I suspect the initial decision was something like "hey I could actually just buy Twitter, that would be funny". It's less clear to me why he almost immediately started trying to back out. It's probably a waste of a significant chunk of money, but is that all?
>> 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.
Perhaps underneath the 420 jokes lies the reality that he's high fairly often.
I am sure the offer price of $54.20 was a joke. With Musk, the appearance of those digits is never an accident.
The IT industry is extremely left leaning on the whole. People who are intelligent enough to know better, it's a very strange phenomenon. Twitter has one of the worst interfaces known to man, I'm amazed anyone uses it.
This is really strange! I'm a tech entrepreneur, but don't personally know many others. Critical thinking should prevail in the tech industry, not this nonsense.
If someone's stock is as incredibly overinflated as Tesla has been for so long, choosing the most effective way to liquidate stock without triggering a run becomes a social engineering problem with the incentive of a multi-billion dollar payoff. Honestly I think other people trying to read this situation in some way that ignores a multi billion dollar incentive just sitting there is utterly naive.
You say social engineering, I say criminal fraud.
But this is only because everywhere, everything is securities fraud
It also does not make sense to do this kind of fraud, as Tesla stock will surely tank on the news of it being used as a collateral in an acquisition deal.
For anyone thinking he can pay the 1B$ termination fee and walk away, it's not that simple. The 1B$ is a "reverse breakup" fee, and applies when an outside force (like SEC or financing) prevents the deal. That 1B$ has nothing to do with any choices on either side, and is unlikely to factor into this process. At this point they're clearly going to trial, and it's not unlikely that the cost to Elon will be somewhere in…
When has there ever been a lawsuit of this sort that was anywhere near $15 billion? What do you base these numbers on?
His team apparently had a tough time verifying the data due to API rate limits. > While Twitter has provided some information, that information has come with strings attached, use limitations or other artificial formatting features, which has rendered some of the information minimally useful to Mr. Musk and his advisors. For example, when Twitter finally provided access to the eight developer “APIs” first explicitly…
the contract says they can't make any demands that have materially adverse effect on the company if he was hitting up against rate limits, it's easy for Twitter to call his requests adverse
They write > Despite public speculation on this point, Mr. Musk did not waive his right to review Twitter’s data and information simply because he chose not to seek this data and information before entering into the Merger Agreement. In fact, he negotiated access and information rights within the Merger Agreement precisely so that he could review data and information that is important to Twitter’s business before fin…
He was specifically looking for > 1. Information related to Twitter’s process for auditing the inclusion of spam and fake accounts in mDAU. > 2. Information related to Twitter’s process for identifying and suspending spam and fake accounts. His principle activity is influencing. The main sticking point of the proposed merger is information on how Twitter polices fake accounts. Nothing suspicious about this at all. Re…
From what I understand, the sticking point is the total bot count,
and since ElMu can't produce a trustworthy/reliable bot count which differs from Twitter's (meaning, he can't defend his claims),
he appears to be switching to attack, trying to get data on how Twitter produces their counts, even though he can't convincingly articulate any issues with either it or the result.
I hope he hangs lol. Not out of any disrespect for musks achievements like those cars or the first online payment method that did not involve a credit card but he's been doing too many disruptive unnecessary things that will have cost a lot of ordinary retail stockholders a pretty penny.
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…
What he was getting out of it was that he was/is addicted to Twitter, and has an outsized view of its overall importance and value.