Comment on Elon Musk Bought Twitter to Settle His Jet-Tracking Beef, New Book Claims

Red_October@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• Neato@ttrpg.network ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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  • Red_October@lemmy.world ⁨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.

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    • powerage@lemmy.ml ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Elon is the kinda guy to put the meme before the horse

      Or however that.goes

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• GoodEye8@lemm.ee ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I think you’re giving him too much credit. The announcement that he owned Twitter shares already hiked the price. If he wanted to short he should’ve just kept his mouth shut, get on the board and then sell his stocks. The initial hike to his 9% ownership was on par with his buy offer hike. If his plan was to short the company he could’ve done it without the legal trouble. Also the second price hike was after he had already made a public bid for the company and the company had accepted the offer. At that point he was locked in to buying the company. There was speculation if such a deal is allowed to go through, but the reality is that unless someone else steps in Musk had two options, he either buys the company or he gets taken to court and is forced to buy the company.

  He had to buy the company, but not because he was risking going to jail. He had to buy it because he screwed himself over by making the bid in the first place. I don’t get the need to make him seem like an intelligent man. He didn’t have any grand schemes or ulterior motives or someone else footing the bill. He simply made a horrible move, probably because he’s a huge manchild who didn’t like that the CEO of Twitter didn’t completely lick his boot.

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  • supercriticalcheese@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    He could had pulled out of the bid as well me thinks. Between presenting a bid and closing the deal there should be **due diligence **.

    This is what I understand Mr Musk failed to do, after that it would have been nearly impt to cancel the deal.

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    • GoodEye8@lemm.ee ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I don’t remember the specifics but I think it was a sort of a “no questions asked” kind of bid, where he chose to not do the due diligence. He did try to play the “My estimation of Twitter was misled because I wasn’t disclosed to vital information” card and it got him nowhere.

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      • Archer@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Yep! He explicitly waived it. Corporate equivalent of waiving a home inspection

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      • supercriticalcheese@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        facepalm genial

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  • Serinus@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    He wasn’t trying to short Twitter. He was trying to pump and dump. Though the dumping probably would have been done more tactfully than the standard pump and dump. Musk getting publicity for holding the stock helps to keep the value up. Tesla’s been inflated forever, and he thought he could do the same with Twitter.

    Yes, the primary reason he bought Twitter is that he screwed up during his pump and dump scheme. There are several reasons he was looking at Twitter in particular, including the jet tracking, how much he loves Twitter anyway, his hate for being told what he can and can not post, etc. I also suspect he’s lost most of the people who will tell him the truth and is now surrounded by right-wing grifters (for politics and aiming his money, they’re smart enough to not try to take the money directly). All these reasons were part of why the pump and dump was plausible as something else, and why it was Twitter that it happened to. Probably not even Musk knows how much of the intent to buy was legit (though not for 44b) and how much of it was the pump and dump.

    He had a scheme; I don’t know that I’d call it grand.

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• Archer@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  50k is a rounding error for Musk, true. I suspect his ego/feelings stopped him from doing the smart thing and taking that kid up on the offer

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• Snapz@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Yes AND he’s desperate for approval from those he sees as peers. Twitter enabled things like the Arab spring and was a useful tool for protest organizing and shining a light on horrific things - it was a lot of bullshit too, but it was also that.

  The Saudis and other authoritative, fascistic dickheads with billions all over the world benefit from a useless Twitter and the decreased threat that it can be a tool used to coordinate where the guillotines get set up. And long story short, we now have a useless joke of a Twitter.

  It was win win for him and the people propping him up, either his delusions that he would be successful with Twitter came true (they didn’t) or his likely failure makes all those ghouls happy and he sees indirect benefit from unrelated investment/contracts and someone telling him, “you’re the coolest, bro” and him replying, “watch, hey look, are you looking? Look how fast I can run, are you looking? I’m probably the fastest dinner ever actually” [Proceeds to run slow, trip and fall on his face]

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• merc@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  If he had really cared about the jet tracking thing, he wouldn’t have burned $44b buying twitter to handle it. He just would have bribed / lobbied politicians to put a “public safety” exemption into effect for public data about flights. Make it so that private jets aren’t available in the public feeds / databases. Getting a law like that passed would have cost him tens of millions rather than tens of billions.

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• Daft_ish@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Likely story. Rich people don’t go to prison, you think I was born yesterday?

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• Drunemeton@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  IIRC he was fighting “tooth & nail” to get out of the deal…until they made a request for some of his e-mails.

  Suddenly he’s done fighting and carried through with the purchase.

  (Sorry but I’m going into an appointment so no time to look up this new event…)

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  • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I thought it was more than emails, it was all communication around it?

    Really wish he’d kept fighting do we’d see that.

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• homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Yeah whatever the reason given as to why he bought it will never not be stupid or funny.

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• PieDeath@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This

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• SuckMyWang@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I don’t think he would have gone to jail, he’s too rich for that and that’s not how justice works apparently but I thought there was a heap of stuff that was going to come out in discovery during the trial that was so embarrassing and damning that he preferred to pay the money

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• neclimdul@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Also the part where Twitter has invested in s tier lawyers and brought and iron clad contract that heavily favored them. Which being an entitled idiot he agreed to. So when he tried to back out he literally couldn’t afford the penalties because he didn’t have enough cash and getting it would loose him control of his companies.

  Definitely not him being dumb and entitled. Surely it was a petty $50k grudge.

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