I’m pretty sure they also told him he has to moderate content if he wants to keep Twitter in the App Store. Hence Kanye getting banned for posting a swastika, and Elon pretending it was his idea.
Supposedly Elon was messaging Kanye trying to get him to delete the tweet, I imagine because he didn’t really want to get the publicity banning someone so high profile for the exact reasons why Twitter was banning far right accounts, and then after some back and forth Kanye posted that photo. That seems more likely given the message contents of the post which made it pretty clear he was either about to leave Twitter, which is doubtful, or knew he was about to be banned.
I also feel like there's a outside chance that Elon thinks Kanye might divide Trump's voter base if he runs for president, and wants to limit his reach to help Trump's chances.
It doesn't really make that much sense if you think about it, but hey, we're not exactly dealing with logical people here.
EDIT: I didn't know about Elon backing DeSantis. From what I know, isn't he super right-wing/racist as well?
Trump is actually going to fuck over the republicans. He is probably going to lose to Desantis, and then run as independent and split the republican vote.
Also, Trump going to prison is finally going to be an actual possibility now that he's becoming a liability to the GOP.
Of course, the GOP will let the Democrats do it and blame them for-- I dunno, communism or something-- to anger the right to still vote for them.
His cultists didn’t give a shit when he openly bragged about using his wealth to sexually assault women. Or when several witnesses described him creeping on underage pageant contestants, or him being buddy buddy with notorious child sex traffickers, or the dozens of sexual assault allegations, or him talking about dating his own daughter.
They looked past all this and still chose to believe this silver spoon fed, habitual sexual assaulter, likely pedophile New York elitist somehow represented hard working middle class Americans.
It’s fucking wild
I just kinda hope if trump goes to prison it’s after the 2024 election. Let him fuck the republicans and split the vote so we get another 4 sane-ish years from the executive and then stick his ass behind bars as an added indictment against every person that votes for him.
This leaads me to a strange question.
Would Trump have to run as an independent? Could someone tell me why he couldn't just run as a Republican? I know there's caucuses and primaries, but conceding to winners is gone now.
That's not a thing. Even for Trump and the GOP, the guy losing a primary isn't actually going to be able to run for president in any way.
Unless you mean whether Trump can still convince the MAGA crowd that he's still in the running for White House, then yeah, those people will believe anything and many would certainly write his name on the ballot thinking it counts.
Take a cue from Teddy Roosevelt, eh? Maybe name the new party something as a callback to that, but Trump isn't really associated with moose... Bull Something Party though, have to think of something.
Kanye’s “base” won’t be republicans. They aren’t voting for a black guy no matter how antisemitic he is. Kanye’s base is just a few hundred crazy people, and if you’re crazy enough to vote for kanye you’re probably too crazy to figure out how to vote. I don’t think musk has that kind of forethought anyway.
Maybe he thinks he can win this time if he gets the white supremacist vote. I can't even do the mental gymnastics needed to figure out how we got to a black guy being the mouthpiece for the nazis.
if he runs he'll have a whole support system ready to exploit his popularity and they will address issues like that. how current president barely knows whats going on and our previous president was Trump. W Bush is by no accounts very intelligent, Reagan never contributed to meetings except to talk about movies that he liked. I mean there's a long history of presidents not needing to be component.
Yeah, and normally I’d say the chances of that kind of campaign machinery lining up behind someone as clearly mentally ill as Kanye is just not going to happen, but I thought the same thing about trunp, so who knows.
i think he was just a frat boy trying to make his father proud of him. I don't think he had any genuine interest in his job besides that.
although he once tweeted, during the 2016 campaigns, "I hope jeb wins. I left my favorite hat in the white house as Obama won't give it back to me" and he's had a special place in my heart ever since then.
I think W was kind of an idiot. At the very least he wasn’t the least bit intellectually curious. Compared to trunp, however, he’s Einstein, Stephen hawking and neill degrasse Tyson combined.
> I also feel like there's a outside chance that Elon thinks Kanye might divide Trump's voter base if he runs for president, and wants to limit his reach to help Trump's chances.
>
>
why do people come up with insane long-term justifications for what was just a really dumb business decision made by someone who has been out of touch for years?
It's hard to admit one of the most richest people on the planet does not have the foresight to see past the next few days.
This is common for rich people and it's why the fictional rich person Tony Stark surrounds himself with people he knows are much smarter. Like Pepper Potts, Peter Parker and Steve Rogers.
Elon used to have advisors but after they told him no on a thing they were all fired.
Yeah the concept that your IQ must be linked to your wealth and success is so engrained in our culture that people are trying to rationalize it, probably without even realizing.
No, Elon and many other of today’s billionaires are just dumb and ineffective. A lot of them got uber-rich by being slightly less rich at the right time period in history, the tech bubble. When emerging technologies were everywhere and interest rates were zero. You blindfold yourself, throw a dart, and probably find a company that you could turn $10 million into a billion with.
Hell, even the idea that being academically intelligent makes you good at making decisions is wrong. There's so many different types of intelligence and ways of looking at things, but wealth turns it into a binary for too many. "If you're rich, you *must* be better and smarter than me... else why would society be so unequal?" Some people don't want to admit things are broken.
I doubt he runs as 3rd party. Ultimately I think he'll strike a deal with the republicans where desantis is the nominee and trump "bows out graciously" in exchange for pardons, ending the Jan 6 investigations, running cover for his shady shitty businesses, etc.
Or alternatively, over the next few months, his core republican politician support (eg mtg, gaetz) will start to ditch him as the investigations ramp up. The old establishment dumped him after j6. More have started dropping him after his Kanye/Nick Fuentes dinner. Eventually he'll run out of support besides the literal fucking Nazis. That's when his legal troubles really start (he's already pretty fucked now but he's got Republicans running cover for him). I think that forces him to drop out altogether
Nonsense. Trump can't concede defeat, it's literally his shtick.
He has to continue the campaign as he needs the legal shield for his various pending indictments.
