as an entrepreneur not afraid to reconfigure and come out on top.

Musk could be the last one laughing, or maybe not. I don't think the 44 B$ is something for him to lose sleep over if it fails. More something as a life lesson... - next!

Well, if he doesn't care about losing $44Bn, can he chuck a couple of million my way? That's literally pocket change.

Twitter is the natural home of YIPs and all things woke. The problem is they are the loudest yell but a small minority. Most people just want to get on with their lives without endless 'you're-guilty-even-if-you-dont-know-it' progressive agendas.

It could be that Twitter gains popularity with the majority of normal people.

(I don't really believe this, Musk has just taken Twitter to the farmer at the end of the lane earlier than its natural demise).....

I don't normally wear Adidas. But now that there's a swastika in the retweet of their ad I'm convinced.

And the next generation re-discovers Godwins Law...

Personally I thought that Gad Saad's analysis of Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter quite interesting

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZKJ272GxLs

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZKJ272GxLs

Still waiting for his self-driving cars to work at something other than killing people.

All you need to know about Elon Musk, narrated by William Shatner.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gy5P45hEN4

That's one person in eight, globally.

I'm trying hard to think of anyone I know who is a regular user of Twitter, let alone one person in eight, and I live in a first-world supposedly affluent* country. I don't see anyone flocking** to use it, and I seriously doubt that people in the "Global South" are going to prioritise this over struggling to feed themselves, avoid conflict, and cope with climate change, so you can probably rule out a good four billion people there. So the claim here, is that in first-world countries, every fourth man, woman and child, will be actively using Musk's Twitter which is rapidly becoming an ever more toxic wasteland.

His Muskiness really is bananas, isn't he? Has he decided to do the thing he claimed the former owners were guilty of, and count bots as genuine users?

*mis-government aside

**natch

I'm expecting

"I think I see a path to Twitter exceeding a billion monthly users in 12 to 18 months,"

is more like

"I think I see a path to Twitter exceeding a billion monthly bots in 12 to 18 months,"

Took the words right out of my AI algorithm.

So,

How many of them are bots?

Since he was making a big deal about bots on twitter, I think that is a fairly important question to be asked.

According to Twitter before the purchase, no more than 5%....

That was the number of bots that were found in manual samples *after* automatic detection of bot accounts had been applied. It said nothing about the total number of bots that signed up.

And having fired both the automatic bot detection team and the manual bot counting team - there are now no bots recorded

Non in acta, non in mundo

Twitter chief executive Elon Musk confirmed plans for end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for direct messages on the platform.

Over at The Hacker News... https://thehackernews.com/2022/11/elon-musk-confirms-twitter-20-will.html

Perhaps this coupled with bans being lifted has attracted new readers?

Now on with the Twitter bashing bash!

Musk was talking about sign-ups, not readers. He was not saying lots of new people followed a link and looked at a page of tweets. For a sign-up, a human or bot came up with a unique user name and something resembling a password then jumped through whatever hoops are required to prove/pretend they are not a bot.

Your reason for them doing so is that end to end encryption has been mentioned but is not yet implemented. Even before I start thinking, that seems fr fetched but lets follow this through. Plenty of people click the 'track my every move and sell my data to anyone who offers a little money' button because it is only one click instead of often two plus a little reading and thinking. None of that crowd are going to make the effort to sign up for your reason. Next up, there are some whose lives depend on their communications remaining private. They will make a proper effort to research the product. With the minimal possible effort they will find "not implemented yet" and move on.

Perhaps one day Musk will say encryption is working. On that day anyone with a clue will find out who provided a billion or more to help Musk buy twitter. That list of names would scare away anyone with a genuine need for private communications.

I prefer some other theories.

1) Musk simply made it up. People have a bad habit of believing what they are told despite evidence to the contrary and doing what they think others are doing. Just by saying people are signing up in droves Musk will convince a bunch of people to sign up.

2) One of Musk's employees made it up to avoid getting fired.

3) Some bot herders are taking the opportunity to create a pile of new accounts while Twitter is too short staffed to stop them.

4) Musk hired some bot herders to create accounts that follow him and like his tweets.

I would believe any of those and a bunch less likely over people making an effort to get encryption that is not yet available.

And none of them will pay $8. Cause 95% will be bots

What Musk said:

> "I think I see a path to Twitter exceeding a billion monthly users in 12 to 18 months,"

What El Reg writes:

> Musk: Twitter will have 1 billion monthly users inside 18 months

"Seeing a path" is clearly not the same as "will have". Zero journalistic integrity.

And to be clear, I have no axe to grind concerning neither Twitter nor Musk. But I very much take issue with misleading, unprofessional journalism.

(I half expect ElReg's reaction is going to be to put this account on their naughty list rather than taking criticism like grown ups)

That would be Elon's reaction

> That would be Elon's reaction

That's neither here nor there. But you're quite welcome to show me one account that's been suspended for disagreeing with him.

