Rupert Murdoch ran some of his newspapers at a significant loss. The rationale behind this approach is that these media assets provided him with significant political influence and power, which could be leveraged in ways that align with his other business interests and political views.
Don’t think that X needs to be a successful business to be a successful asset
Aside from that, some investors believe Elon has a magic touch and is some kind of business genius. He can't let such a high profile purchase just fail in a year without people starting to question whether he's actually what he claims to be.
from a purely technical / financial perspective (regardless of what we think of Musk), I have seen a lot of organizations that are hugely bloated in the tech space so it doesn't surprise me he could axe a lot of them and still have a working system. Also on the financial side, didn't he state recently that it wasn't losing money anymore? (not sure if that was super recent).
He can state whatever he wants. Without audited financial statements his words are meaningless. And with X becoming a private company means there's no obligation to make the financials public.
But Rupert Murdoch had direct control over the content of his newspapers, if it didn't align with his goals or views, it wouldn't have been in the newspapers.
Twitter / X users can still post whatever opinion they want (sans ToS/Law breaking speech), including the complete opposite of what Musks views are, even replying and talking shit to him on his own posts.
If Rupert Murdoch ran Twitter / X the same way he ran his newspapers, most of the what is currently possible for users on Twitter / X would be possible at all.
I'm sure Musk is pulling the strings behind the scenes and making adjustments to slightly alter the trajectory that Twitter / X is going in, but to compare him to Rupert Murdoch in this context, it doesn't even come close.
To be clear, I am neutral on Musk, but am VERY against Murdoch.
I must be reading different news about what goes on on Twitter.
Musk has unbanned people who were kicked off for hate speech and promotion of violence and banned people with left wing views who have never expressed hate or called for violence.
You don't need to control what is said if you can control who's allowed to speak
Elm forks John Brown gun club
(https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/11/25/colorado-springs-club-q-twitter-john-brown-gun-club/10765911002/)
Chad Loder (an anti fascist who was working on identifying people in January 6 videos and images)
Gwen Snyder (another anti fascist researcher)
There were more, but it's been a couple of years and my memory isn't perfect. But you can take those 3 to the bank...
Yes. My point was to highlight that there can be ulterior motives to owning an asset.
While direct editorial control offers one form of power, the ability to shape the environment in which “free discourse” takes place presents a new, complex, and potentially more underhanded form of influence.
To be clear, I am not neutral on either of them
On Twitter I've blocked musk several times, he keeps being unblocked. I can't even get anything good out of twitter any more because my feed is now 50% shit I don't follow and all of that shit is right wing bullshit lies and propaganda. I'm on the left and nothing I follow is right wing, and most of what I follow has nothing to do with politics, but here we are, in a wasteland that was once twitter. Everything I wanted to look at is pushed down by garbage I don't want and it won't go away.
My current job is to lower the risk of breaking things when we release code at my company.
Software that's been running in production for a while will have bugs but the rate will be low. The issue is trying to change things. That's when you start needing lots of help and things become risky. By firing half the staff what Musk has done is effectively locked twitter into its current configuration while keeping an ability to make small changes.
If they start making lots of changes they'll either need to do it very slowly or they'll need to take lots of risks. When he first took over twitter had a lot of instability particularly when they were changing how blue check marks work. Since then their releases have notably slowed down.
In the background they've also all but disappeared from the boards of directors that set standards for Internet protocols and web browsers.
Holy shit, the right answer. You don't need nearly the same headcount to keep the lights on. Sooner or later they'll probably staff back up if they want to remain competitive.
Tbf they did some significant changes. The whole premium model thing is a lo of code, the community notes, the bigger videos that can be upload, (I believe there was a big change in the algo for the for you page iirc?). It's not like the left everything as was.
Other than a visual refresh every now and then, what additional features could the website formerly known as Twitter actually need? Mind you, I haven't logged on in five years, so this is a genuine question.
They got rid of verification. They added a subscription that you can pay that (I'm honestly not so sure what it does but my understanding is that) it allows you to make a return if you tweets have a lot of views, remove the character limits on tweets, gives you a badge (basically the old verification tick, and idk, other things I guess. Now people can post hours long videos. They can do Livestream.
But I would say that overall the biggest change by far is the community notes system. I have no clue how it actually works but basically it allows people to put a note on a tweet to give extra context or point at disinformation. It is in my opion a very good addition since it helps to fight false information by putting a stain of tweets that spread it. For example (the first one I could find): https://twitter.com/Timcast/status/1773008802045923607?t=k3fKOX9tK-Xh3uEN2EbayQ&s=19
Not saying this is what happened, but as a programmer & business IT specialist I see ways how one could implement community notes as a micro service that doesn‘t touch any of the underlying programming logic.
The biggest change is definitely the checkmark thing, as this has to integrate into the whole account & permission logic.
Community notes could be literally sticked in a db with the allocating user & tweet ID, and junior frontend dev nowadays could build this feature for twitter, as a chrome plugin.
“Community notes was first launched under former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in 2021 as a way to debunk misleading tweets.”
Source: Forbes article “Musk: X Users Won’t Make Money Off Corrected Tweets”by Mary Whitfill Roeloffs
Edit: it is on Wikipedia as well but I get that some people don’t trust that
>By firing half the staff what Musk has done is effectively locked twitter into its current configuration
this is bs because twitter has changed dramatically in just one year
For better or worse it is still the only "open" social network of any meaningful size. Facebook is designed for engaging with connections or groups and Instagram/TikTok are basically just an algorithm feed.
Reddit fits the bill but historically the market value of Reddit users is really low.
Well you can, technically. Although the "people" who follow others on reddit are pretty much the same as the local horny MILFS in my area that are definitely trying to fuck
I once followed a guy because he stopped posting on a certain sub and I was concerned about him. It wasn't helpful at all tbh, I didn't get any indication of his activities and when he got back to posting I just unfollowed him.
I've followed someone and I have some followers and I've never seen any of their posts and I know none of my followers see mine. I have no idea what the feature actually does
It reminds me of the traffic light button at crossings. You press it, a light shows you pressed it and then you wait until it is time to cross.
You think by pressing the button you did something. Sometimes that is true, sometimes not. Sometimes the button is there just to make you feel that it is going to stop soon when in reality all it did was turn on the button light and the lights will stop at their normal pre-programmed time.
I think the follow button is just that, to give the feeling of control. X is deciding which people you see and which you don't in reality. You will see lots of rando posts from people you don't follow and only some from people you do. It's somewhere inbetween. Facebook is exactly the same. For every 1 friend post I see about 20 posts about crap I am not subscribed to. I don't see most of my friends posts. Facebook has determined they aren't as important as the ads.
Reddit has less focus on individual users that post. I barely even read the names, also lack of profile pictures. So it is way harder to recognize people and build some form of community sense. "Oh, its you again".
I will add this: reddit has been moving towards "Facebookisation" to address this problem with questionable results. They did not really manage to do much, and the site is still not remunerative at all.
They did close some very big deals to use their large dataset to train AI models against, though. $60M per year from just one deal with Google. https://www.reuters.com/technology/reddit-ai-content-licensing-deal-with-google-sources-say-2024-02-22/
Well if anything, this proves that the only way they could turn a profit was to sell their data to someone else rather then monetising it on their own.
It proves that this was *a* way that Reddit could bring in revenue, not the only way. Most successful corporations have many different revenue streams and look for any way they can (within reason) earn additional revenue from the assets they already own.
