Elon Musk Buys Twitter

[Paranoid Android]

Elon Musk has embedded himself in the right-wing ecosystem. Here’s a thread of him getting cozy in the mentions of fascists, all from just the past week

It's a tweet thread with screen caps and all his engagements with extreme right wing people. These are not the so called everyday Republicans here. Posts include Andy Ngo, Tim Poole, Catturd (fml), Dinesh D'Souza, etc. All in the past day.

Anecdotally I went to page and looked at "left" engagement. Only ones I read was him trying to Stephen King and others, just trolling them.

[diller]

There's basically nothing particularly unique about Twitter that couldn't be immediately replaced by a competitor, other than the audience it currently (or at least, prior to all this) commands. It could be replaced by a competitor in a week and it would change nearly nothing about society, other than people having to change the link to their Twitter to a link to their Mastodon or Bluesky or whatever. I don't actually think Mastodon's that great an alternative because it's too high a bar to entry (not that the bar is high, but it needs to be low enough that idiots can figure it out to get popular enough), but that's not really a "feature".

That wasn't my question though - why is twitter apparently inherently bad?

[NoiseTank13]

It's inherently bad because there's no real way to govern it. It's become such a vessel for communication and the free flow of speech that when things like hate speech, misinformation, or basically negative influences are given far more weight and following than they deserve. The KKK and it's ilk are a lot more in touch with one another across the country, criminals and other toxic elements.

How should we have it controlled, by the Government? People don't want that for good reasons. Private enterprise? People also don't want that, for equally good reasons. It's become a matter of we can't trust anyone with the policing of social media like Twitter, not private companies, the government, or the people themselves.

I won't deny there are some good elements to social media, but the bad elements are just surging with no real pushback at a rate that makes those good things irrelevant.

[Draco-Onis]

It's inherently bad because there's no real way to govern it. It's become such a vessel for communication and the free flow of speech that when things like hate speech, misinformation, or basically negative influences are given far more weight and following than they deserve. The KKK and it's ilk are a lot more in touch with one another across the country, criminals and other toxic elements.

How should we have it controlled, by the Government? People don't want that for good reasons. Private enterprise? People also don't want that, for equally good reasons. It's become a matter of we can't trust anyone with the policing of social media like Twitter, not private companies, the government, or the people themselves.

I won't deny there are some good elements to social media, but the bad elements are just surging with no real pushback at a rate that makes those good things irrelevant.

Have it privately owned and heavily regulated, it's really not that complicated we do that with similar mediums.

[Cthulhu 2020]

You'd think that as Twitter's monthly income (and thus debt) plummets in to Oblivion, Musk would be more worried. Instead he's cozying up to the far right, likely because he's a narcissist that needs praise and seeks validation, and the only one praising his recent decisions are the far right. Everyone else is ridiculing him.

Also, Tesla stock continues to absolutely Plummet.

Musk's little stunt has likely landed him in bankruptcy for both himself and Twitter, but bankruptcy has never stopped the far right from continuing their grifts. If anything, gaming the system through declaring bankruptcy tends to only gain them more popularity. Why does the right gravitate towards terrible business leaders?

[Breccia]

MMO-C's second-favorite lawyer lists the issues Musk faces with his buyer's remorse.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Elon's argument for layoffs is "Twitter is losing 4 million a day". It was profitable until he borrowed a bunch of money to overpay for it, and now the interest is killing him, so he's taking it out on the employees.

The beatings will continue until morale improves!

No no, don't you see, this is all clearly a plot by the activist libs to ruin Musk and the right!

Never mind that the advertisers that pulled out have stated that people are reporting their ads being next to heavily racist tweets with no action on the part of twitter, and see that as bad for brand safety.

Ultimately, Twitter is either going to 1. Fold 2. Go Bankrupt and operations are put into the hands of someone who basically reverses everything Musk has done 3. Turns into a right wing echo chamber.

In the case of 1 and 3, Twitter will become a fringe social media site, while some other social media site will rise up as the main "town square". A place where racism etc. isn't allowed. Right wingers will once again claim that their hateful bigotry is being silenced unfairly, and claim that they have rights to use the new "town square" even though they shit all over the last one.

[Santti]

So if twitter goes down, look for people to start getting worried about facebook (although admittedly, facebook users are likely a lot stickier than twitter).

I doubt people are going to be worried for Facebook and the like. Quite the opposite. If Twitter goes down, it's users are likely to migrate elsewhere, giving a surge of new users to other platforms. And I'm sure the investors and advertisers know that, and couldn't be happier.

