The IT Nerd

In the most obvious sign that Elon Musk owned Twitter is bleeding cash like a gunshot victim, the floundering social media platform has announced a massive price increase for its Premium Plus subscription tier.

• Monthly rates in the US have gone up from $16 to $22, representing a 37.5% increase.
• The annual subscription cost will also rise from $168 to $229.

Now these price increases will vary from region to region, and some regions will face triple digit percentage increases. But you have to wonder if there is any value left in Twitter for anyone to justify paying these prices. I really don’t think so. But Twitter thinks so. In fact they highlighted the following as reasons to pay up:

• A completely ad-free experience
• Enhanced access to Grok AI.

To me, that isn’t enough value to convince me to hand over my credit card. And combined with the fact that Elon has really lost the plot and embraced the far right of the political spectrum adds to my lack of desire to pay to be on that platform. Now I might have paid for Twitter in some fashion in the days before Elon took over. But not now as any value the platform had is gone thanks to Elon. And based on the reaction that I am seeing online, others feel the same way. So I truly can’t see this move by Elon is going to succeed.

R.I.P. Twitter.

In case you missed it, Elon Musk is heavily involved in the incoming Trump Administration. The key thing that he will be doing is running the Department of Government Efficiency with Vivek Ramaswamy. The first thing that you will note is that Department of Government Efficiency spells DOGE which is Elon’s favourite cryptocurrency. This is right up there with “S3XY” which is made up of almost all of the Tesla cars that are currently on sale put together (Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y) and the Tesla self driving feature Actual Smart Summon or “ASS”. So based on that, if you concluded that it is highly likely that Elon came up with the name for this department, you get to move to the front of the class.

But if you think that’s suspect, it gets worse. This is the official Twitter feed for the department:

You will note that it has a grey checkmark next to the name. That means that it’s an official government account. But there’s a problem with that:

According to X’s rules on checkmarks, organizations eligible for the gray checkmark are generally reserved for executive office accounts, government agency accounts, and embassy and state-level accounts, as well as accounts held by government officials and heads of state.

As DOGE is not an official government department, having the gray checkmark may violate X’s rules.

Well, that’s kind of bad. But not surprising as Elon is known for breaking the rules that he creates. Never mind other people’s rules. But there’s worse yet to come. Have a look at this:

So beyond the bizarre requirements for someone to be considered for a job with this not quite a government department, there’s the fact that resumes have to be DM’ed, which are solely open to verified Twitter users who pay Elon Musk. Which means that Elon effectively is going to make $8 a month from any job applicant to this not quite a government department. Then there’s the fact that the Twitter users who pay Elon $8 a month are Elon fanboys by and large. That to me borders on corruption and cronyism. But maybe I’m looking at this wrong.

Honestly, I am not surprised by any of this. But at the same time I am surprised. Mainly due to how fast this is happening. And I suspect that it’s only going to get worse from here.

Elon Musk can’t stop getting sued. This time French news publishers are suing him. Or more accurately Twitter. Here’s why:

Under EU law, digital platforms are required to negotiate with publishers to remunerate them for news reuse. After a prolonged dispute, Meta and Google have signed deals with news publishers in France.

However, X has refused to engage in negotiations with news publishers to compensate them for reusing their content (or at least so far). As a result, judges at the Paris Court of Justice will now face the complex task of determining the value of article previews shared on X.

This seems to me be another one of those FAAFO moments. He flipped off French news publishers and now they are suing him. Making this and not Bluesky gaining users and rocketing up the App Store charts or the latest Cybertruck recall his latest problem today. Most logical people would want to avoid getting sued at all or as often as Elon has. But clearly he has more money than brains as the lawsuits keep piling up.

As for this specific lawsuit. I am not a lawyer, but I’m pretty sure that he’s going to lose.

Elon Musk woke up to the news that one of the UK’s biggest newspapers The Guardian won’t be posting on Twitter anymore. And they didn’t pull any punches when they explained why:

We wanted to let readers know that we will no longer post on any official Guardian editorial accounts on the social media site X (formerly Twitter). We think that the benefits of being on X are now outweighed by the negatives and that resources could be better used promoting our journalism elsewhere.

This is something we have been considering for a while given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism. The US presidential election campaign served only to underline what we have considered for a long time: that X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse.

X users will still be able to share our articles, and the nature of live news reporting means we will still occasionally embed content from X within our article pages.

