Fidelity marks down X valuation by 71.5% | Hacker News Reader

Fidelity marks down X valuation by 71.5%

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55 pointsclockworksoul48 comments

And they still haven't changed the primary app domain to x.com. Such a joke. It will probably never happen due to the engineering complexities of such a switch with just a barebones engineering team and loss of institutional knowledge over the last year.

The rebranding was an incredibly dumb decision. I have never seen it referred in the wider world to anything other than "X (formerly known as Twitter)".

We really should be calling ex-Twitter.

X is an un-ownable name/word.

It's the 2023 version of the artist formerly known as Prince.

At least the artist formerly known as Prince continued providing value until the day he died. With Twitter, that value is long gone.

Also he had the decency to make up his own symbols (sent to newspapers on a floppy disk!) rather than just using the X11 logo for some reason.

It reminds of when Prince changed his name to a symbol. He eventually gave up on the symbol, it just didn’t work. “X” is too generic a name and doesn’t work.

They did, but it was changed back

It doesn't take much, just a rewrite rule on a frontend proxy. The nice thing about barebones engineering teams is you get barebones solutions.

"Turns out it doesn't actually require that many people to run the site" - Elon Musk.

Rofl - I guess that’s why the value is down 75% numbnut. Seems like only having some bare bone it staff isn’t what you really need to run a social media site. I love Elon musk quotes - everytime you read one it hasn’t aged well, just like he was just some dumb idiot that feel in a pot of gold (bought with daddy’s blood diamonds)

The List of Defunct Social Networking Services page on Wikipedia will be there for its time:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_social_network...

> “What this advertising boycott is going to do is kill the company,” Musk continued. “And the whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company, and we will document it in great detail.”

You tell 'em Elon!

Such an absurd comment that was. If your customers are the ones paying for ads, and you cause your customers to leave, isn't that just deliberately tanking your business?

And "document in detail" it for who? As though there's some court or something that you can demonstrate why your business failed, and then.... what? Prove that it was departing customers? No one will give a shit. Just absurd.

Sometimes it's fun to think about the N-degrees of circles of yes-men around the ultra rich that lead them to believe the most absurd things.

> And "document in detail" it for who

He actually said "for the earth", thinking that humanity would revolt against the advertisers for destroying Twitter for them...

Not a hint of megalomania there.

As Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI, put it in a Musk profile for the New Yorker: "Elon desperately wants the world to be saved. But only if he can be the one to save it." (I heard this quote on John Oliver's profile of Musk-boy: [1])

I suppose a war of Musk against the ad-fueled capitalism (where "ad" can be placeholder for "scam") would be funny, although the alternative might probably be a dictatorship by Musk, and that would be a Mad Max world, might as well join Somali pirates...

[1] https://youtu.be/Eo3zORUGCbM

This is why I hate when anyone puts this guy on a pedestal. I can't be certain about his level of knowledge in most things, but with comments like this he regularly demonstrates lack of credibility due to either complete ignorance a highly self-centeric view of the world. Either way, he is not to one be trusted, admired, or emulated.

"Stop liking what I dont like" variant

I do think it is weird that there is an advertising boycott of Twitter but nothing is hitting Tesla yet. People seem ok with Elon's antics when it comes to the poplar car.

Wait, do companies buy ad placement in Teslas? Do they appear on the dashboard display while driving or something? If not, then how would they boycott?

I think the parent just meant that there's no popular mindshare backlash against Tesla like against X/Twitter. The perception of Tesla that electric cars are environmentally good is outweighing whatever negative perception of Musk.

... I mean, I think there definitely _is_. The "I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy" bumper stickers have been fairly popular, right?

Isn’t this Elon putting his money where his mouth is? He’s stated many times that he bought Twitter due to free speech concerns and not to make money. It’s kind of weird to me that people on the internet aren’t praising him for being principled, and are instead laughing at him for (expectedly) losing money.

Whether he's morphing Twitter as a new bastion of free speech remains to be seen. Musk himself says that saying the word "cis" is a slur with threats of suspension for saying it. Meanwhile, transgender people are actively being deadnamed and harassed with no repercussions to those committing those actions. Which is a clear violation of their Hateful Conduct policies.

Then when companies decide "Hey, I don't want to give my money to a company like that" based on reports of rising hate comments and speech on the platform Elon then threatens to sue them despite their protected speech.

It's giving "free speech for me but not for thee", which rubs a lot of people the wrong way. And, to many, this incredibly public meltdown of Twitter and Elon's inability to not be the center of attention is why people are laughing. It's absurdity to the nth degree.

He also threw "decolonization" into the words you can be suspended for (part of his outreach after getting in trouble over antisemitism)

> He’s stated many times that he bought Twitter due to free speech concerns and not to make money. It’s kind of weird to me that people on the internet aren’t praising him for being principled, and are instead laughing at him for (expectedly) losing money.

Well, other than the whole little thing where he said "advertisers leaving will destroy Twitter and it will be all their fault".

Platforms offered advertising for, last I checked, making money.

