As Twitter ditches its iconic branding in favor of owner Elon Musk's favorite letter "X," its open source competitor Mastodon is once again seeing usage numbers soar.

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[–] Philolurker@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

He didn’t want to buy the company. So, he’s turning it into a pet project.

That's a good point, and one that had not occurred to me. For all we know, he's already mentally written off the $44 billion as a loss and is just having fun with it, with no expectation of success.

That would explain a lot.

[–] FinalBoy1975@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The fact that he did not want to buy it for the price he had to buy it for is enough for me to conclude that he doesn't give two shits about it. The ones he bought it from don't give two shits, either. It's just money. For Musk, money lost. For the former owners of Twitter, money gained. The rest is just blah blah blah to them. This is not so for the users of Twitter. It means much more to them socially than it does to the people who bought it and sold it. This, for me, is fascinating as a social phenomenon. Fascinatingly sad in a lot of ways.

[–] Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

Just to add in, X.com was something Elon wanted to do all the way back in PayPal days, basically a line/wechat with PayPal abilities.

[–] ttmrichter@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

It's not his $44 billion, though.

The people who ACTUALLY paid for it are going to have a few words with him, probably, at some point.