Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

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hn_throwaway_99

I read the article, and as much as I see a lot of Elliott Management's tactics as personally odious, this action seems very much par for the course for them. That is, I don't see the political angle having much weight.

Elliott has always been very clear the absolute only thing they care about is making more money, and finding companies that they believe have a management team that is not 100% laser focused on increasing shareholder value have always been a target for them. Given Dorsey's dual CEO roles and his persona as the tech-male version of Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle brand, not out of character at all that they'd be eyeing a change in management.

As an aside, would someone who is more versed in the world of finance explain how these PE companies are able to have so much leverage when the stakes they take are still relatively small (e.g. single digits). Management in firms across the world shudder with fear when Elliott takes a sizable stake, but I don't understand how Elliott can wield so much power without having a greater percentage of shares.

Their power comes from a combination of (1) the shares they own, (2) their balance sheet which allows them to outspend (litigation, buying more shares, buying bonds) anyone if they choose to do so, (3) their reputation as money-makers and being absolutely relentless in activist situations, and (4) the fact that generally they have a high batting average in these situations - in other words, they are often right about the need for change whether you think they're jerks or not. These guys pick their spots pretty carefully and they're good at what they do...the level of diligence they do would shock you.

I've been saying for a while that Twitter is one of the most no-brainer activist targets out there to the point where it's almost a layup. Executive compensation is outrageous, the CEO treats it as a hobby, lots of executive turnover, results have been mostly disappointing, R&D is inexplicable ($700 million to turn the star into a heart), a stock that's done essentially nothing since coming public years ago, and they really have no defenses (eg dual share class). And that's all before we even get to whether the company could benefit by dropping its brazenly liberal bias in how it polices content. I've been joking that Rupert Murdoch should buy it :)

What are some examples of their blazenly liberal bias? From what I've seen they only tend to kick people off the platform who have been saying exceedingly unsavoury things ... Katie Hopkins opining about needing a "Final Solution" is just one example.

"Exceedingly unsavory" as determined by whom? People have been kicked off for far vaguer reasons than openly talking about a "final solution". Many conservative e-personalities have been kicked off for ambiguous and yet unexplained violations, whether it is a specific thing they say or a general perception about their personalities or affiliations.

Official policies are strongly influenced by prevailing Leftist dogma as well. Questioning whether gender dysphoria (transgenderism) can be considered mental illness would be considered ban worthy on Twitter, in spite of evidence that many cases of transgenderism are either an example of herd following or some sort of dysphoric personally disorder.

#LearnToCode comes to mind

> What are some examples of their blazenly liberal bias?

I think looking up why #OkDude was trending in the last few days would give you one example.

I never call women "dude" period, because "dude" is literally a moniker applied to men, that's its etymology.

Deliberately misgendering someone goes beyond just tacky and into offensive. That's not a liberal thing, that's just a human decency thing. He was unbanned anyway.

The problem is, a lot of the people who seem to take issue with someone choosing to be transgender seem to extract perverse glee from tormenting them deliberately.

>>Deliberately misgendering someone goes beyond just tacky and into offensive.

Strong disagree. You need to consider what is actually offensive, and when labeling it so is simply hyperbole. Boy who cried wolf.

You're free to disagree, but you're wrong.

Gender identity and how someone refers to themselves is a core part of their identity. Deliberately (as in, going out of your way, not as a mistake, but as a conscious act) is indeed offensive. And moreover there's zero need for it, unless your purpose is to cause offense.

What about Infowars? They're kooks, sure, but I can't recall them saying anything "exceedingly unsavoury".

I can definitely accept twitter as a company not using its potential. Even if they just fire lots of employees, make their pages load faster, stop making their pages break on two thirds of every external links and sprinkle some lightweight ads here and there they could be substantially more profitable.

Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with twitter where mobile, desktop, VPN or not, chrome or firefox, they still have 'something went wrong' messages or throttling messages (from a mobile IP!) on the majority of pages loaded from external links.

Twitter is gross to use and has thousands of employees, I could see someone buying in and trying to smooth it out.

That was my impression too, Dorsey is spreading himself too thin, getting distracted, and not focusing sufficiently on Twitter, hence he’s made himself vulnerable to an activist shareholder.

As for Elliott’s power, part of that is probably his soft power - ability to persuade enough other shareholders to vote Dorsey out. That means he needs to supply a compelling alternative plan to the current status quo and get enough other shareholders to vote for it. I assume he already had that to some degree before buying the shares, so Dorsey could be in for a battle here.

>absolute only thing they care about is making more money

That is a political angle.

You're right. The problem is people in their thinking silo and try to differentiate to claim that not everything is political - when in fact, someone who only is interested in earning money is inherently impacting politics.

It can be, but I'd argue in Twitter's case it's not. Twitter's problem isn't "too much" altruism, but rather generically poor management

This is correct

What changed between Elliot being anti-Trump to becoming pro-Trump? That is so blatantly obviously something.

You can't fairly disassociate making money and politics, as arguably someone who only is interested in earning money is inherently impacting politics.

The drive alone for only caring about money is one issue, however added to that of the anti- to pro-Trump stance makes this feel a whole lot more sinister.

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