nuff said

  • RouxFou@dormi.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    390
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    With the way he’s running this, I’m a bit confused as to why he didn’t just buy Truth Social directly. Wouldn’t have cost him nearly as much.

        • Arakwar@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          108
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Twitter could have 200% more users, if no one want to show them ads, then ad spots will be dirt cheap. Printing 5 millions of 1cent ads vs 1 million of 10cents ads is not the same. Both on income and expenses…

          • 1nk@kbin.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            47
            arrow-down
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            This, so much this. I also find it rather coincidental that fb cam out with threads soon after the twitter implosion. Opportunistic feasting on a dead carcass perhaps?

            • Neato@kbin.social
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              41
              ·
              1 year ago

              Twitter has been on the outs since musk bought it. If Facebook was smart they’d have started right then.

                • eric@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  17
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  According to Adam Mosseri, IG had been working on Threads in various forms since 2021. Apparently they struggled to make it a native part of IG, then started working on the stand-alone version in 2022. So if he is to be believed, Threads development predates Twitter’s sale to Musk.

                  • cyberian_khatru@kbin.social
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    10
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    my guess is that they were working on it in the background and when musk bought tw they started pouring way more resources into it and turned it into a standalone app

              • dragontamer@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                34
                ·
                1 year ago

                Threads still doesn’t have #hashtag searching IIRC. It’s missing a huge number of features. It’s clear that they only came out as early as they did because they saw an opportunity to eat Twitter’s lunch.

                They really needed a few more months of dev time.

                • garretble@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  31
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Bluesky is the same way. There are a lot of features there that still need to be implemented.

                  I’m glad Masto at least has hashtags and video and gifs and editing. For me right now it has the best features and the best experience. I’m pretty happy with it.

                • AnonymousLlama@kbin.social
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  3
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Still exciting to be on the ground floor, when every day out week could bring a new update or feature. Wonder how they’ll improve over the next 3 months

              • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                5
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                Considering development time, server setup, testing time, etc… They probably did. It probably took several months to develop, deploy, integrate with the rest of their systems, and test. And then it’s simply a matter of waiting on Musk to do something stupid before they announce the launch, so all the freshly spurned users are happy to switch.

        • oselecto@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          To be fair I don’t think that can be entirely prescribed to drop in user base; the internet ad market in general is absolutely tanking at the moment.

      • Dojan@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        20
        ·
        1 year ago

        Most people I know that use Twitter did leave it because they can no longer use the platform. They used it to promote their work and get new clients, which through a series of changes is basically impossible now.

        • DauntingFlamingo@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          20
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          That saw an overnight 50% drop in activity. People were kinda pissed to find out that Meta created them a Threads handle from their Facebook/Instagram and immediately deactivated their Threads accounts. I don’t know what it means, but I like it

            • Acat114@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              4
              ·
              1 year ago

              You don’t have an account unless you activate it, but they do hold your Instagram handle if you were to sign up that would be your Threads handle. The 50% drop in activity is because the app is lame as hell, and once people saw it they were done. No chronological sorting option, not even an option to only see threads from the people you follow.

              • stebo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                not even an option to only see threads from the people you follow.

                lol then what’s the fucking point of following anyone

    • donuts@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      50
      arrow-down
      8
      ·
      1 year ago

      Dude could have created his own Mastodon insrance for practically nothing. Is he somehow even dumber than Trump?

    • Moohamin12@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      35
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Let’s be honest Elon doesn’t care about Twitter.

      He bought it with money he doesn’t have. He only increased in net worth since the takeover and has successfully done what he wanted to, destroy an organization he thought was problematic and now everyone gives even more data to Facebook.

      Everyone of them won.

      • JeffCraig@citizensgaming.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        I think part of it is his own hubris through. His head is so far up his head by now that he though he knew better. It’s the same reason why Super Heavy destroyed itself on first launch. He thought he was smarter than his engineers and forced them to go without a proper launchpad.

    • DingleBoone@reddthat.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      16
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      I’m still convinced there is money coming in from an outside influence that is paying him to destroy Twitter, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the same thing is happening to Reddit as well

      • meeeeetch@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        12
        ·
        1 year ago

        As much Saudi money as he burned though, I’m expecting him to leave an embassy in a half dozen suitcases.

