Subj : Elon Musks Twitter gamble has already cost him $24 billion - and To : All From : TechnologyDaily Date : Tue Mar 28 2023 11:15:03 Elon Musks Twitter gamble has already cost him $24 billion - and he's still digging Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2023 10:11:17 +0000 Description: Despite racking up massive losses, Musk is pushing ahead with plans to further worsen the Twitter experience for free users. FULL STORY ====================================================================== Oh, Elon. When will you learn? Never, if this latest development is anything to go by: according to a memo reported on by the Wall Street Journal , an internal valuation has just placed Twitters total value at around 20 billion dollars. Hilariously, thats less than half of the $44 billion Musk originally paid for the social media site back in October 2022. But it seems Elon isnt content with just sitting in the hole hes fallen into; some unpaid intern has handed him a shovel, and hes gonna keep on digging down until everyone on Twitter is paying for Twitter Blue - or the site collapses entirely. Musks latest move to drag more people kicking and screaming into $8-subscription land is to reveal more limitations on free accounts; unless you cough up for a Blue membership , your tweets wont be recommended to other users in the For You tab, and non-verified users wont be allowed to vote in polls either. Now, any Twitter user with two brain cells to rub together (so, at least half of them) can probably already tell you that the For You page is garbage, and its really worth sticking to the Following tab if you want something approaching the original Twitter experience. But shutting non-paying users out of polls entirely is, well, a dick move from Musk - perhaps hes scared there might be a repeat of the embarrassing poll where he was told by the sites user base to step down as CEO . Opinion: Cheer up - it might never happen Its worth bearing in mind that these latest death throes from the apparently-cursed social media platform come directly from the horses mouth - that is to say, Elons own Twitter account. That means we should take them with a sprinkling of sodium, since Musk has tweeted out upcoming features in the past that have never actually materialized. Musk claims that the changes are the only realistic way to address advanced AI bot swarms taking over even though, you know, everything hes done so far has yet to make any sort of tangible impact on Twitters bot account problems. Bots comprise roughly 5% of the platforms 330 million users, but account for more than 20% of actual tweets in the US. Oh, and hes getting rid of 2-factor authentication for non-paying users too, which is going to further worsen the sites security issues. Starting April 15th, only verified accounts will be eligible to be in For You recommendations.The is the only realistic way to address advanced AI bot swarms taking over. It is otherwise a hopeless losing battle.Voting in polls will require verification for same reason. March 27, 2023 See more Another part of the problem is that despite constantly worsening the free user experience, Twitter Blue is estimated to have made the company just $11 million from mobile users since its soft relaunch after Elon took the reins. That sounds like a lot, but its a comically small drop in the bucket for a social media giant like Twitter. Nonetheless, Elon claimed in the aforementioned valuation memo that he believes the company will be profitable as early as next quarter. Im putting on my best impression of Chris Hemsworth in Thor: Ragnarok to say will it, though? - Twitter is still burning money despite slashing staff counts (which leads to trouble like this ) and is embroiled in a laundry list of legal disputes which are no doubt costing it a ton of cash. To compound the issues further, many of those cases are specifically Twitter being sued over nonpayment of everything from contracted wages to rent owed to, uh, the British royal family. Yup, you read that right. Now, as a fun (read: horrifyingly dystopian) little thought exercise, lets contextualize Elons massive losses by taking a little look at some of the things he couldve spent that wasted $24 billion on instead: 21,838,034 iPhone 14 Pro Max units 120,000 copies of the original 1999 shiny Charizard Pokemon card 48 working replicas of Jeff Bezos 417-foot superyacht 14 NASA space shuttles At least 2 more Tesla gigafactories Housing every homeless person in the USA for three full years And finally, the entire nation of Montenegro - and with cash to spare, since the tiny European country is estimated to be worth just over $17 billion as of 2023. Perhaps Elon could've bought Barbados too. ====================================================================== Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/news/elon-musks-twitter-gamble-has-already-cost-him- dollar24-billion-and-hes-still-digging --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 (Linux/64) * Origin: tqwNet Technology News (1337:1/100) .