Elon Musk: “thermonuclear name & shame” against advertisers pulling out
twitter.com
twitter.com
https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1588668007244759041 sounds like Elon was caught flatfooted, and his continued behavior is just another in a series of unforced errors.
Probably doesn't help that the guy is taking advice from Jason and David Sacks (classic "oh you're mad at me? That means I'm right" personalities). The best thing Musk could do right now is find someone who does not have a twitter account (or doesn't care) and talk to them. Yet another case study for "don't just work with people because you are friends".
No, I'm pretty sure this is just another in a long list of mistakes by Elon. I don't believe he knows what he's doing here.
“It’s at X that he lost me.”
This character trait will cost him a lot.
This is one where his business acumen is under scrutiny too, that's a whole new game. But let's see, it's only the bottom of the first inning.
He’s destroying lives too. ~3700 Twitter employees got randomly fired. Maybe Twitter needed a haircut but 50%? Plus you know many of those people had spouses and children. Add that to the total. There are people whose entire income as software developers is for Twitter apps. If Twitter goes down they’re in trouble.
His other businesses are taking reputation hits by proxy (he doesn’t look like such a good/smart businessman anymore does he?).
And of course there are 40m daily active users. Even if only a small percentage really enjoy it that’s millions of people losing something they really like (like me).
All because he didn’t want to lose a $1B lawsuit and risk whatever would come out in discovery.
When this is over I just can’t see us ending up in anything but a net-negative for everyone.
I think it was the first real consequence he has had to face in a very long time and it was a BIG one. And he was so scared this was the better option.
That’s the theory that makes the most sense to me. The breakup fee of $1B was a lot of money but seems like he’ll lose way more than that in the end on this path.
There was no $1B breakup fee.
WTF are you talking about? In no world was there a $1B lawsuit. I don't know how anyone is possibly parroting that point given that it has been repeatedly debunked since it was first uttered. It's like someone read a contract, saw that $1B was mentioned somewhere in it and just decided that that would mean whatever the fuck they wanted it to mean. The lawsuit was almost certainly going to end with musk being forced to buy the company.
Guy probably thinks he can get away with whatever and misunderstands “every VC is addicted to Twitter” with “Twitter will always be used”, and can get the site running with a skeleton crew.
I mean honestly I think you can get away with a tinier team! But he’s doing so much that makes life harder for himself it’s hard to imagine this as anything but him being himself.
There is a good chance Twitter will go the way of Tumblr - sold worthless for parts.
To their credit I think the network effects of twitter are in fact stronger than I’d like to believe them to be. I also think they themselves don’t want a “free for all hell scape” really, just enough to push some libertarian / longtermist / free speech ideology and hope that they can shape the countries narrative in their direction.
Oddly I’m starting to think this whole thing goes back to an old money vs new money struggle. SV wants to pull influence away from “the New York Times” crowd, but I think what they’re underestimating I exactly how unpopular their worldview is.
This, and that default genre of emotionally retarded mocking of individuals and groups that goes over the line from "critique using humor" to just "making fun of somebody" (exemplified nowadays by pepe and wojack), are both hallmarks of the hyper-low-quality bickering the masses have always engaged in on the internet, often stemming from a disagreement about something petty.
Now, that style of interaction is common not just for adult children arguing about fantasy lore, but for public discourse about political and social issues, for the CEO of Twitter, for US presidents. In fact, it's not just common - it's popular, and many people see Elon's behavior (not just his executive decisions - his behavior) as a good thing (given the prerequisite perception that those targeted by that behavior are primarily members of their social enemy group(s)). Given this, I wouldn't be so sure about the scale of the negative consequences for Elon/Twitter.
I know - people have always been shitty and petty to each other about things like politics. But there's something terrifying about it reaching this particular tier on the immaturity scale.
I was actually considering jumping in while other larger corps were pulling out (better CPMs), but I can’t risk the act of advertising on Twitter becoming a brand liability, especially on the off chance that Elon publicly unleashes millions of followers in anger on my startup.
Elon is making a massive mistake picking fights with advertisers. It’s a new brand attack surface that didn’t exist last week.
Facebook and Google have provided homes for Farrakhan, ISIS, etc. and they're the two largest advertising platforms on the planet, yet Elon is a dick so that it as bridge too far?
Fascinating lol
Think about some company that was just starting to think about advertising on Twitter.
And now Elon Musk is threatening that if you ever stop advertising with them, he will try to convince his followers to boycott your products.
hard sell, considering you clearly don't know the meaning of the word.
.
(Note punishments for certain content do count as a cost.)
"the practice of obtaining something, especially money, through force or threats."
He's threatening advertisers so that they'll stay on the platform and continue to pay him. Why isn't that extortion?
