234 points

Just stop permanently.

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69 points

Stop X permanently. The lawsuits are massing up, and the value of the business has nearly dropped such that the $13bn debt is bigger than it. They had little hope of paying even the interest before Musk started intentionally tanking their revenue. He knows that the business will never have to pay up, hell they’re not even paying rent on their offices, and he’ll get away with the crime Scott free because it’s a limited liability company.

And make no mistake, that was the plan all along. Destroy a private business cum public forum that served the public good, and on the way out see what controversial actions they can get away with. That way any site that comes to fill the void can do the same. His old mate Peter Thiel will likely be pleased, along with a bunch of other unscrupulous people.

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36 points
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Destroy a private business cum public forum that served the public

It’s amazing to me how much people have rewritten history since musk took over. Twitter was always shit. It’s worse now, yeah. A lot worse. But it’s like taking a shit on a smaller pile of shit. All this talk about how it was a real boon for humanity and so important it should be regulated as a utility is equal parts idiotic and hilarious.

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31 points
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It’s shit, but it had significant uses. Namely, getting breaking news from trusted journalists, and speaking directly to businesses for consumer support when other methods typically went unanswered.

That’s not to mention the Arab Spring. Sure, significant change that people had hoped for didn’t follow through, but it still spooked them enough that one of the incumbent leaders helped buy the website to undermine it.

Also, when you compare it to Facebook it certainly was better. Even reddit was better, then followed it down the drain.

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5 points
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I 100% agree it was shit. Sometimes though, that shit fertilized real growth.

That said, lesson shouldn’t be, “we need twitter.” It should be, let’s populate similar platforms so we can have this resource in the future.

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1 point

It was both good and bad, period.

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18 points
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served the public good

Yeah, nah. For a start, if one website could be singled out for bringing Trump into power, it wasn’t any of those icky extremist places such as 4chan, 8chan, r/trump - it was Twitter where he posted his garbage for literal years with no interruption and thus gained a massive following. The site practically lived off his controversial diarrhea.

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17 points

You could say the same about reddit in a large part. 4chan was a free home, Twitter was a megaphone, but reddit really encouraged the infestation to gestate.

Also it wasn’t r/trump, but r/the_Donald, as well as all the spin off astroturfed subs.

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7 points

I don’t disagree this is a possibility, but I have yet to hear someone clearly articulate why poopoobrain over there would do something so dumb intentionally.

I find it so much more compelling that he’s just a divorce-brained middle-aged dumbass with a megaphone and billions to dig his own grave. That he was forced to buy Twitter after waving his dick around in public and has been trying to save his reputation ever since by pretending that it’s all a part of his plan to amplify the right voices to ‘save humanity’.

I’m not saying he isn’t brain-broken enough to believe it himself, but I don’t think he ever really had a plan. I think he’s a sad, lonely billionaire going through the worlds biggest mid-life crisis.

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4 points

but I have yet to hear someone clearly articulate why poopoobrain over there would do something so dumb intentionally.

Because it distracts from the fact that leveraged buyouts are almost always meant to kill the business in the long run, and such distraction reduces the chance of regulation against the practice. People don’t think Twitter is failing because it had $13bn of debt it could never afford, they think it’s failing because Musk is a poor businessman. That isn’t to say Musk is a great businessman acting like a fool, rather, he is a clown acting like a fool.

I think if Musk had made a genuine effort to buy Twitter there wouldn’t have been so much debt saddled onto the business. Musk was forced to make the purchase, but the nature of the purchase has subsequently been tailored into sinking the ship. One of the first things they did was stop paying rent - if this wasn’t a sign of a business doomed to failure I don’t know what is. The business will die a death, and everyone it owes money to will be left fighting over the ashes.

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4 points

website formerly known as twitter*

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1 point

Twitter never served the public good. Musk is doing us all a public service by killing it and associating himself with Nazi losers in front of the whole world. Now everyone knows that Musk sucks, Shitter sucks, and Nazis suck.

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1 point

I mean Twitter has always been a bit Marmite (I certainly never got into it, even after they extended the character count) but it had some unique good aspects. From another comment, it was good for breaking news from trusted journalists, speaking directly to companies for customer service when other avenues would be ignored, and the Arab Spring (which maybe didn’t end up changing much, but it spooked the Saudi prince into joining in with the Twitter purchase).

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0 points

Twitter was literally a public company. Musk bought all the stock and took it private.

