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Comment by Natsu | Hacker News Reader

Why is this downvoted? It's true:

https://qz.com/519388/this-saudi-prince-now-owns-more-of-twi...

"Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, who in 2011 invested $300 million in the social network, now owns 34.9 million shares of Twitter’s common stock, according to a new regulatory filing (pdf)."

That is from 2015, but as far as I know he still owns a huge stake in the company. It would seem relevant when discussing SA's influence on Twitter, but I don't see it mentioned in the article for some reason.

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je was arrested when MBS came to power in 2017

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/04/world/middleeast/saudi-ar...

he does not seem to be part of the "saudi intelligence community"

The downvotes are because the "infiltrated twitter" in the story has nothing to do with the investment.

Why should we focus exclusively on low level henchmen when there's a huge Saudi influence on Twitter like that one?

Why should we believe that owning the single largest stake--one even larger than the Jack's--isn't relevant when discussing how they influence Twitter to get what they want?

Well to start the actual information in the story is about the folks involved... and they got all that done without any overarching conspiracy from ownership.

So is the risk here some unproven ownership influence, or the something any given dude can just go and do if he can get a job?

I think that's a very strong claim. What's your evidence for it?

I'm not saying the two things are related. But I'm happy to say that if I wanted to unduly influence a company, buying a significant part of it would be one of the things I'd look at.

> What's your evidence for it?

Evidence for ... the investment being irrelevant?

Can't prove a negative but there's nothing about the story that required any kind of investment to accomplish any of the events described.

You made a positive claim that the two had nothing to do with one another. The kind of evidence that could prove that might include logs of conversations between Twitter execs and reps of Saudi investors.

I agree that nothing has come to light demonstrating that their was behind-the-scenes influence in aid of this. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

I'm amazed at how naive people are on this site about how the world works.

And go ahead and quote my reply with the > and tell me awkshuwaly how wrong I am.

You're awkshuwaly wrong in the sense that the whole story doesn't need any kind of conspiracy regarding owning twitter to occur.

Sure. Nothing at all. Except that Prince Walid surrendered his investment to the same people who ran moles at Twitter. Nothing to see here. It's just a coincidence. Move along.

The story likely plays out just the same regardless...

I get what you're saying but the whole "it's a conspiracy here is some unrelated thing I can't connect but I'm suspicious" thing is such an easy to do, the internet is full of it... I don't think it adds anything, or is even accurate.

And let's say somehow that thing with the investment doesn't happen.... I don't think that changes the story or the lessons from it.

They didn't really need the investment to plant the spies. He just applied for a job and got it. Any foreign spy can do the same and nothing will change.

This seems to me like focusing on the trees instead of the forest. I would think that when discussing Saudi control over a company, we might be interested in more than just some low-level henchmen, but maybe the Saudi prince who owns a third of the company.

To hear some other people talk, this is "conspiracy" territory now. But c'mon, we're supposed to believe that some nobody henchmen are solely responsible for this and ignore the fact that the Saudis own a third of the company.

>we're supposed to believe that some nobody henchmen are solely responsible for this and ignore the fact that the Saudis own a third of the company

Without proof for your second part... yes.

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