Elon Cleaning House

It's not a small detail that Musk had to arrange billions in financing after publicly balking at the deal. That suggests creditors have reason to believe in the X vision, especially given Twitter's balance sheet at the time. Lenders like Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Barclays generally don't throw billions in loans to a sinking ship unless they have very good reason to believe it can be resuscitated.

 

I've been meaning to post this. Very cool that Musk took a $350,000 fine for freedom of speech.

https://thehill.com/regulation/cour...et-search-warrant-for-trumps-twitter-account/

 

Was already discussed, but he folded after 3 days. Some hero.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/08/15/twitter-x-links-delayed/

Mr free speech Musk is putting linking delays on sites he doesn’t like.

 

So, in other words, no evidence that this was actually happening. We just have to take the WaPo's word for it? Okay...

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/16/jud...on-musk-tried-to-cozy-up-to-ex-president.html

Thank you, Judge Howell, for confirming what Musk has been telling us for a while now. Wow...

Published August 16, 2023 2:13pm EDT
At several times during the conversation, Howell disputed Twitter’s interpretation of various rights related to the First Amendment and executive privilege, which the company claimed would impede its ability to provide materials to the government as part of an investigation.

“It couldn’t be that Twitter is trying to make up for the fact that it kicked Donald Trump off Twitter for some period of time that it now is standing up to protect First Amendment rights here, is it?” said Howell.

“No, your honor,” replied George Varghese, Twitter’s lawyer, adding that the nature of the search request provided a legal reason for not complying with the order.

Howell continued, asking if the company was trying “to make Donald Trump feel like he is a particularly welcomed new renewed user of Twitter, here.”

Varghese responded by saying, “Twitter has no interest other than litigating its constitutional rights, your honor.”

 

Elon Musk takes heat after announcing apparent end of 'block' feature on X: 'Worst idea ever'

 

Public square moving to a gated cal de sac.

https://www.axios.com/2023/09/19/musk-x-twitter-charge-all-users-monthly-subscription-fees#

 

This bullet is an excellent point:

• Musk said adding a subscription would make it much more difficult for bots to create accounts, because each bot would need to register a new credit card.

Make it $1/mo or $10/year and only one account per CC.

I'm not contending this is the only thing being considered here, but it is a good point.

 

Seems like a good way to kill twitter once and for all, or at least the people who complain about it but still use it habitually. I still use it, but if I have to enter in CC info and start paying even nominal amounts of money I think I'm out for good. It requires positive action on my part, rather than ritual doom scrolling.

 

Agreed. I rarely visit. No way Id pay $5/year.

It's a risky experiment, particularly with Threads waiting in the wings (though there are plenty of issues there), but it is a reasonable way to purge bots.

 

I suppose, but I don't really understand the obsession with bots to the point of this sort of extreme either. Seems like just catering to a small number of power users with high follower counts, but I suppose those are the people paying now. I'm sure my experience is very different.

 

Once again, this scene from Moneyball comes to mind.

 

I have entirely stopped scrolling through twitter. Last report I read Twitter traffic was eroding regardless of Musk’s statements.

 

"Citing a third-party estimate, Mashable reported in May that roughly 640,000 to 680,000 people were subscribed to Twitter Blue as of the end of April."

Okay, so lets say it is 680,000, for the sake of argument. Let's also assume that ad revenue pays off their costs (it doesn't, or even come close). And let's further assume that the discount rate = 0. It will take Musk approximately 659 years to pay off his investors.

 

He could accomplish the same with a one time charge or even a "verification charge" of a few cents that gets refunded. I think He wants the monthly income stream and is trying to frame the need as "bot control".

 

Elon is now hiring you for zero compensation to be citizen journalists and flood X with eyewitness citizen reporting. Brilliant strategy to drive X content and then charge people to see more.

 

LOL. Elon begging for content. I doubt that makes up for the $30B in value Twitter has lost.

 

Elon has now fired have of the election integrity unit and will likely let them all go.

He continues to do the bidding of the people who really paid to buy Twitter.