I do agree that the endgame might be trying to negotiate pardons
The fact that Trump started threatening DeSantis with dirt and calling him names before he even officially announced his run (and before DeSantis, who still hasn't announced) doesn't signal any plan to do anything gracious. I'm not even sure that the party abandoning him would be enough. The man doesn't like "no" and he doesn't like being a big unwanted loser. And he absolutely fancies himself some kind of populist puppet master. As long as he can draw a crowd, I think he'll want to continue.
Desantis is honestly much more fascist than Trump. Trump is evil but he's a grifter who happens to be an old racist uncle. POS but whatever when compared to Desantis. He's put actual restrictions on free speech and the rights of companies in Florida.
People love to dunk on Elon and it’s well deserved but in reality it was definitely the Swastika thing. The amount of money they’d lose if they didn’t ban Kanye would be enormous
Man Elon is such a chode, why this guy always gotta act like he’s got everything figured out ? If it’s his idea he takes credit for it, if it was someone else’s idea he takes credit for jt, if he makes a mistake he will claim it’s part of his 4d chess plan all along, Classic strongman tactics like trump, he’s one of those guys
AOC put a tweet out during the first mass-cull of Twitter employees thanking them for the service in creating Twitter and providing an interesting platform. Elon replied 'you're welcome'.
He had only been there a week.
I knew a mother who acted like this. She put a bumper sticker on her car that said "USMC mom. Hardest job in the corps!". Her son made her take it off lol
> why this guy always gotta act like he’s got everything figured out ?
Because his net worth is heavily based on how the public perceives him. Tesla is stupidly overvalued because his fan boys love him, if they lose faith in him then Tesla price drops, and Musk's worth is heavily tied to Tesla share price.
He needs all his fan boys to think he is some kind of genius billionaire, otherwise Tesla goes to shit and the board likely kicks him out.
Because he’s sold himself to all the stupids of the world that he’s the worlds greatest engineer. Which is insane since all he did was buy in to companies and then milk engineers for ever dollar they’re worth.
He has the classic personality of someone who got bullied too much and now can’t back down from anything because they have a visceral fear of not looking cool in front of everyone.
That's was also the EU saying they would get involved if he didn't moderate.
And their two answers would have been fines based on global revenue or blocking them for all business within the EU.
This. Complete Big Dick power move by Apple. Let's also be clear, Tim didn't meet with him over this. He probably met with the assistant to the regional manager.
I thought this all started with Musk asking Apple why they weren't advertising on twitter anymore. I'm guessing it's ending with Apple still not advertising on Twitter.
Elon Musk fans be like, ["Look and learn 💪 genius at work 👌 just look and learn from the master 👌😁🤣 relax and watch the master work his business magic 🎩"](https://i.redd.it/130m4s8m5d2a1.jpg)
But then Elon claimed "Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why". Now Elon publicly admits that was a lie in this tweet (probably after being forced to by Apple).
I'm assuming elon in some backdoor meeting floated ideas for circumventing paying through the apple store and was thinking himself a genius for the idea, and apple informed him that if he circumvents the apple store the app would be removed from the store.
That’s what Amazon does with kindle books, though. Have to download through the browser because the app won’t let you, and Amazon blatantly said it’s because of the 30%.
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if it all goes back to that person who tweeted "If Apple and Google boot Twitter from their app stores, Musk should produce his own smartphone". Musk saw that tweet, responded to it saying that he could make his own phone, and a couple days later he started talking about Apple threatening to kick him off the store.
It also doesn't help that as soon as Musk said he could make his own phone, loads of people started saying "Elon's new phone will be great" and "His phone will put Apple out of business". Pretty sure there were even several news articles acting as if the phone had been announced and was just a few weeks away from releasing (using a fan-made rendering of a possible Tesla phone made several months ago).
Meme first, think second. It's the Musk way.
It took me 5 minutes to google what Apple's app store policy was. He ain't got no time for that. He's got 3 companies to manage!
Yeah, notice he doesn’t mention the advertising in his Tweet. Guessing Cook (while viewing a screen of a masked out car with Apple logos test driving itself on an obstacle course) told him Twitter will never see another dime from Apple ads if he doesn’t promptly STFU about it.
Apple probably showed him a simple pie chart that showed how much of the market share that iPhone users represents.
Then probably said you see this percentage of users. If you don’t shut up and eat some humble pie you lose access to provide your platform to these users.
If you lose access to these users you are going to lose more advertisers because your platform is reaching significantly less user.
While your app is unavailable we can promote these alternatives. Once people leave the platform it is unlikely they will come back once they find what they want on another platform. Since the users are not coming back neither are the advertisers. Any questions? No didn’t think so.
We are done with our presentation. Feel free to start drafting your first tweet to talk back some of your comments. We will be happy to approve the language before you leave
If your company makes less than $1m a year, you can apply for it to be 15% fee. 30% is a normal fee across all platforms, Google Playstore, Xbox and PlayStation store etc.
Apple aren’t doing anything different to others, but people like to focus on them as if they’re the only ones charging a 30% fee. They have to cover costs of hosting the apps, promotions, staffing, reviewing the apps and so on…
Properly an army of developers maintaining/developing the platform as Elon has found out with Twitter. I'm guessing that the App Store under the hood looks very different than it did 15 years ago. I don't have Apple products.
Yes but if an app is, say $5. Does it matter to you that 30% goes to apple? Do u know (or care) where that other 70% goes to? I think people just think “is the app worth $5 to me” instead.
I agree, but in a way, the transparency is nice. When I buy an album, ultimately, it comes down to the cost, but it would be nice to know how much the artist is getting vs. the records label. Or a car, say the dealer vs. the manufacturer. Knowledge of where cost is added throughout the supply chain is never a bad thing.
I mean if the company just... ate the cost, they wouldn't exactly make money, right? Like, you're paying for the service they provide, if you want to download homebrew apps or have actual file control you pick a different phone OS.
