Musk screaming about advertisers taking their money elsewhere could possibly kill X-Twitter implies he thinks we should care. We don't. He should hobnob with former editors of deceased newspapers and try his spiel.

(No icon. Imagine finger rubbing thumb, representing the world's smallest violin playing, "Poor Elon.")

Please, that would still be an insult to the violin. Even when it is a very, very, exceedingly very small one.

Love the "God bless America" playing :-)

...the advertising system just doesn't have a very robust owner :-D

maybe that forgotten about cage fight will happen after all

Yes... Musk v a mirror. It's happening right now :-)

This old fart still likes RSS feeds. I can scan through a bunch of headlines and queue up tabs for the stories I'm interested in.

What would have happened if Twitter disappeared tomorrow?

Before Twitter mostly people at one's village knew they are daft.

Twitter made it known to the whole world.

So I guess once Twitter is gone, we will temporarily lose the ability to track people with let's say peculiar views and an urge to express them to broadest audience possible.

I'm with Thomas on this one, and there's that notion that "the customer is always right" that seems to have slipped off the map in this saga. It just makes sense that an advertiser should want to maintain an image of quality, wholesomeness, seriousness, playfulness, or what have you for its products, and that having its ads paired with uncorrelated, or negatively correlated content, would be perceived as potentially damaging for a brand's image (or just wasted money). Like advertising for fine dining in a public urinal.

How do you run a company into the ground you do not want?

You make it impossible for your company to survive by being a complete dick to your customers (*) and assure to alienate them. It takes a while, but with the right amount of intent,... you'll get there sooner than later.

(*) No, the tweeting fools are not customers but they are the product. The advertisers are the customers.

No way.

Musk's perceived wealth is number of Tesla shares multiplied by share price. That number is partly fiction: selling some Tesla shares drops the value of his remaining holding. To spend that money Musk must instead borrow it from some banks offering shares as collateral. His credit was so good he could get banks to lend Twitter version 2 the money needed to buy Twitter version 1. The banks agreed to this because they believed they could sell the debt to greater fools.

This all fell to pieces the day he trashed-talked Twitter V1 - after committing to buy for $44B. Somehow he worked out that he was massively over paying. The way out would have been to talk up the value of Twitter so V1 share holders would be reluctant to sell. This is actually something he is good at. Tesla is proof he can talk up share price well beyond company performance.

Instead he trashed Twitter V1's share price with considerable skill and enthusiasm. This made Twitter's previous share holders determined to sell - at the high price he had committed to. It also made Twitter V2's debt unsellable. No rich people were foolish enough to buy Twitter debt when he took control of the company. That became more impossible when he stopped his Twitter paying bills. It has become even more impossible now he is talking about Twitter going bankrupt.

Twitter borrowed more money than it needed to buy Twitter. The excess has been paying the interest but there is very little left. Musk is not going to bail out Twitter so the banks will be left with a bad debt.

Musk's credit rating is now shit. Any vendors not currently requiring payment in advance will do so after Twitter's bankruptcy. Loss of that credit rating actually hurts Musk hence the massively inept performance intended to blackmail advertisers into returning.

We just can't take our eyes off of him, can we?

And the campaign against free speech by journalists (!) continues.

I cannot tell--is this a parody account or the genuine article? Anyone have a solid clue?

[1]Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells on Wiki , though I would normally expect the stereo-typical "Disgusted" to be writing to complain about Musk's profanities

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disgusted_of_Tunbridge_Wells

I'll admit, it is a radical approach for a business. Telling your customers to f**k off.

And make now mistake, the advertisers *are* the customers. The people who actually use the site are the product the advertisers buy.