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Elon has decided not to join our board

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Re: Elon has decided not to join our board

#101
post #25
post #9

A very odd set of events and no explanation regarding Elon's change of mind. A pessimist would think that Elon has decided to go for a "hostile" takeover since he is no longer bound by the percentage holding cap. An optimistic would think that Elon had enough self-awareness to realize it would be an overall distraction for Twitter with little benefit. It amuses me more than it should that the CEO of Twitter has poste…

> A very odd set of events and no explanation regarding Elon's change of mind. I don't know about the regulatory guidelines which would or would not have barred Elon from exercising any sort of control in the board, but my sources from Twitter are telling me that folks were not happy about the prospect of Elon wanting to change Twitter to be in his image and it's likely this that the higher-ups communicated to Musk a…

>> hence the 'I believe this is for the best' affirmation line from Agrawal himself

He also says in the previous paragraph that they [had?] believed that having Musk on the board would "be the best path forward." It's sort of a Rorschach test. You could divine either opinion you wanted from the post.

Re: Elon has decided not to join our board

#102

Maybe he was going to fail the background check? But that is curious.

You don't "fail" a background check at that level. They get whatever info is in it and decide on what to do about it, I guess. But the decision as to whether to put a 9% shareholder on the board or not is clearly not going to be left to random bureaucratic process.

And let's be honest: if the world's richest man had dirt in his past that a mere "background check" would turn up, we'd clearly already know about it.

Re: Elon has decided not to join our board

#103
post #62

Matt Levine on point: Twitter’s relatively new chief executive officer, Parag Agrawal: Welcome, Mr. Musk. We’re so glad that you are our biggest shareholder. We have prepared a presentation showing how we are executing on our strategy of being more technically nimble, building new products and growing revenue and active users. Here on slide 1 you can see— Elon Musk: Make the font bigger when I tweet. Agrawal: What? M…

And everyone's profile picture needs to be the same as mine.

No of course not. Everyone should have the same profile picture, except his which is giant and flashy so you can see it prominently.

Re: Elon has decided not to join our board

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The part I don't get: why is Elon still tweeting ideas for improving Twitter and shaking things up? That is weird, trolling doesn't seem like Elon's thing at all.

Where have you been? The man lives to troll.

I read parent as sarcasm.

Re: Elon has decided not to join our board

#105

This particular instance aside, what possible sane regulatory changes could discourage this sort of manipulation? Modern social media is poking holes in a system that reacts too slowly and too inconsistently when questionable actors stir the pot. The only thing I can think of is a slower exchange, where trades happen on the order of days, or better yet weeks or months, where this sort of thing becomes a wash. I have…

Enforcement is what discourages manipulation. The SEC could make a case that Elon intentionally manipulated the stock, (particularly with his late and then mis-filing of the 13G and 13D), that he then announced he was going to join the board only to then reverse only a few days later. The final key piece of evidence will be any further trading activity; has he already begun to sell his stake? If so it doesn't look good. They can see his trading activity without any public disclosures. Given his history of manipulating Tesla stock via Twitter, and violation of the settlement, and then the recent shenanigans around his selling stock to pay for taxes, I'm sure they're already taking a close look at him.

Re: Elon has decided not to join our board

#106
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An optimistic would think that Elon had enough self-awareness to realize it would be an overall distraction for Twitter with little benefit. Assuming Musk did take over Twitter, he wouldn't need to be much of a distraction. He could dictate a few rules (don't moderate Twitter, don't ban anyone, etc.) and then leave the company to function as it did before. I think what he doesn't realize is that reducing moderation…

I don't think Musk's ideas about free speech extend to allowing unfettered botting.

I wonder whether he's really thought about the technical ramifications, though. Even an edit button would have pretty major consequences and things could get into the weeds pretty fast if you had to start diffing edits to see who retweeted what at which point. This might be the kind of thing that would be a major distraction for Musk if he started to put his engineering mind to it, rather than just making a few snarky quips and letting people make of them what they will.

Re: Elon has decided not to join our board

#108
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A very odd set of events and no explanation regarding Elon's change of mind. I don't know about the regulatory guidelines which would or would not have barred Elon from exercising any sort of control in the board, but my sources from Twitter are telling me that folks were not happy about the prospect of Elon wanting to change Twitter to be in his image and it's likely this that the higher-ups communicated to Musk a…

>> hence the 'I believe this is for the best' affirmation line from Agrawal himself He also says in the previous paragraph that they [had?] believed that having Musk on the board would "be the best path forward." It's sort of a Rorschach test. You could divine either opinion you wanted from the post.

The CEO's job, much like a politician's, often involves giving out statements that are a series of Rorschach tests. That's what you do to appease and assuage multiple parties simultaneously.

Re: Elon has decided not to join our board

#109
post #102

Maybe he was going to fail the background check? But that is curious.

You don't "fail" a background check at that level. They get whatever info is in it and decide on what to do about it, I guess. But the decision as to whether to put a 9% shareholder on the board or not is clearly not going to be left to random bureaucratic process. And let's be honest: if the world's richest man had dirt in his past that a mere "background check" would turn up, we'd clearly already know about it.

The "dirt" is that Elon is a massive troll who flaunts SEC regulations on the regular.

Re: Elon has decided not to join our board

#110

It’s funny that the first paragraph of the letter says they believed it was best for Elon to join the board. Then the second paragraph says that Elon declined to join the board and they believe it was also for the best.

Joining the board "the best path forward", whereas not joining was "the best". From this we can deduce that the destination of the "the best path forward" was for him to leave the board ("the best").

Thank you for providing a total ordering for the algebra of press releases.
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