So "X" - nothing to see here. Elon's in control - Part XXX

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119888546#Comment_119888546

To be fair nothing is going to make Truth Social be a success.

Elon has, however, effectively turned the previously rather obscure, open source Mastodon network and protocol into a huge deal, and achieved all that in less than two weeks!

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119888432#Comment_119888432

In my case the boss would come up with ludicrous stuff. I remember being sent on wild goose chases all over the country for absolutely no reason. I was made work in an empty office, doing nothing all over Christmas other than it was to show me I was the most junior

I won’t derail the thread by going on…

Agent Coulson

I can’t wait till Musk say this was his plan all along to burn down Twitter and rebuild it from the ashes he created with his new platform Phoenix which rises from the ashes of Twitter and the fanboys lap it up proclaiming him, the greatest minds in the history of world.

McFly85

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119888529#Comment_119888529

Watching a billionaire(and proclaimed genius) buy a company for way over the valuation and seeing every very public decision he’s made backfire is fascinating. It’s a complete car crash and will continue to be so until Musk isn’t making the decisions.

That’s extremely unlikely. This is isn’t the kind of thing you can just showboat into. Twitter was a phenomenon because it had scale and evolved at a time when things like smartphones were coming into mainstream use.

It was never about a cult of personality leadership, quite the opposite actually, it was entirely about the broad range of people and personalities on it and the networks and interaction that grew up on it. Some of them were incredibly positive, some were incredibly negative, but it was an almost organic thing.

All Twitter does is provide a platform. It was simple, low key and often quite low tech in its early days. It was the internet’s dingy pub where where all the important stuff happened.

Now it’s been bought by some ego of a landlord who’s decided to turn it into the very thing it should never be.

He won’t make a success of this because he doesn’t know what ‘this’ is and it can’t be all about him.

magicbastarder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119888547#Comment_119888547

hardly bluff calling. i'd say the majority of employees have been job hunting given the events of the past few weeks, and offering them three month's severance is a godsend for them.

VinLieger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119888529#Comment_119888529

Where in any of this have you seen people complaining about what hes doing, everyone's laughing at him and his fanboys which you sound like you are deffinitely one of.

Agent Coulson

At least when it goes under Musk's Saudi's & Qatar backers who pumped in over $2b betwen them won't have a backdoor into spying on there people on the platform and be able to jail and murder them for tweeting negatively about Saudi & Qatar on the back of Musk taking there money.

hotmail.com

We've been hearing that twitter is a cesspit for years.

So those who hate it will be happy to see the back of it.

There are good and bad points about Twitter going.

It has turned, at least in part, into a hell scape in the last few years, of that there is no doubt.

However, I don’t think you can blame Twitter or the internet itself for American polarised politics or various other messes. It’s just a reflection of the chaos in certain societies and tends to amplify them and make the cracks more obvious.

Twitter wasn’t the only place that was going on and in various more niche forums and platforms it’s far, far, far worse. Social media in general can do that.

Plenty of Twitter was completely non-toxic, fun, friendly, useful and even very positive. It very much depended on what networks you were moving in. There were debates that happened and movements that formed, mostly on Twitter, that were hugely important, but it can be an accelerant in good and bad ways.

I think though the platform is over. It’s a phenomenon of the early days of smartphones - a very simple microblogging service that grew to huge scale. We’ll all just move on to whatever grows next, and maybe this time we’ll manage to inject a bit more nuance and sanity to it, but we probably won’t.

magicbastarder

i recently heard a comparison made which seemed to make some sense; cities created an existential threat to human health, and one of the biggest changes made to counteract that was the invention of the sewer system/public sanitation. social media is an existential threat to clean public discourse, but we've yet to invent its equivalent of the functional sewer system.

hotmail.com

Not enough people use twitter for it to make money. It should have brought in a subscription for news sites etc years ago.

