So Elon Musk Has a New Toy...

[MineralMan]

What will he do to ruin Twitter? His options are many. I guess we'll watch to see how he screws up.

The thing is that a system that depends on individual members for almost all of its content is really, really difficult to control. Folks are fickle. Fuck with them and they disappear from your platform. A lot will just do that anyhow because, you know, Elon Musk.

Should be interesting.

[lame54]

1. Jim Comey with money

[MineralMan]

2. Well, maybe, sorta.

Musk is an "on the spectrum" kind of guy. He's clever in some ways, but there's a lot he doesn't get about people. Twitter is people. That's what it is. Musk doesn't do "people" that well. He's sort of awkward and says things that offend people.

He's going to want Twitter to be like him. Twitter may have other ideas, and Twitter is people.

I don't see this working out well down the road.

[LisaM]

4. I hope you're right.

He's a Libertarian, and sometimes I fear them as much as I do Republicans.

He'll use it to pump up Tesla and Space-X and presumably to promote his dystopian vision of a world filled with autonomous vehicles, little human interaction, his.network of light polluting satellites, underground cities, and the like, and to take petty shots at Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.

It's going to be a company is run from the point of view of a twelve-year old boy. It will suck for people who like Twitter.

It will be awful, but he's shown he doesn't care if he makes life awful for other people. I do not wish him well in this endeavor.

[MineralMan]

8. I doubt he's going to enjoy his ownership.

Twitter is essentially unmanageable. It's a virtual free-for-all thing. Its users like it that way. Try to control it and people will simply leave.

[RicROC]

3. I wish he would pay a 8% sales tax on that purchase.

[C_U_L8R]

5. $44 Billion only got him the keys to the house

It's going to take a hell of a lot more capital to even sustain Twitter. With plunging user activity and sponsor revenues, Musk could go broke very quickly.

[jcmaine72]

6. And a broken one at that. He just paid $44 billion to read RW lies and racist hate speech.

What's that old saying about a fool and his money soon parting ways?

[TheProle]

7. Though the study is a couple of years old

Pew reported that references to US national politics represents about 13% of all tweets. Also:

...this analysis finds that a small share of users produce the vast majority of content related to national politics: 97% of tweets from U.S. adults that mentioned national politics over the study period came from just 10% of users

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/10/23/national-politics-on-twitter-small-share-of-u-s-adults-produce-majority-of-tweets/

The political outrage at Musk will be far more limited than folks are predicting.