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

All: speech here isn't very free when the server can't stay up, and it's smoking right now, for obvious reasons.

I'm going to prune some of the top-heavy subthreads and possibly restrict the page size a bit. There are over 2500 comments in this thread, and if you want to read them all you're going to have to click "More" at the bottom of each page, or go like this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31025061&p=2

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...and so on. Sorry everyone! (Yes, fixes are coming, yes it's all very slow.)

Edit: also, if some of you would log out for the day, that would ease the load considerably. (I hate to ask that, but it's true. Make sure you haven't lost your password!)

So Twitter was at $70 per share a year ago. So what? Jack Dorsey was CEO a year ago, too. The share price was $33 less than a month ago.

But, despite an absolutely incredible roller-coaster news cycle, things have been definitely trending down at Twitter ($33/share last month), which was reflected in its share price. The current executive team (and Dorsey) had wasted time focusing on things that didn't matter instead of things that did matter.

Boards have several fiduciary duties to the shareholders. As an all-cash offer, this generates for the shareholders a substantial return with NO RISK, and so the board has a serious legal obligation to carefully review this offer and make a decision.

If the board elects to reject this offer, then their reasons for doing so need to be very clearly elucidated, because, as Twitter is a public company, they would have to see something in their crystal ball that the rest of the market does not.

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 changed fundamentally over a year.

Musk's offer is a cash only offer. $43 billion is a lot of cash. That's a lot of Tesla shares to sell, or massive loan. If Musk thinks Twitter is that valuable to take such risks, current major investors will probably want to unlock that value themselves.

I think the takeover offer is just as believable as last week's announcement that Musk was joining the Twitter board.

I personally think this is excellent, in the great scheme of things, maybe this will open a real discussion about the real oligarchic nature of the US political and societal life at the top.

I mean, with tech titan (and second wealthiest man on the planet) Bezos owning the WaPo, the moment the tech titan (and the wealthiest man on the planet) Musk will put his hands on Twitter hopefully will also be the moment of some "enlightenment" for the educated masses. Or maybe I'm just day-dreaming.

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 there's no more behind the scenes manipulation. The algorithm itself would be open sourced. Anyone could view it on Github and suggest changes or point out issues.

https://youtu.be/cdZZpaB2kDM?t=666

> "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.

Just to verify that I understood the concept I looked up the definition of "hostile takeover" from various places, its common theme is taking over a company without approval of the board.

The actual offer states [0]:

>As a result, I am offering to buy 100% of Twitter for $54.20 per share in cash, a 54% premium over the day before I began investing in Twitter and a 38% premium over the day before my investment was publicly announced. My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder.

Which means he is asking for approval, which seems to contradict the headline and the quote from Mirabaud Equity Research which was used to make the headline more sensational as they were quoted saying “This becomes a hostile takeover offer which is going to cost a serious amount of cash”.

If the board disapproves of the offer and he acquires a larger stake of ownership, that would be more inline with what a hostile takeover is.

[0] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001418091/000110465...

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 is a good thing.

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.

> The takeover is unlikely to be a drawn out process. “If the deal doesn’t work, given that I don’t have confidence in management nor do I believe I can drive the necessary change in the public market, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder,” said Musk.

Is he holding his own existing shares as hostage?

It's hard to navigate comments, but I cannot find the important stuff being discussed. I mean: how the hell can he even remotely viably secure $43B in cash?! All this "$200B net worth" is pretty much bullshit — it's multiplying current stock price by the amount he holds. (Hugely overpriced stock, in his case.) Sure, he can borrow insane amounts of money using this stock as a leverage, but no way it can be even close to $40B! Right?

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.

> As an all-cash offer, this generates for the shareholders a substantial return with NO RISK, and so the board has a serious legal obligation to carefully review this offer and make a decision.

What a gut check. I'm sure this is an obvious comment by now, but seeing the board's response to turning down something like this is going to be an olympic level display of mental gymnastics. Exciting times.

Journalists and bluechecks seem to be particularly mad about this. I guess they don't like the prospect of having to follow rules that are transparently enforced rather than the current system of favoritism and opacity

What he did today is thousand times better than shelling money behind the charity that many billionaires doing. Under Elon twitter can enable true "freedom of expression." Parag's one sided stand to enable woke culture, and board's support to that clearly showing how extreme right mindset they have when running this company. Today we can't hear the voice of other side on this platform, they are either shutdown or suspended even if you are former prez https://twitter.com/jack/status/651003891153108997

I believe this is not a hostile takeover. It's an unsolicited bid to purchase the company directly to the board. A hostile takeover would involve a tender or purchases directly to shareholders to purchase stocks ignoring the board or likely against the wishes of the board.

This is exactly why individuals should not be allowed to have tens (let alone hundreds!) of billions of dollars in wealth - they become all-powerful and too easily subvert the will of the people. They become their own ruling class, which is unacceptable in a functioning democracy.

He actually dismissed Twitter’s management so I am guessing they’re slated to be demoted or fired if he takes over. Should they sell? I mean it’s such a bizarrely undervalued company. It’s like buying a plot of land on fifth avenue that’s owned by a convenience store and the store owner wants to charge for a skyscraper market rate.

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...

For $1B he could make an exact twitter clone, and he could probably do it for much less than that. You might say, yes, but he's paying for the brand, and no one would use his clone. He could pay for a flood of advertising and other promotions to get people to switch. He could pay 42,000,000 people $1000 each to switch to his twitter clone.

The reason this bothers me in principle, is that whatever the side of politics you are, the "public" will have effectively zero control on affecting any board decisions at Twitter, moderation-wise or otherwise.

Its true that the public had little say in that regard till now but at least this buyout threat shows that it is "possible" to stand up to whatever decisions their board makes.

As an aside, I doubt people and governments would have the same confidence in Twitter were it a private company, which leaves me to believe that this whole buyoff thingy is just a power play by Musk to gain some power over the board without actually joining the board.

Since Elon bought his 9% stake, the value of Twitter increased. He mentions selling his shares if the takeover is not accepted. That would make him a lot of money!

His offer is also on the high side, this might make people bullish about twitter. On the other hand, I do think he is genuinely interested in buying twitter.

But can't help to feel this might also be lucrative for him if the deal doesn't go through.

It seems like Musk has a love hate relationship public companies... That's why SpaceX is still private.

I don't know about the validity of the bid (fifty.. four twenty?) but man does Twitter need a kick in the ass. The product has been stagnant since birth but has so much potential, I'd be interested to see what reforms Elon would bring in.

What he certainly has produced already is a lot of attention, now, if he can't buy up this specific platform at his final bid maybe a dump and a 51% will follow ... whatever the case he got an extraordinary amount of people in and outside of TWTR discussing his intentions and captured hopefully some imaginations so in the end if nothing succeeds in terms of an acquisition he can at least effectively leverage this huge attention to jump start a new platform.

