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

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Neonmoon

Neonmoon 38130

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5 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Musk says he was invited but turned down a trip to Davos.

World Economic Forum says he wasn’t invited.

https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-inc-technology-san-francisco-european-union-7a82416400545f313ff46c0180e606d7

He’s a confidence man. Everything he says is a half truth or outright lie. Confidence men prey on people not calling them out or questioning them. 

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Hotez is far from bulletproof.       

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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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atomheartbevo

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2 hours ago, UpperWestside said:

I am going to be vocal about what a fraud he is. This guy needs some serious professional help, but no one around him has the bravery to step in and tell him he needs some psychiatric help. Tank Twitter and Tesla, SpaceX and anything else in the portfolio. This is what he will do because his mind does not think rationally and he makes no attempt to even work on that aspect of his insanely narcissistic personality.

We pretty much already knew this, but a responsible person would be doing everything possible to bring advertisers back, not taking a top 15 or top 20 social media platform and tanking the revenue because they want to allow your Qanon Aunt Bertha (with a blue check) to spew her "Oprah Winfrey is trafficking kids for their fluids" bullshit or your high school dropout Cousin Eddie (with a blue check) to talk about injecting bleach to get rid of COVID or some white supremacists (with a blue check) pushing some conspiracy about the Jews.

I get that he wants to be liked, but it's fucking bizarro who he wants to be liked by.  And I don't necessarily buy the "well he grew up under Apartheid so of course he loves the racist/conspiracy theory nuts" angle, I think it's just some kind narcissism on a massive scale and maybe the original Tesla crowd wasn't providing him enough of a dopamine hit or whatever.  Most of his tweets seemed geared towards getting people talking about him and getting the likes.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/twitters-revenue-down-40-over-014752060.html

Quote

(Reuters) -More than 500 of Twitter's advertisers have paused spending on the micro blogging site since Elon Musk's takeover last year, The Information reported on Wednesday, citing a person familiar with its ad business.

The social media company's daily revenue on Jan. 17 was 40% lower than the same day a year ago, the report added. The drop in the company's revenue was first reported by technology newsletter Platformer on Tuesday. Twitter did not immediately respond to a Reuters' request for comment on both the media reports.

 

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hayden_horn

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5 hours ago, UpperWestside said:

I am going to be vocal about what a fraud he is. This guy needs some serious professional help, but no one around him has the bravery to step in and tell him he needs some psychiatric help. Tank Twitter and Tesla, SpaceX and anything else in the portfolio. This is what he will do because his mind does not think rationally and he makes no attempt to even work on that aspect of his insanely narcissistic personality.

we've all known people like this. i used to know a guy who would play poker. pretty good player, took risks, won pretty big at times. 

but he always lost it all in the end. because he didn't sit down to win. he sat down to lose. that's what elon is. he's a loser. he needs to lose. there's something about him that is just a loser crying out for help that no one will give him because he'll never accept it.

also, he's on drugs.

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NoName

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unintended side effect of a "we know better than our users do on how they want to use the platform, so let's force them away from a reverse time based list to an algorithm of of what we think they want to see"

no clue who the Schaffer guy is but looks like he is the exact type of person Elon usually responds to.

side note, i don't have a single person i follow who tweets like Elon does with that dumb two or three word responses all the time. i started looking a few weeks ago intentionally...nothing.

also anyone have a rec for an iOS twitter app that isn't shit for how i like to use twitter? i use lists, which then update when I open the app and load tweets for me to scroll up through (oldest to newest) instead of the stupidity that is the current way you see tweets where you have to scroll down, then go to the top of the list, refresh it and scroll down to the last top tweet you saw, then refresh and scroll down.

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NoName

NoName 16369

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1 hour ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

Why are you still there?

almost all of who i follow has yet to shift over to post or mastadon or anywhere else in the Fediverse. literally <10%

i've tried the twitter app a couple of times and it doesn't match how i use it or want to use it at all. genuinely the worst social major media app i have used.