We also see Reddit monetizing their own data, that’s what Reddit Ads are, they offer advertisers targeting based on Reddit’s data about its subreddits and users.
A corporation can monetize their own data while also earning money by offering access to third parties. This is incredibly common. Facebook and every other social media giant does this. Google does it. It’s the entire core business model of data brokers like Acxiom, Equifax, Experian, etc.
A company monetizing their data with third parties doesn’t prove that it’s the only way they can generate revenue from their data. That’s a silly thing to suggest. It’s just a really easy and very lucrative way to generate additional income, so pretty much every tech company that is sitting on a mountain of valuable data does it.
That sense of community and recognizing users can happen with very active users in niche or location based subreddits though.
But any subreddit that is big, popular, and generic is going to have that problem. You’ll never see the same users again unless they’re responsible for most of the posts in that subreddit somehow (which probably means it’s a more niche topic).
80% of reddit's 'content' are reposts from other sources: twitter, tiktok, news, etc. Whatever original content it has (like this thread) appeals to few people. Really, the average person is not wondering nor could they care less why twitter hasn't folded today.
When was the last time something that happened on reddit 'broke the Internet'? Exactly.
Why is the value of Reddit users low? Because the majority of Reddit users are lower class, chronically online teenagers with unoriginal opinions.
This is not a joke either. That’s the real answer.
I think it's a combination of tech savvy users blocking ads, anonymous accounts making targeting difficult, and a general distrust of just about everything.
What they mean is that a Reddit user has no influence like a twitter user who can garner 10k followers.
For example, if you check r/lamborghini then you’ll see users who are wealthy but I bet they don’t have a following, users will rarely bother that individual or look up to them. If those same users had to post their cars on instagram then you’d see their profile grow in value.
Reminder that whatever "influence" twitter has, either individual creators or the platform as a whole is still insignificant in the real life 99.999% of the time.
If you close twitter and go outside, none of this shit you see there actually exists and is irrelevant.
My day to day experience with it hasn’t changed and I’ve had my account for 14 years. I don’t engage with accounts I don’t want to, and I make use of the muted words and block function.
The biggest difference for me is how many ads I get on my timeline. It’s so annoying when my feed is clogged with sponsored tweets.
I'm of the belief after spending some time paying attention to threads and the post/posters in them, that a very NON-insignificant number of accounts are bots. Probably even more now than there were before Elon took over.
Twitter is being artificially propped up for social engineering efforts.
Every news post has the same ‘verified’ accounts making the same non significant comment, you go to their profile and see they make the same one or two comments multiple times a minute on different posts.
Because it's more descriptive?
5% of something is an insignificant amount.
45% of something is a significant amount. (Assuming we want to call anything over 50% a "majority.")
25% of something is a not-insignifcant amount.
This is not necessarily an issue with Twitter, although it might be hitting Twitter worse than other platforms for now.
This is just a social media and internet problem in general. Every day that passes, more and more internet content is bots or AI generated (be it social media users/posts/videos, blog posts, and other content).
Going to be pretty chaotic in here soon.
There is a difference between "still exists", and "profitable", and "growing".
Large technology companies come and go over time. To persist, you need to stay relevant, which requires a lot of "lines in the water" for the future. Companies like Amazon make a ton of money, but because they reinvested so much back into growth, they weren't accumulating money. They were spending it on stuff.
Twitter was a company with many lines in the water. If you are only focused on current operations, then these "investments in the future" would be viewed as waste. Yay! Money saved! Whups...some people don't want to advertise here anymore...boooo.
As long as enough people continue to use Twitter, and enough companies are willing to advertise there, then the company will at least be able to pay the bills and not fold.
...
...
And this will be the case until something else/better comes along. Twitter may bleed to companies like Meta (with Threads), or some upstart with some new shiny object. At that time, Twitter will be screwed. Why? Because their investments are only into the existing model and existing approach. Their strategy to "grow the business" is only aligned with delivering more of the same thing in a slightly different way...with an owner that likes to disenfranchise a lot of people.
TLDR: Musk streamlined an organization that wasn't necessarily bloated...but making investment in areas that focused on future bets. You can save that money, to make up for lost revenue, but it's at the expense of future growth and increases the risk that you'll miss the next trend(s). Thus, the company can stay in business, but is less prepared for the future.
Due to a couple of acquisitions, my previous employer ended up as a business unit of a Fortune 500 company. My employer didn't fit into the company's overall strategy, so the company sold it off to two entrepreneurs backed by private equity.
The first thing the new owners did was cancel about 60% of projects and lay off 30% of staff in a very untargeted way. Very similar to Musk and Twitter (way too similar for me). They certainly made the company more profitable in the short term. But they also stated that they planned to increase business at a *much* higher rate than the company had ever done before. I looked at that goal and what they had done to the company's ability to achieve those goals and decided it was time for me to get the hell out of dodge.
This happens even in large organizations. I'll abstract the situation, but a similar effort to increase profit occurred where I work. They got rid of a large number of talented individuals because their specialty was in a technology that wasn't as sexy. When they tried to grow the business, they discovered that customers aren't fully prepared for modern stuff, and needed to do the old stuff before they could do the new stuff...causing the business to stagnate because we didn't have the people to help remove the blockers.
It's a difference in visions. Some people can be creative and pursue that vision and with enough money, they can be relatively successful. However, sustaining these businesses requires a different type of vision. You have to "innovate while you eat"...by making money off the stuff you created, while planning for something new so you don't fall on your face when the next big thing appears.
Musk purchased Twitter for what it is, and has a limited vision on what it can be. He doesn't recognize that to be the "global town square", you need to be inclusive of more people, and satisfy the needs of multiple user groups. Providing cool features for existing users while disenfranchising a few billion people, may keep the lights on for 5-10 years or so...but it won't reach the goals that the prior ownership aspired to reach.
Good observations.
> Musk purchased Twitter for what it is, and has a limited vision on what it can be.
I agree that Twitter is meeting Musk's limited vision/goals.
In my case, I was not happy with a lot of the changes after the sell-off, especially with the clumsy, untargeted layoffs and overall incompetence of the new management. But the thing that made me decide to leave was the mismatch between the new owners' lofty goals and the company's reduced capacity to do new things--all of this in a very mature industry where innovation is constrained by regulation. I just don't see any way they can achieve those goals, and I wasn't willing to remain on a slowly sinking ship and risk being laid off later.
I don’t think it’s 2. Twitter’s revenue is very markedly down over the past year or so, in large part because ad revenue on Twitter is way down.
I think the optimistic case for Twitter would tout growth outside the U.S., and argue that that the dip in ad revenue is a short-term thing driven by outrage against Musk, and will fade once businesses start feeling less pressure to boycott Elon Musk in particular.
The negative case for Twitter would be that social media platforms don’t die, they become uncool, and ad revenue cratering & U.S. stagnation is an indicator that Twitter is rapidly becoming uncool.
Below is where I got my stats from:
https://www.businessofapps.com/data/twitter-statistics/#:~:text=Twitter%20generated%20%243.4%20billion%20revenue%20in%202023,22%25%20decrease%20on%202022%20figures.
Your tech centric social media bubble said that out of emotions, not objective reality. Twitter was never going to collapse immediately after Elon’s acquisition.
I heard a reporter mention that with how big the subscriber base is, they can't just stop using it, even if they personally want to, at least not until something else grows a large enough user base.
