> Meanwhile, the banks who funded Musk's acquisition are getting antsy. More fleeing advertisers means more lost revenue and more likelihood that the bonds held by the financiers are unsellable.
This paragraph links to a related piece about CEO Yaccarino's efforts to save the company despite Musk seemingly doing his best to burn it all down:
> Yaccarino is reportedly set to meet with Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, British bank Barclays, Japanese banks MUFG and Mizuho, and French financial institutions BNP Paribas and Société Générale to discuss plans not to leave them in the lurch as the value of X's assets have plummeted by two thirds in the past year.
> With huge interest payments to those banks continuing to come due and X's value incredibly unclear - but unlikely to have appreciated - the banks might be getting impatient to see some improvement as Musk's first year of ownership draws to a close.
I'm very curious to see what happens when X ends up defaulting on these obligations, as it sure looks like it will. Musk didn't seem too concerned about ignoring other contractual obligations, like rent and its AWS bill, nor about paying required severance for laid-off workers, to the tune of $500 million, according to one recent suit.
But I imagine that he can't just skip out on his obligation to the banks without a severe reckoning. Can he?
>But I imagine that he can't just skip out on his obligation to the banks without a severe reckoning. Can he?
If you default on your bonds, your creditors can just force you into bankruptcy. In the context of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the company would have to propose a reorganization plan that was acceptable to the creditors.
One could imagine a debt-to-equity conversion during which Musk's holdings would effectively become worthless and the banks would end up owning the business. If the bondholders conclude that the business has value, but less if Musk keeps calling the shots, one can imagine an outcome like that.
At that point, best case is probably that you'd try to put a turnaround management team in place with a view to taking it public again.
Not sure how it might play out in this case but in restructurings there is often a trade off between value destroyed by "kicking equity out" completely and value allocated to creditors vs equity (plus there's often value to agreeing anything rather than dragging it all through the courts which takes a long time, is distracting for management and costs a huge amount). Outcomes in big restructurings where equity walks away with nothing are rarer than you might think.
If the calculus is that "Twitter with Elon" is valueless and "Twitter without Elon" is not, then perhaps this will be the exception that proves the rule.
What kind of recourse do the banks have, in practical terms? My bet is that taking any action is just going to materialize their loss, and inaction and cutting X some/a lot of slack will allow them to perhaps not lose as much in the long term.
I don’t see any conceivable path for Twitter to turn around and actually be successful.
The only tech turnaround of this magnitude that has happened in recent memory is Apple. Jobs was a founder and had the RDF going for him and while he might have pissed off a few people.
It has a lot of users that keep using it, despite all the fud saying otherwise. And they're shipping more features than before, and experimenting more. So it's bound to either die violently or eventually find another growth engine and become a massive opportunity. The "everything apps" abroad are quite good and there's really no equivalent in the US. Twitter/X could be it, although realistically with all the bad karma that Elon is collecting, it'll be tough. But if the silent majority doesn't care and is willing to try out the new features, it'll probably work. I think.
I think in the tech community and other luminaries, bien-pensants associated groups, we have a tendency to really exaggerate and delude ourselves into believing what we want to be true in the social world. We dislike person A/idea A so we're convinced anything that has to do with it will fail or has to be some sort of negative spin.
In reality I think the average person on this planet is a lot more pragmatic and doesn't necessarily care anywhere as much as loud people do.
The number of users using it doesn’t matter if they can’t attract advertisers.
Yahoo was one of the most trafficked sites for decades and couldn’t monetize their traffic.
And the average person is not using Twitter. There are only 350 million active users worldwide compared to 3 billion Facebook users. Even PInterest has more users
And Twitter will never be “the everything app” in the US. Apple and Google will never let it and the only reason that worked in other countries is a combination of path dependencies and phones in China are not running “Google Android” and Apple doesn’t have a choice but to be more lax about its App Store policies in China or users of the “everything apps” will revolt.
Perhaps you're right, but their entire business plan is premised on you being wrong, so it sounds like there's at least some informed people who disagree: them. Personally I have no clue.
While I’ll give Musk credit for doing what almost no one in the last 20 years has done - create successful hardwarw/tech companies. He’s shown no ability to run a software business.
And the immovable object is Apple. You can’t be the “everything app” without running head first into the App Store restrictions.
