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Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

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Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#291

Post by dragontamer »

lake_vincent wrote: post #56
davidw wrote: post #11

I think the thing to watch will be ads and other revenue streams. Most companies aren't going to want their ads next to 'free for all' content, so we'll see what happens.

Well, speaking in those terms, I think the thing to watch will in fact be censorship. Elon is extremely idealistic, so it will be fascinating to watch him melt down when confronted with the reality of how complex free speech and censorship issues really are. I predict that he will succeed in turning Twitter into the rightwing safehaven that "Truth" Social, Parlor, etc have all been trying to become. He's making a dea…

Idealistic?

Elon Musk has been talking about how awesome Gigafactory Shanghai is for the past year, thanks to Chinese workers who don't talk back to their boss and work harder than their American counterparts.

Dude loves his Chinese anti-speech factory. Or at least, he already is pretending to do that so that he gets his Chinese sales numbers up.

Musk makes the public statements he needs to do business. He has no morals outside of money as far as I can tell. Dude is 100% willing to spout off anti-American propaganda / stereotypes to serve his Chinese masters (at least, this year when his Chinese factory is opening up. We will see if he really believes those words or if he's just playing dumb or something...)

EDIT:

> I think there will be some very strong companies coming out of China. There’s just a lot of super talented and hardworking people in China that strongly believe in manufacturing. And they won’t just be burning the midnight oil. They’ll be burning the 3am oil. So they won’t even leave the factory type of thing. Whereas in America, people are trying to avoid going to work at all.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#292

Post by UncleMeat »

nightski wrote: post #130

We can argue about free speech & all that jazz to no end. But at the end of the day it's as simple as not banning elected officials. I don't care how divisive they are, we need to know what they say and do. These are people chosen by the people whether you love or hate them. Secondly, I just visited Twitter today and at the top it has statements about false accusations and fact checking prominently displayed. I follo…

> But at the end of the day it's as simple as not banning elected officials.

Various ISIS leaders were elected officials.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#293

Post by MonkeyMalarky »

Hamuko wrote: post #230
_chap wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Boring Company's latest test tunnel was about 1034 times slower than a snail (their current stated goal). https://www.reddit.com/r/BoringCompany/comments/xugxdl/comme...

Has the Boring Company really achieved anything that is not a flamethrower (not not a flamethrower?) and a slow EV taxi lane under Las Vegas?

It's achieved distracting voters and politicians from proven mass transit technologies.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#294

Post by CrazyStat »

twblalock wrote: post #245
Animats wrote: post #129

OK, so far, not much. Musk is getting stretched rather thin. Space-X seems to be doing OK with Gwynne Shotwell running things. Tesla, which Musk apparently does really run personally, is doing OK, but their side ventures are not. Self-driving is a mess. Solar panels (yes, Tesla has a solar panel business) are not doing well. The Cybertruck is years late. (Maybe next year.[1]) So is the Tesla Model 2, the low-end vehi…

I don’t think many people are cross-shopping Teslas with Bolts or Leafs. The difference in performance and technology is big enough to put them in a different vehicle class. Most of the people I know who are buying Teslas are coming from Audi and BMW, and never would have considered buying a Chevy.

I did. I was coming from a Toyota Corolla and wanted an electric car. Never considered a BMW or Audi, which didn't have electric options available at the time. Tesla won on range and comfort--I'm a big guy and the Leaf and Bolt were both a bit cramped.

Tesla has actually released stats on what cars their buyers trade in [1]. Most of them are not premium brands. Toyota is the largest single brand.

The anecdote about the people you know who are buying Teslas may be more reflective of who you know than who is buying Teslas.

[1] https://insideevs.com/news/504078/what-cars-tesla-buyers-tra...

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#295

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

capableweb wrote: post #266
thethethethe wrote: post #156

If I was working at Twitter right now I would be looking for a different job, regardless of what I think of Elon's politics/motives. The talk of layoffs and major policy changes creates massive uncertainty and I don't think I'd risk sticking out the transition. I bet many inside the company feel the same. This begs the question: If there is a major exodus, will it even matter? And, if it does, how will the problems m…

> Reduced reliability? Slower feature velocity? Less innovation? Slower feature velocity usually means higher reliability as changes to systems are usually what causes big systems to fail or enter degraded performance modes. If Musk ramps up development and forces out more features faster, that'd lead to lower reliability most commonly.

