this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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[–] [email protected] 157 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)
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[–] Synthead 120 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I honestly think that he doesn't have to face consequences like normal people because he has enough money to make problems go away. He can be an awful person in interviews, and mean his words too, then even bankrupt his company, and you know what? He will continue being excessively rich.

His money could be used to fix so many issues en masse. It's disgusting that he chooses not to do so every day.

[–] frunch 29 points 11 months ago (1 children)

His money could be used to fix so many issues en masse. It's disgusting that he chooses not to do so every day.

One of my biggest gripes is that anyone can have this much money to begin with. We should never have to rely on the ultra-wealthy to fix our problems by making it their pet project, and no one should be able to squirrel away that much money to begin with. All the money that could fix those issues en masse instead pads some sociopath's portfolio.

[–] Synthead 12 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Personally, I'm okay with a small set of folks being rich as long as they pay taxes. I'm this case, a hell of a lot of taxes. You know, the taxes they should be paying, not what they manage to get away with now.

Let the legal system enforce that they give back to society in a meaningful way. Close the stupid loopholes. I want to see a meaningful improvement in society from their contributions. Everyone else is worse off unless they contribute.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (2 children)

He has wealth, he has to dip into selling stock to have "money."

I don't disagree otherwise, but when your wealth is in the companies you own, you pretty much have to sell the whole shebang in one go (what Musk reportedly tried to do with Apple, offering to sell them Tesla as a whole) or selling it piecemeal, by selling off portions of stock (which he does fairly regularly for cash infusions).

His wealth will surely insulate him for quite a long time. However, it is not a permanent insulator, and he has made a series of, let's say, questionable decisions. It's very likely that it will either take decades for it to really hurt him, or that it just may make him far less wealthy, but still wealthy enough to be annoying.

We're also at a precipice, because the kinds of things that he is saying were the kinds of things that used to get you shitcanned from the business community as a whole. Nobody would do business with a virulent anti-semite. It's one of the reasons Musk bought Twitter, really, because they are busy normalizing positions like anti-semitism.

The normalizing of his hate will actually get him farther, longer, than his wealth.

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[–] Gazumi 77 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

Life without is better. I left over a year ago. No drama, no loss, no issues. Twitter is not family

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[–] NounsAndWords 65 points 11 months ago (2 children)

"I don't have any theories that make sense," Paskalis says. "There is a revenue model in his head that eludes me."

You don't need a complex business model for this to make sense. The man has had "fuck you money" his entire life. Things are finally not going his way and he only has one way to respond..... by saying "fuck you" to the people he doesn't like.

[–] Red_October 35 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Pretty much. I understand the impulse to think he has to have some secret plan, some rational explanation for his behavior. I used to think the same thing, that there was some way he would actually make money from destroying the company, but no. No, he's just an impetuous, impulsive idiot who tricked himself into having to buy the company at meme stock prices, and is going to burn the whole thing to the ground purely because he is, in fact, a dumbass.

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[–] Viking_Hippie 12 points 11 months ago

Yeah. Most people, especially in the establishment press, don't know or pretend to not know that this is the first time he's actually shaping how a company is run rather than pay someone else and then take credit for their work like he's always done.

Everything went well when he pretended to be Tony Stark inventing and designing every part of his companies while others did it all much better than he ever could.

Now that he's publicly making actually meaningful (as in they have a big impact, not as in them making sense) decisions, he's showing the world that he's just an extremely impulsive malignant narcissist 52 year old manchild who desperately craves to be seen as cool and edgy by young people.

[–] EnderMB 53 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I liked Twitter. I know it's a cesspit, but as a software engineer it was always the top company I wanted to work at. It didn't work out (for several funny reasons), but for that selfish reason I'll never forgive Musk.

IMO, Musk needs help. If he were a normal person, someone would have pushed him to leave work and find help. As the owner of three companies, responsible for tens of thousands of employees, no chance is he getting that help. He's constantly baited and prodded by his fan boys, people like Rogan and Chappelle who can deal with that kind of fame, and the press that get content from his antics.

As for Twitter, I don't see it dying, until it fails to have a use for Musk. My initial belief was that his "everything app" would use Twitter's account system to get all of its users, and then he'd sell Twitter and continue with the users - but that app isn't ever happening. It's just something he's desperate to ditch, but his vanity and poor mental health won't let him do it. For that reason, it'll just be a zombie app.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (3 children)

If he were a normal person, he’d be drug addicted and homeless.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (8 children)

I dont think an "everything app" will ever work.

You can make one thing that does one thing very well and better than the competition, and you will get users. Or you can do one thing that will try to do 10 things half assed, and it will fail to impress users. This happens because you have to divert your resources (time, money, people) for development, maintenance, new ideas, design etc. across all your "everythings". The more everythings you have, the less resources each one gets, however the costs for maintenance, bugfixes, updates etc. stay the same.

This happened to Yahoo in the early 2000s, where it tried to be Search, News portal, Email, Web directory, Weather, games and whathaveyou, however it failed because none of it's parts was better than the competition.

The better approach for an app would be to do it's own thing it is supposed to do, but support other apps that can enhance your product by allowing it to interact with outside data, and also give his data back out to other apps: use mailto:links/email instead of inventing your own messaging protocoll, support exporting to standard calendar files instead of implementing your own calendar that is oblivious to the schedule on the users phone. Support exporting datasets into common formats the user knows from his everyday tasks (excel, csv) so he can run his own data analysis on it, instead of baking some half-assed "analytics" module that only has 10% of the features the user needs.

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 11 months ago (3 children)

The sooner the better.

