“Fidelity is currently valuing X at about $9.4 billion”

I found this funny.

259 points

Honestly terrifying that they still think it is worth that much.

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114 points

they still own the twitter trademark, that might be their biggest asset

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50 points

Since they don’t seem to care about it, start using “tweet” for every social media post to devalue them further.

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54 points
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Tweets are a specific type of a microblog post you do on twitters. Have you tried tweeting, make your own twitter at https://joinmastodon.org/ today!

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9 points

Which has been crashed and burned to a fraction of its value.

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62 points

If someone were to buy it, ban the Nazis and get advertisers to come back it’s still salvageable, I guess. The longer Musk owns it, the bigger the chance is that it’ll become the next MySpace.

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14 points

At least the MySpace guy was able to run a fun site, cash out before social media became crazy, and spend the rest of his life having fun with that money.

Trump will lose, and Musk will be holding on to a useless site that serves nothing. He’ll probably sell for a fraction of what he paid (not that it was his money in the first place), but by that point it’ll be too late. Twitter will be long dead.

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4 points

I doubt the saudis will be very happy if Musk doesn’t repay them their investment. I’m surprised they haven’t threatened him into stepping down and handing their investment to someone who can properly manage a social media platform already

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9 points

I think MySpace is a more likely scenario that the former already.

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8 points
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Deleted by creator
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3 points

I wouldn’t be surprised if part of this remaining value is because the Japanese internet still heavily relies on it as a platform, even if the west has begun moving elsewhere.

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2 points

I was going to say that they could have stopped the headline at “quarter” as far as I’m concerned.

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-2 points

This is the stock market, the value is set by what investors think the value could be. Mostly, they’re probably assuming people would come back if he sold it. Literally everyone knows the name Twitter.

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21 points

This actually isn’t the stock market, Twitter isn’t publicly traded since being bought.

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3 points

Just because it’s not publicly traded, doesn’t mean that there isn’t stock nor that there’s no market. Usually, you can technically still buy/sell the stock, just not as a random member of the public on a public stock exchange like the NYSE or FTSE.

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2 points

I understand the basics. I still find it difficult to grasp why it is worth 9 billion.

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And yet, he’s still one of the what, 5 richest people on the planet?

He doesn’t give a shit, and neither should you (as nice as the schadenfreude might feel). He got something worth more to him than plain old money - an established propaganda platform, which he is using as he intended - to war monger and otherwise interfere in politics to ensure fascism progresses as fast as he can help it. The “dent” (more like a surface scratch) it put in his finances is completely invisible and irrelevant to him.

And it should be to you, too.

He is NEVER going to end up without means or power, not even fucking close, unless we take them from him, and abolish the system that encouraged and enabled him to amass them in the first place.

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37 points
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What is completely wild to me is that there are only 4 main apps: Reddit, twitter, instagram, and Facebook. Almost every public conversation happens on one of those platforms. And of those four platforms, one of them was bought by one singular person. Some people just don’t get the absolute scale of how much one person can just buy of our communities.

Like it or not, there are businesses on Twitter. Celebrities are easy to reach and talk to. Even companies use Twitter for support. News outlets post there. It’s a whole community. Was it a bit toxic? Yeah. But it wouldn’t have mattered. One guy bought it.

Similar to what you said, if you were to run the numbers on this I’m pretty sure owning twitter to Elon is not much different than owning a cable subscription to your average family. A whole community of tens of millions of people bought by one person and its success doesn’t matter. Capitalism is broken. And if you think that’s bad, imagine how he can affect your government when a Supreme Court justice goes for a small small fraction of the price…

Edit: I did the math and it turns out that twitter has lost so much money that this is no longer a cable subscription. It’s about a 6% yearly loss to Elons net worth, dependent on his current stock values. Which means it’s not cable, but about the cost the average person spends on food in a year ($10,000 yearly cost to a 200k net worth). Still insane.

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5 points

The average family’s cable subscription doesn’t cost 20% of their net worth.

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3 points

I think the average family’s net worth is a negative number, so you’re technically right.

