Elon Musk May Have Just Signed X’s Death Warrant | WIRED
(www.wired.com)
from Albinjose7345@lemmy.dbzer0.com to technology@lemmy.ml on 18 Nov 2023 13:59
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/8637454
from Albinjose7345@lemmy.dbzer0.com to technology@lemmy.ml on 18 Nov 2023 13:59
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/8637454
#technology
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Knew he was good for something
Death warrant? Maybe, but I expect companies (maybe not the EU, but - let’s be frank - probably the EU too) to go back into X as soon as they feel they are done cashing in this virtue signaling.
There were plenty of reasons to leave twitter before this idiotic tweet from Musk (reasons due to twitter’s action as a company, and not just Musk’s drunken posts) and they were all happily tweeting and advertising.
Is this drop that breaks the camel’s back? Maybe, but I wouldn’t be holding my breath.
My chips are also on them coming back, but at the same time it feels like Musk wants to make Twitter's business harder than it needs to be.
This reaction doesn't come from the last tweet itself, instead it comes from him not stopping with hot takes and not showing any signs of slowing down.
If he keeps going, I could see companies just accepting "it is what it is" and coming back, but at the same time it also feels like he's one tweet away from going too far for most companies. And it's not like Twitter is a strong social media anyway, they are not even in the top 10 social medias in terms of active users count: https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/
Maybe these companies may also decide that dealing with Twitter is more trouble than it's worth. But we'll see
Well, that was certainly decisive.
I don’t think x’s value is from the number of users. It’s the type of powerful people on it and the headline style format the multiplies it’s impact across the information space. It still sucks though
right, but what matters to most ad publishers is the number of eyeballs that are converted into buying customers
“cashing in this virtue signaling”
Not wanting to be associated with the Great Replacement theory is “virtue signaling”
Tell me you’re a right wing shill without telling me you’re a right wing shill
He’s right. They don’t care about what’s on X as long as there isn’t negative publicity. It has nothing to do with being right-wing. If anything, it’s quite left-wing to believe that companies only care about the baseline.
“virtue signaling” is a right wing term by which statements of principle are dismissed.
That’s rubbish. It has nothing to do with right wing. Google, Apple, Coca Cola, Microsoft, and many other large companies have been accused of virtue signaling - rightfully so. They pretend to care about social issues for 2 seconds and then go right back to business once the news cycle is over. Is that a right-wing thing to do?
uhuh…
I have very little faith in businesses to do the right thing for the right reasons. Publicly traded companies in the US literally can’t do that legally if they think it will hurt their bottom line.
X is a shit company that doesn’t need to exist anymore but I’m equally tired of companies virtue signaling behind causes. Like, fuck off, I don’t need you to tell me that you’re “invested” in “human rights” or “causes” when you treat your workers like shit and fail to provide your retail workers a minimum wage for example.
X and these other companies virtue signaling behind causes for profit/marketing goodwill can all go to hell.
Seems like a smear of Musk for not siding with Israel and instead calling for a ceasefire or peace.
Looking at the talk Musk had with Lex Fridman.
He wasn’t really in good standing before the conflict.
True, politics makes Musk a tribalist issue.
He wrote that the jews are responsible for the great replacement conspiracy theory, how is that not antisemitic?
Please don’t conflate anti-semitism with Pro Palestinian voices. What he is doing is not helping anyone.
Anti-semitism is a real thing, but Israel-Palestine has always made it harder to understand. If it is truly anti-religious or just questioning Israel gov’t and actions.
The problem is that Zionists like to say “Israel = Jews”, raging when you say something anti-Zionist that you’re being an anti-semite. However, what Musk is doing is actually saying Jews are the problem. That’s antisemitism. That is not helping Jews nor is it helping anyone who is anti-Zionist because now people will say “see? Anti-Zionist equals anti-Semite, just look at Musk if you don’t believe me.”
It's not that he sided against Israel. It's that he sided against Jews. The Israeli government and its supporters like to conflate the two a lot, but they are very different things.
So when someone writes “Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.” and Musk responds with “You have spoken the actual truth.”, that is not an anti-Israel position, that is an antisemite position, one that couldn't be made more clearer even if he posted it with a picture of Auschwitz
Amen!
If you read the religious texts and are familiar with the oral scriptures there you go Though those views mainly only exist in communities of Orthodox Jewish sects that dedicate their lives to religious studies
To add on to what others have already said
He didn’t do that either though? He attacked those calling for peace/ceasefire
He’s attacking everyone, as if he’s trying to distract people from each controversy with a different controversy
I'm sorry, but proclaiming that Jews are conspiratorially poisoning the world against whites is not remotely related to Israel/Palestine. It's blatant Nazi shit. Muddying the waters is also generally crypto-fascist shit, but I don't know you and I'm not going to put that label on you. Just realize that's what you're doing.
He in fact demonstrated the clear distinction between being an antisemitic Nazi fuckwit and opposing Israeli military actions in Gaza.
I hope so. I’m so fucking tired of hearing about it.
It would be amazing if there were any sort of consequences for this clown, or any other rich clown, honestly.
