I won't believe this thing can ever die until I see it rotting in the ground.
this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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$13 Billion debt means $1.3 Billion/year interest payments.
I'm pretty sure Elon can pay that btw. But I'll be watching from the sidelines for that shitshow.
Do you really think a company like that would be paying 10% interest?
My 10% estimate is assuming April 2022 (edit) market, when the deal was signed.
It could be as high as 15% depending on circumstances. But yeah, consider the 10% number an underestimate.
Rumor is that half the debt was variable and half the debt was fixed. Suggesting about 13% or so interest today.
I’m pretty sure Elon can pay that btw.
But that will involve more TSLA stock fire sales (as that's literally what he did the last time he needed to pay Twitter's bills, his "net worth" is mostly unrealized gains from his shares) and he will face more backlash for that from Tesla investors. His house of cards will collapse quicker the more he resorts to that as there's a limit to how long Tesla investors can stay patient with him treating them as his personal ATM.
While true, we are only talking about $2 to $3 Billion in losses a year.
How long do you think it'd take before Elon truly felt that burn? Maybe 5+ years, right? Maybe longer.
This is a man who conjured up $20+ Billion in cash last year to buy Twitter after all. He can take a few $2 or $3 Billion losses for a while.
Now SpaceX is also losing money and Tesla also looks like it's lost a ton of reputation. So that's what's gonna hurt Elon. But Twitter nonsense is unfortunately a rounding error in all of this.
Man, Elon speedrunning corporate bankruptcy for Twitter lol.
This whole thing is just a tax write-off.
I'm reasonably certain his goal with buying Twitter was just to be able to control the political narrative around the 2024 election for the usual wingnut purposes. Other than that I'd doubt he actually gives a shit what happens to the platform. He'll drop it like a hot potato the instant it ceases to be useful to him and/or the GOP, and his sycophants will all be right behind him gushing at what a "genius business idea" it'll have been for him to sell Twitter at a loss after running it into the ground by being a moron.
I'm not sure why people think he wanted to buy Twitter at all.
His goal was to pump & dump Twitter stock until he was forced into buying it for ~4 times it's actual value.
People are quick to forget that part of the situation, but I think you’re both right. There was the initial decision to buy which he didn’t want to do until the alternative was worse for him, then there was his management of the company afterward. I think once the initial sale’s decision was made for him, he has been trying to destroy Twitter entirely for the left.
he has been trying to destroy Twitter entirely for the left.
Which only shows that he doesn't understand the progressive mindset at all.
I meant “for the left” as in destroy Twitter so the left doesn’t want to use it, not destroy it at the behest of the left.
I've heard this theory before. Just bankrupt it fast, then the debt goes with the company... But the thing is, the loans are on his name. Twitter didn't ask money, and it might have it's own debt for sure, but Elon has a "small county" sized debt to pay and I don't think he can really get rid of it
Others said he would be bailed out by the government. Not sure either of the candidates would agree to that (or the citizens of US)
What government? It certainly won’t be the U.S. government bailing out this fool and his stupid website. Maybe he can go ask MBS or Putin.
Just relying the conspiracies, I'm really not sure how some people think this is him outsmarting everyone
I think the only benefit he will ever get from this is never having to pay income tax again.
Fun fact: musk is using the Unicode symbol 𝕏 as the twitter logo, he can’t trademark it
Instead, he's given the symbol such a bad reputation that nobody would want to use it
Damn... He really is brilliantly stupid. He's like... King of the idiots. The one and only true Edgelord. It's like highlander, he's the only one.
I know this is somewhat self—serving, but what if everyone literally started calling him THE Edgelord? How fucking funny would it be to see journalists calling him that? How many of us would it take?
Just imagine that Twitter (FuckX) becomes the only media site with no ads because no one wants to deal with that trash fire.
Sorry, but there is a bottomless sea of scummy programmatic ads.
You just get the Nike/Apple/Disney ads replaced by crypto/porn/drugs.
Just like every other conservative social network *cough* Truth Social *cough*.
I know another media site with no ads. It's called Lemmy, it's a decentralized.... Wait a second....
You have been permanently banned from reddit.
Again???
