Elon Musk, the owner of X, criticized advertisers with expletives on Wednesday at The New York Times’s DealBook Summit.
I loved him telling advertisers to fuck off and all the people listening just laughing at him like the moron that he is. He thinks his edgy, middle aged man schtick is cool, but everyone’s laughing at how pathetic he is
What he doesn’t realise (which most middle aged men don’t realise, myself included) is how far the culture has moved since 2001. The values, the mores, the basic morality has shifted. It isn’t tight jeans past 40 that make you look old, it’s your outmoded relationship with the world that does that.
I don’t care about right jeans making me look old because I just can’t wait until baggy pants become more acceptable to wear again. Much more comfortable!
JNCO Jeans opened back up.
You better not be lying… I loved wearing my flying squirrel jeans.
I’ve never stopped wearing baggy jeans. It was my first “I’m too old to give a shit” moment.
It’s become true in recent years that I’m also I’m too, uh, husky for skinny jeans to really work.
But honestly don’t give a shit. I’m pretty sure my wardrobe screams middle aged guy with no fucks to give and I’m just fine with that.
I have heard uncool middle aged guy with the “not a bigot though” upgrade package is a great overall build. You would think, not that sexy right? However, surprisingly being a nice person gives you lots of buffs on your sexy skill check so even though it is low on paper, in reality you can rack up a lot of points quickly. Best part you don’t even need expensive gear to buff your stats like a cool car or nice clothes.
The Be Kind To Kids and Animals action is really OP in those key years from around 20-50. Lots of straight guys sleep on that play.
Seriously, if you do the math out you get sexy bonuses that easily outstrip other strategies like buying a stupid sports car or impractical big truck, for essentially zero dollars, minimal effort AND as an added bonus the people you increase your sexiness stat with the most also happen to be the kind of person that is the best to sex with (a genuinely kind person who cares about your pleasure as much as theirs, not someone who just starfishes and calls it a day).
You basically get a free asshole filter thrown in, no extra cost. Crazy deal, and you can drive around an old beat up corolla that costs nothing to maintain, wear shit clothes and still be absolutely demolishing the competition.
The comments like there are making me wish that there exists a Lemmy equivalent of r/outside community
I have heard uncool middle aged guy with the “not a bigot though” upgrade package is a great overall build.
How sad is it that there are so many middle aged white bigots that it’s something I could list like “over six feet tall” and “has a stable job” if ever I’d find myself single again. (Not that I’d really be looking for love at this point I think.) Crazy world we are living in.
Regardless, I will walk a little straighter having read your kind words. 😁
I just wear sweatpants. Fuck what other people think. They’re comfortable.
I honestly think skinny jeans are more comfortable than the material that they’re making baggy jeans out of. My skinny jeans stretch so much that I can sprint in them.
Yeah, besides our tight jeans make us look youthful and bulgy.
He’s an entitled thrust fund baby. An overgrown 15 year old edgelord.
It’s very funny that his single biggest failure is so public. Like if The Boring Company couldn’t find customers, it would just quietly shut down. Newsworthy, but only for like a day.
This is monthly stories about severe incompetence and petulance.
It’s very funny that his single biggest failure is so public.
biggest failure in public…so far.
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As much as Musk is an idiot these days with his antisemitism and MAGAism, I don’t think the Vegas Loop is a failure. It was never a HYPER-loop, just regular loop (low speed). The city of Vegas likes it enough they are planning on expanding it even more.
It’s not about if Vegas likes it. Because Vegas is one of the worst cities for transportation in the US. The main strip is a disaster. Walking as a pedestrian is dangerous and insanely confusing. The trains are underfunded and misplaced. Buses get stuck behind billboard cars in traffic.
And instead of funding train or bus development, Vegas spent wild money to get the loop built. The loop is a safety hazard, it holds very few people, and it achieves far less than what a good subway system could do.
Basically Elon may have made money, but the world mostly lost.
Like if The Boring Company couldn’t find customers, it would just quietly shut down.
If? Besides a few small projects have they ever scored anything significant?
Ha I didn’t want to put this in my comment to complicate the point but no they’ve only done one actual thing so this could have happened and I don’t know that we’d know.
it’s public because it is the public it’s twitter
There are different levels of “public”. Musk doesn’t need to publicly announce he’s telling all the advertisers to fuck off, he could tell it to them on a private call and then the public would most likely only know what advertisers are pulling out. The whole “fuck off” statement never needed to be public, Musk made it public because he can do whatever the fuck he wants. The same goes for a lot of things you see about Twitter. He didn’t need to do his things in public, he simply did.
that is not what I’m saying. the failure of twitter is a public issue. it affects the public. nobody should give a fuck about the boring company.
