As Twitter ditches its iconic branding in favor of owner Elon Musk's favorite letter "X," its open source competitor Mastodon is once again seeing usage numbers soar.

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[–] AlternatePersonMan@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I can't fathom that anybody could be this stupid. Does he have a reason to purposely destroy Twitter?

The decisions he's making aren't just bad, they're the worst possible ones that he could make. As in, he gathered a group of experts and these are the best ways to destroy Twitter that they could think up.

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Some people are suggesting he ran up so much debt buying Twitter that he's now running it into the ground in order to declare bankruptcy and not have to repay the debt. I don't know how plausible this is.

[–] Hiccup@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago

Totally could be pulling a Sears/Kmart and an Eddie lampert.

[–] gndagreborn@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I wonder if that would be taken to court if true.

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

I imagine it would be hard to prove, because he would never admit it was intentional, and he'd never have to tell anyone else that in order to execute the plan. It can look like a series of blunders either way.

[–] theneverfox@pawb.social 2 points 1 year ago

Exactly!

More are more I've been thinking - he watches anime, he thinks current social media is incredibly dangerous, and (while he was always a dick in private) he only really showed the current Musk after meeting Trump.

We know musk watches anime - it's like the zero requiem. First, he becomes a folk hero, a billionaire putting his weight behind important tech for humanity. Then he meets Trump - maybe he realized how dark our prognosis as a species is.

He starts driving away his left-leaning futurist and techy core with bigotry and being a dick. He backs out of a plan to buy Twitter, violates his parole, and makes a big show about trying to get out of it... But what did he actually do besides complain it's full of bots, then give up?

He walks in with a kitchen sink, drives away anyone who can afford to leave or might resist a stupid order, and settles in.

For months, about every two weeks he's been doing something to wean users off Twitter, while making a big show of some increasingly obviously dumb ideas. Like seriously, his business is ads - it makes so little sense that he limit users to such low limits - even subscribers could eat through that easily

He lies through his teeth and says it's working, he's almost breaking even, that users and advertisers come crawling back... Exactly what u/spez and every other social media guy desperately want to believe - the only thing standing between them and profit is telling their users to suck it

Now he finally admits they're in terrible shape, making his last fanboys look like idiots, and making himself look not only erratic and out of touch, but like a bad businessman.

To totally parallel the requiem, he needs to topple all the billionaires before staging his death - leaving the world in shape to rebuild, and very wary of the dangers of wealth inequality.

Or at least make us actually unite and change the laws and economic system.

Or maybe he's just having a midlife crisis, hates Twitter, and is just burning money for the hell of it. And the attention.

[–] Andjhostet@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

He was paid to tank Twitter.