I'm not for obscenely wealthy single individuals i.e. 'oligarchs' sponsoring "open source free speech platforms" but I welcome the mainstream opportunity for stirring up the dead end (social dilemma) in which social platforms find themselves (from out-of-spiral censoring ("moderating") to basically uncontrolled anon image boards) I guess from an engineering perspective sensible new solutions are very much needed.

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

This is the coolest mid-life crisis purchase I've ever seen. I hope he enjoys it and has some fun from the boring office work of rockets, tunnels, robots, AI, and of course bullet-proof trucks.

Interesting if he manages to take over twitter. For me Twitter has become full of people marketing themselves with lists, tweets that don't make sense out of context, replies full of bile or inane comments and animated gifs.

But I'm not convinced Musk's opinions of what is good for twitter is aligned with other content creators and consumers. Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX, Boring Company have clear goals - twitter is quite different.

Good. Twitter is a hate factory. And it is failing as a business. A shake up is overdue.

I've always felt Twitter has been poorly run, it's almost like the people that work for the company don't actually use it often and are completely disconnected from the userbase. Remember when they completely screwed API users? Various Twitter third parties had to shut down entirely because of it. Twitter has some of the most valuable and useful realtime information in the world, but everyone there seems content on not using it for anything worth anything.

They even killed Vine, which is basically the exact same thing as Tiktok and Stories...years before both. Then tried to push their own version of stories, which was just awful. Jack and the current CEO seem(ed)s totally disconnected from any sort of reality going on with their own product.

Even Jack, while he was still in power, seemed confused by Twitter's own censorship/moderation rules at times. How is that possible? Moderation is also totally uneven with some accounts getting away with certain jokes (or outright threats) and others are completely immune to it. I personally love Twitter as a product, but it's so insane to me how the current CEO has his job, or how Jack was able to remain CEO for so long when he had clearly long abandoned it for Square.

For major news, no one talks about Facebook/Tiktok/Instagram...they talk about Twitter. It's so incredibly valuable, and it's shackled by sheer incompetent and complacency. If it's not Elon, someone needs to come in and restructure it and get rid of those holding it back.

How did it actually get to the situation that none of the Twitter co-founders have any significant ownership?

That's cool. When I'm bored I usually just fire up a game in my Steam backlog, but whatever.

I'm not sure Musk knows what he's doing, this feels like a personal vendetta. I'm also not sure he has any likelihood of succeeding in the first place, I wouldn't necessarily assume anyone is going to take him up at that price. And (quite frankly) I don't think that Musk is a very good free speech activist. I think he's regularly hypocritical about free speech and regularly engages in his own forms of censorship; I don't think he has a particularly coherent philosophy about how to approach free speech.

All that being said, I don't really see the problem with him trying this, and I don't necessarily see a ton of downside to him succeeding or failing. I'm perfectly willing to grab the popcorn and just watch.

Twitter is not a great social network, and I don't think it's amazingly well managed. If it gets worse and Musk does a bunch of radical changes, maybe more people will start using Mastodon. If he fails, no harm done. If he joins on and does nothing and just monetizes it more aggressively, then :shrug:, Twitter is probably eventually headed in that direction anyway.

Go for it. I've got no confidence that Musk can actually innovate in this space, and little to no confidence that he'll actually even get the control he wants, and he might actually make things worse if he does succeed, but on a certain level who cares?

It really stinks for artists/communities on Twitter that might be hurt by that happening, but again, I don't really have a lot of confidence that Twitter isn't going to start hurting them anyway, so I don't know that this really matters all that much for them.

:shrug: Maybe 2 years from now I'll look back at this comment and think it's naive.

"The Reporting Person intends to review his investment in the Issuer on a continuing basis. Depending on the factors discussed herein, the Reporting Person may, from time to time, acquire additional shares of Common Stock and/or retain and/or sell all or a portion of the shares of Issuer common stock held by the Reporting Person in the open market or in privately negotiated transactions, and/or may distribute the Common Stock held by the Reporting Person to other entities." [1]

[1]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001418091/000110465...

From observing various internet forums, including this one, I noticed that people from the "first world" countries don't know the value of free speech and often take it for granted. Sometimes even coming to such views as "free speech is dangerous" and that "we should limit free speech" (by blocking the views I don't like).

Understand this: limits on free speech are far more dangerous to society than allowing fringe extremists to spread their ideas. Coming from a country that had made a transition from a (rather messy) democracy to an authoritarian fascist police state in just 15 years, I tell you this: it all started with limits on the freedom of speech.

> Free speech absolutism is possible and is beneficial

I don't think we have evidence to support this. Pursuant to the last major thread on the topic, I was thinking further about it, and realized that the vast majority of progress civilization has made has been under conditions much more regulated in terms of which ideas may propagate. We've never had a situation where fake news can and does spread the way it does today, where authorities are being undermined like this and casually dismissed by people with no knowledge of the respective fields, etc.

The notion that all speech should be allowed actually seems stupid to me on its face, the more that I consider it.

The saddest thing about this bid going through is that we're going to miss out on the next SpaceX or Tesla and he's going to be pulling his hair out over this intead.

If the bid is accepted, he's going to want to build his own app store otherwise Google & Apple will kick the Twitter app off if his version of free speech doesn't align with their version of censorship.

Gab discovered this early on and pivoted accordingly.

The fact it is an all cash offer should finally put an end to the ludicrous claim so often made that billionaires can’t access liquidity.

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.

I don't think on Twitter we should be 'free speech absolutists'. Its a private company, no need for lots of people.

What I would actually like is seriously shooting down these idiotic bots. Like seriously, they have the exact same name and picture as the main account. How the fuck do we not have machine learning, fuck a bunch of bash-scripts to figure this out?

It makes the platform borderline unusable how much crypto spam bots exist on it.

That said, not a fan of Musk waste his time with Twitter. SpaceX, Tesla are plenty.

As much as I very much admire the output of Elon's various ventures, I'm not sure of the value of this move, either for him or Twitter.

I think Twitter often brings out the worst of his character (or perhaps "reveals"?)

I wonder if he might be too emotionally invested in how Twitter operates for this to be a good move, given his numerous Twitter-led controversies. I worry about the motivations behind him trying to do this.

But I could be wrong. And to be fair, I can think of worse owners...

This is like Warren Buffett's hostile takeover of Berkshire Hathaway (then a failing textile company) because their CEO made him assmad, that ultimately just prevented him from becoming even more disgustingly rich.