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119888381#Comment_119888381

Oh no, they called him apartheid profeteer and colonizer, the irony is lost on them unless they were native Americans living in a reservation.

Boggles

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119888434#Comment_119888434

This is the hilarious insane part, having some friends who are that level, not with Twitter but other companies.

They don't apply for jobs, or even get interviewed, they get courted and head hunted dozens of a times a year.

They effectively interview the suitors and set their terms.

Also the idea that they will agree to some sort of 9-5 and are constantly whipped and degraded by some cockwomble is hilariously naïve.

His massive fragile ego has completely over taken the logically part of his brain.

TheValeyard

The whole thing is just mad.

I think those arguments are a bit pointless though. The genie is out of the bottle and the internet is here.

Other social media platforms are there and as one dies others will take over. The network is there and people will use it and build stuff on it.

The internet is as profound a change as the invention of the printing press, a technology that allowed the free flow of information and caused chaos too.

We just have to adapt to it and learn how to use it. Social media is still very new, but we can’t just turn the clock back a few decades either in search of some comfortable nostalgia.

This is where we are. This is what a huge shift technology enables.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119888666#Comment_119888666

Twitter ran into the same problem Facebook ran into: the more they tried to become an indispensable part of life and "current affairs", the more the cold reality of living in that space became. Starting with a basic need for moderating the extremes. "Free Speech" is a myth usually wielded by people who really mean "I want to be a cúnt without repercussions", but FB & Twitter quickly discovered being a ubiquitous tool meant dealing with those cases. And to be fair to them both, neither could have predicted the levels to which "Fake News" and misinformation came to be weaponised on the services. They reacted too late to the problem, but that's just what happens when you basically become a new Media.

Point being. Mastadon, if it truly takes off, will run into the exact same problem eventually. At some point you need to cover your áss, doors start needing to be shut if even from a legal standpoint - limits put on what can be said or tolerated. True Free Speech is 4/8chan and there's a very simple reason why nobody above a certain level wants to advertise there.

Kiith

I feel sorry for anyone that has, or will lose their job because of this.

But god damn is it enjoyable watching that complete muppet constantly making the wrong call. Everything he's done has been a complete shitshow. It's like a manual on how not to run a company.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119848566#Comment_119848566

I think that you forgot to mark your posts with a sarcasm tag...

Mastodon could potentially get weirder again because it isn’t a single entity. Mastodon is really a protocol that allows anyone to spin up a microblogging service, much as you would an email service or a website, and to connect to an ad hoc network of similar servers across the internet.

Individual servers can opt to block connections from servers they don’t like, and set their own rules locally, but it’s potentially very much more complicated because it isn’t a single company or platform, it’s just a protocol.

Regulating it would be like trying to regulate email, SIP, or even the Web. None of those things are centralised. They’re just protocols linking servers connected in completely ad hoc ways across the internet.

It will be … interesting…

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119888547#Comment_119888547

It's almost like there is employee power in numbers when they come together to a single entity, a "union of workers" if you will...

Timberrrrrrrr

And the stupidity continues 🤣

https://twitter.com/anothercohen/status/1593404311832338442?t=AiUeH1i8fBz40plxq6LRsQ&s=19

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1593447646470889473?t=nMQXwDmjKQD-ekGxL1t2HQ&s=19

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119888664#Comment_119888664

Yes, even if it was a handy tool for breaking news (particular example the Russian war in Ukraine)

Want to be able to delete new posts!!!

Penn

...

TheIrishGrover

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119888701#Comment_119888701

This exactly. Many of my friends are developers, simply 'cos one of my initial friends is - I am not. However, I am in a position where I have hired and it has been difficult. And yes, the closest a GOOD developer would do to seeking a job is simply getting it out there "I'm open to offers". There are quite a few developers out there. It's not like it's a small field but most of the recruitment/recommendations is via word-of-mouth. "Oh I worked with them in XYZ. Give them what they want". A good developer usually doesn't stay at a place very long either. Sure, money is a factor, but doing interesting work is actually higher on their list of priorities. So they'll come in, work on a few improvement/transformation projects, get bored after 3 years or so and move on.

