Was chatting to a financial reporter friend of mine over DMs about it, and their thoughts are that it’s likely a PR stunt. Their reasoning is that he’s offering a too-low price per share for this kind of deal, and he also doesn’t have that much on-hand liquidity, he would have to sell a bunch of Tesla Stock and other assets.
They think he may be gunning to do two things - pump the stock price for when he can offload his own shares, and/or basically make an offer he knows will be rejected, so that he can leverage it in the public both pissing and moaning about it, while also being able to whitter on about how he could have “Saved” twitter, but they refused, the fools, another case where he makes himself out to be the tragically unheeded genius slash hero.
The move would allow existing Twitter shareholders — except for Musk — to buy additional shares at a discount, thereby diluting Musk's stake in the company and making it harder for him to corral a majority of shareholder votes in favor of the acquisition.
It’s basically a done deal unless something crazy happens.
Considering he seems to just be mad that people make fun of him, personally, on Twitter, and that seems to be a primary driver in this action, I don’t think Twitter will survive too long.
So if I’m reading this right, House Republicans essentially threatened to launch a congressional inquiry into Twitter if they didn’t accept Musk’s offer to buy. Interesting times.
I love the ideas in this thread. Don’t just leave Twitter quietly, demonstrate the limits they will no-doubt still have with “free speech”. Submit reports, upload large multimedia repeatedly. Troll the fuck out of the service that was already a gauntlet of marginal net-benefit and will now embrace the true hell-site it can be!
I can’t fathom spending the emotional and mental energy to troll twitter in an effort to sabotage Musk. Just better invested in just about any other positive activity elsewhere.
It’s weird how easy it has been to totally ignore Musk and all his Twitter bullshit, even though I follow SpaceX and space flight news very closely, and I’m also interested in electric cars. Super easy to stay out of all the trolling and controversies. Same with Trump too, all that’s needed is a few unfollows and a few muted words. And skipping forward in some podcasts.
But this Twitter adventure is breaking through all my previous measures! It’s insane how much everyone in my normal non-Musk circles are talking about this. I guess people care about Twitter a lot more than I do, and think Elon Musk is going to be a lot worse than I do.
I legit just logged of twitter and erased the app from my phone. I am not a fan of Elon Musk, so I am off twitter for now. Will see how things go in 2 weeks for now.
“Temporarily on hold” is not a thing. Elon Musk has signed a binding contract requiring him to buy Twitter. Legions of bankers and lawyers and Twitter employees and special-purpose-vehicle promoters are working to fulfill his legal obligation to get the deal closed. “The parties hereto will use their respective reasonable best efforts to consummate and make effective the transactions contemplated by this Agreement,” says the merger agreement. (Section 6.3(a).) He can’t just put that “on hold.”