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Comment by rtpg | Hacker News Reader

https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588599808587345921 from this post sure seems like the advertisers aren't really worried about being named.

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".

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In behaving this way, he is erasing a tremendous amount of the goodwill he generated from his space and electric car businesses. The world's media, political, business, scientific elite are on Twitter and watching carefully. It's all very upsetting to watch. I hope that, as you've said, he finds a better management team to fix this ongoing trainwreck.

Elon erased his goodwill when he started his crypto pump and dump scams. Or there's the whole vaporware thing to sucker in more investors. Or there's the fact that he argued Ukraine should concede to Russia's demands.

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.

There’s some axiom here… something about wherever you get off the hype train, you still think the earlier stops made sense.

“It’s at X that he lost me.”

And when Elon decided to call a rescue worker a pedophile. To me that demonstrated that Elon was willing to truly destroy people for merely offending him on social media. He later double-downed on the pedophile claim by elaborating on his reasoning for why he thought the rescue worker was a pedophile.

Elon clearly never admits mistakes involving his ego. Same with the discussion now with Kasparov where Elon clearly didn't know he was fighting the Putin regime for a long time, but still doubles down on his mistake.

This character trait will cost him a lot.

I think this turned a corner. He lost some credibility as a serious person with crypto pump and dump, and also with pedo guy, and with other shenanigans, but he had a trust fund of credibility from the other businesses.

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.

And in the process destroying so much. Twitter is going to lose most its value and be sold in a fire sale at some point. I doubt it will ever recover.

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.

If he doesn't ruin twitter I will be sorely disappointed. I have no care at all for the twitter employees, you may as well ask me to sympathize with Phillip Morris workers getting laid off because cigarettes fall out of favor. The sooner he crashes that whole company into a wall, the better.

Don't underestimate the value of witholding whatever was in those discovery text messages.

I’m not. I suspect it would have proved some kind of real fraud on his part, or more likely perjury. And he knew if that came out he’s be facing slam-dunk prison time (among other things).

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.

> The breakup fee of $1B

There was no $1B breakup fee.

>All because he didn’t want to lose a $1B lawsuit and risk whatever would come out in discovery.

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.

>"oh you're mad at me? That means I'm right"

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.

Why does he think anyone would be ashamed of _not_ advertising on Twitter? Twitter ads are worthless. If you're a CMO who manages to kill your entire Twitter ad spend, that should probably go on your resume.

Ok, so maybe this is tin foil hat but maybe the 4d chess is to destroy Twitters relationship with its advertisers so that advertisers lose control of the platform and he can go ahead with the long term “free speech” changes. It is his and Jack’s vision, the only question is does he have the money to fund twitter until he can cut costs and raise money.

Yeah that’s 4d chess. Guy wanted out of the deal remember?

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.

How does Twitter make money without advertisers ?

$8/month. Ha.

At $8, you still get "half of the ads". At this rate of advertisers dropping out, it will be a very tiny 50%.

I guess in this tin foil hat theory, his investors would help him keep it alive while he cut costs enough to sustain it on membership revenues, or selling user data or some other yet to be unveiled monetization strategy.

It doesn’t make money with advertisers. So it’s a moot point.

So we are going to have an 8chan clone? Imagine an 8chan but only lightly moderated. No one wants to be on that. It's the worst of both worlds.

There is a good chance Twitter will go the way of Tumblr - sold worthless for parts.

I totally agree with you, I’m just trying to figure out what a billionaire and a bunch of his anti-woke billionaire buddies think they can do with a platform like this.

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.

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