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Elon Musk: Officially a fraud and piece of shit. Official or unofficial war criminal?

MaybeACoordinator

By MaybeACoordinator
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Spottieottiedopaliscious
Spottieottiedopaliscious

Hotez is far from bulletproof.       

MissingInAction
MissingInAction
Spottieottiedopaliscious
Spottieottiedopaliscious

Absolutely.    Would you like other guys pointing out Hotez deficiencies?   It was actually more about Hotez but whatever? Why stick around? All the constructive back and forth

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workswithseed

workswithseed 2112

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Posted
9 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

It'll just be replaced by something else.  There's plenty of social media platform wannabes that are constantly starting up and then fading away - some are not just quick money grabs either, but people who really want to build The Next Big thing, and there's plenty of open-source media platforms that are just waiting to be reshaped into something that could replace the existing big platforms.

I kind of miss the old BBS and usenet days from the late 80s and early 90s, although Surly handles the BBS part and reddit handles the usenet part. Having watched AOL, CompuServe, GeoCities, MySpace, and plenty of other social media platforms (even if they weren't called that back then) rise up and then self-destruct, it's just a matter of time until the existing big platforms lose some major luster.

Although twitter/Facebook, and even spinoffs like Instagram, probably have a decent amount of staying power (assuming Musk doesn't open the floodgates and let twitter be overrun with bots) simply because they hit some kind of financial critical mass that MySpace/GeoCities/etc. were never quite able to reach.  

Myspace was so big for 3 years, then I was told that Facebook was the new deal, and for whatever reason it still has some stay. That one is a bit of a mystery me. 

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atomheartbevo

atomheartbevo 89732

Posted
Posted (edited)
13 minutes ago, workswithseed said:

Myspace was so big for 3 years, then I was told that Facebook was the new deal, and for whatever reason it still has some stay. That one is a bit of a mystery me. 

Late 2006.  Facebook opens up for everybody and introduces the News Feed, showing you all of your friends' happenings.  Shit-ton of college kids who had been using it like crazy then get their siblings, parents, grandparents, etc. to get Facebook accounts.  

Plus the interface felt easier to use than MySpace, and I can't fully explain that, other than my mom hated MySpace, but could easily use Facebook.

If you are missing MySpace, somebody kind of brought it back.

https://spacehey.com

Edit: Looking at Facebook, I had an account in mid-2006 before it opened up to the public, so I must have gotten it using my old company email or something.

Edited by atomheartbevo
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dcbc

dcbc 14487

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41 minutes ago, Deej said:

I'm all for whatever kills Twitter.

So are we all scat bombing it on the way out, you know, for free speech?  If I've learned anything from Surly, it's how to leave a web community in style.

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52-80

52-80 19164

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5 hours ago, Bevo said:

What is the elevator pitch for twitter?

It's the most rapid and dynamic conversation on planet.  The lowest-friction way to plug into any conversation on any subject with any person at any depth and scope.

If you are interested in The War, you put Ukraine in the search.  Now you are presented with all sorts takes from a local resident to a policy analyst to a politician -- any of whom you can reply directly -- and covering anything from military tactics to economic impact to fundraising efforts, and all those convos are chained to adjacent convos on tank mechanics to russian food to cossack art.

Basically you are Professor X and twitter is Cerebro.

5 hours ago, Bevo said:

What are the alternatives to Twitter?

lol none

5 hours ago, Bevo said:

How does Twitter make money?

by selling itself to Musk?  well I see sponsored advertisement for McKinsey, which strikes me as fruitless as Accenture plastering their posters all over airports.  The feeble monetization of the platform is why Musk is interested.

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52-80

52-80 19164

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9 minutes ago, Cajun said:

Just another race hustler/perpetually offended Ninja.

Nothing to see.

There’s plenty of global supply.

His final parting words:

Quote

At its root, @ElonMusk wanting to purchase Twitter is not about left vs right. It’s about white power. The man was raised in Apartheid by a white nationalist. He’s upset that Twitter won’t allow white nationalists to target/harass people. That’s his definition of free speech

He will not be missed.

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Hermanator

Hermanator 7110

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We already know that unmoderated social media quickly becomes a complete shit show due to human nature. If Musk really follows through on his "100 percent free speech" nonsense it'll become so toxic most people with any legitimate knowledge will bail quickly.  Will be interesting to see.

Honestly to make it better remove the ability to like or dislike posts, remove the ability to retweet anything, and remove the ability to tag people. Then the incentive to be competitive and petty on a wide scale is removed and it can go back to being a global news and information sharing hub like the early days before most of those things were added around 2011 or so

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Vegas64

Vegas64 676

Posted
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Elon Musk the businessman seemed to do some smart things here. Also when you are the world's richest man, your tools and levers you can pull are plenty, to allow you to put a board of directors in a full nelson and tap out:

"Twitter may want to finalize a takeover deal with Elon Musk ahead of the company’s first-quarter earnings report on Thursday, according to analysts…“Locking a deal up today or tomorrow may sound pretty appealing for someone who knows they are in possession of bad news,” Gordon Haskett said in a Monday note…Wedbush analyst Dan Ives told CNBC on Monday that advertising models are slowing and subscriber growth has continued to pose a challenge. A difficult macro environment could weigh on results, KeyBanc said in an April 14 note. The company has banned advertising in Ukraine and Russia due to the war, and any softness in Europe ad spending could also hurt second-quarter projections, according to a note earlier this month from MKM Partners.