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Blotto

Blotto 23564

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On 1/17/2023 at 2:18 PM, longhornmatt said:

Much like how the Boring Company has invented, um, tunnels for car traffic, Tesla has invented, um, cruise control.

More accurately, they invented the $15,000 cruise control. Something you didn't even know you needed. 

7 hours ago, Neonmoon said:

He’s a confidence man. Everything he says is a half truth or outright lie. Confidence men prey on people not calling them out or questioning them. 

"I've sold Boring Company Loop Systems to Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook, and by gum I've put them on the map! And I come before you good people tonight with an idea. Probably the greatest... Aw, it's not for you. It's more of a Shelbyville idea."

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texasdago

texasdago 7577

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8 hours ago, Slacks said:

I deleted the app from my phone.

I still respect that SpaceX life, though.  Reusable rockets, satellite internet, etc... That is visionary stuff. 

When you're rich, they call you eccentric.

When you're black, they call you suspicious.

Speaking from experience, you are a little concerning...

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Chopper

Chopper 17243

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One day you're accused by an ex-employee of knowingly committing fraud to juice your company's stock price, the next you're crying that everyone's a liar and out to get you.  Just another day for Tammy Faye Musk.

image.thumb.png.b108ce39d340b42785c83f80ccc9d64e.png

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NoName

NoName 16369

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oopsie

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2023/01/18/twitter-revenue

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Twitter’s fourth quarter revenue fell about 35% year over year to $1.025 billion, a top ad executive revealed at a staff meeting Wednesday, the most detailed sign yet of how much revenue has fallen. That was 72% of Twitter’s internal goal for the quarter, according to a slide showed to employees.

The executive, Twitter’s global sales and marketing chief Chris Riedy, also said the company is hoping to generate $732 million in revenue in the first quarter, which would be a drop of 39% from the first quarter of last year.

 

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atomheartbevo

atomheartbevo 89775

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6 hours ago, Chopper said:

One day you're accused by an ex-employee of knowingly committing fraud to juice your company's stock price, the next you're crying that everyone's a liar and out to get you.  Just another day for Tammy Faye Musk.

image.thumb.png.b108ce39d340b42785c83f80ccc9d64e.png

A-fucking men.  If you were so worried about The State,  then stop taking billions from them.

This is another example of how fucking stupid Elon and his followers are - Musk and his followers  rail against the very thing that has propped up two of his companies and provides a big chunk of his net worth,  because if the US government dropped the whole CAFE/carbon credit requirement thing tomorrow, and auto companies stopped having to buy credits from Tesla, Tesla would be trading half of what it is now.  And if they stopped using SpaceX, it would run out of money really fucking fast, and he can’t sell that many shares of Twitter.

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atomheartbevo

atomheartbevo 89775

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8 minutes ago, Chopper said:

Elron Tammy Faye Musk: delusional or fraud? 

Both?  He still rambles on about freedom and free speech and stuff, and then shuts out 3rd-party developers, etc.

Oh, and cites "long-standing rules" that were made up a few hours before being implemented.

https://developer.twitter.com/en/developer-terms/agreement

https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/19/23562947/twitter-third-party-client-tweetbot-twitterific-ban-rules

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Twitter has updated its developer rules to ban third-party clients, almost a week after it unceremoniously blocked the apps’ access to its platform, offering almost no explanation to what was going on (via Engadget). The new rules state that you can’t use Twitter’s API or content to “create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications.”

The rules, updated on Thursday, make it clear what that means: “Twitter Applications” refers to the company’s “consumer facing products, services, applications, websites, web pages, platforms, and other offerings, including without limitation, those offered via https://twitter.com and Twitter’s mobile applications.” The clause banning alternative services was added to the rules with the most recent update, according to the Wayback Machine.

All the idiots running Twitter had to do was serve ads through the API and it'd be another revenue stream, but apparently they are too incompetent, or they fired the people that could.

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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32406

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More on the upcoming interest payments from Bloomberg.   TL;DR.  A debt analyst has no idea what Elon is going to do, because he behaves "differently" than what a normal person would do in this situation.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-18/elon-musk-has-more-to-lose-if-he-tries-to-skip-twitter-debt-payment

 

Quote

By all accounts — including Elon Musk’s — Twitter has more than enough money to make its first interest payments, expected to total about $300 million.

