Oh he has gotten himself into a pickle. I am just sayin he is not going to be homeless and his rogue nature will cause him to do rogue things without regard to the economics of it because he has all the money he needs, and if he does that I am not going to worry about him or Twitter. No one is on a heart-lung machine that Elon is trying to unplug, contrary to all the histrionics being created around it. Yes some employees are coming and going under rough circumstances. Nothing I have not seen more than my share of bigtime from my corporate world days.
Under Musk - Twitter is a misinformation hellscape. Twitter to no longer enforce rules against misinformation https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3723094-twitter-confusion-misinformation-policies/
Good. Because what you and your ilk call "misinformation" ends up being right most of the time when the chips fall. Censorship shouldn't be allowed. You're a statist and a religious zealot of the Church of Covid™. But even you should be allowed to make your (worthless) point.
Entire governments have stopped ads on Twitter while strongly urging companies in their country not to advertise either. Canadian Government Told To Pause Twitter Ads After Musk’s Mass Layoffs https://www.complex.com/life/musk-twitter-layoffs-canadian-government
"Entire governments". Never saw a Canadian government add on Twitter in over a decade. And not surprising that a government so intent on penalizing and restricting its citizens is like you - wanting to stifle dissent of any kind.
So, let me think. The Trudeau government spends massive bucks advertising on Facebook and Facebook is in the process of implementing massive layoffs, so I can expect Canada to stop doing business with Facebook too, eh?
Musk blocks the one of the most influential advertising executives in the U.S. after the exec politely responded to Musk's post about advertisers. You would have think that Musk would have taken the hint when Paskalis was one of the lead industry representatives when Musk met with advertisers. Elon Musk Gets Pilloried By Top Ad Exec Over Rift With Sponsors: He’s ‘Petulant and Thoughtless’ https://www.mediaite.com/news/elon-...t-with-sponsors-hes-petulant-and-thoughtless/ New Twitter owner Elon Musk “charmed” advertising executives on a conference call last Thursday but then “undermined his own progress the next day” with his own “petulant and thoughtless” behavior, according to one of the marketers on that call. Last Friday — the same day that Musk laid off roughly half of Twitter’s workforce — the self-proclaimed “Chief Twit” complained about “activist groups pressuring advertisers” causing “a massive drop in revenue,” claiming “nothing has changed with content moderation” and blaming these activists for “trying to destroy free speech in America.” Lou Paskalis, a longtime ad executive and the former head of global media for Bank of America, replied to Musk’s tweet with two tweets of his own. Paskalis referenced the “[g]reat chat” on Thursday, in which senior advertisers had “overwhelmingly” agreed that “the issue concerning us all is content moderation and its impact on BRAND SAFETY/SUITABILITY.” “You say you’re committed to moderation, but you just laid off 75% of the moderation team!” he added. In the next tweet, he shot down Musk’s claim that advertisers were being “manipulated” by activist groups. The truth, Paskalis insisted, was that companies have “established principles” around what other companies with which they want to partner. “These principles include an assessment of the platforms commitment to brand safety and suitability.” According to screenshots Paskalis posted, Musk blocked him in response to his tweets (More at above url)
Elon Musk Didn’t Care About Twitter Economics Before He Bought it, but He Cares a Lot Now https://gritdaily.com/musk-didnt-care-about-twitter-economics-it-but-he-cares-a-lot-now/ Last April, Tesla billionaire Elon Musk said he “didn’t care about the economics” of Twitter when he was jockeying to buy the platform but now that he owns it, he seems fixated on Twitter economics. Musk shifts focus from future of civilization: Musk spoke about Twitter, where he has a large and loyal following, in lofty terms last spring. “This is just my strong, intuitive sense that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization,” Musk said during the TED2022 conference, when his $44 billion bid for the company was public but he hadn’t completed the purchase. Musk borrowed $13 billion to partially fund his purchase of Twitter, which is believed to be the largest tech leveraged buy out ever. The future of civilization has fallen behind the estimated $1 billion in annual interest payments on the loan as his primary concern. Musk seems to be waking up to fact that Twitter, while a prestigious social media platform, is not a lucrative company. According to the New York Times, the company has lost money eight of the last 10 years. Which you think would have been more of a concern during the due diligence phase of the deal, not just be in the news now. Twitter economics, front and center The numbers don’t seem to work: The Times further noted that Twitter had been paying $50 million annually in interest payments, but the company is saddled with the the new debt taken on in for Musk to complete the deal. Annual interest payments have shot up to about $1 billion a year, but last year Twitter only generated about $630 million in cash flow to meet its financial obligations. The first cut is the deepest: Musk has been floating ideas for generating revenue but has first turned to the usual billionaire standby of laying off staff. Up to half of Twitter employees were unceremoniously laid off late last week. Last Thursday night and Friday morning, large swaths of Twitter’s staff learned they had been laid off. Some staff reportedly received an email telling them they no longer had a job, while many figured it out because they had lost access to their Slack and email accounts. Twitter staff who still have jobs probably won’t have much of a life outside of work for the foreseeable future. Musk has told Twitter employees to work 24/7 to generate revenue needed to to make the massive interest payments. Will people pay for what has been free? Musk has been tossing revenue ideas against the wall to see what will stick. Mostly is has come down to charging people for what they have long enjoyed at not cost. That is no easy trick. Musk recently proposed charging $20 per month for the coveted blue check mark verification that many, but far from all, users enjoy. The objections were loud, and Musk announced that Twitter would begin charging $8 per month for verification. “We need to pay the bills somehow!” he wrote in a tweet responding to complaints about the fee. According to The New York Times, Musk and his advisers are considering adding a service that would allow users to send direct messages to high-profile users for a fee, “paywalled” videos, charging for user analytics and reviving the short-form video platform, Vine. How Twitter users receive the changes remains to be seen. If the new owners of a popular diner fired half the staff, raised the menu prices and then started charging for ketchup packets, would the customers get used to it or just start going somewhere else to eat? Advertising used to be Twitter’s main revenue: Advertising was about 90 percent of Twitter’s revenue prior to Musk, but image conscious brands loath to be associated with racism and loony conspiracy theories are fleeing the platform. According to the Network Contagion Research Institute, an independent center that tracks online trend, there has been a 500 percent increase in racial slurs on Twitter just since Musk bought the platform. Many large brands have stopped, or at least paused, advertising on Twitter, leading to what Musk described as “a massive drop in revenue.” Elon Musk is likely to be long remembered as a genius, even a savior, for founding Tesla and popularizing electric cars when civilization urgently needed to stop using fossil fuels, but nobody is brilliant at everything. Twitter might be the test of whether Musk is as exceptional as his popular image portrays him, or just as human, albeit much richer, than the rest of us.