I struggle with the two-sided ness of his claims. If he wanted to build a free speech base, and burn his money doing so, that is his right, but then he can't whine and complain if his customers (advertisers) decide to take their business elsewhere. Which he does, in spades. Even more oddly, he has poor Linda Yaccarino out there pressing the flesh on Madison Avenue, trying to reassure customers that Twitter is a safe space for them to promote their brand.

The same logic applies in the other direction too, eg if I sell beer and my customers object to my spokesperson, I can be sorry about their decision, and regret their choice not to buy my beer, but I dont have the right to complain.

In both cases, a business decision was made, and the business owner must deal with the consequences.

> then he can't whine and complain if his customers (advertisers) decide to take their business elsewhere

I said this so many times it's embarrassing, but the wrong assumption is that advertisers stop buying ads because somehow the content directly damages the brand. Which I think is super naive. The reality is that organisations and media who dislike the content threaten advertisers of organising campaigns against them if they don't boycott the platform. Consumer actions (right or wrong, doesn't matter) are almost never spontaneous, they need to be organised and promoted. There are organisations that have this as one of their core businesses and have an enormous ability to influence what is published.

So Musk is not complaining about the fact that his advertisers are going elsewhere, but about the fact that political organisations are pressuring them to do so under threat of damaging their business.

Given how distasteful people find his actions, it's not surprising that people organize against them. Unless you're suggesting that his actions are viewed favorably by people (lol), but people are being brainwashed into acting in the opposite manner by some conspiracy of organizations. The more likely scenario is that most people think he acts like a douchebag, and most folks don't like associating with people who act like douchebags, and if those folks organize, more power to 'em.

They should threaten and pressure him and Twitter until he shoves off into the abyss.

The guy is an existential threat.

Consumer pressure (aka outrage, real or invented) is certainly a factor, but advertisers seem to be coming to the conclusion that X isn't worth the agita, independently of any given week's particular rumpus.

If I'm the CMO of <bigcorp>, I can either be watching 24x7 for a blowup that is going to consume all my people and news cycles about my company for a week, or I can just give up on X and move my spend to, say, YouTube or Tiktok. I only have so many cycles in the day, and X no longer even gives me decent information about my reach (eg they withdrew from the MRC audit that advertisers use to validate reach). Pulling back is an easy decision.

Like Elon said in his Dealbook interview last November, let's see where the chips fall.

It isbalmost as if he is struggling to avoid responsibility and accountability for his actions.

In this case it was Fidelity putting their customers money where his mouth was actually.

He’s blocking and banning people left and right. I don’t think the “free speech” claim was serious.

Like many people who go on about free speech a lot, he just has his own personal definition; free speech, for Elon, _clearly_ is a term of art meaning speech that Elon approves of. There's no other way to read his actions.

He's not being principled, he's being an asshole.

71.5% so far

It is curious as to why Fidelity is owning X shares. Is this on behalf of some sort of Fidelity mutual fund that invests in private companies? Or is some sort of alternative investment fund targeted at accredited investors only?

Or do they invest the Fidelity customer cash balances in some sort of David Swenson style diversified portfolio?

The holding is within the Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Fund (FBGRX), an actively-managed growth equity mutual fund.

Who benefits of Twitter truly dies? Who has invested directly or indirectly in Twitter? What is the intersection of those two groups and what is their connection with Musk?

I mean, Twitter.com will always go somewhere; if Twitter disintegrates the IP will be bought up by someone or other, and probably revived sans Elon. I recognise the temptation to look for a conspiracy (Musk is destroying Twitter because [insert Bond-villain plot here]) but, really, Occam's razor says that he's just destroying it because he's incompetent.

Humanity benefits if Twitter truly dies.

Interesting. Musk "switched sides" and suddenly twitter becomes the worst social media imaginable. To be honest, my feed didn't change much after Musk took over.

Instagram is just business ads at this point, TikTok is adding ads and their feed is getting worse, I don't even know what's happening on fb. Reddit is somewhat bearable only if you follow enough subs.

I don't want to be on an echo chamber when discussing general topics, politics, etc... That doesn't get anywhere.

I don't think elmu "switched sides" unless you're talking about his claims he supported free speech before he cracked down on free speech. But yeah, he made twitter pretty bad, hence this article.

Is this the same Fidelity as in GameStop?

If I have say... cars as a hobby. Turbochargers, wheels, parts, say I spend 20% of my disposable income on it and I have a good portion of my net worth tied into it as well (the cars themselves, the parts, etc).

Elon Musk spending $44b (which I don't think he did as all cash all at once/financed some) of his $250b net worth is like 17.5%

Even if it makes $0/goes to $0, it's just basically his hobby/a passion project for him, no? Should his goal be to make money/not lose money at an enormous scale? Probably. But he's obviously eccentric. Isn't this kind of on-brand for him?

He probably thinks he's better than most people. "Your hobby is tennis, my hobby is international social media platforms".

I don't think it's even a hobby, it'd be like you being forced (by an impending lawsuit and discovery proceedings) to spend 20% of your money buying a junker car you don't particularly like, because you couldn't resist keeping your mouth shut.

It's not even all his money, a lot of it is loans from banks who won't take his call the next time he rings...

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