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

atomheartbevo · January 25, 2023

Weird thing to publicly boast about.

Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand · January 25, 2023

3 hours ago, NoName said:

lol

Fire more employees. Work extra super hardcore.

Chopper · January 25, 2023

44 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Weird thing to publicly boast about.

atomheartbevo · January 26, 2023

On 1/21/2023 at 5:24 PM, Brisketexan said:

We are getting to the "4th grader running for student council and promising a full sundae bar in the cafeteria and 3-hour recess every day" levels of absolute cluelessness.

Correction, we blew past that level of cluelessness weeks ago.

Dumbshit Elon thinks he can reinstate twitter accounts of white supremacist/Holocaust deniers who acted like dumbasses, in the belief that they won't act like white supremacist Holocaust-denying dumbasses....Let's see how that went within 24 hours of it happening....Did Elon show once again that he's a member of the "I don't know why the leopard ate my face even though I voted for the leopards eating faces party!"

https://gizmodo.com/nick-fuentes-twitter-twitter-space-nazi-elon-musk-1850030536

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After just one day after being reinstated back on Twitter thanks to owner Elon Musk’s blanket pardon of hate figures, white nationalist and anti-Semite Nick Fuentes has once again been kicked off the platform.

Elon is doing a bang-up job of running twitter, but at least this reduces the amount of time he has to spend managing Tesla and SpaceX, which benefits both of those companies and their employees a great deal.

Francisco 2.0 · January 26, 2023

Wooooo boy.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/25/23571793/elon-musk-twitter-tesla-brand-image-damage-earnings

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This should come as no surprise, but Elon Musk doesn’t see a downside to being extremely online.

Asked whether his recent tweets — spreading tawdry conspiracy theories about the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, embracing COVID misinformation, mocking trans people, making groan-inducing, jokes, and exposing himself as a right-wing troll — has harmed Tesla’s brand image, Musk responded with characteristic mocking defiance

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“Let me check my Twitter account,” he said in a Tesla earnings call Wednesday evening. “Okay, so I’ve got 127 million followers and it continues to grow very rapidly.”

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Apparently the steady growth of his own Twitter presence is all the evidence he needs that his tweets are right and good and his online antics are beyond reproach. No mention of the white supremacists he’s let back on the platform (and then kicked off again after they have reverted to type and said Nazi things) or the worrying rise in hate speech and harassment. No mention of his own declining reputation or the growing calls to ditch his post at Twitter and refocus on the company that actually matters, Tesla.

Just look at that scoreboard.

“That suggests that I’m reasonably popular,” Musk continued. “Might not be popular with some people. But for the vast majority of people, the follow account speaks for itself.”

Spoiler

It’s a bizarre statement from someone who is quite literally on trial on the basis that his tweets have caused measurable chaos, both for himself, his investors, and his company. Musk is facing potentially billions of dollars in damages from a class of Tesla investors who allege that Musk’s tweets misled them and said that relying on his statements to make trades cost them significant amounts of money.

That 2018 tweet has already cost him $40 million — $20 million from Tesla and $20 million from him personally — in order to settle a securities fraud lawsuit from the SEC. Twitter is free for most people to use, but for Elon Musk, the costs have been disproportionately high.

On the earnings call, Musk rattled off a quick pitch for Twitter, noting that it’s an “incredibly powerful tool” that drives demand for Tesla’s vehicles (the company just instituted a massive price cut to account for flagging demand) and suggesting that other automotive CEOs should tweet like him to drive sales. (Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess tried doing exactly that; he was out of a job a year later.)

It’s fair to say that Musk’s Twitter usage has been a disaster. His acquisition of the social media company has diminished his own net worth and left him saddled with debt. A growing number of Tesla owners who bought into his early claims of a more sustainable future are now embarrassed to be seen driving one of his cars. His investors are begging him to stop tweeting, but of course, Elon Musk will never stop.

Twitter, it is often said, is not real life. But to Musk, it’s all that and more.

Francisco 2.0 · January 26, 2023

14% interest on bridge loans, and $3.4 million a day in interest incurred. That's good, right?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-explores-raising-up-to-3-billion-to-pay-off-twitter-debt-11674669412?mod=hp_lead_pos2

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Elon Musk’s team has held talks with investors about raising up to $3 billion to repay some of the $13 billion in debt tacked onto Twitter Inc. as part of his buyout of the company, people familiar with the matter said.

In December, Mr. Musk’s representatives discussed selling up to $3 billion in new Twitter shares, people familiar with the matter said.

Mr. Musk’s team has said to people familiar with the finances of the company that an equity raise, if successful, could be used to pay down an unsecured portion of the debt that carries the highest interest rate within the $13 billion Twitter loan package, people familiar with the matter said.

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Paying off the debt would provide welcome financial relief to Twitter, which has struggled to keep advertisers on the platform. In November, Mr. Musk said Twitter had suffered “a massive drop in revenue” and was losing over $4 million a day. He also said that month that bankruptcy was a possibility for the company, although Mr. Musk later shared more upbeat prospects for the company, saying he expects Twitter to be roughly cash-flow break-even in 2023 as he has slashed some 6,000 jobs.

The state of the fundraising talks couldn’t be learned. In mid-December, Mr. Musk’s team reached out to new and existing backers about raising new equity capital at the original Twitter takeover price.

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Mr. Musk’s advisers had hoped to reach a deal to raise cash at the initial takeover price by the end of 2022, according to an email sent to prospective investors at the time. However, some prospective backers said they balked at the terms, given concerns about Twitter’s financial performance. The Musk team didn’t specify a funding amount or purpose for the fundraise in the email.

