It already served its purpose. He bought it so he could control a narrative, used it to boost right wing voices, used it to capture media for the purposes of suppressing dissent to win an election. He took Russian and Saudi money to buy the platform for the expressed purpose of getting Trump elected.
this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
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He's already used it to buy an election. He's gotten plenty of value out of it.
According to analysts at Emarketer, from when Musk acquired X in 2022 until 2025, they expect X to have lost 7 million monthly active users in the U.S.
The declining user base pales in comparison to the decline of X's brand and value. According to a recent report from Brand Finance, X's brand is now worth 673 million. The brand was valued at $5.7 billion before Musk's takeover in 2022. When it comes to revenue, X's revenue fell by 40 percent when compared to the prior year based on internal company data from June 2024.
X as a brand was worth $0 in 2022.
Twitter as a brand was worth $5.7 billion in 2022.
Elon took Twitter to the back of the shed and Old Yeller'd it.
Or if you prefer to be a lot more cynical, he Old Yeller'd it, but he burned it's equity to get himself elected Co-President, and is worth like a hundred billion dollars more than he was before he did that.
So really, it was a Very Wise and bigly Smart business move.
<angry_upvote>
Dude he doesn't care Twitter did exactly what he bought it to do. It can burn to the ground far as he is concerned. He bought himself a president and will be put in charge of the government that reglates his businesses. Dude going make more then he loss on Twitter .
Which is exactly what the people who gave him the money wanted him to do with it.
Am I missing something? He bought it for $44bn
"Brand" means the value attached to the name, not the value of the company as a whole. With that being said, yes, Elon massively and hilariously overpaid for Twitter (around 50%-100% over the odds IIRC). He offered an absolutely insane price per share as a stunt to get them to change their hate speech policies, and the Twitter shareholders said "Deal" and took his money. That's why he sued them to try to get out of going through with the deal; he never actually meant to buy the company in the first place, he just made a really, really stupid attempt at a power move and it blew up in his face.
Ahh I see. Thanks for the explanation. Too funny lol
And now he is basically another misinformation hub like Murdoch Media. Weirdly also with M's.... Musk Media.
There is a clear successor to X now, Bluesky, which means anyone not happy with X knows what their best option is.
My guess is, when X and Bluesky are roughly even in terms of active users, X's user base will start to collapse and there will be a mass exodus to Bluesky.
I think Elon might try to intervene in that, either by regulations favoring his platform, or industrial sabotage. Maybe even try to get into the fediverse game, so X accounts could interact with Bluesky or Mastodon ones.
I don't see how regulations can help him there, especially given the nature of the Web. Bluesky can always move offshore, beyond the reach of the US authorities.
I also imagine both Bluesky and Mastadon users will tell x users, loudly and clearly, to fuck off.
I’m guessing the worst of the worst will hang back at Xitter because they’d otherwise be banned elsewhere, and it will be a cesspool not unlike 8chan.
Which is a nice change, usually every alternative starts up exactly because the worst of the worst got banned from the original and had to migrate to somewhere else, and then it's an uphill battle for anyone else to make use of that platform.
^cough^ ^Lemmy^ ^cough.^
Oh definitely, although the federated nature of the platform means it's easy to block the angry Internet communists.
Personally, I just block all the ML domains, nothing good comes from there.
I like to think we’re the best of the best, at least on some instances.
Yep, nothing but the dregs will remain.
My guess is that the user base shifts will vary by nation and language. The rate of X enshitification and migration has hit different regions at different speeds.
The writing is on the wall for US users though. Twitter is the AOL or MySpace of this decade. It’s lame and not fun anymore, and Bsky is fun and very active.
Good! Some good news in my feed for a change.
That should be a lemmy community :) I would read a good news focused lemmy, although moderating something like that would be subjective and potentially difficult.
Not quite the same, but we do have "andfinally" for quirky and silly news.
https://feddit.uk/c/andfinally
Named after the tendency on TV to put lighthearted news pieces like these at the end, to give people something to smile about after all the depressing stuff.
oh interesting! subed.
On Lemmy:
Elsewhere:
Good! Let's accelerate this trend. If you have friends or family still using X tell them to delete their account.
This image really enhances the content.
It’s a story about Elon Musk: so we have a Musk silhouette.
It’s also a story about X: so there’s a big phone with an X on it
Finally, it’s a story about users: so there’s a thumb
Like the great masters of old, whoever composed this image really managed to convey the essence of this story via this image, which very much enhances the story.
This person should work for national geographic. So poignant. So gripping. So utterly arresting.
Are u the artist lol
The collagist? I’m not
Don't worry, Elon. The Russian bot farms will create more users every election cycle.
Is someone shutting down all the Russian bot servers or something?
Soon Xitter/Elon will purchase Truth Social from Trump for all the monies and they will be the same platform, under one overlord.
Long as the dregs stay put its all good
They'll follow their prey.
Can't lose what he's never had, my love 💕
Well, ain't that just a low down dirty shame? lol
I wish I used x so I could change. I did sign up for mastodon, however I found out I cannot stand the format.
There are many different clients if you dislike the default one. Maybe give those a shot?
Technically I'm running a GoToSocial instead of Mastodon with my own custom client on my own server. It's so much more lean.
I think it's the medium, it's so centered around persons and talking heads, that doesn't gel with me. Software technically I like Mastodon, but I feel like I lose interest in checking it compared to Lemmy.
I like using mastodon to follow people and peertube content.
Lemmy I like because I can follow topics.
That's it. I like following topics more than people
I wish.