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Comment by monero-xmr | Hacker News Reader

He’s the richest person on earth and has a very solid track record. I’m betting he knows more than the average bitter commenter.

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That's a losing bet since we actually have enough information about his knowledge beyond the simplistic heuristic "he's rich so he's right"

So you'll be willing to sell me calls in an Elon owned company then, yes?

This doesn't make sense whether you know he's failing or not. With that amount of money he can literally buy a temporary success when needed. That makes betting against his companies extremely risky - even if you're sure they'll collapse long term.

If Twitter could still be traded, he could announce his X app with some broken features, buy lots of ads, pay for influencers and reviews, and Twitter price would go up. And he's the kind of person who we know could totally do it.

For Twitter? Sure, it just wasn't possible anymore. And Tesla is still down 30 % as of now in the last 12 months, despite a 50% rally since January. I guess quite a few shortsellers made quite some money on that.

None of that is mitigated by the fact that Tesla is still up 718% since 2018, not everybody invested back then, nor is everybody, especially shorts and their counterparts in thier trades, long term investors.

These words you're using, I don't think they mean what you think they mean

Your question makes no sense without price information, and even then, that's way too broad a target to reflect the knowledge of a guy, where just listening is more than enough

a) He's not the richest person on earth.

b) His track record in general is not without faults.

c) His track record with Twitter is clear for everyone to see. Revenue has plummeted, Twitter Blue subscription numbers are just embarrassing and BlueSky is every day attracting more and more key content creators. Twitter is slowly but surely going to end up being nothing more than a Truth Social / Gab clone.

Revenue doesn't matter, profit does. Articles focusing on the former are being intentionally disingenuous. Twitter's employed headcount has fallen to to ~1800 from 7500, and their contractor headcount to ~1100 from 5500. And among the layoffs include most (all?) of the former executive positions, many of which drew quite absurd comp. For instance Vijaya Gadde's final comp was ~$17 million for a year.

That's going to be a dramatic decrease in costs. Their revenue since is going to be difficult if not impossible to fairly assess. Many (most?) of the largest advertisers like Apple/Amazon have returned, but likely with discounted enticements which, to my knowledge, are not public. So all one can do is speculate. I think the only fair conclusion is that it's hardly doomsday for Twitter, but it's also not quite time for a victory parade either.

I genuinely hope alternatives, especially decentralized ones, succeed. Competition improves everybody. But the reason Elon spent $40 billion on Twitter is not for the software, but for the users. Network effect is seemingly impossible to overcome, regardless of the merit of a site.

>He’s the richest person on earth

Mainly because of Tesla, which is overvalued also according to him.

>bitter commenter.

This fits for Elon too.

His track record at running Twitter has been abysmal so far.

Twitter works fine for me.

That's not incompatible with what I said. It mostly "works fine" for me too.

Works fine for me too. And am looking forward to all the new features they now have in the pipeline.

same

You can't squeeze blood from a turnip, and you can't make Twitter profitable. Twitter's problem is, and always has been, the business model. If you want to make money off ads then you have to keep the content acceptable to advertisers. Advertisers don't want their ads next to neo-Nazi propaganda on Twitter. Elon's approach to this is totally assbackwards if his goal is to make money.

Can you point to some examples of this propaganda?

Here is Musk himself trying to provide cover to one last week when he really had no reason to open his mouth about the shooting at all.

https://fortune.com/2023/05/10/elon-musk-twitter-texas-mall-...

Do you have a link to the tweets? I'm not reading through that

I am not your errand boy. I sent you the information you requested. You have all the details you need to research if you so desire.

I wasn't the one who insinuated that twitter was full of, and I quote, "neo-Nazi propaganda". And the comment history of the one who made that claim suggests an axe to grind.

Have you used Twitter?

yes?

Its idea that people covet a rich person just because they're rich is bizzare.

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