Fidelity, one of the co-investors that backed Mr. Musk’s takeover of Twitter, wrote down its stake in Twitter by 56% in November, public filings show, suggesting Mr. Musk would face an uphill battle raising funds at the original valuation from outside investors. The banks holding the $13 billion in debt that backed his takeover of the company haven’t yet received any formal notice of any repayments, people familiar with the matter said.

Spoiler

Representatives for Mr. Musk didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Twitter’s unsecured bridge loans, which total $3 billion, are the most expensive portion of the $13 billion debt package Mr. Musk incurred as part of his $44 billion acquisition of the social-media company. They carry an interest rate of 10% plus the secured overnight financing rate, a benchmark interest rate that has shot up in recent months and currently sits at 4.3%.

With every quarter that passes without Twitter refinancing the debt, the interest rate goes up by an additional 0.50 percentage point, according to regulatory filings. Twitter’s first quarterly interest payment is due at the end of the month, the filings show.

Twitter’s annual interest burden has increased by over $100 million since he announced the takeover deal last April, as the overnight rate has increased. At the time of the announcement, the overnight rate was 0.3%.

Twitter’s total interest expense has been estimated to be roughly $1.25 billion a year, according to a December analysis by Jeffrey Davies, a former credit analyst and founder of data provider Enersection LLC. By that estimate, Twitter is incurring roughly $3.4 million every day in interest-payment obligations.

On Dec. 13, Mr. Musk tweeted “beware of debt in turbulent macroeconomic conditions, especially when Fed keeps raising rates.”

Repaying the unsecured bridge loans would leave Twitter with a debt burden that has much more manageable interest rates. Twitter’s $6.5 billion in term loans and $3 billion in secured bridge loans carry an annual interest burden of 4.75% and 6.75%, respectively, plus the overnight rate, according to public filings.

A potential deal would also provide a degree of relief for the banks that backed Mr. Musk’s takeover of the social-media company and that intended to sell the debt to third-party investors but changed course after deteriorating market conditions sank Wall Street’s appetite for exposure to risky bonds and loans.

The $13 billion of Twitter debt on bank balance sheets, one of the biggest “hung deals” of all time, has helped contribute to a drag in the number of mergers and acquisitions as banks’ firepower to back deals is tied up.

Morgan Stanley, the lead bank on Twitter’s debt deal, has approximately $807 million in unsecured bridge debt on its balance sheet, while Bank of America Corp., Barclays PLC and MUFG Bank Ltd. each have approximately $623 million of exposure, according to public documents and calculations by The Wall Street Journal.

Each of the four banks have more than $2 billion in other Twitter debt commitments on their balance sheets separate from the unsecured bridge facility, including term loans and other secured debt, the documents show.

Representatives of those banks declined to comment.

atomheartbevo · January 26, 2023

3 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

14% interest on bridge loans, and $3.4 million a day in interest incurred. That's good, right?

Sp $3.4 million a day in interest, and he claims Twitter is losing $4 million a day, so $7.4 million in interest and losses, so losing $222 million a month, $2.7 billion a year...

Deej · January 26, 2023

atomheartbevo · January 26, 2023

21 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

It’s fair to say that Musk’s Twitter usage has been a disaster. His acquisition of the social media company has diminished his own net worth and left him saddled with debt. A growing number of Tesla owners who bought into his early claims of a more sustainable future are now embarrassed to be seen driving one of his cars. His investors are begging him to stop tweeting, but of course, Elon Musk will never stop.

Twitter, it is often said, is not real life. But to Musk, it’s all that and more.

There's a reason why Musk buys into a lot of stupid conspiracy shit, and it's not just because he doesn't appear to be as smart as some claim. Like my Qanon in-law and a bunch of her fellow idiots, they have way too much free time on their hands, and spend way too much time online and as a result, are intermingling their online lives with their real lives, to the point where they can't differentiate between reality and fake bullshit.

It's why Musk keeps reinstating pieces of shit on twitter and then is surprised when they act like pieces of shit.

It's also why he thinks he can throw out buzzwords and phrases like "freedom of speech" but then bends the knee to India, Saudi Arabia, Russia, etc. all the while acting surprised when people call him out.

Pig Bellmont · January 26, 2023

31 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

Wooooo boy.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/25/23571793/elon-musk-twitter-tesla-brand-image-damage-earnings

Reveal hidden contents

It’s a bizarre statement from someone who is quite literally on trial on the basis that his tweets have caused measurable chaos, both for himself, his investors, and his company. Musk is facing potentially billions of dollars in damages from a class of Tesla investors who allege that Musk’s tweets misled them and said that relying on his statements to make trades cost them significant amounts of money.

That 2018 tweet has already cost him $40 million — $20 million from Tesla and $20 million from him personally — in order to settle a securities fraud lawsuit from the SEC. Twitter is free for most people to use, but for Elon Musk, the costs have been disproportionately high.

On the earnings call, Musk rattled off a quick pitch for Twitter, noting that it’s an “incredibly powerful tool” that drives demand for Tesla’s vehicles (the company just instituted a massive price cut to account for flagging demand) and suggesting that other automotive CEOs should tweet like him to drive sales. (Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess tried doing exactly that; he was out of a job a year later.)

