Elon Musk may flip the switch to make X — the social network formerly known as Twitter — an entirely subscription-based platform. Musk brought up the idea of charging all users of X/Twi…
I’m not sure if this is technically Technology news, but I can remove this post if it’s in the wrong community
Musk brought up the idea of charging all users of X/Twitter during a wide-ranging conversation focused on AI that featured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday. “[We’re] moving to a small monthly payment for use of the X system,” Musk told Netanyahu, claiming that it is the only way to eliminate the problem of bots, as reported by Bloomberg’s Dave Lee.
Musk didn’t mention timing of his plan to charge X/Twitter users, nor did he say how much it would cost.
Musk, who also is CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has said X/Twitter ad sales have plunged 50% since he bought the company. “We’re still negative cash flow, due to ~50% drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load,” Musk posted on July 15.
Ok, I loathe the man, hate the shit show he’s made TwitX, think he’s a clown, generally hate billionaires, etc. But this is kinda a really stupid comment.
He’s the wealthiest man in the world. That doesn’t mean he has a lair full of cash and just wants more. People really struggle to understand the difference between wealth and money in the bank. This isn’t about hoarding money just for the sake of it.
I understand the difference, but he’s collecting stuff just because it’s shiny. He’s short of cash because he has no impulse control, and I fail to see why he shouldn’t fail the same way other people who overextend themselves fail.
What makes you think he’s short on cash? Wealthy people don’t store their wealth in cash anyways. The money is tied to the stocks of the companies they’re running. That’s why he needed to lend the money for twitter too; he doesn’t have that kind of cash, but people are willing to borrow it to him because of his wealth.
If you just had read the article you’d see that they have lost 50% of the advertisers and are losing money. This isn’t about wanting more money just for the sake of it. No company can exist if their finances are on the negative.
Is he just supposed to pay for the running of twitter out of his pocket or what? It says there they’ve lost 50% of advertisers, and are making negative profit. That isn’t sustainable. The purchase of twitter has cost him 40-something billion, and still keeps costing him even more. It’s not about just wanting more profit, but to atleast break even.
Don’t quote me on this but I believe his thing is what the handle says; knees over toes. It used to be considered to be bad for your joints doing exercises such as deep squats for example, but his belief is that it’s the exact opposite. He used to have really bad knees himself, and couldn’t really play basketball like he wanted to, but by doing these exercises he was able to strenghten his knees to the point they no longer cause issues for him. The main exercise he’s recommending is pulling a sled backwards. He tells about Finnish lumberjacks who used to drag logs backwards like this and how they had super strong knees.
On one hand, I’d love for it to finally die, but those toxic communities will simply move to a new site and do the same thing they did on Twitter. Like ants.
On the other hand, a lot of people have grown their business through Twitter and have relied on it. Most other sites don’t have the same functionality and large number of people that make it so easy like Twitter.
A new platform has the potential for better moderation and better design to keep those unsavory elements in check. Since Musk has made himself the enemy, the only path forward is for Twitter to die. Nothing good will come from it as long as he is in charge.
Frankly I do not understand Twitter. Never been a member. Have looked at linked content sometimes but it always looks like a bunch of short meaningless thoughtless content. So I think Twitter has 0 value.
The people that seem to like it are those that want to be “the person” people follow or those that want to follow “the person”. Both are kind of offensive behaviors as far as I am concerned.
Have looked at linked content sometimes but it always looks like a bunch of short meaningless thoughtless content. So I think Twitter has 0 value.
I mean, that was the original point of twitter. Jack Dorsey took Facebook’s status updates feature and made a whole website about it. You’d follow people you knew in real life as well as famous people you liked and then could see short updates about their life and their interests. Most of the very first tweets were just innocuous little updates. 50cent said he was in Turkey. Warren Buffet said he joined the app. A bunch of random non celebrities posted messages about what they were cooking that day.
Twitter effectively ran this concept into the ground when it 1) removed the character limit (it was originally 140 chars), and 2) added thread reply features.
The amazing thing to me is that people actually care about that. Obviously a lot of people do. I cannot fathom it. It is just not me. Kind of confirms I made a good choice by ignoring Twitter.
