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Comment by lalos | Hacker News Reader

It is interesting how much influence Peter Thiel has on the main players of social media: via Facebook as an early investor and ex-board member and via Twitter with his ex-coworker from Paypal days Musk. He’s very explicit in his book about the power of monopolies and now you see this consolidation of social media companies under a specific group of closed people. WSJ reported Thiel being involved with Musk on this twitter deal, that plus his recent political investments in certain figures, did he figure out that they are not getting the same bang for buck with this ban in play? Dorsey has a financial interest of this deal going through, last I heard was at least 1 billion. So he’ll start saying yes to whatever pops up to let this go through and even more incentive with the recent downturn of tech stocks that are not profitable.

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I doubt Thiel is some kind of central master mind behind all this. Musk seems quite independently driven and probably found this a necessary move with only minor chats with thiel (if any). I'm not sure Thiel has any more or less influence than Sam Altman or Paul Graham.

If someone makes you rich and successful with their business advice and you work with them for multiple years, would you ignore their phone call in the future and ignore their other suggestions? It’s not about being a master mind, there is soft power in play, humans are social animals.

If somebody truly creates value out of thin air, then they deserve to be heard.

I agree. This is why labor unions need to be heard!

Heard yes, protected from firing? Not necessarily.

Thiel (+ the rest of the board) fired Musk from his CEO position at PayPal.

I'm pretty sure Musk would ignore any phone calls from Thiel.

Furthermore, Thiel didn't make Musk rich. When PayPal was sold to eBay Musk was the single largest shareholder of PayPal, which should tell you who was the most responsible for PayPal's success.

That decision to oust him made Musk (one of the largest shareholders as you mention) rich when ebay purchased paypal under the new CEO… Peter Thiel. He effectively secured an exit for the company.

"Elon Musk Reacts To WSJ Report That 'Shadow Crew' Of Billionaires Including Peter Thiel Pushed Him To Buy Twitter"

https://www.benzinga.com/news/22/05/26922872/elon-musk-wants...

"A source who spoke to both men said that Musk thinks Thiel is "a sociopath," and Thiel considers Musk "a fraud.""

https://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-elon-musk-relati...

Wouldn't that be what is beneficial for them to say about each other, in public? I honestly don't know what to think any more about anyone who has obtained massive amounts of money.

Well there can't be much love between both...

""Life is too short for long-term grudges" Elon Musk on Peter Thiel's coup to be PayPal CEO": https://nitter.net/nitashatiku/status/735273960703545344

"Reacts to" and rejects the idea. I trust Musk more than rumors spread by WSJ.

Not true at all. They’re on very good terms.

This is a very rare occasion when I can say that both Musk and Thiel are probably right (not that it matters either way).

> A source who spoke to both men said that Musk thinks Thiel is "a sociopath," and Thiel considers Musk "a fraud.

Yeah, they're perfect for one another.

You don't need any conspiracies theories to explain why Dorsey is a supporter of free speech.

Dorsey has always been part of the crop of Enlightenment-liberal tech CEOs, which includes Larry, Sergey, and Zuckerberg. It got memory-holed pretty quickly, but these guys were dragged kicking and screaming into the new illiberal consensus that it was their job to decide what users are allowed to talk about. At a certain point, they bowed to the emerging illiberal consensus, for fear of both political and employee-revolt consequences. It is business, after all.

(I was at Google for the first half of the last decade, and it was eerie to see the employee culture slowly get colonized by the culty illiberal-left perspective)

Culture is weird, and can shift dramatically between equilibria. Now that the conversation has shifted, a lot of these figures feel like they have cover to start expressing their beliefs again without those who disagree being able to gin up any financial consequences.

This take should be framed and pinned to the top. Of all the hinged/unhinged comments, this one tries hard to be principled in fact. It's getting tiring hearing about how this heir to an emerald mine was going to enslave us all.

Just as Dorsey was influenced by that abstract force you mention as 'illiberal consensus' because of fear of different factors (political, employee/stakeholders, financial consequences). Dorsey is now influenced by the likely new owner of Twitter because of fear of different factors (stakeholders, financial consequences), he wants the deal to go through he will not go on the record and contradict the person he is selling to. It was beneficial to be for the ban before, and now it is beneficial to be against it. Dorsey was the CEO. It is business, after all. Sounds like your argument (or conspiracy theories) and mine aren't that different.

Just to be explicit for all the rabid fans, I'm not against Thiel, Musk, Zuckerberg or any other tech CEO. On the contrary, they have so much impact and are involved in multiple projects in so little time. I'm not proposing any conspiracy of them wanting to control us or whatever straw-man argument others are injecting on my comment. It's interesting to see this deal unfold from a business perspective with all the different stakeholders involved, and the flip-flopping of Dorsey's decisions.

> Dorsey is now influenced by the likely new owner of Twitter because of fear of different factors (stakeholders, financial consequences), he wants the deal to go through he will not go on the record and contradict the person he is selling to.

I don't know if you did this intentionally, but there's some rhetorical sleight-of-hand here that prevents it from cohering logically. This isn't a case of "not contradicting" the new buyer. Dorsey _actively tweeted out_ that he supported reversing the Trump ban. If he had simply not spoken on the issue at all, how on Earth would you consider that "contradicting the person he is selling to"? Note that in the converse scenario, he never actively tweeted out that he happened to personally agree with increasing speech restrictions.

There's a pretty obvious asymmetry here: a period of silent assent with heavier speech codes vs active support for lighter speech codes (where the latter is also consistent with tangentially-expressed personal views).

I meant to say this:

- Back then Jack, active CEO, enacted this ban.

- Now Musk goes out and says he would revert.

- Even in the wild case (I personally think it is not the case) which Jack fervently would still believe that the ban should go on, why do it? why add drama to a business deal and say "no, Musk is wrong"? that would just sour the whole business deal that he would benefit from. Or why would anyone be antagonistic to someone on the other side of the table, this applies to any other business deal not just this.

- Reporters or anybody would naturally question Jack, hey the new owner is saying this do you want to go on the record about why the new owner is against something that happened on your command? Paraphrasing: "Yes, I agree with him now, lets move on". Very diplomatic and 'correct' answer from his part.

It's not improbable that he was privately opposed to it, but he had to be publicly in favor of it in order to not undercut people like Vijaya Gadde and Del Harvey. Remember that Dorsey was also CEO of Square at the time and doing a bunch of crypto stuff. Dealing with Twitter drama was probably not the hill he wanted to die on.

  – Back then Jack, active CEO, enacted this ban.

No. He's even commented on this. He was CEO at the time, with a board of directors. He didn't "enact" it any more than any CEO "enacts" every single decision at any company.

A rather cynical take, liberally sprinkled with straw men and conjecture, served fait accompli.

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