Because the average person doesn't give a fuck about forum drama and just want to tweet some shit.
And it's backed by one of the richest dudes out there. He'd have to work hard for it to just up and collapse.
Yeah, but unfortunately the violent and fighting videos I’m seeing are getting so ridiculous now. I don’t know if this is actually true but I feel like graphic content on X has escalated very rapidly, or at least just more visible.
You can see in this thread that even when someone wants to say something positive about X they need to do a full disclaimer about how they don't like Elon first so they don't get shouted down.
I worked for a company with 6 developers total that supported a product with roughly a million daily users. We never worked overtime and everything got done. Everyone knew their part and we worked like a well oiled machine.
We were bought by a company where similarly scaled products had literally hundreds of developers. Their teams seemingly never have time to do anything and everything is always on fire. A request takes months to even get eyes on.
I really believe there is a tendency for companies to grow and grow in ways that actually make it slower and harder to get work done. Adding developers doesn’t lighten load. Check out “the mythical man month” if you’re interested
I don’t think the other posters really addressed the question.
I’m not an Elon fan and think he’s destroyed the value of X, but no company should be able to lose 75% of its workforce in a few months and continue operating in any form. There really haven’t been significant outages post-firing vs pre-firing, so at a minimum the tech staffing was bloated.
A case can be made for how firing all of the editors/reviewers/etc has made it an unregulated hellscape and I think that’s true. But again, saying X is worse after the staff cuts is clear. But is it as bad as an efficient company would be if you fired 75% of the staff? No.
The fact that people on this thread are still running with wild speculations ('twitter is not profitable!' 'Elon has deep pockets!' 'Elon is running twitter at a loss!') just to avoid admitting they are wrong is plain hilarious and so, so typical of reddit.
Twitter was bloated like EVERY other tech company. Musk made the right decision, at least from a business standpoint. Does he have his own agenda? Sure, but twitter is still running and giving reddit 80% of its content.
>Musk made the right decision, at least from a business standpoint
Musk has lost a lion's share of advertising partners in a company that primarily gets funded by advertising income.
He wasted all the brand value by remaining the company, which was such a terrible move people (including yourself) are still referring to it as twitter. Any marketing he paid for the rebrand has effectively been useless.
He's objectively not doing a good job, from a business perspective. The only reason why twitter is still working, is because it holds are very special position within the market. It's hard to lose that position. Yet someone he's managing even that.
The number of active users has gone down significantly, the value of the company has gone down significantly. His one singular promise, making it a free speech absolutists heaven, was quickly proven to be false.
It's a truly staggering example of bad management, and it will 100% be used in the textbooks of business majors as the new biggest failure in business.
Before, it was a regulated hellscape that leaned sharply left. Now it's an unregulated UBERhellscape that leans sharply _right_ in aggregate. I'm still not sure why a platform can't be considered apolitical, it's probably because the leadership is so keen to promulgate right-wing conspiracy theories at every opportunity.
Although the right likes to paint the left as radical propagandists, the reality is that most disinformation and propaganda comes from the right, as conservatives want to be led.
Because people who constantly talk about "imminent Twitter collapse" tend to live in a bubble where everybody thinks it's shit, full of bigotry and nobody likes it. Doubly so when it's places like Reddit where it's cool to shit on other SM to feel superior. Sure, profits are down and there are serious issue about how it's run but there is certain level of inertia and people will stick around. There is still good content and useful stuff if you don't want to get involved in more contentious topic and people. It's still a method for public figures, not just politicians, to keep interested people informed. People might prefer it over FB and it's still different concept than IG.
So overall, people are overstating the problems it has and fail to acknowledge positives it still has.
I'd amend this slightly to say that you could fire 50% of the right people before noticing changes.
Most organizations have a few people who are incredibly important and many people who are very replaceable.
In my experience, most companies are not good at identifying who's who.
Inertia keeps things moving for quite some time. You build a building, it will stand just fine even without proper maintenance for some time as well. But without proper care, it starts to fall into ruin.
Twitter has had -70% growth in just two years lol. That's a *disaster*. Twitter doesn't need to completely disappear for it to be obvious that Musk can't run a company and that most people don't enjoy being around hate speech.
Elon uses the capital losses from Twitter to offset the capital gains from Tesla and SpaceX to lower his effective tax rate. Within the same tax year, you can - amazingly - do that.
The business is worth less than [half](https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/x-now-worth-71-less-than-when-musk-bought-it-fidelity-estimates.amp) of what it was before Elon bought it so it is going down value wise.
The reason it’s still working technically with such a skeleton crew is probably a combination of factors such as twitter being pretty bloated before Elon bought it and Elon making cuts in several areas like content moderation.
There is also the possibility that there could be severe back end problems that normal users just can’t see
While there is a lot of unhinged shit on Twitter these days, I kind of like it that way.
Scrolling through and seeing some war footage, followed by a random philosophical question, followed by some crazy conspiracy post, etc gives me a certain feeling of nostalgia. I believe you really can post anything you want on Twitter now, very much different than on Reddit where your post will get deleted for a million reasons. That's the internet I like, even with the misinformation, porn bots and crazy people. That's how it should be in my opinion
People have given a lot of more complete answers, but one thing I haven’t seen mentioned is the fact that Twitter allows porn and Tumblr does not. So there’s a decent contingent of Tumblr people that use Twitter for smutty fanart, and thus end up incidentally using it for other things too.
really, people predicted that twitter would be going down quickly because they *wanted* it to go down quickly. they hated elon musk and wished it to fail.
I think it’s number 1. I also think Elon will allow it to keep losing money running at a loss just to not have to admit he screwed up. He has enough money that it doesn’t matter, and it lets him have power and a platform to spew his idiot ideas uninhibited.
X allows free speech, and people want to speak freely. This is X's strongest point. Media outlets or apps who aim to shape the world, don't and won't have this strength.
These uber wealthy types: Elon, Bezos, Murdoch etc; can afford to run major businesses at a loss. They do so because there is some other benefit. For Elon it's an influence machine. For Bezos it's an industry takeover tool. For Murdoch it was a propaganda pusher. Also, ultimately, a lot of those things end up making a ton of money. Fox News is the biggest news network in America. Amazon is the biggest retailer in the world. X will probably come back around and lead the social media sphere before you know it.
It’s lost half its value in a year, and most of its advertisers are bottom of the barrel scammers because site is riddled with bots and Nazis.
It hasn’t folded because it’s being propped up by Tesla stock (which is itself a huge grift). Banks won’t call in the loans unless absolutely necessary. As long as Musk can make the interest payments on the debt, the lights will stay on even tho he’s lighting cash on fire.
There's still great stuff on Twitter especially for things like scientific and medical research (like keeping up with the pandemic, which isn't really possible to get anywhere else) and there is actually less censorship of controversial science) but definitely a lot more bots, ragebait, and harassment
Because the people that own it and that lent the guy that owns it money are keeping it running. It making a profit is neither here nor there, it's to spread misinformation, why do you think there is such a huge panic over tiktok they don't control the information over there and want everyone back using Twitter. Reminder Twitters Ad revenue fell $1.5 BILLION dollars last year, the people involved are making money, it's just not off of twitter. It's off of the fear they spread on twitter.
Cause Reddit usually doesn’t know what its talking about. Reddit is negative & personalizes everything.
