Right-wing Musk fans win Twitter CEO's loyalty. Staff loses

brucethemoose2 · on June 4, 2023

Lets set the PR disaster aside.

Musk has one of the biggest personal financial stakes of any CEO in history, and tons of experience, yet he seemingly didn't take two minutes to pause and consider if such action will financially harm the company.

Or maybe he did, and just... Couldn’t see how this would backfire? Even though a report claims he literally saw the risk in person?

Either explanation is so bizzare.

_zzaw · on June 5, 2023

I think he's so used to being ensconced in vast sums of money—and mostly shielded from any consequences—that he's largely disconnected from the world. He's not in the habit of doing the rational cost-benefit calculations that we assume he's doing because we'd do them ourselves if we were in that position.

Everyone assumes this guy is still acting according to some process of reasoning. I really don't think that's the case anymore.

jfengel · on June 5, 2023

Musk seems to understand that money is a means, not an end. He doesn't want money for its own sake. He's got so much money that if he just plain lost $44 billion between the couch cushions he probably wouldn't bother looking for it.

Musk wants the power and prestige that come from setting the policy on the world's most influential platform. He thinks he's putting the world aright.

I think he imagines that everybody else will come to see it his way. He's hardly unique in that: most people believe that the world would be better of if we all just did things my way.

Now... he also seems to be just plain failing at that. He doesn't seem to understand why people paid attention to Twitter. He may not care if he harms the company financially, but if it's also costing him influence, and making him look stupid, he really is worse off.

I'm sure he'd ask me if I'm so smart, how come I ain't rich. All I can answer is that time will tell -- and maybe not even then. He could well succeed even if he's wrong and I'm right.