• LemmyAtem@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Twitter’s response to a request for comment regarding its Boulder offices was an automatic email with a poop emoji. Twitter CEO Elon Musk tweeted in May that this is the new auto-response for press inquiries.

    I can’t believe this is real, what an absolute clown show.

    • dope@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Valid question that can be expanded even further. Has Elon paid for… anything?! Last I heard, Google is still waiting on their payment for their cloud services. 😂

      • pete@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Wonder how much of them not just killing the servers is to avoid a monopoly lawsuit/perception.

        I’d assume if they (Twitter) were a normal non-social advertising company they’d just cut them off and be done. Granted it’s hard to know how long they haven’t paid, but my guess is basically since Elon took over.

    • Not Merritt Stone@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      If you’re bored and looking for something (un)interesting to read - you can see some of the legal filings surrounding the lawsuit for non-payment of rent on their SF headquarters on this website.

    • bouncing@partizle.com
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      1 year ago

      I’m assuming you couldn’t get around the paywall, so here you go:

      In May, Twitter’s landlord filed a complaint against its tenant Twitter, alleging that the company is behind on rent payments. The landlord is Lot 2 SBO LLC, affiliated with The John Buck Company, a Chicago-based real estate firm.

      The complaint alleges that Twitter set up a letter of credit for $968,000 that the landlord could draw upon if the company failed to pay its rent, and the lease agreement said Twitter must replenish that letter of credit within 10 days if that were to happen.

      The landlord used the letter of credit toward the unpaid rent this March, according to the complaint, but Twitter failed to restore the letter of credit within 10 days, as outlined in its lease.

      Basically yes, non-payment of rent.

  • fox@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Twitter’s response to a request for comment regarding its Boulder offices was an automatic email with a poop emoji. Twitter CEO Elon Musk tweeted in May that this is the new auto-response for press inquiries.

    Wow!

  • dantheclamman@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    If I just broke contracts left and right, my credit rating would be ruined and I’d struggle to get any more financing. Yet this guy continues to leave a longer trail of financial wreckage behind him with few consequences. Our financial system is broken

    • maynarkh@feddit.nl
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      1 year ago

      The social credit rating system is just for poor Americans. Most people in the world don’t have a credit rating, and neither do rich Americans or big companies.

    • raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      It’s odd because a common argument I saw for why the Twitter board/ceo was ethically obligated to sell the company to Musk in the first place was to protect the value for shareholders. The idea being that if the board and CEO weren’t doing everything they possibly could to maximize profits at any opportunity, they would open themselves to lawsuits.

      It’s an argument we see a lot when companies make some dubious sale or take some action that increases profits at the cost of consumers and workers. That the companies hands are tied and profit always goes above ethics, that it’s just the way of the world.

      But if that’s the case, Musk should be getting sued into the ground by now as you say. It seems like a rule that gets applied very selectively.

      • G0ldenSp00n@lemmy.jacaranda.club
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        1 year ago

        Well the sale took twitter private, so Elon is no longer beholdent to share holders. Don’t get me wrong, he is an idiot and definitely deserves this downfall, but he can’t be sued by the shareholders since twitter is now privately owned.

          • argv_minus_one@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            He took it private. Bought out all of the shareholders. It’s now all his, to ruin as he pleases.

            That’s why he tried so hard to get out of the purchase, by the way. Buying out all of the Twitter shareholders was staggeringly expensive, even by billionaire standards.

      • marco@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Shareholders are only beholden to the value of their shares. The offer was simply too good to pass.

        Now the muskrat is the only shareholder and apparently he’s happier without decorum.

          • NattyNatty2x4@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            The banks don’t care how much Twitter is specifically worth, just that they get their money from somewhere. They’ll happily find Musk burning a company down if they’re also confident that he’ll be able to pay off his loans from somewhere else

      • ArtZuron@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        IIRC, this toxic economic culture was started when Ford decided to pay their employees way more than their competitors, and they were still making bank and still the best in the market. Then a competitor sued them to stop them from paying their employees so well, because the competitors couldn’t (ie wouldn’t) compete with that.

        Ford lost the lawsuit on the grounds that they were legally obligated to wring as much money out of their business to earn their shareholders and investors dividends. By paying their employees more, they weren’t paying their investors more. Or some other zero-sum-game nonsense.

      • cyd@vlemmy.net
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        1 year ago

        Public companies have a duty to protect value for their shareholders, among other obligations. This is actually not an unreasonable rule of thumb, because public companies have a multitude of owners (the shareholders) who can’t always be polled on what the company should do, but one thing they have in common is that they want their investment to make money.

        Private companies can do whatever the owner wants. In Twitter’s case, the only other party with standing to sue Musk for destruction of shareholder value is the Saudi sovereign wealth fund (Kingdom Holdings), which declined to relinquish its stake when Musk took Twitter private. The Saudis probably don’t want to raise a public stink (i) it’s a loss of face, and (ii) they have more money than they know what to do with, anyway.

    • Hirom@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      A paywall can be a fair way for publishers to get subscribers and revenue.

      Here it’s less fair since it’s an anti-adblock paywall that specifically targets user who obect to targeted advertising. It’s trying to pressure readers into accepting tracking by advertisers.

      • magnetosphere @beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I agree that paywalls can be fair, and I appreciate your additional analysis of the situation. I’m not okay with being tracked.

  • Nooch@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Elon’s next tweet: “Squatters Rights! Very Interesting!! We are looking into it!!”

  • Tkltangent@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’m curious how Twitter is still running. How can the servers stay up as the support structure rots around them…

    • Rakn@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      I mean usually if these systems are well architected and have enough head room they will just continue to run. It becomes problematic if you introduce change and don’t know them well. Change is the biggest factor leading to incidents.

    • maynarkh@feddit.nl
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      1 year ago

      Twitter servers are run by Google in Google datacenters. If Twitter just ceased to exist but would continue to mostly pay Google, it would stay up and running.

  • Ralphensnitch@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    So everyone has to return to office, but they didn’t pay the bills for said office? This sounds about right for today’s Twitter. What an awful place to work now.