Elon Musk just bought Twitter. What happens next?

Elon Musk just bought Twitter. What happens next?

What do you think?

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  15. For 99% of anyone nothing at all. Terms and conditions probably loosens up a little on content moderation. Within the business itself there could potentially be major changes/layoffs etc (Twitter currently has more employees per revenue $ than any other social medium by a fairly high margin).

  16. hopefully his promise of unrestricted free speech is true

    I can go back to calling Tomi Lahren a cunt on every tweet she posts.

    until the fascists inevitably turn the entire platform into a hate-spam, fest.

    ​

    seriously.. he says “free speech”

    but wheres the line Elon, will you allow neo-nazis to call for another holocaust?

    what abuot death threats against your family Elon?

    clearly SOME speech will be restricted.. right?

  25. The world’s richest incel just convinced a bunch of banks to help him own Twitter, because the world’s insane. What happens next?

    Maybe nothing. Hell, probably nothing. This whole deal is just the same old story of profit-mongering, said rich incel’s virtue signaling notwithstanding. Chances are good Musk will discover he, as Twitter’s private owner, might end up held liable for what people say on the platform. In this case, little changes, but a lot of willfully ignorant people insist a *lot* has changed because they have such significant issues dealing with reality that they need to disassociate from it completely.

    But maybe he makes good on his promise. Then we just see a resurgence of willful ignorance and harmful misinformation (see above point about willfully ignorant people and reality). And then our world just gets that little bit crazier, while that rich incel I mentioned previously (and his bankrollers) get pointlessly richer.

  28. Trump gets reinstated, millions of users sign up, stock goes to $100 or more per share, all the pension plans and hedge funds that own it make bank.

    Bonus: all the people who went “If Musk buys Twitter, I quit!” (just like, “If Trump wins, I”m moving to Canada!”) don’t.

    Edit: holy fuck. Imagine the mental gymnastics someone must have to perform to be – apprently – pro-democracy and pro freedom, but also demand censorship of ideas they don’t like.

    Reminder: Freedom of speech means letting people you don’t like, express opinions you don’t agree with.

  33. Jack Dorsey had been under a lot of pressure to get more revenue in, but he was focused only on the core product and strongly resisted changes to it. When Agrawal replaced him at the top, he largely continued that stance.

    Twitter’s growth came from more users, but it’s now more or less saturated its market, so no growth = unhappy shareholders. Its performance in 2021 was 200 million users per day and a 13% growth in userbase, yet its share price in early 2022 was lower than at its IPO in 2013.

    A publicly traded company must expand, and Twitter has reached about the limits of its expansion without changes or additions to its product line. The core product, an SMS-like limited character text service, is not very unique and its value to users comes from the presence of other users, not anything intristic to Twitter.

    It has severe problems with bots, fake accounts, propaganda, and foreign state disinformation and has struggled to contain these.

    Musk’s background is finance and he’s been very open about how he could make more revenue and he doesn’t like the current management of Twitter. As a private company, it wouldn’t have shareholders to appease and Musk could run it as he saw fit…

    This means he has change in mind. That’s one thing anyone can say is certain.

    With control over Twitter, Musk becomes one of the most powerful people on Earth. He has the ability to control what people see and when they see it. It’s likely he will be tempted to use that power to, as Facebook does, promote content it deems desirable, and restrict the spread of content it deems undesirable.

    However, it is much more likely to “pull a Digg” and collapse its userbase when it does this. People who shout the loudest about “free speech” are generally its biggest enemies.

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