“Fidelity is currently valuing X at about $9.4 billion”

I found this funny.

  • @[email protected]
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    82 hours ago

    My first thought is ‘I can’t wait for it to turn zero’ but then I realize that 79% decline from 44 billion still means it is worth 9.24 billion.

    And that is still a shitload of money.

  • @[email protected]
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    179 hours ago

    its worth comes from being able to influence world politics. Does he seem like someone who cares or needs money?

    • @[email protected]
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      118 minutes ago

      He didn’t bilk Tesla shareholders into his huge pay package because he doesn’t care about money.

    • @[email protected]
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      97 hours ago

      True, but that power is also diminished greatly as more and more regular users abandon the site. No eyes on the propaganda makes it worth a lot less.

      • @[email protected]
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        32 hours ago

        Yeah I’m sure I’m not the norm but I’m actually shocked when I see companies advertising their/their talent’s twitter accounts on tv broadcasts. I truly can’t believe that site is still mainstream after everything that’s happened.

        Idk then I look over and see trump as a presidential candidate and ugh… I guess I’m just still not comfortable/accepting of how far off the rails things have gone 🙁

    • @[email protected]
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      46 hours ago

      He is a net loss for humanity is the currency is moralistic.

      We be deep in the red between Trump, Bezos, this clown and many other “captains of industry”.

    • @[email protected]
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      76 hours ago

      It’s like 4chan but it didn’t know where the line was for the amount of right wing people to be on a social media and ran a marathon

  • kamen
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    410 hours ago

    I don’t have the whole context so I might be missing some things, but the whole thing looks to me like “look at how much money I have to burn and how much I don’t care”.

    • @[email protected]
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      1110 hours ago

      He didn’t even want to buy Twitter, just manipulate the stock price by talking about buying it. Dumbass signed too much paperwork and waived too many rights, though, and found himself obligated to buy it anyway. Pretty sure he tried to fight it and lost.

      So now he’s trying to not burn all his money, but he’s fucking terrible at it, so he’s just becoming a laughing stock.

  • Uriel238 [all pronouns]
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    5821 hours ago

    We knew this was going to happen before he made the purchase.

    Everyone said, the best way for Elon to keep his money was to change very little, or even take a hands-off approach.

    Masnick suggested this would happen

    It was that and so much worse. Moral of the story: Running a huge social media service is hard. Maybe don’t assume that because you’re a billionaire you’re the best at doing stuff.

    • Gloomy
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      7 hours ago

      Masnick gives 20 levels of development. Elon stopped here:

      Level Two: “We’re the free speech platform! But no CSAM!”

      And that’s about it. Ex-Twitter has copyright infringement, hate speech and doesn’t give a fuck about local laws unless the law actually has teeth (Brasil, anybody?).

      • katy ✨
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        37 hours ago

        and then he fires trust and safety and it gets riddled and plagued with csam

    • @[email protected]
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      1213 hours ago

      I mean the people at Twitter were very happy to sell it off. Remember how they actually sued to force him to go through with the deal and succeeded in stopping him from backing out?

      Even if he’d managed it as well as the prior stewards, it was always a losing business.

      • JackbyDev
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        510 hours ago

        If the price offered is actually a good price then I think they might have some obligation to shareholders to pursue it. (Many of the people making that decision likely also being shareholders.) Like if someone offered you more than what your stuff is worth but tried to changed their mind, wouldn’t you pursue that? I don’t think that’s any sort of indicator that they thought it was a sinking ship. It’s just in their best interest to take a good deal when they get one.

        • @[email protected]
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          11 hour ago

          I think you make a good point. But we don’t have to guess whether they thought Twitter was struggling. We know it was.

          Twitter never managed to develop an online ad business that matched the scale of its influence in popular culture and society at large. Twitter has lost money in six of the eight years since its IPO.

          Source: CNBC

    • @[email protected]
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      1920 hours ago

      Meanwhile he is on track to become the world’s first trillionaire

      I think the purchase was more about welding power than any financial gain

      • @[email protected]
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        26 hours ago

        Now, call me crazy, but if I was optimizing for maximum welding power, I’d start with oxy acetylene and at least try a few other options. How would buying a website even be a good start?

