Re: Good luck getting the advertisers back now
Perhaps Musk is thinking that as long as Twitter as masses of users addicted to engagement - which so far is actually increasing do to heightened confrontation - there will be a way to monetize that. People will certainly reject any but freemium service, so a mandatory subscription is out.
Perhaps he can improve the click through rate, currently Twitter has a very low click-through rate (getting people to buy things on impulse).
However, I think the next frontier in PI may not be more consumer data, but PI as means to monitor social-political networks, and mine that. The payoff is not as direct as consumer data, but in the long run social monitoring and control should have a larger payoff. And Twitter's engagement pattern are an excellent source of data for finding the most politically active people and their networks.
That twitter data in conjunction with Palantir's facial recognition data, available in real time - some would pay for that wouldn't they? At the very least, it would curry favor at high levels, offering new related business opportunities.
What would throw a spanner in the works would be if those whose PI data were most likely to be mined simply left Twitter and made the effort to join more organic and truly freer networks - setting up Mastadon servers or whatever - but that would lower their daily diet of viral confrontation and so perhaps engagement. Musk is betting that they won't leave Twitter. I think he is probably correct but would be happy to be proven wrong.
In the last few days Sen Scott Weiner (D CA) posted about the Colorado Q club killings and was "attacked" by the newly reinstated Marjorie Green - instead of simply banning her from his personal feed he counter attacked, generating more viral shock waves and increasing Twitter engagement. I understand the impulse to reply - but in the long run?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
