>I wonder if commenters who thought that Musk would usher in an era of freedom and an end to bad design choices at Twitter are eating crow about now.

Absolutely not. Musk fans tend to decide good/bad based off of “Musk idea”/“not Musk idea”

Somewhere there’s somebody crafting some version of an “Uptime and usability are ideas from a beta cuck mentality, in this thread I will show that slow-loading brain pill ads on a website facing a mass exodus are the sign of virility and strength…” post right now.

Exactly. They still think after he pumped and dumped Doge coin that he’s going to pump it again one day, and they’ll be rewarded for faithfully HODL’ing. The older I get the more I think established organized religion may not be such a bad thing compared to the alternative

Prosperity gospel! It’s like somebody once posted “Joel Osteen plus crypto”, he read that, then thought “I came up with this”

Not one thing that Musk had done prior to his purchase of Twitter ever suggested to me that he would do anything but exactly what he's doing @Twitter. Everything about him suggested "freedom for me (and my ilk), but not for thee" would be how things would proceed. Which flavor of kool-aid do I need to drink before I see Musk as the great savior instead the person I see now?

> Which flavor of kool-aid do I need to drink before I see Musk as the great savior instead the person I see now?

Presumably buying a Tesla and believing that its the best car in the world, also that Elon musk did everything alone and he's the reason Tesla exists(not true, elon didn't create Tesla).

>> Which flavor of kool-aid do I need to drink before I see Musk as the great savior instead the person I see now?

The things he said about freedom of speech ("free speech absolutism", etc.) made a great impact on people. To be fair, there was also some merit in that narrative as censorship was indeed happening in Twitter 1.0.

It's quite easy for a commoner or pleb to think that Elon Musk is single handedly taking on the "mighty establishment" on behalf of the common people. The "Modern day Robin Hood" is a kool-aide stereotype which isn't easy to shake off and Elon seems to have been successful so far in that narrative pitch.

The fact that the person who tried to silence multiple employees and journalists convinced anyone that he is a "free speech absolutist" really baffles me. But then again the same people shouting for this brand of "free speech absolutism" had absolutely no problems with protestors (often violently) being escorted out of Trump rallies.

One oft-overlooked factor is that when you look at the people Musk surrounds himself with deliberately (so not the cult, which is mostly just generic personality cult nonsense, TSLA owners desperately trying to deny that their stock is collapsing and people who deluded themselves into thinking their Tesla car is better than it actually is) are all people who fundamentally do not care if Twitter goes down.

They're the right-wing commentators and conspiracy theorists who see Twitter as everything wrong with modern society[0]. To them, no matter what Musk does, it'll be beneficial for them. Either Musk reworks the platform to be amenable to them or he drives the company in the ground. Right now he's doing both, so for them it's an absolute win.

That's the flavor of kool-aid Musk is deliberately drinking from and once you realize that, most of his actions make some amount of sense (whilst also having a distressingly low concern about his personal fortune, something which makes it clear that when it comes to right-wing radicalization, he's firmly within the "sucker" group, rather than the "grifter" group; the latter is flexible with their beliefs if it risks losing personal profits, Musk isn't), like the utter nothingburger that is the "Twitter files"[1].

[0]: Point of clarity - this is the people who Musk surrounds himself with, I am not saying anyone who thinks twitter is negative on society is a right wing commentator or conspiracy theorist. Musk specifically is talking and listening to policy advice from these two groups and this is what those groups generally believe.

[1]: Which so far have been extremely boring and generic content moderation requests rather than proof of any "inside jobs" and restatements of old news.

Nope, the goalposts will just keep moving, as usual.

"I fully support Musk taking over Twitter. He is a free speech absolutist and will end censorship."

"Of course you can't have people impersonating others, even for comedy. That's just dangerous."

"Those journalists had it coming. They anyways just post fake news. No one has the right to a Twitter account."

"It's a private company. He can ban whoever he wants. The guy shouldn't have shared locations of his jet."

"Third party clients cut into Twitter's revenue and give nothing back. They deserve to be cut off."

