The Fall Of Twitter (Bluesky lists ahoy)

I agree with what others have said on the broader point (that those spreading false information, especially dangerous information should be deplatformed from social media - including lying about election results), I also think it is worth saying on this particular point that "illegal activity" is not as simple to define as you make out here. Here in the UK, we do have laws against what you can and can't say. The US is much more "free" with its free speech laws.

For example, Westbro Baptist Church (the church that pickets military funerals with anti-LGBTQ and racist slogans), have had court rulings in the US overturned in their favour as their protests are considered protected speech. Here in the UK though, they have been banned entry as their protests would be considered to use hate speech. I'm sure there are other countries where other speech would be considered illegal, whereas here in the UK it would be fine.

Presumably if we are following rules of everything fine as long as it isn't illegal, Twitter would be just following what would be illegal in the US (so, basically nothing).

I love Twitter, it’s brilliant

Hopefully it won’t change under the Cunt’s ownership

I still remember Tom being a welcoming face on Myspace.

TweetGeek

Well, Bloomberg has said that he plans to reverse lifetime bans. Which will make Parler worth about 3p.

Also, Tesla has strong links with China. So it will be interesting to see what the Chinese government thinks about a free speech warrior that also wants to do business with them.

I can imagine there'll be a lot of

"No, not that sort of free speech. Yay for communism"


I predict a lot of whataboutery and mental gymnastics, to just say he only wants money and it's a vanity project

I know! But he's trying to present as one, and that's going to be tough if the CCP are asking him to take down "Democracy for Hong Kong!" tweets.

That'd be funny, but you can bet your life it'd be the people who have loaned the money and the leveraging that'll take the brunt.

I suspect that between the current recession and the other car manufacturers catching up with the battery tech (and that's already been happening, the new Porsches and Mercs apparently rival/beat the Teslas and are far superior as vehicles) that the value of that stock will plummet from its currently massively inflated value (which is all based on market possibilities and not on concrete things like car sales) and he'll be keen to sell off any assets he can so that he can continute to appear to be incredibly rich. I wonder how much actual cash he has, rather than notional stock value?

According to SMMT, they have a 2% market share in the UK for 2022.

For example, BMW have 6.59%, Kia have 6.88%. They were also outsold by brands such as MG, Mini and Skoda.

So comparatively not that many, but they don't sell ICE vehicles so they're going to sell less anyway. I think their star is probably at its apex and it may stay there for now, but their build quality and no longer being the only game in town (plus, being used as the stock plaything of a nutjob) isn't going to help them. I imagine they won't be so hugely valued in say, 5 years - although I'm not an expert on these things.

Edit:

Worldwide figures are a bit harder to accurately get hold of, but Tesla claim they delivered 343,000 new vehicles worldwide in Q3 2022. Comparatively, Mercedes (who he likes to think are his closest competitors) delivered 517,800 and BMW (who are the market leader in that sector) 587,795.

It's worth noting that the vast majority of those numbers will not be sales, but leases, too. Most of the vehicles of other manufacturers have better resale values as 2nd hand Teslas aren't nearly so highly prized as some other marques.

All (well most) the value in Tesla is supposed to be in the self driving tech. Not the cars themselves. I have US relocated friend who rattles on about self driving being the bees knees / the future. I just don't see it hardly working on UK roads. And anyway, car centric cities and design really need to disappear. US cities are awful.

Except their self driving tech has become worse over time, not better. They've removed radars from their cars, and disabled the radars of cars that were in people's cars that already had them. So they've reduced the capability of cars that people have already paid for.

Yeah I agree, the technology barely works on motorways, where the rules are more straightforward, but there's too many variables on a normal road.

I would love to see self driving cars, and a shift away from personal car ownership. Can't see that happening in my lifetime though, and certainly not in the US.