Elon Musk Buys Twitter

[Starkiller]

21 minutes ago, CreepingDeath said:

I was considering if Putin fits in with this due to Musk talking to him for Starlink, etc.  Twitter was a tool for the masses for at least he Arab Spring.  Dictators don't like the old social media.  

Dictators like social media they can control, like the other forms of media. 
 

And while I could see Putin wanting to have input on Twitter in a way he could use it like China uses Weibo, America would shut down Twitter if Elon ever used it in Russia like that. 

[pat]

3 hours ago, reo said:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/11/twitter-could-go-bankrupt-lose-billions-next-year-musk-tells-staff/

 

 

Sounds like the rumors that he wanted to turn it into some sort of all in one app like one in China are true. He's definitely wanting to challenge PayPal and Google as a payment system. 

 

I wonder if he'll try to use it to help Russia evade sanctions. 

He’ll have to hire a CISO before becoming a bank.  Wonder if he even has the staff to do PCI compliance.

[pat]

The idea that Twitter will become a bank a week after their Chief Information Security Officer, Chief Compliance Officer, and Chief Privacy Officer’s all quit is laughable.  Almost as laughable as the ideas that engineers will self certify to the FTC.

 

It ain’t happening.

 

 

[pat]

This is an exciting week:

 

Valid from 13/Dec/2021 to 12/Dec/2022

 

Digicert auto renews 30 days before expiration.  So if someone is paying attention, it should get fixed this week.

 

For the non technical folks, SSL cert renewal should be easy but often is trickier than one would like it to be.  In this case, it happens once a year so it’s easy to forget about.  And when the cert is invalid, many things won’t connect.

 

just a wee little canary to see how bad things are.  It should never be so bad for a company like Twitter that this is conceivable.

[oldschool]

My goodness can Musk really be this stupid? I know its been floated he is tanking Twitter on purpose but what is the end game in doing so? His investors won't be too happy. Am I missing something?

 

 

 

 

[Starkiller]

Imagine how worried you’d be if Elon bought the Titans…

[Titans279]

2 hours ago, Starkiller said:

Imagine how worried you’d be if Elon bought the Titans…

Hah I was thinking this morning how he’s running the place like some NFL owners run their teams (Irsay). 

 

Dude paid 44B to become Twitter’s main character 
 

 

[reo]

4 hours ago, oldschool said:

 Am I missing something?

 

You're missing that this is how Elon operates.

 

It's the same w/ SpaceX. Where most companies in the research field will now do a ton of research and development into design ideas before testing, Musk is known for just trying things and failing to see if they work then trying something else. That's essentially what he's doing here. He has an idea. He tries it to see if it works w/o looking into it too much. It fails. Then he tries something else.

[reo]

It's a very expensive way to do business but it can be faster.

 

Let's say Lockheed Martin wants to change the paint they use for the f35 b/c they think it'll help their stealth capabilities but it'll change the surface roughness of the wings and they're not sure what that'll do to the aerodynamics.

 

LM would then go through weeks or months of design selection to see if it's worth the risk. Then they'd go through weeks or months of CFD testing to see what they can expect. After that they'd schedule wind tunnel time to see if what actually happens in the wind tunnel matches their expectations. Then they'll paint an f35 and run test flights w/ the new configuration. And by then there better not be any real surprises or someone fucked up.

 

Elon would just buy/build an F35 and paint the wing and fly it... probably crash some F35s in the process.. may or may not kill some pilots. Then he'd do it again until he found something that works.

 

Thankfully he's not in the F35 business. At SpaceX, he can blow up all the rockets in the desert or crash them into the ocean all he wants and no one really gives a shit. Kill some pilots or fuck up a company like Eli Lily's profit margins and people pay attention. 

[Starkiller]

Some people think he’s trying to push Twitter towards bankruptcy as quickly a possible since it’s going to get there eventually. But if that’s true, I’m not sure what his endgame is, or if he has even thought that far ahead.

[reo]

11 minutes ago, Starkiller said:

Some people think he’s trying to push Twitter towards bankruptcy as quickly a possible since it’s going to get there eventually. But if that’s true, I’m not sure what his endgame is, or if he has even thought that far ahead.

 

I doubt it. he's trying things w/o actually thinking them through first. it's bad manager 101

 

he's doing the exact same things he did w/ SpaceX. Cut overhead by firing people then make his employees work longer and longer hours b/c they're replaceable. Then implement "fixes" w/o actually thinking them through or testing them well first

[Starkiller]

1 hour ago, reo said:

 

I doubt it. he's trying things w/o actually thinking them through first. it's bad manager 101

 

he's doing the exact same things he did w/ SpaceX. Cut overhead by firing people then make his employees work longer and longer hours b/c they're replaceable. Then implement "fixes" w/o actually thinking them through or testing them well first

That might be true, but he is doing things that seem to anyone with any common sense to be clearly leading towards failure. It’s not clear he’s even trying to make the company successful with these moves. 

[reo]

1 minute ago, Starkiller said:

That might be true, but he is doing things that seem to anyone with any common sense to be clearly leading towards failure. It’s not clear he’s even trying to make the company successful with these moves. 

 

he's looking for ways to charge money to twitter users and not really thinking them through. that's really all he's done.

[Starkiller]

53 minutes ago, reo said:

he's looking for ways to charge money to twitter users and not really thinking them through. that's really all he's done.

Actually he has done a lot more than that, it’s just often less visible.
 

He is actively driving off advertisers (which could be seen as intentionally cutting revenue). He has laid off half the employees (many illegally, at least in California) and has eliminated 80% of the contractors, which is frankly below an operational level. He tried to push off legal obligations (liability for new features) to upper level employees who then quit because they refused to be liable. He might have violated an FTC consent agreement as well as other federal regulations dealing with data integrity.

 

At best he is an incompetent CEO. At worst he’s trying to damage the company. It’s just very hard to tell which it is at this point.

Edited November 14, 2022 by Starkiller

[reo]

53 minutes ago, Starkiller said:

Actually he has done a lot more than that, it’s just often less visible.
 

He is actively driving off advertisers (which could be seen as intentionally cutting revenue). He has laid off half the employees (many illegally, at least in California) and has eliminated 80% of the contractors, which is frankly below an operational level. He tried to push off legal obligations (liability for new features) to upper level employees who then quit because they refused to be liable. He might have violated an FTC consent agreement as well as other federal regulations dealing with data integrity.

 

At best he is an incompetent CEO. At worst he’s trying to damage the company. It’s just very hard to tell which it is at this point.

 

Not really anything that hasn't already been mentioned.