{"id":1772396,"date":"2022-12-12T06:30:12","date_gmt":"2022-12-12T11:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1772396"},"modified":"2022-12-12T11:19:20","modified_gmt":"2022-12-12T16:19:20","slug":"charles-gasparino-twitters-dumb-business-failure-put-politics-over-profit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/charles-gasparino-twitters-dumb-business-failure-put-politics-over-profit\/","title":{"rendered":"Charles Gasparino: Twitter\u2019s Dumb Business Failure Put Politics Over Profit"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fcharles-gasparino-twitters-dumb-business-failure-put-politics-over-profit%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1772396&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><aside class=\"single__inline-module alignleft\">\n<div class=\"inline-module inline-module--columnist inline-module--author\">\n<div class=\"inline-module--author__img\">\n\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"76\" height=\"69\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Gasparino_Charles_headshot.png?w=76&#038;h=69&#038;crop=1\" class=\"attachment-nyp_columnist size-nyp_columnist\" alt=\"Charles Gasparino\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Gasparino_Charles_headshot.png?w=152 152w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Gasparino_Charles_headshot.png?w=114 114w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Gasparino_Charles_headshot.png?w=76 76w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Gasparino_Charles_headshot.png?w=38 38w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Gasparino_Charles_headshot.png 706w\"   style=\"display:none\">\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>One takeaway <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2022\/12\/10\/latest-twitter-files-reveals-how-staff-pushed-for-new-policy-to-ban-trump\/\">from the explosive \u201cTwitter Files\u201d case<\/a> is just how much time top executives at the social media platform had spent on censorship as opposed to doing their fiduciary duty and trying to make money for shareholders.<\/p>\n<p>Recall: Since 2013 Twitter had been a public company. For all the progressive yearnings for the leaders of our public companies to consider the \u201cgreater good\u201d in their corporate decision-making, their ultimate, legally bound duty is to the investor and thus to enhance the value of the enterprise.<\/p>\n<p>What we are seeing in the Twitter Files drama is that shareholders appear to be a distant second \u2014 and maybe third or fourth \u2014 in prior management\u2019s concern.<\/p>\n<p>The wasted hours trying to figure out <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2022\/12\/02\/elon-musk-releases-twitters-files-on-censorship-of-post\/\">how to deal with The Post\u2019s Hunter Biden laptop story<\/a> or whose tweets should be blackballed because they run afoul of progressive orthodoxy is so out of proportion to what\u00a0any public company\u2019s base mission must entail.\u00a0My bet: If Twitter wasn\u2019t now in private hands with Elon Musk, the shareholder lawsuits would be flying. And who knows? Musk is such a wild card, he might use the laptop imbroglio, the latest revelations of secret Twitter enemies lists, to make a run at the old guard in court.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, if your product is hate speech, you want social media platforms to impose limits. If it\u2019s drug dealing, there are laws preventing that as well. That\u2019s not what we\u2019re talking about here. The Twitter Files are about many things \u2014 censorship and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2022\/12\/10\/elon-musk-defends-fbi-but-says-old-twitter-was-democratic-party-activist-machine\/\">leftist bias<\/a> in Big Media and Big Tech \u00adbeing chief among them.<\/p>\n<p>But it\u2019s also about putting politics above Twitter\u2019s bottom line.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, you can make the case that Musk isn\u2019t doing much better than the old crew in making Twitter profitable. He\u2019s been CEO for about two months, and <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2022\/12\/08\/twitter-targeted-women-for-layoffs-after-elon-musks-takeover-lawsuit\/\">he\u2019s fired a chunk of his staff<\/a>, including people he needed to keep the site running \u2014 not smart \u2014 whom he needed to hire back.<\/p>\n<h2>Daunting hurdles<\/h2>\n<p>Even with Musk trying to squeeze left-wing bias out of the platform\u2019s censors (so they can focus on cracking down on kiddie porn and outright calls for violence), the business faces daunting hurdles. He has no idea how to create something that makes money reliably after paying $44 billion for it.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<h2>Catch up on Twitter\u2019s censorship of The Post\u2019s Hunter Biden laptop story<\/h2>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>Still, if Musk loses money, it\u2019s his own skin in the game. Twitter is now a private company answerable to no one but crazy Elon, the world\u2019s richest man. Not so before, when Twitter was public and management was legally answer\u00adable to shareholders for its actions.<\/p>\n<p>What we see from the Twitter Files is that the pre-Musk Twitter was something pretty sinister from a shareholder standpoint: A public company obsessed with the process of how to censor stuff \u2014 profits and those pesky shareholders be damned.