Elon Musk’s X is now worth less than a quarter of its $44 billion purchase price

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• apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Honestly terrifying that they still think it is worth that much.

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  • hushable@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    they still own the twitter trademark, that might be their biggest asset

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    • KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Which has been crashed and burned to a fraction of its value.

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  • jonne@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    If someone were to buy it, ban the Nazis and get advertisers to come back it’s still salvageable, I guess. The longer Musk owns it, the bigger the chance is that it’ll become the next MySpace.

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    • EnderMB@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      At least the MySpace guy was able to run a fun site, cash out before social media became crazy, and spend the rest of his life having fun with that money.

      Trump will lose, and Musk will be holding on to a useless site that serves nothing. He’ll probably sell for a fraction of what he paid (not that it was his money in the first place), but by that point it’ll be too late. Twitter will be long dead.

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    • apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I think MySpace is a more likely scenario that the former already.

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  • celsiustimeline@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    It’s only worth as much as anyone’s willing to pay for it. Take a look at any of these tech start ups that do something very insignificant slightly differently than their competitor. VALUATION 100 BILLION DOLLARS!

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  • Artyom@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    This is the stock market, the value is set by what investors think the value could be. Mostly, they’re probably assuming people would come back if he sold it. Literally everyone knows the name Twitter.

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    • phdepressed@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      This actually isn’t the stock market, Twitter isn’t publicly traded since being bought.

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    • apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I understand the basics. I still find it difficult to grasp why it is worth 9 billion.

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  • sqibkw@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    I wouldn’t be surprised if part of this remaining value is because the Japanese internet still heavily relies on it as a platform, even if the west has begun moving elsewhere.

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  • Kraven_the_Hunter@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    I was going to say that they could have stopped the headline at “quarter” as far as I’m concerned.

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• ShareMySims@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  And yet, he’s still one of the what, 5 richest people on the planet?

  He doesn’t give a shit, and neither should you (as nice as the schadenfreude might feel). He got something money can’t buy - an established propaganda platform, which he is using as he intended - to war monger and otherwise interfere in politics to ensure fascism progresses as fast as he can help it. The “dent” (more like a surface scratch) it put in his finances is completely invisible and irrelevant to him.

  And it should be to you, too.

  He is NEVER going to end up without means or power, not even fucking close, unless we take them from him, and abolish the system that encouraged and enabled him to amass them in the first place.

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  • CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    What is completely wild to me is that there are only 4 main apps: Reddit, twitter, instagram, and Facebook. Almost every public conversation happens on one of those platforms. And of those four platforms, one of them was bought by one singular person. Some people just don’t get the absolute scale of how much one person can just buy of our communities.

    Like it or not, there are businesses on Twitter. Celebrities are easy to reach and talk to. Even companies use Twitter for support. News outlets post there. It’s a whole community. Was it a bit toxic? Yeah. But it wouldn’t have mattered. One guy bought it.

    Similar to what you said, if you were to run the numbers on this I’m pretty sure owning twitter to Elon is not much different than owning a cable subscription to your average family. A whole community of tens of millions of people bought by one person and its success doesn’t matter. Capitalism is broken. And if you think that’s bad, imagine how he can affect your government when a Supreme Court justice goes for a small small fraction of the price…

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    • yamanii@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Well said, after losing access to twitter it’s really hard to get information on game companies for example, since they don’t have their own blog for you to RSS and get information about the newest game updates and what not, and they only post on youtube if they have a new trailer.

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    • AbidanYre@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      The average family’s cable subscription doesn’t cost 20% of their net worth.

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    • sensiblepuffin@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      A cable subscription isn’t a depreciating asset, though.

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  • simple@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Yeah a lot of people miss the fact that the play for Twitter was never about money, but control. Owning one of the most popular social medias makes it easy to spread propaganda and amplify your voice.

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    • Womble@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Lots of people spout this conspiricy theory, but Ive yet to hear a good reason why he had to be sued into naking the purchace (after making price manipulating statements) if it was some sinister plan.

      Far more likely hes just a fuck up.

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  • Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Not only that, but the folks who helped bankroll him saw what social media could do to organize protests and evade censorship and wanted to reduce its power. The Saudis saw the Arab Spring and shit their collective thobe.

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  • celsiustimeline@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    He’s the actual richest man on the planet with a net worth of a quarter of a trillion dollars. The next richest person on the planet is Jeff Bezos with $197B

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    • datavoid@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      And I’ll never own a house, yay

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    • ShareMySims@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Thanks, that’s one race I definitely don’t keep up to date on. All billionaires need to cease to exist.

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  • scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    PayPal and Tesla and SpaceX been pretty big successes. But Twitter is a real fuckup for him. It shows that his judgment and temperament and perfect boy genius mystique have all jumped the shark in a big way.

