Twitter announces that it's being acquired by Musk for 44 billion

pointofdeparture said:

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I'm not going to say that Musk hasn't accomplished anything (he clearly has a penchant for sizing up opportunities and striking when the iron is hot) but I also think his portrayal as a self-made man of means is a bit inaccurate.

He was born in South Africa to an extremely wealthy family that profited off an emerald mine in Zambia and has fought to erase the existence of Tesla's actual founders and obscured his involvement with PayPal as well.

These facts aren't unique among Silicon Valley tech bro CEO types - many of them have revisionist tendencies with regard to their own contributions, are cutthroat businesspeople and come from very privileged upbringings - but I would definitely have a higher opinion on him if he didn't get on Twitter and say just breathtakingly stupid things with regularity in an attempt to paint himself as some kind of folk hero.

I'm not trying to say he came from nothing and everyone's got an opinion. Just trying to say that he's a billionaire because of what he did, not a billionaire who got interested in cool rockets once he was a billionaire. He's done legitimate amazing things in that area, and taking $175 million and turning it into $250 billion or whatever of paper value is beyond what most tech bros do. See Jeff Bezos as an example of a billionaire who got interested in rockets and has managed to achieve nothing.

$175 million is peanuts when it comes to dealing with rocketry. That wouldn't even buy 20% of a single launch of SLS. And then to carry a new automaker to mass production at the same time? Yeah, it's a lot less than a gazillion. 

I don't worship the man. He's got some serious flaws, and the worst of them are on display on Twitter. But he's done some spectacular stuff, and just brushing him off as "anyone could do that if they had that much money and wanted to" is demonstrably incorrect because nobody else HAS and because it was done on a remarkably low budget. Unfortunately, I think the purchase of Twitter will only make him less effective in the places where he is truly effective.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

All valid points, and yes to make clear I absolutely think he's got talents involving getting momentum behind ambitious ideas and executing them with conviction. People talk most about Tesla but everything he's done with SpaceX is really probably his biggest achievement.

It just seems like his game plan is getting a lot less focused and ambitious in favor of weird personal brand "for the lulz" type stuff that just devalues all the cool stuff he has actually contributed to. And he keeps pushing further and further in this direction...

5 years ago I was excited to hear Musk's name pop up in the news and learn more about what he's doing...now it's usually an eye roll in anticipation of a cringe moment.

In reply to GameboyRMH :

You just sound like you dislike the guy therefore you can't say anything positive about him without your negative feelings getting in the way. I don't have an opinion on him myself as he doesn't seem like a bad or good person in particular. I did meet him once in early 2020, and had the opportunity to sit and chat for about 15 minutes.

It takes more than just throwing money to accomplish what he did, otherwise America would've accomplished it already. Let's not E36 M3 in folks accomplishments simply because we don't like them. Just because he doesn't operate the way you like for him to doesn't mean his accomplishments and impact are any less great. 

Anyway, haters gon hate lol

He does know that cracking open the checkbook won't make give him Founder status, right? Or is he gonna sue for it like last time? I also wouldn't be surprised if the acquisition stopped being shiny and he tried to back out.

In reply to yupididit :

I dislike Elon Musk less than I dislike his worshippers.

All I can think when I think when I see Musk is he puts the douche in bag.

In reply to Beer Baron :

Its like the Dallas Cowboys and their fans. Lol.

Seriously though, his die-hard haters and his die-hard followers are a lot alike. They put unnecessary emotional energy into a man who doesn't know they exist. 

This is F. U. Money to the tune of 44 BILLION

In reply to GameboyRMH :

There have been genocides that probably wouldn't have happened if not for social media amplifying hate speech, a resurgence of conspiratorial nonsense thinking including anti-vaccine beliefs just to name one particularly damaging one, and to avoid being too political, a massive rise in the popularity of politicians and political parties who simply don't care for the truth one bit, especially in the first world.

