X / Twitter is now worth 70% less than what Elon Musk paid for it, says report

[Bobbydpue]

He should had paid that 1B$ penalty and abort the transaction...

He shouldn't have offered to buy Twitter in the first place, excluding due diligence, and certainly not for more than its stock prices were worth. But since he's ruined the platform's value and significantly reduces the number of users, he may have solved the botting problem by making it a less desirable platform for botting.

 

[McMurdeR]

That's a bit of a misrepresentation. If I remember the context correctly, he told that to advertisers who wanted to "blackmail him with money" (e.g., tone-police him) to do that. The additional context is important as this is presumably a subset of all advertisers.

One would have to assume they're all gonna want to do that, I.e. have some control over what content is placed alongside their ads. Musk is framing it as politics, but in reality it's a standard practice in the advertising industy that's as old as the hills.

If Musk wants an unfettered free speech platform that's fine, but ultimately he can't make advertisers go along with him. If he wants to make money this way he'll have to compromise with them. There's a bit of theatrics going on here, but you can bet they'll quietly build some segregation into the platform and a lot of this will blow over.

 

[LemmingO]

Most social media companies are vastly overvalued anyway.

 

[GreyOmega]

The whole situation is exactly what you'd expect if a drug addict had the money to buy out the place that makes his drugs. He agreed to a ludicrous evaluation to buy it cause his drug addled brain thought it was worth infinite dollars, and then he proceeds to run it into the ground by making all his decisions while being constantly wasted off their own drugs.

 

[GoldenGoat]

When you're the richest man in the world, you can spend 30 billion to destroy Twitter just for fun and it's no big deal.

 

[nnguy2]

How is Tesla "state sponsored"? What facts do you have on this claim? Not trolling, serious question.

You can Google "tesla government subsidies" and read up on any of the many articles that summarizes what the US government did for Tesla.

Here's one of many

Elon Musk is speaking out against government subsidies. Here's a list of the billions of dollars his businesses have received.

Musk's companies benefited from subsidies as recently as April, when SpaceX won a $2.89 billion contract from NASA. Tesla got subsidies for years.

www.businessinsider.com

 

[takemaru]

that would have been the smart business decision. a good business person needs to know when to cut your losses

It was not a business decision. He was and is transparent about his reasons. He bought twitter to get rid of the censorship, and he is not letting the advertisers to strong-arm him.

 

[HyperPete]

Musk recently told X advertisers to "go f*ck yourselves"

F*ck musk

 

[nnguy2]

It was not a business decision. He was and is transparent about his reasons. He bought twitter to get rid of the censorship, and he is not letting the advertisers to strong-arm him.

Twitter isn't the free speech absolutism platform you think it is. And if you think Musk did it just for free speech, none of the companies thst financed the deal would have loaned him the money. It's a business decision and you're dumb if you think otherwise.

 

[takemaru]

F*ck musk

It was a setup. The advertisers know it. Musk knows, that the advertisers know it. The advertisers know, that Musk knows that they know it.
It's a repeat of Youtube's ad-apocalipse. Unlike youtube (ex)CEO Suzan, Musk doesn't bend over for a cold enema.

The author of the hit-piece had to spam F5 for hours to find neo-nono content on twitter, next to a big advertiser.

 

[takemaru]

Twitter isn't the free speech absolutism platform you think it is.

Why would you assume I think that?

The first thing Musk did was to fire the censorship department(s). He got rid much of the CP infesting the site, and it's still fairy strictly moderated. If you have a potty mouth, your tweets will be hidden, and you can get hit with a shadow ban.

 

[nnguy2]

Why would you assume I think that?

The first thing Musk did was to fire the censorship department(s). He got rid much of the CP infesting the site, and it's still fairy strictly moderated. If you have a potty mouth, your tweets will be hidden, and you can get hit with a shadow ban.

It was not a business decision. He was and is transparent about his reasons. He bought twitter to get rid of the censorship, and he is not letting the advertisers to strong-arm him.

You answered your own question. It's still being censored. But I guess it's cool with you since Musk is doing the censoring. So he wasted tens of billions of dollars and Twitter is still censoring.

 

[takemaru]

You answered your own question. It's still being censored. But I guess it's cool with you since Musk is doing the censoring. So he wasted tens of billions of dollars and Twitter is still censoring.