Which then drives more people in, and after a while more ads. Win win win scenario
They've been saying this for what, a year now? I'll believe it when I see it.
The problems at Twitter are profound.
DeSantis's campaign has been plauged by technical issues, as Twitter Spaces cannot support the same kind of streaming traffic that Twitch / Youtube / etc. etc. can support. This means that DeSantis's big online launch party was ruined due to reliance upon Twitter.
This is closer to what I predict and expect to happen. Twitter's bones are solid, Twitter was (emphasis on WAS) one of the best run technology stacks ever back in 2020 or 2019. It will take a lot of effort before that falls apart. Any "legacy" code is likely good.
But you know what's likely to break? New features, new loadouts, and random changes that the new ignorant staff cannot manage. Its one thing to maintain a good website, its a totally different thing to make new features. (Especially when the feature is to get rid of blue checkmarks, I mean to turn old blue-checkmarks into grey checkmarks, I mean allow a $8/month payment for blue checkmarks, I mean to delete old blue-checkmarks from people who haven't moved onto the payment scheme, I mean...)
Technology is about change. Eventually, Twitter cannot change and get updated. Its already happened this year, Twitter Spaces is proof of that. All the new crap this year has fallen flat on its face.
I dunno', they're already having problems keeping tweets sync'd across servers. Several times have I seen a 404 for a tweet that someone else is staring at.
That's a basic server scaling issue. Showing up in Twitter production. I'm not so sure they've even kept the old bones intact.
Well, new stuff includes the new Datacenter that Elon Musk personally moved all those servers into. Even if it was legacy old servers that were working, they're effectively new given the amount of changes that could occur at a new datacenter.
The new staff are not necessary "ignorant". There's a limited amount of work you can do in one day/week/month.
I'm sure they're smart, but its well recognized that they're ignorant.
Ex: there were large scale complaints about being the last person remaining from a team of ~20 and being forced to take care of the servers anyway. They were certainly fine when they were part of a team of 20, but when 19/20 people leave, whoever is left over is best described as "ignorant".
I'm sure they're doing the best that they can, but there's no way one person can know everything that the 19-other-people knew. They are literally incapable of learning all the server details from here on out, because the other 19 people have left the company and are likely not returning phone calls (aka: happily employed elsewhere by now).
I'm not using ignorant as an "insult", but as a fact of life. When 80% of staff leaves in a month, there's no way the remaining 20% of that staff can pickup all the pieces. Knowledge will be lost. Hell, in IT, knowledge is lost even under the best of circumstances. People get called in for projects they did 5 to 10 years ago for advice on a regular basis (documentation is nice, but there's no replacement to just having the programmer who designed the system on speed-dial, somewhere in the firm... to call them when something bad happens). You lose that when 80% of staff is fired and/or quits, doubly-so when they do so before writing all the documents that their replacements will need.
The advertisers are leaving Twixxer, but don't worry, Elon, the Jews probably won't replace them.
Wow I didn't realize revenues were already forecasted to drop by more than 50% yoy.
Move fast, break ~~things~~ everything.
In other news: water is wet, and this floor appears to be made of floor.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Though X has still proven itself as the hub for fast-breaking news — as this weekend’s OpenAI drama proved — the nature of its business is still dependent on advertising, which makes up the majority of its revenue.
While brands generally understand the risk of running ads against user-generated content, they don’t typically find themselves in a situation quite like this, she also points out.
But they’re not accustomed to a platform’s owner amplifying misinformation and hate speech, and emboldening conspiracy theorists,” Enberg notes.
Twitter’s influence has always been larger than its user base and ad revenues, and while the platform’s cultural relevance has declined, Musk and X are still very much a major part of public conversation,” she adds.
Ahead of this, X’s ad revenues were already forecast to decline by 54.4% from 2022 to 2023 — a sizable drop for the platform that Musk has now run for roughly one year so far.
Forbes recently reported that top advertising executives have been pressuring Yaccarino to resign, suggesting her own reputation is now at risk as a result of Musk’s actions.
The original article contains 933 words, the summary contains 182 words. Saved 80%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
This thing's probably going to become the social platform of the International Democracy Union and be supported by all the billionaire assholes of the planet.