Elon Musk $41B offer for Twitter

[Byker28i]

emicen said:

BBC News article earlier saying the company is now worth less than half the $44bn paid.

Now in reality, it was never worth the $44bn paid, he did himself right over on that one, as much as it may mitigate some of the value loss.

In the same article, seemingly he has communicated to staff he sees a clear but difficult path to a valuation of over $250bn.

The $44bn was musk's internet joke figure valuation, one which he was held to.
His current $20bn valuation was one he gave in trying to flog shares to the remaining employees.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/mar/26...

The trouble is, the new Blue with verification subscription led to a wave of fake accounts, that coupled with musks “general amnesty” policy that brought back some of Twitter’s worst users, means it's not attractive for advertisers and musk is doing everything possible to disuade them more, whilst he used twitter as a personal weapon.

He still owes debts to landlords, unpaid bills. Fidelity heavily reduced its stake in the company from $53.47 million to $23.46 million last year, while Twitter’s revenue dipped by about 40 percent year over year in December.

[dimots]

Byker28i said:

So thats why Musk did away with 2FA then, unless of course you pay? It's about the money not the bots, because he's lost so much advertising etc.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/21...

He also sacked all the content moderators who track abuse on Twitter, without any alternative in place.

SMS athentication is abused. You are better having no authentication that authentication that is being abused.

Can you understand that?

False authentication = bad.

No authentication = neutral.

Authenticated = good.

[Byker28i]

dimots said:

Byker28i said:

So thats why Musk did away with 2FA then, unless of course you pay? It's about the money not the bots, because he's lost so much advertising etc.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/21...

He also sacked all the content moderators who track abuse on Twitter, without any alternative in place.

SMS athentication is abused. You are better have no authentication that authentication that is being abused.

Can you understand that?

False authentication = bad.

No authentication = neutral.

Authenticated = good.

Wow. Really, gosh all those people using 2FA, like banks etc have got it all wrong and you think you are right...
You know Twitter still uses SMS 2FA - only you have to pay...

[captain_cynic]

Byker28i said:

The $44bn was musk's internet joke figure valuation, one which he was held to.
His current $20bn valuation was one he gave in trying to flog shares to the remaining employees.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/mar/26...

Whilst Twitter was never worth $44 bn, after all Musk has done to it, even $20 bn seems to be a very optimistic figure.

Twitter's value was that it was a somewhat trustworthy source of information, that it would be quoted by reputable news organisations. That has stopped and Twitter is now a haven for misinformation. Musk paid $44 bn for Twitter and is half way to increasing its valuation to a tenner.

[Byker28i]

It's OK though - Musk is "looking into it" - oh
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/16401704272710...

[dimots]

Byker28i said:

Wow. Really, gosh all those people using 2FA, like banks etc have got it all wrong and you think you are right...
You know Twitter still uses SMS 2FA - only you have to pay...

Yes that's right because there is an extra layer of authentication that prevents the 2FA from being abused, a bit like at a bank. Glad you agree with me haha.

[dimots]

There's been some good discussion about Telco SMS verifcation abuse on Hackernews if any of you lot are on there?

[Byker28i]

dimots said:

Byker28i said:

Wow. Really, gosh all those people using 2FA, like banks etc have got it all wrong and you think you are right...
You know Twitter still uses SMS 2FA - only you have to pay...

Yes that's right because there is an extra layer of authentication that prevents the 2FA from being abused, a bit like at a bank. Glad you agree with me haha.

?

dimots said:

SMS athentication is abused. .

Hey musk - dim-ots just doesn't get it, blinded by his admiration for you





Still he's 'on it'
;D

and I've given up with you

[dimots]

Here's a good thread on SMS verification and the previous attitude of Twitter pre-Musk. Long story short, it is heavily abused, Twitter ignored it becasue they historically loved the vanity stats of fake accounts on their system and the Telcos didn't mind getting paid for all the fake verification traffic.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34847650

[dimots]

And the article, and the Twitter spaces with Musk that it was taken from. He was always going to stop text 2FA because he understands how it is being abused. Something that old Twitter never dealt with because old Twitter was a massive mess of bots and unmanaged rubbish.

https://commsrisk.com/elon-musk-says-twitter-lost-...

[Al Gorithum]

dimots said:

old Twitter never dealt with because old Twitter was a massive mess of bots and unmanaged rubbish.

Unlike now. LOL

[tangerine_sedge]

dimots said:

Here's a good thread on SMS verification and the previous attitude of Twitter pre-Musk. Long story short, it is heavily abused, Twitter ignored it becasue they historically loved the vanity stats of fake accounts on their system and the Telcos didn't mind getting paid for all the fake verification traffic.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34847650

Well, that's me convinced. I'm going to remove all the locks from my house, as apparently they can be picked. At some point in the future I might implements quantum encryption on my front door, but until then I'm definitely going lockless.

[AW111]

Al Gorithum said:

dimots said:

old Twitter never dealt with because old Twitter was a massive mess of bots and unmanaged rubbish.

Unlike now. LOL

There is nothing Musk has done or can possibly do that would shake dimots' blind faith in him.
Nothing.

Accept that and move on.

[Al Gorithum]

AW111 said:

Al Gorithum said:

dimots said:

old Twitter never dealt with because old Twitter was a massive mess of bots and unmanaged rubbish.

Unlike now. LOL

There is nothing Musk has done or can possibly do that would shake dimots' blind faith in him.
Nothing.

Accept that and move on.

Seems so. Oh well, each to their own and good luck with that. It's not as if Musk is a nutter or anything...

[Gweeds]

dimots said:

The point being that only the stupid will be fooled?

You two are doing an excellent job of proving that.

