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Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

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Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#271

Post by lultimouomo »

SkipperCat wrote: post #161
pjc50 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that Twitter the company owes $12bn to Morgan Stanley, that will be a serious problem for them.

Meh, Morgan Stanley has had bigger losses. How much of it is actually their money anyway? My guess is the losses will be passed down to the individuals who gave MS the $$$. Morgan probably bundled it all up, made a nice fee, and passed it on to Musk.

> Morgan probably bundled it all up, made a nice fee, and passed it on to Musk.

It has not. The debt was conditional on the acquisition of Twitter by Musk, so Morgan Stanley could not sell it before the acquisition was completed. But the debt was necessary for the acquisition, so the acquisition could not be completed without the debt money. Therefore, they had to happen at the same time, with M&S fronting the money.

Of course the terms of the debt, and the price of the acquisition, had to be both defined for everything to move forward, so they were finalized months ago.

When Musk signed a contract with Morgan Stanley, money was cheap, so the debt has very low interest. When the debt has actually been issued, a few days ago, money had become more expensive; Morgan Stanley won't find anyone to buy it as-is. To sell it they will have to discount it quite deeply, losing a bunch of money; otherwise they'll be stuck with it.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#272

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

ronnier wrote: post #258
redwood wrote: post #9

In my view no single medium (the media is the message) has done more to weaken the quality of public discourse in the world than Twitter. But maybe Facebook proves that even if you're allowed to use prose crazies dominate so maybe the issue is deeper

Reddit. Reddit is by far the worst and has the most impact.

> Reddit. Reddit is by far the worst and has the most impact.

I think this may be viewing things through a bubble - my baby boomer parents don't know what reddit is, neither do any of their friends, but you better believe they and all their Facebook friends are all aware of all the latest crazy conspiracy theories. I think Reddit, while popular for certain demographics, is far less wide spread than some of the other social media.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#273

Post by notacoward »

s1k3 wrote: post #192
tomp wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? On which other platform can you directly communicate (or at least listen to, unfiltered) to the worlds dictators, political leaders, and billionaires?

Twitter has destroyed public discourse. It has turned conversations into contents to be as short and as edgy as possible. I’m sorry you don’t see that.

Is that really Twitter's fault? Please go through this thread right here and see how many of the comments would fit in a tweet. Many of them also match (or exceed) the Twitter standard for lack of basic humanity. The appetite was there. If Twitter hadn't provided the outlet, some essentially identical alternative would have. It's quite likely that some other will do the same after Musk finishes driving Twitter into the ground.

The platform isn't the problem. The people using whatever platform they can find to spread an anti-democratic anti-intellectual anti-humanitarian message are. I'm sorry you don't want to see that.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#274

Post by maxbond »

losvedir wrote: post #180

And so the grand experiment begins. I feel bad for the folks losing their job because that always sucks, and I hope there's a decent severance package. Now we'll see what happens to Twitter... I hardly use it, so if it implodes it won't bother me too much. But I am curious to see if all the "how do you need X people to do Y?" commenters are correct in this case. The app is simple but doing simple things at scale is h…

Erring on the side of things often changing less then we may anticipate, my guess is that Twitter becomes a sort of Tumblr for people of a certain persuasion, that being the people who like the ideas Musk is putting forward. It still exists, it puts out new features from time to time, there's a large group of people who simultaneously love and hate it and spend enormous time and energy there, but it's role as the primary town hall forum is passed on to some other community or set of communities. Maybe ones we know today, maybe ones we don't.

But my confidence that I can forecast this is low, I'm mostly taking a stab for a bit of fun and to look at this comment in a few years.