I don’t use Xitter, what functionality does it have that’s not stupidly easy to implement? As far as I can tell the only thing that Xitter has is a userbase - and when they drive them away they’ll have nothing [but debt].
It’s a prisoner’s dilemma thing. People have had ample time and opportunity to move to mastodon, but as you say Twitter is still where the bulk of eyeballs are, but that only remains true if everyone’s too afraid to leave it.
So, I am starting to really believe his goal is to just drive a stake into the heart of twitter.
Either that, or he is trying to prove a point regarding something.
I don’t think there is any possible way, he is so dumb as to make all of these horrible decisions regarding twitter… This has got to be destroying twitter by design, on purpose.
I mean, seriously… he has done literally everything that you SHOULDN’T do. Fire the majority of the company. Destroy over a decade worth of very good branding. Alienate all investors. Alienate the user base. Piss off the remaining users more. Drive away advertisers…
FFS, the dude has a company that sends rockets into space, and previously, the world’s premier electric car company… What in the hell is his odd obsession with choking the life out of twitter, that has been costing him money left and right due to absolutely horrible publicity.
If he wanted Twitter to fail, he could have just unplugged all the servers and be done with it.
No need for him to change the policies so much everyone would leave, break his internet persona, and then declare Xitter bankrupt.
No, I believe he bought Twitter in order to manipulate the US presidential election by spreading propaganda from what he considers a “left-wing bubble”. But because he has no idea how to run a social media, he is failing to keep it together and by now is throwing stuff against it to see what sticks.
Haven’t you heard the story about that one time when he literally unplugged a bunch of servers? He also had zero regards to the proper protocol for moving hardware like that.
He owes a lot of money to banks, etc, for the company.
Explicitly closing Twitter would make him liable for destroying other people’s equity. Accidentally destroying twitter while pretending to drastically fix it, while pretending it’s failing against his will and his taking measures to save it, is the only way to kill it without being on the hook for it.
Please remember that SpaceX and Tesla have entire teams dedicated to handling Elon and reversing his decisions. Twitter did not have the infrastructure required to handle the sheer level of stupid that is Elon Musk.
I think he should seriously consider buying Meta so that we can watch it crash and burn just like Xitter. Facebook is the cancer of the internet and it deserves to go too.
Unfortunately, Twitter was only up for sale because it wasn’t able to effectively monetize. On the other hand, Meta has figured out how to make money hand over fist.
I think the easiest route to get Musk to own Meta is if we goaded him + Zuck into a pay per view fist fight over ownership of Meta.
Twitter was profitable in the years before covid. They made a net income of $1.2 billion in 2018.
They made a slight (compared to their revenue) loss during the pandemic, presumably because advertisers generally were willing to spend less, but they were still earning more than enough - simply cut a few costs and they’d be profitable again. Or just wait for the market to improve since from the sounds of it they had more than enough savings to ride it out (that appeared to be their plan).
They didn’t sell to Musk because they were desperate, they sold to Musk because he signed a contract guaranteeing he would pay far more than the company was worth. If I owned a house that was worth a million dollars, and someone offered me ten million, hell yeah would I sell that house even if I wasn’t really interested in selling.
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One of the richest people in the entire world wants still more money. Tell me again how “trickle-down economics” works?
Ok, I loathe the man, hate the shit show he’s made TwitX, think he’s a clown, generally hate billionaires, etc. But this is kinda a really stupid comment.
No, see, it’s like an inverted pyramid, and the little our overlords permit us of the product of our labor trickles down to them, you see.
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He’s the wealthiest man in the world. That doesn’t mean he has a lair full of cash and just wants more. People really struggle to understand the difference between wealth and money in the bank. This isn’t about hoarding money just for the sake of it.
I understand the difference, but he’s collecting stuff just because it’s shiny. He’s short of cash because he has no impulse control, and I fail to see why he shouldn’t fail the same way other people who overextend themselves fail.
What makes you think he’s short on cash? Wealthy people don’t store their wealth in cash anyways. The money is tied to the stocks of the companies they’re running. That’s why he needed to lend the money for twitter too; he doesn’t have that kind of cash, but people are willing to borrow it to him because of his wealth.