It’s fair to say that Musk’s Twitter usage has been a disaster. His acquisition of the social media company has diminished his own net worth and left him saddled with debt. A growing number of Tesla owners who bought into his early claims of a more sustainable future are now embarrassed to be seen driving one of his cars. His investors are begging him to stop tweeting, but of course, Elon Musk will never stop.

Twitter, it is often said, is not real life. But to Musk, it’s all that and more.

Failing to understand the damage he’s doing to the Tesla brand just reinforces that he’s a shitty CEO and also an idiot

DigglerontheHoof · January 26, 2023

10 hours ago, Pig Bellmont said:

Failing to understand the damage he’s doing to the Tesla brand just reinforces that he’s a shitty CEO and also an idiot

Kinda surprising the Tesla BOD hasn't canned his ass.

Samson's Wig · January 26, 2023

A white supremacist named Fuentes is about as on the nose as you can get if you're looking for a self-loathing piece of shit with daddy issues.

Chopper · January 26, 2023

57 minutes ago, DigglerontheHoof said:

Kinda surprising the Tesla BOD hasn't canned his ass.

Every member of the board is dependent on Elron for cash, and professional and social status, save for Adolf Murdoch's son, who has his own nepo problem to worry about.

Elron Musk touts fake followers, incurs real debt, and loses real revenue. This was from a May 2022 audit and I'm willing to bet he's only jacked up the number of bot-followers since then.

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Analyzing all of Musk's nearly 100 million followers, they found that 73% have spam-correlated keywords on their profiles and that 71% use locations that don't match any known place name.

NoName · January 26, 2023

7 minutes ago, Samson's Wig said:

A white supremacist named Fuentes is about as on the nose as you can get if you're looking for a self-loathing piece of shit with daddy issues.

he is really dumb.

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Fuentes identifies as a member of the incel movement, as a supporter of authoritarian government, and as a Catholic integralist and Christian nationalist

i am pulling most of these quotes/info from wiki, but he is

if you can support, with a straight face, the Taliban, Putin, Hitler, autocracy, only allowing men to vote and somehow none of those are the most batshit thing you support (his incel quotes below are truly amazing) you are doing it wrong.

“If we’re really being honest, never having a girlfriend, never having sex with a woman really makes you more heterosexual,” he said, “because honestly, dating women is gay, having sex with women is gay. And having sex with men is gay.” “Really it’s all gay.” “The only really straight heterosexual position is to be an asexual incel. That’s it. That’s all there is.”
“Gay people do date girls all the time,” he claimed. “All these gay people are coming out and saying, ‘I’ve had more girlfriends than Nick. I’ve had sex with more girls than Nick.'” “That actually makes me really more heterosexual than anyone.”
Think about it this way: What’s gayer than being like ‘I need cuddles. I need kisses … I need to spend time with a woman.’ That’s a little sus.” “I think, really, I’m like the straightest guy.”

Spoiler

attended the Charlottesville rally
dropped out of Boston University for "threads" based on him attending Unite the Right
said he was transferring to Auburn...he didn't
spoke on 1/6/21 before the Capitol attack
he is happily an incel
- “If we’re really being honest, never having a girlfriend, never having sex with a woman really makes you more heterosexual,” he said, “because honestly, dating women is gay, having sex with women is gay. And having sex with men is gay.” “Really it’s all gay.” “The only really straight heterosexual position is to be an asexual incel. That’s it. That’s all there is.”
- “Gay people do date girls all the time,” he claimed. “All these gay people are coming out and saying, ‘I’ve had more girlfriends than Nick. I’ve had sex with more girls than Nick.'” “That actually makes me really more heterosexual than anyone.”
- Think about it this way: What’s gayer than being like ‘I need cuddles. I need kisses … I need to spend time with a woman.’ That’s a little sus.” “I think, really, I’m like the straightest guy.”
in December 2020, Fuentes led a crowd to chant "Destroy the GOP", and encouraged them to sit-out the United States Senate special runoff election in Georgia.
On January 6, 2021, prior to the attack, Fuentes spoke to a crowd of supporters at Freedom Plaza, stating, "It is us and our ancestors that created everything good that you see in this country. All these people that have taken over our country—we do not need them. ... It is the American people, and our leader, Donald Trump, against everybody else in this country and this world... Our Founding Fathers would get in the streets, and they would take this country back by force if necessary. And that is what we must be prepared to do."
During the AFPAC speech in which he praised Hitler, Fuentes said that the media had been comparing Vladimir Putin to Hitler "as if that wasn't a good thing"
"You know what democracy has given us? Obesity. Low rates of literacy. It's given us divorce, abortion, gay marriage, liberalism, pornography. That's what democracy has given us. Ghettos and crime and political correctness. Diversity. Yeah, the track record of democracy? Not so good."
In a documentary for the BBC, broadcast in 2022, Fuentes told the interviewer, Louis Theroux, that he believes it would be better if women did not have the right to vote.
"The Taliban is a conservative, religious force, the US is godless and liberal. The defeat of the US government in Afghanistan is unequivocally a positive development."

there is a reason that every platform de-platformed him. not that it matters to Elon.

really interested to see how this Germany lawsuit about not removing holocaust denials/anti jewish comments goes.

texasdago · January 26, 2023

First, it saddens me that guys like that are influencing our youth. Its really very sad as a parent.

Second, Elron's comment's about followers and likes... he really does think like a 12 year old.

Dutchrudder · January 26, 2023

If Elon can figure out a way to make all those Twitter bots followers sentient and willing to buy Tesla cars, he can turn this thing around pretty quick.

atomheartbevo · January 26, 2023

10 minutes ago, Dutchrudder said:

If Elon can figure out a way to make all those Twitter bots followers sentient and willing to buy Tesla cars, he can turn this thing around pretty quick.

