Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

simonwillison.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 472 posts

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#331

Post by hristov »

Aeolun wrote: post #292
hristov wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main difference isn't really who but how much money. One uses a lot of goods and services in ordinary life. Generally speaking one hopes that the provider of these goods and services uses their resources efficiently to provide them for a reasonable price including reasonable profit. When a leveraged buyout happens (this is true for most leveraged buyouts) a large cost is put into the business that wasn't there be…

I’m afraid I don’t understand how Twitter can end up with debt from Musk buying it. How does that even work? Twitter the company takes out a huge loan to pay the current shareholders a fortune (which is decided by those same shareholders, no conflict of interest there at all). But who the fuck would give them a loan like that (like you say, just to have Musk at the helm)?

"But who the fuck would give them a loan like that (like you say, just to have Musk at the helm)?"

A syndicate of banks, including Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Barclays, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, BNP Paribas, Mizuho Financial Group and Societe Generale.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/05/banks-financing-musks-twitte...

Banks usually do not care that much about clients or user experience. They look at a businesses financials and check whether it can take the extra interest payments. Apparently, Musk convinced them that with some job cuts, Twitter would be able to make the interest payments. We will see how this works out. There may be an advertiser exodus happening already and I do not think either the banks or Musk planned for that.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#332

Post by HereBeBeasties »

Aeolun wrote: post #292
hristov wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main difference isn't really who but how much money. One uses a lot of goods and services in ordinary life. Generally speaking one hopes that the provider of these goods and services uses their resources efficiently to provide them for a reasonable price including reasonable profit. When a leveraged buyout happens (this is true for most leveraged buyouts) a large cost is put into the business that wasn't there be…

I’m afraid I don’t understand how Twitter can end up with debt from Musk buying it. How does that even work? Twitter the company takes out a huge loan to pay the current shareholders a fortune (which is decided by those same shareholders, no conflict of interest there at all). But who the fuck would give them a loan like that (like you say, just to have Musk at the helm)?

There was $13 billion of debt used to finance the buy-out. It's a leveraged buy-out, so the target company owns the debt, not the buyer.

How do you think that debt ends up getting paid off? It'll be close to $1 billion every year just to service that debt.

Given that:

* Twitter has only ever made a profit in 2018 and 2019

* That the profits it made in those two years were $1.2bn and $1.4bn respectively (only just enough to service this new debt)

* That for 2020 and 2021 other tech companies were comparatively minting it, but Twitter burned ~$1.3bn

* The world is generally in the early phases of what is likely to a deep recession, with ad spend and consumer spending already well down

It feels like a bit of an interesting purchase, to say the least.

It should be noted that the plan to charge users $8 per month for a blue verification badge wouldn't even service the debt if 25 times more people bought it than currently have it for free.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#333

Post by briantakita3 »

tchaffee wrote: post #259
briantakita wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Twitter also used to be owned by average people Then all public companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, & Northrop Grumman are owned with the money of "average people"...largely managed by fund advisors.

Of course. What's your point?

No post body was provided.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#334

Post by tchaffee »

causi wrote: post #327
tchaffee wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Based on talking to those who dislike him So anecdotal evidence? > they're mostly pretty hating him for things he hasnt done, views he doesnt hold and traits he doesnt have So they have actual reasons to hate him. Superficial reasons, but you didn't once mention anything having to do with it being in vogue. Evidence of it being in vogue would be people who don't know why they hate Elon, but they do know their frien…

Musk is eminently hatable. He's also a competent businessman. The odds of him turning Twitter into Stormfront are very low, yet many are acting like it's already happened. What is the point of calling for a boycott of a company that hasn't yet done the thing you don't like?

Maybe people just don't want to use a company run by someone they abhor. Does there need to be a point other than that?

