It’s not just lemmy that’s benefiting from Elon Musk.

  • flossdaily@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’m sure there were a huge swath of people who used Twitter and didn’t care at all about Musk one way or the other.

    Then he rebranded and threw his ego and control in everyone’s face. And all the people who like Twitter IN SPITE of Elon were now forced to acknowledge that their Twitter is gone.

    Just like over at reddit now, the latest move has alienated the people who really cared about the platform itself. If they rebranded to “Spez’s World”, though, a lot of the people who didn’t give a shit before would suddenly be ready to bail.

  • o0joshua0o@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    He has so thoroughly ruined Twitter that you can’t help but wonder if that was his goal from the outset.

    • appel@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      To what end, though? The man blew 44b on a site that apparently was only worth 5-10b, and that was before he ran it into the ground. He also destroyed his reputation and the mystique as “genius entrepreneur” which the world can now clearly see he never was.

      I can’t think of a single net positive. I think it’s an age old tale with people with too much money: he fell victim to an over inflated ego and too many yes men aiming to please. He started to believe he really was brilliant.

      Sad thing is the man has so much money he still can’t fail, personally. He’ll have destroyed Twitter and even more people will lose their jobs. And autocrats around the world will be pleased. Musk will just shrug, tell himself it wasn’t his fault, “it was the libs” or something, and move on.

      Eta: the only winners here, as per usual, are the shareholders.

      • Moob@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Foil hat time. Twitter was at one point a huge communications platform. People got news and opinions on daily happening almost immediately. He has successfully purchased that platform and destroyed the faith people had in it, in time for some of the most controversial events in recent history.

        • appel@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          I mean, sure, assuming he doesn’t mind paying for that with 44 billion of his own dollar bucks, the devaluation of his other companies and the evaporation of his personal reputation.

          • Moob@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Which is where my conspiracy theory falls apart. It mainly rests on fact that most of these decisions seem deliberate. Even an idiot by this point might start worrying about the loss of money. As much as he has, 40bil is considerable.

              • sfgifz@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Considering that most of the market was stupidly overpriced, if you had 100b of worth in overpriced stock, and you had to choose between spending it or waiting for it to lose value over the next few months, what would you do?

      • Sludgehammer@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        IMO Mush was trying to run a simple pump and dump scheme with Twitter stock. You know, make some statements about ho he’s going to buy it at a massively inflated price, sell all the stock during the uptick and then suddenly find some issue with the sale and leave. However, during the “make some statements” phase he managed to make some legally binding statements and Twitter and their lawyers held him to them.

        So there’s no agenda or plan really, just a larger version of the Dogecoin pump and dumps that Mush has done in the past. It’s just this time rather than some crypto rubes he tried running it on a company with lots of lawyers and it blew up in his face.

        • appel@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Agreed, very plausible scenario. It played out that way as well, right up to the part where his lawyers told him “you legally can’t actually walk away from this deal”.

    • Archmage Azor@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Elon is a narcissistic idiot, but that’s all he is. He bought the same crap his own PR team was peddling a few years ago, figured he didn’t need his PR team because he was so great (according to propaganda they spread), and went on to confidently make idiotic decisions because of course the real life Tony Stark can make no mistakes

    • CrypticCoffee@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I wonder if his goal isn’t for Twitter to be successful. I’m wondering if political influence will help to get cushty deals or legislative changes favourable to Tesla or SpaceX.

      Why worry about losing $30bn from one hand when you gain $100bn in another?

  • Tygr@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It’s not the rebrand that’s killing Twitter. Elon is. He’s proving to himself that he cannot, in fact, run Twitter better than the prior owners.

    • hairinmybellybutt@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I wonder if previous twitter execs are feeling a bit bad to have sold him twitter to see it destroyed like that.

      I mean it certainly proves Elon is an idiot as he used fraud to manipulate the price and got played instead.

      But was it worth it to let him destroy Twitter just because he tried to defraud it?

      • Tygr@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’d be bummed out but happy I have an unlimited supply of hundred dollar bills to wipe away the tears.

      • Uiopp@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        I wonder how long twitter would able to run at a loss if elon didn’t take it over as a slapstick joke went wrong.

      • KIM_JONG_JUICEBOX@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        I’m sure the previous execs are crying into their wads of cash. So much sympathy for them.

        Lol. Like if they gave a shit they would have forced that buyout to go through.

    • Saneless@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Yeah. I left with the bluetlicker shitstain bump up in every reply. The dumbest people to ever buy a device and learn English that somehow didn’t choke on rocks as a kid…

      Just had enough and had to leave

        • joe@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          This is how I mainly used Mastodon before Lemmy. It lets you follow topics instead of people; I prefer finding content this way. Unless a person really likes the format of Mastodon better, I’d suggest Lemmy over Mastodon for people that would rather follow topics than individuals.

            • joe@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I found it very refreshing that it doesn’t have an algorithm at all. I know there are some downsides to that, but I think they’re worth it.

