this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2023
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“If it involves money. It’ll be on our platform. Money or securities or whatever. So, it’s not just like send $20 to my friend. I’m talking about, like, you won’t need a bank account.”

Well that sounds terrifying!

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[–] blackstampede@sh.itjust.works 59 points 1 year ago (5 children)

My girlfriend has a theory that he's trying to destroy the platform deliberately. I disagreed with her until he renamed it to X lol

[–] napoleonsdumbcousin@feddit.de 85 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Just today there was a great comment by @Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works on why this does not make any sense.

  1. When you factor in the incredible damage done to the Tesla share price by the amount of stock he had to liquidate to finance the deal, and the almost billion a year in interest and operating costs the company is pulling out of him, the deal has, altogether, cost Musk about half of his net worth. No amount of petty childishness is worth that.
  1. He literally went to court to try to get out of the deal. What was his play here? To sue with the intention of failing? For what possible reason?
  2. If his plan was to kill Twitter, why would he attach his beloved X name to it? Musk has spent his entire life trying to make X happen. It is dearer to him than his own children. Why would he attach that brand to a company he’s intentionally sabotaging?
  3. If his goal is to kill Twitter, why is it still here? He owns the company outright. He took it private. There’s no board. There’s no shareholders. He doesn’t have a fiduciary responsibility. If he wanted Twitter dead, all he had to do was shut the doors, turn off the lights, and send everyone home.

Anyone who buys into this “He’s trying to kill Twitter” nonsense, please, I am begging you, try to get your head around the fact that Elon Musk is not a smart man. This isn’t some incredible 4D chess play. Twitter isn’t failing because of intentional sabotage; it’s failing because Musk is genuinely trying his best, and his best absolutely sucks. He’s a bad businessman who lucked into a fortune he never deserved.

https://sh.itjust.works/comment/4855307

[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Big chunk of the funding is from the Saudis though - and they have a very vested interest in trashing twitter.

It's also entirely possible the truth is somewhere in between - people who knew he couldn't manage his way out a paper bag working ego boy into buying twitter and ketting the inevitable happen. He's not exactly hard to manipulate.

[–] Kowowow@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Could have been both, twitter gets messed with enough to drive off normal people and musk gets to rebuild it from the ground up afterwards using what ever is left or they knew musk would be poison to twitter and let him just have fun with it

[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 4 points 1 year ago

"I'm sorry but i just sacrificed a very expensive social media just to get some quet time"

I have no idea why the idea of twitter being the meat-filled pumpkin they threw into Musk's enclosure to keep him busy cracks me up so hard, it just does

[–] napoleonsdumbcousin@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

Big chunk of the funding is from the Saudis though - and they have a very vested interest in trashing twitter.

This does not address any of the points above though. The Saudis could have just bought it for half the money and closed the doors.

It’s also entirely possible the truth is somewhere in between - people who knew he couldn’t manage his way out a paper bag working ego boy into buying twitter and ketting the inevitable happen. He’s not exactly hard to manipulate.

Manipulate into doing what? Buying twitter? I think it is very likely that he just attempted market manipulation and failed. Now he is trying to make the best out of the situation and transform Twitter into the company he actually wants. Except he is absolutely incompetent. I don't see where anybody manipulated him into doing anything. Everything that happened seems very much like him.

[–] ubermeisters@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

you assume he is a rational being.

[–] blackstampede@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

Oh yeah, neither of us were assuming he was intelligent- just a flailing asshole with a grudge. But you're probably right.

[–] jollyrogue@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don’t think he meant to. He’s just an idiot.

Right wing control of Twitter was always my hypothesis, since, as people have pointed out, Twitter gave regular people access to people with influence. Destroying Twitter destroys that access, but it was more valuable as a tool to manufacture consent, like most media.

[–] sock@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

to right wingers, failure is good as success

think about it, trump is a godlike business man despite failing numerous times at all his businesses. he loses the election people still think he won. caught with nuclear codes giving them to enemy intelligence? it was probably a librul framing him.

if x goes under people will say it's part of musk's master plan

[–] baronvonj@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

yeah that seems the most plausible explanation to me at this point.

[–] MeetInPotatoes@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago

Been saying that for a while now too. The people bankrolling him; Saudi Arabia and Russia, have a vested interest in seeing Twitter burn after the Arab Spring organized around it, and Ukraine found so much support on the platform. The thing is, he can't directly run it into the ground without lawsuits so he's doing it piece by piece.

[–] ubermeisters@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

I honestly think Twitter and Reddit self imploded intentionally to remove our ability to congregate in places outside of the 1%'s control.