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Now I'm confused. I thought the topic of discussion was partisan opposition to Musk. There's other reasons to dislike him (his recent apparent incompetence running Twitter being the most salient at the moment). But a lot of the people pre-ordering electric cars are likely be to Democratic partisans, and it makes sense they would want to distance themselves from a brand that suddenly has much more visible ties to the Republican party.
Perhaps there was some miscommunication or misunderstanding - I thought the topic of discussion was still about why Musk generally gets a negative reception, and was of the impression that this was a continuation of that discussion.
Define "incompetence". The point of Musk's purchase was always sold as making Twitter function properly as a digital public square where people should be free to speak their minds. I would say the initial loss of users is to be expected, because Twitter's slant prior to Musk's acquisition would clearly have an effect on the user base - these users came to Twitter for a specific type of forum, and now that they're expecting that the focus of the platform might shift it's likely to attract a different base than it did before.
I also think that many of the issues Twitter is facing at the moment are fuelled by the disproportionately negative reporting on the topic of Musk, driven by the motivations I stated in my prior comment. This is basically sowing distrust and apprehension about a target, then claiming that the downstream effects of that negative reporting represents a failure on the part of the target. There's also the fact that orgs actually pressured advertisers to pause spending on Twitter in the wake of Musk's acquisition. Suffice to say that it's kind of hard for me to see all the issues as being his fault.
I'm actually not so sure if this holds for Tesla. "Surveys by research firm Morning Consult show that in January about 22% of Democrats were considering buying a Tesla, while 17% of Republicans were looking to purchase one. And that gap has been closing — Republican consideration of buying a Tesla has risen about 3 percentage points just since December’s survey. And Republicans are slightly more likely to trust the Tesla brand, 27% compared to 25% among Democrats. ... Data from Strategic Vision, which has surveyed hundreds of thousands of car buyers, shows that since 2019, 38% of Tesla buyers have identified themselves as Democrats, and 30% have said they’re Republicans."
None of this suggests a particularly Democrat-slanted customer base. The reason for the lack of political slant is because Tesla buyers are not primarily motivated by climate change concerns, rather it's performance and styling that concerns them.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/03/cars/tesla-buyer-politics/index.html
Fair. There's a lot of people commenting on his apparent incompetence like having destroyed the verification system (the checkmark now means "is really who their username says they are or paid Twitter $8"). Whether that actually will lead to Twitter being less profitable in whatever timeframe you want to give him remains to be seen.
That surprises me. Thanks for the info.
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