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5 points

Well said, after losing access to twitter it’s really hard to get information on game companies for example, since they don’t have their own blog for you to RSS and get information about the newest game updates and what not, and they only post on youtube if they have a new trailer.

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2 points

I suppose it’s too much to hope for, for RSS feeds to make a comeback. Or JSON feeds being more prevalent. I’m totally serious, I miss being able to just check the headlines without going through a bunch of bullshit.

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4 points

A cable subscription isn’t a depreciating asset, though.

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3 points

To clarify, I was thinking of the depreciating asset part as a loss of value the same way that a subscription is.

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19 points

Yeah a lot of people miss the fact that the play for Twitter was never about money, but control. Owning one of the most popular social medias makes it easy to spread propaganda and amplify your voice.

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3 points
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Lots of people spout this conspiracy theory, but Ive yet to hear a good reason why he had to be sued into making the purchase (after making price manipulating statements) if it was some sinister plan.

Far more likely he’s just a fuck up.

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-1 points

Fucked up then adapted musk is a welpling but like every rich WASP be it from England or its colonies he is weirdly adaptable. Which is why the most effective method of WASP removal is via flamethrower.

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9 points
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12 points

And I’ll never own a house, yay

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Thanks, that’s one race I definitely don’t keep up to date on. All billionaires need to cease to exist.

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8 points

Not only that, but the folks who helped bankroll him saw what social media could do to organize protests and evade censorship and wanted to reduce its power. The Saudis saw the Arab Spring and shit their collective thobe.

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-1 points

PayPal and Tesla and SpaceX been pretty big successes. But Twitter is a real fuckup for him. It shows that his judgment and temperament and perfect boy genius mystique have all jumped the shark in a big way.

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But Twitter is a real fuckup for him

Except it clearly fucking isn’t, it’s doing exactly what he bought it for, including convincing people like you to feel sympathy for him and his “loss”, which is equal parts hilarious and really fucking sad. You’re looking at his life from the point of view of a poor person, something he never was and never will be, yet he’s still so easily manipulated you in to feeling bad for him (and the billions he’s lost, leaving him… still the motherfucking richest person on the planet), and even fucking (think you) relate to him and the idea that he can “fail” just like you can, using you as a living breathing mouthpiece to make his life easier. Not yours.

perfect boy genius mystique

I just threw up a little in my mouth, thanks.

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1 point

I don’t know who you’re talking to. I have no pity for the man and don’t relate to him. I don’t have to argue with you over whether Tesla and SpaceX have been successful businesses because those are objective facts. It’s also pretty idiotic to deny that years ago, he had a boy genius aura about him - investors still throw billions at that image. Sorry it makes you throw up, especially because you already appear to be absolutely choking on Elon hate. I despise the man but I’m not slobbering all over myself with jealous disdain as you sound to be.

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137 points

Musk did not buy this as an investment. He bought it to flip elections and manipulate public opinion.

Tesla is writing him a check that will cover the entire purchase price, and Saudi Arabia and Russia will pay the operating costs.

Active users are what matters; if they lost 75% of their users then I’m paying attention.

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51 points
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Correct me if I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure he gave an outlandish bid for Twitter to manipulate it’s stock prices when he pulled put, but he was sued into following through.

I don’t think he ever wanted to buy it, or at least he wanted to crash it’s value to come back and buy it on the cheap.

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-4 points
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19 points
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If he was that competent why would he resort to openly pumping and dumping meme coins in public just prior to this stunt.

He has some dangerous strings he can pull, but that doesn’t make him a good puppet master.

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5 points
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then why not buy it normally like a human from earth and instead involve this lawsuit to make himself look like an absolute moron

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25 points

Aren’t 75% of the users Russian bots? Lol

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22 points

I think you’re giving the guy too much credit. Sometimes things are as they seen. He just didn’t like the moderation scheme on Twitter, made a gesture buying it, fumbled a little bit and overbid, then after having been forced to acquire it tried to turn it into something closer to what he wanted it to be.

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18 points

I think it’s even pettier than that. He’s the loud guy on the forum who literally bought the site so he could be admin.

