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Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors

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Re: Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors

#791
post #678

I think people are really over-analyzing this move. I think it's motivated by prestige, not money, nor is free speech the heart of the matter. Twitter is a stagnant company. They have thousands of engineers that in the span of a decade don't seem to produce much at all, nothing visible or memorable anyway. Long-lasting Twitter problems (culture, spam, algorithm issues) never seem addressed. User growth is stagnating…

>Long-lasting Twitter problems (culture, spam, algorithm issues) ...

don't see how an edit button will change any of that!

Re: Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors

#792
post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand. What is the relevance of this line?

The board seat was granted in tandem with a guarantee from Musk that he will limit the number of voting shares he amasses. I don’t think it’s an uncommon arrangement when an outside investor joins the board.

It's a standard clause for anyone getting into any relationship with a company. Your own employee agreement probably has a similar one.

Ultimately if he does want to buy more he can resign from the board with one Tweet.

Re: Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors

#793

"For so long as Mr. Musk is serving on the Board and for 90 days thereafter, Mr. Musk will not, either alone or as a member of a group, become the beneficial owner of more than 14.9% of the Company’s common stock outstanding at such time, including for these purposes economic exposure through derivative securities, swaps, or hedging transactions." This is the second line in the linked filing, and something a number o…

Someone fill me in here: TWTR is a NYSE traded stock. What, hypothetically, would prevent someone from just paying the market price for whatever percent of Twitter's stock they care to buy, such that they would have to agree to these terms?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takeover#Hostile

Re: Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors

#794
post #678

I think people are really over-analyzing this move. I think it's motivated by prestige, not money, nor is free speech the heart of the matter. Twitter is a stagnant company. They have thousands of engineers that in the span of a decade don't seem to produce much at all, nothing visible or memorable anyway. Long-lasting Twitter problems (culture, spam, algorithm issues) never seem addressed. User growth is stagnating…

He is a board member, not the CEO/COO. He can demand changes, but how will they magically get done?

Re: Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors

#796

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with you, at the same time if Twitter as a company isn't really doing much, why do they have thousands of developers on staff? I don't think there's anything wrong with being a stable, profitable company, but logically it should also come with a whole lot of layoffs.

> at the same time if Twitter as a company isn't really doing much, why do they have thousands of developers on staff? ...to keep the app running? New devices, new standards, a lot of things change that you need devs to keep up with. Also, what's up with people saying twitter is stagnant? They've added Spaces, Twitter Blue and Crypto Profile Pictures - all 3 massive features added to their product. They're all trash,…

FWIW, I have a close friend who worked on Twitter's "Health" team whose job at one point was building mini games for the support/moderation staff to play during company mandated breaks in between looking at racist tweets and CP. He coasted for a while then moved onto a job with more work.

This is entirely anecdotal, but from the little I know from his couple months there, Twitter has no idea what to do with the huge amount of engineers they employ. This is by no means an endorsement of Musk, but the company could use some new direction I think.

Re: Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors

#797
post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange that both of you would say that. He's a ruthless result-driven executive that doesn't accept excuses. If it's at all impossible for something to get done, he'll get it done. I'm not at all a fan of him, but his power is in execution. A vision is worthless.

yeah, The Boring Company is absolutely killing it. I use that thing every day

Why are you gambling so much in Vegas?

Re: Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors

#798

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with you, at the same time if Twitter as a company isn't really doing much, why do they have thousands of developers on staff? I don't think there's anything wrong with being a stable, profitable company, but logically it should also come with a whole lot of layoffs.

> at the same time if Twitter as a company isn't really doing much, why do they have thousands of developers on staff? ...to keep the app running? New devices, new standards, a lot of things change that you need devs to keep up with. Also, what's up with people saying twitter is stagnant? They've added Spaces, Twitter Blue and Crypto Profile Pictures - all 3 massive features added to their product. They're all trash,…

Spaces is amazing. It was great listening Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador talk while they were making history by voting Bitcoin to be adopted as legal tender in the country. He was just looking at his Twitter feed at that time, and was interested in what people are talking about the bill in spaces.

I know he's controversial, but I wish more politicians would make themselves more accessible through Twitter (and I'm not a Trump fan, I just think he used it more effectively than other politicians).

Re: Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors

#799
post #770

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 217 million active daily users? It is "only" $~80 million in the US, I'd love to know how a quarter of the US population using it daily represents an insignificant user base.

> I'd love to know how a quarter of the US population using it daily represents an insignificant user base I'd love to know which variant of the English language treats "all" as analogous to not "insignificant".

Near as I have ever seen, most English speakers actually do mean something more like that when they say "all": maybe it would be good to mentally model it as "it feels as if it would be hard to choose at random and not find this statement to be true".

Re: Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors

#800
post #771

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see both white nationalism and civil rights as political antipatterns? What do you consider a healthy political environment? Complete stagnation where people who got theirs are OK but no one else can ever rise to that level? Or do you mean something different by "woke" than its usual meaning of "aware of inequities and desiring to fix them"? Edit: I see the free speech proponents are here to try to make my commen…

Woke is a disparaging term used to refer to people espousing broadly left wing “progressive” ideologies, who are obsessed with issues affecting minorities and “inclusion”, yet fail to recognize that their intolerance and refusal to respect differing views are utterly exclusionary.

So what you're saying here is that helping minorities and making them equal members of society is a political antipattern if opponents of civil rights don't like when you do it? I don't see how that's an antipattern. If that's what you mean, it's basically just saying "A healthy political landscape is one where civil rights are never granted to anyone," which doesn't sound healthy at all.

As a side note, I don't think there are very many people who are unaware that being intolerant of bigotry is exclusionary toward overt bigots. Can you give an example of someone you think has this attitude but doesn't realize that it excludes the people they would consider bigots?

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