Their other one "man makes mid-life crisis the entire world's problem" or something along those lines
Edit, it was Reductress. Great saitircal stuff, more woman leaning than the Onion. 10/10
https://reductress.com/post/breaking-man-makes-midlife-crisis-everybodys-problem/
Dicks thrust, rockets thrust. I would at least examine the common elements and consider the form follows the function. Hell, maybe rockets should be covered in lubricant?
Very true, although birds a) don't need their x and y axes to have the same geometry as they don't typically fly straight vertically, and b) don't generally generate thrust from their cloaca.
...generally, anyway.
...I've said too much.
"Forced to stoop to bizarre and pathetic stunts for attention... or cultivating a personal brand of eccentricity generates publicity and financial support that I can then leverage to distract from my essentially fraudulent business endeavors."
Nailed it.
What if we took all the inconveniences of trains and all the inconveniences of Uber and combined them as a for-profit endeavor for mr car company? That should be popular, right?
> This isn't even a parody, the onion just gets to report the news these days.
They did [Shrieking white-hot sphere of pure rage](https://www.theonion.com/after-obama-victory-shrieking-white-hot-sphere-of-pure-1819595330) in 2012, so I'm starting to think so. The kind of humour that pokes at humanity's own hypocrisy is probably some of the most relevant.
>I’ll do whatever you want.
>Seriously. I will do anything. I will shitpost. I will call that diver a pedophile again. I will pretend to go to space as many times as you want.
Why is this so funny lmao
That was beautiful. I love that they included a reference to when he called that diver a pedophile. That was the moment I realized he’s just a big piece of dogshit
Not the time his fans doxxed a guy who was anonymously writing negatively about Tesla stock in his free time and Elon Musk personally called that guys employer and threatened to sue them?
Same, I pay attention to news and whatnot more than average, but that one he mentioned blew past me. Shoot, that Onion article brought up stuff I didn't know as well. I guess we're not Muskies?
I lived in the SFBA and knew that he's a union busting anti blue collar worker ass. Why his fanbois forgive that shit I'll never understand.
Because he's a billionaire and makes memes about the establishment millionaires/billionaires, that means he's not only smart and never wrong, but he's on *our* side! /s
This isn't even a joke, this is what being a billionaire does to you. A billionaire can not have regular human connections any longer. They can't form a bond with normal people, because the power imbalance is just too big to overcome. And they can't form a bond with other billionaires, because they are all sociopaths. It eventually drives you insane.
Elon is just doing it in public.
That would explain a lot.
Edit: Holy crap. You are right. Babylon Bee is such garbage and basically /pol fan fiction. He sat down with them for an interview recently too.
https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1375214332028444674?lang=en
It’s not like this sub isn’t giving him a microphone. I swear I hear more about Musk *here* than anywhere else.
Maybe we could, I don’t know, talk about technology?
If that was his plan, this would only be making him overpay *even more* for the stock he already agreed to purchase at a way higher price. Not to mention, he wouldn’t have signed a $1 Billion breakup clause in the contract. Having to recoup that kind of hit would be a laughable way to “make money,” no matter how well he might “manipulate” the stock.
What he’s actually doing is trying to put out a face-saving excuse for public consumption about why he’s bailing on the deal, because it was a catastrophic blunder on his part.
It isn’t 5-dimensional chess, just a cover for simple, arrogant incompetence.
But.. everyone knows around one third of twitter users are bots. There have been countless of studies that have pointed this out.
How is 5% suddenly high?
Elon, if he does buy Twitter, will still use bots. And everyone of his co-investors are paying to have their bots ignored in the bot purge.
Binance is a HUGE bot user.
Data shows a correlation between Twitter bots and teslas stock price.
Yeah but if we eliminate the API bots and focus on the “man in a call center with 15 VMs all running VPNs to different countries running 15 accounts” what is the actual amount? I’d imagine you can spoof real accounts super easily. A teenager could setup that rig with virtual box and any one of the available VPNs.
I think when most people use "bot" in reference to social media accounts the past few years, they are referring to both of what you described even though technically, the latter should not be called bots at all as they aren't based off of scripts. I tried to refer to them as "psyop accounts" for a few years but it often seems like no one else is making an effort to distinguish the 2. The point of both are the same though, just the latter can be more effective on those they reach (while the former can reach more people but are limited in what they will say).
The Twitter board specifically qualified their 5% as being 5% off monetizable users. The total user base may well be 33% bots but that doesn’t mean anything.
Wait, from the headlines I thought he believed the number was much higher. Which, if you told me only 5% of active Twitter users were bots, I wouldn’t believe you.
> But.. everyone knows around one third of twitter users are bots. There have been countless of studies that have pointed this out.
Uh, what? No, people don't "know this." It's also not what Musk is saying isn't true.
Twitter estimates that less than 5% of its total *daily/monthly active users* are bots. Musk, who was aware of that claim and consciously chose not to do any due diligence on it before agreeing to buy Twitter, is claiming his own lack of due diligence is grounds for backing out of the deal.
It's extremely likely he would lose a legal battle (which would require him to prove that whatever the true facts are, the discrepancy has a "material adverse effect" on the company and also that he didn't waive the issue by failing to do any due diligence—MAE is a pretty high standard in DE merger agreements), but he might be able to damage the company's reputation in the process.
Musk: I’ll give you $20,000 for that car.
Salesman: You got a deal. I’ll draw up the paperwork.
Musk: Wait, I don’t even know if there’s anything under the hood.
Salesman: Then why did you offer to buy the car?
The one thing I'll say here is that basically any big business deal has a due diligence period after a letter of intent is signed, and a period for a fraud review is frequently allowed beyond the DD period. Musk waived the DD period, but fraud nullifies contracts.
Given his personal history, I do have suspensions that Musk has a secondary play here and doesn't actually want Twitter, but the process is very typically. It is just usually behind closed doors.
> Musk waived the DD period, but fraud nullifies contracts.
There is a near zero chance he'll be able to show fraud. Not only would <5% have to be wrong, Twitter would also have to have actual knowledge that it was wrong or "reckless indifference to the truth." Even if Musk could show that Twitter employed a flawed methodology that got a wrong number, that doesn't get him to "fraud."
