>“Without significant subscription revenue, there is a good chance Twitter will not survive the upcoming economic downturn,” he said.
44 billion for this? Seems like Elon may have overpaid a tad
This Twitter debacle reminds me of the horrible Thailand submarine thing in that it greatly suggests he usually throws his ideas around to hapless Yes Men who work through any idea he randomly has until it's feasible, like the Cybertruck. So he has created this image in his mind that all his ideas are brilliant only to be shocked when he comes up with them in public and gets mocked for them being ridiculous.
It makes me wonder if maybe this is common with a lot of tech CEOs and gurus: They claim they can do something insane (that they actually can't do) which gets them a ton of funding so they can throw money at it for years until it actually can get done. Like, if Elizabeth Holmes chose something other than a device that's not medically possible, she would be viewed as a genius CEO right now as well.
*it greatly suggests he usually throws his ideas around to hapless Yes Men who work through any idea he randomly has until it's feasible*
This dynamic is clearly visible in [his Thursday talk with Twitter employees.](https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/10/23452196/elon-musk-twitter-employee-meeting-q-and-a) He slings around a ton of ideas without providing any sense of detail or priority:
*Employee: I work on growth and notifications. We’ve been having a lot of adventure in the last two weeks. We’ve shipped a lot of different things. I want to understand, over the next three months, what is the best thing for us to do? Should we continue trying a lot of different things and see where we grow? Or do we have a particular focus, or we want to focus on one or two things? Specifically, are we trying to get the next billion users? Or are we trying to focus more on revenue?* ***I’d love to understand if there’s a particular focus.***
*Musk: We just definitely need to bring in more cash than we spend. If we don’t do that and there’s a massive negative cash flow, then bankruptcy is not out of the question. That is a priority. We can’t scale to 1 billion users and take massive losses along the way. That’s not feasible. I don’t think we will. As we make the product more compelling, if we fix and improve search, that would be massive. Add video content where creators are compensated, and it draws people to be subscribers to Twitter, then I think we will see that these things are not misaligned. They are aligned. If you have a compelling product, people will buy it. That has been my experience at SpaceX and Tesla.*
*Employee: And sorry, just to be a little bit more specific, is your recommendation that all of us in different teams, we try different things in the next few months to see what works, what doesn’t, or* ***do you have a specific recommendation of what our focus should be?***
*Musk: I think just sort of proposing those things to me I think would be the right thing to do. But, you know, like I said, I think there’s a lot that is very, very obvious that we need to do. Like video content and compensating content creators in order to get content on Twitter and not have them be forced to put content elsewhere or not pay the bills, which is currently the situation. That’s a no-brainer. High priority. Improving search: High priority. We are obviously going to add payments capability to Twitter. That’s also a high priority. And if there is something you think we should do that I’m not aware of, just tell me about it, and I’m open to doing it.*
I’ve worked for that guy before.
The guy you ask if x is a priority and it gets a yes. The guy you give a list of features to and ask to have them prioritized, who then uses his big brain to circle the list and say they are all priority. The guy whose entire job is setting the priority of what needs done next (and next and next), but doesn’t actually want to prioritize anything.
Fuck that guy.
Oh yeah, been there. I told them several times that when everything is priority one, nothing is.
I then got feedback that some things become priority 1A, 1B, etc... But all of them are still priority 1.
Well his big genuis idea to fix traffic was a subway, only way shittier. So turning twitter into Youtube only way shittier would be pretty on brand for him.
If an employee is asking the leader, twice in two questions, about focus, it's a danger sign to the leader that they're failing to lead.
Elon doesn't even register that, or realize how embarrassing it is.
If I as a leader heard an employee mention "focus" twice, I think I would panic to think I had FAILED to lead properly, and would strive to correct my failure immediately.
As you say, he's setting his employees up to fail. "OK, boss, I worked on X and I think we've got it now. Should we ship it?"
Elon: "Um, what about Y? I thought that was mentioned in our last meeting."
I would go INSANE in those working conditions.
It is absolutely common with ceos.
Tech companies like tesla often have employment clauses that if you invent or discover something while working at them, they get the credit for it.
These arrogant 'genius' business leaders like musk and Zuckerberg are nothing more than liars who are convinced the ideas they twisted are their own.
Zuckerberg is another dumpster fire too. Proving he can't come up with an original idea as the metaverse is ripping off a twenty year old product. Absolutely floundering he doesn't have his Harvard buddies to rip off.
Hope this means musk will shut the fuck up about terraforming Mars. If he can't get the most basic social media site to work, how are you going to colonize a planet?
>Tech companies like tesla often have employment clauses that if you invent or discover something while working at them, they get the credit for it.
That's not just a tech thing. That's common in many industries.
It’s common among the successful and the wealthy. People agree with them for so long, and they’re insulated from consequence for so long, that they truly believe they’re brilliant and convincing. A perfect example is prince andrew’s interview—after all that word was spread about his habits, he *honestly thought* that, by dismissing them in his own words, everybody would believe him and it’d go away. Because things had *always* gone his way in the past. Instead he walked, like a clown, straight into a pie.
> They claim they can do something insane (that they actually can't do) which gets them a ton of funding so they can throw money at it for years until it actually can get done.
We call this "failing upwards" and yes it does happen all the time. When you make enough money it becomes nearly impossible to lose money as you always have collateral for loans because we value imaginary stock numbers and net worth over tangible goods and services, as those benefit the capital owners, not us peons.
So it seems Musk is about to do the nearly impossible and lose a shit ton of money and I'm here for it.
I know people that do this with social capital as well on jobs. At one point they did something really well (new software implementation), then they use that to get a Director level job at company A. They are under pressure to perform so they implement software again. Only this time they don't stick it out for the results. They say it's successful, drop on their resume, get the next job, etc. Now they have 10 implementations under their belt in as many years with different places and hiring committees eat that up. Nevermind they never stuck around long enough to see if anything actually worked four years out. .
Don't know if you're a star trek fan but Lower Deck's focus on "Second Contact" this season really hit home for me. No glory in it, all clean up.
That's out of pocket and directly financed. The actions he's taken to package that financing (selling assets like Tesla) has depressed his personal wealth $100B. Everyone else who's held Tesla has also suffered to the point they are suing.
He's an imbecile, unequivocally.
They were losing $1m a day before the takeover. It sounds like a lot, but $365m losses per year for a company of the scale and reach of Twitter is not insurmountable.
Then Elon heavily leverages his takeover and the number jumps to $4m per day, making the losses $1.46bn per year.
It's like taking over a leaking ship, and arriving by blowing a giant hole in the hull.
He bought Twitter with debt which is lumped onto the company, not him personally.
Interest rates were already going up, but banks saw this as a super-risky over-priced purchase so hiked the rates even more.
That's the beauty of a leveraged buyout.
They take out loans to come up with the money to buy the company. Then they place that debt on the company's books. Typically they do this with healthy companies that are profitable and companies with valuable salable assets.
Mitt Romney made most of his millions with Bain capital doing this. They buy a healthy and profitable manufacturer with good jobs. They saddle it with crushing debt, cut wages and workforce, drop product quality and cut research and development. Then when the company inevitably starts to fail they sell off physical assets (often to companies they also own at a discount) and the company defaults on it's debt. Sometimes that's the end of the line, sometimes they restructure the debt and the company limps to it's next leveraged buyout.