Yeah, had a conversation tying into that with a relative the other day who touted the whole "he's got all of these followers, so he must know something", with my pointing out that if only 10% or so of his followers cared enough about his opinion and would buy his cars, that'd be a jump from 1.3 million cars to 10 million cars sold a year, which seems like a kind of big jump.

Edited January 26, 2023 by atomheartbevo

Samson's Wig · January 26, 2023

1 hour ago, NoName said:

he is really dumb.

i am pulling most of these quotes/info from wiki, but he is

if you can support, with a straight face, the Taliban, Putin, Hitler, autocracy, only allowing men to vote and somehow none of those are the most batshit thing you support (his incel quotes below are truly amazing) you are doing it wrong.

“If we’re really being honest, never having a girlfriend, never having sex with a woman really makes you more heterosexual,” he said, “because honestly, dating women is gay, having sex with women is gay. And having sex with men is gay.” “Really it’s all gay.” “The only really straight heterosexual position is to be an asexual incel. That’s it. That’s all there is.”

“Gay people do date girls all the time,” he claimed. “All these gay people are coming out and saying, ‘I’ve had more girlfriends than Nick. I’ve had sex with more girls than Nick.'” “That actually makes me really more heterosexual than anyone.”

Think about it this way: What’s gayer than being like ‘I need cuddles. I need kisses … I need to spend time with a woman.’ That’s a little sus.” “I think, really, I’m like the straightest guy.”

Hide contents

attended the Charlottesville rally

dropped out of Boston University for "threads" based on him attending Unite the Right

said he was transferring to Auburn...he didn't

spoke on 1/6/21 before the Capitol attack

he is happily an incel

“If we’re really being honest, never having a girlfriend, never having sex with a woman really makes you more heterosexual,” he said, “because honestly, dating women is gay, having sex with women is gay. And having sex with men is gay.” “Really it’s all gay.” “The only really straight heterosexual position is to be an asexual incel. That’s it. That’s all there is.”

“Gay people do date girls all the time,” he claimed. “All these gay people are coming out and saying, ‘I’ve had more girlfriends than Nick. I’ve had sex with more girls than Nick.'” “That actually makes me really more heterosexual than anyone.”

Think about it this way: What’s gayer than being like ‘I need cuddles. I need kisses … I need to spend time with a woman.’ That’s a little sus.” “I think, really, I’m like the straightest guy.”

in December 2020, Fuentes led a crowd to chant "Destroy the GOP", and encouraged them to sit-out the United States Senate special runoff election in Georgia.

On January 6, 2021, prior to the attack, Fuentes spoke to a crowd of supporters at Freedom Plaza, stating, "It is us and our ancestors that created everything good that you see in this country. All these people that have taken over our country—we do not need them. ... It is the American people, and our leader, Donald Trump, against everybody else in this country and this world... Our Founding Fathers would get in the streets, and they would take this country back by force if necessary. And that is what we must be prepared to do."

During the AFPAC speech in which he praised Hitler, Fuentes said that the media had been comparing Vladimir Putin to Hitler "as if that wasn't a good thing"

"You know what democracy has given us? Obesity. Low rates of literacy. It's given us divorce, abortion, gay marriage, liberalism, pornography. That's what democracy has given us. Ghettos and crime and political correctness. Diversity. Yeah, the track record of democracy? Not so good."

In a documentary for the BBC, broadcast in 2022, Fuentes told the interviewer, Louis Theroux, that he believes it would be better if women did not have the right to vote.

"The Taliban is a conservative, religious force, the US is godless and liberal. The defeat of the US government in Afghanistan is unequivocally a positive development."

there is a reason that every platform de-platformed him. not that it matters to Elon.

really interested to see how this Germany lawsuit about not removing holocaust denials/anti jewish comments goes.

I know I shouldn't be, but I'm shocked that anyone would actually listen to someone this clearly stupid. How is this a "movement"? Is it really just a small handful of morons and we're blowing it out of proportion, or is the whole incel thing something to actually worry about? Racism, neonazis, etc. I understand being worried about as some of that crap is baked in to pockets of our country for centuries now (and more than just pockets in the case of racism), but incels? How is that a significant number of people? The overlap in this guys' case is definitely concerning.

Sorry, that shit is a bit off topic. Fuck Elon and given a platform to someone like this to get his message out to his tens of followers. Back on track.

HamsterHookah · January 26, 2023

It looks like Tesla is rebounding? At least the stock a bit? Decent-to-good earnings and numbers came out yesterday or today I guess is the impetus.

NoName · January 26, 2023

found this article interesting: https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/twitter-tumbleweed-watch

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Twitter’s locked-in value comes from all the people that spend too much time there. It benefits from having over a decade of habit formation, and from all the sedimentary network development that happened along the way.

Thanks to Elon adding the view count to the native Twitter app, we’re now constantly reminded how many people are actually seeing our tweets.

For me, at least, what Elon revealed is that Twitter is a megaphone equipped with dying batteries.

I’ll keep using it, just like I use all the other tools. But it’s already much less special than I thought.

article text below:

Spoiler

Twitter Tumbleweed Watch

The "view" count reveals a different story than Elon intended

Dave Karpf

Jan 25

40

38

https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.ama

I just want to share some back-of-the-envelope math. I’m increasingly convinced that Twitter (or at least the network neighborhoods that comprise my Twitter experience) is becoming a ghost town. Here’s why:

Subscribe

A couple months ago, I spoke with Nancy Scola for her story about why DC-types can’t seem to quit Twitter. One of my comments became the headline: “I caught lightning in a bottle. I will be one of the last people to leave Twitter.”

