The Twitter Debacle

[Aaron44126]

Twitter failing to pay rent on office space (and facing a lawsuit).

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/01/musk-led-twitter-faces-another-lawsuit-alleging-it-failed-to-pay-bills/

[Etern4l]

BTW not every Elon fan in the US is aware that the lithium man is quite partial to China:

 

Elon Musk praises China’s economic progress on Communist Party anniversary

 

Elon Musk said Taiwan should become a special administrative zone of China.

 

Elon Musk praises Chinese workers for ‘burning the 3am oil’ – here’s what that really looks like

 

and most recently

 

Tesla makes China boss highest-profile executive after Musk

[Reciever]

Everyone is partial to China, that is not news.

 

Please keep the thread on the topic of Twitter.

[ryan]

On 1/3/2023 at 2:53 PM, Etern4l said:

BTW not every Elon fan in the US is aware that the lithium man is quite partial to China:

 

Elon Musk praises China’s economic progress on Communist Party anniversary

 

Elon Musk said Taiwan should become a special administrative zone of China.

 

Elon Musk praises Chinese workers for ‘burning the 3am oil’ – here’s what that really looks like

 

and most recently

 

Tesla makes China boss highest-profile executive after Musk

I'm not anti china, but I am anti communist. I think the USA and individuals supporting these regimes is disgusting. we need to stand up for what is right.

 

also very solid post @Etern4lI had no idea, and now I know. Pro intelligence never hurt anyone.

[Etern4l]

UK Twitter employees in legal threat over redundancies

[Sandy Bridge]

I went ahead and blocked Twitter from my home network when updating some router settings the other day.  Time to see how much if at all I miss it.  So far I haven't noticed it, but I haven't been home a lot since I blocked it.  As Etern4l said, it's about the ethics of it.

 

We're also in this weird situation where because Musk runs so many companies, his actions running one of them can affect the others, and I would argue he is creating potential conflicts of interests.  It would be in the interests of the People's Republic of China to seek favorable treatment on Twitter (indirectly, e.g. more promotion of content aligning with its beliefs, and suppression of content that doesn't align with its beliefs, such as content on Tiananmen, Tibet, and Taiwan), perhaps offering favorable market access and lighter regulation to Tesla in return.  The more Tesla runs into headwinds outside of the PRC, the more tempting it would be for Musk to accept a proposal along these lines.

 

 

So while the thread is primarily about Twitter... I don't think it's possible to ignore how Tesla, SpaceX, and the geopolitics of the situation play into that.  That the man who now owns one of the most popular news platforms in the U.S. has been praising the leaders of authoritarian mainland China is relevant for someone concerned about whether Twitter will continue to protect fair speech.  Even if he's doing it for the business interests of his other company, it's the sort of conflict that regimes willing to use corruption for their own ends will attempt to leverage.

 

Though admittedly I am also partial to China, I'm just partial to the Republic of China.

 

 

 

[Aaron44126]

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/01/third-party-twitter-clients-are-broken-whether-by-policy-or-glitch/

Third-party Twitter clients are broken, whether by policy or glitch

[Linux]

Twitter is dead to me and i have moved on to the Fediverse. I already run my own (private Mastodon) instance.

[ryan]

partial to the republic of china>? pro oppression cool man....power to the oppressors. nothing says cool like communism..

 

you got 4 likes..retract

[ryan]

i dont know if this true, but they say mr beast is going to be twitters ceo

 

 

[Sandy Bridge]

On 1/13/2023 at 3:56 PM, ryan said:

partial to the republic of china>? pro oppression cool man....power to the oppressors. nothing says cool like communism..

 

you got 4 likes..retract

Republic of China = Taiwan.  People's Republic of China = Mainland Communist China.

 

For some reason authoritarian states like to call themselves republics, but so do actual republics.  It's confusing.  Probably intentionally so on the part of the authoritarian states.

