this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2024
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"Fidelity is currently valuing X at about $9.4 billion"

I found this funny.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

It's a fair argument, especially given how much... entertainment he seems to derive from owning it.