[waltbosz]

I like to imagine (with my overactive imagination) that Elon Musk knows exactly what he is going to do with Twitter. I don't think he would be able to do all the things he does if he didn't strategize extensively for every one of his projects.

My _crazy off-the-wall_ theory is that his mid-level plan is to "bring back AOL". That is, to turn Twitter into a paywalled garden like AOL was back in the 1990s before AOL users could access the outside Internet.

Charging a Twitter subscription would cause a massive shed of users, but where will they go to? Charging money would also keep out most of the bad actors. You would have to do a balancing act of how to ensure there are remaining Twitter users left to keep the ecosystem healthy. It's crazy to think about, who would pay for Twitter?

I'm not accountant enough to do the math to calculate the time until monetary payback. But if a radical transformation of Twitter is the goal, then Musk is playing a long game where dollars aren't the first priority.

It would also create a reason to buy StarLink in markets where FIOS/etc is already cheaper, sales pitch: "buy StarLink and get a free Twitter subscription"