Stop X permanently. The lawsuits are massing up, and the value of the business has nearly dropped such that the $13bn debt is bigger than it. They had little hope of paying even the interest before Musk started intentionally tanking their revenue. He knows that the business will never have to pay up, hell they’re not even paying rent on their offices, and he’ll get away with the crime Scott free because it’s a limited liability company.
And make no mistake, that was the plan all along. Destroy a private business cum public forum that served the public good, and on the way out see what controversial actions they can get away with. That way any site that comes to fill the void can do the same. His old mate Peter Thiel will likely be pleased, along with a bunch of other unscrupulous people.
Destroy a private business cum public forum that served the public
It’s amazing to me how much people have rewritten history since musk took over. Twitter was always shit. It’s worse now, yeah. A lot worse. But it’s like taking a shit on a smaller pile of shit. All this talk about how it was a real boon for humanity and so important it should be regulated as a utility is equal parts idiotic and hilarious.
It’s shit, but it had significant uses. Namely, getting breaking news from trusted journalists, and speaking directly to businesses for consumer support when other methods typically went unanswered.
That’s not to mention the Arab Spring. Sure, significant change that people had hoped for didn’t follow through, but it still spooked them enough that one of the incumbent leaders helped buy the website to undermine it.
Also, when you compare it to Facebook it certainly was better. Even reddit was better, then followed it down the drain.
I get the feeling (I wouldn’t really know, haven’t been there in months) that Reddit is still significantly better. Sure, it’s worse now, but it still has active communities on pretty much any topic imaginable. Lemmy is on its way, but won’t be there for a few years I think.
I was shook the other day when I stopped by reddit and saw, “just a normal day in russia” at the top of the front page. As Americans we need to give up on the idea of a non-political social media because it always gets co-optd into some psy-ops bullshit.
Yeah, nah. For a start, if one website could be singled out for bringing Trump into power, it wasn’t any of those icky extremist places such as 4chan, 8chan, r/trump - it was Twitter where he posted his garbage for literal years with no interruption and thus gained a massive following. The site practically lived off his controversial diarrhea.
You could say the same about reddit in a large part. 4chan was a free home, Twitter was a megaphone, but reddit really encouraged the infestation to gestate.
Also it wasn’t r/trump, but r/the_Donald, as well as all the spin off astroturfed subs.
I don’t disagree this is a possibility, but I have yet to hear someone clearly articulate why poopoobrain over there would do something so dumb intentionally.
I find it so much more compelling that he’s just a divorce-brained middle-aged dumbass with a megaphone and billions to dig his own grave. That he was forced to buy Twitter after waving his dick around in public and has been trying to save his reputation ever since by pretending that it’s all a part of his plan to amplify the right voices to ‘save humanity’.
I’m not saying he isn’t brain-broken enough to believe it himself, but I don’t think he ever really had a plan. I think he’s a sad, lonely billionaire going through the worlds biggest mid-life crisis.
but I have yet to hear someone clearly articulate why poopoobrain over there would do something so dumb intentionally.
Because it distracts from the fact that leveraged buyouts are almost always meant to kill the business in the long run, and such distraction reduces the chance of regulation against the practice. People don’t think Twitter is failing because it had $13bn of debt it could never afford, they think it’s failing because Musk is a poor businessman. That isn’t to say Musk is a great businessman acting like a fool, rather, he is a clown acting like a fool.
I think if Musk had made a genuine effort to buy Twitter there wouldn’t have been so much debt saddled onto the business. Musk was forced to make the purchase, but the nature of the purchase has subsequently been tailored into sinking the ship. One of the first things they did was stop paying rent - if this wasn’t a sign of a business doomed to failure I don’t know what is. The business will die a death, and everyone it owes money to will be left fighting over the ashes.
Ok, so you’re not saying he actually originally wanted to buy it in order to tank it, you’re saying once he was forced to buy it the most expedient thing to do was to bankrupt it.
Being pushed into buying it because of his loud mouth is still a MASSIVE blunder, him choosing to steer it into an iceberg after being handed the keys is just him cutting his losses. It doesn’t explain why he would have wanted to destroy the company in the first place. If it was because the site was largely critical of him or platformed people counter to his personal worldview, then buying the company and running those voices out (like he did) would have sufficed and he wouldn’t also need to tank it. Likewise, if all he wanted was to platform voices friendly to him and his worldview, burning down the house around himself and his new friends is contradictory.
I think you’re giving him too much credit, I think he’s just an overconfident dumbass that got himself into trouble and is trying to erase his mistake without ruining his reputation as a genius.
