Elon Musk tells advertisers: ‘Go fuck yourself’ - The Verge
3 years ago by BobTheBoozer to c/world
he said. “We’ll be gone, and it’ll be gone because of an advertiser boycott.”... eeer, no.
Billionaires are money addicts
I've been saying this for a while now. If he were an average person, a loved one or friend would have probably tried to get him help, if not voluntarily, then as an intervention. He's a billionaire, and has clearly been unwell for a while, but the world just keeps egging him on to do more crazy shit.
It reminds me a little of the South Park pop star thing, where the world needs a "sacrifice" in terms of fame. We've now moved past pop, and now we're letting influencers (which, let's be frank, that's basically Musk's contribution to any of his businesses) dance for our enjoyment.
In theory, I think bad people deserve pity more than anything else, because something made them that way, and we don't get to choose our formative experiences. We are fundamentally still just animals responding to our environment.
But in practice, I have a finite amount of empathy, so I'll save it for people who aren't actively making the world a worse place.
but muh 20-d chess
What a fucking clown. Shareholders should be holding him personally liable for tanking the company.
He's not the only shareholder though.
First off, they didn't pay $44bn, that number includes a $13bn loan that Twitter took out to buy itself on behalf of the new owners. Musk paid ~$27 including fees, $20bn of this was Tesla stock (which since shortly after has been underperforming), then $5bn was other investors, including that Saudi Prince.
Edit: there was also Musk's existing shares, which iirc was around $2bn, but I think that's included in the $27bn - so his payment was something like $25bn, made up of $20bn in stock and $5bn in cash. /e
Musk is the majority owner, owning roughly around 26/31 of the value. However he isn't the only shareholder.
In any case the leveraged buyout has been structured with the intent of killing the business. There was never any sincere hope of paying off the $13bn debt, and the intent was all but proven when they almost immediately stopped paying rent on their offices. This might not have been the goal along, but since Musk was forced to make the purchase that's what it turned into.
What do you think is the endgame here? Im so lost with regard to this whole storyline
It's an interesting question.
Musk was forced to buy Twitter after accidentally promising to do so in legally binding terms. So, to a very great extent, there is no endgame, just the endless flailing of a rich kid who can't comprehend just how much luck (rather than genius) got him where he is.
But, his supporters are primarily far right authoritarians, and his partners in Twitter include some extremely authoritarian regimes which have an interest in being able to suppress speech (and have had more help to do so with X compared to old Twitter). And his idea of free speech is being able to say whatever he likes without criticism, which means silencing any ideas that could possibly be construed as criticism, whether directed at him or not. The standard far right nonsense. If you point out the existence of racism you're attacking white people. If you point out the existence of sexism you're attacking men. If you choose not to advertise on a website promoting far right ideas, you're attacking him personally.
Is he trying to turn Twitter into a more successful version of Gab or Truth Social, or is that just a by-product of his peculiar psyche? Is it with the intention of influencing elections, or is it just that his particular type of narcissism happens to be very useful to authoritarians? Are the ideas of the far right anything other than extreme narcissism anyway?
He's not an evil genius but evil clowns can do a lot of damage too.
There is no endgame plan. He is a fucking idiot that got rich on accident.
Endgame now is to kill off Twitter (and grassroots public forums in general) then replace them with right wing alternatives. Musk's old friend Peter Thiel failed with Parler, with Twitter out the way they have a much stronger chance.
Meanwhile, as Twitter crashes and burns, they can experiment with ludicrous ideas. Most of them will fail, but anything they get away with becomes a template for whatever comes next.
Like I say, that wasn't the plan all along - most likely he just wanted to manipulate the stock price and make a bit of profit - but that's what this has turned into.
In any case the leveraged buyout has been structured with the intent of killing the business. There was never any sincere hope of paying off the $13bn debt, and the intent was all but proven when they almost immediately stopped paying rent on their offices.
i don't know that this is certain. Withholding rent is not an uncommon tactic to force a landlord to renegotiate a lease (in fact, that was the stated reason for withholding rent, for whatever Elon's statements are worth). Certainly a very dirty one, and one that could blow up in his face if the landlord called his bluff and evicted him (last i heard they were handed an eviction notice in June, but I assume that's either currently being litigated or already settled). It may have been HIS intent, but that doesn't mean his shareholders weren't intent on being repayed.
Regardless, I think 'shareholder' is a bit misleading (even if completely accurate and justified), because people (possibly the original commenter) think of CEO's having fiduciary obligation to shareholders for publicly traded companies, and that's not the case here.
