Twitter refused to pay AWS bill, so Amazon refused to pay for ads
datacenterdynamics.com
datacenterdynamics.com
“…AWS is not willing to renegotiate the five-and-a-half year contract it signed with Twitter in 2020 … contract required Twitter to pay $510m over that period … signed when Twitter was expecting to [use AWS heavily], but that never occurred … meaning that Twitter is not fully making use of the contract. … Twitter [paid] $10m in AWS costs a few weeks ago … at least $70 million still outstanding…”
“Twitter uses Google Cloud to a greater degree … its own five-year contract worth $1bn … Twitter is up to date on payments”
So a $0.5bn contract for the cloud that apparently just serves Twitter Spaces, and a $1bn contract for the cloud that serves the rest of Twitter. “Not fully making use of that contract” indeed, I wonder what the actual utilization metrics say. We can guess: the article claims Twitter paid $10m while owing at least $80m, so this means Twitter is using at most 1/8th of the capacity. That’s very close to single-digit-percentage utilization - I understand why Amazon is avoiding re-negotiating that contract, it’s literally free money. Non-payment will certainly bring them back to the negotiating table.
Reporting on Twitter’s other non-payments of rent, services, etc. has been more careful to not hint at the reason for non-payment. After all, when someone’s being evasive about paying the rent, we all know it’s because they don’t have the money.
There's another reason for them to avoid this-- to not create the precedence that people can get out of contracts if they decide they don't like them anymore. If they let someone do this, even a big player like Twitter, that could lead to a lot of trouble in the future with other players trying to re-negotiate
What kinds of knobs does AWS have, I wonder? Not allowing new resources to get allocated? Eventually start draining existing resources? I imagine for stateful stuff like DB tables and EBS volumes they might keep them around but inaccessible to Twitter until they pay their bill.
I of course am a responsible individual with a flawless credit score so I have no experience with such things myself
Cutting service is the very last cudgel to come out for large contracts. And only when counterparty's insolvency is looming. Which may or may not be the case for Twitter.
If Amazon concluded Twitter's insolvency was near it would certainly negotiate on the contract. Before cutting service. Which is why it's interesting to watch Amazon's reaction here.
But I think what you’re saying seems more likely
Again my enviable FICO score and decades of responsible borrowing mean I’m speculating quite a bit here
I have sympathy with consumers who don't read the terms. I laugh when rich people misspend billions.
He must've known of poor financials before dropping 44 billions.
The thing I really hate about the Elon Twitter purchase saga is that now you have an army of Elonauts who believe that breaking contracts is just normal contract negotiations.
I’m dreading facing one of these people off in court one of these days. Eventually they will have to pay up, and more, but it’s just an awful waste of time and energy for everybody.
To be fair, I'd say Trump perfected that business plan but Trumponauts are much less terminally online than the Elonauts (although I suspect the overlap is high.)
The problem with a lot of these people is that they follow the worst, most superficial aspects of their idols. It’s like when all the Jobs followers decided being a good CEO meant wearing jeans and a black turtleneck and and being assholes to everyone around you.
I’m 100% sure the majority of the Elon followers won’t bother with his work ethic, which is admirable, and instead focus on his douchebaggery and petty criminality instead.