Elon Musk buys a big chunk of Twitter
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An excerpt from Matt Levine's column at Bloomberg.
Look this all makes complete sense, obvious, intuitive, simple sense. If you are the richest person in the world, and annoying, and you constantly play a computer game, and you get a lot of enjoyment and a sense of identity from that game and are maybe a little addicted, then at some point you might have some suggestions for improvements in the game. So you might leave comments and email the company that makes the game saying “hey you should try my ideas.” And the company might ignore you (or respond politely but not move fast enough for your liking). It might occur to you: “Look, I am the richest person in the world; how much could this game company possibly cost? I should just buy it and change the game however I want.” Even if your complaints are quite minor, why shouldn’t you get to play exactly the game you want? Even if you have no complaints, why not own the game you love, just to make sure it continues to be exactly what you want? The game is Twitter, the richest person in the world is Elon Musk, and:
Elon Musk has taken a 9.2% stake in Twitter Inc. to become the platform’s biggest shareholder, a week after hinting he might shake up the social media industry.
Twitter shares surged about 26% in premarket trading after Musk’s purchase was revealed Monday in a regulatory filing. The stake is worth about $2.89 billion, based on Friday’s market close.
Musk, 50, polled his more than 80 million followers on Twitter last month, asking them whether the company adheres to the principles of free speech. After more than 70% said no, he asked whether a new platform was needed and said he was giving serious thought to starting his own.
I hope that if Elon Musk is going to do activism on Twitter, it will not be for tedious “free speech” advocacy. I hope it is like:
Twitter’s relatively new chief executive officer, Parag Agrawal: Welcome, Mr. Musk. We’re so glad that you are our biggest shareholder. We have prepared a presentation showing how we are executing on our strategy of being more technically nimble, building new products and growing revenue and active users. Here on slide 1 you can see—
Elon Musk: Make the font bigger when I tweet.
Agrawal: What?
Musk: I am your biggest shareholder, I want the font on my tweets to be bigger than the font on everyone else’s tweets.
Agrawal: That’s not really how we—
Musk: And I want 290 characters. Again, just for me.
Agrawal: …
Musk: And it should play a little sound when I tweet so everyone knows.
Agrawal: I just feel like we want to make a good product for all of our millions of users? I feel like that is going to improve profitability in the long run and, as our largest shareholder, you in particular stand to benefit from—
Musk: Oh I don’t care even a little bit about that, if your stock doubles that is rounding error on my net worth, I just love tweeting and want to meddle a bit to optimize it for my personal needs.
It’s always something.
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@jon-nyc said in Elon Musk buys a big chunk of Twitter:
I hope that if Elon Musk is going to do activism on Twitter, it will not be for tedious “free speech” advocacy.
"Tedious free speech" advocacy, huh?
Lemme guess, Mr Levine finds himself in the opposite political tribe of those who tend to speak up for "free speech" and has now declared the advocacy for such, "tedious".
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@Doctor-Phibes said in Elon Musk buys a big chunk of Twitter:
Why not Truth Social shares?
Why? Why?
Elon knows a loser when he sees one?
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Two “key tech execs” have just quit Truth Social.
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Indirectly at best. At 10% he could ask for a board seat and almost certainly get it. He can also make coalitions with other shareholders.
But he's Elon Musk. So he'll have all kinds of influence.
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Legally he doesn't get access to material non-public info due to a 15 year old or so regulation that prevents companies from favoring large investors ("Reg FD" for Full Disclosure). Informally that's often not honored.
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The Twitter censorship is weird. Russian chess player Sergey Karjakin is still Tweeting and re-Tweeting the most obnoxious anti-Ukrainian pro-Russian propaganda, talking about Nazi's and all kinds of crap.
There's no consistency at all.
Or maybe they don't give a shit about anything other than American politics.
Proud supporter of Plan 2525. Everything you think, do and say will be in the pill you took today.
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@Doctor-Phibes said in Elon Musk buys a big chunk of Twitter:
The Twitter censorship is weird. Russian chess player Sergey Karjakin is still Tweeting and re-Tweeting the most obnoxious anti-Ukrainian pro-Russian propaganda, talking about Nazi's and all kinds of crap.
There's no consistency at all.
Or maybe they don't give a shit about anything other than American politics.
Twitter censorship is not ideological but capitalistic. You just have to factor in that the customers are tribal regarding American culture wars, and currently in the throes of an economic cancelation fetish.
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Trump back to Twitter?
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@Jolly said in Elon Musk buys a big chunk of Twitter:
Trump back to Twitter?
It feels like he's lost it. He's said plenty of controversial things in the last couple of years - people don't really seem to care like they used to. Myself included. I haven't read maybe a handful of Trump stories in the past few months.
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Meanwhile, Roger Stone, close friend of President Trump, says he is being censored on Truth Social. I thought that Truth Social was formed so that they would be free from censorship?
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@xenon said in Elon Musk buys a big chunk of Twitter:
@Jolly said in Elon Musk buys a big chunk of Twitter:
Trump back to Twitter?
It feels like he's lost it. He's said plenty of controversial things in the last couple of years - people don't really seem to care like they used to. Myself included. I haven't read maybe a handful of Trump stories in the past few months.
I dunno.
Presidential race will start right after the Midterms.
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@Doctor-Phibes said in Elon Musk buys a big chunk of Twitter:
The Twitter censorship is weird. Russian chess player Sergey Karjakin is still Tweeting and re-Tweeting the most obnoxious anti-Ukrainian pro-Russian propaganda, talking about Nazi's and all kinds of crap.
There's no consistency at all.
Or maybe they don't give a shit about anything other than American politics.
Well, consider Disney…Right now they are vocally opposing the misnomered “Don’t Say Gay” bill, and at the same time they are expanding operations in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the Palestinian Authority, and many other countries where being gay results in chemical castration if you’re lucky…
Me/rry/Christmas
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@LuFins-Dad said in Elon Musk buys a big chunk of Twitter:
@Doctor-Phibes said in Elon Musk buys a big chunk of Twitter:
The Twitter censorship is weird. Russian chess player Sergey Karjakin is still Tweeting and re-Tweeting the most obnoxious anti-Ukrainian pro-Russian propaganda, talking about Nazi's and all kinds of crap.
There's no consistency at all.
Or maybe they don't give a shit about anything other than American politics.
Well, consider Disney…Right now they are vocally opposing the misnomered “Don’t Say Gay” bill, and at the same time they are expanding operations in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the Palestinian Authority, and many other countries where being gay results in chemical castration if you’re lucky…
Yeah, but Disney's always been a bit of a Mickey Mouse operation.
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@Klaus said in Elon Musk buys a big chunk of Twitter:
I wonder if Musk would have been allowed (or maybe he did?) to bet on the value of Twitter stocks before he bought the actual stocks. He could presumably make (another) fortune that way.
Well in a sense he did that. He acquired a big chunk before it was public that he was buying. So he already had the shares when the price jumped on the news of him buying shares.
It’s always something.
