this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2023
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[–] henfredemars 393 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Who knew that removing functionality and limiting access to your product was the path to social media success.

[–] SmellyNinja@lemmy.world 255 points 1 year ago (10 children)

Apparently reddit attended the same workshop.

[–] jivandabeast@lemmy.browntown.dev 178 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Spez literally said in an interview that Musk's handling of twitter is what inspired him so

[–] Justice@lemmygrad.ml 106 points 1 year ago (3 children)

“This guy lost like $30B under a year. I wanna be just like him!”

How fucking stupid are these people?

[–] 0110010001100010@lemmy.world 66 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The thing to remember is that CEOs aren't typically any smarter than the average person. They ended up in that position from inheritances, personal connections, etc. In the case of Musk, he has so much disposable income around that he can throw $30B at something and still have more than you or I will ever earn in a lifetime.

[–] kescusay@lemmy.world 31 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Ever see Glass Onion? Musk (and spez) are Miles Bron.

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[–] another_lemming@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Spez sold Reddit for some small $mils before failing his other project and returning as a hired CEO. He is a cheapskate among media magnates. He isn't clever and is a loser. He adores Elon because he wishes he can throw money around just like him, but on the day's end he knows he doesn't have comparable wealth and he is there just because he happened to be around Aaron Swartz and other cool dudes. He himself couldn't create Reddit. And being the top admin of it now is probably the closest thing in corporate world to cuckolding, for he doesn't have a word in managing the 'frontpage of the internet' he once owned, he just follows what the board says him to. Sad piece of shit he is. Won't cry about him tho. Let misery fall onto his little empty head.

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[–] BURN@lemmy.world 136 points 1 year ago (24 children)

Ad revenue is down (at least) 50% and they just keep making decisions that kick people off their platform.

I’m pretty sure Twitter advertising and Reddit advertising are in a race to the bottom to see who’s going to have to pay companies to put ads on their site first.

It’s insane to watch this happen. I remember watching the rise of Twitter as a kid and it becoming ubiquitous with social media, only to see it crash down this quickly.

I’m speculating, but I’d guess a lot of functionality is being limited because they don’t have dev staff to maintain it, as well as trying to cut server costs as much as possible. I’d honestly be surprised if musk was making these decisions because he thinks it’s good for the health of the platform. There has to be some ulterior motive for it.

[–] deong@lemmy.world 105 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It is unfathomable to me how Reddit isn't profitable.

Facebook makes a mint by telling advertisers, "trust us, we'll get your ads in front of people who might buy your product based on a lot of inference around their fairly generic profile data plus some tracking cookies". One guy should be able to sell a billion dollars worth of ads on Reddit. Just put up a form that says, "which subreddit do you want to advertise in?" and "what's your credit card number?". That's it. They have like 10,000 completely segmented markets just sitting there full of hundreds of millions of people who have self-selected to be members of those communities.

We spend hundreds of billions of dollars collectively trying to figure out which google search terms might find us a few more solid leads. Reddit has an amazing list of them for every company in the entire world. How in the everloving fuck have they managed to blindly bumble around for two decades without ever falling into the giant pile of money in front of them?

[–] Lydia_K@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago

Yes, yes fucking exactly, how is it not an automatic gold mine!? This vexes me as well.

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[–] soulifix@lemmy.world 105 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We're living in very interesting times indeed.

So we have one billionaire over in Meta, who's been making it very known how predatory in practice he is with getting your data and they fundamentally shatter the functionality of all of their platforms.

Then, we have this billionaire here who under a year, has made a total catastrophe of what was once a thriving platform once worth billions of it's own until he came and acquired it.

And then we have this not-a-billionaire who, is inspired by the self-destruction of the other platforms that they too, must follow suit, in hopes of aspiring success.

I wonder what book they're all reading from in the ways of business, that says if you suck harder, they'll mean a net positive.

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[–] Snapz@lemmy.world 95 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I can't think of another product I know more about that I don't use. Just die already, elon is killing you in public to remove the threat of Twitter as an organizing tool for social uprisings and labor as a favor/brownie points/roundabout contracting for other billionaire "buddies".

Just go.

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[–] relative_iterator@sh.itjust.works 86 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don’t see the logic in making this change. Is someone supposed to want to join blue just so they can DM people that haven’t changed the default setting?

[–] Kichae@kbin.social 82 points 1 year ago

Yes.

It's a pay-to-harass scheme.

[–] Blaze@sh.itjust.works 83 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (10 children)

Everytime, they raise the bar

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[–] Licherally@lemmy.ml 80 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think it's important to remember that musk has never actually done anything to innovate the companies he's been a part of. He didn't create PayPal, he just bought his way in and made a series of dumb suggestions. He didn't create Tesla, he bought Tesla right after they had fine tuned their models, and then he made a series of changes that likely resulted in a worse product.