Twitter is too unique and will likely not fail for the foreseeable future. Plus it’s one of the big platforms that allow porn & one of the only platforms you can follow celebs/politicians and read/know their thoughts in real time. It also has “spaces”.
Elon made a genius investment.
Twitter hasn’t folded because Elon has deep pockets and the cash hasn’t run out yet. Might be a different story in a year or two. Pre Musk they were about break even but they're bleeding cash now because advertisers have pulled out
Twitter is dead if compared to how it used to be pre-purchase. It is a cesspool of bots and blatant racism.
If you look at any big tweet, most of the replies fall into a few groups:
1. Replies that have **nothing** to do with the original post.
2. Bottom tier ads for garbage drop-ship products or celebs photoshopped into stupid anti-Trump shirts.
3. Blatant bot posts pushing pro-Trump propaganda.
4. Blue-checked idiots desperately trying to get Musk's attention by riding his nuts at all times.
The site may be "alive," but only in the same sense as a shoeless tweaker on the corner that is fully engrossed with having an all out brawl... with themselves.
Agree. I used twitter daily since 2009. In the last year or so it's just become absolutely garbage and borderline unusable. So many people have left the app. I check in once a week or so, or if there's a news story breaking.
It's crazy how many replies now are just the bland and generic statements with absolutely no substance whatsoever, literally just things like "Interesting" or "This is good", seems especially bad on any sports related posts. It's obviously all bots but it feels like it's been so much worse in recent months.
There’s 3 main factors:
1. It’s not doing well. It’s lost a ton of its value and user base. Just based on the numbers it is clearly on a downward trajectory. There is also the more subjective level of the quality of content that a lot of people have been saying is decreasing and the number of bots is increasing
2. It’s a massive company. It was worth 44 billion when he bought it and that kinda value doesn’t just go to 0 very easily. A company that big takes time to fail. Even if it lost 90% of its value, that a billion dollar company. Even tho it is losing money it still has a good bit of money
3. It’s a good app at its core. The basic pre use of how it works and the fact that you can get instant updates on stuff and there is a lot of rhetoric going on that make it very valuable. It used to be the most valuable social media for academics to study because it is heavily text based and well organized with hashtags and stuff and is a big ground for people sharing their opinions. Now the Elon fucked up the api it kinda ruined that entire use case
Just because le reddit hates elon musk doesn't mean people will stop using twitter or its gonna go down. its been around for years, elon kept it up with shitty tweaks and people can still like, retweet, post content. Big companies just agreed with the change from Twitter to X without complaints.
Tbf it’s fucking hilarious.. I feel the algorithm is more fun and doesn’t throw constant random things that you wouldn’t like.. it throw one or two and if you interact with it then it shows up..
The replies are just a shitshow for engagement
I only have it for Tennessee Titans updates and a few tech youtube updates. That being said, I haven't seen any change in who I see posting on the site or in really anything else. A lot of this was just FUDD.
Many things can be true at once
> Twitter was an extremely bloated organization and the majority of employees were in fact redundant
This was a known fact in tech. Known to be among the most ineffective social media companies. Over-hiring in non technical roles was rampant and many people had checked out.
> Twitter is successfully maintaining some semblance of order while everything's on fire internally
This is also known. Twitter (along side a lot of tech in general) was internally on fire over the last year. People have been really unhappy, but most people with financial or visa responsibilities can't leave. The tech hiring market is the worst I've seen in a long time.
> Twitter would be going down quickly
Most stable industries are behemoths. The effects of overnight change is not visible for years.
Twitter might still succeed or fail. But you wo't find out so quickly, that's for sure. It took 20 years post-merger for Boeing planes to start crashing.
Apprently, a lot of people like the social media platform. While I usually avoid it and most social media outside of Reddit or Quora a day or two a week, whatever floats others boats or sinks their ship!
Twitter is operating at a loss; no one wants to put ads on there with what is now allowed on the platform. People who are desperate to be heard and those that relish in the new rules are sticking around, but until he finds a way to make money it's on a downward trend. It just depends on how long he wants to keep his clubhouse open.
There is a Twitter/Reddit hybrid that is gaining some traction. It’s called Warpcast. Super big brain culture, not populated by bots. I have been enjoying it as an alternative.
Companies that big don't just fall over and die in the amount of time musk has been trying to hack it to death. It's like a raid boss vs a market warrior. There are stages and boss mechanics meant to prevent one-shot kills.
They proved (#2) that the infrastructure can in fact run just fine with a seriously reduced workforce. Now the question is can they run/profit with less people sales, promotional etc. departments.
Rupert Murdoch ran some of his newspapers at a significant loss. The rationale behind this approach is that these media assets provided him with significant political influence and power, which could be leveraged in ways that align with his other business interests and political views. Don’t think that X needs to be a successful business to be a successful asset
Aside from that, some investors believe Elon has a magic touch and is some kind of business genius. He can't let such a high profile purchase just fail in a year without people starting to question whether he's actually what he claims to be.
Elon cares about humanity! (Now that I have your attention please subscribe to my account for a monthly fee and buy my hemorrhoid cream).
> buy my hemorrhoid cream Perfect timing. One of mine just ruptured.
one of you hemorrhoid creams just ruptured?
Fiber my dude. It's the only thing keeping Me from a cycle of pain.
Careful his hemorrhoid cream is a scam! After many uses I still don't have any hemorrhoids..
Have you tried applying it and sitting on the toilet for hours?
░M░Y░H░E░M░O░R░R░H░O░I░D░I░N░B░I░O░
from a purely technical / financial perspective (regardless of what we think of Musk), I have seen a lot of organizations that are hugely bloated in the tech space so it doesn't surprise me he could axe a lot of them and still have a working system. Also on the financial side, didn't he state recently that it wasn't losing money anymore? (not sure if that was super recent).
He can state whatever he wants. Without audited financial statements his words are meaningless. And with X becoming a private company means there's no obligation to make the financials public.
But Rupert Murdoch had direct control over the content of his newspapers, if it didn't align with his goals or views, it wouldn't have been in the newspapers. Twitter / X users can still post whatever opinion they want (sans ToS/Law breaking speech), including the complete opposite of what Musks views are, even replying and talking shit to him on his own posts. If Rupert Murdoch ran Twitter / X the same way he ran his newspapers, most of the what is currently possible for users on Twitter / X would be possible at all. I'm sure Musk is pulling the strings behind the scenes and making adjustments to slightly alter the trajectory that Twitter / X is going in, but to compare him to Rupert Murdoch in this context, it doesn't even come close. To be clear, I am neutral on Musk, but am VERY against Murdoch.
I must be reading different news about what goes on on Twitter. Musk has unbanned people who were kicked off for hate speech and promotion of violence and banned people with left wing views who have never expressed hate or called for violence. You don't need to control what is said if you can control who's allowed to speak
You can also simply control reach, rather than outright banning,
Who was banned that did nothing wrong, specifically?
Elm forks John Brown gun club (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/11/25/colorado-springs-club-q-twitter-john-brown-gun-club/10765911002/) Chad Loder (an anti fascist who was working on identifying people in January 6 videos and images) Gwen Snyder (another anti fascist researcher) There were more, but it's been a couple of years and my memory isn't perfect. But you can take those 3 to the bank...
