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Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

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211–220 of 348 posts

Re: Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

#211
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen much evidence he's good at delegating. Such as how he remains in control of his own Twitter despite the SEC warnings and penalties. He doesn't need to spend much time with his companies to damage them.

Don’t you think it would have been very visible if he were bad at delegating? His companies tend to produce results - not always on time, but that’s to be expected in greenfield projects right?

Not only do they produce results, they tend to save humanity while doing so.

Re: Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

#212

If Musk acquires Twitter, I will likely be deleting my account. Am I the only one? Would his acquisition spell the beginning of the end for Twitter?

I don't even know who owns/CEOs it now. I'll be there with popcorn to see what happens but nah I doubt my usage of Twitter will change unless the platform goes boring first

Re: Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depends on if he follows through on what he is proposing, which seems to be to allow for disinformation and hate speech. If that turns out to not be the case, then I might reconsider.

> It really depends on if he follows through on what he is proposing, which seems to be to allow for disinformation and hate speech. If you have to put a real, verified name behind these posts, at least that can cut into the massive bot armies spreading disinformation and the massive foreign spending that goes into amplifying all of it. Then you would have the benefits of a free speech platform while preventing it fr…

Requiring "Real Name" (and making it public) is an incredibly privileged position that immediately destroys the website for a significant amount of people.

Anonymity is very valuable, especially for some of societies' most vulnerable, who should have a place on social media.

Re: Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

#214

The valuation for Twitter seems to be basically fair, so it wouldn't be surprising to see this deal eventually close. I think it's fair to say most people's view was that the biggest barrier to closing the deal was Musk actually making an honest offer. Which now, with Morgan Stanley actually standing behind the offer, looks more or less certain. So really it's going to be down to details which are unlikely to be an i…

We do not want to "blow up the deal", a lot of effort & ongoing research has been applied to adapt without breaking it's purpose or charecter or brand.

Same Twitter, just better.

Re: Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

#215
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s not relevant. Is anyone expecting him to be the CEO? The article quotes a shareholder rallying behind Musk's offer as justifying his support for Mr Musk's personal involvement. The article includes quotes from shareholders such as “He has an established track record at Tesla,” and “He is the catalyst to deliver strong operating performance at Twitter.” I'm not aware of a single instance where shareholders were…

Yet that is what he has done at both Tesla and SpaceX. He set the company vision and direction and his hand picked executives execute that... I look forward to seeing who Elon pickes to replace all board members and executives at twitter

I dont really understand how Elon could just ignore Twitter, if something happens in Spacex, they can handle it in private, but if something happens in Twitter, like Trump is unbanned and he starts to share Russian propaganda, everyone is going to know about it right away. Is Elon going to sit and focus on other things while his phone is going mad?

Re: Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depends on if he follows through on what he is proposing, which seems to be to allow for disinformation and hate speech. If that turns out to not be the case, then I might reconsider.

> If that turns out to not be the case, then I might reconsider. It seems rather narcissistic to think that deleting your account would be of any consequence or inflict punishment on anyone. To put it bluntly, someone farting in their own car on the highway (and potentially soiling themselves, getting distracted, and causing a chain-reaction accident) has a greater potential impact to future events than whatever irre…

People have boycotted bigger things over less. I think it's perfectly reasonable for someone to not want to support Musk and not buy their products or support a site they own (especially if you think they're going to make it worse).

Re: Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla is a strategic asset for the US and for the West more generally speaking, even more so than SpaceX at this point, I personally don’t think it will be allowed to tank/go under. I do agree that the stock is way over-valued when looking only at the economic fundamentals, but when one balances out the “the Chinese have all this battery thing all figured out!” vs “we only have Tesla on our side!” then things are dif…

> Tesla is a strategic asset for the US and for the West more generally speaking How so ? It's a car company, there are dozen of them making equally good, if not better, cars. Autopilot is useless and electric cars are already there. You can credit them for the democratisation of EV but that's about it

It’s not a car company, it’s a battery+software company with some wheels (literally) attached, hence part of the high valuation. It took me a while to realize this, had I put my money on this back then I would have had more money right now (10x times, I’d say).

The likes of Mercedes and VW are orders of magnitude behind, both when it comes to batteries and especially when it comes to software

Re: Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

#218
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Really hard to imagine the richest and most accomplished dude on the planet not being able to secure funding. You don’t have to imagine. It literally already happened once when he claimed he had funding secured to take Tesla private. As such, if you can’t imagine him not having funding secured this time, you’re severely lacking in imagination.

In his latest TED interview [0], Musk said that he had the funding secured for that Tesla private offering. He said that he needed to settle with the SEC so that they wouldn't freeze Tesla's bank accounts, and as part of the settlement he needed to publicly say that he hadn't secured funding. I don't think he's lying. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdZZpaB2kDM

That sounds super dubious, the SEC forced him to publicly lie in a settlement? Sorry, I am not buying it. You would have to put at least a dozen SEC lawyers on suicide watch after such a deal. And not only did they force him to lie in a settlement, now he suddenly breaks what he agreed to in that settlement without any consequences, so what was that settlement worth to begin with.

Re: Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

#219
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet that is what he has done at both Tesla and SpaceX. He set the company vision and direction and his hand picked executives execute that... I look forward to seeing who Elon pickes to replace all board members and executives at twitter

I dont really understand how Elon could just ignore Twitter, if something happens in Spacex, they can handle it in private, but if something happens in Twitter, like Trump is unbanned and he starts to share Russian propaganda, everyone is going to know about it right away. Is Elon going to sit and focus on other things while his phone is going mad?

When the deal succeeds TWTR will also become private.

Re: Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not disinformation if you agree with the bots politically. Gotta keep that dopamine raging somehow. Also I've lost count of how much of last year's 'disinformation' became this year's 'that totally happened'.

Well, whatever but bots are just generally bat and annoying. The platform would be better without them.

"generally bad and annoying" breaks whatever ideal of 'free speech' one might have. The most concrete thing Musk has said is "twitter should just follow the laws of countries", but spam bots are not illegal - USPS cannot unilaterally ban junk mail because that breaks the first amendment

Interviewer: You've described yourself, Elon, as a free speech absolutist, but does that mean that there's literally nothing that people can't say and it's okay?

Musk: Well, I think obviously Twitter or any forum is bound by the laws of the country that it operates in. So obviously there are some limitations on free speech in the US, and, of course, Twitter would have to abide by those rules. [...] No, I think, like I said, in my view Twitter should match the laws of the country

Quite a struggle for an international website, where the majority of users are outside of the US, to just say "we should follow the laws of countries" as if there's one single internationally compatible law for that.

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