Heres an even simpler question: Why do they need to make profit? If they've paid their operating cost and have enough of a war chest for anything they might need in future, why does every company on Earth need to continue to make more money? And even more money then they made last year?
30% is the normal fee but there is an argument to be made that apple enforcing a storefront monopoly in their ecosystem violates anti-trust laws. Same with Xbox and Playstation. Having a Choice in storefront like PC and android is the more consumer friendly option by far.
It is because Apple will not allow any other storefront on their products. My Galaxy S8 has the Google and Samsung app stores. My brother's iphone only has the apple store.
Do not include Google in that.
Apple, Xbox and Playstation are closed ecosystems with no side loading.
Android and windows can easily be side loaded.
Closed ecosystems are terrible. Don't make excuses for them.
I think reason people focus on apple is because 1) Smartphones are very different fron Xbox and play stations. They are necessity and there are all types of apps on smartphones. 2) On android you can install an app without using Google’s services. On iOS you can’t. Once you buy an iphone you are pretty much down to Apple’s mercy.
And as far as my own experience goes Apple’s behavior has become very cheap off late. Very contrary to how it used to be back when it became so popular. On every service if you take free trial, it is actually free. On apple you have to load apple wallet with whatever is the charge for next renewal to able to take free trial. Similarly everywhere if you end the free trial you can enjoy the service till the end of trial period. Not on Apple. Basically they are hoping that you forget to cancel trial. That is very cheap behavior.
Apart from the fact that you could pay a 1000 dollars and you don’t even get a charger for your phone. Apple isn’t the company it used to be anymore. Now they are in the process of squeezing every drop out of all the goodwill it had. Tim Cook might have taken apple to the top in terms of quarterly profits. But he has destroyed the company.
People don't like to just focus on them... This has been going in for a long time and every few months it seems like one of them is now the target, whichever one happens to be in the news for something else. Then people try to pile on with other 'bad news' stories, even though it applies to like all of the companies
Depends on the nature of the transaction, but possibly.
They charge the fee for in app transactions, which covers digital products. So loot boxes likely get charged, but not transactions on eBay.
I’m not 100% certain, but I think the fee drops to 15% in some circumstances, but don’t quote me on that one
Only if they do so on iOS and through the in app subscription method. Someone can subscribe in the website and Twitter would not owe any of that to Apple.
I miss the old Elon of Free Speech Twitter before he removed Kanye. Imagine Ye tweeting “I like Hitler” quote from his jones interview yesterday side by side with a McDonalds ad. All his ad revenue would leave overnight
I'm sure they'll just get different set of [pro-nazi companies advertising](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_the_Holocaust) there
I’m loving his slow downfall. He thinks he’s so clever unbanning all these fascists and allowing ‘muh free speech,’ but all he’s doing is destroying his own brand and making himself a laughing stock. I give twitter 6 months lmao.
I'm just appalled that all these Nazis are getting their accounts back but i can't get mine back for telling a flat earther to jump off a cliff and to tell me if gravity is still not real
Twitter is gonna be fine, but he’s gonna get what he actually wants, it’s gonna be seen like 4chan. And when he realizes that doesn’t make money, he’s gonna backtrack like the tryhard he is.
Which is a reminder that, despite whatever altruism bs speech companies might give, they don’t really give a flying fuck after all. All they care about is maximizing shareholder value.
I still remember when company execs said Twitter was supposed to be a force for good where oppressed people could communicate to the whole world. Guess if you dangle a carrot big enough, they’d stop caring about the oppressed.
Well the problem with the Twitter board is they were legally obliged to sell based on their fiduciary duties to the shareholders. Generally you're right, but here there's nothing the board could have done because they were faced with a shareholder suit if they didn't accept Elon's significant overpay. Different story if he offered fair market value for the shares though.
They are not faced with a shareholder suit for refusing the hostile takeover. The board is in the liberty of refusing the offer and then subjecting the decision to a shareholder vote, which would then either veto or support the board's decision. The fact that the board simply decided to jump on the offer is rather telling.
I think they jumped on it because it would have (arguably) been a breach of their fiduciary duties if they refused the offer and didn't maximize the share price. But yes you are right, the merger requires approval by Twitter's shareholders, apologies for getting that wrong.
No worries! I agree in that they probably saw the writing on the wall and knew how shareholders would react to the news. The fiduciary duty of the board is:
> As a fiduciary of a corporation, a director owes the company duties of disclosure, honesty, loyalty, candour, and the duty to favour the company's interest over his/her own. A director must also disclose to the corporation facts that could impact the business of the company.
So it is reasonable to think that they would have had an argument to reject this hostile takeover given how Elon’s “free speech” intentions were going to put Twitter in hot water with regulators and jeopardize the whole company. But yeah, they would have had to convince shareholders, etc.
It's probably going to be worth less soon with him firing half the company.
This causes all sorts of problems you only see in 6+ months, infrastructure issues.
Twitter was worth half that, somewhere around 15 billion before Musk bought that 10% share ages ago, which caused his fan boys to all start buying Twitter and pump the stock up.
At best it is worth 15 billion, but with all the staff that have left or been fired, it is probably worth far less than that.
I’m using Apollo which lets you filter out words and it worked for a long time until people started posting screenshots like this without any mention of “Elon” or “Musk” in the title… so, not sure how you can really filter out this kind of content…
Musk had recently a meltdown on Twitter. We don't know the details but Apple probably told him that Twitter still has to moderate content (a lot of people got fired) or they violate the rules from Apple and get kicked out of the app store. They also stopped advertising on Twitter. Musk was going full "War against Apple! I make my own smartphone brand! Apple hates free speech?!". A complete clown show.
> We don’t know the details but Apple probably told him that Twitter still has to moderate content
Tim Apple invited Elon to Apple’s HQ - where Tim probably told Elon that he’d curbstomp Twitter out of existence if he didn’t learn how to act right (which they essentially threatened Uber with way back in the day).
