Because Twitter (as an investment) is terrible because of the lack of revenue it has. Musk just bought it because his investment wasn't for twitter's success, but to get into the white house.
this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2025
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Even before musk bought it, it was a house of cards. At no point in it's history since it's creation has it EVER made money. It was ALWAYS a money loser. That's why they were trying to sell it in the first place. It had value, but nothing close to 43 BILLION dollars.
It was assumed to sell for a few hundred million before musk ran his mouth, and joked that he'd do it for 43 billion. Then he took the joke as far as signing legal paperwork, then bitched that he HAD to now buy it for his joke price of 43 billion.
And now you read daily how much money it's losing. Firstly because even if he paid a fair price for it, AND ran it perfectly, it would still be losing money. But he bought it for 43 BILLION dollars, and from day one publically harassed advertisers saying he doesn't need them.
Well, even under perfect conditions, the advertisers were the only thing keeping twitters losses pre-musk at a minimum. They were losing about 13 million a year since 2008. And now it was adding up.
But now you got advertisers to go fuck themself. And they leave. Then he alienates twitters at the time core leftist by....well existing. And now you got all these people leaving twitter in droves. So now, even for the advertisers that remain, twitters reach loses 40% of it's value. Which means advertisers aren't willing to pay old rates. Which means less revenue.
And all these other companies, before musk bought it, looked at an unprofitable social media site, then remembered how MySpace went, and thought ".......no."
Musk didnβt buy Twitter to make money, he bought it to control the narrative. To censor some voices and amplify others.
And now heβs our shadow president.
He wasn't just a joke, musk was legally forced to make his deal real to avoid having manipulated the market and potentially go to prison. This was before he became POTUS . If it happened today he would just tell the courts to fuck off and replace those who aren't loyal without ever actually buying twitter
Twitter was developing the at protocol and bluesky, think they always saw it eventually dying and had bluesky as their backup
Bluesky was an EEE operation. Meant to kill federation by capturing users then forcing an instance monopoly. That's why it is federated on paper only. In practice no engineering was done to make it actually federated at all. Now they're far behind the Activity pub and mastodon, and the rest of the fediverse despite having much more investment.
At no point in it's history since it's creation has it EVER made money.
Actually they did make money in 2018 and 2019 but then the pandemic caused advertisers to cut spending.
It had value, but nothing close to 43 BILLION dollars.
43 billions is peanuts compared to the 3 trillions apple and microsoft market cap. Twitter is one of the biggest social network in the world and the one more used by politicians. It has plenty of value even if not making profits, everyone know how it works.
And now you read daily how much money itβs losing.
Last time i hear about him he was talking over the president, as expected from owning one of the biggest social networks in the world he isn't losing much.
It has plenty of value even if not making profits, everyone know how it works.
That is true and also applies to Youtube,. However, remember that shareholder mentality is "MONY NAO!!!!! FUCK THE FUTURE". CEOs would have to make a very good case for buying a money sink with very little chance of becoming profitable. Elon bought the company as an individual, so he didn't have to answer to a board of directors or shareholders complaining about reduced quarterly profits
Because there's really nothing worth investing in, with people who just scream at eachother all day. The only social media platform that is probably worth acquiring in their eyes is Facebook because Facebook actually has more going for them and has acquired other companies too. Twitter was just...Twitter.
For one thing, Musk's offer was thought to be very generous. He was also a lone actor who didn't need to worry about it blowing back on him somehow if the deal fell through, as opposed to a CEO who's actually accountable to someone.
Another billionaire could have done it, I guess, but there's like ten guys who were rich enough and only one was Elon Musk.
I was gonna, but I ended up needing new tires on the car.
