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ngwoo t1_j72w1wj wrote

Twitter must be in a really precarious spot if they're monetizing this

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Gurglesplat t1_j73bftp wrote

He is desperate to recoup his financial losses.

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bastardoperator t1_j743bh9 wrote

LOL, he never will and that's what I love about this deal.

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pwalkz t1_j75ix67 wrote

It's so wonderful. He is doing whatever he can to squeeze the remaining juice of Twitter but my dude there is not enough for you to recover 😂

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grumpyfrench t1_j75qy22 wrote

worse he can not pay le billion per year loan interests

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pwalkz t1_j75ron9 wrote

Thats what he fired all those employees for! No joke! That reduction in overhead covers his billion per year in interest. Which I can't really fault him for. Seems like a smart move if you got that sort of interest to pay off.

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grumpyfrench t1_j75y3yn wrote

wow you are right

1b / 200k cost per person = 5000

twitter went from 7500 to 2200

grossly match the math

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kippertie t1_j7513aa wrote

No I think it’s more insidious than that. I think he’s trying to shut down Twitter in a way that doesn’t have his investors coming after him for deliberately destroying it. If he keeps trying to monetize it more and more and it turns into a ghost town he can shrug and go “welp, I tried, guess it was already doomed guys, sorry and all that.

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Zealousideal_Ad9747 t1_j75ezqo wrote

Man destroys something he once thought was beautiful isn't exactly a news story though. Have you seen how many divorced people there are out in the world?

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pwalkz t1_j75iytb wrote

Same thing as your first proposition. He intentionally destroys it.

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OriginalCompetitive t1_j75gxzz wrote

What evidence do we have that Twitter is even losing money, much less shutting down?

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BlameThePeacock t1_j75ii57 wrote

There have been multiple reports by reputable organizations on the list of advertisers that shut down or scaled back their spending on the platform along with estimates on current loses per day being in the millions.

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OriginalCompetitive t1_j76jgcq wrote

Seems like that was just a temporary blip:

“New data suggests that the effect was temporary, with Twitter having managed to grow its advertiser roster to 3,700 in the fourth quarter of 2022 from 3,000 in the third quarter, according to an ad intelligence firm’s report released Wednesday.

Twitter averaged 3,330 U.S. advertisers per month on average in the first quarter; 3,740 in the second; 3,000 in the third; and 3,700 in the last three months of the year.“

It’s hard to know for sure, of course.

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eugene20 t1_j747gsi wrote

The only way he could do that the way he is burning through the company would be by using their plummet to game the stock market illegally.

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Ultrabadger t1_j74rv89 wrote

I thought Twitter went private because Musk now owns it. There is no gaming the stock price.

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Steve_the_Samurai t1_j73e1nv wrote

The first $300m interest payment was due this week so...

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Kalel2319 t1_j74lwow wrote

God how many people could that money feed?

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kerkyjerky t1_j74o4kt wrote

Well elon has already pedantically offered to feed the world so I’m assuming zero people.

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Real-Problem6805 t1_j74qidh wrote

He offered to sell the stock instantly if the reporter could make a reasonable plan to do so

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kerkyjerky t1_j74wtmp wrote

I mean do you really need a plan to actually make a difference in someone’s life? Feels like an easy escape if you ask me. It really doesn’t have to be a one size fits all approach, just give starving people food, the details can be worked out later. If you have ever been starved or genuinely malnourished, you would know that nothing else matters.

Again, if he genuinely wanted to make a difference in starving peoples lives, he can do it one meal at a time, one community at a time, hell one person at a time. Because as of right now, he still has done less than my 35 dollar a month donation.

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Real-Problem6805 t1_j750hp4 wrote

Yep because a plan is sustainable. You realize that food programs in places like Africa actually cause more starvation? Because free beats locally purchased every time it drives local produce out of the market. So you have to plan how to do stuff. Otherwise your just feeding pets

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Boreras t1_j76btp5 wrote

This is not true, a lot of food programmes and aid is aimed at helping producers become more productive.

https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/33836

https://academic.oup.com/wber/article/33/1/1/5036796

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Real-Problem6805 t1_j76xa5x wrote

It's true direct food aid pushes local prices down and pushes local farmers out of the market.https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/world/americas/14iht-food.4.7116855.html

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Silvawuff t1_j75rr73 wrote

This, and there’s also the tidbit that a lot of world hunger stuff is gated behind, well, world peace.

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OriginalCompetitive t1_j75h8nl wrote

Musk could pay $300M per month for the rest of his natural life and not run out of money.

