As Twitter, renamed X, faces increased scrutiny in the EU and usage falls, Elon Musk has floated drastic action.
It is increasingly likely that the point of purchasing Twitter was to destroy it.
Edit - FWIW, I waffle back and forth on this one. I mean, the guy’s not a complete idiot. Though I don’t certainly think he’s the genius people often think he is. He’s needed had a fair amount of luck and self-serving coercion to get where he is. The Twitter stuff is just so blind to market reality that I wonder if there’s some self-sabotage in there?
(Either way, I am genuinely enjoying the the follow-on comments here!)
Sorry but that’s dumb. You don’t spend $44B to ruin it, when you can use it for own benefit.
EU doesn’t like the changes he did and started investigation. Melon hopes that by threatening to withdraw they might stop, or be easy on him.
I mean if the goal was indeed so ridiculous as shutting Twitter down, it would be easy as shutting it down. He would save his image by just doing that instead of what he is doing right now.
His goal is to turn Twitter around and use it for affecting next elections, he is running into pesky EU and their regulations.
It’s trying to give him a little credit to justify messing up a purchase that large.
If the intention wasn’t to shut it down or disrupt then everything that’s happened is literally just Elon being a complete dunce. Which is definitely more likely, but scary to think someone can be that reckless with 44 billion dollars
I mean if the goal was indeed so ridiculous as shutting Twitter down, it would be easy as shutting it down.
But that wouldn’t work. If the community was snuffed out in a day then it would move to some clone pretty easily. It dying slowly means the community is divided and diluted many ways.
He didn’t plan on spending 44B. The plan was to manipulatie stock price with pretending to buy, but Twitter management saw that one coming and let him sign a document for 44B that the rich idiot didn’t read.
So when the “I changed my mind” phase of his master plan started, Twitter pulled out the document and forced him to cough up the 44B. So yeah, now he pretends it was the plan all along.
Well, mostly to take it away from the libs and hand it to fascists.
Expect a fire sale to Trump Social.
Anyone that believes this is truly brain dead. He was humiliated when he didn’t look into the deal signed the contract and then tried to pull out when he realized what was happening. He had to beg for loans for fucks sake, putting up Tesla shares and other things as collateral.
He’s just a dumb rich piece of shit who is desperate for control and power. He will say or do anything to get what he wants (especially if he thinks it will garner attention) - that doesn’t require a master plan or any real preemptive thought for that matter
He’s a fucking piece of shit with a golden parachute out his ass and a silver spoon in his mouth since he was a child. He has ALWAYS bought his way in, look at damn near every business venture this piece of shit has had. Shit, he literally bought his way into Tesla, then OUSTED THE OGS AND LABELED HIMSELF A FUCKIN FOUNDER.
It has always worked for him so he kept trying to buy his way thru shit. Just look at his little spat with Zuck. He is ALL talk; especially when his money gets to do the talking. When shit hits the fan he scrambles. Always has always will
His point of purchasing Twitter was to pretend that he was purchasing Twitter. He never intended to go through with it.
Remember that he tried to back out but courts forced him to go through with it.
Since he was an idiot and gave a no reservations or conditions bid for the company. At way overpriced at that. The existing biard and owners must have been fainting from shock and glee.
No one sane ever gives no reservations and conditions bid. That is insanely stupid thing to do.
Twitter didn’t make Elon buy Twitter. Elon did that to himself. Under normal bid, absolutely he could back out by arguing one of the conditions his lawyers would have put in.
Either his lawyers were highly incompetent, he didn’t use them or he ignored their advice that it would be highly unusual and monumentally stupid to issue such bid while waiving ones right to have terms and conditions included. Well negotiate in terms and conditions. Since obviously otherside might refuse to accept the buying contract, if they don’t like the terms and conditions.
In this case all the judge did was looked at the bid contract and went “Mister Musk, you signed bid to buy with no terms and conditions. So you have to honor the bid.”
Nah, he never wanted to buy it.
It was a pump and dump and then the SEC forced him to actually buy it.
He tried to back out but was forced to complete the sale.