Musk is gonna be left with a pile of worthless, shit stock. Of course once one of the streaming services releases a docu-drama about Twitter's rise and fall (like they did for Theranos, Uber, and WeWork), Musk can charge decent money to play himself.

Sometimes being reckless and a heretic helps society move forward.

I'm starting to become a fan of Musk. Guy is sitting on $256B in net worth. That's so rich it's like trying to picture the distance from the earth to the sun, your brain struggles.

I get the sense he's going to be the Howard Hughes of our time. Weird ideas and a ton of money make for some interesting moves. Not everything he does will be positive, but his imprint will be one for the history books.

I have to admit: I hope this happens mostly for the entertainment value.

Also, I think that this business of shutting down opinions of people we dislike or disagree with is really bad for society long term. I think Musk might stop that.

Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one. — A.J. Liebling

Arguably he already has it but if Elon manages to turn Twitter around and grow it to be on par with Facebook and TikTok then nobody could deny he has the greatest Midas touch in the world.

I don't know what anyone means by "free speech" sometimes.

Often I think it is just "I get to say what I want." but beyond that they've no idea.

I wonder who is his ally (inside and financial). This could be interesting.

I don't understand how making twitter private will be beneficial for free speech? Isn't it the point that the company ownership is distributed?

Another billionaire that buys a media outlet to massage the public's opinion to their need.

OK. I'm a huge admirer of everything Musk has a accomplished, but... W.T.F.?

Taking on Twitter will not only be a huge amount of work, it is likely consume a ridiculous amount of talent -- which could be focused instead on building next-generation humanoid robots, electric vehicles, energy solutions, reusable spaceships, and space stations.

Musk has a long history of taking on more than it's humanly possible, but so far he has been narrowly avoided failure. Recall that Tesla was ready to file for bankruptcy at one point in 2019.[a]

He hasn't sold any shares, so he's likely borrowing against his Tesla stock to finance this hostile takeover, exposing himself to all sorts of potentially ugly debt squeezes.

I really, really, really hope Twitter doesn't become a black hole that sucks talent and energy away from more important things. More than that, I hope this latest battle doesn't become Musk's Waterloo.

--

[a] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/03/musk-tesla-was-about-a-month...

It’s an all cash offer. Do folks here who manage such things educate us how could Musk muster such cash? Genuinely curious.

Twitter does not make any great money. It has to go private backed by a wealthy individual to stay afloat for more time without the regulatory worries. It's just a noisy online market place with mostly garbage.

I doubt he will make it actually work, but at least it will be fun show to watch from outside. There will be some changes if he succeeds. And the effects of those should generate plenty of content to follow.

Good old activist investing. Carl Icahn would be proud.

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 you ensure that someone is not gaming the system, i.e. someone pretending to be more than one person. Add some other social mechanisms that we organically use in our daily lives to combat bad actors, for example if someone is caught BS'ing degrade their reputation and amplify the defence of the victims(thus, solve the problem of sensational lie being viewed a million times and no one seeing the correction).

Filter bubbles? Doesn't have to be a thing, you have all the data to detect bubbles and pop them by introducing them to each other. "More from the same" algos are a choice, TikTok successfully serves you new content - doesn't think that just because you liked a cat you want cats and cats only.

A "free speech" platform would give users more power to control their communications with others and transparency of how the "system" worked.

Very simple things that we had with usenet like killfiles and threaded conversations are foreign things to the younger generations. Things like shadowbans and a central authority that just decides to disable your account would be non-existent. Heck, we even had a form of "blue checkmark" with finger daemons.

I have no idea what musk is thinking.

Two options: a) He buys Twitter for ~35.5bn (he already owns ~9.2%) IN CASH mind you.

b) He's trying to sell all of his stocks without people saying he's manipulating the market.

Twitter has immense influence on the zeitgeist than any other single media property. For a person like Musk, $43B is an investment that would pay for itself in short order by the various kinds of market manipulation he could engage in. He has cheated so many times without consequence. Why not take it to the next level? Pump and dump, favorable sentiment for his companies, signal boosting his pocket politicians, and so on. Truly frightening.

Dumb question: what makes this a “hostile takeover”?

Elon’s bid was non-binding, and unless I’m unaware - he isn’t trying to actively change the board or management.

So what makes this “hostile”?

This seems like a win/win. If Elon takes over Twitter and fixes it, we get free speech there (plus, product innovation!). If Elon is rejected, battle lines clearly drawn and hopefully many alternative platforms (innovating on product as well as terms of service; enjoy tankie-twitter!). This is like the great unbundling of Craigslist, probably created 100x consumer surplus over a decade.

They are backed into a corner here. They don’t have a choice. Elon’s got ‘em.

> Musk said that if he succeeds in his bid, he would seek to retain as many other shareholders as the law allows for a private company, rather than being sole owner.

This really changes the equation for stakeholder value. The offer isn't Twitter-owned Twitter or $54.20/share, it's Twitter-owned Twitter or Elon-owned twitter.

It's sorta funny; I had a call scheduled to talk to a recruiter at Tesla but seeing this reminded me just what kind of guy is ultimately the CEO of the company. I feel very strongly that company culture permeates from the top, and I don't want to swim in whatever cesspool is leaking from the top of that pyramid.

remember: Musk is the same person that posted this: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1503276966874595330

democracy doesn't matter when the rich seek to bend the world to their will.

He's already backing off the deal which should be a surprise to no one.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/14/elon-musk-not-sure-hell-be-a...

It’s interesting to contextualize this with a regular persons life. This amount will present about 1/7 of his net worth.

However unlike a traditional purchase this will be n investment and depending on how it goes, he can get even more money.

If an average person had a max net worth of 3 million this would be like them deciding to buy a 400K investment property, or a laundry mat.

That aside, this is also a great example of how easy it is to become richer if you’re rich.

Musk buys at $39 pumps all month to $54. He can either sell and easily make billions profit or take over the entire company at what can only be described as a discount compared to potential.

Not to mention twitters stock hardly does well. He can just try again on the next dip if he likes.

The closest thing we had (have) to online free speech was (is) Usenet. But distributors of child porn along with Andrew Cuomo (when he was the New York state attorney general) making a deal with a number of major ISPs resulted in most ISPs discontinuing their Usenet service.

Is this a high enough price to be considered a "Bear Hug"? I immediately thought of this scene from Succession: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4QHqjel4kI

Why isn't Elon buying Truth Social? Because it's not the hardware and software that he would be buying it's the equity which is people. Truth Social can have piles of servers and the best software but it can't buy or generate truth.

With the original founders gone, why not? He is literally twitter’s most passionate user.

This isn't what a hostile takeover is. Is it?

He could load up on puts and sell his position. Pretty sure he does these games read somewhere there was massive Doge purchase weeks prior to his fandom of said coin.