In other countries like China and South Korea, those apps are so popular that if Apple banned them or crippled their functionality, no one would buy an iPhone.
That’s like with all of the big talk that Apple does about App Store rules, they’ve let Uber and Facebook get away with things that no smaller developer could.
No one is going to stop buying an iPhone in the US because of Twitter.
As a user of Twitter/X, Instagram, and to some extent TikTok, I can say that, at least for me, Twitter/X is much cleaner and more aligned with the people I follow.
In contrast, Instagram Reels are annoying; even after reporting certain content, the same or similar Reels reappear. We don't even need to discuss TikTok. From my perspective, it tends to have far more hateful content.
Guess you are right. Anyway in my opinion, it actually doesn't matter where exactly the ads appear. I think to be fair, you would have to compare the feeds.
I’m saying that advertisers don’t want to go near a business that caters to the modern version of “conservatives”. Look at the type of ads that you get on Newsmax, Redstate and FoxNews’ talk shows.
By modern “conservatives”, I’m not talking about the Reagan/Bush/McCain/Romney type of conservative who are now out of favor by the Republican Party.
Sadly, I believe this is just one more step in the inevitable outcome for Twitter. As a business, it's value prop. is an advertising platform. Like all social media, the value to advertising companies is to mix-in those ads alongside engaging user-generated content. There will always be associations with _other's content_ on such a platform. Advertisers don't want to do anything that would alienate or otherwise put-off their population of potential buyers. They want to avoid other strong emotions because they're trying to cultivate a specific emotional reaction: "I want to buy that thing!" No one is going to want to do that if they see extremely inflamatory content.
Advertisers have far more options for their advertising dollars than most people think. If they're not advertising on Twitter/X then they're putting their dollars somewhere else and getting the same return.
The amount of trouble necessary for an advertiser to put most of their dollars somewhere else is vanishingly small. They don't need much of an excuse.
In practice... the advertisers care about Facebook, Google, Youtube, TikTok, Instagram, Tencent (aka: Fortnite), Snapchat...
I'd be surprised if Twitter were a top-10 website for advertising. Last time I was looking at Twitter's advertising revenue, they were far smaller than I expected.
"Advertisers don't want to do anything that would alienate or otherwise put-off their population of potential buyers" I'm not sure they think like this anymore.
A big example of a faux pas within the past few years was some Airplane crash was being highlighted by the Twitter-algorithm as "Relevant to Airplanes", and a bunch of airlines were getting their advertising placed next to the crash.
That pissed off ... some company... and apparently Twitter promised tools to help prevent this in the future.
Those tools have been breaking this year. An advertisement's ability to generate good-will to the company is entirely dependent on context. Airplane advertisements (ie: Fly with Southwest) mean completely different things when they're next to airplane crashing news.
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Simple rules like "If you have news about an airplane crash or other such disaster, please skip my advertisement until the next cycle" are a thing in traditional media. Especially for the high-paying industries. They expect an advertising partner to help control the context in which their advertisements are shown.
EDIT: Another example is Micky Mouse or Tony the Tiger (and other such mascots) showing up next to Twitter Furry-porn. There's plenty of reasons for a company to try to control the context. In the case of furry-porn, its all legal (though uncomfortable), but it really makes animal-based mascots shown in a grossly different light and is terrible for messaging.
That being said…Micky Mouse or Tony the Tiger showing up next to furry porn is likely to have a positive reaction from most consumers of furry porn, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> Twitter has been pushing the subscription model a lot and I suspect that will likely be the long term solution.
That's obviously the intent, but you’d need a lot of paying subscribers to replace the ad revenue they’ve lost, even without the additional debt from the acquisition.
X pushing the subscription model only works if people subscribe. And the amount of subscription you need to service this level of debt is.... pretty high.
With all the aversion to ads = blockers, add in the European tracking standards that will probably become ours as well, are we seeing the decline and fall of all tracking ads? I see podcasts are down 50-75% - not sure why? But at some point anything with ads changes from a product you want, to one you want to avoid = pay $ for what you want - ad free, and skip the rest?
Looks like Media whatnot went looking for bad ads with anti semitic content = that made them a bad ad 'magnet' and wherever they went, their stick-ons attracted these bad ads = that is what tracking does. Browse to IBM and up come the trackers targeted to them and now you wear that same badge.