One thing I have a high degree of confidence is that Musk will declare victory in almost any outcome, and if it's really so egregious that he can't declare victory with a straight face, he'll find some way to blame everyone else in the world.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#275

Post by UnpossibleJim »

taurath wrote: post #89

Since apparently nobody else in the thread has any empathy for those who've lost their jobs, future access to healthcare (in the US and less civilized countries), and financial security, I guess I'll be the first: I feel bad for people who are laid off by the machinations of billionaires. I wish we lived in a society where it wasn't optimal to act like raving lunatics will tear down every bit of security you have at…

It's that whole thing of reacting with great sadness to hearing of one person's death and being numb to hearing of a plane crash (I'm mangling the saying). If we stopped to think about all the individual tragedies that go on every day around us, nothing would ever get done, we'd stop eating and we'd never get out of bed. People have to cope, and we shouldn't have to feel guilty about it.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#276

Post by flanked-evergl »

Loughla wrote: post #257
losvedir wrote: post #180

And so the grand experiment begins. I feel bad for the folks losing their job because that always sucks, and I hope there's a decent severance package. Now we'll see what happens to Twitter... I hardly use it, so if it implodes it won't bother me too much. But I am curious to see if all the "how do you need X people to do Y?" commenters are correct in this case. The app is simple but doing simple things at scale is h…

>Anyone want to make predictions about the state of Twitter in a few years? I'll bite on this one. For reference, I personally believe Elon Musk is a degenerate blowhard who has literally zero concept of what life actually is like for billions of people on the planet, nor does he care. I believe he belongs to the class of people known as 'parasites'. Here's my take: 1 year: Initially, we'll see improvements. Dead wei…

> up to and including "vague" threats of violence.

I'm no expert in Twitter, but I have heard many people of note complain about receiving death threats on Twitter. One example:

https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-dea...

> Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has revealed that some mornings she starts her day by reading the death threats she has received from men on Twitter.

Making a death threat, or a threat of violence, is not protected speech, it is a crime. Can you clarify why you think the new owners will look the other way at crimes being committed on their platform?

Also, if it was already happening (up to and including "minor celebrity blames Twitter for their recent issue with a fan stalking them"), is this the trajectory you see regardless of ownership? And if not how will new ownership contribute to it?

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#277

Post by pushkine »

threeseed wrote: post #59
bluescrn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For comparison, SpaceX runs an entire private space program on ~12,000 employees. Near-weekly launches. Rocket development+production. Building+deploying Starlink. (Although that's just a number from a quick googling. Maybe they outsource a lot of manufacturing etc?)

That comparison is however completely irrelevant to Twitter. It may seem to ignorant people that a space program is more advanced than "just a website" but actually running these kind of websites is extremely complex. Especially when you're needing to compete with Facebook and Google at serving ads in a relevant and effective way. It is really interesting reading through their infrastructure challenges alone: https:/…

It's crazy the number of people on HN somehow claiming that Twitter is this well run and well functioning tech company now that bad rocket man took the reigns and decided to lay off everyone... Isn't it a consensus among tech people that Twitter is the absolute worst tech company?

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#278

Post by i_like_apis »

threeseed wrote: post #59
bluescrn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For comparison, SpaceX runs an entire private space program on ~12,000 employees. Near-weekly launches. Rocket development+production. Building+deploying Starlink. (Although that's just a number from a quick googling. Maybe they outsource a lot of manufacturing etc?)

That comparison is however completely irrelevant to Twitter. It may seem to ignorant people that a space program is more advanced than "just a website" but actually running these kind of websites is extremely complex. Especially when you're needing to compete with Facebook and Google at serving ads in a relevant and effective way. It is really interesting reading through their infrastructure challenges alone: https:/…

Whew - even with your empty caveat against saying what I’m about to say:

Designing reusable rockets and launching hundreds of them into space for profit, is more complicated and requires a different caliber of frankly higher IQ worker, than building and maintaining the existing Twitter.

Not that there aren’t some smart web people, obviously.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#279

Post by notacoward »

pavlov wrote: post #68

In four years Musk will be bored to death with Twitter and will sell it to private equity and the Saudis for $5 billion. At that point it will be mostly a platform for porn creators and crypto pumping, the only two verticals where Twitter seems to be actually growing lately.

Do you really think it will be four years? Considering his attention span, and the rapidity with which Twitter is already deteriorating, I suspect it will be much less than that.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#280

Post by blippage »

redwood wrote: post #9

In my view no single medium (the media is the message) has done more to weaken the quality of public discourse in the world than Twitter. But maybe Facebook proves that even if you're allowed to use prose crazies dominate so maybe the issue is deeper

I checked out Twitter again after a few months absence. There is good content, for sure, but by crikey, most of what passes for political discourse amounts to a stream of non sequiturs and ipse dixit (assertion without proof).
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