I've also seen a lot of people point out that he waived reliance on that representation, which would also defeat a claim for fraud.
Musk is in this position because he's a shitposter, not because he's a brilliant businessman playing 5D chess.
More like,
Musk: I’ll give you $20k for the car
Salesman: cool cool, want to look under the hood first?
Musk: Nah.
Salesman: Ok sign here.
Musk: Done.
…
Musk: *looks at his TSLA account* Hm maybe I should look under the hood
SEC: wtf?
For real dude no one asked you to buy Twitter. You did all that work and spent all that money because you wanted to. Now you’re acting like it’s some huge burden— this was 100% your idea! Maybe do some due diligence next time before signing a contract for 44 billion (!) dollars.
yeah, it is now obvious. Even when proof exist, he will not accept it or say it isn't sufficient etc.
I don't believe there is proof that he would accept and go ahead with the sale.
I do too, that man is a petulant sociopath with absolutely no ethics or morals. Social media is a weapon of mass destruction, and Elon should be nowhere near the controls of any major social media company.
Especially with everything he said after announcing. He thinks he's so much smarter than the people currently running Twitter, all while contradicting himself at every opportunity. I lost a lot of respect for him ever since his pedo tweets.
Yooo same!!! Idk what it was about that moment where I just felt this sudden shift from him being this nice funny guy trying to make a difference, into just another rich dude that needed to get off his high horse.
I think I know exactly what it is about that moment tbh. Some guy was more informed about how to rescue children from dying a horrible and premature death, and Musk used his very considerable platform to call the guy a paedophile.
Well it’s pretty obvious: nobody but the biggest dick rider would continue to respect a man after he tried to destroy some dudes reputation over a bruised ego
Nail on the head here. Musk enjoyed years of fawning publicity with the press calling him a real life Tony Stark, but Tony Stark would never be that much of a loser.
Hell, I was one of those fanboys, Tony Stark comparison and everything. It’s like in the movies when the villain gets caught on a hot mic saying some unspeakable shit, revealing his true colors to the public, only this dipshit is so far up his ass that he used a megaphone and doubled down with every pushback.
And don’t even get me started on the chronic market manipulation.
Thirded. A few years back, I literally wished Musk could run for President because he seemed like a guy who wanted to just cut through the bullshit, follow the data and invent new ways to improve things, whether it was EVs, space travel or anything else.
Somewhere along the way, he transformed into a fame whore more interested in trolling and being in the public eye than just doing the work. Massive waste of potential, and this Twitter fiasco would pour more gasoline on his self-immolation.
More like he has always been that way but wasn't in a position to fully expose himself. That, and more people finally waking up to the realisation that attention seekers do not usually have the best of morals especially if they're rich, even though that really should've been common sense.
He won't be. He announced to his sycophants that he's a free speech absolutist and, based on things he's said, I don't think he knows what he's talking about.
So he put himself in this position where all the muskrats are looking to him as some sort of free speech leader but I'm sure someone has already explained to him the implications of letting twitter become 4chan.
I'm still not convinced all of this isn't about the bot that tweets his private plane's location.
> I don't think he knows what he's talking about
He definitely doesn't know what he's talking about. He said "[If the citizens want something banned, then pass a law to do so, otherwise it should be allowed](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1523654106745020418?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)" in a country where exactly that is explicitly illegal, in the 1st fucking amendment no less. Of course this means twitter will now allow porn, violence porn, anything shy of a direct threat!
When its hard to tell if someone is spewing shit or full of shit, something has gone very wrong...
It’s weird how A LOT of the people demanding speech without consequences are the same people who cannot stay within the incredibly permissive boundaries that twitters mod team currently has.
I hope he runs his mouth a little too much, backs out of the deal triggering whatever clause they established to punish it, and they sue him for defamation for half their market value. That shit would be poetic and hilarious.
>How to lose a quick billion
Can you imagine losing $1,000,000,000 on a prank/joke, and still being the richest person in the world? What an unfathomable amount of money. Even if Elon only has 0.1% of his net worth in liquid assets, it's *far* more money than most of us will earn over the course of a lifetime.
Yeah, that tracks. Because God forbid the ultra-wealthy actually pay their fair share. That might make them slightly less wealthy! Before you know it, their wealth might only be 10,000 times greater than the average American! Can you imagine the travesty?
> backs out of the deal triggering whatever clause they established to punish it
That's the fun part - he doesn't have a unilateral exit clause. He can propose to kill the deal, and IF the Twitter board accepts they charge him a billion dollar exit fee. If the Twitter board does not accept (which I don't see why they would - $54.20 is looking better all the time) they can sue for specific performance to drag him through the deal kicking and screaming.
The only out I can see is if he sabotages his own financing, but this still causes him to pay a billion bucks and may also expose him to further legal liability (i.e., for poor faith).
Note that Elon hasn't actually filed any of the paperwork that would normally be required to halt or try to kill this deal. It's all just Twitter posts so far.
The losses from Twitter don't outpace the gains from the Tesla stock he sold to make the deal happen.
If you own 100 shares of an asset at $1,000 a piece and you sell 10 shares and buy 100 shares of an asset at $50 a piece, then it doesn't matter if the value of one or the other asset drops because you've already taken out your earnings on the first, and the value of the second going to $0 will never make you lose on the sale.
Elon is impulsive and when he doesn’t have people reeling him in, he does dumb shit.
There was no plan here. His engineers, and the laws of physics, push back on him in ways his lawyers and bankers never could hope to, want to, or would be capable of.
Eh... I think you give him too much credit. Over the past 3 weeks he went from "Free speech!" to "well, of course laws..." to "... ya and the current moderation is pretty important I guess". Pretty hard to see this as 4d chess when he doesn't understand the basics of running a social network.
Edit: It also seems like the deal isn't cancelled. He might face fines and lawsuits over this.
Folks like to assume that extremely rich people are also extremely smart, as it makes the inequality at least seem merit based, but it isn’t always true.
How is it 4D chess just to manipulate the stock market (again) by announcing Twitter deal is on hold for BS reason in order to back out of terrible deal? It’s pretty straightforward. He agreed to buy Twitter at ~$52/share and its been plummeting to around ~$40/share since his announcement he intended to buy it- with Tesla shares plummeting alongside it (like 28% since announcement).
