“Fidelity is currently valuing X at about $9.4 billion”

I found this funny.

  • ShareMySims@sh.itjust.works
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    4 days 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 worth more to him than plain old money - 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.

    • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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      4 days 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.

    • scarabic@lemmy.world
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      3 days 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.

      • ShareMySims@sh.itjust.works
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        3 days 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.

        • scarabic@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          I don’t know who you’re talking to. I have no pity for the man and don’t relate to him. I don’t have to argue with you over whether Tesla and SpaceX have been successful businesses because those are objective facts. It’s also pretty idiotic to deny that years ago, he had a boy genius aura about him - investors still throw billions at that image. Sorry it makes you throw up, especially because you already appear to be absolutely choking on Elon hate. I despise the man but I’m not slobbering all over myself with jealous disdain as you sound to be.

    • simple@lemm.ee
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      4 days 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.

      • Womble@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

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

        Far more likely he’s just a fuck up.

        • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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          4 days ago

          Fucked up then adapted musk is a welpling but like every rich WASP be it from England or its colonies he is weirdly adaptable. Which is why the most effective method of WASP removal is via flamethrower.

    • celsiustimeline@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 days 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

    • CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world
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      3 days 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…

      Edit: I did the math and it turns out that twitter has lost so much money that this is no longer a cable subscription. It’s about a 6% yearly loss to Elons net worth, dependent on his current stock values. Which means it’s not cable, but about the cost the average person spends on food in a year ($10,000 yearly cost to a 200k net worth). Still insane.

      • yamanii@lemmy.world
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        4 days 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.

        • regeya@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          I suppose it’s too much to hope for, for RSS feeds to make a comeback. Or JSON feeds being more prevalent. I’m totally serious, I miss being able to just check the headlines without going through a bunch of bullshit.

      • AbidanYre@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

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

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      I’m confident you could unload the property for $4B easily enough. That’s somewhere in the neighborhood of $10-100/unique user amortized out over the life of the loan, which would be a steal via any other advertising medium.

      Twitter still has real value. Hundreds of millions of people still use it, even in its deplorable state. And under new management, I’m confident people would flood back in.

  • grue@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    If he succeeds in using it as a propaganda platform to force the US into a fascist dictatorship, he will have gotten his money’s worth.

    • jaemo@sh.itjust.works
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      3 days ago

      He is a net loss for humanity is the currency is moralistic.

      We be deep in the red between Trump, Bezos, this clown and many other “captains of industry”.

  • Red_October@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

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

  • Rhoeri@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

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

      • Rhoeri@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Appreciated. Yeah. That douche is the absolute worst, but everyone climbing over one another to call him out is just making him more and more relevant.

        • dubious@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          I tend to ignore posts about him. I wouldn’t even be commenting here if I weren’t just trying to see if I’m banned from this instance, or just political memes.

      • Robaque@feddit.it
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        2 days ago

        Absolutely! He simply has a very original take on “freedom”, but we all know that’s a tricky word to pin down, so don’t think about it too much, and leave it to the big dogs to tell you when your freedom is being protected.

  • 9point6@lemmy.world
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    4 days 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

  • CosmoNova@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    If I remember correctly the evaluation of Xitter has been around $9 Billion for years so they’re basically saying it tanked only a little if you adjust for inflation.

    • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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      4 days ago

      The value of Twitter when he bought it was $44 billion. We know this because his dumb ass bought it for $44 billion.

      Regardless of what a sane person would pay for it, that was the value to him and so if the next highest valuation is $9b he lost $35b of value by overpaying.

      You do raise a good point though. Twitter used to be valued at $9b when its value was speculative and the company was growing, now that we know it’s shit and getting worse it’s almost certainly worth less than that too.

      • CosmoNova@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        I guess my point is that it isn’t worth an article in mid 2024 because it really only repeats what has been said a million times a about the subject. Even before it was bought. No one else would’ve paid much more than $9 Billion at any point because it is legitimately insane.