tho, How much of this drop (adjustment to reality) could Musk potentially write off on taxes, etc? Especially when it was pretty obvious he tanked it on purpose.
- asylteltine 3y ago
  Can you write off this stuff? You can only personally write if like 3k of loses per year
  - gowld 3y ago
    $3,000 loss limit is the amount that can offset ordinary income. Capital losses can offset unlimited capital gains.
    - asylteltine 3y ago
      [dead]
- ars 3y ago
  That's not how tax write offs work. You can write that off against profits, and save around 20% - but you still lost 80% of the money. So what would be the purpose of tanking it on purpose? He could just send the US Treasury the money for less trouble.
- guntars 3y ago
  Losing actual money is not a good tax write off strategy.
- KMag 3y ago
  I'm not an accountant, but doesn't he need to realize investment losses in order to write them off? Capital expenses can be depreciated for tax write-offs, but I wasn't aware that corporate investments could be marked to market for write-offs.

fakecontent000 3y ago

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arnvald 3y ago

I’m quite surprised it’s dropped “only” by 55%. Musk made the offer just before a big drop in valuation of tech companies. Even if Twitter revenue remained stable it probably wouldn’t be worth $44B Musk paid. With a drop in usage, drop in ads, controversy around the bots, misinformation, failure of Twitter Blue, I would expect that the actual value is quite below the said $19B. Maybe the cost saving measures partially offset the drop in revenue? They crippled functionality for guest users quite a lot (I’m not logged in on my work laptop and I can’t see quote tweets nor replies), their workforce is 5x smaller, it seems their costs are way lower than before.

silverbax88 3y ago
Agreed. It wasn't worth $44B when he bought it, so I'm not sure why the NY Times would even use that number in any way. If I pay someone $100,000 for a stick they found on the side of the road, it doesn't make that stick worth $100k. I doubt Twitter was worth $19B even before Musk overpaid for it. It was a 15 year old company that couldn't make money.
- omarfarooq 3y ago
  > If I pay someone $100,000 for a stick they found on the side of the road, it doesn't make that stick worth $100k. So why did you pay $100,000?
  - klyrs 3y ago
    This line of thinking is so basic. Say I bought a lotto ticket for $5. Does that mean it's worth $5?
    - the_gastropod 3y ago
      Say I bought this cabbage... When you bought that $5 lotto ticket, it was worth $5. After the lotto is drawn, it's either worth approximately nothing or potentially a lot more than $5.
- 3y ago

nova22033 3y ago

Phantom braking but for market cap

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

Related from earlier: Fidelity has marked down the value of Twitter/X by 65% https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38073218 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38073218

TheAlchemist 3y ago

$19B ?! I think they forgot the comma here. And even that would be generous. All advertisers are gone - it seems like most advertising is some absolute crap. No way it brings any real money. Linda Yaccarino was recently caught lying (or rather, presenting the state of affairs in Elon's way) - suggesting and even naming some big brands that are supposedly back, while they are not (or spend 0.1% of their previous spending). Creators revenue sharing seems to be a 'fake it till you make it' attempt - with first payouts an order of magnitude higher than the last ones. And of course, it's completely opaque - nobody has any idea what the payouts are really based on. But hey, Twitter open sourced 'the algorithm' ! Even Elon fans appear to complain and realize that they may have been mislead. We are definitely witnessing history in the making. A guy, that 4 years ago had a legitimate shot at becoming an absolute legend, decided to push his 'optimism' way too far (for which, I believe, he will end up in prison) and then on a whim, to buy Twitter for $44B, only to burn it to the ground.

strangesmells02 3y ago
He didn't pay 44 billion for Twitter. He paid 44 billion to restore free speech. I think his cause is more noble than sheer capitalism Edit: down vote and hate all you want... mark my words .. Elon is going to go down in history as a visionary, a hero and a champion of free speech. a bunch of angry ex-twitter employees on hacker news is not an accurate representation of reality
- ipqk 3y ago
  TIL free speech was dead in 2022.
- kalupa 3y ago
  lol, you can't be serious ...
  - SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
    I think they are, which really speaks to the information asymmetry people face in their various circles.