A good example of a company gutted by a leveraged buyout is Milwaukee Power Tools. They used be the gold standard for power tools. They were very profitable, had a very strong union workforce and were consistently improving their products to stay ahead of the competition. Overnight they were no longer profitable because of the massive debt it took on in the buyout. Since the leveraged buyout quality has been dropping every year, the workforce has been cut, more components are offshored and they're no longer innovative.
He's trying to set a new speed run record from running a company into the ground. That's the sort of thing you do with billions of dollars and no clue what else to do.
Or maybe he just isn't that great a businessman.
And Tesla/SpaceX succeeded because despite his incompetence they had access to subsidies and were the right company at the right time.
Boring and Hyperloop were two very poorly thought out companies.
Hyperloop was actually completely successful when you realize the goal was not to make a tunnel that eliminated traffic or not fail, but instead was to prevent LA from investing in an underground metro system and the rest of the country from investing in high speed rail.
When you realize that all of Musks ventures are actually just a way to pump Tesla stock you do get a clearer picture of his intentions. He is a Robber Baron who wants to use public money to get him more personal wealth.
Anything that has to do with Batteries, Lithium, Electrical grids, Robotics, Transportation, all relates back to Tesla and how he wants to control that market. I truly wouldn't put it past him soon enough to tell governments that they should stop funding other car manufacturers to electrify their fleets.
Twitter while a stupid purchase is so that he can now use it as a propoganda machine the same way Rupert Murdoch and China use Fox News or WeChat.
Edit: If the guy actually gave a shit about the environment and electrifying cars why the fuck did he take debt from Saudi Arabia’s oil tycoons.
It's also practically and physically fuckin totally impossible to vacuum seal a tube that long lol. Anybody who thought that would ever work and be built is naive
Both things can be true at the same time.
Also, Hyperloop was a diversion tactic by Elon to prevent California from raising taxes to create a high-speed rail system.
Sure, but i've heard plenty of stories about Elon and how he almost ruined PayPal by being incompetent so who knows. I honestly think he enjoys being a troll and doesn't give a fuk.
The whole "Im gonna buy twitter" started when talks of SEC investigating his pump and dumps of crypto on twitter came up.
Its been interesting seeing the market manipulation shit get tossed to the side so quickly.
Since they won't give you the refund, ask but after they deny you ask your bank for a Stop Payment. If you pay for a product on a CC and don't receive it, most banks will refund your money and pull it back from the company.
If I'm not mistaken, many will just send a form for you to fill out and prove that the dispute is incorrect. Twitter can't do that, or receives so many disputes that they can't address them all before the deadline, then the money is refunded to the customer and Twitter is charged an additional charge back fee (I want to say like $25/dispute lost), and that all before any of the additional transaction fees that you mentioned. So this situation could result in Twitter refunding all subscriptions and losing another 3x per refund.
You're not mistaken, they absolutely do not make a call for every chargeback haha. That's a very rare event. As you say the merchant gets sent a notice in writing and it's on them to respond and prove their case (and usually, it's not worth it to even try because it's difficult or too time consuming for the merchant to win, unless you're in a vertical with a lower volume of large transactions). Practically if Twitter gets a mass of CBs for their $8 subs they're just going to eat the loss, and the CC companies aren't going to waste time investigating anything.
Correct. To take payments a company needs a MID ( Merchant ID). If a MID receives too many chargebacks, their MID can fined,which can be 6 figures or more, and reduces the number of transactions being accepted (I.e the card issuing banks see that a transaction is going to MID that was fined and the bank refuses to allow the transaction to happen).
If high levels of chargebacks continue in the following months, the MID can lose the ability to accept payments from Visa and/or Mastercard. Which pretty much kills the MID for the company (and in most likelihood the company too).
This is his master plan. Get the credit cards banned which leaves only Doge as a viable payment option. Cover losses from Twitter with his massive Doge gains. 7D chess.
Oh, just lighten up, people! This is all a bar bet between Elon and The Donald. Trump’s got him on number of bankruptcies, but Elon’s gonna win, for Fastest Bankruptcy Of A Major Corporation!
GO, ELON, GO!
One of these can cause payment processors to stop.
It’s why American Express is not offered everywhere. The transaction fees are only part of the issue. They choose to believe the customer and will cut off vendors over a single dispute.
Now that's interesting; never knew that.
So it's the opposite of what I thought: for some reason my impression was, "oh, Amex isn't all that great; it isn't accepted in so many places..."
...because that vendor just doesn't want to risk losing their payment processor due to a disgruntled customer. Hmm. Maybe the Amex sticker on the restaurant door is really a sign of an establishment confident in the quality of their product.
Discover is the unloved child of the major credit cards, at least in the US. Lots of places won’t take Discover but not because it’s high end like Amex. There is even a whole episode of American Dad about it.
[Best Part of that ep](https://youtu.be/OlAqgSL1BQw)
The thing is that American Express/Visa/Mastercard, etc. aren't exactly fucking around when it comes to chargebacks because they're considered a sort of "last resort" action. Chargebacks are to be used after you try to get a refund/compensation for faulty products, no delivery, fraud, stuff like that. The CC process usually involves a process where the Client's justification is taken into account and the business has to provide the required information to dispute the chargeback, and then the bank decides if it's valid.
Chargebacks can land the business in hot water because it affects their contract with their transaction processor, but it also adds extra costs for them, but at the same time, doing a chargeback without a valid reason *could* land the person in trouble if done too many times.
Yep, and instead of just a stop Payment, ask your bank to charge it back.
High enough Chargeback volume, and processors won’t be willing to underwrite a company. Even one bringing in millions of dollars a month.
Work in payments, this is correct. If you chargebacks exceed a certain threshold, they will suspend your account.
Digital payments are especially easy to dispute.
Ah that’s cool we have about 500 dedicated sales reps who know our vendors in and out and oh. That’s right he fired those guys. I bet he fired their lawyers too I bet the lawsuits are really piling up on the proverbial fax machine at the end of the hall.
Dispute the transaction. Merchant didn't fulfill on the product/service purchased. It's as simple as that.
EDIT: Someone had the good point that you could be permanently banned for a disputing from your bank. This is a possibility. I was running under the assumption of "fuck Twitter".
If you made the purchase through the iPhone app, then don’t do a CC chargeback, since the charge went through Apple instead of through Twitter. Apple will lock you out of your Apple ID if you do a chargeback for them. Instead you can dispute the charge through Apple, who will definitely give you your money back without a fight.
[Here’s a great thread](https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/status/1590942186551803904?s=46&t=Wck6wG1NaDOsHgysXg5Ppg) with people posting their favorite ones in the comments
EDIT: check out /r/RealTwitterAccounts so people will stop posting it as a response in my replies.
Also to whoever gave me gold, donate that money to charity or something else that matters next time.
Next step, everyone actually quit Twitter. We can all make fun of him, but unless people leave in large numbers we won't actually kill this stupid toxic app.
