Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 1001 posts

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

#91

Post by Zigurd »

mrtksn wrote: post #2

I don't have an opinion over the consequences for politics over this, I'm just excited over the potential shakedown of the social media landscape that I grew to despise. Musk is an activist, can make it or break it. He is absolutely right over its enormous potential, all the problems it has - as a business or ones it creates for the society - can be solved. Free speech absolutism is possible and is beneficial once yo…

What the right calls "free speech" has been tried by several investor-backed social media startups. In every case it has turned into a sewer of racism, misogyny, death threats, and non-monetizable yuckkyiness.

Nobody has an answer to that problem, yet. If there is no answer, turning Twitter into a desolation for trolls will not help Twitter.

These trolls want to go back to Twitter to torment everyone who rejected them. Good luck creating shareholder value that way.

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

#93

Post by lossolo »

mrtksn wrote: post #2

I don't have an opinion over the consequences for politics over this, I'm just excited over the potential shakedown of the social media landscape that I grew to despise. Musk is an activist, can make it or break it. He is absolutely right over its enormous potential, all the problems it has - as a business or ones it creates for the society - can be solved. Free speech absolutism is possible and is beneficial once yo…

> once you ensure that someone is not gaming the system, i.e. someone pretending to be more than one person

For this to work you would need a worldwide government identity check protocol implemented by all participating countries, something like OAuth so you could register only one account connected to that real identity, it could still be anonymous from other users perspective. Problem here is that even if that would make bot problem less significant it would not eliminate it. You would have farms of hacked identities and then in countries with really low income you could buy those identities (digital access) for a few dollars per piece.

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

#94

Post by snowwrestler »

As a Twitter shareholder I would vote against this. Musk says there is tremendous financial potential in Twitter but then offers $54 a share, which is not even 2x the IPO price. That’s not a “tremendous potential” premium.

There is a lot of evidence that platforms which de-prioritize moderation have trouble attracting revenue and experience significant compliance costs. See: the sad story of Moot, who ran one of the most popular social websites in the world and ended up with absolutely nothing to show for it.

This looks more like a hobby to me than a business decision. Hobbies are fine as long as they don’t distract from the job, like Bezos buying Washington Post (he is a hands-off owner who spends very little time on it). But Musk is in two high-risk positions with Tesla and SpaceX. He worked over last Thanksgiving and sent a rather dramatic email about it. So I would be concerned about his ability to multi-task. He has already tried to run three businesses at once and he had to use Tesla to bail himself out of Solar City’s troubles.

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

#95

Post by blenderdt »

mrtksn wrote: post #2

I don't have an opinion over the consequences for politics over this, I'm just excited over the potential shakedown of the social media landscape that I grew to despise. Musk is an activist, can make it or break it. He is absolutely right over its enormous potential, all the problems it has - as a business or ones it creates for the society - can be solved. Free speech absolutism is possible and is beneficial once yo…

I think there is a huge distinction between the potential business opportunity and the potential social opportunity Twitter is offering.

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

#96

Post by mlindner »

wdb wrote: post #61

Buying Twitter is probably an easy way to get that Twitter account tracking his airplane to be closed down Personally, I am seeing this a potential way to limit the freedom even more on Twitter than already happening.

Why do people keep thinking this is about petty minor things?

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

#100

Post by gigglesupstairs »

exikyut wrote: post #51

Ooooh, maybe this is what the > "There will be distractions ahead ... let's tune out the noise and stay focused on the work and what we're building" from the other day ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30984215 ) meant...

Haha good catch
Post reply on HN