If you just had read the article you’d see that they have lost 50% of the advertisers and are losing money. This isn’t about wanting more money just for the sake of it. No company can exist if their finances are on the negative.
And yet here they are…
You aren’t going to tell me Musk doesn’t have some cash laying around.
Is he just supposed to pay for the running of twitter out of his pocket or what? It says there they’ve lost 50% of advertisers, and are making negative profit. That isn’t sustainable. The purchase of twitter has cost him 40-something billion, and still keeps costing him even more. It’s not about just wanting more profit, but to atleast break even.
It’s a self inflicted wound. Can’t bring myself to care.
I still have a Twitter account. Checking in to see who is still advertising.
“Knees over toes guy”… some personal trainer thing?
Google pixel with comments turned off
Some ethereum outfit…
Youtube advertising football stuff with comments turned off
Amazon music advertising s9me podcast
ESPN sport center
Shrug
Yo knees over toes guy slaps, I’m a huge fan and have been since the pandemic.
I definitely fell victim to the marketing but goddamn if his workouts haven’t helped my knee pain!
How can he slap?! 😫
In all seriousness, though, what’s the angle? Building musculature to support joints? Or is it some sort of weight lifting reference?
Don’t quote me on this but I believe his thing is what the handle says; knees over toes. It used to be considered to be bad for your joints doing exercises such as deep squats for example, but his belief is that it’s the exact opposite. He used to have really bad knees himself, and couldn’t really play basketball like he wanted to, but by doing these exercises he was able to strenghten his knees to the point they no longer cause issues for him. The main exercise he’s recommending is pulling a sled backwards. He tells about Finnish lumberjacks who used to drag logs backwards like this and how they had super strong knees.
On one hand, I’d love for it to finally die, but those toxic communities will simply move to a new site and do the same thing they did on Twitter. Like ants.
On the other hand, a lot of people have grown their business through Twitter and have relied on it. Most other sites don’t have the same functionality and large number of people that make it so easy like Twitter.
So I guess I’m on the fence about Twitter dying.
A new platform has the potential for better moderation and better design to keep those unsavory elements in check. Since Musk has made himself the enemy, the only path forward is for Twitter to die. Nothing good will come from it as long as he is in charge.
Frankly I do not understand Twitter. Never been a member. Have looked at linked content sometimes but it always looks like a bunch of short meaningless thoughtless content. So I think Twitter has 0 value.
The people that seem to like it are those that want to be “the person” people follow or those that want to follow “the person”. Both are kind of offensive behaviors as far as I am concerned.
I mean, that was the original point of twitter. Jack Dorsey took Facebook’s status updates feature and made a whole website about it. You’d follow people you knew in real life as well as famous people you liked and then could see short updates about their life and their interests. Most of the very first tweets were just innocuous little updates. 50cent said he was in Turkey. Warren Buffet said he joined the app. A bunch of random non celebrities posted messages about what they were cooking that day.
Twitter effectively ran this concept into the ground when it 1) removed the character limit (it was originally 140 chars), and 2) added thread reply features.
The amazing thing to me is that people actually care about that. Obviously a lot of people do. I cannot fathom it. It is just not me. Kind of confirms I made a good choice by ignoring Twitter.
Okay.
I don’t use Xitter, what functionality does it have that’s not stupidly easy to implement? As far as I can tell the only thing that Xitter has is a userbase - and when they drive them away they’ll have nothing [but debt].
It’s a prisoner’s dilemma thing. People have had ample time and opportunity to move to mastodon, but as you say Twitter is still where the bulk of eyeballs are, but that only remains true if everyone’s too afraid to leave it.
Do it! Do it!
Rip the bandaid off! Get this shit closed down and be done with it.
Gotta hand it to Musk, he’s mastodon’s greatest promoter.
Anyone who hasn’t abandoned the platform by now deserves whatever they get.
So, I am starting to really believe his goal is to just drive a stake into the heart of twitter.
Either that, or he is trying to prove a point regarding something.
I don’t think there is any possible way, he is so dumb as to make all of these horrible decisions regarding twitter… This has got to be destroying twitter by design, on purpose.
