Elon Musk is a bully
As all billionaires are. Along with unempathetic sociopathic psychopaths.
I can’t fathom having the power to save our at least change millions of lives…but instead choose to leech more wealth from the people that need it most. And systematically make the world worse. It’s a sickness.
There are no good billionaires.
I would build SO much low income, homeless, and transition housing. I would also start my own line of bamboo products and packaging to replace plastic.
Then you’d go bankrupt and stop supporting your “so much” housing, unless you’d gift it to those people, not give as a temporary service.
Bamboo - a nice idea. Actually I’m not sure it’s that hard for you to do even now. I’m serious, if you know the pipeline, then try to evaluate how much a start would cost (for it to be barely profitable). You need, well, bamboo itself (grows like a virus, shouldn’t be a problem), and on the process of making stuff from bamboo I’m not sure (I think it involves making some kind of pulp and then pressure?..), but humans do this kind of thing. Should probably start with dishes and cups.
The most important part of what you said is that you’d build “SO much” housing. If we’d just let the free market build all the housing it wants without letting NIMBYs get in the way, we’d have largely solved the housing crisis.
I mean, one can build it NITBY, just with functioning public transport to TBY, so that it could function. There’s plenty of available space on the planet.
Except we already have more houses than there are homeless people. The problem is the empty houses have ridiculous price tags due to corporate landlords and landlords refusing the sell and only rent (also at ridiculous prices)
Vacancy rates in the places where people actually want to live are really low. Besides, are people not allowed to have vacation homes?
Market price is a function of supply and demand. We’ve been under building housing for years.
Alright but life never promised anyone these luxuries. I don’t give a fuck if someone can’t have a vacation home because it means more people without one can have one. People act like freedom to do whatever the hell they want no matter how negatively it effects everyone else is their universal right. The Universe doesn’t give a fuck about your summer home, nature doesn’t give a fuck that you worked hard to get it. It will all be swallowed all the same if our main goal still is not perpetual survival. That may be authoritarian, but it is also the truth. We never left the game of survival we just plastered concrete and asphalt on top of it and pretended we were removed.
Modern billionaires are the manifestation of the rampant consumerism of the masses. Want to do your part against the billionaires? Start with consuming less. Buy less. Move toward minimal.
Well yeah. If you weren’t sociopathic, you wouldn’t be holding onto all of your money, but would instead be trying to help people with it.
Being a billionaire means having the means to help millions of people, and deciding to instead keep all that money for yourself.
Not necessarily. It may be optimization between what you give now and what you keep for later to make more, with the total effect on others’ well-being being the criterion. I mean, theoretically.
If you make a dime and immediately give it away randomly, you are making a worse decision than keeping it by this criterion. If you immediately give it away not randomly, but to somebody you think needs it, still possibly worse because you could try and make much more and then, say, open a pharmaceutical company.
Say, with cattle you’d use some for meat and some to make more cattle to feed more people. You wouldn’t just slaughter the whole herd for meat. It’s worse.
Being a billionaire means using it to acquire more money which provides more power which provides more control. Shit floats to the top.
You can’t be sociopathic and psychopathic - they’re different points on the same (ASPD) spectrum. Please learn what words mean before throwing them around.
That may be the most tautological sentence I’ve ever read.
Automated teller ATM machine 👍
Personal Identification PIN Number 👍
What short, catchy username did Musk’s company change Hwang’s handle to? @x12345678998765.
It could have been worse.
They could have named him “X Æ A-12” 😵💫
Kyle!
According to Hwang, the company now formerly known as Twitter did offer “an alternative handle with the history of the @x account” so that his original account, complete with its posts and followers, could live on and continue to be used.
What short, catchy username did Musk’s company change Hwang’s handle to? @x12345678998765.
You can’t make this shit up. God damn!
that sounds like what an idiot would have for a password.
Quick someone check if it’s Elons password!
Nah his password would definitely include an “42069” in it.
Did you try
xXx42069NoScopexXx?
It’s the same password I have on my luggage!
Who the hell downvoted an Airplane! quote?
Maybe someone who hasn’t see Airplane.
I refuse to believe there are people like that. I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue.
So you are saying one could log into @x with that…
However, Hwang tells me, he was also offered a new handle of his choice – as long as it’s available. He just hasn’t picked one yet.
He should ask for @twitter.
It’s only fair. An even trade.
“as long as it’s available” is as good as nothing imho.
We’ll a lot of people have left
Since his handle is being taken against his will, he should get to take someone else’s handle against their will. Then let it be a chain reaction.
That is absolutely hilarious. They should’ve offered him @twitter in exchange, it would only be fair…
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All for the buzz I imagine.