My bad, didn’t get your comment that way.
monthly
Lol it’s a bit more frequent than that.
The Boring Company is a line item expense so Tesla can keep selling cars while stalling rail projects. It was never meant to do anything.
I thought this guy was supposed to be right wing? Doesn’t he like the free market? Because, I mean, the alternative is regulation. We could make antisemitism illegal, but in the west we have largely decided that we will instead rely on free market forces (read: public shaming) to root that shit out.
It’s almost as if… and this might sound crazy, but hear me out… it’s almost as if this guy wants the advantages of capitalism, but none of its disadvantages?
He’s a libertarian. That means he thinks he can do whatever the fuck he wants but will squeal like a stuck pig at the slightest sign of pushback.
And as any “proper” libertarian, he depends deeply on State money (SpaceX + Tesla).
And probably likes underage girls
there’s also considerable evidence he lied about not knowing epstein
[insert photo of the Boer hanging out with Ghislaine Maxwell]
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There’s only two ways to make money: suckle at the teet of government (because the government prints the money), or bilk customers. Musk started all of his companies using the first method and has now has moved onto the second in many of his companies.
Everyone loves capitalisim until it’s inflicted on them. Oddly enough, this includes Musk.
What advertisers are doing isn’t capitalism it’s collusion to manipulate the market.
Yeah, that’s just capitalism.
Obviously you don’t understand capitalism and your just going off what people who want communism and socialism are saying.
Please explain to me how advertisers exercising their agency in choosing who to advertise with is “communism” or “socialism”.
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When I mentioned communism and socialism I was pointing to the mischaracterization of capitalism. Capitalism is just the free and open market and when companies collude together to manipulate the market that’s not capitalism. Capitalism has built in rules against market manipulation and monopolies unfortunately that requires the government to do it’s job to enforce it, which it’s been doing a piss poor job of.
What evidence is there that the companies are colluding? Are there communication logs where they all conversed and decided to pull ads? Is there any evidence at all that the companies had any interaction with each other about this and made a unifying decision to cancel their ads?
Collusion requires entities to work together to achieve a mutual goal. Otherwise, it’s just a coincidence of timing.
Capitalism has built in rules against market manipulation and monopolies
It most assuredly does not. Addressing these externalities is the responsibility of government.
So, are you suggesting regulation of the market?
Your definition of capitalism in this argument is simply a no true scotsman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman.
I think you might be having difficulty grasping the idea that people have marketing budgets and if say the ceo of a company you advertise on very publicly endorses hate speech it does create a brand management problem.
You want your products to not be associated with things like, say, racism, which are kind of “yucky” to a lot of people.
As a result you might refocus spending. If a bunch of people do this at once this doesn’t mean there’s collusion. For example, during a thunderstorm you might see less people outside. This isn’t because they all colluding - people don’t like being struck by lightning. Similarly, companies don’t want their brands to be “yucky” to the average consumer and often its just a matter of moving the ad spending to another platform without the baggage.
You could ONLY limit this effect by banning advertising entirely.
Lol at someone insulting others understanding when they conflate communism and socialism.
I’m not conflating the two I’m simply saying the people that have an issue or misunderstanding and capitalism usage fall in either camp.
So capitalism bans collusion? How?
Government regulations. Capitalism is a component of the government so it should take government action to enforce it.
Really? Because I’ve been repeatedly told by libertarian types (not socialists or communists) that any government regulation is not capitalism.
You’re free to disagree with them, but then I’m going to ask what your definition of capitalism is that assumes this regulation (not just allowing it, but mandating it).
I’m entirely pro-capitalism. Why should the free market not be allowed to act here?
In this context if they disagree so much they should just leave the platform and then it would fall under capitalism. What they want is to stay on the platform and dictate how it should be run and if they don’t get their way they make threats and ultimatums, which is a form of manipulation, I.e anti-capitalism.
It’s not manipulation to say “we’re leaving because you did this thing and won’t be back until you don’t do this thing.” This is simply the market forces articulating their preferences.
If I stop buying a company’s products because I disagree with the direction it’s going, I am voting with my wallet, not manipulating the company.
