It’s a bit annoying how for so long people agreed that Twitter was basically a hellhole
This was the sentiment on Reddit because it’s an anti-“every other social media” echo chamber, but it definitely wasn’t the overall sentiment of Twitter before Musk took over.
On Twitter, yes. There were tons of people for whom that was their only social media and they thought it was great. Not so much love for the admin as the community of course, and generally people were fine with the software.
If you build it people will complain, and engineers have always complained about the product they own/built. We also tend to lump communities by the worst subset of it’s members. Facebook: racist boomers, Instagram: Fake influencers, Reddit: Angry nerds, 4Chan: Really angry racist nerds. It’s just human nature to focus on the bad in general. Twitter actually used to be widely well received overall (especially when they added in those fact checks that Musk removed). Calling it a “hellhole” is subjective and was not the opinion of the overall population until it actually went to shit, otherwise it wouldn’t have been the preferred platform for many politician and news outlets world-wide.
Woah I never said it was great lol, there is no hidden utopia corner of the internet, I just think calling it widely considered a hellhole is incorrect.
Well we definitely did that when he entered the story. Not that before Twitter was more than a venom riddled shouting platform but all hope was lost when this conman bought it …
Since his acquisition shenanigans started, I felt like that was like a spoiled billionaire kid who didn’t get the reverence he thought he deserved from a waiter, then proceeded to buy the restauran chain just to close it.
Musk is so addicted to Twitter (or whatever they end up calling it) that he bought it to ensure he would never be banned. So it’s like he bought the restaurant, fired the staff, put shit on the menu, and none of it matters to him because he still gets to sit at his favorite table and no one can tell him to leave.
Except that one guy who had a long-term contract with Twitter. He was threatened to be fired by Musk. Then he showed off a huge $hundred-million portion of his contract if he were ever laid off or fired, and suddenly Elon Musk treated him with a lot of kindness and respect online.
Imagine spending 44 billion dollars to buy an unprofitable service and then announcing a year later that you are rebranding and ditching the IP you paid 44 billion dollars for. Madman genius or dude with toilet water in his cranium?
Him spending $44B on Twitter is similar to someone worth $100k spending $18k on a car or a house remodel or something. Its proportionally a decent amount of money, but it’s not gonna break him if he totally loses it all.
Oh no, they might dip severely and he’ll only have $60B or as a little as $10 billion!
His problem seems to be more cash flow. As a prominent shareholder and executive, he can’t sell large amounts of his stocks without PR and legal risk. He could do what people like Bill Gates do and sell them slowly on a set schedule, though.
he has that much in stock, he doesn’t have that much cash. he also has to make huge payments on what he borrowed to buy twitter so that may affect cashflow and then value of his other companies…
Not having that much in cash is a good way to not pay more taxes. If any of his stock is valued 1 cent less than what it’s supposed to be worth in the stock market i’m down to buy all of them.
Hold on…. You’re saying I can take out a loan for $x amount of dollars against a company I don’t own yet and buy it with that money?
Yes
I take out a mortgage for a property before I buy it and I destroy the house; the bank still comes after me for the value.
Not the same, a house can’t be a legal person, the owner is the legal person of the house. The money Musk borrowed in twitter is owed by twitter, not by Musk. To do the same with a house, you need to do it through a company.
That is possible because companies can have limited financial responsibility, meaning the money they owe are not owed by their owners.
It’s a pretty nifty arrangement, to help the rich stay rich no matter what happens.
Am I being stupid or is the game more rigged than I thought?
We are stupid for not being rich enough, and still allowing the rich unfair advantages.
Not quite. The the $33 Billion of equity Elon Musk put up junior to the $13 Billion loan.
That means that if the company starts at $44 Billion then falls to $15 Billion, then Twitter still owes $13 Billion, but Elon Musk only has $2 Billion now.
Leveraged buyouts are… well… levered. It grossly increases the risk of losing everything.
Freedom of information should be a human right, it allows to build consensus crucial for social cohesion. A bit like open access in academia, which is getting more traction recently. But unless this right is guaranteed stealing from authors destroys knowledge industry as such. Except that maybe it helps to transform predatory business models.
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