Musk aims to grow Twitter users by 1 billion, then link accounts to debit cards.
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Twitter could go bankrupt, lose billions next year, Musk tells staff
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He's actually doubling down on it. Just like that guy at the roulette wheel betting on red until he makes all his money back and more!
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Haha. Twitter is now a massive security risk due to mass layoffs of lots of key personnel and the introduction of Musk's toxic work culture. No way is Musk going anywhere near my money.
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Honestly, the most bizarre thing about this is I still go on Twitter and you'd never know any of this is happening. Nothing about it or the content being created has changed.
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A messaging/video/send money/banking platform? I am pretty sure the Fed and SEC are going to want to look at those plans. I am pretty sure this isn't what his investors heard as a sales pitch.
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day-yum. putin and musk auguring in at the same time. that can't give you diabetes, can it?
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In line with this level of security is my concern regarding their ability to secure other people's money.
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I'm hoping it isn't a dream that I wake up from. Or at least let the dream go on long enough for me to enjoy it to the fullest.
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I think the key is the check mark. Section 230 immunizes Twitter for the content. And I would suspect that an algorithm would not attach additional liability. BUT to the best of my knowledge, there has not been a case where an internet service provider (i.e. Twitter) was challenged because it gave a user some sort of indicia of authenticity and it was that indicia that led to the loss.
Section 230 is intended to ensure that the actual "speaker" is liable if a claim is brought. So it doesn't penalize service providers if they choose not to moderate or if something they didn't moderate ends up being actionable. (Note: moderation in and of itself is not a Section 230 issue - a decision by a private company to moderate users speech (i.e. to decline to allow/moderate certain posts) is an exercise of the company's First Amendment rights.) Section 230 is all about what *is* posted.
So all that being said - it will be a question of whether a service provider is exercising its own speech by giving a post a checkmark - which would bypass Section 230 and allow a claim to reach the service provider.
Big picture, even though I think Twitter screwed the pooch here, I would argue against finding liability against the service provider because finding a service provider liable would eliminate any sort of verification if verifying would make the service provider liable. I think verification is a good thing generally when done right and I want more and better verification. I'd hate for Elon ruin that simply because Twitter did it poorly.
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What an absolute fucking idiot.
Elon wants to turn Twtitter into WeChat because he has a hard on for WeChat's monopoly in China. But he also forgot (or maybe ignored) WeChat only got there because the CCP had a period where they don't regulate anything and "connected" Chinese entrepreneurs were allowed to grow their business with the blessing of the CCP as a counter force against foreign IT tech giants taking any roots in China (and now the CCP simply tightens their grip around on these IT giants and the state owns them - solidifying and centralising the CCP's power). If Elon ever tries to make Twitter a bank in the west, he's going to be faced with so much regulation that it will never become close to the monopoly that WeChat is - but of course nobody told him because they are all too busy stroking his ego about how he is a geniuses.
Elon wants to turn Twtitter into WeChat because he has a hard on for WeChat's monopoly in China. But he also forgot (or maybe ignored) WeChat only got there because the CCP had a period where they don't regulate anything and "connected" Chinese entrepreneurs were allowed to grow their business with the blessing of the CCP as a counter force against foreign IT tech giants taking any roots in China (and now the CCP simply tightens their grip around on these IT giants and the state owns them - solidifying and centralising the CCP's power). If Elon ever tries to make Twitter a bank in the west, he's going to be faced with so much regulation that it will never become close to the monopoly that WeChat is - but of course nobody told him because they are all too busy stroking his ego about how he is a geniuses.
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i think it's likely that Musk is about to learn that "free speech" isn't free of consequences. I hope Lilly sues the everloving shit out of Twitter over this. I also hope the SEC comes down on them like a ton of bricks. If I was a Lilly shareholder I'd be pissed the hell off... (If I was a Lilly shareholder with liquid cash I'd double down)
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Well, to be fair... what choice does Zuckerberg have?
Facebook, and to a lesser extent Instagram, are at the end of their massive growth periods. Pretty much everyone who wants to use them is using them.
Metaverse is all about providing another avenue for growth. If it fails, the company stalls.
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Elon, buddy, you actually expect us to trust our financial information to code written by folks you're working to the bone? Not to mention your years long demonstration of the perils of affluenza? Get fucked.
To any current Twitter employees, run for your professional lives, if not your sanity.
