• TWeaK@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      Stop X permanently. The lawsuits are massing up, and the value of the business has nearly dropped such that the $13bn debt is bigger than it. They had little hope of paying even the interest before Musk started intentionally tanking their revenue. He knows that the business will never have to pay up, hell they’re not even paying rent on their offices, and he’ll get away with the crime Scott free because it’s a limited liability company.

      And make no mistake, that was the plan all along. Destroy a private business cum public forum that served the public good, and on the way out see what controversial actions they can get away with. That way any site that comes to fill the void can do the same. His old mate Peter Thiel will likely be pleased, along with a bunch of other unscrupulous people.

      • thecrotch@sh.itjust.works
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        11 months ago

        Destroy a private business cum public forum that served the public

        It’s amazing to me how much people have rewritten history since musk took over. Twitter was always shit. It’s worse now, yeah. A lot worse. But it’s like taking a shit on a smaller.oile.of shit. All this talk about how it was a real boon for humanity and so important it should be regulated as a utility is equal parts idiotic and hilarious.

        • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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          11 months ago

          It’s shit, but it had significant uses. Namely, getting breaking news from trusted journalists, and speaking directly to businesses for consumer support when other methods typically went unanswered.

          That’s not to mention the Arab Spring. Sure, significant change that people had hoped for didn’t follow through, but it still spooked them enough that one of the incumbent leaders helped buy the website to undermine it.

          • Sage the Lawyer@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            I get the feeling (I wouldn’t really know, haven’t been there in months) that Reddit is still significantly better. Sure, it’s worse now, but it still has active communities on pretty much any topic imaginable. Lemmy is on its way, but won’t be there for a few years I think.

            • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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              11 months ago

              There’s some genuine communities lingering on, but almost all of the larger communities have become part of the power mods’ “projects”.

              • Daft_ish@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                I was shook the other day when I stopped by reddit and saw, “just a normal day in russia” at the top of the front page. As Americans we need to give up on the idea of a non-political social media because it always gets co-optd into some psy-ops bullshit.

        • Daft_ish@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          I 100% agree it was shit. Sometimes though, that shit fertilized real growth.

          That said, lesson shouldn’t be, “we need twitter.” It should be, let’s populate similar platforms so we can this resource in the future.

      • antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        11 months ago

        served the public good

        Yeah, nah. For a start, if one website could be singled out for bringing Trump into power, it wasn’t any of those icky extremist places such as 4chan, 8chan, r/trump - it was Twitter where he posted his garbage for literal years with no interruption and thus gained a massive following.

        • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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          11 months ago

          You could say the same about reddit in a large part. 4chan was a free home, Twitter was a megaphone, but reddit really encouraged the infestation to gestate.

          Also it wasn’t r/trump, but r/the_Donald, as well as all the spin off astroturfed subs.

      • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.social
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        11 months ago

        I don’t disagree this is a possibility, but I have yet to hear someone clearly articulate why poopoobrain over there would do something so dumb intentionally.

        I find it so much more compelling that he’s just a divorce-brained middle-aged dumbass with a megaphone and billions to dig his own grave. That he was forced to buy Twitter after waving his dick around in public and has been trying to save his reputation ever since by pretending that it’s all a part of his plan to amplify the right voices to ‘save humanity’.

        I’m not saying he isn’t brain-broken enough to believe it himself, but I don’t think he ever really had a plan. I think he’s a sad, lonely billionaire going through the worlds biggest mid-life crisis.

        • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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          11 months ago

          but I have yet to hear someone clearly articulate why poopoobrain over there would do something so dumb intentionally.

          Because it distracts from the fact that leveraged buyouts are almost always meant to kill the business in the long run, and such distraction reduces the chance of regulation against the practice. People don’t think Twitter is failing because it had $13bn of debt it could never afford, they think it’s failing because Musk is a poor businessman. That isn’t to say Musk is a great businessman acting like a fool, rather, he is a clown acting like a fool.

          I think if Musk had made a genuine effort to buy Twitter there wouldn’t have been so much debt saddled onto the business. Musk was forced to make the purchase, but the nature of the purchase has subsequently been tailored into sinking the ship. One of the first things they did was stop paying rent - if this wasn’t a sign of a business doomed to failure I don’t know what is. The business will die a death, and everyone it owes money to will be left fighting over the ashes.

          • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.social
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            11 months ago

            Ok, so you’re not saying he actually originally wanted to buy it in order to tank it, you’re saying once he was forced to buy it the most expedient thing to do was to bankrupt it.

            Being pushed into buying it because of his loud mouth is still a MASSIVE blunder, him choosing to steer it into an iceberg after being handed the keys is just him cutting his losses. It doesn’t explain why he would have wanted to destroy the company in the first place. If it was because the site was largely critical of him or platformed people counter to his personal worldview, then buying the company and running those voices out (like he did) would have sufficed and he wouldn’t also need to tank it. Likewise, if all he wanted was to platform voices friendly to him and his worldview, burning down the house around himself and his new friends is contradictory.

            I think you’re giving him too much credit, I think he’s just an overconfident dumbass that got himself into trouble and is trying to erase his mistake without ruining his reputation as a genius.

            • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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              11 months ago

              It doesn’t explain why he would have wanted to destroy the company in the first place.

              For that, you could turn to his old friend, Peter Thiel. Thiel tried and failed to start up businesses that competed directly against Twitter. Aside from Thiel, there are plenty of other people who likely resent Twitter - such as the Saudi prince who now owns a portion of it alongside Musk.

              I think the goal is to bring Twitter down, then replace it with something else. Alternatively, they could turn Twitter into what they want it to be by further financing it and covering the debt, though that seems less and less likely as time goes on. However, by sending Twitter down the toilet they can experiment with the kind of things that future platforms might be able to do - anything Twitter gets reprimanded for will ultimately have no consequence if Twitter goes away, but anything Twitter gets away with can be fair game for new start ups.

              I think you’re giving him too much credit, I think he’s just an overconfident dumbass that got himself into trouble and is trying to erase his mistake without ruining his reputation as a genius.

              I agree he’s an overconfident dumbass and got himself into this position, and I’m sure he desperately values his reputation - the one aspect of all this that I’m enjoying is how badly his reputation is getting ruined. I still worry about more sinister things happening over the long run that may shape the future of social platforms for the worse, though.

  • Dyskolos@lemmy.zip
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    11 months ago

    Why does anyone still use this pile of crap anyway since the kid took over?

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Pretty sure users have mostly left.

      Companies and public figures keep using it, because for most of them it’s just some intern or bot that was posting.

      It takes a while for social media to finally die because of that. They’ll just stumble on like a zombie for like a decade.

      The only way it’ll happen faster, is if people loudly boycott anyone that’s still using it. But with 99% of social media sucking ass, there’s not really a place to do it from where companies and public figures will hear it.

    • cm0002@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Don’t insult children like that, kids would have made way better and funnier decisions lmao

    • Dem Bosain@midwest.social
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      11 months ago

      I’m still there because I like to know what the crazies think about stuff. It’s still entertaining in its own way. For example, did you know there are business experts on Twitter even smarter than Tim Cook? It’s true…

      • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        Scott Adams needs to hide away in his Dilbert shaped house, never to be heard from again.

    • Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      For the same reason I started using it in the first place. Elon taking over haven’t changed my user experience in any way. It’s the same it has always been. Ironically enough it’s also the only social media platform where my feed is 99.5% free of politics or talk about Elon.

  • HeyJoe@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    The only part I hate is that real people have and will lose their jobs due to 1 person that treats this entire situation like a kids game.

    • ubermeisters@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Thosee people honestly took that risk working for that company. I don’t go work for Walmart then cry about it killing small towns, kinda thing.

    • Ranvier@sopuli.xyz
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      11 months ago

      So they can start advertising on it again in two weeks when people aren’t paying as much attention again, duh. Just like when all those corporations stopped donating to insurrectionist Republicans, for about three seconds.

  • blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    “Exclusive”, at least the forth version of this story I’ve seen today.

  • db2@sopuli.xyz
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    11 months ago

    Musk being an utter waste of skin isn’t an exclusive.

  • Jaysyn@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    Just a pause? Planning on hanging out with the #fascists a bit later maybe?

    Between this & the Jon Stewart / China bullshit, I’m so glad I never gave Apple’s e-trash a second thought.

  • anon232@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    To my knowledge, McDonalds isnt trying to upend our democracy; as well as inciting nazis in their restaurants.