The “lightning” in this case, was the whole “Bretbug” dustup back in August 2019. Before Bret Stephens got mad and wrote to my provost, I had about 9,000 followers on the platform. After his weeklong tantrum was over, I had around 40,000 Twitter followers. That number has held pretty steady ever since — today I have around 42,000. That’s… a lot. On paper at least, it makes Twitter a much larger and more valuable megaphone than I am likely to have anywhere else.

I have 3,500 followers on Mastodon. Mastodon is fun! It kind of has the vibe of Twitter circa 2011. I like it. But if I want to promote a new essay that I’ve written, Twitter is my bread and butter. That’s where people will see it and share it.

(This is a classic “network effects” story. The value of Twitter is derived from the number of people who are also using it. Twitter is the solution to a coordination game. Mass-scale coordination games are not easy to solve.)

But that number — 42,000 Twitter followers — has begun to seem hollow. When I tweet something, it isn’t actually viewed by 42,000 individuals. It’s seen by the subset of those 42,000 people that happen to be staring at Twitter’s chronological timeline at the time I send the tweet, plus anyone who is shown the tweet through Twitter’s algorithmic timeline. And that reduced-megaphone turns out to be a lot less irreplaceable.

I first noticed it last month. I wrote a piece for the Atlantic about ChatGPT. (It’s a good piece! I think it holds up well!) The piece had everything that my normal substack posts lack —a real editor, professional art, a catchy headline. I shared it to Twitter and Mastodon. I posted about it on Substack too.

Here’s a screenshot of the Twitter post. Notice the view count, which Elon had just recently pushed as a new feature.

I didn’t reach 42,000 people by tweeting my article. I reached less than 3,000 people. And that has been pretty consistent. Unless I write something spicy that gets a lot of retweets, the view-counter tells me I’m reaching 2,000-3,000 people.

Here’s my post from earlier this week. 2,203 views.

I figure there are two potential explanations. (Well, there are three, but I’m going to dismiss the third.)

(1) Maybe I’m a little bit shadowbanned?

I don’t think this is especially likely. But I can’t say I don’t deserve it. I have spent a lot of time heckling Elon on Twitter. I have said a great many things, I have meant every one of them, and none of them very nice. Elon fans might have flagged my tweets for review. (If somebody was repeatedly saying the stuff I say about Elon to someone I like, I would flag their tweets for review too.) One of the few surviving Twitter employees may have looked at my tweets and said “nope! Too mean to the bossman. Totally uncalled for. You will receive less algorithmic amplification from now on.”

That seems like a reasonable thing for the company to have done.

(2) Many of the people who follow me on Twitter have either quit the site or check it a lot less.

This is what I mean by Twitter becoming a ghost town.

You wouldn’t notice it from the activity in the algorithmic feed. There’s still Twitter-drama. People still post article links and TikToks. But the crowd is thinning out. People are locking-but-not-deleting their accounts. (If you delete your account, someone can grab the freed up username and impersonate you.) People are deleting the app from their phone. People are spending their attention-minutes somewhere else — Instagram or TikTok or Mastodon or Slack or Discord or, I dunno, going for a nice walk outdoors or something.

(3) The view-counter might be garbage.

I’m dismissing this explanation for now, since I have no way to evaluate it. And it would be pretty surprising if views were being undercounted, rather than overcounted. Usually social media platforms end up getting in trouble for inflating their metrics, not deflating them. But it’s a possibility because there are only like sixteen engineers left at Twitter and this new feature was pushed just before the holiday. …Who knows, y’know?

Here’s where we get to the back-of-the-envelope math:

I have a bit more than 2,300 Substack subscribers. My posts appear in the inboxes of all those subscribers. Everyone presumably at least views the headline, whether they open and read the article or not.

If I’m getting 2,000-3,000 views through Twitter, and ~2,300 views through Substack’s email distribution, then my Substack has already reached the same effective size as my Twitter following.

What’s more, Substack is growing, while Twitter is shrinking. Mastodon is growing too (though they don’t provide comparable analytics, and the user experience probably benefits from having fewer gamified metrics.).

Twitter isn’t irreplaceable. Not even for minor-Twitter-celebrities like me who have much larger followings on the site than they would have anywhere else.

And that’s because Twitter is becoming a ghost town. (Certainly not for everyone. If you’re a crypto-spammer, the place is probably hopping again. If you’re a white nationalist, it must be exciting to see so many of your old buddies have their bans rescinded.)

Twitter’s locked-in value comes from all the people that spend too much time there. It benefits from having over a decade of habit formation, and from all the sedimentary network development that happened along the way.

Thanks to Elon adding the view count to the native Twitter app, we’re now constantly reminded how many people are actually seeing our tweets.

For me, at least, what Elon revealed is that Twitter is a megaphone equipped with dying batteries.

I’ll keep using it, just like I use all the other tools. But it’s already much less special than I thought.

Even Mr. Tweet's posts get widely different view counts. for example, his WEF poll from about a week ago got 47.9k RTs, 40.8k replies, 111.5k likes and 26.3m views.

meanwhile, in what i can only assume is due to algorithm pushing his tweet like 1 day later of "VE RI TAS" gets 23.9k RTs, 14.5k replies, 253.7k likes (why so high vs the others?) and 43.9m views.

most of his tweets are sub 20m views. he has 127+m followers so only about 15-16% of his followers are even seeing the tweets?