Because it didn't make financial sense for them to buy it. The last I read up on the matter it seemed like Musk has lost quite a bit of money on it since he took over. Literally the ONLY reason Musk bought it was because he got into a pissing contest with the previous owners after he claimed he could run it better. He actually tried to back out of the deal a number of times but there was some kind of legal reason he was obligated to buy it after he made an offer
Literally the ONLY reason Musk bought it was because he got into a pissing contest
People keep saying he's an idiot making stupid decisions, which is true because he's a corrupted money addict but he's the second if not the first richest man in the world and he's now in the white house talking for the president. You are all getting fooled hard thinking he becomes more wealthy by accident.
musk was mouthing off in an official enough way that he got trapped into buying it. He lost tens of billions. It was basically a money pit and he has drove it to even more of a money loser.
He has unlimited money. I am pretty sure he doesn't really care.
Except he doesn't really have unlimited money. Like most rich bastards he had assets - aka, hypothetical money (investments). They take out loans using that hypothetical money as collateral, and then have to pay that money back over time, which they can do by earning dividends (hypothetical money increases that they can access without penalties) or selling hypothetical money for real money (possibly with penalties).
Musk borrowed an enormous amount of money, which saddled the loaners with hypothetical money that began to decrease in value, and were this unable to profit by selling it for actual money. They therefore have to trust that Musk will repay these loans or else sell them at a loss to some other dumb bastard.
Or be forced to sell assets to pay his debts.
Doesn't seem like he lost much, like you would expect by buying one of the biggest social platform in the world he got even richer and more relevant (enough to get a sit in the white house)
Well he does get investors. Like the openai thing he is leading a group of investors and as other folks point out loans. so he does spread the losses out to other folks. Honestly this destroys the economy really. Its one of my arguments for higher taxes for the rich in a progressive way that should keep having brackets till you get to the highest. It means making more money takes more ability as it becomes a harder and harder thing to do. Makes sure the best are messing around at those levels or keeps those levels from happening to begin with.
Because Twitter sucks!
bad investment
Nope. It got musk into the White House. Bad investment for the populace, but good investment for drumpf and musk
watch musk turn the "savings" from "DOGE" efforts into a gov purchase of twitter at twice what he paid, with the argument that they plan to nationalize a digital platform for communication between politicians and voters, while tying a privatized transactions system to the platform where he siphons a small percentage of every transactions ever done by an american henceforth.
Doesn't look like a bad investment, look at where the ceo is at
Because its usefulness is not on the money-making side of business, so it wouldn't make sense to buy.
Imo it's still very valuable even if not profitable. eg YouTube is quite famously a massive money sink for Google but I doubt Google would want to let go of its monopoly on online video sharing.
It's completely unprofitable and I remain of the opinion that Musk bought it to break Grimes' toy and then lucked into the fact that he had a huge propaganda engine.
He knew very well that it was a huge propaganda engine, which is why he bought it. And now he is our shadow president.
These people arenβt stupid. Theyβre fascist tech oligarchs with a plan.
These people are really fucking stupid. Musk said confidently that the government doesn't use SQL.
I don't think you specifically are doing it out of praise and glorification but people love mythologize tech people. Jeff Bezos is actually incredibly smart holding multiple degrees and, by account a savvy businessman... Musk is a fucking idiot that lucked into money, has terrible ideas and acumen, won the lottery with PayPal and has built a castle of lies to sustain his wealth.
If the purchase was done with intention to propagandize it certainly wasn't that ass clown's idea.
He absolutely is a fascist though - but most of his ideas are probably just regurgitated from Peter Thiel.
No one wanted it.
Why they didn't want it?
It's shit
Not to mention, that itβs never made a profit
i wish it would just go out of business already so that the rest of my loyalists can join me in bluesky
Blue sky? Is that some sort of Mastodon knock off?
Yes.
Yup. With its trans deniers and TERFs and numerous right wing folk. That person has left Twitter to join something a lot like Twitter.
Sell, fork, start from scratch, climb the ladder, sell, fork, start from scratch, climb...
Musk massively overpayed for Twitter. They wouldn't have sold the company, but Musk made a ridiculous offer and they accepted. Then he tried to back out of it, and the court forced him to follow through. But he didn't have enough money to match his offer, so he had to find some investors willing to bail him out because they wanted him to kill the platform for them.
I tried but they said I was fat
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