Just stop permanently.
Stop X permanently. The lawsuits are massing up, and the value of the business has nearly dropped such that the $13bn debt is bigger than it. They had little hope of paying even the interest before Musk started intentionally tanking their revenue. He knows that the business will never have to pay up, hell they’re not even paying rent on their offices, and he’ll get away with the crime Scott free because it’s a limited liability company.
And make no mistake, that was the plan all along. Destroy a private business cum public forum that served the public good, and on the way out see what controversial actions they can get away with. That way any site that comes to fill the void can do the same. His old mate Peter Thiel will likely be pleased, along with a bunch of other unscrupulous people.
Destroy a private business cum public forum that served the public
It’s amazing to me how much people have rewritten history since musk took over. Twitter was always shit. It’s worse now, yeah. A lot worse. But it’s like taking a shit on a smaller pile of shit. All this talk about how it was a real boon for humanity and so important it should be regulated as a utility is equal parts idiotic and hilarious.
It’s shit, but it had significant uses. Namely, getting breaking news from trusted journalists, and speaking directly to businesses for consumer support when other methods typically went unanswered.
That’s not to mention the Arab Spring. Sure, significant change that people had hoped for didn’t follow through, but it still spooked them enough that one of the incumbent leaders helped buy the website to undermine it.
Also, when you compare it to Facebook it certainly was better. Even reddit was better, then followed it down the drain.
I get the feeling (I wouldn’t really know, haven’t been there in months) that Reddit is still significantly better. Sure, it’s worse now, but it still has active communities on pretty much any topic imaginable. Lemmy is on its way, but won’t be there for a few years I think.
There’s some genuine communities lingering on, but almost all of the larger communities have become part of the power mods’ “projects”.
I 100% agree it was shit. Sometimes though, that shit fertilized real growth.
That said, lesson shouldn’t be, “we need twitter.” It should be, let’s populate similar platforms so we can have this resource in the future.
It was both good and bad, period.
served the public good
Yeah, nah. For a start, if one website could be singled out for bringing Trump into power, it wasn’t any of those icky extremist places such as 4chan, 8chan, r/trump - it was Twitter where he posted his garbage for literal years with no interruption and thus gained a massive following. The site practically lived off his controversial diarrhea.
You could say the same about reddit in a large part. 4chan was a free home, Twitter was a megaphone, but reddit really encouraged the infestation to gestate.
Also it wasn’t r/trump, but r/the_Donald, as well as all the spin off astroturfed subs.
website formerly known as twitter*
I don’t disagree this is a possibility, but I have yet to hear someone clearly articulate why poopoobrain over there would do something so dumb intentionally.
I find it so much more compelling that he’s just a divorce-brained middle-aged dumbass with a megaphone and billions to dig his own grave. That he was forced to buy Twitter after waving his dick around in public and has been trying to save his reputation ever since by pretending that it’s all a part of his plan to amplify the right voices to ‘save humanity’.
I’m not saying he isn’t brain-broken enough to believe it himself, but I don’t think he ever really had a plan. I think he’s a sad, lonely billionaire going through the worlds biggest mid-life crisis.
but I have yet to hear someone clearly articulate why poopoobrain over there would do something so dumb intentionally.
Because it distracts from the fact that leveraged buyouts are almost always meant to kill the business in the long run, and such distraction reduces the chance of regulation against the practice. People don’t think Twitter is failing because it had $13bn of debt it could never afford, they think it’s failing because Musk is a poor businessman. That isn’t to say Musk is a great businessman acting like a fool, rather, he is a clown acting like a fool.
I think if Musk had made a genuine effort to buy Twitter there wouldn’t have been so much debt saddled onto the business. Musk was forced to make the purchase, but the nature of the purchase has subsequently been tailored into sinking the ship. One of the first things they did was stop paying rent - if this wasn’t a sign of a business doomed to failure I don’t know what is. The business will die a death, and everyone it owes money to will be left fighting over the ashes.
Ok, so you’re not saying he actually originally wanted to buy it in order to tank it, you’re saying once he was forced to buy it the most expedient thing to do was to bankrupt it.
Being pushed into buying it because of his loud mouth is still a MASSIVE blunder, him choosing to steer it into an iceberg after being handed the keys is just him cutting his losses. It doesn’t explain why he would have wanted to destroy the company in the first place. If it was because the site was largely critical of him or platformed people counter to his personal worldview, then buying the company and running those voices out (like he did) would have sufficed and he wouldn’t also need to tank it. Likewise, if all he wanted was to platform voices friendly to him and his worldview, burning down the house around himself and his new friends is contradictory.
I think you’re giving him too much credit, I think he’s just an overconfident dumbass that got himself into trouble and is trying to erase his mistake without ruining his reputation as a genius.