Chopper · January 26, 2023

34 minutes ago, Samson's Wig said:

I know I shouldn't be, but I'm shocked that anyone would actually listen to someone this clearly stupid. How is this a "movement"? Is it really just a small handful of morons and we're blowing it out of proportion, or is the whole incel thing something to actually worry about? Racism, neonazis, etc. I understand being worried about as some of that crap is baked in to pockets of our country for centuries now (and more than just pockets in the case of racism), but incels? How is that a significant number of people? The overlap in this guys' case is definitely concerning.

There's somewhat of a convergence between the backgrounds of incels and racists. Each group is misogynistic, below average in basic and emotional intelligence, feel threatened by social norms, and they fetishize violence. For example, the imbecile who went on a murderous rampage several years ago at a UCSB sorority was an incel.

hayden_horn · January 26, 2023

1 hour ago, Samson's Wig said:

I know I shouldn't be, but I'm shocked that anyone would actually listen to someone this clearly stupid. How is this a "movement"? Is it really just a small handful of morons and we're blowing it out of proportion, or is the whole incel thing something to actually worry about? Racism, neonazis, etc. I understand being worried about as some of that crap is baked in to pockets of our country for centuries now (and more than just pockets in the case of racism), but incels? How is that a significant number of people? The overlap in this guys' case is definitely concerning.

Sorry, that shit is a bit off topic. Fuck Elon and given a platform to someone like this to get his message out to his tens of followers. Back on track.

we should always worry about young dudes without dates, as jeff ward says. though he usually uses "shirtless dudes" he's not far off. these men are the causers of chaos and violence for about forever.

wildcat09 · January 26, 2023

2 hours ago, Samson's Wig said:

I know I shouldn't be, but I'm shocked that anyone would actually listen to someone this clearly stupid. How is this a "movement"? Is it really just a small handful of morons and we're blowing it out of proportion, or is the whole incel thing something to actually worry about? Racism, neonazis, etc. I understand being worried about as some of that crap is baked in to pockets of our country for centuries now (and more than just pockets in the case of racism), but incels? How is that a significant number of people? The overlap in this guys' case is definitely concerning.

Sorry, that shit is a bit off topic. Fuck Elon and given a platform to someone like this to get his message out to his tens of followers. Back on track.

Incels are a relatively small subculture among the right, but their influence among the greater movement is much bigger than their numbers indicate. A lot of their ideas have a lot of support among people on the right, even if most wouldn't call themselves incels. This is because the right is already predisposed to misogyny, but incels, pickup artists, etc. have influenced that default misogyny to make it much darker and much more dangerous than the ordinary baseline misogyny that's always present among the right. Think your average aggy students in 2003 vs the lunacy of pretty much all college Republicans these days. That's largely because of the influence of incels and other "mens rights" groups.

Brian Fantana · January 26, 2023

1 hour ago, HamsterHookah said:

It looks like Tesla is rebounding? At least the stock a bit? Decent-to-good earnings and numbers came out yesterday or today I guess is the impetus.

Bateshorn · January 26, 2023

Nm

Edited January 26, 2023 by Bateshorn

HamsterHookah · January 26, 2023

10 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

Tesla bulls.

Brian Fantana · January 26, 2023

18 minutes ago, HamsterHookah said:

Tesla bulls.

Chopper · January 26, 2023

Yes, gov't subsidies lifting the entire EV market. I'd complain but it's not like O&G pays their own freight.

NoName · January 26, 2023

NoName · January 26, 2023

Dave Rubin thread after 2 days at twitter that is worth a read for the laughs and somehow makes the Elon-owned Twitter sound even more chaotic than it did before. as a reminder, he has been on site for 90 days. he has owned it for 90 days. they are still finding out very basic things about the system and accounts. in the replies he also responds to catturd2 and says "yYou were one of the accounts we looked at. Believe it or not they couldn’t find anything specific but that doesn’t mean it’s not there." lol

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1618667912377810945.html

Quote

Rubin: As they fix the code more problems arise. A delicate balance he likened to a Jenga tower. One wrong move the whole thing collapses. They’re working nonstop, and both times I met him were after midnight.

a RIF of 80% of employees and an additional 80% of contract employees was a bad move? who could have ever guessed that deleting that much institutional knowledge could backfire on any company?!

Quote

Rubin: I met with several engineers who were doing a deep dive on why my account and so many others seem to be absolutely crushed after that two or three week return to normalcy when Elon first took over. They still have more questions than answers, but they did learn a bunch of stuff.

Accounts aren’t just hit with labels that are obvious to insiders. They now found more “secret” labels which are causing shadowbans. My account was hit with all three; “Recent abuse strike,” “Recent misinformation strike”, “Recent suspension strike.”

Musk and co have owned the company for 90 days and they are JUST NOW FINDING MORE SECRET LABELS, 90 DAYS IN, THAT CAUSE SHADOWBANS?! what have these morons been doing this whole time?!

Quote

Rubin: Elon was bringing people in and out constantly and seems to be aware of pretty much every issue. He thinks maybe the entire code has to be torn down and start from scratch. At the end last night he said that the whole situation is “a flaming dumpster rolling down the street.”

if he thinks twitter code now is a flaming dumpster fire, let's see what happens when this moron rewrites a decade of code because he thinks that will get them the velocity he wants.