Who in their right mind would work at Twitter if they had other options? A Social Media platform needs absolute tip-top developers. They need to build and maintain a robust environment while also not stagnating. They NEED a stable developer core but why would they? Sure, there are tech layoff at the moment but these people could literally literally finish a job on Friday and start another on Monday if they wished. Usually for more money and better conditions/perks.

I think I heard somewhere (Maybe here) that there were thoughts that he bought it as almost a tax write-off. At the time, I thought this was a bit far-fetched (I am NOT a conspiracy theorist). But right now it's had not to see this as anything other than an intentional dismantling. He is smart enough to know the impact of these policy changes. It is very strange.

hotmail.com

Was it true twitter was losing 4 million dollars a day before Musk took over?

How was it worth 44 billion? Crazy.

I could have told Musk how unused twitter was.

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119888352#Comment_119888352

I think a lot of people misunderstand the idea of it being a private company. While it is it owes substantial money (12 billion) to the banks. How soon the banks can get in to take control am not sure.

I imagine on borrowing's line that it will have earning and turnover targets definably quarterly maybe monthly.

Payments of interest on that loan would be 50-60 million a month. Over the last few weeks he has added another 70-100 million that has to be found in the first quarter to fund redundancies.

Unless he is willing to put hundreds of millions into Twitter o er the next couple of months the banks will foreclose.

Finally if the site starts going down more advertisers will pull out. He is now in a death spiral where Twitter is concerned. It's not if it's when control is taken from him.

It was grossly overvalued. There’s no way to explain it really.

The problem is, assuming the worst (which looks likely) by the time the lenders move in, there won’t be a Twitter to take control of.

I think the backers of this could well be looking at taking a dead loss.

Quin_Dub

It's just all been so rushed and poorly thought out.

I've been part of corporate takeovers before , where a larger entity buys out a smaller one and what happens is that the big company send in the Consultants/Auditors for a few months (I did that role a few times) and they find out exactly how everything works or doesn't work and come back with a set of proposals to streamline things which may or may not include redundancies.

The idea that you could come in and make this scale of massive changes after only a week or two is just complete and utter madness.

Boggles

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119888754#Comment_119888754

Should have told him to go fúck himself.

erlichbachman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119888736#Comment_119888736

Well it kind of isn't sarcasm, sorry its terrible that so many people have lost jobs, but if a company isn't doing well and then someone else is taking over then they are entitled to do what he is doing in order to save the company.

Ok, Elon is doing it Elon's way with a little troll here and there, in some instances it is funny and in some it is warranted, but the man has a serious level of fcuk off money, so he's in some way entitled to say fcuk off

hotmail.com

Sad day for Virgin Media "journalists".

Gregor Samsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119888754#Comment_119888754

I think that's a joke. Alex Cohen's bio says:

Building things at @carbonhealth. Mostly parody account

And this:

https://twitter.com/anothercohen/status/1593466288726327297

Quin_Dub

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119888789#Comment_119888789

Based on the 2021 numbers it was losing about $4M a week - It lost $220M in 2021.

Once Musk took over and burdened it with $1.2B of annual debt repayments from his buy-out, NOW it's losing $4M/Day.

There's a theory that he chose the purchase prices based on a Marijuana meme , which he has used multiple times before.

Bottom line , he's an arrogant tool who fully believes his own hype.

hotmail.com

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119888849#Comment_119888849

So I suppose was the downfall of twitter was inevitable given how much money it was losing.

Musk just speeded things up quite dramatically.

Some people got extremely lucky during the tech booms. It doesn’t mean they be easily knew what they were doing, in terms of finance and investments anyway.