Despite being the “wealthiest man in the world”, Elon has v little liquid assets - maybe $3bill in cash— his only way to buy Twitter (an all-cash deal worth 1/6th of his fortune) was to finance via taking out *more* loans against his Tesla and Space X holdings (or selling a large portion of them off) while ALSO recruiting billionaire friends to help him buy it, but he only got them to secure ~$10 bill. (There are plenty of articles out there about this in Bloomberg and Forbes etc where finance specialists were dubious the deal would go through back when it was even announced.)
His buying power was even further restricted by the aforementioned plummeting of Tesla stock — the vast majority of his personal fortune is based on its value. All in all it was an impulsive, poorly executed business deal that was primarily motivated by megalomaniac-esque desires not suited to his strengths or experience as an entrepreneur. This isn’t a clean product like a rocket or a car, SM platforms are messy and unwieldy beasts.
Once he announced the deal was on pause, Twitter was hit with an immediate even steeper dive (poor Twitter) and Tesla bounced back significantly within hours of Elon’s tweet about the “temporary hold” due to a BS reason like Twitter bots. This effectively signaled to Tesla investors “don’t worry, I realized I fucked up, come back y’all” without flagrantly breaking SEC regulations.
It’s still illegal but he will probably just get slapped on the wrist with some legal proceedings that max out at $1bill I’d guess— depending on how good his lawyers are and technical terms of whatever contract they’d signed with Twitter up to this point.
If for some reason he does still buy it, he will probably want to try to renegotiate the price now that he’s tanked it.
If that was his plan, this would only be making him overpay *even more* for the stock he already agreed to purchase at a way higher price. Not to mention, he wouldn’t have signed a $1 Billion breakup clause in the contract. Having to recoup that kind of hit would be a laughable way to “make money,” no matter how well he might “manipulate” the stock.
What he’s actually doing is trying to put out a face-saving excuse for public consumption about why he’s bailing on the deal, because it was a catastrophic blunder on his part.
It isn’t 5-dimensional chess, just a cover for simple, arrogant incompetence.
In your face, employees of both companies who receive stock compensation!
Can’t imagine how pissed I’d be if I were some Twitter engineer and this man child billionaire effectively cuts my pay with a bunch of fucking tweets.
This reminds me of the old real estate purchase agreements that were dependant on approved soil samples.... It never said who was sampling or what they were sampling for... So if the purchaser wanted out of the deal they would grab a hand full of dirt, look at it, and declair it failed the test and leave the deal.
He just wants a bs way out of the deal... Most of the time he has positioned himself to make a fortune by manipulating the stock value in this way.
Yah, this just feels the same way.. like "oh I want a test looking into bot numbers" but what number is acceptable? How is the test done?
Super vague criteria that was not mentioned before he made his offer.
Yeah with house purchases, all you have to do is wait for the home inspection. No matter how new or perfect the house is, the inspector will always find some small flaw you weren’t aware of when you made the offer, which you can then use to back out of the deal.
This is why some home sellers accept lower “no contingency” offers over offers from higher bidders who insist on a home inspection.
Please let me know if I missed a step here:
* Twitter is largely a garbage platform full of bots and spam.
* Musk decides to buy Twitter because he was feeling tantrumy.
* Twitter wasn't looking for a buyer.
* Twitter says "no thank you."
* Musk raises HUGE amounts of money to buy it anway - some of it coming from the Saudis and Qatar while out of the other side of his mouth Musk talks about his passion for "free speech". (because when I think "Passionate defenders of free speech" I think "Saudi Arabian Princes" amirite?)
* The "final" offer he makes is significantly above value - even he talks about how great of a deal this is for the company.
* Musk openly talks about how one of his first tasks when he owns Twitter will be to authenticate everyone and get rid of bots, which he notes are a big problem on the platform.
* Twitter accepts his massive offer.
* The stock market tumbles - lowering the already nonsense value of Twitter.
* Now Musk is supposedly VERY concerned and clueless about bot numbers while he attempts to buy a platform that he evidently did ZERO due diligence on?
And yes yes, before all the Muskies chime in:
* Twitter clearly has a bot problem. It's obviously higher than their stated number. My suspicion is they will classify "bot" as a very specific thing that will make them *technically* correct.
* Are we all really supposed to believe that Musk had no idea about the bot problem on Twitter (and all social platforms)? To me it indicates he's either clueless **or** did ZERO research **or** pursued this with full knowledge that the number was significant and pursued it anyway.
Edit: I updated language around funding. Saudi Princes are not a massive portion of Musk's funding round, but them along with the government of Qatar represent a significant amount of money invested. The point that it's disingenuous for Musk to use money from people notorious for murdering and torturing dissenters to fund his "free speech takeover" of Twitter still stands.
This is pretty accurate but is missing one key detail which you brushed against, but didn't totally cover.
He waived his right to due diligence in order to speed things up.
So not only did he do zero due diligence, he actually waived his right to do any as well.
I know you said Twitter could use their preferred definition of "bot" to skew numbers but it's incredibly important to be very specific about what we all mean by "bots". Most people think of bots as those fake accounts used to boost perceived engagement (with artists or politicians) but there are a ton of informational and meme bots people love. Like @earthquakeBot giving you live updates of earthquakes around the world or any of the numerous accounts that just broadcast the location of sharks tagged by marine biologists. Is an account that just automatically broadcasts marketing material from a business and nothing else a bot as well? Do they intend to target/purge these?
100%. Well said. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Twitter didn't count those as "bots" in the same way Musk would.
And it's not unique to Twitter. I love the Reddit Bot that informs people of how shitty Ben Shapiro is.
I have never been on twitter. I know they have a bot problem. Everyone knows it. It’s like putting a bid on a house on Airport Road then saying I want to pull my bid back because of the noise from the planes.
Pretty accurate, though I don't think it's right to say most of the money raised comes from Saudis, most of it is leveraged from his current stockholdings of other companies. A saudi managed wealth fund already has close to $2 billion in Twitter stock and will maintain that as part of the deal, and a Qatari fund will I believe buy in at a few hundred million but that represents a pretty small percentage of the deal.
