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.

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.

It was both good and bad, period.

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.

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.

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.