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119888820#Comment_119888820

Well we were constantly told after the acquisition that Musk wouldn't be where he is if he wasn't a genius businessman and that he is so much smarter than all of us, so obviously he was going to make Twitter a huge success and we just couldn't see how brilliant his genius plan was.

So either those people were wrong, or they and Musk will all try to save face and claim this was Musk's plan all along because Twitter bad and lefties bad and lefties liked Twitter, so Musk spaffing $44bn up the wall and greatly damaging his personal reputation to own the libs and drink lefty tears was a sacrifice God-Musk was willing to make.

The issue he faces now is more about investors getting cold feet about Tesla and Space X. This isn’t really demonstrating good business leadership. It looks like it may well go down as one of the most expensive corporate collapses in modern history.

francois

Trolling Musk...

https://twitter.com/JoshuaPHilll/status/1593432939127361542?s=20&t=FMfwMsUR5WCgdvBMiR0UYg

Quin_Dub

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119888838#Comment_119888838

There's "Entitled to do what he wants with the company he owns" and then there's literally burning it to the ground in Public which is what Musk has done.

Even if there is some "master plan" underneath it all , he has utterly destroyed what reputation the company had and it will likely never recover.

This isn't like buying a manufacturing company and closing all the factories only to come out with a great new widget in 12 months time built elsewhere for cheaper and people start buying the new widget.

What Musk has shown is a complete and utter lack of understanding of what exactly it is that he has bought -

His statement that "Twitter is a Software and Servers company" (I assume he actually meant "Services" and not Servers) is nonsense.

Twitter absolutely categorically is not a "Software and Services" company. It's an advertising platform.

And he's spent the entire duration of his ownership pissing off the advertisers and firing all the staff that get the adverts.

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119888857#Comment_119888857

Almost like he made a very bad business decision.

Quin_Dub

That's already happening - He's in court right now being sued by Tesla shareholders over his compensation package and whether or not he is appropriately focused on Tesla to warrant the utterly outrageous pay deal he has.

And as you say - Lots of people will look at how he is acting with Twitter and wonder if that is how he acts in Tesla and SpaceX and it's hard to imagine that it isn't.

I can absolutely see him being squeezed out of both companies by Shareholders over the coming months , Tesla in particular.

The Stock price is taking a battering , the wider motor industry has caught up with them in terms of EV technology etc. and the shareholders might decide they want him gone and try to sell the company to one of the big players so they can cash out while they can.

hotmail.com

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119888892#Comment_119888892

Well isn't that obvious.

If it does fail, any replacement twitter type service will have to have a more sustainable way of making money.

The subscription model is probably the way forward for a niche site like twitter. Those of us who love the news and news tweets will probably pay a small fee to keep up to date on twitter.

Well he’s turned Tesla into the ‘Muskmobile’. The brand is now entirely based around his persona.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119888472#Comment_119888472

His actions wouldn’t stand up under Irish employment law. The employer can’t unilaterally change the terms and conditions of work (“hardcore”) on a whim. The employer can’t deem people to have resigned. They didn’t resign.

Meanwhile

erlichbachman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119888889#Comment_119888889

But it is a software and servers company, it produces nothing but a platform.

There's a noticeable differences when Elon is CEO of a company, he can most likely do the engineering better than most of the engineers, and the company is no longer driven by the marketing department. If the tech is improved and efficient there's no need to worry about gaining advertising revenue. As ever its bottom up with Elon and I don't think anyone can argue with that, I personally would agree, too many companies are selling a pup with missions and other fluff, relying on marketing to instil an idea and the underlying tech gets left behind.

magicbastarder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119888965#Comment_119888965

parody account.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119888776#Comment_119888776

He didn’t even think out the alternative meanings of the word ‘sink’ when it’s used as a verb instead of a noun…

Are we sure this guy is a genius?

The whole thing is looking like a Titanic success!

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119888965#Comment_119888965

That's a parody account, he's joking.