Elon Musk

one theory i heard was that elon went right in order to court that demo to buy teslas cause he used up all the liberals by selling them shitty cars, i do not think thats true but its a nice theory anyway

― lag∞n, Thursday, November 3, 2022 9:05 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah this strategy is too coherent for elon

i don’t think right wingers drive electric cars…

The Trumpy neighbor across the alley from me drives a plug-in hybrid and just got solar.

sales are already pretty even (you have to be rich enough to buy a Tesla in the first place and thus...) but Elon's not hurting Tesla as a brand with conservatives
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/03/cars/tesla-buyer-politics/index.html

Lol pic.twitter.com/fIpbLlis0k

— Citizen Shane (@ShaneSheehy) November 1, 2022

repost this one Elon

https://i.imgur.com/4o87E2W.jpg

Employees in Twitter just got an email from their bosses saying layoffs are coming tomorrow.

Those who are staying will get a note tomorrow in their work email. Those who are let go will get an email sent to their personal address.

Slot machine-style layoffs.

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) November 4, 2022

Lol Twitter offices closed to ensure safety. This is like being ghosted by your job.

holy shit they're firing coders based on how many lines of code they wrote

an idiot like me wouldve stayed on for sure lmao

has any big company ever fired half its workers WITHOUT immediately going into a death spiral? like within the last 40 years

Why do people think Twitter isn’t worth 45 billion? Recall, Microsoft is currently acquiring Blizzard for 68.7 billion! A handful of companies could and would make that deal. The trickiest bit is getting regulatory approval but I feel like that becomes a lot easier if regulators perceive Musk as sinking the ship.

Blizzard makes a lot of money though don't they

I don't really know anything about coding, but that doesn't seem like the best performance metric?

2021 Twitter revenue was 5 billion. 2021 Blizzard revenue was 8 billion. They both make a lot of money!

microsoft only bought blizzard because they love video games

I kind of think the opposite — people love believing that rich people they have political disagreements with are secretly unimpressive morons, but even if Musk’s Twitter investment goes to $0 he’s still had a tremendous world-changing career with impressive achievements. https://t.co/Jf08I17my7

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) November 4, 2022

Ah see, Mr. Yglesias proves himself thoroughly wrong by being an openly unimpressive moron.

If cost monitoring (or lack thereof) is what I think it’s like, laying off even half a data science department is going to stop hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in random, non-intersecting experiments in figuring out user stats of whatever per month

I haven’t found a company yet who has figured out how to do this intelligently at scale it’s all “gpu machine go brrrrrr”

Why do people think Twitter isn’t worth 45 billion? Recall, Microsoft is currently acquiring Blizzard for 68.7 billion! A handful of companies could and would make that deal. The trickiest bit is getting regulatory approval but I feel like that becomes a lot easier if regulators perceive Musk as sinking the ship.

― Allen (etaeoe), Thursday, November 3, 2022 10:42 PM (yesterday)

twitter's peer companies (meta, snap, goog (via youtube)) are down ~50-80% since april, when elon made his offer. what's sort of neat is that because of musk's lawsuit, you can see what the market thought twitter was worth when they thought the deal would be renegotiated or wouldn't close entirely - and that number wasn't 44 billion! now, noone's saying it won't be worth 44 billion someday in the future, but my personal take is that if that ever happens, it will be due to some rising-tide-floats-all-boats forces such as a return to a ZIRP environment and the exuberance/frothiness of 2020/2021... and that's only if musk hasn't run it into the ground by then!

fyi, activision posted $2.7 billion in profits for 2021, while twitter posted $221 million in losses. so there's part of your answer? also, activision is the one that faces regulatory scrutiny here (via microsoft already being heavy in the gaming business / needing antitrust approval globally), not musk (twitter is not synergistic with electric vehicles nor is it synergistic with launch rockets, although maybe musk thinks one day it could be?). also, the deal already closed so there's not really any more regulatory risk!

Wait so there’s no verification of who is paying for a blue check? Isn’t the entire value of having a blue check is that the person behind it is verified? So if anyone can pay for it, and it no longer means you are verified, what is the value? Why would anyone get a blue check? Just hoping that some dumb people who somehow hadn’t heard about the new blue check policy will think you are the real Joe Biden or something?

musk et al seem to have bought into the idea that a blue check is a status symbol which was never true and if it was then you are of course destroying that value by making this change

its weird cause authentication does have value thats something you could reasonably sell, where as now the blue check is looking more like.......a scarlet letter

idk maybe they arent capable of authenticating people right now because they fired that department

there may be some utility to scammers over the short term until people figure out you can just buy one

But scammers would NEVER pay a small amount for potential greater rewards!!!

I become more and more convinced every day that there are androids among us who don’t understand human behavior at all.

My impression is that nearly all of us are saying it won't be worth $44 billion one day?

iirc a big part of the rollout of the blue checkmark back in the day was kind of soft-bullying celebs into joining twitter. like "we cant shut down these 9 imposter accounts unless you join so we can verify you". I remember celeb twitter accounts from back then that just had one pass-ag tweet like "i only joined to get them to delete other accounts, please visit my website"

Elon musk is what happens when the ghosts of a 16 year old edgelord and an 18th century coal baron struggle to control the same body

— Mahogany (@Mahoganytooth) November 4, 2022

The blue check mark was a status symbol tho! Esp for my friends in weird bands who didn’t “deserve” it. Many xxxxxxps

but like just for fun right

well it was funNY that's for sure

i mean there is evidence that people do take them seriously but i dont think its that popular of an idea

things got weird when people assigned value other than "yes this is the person they're claiming to be"

twitter is partially to blame because they don't make you lock your username or (iirc) twitter handle (@) when you're verified. they then tend to revoke your verified status if you abuse it (see: italian elon musk, etc)

Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists.

Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2022

lmao

we tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!!

damn

lmao @ him saying "nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists" the same day he fired literally half the staff

pic.twitter.com/KdiuHd6gaC

— Elon Musk (@ChrisWarcraft) November 4, 2022

gotta admit this is tremendous content

lol former Viking Chris Kluwe! good dude

lol

Whoa https://t.co/J0Xpq6G86T

— Keanu Reeves (@abnerpastoll) November 4, 2022

everyone's doing it now that verification is disappearing lol

I did not expect it to take less than two weeks for it to get this bad. Well done Elon!

it's cool that free speech in America is entirely dependent on advertisers

he loves posting and loves the reaction he’s getting.

not to do the Trumpy "here's what he's REALLY doing" thing for a guy who probably hasn't slept in 4 days but is there a chance he's saying this as a way to justify the massive layoffs without getting sued? I mean legally I'm sure this won't work but Musk seems like one of those "they have to tell you if they're a cop, man" guys

firing 50% of the workforce will be so good for morale - imagine losing that many of your co workers in a day

"Musk plans to eliminate half of Twitter’s workforce to slash costs at the social media platform he acquired for $44 billion last month, people with knowledge of the matter have said. The company must also find ways to cope with interest costs on a massive debt pile."

https://www.pressherald.com/2022/11/04/layoffs-lawsuits-begin-after-musk-takes-twitter-helm/

looks like he's following the letter of the warn act

Latest: “It looks like employees are getting their notices and at least some will be paid until January 4,” says the attorney who sued Twitter under WARN Act. “I am pleased that Elon Musk learned something from the lawsuit we brought against him at Tesla" https://t.co/OMwAAFzLlE

— Josh Eidelson (@josheidelson) November 4, 2022

(accidentaly fires entire ar15 magazine into my foot & leg with 100% accuracy rate) alright. thats fine. heres what i think happened, [1/82]

— wint (@dril) June 9, 2017