X is reportedly selling inactive usernames for $50,000 — The move is the platform’s latest attempt to raise revenue::undefined

  • Uglyhead@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Musk claimed that “vast numbers of handles were consumed by bots/trolls” and that he was “aiming to start freeing those up next month.”

    So Phony Stark is going to start taking anyone’s Twitter handle that he considers a troll and selling them.

  • Jeffool@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Seems like a good time to remind everyone just a few months ago he took two active usernames from their users without warning. Both @x and @music were in use and taken by Musk with no warning and no recompense.

    At this rate I see it as completely possible that someone buys one, and the first time they don’t update within whatever Musk feels like is “too long” that day, he takes it back with no warning.

  • lemmy689@lemmy.sdf.org
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    8 months ago

    My account might be worth $50k? Any offers here? 1/2 price fire sale here on Lemmy, only $27k!

  • Tygr@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    These aren’t 3-letter dictionary word .com domains Elon. Nobody will pay that on a service that’s devaluing by the hour.

    • MamboGator@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      The type of people who still follow Elon Musk have proven they’re stupid enough to think this is a good idea, and the number of people who preordered a cybertruck shows that plenty of them have the money to actually do it. As stupid as this all is, I’m 100% sure Elmo Fudd will make at least some money from it.

      Because this is somehow our stupid, stupid reality.

      • pensivepangolin@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I’m sorry, I know this is off-topic, but you mentioned the cyber truck…

        …have you seen how ugly and stupid the cyber truck looks? It looks nothing like it’s primo materials; it’s just an ugly stainless steel slab. It’s laughable.

  • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Sounds like the intention’s to force existing users/companies to continue using the platform, or he’ll sell their brand to someone else who could damage it.

    • DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de
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      8 months ago

      If this was the intention, it might backfire.

      If you’re not active on Twitter but you don’t want your account stolen, is it easier to become active or just use some service to post drivel every few days.

    • aleq@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      I think the DVD division finally shut down a few weeks ago. Read about it in the same breath that I learned it still existed.

  • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    How is this guy one of the richest in the world? This is on the level of used car salesman.

    • Khanzarate@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      He started rich, invested in a relatively early online bank that did decently, was CEO, got voted out of being CEO and they put someone competent in that position, where it evolved into Paypal. EBay bought PayPal for 1.5 billion dollars, and that gave Musk a stupid amount of money to throw at things, like founding spaceX and buying into Tesla very early. spaceX and Tesla have competent people.

      Honestly, as far as I can tell, his whole business life has been coming up with ideas, finding competent people to help make those ideas reality, and then getting replaced with those people, leaving him with a large amount of money and time to repeat the loop. He also seems to be a good engineer for spaceX. If he didn’t start rich, he’d be chief engineer somewhere and do a good job, but instead, he fucks up businesses and then usually gets removed. In twitter’s case, though, he bought it personally, and there’s no shareholders to kick him out, so all the business stupidity has to play out.

      • pensivepangolin@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Close!

        He doesn’t come up with anything. He just got lucky buying into other people’s companies based on their ideas.

        • Khanzarate@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Do you have a source? I admit mine aren’t for sure free of bias, but I’m pretty confident X.com, the online banking company, was actually his.

          PayPal (the service) wasn’t, and it was eventually so important that they renamed the company after the service, so he’s not doing great here, but he wasn’t completely devoid of good ideas.

          I wonder what happened to that, because he certainly is devoid of ideas now.

          • pensivepangolin@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            Okay so a cursory reading of Wikipedia (yeah I know, not the most credible) shows that you are correct about him being one of the key players in starting the online bank X.com with Peter Thiel and crew.

            I concede that point! My apologies for casting aspersions.

      • Uglyhead@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Ooo, mention the part where when wanting to start SpaceX, Muskrat travelled the world trying to buy technology, while being what must have been a complete shite in Russia, a top Russian space scientist spat on him.

        • Khanzarate@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Well-deserved as far as I can tell. Had to get an expert to come with him before they’d even consider again.

  • Godric@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Q: What’s the fastest way to make a social media company worth $20 billion?

    A: Start at $55 billion and do whatever the fuck the Muskrat is doing!

    It would genuinely funny to watch one of the largest, most socially relevant websites commit suicide in real time, of it wasn’t so sad

  • JeeBaiChow@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Pretty much expected. No one really deletes anything. It’s just marked as inactive and hidden from public view. Then the data raping can begin.