>>...the largest distribution source of worldwide news>>

That's not really true is it? My understanding is that it's actually the smallest of its immediate peers in social media. And perhaps the same in the field of the broader definition of media.

As a separate issue, my personal sentiment on social media, like a number of others I know, is that it has all become a steaming pile of toxic garbage, not unlike the pile of junk mail I dutifully retrieve from my physical mailbox once a month (and even then only so that the mail person has room to add more). My concern on a deal like this is that if that sentiment takes off in the mainstream a property like Twitter could experience a MySpace style collapse overnight.

Over the next week, mark down every time you see the following news:

1. News such as an HN post which is a ... twitter link

2. News in an article or on TV that reverences a ... twitter link

3. Social media referencing a ... twitter link

There's a lot more than appears at first, even if you aren't consuming news on Twitter or Tik Tok a lot of it is being broken there.

This is what I was referring to. Sure there are infinite other sites but Twitter is where it is being broken and where majority of all the journalists live. It is currently the site with status and clout for important news. Will that change? Always possible but it is the site du jour.

It's also the site for the unimportant news that journalists decide to transform into "important" news. Too many "click bait" news stories end up being "xxx is outraged" and the story links to 3-4 random twitter comments

Ok gotcha. So largest by volume of breaking stories used as opposed to users.

Yes, social media has become toxic but a lot of people use it to get their news and information.

Twitter is a great way for Musk to get into social media without having to get users and build the infrastructure. He can compete at a worldwide level with Facebook on day one.

Weibo is bigger. Wechat too.

How much global news comes out of either of those? That's the point of the parent comment.

Weido and Wechat may have more users, but they aren't newsmakers. Just like there's more people at a Def Leppard concert than in the White House, but the White House makes news.

They're not news makers? Yes they are.

They are largely irrelevant to the rest of the world as a source of news except to see what the government line is and as a pulse taker of Chinese population tolerance to policy. They are a propoganda news source controlled by the Chinese Government for the Chinese population. Large population for sure, and highly impactful to controlling that population but only viable for the CCP.

Good luck buying wechat as someone without Chinese citizenship.

Good luck buying WeChat without the proper connections to the ruling class in China in the first place.

Facebook is also far far bigger than Twitter. Yet Elon is content with ignoring it, and so was Trump (who is suspended into 2023 [0])

[0] https://www.npr.org/2021/06/04/1003284948/trump-suspended-fr...

Facebook amplifies, it doesn't create. People link to twitter threads from HN all the time, rarely if ever do they link to FB posts.

Nobody cares about Facebook, even though it's hugely used it's a dead letter.

Facebook is a dying site and it isn't for sale. Irrelevant to the options.

Weibo and Wechat are also not available for sale, so what's your point?

Also irrelevant to the conversation.

My rebuttal was to this comment, which implied that size was an overriding factor of importance. That comment was a rebuttal to you. So I'm not sure what you even want to argue about.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31110766

Please learn how comment threads work.