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    • ShareMySims@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      But Twitter is a real fuckup for him

      Except it clearly fucking isn’t, it’s doing exactly what he bought it for, including convincing people like you to feel sympathy for him and his “loss”, which is equal parts hilarious and really fucking sad. You’re looking at his life from the point of view of a poor person, something he never was and never will be, yet he’s still so easily manipulated you in to feeling bad for him (and the billions he’s lost, leaving him… still the motherfucking richest person on the planet), and even fucking (think you) relate to him and the idea that he can “fail” just like you can, using you as a living breathing mouthpiece to make his life easier. Not yours.

      perfect boy genius mystique

      I just threw up a little in my mouth, thanks.

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• eestileib@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Musk did not buy this as an investment. He bought it to flip elections and manipulate public opinion.

  Tesla is writing him a check that will cover the entire purchase price, and Saudi Arabia and Russia will pay the operating costs.

  Active users are what matters; if they lost 75% of their users then I’m paying attention.

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  • Wirlocke@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Correct me if I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure he gave am outlandish bid for Twitter to manipulate it’s stock prices when he pulled put, but he was sued into following through.

    I don’t think he ever wanted to buy it, or at least he wanted to crash it’s value to come back and buy it on the cheap.

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    • celsiustimeline@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Given his unlimited resources, and the world’s worst people on speed dial, do you not think that the powers that be could have orchestrated that?

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  • cultsuperstar@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Aren’t 75% of the users Russian bots? Lol

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  • deathbird@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    I think you’re giving the guy too much credit. Sometimes things are as they seen. He just didn’t like the moderation scheme on Twitter, made a gesture buying it, fumbled a little bit and overbid, then after having been forced to acquire it tried to turn it into something closer to what he wanted it to be.

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  • scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    I think it’s even pettier than that. He’s the loud guy on the forum who literally bought the site so he could be admin.

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    • reka@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Honestly, everyone needs to listen to the episode of Search Engine about Elon. It’s such a clear narrative of what happened between the Iron Man cameo and now. It’s pure hubris - someone who is very unlikable desperately hungry for love to the point where his brain bust a fuse.

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  • fluxion@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    We’ll never know since Musk is nurturing a state-funded “user”-base that will always keep their numbers inflated

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  • frezik@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    If he’s trying to flip elections, he needs to at least pretend it’s being operated in good faith.

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  • macattack@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    I agree 100%. Liberals retweeting how Elon is losing money is actually making him money

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• Red_October@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Elon Musk’s greatest personal achievement has been his tireless work and incredible effort toward disproving the myth of Billionaire Exceptionalism.

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• uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  We knew this was going to happen before he made the purchase.

  Everyone said, the best way for Elon to keep his money was to change very little, or even take a hands-off approach.

  Masnick suggested this would happen

  It was that and so much worse. Moral of the story: Running a huge social media service is hard. Maybe don’t assume that because you’re a billionaire you’re the best at doing stuff.

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  • mynameisigglepiggle@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Meanwhile he is on track to become the world’s first trillionaire

    I think the purchase was more about welding power than any financial gain

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    • dabaldeagul@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      He tried to back out, I don’t think any of this was about anything. He’s just a dick with a weird sense of humor.

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    • KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      First step to becoming a billionaire: start with 1 trillion

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    • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Hasn’t his wealth kinda flatlined lately though? X is doing terribly, Tesla is struggling a bit, I think SpaceX is at least doing well.

      I don’t think he’s going to be a trillionaire any time soon.

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    • jaemo@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Now, call me crazy, but if I was optimizing for maximum welding power, I’d start with oxy acetylene and at least try a few other options. How would buying a website even be a good start?

      No wonder people are making fun of him!

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    • Another_earthling@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Would you not agree that he has a tool of influence with X? I see that as the main aspect of why you’d still buy twitter, even though he knew he wouldn’t earn money with that.

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  • scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    I mean the people at Twitter were very happy to sell it off. Remember how they actually sued to force him to go through with the deal and succeeded in stopping him from backing out?

    Even if he’d managed it as well as the prior stewards, it was always a losing business.

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    • JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      If the price offered is actually a good price then I think they might have some obligation to shareholders to pursue it. (Many of the people making that decision likely also being shareholders.) Like if someone offered you more than what your stuff is worth but tried to changed their mind, wouldn’t you pursue that? I don’t think that’s any sort of indicator that they thought it was a sinking ship. It’s just in their best interest to take a good deal when they get one.

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  • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    I mean, yeah we all knew he overpaid, but losing over 75%? I didn’t expect that.

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    • dabaldeagul@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Twitter wasn’t profitable right? So most of the “value” is in the name of the product. Elon changed the name and added his signature to everything the platform was doing, completely changing the platform Twitter is. So yeah, I do get why 75% of the money is gone now.

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  • deathbird@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Masnick’s post is well put, but also a disturbing reminder of how much power nation-states can exert over the Internet.

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  • iAvicenna@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    “Maybe don’t assume that because you’re a billionaire you’re the best at doing stuff.”

    This is literally every second generation billionaire. They seem to have the tendency to believe that their success is solely due to their intelligence and not due to their parents connections and money.

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  • Gloomy@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Masnick gives 20 levels of devolpment. Elon stopped here:

    Level Two: “We’re the free speech platform! But no CSAM!”