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I simply made a claim to why something is happening whether or not is true is yet to be proven but that doesn’t mean it’s not a possibility. These companies want a hand in how the company is run and if they’re not getting what they want them calling each other up to coordinate an ads pull is a tool in their toolbox.
Either bring facts, or state it as an opinion, don’t try to do both or you will get called out.
It’s to early to state facts so it’s a given that most things mentioned this early would be opinions.
Most is not all.
So don’t try to use it as an excuse.
Capitalists love collusion to manipulate the market when they’re in on it.
No, corrupt individuals do
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lol, how old are you because that’s really immature.
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Hypocrisy? From a right winger? What’s next, water being wet?
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I hope the businesses who come do like the BBC and spin up their own server. I don’t want them making accounts on places like Lemmy, like reddit, where someone is having their username taken away now for ‘trademark infringement.’ Username was “FoodNetwork.”
The fact that reddit just letting business steal fucking usernames is god damned vile.
Saw that post. It’s seems since the 3rd party controversy Reddit accelerate it’s decay into corporate existence. Still, it’s going to take a while for it to die.
I haven’t been back since. I can’t say Reddit hasn’t come up in Google searches that I’ve clicked on, but no commenting and no browsing around, and certainly no installing the app. Fuck these asshole rich dudes jerking us around. I don’t need their bullshit websites.
Newsgroups and IRC were all I had back in the day and we got by just fine. Now let me go find an onion for my belt.
Stop using goog
Still applies with Duckduckgo.
Can you share the context here?
Which context? I was referring to Reddit taking usernames from longtime users to sell them to corporate channels.
Yeah that! Is there a news story or more info about it? Crazy!
Thanks!
Problem is, advertisers likely do not want to go on mastodon because they can’t advertise there
And that’s a feature not a bug. A lot are waiting on how ad sales will play out on Threads I bet.
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Companies give a shit about giving us information. It’s all about the advertising, so they will flock to the next closed-source company-controlled shithole.
More? Is anyone in Mastodon?
So when twitter actually dies will people finally start using mastodon then? Or they too eager to use another billionaire owned social media and migrate to threads?
I’m going to invent the perfect social media system where you type a comment and then a bunch of LLMs just argue with you forever and nobody has to read anybody else’s stupid bullshit.
You forgot the most important part? You need to have notifications pop up every 15 mins so you get a dopamine hit for checking how many bots liked your devastating own of another bot in an argument.
They’re already going to threads or bluesky if they’re able. Honestly though? I don’t think we want THAT many people flooding the fediverse. There’s already a bunch of accounts here that exist only to troll or have bad takes.
Hey now! I already created my own fediverse servers in Panama and registered to a local domain provider down there and am behind 7 proxy’s at all times for my Shit Posting aS a Service or SPASS as it’s commonly called. You can’t take that away from us!
All joking aside I hope you’re wrong but it’s probably gonna go that way. Really want Mastodon to take off here
Not to mention that one of the most active instances is pretty much just open information warfare at this point. .ml has become a complete dumpster fire
Don’t leave hexbear out!
Bluesky is pretty allright but it’s poorly built lol
The second one, a number of people that I follow are going to blue sky, they learned nothing.
No they won’t. The federation system like it’s currently implemented will never be mainstream.
You literally can’t know that and are just being unnecessarily cynical.
The crazies might stick with Truth Social 100% rather than 50/50 with Twitter
Can you think of a single open source, open community spcial platform that has gained anything more than early adopter adoption?
Mastodon has a terrible name that sounds like masturbate
There is no charismatic leader
There is no method to advertise on the platform, so the platform will suffer from no commercial incentives or correlation (e.g. find us on Twitter)
It’s confusing to the vast majority of people that you can join from more than one location
There are other platforms that do the same thing, why this one?
if you didn’t learn anything in school, Mastodon might sound stupid. You might confused it with a Mammoth but you’d be a fool to think it was anything other than awesome. Like the war elephants in LotR
I mean a mastodon is essentially a mammoth just with a bit more heavy metal mixed in.
Elon: Go fuck yourself advertisers
Advertisers: Understandable, have a nice day [doubles spend on other platforms]
I don’t see how anyone expected this to end. I for one am hoping for a fatal ketamine od.
"Hours later, Linda Yaccarino, X’s chief executive, tried to mitigate the damage. In a post on X, she shifted attention to Mr. Musk’s apology for associating himself with antisemitism and appealed to advertisers to return.
