Elon Musk

i logged off forever and yet am still exposed to Horrible Tweets basically every day

literally every time this comes up some super users are like "you just gotta rigorously customize your feed, it's so easy" and personally i think you're all sociopaths

i suspect hes got some sort of business idea to make it worth more, not saying its going to work or that its really substantial but kinda doubt hes just doing this for the lolz or whatever

I don't think hes buying it for the lols, and he may or may not have certain plans for it, but what does that look like in practice? If its to make it into a 'free speech haven' or something, I don't see how thats possible, all those free speech alternatives that keep springing up are moderated to the hilt

I know all kinds of twitter bullshit that no one I follow engages in

― Chappies banging dustbin lids together (President Keyes), Tuesday, 26 April 2022 bookmarkflaglink

But you've got an account, that's usually enough.

also the degree to which everyone is performing for the likes undermines it as a useful transmitter of ... information, criticism, *jack voice* consciousness. i should be posting this in the twitter thread

this is why i'm glad ilx has no likes system, you can only tell if your posts are good if everyone says "otm" afterwards

Musk is taking on $25 billion in debt financing to acquire Twitter, at an avg interest rate of between 4.5-5%. That means Twitter's going to have to pay $1.15-$1.3 billion a year in interest alone, which is more than it made before interest and taxes last year.

— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) April 26, 2022

good at business

xxpost I kind of like the "tough room" aspect of ilx. Who cares if a bunch of dum dums like my tweet? I'd rather get a "heh" from a jaded Replacements fan.

literally every time this comes up some super users are like "you just gotta rigorously customize your feed, it's so easy" and personally i think you're all sociopaths

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Tuesday, April 26, 2022 9:49 AM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is 100% right, but I'm also an old cranky twitter user who just uses tweetbot on my phone 99% of the time. it's just people I follow, all chronological

I also stopped replying to comments on tweets that are dumb and just block people who make egregious replies to people I follow instead of replying, because the urge to reply to bad twets gives me bad brain

i like looking straight into the vortex of chaos like those dudes in CHERNOBYL (2019) who opened a door and there was the naked reactor glowing spookily back at them

apparently the terms of the loan Elon took out against his tesla shares are really funny

if he can't pay back the loan -- which he probably never will have to, all these guys do is just chain loans forever -- he'll have to forfeit five times the number of tesla shares compared to its current valuation

related: he mainly wants to play pump-yr-crypto, including w/the algs

people really don't get the "stock rich, cash poor" thing. saw a few tweets about how he could have given every person in the world X amount of dollars instead of buying twitter, etc

there's no cash! if a stock-rich guy wants to buy anything more expensive than a hamburger they just take out a loan against their stock assets

I think ppl saying this is going to fail massively overrate the degree to which insanely rich people fail at anything. At some point, being rich is self-fulfilling.

Expecting capitalism or market forces or whatever to punish the richest person on earth seems to be missing the point.

Mh otm. Afaict, claims the financing is dumb book down the same idea as “the government should run its checking account like a family”

*boil

Elon now on first name basis with EU

Brussels has warned Elon Musk that Twitter must comply with the EU’s new digital rules under his ownership or risk hefty fines or even a ban, setting the stage for a global regulatory battle over the future of the social media platform.

Thierry Breton, the EU’s commissioner for the internal market, told the Financial Times that Elon Musk must follow rules on moderating illegal and harmful content online after Twitter accepted the billionaire’s $44 billion takeover offer.

Breton said: “We welcome everyone. We are open but on our conditions. At least we know what to tell him: ‘Elon, there are rules. You are welcome but these are our rules. It’s not your rules which will apply here.’”

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/eu-warns-elon-musk-over-twitter-moderation-plans/

I don't think hes buying it for the lols, and he may or may not have certain plans for it, but what does that look like in practice? If its to make it into a 'free speech haven' or something, I don't see how thats possible, all those free speech alternatives that keep springing up are moderated to the hilt

― anvil, Tuesday, April 26, 2022 10:51 AM (thirty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i mean obvs i dont know what hes planning but i suspect the free speech thing is just marketing because as everyone knows any internet place with actual free speech will immediately fill with nazis and kiddie porn so i suspect hell make minor "free speech" changes and call it a victory for freedom

as far as predicting what hell do i guess we can look at what hes done with his other businesses which is some sort of mix of extravagant lying in the media and shady accounting, to his credit hes been insanely successful with that approach tho i do think twitter might be difficult to accomplish the same stuff with because its a more mature business and it has an extremely high level of visibility and scrutiny

i could see him spending a bunch of money to juice the stats and then take it public again in a couple years with all his meme stock fans jumping on board, hell prob make some ux changes maybe try to get the newsletter business off the ground which he could then point to as an area of growth, maybe make twitter blue the twitter you pay for worth peoples while

it does seem like he’s taking a massive risk that might tank his cash cow of a car company for no apparent gain, but idk maybe he’s a business genius

not in response to you lagoon, all of that does seem plausible

i think he'll integrate crypto into it somehow, anyhow

hes def some sort of business/media genius, its not nothing to become the richest man in the world, but who knows if his approach is viable long term, i personally wouldnt be surprised if his story ended with a major accounting fraud scandal

maybe that’s the identity verification bit

twitter ids will be blockchain lol

the richest man in the world

It's funny how people repeat this in the very same sentence where they talk about how he has no cash and it's all about grotesquely overvalued (and massively leveraged) Tesla stock. Like, if your "wealth" is entirely based on the collective delusion of speculators, sycophants, and other rich scumbags who don't want to see the balloon pop during their lifetimes, are you really rich? Or does it just look that way on paper?