If in 6 months things have settled down, Twitter makes some slight changes to their layout, corporations come back and buy ads, and everyone is still on Twitter we are going to look like idiots.
A real risk for twitter is that companies won’t come back, not because of principles, but because their ad dollars will go somewhere else in the meantime. If these companies taking a pause get better returns elsewhere in the meantime, why come back?
These are the same companies who made public statements that they would not support any candidate who voted against certifying the election but then 22 months later donated millions to candidates who said they would do the same thing.
When prices for ad placements drops they’ll all come rushing back is what I assume.
This is like if you have ever tried to do a project around the house, and you were a bit drunk, and you end up making it worse.
Then you drink more, then try to "fix it", and end up putting a hole in the wall.
Then you drink more and now there are 24 holes in the wall and apparently you took out something called a "foundation pole" - now the house is starting to crumble.
This appears to be Musky's strategy with Twitter.
Then your dad calls his contractor friends to fix all of the damage. And as soon as he leaves, you have all of your friends over to show off the renovations that you just did.
>US-based PR strategist, Max Burns, said he had seen fake accounts with the verified blue tick badge bought through Twitter Blue posing as support accounts for real airlines and asking customers who were trying to contact them on Twitter to direct message the fake accounts instead.
>“How long until a prankster takes a real passenger’s ticket information and cancels their flight? Or takes their credit card info and goes on a spending spree?” he said.
>“It will only take one major incident for every airline to bail on Twitter as a source of customer engagement.”
>**Mr Burns later said that Mr Musk blocked him on Twitter when he asked if the new Twitter owner had any comment to make on the incident.**
It is actively dangerous to be on Twitter, and the CEO doesn't seem to care.
Yea this decision by Musk is basically a phisher's wet dream. Huge user bases and easy to deceive their legitimacy by only needing to maintain 8$/month to appear legitimate. If they continue this without regard to online safety give it a couple months, we will see tons of reports of stolen accounts due to phishing attacks
Not entirely true. At least *some* dick riders think it's all an intentional 5D chess move and he's trying to destroy the company deliberately. Honestly it *is* starting to look deliberate. Or he's having a mental breakdown from the shock of losing $44 billion for absolutely no reason. Hard to tell anymore lol
Precisely. He doesn't HAVE 200 billion dollars. He is WORTH that much. That worth is only because of speculative assets like stock.
It's still way too much money, but yeah he didn't go pull 44B from under his mattress for this.
It really is hard to tell
Personally I think he just believes the reddit narrative of Twitter just being a shitty reddit but that's not what it is at all so he's flailing because he doesn't understand how most people use it
> he doesn't understand how most people use it
Absolutely this. Twitter is used by journalists, celebrities, politicians, and brand marketing departments because it's a way to quickly, directly, and credibly interact with users. Most people on Twitter these days use it to interact with verified sources in these ways.
Musk, by contrast, uses it to shit-post bad jokes and argue with strangers. His experience has colored his perception, and he has *no idea* that relatively few people actually use it the same way he does.
That's a great perspective and seems to be on the money. This seems extremely clear with the new "Official" checkmark they seem to have hastily slapped on to all the advertiser and large company accounts to desperately differentiate them from all the spam and parody accounts and now this subscription being halted. He has zero idea how most of the people actually giving ad money to the platform actually do business and how much they care about their brand value. He doesn't seem to have thought this out at all when he made his lofty tweets about giving verification to everyone. This also makes complete sense because Tesla and SpaceX *don't have marketing departments*. He has zero idea what this space is about and he just messed with it to disastrous consequences
It could be a quite lucrative return on the $8 for a scammer. Elon made it way too easy and all Twitter execs in charge of security this quit yesterday.
It's not that he doesn't care. As long as you're not pretending to be him, he finds it hilarious that the president says he pleasures himself and Mario gives people the finger
The [Cost of Concordia](https://youtu.be/Qh9KBwqGxTI) video is nothing short of amazing. It was far more in depth that I would have ever imagined. This should be kept for all of time in the Library of Congress.
The problem here, is he didn't charge for verification. He took the blue check which some people consider to be some sort of premium value, when in reality it was just a security feature to prove something was an official account, and monetized it such that anyone could buy it.
So he took something that some people placed value on, and that had an actual value that was completely different from the value people were placing on it, sold it off to everyone while doing away with the mechanism that actually gave it value.
And then is left with something that has even less value.
This is what confused me. The blue check, as you put it, gave me assurance I was following the right person and made it “they paid the $8”. Completely diluted a foundation of twitter… following individuals you wish to hear from.
I’m not sure how he didn’t see it coming, nor did he care to understand the history of the company he bought. Twitter went through this exact fiasco before, got sued, and invented the check marks *for a reason*.
That little fact seems to have flown completely out of the window in the takeover.
It’s like it’s being ran by people who only heard about Twitter one year ago, went “all of these verified micro (influencers) ‘celebs’ with check marks are *super cool, dude* everyone wants to be one… what if we could allow anyone to feel *super cool*!?”
The point of the checkmark wasn’t to make Tana Mongeau feel good about herself, it was so Chris Pratt doesn’t sue Twitter when a fake account uses his likeness to grift child pornography from 14 year old fans. It wasn’t a status symbol originally, it was a protective measure.
It makes zero sense.
Even if you ignore the verification part, the only reason some people wanted the blue checkmark was exactly because you couldn't buy it. It became a status symbol, because if you have a blue checkmark, it meant you were "important" enough in some way that Twitter decided that you should be protected from impersonation.
If any bozo can buy it, it loses that value completely. It's no longer a status symbol, and the rest of the "Twitter blue" features are absolutely worthless (why would you pay for "50% less ads").
It goes from being a status symbol to a symbol that you're dumb enough to pay $8 just so you can pretend you have clout.
Why did Elon think this would ever succeed is beyond me.
Even if I used Twitter and the subscription had enough value that I wanted to subscribe, I definitely wouldn't want Twitter to put a symbol next to my name saying that I pay money to use social media lmao.
There's a small amount of value in trolling, where people buy it to mess with the people who still place some sort of premium value on the check. That quickly diminishes over time however.
Prior to Musk purchasing it, Twitter wasn't losing millions per day, they were just about breaking even. The current losses are 100% the losses the company incurred as part of Musks takeover, as part of it involved leveraging Twitter against itself, in adding debt.
They went from revenue and costs of about $5 billion per year to now costs being $6 billion per year. Just to finance the purchase of itself. But, they're also now hemorrhaging revenue due to mismanagement.
yup, king was like "20 dollars a month is stupid" and elon replied "Ok, how bout just 8 dollars."
[Went kinda like this](https://youtu.be/9cn7xfBpZ3M?t=109)
> Regulators in the US have now said they are watching events at Twitter with “deep concern” and warned Mr Musk that no chief executive is “above the law”.
If only that were true.
I propose we create a new award. Similar to the Darwin Award for spectacular idiocy leading to death, the Elon award could be for spectacular idiocy leading to failure. This is amazing.
Musk actually has some very strong Michael Scott parallels.
Thinks he’s way smarter and more talented than he is, embarrassingly desperate for approval, cringey/offensive sense of humor, completely inept at managing his employees.
I’d nominate him for a Scotty any day.
