𝕏 / Twitter / X, the Social Media Platform Formerly Known as Twitter / "MUSK OWNS TWITTER"

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

I mean that seems hella reasonable tbh

 

[Involuntary Celebrity]

I've always figured that a lot of "ad revenue" is actually black funds distributed by the feds via adservers like Google to ensure wrongthink is relatively unprofitable and to prop up propaganda fronts.
Reminder that when the state dept built a whole fake social media site explicitly for brainwashing the model they copied was Twitter, so apparently it's just ideal for that, and when they shut it down it happened to be the same year that domestic propaganda restrictions were changed meaning it became legal to simply operate on Twitter. Hypothetically.

 

[TitusOvid]

if twitter dies people will thank elon for killing one of the most cancerous faggot sites on the internet

Seriously. Twitter is responsible for nearly all the cultural rot of the last 10 years.

 

[AgendaPoster]

He is already talking about bankruptcy (archive).

Elon Musk tells Twitter employees ‘bankruptcy is not out of the question’​

Ad revenue has declined significantly since Musk took over the company.

Two weeks after taking over Twitter, Elon Musk has finally addressed the company’s remaining staff and the message was bleak. Speaking at an all-hands meeting, Musk said that Twitter is losing so much money that “bankruptcy is not out of the question,” The Information and Platformer reported.

Twitter hasn’t turned a profit since 2019, and ad revenue has declined significantly since Musk’s takeover as advertisers pull back from the platform. At the all-hands, Musk said Twitter could have "net negative cash flow of several billion dollars” in 2023, according to The Information. He also suggested that Twitter’s future depends upon the success of the revamped Twitter Blue subscription service.

“The reason we’re going hardcore on subscribers is to keep Twitter alive,” he said.

Musk also told employees, again, that they are expected to work from Twitter’s office, a reversal of the company’s previous “work from anywhere” policy. “If you can physically make it to an office and you don’t show up, resignation accepted," he said, Platformer’s Zoe Schiffer, reported.

Twitter is also rapidly losing the top executives that survived Musk’s layoffs. The company’s chief information security officer, chief privacy officer and chief compliance officer all recently resigned, exposing the company to potential new FTC fines. And two other high-profile executives, head of trust and Safety Yoel Roth and head of ad sales Robin Wheeler, also resigned on Thursday, Bloomberg reported. The two had joined Musk in a town hall meant to reassure Twitter’s advertisers just one day before.

Meanwhile, the roll out of the new Blue subscription has been rocky. After introducing — and quickly killing — a separate “official” checkmark, there’s been a surge in scammers and pranksters impersonating politicians, celebrities and brands. Musk reportedly told employees that rooting out scammers abusing the checkmark was a “top priority.”

I'm starting to feel a bit bad for Elon, which is really hard for me, as I despise these pampered rich fucks.
How I see things:
He buys the corporation, after trying to get out of the deal. His friends and investors are nowhere to be seen. Maybe they warned him. He's faced with a huge corporation with a very specific, urban progressive culture and expectations, filled to the brim with Amerifat queerio pink hairs that the previous admin has made sure to hire. A core of programmers and competent managers run things.
He immediately becomes deeply hostile to this existing intricate machinery by firing most of it, making the rest afraid and likely uncooperative.
He find himself caught between the need to make money and his idealistic, naive lolbert convictions - the question of moderating the platform is revealing itself now in full. People (like me!) test the waters and boundaries, creating the impression that the platform is now allowing nazis on it. Celebretards start leaving like the paranoid low IQtards that they are. Negative publicity on all MSM. He tries to compromise some, shadowbanning hostile users and hiding their content, but you cannot compromise with social justice activism, as we all know, because this is a cultural war. Advertisers are hit with multiple demands from NGOs and activists, which create an atmosphere of an out of control, death-spiraling corporation where it's not worth putting ads on.
Desperate, Elon starts to sell checkmarks, essentially now a way to make your content visible - but it's not even guaranteed, what if you want to say nigger and shitpost - will Blue guarantee that you're not shadowbanned? Likely not.
Inconsistencies are everywhere. The platform seems aimless and headless. New checkmarks add to the chaos by impersonating.
----
So, yeah.
There is no escape from the moderation question, and now it's a bit too late. I honestly don't know what I would've done if I were Elon.
Twitter was a legitimately dangerous propaganda tool for the shitlibs. That had to change. But you cannot fully change such a progressive corpo overnight. And you cannot make it more libertarian and free speech without the far right. I don't really mind that, I enjoy some online conflict and shitposts, but most people aren't like that.
I don't know a single person from my circle of acquittances and friends that would be OK with a 2013 Twitter where hordes of anime avis bully queers and journos and feminazis. "Normal" people perceive that as a hostile, dangerous, abnormal territory that should be avoided, they don't wanna see Jews in ovens memes and demands for race wars.
Running big platforms is incredibly complex, it's not like with forums. When I was young, because of my tech knowledge, I got to moderate a large forum for money, paid janny&sheeiit. rules were simple, no religion, no war, no oil, no politics, we're here to discuss tech. There were no queers, no fags, no blacks, no whites, no cishets, just random anons poasting about the first Geforce and AMD's hitting the 1GHz barrier or w/e.
Once you let in politics and social issues, you're fucked, you'll have to take sides and to moderate.