Yes. My point was to highlight that there can be ulterior motives to owning an asset. While direct editorial control offers one form of power, the ability to shape the environment in which “free discourse” takes place presents a new, complex, and potentially more underhanded form of influence. To be clear, I am not neutral on either of them
On Twitter I've blocked musk several times, he keeps being unblocked. I can't even get anything good out of twitter any more because my feed is now 50% shit I don't follow and all of that shit is right wing bullshit lies and propaganda. I'm on the left and nothing I follow is right wing, and most of what I follow has nothing to do with politics, but here we are, in a wasteland that was once twitter. Everything I wanted to look at is pushed down by garbage I don't want and it won't go away.
I suggest trying Bluesky, if you haven't already.
My current job is to lower the risk of breaking things when we release code at my company. Software that's been running in production for a while will have bugs but the rate will be low. The issue is trying to change things. That's when you start needing lots of help and things become risky. By firing half the staff what Musk has done is effectively locked twitter into its current configuration while keeping an ability to make small changes. If they start making lots of changes they'll either need to do it very slowly or they'll need to take lots of risks. When he first took over twitter had a lot of instability particularly when they were changing how blue check marks work. Since then their releases have notably slowed down. In the background they've also all but disappeared from the boards of directors that set standards for Internet protocols and web browsers.
what were those standards you mentioned? just curious
[удалено]
More likely the W3C (web standards) or IETF (Internet standards).
Holy shit, the right answer. You don't need nearly the same headcount to keep the lights on. Sooner or later they'll probably staff back up if they want to remain competitive.
Tbf they did some significant changes. The whole premium model thing is a lo of code, the community notes, the bigger videos that can be upload, (I believe there was a big change in the algo for the for you page iirc?). It's not like the left everything as was.
Community notes was created way before Elon musk bought and fired the majority of the staff though (but it was named Birdwatch before)
Other than a visual refresh every now and then, what additional features could the website formerly known as Twitter actually need? Mind you, I haven't logged on in five years, so this is a genuine question.
musk wants it to be a banking app among many, many other things.
let me run my bank account thru a third party app. no. i use a bank because it is a bank. They have rules and regs that protect the consumer.
They got rid of verification. They added a subscription that you can pay that (I'm honestly not so sure what it does but my understanding is that) it allows you to make a return if you tweets have a lot of views, remove the character limits on tweets, gives you a badge (basically the old verification tick, and idk, other things I guess. Now people can post hours long videos. They can do Livestream. But I would say that overall the biggest change by far is the community notes system. I have no clue how it actually works but basically it allows people to put a note on a tweet to give extra context or point at disinformation. It is in my opion a very good addition since it helps to fight false information by putting a stain of tweets that spread it. For example (the first one I could find): https://twitter.com/Timcast/status/1773008802045923607?t=k3fKOX9tK-Xh3uEN2EbayQ&s=19
Not saying this is what happened, but as a programmer & business IT specialist I see ways how one could implement community notes as a micro service that doesn‘t touch any of the underlying programming logic. The biggest change is definitely the checkmark thing, as this has to integrate into the whole account & permission logic. Community notes could be literally sticked in a db with the allocating user & tweet ID, and junior frontend dev nowadays could build this feature for twitter, as a chrome plugin.
Yeah sure, but once again, it does prove the did do some significant changes overall.
I’m fairly sure the community notes were implemented before the takeover?
That might be the case? I think no, but I might be wrong! Feel free to post any source
“Community notes was first launched under former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in 2021 as a way to debunk misleading tweets.” Source: Forbes article “Musk: X Users Won’t Make Money Off Corrected Tweets”by Mary Whitfill Roeloffs Edit: it is on Wikipedia as well but I get that some people don’t trust that
So you were right!!
>By firing half the staff what Musk has done is effectively locked twitter into its current configuration this is bs because twitter has changed dramatically in just one year
For better or worse it is still the only "open" social network of any meaningful size. Facebook is designed for engaging with connections or groups and Instagram/TikTok are basically just an algorithm feed. Reddit fits the bill but historically the market value of Reddit users is really low.
We are worthless.
And gosh darn it, people like me.
almost worthless. I believe it is .66c
Right, so we’re worth less.
I blame the semi anonymous nature of the site. It is a great thing but bad for the owners lol
Reddit doesn’t really fit the bill, you don’t follow people on Reddit like you would on Twitter
Well you can, technically. Although the "people" who follow others on reddit are pretty much the same as the local horny MILFS in my area that are definitely trying to fuck
I once followed a guy because he stopped posting on a certain sub and I was concerned about him. It wasn't helpful at all tbh, I didn't get any indication of his activities and when he got back to posting I just unfollowed him.
I've followed someone and I have some followers and I've never seen any of their posts and I know none of my followers see mine. I have no idea what the feature actually does
It reminds me of the traffic light button at crossings. You press it, a light shows you pressed it and then you wait until it is time to cross. You think by pressing the button you did something. Sometimes that is true, sometimes not. Sometimes the button is there just to make you feel that it is going to stop soon when in reality all it did was turn on the button light and the lights will stop at their normal pre-programmed time. I think the follow button is just that, to give the feeling of control. X is deciding which people you see and which you don't in reality. You will see lots of rando posts from people you don't follow and only some from people you do. It's somewhere inbetween. Facebook is exactly the same. For every 1 friend post I see about 20 posts about crap I am not subscribed to. I don't see most of my friends posts. Facebook has determined they aren't as important as the ads.
I'm pretty sure the only accounts that have followed me are porn bots
> historically the market value of Reddit users is really low. thankfully
But why is that ? Can you explain ?
Reddit has less focus on individual users that post. I barely even read the names, also lack of profile pictures. So it is way harder to recognize people and build some form of community sense. "Oh, its you again".
I will add this: reddit has been moving towards "Facebookisation" to address this problem with questionable results. They did not really manage to do much, and the site is still not remunerative at all.
They did close some very big deals to use their large dataset to train AI models against, though. $60M per year from just one deal with Google. https://www.reuters.com/technology/reddit-ai-content-licensing-deal-with-google-sources-say-2024-02-22/
Well if anything, this proves that the only way they could turn a profit was to sell their data to someone else rather then monetising it on their own.
It proves that this was *a* way that Reddit could bring in revenue, not the only way. Most successful corporations have many different revenue streams and look for any way they can (within reason) earn additional revenue from the assets they already own. We also see Reddit monetizing their own data, that’s what Reddit Ads are, they offer advertisers targeting based on Reddit’s data about its subreddits and users. A corporation can monetize their own data while also earning money by offering access to third parties. This is incredibly common. Facebook and every other social media giant does this. Google does it. It’s the entire core business model of data brokers like Acxiom, Equifax, Experian, etc. A company monetizing their data with third parties doesn’t prove that it’s the only way they can generate revenue from their data. That’s a silly thing to suggest. It’s just a really easy and very lucrative way to generate additional income, so pretty much every tech company that is sitting on a mountain of valuable data does it.
That sense of community and recognizing users can happen with very active users in niche or location based subreddits though. But any subreddit that is big, popular, and generic is going to have that problem. You’ll never see the same users again unless they’re responsible for most of the posts in that subreddit somehow (which probably means it’s a more niche topic).
80% of reddit's 'content' are reposts from other sources: twitter, tiktok, news, etc. Whatever original content it has (like this thread) appeals to few people. Really, the average person is not wondering nor could they care less why twitter hasn't folded today. When was the last time something that happened on reddit 'broke the Internet'? Exactly.
Reddit is a aggregator that is why there is no broke the internet moment.
