The Elon Musk rorting continues ...

[Jerry_Atrick]

Indeed,  sir.. Indeed:

 

Edited December 13, 2022 by Jerry_Atrick

[facthunter]

Yes that's the reason I decided to not become rich. You think I'm Joking don't you?  Nev

[Jerry_Atrick]

Me, too (#metoo)

 

[edit] I really do try to be an ass-holier than thou.. I reeally do... But I guess I will never be rich!

Edited December 13, 2022 by Jerry_Atrick

[Jerry_Atrick]

Some of the collateral damage to Musks twitter takeover is Tesla. He has cashed out anouther $3.6bn of shares - he has sold over $40bn of shares..  To be fair, some if it has been to fund other ventures, so it isn't just twitter drawing the cash down. However, even though they drip-feed the sell orders onto the market to minimise the price impact, the market picks up a disproptionate supply or demand curve and acts accordingly. Therefore, it has had the effect of further reducing the share price (and therefore market capitalisation, or investor equity/value). But investors in Tesla, according to this article, are getting peeved as he is focusing too much on Twitter and not enough of his capital cash cow - Tesla.

 

This is understandable, because it appears Tesla does not own twitter, but Elon Musk directly (which in itself is weird, as operational companies are often woend by holding companies, which are owned by dubious trusts for tax purposes). So Telsa shareholders don't benefit from any improvement in twitter, but siffer as their CEO protecting and improving their value is off with the fairies on some other shiny object project.

 

Musk is still the highest shareholder, with 14.11% of the Tesla stock, followed by Vanguard, Blackrock and State Street with 6.75%, 5.44% and 3.16% respectively. Neither one of those want to lose money as their future ability to attract investors rests on their reputation to successfully navigate choppy waters. They are wort of between a rock and a hard place as a lot of TSLA value is wrapped up with Musk's personal brand. Having said that, both revenues and earnings per share have been trending upwards nicely, but the reduction in share price would also be the market factoring in not quite so solid growth, and dealing with increasing competition, especially from China.

 

In December, 2021, their share price was almost $410/share. Yesterday, it closed at 156.80. There is some natural market fall in there. The Nasdaq composite index peaked in December at 15,939 and is currently 11,970. But the fall of TSLA shares is far more marked than an average fall.. Ouch!

 

Edited December 15, 2022 by Jerry_Atrick

[willedoo]

There's a lot of people not happy with Musk's algorithm and rule changes on Twitter. The open source intelligence community is especially hard hit with a ban on any geo-location, live location  or any other identifying information that would reveal a person or person's whereabouts. Tough luck for mobs like Bellingcat. Also no more videos of POW's allowed.

 

It's getting harder for the pro Ukrainian side to post war news. Also, at the moment, Ukraine has been removed from the list of countries for the verification process to create new accounts. People are hoping it's a mistake and not intentional. Meanwhile, under his new freedom of speech ideas, more Russian bots are showing up on Twitter. The way he's going with it, fairly soon he'll have to convince people he's not Putler's boy.

[Jerry_Atrick]

It wouldn't surprise me if there is some Putin sympathy there... Just beecause he is a CEO and not a national leader doesn't mean he doesn't suffer the same self-fulfilling prohecies.

[facthunter]

I think Elon has lost a lot of  support and general trust from your average person.. THAT definitely will affect his business's value since He is a prominent entity. Nev.

Edited December 15, 2022 by facthunter

[willedoo]

5 hours ago, facthunter said:

I think Elon has lost a lot of  support and general trust from your average person.. THAT definitely will affect his business's value since He is a prominent entity. Nev.

You only have to look at Tesla's share price. Elon has lost a lot of billions on paper. He's no longer the world's richest man. Some say there is a big personality factor in share buying with his companies. If Elon behaves, investors are confident. It's only since he's been trying to remake himself as Mini-Trump that he has stuffed up. It's a shame really; if you take his politics out of the equation, he's done a lot of good things in the world. Now he's trashing his own reputation daily and people are seeing him as a nutter.

[facthunter]

Alignment with Trump has a high risk factor (as it should).  There has to be a reality check sometime though BS baffles Brains.  Nev

[Jerry_Atrick]

The ABC is reporting Musk has turfed off journos without yet explaining why, and a user suspended for "Doxxing" musk for posting flight tracking, available publicly, of his private jet. Oh, and he banned some join Mastadon (competitor) account - the latter is understandable. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-16/twitter-journalist-ban-over-doxxing/101782888

 

Yet, he waits until Kayne or whatever his name is really leaves no doubt of tocixity, Trump, who leaves no doubt of Toxicity, et al, on.. as long as he can, anyway. Trump, I think, has snubbed Twitter (or had), posting on his own social platform he sees no use for Twitter.