The amount of stupidity in this comment is worthy of it being posted on X

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6 points

Uhhh the plan plays out the same either way. Stop being a pedantic twat missing the entire point. Musk can do it no matter the mechanism through which he bought the company: He still bought it and ran it in to the ground!!

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3 points

Public company =/= publicly owned. As an American, you probably don’t know what a publicly owned business is, but public schools are pretty close (again though, Americans and education…). A company in the public sector has to follow a lot more regulations than a company in the private sector. Twitter has always been in the private sector. It was publicly traded, now it is not.

Musk did not buy all the shares. Musk put up about $27 billion out of $44bn, most of which was Tesla shares (which subsequently tanked, and since then the business has been on something of a decline compared to their previous success). $5 billion came from other investors, including a Saudi prince. The remaining $13bn was a loan Twitter took out to buy itself on Musk’s behalf - this is the smoking gun that ultimately will kill the business, like most leveraged buyouts are bound to (eg Toys R Us).

But no, tell me I’m stupid while you speak in hollow hyperbole.

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12 points

yeah but money

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108 points

Why does anyone still use this pile of crap anyway since the kid took over?

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46 points

Pretty sure users have mostly left.

Companies and public figures keep using it, because for most of them it’s just some intern or bot that was posting.

It takes a while for social media to finally die because of that. They’ll just stumble on like a zombie for like a decade.

The only way it’ll happen faster, is if people loudly boycott anyone that’s still using it. But with 99% of social media sucking ass, there’s not really a place to do it from where companies and public figures will hear it.

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20 points

No, there are sadly a whole lot of users still on it.

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12 points

There’s even a bunch of hardcore right wingers praising it in its new form.

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-2 points

you know because you’re one of them?

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37 points

Don’t insult children like that, kids would have made way better and funnier decisions lmao

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4 points

You’re right. Sorry.

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1 point
Deleted by creator
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11 points

I’m still there because I like to know what the crazies think about stuff. It’s still entertaining in its own way. For example, did you know there are business experts on Twitter even smarter than Tim Cook? It’s true…

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28 points

Scott Adams needs to hide away in his Dilbert shaped house, never to be heard from again.

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7 points

Tim Cook must be on vacation! I know this because The Sacred Man Himself could never do such horrible thing!

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3 points

Everyone still there is scared of losing money, or attention.

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2 points

Yes. I know at least one person. His name is Elon.

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2 points

Sports… beat writers still use it and most news breaks on there first.

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12 points

most news breaks on there first

I’ve learned about Apple pausing their ads and about Sam Altman being fired on Mastodon. it’s been becoming much better replacement for Twitter in that regard, and is only going to continue to improve.

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4 points

Holy shit snacks, I had no idea Sam Altman has been fired

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3 points

I mean sporting news. I use mastodon and regularly check AP and Reuters for actual news. Mastodon isn’t even close to Twitter when it comes to sports.

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0 points

am kid ._.

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-3 points

For the same reason I started using it in the first place. Elon taking over haven’t changed my user experience in any way. It’s the same it has always been. Ironically enough it’s also the only social media platform where my feed is 99.5% free of politics or talk about Elon.

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60 points

The only part I hate is that real people have and will lose their jobs due to 1 person that treats this entire situation like a kids game.

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-24 points
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Deleted by creator
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35 points

He bought Twitter.

There are plenty of people who were affected by that

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-6 points
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Deleted by creator
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11 points

What happens with the HB-1 workers if they’re fired or if the company close?

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-17 points
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Deleted by creator
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6 points

Nearly all companies are cash-chasing shitholes. The real problem here is the disparity of wealth between top and bottom.

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6 points
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Deleted by creator
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51 points

The problem I see that it is “pause”, not “quit”.

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24 points

“Wait until it dies down, then go back to selling Macbooks to the Nazis.”

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2 points

This

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47 points

Why just pause

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36 points

Waiting for the latest Nazi shit to blow over.

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18 points

So they can start advertising on it again in two weeks when people aren’t paying as much attention again, duh. Just like when all those corporations stopped donating to insurrectionist Republicans, for about three seconds.

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5 points

Why not remove the app from their app store?

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1 point

He might sell X some time in the future.

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11 points

That’s not why it’s only a pause.

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-2 points

Please tell more. Don’t let us hanging out.

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8 points

He’s more likely to have to part it out in the bankruptcy hearing.

Forcing a company to take out a loan to buy itself should be illegal.

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