Musk to cut half of Twitter jobs and end remote work for the rest, report says

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From where I'm standing, every one of the people who oppose his attempts to clean up the place and allow free speech are sketchy--they have indicated a preference, possibly unexamined, for the way it has been.

you mean like the President/COO of what is possibly the largest advertising trade group
 
you mean like the President/COO of what is possibly the largest advertising trade group
Yes, I do. Possibly he's ignorant of what a cesspool Twitter's been for years. But more likely, he's got people who told him that, and he said "meh, I'm OK with advertising here." And then Musk comes along wanting to bring back free speech, and he says "whoa, that's a bridge too far."
 
or that musk made up some stupid shit about "activists" and got subsequently called out by the dude with the sequoia sized dick in the space
 
Yes, I do. Possibly he's ignorant of what a cesspool Twitter's been for years. But more likely, he's got people who told him that, and he said "meh, I'm OK with advertising here." And then Musk comes along wanting to bring back free speech, and he says "whoa, that's a bridge too far."
I think you are again confused about what advertisers/brand agents care about: They don't give a shit about free speech, they don't care about worker's rights, they don't care about bots, they don't care about shills. What they care about is how something makes their brand look. That's it. Their job is to make sure advertising dollars are spent in places that people see, and that creates the brand association the companies want.

Different companies have different associations they want and things they are ok with, you won't see Gerber baby food advertising on the UFC for example, whereas other companies happily do. But one thing that is a hard line for basically all brands is overt Nazism/antisemitism/racism. Thing is, we know that there are people who like to post things like that if given the chance, if they have unlimited free speech. So what the advertisers are worried about here is that if the moderation team gets gutted and the policy becomes free speech maximalism, people will post things like that, and that means their ads can occur next to that. They are not ok with it, so if there's no solution offered on twitter's part, their solution is to pull their ad buy.

You can disagree that it should be that way, I'm telling you that is how it is. Companies can, and will, take their ad dollars elsewhere if content isn't controlled in a way they find acceptable. At that point, money has to come from somewhere else. In the case of twitter, what that somewhere else would be is not clear. While charging for blue checkmarks might make a little, twitter owes $1 Billion/year on the debt from the buyout. That means you'd need to sell over 10 million yearly checkmark subscriptions to cover just that, never mind other costs.
 
I think you are again confused about what advertisers/brand agents care about
I'm not *confused* at all. Some advertisers are OK with the toxic nature of Twitter as it's been for years, as evidenced by them not pulling out when "I want to kill white people" is ruled as not violating Twitter's community standards.
 
I'm not *confused* at all. Some advertisers are OK with the toxic nature of Twitter as it's been for years, as evidenced by them not pulling out when "I want to kill white people" is ruled as not violating Twitter's community standards.
Point is, just because they were ok with it as it was, doesn't mean they are going to be ok with what it may become and it isn't about wokeism or anything like that, it is about what they think hurts their brand.
 
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Point is, just because they were ok with it as it was, doesn't mean they are going to be ok with what it may become and it isn't about wokeism or anything like that, it is about what they think hurts their brand.
*May* become... That is NOT a business decision.
 
The kind of thing these much-loved Twitter advertisers are okay with.

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I had read that there was a big bonus date coming up, and he is laying people off a few weeks before the bonus to avoid paying it, which is really shitty.

I read that was for the top execs to qualify for their golden parachutes and Elon basically cut that off, which I don’t have a problem with because golden parachutes for multimillionaire execs are BS, especially when they’re not particularly good at their jobs. If it impacts rank and file employees though, I agree with you, that’s a crappy thing to do.
 
Twitter is the best place on the internet to watch ass-holes accuse ass-holes of being ass-holes, because that's what people with no real problems do on the internet. It's tremendously entertaining. Twitter has also been used for very important things in the past and around the world. People hoping it sinks are just fixating on the people and things they hate. Something people with no real problems tend to do.

Focusing on the people you hate is such a waste of energy.
 
what the fuck is even the game plan

$1 billion/yr estimated interest expense to fund this powerplay.

the company has basically never made money and was still hundreds of millions in the red last year.

90% of the revenue was advertising - a commodity they're now hemorrhaging.

The game plan was Musk is a major league troll who finally ran into a judge that wasn’t going to tolerate the BS and decided the rules actually matter. He couldn’t back out at this point and had to buy it because he wasn’t going to win in court. Twitter will go down as one of the largest overpayments in US tech history.

That said, if anyone can figure out how to make money, it’s Musk.

Twitter is garbage as an ad platform. The ads I get on Twitter have nothing to do with my interests or who I am. By comparison, if I fart, Facebook will blast me with ads for Pepto Bismol and Tums.
 
The game plan was Musk is a major league troll who finally ran into a judge that wasn’t going to tolerate the BS and decided the rules actually matter. He couldn’t back out at this point and had to buy it because he wasn’t going to win in court. Twitter will go down as one of the largest overpayments in US tech history.

That said, if anyone can figure out how to make money, it’s Musk.