 

[Varretnon847]

I honestly don't care whether Elon actually makes Twitter a better place or turns it into an even bigger dumpster fire. I'm just enjoying seeing all the Twitter lolcows screeching about his ownership.

 

[Polarity]

The reports of Twitter dying are overblown. Corporations were looking to tighten their belts and cut ad spending so they used this as an excuse to back out and get some social justice points.

The rest is just the media terrified that their main propaganda outlet might not be as reliable as it used to be.

 

[Some Badger]

The reports of Twitter dying are overblown. Corporations were looking to tighten their belts and cut ad spending so they used this as an excuse to back out and get some social justice points.

The rest is just the media terrified that their main propaganda outlet might not be as reliable as it used to be.

It's certainly convincing enough furry artists to make contingency accounts on Tumblr as they wishy-washily threaten to re-migrate.

No. Stop. Come back.

 

[Sneeder Griffin]

Just adding the email I keep seeing referenced. tldr, "back to work idiots. oh, and we're probably not gonna make it."

From: Elon Musk [email removed]

Date: Nov 9, 2022 [time stamp removed]

To: Team

Sorry that this is my first email to the whole company but there is no way to sugarcoat the message.

Frankly, the economic picture ahead is dire especially for a company like ours that is so dependent on advertising in a challenging economic climate. Moreover, 70% of our advertising is brand, rather than specific performance, which makes us doubly vulnerable!

That is why the priority over the past ten days has been to develop and launch Twitter Blue Verified subscriptions (huge props to the team!).

Without significant subscription revenue, there is a good chance Twitter will not survive the upcoming economic downturn. We need roughly half of our revenue to be subscription.

Of course, we will still then be significantly reliant on advertising, so I am spending time with our sales & partnerships teams to ensure that Twitter continues to be appealing to advertisers.

This is the Spaces discussion that Robin, Yoel and I hosted today: [Link to Elon Q&A: Advertising & the Future removed]

The road ahead is arduous and will require intense work to succeed. We are also changing Twitter policy such that remote work is no longer allowed unless you have a specific exception. Managers will send the exception lists to me for review and approval.

Starting tomorrow (Thursday), everyone is required to be in the office for a minimum of 40 hours per week. Obviously, if you are physically unable to travel to an office or have a critical personal obligation, then your absence is understandable.

I look forward to working with you to take Twitter to a whole new level. The potential is truly incredible!

Thanks,

Elon

Makes sense. With an upcoming recession and rising inflation, companies across the board are cutting down on social media spending and advertising. Social media and ad spending are always expendable, especially when consumers are more and more concerned with price over clever advertising campaigns.

