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Comment by wingworks | Hacker News Reader

Allot of how Elon handled the layoffs from what's public doesn't sound ideal. But also idk how many of those people would've had a job at twitter for much longer anyway. We get a post in HN every other day at the moment of x company laying of 1000 of people.

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Twitter was almost certain to see layoffs had Musk not bought it, but they’d have been slower, more considered, less harmful, and probably smaller because the company didn’t have a ludicrous leveraged buyout $1bn annual debt bill.

The way things are going now there’s an increasingly real possibility that Twitter may not exist in a few months, putting the jobs of the other 3000 or so employees at risk too. Not to mention all the people who used Twitter to make a living.

The destruction of lives and so much value for one man’s ego is astounding.

> there’s an increasingly real possibility that Twitter may not exist in a few months,

If you honestly think that's a real possibility, how do you see that actually happening?

Edit: in case it wasn't clear, the "in a few months" time frame is what seems completely unrealistic to me.

No advertisers? Catastrophic server failures? Elon just pulls the plug?

They are seeing a massive advertiser exodus, have apparently created potential new FTC/DOJ issues regarding the existing privacy consent decree with their desire to push-down responsibilty to facilitate velocity, are seeing policy churn that undermines trust, and their big revenue ideas are becoming a for-pay social network and payment processor with that trust deficit.

Those are certainly big problems, but I don't see how they lead to the company ceasing to exist in a few months.

Musky himself has said that bankruptcy is a possibility:

https://www.axios.com/2022/11/10/musk-twitter-email-arduous-...

Strangely, it's the same story as linked in OP, but Bloomberg doesn't include that detail

Bankruptcy is certainly a possibility, but I don't see how that at all leads to the company not existing a few months from now.

If he removes moderation then he risks getting kicked out of the app store which would be the end of the company.

Getting kicked out of the App Store could put the company in a death spiral, but I still have a really hard time seeing how that leads to the company ceasing to exist within a few months.

I think you're getting hung up on the technical difference between Twitter continuing to exist in any recognisable form and continuing to exist as a shell of a company with neither revenue nor staff. I see them as functionally the same.

A few weeks ago I didn't think this sort of outcome was possible, I thought Musk might muddle a bit and cause a long term decline, but nothing so sudden. Now, with the FTC consent decree potentially breached, advertisers running for the hills, Musk himself saying the company is close to bankruptcy, the resignation of virtually all key top staff including their head of Trust & Safety, and the departure of so many SREs that it will cause stability issues, there's a perfect storm developing that'll have mutually reinforcing effects. Social networks don't always die slowly, sometimes they collapse as Hemingway described: Slowly, then all at once.

The death knell would be if Twitter is kicked off one or both of the App Stores, but I think long before that the company will become completely unsustainable financially. I expect Musk to successively lay off more and more staff to try to stay ahead of that, making things worse.

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