To any current Twitter employees, run for your professional lives, if not your sanity.
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The man is crazy. And his other ventures ended up working not because of a 'compelling' product, but one that worked. Twitter as a 'financial institution' is no longer Twitter and the people with accounts will be gone.
So my guess is he's actively working to make Twitter fail so he can declare bankruptcy and not owe a ton of money.
So my guess is he's actively working to make Twitter fail so he can declare bankruptcy and not owe a ton of money.
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The WeChat idea. It could have merit, as a safe experiment for them to dip their toes into, but not as something they can't afford to fail at.
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As I understand it, Twitter was liable for $50M in debt payments each year and was making those payments out of revenues. Musk has added an additional $1B in annual debt payments to Twitter. So going from $50,000,000 to $1,050,000,000 (in round figures) is a big jump.
(Edited $500M to $50M - thanks Fancy Internet Person!)
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Oh joy you just hit H.L. Mencken territory with that one. Having a complex problem and proposing a clear simple solution that is wrong (or rather does not work in this case).
Have fun playing Don Quixote while trying to define what a hedge fund is while the people abusing the systems that are normally used to ensure a smooth(er) functioning of the economy are now running a not-hedge fund (or were already not running a hedge fund but for example a venture capitalist fund). And have even more fun trying to pin down what ownership means when there are a million and one ways to own a company without being an owner or how to split that debt if there is more then one owner. And what if for example you hand over 1 share of the company to the company itself, at this point the company owns itself so you can offload the debt legally without having to go through legally valid but morally questionable means of transferring the debt (just imagine the merry hell any solution to this will do to the stock markets).
Because that is the problem, it is impossible to (completely) prevent abuse of the systems in place. That (special) dividend I mentioned? That is the normal way for owners to take out their share of the profits, potential or already realized, not a way to remove any remaining value/net worth of the company. Same thing with debt there are whole areas of debt that do not make sense if not owned by the issuer/user of said debt or should not be legally owned by any other entity. There are good reasons to keep debts siloed even if that siloing can be abused.
The inability to own debt opens up so many ways to now legally defraud others it isn't funny (especially not the victims). And if you make even one concession to that, that concession will be used to for logically sound if X why not Y arguments for more forms of debt to be owned by this company while at the same time will giving a venue for abuse to enrich the owner(s) at the expense of the company.
And that is ignoring how this 'solution' cripples the companies that are not in the hands of entities that are not abusing what is legally allowed. And as usual the moment you carve out an exception for these entities that behave said exception will be abused.
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That means anyone who's ever had more than 1 job and let-go is a reject at some point in their career.
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If you're not a paying user, YOU are most definitely the product, being sold to advertisers.
Even if you pay for Twitter Blue or whatever they call it this hour. If you're seeing ads, you're a product this platform sells.
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Fancy Internet Person
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
Twitter's 10K filing for fiscal year 2021 (released on February 2022) shows them paying $50 million in interest in the year 2021.
Musk has grown that payment to over $1B ($1000 million, 20 times as much).
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“We just definitely need to bring in more cash than we spend,” Musk replied. “If we don’t do that and there’s a massive negative cash flow, then
bankruptcy is not out of the question.”
you don't say?
bankruptcy is not out of the question.”
you don't say?
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Those companies' reasons were somewhat cogent. The main reason is to kill competition with your own products or to acquire IP that you might be infringing upon. I don't know what this *thing* Musk is doing with Twitter, but I'm inclined to believe it's just a drowning man flailing in the water.
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I'm behind (again!) on Twitterfire comments, but wanted to thank you for teaching me "hypergolic." I will be shoehorning this into conversation by the end of the week, in full recognition that it's already late Friday.
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Throwing away 44 billion dollars to punish Twitter is pretty stupid.
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If Musk has the additional 4 billion from stock sales etc, and that's likely just a fraction, he would be best to just sell 13 billion worth, pay off the debt entirely, and save the 1.2 billion a year in interest payments.
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Maybe. But then he is into it $57B worth and if it never pays off then he would have been better off quitting at $44B.
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Not quite - the $44B includes that $13B debt (and another portion is his investors). Your general point stands though.
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Why on earth would it make sense for Stephen King to pay Twitter? You've gotten the incentives backwards. Stephen King doesn't need Twitter, not even a little bit. But Twitter needs Stephen King a *lot*. Maybe not specifically, but one of the reasons people hang out on Twitter is because that's where Stephen King and Kendall Jenner and various sportsball players can be found.