Now he has no idea what to do with it and is just digging himself deeper and deeper and deeper.
What was Elon Musk’s strategy for Twitter?
Well, he is kinda following a random message he got from an unknown person:
The three texts were sent on April 4, 2022. In the nearly 18 months since then, many of the decisions Musk made after he bought Twitter appear to have closely followed that road map, up to and including his ongoing attacks against the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organization founded by Jewish Americans to counter discrimination.
The text messages described a series of actions Musk should take after he gained full control of the social media platform: “Step 1: Blame the platform for its users; Step 2: Coordinated pressure campaign; Step 3: Exodus of the Bluechecks; Step 4: Deplatforming.”
Seems he’s killing it to get cheers and adulation from the far right.
Why try to back out then? If this was some catch and kill op why did he humiliate himself and involve a fuck ton of bank loans??
Also it’s not like that text is some grand fuckin plan lmao
It’s a damn copy paste from the fascist playbook, reverse victim and offender/gaslight/silence those you don’t like with your new power
porque no los dos?
I think he found himself between a rock and a hard place having to buy Twitter, but now he is realizing he can’t make his money back and his attempts to alter the platform to his liking are failing miserably as well, he is probably dead set on killing it for good.
I’m not so sure.
He owns it outright now.
There are no other shareholders to answer to.
If he wanted to close it down tomorrow, he could just turn off the servers and sack everyone.
Good point, you are correct. I worded that incorrectly and have edited it.
To people like EM, laws are only there to force others to do what they want, not to bind or limit their actions. When he decided to back out of the deal, as far as he was concerned, he should have been allowed to.
When they sued to force the sale, it was the legal discovery that scared the shit out of him. So he had to go through with the purchase.
So while we all rightfully hate Musk, what does “removing twitter from the EU” even look like? Does he just stop doing business with all European ad-agencies, get rid of the safety blanket that twitter installed to molify the German government, and basically through inaction allow European users who want to user twitter use it without materially supporting Musk through ads at all? That sounds like a win for european users who still want to use twitter.
Does the EU step in and trip over their collective dicks trying to censor twitter from EU users? That doesn’t like something that anyone should desire, or support, it would also be ineffective. Does Twitter try to trip over their dicks trying to censor twitter from EU users? Given how well twitter is run, I look forward to most EU users who want to use twitter being able to do so almost trivially after just a few months. So basically Musk can’t make money from twitter in the EU, but who cares? It’s already losing astounding amounts of money. It’s not a sustainable business, and it never was going to be.
So it sounds like even if this was going to happen (it won’t, he’ll just shut down all of twitter when he realizes he can’t pay for it anymore,) that it will improve the experience for everyone who still uses it, including those in the EU, and twitter will have even less oversight then it does today.
I expect a “This page is not available to European Users” page setup by X when entering and that’s it similar to some pages that didn’t want to to deal with GDPR did. Maybe since this is Elon Musk some rant or some crazy shit on it but that’s basically it.
The thing with European ads agencies side not sure, the issue of X with Europe doesn’t have much to do with them or in any case European Users wouldn’t be effected by their ads anyway if the page is blocked and they might have ads for the USA I guess? So not sure if that would stop.
Of course regarding access VPNs and similar would still work… But really at least in my case I don’t see myself using a VPN just to check Twitter… I will simply stop using it I barely use it already just as an RSS alternative to get some notifications.
The issue is that in order to block a website on the internet from a subset of users, there is a huge amount of work that has to be done to make it effective. I can’t imagine twitter would bother with any of that, and why would they? It doesn’t cost them anything to just shut down their EU offices/operations, stop complying with all EU laws they have to comply with in order to do business there, and make twitter (even more) American-centric. EU users can still use it if they want, since at the end of the day it’s just a website on the internet.
I hate musk and his handling of twitter, but i also dont like EU’s anti-privacy push online
Can he take it out of Australia as well?
With the Canadian-Danish territorial disputes settled one more obstacle to becoming European has been achieved. Next on the agenda to show European values: win, then host the Eurovision followed by an abyssal performance on home ground not directly qualifying for next year’s event.
