Big changes for Twitter

[JerryBaumchen 1,082]

1 hour ago, SkyDekker said:

Only in America would you get a billionaire to convince people they need to pay for Free Speech.

Hi Sky,

As one who have never used or been a part of Twitter, I think it is time to get some popcorn going & sit back and watch what happens.  At least the entertainment is free.

Jerry Baumchen

 

[ryoder 1,412]

2 hours ago, JerryBaumchen said:

Hi Sky,

As one who have never used or been a part of Twitter, I think it is time to get some popcorn going & sit back and watch what happens.  At least the entertainment is free.

 

I have a Twitter account and login every morning. But I don't post. I follow the posts of my local police dept, my elected representatives, and a several news reporters. This is how I often first learn of news-worthy events.

[gowlerk 1,956]

1 hour ago, ryoder said:

I have a Twitter account and login every morning. But I don't post. I follow the posts of my local police dept, my elected representatives, and a several news reporters. This is how I often first learn of news-worthy events.

That makes you one of Elon's new products for sale to advertisers.

[olofscience 431]

9 hours ago, gowlerk said:

That makes you one of Elon's new products for sale to advertisers.

But will people be happy that their local police dept. will now have to spend $8/month of their tax money to keep their verified status?

Twitter made a loss of more than $300 million last year. Those verified accounts drive views, like ryoder's. Advertisers don't want them leaving twitter, and that's exactly what this fee will do.

There are about 400,000 verified accounts there, so even if none of them left, it would only generate $38.4 million per year. Not really going to put a dent on a $300 million loss.

[wolfriverjoe 1,371]

Seen on FB - If Elon Musk wants to make money, he should charge people to block HIM.

[ryoder 1,412]

Musk’s Twitter Looks to Rehire Some of the Staff it Booted Last Week

Typical corporate idiocy in my experience. When I was at TCI in Denver, (before John Malone sold it to ATT), the fools had a RIF.  After the RIF, someone realized they had cut the only guy who knew how to provision data circuits with the telcos.  Now since Malone had a hobby of constantly buying/selling cable TV companies, this was pretty damned important.  I am not exaggerating when I say there were small cable companies being bought and sold every week!  Every one required data circuits to TCI to be set up or taken down.  When I left, there were four people doing the job of that one guy they RIF'd.

[BIGUN 1,109]

I have a general rule. You can charge me a subscription fee or show me advertisers, but not both.  

[wmw999 2,178]

I don’t have a Twitter account. Nothing has even suggested, never mind convinced me, that this is a mistake

Wendy P. 

[winsor 192]

25 minutes ago, wmw999 said:

I don’t have a Twitter account. Nothing has even suggested, never mind convinced me, that this is a mistake

Wendy P. 

I followed the recommendation to get a Twitter account a decade and a half ago or thereabouts.

After maybe a month I realized that the "must follow" feed was entirely uninteresting after checking it a couple of times, and that I had zero interest in either posting or reading what the twits had to say.

I canceled and haven't missed if for a second.

[billvon 2,476]

36 minutes ago, wmw999 said:

I don’t have a Twitter account. Nothing has even suggested, never mind convinced me, that this is a mistake

I have a Twitter account that I check perhaps twice a year when some company/group/activity/brewery uses Twitter exclusively for updates.

[kallend 1,683]

On 11/7/2022 at 10:59 AM, wmw999 said:

I don’t have a Twitter account. Nothing has even suggested, never mind convinced me, that this is a mistake

Wendy P. 

Same here.

[gowlerk 1,956]

On 11/7/2022 at 10:59 AM, wmw999 said:

I don’t have a Twitter account. Nothing has even suggested, never mind convinced me, that this is a mistake

Wendy P. 

All the cool kids have Twitter. Until recently when Elon made it uncool. I also have never had an account. Nor have I ever been cool, not even for 5 minutes.

[kallend 1,683]

23 minutes ago, gowlerk said:

All the cool kids have Twitter. Until recently when Elon made it uncool. I also have never had an account. Nor have I ever been cool, not even for 5 minutes.

Your avatar exudes coolness.

[gowlerk 1,956]

5 minutes ago, kallend said:

Your avatar exudes coolness.

Not nearly as cool as yours.

[JerryBaumchen 1,082]

5 hours ago, gowlerk said:

All the cool kids have Twitter. Until recently when Elon made it uncool. I also have never had an account. Nor have I ever been cool, not even for 5 minutes.

