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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

#711

Post by bena »

dgudkov wrote: post #661

I bet some of those who advocated "it's a private company, it can deplatform whoever it wants" are probably re-thinking their stance on deplatforming from a major social media.

It seems to me that you are implying that the people who previously defended twitter's decisions to ban certain public features may not fare so well under a regime managed by Elon Musk.

Everything that follows is based on that inference.

There are two major possibilities here. Either Musk lets twitter continue much in the same manner as it operates today. In which case, nothing really changes.

Musk operates twitter as his personal bullhorn, promoting beneficial tweets and removing tweets that are critical of him, his companies, his ideals, whatever. All of which would be his right to do. However, all actions have consequences.

Twitter isn't twitter because it was ordained from on high as the service to spit hot takes in 140 characters or less. Twitter is twitter because of everything twitter did. From the initial concept, to the pivoting to whatever the hell "micro-blogging" is, to letting people say mostly whatever, to the various standards they've implemented over the years. All of that makes twitter what it is.

If twitter just becomes "Elon Musk's dream platform where he can shit post all day and no one can say shit to him", that's entirely something else. Most of the people left on twitter would be Musk and people who want to follow him.

Like how the crowd shifted from Slashdot to Digg to reddit. From Friendster to MySpace to Facebook. Something will come along and supplant twitter.

So, I believe the people who "advocated "it's a private company, it can deplatform whoever it wants"" are going to be fine with their stance. Because if Musk changes twitter into a shithole, no one is going to want to stay regardless.

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

#712

Post by another_devy »

bikamonki wrote: post #644

I am not sure Elon can fix Twitter b/c I am not sure Social Networks can be fixed at all.

Social networks in essence mirrors the society so its hard to run a company without judging and censoring free speech if comany doesn't want to be something like 4chan. The bigger problem arises when this censoring and controlling starts affecting democratic processes, there are other bad side effects too. Maybe there should not be any Social networks or maybe we should have better democracy which doesn't crumble under these new powers of information age.

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

#713

Post by xwdv »

yabatopia wrote: post #383

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 change…

Sorry to say but $54.20 is the best they will ever get for TWTR. Those days of $70 per share are over unless we enter another period of easy money.

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

#715

Post by CivBase »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #706
dgudkov wrote: post #661

I bet some of those who advocated "it's a private company, it can deplatform whoever it wants" are probably re-thinking their stance on deplatforming from a major social media.

Not really. When moderation goes away, platforms become rife with racism, spam, scams and less than desirable actors. We've seen this with Gab and Parler.

While I'm not necessarily disagreeing with that assessment, I think those examples of Gab and Parlor are weak. Those platforms were essentially created and marketed specifically to individuals and groups who were kicked off of other platforms. That demographic will naturally include a much higher proportion of "less than desirable actors".

Many of the largest platforms featured much less moderation in their past - even when they were much larger than Gab or Parlor - while also enjoying a smaller proportion of "less than desirable actors". Of course, whether that level was acceptable is debatable. Free speech is a double-edge sword and moderation is an astoundingly complex problem.

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

#716

Post by fallingknife »

DelaneyM wrote: post #691
gunapologist99 wrote: post #521

So Twitter was at $70 per share a year ago. So what? Jack Dorsey was CEO a year ago, too. The share price was $33 less than a month ago. But, despite an absolutely incredible roller-coaster news cycle, things have been definitely trending down at Twitter ($33/share last month), which was reflected in its share price. The current executive team (and Dorsey) had wasted time focusing on things that didn't matter instead…

Everyone currently holding $TWTR believes that the true value is greater than the current price. To make a successful hostile bid, you need to pay not just "more than the current price", but "more than the holders of 50% of current shares believe the company to be worth". Usually bidders use analyst price targets to guess at the distribution of holders' internal price targets. This is what makes it so difficult, and…

TWTR was trading at 33 before Elon announced his stake, and he offered 54. That's a 60% premium.

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

#717

Post by delaaxe »

yabatopia wrote: post #383

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 change…

Unless a massive recession is coming

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

#718

Post by krrrh »

cgtyoder wrote: post #311

This is exactly why individuals should not be allowed to have tens (let alone hundreds!) of billions of dollars in wealth - they become all-powerful and too easily subvert the will of the people. They become their own ruling class, which is unacceptable in a functioning democracy.

Democracies are great, but they become weak when the majority crushes minority opinion and the chilling effects of a singular ideology makes it difficult for those without resources to speak their minds and openly engage in debate [1][2][3]. And this is even more true when there are few alternate centres of power outside of the state. Billionaires, along with NGOs, unions, etc, provide these alternative centres of power that are essential when a perspective or ideology becomes too hegemonic. This is even more obvious when the whole point of what Elon is doing is trying to do right now is to make twitter a more free, fun, and open platform for people who don't have the fuck you money that he has managed to earn.

Of course the other utility of billionaires is that when they've earned it themselves they have shown some skill at allocating capital, and can pursue important societal goals that government or existing corporations have proven incapable of, like space flight, electric cars, better urban mass transit, brain-computer interfaces, etc.. None of those achievements seem important to people who have decided that Elon == bad for whatever transgression they believe is more important.

[1] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-study-shows-peo...

[2] https://www.cato.org/survey-reports/poll-62-americans-say-th...

[3] https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2021/1...

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

#719

Post by zaroth »

aniken wrote: post #600
yabatopia wrote: post #383

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 change…

Another non trivial aspect is his offer price. No one seems to be pointing out the obvious half trolling nature of an offer that yet again includes the number 420. In that respect part of his motivation for doing this is self amusement.

I fully agree that part of his motivation is self amusement. It's one of the things I really like about Musk, is that he's clearly still connected to his inner child, and I think that's part of what keeps him dreaming.

I think the people most offended by it tend to be the people who have lost that joie de vivre and miss out on the fact that we're all just existing here and now. Sure, do the very serious things that need to be done for a person with his resources, but in the end, we can't even prove it's not all just a damn simulation can we.

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

#720

Post by Zigurd »

The offer will fail: The tell is that it is a "final" offer. In fact, if the offer were accepted, Elon would be hard pressed to come up with the actual cash for an all-cash offer. The offer isn't meant to be taken seriously.

After his "final" offer is rejected, Elon will rage quit his position in Twitter.

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