1. Parag is covering his own ass and making clear that the initial announcement was always contingent on a few things and not a done deal.
2. He is heavily implying that being a fiduciary of the company and having to act in its best interests (including, I imagine, not randomly criticizing it in public or promising non-existent features) was the deal breaker for Elon.
To my ear, the most simple reading is (1) the board seat came with conditions (2) Elon didn't accept them.
Twitter management undoubtedly has unresolved tensions, tense status quos, factions...
As always with online forums, anyone hitched to the "free speech absolutist" wagon loses eventually. That clears the way for the other camps to gain influence.
Elon's stock purchase has already upended truces, created a rally within previously defeated camps and a circling of wagons within previously superior camps. These are probably where the conditions came from.
Great drama.
Then iirc the SEC put a restriction where his tweets about his companies had to be like, nominally vetted by an officer of the company or something, I don't remember the details. Anyway he basically just refused, but also afaik hasn't tweeted concrete financial lies since then either.
Matt Levine has argued pretty convincingly that musk's highly visible online unpredictability is a net asset for tesla, but contingent on specific circumstances and still carrying risks. It's not surprising at all that other companies would find those circumstances don't apply to them or the risks aren't worth it.
1 basis point, or 0.01%
Can you ELI5 this metaphor for me? I know it's something about when the pope dies but my knowledge of Catholicism is very limited.
Twitter GC also probably hated the idea of Elon as a Director, but it's not their place to stop it. Most they can do is take a page from Tesla GC and quit.
Elon's lived in a fantasy land for years thanks to the Tesla board and investors letting him do whatever he wants.
I doubt that's his intention though.
I wonder what you've achieved in your life that makes you think you're in a position to say anything about that man
I have valid opinions about politicians too ;)
One can legitimately acknowledge the good and bad in a person.
[0] https://stratechery.com/2022/musk-declines-twitter-board-sea...
For Twitter this is serious; Elon could destroy Twitter.
Sell it again, and create (or buy) an alternative.
Just like Trump he has a personal brand big enough to jumpstart a social network, and unlike Trump (it seems) he could probably build it.
That appears to be an embarrassing failure, tho. And Musk's personal brand is much smaller than Trump's.
The world is larger than just the USA. Elon has an international following that probably outsizes what's left of Trumps crazy republicans.
However it seems like the problem is scaling / delivering in a technical sense.
I find that incredible given the momentum he had just after election and the fact that the project was valued at 3 b usd via a spac.
Also, the fact that as far as I know Trump still hasn't posted anything there is a major unforced error. If nothing else it was a way to get a direct line to him post Twitter ban.
There's another flip-side to this which is particularly important towards the more extreme end of the right wing - some people want to go where their enemies are. That Twitter allows you to jump right into the middle of a discussion and directly engage with or antagonise those who you dislike is a big draw. For those into reactionary politics, being siloed away in a little safe zone with people who agree with them isn't particularly gratifying.
edit: I agree with your comment btw, I just wanted to add a little something to it :D
But, again, this makes a Musk-specific social network look even more dubious; Musk hasn't been banned, just... kinda snubbed, if you squint hard enough, but arguably not even that?, and there isn't really a Musk-focused ideology in the same way as there's a Trump one.
(Also, the timing was arguably particularly unfortunate, in that the Soviets also called their major internal propaganda organ 'Truth', and, well, Russia is on peoples' minds now. Though I'm not sure how obvious this parallel was to Trump enthusiasts; it jumped out at me, but I'm not sure how well-known Pravda is in the US).
Twitter is driven mostly by the media and regular personalities.
Trump brand is toxic, and so very few luminaries will contribute.
Combine that with the fact that unregulated speech online immediately results in people calling for some guy they don't like to be lynched, literally, and you have a problem.
Even Trump's allies are all on Twitter, because that's where the audience is.
If Trump were a sharing guy, he could have given America's right wing luminaries each a small stake in it, and required them to put >50% of their content there.
And then talked about it like it was 'free speech' but secretly just have slightly more lose moderators.
Paradoxically a 'free speech' platform that benefits Trump would come out of the anarcho-socialist types. A Pirate Bay type thing I think is more likely to find themselves overrun by unpleasant people, and then maybe get acquired by Trump or something.
[0] - sort of, I've seen stuff mocking the alt-right getting taken down which is pretty funny
[0] - https://i.insider.com/6171b3c713a46d0012b3c7c9 - it's from this article, in case that link is ethereal https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-media-company-p...
I'm under the impression that Elon Musk personal brand is orders of magnitude bigger than Trump, measuring them with how much market cap was generated by both of them.
And, FWIW, neither Yesla nor Space X were created with his “personal brand”—its the other way around. The personal brand is good for some crypto coin manipulation and maybe 5hat boring thing I haven’t heard of on a while.