Reply to post: Re: Elon's on a crusade the make the internet free of advertising

Twitter gives up fight against COVID-19 misinformation

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Re: Elon's on a crusade the make the internet free of advertising

Not a joke. Musk's long term plan to 'save' Twitter was to change the proportion of revenue sources so advertisers would not have to power to silence viewpoints that the majority of their customers strongly object to (strongly enough to stop buying products that fund advertising on platforms that allow objectionable content). Musk has been very successful at reducing the proportion of income from advertising. What he did not expect what his actions would cause such a rapid fall in advertising and that other sources of income would not come close to making up the difference.

This is not Musk deliberately burning Twitter to the ground. It is an attempt to create Musk's next great money earner: x.com. The plan was to connect social media, online payments and online banking into one site (Musk's path to a billion Twitter users in under two years). Advertising could then be directly linked to purchases and so command a steeper commission. This has been Musk's dream since before his x.com merged with Thiel's confinity to create paypal. Back then Musk was unable to implement his dream, was fired from Paypal which Theil sold the eBay and that made the pair of them rich.

The only thing that has changed is Musk now has a much smaller connection to reality and so gets surprised when his actions have unexpected (to him) consequences. Musk genuinely sees his path to a world dominating does everything internet site. Others see the same path leading to a different destination.

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