But with the payment date fast approaching, there’s nevertheless some anxiety over what the impulsive billionaire might do to ease the social-media company’s $12.5 billion debt burden.

 

Quote

Yes, Musk said in a late December Twitter Spaces conversation that the company has about $1 billion in cash on its balance sheet. But he’s also openly floated the idea of bankruptcy, cited a “massive drop” in revenue as some advertisers fled from the platform and slashed staff since closing his $44 billion leveraged buyout at the end of October.

 

Quote

A group of seven banks, led by Morgan Stanley, own the debt. The drama around Musk’s acquisition and volatile markets left them saddled with the loans, which they normally would have offloaded to investors.

Now, after they lost some $4 billion on paper for backing Musk’s Twitter bid, market onlookers see little reason for the banks to go along with any unexpected maneuvers near the interest-payment deadline, roughly around Jan. 27.

 

 

Spoiler

After all, in most bankruptcies, the equity is wiped out — and lenders eventually take control.

“There’s too much at stake for Musk and his co-investors,” said Jordan Chalfin, a senior analyst at credit research firm CreditSights. “Twitter will make its near-term interest payments, come hell or high water, and give the business time to turn around.”

Representatives for Morgan Stanley and Musk didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Few Reasons

While anything is possible with Musk, he doesn’t have many reasons to skip the first interest payment. The longer term is a bigger question: In the Twitter Spaces conversation, he said the company was on pace to lose $3 billion in 2023.

“That is why I spent the last five weeks cutting costs like crazy,” he said.

But in the near term, if Twitter didn’t pay its interest, that could trigger a default, which would allow the banks to force the company into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Some debt allows for a 30-day grace period, but it’s unclear if that exists for the Twitter loans.

Regardless, the consequences for Musk, 51, who owns an estimated 79% of the company, would be immediate and severe.

While Twitter is on the hook for the debt, and not Musk personally, he put up more than $20 billion for his stake in the company. That’s now worth an estimated $11.6 billion, a sizable part of his $137.4 billion fortune, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. 

“If you’re a lender to Twitter and Elon Musk is threatening to not pay the coupon, you go to the standard playbook, which is: ‘OK, I’ll see you in bankruptcy,’” said Philip Brendel, a distressed debt analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. 

“In terms of who’s got more to lose, it’s certainly Elon Musk,” Brendel said. “Whether he cares whether he loses that or not, that’s a whole different question. He certainly behaves differently than what normal people would do in those situations.” 

Wider Negotiations

Musk is known for being unpredictable and could use the first payment in wider negotiations with Twitter’s lenders. He and the banks have been trying to find solutions for the interest burden, which has grown more punitive than when he made his offer in April as interest rates soared. 

Late last year, bankers were considering replacing some of the high-interest debt with new margin loans backed by Tesla Inc. stock that he’d be personally responsible for repaying, one of several options considered at the time. 

As Musk sold $3.6 billion of Tesla shares last month, some analysts speculated that he could use the money to buy Twitter debt from the banks, putting him in a better position in bankruptcy proceedings. But it’s not clear whether Morgan Stanley and others would willingly sell to him at fire-sale prices. 

There’s also a chance that Musk decides to give up on Twitter and refocus on his other companies including Tesla and SpaceX.

Of course, if Musk walked away, he wouldn’t just hurt himself, but also the other equity backers who joined his investment, such as sovereign wealth fund Qatar Investment Authority, which contributed $375 million.

“We engage with the management, with Elon in terms of the plan that he has for the company, and we believe in this, and we trust his leadership in terms of turning around the company,” QIA Chief Executive Officer Mansoor Al Mahmoud said in a Bloomberg TV interview at Davos on Monday.

QIA was part of a group of around 20 investors that contributed to the equity commitment, according to a May filing. Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal also rolled over more than 30 million shares, valued at about $1.9 billion using the $54.20 purchase price. Jack Dorsey rolled over his stake, too. 

