Image: Krea.AI
🔐 Premium: Elon Musk has opened the door for alternative platforms to Twitter. His chaotic and disruptive management style is a catalyst for the disaffected who hung in there with Twitter, even though it had become a cess pit of content.
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Twitter is over
Who knows if Elon Musk has a master plan to save the world? The cult of Musk believe the man has a mega-brain and the unique capacity to save humanity.
However, Musk's mystique pre-dates his Twitter soap opera.
From the moment it became public that Musk had been secretly buying Twitter stock, breaking SEC rules along the way by not disclosing what he was doing, this has had a roller-coaster storyline fitting of any soap opera.
Since concluding the on-off $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, Musk has wasted no time in turning the business inside out.
One theory doing the rounds is that Musk is deliberately screwing up Twitter as part of his master plan. The logic is that Musk's bizarre stunts, actions and decisions will significantly devalue Twitter (and the value of the loans he took out to buy it).
The speculation is that the $13 billion Elon borrowed off the banks to buy Twitter may only be worth $6 billion of so to buy. If Musk succeeds in his shitposting strategy, the debt becomes no better than "junk." At 50 cents on the dollar, the banks will be chomping on the bit to offload the loans.
If Musk were to make an offer to buy them, why wouldn't the banks take the money and the hit. In the process, Musk would be halving his debt and removing his annual interest payments, believed to be c$1 billion per annum.
Musk's latest stunts involve lifting the nearly all previously banned accounts and welcoming them back. The big name is Trump, who has so far resisted returning to Twitter. Probably because he's tied in some way to Truth Social. Returning to Twitter would sound the death knell for Truth.
The Blue subscription fiasco is about to enter it's 3rd iteration as Musk restarted the on-hold subscription service. As I've written before, IMHO, Musk is going about the subscription model the wrong way. There's little value in paying for Twitter for rank and file members compared to the influencers who can speak directly to many 10's of thousands of fans and followers.
Pricing a subscription service based on the size of a following seems a more logical and business savy solution to me, but then what do I know, I've never built a reusable rocket launcher before.
Musk's stunts have apparently drawn the attention of Apple and Google who are considering taking Twitter dwon from their app stores (remember, they did this for Parler.) The issue is the Apple and Google have policies against all kinds of bad behaviour. Musk's relaxation of content moderation rules will take Twitter closer to, if not over, the toleerance thresholds for their policies.
Musk tweeted that if Apple took Twitter down, he'd build his own iPhone. That got Musk's loyal fans cheering in the aisles without considering the absurdity of the claim.
IMHO, neither Apple nor Google will take down Twitter. They're tolerated Twitter's endless stream of porn, the constant misinformation and fake news, and the microaggresive discourse that makes Twitter the cesspit that it is. How worse would it need to get before they actually took the app down?
The big question of course is can Musk turn it around? Will advertisers flock to Twitter in a way that they've never done so before. Ever!
Meanwhile, the consequence of Musk's actions is to open the door for the alternatives to Twitter. In his attempt to save Twitter for humanity, he's actually drawn attention to a world outside of Twitter.
One that promises to be better, kinder, algorithm free and not fuelled by advertising-driven enragement.
Wiser! readers know that I'm giving Mastodon a go. I can't say that it's been a whirlwind success, but I'm sticking with it anyway.
There are, of course, over options. I'm going with Mastodon at them moment.
Here's my take on Mastodon plus another 10+1 alternatives to Twitter.
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