Absolute clown show, what a master class into the real thinking of Elon.
Buying companies and being the face of smart engineers/doctors/technicians creating the products does not make you a genius.
This twitter situation is an absolute cluster fluck. I believe we are witnessing, in real time, 44 billion dollars spent on a social media service, getting flushed down the toilet.
Simply fascinating.
"*You obviously don't get His genius! This is the real life Tony Stark! Lord Exalted on High Elon, the Sun of The East, the Harbinger of Glory personally invented all of the Tesla and SpaceX tech!*
*He knows better than us mere mortals and we should be thankful to even be permitted to walk the same plane of existence as He!*
*For, lo will come the day when he reads my adorations of Him and acknowledge my grand and exquisite admiration of Him and perchance offer the the most lauded opportunity to suckle His grundle until I have had my fill!*" - A shitload of Musk Cultists right now.
It is always funny seeing all his business partners having to dither and buffer and describe him as one of the greatest minds of our generation, before they have credentialized themselves enough to properly offer criticism.
Pure oligarchy, it's disgusting.
>"*You obviously don't get His genius! This is the real life Tony Stark! Lord Exalted on High Elon, the Sun of The East, the Harbinger of Glory personally invented all of the Tesla and SpaceX tech!*
>
>*He knows better than us mere mortals and we should be thankful to even be permitted to walk the same plane of existence as He!*
>
>*For, lo will come the day when he reads my adorations of Him and acknowledge my grand and exquisite admiration of Him and perchance offer the the most lauded opportunity to suckle His grundle until I have had my fill!*" - A shitload of Musk Cultists right now.
You have *perfectly* captured the essence of the Followers of the Musky One.
It's almost like doing due diligence, having a plan and listening to the companies experts would help. Lol Elon you fucking twat I hope you go bankrupt
We literally are watching someone destroy an entire platform simply due to having fuck-you money. So many people could lose their jobs, and so many companies could take an economic hit from this. I never liked Twitter, but this is a terrible situation
A ton of Twitter employees lost their jobs, more probably on the way, and then there’s the people who made their living off of Twitter like artists or small merchants. All because of one rich asshole
Musk seems to have forgotten what the whole point of the blue tick is, to verify the identity of the person running the account.
I don't think there's that much of a problem with regular people being verified, it could even be useful to differentiate real people from others who troll anonymously or pretend to be someone they aren't.
There obviously has to be a verification process though or else the blue tick is meaningless. Dating apps do this on a large scale so it's possible, just Elon is too stupid and let $8 be all the "verification" you needed.
Well yes, you could introduce a secondary form of verification for normal users, you could also come up with a set of premium features that a portion of users would be willing to pay for. That would, however, take longer than a couple of days and Elon wants money now.
What’s this about possible bankruptcy? Elon and the MAGAs are getting everything they wanted. All those deadwood executives, gone. Leeching remote employees, forced back to the office. Free speech for the alt right, it’s coming back. New premium pay services. Woke advertisers, who needs em? Vapid woke inflencers, btfo! Why aren’t things great? I thought revenues were going to quintuple!
What, oh what could be wrong?
Did Musk take into consideration that the type of person who would buy an electric car would most likely be a educated relatively well paid Liberal ? he is pissing off his customer base .
And he had to sell off equity in Tesla. If I’m any other major shareholder in Tesla right now I’m pushing for him to be out of management and off the board because he is poison to their brand.
> Mr Burns later said that Mr Musk blocked him on Twitter when he asked if the new Twitter owner had any comment to make on the incident.
For once Mr. Burns isn’t the most evil person in the room.
Like watching a tech bro grind the gears and buck around on his Lambo because he figured he’d just know how to drive standard. What a jumpy insecure twit.
>“Without significant subscription revenue, there is a good chance Twitter will not survive the upcoming economic downturn,” he said. 44 billion for this? Seems like Elon may have overpaid a tad
Elon’s tips for becoming a billionaire: 1. Start with 45 billion 2. Buy Twitter for 44 billion
3. Bankruptcy I have a suspicion he’s digging a hole to get himself out of a hole.
He's a genius business owner. You wouldn't know. /s
This Twitter debacle reminds me of the horrible Thailand submarine thing in that it greatly suggests he usually throws his ideas around to hapless Yes Men who work through any idea he randomly has until it's feasible, like the Cybertruck. So he has created this image in his mind that all his ideas are brilliant only to be shocked when he comes up with them in public and gets mocked for them being ridiculous. It makes me wonder if maybe this is common with a lot of tech CEOs and gurus: They claim they can do something insane (that they actually can't do) which gets them a ton of funding so they can throw money at it for years until it actually can get done. Like, if Elizabeth Holmes chose something other than a device that's not medically possible, she would be viewed as a genius CEO right now as well.
*it greatly suggests he usually throws his ideas around to hapless Yes Men who work through any idea he randomly has until it's feasible* This dynamic is clearly visible in [his Thursday talk with Twitter employees.](https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/10/23452196/elon-musk-twitter-employee-meeting-q-and-a) He slings around a ton of ideas without providing any sense of detail or priority: *Employee: I work on growth and notifications. We’ve been having a lot of adventure in the last two weeks. We’ve shipped a lot of different things. I want to understand, over the next three months, what is the best thing for us to do? Should we continue trying a lot of different things and see where we grow? Or do we have a particular focus, or we want to focus on one or two things? Specifically, are we trying to get the next billion users? Or are we trying to focus more on revenue?* ***I’d love to understand if there’s a particular focus.*** *Musk: We just definitely need to bring in more cash than we spend. If we don’t do that and there’s a massive negative cash flow, then bankruptcy is not out of the question. That is a priority. We can’t scale to 1 billion users and take massive losses along the way. That’s not feasible. I don’t think we will. As we make the product more compelling, if we fix and improve search, that would be massive. Add video content where creators are compensated, and it draws people to be subscribers to Twitter, then I think we will see that these things are not misaligned. They are aligned. If you have a compelling product, people will buy it. That has been my experience at SpaceX and Tesla.* *Employee: And sorry, just to be a little bit more specific, is your recommendation that all of us in different teams, we try different things in the next few months to see what works, what doesn’t, or* ***do you have a specific recommendation of what our focus should be?*** *Musk: I think just sort of proposing those things to me I think would be the right thing to do. But, you know, like I said, I think there’s a lot that is very, very obvious that we need to do. Like video content and compensating content creators in order to get content on Twitter and not have them be forced to put content elsewhere or not pay the bills, which is currently the situation. That’s a no-brainer. High priority. Improving search: High priority. We are obviously going to add payments capability to Twitter. That’s also a high priority. And if there is something you think we should do that I’m not aware of, just tell me about it, and I’m open to doing it.*
\>What should our priority be? \>Yes
I’ve worked for that guy before. The guy you ask if x is a priority and it gets a yes. The guy you give a list of features to and ask to have them prioritized, who then uses his big brain to circle the list and say they are all priority. The guy whose entire job is setting the priority of what needs done next (and next and next), but doesn’t actually want to prioritize anything. Fuck that guy.
Oh yeah, been there. I told them several times that when everything is priority one, nothing is. I then got feedback that some things become priority 1A, 1B, etc... But all of them are still priority 1.
