[moomin]

I’m not sure you understand what advertising cares about. They care about reach and brand value, both of which have dropped for Twitter. “Politics” is a component of brand value, but it’s got nothing to do with reach, which is falling through the floor.

But equally “politics” doesn’t explain the drip in brand value, either. The FIFA World Cup has _dreadful_ politics, advertisers don’t care because it’s still a great brand with a huge reach.

Musk is rich and connected enough to be able to ignore commercial reality for a basically unlimited amount of time, but I seem to recall you were arguing elsewhere on this thread that company owners should only care about the money a company makes.

[DeathArrow]

> “Politics” is a component of brand value, but it’s got nothing to do with reach, which is falling through the floor.

I think reach was falling because of political pressure.

> I seem to recall you were arguing elsewhere on this thread that company owners should only care about the money a company makes.

I was arguing that the goal of a company is to generate profit. That should be the goal. If business owners do that or don't, it's up to them. And I am not arguing that Musk does a good thing if he doesn't have the profit as the objective.

[moomin]

I'm not sure what mechanism you're ascribing to reach falling due to "political pressure". Who's exerting this pressure? On whom? Why am I still using the site despite being a dyed in the wool leftie?

You say a company should have the goal of generating profit. According to what moral imperative?

[DeathArrow]

>You say a company should have the goal of generating profit. According to what moral imperative?

According to market economy, not to a moral imperative.

[moomin]

Honestly think at this point I should recommend hbomberguy’s video on “Woke Brands”.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=06yy88tLWlg

I’ll appreciate his politics are way to the left of yours and he’s making this point for a left wing audience, but the TL;DR is: a lot of what you’re perceiving as politics here is literally the market economy acting to maximise profit.

His perspective is that _left-wing_ people shouldn’t be conned into thinking this is about anything other than profit maximisation.