Buying Twitter made Musk "king of the sandbox," allowing him to promote free speech, but not at the cost of his own ego.
  • 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.worldEnglish
    841·
    9 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.mlEnglish
      22·
      9 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.worldEnglish
        31·
        9 months ago

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

    • PoliticalAgitator@lemmy.worldEnglish
      141·
      9 months ago

      I’m also convinced the entire purchase was an accident but I think he was doing the usual far-right “try and shame people for standing up to nazis”.

      • ScrofEnglish
        314·
        9 months ago

        That’s his entire business model. Just look at starship, hyper loop, solar roofs and Tesla semi. Overblown Tesla stock bubble too. All complete vaporware, but he profits greatly from the hype alone. He belongs in prison as he is a classic conman.

        • laverabe@lemmy.worldEnglish
          142·
          9 months ago

          As much as I personally dislike Musk, Starship does not belong on that list. It is the largest and most powerful space vehicle humanity has ever launched successfully and landed! It is re-usable and can potentially carry up to 100 people or 300,000 lbs of cargo.

          Nothing like that has ever been done before, and the advancements in science that will follow humanities expansion into space cannot be overstated.

          • laughterlaughter@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            9 months ago

            100 people are, like, 19,000 lbs. Why the weight difference between 100 people and just cargo? Because of life support systems?

            • laverabe@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              9 months ago

              1 ton per person for living quarters, supplies, etc. I’m not sure if life support is part of that, and also not sure how exactly they settled on 1 ton.

              SpaceX has stated that Starship, in its “baseline reuseable design”, will have a payload capacity of 100–150 t (220,000–331,000 lb)

              https://wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship

      • RealFknNito@lemmy.worldEnglish
        12·
        9 months ago

        So is racking up debt in shell companies and claiming bankruptcy on them but it didn’t stop Trump either.

    • arc@lemm.eeEnglish
      6·
      9 months ago

      It’s worse than that. The usual way of buying a company is a memorandum of understanding followed by due diligence, followed by signing a contract and then the actual completion. Elon went straight to signing the contract and then had big old shit fit when the Twitter board held him to the terms of the contract and the penalties for pulling out.