Twitter is being rebranded as X
www.theverge.com
The bird site may lose its logo on Monday.

🙄

  • Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    193·
    1 year ago

    Ffs

    Yes change the name and iconic logo of a huge corporation, that will go over great.

    If he hadn’t demonstrated his incompetence earlier I’d think it was intentional.

    I still think there’s a bit of intent to destroy the company but it’s kinda hard to tell.

    • poorsocialskills@lemmy.ml
      117·
      1 year ago

      There’s a woman over on Mastodon making the argument that he’s trying to destroy it so it can’t be used to organize left-leaning political action (fundraising, activism, issue messaging, etc) any longer. She makes a compelling argument.

      • bedrooms@kbin.social
        92·
        1 year ago

        I don’t buy that. He tried to cancel the purchase. He’s also losing money, and so it’s definitely not a 3D chess.

        • qwertyqwertyqwerty@lemmy.one
          48·
          1 year ago

          Didn’t Twitter almost take him to court if he didn’t follow through with the purchase? I think he got caught in his over investment in Twitter last year, and rather than go through a trial with discovery (I think he NEEDED to follow through to avoid this specifically), he decided to go through with the purchase. I wonder what the hell they would have found during a trial discovery that made him sink $44B.

          But what he’s doing now? I don’t think it’s related to that. I think it might be to help manipulate stocks, as we have seen him do several months back. Maybe he thinks that destroying left-leaning political action saves him in taxes? He destroyed public transportation in California just so people would theoretically purchase more Tesla cars. Nothing is beyond being trampled by Musk if he thinks he can benefit by stumbling over the other side of the corpse.

        • Banzai51@midwest.social
          28·
          1 year ago

          Not only that, it would have been easier and cheaper to just shut the whole thing down after taking ownership. His very public (mainly by his own tweeting) stewardship of Twitter is damaging to his reputation, and the reputation of his other businesses. The reality is, he just is that dumb.

          • regul@lemm.ee
            11·
            1 year ago

            His net worth has only gone up since he bought it, iirc. Tesla will continue to print money at least for a little while until other automakers catch up on EVs. SpaceX doesn’t seem to have any viable competitors, and both sides of the aisle agree on privatizing space, so that’s a big growth industry. This is the unfortunate fact of capitalism in general and late-stage capitalism in particular.

            • Ech@lemm.ee
              8·
              1 year ago

              His net worth has only gone up since he bought it, iirc

              It absolutely didn’t. His net worth dropped over 50% in the months following the purchase. It’s back up above $200b at this point according to Forbes, but he’s still down from his pre-purchase state.

          • anlumo@feddit.deEnglish
            5·
            1 year ago

            If he’d just shut it down, he probably would have been personally liable for Twitter’s debt, because he didn’t even try.

          • DJDarren@beehaw.orgEnglish
            8·
            1 year ago

            He’s the consummate failson. Rich enough that he’ll never actually experience any tangible negativity from his various ventures, if he has a skill, it’s in self-publicity and (historically) throwing money at ventures that are already on an upward trajectory.

            But I feel that all the cocaine and being surrounded by Yes Men have led to him tipping over the edge.

      • Nepenthe@kbin.social
        40·
        1 year ago

        I’d believe it if I hadn’t already heard of Musk being the type to fire workers in his line of sight at pure random simply to fire someone. It apparently got so bad that aids would plan the route he would take to the meetings around having as few victims as possible out in the open.

        It would be a smart move for anyone, and he is succeeding to a good extent (they’ll just go elsewhere?), but I think that’s just a happy accident of his. I feel like he’s really just using it as a chew toy so he can feel all big and important with the headlines. If he were being journalistically gray rocked, I wonder what he’d do.

      • Big P@feddit.uk
        31·
        1 year ago

        The issue with that argument is… Why? He is a business man, activism generally doesn’t effect him, tesla cars are generally liked by left leaning middle class, why would he spend so much money to destroy something?

      • blazera@kbin.social
        20·
        1 year ago

        he bought it pretty soon after a meeting with Putin, while the Ukraine invasion was fresh and international support was rallying on Twitter. So, blackmail, bribery, buy up Twitter and immediately gut it.

      • Xerø@infosec.pub
        7·
        1 year ago

        I’ve been saying the same thing in multiple Lemmy posts and on Mastodon. Twitter and Reddit were both used by progressives to organize.

