I saw this article by Moldbug on Compact Mag, Elon Musk’s Twitter Revolution. Too bad they have now put all of their content behind a paywall. I don’t understand why they would do this when it cuts off potential traffic and viralness.
From the passages that are not paywalled, he writes:
But if the deal goes through, and the social-media giant becomes what all good people hope for, this is a philanthropic acquisition. Philanthropy, the most powerful political force of the last century, is the art of turning money into power. A normal investment is the art of turning money into more money. But Musk doesn’t need more money. He could turn Twitter into a nonprofit if he wanted—and arguably, he should.
But Twitter is already losing money despite it being for-profit. Turning into a non-profit would make Elon’s investment close to worthless, and not only that, would be a major cash drain for the foreseeable future. Look at 4chan…do you think Elon would want spend $44 billion to make a bigger version of 4chan? I think not. Instead of turning it into a non-profit, all he has to do is turn the dial back to 2016 or so, before Twitter began banning accounts for political or for arbitrary reasons.
I disagree here:
Turning Twitter back into the “free-speech wing of the free-speech party,” as its executives used to call it, will not maximize profits. With the European Union threatening to steal 6 percent of Twitter’s global revenues if it doesn’t “prevent dangerous misinformation from going viral,” there is no rational business decision besides abject and immediate compliance.
A whole 6%…and this is assuming the EU acts. The EU is not going to ban Twitter or block Twitter ads. At worst, the EU will fine Twitter, which is usually how it handles transgressions. Also, Twitter will make more revenue by reinstating Trump and having more free speech, overall, more than enough to negative the potential 6% loss. Like Musk, Trump’s Twitter account is a social network in and of itself. Reinstating Trump and other polarizing, controversial individuals such as Alex Jones and Roger Stone, will boost overall engagement and hence also ad revenue. It’s not like advertisers in 2017-2018 defected when Trump and Jones were active on Twitter. Trump voters also need credit reports too. Also, I predict exactly zero prominent liberals will leave twitter for good if Trump is reinstated. They may threaten to or leave briefly, but they will return. Because all they want is the dopamine rush that comes from engagement, positive or negative.
The tiny Twitter alternatives that allow right wing posts like gab.ai are just not interesting as there’s no real content.