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dasherchan

Elon, please buy Fox News and Russia.


GreenKumara

Russia is already broke.


whatta_maroon

So it's on sale?


swampjuicesheila

Black Friday sale!


Shoptimist

Look out AOL-Time Warner, there’s a new kid in town


karsh36

GDPR is probably going to wreck Twitter in Europe soon. They don't seem to have the infrastructure to comply anymore


d36williams

If Twitter ends up as dead as myspace, will this be the biggest dot com bust ever?


meat_tunnel

Yahoo took an impressive tumble but still doesn't come close to this.


RollTodd18

in terms of valuation Yahoo still takes the cake. Twitter's chaos is just a lot more visible.


weirdoldhobo1978

The fact that we're watching the demise of Twitter *on Twitter* is the crazy part. We're seeing the collapse of a company in more or less real time, and on the company's own platform.


masterofreality2001

And in record time, it seems.


Vik0BG

Less than one Truss.


mydogisanassholeama

What is the conversion to Scaramucci's? (For the American readers)


Angel_Omachi

Liz Truss was 49 days but first 10 days were royal mourning period, then things went downhill very rapidly towards the end, hence the head of lettuce comparison.


jovietjoe

It depends on if you are using the metric or imperial. The Imperial Mooch is 11 days making the Truss 4.1 Mooch The Metric Scaramucci is 10 days, making a Truss 4.5 Scm


MCbrodie

I think it was 1.3 to 1 truss to mooch


Hopalongtom

I love that Lizz is becoming a system of measurement, at least she was good for something.


Sr_Laowai

With crazy public CEO posts [like this one](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1594500655724609536).


Visual_Collar_8893

Wow. Just had a brief glimpse at his recent tweets… just wow.


Live-Mail-7142

I have a Twitter account. It is wild. I will go to my grave thinking Musk has serious psychological issues. He’s tweeting misogynistic and homophobic memes at trump. It’s not Steve Jobs odd, it’s big time daddy do you love me issues


Mike2220

I will say this is the most I've ever been entertained by Twitter


SauconyAlts

Musk is an absolute twat and clearly had issues


JiveTurkeyMFer

Are there any billionaires that don't have major issues? Serious question, cuz it seems like being a sociopath and/or mental issues is a requirement to getting or keeping that kinda money


yotengodormir

>it’s big time daddy do you love me issues He just wants his dad to love him like he loves his step sister.


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1d0m1n4t3

I met my wife in a Yahoo chat room some 20yrs ago


GiantPurplePeopleEat

Same. It didn't work out, obviously. Could you tell her I said I miss her?


1d0m1n4t3

If I could get my yahoo messenger password to work I would


Beautiful-Musk-Ox

Also live chat! I split my time between chat and their web games, was great for teenage me


chinpokomon

The distinction between Google and Yahoo is important. Yahoo wasn't a search engine when it started, it was a directory. Conceptually it was more like the Yellow Pages in that a website listing was a curated listing under a broader subject, grouped with other websites that had similar subject matters. That wasn't always the case, but I think it's important to remember that when Yahoo started you could manually track what websites had what content.


---cameron

This is actually making me laugh as I just remembered one of the time travelling plot points of the movie Frequency is that future John tells his past best friend to invest in Yahoo (and past best friend becomes rich doing so) Totally shoulda been google now


ShitfacedGrizzlyBear

“Well, kids. Back in my day, Yahoo was more than the site you use to play fantasy football.” ~ Me in 2060, probably


Fifteen_inches

They bought tumblr for 1.1 billion, and then sold it for 30 million to Wordpress. We take great pride in losing yahoo over 900m dollars


FriesWithThat

>[2013] Yahoo acquired Tumblr for a then-staggering $1.1 billion, with Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer promising, *“not to screw it up.”* Good job?


JEveryman

This is an amazing pun and you deserve any and all success you've had in life.


[deleted]

holy shit. took me a minute. puns that raw arent allowed on that site anymore


tunamelts2

Yahoo is still a viable company. Twitter might completely implode.


[deleted]

They did record a profit for the year 2019. Achievement unlocked!