Hi Ken,

Since I qualify, can I join your club?

Jerry Baumchen

[Phil1111 943]

Why the hate on for Elon? He has lost over $90 billion since last year from the drop in Tesla and Twitter stock prices. Twitter of course is no longer publicly traded.

Ok so he said he wouldn't sell more Tesla stock. Then broke that promise and dumped another $8 billion after that promise. Including $3.8 billion last week.

Ok, so racists and trump will need a place to gather. To trade laughs about Soros and his fight for democracy. Xi, Putin and trump all need to spread the message about freedom and republicans!

[billvon 2,476]

I gotta say this latest escapade has been a lot of fun to watch.  It's about free speech, not money! he said earlier this year.   His buying Twitter “is not a way to make money.  I don’t care about the economics at all.”  He has called himself a "free speech absolutist" and suggested that anything that is not actually illegal (i.e. underage porn) should never be censored.  He was going to "free the bird!"

Then he bought it.  And right away he announced he was going to add charges, because it has to make money.  This was a leveraged buyout so he has to make a profit of at LEAST $1 billion a year just to pay the interest on the loan.  (Last year Twitter lost money and took in less than $1 billion total, almost all in advertising.)  He's going to add charges for "verified users" and is talking about paywalls for videos.   Which of course will drive people away.

Implementing those new pay-to-play features, of course, will take resources and money.  Unfortunately, he has just fired half the Twitter workforce, and the remaining workforce will be hard-pressed to even keep the platform running.

In terms of free speech, he has already (whether intentionally or unintentionally through firing the content monitors and the AI team, which does the first pass filtering) allowed hate speech back on.  In the first 24 hours hate speech increased by a factor of 5, and it has continued to grow.  Advertisers have noticed this and have started dropping out of Twitter, since (for example) General Mills doesn't want to see their ad for kid's breakfast cereals next to a racist rant.

Amusingly Musk has blamed all this on evil activists who are making the advertisers leave, and have threatened to shame the advertisers   Which 1) does nothing since those advertisers (like United Airlines and General Mills) are being widely reported on, and 2) is sure to drive even more advertisers away.  Who wants to advertise on a platform where you will be attacked by the CEO?

But at least there's more free speech, right?

Last weekend Kathy Griffin changed her screen name to "Elon Musk" and posted some mocking material.  She was promptly banned, and Musk said that unless an account said "parody" that users could not use another user's screen name.  (This despite hundreds of accounts that do just that.)  Conservatives celebrated this censoring of a voice they disagreed with.

This all points towards a future in which fees increase as people and advertisers leave, which leads to a vicious cycle of people not able to afford Twitter.  Musk seems to realize this is coming; he just sold $4 billion worth of Tesla stock to try to prop up the company.  Even he will run out of money if he has to keep doing that

 

https://www.montclair.edu/school-of-communication-and-media/2022/10/29/study-finds-hate-speech-increases-on-twitter-after-elon-musk-acquisition/

[gowlerk 1,956]

18 minutes ago, billvon said:

Amusingly Musk has blamed all this on evil activists who are making the advertisers leave, and have threatened to shame the advertisers 

What? You mean it is not the evil stock shorters this time? There must be a scapegoat somewhere when hubris catches up with the great man.

[ryoder 1,412]

It's a verified account, so it must be true. Am I right?

 

[ryoder 1,412]

And where else but Twitter can you find great humor like this?

 

[wmw999 2,178]

51 minutes ago, ryoder said:

And where else but Twitter can you find great humor like this?

 

Bill? You’re involved in this? Dang, you get around!

Wendy P. 

[wolfriverjoe 1,371]

6 minutes ago, wmw999 said:

Bill? You’re involved in this? Dang, you get around!

Wendy P. 

Damn. Beat me to it.

[ryoder 1,412]

More fun on Twitter:

 

[gowlerk 1,956]

I now hear that banks that are holding about 13 billion of the purchase price in outstanding loans are trying to sell pieces of those loans. They are getting offers of about $.60 on the dollar. Because bankruptcy is now seen as a possible outcome for Twitter.

[SethInMI 146]

It's hard to bet against Musk though isn't it? Here is a man who lead revolutions in two industries that most people would have said were impossible to revolutionize, the space industry and the auto industry. Can he do it with a social media company?  I think he might, but it could be too hard and take too long... if he can stay out of his own way he has the resources and willingness to try a lot of ideas and apparently he can motivate well enough to get them implemented.