Skip to main content

Elon Musk’s Twitter is going to be a disaster | Hamilton Nolan

Musk probably bought Twitter for the same reason billionaires throughout history have become press barons: to try to control the conversation

Twitter is free. You can go on there and type your embarrassing little thoughts for the whole world to see any time you like. Millions of us have been doing this for years. Revealing to everyone how dumb your inner thoughts are may cost you your reputation, sure, but it won’t cost you any money. Not even if you’re the richest man in the country.

So why spend $44bn to buy it? That’s a fair piece of change, even to someone whose net worth hovers above $200bn. It’s also much more than the company is actually worth, as evidenced by Elon Musk’s desperate attempt to get out of the deal almost as soon as he had gotten irretrievably into it. The price is too high to be a pure lifestyle purchase – if you want a media property just for the social cachet and party invitations, it can be had much cheaper. Fellow villainous mega-billionaire space tourist Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post for a mere $250m, less than 1% of what Musk just paid for a cacophonous global collection of weird, hollering self-promotion.

Hamilton Nolan is a writer at In These Times

Continue reading...

from The Guardian https://ift.tt/dCXvoKy
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Green Planet review – David Attenborough’s gobsmacking, awe-inspiring return

From glowing bioluminescent fungus to 7,000 different camera set-ups for ants, the veteran broadcaster’s miraculous profile of plant life will have you gasping in astonishment so often you’ll be breathless One of the televisual joys I most remember from childhood was when a programme – often a nature documentary, but sometimes a few seconds on Sesame Street or a Tomorrow’s World demonstration of new technology – would show a flower unfolding with time-lapse photography. It was always sudden, always fleeting, and of course there weren’t even any recording buttons – let alone live pausing and rewinding facilities – that you could quickly press in order to capture and relive the delight. It was ever ephemeral, and I could never get enough. Until now, with the latest gift from David Attenborough and his endlessly patient and dedicated team of camera operators (to whom a now traditional 10-minute coda is again devoted), The Green Planet (BBC One). The new five-part series presented by the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Wandsworth escape accused says it was ‘foolish’ to jail him with his ‘skill set’

Daniel Khalife, 23, says he absconded because he was ‘terrified’ of being locked up with dangerous offenders A former British soldier has told a jury he did not hand himself in after he escaped from prison because he was “finally demonstrating what a foolish idea it was” to imprison someone with his “skill set”. Daniel Khalife, 23, told the court he absconded from Wandsworth prison while on remand because he was “terrified” of being locked up with “serious sex offenders” and “terrorists” who wanted to kill him, and that he did not think his imprisonment would be in the public interest. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/vRZHkaw
Post a Comment
Read more

How Rico Lewis helped harden up Manchester City’s treble challenge | Jamie Jackson

Guardiola believes advent of the teenage talent sowed seeds of change that turned his side into champions again Mid-January, the Etihad Campus. Before Tottenham’s visit a discontented Pep Guardiola is addressing a Manchester City team meeting that includes Erling Haaland, Kevin De Bruyne, John Stones and Ederson. The champions are in second place, eight points behind Arsenal, each having played 18 games. Performances have dipped and so has the attitude of his players. The final match before the World Cup was a 2-1 home defeat by Brentford . Since the tournament, City have beaten Leeds and Chelsea, drawn with Everton and lost their previous outing , 2-1 at Manchester United. Seven points from 15 is not championship-defending form and, when being knocked out of the Carabao Cup by Southampton is factored in, Guardiola can see City’s campaign derailing. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/h8WjbMX
Post a Comment
Read more