Your periodic reminder that VC-funded CEOs are in a situation that they have bet both their kidneys on being able to deliver a 100x return to the bone-saw wielding loan sharks who funded them.
Your “community” is worthless to them unless it delivers Kidney Money.
They cannot just “decide” to not enshittify the community you mistakenly believed was yours. No appeal to justice or fairness will work, unless accompanied by a donor kidney or two.
Let's not forget that the muskrat is in a totally different situation, however. He has PLENTY o' money to pay off the loansharks. He's enshittifying the birdsite just for funsies.
I still argue that it's performance art: he's providing an object lesson to people about why you shouldn't let important things get purchased and run by billionaires and he spent $44B to show how much he meant it.
And a bunch of people *still* haven't gotten the point.
@stevendbrewer @Unixbigot @cstross
To be clear, (he spent if I recall correctly) $15 billion to turn Twitter into a shrine to his trollish nature, not $45 billion.
The purchase included ~$15 billion in new bank loans to Twitter, and other investors (the Saudis, Jack Dorsey, some others) agreed to hold on to their share of Twitter instead of forcing him to buy them out (and the inflated price his contract required him to pay).
@warren__terra @Unixbigot @cstross
I think the sale price was $44B and you're assuming it will still have some value when he's done.
He's worth something like $200B. It was more convenient to put some of it on a credit card, but he's good for it.
@stevendbrewer @Unixbigot @cstross
No, it's already probably near zero net value (it was worth maybe $15-25 billion when he bought it, and as part of the purchase he had it borrow $15 billion from banks, and even if he hadn't tanked its advertising sales and damaged its brand there's been a tech slump since then).
But he put in about $15 billion of his own money, he didn't have to pay the full $45 billion.
@stevendbrewer @Unixbigot @cstross
The rest of the $45 billion purchase price isn't his responsibility; 1/3 of it is on the banks, who inexplicably loaned that $15B to Twitter (not to Elon), and 1/3 of the owners decided to hold on to their share, not sell to him.
Though, the $15 billion is his cash outlay. As Charlie points out, his antics at Twitter have reduced Tesla's stock price and hurt his net worth, by a lot.
Also he's likely to subsidize Twitter's losses rather than admit defeat.
Kit Bashir
Steven D. Brewer 🏳️⚧️
Warren Terra