There is a fine line between censorship and moderation. And I don't care who does it, if they are cracking down on CP or moderating the language used.
I'm not a "free speech absolutist" as you assumed in the beginning.

And if the twitter buyout would have been a business decision, he wouldn't be fighting with the
advertisers, but rather trying to butter them up.
Buying twitter - an overpriced, money-hemorrhaging platform - is a terrible business decision, but if he had idelogocal reasons, it makes much more sense.

 

[nulll]

How is Tesla "state sponsored"? What facts do you have on this claim? Not trolling, serious question.

They aren't, or at least they aren't any more than any other US automotive manufacturer is. Basically Tesla did the R&D to actually have a series of production vehicles are compliant with government mandates while their "competitors" in the legacy dragged their feet with novelties like the Hummer EV betting on their lobbyists to get the mandates pushed back, declawed or outright dismissed. As such those legacy brands have had to purchase EV credits from Tesla so as to continue manufacturing ICE vehicles. Tesla has also benefitted from several rounds of US governmental grants to aid their R&D through to production, which was the entire purpose of the grant programs.

Long story short, Tesla did exactly what they were supposed to do in securing governmental funding that was available to all complying manufacturers. So now those folks with a shallow pool of critical thought are stuck in just a tiny little neurocognitive quagmire while they shout about the need to more closely regulate Tesla for not obeying US regulations (which they are but don't tell the anti Musk types) while also having to contend with the fact that broadly speaking Tesla is the only US auto maker to actually have followed the intent of the regulations to the letter. Rivian and possibly Scout as well but Rivian is more of a high end luxury mark for now and as such falls outside of a lot of the intent of the grants and regulations, no shade to Rivian here as their product is really solid for a first attempt (yes there have been some niggles but nothing critical...well except maybe discontinuing the sunlight yellow color option for the R1T).

 

[umeng2002]

Most social media companies are vastly overvalued anyway.

Not to get political, but apparently, Twitter's real value was being a propaganda outlet for the left wing.

 

[monkeylove]

From what I remember, it was overvalued when he bought it, and the ones who did that were Wall Street banks that he consulted. That's also why the rest of the owners were eager to sell and at one point even threatened to sue him if he backed out. He wanted to do that because he suspected that a significant proportion of the user base consisted of 'bots.

One reason why it was overvalued was because the ones that operated the company ran it to the ground. It lost money almost every year it operated, and when it did earn big one year it lost big the following year.

 

[Bamda]

This is a perfect example of how to not run a company. Thank you Elon for showing us all how it's done.

 

[Bamda]

Truth be told, Twitter was never worth 44B. Probably not even half of that.

And yet he paid it. He must be one of those Stable Genius I keep hearing about. LOL

 

[Bamda]

Elon Musk's net worth as of 1/2/24 $251.3 Billion. So pocket change in the grand scheme of things . Even Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg could not achieve this with their state sponsored platforms.

Pocket change? He paid almost 20% of his networth if your numbers are accurate. I would never throw away 20% of my networth unless are a compmlete idoit! LOL

 

[Bamda]

When you're the richest man in the world, you can spend 30 billion to destroy Twitter just for fun and it's no big deal.

I guess if you are a nonsensical, delusional *****. Yea, make it rain baby. I would have preferred he build a shelters for homeless people then pure it down the drain in the Twitterverse. But hey I am not as bright as most y'all.

 

[umeng2002]

True, US-legal free speech is not business friendly. And is frankly, illegal in most of the rest of the world... even in "free" European countries.

 

[Furriest]

If "" is all you can muster as an automated response from the press email for Xitter, then "" is what you shall receive in kind from our beloved journalists.

 

[MaxEffectUSA]

I personally prefer free speech to censored speech. Musk changed Twitter for the the better when he purchased it.He was willing to take a loss to open it up. He is also working hand in hand with the gov. to better our countries defense.

 

[Endymio]

I find it patently absurd that any company can be worth more then 4-5x their annual profit, but the stock market runs on funny rules that the rest of us cant use.

The rules aren't that strange, but they do require more than a 75 IQ to understand. If a company's current annual profit is "x", whereas within five years it's projected to be "3x", "10x", or even "100x", the share valuation will support a much higher P/E ratio.

This is a perfect example of how to not run a company. Thank you Elon for showing us all how it's done.

Agreed! If you care about nothing but money, then you should never publicly disclose that the company you're purchasing engaged in illegal acts to suppress true, but politically damaging information.