4 ms·

This has been Musks goal for a long time. But while trying to accomplish it he's burned the goodwill and much of the public perception of Twitter/X as a good c

This has been Musks goal for a long time. But while trying to accomplish it he's burned the goodwill and much of the public perception of Twitter/X as a good company. I certainly have a highly negative view of Twitter/X and wouldn't trust the platform with any financial information or using it for financial transactions no matter who its backed by, but that's reflected in my not having a Twitter/X account to begin with so its a moot point.

MBCook 2y ago
I get him, but why Visa? As a company I’d be terrified to be tied to his brand in any way. I also suspect the primary use of this may end up being scams, which seems like a really bad market to get into. Now not only can you fake having cancer or whatever, you can ask for donations in-app! Or let people help you in your fight against $EVIL_THING by donating to your cause (no matter how real or not) without leaving the site. Or you can just peddle your new sponsor $WONDERFUL_THING. If it’s not primarily used for scams, seems likely to turn the platform into a big begging space. Before you had to convince people to go to IndieGoGo or your site or whatever. I know this has always been his dream. I just don’t see a likelihood of it making anything better. And I’d say that for any social network. Maybe Meta hasn’t done it because they realized that would likely be the case?
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  Also, "why Visa" from the X.com perspective. As far as I can tell, Musk's vision was WeChat for the Western world. The platform for everything. WeChat replaces Visa, it doesn't use Visa or a competitor. If X.com is using Visa then Visa is the platform, not X.com. Using Visa feels like an admission of defeat to me.
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    I imagine it has to do with the difficulty of financial compliance. Musk was part of PayPal which has gotten into trouble before for being not quite a bank and attempting to do bank-like things.
    - bryanlarsen 2y ago
      Yes, it's hard. That's the point. Visa is a monopoly that makes monopoly sized profits. (Visa's $20B of income is misleading, that's tiny compared to the profit the banks issuing Visa cards make). If Musk could crack the Visa monopoly X.com would be worth a lot more than the $44B he paid for it. He's the richest man in the world because his companies do hard things. Landing a rocket on a barge bobbing in the ocean is difficult. Tesla not being on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_automobile_manufacturers_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_automobile_man... is difficult. Sending 280 character messages across the internet is not difficult in comparison. Breaking the Visa monopoly, OTOH...
      - bobthepanda 2y ago
        Financial payments is a cartel wherever you go. In China it's not better, it's just different players; AliPay and WePay. In fact UnionPay is probably more of a cartel since it's the only card authorizer in China. A couple of companies have tried their hand at a western mega-app, most notably Meta, and you could consider Apple close, but for the most part the consumers are not super interested.
        bryanlarsen 2y ago
        And X wants to join the list of cartels, not to break them.
      - hmmm-i-wonder 2y ago
        >Breaking the Visa monopoly, OTOH... Musk has consistently pushed his companies into higher risk acceptance and financed those moon-shots to deliver a product that had a demand but not a supply (reusable rockets, electric cars, low-orbit internet satellite network). Also the tunnel thing, neuralink, and a handful of other smaller and less successful gambits. I don't see him having the same benefits tackling financial transactions. There are already multiple players with significant regulatory capture, significant centralization, on top of established reputations.
- new_user_final 2y ago
  Meta has already done this with Whatsapp payment.
