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

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

#221

Post by afavour » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 9:44 AM UTC

Traster wrote: post #170

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 have seen over the years that it's very easy for social media companies to die rather than adapt

I’d also argue that it’s very easy for a social network to be so dedicated to adapting for growth that it loses character. For example, how every single app these days seems to have a “story” feature.

In fact, Twitter had one too: fleets. They were pushed by an activist investor and flopped horribly. Best case Musk is a wonderful steward for the company, worst case we see ideas like fleets and much worse and Twitter loses much of what makes it unique in the first place.

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

#222

Post by 7speter » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 9:45 AM UTC

tauntz wrote: post #208

Traster wrote: post #170

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…

> Which now, with Morgan Stanley actually standing behind the offer, looks more or less certain Morgan Stanley only covers part of the total deal and Musk still needs to find a solid 21 billion from somewhere. That's probably doable for him but definitely not easy. I don't see it as "more or less certain" at least..

> Morgan Stanley only covers part of the total deal and Musk still needs to find a solid 21 billion from somewhere

Is Musk’s reputation so bad that he, the owner of a car company that turned the car industry on its head (by proving that electric cars were possible) and pushed a massive paradigm shift in the lithium ion battery industry/market (maybe helped with the meteoric rise in demand mobile devices in the last decade as well, admittedly) not be able to find and convince a consortium of investors to put money towards the buy out?

Maybe I’m too stuck on thinking of this as like the purchase of a sports team…

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

#223

Post by dijit » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 9:47 AM UTC

native_samples wrote: post #150

dijit wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He's got money and hired some smart people. Definitely not a fan of his but hiring smart people and enabling them is an accomplishment. As wealthy as he is, he didn’t inherit all of what he has today. He’s definitely done more than many people who come from wealth.

He didn't inherit any of what he has today, did he? And he didn't come from wealth. He grew up in South Africa.

Are you implying that there are no wealthy people in South Africa?

Not to sound “attacky” but that seems extremely naive.

Truthfully, he comes from wealth, but not close to the wealth he has today; his father owned half of an emerald mine for example.

He is quoted as saying (about his youth): "We had so much money at times we couldn't even close our safe"

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

#224

Post by hnbad » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 9:52 AM UTC

mlindner wrote: post #73

matthewdgreen wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s much worse than that. I had previously assumed Musk knew what he was doing and was fooling around on Twitter in an effort to (unethically) crush short sellers. Now it appears like he’s an utterly inept businessman who took the first verbal sign of interest, rushed it to Twitter as though the deal was complete, and then blew up the deal in a hissy fit. I still think what he’s done at SpaceX and Tesla is admirable…

He's not an inept businessman. He's someone with aspergers who takes someone at face value at all times. If someone says something is the case he believes them. He doesn't handle being deceived well nor does he know when it's happening. And actually he's not a "businessman" at all. He's an engineer at heart. "Businessman" would require strong social skills, not something someone with aspergers has good ability at.

> He's someone with aspergers who takes someone at face value at all times. He doesn't handle being deceived well nor does he know when it's happening.

> "Businessman" would require strong social skills, not something someone with aspergers has good ability at.

This exact nonsense is why the autistic community was so displeased when he made a big show of having "asperger's" (which in the US under DSM-V is just autism, btw). Can we please stop justifying toxic and reckless behavior with "oh but they're autistic" as if we're talking about naive children not grown adults?

Autistics tend to struggle with ambiguity and social cues, yes, but many of us are even more sensitive to social cues than allistics because we literally had to learn to pick up on this shit to survive. A lot of autistics report actually being hyper-empathetic to the point where it can be debilitating because it's hard to filter out the noise and determine which cues you're supposed to pick up on and which ones you're supposed to ignore.

Elon Musk is a dickhead AND autistic. He's not a dickhead because he's autistic. He's naive because he got extremely lucky (like all billionaires do, even if it's only winning the lottery of being born into wealthy families with ample of business opportunities) and overestimates his own intelligence (which isn't helped by his massive fanbase thinking he's the best thing since sliced bread because he bought and funded some companies developing tech he thought was cool), not because he's autistic.

