this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
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[–] [email protected] 122 points 11 months ago (4 children)

That’s not as much as I would’ve hoped

[–] [email protected] 44 points 11 months ago

Don't forget how recently he really started driving away the advertisers and how close we are to the end of the year. I see it as a very hopeful start.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago

$75m in 5 weeks. That’s a run rate of $780m per year. That is not a small chunk of revenue.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (2 children)

75 bucks is the minimum though. It could be like... 37 billion.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 11 months ago

X is already worth less than half of buying price. And this is income loss, not net worth. Which will eventually lead to the later or if not to bankruptcy.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don't think Twitter ever even had ad revenue that high right?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

5 trillion then.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Don't worry, the company is now worth less than half of what he paid for it and his Tesla stocks are hemorrhaging value too 🙂

[–] [email protected] 60 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Does anyone else pick up on the subtle humor of X being the means by which illiterate people can put pen to paper and "have their say"

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I doubt this is lost on Elon, as much of Africa was sold off to colonisers on treaties signed with an X.

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

K you better not have just unearthed the REAL genesis and hidden meaning behind all this X bullshit...👆

Edit: sort of makes some sick kinda sense given his autocrat state-level investors... :/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (3 children)

And naming the Tesla models S, 3, X, Y, is a nice PR smokescreen that would help hide the previous theory.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Time to consider Xitter a hate group and ban them.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Excellent, let's keep that momentum going.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

we can beat that

[–] [email protected] 27 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Let's be fair, there's also been a rise in CSAM, too, not just hate speech.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 11 months ago

Well of course there's more CSAM. They have to do something to attract more conservatives.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I've been on the internet since the 90s, BBS services before that. Thankfully I've never stumbled upon anything remotely close to CSAM all this time. To think that I could open up a twitter thread linked from a news story and be subjected to it is repugnant.

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

Especially since there are services like Thorne that would help you manage it. Also this is a direct result of gutting trust and safety teams.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 11 months ago (2 children)

...and unless you're Elon, this is a problem why?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Why is this problematic for Elon? Has he ever explicitly conceded he needs X to be profitable? Isn't it sufficient and necessary enough in the eyes of his investors to simply neuter it?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago (1 children)

He's said that he WANTS it to be profitable and as a clinical narcissist billionaire, he doesn't cope well with not getting what he wants.

On a more practical level, the cesspit it's become has increased scrutiny on his other companies and the main one, Tesla, is decidedly NOT weathering that well.

All in all, he's lost over a third, maybe even as much as HALF of his still absurdly huge dragon's hoard of wealth since he took over Twitter.

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

There's something fishy going on in my view. Its only conjecture as of yet and I don't want to push it too much but none of this computes, so to speak

He said...

Elon spouts a lot of nonsense and "said" he wanted to buy Twitter initially

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I think you're overthinking it tbh. He's not some evil supergenius, he's just an extreme lucky idiot and bigot who's finally getting a taste of the finding out after fucking around for most of his life..

Evil, yes, but in no way a mastermind. Barely even a mind.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

He doesn't need to be evil or a genius or even have a mind (although I think that is overly uncharitable to the point I have to depart in agreeing with you briefly, he is a smart guy but sometimes smart people can be the dumbest, I'm a living+breathing example of this), all he has to do is to take money from cunning evil people

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

True, and pay people much smarter and otherwise more capable to do the actual work required for making him money.

That's the main reason why the whole Twitter thing has been such a dumpster fire: he's taking a hands on approach rather than just pretending to by taking credit for the work of other people.

The fact that the nature of a social media company means that most of his mistakes and desperate attempts to rectify them are much more public sure doesn't help either, given his narcissism..

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

pay people much smarter and otherwise more capable to do the actual work required for making him money.

That's intense, its not like he has any kind of track record with that, does he? I dunno, I thought he was always already all of those things and worked 120-hour weeks "running" several companies one-man-show style like Nathan Fielder or James Franco('s Roast)?

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

Every billionaire claims that it's all due to hard work, but their "work" is mostly just meetings where they get to just spitball bullshit that doesn't even have to make any sense.

