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Twitter has started blocking unregistered users

It is readable by the general public again.
I haven't noticed any slow down on my feed or reduction of posters
 
Andy_Ross said:
It is readable by the general public again.
I haven't noticed any slow down on my feed or reduction of posters
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Sorta. It's still more locked down than previously. You can't browse people's profiles and while you can read linked tweets, replies don't load.

In another thread a user posted a tweet that was a reply from some politician to another post. When you click the link you can't see what they are replying to, which strips out necessary context, and previously you would have been able to see it.
 
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arthwollipot said:
The flood of bots hasn't stopped.
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Ironically the single best way to cut down on bot and otherwise low quality comments on the app is to use the unsanctioned "Block the blue" browser extension which automatically blocks any blue check accounts you encounter. Have to be using it on a PC though, doesn't work yet on phone browsers and obviously not on the official app.

The blue check has been totally devalued that now it's either a sign of an insufferable Elon reply guy, some desperate fame-ball that thinks the check still means anything, and scammers that are willing to pay the $8 to get their scamming higher views and more victims.
 
Gulliver Foyle said:
Hey now, there's method to his strate...

Sorry, I don't know what just came over me, I had a five minute laughing fit.
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Seems like his method is pretty obvious. He's increasingly making Twitter a paid-only service, stripping away useful features bit by bit and putting them behind the paywall.

Strikes me as an absolutely idiotic way to run a social media business. Making the website less accessible except to a tiny minority of weirdos who decide to join the $8/month Elon Fanclub seems at direct odds with the company's actual moneymaker, advertising to as many eyeballs as possible. Spending a dollar to make a dime, the Elon business way.
 
Letting unregistered users see the content without the ads was a baffling way to run things, but "fixing" that by stopping users sharing content with non-users seems to guarantee its death spiral by putting existing users off using your platform and not drawing in new users.
 
TurkeysGhost said:
Seems like his method is pretty obvious. He's increasingly making Twitter a paid-only service, stripping away useful features bit by bit and putting them behind the paywall.

Strikes me as an absolutely idiotic way to run a social media business. Making the website less accessible except to a tiny minority of weirdos who decide to join the $8/month Elon Fanclub seems at direct odds with the company's actual moneymaker, advertising to as many eyeballs as possible. Spending a dollar to make a dime, the Elon business way.
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He thinks that because he himself is a far right idiot everybody else out there is to. But pandering to the far right is a proven losing strategy for online businesses, and only works for pre-internet ones if they've a) been doing it for decades (eg the Daily Heil) or b) it's a side hustle where the rest of the conglomerate can take up the slack (eg Murdoch's media empire before he sold the most profitable bits to Disney).
 
Gulliver Foyle said:
He thinks that because he himself is a far right idiot everybody else out there is to. But pandering to the far right is a proven losing strategy for online businesses, and only works for pre-internet ones if they've a) been doing it for decades (eg the Daily Heil) or b) it's a side hustle where the rest of the conglomerate can take up the slack (eg Murdoch's media empire before he sold the most profitable bits to Disney).
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It's weird because there was already obvious examples out there. Trump's "Truth Social" is already about as successful as you could hope for a social media company that panders to right wingers. And Truth Social did it the smarter way, building a niche social website from scratch rather than spending obscene amounts of money on a existing, popular one and driving away all but a vocal minority of the user base.

These right wing, anything goes websites always run into the same 4chan problem, that even though they have niche popularity and have decent traffic, their user base is advertiser poison and only sketchy companies are willing to buy ads there.

Buying Twitter, gutting the user base, and getting into a crowded market of right wing Twitter alternatives (Parler, Frank Speech, Truth) seems an awful way to spend ~40 billion dollars.

Edit: I'm getting ahead of myself here, but it's quite clear to me that this the path Twitter is on. Unless someone(s) intervene and remove Musk and reverse course, Twitter seems destined to become a niche social site pandering to right wingers rather than one with general appeal (and it may already be too late).
 