[Cthulhu 2020]

This is an interesting test for facebook. Facebook and twitter share a weakness - they're both relatively basic products and they mostly won due to grabbing a lot of users early on. If there's some force that causes most users to flee, they are dead. Google, Amazon, and Apple all have a real product that is just way better than competitors that's difficult to compete with. Facebook has a really innovative and complex advertising platform, but that's not convincing any users to stay there - the product users use is just a simple photo sharing website.

So if twitter goes down, look for people to start getting worried about facebook (although admittedly, facebook users are likely a lot stickier than twitter).

Most of us know the migration from Livejournal to MySpace to Facebook. Facebook is now mostly occupied and used by boomers, with some mostly inactive accounts from younger audiences. Facebook creates more overall internet traffic, but that's in raw data. Twitter's compact form means it can produce far less traffic while still garnering more engagement. People love it because of those "quick hot takes" that have to be shoved into 256 characters.

I imagine the Musk fanboys are going to try to spin taking Twitter down as a "win", when in reality Musk is in a ton of trouble. He's unintentionally martyred himself. As I said, if Twitter goes down, or gets filled with right wing propaganda, some other social media platform is going to step it up and take its place. Then all the RWNJs will whinge that they can't shit in that town square even though they already shit all over Twatter.

[Kathranis]

Facebook is NOT cool. They're not getting a ton of young users. I'd be surprised if people left twitter and went to facebook - it's more likely that some new competitor will appear.

Also, twitter is really small relative to facebook, so it wouldn't even help them much.

Facebook is pretty big and mainstream in non-English communities, fwiw.

[NED funded]

Facebook is pretty big and mainstream in non-English communities, fwiw.

Also, facebook owns instagram

[Jastall]

Facebook is NOT cool. They're not getting a ton of young users. I'd be surprised if people left twitter and went to facebook - it's more likely that some new competitor will appear.

Also, twitter is really small relative to facebook, so it wouldn't even help them much.

Facebook isn't just boomers posting racist rants and minion memes. That's mostly a cliché in the US anyway. It's also Messenger, Marketplace, a dating app, owns Instagram, so on and so forth. It's used by an absolute ton of people for many different reasons as the Meta brand has a bunch of different products, unlike Twitter which is just Twitter.

But it's true that potential competitors are likely spawning everywhere in Silicon Valley and beyond. Hell maybe Facebook or whoever owns TikTok will try to fill the void themselves once Musk runs the thing into the ground. Twitter will still have a fair amount of users for the foreseeable future, but they won't be profitable users so the money will be made elsewhere and Elon will surely be glad to have lit 44b$ on fire, and threatened the stability of his financial empire, so that he can have his cultish echo chamber telling him he's cool because he owns the libs all day.

[NED funded]

Most of us know the migration from Livejournal to MySpace to Facebook. Facebook is now mostly occupied and used by boomers, with some mostly inactive accounts from younger audiences. Facebook creates more overall internet traffic, but that's in raw data. Twitter's compact form means it can produce far less traffic while still garnering more engagement. People love it because of those "quick hot takes" that have to be shoved into 256 characters.

To be clear this conception of twitter is new and made up by Jack Dorsey only like 4-5 years ago. A couple years back Twitter was envisioned as the place to be

Twitter is a giant company that up until recently existed just because. It had to years where it was profitable and not much else. They stopped reporting MAUs because it has stagnated as a platform in that front

[PrimiOne]

#PleaseElonBuyFoxNewsNext

[Rasulis]

Facebook is NOT cool. They're not getting a ton of young users. I'd be surprised if people left twitter and went to facebook - it's more likely that some new competitor will appear.

Also, twitter is really small relative to facebook, so it wouldn't even help them much.

When the news headlines say FB is losing US market share (down from over 70% to 63%), it does not mean that FB user in the US is declining. It means that more people are using multiple social platforms diluting FB marketshare. The table below shows that the # of FB users in North America is still increasing. The #s are increasing at faster rate in EU, Asia-Pacific, and the rest of the world.



It also worth noting, that #3 and #4 social media platforms (WhatsApp & Instagram) by user base are also owned by Meta.



TikTok user base # is a bit misleading. Around 0.7b of TikTok users are in China which is off limit to FB. Also TikTok is facing regulatory headwind in countries hostile against China. In fact Tik Tok is banned in India. Which was its second biggest market after China.