There are other contractual obligations he would have to his co-investors and lenders (more serious ones I think) if he's found guilty of intentionally tanking the company. I think that's probably why he's being so vocal here about it being the fault of the advertisers; if he tanks the company, whether he's held to those contracts or if he's allowed to declare bankruptcy depends on whether the plaintiff's can prove he tanked it intentionally. If he did (as I think is pretty clear to most people at this point) and he's found guilty of that, he'd be held liable for the total repayment of those loans plus whatever damages determined.
While he himself didn't pay $44b for twitter, he could end up personally paying that much if all of the above comes to fruition, and that's worst-case for him. Considering his net worth is mostly tied up in his other companies, he could stand to loose most of his net worth. If he gets tied up in a fraud trial, chances are high that his other companies' stock values would plunge, too (TSLA has a beta value of 2.3, which means it's more than twice as volatile as the rest of the market).
TLDR: Elon has every reason to be completely loosing his shit
The banks that finaced him are extremely furious though.
Pretty sure he's paying a massive amount of interest on those loans, and he would have to liquidate his other assets before he could declare bankruptcy and erase any of the debt... The banks are probably laughing.
Ah, I thought he only acquired a controlling stake, rather than buying the full company outright.
Why burn 23 billions if you can burn 44?
BTW, cool user identity!
Best case scenario
The best thing for the Fediverse has been Musk cannibalizing twitter with ever decision he makes it seems.
Twitter imploding -> People finding Mastodon as an alternative -> People discovering federation as an alternative to walled garden social media
98% of people I see leaving Twitter are headed for BlueSky, not Mastodon
Well, as dumb as this was (and it was very, very dumb), I found myself distracted by just how... weird he looked. Not just his face, which reminded me of Lady Cassandra from Dr Who ("Moisturize me, moisturize me!"), but his weird, jerky movements, and just his general vibe. He's like the personification of the uncanny valley. Eggar-from-MiB "get me sugar water" lookin' ass. If someone were to come out with a tell-all saying that Musk had been secretly replaced by aliens, I wouldn't even be terribly surprised at this point.
It's always fun to play is he weirdly out of touch because he's a billionaire or is he weirdly out of touch because he's autistic. I think this might be a bit of both.
Hand gestures don't come naturally to everybody. Some people learn them just to fit in and some try and evoke the same emotions from them without understanding the emotions or the motions completely because they're just not physically capable of connecting those brain synapses. Add to that the fact Elon doesn't hang out with normal people. He only hangs out with engineers and sycophants. So he doesn't get to naturally see people in their everyday environment. He only sees people acting in videos and then he tries to imitate that and the sycophants and engineers around him applaud him. The dumb shit he says gets retweets so he thinks everyone agrees. Then he goes out into the real world and continues parroting this end stage meming with gestures he learned from Hitler speaches, not realizing the jerky movement was due to low frame rate and high meth rate, and is stun locked when everybody else is trying to figure out what the fuck is happening. And what the fuck is happening is that we are witnessing a man who is so far up his own ass that even basic hand gestures are oddly shitty.
He claims to be autistic. As far as I know, there has never been a formal diagnosis. But he sure does like to use it to excuse the things he says and does.
I think it might be tourette's, my son has the same jerkey movements but without the verbal symptoms.
People are also speculating drug use, and I personally wouldn't rule that out considering just how stressful his life currently is. Hell, I feel as though his hairline has receded a bunch (again) too.
I think it's likely that's it's a mixture of all three. Drug use (even some completely above-board prescriptions. I know that my ADHD prescription makes me act strangely when I'm low on sleep or over-caffeinated) would dull his ability to mask his other behavioral idiosyncrasies, which could originate with his placement on the spectrum and the fact that he's surrounded by sycophants. But who fucking knows.
Isn't it fun playing armchair doctor for Elon Musk! If you're wrong, who are you hurting, fuck that guy. And if you're right, it's fucking hilarious because fuck that guy.
I'm not so self-involved as to think my anonymous comments have any material impact on Elon's well-being, but if they did I'd be pleased.
Fuck the rich, but especially fuck the fascist ones.
I think it's the ketamine
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This is the free market at work, not black mail like he claims.
I could only manage to skip through a bit.. any idea roughly when he says the fuck yourself line?
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“That is what everybody on Earth will know,” he said. “We’ll be gone, and it’ll be gone because of an advertiser boycott.”