    • fearout@kbin.social
      28·
      1 year ago

      I saw this article posted in another thread and it seems to explain a lot. Not sure how close it is to reality, but it looks like nostalgia is at least a partial reason for this change.

      Yep. Fucking nostalgia.

  • Fizz@lemmy.nz
    78·
    1 year ago

    If your goal is to reduce cost why would you waste money doing a rebrand… so dumb

    • EnderWi99in@kbin.social
      37·
      1 year ago

      I believe his main goal is turning Twitter into something of an “everything” site where he’s looking to combine the likes of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Discord, and Venmo/Paypal into a single service. I don’t know if it was his goal when he bought it or if it has any chance in hell of working, but that’s something he at least said (while probably drunk) fairly recently.

      • aperson@beehaw.org
        14·
        1 year ago

        He has had this dream of an everything app for a very long time. I feel like he is trying to realize it now.

      • Daniel@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        5·
        1 year ago

        My first thought was an all-in-one “life subscription,” kinda like how you can buy those iPhone + Apple One packages, but with Tesla (I don’t know if Tesla has subscriptions to them – but I’m sure they do), Twitter Blue, and Starlink. It’s pretty dystopian and hecka freaky.

      • Kresten@feddit.dk
        3·
        1 year ago

        This reminds me of when snapchat tried to entire the mobile cash industry with they snapchat pay service.

      • Fizz@lemmy.nz
        13·
        1 year ago

        Yeah I saw that and cringed. Why would you give Andrew Tate money. It removes all plausible deniablity and proves that you want people like him posting on your platform.

  • figaro@lemdro.id
    71·
    1 year ago

    Was Twitter ever really a left leaning platform in the first place? It pretty much always felt like it was filled with Russian bots and maga shit.

    So I guess good job Musk for burning down a shit website? Lol

    As a side note, Mastodon is legitimately fantastic. The community there is genuinely nice.

    • The Cuuuuube@beehaw.org
      70·
      1 year ago

      It was left leaning until about 2014. Then it slowly crept farther and farther right wing. Slowly bleeding users who didn’t want to deal with the fascist jerks. Slowly converting fence sitters into fascist jerks by normalizing fascism by pretending it was just asking questions, just making edgy jokes, you know the drill. Next, 2016 came. That for me was when the bottom fell out of twitter. The Russian twitter bots were everywhere. And it took twitter way too long to deal with it. I think by that point, the platform was ruined. It was never going to grow meaningfully by attracting new people. It was just going to slowly decay as people looked for their friends and favorite creators on Reddit, Discord, Youtube, or wherever else they went. But that decay would have been slow until Elon tanked it. His efforts have chased off users in droves

      • sci@feddit.nl
        11·
        1 year ago

        Most new platforms are left leaning from the start, because left leaning people are more likely to try out new platforms. Once platforms get mainstream they will be picked up by right leaning media.

  • Gacrux@lemm.ee
    56·
    1 year ago

    alright now we’re gonna have quite a big discussion as to what “x server” means. x11? twitter?

    “guys x servers are down!”
    “have you checked your .xinitrc? did you start x?”
    “whats an x innit racecar? the x servers are down!”
    “how do you use x without knowing what an .xinitrc is… oh”

    meanwhile reddit gonna rename themselves to “wayland”

      • jemorgan@lemm.ee
        15·
        1 year ago

        Just so you know, you don’t have to announce if you’re leaving a community. Just go. Nobody cares

        • CapedStanker@beehaw.orgEnglish
          9·
          1 year ago

          I don’t know i think it would be kind of cool to have a herald yell out when we come and go, like the medieval times.

          • jemorgan@lemm.eeEnglish
            5·
            1 year ago

            Alright I’m sold, I take back what I said.

            Do we have Lemmy bots? Sounds like a cool idea for a really annoying bot haha.

            • CapedStanker@beehaw.orgEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              HEAR YE HEAR YE, THE RIGHT AND HONORABLE SIR LORD JEMORGAN of LEMM.EE HAS DECLARED, ON THIS DAY THE 24TH OF JULY, THAT THEY ARE SOLD, AND TAKES BACK WHAT THEY SAID. LET US ALL APPLAUD THEIR OPEN MINDEDNESS.

              THE LORD ALSO CARES TO INQUIRE ABOUT THE IMPLEMENTATIONS OF LEMMY BOTS AND THAT IT SOUNDS LIKE A COOL IDEA.

