Twitter’s ad revenue is down 89% and not many users are signing up to its paid subscription. In April, it’s removing “legacy” blue checks and further prioritizing paid accounts.
For Disconnect, I explain that Elon Musk needs this to push more users to subscribe to Twitter Blue so he can pay his $1.5 billion in annual interest payments. But it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.
https://www.disconnect.blog/p/twitters-moment-of-truth-has-arrived
Elon Musk is actively dismantling the experience that brought people to Twitter in the first place. They’re not going to pay for a declining platform.
When Twitter dies, it needs to take Musk and the genius myth he built around himself with it. We shouldn’t let him try to shape our future anymore.
https://www.disconnect.blog/p/twitters-moment-of-truth-has-arrived
@paulbusch @parismarx The core value of the traditional blue checkmark was that one could not request it.
You either were noteworthy by itself, or not.
@parismarx American financial regulators prefer not to do anything against hucksters like #Musk, as long as he's making money for the people.
Guess, what will happen when he has to sell a huge volume of his #Tesla shares to pay for the interest on his #Twitter loan. Once people start lose money in their investments with Musk, he'll go the way of Elizabeth Holmes or Trevor Milton.
@nicemicro @parismarx He already did that. Last year. Had to sell off nearly half his Tesla stake due to Twitter. Used to own a quarter of the company, had to sell down to 13,6%. Everything went wrong for him with that buy, and it cost him dearly. ;)
Note that he also owns over half of SpaceX. But that's a private company, and so is much harder to sell a stake in. He also doesn't want to go under 50%, or he'll lose absolute control over it.
@nicemicro @parismarx Important note, though: Tesla isn't Musk. Musk isn't Tesla. He barely even spends time at Tesla anymore, by his own admission. Betting against Tesla is a widowmaker bet, made by people with no understanding of the EV market.
Just a warning.
@nicemicro @parismarx He doesn't have to do that.
The loan was transferred to Twitter.
The move is extremely popular in the USA (although interestingly, it's also criminal in numerous other countries). You basically “show that you could buy” a company, and after a brief moment transfer the debt as a backbreaking milestone to the company just bought.
Twitter as an entity is about 1.5b a year worse off alone in debt service for the privilege of being owned by the Musk consortium.
What's concernjng is that he's gonna have to liquidate/sell Tesla and SpaceX to pay for it, and that certainly means income disruption for the workers of those companies.
@parismarx cough, you are assuming he is in the game for the money.
Yes, if you look from the perspective of making money, this is a more or less slow-moving train crash.
Now if you accept that #Dodo still has eyeball reach and influence, Emperor Musk's changes much more sinister because for the time the #birdsite is becoming a sinister actor. Acting as a conduit for unfiltered hate messaging, fake news, Russian operatives, …
And the $8 to “stop bots” is a joke.
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