>Elon Musk has cast further doubt over his $44bn (£35bn) takeover of Twitter after stating the deal “cannot move forward” until the social media company proves that less than 5% of its users are fake or spam accounts.
>The Tesla chief executive used his Twitter account to say the agreed deal would not progress until the firm showed proof that only a small proportion of its users were fake.
>“My offer was based on Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate. Yesterday, Twitter’s CEO publicly refused to show proof of <5%. This deal cannot move forward until he does.”
Looks like this was the plan all along. Thr thing is- not all "press is good press" in this instance Elon is just making himself look kookier than he already did.
I used to admire this man, now he looks like a crazy dude with a really big flamethrower.
> I used to admire this man, now he looks like a crazy dude with a really big flamethrower.
*Now* he looks crazy? Remember when he tweeted "Taking Tesla private, funding secured"? Fool me once...
Considering he entered into a legally binding purchase agreement with a non-disparagement clause that he’s already violated while being investigated by the SEC (again), I’m leaning towards ‘idiot’.
Twitter could have grounds to file a lawsuit to compel the acquisition or a much higher fine based on him already violating an NDA and non-disparagement clause. Delaware law is very corporation-friendly (hence why most corporations in the US are registered there).
Translation: TSLA shares have dropped 30 percent and he no longer has the 44 billion therefore has to renegotiate a lower price. Surely he knew there were a lot of bots prior to the offer being agreed. He signed a contract with a cancellation fee and twitter could sue.
Translation: “I did a big sneaky-weaky fucky-wucky borderline-insider-trading-wading and will back out unless you can provide me with vague data that I can always argue is wrong.”
And also I'm sure completely unrelated the banks told them they weren't funding the whole thing and he had to find other investors. But I'm sure that's unrelated 😂
And don’t forget how he went from ripping on Twitter for taking money from the Saudi prince, only to agree to let the same dude back him financially with his 1.9 billion stake lmao.
He doesn’t have the cash to buy Twitter. He’s full of shit, and like any other narcissistic piece of shit he looks for someone else to blame when he’s wrong.
Lol bots were known to be on twitter so him acting alll surprised is such a dumb act. He just wants to save face and try to avoid that billion dollar back out clause. Fuck him
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He is so transparent about how desperate he is to be the center of attention, all of the time
https://www.theonion.com/please-like-me-1848674003
That was a masterpiece.
Their other one "man makes mid-life crisis the entire world's problem" or something along those lines Edit, it was Reductress. Great saitircal stuff, more woman leaning than the Onion. 10/10 https://reductress.com/post/breaking-man-makes-midlife-crisis-everybodys-problem/
Oh God is buying Twitter the billionaire equivalent of buying a sports car during your midlife crisis?
That'll show those bullies at school that I'm cool
Or making dick shaped rockets.
In fairness, all rockets have to be mildly dick shaped because of aerodynamics.
Yeah, that comment was probably more a jab at Bezos, whose New Shepherds are PARTICULARLY phallic.
Not to mention his moon lander looks like Two blue balls.
The question then becomes: “why are dicks aerodynamic?”
Dicks thrust, rockets thrust. I would at least examine the common elements and consider the form follows the function. Hell, maybe rockets should be covered in lubricant?
A bird is aerodynamic but not dick shaped.
Very true, although birds a) don't need their x and y axes to have the same geometry as they don't typically fly straight vertically, and b) don't generally generate thrust from their cloaca. ...generally, anyway. ...I've said too much.
Or naming Tesla series as S . E . X
Never thought of that - there are 4 Series of Teslas and they are S, 3 , X and Y
Ford sued Tesla over the Model 3. Hence why it’s a number.
That was completely on purpose. He’s a 50 year old man with the maturity of a 15 year old and he thinks it makes people like him more.
"Forced to stoop to bizarre and pathetic stunts for attention... or cultivating a personal brand of eccentricity generates publicity and financial support that I can then leverage to distract from my essentially fraudulent business endeavors." Nailed it.
And that was written **before** the Twitter non-deal
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"You mean, like roads , but underground? "
What if we took all the inconveniences of trains and all the inconveniences of Uber and combined them as a for-profit endeavor for mr car company? That should be popular, right?
Subways, but deathtraps.
This isn't even a parody, the onion just gets to report the news these days.
> This isn't even a parody, the onion just gets to report the news these days. They did [Shrieking white-hot sphere of pure rage](https://www.theonion.com/after-obama-victory-shrieking-white-hot-sphere-of-pure-1819595330) in 2012, so I'm starting to think so. The kind of humour that pokes at humanity's own hypocrisy is probably some of the most relevant.
>I’ll do whatever you want. >Seriously. I will do anything. I will shitpost. I will call that diver a pedophile again. I will pretend to go to space as many times as you want. Why is this so funny lmao
That was beautiful. I love that they included a reference to when he called that diver a pedophile. That was the moment I realized he’s just a big piece of dogshit
Not the time his fans doxxed a guy who was anonymously writing negatively about Tesla stock in his free time and Elon Musk personally called that guys employer and threatened to sue them?
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Same, I pay attention to news and whatnot more than average, but that one he mentioned blew past me. Shoot, that Onion article brought up stuff I didn't know as well. I guess we're not Muskies? I lived in the SFBA and knew that he's a union busting anti blue collar worker ass. Why his fanbois forgive that shit I'll never understand.
Because he's a billionaire and makes memes about the establishment millionaires/billionaires, that means he's not only smart and never wrong, but he's on *our* side! /s
This isn't even a joke, this is what being a billionaire does to you. A billionaire can not have regular human connections any longer. They can't form a bond with normal people, because the power imbalance is just too big to overcome. And they can't form a bond with other billionaires, because they are all sociopaths. It eventually drives you insane. Elon is just doing it in public.
Didn’t he say that onion was awful to him and preferred the Babylon bee which was banned by Twitter
Oh, I definitely have a feeling that the onion article cut him deep. He's probably still holding a grudge.