strangesmells02 3y ago

That's the cost of free speech apparently. Elon's cause is more noble than sheer capitalism. Advertisers don't want to be on a platform that allows honest, open communication. A sterile non-controversial platform is much safer for them. At some point as our rights and our freedoms in this country slowly erode, we're going to be grateful to have Twitter and to Elon Musk for being one of the last platforms to put our freedoms over sheer capitalism.

qotgalaxy 3y ago
[dead]
nickthegreek 3y ago
Not being able to see replies without logging isn’t putting freedoms over capitalism. Twitter Blue replies pushed to the top of threads isn’t putting our freedoms over capitalism.
sdfghswe 3y ago
Can you give us an example of things that can't be said anywhere else but twitter?
- stass 3y ago
  From the recent stuff, remember the lab leak theory where any mentions of which were getting removed from Twitter, Facebook and Youtube, including the scientific papers that looked into it?
- ceasefire 3y ago
  Can you give an example of any of these places that get universally used and cited by news organizations and politicians the world over?
clouddrover 3y ago
> At some point as our rights and our freedoms in this country slowly erode, we're going to be grateful to have Twitter and to Elon Musk for being one of the last platforms to put our freedoms over sheer capitalism. Musk isn't interested in your rights or freedoms: https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/rcna81961 https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/rcna81961 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/15/twitter-suspends-accounts-journalists-musk https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/15/twitter-s...

TradingPlaces 3y ago

That’s the equity. If someone were to buy Twitter for $19b, they would also be assuming $13b of debt, which means Elon thinks Twitter is worth $32b. LOL. It wasn’t worth that much when he bought it, which is why he tried to bail.

mcpackieh 3y ago

The sooner it dies, the better.

mullingitover 3y ago

The "Elon is saving free speech, so this is worth it" argument for this incredible destruction of value is what cracks me up. The internet had/has no problem hosting repugnant viewpoints. Plenty of web hosting providers are available for you to share your most vile, hateful thoughts. We're watching a very powerful person discover in real time that free speech isn't something that generates value on its own.

partiallypro 3y ago
Saying Elon is "free speech" at all is a joke. He could have lined up certain principles and been fine. It's not like the last CEO and ownership group was really killing it. There was a lot of unfairness. Elon just made it much worse. He has even suspended accounts that have merely said something negative about him. On a few popular threads critical of Elon, likes keep disappearing and reach gets limited.
- qzw 3y ago
  All speech are equal, but some speech are more equal than others.
realcertify 3y ago
"Destruction of value" assumes that Elon paid what Twitter was worth back then, which is not necessarily true.
- goalieca 3y ago
  It’s definitely not true. Elon way overpaid for Twitter and even tried to back out. Twitter was also in poor financial shape and it was losing money. Frankly after this many years I couldn’t see it as a growth stock.
  - dragontamer 3y ago
    Twitter was losing $200 million/year in 2021 IIRC. Taking a $13 Billion loan and therefore being charged $1.3 Billion/year in interest payments means its going down the Xitter faster than ever before. The amount of loan-payments Twitter had to make this year alone dwarfs the losses Twitter had over the past decade.

partiallypro 3y ago

Given he also destroyed the brand name and all brand value associated with it, this number still seems way too high. Especially when you see downloads have dipped drastically. Accounts that get payouts now just post nonsense trying to get engagement, it's like the "click fraud" of social media posting. No idea why any advertiser would touch it. To me Twitter was once the most valuable social media platform that no one could figure out how to monetize...now it's, I don't even know what it is now. Unless he's trying to recreate The Producers in tech, almost nothing he's done makes much sense.

reddog 3y ago

Meanwhile, SpaceX valuation has increased about $35 billion over the same time period. At his current net worth, Musk will be able to underwrite Twitter for the next 3 centuries before he starts running out of money.

Exmoor 3y ago
...And TSLA is down about $80 billion in that time period.

DueDilligence 3y ago

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rsynnott 3y ago

> “For people that don’t see our vision yet, people that don’t see what’s happening here at X, stop giving any of that oxygen,” she said. “Don’t pay attention to it.” Yes, don't listen to the outsiders who question the Vision. They're only doing so because they haven't purged themselves of their body thetans, yet. There's a blurry line between over-enthusiastic corporate-speak, and cult-speak, and this is sitting somewhere on the line.