Clearly, all part of Musk’s 25D chess plan.
I love how an integral part of Elmo’s 25D chess strategy is giving outside observers the impression – obviously a carefully crafted illusion – that he’s a totally inept self-absorbed moron. To enhance the illusion, he’s created the impression that not only is Twitter falling apart, but these days so is Tesla. The sheer brilliance of it all is astonishing.
[Mr. Burns voice]
Heh, heh, heh. They’re falling right into my clever trap, Smithers! The fools; soon they will all pay!
[/Mr. Burns voice]
Literal LOL for that one. 
Prior to the takeover, Twitter had annual revenue of $5.1 billion, almost 90% of that from advertisers. Even with that prior level of revenue it had already been posting a loss for the last three years.
I dug up details on the financing of the buyout. There was $13 billion of floating rate debt at an average of 11% based on current interest rates. That’s $1.4 billion annually that Twitter must now cover, curiously that alone is exactly equal to the $4 million per day that Musk once claimed Twitter was “losing” when he was trying to justify layoffs. Morgan Stanley led a group of banks in financing this $13 billion, and reports say that they have not sold any of it.
Twitter’s advertising revenue has collapsed, and every analysis I’ve seen says it’s pie in the sky that blue tick subscriptions will ever come close to generating enough revenue to move away from advertising as the main source of revenue.
It’s hard to see a path out of this other than bankruptcy and restructuring unless Musk injects more cash. And just injecting cash just delays the day of reckoning without a viable business model. Either way, I suspect on any rational analysis the debt that the banks are stuck with should be written down to 50c or less, and the equity investment by Musk and others by 90%.
Details of financing (note that 3m SOFR now = 4.6%)
WSJ analysis from back in November
The Morgan Stanley CEO said back in December that he wouldn’t bet against Musk. I wonder how he feels about him now? Gossipy NY Post article, but I think this is a pretty accurate read:
I’m not sure if I would bet against Musk either. Deserved or not (I would say not), Musk has had a track record of creating value, sometimes on the backs of the Muskrats. If he can figure out a way to grift them of the money to get him out of this jam, then he will. On the flip side, since I think Musk has very little actual talent I would not bet on him either. Eventually the lack of talent should catch up to him in a fair world with a fair economic system. However, on the other hand Trump is a billionaire, so what can I say, we live in a late-stage capitalist dystopia, and Musk will probably continue to be ludicrously, and undeservedly (imo) wealthy.
He needs to come out with NFT Trading Cards. Only $4000/ea!
Great phrase. Thank you.
However IMO it’s a capitalist utopia. If you’re one of the 0.1% who are true capitalists. For the rest of us it is the dystopia you said, but not exactly a capitalist one. In true capitalism, everybody has meaningful capital.
They would probably sell. 
Capitalism is a great system in theory. Sadly, since a significant percentage of humans are greedy and selfish and cannot be happy with enough wealth. Hence over time, wealth concentrates into fewer and fewer hands.
For the record, communism sucks too. Just for different reasons.
In short, people suck and they are why we cannot have nice things.
QFT my friend, QFT.
You might like this, R.D.Laing:
We are only half alive in the fibrillating heartland of a senescent civilzation.
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it’s just the opposite.
–J. K. Galbraith
So sadly true.
I’ve never seen any Tesla advertising at all, and I live 15 minutes from a Tesla dealership.
…in the latest “Twitter is breaking” news:
https://twitter.com/CaelanConrad/status/1615124521299890177
There have been reports of this happening on-and-off for a while now, and I suspect that it may be entirely dependent on what device you are using to access Twitter.
And in personal UX/UI news, my feed now looks like this:
(Reminder, I make my screen bigger because I can’t see stuff as good any more.)
So for folks who need to zoom in the “For You/Following” section takes up about a third of the screen. And now the “these people just tweeted” modal pop-up now pops up every few seconds, so most of the screen real estate is now is taken up by everything except tweets. (the screenshot isn’t cropped. Thats literally what I see now)
I’m sure it’s just that Twitter, these days, employs very few people who could be working to make it usable.
But sometimes it does seem as though Elmo genuinely thinks that driving EVERYONE off the site will somehow accrue to his benefit.
There are three options here.
- Musk doesn’t know what open source means.
- He is an idiot for making the Twitter recommendation algorithm open source.
- He’s lying. Again.
I suspect it is a mix of all three, but mainly option 3. All part of the 29D chess game I suppose.
I love the following:
" Twitter did not immediately respond to Engadget’s comment request. It has not operated a communications department since Elon Musk started downsizing the company’s workforce."
He’s behaving like someone I was acquainted with who had Bi-Polar disease. Every time he’d go off his meds, he’d resort to being a bully and an asshole. It was really just sad. He lost his job and his girlfriend during one particularly bad episode.
Twitter is not much fun anymore. Thanks Elon.