Hacker News Reader

Your other points may or may not be valid, but I think it's fairly uncontested that Musk's reputation took and continues to take huge damage over every aspect of the Twitter fiasco. He's burning down a $50 billion acquisition like he's a 1980s corporate raider, except that the raiders made money by torching corporations.

I don't really see Twitter use going down much which means revenue can likely stay as is at 5 billion annually and likely grow over time. Cut out 80% of the costs and a 50 billion price tag isn't that farfetched. It's possible to recoup the cost within 10 years by increasing revenue only 20% and keeping costs low. He could have done this without being a total dick about it though. It's the billionare equivalent of being penny wise but pound foolish. Why take the hit from public opinion when it's gonna negatively effect your other brands? Just dumb execution.

Many of the large advertisers have left, that will be a challenge to maintain revenue. Plus +$1B in annual interest payments and it being more expensive to borrow money due to interest rate rises + being seen as a larger risk than other borrowers.

I think that's just temporary. People will forget and move on. Advertisers will want back in on the action. All he has to do is stop talking.

I'm sure some will return, but the default as of now is to not spend on Twitter. From my friends who buy ads at big agencies, they are actually quite happy to not deal with the smaller reach and platform - but felt they needed to, in order to show their clients "effort".

In addition, there is general belt tightening, and ad spends are the first thing to get hit. Going after the smaller ad networks reduces the effort to maintain campaigns; add in that there is a reason to drop Twitter instead of across the board reduction, and I think this is a problem for twitter.

I'd wager that 50% of the dollars that left aren't going to return, if not more.

Twitter's revenue comes almost entirely from advertisers, not from Twitter users, and there's no way it's going to pick up enough paying users to come close to covering its costs.

Advertisers are very sensitive to reputation, and to optics. The optics of what Musk's done with Twitter have already driven most of the major advertisers away.

The idea that Musk can come out of this with a profit is absolutely ludicrous at this point.

I'm in a few different Twitter sub cultures and not a single one has had anyone leave the platform. Usage is still very high. Eventually advertisers will forget about the controversy and want back in on the action. They were previously making 5 billion in revenue annually. Even if they lose half that's still a significant amount of income. And I'm sorry but it doesn't take thousands to run it. Look at Reddit running everything with a skeleton crew.

"Major Tech Site A runs with a skeleton crew, so obviously Major Tech Site B, with a completely different style of interaction and set of requirements, could do so too!" is really not a viable argument.

Furthermore, one of the things that's frequently named as a concern with Reddit is their volunteer moderation; Twitter very obviously needs paid moderators for a host of reasons, and that's something you can't scale with tech. You need actual human people spending their time and energy actually doing that work, in proportion to the amount of content that's being created. (You need more than Twitter has had, in fact, given how many problems there have been.)

You can, of course, argue that they don't actually need that; that it should be all free speech all the time...but you'll get exactly zero traction with me, and with a very large percentage of the public and Twitter's users.

According to https://twitter.com/magey/status/1610856428646064129 the 60 day notice ends tomorrow, so it’s possible the payments are being sent at the last possible day.

> I think they did an effective job completely Turning public opinion against twitter employees.

Interesting. Is this true, and I just live in a pro-twitter-employee echo chamber?

It's only true in the QAnon bubble.

I think the quote might be a bit hyperbolic, but there is a general PR push against twitter employees that has caught on a bit. Here is some anti-twitter narratives I've picked up.

* Twitter didn't crash as soon as Musk laid everyone off, as some predicted. This gives credence to the 'dead weight' angle.

* There's some controversy around Twitter and it's employees being anti-conservative or anti-free speech in some circles. This was highlighted by Trump being banned.

* There's open questions around the intelligence community's (FBI specifically) influence on social media under the guise of preventing the spread of 'misinformation'. This isn't a Twitter specific problem, and most of it is aimed at management/exec level, but it doesn't help the reputation of the average twitter employee.

* Twitter in general inflames emotions. It's no surprise people have opinions about the people that work there.

* There's a general view that tech workers are highly compensated with great perks. We are unlikely to gather sympathy.

> * There's a general view that tech workers are highly compensated with great perks. We are unlikely to gather sympathy.

You are not going to get much sympathy from someone who works a 75k year job on their feet, getting all kinds of dirty and grimy from the labor they do, when they hear that your 400k WFH gig for a arguably evil social media company went away…and you got 3 months of severance to boot—literally a years wages for them.

Oh boo-hoo

> I think they did an effective job completely Turning public opinion against twitter employees. Painting them as dead weight and woke stooges for the FBI.

I disagree. From what I've seen, the only people holding anything against Twitter employees are those with a political bent that makes them inclined toward belief in a grand conspiracy to suppress conservative views. Like everything else political, it's a Rorschach test where people on the right-leaning fringe say "yeah, fuck those lazy/woke/entitled/whatever employees" and everyone else is left shaking their heads about how Elon is running the company and the brand (of Twitter, himself, and his other businesses) into the ground.

Even conservative financial media like the Wall Street Journal have been critical or at least skeptical of his moves, so I don't think it's accurate to say everyone is in agreement that the employees were the problem. Twitter was doing fine before Elon. They were not blowing anyone's socks off with financial performance, but they were relatively stable for the long term and could have got through the recession with a much more modest layoff similar to what you're seeing in other companies. Elon is solely responsible for tipping the company into an aggressive nosedive by saddling the company with massive debt and single-handedly tanking revenue by scaring away advertisers with his $8 blue check impersonation crisis and many other erratic policy changes.

Why is Musk stealing / defrauding >$1million from his landlord not a felony?

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal loaves of bread”

One of the things I've learned from Ken White (aka Popehat) is that the more a behavior is something only a rich or powerful person might do, the more flexible the laws. E.g., tax fraud is a "specific intent" crime, where they have to prove that your intention was tax fraud. Or we can look at how wage theft is treated vs the same amount of normal theft.

ooh ooh do honest services next

His landlord can evict him and/or sue him (well, Twitter, not him) for the back rent. Whether they will or not is a separate issue, but that’s technically something his landlord could do.

Sorry but I'm not sure I understand your comment, I think you would gain some benefit in trying to make it clearer and more structured as it's quite long and feels more like a rambling.

Maybe it's been edited, but it seemed pretty clear to me they were describing the ways Musk is trying to 'cheat the system.'

At a first read it's a bit ambiguous - but essentially Musk is more or less "staying in the office without paying rent", waiting for the "landlord" to try and kick him out using legal means, or renegotiate for a lower rent (severance pay for ex employees in this case) or none at all, knowing that the "landlord" has no real power or means to penalise.

But what does that have to do with the link?

The GP on twitter was laid off almost two months, and not given their severance as far as we can tell, or given any notification of severance.

More or less they were fired on the spot, and they'd have to find some legal means to recoup any backpay / severance from Twitter (Musk).

In OP's words, they're the landlord who did not get paid and the tenant (Musk / Twitter) is abusing their power.

It's a list of ideas or "takes" about the situation. I enjoyed it and thought it was interesting. It's time consuming to put something like this in essay format, but some ideas thrown out there are fine with me.