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TurkeysGhost said:
Edit: I'm getting ahead of myself here, but it's quite clear to me that this the path Twitter is on. Unless someone(s) intervene and remove Musk and reverse course, Twitter seems destined to become a niche social site pandering to right wingers rather than one with general appeal (and it may already be too late).
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I don't think that's an option. When Musk bought Twitter, he saddled it with a $13 billion dollar debt. Their biggest profit Twitter ever made was only $1.4 billion. It doesn't have a hope of servicing its debt if it is a niche site pandering to right wingers.
 
jeremyp said:
I don't think that's an option. When Musk bought Twitter, he saddled it with a $13 billion dollar debt. Their biggest profit Twitter ever made was only $1.4 billion. It doesn't have a hope of servicing its debt if it is a niche site pandering to right wingers.
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I don't know if he had a hope of servicing the debt even if he made no policy changes. Musk famously overpaid (after trying desperately to get out of his idiotic deal) and Twitter itself doesn't have much of a history of profitability to suggest it could easily support such a debt.

What happens if he defaults? Who ends up with ownership if Musk's disastrous management ends in bankruptcy? Do his creditors have any power to force him out and try to protect their interests?
 
TurkeysGhost said:
I don't know if he had a hope of servicing the debt even if he made no policy changes. Musk famously overpaid (after trying desperately to get out of his idiotic deal) and Twitter itself doesn't have much of a history of profitability to suggest it could easily support such a debt.
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No neither do I. Run properly, it would have returned to profit in 2022 but not with $1 billion of interest to pay.

What happens if he defaults? Who ends up with ownership if Musk's disastrous management ends in bankruptcy? Do his creditors have any power to force him out and try to protect their interests?
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Good question. In the UK, if Twitter couldn't pay its debts, it would be forced into administration and hopefully a buyer could be found. If not, it would be wound up and its assets sold to compensate the creditors as much as possible. Before it comes to any of that, the company would try to renegotiate the terms of its loan with the owners of the debt, the idea being that more lenient terms are better than fighting the other creditors for pennies on the pound.

I don't know how similar it is in the USA and how much liability Musk would have for Twitter's debt.

I find it totally astonishing that it is legal to finance a takeover with debt and then transfer the debt to the taken over company. This is what happened to Manchester United and, I think, Toys R Us.
 
jeremyp said:
No neither do I. Run properly, it would have returned to profit in 2022 but not with $1 billion of interest to pay.



Good question. In the UK, if Twitter couldn't pay its debts, it would be forced into administration and hopefully a buyer could be found. If not, it would be wound up and its assets sold to compensate the creditors as much as possible. Before it comes to any of that, the company would try to renegotiate the terms of its loan with the owners of the debt, the idea being that more lenient terms are better than fighting the other creditors for pennies on the pound.

I don't know how similar it is in the USA and how much liability Musk would have for Twitter's debt.

I find it totally astonishing that it is legal to finance a takeover with debt and then transfer the debt to the taken over company. This is what happened to Manchester United and, I think, Toys R Us.
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Leveraged buyouts are common.

I think the analogy is me going to the bank and asking to take out a buy-to-let mortgage, and persuading the bank that it's fine if the new house owes the money not me. Oh, and would they mind if I paid myself a management fee for running the house?
 
jimbob said:
Leveraged buyouts are common.

I think the analogy is me going to the bank and asking to take out a buy-to-let mortgage, and persuading the bank that it's fine if the new house owes the money not me. Oh, and would they mind if I paid myself a management fee for running the house?
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That might have happened to a company I worked for, where the bondholders ended up with 20¢ in the dollar
 
TurkeysGhost said:
It's weird because there was already obvious examples out there. Trump's "Truth Social" is already about as successful as you could hope for a social media company that panders to right wingers. And Truth Social did it the smarter way, building a niche social website from scratch rather than spending obscene amounts of money on a existing, popular one and driving away all but a vocal minority of the user base.

These right wing, anything goes websites always run into the same 4chan problem, that even though they have niche popularity and have decent traffic, their user base is advertiser poison and only sketchy companies are willing to buy ads there.

Buying Twitter, gutting the user base, and getting into a crowded market of right wing Twitter alternatives (Parler, Frank Speech, Truth) seems an awful way to spend ~40 billion dollars.

Edit: I'm getting ahead of myself here, but it's quite clear to me that this the path Twitter is on. Unless someone(s) intervene and remove Musk and reverse course, Twitter seems destined to become a niche social site pandering to right wingers rather than one with general appeal (and it may already be too late).
Click to expand...

Even if Musk keeled over and somebody sane took over in the morning, it's probably too late. Twitter's staff and systems have been irreprably damaged and are beyond usability. The only way to save Twitter is to let the company die and pick up the name in the resulting fire sale.
 
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