"A thermonuclear name & shame is exactly what will happen if this continues."
Saying you will publicly shame someone if they do something you don't want them to isn't a threat?
> Remember, the word blackmail refers to a crime wherein the threat is a revelation of information, extortion refers to a crime wherein the threat is either physical, violent or an unfair use of power.
Generally no, that's not true. For example:
https://www.legis.state.pa.us/WU01/LI/LI/CT/HTM/18/00.039.02...
"Theft by extortion. . . . if he intentionally obtains or withholds property of another by threatening to . . . expose any secret tending to subject any person to hatred, contempt or ridicule"
> Remember, the word blackmail refers to a crime wherein the threat is a revelation of information, extortion refers to a crime wherein the threat is either physical, violent or an unfair use of power.
I assert that getting people to boycott me because I don't buy his services would be an unfair use of his power.
And if you disagree, then please explain to me how boycotting Twitter or people who advertise on Twitter is bad...?
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeping_Giants
[2]https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jun/30/third-of-...
Or do you think it's more likely that GM, Audi, Mazda, Porsche, VW, and Ford don't want to give money to Twitter (and by extension Musk and their competitor Tesla), and they're blaming the boogey-man of "activist groups"?
Got it.
Facts are a thing, and it's worth deriving them by looking at the available evidence.
It makes me really sad to see someone who is absolutely convinced by the media narrative, who won't even look into other evidence.
We know that activists target advertisers and investors. It's not just a fact, it is their stated goal and they have countless examples where their targeting accomplished their goals.
A fair few historical examples of "nobody do business with X" have involved improper levels of coercion.
https://twitter.com/GoAngelo/status/1588696157794242560?ref_...
https://www.barrons.com/articles/twitter-advertising-ad-busi...
How can he not see this? With a single Tweet Elon made buying Twitter ads into a risk companies will have to weigh against any benefit from the ads. Literally threatening your customers.
I was convinced it was fake Tweet. He needs to hire someone to delay all his Tweets by 24 hours so he can sleep on them.
Stoned off his duff, probably. He might sober up in the morning
He’s rich and seemingly successful at everything he does. People fawn all over him. He has enough money to buy his way out of almost anything, and he’s been able to get away with insane stuff like naming Autopilot, testing it on public roads w/o any oversight, lying to the SEC, ignoring his deal with the SEC, stuff in his personal life, etc.
He seemingly hasn’t ever had to face real consequences. At least not since he was a child.
So he’s not scared of them. He doesn’t care. Doesn’t think about it. He’s always right because he’s Elon Musk.
So when he doesn’t get his way he doesn’t understand and lashes out (e.g. pedo remark over sub to help kids in cave).
And he was getting more fans! The right wing had started to embrace him! He knew what to say to them! More praise!
Then something happened. He screwed up massively. He jokingly(?) made an offer to buy Twitter with moronic terms. And based on what we’re seeing that probably would have gone badly.
But it got worse. The market dropped a bunch and now his high price was crazy. But he couldn’t back out because he agreed to terms preventing it! He lost a ton (stock holdings) and now had to overpay for Twitter or face a lawsuit.
And he seemed to be more scared of the lawsuit than wasting all that money and destroying Twitter.
It’s all consequences. And Elon Musk doesn’t know about consequences. So he’s responding to them like a 5 year old, lashing out. But that’s causing more consequences.
Advertisers/etc got nervous about his “no moderation” approach. Consequences. He tried to reassure them and pissed off all his new right-wing friends. Consequences. But the advertisers are holding back so now Twitter has less money (and new heavy debt). So he tries to raise money with the blue check thing and everyone gets mad. Consequence. Decided to cut a ton of jobs to save a lot of money. Now EVERYONE is unsure about Twitters future and advertisers get MORE scared. Consequences.
He’s not living in Elon world any more. And he can’t take it. It can’t be his fault. He’s perfect. It must be someone else’s fault.
Begun, the conspiracy theories have.
> The Brand Safety Institute was founded to professionalize and advance the executive capacity needed at every company to protect their brands.
> There are certified brand safety practitioners at the world’s largest advertising agency holding companies, global 500 brands, and major technology platforms.
Makes sense that someone has to be responsible for making sure their brand not be associated with bad things.
His real enterprise is a massive DoD program*, which requires Republicans to fund. Twitter helps him curry favors to earn these Republican backed contracts.
Mike Griffin is the ringleader but he's only useful when Republicans are in power.
There is a goal to Elon's madness, but it's unclear his ploys will pay off.