Elon Musk is not a good businessman, he's just rich and has a habit of purchasing profitable companies. Anyone could do this with his wealth. I'm not even really convinced that he's offered many technical ideas or designs for any of his companies, as it seems that would be the first thing he would mention every single time someone brought up one of his companies.

[–] drdabbles@lemmy.world 31 points 1 year ago (3 children)

But open AI wouldn't even exist without him! After all, he contributed less than 10% of their raise and he suggested the name. You can't have a company called Open AI if nobody names it Open AI.

He's a dumbass, and his worshipers deserve him.

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[–] life_is_coffee@lemmy.fmhy.ml 68 points 1 year ago

Dead platform

[–] Opafi@feddit.de 65 points 1 year ago (4 children)

But you can change it back. Here's how.

At this point, why even bother?

[–] Silverseren@kbin.social 24 points 1 year ago

And you're relying on anyone else you want to DM changing that setting too. Otherwise, you're SOL even if you've changed it on your end.

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[–] eek2121@lemmy.world 56 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Damn, Mr. Musk could have made more money betting on stocks mentioned in r/wallstreetbets, and they ALWAYS lose money. Dude seriously needs to have twitter do the opposite of what he thinks.

I have never seen a billionaire try to go from billions to zero so hard in my life. It is like he is showing the U.S. government why billionaires shouldn’t exist.

Is there a fund that lets me do long term shorts on rich people?

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[–] GnomeKat@lemmy.blahaj.zone 53 points 1 year ago (35 children)

Who is still interested in that stite it's actually baffling at this point that there are still people on there.

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[–] MaxPower@feddit.de 45 points 1 year ago (4 children)

"How to burn 44 billion dollars within a year" by Elon Musk

✅ alienated advertisers ✅ alienated right wing by curbing free speech despite saying the opposite ✅ alienated left wing by letting the right wing go rampant ✅ restricting core functions

Wow how is that going to be profitable for him? I don't see it.

[–] NutWrench@lemmy.ml 27 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It must be nice to be able to burn 44 billion dollars and not miss it at all.

I could live comfortably for the rest of my life on 1/10,000th of what Musk wasted.

[–] general_kitten@sopuli.xyz 19 points 1 year ago (6 children)

With 44 billion us dollars Elon could have built a small home for every homeless us citizen.

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[–] MeanEYE@lemmy.world 40 points 1 year ago (4 children)

To be honest, this is the only reason why I still have Twitter. I use it to contact various companies and ask for tech support. If I can't do that now, then there's no point to keep the account alive. Self-proclaimed genius is kind of an idiot. Just recently he complained about 50% drop rate in ad revenue, after killing ability to view tweets without account.

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[–] daniskarma@lemmy.world 39 points 1 year ago (12 children)

The didn't buy Twitter for a profit.

He bought Twitter to destroy it because big free horizontal communication platforms are bad for billionaires.

He can't just close it, so he just destroy it little by little until it is no more.

The same way conservative groups bought Tumblr because it was too sexual liberating for their conservative views.

[–] notatoad@lemmy.world 44 points 1 year ago (3 children)

he offered to buy twitter for a joke, and he actually did buy twitter because a court forced him to. not because this was some grand plan to accomplish anything - he literally spent months in court arguing that he shouldn't have to buy twitter, and he lost. that's the only reason he owns twitter now.

[–] penguin@lemmy.fmhy.ml 22 points 1 year ago

Yeah, he owns it because he's a dumbass and he's running it into the ground like a dumbass

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[–] QualisArtifexPereo@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago (6 children)

He bought Twitter by mistake, and was forced into it by Twitter shareholders who saw the opportunity to make bank.

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[–] LEDZeppelin@lemmy.world 36 points 1 year ago (4 children)

What happens to Twitter can also happen to your Tesla. Buyers beware.

[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago (3 children)

A lot of Telsa’s stuff is already paywalled.

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[–] noodle@feddit.uk 35 points 1 year ago

But you can change is back. Here's how

Why? Why waste the mental resources fighting to make a platform work for you? Just let Twitter die

[–] febra@lemmy.world 32 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Gotta save on those server costs.

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[–] caffeine@lemmy.ml 30 points 1 year ago (7 children)

The longer this shitshow goes on, the dumber Elon looks. Who could idolize him at this point?

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[–] arin@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Elon: why is our revenue tanking?

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[–] chairman@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] Amilo159@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Seems like Reddit and Twitter are having a race on who can burn their house down faster.

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[–] nick@forum.fail 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Ultimately he wants all users to be paying users.

Louis Rossman has stated in a few of his Youtube videos that he would make more money if you sent him $1.00 than if you watched adds in a years worth of videos. I don't imagine that Twitter or Reddit are any better.

I think that what we're actually seeing is the death of advertising supported services. There's just not enough money in adds to be viable and there's no more free investor money to burn.

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[–] DrinkBoba@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago

Watch it burn lol

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