• Elon Musk purchased shares of Twitter after unsuccessfully petitioning the CEO to remove a Twitter account tracking his private jet.
  • Musk’s personal gripes played a key role in his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter.
  • Musk banned the account after promising not to, highlighting his prioritization of getting his way over free speech.

Archive link: https://archive.ph/ttBv9

  • Sludgehammer@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I think he was trying to get out of Twitter and wanted to do a real life version of his Dogecoin pump and dumps. You know, talk a big game, hype up how the stock is gonna go to the moon after he brings his genius to bare on the company, then dump the stock and pull out of the deal. However, during the hype phase he managed to say some legally binding things and suddenly found himself forced to honor what he thought was going to be empty hype.

    • underisk@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      He did more than say legally binding things. He signed a contract. That had a clause in it to prevent him from backing out, because the management at Twitter fully expected him to try it. I think he had made several gestures at buying before to try and get some kind of influence over how it was being run, so they drew up the contract to make him put up or shut up.

      • Quadhammer@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Makes you wonder what the og twitters guys are doing now besides drinking mai tais on the beach

    • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
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      8 months ago

      Holy shit this dude fucking lives on his plane. Like I feel guilty about the 2-3x per year I fly to see family but this fucker has flown that far already in the past week. Why? Does he not know how to do a video call?

      • PureTryOut@lemmy.kde.social
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        8 months ago

        Ugh, I feel the same. I know the top 1% of the world or whatever emits tons and tons more CO2 per year than the other 99%, but I didn’t know it was this bad. That plane is flying multiple times per day. Sure Musk is probably not in it all the time, but that doesn’t matter.

        Private jets should be banned all together, let’s see how quickly they suddenly find out the internet exists.

  • Red_October@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Yeah, no. Musk bought Twitter because he HAD to. He very publicly made comments about buying Twitter at absolute meme-stock prices, but didn’t disclose that he already owned a LOT of Twitter stock. So, when his comments predictably increased the price of Twitter stock, he had two choices: Either it was just talk, and he was BLATANTLY guilty of stock manipulation and the Feds put a target on his back, or he acts like he totally meant it.

    So he went with option two, acted like he was serious and wanted to buy twitter. Then he tried everything he could think of to kill the deal, accusing Twitter of all sorts of wrongdoing and lies, but Twitter was more careful than that. They got their shit right, and Musk couldn’t back out. So he bought Twitter, rather than go to prison.

    The fact that he could also kill the tracking twitter account was completely incidental. Musk is an idiot, but even he isn’t that stupid. Musk initially offered $5,000 to the account holder to stop, and then balked at the return offer for $50,000. Now, I may not be a billionaire tech-bro, but I’m pretty sure that spending $50,000 to achieve a goal is preferable to spending $44,000,000,000. He’s dumb, but he’s not that dumb.

    • Neato@ttrpg.network
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      8 months ago

      Ah so Musk was trying to increase his profits super publicly and super illegally.

      • Red_October@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I honestly don’t think he was TRYING to do anything but shitpost. It didn’t look like a well thought out plan, it looked like an idiot talking out of his ass and realizing that his memes were also crimes.

  • crypticthree@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Muskrat bought it because he has poor impulse control. There’s no “grand design,” just a man child who desperately needs a mommy to protect him from himself.

    • Hoomod@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Made a legally binding decision to massively overpay what the company was worth, or probably ever would be. Of course the current owners are going to take it

      • tacosplease@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I think the deal was so good for Twitter that it may have been illegal for them not to sell to Musk because their job is to maximize profits or value for the shareholders or whatever. As a publicly traded company, not doing the deal would be choosing to not maximize profits.

        Now in hindsight the idiot is killing current stock value, but that still has nothing to do with the shareholders who had stock when Twitter was sold. Those shareholders were thrilled to sell all their stock well above market price. Corporate ethics.