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Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

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Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#691

Post by M2Ys4U »

tdehnel wrote: post #604
hooande wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As is detailed by many smart people below, fiduciary duty lawsuits are difficult to win. They'd pretty much have to have board members emailing each other saying "This would be in the best interest of shareholders, but let's screw them over instead" This was an epic debacle. Musk invested 4 BILLION dollars in an asset of questionable value, because "free speech". If he times it right he could come out ahead financial…

You say “free speech” mockingly in quotes as if it’s not the one right that literally all your other rights depend on.

It's not, though.

In fact free speech is in direct contradiction to other rights, and these have to be balanced against each other for society to function.

Take the right to privacy, for example. My right to privacy necessarily entails restricting your right to disseminate information about me.

Or the rights to life and bodily autonomy - the prohibition on inciting violence is a restriction of free speech.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#692

Post by puffoflogic »

FFRefresh wrote: post #242
axg11 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pushback is simple: Twitter stock price was higher than Musk’s offer for most of 2021. We are in a downturn affecting the entire tech industry, and it’s likely that prices will return to previous levels at some point. Elon’s offer is a lowball and Twitter can bring more value to shareholders with or without Elon.

I don't immediately buy the logic of "Stock A hit a peak of $X last year, therefore that is the correct price/valuation, and not the lower price it is right now" If Twitter was worth more, it'd be worth more. With that logic, you should put a huge chunk of your savings into Twitter to benefit from the insight, as it's currently trading at 39% below its 52-week high.

Indeed, note that the only rational reason not to buy TWTR right now is the simultaneous belief that (a) it's not underpriced but also (b) Musk will never [be allowed to] make the purchase. If you disagreed with either of those statements, then it would be irrational not to buy TWTR, because either way you'd profit.

I have not bought TWTR.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#693

Post by ergocoder »

extheat wrote: post #680
ergocoder wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not insult. It is malicious intent. Weeks later someone talked to musk about it, and he replied "Bet ya signed dollar it's true". Elon also hired private investigator to dig dirt on the diver but found nothing. https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/15/elon-musk-tweets-hell-bet-... Musk also emailed BuzzFeed reporter suggesting that the diver was a child rapist. Source: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/el…

I think you again have missed the point that it was not an unprovoked comment. It was in response to another insult. I don't know how betting money on an insult makes it not an insult. It's one thing to attack someone because they dislike you or it's not provoked at all. It's another to respond to an ad hominem with another. Nobody is disputing he went far overboard than he needed to, and that his position gives him…

"bet dollar" happened weeks later. This is not "in the moment" stuff.

He sent email to BuzzFeed report trying to get them to write about the child rapist.

He hired PI to dig dirt on the diver.

This is not a response to an insult.

Musk intended to destroy the diver's life with a false child rapist accusation.

Nah, he didn't apologize. He said in court that insisting somebody is a pedo is a common playground insult in Africa.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#694

Post by binarray2000 »

systemvoltage wrote: post #281
UnpossibleJim wrote: post #105

So, I'm not very corporate savvy and this might be a very stupid question. Is there a NON-culture/political reason for all the push back against Musk buying Twitter? From the read, this just seem to be opening the door for someone else to try and take majority control and pining away for the days of Dorsey (which, if looked at objectively, weren't great... just filling an opportunity).

The sad truth is that this is an intense political battle. I would personally favor Elon Musk taking over and shaking things up, any other position is untenable. And, I am saying this as a progressive. I think an open and transparent social platform would be great for the society. The issue is that managerial class of America, both in private and public sector, are in bed with each other. The government cannot suppre…

Just as the Republican Party has been taken over by neocons, the Democrat Party has been taken over by neolibs. They both have the same ideas and are never on the oposite sides. That is why you see endless and meanilingless wars, media conglomerates, censorship, billionaire-class, 3-letter-agencies off the leash, workers in diapers.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#695

Post by GoOnThenDoTell »

4khilles wrote: post #613
rgbrenner wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s definitely just a stunt… he doesn’t have the money, and said he expects larger shareholders to sign on to the deal… so he can take the company private and do great profit-maximizing ideas like turning their office into a homeless shelter. He’s presented no ideas that would increase twitters profits or market share. What shareholder would sign up for this?

Why would Twitter profits matter to shareholders after they divest?

The employee’s RSUs?

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#696

Post by memish »

Some points from the All in Pod.

1. The Twitter board of directors has become a status thing. It's like a country club. They don't have real skin in the game; they don't own much stock. They're not aligned with the shareholders. It's about status and cultural power.

2. Why should we believe that the company will become more valuable when the stock price is where it was way back in December 2013? Compare to how the S&P or Tesla did during this period. Twitter has languished for a long time.

3. They should put it to shareholder vote.

4. One AI engineer from Tesla could solve Twitter's bot and spam problem.

5. The elites have somehow inverted history so they now believe that it is not censorship that is the favored tool of fascists and authoritarians, even though every fascist and despot in history used censorship to maintain power, but instead believe free speech, free discourse, and free thought are the instruments of repression.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#697

Post by CompleteWalker »

hooande wrote: post #654
CompleteWalker wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the recent Ted talk Musk talked about needing AI-complete solutions for projects like full self-driving and Optimus (tesla bot) to succeed. He also wryly mentioned that there was a plan b if his Twitter bid wasn't accepted. He's heavily invested in AI and machine learning, could he be interested in twitter's data?

He could just give them money for it. I'm sure they'd love having a multibillion dollar customer. It's very possible that his AI investments have yielded developments that we can't imagine. But it's hard to see the value of twitter's data over that of, say, the internet cache that gpt-3 uses. I have no idea what the plan b he alluded to is.

Sure he could pay for it, but buying the company (and taking it private) is potentially a way to get paid for access. Web archives - like common crawl - are snap shots of the past, but twitter users react and discuss events in real time.

Reliably parsing and interpreting new, potentially unreliable data is part of that whole AI-complete thing.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#698

Post by client4 »

memish wrote: post #696

Some points from the All in Pod. 1. The Twitter board of directors has become a status thing. It's like a country club. They don't have real skin in the game; they don't own much stock. They're not aligned with the shareholders. It's about status and cultural power. 2. Why should we believe that the company will become more valuable when the stock price is where it was way back in December 2013? Compare to how the S&…

I think the salient point is the impotence of the SEC.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#699

Post by browserman »

memish wrote: post #696

Some points from the All in Pod. 1. The Twitter board of directors has become a status thing. It's like a country club. They don't have real skin in the game; they don't own much stock. They're not aligned with the shareholders. It's about status and cultural power. 2. Why should we believe that the company will become more valuable when the stock price is where it was way back in December 2013? Compare to how the S&…

Tesla's AI engineers can't even solve their own problems, why do you think they could solve Twitter's?

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#700

Post by browserman »

FFRefresh wrote: post #687
browserman wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After considering it for a bit, my opinion is that it's mostly a political ploy; if he buys it, he'll bring back Trump et. all, expecting that once the GOP is back in power, they'll make any trouble he may be expecting with the SEC and the National Labor Relations Board go away I think there are probably other factors at play too. His ego, of course. And also the general desire, also evident among VCs like Andreesen,…

It's really fascinating seeing all the conspiracy theorizing going on with this offer. You have a number of really creative threads going on here. To step through this... So we have someone with a net worth near 300 billion dollars that is going to go through all this trouble to: -Unblock one user -Which will then trigger an American political party to like him -This political party will then make it less likely the…

I don't think it's a straight quid pro quo or that he's on a secret Signal chat with Trump or anything. Just part of a broad alignment of the tech oligarchy with the Republican Party on anti-labor and anti-regulation lines.
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