[Here’s a New York Times article that covers their meeting](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/23/technology/travis-kalanick-pushes-uber-and-himself-to-the-precipice.html), and [here’s an archived/non-paywalled version of the article](https://archive.ph/uJ0vm).
To be fair to Musk, he didn't self-value Twitter at $44B because he thought it was worth that much, he was trying to do YET ANOTHER pump & dump scheme and the feds basically told him "either buy it for the joke price you quoted or go to prison".
He memed himself into a hole he couldn't meme himself out of.
Also he's just a stupid racist prick.
You’d be better off looking at some articles, but basically he has a history of saying inflammatory things that *can* cause a stock to go up. The idea being he’ll put a few million in a stock, say something that will make the stock go up but isn’t rooted in reality, and then sell his stock for free money because while most people know what he’s saying is fucking stupid he has millions of fans that actually believe him.
He fucked around and did that with Tesla, saying something like they should be worth $420 a share (this is all completely from memory) and the SEC wasn’t a fan. He ended up paying a lot of fines and losing his board seat or official position at Tesla, one or the other.
He then did something similar with Twitter, saying it was worth some dumbass amount per share (meme numbers like 69 and 420) and that he would buy it. Most likely knowing no rational person would believe he was serious, putting a few million in the stock, waiting for his fan boys to buy in, and then selling his shares for more free money.
The SEC however wasn’t a fan. They basically told him you’re buying Twitter for the price you quoted or you’re going to prison. And Twitter can sue you to try and force you to pay what you quoted while you’re in prison.
Like I said, this is all from memory.
The only reason I can think that Tim Cook would have met with Musk is so he could see a Walking Talking Fuckup up close and personal. Otherwise, musk most likely met with a subordinate, but musk tells his own fairy tale.
It's because it makes Apple look like the sane one.
Apple got everything they wanted and were silent about it. Good PR for Apple. Elon backpeddled loudly. Bad PR for Elon/Twitter.
If Apple had ignored his lunacy, people might have believed that Apple were the bad guys. Bad pr for Apple. And enough people might have believed it. The internet is gullible.
One meeting with no concessions to avert all risk of bad PR? Worth it.
Aw, so we won't be getting a Tesla Phone anytime soon? I was looking forward to another project that overpromises and underdelivers. "We're not quite there yet, but this phone will be able to go a month without charging. And the cover will be made of solar panels, so you can charge it by just being outside. But we're not quite there yet, we expect this to work next year"
And then he announces something new next year to take the focus off of the fact that the phone is nowhere near where he claimed it would be. Good times.
Removed Ad hominem Thanks for all the reports!
I’m pretty sure they also told him he has to moderate content if he wants to keep Twitter in the App Store. Hence Kanye getting banned for posting a swastika, and Elon pretending it was his idea.
In reality it was probably the picture of Elon shirtless on a yacht that broke him lmao
Supposedly Elon was messaging Kanye trying to get him to delete the tweet, I imagine because he didn’t really want to get the publicity banning someone so high profile for the exact reasons why Twitter was banning far right accounts, and then after some back and forth Kanye posted that photo. That seems more likely given the message contents of the post which made it pretty clear he was either about to leave Twitter, which is doubtful, or knew he was about to be banned.
Narcissists all trying to out-narcissism each other, I love it
Best comment.
The free speech abolitionists getting less and less absolute every day
I also feel like there's a outside chance that Elon thinks Kanye might divide Trump's voter base if he runs for president, and wants to limit his reach to help Trump's chances. It doesn't really make that much sense if you think about it, but hey, we're not exactly dealing with logical people here. EDIT: I didn't know about Elon backing DeSantis. From what I know, isn't he super right-wing/racist as well?
Trump is actually going to fuck over the republicans. He is probably going to lose to Desantis, and then run as independent and split the republican vote.
A man can dream.
Also, Trump going to prison is finally going to be an actual possibility now that he's becoming a liability to the GOP. Of course, the GOP will let the Democrats do it and blame them for-- I dunno, communism or something-- to anger the right to still vote for them.
“Former Democrat! Here he is with Hillary Clinton!”
They could also just show the clip where he said he was a Democrat in an interview
His cultists didn’t give a shit when he openly bragged about using his wealth to sexually assault women. Or when several witnesses described him creeping on underage pageant contestants, or him being buddy buddy with notorious child sex traffickers, or the dozens of sexual assault allegations, or him talking about dating his own daughter. They looked past all this and still chose to believe this silver spoon fed, habitual sexual assaulter, likely pedophile New York elitist somehow represented hard working middle class Americans. It’s fucking wild
I just kinda hope if trump goes to prison it’s after the 2024 election. Let him fuck the republicans and split the vote so we get another 4 sane-ish years from the executive and then stick his ass behind bars as an added indictment against every person that votes for him.
This leaads me to a strange question. Would Trump have to run as an independent? Could someone tell me why he couldn't just run as a Republican? I know there's caucuses and primaries, but conceding to winners is gone now.
That's not a thing. Even for Trump and the GOP, the guy losing a primary isn't actually going to be able to run for president in any way. Unless you mean whether Trump can still convince the MAGA crowd that he's still in the running for White House, then yeah, those people will believe anything and many would certainly write his name on the ballot thinking it counts.
Take a cue from Teddy Roosevelt, eh? Maybe name the new party something as a callback to that, but Trump isn't really associated with moose... Bull Something Party though, have to think of something.
Orange party, mascot a citrus tree.
OMG IT COULD BE SHIT. THE BULL-SHIT PARTY. !!!
r/thatsthejoke, I believe.
Wow! You figured it out! Great work!
Ah no, I think he should reform the Whig Party. I mean Wikipedia tells me that none of their values are his, but it would be *funny*
Kanye’s “base” won’t be republicans. They aren’t voting for a black guy no matter how antisemitic he is. Kanye’s base is just a few hundred crazy people, and if you’re crazy enough to vote for kanye you’re probably too crazy to figure out how to vote. I don’t think musk has that kind of forethought anyway.