Debt Details

Twitter has three large pieces of debt with interest coming due: $6.5 billion that was meant to be sold to leveraged-loan investors, and $6 billion of bridge loans, split equally between a secured and unsecured tranche, that banks had planned to sell in the form of junk bonds.

All the debt appears to have quarterly interest payments, according to an April debt commitment letter and people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named discussing a private transaction. 

The interest due in the coming weeks is expected to be about $300 million, according to Bloomberg calculations and market participants not involved in the Twitter deal. That’s based on the debt commitment letter and a maximum interest rate of 11.75% on the unsecured tranche. 

This figure could be higher depending on whether the banks increased the interest rate on the $6.5 billion tranche using their “flex” provision when the deal closed, and whether Twitter is using the one-, three- or six-month version of the benchmark Secured Overnight Financing Rate. (If the company opted for the one-month rate, it could have paid smaller interest amounts each month rather than a larger sum quarterly.) 

Twitter also has a $500 million revolving credit facility, which allows the company to borrow, pay it back and borrow again over the life of the loan. If Twitter draws on it, interest expense would increase significantly. Twitter is already paying an annual 0.5% fee to have access to the funds. 

In the meantime, Twitter has been searching for creative ways to reduce spending. In some cases it has stopped paying rent on some of its office space, and has also asked employees to try to renegotiate deals with third-party vendors. This week, Twitter auctioned offhundreds of pieces of office furniture.

All the while, Musk periodically tweets about the Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates at the fastest pace in a generation.

“I wonder what would have happened in 2009 if the Fed had raised rates instead of lowering them,” he said on Jan. 13. “The higher the rates, the harder the fall.”

 

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NoName

NoName 16369

Posted
Posted (edited)
10 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Both?  He still rambles on about freedom and free speech and stuff, and then shuts out 3rd-party developers, etc.

Oh, and cites "long-standing rules" that were made up a few hours before being implemented.

https://developer.twitter.com/en/developer-terms/agreement

https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/19/23562947/twitter-third-party-client-tweetbot-twitterific-ban-rules

All the idiots running Twitter had to do was serve ads through the API and it'd be another revenue stream, but apparently they are too incompetent, or they fired the people that could.

even better they could have TRIPLE dipped:

  1. serve ads through the API (except that he fired the whole API team?)
  2. charge more for API access (cost will be passed on to users, which will drive some to use the free first party app!)
  3. require users to have Twitter Blue to use a third party app (juicing the membership numbers)

instead they lied, then tried to cover it up by changing basically one line in their developer agreement, which hacked off a ton of end users and devs. since he has owned twitter, how many major policy changes at the org has Elon not just tweeted through? none except this one. no tweets, no dumb "true" or emoji responses, no likes - literally no comment on it at all.

oh yeah...by the way the entire thing is hypocritical because TweetDeck, which was acquired by Twitter in 2011, and as of today still works (even though most of the team that maintained it was let go) does not serve ads.

despite the change in the rules - The new rules state that you can’t use Twitter’s API or content to “create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications" - they still have not banned all apps that use that API, only the larger ones. which makes no sense at all.

remember kids - transparency is the key to trust!

i've made the shift to mastadon. as of yesterday, less than 10% of the people i follow have their mastadon info in their bio/username based on movetodon, which is unfortunate. really this whole thing sucks.

the only good news? at least we don't have to hear for the next 30 years how much of a brilliant human being Elon is anymore.

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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32406

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https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/20/23564061/twitter-tests-adding-more-clutter-to-its-cluttered-interface

 

 

Twitter tests adding more clutter to its cluttered interface.

Twitter is testing yet another form of verification for journalists. The latest trial adds a small publication logo to the right of display names. It looks pretty messy to me, but that might just be the Daily Mirror logo used in the tests. 

Anyway, remember when Elon Musk was talking about dropping features because they were a “waste of screen space”?

 

Screen_Shot_2023_01_20_at_4.24.10_PM.jpg

 

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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32406

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Man, times must be tough for Elon.  Something, something assume all debts when you acquire a company, etc.   

