this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023
538 points (94.8% liked)

Technology

33611 readers
317 users here now

This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.


Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.


Rules:

1: All Lemmy rules apply

2: Do not post low effort posts

3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff

4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.

5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)

6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist

7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 86 points 11 months ago (3 children)

In July, Musk tweeted about Twitter / X’s financial situation, saying, “We’re still negative cash flow, due to ~50% drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load.”

Advertising could be up two fold for all it matters. You sack a company that last turned an annual profit in 2019 with $44B in debt, it won't matter if Musk is shitting gold bricks. You can't pay that size of debt off fast enough. To just get started on that debt Musk would need to make Twitter twenty times more profitable than their 2019 profit. And even then that debt is going to be a monkey on his back for forty years in ideal conditions.

That $44B isn't chump change for Twitter, like maybe if Tencent took a sudden $44B debt they'd make good on it, but they're wildly profitable. Twitter barely gets by and has only gone on this long because of the Tech Bro funding that all but dried up when the interest rates were going up.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I can't wait to see how his offer to pay people's legal bills who get in trouble at work for saying problematic shit on his platform works out

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

Alot like Trumps promise to do the same thing would be my guess

The last thing Twitter needs right now is to find more clever and creative ways to spend money, especially on other peoples legal problems

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

Twitter wasnt saddled with 44B in debt, That was the purchase price, which included $13B in debt