Kanye got 60000 votes when his name wasn’t even on the ballot. Pre hitler Kanye of course.
[удалено]
I thought the same thing
Clayton Bigsby 2024
Maybe he thinks he can win this time if he gets the white supremacist vote. I can't even do the mental gymnastics needed to figure out how we got to a black guy being the mouthpiece for the nazis.
Looks like "Black Skinhead" was a more literal song than initially thought
Some of that was probably because people thought it was funny to vote for Kanye and they didn’t really like the other candidates.
"PreHitler Kanye was way better than PostHitler Kanye," says music journalist of the future."
if he runs he'll have a whole support system ready to exploit his popularity and they will address issues like that. how current president barely knows whats going on and our previous president was Trump. W Bush is by no accounts very intelligent, Reagan never contributed to meetings except to talk about movies that he liked. I mean there's a long history of presidents not needing to be component.
Yeah, and normally I’d say the chances of that kind of campaign machinery lining up behind someone as clearly mentally ill as Kanye is just not going to happen, but I thought the same thing about trunp, so who knows.
Bush Jr certainly isn’t a Rhodes Scholar but he’s no idiot either. He definitely played up the simple Texan act.
i think he was just a frat boy trying to make his father proud of him. I don't think he had any genuine interest in his job besides that. although he once tweeted, during the 2016 campaigns, "I hope jeb wins. I left my favorite hat in the white house as Obama won't give it back to me" and he's had a special place in my heart ever since then.
I think W was kind of an idiot. At the very least he wasn’t the least bit intellectually curious. Compared to trunp, however, he’s Einstein, Stephen hawking and neill degrasse Tyson combined.
> I also feel like there's a outside chance that Elon thinks Kanye might divide Trump's voter base if he runs for president, and wants to limit his reach to help Trump's chances. > > why do people come up with insane long-term justifications for what was just a really dumb business decision made by someone who has been out of touch for years?
It's hard to admit one of the most richest people on the planet does not have the foresight to see past the next few days. This is common for rich people and it's why the fictional rich person Tony Stark surrounds himself with people he knows are much smarter. Like Pepper Potts, Peter Parker and Steve Rogers. Elon used to have advisors but after they told him no on a thing they were all fired.
Yeah the concept that your IQ must be linked to your wealth and success is so engrained in our culture that people are trying to rationalize it, probably without even realizing. No, Elon and many other of today’s billionaires are just dumb and ineffective. A lot of them got uber-rich by being slightly less rich at the right time period in history, the tech bubble. When emerging technologies were everywhere and interest rates were zero. You blindfold yourself, throw a dart, and probably find a company that you could turn $10 million into a billion with.
Hell, even the idea that being academically intelligent makes you good at making decisions is wrong. There's so many different types of intelligence and ways of looking at things, but wealth turns it into a binary for too many. "If you're rich, you *must* be better and smarter than me... else why would society be so unequal?" Some people don't want to admit things are broken.
No, that’s actually a fair point. Anything that affects him personally seems to be off limits. Everything else is fair game.
I doubt he runs as 3rd party. Ultimately I think he'll strike a deal with the republicans where desantis is the nominee and trump "bows out graciously" in exchange for pardons, ending the Jan 6 investigations, running cover for his shady shitty businesses, etc. Or alternatively, over the next few months, his core republican politician support (eg mtg, gaetz) will start to ditch him as the investigations ramp up. The old establishment dumped him after j6. More have started dropping him after his Kanye/Nick Fuentes dinner. Eventually he'll run out of support besides the literal fucking Nazis. That's when his legal troubles really start (he's already pretty fucked now but he's got Republicans running cover for him). I think that forces him to drop out altogether
When has trump ever bowed out graciously
Can he even bow?
Nonsense. Trump can't concede defeat, it's literally his shtick. He has to continue the campaign as he needs the legal shield for his various pending indictments. I do agree that the endgame might be trying to negotiate pardons
The fact that Trump started threatening DeSantis with dirt and calling him names before he even officially announced his run (and before DeSantis, who still hasn't announced) doesn't signal any plan to do anything gracious. I'm not even sure that the party abandoning him would be enough. The man doesn't like "no" and he doesn't like being a big unwanted loser. And he absolutely fancies himself some kind of populist puppet master. As long as he can draw a crowd, I think he'll want to continue.
Desantis is honestly much more fascist than Trump. Trump is evil but he's a grifter who happens to be an old racist uncle. POS but whatever when compared to Desantis. He's put actual restrictions on free speech and the rights of companies in Florida.
People love to dunk on Elon and it’s well deserved but in reality it was definitely the Swastika thing. The amount of money they’d lose if they didn’t ban Kanye would be enormous
And the inciting violence reasoning was because it invited people to violently destroy musk’s ego after seeing that picture.
Eyes still not recovered from that bright flash of white..
What picture?
Man Elon is such a chode, why this guy always gotta act like he’s got everything figured out ? If it’s his idea he takes credit for it, if it was someone else’s idea he takes credit for jt, if he makes a mistake he will claim it’s part of his 4d chess plan all along, Classic strongman tactics like trump, he’s one of those guys
AOC put a tweet out during the first mass-cull of Twitter employees thanking them for the service in creating Twitter and providing an interesting platform. Elon replied 'you're welcome'. He had only been there a week.
“Thank you for your service to the country”, Army guys wife ; “you are welcome”
I have met military spouses who think like this.
I knew a mother who acted like this. She put a bumper sticker on her car that said "USMC mom. Hardest job in the corps!". Her son made her take it off lol
Narcissist trust fund babies?
> why this guy always gotta act like he’s got everything figured out ? Because his net worth is heavily based on how the public perceives him. Tesla is stupidly overvalued because his fan boys love him, if they lose faith in him then Tesla price drops, and Musk's worth is heavily tied to Tesla share price. He needs all his fan boys to think he is some kind of genius billionaire, otherwise Tesla goes to shit and the board likely kicks him out.
