6 ms·

Fidelity marks down X valuation by 71.5%

55 points by clockworksoul 3y ago

tycoon177 3y ago
71.5% so far
weinberg 3y ago
!!
hyggetrold 3y ago
> “What this advertising boycott is going to do is kill the company,” Musk continued. “And the whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company, and we will document it in great detail.” You tell 'em Elon!
- dimator 3y ago
  Such an absurd comment that was. If your customers are the ones paying for ads, and you cause your customers to leave, isn't that just deliberately tanking your business? And "document in detail" it for who? As though there's some court or something that you can demonstrate why your business failed, and then.... what? Prove that it was departing customers? No one will give a shit. Just absurd. Sometimes it's fun to think about the N-degrees of circles of yes-men around the ultra rich that lead them to believe the most absurd things.
  - FireBeyond 3y ago
    > And "document in detail" it for who He actually said "for the earth", thinking that humanity would revolt against the advertisers for destroying Twitter for them... Not a hint of megalomania there.
    - netsharc 3y ago
      As Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI, put it in a Musk profile for the New Yorker: "Elon desperately wants the world to be saved. But only if he can be the one to save it." (I heard this quote on John Oliver's profile of Musk-boy: [1]) I suppose a war of Musk against the ad-fueled capitalism (where "ad" can be placeholder for "scam") would be funny, although the alternative might probably be a dictatorship by Musk, and that would be a Mad Max world, might as well join Somali pirates... [1] https://youtu.be/Eo3zORUGCbM https://youtu.be/Eo3zORUGCbM
  - HybridCurve 3y ago
    This is why I hate when anyone puts this guy on a pedestal. I can't be certain about his level of knowledge in most things, but with comments like this he regularly demonstrates lack of credibility due to either complete ignorance a highly self-centeric view of the world. Either way, he is not to one be trusted, admired, or emulated.
- RobRivera 3y ago
  "Stop liking what I dont like" variant
- chung8123 3y ago
  I do think it is weird that there is an advertising boycott of Twitter but nothing is hitting Tesla yet. People seem ok with Elon's antics when it comes to the poplar car.
  - pohl 3y ago
    Wait, do companies buy ad placement in Teslas? Do they appear on the dashboard display while driving or something? If not, then how would they boycott?
    - vikingerik 3y ago
      I think the parent just meant that there's no popular mindshare backlash against Tesla like against X/Twitter. The perception of Tesla that electric cars are environmentally good is outweighing whatever negative perception of Musk.
      - rsynnott 3y ago
        ... I mean, I think there definitely _is_. The "I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy" bumper stickers have been fairly popular, right?
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
riffic 3y ago
The List of Defunct Social Networking Services page on Wikipedia will be there for its time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_social_networking_services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_social_network...
somethoughts 3y ago
It is curious as to why Fidelity is owning X shares. Is this on behalf of some sort of Fidelity mutual fund that invests in private companies? Or is some sort of alternative investment fund targeted at accredited investors only? Or do they invest the Fidelity customer cash balances in some sort of David Swenson style diversified portfolio?
- troydavis 3y ago
  The holding is within the Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Fund (FBGRX), an actively-managed growth equity mutual fund.
pfannkuchen 3y ago
Isn’t this Elon putting his money where his mouth is? He’s stated many times that he bought Twitter due to free speech concerns and not to make money. It’s kind of weird to me that people on the internet aren’t praising him for being principled, and are instead laughing at him for (expectedly) losing money.
- notaustinpowers 3y ago
  Whether he's morphing Twitter as a new bastion of free speech remains to be seen. Musk himself says that saying the word "cis" is a slur with threats of suspension for saying it. Meanwhile, transgender people are actively being deadnamed and harassed with no repercussions to those committing those actions. Which is a clear violation of their Hateful Conduct policies. Then when companies decide "Hey, I don't want to give my money to a company like that" based on reports of rising hate comments and speech on the platform Elon then threatens to sue them despite their protected speech. It's giving "free speech for me but not for thee", which rubs a lot of people the wrong way. And, to many, this incredibly public meltdown of Twitter and Elon's inability to not be the center of attention is why people are laughing. It's absurdity to the nth degree.