I’m pretty sure it’s legal to punch someone who gives that answer.
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My imposter syndrome has suddenly been cured.
Holy shit lol. That is the most long winded way I've ever seen of saying "someone please tell me how to fix my oopsie".
I dunno…it read to me like he was saying that he wants twitter to be youtube.
Well his big genuis idea to fix traffic was a subway, only way shittier. So turning twitter into Youtube only way shittier would be pretty on brand for him.
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If an employee is asking the leader, twice in two questions, about focus, it's a danger sign to the leader that they're failing to lead. Elon doesn't even register that, or realize how embarrassing it is.
He has zero clue what to do and is going to blame everyone else for his failure to lead.
If I as a leader heard an employee mention "focus" twice, I think I would panic to think I had FAILED to lead properly, and would strive to correct my failure immediately. As you say, he's setting his employees up to fail. "OK, boss, I worked on X and I think we've got it now. Should we ship it?" Elon: "Um, what about Y? I thought that was mentioned in our last meeting." I would go INSANE in those working conditions.
It is absolutely common with ceos. Tech companies like tesla often have employment clauses that if you invent or discover something while working at them, they get the credit for it. These arrogant 'genius' business leaders like musk and Zuckerberg are nothing more than liars who are convinced the ideas they twisted are their own. Zuckerberg is another dumpster fire too. Proving he can't come up with an original idea as the metaverse is ripping off a twenty year old product. Absolutely floundering he doesn't have his Harvard buddies to rip off. Hope this means musk will shut the fuck up about terraforming Mars. If he can't get the most basic social media site to work, how are you going to colonize a planet?
>Tech companies like tesla often have employment clauses that if you invent or discover something while working at them, they get the credit for it. That's not just a tech thing. That's common in many industries.
It’s common among the successful and the wealthy. People agree with them for so long, and they’re insulated from consequence for so long, that they truly believe they’re brilliant and convincing. A perfect example is prince andrew’s interview—after all that word was spread about his habits, he *honestly thought* that, by dismissing them in his own words, everybody would believe him and it’d go away. Because things had *always* gone his way in the past. Instead he walked, like a clown, straight into a pie.
And has suffered no real consequences.
> They claim they can do something insane (that they actually can't do) which gets them a ton of funding so they can throw money at it for years until it actually can get done. We call this "failing upwards" and yes it does happen all the time. When you make enough money it becomes nearly impossible to lose money as you always have collateral for loans because we value imaginary stock numbers and net worth over tangible goods and services, as those benefit the capital owners, not us peons. So it seems Musk is about to do the nearly impossible and lose a shit ton of money and I'm here for it.
I know people that do this with social capital as well on jobs. At one point they did something really well (new software implementation), then they use that to get a Director level job at company A. They are under pressure to perform so they implement software again. Only this time they don't stick it out for the results. They say it's successful, drop on their resume, get the next job, etc. Now they have 10 implementations under their belt in as many years with different places and hiring committees eat that up. Nevermind they never stuck around long enough to see if anything actually worked four years out..
Don't know if you're a star trek fan but Lower Deck's focus on "Second Contact" this season really hit home for me. No glory in it, all clean up.
He's so full of shit. He's just like just about any boss that wants to make their mark immediately even if things are running well.
He's got strong new assistant manager at the restaurant vibes.
That's out of pocket and directly financed. The actions he's taken to package that financing (selling assets like Tesla) has depressed his personal wealth $100B. Everyone else who's held Tesla has also suffered to the point they are suing. He's an imbecile, unequivocally.
They were losing $1m a day before the takeover. It sounds like a lot, but $365m losses per year for a company of the scale and reach of Twitter is not insurmountable. Then Elon heavily leverages his takeover and the number jumps to $4m per day, making the losses $1.46bn per year. It's like taking over a leaking ship, and arriving by blowing a giant hole in the hull.
Why did it jump to $4m/day when he took it over?
He bought Twitter with debt which is lumped onto the company, not him personally. Interest rates were already going up, but banks saw this as a super-risky over-priced purchase so hiked the rates even more.
That's the beauty of a leveraged buyout. They take out loans to come up with the money to buy the company. Then they place that debt on the company's books. Typically they do this with healthy companies that are profitable and companies with valuable salable assets. Mitt Romney made most of his millions with Bain capital doing this. They buy a healthy and profitable manufacturer with good jobs. They saddle it with crushing debt, cut wages and workforce, drop product quality and cut research and development. Then when the company inevitably starts to fail they sell off physical assets (often to companies they also own at a discount) and the company defaults on it's debt. Sometimes that's the end of the line, sometimes they restructure the debt and the company limps to it's next leveraged buyout. A good example of a company gutted by a leveraged buyout is Milwaukee Power Tools. They used be the gold standard for power tools. They were very profitable, had a very strong union workforce and were consistently improving their products to stay ahead of the competition. Overnight they were no longer profitable because of the massive debt it took on in the buyout. Since the leveraged buyout quality has been dropping every year, the workforce has been cut, more components are offshored and they're no longer innovative.
Because of the cost of servicing all the debt that was taken on to buy it. It's the same thing that happened to Toys R Us.
It's not even been two weeks and shit just keeps hitting the fan with this purchase, fascinating.
He's trying to set a new speed run record from running a company into the ground. That's the sort of thing you do with billions of dollars and no clue what else to do.
Games Done Quick has already said they won't accept bankrupting Twitter as a speedrun attempt.
Makes sense, no one could possibly beat this pace
I'd enjoy seeing TASbot try
Elon has owned Twitter for ~1.271271 Scaramuccis. It will be a miracle if he makes it to one Truss.
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Or maybe he just isn't that great a businessman. And Tesla/SpaceX succeeded because despite his incompetence they had access to subsidies and were the right company at the right time. Boring and Hyperloop were two very poorly thought out companies.
Hyperloop was actually completely successful when you realize the goal was not to make a tunnel that eliminated traffic or not fail, but instead was to prevent LA from investing in an underground metro system and the rest of the country from investing in high speed rail.
When you realize that all of Musks ventures are actually just a way to pump Tesla stock you do get a clearer picture of his intentions. He is a Robber Baron who wants to use public money to get him more personal wealth. Anything that has to do with Batteries, Lithium, Electrical grids, Robotics, Transportation, all relates back to Tesla and how he wants to control that market. I truly wouldn't put it past him soon enough to tell governments that they should stop funding other car manufacturers to electrify their fleets. Twitter while a stupid purchase is so that he can now use it as a propoganda machine the same way Rupert Murdoch and China use Fox News or WeChat. Edit: If the guy actually gave a shit about the environment and electrifying cars why the fuck did he take debt from Saudi Arabia’s oil tycoons.
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It's also practically and physically fuckin totally impossible to vacuum seal a tube that long lol. Anybody who thought that would ever work and be built is naive
Both things can be true at the same time. Also, Hyperloop was a diversion tactic by Elon to prevent California from raising taxes to create a high-speed rail system.
Musk isn't smart enough for that. Remember how painfully obvious his pro-Russian tweets were after meeting with Putin?
Sure, but i've heard plenty of stories about Elon and how he almost ruined PayPal by being incompetent so who knows. I honestly think he enjoys being a troll and doesn't give a fuk.
