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Fidelity marks down X valuation by 71.5%

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Re: Fidelity marks down X valuation by 71.5%

#21
If I have say... cars as a hobby. Turbochargers, wheels, parts, say I spend 20% of my disposable income on it and I have a good portion of my net worth tied into it as well (the cars themselves, the parts, etc).

Elon Musk spending $44b (which I don't think he did as all cash all at once/financed some) of his $250b net worth is like 17.5%

Even if it makes $0/goes to $0, it's just basically his hobby/a passion project for him, no? Should his goal be to make money/not lose money at an enormous scale? Probably. But he's obviously eccentric. Isn't this kind of on-brand for him?

He probably thinks he's better than most people. "Your hobby is tennis, my hobby is international social media platforms".

Re: Fidelity marks down X valuation by 71.5%

#22
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such an absurd comment that was. If your customers are the ones paying for ads, and you cause your customers to leave, isn't that just deliberately tanking your business? And "document in detail" it for who? As though there's some court or something that you can demonstrate why your business failed, and then.... what? Prove that it was departing customers? No one will give a shit. Just absurd. Sometimes it's fun to t…

> And "document in detail" it for who He actually said "for the earth", thinking that humanity would revolt against the advertisers for destroying Twitter for them... Not a hint of megalomania there.

As Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI, put it in a Musk profile for the New Yorker: "Elon desperately wants the world to be saved. But only if he can be the one to save it." (I heard this quote on John Oliver's profile of Musk-boy: [1])

I suppose a war of Musk against the ad-fueled capitalism (where "ad" can be placeholder for "scam") would be funny, although the alternative might probably be a dictatorship by Musk, and that would be a Mad Max world, might as well join Somali pirates...

[1] https://youtu.be/Eo3zORUGCbM

Re: Fidelity marks down X valuation by 71.5%

#24
post #9

And they still haven't changed the primary app domain to x.com. Such a joke. It will probably never happen due to the engineering complexities of such a switch with just a barebones engineering team and loss of institutional knowledge over the last year.

They did, but it was changed back

Re: Fidelity marks down X valuation by 71.5%

#25

Isn’t this Elon putting his money where his mouth is? He’s stated many times that he bought Twitter due to free speech concerns and not to make money. It’s kind of weird to me that people on the internet aren’t praising him for being principled, and are instead laughing at him for (expectedly) losing money.

I struggle with the two-sided ness of his claims. If he wanted to build a free speech base, and burn his money doing so, that is his right, but then he can't whine and complain if his customers (advertisers) decide to take their business elsewhere. Which he does, in spades. Even more oddly, he has poor Linda Yaccarino out there pressing the flesh on Madison Avenue, trying to reassure customers that Twitter is a safe…

> then he can't whine and complain if his customers (advertisers) decide to take their business elsewhere

I said this so many times it's embarrassing, but the wrong assumption is that advertisers stop buying ads because somehow the content directly damages the brand. Which I think is super naive. The reality is that organisations and media who dislike the content threaten advertisers of organising campaigns against them if they don't boycott the platform. Consumer actions (right or wrong, doesn't matter) are almost never spontaneous, they need to be organised and promoted. There are organisations that have this as one of their core businesses and have an enormous ability to influence what is published.

So Musk is not complaining about the fact that his advertisers are going elsewhere, but about the fact that political organisations are pressuring them to do so under threat of damaging their business.

Re: Fidelity marks down X valuation by 71.5%

#26

Isn’t this Elon putting his money where his mouth is? He’s stated many times that he bought Twitter due to free speech concerns and not to make money. It’s kind of weird to me that people on the internet aren’t praising him for being principled, and are instead laughing at him for (expectedly) losing money.

Whether he's morphing Twitter as a new bastion of free speech remains to be seen. Musk himself says that saying the word "cis" is a slur with threats of suspension for saying it. Meanwhile, transgender people are actively being deadnamed and harassed with no repercussions to those committing those actions. Which is a clear violation of their Hateful Conduct policies. Then when companies decide "Hey, I don't want to g…

[flagged]

Re: Fidelity marks down X valuation by 71.5%

#27
post #9

And they still haven't changed the primary app domain to x.com. Such a joke. It will probably never happen due to the engineering complexities of such a switch with just a barebones engineering team and loss of institutional knowledge over the last year.

The rebranding was an incredibly dumb decision. I have never seen it referred in the wider world to anything other than "X (formerly known as Twitter)".

We really should be calling ex-Twitter.

Re: Fidelity marks down X valuation by 71.5%

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I struggle with the two-sided ness of his claims. If he wanted to build a free speech base, and burn his money doing so, that is his right, but then he can't whine and complain if his customers (advertisers) decide to take their business elsewhere. Which he does, in spades. Even more oddly, he has poor Linda Yaccarino out there pressing the flesh on Madison Avenue, trying to reassure customers that Twitter is a safe…

> then he can't whine and complain if his customers (advertisers) decide to take their business elsewhere I said this so many times it's embarrassing, but the wrong assumption is that advertisers stop buying ads because somehow the content directly damages the brand. Which I think is super naive. The reality is that organisations and media who dislike the content threaten advertisers of organising campaigns against t…

Given how distasteful people find his actions, it's not surprising that people organize against them. Unless you're suggesting that his actions are viewed favorably by people (lol), but people are being brainwashed into acting in the opposite manner by some conspiracy of organizations. The more likely scenario is that most people think he acts like a douchebag, and most folks don't like associating with people who act like douchebags, and if those folks organize, more power to 'em.

Re: Fidelity marks down X valuation by 71.5%

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether he's morphing Twitter as a new bastion of free speech remains to be seen. Musk himself says that saying the word "cis" is a slur with threats of suspension for saying it. Meanwhile, transgender people are actively being deadnamed and harassed with no repercussions to those committing those actions. Which is a clear violation of their Hateful Conduct policies. Then when companies decide "Hey, I don't want to g…

[flagged]

Then why is one allowee and another getting bans for?

Re: Fidelity marks down X valuation by 71.5%

#30

> “What this advertising boycott is going to do is kill the company,” Musk continued. “And the whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company, and we will document it in great detail.” You tell 'em Elon!

I do think it is weird that there is an advertising boycott of Twitter but nothing is hitting Tesla yet. People seem ok with Elon's antics when it comes to the poplar car.

Wait, do companies buy ad placement in Teslas? Do they appear on the dashboard display while driving or something? If not, then how would they boycott?
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