this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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[–] HappyMeatbag@beehaw.org 47 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In related news, Elon Musk has been adamant about ending remote work, but that’s likely to be difficult without, you know, office space.

I like this journalist.

Twitter disbanded its press arm and its trust and safety council, so there’s nobody to reach out to for comment.

I really like this journalist.

[–] Bowen@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago

It's refreshing to see one that doesn't pull their punches. It's also very refreshing to see the general aura of Elon being this genius fading away finally.

[–] Felemuso@feddit.de 46 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is a tl;dr based on smmry.com, the original was reduced by 68%:

Twitter is getting evicted from its Colorado office over unpaid rent A judge deemed that the company must vacate by the end of July.

It's another day, so here's another entry in the endless "Twitter is slowly becoming an empty husk" conversation.

The judge sided with the landlord and has given Twitter until the end of July to vacate.

The line of credit ran out a few months back and Twitter failed to make any additional payments.

TechCrunch unearthed another Colorado lawsuit aimed at Twitter, as a local cleaning company claims the social media site didn't pay its bills, totaling nearly $100,000 for services rendered.

[–] minode@szmer.info 35 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Good b... Oh wait, we need more useful bots on Lemmy

[–] Felemuso@feddit.de 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hehe so far I actually did it manually whenever I read a news post without any comment yet 😉 But my plan is to implement a bot once I find some time 😊 Would love to see the bots from reddit join lemmy 😁

[–] Pekka@feddit.nl 6 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the summary. It would be great to see an actual bot for this purpose when we have too many articles to do it yourself. This was always a great way to get a basic idea whether the article was worth reading with that bot on Reddit.

[–] abrasiveteapot@sh.itjust.works 44 points 1 year ago (3 children)

OK, the conspiracy theory that Musk is deliberately tanking the company is starting to become believable. Given his insistence on people working in the office, refusal to pay the rent seems to be a little contradictory. He may have to reconsider that policy

[–] sabret00the@beehaw.org 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I remember there was a thread that explained it. But basically it was because you can write it off if you don't pay and you're not liable. He's basically downsizing. It's like how rich people don't pay taxes but normal people have to.

[–] abrasiveteapot@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'd be curious to see the thread in question if you can recall where it was.

[–] sabret00the@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

It was a Twitter thread when he started refusing to pay, so pretty old now.

[–] Animoscity@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

Or he was really successful at tricking people into thinking he was smart. Now that he's in the spotlight of the public more, people are shining the light and seeing that he just buys still and claims he made them.

[–] mcc@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago

I don't think he even consider people not right around him his employees.

[–] MyOpinion@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] dan@upvote.au 19 points 1 year ago

At this point, I don't know why any vendors would trust Twitter. It's going to make it very hard for them to deal with other businesses. Elon can't be that dumb, so maybe he really is trying to tank the company.

[–] Elyssa_Greensley@beehaw.org 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What I'm hearing is you can live rent free for about 3 months before you can be evicted by court order.

[–] agressivelyPassive@feddit.de 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's actually standing law in Germany. At least for people and their homes.

[–] uzay@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

I heard it's when you owe two months' rent, which is the case after 32 days.

[–] venuswasaflytrap@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago

That's actually surprisingly common.

[–] cyd@vlemmy.net 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

A lot of stories like this have been coming out, but it's not clear that they foretell the doom of Twitter as so many people are assuming (or anticipating).

Donald Trump's various businesses showed long ago that large companies aren't necessarily harmed by shitty practices like not paying bills. And mid-2010s Reddit showed that a social media platform, once established, can survive terrible technical deficiencies (remember when Reddit was crashing daily?), simply because people tend to be too lazy to move.

Most likely outcome is that Twitter continues to chug along, maybe with outages here and there, not losing much traction. Maybe it ekes out a small profit, which Musk can use to salve his ego.

[–] Thrashy@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"Twitter continues to chug along, maybe with outages here and there, not losing much traction. Maybe it ekes out a small profit, which Musk can use to salve his ego."

Twitter's big problem on this front is the massive amount of debt that Musk saddled it with in order to purchase it, which the company now has to make quarterly payments on. Twitter was very close to turning a profit pre-buyout, but thanks to Elon it now has to pay ~$1.5 billion dollars in debt service annually at the same time that it chased away something like half of all its advertising income. That's why he's laying off all his employees and skipping out on the company's bills.

[–] cyd@vlemmy.net 3 points 1 year ago

That's very true. That's why Musk was talking up his plans to turn Twitter into some kine of super-profitable super-app (a la WeChat)... but that's definitely not materializing, because how many people would trust Musk's Twitter enough to use it as a super-app?

I think Twitter will have to end up defaulting on those loans. The banks will be pissed off, but they'll have to work out some kind of face-saving deal with Musk to write off the loans, because at that point only a masochist would want to run/own it. But who knows.

[–] rlaimondas@venera.social 2 points 1 year ago

@Virtim @cyd Origin of the most problems trade – twitter cannot pay because of trades, people are lazy because they need to trade. Solution: works on creating trade-free products and services

[–] ptsdstillinmymind@lemmy.studio 11 points 1 year ago

I'm so happy everyone is finally seeing Elon for the nepot baby he is.

[–] hellothisisdog@yiffit.net 10 points 1 year ago

lmao so, in other words, the richest man alive fails to pay his rent. what a time we live in~

[–] emi@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In related news, Elon Musk has been adamant about ending remote work, but that’s likely to be difficult without, you know, office space.

[–] mrmanager@lemmy.today 1 points 1 year ago

He also wants people to be hardcore so I guess they will just work on laptops from the parking lot. So hardcore!

[–] sodium@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

How many employees are even left at Twitter at this point?