this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
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X outage breaks all outgoing links, again::An outage on X, the platform previously known as Twitter, caused the site to display an error message when users tried to click outgoing links.

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[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

killing twitter is the goal

Please explain the following:

  1. Why is killing Twitter worth half of his entire fortune?
  2. Why would he attach the X brand to it, something that has been his personal obsession throughout his life, if the goal was to kill it?
  3. Why isn't it dead yet? He owns Twitter outright. He's not the CEO. He's not a major shareholder. He's the owner. Full stop. If the goal was to kill it, he could fire everyone, shut the doors and turn off the lights. So why hasn't he?
[–] lando55@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

he could fire everyone, shut the doors and turn off the lights.

Can he? Genuine question, since I'd be interested to know if he'd be subject to litigation from the shareholders

[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

By this person's logic, Musk was willing to tank 200bn of his net worth to kill twitter. Why would he give a single flying shit about a lawsuit or four? At best he'd owe them back the value of their investment, which is apparently, according to the insane logic of the "He's deliberately killing twitter" crowd, small change to see a single social media site dead.

[–] lando55@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah I get that. But we were operating under the assumption that either a. he is mentally handicapped or b. he is intentionally tanking the company.

There is also the possibility that he is both deliberately destroying the brand while also severely lacking the mental acuity to understand that there are more feasible options available. I don't personally subscribe to this theory, I can only subjectively say that he has made numerous questionable business decisions, and probably never wanted to buy Twitter in the first place.

[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 months ago

First off, yes, he didn't want to buy Twitter. That much is established fact. He went to court to get out of buying Twitter (unless we're suddenly supposed to believe that was some kind of elaborate 5D chess move made for reasons our puny mortal minds cannot understand).

Given that he didn't want to buy the company in the first place, why would he be digging that hole deeper by deliberately destroying it?

"He's a idiot" is not a satisfactory explanation. Idiots don't crash their cars on purpose just because they were idiots. They crash their cars for numerous reasons such as texting and driving, drinking and driving, etc, but not "Because they wanted to."

To be clear, Musk is an idiot. We can thank this whole debacle for finally helping people finally grasp that. But he thinks he's smart. He thinks he's a good businessman. That's why he's doing all the things that he's doing; because he genuinely thinks this is how to be successful. That's why he attached his beloved X brand to this sinking ship; because he's too caught up in his own ego to recognize that it's sinking, and that he's the one sinking it.

"He's trying to kill Twitter" is an excuse that people come up with because they spent so long believing the man was a genius that now they can't square that with the recent flood of evidence that he's not. So they need there to be some other explanation. It can't be that he's just incompetent. It has to be that this is all part of his master plan. This is no different than QAnons trying to rationalize away every stupid thing Trump does by claiming its all secretly genius.