Ask HN: Why was Elon Musk forced to buy Twitter? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why was Elon Musk forced to buy Twitter?

12 points__jambo20 comments

It feels like they forced him to buy it, and now they are tarring and feathering him.

The “they” who forced him to buy Twitter was the previous management of Twitter, when he attempted to back out of a legally binding agreement to buy Twitter that he had signed.

The “they” who are now criticising him for the way he’s running Twitter, are different people.

Elon signed a binding agreement to acquire Twitter as a joke. His legal attempts to back out of it failed.

Specifically he gave into the inevitable only when he was about to be forced into the discovery phase of a legal action. It's a matter of speculation as to WHY he preferred to pay $44 billion rather than have to truthfully produce documents and depositions under oath, but...

Yeah, the person who ‘forced’ Musk to buy twitter was Musk. And he has brought his own tar and feathers to the party.

We're all trying to find the guy who did this.

I'm starting to narrow down the list of people who might be posting on @elonmusk's account too.

We gon' nail this son of a gun.

"Acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquisition_of_Twitter_by_Elon....

The only thing that forced Musk to buy Twitter was his own bloody-mindedness. The agreement he signed was to protect the value of Twitter as negotiations for its sale proceeded. Musk could have paid a $1B penalty and backed out, but he treated the agreement as a joke and got nailed. Musk is not the victim here.

> Musk could have paid a $1B penalty and backed out

That's not correct: the penalty was only for failure to complete the transaction, Elon still had to go through with it.

Elon tried to create cause to stop the transaction (the weird bot fixation) and eat the penalty but that didn't get to discovery.

That's correct. If it had been only a billion, he would have cut a check for that and been done with the whole thing. He somehow convinced himself he could flip Twitter for a profit, or at least for a smaller loss than a settlement would have cost. You have to have some kind of ego to think that way.

He bought it in order to rage quit the litigation to enforce his previous contractual commitment to buy Twitter. Nobody forced Elon to do anything. It was an incredibly unwise and impulsive move.

And all would be fine, if the impulsive behavior stopped there and then.

Alas.

“Ask HN: Why can cats fly?”

I mean, you’re starting from a false premise; Naughty Old Mr Car was not forced to buy Twitter.

Who is ‘they’ supposed to be here?

nobody forced him to submit a real, ridiculous offer for twitter when he was clearly not serious

nobody forced him to take direct control of it and proceed to run it into the ground

nobody forced him to do a costly rebrand that added no value and made it look like a porn site

nobody forced him to besmirch his reputation by conducting a scorched earth cull of twitter staff, having numerous public brawls and spats, making him look like a bad leader

nobody forced him to pick a fight with city councils and the owners of buildings he was renting over nonsense, cementing his reputation as erratic, untrustworthy and belligerent

nobody forced him to be repeatedly, vociferously transphobic, to complain bitterly about leftism, or to talk about how pizzagate was real and scare away all the wealthy twitter sponsors

nobody forced him to promote conspiracy theories

nobody forced him to openly court the alt-right

nobody forced him to do anything. He has been messing around and finding out for a while now, and now that he bought his own kool-aid and the stakes are so high that even a skilled team of people managing his numerous, constant screw-ups are not able to help save his image. This man went from seemingly a beloved Tony Stark like figure to a ranting lunatic all of his own accord.

Sure. He was completely minding his own business when suddenly, out of nowhere, a judge forced him to buy Twitter for no reason. Poor guy.

Musk is an attention seeking narcissist. He is absolutely determined to turn himself into a clown show. He is succeeding.

No one has done this to him. He did it to himself.

Sure. He was completely minding his own business when suddenly, out of nowhere, a judge forced him to buy Twitter for no reason. Poor guy.

I hate it when that happens. That's how I got stuck owning MySpace.

I agree with your conclusion, but it's a natural question. Twitter management and users were not in favor of him owning the place, so why not let him back out? I think the driving answer was money. He paid way more than the company was worth, and there's no way the investors would accept the board turning down the offer.

You're asking why the people who get to benefit from him buying Twitter with a least 100% markup over its true value would prefer that he sticks to the purchase agreement he personally signed?

Well, let's think about it.

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If the above is not coming through, imagine you have a trusty old Ford Focus. Does the job, needs repairs from time to time, but you're about break even on it. You put money in it and get the same amount of value back. Its market price is about $4,000, because there's some craze about cars at that point in time.

So here comes Elon and says "I'll buy this car for $4,400." You're like "OK, let's sign an agreement". He signs.

Few weeks pass, he's not not sending money, and not calling. More time passes. The market conditions change. Now a car like yours costs $2,200. Elon is trying to say the agreement you signed is not valid, because he missed a giant scratch on the left side of the car, despite you discussed this scratch in detail last time.

You sue him. He pays $4,400 and gets the car, and is so mad, that he drives it into a tree immediately.

Twitter's board had a fiduciary duty to ensure the completion of the transaction.

If they let Elon back out, there would have been shareholder lawsuits.

> Twitter management were not in favor of him owning the place

Management and users aren't relevant, the shareholders and the board make the decision, and they don't care what happens to the company after they've sold it because they've already got their payday.

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