It doesn’t explain why he would have wanted to destroy the company in the first place.
For that, you could turn to his old friend, Peter Thiel. Thiel tried and failed to start up businesses that competed directly against Twitter. Aside from Thiel, there are plenty of other people who likely resent Twitter - such as the Saudi prince who now owns a portion of it alongside Musk.
I think the goal is to bring Twitter down, then replace it with something else. Alternatively, they could turn Twitter into what they want it to be by further financing it and covering the debt, though that seems less and less likely as time goes on. However, by sending Twitter down the toilet they can experiment with the kind of things that future platforms might be able to do - anything Twitter gets reprimanded for will ultimately have no consequence if Twitter goes away, but anything Twitter gets away with can be fair game for new start ups.
I think you’re giving him too much credit, I think he’s just an overconfident dumbass that got himself into trouble and is trying to erase his mistake without ruining his reputation as a genius.
I agree he’s an overconfident dumbass and got himself into this position, and I’m sure he desperately values his reputation - the one aspect of all this that I’m enjoying is how badly his reputation is getting ruined. I still worry about more sinister things happening over the long run that may shape the future of social platforms for the worse, though.
Uhhh the plan plays out the same either way. Stop being a pedantic twat missing the entire point. Musk can do it no matter the mechanism through which he bought the company: He still bought it and ran it in to the ground!!
Twitter always sucked, and always will suck. Explain to me, in pornographic detail, how this is some huge conspiracy, what the end goal of that conspiracy is, and who is perpetuating it.
I absolutely love the ask on pornographic detail, though it’s mostly the presence of many seperate but cohesive puzzle pieces. Between how he’s gotten kicked out and silenced in most of his business positions, to his children hating his guts, to his dad calling his bluffs, to how he lies on stage making promises no one in the company has even heard, yet alone vetted the viability of, to how he’s constantly liking extreme right-wing tweets and openly allowing anti-trans rhetoric…
It’s just a very large set of puzzle pieces that spell out a very, very clear picture: Elon is a fascist-sympathising white supremacist, whether it be out of hate or general priviledged lack of empathy, the result is the same. It’s mildly hidden in his eclectic pretending and mountain of lies. He doesn’t even have an engineering degree like he loves to pretend.
If that was Elon’s goal, rather than the goal of various other people he’s closely associated with (eg Peter Thiel, Saudi prince Mohammed bin Salman, to name but two of the most prominent ones), then such a goal could be fulfilled by platforms that take Twitter’s place after it’s gone - along with all the debt Twitter owes, including rent not being paid, state fines, lawsuits from former investors and staff, and the $13bn loan from the buyout itself.
That isn’t to say this was Musk’s goal all along, rather that’s what it has transformed into.
I always saw it as two possible outcomes: either they make Twitter into what they always wanted from the failed startups that tried to compete against Twitter, and pay off the debt to keep it going; or they run it into the ground and write off the debt, then replace it with something more favourable. The latter seems more and more likely as time has passed.
Public company =/= publicly owned. As an American, you probably don’t know what a publicly owned business is, but public schools are pretty close (again though, Americans and education…). A company in the public sector has to follow a lot more regulations than a company in the private sector. Twitter has always been in the private sector. It was publicly traded, now it is not.
Musk did not buy all the shares. Musk put up about $27 billion out of $44bn, most of which was Tesla shares (which subsequently tanked, and since then the business has been on something of a decline compared to their previous success). $5 billion came from other investors, including a Saudi prince. The remaining $13bn was a loan Twitter took out to buy itself on Musk’s behalf - this is the smoking gun that ultimately will kill the business, like most leveraged buyouts are bound to (eg Toys R Us).
But no, tell me I’m stupid while you speak in hollow hyperbole.
The fact you admit you’re using your own definition of publicly owned, instead of the legal definition of that word in the country in which it applies, and then double down with a bunch of “facts” you don’t understand, while really pouring on the condescension, is simply an amazing execution of trolling.
The sad thing, though, is I don’t think you’re trolling. I think you believe what you just said is true.
The sad thing is, even after I explained there are two definitions (public sector/private sector and publicly traded/privately traded), and after I clarified exactly which I was referring to, you still think your correction holds water.
Twitter was private sector publicly traded, then Musk took it off the public stock market. However it is and always was private sector, meaning that it’s “Twitter’s house” and they get to set the rules of entry. If it was public sector, then it would be obligated be open to all members of the public equally.