“X is enabling an information independence that is uncomfortable for some people,” Ms. Yaccarino wrote. “X is standing at a unique and amazing intersection of Free Speech and Main Street — and the X community is powerful and here to welcome you.”
It’s called information independence y’all, look it up. Kinda like alternative facts but better.
X is giving actual Nazis a platform, so that comment can fuck right off.
Honestly at this point it’s ok. Because the worse it gets the quicker people will abandon it. Advertisers leaving means famous people won’t be able to monetize the website optimally and they’ll start looking for alternatives as well. It will just take the right start up with leadership that isn’t a massive dick head to see sometime knock out the titan. I honestly can’t wait.
Well, Linda Yaccarino is an actual Nazi, so that tracks.
A unique and amazing platform, no less.
information independence
independent from what?
Reality.
Critical thinking, apparently.
Decency
Next question!
We must liberate information from reality. We are the freedom bringers.
Reality?
This woman must have some clause in her contract that says she loses some big cash bonus if she quits too soon. Why would any sane person with a reputation that is quickly eroding choose to stay?
So, personal agenda/interests probably…
“The X community” can go FUCK ITSELF! Is that clear? I hope so.
Yep!
However, at this point, isn’t it mostly bots?
Let Muskrat dump even more money into that dumpster.
Elon made Lemmy side with Big Advertisement
Weird how people applaud companies when they do good things.
We meet again, still the most gnarly username to date, will keep you informed.
LOL I remember the first time you noticed them
I have a feeling I’ll see him again
It’s a rare example of the free market working the way it should.
Please buy Facebook next!!!
What happened to that cage fight?
Musk wasn’t ever going to go through with it. He was hoping Zuckerberg would decline and then he’d look like the big tough guy, but it fell apart when Suck called his bluff so now he just looks (even more) foolish.
that’s not true!
he cannot possibly look more foolish, at this point.
Watch em
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It was stupid from the start because Zuck is actually doing Jiu Jitsu and went to tournaments while Musik doesn’t seem to do much sports at all.
He doesn’t need to, just sharing his drugs with Zucc should do it.
“why are the companies leaving after I told them to fuck themselves and right after spreading nazi propaganda? It’s a mystery.”
The random downvotes in this thread makes me wonder if some musk fanboy is raging out while lurking.
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“X is enabling an information independence that is uncomfortable for some people,” Ms. Yaccarino wrote. “X is standing at a unique and amazing intersection of Free Speech and Main Street — and the X community is powerful and here to welcome you.”
Wow, the mental gymnastics. Someone call the Olympic committee.
it’s incredible to see the lengths they will go to, all of the new phrases and euphemisms they’re willing to conjure up, before admitting they’re doings things badly and everything is on fire
uncomfortable for some people People like me, who got tired of the firehose of ultra-right-wing lies, conspiracy theories, and propaganda. Oh, and nazis.
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He’s trying to find a scapegoat to blame for destroying the company, and he seems to think he’s found it in the advertisers that are withdrawing their money.
Benny “Dry Humping Only” Shapiro is calling it an attempt to silence Musk and an attack on free speech
These guys never showed up for fifth grade civics
I think they have, they just know their base is easy to manipulate.
You can always count on Benny to come up with some hot take that’s wrong, stupid, or not even wrong.
Hard to deny this as he explicitly said it in this same interview, but the fan boys will
Don’t forget his “lawsuit” against Media Matters.
I heard David Samson (former president of the Miami Marlins) suggest that he wants the advertisers to all bail so that he can entice his sycophants to boycott the companies who pulled their ad revenue.
He suggested that if you have the type of f-you money to waste that Musk does, then it’s simply an ego move. He’s not going to succeed with XTwitter so he might as well let it burn, and scorch as many people as he can in the hopes of getting petty revenge on those who crossed him.
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Well, he’s well on his way to burning it down, so he’ll get at least half way there.
Finally. Took them long enough.
And all it took was him telling them to go fuck themselves.
Not sure who’s dumber, Elon or the advertisers.
Letting Nazis stay on the platform? Not enough.
Unbanning Kanye? Not enough.
Elon personally agreeing that Jews were going to destroy white people? Not enough.
Telling them to go fuck themselves? HOW DARE HE?!?!
This.
There are so many media institutions and slebs who have and still are giving twitter all its content .
They are complicit in this.
The most hilarious thing about the whole thing to me was the way he said, “blackmail me with money?” as if he’s definitely automatically wealthy to a level that he doesn’t have to worry about being bullied.
