Things like Reddit and Twitter are bad for billionaires. It makes it harder for them to exploit you when there is a public place to talk about their bullshit.
That was my reaction when Elon first bought twitter. It’s like he’s so stupid he thinks Twitter is the only possible platform that could ever be a twitter.
It turns out, we’re all pretty clever at figuring out places to talk. The talking is going to happen. Where we do the talking keeps changing.
He never actually wanted to buy Twitter. He was just running his mouth to manipulate the market.
Twitter called his bluff and took him to court. He tried to weasel out of it with various excuses (like there are too many bots) but it didn’t work. When he came close to having the court accessing his personal communications, he folded and bought Twitter.
He massively overpaid for it compared to the already inflated market price, instantly losing many billions. Must have had some insanely illegal dirt in those communications for it to be worth it.
So no, it wasn’t some machiavellian plan to disrupt public communications. Musk is just not a very smart greedy asshole.
I suspect that he’s just bad at making business decisions in general, but it was harder to see that with SpaceX and Tesla.
He seems to take this whole Twitter thing personally as well, so I’m sure that’s not helping. (i.e. he’s not outsourcing decision-making to competent people)
IIRC, causing its value to plummet is the easiest way for him to get out of this whole fiasco via bankruptcy (remember, he was basically forced into buying it). He played a stupid game and won a stupid prize and now he’s desperately trying to find a way out.
I still need a little guidance here so I can understand. Let’s say Twitter did go bankrupt, then what would happen? Would Elon be off the hook for the billions of dollars he owes to his financers?
I don’t recall the specifics of the one article I read about this, but yes, I think being able to declare bankruptcy gives an out for at least some of the debt. I believe there was also some way that doing so protected Tesla but can’t recall exactly how that worked.
This just doesn’t seem like a “he’s just bad at running a company” situation. A company of Twitter’s age and maturity could have run itself for quite some time if Elon just let it continue on. He’s doing this intentionally for some self-serving reason.
But what’s the end game? I seem to recall he fought pretty hard to prevent the purchase from going through and only when faced with a lengthy court battle that he would likely lose did he accept. And he is in for a fair amount of loss on that deal anyway.
Isn’t it a simpler answer that he is just incompetent and somewhat like sand, the more he tries to squeeze the users for money the more it slips through his fingers? The strategies he’s trying might work in other business types like the car industry but not one where it is wholly dependent on user content and engagement (and the ability to engender enough good will to sell ads)…
That’s exactly why. He didn’t want to go through with JT and I think devaluing the company might be a way for him to get out of it via bankruptcy. I remember reading that somewhere and thought it made the most sense. He’s a dude with a lot of money (at least on paper) and I’m sure he has people with a decent amount of financial acumen advising him what to do or at least trying to steer him in the right direction. I don’t think it’s any 6D chess or anything, just finance and tech bros playing finance and tech bro games.
Bye bye Reddit. Hope they collapse after getting rid of 3rd party apps. Reddit is Fun was my shit. I gotta find a Lemmy equivalent so I can get off my phone’s web browser.
I downloaded Connect for lemy today. Seems to be working okay so far. I haven’t tried any of the other ones yet, so don’t take my word as gold. Could be something better out there.
I just found out about Connect today and have been loving it.
I’ve been a paid Sync user for more years than I know, and am so glad they’re coming over to Lemmy. However, in the meantime, Connect is pretty great for basic posting/reading needs.
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