It doesn’t explain why he would have wanted to destroy the company in the first place.
For that, you could turn to his old friend, Peter Thiel. Thiel tried and failed to start up businesses that competed directly against Twitter. Aside from Thiel, there are plenty of other people who likely resent Twitter - such as the Saudi prince who now owns a portion of it alongside Musk.
I think the goal is to bring Twitter down, then replace it with something else. Alternatively, they could turn Twitter into what they want it to be by further financing it and covering the debt, though that seems less and less likely as time goes on. However, by sending Twitter down the toilet they can experiment with the kind of things that future platforms might be able to do - anything Twitter gets reprimanded for will ultimately have no consequence if Twitter goes away, but anything Twitter gets away with can be fair game for new start ups.
I think you’re giving him too much credit, I think he’s just an overconfident dumbass that got himself into trouble and is trying to erase his mistake without ruining his reputation as a genius.
I agree he’s an overconfident dumbass and got himself into this position, and I’m sure he desperately values his reputation - the one aspect of all this that I’m enjoying is how badly his reputation is getting ruined. I still worry about more sinister things happening over the long run that may shape the future of social platforms for the worse, though.
Twitter was literally a public company. Musk bought all the stock and took it private.
The amount of stupidity in this comment is worthy of it being posted on X
Public company =/= publicly owned. As an American, you probably don’t know what a publicly owned business is, but public schools are pretty close (again though, Americans and education…). A company in the public sector has to follow a lot more regulations than a company in the private sector. Twitter has always been in the private sector. It was publicly traded, now it is not.
Musk did not buy all the shares. Musk put up about $27 billion out of $44bn, most of which was Tesla shares (which subsequently tanked, and since then the business has been on something of a decline compared to their previous success). $5 billion came from other investors, including a Saudi prince. The remaining $13bn was a loan Twitter took out to buy itself on Musk’s behalf - this is the smoking gun that ultimately will kill the business, like most leveraged buyouts are bound to (eg Toys R Us).
But no, tell me I’m stupid while you speak in hollow hyperbole.
yeah but money
Why does anyone still use this pile of crap anyway since the kid took over?
Pretty sure users have mostly left.
Companies and public figures keep using it, because for most of them it’s just some intern or bot that was posting.
It takes a while for social media to finally die because of that. They’ll just stumble on like a zombie for like a decade.
The only way it’ll happen faster, is if people loudly boycott anyone that’s still using it. But with 99% of social media sucking ass, there’s not really a place to do it from where companies and public figures will hear it.
No, there are sadly a whole lot of users still on it.
There’s even a bunch of hardcore right wingers praising it in its new form.
Dang. Almost wish I got into twitter so I could see it implode under the weight of 4channers.
you know because you’re one of them?
Don’t insult children like that, kids would have made way better and funnier decisions lmao
You’re right. Sorry.
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I’m still there because I like to know what the crazies think about stuff. It’s still entertaining in its own way. For example, did you know there are business experts on Twitter even smarter than Tim Cook? It’s true…
Scott Adams needs to hide away in his Dilbert shaped house, never to be heard from again.
Tim Cook must be on vacation! I know this because The Sacred Man Himself could never do such horrible thing!
Sports… beat writers still use it and most news breaks on there first.
most news breaks on there first
I’ve learned about Apple pausing their ads and about Sam Altman being fired on Mastodon. it’s been becoming much better replacement for Twitter in that regard, and is only going to continue to improve.
I mean sporting news. I use mastodon and regularly check AP and Reuters for actual news. Mastodon isn’t even close to Twitter when it comes to sports.
Holy shit snacks, I had no idea Sam Altman has been fired
the Betteridge’s Law guy told me! https://writing.exchange/@ianbetteridge/111427837747897068
Everyone still there is scared of losing money, or attention.
Yes. I know at least one person. His name is Elon.
am kid ._.
For the same reason I started using it in the first place. Elon taking over haven’t changed my user experience in any way. It’s the same it has always been. Ironically enough it’s also the only social media platform where my feed is 99.5% free of politics or talk about Elon.
The only part I hate is that real people have and will lose their jobs due to 1 person that treats this entire situation like a kids game.
Thosee people honestly took that risk working for that company. I don’t go work for Walmart then cry about it killing small towns, kinda thing.
He bought Twitter.
There are plenty of people who were affected by that
Twitter was a cancer on society long before elon bought it.
They downvoted him because he spoke the truth. I have no sympathy for anyone choosing to work at X or Meta. If you knowingly work at these companies, knowing how they’re run and what they do, you’re a piece of shit. These people are only there to try to boost their own careers, but they’re still participating in the efforts against society that these companies impose.
I dont want to hear about how “Twitter was bought out! What would they do?” Fucking quit, that’s what you do. I’d rather work at McDonalds than have Elon as my CEO.