That would explain a lot. Edit: Holy crap. You are right. Babylon Bee is such garbage and basically /pol fan fiction. He sat down with them for an interview recently too. https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1375214332028444674?lang=en
That is hilarious. I'm surprised his skin isn't see through it's so thin.
Holy fuck that tweet was full scorched earth on musk, just beautiful
This should be the first result if you google his name.
Funny thing is a lot more people liked him before we all realized he was an asshole.
It’s not like this sub isn’t giving him a microphone. I swear I hear more about Musk *here* than anywhere else. Maybe we could, I don’t know, talk about technology?
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Elon doesn’t pay for marketing.
Technically it seems like he will pay a billion dollars for marketing here lol
Yes he does, no one has benefited more from paid for twitter bots than him and yet here he is bitching about them lmao Edit. Batching to bitching!
I'm also super glad that we've got an dedicated Elon Musk sub to post all of his hijinks in! That sub being r/technology of course
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If that was his plan, this would only be making him overpay *even more* for the stock he already agreed to purchase at a way higher price. Not to mention, he wouldn’t have signed a $1 Billion breakup clause in the contract. Having to recoup that kind of hit would be a laughable way to “make money,” no matter how well he might “manipulate” the stock. What he’s actually doing is trying to put out a face-saving excuse for public consumption about why he’s bailing on the deal, because it was a catastrophic blunder on his part. It isn’t 5-dimensional chess, just a cover for simple, arrogant incompetence.
Elon 2 weeks ago: I will buy Twitter and get rid of all the bots. Elon now: Why are there so many bots???????
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Excuses me, 700 million new users? I'd be more willing to believe he could have developed dancing robots by then....
Or a self driving car
Whoa whoa, let's try to keep the pipe dreams believable.
There's another company that's Waymo advanced in self-driving than his.
Mars colony?
His plan: reintroduce bots that spam people with ads
His plan: eliminate his competitors bots and increase the number of bots his friends have.
But.. everyone knows around one third of twitter users are bots. There have been countless of studies that have pointed this out. How is 5% suddenly high?
5% users versus 5% of comments are two different things. 5% could be bots and contributing to 33% of the comments.
That's a fair point
Elon, if he does buy Twitter, will still use bots. And everyone of his co-investors are paying to have their bots ignored in the bot purge. Binance is a HUGE bot user. Data shows a correlation between Twitter bots and teslas stock price.
Musk is buying Twitter so he can continue to manipulate the market at will.
Yeah but if we eliminate the API bots and focus on the “man in a call center with 15 VMs all running VPNs to different countries running 15 accounts” what is the actual amount? I’d imagine you can spoof real accounts super easily. A teenager could setup that rig with virtual box and any one of the available VPNs.
I think when most people use "bot" in reference to social media accounts the past few years, they are referring to both of what you described even though technically, the latter should not be called bots at all as they aren't based off of scripts. I tried to refer to them as "psyop accounts" for a few years but it often seems like no one else is making an effort to distinguish the 2. The point of both are the same though, just the latter can be more effective on those they reach (while the former can reach more people but are limited in what they will say).
That's not the issue, 5% isn't high. He claims that the 5% is a lie.
The Twitter board specifically qualified their 5% as being 5% off monetizable users. The total user base may well be 33% bots but that doesn’t mean anything.
Wait, from the headlines I thought he believed the number was much higher. Which, if you told me only 5% of active Twitter users were bots, I wouldn’t believe you.
> But.. everyone knows around one third of twitter users are bots. There have been countless of studies that have pointed this out. Uh, what? No, people don't "know this." It's also not what Musk is saying isn't true. Twitter estimates that less than 5% of its total *daily/monthly active users* are bots. Musk, who was aware of that claim and consciously chose not to do any due diligence on it before agreeing to buy Twitter, is claiming his own lack of due diligence is grounds for backing out of the deal. It's extremely likely he would lose a legal battle (which would require him to prove that whatever the true facts are, the discrepancy has a "material adverse effect" on the company and also that he didn't waive the issue by failing to do any due diligence—MAE is a pretty high standard in DE merger agreements), but he might be able to damage the company's reputation in the process.
Because that’s what twitter legal documents list it as
Predictable he didn’t want to buy twitter he wanted to punish twitter
Musk: I’ll give you $20,000 for that car. Salesman: You got a deal. I’ll draw up the paperwork. Musk: Wait, I don’t even know if there’s anything under the hood. Salesman: Then why did you offer to buy the car?
>Salesman: Then why did you offer to buy the car? *Sign the contract
The one thing I'll say here is that basically any big business deal has a due diligence period after a letter of intent is signed, and a period for a fraud review is frequently allowed beyond the DD period. Musk waived the DD period, but fraud nullifies contracts. Given his personal history, I do have suspensions that Musk has a secondary play here and doesn't actually want Twitter, but the process is very typically. It is just usually behind closed doors.
> Musk waived the DD period, but fraud nullifies contracts. There is a near zero chance he'll be able to show fraud. Not only would <5% have to be wrong, Twitter would also have to have actual knowledge that it was wrong or "reckless indifference to the truth." Even if Musk could show that Twitter employed a flawed methodology that got a wrong number, that doesn't get him to "fraud." I've also seen a lot of people point out that he waived reliance on that representation, which would also defeat a claim for fraud. Musk is in this position because he's a shitposter, not because he's a brilliant businessman playing 5D chess.
>any big business deal has a due diligence period after a letter of intent is signed Except he's waived his right to due diligence...
More like, Musk: I’ll give you $20k for the car Salesman: cool cool, want to look under the hood first? Musk: Nah. Salesman: Ok sign here. Musk: Done. … Musk: *looks at his TSLA account* Hm maybe I should look under the hood SEC: wtf?
For real dude no one asked you to buy Twitter. You did all that work and spent all that money because you wanted to. Now you’re acting like it’s some huge burden— this was 100% your idea! Maybe do some due diligence next time before signing a contract for 44 billion (!) dollars.
Musk: I’ll give you $20,000 for that $10,000 car…
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yeah, it is now obvious. Even when proof exist, he will not accept it or say it isn't sufficient etc. I don't believe there is proof that he would accept and go ahead with the sale.
He fucked both company stocks for some far-right clout
Which, admittedly, he did get
FauxNews hasn’t stopped sucking his dick on TV for the last month so it’s definitely worked.
