221–230 of 1001 posts
It was really hard to see how he would apply his usual tricks, and I always figured he was going to wiggle out.
Elon waived his right to due diligence when he first made the offer to buy Twitter, so backing out of the deal by arguing a lack of due diligence is very funny.
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>the reason that elon musk can't get out of the deal over the bots thing is not that he "waived due diligence." it's that he SIGNED A BINDING AGREEMENT TO BUY TWITTER, and that agreement does not have any outs for "i think there are too many bots."
- Matt Levine esq of Bloomberg
However related to Twitter, looking what's happening since his first tweet, this was the plan all along. Come up with an excuse to get out of the deal. Just he was trying to cash in all the marketing he can like always.
I don't think its going to work the way he thinks in this case, its atleast going to cost him $1b
Seems like there is only one loose end left: will he or will he not avoid the 1B penalty for backing out. How that goes is anyone's guess.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/13/elon-musk-cant-just-walk-awa...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Musk's misguided approach to free speech, which says anything that is not explicitly illegal is allowed, would have made Twitter an open forum for spreading lies and hate. Twitter is of course currently known as a source of Truth and Harmony. "anything not illegal is allowed" sounds decent to me; if you want stuff illegal, make it illegal. If you want unwritten laws dreamt up by anonymous elites and enforced for ra…
That includes spam though
An alternative theory all the people who have being really upset about him buying Twitter are now actually cheering for him to be forced to buy it. So he got to shift the sentiment for free :)
This is good for Twitter, and good for the world. Musk's misguided approach to free speech, which says anything that is not explicitly illegal is allowed, would have made Twitter an open forum for spreading lies and hate. My guess is Musk never intended to buy Twitter. He needed an excuse for dumping billions of dollars' worth of TSLA at its peak (while at the same time faulting Bill Gates for shorting TSLA), and his…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> It's less clear to me why he almost immediately started trying to back out. That's what you do when you sober up and realize what a mess you've made.
Well, if the purpose of buying twitter was to improve the user experience of internet users and advance the doctrine of free speech, then why not just spend that same amount of money building your own twitter (mastodon instance or something) and use your publicity to attract users?
I don't believe for a second that Elon Musk really cares about free speech for anyone but himself and he is right now probably not limited by twitter's policy but by other externalities
It seems apparent to this observer that he developed cold feet pretty fast after an impetuous decision, and has been looking for any reason to back out of it since then. The spam accounts angle seems like a convenient scapegoat, rather than a real surprise to him. He's clearly eccentric in his approach to decision making: I don't think any Harvard Business School course will teach "the Musk Principles". But it's uncl…
There's another belief floated by Josh Wolfe (an investor with Lux Capital) who claimed it was a ruse to liquidate Tesla stock en masse without Tesla hodlers getting suspicious and tanking the inflated stock price. https://twitter.com/wolfejosh/status/1545387947578597376
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but he will negotiate a lower price How? As best I understand things, he has zero wiggle room - he either buys Twitter for the agreed price or he stumps up the $1B termination fee. And if Twitter's board did go mad and decide to negotiate a lower price, their shareholders would almost certainly block it and/or sue the board, no?
He has tons of wiggle room. Mostly in this will takes years to resolve, Twitter will be forced to disclose nearly every internal document that will 100% have some email or chat of employees stating, if only as hyperbole, that the bot rate they report to the public is bullshit.