I long for the headline "self driving Tesla runs over musk".

[–] No_Ones_Slick_Like_Gaston 12 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Self driving teslas only run over kids and POC

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 11 months ago (3 children)

The fact it hasn't imploded a long time ago is proof that digital platforms need to be regulated to enforce interoperability.

Since this shitshow started, I have not heard from anyone that wanted to be on Twitter. In anything resembling a free market, these customers (both advertisers and users) could freely go to a competitor.

But due to the way platforms work, no one can compete, once a dominant platform emerges. A platform has a monopoly on all the things people built on top of the platform (content, software etc.). This monopoly kills the free market. Enforced interoperability would reduce this platform effect and help out competitors.

The EU is starting to tackle that, with the Digital Markets Act, but very few companies are targeted so far, even though the whole industry is plagued by quasi-monopolistic platforms that are universally agreed upon to be trash.

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[–] Daft_ish 32 points 11 months ago

We're scheduled to find out.

[–] NABDad 30 points 11 months ago

Morally or financially?

Both, right?

[–] [email protected] 26 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Pretty sure it's an inevitability at this point and Musk knows it, which is precisely why he's fueling the flames of the whole ad situation. Since the whole controversy are both about the Jews (as in antisemitism) and advertisers, they can be blamed for the death of the platform instead of business decisions by Musk.

There's also the possibility that some right-wing billionaires who really love to spread their propaganda using twitter are going to buy the company or bail it out or whatever, but that remains to be seen

[–] AWittyUsername 29 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Wasn't Musk a right wing billionaire who loved spreading their propaganda

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 11 months ago (5 children)

What is it about him, that makes him look like an asshole? It can't just be his eyes being too close together, can it?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

For me, it just looks like he has a certain coldness in his eyes. It's not a dead or vacant look, it's just the way a smile, or any other facial expression for that matter, just doesn't seem to make it to his eyes. There's obviously life and intelligence there, but it's not a friendly intelligence. I pulled up the most lizard-man pictures of Zuckerberg for comparison, and even at his most robotic, his eyes still look human. Like there's some capacity for empathy in there somewhere. With Musk? His eyes just don't quite read as human to me in an uncanny valley sort of way.

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[–] fuzzywombat 22 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Go F Yourself meltdown is probably the final nail in the coffin. It does seem like space nazi knows it's doomed. Anyone know what happens when bankruptcy happens? Does creditors take over the company? Does he get sued for negligence? Does it get sold to a highest bidder for pennies on the dollar? I'm hoping someone can enlighten us.

[–] tburkhol 13 points 11 months ago

The first kind of bankruptcy, Elon & his Saudi bros keep the company, and the banks lose like 50-90% of their loans.

The second kind of bankruptcy, the banks get all the servers and office chairs and sell them to either a new data-mining company or a recycler. This isn't very likely, because most of the value of Xitter is all the people who keep visiting, regardless of whether Elon knows how to monetize them.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Go F Yourself meltdown is probably the final nail in the coffin.

I'll believe it once they're actually bankrupt. So many things have been predicted as "killing" the company in the last year yet somehow they're still going and millions and millions of morons/addicts are still using it.

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[–] bwf93 20 points 11 months ago
[–] NewPerspective 19 points 11 months ago

This was a hit job and news outlets are trying to pretend it's an accident.

[–] mechoman444 19 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Does it even matter? Twitter is a cesspool! It only has 1500 employees. In the grand scheme of things there will be negligible economic backlash from this company going under.

Nobody really cares if Elon loses all that money and the 1500 employees will be able to find employment elsewhere.

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[–] Aussie_Damo 18 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Was it ever profitable? I always thought twitter was always in the red and the only time it made money was when it sued Elon to buy it due to his arrogance and coz it minupilated the stock prices on twitter.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

It almost certainly will. Dude's a fuckin' dipshit.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Could?!

its the whole point. the guy is tanking the business while providing legal cover for doing so. he will default on what he can, let the saudis eat bunch of it and call it a FUCKING WIN.

why you people keep expecting muskrburger to be doing anything but destroying twitter is beyond me. his actions are obvious and have literally nothing to do with generating revenue.

[–] MushuChupacabra 13 points 11 months ago (3 children)

What's MySpace worth these days?

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (4 children)

I think Murdoch will buy it just as it goes irrelevant for $580m and then it will go bankrupt

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago

I just don’t care anymore. I hope far worse for Elon and every other rich asshole piñatas that exist.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yes, that's what he wants and he's looking for people to take the blame for it. Like advertisers

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[–] dinckelman 10 points 11 months ago (2 children)

It’s not a question of IF it will. It will. Both financially, and morally

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[–] eran_morad 10 points 11 months ago

I hope so, for the lolz

[–] weeahnn 9 points 11 months ago
[–] hal_5700X 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don't care. But it will be good for people who are addicted to it.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Screw x, I literally don't care what happens to it at this point. At one point in time "twitter" was actually half decent, then it just went to shit....

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Twitter was decent in like 2008 before boomers were on it. By 2012 it had become the information warfare platform we all know and hate.

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[–] Buffalox 8 points 11 months ago (5 children)

its vast archive of conversations can be used to train chatbots.

Maybe Nazi chatbots?

[–] dojan 12 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Since that literally already happened years ago with Microsoft Tay. The Japanese version Rinna got depression instead.

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[–] Bonskreeskreeskree 7 points 11 months ago

That's his goal. It always has been. He was forced to buy. His solution? The world's biggest tax write off. Yet everyone is determined to keep him in the news like he actually cares about it.

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