With this play, "funding secured" for his Twitter killer.

That’s a lot of zeros for some frozen peaches.

Good. Twitter is actually dying [0] (and Musk knows it [1]). For its survival it needs to be saved from itself, by taking it private.

Well done to Musk for doubling down.

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/11/15/2-comparing-...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30973239

Well done, he won't be on the Supervisory Board - so bought the shares for useless. Now complete takeover announced - rejected - share price rises - shares sold again, good money made

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.

I am a Musk fanboy. But I don't think he should be a gatekeeper for free speech evangelism. No matter how fair Elon thinks he is, a completely private entity or person cannot guarantee unbiased free speech. There has to be regulation and oversight.

So if Musk wants to take over Twitter, sure, no one's going to stop him. But let's not expect it means that free speech principles will be upheld. It's probable that under Elon's regime, Twitter might suppress anti-Tesla topics.

Can someone give me a layman's explanation as to why taking Twitter private would allow Elon to make the changes he wants to make that he couldn't do if it was still public?

Twitter would have killed for this type of buyout offer 6 years ago.

This is great news.

Twitter definitely has potential but at the moment it is a cespool of triggered personalities where the voice of the sane and interesting people is drowned in an endless screaming.

Let the “420” aspect of the share price offer be lost on no one…

There’s an account called Elon Jet which uses publicly available information to track Elon's private jet and post take off and landings. Elon offered 5k to the owner to take it down[1]. He has blocked loads of people for mocking or disagreeing with him.

Are those actions evil or wrong? Not really, but I also don’t think they’re the actions of an ardent believer in free speech which this thread is making him out to be.

Saying you believe in free speech and acting out a belief that everyone should have an equal right to say their piece without fear of being silenced are two different things.

1 https://www.techtimes.com/articles/271211/20220130/elon-musk...

I personally dislike Musk and most things he says and does, but I am grateful for the fact that his actions lead to more hilarious chronicles by Matt Levine (Money Stuff).

Can't wait for today's installment!!!

Hmm, Mark Cuban for no cash starts a cost-based online pharmacy to help people. I really do not see any factual proof that Elon making money saves civilization.

Or I do not see how refusing to follow SEC rules will get Elon any closer to buying twitter as I do not think SEC would ever allow it without doing a massive lawsuit to block it. Which means Leon is motivated by his beef with SEC not saving civilization.

As a free speech absolutist, I might actually start using Twitter if it were run by Elon. Unfortunately I’m not terribly optimistic about it happening.

Bezos buys the Washington Post, Musk buys Twitter...Now we need to long for the world where megalomaniacal billionaires just bought football teams?

Does anyone else think he is trying to do this so it gets accepted and announced on 4/20?

I worry, because Twitter is a very real outlet for many oppressed people. Matrix technology is good, but nowhere near as widespread or easy to use yet. I worry that Twitter will be bought and Musk turns out to be a far-right or far-left extremist that makes Twitter into a much more biased political platform.

Why is this discussion only about the free speech on the internet? This is a business news story about an SEC filing. There is certainly other possible interesting discussions in regards to the financial aspects of this story.

If it cannot happen here in this discussion, HN should not be so quick to flag/dupe/dead the other submissions which are from other business or news publications.

Mostly but not entirely off topic, just something I thought about this morning, a hypothetical feature of twitter.

Imagine being able to flip a switch (a “green profile check mark”) that would disable banning and muting features for you. And will only allow another green check marks to engage in conversations with you.

Will this help break the echo chambers, or will it create a tyrannical majority? Both?

@dang Will you be writing a blog with the technical issues that happened which caused server load ? Would be much appreciated.

Bezos has Washington Post as his mouthpiece. Murdoch has Fox News. Musk doesn't really need more money. I don't think this is just pump and dump.

Is it possible Musk is looking to buy a method to influence a populace for his own ends? I.E. is this a method for him to influence a population to gain power and sway over elections, organizations, etc?

A major Twitter shareholder and Saudi prince Alwaleed rejects Elon's offer to takeover Twitter.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/saudi-prince-alwaleed-bin...

What's the relationship between Jack and Musk? Are they buddies? Do they hate each other? Is that relationship a factor here?

My take, this is about putting a valuation on non-twitter social. Reddit has more users than Twitter, and a valuation 1/5th of twitters. If Twitter is worth 47 billion to someone, then reddit should be worth 50-100 billion.

Unfortunately it's not possible to know if Elon has a major stake in any privately held social companies.

The offer will fail: The tell is that it is a "final" offer. In fact, if the offer were accepted, Elon would be hard pressed to come up with the actual cash for an all-cash offer. The offer isn't meant to be taken seriously.

After his "final" offer is rejected, Elon will rage quit his position in Twitter.

We've talked about compliance and advertising revenue, which I think are good points for discussion.

The motivations of Elon are unclear. What is clear is that he hates feeling like his behavior is being controlled or monitored. He loves attention. He's petty. For someone who wants to advance the world and get to Mars, he obsesses over small slights and squabbles far too much. Twitter is far from being some technological marvel. They have a decent application with lots of reach. Doesn't really match the rest of Elon's assets. Doesn't seem to align with his goals.

But let's imagine Elon's Twitter. Let's say he isn't bound by laws and contracts preventing it and he says "anything goes" on the platform. What happens to advertisers? I assume they leave. What happens to staff? I assume they get fired when the revenue dries up. We know what "free speech twitter" looks like; an uber-conservative site devoid of real life and full of misinformation.

Does allowing medical (and other) misinformation and promotion of violence to spread on Twitter serve Elon's ends? Perhaps, if he wishes to make an attempt to become an autocrat (which wouldn't be surprising; it's every geek and billionaire's dream) or support one. It doesn't seem like he'd fight the spread of that misinformation with corrective speech, as he has what's (at best) a loose relationship with the truth.

Removed my tw?tter account in a week, after reading the Terms of Service. Won't regret even if it dies.

I assume this will mean that if you post the picture of him with Ghislane Maxwell you get instantly banned

Imo, he's taking responsibility. If as an individual you can deploy the most money in the world, what do you do with it? Twitter became a negative-sum game of people competing to debase themselves in service of narrative in exchange for nothing but the approval of others who had already done the same. Unlocking that negative cycle can release a lot of captive value for everyone. The best way to do that is to connect great minds and scale them based on their revealed desires.

I remember Musk offered to solve world hunger but the NGO people who said they could do it flaked when (pen in hand) he offered to cut them a cheque. The next best thing is to provide a platform for discourse so that smart people indexed on truth and reality can thrive and wield influence.