Meta tried so hard to recruit me. It was HARD to say no. They have amazing facilities, fucking nice ass games everywhere, amazing pay, free food everywhere you look…
and they destroy democracy and freedom more everyday. But I can actually still sleep at night with my low wage somehow… wierd.
This bullshit “grindset”, “do whatever it takes to give me.and mine what we know we deserve” is a subversive mental plant that’s been growing as a seedling from the first time you saw a TV commercial with happy kids playing with better toys than you. And it’s all bullshit. News flash, you and yours aren’t special and you don’t deserve anything extra. However, we we all collectively do deserve better. Just not individually. It’s a grand lie and these morons keep conflating it.
You don’t NEED that job at X, or Meta. You WANT it, because you think you’re special and have earned the right to harm the world that tiiiiiny immeasurable amount, so you and yours can get thier cake. It’s a lie, and we all deserve cake. Don’t skip the line.
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> I’d rather work at McDonalds than have Elon as my CEO.
> If you knowingly work at [McDonald’s], knowing how they’re run and what they do, you’re a piece of shit.
Seems I can apply this to everything.
To my knowledge, McDonalds isnt trying to upend our democracy, nor are they inciting Nazis in their restaurants as well as discriminating against other protected classes. Yeah their food sucks but at least they aren’t causing the downfall of society.
And twitter did prior to elon?
How are the people at Twitter doing all these things?
What happens with the HB-1 workers if they’re fired or if the company close?
What if this? What if that? What if the sky falls??
edit: listen, alright, the HB-1 worker system has been fucked for a long time and needs a serious, honest overhaul, these massive companies are abusing the shit out of it, and not ever intending to provide permanent positions etc, I see it all the time. Write your congressmen and ask for them to provide relief funding for victims of HB-1 employer-side contract abuse or whatever its going to wind up being called. They absolutely deserve better, and its FUCKED to trick people into working for cheap and ship them back off to a worse life when the time is up. But that takes time. So you better get moving, because twitter is a falling tower already, with or without my apparent egregious sentiments.
Nearly all companies are cash-chasing shitholes. The real problem here is the disparity of wealth between top and bottom.
We can have more than 1 problem. And 1 problem can contribute to another problem.
Why just pause
Waiting for the latest Nazi shit to blow over.
So they can start advertising on it again in two weeks when people aren’t paying as much attention again, duh. Just like when all those corporations stopped donating to insurrectionist Republicans, for about three seconds.
Why not remove the app from their app store?
He might sell X some time in the future.
That’s not why it’s only a pause.
Please tell more. Don’t let us hanging out.
He’s more likely to have to part it out in the bankruptcy hearing.
Forcing a company to take out a loan to buy itself should be illegal.
The problem I see that it is “pause”, not “quit”.
“Wait until it dies down, then go back to selling Macbooks to the Nazis.”
This
“Exclusive”, at least the forth version of this story I’ve seen today.
Better late than never I guess
They could remove the app from their app store if they cared.
This is practically nothing compared to doing that.
You’re asking a corporation to care for human values when its only purpose is to generate revenue…
“pause”
the surprising part is that they were still advertising on it until now
Are you going to be surprised again when Apple resumes after their “pause”?
Must not touch the Jews! Tim Apple hates that
Just a pause? Planning on hanging out with the #fascists a bit later maybe?
Between this & the Jon Stewart / China bullshit, I’m so glad I never gave Apple’s e-trash a second thought.
They’re gonna head down to the Winchester, have a pint, wait for this all to blow over
Fascists buy iPhones too, I guess.
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Musk being an utter waste of skin isn’t an exclusive.
The worst thing is reading news with X in the middle of the sentences, it looks like a math problem.
To solve for X we must cancel it out.
When will any of these companies realize that they need to leave forever?
If Apple really wanted to send a message, they would suspend the Twitter App (I can’t bring myself to call it by the stupid CyberTruck name) from the App Store.
Maybe after another 11 months of this…
When consumers stop purchasing from them if they go back.
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Even if companies do something absolutely heinous, people will stay. That’s why consumer experience is so shit.
Somehow HP still exists as a company.
What was the original tweet that he said he agreed with? I’d prefer to judge for myself.
Okay.
Jewish communties have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.
I’m deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest shit now about western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that support flooding their country don’t exactly like them too much.
You want truth said to your face, there it is.
I have no idea what he’s on about. Jews have been pushing “dialectical hatred”? Does he even know what “dialectic” means?
I was about to defend the usage of the word dialectical here but then remembered nazis can get fucked
Maybe, but their followers definitely don’t.
I dunno…spoken and written word maybe?
apple and musk can both go fuck themselves
Not google tho, rite?
It wasn’t an exhaustive list.
About bloody time.