Leave aside the whole framing where the only reason people might be pulling out is to blackmail Elon Musk personally, and just assume that that’s true and analyze the question of whether he’s big enough to be immune if they decide that’s what they want to do. Musk is worth somewhere around $100-200 billion personally. I picked, totally at random, a single one of the advertisers who have pulled out, and learned that Eli Lilly has a market cap of around $565 billion. Remember this? Back from a year ago?
Eli Lilly and Co. stopped showing ads on Twitter the day after an account impersonating the pharmaceutical company — complete with a purchased blue check mark — posted, “We are excited to announce insulin is free now.”
Eli Lilly asked Twitter to take it down, but the tweet remained up for hours, because the platform’s staff was stretched thin due to recent layoffs and resignations. The tweet garnered hundreds of retweets and thousands of likes, and Eli Lilly’s stock soon took a dive.
as if he’s definitely automatically wealthy to a level that he doesn’t have to worry about being bullied.
“One of the indulgences of great wealth is freedom from other peoples’ opinions.” Trump and Musk both seem to have missed this memo. They’re so self-absorbed and insulated that they can’t imagine there are people out there that they can’t buy, can’t bribe, and can’t silence. Their lives must be so empty they can only hear the echoes of their critics… or maybe that’s just my imagination.
Maybe a little bit your imagination but I think I get your point. Would anyone here concern themselves with this nonsense given Elon Musks means? I doubt it.
Huh. I wonder why Saudi Arabia isn’t demanding their $22B back.
Because they didn’t do it as an investment. Destroying the platform was the point.
Exactly what I was implying. If destroying the platform wasn’t the point, then they’d want to know why they’re not seeing a return on their investment. The public story is that it was an investment.
Legitimately curious because I’m OOTL: why would Saudi Arabia want to destroy Twitter? My (admittedly uninformed) instinct says it would be a waste of their large investment and control over a platform ripe with potential for them to control narratives over their shitty PR for human rights abuses and other shit. Would it just be to prevent negative coverage of their actions from spreading?
Again, not arguing, just legitimately curious. I figured Twitter’s downfall would be really bad for them since they have sway over Musk and a vested interest in the platform.
Twitter was at the heart of the Arab Spring uprising a few years ago. Letting people under your control communicate with each other quickly and concisely does not work well for dictators. The Saudis are dictators who want to control the people under them.
For them, 20 billion spent on some stupid revenge. Porn doesn’t really make an impact. On the bottom line.
Hold up, what does SA have to do with musk buying Twitter? Did they actually pay him?
“Kingdom Holding Company and the private office of Prince Alwaleed bin Talal will maintain their stake in Twitter after Musk took control of the social media company.”
Twitter was unparalleled in the reach it had. It has been used to organize protests, riots and overthrow governments. There still isn’t a viable alternative that can reach 80%+ of a population.
Twitter was also used frequently to expose poor working conditions and other abuses of power, especially in middle eastern countries
But that’s not Tru Freedums! Tru Freedums is being able to say the n-word and be respected for it!
Twitter was the only mainstream social media that seemed to have any semblance of ethics.
Musk is also a wild card, and adding to the instability of Western society is advantageous. It’s another direction we get pulled, another thing to be upset about, another distraction.
I guess they failed. Twitter is still just as massive as it was before.
Take a look at how many posts on lemmy and even mastodon are just screencaps of tweets.
Ya’ll are addicted to that shit, lol.
Yeah, but now they can be sure that anyone arranging an Arab spring in the kingdom of Saud will be banned within the hour.
Why? Does twitter ban users if the Saudi government demands it?
That’s the implication, you know because of the investment.
Is there evidence of it happening?
Xitter has been banning journalists on request of the Indian government.
So would probably do the same for Saudi’s.
I’m addicted to drama and elon provides plenty of that. I haven’t had a Twitter account in about 10 years and I only used it as a teenager to look for porn.
Have you seen thunderf00t’s anthology on Musk?
I suspect it’s doing exactly what they want it to do. The platform isn’t destroyed, only it’s ability to make money through conventional advertising. It’s still full of strongly conservative viewers running businesses with plenty of cash. It’s primed to be a disinformation delivery system.
Right now if he was able to liquidate holdings, he could pay them back in full and still be #2 richest and still be above Bezos by 43 billion
They’ll get some of it back when they sell his kidneys
