We just need a replacement. Not Zuck’s.
8 Likes
I don’t know about that. A lot of the right wing is “but I’m different”
5 Likes
Not heard of Twitter before — is that some sort of new online chatline for bird-watchers?
4 Likes
I mean, he borrowed and lost like $16bn from people who cut up journalists they don’t like with a bonesaw. Maybe Mars is his best equivalent of running away from the mob to Rio.
15 Likes
Per Scott Galloway on Pivot, she probably has an ironclad contract for payout after he scapegoats her and she exits in 12 to 16 months.
11 Likes
I’m sure Mr. Bone Saw is perfectly happy to see Twitter go down in flames, but Elno did borrow some of that money from banks who presumably want their money back. Though the whole deal was so transparently bad that it gives me the impression banks are perfectly happy to just throw away billions of dollars without properly investigating the deal, so long as the person asking belongs to the rarefied strata of the hyper-wealthy. Or bankers are just idiots who think Elno got where he is through something other than sheer dumb luck. If that’s the case, they’re hopefully disabused of that notion now.
15 Likes
12-16 months? You think things are going to last that long?
9 Likes
I’m glad mastodon got that initial wave last year; a lot of work has been done improving efficiency and capacity. Scaling up is much easier now, with a lot of social systems now in place.
Hopefully Meta doesn’t kill the fediverse with Threads. There’s a solid risk they’ll try to do to ActivityPub what they did to XMPP.
12 Likes
This is literally Tr@mp 2.0. The banks will keep shovel money this idiot way in hope of making back what they lose by propping Melon up as some business genius in hope for new suckers to come in. Basically, musical chairs for bankers. Well, the illusion is wearing off and soon, only the Saudi, Russia, or China would willing to “invest” in this useful idiot to further their interest.
12 Likes
Yeah, it’s very much ended up being the same phenomenon with Elno and Trump. Though what struck me with Elno is how he was wildly overpaying for Twitter, had no coherent plan for it, it was at best barely profitable yet he was going to saddle it with billions of dollars of debt servicing it couldn’t pay back, and the banks didn’t blink at the obviously bad deal, but just handed over billions of dollars without any collateral or personal liability from the world’s richest man in paying off the loans. Trump got treated generously (initially) due to his inherited wealth, but he still had to engage in decades of loan fraud and had actual real estate as collateral to build his way up to several orders of magnitude less debt than what Elno managed in one deal.
It’s like the bigger the deal is, the less scrutiny there is, once you’ve “proven” yourself by being enormously wealthy (or at least by convincing people you are).
17 Likes
I mean, he borrowed and lost like $16bn from people who cut up journalists they don’t like with a bonesaw. Maybe Mars is his best equivalent of running away from the mob to Rio.
Those guys got exactly what they wanted - which was access to the user database to match up other people who have a date with a bonesaw.
Those investors wouldn’t notice a few billion dollars in the same way that you could loose a dime and not really remember what you might have been hanging onto it for.
8 Likes
Yeah but he used Tesla as collateral - the ultimate irony would be his losses costing him his dominant share of Tesla.
12 Likes
This is what I remembered about the speculation at the time: he was trying to get money out from his TSLA shares without spooking his fanboy/investor. Playing chicken with Twitter was the excuse for selling the stocks. I bet he was counting on the Twitter’s board to fold. He can then sell his Twitter holding with a nice bump using the rumor. Drug and his ego waived due diligence. The recession came. The board accepted his invitation. The perfect storm. He panicked and wanted to get out but Twitter lawyers trapped him like a fool. At this point, he faced 2 choices: sue and face discovery, or sucked it up and swallow the deal(with others people money). I thought the discovery was more damaging to his reputation back then but I’m not sure now. He would prove he’s a dumbass either way. I’m sure paying Twitter for damage would cost less than 44b but what would I know. I’m not some business genius. 
On paper. This sure expedited the trainwreck with everyone throwing money at this onboard.
11 Likes
This is what I don’t think people quite realize above - sure, the Twitter loans were risky, but they were backed by Elon’s Tesla stock. When Twitter fails (and barring a miracle, it will fail), the banks are going to end up with Twitter and a lion’s share of Tesla. In fact, that may have been their plan from the beginning.
10 Likes
/s for those who don’t remember the countless times I’ve cursed in the BBS.
14 Likes
When Elno was working out the financing he initially was considering using Tesla stock as collateral, but eventually he decided against it - instead he sold some of Tesla off for cash for the sale (and later to pay for operations/debt servicing) and took less money in loans, but Twitter itself holds the debt now, with no collateral or liability on Elno’s part. It’s crazy. The only thing Elno can lose is Twitter itself (and then his creditors are stuck with the albatross).
It seems like it, it wouldn’t have been the only wild miscalculation he made in that whole venture and he clearly wasn’t serious about buying it (if a lawyer looked at the contract, Elno ignored whatever they told him).
It didn’t take much - Elno really trapped himself by signing that incredibly airtight agreement to purchase - he wasn’t going to wriggle out of it and it was entirely self-inflicted, seemingly because he didn’t take any of it seriously.
With either choice he made, he’d still be stuck buying Twitter - it’s just that the legal fight would have cost more money and included that discovery.
There was discussion early on about the penalty Elno would have to pay if he didn’t buy Twitter, but it turned out the deal he made was that he either bought Twitter for the agreed price… or he bought Twitter for the agreed price plus the costs of the legal battle. When details of the agreement came out, there were an awful lot of lawyers laughing incredulously that Elno ever agreed to something so insanely self-destructive.
11 Likes
His lawyers must be holding themselves back the whole time from telling him to shut the fuck up.
2 Likes
isn’t that a typical move though? places like baine capital that buy up a company, load it up with debt, and then walk away with money from all the fees.
i think bed bath and beyond even just exploded like that. it works as long as you’re not the one holding the potato in the end. ( a big enough potato though and you get the government bailout )
re banks investing in ■■■■■’s deals. that definitely never made any sense. the man bankrupted a casino. who does that? a lot of those deals seems to be built on personality, not on business sense
14 Likes
I would love to know who is rate limited, as 43 year old who prob spends 3 hours a day on twitter, i have yet to hit the 600 cap for tweets, just how many hours a day are you spending on twitter to hit that 600?
We may all be on no elon broke twitter, but i would guess for most the rate limit meant nothing and they never saw or it or where effected by it, other than it being in every web news section.
Having to sing in is limiting and yes limits advert reach, but lets face it 99% of sites want you to sign in now, the amount of sights i go to that dont need an account but want me to sign in any way with my google account is nuts.
Yes he going to drive twitter into the ground, but i just dont see that these 2 changes are as big of deal as every one is making out.
3 Likes