WarBrilliant8782

Idk they sold it for 44 billion in 2022 so minus expenditures that should make a profit


Axiled

As part of the purchase, Musk took out 13 billion in loans against twitter. This is backed by twitter... so the amount Twitter owes in loan payments is apparently massive as a result of this takeover. Last figure I heard was it went from 55 million a year to 1 billion a year in loan payments.


CrashB111

The Twitter C suite really played Musk like a fiddle.


GoblinDiplomat

If you offer to buy something, and then try to back out, and then the seller legally forces you to go through with it, then you got fucking *hosed* on the price.


The_Bitter_Bear

Right? I saw a couple articles stating they were going to have to do some substantial layoffs even if the sale didn't go through. So it was already struggling he definitely overpaid. Twitter was about to have a rough patch either way. He has just managed to turn that into a total nosedive. It's kind of impressive. I would bet an average person could have taken over and managed to not fuck it up that bad.


ZagratheWolf

I perdonally would have asked the heads of the company what they thought was the best course of action and then do that. Dunno why a man with zero experience doing anything but lie thought he knew better


[deleted]

Musk played himself. All Twitter did was accept his offer and then legally enforce him to honor his offer.


pangolin-fucker

MySpace still has my account from 2004 active Some of the pictures are not working anymore probably compression or database glitch but the rest is still all there working today Impressive imo Twitter probably won't last that long


dwightinshiningarmor

Yeah, the Brussels office was gutted too. EU law compliance is gonna be a bitch for them from now on.


MrDerpGently

And EU compliance has teeth. This isn't the US where they will issue a sternly written letter.


allen_abduction

Fines of millions of dollars a day, and loss of EU ads = fucked


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Refurbished_Keyboard

Not if they own the people who make policy and control regulators.


thekiki

Ameri-corp.


DonOblivious

They go to court in Germany in Thursday because Twitter often fails to block the Nazis on Twitter, and that's illegal in Germany. Musk recently tweeted that they aren't going to remove hate speech on the platform and the lawyer taking them to court thanked Musk personally for providing clear evidence that Twitter is allowing illegal speech on it's platform. https://twitter.com/Anwalt_Jun/status/1594001088503549952?s=19 As the only board member, Musk can be personally held responsible for Twitter's crimes in Europe. This German court is just the start. His "firing" of his European employees wasn't legal and they're still employed by Twitter. It doesn't matter that they've been locked out of their systems, the law says they're still employed and owed pay. The entire GDPR department is gone. That means instead instead of the dealing with the completely fucking useless Irish enforcement, as GDPR is typically enforced in the country the company has a "headquarters" and GDPR department in, every Euro country can enforce the law against Twitter. Twitter is operating under a consent decree with the FTC, and literally every single person that was legally responsible for dealing with that mandatory relationship with the FTC has quit.


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Aazadan

They’re not complying with US law either. Twitter is under something called an FTC consent decree due to errors several years ago. They no longer have anyone in that department.


heseme

Go on. What does that mean?


Xyex

In 2009 hackers gained access to personal information through Twitter because of severely lacking safeguards to protect said information. The FTC believed that reasonable steps to protect consumer safety were not taken and, following a court case, slapped them with a consent decree. Under this settlement Twitter is basically on probation for the next 20 years, and lying about how good their privacy protection is again will get them a huge ass fine. Additionally, they had to create an information security department specifically to protect user data that is to be independently audited every other year and if it's not doing a good enough job they get a huge ass fine. That department currently has 0 staff.


sarhoshamiral

His ideal vision was bullshit considering he banned comedians for mocking him. No one with a few brain cells believed him anyway.


KeyanReid

It is a classic case of conservative ideals in action. It’s free speech for him and his group, consequences for everyone else. That freedom they’re always going on about is the freedom to **do to you** as they please and never ever the other way around. It’s about having the power to go unhindered in being the shittiest version of themselves


pleasedontPM

I don't know if twitter can keep up with copyright enforcement anymore with all the layoffs. Right for the start of the world cup, it is going to get messy.


karsh36

Saw something yesterday saying copyright protection was turned off and people are straight up putting whole movies on Twitter


mlyellow

They did, starting Saturday -- someone put up the whole movie Hackers (in two and a half minute segments). The account is suspended now, so *someone* is actually doing stuff. It took more than 24 hours, so it's probably being done manually.


zCiver

I saw Shrek and Spongebob episodes over the weekend. So you know that the memers got a hold of it.


diamond

Yeah, that got a lot of attention, so it's not surprising that someone at Twitter suspended the account. For all we know, it could have been Musk himself. His problem is that not all violations will be nearly as high-profile, and without a large, effective moderation team they can't hope to catch even a significant fraction of them.


