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Re:Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023 by wpietri on Friday January 20, 2023 @02:55PM (#34458859)
Honestly, it was partly my faith in money that made me comfortable with Twitter as a public company. They (gradually and often reluctantly) learned that if they wanted to be a viable business, they had to provide a reasonably safe place for a lot of people. For purely pecuniary reasons, they also thought they needed to be a good partner to people building things related to Twitter.

All that has gone by the wayside, of course. Part of the problem here is that Musk had so much money he could afford to burn tens of billions of dollars on a weird personal fixation. [1] A problem that the market has happily started to correct, [2] but perhaps not soon enough to save Twitter.

[1] One possible explanation is here: https://defector.com/i-was-almost-elon-musks-twitter-voice

[2] He even set a record! https://www.npr.org/2023/01/12/1148634966/elon-musk-guinness...

Re:Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023 by smoldesu on Friday January 20, 2023 @03:08PM (#34459064)
They didn't learn much of anything, though. Twitter lost money when they played nice, and they lose less money when they play mean and lean. Either way Twitter was bloated and overvalued, but anything bought with wealth leveraged against Tesla shares can't be worth much in the first place.
Re:Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023 by wpietri on Friday January 20, 2023 @03:55PM (#34459817)
No, they really did learn things. For example, consider the racist mobbing of Leslie Jones in 2016: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/jul/18/leslie-jones...

Twitter learned that they really had to take harm reduction more seriously if they didn't want to be known for things like that. I believe that their improvements there were part of what set them on the path to their later profits: https://www.netcials.com/financial-net-profit-year-quarter-u...

And as far as losing money goes, their "lean and mean" approach isn't doing so well. Ad revenues are reportedly down ~40% as the same time Musk is going to have to come up with billion-dollar interest payments.

Re:Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023 by smoldesu on Friday January 20, 2023 @04:55PM (#34460543)
Ad revenue can be down 40% if your overall paid workforce was reduced by ~85%. It wasn't working out for Twitter either way, if they wanted to be profitable then something had to change.

As an impartial non-Twitter user, I think it's safe to say that neither version of Twitter was healthy for it's platform or users.

Re:Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023 by wpietri on Friday January 20, 2023 @05:13PM (#34460789)
Twitter has been profitable in the recent past and could be again. Drama was not necessary.

I think your claim on profitability is flat out wrong. If you think that's the case, what are the exact numbers you are imagining that would make Twitter profitable?

Re:Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023 by ceejayoz on Friday January 20, 2023 @06:25PM (#34461613)
Twitter was profitable in 2018 and 2019. Down in 2020, and 2021 is hard to fairly assess.