The fiduciary and reporting responsibilities of public companies are drastically different than private.
Musk bought all of the shares, then took the company private, meaning all of those fiduciary and reporting responsibilities are no longer required.
Your understanding how public and private companies in the United States work is lacking.
What is public? A 501c3? c6? A government run organization like the post office? What legal and compliance frameworks did Twitter have to follow when it was publicly traded vs now when it’s not publicly traded. In your terms it was “private” in both instances. So please, educate me. How is Twitter different now
Yes, public sector refers to government run entities like the post office, also anything staffed by civil servants, and to a far lesser extent businesses contracted to the state.
Publicly traded businesses do have a lot of reporting responsibilities, also the CEO is essentially obligated to pursue profits over all else on behalf of the shareholders. A privately traded business does not have these obligations. Musk made this change with the purchase of the company (but again, he did not “buy all the shares”, he bought most of them, $5bn was paid by other parties compared to his ~$26bn [plus a couple bn in fees]) however Twitter as a business was always and still is private sector. This means they absolutely could have censored Trump any time they liked - or anyone else for that matter - and they still can. It’s just Musk has skewed the business to one political side, and now Musk doesn’t really have to answer to anyone. Even the lawsuits against him and Twitter he’ll likely be able to weasle out, because it’s a limited company - although I hope they do manage to make it stick, he personally made promises that the purchase was conditional upon, which he has since broken.
So, like I’ve said from the beginning, it has always been private sector. However, even as a private sector business, it serves as a public forum - it was always a “private business cum public forum” - but now Musk has ruined the public forum part by making it very apparently biased towards right wing extemism.
A better analogy of what Twitter was is a public house. A private sector business, but open to the public (although Twitter never had the licencing regulations that pubs have). Musk has taken over the pub and is running it into the ground, driving out the peaceful regulars in favour of unsavoury people that spill out on to the residential streets and vomit everywhere.
I never actually wanted to talk about publicly traded vs privately traded, you brought that up.
Yes, the point you made was completely irrelevant to the conversation. I’m glad that’s established. Maybe if you were a little smarter, we could’ve reached that conclusion in fewer words.
Stop X permanently. The lawsuits are massing up, and the value of the business has nearly dropped such that the $13bn debt is bigger than it. They had little hope of paying even the interest before Musk started intentionally tanking their revenue. He knows that the business will never have to pay up, hell they’re not even paying rent on their offices, and he’ll get away with the crime Scott free because it’s a limited liability company.
And make no mistake, that was the plan all along. Destroy a private business cum public forum that served the public good, and on the way out see what controversial actions they can get away with. That way any site that comes to fill the void can do the same. His old mate Peter Thiel will likely be pleased, along with a bunch of other unscrupulous people.
It’s amazing to me how much people have rewritten history since musk took over. Twitter was always shit. It’s worse now, yeah. A lot worse. But it’s like taking a shit on a smaller pile of shit. All this talk about how it was a real boon for humanity and so important it should be regulated as a utility is equal parts idiotic and hilarious.
It’s shit, but it had significant uses. Namely, getting breaking news from trusted journalists, and speaking directly to businesses for consumer support when other methods typically went unanswered.
That’s not to mention the Arab Spring. Sure, significant change that people had hoped for didn’t follow through, but it still spooked them enough that one of the incumbent leaders helped buy the website to undermine it.
Also, when you compare it to Facebook it certainly was better. Even reddit was better, then followed it down the drain.
I get the feeling (I wouldn’t really know, haven’t been there in months) that Reddit is still significantly better. Sure, it’s worse now, but it still has active communities on pretty much any topic imaginable. Lemmy is on its way, but won’t be there for a few years I think.
There’s some genuine communities lingering on, but almost all of the larger communities have become part of the power mods’ “projects”.
I was shook the other day when I stopped by reddit and saw, “just a normal day in russia” at the top of the front page. As Americans we need to give up on the idea of a non-political social media because it always gets co-optd into some psy-ops bullshit.
I 100% agree it was shit. Sometimes though, that shit fertilized real growth.
That said, lesson shouldn’t be, “we need twitter.” It should be, let’s populate similar platforms so we can have this resource in the future.
Yeah, nah. For a start, if one website could be singled out for bringing Trump into power, it wasn’t any of those icky extremist places such as 4chan, 8chan, r/trump - it was Twitter where he posted his garbage for literal years with no interruption and thus gained a massive following. The site practically lived off his controversial diarrhea.
You could say the same about reddit in a large part. 4chan was a free home, Twitter was a megaphone, but reddit really encouraged the infestation to gestate.