The opportunity is that Twitter just isn't funny, and as a signal of alignment to truth, that's a pretty honest sign it has become oppressive and that it has become a thing that most people just do not want. The controversial censorship on Twitter has been against humour, which makes Musk's play such an obvious win. As an activist target, Twitter has spent almost a decade contorting itself and spending a lot of effort to make itself suck, and it just needs to suck slightly less to be a benefit to humanity. Value for money, it's probably the most effective $43B anyone has spent in the US.

What's the chance of him just polling off a dogecoin? Price went up, he sells, then says "sorry for rejecting my offer" (which of course had "secured funding" and all that).

Would be a great way to make a few extra billion and of course the SEC won't do mcuh

Basically whether it’s rational to dump his stake in Twitter to you or me doesn’t matter. He Carries enough influence that investors will spook and it may trigger a sell off. It’s possible Dorsey knew this was coming and parag is enjoying the leftovers

Wonder if Bezos will out bid? The WashPo and twitter under one roof would be kind of cool

If I was Jack Dorsey, I would take this deal in a heartbeat. Twitter stock has not gone anywhere in the last 9 years it has been public. It does not make any money. This is like the Yahoo deal where Microsoft offered a bunch of money for Yahoo.

Scary if he wins. One super powerful shit disturber with a personal agenda controlling one of the largest social news sources out there.

It goes from a company fighting to survive, who probably has little agenda (or time and power to really fight for it), to a company that exists simply to serve the whims of one man's agenda and every change and action will be for that purpose, albeit not advertised as such. How else better to amplify one's voice and discredit anyone else's? Sow chaos, fuel rumours, surface chatter that will affect markets to his favour and to dick around with politicians and countries that aren't doing him any favours. It definitely doesn't sit right.

The real question is why, because I very much doubt he wants to "improve" twitter, it's more like what does he want to accomplish by owning the platform to advance his other goals.

As a fan of Musk and his companies, I personally hope this fails. He's already busy enough running SpaceX and Tesla which matter significantly more to the future of humanity than a website that lets people type 280 characters.

I think Scott Galloway is right, Elon doesn't add value, just volatility.

Any twitter employees here?

Whats your take on this? Do you feel happy or anxious or do not care?

I can't believe this many people really care wtf is going to happen to Twitter. I hope Musk takes the hardware running it and makes it into an AGI who's sole job is to pass the butter.

This underscores the importance of federated social media like Mastodon, which offers a broad range of instances (servers/communities) that never will be owned and controlled by a single guy.

the things Musk says about twitter in the press release, dont seem to be necessarily true - that twitter has some unique social utility, or a great deal more value that is not being maximized. I guess reality distortion fields work, but people are wise to twitter, and what it is and isnt good for. and any changes or enhancements that make it worth 70 per share once more are likely to be more about new engagement models like 10 second videos or something, not crossing some imaginary line of maximal free speech. I dont know.

The thing that is absolutely puzzling to me in these conversations is it seems that people who generally believe in the free market desire what amounts to regulation on social media platforms, inversely, to protect 'free speech' when in fact Twitter has the absolute right in the free market to moderate as they see fit when free speech only protects from governmental actions.

And to those who would make the argument that Twitter is too big to not be protected under free speech, I would say that Twitter is _excellent_ at making its user base seem more important than it is. Go outside, talk to people. Twitter is just a shitty microcosm.

This thread is hilarious.

In the cesspit of a social media website, people accuse Twitter of being a social media cesspit.

I've seen people arguing for absolute freedom of speech, except in malicious circumstances, but seem to think that malicious is easy to define.

I've seen people ask if there really are any other alternatives to individuals owning huge wealth. Or people saying that doing immoral things is ok if it's within the law.

I think I've had enough of this site for a while.

This feels more like hes trying to make the Twitter stakeholder lawsuit go away by announcing an offer (who wants to be suing their new boss?) than an actual acquisition attempt.

So he is pumping up the share price and, if he doesn't get his way he will dump his shares.

I wonder if there's a name for this sort of behaviour?

So Musk offered $43B to purchase Twitter, but it can't be a serious offer because $43B is only $1083.00 /rimshot c'mon... it's a hex joke. No? Ok.

I can't imagine Musk can make Twitter any worse than it is. As much as I would have liked it to be a medium that elevated humanity, with some exceptions, it's served to be quite the opposite. I'd be pleased if Twitter disappeared from existence, but maybe Musk either improves it or leads to demolish it, and by no means would I suggest standing in the way.

Has Musk made it clear why he thinks Twitter doesn’t serve the goal of free speech with explicit reasons? I don’t follow him so he may have mentioned them in the past.

>As a result, I am offering to buy 100% of Twitter for $54.20 per share in cash, a 54% premium over the day before I began investing in Twitter and a 38% premium over the day before my investment was publicly announced. My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder.

This seems like he's mostly trolling them or looking for an excuse to sell. The chances they accept and he can get 100% seem low, this is a one-time offer with something of an ultimatum, and it seems a bit unlikely he wants to share that much Tesla to get the money in the first place.

I see this positively. Musk cannot save what the Internet is becoming, but he may be able to prevent Twitter from being completely captured by leftists fascists.

I appreciate this man.

$43 billion to stop some kid from tracking your flights.

Free speech is an ideal that doesn't really exist. Even in the USA I can't threaten to kill you or announce that a bomb is in the building.

"Elon Musk's raging narcissism launches all-out $43B assault on his credibility and fortune"

Without any understanding that the his right-wing narcissistic suppliers who rage in public about being prevented from raging in public are not the sort of people who become good paying customers for a free platform.

This is like the universe seeing Elon Musk and issuing a course correction.

For the avoidance of doubt: this is dreadful for Twitter's longevity. Twitter's only sustainable future while staying true to its roots, is as a market utility co-owned by media companies.

A billionaire pouring money into a money-pit is fine only for as long as it holds his interest as a plaything (which might be a long time, considering his narcissism)

Who else thinks he's hype driving the price up to dump the shares he already owns at a profit? He clearly has no reason to fear the SEC...

It will be end of Twitter, or beginning of the end.

Time to take a second look at Mastodon. Or third.

Hee hee.

Let's see what The Babylon Bee has to say about this.

Why not. Makes totally sense. Twitter gets a better image. Right now there is a real risk that something like gettr will take off.

Gogogogo Elon! free us from the cancel culture

This is playing out like the Russian invasion.

Anyone else curious how Musk would handle that Twitter account tweeting about his private jet flights if he owned Twitter? Strange to think that might be the real litmus test of how much he cares about free speech.

So after Twitter’s stock price doubles and Musk dispenses with these foolish antics, he dumps his shares, yeah?

I just realized that we can use the current stock price to derive a probability that Elon Musks offer will be accepted.