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#335

Post by FortiDude »

glenstein wrote: post #321
FortiDude wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So let's say a lot of people think in that way and avoid instances managed by nameless accounts. Where does that leave us? Well, maybe people will flock to the few instances ran by transparent, accountable and competent people. Maybe some apolitical non-profit? Maybe a group of passionate engineers with spare change? In any case those instances would become pretty massive and the costs would skyrocket and...... well,…

.....or they would find an equilibrium that doesn't require massive centralization. Your analogy gets from point A to point be with a lot of empty speculation and hand waving.

My only assumption is that most people will choose an instance based on its reputation and that reputable instances will be far fewer than amateurish and unreliable ones. This is a very generous assumption and if we suppose people will choose even more randomly then the situation can only get bleaker.

On the other hand you hand waved everything I said without specifically refuting any points, so what does that make your reply?

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#336

Post by nells »

swyx wrote: post #112
schipplock wrote: post #87

I expect that the feature I’ll miss most from Twitter will be the algorithmic timeline! I must be old. I remember a time when people wanted a chronological timeline (on by default). Twitter still offers a chronological timeline, but now that people are migrating to Mastodon, I've come across the wish to have an algorithmic timeline again quite often :). I just find this interesting (I can relate, I find the algorithm…

stated vs revealed preference. many people say they want chron, but actually end up using algo a lot more (figures)

Algorithmic makes no sense to me. Imagine being in a group chat with friends where an algorithm decides which messages you can see and the way the messages are sorted. It would be absolute nonsense.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#337

Post by tsimionescu »

briantakita wrote: post #305
tchaffee wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source?

Project Veritas had some videos about Twitter employees declaring their politics & their willingness to censor political opponents. I don't think anyone on the accessibility team was interviewed but Twitter as a whole did have a political leaning. Banning people for political speech is an accessibility issue & for some reason it was allowed to continue.

Mentioned this elsewhere, but in general "Project Veritas had some videos of X" is negatively correlated with X having actually occurred. They have a long history of intentional manipulation in all of their reporting.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#338

Post by [deleted] »

andsoitis wrote: post #308
hristov wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main difference isn't really who but how much money. One uses a lot of goods and services in ordinary life. Generally speaking one hopes that the provider of these goods and services uses their resources efficiently to provide them for a reasonable price including reasonable profit. When a leveraged buyout happens (this is true for most leveraged buyouts) a large cost is put into the business that wasn't there be…

> So what is the difference between Musk and the previous shareholders? The main difference is that Musk put an enormous cost on the business which will be borne by twitters users and advertisers, and that cost brings twitter nothing more than having musk as an owner. > By himself musk may be no better or worse than the previous shareholders. But just for him to rule over twitter is going to cost twitter a lot of mon…

[deleted]

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#339

Post by dezeiner »

tsimionescu wrote: post #329
briantakita wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Project Veritas is one...sure there was a hidden camera but some of the employees were quite candid with their beliefs. I don't mean to paint a broad stroke, but from the interviews, it seems like the culture of the company leaned a certain political direction.

Project Veritas has a long history of deceptive editing and outright manufactured reporting, so I wouldn't trust any report you see out of them.

This is a tired and often parroted talking point used to dismiss literal hours of continuous footage of execs rambling on and on about enacting their political agendas in the workplace.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#340

Post by HereBeBeasties »

rustybolt wrote: post #301
Aeolun wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m afraid I don’t understand how Twitter can end up with debt from Musk buying it. How does that even work? Twitter the company takes out a huge loan to pay the current shareholders a fortune (which is decided by those same shareholders, no conflict of interest there at all). But who the fuck would give them a loan like that (like you say, just to have Musk at the helm)?

How I understand the parent post: Twitter has cost Musk a lot of money. Musk will now have to get a lot of value from twitter, and that will probably be bad news for the user.

It has cost Musk a lot of money, but the critical point here is that it has also cost Twitter a lot of money: Because it is a leveraged buy out Twitter owns the $13bn debt that was raised to buy it out.
Post reply on HN