 

Anyway I came here to post about the APIs and third-party clients breaking but Aaron beat me to it.  50:50 on whether it was intentional or not.

 

I've noticed the first effect of my blocking Twitter locally, my U.S. Senator had some embedded tweets in his web page that no longer load.  I'm expecting to see other examples if I come across "lazy journalism" articles that spend a significant part of the article just embedding Tweets, but I guess I haven't come across any of those this week.

[ryan]

oh ok...thought you were referring to china. my bad.

[Aaron44126]

Interesting article on the Twitter "debt payment due soon, what to do?" conundrum.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/01/looming-twitter-interest-payment-leaves-elon-musk-with-unpalatable-options/

 

Another one just recapping the last few months of Twitter from a sort of "what's it like to work there" perspective.

https://www.theverge.com/23551060/elon-musk-twitter-takeover-layoffs-workplace-salute-emoji

[Etern4l]

2 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

Interesting article on the Twitter "debt payment due soon, what to do?" conundrum.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/01/looming-twitter-interest-payment-leaves-elon-musk-with-unpalatable-options/

 

Another one just recapping the last few months of Twitter from a sort of "what's it like to work there" perspective.

https://www.theverge.com/23551060/elon-musk-twitter-takeover-layoffs-workplace-salute-emoji

 

Qatari to the rescue I guess.

 

Meanwhile, there may be some chump change to pay out to Tesla shareholders who were drastically robbed of value last year: 

Elon Musk begins trial over Tesla tweet that cost him $20m

[Aaron44126]

Twitter (quietly) officially bans third-party clients

https://www.engadget.com/twitter-new-developer-terms-ban-third-party-clients-211247096.html

https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/19/23562947/twitter-third-party-client-tweetbot-twitterific-ban-rules

[Sandy Bridge]

If he seemed certain of anything, it was the steadily improving technical architecture of Twitter itself. The staff might be vastly diminished, but what it lacked in size it more than made up for in growing technical competence. Bit by bit, Musk said, Twitter’s notoriously fragile infrastructure was improving.

 

This, as well as some of the other Twitter incidents, reminds me of the area of the company where I work, although Twitter is worse.  Our staff is too small, and most importantly too new to the team, for our number of projects and their ambition. We're essentially a year after where Twitter was in November when they laid off 75% of this staff; we had 100% turnover of our entire technical staff in late '21 and early '22, although our one saving grace is a couple of the transfers were internal so we can still pester them when we really need their help.

 

The management strategy seems to be "hope that with growing technical competence and familiarity with the product, things work themselves out."  On one of our products, management literally took a page from Musk's book and decided "we can turn off 3 of the service's 5 services for half the day and it will still work okay."  Turns out, customers were able to notice, and we're still working through the consequences of that, including the technical side effects.

 

The longer I'm there and the more other employees trust me, the more I learn about how many are at least considering looking for other jobs.  It's the smart ones that could help solve the problems that are looking, too, of course.  They can see the mismanagement and have other opportunities if they want them.  I've started talking with recruiters myself, and have already learned that I could get a nice raise if I'm willing to go work for Big Evil Corp.

 

So... when I see that Twitter is like that but worse and across the whole company, I see the ship sinking.  Is Twitter's infrastructure really improving, or are they just patching the above-the-water holes that Musk saw before he bought it while below the water line the structure is rotting?

[Sandy Bridge]

King Charles III is taking Twitter to court over unpaid rent.  Source

 

The Crown Estate, which manages the British monarchy’s vast property portfolio, launched court proceedings against Twitter over unpaid rent at the social media giant’s office space in central London’s West End neighborhood, it said in a statement Tuesday.

The estate declined to say how much rent was allegedly owed but said in the statement that it brought the action after making contact with Twitter. The two businesses are now in discussions, the statement added.

 

King Charles III, when he became monarch, inherited a huge number of royal-owned U.K. properties that are managed by the Crown Estate, a trust. They include residences, luxurious office space in central London, offshore wind farms and the address publicly listed as Twitter’s headquarters in the United Kingdom.

