I’m just going to go out on a limb and say, maybe it shouldn’t be possible for one person to have enough wealth to singlehandedly buy and destroy important social institutions.
Also, maybe smart people shouldn’t be putting all their eggs into one privately owned basket.
It probably was one of the best and simplest tools for the job.
Worth remembering that Twitter’s problems didn’t start with Musk’s acquisition. He just redirected the city sewers into what was already a cesspool. Then took a piss in it for good measure.
I always cringe at this argument for tech companies. “Ohh, but they aren’t/weren’t profitable!”
That is by design. Any money that comes in, they double, triple invest in growth with some nebulous end goal that gets continuously kicked down the road to keep growing revenue year after year.
It’s their business model to not be profitable.
They don’t need to grow at break neck speeds. They can reduce spending and grow slowly at sustainable speeds if they choose. But they want to corner the domestic market, then then international market, then expand into adjacent markets, etc etc until they implode.
Same argument was made for ride share corporations during the gig worker reform initiatives. “Woe is Uber, they don’t make money! They can’t afford to give drivers benefits, or a minimum wage if rides are slow!”
No, they could have, if they didn’t decide to throw mountains of cash on driverless R&D, international expansion, lobbying to kill taxi laws, subsidized ride rates in new markets, etc.
Same as Twitter paying celebrities to use their platform, news stations to adopt and push their platform, etc etc.
I wasn’t talking about Twitter’s profitability or lack thereof. I meant it was a breeding ground for trolls, brigading, bullying, and disinformation long before Musk took over. Musk made it worse, but it’s funny how some people remember pre-Musk Twitter as this bastion of integrity and civil discourse.
I think the comment was in response to the problems that existed before. While this was about the economic problems, it‘s worth considering that both may be connected.
To avoid a similar situation in the future, Mastodon is a good choice. They can migrate their account if an instance goes wrong.
Others are more centralized if not totally centralized. It will repeat sooner or later on them.
His management has left scientists reconsidering the value of X
Ayyy
