Elon Musk: Always A Douche

[Jacob]

Hmmm... certainly a non-standard way to engage with existing and potential clients. Pretty sure it's quite unorthodox for heads of organizations depending on advertising for their revenue.

I suppose time will tell how this is a genius way to run his company.

[Grey Fox]

He's going to again get a call from MBS pretty soon, imo.

[Darth Wagtaros]

It's like he's transforming into a living social media meme.

"If you can't handle me at my worst you don't deserve me at my best."

Then the one of some badass looking into the camera with the caption, "I tell it like it is snowflake!"

[Josquius]

Go anti woke, go broke.

[Sheilbh]

On the one hand - that is the right response. The commercial/advertising tail of social media platforms or publishers shouldn't wag the dog.

On the other hand their owners shouldn't go around chatting shite/shitposting and it's probably not a great business decision to spend billions just so you have your own dedicated shitpost product...

[DGuller]

Go anti woke, go broke.

I know you like playing the Uno reverse card with everything woke-related, but you do realize that you're talking about literally the richest person in the world, right?

[Josquius]

Go anti woke, go broke.

I know you like playing the Uno reverse card with everything woke-related, but you do realize that you're talking about literally the richest person in the world, right?

His beer is currently being held.
Certainly limiting things just to twitter it all looks quite the disaster.

[The Minsky Moment]

On the one hand - that is the right response. The commercial/advertising tail of social media platforms or publishers shouldn't wag the dog.

Of course, and the earth shouldn't have to revolve around the sun either.  The sun should get its ass in gear and revolve around us.

Every major social media platform is designed to fund itself through advertising.  Given that and the disinclination of government to effectively regulate, at least in the US, this is spitting into the wind.

 

[OttoVonBismarck]

There's different scales as well--Facebook for example captures the vast majority of social media advertising dollars. While they probably, like any company, will make certain concessions to really big blue chip accounts, my guess is if some random company paying them for ads got pissed over some Facebook policy or position that the company viewed as important, they would invite them to buy ads on another platform.

Musk's issue is he bought a company that was a major laggard in advertising revenue before he took it over--because Twitter was much smaller than the other social networks and also seen as intrinsically less valuable per-user. (For many reasons we've already discussed--there is less rich user data attached to most Twitter accounts, the way Twitter serves advertising is seen as less effective etc.) I can't remember the exact numbers, but I think before all the drama started Apple alone was a major chunk of all of Twitter's revenue, probably significantly larger as a single customer than any of Facebook's customers.

Musk also has just never been involved in running a company where he is so vulnerable to what this "type" of customer thinks. Advertisers are all risk-averse, corporate types. They generally care quite a bit about perception, PR, etc. Musk is just used to not having to work in that world--in fact Musk often has ignorantly mocked people who do as being woke / etc because he doesn't (or didn't) understand the financial reasons many companies manage their PR the way they do.

He jumped pretty deep into a pool he knew very little about, and the results are unsurprising.

[Jacob]

Who would've thought PR folks would care about things like PR? I can see why Musk would be surprised by discovering this

But yeah, I think that's spot on OvB.

[Sheilbh]

Agree - and you can see the subscription model as a way to hedge against advertising. But it doesn't really exist, I don't think, and there's only so much you can do for brand safety when the main risk is the owner.

[crazy canuck]

Agree - and you can see the subscription model as a way to hedge against advertising. But it doesn't really exist, I don't think, and there's only so much you can do for brand safety when the main risk is the owner.

Add to that the fact that Musk fired all the people engaged in risk management.

[Zoupa]

Wasn't he supposed to be a free-speech absolutist?

It's like he wants to bully brands into buying ad space on twitter lol. That's not how any of this works, buddy.

[crazy canuck]

Wasn't he supposed to be a free-speech absolutist?

It's like he wants to bully brands into buying ad space on twitter lol. That's not how any of this works, buddy.

You always have to remember the way in which free-speech is understood by some.  That they can say whatever they want and nobody has the right to say anything bad about what they said.

[Razgovory]

Wasn't he supposed to be a free-speech absolutist?

It's like he wants to bully brands into buying ad space on twitter lol. That's not how any of this works, buddy.

He's been labeling leftwing accounts "antifa" and blocking them.  Largely at the request of far-right groups.