 

Probably not the best look to stiff the King...

[Aaron44126]

Multiple lawsuits are now trying to recover money from Twitter.  They've apparently not paid $7 million in rent for the main California HQ since the takeover, plus the UK office mentioned above (and most/all other offices), and also there was that lawsuit that resulted in Musk being basically obligated to buy Twitter... those lawyers have not been paid either.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/01/twitters-landlord-sues-for-millions-in-unpaid-rent-at-firms-us-headquarters/

 

It seems like bankruptcy is inevitable, but I'm sure at some point Musk will be trying to "renegotiate" the conditions of various obligations that Twitter has.

 

Elon Musk's own comments continue to be fun reading.

"My follower count is really high, so obviously I am very popular and doing everything right."

https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/25/23571793/elon-musk-twitter-tesla-brand-image-damage-earnings

 

"It's easy to raise money" (as Twitter continues to have trouble covering expenses).

https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/25/23571568/elon-musk-twitter-loan-financing

 

I feel like the main defense strategy at the trial is just to muddy things up for the jurors so much that they don't (all) come to the conclusion that he owes people money.

 

I recently set up a Mastodon account to check that out.  I found a few of my (old) Twitter followees on there, but I don't feel like enough people have moved over that I have a really interesting feed to look at.

[Reciever]

1 minute ago, Aaron44126 said:

Multiple lawsuits are now trying to recover money from Twitter.  They've apparently not been paying for their main California HQ rent since the takeover, plus the UK office mentioned above, and also there was that lawsuit that resulted in Musk being required to buy Twitter... those lawyers have not been paid either.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/01/twitters-landlord-sues-for-millions-in-unpaid-rent-at-firms-us-headquarters/

 

It seems like bankruptcy is inevitable, but I'm sure at some point Musk will be trying to "renegotiate" the conditions of various obligations that Twitter has.

 

Elon Musk's own comments continue to be fun reading.

"My follower count is really high, so obviously I am very popular and doing everything right."

https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/25/23571793/elon-musk-twitter-tesla-brand-image-damage-earnings

 

"It's easy to raise money" (as Twitter continues to have trouble covering expenses).

https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/25/23571568/elon-musk-twitter-loan-financing

 

I feel like the main defense strategy at the trial is just to muddy things up for the jurors so much that they don't (all) come to the conclusion that he owes people money.

Gotta spend money to make money 

[Sandy Bridge]

What I don't get is how Musk expects the "not paying rent" strategy to end up working out well for Twitter.  Not renewing leases would make sense, but simply not paying rent - and millions of dollars of rent at that - is going to invite lawsuits, and is going to make it very difficult for Twitter to rent offices when they do want to do so - they'll probably have to pay the whole lease up front, which worsens their cash flow problem.  I mean, if I were one of the few landlords where Twitter was still paying, I would definitely be demanding that when the lease came up for renewal!

 

Add to that the legal fees for the lawyers they'll need (and that the lawyers will demand being paid up front since previous lawyers got stiffed), and it doesn't add up at all.

 

Is any court really going to look at these cases and say it's okay for Twitter to not pay their contractually obligated rent?  The only case where I can see that happening is if it also involves Twitter filing for bankruptcy or insolvency, which while a plausible end result presumably wouldn't be the goal.

 

----

 

As a side note, I could see this spilling over reputationally for Musk's other businesses as well.  If I'm a commercial real estate manager and I see Tesla on my rent roll, I am going to be flagging that as a potential risk; if their cash flow starts decreasing what's to say Musk isn't going to pull the same stunt there?  They seem to have a healthy cash flow right now, but if it's a five year lease, would they do the same thing in 2026 if EV competition heats up and they aren't bringing in tons of bacon anymore?