Also it wasn’t r/trump, but r/the_Donald, as well as all the spin off astroturfed subs.
I don’t disagree this is a possibility, but I have yet to hear someone clearly articulate why poopoobrain over there would do something so dumb intentionally.
I find it so much more compelling that he’s just a divorce-brained middle-aged dumbass with a megaphone and billions to dig his own grave. That he was forced to buy Twitter after waving his dick around in public and has been trying to save his reputation ever since by pretending that it’s all a part of his plan to amplify the right voices to ‘save humanity’.
I’m not saying he isn’t brain-broken enough to believe it himself, but I don’t think he ever really had a plan. I think he’s a sad, lonely billionaire going through the worlds biggest mid-life crisis.
Because it distracts from the fact that leveraged buyouts are almost always meant to kill the business in the long run, and such distraction reduces the chance of regulation against the practice. People don’t think Twitter is failing because it had $13bn of debt it could never afford, they think it’s failing because Musk is a poor businessman. That isn’t to say Musk is a great businessman acting like a fool, rather, he is a clown acting like a fool.
I think if Musk had made a genuine effort to buy Twitter there wouldn’t have been so much debt saddled onto the business. Musk was forced to make the purchase, but the nature of the purchase has subsequently been tailored into sinking the ship. One of the first things they did was stop paying rent - if this wasn’t a sign of a business doomed to failure I don’t know what is. The business will die a death, and everyone it owes money to will be left fighting over the ashes.
Ok, so you’re not saying he actually originally wanted to buy it in order to tank it, you’re saying once he was forced to buy it the most expedient thing to do was to bankrupt it.
Being pushed into buying it because of his loud mouth is still a MASSIVE blunder, him choosing to steer it into an iceberg after being handed the keys is just him cutting his losses. It doesn’t explain why he would have wanted to destroy the company in the first place. If it was because the site was largely critical of him or platformed people counter to his personal worldview, then buying the company and running those voices out (like he did) would have sufficed and he wouldn’t also need to tank it. Likewise, if all he wanted was to platform voices friendly to him and his worldview, burning down the house around himself and his new friends is contradictory.
I think you’re giving him too much credit, I think he’s just an overconfident dumbass that got himself into trouble and is trying to erase his mistake without ruining his reputation as a genius.
For that, you could turn to his old friend, Peter Thiel. Thiel tried and failed to start up businesses that competed directly against Twitter. Aside from Thiel, there are plenty of other people who likely resent Twitter - such as the Saudi prince who now owns a portion of it alongside Musk.
I think the goal is to bring Twitter down, then replace it with something else. Alternatively, they could turn Twitter into what they want it to be by further financing it and covering the debt, though that seems less and less likely as time goes on. However, by sending Twitter down the toilet they can experiment with the kind of things that future platforms might be able to do - anything Twitter gets reprimanded for will ultimately have no consequence if Twitter goes away, but anything Twitter gets away with can be fair game for new start ups.
I agree he’s an overconfident dumbass and got himself into this position, and I’m sure he desperately values his reputation - the one aspect of all this that I’m enjoying is how badly his reputation is getting ruined. I still worry about more sinister things happening over the long run that may shape the future of social platforms for the worse, though.
website formerly known as twitter*
Twitter was literally a public company. Musk bought all the stock and took it private.
The amount of stupidity in this comment is worthy of it being posted on X
Uhhh the plan plays out the same either way. Stop being a pedantic twat missing the entire point. Musk can do it no matter the mechanism through which he bought the company: He still bought it and ran it in to the ground!!
Twitter always sucked, and always will suck. Explain to me, in pornographic detail, how this is some huge conspiracy, what the end goal of that conspiracy is, and who is perpetuating it.
I absolutely love the ask on pornographic detail, though it’s mostly the presence of many seperate but cohesive puzzle pieces. Between how he’s gotten kicked out and silenced in most of his business positions, to his children hating his guts, to his dad calling his bluffs, to how he lies on stage making promises no one in the company has even heard, yet alone vetted the viability of, to how he’s constantly liking extreme right-wing tweets and openly allowing anti-trans rhetoric…
It’s just a very large set of puzzle pieces that spell out a very, very clear picture: Elon is a fascist-sympathising white supremacist, whether it be out of hate or general priviledged lack of empathy, the result is the same. It’s mildly hidden in his eclectic pretending and mountain of lies. He doesn’t even have an engineering degree like he loves to pretend.
Let’s assume that’s true.
