Enrico_sw

BTW, I'm not talking about explicit demands of Bezos to his employees or explict demands/trades with other companies (Disney, etc.) All of this can be very implicit through tacit demands, peer pressure or even innocent talks in business dinners or events. For example, when you're a WaPo employee, you don't have to be told that it's "verboten" to investigate Amazon's business... you just know it without it ever been written or even told.

Yes, it's definitely part of the reason it's a better deal for him. Analysts thought he paid a huge goodwill (probably $50-100+ million), but this amount is nothing compared to the value for Bezos. The fair value of the WaPo (based on the sum of its discounted future cash flows minus its debts at the time) when he bought it was probably pretty low (let's say $150 million). That's an estimation of what the company will generate at "face value". But Bezos, as its shareholder, enters the "small club" of media owners. He can uses this influence to protect its business and he can trade influence with the other members of the club. This has huge value. He probably paid $100 million for it, but this is nothing compared to the real intangible value of influence. I think he could've paid $200 or even $500 million for that.

I remember when I watched movies from the 80/90/00s with my mum when I was a kid.

Hmm, I see what you mean. Do you think there can be real competition against twitter one day?

@Matt! I've bought a subscription to the gym last week (I found another one that's less expensive) It's good though it's a bit "populated" I've tried machines for the adductors, it's great cause it's more efficient than what I could do at home... but now I have a lot of soreness in the adductors

He already has the mainstream media against him, but maybe he sees this more as an asset than a liability.

You think he's playing the anti-woke card to get sympathy and influence? Hmm, maybe, but I can't see a lot of value in it. Furthermore, he can't influence what people say on twitter. There are too many people. Whereas Jeff Bezos has a handful of employees, which is easier to manipulate (he can fire them, choose them, etc. which means they'll try to please him without him even asking).

The years 2020 and 2021 hit civil discourse very hard.

Democracy dies in darkness... It's funny because what most of their journalists do is turn off the light

For example, this WaPo owned journalist, Taylor Lorenz, will never investigate Bezos. No. Her mission is to doxx and attack regular citizens (like libs of tiktok). Because the rule in the broken American democracy is: strong with the weak, and weak with the strong. I think they call it "progress"... https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/04/19/libs-of-tiktok-right-wing-media/

What's intriguing is that I can't see what additional value there is for Elon in the goodwill he paid. Maybe his fight for freedom or a personal beef with the platform... but that's not worth this much. In contrast, the takeover of the Washington Post by Jeff Bezos is way clearer. He overpaid the newspaper, at face value, but, aboce all, he bought influence. And that's worth a lot. The readers are high profile and the WaPo is a help for many of his businesses (they protect Amazon Prime shows, like ROP, they can hide bad press or shady businesses he has). But you can't do that with twitter.

We love Elon because he's not scared of the masters of the woke cult (plus, he's witty and he's got balls)

You may think it's unrealistic, but it's true. Lots of blue checkmarks are smug and self-righteous bastards anyway...

I agree. It' hard to have subtlety with 280 characters. I guess we could say that twitter killed nuance and subtlety. It reminds me of this song, somehow (BTW, this song's better than the original)

True and that's the main problem of many internet services. Nobody is willing to pay, so you have to rely on advertisers (who themselves can be driven easily by anti-democratic forces - Woke capitalism being one of these forces).

We are not talking about the same thing. I think free speech is key to a functioning democracy. If you have to brown-nose the advertisers (and the anti-democratic stakeholders behind them) to make your platform work, then I think it's a worthless platform, in terms of free speech. But then again, the platform can be anti-free speech and good business (that's what it was until now), but it's still anti-democratic IMO.

In any case, I guess we can agree that Elon overpaid this shit. That's twitter stock price history compared to what Elon paid per share. I don't know which advisors green-lighted this deal, but it's very very pricey.

Maybe, but free speech should be essential on such a platform. If people aren't free to speak their mind, if there's a thought police (on whichever partisan side it is), then it's a worthless platform for democracy. But then again, America is not a functioning democracy. And I'm sure powerful stakeholders will do everything they can to compel speech.

Advertisers are heavily influenced by what specific stakeholders think: the mainstream media associations (like the sleeping giants who are very biased) and above all, what their ESG score will be in the end. The rest is meaning less to them. This race obsession is probably part of the discussion, since it's the American Zeitgeist.

This is people trolling to test the system. That's what this institute says; they are trying "to test the limits". It's highly speculative to take long term conclusions based on this. Also, you would need to analyse what is the content of these posts on twitter. Some bots can do these analyses, they can even interpret the intention of the post (though it's probably still imprecise).

I have not mentioned racial slurs or race for one second. You brought that topic up. Not me. Race is the obsession of the Woke, and this obsession creates more racism.

True. And all these scammers that became uber-rich are all self-labelled leftists. Leftism is full of scammers. The peons in the socialist sects don't get nothing. Oh, but the socialist masters always get uber-rich and powerful. That's a huge part of the 20th century history.

That's what I hate with the Americanisation of the world. Every conversation is irremediably brought back to race. I didn't mention race for one second here... but you had to bring this up. It's like the new Godwin's law.

That's exactly what happens with heavy taxation... the middle class pay, but the uber-rich can emigrate, get tax evasion or loopholes. You can share this on twitter. With all the SJWs that lurk there, that'd be useul. Maybe they would learn a thing or two about economics. (be careful they don't call you a "reeecist" for disagreeing with them though )

If you like the thought police so much, you can emigrate to China or Venezuela... Maduro would love to get new citizens, since his own are fleeing his socialist nightmare