And Twitter's problem are nowhere near technological. The site needed to make more money, not reengineer the whole thing while advertisers are fleeing because Trump is back on on a whim!
What choice do they have? The company was hovering around profitable (2021 would’ve been without a lawsuit settlement) but that was before they were saddled with a ton of new debt. It’s possible that they could find new revenue models - that pay for checkmark scheme isn’t it but maybe a smart businessman could come up with a better variant - but that takes time and has to be done carefully since they have to keep the lights on in the middle. Driving away advertisers before finding that new revenue source doesn’t leave much time to iterate.
Debt and equity are just different ways for investors to invest in a company. If company isn’t generating any return on investment, keeping the lights on is not sustainable.
I say everyone can join for free and gets one post a day. $8/month plan includes 10 posts a day, and unlimited for $20. While I have no interest in Twitter, I'm told it's quite addictive, so make the first taste free and then reel them in once they're hooked.
If that's it's business model then sure, that's how it works.
A "de facto public square" would be public in conception, construction, and support from the start, which is one of the ways we know that Twitter is no such thing. Though it would likely also have some rules for how speech is/isn't conducted.
And all things considered, advertiser-friendliness is a sort of low-resolution but approximate passable democratic mechanism for marking boundaries of civilized discourse.
> advertiser-friendliness is a sort of low-resolution but approximate passable democratic mechanism for marking boundaries of civilized discourse
This reminds me that progressives have historically always supported corporations as complex hierarchies, scientific enterprises, run (ideally) by “experts.”
Nowhere was a claim forwarded it was progressive or ideal. The claim is more or less that advertisers have some of the same concerns that elected representatives do because consumers have something like a vote.
But then again, if you're scare-quoting expertise, maybe that's not the conversation you're here to have.
I'm scare-quoting expertise because it seems like you think there's an expert way to run a corporation.
And that's a very progressive sensibility towards corporations, and precisely why they actually like them (what's more appealing to a progressive other than a huge centrally-planned organization run by credentialed experts) despite claiming otherwise.
LOL. If you think that progressives are generally friendly towards corporations then you've never actually talked with a progressive, have you?
And corporations are not generally progressive in outlook either, there are too many values higher up on ladder of concerns.
Advertisers are one subset that bring a rough approximation of democratic to their decisions, knowing that each person in the market they hope to reach will be deploying something like a vote with their dollars. As with any democratic approximation, it's only progressive to the extent that population is, though it's poor compared to other democratic mechanisms.
You can take issue with whether democratic decisions are good decisions, of course, but that's likely to be an unpopular opinion for obvious reasons. And hey, I hear the person currently running twitter recently went so far as to say vox populi vox dei. Was his expertise in running corporations part of what you meant to scare quote, or is your challenge to expertise, shall we say, selective?
Read up on Progressive history and, yes, it's very clear that the early 20th century Progressive movement loved the concept of a corporation.
While most aren't self-conscious enough to realize it now, they still love corporations as evidenced by how they zealously defend them when they serve progressive ambitions and power.
That depends on Musk’s goals. If his goal is to make money to pay off the massive amount of debt he gained as part of buying twitter, (as the attempted quick roll out of twitter blue would indicate), then yes he probably needs to care about what advertisers think. If he just wanted to leverage his position as one of the richest men in the world to ensure that twitter was a haven for free speech and screw the profitability, then no he wouldn’t need to be guided by advertisers. He probably can’t both want immediate returns on his investment and to quickly rock the boat though.
>while advertisers are fleeing because Trump is back on
[citation needed]
CNN's ratings were never better than under Trump. He's fantastic for advertising. So is Musk. All controversial figures are. That, oddly, isn't controversial in advertising.
>on a whim!
He created a public poll, and when people voted for Trump to be allowed back won, he unbanned him, tweeting "vox populi, vox dei" ("the will of the people is the will of god"). Had he unbanned him despite the poll saying "no" you could argue it was a whim, but that isn't the reality we're in. He also refused to unban Alex Jones, citing exploitation of child deaths and a personal story. Not unbanning Alex Jones was more whimsical than unbanning Trump was, factually speaking. Why do people always misrepresent his actions? And why is it always upvoted and not flagged here?
