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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

#471

I'm not sure Musk knows what he's doing, this feels like a personal vendetta. I'm also not sure he has any likelihood of succeeding in the first place, I wouldn't necessarily assume anyone is going to take him up at that price. And (quite frankly) I don't think that Musk is a very good free speech activist. I think he's regularly hypocritical about free speech and regularly engages in his own forms of censorship; I d…

Twitter only needs one change, and is as simple as this: make users confident that they will never be censored for saying something that goes against management's politics. Twitter has seriously violated this trust. That's why current management cannot save Twitter. Even if they say they will accept all speech from now on, nobody will believe them.

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

#472

I just realized that we can use the current stock price to derive a probability that Elon Musks offer will be accepted. Let `cp` be the current stock price; let `op` be the original price, before the offer was made; let `bp` be the bid price, what Musk offered; and let P be the probability that the offer is accepted. Then it must apply that `cp = op + P*(bp - op)` Meaning: The current price is the original price plus…

"It could go both ways, nobody knows how it will play out."

"Let's use math to calculate the probability!"

...

"It could go both ways, nobody knows how it will play out."

No hate, just thought it was kinda funny.

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

#473

It’s amazing to me that people really think someone like Musk would a good steward of free speech. This idea that the obscenely wealthy are going to come in and save us from ourselves, if only we can let them be in charge, is a tale as old as time, yet people keep believing it.

Didn't he also try to shut down a Twitter bot that publishes flights of his private jet?

I also recall him firing people who supported unionization and employees who talked to reporters.

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

#475

It’s amazing to me that people really think someone like Musk would a good steward of free speech. This idea that the obscenely wealthy are going to come in and save us from ourselves, if only we can let them be in charge, is a tale as old as time, yet people keep believing it.

Just a different kind of strongman political fantasy.

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

#476

It’s amazing to me that people really think someone like Musk would a good steward of free speech. This idea that the obscenely wealthy are going to come in and save us from ourselves, if only we can let them be in charge, is a tale as old as time, yet people keep believing it.

As if the current board of directors were “ourselves” when they are nothing but rich people just like musk, just a left wing political leaning.

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

#477

Someone explain to me how this is a "hostile" take over?

Basically if you don't like Musk then all this behaviors can be explained as hostile.

I certainly don't agree with this viewpoint but this is functionally what is happening.

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

#478

It’s amazing to me that people really think someone like Musk would a good steward of free speech. This idea that the obscenely wealthy are going to come in and save us from ourselves, if only we can let them be in charge, is a tale as old as time, yet people keep believing it.

The current "stewards of free speech" on Twitter appear to be from the military-industrial complex (recalling when Twitter implied "undermining faith in NATO" is a bannable offence, since confirmed, and unironically citing ASPI as an "independent source" on which accounts to ban), so I personally view an eccentric oligarch as an upgrade.

Of course, he might just continue this trend.

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

#479

Imo, he's taking responsibility. If as an individual you can deploy the most money in the world, what do you do with it? Twitter became a negative-sum game of people competing to debase themselves in service of narrative in exchange for nothing but the approval of others who had already done the same. Unlocking that negative cycle can release a lot of captive value for everyone. The best way to do that is to connect…

"Value for money, it's probably the most effective $43B anyone has spent in the US."

Yikes.

A more realistic take: this is a petty reaction on par with Peter Thiel suing Gawker into oblivion. Musk doesn't really care about Twitter's role as a tool for good, he cares about his ego.

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

#480

I can't imagine Musk can make Twitter any worse than it is. As much as I would have liked it to be a medium that elevated humanity, with some exceptions, it's served to be quite the opposite. I'd be pleased if Twitter disappeared from existence, but maybe Musk either improves it or leads to demolish it, and by no means would I suggest standing in the way.

It's easy to imagine how Twitter can be worse because you can just look at Facebook.
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