> "So far this year, 99 percent of measured ad placements have appeared adjacent to content scoring above the brand safety 'floor' criteria set by [the Global Alliance for Responsible Media]."
That just makes it all the more embarrassing for any advertisers who remain. They'll have been beaten in the race to distance their brands from such content by IB fucking M.
I have a German magazine/pamphlet from 1985 for IBM's 75th anniversary. It omits any reference to IBM's involvement in genealogical processing, and instead mentions things like the the Mark I, the Z3, and von Neumann.
Low effort photos of the pages for the 30s and 40s:
This definitely shouldn't be flagged, as edgy as it is.
IBM materially provided computers knowingly to the WWII Nazies of Germany, to identify, track, and lead to execution. This isn't some plausibly deniable fact. IBM execs did this knowing exactly what their equipment was used for.
Did you know about Kodak and Apartheid? During the 1960‘s, Kodak developed a photo id system for the South African government which was better at taking pictures of darker skin. Due to employee and international pressure, in 1971 Kodak declared they were pulling out of South Africa. Privately though, they used Frank & Hirsch as an intermediary to continue to supply the passbooks until they were found out in 1977.
IBM also manufactured guns for the Allies, so take that as you will. Having their businesses on both sides of the war co-opted by the various governments is a tough position for any business.
It shouldn’t be flagged but also let’s not pretend that IBM is this ibm. America also literally hired a ton of Nazis, but you wouldn’t blame any president in the last 20 years right? Well let’s be honest America would ABSOLUTELY do it again
I think people have forgotten how many big-businessmen of the 1920s were pro-Nazi and antisemetic. IBM, Ford, and Charles Lindbergh come to mind immediately.
The 1920s and 1930s had a surprising amount of pro-Nazi sentiment. Remember, USA didn't learn about the Holocaust until 1943 or something (long after it started, and even then only as a rumor in niche papers). The proof of the Holocaust didn't hit until 1945 or later.
Meanwhile, America First Committee and German-American Bund were pushing pro-Nazi sentiments.
If we expand the political groups to the next degree of freedom (ex: Christian Front marched with German-American Bund. I don't know if you could call Christian Front a Nazi-organization, but they were 100% comfortable with marching with the literal Nazi groups), there were plenty of political groups who were "directly a Nazi supporter" and/or "were hosting political rallies and inviting the Nazis".
People who dont like the new twitter/X keep having temper tantrums and posting stories like this. But I have news for you. X is less than 10% of Elon Musks net worth and he doesnt give a shit. When are people going to realize this. You're not going to pressure Musk with advertizing revenue to do what you want.
Sorry, I just find the perpetual meltdown from the left that they dont control twitter anymore to be fascinating, a bit hilarious and sort of pathetic. Just move on. The hyperbolic and seriously stretched stories of antisemitism just comes off as desperate.
If you actually read the tweet and understand what its about and follow up tweets it is absolutely a stretch to call him antisemitic and theres a lot of truth in there as well. You're reacting to headlines like most people.
Man, don't take it that seriously. First, it's The Reg that broke the story, which is a tell that this actually happened, but probably nothing will really get out of it, Elon is safe, don't worry.
Second I think that people re-tweeting elon sightly antisemitic tweet to have it show regularly (and thus close to advertising content) is funny and fair trolling. I would do it too if I bother connecting to my account sometimes (Nitter is better for me rn)
This paragraph links to a related piece about CEO Yaccarino's efforts to save the company despite Musk seemingly doing his best to burn it all down:
> Yaccarino is reportedly set to meet with Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, British bank Barclays, Japanese banks MUFG and Mizuho, and French financial institutions BNP Paribas and Société Générale to discuss plans not to leave them in the lurch as the value of X's assets have plummeted by two thirds in the past year.
> With huge interest payments to those banks continuing to come due and X's value incredibly unclear - but unlikely to have appreciated - the banks might be getting impatient to see some improvement as Musk's first year of ownership draws to a close.
I'm very curious to see what happens when X ends up defaulting on these obligations, as it sure looks like it will. Musk didn't seem too concerned about ignoring other contractual obligations, like rent and its AWS bill, nor about paying required severance for laid-off workers, to the tune of $500 million, according to one recent suit.
But I imagine that he can't just skip out on his obligation to the banks without a severe reckoning. Can he?