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

#225

Post by _fizz_buzz_ » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 9:59 AM UTC

samuelstros wrote: post #25

matthewdgreen wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He’s not just a showman, but he is a showman. And it’s not like you have to dig back into ancient history to find instances where he invented a bid like this, he basically made up a bid for Tesla a few years ago and lied about having secured financing.

Internal chat between Musk and the Saudi investors just popped up on my twitter feed https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1518353213283442688 Doesn't seem like the funding secured thing was an outright lie.

Sounds to me like it was a lie. August 10th is two days after Musk tweeted out "funding secured". And all they agree to saying is: "Therefore, as discussed, we would like our teams to start working together in a confidential manner to explore a potential transaction".

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

#226

Post by assttoasstmgr » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 10:00 AM UTC

madeofpalk wrote: post #216

assttoasstmgr wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

Of course they can; after all, we have freedom of thought.

It's also as idiotic as all the people who were rage-tweeting their airline a week ago, upon suspension of the mask policy in the US, threatening to take their business elsewhere, only to have every major airline follow suit in the span of 6 hours.

I hope they enjoyed their bus ride, otherwise they'd have to just sit there and take it. I suppose getting your pilot's license isn't out of the question. It might be easier than building your own Twitter.

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

#227

Post by chrisan » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 10:05 AM UTC

I have a question for those who say things along the lines of twitter becoming "more open platform, with reduced censorship of unpopular people and ideas"

Wasn't the only "censorship" twitter has done simply against harmful misinformation and hate speech? What exactly is twitter censoring that's outside of those two?

I haven't used HN long enough to know why I can reply to some posts but not others, so sorry for this top level

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

#228

Post by mlindner » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 10:06 AM UTC

hnbad wrote: post #224

mlindner wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not an inept businessman. He's someone with aspergers who takes someone at face value at all times. If someone says something is the case he believes them. He doesn't handle being deceived well nor does he know when it's happening. And actually he's not a "businessman" at all. He's an engineer at heart. "Businessman" would require strong social skills, not something someone with aspergers has good ability at.

> He's someone with aspergers who takes someone at face value at all times. He doesn't handle being deceived well nor does he know when it's happening. > "Businessman" would require strong social skills, not something someone with aspergers has good ability at. This exact nonsense is why the autistic community was so displeased when he made a big show of having "asperger's" (which in the US under DSM-V is just autism…

> This exact nonsense is why the autistic community was so displeased when he made a big show of having "asperger's" (which in the US under DSM-V is just autism, btw). Can we please stop justifying toxic and reckless behavior with "oh but they're autistic" as if we're talking about naive children not grown adults?

There's no such thing as "the autistic community" (though I won't deny some people may self-proclaim themselves as part of some non-existent community) and I'm not justifying anything by what I said. It's just how he thinks.

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

#229

Post by mlindner » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 10:07 AM UTC

encryptluks2 wrote: post #115

mlindner wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's called "believing the accuser", and that statement didn't actually lead to him gaining any money. So I go back to my previous statement. Also there's recent news that Musk was forced to settle despite believing that he would have won the case because bankers were holding Tesla hostage.

So he paid 40 million just for fun?

He paid 40 million because he would have lost a lot more by Tesla going bankrupt, and I'm not talking about money. He cares about the success of Tesla and SpaceX at a psychological and emotional level.

This is what makes Musk appealing. He doesn't care about the money. He cares about the future. Money is a means to an ends. As he's stated, the company only needs to make enough money to continue to grow. It doesn't need to be profitable above $0 after R&D.

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

#230

Post by mlindner » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 10:08 AM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #124

mlindner wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some of the criticism of his behavior is clearly sour grapes that he doesn’t act “properly” for a billionaire, but there are also many examples of him being a bad person a la Steve Jobs. If we can get a massively successful revolutionary business like SpaceX without someone like Steve Jobs I'd love it. But so far the sample size is small and there aren't any countering examples. History has thus far shown that you…

SpaceX is impressive, no doubt about that. But all we got from it so far is, maybe, cheaper orbital launches. Even without SpaceX we would get stuff into space, we did before already so.

It's also galvanized an entire industry that was basically completely stagnant before SpaceX. The number of space-related and space-adjacent startups is skyrocketing. People figured out, because of SpaceX, that you can actually make a profitable business out of space that isn't just government contracts.

Also, SpaceX isn't done.