<\/p>\n<p>The company\u2019s woke management infrastructure hated that the Hunter Biden laptop story would have made then-presidential candidate Joe Biden look bad.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/12\/gaspo-2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"701\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/gaspo-2.jpg\" alt=\"Graphic about Hunter Biden\" class=\"wp-image-24972300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/12\/gaspo-2.jpg?quality=75&#038;strip=all&#038;w=1402 1402w, https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/12\/gaspo-2.jpg?quality=75&#038;strip=all&#038;w=1051 1051w, https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/12\/gaspo-2.jpg?quality=75&#038;strip=all&#038;w=701 701w, https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/12\/gaspo-2.jpg?quality=75&#038;strip=all&#038;w=350 350w, https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/12\/gaspo-2.jpg?quality=75&#038;strip=all 1024w\" \/><\/a><figcaption>The Twitter Files reveal censorship and\u00a0a lefty bias in Big Media and Big Tech.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>How to rationalize keeping it out of the public debate became an all-consuming management \u00adeffort \u2014 as opposed to leveraging news that would spike platform traffic and ad sales. It took weeks to figure out, and just the way I suspect management wanted it, because the immediate release of The Post\u2019s reporting could have reelected every lefty\u2019s nightmare, Donald Trump.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"single__inline-module alignright\">\n\t<\/aside>\n<p>Keep in mind, if Twitter really cared about whether the contents of the laptop were authentic \u2014 from Hunter Biden\u2019s cavorting with hookers to his sleazy business dealings that would have stained his old man \u2014 there was a simple way to find out: A phone call.<\/p>\n<p>That call would have taken minutes, given Twitter\u2019s ties to the Democratic Party, and it would have yielded the answer that others received when asked about the authenticity of the laptop \u2014 a stern nondenial. Then it would have been off to the races, allowing the story to circulate and generate buzz so Twitter management could do what most decent businesspeople would have done, and what public companies are legally obligated to do: Make money off that buzz.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/12\/AP22234685407286.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/AP22234685407286.jpg\" alt=\"Technology entrepreneur and former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey\" class=\"wp-image-24972409\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/12\/AP22234685407286.jpg?quality=75&#038;strip=all&#038;w=2048 2048w, https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/12\/AP22234685407286.jpg?quality=75&#038;strip=all&#038;w=1536 1536w, https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/12\/AP22234685407286.jpg?quality=75&#038;strip=all 1024w, https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/12\/AP22234685407286.jpg?quality=75&#038;strip=all&#038;w=512 512w\" \/><\/a><figcaption>Jack Dorsey was supposed to be an innovator.<\/figcaption><figcaption><span class=\"credit\">AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>None of which happened, of course. It\u2019s why Twitter has been wrestling with red ink on the\u00a0bottom line from the minute it went public.<\/p>\n<p>The people who created Twitter, including former CEO Jack Dorsey, were supposed to be innovators. Dorsey himself split his time between Twitter and a company called Block (formerly known as Square). The mobile-payments outfit had technology that reasonably could have been integrated into Twitter\u2019s social media platform to increase revenue.<\/p>\n<h2>Trying to make a buck<\/h2>\n<p>It\u2019s along the lines of what Musk is proposing today, which means that for all of Elon\u2019s faults, he\u2019s at least trying to make a buck.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the Twitter Files show Dorsey was largely outside the loop on the full extent of censorship concerning The Post\u2019s laptop reporting. OK, but why were he and his minions apparently so out of the loop on innovating and returning value to shareholders?<\/p>\n<p>After the Twitter Files, I can only guess that these geniuses were more interested in censorship than building a profitable business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One takeaway from the explosive \u201cTwitter Files\u201d case is just how much time top executives at the social media platform had spent on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1321749,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[547],"tags":[5458,4284,7758,8117,5071,8118,5894,7116,3819,6900],"class_list":["post-1772396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-bongino-report","tag-bongino","tag-business","tag-charles","tag-dumb","tag-failure","tag-gasparino","tag-politics","tag-profit","tag-report","tag-twitters"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1772396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1772396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1772396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1321749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1772396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1772396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1772396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}