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Steve_the_Samurai t1_j76h212 wrote

In order to do that he would have to sell at least some of his businesses. He could not personally pay for it. Hence why he has a giant loan with 300m interest payments

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Infamous_Yogurt2858 t1_j73y7vg wrote

It would require a miracle for that not to be the case. Musk spent a pile on the purchase and his entire vision for the platform was essentially rolling back everything Twitter did to make themselves amenable to major sponsors.

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unresolved_m t1_j74kw9k wrote

I'm surprised Twitter didn't crash in any major way so far.

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satansxlittlexhelper t1_j74nr2d wrote

I mean, it can’t ‘crash’. Once he bought it, it became a private company. Everything the company makes or loses is absorbed by Musk. And by ‘Musk’ I mean ‘Tesla’.

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unresolved_m t1_j74oi88 wrote

I mean crash as in "blue fail whale" appearing all the time. When company was bigger that used to happen often and now that cut down stuff I expected Twitter to get even worse in terms of crashes. It didn't, although that's not meant to say it got better either.

Had my account hacked into the other week. Still waiting for Twitter Support to provide some help.

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satansxlittlexhelper t1_j74p4lh wrote

Thanks, great response. I’d assume that’s because cutting the headcount to such an extreme degree means the remaining devs are doing a lot of brass-polishing, and Elon is hearing a lot of “Sorry, sir, no one here knows how that works, so we’re afraid to touch it”.

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i-can-sleep-for-days t1_j74t4zq wrote

Doubt the people remaining would say no to musk. They are also humming along by making people work longer hours. They had to sign a pledge that they would work like 80 hours a week or something.

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satansxlittlexhelper t1_j74tdlj wrote

Because everyone knows developers are at their best when they code non-stop for sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. I saw it on The Social Network, so it must be true.

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satansxlittlexhelper t1_j74tn6a wrote

SHOOT RED BULL DIRECTLY INTO MY VEINS UNTIL JAVASCRIPT SHOOTS OUT OF MY EYES DADDY MUSK

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TheLizardKing89 t1_j74chrr wrote

They can’t even pay rent on their office space.

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thingandstuff t1_j74lb34 wrote

It makes some sense to me. People don’t casually use it and it’s a disincentive for the botnets.

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thatVisitingHasher t1_j73d5py wrote

They’ve been running negative for years now. They need to monetize anything they can.

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CrotchetAndVomit t1_j73llwo wrote

That's the thing though. They didn't before this. But he leveraged everything he could do hard that his creditors are likely forcing the hand. Before Elon Twitter was a Venture Capital black hole. That's not the case anymore. This new emperor has no clothes and the banks and oligarchs want their cut of the palace next.

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thatVisitingHasher t1_j73mzgo wrote

It was running negative before Elon. They’ve been using Investor dollars to keep the company growing.

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CrotchetAndVomit t1_j73ne54 wrote

Yes. I know. Like I said, VC Black hole. My point was that with the shit Elon is pulling there, HIS investors are calling in their bets. That wasn't an issue for Twitter pre Musk. Twitter had made a business running at a loss and growing for well over a decade. Elon messed that all up because people hurt his feelings on the internet

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thatVisitingHasher t1_j73o59g wrote

Does he have investors right now? He turned it into a private company. Everyone got paid out when he bought the company. I think he’s using his own bank account to fund the business. There are no investors to chase away.

We should probably look at these tech companies that are growing with a negative balance sheet. That shouldn’t happen.

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CrotchetAndVomit t1_j73q7jy wrote

Oh course he has investors. While he is the majority stake holder he didn't buy Twitter with his pocket change. He has loans from several banks and a hand full of Saudis at a minimum. All of which likely have SUBSTANTIAL interest rates given that it's a loan for acquisition of a loss leading company

(Source from Routers with some incomplete numbers: https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/who-is-financing-elon-musks-44-billion-deal-buy-twitter-2022-10-07/ )

He offered severance yes but that's not the point and irrelevant to this conversation

him using his own persona accounts to finance his shit show at this point that's on him and because he fucked up by coming in way too hot and torching any good will he might have had from outside investment. You can track how he typically finances day to day operations by looking at any of his other companies. They are all run similarly at the macro level.

Plenty of tech companies run at a loss and grow for substantial periods of time. It's not in and of itself a cancerous place to be as a company when your product will take time to get to a place where it is marketable. Those companies often being an IP to a functional state and then sell it or are absorbed into other much larger companies like Google/Facebook/Amazon. So much so that it's become a trope on TV with shows like Silicon Valley.

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Infamous_Yogurt2858 t1_j73yq80 wrote

He may not have investors in the exact sense a public company does, but he absolutely has investors (or more properly creditors) who helped him finance the purchase and they want their cut.

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m0nk_3y_gw t1_j751cy9 wrote

They made a profit in 2018.

Their slacker CEO Jack left recently and they were probably turning things around.

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