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Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

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Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#381

Post by peoplefromibiza »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #105

From observing various internet forums, including this one, I noticed that people from the "first world" countries don't know the value of free speech and often take it for granted. Sometimes even coming to such views as "free speech is dangerous" and that "we should limit free speech" (by blocking the views I don't like). Understand this: limits on free speech are far more dangerous to society than allowing fringe e…

> it all started with limits on the freedom of speech.

Twitter has nothing to do with freedom of speech though.

Or, to put it in a non-ambiguous way, Twitter is about freedom of speech as much as Coca-Cola is about "right to food, and its variations" [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_food

Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#383

Post by yabatopia »

Let's ignore personality and societal issues for a moment and look at the value proposition. The 'best and final offer' of $54.20 per share is just too low to be acceptable for major investors.

Just over year ago, Twitter shares traded at about $70 per share. Musk's offer is about 25% lower than last years peak. There's no reason to assume Twitter shares can't reach the same levels ever again, nothing much has changed fundamentally over a year.

Musk's offer is a cash only offer. $43 billion is a lot of cash. That's a lot of Tesla shares to sell, or massive loan. If Musk thinks Twitter is that valuable to take such risks, current major investors will probably want to unlock that value themselves.

I think the takeover offer is just as believable as last week's announcement that Musk was joining the Twitter board.

Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#384

Post by bitwize »

This is like Warren Buffett's hostile takeover of Berkshire Hathaway (then a failing textile company) because their CEO made him assmad, that ultimately just prevented him from becoming even more disgustingly rich.

Musk is gonna be left with a pile of worthless, shit stock. Of course once one of the streaming services releases a docu-drama about Twitter's rise and fall (like they did for Theranos, Uber, and WeWork), Musk can charge decent money to play himself.

Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#385

Post by petilon »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #105

From observing various internet forums, including this one, I noticed that people from the "first world" countries don't know the value of free speech and often take it for granted. Sometimes even coming to such views as "free speech is dangerous" and that "we should limit free speech" (by blocking the views I don't like). Understand this: limits on free speech are far more dangerous to society than allowing fringe e…

I think a distinction should be made between restrictions (on speech) by government, and restrictions by private entities. The former is dangerous, the latter is necessary.

Societal attitudes towards free speech have changed a lot in recent times. I believe this is related to technological advancement and the rise of social media. The advent of social media has made it too easy to spread dangerous levels of hate and false information online. Malicious individuals and groups now have the power to reach hundreds of millions instantly, at no cost to themselves. It started off innocently enough, with cat videos uploaded to YouTube, but soon extremists were taking advantage of social media for radicalization purposes, adversarial nations were spreading fake news to influence who gets elected, and others were even live-streaming mass murders. This has caused an upheaval in attitudes towards free speech. Enough is enough! There needs to be limits. Communities started imposing limits to free speech. Society — as opposed to governments — have decided that some censorship is in order. This is a natural evolution of societal norms. This particular evolution was a reaction to the excesses and abuses seen in social media. Some censorship, by private parties such as Twitter, as opposed to absolute free speech, will be the new normal.

We live in a new world; the old norms no longer apply.

Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#386

Post by jelder »

542458 wrote: post #126

As somebody from the first world who has had the experience of moderating Internet forums… free speech in the sense of “the government generally shouldn’t control people’s speech, with limited exceptions” is good and necessary. Free speech in the sense of “everybody should be forced to platform every idea” is silly IMO. Left alone user content rapidly devolves into the most low-effort salient content - flame wars, po…

Not enough people are aware of the Paradox of Tolerance:

"The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly paradoxical idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#387

Post by photochemsyn »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #12

Interesting if he manages to take over twitter. For me Twitter has become full of people marketing themselves with lists, tweets that don't make sense out of context, replies full of bile or inane comments and animated gifs. But I'm not convinced Musk's opinions of what is good for twitter is aligned with other content creators and consumers. Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX, Boring Company have clear goals - twitter is quite d…

"Twitterized" - means you can no longer absorb anything but simple concepts that can be delivered in a few lines, due to too much time spent on Twitter. To quote some early 20th century propaganda monkey, "The essence of propaganda is to take a complex subject, reduce it to a simple concept that a small child can understand, and then repeat, repeat, repeat."

That's what Twitter is ideal for, and that's what political and media types use it for. Add in siloed echo chambers like Facebook groups and Reddit subreddits... I urge everyone to flush it all down the toilet.

Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#388

Post by jiveturkey42 »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #369

This is the coolest mid-life crisis purchase I've ever seen. I hope he enjoys it and has some fun from the boring office work of rockets, tunnels, robots, AI, and of course bullet-proof trucks.

I agree!

I'm shocked to see a fun and positive comment on HN and not sarcasm, irony, or the endless steam of 'what I think the world's must successful man should do'

Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#390

Post by metalliqaz »

Twitter has immense influence on the zeitgeist than any other single media property. For a person like Musk, $43B is an investment that would pay for itself in short order by the various kinds of market manipulation he could engage in. He has cheated so many times without consequence. Why not take it to the next level? Pump and dump, favorable sentiment for his companies, signal boosting his pocket politicians, and so on. Truly frightening.
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