its paper all the way down, but yeah musk is prob in some ways less rich than the other super rich guys, bill gates still owns a ton of microsoft but at least microsoft is a mature profitable business

when you really think about it the true riches are… friendship

twitter ids will be blockchain lol

― mh, Tuesday, April 26, 2022 11:41 AM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i need to see this attempted, as a fan of engineering disasters

as far as predicting what hell do i guess we can look at what hes done with his other businesses which is some sort of mix of extravagant lying in the media and shady accounting, to his credit hes been insanely successful with that approach

I mean yeah, he's successful in the same sense Trump is. which is a sense that's divorced from what we might think of *real* markers of success like, you know, doing things that are innovative or smart disruptive or actually delivering on any of your promises at all. I mean it's the same with crypto, you can make all the arguments and two-hour long videos you want explaining about how the stuff is idiotic & completely useless, but that only matters if "value" is a tangible thing, and in 2022 what's "valuable" is convincing people who spend 80% of their waking hours on social media that they're cool and smart and that everyone else sucks

Eventually, the house of cards comes down.

yeah i'm not doubting that he has a certain kind of genius, but buying twitter and putting up your car company as collateral is a dumb risk, even if it winds up working out.

I feel like we’re ramping up to the second Brosnan Bond flick, folks, the one with Michelle Yeoh

tbf tesla does make and sell actual cars which differentiates it from crypto which is just nothing, but yeah their certainly is a lot of hot air around both

yeah i'm not doubting that he has a certain kind of genius, but buying twitter and putting up your car company as collateral is a dumb risk, even if it winds up working out.

― in places all over the world, real stuff be happening (voodoo chili), Tuesday, April 26, 2022 11:54 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

saw someone who knows things about him call him the most risk tolerant person theyd ever encountered, which yeah thats prob not going to end well

just going to put this here...

"What is more, Musk has agreed to take out a risky $12.5 billion margin loan, secured against his stock of Tesla Inc (TSLA.O), the electric-car maker that he leads, to pay for some of the $33.5 billion equity check. Were Tesla's stock to drop by 40%, he would have to repay that loan, a regulatory filing shows."

and then note that tesla is down 10.2% so far today.

that's from https://www.reuters.com/business/musk-tears-up-buyout-playbook-with-465-bln-twitter-financing-2022-04-22/

i mean he doesn't actually repay the loan. he just takes out another loan if that happens. but he's stretched!

i do think twitter might be difficult to accomplish the same stuff with because its a more mature business and it has an extremely high level of visibility and scrutiny

true for the content more or less, but their revenue is nearly entirely from the quasi-invisible and underscrutinized world of digital ads

And monetization of user data.

Melty but authoritative tech journo I know says ‘wait, he still has to pass due diligence and a shareholder vote, not so fast’ but OTOH was like, ‘he’s not buying it’ seconds before the announcement. 🤷🏻‍♀️

xp
yeah it's 89% ads, 11% data licensing

tesla is down 10.2% so far today.

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Tuesday, April 26, 2022 12:10 PM (twenty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FQzMUM7WUAMly1w?format=jpg&name=medium

back of the envelope calculation, only googled quick facts that might not be accurate today
Elon has 17% of Tesla, at today's valuation, that's roughly $176 billion
twitter deal is for roughly $44 billion

margin loan is for $12.5 billion

if the payback is really 5x if he fails to pay it off... he's out $62.5 billion (probably off, considering he inked the margin deal at +10% stock price)

so he'd lose 35% of his Tesla stock

idk that still seems like a drop in the bucket

losing that much tesla stock makes him likely to lose even more wealth if the price drops

Each quarter, if Tesla meets certain revenue, earnings and stock price goals, Musk can earn up to two tranches of Tesla options from this award. The $70.01 per share Musk will have to pay to exercise these Tesla options is less than 10% of the company's closing stock price of $977.20 per share on Wednesday.

Nope, as long as Tesla makes money, which they seem to finally be doing, he gets stock at $70 and the current price is still hovering around $900

good work if you can get it

succession clip logan roy asks son kendall roy “is that why you’re paying a billion dollars for a gay little website?” pic.twitter.com/VzsaQmZhdt

— succession clips and reaction videos (@successionreact) April 26, 2022