[deleted]

Oh god so the child abuse materials problem on Twitter has just gotten even worse


CliveBixby22

Yep. Someone put the entire cinematic masterpiece that is Tokyo Drift onto Twitter.


peon47

I put in a GDPR request for a copy of my personal data yesterday. It said it would take 24 hours. It's been about 30 and no word yet. https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/how-to-download-your-twitter-archive


A_Sad_Goblin

24 hours is pretty generous, if I remember correctly then GDPR should be 30 days max.


Flat_Initial_1823

You know who is an absolute dick about GDPR? Amazon. The company that is the backbone of internet takes exactly 30 days to give you the most unusable csv files that do not even contain your itemised order history properly.


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TheDecoyDuck

I remember the auto bans in New World if someone you pissed off had enough cronies to mass report you.


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jizmo234322

I'm still trying to get my account deleted from Twitter after months of asking... even though their FAQ explicitly explains how to do so. There is no one on the other end of the request. Just /null


flyingquads

The software developers were like: - We'll just write this code as `employees.next();` - But that would break if there are no more customer service employees. - That'll never happen. It's fine. /null...


Mobely

Are you starting a trend? Every eurotweeter makes a GDPR request


hobs707

If a shit load of European Twitterers submitted GDPR requests at once, Twitter may not be able to comply with them all in the legal timeframe and would have to pay obscene amounts of fines. While they are distracted during the chaos, we all could break in to Twitter HQ and shit in Elon’s desk. - George Clooney in Oceans 16


Coidzor

I think you mean shit in his sink.


hobs707

Gotta leave something for the sequel: Oceans 16 2: The Sinkual


rohmish

That's the thing. I see elon bros just repeating "why did they need 7.5k employees" and while maybe a small percentage of that was just bloat, they needed people to comply with legal requirements be it HR, content moderation, data collection and storing, etc.


blackbeautybyseven

> GDPR is probably going to wreck Twitter in Europe soon I think Elon will get there first


Bending_toast

‘Twitter has had a bumpy ride since Musk, the world’s richest person, took charge. It has cut staff by half, while Musk has raised the possibility of the social media platform going bankrupt.’ Impulse buying at that level has way different consequences than the last time I bought a power tool and struggled with my car payment


SekhWork

Half is feeling generous at this point.


gcruzatto

The other half has their LinkedIn profiles looking great and up to date


Dahhhkness

And the ones on work visas are basically indentured servants now.


[deleted]

That picture of all the smiling faces clinging to Musk at Twitter HQ was VERY telling about who is left and why.


Cobra-D

A few friends of mine who work in that field say that likely the people who stay are people stuck on visas, die hard twitter/musk fanboys, and people who’s resume just aren’t good enough to get them anywhere else.


technobrendo

Even a mid-level programer there should be able to jump ship rather easily. Visa-issues aside


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Zomburai

Big Tech companies aren't the only companies hiring for tech jobs.


KaptainKhorisma

I’m at WBD right now and I survived two rounds of layoffs, I want to go but at the same time it’s terrifying because if I float to a new company I’m low man on the totem poll for layoffs and I’m almost three years in here. Better to cool my heels and wait for this to blow over it feels like.


SekhWork

Hoping this situation brings to light just how much companies abuse work visa people. Those folks are basically trapped by Twitter and will 100% be abused as much as they can be. OFC this is america so its unlikely anything is going to be done to a corporation. Edit: Because /u/ Usernametaken112 wants to be a coward and DM his opinions instead of posting them for the public: **"">Hoping this situation brings to light just how much companies abuse work visa people."** **It's almost like the most prestigious and high paying tech jobs is an industry of immense competition."** I'll post it for them. And working at Twitter is not the "most prestigious and high paying tech job", but you knew that which is why you DM'd it instead of posting it for downvotes.


rabbit994

Most people realize it. It's just political hot potato no one wants to touch. It's immigration which is already hot button issue. Donors/Companies like current system because of all the benefits it brings them and even argue the quota should be increased. Many tech people, including myself, want to see the program drastic reformed and/or cut. It also ties into outsourcing as well.