Twitter has likely been seeing a decline in advertising revenue anyway over the past few years, due to rise of Tiktok and the increasing popularity of Instagram and Snapchat, especially among biologically female millennials and zoomers that are among the largest consumers of most products. It doesn't help that until those three sites, Twitter is lacking for "brand ambassadors" (i.e paid shills) and there's currently no practical way for influencers to monetize solely off of Twitter.

A lot of Elon's ideas are actually pretty solid. Twitter Blue is a great idea if it is implemented correctly and shares similarities to monetization methods on Reddit and 4chan (which also are bad social media sites for influencers and brand ambassadors). I also think that improving Twitter's video capabilities and finding ways for influencers to monetize off Twitter are also brilliant ideas that could save the company.

One potential idea that I think Elon should explore is finding ways to monetize customer service. Twitter is the top social media site for fielding customer feedback and despite companies saying that they're pulling back ads, no company is pulling back on their company customer service accounts. Perhaps Elon could release a professional "customer service suite" so that companies could analyze and respond to feedback more efficiently.

 

[Toolbox]

It's certainly convincing enough furry artists to make contingency accounts on Tumblr as they wishy-washily threaten to re-migrate.

No. Stop. Come back.

Did Tumblr get dropped by Yahoo's parent company and start allowing NSFW again? I don't see this going well for them.

 

[Some Badger]

Did Tumblr get dropped by Yahoo's parent company and start allowing NSFW again? I don't see this going well for them.

It got dropped a second time? Yeesh.

There's enough pushback against Tumblr as an alternative right now because getting visibility is absurdly difficult for artists and you can't exactly pay for followers under the table like one might for Twitter. It's worth noting that a lot of these full-time commission artists stake their entire incomes on the stability of Twitter because for the past six years or so it's proven to be the most effective avenue to growth and attention. If Twitter goes away, most of them will have to start over at a major disadvantage.

 

[Toolbox]

It got dropped a second time? Yeesh.

There's enough pushback against Tumblr as an alternative right now because getting visibility is absurdly difficult for artists and you can't exactly pay for followers under the table like one might for Twitter. It's worth noting that a lot of these full-time commission artists stake their entire incomes on the stability of Twitter because for the past six years or so it's proven to be the most effective avenue to growth and attention. If Twitter goes away, most of them will have to start over at a major disadvantage.

I was considering it more hypothetically, but it does appear they got purchased for basically nothing in 2019 by Wordpress.


Putting everything in one basket in the first place was a mistake though. A lot of these artists had already been on Tumblr before the NSFW purge, tried to escape to Newgrounds, then settled on Twitter. Somehow they didn't understand a rug pull could happen again. Not that I actually think it will, Twitter isn't going to instantly die even if it is crashing down, which I again doubt.

 

[AnOminous]

Twitter is in all free fall now, and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer platform

I hope Elon crashes Twitter with no survivors.

CRASH IT INTO THE GROUND ELON! NO SURVIVORS!

My sediments exactly.

I honestly don't care whether Elon actually makes Twitter a better place or turns it into an even bigger dumpster fire. I'm just enjoying seeing all the Twitter lolcows screeching about his ownership.

Every time I wake up, I feel a sense of absolute glee at knowing I'm going to see yet more seething and coping from twittards realizing they're owned by an African male.

And they can't do a single thing about it. He OWNS them. He is buggering them in public and all they can do is seethe and cope.

 

[Some Badger]

I was considering it more hypothetically, but it does appear they got purchased for basically nothing in 2019 by Wordpress.


Putting everything in one basket in the first place was a mistake though. A lot of these artists had already been on Tumblr before the NSFW purge, tried to escape to Newgrounds, then settled on Twitter. Somehow they didn't understand a rug pull could happen again. Not that I actually think it will, Twitter isn't going to instantly die even if it is crashing down, which I again doubt.

Oh buddy, you don't even know the half of it. Most of these guys have no contingency plans at all. I got in a huge argument with one of my artist friends over this last year because I was trying to warn him that Twitter, being cancer, is always a stone's throw away from no longer being an artist-friendly platform, which almost killed our friendship. This site gives people a stupid amount of tunnel vision when they begin to profit off of it.