 

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/01/twitter-hired-experts-for-case-against-musk-now-musk-wont-pay-them-lawsuit-says/

 

Quote

Twitter was sued yesterday by a consulting firm that says it was never paid for work it did on the lawsuit that forced Elon Musk to complete his purchase of the company.

Charles River Associates (CRA) says it was hired by Twitter in August 2022, shortly after Twitter sued Musk over his refusal to complete their $44 billion merger agreement. Musk finally completed the purchase in late October after it became clear that he was likely to lose in court.

From August 15 to October 27, "CRA provided all requested expert consulting work and services to Twitter and its legal counsel in connection with the Musk Litigation and pursuant to the terms and conditions of the Contract," according to the lawsuit filed yesterday in Suffolk County Superior Court in Boston, Massachusetts. The lawsuit said that "Twitter has breached the Contract by failing to pay all of the CRA Invoices," which added up to $2.19 million.

 

Quote

CRA is seeking the full amount owed on the invoices and double or treble damages due to Twitter's "deceptive, intentional breach of the consulting agreement, plus interest, costs, and legal fees." CRA's lawsuit is one of several alleging that the Musk-owned Twitter has refused to pay bills for services provided before he bought the company.

Software vendor Imply Data previously alleged that Twitter failed to pay a $1,092,000 invoice and apparently intends to stiff Imply on another $7 million worth of payments on a contract that expires in late 2024. Additional breach-of-contract lawsuits allege that Twitter failed to pay $136,000 in rent at a San Francisco office tower and $197,725 for private jet services.

 

Spoiler

The new lawsuit said that "CRA and its Senior Consultant, Professor Mark Zmijewski, were retained by Twitter to provide economic consulting services related to Professor Zmijewski's anticipated expert rebuttal report and expert rebuttal testimony, which were to be in rebuttal of the expert report and testimony of one of the experts for the Musk parties, Yvette Austin Smith."

CRA's work included "research and analysis underlying the expert opinions to be included in the expert rebuttal report," preparation of drafts of the report, "and other expert consulting and litigation support at the direction of Twitter's legal counsel," the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit describes CRA's attempts to get paid for its work after Musk reluctantly completed his purchase of Twitter instead of continuing to fight the lawsuit. CRA said it received no response to a series of messages it sent about the unpaid invoices during the month after Musk's purchase.

Twitter also hasn't followed the agreed-upon process for objecting to the invoices, CRA said. "Twitter agreed pursuant to the terms of the Contract that any 'objection with respect to CRA's invoices must be made by the client in writing within five (5) business days following receipt of the invoice to which objection is made,'" the lawsuit said. "Twitter has never provided any objection to CRA with regard to the CRA Invoices."

 

 

From the Verge comments section:

 

Quote

This is the closest thing to 4D chess I've ever seen. Being sued to pay the lawyers that were suing you to compel the sale of the company to you after a groundless retraction of your offer to buy a company you didn't want by the time the words had left your stupid thumbs.
 

What a fuck up.

 

Edited by Francisco 2.0
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atomheartbevo

atomheartbevo 89775

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Dude is a 1990s teenaged BBS SysOp who fucked up his WWIV strings or his pirated PCBoard setup (or the equivalent if he’s running TAG, Renegade, ProBoard, Telegard, etc.) or door scripts or whatever, gets called out for it, and doesn’t know enough to unfuck everything.  Meanwhile his parents are about to discover an insane phone bill at the end of the month because he was polling long-distance Fidonet nodes constantly, so that new messages were coming in everyday even though his users had no interest in those messages and wanted something else (porn and warez).

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Chopper

Chopper 17243

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One day someone with "auto pilot lol" engaged in a Tesla will find their car pulling into some dank restaurant that's not even open, and when they call tesla customer service after waiting an hour on hold they'll finally reach a customer service agent and be told, "Oh we just thought that particular restaurant was an amazing restaurant and an experience you should consider."

Elsewhere the huge upgrades to twitter hose is on full blast.


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