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Comment by forgotusername6 | Hacker News Reader

Because there is something distasteful about a man that rich firing loads of people. There is something almost medieval about it. He's basically a modern day king. I've never understood the complete lack of empathy displayed by so many people on HN. It's worse than Reddit.

"He bought the man, it is his property now. He can do with him as he wishes" - legal ownership can still be wrong.

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> I've never understood the complete lack of empathy

A lot of Twitter employees have spent years being about as obnoxious as they possibly can be to anyone with even slightly different views. I've seen a Twitter employee practically in tears calling someone a fascist because they insisted on putting semi-colons after statements in JavaScript.

> Because there is something distasteful about a man that rich firing loads of people.

I don't think it's distasteful at all. Twitter isn't a charity and it needs to fix its finances. Even the previous CEOs recognized that there's a ton of Twitter employees that do basically no relevant work.

> "He bought the man, it is his property now. He can do with him as he wishes" - legal ownership can still be wrong.

Jesus do you even read the words you just typed? Someone bought a company that was hemorrhaging money, he let go of the fluff and you're equating it to slave ownership?!

Is this the moment to snarkily bring up "corporations are people, my friend"? :D

"Corporations are people" is the plural of "a corporation is people". It has nothing to do with assigning person hood to a corporate entity. "Corporations are people" is in reference to the 1st amendment free speech rights that the _people_ who make up a corporation still maintain when they are acting as a group.

Consider not eating up the soundbites of politicians without understanding the context.

It is somewhat telling that those who used to dismiss all complaints about Twitter's moderation practices with a variation of the "private companies can do whatever they want" canard, are not really repeating that one anymore, or worse, seem to have abandoned that principle outright and are now complaining that the owner is, indeed, doing whatever he wants.

Twitter was a $4 million a day money pit at the time of its acquisition. It has had 2 profitable years in its entire life. Corporations are not charities and it absolutely beggars belief that people seem to think radical changes were not both necessary and inevitable.

> Twitter was a $4 million a day money pit at the time of its acquisition.

Do you have a source for that? They lost $221M in 2021[1] which is ~$600k/day (and that was after a $800M lawsuit settlement which would have put them at ~$580M profit for 2021.)

[1] https://news.yahoo.com/twitter-posts-loss-2021-stock-1301280...

Twitter hasn't even been acquired for a month yet, how are numbers from nearly 2 years ago even relevant?

Straight from the horse's mouth: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1588671155766194176

Ok, do you have a source that isn't someone known for playing fast and loose with facts, especially financial ones? Anything pre-takeover that suggests they were losing $4M a day? Because it is almost certain that the $4M a day he quotes is likely only due to the $1B a year debt interest Musk himself saddled the company with.

Or do you think it is even slightly plausible for a company to go from a profit of ~$570M to a loss of ~$1.4B in under a year?

Pre-takeover is irrelevant. The statement I said was "at the time of acquisition". If you don't want to take the word of the person who likely has the greatest insights on the financial status of a nonpublic company they own, welp, don't know what to tell you.

And regardless of the rate of loss, the fact remains that twitter, throughout its entire history, has been a money-losing operation. Even taking the literally 2 years they were in the black, that doesn't wipe out the other unprofitable years. This seems like one hell of a nit to pick.

Twitter has lost money nearly every year since it’s been public, and was losing $4 million a day when Elon took over. If jobs don’t generate money they can’t exist in the free market, and the real shock is that the previous board of directors didn’t initiate layoffs sooner.

I've seen it claimed that the $4M/day figure is mostly because of the debt servicing cost that Musk's acquisition added to the company's books.

The new debts apparently add over $1 billion / year in interest payments alone. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/03/technology/elon-musk-twit...

(Being able to do this as part of a buyout sounds ridiculous, I know. And yet.)

Twitter's net loss in 2021 was $221 million, far from $4 million a day, and there's nothing to indicate that had changed before he bought it. The figure he quoted is made up predominantly of the $1 billion in annual interest payments Twitter now has thanks to Musk's leveraged buy out.

There was no imminent need for Twitter do anything. It still had a healthy enough cash pile and leeway and time to layoff 10% of the workforce or so to return to pre-COVID staffing levels.

Exactly. He's running it into the ground financially by saddling a low margin business with high-interest debt and also tanking revenue by spooking advertisers. 5D chess.

From when twitter went public(2013), the deficit decreased every year and eventually the company ran a measurable profit in 2018 and 2019. It ran red in 2020 but since then has been making a profit most quarters. This seems to indicate that while they weren't running on great margins, they were above board even if just barely.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/299119/twitter-net-incom...

And the $4 million/day is from the debt incurred by Elon's purchase.

> I've never understood the complete lack of empathy displayed by so many people on HN.

I don't think this is empathy related to be honest ( as your statement is "a man that rich firing loads of people." )

It is either wrong to fire those people, or not. If it is not wrong to fire those people, it shouldn't matter who did it.

System is broken and hating or getting rid of the winner does not help since there is a line of people ready to take his spot and that spot is only open for people who are not afraid of a fight. Don't hate the player, hate the game as they say.

> He's basically a modern day king

In what way? I mean, besides him being very powerful. Other than that, his behavior here seems perfectly capitalistic to me.

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