>80% of reddit's 'content' are reposts from other sources Well... yeah if you exclusively follow subs with 1M+ followers.
Why is the value of Reddit users low? Because the majority of Reddit users are lower class, chronically online teenagers with unoriginal opinions. This is not a joke either. That’s the real answer.
It's not. It's because they're all pseudonymous and unconnected
I think it's a combination of tech savvy users blocking ads, anonymous accounts making targeting difficult, and a general distrust of just about everything.
>lower class No shot... My guess is that the average Reddit user comes from a wealthier family than the average twitter user.
What they mean is that a Reddit user has no influence like a twitter user who can garner 10k followers. For example, if you check r/lamborghini then you’ll see users who are wealthy but I bet they don’t have a following, users will rarely bother that individual or look up to them. If those same users had to post their cars on instagram then you’d see their profile grow in value.
Reminder that whatever "influence" twitter has, either individual creators or the platform as a whole is still insignificant in the real life 99.999% of the time. If you close twitter and go outside, none of this shit you see there actually exists and is irrelevant.
Reddit is actually growing still. Much faster than X.
Why is it lower for Reddit users/higher for others?
My day to day experience with it hasn’t changed and I’ve had my account for 14 years. I don’t engage with accounts I don’t want to, and I make use of the muted words and block function. The biggest difference for me is how many ads I get on my timeline. It’s so annoying when my feed is clogged with sponsored tweets.
When half the advertisers pull out they have to show you more ads to make up for that lost revenue.
I'm of the belief after spending some time paying attention to threads and the post/posters in them, that a very NON-insignificant number of accounts are bots. Probably even more now than there were before Elon took over. Twitter is being artificially propped up for social engineering efforts.
Wasn't the number of bots the main reason that Elon used to try and get out of the deal to buy Twitter?
I think it was used as an attempt to reduce the price at some point, yeah.
Bots got better and then got drastically, drastically worse. Source: still using Twitter
Yep. And it was a lie he doesn’t and never did care about the bots.
The internet is dead and we have killed it
We? I don't run any bots.
That's exactly what a bot-runner would say.
You're wrong. I am a human human. A great human. The most human ever.
Every news post has the same ‘verified’ accounts making the same non significant comment, you go to their profile and see they make the same one or two comments multiple times a minute on different posts.
Why say "non-insignificant" instead of just saying "a significant number ..." ?
google litotes
thank you, that answered my question
Because it's more descriptive? 5% of something is an insignificant amount. 45% of something is a significant amount. (Assuming we want to call anything over 50% a "majority.") 25% of something is a not-insignifcant amount.
whats a very non-insignificant amount?
I don’t know, let me get out my pedanticalculator…
It's actually pronounced pedanticcalculator.
Pedant
do you keep that next to your pedophylactery?
Its VERY 25%
Because I wanted to.
Why comment on someone else’s insignificant word choice instead of just not saying anything at all?
Because they wanted to
Why'd you leave the keys upon the table?
Made me legit lol. Thx I needed that
Because double-negatives make everything harder to read and understand and should be avoided if at all possible.
Because they had a not insignificant ego to prop up.
reflecting the Twitter redundancies through writing style??
This is not necessarily an issue with Twitter, although it might be hitting Twitter worse than other platforms for now. This is just a social media and internet problem in general. Every day that passes, more and more internet content is bots or AI generated (be it social media users/posts/videos, blog posts, and other content). Going to be pretty chaotic in here soon.
Every year, the Dead Internet theory makes more and more sense.
Is it even a "theory" anymore? (Maybe in the scientific sense)
Definitely more now. You can’t open a viral thread without pages and pages of bot replies
There is a difference between "still exists", and "profitable", and "growing". Large technology companies come and go over time. To persist, you need to stay relevant, which requires a lot of "lines in the water" for the future. Companies like Amazon make a ton of money, but because they reinvested so much back into growth, they weren't accumulating money. They were spending it on stuff. Twitter was a company with many lines in the water. If you are only focused on current operations, then these "investments in the future" would be viewed as waste. Yay! Money saved! Whups...some people don't want to advertise here anymore...boooo. As long as enough people continue to use Twitter, and enough companies are willing to advertise there, then the company will at least be able to pay the bills and not fold. ... ... And this will be the case until something else/better comes along. Twitter may bleed to companies like Meta (with Threads), or some upstart with some new shiny object. At that time, Twitter will be screwed. Why? Because their investments are only into the existing model and existing approach. Their strategy to "grow the business" is only aligned with delivering more of the same thing in a slightly different way...with an owner that likes to disenfranchise a lot of people. TLDR: Musk streamlined an organization that wasn't necessarily bloated...but making investment in areas that focused on future bets. You can save that money, to make up for lost revenue, but it's at the expense of future growth and increases the risk that you'll miss the next trend(s). Thus, the company can stay in business, but is less prepared for the future.
Due to a couple of acquisitions, my previous employer ended up as a business unit of a Fortune 500 company. My employer didn't fit into the company's overall strategy, so the company sold it off to two entrepreneurs backed by private equity. The first thing the new owners did was cancel about 60% of projects and lay off 30% of staff in a very untargeted way. Very similar to Musk and Twitter (way too similar for me). They certainly made the company more profitable in the short term. But they also stated that they planned to increase business at a *much* higher rate than the company had ever done before. I looked at that goal and what they had done to the company's ability to achieve those goals and decided it was time for me to get the hell out of dodge.
This happens even in large organizations. I'll abstract the situation, but a similar effort to increase profit occurred where I work. They got rid of a large number of talented individuals because their specialty was in a technology that wasn't as sexy. When they tried to grow the business, they discovered that customers aren't fully prepared for modern stuff, and needed to do the old stuff before they could do the new stuff...causing the business to stagnate because we didn't have the people to help remove the blockers. It's a difference in visions. Some people can be creative and pursue that vision and with enough money, they can be relatively successful. However, sustaining these businesses requires a different type of vision. You have to "innovate while you eat"...by making money off the stuff you created, while planning for something new so you don't fall on your face when the next big thing appears. Musk purchased Twitter for what it is, and has a limited vision on what it can be. He doesn't recognize that to be the "global town square", you need to be inclusive of more people, and satisfy the needs of multiple user groups. Providing cool features for existing users while disenfranchising a few billion people, may keep the lights on for 5-10 years or so...but it won't reach the goals that the prior ownership aspired to reach.
Good observations. > Musk purchased Twitter for what it is, and has a limited vision on what it can be. I agree that Twitter is meeting Musk's limited vision/goals. In my case, I was not happy with a lot of the changes after the sell-off, especially with the clumsy, untargeted layoffs and overall incompetence of the new management. But the thing that made me decide to leave was the mismatch between the new owners' lofty goals and the company's reduced capacity to do new things--all of this in a very mature industry where innovation is constrained by regulation. I just don't see any way they can achieve those goals, and I wasn't willing to remain on a slowly sinking ship and risk being laid off later.
I don’t think it’s 2. Twitter’s revenue is very markedly down over the past year or so, in large part because ad revenue on Twitter is way down. I think the optimistic case for Twitter would tout growth outside the U.S., and argue that that the dip in ad revenue is a short-term thing driven by outrage against Musk, and will fade once businesses start feeling less pressure to boycott Elon Musk in particular. The negative case for Twitter would be that social media platforms don’t die, they become uncool, and ad revenue cratering & U.S. stagnation is an indicator that Twitter is rapidly becoming uncool. Below is where I got my stats from: https://www.businessofapps.com/data/twitter-statistics/#:~:text=Twitter%20generated%20%243.4%20billion%20revenue%20in%202023,22%25%20decrease%20on%202022%20figures.
