Post Elon, they are not-turning-a-profit.

They will, but it would likely need restructuring the debts and the cap table, and would not be Elon's Twitter anymore.

Yes, if the business was different, it would be different.

Are their losses greater or less than pre purchase. I know revenue is down, but I wonder how the cost cuts affected margin.

Don’t forget the massive amount of new debt that needs servicing.

They made a profit in 2018 and 2019 ($1.2bn and $1.45bn according to SEC filings) but not in any other year.

Presumably they could have done Elon’s massive firing spree at any point in time and become profitable overnight?

Good to know a publicly-traded company known to censor content to be more advertiser-friendly and with notoriously predatory content discovery algorithms designed to elicit emotions to keep users coming is apparently not-for-profit if it happens to be unprofitable during the ZIRP period. Or is Facebook also not-for-profit?

If anything, Musk is less profit-oriented. Someone looking to profit off the platform wouldn't be actively driving off advertisers. But I suppose that because we must all believe that Elon Bad, he must also be the evilest capitalistest person in the whole world, and everything before him was sunshine and roses.

> known to censor content to be more advertiser-friendly

And now it’s know to censor content to be friendly to autocratic governments.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/88xqnv/elon-musk-censors-twi...

Obviously your post has nothing to do with Twitter being for-profit before the acquisition and Musk prioritizing profit less than his predecessors, but I'll bite.

By complying with government regulations when displaying content in their respective regions to avoid getting the entire network banned there, right. While this hit piece from a notoriously biased outlet would like to equate this with ye olde Twitter's regular practice of of suppressing or deleting content worldwide at the whim of the US government, it's obviously more transparent and fair to comply with censorship locally and provide a reason for the missing content. Reeks of "it's okay when we do it".

> Twitter being for-profit before the acquisition and Musk prioritizing profit less than his predecessors

Being unable to turn a profit is not the same as not prioritising profit.

If he’s so unconcerned with making a profit, then why weasel out from paying rent, the fired employees, and all the rest? Why be so adamant about a payed subscription? Why complain of advertisers leaving?

More importantly, why does a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” kowtow to an autocratic government if he’s not even concerned with profit? And why does he keep banning his own critics?

> ye olde Twitter's regular practice of of suppressing or deleting content worldwide at the whim of the US government

Disputed by his own lawyers.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/06/tech/twitter-files-lawyer...

> this hit piece from a notoriously biased outlet

Here are eight more sources and a study. Surely they won’t all be “notoriously biased outlets” writing hit pieces, or is the definition for that “writes something negative about Musk”?

https://nypost.com/2023/04/01/twitter-censorship-increases-u...

https://www.thestreet.com/technology/twitter-promised-to-fig...

https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-05-24/under-el...

https://restofworld.org/2023/elon-musk-twitter-government-or...

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/04/elon-musk-...

https://slate.com/technology/2023/05/elon-musk-turkey-twitte...

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/elon-musk-twitte...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/04/27/tw...

https://censortrack.org/study-twitter-censorship-shockingly-...