We’ll see what happens on Thursday, but you can certainly see how difficult it might be for the board to turn down Musk’s offer — which would already kill the stock, given it would not only end the Musk premium but also include his vote of no confidence in management — because they claim their plan is better, particularly if there were fresh evidence to the contrary."

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immamac

immamac 42865

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1 hour ago, Hermanator said:

We already know that unmoderated social media quickly becomes a complete shit show due to human nature. If Musk really follows through on his "100 percent free speech" nonsense it'll become so toxic most people with any legitimate knowledge will bail quickly.  Will be interesting to see.

Honestly to make it better remove the ability to like or dislike posts, remove the ability to retweet anything, and remove the ability to tag people. Then the incentive to be competitive and petty on a wide scale is removed and it can go back to being a global news and information sharing hub like the early days before most of those things were added around 2011 or so

 This is exactly true, and has always been the identity of the internet. See 4chan.

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Vegas64

Vegas64 676

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Posted (edited)

A couple of pages back folks were talking about how 7500 employees for twitter felt bloated, especially since they are not A-list talent either (FAANG). Looks like cuts will come if you read the tea leaves on the financials of this upside-down-topsy-turvy-kinda-LBO. From NYT:

So to summarize:

$13.5 billion of Musk’s offer is a loan to Twitter; the aforementioned 4.51% interest rate would mean $609 billion in annual interest payments, which, you will note, was just covered by last years free cash flow of $630 billion.

That leaves $33.5 billion of Musk’s offer as cash for equity.

$12.5 billion of that cash is a margin loan against Musk’s Tesla stock; $21 billion is out-of-pocket…somehow.

The first thing to note is that Musk is taking on enormous risk, and doing so in a way that actually limits his potential return. Remember, most LBO’s entail putting up around 10% of the purchase price, not 72%; the benefit of that approach is not simply less downside risk, but also more leverage to generate a higher return. This certainly lends credence to Musk’s insistence that this acquisition isn’t about the economics.

That noted, I suspect that margin loan in particular is something Musk would like to get rid of as soon as possible. The best way to do that is to bump up Twitter’s cash flow and refinance that $12.5 billion, and the easiest way to increase cash flow is to make big cuts to Twitter’s workforce. Here are some rough calculations on what that might look like:

Twitter, as of the end of 2021, had 7,500 full-time employees. That, to be perfectly honest, is a lot, particularly given the anemic nature of Twitter’s business: the average Twitter employee generates $677k in revenue (for reference, each of the 35,587 Facebook employees generates $3.3 million in revenue).

Twitter spends just over $3 billion on Research & Development, Sales & Marketing, and General & Administrative; for the sake of argument let’s assume that those costs are Twitter’s employee costs, which means each employee costs Twitter around $401k/year (this obviously isn’t correct, but it’s close enough for this exercise).

$12.5 billion more in debt (to refinance the margin loan) would require $564 million more a year in free cash flow (at an interest rate of 4.51%); that is about 1,400 employees at $401,000/employee.

Edited by Vegas64
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52-80

52-80 19164

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5 minutes ago, Vegas64 said:

$12.5 billion more in debt (to refinance the margin loan) would require $564 million more a year in free cash flow (at an interest rate of 4.51%); that is about 1,400 employees at $401,000/employee.

trimming 1400 puts them exactly in-line with Snap. 

Total employer cost for senior staff eng in the state of california, from salary to various SBC, 400k isnt too far off from the true cost.  and even people who started with them fresh, imagine their seniority now.

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Cheeseweasel

Cheeseweasel 26438

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24 minutes ago, 52-80 said:

trimming 1400 puts them exactly in-line with Snap. 

Total employer cost for senior staff eng in the state of california, from salary to various SBC, 400k isnt too far off from the true cost.  and even people who started with them fresh, imagine their seniority now.

You have to imagine that there will be some "cross-pollination" between Musk's companies (accounting, HR, Eng, etc) that will allow him to reduce staff.

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wildcat09

wildcat09 29355

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You guys are really slipping on the opportunity to call Shaun King a thief. Because he's a huge thief.

Also, Posobiec is a liar and Shaun King is still on twitter. Apparently they're having an argument and everyone should be rooting for the meteor in that one.

 

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Moby Ric

Moby Ric 2058

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

You guys are really slipping on the opportunity to call Shaun King a thief. Because he's a huge thief.

Also, Posobiec is a liar and Shaun King is still on twitter. Apparently they're having an argument and everyone should be rooting for the meteor in that one.

 

Who the Hell is Shaun King, and why is he a thief?

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workswithseed

workswithseed 2112

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8 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

You guys are really slipping on the opportunity to call Shaun King a thief. Because he's a huge thief.

Also, Posobiec is a liar and Shaun King is still on twitter. Apparently they're having an argument and everyone should be rooting for the meteor in that one.

 

Are you saying he comes as a thief in the white?

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