I'll also add that SBF going on tour was the stupidest thing he could have done. Every time he spoke, he was giving the government more evidence. Hubris has often been the downfall of the rich and powerful throughout history. What's changed is now we get to see it in real time with people like Musk and SBF.
Just to give some perspective that I don’t think HN really gets: most of my friends have increased their twitter usage.
If you aren’t aware, whatever the team did there a few days ago really has appeared to cut bots down to almost 0.
SBF is an [alleged] criminal who has [allegedly] defrauded people of billions of dollars, and will likely be spending a substantial amount of time in prison for it.
These things aren’t the same. A restaurant changing their menu to suit a larger audience is not “hubris” simply because it no longer caters to you.
Just for reference what Musk did is just blocked half the mobile carriers in emerging markets, kneecapping their ability to grow Twitter in those countries whilst only temporarily tamping down on bots. The bots will be back, the users won't.
Honest question: are low income users viable for an ad supported platform? As it is I think only North American online ads actually make decent money, though perhaps European and Asian ad markets also deliver value close to break even. It is all an investment in the future. The last 15 years have had a belief that more users means more money but this might be thinking that all users are the same when some are much more valuable than others.
Meta makes revenues of about $15Bn in US & Canada, $8Bn in the EU and $10Boutside of EU & US/Canada each year. So it's clearly not nothing, and it's not like Twitter can afford to be picky about where it makes money.
> it's not like Twitter can afford to be picky about where it makes money.
Being picky about where you make your money is absolutely essential for most businesses. Every dollar in revenue costs some amount of money to generate, and choosing the right market segments to invest that money in is a foundational part of a business plan.
Revenue is not profit. It costs money to serve content. The EU has a 1.5x population of NA so that means it is only a third the revenue per user. The third segment has 6x population of NA so the revenue per user is only ~8% of a NA user and that population’s revenue stream is probably dominated by Japan, Korea, Australia and wealthy countries. At a certain point it costs more to serve content than ads will pay. Twitter doesn’t have the pockets to run a loss as an investment indefinitely so it needs to be picky about where it spends money.
> The project was part of Elon Musk’s attempt to rid Twitter of spam. But rather than work to remove individual offenders, the company identified mobile networks associated with large spam networks in specific countries, and blocked users who relied on those networks from receiving SMS messages from Twitter, impacting people with two-factor authentication. Then it blocked traffic from those carriers completely.
> From 5:35 AM to 6:45 AM PT on Sunday, Twitter shut down access to the primary telecom providers in India and Russia, as well as the second biggest telecom company in Indonesia, Platformer has learned.
Twitter use is up because everyone wants to see the sometimes insane tweets put their by their top leadership. I had never used twitter prior to Elon taking over, and I made an account to check it out for a week or two.
Ultimately stopped using it because it isn’t really for me. I also don’t care enough for anyone’s opinion that much that I’m willing to scroll through insanity, bots, and a holes to find a nugget. But I’m sure millions of others do enjoy that.
> most of my friends have increased their twitter usage
Meanwhile, all of my friends have erased their Twitter accounts (some migrating to Mastodon, others to other social media sites, others happily forgoing social media at all), all of the organizations I'm a part of have stopped using Twitter for official communication, the subreddits I follow have banned Twitter links, and my product has removed its Twitter integration. Large swathes of the internet are defederating from Twitter.
I qualify as a marketer. I don't want my ads seen by people not local to my market. Audience size alone isn't useful, it's about target audience, of which, almost none of that would have been blocked recently. (I don't use or market on twitter).
If we assume (big assumption) Musk has done everything right since the closing, he may still just be rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic. His hubris got him stuck in a deal way over paying for Twitter. I think he thought he could run his mouth and get out of any real consequence like he's done every other time. Except this time he found out.
> Just to give some perspective that I don’t think HN really gets: most of my friends have increased their twitter usage.
So your friends are using twitter more and you just assume everyone else does too? Have you considered that people who have other opinions exist and theirs is as valid as yours?
> Have you considered that people who have other opinions exist and theirs is as valid as yours?
I think parent is saying the opposite.
"Just to give some perspective that I don’t think HN really gets"
Parent has seen several comments assuming everyone's leaving Twitter and Musk is destroying the platform and himself and will never recover. I, likewise, reading Reddit get the same feeling that some pockets think everybody is leaving Twitter and going to Mastadon or something like this is a big cultural revolution. I think that is true in some pockets, but like parent I don't think anyone except Musk really knows what the actual engagement numbers look like, and even he doesn't know what they'll look like long term. But he is clearly making a bet, and it's silly for a biased hivemind to already assume his downfall when it actually hasn't happened yet. Just like there was a broad assumption that Twitter would have all kinds of technical issues after most of the staff was fired. Maybe that's still to come, but it hasn't really happened yet, and it can't be assumed.
Twitter isn't necessarily going to be an epic failure, and it's strange how some pockets of the internet feel they should make that assertion, whether you agree with Musk's politics or not. And politics is what it really comes down to. Politics is what drives the desire for these communities to see Musk fail, nothing else.
And at any rate it is very strange to compare Musk to SBF in any way.
Everyone assumed my comment about hubris referred to how he's running Twitter now. I think what he's doing is dumb, but that's not my point. His biggest problem is he way overpaid, and saddled the company with a ton of debt. My hubris comment was referring to him talking big and signing a deal he never intended to follow through on. He could run Twitter perfectly and still be forced into bankruptcy by the end of '23. IMO, that's a very likely scenario.
Is there an information source that says he didn't massively overpay and saddle Twitter with a near insurmountable debt load? Reports are Twitter has stopped paying its bills [1], which is common when bankruptcy is inevitable.
If he wasn't the type to go on tour and shout, then he wouldn't have attracted enough investors in the first place to be rich. It takes a specific personality to market things so others will buy, and that personality doesn't like to shut up and so won't.
Some things sell themselves, but most great ideas sit around unknown by people who need them just because they don't know about it. I'd love to buy a better mousetrap to take care of my mouse problem, but if one exists I don't know about it. If you shout that your mouse trap is better I'll probably try it.
I think I know just the thing for you. It's a sophisticated autonomous mousetrap that doesn't even need bait, as it has the ability to locate and catch the mouse all by itself. With its unique combination of strength and agility, this mousetrap is able to outsmart any mouse. When you least expect it, the mousetrap will pounce and capture its target. It's called a cat.
Right, everything in his life up to this point has taught him that if he keeps talking he'll be able to convince anybody of anything. He convinced his series B investors to hand over $420 million in "investment" funds to FTX while he pocketed $300 million of that personally.
> And given what's leaked from their balance sheet, I don't see how people avoid jail time.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33608691
I'll also add that SBF going on tour was the stupidest thing he could have done. Every time he spoke, he was giving the government more evidence. Hubris has often been the downfall of the rich and powerful throughout history. What's changed is now we get to see it in real time with people like Musk and SBF.