[facthunter]

Big BOYS building $#!t Castles in their Playpens. They both need to grow up.  Nev

[willedoo]

It's just Musk living up to his man-child reputation. He's suspended journalists who p*ssed him off for reporting on him unfavourably. The EU is talking about applying sanctions on Musk for violating EU freedom of the press rules. Links to the Twitter competition Mastodon are being flagged as malware.

 

If all that is not childish enough, Musk has disabled the Spaces feature on Twitter, which is an audio chat room feature. Musk's involvement in Spaces chats usually involve right wing participants telling him how good he is. This time he went on a chat involving journalists talking about his bans, and didn't like what he heard. He exited the chat and now the feature is disabled on Twitter. 

 

Since Musk took over, a lot of Twitter users and journos have opened Mastodon accounts as a back up in case Twitter goes belly up. They normally provide links on their Twitter account so their followers can find them on Mastodon if need be. I think since Musk's dummy spit, you can post the link but it will be flagged as malware and won't update the page.

[willedoo]

I was reading where a lot of Tesla investors are calling for Musk to stop playing the clown on Twitter and concentrate on his other businesses. They don't like the fact the share price has halved since Elon's antics started with Twitter.

[rgmwa]

Twitter seems to be like aviation - a good way to turn a large fortune into a small one. 

 

[facthunter]

Farming is already allocated that distinction. Farmers gamble more than any other group I know of.. I was glad to get off my grape Block. The slump came about 3 years later than I predicted. Chinese banning imports of wine was the final nail in the coffin for many People in that game and the Chinese were getting some of OUR best, which is not too shabby by any fair measure.   Nev

[Jerry_Atrick]

I had a share of a vineyard (no winemaking) back in the mid-90s when the industry was booming, allegedly. Had it for about a year and turned a modest profit on it.. Wish I held it for another year.. Came back from my first year living in the UK, and the Mornington Peninsula property prices had skyrocketed. 

 

Recently saw one of my favourite Mornington Peninsula wineries come on the market for about $8m. It sold within a week. 

 

 

 

[facthunter]

WINERIES cost a lot to build. Can be many millions and some places like that, the rates may be through the roof. I don't know where you'd get water to irrigate with. You might just get enough from the natural fall  but it's unpredictable and too any cloudy days means Powdery Mildew. Yarra Valley has that problem.  Nev

[willedoo]

Musk's Twitter antics aren't over yet. He ran a poll on Twitter on whether the banned journos should be allowed back. He didn't get the result he wanted with his original multi choice format, so redid the poll with only two options. It still backfired on him and he has reinstated some accounts.

 

Now he's running a poll on whether he should step down from running Twitter, with a simple yes/no option. He says he will abide by the results. Currently the poll is running around 57% Yes, 42% No. It seems like it has taken the threat of EU sanctions and a plunge in the Tesla share price for him to start thinking like an adult again.

[facthunter]

 Again ??  Nev

[willedoo]

13 minutes ago, facthunter said:

 Again ??  Nev

good point.

[willedoo]

When you look at a typical Musk post like this one from three days ago, it's easy to understand why investors and advertisers are spooked. Having a child run a major platform like it's his new toy can only end badly.

 

[facthunter]

 Similar to what Morrison said to the Assembly of LADIES outside our Parliament.  Nev

[rgmwa]

Apparently unrestricted free speech actually has limits when the owner doesn’t like what was said. What a clown. 

[willedoo]

There's no shortage of memes for it.

 

[onetrack]

He's not only banned journos he doesn't like - he's also banned Twitter users from putting up links on Twitter to "opposition" social media - such as Facebook, Mastodon, Instagram, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr, and Post.

 

Musk's idea of "free speech" seems to have altered a great deal since he took over ownership of Twitter. Can't have any opposition to his grand plans to make a Motza, and to promote himself above everyone and everything else.

 

https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/18/twitter-wont-let-you-post-your-facebook-instagram-and-mastodon-handles/#:~:text=(Update December 19%2C 2022%2C,page that detailed these rules.