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Comment by celtoid | Hacker News Reader

Musk is a major military/intelligence contractor. Twitter was becoming a threat to the US national security state, imo. I agree with your thought re: Musk purposefully destroying Twitter.

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And he fixed that threat by allowing Russian bots to have a blue badge next to their fake celebrity name, I mean good job.

Yet another way to destroy Twitter's brand and ultimately Twitter itself.

I'm not agreeing with the theory presented, but "what's good for the US national security state" and "what's good for the US population" are two separate things.

I’m not really understanding how Twitter was becoming a threat to the US national security state. That “fact” being true is the prerequisite to this particular conspiracy theory, and I don’t think it’s a strong theory. This was a US-based public company where TLAs can knock on their door anytime.

I think the explanation is far simpler: Elon fully controls Twitter and is doing whatever he wants. Whether he lost $50 billion on it is immaterial at this point: he’s so wealthy that it will take him no time at all to recover that kind of money.

With only ~20% of its original headcount, I have to assume Twitter is profitable, even if it lost half its advertising revenue.

Twitter is still commanding a huge user base: the number of people leaving Twitter just because of Elon being a baby is way overstated. There are probably, no exaggeration, hundreds of millions of Twitter users who have basically no clue who the guy is (especially outside the United States where 75% of Twitter users are located).

I don’t even think Elon’s vision for the product as a “super app” is all that dumb, it just depends on whether it’s something that can be successfully executed. For example, Instagram added direct shopping within their app and it’s been successful. That would be a great start for Twitter or X or whatever it is going to be.

> With only ~20% of its original headcount, I have to assume Twitter is profitable, even if it lost half its advertising revenue.

This is a terrible assumption. Not only do they have massive infrastructure cost but he also saddled the company with over $1 billion / year in interest costs on the loans he used to buy the company.

I wasn't actually thinking this though, I was being facetious. Just saying that Elon is running the company so comically poor that you'd have to think he's doing it on purpose. Not saying he -is- doing it on purpose, just that he is actually running the company -that- badly.

> Twitter was becoming a threat to the US national security state, imo.

I'm going to need a source for that one. That seems like the exact opposite of what actually happened prior to Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter.

Twitter was a threat to Donald Trump and those who allied with him, not the US national security state.

Per the "Twitter Files" that Elon Musk released upon gaining control Twitter effectively worked in concert with the Democrats, the FBI, and liberal media outlets.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/fairnes...

> Twitter was a threat to Donald Trump and those who allied with him, not the US national security state.

A threat to all of those in power, for the same exact reasons.

The posts you happened to see personally don't really have any relevance on the various power groups around the world that have had big leaks on the platform.

Did you not read my link? The Democrats, the FBI, Twitter, and liberal media colluded to work against Donald Trump.

Guess what...if you're on the side of the Democrats, the FBI, Social Media, and over 90% of traditional media companies, you're part of the establishment and the US national security state.

Donald Trump was the one that was considered a threat to the establishment.

I'm not debating the merits of Donald Trump as a person or as a politician, but literally the opposite of what is being asserted here in other comments is what happened.

I'm not here to talk about Donald Trump.

I'm just pointing out that you had it all mixed up. Twitter was allied with the national security state prior to Musk's acquisition, not opposed to them.

How does that impact, say, the Saudi ownership of Twitter?

Think broader, more completely.

"Twitter's former head of security is now blowing the whistle on the company. Peiter Zatko, also known by his hacker name Mudge, filed complaints with several government agencies. He accuses Twitter of serious security flaws that he says pose a risk to the platform's users, shareholders and national security. "

https://www.npr.org/2022/08/23/1119103584/whistleblower-says...

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