 

[Toolbox]

Oh buddy, you don't even know the half of it. Most of these guys have no contingency plans at all. I got in a huge argument with one of my artist friends over this last year because I was trying to warn him that Twitter, being cancer, is always a stone's throw away from no longer being an artist-friendly platform, which almost killed our friendship. This site gives people a stupid amount of tunnel vision when they begin to profit off of it.

I hear you. I know people who have this same obsession with Twitter as their 'needed' platform. Partially I understand it because for some reason the general culture of creators online loves centering around singular sites that they have no control over, which is what ended up happening with digital artists and Twitter, but there are other platforms and you can find success on them. There are even platforms that are basically twitter beat for beat but decentralized, though of course that means that your audience will be less by default.

 

[AnOminous]

I hear you. I know people who have this same obsession with Twitter as their 'needed' platform. Partially I understand it because for some reason the general culture of creators online loves centering around singular sites that they have no control over, which is what ended up happening with digital artists and Twitter, but there are other platforms and you can find success on them. There are even platforms that are basically twitter beat for beat but decentralized, though of course that means that your audience will be less by default.

That's why I love Elon Musk of all people owning the platform now. He isn't someone you can just ignore because he is just such a titanic, epic asshole that if he's in charge, you will have this cocksucker in your face every single moment. So it's like these insufferable cunts have their absolute nightmare of a person in charge, the kind of person they'd previously scream to a tranny janny and he'd be banned, but now he owns the joint.

Suck it you tranny scum!

 

[Some Badger]

I hear you. I know people who have this same obsession with Twitter as their 'needed' platform. Partially I understand it because for some reason the general culture of creators online loves centering around singular sites that they have no control over, which is what ended up happening with digital artists and Twitter, but there are other platforms and you can find success on them. There are even platforms that are basically twitter beat for beat but decentralized, though of course that means that your audience will be less by default.

I really just want more people to give the Fediverse a shot, but each instance's capacity to defederate is really gonna fuck over capturing the Twitter experience and instant gratification these chucklefucks are used to.

Also, as it stands, there's way too many bots.

 

[Local Fed]

That's why I love Elon Musk of all people owning the platform now. He isn't someone you can just ignore because he is just such a titanic, epic asshole that if he's in charge, you will have this cocksucker in your face every single moment. So it's like these insufferable cunts have their absolute nightmare of a person in charge, the kind of person they'd previously scream to a tranny janny and he'd be banned, but now he owns the joint.

Suck it you tranny scum!

It's the factor that is drawing their ire the same way that Trump did/does. It's not some typical behind the scenes guy who'll sit in the back of the room and say nothing, he'll actually open his mouth (for good and for bad) and talk back. The people squealing and shitting themselves over Musk, acting like he's the new-new-new-new-Hitler because he's (advertising himself as) not being as authoritarian are the epitome of the quote that they sometimes like to smugly use on the people they hate (white people, men, conservatives, white people, people critical of troons, white people, etc.) all of the time:

"When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression."

"Musk is literally letting trans folx and minorities be murdered become Groyper1488 feels free to say 'Nigger' now!" (even though he still gets banned for it just like before.)

 

[Kendall Motor Oil]

"I don't care about the economics at all"

He doesn't have to tell people. He's a european scientist.

 

[Mothra1988]

So do you think this means the SJWs are starting to loser their grip on Twitter now? This seems pretty big, and Roth was pointed out as an over-sight in regards to the earlier round of firings.

 

[ducktales4gameboy]

Did Tumblr get dropped by Yahoo's parent company and start allowing NSFW again? I don't see this going well for them.

Yup. For about 12 hours after it happened a gif of a guy fucking a pumpkin was completely inescapable. It was like a flashback to early 2000s shock image bombing and funny as hell.

For what it's worth I've seen a post floating around that goes "Coming from Twitter? Here's the key differences" and the link provided goes to Last Measure. The remnants who still use Tumblr don't want the refugees either.