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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

#61
post #41

Prediction: Brain drain at Twitter begins as Elon starts enacting unpopular policies. Valuation tanks. Morale becomes non-existent and Twitter slowly starts to fade from existence while competitors begin to fill the void. I give it 3-5 years before it's gone full husk.

You’re wrong, as a staunch advocate of free speech on the web and as a near victim of cancel culture I would gladly work at twitter as long as I were paid more than what I earn now, and I’m sure many people would feel the same. Twitter was already a crappy place to work before Elon with all its woke polítics, now though it may become more tolerable.

That’s very anecdotal. You’re not going to get the best engineers who could get a job anywhere giving up much better compensation because of “idealism”

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#62
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://www.reuters.com/markets/us/who-is-financing-elon-mus...

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#63
post #44

Prediction: Brain drain at Twitter begins as Elon starts enacting unpopular policies. Valuation tanks. Morale becomes non-existent and Twitter slowly starts to fade from existence while competitors begin to fill the void. I give it 3-5 years before it's gone full husk.

Brain drains usually happen due to low or uncompetitive pay, not because of corporate ideology. Otherwise Facebook/Meta would have had a brain drain years ago.

Working under Zuck I would imagine is much different than working under Elon.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#64
Elon Musk wants to set the bird free. But is the bird going to be free? Even free speech people don’t like speech that is critical of their beliefs, the pressure on Elon Musk to widen the definition of hate speech will be significant. The pressure from advertisers will force him to cave.

There will be pressure from platform owners like Apple and Google as well. If the moderation is weak Apple could decide to remove the Twitter app like they did to Parler.

Elon buying Twitter isn’t going to set the bird free, for sure it made the cage a little bigger.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#65

Prediction: Brain drain at Twitter begins as Elon starts enacting unpopular policies. Valuation tanks. Morale becomes non-existent and Twitter slowly starts to fade from existence while competitors begin to fill the void. I give it 3-5 years before it's gone full husk.

Brain drain? Twitter stock basically hasnt appreciated since IPO. They have been treading water for a decade, what brains are there providing value?

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Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#66
post #29

Prediction: Brain drain at Twitter begins as Elon starts enacting unpopular policies. Valuation tanks. Morale becomes non-existent and Twitter slowly starts to fade from existence while competitors begin to fill the void. I give it 3-5 years before it's gone full husk.

Prediction: Twitter becomes more efficient, focused and profitable than they ever have been. And it will return to the platform neutrality and free speech ideals it had prior to 2015ish.

Twitter is already biased towards right-wing sources, despite the right being the loudest at claiming persecution. [1] If Twitter actually became more platform neutral, then ironically we should see a shift towards the left.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/22/twitter-a...

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#67

Prediction: Brain drain at Twitter begins as Elon starts enacting unpopular policies. Valuation tanks. Morale becomes non-existent and Twitter slowly starts to fade from existence while competitors begin to fill the void. I give it 3-5 years before it's gone full husk.

Brain drain? Twitter stock basically hasnt appreciated since IPO. They have been treading water for a decade, what brains are there providing value?

There are still a lot of smart people there that are working on hard at scale problems. Just because the stock is stagnant doesn't mean there aren't smart people there keeping it running.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#68

Prediction: Brain drain at Twitter begins as Elon starts enacting unpopular policies. Valuation tanks. Morale becomes non-existent and Twitter slowly starts to fade from existence while competitors begin to fill the void. I give it 3-5 years before it's gone full husk.

They don't need to worry about valuation, they're just going to cut costs and extract revenue.

Politicians and sports media aren't going to abandon twitter any time soon, so I expect revenue will hold for quite some time.

It seems that many people abandoned FB already. If those same people abandon twitter, where will they go? I personally don't use twitter because I don't want to see updates from random people on the internet, but is there a replacement for that? I'm not sure.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#70
post #6
post #2

Apparently He laid off the data engineering team. That term is pretty vague, anyone know what they do? https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/28/departing-twitter-employees-... Edit: this may have been a prank.

That sounds like the move of someone who wants specifically-selected very loyal people designing systems which would tell you what's actually happening on the platform.

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