        No wonder people are making fun of him!

      • @[email protected]
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        311 hours ago

        Hasn’t his wealth kinda flatlined lately though? X is doing terribly, Tesla is struggling a bit, I think SpaceX is at least doing well.

        I don’t think he’s going to be a trillionaire any time soon.

      • @[email protected]
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        212 hours ago

        Would you not agree that he has a tool of influence with X? I see that as the main aspect of why you’d still buy twitter, even though he knew he wouldn’t earn money with that.

      • Da Bald Eagul
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        1718 hours ago

        He tried to back out, I don’t think any of this was about anything. He’s just a dick with a weird sense of humor.

    • @[email protected]
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      217 hours ago

      Masnick’s post is well put, but also a disturbing reminder of how much power nation-states can exert over the Internet.

      • Da Bald Eagul
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        1018 hours ago

        Twitter wasn’t profitable right? So most of the “value” is in the name of the product. Elon changed the name and added his signature to everything the platform was doing, completely changing the platform Twitter is. So yeah, I do get why 75% of the money is gone now.

        • @[email protected]
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          311 hours ago

          Changing the name of one of the most valuable brands isn’t something I’d expect even him to do.

    • @[email protected]
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      119 hours ago

      The way to make it hurt is to establish a replacement that keeps discussions away from trolls and hate propaganda.

  • @[email protected]
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    1321 day ago

    Musk did not buy this as an investment. He bought it to flip elections and manipulate public opinion.

    Tesla is writing him a check that will cover the entire purchase price, and Saudi Arabia and Russia will pay the operating costs.

    Active users are what matters; if they lost 75% of their users then I’m paying attention.

    • @[email protected]
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      1313 hours ago

      I think it’s even pettier than that. He’s the loud guy on the forum who literally bought the site so he could be admin.

      • @[email protected]
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        66 hours ago

        Honestly, everyone needs to listen to the episode of Search Engine about Elon. It’s such a clear narrative of what happened between the Iron Man cameo and now. It’s pure hubris - someone who is very unlikable desperately hungry for love to the point where his brain bust a fuse.

    • @[email protected]
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      1917 hours ago

      I think you’re giving the guy too much credit. Sometimes things are as they seen. He just didn’t like the moderation scheme on Twitter, made a gesture buying it, fumbled a little bit and overbid, then after having been forced to acquire it tried to turn it into something closer to what he wanted it to be.

    • @[email protected]
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      1 day ago

      Correct me if I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure he gave an outlandish bid for Twitter to manipulate it’s stock prices when he pulled put, but he was sued into following through.

      I don’t think he ever wanted to buy it, or at least he wanted to crash it’s value to come back and buy it on the cheap.

      • @[email protected]
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        -31 day ago

        Given his unlimited resources, and the world’s worst people on speed dial, do you not think that the powers that be could have orchestrated that?

        • @[email protected]
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          410 hours ago

          then why not buy it normally like a human from earth and instead involve this lawsuit that to make himself look like an absolute moron

        • @[email protected]
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          24 hours ago

          If he was that competent why would he resort to openly pumping and dumping meme coins in public just prior to this stunt.

          He has some dangerous strings he can pull, but that doesn’t make him a good puppet master.

    • @[email protected]
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      151 day ago

      We’ll never know since Musk is nurturing a state-funded “user”-base that will always keep their numbers inflated

    • @[email protected]
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      221 hours ago

      If he’s trying to flip elections, he needs to at least pretend it’s being operated in good faith.

      • SkavarSharraddas
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        501 day ago

        Since they don’t seem to care about it, start using “tweet” for every social media post to devalue them further.

    • @[email protected]
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      591 day ago

      If someone were to buy it, ban the Nazis and get advertisers to come back it’s still salvageable, I guess. The longer Musk owns it, the bigger the chance is that it’ll become the next MySpace.