  - sidibe 3y ago
    He also threw "decolonization" into the words you can be suspended for (part of his outreach after getting in trouble over antisemitism)
  - 63837449 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - pests 3y ago
      Then why is one allowee and another getting bans for?
- FireBeyond 3y ago
  > He’s stated many times that he bought Twitter due to free speech concerns and not to make money. It’s kind of weird to me that people on the internet aren’t praising him for being principled, and are instead laughing at him for (expectedly) losing money. Well, other than the whole little thing where he said "advertisers leaving will destroy Twitter and it will be all their fault". Platforms offered advertising for, last I checked, making money.
gbenzzz 3y ago
And they still haven't changed the primary app domain to x.com. Such a joke. It will probably never happen due to the engineering complexities of such a switch with just a barebones engineering team and loss of institutional knowledge over the last year.
- paulette449 3y ago
  The rebranding was an incredibly dumb decision. I have never seen it referred in the wider world to anything other than "X (formerly known as Twitter)".
  - ianburrell 3y ago
    We really should be calling ex-Twitter.
  - qgin 3y ago
    X is an un-ownable name/word. It's the 2023 version of the artist formerly known as Prince.
    - xenospn 3y ago
      At least the artist formerly known as Prince continued providing value until the day he died. With Twitter, that value is long gone.
      - rsynnott 3y ago
        Also he had the decency to make up his own symbols (sent to newspapers on a floppy disk!) rather than just using the X11 logo for some reason.
  - al_borland 3y ago
    It reminds of when Prince changed his name to a symbol. He eventually gave up on the symbol, it just didn’t work. “X” is too generic a name and doesn’t work.
- 3y ago
MuffinFlavored 3y ago
If I have say... cars as a hobby. Turbochargers, wheels, parts, say I spend 20% of my disposable income on it and I have a good portion of my net worth tied into it as well (the cars themselves, the parts, etc). Elon Musk spending $44b (which I don't think he did as all cash all at once/financed some) of his $250b net worth is like 17.5% Even if it makes $0/goes to $0, it's just basically his hobby/a passion project for him, no? Should his goal be to make money/not lose money at an enormous scale? Probably. But he's obviously eccentric. Isn't this kind of on-brand for him? He probably thinks he's better than most people. "Your hobby is tennis, my hobby is international social media platforms".
- netsharc 3y ago
  I don't think it's even a hobby, it'd be like you being forced (by an impending lawsuit and discovery proceedings) to spend 20% of your money buying a junker car you don't particularly like, because you couldn't resist keeping your mouth shut. It's not even all his money, a lot of it is loans from banks who won't take his call the next time he rings...
jbverschoor 3y ago
Is this the same Fidelity as in GameStop?
shostack 3y ago
Who benefits of Twitter truly dies? Who has invested directly or indirectly in Twitter? What is the intersection of those two groups and what is their connection with Musk?
- rsynnott 3y ago
  I mean, Twitter.com will always go somewhere; if Twitter disintegrates the IP will be bought up by someone or other, and probably revived sans Elon. I recognise the temptation to look for a conspiracy (Musk is destroying Twitter because [insert Bond-villain plot here]) but, really, Occam's razor says that he's just destroying it because he's incompetent.
- MiguelX413 3y ago
  Humanity benefits if Twitter truly dies.
Proven 3y ago
[dead]
elforce002 3y ago
Interesting. Musk "switched sides" and suddenly twitter becomes the worst social media imaginable. To be honest, my feed didn't change much after Musk took over. Instagram is just business ads at this point, TikTok is adding ads and their feed is getting worse, I don't even know what's happening on fb. Reddit is somewhat bearable only if you follow enough subs. I don't want to be on an echo chamber when discussing general topics, politics, etc... That doesn't get anywhere.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
  I don't think elmu "switched sides" unless you're talking about his claims he supported free speech before he cracked down on free speech. But yeah, he made twitter pretty bad, hence this article.

