At the moment, it looks like Twitter is going to crash and burn. What'll be the fallout?

I don't know enough about the deal to understand possible implications for Musk's other ventures, but obv. tsla stock has taken a hit.

Given the recent announcements about dubious terminations and forced return to office for remaining employees, we're probably looking at protracted lawsuits.

The layoffs combined with asinine feature rollouts have probably greatly increased the risk of a massive security breach, with unforeseeable consequences (leaks of sensitive personal info from both Twitter and other sites, identity theft, etc). Several very senior employees have reportedly resigned and lawyered up in anticipation of such breaches.

Dissidents in totalitarian countries—and their collaborators abroad—are probably at greater risk of being identified and retaliated against.

Academics in my network seem to have migrated en masse to Mastodon, which means I'm not being exposed to as many interesting papers and ideas, and I expect it'll be a long while before young academics are able to rebuild a comparable global academic forum.

Biden has indicated that there may be reason for the govt to look into this mess.