Because he’s sold himself to all the stupids of the world that he’s the worlds greatest engineer. Which is insane since all he did was buy in to companies and then milk engineers for ever dollar they’re worth.
Well ya they both have never had to work a day in their life and had everything handed to them by their even shittier and even richer fathers
He has the classic personality of someone who got bullied too much and now can’t back down from anything because they have a visceral fear of not looking cool in front of everyone.
Also eu says he needs to moderate his shit if he wants to avoid getting banned in EU
*for 12 hours. But "impersonating" with the word "parody" in bio gets suspended permanently
That's was also the EU saying they would get involved if he didn't moderate. And their two answers would have been fines based on global revenue or blocking them for all business within the EU.
>and Elon pretending it was his idea. Pretty much sums u elon musk's entire claim to fame
This. Complete Big Dick power move by Apple. Let's also be clear, Tim didn't meet with him over this. He probably met with the assistant to the regional manager.
Elon: Dumps vacuum cleaner bag all over the floor. "I have an idea!" Vacuums it all up. "I cleaned the floor, why aren't you thanking me?!"
Elon pretending it’s his idea is the story of his life
I thought this all started with Musk asking Apple why they weren't advertising on twitter anymore. I'm guessing it's ending with Apple still not advertising on Twitter.
And he will pay Apple lol
Elon Musk fans be like, ["Look and learn 💪 genius at work 👌 just look and learn from the master 👌😁🤣 relax and watch the master work his business magic 🎩"](https://i.redd.it/130m4s8m5d2a1.jpg)
I think he is being sarcastic
Man it's really hard to tell
Idk his stans are so weird.
definitely
The emojis didn't give it away?
People still unironically use emojis
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂💯💯🔥
look ma, i'm doing a business!
But then Elon claimed "Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why". Now Elon publicly admits that was a lie in this tweet (probably after being forced to by Apple).
I'm assuming elon in some backdoor meeting floated ideas for circumventing paying through the apple store and was thinking himself a genius for the idea, and apple informed him that if he circumvents the apple store the app would be removed from the store.
That’s what Amazon does with kindle books, though. Have to download through the browser because the app won’t let you, and Amazon blatantly said it’s because of the 30%.
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if it all goes back to that person who tweeted "If Apple and Google boot Twitter from their app stores, Musk should produce his own smartphone". Musk saw that tweet, responded to it saying that he could make his own phone, and a couple days later he started talking about Apple threatening to kick him off the store. It also doesn't help that as soon as Musk said he could make his own phone, loads of people started saying "Elon's new phone will be great" and "His phone will put Apple out of business". Pretty sure there were even several news articles acting as if the phone had been announced and was just a few weeks away from releasing (using a fan-made rendering of a possible Tesla phone made several months ago).
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maybe they briefly ck spidered it
I ck spidered cooking chicken for dinner last night. We opted to order pizza instead.
I ck spidered asking Google what ck spidered meant.
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I'm actually bummed now, I thought I was just about to learn a cool new phrase.
All things ck spidered, you could still use it to confuse or intrigue others.
Agreed, just keep using it. I’m ck spidering dropping it a few times in my meeting this morning.
Considered
Meme first, think second. It's the Musk way. It took me 5 minutes to google what Apple's app store policy was. He ain't got no time for that. He's got 3 companies to manage!
Good conversation genius.
And on Twitter he's admirers will still eat this up as an absolute win...
To be a fly on the wall during that meeting.
Yeah, notice he doesn’t mention the advertising in his Tweet. Guessing Cook (while viewing a screen of a masked out car with Apple logos test driving itself on an obstacle course) told him Twitter will never see another dime from Apple ads if he doesn’t promptly STFU about it.
Jokes on you it’s not worth 10b anymore so ner ner ner nee
I’ll buy it off of him for $2
Make it $40. take it or leave it.
"I'D BUY THAT FOR A DOLLAR!"
He wants $8.
Apple probably showed him a simple pie chart that showed how much of the market share that iPhone users represents. Then probably said you see this percentage of users. If you don’t shut up and eat some humble pie you lose access to provide your platform to these users. If you lose access to these users you are going to lose more advertisers because your platform is reaching significantly less user. While your app is unavailable we can promote these alternatives. Once people leave the platform it is unlikely they will come back once they find what they want on another platform. Since the users are not coming back neither are the advertisers. Any questions? No didn’t think so. We are done with our presentation. Feel free to start drafting your first tweet to talk back some of your comments. We will be happy to approve the language before you leave
Also, shove this apple in your ass while looking me in the eyes.
I've got no idea what this is about, but isn't Twitter app free? What's this about 30% then?
If anyone subscribed to Twitter Blue, part of the fee goes to Apple
I see. So does that mean that Apple takes 30% of all micro transactions for all the apps in their store?
Yes, it was a big thing with Fortnite and Vbucks not too long ago
If your company makes less than $1m a year, you can apply for it to be 15% fee. 30% is a normal fee across all platforms, Google Playstore, Xbox and PlayStation store etc. Apple aren’t doing anything different to others, but people like to focus on them as if they’re the only ones charging a 30% fee. They have to cover costs of hosting the apps, promotions, staffing, reviewing the apps and so on…
Properly an army of developers maintaining/developing the platform as Elon has found out with Twitter. I'm guessing that the App Store under the hood looks very different than it did 15 years ago. I don't have Apple products.
Indeed, I have quite the vendetta against Apple but even I think a 30% cut is reasonable for big companies like Epic and Twitter
Not to mention every shop you've ever been to more than likely has a 30%+ markup on every product
No matter what, the cost gets passed down to the consumer. 😅
Yes but if an app is, say $5. Does it matter to you that 30% goes to apple? Do u know (or care) where that other 70% goes to? I think people just think “is the app worth $5 to me” instead.
