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Comment by max599 | Hacker News Reader

Twitter is not "trying to solve this problem", they are embracing it and benefiting from it. They are strongly incentivised to keep the bots because it gives them a massive boost in their number of active users and the valuation of their company.

I don't think this would ever change unless they go private with someone that has no intention of selling it. I have no idea how successful Elon would be at removing them, but at least he intend to try to do it.

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I don't think that the biggest benefits that Musk is bringing are technical ones, although he can surely afford to mobilize a lot of technical power, but policy ideas. Twitter will be run differently, become less toxic, and hopefully in addition to that game-changing attitude the bot problem can be addressed as well. I don't see how it can get worse, but there's a lot of potential for it to get better. Who knows? I might actually start using it.

Overnight it’ll become less toxic because he’ll “run it differently”? I’m skeptical.

> Twitter will be run differently, become less toxic, and hopefully in addition to that game-changing attitude the bot problem can be addressed as well. I don't see how it can get worse, but there's a lot of potential for it to get better.

While I'm an optimist in real life, unfortunately I don't have much reason to believe anything will improve, particularly due to Musk. He is hardly the most reasonable or grounded person. (Mind you, as a twitter user I do hope it improves.)

> surely afford to mobilize a lot of technical power

How do you reckon he’ll do that?

I think one of his strongest skills is recruiting young engineers who are ready to work harder for him than they should for less pay than they could get elsewhere.

And not just twitter!

Surely the biggest outgoing for marketing departments is paying for 'active users'.

Are you suggesting fraud? If not what? (I also suspect many MAU numbers are fraudulent)

Edit: spelling

Elon isn't paying for this out of his own pocket. He's not transferring it to some perpetual trust a la the Guardian and the Scott Trust. He's taking it private but there will still be pressure from everyone he's raised money from to make sure they make good.

Mostly, I think this is going to end up being one of the most expensive acts of individual hubris in history. It's strange from someone whose other notable projects have such clear goals. "Moar free speech lmao" doesn't sound measureable, let alone achievable while also making bank.

The money he's secured is mostly loans, not venture capital, so that sort of pressure to grow or pad numbers should indeed be diminished.

Bloomberg mentioned two loans to cover the shortfall in his equity swap (one external and one drawn on his Tesla stock), with annual interest payments in the ballpark of $1B each. So Twitter's take home pay just lost $2B of the $4B it nets annually. Losing further market share by re-engineering retweet algorithms to be kinder/gentler looks like a better bet to bury Twitter than raise it.

But mature media giants are supposed to lose money, right?

"one of the most expensive acts of individual hubris in history" is what people have been saying about everything Elon does for a while now.

> "Moar free speech lmao" doesn't sound measureable

Did you just make up a ridiculous quotation and then attribute the sound of it to Musk ?

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