55 points by clockworksoul 3y ago

tycoon177 3y ago

71.5% so far

weinberg 3y ago

hyggetrold 3y ago

> “What this advertising boycott is going to do is kill the company,” Musk continued. “And the whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company, and we will document it in great detail.” You tell 'em Elon!

dimator 3y ago
Such an absurd comment that was. If your customers are the ones paying for ads, and you cause your customers to leave, isn't that just deliberately tanking your business? And "document in detail" it for who? As though there's some court or something that you can demonstrate why your business failed, and then.... what? Prove that it was departing customers? No one will give a shit. Just absurd. Sometimes it's fun to think about the N-degrees of circles of yes-men around the ultra rich that lead them to believe the most absurd things.
- FireBeyond 3y ago
  > And "document in detail" it for who He actually said "for the earth", thinking that humanity would revolt against the advertisers for destroying Twitter for them... Not a hint of megalomania there.
  - netsharc 3y ago
    As Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI, put it in a Musk profile for the New Yorker: "Elon desperately wants the world to be saved. But only if he can be the one to save it." (I heard this quote on John Oliver's profile of Musk-boy: [1]) I suppose a war of Musk against the ad-fueled capitalism (where "ad" can be placeholder for "scam") would be funny, although the alternative might probably be a dictatorship by Musk, and that would be a Mad Max world, might as well join Somali pirates... [1] https://youtu.be/Eo3zORUGCbM https://youtu.be/Eo3zORUGCbM
- HybridCurve 3y ago
  This is why I hate when anyone puts this guy on a pedestal. I can't be certain about his level of knowledge in most things, but with comments like this he regularly demonstrates lack of credibility due to either complete ignorance a highly self-centeric view of the world. Either way, he is not to one be trusted, admired, or emulated.
RobRivera 3y ago
"Stop liking what I dont like" variant
chung8123 3y ago
I do think it is weird that there is an advertising boycott of Twitter but nothing is hitting Tesla yet. People seem ok with Elon's antics when it comes to the poplar car.
- pohl 3y ago
  Wait, do companies buy ad placement in Teslas? Do they appear on the dashboard display while driving or something? If not, then how would they boycott?
  - vikingerik 3y ago
    I think the parent just meant that there's no popular mindshare backlash against Tesla like against X/Twitter. The perception of Tesla that electric cars are environmentally good is outweighing whatever negative perception of Musk.
    - rsynnott 3y ago
      ... I mean, I think there definitely _is_. The "I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy" bumper stickers have been fairly popular, right?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]

riffic 3y ago

The List of Defunct Social Networking Services page on Wikipedia will be there for its time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_social_networking_services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_social_network...

somethoughts 3y ago

It is curious as to why Fidelity is owning X shares. Is this on behalf of some sort of Fidelity mutual fund that invests in private companies? Or is some sort of alternative investment fund targeted at accredited investors only? Or do they invest the Fidelity customer cash balances in some sort of David Swenson style diversified portfolio?

troydavis 3y ago
The holding is within the Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Fund (FBGRX), an actively-managed growth equity mutual fund.

pfannkuchen 3y ago

Isn’t this Elon putting his money where his mouth is? He’s stated many times that he bought Twitter due to free speech concerns and not to make money. It’s kind of weird to me that people on the internet aren’t praising him for being principled, and are instead laughing at him for (expectedly) losing money.

