There’s no benefit. He’s clearly totally out of his depth and whoever he is listening to isn’t giving him good advice.<p>Tesla and SpaceX have physical products. Twitter isn’t, it’s an advertising platform. That’s very different.<p>Tesla engineers didn’t have any options for similar companies to go to (until recently). Not a lot of rocketry companies out there either. Programmers have TONS of jobs. You can’t push them around so easily.<p>He had a very clear executable vision for Tesla he could articulate and motivate with. Same with SpaceX. No one knows what his Twitter plans are out side of “make it better”. But no one knows what that means, so it’s hard/impossible to follow. And he’s not articulating it.<p>Frankly it’s incredibly clear he doesn’t understand the product. Users don’t like Twitter, they like <i>other Twitter users</i>. So you have to be real careful not to drive them away. You know what advertisers don’t care about? Twitter. They like twitter users.<p>His changes to verification/Twitter Blue showed he didn’t know what the point of verification was (something many get wrong). That plus the terribly executed initial layoffs (and general uncertainty) destroyed moral and trust.<p>If he wasn’t running at 200 MPH his decisions might work. I haven’t heard <i>anyone</i> defending Twitter’s old headcount. But the way he went about layoffs was super counterproductive. Twitter Blue sucked, but using it to ruin verification was moronic.<p>Everything after that just reeks of desperation.<p>There’s no master plan. There’s no 4D chess. He went out in a ledge he shouldn’t have been on unprepared and is now trapped with everyone watching him fall.<p>Read this thread. It made a ton of sense to me.<p><a href="https://twitter.com/drskyskull/status/1593465921498144769" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/drskyskull/status/1593465921498144769</a>
I don't see how anyone can call the Twitter debacle an accident, so I have to conclude Musk does what he does intentionally, though possibly without a clear purpose. He alone has almost absolute control over the company.<p>What does Musk stand to gain by tanking Twitter? I don't know. Nor do I know what he thought he might gain by buying it. His explanation -- that he wants to save free speech for all humanity -- sounds so delusional and self-important I took it as either insincere or narcissistic. Given his history I settled on narcissism.<p>I don't doubt that if Twitter fails Musk will blame lazy and disloyal employees (or former employees), sabotage, the "woke left," spineless advertisers, greedy bankers. He won't see fault in his own actions, ignorance, failure to plan or set a course for the company. He already blamed "activists" for scaring off advertisers.
I don’t buy this theory mostly because his ego is too big to do so without saying it. Plus given the texts with his friends and partners, it seems like he really really wanted to turn it into something, he just has no idea what.<p>I think this is just his “emperors got no clothes” moment.<p>However I do think when it fails, he will about turn and make up an excuse about how it was intentional.<p>Consider this a billionaire mid life crisis
I don't thing the premise of the question is right, he is not tanking Twitter, he is transforming a stagnated company that he overpaid for into something else that may or may not tank.<p>Remember some things he discussed in his messages, like Twitter becoming a protocol and essentially acting as infrastructure like a phone company that doesn't care what you are talking about as long as you pay your bills?<p>Yeah, that's not happening because he spent tens of billions of his personal wealth, got other investors whose motives might not be as pure, loaded the company with debt that has yearly interest payments larger than the profits of the company in good times and the "pay $8" thing didn't work well.<p>He simply can't keep Twitter in the form he purchased Twitter, so he is shaking it down to try make something out of it. He will try all kinds of things until something works or Twitter shuts down. Not doing this and keeping Twitter the way he purchased it means Twitter shuts down eventually anyway and without anything to show for the money he spent.
Certain authoritarian regimes that have provided him with financing might be glad that their critics no longer have a platform to reach the masses with, and consider it a cost of doing business, and gladly take the loss.
heres my theory;
Thiel and/or Trump have incentivized Elon to break twitter for 2024, as it’s an echo chamber for uniting the left and cancelling the right. When Trump wins 24, all of Elon’s companies get special treatment. Conspiracy? yes maybe and I have no proof, except that Elon just bought a company for 44 billion dollars and 2 weeks later is floating the idea of bankruptcy.<p>I also wonder if the FTX collapse needs a second review. There goes the left’s second largest donor.
Elon is creating a PR storm around twitter so news companies keep talking about twitter, this is driving user engagement.<p>Everyone is talking about twitter, this is no accident.<p>Musk is trying to shed the maximum amount of people as possible before things break. Then he will rebuild the staff with new people under a new culture and vision. Similar to Japanese plan to population replace islands it took over during WWII.<p>This is a huge PR play, and so far its working. Twitter stories are everywhere.
Twitter allows anyone to jump into a tweet and confront the dogma, people see it, and they get food for thoughts<p>That's what they want to cancel, the ability for anyone to become an actor and defy the establishment<p>With the verification for all, and the suppression of non verified accounts, they want to make sure everyone is uniquely identifiable on the platform so they can target him and silence him if he causes problems (response to a tweet to callout a propaganda for example)<p>The project is clear, digital ID(internet passport), and democratization of the digital currency (digital EURODOLLAR)<p>Remember what TikTok's parent company is building (digital marketplace and everything that comes with it)<p>Musk is fabricated<p>Ask yourself these simple questions:<p>- why he get free pass for everything<p>- why the press gives him the red carpet<p>- why is he allowed to do everything he is doing? it should be considered national security ;)<p>- why is he allowed to play with crypto like that, the US doesn't like it when Middle East tries to use something other than the petro dollar<p>I have other questions but i'll share them on a different occasion<p>Strangely enough, i feel like hackernews could become the Twitter Alternative, the place for "civil journalism"<p>I see less and less "flagged" comments, this is encouraging and promising