Haven't you ever worked at a company where the only thing that keeps the product going is ongoing heroic intervention by people with deep subject matter expertise; even in the absence of any actual feature-driven change?

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#296

Post by giobox »

cinntaile wrote: post #182
Animats wrote: post #129

OK, so far, not much. Musk is getting stretched rather thin. Space-X seems to be doing OK with Gwynne Shotwell running things. Tesla, which Musk apparently does really run personally, is doing OK, but their side ventures are not. Self-driving is a mess. Solar panels (yes, Tesla has a solar panel business) are not doing well. The Cybertruck is years late. (Maybe next year.[1]) So is the Tesla Model 2, the low-end vehi…

I think Starlink is a gamechanger, but I guess that's part of SpaceX?

By Musk's own admission, it can never be competitive against the cellular providers - they have the advantage in simple radio/physics terms over satellites.

I have some doubts - 4G/5G access is more and more prevalent throughout the US, and it provides better speeds and lower latency for less cost. T-Mobile's latest "home broadband" router that has an integrated 5G modem is surprisingly fast and affordable now, as one example. Starlink simply can't compete there, ever, seemingly. Cellular coverage grows and grows. Maybe there truly are enough customers cellular will never reach to justify low cost satellite internet? I have no doubts a market exists for expensive satellite internet for those that really need it. I pulled 600mbps over the air the other day on a Verizon 5G connection, just sitting in a store in a small town.

There is absolutely a risk Starlink will be an amazing technical invention, but not one enough people actually need to buy to justify continuing an affordable service. I think even owning a 2nd internet connection outside of your devices could become weird in the future - who wants wifi if the device can just have connectivity embedded from the factory, skipping wifi, routers and broadband connections altogether unless you want them? Smartphones and watches have already ditched the physical sim cards...

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#297

Post by SamBam »

bobiny wrote: post #31
davidw wrote: post #11

I think the thing to watch will be ads and other revenue streams. Most companies aren't going to want their ads next to 'free for all' content, so we'll see what happens.

I hope ads will die some day. To me they are just annoying and very rarely informative.

Clearly they generate revenue, though.

What's your proposal for how Twitter makes money? Just double-down on the harvesting of personal information instead?

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#298

Post by phpisthebest »

thethethethe wrote: post #156

If I was working at Twitter right now I would be looking for a different job, regardless of what I think of Elon's politics/motives. The talk of layoffs and major policy changes creates massive uncertainty and I don't think I'd risk sticking out the transition. I bet many inside the company feel the same. This begs the question: If there is a major exodus, will it even matter? And, if it does, how will the problems m…

>>If there is a major exodus

I think that is the goal of the announcements, it is always better for everyone if there are voluntary separations instead of layoff's and/or terminations.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#299

Post by cutenewt »

mooreds wrote: post #62
davidw wrote: post #11

I think the thing to watch will be ads and other revenue streams. Most companies aren't going to want their ads next to 'free for all' content, so we'll see what happens.

I agree. I think he understands that, as indicated by https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1585619322239561728 That doesn't sound like someone burning Twitter to the ground. Also, many are acting like Musk has free rein in running the company. Yes and no. Beyond needing employees to actually run the thing, he also has loans to pay back ($13B!) and investors to maintain good relationships with. More on that here: https…

The investors can't really do anything -- the board has been dissolved.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#300

Post by colinmhayes »

TSiege wrote: post #43

I would really like to hear how he's financing this deal. His net worth has dropped since he's made this play. Most of his money is tied up in equity. So who's funding this deal? The fact that this isn't well talked about and that the company is going private is raising a lot of red flags to my eyes

The entire point of buying twitter was to give Musk an excuse to sell some of his tesla stock. He did just that, and now combined with twitter leveraged buyout loan and the other investors he's brought in he only needs a few billion in loans against tesla shares to close the deal.
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