[Aaron44126]

Twitter is going to revoke free access to the API and make people pay for it.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/2/23582615/twitter-removing-free-api-developer-apps-price-announcement

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/02/cash-strapped-twitter-to-start-charging-developers-for-api-access-next-week/

 

About a decade ago, I worked for a digital marketing company, and worked on a product that allowed clients to make promotional posts to their web site, an SMS list, Facebook, Twitter, and some other outlets simultaneously and from a centralized "dashboard", so I have some real first-hand experience with the Twitter API.  I'm sure there are a number of businesses that offer a service like this.  I also wrote a little scraper to turn a user's tweet stream into an RSS feed just so that I could consume it in my RSS reader rather than having to use the Twitter web site (that I stopped using after Feedly started supporting Twitter feeds directly).  Being able to slap together a tool like that was definitely handy.  Also as mentioned in the article, the Twitter API is the interface that bots use to function, plus third-party clients (...now banned...) and tools that just read tweets and whatever out of Twitter for research and analysis.

 

Anyway, I wonder how many API users will really pony up for the paid access?  And of course, Twitter has only given a one-week notice, and no indication of what the price will be.

[Etern4l]

Twitter: Number of staff suing goes up daily - lawyer

[Sandy Bridge]

I've heard those cross-platform-posting tools are popular, and for good reason, who wants to have to manually post the same thing to six platforms?

 

So far my experiment with blocking Twitter on my home network has been going well.  Occasionally I will see an article with an embedded Tweet that doesn't load, but there's usually enough context in the article to get the gist of it anyway.  And sometimes someone will post just a link to a Tweet on a forum, without any commentary.  I take those the same way as someone sending me a YouTube link without any description of why they think it would be worth my time - it probably wasn't worth it in the first place.

 

There is one site I browse where the Tweets still show up in a widget they use.  Most likely that widget is fetching them via the Twitter API, it will be interesting to see if that stops working next week.

[Aaron44126]

More "inside scoop on Twitter".  Apparently, Musk fired an engineer who offered an explanation as to why his tweets are not getting as much engagement as he would like.  Also, there is a looming FTC audit which could result in hefty fines.

 

https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/9/23593099/elon-musk-twitter-fires-engineer-declining-reach-ftc-concerns

[Sandy Bridge]

Quote

One of the company’s two remaining principal engineers offered a possible explanation for Musk’s declining reach: just under a year after the Tesla CEO made his surprise offer to buy Twitter for $44 billion, public interest in his antics is waning.

 

Two remaining principal engineers, which is now just one.  Twitter may not have the same level of title inflation as a lot of companies, but two principal engineers for a company of its size seems like an absurdly low number to me.

 

Also noteworthy is that researchers at Northeastern University, Rutgers, and Harvard have found a 9% drop in the Twitter userbase in the U.S. since Musk took over.  That might not be fatal but if it continues at that rate on a quarterly basis it eventually will be.

 

Relevant quote from The Verge:

 

Quote

On Wednesday, the company suffered one of its first major outages since Musk took over, with users being told, inexplicably, “You are over the daily limit for sending tweets.”

It turns out that an employee had inadvertently deleted data for an internal service that sets rate limits for using Twitter. The team that worked on that service left the company in November.

“As the adage goes, ‘you ship your org chart,’” said one current employee. “It’s chaos here right now, so we’re shipping chaos.”

 

 

Sounds about right, lose the entire team responsible for something and it's much easier for someone unfamiliar with it to cause it to break.  We have a similar situation where I work, where a long-inactive project is low on space and we're paranoid about deleting data from 2009 because we don't want to break Twitter break our service.  Easier to just add more storage space and leave the data there just in case.

 

Quote

[Twitter employee]: “Most of our time is dedicated to three main areas: putting out fires (mostly caused by firing the wrong people and trying to recover from that), performing impossible tasks, and ‘improving efficiency’ without clear guidelines of what the expected end results are. We mostly move from dumpster fire to dumpster fire, from my perspective.”

 

Makes my workplace sound utopian by comparison, we only have "putting out fires" as a regular occurrence!