What about the engineer who was fired for disagreeing with him?

> What about the engineer who was fired for disagreeing with him?

He still has his Twitter account active, as far as I know.

Also, not sure he was fired for disagreeing. He was chided for, in musk's opinion at least, not knowing what was going on behind the scenes when their client makes a request to the server.

Kathy Griffin

Could you contemplate getting over yourself for a second?

> But I very much take issue with misleading, unprofessional journalism.

Especially when it foments hate. I really don't understand what this guy has done that now everyone hates on the bastard. It's clear (to me, at least) that there's a real chance that this might end badly, specifically with physical violence against the person, and "journalists" that irresponsibility help create that sorry of environment with one-sided coverage (presumably because drama sells?) will have a lot to answer for.

Let's get shit back on track, shall we?

>I half expect ElReg's reaction is going to be to put this account on their naughty list

Do we know of commentards being blocked for a single criticism of ElReg or is that passing swipe itself an example of distortion and a false accusation of committing "cancel culture"? Anyway, don't worry, you weren't logged in.

> Do we know of commentards being blocked for a single criticism of ElReg

Yes, myself. For responding to an article based on made up facts, which I happened to have personal knowledge of. Their first reaction was to close my account rather than fact check (a well known former contributor's) story.

We all make mistakes and that could have been a one off, but I wasn't impressed, as I am not impressed by this one-sided, irresponsible coverage.

(To be clear, their toys, their rules. I'm fine with them closing accounts for whatever reason or for no reason at all, that's not the issue.)

> Anyway, don't worry, you weren't logged in.

Beg pardon?

That post shows as being by "Anonymous Coward", which indicates that the poster wasn't logged in. If that and the post about having had an account closed were also yours, I'm surprised you don't know that.

Well, I can see a path to me having a billion pounds in a year to a year and a half.

If that doesn't equate to me having a billion pounds in that time period it's a pretty useless statement.

Musk is purposefully couching his language to avoid being called out for failure while still being able to claim glory if it works. It's a classic BS move and is sophistry (or at least related to it).

Musk has a habit of doing this sort of thing. There's always a "reason", handy excuse, or party to blame; it's out of his control. Then, when something great happens, he's front and centre to tout his divine vision and ability. Why is this ability so fickle? Why can't he bring it to bear on command? Before he'll answer, he'll bring out a "flamethrower" or claims of vox populi and the cycle moves on.

He's a rich hokum vendor, and money loves money; that's his power. He's not made anything, only bought in. It could be that this time he's done so at the worst time in very public fashion.

Third paragraph: "I think I see a path to Twitter exceeding a billion monthly users in 12 to 18 months," Musk said on Twitter in...

Which you would know IF YOU READ THE ARTICLE?

A certain amount of artistic license is allowed in headlines and sub-headlines. The facts were fully presented in the article.

But you don;t want to read the article you just want to be a childish twat. Fuck off back to the Daily Wail or Fox.

there's people i wouldn't do business with and he's one of them. twitter ? no thanks .. ill pass.. leaves a s***** aftertaste.

may they go down in flames.

I think that he’s absolutely correct. But, as others say here, they’ll be bots. And bots aren’t exactly known for responding to advertising and splashing the cash. So, on that basis, who f’ing cares? It doesn’t matter. His users are imaginary numbers and he’s still an f’ing dimwit.

* 900 million daily active bots

* 5M monthly active users

* 100k daily active users

* 1000 ad sales people

* 10 engineers

* 5 monthly paying users

* 1 Elon Musk

* 0 content moderation

* 0 advertisers

And a partridge in a pear tree

Some strange disconnect in this article (well, another one)

The subscription options are for the mostly for the writing side of thigns that use twitter as some publishing channel. The cited stats are for the mostly readers. Assuming the readers will sign up for subscription is somewhat far fetched.

Elon said he counts on hundreds of millions of verified (phone and credit card) users, so both writers (creators) and readers (followers/subscribers). Dude's completely nuts

Pay each of us $10 to sign up.

Cheap at the price!

When phoning a company convince them to place ads with you, do you:

A) Offer a good deal on slots for the next month

or

B) Cuss at them and say they are meanies for not buying you ad slots

If (B), should you also stamp your little feet?

> When phoning a company

When reading an article and you see "reportedly", do you:

A. Take the report as fact

B. Understand that it's a get out of jail free card for the journalist to write something without taking responsibility for it (though in that case, the source solid be mentioned).

There are of course good uses of "reportedly" but often it's used to publish very dubious claims with no other purpose than to shape the narrative.

> Musk, it is claimed, personally called execs at some brands to berate them on their current Twitter ad policy.

I really hope some of those execs asked who was calling, who the hell he thinks he is and told him they will not be advertising on his new version of 4chan.