Let `cp` be the current stock price; let `op` be the original price, before the offer was made; let `bp` be the bid price, what Musk offered; and let P be the probability that the offer is accepted. Then it must apply that

`cp = op + P*(bp - op)`

Meaning: The current price is the original price plus the probability that the offer is accepted times the stock price premium if the offer is accepted.

=> P = (cp - op) / (bp - op)

Plugging in the current numbers gives us a probability of about 50 %.

Interesting. I think Musk will be under tones of pressure. How would one play the market against him? Shorts?

No. No. Do not want. Why is he going to ruin something good? I hope the shareholders reject this.

I am not sure Elon can fix Twitter b/c I am not sure Social Networks can be fixed at all.

I have some Twitter stock, and will be happy to transmorgrify it into another Musk company!

just adding to this historic post

I hope the Fediverse can handle the onslaught of two consecutive marketing campaigns.

Hackernews is just as censorious as twitter. Comments get flagged and moderated solely by the positions taken within and then system has the gall to then tell you to read the comment policies which you didn't violate as they are from the libertine age that preceded this one.

Controversial post rarely reach the front page anymore and if they do they are full of reasonable and true comments fading into gray and finally away. Meanwhile the most on the nose, vile and hateful propaganda get's voted to the top with rarely anyone speaking against it.

I understand you do this for a good cause, because you think it will save lives or make society better. It won't.

There is an underlying reality with it's ground truth and that can only ever be glimpsed through the verbal sparring of ideas and ideologies.

To those truly concerned about "harmful misinformation", you should know that the greatest atrocities in human history were committed when one side, faction or ideology could dictated what everyone said and wrote.

This is not an accident.

The most harmful misinformation is that which no one is allowed to correct.

Good. Twitter is a top heavy company that could have its staff halved and still be good.

Elon would do a great job firing the staff and right sizing the company.

There was a chap who was involved in their AI department. Despite the initial question of why is there an AI department, the follow up is why is it doing so badly?

What happens to employee unvested stock grants when you're taken private?

I hope that it succeeds and that the effects trickle down the whole industry.

Elon if you’re reading this. Do it. They can’t stop you. We believe in you!

So what I'm hearing is, there may be some job openings at Twitter soon.

The title of this should be changed to the title of the article, "Elon Musk Makes $43 Billion Unsolicited Bid to Take Twitter Private".

The current title given here implies that Musk is likely to take over Twitter, which doesn't seem true after reading the article (which includes a quote about the proposed price being too low to be taken seriously).

pretty crazy to see the sheer unadulterated terror that the mere possibility of free speech absolutism instills in people. this way of thinking was not common like sixteen years ago—what changed?

Everyone here is talking about free speech and Twitter censorship, but I have a different take:

How do we know Elon Musk won't just ban criticism of him or his business ventures (Tesla / SpaceX / The Boring Company / Starlink / etc)?

We know that his claims of being a "free speech absolutist" are absolute bullshit, because the moment the speech is about him he turns to every trick in the book to try and censor it[0]. This includes firing internal critics of himself and getting dox on anonymous bloggers so he could threaten to sue their employers.

If Elon buys Twitter and makes any major changes to it's policies, it will be for the worse. I probably will delete my account at that point.

[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/free-speech-absolutist-elon-...

As a SpaceX customer, this makes me sad. I want that money to go into his existing businesses. Not some ego trip for silly idealogical reasons.

$43B could go some way for more satellites, more ground stations. Investing in businesses already making him money.

I’ve been very unhappy with my Twitter use because it has an addiction pattern. I set a short screen time limit on my phone, but I keep breaking it. Yet browsing the feed generally makes me feel sad and anxious.

This news may be what I needed to delete my account.

Someone explain to me how this is a "hostile" take over?

My only issue is they used the wrong name.. he now goes by Elona

*MUSK: `NOT SURE I'LL ACTUALLY BE ABLE TO BUY' TWITTER

Is he able to sell his 9% stake while the board mulls his offer?

If I was an investor in Tesla or SpaceX I'd be extremely opposed to this. Calling the shots at three important companies is basically a disaster waiting to happen, especially if you spend a lot of time posting memes on Twitter.

Why is the market cap of Twitter so low (not even 10% of fb)?

Who didn't know this was coming?

Imagine you're Musk. You have a bijjilion and 1 $. You use twitter heavily and see huge issues, you even see the results of your poll. You buy it for $50 billion and you fix those huge issues because they are in fact trivial to solve. The valuation of twitter would only go up, but Musk isn't even looking at it from a value investing point of view. He's looking at it from a societal point of view. He's looking at it from a 'worth more than currency' value.

Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.

-Albert Einstein

This isn't about nation to nation. This is about so many subjects. The peace between the republicans and democrats is only being kept by force right now. Censoring your political opponents eliminates the possibility of understanding.

My hope is that he does things that the "Twitter is a private company and they can do what they want" crowd hates. Twitter may cost $43B or more, but to witness the prostration of that crowd is truly priceless.

This seems like a massive waste of money. Firstly, it will kill remaining trust in twitter and secondly the opportunity cost of spending that much money, like why not expand Telsa into India, or Asia in a big way.

For all those saying govnt should control platforms like this bear in mind that the free market is working even in this case. A single person decided to take a massive social media private only after a few years of it being a bad actor (see anti free speech sentiment around Twitter.) In a socialist/state-run world any regulation would take years to pass to only then cripple the platform and make it a worse version of itself in many ways maybe except the primary goal of the regulation.

A non-public Twitter will have less pressure from the outside to "perform" and not taken hostage to follow the current dogmatic norms of the population allowing it to undergo much needed and necessary changes to make it a better platform.

Twitter shouldn't have part time leadership.

So now Twitter should have part time leadership.

I'm being unfair, right? So let's qualify that: Twitter shouldn't have part time leadership that is distracted by cryptocurrency.

Wait, no...

> Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk offered to take Twitter Inc. private in a deal valued at $43 billion, lambasting company management and saying he’s the person who can unlock the “extraordinary potential” of a communication platform used daily by more than 200 million people.

That's intriguing. Twitter's user facing APIs have been pretty stale in the last decade or so, in fact it could be said that they have regressed. If you regularly use something like Slack then it's easy to see how Twitter have wasted 1000s of integration opportunities. With the right direction it could become an exciting platform again. I don't think Musk intends to do anything like that, though.

I liked Elon Musk better when he was less focused on a being a celebrity and trying to protect his effectively infinite stack of virtual cash. At one point he was worth $300 billion--today it is merely $265 billion. He could literally retire 100,000 times over (a comfortable middle-class $80k/yr lifestyle)--or maybe just 10,000 times over (comfortably in the 1% at $800k/yr).