I mean, seriously… he has done literally everything that you SHOULDN’T do. Fire the majority of the company. Destroy over a decade worth of very good branding. Alienate all investors. Alienate the user base. Piss off the remaining users more. Drive away advertisers…
FFS, the dude has a company that sends rockets into space, and previously, the world’s premier electric car company… What in the hell is his odd obsession with choking the life out of twitter, that has been costing him money left and right due to absolutely horrible publicity.
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” - Hanlon’s razor
Can’t… can’t it be both? 🤔
He’s probably losing money on it… So, it makes sense for him to kill it, before he digs a deeper hole.
That being said, he’s an engineer who seriously got angry at cave divers when they told him his sub sucks.
And I’m willing to bet many of the crappy design decisions for Tesla are made by him too
So, possible he’s an idiot, but, equally possible, he’s trying to kill it in a subtle way which won’t instantly drive all traffic to a competitor
He’s a stupid man. But he’s also sitting on mbs dick, so he does what daddy says
If he wanted Twitter to fail, he could have just unplugged all the servers and be done with it.
No need for him to change the policies so much everyone would leave, break his internet persona, and then declare Xitter bankrupt.
No, I believe he bought Twitter in order to manipulate the US presidential election by spreading propaganda from what he considers a “left-wing bubble”. But because he has no idea how to run a social media, he is failing to keep it together and by now is throwing stuff against it to see what sticks.
Haven’t you heard the story about that one time when he literally unplugged a bunch of servers? He also had zero regards to the proper protocol for moving hardware like that.
Yes, but he didn’t do that with every server sadly
It was a good start. Elon should pull that same stunt with all the data centers he owns.
He owes a lot of money to banks, etc, for the company.
Explicitly closing Twitter would make him liable for destroying other people’s equity. Accidentally destroying twitter while pretending to drastically fix it, while pretending it’s failing against his will and his taking measures to save it, is the only way to kill it without being on the hook for it.
I doubt he won’t be on the hook for the billions he got as investment no matter how he destroys Twitter.
Incompetence is not a legal defense.
Please remember that SpaceX and Tesla have entire teams dedicated to handling Elon and reversing his decisions. Twitter did not have the infrastructure required to handle the sheer level of stupid that is Elon Musk.
There are some (extreme) suspicions on his intent: https://davetroy.medium.com/no-elon-and-jack-are-not-competitors-theyre-collaborating-3e88cde5267d
I think most people that have checkmarks will.
Especially, the people in social media/politics that talk about the elite/wealthy class.
I fucking dare him to follow through. Please do it. Don’t wuss out Elon!
Should we all go make twitter accounts and say how great of an idea this is?
Yes! Absolutely!
I hope he buys reddit next
I think he should seriously consider buying Meta so that we can watch it crash and burn just like Xitter. Facebook is the cancer of the internet and it deserves to go too.
Beautiful idea
Unfortunately, Twitter was only up for sale because it wasn’t able to effectively monetize. On the other hand, Meta has figured out how to make money hand over fist.
I think the easiest route to get Musk to own Meta is if we goaded him + Zuck into a pay per view fist fight over ownership of Meta.
How about we upgrade that to a thunderdome with chainsaws?
Twitter was profitable in the years before covid. They made a net income of $1.2 billion in 2018.
They made a slight (compared to their revenue) loss during the pandemic, presumably because advertisers generally were willing to spend less, but they were still earning more than enough - simply cut a few costs and they’d be profitable again. Or just wait for the market to improve since from the sounds of it they had more than enough savings to ride it out (that appeared to be their plan).
They didn’t sell to Musk because they were desperate, they sold to Musk because he signed a contract guaranteeing he would pay far more than the company was worth. If I owned a house that was worth a million dollars, and someone offered me ten million, hell yeah would I sell that house even if I wasn’t really interested in selling.
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Ok. This one might “finally” kill the platform because normal customer wouldn’t want to pay for access.
Spock: Twitter is dying.
Kirk: Let it die.
People won’t pay for something that used to be free… OTOH, neither will bot farms.
Either case will end Twitter, so I say go for it!