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9 points

Honestly, everyone needs to listen to the episode of Search Engine about Elon. It’s such a clear narrative of what happened between the Iron Man cameo and now. It’s pure hubris - someone who is very unlikable desperately hungry for love to the point where his brain bust a fuse.

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15 points

We’ll never know since Musk is nurturing a state-funded “user”-base that will always keep their numbers inflated

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2 points

If he’s trying to flip elections, he needs to at least pretend it’s being operated in good faith.

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1 point

I agree 100%. Liberals retweeting how Elon is losing money is actually making him money

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72 points

Elon Musk’s greatest personal achievement has been his tireless work and incredible effort toward disproving the myth of Billionaire Exceptionalism.

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We knew this was going to happen before he made the purchase.

Everyone said, the best way for Elon to keep his money was to change very little, or even take a hands-off approach.

Masnick suggested this would happen

It was that and so much worse. Moral of the story: Running a huge social media service is hard. Maybe don’t assume that because you’re a billionaire you’re the best at doing stuff.

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19 points

Meanwhile he is on track to become the world’s first trillionaire

I think the purchase was more about welding power than any financial gain

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16 points

He tried to back out, I don’t think any of this was about anything. He’s just a dick with a weird sense of humor.

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7 points

First step to becoming a billionaire: start with 1 trillion

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4 points

Hasn’t his wealth kinda flatlined lately though? X is doing terribly, Tesla is struggling a bit, I think SpaceX is at least doing well.

I don’t think he’s going to be a trillionaire any time soon.

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3 points

Now, call me crazy, but if I was optimizing for maximum welding power, I’d start with oxy acetylene and at least try a few other options. How would buying a website even be a good start?

No wonder people are making fun of him!

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1 point

He needs all the welding power he can get to keep the Tesla’s held together

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2 points

Would you not agree that he has a tool of influence with X? I see that as the main aspect of why you’d still buy twitter, even though he knew he wouldn’t earn money with that.

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14 points

I mean the people at Twitter were very happy to sell it off. Remember how they actually sued to force him to go through with the deal and succeeded in stopping him from backing out?

Even if he’d managed it as well as the prior stewards, it was always a losing business.

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7 points

If the price offered is actually a good price then I think they might have some obligation to shareholders to pursue it. (Many of the people making that decision likely also being shareholders.) Like if someone offered you more than what your stuff is worth but tried to changed their mind, wouldn’t you pursue that? I don’t think that’s any sort of indicator that they thought it was a sinking ship. It’s just in their best interest to take a good deal when they get one.

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2 points

I think you make a good point. But we don’t have to guess whether they thought Twitter was struggling. We know it was.

Twitter never managed to develop an online ad business that matched the scale of its influence in popular culture and society at large. Twitter has lost money in six of the eight years since its IPO.

Source: CNBC

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3 points

Masnick’s post is well put, but also a disturbing reminder of how much power nation-states can exert over the Internet.

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3 points
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Masnick gives 20 levels of development. Elon stopped here:

Level Two: “We’re the free speech platform! But no CSAM!”

And that’s about it. Ex-Twitter has copyright infringement, hate speech and doesn’t give a fuck about local laws unless the law actually has teeth (Brasil, anybody?).

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3 points

and then he fires trust and safety and it gets riddled and plagued with csam

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3 points
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“Maybe don’t assume that because you’re a billionaire you’re the best at doing stuff.”

This is literally every second generation billionaire. They seem to have the tendency to believe that their success is solely due to their intelligence and not at all due to their parents’ connections and money.

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3 points

I mean, yeah we all knew he overpaid, but losing over 75%? I didn’t expect that.

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11 points

Twitter wasn’t profitable right? So most of the “value” is in the name of the product. Elon changed the name and added his signature to everything the platform was doing, completely changing the platform Twitter is. So yeah, I do get why 75% of the money is gone now.

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5 points

Changing the name of one of the most valuable brands isn’t something I’d expect even him to do.

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2 points

The way to make it hurt is to establish a replacement that keeps discussions away from trolls and hate propaganda.

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1 point
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