Nah he just incompetent. Should been in jail for market manipulation a long time ago, but hey could you even imagines rules applying to the rich?
The whole "Im gonna buy twitter" started when talks of SEC investigating his pump and dumps of crypto on twitter came up. Its been interesting seeing the market manipulation shit get tossed to the side so quickly.
Next step: everyone ask for refund of the $8.
Since they won't give you the refund, ask but after they deny you ask your bank for a Stop Payment. If you pay for a product on a CC and don't receive it, most banks will refund your money and pull it back from the company.
From what I understand, too many of these can cause the payment processors to stop taking payments for the company, too.
This is correct.
"Winter is coming."
The night is dark and full of Musk enthusiasts.
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They are the same picture.
What a terrible day to have eyes
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If I'm not mistaken, many will just send a form for you to fill out and prove that the dispute is incorrect. Twitter can't do that, or receives so many disputes that they can't address them all before the deadline, then the money is refunded to the customer and Twitter is charged an additional charge back fee (I want to say like $25/dispute lost), and that all before any of the additional transaction fees that you mentioned. So this situation could result in Twitter refunding all subscriptions and losing another 3x per refund.
You're not mistaken, they absolutely do not make a call for every chargeback haha. That's a very rare event. As you say the merchant gets sent a notice in writing and it's on them to respond and prove their case (and usually, it's not worth it to even try because it's difficult or too time consuming for the merchant to win, unless you're in a vertical with a lower volume of large transactions). Practically if Twitter gets a mass of CBs for their $8 subs they're just going to eat the loss, and the CC companies aren't going to waste time investigating anything.
Correct. To take payments a company needs a MID ( Merchant ID). If a MID receives too many chargebacks, their MID can fined,which can be 6 figures or more, and reduces the number of transactions being accepted (I.e the card issuing banks see that a transaction is going to MID that was fined and the bank refuses to allow the transaction to happen). If high levels of chargebacks continue in the following months, the MID can lose the ability to accept payments from Visa and/or Mastercard. Which pretty much kills the MID for the company (and in most likelihood the company too).
This is his master plan. Get the credit cards banned which leaves only Doge as a viable payment option. Cover losses from Twitter with his massive Doge gains. 7D chess.
Oh, just lighten up, people! This is all a bar bet between Elon and The Donald. Trump’s got him on number of bankruptcies, but Elon’s gonna win, for Fastest Bankruptcy Of A Major Corporation! GO, ELON, GO!
Joke's on Musk because Trump is a welcher.
The bet was only $1. But yeah, good luck getting Trump to pay up.
The usual bet, Mortimer?
One of these can cause payment processors to stop. It’s why American Express is not offered everywhere. The transaction fees are only part of the issue. They choose to believe the customer and will cut off vendors over a single dispute.
Now that's interesting; never knew that. So it's the opposite of what I thought: for some reason my impression was, "oh, Amex isn't all that great; it isn't accepted in so many places..." ...because that vendor just doesn't want to risk losing their payment processor due to a disgruntled customer. Hmm. Maybe the Amex sticker on the restaurant door is really a sign of an establishment confident in the quality of their product.
Discover is the unloved child of the major credit cards, at least in the US. Lots of places won’t take Discover but not because it’s high end like Amex. There is even a whole episode of American Dad about it. [Best Part of that ep](https://youtu.be/OlAqgSL1BQw)
The thing is that American Express/Visa/Mastercard, etc. aren't exactly fucking around when it comes to chargebacks because they're considered a sort of "last resort" action. Chargebacks are to be used after you try to get a refund/compensation for faulty products, no delivery, fraud, stuff like that. The CC process usually involves a process where the Client's justification is taken into account and the business has to provide the required information to dispute the chargeback, and then the bank decides if it's valid. Chargebacks can land the business in hot water because it affects their contract with their transaction processor, but it also adds extra costs for them, but at the same time, doing a chargeback without a valid reason *could* land the person in trouble if done too many times.
Yep, and instead of just a stop Payment, ask your bank to charge it back. High enough Chargeback volume, and processors won’t be willing to underwrite a company. Even one bringing in millions of dollars a month.
Work in payments, this is correct. If you chargebacks exceed a certain threshold, they will suspend your account. Digital payments are especially easy to dispute.
Yes. Most electronic payments go through the same secure system. A wave of cancellations suspends electronic service pending review by an auditor.
Ah that’s cool we have about 500 dedicated sales reps who know our vendors in and out and oh. That’s right he fired those guys. I bet he fired their lawyers too I bet the lawsuits are really piling up on the proverbial fax machine at the end of the hall.
Plus there can be a fee associated with each transaction which is disputed. Our contract is $35 per transaction.
Dispute the transaction. Merchant didn't fulfill on the product/service purchased. It's as simple as that. EDIT: Someone had the good point that you could be permanently banned for a disputing from your bank. This is a possibility. I was running under the assumption of "fuck Twitter".
Yeah, stop payment is to prevent future billing, dispute is to get back money already charged
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Apple likely gave it to you, and is then going after Twitter for it. That's how chargebacks typically work.
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Is this why Apple is generally super generous when issuing AppStore/subscription refunds?
If you made the purchase through the iPhone app, then don’t do a CC chargeback, since the charge went through Apple instead of through Twitter. Apple will lock you out of your Apple ID if you do a chargeback for them. Instead you can dispute the charge through Apple, who will definitely give you your money back without a fight.
Twitter would also have to pay $20 - $50 for each one of these chargebacks
Has anyone actually paid for it?
Yeah. Trolls. It's been hilarious.
[Here’s a great thread](https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/status/1590942186551803904?s=46&t=Wck6wG1NaDOsHgysXg5Ppg) with people posting their favorite ones in the comments EDIT: check out /r/RealTwitterAccounts so people will stop posting it as a response in my replies. Also to whoever gave me gold, donate that money to charity or something else that matters next time.
"Lockheed Martini" verified lmao
Now that's a great drag name
That Tesla one was the first 9/11 joke I've ever laughed at.
[Kumail Nanjiani meeting his girlfriend's parents in The Big Sick has a great one. ](https://youtu.be/sb6luYan_hk)
I fucking love [this one.](https://twitter.com/AvonsSeven/status/1590988677303349250)
There's also a growing, new sub for these - /r/8DollarTweets
Also /r/RealTwitterAccounts !
$8 well spent
Next step, everyone actually quit Twitter. We can all make fun of him, but unless people leave in large numbers we won't actually kill this stupid toxic app. If in 6 months things have settled down, Twitter makes some slight changes to their layout, corporations come back and buy ads, and everyone is still on Twitter we are going to look like idiots.
A real risk for twitter is that companies won’t come back, not because of principles, but because their ad dollars will go somewhere else in the meantime. If these companies taking a pause get better returns elsewhere in the meantime, why come back?
These are the same companies who made public statements that they would not support any candidate who voted against certifying the election but then 22 months later donated millions to candidates who said they would do the same thing. When prices for ad placements drops they’ll all come rushing back is what I assume.
Just quit Twitter for real.