      • Dr. Dabbles@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        1 year ago

        The simpler explanation is he’s a dumbass with a big mouth and he screwed himself over with Twitter. Now he doesn’t have any lifelines left, and he’s failing miserably.

      • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        I think he thought the “Twitter files” were real and wanted them so he could be the saviour of democracy and the right wing.

    • fiat_lux@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      1 year ago

      Simple. He didn’t shit-talk Truth Social in a legally binding way and then have his bluff called by people with enough financial resources to survive the lengthy court battle.

      He probably experiences less personal financial loss from running Twitter into bankruptcy now that he has been forced to buy it. He even gets to use it as his personal ego-stroking machine in the meantime.

      But he may have experienced significant personal loss had he decided to continue fucking around with the SEC (or was it one of the other agencies?), whom he had previously pissed off.

      If you view his words and actions through the lens of what will make him the most money or lose him the least, his actions make sense. Add a significant dash of arrogant impulsive invincibility too. He’s comfortable telling us about Twitter’s financial problems because starving it gets rid of it and let’s him focus on his other vanity projects.

      It’s not like they can send him to jail for being a bad manager. It’s not like he’s going to pay his bills. It’s not like he even used all of his own money to buy Twitter in the first place. What does it matter to him?

    • PoliticalAgitator@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      The biggest obstacle to spreading far-right propaganda has always been finding a platform.

      Before the internet, when neonazis tried to shove racist leaflets into peoples pockets at punk gigs, they’d be immediately run out of the venue, despite “angry, dissaffected, young people” being exactly the kind of vulnerability they were looking for.

      When the internet did come along, initially things weren’t much better. Sure, there were sites like Stormfront, but nobody went there. So instead they’d “raid” other forums to spread their shitty views, getting instantly banned because they hadn’t figured out how to be a Nazi with plausible deniability yet.

      When they finally nailed that, it was a big moment for them.

      Historically, mainstream media also never gave a fuck what the opinions of Nazis were. But the moment they rebranded to “alt-right”, the psycopathic, for-profit, neoliberal media companies saw a way to make some quick cash without having to openly admit they were functioning as a mouthpiece for people with swastika tattoos.

      From there, the “mask on, hide your powerlevel” stategy was codified. 4chan and far-right Discord servers openly stategized about how to do it best, such as presenting their dogshit opinions as popular, moderate beliefs and blaming progressives for their asshole personalities.

      By the time Charlottesville’s swastika-waving parade and domestic-terrorism-finale happened, it was too late. Key figures in the far-right funnel had settled into social media like bedbugs at a two-star hotel.

      Whenever a platform tried to get rid of them, they’d slip away through cracks in the walls. They would get banned and create new accounts that were slightly toned down, searching for that sweet spot of “as far-right as we can get away with”. They’d move to another major platform (or somewhere else on the same platform), because there was no coordinated effort to remove them for good.

      But despite the slow, uncordinated response from social media sites, it was starting to work, especially on Twitter. By the time you’d hidden how far-right you were, you could no longer spread your message. Nobody was fooled by the dog whistles, fake engagement and flowery misrepresentations of “freedom of speech” any more.

      Intially, they tried their own mask-off Twitter with Truth Social (who conspiciously aren’t being sued by Musk for being a Twitter clone). But the numbers were dogshit. It had a fraction of the traffic and everybody there was already far-right. You could keep them frothy, but you couldn’t breed more of them.

      So Musk bought Twitter. Ideally, he wanted to just hand one of the big three socials back to right-wing reactionaries ane extremists but he also has no problem just killing the platform.

      The only thing that mattered was that the deplatforming stopped, before people realised that it works and makes sites 1000x better.

    • rustic_tiddles@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      He wanted to prove he doesn’t care about money and is fully willing to throw away $44 billion dollars on a shitpost

    • atempuser23@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Thanks to Elon, there will never be another Arab Spring. Most of the money came from investors where that is a big plus. Elon invested a surprisingly small amount of his own money given the 44b total. Even a shattered Twitter will be a bigger soapbox than truth social. 6-8B of his own money, which he may have already extracted from twitter as a loan, is not a big deal to him.