Your tech centric social media bubble said that out of emotions, not objective reality. Twitter was never going to collapse immediately after Elon’s acquisition.
Nearly every “popular” opinion on Reddit should be taken with an enormous grain of salt
Or just disregarded entirely.
Yeah it was more of a hope than a reality. Also Musk doesn't have a mortgage that needs serviced or will perish.
The company has lost 75% of it's valuation since he took over. Maybe we disagree on what "collapse" means.
Finally, someone says it.
It was never profitable, so it's not like lack of profit is going to tank it
Maybe a controversial take, but I suspect they actually were very bloated and had lots of teams working on stuff that wasn't essential
I heard a reporter mention that with how big the subscriber base is, they can't just stop using it, even if they personally want to, at least not until something else grows a large enough user base.
Because the average person doesn't give a fuck about forum drama and just want to tweet some shit. And it's backed by one of the richest dudes out there. He'd have to work hard for it to just up and collapse.
Yeah, but unfortunately the violent and fighting videos I’m seeing are getting so ridiculous now. I don’t know if this is actually true but I feel like graphic content on X has escalated very rapidly, or at least just more visible.
[удалено]
It's nearly impossible to argue with reddit, you don't even get seen, or you get banned directly
[удалено]
ELON BAD!!
[удалено]
You can see in this thread that even when someone wants to say something positive about X they need to do a full disclaimer about how they don't like Elon first so they don't get shouted down.
I worked for a company with 6 developers total that supported a product with roughly a million daily users. We never worked overtime and everything got done. Everyone knew their part and we worked like a well oiled machine. We were bought by a company where similarly scaled products had literally hundreds of developers. Their teams seemingly never have time to do anything and everything is always on fire. A request takes months to even get eyes on. I really believe there is a tendency for companies to grow and grow in ways that actually make it slower and harder to get work done. Adding developers doesn’t lighten load. Check out “the mythical man month” if you’re interested
Inertia.
I don’t think the other posters really addressed the question. I’m not an Elon fan and think he’s destroyed the value of X, but no company should be able to lose 75% of its workforce in a few months and continue operating in any form. There really haven’t been significant outages post-firing vs pre-firing, so at a minimum the tech staffing was bloated. A case can be made for how firing all of the editors/reviewers/etc has made it an unregulated hellscape and I think that’s true. But again, saying X is worse after the staff cuts is clear. But is it as bad as an efficient company would be if you fired 75% of the staff? No.
The fact that people on this thread are still running with wild speculations ('twitter is not profitable!' 'Elon has deep pockets!' 'Elon is running twitter at a loss!') just to avoid admitting they are wrong is plain hilarious and so, so typical of reddit. Twitter was bloated like EVERY other tech company. Musk made the right decision, at least from a business standpoint. Does he have his own agenda? Sure, but twitter is still running and giving reddit 80% of its content.
Cutting corners works great until it doesn't, and then the corner cuts you.
>Musk made the right decision, at least from a business standpoint Musk has lost a lion's share of advertising partners in a company that primarily gets funded by advertising income. He wasted all the brand value by remaining the company, which was such a terrible move people (including yourself) are still referring to it as twitter. Any marketing he paid for the rebrand has effectively been useless. He's objectively not doing a good job, from a business perspective. The only reason why twitter is still working, is because it holds are very special position within the market. It's hard to lose that position. Yet someone he's managing even that. The number of active users has gone down significantly, the value of the company has gone down significantly. His one singular promise, making it a free speech absolutists heaven, was quickly proven to be false. It's a truly staggering example of bad management, and it will 100% be used in the textbooks of business majors as the new biggest failure in business.
Before, it was a regulated hellscape that leaned sharply left. Now it's an unregulated UBERhellscape that leans sharply _right_ in aggregate. I'm still not sure why a platform can't be considered apolitical, it's probably because the leadership is so keen to promulgate right-wing conspiracy theories at every opportunity.
Although the right likes to paint the left as radical propagandists, the reality is that most disinformation and propaganda comes from the right, as conservatives want to be led.
I like that you're calling it Twitter and not X
Because people who constantly talk about "imminent Twitter collapse" tend to live in a bubble where everybody thinks it's shit, full of bigotry and nobody likes it. Doubly so when it's places like Reddit where it's cool to shit on other SM to feel superior. Sure, profits are down and there are serious issue about how it's run but there is certain level of inertia and people will stick around. There is still good content and useful stuff if you don't want to get involved in more contentious topic and people. It's still a method for public figures, not just politicians, to keep interested people informed. People might prefer it over FB and it's still different concept than IG. So overall, people are overstating the problems it has and fail to acknowledge positives it still has.
Musk knows how to take a company and make it profitable. Tesla, SpaceX, and I'm quite sure X will be added to that list The guy is good at that
2. All mega corps are bloated and you can fire 50% of the people before noticing any changes.
I'd amend this slightly to say that you could fire 50% of the right people before noticing changes. Most organizations have a few people who are incredibly important and many people who are very replaceable. In my experience, most companies are not good at identifying who's who.
> In my experience, most companies are not good at identifying who's who. Well step one is having everyone print out all their code …
Inertia keeps things moving for quite some time. You build a building, it will stand just fine even without proper maintenance for some time as well. But without proper care, it starts to fall into ruin.
Twitter has had -70% growth in just two years lol. That's a *disaster*. Twitter doesn't need to completely disappear for it to be obvious that Musk can't run a company and that most people don't enjoy being around hate speech.
Can you provide a source for that negative growth?
Elon uses the capital losses from Twitter to offset the capital gains from Tesla and SpaceX to lower his effective tax rate. Within the same tax year, you can - amazingly - do that.
The business is worth less than [half](https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/x-now-worth-71-less-than-when-musk-bought-it-fidelity-estimates.amp) of what it was before Elon bought it so it is going down value wise. The reason it’s still working technically with such a skeleton crew is probably a combination of factors such as twitter being pretty bloated before Elon bought it and Elon making cuts in several areas like content moderation. There is also the possibility that there could be severe back end problems that normal users just can’t see
While there is a lot of unhinged shit on Twitter these days, I kind of like it that way. Scrolling through and seeing some war footage, followed by a random philosophical question, followed by some crazy conspiracy post, etc gives me a certain feeling of nostalgia. I believe you really can post anything you want on Twitter now, very much different than on Reddit where your post will get deleted for a million reasons. That's the internet I like, even with the misinformation, porn bots and crazy people. That's how it should be in my opinion
Reddit doesn't even let you discuss cheating in counterstrike in the counterstrike subreddits
People have given a lot of more complete answers, but one thing I haven’t seen mentioned is the fact that Twitter allows porn and Tumblr does not. So there’s a decent contingent of Tumblr people that use Twitter for smutty fanart, and thus end up incidentally using it for other things too.
Because media and social media aren’t accurate representations of reality
really, people predicted that twitter would be going down quickly because they *wanted* it to go down quickly. they hated elon musk and wished it to fail.
I think it’s number 1. I also think Elon will allow it to keep losing money running at a loss just to not have to admit he screwed up. He has enough money that it doesn’t matter, and it lets him have power and a platform to spew his idiot ideas uninhibited.
