Ask HN: What if Elon Musk is tanking Twitter on purpose? Thought experiment: What if Elon Musk is ensuring that Twitter fails on purpose? What would be the benefit? |
Ask HN: What if Elon Musk is tanking Twitter on purpose? Thought experiment: What if Elon Musk is ensuring that Twitter fails on purpose? What would be the benefit? |
Tesla and SpaceX have physical products. Twitter isn’t, it’s an advertising platform. That’s very different.
Tesla engineers didn’t have any options for similar companies to go to (until recently). Not a lot of rocketry companies out there either. Programmers have TONS of jobs. You can’t push them around so easily.
He had a very clear executable vision for Tesla he could articulate and motivate with. Same with SpaceX. No one knows what his Twitter plans are out side of “make it better”. But no one knows what that means, so it’s hard/impossible to follow. And he’s not articulating it.
Frankly it’s incredibly clear he doesn’t understand the product. Users don’t like Twitter, they like other Twitter users. So you have to be real careful not to drive them away. You know what advertisers don’t care about? Twitter. They like twitter users.
His changes to verification/Twitter Blue showed he didn’t know what the point of verification was (something many get wrong). That plus the terribly executed initial layoffs (and general uncertainty) destroyed moral and trust.
If he wasn’t running at 200 MPH his decisions might work. I haven’t heard anyone defending Twitter’s old headcount. But the way he went about layoffs was super counterproductive. Twitter Blue sucked, but using it to ruin verification was moronic.
Everything after that just reeks of desperation.
There’s no master plan. There’s no 4D chess. He went out in a ledge he shouldn’t have been on unprepared and is now trapped with everyone watching him fall.
Read this thread. It made a ton of sense to me.
What does Musk stand to gain by tanking Twitter? I don't know. Nor do I know what he thought he might gain by buying it. His explanation -- that he wants to save free speech for all humanity -- sounds so delusional and self-important I took it as either insincere or narcissistic. Given his history I settled on narcissism.
I don't doubt that if Twitter fails Musk will blame lazy and disloyal employees (or former employees), sabotage, the "woke left," spineless advertisers, greedy bankers. He won't see fault in his own actions, ignorance, failure to plan or set a course for the company. He already blamed "activists" for scaring off advertisers.
They’re not all geniuses. Some were just born into it or were in the right place at the right time and had the willingness to let someone who knew what they were doing manage it.
But maybe the bigger problem is the transferability problem. You were ultra successful in A, so you must be great for B too, right?
What does Twitter have in common with SpaceX? They both have computers?
There have been tons of moronic ideas in valley in the last 20 years started/run by successful people that cratered. How many things has MS tried? And there must be tons of examples outside computing of people/companies trying to get into new lines of business that flopped hard.
But almost every time we’re surprised. “How could Elon fail?” Then the rationalization starts. “He must have a plan! He’s doing it on purpose!”
Nah. People fail at things. No one’s magic.
I think this is just his “emperors got no clothes” moment.
However I do think when it fails, he will about turn and make up an excuse about how it was intentional.
Consider this a billionaire mid life crisis
He screwed up agreeing in the first place under the conditions he did.
Everything else seems like flailing trying to undo/minimize damage, often making things worse.
Remember some things he discussed in his messages, like Twitter becoming a protocol and essentially acting as infrastructure like a phone company that doesn't care what you are talking about as long as you pay your bills?
Yeah, that's not happening because he spent tens of billions of his personal wealth, got other investors whose motives might not be as pure, loaded the company with debt that has yearly interest payments larger than the profits of the company in good times and the "pay $8" thing didn't work well.
He simply can't keep Twitter in the form he purchased Twitter, so he is shaking it down to try make something out of it. He will try all kinds of things until something works or Twitter shuts down. Not doing this and keeping Twitter the way he purchased it means Twitter shuts down eventually anyway and without anything to show for the money he spent.
What could he get that would be enough to offset all that?
He could have just turned off Twitter in other countries that didn’t want it. He could have run it with Chinese style censorship. He could have manipulated the conversation. He could have flat out backdoored it for them.
Why was it necessary to destroy it? Why would that be the preferred outcome?
Makes no sense.
I also wonder if the FTX collapse needs a second review. There goes the left’s second largest donor.
Everyone is talking about twitter, this is no accident.
Musk is trying to shed the maximum amount of people as possible before things break. Then he will rebuild the staff with new people under a new culture and vision. Similar to Japanese plan to population replace islands it took over during WWII.
This is a huge PR play, and so far its working. Twitter stories are everywhere.
That's what they want to cancel, the ability for anyone to become an actor and defy the establishment
With the verification for all, and the suppression of non verified accounts, they want to make sure everyone is uniquely identifiable on the platform so they can target him and silence him if he causes problems (response to a tweet to callout a propaganda for example)
The project is clear, digital ID(internet passport), and democratization of the digital currency (digital EURODOLLAR)
Remember what TikTok's parent company is building (digital marketplace and everything that comes with it)
Musk is fabricated
Ask yourself these simple questions:
- why he get free pass for everything
- why the press gives him the red carpet
- why is he allowed to do everything he is doing? it should be considered national security ;)
- why is he allowed to play with crypto like that, the US doesn't like it when Middle East tries to use something other than the petro dollar
I have other questions but i'll share them on a different occasion
Strangely enough, i feel like hackernews could become the Twitter Alternative, the place for "civil journalism"
I see less and less "flagged" comments, this is encouraging and promising