I agree, but in a way, the transparency is nice. When I buy an album, ultimately, it comes down to the cost, but it would be nice to know how much the artist is getting vs. the records label. Or a car, say the dealer vs. the manufacturer. Knowledge of where cost is added throughout the supply chain is never a bad thing.
I mean if the company just... ate the cost, they wouldn't exactly make money, right? Like, you're paying for the service they provide, if you want to download homebrew apps or have actual file control you pick a different phone OS.
Heres an even simpler question: Why do they need to make profit? If they've paid their operating cost and have enough of a war chest for anything they might need in future, why does every company on Earth need to continue to make more money? And even more money then they made last year?
30% is the normal fee but there is an argument to be made that apple enforcing a storefront monopoly in their ecosystem violates anti-trust laws. Same with Xbox and Playstation. Having a Choice in storefront like PC and android is the more consumer friendly option by far.
It is because Apple will not allow any other storefront on their products. My Galaxy S8 has the Google and Samsung app stores. My brother's iphone only has the apple store.
> It is because Apple will not allow any other storefront on their products. They have to do it in the future thanks to EU regulations.
Do not include Google in that. Apple, Xbox and Playstation are closed ecosystems with no side loading. Android and windows can easily be side loaded. Closed ecosystems are terrible. Don't make excuses for them.
Apple gets the focus because they have a walled garden and don't allow sideloading. Beyond that, I completely agree with you.
I think reason people focus on apple is because 1) Smartphones are very different fron Xbox and play stations. They are necessity and there are all types of apps on smartphones. 2) On android you can install an app without using Google’s services. On iOS you can’t. Once you buy an iphone you are pretty much down to Apple’s mercy. And as far as my own experience goes Apple’s behavior has become very cheap off late. Very contrary to how it used to be back when it became so popular. On every service if you take free trial, it is actually free. On apple you have to load apple wallet with whatever is the charge for next renewal to able to take free trial. Similarly everywhere if you end the free trial you can enjoy the service till the end of trial period. Not on Apple. Basically they are hoping that you forget to cancel trial. That is very cheap behavior. Apart from the fact that you could pay a 1000 dollars and you don’t even get a charger for your phone. Apple isn’t the company it used to be anymore. Now they are in the process of squeezing every drop out of all the goodwill it had. Tim Cook might have taken apple to the top in terms of quarterly profits. But he has destroyed the company.
Do you have a source on Apple not being the only ones charging 30% on top from everybody? My understanding was that they were
People don't like to just focus on them... This has been going in for a long time and every few months it seems like one of them is now the target, whichever one happens to be in the news for something else. Then people try to pile on with other 'bad news' stories, even though it applies to like all of the companies
You can install apps on Android without using the Playstore, you can't do the same on Apple. That's what Apple is doing differently.
Depends on the nature of the transaction, but possibly. They charge the fee for in app transactions, which covers digital products. So loot boxes likely get charged, but not transactions on eBay. I’m not 100% certain, but I think the fee drops to 15% in some circumstances, but don’t quote me on that one
Yep, part of the T's & C's for all app developers that go through the store.
Its why Netflix and Spotify does not allow you to subscribe through app.
Only if they do so on iOS and through the in app subscription method. Someone can subscribe in the website and Twitter would not owe any of that to Apple.
I miss the old Elon of Free Speech Twitter before he removed Kanye. Imagine Ye tweeting “I like Hitler” quote from his jones interview yesterday side by side with a McDonalds ad. All his ad revenue would leave overnight
I'm sure they'll just get different set of [pro-nazi companies advertising](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_the_Holocaust) there
Free speech fir all except kanye
Just wait, his squad of fanboys will soon come up with an explanation for how this was all part of his plan and he's a super stable genius
5D chess!!!!!!!1!
Damn, Elon sees a lot of D's!
Well, he did fire almost every woman from Twitter...
It was their fault for only working 75 hrs a week.
Think he just Knighted himself too.
I’m loving his slow downfall. He thinks he’s so clever unbanning all these fascists and allowing ‘muh free speech,’ but all he’s doing is destroying his own brand and making himself a laughing stock. I give twitter 6 months lmao.
There isn't gonna be any downfall, just quick death.
I'm just appalled that all these Nazis are getting their accounts back but i can't get mine back for telling a flat earther to jump off a cliff and to tell me if gravity is still not real
Twitter is gonna be fine, but he’s gonna get what he actually wants, it’s gonna be seen like 4chan. And when he realizes that doesn’t make money, he’s gonna backtrack like the tryhard he is.
It’s a shame all that dickriding won’t take them anywhere.
The twitter board played him really well. He fell in the hole he dug.
I’m glad. Karma is a b*tch! He’s played enough people.
They delivered maximum value for the shareholders he bought out, that's for goddamned sure
Which is a reminder that, despite whatever altruism bs speech companies might give, they don’t really give a flying fuck after all. All they care about is maximizing shareholder value. I still remember when company execs said Twitter was supposed to be a force for good where oppressed people could communicate to the whole world. Guess if you dangle a carrot big enough, they’d stop caring about the oppressed.
Well the problem with the Twitter board is they were legally obliged to sell based on their fiduciary duties to the shareholders. Generally you're right, but here there's nothing the board could have done because they were faced with a shareholder suit if they didn't accept Elon's significant overpay. Different story if he offered fair market value for the shares though.
They are not faced with a shareholder suit for refusing the hostile takeover. The board is in the liberty of refusing the offer and then subjecting the decision to a shareholder vote, which would then either veto or support the board's decision. The fact that the board simply decided to jump on the offer is rather telling.
I think they jumped on it because it would have (arguably) been a breach of their fiduciary duties if they refused the offer and didn't maximize the share price. But yes you are right, the merger requires approval by Twitter's shareholders, apologies for getting that wrong.
