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Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

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Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#271

Post by chernevik »

vishnugupta wrote: post #186

It’s an all cash offer. Do folks here who manage such things educate us how could Musk muster such cash? Genuinely curious.

He can borrow against his Tesla and Space X holdings. The Twitter stake itself can be used as collateral. Or he can sell shares of them.

There is LBO financing, where the purchased company itself borrows to fund the purchase. But I doubt a company as risky as Twitter can borrow a significant fraction of the purchase price. And Musk doesn't have a history of using financial engineering like that.

Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#272

Post by strogonoff »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #105

From observing various internet forums, including this one, I noticed that people from the "first world" countries don't know the value of free speech and often take it for granted. Sometimes even coming to such views as "free speech is dangerous" and that "we should limit free speech" (by blocking the views I don't like). Understand this: limits on free speech are far more dangerous to society than allowing fringe e…

“Free speech” tends to be used in two ways: free speech the compound phrase, and free speech as two words taken literally.

Certain subsets of population love to hijack discussions by forcing the latter meaning[0]—they break the phrase up into separate words and take them as absolutes. Yet the reality is that free speech in absolute sense doesn’t exist: a bit like free market, in a world where malicious actors exist at all, it has to be subject to limits (moreover, in any culture there are its own taboos defining additional unwritten constraints).

The first meaning is what “free speech” refers to in any meaningful political discussion about free speech. It is fundamentally vital in a democracy, and no sane person would qualify it as absolute.

Fine aspects of what conditional free speech actually implies could be a worthy topic. Off the top of my head, free speech is where you don’t need to censor yourself provided you are of sound mind and do not mean harm, but this is not very precise. How should we define the limits of free speech on a meta level? Is it their vagueness that causes distress? Once the terminological ambiguity is settled, meaningful debate becomes possible.

[0] I believe in most cases such individuals have their own agenda to push, and one would become equally opposed to absolute free speech as soon as their preferred agenda is implemented.

Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#273

Post by chunsj »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #105

From observing various internet forums, including this one, I noticed that people from the "first world" countries don't know the value of free speech and often take it for granted. Sometimes even coming to such views as "free speech is dangerous" and that "we should limit free speech" (by blocking the views I don't like). Understand this: limits on free speech are far more dangerous to society than allowing fringe e…

Most of the case, "different views" are not different; simply, they are just wrong ones. When people says "limit free speech", it's intended to limit these. Liberalism is meaningless without under democratic control.

Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#274

Post by zzzeek »

cs702 wrote: post #263

OK. I'm a huge admirer of everything Musk has a accomplished, but... W.T.F.? Taking on Twitter will not only be a huge amount of work, it is likely consume a ridiculous amount of talent -- which could be focused instead on building next-generation humanoid robots, electric vehicles, energy solutions, reusable spaceships, and space stations. Musk has a long history of taking on more than it's humanly possible, but so…

No post body was provided.

Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#275

Post by Chris2048 »

542458 wrote: post #126

As somebody from the first world who has had the experience of moderating Internet forums… free speech in the sense of “the government generally shouldn’t control people’s speech, with limited exceptions” is good and necessary. Free speech in the sense of “everybody should be forced to platform every idea” is silly IMO. Left alone user content rapidly devolves into the most low-effort salient content - flame wars, po…

The difference between the two is less significant when a few large tech companies monopolise online discourse. Water an electricity is considered a "utility" but still delivered by many private companies - why isn't the same argument used there? I'm sure plenty of people would support cutting off utilities for neo-nazis; that doesn't men it's a good precedent.

Consider gabber et al was cut off by their hosting companies, a much harder space to enter for non-established companies - maybe net-neutrality should be extended from traffic to hosting/computing facilities?

> Left alone user content rapidly devolves

> you need curation and moderation

the thing about online content is that it doesn't work like a free-speech bazaar. You can choose which soapbox you want to visit. You can choose what networks to participate in.

Also, it should be noted that that these types of places sometime devolve because of bubbles/moderation; e.g. reddit /politics/ is a toxic echo chamber because it bans/downvotes dissenting opinion, resulting in a groupthink-mentality.

> instead of a less moderated forum like 8chan’s

and that's a choice, until it isn't (e.g. 8chan is banned/blocked/deplatformed)

Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#276

Post by loceng »

danShumway wrote: post #240

I'm not sure Musk knows what he's doing, this feels like a personal vendetta. I'm also not sure he has any likelihood of succeeding in the first place, I wouldn't necessarily assume anyone is going to take him up at that price. And (quite frankly) I don't think that Musk is a very good free speech activist. I think he's regularly hypocritical about free speech and regularly engages in his own forms of censorship; I d…

He arguably didn't know what he was doing with Tesla or SpaceX, nor The Boring Company et al, though he seems quite good at solving for problems he deems worthy enough of his attention - or that draw his attention strongly enough.

Elon also doesn't need to innovate himself, he simply needs to be a signal, a beacon or lighthouse to others who know they are capable of innovating - and where they may now actually attempt to work for/at Twitter/with Elon because they may now believe they have a chance of implementing systems as they may believe Elon will be able to understand their design - and therefore getting approval.

Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#277

Post by pilsetnieks »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #105

From observing various internet forums, including this one, I noticed that people from the "first world" countries don't know the value of free speech and often take it for granted. Sometimes even coming to such views as "free speech is dangerous" and that "we should limit free speech" (by blocking the views I don't like). Understand this: limits on free speech are far more dangerous to society than allowing fringe e…

There isn't a black and white answer to this. It should be painfully obvious by now that unrestricted free speech also enables incredibly technologically amplified propagandists of various stripes to drive people's behavior to various extremes including threatening the existence of that same democracy.

Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#278

Post by spamizbad »

542458 wrote: post #126

As somebody from the first world who has had the experience of moderating Internet forums… free speech in the sense of “the government generally shouldn’t control people’s speech, with limited exceptions” is good and necessary. Free speech in the sense of “everybody should be forced to platform every idea” is silly IMO. Left alone user content rapidly devolves into the most low-effort salient content - flame wars, po…

You raise a good point that does make me wonder: why isn’t there more pressure from free speech advocates to liberalize moderation on HN?

Re: Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private

#279

Post by mountainriver »

cs702 wrote: post #263

OK. I'm a huge admirer of everything Musk has a accomplished, but... W.T.F.? Taking on Twitter will not only be a huge amount of work, it is likely consume a ridiculous amount of talent -- which could be focused instead on building next-generation humanoid robots, electric vehicles, energy solutions, reusable spaceships, and space stations. Musk has a long history of taking on more than it's humanly possible, but so…

I agree, this seems like a distraction for him, and probably more ego driven than anything. Although much of his success has been through being a public figure on Twitter, maybe he sees it as investing in his image.
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