Oh no, not at all, dear ... everybody on Earth is perfectly aware that it is YOU who is killing the company. Twisting the narrative to feel better within yourself ain't gonna change the fact. Why would any advertiser worth a damn, want to be associated with Stormfront 2.0?
everybody on Earth will know
hahaha holy shit, he believes. he really believes his own shit. he really views "X" as being of planetary importance. he's actually living in his daydream, where Mars (by his hand) and Earth are networked (by him) and his "X" has somehow supplanted the Internet and spans between planets. his principal operating perspective is a delusion. wow. like, all the time.
The book Red Rising was suppose to be fiction but fucking hell if people like Musk continue to hold the top of the economic and political power structures, that shit is gonna be reality.
Most people are rooting for that shit ass company toburn to the ground.
It is hilarious to me how this guy thinks he is entitled to have advertisers on his platform. I don't understand why he thinks he can coerce them back with insults and claiming they will bankrupt his company. Why do they have any responsibility to save your rotten company? Delusional!
In 7th grade, many years ago, my school had an excited young teacher who convinced management to let them teach a Logic class. I can’t even remember if the teacher was male or female, but I use the shit I learned in that class constantly, particularly the fallacies and biases we memorized (and then promptly weaponized against teachers, parents, and pastors).
When billionaires attribute their success entirely to their own virtues, skills, or talents, and blame others or external circumstances for their failings, they are demonstrating a self-serving bias, a specific form of the fundamental attribution error. They fail to acknowledge external factors like market conditions, socio-economic advantages, or the efforts of their teams that may have contributed to their success. Conversely, they externalize blame for failures, ignoring any personal shortcomings or misjudgments.
Sprechen sie Deutsch?
What about the Dutch?
He's just using abusive partner/parent tricks to manipulate people. I doubt they have any real basis in logic.
oh but they will be judged!
I always feel like there's this low-key conspiracy to deed out every proper noun a cinematic treatment
It's the -or at the end. Makes everything sound cool. Almost as cool as the letter X.
The sexiest logical operator.
You needs to gets urself to school and get some learnings and spellingzl
So he's not even trying to control the damage anymore, huh? Just decided he might as well finish flushing the last 20 billion?
Good fucking riddance.
So did he steal them off a dead soldier?
Jewish people are funding causes meant to “annihilate” them
This is what happens when your CEO overdoses on his own farts.
Why wouldn't he have done that first?
Twitters downfall is intentional, if he wanted to micromanage Tesla and SpaceX he would have. This is all a symptom of the fact that he didn't want to buy Twitter in the first place, he was using it as a coverup for selling stock in Tesla.
Both companies had teams of handlers that followed him around and kept him from messing with important work. Now that he's addicted to 24/7 media attention, I doubt the handlers will be able to contain him.
I don't understand why Tesla won't remove him. He isn't even the majority stock holder. I highly doubt he adds any value for the company at this point so the only thing I can think of is that there must be some weird clause in their agreements.
I've owned a Tesla since 2017 and at this point, I've only replaced tires and spent less than $1000 on electricity to go a bit over 50k miles, but I'm ashamed to be driving it every day and it sucks.
Not for nothing. His Nazi fans loved it. And all he seems to care about now is what they think.
Skirting awfully close to a nazi boycott! Luckily the nazis will probably understand it was freeze peach. They know as no other what it means to disavow.
Musk is playing 3d checkers and saves free speech once again.
There are no twitter stocks, you can't buy or sell them, and therefore can't short them, since you need to borrow them to do just that. This could work if Elon had some percent of the company, so other people's money would enter the equation, but right now it is not possible.
I'm a little confused by this comment, Twitter isn't a publicly traded stock anymore?
Unless you mean he made deals with them before he BOUGHT twitter (for well beyond market value), meaning the hedgies would be taking a loss....?f
edit: that doesn't preclude the possibility he's tanking the company so he can declare bankruptcy to get out of his loans, but that doesn't involve conspiring with hedge funds, it's just a different kind of financial fraud
Yea, I mean I think it's probably his best play. But I don't really grant him to be so principled as to have originally bought twitter for that purpose: I think he's a dumbass who got called on a shitpost, and now he has to weasel his way out.
Doesn't mean he's not also a reactionary cunt, but I personally think that plays second fiddle to this situation.
Do you have evidence of him committing insider trading?
Well he's spent the last decade committing market manipulation, not that far of a jump.
Because its kind of pointless to the point t of sealioning.
Like take for example when the leader of Wagner group died in a plane crash and it was pretty obvious putin had him killed. Would asking a random lemmy user to provide proof of that claim add anything to thr discussion?