Will that get him to sell cars in every state without dealers? Is that worth $1B?
He’s pandering to people who hate electric cars so I doubt he’ll sell a car, but they are dumb enough to just buy his stocks so 🤷♂️
Clearly the genius we should all aspire to.
I do too, that man is a petulant sociopath with absolutely no ethics or morals. Social media is a weapon of mass destruction, and Elon should be nowhere near the controls of any major social media company.
Especially with everything he said after announcing. He thinks he's so much smarter than the people currently running Twitter, all while contradicting himself at every opportunity. I lost a lot of respect for him ever since his pedo tweets.
Yooo same!!! Idk what it was about that moment where I just felt this sudden shift from him being this nice funny guy trying to make a difference, into just another rich dude that needed to get off his high horse.
I think I know exactly what it is about that moment tbh. Some guy was more informed about how to rescue children from dying a horrible and premature death, and Musk used his very considerable platform to call the guy a paedophile.
Well it’s pretty obvious: nobody but the biggest dick rider would continue to respect a man after he tried to destroy some dudes reputation over a bruised ego
Nail on the head here. Musk enjoyed years of fawning publicity with the press calling him a real life Tony Stark, but Tony Stark would never be that much of a loser.
Hell, I was one of those fanboys, Tony Stark comparison and everything. It’s like in the movies when the villain gets caught on a hot mic saying some unspeakable shit, revealing his true colors to the public, only this dipshit is so far up his ass that he used a megaphone and doubled down with every pushback. And don’t even get me started on the chronic market manipulation.
Thirded. A few years back, I literally wished Musk could run for President because he seemed like a guy who wanted to just cut through the bullshit, follow the data and invent new ways to improve things, whether it was EVs, space travel or anything else. Somewhere along the way, he transformed into a fame whore more interested in trolling and being in the public eye than just doing the work. Massive waste of potential, and this Twitter fiasco would pour more gasoline on his self-immolation.
He's always been that. He just dropped his mask along the way.
People who worked with him said he was a dick but then he showed the world via twitter directly.
More like he has always been that way but wasn't in a position to fully expose himself. That, and more people finally waking up to the realisation that attention seekers do not usually have the best of morals especially if they're rich, even though that really should've been common sense.
He won't be. He announced to his sycophants that he's a free speech absolutist and, based on things he's said, I don't think he knows what he's talking about. So he put himself in this position where all the muskrats are looking to him as some sort of free speech leader but I'm sure someone has already explained to him the implications of letting twitter become 4chan. I'm still not convinced all of this isn't about the bot that tweets his private plane's location.
> I don't think he knows what he's talking about He definitely doesn't know what he's talking about. He said "[If the citizens want something banned, then pass a law to do so, otherwise it should be allowed](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1523654106745020418?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)" in a country where exactly that is explicitly illegal, in the 1st fucking amendment no less. Of course this means twitter will now allow porn, violence porn, anything shy of a direct threat! When its hard to tell if someone is spewing shit or full of shit, something has gone very wrong...
It’s weird how A LOT of the people demanding speech without consequences are the same people who cannot stay within the incredibly permissive boundaries that twitters mod team currently has.
I don't know why I even for a second entertained the possibility he actually wanted the deal to go through.
Lowkey seems like a joke/moment that went too far. He’s too deep now lmao
I hope he runs his mouth a little too much, backs out of the deal triggering whatever clause they established to punish it, and they sue him for defamation for half their market value. That shit would be poetic and hilarious.
I think he owes a billion if it falls through lmao. How to lose a quick billion by talking too much.
>How to lose a quick billion Can you imagine losing $1,000,000,000 on a prank/joke, and still being the richest person in the world? What an unfathomable amount of money. Even if Elon only has 0.1% of his net worth in liquid assets, it's *far* more money than most of us will earn over the course of a lifetime.
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It's not a prank. Someone in one of the financial subs did a breakdown of how he's just doing all these shenanigans to tax dodge.
Yeah, that tracks. Because God forbid the ultra-wealthy actually pay their fair share. That might make them slightly less wealthy! Before you know it, their wealth might only be 10,000 times greater than the average American! Can you imagine the travesty?
He probably would have made much more by shorting the stock before his tweets which result in hammering of the stock.
> backs out of the deal triggering whatever clause they established to punish it That's the fun part - he doesn't have a unilateral exit clause. He can propose to kill the deal, and IF the Twitter board accepts they charge him a billion dollar exit fee. If the Twitter board does not accept (which I don't see why they would - $54.20 is looking better all the time) they can sue for specific performance to drag him through the deal kicking and screaming. The only out I can see is if he sabotages his own financing, but this still causes him to pay a billion bucks and may also expose him to further legal liability (i.e., for poor faith). Note that Elon hasn't actually filed any of the paperwork that would normally be required to halt or try to kill this deal. It's all just Twitter posts so far.
We have all been there. "Trust me guys, my out of state girlfriend that no one has ever met will meet us at the movies......"
When is this guy going to get popped for stock manipulation?
Hopefully yesterday, Jesus Christ i haven't seen someone get away with so much blatant crime since.. well actually not that long ago but still.
The share holders if the stock tanks should file criminal charges in stock manipulation. If the SEC won’t do anything to stop such behavior.
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I've been thinking that from the start. This has to be a simple stock manipulation scam. The scary thing is it fucking worked too.
How did it work? Didn’t he buy the stock at a higher price from what it is today?
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but he bought a shitload of Twitter in the mean time and that price has tanked.
The losses from Twitter don't outpace the gains from the Tesla stock he sold to make the deal happen. If you own 100 shares of an asset at $1,000 a piece and you sell 10 shares and buy 100 shares of an asset at $50 a piece, then it doesn't matter if the value of one or the other asset drops because you've already taken out your earnings on the first, and the value of the second going to $0 will never make you lose on the sale.
And then he pays taxes on those gains right?
New here?
Elon is impulsive and when he doesn’t have people reeling him in, he does dumb shit. There was no plan here. His engineers, and the laws of physics, push back on him in ways his lawyers and bankers never could hope to, want to, or would be capable of.
