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> Twitter lost 84% of its revenue. How much of that is because of politics? Already at the point of takeover, Musk was so hated by half the US for various reas

> Twitter lost 84% of its revenue. How much of that is because of politics? Already at the point of takeover, Musk was so hated by half the US for various reasons that it became profitable for major publishing platforms to abandon Twitter/X "on principle". When you're in that situation, nothing on the object-level can help you - neither good management nor technical competence. Revenue depends indirectly on the public opinion, and half of it wants nothing to do with you. US nuclear arsenal is not in this situation.

jimnotgym 2y ago
Is it politics that people don't want to do business with shitty people? I'd call that being human. If I owned a bill board space, and set everything around it on fire, wouldn't you think it was my fault that advertisers didn't want to pay to use it any more?
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  No, but then burning everything around the billboard doesn't necessarily make you a shitty person, and also opinions of people siding with advertisers aren't somehow the definitive ones. I mean, why do people who hate what Twitter is now care about it's lost revenue? Especially given what it was, and where the revenue came from, this isn't exactly an argument that generalizes well.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    The real question is why people think Twitter's lost revenue is linked to Musk's management. There doesn't seem to be a theory about a causal link. If anything the argument is "Musk is a bad person -> Twitter lost revenue" which suggests his management practices had no effect on the company's operation.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      FWIW, I absolutely blame his management of Twitter rather than his political alignment or questions of morality. Reason being, look at Tesla stock price: Musk's gaffes have a short term impact, but overall the price is way up since buying Twitter.
      - TeMPOraL 2y ago
        Tesla is not in advertising business, though. They are affected by the whims of public opinion, but not as much, as they're established company selling a quality product worldwide. Musk used to dabble much more in Tesla directly than he's now, I wonder whether the ups and downs of the company correlate with his involvement, especially before he started going off the rails so badly? That would be informative and help separate object-level impact from political hysteria.
        LunaSea 2y ago
        > Tesla is not in advertising business, though. Tesla is absolutely in the advertisement business. Their marketing and image is the only thing holding the company up (for now).
        TeMPOraL 2y ago
        What I meant is: they buy ads and care about their opinion. They're not a platform selling ads, and they're not an ad delivery vector (like e.g. publishers) either. The latter two kinds of businesses have particular dynamics that are highly sensitive to public opinion, much more so than for any other kind of business.
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      Did people already forget he allowed Anti-semitism? And then brands left Twitter? And then he threatened to sue the brands for leaving? We can argue the first part all day. The point was Coca Cola and co. did not want to assossiate anymore and that had an objective dollar amount. I know less about this situation, but Twitter in 2024 apparently made some controversial blocking changes and that started the bluesky migration. I don't know the dollar amount there, but they apparently lost some big influencers.
ben_w 2y ago
If Musk was so politically toxic as to drive an 84% revenue decline, the Republican politicians wouldn't have allowed him to support them or their party.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  Why? That entirely depends on political alignment of revenue sources, and I bet that (before the takeover) the balance was heavily on the US left-wing side, as that's also the overall bias in tech industry and social media and news publishing. And all that is amplified by advertisers in general, regardless of political leaning, being very touchy about controversy. I can easily imagine this to alone be responsible for wiping 84% revenue. Real world has a different political distribution than the Internet. "Politically toxic" on-line in particular is a knee-jerk reaction that is great at generating consistent revenue streams for publishers and social media on-line, but doesn't translate well to how the entire population of a country actually thinks or votes in the real world.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    > Real world has a different political distribution than the Internet. 5% different, almost everyone is online. But, thinking about your oft-quoted blog post about advertising bring a cancer, I guess if the top ad spenders cut themselves out entirely, then the bidding system could result in the runner-up bidder finding their ads are now almost arbitrarily cheaper.
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      >5% different, almost everyone is online. We at best get 70% participation in voter representation. Online wise, I'd wager we get at best 20% "public" participation in terms of who bothers to participate online as opposed to lurking. And that 20% is spread amongst hundreds of subjects. And we know these aren't created equal. The internet is disproportionately on the younger side, is very slightly biased by "middle class", educated workers, and the gender demographics vary site to site, despite being overall even (e.g. disproportionately male on Reddit, female on Pintrest). There will definitely be a different resuts online compared to making physical surveys.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
> Already at the point of takeover, Musk was so hated by half the US for various reasons that it became profitable for major publishing platforms to abandon Twitter/X "on principle" No, Musk became hated by half the US __because__ of the way he took over Twitter. That lost him a great deal of good will.
jjk166 2y ago
> How much of that is because of politics? The US government is a lot more affected by politics than twitter will ever be.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  Different kind of politics. For the Twitter-affecting kind, I'm struggling to come up with a term that wouldn't be seen to some as offensive.
  - jjk166 2y ago
    Pretty sure it's the same type of politics. If you think private, profit driven corporations are reluctant to deal with individuals viewed as problematic by their customers, wait until you see how elected, popularity driven officials deal with people viewed as problematic by their constituents.

jimnotgym 2y ago

Is it politics that people don't want to do business with shitty people? I'd call that being human. If I owned a bill board space, and set everything around it on fire, wouldn't you think it was my fault that advertisers didn't want to pay to use it any more?