              ALL HAIL JEMORGAN, MAY THEY LIVE LONG AND PROSPER

              • jemorgan@lemm.eeEnglish
                2·
                1 year ago

                Well doesn’t that just make my pants a little tighter in a way that I’m 100% down for

          • jemorgan@lemm.ee
            1·
            1 year ago

            Yeah, because sadly I can’t just silently unsubscribe from all the whiners who have to make sure to let everybody know that they’re not going to stay subscribed to a community lol.

            And also, I just care about you buddy I don’t need to justify that. You have an awesome rest of your day.

    • sol@thelemmy.club
      18·
      1 year ago

      No rich person is actually smart, they are all addicted to money and can’t get help over it. But their moves in the business world are all calculated, this guy is doing exactly what he wants to do and their goal is to make money not to lose them.

        • ObiGynKenobi@beehaw.org
          22·
          1 year ago

          Lucky, or in Elmo’s case, born with a platinum spoon in his mouth thanks to daddy’s apartheid emerald mines.

          • Doug [he/him]@midwest.social
            6·
            1 year ago

            That’s a very big part of it.

            When fucknugget wanted to start a company he had plenty of credit either on his own, with his name, or both. If he blew 50k in an attempt he could try again next week.

            If I blew 50k I’d be homeless.

            It’s way easier to high stakes gamble when you won’t notice you lost.

        • sol@thelemmy.club
          1·
          1 year ago

          They are lucky because the average person won’t even bother checking out on wikipedia how they become so rich

      • ipkpjersi@lemmy.one
        10·
        1 year ago

        this guy is doing exactly what he wants to do and their goal is to make money not to lose them.

        How does this make him money exactly? lol

        He is literally just killing off his website.

        • sol@thelemmy.club
          3·
          1 year ago

          My guess: the same way the now called Meta benefited from stalling facebook and moving people to their other platforms like instagram. These marketers perceive everything in market terms, twitter is old and they need to release a brand new product to hook people up

        • Banzai51@midwest.social
          2·
          1 year ago

          I’m waiting for the next step when he tries to add features to make X whatever he envisions. Oh, those devs I fired. Hey, why can’t we hire anyone? No one wants to work.

        • sol@thelemmy.club
          1·
          1 year ago

          Money are an addiction just like smoke, sex or drugs. If you can’t cope with being addicted to gold at the end of the day you are dumber than some kids

    • TheYang@lemmy.ml
      7·
      1 year ago

      Depends.

      If he thinks Twitter is irreperably dying, this may be a way, in which he can get out of repaying the loans he used to (partially) fund the buyout of twitter.

      • agentsquirrel@beehaw.org
        15·
        1 year ago

        If you’re thinking this an “artist formerly known as Prince” sort of thing where Prince got out of a contract, I’m sure all the debt holders have the proper legal verbiage to have agreements remain valid in the event of a name change.

        • BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca
          18·
          1 year ago

          The lenders lawyer arrives at the Twitter office:

          Lawyer: This is Twitter, is it?

          Musk: (with a fake mustache) No, it’s X.

            • BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca
              6·
              1 year ago

              That makes me think of the theory about Saudi Arabia and probably other countries have had it in for Twitter since Arab Spring.

              So this is just Elon doing as instructed: “Make Twitter disappear, but make it look like an accident”

        • TheYang@lemmy.ml
          1·
          1 year ago

          depends how the loans worked.
          I was assuming his majority shares of X (ex Twitter) collateral.
          And that that he could just go “yeah, go on, collect on your collateral, I don’t mind”, because it’s not worth anything anymore.

          But admittedly I have no Idea how the contracts were drawn up, if this is possible and if his other money would be available to collect on.

      • milkjug@beehaw.org
        4·
        1 year ago

        At some point some creditor should be desperate enough to do a margin call, since the loan collateral is next to worthless.

  • Dan_Rachevaski@beehaw.org
    46·
    1 year ago

    He got a company and a social media that is remarkable, and recognizable, and even has an action verb related to it, “tweet, to tweet, tweeting”.

    And he decided to piss on it and create the X app. Adding insult to injury is that it’s again, another techy black and white logo. Of course, because that’s the silicon valley trend isn’t it, black and white clean minimalist corporate logo, no soul, no community, just corporate all along.