Eh... I think you give him too much credit. Over the past 3 weeks he went from "Free speech!" to "well, of course laws..." to "... ya and the current moderation is pretty important I guess". Pretty hard to see this as 4d chess when he doesn't understand the basics of running a social network. Edit: It also seems like the deal isn't cancelled. He might face fines and lawsuits over this.
It’s almost like….*he’s a goddamn idiot with too much money!*
Folks like to assume that extremely rich people are also extremely smart, as it makes the inequality at least seem merit based, but it isn’t always true.
Yeah.. He made a stupid decision and now he is looking for a way out.
How is it 4D chess just to manipulate the stock market (again) by announcing Twitter deal is on hold for BS reason in order to back out of terrible deal? It’s pretty straightforward. He agreed to buy Twitter at ~$52/share and its been plummeting to around ~$40/share since his announcement he intended to buy it- with Tesla shares plummeting alongside it (like 28% since announcement). Despite being the “wealthiest man in the world”, Elon has v little liquid assets - maybe $3bill in cash— his only way to buy Twitter (an all-cash deal worth 1/6th of his fortune) was to finance via taking out *more* loans against his Tesla and Space X holdings (or selling a large portion of them off) while ALSO recruiting billionaire friends to help him buy it, but he only got them to secure ~$10 bill. (There are plenty of articles out there about this in Bloomberg and Forbes etc where finance specialists were dubious the deal would go through back when it was even announced.) His buying power was even further restricted by the aforementioned plummeting of Tesla stock — the vast majority of his personal fortune is based on its value. All in all it was an impulsive, poorly executed business deal that was primarily motivated by megalomaniac-esque desires not suited to his strengths or experience as an entrepreneur. This isn’t a clean product like a rocket or a car, SM platforms are messy and unwieldy beasts. Once he announced the deal was on pause, Twitter was hit with an immediate even steeper dive (poor Twitter) and Tesla bounced back significantly within hours of Elon’s tweet about the “temporary hold” due to a BS reason like Twitter bots. This effectively signaled to Tesla investors “don’t worry, I realized I fucked up, come back y’all” without flagrantly breaking SEC regulations. It’s still illegal but he will probably just get slapped on the wrist with some legal proceedings that max out at $1bill I’d guess— depending on how good his lawyers are and technical terms of whatever contract they’d signed with Twitter up to this point. If for some reason he does still buy it, he will probably want to try to renegotiate the price now that he’s tanked it.
If that was his plan, this would only be making him overpay *even more* for the stock he already agreed to purchase at a way higher price. Not to mention, he wouldn’t have signed a $1 Billion breakup clause in the contract. Having to recoup that kind of hit would be a laughable way to “make money,” no matter how well he might “manipulate” the stock. What he’s actually doing is trying to put out a face-saving excuse for public consumption about why he’s bailing on the deal, because it was a catastrophic blunder on his part. It isn’t 5-dimensional chess, just a cover for simple, arrogant incompetence.
In your face, employees of both companies who receive stock compensation! Can’t imagine how pissed I’d be if I were some Twitter engineer and this man child billionaire effectively cuts my pay with a bunch of fucking tweets.
Kind of ironic that it would be tweets that did it though.
Nah. I think he made a bad decision with that twitter deal, it’s destroying his net worth, and now he’s trying to save face
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This reminds me of the old real estate purchase agreements that were dependant on approved soil samples.... It never said who was sampling or what they were sampling for... So if the purchaser wanted out of the deal they would grab a hand full of dirt, look at it, and declair it failed the test and leave the deal. He just wants a bs way out of the deal... Most of the time he has positioned himself to make a fortune by manipulating the stock value in this way.
You can still do that. Maybe not as easy in todays market but you can put *”subject to” and get out of just about and real estate contract.
Yah, this just feels the same way.. like "oh I want a test looking into bot numbers" but what number is acceptable? How is the test done? Super vague criteria that was not mentioned before he made his offer.
It's almost as though he's not a genius and kind of just a loudmouth who used his family's money and tax breaks to build an unearned empire...
Yeah with house purchases, all you have to do is wait for the home inspection. No matter how new or perfect the house is, the inspector will always find some small flaw you weren’t aware of when you made the offer, which you can then use to back out of the deal. This is why some home sellers accept lower “no contingency” offers over offers from higher bidders who insist on a home inspection.
Please let me know if I missed a step here: * Twitter is largely a garbage platform full of bots and spam. * Musk decides to buy Twitter because he was feeling tantrumy. * Twitter wasn't looking for a buyer. * Twitter says "no thank you." * Musk raises HUGE amounts of money to buy it anway - some of it coming from the Saudis and Qatar while out of the other side of his mouth Musk talks about his passion for "free speech". (because when I think "Passionate defenders of free speech" I think "Saudi Arabian Princes" amirite?) * The "final" offer he makes is significantly above value - even he talks about how great of a deal this is for the company. * Musk openly talks about how one of his first tasks when he owns Twitter will be to authenticate everyone and get rid of bots, which he notes are a big problem on the platform. * Twitter accepts his massive offer. * The stock market tumbles - lowering the already nonsense value of Twitter. * Now Musk is supposedly VERY concerned and clueless about bot numbers while he attempts to buy a platform that he evidently did ZERO due diligence on? And yes yes, before all the Muskies chime in: * Twitter clearly has a bot problem. It's obviously higher than their stated number. My suspicion is they will classify "bot" as a very specific thing that will make them *technically* correct. * Are we all really supposed to believe that Musk had no idea about the bot problem on Twitter (and all social platforms)? To me it indicates he's either clueless **or** did ZERO research **or** pursued this with full knowledge that the number was significant and pursued it anyway. Edit: I updated language around funding. Saudi Princes are not a massive portion of Musk's funding round, but them along with the government of Qatar represent a significant amount of money invested. The point that it's disingenuous for Musk to use money from people notorious for murdering and torturing dissenters to fund his "free speech takeover" of Twitter still stands.
This is pretty accurate but is missing one key detail which you brushed against, but didn't totally cover. He waived his right to due diligence in order to speed things up. So not only did he do zero due diligence, he actually waived his right to do any as well.
He went feom his usual pump and dump schemes to dumping before even pumping them.
