[scythe]

Twitter would need a lot of subscriptions to justify a $44B valuation on user revenue alone. You'd need 16 million subscribers paying $8/mo each just to cover operating expenses. Maybe Elon can bring opex down (firing everyone is a start, I guess?); maybe it is just a vanity purchase after all, but there is a reason that the advertising model is so dominant in social media, and so hard to avoid. Reddit has done everything it can to grow direct user revenue for years now and it's still basically an ad company.