Money aside, clearly that's just not enough for him anymore. He got sucked into the fame game and inevitably had to step on faces to keep climbing. And that made him a target, and now he's going to go punish those Twitter trolls like a baby with an enormous wallet.

He couldn't have just joined the board first?

Nothing would compel me to use that junk site.

The only people complaining about free speech are literally right-wingers spreading verifiable lies (and this includes non US right-wingers). The fact that this is an issue is a tragic flood of propaganda by these liars.

I cannot think that Elon Musk owning/controlling Twitter will go even half the way he expects. He clearly only sees it as a potential platform for disseminating his opinions, which have regularly been wrong when it came to things like the pandemic. He's a potentially dangerous egomaniac and if he is allowed to own Twitter the best case scenario is that Twitter experiences a mass user exodus, worst case it turns into a social media platform for crazy nonsense like Newsmax and OAN. Sure, it could just turn into a Fox News equivalent, but that's barely better.

What a profound waste of his time and talent.

If he's so rich and smart, just make a better Twitter and people will flock to it, right?

I mean, I thought he's for the invisible hand of the market yadda yadda yadda.

My prediction: this is how democracy ends.

I really hope twitter burns to the ground.

Such events is the moment when news agencies reveal their true faces. Compare how different outlets want to frame the narrative.

Axios: "Elon Musk goes into full goblin mode". This outlet pretends to be neutral in quiet times. They usually frame the narrative by omission of inconvenient news.

Reuters: "Elon Musk makes $43 billion cash takeover offer for Twitter". That's plain and factual.

RedState: "Liberals Absolutely Lose It Over Elon Musk's Hostile Takeover Bid of Twitter". But they don't pretend to be neutral: it's in their name.

That is certainly one way to kill twitter

I am 100% convinced that this is driven by the failure of Trump's social media platform which leave Trump without a megaphone.

Elon Musk wants to deliver Trump the Twitter megaphone before the elections.

So if he purports that Twitter now limits freedom of speech, the only thing he can mean by that is hate speech, dangerous medical misinformation, conspiracy bs, or calls to violence.

I've always had a gut feeling that Musk is politically on the far right spectrum farther than most people would believe, but now that he has joined the ranks of these misguided new right-wing "muh freedom of speech"-warriors, who never had any point to begin with, it's a strong indicator rather than just a feeling.

What a drama queen. He says Twitter is important for freedom of speech but it is not even open, it is walled garden just like FB, IG etc.

Absolute idiocy going on with Elon, man is sorta like Kanye but also the richest in the world and has no verifiable mental illness yet

So when is he finally going to Mars?

Why 100% and not just the majority?

Just to much money for one person.

How common are bids solicited?

Private company and free speech sounds like an oxymoron.

This isn't free speech that's benevolent dictatorship at most.

I would say:

(1) Twitter is a poorly managed company and has been for a long time. A shake up could be a good thing.

(2) I don't see Musk as the person to do it. Mostly he uses Twitter to shoot himself in the foot and his free-speech fetishism doesn't ring true. Is he going to reinstate Trump's Twitter account? Is he going to encourage Narendra Modi to use Twitter to organize pogroms next?

This time last year he was the reason why Dogecoin skyrocketed. Look at where it is now.

Don't let him do this to Twitter.

It’s amazing to me that people really think someone like Musk would a good steward of free speech. This idea that the obscenely wealthy are going to come in and save us from ourselves, if only we can let them be in charge, is a tale as old as time, yet people keep believing it.

Elon being in headlines is good for him and his companies. Making noise related to Twitter gets Elon in headlines.

It's the good old trick of 'there is no such thing as bad publicity' that Trump used so effectively too.

I feel like this is a huge publicity stunt and he would probably not follow through with it even if Twitter shareholders wanted it.

Elon Musk can not buy Mastodon (https://www.joinmastodon.org)

This is the best ethical replacement for what Twitter provides, and it gives control back into operators of communities because it is based on a standardized specification for a federated social web.

Deleted my 3 twitter profiles last week when this started going down.

I feel incredibly healthier mentally.

You should try it.

Elon Musk is into politics, isn't that looking strange somehow? I mean he wants to go to Mars, his project was "Flyin' mother nature's silver seed to a new home in the sun", and now he goes right in the opposite direction. Did he have any major setbacks with his Starship?

As somebody from the first world who has had the experience of moderating Internet forums… free speech in the sense of “the government generally shouldn’t control people’s speech, with limited exceptions” is good and necessary. Free speech in the sense of “everybody should be forced to platform every idea” is silly IMO. Left alone user content rapidly devolves into the most low-effort salient content - flame wars, political proselytizing and porn, mostly. If you want your platform to be about anything other than those, you need curation and moderation. This is key for a good user experience.

Note that you’re choosing to spend your time on HN (a relatively strongly moderated forum) instead of a less moderated forum like 8chan’s /b/.

tWiTtEr iS A PrIvAtE CoMpAnY, tHeY CaN Do wHaTeVeR ThEy wAnT

Elon Musk: buys Twitter to run it how he wants to

nO NoT LiKe ThAt

Twitter should be nationalized. No man should control such a large medium

Every second my brain spends thinking about this man is unsolicited.

I suspect most of the commenters supporting the right of a private company to moderate content is completely contingent on what those moderation policies are. Commenters feign holding an absolute position but would certainly balk if the moderation ever turned against them and the idea they support.

If you believe on principle, the right of private companies to moderate content, then you must support all kinds of absurd outcomes: Twitter deciding to subtly push pro-Russian viewpoints, Facebook deciding to boost antivax content etc.

Elon, if you’re reading, pull the plug. Nuke the entire site from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.

buying twitter will not make people like you.

Madlad here....

K

Wow

Wow

This is awesome. Way to go Elon!!!

All he has to do is buy it at a discount and let Donald Trump back on for a significant profit. Sad but true.

Oh I’m going to make one of those wild guesses:

1) musk buys twitter because it’s difficult to reject the offer

2) musk states “free speech is very important” and reinstates a lot of banned conservatives, namely trump

3) trump’s reelection gets put into high gear with twitter back as his main platform

Actually feels more obvious than wild if 1 happens.

How does one like Elon Musk go about "planning" this? Lawyers?

Elon Musk is trying to out-troll current world champion Kanye West.

b0LL0X

Prediction: I delete my twitter account and move on to a new platform because none of this matters and that's the cycle of online platforms.

All

Twitter is a mob launch pad. It's ran by outrage addicted, sadistic, cruel bullies. It's as if all of the world's village idiots joined forces and became the ruling class in culture and speech.

It is Twitter that has normalized and promoted inhumane tactics like context switching, bad faith discussion, talking behind you to others instead of towards you (quote tweeting), screenshotting, obsessively digging through one's history, mob launches, and in some cases cancellations, death threats, etc.