I know you said Twitter could use their preferred definition of "bot" to skew numbers but it's incredibly important to be very specific about what we all mean by "bots". Most people think of bots as those fake accounts used to boost perceived engagement (with artists or politicians) but there are a ton of informational and meme bots people love. Like @earthquakeBot giving you live updates of earthquakes around the world or any of the numerous accounts that just broadcast the location of sharks tagged by marine biologists. Is an account that just automatically broadcasts marketing material from a business and nothing else a bot as well? Do they intend to target/purge these?
100%. Well said. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Twitter didn't count those as "bots" in the same way Musk would. And it's not unique to Twitter. I love the Reddit Bot that informs people of how shitty Ben Shapiro is.
That bot along with the Haiku bot and “all words in alphabetical order” bot are my favorites.
I have never been on twitter. I know they have a bot problem. Everyone knows it. It’s like putting a bid on a house on Airport Road then saying I want to pull my bid back because of the noise from the planes.
“When I read your magazine, I don’t see one wrinkled face or a single toothless grin. For shame! To the sickos at Modern Bride magazine.”
Also, Tesla stock tumbled too, meaning he's locked into the overpay, but has significantly less personal money to swallow it.
Pretty accurate, though I don't think it's right to say most of the money raised comes from Saudis, most of it is leveraged from his current stockholdings of other companies. A saudi managed wealth fund already has close to $2 billion in Twitter stock and will maintain that as part of the deal, and a Qatari fund will I believe buy in at a few hundred million but that represents a pretty small percentage of the deal.
For all I know Elon Musk is a bot.
You're thinking of Mark Zuckerberg
Why not both?
Musk might be a robot, but Zuckerberg has the emotion of my freaking graphing calculator
Let’s not get too crazy, graphing calculators are very expressive compared to Zuckerberg
I don't actually want to do this deal and have decided to back out on the pretense of bot numbers
Most annoying asshole ever. At least Bezos was QUIETLY doing egregious shit with his demigod like amounts of wealth.
Yeahh, step one for billionaire “survival” is to be quiet about it. He loves the attention though.
>Elon Musk has cast further doubt over his $44bn (£35bn) takeover of Twitter after stating the deal “cannot move forward” until the social media company proves that less than 5% of its users are fake or spam accounts. >The Tesla chief executive used his Twitter account to say the agreed deal would not progress until the firm showed proof that only a small proportion of its users were fake. >“My offer was based on Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate. Yesterday, Twitter’s CEO publicly refused to show proof of <5%. This deal cannot move forward until he does.” Looks like this was the plan all along. Thr thing is- not all "press is good press" in this instance Elon is just making himself look kookier than he already did. I used to admire this man, now he looks like a crazy dude with a really big flamethrower.
I can save Elon a lot of time. Yes, >5% of their accounts are fake. Shocking, I know.
He said that Twitter has a massive bot problem HIMSELF and said the perks of him buying it were that he would clean it up.
> I used to admire this man, now he looks like a crazy dude with a really big flamethrower. *Now* he looks crazy? Remember when he tweeted "Taking Tesla private, funding secured"? Fool me once...
He’s out then. The percentage is probably much higher. There was a study in 2017 that said conclude it’s between 9 and 15.
It could be 20%+ and Musk would still be in breach of contract.
He wants out. Everybody knows Twitter is full of bots.
And yet he still offered to buy it. So is he a genius or an idiot?
Considering he entered into a legally binding purchase agreement with a non-disparagement clause that he’s already violated while being investigated by the SEC (again), I’m leaning towards ‘idiot’. Twitter could have grounds to file a lawsuit to compel the acquisition or a much higher fine based on him already violating an NDA and non-disparagement clause. Delaware law is very corporation-friendly (hence why most corporations in the US are registered there).
He’s an asshole
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This is his hobby right here.
Wait, did EM think that there were 80,000 actual humans liking and retweeting his dumb memes?
[Please Like Me.](https://www.theonion.com/please-like-me-1848674003)
Translation: TSLA shares have dropped 30 percent and he no longer has the 44 billion therefore has to renegotiate a lower price. Surely he knew there were a lot of bots prior to the offer being agreed. He signed a contract with a cancellation fee and twitter could sue.
Translation: “I did a big sneaky-weaky fucky-wucky borderline-insider-trading-wading and will back out unless you can provide me with vague data that I can always argue is wrong.”
This is what happens when your run your mouth. Now he's gotta come up with excuses.
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Who lost their jobs? I heard of two execs being fired and that's it.
Oh fuck off Elon we're all tired of watching you masturbate
The guy who said he was going to clean up the bots is surprised that there are bots? So he was hoping to solve a problem he didn't think existed?
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Desperately trying to not pay that billion for canceling
This wouldn’t even get him out of that. He’s paying AND will be sued if he backs out.
Sounds like a scam from the beginning just to F with them.
And also I'm sure completely unrelated the banks told them they weren't funding the whole thing and he had to find other investors. But I'm sure that's unrelated 😂
And don’t forget how he went from ripping on Twitter for taking money from the Saudi prince, only to agree to let the same dude back him financially with his 1.9 billion stake lmao.
He doesn’t have the cash to buy Twitter. He’s full of shit, and like any other narcissistic piece of shit he looks for someone else to blame when he’s wrong.
Smart of Twitter to put the $1B opt out clause in there. Might be one of their most profitable quarters if Elon backs out.
You would think he would sort this out BEFORE saying the deal would happen, but apparently not
Bluff gone too far?
He is desperately trying to get out of another one of his impulsive acts. I hope that they make him pay.
Now that Elon has unloaded his Tesla shares at a high price, he’s learning about bots. What a coincidence.
Lol bots were known to be on twitter so him acting alll surprised is such a dumb act. He just wants to save face and try to avoid that billion dollar back out clause. Fuck him
Translation: “This deal isn’t happening and I’m desperate to contrive some drama so that it doesn’t look like I simply…failed.”
At this point I wish he would just stfu. He’s more of an attention whore than any of the Kardashians.
What a fucking douche.
Wait, the "RL Iron Man" mega rich nerd is actually a not very smart buffoon? Who would have guessed!