I'd argue that silencing speech that you disagree with is even more dangerous, even if you are right. But time and time again, Twitter has been shown to silence truth, and perpetuate lies. It's not their job to find truth. I sure hope not, because the suck at it. It's their job to let voices be heard, it's our individual responsibility to decide the truth. And we may suck at it, but at least it's out there in the open, we aren't just a bunch of puppets on strings. The dangerous people aren't the ones with contrary ideas. The dangerous people are the ones who what to shut down contrary ideas. 

Error404 said:

I also wouldn't be surprised if the acquisition stopped being shiny and he tried to back out.

This is what I'm mostly thinking about with regard to all this. This sale is EXTREMELY leveraged. $13 billion in debt financing, $12.5 billion in margin loans against his Tesla stock. And what's the growth plan? Can Twitter get any bigger?

I would be real nervous if I was a big Tesla shareholder right now.

The financing, which Musk’s bankers hashed out in a few days, will have raised eyebrows on Wall Street. Twitter generated almost $1.5 billion of EBITDA last year, excluding a shareholder-litigation settlement. A Musk takeover would puff up the company’s leverage to a heady 8.6 times EBITDA, excluding cash on its balance sheet. Interest alone could cost $939 million annually, or roughly two-thirds of Twitter’s EBITDA, based on the loan and bridge finance terms. That leaves lenders with little protection if growth goes into reverse. Such a scenario is all too plausible if Musk spooks advertisers by blazing his way through content-moderation rules in the interests of promoting free speech.

Source: Reuters 

SEC filing for the real finance nerds

Boost_Crazy said:

In reply to GameboyRMH :

There have been genocides that probably wouldn't have happened if not for social media amplifying hate speech, a resurgence of conspiratorial nonsense thinking including anti-vaccine beliefs just to name one particularly damaging one, and to avoid being too political, a massive rise in the popularity of politicians and political parties who simply don't care for the truth one bit, especially in the first world.

I'd argue that silencing speech that you disagree with is even more dangerous, even if you are right. But time and time again, Twitter has been shown to silence truth, and perpetuate lies. It's not their job to find truth. I sure hope not, because the suck at it. It's their job to let voices be heard, it's our individual responsibility to decide the truth. And we may suck at it, but at least it's out there in the open, we aren't just a bunch of puppets on strings. The dangerous people aren't the ones with contrary ideas. The dangerous people are the ones who what to shut down contrary ideas. 

Examples of Twitter silencing truth? I know they perpetuate lies just by existing as an open discussion platform people are largely free to lie on, but I can't think of when they've done that through any moderation action.

So if he takes Twitter private, no longer a traded company right? He can do literally anything he wants with it because it's his, right?

So what happens if he does the best thing possible and just shut it down? Delete EVERYTHING, and act as if it never existed.

He's got the "worth" to cover it.

RevRico said:

So if he takes Twitter private, no longer a traded company right? He can do literally anything he wants with it because it's his, right?

So what happens if he does the best thing possible and just shut it down? Delete EVERYTHING, and act as if it never existed.

He's got the "worth" to cover it.

Best idea ever. Won't happen though. The man loves twitter too much.

In reply to RevRico :

That thought is about as pie-in-the-sky as it gets, but for starters, the big banks and Tesla shareholders financing $25.5 billion of his purchase would sure be calling in the note faster than anyone on this board could comprehend...and to spend $44 billion on a company just to nuke it would almost certainly rattle investors in his other projects (Tesla stock plummets, etc).

If that was truly his goal he'd be making the purchase 100% with his own cash, leveraging the buyout just to kill it is a lose-lose for him.

Ech.

Yes, he's done some genuinely amazing things. Seriously impressive.

But he also doesn't seem to give a rip about some informational distinctions. There's a reason the SEC has rules around saying stuff that are... sort of like shouting "fire" in a theater. When you're that guy, you can wipe out thousands of peoples' retirements with a glib quip about what you might do with some stock.

Which is not to say that he's broken any rules (I'm not informed enough to say), and certainly nobody should have their eggs in one basket like that. My point is that he's clearly utterly disinterested in not berking up anybody near him with his thrashing about. He doesn't seem to me to give a rip about society; a society that has made him so wealthy that we don't get to ignore him, because his whimsies impact people in real ways. He doesn't seem to recognize that reality, or to care if he does recognize it.