Let’s also assume Twitter collapses under its own weight within the next year.
How does that further Elon’s secret goal of spreading his brand of fascism and racism.
If that was Elon’s goal, rather than the goal of various other people he’s closely associated with (eg Peter Thiel, Saudi prince Mohammed bin Salman, to name but two of the most prominent ones), then such a goal could be fulfilled by platforms that take Twitter’s place after it’s gone - along with all the debt Twitter owes, including rent not being paid, state fines, lawsuits from former investors and staff, and the $13bn loan from the buyout itself.
That isn’t to say this was Musk’s goal all along, rather that’s what it has transformed into.
I always saw it as two possible outcomes: either they make Twitter into what they always wanted from the failed startups that tried to compete against Twitter, and pay off the debt to keep it going; or they run it into the ground and write off the debt, then replace it with something more favourable. The latter seems more and more likely as time has passed.
Public company =/= publicly owned. As an American, you probably don’t know what a publicly owned business is, but public schools are pretty close (again though, Americans and education…). A company in the public sector has to follow a lot more regulations than a company in the private sector. Twitter has always been in the private sector. It was publicly traded, now it is not.
Musk did not buy all the shares. Musk put up about $27 billion out of $44bn, most of which was Tesla shares (which subsequently tanked, and since then the business has been on something of a decline compared to their previous success). $5 billion came from other investors, including a Saudi prince. The remaining $13bn was a loan Twitter took out to buy itself on Musk’s behalf - this is the smoking gun that ultimately will kill the business, like most leveraged buyouts are bound to (eg Toys R Us).
But no, tell me I’m stupid while you speak in hollow hyperbole.
The fact you admit you’re using your own definition of publicly owned, instead of the legal definition of that word in the country in which it applies, and then double down with a bunch of “facts” you don’t understand, while really pouring on the condescension, is simply an amazing execution of trolling.
The sad thing, though, is I don’t think you’re trolling. I think you believe what you just said is true.
The sad thing is, even after I explained there are two definitions (public sector/private sector and publicly traded/privately traded), and after I clarified exactly which I was referring to, you still think your correction holds water.
Twitter was private sector publicly traded, then Musk took it off the public stock market. However it is and always was private sector, meaning that it’s “Twitter’s house” and they get to set the rules of entry. If it was public sector, then it would be obligated be open to all members of the public equally.
The fiduciary and reporting responsibilities of public companies are drastically different than private.
Musk bought all of the shares, then took the company private, meaning all of those fiduciary and reporting responsibilities are no longer required.
Your understanding how public and private companies in the United States work is lacking.
What is public? A 501c3? c6? A government run organization like the post office? What legal and compliance frameworks did Twitter have to follow when it was publicly traded vs now when it’s not publicly traded. In your terms it was “private” in both instances. So please, educate me. How is Twitter different now
Yes, public sector refers to government run entities like the post office, also anything staffed by civil servants, and to a far lesser extent businesses contracted to the state.
Publicly traded businesses do have a lot of reporting responsibilities, also the CEO is essentially obligated to pursue profits over all else on behalf of the shareholders. A privately traded business does not have these obligations. Musk made this change with the purchase of the company (but again, he did not “buy all the shares”, he bought most of them, $5bn was paid by other parties compared to his ~$26bn [plus a couple bn in fees]) however Twitter as a business was always and still is private sector. This means they absolutely could have censored Trump any time they liked - or anyone else for that matter - and they still can. It’s just Musk has skewed the business to one political side, and now Musk doesn’t really have to answer to anyone. Even the lawsuits against him and Twitter he’ll likely be able to weasle out, because it’s a limited company - although I hope they do manage to make it stick, he personally made promises that the purchase was conditional upon, which he has since broken.
So, like I’ve said from the beginning, it has always been private sector. However, even as a private sector business, it serves as a public forum - it was always a “private business cum public forum” - but now Musk has ruined the public forum part by making it very apparently biased towards right wing extemism.
A better analogy of what Twitter was is a public house. A private sector business, but open to the public (although Twitter never had the licencing regulations that pubs have). Musk has taken over the pub and is running it into the ground, driving out the peaceful regulars in favour of unsavoury people that spill out on to the residential streets and vomit everywhere.
I never actually wanted to talk about publicly traded vs privately traded, you brought that up.
Great. So we agree. Twitter was a pubic company that is now a private company.
Glad we worked through that
Yes, the point you made was completely irrelevant to the conversation. I’m glad that’s established. Maybe if you were a little smarter, we could’ve reached that conclusion in fewer words.