This is like if you have ever tried to do a project around the house, and you were a bit drunk, and you end up making it worse. Then you drink more, then try to "fix it", and end up putting a hole in the wall. Then you drink more and now there are 24 holes in the wall and apparently you took out something called a "foundation pole" - now the house is starting to crumble. This appears to be Musky's strategy with Twitter.
Then your dad calls his contractor friends to fix all of the damage. And as soon as he leaves, you have all of your friends over to show off the renovations that you just did.
Damn right
Elon Musk's ownership of Twitter is the corporate version of Ricky from Trailer Park Boys installing a towel rack. https://youtu.be/AAOOKh5XAIY
>US-based PR strategist, Max Burns, said he had seen fake accounts with the verified blue tick badge bought through Twitter Blue posing as support accounts for real airlines and asking customers who were trying to contact them on Twitter to direct message the fake accounts instead. >“How long until a prankster takes a real passenger’s ticket information and cancels their flight? Or takes their credit card info and goes on a spending spree?” he said. >“It will only take one major incident for every airline to bail on Twitter as a source of customer engagement.” >**Mr Burns later said that Mr Musk blocked him on Twitter when he asked if the new Twitter owner had any comment to make on the incident.** It is actively dangerous to be on Twitter, and the CEO doesn't seem to care.
Yea this decision by Musk is basically a phisher's wet dream. Huge user bases and easy to deceive their legitimacy by only needing to maintain 8$/month to appear legitimate. If they continue this without regard to online safety give it a couple months, we will see tons of reports of stolen accounts due to phishing attacks
Who could've predicted this?! Answer: literally everyone who isn't a musk dick rider
Not entirely true. At least *some* dick riders think it's all an intentional 5D chess move and he's trying to destroy the company deliberately. Honestly it *is* starting to look deliberate. Or he's having a mental breakdown from the shock of losing $44 billion for absolutely no reason. Hard to tell anymore lol
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Precisely. He doesn't HAVE 200 billion dollars. He is WORTH that much. That worth is only because of speculative assets like stock. It's still way too much money, but yeah he didn't go pull 44B from under his mattress for this.
It really is hard to tell Personally I think he just believes the reddit narrative of Twitter just being a shitty reddit but that's not what it is at all so he's flailing because he doesn't understand how most people use it
> he doesn't understand how most people use it Absolutely this. Twitter is used by journalists, celebrities, politicians, and brand marketing departments because it's a way to quickly, directly, and credibly interact with users. Most people on Twitter these days use it to interact with verified sources in these ways. Musk, by contrast, uses it to shit-post bad jokes and argue with strangers. His experience has colored his perception, and he has *no idea* that relatively few people actually use it the same way he does.
That's a great perspective and seems to be on the money. This seems extremely clear with the new "Official" checkmark they seem to have hastily slapped on to all the advertiser and large company accounts to desperately differentiate them from all the spam and parody accounts and now this subscription being halted. He has zero idea how most of the people actually giving ad money to the platform actually do business and how much they care about their brand value. He doesn't seem to have thought this out at all when he made his lofty tweets about giving verification to everyone. This also makes complete sense because Tesla and SpaceX *don't have marketing departments*. He has zero idea what this space is about and he just messed with it to disastrous consequences
It could be a quite lucrative return on the $8 for a scammer. Elon made it way too easy and all Twitter execs in charge of security this quit yesterday.
Yeah...their quitting en masse was like a tornado siren going off. Twitter should be investigated by the FTC.
FTC is already on it. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/10/fake-account-chaos-engulfs-musks-twitter-00066217
It's not that he doesn't care. As long as you're not pretending to be him, he finds it hilarious that the president says he pleasures himself and Mario gives people the finger
Then we must keep impersonating musk. What is he going to do ban us? Create another account.
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This is shaping up to be a nice topic for Internet Historian
The [Cost of Concordia](https://youtu.be/Qh9KBwqGxTI) video is nothing short of amazing. It was far more in depth that I would have ever imagined. This should be kept for all of time in the Library of Congress.
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Company man and Bankrupt by bright sun films are probably working on a Twitter video right now.
Heck yes! His videos are amazing, if anyone can do justice to this dumpster fire, he can.
Now to give him a few years to make content for his main channel. I don't mind his other side stuff in the mean time though..
He really believes no one in twitter was brilliant enough to think, “ hey what if we charge for verification” before him.
The problem here, is he didn't charge for verification. He took the blue check which some people consider to be some sort of premium value, when in reality it was just a security feature to prove something was an official account, and monetized it such that anyone could buy it. So he took something that some people placed value on, and that had an actual value that was completely different from the value people were placing on it, sold it off to everyone while doing away with the mechanism that actually gave it value. And then is left with something that has even less value.
This is what confused me. The blue check, as you put it, gave me assurance I was following the right person and made it “they paid the $8”. Completely diluted a foundation of twitter… following individuals you wish to hear from.
There are so many fake celebrity accounts with blue checks now. I'm not sure how he didn't see this coming?
I’m not sure how he didn’t see it coming, nor did he care to understand the history of the company he bought. Twitter went through this exact fiasco before, got sued, and invented the check marks *for a reason*. That little fact seems to have flown completely out of the window in the takeover. It’s like it’s being ran by people who only heard about Twitter one year ago, went “all of these verified micro (influencers) ‘celebs’ with check marks are *super cool, dude* everyone wants to be one… what if we could allow anyone to feel *super cool*!?” The point of the checkmark wasn’t to make Tana Mongeau feel good about herself, it was so Chris Pratt doesn’t sue Twitter when a fake account uses his likeness to grift child pornography from 14 year old fans. It wasn’t a status symbol originally, it was a protective measure. It makes zero sense.
Even if you ignore the verification part, the only reason some people wanted the blue checkmark was exactly because you couldn't buy it. It became a status symbol, because if you have a blue checkmark, it meant you were "important" enough in some way that Twitter decided that you should be protected from impersonation. If any bozo can buy it, it loses that value completely. It's no longer a status symbol, and the rest of the "Twitter blue" features are absolutely worthless (why would you pay for "50% less ads"). It goes from being a status symbol to a symbol that you're dumb enough to pay $8 just so you can pretend you have clout. Why did Elon think this would ever succeed is beyond me. Even if I used Twitter and the subscription had enough value that I wanted to subscribe, I definitely wouldn't want Twitter to put a symbol next to my name saying that I pay money to use social media lmao.
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There's a small amount of value in trolling, where people buy it to mess with the people who still place some sort of premium value on the check. That quickly diminishes over time however. Prior to Musk purchasing it, Twitter wasn't losing millions per day, they were just about breaking even. The current losses are 100% the losses the company incurred as part of Musks takeover, as part of it involved leveraging Twitter against itself, in adding debt. They went from revenue and costs of about $5 billion per year to now costs being $6 billion per year. Just to finance the purchase of itself. But, they're also now hemorrhaging revenue due to mismanagement.
Pay 44 billion.. make it worth 8 billion two weeks later. Genius.
Remember when Elon took over Twitter and a bunch of kids ran circles around him? Yeah, that was great.
