Assuming the 573 billion is a typo....

Maybe the article was updated, it says "million" now.

Buy something for billions, plan to sell it for millions. Oh Elon, you business tycoon you.

I'm a bit liberal myself, but I don't consider myself a libtard. You know, one of those people who loves free speech, as long as people are saying the things that you agree with, but are happy to have things censored if they don't agree with it. These are the people that are having a meltdown about Elon taking over Twitter and are leaving the platform now. It's entertaining to watch, I've got my popcorn to hand.

That’s because they’re the type who get their jollies from getting people who disagree with them banned from twitter. Musk threatens to ruin their sport.

There's no such thing as no moderation. Without moderation, Twitter would be an even deeper cesspit. Twiiter has to moderate it's content to operate in many countries. It will need to moderate for illegal content, to prevent civil liability, etc. People will still get banned. Do we need to get the XKCD out again?

"Do we need to get the XKCD out again?"

Always, when it's an option!

I always love a good XKCD. Which one are you referring to? Is there one on false dichotomies?

It needs the right moderation.

Musk didn't get banned over his paedo comment. People and organisations did get banned for tweeting about Biden's abandoned laptop. Justification was that was 'Russian disinformation', yet turned out to be a real story. Then there was banning a sitting President.

I find myself strangely agreeing with Musk though. Censor stuff that's illegal, not just objectionable. If flat earthers want to tweet their theories, let them. Nobody is forced to follow or engage with them, unless they want a laugh. Don't like Biden or Trump, don't follow and ignore them. Twitter gives people the ability to follow who they want, and exist in their own echo chamber, if they want.

Exactly this. It's only the whole "censored if they don't agree with it". Of course you need some sort of moderation, and as far as I understand it that's what his Muskiness is proposing. But who knows? The man often does the opposite of what he says he will do.

See what you've done right there is get "moderation" and "censorship" muddled up. They aren't the same words. You should go and look them up.

Death to Steve Button!

Just trying that one on for size, to see if we can flesh out if there really are no limits to your support for free speech. Coming up next: your bosses email, your home address and where your kids go to school.

What you've just done there is illegal. I won't pursue it though, as I assume you are just trying, in a very awkward way, to make a point. (you ARE just trying to make a point, aren't you?) I never said there are no limits to my support of free speech. Obviously if stuff is illegal it should be moderated. However, someone saying things like "That Hunter biden laptop story is interesting, here's a link" or "lockdowns don't actually seem to work" or even (horror of horrors!!) "Can anyone show me strong evidence that facemasks work" ...

well, people should be able to say stuff like that. Which have all been very much not allowed in the past couple of years.

Which is patently wrong, and I don't get how more people don't seem to be able to see that.

Anyway, I got the popcorn out and the mini dogpile happened and the libtards hit the downvote button. As predicted.

So far, so normal. Borrow money, buy Twitter, load it with debt. Then trust you can take it public again later for more than you paid for it. Which could be problematic given Twitter, like Tesla was already grossly overvalued based on revenue, profit etc.

But Musk works on a different timescale, so 3 years probably means a decade, or never. See FSD Tesla taxis, semis, cybertrucks etc for more info. Then again, Musk is a software guy, and developing a messaging app is a lot easier than FSD. Plus there's a lot of fat that can probably be trimmed, like their $15m a year chief censor. Moving Twitter away from California would also cut payroll and other overheads a lot as well.

But who would buy shares of a now-debt-ladden Twitter 2.0?

What's there to gain?

I guess that's Musk being Musk, selling chickens before the eggs have been hatched.

Maybe this is a test of his messianic properties.

Can he sell a future IPO of a company he has yet to buy and take private?

So is this really just a new step in Elons Dogecoin pump-and-dump?

Man must have a lot of Dogecoin for this to end up being profitable.

To watch the screaming, shouting, and carrying on. Frankly, the entertainment value of this nonsense is mostly due to the fact that I don’t do Twatter, ArseBook, or pretty much any ‘social network’ that isn’t El Reg or usenet. Some of us simply couldn’t care if Elon the Bond supervillain Musk bought Twatter; frankly, I don’t think that he could make it much worse. And that if he were to pry ArseBook out of the Zuck’s hands, anything he did would be an improvement. If Elon bought it to crank the price up and then dump it, that’s a _good_ idea, especially if it sheds a few thousand/million users in the process. Even better would be if he couldn’t dump it because he’d lose money thanks to the number of users who bailed from the platform. It would be hilarious if his buying it was what killed it…

Where’s my bowl of popcorn?

My sympathies are very much with your views. The problem is that anyone who has to promote anything is forced to sup with these devils with quite short spoons. An example, any indie author has to have a presence on all the antisocials to promote their wares.

Politicians, in particular have to be on them even if they are diametrically opposed to most political anti social types.

It seems that Linkedout is now becoming important for when you are looking for a job in our august profession.

I do wish that people would be less interested in the narcissistic rantings of the Musk Ox and where he indulges in his shopping habits.

has been to embarrass big companies. And even that is now waning (I've thrown a few shitballs at shit companies that have left them for all to see).

My memory was that it was a thing to allow people to SMS to forums, and as such unique.

If it's not doing that anymore, what's it for ?

If you've got what you think is a decent plan to make a business bigger and more profitable, you wouldn't try to reduce your own stake in that business, you would try to increase it.

Just a hint to the Musk-dazzled who don't understand the basics......... he's trying to reduce his own risk here and get the investment banks take on more of it - a sign he feels his own plans could possibly backfire.

hopefully it will backfire on the twat.

"a hint to the Musk-dazzled who don't understand the basics......... he's trying to reduce his own risk here and get the investment banks take on more of it - a sign he feels his own plans could possibly backfire"

Or he's simply hedging his bets and not biting off more than he can chew, while throwing a bone at the banks who will anyway underwrite most of his loans not only to Twitter but also Tesla, SpaceX etc.

It's like a message tied to a hockey puck in a vaccuum.