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Comment by matthewdgreen | Hacker News Reader

Won't be a bitter pill if he can offload most of the expenditure by selling it to Saudi Arabia, which would probably love to own such an influential chunk of the "public square."

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Potential buyer is offering what they think is current market price. Something like like $15-$20 per share than $52 per share. Musk would sell with huge loss.

There's effectively zero chance that CFIUS[1] would allow the KSA to purchase Twitter.

[1]: https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/international/the-co...

What if he sells an API to Saudi and Russia and beyond to essentially hide criticism?

Censorship as a service...

As I understand it, MBS and Co. prefer to drown out the criticism rather than censor it, so they already have that API, and a crusade against bots would put it at risk. Granted, it's possible that Elon isn't committed to shutting down bots so much as shutting down non-friendly bots.

You appear to understand wrong: “Ex-Twitter employee found guilty of spying on Saudi dissidents.” Happened in 2018, verdict this year. https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/09/twitter-saud...

This doesn't contradict what I wrote.

They already are a major shareholder. And I presume they can (or could in the future) have stakes in other Musk companies. That might predispose a private Musk Twitter to offer access (for example, provide access to private customer information on dissidents, something Saudi Arabia is very interested in [1]) in ways that a public Twitter might not.

[1] https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/09/twitter-saud...

Being a major shareholder is different than having a controlling stake, which is implied by your comment that Musk "can offload most of the expenditure by selling it to Saudi Arabia."

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is a major shareholder. He will probably keep his shares.

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