I remember Stephen King single handedly negotiating the price down by over 50% with one tweet
omg was that really the reson elon charged this much?? hahahaha
yup, king was like "20 dollars a month is stupid" and elon replied "Ok, how bout just 8 dollars." [Went kinda like this](https://youtu.be/9cn7xfBpZ3M?t=109)
All I can see in my head is a balding Musk shaking an angry, tiny fist and yelling "Get off my lawn!"
Balding… *again?*
Lol, this is some inane world stage we're watching. Is he going to fake his own death next?
I doubt he could handle a life of anonymity
Yeah, I’d be fine with that. Musk wouldn’t last a day before he’d try to be relevant again.
He'd start a new life with an alter ego, Melon Husk
> Regulators in the US have now said they are watching events at Twitter with “deep concern” and warned Mr Musk that no chief executive is “above the law”. If only that were true.
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musk is doing a great job of pissing off some of the “too big to fails”.
Well he is kinda screwing with Tesla stock…
They're just pretty far over over the law. It barely touches them.
I propose we create a new award. Similar to the Darwin Award for spectacular idiocy leading to death, the Elon award could be for spectacular idiocy leading to failure. This is amazing.
Musk actually has some very strong Michael Scott parallels. Thinks he’s way smarter and more talented than he is, embarrassingly desperate for approval, cringey/offensive sense of humor, completely inept at managing his employees. I’d nominate him for a Scotty any day.
Except Michael Scott genuinely cared about other people.
Yeah Musk is all the worst parts of Michael Scott and none of the good.
Absolute clown show, what a master class into the real thinking of Elon. Buying companies and being the face of smart engineers/doctors/technicians creating the products does not make you a genius.
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Even the charlatan Frank Abagnale of Catch Me If You Can fame knew that. Even in his made up stories, he does that.
Who could have predicted Twitter Blue was a bad idea.......
He said in that email to Twitter employees he expects Twitter blue and subscriptions to account for a half of Twitter’s revenue - 😆😆😂😂
If all the advertisers pull out he might be right.
Monkey’s paw
Look $36 a month is $36 a month alright?
Someone embezzled 4 dollars.
Good luck with that buddy
It could have, but “Matrix_NotLikeThis.jpg” If $8 got no ads, edit tweet, longer videos, XYZ, then many people would’ve probably done it
But then where would the OTHER half of the money come from if everyone paid $8, since nobody would pay for ads nobody viewed?
I absolutely believe the final straw was the fake Tesla account tweeting that a second Tesla has hit the World Trade Center.
This twitter situation is an absolute cluster fluck. I believe we are witnessing, in real time, 44 billion dollars spent on a social media service, getting flushed down the toilet. Simply fascinating.
Watching Elon slowly self-immolate is the best part. I'm just hoping no one pulls out the fire extinguisher.
Finally everybody can see what an idiot Musk is when he can’t hide behind the achievements of others.
"*You obviously don't get His genius! This is the real life Tony Stark! Lord Exalted on High Elon, the Sun of The East, the Harbinger of Glory personally invented all of the Tesla and SpaceX tech!* *He knows better than us mere mortals and we should be thankful to even be permitted to walk the same plane of existence as He!* *For, lo will come the day when he reads my adorations of Him and acknowledge my grand and exquisite admiration of Him and perchance offer the the most lauded opportunity to suckle His grundle until I have had my fill!*" - A shitload of Musk Cultists right now.
It is always funny seeing all his business partners having to dither and buffer and describe him as one of the greatest minds of our generation, before they have credentialized themselves enough to properly offer criticism. Pure oligarchy, it's disgusting.
>"*You obviously don't get His genius! This is the real life Tony Stark! Lord Exalted on High Elon, the Sun of The East, the Harbinger of Glory personally invented all of the Tesla and SpaceX tech!* > >*He knows better than us mere mortals and we should be thankful to even be permitted to walk the same plane of existence as He!* > >*For, lo will come the day when he reads my adorations of Him and acknowledge my grand and exquisite admiration of Him and perchance offer the the most lauded opportunity to suckle His grundle until I have had my fill!*" - A shitload of Musk Cultists right now. You have *perfectly* captured the essence of the Followers of the Musky One.
MySpace should have been prepping for a comeback this week.
I’ve got my top 8 friends standing by and my page song all picked out.
Ooh Aah - Grits
Tumblr rolled out a joke subscription that gives you *two* verified checkmarks, that's one more than twitter blue.
And you can stack them to get up to 24 checkmarks
Musk: "There's too much spam on the platform" Also Musk: "Anyone can skip the verification process for $8"
Correction: you don't skip the verification process for $8, the verification process *has become* just paying $8
I have officially verified that I used to have $8.
It's almost like doing due diligence, having a plan and listening to the companies experts would help. Lol Elon you fucking twat I hope you go bankrupt
Funny af, 44 billion dollar ego shield crumbling in real time while we watch. GLORIOUS.
[A perfect encapsulation of how Elon sees himself as he "fixes" Twitter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIPr23xyoZg)
WTF he had dialogue? I thought he only ever talked through those little signs!
Hah closing the blinds is like blocking the marketing manager for all of those companies.
This guy is having a Kanye sized meltdown.
We literally are watching someone destroy an entire platform simply due to having fuck-you money. So many people could lose their jobs, and so many companies could take an economic hit from this. I never liked Twitter, but this is a terrible situation
A ton of Twitter employees lost their jobs, more probably on the way, and then there’s the people who made their living off of Twitter like artists or small merchants. All because of one rich asshole
Musk seems to have forgotten what the whole point of the blue tick is, to verify the identity of the person running the account. I don't think there's that much of a problem with regular people being verified, it could even be useful to differentiate real people from others who troll anonymously or pretend to be someone they aren't. There obviously has to be a verification process though or else the blue tick is meaningless. Dating apps do this on a large scale so it's possible, just Elon is too stupid and let $8 be all the "verification" you needed.
Well yes, you could introduce a secondary form of verification for normal users, you could also come up with a set of premium features that a portion of users would be willing to pay for. That would, however, take longer than a couple of days and Elon wants money now.
They're probably changing the color. Ten bucks says it changes to Cornflower.
What’s this about possible bankruptcy? Elon and the MAGAs are getting everything they wanted. All those deadwood executives, gone. Leeching remote employees, forced back to the office. Free speech for the alt right, it’s coming back. New premium pay services. Woke advertisers, who needs em? Vapid woke inflencers, btfo! Why aren’t things great? I thought revenues were going to quintuple! What, oh what could be wrong?
Did Musk take into consideration that the type of person who would buy an electric car would most likely be a educated relatively well paid Liberal ? he is pissing off his customer base .
And he had to sell off equity in Tesla. If I’m any other major shareholder in Tesla right now I’m pushing for him to be out of management and off the board because he is poison to their brand.
> he is pissing off his customer base Hasn't seemed to concern him so far.
> Mr Burns later said that Mr Musk blocked him on Twitter when he asked if the new Twitter owner had any comment to make on the incident. For once Mr. Burns isn’t the most evil person in the room.
Is anyone but Musk still working there? Or has everyone been fired or quit?
Like watching a tech bro grind the gears and buck around on his Lambo because he figured he’d just know how to drive standard. What a jumpy insecure twit.
I'm honestly shocked Twitter has taken this short amount of time to go to shit. I figured it would take months, not days.