• EdibleFriend@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Don’t forget how recently he really started driving away the advertisers and how close we are to the end of the year. I see it as a very hopeful start.

    • ramble81@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      $75m in 5 weeks. That’s a run rate of $780m per year. That is not a small chunk of revenue.

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Don’t worry, the company is now worth less than half of what he paid for it and his Tesla stocks are hemorrhaging value too 🙂

  • cheese_greater@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Does anyone else pick up on the subtle humor of X being the means by which illiterate people can put pen to paper and “have their say

      • cheese_greater@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        K you better not have just unearthed the REAL genesis and hidden meaning behind all this X bullshit…👆

        Edit: sort of makes some sick kinda sense given his autocrat state-level investors… :/

            • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              He named the 4 models of Tesla cars Model S, Model 3, Model X, and Model Y. This makes him appear to be juvenilly obsessed with X because of XXX meaning Porn. If it was indeed to hide the intent of him being obsessed with X because that’s the symbol that was used to sell Africa to the colonizers, it worked because I was under the impression he was just sex obsessed, until I read the previous posters theory

    • cheese_greater@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Why is this problematic for Elon? Has he ever explicitly conceded he needs X to be profitable? Isn’t it sufficient and necessary enough in the eyes of his investors to simply neuter it?

      • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        He’s said that he WANTS it to be profitable and as a clinical narcissist billionaire, he doesn’t cope well with not getting what he wants.

        On a more practical level, the cesspit it’s become has increased scrutiny on his other companies and the main one, Tesla, is decidedly NOT weathering that well.

        All in all, he’s lost over a third, maybe even as much as HALF of his still absurdly huge dragon’s hoard of wealth since he took over Twitter.

        • cheese_greater@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          There’s something fishy going on in my view. Its only conjecture as of yet and I don’t want to push it too much but none of this computes, so to speak

          He said…

          Elon spouts a lot of nonsense and “said” he wanted to buy Twitter initially

          • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            I think you’re overthinking it tbh. He’s not some evil supergenius, he’s just an extreme lucky idiot and bigot who’s finally getting a taste of the finding out after fucking around for most of his life…

            Evil, yes, but in no way a mastermind. Barely even a mind.

            • cheese_greater@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              He doesn’t need to be evil or a genius or even have a mind (although I think that is overly uncharitable to the point I have to depart in agreeing with you briefly, he is a smart guy but sometimes smart people can be the dumbest, I’m a living+breathing example of this), all he has to do is to take money from cunning evil people

              • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                True, and pay people much smarter and otherwise more capable to do the actual work required for making him money.

                That’s the main reason why the whole Twitter thing has been such a dumpster fire: he’s taking a hands on approach rather than just pretending to by taking credit for the work of other people.

                The fact that the nature of a social media company means that most of his mistakes and desperate attempts to rectify them are much more public sure doesn’t help either, given his narcissism…

                • cheese_greater@lemmy.world
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                  11 months ago

                  pay people much smarter and otherwise more capable to do the actual work required for making him money.

                  That’s intense, its not like he has any kind of track record with that, does he? I dunno, I thought he was always already all of those things and worked 120-hour weeks “running” several companies one-man-show style like Nathan Fielder or James Franco('s Roast)?

      • doggle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        11 months ago

        Much of his wealth is held in shares of his publicly traded companies. If investors lose faith in his ability to manage and grow one company it could (and seemingly has) affect the value of all companies he’s involved with, directly decreasing his net worth. Making Twitter profitable would have gone a long way in demonstrating his ability to run a company, but he has done the opposite.

        But technically no, I guess he doesn’t need Twitter to turn a profit. He could just watch it all burn.

    • GiddyGap@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      Elon is probably one of the only people in the world to whom this is not too worrisome.

    • BongsForJesus@lemmy.wtf
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      11 months ago

      I’ve been on the internet since the 90s, BBS services before that. Thankfully I’ve never stumbled upon anything remotely close to CSAM all this time. To think that I could open up a twitter thread linked from a news story and be subjected to it is repugnant.

      • Sunroc@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Especially since there are services like Thorne that would help you manage it. Also this is a direct result of gutting trust and safety teams.