No normal person engages with another person like this. They are tactics to use when at war, but this is business as usual on Twitter. Worse, it's richly rewarded. It's a place where brains and conversations go to die.

I hope the offer gets accepted, it's not like he can make it worse. Or perhaps he should intentionally make it worse and sink it.

This is terrible. A person like Elon Musk should not hold more power.

Twitter is trash and I'm happy when any chaotic nonsense is happening to it.

"Boards have a fiduciary duty to the shareholders."

Xi and the CCP/Chinese Government make a bid to buy Google, for a 20% premium.

They also bid to buy Twitter, Facebook and Microsoft. All for 20% premium.

Should shareholders do 'the right thing' and sell?

Assuming you're not a Twitter shareholder why do you care about investors interests? Why don't you care about your interests?

Why do plebes constantly argue against their own interests?

As a Twitter user, I pretty much don't want Elon Musk involved, and I don't really care too much otherwise.

Every organization has stakeholders: customers, suppliers, financiers (investors and debtors), execs, employees.

If a Union forms, they can take considerable control away from investors.

If debtors come calling, they can take considerable control, away from investors.

'Externalizations' such as issues in the public good, or environmental issues - matter.

Usually, we like to think of those things, in the context of a 'Charter' that highlights those things i.e. some 'Crown/Gov. Corporations', things like the CBC, US Post etc..

When you say 'things that don't matter vs. things that do' - that could be true, or only even true from a certain perspective.

For example, you might think they should not focus on moderation, but instead, advertising. Well, without appropriate moderation, the ship could sink. Also, issues like moderation can be hard and ultimately satisfy nobody, and frankly, might not even be an operational distraction (although it probably is).

Finally - as property of Elon Musk - Twitter will be literally whatever he wants it to be.

Rich People have, throughout history, bought newspapers etc. for the entire purpose of slandering their opponents. The news wasn't even 'real' until just a few generations ago, it was all tabloid.

Elon Musk could will likely censor those who disagree with him and his colleagues, and boost/amplify those who's interests are aligned with him - maybe not as badly as others, but it could be that.

If you're going to take a 'principled stand' on this issue, it's going to have to be one probably of the externalized common good, not so much shareholders.

Nobody saw it coming… /s

Well you should have nationalized it while you could've

BTW why is this called hostile?

He's blatently planning on running for president

[redacted comment complaining about the use of word "hostile" in title which apparently is a financial term]

I'm worried that something is wrong at Spacex and this is a displacement activity

And just like that, Twitter engineering might somehow develop the same poor culture and work-life balance as Tesla and SpaceX. If I was there, I'd be groaning at this news.

How the hell is this a hostile takeover? No one’s even responded to the offer yet? Shitty ass clock bait headline.

Take a look at the world around us. If you’re a Twitter employee, how much does this really matter? If the worst happens you will find a new job in no time. You will still be far better off financially than most people in the world today.

What if Twitter employees threaten to leave en-masse? I'd seen some reports that people quit when he became the largest shareholder. It's not outside the realm of possibility.

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.

This is terrific. He said it will require threat with guns to get them to violate free speech. If true, this type of leadership is exactly what humanity needs.

I still don't understand the interest individuals have in proprietary, restrictive, unnecessary, platforms.. but for those who tolerate that sort of thing, I assume Twitter will become more valuable to them.

We had the Bernanke Put now the Musk Put

1) Buy 9 % of shares

2) Announce intention to buy 100%

3) Look share price rise

4) Sell shares

5) Profit!

PS: Note to Musk -> If you are looking to control a company you don't need to buy 100% of shares. Just a majority of shares or special rights shares if they exist. Save your money and help the less lucky ones:

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/02/mackenzie-scott-jeff...

What a clown. Probably made the offer knowing it won't get accepted anyway. Then sells his shares at a nice profit and goes on with his day.

That said, it would be interesting to see how Musk would destroy Twitter, instead of seeing Twitter continue to do it themselves.

43 Billion Dollars!? Of all the important issues in the world, Twitter is where this sort of money might go? Twitter! Oy vey have we lost sight of whats important. That's enough to give every research PhD student in the USA a sorely needed extra $15k every year for the next ~50 years. Sure glad we aren't living in an age where incentivizing technological breakthroughs on a societal level is an important thing to do.

I use twitter, I get something out of it, and I probably disagree with Musk politically on several issues. But if he were to take Twitter private, and change it, or whatever... Honestly, that's his prerogative; I'm certainly not in a position to stop him. Whether it's "good" or "bad" is not something that's really under my control. It's just a shame that this wealth isn't used for something more productive.

It will be fun when the Internet mobilizes a mass exodus to a new or competing platform to fuck him over. He lives his online life with a foot three inches from his mouth, cocked and loaded, and waiting to scatter his brains to the wind. The first time it goes off after the takeover, Twitter will burn to the ground.

Because at its core, woke culture isn't righteous; it's petty and it's fueled by have nots fucking with haves because they can.

I am just going to throw something new out here.

EVERYTHING Elon does is circled around his belief that we need to be living on Mars. Spaceships to get there. Satellites for communications when we get there. Electrical cars since no oil to drive there. Tunnel boring to make the roads and cities there.

Why would buying Twitter be any different? He currently is meeting serious resistance from USGOV and FAA on launching Starships. Postponed many times and may be postponed yet again due to environmental studies in TX.

Maybe; just maybe; total guess here; He thinks twitter would be a benefit to him during future elections to help either steer the future governments to directions he wants; or at a minimum move away from the one currently in power that's holding him back. I can certainly see it helping with his mantra "Going to Mars soon". Just another cog in the engine.

I just do not think this is about the money. A lot of people are talking about his stock price etc. Elon has never been about the money. It is about his end goals. Either the purchase of twitter is his repairing a social injustice he perceives, not normally on his radar. Or; it is a move to further his goal.

Twitter and Facebook should either be forced to accept regulation around banning and denial of access to their content or should be forced to remove accounts of government officials and government utilities. It’s somehow become the defacto standard that government can release updates on social media at faster rates than any other channel of communication that they use and that people can be banned from accessing that communication. I think it’s disingenuous to say Twitter is not a public utility given the way it is used by government offices and politicians to communicate. Especially given the way Twitter had actively worked to facilitate that.

Barring a legal requirement for government to share all information to citizens on other channels at the same pace as they do on Twitter, being banned from Twitter prevents access to information that one is legally entitled to. That is clearly unacceptable.

I think Twitter should be able to moderate content as a private entity. But they’ve knowingly created a situation where outright banning is a powder keg and I feel like they’ve mostly lost the right to do so. They should have a good case for making accounts read only but they are definitely causing huge problems when they ban someone.