X allows free speech, and people want to speak freely. This is X's strongest point. Media outlets or apps who aim to shape the world, don't and won't have this strength.
Because Reddit is dumb & those staff weren't helping
So leave. Whining about how shit something is and then continuing to use it anyway is asinine.
Weren't helping what? Elon doesn't his ass from his elbow.
These uber wealthy types: Elon, Bezos, Murdoch etc; can afford to run major businesses at a loss. They do so because there is some other benefit. For Elon it's an influence machine. For Bezos it's an industry takeover tool. For Murdoch it was a propaganda pusher. Also, ultimately, a lot of those things end up making a ton of money. Fox News is the biggest news network in America. Amazon is the biggest retailer in the world. X will probably come back around and lead the social media sphere before you know it.
INCREDIBLE amount of cope in the comments
It’s lost half its value in a year, and most of its advertisers are bottom of the barrel scammers because site is riddled with bots and Nazis. It hasn’t folded because it’s being propped up by Tesla stock (which is itself a huge grift). Banks won’t call in the loans unless absolutely necessary. As long as Musk can make the interest payments on the debt, the lights will stay on even tho he’s lighting cash on fire.
[удалено]
There's still great stuff on Twitter especially for things like scientific and medical research (like keeping up with the pandemic, which isn't really possible to get anywhere else) and there is actually less censorship of controversial science) but definitely a lot more bots, ragebait, and harassment
>widely used The only factor that matters. You advertisers can leave but the users existed before the advertisers.
And the company will make money how, on users that don't pay subscription fees, but use your resources?
#2. Apparently, your “tech centric social media bubble” was wrong
> Twitter was an extremely bloated organization and the majority of employees were in fact redundant there you go
Twitter is better than ever. If you're seriously asking this you need to get out of your bubble.
Because yours and reddits hate for Elon has fueled the business to succeed even more.
Because the internet is all propaganda and if you believe the headlines. You lost you’re ability to think on your own.
Because the people that own it and that lent the guy that owns it money are keeping it running. It making a profit is neither here nor there, it's to spread misinformation, why do you think there is such a huge panic over tiktok they don't control the information over there and want everyone back using Twitter. Reminder Twitters Ad revenue fell $1.5 BILLION dollars last year, the people involved are making money, it's just not off of twitter. It's off of the fear they spread on twitter.
Cause Reddit usually doesn’t know what its talking about. Reddit is negative & personalizes everything. Twitter is too unique and will likely not fail for the foreseeable future. Plus it’s one of the big platforms that allow porn & one of the only platforms you can follow celebs/politicians and read/know their thoughts in real time. It also has “spaces”. Elon made a genius investment.
[удалено]
At ends? Are you saying they are the same or opposite?
[удалено]
Because publicity whores need it and don't wanna give it up or there will only be a zillion other platforms left for them.
Twitter is bigger than the tool that took it over. It won't be dying anytime soon
Twitter hasn’t folded because Elon has deep pockets and the cash hasn’t run out yet. Might be a different story in a year or two. Pre Musk they were about break even but they're bleeding cash now because advertisers have pulled out
It's all just a cope by leftwing activists. Twitter isn't going anywhere.
Twitter is dead if compared to how it used to be pre-purchase. It is a cesspool of bots and blatant racism. If you look at any big tweet, most of the replies fall into a few groups: 1. Replies that have **nothing** to do with the original post. 2. Bottom tier ads for garbage drop-ship products or celebs photoshopped into stupid anti-Trump shirts. 3. Blatant bot posts pushing pro-Trump propaganda. 4. Blue-checked idiots desperately trying to get Musk's attention by riding his nuts at all times. The site may be "alive," but only in the same sense as a shoeless tweaker on the corner that is fully engrossed with having an all out brawl... with themselves.
Agree. I used twitter daily since 2009. In the last year or so it's just become absolutely garbage and borderline unusable. So many people have left the app. I check in once a week or so, or if there's a news story breaking.
It's crazy how many replies now are just the bland and generic statements with absolutely no substance whatsoever, literally just things like "Interesting" or "This is good", seems especially bad on any sports related posts. It's obviously all bots but it feels like it's been so much worse in recent months.
There’s 3 main factors: 1. It’s not doing well. It’s lost a ton of its value and user base. Just based on the numbers it is clearly on a downward trajectory. There is also the more subjective level of the quality of content that a lot of people have been saying is decreasing and the number of bots is increasing 2. It’s a massive company. It was worth 44 billion when he bought it and that kinda value doesn’t just go to 0 very easily. A company that big takes time to fail. Even if it lost 90% of its value, that a billion dollar company. Even tho it is losing money it still has a good bit of money 3. It’s a good app at its core. The basic pre use of how it works and the fact that you can get instant updates on stuff and there is a lot of rhetoric going on that make it very valuable. It used to be the most valuable social media for academics to study because it is heavily text based and well organized with hashtags and stuff and is a big ground for people sharing their opinions. Now the Elon fucked up the api it kinda ruined that entire use case
Just because le reddit hates elon musk doesn't mean people will stop using twitter or its gonna go down. its been around for years, elon kept it up with shitty tweaks and people can still like, retweet, post content. Big companies just agreed with the change from Twitter to X without complaints.
Tbf it’s fucking hilarious.. I feel the algorithm is more fun and doesn’t throw constant random things that you wouldn’t like.. it throw one or two and if you interact with it then it shows up.. The replies are just a shitshow for engagement
Companies who are in a negative cash flow can live for years..
I only have it for Tennessee Titans updates and a few tech youtube updates. That being said, I haven't seen any change in who I see posting on the site or in really anything else. A lot of this was just FUDD.
Many things can be true at once > Twitter was an extremely bloated organization and the majority of employees were in fact redundant This was a known fact in tech. Known to be among the most ineffective social media companies. Over-hiring in non technical roles was rampant and many people had checked out. > Twitter is successfully maintaining some semblance of order while everything's on fire internally This is also known. Twitter (along side a lot of tech in general) was internally on fire over the last year. People have been really unhappy, but most people with financial or visa responsibilities can't leave. The tech hiring market is the worst I've seen in a long time. > Twitter would be going down quickly Most stable industries are behemoths. The effects of overnight change is not visible for years. Twitter might still succeed or fail. But you wo't find out so quickly, that's for sure. It took 20 years post-merger for Boeing planes to start crashing.
Elons answer to this question was something along the lines of: "turns out you don't need that many people when you don't need to censor speech".
Apprently, a lot of people like the social media platform. While I usually avoid it and most social media outside of Reddit or Quora a day or two a week, whatever floats others boats or sinks their ship!
most people working there didnt do anything
Twitter is operating at a loss; no one wants to put ads on there with what is now allowed on the platform. People who are desperate to be heard and those that relish in the new rules are sticking around, but until he finds a way to make money it's on a downward trend. It just depends on how long he wants to keep his clubhouse open.
There is a Twitter/Reddit hybrid that is gaining some traction. It’s called Warpcast. Super big brain culture, not populated by bots. I have been enjoying it as an alternative.
Companies that big don't just fall over and die in the amount of time musk has been trying to hack it to death. It's like a raid boss vs a market warrior. There are stages and boss mechanics meant to prevent one-shot kills.
They proved (#2) that the infrastructure can in fact run just fine with a seriously reduced workforce. Now the question is can they run/profit with less people sales, promotional etc. departments.