- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
“Fidelity is currently valuing X at about $9.4 billion”
I found this funny.
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Honestly terrifying that they still think it is worth that much.
they still own the twitter trademark, that might be their biggest asset
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.
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.
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.
The average family’s cable subscription doesn’t cost 20% of their net worth.
I think the average family’s net worth is a negative number, so you’re technically right.
A cable subscription isn’t a depreciating asset, though.
To clarify, I was thinking of the depreciating asset part as a loss of value the same way that a subscription is.
It’s a fair argument, especially given how much… entertainment he seems to derive from owning it.
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.
I suppose it’s too much to hope for, for RSS feeds to make a comeback. Or JSON feeds being more prevalent. I’m totally serious, I miss being able to just check the headlines without going through a bunch of bullshit.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Aren’t 75% of the users Russian bots? Lol
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.
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.
We’ll never know since Musk is nurturing a state-funded “user”-base that will always keep their numbers inflated
I agree 100%. Liberals retweeting how Elon is losing money is actually making him money
Elon Musk’s greatest personal achievement has been his tireless work and incredible effort toward disproving the myth of Billionaire Exceptionalism.
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.
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
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!
He needs all the welding power he can get to keep the Tesla’s held together
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.
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.
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.
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
My point is that if someone offers you a good price for what you believe you have have, you take it. If they thought it was good and they got a good price for it they’d take it. If they thought it was bad and they got a good price for it they’d take it.
Yes I did read your comment before :)
You’re saying that accepting his offer is not necessarily a statement of low confidence in their own business. I get you.
But we can’t separate the notion of it being a good price apart from its being a bad business. It was a great offer in part because the business was so poor. By all estimates he vastly overpaid.
So yes, it was a good price.
And yes, it was a bad business and yes they knew it. With no other offers on the table, they pulled out all the stops to ensure it went through. It was their and their shareholders only chance for a payday with the business as bleak as it was.
All of these things are true.
The way to make it hurt is to establish a replacement that keeps discussions away from trolls and hate propaganda.
“Maybe don’t assume that because you’re a billionaire you’re the best at doing stuff.”
This is literally every second generation billionaire. They seem to have the tendency to believe that their success is solely due to their intelligence and not at all due to their parents’ connections and money.
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Still worth billions though.
“Y’all my current portfolio is worth 9 BILLION dollars!” “Ah sick, seems to be going pretty well for you.” “Yeah, I’m down 75%”
“Still worth billions tho” is one of the dumbest things I’ve heard on this platform and that’s saying a lot.
I’d cheer on if Elon Musk becomes a pauper. $9 billion is still worth a lot. It’s still, as the article says, billions.
If they influence the election to their desired outcome, then the value won’t matter. The damage will have been done.
Didn’t he pay too much for it in the first place?
paying too much is when you buy a ubisoft game. what he did is officially the worst deal since the financial crisis.
I just checked and it’s worth nothing to anyone important.
Posts about value are ads. Stop give exposure to this guy or his companies
I doubt anybody would buy it for a tenth, tbh.
I’m confident you could unload the property for $4B easily enough. That’s somewhere in the neighborhood of $10-100/unique user amortized out over the life of the loan, which would be a steal via any other advertising medium.
Twitter still has real value. Hundreds of millions of people still use it, even in its deplorable state. And under new management, I’m confident people would flood back in.
You would have to prove that the hundreds of millions who use it are “people”.
Empty Internet Theory is a clever joke, but it doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.
FaceBook deleted 6.5 BILLION BOTS IN 2021.
Neither Facebook nor Twitter claimed 6.5B unique users.
Well then FB lied about it at this link HERE
They can delete 6.5 billion accounts without claiming they are active users.
Something tells me its value is not monetary for Musk.
While probably true, this still probably gets him all wound up.
Let’s everyone point and laugh. It humbles people like him, right?
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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.
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.
I see ya loud and clear! So that’s good news!
May it sink even lower
I remember thinking twitter was bad before he took over
It’s now a complete shadow of what it was even just a couple of years ago. Just a quarter of its value seems generous
