No, that won’t spell twitter’s doom. The facf that Elon now has moved a company that was $5 billion in debt to a company that is now $25 billion in debt, and the fact that he will have to pay $857 million per year just to keep up with interest… for a company who’s best year ever was around $2 billion REVENUE… that will spell twitter’s doom.
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I felt a little melancholy deleting an account I’ve used for 15 years.
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“Highly relevant ads are actually content” sounds a lot like the spammer fallback of “Yes, but I know you’ll want to see this.”
Also, speaking as someone who used to work for an ad-supported startup distributing user-generated content, finding “highly-relevant” ads for a large and diverse userbase is a challenge that makes content moderation look easy. It’s not enough just to have an algorithm that can figure out what you think people want, you actually have to have the ad inventory available.
If it could be done easily, then Facebook and Twitter would already be doing it. The fact that they aren’t suggests that it’s a rather harder problem than Elon likes to admit.
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Musk already did this himself when he launched his own perfume.
Seriously, he thinks he’s Adrian Veidt.
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To quote the late Hilmar Kopper: Peanuts.
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I think that is an overlooked fact, that Twitter was, as a company, never all that profitable. And as a private company now, it will be easier for the owner to close it all up in a pique and declare that he is no longer delaying the inevitable… or he could pretend it never was meant to be profitable, or even do the Zuckerberg and end up throwing the company after vaporware that no one wants.
Whatevs. I don’t rely upon it, no one I know relies upon it. I personally think Discord is going to be the shiny platform that eventually becomes popular, TikTok is too blatantly Chinese spyware bloat.
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Exactly. What’s $200 mil to him? Like $2.00 to us?
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Given that he has no real cash on hand at this point, it’s probably a lot. But that $200 mil isn’t coming from Elon, it’s coming from twitter, and probably will be wrapped up in Twitter Inc’s debt.
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I’m waiting on the notification of an archive of my data right now. Once I receive that, I’m deleting the account. I’ve already removed it from my phone. I do have a bit of a community there that I will miss and kept things relatively sane, mostly by staying away from the bigots and heavy use of blocking, but it just became completely tainted.
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It’d be nice if there were some indication that he wanted to help humanity more than he wanted to help billionaires.
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True.
Although I’ve seen pictures where he looks like Pee-wee Herman’s demented brother.
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The advice I saw and took is not to jump ship but to start blocking every advertiser on my timeline. If enough people do this the advertisers jump ship. Try it!
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For some reason, this one jumped into my head. I was just looking for the character, but the particular screen cap was just perfect.
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What I took from that statement and EM’s previous behaviour is that I don’t count as part of his view of humanity.
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Simply by being a billionaire he’s made it clear he has no intention of helping humanity. There are no moral billionaires.
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Elon Musk jettisons Twitter leadership, says takeover was ‘to try to help humanity’
COMMENT
Famed cave rescue expert Elon Musk has realized his dreams and completed the acquisition of influential social media platform Twitter.
Following the closing of the $44 billion deal yesterday, the electric car enthusiast posted a statement on the microblogging website which claimed in all seriousness that he was executing the takeover “to try to help humanity, whom I love.”
The Register does not know how well acquainted Musk is with humanity, but we are quite prepared to introduce him to humility, whose influence seems to be markedly absent.
The missive adds that the co-founder of PayPal decided to acquire Twitter “because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common town square of where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence.”
Musk, who has the whiff of a man satisfied by the smell of his own farts, has made it clear he intends to reinstate Donald Trump, the twice impeached former US president permanently suspended from Twitter for risk of further incitement of violence after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
Trump has now been issued a subpoena to appear before the House January 6 select committee, such that he should offer an accounting of any foreknowledge of the Capitol attack and his broader efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
In May, Tesla chief executive Musk told a Financial Times conference it was not correct to ban Trump from Twitter. “I think that was a mistake. It alienated the country and did not result in Donald Trump not having a voice. I think it was a morally bad decision and foolish in the extreme.”
Among Musk’s first moves upon taking the helm at Twitter was to fire Vijaya Gadde, the head of legal policy, trust and safety, who took the decision to ban Trump. Also axed were chief executive Parag Agrawal and chief financial officer Ned Segal, according to Reuters.
Quite apart from the thorny political issues surrounding social media platforms and the concept of free speech versus the right to be free from incitement of hatred, prejudice and violence, there is the question of what Musk plans to do with Twitter as a business.
He has boasted that Twitter’s valuation could be an order of magnitude greater than its current dollar status. Twitter’s share price has collapsed since Musk first made his offer, leading some to argue the business genius is overpaying for the platform. Indeed, Musk himself set out on a court battle to try to pull out of the $44 billion deal.
Vague allusions to a “superapp” and “everything platform” have so far left analysts unimpressed and wanting to see more details.
For a man yet to fulfill his promises of brain-computer interfaces, autonomous humanoid robots, and self-driving cars, Musk needs to come up with something more concrete for Twitter. To take him at his word, humanity itself is at stake. ®
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Can they take the parachute, and sue for wrongful termination? (Assuming that’s even a thing in the jurisdiction.)
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My bet is that they can take the parachute, and still sic their lawyers on to annoy Twitter just for funnies and change found under the sofa cushions.
The point isn’t to win more compensation, it’s just to make running Twitter a chore that isn’t fun.
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This is what came to my mind when I saw that. Far more hellish, and far more like what he deserves.
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