[Talksteer]

Gweeds said:

skwdenyer said:

Businesses who want to be verified must join Blue for
Business, a programme under which they can - confusingly - receive a gold tick, in return for the modest sum of £1k / month…

Ryan Broderick had a lovely bit about this last week:

"At this point, I no longer consider Twitter’s comms channels an official broadcast of the company’s activity and, instead, now I sort of treat it like a glimpse into the frothing and desperate collective Id of late-stage Big Tech. Every couple days it’ll blast out a bunch of updates on features and products and monetization strategies that will never actually happen and don’t really mean anything. I mean, the company’s ability to articulate its own roadmap seems to be so meaningless to itself that it literally set up an auto-reply to its PR email that just sends back a poop emoji.

This week, though, Twitter announced a couple curious things that I do think provide some fun insights into how grim things are getting over there. First, we finally have an actual date for the “winding down” of of the “legacy verified program”. It’s April 1st. Because there is literally no one with any common sense left at that company.

Oh, even funnier, if an institution wants to be verified it will cost $1,000 a month! Plus an additional $50 for each account underneath that organization. lol sorry, but are you out of your fking mind???

I clicked on the link to see what the paid verification currently offers and it didn’t work for a while because the site is breaking in front of our very eyes. But when I finally got it to show up, it currently lists access to things like an edit button, folders for bookmarks, a way to customize your navigation inside the app, and the ability to post long videos. Apparently, you’ll eventually get the ability to rank higher in replies and see less ads. See the first paragraph above for how I feel about the likelihood of those things happening.

But let’s pretend that on April 1st the legacy-check-pocalypse will happen. According to the most recent data I can find, 0.2% of the site pays for Twitter Blue. I do not believe there is anything that Twitter can do to get that number above even 1% in the next nine days. So all that’s going to happen is that we’ll suddenly be able to immediately identify who pays for Twitter (and doesn’t matter) and lose any ability to know if what we’re looking at is an account run by real person (who does, assumedly, matter).

This will also, hilariously, immediately remove any reason to pay for verification. Now, I’m sure there are some people who are paying $8 a month for an edit button and longer video uploads. And if you pay for Twitter and read this newsletter, know I love you and by reading Garbage Day, the cringe itself cancels out. But based on the amount of NFT and AI spam being pumped out by Twitter Blue subscribers, it seems like the majority of the 0.2% that pays for Twitter is paying to make themselves look like people who are important or notable enough to be legacy verified.

And it seems like at least someone inside of Twitter is aware of this little conundrum because Alessandro Paluzzi, a platform features leaker, noticed earlier this month that the app is currently testing ways to hide your Twitter Blue checkmark. So I just want to put all of this together in one concise paragraph because it’s maybe the funniest thing in the whole world:

Elon Musk and an army of the tech industry’s biggest reactionary dorks literally bought and took over Twitter after years of being both obsessed with it and also completely consumed with resentment over “the liberal establishment’s” perceived importance on the app. They were furious that they did not also get the same little blue checkmark that 22-year-old viral news reporters were given so they could protect themselves from impersonators and mute some of the death threats they get on a daily basis. And so these giant losers built a new way to pay for a blue checkmark so they could pretend like they were just as important as they assumed the verified users believed themselves to be. And they expected everyone else to eventually pay to keep their checkmarks. No one has, of course, but Twitter is still moving forward with this. But they seem to realize that if they do that all it’ll do is make Musk’s try-hard fanboys immediately identifiable on the app. So now they’re building a way to hide how lame they will look alone on the site with their paid checkmarks.

Very cool. Good stuff. Excited for April 1st.'

That you wrote out such a long reply about this platform not even on the platform itself indicates how much relevance the whole company has.

I for one would hold judgement, Musk had barely owned the company for half a year. It's not scientific but compare the current headlines with Tesla's "production hell" 3-4 years ago. That was the pain point that lead to Tesla having 30% margins while Ford looses $10-20k on each EV they make.

Musk isn't an idiot and has a business plan which has at least some chance of getting the company to a $250bn value. That would be indicative that the long term strategy isn't based on blue ticks or anything else that the app currently does.

The current chaos is because Musk tends to make decisions based on a long term end state and just endure short term problems (We won't need X department when we automate it, run it down now). From his perspective today's issues are basically noise while he builds engineering teams to roll out whatever the long term strategy is.

[Al Gorithum]

Talksteer said:

That you wrote out such a long reply about this platform not even on the platform itself indicates how much relevance the whole company has.

I for one would hold judgement, Musk had barely owned the company for half a year. It's not scientific but compare the current headlines with Tesla's "production hell" 3-4 years ago. That was the pain point that lead to Tesla having 30% margins while Ford looses $10-20k on each EV they make.

Musk isn't an idiot and has a business plan which has at least some chance of getting the company to a $250bn value. That would be indicative that the long term strategy isn't based on blue ticks or anything else that the app currently does.

The current chaos is because Musk tends to make decisions based on a long term end state and just endure short term problems (We won't need X department when we automate it, run it down now). From his perspective today's issues are basically noise while he builds engineering teams to roll out whatever the long term strategy is.

That sounds extremely optimistic. At best.

[AW111]

Al Gorithum said:

That sounds extremely optimistic. At best.

It will also require staff to implement, and Electric Jesus does not appear to be any good at managing staff, although he inspires devotion from his online fans.

Engineers will work for a.stty boss if they're doing fun stuff like rockets or electric cars - wrangling social media doesn't have that cachet.

[Gweeds]

Talksteer said:

That you wrote out such a long reply about this platform not even on the platform itself indicates how much relevance the whole company has.

I didn’t. If you read it you’ll see it was copied from a newsletter.

[Gweeds]

Al Gorithum said:

That sounds extremely optimistic. At best.

Well quite. That’s more than a tenfold increase in his own valuation over the weekend.

Must be 14d chess.