      • @[email protected]
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        141 day ago

        At least the MySpace guy was able to run a fun site, cash out before social media became crazy, and spend the rest of his life having fun with that money.

        Trump will lose, and Musk will be holding on to a useless site that serves nothing. He’ll probably sell for a fraction of what he paid (not that it was his money in the first place), but by that point it’ll be too late. Twitter will be long dead.

        • @[email protected]
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          312 hours ago

          I doubt the saudis will be very happy if Musk doesn’t repay them their investment. I’m surprised they haven’t threatened him into stepping down and handing their investment to someone who can properly manage a social media platform already

          • @[email protected]
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            311 hours ago

            That’ll probably be what happens if Trump loses. Musk didn’t spend “his” money so it’s no loss, and many from the Middle East have wanted control of Twitter ever since the Arab Spring.

    • @[email protected]
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      81 day ago

      It’s only worth as much as anyone’s willing to pay for it. Take a look at any of these tech start ups that do something very insignificant slightly differently than their competitor. VALUATION 100 BILLION DOLLARS!

    • @[email protected]
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      220 hours ago

      I was going to say that they could have stopped the headline at “quarter” as far as I’m concerned.

    • @[email protected]
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      21 day ago

      I wouldn’t be surprised if part of this remaining value is because the Japanese internet still heavily relies on it as a platform, even if the west has begun moving elsewhere.

    • @[email protected]
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      -21 day ago

      This is the stock market, the value is set by what investors think the value could be. Mostly, they’re probably assuming people would come back if he sold it. Literally everyone knows the name Twitter.

      • @[email protected]
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        211 day ago

        This actually isn’t the stock market, Twitter isn’t publicly traded since being bought.

        • @[email protected]
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          31 day ago

          Just because it’s not publicly traded, doesn’t mean that there isn’t stock nor that there’s no market. Usually, you can technically still buy/sell the stock, just not as a random member of the public on a public stock exchange like the NYSE or FTSE.

          • @[email protected]
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            21 day ago

            There’s usually defined periods for sales as well. Gives employees and other stock holders a way to cash out and get new investors in.

  • @[email protected]
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    1 day ago

    And yet, he’s still one of the what, 5 richest people on the planet?

    He doesn’t give a shit, and neither should you (as nice as the schadenfreude might feel). He got something worth more to him than plain old money - an established propaganda platform, which he is using as he intended - to war monger and otherwise interfere in politics to ensure fascism progresses as fast as he can help it. The “dent” (more like a surface scratch) it put in his finances is completely invisible and irrelevant to him.

    And it should be to you, too.

    He is NEVER going to end up without means or power, not even fucking close, unless we take them from him, and abolish the system that encouraged and enabled him to amass them in the first place.

    • @[email protected]
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      12 hours ago

      What is completely wild to me is that there are only 4 main apps: Reddit, twitter, instagram, and Facebook. Almost every public conversation happens on one of those platforms. And of those four platforms, one of them was bought by one singular person. Some people just don’t get the absolute scale of how much one person can just buy of our communities.

      Like it or not, there are businesses on Twitter. Celebrities are easy to reach and talk to. Even companies use Twitter for support. News outlets post there. It’s a whole community. Was it a bit toxic? Yeah. But it wouldn’t have mattered. One guy bought it.

      Similar to what you said, if you were to run the numbers on this I’m pretty sure owning twitter to Elon is not much different than owning a cable subscription to your average family. A whole community of tens of millions of people bought by one person and its success doesn’t matter. Capitalism is broken. And if you think that’s bad, imagine how he can affect your government when a Supreme Court justice goes for a small small fraction of the price…

      Edit: I did the math and it turns out that twitter has lost so much money that this is no longer a cable subscription. It’s about a 6% yearly loss to Elons net worth, dependent on his current stock values. Which means it’s not cable, but about the cost the average person spends on food in a year ($10,000 yearly cost to a 200k net worth). Still insane.

        • @[email protected]
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          312 hours ago

          To clarify, I was thinking of the depreciating asset part as a loss of value the same way that a subscription is.

