from Hacker News

Ask HN: What is Elon Musk's strategy in buying Twitter?

by m33k44 on 10/28/22, 12:43 PM with 6 comments

Lot of Silicon Valley bigwigs, including Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey, have heavily invested in cryptocurrency.

Will there be some cryptocurrency integration with Twitter? That could give cryptocurrency some sort of legitimacy because lot of politicians and government organisations use Twitter as a means of communication.

  • by brookst on 10/28/22, 1:00 PM

    Read Matt LeVine’s stories; I think he has the best take.

    In short: Musk made an offer for the lulz because how many people can joke about $44B, got trapped in it, loves Twitter, hates Twitter, figures there’s something there, wants out, wants to go big, ask again tomorrow.

    He’s rich enough that he can afford to be erratic and cavalier, none of his past statements should be taken as predictive of future actions. He’s already gone from “all moderation is censorship” to “of course we don’t want the dystopian bell scape that complete laissez faith would produce”. Tomorrow he might run the firehouse through CCP’s censors. For the lulz.

  • by bediger4000 on 10/28/22, 12:47 PM

    That seems too convoluted. Why not just believe Musk: he claims that almost all moderation is censorship. I've got to give him credit if he's bought Twitter to cut moderation. He's put his money where his mouth is, and he's going to pay for everyone else's free speech.

  • by waltbosz on 10/28/22, 2:28 PM

    I like to imagine (with my overactive imagination) that Elon Musk knows exactly what he is going to do with Twitter. I don't think he would be able to do all the things he does if he didn't strategize extensively for every one of his projects.

    My _crazy off-the-wall_ theory is that his mid-level plan is to "bring back AOL". That is, to turn Twitter into a paywalled garden like AOL was back in the 1990s before AOL users could access the outside Internet.

    Charging a Twitter subscription would cause a massive shed of users, but where will they go to? Charging money would also keep out most of the bad actors. You would have to do a balancing act of how to ensure there are remaining Twitter users left to keep the ecosystem healthy. It's crazy to think about, who would pay for Twitter?

    I'm not accountant enough to do the math to calculate the time until monetary payback. But if a radical transformation of Twitter is the goal, then Musk is playing a long game where dollars aren't the first priority.

    It would also create a reason to buy StarLink in markets where FIOS/etc is already cheaper, sales pitch: "buy StarLink and get a free Twitter subscription"