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  Visa and Mastercard are very strict on merchants (so in this case Twitter), when it comes to any kind of fraud. So this I would take as a signal that Twitter will have to completely clean out frauds. Selling directly through Twitter will then give a high level of fraud protection to customers. Compare this to Instagram and Facebook, where over half of all paid advertising are outright frauds, and where their policy is to allow frauds even when users have reported them. Letting customers purchase directly on social media instead of social media just being ad platforms for scams could be a positive thing. Meta would have to go the same way then. And maybe – maybe – we can move on from the ad/scam/bot hellscape into a system where social media platforms are instead funded by taking a percentage on direct sales from businesses selling there. That would be a much healthier system for everybody involved, except for scammers and ad professionals.
- Symbiote 2y ago
  > I get him, but why Visa? It seems a crazy business decision for Visa. There was an advertiser boycott in 2023-2024, why would Visa choose to get involved?
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    The brand is completely wrecked and now associated with things that mainstream advertisers and businesses rightly want nothing to do with. This feels nearly like Stormfront or 4Chan announcing a partnership with Visa. Wild times!
- mikequinlan 2y ago
  >As a company I’d be terrified to be tied to his brand in any way. Ok, but what if he gave you a billion dollars plus promises of billions more in transaction fees? If that wasn't enough, what if we promised 2 billion plus fees? At what point would your (Visa's) terror be offset by your (Visa's) greed and fear of giving this profit opportunity to a competitor (MasterCard/AmEx)?
- sebazzz 2y ago
  >As a company I’d be terrified to be tied to his brand in any way. It is VISA or MasterCard in Europe. Not like we have much choice. Whether it is MasterCard or VISA is outside your control as it is tied to your bank.
mistrial9 2y ago
[flagged]
- naasking 2y ago
  They had already turned 180 degree opposite from the "anarchist bike messenger" ethos long before he bought it. Do you not recall the sometimes crazy moderation policies?
ActionHank 2y ago
[flagged]
voidfunc 2y ago
> But while trying to accomplish it he's burned the goodwill and much of the public perception of Twitter/X as a good company. Has he? If we step out of the echo chamber of HN and Reddit he is immensely popular. I was actually shocked around the holidays seeing many friends and family that are not internet junkies have a very strong overall opinion of Musk.
- icameron 2y ago
  Yes he's getting more unpopular by the day. Polls show his popularity among the American population is plummeting, according to CNN analyst Harry Enten. Enten said Tuesday on Erin Burnett OutFront that Musk's net favorability rating in January had dropped to -13 points. This was down from -3 points before the election and a sharp fall from his +29 rating in 2016. An Associated Press-NORC poll published last week found that 52 percent of respondents had an unfavorable opinion of him, compared with 36 percent with a favorable opinion. This marks a decline from a 10-point negative rating the previous month. Of course like everything else it is very partisan... , a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that Musk still enjoys widespread support among Republicans, with 75 percent of Republican respondents saying they viewed him favorably compared to 90 percent of Democrats viewing him unfavorably.
- TheNewsIsHere 2y ago
  > If we step out of the echo chamber of HN and Reddit he is immensely popular. I was actually shocked around the holidays seeing many friends and family that are not internet junkies have a very strong overall opinion of Musk. This has not been my own experience. In most of my offline circles he is regarded poorly, or at least as a joke.
- hmmm-i-wonder 2y ago
  My very non-technical family that doesn't use HN or Reddit has a very negative view of him now. It really comes down to politics. His cozying up to Trump and showing his 'true colors' has turned off a lot of 'regular media' consuming people, non-republicans as well as people outside of the US that dislike Trump. While there are some that like him, his popularity is dropping quickly.

