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Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

reuters.com

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Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#451

Post by soperj »

khazhoux wrote: post #434

What most troubles me about this whole ordeal: The lack of upper limits on wealth accumulation by an individual means that a single person can eventually directly control enough funds to simply decide one day to buy one of the world's largest communication channels. No one here seems to have a problem with this. For as much as the tech community generally despises generational-wealth families like the Waltons, or for…

Seriously? Anyone can just not use their product. Did you feel this way when NewsCorp bought MySpace?

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#452

Post by pfarrell »

khazhoux wrote: post #434

What most troubles me about this whole ordeal: The lack of upper limits on wealth accumulation by an individual means that a single person can eventually directly control enough funds to simply decide one day to buy one of the world's largest communication channels. No one here seems to have a problem with this. For as much as the tech community generally despises generational-wealth families like the Waltons, or for…

Agree with all your points and I share your concerns. If this deal goes through, I'll cancel my (almost completely unused) Twitter account. It's not much, but it's more than nothing.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#454

Post by ec109685 »

khazhoux wrote: post #434

What most troubles me about this whole ordeal: The lack of upper limits on wealth accumulation by an individual means that a single person can eventually directly control enough funds to simply decide one day to buy one of the world's largest communication channels. No one here seems to have a problem with this. For as much as the tech community generally despises generational-wealth families like the Waltons, or for…

We do have the ability to enact laws to reduce power though. E.g. the antitrust laws that limited JP Morgan at a certain point.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#455

Post by aetherson »

khazhoux wrote: post #434

What most troubles me about this whole ordeal: The lack of upper limits on wealth accumulation by an individual means that a single person can eventually directly control enough funds to simply decide one day to buy one of the world's largest communication channels. No one here seems to have a problem with this. For as much as the tech community generally despises generational-wealth families like the Waltons, or for…

Over twenty years ago. Veritably ancient.

Perhaps the reason why people are more troubled by the Waltons (family net worth: $238B) than Gates ($132B) is that the Walton wealth is multi-generational and Gates' is not (so far). Though I think that as long as the Waltons keep spreading their money out among an every increasing number of descendants, it mostly takes care of itself.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#456

Post by dumpHero2 »

khazhoux wrote: post #434

What most troubles me about this whole ordeal: The lack of upper limits on wealth accumulation by an individual means that a single person can eventually directly control enough funds to simply decide one day to buy one of the world's largest communication channels. No one here seems to have a problem with this. For as much as the tech community generally despises generational-wealth families like the Waltons, or for…

The idea is that they have control over how and where they invest their money. If they make stupid decisions, they lose that wealth. So you still have some checks and balances there.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#457

Post by rosenjcb »

Does anyone else feel like he's going to start doing petty shit like banning people he doesn't like (e.g. that musk flight tracker account)? He talks a lot about free speech but he has a track record of limiting speech on the platform (blocking multiple people) and off (making the founders of Tesla sign a hush contract).

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#458

Post by scotuswroteus »

khazhoux wrote: post #434

What most troubles me about this whole ordeal: The lack of upper limits on wealth accumulation by an individual means that a single person can eventually directly control enough funds to simply decide one day to buy one of the world's largest communication channels. No one here seems to have a problem with this. For as much as the tech community generally despises generational-wealth families like the Waltons, or for…

Human beings need to be less lazy in switching communication platforms. It used to cost money to change cable subscriptions. It costs nothing to switch to a new platform, except for small businesses who rely on their presence online. For individual conversations, just switch. Not a big deal. It's fairly easy. The problem is lazy competitors who don't do what they need to make their services as easy to access as Twitter. Invest up front, offer a free, low barrier way for people to share the content they want to share and in the format they prefer. Boom.

Re: Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources

#460

Post by jmyeet »

I feel like the world is divided into two kinds of people:

1. Those who are active on Twitter; and

2. Those who don't and don't even scroll through it.

The first group seems to think this buyout is the most pressing issue of our generation. The latter just doesn't care.

I honestly just don't care about Twitter. The only people who "engage" in Twitter are those with a decent number of followers and they're, by definition, a small minority (of the small minority who use Twitter). For the remainder that read Twitter, it's really interchangeable with Facebook or Reddit or whatever. Like Twitter disappearing overnight would (IMHO) have very little impact.

My prediction here is that Elon will take it private, realize the "problems" aren't really problems or are incredibly hard to solve and then after a couple of years there'll be some face-saving reorganization and the whole thing will get made public again, probably for a net total loss.

Luckily (thus far) there's a pretty limited market for conservatives crying about censorship of hate speech masquerading as free speech.

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