                • joe@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  On Mastodon? I distinctly recall reading that it did not have one but I guess these projects are fast moving so maybe it has changed or I am just mistaken.

        • DharkStare@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Another good thing is putting people you follow into lists. I just wish we could do the same with hashtags.

        • ErinCrush@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Tusky is a great app. But it doesn’t seem to have a trending tab, which I use to find cool accounts to follow. For now I use trunks.

  • Desistance@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Lemmy would be soaring too if it weren’t for terrible database code allowing for easy ddos.

        • DarthBueller@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I had one tell me “you know nothing about communism, stop talking,” and I was like, oh, that’s right, I know nothing despite being well informed about the history of workers movements going back to the 1840s, Das Kapital, the Manifesto, and despite these noble ideals, the fact that every single communist government relied on purges to accomplish its goals, formed an exclusionary ruling class, and were corrupt as fuck. Fucking teenagers and their black and white thinking.

          • WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            But you see, that wasn’t real Communism. Communism is a great and perfect egalitarian society by definition, so when it inevitably devolves into just another brand of stratification and oppression then it’s not Communism anymore. Next time it’ll work, though. We’ll still follow exactly the same formula that’s failed spectacularly every time it’s been tried, but this time it’ll work. For reasons. And if you say otherwise you’re just a status-quo liberal (never mind the fact that those supposed status-quo liberals are the ones implementing real tangible change that actually affect peoples’ lives while all the Communists do is endlessly wank about some glorious revolution that’ll happen some time in the nebulous future.)

          • Ann Archy@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            When people say stuff like that it’s not about politics, it’s straight up about gatekeeping.

    • Draconic NEO@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      At least it’s open for collaboration so people who can or help contribute to fix bugs for them are able to do so. That’s the beauty of open source, anyone can help out.

  • egeres@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Apparently, as a competitor of any major platform you just need to get close to the features your adversary has and wait for that site/service to start the process of enshittification, let’s see if reddit makes more blunders

    • martinmine@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I feel that reddit is already at this stage. It started feeling more like a half-bombed corporate minefield so I decided to flee the site one week ago. This site feels much more like things should be. You can even browse on a decent site on your phone.

  • s1vgm@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’ve been trying to stick to Mastodon and ditch Twitter, but honestly, even though I’ve gotten into the habit of using Mastodon every day, it’s pretty hard for me to resist accepting information from Twitter.

    • drewofdoom@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s ok to get information from places like X/Twitter or Reddit. It’s even fine to have an account. But it’s better to post your OWN material to platforms that best align with your sensibilities.

    • mihor@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      What? I’ve been using Squawker and lately it stopped working because monkey boy elon borked something again in the twitter api. No tweets for me.

  • Tapioca@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    There were stories that Tesla had a team in place to distract Elon any time he showed up to the office, and I absolutely believe that. Now that Elon has Twitter to distract him, I wonder what that team is up to.

  • scottywh@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Honestly, I joined Twitter begrudgingly in 2015 after ignoring it for years only because I thought it might be easy to keep up with some interesting news before it hit Reddit… and it worked for a while…

    Now, I just wonder why I’m still there at all.

    I also don’t.see why I might want a mastodon account at this point though… I don’t feel like I need a replacement for something that I never really liked…

  • MyOpinion@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    That is right baby. The Fedi is a life raft always waiting to scoop people up.

  • arglebargle@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I am so annoyed that Twitter got ruined.

    Don’t get me wrong. I don’t like Twitter. I don’t follow anyone on Twitter. But if I had no other recourse I could complain about a corporation that wasn’t paying any attention to me and they would do something about it.

    By the way fuck FedEX. Is there a place on mastadon I can bitch about FedEx? I have had a mis-delivered package sitting on my porch for over a month. I call about every three or four days and tell them, pick up your package so it can go to the right place. They say they will get it. They never do.

    Never use FedEx.

    • nik0@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Is there a place on mastadon I can bitch about FedEx?

      #fuckfedex #fedex

    • danielton@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Fuck FedEx. Whenever a signature is required, they won’t let me have the package held for pickup anywhere, so I get door tags… even if I’m sitting on the couch watching TV. Called them and they said they don’t require the drivers to knock or ring. I only figured out after a ton of aggravation that if you get three door tags, they will hold the package for pickup for a few days anyway (even though they say they can’t due to “shipper restrictions”).

  • dx1@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    There’s an ethical consideration when you sell a company. Dorsey and co. took a big payout and this is the result. I was thinking earlier about how this probably wouldn’t have been happened if you had an even equity split across the company’s employees.

    • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      It was a corporation. Corporations exist to get shareholders paid. You can’t expect those to not be for sale for the right price, which in this case was more than it was worth. If you want the people running companies to make decisions based on ethics, you should ban publicly traded corporations first otherwise it’s just not happening.

      • dx1@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I mean, they routinely make the unethical decision. They probably wouldn’t be in the position to make it in the first place if they didn’t already have dollar signs in their eyes. And I’ve been around enough tech companies to know that’s usually the way it breaks down.