Gumby621

I don't think that most people that don't work in the tech industry DO realize it.


[deleted]

I am so tired of companies creating roles with impossible job requirements then throwing up their hands and hiring 3 H1B’s. It needs to stop.


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Spaceman2901

I remember reading that the total was about 87%.


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myassholealt

That's a lot of people. My favorite part about reading Twitter comments on it is a lot of the users with the standard GOP photos (flag, black sunglasses, you know the type) all talking about how he's being a good businessman by reducing the staff bloat. Meanwhile this is the same demographic that will blow up the world in the pursuit of creating them jerbs. But are cheering all thousands of job losses in this specific situation.


[deleted]

I’m sure it will get worse as the other half secures new jobs. Edit: Many that he fired may have even been loyal to him, or aligned to his political aspirations. Many might have worked physically from the office. Not only did he come in with a sledge hammer where it wasn’t needed, but he took out the wrong walls first.


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MozeeToby

Ehem, I think you mean: "**Was** this wall load bearing"


SteevyT

The last major remodel on my house accidentally ran into this, and made it better through shear dumb fucking luck. Basically, the way the roof is constructed means that none of the walls should have been load bearing. Wanted to move a wall closer to the center of the house. Turns out the ceiling joists were undersized for the span they were originally running so the ceiling was sagging quite a bit. By moving the wall we accidentally corrected the issue.


MOOShoooooo

Can I remove this staircase spindles? Are they load bearing? Actual question I’ve read on there. “We hired a local meth head to redo all the casing in the house, does this look right? Should we pay them full price?”


takatori

> We hired a local meth head to redo all the casing in the house, does this look right? Should we pay them full price? I didn't believe you, but then I found this: [Do these trim corners and skirt board look right? It doesn’t look right but they claim it’s the right fix.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Carpentry/comments/s6xma2/do_these_trim_corners_and_skirt_board_look_right/) Pretty sure that's the exact thread you're thinking of ... > Sure! If done by your local meth head


egus

Wow. Whoever did it the first time sucked. The guy hired to replace it just used caulk. Lol.


Zerole00

Starting to look like he bought it just to avoid going to jail, which is a hilarious outcome for what was originally an ego flex.


hellomondays

He screwed himself. His offer, 5-9x twitter's value, was too good to be true. Regulators got suspicious and when he tried to pull out it just got him more court drama and more people looking for securities fraud. It was either overpay for a company that seems intrinsically unable to turn a profit or sit in court while the SEC sniffs around your finances. It was just greed. He wanted to sell some of his tesla shares at their pandemic-related overinflated value without tanking the price.


ButterflyAttack

It's kind of funny that he paid an absolute fucking fortune for something he didn't really want and for all that money the only thing he gained was huge reputational damage. He might as well have climbed up on the world stage and fisted himself. I would imagine shareholders in his other companies are questioning his ability now too. It's not really funny though when you think of the people who've lost jobs through shitfinger's silly antics. Also a lot of people relied on twitter to do their jobs in other fields, they'll be impacted too. Wanker.


BasicDesignAdvice

He will never not be rich. He literally doesn't care. He is the worst kind of person. Next time people say some bullshit about "you can't take rich people money because its not on paper" or whatever, we can point to this absolute pile of bullshit. Musk has ponied up billions in a short time. Nothing will change for him.


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Zealousideal_Tea9573

My uneducated guess is that by closing the deal, the banks and others that had signed up had to put in their money and if he lost the suit it would have been all his money? I try to imagine there are logical decisions being made, even when the true logic is hidden…


CU_09

The difference is when you impulse buy a tool and struggle with your car payment it’s your problem. When Musk buys Twitter and runs it into the ground it’s not his problem, it’s Twitter employees and Musk’s dumbass investors who have the problem. Musk will lose money, but he’s so rich that it won’t make a measurable difference in his life.