Or for some hyper inflated fragile ego I guess.
Well that’s my guess.
Let’s be real now. That name is temporary until he chooses his new one. Read the whole article. It’s rediculous enough without making things seem even worse.
But look at that username. It definitely not randomly generated. Someone at Twitter pick that new name. They just give someone with the shortest username possible (1 character) the longest possible username (15 characters), and they do so by pressing the number row back and forth until they hit the username characters size limit. If it’s not a mockery then I don’t know what is.
It’s not mockery, it is the logical thing to do. They don’t want to allocate a username a person would actually want, so naturally they pick the longest possible username, with arbitrary and meaningless contents. Would you have been happier if it was @xloremipsumdolo? @xtemporaryusern? Like what was the right thing for the technician who had to pick the name to do, in your mind?
I thought long and hard about this, and you’re right. If it were me, no matter what the new username is, I’m still going to be mad. But I feel like I’ll be less mad (just a little bit less) if they select a completely random username (with sensible length, like 8 characters or less), indicating it’s chosen by an impartial random number generator instead of chosen by someone who in my mind is messing with me (image of Elon Musk laughing at me coming in my mind).
💩
I hate to say it because Fuck Elon, but this is just one of those things you sign away when you agree to the terms of service.
True, but it’s still worth criticizing because of him being so dickish about it. He even renamed the account @x12345678998765.
And he could have gone down the “Mike Row Soft” route and offered the guy some free stuff as compensation. Terms allowing them to do something doesn’t mean they have to be dicks about it.
Exactly! Musk is being an asshole because he can and he likes it. Sure, he has every right to be an asshole just like Jason Aldean has the right to release a racist song. That doesn’t make them free from criticism.
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Bro you’ve only got 2 comments are both of em are shit talkin’ one dude. Grow up.
Blocked.
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Bro you’ve only got 2 comments are both of em are shit talkin’ one dude. Grow up.
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It’s still really petty - Elon is one of the richest guys on earth. Take the username, but send him a Tesla. Invite him to a SpaceX launch.
Well you don’t get rich by giving away 100k cars to everyone…
Exactly. You get rich by being a dick.
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Man…
I was pretty bummed when I heard that Twitter was going to die. There are some cool moments in history that happened on Twitter. It was a hell of a ride, but the writing was on the wall well before Elon bought it. It was time to go.
But not like this.
It deserved a good death. Not to have it’s corpse raped on full display over and over.
A lot of very talented people committed so much time and energy to this. When it launched, it was a novel idea and they really forged some roads in our understanding of how we communicate and receive information.
It was clear at the end that it would never produce the kind of ROI on advertising to make investors happy, and that Nazis had clearly taken over the platform and used it to bastardize journalism further. It was time to go to pasture.
But not like this.
Hopefully its mutilated, humiliated and desiccated corpse will feed the growth of the federated web.
I hope you find peace, sweet prince.
Twitter was profitable before Musk took over.
The purchase itself saddled Twitter with $13 billion in debt. Musk paid $26bn, other investors (including the Saudi prince) together paid $5bn, and the remaining $13bn was a loan Twitter took out to buy itself on their behalf.
The new owners only paid tax on the $31bn they paid, not the $44bn that was paid to shareholders. (Here’s something I’m not sure about: Musk was one of the largest shareholders. Is the $44bn the total value of all shares - does that include Musk’s shares? Did he basically buy shares from himself?)
The interest on that $13bn was comparible to Twitter’s revenue, before Musk started fucking around. Twitter could not afford that debt.
The buyout itself was what killed Twitter. Everything since then has been nothing but a clown show to distract from the fact that was the original intention.
Thank you. I hate it when people say Twitter wasn’t profitable. It was profitable. It just wasn’t an infinite money printing machine like people (investors) wanted. Twitter didn’t need investor money or loans to pay all its bills unlike say Tumblr.
Twitter was the victim of the same financial BS as Toysrus.
I’ve had the impression for a while that Twitter upper management wanted monthly active users on the level of Facebook, Tiktok and other social media. To enrich themselves by way of ad revenue, rather than to create opportunities and experiences for the platform and its users. Then when it became apparent that such a potential opportunity had come and gone (if it was ever there in the first place), they did what was in their minds the next-best thing: They cashed out while they could still find a buyer. Elon’s idiotically freewheeling but nevertheless binding offer was basically their winning lottery ticket, so they held his feet to the fire instead of treating it like the thoughtless shitpost it was.
Wait, that sounds like a leveraged buyout. I overlooked that detail in the news. It changes everything.