Common mistake. He doesn't mean "free speech" when he says "free speech" and neither do those defending him. There are like three people who genuinely believe in free speech above all else, everyone else is fine with a subset of speech being censored.

Note that e.g. reinstating far-right accounts banned for hate speech is "free speech" but banning leftist or progressive accounts doesn't contradict that. Only one side of the political divide loves to portray itself as "centrist" to hide its actual beliefs and values.

APIs save Twitter R&D, marketing and support $, develop features to clone and apps to buy, lock in high-value customers who make custom workflows.

> on monetizing to the maximum extent possible.

Are they though? I thought money loss at twitter was at an all time high

That’s because the acquisition was financed through debt.

Given twitter’s massive headcount increases in the previous couple of years and the decline in ad spend that came last year, the previous executive team was about to fall off their tightrope. I’m sure they would have handled it with much better communication while treating employees better, though.

Twitter only lost $200-million in 2021.

Do you want to guess how much it lost in 2022? Hint: Elon Musk's buyout forced Twitter to take on $13 Billion debt... estimated to be $1.3 Billion in interest payments per year.

This "Headcount" fallacy seems to be just the pro-Elon Musk crowd ignoring the fact that the #1 and #2 sources of Twitter's financial woes are:

1. The aforementioned Loan.

2. The $2.5 Billion (estimated) loss in advertiser revenue.

Twitters losses in 2023 will be astronomical. It will not be possible to ignore Twitter's loan issues, or their loss in advertiser revenue.

Are they still required to report those losses to the public under the new structure? Or can they wear a facade of success until a sudden "Our Incredible Journey" at some point?

No. They're a private company now, so all their profits / losses / etc. etc. can remain private now.

Losing money in 2021 for a tech company in Twitter’s position is dire. That was the most intense boom year the industry has experienced since at least the 90s, maybe ever. Meta had all time high gross revenue and net income, both about 35% higher than in 2020. They haven’t lost money and are still reducing headcount by 12%. Twitter’s layoffs were bound to be much greater.

I am not a fan of Elon Musk, for what it’s worth, and I’m sorry that you felt the need to make this some kind of tribal battle instead of a productive discussion. Twitter’s financial issues were well known before Musk became involved, and it is widely agreed that he greatly overpaid for the company. Nothing he has done with the company should impress anyone at this point. The point stands that the company was going to be experiencing major pain even without him.

> The point stands that the company was going to be experiencing major pain even without him.

$3.8 Billion / year of that pain is directly attributable to Musk, in a company that only had $5 Billion/year revenue.

Its really that simple. Look at the advertising losses due to Elon Musk's right-wing redpilling of the world... and add the $1.3 Billion loan structure Elon Musk is directly responsible for. There's no need to overthink this. We can actually calculate how much revenue Twitter is losing directly related to Elon Musk's behavior.

---------

If you want to argue otherwise, you need to start putting down at least some napkin-level estimates to where the other losses-of-revenue came from for Twitter. Or you need to chip away at the $3.8 Billion number I posted above.

Coming into a $5 Billion revenue company and immediately causing $3.8 Billion (combination lost revenue and new liabilities) is very impressive. I don't think I've ever seen someone wipe out... 76% of a company's revenue in just 3 months before.

I don’t know what this has to do with what I posted. I never said Twitter was doing well under Musk. You are shadowboxing.

> I don’t know what this has to do with what I posted.

The problems you're trying to discuss are almost entirely irrelevant to Twitter's current woes. The actual problems are measured in the $Billions/year size. The problems you discuss are perhaps only a few dozen million/year.

> You are shadowboxing.

You are making a mountain out of a molehill. The $million mistakes should be ignored for the $Billion mistakes happening right now.

I'm not sure if Twitter burning down is bad or if it's a blessing, Musk's Twitter so far seems to be generating less hate-driven politicisms than it used to. That is a plus, short term.

Just like Musk himself, they did not wanted general freedom. They wanted to stick it to the libs, to suppress their enemies and to restore hardcore right wing accounts. Musk delivered on all counts.

It's a cult of personality rather than anything else, so presumably not. If Musk said he was going to save Twitter with homemade submarines, the fanbase would eat it up.