2-hour "business lunch" where you discuss business for 5 minutes? That's work to a billionaire.

18 holes with your business buddies, whether that means golf or a meeting at a brothel? Work.

Tweeting from a building belonging to the company? Work.

Playing a ridiculous Elden Ring bulld in the office? Work.

Shouting at your ex wife while on company premises? Work.

Berating workers for wanting to unionize? Work.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Its funny cuz when I want to eat something tasty and have it brought to me and be able to focus on something else in the process, I call it a power lunch. I always get NOTHING done lol.

I totally will get something done the next time, no doubt about that. I have the track record to prove it /s

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Elon's not personally designing battery chemistry or running aerodynamics simulations on bodywork at Tesla. He certainly isn't bolting them together, though that would explain the poor finish quality I keep hearing about.

The leadership of a company of any significant size can only ever be doing a small plurality of the work at most, and can usually get away with much less than that. There simply aren't enough hours in the day to outwork the hundreds or thousands of employees that are actually making the company most of its money.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

Much of his wealth is held in shares of his publicly traded companies. If investors lose faith in his ability to manage and grow one company it could (and seemingly has) affect the value of all companies he's involved with, directly decreasing his net worth. Making Twitter profitable would have gone a long way in demonstrating his ability to run a company, but he has done the opposite.

But technically no, I guess he doesn't need Twitter to turn a profit. He could just watch it all burn.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

Elon is probably one of the only people in the world to whom this is not too worrisome.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 11 months ago (2 children)

It's amazing how you can spend 44 billion dollars and not lose credibility over it.

Oh wait

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Just don't have any credibility to begin with ez

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago

I love seeing some good news... really lifts my spirits.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago (4 children)

He really made a bad deal on that website. Monetarily anyway.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Sure, but at the end of the day, does it really matter? It's like made up numbers that never run out. He's still set for life, no real consequence. He feels this less than someone who misses a car payment one month.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago

That's the really crazy thing. With the market value crash of Twitter he lost more money than the GDP of a small country. Yet, it practically makes no difference to him.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

How much of his own money did he really lose though? Didn’t he have a bunch of people throw in with him?

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

Around $22Bn, that's how much he had to sell on Tesla stock. The other half was a loan from several banks and investors that got saddled to Twitter itself. These things are public, that's how we know most of the loan money came from the Saudi crown.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

Yeah, he probably wanted it in order to influence the election, but the way things are going it might but be around for that. Not to mention, Twitter isn't really used by real people, it's basically just all journalists circle jerking.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Seems pretty obvious, right? Someone on Lemmy once argued, he did it to avoid taxes. Failed to explain how this is profitable in the end though.

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

I remember reading an article speculating that his strategy was to bring down twitter because it was a left leaning platform, and that would appease the Saudis, or something like that. Seemed pretty far fetched. I reckon he made an ego driven power play without thinking it through and it is going about as well as anybody expected. No shenanigans, no strategy, just a more publically exposed failure than his previous business failures.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago

Is Twitter not part of the three comma club anymore?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Nov 24 (Reuters) - Elon Musk-owned social media company X could lose as much as $75 million in advertising revenue by the end of the year as dozens of major brands pause their marketing campaigns, the New York Times reported on Friday.

Musk backing an antisemitic post on the platform last week has led several companies including Walt Disney (DIS.N) and Warner Bros Discovery (WBD.O) to pause their advertisements on the site formerly called Twitter.

X has struck back and sued media watchdog group Media Matters, alleging the organization defamed the platform with a report that said ads for major brands including Apple and Oracle had appeared next to posts touting Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party.

X said on Friday $11 million in revenue was at risk and the exact figure fluctuated as some advertisers returned to the platform and others increased spending, according to the report.

Advertisers have fled X since Musk bought it in October 2022 and reduced content moderation, resulting in a sharp rise in hate speech on the site, according to civil rights groups.

The platform's U.S. ad revenue has declined at least 55% year-over-year each month since Musk's takeover, Reuters previously reported.


The original article contains 255 words, the summary contains 198 words. Saved 22%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

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