X has been nothing short of an exercise in brand destruction. However, despite all the drama, it still stands, it still exists, and it remains relevant.
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The only issue is that Musk vastly overpaid for Twitter, but if he plans to keep it and use it for his political ambitions, that might not matter. Also remember that while many agree that $44B was a bit much, most did still put Twitter at 10s of billions, not the $500M I think you could justify.
The firings, which was going to tank Twitter also turned out reasonably well. Turns out they didn't need all those people.
Twitter/X is the reason DJT became President. It happened accidentally (ie against the wishes of Twitter management) in 2016, they successfully suppressed him in 2020, and then Elon gave MAGA that platform in 2024, leading to DJT's successful election.
As long as X is seen a kingmaker, someone will find it profitable to own/maintain, even if it doesn't convert Ads like Meta/Google.
> It happened accidentally (ie against the wishes of Twitter management) in 2016
I think the whole Cambridge Analytica fiasco played a bigger role, and I don't think they utilize Twitter. On top of that, frankly, TV and his behavior at rallies/debated helped him a lot more than Twitter did in 2016. I don't know a single MAGA supporter who was even on Twitter in 2016.
> they successfully suppressed him in 2020
How? He was banned after the election.
> and then Elon gave MAGA that platform in 2024, leading to DJT's successful election.
DJT was not on Twitter in 2024. Did it really make a difference when he had his own social network? We all have our opinions, but is there actual data supporting this for the 2024 election?
By suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story before the election.
'it will go away in two weeks, no one will even remember...'
injecting bleach
getting uv light 'inside the body'
the look on all his health advisors faces whenever he showed up at a press conference.
In the case of Bush in the 2004 election, at that time they were pushing the story that Iraq had been developing WMDs; that was the initial justification for the invasion. Obviously false in hindsight, but at the time people were still pretty raw about 9/11, so critical thinking was in short supply, but--most importantly--it provided an enemy to focus on.
In the case of covid there was no comparable enemy. "Declaring war" on a virus would not have anywhere near the same impact as using the military to actually wage war on another country.
“The story was true but…”
Stopped reading here.
I don't understand this at all.
Covid was devastating for the whole world. I don't see how it is an "easy layup" for anybody or any country. Was there any country or scenario where it was an "easy layup"?
I disagree. Look at the way we talk about it, "the covid", "covid did this", etc. It absolutely would have worked as an enemy to declare war on and I don't think the vast majority of people would consider it trump's fault if he just got out ahead of it.
Imagine a world where he didn't do trumpy things and instead did things like talking about how this is a national, world wide foe we all need to work together to defeat, I know it's hard, we'll all make sacrifices, but we're the nation that beat the nazis and went to the moon, we can win this war on covid. For further details here are my science advisors talking about the latest info on counter measures.
Obviously this is imagining a world where trump isn't trump, but I very much believe obama/clinton/bush/etc would have been re-elected.
Keep in mind that we also have a strong tendency to re-elect the incumbent anyways and covid is an amazing opportunity to blame all your previous fuck ups on this new "totally unforseeable/preventable disease cataclysm!"
There are two separate "the story"s. One is a story about Hunter Biden's laptop. One is a story about political interference and/or bias at Twitter.
At least some of the story about Hunter Biden's laptop was true. That doesn't tell us anything about whether the story about political interference and/or bias at Twitter was true.
The linked article argues that (1) there wasn't in fact political interference at Twitter, (2) although Twitter employees (like employees of many many many tech companies) lean left, there was no sign that anything in the company's treatment of the H.B. laptop story was politically motivated, and (3) the fact that Twitter nerfed links to the NY Post's story about H.B.'s laptop for one day (a) more likely increased than decreased interest in that story and (b) had no impact to speak of on the presidential election anyway.
Of course it might be wrong about any or all of those things, but whether the NY Post's story about the laptop was actually true or not has nothing to do with any of them.
(The assertion being made upthread here is that Twitter's handling of the story was a deliberate attempt to "suppress" Donald Trump and that it handed the election to Joe Biden. It's all about the second story, not the first one.)
(I'm not convinced that that's right, but it isn't refuted by the fact that COVID-19 was devastating for the world in general and the US in particular.)
We literally have multiple Trump children openly bragging in public about how paying them gives one access to their father.
Nobody cares. Nobody would have cared about Hunter either.
Yes it does.
If he had a chance of being re-elected, it was certainly dead after his attempts at dealing with covid.