          • @[email protected]
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            12 hours ago

            It’s a fair argument, especially given how much… entertainment he seems to derive from owning it.

        • @[email protected]
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          215 hours ago

          I think the average family’s net worth is a negative number, so you’re technically right.

      • @[email protected]
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        41 day ago

        Well said, after losing access to twitter it’s really hard to get information on game companies for example, since they don’t have their own blog for you to RSS and get information about the newest game updates and what not, and they only post on youtube if they have a new trailer.

    • @[email protected]
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      181 day ago

      Yeah a lot of people miss the fact that the play for Twitter was never about money, but control. Owning one of the most popular social medias makes it easy to spread propaganda and amplify your voice.

      • @[email protected]
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        23 hours ago

        Lots of people spout this conspiracy theory, but Ive yet to hear a good reason why he had to be sued into making the purchase (after making price manipulating statements) if it was some sinister plan.

        Far more likely he’s just a fuck up.

        • @[email protected]
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          020 hours ago

          Fucked up then adapted musk is a welpling but like every rich WASP be it from England or its colonies he is weirdly adaptable. Which is why the most effective method of WASP removal is via flamethrower.

    • @[email protected]
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      -113 hours ago

      PayPal and Tesla and SpaceX been pretty big successes. But Twitter is a real fuckup for him. It shows that his judgment and temperament and perfect boy genius mystique have all jumped the shark in a big way.

      • @[email protected]
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        110 hours ago

        But Twitter is a real fuckup for him

        Except it clearly fucking isn’t, it’s doing exactly what he bought it for, including convincing people like you to feel sympathy for him and his “loss”, which is equal parts hilarious and really fucking sad. You’re looking at his life from the point of view of a poor person, something he never was and never will be, yet he’s still so easily manipulated you in to feeling bad for him (and the billions he’s lost, leaving him… still the motherfucking richest person on the planet), and even fucking (think you) relate to him and the idea that he can “fail” just like you can, using you as a living breathing mouthpiece to make his life easier. Not yours.

        perfect boy genius mystique

        I just threw up a little in my mouth, thanks.

        • @[email protected]
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          11 hour ago

          I don’t know who you’re talking to. I have no pity for the man and don’t relate to him. I don’t have to argue with you over whether Tesla and SpaceX have been successful businesses because those are objective facts. It’s also pretty idiotic to deny that years ago, he had a boy genius aura about him - investors still throw billions at that image. Sorry it makes you throw up, especially because you already appear to be absolutely choking on Elon hate. I despise the man but I’m not slobbering all over myself with jealous disdain as you sound to be.

    • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod
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      81 day ago

      Not only that, but the folks who helped bankroll him saw what social media could do to organize protests and evade censorship and wanted to reduce its power. The Saudis saw the Arab Spring and shit their collective thobe.

    • @[email protected]
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      91 day ago

      He’s the actual richest man on the planet with a net worth of a quarter of a trillion dollars. The next richest person on the planet is Jeff Bezos with $197B

      • @[email protected]
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        131 day ago

        Appreciated. Yeah. That douche is the absolute worst, but everyone climbing over one another to call him out is just making him more and more relevant.

        • @[email protected]
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          521 hours ago

          I tend to ignore posts about him. I wouldn’t even be commenting here if I weren’t just trying to see if I’m banned from this instance, or just political memes.

  • @[email protected]
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    691 day ago

    Elon Musk’s greatest personal achievement has been his tireless work and incredible effort toward disproving the myth of Billionaire Exceptionalism.

  • @[email protected]
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    391 day ago

    If they influence the election to their desired outcome, then the value won’t matter. The damage will have been done.

      • @[email protected]
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        1 day ago

        Yes, he gets a raging fascist boner every time someone fails to assassinate Trump because he thinks it’s the cue to go full Nazi but really he just keeps jumping the gun and making it far too obvious deeply part of Trump’s ongoing fascist takeover schemes and really not the guy we should have any significant government contracts with

        • bruhSoulz
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          219 hours ago

          I see, thanks for the insight. I don’t have Twitter so I didn’t really know about this stuff 😂