It appears to be some sort of broad scam, multiple alleged storefronts with nonsense names using similar wording in the posts and odd products. But it does seem that somebody is paying money for this. A lot of people with an axe to grind about something or other seems to be paying to place just stuff they’re posting as ads, perhaps unsurprisingly these are usually racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic/other bigotry.
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Is that a new laxative brand?
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presumably. it’s got about the same quality output from what i hear
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If I’d come across this I’d take the shopping cart.
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So many journalists and governments, and government agencies all still use Twitter. it’s annoying.
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It seems like we’ve been getting headlines like this about once a month ever since Musk took over. I expected Twitter to collapse within months. But at this point the company’s value seems utterly meaningless. It can keep falling infinitely and there never seem to be any actual consequences as a result. Musk never closes up shop, X never loses its last five employees, and the remaining users are carrying on in airheaded obliviousness to any changes, apparently under the impression it’s circa 2012 and Twitter is still credible and relevant.
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How is their debt calculated in all that? Is that valuation selling off the debt at however many cents on the dollar or do you get multi billions of debt with your purchase?
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“Positive” externalities…
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OK, MBA student here. This is a bit funny, but it points to the problem with Twitter.
Goodwill is the amount of value the company/brand has built up over the years with its customers. Know that really good restaurant around the corner that’s been there for years, owned by a family, that’s always a great place to eat? They have goodwill.
If I’m an investor, I could start my own restaurant from scratch. Or I could buy the existing business. And if I don’t fuck it up, then I can take advantage of the goodwill the business has with the community to make more money than if I started the business on my own.
When I go to sell that business, I want to take advantage of the goodwill I’ve built up to get more money. And as an investor, I’m okay with paying for goodwill- if I feel confident I can take advantage of the company’s reputation to make money.
If Musk had wanted to, he could have built his own microblogging platform from scratch to take on Twitter. There are plenty of Twitter clones out there- Bluesky, Threads, etc. He paid $44 billion for the goodwill- the reputation Twitter had of being the one place to voice your opinion. Then he wrecked it. So the goodwill he paid for is gone, and you have the value the business on its current ability to generate cash over costs. And that’s why it ain’t worth shit. (I doubt its book value is anywhere near $10 billion.)
Goodwill is actually a valuable concept, and makes situations like this easy to explain.
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I think it’s more accurate to say he bought it because he was high and his mouth made a check that had to be cashed.
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I think that’s true, because he went to a lot of effort to avoid finalising the purchase.
However does it explain why Musk has almost systematically destroyed every aspect of the Twitter he ended up being forced to buy?
Maybe it does. Perhaps when you’re “worth” nearly a trillion dollars, spunking away the odd 50 billion here and there doesn’t really matter, so you can make all your decisions while out of your gourd.
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I mean who buys late night TV shopping channel ads? Isn’t it drunk people?
The differences are that while that exercise machine (or whatever) might stop you buying something else as you don’t have cash, when you discover you don’t want it you can leave it under the bed until your children empty your house.
His rubbish impulse buy is taking over his life.
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That’s… wtaf!? There’s a market big enough to cater to pedophiles who like scented candles?!
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Except, as you note, he tried his damnedest to weasel out of the deal until it was painfully obvious the Delaware Chancery court was going to force him to buy anyway.
Most of his wealth is tied up in securities — Tesla and SpaceX stock. Like many ultra wealthy people, he is relatively cash poor. So he is collateralizing his Twitter debt with Tesla stock. He could very well lose control of the company, which is why he is freaking out over advertiser flight. If he truly had money to flush indiscriminately down the toilet he wouldn’t care. He’d just prop it up with his action figure money until he grew bored with it, then Shuttered the whole thing.
He isn’t a particularly bright or complicated man. He was born with half a billion and made couple lucky investments that were mostly run by other people.
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The reason for that is pretty simple. He thinks he’s a visionary genius who knows better than everyone else, and he’s not. Take SpaceX’s multi-engine rockets that keep blowing up, and Tesla’s exciting new line of poorly assembled dumpsters. Then imagine that same leadership in a company that can’t keep him away from the useful stuff because it only offers one product, and you get X.
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it does say “boob job gift”, so I guess you get it for someone who’s just had cosmetic surgery?
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I missed that! My bad, though the whole thing is icky as hell, no matter the context. 
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Asbolutely, yeah
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Rich people get cash by borrowing against the value of their capital, then write off the interest on the loan against their taxes. It’s part of why the very rich pay lower tax rates than waitstaff in diners on less than minimum wage.
Musk has actual cash flow from dividends on his shares in Tesla and SpaceX, which are both profitable in recent years.
While the value of so-called X may have plummeted 90% while he’s been in charge, it’s only $40B against his overall “wealth” of something like $280B, and a good chunk of the money to buy the Twitter shares came from other investors.
He’s still an idiot.
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