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Comment by johnnyAghands | Hacker News Reader

I don't see what the big deal here is. I feel like it's the obvious move. He wants a no nonsense review of the current state of things at Twitter, and isn't wasting time. I'm assuming these engineers he trusts and wants an objective review instead of some bs from folks too removed.

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The big deal is that Tesla didnt buy Twitter, Musk did. Based on the Tesla engineers doing due dilligence on a non-Telsa acquisition seems like a conflict of interest.

It's not really a big deal though?

That isn’t what conflict of interest means. It’s a complete non-sequitur in this context.

Elon Musk has an obvious conflict of interest here. As CEO of a publicly traded company he has an obligation to act in the best interest of Tesla's shareholders. By using Tesla's engineers to look at his private company's source code he arguably doesn't act in their best interest, but in his own personal best interest.

What exactly is the conflict of interest here?

That he is using resources of a publicly traded (Tesla) company for personal use. This exercise isn't in the interest of Tesla.

I suppose there is a small conflict of interest as Tesla is paying some of its employees to do this work which doesn't benefit Tesla. As long as Twitter compensates them for this in some form however, I think this conflict is eliminated.

It's true though that a Tesla shareholder likely wouldn't want Tesla employee's focus to shift to Twitter too much I don't think.

> As long as Twitter compensates them for this in some form however, I think this conflict is eliminated.

Who negotiates that payment? Elon Musk?

Tesla shareholder here - in my opinion it's greasy, but realistically I know that most of Tesla's marketing happens on Twitter and having the platform running smoothly is in my best interest.

I suspect that kind of influence-peddling is how a lot of platforms like Twitter got a lot of sweetheart deals up to now anyway, so it being in the open is more interesting than annoying. The worst part is that it probably opens Tesla up to more lawsuits from 'activist investors'.

Exactly! There is too much hate here on anything he does. It just makes sense that he’d want to get people that he trusts looking into this.

Why would $TSLA shareholders want to pay for a Twitter code-review?

This story is very publicly pushing the narrative that Tesla’s software engineers are some elite Ninjas you can helicopter in to pass judgement on the spoiled SF “engineers.”

That image, combined with the image of Musk himself as the no-nonsense get-it-done boss who will call in those ninjas without asking for permission, is very good for $TSLA shareholders.

Who says that they are? Presumably Musk, Twitter and Tesla all have accountants who will ensure that everything is above board.

Tesla shareholders are also free to fire Musk if they don’t like the way he runs the company.

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