That’s a pretty damming indictment of Twitter under Elon Musk. But not surprising as it is 100% true. The real question is if he will care. I think he does, but not for the reason you think. He may see The Guardian leaving as him winning against “legacy media” or “the woke mind virus” or whatever catchphrase that he’s using at the moment. Thus he will keep doing whatever he thinks will achieve the same result with other media outlets that he doesn’t like. Assuming that the don’t follow The Guardian out the door.

Oh yeah. In case you want an alternate place to get your fix of The Guardian, you can head over to their website. And perhaps even throw them a couple of bucks to support what they’re doing.

If you’re one of the few people left on Twitter, you might have noticed that a pop up informing you of a change to the Twitter terms of service is happening.

Now I encourage you to read their blog post on this here. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. For that you have to go to the actual terms of service and scroll down to the section called “Your Rights and Grant of Rights in the Content” you will see this:

The key part of this paragraph is here:

In short, if you post content to Twitter, Elon gets to use it to train his AI models. I’ve read this a few times, along with looking at the Twitter app and it doesn’t seem that there is any way that you can opt out of this. Though I am free to be proven wrong about this via posting a comment below showing me where you can opt out of this. But assuming that I am right about this, this is really inexcusable and Elon has really crossed the line here.

But that’s not all. If you continue to read these terms of service, you’ll also see this.

If you view more than 1 million posts, which includes replies, within 24 hours, you will be charged $15,000 USD per 1 million posts. No human could actually do that. Thus one plausible explanation is that this is there to stop organizations from scraping his site using automated tools. For example organizations that are looking at Twitter to see how racist, homophobic, or whatever else that dumpster fire of a site has become. I say that because this sounds sort of like Elon charging for Twitter API access, and these sorts of organizations finding ways around that. Another plausible explanation is that it would stop people like me from embedding Tweets in their stories. Particularly big news organizations that gets millions of views on something they post so that Elon either gets paid, or he can hid the bad behaviour that is pretty pervasive on Twitter these days. If you have other possible explanations for this, please post them in the comments below.

It wouldn’t surprise me if this drives more signups on platforms like Threads, Bluesky, and Mastodon once word of the changes to Twitter’s terms of service start to circulate. Because this is the sort of stuff that upsets people and drives them away. Which if a problem if you’re Elon and you desperately need eyeballs on Twitter to sell advertising. I wonder how he’s going to square that circle?

The new terms of service go into effect on November 15th. But you’re going to see the backlash happen way before then.

It appears the fight between Twitter and the Brazilian Government is over…. For now. CBC News is reporting this:

Brazil’s Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared X to resume service in the country after the social media platform reversed course and started complying with court rulings that billionaire owner Elon Musk had previously vowed not to accept.

Yeah. Elon wasn’t going to accept anything that moderated anything on Twitter in Brazil. That was before Elon folded up like a cheap suit after Brazilians signed up en masse for Bluesky and Tumblr among other social media platforms after Twitter got banned. I guess that shows that Elon talks the talk but lacks a spine. Given that we all know that Twitter is worth next to nothing at the moment I expect to see Elon do a lot more of walking back stuff he says to try and keep Twitter alive.

Can someone remind me why people think that Elon Musk is a great businessman? I am asking because of this:

Elon Musk’s X is now worth less than a quarter of its $44 billion purchase price, according to a new estimate from investor Fidelity. 

The asset manager’s Blue Chip Growth Fund now values its stake in X, formerly known as Twitter, at approximately $4.19 million, based on newly released disclosures from Fidelity’s Blue Chip Growth Fund. The firm’s unit has reduced the value of its holding in X by a total of 78.7% as of August end.

For context, Fidelity had initially invested $19.66 million in X through the Blue Chip Fund, as per regulatory filings. This isn’t the first time Fidelity has cut the value of its holding in X. As of July’s end, Fidelity had valued its shares in X at about $5.5 million.

This 78.7% markdown implies that Fidelity is currently valuing X at about $9.4 billion overall. (TechCrunch’s assessment assumes that Fidelity’s investment in X was made at a $44 billion valuation. The acquisition was financed through a combination of equity and debt.)

Perhaps I am looking at this wrong. But if I buy a business and it is worth substantially less than what I bought it for, then that means that I really screwed up because the whole point is to make money rather than bleed money. Given that, you have to wonder how long before Elon taps out because he either has to put his own money into Twitter to keep it afloat, or he has to tap out and look like a loser by doing so.

Let’s see what he’s going to do as I suspect the clock is ticking.