Elon damaged Twitter's reputation when he started his "hardcore" work ethic of summary firing people, refusing to honor contracts and not pay bills.
In any other company, this would be a nothing-burger. Account managers are always withholding payments from vendors when they feel the vendor did not deliver the claimed services, or when a contract negotiation is in progress. Its incredibly common.
But now with Twitter, anything that can barely fit the narrative of "Twitter can't pay their bills" becomes a news item. And people eat it up because everyone wants to see Elon fail (mostly because he seems to be a jerk).
This is why most company executives try to have a very low profile. If you're boring, you don't make the news.
AWS and GC don't turn them off because they know they will eventually get paid. No reason to stop Twitter from continuing to rack up charges.
Years ago I wrote software for a big cell service provider, and (in my young naiveté haha) wondered why we didn't shut people off who didn't pay their bill (this was before pre-paid). The answer was the same, keep them racking up charges. If it got to a certain threshold, get them to pay a minimum, but do everything we could to never shut them off.
I don't know if you ever experimented with not paying an AWS bill. If you haven't: they will let you run your services and accrue new charges as if nothing happened. It's a well thought-out strategy.
Renegotiating contracts isn’t an abnormal thing. I’ve seen it 1000 times in the industry I work in. But just refusing to pay your existing bills is someone only a real prick does. You do this in the construction industry and you will be blackballed so hard.
I think twitter can do it because its big enough. I am guessing big companies in all industries can do this, whether they do probably is more based on who is leading the company.
> I think twitter can do it because its big enough.
This depends on what you mean by "it". If you mean "refuse to pay bill" then everyone can do that, no matter for how small or big. If you mean "refuse to pay the bill and get away with it" we are yet to see if that is the case with twitter even. Sure, their account was not terminated immediately. But that doesn't mean there are no adverse consequences which can catch up with them eventually.
In any other company, this would be a nothing-burger. Account managers are always withholding payments from vendors when they feel the vendor did not deliver the claimed services, or when a contract negotiation is in progress. Its incredibly common.
But now with Twitter, anything that can barely fit the narrative of "Twitter can't pay their bills" becomes a news item. And people eat it up because everyone wants to see Elon fail (mostly because he seems to be a jerk).
This is why most company executives try to have a very low profile. If you're boring, you don't make the news.