Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement • Hacker News Board

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#311

Post by petilon » Fri, Jul 08, 2022, 10:38 PM UTC

rappatic wrote: post #276

petilon wrote: post #53

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…

> Musk's misguided approach to free speech, which says anything that is not explicitly illegal is allowed That's what free speech is , whether or not you agree that such a policy of unrestricted free speech is constructive or beneficial.

Disagree, there is no absolute freedom of speech, for example you can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater.

Also disagree that such unrestricted free speech is constructive or beneficial. Sacha Baron Cohen explains it best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymaWq5yZIYM

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#312

Post by toiletfuneral » Fri, Jul 08, 2022, 10:38 PM UTC

duxup wrote: post #185

timsneath wrote: post #17

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…

> But it's unclear to me what he initially thought he was getting out of this. The more it goes on it feels like “I don't like how twitter works, I’ll show them! ” Later: “Oh noes if I do what I want here the result might be bad…” It just feels like a YOLO business deal that wasn’t thought out the more this goes on.

No post body was provided.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#313

Post by adamrezich » Fri, Jul 08, 2022, 10:38 PM UTC

lots of emotionally-charged comments here, which is pretty disappointing. if we look at this dispassionately, perhaps we can come to better conclusions than "elon big poopy head freeze peach bad". for example, one possibility is that Musk never intended to actually buy Twitter because he had reasonable suspicions that the <5% spam/bot figure provided by Twitter was intentionally incorrect (i.e. fraudulent), and he just wanted to get that out in the open and possibly even tank the company's stock as a result, either as a personal vendetta against the platform and company, or because he wants to develop a competitor. or maybe he wants to buy it up after the price falls even further. who knows? but it's more fun and interesting to speculate like this rather than just hurling loaded adjectives like "impetuous", "eccentric", "breathlessly arrogant", "astonishingly careless", and so on and so forth. I get that public opinion on the guy here has largely turned pretty sharply in the past couple years but do we really need to pretend like we're 2016 headline-writers writing about Donald Trump when we discuss him for some reason? that entire schtick is long-since played out.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#314

Post by rvz » Fri, Jul 08, 2022, 10:39 PM UTC

daemoens wrote: post #251

andrewclunn wrote: post #15

So then it looks like the "right wing" / anti-establishment tech pantheon is then set: Rumble, Brave, Truth Social, Subscribe Star Locals and Bitchute gave it a shot (and aren't dead yet). And an Elon owned Twitter might have been interesting, but at this point that's who the players are.

All of them are incredibly small though. Most conservatives still use regular social media.

All of them are still bigger than Mastodon. After 6 years, Mastodon failed to show itself to be a proper alternative even during the so-called 'exodus' from Twitter. Given that it is smaller than those social networks, I regard that as a catastrophic failure.

6 years is not early days and Mastodon failed has still failed to attract users from Twitter 2 months ago. No chance of a significant amount of serious users from other social networks migrating over.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#315

Post by petilon » Fri, Jul 08, 2022, 10:40 PM UTC

MallocVoidstar wrote: post #265

h2odragon wrote: post #148

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…

>"anything not illegal is allowed" sounds decent to me; if you want stuff illegal, make it illegal. Twitter is based in the US, the 1st Amendment protects hate speech such as explicit support for genocide. I don't consider a social network full of genocide promotion to be a good thing.

Nope, 1st Amendment only means the government can't restrict your speech. Private companies can.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#316

Post by betwixthewires » Fri, Jul 08, 2022, 10:40 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #159

jiggyjace wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read the termination letter? The letter was sent by Elon's lawyers working with Twitter's lawyers according to the merger terms they had all agreed to. Why shouldn't they have expected a "good faith resolution"? A termination can still be made in M&A under good faith.

Where did you get the "working with Twitter's lawyers" part? This letter is sent to Twitter's lawyers informing them that Musk is terminating the agreement.

They helped craft the agreement, according to Musk, twitter is violating the agreement which is grounds for termination as per the agreement.

I'm not going to pretend to know who's right or how this will play out legally, but Twitter's lawyers did participate in the creation of the agreement and therefore the current state of affairs.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#317

Post by avidphantasm » Fri, Jul 08, 2022, 10:40 PM UTC

Was really looking forward to watching him eat this shit sandwich he made for himself.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#318

Post by elliekelly » Fri, Jul 08, 2022, 10:41 PM UTC

shuckles wrote: post #298

chernevik wrote: post #264

The filed letter ( https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000110465922... ) isn't the knockdown argument I would be expecting. Musk is saying, you haven't demonstrated your numbers are accurate. But having signed the merger agreement and waived due diligence, I think he needs to demonstrate that they are _not_ accurate. Complaining Twitter rate-limited his API access (which would be very foolish on their par…

Twitter has already said they'll sue for specific performance: https://twitter.com/btaylor/status/1545526087089696768

My heart sank when I read your comment: why on earth would the board sue for specific performance!? But my reading of the statement in the tweet is that they plan to sue for enforcement of the agreement which I believe means paying the agreed-upon penalty for backing out of the deal. I don’t at all read that statement as a plan to seek specific performance.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#319

Post by minimaxir » Fri, Jul 08, 2022, 10:41 PM UTC

adamrezich wrote: post #313

lots of emotionally-charged comments here, which is pretty disappointing. if we look at this dispassionately, perhaps we can come to better conclusions than "elon big poopy head freeze peach bad". for example, one possibility is that Musk never intended to actually buy Twitter because he had reasonable suspicions that the <5% spam/bot figure provided by Twitter was intentionally incorrect (i.e. fraudulent), and he ju…

> one possibility is that Musk never intended to actually buy Twitter

Which was a common perspective when the idea was floated around, until he signed a legal agreement actually saying he was going to buy Twitter.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#320

Post by manquer » Fri, Jul 08, 2022, 10:41 PM UTC

nemo44x wrote: post #207

Why would he spend $44B on a company worth $28B today? I’d make a new offer of $35B. They’d probably accept.

They can’t accept anything like that , twitter board would get sued by their shareholders for any price renegotiation.

Shareholders would sue them as most legal theory says twitter would win in court and enforce the deal, so there is no reason for the board to renegotiate instead of going to court, the board has fiduciary responsibilities.