This deal puts a lot of emphasis on the idea that social media shouldn't decide what to allow to be said, but that's really only part of the issue; it's one thing to allow people to say whatever they want, and a different thing to make sure that if it's usefully inflammatory that it's shown to as many people who will be engaged (read: enraged) by it as possible. I don't know whether Twitter does this in the same manner as FB, but I do think social media as we know it is too flawed to matter with regards to editing. It's like a cross between high-frequency stock trading and that saying about lies getting around the world before the truth gets its boots on.

A lot of information is exchanged on Twitter, but I'm not at all sure it's being done in a useful manner, as in more useful than not exchanging it, or doing it by carrier pigeon. Crossing my fingers this is "Elon Musk 5D chess" for wiping it off the face of the planet, but that's just me blue-sky daydreaming in the absence of any real info.

He's earned a lot of the influence he has by doing remarkable things; "getting his way" isn't a great use of that influence.

I love how allowing ALL speech on a platform is somehow bad for free speech. I also don't remember being forced to read anything on Twitter, did they miss making me?

In reply to Steve_Jones :

Well now that you showed up in here and didn't make the joke, I have to do it.

If you really want to see what Elon thinks of free speech, start a Twitter account and make sure to post this photo every day until he officially takes over...

(There's another joke here about Twitter being 14 years old at the time of his purchase but man, I just can't take that one all the way.) 

Steve_Jones said:

I love how allowing ALL speech on a platform is somehow bad for free speech. I also don't remember being forced to read anything on Twitter, did they miss making me?

Agreed, Im not on twitter but in general I'd rather see all social media platforms unfiltered and let people use their own thought processes to decide what they want to see.  Provide the end user tools to filter as they see fit but dont restrict speech.  Or go the other way and shut it all down.  Honestly social media is great in that it has given everyone a voice, and its been terrible in that its given everyone a voice.   

pointofdeparture said:

In reply to Steve_Jones :

Well now that you showed up in here and didn't make the joke, I have to do it.

If you really want to see what Elon thinks of free speech, start a Twitter account and make sure to post this photo every day until he officially takes over...

(There's another joke here about Twitter being 14 years old at the time of his purchase but man, I just can't take that one all the way.) 

She looks like his mother. Give her a few more years in the pen and she will look like his grandmother. 

Hey, take solace in the fact that, if you don't like it, you can build your own website.

In reply to Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) :

Only 10 years age difference between the two, believe it or not. Musk has a hell of a hair plug guy.

Boost_Crazy said:

In reply to GameboyRMH :

There have been genocides that probably wouldn't have happened if not for social media amplifying hate speech, a resurgence of conspiratorial nonsense thinking including anti-vaccine beliefs just to name one particularly damaging one, and to avoid being too political, a massive rise in the popularity of politicians and political parties who simply don't care for the truth one bit, especially in the first world.

I'd argue that silencing speech that you disagree with is even more dangerous, even if you are right. But time and time again, Twitter has been shown to silence truth, and perpetuate lies. It's not their job to find truth. I sure hope not, because the suck at it. It's their job to let voices be heard, it's our individual responsibility to decide the truth. And we may suck at it, but at least it's out there in the open, we aren't just a bunch of puppets on strings. The dangerous people aren't the ones with contrary ideas. The dangerous people are the ones who what to shut down contrary ideas. 

Nope.  It's not Twitter's job to let voices be heard.  Not Elon's either.  They don't owe anyone a conduit.  No one does.

Once more, for those in the back:  Free speech protects you from government retribution for something you said.  That's it.

And as much as this is painted in certain quarters as a "victory" for free speech...I'm pretty certain based on Musk's prior megalomaniacal doings that there will be plenty of bans for people saying things he doesn't like.

Let me grab my cup of joe here and start a real discussion:

Musk will be president of the USA in under 10 years. 

Change my mind.

Robbie (Forum Supporter) said:

Let me grab my cup of joe here and start a real discussion:

Musk will be president of the USA in under 10 years. 

Change my mind.

Can't be. Not a natural-born U.S. citizen.

In reply to Robbie (Forum Supporter) :

Not a natural born citizen