• gomp@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Death warrant? Maybe, but I expect companies (maybe not the EU, but - let’s be frank - probably the EU too) to go back into X as soon as they feel they are done cashing in this virtue signaling.

    There were plenty of reasons to leave twitter before this idiotic tweet from Musk (reasons due to twitter’s action as a company, and not just Musk’s drunken posts) and they were all happily tweeting and advertising.

    Is this drop that breaks the camel’s back? Maybe, but I wouldn’t be holding my breath.

    • SloganLessons@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      My chips are also on them coming back, but at the same time it feels like Musk wants to make Twitter’s business harder than it needs to be.

      This reaction doesn’t come from the last tweet itself, instead it comes from him not stopping with hot takes and not showing any signs of slowing down.

      If he keeps going, I could see companies just accepting “it is what it is” and coming back, but at the same time it also feels like he’s one tweet away from going too far for most companies. And it’s not like Twitter is a strong social media anyway, they are not even in the top 10 social medias in terms of active users count: https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/

      Maybe these companies may also decide that dealing with Twitter is more trouble than it’s worth. But we’ll see

      • SuckMyWang@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I don’t think x’s value is from the number of users. It’s the type of powerful people on it and the headline style format the multiplies it’s impact across the information space. It still sucks though

    • zartcosgrove@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      “cashing in this virtue signaling”

      Not wanting to be associated with the Great Replacement theory is “virtue signaling”

      Tell me you’re a right wing shill without telling me you’re a right wing shill

      • onlinepersona@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        He’s right. They don’t care about what’s on X as long as there isn’t negative publicity. It has nothing to do with being right-wing. If anything, it’s quite left-wing to believe that companies only care about the baseline.

          • onlinepersona@programming.dev
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            1 year ago

            That’s rubbish. It has nothing to do with right wing. Google, Apple, Coca Cola, Microsoft, and many other large companies have been accused of virtue signaling - rightfully so. They pretend to care about social issues for 2 seconds and then go right back to business once the news cycle is over. Is that a right-wing thing to do?

      • Swallowtail@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I have very little faith in businesses to do the right thing for the right reasons. Publicly traded companies in the US literally can’t do that legally if they think it will hurt their bottom line.

    • generalpotato@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      X is a shit company that doesn’t need to exist anymore but I’m equally tired of companies virtue signaling behind causes. Like, fuck off, I don’t need you to tell me that you’re “invested” in “human rights” or “causes” when you treat your workers like shit and fail to provide your retail workers a minimum wage for example.

      X and these other companies virtue signaling behind causes for profit/marketing goodwill can all go to hell.

    • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 year ago

      It would be amazing if there were any sort of consequences for this clown, or any other rich clown, honestly.

      I think part of the reason bad behavior has been so normalized among the general populace is because they’re seeing such bad behavior from “the elites” that they “look up to” so they think that since those “rich, successful men” act like that without consequence, it must mean that behavior is okay.

  • FewerWheels@mander.xyz
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    1 year ago

    So the radical free speech guy is going to sue someone for what they said? Sounds spot on for Musk.

  • FrigidAphelion@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I don’t understand why anyone continues to use that platform, and this latest controversy isnt even strange compared to the others. What does it take for someone to stop using a platform that spreads hate?

    • HeartyBeast@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Inertia. In the UK, for example, every local government council, the NHS, central government, charities etc use user Twitter//X as a free channel for announcements and publicity. Quite often they manage it though things like Hootsuite that lets the, plan and manage and cross-post to Facebook etc.

      Deciding to quit that is quite a major step - especially when there isn’t really a clear single alternative that has similar reach and userbase.

      • qupada@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Except that they’ve ruined that too. You now need an account to view anything, so the reach of announcements is greatly diminished.

        At this point leaving shouldn’t really be too difficult, since a large portion of your audience already has; because they’ve been shut out, or have quit voluntarily.

    • quicken@aussie.zone
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      1 year ago

      It’s no longer a public company. So it can be bought when Musk chooses to sell. Or if he defaults on his loan then it may go to banks but they really don’t want it and have already written off their loan to him.

      • intrepid@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        Why exactly do normal people with small defaults have ‘collection agents’ sent after them, while billion dollar defaults are written off? Isn’t that supposed to be the other way around?

        • blindsight@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          It’s all to do with the terms of the contract and collateral.

          Bonds are guaranteed by the collateral of the ownership of the company. If the company defaults on their loan, then ownership transfers to the bond holders, so the bond holders now own all the equity in the company (and previous equity holders get nothing.)

          There are no collections agents for companies because once they default, all of that is essentially triggered automatically contractually. There’s a bit of wiggle room with negotiating changing terms on the loans and such before a default happens, but that’s the broad strokes.

        • Ergifruit [he/they]@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          because it’s easier to come after real people, since we don’t know all loopholes, can’t jerk them around indefinitely, have no individual power, can’t afford lawyers, and are all around an easier mark.

    • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, it’s only a death warrant for conventionally run companies. He can run it into the ground as deep as his pockets will let him. And according to Forbes that’s still relatively deep, deeper than they should be anyway.

      I kind of suspect he’s up to something. Maybe he’s grooming it for a political ad platform. Although it’s equally possible he just loves watching everybody flip the hell out, One hell of an expensive hobby if so.

    • JGrffn@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Right? Twitter hasn’t stopped dead naming Twitter, for fuck’s sake

  • m-p{3}@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    We’ve yet to see any regulatory actions with real consequences, so yeah I doubt it.

  • NutWrench@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Musk only buys things that he thinks will keep his name in the news, and he’s always looking for that next bong-hit of attention.

    Nobody likes him. Nobody cares about him. And he makes it so obvious WHY with his racist, apartheid bullsh*t.

        • NoiseColor@startrek.website
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          1 year ago

          I read about where the money came from and I’m not saying I really understand it, but it seems solid enough for it to never fail unless musk wants it to fail.

          Which is, like,…if somebody wants to destroy twitter as fast as possible, but make it look like it’s not intentional, what would they do differently than what is happening right now? :) Jk, musk is just an incompetent bag of shit.

          • 520@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            The money used to come from advertisers. Elon has been trying to move it to a subscription model, but few people want to subscribe to a place only right wingers want to be.

            Elon wanted Xitter to be a bastion of right wing speech. He just didn’t think about what that would entail.

          • FlexibleToast@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            It was always going to fail. At that point, Twitter as a company only recently started actually making a profit. What Musk did is called a leveraged buy-out where someone takes out a loan to buy a company. The company that is bought out is then responsible for paying that loan. Remember when I said they just barely had started making money? Well, now they have so much debt that they not only have to make enough money to cover their previous expenses, but also cover the payments for this new loan, and the new loan has interest that creates additional debt of $1 billion a year. How is a company that struggles to make money suddenly going to come up with an extra $1 billion a year? Charging for checkmarks? There aren’t enough users… That’s why he is so desperate. He knows that by making that joke offer, he royally screwed himself when Twitter called his bluff and forced him to buy. I think he just wanted an excuse to sell some Tesla stock that he knew was overvalued but had said he wouldn’t sell.

            • NoiseColor@startrek.website
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              1 year ago

              I don’t know, as far as I understand it, all the money sources are covered quite well, he can literally do whatever and there won’t be much consequences.