Amazon made almost no profits for many many years others too. They follow a reinvest or expansion strategy and if investors believe it the stock goes up. It is not encouraging that Twitter lost 80% of its value under Musk's leadership and not something pne wants for the US Government which also does not work on a for profit basis. Ofcourse Musk fakes that he doesn't know that and promotes his unsubstantiated wins stories daily.

Amazon offered very obviously valuable and profitable services. I think we're starting to realize ad-based monetization is not how to maintain a billion dollar corporation anymore. I wouldn't have much aspects for Twitter even if Musk never took over. But he sure did accelerate things.

>ad-based monetization is not how to maintain a billion dollar corporation anymore.

Online ad revenue has been growing, 15% per year recently. Huge growth. That includes legacy networks like (decrepit) Facebook, which is seeing double digit growth, and the short form video frontier is growing considerably faster and constantly pushing out new ad/partnership models and is very much a strong growth industry in an of itself.

Ad revenue is more than sufficient to sustain a billion dollar corporation. It can and does sustain trillion dollar corporations, and the industry is currently in a strong growth phase with a lot of obvious green fields for innovation.

You seem to miss the point.

Twitter was an imperfect yet functional website before Elon. Elon fired most of the staff. Twitter then continued to be an imperfect yet functional website.

Hell, I remember ten years of HN saying "WTF does Twitter need so many people for??", and then those same people said "OMG Elon is insane to fire so many people!!".

I don't know what that means as far as a comparison to a government institution.

Twitter could be massively profitable, or woefully unprofitable ... it has no impact on anyone outside investors.

Many people are more concerned about the messenger than the message. They’ll flip-flop their opinions solely based on who is doing the bidding.

A glaring recent example. If Biden had taken action like Trump has to negotiate with Russia to stop the Ukraine war, would the Democrats be screaming that Biden is a “Putin apologist”?

If Barrack Obama made statements about deporting undocumented immigrants (which he did), Democrats fall largely silent. If Trump makes similar statements, same Democrats scream fascism, racism, and Nazi/white supremacy.

Not just the act matters. The rhetoric used by the messenger matters to.

Sure, rhetoric matters for style points, but the act supersedes stylish rhetoric. I’ll take proper action with clumsy rhetoric over inaction or improper action backed up with eloquent rhetoric, which is what most politicians provide.

Twitter’s cash flow has doubled: https://www.teslarati.com/elon-musk-x-doubled-ebitda-since-2...

This is an incorrect statement. Twitter’s revenue halved but its expenses were cut as well meaning its EBITDA doubled. The most likely conclusion on cash flow is that it went down actually, probably by a half in line with revenue (since revenue is a sign of flow in).

This is not the stunning retort to criticisms of Elon’s “fire them all” approach that some imagine it to be. It basically says “we cut expenses by 75% and only lost half our business.” Which half of the US government are you willing to lose, and are you sure you’re cutting the right 75% to lose the targeted half? Which half of the subjects that we fund R&D for are you willing to lose?

https://www.bankrate.com/investing/ebitda/ (“Some investors and analysts use EBITDA to assess the operating performance of a business or as a broad measure of its cash flow.”)

Increasing EBITDA by downscaling the business and severely cutting expenses is a common approach when turning around an unprofitable company.

https://altline.sobanco.com/ebitda-vs-cash-flow/ ("EBITDA and cash flow are both important financial metrics, but they serve different purposes and provide different insights into a company’s financial health.")

We can quote secondary sources back at each other all day, but it's somewhat pointless because the truth is what I said already: EBITDA and revenue are merely indicators for cash flow, not synonyms. You used the wrong words dude.

I also noticed you only replied on a pedantic point while leaving the substantive questions on which half of the government and research funding you'd like to see gone (and how these cuts target that half) as an exercise for the reader.

I think it’s common for people to refer to “cash flow” (without referring to OCF or FCF or whatever specifically ) when they mean EBITDA, but I’m happy to be wrong about that. I’m not a financial analyst. But as you acknowledge, EBITDA is an indicator of cash flow. Is there a difference between the two measures that you think is relevant to X? X is increasing how much money they’re making right?

I'm glad we agree that cash flow is not the same as EBITDA.

The question we are talking about is whether Twitter makes more money now versus before Musk's take over. If "makes more money" means revenue, then the answer is a definitive no, it does not make more money now. If "makes more money" means profit, then the answer is that we don't know but probably not because profit is found after ITDA (hence the B in EBITDA) and we know the ITDA is substantial for Twitter given how it was acquired.

So yes there is a difference between cash flow and EBITDA that is germane here, and the difference is that cash flow doesn't help us answer the question that we are asking while the one piece of information that we do have (revenue) tells us the opposite of the answer you're trying to imply.

Elons own statements at his meetings indicates otherwise.

The linked article, which is relying on WSJ reporting, says EBITDA increased from $682 million to $1.25 billion.

Elons own description of his business is that they’re only just profitable some quarters.

Let alone that we’re talking about comparing an advertiser based social network to a government institution.