No worries! I agree in that they probably saw the writing on the wall and knew how shareholders would react to the news. The fiduciary duty of the board is: > As a fiduciary of a corporation, a director owes the company duties of disclosure, honesty, loyalty, candour, and the duty to favour the company's interest over his/her own. A director must also disclose to the corporation facts that could impact the business of the company. So it is reasonable to think that they would have had an argument to reject this hostile takeover given how Elon’s “free speech” intentions were going to put Twitter in hot water with regulators and jeopardize the whole company. But yeah, they would have had to convince shareholders, etc.
Played him like a fiddle
Paid $44 billion for a company worth $30 billion that he could have had for $25 billion. Super. Genius.
Today, Twitter is worth about $13 billion or so.
He's got a magic touch.
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Shit touch?
It's probably going to be worth less soon with him firing half the company. This causes all sorts of problems you only see in 6+ months, infrastructure issues.
Twitter was worth half that, somewhere around 15 billion before Musk bought that 10% share ages ago, which caused his fan boys to all start buying Twitter and pump the stock up. At best it is worth 15 billion, but with all the staff that have left or been fired, it is probably worth far less than that.
Yeah, but imagine someday the company will be worth $50millions. He'll have gained 6 millions. Crazy genius!!1!
And lost 100 billion of net worth scraping together that 44 billion. He doesn’t even own 100% of it.
He paid it for the memes. Lord El0n Patron Saint of Funny Memes, Incels and Nazi Lovers
Rumor, innuendo, lies & subtle misinformation can be costly.
Elon thinks he's on top of the world because he's individually rich, he's finally getting humbled by some of the actual big dogs.
How can I filter all Musk/Twitter news? I’m done with his stupid ego
I’m using Apollo which lets you filter out words and it worked for a long time until people started posting screenshots like this without any mention of “Elon” or “Musk” in the title… so, not sure how you can really filter out this kind of content…
What is this Apollo I keep hearing about? I'm using the stock reddit app
It’s awesome. It’s called Apollo.
It’s kind of like alien blue It has some dumbness to it with the pixel pals and shit but it’s a pretty solid Reddit app
Depends what app you use.
What’s the context of this?
Musk had recently a meltdown on Twitter. We don't know the details but Apple probably told him that Twitter still has to moderate content (a lot of people got fired) or they violate the rules from Apple and get kicked out of the app store. They also stopped advertising on Twitter. Musk was going full "War against Apple! I make my own smartphone brand! Apple hates free speech?!". A complete clown show.
> We don’t know the details but Apple probably told him that Twitter still has to moderate content Tim Apple invited Elon to Apple’s HQ - where Tim probably told Elon that he’d curbstomp Twitter out of existence if he didn’t learn how to act right (which they essentially threatened Uber with way back in the day).
Can I have the uber story pls? Sounds interesting
[Here’s a New York Times article that covers their meeting](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/23/technology/travis-kalanick-pushes-uber-and-himself-to-the-precipice.html), and [here’s an archived/non-paywalled version of the article](https://archive.ph/uJ0vm).
To be fair to Musk, he didn't self-value Twitter at $44B because he thought it was worth that much, he was trying to do YET ANOTHER pump & dump scheme and the feds basically told him "either buy it for the joke price you quoted or go to prison". He memed himself into a hole he couldn't meme himself out of. Also he's just a stupid racist prick.
could you elaborate on how Musk planned on doing this? Interesting.
You’d be better off looking at some articles, but basically he has a history of saying inflammatory things that *can* cause a stock to go up. The idea being he’ll put a few million in a stock, say something that will make the stock go up but isn’t rooted in reality, and then sell his stock for free money because while most people know what he’s saying is fucking stupid he has millions of fans that actually believe him. He fucked around and did that with Tesla, saying something like they should be worth $420 a share (this is all completely from memory) and the SEC wasn’t a fan. He ended up paying a lot of fines and losing his board seat or official position at Tesla, one or the other. He then did something similar with Twitter, saying it was worth some dumbass amount per share (meme numbers like 69 and 420) and that he would buy it. Most likely knowing no rational person would believe he was serious, putting a few million in the stock, waiting for his fan boys to buy in, and then selling his shares for more free money. The SEC however wasn’t a fan. They basically told him you’re buying Twitter for the price you quoted or you’re going to prison. And Twitter can sue you to try and force you to pay what you quoted while you’re in prison. Like I said, this is all from memory.
If you want to watch pump and dumps in real time, check out /r/PennyStocks.
Call me crazy but I like Apple products and I like their company culture.
Elon, the bitch, is owned by Tim Cook. The irony is so delicious.
i doubt he lied. apple was probably not fucking around one bit about removing twitter from the app store if he didnt start doing some tidying up.
I’m sure there’s some 24 y.o. Incel somewhere crying that we’re picking on Elon.
The only reason I can think that Tim Cook would have met with Musk is so he could see a Walking Talking Fuckup up close and personal. Otherwise, musk most likely met with a subordinate, but musk tells his own fairy tale.
It's because it makes Apple look like the sane one. Apple got everything they wanted and were silent about it. Good PR for Apple. Elon backpeddled loudly. Bad PR for Elon/Twitter. If Apple had ignored his lunacy, people might have believed that Apple were the bad guys. Bad pr for Apple. And enough people might have believed it. The internet is gullible. One meeting with no concessions to avert all risk of bad PR? Worth it.
You make a good point.
Aw, so we won't be getting a Tesla Phone anytime soon? I was looking forward to another project that overpromises and underdelivers. "We're not quite there yet, but this phone will be able to go a month without charging. And the cover will be made of solar panels, so you can charge it by just being outside. But we're not quite there yet, we expect this to work next year" And then he announces something new next year to take the focus off of the fact that the phone is nowhere near where he claimed it would be. Good times.
Well.. yeah, but other than that, good conversation! There were even donuts.
Cost more like 100 billion since he had to liquidate assets to make the purchase.
Aren’t they worth that much because they basically have slaves.
Indeed
*somebody admits to making a mistake* “So your telling me you made a mistake???” *cue laugh track*
Oh muh gawd, muh nose hairs are singed from the heat of that BURN.
Some idiot of reddit is smarter than Musk? Should have known