(hint: it won't)

Quote

Rubin: So I assure you they are aware of the problems and Elon and engineers are there all night trying to untie this crazy knot. Some changes they’ve made, like the “For You” tab, have confused people and hurt engagement for accounts who have gotten the NSFA label without knowing

making major changes to the system because you want to flip to algorithms over chronological feeds then fucking over most accounts is a bad decision. also there is this quote from Elon. reminder: he can "open source" it any time now...we're all waiting.

Quote

One of the things that I believe Twitter should do is open source the algorithm, and make any changes to people's tweets, if they are emphasized or de-emphasized, that action should be made apparent so anyone can see that that action has been taken

Quote

Rubin: They also don’t know for sure why things got so much better once Elon made the acquisition and why it seems far worse now.

that's why you don't fire 80% of your workforce in the first 60 days you own the company.

Quote

Rubin: On a personal note Elon is funny as hell, laughs a ton and it’s just really obvious he cares about Twitter because he cares about free speech and the bigger problems facing the world. He doesn’t need this headache, he chose it

the comments about him not being funny just remind me of this

"another thing, i am funny. please don't tell anyone i am not funny"

Quote

Rubin: What’s also really crazy now having seen under the hood is that Jack Dorsey repeatedly said they don’t shadowban. The entire machine behind Twitter is designed to shadowban. It’s almost as if that was the primary goal rather than the product itself.

the entire machine behind Twitter was designed to sell ads. it is why it was 89% of their revenue. companies don't want their information next to neo nazi and homophobic tweets. instead of outright banning people, which leads to whack a mole with banning their next account, most platforms shadow ban unless it's bad enough then ban.

literally, you fucking morons, the primary goal of twitter was not the product. the primary goal of twitter was to sell ads. how can so many people NOT UNDERSTAND THIS?!

he then has this random video of RT counts going up and then down slightly - which can is what happens when people accidentally RT it?

Quote

Rubin: Engineer I’ve been working with contacted me on this specifically and said there is a technical reason this happens related to two data centers not syncing. They’re working on it.

it literally goes from 1099 -> 1001 -> 1093 keep in mind at that point it had more than 4400 likes on it so that small % could very easily be people accidentally RTing then un RTing then quote tweeting but s