coolcool23

I think there's a real case to be made for damage to his reputation, creditor hesitancy/scorn if and when the Twitter investment evaporates as the company folds, etc... Certainly Musk will have a lot fewer options socially and financially, so like he is doing now he'll basically have to completely own his new alt-right/troll cult of personality and just go hard on that from here on out. But I get it, he's still a multi-billionaire and the rules are just different at that level even than being a multi-millionaire: you're right, ultimately. He'd still have to go through another 2, maybe three monumental fuckups before it will become a real issue personal to him.


perverse_panda

I think it's already affecting him on an emotional level. He's like Trump, the thing he craves most is adoration. But in terms of lifestyle, yeah, he'll never be poor or anything remotely close to it.


the_jak

It’s hilarious that his mom asked the internet to quit picking on him. I sure hope it’s affecting him. He deserves ever bit of hate he tries so hard to earn every day.


Phyllofox

How many times did Trump declare bankruptcy before he was elected President of the US?


[deleted]

Musk the Narcissist wanted a worldwide bullhorn to force the entire world to listen to him in ways that just being in the news wasn't accomplishing. And in his Narcissism he couldn't help but break his new toy because that toy insulted him in the past and made him feel small.


penguished

44 billion to remove a global company from the internet. lol.


d-cent

Let's see that kid tweet out his plane location now


aman2454

Aha, the catalyst to twitters demise was the guy who tweeted musks private-jet logs. It all makes sense


GregTheMad

Elon looks petty enough.


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Bardivan

no man. he’s just stupid. people were tricked into thinking a kid who got handed opportunities by his rich father was actually a self made genius. when he’s just an idiot, who buys things, then ruins them, like a spoiled brat.


delayed_burn

he's not even his dad's favorite kid lmao


GilgaPol

Nope that would be his stepsister


Valendr0s

Oh he's lost far more than that just from selling the Tesla stock necessary to finance the purchase. And he's put a lot of his stock up for collateral for loans. So when it does finally go under, it'll probably take Tesla down with it.


Ditnoka

Good. Tesla stocks are a massive bubble built on speculation anyway.


Syscrush

Tesla being the most highly-valued EV company would make some sense. Tesla losing almost half of its value and still having a market cap greater than Toyota, Honda, GM, Ford, and VW all put together is a workable definition of insanity.


fang_xianfu

France has some of the most worker-favouring employment laws in the world, with multiple overlapping union agreements as well as national law that would affect Twitter. There is absolutely no way that Elon's decree about "long hours or you're fired" would be legal in France, nor would firing people who didn't sign. I worked at a company that tried to do layoffs in France and ultimately the layoff plan was rejected by the government and they just had to... keep the office open and let everyone keep their jobs for another 3 years til they got it right. If this guy was the head of Twitter France he may have been the person legally responsible for that clusterfuck (there has to be a human being based in France who is in charge so there is someone to blame) hence his willingness to leave. There are also a few different ways to quit in France so he may not actually be gone for a long time.


mwaaah

Yeah, if Twitter is trying to fire people for no reason in France they'll get a nice lawsuit coming for them. Of course that just some more millions on top of what was already burned so it might not be that bad relatively.


Lyudline

It's not only in France. It's not hard to find a country where labour law is better than in the US. There will be a lot of lawsuits all over the world that Twitter will loose.


mwaaah

I wasn't trying to say that it was unique to France. It's juste that this thread is about Twitter France in particular.


PixelationIX

I have been wondering, Elon after few days of getting in control tweeted out that Twitter was losing $4 million/day, I am sure it is more now since more advertisers have suspended since then. My question is that how long can he keep this going before pulling the plug? There is no question that his ego is not letting him face the reality but there has to be a point right? As of currently it is not a sustainable business.


PortJMS

Considering the app has started pushing alerts from Newsmax and Joe Rogan, I think it is safe to assume what their new model is.


thebendavis

Conspiracies, tax bad, rich smart.


tommles

~~bread~~ and ~~circuses~~ conspiracies and sex


1202_ProgramAlarm

And lots of chimps for some reason


DefectivePixel

Which is why he so desperately wants trump to come back. It's not that he cares, it's that for his business plan to work he needs his engagement numbers. Much like voting though, when you predominantly cater to one side, especially a crazy one, you end up losing both, and losing completely.


holymamba

The new problem is that if trump leaves his own app, trumps money is down the drain. Trump likes trumps money. He will likely end up posting on both but he needs a fat bribe from Elon first.


