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Comment by RajT88 | Hacker News Reader

> they realized they had no idea how to monetize the content

This sort of thing should be a nonprofit. When it was good, it was literally making the world a better place.

Possibly the Library of Congress would be a good steward for such a platform. Something to make it resistant to enshittification.

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Agreed re: being a non-profit. My great hope was that Elon might do that with Twitter. Needless to say, I was… not right about that.

Arguably, prelon Twitter was not-for-profit.

Post Elon, they are not-turning-a-profit.

Are their losses greater or less than pre purchase. I know revenue is down, but I wonder how the cost cuts affected margin.

They made a profit in 2018 and 2019 ($1.2bn and $1.45bn according to SEC filings) but not in any other year.

Presumably they could have done Elon’s massive firing spree at any point in time and become profitable overnight?

Don’t forget the massive amount of new debt that needs servicing.

They will, but it would likely need restructuring the debts and the cap table, and would not be Elon's Twitter anymore.

Yes, if the business was different, it would be different.

Good to know a publicly-traded company known to censor content to be more advertiser-friendly and with notoriously predatory content discovery algorithms designed to elicit emotions to keep users coming is apparently not-for-profit if it happens to be unprofitable during the ZIRP period. Or is Facebook also not-for-profit?

If anything, Musk is less profit-oriented. Someone looking to profit off the platform wouldn't be actively driving off advertisers. But I suppose that because we must all believe that Elon Bad, he must also be the evilest capitalistest person in the whole world, and everything before him was sunshine and roses.

> known to censor content to be more advertiser-friendly

And now it’s know to censor content to be friendly to autocratic governments.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/88xqnv/elon-musk-censors-twi...

Obviously your post has nothing to do with Twitter being for-profit before the acquisition and Musk prioritizing profit less than his predecessors, but I'll bite.

By complying with government regulations when displaying content in their respective regions to avoid getting the entire network banned there, right. While this hit piece from a notoriously biased outlet would like to equate this with ye olde Twitter's regular practice of of suppressing or deleting content worldwide at the whim of the US government, it's obviously more transparent and fair to comply with censorship locally and provide a reason for the missing content. Reeks of "it's okay when we do it".

> Twitter being for-profit before the acquisition and Musk prioritizing profit less than his predecessors

Being unable to turn a profit is not the same as not prioritising profit.

If he’s so unconcerned with making a profit, then why weasel out from paying rent, the fired employees, and all the rest? Why be so adamant about a payed subscription? Why complain of advertisers leaving?

More importantly, why does a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” kowtow to an autocratic government if he’s not even concerned with profit? And why does he keep banning his own critics?

> ye olde Twitter's regular practice of of suppressing or deleting content worldwide at the whim of the US government

Disputed by his own lawyers.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/06/tech/twitter-files-lawyer...

> this hit piece from a notoriously biased outlet

Here are eight more sources and a study. Surely they won’t all be “notoriously biased outlets” writing hit pieces, or is the definition for that “writes something negative about Musk”?

https://nypost.com/2023/04/01/twitter-censorship-increases-u...

https://www.thestreet.com/technology/twitter-promised-to-fig...

https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-05-24/under-el...

https://restofworld.org/2023/elon-musk-twitter-government-or...

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/04/elon-musk-...

https://slate.com/technology/2023/05/elon-musk-turkey-twitte...

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/elon-musk-twitte...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/04/27/tw...

https://censortrack.org/study-twitter-censorship-shockingly-...

Thanks for the laugh.

Your hope was that one of the richest people on earth would give something away for free (free free not free* [conditions apply])?

How exactly was quora ever making the world a better place?

You're going to entrust making the world a better place to... the US government?

Sure. Much better than to VC backed startups anyway.

We're going to have to agree to disagree.

The US has done terrible things in the too-recent future in the explicit name of making the world a better place.

At least, that rationale triggers my gag reflex.