TeMPOraL 2y ago
No, but then burning everything around the billboard doesn't necessarily make you a shitty person, and also opinions of people siding with advertisers aren't somehow the definitive ones. I mean, why do people who hate what Twitter is now care about it's lost revenue? Especially given what it was, and where the revenue came from, this isn't exactly an argument that generalizes well.
- roenxi 2y ago
  The real question is why people think Twitter's lost revenue is linked to Musk's management. There doesn't seem to be a theory about a causal link. If anything the argument is "Musk is a bad person -> Twitter lost revenue" which suggests his management practices had no effect on the company's operation.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    FWIW, I absolutely blame his management of Twitter rather than his political alignment or questions of morality. Reason being, look at Tesla stock price: Musk's gaffes have a short term impact, but overall the price is way up since buying Twitter.
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      Tesla is not in advertising business, though. They are affected by the whims of public opinion, but not as much, as they're established company selling a quality product worldwide. Musk used to dabble much more in Tesla directly than he's now, I wonder whether the ups and downs of the company correlate with his involvement, especially before he started going off the rails so badly? That would be informative and help separate object-level impact from political hysteria.
      - LunaSea 2y ago
        > Tesla is not in advertising business, though. Tesla is absolutely in the advertisement business. Their marketing and image is the only thing holding the company up (for now).
        TeMPOraL 2y ago
        What I meant is: they buy ads and care about their opinion. They're not a platform selling ads, and they're not an ad delivery vector (like e.g. publishers) either. The latter two kinds of businesses have particular dynamics that are highly sensitive to public opinion, much more so than for any other kind of business.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    Did people already forget he allowed Anti-semitism? And then brands left Twitter? And then he threatened to sue the brands for leaving? We can argue the first part all day. The point was Coca Cola and co. did not want to assossiate anymore and that had an objective dollar amount. I know less about this situation, but Twitter in 2024 apparently made some controversial blocking changes and that started the bluesky migration. I don't know the dollar amount there, but they apparently lost some big influencers.

ben_w 2y ago

If Musk was so politically toxic as to drive an 84% revenue decline, the Republican politicians wouldn't have allowed him to support them or their party.

TeMPOraL 2y ago
Why? That entirely depends on political alignment of revenue sources, and I bet that (before the takeover) the balance was heavily on the US left-wing side, as that's also the overall bias in tech industry and social media and news publishing. And all that is amplified by advertisers in general, regardless of political leaning, being very touchy about controversy. I can easily imagine this to alone be responsible for wiping 84% revenue. Real world has a different political distribution than the Internet. "Politically toxic" on-line in particular is a knee-jerk reaction that is great at generating consistent revenue streams for publishers and social media on-line, but doesn't translate well to how the entire population of a country actually thinks or votes in the real world.
- ben_w 2y ago
  > Real world has a different political distribution than the Internet. 5% different, almost everyone is online. But, thinking about your oft-quoted blog post about advertising bring a cancer, I guess if the top ad spenders cut themselves out entirely, then the bidding system could result in the runner-up bidder finding their ads are now almost arbitrarily cheaper.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    >5% different, almost everyone is online. We at best get 70% participation in voter representation. Online wise, I'd wager we get at best 20% "public" participation in terms of who bothers to participate online as opposed to lurking. And that 20% is spread amongst hundreds of subjects. And we know these aren't created equal. The internet is disproportionately on the younger side, is very slightly biased by "middle class", educated workers, and the gender demographics vary site to site, despite being overall even (e.g. disproportionately male on Reddit, female on Pintrest). There will definitely be a different resuts online compared to making physical surveys.

insane_dreamer 2y ago

> Already at the point of takeover, Musk was so hated by half the US for various reasons that it became profitable for major publishing platforms to abandon Twitter/X "on principle" No, Musk became hated by half the US __because__ of the way he took over Twitter. That lost him a great deal of good will.

jjk166 2y ago

> How much of that is because of politics? The US government is a lot more affected by politics than twitter will ever be.

TeMPOraL 2y ago
Different kind of politics. For the Twitter-affecting kind, I'm struggling to come up with a term that wouldn't be seen to some as offensive.
- jjk166 2y ago
  Pretty sure it's the same type of politics. If you think private, profit driven corporations are reluctant to deal with individuals viewed as problematic by their customers, wait until you see how elected, popularity driven officials deal with people viewed as problematic by their constituents.