The others socia media platforms are simply social media platform. Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp are entire e-commerce ecosystems.

Facebook has Marketplace, Shop, Pay, Manager, etc. Basically all the e-commerce that anybody would need. Both Instagram and WhatsApp have the similar tools. The e-commerce tools on all three platforms are quite robust.

Several years ago, the City/County of San Francisco legalized home-based food services. Most of those businesses use WhatsApp to manage their orders. You want the best regional South East Asian foods from Ipoh, Padang, Madura, Makassar? You won't find it in any of the 11,000 restaurants in San Francisco. You'll find them on WhatsApp. Want a caterer that will do full blown Rijsttafel? WhatsApp. Yeah. I like food.

The nice thing about WhatsApp is that Meta has not monetized the platform. Everything is free and no adds.

[Zan15]

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/24/elon...-accounts.html
https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk...008188fa6d057c

New Twitter owner Elon Musk said Thursday that he is granting “amnesty” for suspended accounts


The billionaire’s announcement came after he asked in a poll posted to his timeline to vote on reinstatements for accounts that have not “broken the law or engaged in egregious spam.” The yes vote was 72%.



So, wait, spam isn't free speech? So is he limiting speech again?
Don't remember the constitution telling you that you are only allowed a few words of free speech every hour or so.




So, I guess a lot of people who made threats are going back live to make even more threats... as long as they haven't been charged that is.

Not to mention a lot of other kind of people.


God i wish this stock was public, I'd be making mint on options all the way down to single digits.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Facebook is largely losing value because it's reached market saturation. Investors know that Facebook isn't going to gain much value in the coming years as they are effectively at their market cap. I've said this before and I'll say it again, capitalism relies on continuous growth. Once growth halts and something reaches stable stasis, even if it's earning money, investors will bail and the value will crash because nobody believes their portfolio will grow with said stock.

It's why so many companies are vastly overvalued. The stock is desired and valuable because people speculate it will continue to grow, artificially inflating its actual value. As soon as market saturation happens, as soon as a company reaches 95%+ of their potential market base, people will bail and the overall value will course correct to its actual value.

Zuckerburg's recent blunders haven't helped. But Facebook's plummeting value is more investors believing there is no growth left.

[Rasulis]

Facebook is largely losing value because it's reached market saturation. Investors know that Facebook isn't going to gain much value in the coming years as they are effectively at their market cap. I've said this before and I'll say it again, capitalism relies on continuous growth. Once growth halts and something reaches stable stasis, even if it's earning money, investors will bail and the value will crash because nobody believes their portfolio will grow with said stock.

It's why so many companies are vastly overvalued. The stock is desired and valuable because people speculate it will continue to grow, artificially inflating its actual value. As soon as market saturation happens, as soon as a company reaches 95%+ of their potential market base, people will bail and the overall value will course correct to its actual value.

Zuckerburg's recent blunders haven't helped. But Facebook's plummeting value is more investors believing there is no growth left.

FB growth has stagnated. However, Instagram and WhatsApp are growing rapidly. Instagram is under monetized. WhatsApp is barely monetized. Lots of room for revenue growth for Meta.

[Rasulis]

Went to the linked tweet/poll in this article and the amount of engagement from right wing folks shows exactly what Musk is chasing. Twitter is rotting from the inside because the child that took over is too stupid to realise what he's doing is more harmful than good because he needs people, anyone, to like him. It just so happens he's chosen the worst bunch of people to cling to for engagement.

But sure, advertisers only leave because of some shadowy cabal that are out to get him or something.

Or the far left.

It has been really bad. Far left San Francisco/Berkeley views have been propagated to the world via Twitter.

I’m sure this comes as no surprise to anyone watching closely.

Twitter is moving rapidly to establish an even playing field. No more thumb on the scale!

Seriously. There is a reason why CEOs don't make daily incendiary twitter posts. Because it is stinking bad for business. Especially, when you are in the advertising business which requires a lot of good wills.

[masterhorus8]

Or the far left.

It has been really bad. Far left San Francisco/Berkeley views have been propagated to the world via Twitter.

I’m sure this comes as no surprise to anyone watching closely.

Twitter is moving rapidly to establish an even playing field. No more thumb on the scale!

Seriously. There is a reason why CEOs don't make daily incendiary twitter posts. Because it is stinking bad for business. Especially, when you are in the advertising business which requires a lot of good wills.

The replies to that make me nauseous.