Isn’t a lot of what the US government does decided by capital anyway?

Kind of.

There is a lot of money in lobbying for certain things.

Companies generally don't want political outcomes per se via lobbying outside of their own niche interests.

Much more impactful are dedicated lobby groups.

For exmaple, there's a particular country that I'm not allowed to mention here under duress of being banned that has a lot of moneyed lobbying.

Like when the sugar industry lobbied and the US government told everyone fat is bad for 50 years?

Did the government say that sugar is good?

How about Wikimedia?

Wikimedia is a non-profit that operates like a for-profit when the yearly round of donations comes around. They literally hoard money[0].

I will get downvoted for this, but it's my perception.

[0]: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/wikipedia-millions-bank-beg/

>I will get downvoted for this, but it's my perception.

I will always downvote a comment when someone writes something like this. It is irrelevant to the conversation and screams insecurity.

100%

It's also tinged with a "People can't handle the based truth I'm laying down" attitude, which is annoying to read.

Based. It is r*ddit-tier passive aggression. This place is not much better, but we should still resist this type of crap when we can.

Downvoted your comment immediately, as unnecessary and hostile. Parent just made a comment that knew would be unpopular and expressed that.

That's so Reddit, this here is Hacker News.

Interesting reference. Non profits cannot hoard money. I believe it becomes taxable and they can lose their non profit status (i am not an expert)

Though, hoarding seems like a mischaracterization. Per the article linked, the cash burn rate is on the order of $100M/yr, having $150M in the bank is 18 months worth of funding.

The biggest gripe I read in the article is the "high" expenditure rate and how necessary it is. It seems like reasonable people may disagree on whether that spend rate is excessive.

If the expenditure rate were lower, I'd agree it would be hoarding.

I guess I can't see the reasonable argument that it is necessary when you look at the growth rate of their spending.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has...

If they kept expenditures low and hoarded, I would actually be fine with that and happy to contribute. I see nothing wrong with forming a large endowment for a project like Wikipedia.

Citation needed for your claim about hoarding money, which is refuted by simple observation of the many, many endowments that exist.

I was confused about another situation - I was quite sure about this - and was incorrect. This speaks to the benefits of speaking from data and not just what you think the data was. Thank you for calling me out here, it was merited and the info was bad.

There are no limits on a nonprofit's ability to raise and maintain cash reserves; there are limits on how and to whom funds can be disbursed and (to a lesser extent) the kinds of activities that can be used to generate funds. But a nonprofit can sit on an endlessly-growing hoard of cash if that's what they (and their donors) want to do.

HAHA, apparently my comment is the number 1 result from google to the question: "can a nonprofit hoard cash", and the answer quotes me from this very thread with "Non profits cannot hoard money"

I believe I was likely incorrect and you are correct here @HillRat. The nuance where I was incorrect was if the nonprofit fails to properly pay taxes on unrelated activities - in which case the government can decide that entity is a for-profit entity. This link was helpful for me for that clarification: https://www.findlaw.com/smallbusiness/incorporation-and-lega...

I recall this being an issue for an HOA which wound up collecting more than it needed and there was concern that (A) it would be taxed & (B) nonprofit status would be lost. Paying taxes correctly is very important, but does not speak to a non-profits ability to hoard cash. My earlier comment is incorrect, I apologize for the bad information.

I think the distribution requirement is specifically for private foundations, not public charities.

I'm fine with that.

> the yearly round of donations comes around

The what? I cannot visit Wikipedia without seeing a donate bar, even when I close it every time. "Year-round" maybe.

One person's hoard is another person's endowment. To-mah-to, to-may-to.

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

Wikimedia is not a platform.

Their sister Wikicities / Wikia / Fandom (also relying on MediaWiki), and now owned by Texas Pacific Group, is however, another example of a platform getting enshittified.

Yeah, was surprised to find out that that shithole was actually founded and lead by Jimmy Wales and not some random unrelated parasite.

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