I think part of the reason bad behavior has been so normalized among the general populace is because they’re seeing such bad behavior from “the elites” that they “look up to” so they think that since those “rich, successful men” act like that without consequence, it must mean that behavior is okay.
There are many factors.
Someone of such resource certainly likes to carry and bang an empty pail.
Good. I hope it goes under.
How would that happen?
It can’t afford its debt. It’s almost guaranteed to happen.
I read about where the money came from and I’m not saying I really understand it, but it seems solid enough for it to never fail unless musk wants it to fail.
Which is, like,…if somebody wants to destroy twitter as fast as possible, but make it look like it’s not intentional, what would they do differently than what is happening right now? :) Jk, musk is just an incompetent bag of shit.
The money used to come from advertisers. Elon has been trying to move it to a subscription model, but few people want to subscribe to a place only right wingers want to be.
Elon wanted Xitter to be a bastion of right wing speech. He just didn't think about what that would entail.
It was always going to fail. At that point, Twitter as a company only recently started actually making a profit. What Musk did is called a leveraged buy-out where someone takes out a loan to buy a company. The company that is bought out is then responsible for paying that loan. Remember when I said they just barely had started making money? Well, now they have so much debt that they not only have to make enough money to cover their previous expenses, but also cover the payments for this new loan, and the new loan has interest that creates additional debt of $1 billion a year. How is a company that struggles to make money suddenly going to come up with an extra $1 billion a year? Charging for checkmarks? There aren’t enough users… That’s why he is so desperate. He knows that by making that joke offer, he royally screwed himself when Twitter called his bluff and forced him to buy. I think he just wanted an excuse to sell some Tesla stock that he knew was overvalued but had said he wouldn’t sell.
I don’t know, as far as I understand it, all the money sources are covered quite well, he can literally do whatever and there won’t be much consequences.
Many who remain actively want to spread hate
Inertia. In the UK, for example, every local government council, the NHS, central government, charities etc use user Twitter//X as a free channel for announcements and publicity. Quite often they manage it though things like Hootsuite that lets the, plan and manage and cross-post to Facebook etc.
Deciding to quit that is quite a major step - especially when there isn't really a clear single alternative that has similar reach and userbase.
And now we're living in the "that was a bad idea" world.
Except that they've ruined that too. You now need an account to view anything, so the reach of announcements is greatly diminished.
At this point leaving shouldn't really be too difficult, since a large portion of your audience already has; because they've been shut out, or have quit voluntarily.
Musk only buys things that he thinks will keep his name in the news, and he’s always looking for that next bong-hit of attention.
Nobody likes him. Nobody cares about him. And he makes it so obvious WHY with his racist, apartheid bullsh*t.
Haven’t people been saying that since before he even bought it?
We’ve yet to see any regulatory actions with real consequences, so yeah I doubt it.
A $50 fine or something
<img alt="Two-panel meme image of a guy saying in the first panel “oh no” and in the second “anyway.”" src="https://i.imgflip.com/43iv8l.jpg">
No he hasn’t. 200M users won’t jump off because of this. If most people really cared, they’d be switching to alternatives - they don’t.
Money doesn’t come from the users, it comes from the advertisers. The platform is already in the hole but it’s getting worse over time
I think fediverse is not still popular as it is. And most people don’t know that better alternatives exist.
It shows how much more important being first is rather than being the best.
So the radical free speech guy is going to sue someone for what they said? Sounds spot on for Musk.
Wait, I don’t see that in the article. Who’s he suing now?
did people stop deadnaming twitter
Right? Twitter hasn’t stopped dead naming Twitter, for fuck’s sake
Can we please stop posting business news here
How cheap does X have to get before it can be bought by a non-profit, turned into a co-op and renamed twitter?
and then federate with Mastodon?
It’s no longer a public company. So it can be bought when Musk chooses to sell. Or if he defaults on his loan then it may go to banks but they really don’t want it and have already written off their loan to him.
Why exactly do normal people with small defaults have ‘collection agents’ sent after them, while billion dollar defaults are written off? Isn’t that supposed to be the other way around?
It’s all to do with the terms of the contract and collateral.
Bonds are guaranteed by the collateral of the ownership of the company. If the company defaults on their loan, then ownership transfers to the bond holders, so the bond holders now own all the equity in the company (and previous equity holders get nothing.)
There are no collections agents for companies because once they default, all of that is essentially triggered automatically contractually. There’s a bit of wiggle room with negotiating changing terms on the loans and such before a default happens, but that’s the broad strokes.
because it’s easier to come after real people, since we don’t know all loopholes, can’t jerk them around indefinitely, have no individual power, can’t afford lawyers, and are all around an easier mark.
We can only hope
I’ve heard this said for months now
Yeah, it’s only a death warrant for conventionally run companies. He can run it into the ground as deep as his pockets will let him. And according to Forbes that’s still relatively deep, deeper than they should be anyway.
I kind of suspect he’s up to something. Maybe he’s grooming it for a political ad platform. Although it’s equally possible he just loves watching everybody flip the hell out, One hell of an expensive hobby if so.
the guy don’t give a single fuck, people don’t get that he don’t care about loosing money.