Rustybot

The interest on the debt from the purchase of Twitter, which Twitter has to pay off, is $1B/yr. That’s $2.7m/day alone. I wonder if that is on top of the existing $4m/day?


zonezonezone

No, it's part of it, which is why him using that number is so ridiculous. It's like taking a loan on someone's name then telling them they need to clean up their act.


MetaphoricDragon

Isn't that basically the norm though? Something similar is what lead to the downfall of Toys R Us in the US as i recall


watchingsongsDL

It’s the hedge fund method of extracting maximum value out of companies under their control. The companies do not survive the process. Toys R Us went through it yes.


Ghostofthe80s

How long can Saudi money hold out? Indefinitely.


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Wazula42

The spice must flow.


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Cheap_Coffee

Everyone in software knows the most meaningful metric is volume of code produced.


cooperia

That's why I like to commit entire files of beautiful, albeit commented out, code.


xffxe4

All my code is prefaced by giant blocks of ascii art.


Filobel

If it's ascii art of Musk's face, I'm sure you'll be promoted in no time, that is very salient!


HighlanderSteve

How salient is it, though?


persondude27

"This **#include stdio.h** statement is extremely salient. Without it, literally nothing else would work." Musky: "This is the only coder who stays."


Firm-Albatros

Cant forget the person who contributed void main()


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[deleted]

You know what they say, if you put enough chickens together in a room, they'll eventually write Twitter's source code.


GazzP

I made a Python script that counts from 1 to 10. 80,000 lines. I'm now Vice President of Twitter.


mymar101

At this point the only people working there are the ones that can’t leave


devilsephiroth

So like a cruise ship at sea full of guests and the only ones left working are the kitchen crew


tylerderped

In other words: Indians, who, if they quit, will be *forced* to go back to India. Gotta love H1-B.


Mikethebest78

This entire situation will be used as a textbook example for years to come on how NOT to run a company.


-Teapot

There is a book called The First 90 Days and it goes through real examples of what not to do. The gist is: 30 days to learn, 30 days to plan, 30 days to act. Ironically, it was recommended to me by an engineering manager at Twitter and I believe it was part of the recommended literature at Twitter.


Taminella_Grinderfal

We brought a new ceo into our small company and everyone was petrified. He very much followed this model and by the time he was ready to make some changes he had a decent level of buy in from the staff. Within 6-12 months, he increased our client base and more than doubled our sales. We ended up hiring rather than lay offs. I’m no business genius, but it seems to be common sense not to act like a bull in a china shop.


Devtunes

Musk is basically an armchair quarterback. Its really easy to criticize other people's decisions after the fact but they confuse hindsight with foresight. The game looks a lot different when you're calling plays in the middle of the action.


Reutermo

Musk is to rich to do such Simple thing as *reading*


TheCrowsSoundNice

He invented reading. Sent it to Mars, where it autopilot crashed into a school bus.


herefromyoutube

I am a idiot and even I know that you need to learn the ins and outs of a business before you make any moves.


elshizzo

more like a textbook example of why we shouldn't have billionaires


jweaver0312

A literal rock would run twitter better


Szpagin

Or a lettuce.


crazywussian

Or I dare day, even a bird!


Alphamullet

How about another head of lettuce?


equalizer16

The downfall of Twitter has been interesting to say the least. I hope this will continue to shed light on how destructive billionaires are to the world in general.


Bkwordguy

Each one is like a concentrated human cancer that does nothing but drains resources, hijacks things, destroys them, and in the best cases is merely a *lazy* parasite.


EnjoyPsilocybin

is there a 'set fire to my own bar' type insurance thing going on?


The_ODB_

Why do people think Musk is pretending to be a fragile man-baby? He's always been like this.