I know that some investment firms use leveraged buyouts to drain every bit of money from a company before they chop it up, sell the good bits and let the rest go bankrupt due to the massive debts left in the carcass of the old company. It’s so scummy I wonder why it’s not illegal.
It is a leveraged buyout, yes.
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the remaining $13bn was a loan Twitter took out to buy itself on their behalf.
That’s truly some Hollywood-accounting-style bullshit. I couldn’t even imagine the paradoxical mathematics it took to make that happen.
It would be like me paying you to buy a candy bar from me.
I’m not saying it wasn’t profitable. It’s a hell of an achievement that it was.
Just that they took on a lot of investment capital and it wasn’t the kind of return that investors were expecting.
Ultimately, the efficacy of social media advertising on the whole is in the decline. The number and types of companies that used to advertise and run their business on Facebook is so different today than it was five years ago, and business are seeing far less return for their budget.
Twitter was riding a knife’s edge (particularly during COVID) and would have to really scramble to stay in the red in the future.
would have to really scramble to stay in the red in the future
Did you mean stay in the black?
there was a time when twitter was the place for internet sensation. if you want to see what’s going around the world, twitter was a great place to visit. movements like #metoo wouldn’t have happened if there was no twitter. sad to see that musk just plays with it like a toy and making it’s credibility to lose everyday and giving it a slow death.
movements like #metoo wouldn’t have happened if there was no twitter.
That’s exactly why Musk is doing what he’s doing.
Indeed, put it out of its misery.
Musk is an overpaid idiot, but anyone has to expect not to have any real rights on any website.
To be fair, no user “owns” their account. Everything about your Twitter account, from the user name to the data you tweet belongs to Twitter. I hesitate to call it a dick move. It’s more of an Elon move.
I really hope phrases like “he got Musked” and “they Musked up” become a thing.
Right. Although I don’t support it, but if the logic is that they can supress stories and say you don’t have a free speech on a private platform, then they can take away your handle because technically it’s theirs.
The user got Elon’d
Get Musked kiddo 😎
Imagine how amazing the PR would have been if the title had been: “User gets spectator seating for a SpaceX launch in return for lost handle”
Instead he got a “fuck you” 🤷
Another example of Musk being a cunt, what a surprise
I can hear his theme song now…
X gon’ take it from ya (uh), he gon’ take it from ya X gon’ take it from ya, he gon’ take it from ya
First we gonna rock, then we gonna roll Then we let it pop, go, let it go
This can be done with any centralized social media. You don’t know your username.
I wouldn’t say it’s limited to centralized social media. The admin of Lemmy.world could go into its database and do whatever they want to my username, too. And other instances can feel free to steal my name if I didn’t grab it first.
That’s correct! The only social media I would trust is Nostr.
I doubt X has much money to spare to give to people considering how they hemorrhage money.
Clearly you don’t realize how much a billion dollars really is then.
He could literally lose 99% of his wealth and still be islands buying rich.
Elon is not Twitter/X. Sure, he could pump all his personal money into it and keep it afloat indefinitely and I’m sure he’s putting in personal money… but at the end of the day they’re separate entities.
You want a business to survive on its own funding. If I were him I would try to put in as little personal money as possible. Which is why we’re seeing stuff like them getting evicted from office spaces. He doesn’t want to just burn money.
Thank you for this!
I dislike Musk as much as the next person, but most of the hate of Musk & Twitter/X fails to make the distinction that they are not the same thing. At this point, any additional capital injected into X is throwing good money after really bad money.
Elon is not Twitter but Twitter is Elon. It used to be a public company, but now it is his personal property. There is no difference between Elon losing a dollar and Twitter losing a dollar. If he can use his personal resources to manipulate Twitter’s market value or appeal to advertises, he can and will because anything else is leaving money on the table. They are not separate entities.
From what i have read, most of his money is in the stock value of tesla. If other car makers take away teslas market share then elons wealth will soon follow, and right now he does not exactly do any of “his” companies any favours with his ego and business decisions.
What short, catchy username did Musk’s company change Hwang’s handle to? @x12345678998765.
That’s some really !funnyandsad material…
Sounds like someone trying to type a random number on the keyboard, looking at it, and thinking, what ever
It’s not even random, it’s counting 1 to 9 and then down again to 5. Seems like even less effort lol. It’s either patronising in a show off kind of way or just dumb. Either way… just wow.
The guy should ask for @xoriginal…
Technically they don’t need to nor would you. Yeah its shitty but its making a mountain out of a molehill…
A typical Internet scammer would have at least pretended to offer some money before stealing the username.
He ain’t pretending …