Twitter is garbage as an ad platform. The ads I get on Twitter have nothing to do with my interests or who I am. By comparison, if I fart, Facebook will blast me with ads for Pepto Bismol and Tums.
I mean all I get in my Twitter feed are Star Trek shit posts and milfs in my area...
So pretty relevant.
 
So assuming a 100% conversation rate, it would only take about 25 years to generate the equivalent of 1 singular year of the interest payments alone.
Do you think that, since it won't produce all the revenue Twitter needs, Musk should eschew all revenue from doing it?
 
I mean all I get in my Twitter feed are Star Trek shit posts and milfs in my area...
So pretty relevant.
Well, hell, that'd be an improvement over what I see when I wade into that sewer.
 
Ok so there's too many verified users. Apparently there's about 420k of them.

So assuming a 100% conversation rate, it would only take about 25 years to generate the equivalent of 1 singular year of the interest payments alone.

Well ok
Why do you think only existing blue checks want one?
 
It’s a weird form of narcissism. They’ll announce it and then stay in the platform to see how much internet sympathy they get. Leaving Twitter is the new moving to Canada.
It's cult behavior. Cultists gonna cult.
 
My father used to work for GTE data services, work from home only happened when you were sick or had extra work to do into the weekend. He brought home those monochrome screens IBMs in a box units in the early to mid 80s. The earlier unit had you set a phone handset into a cradle to connect, the later unit had just plug in the phoneline.
Yeah because what your father did back when computers had vacuum tubes in them is absolutely relevant to today

"My father worked in the coal mines, and got black lung disease, the only time you cared about your health was when you were dead! This namby pamby cry babies whining about pesticides being sprayed while they work, I put food on the table for my family that's all that mattered!" :D :D :D

But seriously, how much money could a company like Twitter actually save by NOT having office spaces? I mean smack dab in the middle of one of the more expensive regions of the country too. Not only do they pay for the real estate premium they also pay their workers are a higher wage because of the city they work in.
 
Yeah because what your father did back when computers had vacuum tubes in them is absolutely relevant to today

"My father worked in the coal mines, and got black lung disease, the only time you cared about your health was when you were dead! This namby pamby cry babies whining about pesticides being sprayed while they work, I put food on the table for my family that's all that mattered!" :D :D :D

But seriously, how much money could a company like Twitter actually save by NOT having office spaces? I mean smack dab in the middle of one of the more expensive regions of the country too. Not only do they pay for the real estate premium they also pay their workers are a higher wage because of the city they work in.
That's why he needs to move twit to Texas.
 
Social Media was the worst thing ever created by humans.
The addicting nature is bad take away everyone's phones for a day see what happens. Everytime I go into the Walmart lunch room everyone is cramming on their phones. The path of least resistance.
 
It is so fun trolling Ars.
I would have stopped reading their stuff long ago... but they do manage the odd interesting unbiased article. Some of their science writing is decent. Their takes on almost anything are comical. Poking their commenters is really too easy, I shouldn't waste my time but I can't help myself.

So many obviously very low life experience people on that site. When a big company changes hands houses get cleaned.... locking everyone out. Ya when your product can be essentially destroyed by one pissed off engineer you don't give them a weeks notice and let them have fun on the network. That some of these employees leaked their private internal emails... is proof they at least deserved to be let go. It is also probably proof that if Elon allowed them to get the news at their desks in the office they probably would have made a scene.
I visit Ars solely for Eric Berger's articles on the aerospace industry, all while avoiding the comment sections like the plague.
 
The addicting nature is bad take away everyone's phones for a day see what happens. Everytime I go into the Walmart lunch room everyone is cramming on their phones. The path of least resistance.
I don't blame them, I'm 46 and got tired of listening to other people's woes, or what nots.

"Everything in existence takes the path of least resistance." Me.
 
Do you think that, since it won't produce all the revenue Twitter needs, Musk should eschew all revenue from doing it?
It's defeating the actual purpose of the system for a dog shit payoff.

Even if you're on board with it, how do you look at the perks and not think it's lackluster as shit.
 
If Twitter goes under at this point, that does not bode well for the future of our country IMO. There needs to be free speech on the Internet, and this is potentially the closest we've been in a while. You can't have free speech when every platform is a censored liberal sanctuary.

Advertisers do not like hate speech, which RWNJ / MAGAts confuse with Free Speech.
 
twitter will go away eventually and be close to worthless. honestly not sure why somebody would pay 44 billion for it. it doesn't make anything...
 
That's why he needs to move twit to Texas.
Eh... that's kind of counter to what I was saying. Why does Twitter need office space? And for any answer to that, why does it need to be anywhere where the cost of real estate is spiking due to population/tech increasing? The whole "we need to be where the workers are" mentality for workers than can do most of the work remotely is just silly.
 
Eh... that's kind of counter to what I was saying. Why does Twitter need office space? And for any answer to that, why does it need to be anywhere where the cost of real estate is spiking due to population/tech increasing? The whole "we need to be where the workers are" mentality for workers than can do most of the work remotely is just silly.
Lower corporate tax rates in Texas.
 
Advertisers do not like hate speech, which RWNJ / MAGAts confuse with Free Speech.
Is this the best you and your group can come up with? However, we know things are being balanced out if we are starting to see this.
 
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