this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2023
606 points (93.0% liked)
Technology
59689 readers
3173 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
At this point, is there any doubt that destroying Twitter was the entire point?
Taking something away from the woke journalists & tech activists and giving it to the Nazis? Yeah, if that wasn't the entire point, it certainly was a "nice to have" for Elon.
I think it was the point, and I think he assumed that doing so would make it much better, so he’d also enjoy business success in the doing.
He really is the guy who didn’t like the mods so he bought the fucking forum. I don’t know if it’s ever gone down that way before, but this was a public company + world’s richest man situation and boy howdy did it go down that way.
But the enormous sums of money involved don’t change the fact that he didn’t like the mods so he bought the forum, and he was gleeful to suddenly be “the admin” of his favorite forum.
He could've just shut it down at any time. I doubt he planned the destruction of his reputation. He's gone from tech boy wonder to being widely loathed. It's hurt his other companies as well but, more personally, it's so obvious from his posts that he's desperate to be loved and revered.
He just really sucks. Being surrounded by people who never criticize or challenge him unshockingly doesn't improve things either.
My understanding is that the SEC would have fucked him if he just shut it down, because it would indicate that he never intended to buy it in the first place and instead was just trying to manipulate the stock market (which is definitely what he was doing).
How is this benefiting him in any way? Even financially?
It's not. He never wanted to buy twitter, he just wanted to pump and dump the stock, but because he is stupid and the plan was obvious they sued him to make him honor the deal.
So if he just turned around and shut the company down, it would give the SEC legal grounds to argue that his intention all along was market manipulation.
This here is the real answer; Elon doesn’t want X now and he never wanted Twitter. Much like Trump falling arse-backwards into the US Presidency he never actually wanted, he’s now just manipulating the thing he didn’t actually want, but now has, to follow his ego and whims. Trump’s presidency and Elon’s ownership of Twitter share a lot of similarities. Far, far too many similarities.
For what purpose would he attach his baby of X to the Twitter he is intentionally trying to kill?
Trying to make the best of a bad situation, I guess?
He could have just done nothing with the company, hired someone to put in charge and say "you have a year to make Twitter profitable", and when that inevitably fails shut it down.
He didn't have to tank his reputation. All the time he's spending running Twitter into the ground he could have instead done nothing, and still shut it down in the same time frame for being "not-profitable". Enough time would have passed for him to get away with it, and would have lost less money in the process.
So even if his plan is to destroy Twitter, he's still an idiot doing it in the dumbest way possible.
If he were smarter and/or not a walking ego then yeah, that would have been the move. Though if he were smart he probably wouldn't be in this mess.
This is what has been making me wonder if Putin has dirt on him like he probably does on just about every Republican politician.
Well, if by "destroying" you mean "turning into a haven for right wing hatespeech", he was pretty open about that. I don't know that he understood that connection though.
"middle"
k
Well known far-left person, billionaire Elon Musk
Aye that checks out
Oh an equally bad take lmao
TIL blaming Jews for the problems of "white people" is "right of the middle."
I was an asshole here and have retracted the comment. Don't lemmy when angry, folks!
He absolutely did not buy it to kill it, he just wanted something he could control after he entered into the “disgusting ultra rich fascist” stage, as previously he pretended to lean liberal. Also why the saudis donated so much of the purchase price
If that’s what you mean by “destroy”, then no, no doubt at all.
I don’t think so. The man is truly stupid.
I've been starting to wonder if Russia has kompromat on him too, and his charge is to just cause general chaos, and yes, as you said, probably eventually shut down Twitter altogether.
My conspiracy theory is he used Russian bots to hype his pump and dump Twitter scheems, which would explain why he and Putin have open contacts and had a meeting. Also then you can view the purchasing of twitter as control over the evidence.
I hate this meme it just so stupid, it gives him an out for being a shit business man.
Reality is he sucks and wants attention, he also owes money to people it would benefit to have Twitter sow seeds of shit in an election year.
There’s no question that he chose to end “Twitter as it was.”
Did he arrogantly think he could turn it into something better? Yeah he probably did.
Did he deliberately lead a billionaire’s club into a $46 billion boondoggle? Probably not.
Does he really hurt at all, in the end, if that’s what it turns out to be? Sadly, no.
So instead of buying Twitter, not touching it for a year, and then shutting it down because it's "not profitable" he would rather people think he's incompetent?
Either he's an idiot man-child who shouldn't be allowed to be put in charge of anything, or he wants people to think he's an idiot man-child who shouldn't be allowed to be put in charge of anything. Either way I'm happy to oblige.
deleted
Really? I think it was much simpler than this. Twitter suspended Elon's account because of his rants and so he decided to buy twitter to show them who is boss.
This is it. He's a fucking man child with obscene wealth. It isn't complicated.