Elon Musk takes over Twitter

[Skybird]

^ This.

[Onkel Neal]

This have to be a massive mistake, $44 billion for...what? Sheesh.

[Skybird]

Here in Germany we thought the same about Tesla. "It will never make profit", Germans knew (also: it cnanto be what shoukd not be...) And now? He is up and away and leads the German car makers around by a ring through their noses.

He must see something in Twitter that us ordinary mortals cannot. And that maybe must not necessarily be financial, economic potentials. Maybe its purely political.

And no, I still have no Twitter or FB or any other such account.

[Onkel Neal]

Yeah, probably. In 3 years everyone will marvel at his vision when Twitter makes him the first trillionaire.

[em2nought]

[Catfish]

So Twitter is not longer present at the stock exchange, it will no longer be publicly traded - there will no longer be a CEO with a board of directors or shareholders. All shareholders are gonna get liquidated. It will just be Twitter and Musk.
Twitter can be a powerful tool in the hands of demagogues for silencing critics, changing opinions and influencing.


Fox News and Carlson are already back on Twitter




Maybe Musk can also reinstate Trump as TwinC (Twitterer in (mis)Chief) ?


But then maybe Musk just shuts Twitter down becasue he does not want to be tracked.

[Jimbuna]

I'm simply wondering what his future plans are

[Skybird]

^
Some project located in the vicinity of Alpa Centauri, I heard.


Seriously, I dont evben know whether he was/is pro or against Trump, but maybe he is just pissed by increasing regulation gagging media and streamlining the allowed public opinion in the name of politically correct and ordered things.


Or maybe he is pro Trump, i dont know, in which case he simply would be a nutcase in my book. 44 bn in sponsoring money? That would redefine the meaning of "crazy".

[Skybird]

The beginning of an opinion piece in Die Welt that probably aims at the correct direction. The rest is behind a paywall, but you get the idea:

Elon Musk is a liberal visionary. The fact that he can now buy Twitter is good news for everyone who wants to defend freedom of speech against the woke speech bans of the zeitgeist. The catcalling already underway among the embittered elites shows just how important this is.

One piece of good news. Elon Musk can buy Twitter and thus take over a communication channel that in Germany has become a biotope of radicals of left and right provenance. The kind of minimalism that condenses zeitgeist fashions into discourse dictates spread between the poles.


In this country, an imperialist moralism is at work. It is particularly suited to the lifestyles of underemployed, semi-ambitious thinkers without a heavy burden of responsibility, who confuse their own lifeworld in the gentrified neighborhood of old buildings with reality.

[Onkel Neal]

With Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink, I would think he has enough on his hands. Well, Elon likes unfettered free speech, we all do, but I don't think he realizes how squirrely it can go.

[Buddahaid]

It will still be moderated.

[Rockstar]

Here’s what Musk said:

"Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated," said Mr. Musk. "I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it."

He has also said he wants to get away from ad based revenue and implement a new paid subscription service. Which may help authenticate who the real humans are. I don’t think spambots have credit cards or bitcoin .

The guy is a genius and I really don’t think he has time to pay that much attention to the daily flood of all the simple minded arguments over the latest clickbait, sensational headlines and memes about him or others either. I hope he succeeds in making it better and makes a crap load of money doing it.

This is a definition of a spambot:

https://5995.io/what-are-spambots-wh...ews-firstpost/

In its most rudimentary form, a spambot is a programme that is used to spread across various avenues of the internet. It can be in the form of an email, or as is the case with Twitter, in the form of a fake or stolen profile, that spreads malicious comments. Hackers and spammers have used spambots to spread malicious links, attack and harass people on the internet, malign campaigns, and in some cases, interfere in governance by swinging elections. Spambots have also led to legitimate accounts being hacked, which have then been used to spread misinformation. Clearly, spambots represent everything that is wrong, and everything that can go wrong with social media, and the Internet in general.

[Bilge_Rat]

well, personally, I don't think Twitter will change all that much.

Elon Musk is an entrepreneur first. He is risking U.S. $44 Billion of his own money into this. From what I have seen of the financing structure, he is essentially using up most of his personal collateral and personal borrowing room to close this deal. If it goes south, he could lose big.

Twitter is a valuable property, visited daily by millions of people, most of which are successful adults in the 30-40s in their prime spending years which are what most advertisers are looking for, but it does not look like Twitter was run that efficiently.

Twitter's gross revenue in 2021 was U.S. $5 Billion up from U.S. $3.4 Billion in 2019, but Twitter actually lost money in 2021 down from a profit of U.S. $1.4 Billion in 2019 and the stock price was at U.S. $77 one year ago. Twitter is one business which should have profited from the Pandemic when people were stuck at home.

So by one metric, you could argue it is actually a good deal at U.S. $44 Billion...

However, to justify the investment and get a decent return of say 10% per year, he will have to increase revenue and slash costs, so at this point I would see his "free speech" spiel as more marketing than anything else.

[mapuc]

The extreme antibody reaction from those who fear free speech says it all

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1519020176884305920

Markus

[Catfish]

I think this guy takes himself much too serious.
Free speech is possible anywhere, and Twitter has exactly zilch to do with it.
Maybe good idea to make money, go ahead, i give a sh!t.