You've got it backwards who's providing value in the value proposition -- if anything, Twitter should be paying Stephen King. "Hey, you're super famous, so you pay Twitter extra" doesn't pass even the most basic smell test.
He's completely mistaken who's the product and what's for sale: it's the users that are the product, and it's their attention that's for sale. His customers are advertisers. Or, they were, before they all stopped advertising there, because brand safety is a thing and "hahaha, someone hit Paul Pelosi with a hammer, lolol" isn't something Cheerios or Ford or Burberry want to be even remotely associated with.
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Make twitter banking/shopping app ?
So this is all an attempt to back door in a resurrected version of his paypal era failed X app branding?
So this is all an attempt to back door in a resurrected version of his paypal era failed X app branding?
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Um, the "content" has most definitely changed. Mainstream news is filled with the stories of "verified" public figures and businesses being impersonated and posting crazy shit, to the point that it is costing one of them actual money. Aside from the huge uptick in general racist/nazi crap. And even more significantly, Musk's own insane tweets as CEO of Twitter. Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it's not happening.
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If you look at what he's done, NOTHING is innovative in concept.
Throw enough money at it, and you CAN make it happen if it's within the realm of doable. That defines both SpaceX and Tesla.
But SpaceX was sold on its merits while Tesla was sold on the lie of full autonomy. In my book SpaceX was a full success. Tesla... The jury is still out, especially with the QC issues it still has. They may make it long-term. They may not.
But with a CEO who's all but killed a $25 billion dollar company in less than two weeks...
Tesla stock is already taking a MAJOR hit because Musk is still on the board. He's more distant from SpaceX, which is still performing pretty well.
That tells me the more removed Musk is from day to day operations of a company, the better the company performs. Conversely, the more closely Musk controls a company, the faster the thing tanks. This speaks volumes of Musk's ability to guide an established company.
I'll readily concede that Musk's style of "leadership" can work at times for start-ups. But beyond a start-up, he's next to death for an established company.
And he's indisputably death to Twitter.
But according to inside sources at Twitter, from the guy he hired to help him run it (who subsequently left like today or yesterday, IIRC), Musk's "sole purpose" for Twitter is to recoup his losses.
That explains his actions, at least. Doesn't excuse them, though.
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A bank's job isn't to evaluate the solidity of a business deal. The sole job a bank has, when loaning money, is to evaluate the borrower's ability to repay the debt. Nothing more, nothing less.
Loan Musk $13 billion (or whatever he actually ended up borrowing)? Well, can he repay it? (Yes/No). Based upon the value of his stock in SpaceX and Tesla, the evaluation would have ended up as a "yes" (although that does depend on exactly how much other debt he has, and how much stock is underpinning that other debt.)
Now, though? The way Tesla's been plummeting, the evaluation may well have shifted to "no". I don't think the banks expected Musk to pour quite so much dioxygen difluoride on the embers - that would probably have shifted their evaluation significantly.
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To be completely fair to Musk, FSD is not what got Tesla to where it is today. It also isn't why the stock was overvalued; that was more Musk's mystique than any promises of FSD specifically.
No, Tesla's stock is taking a major hit because Musk is acting like a crazy person. If SpaceX were publicly traded, it's stock would be tanking too.
Musk's style works best when:
1. There is a clear goal to be achieved.
2. There is a clear vision of what needs to happen to achieve that goal.
3. There is a substantial financial incentive at the end of that goal.
With SpaceX, you want to make rocket launches cheaper, so you need reusability, and there are a lot of opportunities to monetize space if you can make launches cheaper. Musk knew what he wanted and what needed to happen to get there.
Musk has no idea what he even wants out of Twitter. He never wanted to really own it, and now he has a $1 billion bill every year until he can figure out what that is. That's why he's flailing around, throwing out a bunch of ideas to see if something can be monetized.
The fact of the matter is this: if he's staking his hopes on the One Good Idea that will make Twitter profitable in 6 months, given that they're making $1 billion less each month than they were... that's no gonna happen. That's just not possible.
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If the bank deal was negotiated early in April or May, then they kinda got hit with 2 problems. Tesla's stock has been outpacing the market in a downward trajectory. And also, the Fed turned off the free money faucet. This means that the interest on those debts has gone way up. Which impacts the ability of the person to pay.
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