    • Pavidus@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Sure, but at the end of the day, does it really matter? It’s like made up numbers that never run out. He’s still set for life, no real consequence. He feels this less than someone who misses a car payment one month.

      • Square Singer@feddit.de
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        11 months ago

        That’s the really crazy thing. With the market value crash of Twitter he lost more money than the GDP of a small country. Yet, it practically makes no difference to him.

    • phoneymouse@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      How much of his own money did he really lose though? Didn’t he have a bunch of people throw in with him?

      • dustyData@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Around $22Bn, that’s how much he had to sell on Tesla stock. The other half was a loan from several banks and investors that got saddled to Twitter itself. These things are public, that’s how we know most of the loan money came from the Saudi crown.

    • jonne@infosec.pub
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      11 months ago

      Yeah, he probably wanted it in order to influence the election, but the way things are going it might but be around for that. Not to mention, Twitter isn’t really used by real people, it’s basically just all journalists circle jerking.

    • GigglyBobble@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      Seems pretty obvious, right? Someone on Lemmy once argued, he did it to avoid taxes. Failed to explain how this is profitable in the end though.

      • BongsForJesus@lemmy.wtf
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        11 months ago

        I remember reading an article speculating that his strategy was to bring down twitter because it was a left leaning platform, and that would appease the Saudis, or something like that. Seemed pretty far fetched. I reckon he made an ego driven power play without thinking it through and it is going about as well as anybody expected. No shenanigans, no strategy, just a more publically exposed failure than his previous business failures.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    11 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Nov 24 (Reuters) - Elon Musk-owned social media company X could lose as much as $75 million in advertising revenue by the end of the year as dozens of major brands pause their marketing campaigns, the New York Times reported on Friday.

    Musk backing an antisemitic post on the platform last week has led several companies including Walt Disney (DIS.N) and Warner Bros Discovery (WBD.O) to pause their advertisements on the site formerly called Twitter.

    X has struck back and sued media watchdog group Media Matters, alleging the organization defamed the platform with a report that said ads for major brands including Apple and Oracle had appeared next to posts touting Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party.

    X said on Friday $11 million in revenue was at risk and the exact figure fluctuated as some advertisers returned to the platform and others increased spending, according to the report.

    Advertisers have fled X since Musk bought it in October 2022 and reduced content moderation, resulting in a sharp rise in hate speech on the site, according to civil rights groups.

    The platform’s U.S. ad revenue has declined at least 55% year-over-year each month since Musk’s takeover, Reuters previously reported.


    The original article contains 255 words, the summary contains 198 words. Saved 22%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • FaceDeer@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    X was sold recently for $44 billion. $75 million is 0.17% of that. I’m sure X is quaking in its boots.

    • BreadstickNinja@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      It wasn’t worth $44 billion when he bought it. That’s why he tried desperately to back out. The reason the company is in such a dire financial situation is specifically because it was bought at that price and now pays debt service far disproportionate to its actual worth.

      You’re also confusing company valuation with operating revenue. $44 billion isn’t how much cash they have on hand and $75 million doesn’t get subtracted from that, so expressing that percentage makes no sense. One number isn’t a percent of the other.

      Twitter’s ad revenue is already down more than 50% since the takeover and this is $75 million more of lost revenue on top of that. The company was maybe on a path to profitability at full advertising revenue and without the debt service, but now it is burning cash even as revenues tank.

    • squiblet@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      They have a billion of loan payments due each year. In order to pay that, someone has to come up with cash. Having a business that actually generates a profit would be the ideal way to do that.

      • FaceDeer@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        My point is that $75 million isn’t a significant amount either way at the scale that X is operating on.

        • squiblet@kbin.social
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          11 months ago

          Their ad revenue had already been rapidly shrinking. They brought in about 1.5 billion from advertising in 2021. After Musk gutted the company, while I’m sure expenses are lower, advertising revenue has already dropped by 70-55% depending on which source you go by. So, a generous guess is $750 million now, which would make $75 million 10%, and that is a significant drop.

    • anlumo@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Part of that money was paid by X itself (as debt), devaluing it in that process.