There’s a woman over on Mastodon making the argument that he’s trying to destroy it so it can’t be used to organize left-leaning political action (fundraising, activism, issue messaging, etc) any longer. She makes a compelling argument.
he bought it pretty soon after a meeting with Putin, while the Ukraine invasion was fresh and international support was rallying on Twitter. So, blackmail, bribery, buy up Twitter and immediately gut it.
I'd believe it if I hadn't already heard of Musk being the type to fire workers in his line of sight at pure random simply to fire someone. It apparently got so bad that aids would plan the route he would take to the meetings around having as few victims as possible out in the open.
It would be a smart move for anyone, and he is succeeding to a good extent (they'll just go elsewhere?), but I think that's just a happy accident of his. I feel like he's really just using it as a chew toy so he can feel all big and important with the headlines. If he were being journalistically gray rocked, I wonder what he'd do.
Didn’t Twitter almost take him to court if he didn’t follow through with the purchase? I think he got caught in his over investment in Twitter last year, and rather than go through a trial with discovery (I think he NEEDED to follow through to avoid this specifically), he decided to go through with the purchase. I wonder what the hell they would have found during a trial discovery that made him sink $44B.
But what he’s doing now? I don’t think it’s related to that. I think it might be to help manipulate stocks, as we have seen him do several months back. Maybe he thinks that destroying left-leaning political action saves him in taxes? He destroyed public transportation in California just so people would theoretically purchase more Tesla cars. Nothing is beyond being trampled by Musk if he thinks he can benefit by stumbling over the other side of the corpse.
Yeah, he was way too cavalier with the documents he signed while negotiation with Twitter. It would have cost him $1Billion to back out. But that is a bargain compared to what he had to do to come up with the $44B he paid for Twitter.
Not only that, it would have been easier and cheaper to just shut the whole thing down after taking ownership. His very public (mainly by his own tweeting) stewardship of Twitter is damaging to his reputation, and the reputation of his other businesses. The reality is, he just is that dumb.
His net worth has only gone up since he bought it, iirc. Tesla will continue to print money at least for a little while until other automakers catch up on EVs. SpaceX doesn’t seem to have any viable competitors, and both sides of the aisle agree on privatizing space, so that’s a big growth industry. This is the unfortunate fact of capitalism in general and late-stage capitalism in particular.
His net worth has only gone up since he bought it, iirc
It absolutely didn’t. His net worth dropped over 50% in the months following the purchase. It’s back up above $200b at this point according to Forbes, but he’s still down from his pre-purchase state.
He’s the consummate failson. Rich enough that he’ll never actually experience any tangible negativity from his various ventures, if he has a skill, it’s in self-publicity and (historically) throwing money at ventures that are already on an upward trajectory.
But I feel that all the cocaine and being surrounded by Yes Men have led to him tipping over the edge.
The issue with that argument is… Why? He is a business man, activism generally doesn’t effect him, tesla cars are generally liked by left leaning middle class, why would he spend so much money to destroy something?
One factor is his obsession with crypto and Blockchain shit. Left-wing activism generally stands against that stuff because of the environmental impact. Additionally, right-wing political movements recently have been lowering safety standards in business. Bad for the worker, but great for the bottom line.
I saw this article posted in another thread and it seems to explain a lot. Not sure how close it is to reality, but it looks like nostalgia is at least a partial reason for this change.
I believe his main goal is turning Twitter into something of an "everything" site where he's looking to combine the likes of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Discord, and Venmo/Paypal into a single service. I don't know if it was his goal when he bought it or if it has any chance in hell of working, but that's something he at least said (while probably drunk) fairly recently.
My first thought was an all-in-one “life subscription,” kinda like how you can buy those iPhone + Apple One packages, but with Tesla (I don’t know if Tesla has subscriptions to them – but I’m sure they do), Twitter Blue, and Starlink. It’s pretty dystopian and hecka freaky.
Yeah I saw that and cringed. Why would you give Andrew Tate money. It removes all plausible deniablity and proves that you want people like him posting on your platform.
There’s a Japanese youtube channel that makes music under a blank name with blank titles. Thankfully you can google “blank japanese youtube channel” and it shows up lol
Shitter is an app for Mastodon on F-Droid. Dont know why they decided that. Back handed compliment of a name. Work on an app then call it Shitter ! ? IDK
Hell no. If there is one thing I learned from moving over to fediverse, it's that people are what make the site enjoyable or frustrating. As it is now, I enjoy the userbase here and on Mastodon, and the last thing I would want is for the most insufferable of Twitter users to come and ruin it. I'm happy most people who are quitting Twitter are joining the other alternatives. I would rather people join the fediverse as a more deliberate choice based on what we offer.
RIP his SEO. I know it’s part of his goal for an “everything” app. But, this name is just terrible and is going to be a nightmare to look up. Not to mention how much history will refer to Twitter and not a single letter.
It's just the trump style of marketing. Do stupid shit constantly and the media will never shut up about you and people will never stop talking about whatever bullshit it is you're selling.
I'll believe it once the Twitter name and the birdie are both removed off the face of the site and gone for good. And even then I'm not entirely sure I'm going to care all that much.
@Roundcat@chiz@Chozo They've lost MOST of their advertisers, and their paid subscribers are down to the folks who need their service and haven't yet figured out an exit. I don't think they have much time left, darlz.
I don't know about "MOST" as there are still a good amount of mainstream companies that advertise on the site. At least you wouldn't know it if you are still on the site constantly. And I'm mostly going on about the users there who don't like the changes there and constantly complain about them in articles or youtube, yet it is the only way they insist on engaging with their followers still.
The thing about Mastodon and Lemmy to users who exclusively use those sites is they are themselves a bubble. There are weeks I spend most of my web activity on kbin, and would believe reddit is on its death spiral. Yet I peak over there, and it's about as active as when I left it. I even see articles about reddit or twitters activity recovering that I never see get shared here, because at the end of the day, the narrative we want to hear is "Corporate site is dying, we are the future!"
@Roundcat@chiz@Chozo I know! And I mostly agree. I don't go to Reddit, unless I get a link from there but I do sometimes go to Twitter bc I had 30K+ folks I knew there, and I miss them. It rly is dying tho. Nothing but Nazis screaming bile, and stuff doesn't work half the time. The bile is acceptable, but not working? Nobody pays for stuff that don't work. Not for long.
I think Reddit will still be around, but when it comes to Twitter, the acquisition saddled the company with billions in debt amounting to around a billion in yearly interest repayment. Twitter already was barely making ends meet before that, and it only lost revenue for all the stupid decisions being made. Even if it was exactly as profitable as before, it wouldn't be enough anymore.
One day Twitter is simply going to stop working, or close off so much it becomes unusable, unless Musk personally tries to keep it afloat at expense of his own fortune, or someone is dumb enough to buy it off of him and do the same.
I also see a lot of wishful thinking in the Fediverse, but this is not the case here. People there may not want to move on, but it's not gonna keep it afloat. I already see a lot of people making their escape plans and linking alternative platforms every day.
@chiz X is so easy to search in internet. So many results; it gets never boring! Very unique name and brand.
Spez: Write it down, write it down! Let's rename Reddit to Z! Employee: Why Z? Spez: What do you mean why? Does X make any sense to you too? Employee: All right, I should have never questioned you.
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