it's almost like building a system which has multiple data centers - then just closing and reducing the others - has an impact on how the system works. what a concept.

~~~~

full text

Spoiler

Spent last two days at Twitter in SF talking to engineers, product managers and yes, @elonmusk. Learned a ton about what’s going on. Before I share, want to note that after couple hour meeting I asked Elon what I could share and he said, “anything that’s true.”

🧵time…

“A Fractal Rube Goldberg Machine.”

That’s what @elonmusk called Twitter. As they fix the code more problems arise. A delicate balance he likened to a Jenga tower. One wrong move the whole thing collapses. They’re working nonstop, and both times I met him were after midnight.

I met with several engineers who were doing a deep dive on why my account and so many others seem to be absolutely crushed after that two or three week return to normalcy when Elon first took over. They still have more questions than answers, but they did learn a bunch of stuff.

Accounts aren’t just hit with labels that are obvious to insiders. They now found more “secret” labels which are causing shadowbans. My account was hit with all three; “Recent abuse strike,” “Recent misinformation strike”, “Recent suspension strike.”

It’s unclear so far what these strikes actually do, but for sure they suppress views and recommendations, they are trying to figure out to what extent. I also had many innocuous tweets labeled NSFW or NSFA (not safe for ads) which affect visibility in the timeline.

Also, there’s an entire KeyWord database so that machine learning makes sure not to promote violence, porn etc., but it’s a mess of overreaching words. Literally the word “gay” was on the KeyWord list which would make you not advertiser friendly and harm the tweet in the algo.

Backing up for a sec, they found the “recent suspension strike” on my account most interesting because it was fro July 2022, when I was suspended for calling out @jordanbpeterson’s unjust suspension. So though suspension was reversed the action on the account remained.

Elon was bringing people in and out constantly and seems to be aware of pretty much every issue. He thinks maybe the entire code has to be torn down and start from scratch. At the end last night he said that the whole situation is “a flaming dumpster rolling down the street.”

So I assure you they are aware of the problems and Elon and engineers are there all night trying to untie this crazy knot. Some changes they’ve made, like the “For You” tab, have confused people and hurt engagement for accounts who have gotten the NSFA label without knowing.

They also don’t know for sure why things got so much better once Elon made the acquisition and why it seems far worse now. Some is probably related to excitement around Elon himself, which also coincided with World Cup, but that doesn’t explain why it feels so off right now.

Will share more in bit but have to catch a flight.

On a personal note Elon is funny as hell, laughs a ton and it’s just really obvious he cares about Twitter because he cares about free speech and the bigger problems facing the world. He doesn’t need this headache, he chose it.

Also huge shout out to @DavidSacks who is helping Elon clean up this mess because he believes in the fight for free speech as much as Elon does. And massive thanks to the engineers who iopened up their computers, showed me literally everything I asked for, and were total pros.

Oh, one either thing for now…

Elon really lit up when we talked about the shifting political landscape and how anyone non-woke is now “far right.”

That notion is deeply connected to how screwy thing got at Twitter and he’s working to fix it despite the huge challenges ahead.

And frankly they gotta get that company out of SF…

Unroll available on Thread Reader

What’s also really crazy now having seen under the hood is that Jack Dorsey repeatedly said they don’t shadowban. The entire machine behind Twitter is designed to shadowban. It’s almost as if that was the primary goal rather than the product itself.

Perfect illustration of how crazy things are. A friend just sent the to me, watch the RT’s go up and then suddenly go down.

@elonmusk

Engineer I’ve been working with contacted me on this specifically and said there is a technical reason this happens related to two data centers not syncing. They’re working on it.

now it's my turn to say:

...and another thing: im not mad. please dont put in the newspaper that i got mad.

Eastwood · January 26, 2023

The spike in the stock price feels like a bull trap that would unravel all the gains rapidly the moment some bad news hits.

Captainant · January 26, 2023

12 minutes ago, Eastwood said:

The spike in the stock price feels like a bull trap that would unravel all the gains rapidly the moment some bad news hits.

it's a little tinfoil-y, but elmo has definitely exhibited market manipulation tendancies before.... Twitter does have some big ass debt service payment to make, and his follower count alone ain't gonna cover the bills

Grade of D as in David · January 26, 2023

16 minutes ago, Eastwood said:

The spike in the stock price feels like a bull trap that would unravel all the gains rapidly the moment some bad news hits.

Or as soon as Elon unexpectedly sells more shares, after promising not to until 2025.

atomheartbevo · January 26, 2023

53 minutes ago, NoName said:

literally, you fucking morons, the primary goal of twitter was not the product. the primary goal of twitter was to sell ads. how can so many people NOT UNDERSTAND THIS?!

He doesn't understand something as simple a free speech/1st Amendment.

And he has yet to show that he understands that twitter users are the product, and the advertisers are the customers. It's a truly stunning display of business ignorance, because you know people around him have explained that the users are the product and the advertisers are the customers, but he plunges on and just thinks it's his $44 billion "PLEASE LIKE ME" platform to make his friends happy.

chainsaw · January 27, 2023

I use twitter much less now. when i go back it is not an engaging experience at all.

Hmbre97 · January 27, 2023

Elon conflating his popularity with his Twitter followers feels a lot like Trump touting the health of the economy with the DJIA

Pig Bellmont · January 27, 2023

23 minutes ago, Hmbre97 said:

Elon conflating his popularity with his Twitter followers feels a lot like Trump touting the health of the economy with the DJIA

It’s worse. He’s conflating the health of the Tesla brand with the (supposed) number of his personal Twitter followers.

Chopper · January 27, 2023

I have no idea wtf dave rubin is but scrolled his twitter feed and stopped here because i figured any further and I'd be driven to gouge my eyes out.

these grifters sure know how to find each other

Chopper · January 28, 2023

Probably just a coincidence that Elron Holmes Musk continues to collaborate with nazis like Andrew Ngo and only nazis.

edit: No, that's wrong. He collabs with known pedos too.

Edited January 28, 2023 by Chopper

Neonmoon · January 28, 2023

Elon has been banning anyone critical of him since day 1

Chopper · January 28, 2023

4 hours ago, Neonmoon said:

Elon has been banning anyone critical of him since day 1

Clearly not anyone. They'd need to hire 20x the staff and assign them to solely hunt down Elron Holmes' critics just to make a dent.

atomheartbevo · January 28, 2023

4 hours ago, Neonmoon said:

Elon has been banning anyone critical of him since day 1

Anybody he notices. And yeah, it’s a shame that Elon’s followers are too fucking stupid to understand why it matters and that he’s just playing them, pretending to care about free speech.

Also, he’s definitely on the batshit crazy pro-Russian Qanon spectrum when he spouts shit like this

Quote

Nobody is in favor of the Russian invasion, but how does this end with the least amount of bloodshed?

They all ask this, as if there is anything that should be done besides oh, I don’t know, Russia stopping the attack and withdrawing to Russian territory. Those dumbfucks don’t consider Russia withdrawing to be an option. It’s all about what the West or Ukraine should do.

Brisketexan · January 28, 2023

They all ask this, as if there is anything that should be done besides oh, I don’t know, Russia stopping the attack and withdrawing to Russian territory. Those dumbfucks don’t consider Russia withdrawing to be an option. It’s all about what the West or Ukraine should do.

Bingo. It’s pretty enlightening that they don’t even consider the option of “Russia could quit attacking Ukraine and go home.”

Elon is they guy watching a woman being beaten and raped, and asking “what can she do to make her rape and beating less violent?”….without even advocating for the option of “the rapist should stop raping her.”
Elon is a piece of dick, in almost every possible way.

Chopper · January 28, 2023

This dude's ingenious substack article probably deserves its own thread. It's about what he calls the Enshittification of the internet. He discusses tiktok, twitter, amazon, bitcoin and google.

Bama Chick · January 28, 2023

Fucking Space Karen needs his ass beat.

Chopper · January 29, 2023

NoName · January 29, 2023

On 1/28/2023 at 4:49 PM, Bama Chick said:

Fucking Space Karen needs his ass beat.

Anyone can call for and spread disinformation.

Some people search it out. Others are tricked. But when you are a hammer, everything be it true or false, looks like a nail.

UT_OB1 · January 30, 2023

On 1/25/2023 at 8:30 PM, atomheartbevo said:

they have way too much free time on their hands, and spend way too much time online and as a result, are intermingling their online lives with their real lives, to the point where they can't differentiate between reality and fake bullshit

Says the guy with 40k posts 😃

crash_davis · January 30, 2023

Steering wheels optional.

Gene Parmesan · January 30, 2023

42 minutes ago, crash_davis said:

Steering wheels optional.

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

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