In this case and the Wagner example, if the point isn't obvious it's reasonable to ask for some kind of proof to get a better understanding of the point. But I do agree that there's no reason to ask for proof in this case, because the conspiracy theory is already so nonsensical that any proof would just compound the nonsense.
People simply need to stop putting him on a pedestal and accept that he isn't some genius businessman whose inner machinations are an enigma. He made a stupid deal and bought a company he doesn't know how to run so he's running it into the ground, that's it. No grand conspiracy required. You need a grand conspiracy only if you can't accept that Musk is just an ordinary man whose biggest contribution to his success is having wealthy parents.
Lol, I'm no fan of Elon either.
You clearly imply insider trading going on. The fact that it might not be (I'm not sure if the law) musk being guilty of insider trading, but just commiting fraud so others could do so, is being pedantic and silly.
He only bought Twitter because he was forced to or admit he was trying to manipulate the stock again.
He bought a much higher stake, used Twitter to telegraph a higher price than it was worth. Then he didn't use his own money when he was finally forced to purchase Twitter at the higher price he tweeted. The money he used to purchase Twitter came from countries who have stated they didn't want Twitter to be around because it hurt their public perception when they were caught doing shady things.
His Twitter gift started the same way the SEC sued him for market manipulation for his Tesla manipulation years before. Publishing his $420 price point then selling stock when the price goes beyond his tweeted price point.
He was never savy enough to use shorting like the Hedge funds do, but his reach among the idiot masses to cause jumps in price to artificially male a bigger profit.
So you're just talking out of your ass?
Making deals with hedge funds to ruin a brand they have shorted seems illegal.
Is there any legislation that prohibits this in the United States?
Those only apply to poor people
Lol dude is falling apart
Why is he calling the act of people not using his shitty product a boycot?
Persecution fetish. It's a prerequisite for all MAGA trash
Plus it's buzzwords to rile up and gain favor with the authoritarian chuds who speak on the court of public opinion
Cluster-B summed up perfectly. His platform will die because of “an advertiser boycott”, and not because he’s driving it into the ground while throwing middle fingers with both hands and ranting about how everyone else can go fuck themselves as the world burns around him.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Elon Musk took the stage at the DealBook conference on Wednesday evening with nervous laughter and a cascade of jokes about himself and his companies.
But the interview quickly turned to the more serious subject of Musk’s recent antisemitic posts on X and whether his company can survive the advertiser boycott.
Musk’s message to advertisers came after what had briefly appeared to be an attempt to salvage the damage he caused after he called an antisemitic post the “actual truth” two weeks ago.
More than 100 brands have since halted their ads, and the company is at risk of losing $75 million by the end of the year, according to The New York Times.
His attempted clarification only seemed to further the antisemitic conspiracy theory he promoted in the first place, broadly blaming “people in the Jewish community” for their support of unnamed activist groups.
But the questions around Musk’s own actions, and the resulting advertiser exodus — the things that could materially impact X — seemed to garner the most nonchalant answers.
The original article contains 497 words, the summary contains 173 words. Saved 65%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
"X" isn't publicly traded. When he bought it, he took it private, so you can't short it. The ticker symbol X is for the United States Steel Corporation. You could definitely short that, though; it's entirely possible that it'll tank just the same because people confuse it with Xitter. Like when that Chinese company that had the ticker symbol ZOOM shot to the moon at the start of the pandemic because people thought it was the video conferencing app (whose symbol was ZM).
It's.... Not public...
He's at Ballmer chanting "developers developers" except it's "advertisers advertisers" and he has even less charisma than Steve, which takes something.
He's at Microsoft dropping windows mobile in 2010
Alternative headline : https://reclaimthenet.org/...
I expected at least a downvote though :'(, am i becoming mainstream ?
I can debate in favor of E.Musk or religions if you're interested(, my computer crashed a week ago so i've got time for now), Internet is there for us to learn after all, there's not much point for me to stay in Lemmygrad(, yeah, i'm also a communist, too many defects for a single little boy).
And yeah, this world is infuriating, not funny(, but be happy if you want to, i'll stay angry).
All billionaires are thieves but it's hard to argue that the state or citizens would have accomplished as much as his teams.
He's the billionaire who did the most, why should he also be the first to be criticised, it doesn't make sense he should be the last.
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"I fucking hate you and wish you'd get hit by a bus"
Five minutes later: "Please don't leave babe... I love you..."
Dude is not well.
save