notaustinpowers 3y ago
Whether he's morphing Twitter as a new bastion of free speech remains to be seen. Musk himself says that saying the word "cis" is a slur with threats of suspension for saying it. Meanwhile, transgender people are actively being deadnamed and harassed with no repercussions to those committing those actions. Which is a clear violation of their Hateful Conduct policies. Then when companies decide "Hey, I don't want to give my money to a company like that" based on reports of rising hate comments and speech on the platform Elon then threatens to sue them despite their protected speech. It's giving "free speech for me but not for thee", which rubs a lot of people the wrong way. And, to many, this incredibly public meltdown of Twitter and Elon's inability to not be the center of attention is why people are laughing. It's absurdity to the nth degree.
- sidibe 3y ago
  He also threw "decolonization" into the words you can be suspended for (part of his outreach after getting in trouble over antisemitism)
- 63837449 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - pests 3y ago
    Then why is one allowee and another getting bans for?
FireBeyond 3y ago
> He’s stated many times that he bought Twitter due to free speech concerns and not to make money. It’s kind of weird to me that people on the internet aren’t praising him for being principled, and are instead laughing at him for (expectedly) losing money. Well, other than the whole little thing where he said "advertisers leaving will destroy Twitter and it will be all their fault". Platforms offered advertising for, last I checked, making money.

gbenzzz 3y ago

And they still haven't changed the primary app domain to x.com. Such a joke. It will probably never happen due to the engineering complexities of such a switch with just a barebones engineering team and loss of institutional knowledge over the last year.

paulette449 3y ago
The rebranding was an incredibly dumb decision. I have never seen it referred in the wider world to anything other than "X (formerly known as Twitter)".
- ianburrell 3y ago
  We really should be calling ex-Twitter.
- qgin 3y ago
  X is an un-ownable name/word. It's the 2023 version of the artist formerly known as Prince.
  - xenospn 3y ago
    At least the artist formerly known as Prince continued providing value until the day he died. With Twitter, that value is long gone.
    - rsynnott 3y ago
      Also he had the decency to make up his own symbols (sent to newspapers on a floppy disk!) rather than just using the X11 logo for some reason.
- al_borland 3y ago
  It reminds of when Prince changed his name to a symbol. He eventually gave up on the symbol, it just didn’t work. “X” is too generic a name and doesn’t work.
3y ago

MuffinFlavored 3y ago

If I have say... cars as a hobby. Turbochargers, wheels, parts, say I spend 20% of my disposable income on it and I have a good portion of my net worth tied into it as well (the cars themselves, the parts, etc). Elon Musk spending $44b (which I don't think he did as all cash all at once/financed some) of his $250b net worth is like 17.5% Even if it makes $0/goes to $0, it's just basically his hobby/a passion project for him, no? Should his goal be to make money/not lose money at an enormous scale? Probably. But he's obviously eccentric. Isn't this kind of on-brand for him? He probably thinks he's better than most people. "Your hobby is tennis, my hobby is international social media platforms".

netsharc 3y ago
I don't think it's even a hobby, it'd be like you being forced (by an impending lawsuit and discovery proceedings) to spend 20% of your money buying a junker car you don't particularly like, because you couldn't resist keeping your mouth shut. It's not even all his money, a lot of it is loans from banks who won't take his call the next time he rings...

jbverschoor 3y ago

Is this the same Fidelity as in GameStop?

shostack 3y ago

Who benefits of Twitter truly dies? Who has invested directly or indirectly in Twitter? What is the intersection of those two groups and what is their connection with Musk?

rsynnott 3y ago
I mean, Twitter.com will always go somewhere; if Twitter disintegrates the IP will be bought up by someone or other, and probably revived sans Elon. I recognise the temptation to look for a conspiracy (Musk is destroying Twitter because [insert Bond-villain plot here]) but, really, Occam's razor says that he's just destroying it because he's incompetent.
MiguelX413 3y ago
Humanity benefits if Twitter truly dies.

Proven 3y ago

[dead]

elforce002 3y ago

Interesting. Musk "switched sides" and suddenly twitter becomes the worst social media imaginable. To be honest, my feed didn't change much after Musk took over. Instagram is just business ads at this point, TikTok is adding ads and their feed is getting worse, I don't even know what's happening on fb. Reddit is somewhat bearable only if you follow enough subs. I don't want to be on an echo chamber when discussing general topics, politics, etc... That doesn't get anywhere.

ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
I don't think elmu "switched sides" unless you're talking about his claims he supported free speech before he cracked down on free speech. But yeah, he made twitter pretty bad, hence this article.