* DoD program is basically SDI 2.0 as discussed in this link: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career
The DoD program is a space constellation of ballistic missile defense satellites. They enable "improved tracking and potentially targeting of advanced threats, including HGVs and hypersonic cruise missiles".[110] " However, the Union of Concerned Scientists warns developments could escalate tensions with Russia and China and called the project "fundamentally destabilizing".[111] The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace later advocated for a treaty halting development to prevent an arms race in space.[112]
Starlink's military satellite development is overseen internally at SpaceX by retired four-star general Terrence J. O'Shaughnessy.[113][114] O'Shaughnessy advocated before the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services for a layered capability with lethal follow-on that incorporates machine learning and artificial intelligence to gather and act upon sensor data quickly.[115]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities
Also see: Strategic Defense Initiative
The last time I enjoyed watching a money bonfire this big was Windows Phone
Wired: Kicking your customers
This isn't always a good thing mind you, especially when one single advertiser holds a lot of power, but ultimately Musk invited this upon himself and he's just digging a deeper hole with each comment. Once the advertisers are gone, Twitter dies. And he isn't going to monetize users directly enough to change course.
Doesn’t mean anything as none of those ever paid for verification
Unlike at Musk's corporations, big corp mgt is all about managing uncertainty
Execs work to ensure success on big bets (new products/directions/++) by mitigating uncertainties & risks
Yet since buying Twitter, Elon Musk has done almost nothing but maximize uncertainty.
Of course they're stepping back
He may resolve much uncertainty about how things will go over time, and many will come back
But making excuses like "it's activist groups that are making them pull out" makes him look ineffective and whiny, and would he accept such an excuse from any exec reporting to him? They guy/gal would be out the door in a New York second.
And this? Threatening advertisers? Yeah, that'll convince 'em. With that one 30sec post, he's probably just convinced a half dozen to never return — if anything goes wrong with the relationship, he'll turn on them in a microsecond.
Looks like massive flailing. Unfortunate.
Rule 1 of CEOing: it's always someone else's fault. Success is "We" or even "I", failure is "You".
(I assume that's sarcasm,because that's a sure way to lose the respect of your employees, costumers, and the market in general.)
That ecosystem is quite fragile and pretty much the one reason that brands to advertise or are active on Twitter despite it’s having by far the lowest conversion rates and by a long margin is that it’s a platform where advertisement and brand engagement sparks conversation the most and the Twitter commercial API makes is easy to get access to all the tweets and analyze the data.
And this is really their entire value proposition they are pretty much the only platform where you can show an ad or actively engage with customers or potential customers and get immediate feedback that isn’t just a binary yes/no on the conversion.
So not only does this hurts them on two fronts as reduced advertisement and brand engagement reduces the value of their data considerably it’s also going to quickly snowball once only a handful or major brands drop it since the value proposition would completely collapse.
2. I wish Twitter would allow sorting of replies (by likes or whatever).
2. I hate the UI but the API is pretty dope
"Some of you are concerned about the recent change in leadership and of the changes they have enacted. Many feel that Elon is just an MBA wielding moron who has no business running a social media company. I have personally known Elon since we were kids and I just want to set the record straight: Elon does not have an MBA."
What a child.
Either which way, I thought the basic concept was that publicity was a good thing.
As for the employees that got fired. So what? I've worked in tech for decades, layoffs are commonplace. They're getting generous payouts and if they have any skills they'll land another job in no time.
In reality any advertiser who fails to be named as "pulling put" is going to be asked, why they are not pulling out of Twitter.
Of course, advertisers who want to appeal to the far right market are going to be perfectly happy, and will keep sponsoring Twitter.
Sending money to any of Musk's companies is being seen as a brand liability.
I do recall having a bit of fun when I used to have a Twitter account (maybe a year ago) by consistently clicking 'not interested' (or whatever the label was in the UI) for every ad in my feed. After a few weeks, the system began to show me some fairly unusual and occasionally bizarre ads.
Edit: Actually, come to think of it, I wasn't just clicking 'not interested' but instead blocking the advertisers' accounts entirely. I remember thinking that it was kind of hilarious that doing so was even possible.
uBlock Origin: make the web usable again.
Make ‘em pay…
A scary amount of 'news' in the USA is rewritten twitter threads with the origin more or less hidden.
So its as if the young people kicked off Tumblr had the mainstream media to amplify their complaints.
Which yes that's circular, but that just means it's path-dependent and potentially self sustaining.
He's a globalist technocrat. His mission like all globalist technocrats is to continue to divide the useless eaters while the globalist neofuelist scumbags Implement their social Darwinism and destroy the infrastructure built over the last century plus. Won't be that hard considering fractional Reserve banking created a house of cards that's just about done.
You can't make as many poor business decisions as Musk and have the government keep you afloat if you aren't owned by them.
Everyone commenting in this thread will be collateral damage of the great reset if people don't wake up and start working together.