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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

#961

Post by SamineDylah »

prepend wrote: post #69

I think social media is a real negative force in the world and welcome this as potentially a way to make it better, or at least destroy Twitter and remove one outlet. I don’t think public companies can reform social media because it’s too profitable. As a private company it may be possible to reform it to still be profitable, but not in a way that harms people.

I feel a benevolent dictator could actually move Twitter in the right direction here... better that than a malevolent (profit motivated) plutocracy.

(Although a. At best it would only be partially benevolent, and b. It will still be a plutocracy)

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

#962

Post by hooande »

dgudkov wrote: post #661

I bet some of those who advocated "it's a private company, it can deplatform whoever it wants" are probably re-thinking their stance on deplatforming from a major social media.

People seem to believe that it's impossible to create a competing platform. That's built on the assumption that most people are generally happy with current offerings. If Musk does anything that a critical mass of users finds objectionable, they can and will leave or go to a competitor.

Part of me hopes he buys it just to test this hypothesis. My feeling is that we'll learn one way or another how important a given social media brand is.

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

#963

Post by sgillen »

hooande wrote: post #960
memish wrote: post #934

Chris Anderson of TED asked Elon a lot of the questions and concerns being discussed here. Check it out if you want to understand his perspective and goals with twitter. “Having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization” To that end, he committed to transparency. For example, changes to tweets or users would be made visible and apparent so t…

if the algorithm is open source, bad actors can see it as well. it'll become remarkably easy to spam and game the system. this could drive users away, decrease revenue and leave Mr. Musk holding a $40B hot potato

Counter point, maybe it just accelerates the game of cat and mouse already played between bad actors and algorithm designers, possibly leading to faster iteration and improvement of their algorithm to find hard to fake signals.

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

#964

Post by basisword »

hooande wrote: post #960
memish wrote: post #934

Chris Anderson of TED asked Elon a lot of the questions and concerns being discussed here. Check it out if you want to understand his perspective and goals with twitter. “Having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization” To that end, he committed to transparency. For example, changes to tweets or users would be made visible and apparent so t…

if the algorithm is open source, bad actors can see it as well. it'll become remarkably easy to spam and game the system. this could drive users away, decrease revenue and leave Mr. Musk holding a $40B hot potato

Get rid of the algorithmic timeline and make everything chronological. Manipulation and gaming over.

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

#965

Post by hetoh »

Elon is just a troll who happens to be richest man on earth. He is just trolling SEC. Bid price 54.20 is a joke and people do not yet realize and take him seriously, anyone notice 420 ? Everyone remember he wanted to take Tesla private for 420 and funding secured.. he is just doing classic pump and dump.. he did with Tesla and took out all short sellers.. Now he's doing the same for Twitter, he will make money and sell twitter stocks. SEC is a joke.. they should come hard down on him.

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

#966

Post by tux1968 »

hetoh wrote: post #965

Elon is just a troll who happens to be richest man on earth. He is just trolling SEC. Bid price 54.20 is a joke and people do not yet realize and take him seriously, anyone notice 420 ? Everyone remember he wanted to take Tesla private for 420 and funding secured.. he is just doing classic pump and dump.. he did with Tesla and took out all short sellers.. Now he's doing the same for Twitter, he will make money and se…

> SEC is a joke.. they should come hard down on him.

Honest question, what is the illegality or infraction he is committing? He's filing the proper paperwork, presumably he will follow through if the offer is accepted. What can the SEC actually do?

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

#967

Post by toephu2 »

The Twitter exec team & board is between a rock and a hard place. If they take the offer, half the exec team (or the entire exec team) will be axed (Musk already indicated he's not happy with management in the SEC letter [1]).

If they reject the offer, they will be drowning in lawsuits due to not filling their fiduciary duty (getting a good deal for their shareholders [2]).

[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000110465922...

[2] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1514718700674306052

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

#968

Post by shrimpx »

jasonhansel wrote: post #820
yabatopia wrote: post #383

Let's ignore personality and societal issues for a moment and look at the value proposition. The 'best and final offer' of $54.20 per share is just too low to be acceptable for major investors. Just over year ago, Twitter shares traded at about $70 per share. Musk's offer is about 25% lower than last years peak. There's no reason to assume Twitter shares can't reach the same levels ever again, nothing much has change…

> There's no reason to assume Twitter shares can't reach the same levels ever again If there was a strong reason to think that Twitter shares would soon be worth $70 again, wouldn't they already be trading at that price?

Depends on your definition of “soon”. In a volatile market like the current one, tons of people sell stock in the short term despite believing the long term outlook is good. The simplest reason is to go into cash to avoid the worst of the downturn.

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

#969

Post by qsdf38100 »

tomlin wrote: post #583
RustyConsul wrote: post #510

> "if my offer is rejected i will reconsider my ownership in twitter." Thats an immense amount of selling pressure on the stock... This is a threat. He's negotiating with a gun to their head.

Quoted post unavailable.

What does it take for you to see someone as a threat ? A compulsive liar throwing 43000000000$ to take over one of the largest social network in the world, grossly pretending it’s for "free speech"? And people on HN are buying it? Hmmm.

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

#970

Post by qsdf38100 »

thepasswordis wrote: post #249

Can anybody make a good argument as to why Twitter (in its current form) isn’t a major detriment to society? If Twitter poofed out of existence today, it would be a major win for this planet. People talk about a frightening future with a human hostile AI that wants to destroy humanity. That exists, it’s twitter. Elon buying it, even if he runs it into the ground is a good thing. Getting rid of some of the hostile AI…

Of course a responsible and trustable person like Elon will improve the situation. Hens well known for his balanced and respectful discourse. Come on.
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