    And that’s about it. Ex-Twitter has copyright infringement, hate speech and doesn’t give a fuck about local laws unless the law actually has teeth (Brasil, anybody?).

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    • cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      and then he fires trust and safety and it gets riddled and plagued with csam

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  • postmateDumbass@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    The way to make it hurt is to establish a replacement that keeps discussions away from trolls and hate propaganda.

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• ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Couldn’t have happened to a douchier bag.

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  • GeneralInterest@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    The funny part was when he said he was a free speech absolutist, but then he started restricting the free speech of people he doesn’t like

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    • MrGG@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      The hypocrisy!

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    • jonne@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I actually check Twitter from time to time and it is slowly dying. Ken Klippenstein was one of the accounts I was following and now he’s gone too.

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    • theneverfox@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Oh, and you’ve never been a total and complete hypocrite with global consequences before?

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• vegeta@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Image

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  • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Still worth billions though.

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    • reev@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      “Y’all my current portfolio is worth 9 BILLION dollars!” “Ah sick, seems to be going pretty well for you.” “Yeah, I’m down 75%”

      “Still worth billions tho” is one of the dumbest things I’ve heard on this platform and that’s saying a lot.

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• istoff@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  If they influence the election to their desired outcome, then the value won’t matter. The damage will have been done.

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  • bruhsoulz@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Is elon a Trump fan?

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    • fluxion@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Yes, he gets a raging fascist boner every time some fails to assassinate Trump because he thinks it’s the cue to go full Nazi but really he just keeps jumping the gun and making it far to obvious deeply part of Trump’s ongoing fascist takeover schemes.

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    • twack@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Uhm… Yes. Like a lot.

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    • Maven@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Yes, trump has also offered him a spot on his cabinet

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    • Shapillon@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      yes?

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• reksas@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  its worth comes from being able to influence world politics. Does he seem like someone who cares or needs money?

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  • Kyrgizion@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    True, but that power is also diminished greatly as more and more regular users abandon the site. No eyes on the propaganda makes it worth a lot less.

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    • kobra@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Yeah I’m sure I’m not the norm but I’m actually shocked when I see companies advertising their/their talent’s twitter accounts on tv broadcasts. I truly can’t believe that site is still mainstream after everything that’s happened.

      Idk then I look over and see trump as a presidential candidate and ugh… I guess I’m just still not comfortable/accepting of how far off the rails things have gone 🙁

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  • vvvvv@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Twitter currently has $1.5 billion/year deficit which is a lot, even for Musk, to bankroll.

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• tabular@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  I just checked and it’s worth nothing to anyone important.

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• index@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Posts about value are ads. Stop give exposure to this guy or his companies

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• MyOpinion@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Elon is a genius at losing money.

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• Kalysta@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  And may it continue to crash and burn. It’s just 4 chan at this point.

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• zarkanian@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Didn’t he pay too much for it in the first place?

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• phoenixz@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Musk is and always has been an incompetent yet lucky scammer.

  Twitter will be bankrupt within two years.

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• Rhoeri@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Let’s everyone point and laugh. It humbles people like him, right?

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• KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  How to become a billionaire: Start with 54 billion

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• ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  A quarter is cute and all but…

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• Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  My first thought is ‘I can’t wait for it to turn zero’ but then I realize that 79% decline from 44 billion still means it is worth 9.24 billion.

  And that is still a shitload of money.

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• dinckelman@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  May it sink even lower

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• finitebanjo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  I doubt anybody would buy it for a tenth, tbh.

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• babybus@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Something tells me its value is not monetary for Musk.

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• YeetPics@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Twitter was useful.

  X is just useful idiots at this point.

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• 9point6@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  I remember thinking twitter was bad before he took over

  It’s now a complete shadow of what it was even just a couple of years ago. Just a quarter of its value seems generous

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• fosho@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  same as my GameStop shares

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• sxan@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  I wish, I wish… I wish I was a fish.

  I wish there was an instrument other than the stock market whereby private individuals could combine their funds to perform hostile take-overs, and then manage them by pre-agreed conditions.

  Like: we’re going to buy Twitter, build an AP interface on it, federate it, and operate it like a non-profit. We’re going to have a set of these S core values, with yearly votes on changes proportional to investment. No single investor can own more than T percent of shares Investors can sell their shares, or buy shares. Stock will never spilt. Management salaries, combined, can never exceed more than M% of non-management combined salaries, and run it as a Holocracy. Or, maybe, shares can only be sold to employees, who have to sell to other employees when they leave.

  You know; try to design a good operating model that avoids the pitfalls of other companies, and can adapt when the model demonstrates perverse incentives. Put more thought into it than my ramblings above.

  But ten billion dollars is a lot of money to put together, and the rules I’d like to see necessarily exclude the sort of profit-only driven capitalists who’d be able to contribute heavy loads, and would limit the amount that could contribute.

  I may as well wish I were a fish.

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• SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Impressive. I could not have done that.

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• smokebuddy@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  keep sliding

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• uebquauntbez@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  A real socialist! Took money from the rich to give it to the poor (minded). /s

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• PanArab@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  It was never worth 44 billion USD

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