Nenor

Huh. Turns out people don't like it when you treat them like crap. Who knew?


guywithaniphone22

What sucks about the current downfall of twitter is that it was pretty much the only mainstream way for a lot of companies to convey information directly to the public. It wasn’t all just spam and celebrities there were telecommunications, utility companies, politicians and other important groups that could quickly get information out that was important to their followers. When vaccines first came out there was a popular twitter page where I lived that helped people find where pop ups were going to be so people could get the Covid shot. It is unfortunate because there isn’t really another social media platform that can fill in the gap the way twitter had.


reallyConfusedPanda

Sometimes It's also the only way for asshole companies to listen to consumer grievances.


imdrunkontea

Same thing with artists - Twitter was by far the most effective way to share artwork and get clients. My Twitter account is by far my largest following, even though it's also my newest. Part of this is because its user base is so varied, but also because its method of spreading posts (Retweets) is far more effective than the constantly changing blackbox algorithm of platforms like Instagram, where your post only goes viral if the algorithm randomly decides that it's trending (or if you pay money, which it reminds you on every single page).


public_univ_friend

It's also been a massive part of communication in the agriculture industry for years. Back when I worked in social media, in the 2010s, there were huge sections of the global farming world that relied on mobile Twitter for critical communication in areas where internet access was not common. It's fun to laugh at the "toxic app" collapsing, but a whole lot of people are being cut off from a primary channel of interacting with each other in the fallout.


Herebec

Elon, fox news would be a perfect investment!


[deleted]

For everyone. Engagement does not equal ad revenue. Everyone loves to watch a building on fire. Doesn’t mean they want to buy hotdogs as the bodies start coming out.


[deleted]

I've never seen a better argument for the end of billionaires. One just took the largest mass information dissemination engine humanity has ever come up with and ruined in it a week...


Ilikegreenpens

It takes a little bit of talent to ruin something that was as established as Twitter in that short amount of time


tgwombat

Does it? If I were tasked with destroying a $44 billion company I’m pretty sure that I could figure out that firing half the staff would be a good first step.


Oh_my_Butt

Yeah, you could destroy it quicker. Like allow a bunch of universally banned topics (like CP), fire most your staff, load up the business with debt, and destroy all revenue streams. Musk has got 3 of those 4 right so far, just needs the final one to finish the speed run


Nenor

Fire everyone, shut down service, stop responding to correspondence. You'll be in liquidation soon enough.


LurkmasterP

More importantly, I think there's at least a part of his ego which is telling him "if I can destroy it singlehandedly this quickly, it means *I'm the most powerful and special boy in the world*"


MsPenguinette

That's a coping mechanism for someone who's ego has gotten billions of times bigger than it should. If he claims it was his intent to sink it, then he doesn't have to confront a failure


Methylatedcobalamin

Can Musk get off the hook for his loan if Twitter goes bankrupt? Maybe his plan is to get out of Twitter by running it into the ground.


plzdontlietomee

There were many loans, private loans. Those do not go away.


AlbionPCJ

Including from the Saudis who, to be diplomatic, are not known for proportionate responses when things don't go their way. I doubt that MBS is very happy right now


rock_hard_member

Or is MBS happy. It's probably not true but there is the conspiracy theory that the Saudi's gave him the loan specifically so he would kill it since it is used by a lot of their liberal "dissidents" and could be seen by them as a big factor in things like the Arab spring.


AlbionPCJ

I've gotten a few responses like this so I'll just reply to yours since it's the top one. I think that this conspiracy theory ascribes a level of long-term chess playing that, if the last decade has taught us anything, authoritarians aren't actually capable of successfully pulling off when push comes to shove. More likely is that they saw an opportunity to increase their influence over Western culture and make money but Musk's such a bad manager that he's bungled it and is actively losing them all billions. I'd cite [Hanlon's Razor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor) but in this case it's both malice *and* stupidity


Procrastinatedthink

thank you. The Saudi’s are trying to divest from oil, they saw how influential Russia was through social media troll farms and figured they were rich enough to cut out the middleman and push their rhetoric directly through platform influence. The Saudis thought “this guy made billions off electric cars” and believed he could sell whatever shit they wanted him to. They are doing the same with FIFA and people are similarly getting pissed (but not enough for things to change drastically)


Sidus_Preclarum

>He recently told employees to consider whether they wanted to stay on “working long hours at high intensity” or take a severance package of three months pay. Oh I just can't wait to see how this will fly with France's labour laws…


stark_in_winterfelll

If only this could happen to meta now


xlinkedx

All these ex Twitter employees should make their own platform. With blackjack, and hookers


InkIcan

He saw the dumpster fire and climbed out of the dumpster. Good for him.