MBCook 2y ago

I get him, but why Visa? As a company I’d be terrified to be tied to his brand in any way. I also suspect the primary use of this may end up being scams, which seems like a really bad market to get into. Now not only can you fake having cancer or whatever, you can ask for donations in-app! Or let people help you in your fight against $EVIL_THING by donating to your cause (no matter how real or not) without leaving the site. Or you can just peddle your new sponsor $WONDERFUL_THING. If it’s not primarily used for scams, seems likely to turn the platform into a big begging space. Before you had to convince people to go to IndieGoGo or your site or whatever. I know this has always been his dream. I just don’t see a likelihood of it making anything better. And I’d say that for any social network. Maybe Meta hasn’t done it because they realized that would likely be the case?

bryanlarsen 2y ago
Also, "why Visa" from the X.com perspective. As far as I can tell, Musk's vision was WeChat for the Western world. The platform for everything. WeChat replaces Visa, it doesn't use Visa or a competitor. If X.com is using Visa then Visa is the platform, not X.com. Using Visa feels like an admission of defeat to me.
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  I imagine it has to do with the difficulty of financial compliance. Musk was part of PayPal which has gotten into trouble before for being not quite a bank and attempting to do bank-like things.
  - bryanlarsen 2y ago
    Yes, it's hard. That's the point. Visa is a monopoly that makes monopoly sized profits. (Visa's $20B of income is misleading, that's tiny compared to the profit the banks issuing Visa cards make). If Musk could crack the Visa monopoly X.com would be worth a lot more than the $44B he paid for it. He's the richest man in the world because his companies do hard things. Landing a rocket on a barge bobbing in the ocean is difficult. Tesla not being on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_automobile_manufacturers_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_automobile_man... is difficult. Sending 280 character messages across the internet is not difficult in comparison. Breaking the Visa monopoly, OTOH...
    - bobthepanda 2y ago
      Financial payments is a cartel wherever you go. In China it's not better, it's just different players; AliPay and WePay. In fact UnionPay is probably more of a cartel since it's the only card authorizer in China. A couple of companies have tried their hand at a western mega-app, most notably Meta, and you could consider Apple close, but for the most part the consumers are not super interested.
      - bryanlarsen 2y ago
        And X wants to join the list of cartels, not to break them.
    - hmmm-i-wonder 2y ago
      >Breaking the Visa monopoly, OTOH... Musk has consistently pushed his companies into higher risk acceptance and financed those moon-shots to deliver a product that had a demand but not a supply (reusable rockets, electric cars, low-orbit internet satellite network). Also the tunnel thing, neuralink, and a handful of other smaller and less successful gambits. I don't see him having the same benefits tackling financial transactions. There are already multiple players with significant regulatory capture, significant centralization, on top of established reputations.
new_user_final 2y ago
Meta has already done this with Whatsapp payment.
carlosjobim 2y ago
Visa and Mastercard are very strict on merchants (so in this case Twitter), when it comes to any kind of fraud. So this I would take as a signal that Twitter will have to completely clean out frauds. Selling directly through Twitter will then give a high level of fraud protection to customers. Compare this to Instagram and Facebook, where over half of all paid advertising are outright frauds, and where their policy is to allow frauds even when users have reported them. Letting customers purchase directly on social media instead of social media just being ad platforms for scams could be a positive thing. Meta would have to go the same way then. And maybe – maybe – we can move on from the ad/scam/bot hellscape into a system where social media platforms are instead funded by taking a percentage on direct sales from businesses selling there. That would be a much healthier system for everybody involved, except for scammers and ad professionals.
Symbiote 2y ago
> I get him, but why Visa? It seems a crazy business decision for Visa. There was an advertiser boycott in 2023-2024, why would Visa choose to get involved?
- ryandrake 2y ago
  The brand is completely wrecked and now associated with things that mainstream advertisers and businesses rightly want nothing to do with. This feels nearly like Stormfront or 4Chan announcing a partnership with Visa. Wild times!
mikequinlan 2y ago
>As a company I’d be terrified to be tied to his brand in any way. Ok, but what if he gave you a billion dollars plus promises of billions more in transaction fees? If that wasn't enough, what if we promised 2 billion plus fees? At what point would your (Visa's) terror be offset by your (Visa's) greed and fear of giving this profit opportunity to a competitor (MasterCard/AmEx)?
sebazzz 2y ago
>As a company I’d be terrified to be tied to his brand in any way. It is VISA or MasterCard in Europe. Not like we have much choice. Whether it is MasterCard or VISA is outside your control as it is tied to your bank.

mistrial9 2y ago

[flagged]

naasking 2y ago
They had already turned 180 degree opposite from the "anarchist bike messenger" ethos long before he bought it. Do you not recall the sometimes crazy moderation policies?

ActionHank 2y ago

[flagged]

voidfunc 2y ago

> But while trying to accomplish it he's burned the goodwill and much of the public perception of Twitter/X as a good company. Has he? If we step out of the echo chamber of HN and Reddit he is immensely popular. I was actually shocked around the holidays seeing many friends and family that are not internet junkies have a very strong overall opinion of Musk.

icameron 2y ago
Yes he's getting more unpopular by the day. Polls show his popularity among the American population is plummeting, according to CNN analyst Harry Enten. Enten said Tuesday on Erin Burnett OutFront that Musk's net favorability rating in January had dropped to -13 points. This was down from -3 points before the election and a sharp fall from his +29 rating in 2016. An Associated Press-NORC poll published last week found that 52 percent of respondents had an unfavorable opinion of him, compared with 36 percent with a favorable opinion. This marks a decline from a 10-point negative rating the previous month. Of course like everything else it is very partisan... , a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that Musk still enjoys widespread support among Republicans, with 75 percent of Republican respondents saying they viewed him favorably compared to 90 percent of Democrats viewing him unfavorably.
TheNewsIsHere 2y ago
> If we step out of the echo chamber of HN and Reddit he is immensely popular. I was actually shocked around the holidays seeing many friends and family that are not internet junkies have a very strong overall opinion of Musk. This has not been my own experience. In most of my offline circles he is regarded poorly, or at least as a joke.
hmmm-i-wonder 2y ago
My very non-technical family that doesn't use HN or Reddit has a very negative view of him now. It really comes down to politics. His cozying up to Trump and showing his 'true colors' has turned off a lot of 'regular media' consuming people, non-republicans as well as people outside of the US that dislike Trump. While there are some that like him, his popularity is dropping quickly.